perspective, brain, jihadIn the debate about learning from atheists, I stated, that ‘why to kill people and yourself’ is a question what we could learn about atheists, not from atheists. http://atheism.stackexchange.com/questions/2638/what-can-atheists-learn-from-theists-religion/2640#2640
And Lauren Ipsum answered: No, you have to be religious to explain that.
And I don’t agree, but there it will get off topic, so I start a new one here.
My idea is: The religious person is not really self-aware, not conscious and skeptic enough about himself, to explain what he is doing and why. Of course he has an inner perspective, and a rationalization, an explanation why he is doing this - maybe because of 72 virgins. But that is very a selfish explanation, not very spiritual - isn’t it? It might convince an rationalist, if he would believe these virgins were real, and if he would be so amorally, to kill people for his own pleasure.
Let’s get another viewpoint. I’m living in a western society, in Germany to make it concrete, and there are often psychologists asked by media to explain criminal acts which are hard to understand. But I’ve seen very few attempts to explain suicide bombings. Did you? Is there a fear to find ourself when searching for the answer?
And another perspective: Our brain as atheists - is it different from the brain of theists? Is it different between theists who commit such terror, and brave theists, who won’t do you any harm? Or are our brains too similar to make such a distinction? Well, there are hormones, which affect our mood and what we think, and we have influence - be it music, be it drugs, be it work or sports, … - there is the possibility to boost them or to damp them, and a surrounding culture might tolerate, might encourage, tolerate or discourage them.
My thesis is: Observing a coincidence of religious believes and such assassination is just the first step, is just the observation of a symptom. And religion doesn’t explain much here. A serious attempt to explain such actions would try to find similar patterns in other societies and cultures, and not just see the low hanging fruit in an academic debate. A radical, nonreligious viewpoint can’t accept religion as cause of such effect.
Instead, religion is the often used shortcut to refuse reasoning, to refuse thinking, a joker where - maybe - a taboo is sitting.
And the short form of the question is: How can we understand a jihadist without accepting his religion as explanation? Is there a more useful perspective than pointing to the fault of faith?
As someone who lived his entire life under the thread of suicide bombing (I’m an Israeli) I can tell you that your thesis cannot be dismissed. Not only that religion is not the only perspective on atrocities, I assert that the “72 virgins” are not the main cause for Jihadists suicide attacks.
People perform suicidal acts all the time for many causes. An atheist soldier might obey the command to “take point” (move to the front of the line) in face of massive enemy fire without hesitating, and without expecting having even a single virgin in return, although he knows that there’s a 99% chance that he’ll die doing so. He does so because he places protecting his fellow countryman (maybe his family) and his brothers-in-arms above protecting his-own life.
Similarly, most Shahids (Jihadist suicide attackers) do not truly expect a heavenly compensation. They do what they do because of many reasons: Desperation, anger, the will to revenge, monetary compensation to their family, threats made against them or their families, etc. Brainwash also plays a part in this process, but this brainwash does not focus on the compensation. It focuses on aggression and obedience, not unlike in Fascist regimes.
As atheists, we have to view religious warfare as a human activity. The so-called Jihad is not the war of Allah against Jesus, as neither of them exist. It is a war between political powers, some of them cynically using a religion as a device for propaganda and brainwashing. Make no mistakes - Someone at the high-end of the Islamic pyramid benefits from the Jihad, and its not a deity or the late terrorists. Its death-traders (people who transfer the money from supporting governments to the families of Shahids, and cut a commission for themselves), tyrants who keep their seat safe by blaming the west of the troubles of their people, etc.
Here’s something to think about: If Allah truly blesses the Shahids with a post-mortem bliss, why do only the “foot soldiers” become suicide bombers? Why not the Sheikhs and political bosses join the party as well? Don’t they want 72 virgins as well?
A few quick thoughts:
(1) Although the example of suicide bombing you’ve given is a very valid one, I believe there are also non-religious states of mind that can drive a person to commit acts that no properly self-aware individual could condone. Racism (e.g. the KKK), nationalism or greedy corporations in pursuit of profit are a few examples. I think it’s the human being that has a capacity of self-blinding extremism, given certain conditions. Atheists included.
(2) As someone who knows much about Islam, I can assure you that Muslims as a whole do not rationalise any of their actions on the basis of “getting 72 virgins”. It would literally take a mentally handicapped individual to deal in such simplicity. Islam presents itself as a way of life and touches virtually all aspects of what a Muslim does. It is not possible for a person to embrace Islam without embracing what it stands for as a philosophy of life and an explanation for why we exist. It is a larger “ism” than Atheism, and 72 or 73 or 700 virgins doesn’t feature in this thought process. A suitable comparison in Atheism might be the statement that “people become atheists so that they can avoid having someone stick a silly cross on their graves after they pass away”. Yes, that’s a bonus, but it’s not the reason someone embraces the atheist way of thinking. There’s just so much more to it.
Its a long question, I'd like to focus on the part about atheist brains being different than theists. I say they are not. And when atheists take that shortcut and dismiss people's actions based solely on their religion, it adds credence to the idea that atheists have a prejudice.
To start, no one would take the offer of 72 virgins in exchange for a suicide bombing, if it were made that way. But many, many people can be brought to that point, one step at a time. First you show what a great community you have, and the many good philosophical beliefs you have, then create an "other", a bad group that's against your good intentions, then escalate from there. Here is an interesting discussion on a cult and how humans form attitudes, and how, when faced with overwhelming evidence against our beliefs, the natural reaction is to self-justify not self-analyze.
To really understand the mechanism, look outside of religion, look at how prosecutors and police have reacted since DNA evidence starting overturning their cases. These are educated, trained people, convinced they are protecting their community, but actually they have sent innocent people to jail and closed a case without finding the real criminal. You would think that they would react by being glad that the truth had come out, and would review their techniques and figure what they could have done better. That is rarely the case. Catching criminals is their equivalent of 72 virgins.
Here is an answer from someone who went into the villages of where some of those people grew up and tried to understand it.
Demonstrations, Hopes and Dreams
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