In the same week that a father stabbed his son in church for failing to take off his hat, a Georgia woman reportedly ran over her boyfriend because she thought that he wanted to skip church to visit with another woman. Annie Knox of Athens-Clark has been charged with aggravated assault.
According to police, the boyfriend jumped on the hood of a parked car to avoid being hit. Knox, 19, reportedly chased him down by running over a lawn and onto the sidewalk.
Her best defense was stated by the The Pharisee: “If a man still prophesies, his parents, father and mother, shall say to him, “You shall not live, because you have spoken a lie in the name of the Lord.” When he prophesies, his parents, father and mother, shall thrust him through.”
For the story, click here.
In fact, we CAN resolve this issue once and for all if JT would be so kind as to check his data and confirm or deny Bron is a separate entity. Given his proven MO of banning the BB/CMM/WB/GF posting IP’s or e-mail addresses (I’m not sure which WordPress tracks, maybe both), this should not be a problem.
Patty,
It was crude, but Bron was just jerking Jericho’s chain – pardon the pun. Again, Bron is not Wayne. The totality of his posts illustrate that. If you want to attack him, fine, go for it. Bron’s a big boy – he can defend himself if you have an issue with him. But please distinguish between the targets. They are discrete.
Is this what passes for intelligent top-rated ‘turlee’ style conversation these days?
That which *Bron98 so elegantly refers to as ‘mental masturbation?
Things have certainly changed over that past year, haven’t they, mespo?
*aka BB/CMM/WB/GF etc
No war has ever been started for reason except for the war that wages continually for the hearts and minds of those lost to ego and hatred. Wars have been started with reasoned principles that are false in some way, a rationale, to justify aggressive action, but never for reason proper.
Again, reasoning and rationale are not the same thing. Reasoning is the application of logic. When best utilized reasoning is geared at finding truth. Rationale is reason distorted to meet the desired ends of the rationalizer when reality confounds their logics. Be the distortion based in appeal to emotion, misconception or mental defect, it’s still a distortion. Rationalization just another type of false logic. It’s also a driving engine of propaganda. The best lies are 90% true.
Indeed, logical thought can have irrational results.
We’ve discussed the limitations and problems with logic before. If reason is the application of logic, it is subject to the same flaws as logic. When these flaws in reasoning manifest, it is often in the form of rationalization. “Those filthy Jews helped ruin the German economy after WWI!” “That slut was asking for it wearing that short skirt!” The facts don’t match the reality so the mind/ego forces a round peg into a square hole. Indeed, as a formal proposition, A cannot lead to B AND not-B, but A can lead to B OR not-B depending on how good one’s contortionist skills are in linking A to B/not-B.
I think that’s a key distinction.
“This involves the exercise of reason, even if the decision is not rational.”
*********
It may involve a method to their madness, but it is certainly false that rational thought can achieve irrational results. Incorrect perhaps, but not irrational. A cannot lead to B and not-B.
Leave it to MikeA to distill the essence!
Hi, Jill. You’re right. Good point. Even what we perceive to be purely rational decisions have emotional components, and we are frequently not even conscious of them.
Mike A.,
That was very well put. My only addition is that really, emotional appeals have a component of reason to them as well. I’m not a dualist. People are a whole– reason and emotion intertwine. I think the most important distinction you made was the difference between reason and being rational (open to evidence). Emotion can help reason be rational.
I believe that reason and emotion both play critical roles. The decision to commence a war is typically made by a small group of people who have established goals and have determined that those goals can be accomplished through aggression. This involves the exercise of reason, even if the decision is not rational. Once the decision is made to go to war, the war-makers must then develop a willingness on the part of those who will do the actual fighting and dying, and their families and loved ones, to participate. Reason is not as effective in this effort, for obvious reasons, so resort is made to emotional appeals: glory, honor, patriotism, God. As we all know, it works.
