1. Pacific Islanders' Ancestry Emerges in Genetic Study

Comment #113841 by tribalypredisposed on January 20, 2008 at 6:22 pm

"Judy Siegel. "Genetic evidence links Jews to their ancient tribe." Jerusalem Post (November 20, 2001). Excerpts:

"Despite being separated for over 1,000 years, Sephardi Jews of North African origin are genetically indistinguishable from their brethren from Iraq, according to The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. They also proved that Sephardi Jews are very close genetically to the Jews of Kurdistan, and only slight differences exist between these two groups and Ashkenazi Jews from Europe. These conclusions are reached in an article published recently in the American Journal of Human Genetics and written by Prof. Ariella Oppenheim of the Hebrew University (HU) and Hadassah-University Hospital in Ein Kerem. Others involved are German doctoral student Almut Nebel, Dr. Marina Faerman of HU, Dr. Dvora Filon of Hadassah-University Hospital, and other colleagues from Germany and India. The researchers conducted blood tests of Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Kurdish Jews and examined their Y chromosomes, which are carried only by males. They then compared them with those of various Arab groups - Palestinians, Beduins, Jordanians, Syrians and Lebanese - as well as to non-Arab populations from Transcaucasia - Turks, Armenians and Moslem Kurds. The study is based on 526 Y chromosomes typed by the Israeli team and additional data on 1,321 individuals from 12 populations... Surprisingly, the study shows a closer genetic affinity by Jews to the non-Jewish, non-Arab populations in the northern part of the Middle East than to Arabs."
"Study: North African, Iraqi Jewry nearly genetic twins." Jerusalem Post (November 19, 2001). Excerpts:

"Sephardic North African Jews are genetic twins of their Iraq brethren, says a study by researchers [Nebel, Faerman, et al.] at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.... Although the genetic affinity of Jews to the ancient, Middle Eastern non-Arab populations is greater than to Arabs (as shown in the present study), a substantial portion of Y chromosomes of Jews (70%) and Palestinian Muslim Arabs (50%) belong to the same chromosome pool. An additional 30% of the Muslim Arab chromosomes belong to a very closely related lineage... [because] part - or perhaps the majority - of Muslim Arabs in the Land of Israel descended from local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest of the 7th century A.D."
Tamara Traubman. "Study finds close genetic connection between Jews, Kurds." Ha'aretz (November 21, 2001). Excerpts:

"The people closest to the Jews from a genetic point of view may be the Kurds, according to results of a new study at the Hebrew University. Scientists who participated in the research said the findings seem to indicate both peoples had common ancestors who lived in the northern half of the fertile crescent, where northern Iraq and Turkey are today. Some of them, it is assumed, wandered south in pre-historic times and settled on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. Professor Ariella Oppenheim and Dr. Marina Feirman [sic: Faerman], who carried out the research at the Hebrew University, said they were surprised to find a closer genetic connection between the Jews and the populations of the fertile crescent than between the Jews and their Arab neighbors... The present study, however, involved more detailed and thorough examinations than previous research. In addition, this was the first comparison of the DNA of Jews and Kurds... The study's findings are published in the current issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics. The researchers used the DNA of 1,847 Jewish men of Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Kurdish descent; Muslims and Christians of Kurdish, Turkish and Armenian descent; various Arab populations; and Russians, Poles and residents of Belarus.""

Other studies have suggested Jews were most closely related to Palestinians, Syrians, and Druze but according to this Kurds were not tested in those studies.

Interesting that the Kurds are the other decendants of an ancient Middle Eastern kingdom that is fighting to have their own country again.

2. The Group Delusion

Comment #113154 by tribalypredisposed on January 18, 2008 at 5:28 pm

Guys, this was an interesting thread before you all helped wooter hijack it. Let me just mention that I have had the unfortunate experience of playing online cards with wooter. Wooter is only looking for attention everywhere wooter goes online. Wooter cares nothing about evolution or vibrators or card games, wooter is just out to get attention and annoy others. It must be a sad life and I suggested back then that professional help would be appropriate. I still strongly suggest this, wooter, and I do so in earnest with no intention of insulting you.

For the rest of you, I know your evolved instinct is to defend the culturally defined group you belong to against threats, but wooter is not one so just take a deep breath and let it go. We are not helping wooter, wooter could care less about any of this, and we are not helping ourselves.

3. The Group Delusion

Comment #111243 by tribalypredisposed on January 14, 2008 at 6:10 am

First a few responses and then I will explain further.

Steve, of course humans help their kin. But groups of 150 are too poorly related, according to kin selection theory, to be acting altruistically towards each other on the basis of kinship. And altruism does not fail in these groups, altruism even towards complete strangers is fairly common in humans.

By scientific definition altruism is when an organism sacrifices its own fitness to benefit the fitness of another organism. By definition altruists incur a fitness cost and selfish do not incur this cost, so an explanation is needed for how altruism is selected. The general rule is that more fit are selected over less fit. Yes, I understand that altruism has been selected for and that altruism has benefits, but the question is how altruists are more fit than selfish when the basic equation seems to say the opposite.

Yes, sexual selection is one possible answer to the question, or a partial one anyway. Female preference for male bravery as an indicator of fitness has many examples in nature.

Yes, what I am doing is basically trying to model the ESS effectively, show how it can be done correctly. There are still many in the field who claim that it is "obvious" that selfish should overrun a group of altruists that they come to be part of.

Spiderdancer, I make no claims that require rapid evolution or deny it. What I point out is a patern over time and various cultures; from small tribes in the Amazon to Roman citizens in Constantinople to Rwanda and China and Germany we can see that group frequently wins over kinship. This is also common to cults, so common it is one of the signs that it is a cult. I do this to suggest in a brief way that this patern is a human universal and not time or culture specific. If kin selection was the root here, this could not be true. If there was not group selection, this could not be true.

Roland F, just some quibbles. The change from small male coalitions within the group, as in chimps, to groupwide male coalitions reduced the aggresion within the group and allowed the group to be stronger and larger. This made the group more fit. It meant that the dominant males no longer gained mating rights with all the females, mating became more egalitarian. It also results in generaly egalitarian groups (dominants not allowed to push others around too much). Instead of having their most fit males injuring each other all the time, they could go kill the males in the other groups. When I talk about human group selection I consider it primarily a male group that is selected for or against.

