Religion ^and Reality   -//-   Faith ^and Reason   -//-   Reality ^and Religion

Page Three

Understanding Some Basic Concepts

In order to resolve the religious violence problem, we need to be aware of some basic facts, principles, and human behavior patterns.  

Self Interest           ...

1)    Self Interest:   People always act in a manner that they perceive to be in their own best interest.    The simplest way to get someone else to change their behavior is to change the result they receive from that behavior.    When the rewards go away or when the price rises to a level where the person is not willing to pay the price, the unwanted behavior simply stops.   Almost any parent can tell you this.   

        One can also think of this concept in terms of simple supply-demand economics.   The price of something  is what someone is willing to pay.   Raise the price high enough  and all customers stop buying.  

        This concept has also been used successfully in the political arena.   At one time, Omar Kadafi was exporting terrorism from Libya.   He's still in Libya and there is no terrorism coming from his regime.  Why?   Because the price of exporting terrorism was raised to the level where he decided he was not willing to pay the price.   

       Those who have studied the Nazi occupation of Europe know why German soldiers moved about freely in occupied countries without fear of attack by private citizens who could easily have killed soldiers.   The soldiers were safe because the cost of killing a soldier exceeded the price the citizens of the occupied countries were willing to pay.    

       During the Cold War between the U.S. and Russia, why didn't the Russians launch a nuclear attack against the U.S.?   Because the price they would have had to pay exceeded what they were willing to pay.

       So to end terrorism, simply raise the price.   Come on guys.  Wake up!  The answer is right under your noses.   Even my pet cat has the feline equivalent of the answer --  "Come into my back yard and you'll wish you hadn't.   Come into my back yard and you'll hobble home."  

        If you want people to behave in a certain way:   adjust their circumstances,  (the context they are in) --  change the payoffs -- eliminate the  rewards -- add punishments -- raise the price of unwanted actions --  until the person finds it in in his own best interest to behave the way you want him to behave.   He will then comply with your wishes without any coercion or any further effort on your part, or on the part of anyone else.   This can be accomplished  without spending billions of dollars, and without creating elaborate security systems.  

Bet to Pot Ratio     ...

2)   Bet To Pot Ratio:    In every undertaking, there are risks, choices and at least two possible outcomes.   One can achieve the objective (win) or not achieve the objective (lose).   When all the factors are clear and when  there is much to win and little to lose, the choice is easy.   But what happens when your life, your children's lives, and your grand children's lives depended on a bet you have to wage (a decision you have to make) today based upon evidence that you have not personally examined? 

        For example, most people are, right now, betting their lives and the lives of all humanity on the belief the Global Climate Change is not real.   There are four possible outcomes to this bet:   

a)   Climate change is not real and we act vigorously as it were real.   
Result:  Humanity will have cleaned up some of its destructive behavior.  Lives will be improved.   The super wealthy will make a little less money.    Your grandchildren will still have a world to live in.

b)    Climate change is real and we act vigorously as it were real.   
Result:   Humanity will have cleaned up some of its destructive behavior.  Lives will be improved.   The super wealthy will make a little less money.   Your grandchildren will still have a world to live in.

c)   Climate change is not real and we ignore it.    
Result:   Life continues.   Trends such as overpopulation and religious wars will take us wherever they will.

d)   Climate change is real and we ignore it. 
Result:  All human kind experiences disasters of unimaginable magnitude.    A major portion of the human population dies.

        With human survival on the line,  are you willing to blindly  poo-poo Global Climate Change as if it were a hippie, tree-hugger's fantasy?   Are you willing to bet your children's lives  and grandchildren's lives on what you believe -- on what someone with a hidden agenda°  has told you?   If you have thoroughly examined the evidence and found your own answer, that's one thing.   But to mindlessly turn control of your life over to your political and religious leaders and to simply believe their patsies, the so-called public media, is quite something else.   

As you must have noticed by now, those who control major concentrations of power cannot be trusted to keep their promises.   (For example, in 1984, Ronald Regan campaigned for the presidency  on the promise eliminating the country's 50 billion dollar debt.  What he left office the debt was 200 billion.  Under "Resident" Bush Jr., that debt has  skyrocketed to about 9,000 billion)  As a general class of people, those in positions of power are notorious for being  liars, truth twisters, an mind-manipulators.'  They will tell you what you want to hear to get your cooperation, and once their objective is obtained, they stab you in the back.   

Obviously not all powerful people are this way, but history is riddled with thousands of examples of this type of behavior.    For example, how many of you held your retirement moneys in the form of  corporate "Promises to Pay?"   How many millions of people have stood by helplessly as those promises turned into government- sanctioned lies.

