RE: Pope Opens Mouth; Inserts Foot
January 17, 2015 at 5:22 am
(This post was last modified: January 17, 2015 at 5:24 am by Thumpalumpacus.)
(January 17, 2015 at 1:28 am)fr0d0 Wrote: If you had someone in your face winding you up to the extreme , your natural inbuilt reaction would out as a physical action. That's a fact. A result of verbal provocation is a physical reaction.
Unlike the terrorists under discussion, my physical reaction to offense that severe would be removing myself form its sphere.
Did someone make them buy Charlie Hebdo? Did someone force their views in an unrelenting manner into their faces (your term, not mine) as a windup?
No.
Most of us understand that verbal provocations don't justify physical attacks. This is why when one is called names or when one's mother is insulted, a physical response is still prosecuted as a crime. This isn't morality we're talking about, this is the social contract.
It's laid plain by their actions that the Paris attackers did not accept the social contract on offer in France. That's fine. That's their right. That doesn't entitle them to attack -- by fist or by bullet -- the people who offend their sensibilities.
Appealing to an instinctive physical reply is in essence appealing to the lower qualities of humans. I've had people, namely drill instructors, insult my lineage, my mother, and myself, without batting my own eyelids -- because I am able to understand that a windup is a windup, words are words, and people are people.
As you've already indicated you've known, I'm no genius. If lil ole me can figure out that punches don't avenge one's offended mother, surely an enlightened pope should be able to see the same.
And if lil ole me can see that gunplay is not an effective answer to ideals, why cannot terrorists see the same?
It seems to me that they use religion as an excuse to let loose their own demons, you'd ought to abjure them, not defend them. That is the problem most folks here will have with Pope Frank's mutterings.
