search results matching tag: Arsenic

» channel: learn

go advanced with your query
Search took 0.000 seconds

    Videos (63)     Sift Talk (2)     Blogs (7)     Comments (192)   

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson: Trump is Clueless on North Korea

newtboy says...

To be fair, we tried pretty damn hard to stop big Kim from grabbing control in the first place. The price ended up being too high for us (America) then (during the Korean war), and the expected cost of forced regime change today is much higher, multiple millions of lives and rising constantly as lil' Kim's arsenal rapidly grows.
The multifaceted fiasco that is N Korea may prove unsolvable, but our current course has a predictable, unacceptable outcome.
I agree we need leaders with wisdom....also restraint, intelligence, diplomacy, and a high level of comprehension of the situation as seen from multiple viewpoints. Sadly I don't see those qualities exemplified by either of the men who count most in this situation.

shinyblurry said:

It seems strange to argue that we need to protect the North Korean economy so that the people don't suffer..when they are suffering so horribly under their latest dictator and have been for decades. They don't need a better economy, they need regime change.

The moment to do that was a long time ago. Now the price to do that is far, far too high..yet we can see that the price of allowing a nuclear North Korea which can terrorize the world with nukes and sell them to terrorists is much higher still.

What do we do? I really don't know. I am praying for wisdom.

FIRST LOOK! - Hell Let Loose (New Realistic WW2 FPS)

bobknight33 says...

A platoon-based realistic multiplayer first-person shooter for PC set during the Second World War.
HUGE BATTLES - 100 players per game, 50 per team

COORDINATE - Win through teamwork, tactics, and communication

A NEW METAGAME - Capture sectors and resources to beat your enemy into submission

COMBINED ARMS - Over 20 different player-controlled vehicles and deployed weapons

EPIC THEATER OF WAR - Do battle across a 1:1 scale 4 kilometer-squared map

MORE THAN THE TWITCH - Supply, capture and building systems ​

EXPERIENCE HISTORY - Historically accurate arsenal with realistic weapon behavior

A MODERN ENGINE - Developed for Unreal Engine 4

Rethinking Nuclear Power

notarobot says...

I guess I'm lucky enough to live in a country where less than one-fifth of the electricity is generated by coal. So I don't much think of coal vs. nuclear in terms of the cancer risks as such. I'll never be close enough to the fuel of a nuclear reactor. And I'll likely be exposed to more toxicity from traffic than coal plants.

Also, our CANDU reactors can be powered by decommissioned bombs.

"CANDU reactors are unique in that they use natural, unenriched uranium as a fuel; with some modification, they can also use enriched uranium, mixed fuels, and even thorium. Thus, CANDU reactors are ideally suited for using material from decommissioned nuclear weapons as fuel, helping to reduce global arsenals."

https://cna.ca/technology/energy/candu-technology/

There is still spent fuel to be managed, which isn't trivial, but I'm okay with at taking a few bombs out of circulation in the mean time.

transmorpher said:

Comparing coal and nuclear is like choosing between lung cancer or brain cancer, when there is a option to have neither.

Mark Levin Provides Proof Obama Admin Wiretapped Trump Tower

newtboy says...

The title, which you posted, claims this video is proof. Period. Take responsibility for what you post and/or stop posting pure lies. Edit: I don't believe for a nanosecond that if I posted a video titled "X provides proof Trump is having sex with his daughter" and the video had nothing but ridiculous opinion and innuendo (actual fake news) that you wouldn't call me a liar.

Proof: July27, 2016....he publicly requests that Russia hack Clinton in a speech. This is treason, unequivocally asking a foreign nation to interfere in our election. Tube chop is down so I can't cut it out and present it to you, but you won't mind listening to hours of Trump insanity to find it, will you? In case not, here's the quote....
"Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily....by our press"

Who cares? Anyone listening to him that can't determine if "I don't know Putin" or "We're great friends with a close personal and working relationship" is true. The president being truthful is important....and this one is not.

Trump has already been worse at controlling Russia, he's allowing more illegal military build up without any response, allowing more illegal military actions without response, indicating he intends to remove the sanctions imposed because of their interference in our election (on his behalf), and stating that Croatia is now Russia, and East Ukraine soon will be, tacitly supporting their expansion into our allies territories.

Russia and Korea are both problems. Trump has also not done a thing about Korea, waiting days after missile launches to even discuss it with Japan is not an appropriate reaction to missile launches aimed at our allies.