When I saw the reference to comic books I just had to respond but BIL beat me to it (and did a more scholarly job) but I have a few off topic comments about Graphic Novels anyway:
Anyone that hasn’t discovered the joy of Graphic Novels would do well to pick up the books BuddaIsLaughing listed and even though the material wasn’t new, ‘From Hell’ by Moore was excellently done as was ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 1 & 2’. Anything by Alan Moore is a sure-fire winner as is ANY Batman by Frank Miller (Batman for adults) and as long as Miller’s name came up ‘Sin City’ is worth the read: it’s noir style and stark, edge of your comfort level b/w artwork was a treat and departure from the more lush artwork style prevalent in GN’s. It’s hard to look at, just like the stories portrayed. Not a bad thing.
Watchman has been called the greatest GN ever written and I’m tending to agree. It’s two parallel but complimentary stories played out simultaneously. The shorter story (The Black Freighter) is the pure morality tale that mirrors the larger story plays out as a comic book being read by a minor character. It’s beautifully done but I assume it’s cut totally from the movie. Boy o Boy, gonna’ be a great movie!
I thought about adding the GN ‘Transmetropolitan’ to the list but then I’d have to get all explanatory about it not having anything to do with like, Metrosexual or Trans gender, and wasn’t related to any king of trans-metro-homegenital thingy-cult and decided not to.
Totally aside: from the NYT:
“The twist is that Mr. Snyder, known for turning the Spartan comic book series “300” into a global hit movie, is also directing a separate-but-related picture that Warner plans to distribute exclusively on DVD.
The second film, tentatively called “Tales of the Black Freighter,” follows a side “Watchmen” storyline about a shipwreck and will arrive in stores five days after the main movie rolls out in theaters.”
Good news GN/Watchmen Fanboys and gals, good news indeed.
mespo,
Might I suggest that rationale often disguises itself as reason.
“Is there any doubt that the college educated 9-11 hijackers were acting out of religious zeal.”
Considering none of them were on the flight manifests, the question seems moot.
“I think we ignore people’s professed reasons, at our peril.”
Whereas accepting conclusory assertions without reason & factual basis is just as asinine.
Mespo,
I don’t ignore, I just don’t take everyone at their word.
Most of my truism are more rules of thumb. There’s a lot of “generally”s and “most of the time”s that get edited out of my comments.
Gyges:
I think we ignore people’s professed reasons, at our peril. Is there any doubt that the college educated 9-11 hijackers were acting out of religious zeal. Allah Akbar, indeed. It is a mistake to assume every “rationalization” we find unsatisfactory, is not truly a “reason” for those whose attitudes are shaped by delusion. Not every zealot is a cynic –most are true believers.
personally, I think that Bush wanted 2 fronts in a war with Iran. He had to know Iran and Saudi Arabia are the Islamic focal points. But Iran was the big fish and they [Iran] figured that out pretty quick and so the guerilla war in Iraq was actually a proxy for a US Iranian conflict.
Unfortunately the better strategy of using Iraq as a foil to Iran for a war was already tried and I doubt the 2 would have risen to the bait a second time.
Mespo,
I guess we could argue this topic all day. My premise is simply that the more somebody shouts that they’re motivated by religion (although there’s any number of things you could replace religion with, )the less I believe them. I simply applied it to the starting of wars.
Unlike a lot of atheists, I don’t think that religion is necessarily a good or bad thing. I do think that it’s prone to be used to justify things, like any other area where people give themselves over to an idea bigger than the individual. It doesn’t make those things bad, just things we need to be more careful in using as a justification for our action.
Mespo:
“I think 9-11 was religion on the attack, and Iraq flowed from that pretense, and numbers 4 & 5 on my list. So religion started it and it evolved there in a circuitous route aided by the “Gang That Couldn’t Govern Straight.””
Yeah…
http://tinyurl.com/bcxhf5
Right.
http://tinyurl.com/cm24lv
I’m the admitted LW here Jericho.
Are you questioning Morals vs Ethics and Integrity?
Jericho:
come on man it’s called mental masturbation, get with the program!
we are having an intellectual circle jerk.