AAR > Lionel > Caller "God let 9/11 happen."

[patrice]

If one agrees with what Ron Paul said last night about Blowback, the notion that super-ordinate categories of factors trigger things that happen in the world is another way of saying ___________ (fill in the blank with the diety of your choice) let it happen.

Religion in and of itself is not NECESSARILY wrong. It, like mythology, represents a different, perhaps foreign to you, language for explaining things that happen.

The decadence that Lionel's caller referred to could = the sorts of things that Chomsky writes about in Hegemony or Survival.

The issue of individual culpability or innocence is addressed by the FACT that we exist as a group NOT individuals. What happens to the group is the result of what the group is.

[valerief]

1. I don't get it. What about how two trillion angels can fit on the head of a pin instead? nt

[eleny]

2. By that reasoning OBL is the soldier of that deity

[patrice]

13. Yes. He'd fall somewhere, at one level or another, in those classes

of super-ordinate factors that caused 9/11. You could describe those factors with either the semantics of Blowback or with the semantics of Religion, but in either case you could be talking about some of the same phenomena.

Yes, the semantics are derived from different processes, but part of my point is that they are explanations of the same thing from different perspectives. If you look at ___________ from point A and I look at the same ___________ from point B, which one of us is "wrong".

[paparush]

3. Well, Bush does think that he's God.....

I'm just sayin...

[patrice]

14. I will go with that as being the most common Religious error:

Blasphemy - which, in contrast to what I said about Religion not being Necessarily wrong, DOES make it absolutely wrong, with the exception being that not all religious folk are blasphemous and they avoid that by recognizing the inherency of error (something that is also built into all valid Science, BTW).

[kysrsoze]

4. Wouldn't God basically let everything happen? It's supposed to be up to us how we respond

You don't change the future, land a better job or get a bigger house by praying to God. God doesn't support a particular side of a war or a football game. Stupid fucks.

[patrice]

17. Caused:Let it happen?

Yeah, I know I have to think about that point a little more.

If we accept what Ron Paul was saying, our corruption caused terrorism. Is that a different thing from saying terrorism was allowed to happen because we are corrupt?

Different definitions of "corruption" (one defined by Noam Chomsky, the other by the Bible), but still a cause and effect relationship.

[patrice]

18. I'm pretty much in the school of thought that says something like

if "God" is omnipotent, God is the source of what we call "Good and Bad".

How could "Jesus" have "Saved" us, without Judas?

[EstimatedProphet]

5. God lets everything happen

See, that argument is a fallacy, because it doesn't say anything. The rabid fundies want to say that God let 9/11 happen to punish America. Doesn't that apply to everything? God let Iraq get invaded too. God let the US get invaded in the War of 1812. God let the Titanic sink. God let Germany annex the Sudenland. God has let every event in history happen. Was every event in history a punishment of people who God saw as sinners? Reductio ad absurdum with pretty little effort in this case.

[kysrsoze]

7. Only a complete dumb@ss uses such logic (or... now that I think of it... doesn't use logic)

Oops - God let me say that? Doesn't it just make you want to rip your hair out when people are completely incapable of taking that kind of assumption or assigned talking point to its rational end?

[EstimatedProphet]

9. Wait...I have a bald spot! That explains it!

:)

Yes indeed it does drive me up a wall.

[kysrsoze]

10. Actually, God allowed the bald spot to happen. You must have sinned

[patrice]

19. Yes, the reasoning does go something like that,

except sometimes it's "let it happen" sometimes it's "caused" and yes it is circular and self-justifying.

I'm really thinking more about the "because _____________" part of it (i.e. "let it happen because _______" or "caused to happen because _________"). Whether it's a diety or, as in this case, Blowback, a causal relationship is being posited. I wanted to say to the caller, supposing there is something that fits the definition of what you call "God" and that "God" let's things happen **because** of corruption, couldn't corruption just as easily be violations of the Commandment "Thou shall not kill" or "Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's goods" as it could be violations of any other Biblical prohibitions? Ergo, how do you know WHICH corruption caused 9/11, unless you are blasphemous, in which case, given your line of "reasoning", how do you know that the corruption for which "God" let it happen isn't Blasphemy?

Lionel actually started toward this approach, but got deterred somehow.

[dave_p]

6. How does human cause imply a deity?

Huh? A hits B. B hits A back. So there's a god?

I don't know about "super-ordinate categories of factors" triggering things. But I do know that half a million Iraq sanctions dead angered a lot of Muslims. And not just Muslims.

Human action. Human response.

