What is incorrect with those people who drink alcohol?

[lewisnotmiller]

I survived too! But that doesn't mean I'd ever do it to my own kids.

*shrugs*
There are plenty of worse things you can do to your kids than responsibly drink alchohol around them.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Bands of drunken Japanese soldiers roamed the city, murdering, raping, looting, and burning at whim. Chinese civilians who were stopped on the street, and found to possess nothing of value, were immediately killed. At least twenty thousand Chinese women were raped in Nanking during the first four weeks of the Japanese occupation, and many were mutilated and killed when the Japanese troops were finished with them.

THE RAPE OF NANKING (1937) OR NANJING MASSACRE

Some guy at the gym tolled me that drunk Japanese soldiers were betting on who can kill more.

You don't think systematic dehumanization of the enemy had a wee little something to do with this? Honestly, this thread appears to take 1 and 1 and come up with the Theory of Relativity.

 

[Kirran]

*shrugs*
There are plenty of worse things you can do to your kids than responsibly drink alchohol around them.

No arguments there.

But on the responsible note, it can sneak up on you. My mother never decided to have a bad relationship with alcohol.

By now nobody in my immediate family drinks.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

The obvious inaccuracy of these numbers you've conjured up aside, not a single human being has ever been killed "by religion".

Really, so no church has ever killed anyone for no other reason than that they did not believe correctly (i.e. heresy)? Are you quite sure? Think Giordano Bruno, just for example, and go from there.

Bruno was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorist, who conceptually extended the then-novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were just distant suns surrounded by their own exoplanets and raised the possibility that these planets could even foster life of their own (a philosophical position known as cosmic pluralism). He also insisted that the universe is in fact infinite and could have no celestial body at its "center". Not only that, but he was correct.

Beginning in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges including denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno's pantheism was also a matter of grave concern. The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned at the stake in Rome's Campo de' Fiori in 1600. In other words, Bruno was killed over religious beliefs.

We humans have a strong tendency to act on our beliefs. Not all beliefs are religious, but neither are all beliefs necessarily justifiable or true and yet they still inform our actions.

It has always been my view (and not everybody agrees, of course) that when we justify killing in the name of one belief or another (Christianity, Communism, Nazism, Fascism, Islam, race, etc.) then those killings deserve to recognized as having been caused by those beliefs – beliefs which informed the actions of those who took them.

 

[IndigoStorm]

Nations who allow alcohol are breading murderers 3 times faster then nations who bread terrorists.

The chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are about 1 in 20 million. A person is as likely to be killed by his or her own furniture, and more likely to die in a car accident, drown in a bathtub, or in a building fire than from a terrorist attack.

(edit:In USA)
• One person is killed every half-hour due to drunk driving
• Each year approximately 16,000 are killed in alcohol related crashes
• Alcohol is a factor in almost half of all traffic fatalities
• Every other minute a person is seriously injured in an alcohol related crash

Drunk Driving Facts - Drunk Driving Statistics

 

[IndigoStorm]

Automobiles, guns, knives, sticks, clubs, rocks, poisons and alcohol do NOT kill people. People kill people.

 

[sovietchild]

Automobiles, guns, knives, sticks, clubs, rocks, poisons and alcohol do NOT kill people. People kill people.

I like your forum picture.

 

[IndigoStorm]

I like your forum picture.

 

[IndigoStorm]

I like your forum picture.

Why, thanx so much!

 

[sovietchild]

Really, so no church has ever killed anyone for no other reason than that they did not believe correctly (i.e. heresy)? Are you quite sure? Think Giordano Bruno, just for example, and go from there.

Bruno was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorist, who conceptually extended the then-novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were just distant suns surrounded by their own exoplanets and raised the possibility that these planets could even foster life of their own (a philosophical position known as cosmic pluralism). He also insisted that the universe is in fact infinite and could have no celestial body at its "center". Not only that, but he was correct.

Beginning in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges including denial of several core Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno's pantheism was also a matter of grave concern. The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned at the stake in Rome's Campo de' Fiori in 1600. In other words, Bruno was killed over religious beliefs.

We humans have a strong tendency to act on our beliefs. Not all beliefs are religious, but neither are all beliefs necessarily justifiable or true and yet they still inform our actions.

It has always been my view (and not everybody agrees, of course) that when we justify killing in the name of one belief or another (Christianity, Communism, Nazism, Fascism, Islam, race, etc.) then those killings deserve to recognized as having been caused by those beliefs – beliefs which informed the actions of those who took them.

Can we chat about that 500,000 death in Iraq war you posted few pages down? How is that a religious war?

 

[The Emperor of Mankind]

Can we chat about that 500,000 death in Iraq war? How is that a religious war?

It was a sectarian war between Sunni & Shia Muslims that raged for years - where were you when this was going on? The conflict also targeted Iraq's Christian population to an extent they're pretty much all gone now - dead or fled the country.

