Miljenko's Blog

The recent terrorist attacks in the UK may have at least some positive effect if once and for all they serve to puncture the delusion that Islamic terrorists are a product of circumstances of poverty and lack of liberty. The liberal crowd would like to think that people doing evil can be "explained" by the fact they were poor and desperate. These doctors were not poor or desperate by a long shot. The conservative crowd like to think that if only democracy is spread through what today may be totalitarian autocratic states, the magic potion of democracy will convert potential terrorist into humanistic, benevolent citizens. The UK terrorists of last week had all the benefit of liberty of the UK and the spread of democracy to Palestine gave us a Hamas government. So it's not really working according to the script. The problem really is religion in general and in particular a religion which allows for extremist notions of killing everyone who does not believe the same. If ther...

In recent years there has been a huge proliferation of books, news coverage, TV shows giving the non-Muslims an education in what Islam is all about. The implication is that unless we understand Islam better, we will not be able to figure out how to .... and there the thing breaks down because it is not clear exactly what we are after. Having read and listened to much of that, where I come out is that I don't want to "understand" Islam any more than I want to "understand" cannibalism. I don't buy into the notion that only if we understood the Muslim religion better, we would be able to live side by side better. And the more I understand about it, the less I am inclined to view anything about it favorably. The fact that Sunni and Shia groups split in 7 th century over next to nothing is no more an "explanation" or a justification for car bombs exploding in Baghdad than is whatever happened in history between Serbs and Croats a reasonable grounds f...

In his book "America Alone", Mark Steyn gives the following account - "General Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: 'You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom that when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And the we will follow ours." Reminds me of an editorial years ago entitled "In Defence of Cannibalism". Just another custom.

Recently reading the above was a useful reminder that when it comes to religion, not everybody can be right. Either the world was created over a few days 6,000 years ago as the Bible says, or it was not. The factual evidence of the Earth and many things on it having existed for over 6,000 years if beyond overwhelming. Makes one wonder if there is perhaps a good point that Harris and Richard Dawkins make (although I have not read his most recent book "The God Delusion"), about religion in general being anything but a benevolent "everybody can believe what they want" s0cial phenomenon and is on the contrary a profoundly negative factor in any society and the world as a whole. The "intelligent design" proponents often managed to shift the conversation in the direction of "reasonable doubt" such as arguing that things don't quite hang together with Big Bang explanation of origin of everything. It is true, there are some monumentally difficult to ...

Happiness is not an evolutionary prerequisite. Nothing in the process of evolution selects for happiness (or lack thereof). Evolution cares about survival of the species and no advantages are conferred upon happy as opposed to less so individuals. The "happiness industry" which convinces people that they "deserve to be happy" and in fact makes them miserable because they are not as happy as they "deserve to be", is a recent phenomenon. When cave men brought home the antelope and everybody ate it around the fire, there was no cave man equivalent of Dr. Phil walking around trying to asses the degree of happiness of the group. In the Middle Ages, happiness was defined as not having the plague. It is only in recent times that the "entitlement of happiness" came about and as more of the basic needs were no longer an acute issue, mankind went searching for the next thing that will make them miserable. Total bliss or complete happiness is not a default ...

It seems almost inappropriate not to comment in some way on the 5th anniversary of 9/11. One of the things that I find most amazing about it is that 22% of Canadians to this day believe that the entire 9/11 incident was organized and implemented by the U.S. government. The depth of anti-Americanism that is required in order to take leave from logic which would make such belief possible is truly extraordinary. Either the 9/11 hijackers flew those planes or somebody else did. The identity of the hijackers has been established beyond any doubt. They have been identified on video; they have been identified by passengers; their voices are on recordings of conversations from the planes. Everything is known about their lives from where and when they were born to where they were issued drivers licenses to how much rent one of them paid for a room he rented in Germany 10 years ago. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/683026/posts If those were indeed the people who committed those acts, the ...

Both are political parties representing minority interests that are fervent and vocal. They have approximately the same representation in the respective country's parliament at 16-17 % of the total seats. Their positions are at odds with the general intent of the policies of the majority and therefore the country. It would be nice to be able to continue the analogy but differences start to loom large. Imagine a Bloc Quebecois which has a military arm that is being supplied by arms by, say, Mexico which has an ax to grind with the United States for other reasons. The Bloc's military then puts its missiles on the border and after first making an incursion into the US territory to capture a couple of Marines, it starts firing missiles across the border hitting Detroit. Oh, yes, and throw in the additional element of religion and the issue in principle that B Q says the United States should not exist as a country.