Rishon Rishon

I think that one of the fundamental challenges we face right now is an unwillingness and or inability by some people to recognize the danger that Islamists pose.

In part I think that there is a fear of being called a racist or bigot, or some epithet along these lines.

What we really find is that there are many shades of grey and that not all Muslims fit the Islamist mold.

But those that do are problematic. If you believe that you are superior and that you have "smicha" to murder people who disagree then there is an immediate need to confront the problem and take steps to eliminate it.

Those steps do not have to involve death, but it could be required.

The big question to me is how to bring out the moderate Muslims and make them force the radicals into the corners. Without their assistance we are in big trouble and heading for catastrophe.

Nice words, David.

Although Den Beste's three way struggle has some validity, your proposal sounds a little better to me. I believe all humans need to have at least some kind of ideal (that is, a reason for being, a desired state to drive us forward) or else life would have no meaning whatsoever. I know that it is useless to reconcile "what is" to "what should be", but there are some things rugged empiricism cannot explain--like, why a rainbow is beautiful, or why we even exist in the first place.

I do sometimes imagine socialist idealism blending with realism in such a way that there would be no longer any meaning to life at all. If we come to the point where we understand everything there is to know about man--what makes him tick, and ways we can manipulate it--there runs the risk of turning mankind into a perfectly ordered utopia. "Perfectly ordered utopia? How is that bad?" It is bad in the sense that we achieve order by sacrificing free will and becoming automatons, living for the sake of living. If there is no reason for living except for it's own sake, what's the use? I've struggled with that question before, and have concluded that mere rationalism cannot be the machine that drives everything, for I am convinced that there is no rational basis for living, that is, if the premise is that everything that is simply is, and that nothing has significance.

You said before that one proposal for the meaning of life is God (well, I think you did). Although I am of a different religion (Christianity), I cannot agree more. Part of what drives me everyday, what keeps me alive is to know if God is. If God is, then that would answer every single question in my entire life. If God isn't, well, then who cares? Certainly not Mr. Den Beste.

If man is a machine, then "meaning" is nonsensical. No reasonable being would argue that there is "meaning" to the laws of thermodynamics, or the laws of logic, and these are the same sorts of rules which would goven the entirity of humanity if man is nothing but a machine. Besides, any "meaning" we "found" would actually just be some output by the machine; contradictory "meaning" could just as easily be "found" given different input, and neither would have any claim at being more "true" since both are simply outputs of the same machine.

Empiricism can address practically nothing; David Hume has not become less right about what he said as time has gone on. We have no way to derive necessary notions (such as "causality" or "substance") from perception, since all that is given to perception is contingent and accidental.

Idealism and socialism are not the same thing at all. "How Things Should Be" can apply to the ideals of a Free-Market Capitalist as well as to a Stalinist; they both are picturing some end towards which society should work (at least, "should" according to their judgement). Materialism can be paired with socialism as well as capitalism (dialectic *materialism* anyone?).

Looking at Den Beste's article, the comment he links to at the end re: what he says of Kant ("outraged shrieks" he says) is worth noting. No sense dragging the good name of Idealism in the mud when Socialism is the beast that you mean to speak ill of (and that rightly so).

So, yeah, I think your threesome is a more accurate way to describe what's going on, though I think you're needlessly adding the third member: I think that the Islamists are Nihilists ("anti-life" as Amritas called them), but they have decided that not even earthly pleasure is worth chasing after; they are so convinced of an unearthly pleasure that they will sacrifice their life for it. I suppose this could be thought of as a sort of "meaning" but I can not see it as a "meaning to life"; it is fundamentally opposed to life, unless it be life that is radically different from the life that is given to us in modern civilization. It seems a sort of meaning to opposing life, a denial of meaning to life that goes so far as to reject any end in life as being unsuitable, except for the end of denying those ends.

Thanks, all. I am very impressed with the quality of the responses - and proud!

Jack: I have no problem with declaring war on terrorists and their enablers. Declaring war on Islamists could well be counterproductive, inhibiting the movement you want to see.

Ingemar: Small correction: I said that if you believe that existence has meaning, then we can call the unknown source of that meaning God.

Daniel: I think you answered your own question as to why I propose a three-way struggle. I think that living for the afterlife does give meaning to life. In fact, anything that gives meaning to life will under some circumstances be opposed to it.

David,

When we use the term "war" I think that the question is what kind of war are we discssing. It can be a traditional war in which violence is used to achieve the desired end result.

Or it can be the kind of war in which knowledge is applied to achieve change.

And as twisted as it seems, sometimes forces does affect the kind of change you want. I would argue that it was force that pushed Jordan and Egypt into making peace with Israel.

King Hussein and Anwar Sadat realized that war was never going to bring what they wanted and that peace was the better answer. Even a cold peace is better than hostilities.

I suspect that the fight against Radical Islam will be a combination of the two. Force will be required to establish a balance in which negotiations can be held.

Ultimately I still maintain that the goal is to provide a situation in which the moderate Muslims can move forward and stop the co-opting of the religion. Without their assistance in effecting internal change bad things will happen.

If man is a machine, then "meaning" is nonsensical.

I take it you are using the fluffy, ill-defined, and in essence meaningless form of meaning here. Hence the scare quotes.

No reasonable being would argue that there is "meaning" to the laws of thermodynamics, or the laws of logic, and these are the same sorts of rules which would goven the entirity of humanity if man is nothing but a machine.

There is no "meaning" (as you would have it) to the laws of physics, but they are no less meaningful for that. It is "meaning" that lacks meaning.

Besides, any "meaning" we "found" would actually just be some output by the machine; contradictory "meaning" could just as easily be "found" given different input, and neither would have any claim at being more "true" since both are simply outputs of the same machine.

Complete and utter baloney.

One set of input would correspond to the actual Universe, and the output would be true; the other set would not correspond to the Universe, and would be false.

It matters not at all what you wish to be; everything must be tested against what is.

David - have to dash, but as I've mentioned before, I believe that the only meaning there is to existence is that which we create ourselves.

Where do I fit in? I'm no Islamist, nor a nihilist, but I'm not sure I'm a logoist either.

David, I'm with Pixy Misa-- if I believe what Francis Crick believes-- "The Astonishing Hypothesis, is that 'You,' your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased it: 'You're nothing but a pack of neurons.'"
(via Belmont Club) I guess I do belive in the-god-in-the-genes. Does that qualify me to be logoist?

I've been thinking up an imaginary villain for a little while now. His goal is to destroy everything that lives--himself included--because 1). he sees no significance, "meaning," if you will to continued existence, since we are all just particles anyway and 2). he believes continued existence is suffering, and 3). he believes all beings wish to return to nothingness. Think about it--before we were conceived, we were haploid sperm and egg cells which in turn were synthesized from various molecules gathered from food, protein synthesis, etc. etc. and all of this evolved from slime. We are, in fact, nothing--and this villain believes that the cause of all our suffering stems from the belief that we are something, and the realization that all our efforts will blow away in the dust like the ruins of civilization. So his proposal is instead of fooling ourselves by saying life has meaning when we are significant, we should embrace our inherent nothingness and return to it, so that we may no longer feel pleasure or suffering.

How's that? Is there any other villain like that (please tell me, because I'd like to know). Does this echo of neo-Buddhist overtones, like breaking the cycle of Samsara? Is this villain I hypothesized a logoist or nihilist?

Ingemar: What you describe is the tendency of all nihilists, because what really gives life meaning (to all of us) is confirmation of our worldview. This is the psychological basis of self-fulfilling hypotheses.