Bill Maher on the Terry Jones Koran-Burning Incident

Yep. Yep. My point exactly. I’m glad I’m not alone on this! 🙂

But aren’t you doing the same blame transfer: “instead, the blame rests on three mullahs and President Hamid Karzai”?

Surely the blame really rests on those committing the acts of violence? How are the incitations of these four people any worse than the incitation by Jones?

Also, while I don’t think it really applies in this case, a detailed analysis of this issue should nonetheless include some mention of the concepts of “fighting words.” There comes a point where egging someone on absolves them of at least some responsibility for slugging you. The key reason that that doesn’t apply here is that third parties were involved.

But instead of the drunken father beating up his son, he beats up his son’s friend. The violent reactions from the Quran burning aren’t even targeted anywhere near Terry Jones; those getting killed have nothing to do with him.

I am with Lobar regarding the analogy, the “abused kid” in this case are the 10 UN workers not Terry Jones. Jones is the alcohol. And I agree it isn’t alcohol’s (Terry Jones)fault that the alcoholic (rioting muslims) attacked the child (UN workers), however since Jones is an actual person and he was merely promoting his delusional belief over another delusional belief in some kind of my god is better than your god pissing contest, then I hope he really fricking feels like a douche for what happened and that he carries that guilt with him.

To me, I think a better analogy is that Terry Jones poked a hornet’s nest… and other people were stung (or in this case, even worse, killed). But that being said, I am hesitant to place blame on Jones for the killings. At some point, people must be responsible for their own actions. To blame him, one would have to agree that the killers were defending their faith. That is a slippery slope, and one that would offer excuses to those who bomb abortion clinics, and all the other heinous things people do in the name of their god(s).

Terry Jones may not have directly fuelled the fire that killed so many people, but he sure as hell did start it. We all know the old saying, “don’t play with matches,” in this case Jones did; he played with the matches knowing full well what could, or would be most likely to happen. He should have known that others would throw accelerant on the fire after he started it, thus causing it to spread out of control.

What irks me in this debate over Jones’ actions is the fact that so many people have argued that Jones should not be punished for the killings that other people did on the grounds that he didn’t kill any of those people himself. But in the justice system it is perfectly legitimate to prosecute someone for being an accessory to a murder or any other crime, even if that person didn’t commit the crime themselves. It seems to me that for the sake of consistency you would have to either oppose prosecuting anyone for a crime in which they were an accessory, or abetted, or were simply only indirectly involved, or you would have to favour some sort of punishment for Jones, either through the justice system or otherwise.

I don’t think Jones should be punished under the law, since he didn’t actually break it, but he did commit a moral crime against his fellow man, and that surely deserves some form of punishment. I’m actually thinking that some atheists and secularists are condemning the notion of punishing Jones for his book burning because they actually agree with his anti-Muslim sentiment.

“I don’t think Jones should be punished under the law, since he didn’t actually break it, but he did commit a moral crime against his fellow man”

What “moral crime”?

Lighting your personal property on fire on your private property (or someone’s property from whom you have permission) in an expression of your personal beliefs should remain legal and morality simply does not come into play.

Hearing about said expression and then initiating violence against completely innocent third parties is ludicrous, immoral and (should be) illegal everywhere.

Gibbon wrote:

We all know the old saying, “don’t play with matches,” in this case Jones did; he played with the matches knowing full well what could, or would be most likely to happen.

Except that fire is a mindless physical phenomenon ~ the concepts of accountability and/or responsibility cannot be applied to it.

whereas, the human beings who decided to kill are responsible for their actions and should be held accountable for them.

I understand why you’d want to use that analogy, but as you can see, it’s not the greatest.

It sounds like people are wanting to place blame on the man for the action of the others or absolve him of blame and it ends there –
It seems to me they are accountable for their actions and he can still be accountable for his.
Freedom of speech does not extent to inciting riot – intention is relevant. He was not doing a private personal act of speech. He was intentionally aggravating and inciting in a public manner – thus the consequences of the ‘inciting’ are related to his choices of expression, intention and knowledge of effect.

