Violence and fundamentalism

What do they believe? What do you think? Talk about religion as it exists today.

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Clive
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Violence and fundamentalism

Post by Clive »

I receive email updates from conflict and health http://conflictandhealth.biomedcentral.com/about and am aware of the dark triad (psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavelliism), sociology of total institutions and the work of Winnell.
Aims and scope

Conflict and Health brings together essential research on the intertwined relationship between health and conflict.

Millions of people around the world are caught between the vicious spiral of violent conflict and poor health. The journal focuses on the intricate relationship between conflict and health, and how health interventions in war zones may contribute to peace.
Today's Grauniad has an article about Muslims converting to xianity.

Maybe there are sick societies and groups as well as sick individuals, and a continuum of health.

Referring to the subtitle to this forum, "investigating the roots of western civilisation" maybe some ways of being are more conducive to peace and healthy societies.

Xianity feels like it was an attempt to heal things - maybe that is the purpose of the writer of the gospel (good news) called Mark, but others with other agendas got involved and introduced the very violent concept of heresy.
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Violence and fundamentalism

Post by neilgodfrey »

This reminds me of an observation some time back where alpha males in a baboon colony died off because they were the greedy and violent ones who got the pickings of edibles at a garbage tip -- food that was actually poisonous. So they died off and the gentler males were the only ones left and the colony lived peacefully and happily ever after for the first time ever.

I'm also reminded how as a devout believer I struggled over knowing how God was going to judge violent behaviour when I could see from close knowledge of a couple of violent friends of mine that once they had a decent diet and a good night's sleep they would be as calm, normal, civilized as anyone else. Prayer be blowed. It wasn't the devil making them violent; it was the absence of a good salad wholemeal sandwich and a few hours sleep.
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Stuart
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Re: Violence and fundamentalism

Post by Stuart »

Atheist tend to be violent. Look at the Communists and the prisons.

It doesn't fit Neil's rose colored kumbayah view of atheism bringing peace. But it is what it is.

The one positive about religion is to give an emotional understanding of right and wrong within a system. If enough people have a similar belief system of right and wrong the society tends to well. but if it becomes each his own, well, that baboon society comes along. After all it is a survival advantage to dominate others, both for yourself and your offspring. You get to pick the babes to mate with and take your share and then some of plunder. The middle ages and much of the world still operates like that (the Palestine he also see with rose colored glasses operates like gangster run slum, which basically it is.)

Structure is necessary. It will either come in the form of something like North Korea or through a common value system backed up the emotional and irrational attachment to it. Only a tiny percentage of people are able to develop a rational morality to live by via logic, and much of that is absorbed from the irrational and emotional value system they absorbed in the society surrounding them.

Anyway. Violence comes from the politics of dominance, which can be through religion (Islam this is very common, definitely the most common, but it exists in others as well ... its more related to where the cultures are at) or through atheism, take your pick of Communist regimes, or Milosovich in Serbia or Hitler's new age type views. Or simply the Al Capone's of the world, no question a big part of the violence in Latin America (the various drug cartels). Trying to associate it to any particular belief system is done mostly by cherry picking evidence.
“’That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.” - Jonathan Swift
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Violence and fundamentalism

Post by neilgodfrey »

Stuart wrote:Atheist tend to be violent. Look at the Communists and the prisons.

It doesn't fit Neil's rose colored kumbayah view of atheism bringing peace. But it is what it is.
Actually my view of what brings peace is a good salad sandwich and an afternoon nap, not atheism -- as set out in my comment.

My point was that atheism has nothing more to do with it than religion.
vridar.org Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
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