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What atheists REALLY think of the ethics of warfare

Started by Zarathustra, December 03, 2008, 11:44:14 AM

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Zarathustra

Quote from: "Kyuuketsuki"
Quote from: "Zarathustra"
Quote from: "Tanker"When a government encourages and protects a radical element with know terrorist principles it becomes that government responsability when those same radicals attack a foriegn government.
How so?

I don't think it is inherently an unreasonable point of view after all isn't that the stance India is taking with Pakistan over the recent violence in Mumbai? One government mandate is to protect it's people form all enemies foreign or domestic but one assumes it also has some measure of responsibility for the actions of its own citizens if they are carrying out criminal acts in other countries especially if they are organised and acting from a base within the country in question.

Kyu
Well I do.
The first and foremost logistic and economical governmental back up of Al-Qaeda, was by the Saudi administration. Why not attack them?
Because they are allies, the US is dependant on their oil, and basically because the Taliban, just 5 months before the strike, had refused to let the US build their pipeline through Afghanistan. And by the way: It was the US who helped the Taliban to power. Shouldn't they attack themselves first by this logic?

I acknowledge that you both have a point, Kyu and Tanker, but you must admit that the occupation of Afghanistan is a grey-zone. Yet it is UN sanctioned, so I'm not getting into a big argument about it. And I gather we are in agreement about Iraq.

The point is that Tanker's claim, that the Afghanistan government attacked the US, is simply not true. Hiding a criminal is not the same as commiting the crime yourself.
"Man does not draw his laws from nature, but impose them upon nature" - Kant
[size=85]English is not my native language, so please don't attack my grammar, attack my message instead[/size]

karadan

Quote from: "Zarathustra"
Quote from: "karadan"
QuoteI have an idea who these figureheads could be but I'll keep that to myself for now. It is probably more relevant for another thread.
Please do. That sounds very interesting.

Ok, but be warned, the following is a little, umm, wacky and may be seen as thread derailment…

Firstly, I believe the main limitation for us as a species is space. It is the limitation of space which causes a lot of problems. It is no coincidence that the incidence of violence (per head of capita) rises as population density increases. Therefore, our species doesn't function efficiently when confined by space. The same rings true for most other biological systems, be it bacteria in a petri dish or fish in a fish tank. The human race is coming up to the latter stages of the demographic transition model. It is hypothesised that once the population of earth reaches between 30 - 40 billion, it will level off and have a 'plateau' phase where the mean death rate equals the birth rate. The approach to this point will see the increase in wars fought over resources through the need to survive as opposed to the acquisition of power - as I suggested before. Ironically, we are wasting time fighting each other for money when we have larger problems looming on the horizon. If the US government had transferred their defence budget to NASA in the early 70's, we'd already be colonising Mars.

So, if we were able to get over the space issue (colonising other parts of the solar system) then we wouldn't have to fight over limited resources. That still leaves the acquisition of power issue though….

As I said earlier, we'd need an arbitrator. Well, you'll probably laugh at me for this and it is pretty far-out but I do believe it is a possibility - AI…

We know a computer is able to 'compute' information far faster than a brain (I'm talking conscious information - not higher brain functions here). The vast amounts of data a super computer can chew through would give something which is artificially intelligent the resources to determine solutions to problems like global warming, the increase in sea salinity in the gulf stream, famine, religious fundamentalism, fusion power, etc…

I'm not saying we'd be asking a robot 'how do we solve this problem?' and its answer would be 'kill all christians!' That is too simplistic. We'd just feed data into it. Vast reams of data. Eventually it would have enough information to base certain assumption upon. Its solutions to problems would more than likely be hugely radical i.e., it might simply say 'stop being religious'. It would probably come up with answers many of us already know, but have the inability to change. This wouldn't be an enforcement machine, just something with the capability to answer questions which millions of humans cannot instantly agree upon. Whether we act on those solutions is up to us.

This is a hugely debatable subject and something it would take generations to get used to. But, I prefer the thought that something vastly more intelligent than us is churning out solutions to enormous problems, than the endless drudgery of existence based upon the tug-of-war for claims to power and resources by the few power mongerers in charge.