No, I absolutely don't feel safer under Trump, I see many countries 'testing' him, and he's either ignored or completely failed each and every test. Korea alone has broken international law with missile launches repeatedly, and assassinated citizens of other countries in public. Clearly THEY feel safer with Trump....safe to build up their arsenal and threaten us with nuclear war. Russia clearly feels safer too. The only ones not safer are our allies and ourselves.

bobknight33 said:

Where did I say this is proof? I did not. The title is the title. You are in the weeds, as usual on this . All I said that this was the source story that caused this story to blow up all over the other weekend.


Again there is ZERO, proof yet provided about Trump colluding with Russia. ZERO. But go ahead and feed you dark sole with fake news.

Trump may colluded, Obama may be involved with taps I do not know But I being the better man that you are open minded to FACTS....


Who cares if he knows Putin. If they are friendly as you say then great. Trump can negotiate better then not knowing.

Obama/ Clinton were shit in dealing with Putin. Hopefully Trump will do better.


But Russia is not the problem North Korea is and Obama/ Clinton did zero in 8 years to lesson this issue. WE sure feel safer don't we.

No single terror attack in US by countries on Trump ban list

bcglorf says...

@newtboy,

No, it's about law. Warren Jeffries people did all that, on a smaller scale. They weren't their own country, even though they got away with it for decades. Law.

Forgive my lack of familiarity with him, but your telling me he (on a smaller scale than Texas), stopped paying taxes, and instead collecting them. Started up his own legal and justice system. He created his own borders within which the police would not dare set foot because it would be a death sentence for them. And after he'd done all this the US military itself failed to remove him as well?

Or are you meaning not just scale, but severity and all the other rather meaningful extremes of sovereignty that the Taliban and Al Qaida achieved? It's the same then in the sense that me punching you is violent just me killing ten people is violent, but in another sense they are nothing alike...

No, but they couldn't indiscriminately bomb Houston and any large gatherings either....not even if Spencer might be there. The first American civilian they kill will start a war...a real, legitimate war.

Your not embracing the analogy. Spencer's terrorists are still killing American civilians every week, outside of Texas borders. The American military is just corrupt enough that as long as its democrats/republicans dying,(whomever we choose to not be in power) they let it slide because it shows the need for the military to 'protect' the country.

You need to take a harder look at Pakistani politics to see just how powerful Al Qaida and the Taliban's control over the tribal areas has been.

More over, all of the above definitions of state within a state violence and jihad doesn't require war as the response to acts of war. To invade Afghanistan to prevent another 9/11 is dubious at best. Even the Kissinger's of the world wouldn't count the value of that trade off, losing a couple thousand Americans to an attack each decade or so is 'acceptable' loses.
Call it the price of freedom and carry on. The real trick was that if the Taliban and Al Qaida were so tight with Pakistan's military and intelligence services, how concerned should America be that the Pakistani proxies in their tribal regions and Afghanistan are so keen to target Americans. That lead directly to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal being a big enough concern with that pairing that maybe it was time to tell Pakistan they had to end their little dance with terrorists hitting Americans and they had better make a choice who they are going to side with in the Jihad that was already being waged for 2 decades.

has rachel maddow lost her mind?

newtboy says...

I can understand, it's not a simple issue, but this expansion happened 18-20 (invited in 97, members in 99) years ago. I simply can't grasp anyone being upset that NATO troops are in a long term NATO country.
If Putin/Russia hadn't been massing troops on it's borders, and then moving them into neighboring countries it now claims as part of Russia, the other bordering countries would not be asking for this safeguard, but to imply that NATO troops in Poland are somehow an attack on Russia is laughable. NATO troops would never invade Russia, that would certainly be WW3. As it stands, I feel like NATO probably wouldn't respond if it's troops were overrun by a Russian invasion of a member country, we (the US and others) certainly didn't help Crimea or Ukraine, even though we have a binding treaty requiring us to come to their defense, one paid for by giving up their nuclear arsenal.

Sadly, it's looking like there can be no stability/security in Europe with Russia either.

radx said:

Every expansion of NATO has been a hot topic over here, from the moment the reunified Germany joined NATO. We've attacked Russia twice last century alone and to betray them again in this fashion never sat well with quite a lot of folks, especially the old politicians who supported Willy Brand's "Entspannungspolitik" -- that's this guy.

To further illustrate my own stance on this, let me paraphrase Genscher and others: there can be no stability/security in Europe without Russia, and especially not against Russia.

