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Israel/Hamas conflict

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A sample from only one country, and a largely Evangelical Christian country at that. Data gathering that is questionable. Then huge leaps of "logic" in your "analysis".

As an atheist, I don't buy it.

Footstamping fails to be persuasive. An actual atheist is more likely to muster some facts, evidence or logic to defend their claims.

My source was the website fivethirtyeight, specializing in statistical analyses. And here they used data from the US census and the Bureau of Prisons. Is there any contrary data? Or did it merely come to you in a dream? Or perhaps from a sacred text?

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We are most certainly up against religion as the cause of the violence of 9/11 and 10/7 and many more examples.

It is well summed up from Sam Harris:

There are many things to be said in criticism of Israel, in particular its expansion of settlements on contested land. But Israel’s behavior is not what explains the suicidal and genocidal inclinations of a group like Hamas. The Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad do.

These are religious beliefs, sincerely held. They are beliefs about the moral structure of the universe. And they explain how normal people — even good ones — can commit horrific acts of violence against innocent civilians — on purpose, not as collateral damage — and still consider themselves good. When you believe that life in this world has no value, apart from deciding who goes to hell and who goes to Paradise, it becomes possible to feel perfectly at ease killing noncombatants, or even using your own women and children as human shields, because you know that any Muslims who get killed will go to Paradise for eternity.

If you don’t understand that jihadists sincerely believe these things, you don’t understand the problem Israel [and the world] faces. The problem isn’t merely Palestinian nationalism, or resource competition, or any other normal terrestrial grievance. In fact, the problem isn’t even hatred, though there is enough of that to go around. The problem is religious certainty.


. . . There have been nearly 50,000 acts of Islamic terrorism in the last 40 years … 90 percent of them have occurred in Muslim countries. Most have nothing to do with Israel or the Jews . . . [in 2014] six jihadis affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban attacked a school in Peshawar murdering 132 children and burning a teacher alive in front of her students. They committed these horrors in the name of no earthly cause, and issued no set of demands. Their rationale for the atrocities was entirely religious.


If you don't believe me, believe the words right from the Hamas charter:

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or believe the words from a Hamas terrorist bragging about killing Jews:

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Their motivation is deeply religious.
 
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And Stalin's wasn't. People don't require religion to be awful and inhuman. According to that interpretation of that prison chart, Pentacostals must be saints, and Native Americans scum. I don't buy it. The only thing more annoying than a Jehovah's Witness proselytizing for their religion is an atheist proselytizing for their lack of religion. Take it to the theology forums.
 
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According to the Qatari mediators, the hostage exchange deal is back on. Fantastic news!

 
A sample from only one country, and a largely Evangelical Christian country at that. Data gathering that is questionable. Then huge leaps of "logic" in your "analysis".

As an atheist, I don't buy it.

A better analysis would be to look at the same crime statistics from more secular countries such as some European countries.

You also have to look at the sorts of crimes people are incarcerated for and the other demographic factors of the criminals.

Earlier I posted specifically about hate crimes in the US and hate crimes by Atheists are rare. I only found one incident in the last 10 years where a professed Atheist committed a hate crime.

Hate crimes are usually fueled by a culture that endorse the hate. And most groups that have these hate ideas also have some kind of religious tie in.

The data posting from fivethirtyeight does show fewer Atheists in prison, but that could be due to other factors. In the US at least, there is a cultural meme to belong to one religion or another. In much of Europe it's the opposite. It's stronger in some areas than others. The coastal areas have less pressure than the fly over areas. But because of this cultural pressure, those who claim to be Atheist are more likely to be the sort of people who think things through and those people are less likely to end up committing crimes.

Studies on prisoners in the US have found that a very high percentage of prisoners in the US have impulse control problems. And that is frequently linked with subtle brain damage. One study on death row prisoners found that a very high percentage had some kind to head damage as a child. Most from abusive parents who hit them, especially in the left front part of the head where the impulse control area is.