Essentially i'm suggesting that a symbiotic relationship between machines and humans might be a good way to deal with the current dangers facing the human race as a whole. Either that or an extinction level event occurs whilst simultaneously keeping all the combined human scientific knowledge intact :)

I did say it was probably more apt for a different thread :p
QuoteI find it mistifying that in this age of information, some people still deny the scientific history of our existence.

Kyuuketsuki

Quote from: "Zarathustra"Well I do.

Good for you ... the world would be such a dull place if we all agreed :)

Must we? I'm not inherently against the concept of government change by force but personally I think "we" underestimated the time and effort required to invade and hold a country that contained elements so vehemently opposed to western control.

Quote from: "Zarathustra"The point is that Tanker's claim, that the Afghanistan government attacked the US, is simply not true. Hiding a criminal is not the same as commiting the crime yourself.

Specifically hiding it would be construed in a court as being complicit so I'd have to disagree but I would also say that if a government knew about such terrorist bases and elected to do nothing about them then they are ignoring a key part of their responsibilities as a government (entirely different from being unable to do anything about them).

Kyu
James C. Rocks: UK Tech Portal & Science, Just Science

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Wechtlein Uns

Y'know, every guy on the planet has violent tendencies. Every man, boy, or teenager has an instinctive urge towards violence. Violence is a part of who we are. Human beings are NOT perfectly moral or good. There are two sides to every person: their persona, and their shadow. And we all have violence in our shadow.

The good news is that it is possible to have a world without war. The secret lies in being able to turn that violent destructive energy into a constructive energy. And it is possible. One of the major responsibilities and functions of being a father is teaching your son how to deal with their anger and violent tendencies. It's a matter of turning the mentality from "attack", to "protect" and "build". Good fathers do this all the time.

Often, however, when children don't have fathers or have abusuive fathers, they turn to gangs and violence and give voice to that destructive energy inside them. So. The first step towards world peace, I would say, would be to raise our sons right. Accept the loss of a father in their life, and strive to be their for their sons. I'd bet a large sum of money that war would diminish. In fact, the majority of the worlds population all ready does not want war. There are still some portions that do. And those are fed by religious out-group hostility.

There's work to be done. But it's not impossible to have a world of peace.  :lol:
"What I mean when I use the term "god" represents nothing more than an interactionist view of the universe, a particularite view of time, and an ever expansive view of myself." -- Jose Luis Nunez.

curiosityandthecat

Quote from: "Wechtlein Uns"There are two sides to every person: their persona, and their shadow.

Isn't that a Jungian concept?
-Curio

LARA

QuoteWechtlein Uns wrote: Y'know, every guy on the planet has violent tendencies. Every man, boy, or teenager has an instinctive urge towards violence.

I think we all have tendencies.  People tend to look at things in black and white, self and other type ways and it's easy to shift the blame onto another, but the reality is that we all have a part in allowing the psychological atmosphere to exist that allows a war to happen.  We have to catch our own distorted perceptions of those who are different before they pop out.  It's pretty easy to look at another groups problems and say we don't have them ourselves.  And the language we use sometimes betrays things about us we never even knew existed about ourselves.

Communication really is a huge factor in fomenting wars between different countries, but the reality is, it does start with every one of us.  For example, I had to call tech support today to get my modem working and I got a representative from India, just a regular Joe like one of us trying to do his job.  And his accent was hard to understand, plus I was frustrated that my system was acting so weird.  He was asking me if I was tech savvy and stuff and it kind of hurt my feelings a little because I felt like it meant he thought I was a moron with computers.  But I just tried to chill, and let him know I was having trouble with his accent and we had a okay conversation and everything got up and running.

If you compound that situation by how many fold people are trying to communicate with each other on a daily scale, you start to see where the issues that create misunderstandings between people arise. Not everyone has the same sense of humour or tolerance for the gauche. It's all  just culture clash.  And a small piece of respect here and there goes a long way, but sometimes things just seem to enter a downward spiral between disparate groups and well, one thing leads to another and another and so on and so forth.  

So it's easy to see the need and the reason to be polite, but then again we all sometimes have to sit back, go quietly to some safe out of the way place and cuss until our faces turn blue.