US nuclear arsenal is a gigantic accident waiting to happen

dannym3141 says...

I do agree that unilateral disarmament is a difficult thing to achieve, but there are other arguments as to why it should be pursued. I am sure we agree on a lot of things on this subject, but let me at least put the other side out there:

1. America as the over achieving nation in the world has a duty to lead by example. How can the country with the largest nuclear arsenal expect other countries to start the process that we all signed up to? Hey France, why didn't you get rid of your 87 nukes? Well America, why haven't you touched that pile of 500? (making up numbers here to illustrate the point)

2. The US isn't worried about Best Korea nuking them because they would need a staging platform and a functional ballistic missile. They can be launched from subs, but NK isn't really your worry there. The most developed nations are the concern, and if you could get an agreement it could happen, with peacekeepers and mutually open inspections, and pressure on smaller countries to abide or be trade embargoed to stop them (which the west does/has done already). Unlikely as things are right now, i agree.

3. We have ageing equipment housing extremely dangerous explosives. They require a huge amount of maintenance and whatnot, costing billions. The UK has to replace their system soon to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds. Imagine what kind of alternative modern anti-nuclear defence system we could develop using all that money and all our technology? That way we could be safe from nukes without using nukes and it would cost less in the long run.

Also if you claim your weapons as part of a defence, it's a bit of a giveaway that you're bullshitting if you then go off around the world antagonising other countries, knowing that they can't really fight back. So i think in fairness we should crack open that self-defence argument and see what percentage of it is referring to "a good offence".

Having said all that, binning all the US nukes overnight wouldn't be a great idea. The UK would be less of a target and safer without nukes imo, but the US would probably make the world a lot safer just by having less.

Let's be honest here, the amount of nukes we have is preposterous. No one could possibly have any reason to use that many, the potential for absolute worldwide devastation is far too high to need that many - you could potentially finish the world off in a nuclear winter, according to the average figures given, in about 100 'small' nukes. Not 100 each per country, but 100 total worldwide.

And remember, that doesn't mean you can use 90 and be safe. The figure 100 was enough to likely cause a global famine by causing temperature drops leading to crop failures. That doesn't account for extinction of animals and the devastation of the natural balance (which would lead to our eventual extinction) which can be wildly unpredictable. You could shoot 40 at a country, win the conflict, and cause the starvation of millions+ in your own (and other) countries for the next 20 odd years..... or worse.

Mordhaus said:

<edited out so the page isn't superlong>

Clinton or Trump, Tensions Will Escalate w/ China & Russia

SDGundamX says...

I dunno man, this guy comes of as too conspiracy-theorish without enough hard facts. A China nuclear first-strike would be utterly suicidal. China has a nuclear arsenal of around 300 nuclear warheads compared to America's 7000. America alone could nuke the entirety of the country to dust and that's not even considering U.S. allies like the U.K. who would probably launch in retaliation as well.

For a much better fact-based analysis of China's nuclear policies see here.

>250000000 Gal. Of Radioactive Water In Fl. Drinking Water

newtboy says...

Only if it spreads evenly to the entire Florida aquifer instantly.
Local users will see a far less diluted effect than those, say, 300 miles away.
Because there's absolutely no method available to test the water until it's pumped to the surface for use, prudence demands you assume maximum contamination level until proven otherwise.
There's also absolutely no measure of the aquifer itself, how it moves, mixes, flows, etc. The system is mostly unmapped. That means it could (not will) stay in the local area and not be diluted much at all, or could go directly into the main body and be diluted 1000 times per day. There's no way to know until they test the aquifer itself, something they have no way to do at this point, they can only test what they draw off at individual wells, with no knowledge of how they're connected underground.

Also, let's be clear, the 250000000 number comes from the polluter, not some independent measurement. If history is a guide, we can expect that number to rise to > 10 times that amount when independent investigators look into it. (Think BP).

Even in the best case scenario, it's exposing the already short supply of fresh water to more toxins. Just because it might be below the level that would condem your home if found there doesn't make it 'safe' by any means. Radiation exposure is cumulative, low levels over a long time can be as dangerous as high levels over a short time.
IMO, your contention is comparative to me saying 'no problem that I'm putting arsenic in your water, I put in only 1/10 the lethal dose...and arsenic is found in nature, so no harm no foul'. You would still get sick, might die, and would likely have problems and stress the rest of your life. I could still be convicted of attempted murder, and rightly so. I get that this wasn't intentional, but it was foreseeable, so more like manslaughter I suppose....of >an entire county.

