Iran and nuclear power

[Tannhauser]

Looking at it from Iran's point of view:

 

1) they won't have missed the fact that the US neo-con policymakers picked Iraq as the country to invade rather than any other number of possible candidates. I'm sure there were a raft of reasons for that, but one clear one: Iraq had nothing to fight back with. If they had had nuclear weapons, Cheney & Co would have moved on to somewhere else.

2) Iran was named as part of the 'axis of evil', and there was open speculation for a while that Iran 'might be next'. So Iran might have good reason to be seen to be taking an aggressive stance.

3) This might seem more pressing with the US military now with a foothold on their doorstep

4) They may feel they will win popular support through the region by challenging Israel's nuclear monopoly in the region.

 

 

A comment on the religious issue. If you believe that 'all religion does is give people an excuse for wars', then, with the greatest respect, read some history. Religion has been one of the most powerful shaping forces in human history, having an incalculable effect on human culture, technology, philosophy, government, language, art, music, commerce, settlement, exploration and so on. The idea that it just oppresses people or justifies violence (which of course it has done and still does) is a bit naive.

 

I'm an atheist before any conclusions are jumped toward.

 

Cliff

[suprasport]

A comment on the religious issue. If you believe that 'all religion does is give people an excuse for wars', then, with the greatest respect, read some history. Religion has been one of the most powerful shaping forces in human history, having an incalculable effect on human culture, technology, philosophy, government, language, art, music, commerce, settlement, exploration and so on. The idea that it just oppresses people or justifies violence (which of course it has done and still does) is a bit naive.

 

if that was aimed at me, then with the greatest respect, i agree if it wasn't then i still agree

what i meant though is that it is hypocrytical

[Tannhauser]

if that was aimed at me, then with the greatest respect, i agree if it wasn't then i still agree

what i meant though is that it is hypocrytical

 

Nope, not aimed at anyone in particular, it was more 'blindly flailing around'.

 

I see the 'religion only causes war' very often; it's certainly a widely held view. But it's so barmy that it gives me a headache. It's like saying 'all food does is give us cancer'.

[suprasport]

It's like saying 'all food does is give us cancer'.

 

well according to the daily sport it does so

[Pete]

Guys and Gals, where did all this ultra emotive religion and anti-US stuff come from?

Cos I for one know f@ck all about Iran and so can't comment! I don't like to talk bollocks about stuff I don't (want to) understand... just the stuff I do

[chilli]

off topic but if I can just to reply to this:

 

Dude...

 

Approx 200-250k people killed in 2 foul swoops, not overkill?

 

IMHO just having the bomb could have stopped the war, we all know there was a race to get it and the allies won, fortunatley! Certainly the second one seems overkill, to me at least.

 

Perspective, some 250k or so in total, this is more than all of the serving UK army killed in total over the whole duration of the war! If we had lost that many in such a way you might have a different take on it. What's worse probably 95% were all innocent civilians.

 

The figures for WWII are completely shocking, but that's a worldwide total, for nearly 10 years of conflict, on both sides! I don't think you can justify any _unecessary_ loss of life, ragardless of the figures.

 

A comment on the religious issue. If you believe that 'all religion does is give people an excuse for wars', then, with the greatest respect, read some history. Religion has been one of the most powerful shaping forces in human history, having an incalculable effect on human culture, technology, philosophy, government, language, art, music, commerce, settlement, exploration and so on. The idea that it just oppresses people or justifies violence (which of course it has done and still does) is a bit naive.

 

There is no denying that religion has done good, but I think if you really do look at history, as you suggest, that on balance it has tended to do more harm than good. Ongoing conflicts in the middle east are based on religious issues.

 

The problem for me is that when you get to the position where you can justify killing someone else because of a difference of opinion over something that is based on 'faith' anyway, you go down a route of amorality, where there is no right or wrong, everything is right because you are doing in the name of your God

 

--

 

Back to the Iran thing and the middle east in general. It's inevitable that there will be shifts of power in the future, I don't know how long the west can go on attempting to police the East (and the rest of the world), but long term this is futile unless bit by bit they hope to control the whole area, then who would be the bad guys?