Or maybe I'm the only one  :D  who needs to do that.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
                                                                                                                    -Winston Smith, protagonist of 1984 by George Orwell

Will

Quote from: "Kyuuketsuki"A simple example .. the second world war. What solved it? It wasn't talking. It wasn't pacifism. It was the willingness of the Allies to put up against the Axis powers an equivalent or superior force to beat them back to where they should be. The solution to the problem of the Nazi's and other Axis powers aggression was violence, sheer naked violence ... it may not have been the solution that some wanted (although I think a lot of this is about looking back and imagining we could have done it different or better), it may even have been a very poor solution (it's entirely debatable) but it was a solution and it changed the world in ways we can only imagine (because we have no real idea what the world would have been had we not gone head to head with the Axis powers).

Detestable though wars are they solve problems for one side or the other.

Kyu
You're describing military supremacy. Why does everyone equate military supremacy with victory? A lesser of two evils is still an evil, and that's what we got. What did our military supremacy look like? Millions upon millions killed by each side, Europe and Japan in ashes, the globe being carved out by pseudo-capitalists and pseudo-communists for the next generation; I don't recognize this as any kind of victory. War shed it's skin and started all over again, one side retaliating and then the other doing the same until today. War won't stop until people realize that military supremacy doesn't mean victory. It certainly doesn't mean security or freedom. It's worse than worthless, it's self sustaining destruction and chaos.
I want bad people to look forward to and celebrate the day I die, because if they don't, I'm not living up to my potential.

Tom62

You can win all the battles, but still loose the war. If you don't win the hearts of the people you can never have a victory. War in itself is only destructive. It doesn't bring freedom or security, bus misery and chaos. Military superiority helps you to win wars, but does nothing for establishing peace. The main reason why permanent peace was established  in Western Europe after WW-II, was not the military superiority of the allied forces but the Marshall Plan which helped the Europeans to buildup their ruined countries again. With that plan the USA won the hearts of its former enemies.

Nothing infuriates people more than having a foreign occupying force on their home soil. Whenever that is the case there is no chance for peace. The best what then can be achieved is either a permanent stalemate (like in Korea) or unstoppable violent actions against the occupying forces (like in Iraq and Israel). This doesn't mean that we cannot change things for better. For example, the long civil war in Northern Ireland was finally resolved by diplomacy and reason. Once the British government didn't treat Sinn Féin any longer as terrorists, but as a legal political party, the civil war ended quickly. That proves to me as well that if you treat people as potential terrorists they will become terrorists. Fighting a war against terrorism can therefore only have negative results. If you fight violence with violence then you can only create more violence.
The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract.
Robert A. Heinlein

Kyuuketsuki

Quote from: "Willravel"You're describing military supremacy. Why does everyone equate military supremacy with victory? A lesser of two evils is still an evil, and that's what we got. What did our military supremacy look like? Millions upon millions killed by each side, Europe and Japan in ashes, the globe being carved out by pseudo-capitalists and pseudo-communists for the next generation; I don't recognize this as any kind of victory. War shed it's skin and started all over again, one side retaliating and then the other doing the same until today. War won't stop until people realize that military supremacy doesn't mean victory. It certainly doesn't mean security or freedom. It's worse than worthless, it's self sustaining destruction and chaos.

No I'm not, I'm describing the reality of our world and that is that we are human, we are violent and violence resolves things whether that resolution is one that you like or not. I understand your scepticism but of one thing I am absolutely sure ... peace is something that needs to be enforced.

Quote from: "Wechtlein Uns"The good news is that it is possible to have a world without war.

Yes you can channel aggression into other activities but I'd say the evidence supporting this idea is close to non-existent ... they say that at any given moment something like 250 wars are happening though I've no idea how true that is or what they would call a "war". At best I'd describe your view as idealistic because we humans are characterised by violence, it's in our basic nature ... I think you'd have a very, very hard time getting us all to act peacefully.

Kyu
James C. Rocks: UK Tech Portal & Science, Just Science

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Elvis Priestly

Quote from: "Zarathustra"Hi all.

This was a thought provoker for me:
Quote from: "ElvisPriestly"If there are no atheists in foxholes, it's probably because they were smart enough not to go there in the first place.
Because I have a notion that he is right.

All things being equal, the argument against atheists (or "atheism" as they prefer to put it) that tire me the most, is the morality argument. Especially that concerning 'atheist' wars. It find it so assumptive and basically a load of crap!

Hmmm, what wars are you thinking about when you say 'atheist' wars. I'll bet good money that there have been far more religious wars than atheist wars.  I liked it best when someone whose name I don't remember described religious wars as "fighting over who has the better invisible friend".