I agree that too many free riders results in a catastrophic collapse of the group. At a certain frequency of defection all the altruists jump ship and become selfish too, they have seen this effect even in bees. Your point does not explain how altruism is selected for and becomes an ESS initially, but the altruist response does suggest a helpful line of inquery.

As I was saying in an earlier post, we need not assume altruism was born naked and helpless into the world. Instead we should assume that a complex of supporting evolved behaviors existed. Reciprocity, for example in grooming, likely existed. Tit-for-tat is not a stretch. Selection for brave males as an indicator of fitness. So the first altruists would test the waters and find that there was no reciprocity, no cycle of altruism could be established, and they would live their lives as selfish. But all it would take is one dominant male who was an altruist to establish enough of the gene in a small group for that group to gain the advantages of altruism and start to be much more fit than neighboring groups. Altruist group versus selfish group is not much of a contest.

Still there are those who assert that selfish would come into the group of altruists and be more fit than the altruists and overrun them within the group. My work is to show how this is not true.

Steve, you asserted that I had a big IF on the topic of groups of altruists being fitness limiting resources for selfish. Let me show you that the patern scales up and down quite nicely.

I was inspired by the paper "Kin Selection and Parasite Evolution: Higher and Lower Virulence with Hard and Soft Selection" which shows that lower virulence evolves when co-infecting agents are poorly related and that such agents evolve to interfere with each other, resulting in a fitness cost and the underexploitation of the host.

Now, where else can we see this patern? Look at street gangs. Society is their host and they are poorly related; what happens? They fight and kill each other, they interfere with each other and underexploit the host as a result. What happens if one gang gains dominance, as in some Third World countries? They all but kill the host as they become quite virulent. Businesses follow the same patern. Lots of competition results in low virulence, while a monopoly for one company results in rampant abuse of the consumer. Political parties - if there is only one the country is in trouble. Two closely related ones like in America and the country is pretty exploited but not to the point of death quite. Four strong parties poorly related like in Canada and the virulence is low.

What I assert is that the patern holds at the scale between parasites and complex societies, it holds at the individual in a group level. Selfish interfere with other selfish who compete to exploit the host group. This results in a fitness cost for selfish that is not born by altruists and the evolution in most cases of low virulence selfish. This lowers the fitness of the selfish strategy and increases the relative fitness of the altruist strategy, allowing altruism to be an ESS when combined with other supporting evolved behaviors.

4. The Group Delusion

Comment #110813 by tribalypredisposed on January 12, 2008 at 4:39 pm

Spiderdancer, the problem is that kin selection theory fails the real world test for human groups. Humans live in groups too large for members of the group to be closely enough related to each other that kinship is operative. Humans also often side with group over kin in conflicts. Children turned their parents in to the governments of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. Parents killed their own mixed tribe children in Rwanda. Chagnon details men killing their kin that belonged to an enemy tribe. Historical accounts of conflicts between fans of different chariot teams assert that brothers and other family members killed each other over which color they cheered for.

And yes, a warrior who lives is often rewarded genetically. But whether he lives is dependent on the relative strength of his group as well as on his own fitness. Sure, if helping the group did not increase his own fitness, on average, it would never evolve. But here you support group selection without realizing it. Helping the group increases his fitness because there is selective pressure at the level of the group. And you are conflating genetic level altruism, which cannot exist, with behavioral level altruism which can. The genotype may only be selfish, the phenotype is not so limited. So that a behavior which is altruistic results from genetic selfishness is a given and not a counter argument.

Donald is on the right track by noting that it is also about risk. Evolution is about odds, not certainties. Paradoxically, a group of people willing to risk their lives for each other are far more fit as individuals than a group who are not. They will experience much less predation and fewer enemy attacks, and more will survive precisely because they are willing to risk death.

So there are fitness benefits to be gained, but as Spiderdancer points out there is the danger of 'subversion from within' otherwise known as defection, free-riding, selfish non-cooperators and so on. There are selfish defectors in beehives, in every human society, but they are a minority and in most cases do not cause enough harm to make altruism maladaptive.

Still this brings a central question up; how did the first altruists have a fitness advantage over the selfish that they encountered? Seemingly by definition they are less fit and therefore would not be selected for by evolution.

But as I stated before, we should assume altruism evolved as a complex behavior and not a simple one. Reciprocity, tit-for-tat, and other behaviors that support altruism and make it more adaptive would also be useful for selfish, and may well have existed before altruism did. So we need not assume the first altruists were defenseless against selfish exploitation. And again selfish exploitation is also an evolved behavior which would only evolve after altruism did. So the first altruists would not have faced the same fitness cost of being exploited, they would have only faced selfish who would not return the altruistic favor.

Perhaps altruism was originally limited to kin, no way to know. That it is no longer so confined is obvious, and that in humans it is largely confined to in-group is also obvious.

Still we have some big problems. For a group to be altruistic as a norm requires altruistic enforcement of altruism, and this becomes an infinite regression where ultimately still we find an advantage for selfish. How to get past this one?

Here is where I try to forge new tools. As altruist and selfish co-evolved we should not look past the nature of selfish. Selfish are selfish, they do not share willingly. Altruists are a fitness benefit to selfish, existing in a group of altruists is very fitness enhancing for selfish. But the fewer other selfish in the group, the better for the selfish who are there. In other words, groups of altruists are a fitness limiting resource for selfish. Selfish do better in groups of altruists than in groups of selfish.

In fact selfish should compete with each other over groups of altruists, and they do (this is in fact the essence of politics). It is my hypothesis in fact that selfish compelling other selfish to cooperate may make altruism more adaptive and selfishness less. I assert that selfish enforcement of altruism breaks the infinite regression problem of enforcement.

Finally in terms of modeling, if groups of altruists are fitness limiting resources for selfish then the best models are parasite/host models and there is a very interesting paper on this topic that shows what happens when co-infecting parasites are poorly related to each other, the condition we would expect in human groups. In fact what happens is the evolution of low virulence in the parasite. Translating this we would expect to see selfish evolve in humans to be relatively low virulence, to mostly cooperate and then act selfishly at opportune moments. Which is how most humans behave.

Ok, tried to make the above as brief as possible and left some stuff out but hopefully enough to chew on for you all.

5. The Group Delusion

Comment #110747 by tribalypredisposed on January 12, 2008 at 9:09 am

Steve, it may be YOUR point that selection occurs at the level of the gene but it is not Dawkin's point or anyone else's point. So I think you need more than just an assertion here.