[Digsy]

off topic but if I can just to reply to this:

 

 

 

Approx 200-250k people killed in 2 foul swoops, not overkill?

 

IMHO just having the bomb could have stopped the war, we all know there was a race to get it and the allies won, fortunatley! Certainly the second one seems overkill, to me at least.

 

Perspective, some 250k or so in total, this is more than all of the serving UK army killed in total over the whole duration of the war! If we had lost that many in such a way you might have a different take on it. What's worse probably 95% were all innocent civilians.

 

It's not off topic because it relates to whether the UN countries have the right to decide who should and who should not have access to a nuclear weapons programme. I can't think of any nations better qualified than those who have stockpiled, threatened each other with, (in the USA's case) used, and then seen sense and gradually backed away from their use.

 

My original argument was that two similarly armed nations cannot win a nuclear war, hence the mutual deterrent works. However even a very small nuke wielded by a country with the drive to use it will tip the balance of power completely even against an enemy who may be sworn to fight to the last man.

 

America wanted unconditional surrender from Japan - a hangover from Pearl Harbour. Japan may or may not have been considering suing for peace as the plans were made to drop the A-bombs, but meanwhile Allied troops were still dying in their thousands capturing the island chains on the way to the Japanese homeland.

 

Over 200,000 total casualties from the two bomb attacks, and yes almost all were civilian. However the warplanners' wanted nigh on a staggering 3 million soldiers for the home islands invasion and expected to lose up to 35% of them within ithe forst 30 days alone - that's another million military casualties. Coupled with the fact that the Allies had to pretty much kill off everyone on Okinawa to occupy it, how many military casualties would there have been on the Japanes side? How many more civillian?

 

It might seem a bit callous to a generation (myself included) that didn't have to actually live through five years of almost global conflict, but I'm sticking to my view that dropping the bombs on Japan saved more lives than they took. Also, if you consider the bomb drops as a single campaign (i.e. an alternative to the next planned invasion) then the number of casualties was certainly in line with and in fact probably lower than those that would have been suffered through conventional warefare.

 

And I don't think that the Japanese would have stopped fighting just by being threatened. In fact they were warned that they faced "complete and utter destruction" if they didn't surrender.

 

What is worth considering, though, is whether the US could have or should have accepted terms for the Japanese surrender.

 

If anyone fancies some heavy reading, here is a few pages about what happened at Okinawa, and here is what the Allies would have faced at the next planned invasion (the one immediately prior to the strike on Tokyo).

[chilli]

well it's damn early in the morning for this, but I've read your post. Can't say I'm totally convinced but, as an open minded individual, rather than argue I'm going to have a think about it instead At the end of the day, what is done is done, it was a horiffic war however you look at it. I have much less to no problem with the first one, the second one seems much less justified - but in the context of the war it's probably not really for us to judge or criticise with the power of hindsight. Anything that brought the war to an end sooner than later has to be good in some sense.

 

Regarding the other point. My take on it, as I've already stated is that we can not rely on MAD or a fortuitous status quo of power fowever, other countries will gain these weapons in time. Thinking longer term we need a way to cope with that, not try and police the whole world, desperately hanging on to something that can't last forever, making more enemies as we try to do so.

[DShox]

good comments all round. i cannot agree that the US is the best qualified to decide who can harvest a nuclear weapons programme. we havent seen anything yet - as nations such as India and China continue to boom and if the Russians finally sort the economy out, I think we are gonna see the US thrash about like a fish out of water.

[Digsy]

good comments all round. i cannot agree that the US is the best qualified to decide who can harvest a nuclear weapons programme. we havent seen anything yet - as nations such as India and China continue to boom and if the Russians finally sort the economy out, I think we are gonna see the US thrash about like a fish out of water.

