AS250: Thinking Clearly on Orlando

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

[0:00:03] You're listening to Atheistically Speaking. [0:00:31] Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 250. Ooh, that's a nice round number. And I'm your host, Thomas Smith. I'm also a very nice round number, I'll have you know. 250, that reminds me of the fact that I am here in Chicago waiting to record episode 300 of Cognitive Dissonance with Tom and Cecil. I'm in the hotel room, basking in the horrendous humid heat. I didn't even mean to do that alliteration, while waiting to go over there in a few hours and record. Really excited. I hadn't planned on recording my episode here, so that's why the audio quality might not be as stellar. [0:01:11] But I decided to cancel the, well, not cancel, to delay the episode I had chambered, which is a fantastic recording with Andrew Torrez about the EU and hate speech laws and all that. But given the recent events, I think it would be pretty weird and, I don't know, not really appropriate to just ignore the Orlando shooting, which is a, it's just a nexus of everything. It's gun control, it's homophobia, it's Islam, it's Trump, it's everything. I mean, it really is just an explosion of everything relevant to this show and to our community and all that. So I'm going to record some commentary [0:01:52] on that, and hopefully via studio magic on my crappy little iPhone microphone, it'll sound okay. We'll see. Let this be a lesson to any aspiring podcasters that whatever you end up hearing, that quality can be achieved with just your laptop and a iPhone headphones. So yes, the shooting, the, uh, the Orlando shooting, you know, all the details by now. Well, not all the details. And actually that's a point I was going to make, uh, every hour, it seems as though the story of this guy gets more interesting. Uh, so it's possible that the, at the hour I'm recording this, there may be yet another [0:02:32] hour where more info comes out. So I'll just, of course, if any new info comes out, I would update my views accordingly and feel free to post it, but I likely will have seen it. It's just, when you're recording at a point in time, that's how it goes. But anyway, 49 dead, the 50th was the shooter. I don't like to include the asshole shooter and the number of casualties. And even more injured, and the dead might rise, that number might rise, because lots of critically injured people. So I'm sure you've already heard plenty, plenty on what the cause is. It's guns, it's Islam, it's all religion, it's men, it's whatever. I mean, everyone takes [0:03:12] their pet issue and decides that that's what's at fault. I'm, the reason I'm trying to contribute to this or what, rather what I'm trying to contribute to this already saturated, you know, market of ideas about this shooting, I'm just going to do my best to to give you what I always try to give you, which is fair, honest, my best effort at unbiased. No one's completely unbiased, of course, but I'm going to do my best to examine all this and see where we come out. I'm not going to go into it with my agenda. I had various levels of different thoughts throughout the week in the [0:03:53] Wake of the news, and I've kind of examined all that and taken it as a whole, and I'm just going to share a lot of my thoughts on this. I also want to, at the end, actually, maybe right away, we'll see. This really ties in to something I talked with Tom and Cecil about last week and Monday, which was whether or not PC culture is responsible for Trump. That's a claim. Probably the biggest comment from those episodes was people disagreeing with us because we all concluded that PC culture is not to blame for Trump. There might be a difference between saying responsible [0:04:33] and to blame or rather a cause versus a blame. I mean, there could be a cause of something, but you are happy with it. I mean, the example I brought up was climate scientists have caused climate change denial. There wouldn't be climate change denial without climate scientists, without anyone to initially tell us that climate change exists. It's true that without them, there wouldn't be climate change denial candidates and political parties or a political party. But that doesn't mean they're doing anything wrong. So you can be a cause of something unpleasant or something bad, but [0:05:13] not have any moral implications on your action. That's sort of what I think about PC culture and Trump. But I'll get more into that in a minute because this issue affects it. As soon as the shooting happened, we looked to our different candidates, candidates are two major candidates at this point as to what they would do and what words and solutions they would offer us. And they were very different. Actually, I think I will end up going right into my points about Trump and Hillary because they're applicable right now. So one of the biggest criticisms of those on the, again, I don't know what to call it, anti-regressive left, maybe the people who allegedly think that they could almost, [0:05:53] or some have said to me and some alleged that it's almost rational to support Trump over Hillary because he's not afraid to say radical Islam. He's not afraid to say Islamic extremism. Well, here's the interesting thing. So you probably all know this by now, but Obama's approach was very standard Obama. It was extremism. The problem is extremism. And in some way, my first reaction was, as a lot of you might think, well, that's, you know, that's bullshit. It's not extremism. It's extreme Islam. It's radical Islam, etc. And that feeds right into the narrative of, you know, well, Trump will say [0:06:34] all the things that we're all thinking. Oh, it's Muslims. It's, you know, we got to get these Muslims out of our country. Well, are we all thinking that? I don't know. But back to what Obama said, extremism. But it just came