Recent research has also found that non-violent adverse childhood experiences like dealing with a mentally ill parent can have an effect on the brain much like a TBI.

Native Americans, especially those living on the reservations have generational problems with substance abuse and domestic violence. The models that most states use for dealing with domestic violence today were developed on studies done on an reservation in the 1970s. There are problems with the models because the reasons for domestic violence off the reservations appears to be somewhat different.

Penatcostals being so rare in prison is odd. They aren't especially affluent or any other reason to keep their members out of prison.

Just looking at religious ideology and prison population in the US is interesting, but not necessarily indicative of anything because we don't know what people are imprisoned for. This is a mix of people who may have gotten drunk and got into mischief, caught with drugs on them, or murdered someone, we don't know.

We also don't know their motivation. Someone who killed someone after they slept with their wife is a completely different motivation than someone who killed someone else because of some demographic feature like their religion or skin color.

Hate crime statistics are the best data to use to look at which groups commit hate motivated crimes. I suspect the chart for people who commit hate crimes would look very different, but at least in the US, it probably would have Atheists under represented. Though the same statistics for the UK might show more Atheists because atheism is more common in that culture and more people who might commit violent crimes grew up in an areligious environment.

In general, rapists, murderers, and hostage takers are not think-ahead types.

Though Hamas clearly put a lot of planning into the Oct 7 attack.

And Stalin's wasn't. People don't require religion to be awful and inhuman. According to that interpretation of that prison chart, Pentacostals must be saints, and Native Americans scum. I don't buy it. The only thing more annoying than a Jehovah's Witness proselytizing for their religion is an atheist proselytizing for their lack of religion. Take it to the theology forums.

What these have in common is extremist ideologies. Communism is Atheist and extremist. Most other extremist ideologies also have a religious tie in.
 
Five thirty eight has never gotten anything totally wrong. Praise statistics.

Perfect -- an awesome display of the breadth and depth of analysis you bring to bear on these issues.

Feel free to not believe what I tell you, and feel free to ignore the overwhelming facts and best evidence with childish irrelevant red herrings.
But do believe what the Islamic jihadists tell you: Here is what a supporter of the Pakistani Taliban said when interviewed about the Peshawar school massacre:

Human life only has value among you worldly materialist thinkers. For us, this human life is only a tiny, meaningless fragment of our existence. Our real destination is the Hereafter. We don’t just believe it exists, we know it does.

Death is not the end of life. It is the beginning of existence in a world much more beautiful than this. As you know, the [Urdu] word for death is “intiqaal.” It means “transfer,” not “end.”

Paradise is for those of pure hearts. All children have pure hearts. They have not sinned yet… They have not yet been corrupted by [their kafir parents]. We did not end their lives. We gave them new ones in Paradise, where they will be loved more than you can imagine.

They will be rewarded for their martyrdom. After all, we also martyr ourselves with them. The last words they heard were the slogan of Takbeer [“Allah u Akbar”].

Allah Almighty says Himself in Surhah Al-Imran [3:169-170] that they are not dead.

You will never understand this. If your faith is pure, you will not mourn them, but celebrate their birth into Paradise.


You must take these declarations at face value -- they are their honest confessions of their worldview—a worldview that is totally antithetical to everything that civilized people value in the 21st century. This problem is much bigger than the ongoing crisis between Israel and the Palestinians. It is a problem of religion -- in this case Islamic jihadism.
 
Anyone think Hamas will take advantage of the option to extend the cease fire by releasing additional groups of 10 Israeli hostages per day? I would have said very unlikely a few days ago, but feeling a bit more hopeful now.
 
Anyone think Hamas will take advantage of the option to extend the cease fire by releasing additional groups of 10 Israeli hostages per day? I would have said very unlikely a few days ago, but feeling a bit more hopeful now.
They've already said they want to.


They also demanded more terrorists released from Israeli prison.

If i were Israel, I'd say no. If somebody on craigslist tried to make a deal with me this way, I'd say no. Weasels.