Religion and Bernie Madoff

Two points about the biggest scam of all history.

1.I like how CNN and FOX both reported “Jewish Investor Steals Billions”. The fact that this guy is Jewish has nothing to do w/ his crime, other than that his religious/ethnic affiliation granted him access to a lot of rich, Jewish people. BTW, I am ¼ Jewish, although raised very Lutheran. This gives me enough pull to make jokes about their holidays and eating habits, but not the Holocaust.

2.And this is the bigger point. Faith is not a virtue. Specifically, blind faith is not something that you should be proud of. I have faith in a lot of things.

I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. I have faith that I can use chopsticks to guide an ahi roll into my mouth. But this is clearly based on past performance. Getting close to debating Scottish genius David Hume and his criticism of induction, I will deflect. These assumptions are rooted in empiric evidence no matter how you spin it.

In a Darwinian sense, I feel that religion could not survive w/o the concept of faith. Religions that don't demand faith allow their disciples to logically demonstrate them to be untrue. Those religions tended to die out. Religions that demanded faith didn't leave any way for their followers to use logic against them, b/c they denied that logic worked against them. Those religions survived, and so most religions we have now are of that type.

The type that says: unmerited belief is not only specially regarded and rewarded by god, but doubting is specially loathed if not punished by him. Here’s the real Ponzi scheme…

Unmerited belief is presented as courageous risk-taking that will be recompensed in greater degree, whereas belief based on verifiable proof involves no risk and thus has no special merit.

So you believe me based on dubious proof and I will reward you for this leap of faith. This is how you get 19 lonely Muslims to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center.

The kicker is that God supposedly endowed us all w/ a small fraction of his intelligence. You know, “made in his image”? So he gave me reason and a limited ability to think about shit… I should use my brain to weed out false prophets and straw men and not buy that stupid Snuggie. But it’s somehow an insult to him if I use this intellect to try to figure out the biggest questions of our time?

It’s like The Wizard of Oz, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain”! If the SEC, FDIC or any reasonable govt official would’ve taken a peek under Bernie Madoff’s curtains, they would’ve uncovered this scam. I engage any ardent theist to do the same.

Not all Muslims are Terrorists

But it sure does seem like a lot of terrorists are connected with extremist, Muslim fundamentalists who buy into the concept of Jihad. And that really sucks. I know that people say, “Well, look at Timothy McVeigh. He was about as white-bread American as they come. Or those pricks over in Ireland who were car bombing people every week”? Truth be told, McVeigh slipped through the cracks. I don’t subscribe to any form of organized religion, so please don’t think I’m being apologetic toward Christians out of personal bias. But one thing that the Western world does a lot better than most places is keep track of the crazy bastards.

Everyone saw what happened in Waco, TX in 1993. Most of the terrorist stories in the US have headlines that include words like, “planned”, “plotted”, “thwarted” and “suspected”. The main reason is that the US is hypervigilant about these SOBs. Personally I think this is a good approach. Knock on wood, nothing major has happened since 9/11. But you can be sure that plenty of people have been investigated or arrested.

As a quick tangent, I am not going to entertain the delusion that Bush/Cheney or the US in general, be considered a terrorist organization. If you really believe that than you have big issues. Freedom is certainly not free and many people have already sacrificed so you have the right to even consider such a thought.

Here is a list of groups recognized as terrorists by the US Dept of State:
1. Abu Nidal Organization (ANO)
2. Abu Sayyaf Group
3. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade
4. Ansar al-Islam
5. Armed Islamic Group (GIA)
6. Asbat al-Ansar
7. Aum Shinrikyo
8. Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA)
9. Communist Party of the Philippines/New People's Army (CPP/NPA)
10. Continuity Irish Republican Army
11. Gama’a al-Islamiyya (Islamic Group)
12. HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement)
13. Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM)
14. Hizballah (Party of God)
15. Islamic Jihad Group
16. Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)
17. Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) (Army of Mohammed)
18. Jemaah Islamiya organization (JI)
19. al-Jihad (Egyptian Islamic Jihad)
20. Kahane Chai (Kach)
21. Kongra-Gel (KGK, formerly Kurdistan Workers' Party, PKK, KADEK)
22. Lashkar-e Tayyiba (LT) (Army of the Righteous)
23. Lashkar i Jhangvi
24. Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)
25. Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG)
26. Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM)
27. Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK)
28. National Liberation Army (ELN)
29. Palestine Liberation Front (PLF)
30. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)
31. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLF)
32. PFLP-General Command (PFLP-GC)
33. Tanzim Qa'idat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (QJBR) (al-Qaida in Iraq) (formerly Jama'at al-Tawhid wa'al-Jihad, JTJ, al-Zarqawi Network)
34. al-Qa’ida
35. al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (formerly GSPC)
36. Real IRA
37. Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
38. Revolutionary Nuclei (formerly ELA)
39. Revolutionary Organization 17 November
40. Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C)
41. Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso, SL)
42. United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)

Now if you discount the Islamic radicals, socialists and Marxists, all you’re really left with is a bunch of pissed off Irishmen who haven’t really been active in over 10 yrs. We’re all intelligent people (you found this blog, didn’t you?) and can imagine what this Venn diagram will look like. Sure there are over 1 billion Muslims in the world and most all of them will be as normal as it gets. But if you look at the circle that includes dangerous terrorists… Islam has won that Monopoly game and put hotels on every fricking property.

I don’t have a solution. But some of the responsibility has to be on the countries where these individuals are born and raised. Problem is that these countries in South America and the Middle East don’t place the same importance on counter-terrorism as the US. This will need to change. Because if the US ever retaliates, there won’t be any country for them to fix after the fact.

For all the bad things that the current administration has endured and partially caused for the past 8 yrs, your personal safety has really taken priority. People take that kind of thing for granted until it’s challenged. It’s only a matter of time before another one of these guys slips through the cracks. You can hope and pray to Jehovah, Jesus or Mohammed that it doesn’t happen, but reason dictates that it will. And remember that as much as you pray to your God that nothing terrible happens, they are praying to Allah (or their fucked up distortion of Allah) just as much that something does.