out today or yesterday. Hillary, I don't know, in a change change of strategy, decided to say that. She said, Yeah, I'll call it radical Islam. I'll call it a is that the problem? Is that is that going to get me more votes? Yeah, sure. I'll call it that whatever. And so that sort of eliminates, I think, just by saying it, just by saying the, you know, this, this person was an Islamic terrorist, just by saying that, I mean, that takes the weight out of a lot of those claims. But let's [0:07:14] pretend she didn't say that. How does the logic of supporting Trump because he's not afraid to be PC, how does that go? Okay, let's say step one. Let's say step one, you say to yourself, I don't like how everyone is afraid to speak the truth because of political correctness. Okay, I can understand that. I even had Mike, who always comments, say that there's a poll, he commented on the website, in response to Tom and Cecil and I talking about that. There's a poll that 80%, I think it's something like 80% of Republicans and 60% of Democrats say PC is a problem. I worry about the wording of those questions. [0:07:54] I don't know if, because 60% of Democrats seems like a lot to me. It's possible. It's certainly possible, but I would worry that the question was misleading. Maybe they thought people weren't PC enough or something, or maybe they, you know, but, but But anyway, let's even, let's take it as a given. Let's say that's true. Let's say a majority of people in the U.S. are worried about political correctness and it's too big of a problem. Okay, I can take that on board. Maybe you don't like that people are too sensitive to words. We've had that a lot lately with the ableist language debate. Maybe you don't like how sensitive people are to words. Maybe you're like me and you think we should go more with [0:08:34] intent and meaning and all that. Sure, okay. I'm right there with you. Let's not ostracize people for misspeaking. Let's focus on actual racism, actual, you know, I can go with you there. Okay, step two. So we got that step one. Step two, look at those liberals. They won't look at Obama. They won't even acknowledge that the Orlando shooting, the Orlando shooter was Muslim. They won't even acknowledge it. They tiptoe around it by saying extremists. So what does that even mean? So again, I'm there with you. Why tiptoe around it? Let's say, extremist, Islamic extremist, Islamic terrorist. Let's just say it. It's easy. Done. Okay, now I've got that. Now, Trump is [0:09:15] not afraid of political correctness. He's not afraid of it. Great. Now, somewhere in there, I think it's step three or step four, step three A, step three B, whatever it is, you have to look at Hillary and Trump's proposed solutions to things. It's not not enough to just say, I am anti-PC. Trump says he hates PC, therefore I go with Trump. Like, at a certain point, you have to look at Trump's solution, which is shut down Muslims coming into the country, something that would have had no effect on this shooting. The shooter was born in this country. Sure, maybe you could argue that I think maybe one or both of his parents came into the country at some point, but are we really, [0:09:55] I mean, that would have been years ago. He even said instead, shut down Muslims coming into the country temporarily while we quote, figure it out. We need to, we need to figure this out. It's, there's nothing to figure out. That's what, that's what, Trump's solutions are unintelligible. They're not real solutions to anything. I think he just came out as I say this in the news to say we need to surveil mosques. We need to get surveillance going on, on mosques. Isn't there a step where you have to say, okay, sure, I like that he's not afraid to speak his mind, but what's on his mind is stupid. What's on his mind is not real. That's not real solutions. [0:10:35] Those things aren't solutions to the problem. This guy didn't go to a mosque that we know. He didn't, even if he went to a mosque, did he plan his terrorist attack at a mosque? Is that what he thinks is going to happen? Surveil mosques? It doesn't make any sense. Furthermore, the biggest stat that I've seen that matters a lot is how many terrorist attacks have there been since 9-11? Well, fortunately, I have it pulled up, I can tell you. Of 28 homegrown terrorist attacks, only 10 were Islamic extremists. The other 18 were [0:11:15] led by right-wing extremists, including the mass shooting that killed three and wounded nine at Planned Parenthood. There's 28 attacks since 9-11 and 330, according to this article, 330, and it's an article that sources a database of terrorism. So according to that, 28 attacks, 330 cases of people being arrested for terrorism. So that's why there's two different numbers there. So of the 28 attacks, let's look at those, 10 were related to Islam. Now, I think that's still cause for alarm, given that that's a disproportionate number. I mean, how many Muslims are there in the United [0:11:56] States? There are not very many. It's 1% of the total population. I just looked it up. 1% of the U.S. roughly is, is Muslim. So that's just disproportionate. So 10 of 28 is a lot more than 1%, of course. So this is the overall message I want to give. We can't look at one piece of data, one of these facts and figures. I've already brought up several. We can't look at one of them and base our conclusion on that. And furthermore, our conclusion can't be all or nothing. I get it. This is the reason why I think my show is for what I think is an elitely rational group of people, people who are [0:12:36] – because it would be so easy. It would be so easy for me to do either of the two shows that I could do. The show where I just say, hey, Islam, that's the blame. That's what's creating this terrorism. Hey, regressive left, stop blaming anything but Islam. Islam is the problem. False stop. Look at this guy. He was a