EDIT: And you didn't address the orange problem. An orange uses 53 liters of water, and it takes 13-15 oranges to make a liter of juice, for a cumulative dose of 742 times the contaminants if you drink a liter of OJ (based on the assumption that an orange will trap the contaminants, a reasonable assumption). Now, at 742 times the diluted dose, are you going to continue to drink Florida OJ? I'm not....and that sucks, I like OJ. Now I'm going to have to try to grow oranges here on the N coast of Cali if I want them....an impossibility. (although I did grow a pineapple here, another impossibility, so we'll see).

bcglorf said:

If we were talking about whole sale replacement of the waterway with 100% pure waste water from the pond you'd be on point.

The pond in the article held 250 Mgal.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3080/

The stats linked state that Florida groundwater usage in 2005 for drinking purposes alone was 4,242 Mgal per day, and another 2,626 Mgal per day was taken from surface water sources for drinking. So 250 Mgal as a one time release, of water with a very low radiation level already isn't going to hit that hard, nor linger around long enough to concentrate like in your scenarios.

The Most Costly Joke in History

newtboy says...

Yes, you did. You said repeatedly that dogfighting capabilities are not needed at all because this fighter won't ever see dogfighting because it never happens since WW1, and all engagement happens at long range and stealth will protect it 100%.
You must have not read, the articles I linked were about air to air engagements, not bombing, and included up to the gulf war.
Again, the F-15 and F-4 as deployed today is not inferior to Russian planes. Only if you compare the original incarnation of the F-15 with the top of the line Russian planes of today, sometimes it comes out on top, sometimes it's specs are worse.
There's no such thing as a real F-35 pilot, only test pilots have ever flown it, and never in real life situations, only pre conceived situations where it still fails the test designed for it to pass.
The F-35 can't dogfight, and it's not even in the US arsenal. Jesus Christ!
The article I listed before cracked was the one with data, the cracked one was simply to show dogfights using guns have happened repeatedly since WW1, in fact at least up through Vietnam including one completely insane example of using the rotor wash of a helicopter and an AK-47 to take out a pair of fighters (which, agreed, sounded made up it was so insane), contrary to your repeated assertion that it hasn't happened at all and never will again. I notice you don't dispute their facts though.


Oh well. Here I thought perhaps reason and facts had finally permeated the fan boy shell. I guess I was wrong. I give up. If you're going to stick with ridiculous positions like 'there's been no dogfights since WW1', and 'the F-35 will out dogfight the F-4' after being proven wrong time and again with real data and test results, there's no logic or fact that will break the shell, so I quit. Don't feel bad, you're in good company with all of congress (but of course, they all got PAID to hold their positions). Enjoy your $2 trillion fleet of useless planes, since no amount of failure or expense can kill the project.

transmorpher said:

I have not agreed that my position is wrong on the performance and capability designs of the F-35 and modern air combat. Please read the rest of my post above.... I'm still saying that dogfights have ended with WW1. I've never said we don't need ANY dog fighting capabilities. I'm saying that it's never the primary design idea of a modern fighter jet. You still have a cannon for back up. Just like soldiers have a side arm and a knife. Just in case you do get caught with your pants down or the main weapon fails at a critical moment.

I have agreed on the waste of money aspect of course. I'll also agree that if test goals are being downsized to accommodate flaws, then that's just terrible. If it's not able to perform to it's design then it's useless.

The F-4 != F-35. I can see why people draw parallels. But that only works if you ignore that absolutely everything on the planes is different, the adversaries are different, and stealth is requirement for survivability. You don't use stealth planes in the way you use an non stealth plane. Have you ever heard of a sniper wearing a ghillie suit run across the open battlefield with a sword or pistol? There were so many tactical mistakes in Vietnam as well. The conditions in which that article talks about are also different. Those planes were flying low and slow for a bombing run. Because they didn't have laser, gps guided bombs, infrared fire and forget air to ground missiles or cruise missiles back in those days. You don't get fog at 40,000 feet. They had to fly that low to get a visual identification of their bombing target. That does not happen anymore either. You scream past at mach 1 above the clouds and the bomb hits where it was programmed to hit. Also the phantoms missiles were unrelaiable. That hasn't been the case since the 80s. And their training was poor. None of that is true these days, and has not been true since the 80s either. That's why every single fighter plane apart from the F-16 (which is made mostly as an export product anyway) has been created to fight at long range primarily. The F-15 which is the main air superiority fighter for the US, is heavy and has a worse maneuverability than any Russian plane. But it's still the most feared plane, with no loses in combat. The article you linked even says that. So it's basically contradicting itself. At the start it says, F-4's lost because they couldn't maneuver, and ends with therefore the US made the F-15 which has worse maneuverability than the Russian planes lol.



