You basically have a greater probability that a tornado would rip through a junk yard and build a fully functioning 747, then for life to exist given these probabilities.
Which would make sense if anyone contended the laws of the Universe were random, which nobody sane does. Even then positing a magical entity doesn’t ‘explain’ anything.
I just noticed this… you are right on the mark. Isms are a powerful tool for organizing cultural trends and historical periods in one’s mind but nobody ever shot a gun in war for “communism” or died as a martyr for “Protestantism”. An ideology is not an end so it is never the goal of any human action. Even half-baked conspiracy theories are preferable to ideological explanations of human behavior because the half-baked conspiracy theory is at least an attempt to explain human behavior in terms of ends. The idea that Muslims really do blow themselves up because they are brainwashed by clerics to die for Allah requires a child-like view of the world where unmotivated villains commit atrocities for the sake of atrocity. It’s like comic books, the bad guys do bad things because, well, they’re bad guys. That’s how I explain the world to my 5-year-old son but only because he doesn’t comprehend human nature well enough yet to understand more realistic explanations.
Clayton -
You are sure he doesn’t? He might surprise you if you tried.
@Epicurus: I don’t patronize my kids but there’s a lot that they’re not yet prepared to understand about the world.
Clayton -