Muslim. I could do that. I probably would have more listeners. Listeners. Or I could go the other way. I could go the other way and say, no, look at the Christian terrorism. That happens too. Christianity is just as bad, maybe worse. Look at all the things we've done to Middle Eastern countries. Of course they hate us, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I could go full on that way. [0:13:16] I could be C.J. Werleman, and maybe I probably have more listeners there, but I'm not going to do either. I'm going to keep the faith that my listeners don't want me to do that. And I'm going to try to harvest and foster a listenership of people who want to look at it from all angles. So here's where I'm at. I don't think Islam is the problem here. And I don't think the solution is focusing on Islam. I think that's a better way of putting it. I don't think when we all look at this terrorist shooting, we all have the same reaction. We all at our core, I think, think unless you're a horrible bigot, which we'll get to that later. [0:13:57] Most people, 90 some odd percent of people are going to have the same reaction. How do we stop this? How do we stop? How do we keep this from happening again? What, what went wrong? That's another, you know, what, what went wrong to cause this? What, what could we have done? How did this guy fall through the cracks? There must be some way. Everyone has a sense that this is not right. Everyone has a sense that, you know, this, this shouldn't be happening. There should be a way that we can prevent. And then, you know, they coalesce around their favorite topics or maybe they listen to somebody who tells them what the cause is. And most people are satisfied at one level. I've seen one, hey, look, all these attacks, all these terrorist [0:14:37] attacks, they're all by men. Men are the problem. Sure, any other stat is going to be less than 100%. Muslim, that's what, 10 of 28 is 30%-ish. That's a lot less than 100%. 100% of these terrorist attacks, except for one of the shooters in the San Bernardino one. So the wife did participate in the shooting there. So one out of however many that is, it's men. So that's a very high percentage. So maybe men are the problem. I mean, if you look at it like that, if you want to look at it like that, that's pretty compelling. 99%. I think [0:15:17] you and I can do better than all this. I think we can try to look at all the factors. So going back to what I was saying, yeah, Islam is a factor, I believe. I mean, it's now come out, another piece of data, it's now come out that he visited the gay nightclub many times. He had accounts on gay dating and I guess gay just sex apps. And it's looking like that it wasn't just just the case that he was scouting, you know, that was something I thought at first, like maybe he just went to scout the location ahead of time. But it's looking like, based on how many times he was there and how early on he was [0:15:57] there and what he was doing and the dating app thing, he really didn't need to use a dating app, a gay dating app to scout gay people to shoot. I mean, that's not really necessary reconnaissance. So I could be wrong. Everything's preliminary again, but it looks as though he had some gay tendencies. Who knows to what extent. The first thing that came to my mind was the movie American Beauty. Think of Chris Cooper's character in that movie. If you're not familiar, he, it turns out, well, I hate spoilers. Should I give a spoiler? Well, yeah, there's no way to talk about it. Turns out Chris Cooper [0:16:38] is a very big homophobe in that movie, his character, of course. And turns out the source of that is he's closeted himself. And in the end, he murders because of that anger that he has. He's sort of rejected. He comes on to Kevin Spacey and is rejected. And that, I guess, what would you call it? That identity crisis, that mix of just self-loathing and homophobia and trying to reconcile those to embarrassment, that sort of thing. I mean, that causes him to kill in that movie. I know that's not a real, that's a movie. That's not necessarily [0:17:18] a real person. It's strikingly similar to what is looking like happened here. And in that movie, I mean, he's influenced by Christianity, of course. I mean, he's not, he's not a Muslim. So that's an opportunity to look at how the community is breaking down. Right. I'm seeing two threads. It's impossible to gauge numbers. I really don't know what the numbers are. But of atheist responses, I'm seeing a couple different things. I'm seeing, you know, fuck Islam. That's a myth. That would be one extreme. Fuck Islam is responsible. But I'm also seeing a lot of, well, look, Christianity is just as bad. Here's an article. A lot of you probably listened to Dogma Debate. Here's an article by [0:17:58] David Smalley. I guess he's got a atheist channel now. I'm not, I'm not sure, but, uh, but anyway, why I blame Christians for the Orlando tragedy and the bulk of it is just pointing out how anti-gay things are in the Bible as well. He goes so far as to say in one of his bold sections here, like, uh, I don't mean, I mean, bold as in the font is literally bold. That's why there's blood on your hands, Christians. Now, I don't know in this case, I mean, is he really saying blood on your hands for this attack? Because that wouldn't make any sense to me, but he's saying, you have it in your home, you display it proudly and call it the good book. You let Sunday [0:18:38] school teachers teach your children Bible study and feel good about what you're doing. You demand that presidents lay their hands on the good book and swear to be honorable to our country. You've cultivated a society in which we lay our hands on the good book, etc. You've done this, you've perpetuated this false brokenness of the LGBT community. This is why I blame you. Blame doesn't really make sense when when you're