       Because life is not what you've been led to believe it is by those who claim to know,  you, I, and everybody else have  been (and still are) making critical,  irreversible, life-altering  decisions based upon false,  incomplete, and/or intentionally-deceptive information!    Each and every one of us is pushing human kind either closer to oblivion or closer to a successful transformation into an age of self-awareness.   The direction in which you are presently pushing is determined by your beliefs.     

       Where is a sane person going to place his/her bet on this issue?    Where are you placing your bet on this issue?  What if you bet with the Bush/Republican team and you later find out that they have been lying to you?   But we both know that that's not possible.  It's safe to bet your grandchildren's lives on these people because, as we all know, Bush and company have never lied to us, and never withheld vital information, never given us a spin on (distorted)  the truth.   (See the section titled:  It's Wakeup Time°  and the section titled: Lies of Omission.°)   

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3)   Have You Ever Been Wrong?    While you were being wrong, did you know you were wrong?   Most people will respond to this question with something like:   "Of course not!   That's the essence of being wrong."   

       Consider this:  Is it possible that you are wrong right now about something?  Is it possible that something you think is true is actually false and/or something you believe is false is actually true?   If it's possible for you to be wrong, then the next time you think you have THE ONE AND ONLY correct answer about anything, stop for a minute and consider the possibility that you just might be wrong. 

       If you must make a choice about something, it's wise to choose the option that is correctable if you later find out you were wrong.   In this case: 1)  what you have to lose by taking no action regarding climate change is enormous;  2)  the probability of the projections regarding climate change being accurate is very high; and  3)  the consequences of taking no action are both astronomically-devastating and irreversible.   This leads us to the one and only sane choice  --  and that choice is to listen to the wakeup call and immediately begin making and demanding changes.  

Two additional factors to consider are  1)  when you examines history, you'll notice that humans have an incredibly-destructive, pain-producing habit of being wrong about just about everything, and  2)  denial and resistance to change appear to be ingrained human character traits.    Readers are directed to the page titled:   Have you ever been wrong?°

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4)   Sex and Sensuality  or  Violence and Repression --  It's an Either/Or Choice:  It doesn't take much research to find the evidence:   
1)  linking sexual freedom and political freedom, and    linking sexual freedom and political freedom, and    
2)  linking sexual repression and dominator totalitarian politics.

       When one examines the attitude toward women and sex held by the leaders of  radical Islam, it immediately becomes apparent that, for them, sexual repression is both extreme and their normal way of living.   Young men in conservative Islamic societies have no outlet for the life force that normally  expresses itself through sexual activity.   Wherever sexual expression is repressed, physical and/or emotional violence erupts.   

       In terms of expressing basic life energy, sex and violence are at opposite poles; that is, they’re opposite ways of expressing the same, basic life energy.   Basic life energy is similar to a river in that you can divert its course, but you can't stop its flow.   

        Sexually unfulfilled people are less cooperative, less intimate, less loving, less creative, less tolerant of others, and much more willing to argue and fight, to kill each other, and to destroy things.    This increases frustration, sadness, depression, sickness, disease, accidents, anger, hostility, and personal violence.  And this, in turn, promotes chaos, collective violence [wars] and a perpetuation of dominator-manipulator, totalitarian governments.     (For and in-depth analysis of this concept, readers are directed to the page titled: Sex and Sensuality or Violence and Repression.°)   

       Radical Islamic leaders have managed to re-direct the basic life energy of thousands of sexually unfulfilled males toward murdering infidels on orders from God and with promises of sexual fulfillment  (twenty-six virgins)  in heaven if one dies killing non-Muslims.   

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5)   Violence as Self Defense   Versus   Violence to Promote One' Political Agenda:  When one examines the original context of Islam, there was a time in which  self-defense was a valid response to protect the religion.   Those days are long gone.  Nobody, today is attempting to eradicate the Islamic faith.

        In pure Islam, there are no special leaders.   There is the person (Imam) who leads the prayer, but that was not intended to be a political position.   Radical Islamic extremists have hijacked the Imam position and  use that position to promote their political agenda.   They claim offense against anything that threatens their political power and control and, in arrogance, declare anything that they disapprove of to be an attack against Islam, itself.   They then agitate followers to do random violence against all non-Muslims.   You might note that the extremist in Islam, like extremist in Christianity, and extremists everywhere else, have twisted the evidence and used lies of omission.° to manipulated their followers into believing that they (the leaders)  are  holy defenders of "The Truth."   This intentional mis-education is the core point were the process of  ending terrorism can be found.   

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6)    Innocent Lives - Expendable Humans:   No matter how the terrorism scenario plays itself out some additional people are going to die.   Any one of us anywhere on the planet could be among the next casualties of terrorism.   The previous loss of innocent life has been appalling and, unless  major changes in tactics are forthcoming soon, the future losses could be far worse; losses could be in the hundreds of thousands; they could even be  in the millions.  

