A list of puns related to "Scott Atran"
He doesn't actually present "innumerable instances" where religious belief is the proximate cause.
He describes Islam as the most "pungent", and says "it enables perfectly sane, perfectly rational people... who are not suffering obvious psychopathology... to fly planes into buildings." The FBI concluded that a majority of the 9/11 hijackers did not know it was a suicide mission. To imply that we know the pilots were perfectly sane & rational with no obvious psychopathology is silly.
Harris brings up the lack of Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers as reason for Islam being the proximate variable. There are some obvious questions. There are about 6.7 million Tibetan people, majority of whom observe Tibetan Buddhism. There are about 1.6 billion Muslims. Combined with Scott Atran's take on how suicide terrorism became the paragon, isn't the numerical probabilistic explanation the simplest reason for the difference we see? Why are there no Tibetan Muslim suicide bombers? Tibet is a remote territory — does that play some role in affecting political violence tactics? Is there a powerful foreign entity & US "ally" funding extremism in Tibet? Before the 1950 invasion by China, Tibet was a "de facto" independent nation; Palestine had been under foreign control for longer. Also, Robert Pape's extensive work on suicide terrorism reveals that it targets democracies.
Talking about Tibetan Buddhist monks & nuns compassion for their torturers, Harris says, "You will never find a Muslim coming out of decades of torture in an Israeli prison who will speak in those terms at all". Why is Harris so confident that there aren't similar Muslims who's stories haven't been publicized the same way? He also claims this behaviour is "fully explicable" in terms of ideology. But what are the economic, political, and social structures in Tibet and what do they allow for and for whom? Is the compassion for tortur
... keep reading on reddit ➡http://www.thenation.com/article/the-us-war-on-terror-is-playing-right-into-isiss-hands/ Article's behind a pay wall, here you go:
In brief, the “Global War on Terror” sledgehammer strategy has spread jihadi terror from a tiny corner of Afghanistan to much of the world, from Africa through the Levant and South Asia to Southeast Asia. It has also incited attacks in Europe and the United States. The invasion of Iraq made a substantial contribution to this process, much as intelligence agencies had predicted. Terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank estimate that the Iraq War “generated a stunning sevenfold increase in the yearly rate of fatal jihadist attacks, amounting to literally hundreds of additional terrorist attacks and thousands of civilian lives lost; even when terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan is excluded, fatal attacks in the rest of the world have increased by more than one-third.” Other exercises have been similarly productive.
A group of major human rights organizations—Physicians for Social Responsibility (US), Physicians for Global Survival (Canada), and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (Germany)—conducted a study that sought “to provide as realistic an estimate as possible of the total body count in the three main war zones [Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan] during 12 years of ‘war on terrorism,’” including an extensive review “of the major studies and data published on the numbers of victims in these countries,” along with additional information on military actions. Their “conservative estimate” is that these wars killed about 1.3 million people, a toll that “could also be in excess of 2 million.” A database search by independent researcher David Peterson in the days following the publication of the report found virtually no mention of it. Who cares?
More generally, studies carried out by the Oslo Peace Research Institute show that two-thirds of the region’s conflict fatalities were produced in originally internal disputes where outsiders imposed their solutions. In such conflicts, 98 percent of fatalities were produced only after outsiders had entered the domestic dispute with their military might. In Syria, the number of direct conflict fatalities more than tripled after the West initiated air strikes against the self-declared Islamic State and the CIA started its indirect military interference in the war—interference which appears to have drawn the Russians in as advanced US antitank missiles we
... keep reading on reddit ➡http://vridar.org/2015/11/22/scott-atrans-response-to-sam-harris-jerry-coyne-on-religion-and-terrorism/
Forget the articles obvious bias against Harris and Coyne , but this is very interesting. Unfortunately, I could not find the original post made by Atran, so this link will suffice. Basically, Atran invited both Harris and Coyne to join him in interviewing extremists. Though the invite was made a long time ago, Harris should see if the invite is still open. The prospect of Harris actually interviewing extremists (listening to the jihadists) is too good to simply ignore. Harris should take up this offer and write about his experiences. It would be very interesting. Harris has not done interviews with any current extremist or even recent extremists turned moderate, so having him actually go and meet, and dialogue with these people would be fascinating.
