Xurtio

The thing about blaming religion is that it makes the problem intractable. Acknowledging the role it plays is one thing, but confronting an established belief system directly is futile. By doing so, you give the religion the power it only presumed to have in the first place. Violence and intolerance are cultural (and biological) and religion is just a small subset of culture. Consider the Bedouin raiding parties that preceded Islam. They were efficient village raiders and their primary goal was raiding of goods and supplies (material goals). Ibn Khaldun goes into more detail; briefly, over time, the raids got codified into the religious propaganda of Islam.

As culture evolves, seeded religions become a valuable tool for transfer of information and grows with the culture; eventually religious ideology fissions and fractures into sects as people's personal drives and cultural ideals don't match the original interpretation (most westerner's know the story of how Henry VIII personal drives caused the fission in Roman Catholicism). Anyway, point being, that our biological and social drives are ultimately what's at play here and religion is one of the ways humans encode their drives. Treating religion as a the source of the problem is a lot like trying to kill God. Things like Education (from directly teaching tolerance to indirectly teaching it by motivating rational thinking through the physical and life sciences) and well mixed markets (allowing business and property ownership, but protecting common-sense consumers) are more successful at reducing unrest (obviously, we can't do anything like that when the political climate is so unstable).

Military action hasn't gone so well for those of us on the somewhat secular side of things. By this, I mean the US and the UN. We're only secular in that we have freedom of religion as an ideal (and, to some extent, separation of church and state). But we still have religious rhetoric and we clearly have a bias toward Israel. Less than a decade ago we had a US president calling his war holy and calling the enemy "evil doers". So our military actions might be solving some problems, but they're stirring up others, and the whole "us vs. them" mentality just makes the Muslim extremist population larger (because once your 3yo family member has been bombed by an unmanned craft with no face, as it had to a neighbor village's 9yo months before, it doesn't seem so extremist to take up arms against the owner of the thing).

I'm not anti-US military action (the civilian to soldier death ratio of UAV's is not much different than it has been in previous wars) but I think the context is important. The "us vs. them" mentality (which is fed by Islamophobia and perceived Islamophobia) just makes the problem worse. We could at least engage in war in a more appropriately secular manner.

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John Wilkes Booth

you might be right, but what if the religion explicitly endorses ideals which run contrary to your modern values? by ignoring this and pinning it on each person who comes along and acts on it, you're essentially ignoring the disease while attacking the symptom.

there's a few things to address here

1. when you say military action hasn't worked out, which military action are you referring to and what do you think was the objective?

2. why do you suppose the united states supports israel?

3. i do think engaging islamic terror groups, and at this point, engaging any islamic power with us forces is going to spawn more antagonism in the region. but let's say it's a 9/11 situation and a terror group launches an attack on us? whats the practical alternative to engaging them militarily?

Xurtio

Lots of moral systems run contrary to my modern values; I try to discuss on the merits and indirectly render ideology obsolete, rather than directly attacking ideology. Mostly because ideology is malleable and generally people are justifying deeper feelings and drives with their ideology rather than the other way around - they announce loudly that the ideology came first to give it some kind of vague moral authority, but I'm skeptical that moral philosophy trumps hunger and greed. To me, it appears that religion is not the disease, but another symptom. The disease is political and economic instability, religion is a meme that help transmit and store information about how to deal with that instability.

To your specific points:

1) Our whole campaign in the middle east. It's not that we had bad intentions, it's just a messy situation. Our choices of engagement gave preference to secular regimes in the middle-to-late 20th century. Regimes largely funded by outside interests (interests external to the countries in which they operated). During this time, there was a strong secular movement in the civilian population, but it's image was tainted by these outside forces leading secularists like Saddam getting into power, fueling the anti-western sentiment in the region. This has created the recent backlash where religious regimes are rising to power again as the local civilian population has turned back to their religious roots having been rubbed the wrong way by secular ideology (which was not kind to them. Secular leaders in the middle-east have often been tyrants like their predecessors).

2. Israel is the state of the Jews and even before Israel, Jewish people had a rough time and ended up in victim roles a lot. Our sympathy was deserved and they were also a more willing ally through which we could try to negotiate peace treaties. However, Israel's power abuses in the last decades have gone largely unchecked. But this isn't the point, really. My point was the way our media portrays Israel vs. Palestine. You rarely hear about the ****ty things Israel does. I acknowledge that our relation with Israel is diplomatic and in the interest of peace, but we create backlash when we represent it is a good-guy/bad-guy thing on the homefront rather than acknowledging that it's a diplomatic impasse of sorts. And this fosters the anti-western sentiment that makes it hard for the west to participate in stabilizing the region. You have to recognize that the Israel is essentially an invading force to Palestine (Sykes-Picot, etc).

3. It's not the existence of military engagement, persay. And I'm not disparaging military action period. We are talking about tact and homefront attitudes we foster (like Bush calling it a holy war and having a hard on for WMD's with little evidence and calling the enemy "evil doers"). US occupation of Saudi Arabia (after the Gulf War was over) drove a lot of the anti-west sentiment that led to 9/11. How necessary is occupation? It's a complicated question but certainly occupation by foreigners is counter to establishing political stability in a region and stability is the ultimate goal.

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H̓̇̅̉yͤ͏mͬ͂ͧn͑̽̽̌ͪ̑͐͟o̴͊̈́͑̇m͛͌̓ͦ̑aͫ̽ͤ̇n̅̎͐̒ͫ͐c̆ͯͫ̋ ̔̃́eͯ͒rͬͬ̄҉

Freebase Dali

What weird things in particular?