 

The US aren't - at least not on their own and not at the moment. The US, the UK, France and Germany are in talks with Iran (which aren't going very well, BTW). If agreement cannot be reached then Iran will probably be referred to the United Nations.

[Guest chiefvinso]

Looking at it from Iran's point of view:

 

A comment on the religious issue. If you believe that 'all religion does is give people an excuse for wars', then, with the greatest respect, read some history. Religion has been one of the most powerful shaping forces in human history, having an incalculable effect on human culture, technology, philosophy, government, language, art, music, commerce, settlement, exploration and so on. The idea that it just oppresses people or justifies violence (which of course it has done and still does) is a bit naive.

 

I'm an atheist before any conclusions are jumped toward.

 

Cliff

I agree and know that through history it has been a driving force, but still think it is used to justify to certain people for destruction - so why does it make me naive when you say that it has done and still does?? BTW I too am an atheist.

[Tannhauser]

I agree and know that through history it has been a driving force, but still think it is used to justify to certain people for destruction - so why does it make me naive when you say that it has done and still does?? BTW I too am an atheist.

 

I would agree with you that religion has been used as a justification by certain people to destroy what they don't like. In fact, I'll go further and say it has been one of the major justifications used for organised violence.

 

What I find naive - and I mean in the sense of 'naive about history' - is the view that this is ALL that religion has done for humankind. This view seems very narrow to me, ignoring anything outside of war and violence. But I don't think that's what you're saying at all, if I understand you.

[Guest chiefvinso]

Sorry, my bad - yup you do understand me, which is good as sometimes I dont understand myself!! lol

[Tannhauser]

There is no denying that religion has done good, but I think if you really do look at history, as you suggest, that on balance it has tended to do more harm than good. Ongoing conflicts in the middle east are based on religious issues

 

OK, let's try and imagine a world in which religion never existed.

 

I hardly know where to start.

 

Up until very recent times, the overwhelming majority of people on Earth have led short, shitty lives filled full of disease, poverty and brutality. They have been absolutely powerless to escape their lot. Religion has given hope to countless billions that (a) their toil and suffering actually had some point to it (i.e. it was part of 'a plan') and (b) that there was a better life ahead of them. So religion has eased the suffering of billions upon billions of blameless souls, destined to live and die in penury. You may call that a delusional hope, but I can't think the alternative is any better.

 

Secondly,take away religion and you've taken away one of the major motivations for our greatest achievers. Take Newton, for example, a deeply religious man. His whole way of thinking about gravitation, optics and so on is predicated on the belief in a clockwork Universe ticking away to God's orderly design. And his motivation is not just to glorify Newton, but to glorify God. Newton isn't an isolated example, either, but I picked him to point out that the greatest scientist ever was motivated and shaped by his religious convictions.

 

This could go on forever, but off the top of my head, no religion would mean:

 

1) No art in its present form - as even the earliest cave paintings have symbolic, religious elements to them

2) No Western harmony as we know it (mainly produced by monks). No Bach, Haydn, Bruckner or any other overtly 'religious' composer. Hence no classical music and who knows what would be missing from pop, rock etc

3) Virtually no great buildings from medieval or ancient times - no St. Paul's, Pyramids, Cologne Cathedral.

4)No America ( No religious persecution - therefore no Pilgrim fathers etc)- therefore no huge 20th century increase in affluence

5) No 'missionary impulse' complementing more mercenary reasons, therefore much less expansion into the New World e.g. South America, therefore less trade and raw materials

6) Classical learning and rationalist thinking lost for centuries without religious institutions to keep them alive.

 

I could go on....

 

OK, so maybe some of these things would have appeared by other routes, but unless you have some big idea to believe in that's beyond yourself, it's easier not to strive to improve things - you might as well just relax and enjoy yourself. And religion has been one of those ideas.

 

To me, saying 'religion has done more harm than good' is like saying 'air has done more harm than good' - for the vast majority of history, religion was, for virtually everyone, as much a part of life as breathing and a life without it was as unthinkable.