talking about this shooting, I mean, it's fine to say like, you also need to examine yourselves, but it is a little weird that David decided to word it this way. I don't know if it's trying to capture more attention or be more controversial or what, but why would you blame Christianity for a murder, for a mass [0:19:18] shooting committed by a Muslim? It doesn't really make any sense. I would, I would say you're to blame for other potential violence committed by Christians, you know, in this country against gays. You're certainly, you certainly could share some blame if you don't adequately fight against that in your community, if you don't, in your family and in your church, if you're not against homophobia, then you do share some blame for any LGBT attacks committed by Christians. But it really makes no sense to me to say they have some blame for this attack. On the other end of the spectrum, I'm seeing another article by Muhammad Syed [0:19:59] on the Friendly Atheist Patheos, so another Patheos channel, essentially saying, after the Orlando Massacre, we cannot ignore the connection between Islam and anti-gay bigotry. And there's a lot there. I mean, it's really, it's incredibly easy to point to selections of the Quran and the actions of like ISIS. And he points out that 34 out of 49 Muslim majority countries have criminal sanctions against homosexuality. I mean, that's an easy storyline. I mean, Islam, not friendly toward homosexuality. And then, of course, there's another storyline I haven't even mentioned. That's guns, gun control, [0:20:39] assault weapons, stuff like that. Well, gun violence. Why can't we be like Australia, ban all the guns? Or at least have very strict gun control measures. I don't think all guns are banned, actually. And you look at the example. They did that in, what was it, 1996, and haven't had a major shooting spree since then. Yeah, that's another storyline. I'm shifting from storyline to storyline here, and I sense maybe that some of you won't be satisfied yet, because I'm merely describing the different components of blame that people are focusing on. I'm doing that because I think I'm going to round [0:21:19] them all up and kind of go over what I think the appropriate blame is. I don't think it's any one thing. I think it's important to talk about all of it. And I'm going to do my best to come to some sort of conclusion on what to do, what to advocate for. I know it's not, it's not very satisfying. It's not as satisfying as just say, well, just give me one thing that I can yell about. Okay, guns. Oh yeah, I'll just yell about guns. Let's, let's start. Well, okay, if you're yelling about guns, what about the Boston Marathon bombing? Oh, that wasn't good. Well, guns would still help. Guns would still do most of it. Yeah, sure. But it wouldn't, wouldn't stop everything. No one solution is going to [0:21:59] stop everything. And I get that most people in favor of gun control don't think it will stop everything, but it's, I think it's what I'm trying to go against here is the desire that we all have to pick one scapegoat, uh, one factor and harp on it. I think we, I think there are things that we can do on all of these levels. So let's look at the gun control thing a little bit. I, you guys probably know this. If you listen to Comedy Shoeshine this week, we talked a bit about guns and the fact that me and my brother both hate them. So it's pretty easy for us to just say, ban all guns. I hate guns. I don't value guns. [0:22:40] I don't value the right to have a killing instrument. I don't value that as a right. I mean, I get that it's in the constitution, Constitution, so that has certain implications. It's hard, you have to navigate, you know, is it okay to suspend constitutional rights for people who are on a terrorist watch group? That's a tough question, I think. It is a tough question. But guns are a tough one. So my initial reaction, my knee-jerk reaction to this is, get rid of these guns. Who needs an assault rifle? Who needs an AR-15, who needs that? Get rid of it. And then I talked to my friend who is a pretty [0:23:20] intelligent, very, very political and politically educated Bernie supporter, just to give you background. So this is not some right-wing gun nut, but he was a Bernie supporter who was very pro-gun. He likes guns. I argue with him about it quite a bit. And I'll be honest, I think I think he opened my eyes to a few things. You could show two pictures. I've seen this online. You could show a picture of the AR-15 and a picture of a wooden rifle and say, okay, which one's okay? Which one looks scary? Obviously, the AR-15 looks incredibly scary. It looks like it's a murder device. It looks like it's just a [0:24:00] mass killing machine. Well, it turns out they're the same gun. It's just If you build the body out of wood, I mean, everything could be exactly the same, except for you build the body out of wood, and it looks like a reasonable, oh, that's just a hunting rifle you might have if you work on a ranch or something. It's the same gun. That is kind of interesting. I mean, it's something worth thinking about. Out. Honestly, I don't have the interest to get incredibly educated on guns because I just am not interested in them. But I did my best to do some research in light of this. And I have to say, I think there are some problems with [0:24:41] the easy gun control answers. Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying gun control and more and stricter gun control is not a good idea. I think it is a good good idea. But there are some issues with it, like the quote-unquote assault weapons ban. It turns out that it's a little murky what that even means. I thought a, I'll just tell you from my own ignorance, I'll confess my own ignorance about guns. Up to a few days ago, I would have thought there was something called an assault weapon that it would make sense to ban, and then there was like a pistol or, you know, something smaller like that, you know, that maybe doesn't make as much sense to ban. Well, those are both [0:25:21] semi-automatic. Semi-automatic sounds kind of scary. Of course, the difference, okay, so automatic versus semi-automatic. Automatic means you hold the trigger, it just shoots. You don't have to squeeze the trigger more than one time. Semi-automatic means you do have to squeeze the trigger, but that's the standard now. You have to squeeze the trigger multiple times, but the semi-automatic part is more just that it reloads for you. So you don't have to, it's not like old time movies where they have to cock the thing, you know, in the back and then shoot. Even though they still like to do the sound effect in action movies from time to time, they'll do the thing like he has to cock the pistol even though he doesn't. [0:26:01] But anyway, that's the difference there. And so any gun, virtually any gun you're going to buy in this day and age is going to be semi-automatic. So if you're saying we should ban semi-automatic weapons, you're saying essentially that we should ban all guns. You really are. There's, there's, except some old-timey gun that you might keep around for nostalgia purposes. So that's a problem that I think is a reasonable thing to think about. I mean, of course you could take the stance that you want to ban all guns. That's fine. It's a perfectly legitimate stance to take. The only objection and the only thing I'm saying we should probably think about is that there isn't really [0:26:41] A good line between these quote-unquote assault weapons and not, because anything fully automatic is already illegal. Well, to be more specific, you can own an automatic weapon if it was made before 1986, and there's some loopholes where you can, because that's when the date was that it went into effect, something like that. So there there is, but for, for current law and for buying like a new weapon, you can't buy an automatic weapon. So it may surprise people to know, it surprised me, I didn't know this because again, I didn't know shit about guns. I don't care about guns. I didn't know shit about them because my stance has always been, they're [0:27:22] not a good for me. They're not, the second amendment is not a good in my mind. But now that I'm trying to get more into, once I'm trying to advocate specific gun rights laws, I'm doing my best to familiarize myself. So it may surprise you guys to learn that the AR-15, the murder weapon, one of them, the murder weapons, he also had a pistol, I think, you can't just squeeze the trigger and then it sprays bullets. That's not actually how it works. So there's nothing about the AR-15 that makes it more deadly, except that it's easier to aim. So if someone went in there with just a handgun, [0:28:02] it would actually do about the same thing, Especially when we're talking about a crowded club where aim isn't even really going to be a problem. So the reason this is important is my stance had always been like, no one needs an assault rifle, no one needs an AR-15, but I can see people owning a pistol, that'd be fine. There's not really that much difference there. Again, you can make an argument that, you know, it's a little easier for someone who's unfamiliar with weapons to aim an AR-15. It's easier for them to be a little more deadly. But it's really not, I don't think that marginal difference would do a whole lot. I mean, if we outlawed rifles, first of all, that [0:28:42] rifles are good for other, I mean, rifles are important for anyone for hunting, for keeping, you know, wildlife at bay if you're a rancher. I mean, there are legitimate uses of that. So I wouldn't want to ban all rifles as opposed to and just leave handguns. And furthermore, I don't think it would do a whole lot of good. The difference there wouldn't, in my opinion, it wouldn't change these death figures from these shootings a whole lot. I mean, you could just bring a lot of handguns. But at the same time, when I look at all this, again, I'm trying to look at both sides of all these factors. When I look at all this with gun control, despite the fact that I got my intelligent friend saying, [0:29:23] oh, all these laws do is they make it harder for just people who don't want to commit crimes to buy guns. I don't know if I buy that. At the same time as all of this, I can't get out of my mind the perfectly crafted onion headline that you've heard, you've seen a million times. No way to prevent this from happening, says only country in which it happens. I mean, no matter how deep I get into this gun control rabbit hole of, well, it turns out it actually wouldn't stop it, etc., etc., etc. At the same time, something is happening here. There's a reason that this only happens in the U.S. [0:30:03] It doesn't happen in other places as much. I mean, it happens a tiny bit, but it's just nowhere. The numbers are nowhere as near. And the gun ownership numbers are absurd in the U.S. relative to other countries. I mean, there is something going on. But what? What do we do? Let me take a look at a few more bad arguments, actually. I just cropped up on my feed. Lawrence Krauss just shared an article from The Economist. This is weird. I don't know what's going on with The Economist. I don't know if it's a specific author or what, but I've just read now two articles on it where the title is one thing and then the evidence presented in the article doesn't actually support [0:30:43] It. So the title of this article, well, maybe I'll try to link it, although I've got a lot of articles to link. Maybe I'll put it in the show notes. It's "Guns in America, History of Violence." And the subtitle is "Evidence is Growing that Gun Violence in America is a Product of Weak Gun Laws." But it's interesting that right here in this chart, it's got homicides per 100,000 people. So it shows