You, I think, confuse what is being selected with the level that it is being selected at. There are special cases where genetic materials compete directly with each other but these are not germain to the discussion here. Individual genes within my body are not independantly selected, it is a package deal. No one gene I have can pass itself on without the others coming along. So my genes are selected at the individual level; either I as an individual find a woman willing to let me knock her up or I do not. All or nothing for my genes. As Dawkins himself says earlier in the thread, I am the vehicle for the genes and vehicles are the level of selection.

Now look at human groups. If we look at the anthropological evidence, conflict between groups results in 20-30% casualty rate over a male lifetime. As many as one third of groups are wiped out each century. What happens to the genes of a dead person, Steve? Can they still be passed on? Since selection is only at the gene level in your view, and I guess the genes still exist...see how your view cannot be correct?

The point is that your fitness and success in passing on your genes are partially dependant on your group. You can have fifty wives and two hundred children, but if your group only has two other healthy adult males your fitness is likely to amount to zero. This means that your group is a level of selection just like your body is. If your group is wiped out by a neighboring group then you are dead, assuming you are male or a child or an older woman. If you are an attractive female then you get to be taken by a new mate from your new tribe. But whatever kids you had are killed so there is a fitness loss.

Human groups are a level of selection. Individuals are a level of selection. The genes are what get selected, not a level of selection.

To be crystal clear, of course it is the genetic material inside the individuals who belong to the group that is either replicated or not replicated. But the fitness of the individual determines an all or nothing for the genes they carry and the fitness of the group they belong to also affects the individual's fitness.

Call the group part of "the environment" if you want and talk about how we evolved to interact with that part of our environment to make it more hospitable or whatever, bottom line is that competition between human groups is a selective force in human evolution.

My second point is, geez guys, Dawkins is not the only source of truth in the freaking world. I do not think most of you really know enough to be dismissing the views of two of the top scientists in the world on this topic out of hand and with scorn. If E. O. and DS have a view they have absolutely earned the right for it to be considered and respected. Yes, I have disagreements in my views with DS, but I recognize that it is just possible I am also wrong.

Some here have commented on the ferocity of this academic battle. Ironically it is the result of evolved psychological responses selected to make us defend our group's cultural belief borders. Dawkins belongs to the "no group selection" tribe and he will defend it to the death, judging from his attitude here. Why? Why defend his view so aggressively? Because....of group selection. He is demonstrating the existence of group selection while arguing against the existence of group selection.

6. The Group Delusion

Comment #110685 by tribalypredisposed on January 12, 2008 at 12:26 am

Pretty old news here, E. O. was quite explicit about this at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society Conference in 2005, and I had a notebook full of papers about eusocial insects stating that kin selection theory was not supported by their data (intending to ask him about it if possible) there with me. For example, I had the paper "Conflict over Male Parentage in Social Insects" by Hammond and Keller (Plos Biology Volume 2 Issue 9, 2004) which states "Our study reveals greater harmony and more complex regulation of reproduction in social insect colonies than that expected from simple theoretical expectations based on relatedness alone."

I am very puzzled by the antagonism towards group selection here, as to me it is pretty much obvious. Much of human behavior makes no sense at all if there is not group selection, and not just altruism. Also, I assume we are comfortable calling both single and multi-cell organisms "vehicles" and can agree that they constitute a level of selection. Richard seems to agree above. I cannot see how or why there is some magic line between groups of cells that constitute an "individual" and groups of individuals composed of groups of cells. Why can one become a level of selection and the other not? What about groups of single cell organisms that unite under stress and form a stalk that in effect turns them into a single organism? Everyone seems very happy with the eusocial insects helping each other because of how closely related they are, and the fly in that ointment is that some eusocial insects are not very closely related and they still behave the same. Ooops. What other answers might there be then....

The group one is born into, in the case of the social species such as humans, is clearly a major part of one's "environment" that we are evolved to adapt to. Just as wolves have evolved adaptations to live in packs. When these species are group territorial, as in humans, an individuals access to fitness limiting resources depends on the fitness of their group. Belong to a stronger group, get access to the more resource rich territory. Belong to a stronger group at war with a weaker one and you get to survive and maybe take some womem captive to breed with also.

Your genes are more fit if your group is more fit, and this seems not to be debateable to me.

Beyond altruism we have many human universals that all point to group selection. Group initiations for one, designed to test the individuals bravery and commitment to the group. A coward is just dead weight, eating your resources. Bullying is seen as anti-social commonly but it is a behavior, in my view, designed by evolution to drive the weak and the non-conformist out of the group so they do not weaken it. Conformity too evolved partially to keep the group stronger by limiting internal conflict and also to allow larger culturally defined groups, as opposed to kin based ones which are more limited in size.

If behaviors evolve (and you better have some fantastic evidence to assert otherwise here) then why did the behaviors above evolve if not to make the group more fit? If they evolved in individuals so that they would make their group more fit, how can that be possible if there is no group selection?

Now let me mention a few common points of confusion on the topic of selfish and altruist. First, the term "selfish" biologically is not the same as "selfish" behavior in that one is passive and one is commonly assumed to be active. Your genes are selfish regardless, sure we all agree here, but "selfish" or what is also called "defecting" behavior is not a default but is rather a co-evolved behavior with altruism. What we commonly think of as "selfish" then is the behavior that evolved to actively exploit altruists, while the original default is a more passive lack of altruism.

Second, there is no need to assume that altruism evolved in a vacuum as a single attribute, it is complex and depends on other supporting behaviors. Think of complex physical structures; there is no need to puzzle over the evolution of wings and eyeballs. Altruism is in fact a complex behavior structure just as they are complex physical structures. Part of a wing does not give one flight and part of the altruism complex does not give one altruism. We need not assume that the first altruist was entirely vulnerable to exploitation, especially given that exploitive selfish behavior was unlikely to have evolved yet.

Third, we need not assume a binary system here. Proto-wings are good for gliding. Being altruistic sometimes and selfish sometimes is also good for allowing a balance between individual fitness competition within the group and the group fitness needs that follow from group selection (and also from other possible circumstances).

I attempted to get to the point in another thread where I could introduce my own attempts at solving all of this, but could not get to the point where the evolution of altruism was even accepted as a problem. If people here are interested I will attempt it here.

