New Atheism

[Red]

Someone who can twist words into interpreting something completely different then was intended by the original writer.

Is confusing a writer's words in specific intrinsic to this made up phrase.

And this is a great example of language acrobatics.

Maybe try being more specific for my thick skull.

Let's not shift the burden. Just explain to me what exactly you meant when writing 'correlation may be a bigger factor'.

I asked the question first, I think I'm somewhat entitled to an answer.

[knot]

Granted, there aren't any sure fire signs that atheism was related to the shootings or killings or whatever, but it can be a plausible motivation. Like I said, atheists can be bigoted towards religous people, and that bigotry can manifest into violence.

I don't think atheism drives people into violence against certain types of people, but anti-theism certainly can do that. I think we have to be honest and recognize that anti-theistic claims can have the effect to some people to be bigoted against religious people (especially Muslims), and this might be a bigger problem in the new atheistic communities then some of us like to admit. I regularly come across Islamophobia denialism (Bill Maher sadly enough being one of them), which is troubling if fellow liberals make such claims. Don't get me wrong, criticism against Islam can be absolutely valid and should be done in many cases, but we should also be honest about and pointing out problems with certain attitudes against religious people.

However, when a Muslim, who happens to be a highly functioning computer scientist from England, one day decides to start beheading journalists and aid workers, then we can safely say he's motivated by religion.

I'm sorry, but that's just not a valid inference, and possibly empirically not even true (but I have to be honest and say I haven't looked into it that much). You can not rule out other possibilities, which are actually not really that far reached regarding it's plausibility.

It should first be pointed out that being a Muslim is only part of someones identity. There are a lot of factors which weigh in into behaving a certain way (although sometimes it is pretty straightforward), which have to be carefully and scientifically be evaluated if you really want to know what's motives someone doing the things you said. This is something I disagree on with Sam Harris, which has done research into believe and the brain and even though he knows about the complexity of the mind, he's not (always) applying this knowledge when talking about behaviour of people that subscribe to Islam.

Killing journalists can be done for lots of reasons; from taking as hostages, to giving a shock effect for showing power and/or attracting new participants for your organization, to killing those who do have a lot of influence (media) and not presenting objectivity, completeness of even truth to the killers' point of view.

As for beheading (or killing in general) of aid workers: this is a quite uncommon practice, which is probably why not much is known about the motives behind it. It's can absolutely not be taken for granted it's necessarily religiously motived, and political motives can certainly not be ruled out because it seems barbaric. If you have more knowledge about this case then I do, I love to see some sources backing up your claim.

I was referring to "Jihaddi John" aka the guy who chops off heads in ISIS videos. He turned out to be some kind of computer scientist from England. I'd argue his behaviour makes absolutely no sense without the context of religion. Take Islam out of the equation and we would have a psychological phenomenon never witnessed before, where a normally functioning 20-something guy with a good education and career just leaves all of that behind to go kill people who never did anything to him