 

Wake up at the back!!

 

Cliff

[chilli]

hmmm interesting, but since we don't know what the alternative would have been, it's hard to know that what we have is better.

 

OF COURSE WE WOULD HAVE ART, HARMONY, MUSIC, AMERICA, etc are you mad lol - thing is, it might even have been better!

 

I'll come back and post in more detail later, bit busy right now, how can I put it, the alterntive I'd speculate might not have been literally centeries of stagnation and repression

[Guest chiefvinso]

Now its getting deep

 

[chilli]

I'd just like to add whilst I think of it, people may well have been unhappy and led crappy lives in the past. The reason we live the comfy lives we do today is mostly due to science and technology - if we had left it to relgion we would probably still be sowing the fields.

 

Religion supressed a lot of science and scientific progress, that is common knowledge! Be thankfull we are where we are today to science not religion. The program shown on monday showed that most of the people from the bible belt in America today (a very large mass of people) didn't even understand or recognise a basic principle like evolution and detested that we ourselves might be animals, or a least have once been one in the same in our evolutionary history. It's 2006 FFS, progress through religion? Now that is a comical contradiction!

[Fifty]

People need to be free to believe what they want; its the imposition of those believes on others that pisses me off.

People who act in the name of this god or that god are stupid.

We do need rules to live by though; simply good folk are good; evil folk are evil.

 

52:drown:

[Tannhauser]

I'd just like to add whilst I think of it, people may well have been unhappy and led crappy lives in the past. The reason we live the comfy lives we do today is mostly due to science and technology - if we had left it to relgion we would probably still be sowing the fields.

 

Religion supressed a lot of science and scientific progress, that is common knowledge! Be thankfull we are where we are today to science not religion. The program shown on monday showed that most of the people from the bible belt in America today (a very large mass of people) didn't even understand or recognise a basic principle like evolution and detested that we ourselves might be animals, or a least have once been one in the same in our evolutionary history. It's 2006 FFS, progress through religion? Now that is a comical contradiction!

 

Whilst it might be a widely held belief that religion held back science and technology, it's a gross oversimplification. Of course, the Church put Galileo in prison, opposed those that questioned Biblical doctrine, etc, etc, etc. But at the same time, it was the religious institutions that kept academic learning of all flavours alive through the dark ages. Science exploded out of the rationalist movement. The rationalist movement was founded on a rediscovery of 'classical' modes of thinking that had been preserved by the church. For that matter, so did the Renaissance.

 

For the early rationalists and scientists, God was an essential part of the system. For some - like Descartes and Newton, God was a reason to think and enquire. Religion and science in the last three centuries have peacefully co-existed much more than they have been at loggerheads. Evolution is an interesting example; I doubt that religious arguments, for all the fuss, held widespread acceptance of Evolutionary theory back more than 20 years. Public opinion is a different matter.

 

I don't know what programme you're referring to on Monday, but I suspect it was that of Richard Dawkins. I didn't watch it, because I know full well his views - he's renowned as a one-trick pony, an arch-determinist who thinks f88king everything under the sun is explicable in terms of evolution.

 

People in the Bible belt might be having their understanding compromised through religious fundamentalism, but that's miniscule potatoes in the big picture.

[chilli]

Only academics that fitted the mould Everyone else, witches, burn them all for herasey

 

Ok so how long was it that religion and the church insisted that the Earth was at the center of the universe? Please have a think about that.

 

Like I say, not all of religion has been bad. Also, I have no problem with personal Faith. Newton's drive would have come from his personal faith and motivation to find answers (like a true scientist) - religion can not really take credit for his genious - he was only lucky that he wasn't born in another phase of religious history where he probably would have been crushed by the monalithic, dogmatic institution you are trying to defend.

 

Yes, the bible belt is a small part of the whole world population, but then it's just one religion in one country, it was just an example. Now take the whole influence of religion over all the worlds population, for all that influence not a lot to show for it, appart from conflict, violence, stagnation, denial of science and the list goes on.

