[ExI] The mosque at Ground Zero

[Keith Henson]

On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 10:25 PM,  John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> On Aug 5, 2010, at 7:44 PM, Keith Henson wrote:
>
>> I happen to be concerned about the environmental conditions that will
>> drive fundamentalist Christianity to excesses in stupidity beyond those of Islam.
>
> Wow, that would be very stupid indeed! Look, even in the Bible Belt (aka the Hookworm

You are 60 years out of date.  Hookworm was fairly well eradicated
from the US by 1950.

Google  Rockefeller Sanitary Commission and follow some of the links.

> and Incest Belt) they don't stone to death women who's husbands accuse them of adultery even though the Bible says you should, instead they will engage in doublethink and say every single word of the Bible should be taken literally and the part about stoning in the Bible should be taken figuratively. In contrast Muslims are more logically consistent, they note similar hateful passages in their silly holy book and just say fine lets go for it.

Has this been consistent over the last 100 years?  Or do you see the
more extreme versions rising in step with the economic stress on the
population?

>> It's happened. Read the Wikipedia page on pope Urban II to see why.
>
> I don't care about pope Urban II, he died over 900 years ago. The good things Islam did 900 years ago don't impress me and the bad things Christianity did 900 years ago don't worry me.

The point is that religions such as Islam and Christianity are not
stable meme sets.  They drift to the more extreme xenophobic versions
in response to how bleak people's perception of the future is.

Flaming about the particular aspects of any religion at a given time
is the wrong target.  You are not going to properly treat diseases if
you concentrate only on fever.

snip

>> But to answer your question, I don't have a sensible or acceptable course of action.
>> Except to work on the engineering aspects.
>
> That's the best I could come up with as well, and I think you would agree that at best that is a long term solution, so what do we do in the meantime? I don't think pretending that we don't see the elephant in the living room and all is right with Islam is the way to go.

No, but a look at the EP fundamentals of the situation might help
some.  For example, Iran may take the path of the IRA.  The women
there *have* reduced the birthrate to replacement, though it will take
decades for the effect to turn up the income per capita.  If we do
nothing, that country may mellow out.  Other situations are much less
tractable.

Keith