7. Huckabee: Guns, God and rock'n'roll

Comment #108911 by tribalypredisposed on January 8, 2008 at 12:05 am

Just have to point out what great progress America is making as a country. Fifty years ago Baptist Ministers called Rock and Roll "the Devil's music" and burned records in the streets. Now Huckabee, a Baptist Minister, plays that same music himself. Fifty years from now, who knows, Baptists might even learn how to dance a little...

8. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #108769 by tribalypredisposed on January 7, 2008 at 2:49 pm

Just for fun and because I firmly believe in dogpiles...

One of my favorite illogical claims of the Creationists is this whole Intelligent Design line. Humans are too complex and therefore must have had a designer. The universe had to have a designer. The matter in the universe had to come from somewhere, therefore it had to be a magical being.

Unfortunately for them this is just an infinite regression answer unless they want to abandon their starting assertions. Where did your deity come from then? How can a being complex and powerful enough to create the universe not have a designer? How can they come to exist at all? They must have been created...and then whatever created them must have had a creator and so on forever.

No they say, our deity always existed. But the same could not possibly be true of the universe because...uhm...uh...and plus our deity did not need to be designed because they are magic.

Which is what the real Creationist answer is to everything; it is magic. Sorry, but "it is magic" and science do not mix.

9. Could there be a Darwinian Account of Human Creativity?

Comment #104877 by tribalypredisposed on December 29, 2007 at 9:32 pm

I am with you here Steve. The article does little for me, basically it re-states the popular premise that there is no magic in the brain while adding some substantial confusion by using the term Darwinian for something that is not really very similar as a process.

Culture passes along whether it enhances fitness or is maladaptive to the organism. Europeans did not bathe or eat apples for hundreds of years, leaching lead to many premature deaths, in extreme cases culture leads entire groups to kill themselves or engage in suicidal wars. Dennet seems to confuse the scientific process with cultural change, and the two are incredibly different. There is not really a process of testing and choosing in the arts, in culture in general. While Mozart gained approval by millions for the culture he produced, so too has Brittany Spears and sometimes those even considerably less talented and creative than her.

There is a "better" answer in chess and to some extent in classical music which is highly math friendly. Evolution involves finding "better" answers to environmental challenges. Culture is not a process of "better." Hamlet is a great play but every year there are Harlequin romance novels that are widely read too, and in what way do we pretend to judge which is "better?"

Far more convincing for me would be an actual description of how culture evolved, how it was selected for by evolution, as a start and then show how it functions in modern society. No small task and one he did not attempt, but one which I have taken a stab at myself.

It all starts with group size for me. Where competition for resources is partially occuring at the group level, group size is a huge factor in determining relative fitness of each group. Limiting size is the ability to bond through grooming, which takes considerable time (Dunbar), and the limits of relatedness which also keeps group size to about 40 before it no longer makes mathematical sense to favor fellow in-group. Being able to have a cohesive group of 150 instead of 40 would be a considerable advantage for the group members, but it requires a whole lot of changes.

Language, as Robin Dunbar has observed, allows far more efficient bonding. If we stop bonding by grooming then we need to not have fur, since without grooming it will be highly maladaptive. With such a large group dominance by a sole male or small group of males as in chimp society is likely to be unstable too often. There are just too many males involved and the constant fighting would be destructive to the group fitness; if infants were killed after every coup the group would self-destruct.

But beyond these, a new mechanism of defining the group has to evolve. If not kinship, then what? A group has to define who they are, and who they are not. For most of our evolutionary past there were not a lot of real differences between groups..."the group that uses fire and stone axes" does not work to define your in-group when that is what every group does. The answer was culture; some often random change in dress, some new accent of language, some new God to worship, some new songs and stories and beliefs. Evolution selected for culturally defined groups so that we could gain the fitness benefit of greater group size.

I will attempt the second part of this, how it seems to come from some unknown source within us and how we may be thought to have some real "free will" later, best if I explain the above more first if any of you all are interested.

10. The Psychology Behind Cults/Religion

Comment #98919 by tribalypredisposed on December 14, 2007 at 10:35 pm

I think we need to understand some of the underlying evolved psychology of humans in groups here. I presume everyone here believes in evolution...

First, humans evolved to be group social animals and our groups are defined by cultural boundaries, not by kinship. From this comes several salient insights. Culturally defined groups need to have conformity or they cannot work. Most of us are predisposed to conforming and also predisposed to enforcing conformity. Most of us, and there are empirical studies showing this, change our beliefs at the subconscious level to conform to our group; doing so while asserting, we believe honestly, that no change has been made.

Second, we commit to a group psychologically by attaching our view of ourselves to our view of the group, we come to see them as more similar to ourselves than they are and the out-group as more dissimilar than they are. We automatically at the subconscious level become positively biased towards members of our group, making excuses for them and justifying their actions. We see ourselves as good and this is extended to our group, the group of good people. Religion is very well designed to exploit this process.

Third, humans groups are defined in opposition to other human groups, there is always a group that you are NOT and in general people are predisposed to seeing the attributes of that other group as the opposite of the groups they ascribe to their own group. Tragically both Islam and Christianity defined themselves as NOT Jewish when they were founded, laying the groundwork for everything that followed. Because if your group is good and my group is the opposite of your group...we are the evil group.

Since religion typically expressly claims to be opposing evil, this also plays well with our psychology.

Finally we make ourselves vulnerable in the West because of our baseless belief in our own rationality. Evolution had no special need to select for rational humans, in fact it was not very useful in many cases, and downright maladaptive at times. For most of our evolutionary past there was no science and any belief was just as much BS as any other belief. Better to just go along with whatever your group said then instead of disagreeing and getting yourself killed for no good reason.

Remember, we are social animals. We want a group that accepts us as one of them and risking being kicked out of that group is risking psychological death. In some cases we take real death over this, as in suicide cults.

My way of telling what is a cult and what is a religion is the Law of Schisms: if there is a schism then it is a religion, if not then it is a cult.

11. Neuroscience and Moral Politics: Chomsky's Intellectual Progeny

Comment #90259 by tribalypredisposed on November 23, 2007 at 8:40 pm

Rtambree, you want to be taken seriously with a laughable response like that one? Chomsky made the claim that Israel fought a war of aggression in 1967. None of the facts support that assertion. Chomsky in fact has an extensive patern of making false statements about Israel. Why? Why does he single out Israel for his lies? The most obvious explanation based on the evidence and the established paterns is that he is a racist anti-semite. I have seen no other rational explanations given but I happily keep an open mind if you want to try one.

