Religions tend to be idealistic in nature and science tends to be more pragmatic in nature. However, what people bring to both or either is the most important to all. In other words unless someone is balanced to begin with it doesn't matter whether they are in religion or science because what will come of it will be a problem for anyone involved with them if they are unbalanced to begin with. There is a saying attributed to Confucius. It goes something like this, "Man should study man before he studies religion." When I was in college I meditated on this idea and realized he was right. Because without first being grounded in pragmatic "real life" one simply tends to "Lose their moorings" when trying to become spiritual. Since both my parents were lay ministers and in charge of a church with about 500 members from 1954 until 1960 when I was 12, I had a lot of time to see how crazy religion made some people. Now, as a caveat, these same people had all survived the Great Depression and World War II. And as a further caveat there was no one who made it through the Great Depression or World War II even here in the U.S. that didn't have sort of a mild case of PTSD. So, this should be a good place to start regarding all this. Also, anyone living through as a child or older 9-11 who was fully aware of what happened that day had a mild case of PTSD also. So, this is just a part of the zeitgeist of America and the world since 9-11 just like the mild PTSD of the Great Depression and World War II was a part of every aware American as well.
I was thinking just now out in the Hot Tub outside as the sun set about the 10 year old boys that I saw on the news (Cnn Wolf Blitzer I believe)
in Kabul. They had been told by their Muslim Imam that if they strapped bombs to their bodies and walked into Afghanistan and set them off as the Imam said that they would not die, only the people the Imam wanted to kill. Here in the U.S. that Imam would either just be shot on sight or put in jail the rest of his life or put in an institution for the criminally insane. And I think this would likely be true in all nations legal systems on earth. This guy wouldn't be out in polite society anymore, Period. The boys now reside in a home for boys who had attempted a suicide bombing who were anywhere from 8 years old to about 15 which is adulthood in most Himalayan societies that I observed among the common people over there when I was there in both India and Nepal 25 years ago now. Even though this isn't true for highly educated children in the Himalayan region, it is likely still true for most people who never receive a formal education at all or only through the 3rd or 6th grade. A lady who was in charge of this facility for children suicide bombers said they had no psychologist to help these boys and some people wanted to execute them as many felt they couldn't be salvaged. The two boys from Pakistan that were interviewed had obeyed their Imam and left Pakistan to set off their bombs in Afghanistan. However, they had asked other boys if they would still live after setting off their bomb vests because in the end they just weren't that stupid. And so they were put in a detention facility for boy suicide bombers in Kabul. The boys were also sad because their Imam had told them not to tell their parents. What a complete sociopath this Imam must be!
So, once again what is idealistic reality? No matter the person or religion or partial or complete lack of religion, idealistic reality allows people to survive. As in "Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind." However, when you are dealing with societies where killing your children is acceptable if they disobey you as a parent it creates really aberrant and insane realities. Because what happens is that conformity is the ONLY way to survive and no pragmatic reality exists growing up because everything becomes idealistic and nothing outside of survival becomes pragmatic. This is the main reason that people choose to strap on a bomb. Because normal pragmatic reality doesn't exist in any healthy way for such a person unfortunately. When children are only trained on threat of death there is no sanity or real pragmatic reality other than blind obedience to a parent who will kill them if they disobey. Therefore, becoming a suicide bomber is a psychotic way to commit suicide in order to please one's parents because they will never ever be accepted for who they really are so suiciding out is a better option because no individual dreams or life is possible in that cultural context.
So, my thought is that a suicidal bomber is what extreme child abuse and threat of death to that child growing up causes.
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