In dealing with the impasse between becoming as evil as the terrorists  and  allowing them the destroy Western society,  a compromise position must be reached.   Unfortunately that compromise involves the intentional destruction of some human lives.   (see the page titled:    Getting Beyond the Impasse -- How to End Terrorism°)       When an aggressive attack is launched against an enemy, obviously some innocent people will die.    And again, let me be clear, ending terrorism has nothing whatsoever to do with the ground wars, Mr. Bush has started in Afghanistan and in Iraq. (See the section above Iraq Ground War-Versus the War On Terrorism.°)   The questions are:  "How many will die?"  and "Who will do the dying."   We are at choice in answering both of these questions.   

1)    We can maintain our strictly defensive posture; we can continue  to do more-of-the-same and the-same-thing-harder until a terrorist plot kills thousands, perhaps millions of people  (Remember, you and your family could be among the dead.)   

or

 2)   We can choose to kill those who have vowed to fight to the death and kill as many non-Muslims as possible and in the process, accidentally kill a few people close to or associated with those who have vowed to end their lives committing mass murder.

To continue with a defense only strategy is to guarantee that another Islamic jihad, mass murder will occur, and when it does, then what?   Will we raise the price at that point?   How bad does it have to get before we are willing to do what should have been done long ago -- raise the price of terrorism -- raise the price of publicly promoting terrorism --  raise the price of violence  -- raise the price until militant Islam is no longer willing to pay that price.?   (See the above  section titled:  Self Interest.      

So to bottom-line this:  Before terrorism is ended, some innocent people are going to be killed.  The question is who makes the choice of who will do the dying.   Under the present so-called anti-terrorist strategy, the terrorists are the ones making that decision.  

Offense Versus Defense       Offense Versus Defense        ...

7)    It's impossible to win a war from a defensive position only.   Anybody with even a lick of sense  will tell you that using a defense-only strategy is for guaranteed losers.   It is literally impossible to build enough security barriers to stop all who would cause harm to non-Muslims.   

        What is the Bush team's primary strategy?   What is their only strategy?  ---  Setting up defense lines (security barriers)  and waiting for the enemy to attack.   They have absolutely no policy for effectively ending terrorists in America.  (And again, let me be clear that the ground wars, Mr. Bush has started in Afghanistan and in Iraq have nothing whatsoever to do with ending terrorism outside of these two countries.  See the section above Iraq Ground War-Versus the War On Terrorism.°)   

        In the mean time, Bush and company, under completely false pretenses, invaded Iraq on the excuse that he intended to eliminated Saddam Hussein who was definitely not a supporter of any of the terrorist leaders.   Bush and company has  spent four trillion dollars of your money, killed at least 600,000 Iraqi citizens thousands of people, maimed or injured hundreds of thousand more, killed or injured thousands of American servicemen and women,  and pushed millions of people here in America  into desperate financial conditions.   Bush and Company has  inspired  the eccentric, hardliner, radical Islamic leaders  to silence (by murder and intimidation) moderate Islam and has created a "holy war" (jihad)  in which the terrorists have vowed to fight to the death.  

       1)  Bush and Company have no clear plan on how they intend to end terrorism.   2)  They have no attack (offensive) strategy.   3)  They have not spelled out the consequences of another major success on the part of the terrorists.   There are no known consequences -- no price to pay for pulling off another major attack attack against non-Muslims.    4)  they are fighting in a defense mode only -- a context where they have no power, no  leverage, no advantage, and a definite, all-but-impossible-to-overcome disadvantage   5) they regularly fail to use available opportunities to attack the oppositions weak points,  (The paragraph titled:  A lesson in Absurdity° is one tiny example of this)    6)   they do not appear to understand the mentality, the psychology, the belief system of the opposition,  7)   they allow the opposition to  pick the venues where the fights will  occur,  and  8)  your life, your family's life and the future of all humanity is on the line here.   

       As an alternative to the Bush team's "let's-invite-disaster-plan,"  readers are encouraged to review the page titled,  How to Create a Winning Strategy° on our http://www.lifecoach4vip.com  website.   The plan on our website can be applied to any conflict including ending Global Terrorism.

War Of Ideas              War Of Ideas                ...

