Shot dead, instead of life in prison
Published:
January 10, 2015 at 1:55am
And so the Kouachi brothers were shot dead this afternoon. They couldn’t stay holed up in that print-works indefinitely, hostage or no hostage, so they came out shooting, knowing they would die.
Fortunately, their parents are dead – though if they hadn’t died, probably none of this would have happened and all those other people would still be alive. Life is so random. No wonder we need religion to try and make some kind of sense of it.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30752239
We need religion? BS of the first degree. Where does religion come into it?
I would say that a very substantial number of persons living in the more tranquil societies are atheists and it is in these countries that human rights and freedoms are most respected and standards of living are the highest. And that these same atheists live a predominantly moral life.
Go to the religious places (and this includes many non-metropolitan areas of countries like the US) and you get the race problems, the homophobia, the religious intolerance, the violence.
Thanks but no thanks, you can stuff your religion whatever it is.
Get over your guilt complex, your writings amply show what you really think, you are now more than old enough to have made the break.
[Daphne – ‘We’ is a reference to humanity, not to myself. This website is written in idiomatic English. Kindly adapt. I have never been religious, so there was never a break to make. That’s exactly why I don’t rant on against religion, because I am indifferent.]
Not particularly religious myself, but I can’t help but notice that in the ‘more tranquil societies that are atheists’ something else has been made God. It ranges from a scale of faux humanism or overwhelming belief in science, (even though both are poorly understood by their subscribers) to all the people doing yoga to seek whatever these days.
Jung wrote extensively on how the question of God is inescapable. One of his best quotes on the matter:
“The idea of an all-powerful divine Being is present everywhere, unconsciously if not consciously, because it is an archetype. There is in the psyche some superior power, and if it is not consciously a god, it is the “belly” at least, in St. Paul’s words. I therefore consider it wiser to acknowledge the idea of God consciously, for, if we do not, something else is made God, usually something quite inappropriate and stupid such as only an “enlightened” intellect could hatch forth.”
Wow taqattani, you profess that religion shackles freedom and promotes intolerance whilst your post is intolerant to any religion and shows hatred towards all those who follow a faith or a religion.
In your atheistic myopia you fail to see that you are intolerant to other people with different believes and ideas from yourself.
Peace be with you.
Good they are dead. Why should the taxpayers pay for their welfare in prison? They are evil. Now the other evil group Bako Haram massacred hundreds of children and women. Not so much fuss because Nigeria isn’t Europe.
One of the very rare times where I disagree with you – “life is so random”. Nothing random with what is happening.
[Daphne – All of life is random, Rosie. Everything is the consequences of consequences of consequences & c & c exponentially increased. The decisions we make are not random, but the consequences that brought us to that point often are, as is the fact that we exist at all. If another sperm of many thousands hit the spot first in that millisecond, you would have been somebody else entirely. Has that ever occurred to you?]
It’s actually many, many millions per ejaculation.
Ah, those were the days.
I’m down to the last half dozen.
I would have not been at all not be someone else and so in your case as well there would have been no Daphne and where would that leave us today.
I am a believer in design rather than randomness and the fact that we can agree to disagree leaves us some hope that maybe in the distant future everyone will be able to do just that.
An excellent article by Piers Morgan (admittedly for Daily Mail) which you might want to highlight: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2903930/PIERS-MORGAN-accept-Paris-murderers-aren-t-real-Muslims-won-t-MUSLIM-world-say-too.html
Those Muslim terrorists must have had the surprise of their life by not receiving the reward of a harem full of virgins after they were shot when neither imams nor outraged Christians are praising their evil deed.
Still, I think a life sentence without possibility of parole and giving social service to French society would have been a much more salutary lessen to similarly minded future terrorists.
I do not object in any way to the French security services dispatching the dangerous terrorists to kingdom come. That must have been unavoidable to save as many innocent lives as possible – hostages, police, soldiers, bystanders etc.
Francis give a it a break with your hate please. What are your thoughts on this brave person who saved many hostages. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/10/lassana-bathily_n_6448500.html
I take pride in hating evil as practised by murderous Muslim terrorists blasphemously pretending to act in the name of Allahu Akbar.
In the good company of politicians and religious leaders of all hues world wide I condemn the evil deed but I long for the day when evil-doers desist being evil and instead join the company of your exceptional “brave person” so that good Muslims living in peace and rescuing hostages from other Muslims would predominate and when they would become the rule, rather than an exception.
“Life is so random. No wonder we need religion to try and make some kind of sense of it.”
I couldn’t agree more.
It’s actually a reflection of the length of time necessary for anything metacognitive to trickle down.
Religion was a medium for the trickling down.
Let’s not put the blame on it entirely that no other machine has been as efficient in its marketing of metacognitive markers.
If religion experienced a slowdown (in the last couple of hundred years), it’s hardly the case that an alternative showcase of metacognitive example has overtaken it.
No single ideology can today claim precedence, least so when it is restrictive.
Today’s “religion” is more likely to be a slow moving synched awareness.
The strength is in its synchronicity at any one moment.
This week it spiked and many were carried forward on the surge of it to a refreshing of priorities.
Of values.
Of the definition of civilisations.
And then again, back to religion, perforce.
But at every review the nature of the element change is more visible today.
The eternal juggle of order-chaos-order.
Your second paragraph, although short, might be one of your most thoughtful comments on this matter.
Well at least they saved the French taxpayer the expense related to a long stay in prison.
I would tweak your last sentences. Life is so random. Many lack rational capabilities and need religion to make some sense…
Without religion, there would be no top students.
Live coverage via Sky News of dignitaries arriving in Paris, somber and respectful … but Muscat is grinning like a Cheshire Cat.
What rubbish! Scores of dead terrorists had normal biological parents.
[Daphne – It’s not rubbish. Boys who grow up in care homes are statistically more likely to end up in prison. And everybody has biological parents, otherwise they wouldn’t exist. Scotch the normal, though.]