how many are by guns and how many not. And it shows that the U.S. is at something like 4.8, looks like, something like that. It's a bar chart, so it doesn't tell me exactly. The next highest is Canada at [0:31:23] 1.3, we'll say, something like that. And then it shows civilian firearms per person. It shows that we own a lot. We have .8, it looks about like .87 firearms per person. And the next highest is Switzerland, oddly enough, at 0.45, we'll say. And then Canada is third. And this, I suppose, in the author's mind, qualifies as evidence that gun control is a problem. But the weird thing is if you take all of our homicides per person, so again, it was something like 4.8. And if you [0:32:03] even just don't count the guns, just discount, throw out every Every single homicide in our country, in the United States, in my country rather, sorry for my international listeners, in my country of the U.S., throw out all gun homicides. Our homicide rate is still higher than Canada. So our homicide rate with anything but a gun is still higher than – it would still be highest in the world. And that's higher with other countries including their gun – so they get to count their gun homicides. Homicides. Ours is still higher. Isn't that incredible? And then I saw, [0:32:43] as I was looking at this article that Lawrence Krauss tweeted, it does offer at the bottom, it says, well, look at what Australia did and that cut the murder rate. And I agree. I mean, I think there are things we could do to reduce gun homicides for sure, but this in no way establishes the headline. And then I click on another thing from The Economist, which says The Economist explains why the AR-15 is an assault weapon. And so here it goes. It tells, it says, and this is, I read it because it says a lot of things that I just said. It says, uh, it gives a lot of the counter arguments. It talks about how the assault weapon category doesn't really make sense as a category. [0:33:24] A lot of the things that I just said, but then here's the, in the entire title of the article is the economist explains explains why this is an assault weapon. That only happens in one paragraph. I could read the entire paragraph, the last paragraph. After another mass shooting in which an AR-15 most certainly posed a problem to many people trapped inside a nightclub, such a blasé approach to powerful civilian weapons may be harder to maintain. Wittgenstein, a great 20th century philosopher and veteran of the First World War, wrote in his philosophical investigations that when we employ the word meaning, we are most often referring to the everyday purpose of some phrase. The meaning of [0:34:04] a word, he wrote, is its use in language. By that sensible... So we haven't even gotten to it yet. Here we go. Last two sentences. Let's see if we can get to the entire title and point of this article. By that sensible, if trivial, standard, if an AR-15 can be used to assault large crowds of people, killing and maiming scores of them on multiple occasions, it qualifies as an assault weapon. What a stupid conclusion. What a terrible argument. A handgun could be used to assault large crowds of people just as well. A baseball bat could, I mean, not as well, of course, but to have to appeal to Wittgenstein [0:34:44] and meaning and all that in order to define an assault weapon, that tells me that there isn't a good definition of assault weapon. So that's a terrible one. And that's interesting. I mean, again, I still am in favor of stronger gun control. I think, and personally, I might even be in favor of getting rid of guns altogether. Just don't even allow them. I think in the end, it might be better. Now, that said, look at the stats that I just told you, our murder rate would still be higher than any other country. So something else is going on. But certainly, if we if we could somehow just get rid of all guns, it would be an incredible undertaking. It would never happen in a million years [0:35:24] in this country. That would that a lot of people would be alive that wouldn't otherwise be. So, I mean, if I got to do whatever I wanted, I would say that would be worth it. And then guns could be issued, maybe. [0:35:39] Handguns for self-defense could be extremely sparingly allowed if the person requesting met all kinds of background checks and, you know, has no history of violence, domestic abuse, anything like that. I mean, that, that would be my ideal world situation. But this research has somewhat limited my desire to say that gun control would fix all this. I don't think it would. Well, it's getting quite late in the episode, so maybe it's time I make a point. How about that? I think what I've tried to do so far is just undermine points I've heard. But let's try to [0:36:20] come to some conclusions. Well, here's one thing that bugs me about the Islam part. Let's talk about the Islam, Christianity, Christianity, that axis. [0:36:30] I've seen a lot of people, a lot of Muslims, a lot of heroic Twitter memes saying, you know, one guy, one homophobe, one Muslim homophobe murderer doesn't speak for Islam. Well, true. One person doesn't speak, but you don't either. This is the thing I want to tell all these people. This is something you can take away from this show. Whenever someone says he doesn't speak for Islam, you can really easily say, well, okay, neither do you. No one person does. The only thing that speaks for Islam is a full analysis, a good poll or something that shows what Muslims actually think. [0:37:10] That really is the only thing that's because the Quran could say anything that you like, and it would only be relevant insofar as how many people are believing it, just like the shitty Old Testament of the Bible. I mean, does the Old Testament speak for Christians? I think the answer is no. I don't think it does speak for Christians. I think it speaks for some Christians, but that no one