If you had enough information to know you had the right guy and what he was telling you was true, there would be no need to torture him in the first place. If there's a bomb about to go off, acting on false information a victim made up so that you'd be satisfied and stop torturing him is about the worst thing you could do. Why is this so hard to grasp?

Because if it were to be grasped all possibility of torture ever being justified disappears.

As for what you actually wrote:

some atheists for instance were not necessarily dogmatic (about atheistic beliefs - you know there are some) but they were violent nonetheless.

What atheistic beliefs? Atheism is the denial of beliefs. And, who are you talking about, and what do you mean by "not necessarily dogmatic" when it comes to atheism?

Now, I happen to agree with you (I think I'm agreeing) that it's not so simple as claiming that religion is the only thing that drives this terrorism. You are correct, IMO, to point out the economic issues as well, as they are an important part of the equation. That said, when the religious teachings are about hatred and violence, and incite to violence as current fundamentalist Muslim teachings are/do, then you can't simply shrug your shoulders and say, "Well, there are other factors and humans are regularly violent, so what?"

Finally, your parting shot that either we accept what you say or else we are unreasonable is ridiculous.

Leum:
"Torture is nearly always ineffective"
Nope, ask the Japanese and Germans. Torture does work!

Torture is notoriously ineffective at eliciting reliable information. It is very effective at causing fear and breaking psyches.

"..., and situations in which the bomb dilemma exists (i.e. you know an attack's about to come and that you have someone in custody who knows the specifics) are rare to the point of irrelevance."

No. This situation is aplenty in Israel and the middle east.

If you had enough information to know you had the right guy and what he was telling you was true, there would be no need to torture him in the first place. If there's a bomb about to go off, acting on false information a victim made up so that you'd be satisfied and stop torturing him is about the worst thing you could do. Why is this so hard to grasp?

I'm not going to go into the communism thing, but nationalistic zealotry and megalomania are not rational either.

======================================

agreed. to be very specific - i'm saying (and i probably should have been less cryptic) that violence has nothing to do with theism or atheism for that matter. it's ingrained in humans.

there have been atheists (and i'm not talking about a few religious commies) who were violent and there have been theists. some atheists for instance were not necessarily dogmatic (about atheistic beliefs - you know there are some) but they were violent nonetheless.

you referenced the bronze age - there was cannibalism going on around that time. the reason why things were not on the scale they are today was not because of religion. it was because of the lack of technology. technology has made it possible to destroy lots of people much faster in so many ways and i think it's pretty obvious how so i need not go into that.

my wife read an account of the egyptian (?) guy in the US who's widely accepted as the father of terrorism. he started out with hatred for americans because he didn't like them spending time mowing lawns! where's religion in that? sure it has evolved from there but then all islamic fundamentalists live either in pathetic conditions or in oppression (saudi arabia - is rich but there's oppression) which will give rise to jealousy and hatred. it's a natural human emotion. religion is just an excuse then. proof of this is malaysia - a peaceful islamic nation. why? because they are not only reasonably prosperous but also quite broad minded. why would people leading a comfortable life want to indulge in violence and waste their time?

i'm not sure i need to discuss this further - because i think if you are reasonable (and i hope you are) you will accept these arguments to be true. so i'll bow out of this discussion now.

"..., and situations in which the bomb dilemma exists (i.e. you know an attack's about to come and that you have someone in custody who knows the specifics) are rare to the point of irrelevance."

No. This situation is aplenty in Israel and the middle east.

no actually i'm saying that putting all *theists* in the same category as the terrorists is wrong.

Where did anyone do that?

Silver:

not to mention that the atheists are peaceful line is flawed considering that commies are officially atheists.

There have been more than a few Christian communists throughout history and I highly doubt they were atheists.

no actually i'm saying that putting all *theists* in the same category as the terrorists is wrong. not to mention that the atheists are peaceful line is flawed considering that commies are officially atheists.

The first sentence is a strawman; the second has been addressed at length. While Marxism and its derivatives are technically "atheistic" in that they do not posit the existence of a god, they remain dogmas which are believed in blindly and from which dissent is punished, supposedly revealed by a great historical teacher whose followers have split into quarreling camps over whose interpretation of said teacher's teaching is correct, which praise and encourage belief in magic (see their economic claims for details), which claim that a deterministic intangible driving force of which their followers have special understanding is behind historical events, and which treat their temporal leaders as messianic figures. In this, Communism is at least as much a "religion" as most forms of Buddhism.

and about being dropped on my head - that was a sharp observation. so much for logical rational debates. ciao.

When one does something like equating strongly worded arguments with mass murder, one has already forfeited the possibility of having a logical debate as well as any claim one might otherwise have had to being taken seriously. Whining about being treated like an idiot after acting like one doesn't help your credibility.

Being an atheist is a necessary condition to being rational

No non-atheists are rational? I think it would sooner be true that all A and non-A are irrational.

I'm not going to go into the communism thing, but nationalistic zealotry and megalomania are not rational either.