 

Dawkins is a very clever chap (sorry you disagree), most importantly he searches for the truth based on the facts, not speculation. I'm going to be siding with his views over yours unless you can actually come up with something even remotely convincing!

[Tannhauser]

It's 2006 FFS, progress through religion? Now that is a comical contradiction!

 

In a sense, the current situation isn't relevant, since we were discussing whether or not religion had been a positive or negative force through history, not today.

 

But it's an interesting point. How about putting it like this: in the UK, we are now living in the most atheistic time in history, in one of the most athesitc countries in the world. How are we doing? Are we doing better than when we were mostly believers? We're materially better off, that's for sure. Are we happier, now that religion has gone? Are we more moral?

 

When I was a kid, I couldn't wait for the day when people stopped believing all this religious bollocks, grew up and took charge of their own lives, yada, yada. Now I'm living in that time and guess what? I'm not sure it's any better.

 

The church, which used to be the centre of the community, has gone. It doesn't seem to have been replaced by anything. The moral framework that made sense of everything has gone. So, for many, if there's no God watching, then:

 

wrong = what you get caught doing

right = whatever feels good right now

 

But people still need what religion used to offer them. look at what fills the gap now: new age spiritualism, feng-shui, therapy, all manner of unscientific beliefs. Are we more rational than 50 years ago?

 

The main problems facing humankind are questions of attitude, not technology. There is enough food to go around, with a will. There is enough money to end poverty. Changes in attitude and pollution towards energy could be unbelievably effective.

 

One way of thinking of it is like this: if the whole world decided to truly take to heart the New Testament message (for example - or probably other religions, I don't know enough about them), the 'progress' that could be made in ten years would outstrip anything science could dream of in the same time period.

 

Progress through atheism in 2006; it's not working out very well, is it?

[chilli]

hmmm interesting, so is it better to happy in blind ignorance or not? I'd rather be based in reality, personally - if that made me less happy, so be it.

 

you seem to be arguing that religion is good because it makes people happy lol - well no offense but my cat is generally happy, doesn't make its views correct (if it has any) - many retarded people are also likewise happy. A lot of people who take drugs are very happy whilst they are doing so.

 

If the cold reality of truth is a bitter pill to swallow, does that make the alternative right or any better?

 

Progress through atheism is working out excellently, if we could avoid the hatred from fundamentalists, justified in the name of God against us.

 

I don't need a religion to tell me how to lead my life. If I decide to have personal faith, that's a different matter, but at least then I am under the freewill to make my own decisions.

 

It's ironic that you try to justify religion by saying "we arn't doing so well now, as atheists" - well if religion really is as good as you say it is, why then are more people waking up and smelling the coffee?

[Tannhauser]

Only academics that fitted the mould Everyone else, witches, burn them all for herasey

 

Ok so how long was it that religion and the church insisted that the Earth was at the center of the universe? Please have a think about that.

 

Like I say, not all of religion has been bad. Also, I have no problem with personal Faith. Newton's drive would have come from his personal faith and motivation to find answers (like a true scientist) - religion can not really take credit for his genious - he was only lucky that he wasn't born in another phase of religious history where he probably would have been crushed by the monalithic, dogmatic institution you are trying to defend.

 

Yes, the bible belt is a small part of the whole world population, but then it's just one religion in one country, it was just an example. Now take the whole influence of religion over all the worlds population, for all that influence not a lot to show for it, appart from conflict, violence, stagnation, denial of science and the list goes on.

 

Dawkins is a very clever chap (sorry you disagree), most importantly he searches for the truth based on the facts, not speculation. I'm going to be siding with his views over yours unless you can actually come up with something even remotely convincing!

 

 

In haste, as my dinner is ready and calling to me.

 

I don't understand your third paragraph. I can't see how you can acknowledge on the one hand that Newton was driven by personal faith and at the same time say 'religion cannot take any credit'. Without religion, by which I take it you mean institutionalised religion, personal faith isn't going to happen, is it? It's the institution that propagates the ideas that people learn as 'faith'.