Since I don't believe in any kind of an afterlife, I see my life as the most valuable thing in the world. Without life, I have nothing. If I had children, perhaps I would see their lives as more valuable than mine. I also believe that I should place a similarly high value on the lives of everyone around me. For that reason, it seems to me that killing anyone for any reason is a terrible thing. It takes away absolutely everything that they ever had or ever could have had.

My statement about atheists avoiding foxholes came from a thought that perhaps other atheists felt the same way about human life that I do. If you value life that much, you would do just about anything to avoid killing or being killed.  Therefore, atheists would be likely to avoid foxholes. With that said, I would not hesitate to take whatever action was necessary to defend my own life, even if it involved killing someone else. I will fully admit that I value my own life more than the life of anyone who might try to attack me.  

My vote, however, was for the military being an annoying necessity and I wish we could get rid of it. I think that the need for a military is where pragmatism meets self-preservation. I realize that not everyone values life the way I do. I wish that it were different, but the reality is that if a nation can't (or won't) defend itself, it will eventually be attacked and lots of defenseless people will be killed.
Elvis Priestly

Having fun at the expense of established religion]http://www.thechurchofmike.org[/url]

Wechtlein Uns

Lots of good stuff here. I suppose that there are always those that want power, and power is getting people to do what you want them to do. The easiest way to achieve that is scare your subjects. I'd say crucfiying criminals or mowing down civil rights demonstrators would do the trick.

I think, with world government, internationally sanctioned war would be over. Doesn't mean violence would be over, but at least there won't be medals of honor for killing people. I might even make the problem easier to solve.
"What I mean when I use the term "god" represents nothing more than an interactionist view of the universe, a particularite view of time, and an ever expansive view of myself." -- Jose Luis Nunez.

Will

Quote from: "Kyuuketsuki"No I'm not, I'm describing the reality of our world and that is that we are human, we are violent and violence resolves things whether that resolution is one that you like or not. I understand your skepticism but of one thing I am absolutely sure ... peace is something that needs to be enforced.
Violence is not an uncontrollable urge. One always chooses to be violent or not. There's no such thing as human nature; that's a religious construct.

Enforcing peace through violence is like enforcing virginity with a great big orgy. I'm afraid that's not how it works. Violence begets violence.
I want bad people to look forward to and celebrate the day I die, because if they don't, I'm not living up to my potential.

Kyuuketsuki

Quote from: "Willravel"Violence is not an uncontrollable urge. One always chooses to be violent or not. There's no such thing as human nature; that's a religious construct.

Enforcing peace through violence is like enforcing virginity with a great big orgy. I'm afraid that's not how it works. Violence begets violence.

Not trying to be funny but have you noticed the cuckoo's flying through the pretty clouds lately?

I never said it was uncontrollable but it is natural and part of our psychological make-up! Whether you like to admit it or not humans are violent animals, to claim they are not is simply absurd and a denial of evolution. Violence is not something we can simply choose to switch on and off and yes, peace needs to be enforced (why the hell do you think we need laws and a police force to enforce it?) and non-violent pacifism is simply sticking your head in the sand and hoping everything else will go away.

Kyu
James C. Rocks: UK Tech Portal & Science, Just Science

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karadan

Quote from: "Kyuuketsuki"
Quote from: "Willravel"Violence is not an uncontrollable urge. One always chooses to be violent or not. There's no such thing as human nature; that's a religious construct.

Enforcing peace through violence is like enforcing virginity with a great big orgy. I'm afraid that's not how it works. Violence begets violence.

Not trying to be funny but have you noticed the cuckoo's flying through the pretty clouds lately?

I never said it was uncontrollable but it is natural and part of our psychological make-up! Whether you like to admit it or not humans are violent animals, to claim they are not is simply absurd and a denial of evolution. Violence is not something we can simply choose to switch on and off and yes, peace needs to be enforced (why the hell do you think we need laws and a police force to enforce it?) and non-violent pacifism is simply sticking your head in the sand and hoping everything else will go away.

Kyu

I have to respectfully disagree with almost every comment you just made.

I think pack or population mentality is a little different to individual humanistic tendencies. I guess that is a different argument though.