person speaks for religion and no one verse speaks for religion either. I'm sorry to say, I think that's something that some of you may disagree with, but it also cuts both ways because what people would call the regressive left, I suppose. [0:37:51] Lefties who are so happy to put rose-colored glasses on and look at Islam and say, no, it's all fine. It's really fine. They don't get to do that either. There's someone I brought up before, Qasim Rashid. He's an Ahmadiyya Muslim. He has an article that I've seen for Time. I don't know, I guess he writes in the Time Religion section. And it says, says jihadists don't understand the Quran. An understanding of true Islam, true Islam, guys, can help stop terrorist attacks. Now, this is absurd. This really is absurd to me. I looked it up. Ahmadiyya [0:38:31] Muslims, I probably am pronouncing that correctly, Ahmadiyya or something, incorrectly that is, they're 1% of all Muslims. Would you ever say, for any other religion, Would you ever say that someone who represents or views of 1% of that religion is true Islam? Would you say that if you could find a group of 1% of Christians, would you say, oh, that's true Christianity? Would that be a lie? I mean, this is absurd. It really is. And people share this. This is something that I think can legitimately be called regressive left, I think, is when you share crap [0:39:12] like this, an understanding of true Islam can stop terrorist attacks. And this is someone who represents 1% of Muslims. We really give people like this a pass when we wouldn't do it for any other religion. And we wouldn't do it if the message was bad. Somehow we're allowed to say you represent true Islam or true Christianity. We're allowed to say that if it's good. If it's bad, we're not allowed to. That's not right. When you're 1% of all Muslims, you don't represent true Islam. I'm sorry. You don't. He has an argument for why the Quran really says this or really says that. Sure, you can make that argument. Good luck. Try to change Muslims' [0:39:52] minds. I'm not saying you shouldn't. But you can't say that's true Islam. That's just more more religious zealotry. It's just, it's just nonviolent, which is good, but it's still zealotry to say, it's still, it's still, it's almost extremism in a way to say like, no, I have the true Islam. Well, how many Muslims are 1%? Okay, that's not the true. I'm sorry. It's not the true Islam. I mean, even if it was 50%, you couldn't make it, you would say, okay, that's half of true Islam. So that's my big problem with that approach, is that it cuts both ways. If you want to say the terrorist doesn't represent Islam, that's fine, but you can't just paint a rosy picture of how, well, [0:40:33] really this one person who is just a tiny minority of Islam, he represents true Islam because he has a nice message. It doesn't work. It cuts both ways. Anyways, here's another judgment that I think you can take from this if you want. I think the doctrine of martyrdom and jihad and that sort of thing and promise of paradise makes homophobia in Islam a little more dangerous than homophobia in Christianity. Yeah, that's, I mean, people might not like that. I know a lot of people are trying to point fingers at both groups, and I think we should. Homophobia is bad either way. It definitely is. I'm not excusing either one. I do think there's a little more [0:41:13] potential for harm when it's backed by a doctrine of, oh, if you do certain things, you go straight to paradise. Or rather, when that's added in, that makes it a little more dangerous. This is all contingent though on who believes what. I mean, if we can survey both populations and find, oh, no Muslims actually believed that killing gay people or dying in a suicide bombing or something or suicide attack of gay people, if they didn't believe that that sends you to paradise, then problem solved on that. It would make a huge difference. And that's why my biggest message for this is [0:41:53] Any one or small group of people doesn't speak for Islam just because they have a message that you want them to have. All right, so it's time to try to give you guys more satisfying answers, more tangible, firm answers, no more wish-washing and considering all sides and all that. Where am I left? Well, if I had to rank, which it's hard to do, but if I had to try to rank in priority the things that we need to work on, that our society needs to fix in order to try to minimize shootings like this. I don't know that you can ever get rid of violence in any society and mass violence too. [0:42:33] If there's groups of people and there are people who can potentially get bad ideas, then they can attack them with a pressure cooker. I don't know that we'll ever get rid of it. It, but to try to mitigate it. I would say homophobia is a number one. That's the biggest thing at stake in this attack. I really think it is. And that's, that's homophobia in Islam and Christianity. If I had to rank them though, I would say homophobia in Islam is a bigger problem right now. I think that Christians in this country, the worst that they tend to do is discriminate and give fire [0:43:13] and brimstone kind of messages about hell to gay people and say a lot of terrible things, a lot of terrible things that I'm not trying to minimize. But gay violence by Christians in this country is much less, it's less of a problem, different degrees of problem. I trust that my audience can understand different degrees of problems. It doesn't mean one thing is good because it's less of a problem. Um, that's less than homosexuality being banned, being punishable by some cases, stoning and death. Um, but being a crime in what was it? 39 out of 48 Muslim countries [0:43:53] or something like that. I mean, that's, if you're trying to rank it, well, Christianity has slightly less of a problem there. Doesn't mean it's not a problem. So that's how I