I’m having a hard time with this one on moral terms. Legally there is no question in my mind that he has no responsibility because I very strongly support free expression. I want to say the same thing morally, but then at the same time I feel that the pope has some moral responsibility for the spread of Aids in Africa due to his position on condom use and I hold people like Jenny McCarthy partially morally responsible when babies get sick or die in a measles outbreak started by an unvaccinated kid, so I’m not sure how this is any different beyond the fact that I feel the western world is being held hostage by certain extremist Muslims through threats of violence so I support protests against that even if Terry Jones is a jackass. I guess basically then I am a hypocrite when it comes to assigning moral responsibility when free speech results in bad things.

Jones’s actions set off an entirely unsurprising and predictable (not justified, but predictable) chain of events that ended in the deaths of ten innocent men. They would still be alive had he not acted. I don’t know how it can be said morality doesn’t enter play at all here.

I also don’t see how it follows that any blame assigned to Jones for the consequences of his actions must be lifted from the shoulders of the killers of those men. When two men beat a third to death, we don’t find them each guilty of half a murder. Likewise, I see no reason why we cannot say the killers’ guilt is not mitigated by Jones’s actions, but Jones still bears responsibility as an instigator.

“Luckily, I can burn this book so that no one can ever read it.”

I never said his reasoning was rational, but neither was it necessarily malicious.

Without getting into this debate (hopefully), I hold Palin, Beck, Angle, et al to be morally responsible for Gabby Giffords’ shooting, for egging on people over whom they have influence. However, I don’t find them legally responsible. I don’t think they quite crossed over into that territory.

I do not hold Terry Jones to be even morally responsible for the U.N. murders. He’s a grandstanding douche who endangers people for profit and attention, but he holds no discernible influence over the murderers, and has promoted no violence. He’s helping radical religionists to expose themselves. It’s akin to asking a politician, in private, if he would consider taking a huge bribe from you, and secretly recording his response.

… and then the politician goes nuts and murder-suicides his family because his career is ruined. Doesn’t mean he should have been left alone.

Jynx

Lighting your personal property on fire on your private property (or someone’s property from whom you have permission) in an expression of your personal beliefs should remain legal and morality simply does not come into play.

But we’re dealing with more than just a person’s private property. We are dealing with a book that is of such high symbolic and cultural value to a particular population that it is sacred to them. The sacred changes the game entirely as it is what makes the difference between burning the Qur’an and burning The God Delusion for example. The fact that there is that sacred element to it is what makes desecration of that book of moral concern, because it establishes the book at the heart of a particular culture, and so any intentional damage to the book basically constitutes an attack on the culture and hence the people to whom that culture belongs, and that is regardless of whether the book is the legal property of the desecrator. This all revolves around what I would refer to as cultural ownership.

AxeGrrl

Except that fire is a mindless physical phenomenon ~ the concepts of accountability and/or responsibility cannot be applied to it.

whereas, the human beings who decided to kill are responsible for their actions and should be held accountable for them.

I understand why you’d want to use that analogy, but as you can see, it’s not the greatest.

Good god! Do you not understand what a metaphor is? Jones was the one that provided the ignition spark for the fire that was the Afghan mobs and UN killings. Granted it may have been other people who worsened the situation to that point by throwing accelerant on that fire, the fact still remains that Jones started it, and thus bears at least a small portion of responsibility for what happened. You simply cannot pretend that what that mob did to the UN workers occurred in isolation; what a person does is not solely the result of the individual themself, environmental factors, including other people also contribute to determining the choices and actions a person makes, to believe otherwise is a delusion.

I see a lot of ludicrous arguments on this list, so I’m not sure I even want to bother with this. BUT, Terry Jones can not be blamed for those deaths. In my opinion, we should burn a bible, a koran, and a torah every single day and broadcast it worldwide so that every crazy idiot out there will see it. Hopefully it will become so commonplace to them that they will only kill 1 person per burning.

Then the ‘morality’ of burning the book will be mostly negated.