I wonder exactly how you define "foaming-at-the-mouth-drivel" since I make a very well reasoned argument with lots of good citations even using the sources you guys love and worship and use to excuse your hate peddling.

It is a human universal, by the way, to define your enemy out-group as a danger in some way, as you do by asserting that I am "deranged." If you cannot make a reasoned argument to counter mine, as is quite obvious, please at least be mature enough not to start slinging insults. Not going to convince anyone that way anyhow.

I point out that Xenophobic and Chomsky are racists not to insult them but because 1)pretending they are not is unproductive, 2)it is a demonstrable fact, 3)it is not acceptable to go around campaigning for ethnic hatred, and 4)some very good academic work by my cousin's wife has shown that racism loses its effectiveness when it is made explicit.

Xenophobic's views are based on hatred of Jews, as are Chomsky's. Making that fact explicit robs their message of its effectiveness.

People here bash religion for causing groups to hate each other and kill each other. The truth is that most anything else will do just as well. Being a Leftist is just as good for this purpose as being a Nazi or a Christian.

I know that for Xenophobic and Rtambree making the observation that these views are racist is like calling them evil, calling them names, questioning their membership in the group of "good" people who are, in their minds, the Leftists. If they took the time to read my paper they would see that my view is that negative bias towards an out-group is nearly a given for humans, especially for those strongly committed to their own in-group. Race is also not some special issue, it is just as bad to hate a person of another group for any other reason, be it religion or what soccer team they support.

I am opposed to irrational negative bias against others. In all of its forms. We cannot have peace until we oppose irrational negative bias.

Rtambree, if you are able to discuss this in a reasoned way I welcome it. Otherwise there is no point in your replying since not a single person could possibly be convinced by another spew session like you last post.

12. Neuroscience and Moral Politics: Chomsky's Intellectual Progeny

Comment #90185 by tribalypredisposed on November 23, 2007 at 10:00 am

Xeno(phobic), as I predicted earlier, now has sought cover for his views in this gambit "Anyone who accuses people of hating the Jews because they criticise the state of Israel doesn't deserve even to be acknowledged in a debate on this issue."

Of course, one can criticise Israel and not be an anti-Semite. I have criticised Israel myself. But there is a huge difference between criticising Israel and attacking Israel's legitimacy by telling huge lies about the history of their conflict with the Arabs, as Xeno(phobic) does here. Doing the later is a very strong indication that someone hates Jews.

This recent paper, "Anti-Israel Sentiment Predicts Anti-Semitism in Europe" (http://www.h-net.org/~antis/papers/jcr_antisemitism.pdf) shows a very strong correlation between the two attitudes.

I am sure it is abundantly clear to everyone here that Xeno(phobic) is anti-Israel and not just a person who criticises Israel. But I will make it more explicit here so that even he can see it.

"The war of 1967 was a war of aggression, and I've already quoted to you from a book in which Israeli generals involved with the combat operation at the time acknowledge this fact."

Unfortunately for Xeno(phobic) there are actual historical documents available from 1967, and they completely contradict his version of events.

"Newly released files from the Israel State Archives--reviewed here as part of a study-in-progress on the war that will eventually incorporate American and British papers as well--reveal a great deal about Israeli policymaking and diplomacy of the time, and about what Israel's leaders thought, feared and strove for during their three weeks of intense diplomatic efforts leading up to June 5, 1967. But far from even hinting that Israel deliberately brought about the conflict, the record shows that Israel was desperate to avoid war and, up to the eve of battle, pursued every avenue in an effort to avert it--even at great strategic and economic cost to the nation." (http://www.azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?id=137&search_text=MICHAEL%20B.%20OREN)

What about this false claim about the "evidence" Xeno(phobic) "provided" us from the generals? Nothing in his post #63 comes close to being an Israeli General acknowledging what Xeno(phobic) claims above. No General states it was "aggression" or anything remotely similar. We have a quote from one general stating how confident he was in the Israeli armed forces, and find me a General who says anything else from any other conflict. The French Generals were extremely confident and would have readily agreed to a similar statement in 1939...Then we have this interesting "quote" from Rabin indulging himself in some historical revisionism..."Yitzhak Rabin, the Chief of Staff, was frank about it: 'I do not believe that Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent into Sinai on May 14 would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it'."" Yep, Yitzhak Rabin knew it so well that he had a complete nervous breakdown and had to be removed from command in the days leading up to the conflict. Man, we are talking some great confidence there....I have strong doubts that Rabin ever said this at all.

In any case, the Generals in a Democracy do not make the decisions about war, and it is clear from the historical documents that the people who did make those decisions were not doing anything in the days leading up to it but trying desperately to avoid a conflict. Hardly the actions of a country engaged in "aggression."

Now, what about Ilan Pappe and this claim of "genocide" -- "How about the Israeli historian Ilian Pappe who claims that the Israeli State was founded on genocide?" Well, instead of using sources that you might accuse of being biased to contradict that, let me use some of the New Historians you have cited. I assume that...Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, and Ilan Pappe himself are acceptable to you? If not let me know.

Here is what Avi Shlaim wrote in a paper reprinted in a book edited by Ilan Pappe....

"Benny Morris in his book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem investigated this subject as carefully, dispassionately and objectively as it is ever likely to be. Morris found no evidence of Arab leaders issuing calls to Palestine's Arabs to leave their homes and villages nor any trace of a radio or press campaign urging them to flee. On the Israeli side, he found no blanket orders handed down from above for the systematic expulsion of the Palestinians. He therefore rejected both the Arab order and the Jewish robber state explanations. His much-quoted conclusion is that 'The Palestinian refugee problem was born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab. It was largely a by-product of Arab and Jewish fears and of the protracted, bitter fighting that characterized the first Arab-Israeli war; in smaller part, it was the deliberate creation of Jewish and Arab military commanders and politicians.'[27] Benny Morris has already replied in detail to Teveth's criticisms and it would serve no useful purpose for me to give a blow by blow account of the battle between them.[28] But it seems to me that Teveth's position on the origins of the Palestinian refugee problem is about as sophisticated as the old saying haya ness vehem nassu - there was a miracle and they ran away. Anyone who believes that will believe anything."
(http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/The%20Debate%20About%201948.html)

By the end of the war we had approximately 150,000 armed combatants fighting in a very small geographic space. This is great incentive for civilians to get the hell out of the way.