 

[sovietchild]

It was a sectarian war between Sunni & Shia Muslims that raged for years - where were you when this was going on? The conflict also targeted Iraq's Christian population to an extent they're pretty much all gone now - dead or fled the country.

Oh, I thought he was chatting about this New Study Estimates Nearly 500,000 Died in Iraq War | TIME.com

 

[Aštra’el]

Really, so no church has ever killed anyone for no other reason than that they did not believe correctly (i.e. heresy)?

Religion does not kill people. People kill people. A religion is a belief system, not some entity capable of killing. Humans who kill choose to kill, or instinctively kill, or accidentally kill, but however influenced or compelled by religion they may be, it is the human(s) who kill(s), not the religion.

People are individually and collectively responsible for their own choices and actions no matter what their religious beliefs are.

 

[The Emperor of Mankind]

Oh, I thought he was chatting about this New Study Estimates Nearly 500,000 Died in Iraq War | TIME.com

Yeah, and a great deal of that (I think at least half?) of those 500,000 fatalities were caused by Sunni-Shia sectarian bloodshed.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Religion does not kill people. People kill people. A religion is a belief system, not some entity capable of killing. Humans who kill choose to kill, or instinctively kill, or accidentally kill, but however influenced or compelled by religion they may be, it is the human(s) who kill(s), not the religion.

People are individually and collectively responsible for their own choices and actions no matter what their religious beliefs are.

Then you do not believe that medicine cures people, either. They take their medicine because the believe it will help them, but you are saying that they cure themselves. Or people cure themselves by engaging a surgeon, who one must presume is a mere tool in their self-help project.

This is purest sophistry.

I maintain again that as our beliefs inform our actions, we are right to suppose that those beliefs, left unexamined, are themselves playing a part. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

[Aštra’el]

Religion does not kill people. People kill people. A religion is a belief system, not some entity capable of killing. Humans who kill choose to kill, or instinctively kill, or accidentally kill, but however influenced or compelled by religion they may be, it is the human(s) who kill(s), not the religion.

People are individually and collectively responsible for their own choices and actions no matter what their religious beliefs are.

Then you do not believe that medicine cures people, either. They take their medicine because the believe it will help them, but you are saying that they cure themselves. Or people cure themselves by engaging a surgeon, who one must presume is a mere tool in their self-help project.

What a ridiculous comparison. Your allegations that I have said things I never said and believe things that I do not believe are equally ridiculous.

The sun can kill you. A viper can kill you. A volcanic eruption can kill you.

A religion is not going to kill you. Another person might kill you, or a group of people might kill you. You might kill yourself. In the end, you are all responsible for your own choices and actions, no matter what your religious beliefs are.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

No arguments there.

But on the responsible note, it can sneak up on you. My mother never decided to have a bad relationship with alcohol.

By now nobody in my immediate family drinks.

It can. But having daughters, I spend a lot more time focusing on things like body image and self esteem, which don't tend to come naturally for me.
In terms of alchohol, my personal position has always been that you choose to drink, you choose to accept the consequences and responsibility for whatever happens after that point. I find the notion of 'impaired responsiblity' completely counter-productive.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

Religion does not kill people. People kill people. A religion is a belief system, not some entity capable of killing. Humans who kill choose to kill, or instinctively kill, or accidentally kill, but however influenced or compelled by religion they may be, it is the human(s) who kill(s), not the religion.

People are individually and collectively responsible for their own choices and actions no matter what their religious beliefs are.

Whilst I completely agree with your last sentence, are you really suggesting that religion has absolutely no impact on how people think or act?

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

What a ridiculous comparison. Your allegations that I have said things I never said and believe things that I do not believe are equally ridiculous.

The sun can kill you. A viper can kill you. A volcanic eruption can kill you.

A religion is not going to kill you. Another person might kill you, or a group of people might kill you. You might kill yourself. In the end, you are all responsible for your own choices and actions, no matter what your religious beliefs are.

This is extremely difficult, but you have just described a number of "natural things" or "natural events" that can kill. They do so for no reason at all, other than that they follow the nature of whatever it is: sun, viper, earthquake, tsunami, etc..

But you dismiss the notion that the human is just another part of nature, driven by whatever natural forces are at play -- and that some of those natural forces include belief.

If you can't make that connection, you can't understand what I'm talking about. I can point you to philosophers who can help you understand (E.O Wilson, David Hume, Prof. Jacob Needleman, Dr. Robert Buckman -- the latter a friend of mine until his death just a few years ago). But until you can understand something about human nature, as those philosophers have made abundantly clear, you and I are not going to have much luck communicating.

 

[Kirran]

It can. But having daughters, I spend a lot more time focusing on things like body image and self esteem, which don't tend to come naturally for me.
In terms of alchohol, my personal position has always been that you choose to drink, you choose to accept the consequences and responsibility for whatever happens after that point. I find the notion of 'impaired responsiblity' completely counter-productive.

Yeah, I'm with you. If I ever have kids and am bad at parenting, I'll hand them over to you.