The law of large numbers dictates that if people don't have weird, inexplicable things happening to them at some point in their lives, something is probably wrong. Given that there are so many of us out here living life where so many chances of something occurring are vast, if our lives never contained a coincidence at all, we must not have been living.

Another neat thing is confirmation bias. This is basically when something we suspect or believe is bolstered or given evidence based on one of those weird coincidences we have every once in a while, while all the times something does not bolster or give evidence to said belief is not remembered. We remember the hits, disregard the misses. Confirms bias.

If you're interested in more of this kind of thing, research critical thinking in general. There's a cheesy but basic and decent documentary you can watch called "Here Be Dragons" that can help out.

Anyway, when using critical thinking I answer your original question in the following way:

1. How do I qualify evidence? If it is by a scientific standard, which it is, then that's how I qualify it.
2. If I am using evidence to qualify my belief in why things are, I will have more evidence that there is a natural explanation for things than evidence to the contrary. After all, I would be highly egotistical to think that my own personal (and highly subject to flaw via ignorance) anecdotes trump the collective of scientific knowledge up to this point.
3. Ultimately, I believe what there is more evidence supporting. In the case of god vs. nature, we have far more scientific evidence for natural processes than a divine intervention. The only "evidence" for a divine creator is people's own experiences, which are usually not so reliable. If I ever saw "god" or experienced him in any way, I'd not have any more reason to believe in him than I do now.

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John Wilkes Booth

that's interesting, and i think you're right that my analogy of religion as the disease is inaccurate, because the backwards values reflected in religion reflect the backwards values of humans at the times those religious cultures were cultivated, which were in turn shaped by the pragmatic constraints of the world they lived in.

i do agree there's no use attacking islam or any religion ideologically.. but western liberals live in this sort of denial state where they pretend like the religion is different from reality ...i guess all i'm saying is call a spade a spade. you don't need to pretend like things are any other than they are, or give some sort of fake reverence out of 'respect'. but i do agree in general we should avoid actually attacking the ideology and just try to coexist with its adherents.

i see.. so it sounds to me like you approach the issue from point of view that the united states is just trying to pursue peace and diplomacy and have failed on that front.

that is indeed the most popular narrative. and it speaks to our moral impulses. but i feel it fails to identify the true intentions and constraints of the united states, i.e. why we really go to war.

maybe try looking at it this way instead:

Xurtio

I don't have an hour to kill right now, but I'm not so naive that I believe the US has moral superiority in all they do (I started of this discussion with criticism of them). The US is the leading superpower of the world and that's a good position to be in and it's a bad place to come down from (you make a lot of enemies that are waiting to cut your throat if you lose power for all your mistakes). So there are lots of dirty things you have to do to stay on top so that you're not trampled under foot (arms race, etc.)

But... motivations for US war campaigns are versatile and multi-faceted depending on who's in office and what agenda they and their partners are pushing and what events are occurring; stabilization in the middle east is a political and military goal of the US (it's to our economic and defense advantage). The game is rigged in our favor of course, because everyone we bring to world trade on the "free market" is really a market that we've already taken a lot of control over... yet, a stabilized middle east would likely benefit from things like free market principles and liberal social laws to protect discriminated groups (as well as free trade with the West). I don't think these goals are mutually exclusive with more selfish goals. Those of us who do have a modicum of compassion can ride on campaigns in favor of world citizen goals like stabilization (and my perspective does exist in the military and political ranks). If you're at all pragmatic, you have to accept that such campaigns are multi-faceted and you're not going to like some of the facets you share a diamond with, but sometimes it's the only way to get representation for your own facet.

tl;dr real world morality is different shades of grey, not black and white.

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John Wilkes Booth

what if i were to say that destabilization of the middle east is beneficial to the united states and serves our interests?

RoxyRollah

I might have to agree.

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Xurtio

I think you could make the case for some sectors and institutions in the US (particularly the war racket) but not "the US" as a whole. Citizens and their future generations have suffered for it (from the twin towers to TSA to domestic wiretapping). Bin Laden's "war of attrition" is underway.

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John Wilkes Booth

i understand where you're coming from. i used to think about it in this way as well. i would assume the us generally wants peace in the region so it can continue to trade and make money. it makes perfect sense. but there is another way to look at it.

here is basically how i see it. first, you approach the topic of war from a geopolitical perspective, leaving morality and politics to the side for the moment. you look at history as basically a series of civilizations competing and maneuvering for power and wealth and using their military to protect and expand said power and wealth.

then you look at the united states. the biggest economy in the world. the number 1 military superpower in the world. and yet only 100 years ago this was unthinkable. the united states rose to its position through the course of the 2 world wars, which decimated the european empires and transferred the balance of naval power from britain to the united states.

so the united states found itself in a position where it was the greater of 2 super powers, US & USSR, which were then inevitably locked in a cold war for the next few decades because strategically speaking, the USSR was all the US had to worry about, and the US was all the USSR had to worry about. so foreign policy gets shaped by threats and perceived threats.

for a good 4 decades our foreign policy was dedicated to undermining the soviet union. we were willing to give power to other nations just to counter balance that perceived threat. once the soviet threat collapsed, the united states found itself the sole superpower in the world. so at this point it isn't in our best interests that any eurasian power become too big. if the islamic world were to unite and form a force against the united states they might make a genuine foe, but cultural and religious strife leaves this impossible and this is all well and good for the united states because we really don't want any new major powers to emerge.

so an unstable middle east is just fine for the united states. it's not pretty but i think that's how it goes. and i think if you look at the patterns of how we've used our military since ww2 it will make perfect sense when keeping this pov in mind.