 

As for Dawkins - well, yes, of course he's a clever chap. As a biologist, he's more known as a populariser than anything else, but I wouldn't deny the guy's smarts. However, just because he has a training in Science doesn't give him a monopoly on the truth. In fact, as mentioned, he has such a lve affair with evolution that he's right at the extreme of opinion in some areas. In Psychology, for example, his sociobiological views actually ignore rather a lot of FACTS and are noted for their extremely dubious SPECULATION.

 

Tea time.

 

[chilli]

Yes, that's the whole point, religion, man made, an institution, telling you what to do -> historically repressing ideas that challenged this man made construction.

 

Anyone can have faith however. What I meant was, it won't have been the institutionalised religion that drove him, instructed him to do what he did.

 

--

 

as for Dawkins, yes a populariser is exactly what he is. Still doesn't change the fact that he is popularising something he believes in, something that has a heck of a lot more evidence behind it than adam and eve, or god created the heavens and earth in 6 days - honestly, this sort of thing makes me laugh, litterally, it's so rediculous.

 

Ok, my dinner is here also and I'm hungry.

 

We may need to agree to disagree because there is no way I'm buying what you are selling.

 

FYI a lot of promenant scientists have some extreme views that push the boundaries - I'd suggest you are hypocrytical if you have issues with extremist scientific views (that are still rooted in fact) and yet are ok with the bible etc - madness! get a grip please!

 

OK food time

[Tannhauser]

hmmm interesting, so is it better to happy in blind ignorance or not? I'd rather be based in reality, personally - if that made me less happy, so be it.

 

you seem to be arguing that religion is good because it makes people happy lol - well no offense but my cat is generally happy, doesn't make its views correct (if it has any) - many retarded people are also likewise happy. A lot of people who take drugs are very happy whilst they are doing so.

 

If the cold reality of truth is a bitter pill to swallow, does that make the alternative right or any better?

 

Progress through atheism is working out excellently, if we could avoid the hatred from fundamentalists, justified in the name of God against us.

 

I don't need a religion to tell me how to lead my life. If I decide to have personal faith, that's a different matter, but at least then I am under the freewill to make my own decisions.

 

It's ironic that you try to justify religion by saying "we arn't doing so well now, as atheists" - well if religion really is as good as you say it is, why then are more people waking up and smelling the coffee?

 

 

Cool. This is kind of odd for me, as I've used almost exactly the same arguments as you have in the first part of your post. Is it better to know 'the truth' than live in a fool's paradise? Well, my disposition is to agree with you and say 'no, of course not'. However, I happen to live quite a comfortable life, without a great deal of misery to contend with. For the average medieval peasant, I think the grim 'truth' of a Godless universe in which they had absolutely nothing to look for - I'm not so sure. I can't think of how they would have benfited from being 'free from religion'. I think they would have been worse off.

 

Progress through atheism isn't working out excellently, as far as I can see, or at least no better than life under a religion was. Religious fundamentalism doesn't enter into any of the problems I've suggested and the suggestion that it lies behind the hatred towards 'us', as you well know, is only half the story.

 

People aren't 'waking up and smelling the coffee'. They aren't waking up at all. Most kids have no religious beliefs now - do you think that they can give you one piece of evidence for their atheism? I've asked many kids about this and they can't. They just think it's 'wrong' because that's what those around them say. They might mumble something about 'the 'Big Bang', but that's about it (curiously, though kids don't believe Jesus could rise from the dead, they have absolutely no problem with the idea of ghosts). So they blindly accept the current doctrine, and grow into adults that do the same, just as their ancestors did with religious belief. They believe without question what the high priests of Science say.

 

I am a scientist by training, by the way, so I do believe Big Bang/ Evolution etc etc. But increasingly I regard how we answer the 'God' question as one coming down to upbringing, disposition ("ain't no big pointy finger tellin' me what to do!") and culture rather than evidence.