Edit: Cracked.com doesn't count as a reputable source for anything, including basic sentences, spelling and punctuation.

Edit2: Here is an article from an actual F-35 pilot that says the F-35 dog fights better than a F-16 since they keep tuning the fly-by-wire parameters. http://theaviationist.com/2016/03/01/heres-what-ive-learned-so-far-dogfighting-in-the-f-35-a-jsf-pilot-first-hand-account/

So even if it came to a dogfighting encounter, the F-35 is still the best plane in the US arsenal for dogfighting.

The Most Costly Joke in History

transmorpher says...

I have not agreed that my position is wrong on the performance and capability designs of the F-35 and modern air combat. Please read the rest of my post above.... I'm still saying that dogfights have ended with WW1. I've never said we don't need ANY dog fighting capabilities. I'm saying that it's never the primary design idea of a modern fighter jet. You still have a cannon for back up. Just like soldiers have a side arm and a knife. Just in case you do get caught with your pants down or the main weapon fails at a critical moment.

I have agreed on the waste of money aspect of course. I'll also agree that if test goals are being downsized to accommodate flaws, then that's just terrible. If it's not able to perform to it's design then it's useless.

The F-4 != F-35. I can see why people draw parallels. But that only works if you ignore that absolutely everything on the planes is different, the adversaries are different, and stealth is requirement for survivability. You don't use stealth planes in the way you use an non stealth plane. Have you ever heard of a sniper wearing a ghillie suit run across the open battlefield with a sword or pistol? There were so many tactical mistakes in Vietnam as well. The conditions in which that article talks about are also different. Those planes were flying low and slow for a bombing run. Because they didn't have laser, gps guided bombs, infrared fire and forget air to ground missiles or cruise missiles back in those days. You don't get fog at 40,000 feet. They had to fly that low to get a visual identification of their bombing target. That does not happen anymore either. You scream past at mach 1 above the clouds and the bomb hits where it was programmed to hit. Also the phantoms missiles were unrelaiable. That hasn't been the case since the 80s. And their training was poor. None of that is true these days, and has not been true since the 80s either. That's why every single fighter plane apart from the F-16 (which is made mostly as an export product anyway) has been created to fight at long range primarily. The F-15 which is the main air superiority fighter for the US, is heavy and has a worse maneuverability than any Russian plane. But it's still the most feared plane, with no loses in combat. The article you linked even says that. So it's basically contradicting itself. At the start it says, F-4's lost because they couldn't maneuver, and ends with therefore the US made the F-15 which has worse maneuverability than the Russian planes lol.



Edit: Cracked.com doesn't count as a reputable source for anything, including basic sentences, spelling and punctuation.

Edit2: Here is an article from an actual F-35 pilot that says the F-35 dog fights better than a F-16 since they keep tuning the fly-by-wire parameters. http://theaviationist.com/2016/03/01/heres-what-ive-learned-so-far-dogfighting-in-the-f-35-a-jsf-pilot-first-hand-account/

So even if it came to a dogfighting encounter, the F-35 is still the best plane in the US arsenal for dogfighting.

newtboy said:

Well there YOU go.
I'm not sure if you're aware, but WW1 ended well over 25 years ago, so your repeated contention that 'dogfights ended in ww1' so we don't need any dogfighting capabilities is clearly 100% wrong. I hope you'll stop repeating it now, as it's ridiculously annoying to have a conversation with someone who agrees that their position is wrong, but continues to stand on that position nevertheless.
http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2015/07/06/usaf_promised_the_f-4_and_f-35_would_never_dogfight_108180.html
and (the last one mentioned here is INSANE)
http://www.cracked.com/article_19396_5-aerial-battles-that-put-top-gun-to-shame.html

I hope you've also arrived at the position now that, if they have to change the testing parameters/minimum acceptable requirements to turn massive fails into 'success' that it fails miserably and can't possibly ever be prepared for real deployment and has become nothing but a massively expensive, poorly preforming jobs program.