Xeno(phobic), your own sources do not agree with you or do not say what you have claimed they said. The Generals do not say what you claimed. The historical documents do not support what you claim. The New Historians you love to trot out do not support what you claim. You stand alone clutching only your hatred of Jews to support your unsupportable views. Well, alone except for all the other racist anti-semites like Chomsky.

Are you someone who "criticises" Israel, or are you anti-Israel? The evidence is quite clear that you are anti-Israel since your positions do not enjoy the company of truth. The evidence is also quite clear that there is a strong predictive correlation between being anti-Israel and being anti-semetic.

Your cover is in tatters, you are exposed as a racist who hates Jews. You are Xenophobic.

My paper, which I have posted a link to earlier, explains nicely how humans are predisposed to being xenophobic and readily believe that the out-group is evil and their group is good. This is no less true if your own in-group is the Left where you have a strong norm against racism. It has clearly failed to keep a large portion of the people who identify as Leftists from hating Jews.

13. Neuroscience and Moral Politics: Chomsky's Intellectual Progeny

Comment #87809 by tribalypredisposed on November 13, 2007 at 8:01 am

Xeno(phobic) claimed "Anyone who uses Wikipedia as a serious source of knowledge can be dismissed as someone who clearly doesn't want to be taken seriously as a scholar. "

Interesting. "Experts rate Wikipedia's accuracy higher than non-experts" http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061127-8296.html

"The free online resource Wikipedia is about as accurate on science as the Encyclopedia Britannica, a study shows." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4530930.stm

You might also have noticed that the Wiki entry I used is chock full of citations, sources that are good scholarly works.

The issue is quite clear. Jordan attacked Israel while Israel was already engaged with Egypt and Syria. Is the Israeli response that lead to their seizure of the West Bank "aggression," as described by Chomsky, or is he a flat out liar? Egypt is known to have had attack plans that were cancelled at the last minute a week before open hostilities commenced, and Israel knew of these plans. Can we describe the Israeli attack as "aggression" under these conditions, or is Chomsky a liar?

If you cannot attempt to argue based on facts, I understand. No one else can argue with these facts either. Chomsky is a liar. Israel was defending itself in 1967. So what if they believed they would win? Are they required somehow to only go to war to defend themselves if they think they will lose? Is that what you guys are asserting?

I really do not care about all of your Jewish friends. Your views of the right of Jews to have a country of their own is a racist one. Your view of events and who is right and wrong is highly biased against Jews. There is a patern here.

Has Israel done things which good people should condemn? Sure. Have the Palestinians also done things of this nature? I think the record is clear that they have, and to a far greater extent than Israel has. What is more, Israelis themselves condemn some things that Israel has done, while Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians are celebrated by the Palestinians. Yes, a Jewish man attacked Palestinians at prayer...and he was arrested and loudly condemned. On the other side if you blow up an Israeli bus you get posters of yourself put up all over town and your family gets $10,000. Which side is "terroristic?"

Underlying the views of the Left about this conflict is a fundamental racism about the Palestinians as well. The conflict is viewed as a "colonial" one and recently talk of "apartheid" has been used. This is very confused and based on the racism of the Left that sees dark skinned people as inherently peaceful innocent victims, in all cases, of the white inherently violent and racist and aggressive and wrong Europeans who can be blamed for every evil in the history of the world. It is unfortunate for the Palestinians that they have accepted this view of the conflict as being a colonial one since this has suggested a course of action to them which is useful for ending colonial occupations, and entirely fruitless in a conflict with Israel. The Israelis have no home country to return to, and no sponsoring country that would let them all come "back." They are not Europeans either. A very large percentage are from countries of the Middle East. Nor can we compare the occupied territories to a bantustan; the population there are not Israelis and an assertion that Israel should have open borders with the area of an enemy country it is occupying in a war no peace has ever been made in is bizarre. Israelis of Palestinian descent are free to live wherever they like in Israel, there is no apartheid.

If we start with the view that Jews are not always in the wrong and people with dark skin in poor foreign countries are not always innocent victims we arrive at very different conclusions, and view the conflict in entirely different ways from how you and how Chomsky view it.

I have met a lot of self-hating Jews. Jews who denied that Jews are even an ethnicity, Jews who place all the blame on Israel for the conflict. Just last month there were neo-nazi Jews arrested in Israel. It is quite clear that this is not a made up category.

But back to the main point, which is that Chomsky lies about the events of the conflict between Israel and the Arab world. His assertion that the war of 1967 was one of Israeli "aggression" is patently absurd and a huge lie. He knows it. I know it. Anyone vaguely familiar with the events of the time knows it. He is dishonest. The only country that Israel started open hostilities with first was Egypt; the country whose ruler had openly declared he would wipe Israel off the map, who had committed an act of war by blockading Israel, who had cancelled a planned surprise attack the week before when they learned Israel knew it was coming. Not exactly what most unbiased people would describe as a war of aggression.

14. Neuroscience and Moral Politics: Chomsky's Intellectual Progeny

Comment #86546 by tribalypredisposed on November 9, 2007 at 2:14 pm

Windweaver, golly, some Jews are or were racist. Guess we should kill them all or maybe that means Jews do not deserve to have their own nation. Why not take a good look at the ethnic cleansing George Washington and the forces of the American Revolution conducted against the Native Americans too? People still hold up George as a pretty swell guy around here. Maybe we should trot out all the examples of nations founded peacefully where no one was made a refugee or killed. Give me one example because I sure cannot think of any. How about we look for a founder of a nation who did not advocate killing lots of the people who were in the way of their nation founding?

Israel is the worlds most legitimate country. Voted into existence by the UN. Its people largely refugees from nations that showed they could not be trusted to allow Jews to live there in peace. With a million of the Palestinians who were there given citizenship and full legal status, not even pushed onto reservations like here in the U.S. Disperse the populations of most countries and they could live peacefully wherever, Jews are the population shown to be most in legitimate need of a nation of their own. But somehow this upsets people who then claim that they do not hate Jews, they just want them to be forced to live amongst racists who kill them from time to time.

War has psychological effects on humans and one common effect is that we come to think poorly of our enemies. Israel did not seek war, but it happened anyway. I am not blaming the Arabs or the Palestinians either, humans are territorial and the instinct to kill invaders is strong.

This pathetic bashing of Israel by people living in America on land others ethnically cleansed for them with no excuse other than pure greed disgusts me. Do you all love justice? Find the tribe that should own your home and give it to them. Or shut the hell up about justice and demanding that Israel let all the Palestinians return and take back their homes, which they mostly sold anyway.