I should preface this by saying I find glaring limitations/flaws in Atran's approach to the issue. He claims that social networks--rather than the strong belief that ISIS is fighting in the service of God--are by far the greatest predictor of Jihadi enlistment. My objection to this is that solely focussing on this one variable (perhaps implicitly in the name of political correctness--after all, the anthropology discipline is replete with post-modernists/regressive leftists) yields only limited explanatory power. One's social network could very well be a (emphasis) proximal predictor, but it alone does not account for the cognitive attributes/history of learning experiences that motivate a person to start socializing with religious lunatics. It's almost as if one can be a secular humanist and need only suspend his/her skepticism of the supernatural to start associating with such individuals and ultimately follow them on the path to Jihadism. But Atran suggests that belief is only tangential to this process; that such individuals simply desire 'meaning' and 'self-transcendent' purpose. I don't argue with this, but there are other avenues for realizing meaning and belonging that don't involve the establishment of a supernatural order. For example (and just throwing out ideas), why not join the Peace Corps, their national army, or any other non-occult oriented organization?
"Come on dude, come join the Islamic State with us...it'll be fun, I promise." "Islamic State??" "Yeah, you know, the army of God's holy kingdom. He told us we have to go to war to expand his dominion." "hmmm...." "If you're worried about dying, don't. God also told us that we'll get to go right to heaven where we'll be greeted with never-ending mass orgies and live on in pure bliss." "Really?" "Yeah man, really." "Okay, fine. Seems legit."
Nope. Deficits in critical thinking can't have anything to do with this.........right?
I've tried reaching out to Atran on numerous occasions (through email and FB) to challenge some of his contentions and his response has either been an equivocation or none at all (on FB he appears only to respond to his cadre of cheerleaders). I was wondering what you guys thought of all this. Am I missing something here?
If you're curious, I've linked some of his recent articles below.
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/22/456989124/can-we-construct-a-counter-narrative-to-isis-s-end-goal
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/nov/16/paris-attacks-isis-strategy-chaos
... keep reading on reddit ➡Has anyone else read this book? I found it to be a rather revolutionary advancement on our understanding of gods and religion using the Social Sciences, namely, Evolutionary Psychology, but also dips into Sociology, Anthropology, and Mythology. My background education was in History and the Study of Religion before I got into Psychology later in life and I've found Atran's evidence to be compelling and consistent with human behavior even in the most remote groups of people. Also, many of the conclusions he proposes are the same thoughts I had before I knew his work existed. Thoughts?
He doesn't actually present "innumerable instances" where religious belief is the proximate cause.
He describes Islam as the most "pungent", and says "it enables perfectly sane, perfectly rational people... who are not suffering obvious psychopathology... to fly planes into buildings." The FBI concluded that a majority of the 9/11 hijackers did not know it was a suicide mission. To imply that we know the pilots were perfectly sane & rational with no obvious psychopathology is silly.
Harris brings up the lack of Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers as reason for Islam being the proximate variable. There are some obvious questions. There are about 6.7 million Tibetan people, majority of whom observe Tibetan Buddhism. There are about 1.6 billion Muslims. Combined with Scott Atran's take on how suicide terrorism became the paragon, isn't the numerical probabilistic explanation the simplest reason for the difference we see? Why are there no Tibetan Muslim suicide bombers? Tibet is a remote territory — does that play some role in affecting political violence tactics? Is there a powerful foreign entity & US "ally" funding extremism in Tibet? Before the 1950 invasion by China, Tibet was a "de facto" independent nation; Palestine had been under foreign control for longer. Also, Robert Pape's extensive work on suicide terrorism reveals that it targets democracies.
