December 1st 2009
For a little while now I have been following a post on Ronald's blog about the Fort Hood shooting that took place in November. Ronald's poll asks a simple question, was the Fort Hood shooting a terrorist act? The answers many people give underlie one of my key concerns with the fight against terrorism: that it is misapplied.
History is full of situations where a particular label or attitude against a label has been hyped up within the population for political aims. Whether it is the vilification of communism in cold-war America, the attitude toward the Jews in Nazi germany or the fight against terrorism now, these cases all represent a propogandist and unfair generalisation, in some cases bordering on hysteria.
It concerns me that there is an almost automatic labelling of religiously motivated acts as ‘terrorism’ by a large number of people. This not only obscures the real reasons for an individual's actions, making it difficult or even impossible to establish any kind of rational debate, but also gives weight to a non-specific political umbrella under which all kinds of actions, both good and bad, are carried out in our names and further fuels the hysteria that permits and even promotes behaviour that we should be equally alarmed by.
A killing based in religion, without specific political aims, is no more a terrorist act than any other delusional mass murder. A person may be pushed towards action by peoeple with terrorist aims either directly or indirectly but to dismiss the thoughts and fears of that individual by attaching the cover-all boogieman label of terrorist means we fail to see the difference between all of the possible permutations and throw away any hope of limiting future actions through anything but warfare.
At the very least the label should not be automatically applied and where it is it should be treated with caution instead of being used to dismiss the situation as the actions of ‘evil’ men.
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October 27th 2009
Both the BBC and Daily Mail are reporting on an IPSOS MORI survey, the results of which suggest that over half the population of the World think that alternative points of view should be taught in addition to evolution and the theory of natural selection.
It's really easy to jump to conclusions about this survey. Certainly the implication in these stories appears to be that the debate is clearly polarised between those who believe the alternatives are valid and those who don't, but the survey doesn't necessarily mean that.
My main issue is that there is a massive difference between a discussion to explore the arguments with the intention of showing why they are not science and why they are inadequate, and teaching that they are viewpoints that are equally valid.
There is also a big difference between suggesting something should not be discussed because it is not science, and therefore doesn't belong in science classes, and suggesting it not be discussed so that the point remains valid and can still be argued from a theological perspective outside the science class.
The articles aren't clear on whether the survey sheds any light on the meaning behind these statistics and unfortunately I've not been able to find a copy of the full report on the IPSOS MORI website. This means I haven't been able to look at what the questions were and what, if any, follow up questions or information was recorded. I am however clear on my view.
60% of Britains (based on a sample of a 1000) said that alternatives should be taught and I certainly agree with that.
You can argue that the alternatives are bogus, that they are history, that they are an attempt to inject religion into science through subterfuge, but while there are students who will close their mind to the official dogma of the west, while there are people actively pushing lies instead of fact under the banner of these alternatives, we need to make sure the next generation has all the facts so they can see things the way they really are.
With all the facts at hand it really isn't possible to decide that the alternative views are real alternatives at all.
The question that actually matters is not whether the alternatives are taught, it is how they are taught.
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