[patrice]

20. It doesn't imply nor deny it, because order is not absolute.

Order is relative, so sometimes human action obviates "God", sometimes it implies something other than (direct) human action. I think that "other" has acquired a label called "God". Whether that other is, in fact, some super-ordinate factor or sets of factors (think here of some of the explanations you've heard of for things such as the "parting of the Red Sea" or UFOs) or whether it's something that fits the definition of "God", we can't know until we have ALL of those super-ordinate phenomena and sets of factors accounted for.

This, of course, is not to mention that IF you buy into the conventional definition of God, ANY definition is blasphemous . . .

But my original question was really more about: whether you say it's "God" or Blowback (Blowback = super-ordinate factors) causing 9/11, both are motivated by corruption, so what is more important: the higher order cause that we ***disagree*** about, or the more direct cause which we COULD agree about (or, we could if it weren't soooooooo much more important for some people to engage ridicule rather than to seek solutions)? You see that around here all of the time, though, people REALLY just want to "proove" their superiority by getting it over those they deem inferior, rather than creatively identify alternative potentials. Paolo Freire would say they have internalized the oppressor; they have become the very thing they are fighting.

[dave_p]

23. It's politics. Bad politics.

Ridicule? No, just an observation, albeit a terse one. I don't know what you're suggesting, that there's a higher "balancing" at work? In fact the suffering's been extremely imbalanced - 6,500 dead on one "side", as many as 1.4 million on the "other" since 1991 (the "other" not even including the perpetrators of 911). Of course we'd rather it were zero on both sides. But to the extent that there's been "blowback" it's been the comparatively ineffectual and largely counterproductive response of largely powerless groups against massive abuse of modern economic and military might. Unfortunately the blowback from all this will carry on for decades, and it won't bring justice for anyone. And it's the result of human folly.

[patrice]

25. Sorry! "Ridicule" was not directed at you.

I was referring to Lionel and others in this thread who are little over impressed with themselves.

My apologies, it occurred to me that I might be mis-understood, but did nothing about it.

I'll get back to you about the other issues you raise later, after I get a couple of other things done.

Thanks for the reply (despite the fact that I insulted you).

[dave_p]

26. No apology needed, I seemed ruder than I meant to be.

:)

[Solly Mack]

8. if nothing else, gods are handy

[porphyrian]

11. We exist as a group AND as individuals, not either/or.

You're just as wrong by claiming only one is true.

[patrice]

12. I'll stand corrected on that issue.

My point should have been: things happen to the group partly because of what the group is as a whole and partly because of who individuals are. And things happen to individuals partly because of who they are and partly because of what the group is. Any given event is therefore some ratio of the two factors and some of those ratios are disproportionate enough as to say things such as "This individual is suffering because of the group" or "This group is suffering because of an individual".

[porphyrian]

15. That's how I understand it.

Additionally, each individual's perception of themself, other individuals, and the group can and usually does vary from the perceptions of others relating to those things, and all of those perceptions can and possibly do vary from the real inter-relationship.

[patrice]

22. Absolutely!

Or should I say . . . Relatively!

Yep, statements of rational "knowledge" about any factors assume a valid and reliable instrument, or instruments, that produce information that is subjected to peer review in order to account for the differences that you identify. So you end up with (only) probable ranges, or variances, within a context.

[patrice]

28. Re: "assume" in post #22 = and, of course, that is a BIG assumption. nm

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

16. someone's actually listening to Lionel?

That's the real news in this thread

[patrice]

21. It's an experiment.

I'm still MISSING Sammy!!

[LSK]

24. what the fuck does this have to do with US bases in Saudi Arabia????

:shrug:

[patrice]

27. Comparing two explanations for 9/11:

1. Bases in Saudi Arabia (and other such Imperialistic phenomena) caused 9/11 - and -

2. God caused 9/11 or let it happen, because of "corruption" -

I'm comparing them for the purpose of proposing a connection between the two in the definition of corruption.

Socrates showed us that the best tactic for attacking someone's definition of something (in this case the limited definition of corruption as being only homosexuality and Evolution) is not a direct assault, but to expand the definition of that thing by getting them to assent to certain similarities with things that they've arbitrarily excluded from the definition.

Multi-national corporate/American Imperialism = corruption (e.g. blasphemy, idolatry, killing, stealing, covetousness etc. - not to even mention The New Testament, i.e. the so-called "Good News") + Certain selectively exclusive Biblical prohibitions or refutation of "dogma" = corruption.

That's an important tactic in this case, because corruption (however that is defined) is being used in a causal statement by the opposition.