15. Neuroscience and Moral Politics: Chomsky's Intellectual Progeny

Comment #86389 by tribalypredisposed on November 9, 2007 at 6:05 am

Xenocrat, I know it is hard to separate your hatred of Jews from reality but here are some facts from Wikipedia...I could use many other sources but I am lazy and dismissing such whacky ideas does not call for much effort.

The Straits of Tiran
On May 22, Egypt announced that the Straits of Tiran would be closed to "all ships flying Israel flags or carrying strategic materials", with effect from May 23.[38] The Arab Republic of Egypt established the breadth of its territorial sea at 12 nautical miles, pursuant to article 5 of the Ordinance of 18 January 1951 as amended by the Decree of 17 February 1958, in line with the provisions of article 3 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.[3] Whereas article 23 of the Convention stipulates that the ships in question shall, when exercising the right of innocent passage through the territorial sea, carry documents and observe special precautionary measures established for such ships by international agreements, the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt declared that it would require the aforementioned ships to obtain authorization before entering the territorial sea of Egypt, until such international agreements are concluded and Egypt becomes a party to them.

The position of the Government of the United Arab Republic was that the Tiran Strait, 13 miles wide, was its territorial waters in which it had a right to control shipping.[4] It was argued that Egypt whose territorial sea covered the Strait of Tiran was entitled by virtue of this very fact to require foreign ships to obtain its consent before seeking access to the gulf. [5] Nasser stated, "Under no circumstances can we permit the Israeli flag to pass through the Gulf of Aqaba." While most of Israel's commerce used Mediterranean ports, and, according to John Quigley, no Israeli-flag vessel had used the port of Eilat for the two years preceding June 1967, oil carried on non-Israeli flag vessels to Eilat was a very significant import.[39][40] There were ambiguities, however, about how rigorous the blockade would be, particularly whether it would apply to non-Israeli flag vessels. Citing international law[41] Israel considered the closure of the straits to be illegal, and it had stated it would consider such a blockade a casus belli in 1957 when it withdrew from the Sinai and Gaza.[42]

The Arab states disputed Israel's right of passage through the Straits, noting that they had not signed the Convention on the Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone specifically because of article 16(4) which provided Israel with that right.[43] However, it has long been a part of state practice and customary international law that ships of all states have a right of innocent passage through territorial seas.[44][45] That Egypt had consistently granted passage as a matter of state practice until then suggests that its opinio juris in that regard was consistent with practice.[46] Furthermore, when Egypt occupied the Saudi islands of Sanafir and Tiran in 1950, it provided assurances to the US that the military occupation would not be used to prevent free passage, and that Egypt recognizes that such free passage is "in conformity with the international practice and the recognized principles of international law.".[47] In 1949 the International Court of Justice held in the Corfu Channel Case (United Kingdom v. Albania) that where a strait was overlapped by a territorial sea foreign ships, including warships, had unsuspendable right of innocent passage through such straits used for international navigation between parts of the high seas, but express provision for innocent passage through straits within the territorial sea of a foreign state was not codified until the 1958 Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone.[48][49][50] In the UN General Assembly debates immediately after the war, the Arab League argued that even if international law gave Israel the right of passage, Israel was not entitled to attack Egypt to assert it because the closure was not an "armed attack" as defined by Article 51 of the UN Charter. Pursuant to this point, international law professor John Quigley argues that under the doctrine of proportionality, Israel would only be entitled to use such force as would be necessary to secure its right of passage.[51] This is however, contentious, as international law bodies such as the International Criminal Court as well as the International Law Commission have held the contrary as a matter of general principle. The ICC has sought to include blockading as an act of war in its statutes, as traditionally understood, while the ILC has stated that a blockade may be construed as an "armed attack" as defined in Art. 51 of the UN Charter.[52][53]

Gamal Abdel Nasser declared to the Egyptian parliament: "The problem before the Arab countries is not whether the port of Eilat should be blockaded or how to blockade it - but how to totally exterminate the State of Israel for all time".[54]

Israel viewed the closure of the straits with some alarm and the U.S. and UK were asked to open the Straits of Tiran, as they guaranteed they would in 1957. Harold Wilson's proposal of an international maritime force to quell the crisis was adopted by President Johnson, but received little support, with only Britain and the Netherlands offering to contribute ships.

Huh, Gamal stated his goal of "exterminating" Israel. Sounds sort of like.. "In May 1967, Hafez al-Assad, then Syria's Defense Minister declared: "Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. The Syrian Army, with its finger on the trigger, is united... I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation."[32]"

Huh, two of their neighboring countries leaders were talking about their goal of ethnic cleansing of all Jews from Israel. But this is all of 22 years after Hitler had tried to achieve this goal so it is just silly for the Jews in Israel to take them seriously? Is that your position, Xeno?

"During May and June the Israeli government had worked hard to keep Jordan out of any war; it was concerned about being attacked on multiple fronts, and did not want to have to deal with the Palestinian population of the West Bank. However, Jordan's King Hussein got caught up in the wave of pan-Arab nationalism preceding the war;[4] and so, on May 30, Jordan signed a mutual defense treaty with Egypt, thereby joining the military alliance already in place between Egypt and Syria. President Nasser, who had called King Hussein an "imperialist lackey" just days earlier, declared: "Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel. The Arab people want to fight."[55]

At the end of May 1967, Jordanian forces were given to the command of an Egyptian General Abdul Munim Riad.[56] On the same day, Nasser proclaimed: "The armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are poised on the borders of Israel ... to face the challenge, while standing behind us are the armies of Iraq, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan and the whole Arab nation. This act will astound the world. Today they will know that the Arabs are arranged for battle, the critical hour has arrived. We have reached the stage of serious action and not of more declarations."[57] Israel called upon Jordan numerous times to refrain from hostilities."

Golly, what aggression there, huh Xeno? Working hard to keep Jordan, from which the West Bank was seized, out of the coming war? And what country when faced by their neighbors forces massed on its borders with declarations like what Nasser said above would not just choose the path of meek wimpering and then death like good little Jews are supposed to? Huh? Heaven forbid they should respond with "aggression." Both Egypt and Syria had attack plans which the Israelis recovered, Egypt had cancelled an attack planned for May 27th under diplomatic pressure, and perhaps because the pressure included the information that Israel knew it was coming.

