Richard Dawkins has a great idea for preventing suicide attacks. We simply launch a massive propaganda campaign to convince suicide bombers that we will cryogenically preserve and restore their brains…thus depriving them of an afterlife in Paradise!
However, the link posted is broken. Can anyone find a good link? I’ve worked with google extensively but can’t seem to find it, just a Dawkins article decrying that religious brainwashing causes suicide bombers.
Somehow, without any authority or site, I think the suicide bombers do not base making it into paradise on their brains remaining untampered, but on their soul or spirit, or whatever one wants to call that intangible thing.
As the propagator of Insane Idea #32, I naturally love this idea.
[aside]
There seem to be two schools of thought emerging on these boards.
The first school seems to think that these acts were spawned in a pool of hopeless ignorance, and understanding, education, and time are the only ways to combat that ignorance.
The second school also seems to think that these acts were spawned in a pool of hopeless ignorance, but we want to use that ignorance as a weapon to stop this insanity right now. (Yes, the italics do indicate which side I’m on.)
There is no reason why the two schools of thought cannot be reconciled with one another, so long as each side makes some concessions. Those who would attack Islamic fundamentalist terrorists by using their own ignorance against them must concede that while revenge is sweet, it will not solve the problem in and of itself. Those who encourage a more humanistic approach must admit that what happened on September 11 was criminal, even evil, and extremely dangerous–a threat which must be attacked and disabled as soon as possible.
This sort of ignorance can and has been used in the past to great effect. An enormous revolt occured in India over a rumor which stated that the bullets used by Indian troops were coated in grease made from cows. Why can’t we do something similar against Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, who are guided by what many of us would term uninformed superstition?
The Enemy, whoever they are, has succeeded by attacking America’s weaknesses. But the attackers have a great, glaring weakness themselves: ignorance. We are fighters of ignorance, and this board is an excellent venue for exploring that weakness and exploiting it, the better to bring these killers to enlightenment.
The important point regarding this particular revolution- the Sepoy Mutiny of the late 1850’s- was that the Indians already had grievances against the British by that point. The British were seen as uncaring towards Hindi and Muslim faiths, and uninterested in treating the locals as anything other than savages. The rumor that the cartridges the British provided were covered in cow grease (to the Hindi) and pig grease (to the Muslims) was not the absolute cause of the revolt, but merely the final straw in what seemed a campaign of indifference and injustice.
Playing upon Islamic fundamentalist superstition could work, but must be part of a larger campaign of disinformation and putting a schism between the leaders and their troops. And given how close the leaders are to the troops, that seems hard to accomplish.
From everything I’ve read, the Islamic world thrives on far-fetched conspiracy theories. The more outlandish they are, the more the average Arab believes it. The CIA killed Princess Diana because she was going to marry Dodi, an Arab. Jews have religious permission to lie and cheat non-Jews. Saddam Hussein was actually a CIA agent and we ordered him to attack Kuwait so we would have an excuse to send troops to the Middle East.
Starting conspiracy theories of our own seems like an interesting weapon. Of course, the big problem with starting such things is that they mutate and take on a life of their own. Rumors once attached to the Russians, say, could mutate to be attached to the US.
Most people on these boards are from the US, and I’m guessing that includes you, Lemurr866. You live in the country that gave the world the Illuminatus! trilogy. You have more and more dangerous conspiracy-theory-believing crackpots per square yard than most countries have ants. You are a kettle, and I am sure I have no need to tell you what it is you are accusing the pot of being.