Can You See the Fire? -- Extreme Science #2

Payback says...

Please don't say it gives off Nitrogen in the same sentence where it gives off Arsenic and Sulfur. Makes it sound like Nitrogen is bad for you.

The air everyone reading this is breathing -who isn't on bottled oxygen- is over 75% Nitrogen. It is by far the most plentiful gas on the planet. It's why filling your tires with Nitrogen is more or less a gimmick.

eric3579 (Member Profile)

radx says...

German media reports that the USAF's budget plan for Q3/15 includes funds for the integration of the B61-12 nuclear bomb into German Tornado fighter-bombers.

How Germany can lobby for an abolition of nuclear weapons while our government allows the US to modernise its nuclear arsenal on German soil is beyond me, to be quite honest. Especially since an overwhelming majority of our parliament voted in favour of a resolution to pressure the US to remove its nukes from Germany territory five years ago.

Chernobyl's New Confinement Structure

radx says...

Option #3: the country might become destablised enough to halt construction/maintenance entirely and the site will be left to rot, more or less, like the nuclear arsenals/reactors of some nations.

Also keep in mind, this is how we deal with nuclear waste in a stable, wealthy and highly industrialised nation. "Just toss it over there" is the mantra during good times. Times are not good in Ukraine...

Cenk Uygur debates Sam Harris

Barbar says...

I think we agree completely with Sam Harris in that Islam is in desperate need of a reformation. I won't bring Reza Aslan into this as I haven't read him, and it seems to be tangential at best.

But, acknowledge what you just said when you said that Islam is in need of reformation. You are saying what Sam is saying: That Islam contains some horrible ideas, and people are acting on those ideas, and we need to find a way to marginalize those ideas within the canon of Islam.

We could end the disagreement right there, except for where we stand in history at this point. If Christianity had undergone its reformation in a post nuclear arsenals world, who knows where we would be. It is because of this that it behooves everyone to encourage this reformation of Islam, and potentially to limit their access to apocalyptic weaponry until such a reformation has taken place. That's a different discussion though.

I think Sam's position is that one of the potential motivations behind suicide bombing is martyrdom and jihad. Real belief in those particular dogma alone is sufficient to justify suicide attacks. There are definitely plenty of terrorist actions that take place for completely non-religious reasons, and I bet that the bulk of them combine the two. But that doesn't refute Sam's point.

As for your last bit about literal interpretations, I don't agree there either, at least not entirely. How could you possibly explain the inquisition without resorting to what one would now consider to be fundamentalist readings of the texts? The same fundamentals you're saying weren't in vogue until 100 years ago is the very propaganda used to recruit soldiers to the caliphate's armies centuries ago. In any case it seems unrelated to the discussion when scriptural literalism came about, the fact is that it exists, making it more important that some books contain really bad ideas.

enoch said:

@Barbar
what you are speaking of in regards to the 2 religions (judaism/christianity) are the reformations they both experienced.

now there are a myriad of reasons why these reformations occurred:age of enlightenment, renaissance and a new way of thinking=secular philosophy.i could go on but those are the big three.

islam has yet to experience a reformation and reza aslan's book "no god but god" makes the case that islam is in desperate NEED of a reformation,to which harris dishonestly suggests that islam needs while in the same sentence accuses reza of ignoring.the man wrote an entire nook making the case for islamic reformation!

when you are going to criticize belief you have to also ask the "WHY" of that belief.if you strictly confine your arguments to a book then you are ignoring the multitude of factors to the origin of that belief and are actually formulating an argument with the very same absolutist and fundamentalist thinking that you are criticizing.

you are quite literally using fundamentalism to criticize fundamentalism.

example:
harris makes the point that suicide bombers blow themselves up because the quran glorifies martyrdom,with little thought to WHY those young men strapped bombs to their chest in the first place.

when the WHY is the most important question!

and the answer is NOT because the quran demands it of them but rather out of hopelessness brought on by oppression,murder,torture of their friends and family.

the quran offers a rationalization for the suicide bomber.a desperate person will grasp desperately at any thin straw to give their life meaning,but it most certainly not the cause.

this fundamental lack of understanding is why i find harris to be a mediocre atheist thinker.

literalism in regards to scriptural interpretation is a fairly new phenom,(past 100 years),and that includes muslims.



Send this Article to a Friend



Separate multiple emails with a comma (,); limit 5 recipients






Your email has been sent successfully!

Manage this Video in Your Playlists

Beggar's Canyon