Idea (with flakes): Behaviour of religious adherents as a function of a religion's age?

[nova_one]

Comments

[simulated_knave]

1) The simplest way to quantify religious violence is probably to look at wars and look at how often the governments or sides involved invoked God, and if they invoked God as a motivation for the war in question

[nova_one]

I thought for a moment whether I should use that word. And it's not like I look at Rick Perry and see Charles Manson. Actually, Charles Manson might have more fans than Rick Perry. Anyway, my use of the word is rhetoric-y. "Killer-in-error" might be less emotionally loaded, but it irks me that there's killing at all. I'd still be against the death penalty even if they did only use it to kill the people who really committed the transgressions which the state deems capital. Look at Japan for evidence that the death penalty even acts as a perverse incentive.

I wondered about those crescents, too. Maybe they're supposed to be where the "Istanbul Period" line ends, representing (NATO ally) Turkey. It could be that this was originally a quasi-legitimate measure of something like campaigns by conquerors and was subsequently altered for this purpose.

The Ottomans weren't Muslim at any point by any chance, right? ;-p

[simulated_knave]

Rick Perry deserves plenty of shame for being a terrible arbiter of justice. But that's a very different crime from murder (though I would be open to arguments that it's actually a worse one

[nova_one]

Well, maybe one can generalize about groups and their behaviour, but one's ability to make predictions about any individuals is suspect. Maybe it's like the weather forecast in that we sometimes have general ideas of what's going to happen, but we might not know if it will rain or snow on your particular driveway.

I could live with an exile system in place of the death penalty, but requiring similar standards to the ones you posit. I am firmly against the death penalty not only because it can't be corrected if it turns out the judgement was in error, but because two wrongs don't make a right. It's hard to resort to such a hackneyed phrase, but what I mean is that killing the (alleged) murderer won't bring back the victim(s). It's only necessary that he not be able to or be inclined to kill again, and that there is some sort of deterrent to killing in the first place.

[psion_dynamo]

"God, I love the media sometimes. Would we have anything even resembling democracy without them? Here's a new article including some details of the FBI's about-face."

So true. Which is why all the WikiLeaks stuff is so frustrating. It's just killing the messenger/whistle-blower. But don't get me started.