People do not like violence. The few that seem to, are obviously broken, but they will still have levels they will not want to go past. You get masochists who like pain inflicted on them for sexual gratification. I doubt any of them would go so far as to enjoy having their genitals removed or to have their tongues cut out. Criminals will do all they can to achieve their aims with minimal violence. Even the most hardened criminal will do all he can to avoid violence before having to resort to it.

Of course, there are violent people out there but this will have been drilled into them through social conditioning just like army personnel have the will to kill trained into them. This doesn't mean people are inherently violent, it just means they have acquired and learnt various patterns of behaviour.

I also don't think fighting for survival can be used as an example. Just because we have a fight or flight mechanism inbuilt into us, does not mean we have the want for violence. Just because we are capable, doesn't mean that is our core desire. After all, all women have the equipment to be prostitutes. That doesn't mean they are all prostitutes though, does it?

I think it would be more apt to say - populations are inherently violent but individual humans are not. I agree with Willtravel. One chooses to be violent, it certainly isn't something out of our control.
QuoteI find it mistifying that in this age of information, some people still deny the scientific history of our existence.

Kyuuketsuki

Quote from: "karadan"I have to respectfully disagree with almost every comment you just made.

Excellent.

Quote from: "karadan"I think pack or population mentality is a little different to individual humanistic tendencies. I guess that is a different argument though.

I think we have evolved to act as a pack. Yes we have individual decision making capability but that still doesn't stop us acting in a violent animal like fashion and as evidence for that I offer up ... well ... the whole of human history. We are territorial, resource driven and willing (as a species) to fight to gain resource and/or defend our own ... the only real difference between us and the animals is that where they fight tooth & claw we do it with guns, tanks & bombs.

Quote from: "karadan"People do not like violence. The few that seem to, are obviously broken, but they will still have levels they will not want to go past. You get masochists who like pain inflicted on them for sexual gratification. I doubt any of them would go so far as to enjoy having their genitals removed or to have their tongues cut out. Criminals will do all they can to achieve their aims with minimal violence. Even the most hardened criminal will do all he can to avoid violence before having to resort to it.

Individuals may not but many of us do and I'd wager that the vast majority of us would (given the correct stimuli) but to say that humans (criminals included) try to avoid violence may simply be due to not wanting to get hurt or not wanting to put in the effort for fighting, it's a lot easier to not fight. It may also have something to do with our apparent in built recognition of hierarchical social structure ... humans seem to always build such things into their societies and then once they know their place tend (not always) to stick there. Nowhere, BTW, did I say that we enjoyed violence, I simply said we were (and I mean inherently) violent.

Quote from: "karadan"Of course, there are violent people out there but this will have been drilled into them through social conditioning just like army personnel have the will to kill trained into them. This doesn't mean people are inherently violent, it just means they have acquired and learnt various patterns of behaviour.

I think that's what you want to believe rather than an objective view of what is ... I think you'd like to believe that humans are something better than they actually are. I think it far more realistic to accept that we evolved from other animals and are in many (perhaps most) ways just like them, that we are just another animal with the proviso that there is no need to be like that, that we can learn to be peaceful (though I would still say it is a forced state), we can learn to be educated. You see the thing is, we aren't naturally smart, likely no smarter than cavemen ... we only see as far as we do because we have stood on the shoulders of giants. Virtually everything people today define themselves by is culturally learned not natural; take any human and put him or her back in a stone age environment and he/she will learn to fight, to survive and so on ... of culture he/she will know nothing. We are nothing special except to us and then only because of those who went before us.

Quote from: "karadan"I also don't think fighting for survival can be used as an example. Just because we have a fight or flight mechanism inbuilt into us, does not mean we have the want for violence. Just because we are capable, doesn't mean that is our core desire. After all, all women have the equipment to be prostitutes. That doesn't mean they are all prostitutes though, does it?

Of course it does ...it means that when the chips are down we revert to what we truly are, animals. Women, as far as nature is concerned, are just breeding machines and men just the tools to feed and protect them ... everything else we have and/or have learned is just icing on the cake.

Quote from: "karadan"I think it would be more apt to say - populations are inherently violent but individual humans are not. I agree with Willtravel. One chooses to be violent, it certainly isn't something out of our control.

And I disagree (though I never said it was out of our control).

Kyu
James C. Rocks: UK Tech Portal & Science, Just Science

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