 8)   Battle of Beliefs.   It's impossible to stop something as complex as religious violence with physical barriers only.    One must also work to undermine the support for religiously-inspired violence by reaching into the source of beliefs which produce that behavior.     Readers are directed to the page titled:    Global Terrorism -- A War Over Conflicting Beliefs.°  

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9)   Oil Wars:   Imagine for a moment that there was no oil in the Middle East.  Would any of these conflicts be going on, today?   The oil dependency  problem has been obvious since shortly after oil was discovered in this area.    Humanity has had at least sixty years to develop alternative fuels -- fuels that are clean and a keep our environment healthy.   And here we are today?  --   in the middle of an all-out religious war with the opposition holding the trump card -- OIL.

*     Does Mr. Bush  have a functional alternative energy plan?  NO!   If you say nuclear, we invite you to remember that nuclear waste products will still  be lethal for hundreds of thousands of years.  (Nuclear waste has a half-life of 50,000 years.)   If you say coal, we invite you to remember that burning coal is a major contributor to Global Climate Change.

*      Are we engaged in massive research to find safe, clean alternatives?  NO!   

*     Do we have any plan at all?   YES! -- Do more of the same and do the same thing harder.  

*     Are you sure that Mr. Bush is not a believer in "the rapture"  and is not simply waiting for the world to end?

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10)   The Unthinkable:    One also has to be aware that there are people on the non-Islamic side of this war who, if given the means, the motive and the opportunity, would, right now,  strike indiscriminate, massive deadly attacks against countries that are promoting and/or exporting  terrorism.   

       Al Queda and the Taliban leaders need to understand that, if terrorists set off a nuclear bomb any where in the world, massive retaliations will be called for and will very likely be initiated.   Millions of Muslims could  be taken on  a quick journey to meet Allah.   Major Islamic cities could be targeted with neutron bombs.   Anthrax might be scattered over major cities the middle east.   Germ warfare could kill millions.   Mecca could even be wiped of the face of the earth in a nuclear explosion.   Biological and Chemical attack could be initiated from any country and even a single individual could take it on himself to make a retaliatory strike with chemical or biological weapons.  

       Let's hope that neither Al Queda and the Taliban never do anything that could trigger such a totally destructive exchange.  

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11)   Publicly Speaking the Truth:   As you will recall, Jesus said,  "Know the truth and the truth will set you free."    Why then, are those who control the U.S. government intentionally lying to us, withholding vital information, and  sugar-coating the truth?  

       For example, on 9-11-2001,  dozens of people in the trade center towers jumped to their deaths rather than burn to death.   The media has intentionally censored the airwaves and omitted all pictures of these deaths.  Why?   

       As another example, on 9-11-2001,  while most of the world were in shock, people in several Islamic controlled cities were dancing with joy in the streets and passing out candy.   The media has intentionally censored the airwaves and omitted all references of this behavior.  Why?   

       Because if the public knew the truth, they would not tolerate the despicable behavior of the George Bush and Company!

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12)   Freedom of Speech:   In the United States, we have a perspective on freedom of speech that allows for some limitations.  You've probably heard the classic line:  "Freedom of speech does not give one the right to yell fire in a crowded theater."    Do you suppose publicly promoting mass murder might fall into that same category?  

Suppose that, regardless of what country they are in, those now publicly promoting mass murder were given this option:   If you stop promoting violence and mass murder, you will continue to have the same rights as all others.   

If you continue to publicly promote violence and mass murder, you will be considered an enemy combatant in the global war on terrorism.   You will be treated  the same way an an enemy soldier in a war zone holding a bomb or a gun and threatening others.   You will simply be eliminated at the first opportunity!   

What if  radio or TV stations, regardless of what country the station were in, were given a similar choice?   If you continue to use your radio or TV station to promote violence and mass murder it will be sprayed with mixture of rotting pig entrails, pig dung, pig urine, pig fat and orange paint.  

What if those using mosques as a platform to promote violence and mass murder were given the same choice and the radio and TV stations?   If you continue to use your mosque to promote violence and mass murder it will be sprayed with mixture of rotting pig entrails,  pig dung, pig urine, pig fat and orange paint.

Why Use Pig Parts?  Islamic terrorists  are extremist in their religion beliefs.    Their religion says that if they eat or make contact with unclean things, such as pigs, they will not be allowed into heaven.   For a detailed analysis of  this concept, see the section titled:  Pig Soup.'   

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13)   A clearly stated Goal:   As an alternative to guaranteed disaster, suppose a program to actually end terrorism were implemented.  If a clear, specific , tangible, measurable, doable plan were available, would you be interested in hearing about it?  Well, such a plan exists.  

Actually, there are two such plans.   One is explained in detail on the page titled:  Getting Beyond the Impasse -- How to End Terrorism Using Force and Violence,°   and the other is explained on the page titled:  Ending Religious, Extremist-Driven Terrorism  The Non-traditional Way.°    

How to End Terrorism
Continues on Page Four: 
Rules of Engagement --  U. S. Versus Religious Extremists

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