Talking about Tibetan Buddhist monks & nuns compassion for their torturers, Harris says, "You will never find a Muslim coming out of decades of torture in an Israeli prison who will speak in those terms at all". Why is Harris so confident that there aren't similar Muslims who's stories haven't been publicized the same way? He also claims this behaviour is "fully explicable" in terms of ideology. But what are the economic, political, and social structures in Tibet and what do they allow for and for whom? Is the compassion for tortur
... keep reading on reddit ➡He doesn't actually present "innumerable instances" where religious belief is the proximate cause.
He describes Islam as the most "pungent", and says "it enables perfectly sane, perfectly rational people... who are not suffering obvious psychopathology... to fly planes into buildings." The FBI concluded that a majority of the 9/11 hijackers did not know it was a suicide mission. To imply that we know the pilots were perfectly sane & rational with no obvious psychopathology is silly.
Harris brings up the lack of Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers as reason for Islam being the proximate variable. There are some obvious questions. There are about 6.7 million Tibetan people, majority of whom observe Tibetan Buddhism. There are about 2 billion Muslims. Combined with Scott Atran's take on how suicide terrorism became the paragon, isn't the numerical probabilistic explanation the simplest reason for the difference we see? Why are there no Tibetan Muslim suicide bombers? Tibet is a remote territory — does that play some role in affecting political violence tactics? Is there a powerful foreign entity & US "ally" funding extremism in Tibet? Before the 1950 invasion by China, Tibet was a "de facto" independent nation; Palestine had been under foreign control for longer. Also, Robert Pape's extensive work on suicide terrorism reveals that it targets democracies.
Talking about Tibetan Buddhist monks & nuns compassion for their torturers, Harris says, "You will never find a Muslim coming out of decades of torture in an Israeli prison who will speak in those terms at all". Why is Harris so confident that there aren't similar Muslims who's stories haven't been publicized the same way? He also claims this behaviour is "fully explicable" in terms of ideology. But what are the economic, political, and social structures in Tibet and what do they allow for and for whom? Is the compassion for torturer
... keep reading on reddit ➡He doesn't actually present "innumerable instances" where religious belief is the proximate cause.
He describes Islam as the most "pungent", and says "it enables perfectly sane, perfectly rational people... who are not suffering obvious psychopathology... to fly planes into buildings." The FBI concluded that a majority of the 9/11 hijackers did not know it was a suicide mission. To imply that we know the pilots were perfectly sane & rational with no obvious psychopathology is silly.
Harris brings up the lack of Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers as reason for Islam being the proximate variable. There are some obvious questions. There are about 6.7 million Tibetan people, majority of whom observe Tibetan Buddhism. There are about 1.6 billion Muslims. Combined with Scott Atran's take on how suicide terrorism became the paragon, isn't the numerical probabilistic explanation the simplest reason for the difference we see? Why are there no Tibetan Muslim suicide bombers? Tibet is a remote territory — does that play some role in affecting political violence tactics? Is there a powerful foreign entity & US "ally" funding extremism in Tibet? Before the 1950 invasion by China, Tibet was a "de facto" independent nation; Palestine had been under foreign control for longer. Also, Robert Pape's extensive work on suicide terrorism reveals that it targets democracies.
Talking about Tibetan Buddhist monks & nuns compassion for their torturers, Harris says, "You will never find a Muslim coming out of decades of torture in an Israeli prison who will speak in those terms at all". Why is Harris so confident that there aren't similar Muslims who's stories haven't been publicized the same way? He also claims this behaviour is "fully explicable" in terms of ideology. But what are the economic, political, and social structures in Tibet and what do they allow for and for whom? Is the compassion for tortur
... keep reading on reddit ➡Please note that this site uses cookies to personalise content and adverts, to provide social media features, and to analyse web traffic. Click here for more information.