You can try to cook this any way you want to. Countries have the right to defend themselves, and if a war appears inevitable and the other side has stated its desire to wipe your country off the map there is nothing that says you have to wait until they attack on their own terms. Egypt had committed an act of war already and the Syrians had been shelling in the Golan for years. Jordanian forces were under the command of an Egyptian General. There is no way an honest person could look at this situation and describe it as Israeli "aggression." But then there are always plenty of people like Chomsky, yourself, that racist Hirst fellow, and so on willing to lie for their side.

Now, as to my point about your hatred of Jews, since you will commence whinning about how any critic of Israel faces these accusations and whah whah whah. I see that to you "Zionist" is a pejorative term readily combined with "terroristic" despite the vast piles of evidence that the terrorists are the ones the Israelis have been fighting since 1948, and even before.

What is a Zionist? A Zionist is someone who believes that Jews are not the one ethnic group in the world that does not have the right to have their own country with self-determination. A Zionist believes that, along with Palestinians and Kurds and Tibetans and all those other groups I am quite sure Xeno(phobic) here supports having their own country based on their ethnic identity, Jews also should have an equal right to this.

Now, someone who hates Zionism is someone who is saying that they believe Jews, alone amongst all ethnicities in the world, have no right to their own country or to self-determination. Huh. Interesting. So just Jews, but you do not hate Jews? Jews wanting to have their own country and trying to defend themselves are "terroristic," because they work so hard to avoid civilian casualties I assume, while their attackers who shoot children and blow up pizza parlors filled with people are not terrorists...because they are killing Jews? Is that your position that you arrive at because you do not hate Jews at all? Sure, we all buy that one. Got any bridges?

The so-called "Left" is chock full of you racist scum these days and that is why opposition to the war in Iraq has failed to mobilize effectively. Too many like myself refuse to march for peace alongside someone calling for the extermination of all of the Jews in Israel, and I have had that precise experience. I remember debating one fellow after the Nader rally in Madison Square Garden. Surrounded by his cohort of Brown Shirts this "Leftist" claimed that the Holocaust happened because "Jews cannot get along with anyone." This effectively shocked all of his supporters and they left.

Reality is that Palestinain terrorist attacks started in the 1880's, well before there was an Israel, an occupation, any hint of a policy they might be protesting. Reality is that the Palestinians took Hitler's side and cheered the random killing of Jews by Iraqi Scud missiles. Reality is that the side you support is the side of the terrorists and some of the blood of innocents they kill is on your hands. But you hate Jews so this will not concern you.

16. Neuroscience and Moral Politics: Chomsky's Intellectual Progeny

Comment #86259 by tribalypredisposed on November 8, 2007 at 9:18 pm

I post with little hope of either side hearing what I have to say, but here goes nothing.

Humans evolved as a group social species and these groups were and are defined by cultural boundaries. Our groups are not based on kinship. Group boundaries are established in an oppositional process comparing the in-group with at least one other out-group. Human minds automatically and on the subconscious level become positively biased towards their own in-group, tending to excuse the actions of their side if at all possible. See Chomsky. See also the article offered at the start of this thread condemning Chomsky while excusing the American killing in Vietnam with the hilarious lie that the war was winnable and the unspoken drug addled assertion that it should have been fought at all. One million dead Vietnamese.

Morality is an evolved predisposition but it must be understood more fully for this discussion to make any progress. Evolution could not select for unbounded morality towards all humans, it could only select for morality towards one's in-group. Immorality towards the out-group is the norm, as is excusing it with some rationalization.

Religion, by the way, is simply one of an infinite number of ways to define an in-group which has proven useful, perhaps more than some other means but not inordinately so, for defining the in-group as good and the out-group as evil and therefore in need of being killed. Human groups have used as little as choice of sports team to cheer for to motivate them to kill the other side; religion is not some magical thing that once done away with will allow us to live in peace.

Chomsky is biased and dishonest. But no more than most dogmatic party line touters. He has strongly committed to his group, and rational thought and facts are not a large concern. As is the norm. For example, his views on Israel. http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199102--.htm
"1. Does the U.S. oppose aggression? No.

Aggression is fine if it's in U.S. interests. It's bad only if it's opposed to U.S. interests. The U.S. invaded Panama and imposed a puppet regime still under U.S. control. The world objected so we vetoed two UN Security Council resolutions.
Turkey invaded northern Cyprus, broke it up, killed two thousand people, tried to destroy relics of Greek civilization, drove out 200,000 people. That was fine. Turkey is our ally.
Israel attacked Lebanon, killed about 20,000 people, bombarded the capital, and still occupies southern Lebanon. The U.S. vetoed a series of UN Security Council resolutions to terminate that aggression. Israel holds on to the occupied territories. It has annexed some of them. Fine. The U.S. supports Israel."

We can debate the invasion of Lebanon, but the '67 war was clearly not one of aggression and no vaguely honest historian would claim it was. That they hold territories siezed in a defensive war where the parties who attacked it have refused to make peace is hardly surprising or out of the ordinary. When has any country given back land taken from an aggressor who refuses to make peace? This is just one small example of how he has lied over and over about Israel and the Palestinians.

Some people active in this discussion clearly have the standard psychology operating in their minds; "I am good therefore my group is good therefore the out group, defined in opposition to my own, is evil." This is the same process that leads people to kill on behalf of their religion, being an atheist for irrational killing is not much progress.

Now sure, Pol Pot killed over a million and Mao put in policies that killed tens of millions, and the US has killed over a million Iraqis since 1991. Most of this killing resulted from honest desires to do good, which is what makes it even more tragic. Mao and Pol Pot honestly believed they were creating utopian societies, and at least most of the American troops and voters were unaware of the evil motives of our administration.

Yes, sometimes the leaders do have evil motives and I believe Bush to be one of those times. Neo-Conservatism is in fact a philosophy of evil, one that believes all people to be inherently selfish and that anyone would use the opportunity, if given it, to use power for their own benefit. This is the path of evil. The path of good is the opposite, it is evidenced when we see the standard interview with the hero who altruistically risks their life to help others and then says "I was just doing what anyone else would have done." The difference between a good and an evil person is this; they take opposite views of what anyone else would do.

So long as we persist in allowing our evolved paterns to continue unexamined we are doomed to keep killing each other in the name of good and peace.

For more details and relavent references to the above assertions see my paper here http://theroadtopeace.blogspot.com/