I think it’s an arrogant dumbass thing to do for one reason only. That is that some other shmuck is covering Jones’ ass when he pisses some lunatic off. Burn a Koran… piss off a complete idiot, who then goes and blows somebody up. It’s great to talk in broad concepts of law, rights, and freedom of expression, and to offhandedly blame the muslims for the ensuing violence (it’s true, they are morons for reacting with violence, reacting at all really), but it’s also quite convenient to shoot off your mouth when you’ve got some poor enlisted bastard, who just wants to get through his tour, between you and the guy your taunting… unfortunately, it is perhaps some poor guy in the middle who will take a bullet for Terry Jones’ posturing. I just think it’s kind of chicken shit for Jones to burn a Koran from the safety provided by others. I think he should burn a Koran… but send the prick to Afghanistan and make him do it there… he might not be so cavalier if it was his own ass on the line.. he’s a cowardly opportunist media whore. Personally, I think he’d be better considering not his rights to burn a Koran, but rather how his actions may affect somebody else… this isn’t between Jones and Muslims…there are good folks stuck in the middle who shouldn’t have to pay the price for Jones.. it’s just stupid, stupid that his desire to push his point (right or wrong) out weighs his discretion at the possibility of how his egotistical games can hurt others… I think Jones is at fault here, he simply can’t blame those who retaliate and make it all ok…in the end he’s making his points at somebody elses expense. Not on.

From the article: “Jefferson would turn over in his slave.” A simple typo or a reference to Sally Hastings? o.O

Vanessa

Cultural ownership? That’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.

Of course it is one of the most ridiculous things you have ever heard, you’re a stereotypical atheist. You are wrapped up in this anti-religious mentality so much that you scorn and ridicule with an almost religious fervour anything that does not fit with your biases and preconceptions of religion. In other words, you’re unwilling to accept anything which may force you to reconsider your attitude towards religion, unless of course it comes from the physical sciences.

Regardless of your beliefs, the fact still remains that there is something which establishes with the people of any given culture a sense of possession towards any and all relics of that culture, even if material possession of the relic resides with a person who is not a member of that culture. There is that connection, or at the very least the belief that such a connection exists. How else do you explain any and all events which compare to the Muslim response to Terry Jones?

IT’S A BOOK.

The book is sacred, maybe not to you or I, but it is to the people of a specific culture. Do you not understand what the sacred is and what it means? Are you even capable of comprehending the sacred?

AxeGrrl

When a person decides to kill another person because they were ‘inspired’ by someone who destroyed a book, I most certainly do hold them and them alone responsible for that particular action.

Being ‘offended’ or ‘outraged’ are feelings ~ mature human beings always have a choice when it comes to how they’re going to react to such feelings…..

The murderers weren’t being ‘threatened’ (physically or otherwise), they weren’t defending themselves from harm…..they could have chosen a dozen different ways to react to their being ‘offended’ ~ and they chose murder.

No one else made that decision for them. Therefore, the responsiblity for that particular decision is theirs alone.

Yet the choices we make are limited to those which are available to us. I can’t make the decision to take the train rather than drive a car unless the train is available. I can only choose from the options that are open to me. What you don’t seem to realise is that not everyone has the same choices available. In the case of the UN murders we are dealing with the citizens of Afghanistan, a corrupt and poverty-stricken third-world nation; a citizenry which is not nearly as privileged as us inhabitants of developed first-world nations. They don‘t have available to them all the choices and options that you and I do.

The fact still remains that how a person responds is not determined solely by the individual themselves, but also how they are treated and more generally, their environment. How else do you explain the fact that how a child is raised plays a significant influence in determining their personality later in life? The possibility for influence stays open even after we reach maturity.

A person’s response is not solely the result of themselves; their beliefs/personality or whatever, do play an important role in shaping their response (keeping in mind of course that personality and what a person believes are also influenced by external factors), but the form and shape of environmental factors do contribute to the form and shape of the response. If I give a sweating athlete a drink of water that will affect what their response will be, just as kicking them instead would also influence how they would respond. Either of these actions increases the likelihood of a particular response being produced. Their response to me kicking them would be different to what they would do if I gave them the water.

@ Gibbon:

I don’t know if I understand “the sacred.” Does it mean something whose intentional destruction would motivate me to kill a random person of the same nationality? If so then no, I don’t understand “the sacred,” or at least I don’t consider any inanimate objects sacred. Furthermore, I’ve not always been an atheist, yet I can’t recall having ever considered anything “sacred” by that definition.

It is, however, my opinion that the kind of “sacred” I just described is completely appalling, unacceptable, and ought to be discouraged in the strongest possible terms. And I can’t imagine why my personal unfamiliarity with “the sacred” disqualifies that opinion.

How about a compromise: I won’t try to deconstruct “the sacred” if you’ll acknowledge that killing people for defacing it is wrong without qualification.