How do they meet the beyond reasonable doubt criteria?

For that criteria to be met, you have to be able to show, in the absence of any statement of theirs

1) That these men were very religious
2) That their reason for joining was religious and not because of anything related to feeling part of a group

There is no proof of either 1 or 2, so how on earth can you claim that it is beyond reasonable doubt that these men were not of the type that were filled with anger and wanted to kill as many people and then kill themselves instead of spend the resy of their life in a small cell?

I don’t think beliefs are binary, and I’m perfectly aware that not all suicide bombers think they’re destined for an afterlife. I deliberately call these men “martyrdom” bombers. I concede I don’t know for sure what was in their minds. I cannot know, and nor can anyone else for sure. I do think that these particular men meet the “beyond reasonable doubt” criteria.

I stand by my contention that those that are prepared to be martyrdom bombers do have a belief in Paradise.

That isn’t what you said. You said the following:

Because of the brainwashing of fundamentalist Islam, they were surely convinced that their heinous actions would take them to Paradise and their victims to hell.

Beliefs are not binary, you do not have to just believe in something or not believe in something. You can “probably” believe in something. You can “Er, yeah, I think so” believe in something. You can “possibly” believe in something.

We know suicide attackers do not have to believe in an afterlife to commit suicide. The Kamikaze didn’t believe in an afterlife. Neither did the secular Palestinian bombers. I doubt many of the mass shooters who then kill themselves believe in an afterlife.

From the article, most of these terrorists are not “religous” – they don’t talk about theology.

Therefore, it is very possible that some of them didn’t certainly believe in an afterlife, that their reasons for joining were a feeling of belonging, that they found they had a purpose, and they killed themselves because of the purpose, just like mass shooters and Kamikaze did, and not because they believed they were going to paradise. They didn’t want to spend the rest of their life in a prison cell.

Therefore, there is no evidence for your statement that they certainly believed they were going to paradise. There simply isn’t any proof, and the most amazing thing is, you made that statement before we even knew anything about them.

New Atheists are supposed to be rational, the only rational conclusion we can come to is that we can only find out whether they believed they were going into paradise by blowing themselves up once we are able to study them more. To suggest we can be absolutely certain what they were thinking without any evidence whatsoever is irrational.

Yeah, I think for some it would be some other gang. They’re looking for somewhere to belong, and DAESH offers them that. They’re all individuals, and all will have their own reasons. I stand by my contention that those that are prepared to be martyrdom bombers do have a belief in Paradise.

As I’m sure you know better than me given that you’re a lot closer to the action, when there was a political settlement in Northern Ireland, many members of the IRA continued living the life of gangsters. For those who did that, the cause was an excuse. I think people like that are more likely to survive, and to leave the organisation too. They’re in it for themselves.

The religious dimension offers them a framework of personal re-structuration: the truth, the good, a clear set of norms, brothers in arms, a clear objective, and salvation, although the latter is not necessarily understood in terms of the paradise as described in the Koran. In fact few of them speak explicitly about paradise.
The nihilist dimension (revenge, suicide) seems to supersede the utopian one (to build a new and just society).

This would be consistent with the theory that a lot of these guys are not really thinking they will go to paradise if they die because they don’t have a very strong faith, and that it is more about finding a cause that gives meaning to their life – in these cases it was radical Islam, if they hadn’t found radical Islam it would probably have been some other gang.

What you see are common human failings that apply to both sides of the debate. Everyone has beliefs that they think the facts support, but which they hopefully learn don’t, where that turns out to be the case. We all like to hope we’re able to imply logic flawlessly, but it just isn’t true. Yes, some have more difficulties than others. Certainly Heather has shown she can change her mind based on new information.

I’m unaware of NA the movement as different from NA per se, but whatever. I consider myself a NA and I have challenged Sam Harris and others directly as I’ve described elsewhere. I don’t intend to rehash the last debate again here.

There are legitimate concerns, I agree, and we should acknowledge those. It has to be a multi-pronged approach and people on all sides have to be prepared to make an effort. Education is a key ingredient. Tolerance and acceptance of difference too.

I think perhaps we shouldn’t call a commitment to freedom of speech a Western value. It originally was of course, but I wonder if calling it that now just gets people’s backs up. Besides, there are now plenty in the West who have an attitude that freedom of speech is OK for them, but anyone who doesn’t agree with them has to shut up. They’re less likely to get violent about it, but that seems to me more about access to an effective form of justice. If you look at who’s currently rioting in the US, for example, it’s those who feel unable to rely on the police or politicians. I know that’s a bit simplistic, but I’m sort of groping in the dark trying to think of things that might help in the future.

Anti-racism is a fairly recent thing in the West, but Islam has always been pretty good at that (as long as people were fellow Muslims}. You can’t say the same about Christians. Many still look down on Christians in Africa, for example. That’s also a major generalization, but knowing that might help with acceptance too.

Immigrants, wherever they come from, in whatever era, have tended to be marginalized, and therefore often have genuine grievances. That’s definitely the case in France, though that’s no excuse for murder of course. They always become a target in tough economic times, and we’re still emerging from the GFC. The problem is fundamentalist imams and political leaders taking advantage of that. We have to work at making sure everyone gets a fair shake, so there’s no grievance to be taken advantage of.

As atheists we’re always going to have a problem with any fundamentalist religion. However, this is one area where we might be able to look to the US as a positive example. They have millions of fundamentalist Christians who say a lot of things any humanist, religious or not, finds offensive. Because of the way society is structured, they otherwise manage to rub along. Although there’s a new generation who seems to be struggling with the idea a bit (such as in Jerry’s post on Amherst this morning), the First Amendment to their constitution is sacrosanct to just about everybody.

It isn’t anything but naive – the only fact we have at the moment is that we know very very little about who planned it and the background of the people who committed the atrocities. We can’t even be sure it was ISIS – we know that many terrorist groups like to claim responsibility for things they didn’t even do because they want to appear strong.

This is why I say New Atheism is anti-intellectualism – because any intelligent person would say “until I have detailed information about the attackers and their background, I cannot form a reasonable conclusion about what they might or might not have been thinking”. Maybe the Syrian guy had his family blown to bits by an American jet and so he decided to join ISIS and wanted revenge – after all, one of the attackers shouted this is for Syria. Maybe he doesn’t really believe in religion, and all he cared about was revenge. This is a plausible theory, however, New Atheists have been brainwashed to such a degree that religion must be blamed on everything, that it impairs their rationality and causes them to act irrational and decree statements without even knowing the facts.

As you know I am normally happy to admit it when I’ve gone wrong, or made an unwarranted assumption. In this case, I consider it naïve to say these terrorists had anything but the strongest belief in Paradise as taught by fundamentalist Islam.

DAESH has taken responsibility for this attack, and cited Syria as the reason for their actions. There are many groups opposed to what’s happening in Syria – I am strongly opposed to al-Assad myself. Some of those groups are secular, some are religious. Not all the religious groups are Muslim, and not all the Muslim groups are extremist. DAESH is Islamist extremist. I accept that not all members are extremist – some didn’t have a choice but to join that particular group for location and family reasons, but those members are extremely unlikely to be trusted with such an important mission as this.

The people who carried this attack out were extremely well trained and dedicated. It is unlikely in the extreme that those chosen for “martyr
missions” in such circumstances didn’t have a strong belief in Paradise.