would rank it. I would focus on anti-homosexual behavior and attitudes in Islam. And we just need to combat those attitudes. That really is it. I mean, the guns I would put after all that. So gun control in general is a big problem if you're going to open it up to gun violence as a whole. If we're trying to just say, what caused this attack, then this is my ranking. If we're trying to say, how do we stop any attack from ever happening again of any kind, [0:44:34] Well, then it's possible guns are up toward the top there and that more stringent background checks. I think that's the biggest thing. The whole point that I wanted to make with the assault weapons ban thing is that I don't know that there's a great definition for that. I was talking with Tom and Cecil, and I think Tom's opinion is restrict how big magazines can be. So make it three rounds. Make it so you have to reload every three rounds. Actually, that makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, self-defense, if you can't take care of something in three rounds, you're not taking care of it. I mean, if one gunshot [0:45:14] at whatever's attacking you doesn't slow it down, you've got bigger problems. I think that three rounds, and this is something I'm borrowing from Tom. I think it's a good idea, so I want to give him credit for it. But three rounds, like that limit, making someone have to reload, making a potential attacker have to reload every three rounds could save a lot of lives. That might be something that really helps. Um, and I would advise, uh, I would strongly advocate for rigorous background checks much more than we do. Here's an interesting question. I'm a little bit of a sidetrack, but it's something I meant to get to. A lot of people have a problem, uh, as regards [0:45:54] the whole battle over the no fly list. If you're on the no fly list, if you're on the terrorist watch list, how can you still buy a gun? And then conservatives will, it's, it's so funny because they started the whole terrorist watch list thing. But now they come back around and say, well, you can't restrict someone's rights just because they're on this list. And I think it's really curious. For me, I find, I personally believe not being able to buy a gun is an inconvenience. I don't see that as a major violation of your human rights. I think that is a minor inconvenience. I know that absolutist thinking doesn't allow for different rights [0:46:35] to be different levels of valuable. But in my mind, it's pretty easy. The right to buy a gun, which again, I don't even really believe in. I see that I sure it is a right as it stands right now. I do disagree with the interpretation that people like Scalia had of the Second Amendment, but it is a right. So we can't just restrict it willy nilly. But society already accepts and even conservatives accept that we can limit access to guns in certain ways. I mean, we can keep maybe felons from owning guns. We can keep, we can, it's okay to have a background check. What if you fail the background check? We're still denying [0:47:15] your quote-unquote right to bear arms. And my biggest question is how in the world can you be on a terrorist watch list and not fail whatever background check we would require to buy a gun. Maybe in that state there is none, but that's what I would want. You don't even necessarily have to look at it as a question of if you're on this terrorist list, then you can't buy a gun. I think you could solve it by just saying you need to pass a background check of a certain level of rigor, and if you're on a terrorist watch list, guess what? You don't pass that background check and give some sort of appeal. Maybe there's some way you can appeal that, appear before a judge [0:47:55] and say, look, this is, someone put me on this list and I'm not a terrorist and here's evidence. I don't know. Some way to appeal it would be good. I think that that is a complaint conservatives have and I understand that. If you want to be on a list, you want to have a way to defend yourself and get off that list. So I do understand that. So there you have it. I hope I was able to clarify things for you. I hope you found this valuable. And the number one thing I'm trying to do is think clearly, think through everything, not jump to conclusions and provide that insight for you. And if this is something you like, if this is something you want to see more of in the world, you can always support me at patreon.com [0:48:35] slash atheist. And there's plenty in it for you with early access to episodes, bonus content, that sort of thing. I'd like to strongly, strongly thank all my patrons. You guys are the best. You really make the show happen. It would not happen without your support. So thank you guys so much. And for anyone who's not pledged, I encourage you, if you have the extra buck or two a month, it's really not that much. And it does a lot. It goes a long way to support more of this kind of clear thinking that I hope you would want to see more of. And I'm open to all evidence. I interact a lot with you guys. I learn a lot every time, and I like to bring what I learn to you guys. [0:49:15] And that's the pleasure of doing the show, not to mention the great interviews I get to do. And speaking of, the next episode is one with Andrew Torrez, I mentioned already, I believe, about the EU free speech and hate speech laws. That was a contentious debate. So I brought on, I've got on, of course, a lawyer to help us navigate that and give us some real insight there. And it's always fun talking to Andrew Torrez. So I'm really excited to release that one to you Monday. All right. Thank you guys so much. Have a great weekend. Thank you for listening. And enjoy Cog Dis episode 300 [0:49:56] out pretty soon. I guess early next week or earlier than that for patrons. So it was a lot of fun. And I think you'll like it. All right. See you guys later.