I have religious beliefs and that is an absurd contention
Cannoli Send a noteboard - 09/01/2010 12:00:02 AM
And that is how the slippery slope begins. These types of things tend to start with that line of reasoning, with the line of reasoning escalating. If I was a more religious person, I could argue that in the real world, we aren't talking about souls but physical bodies, and as terrible as mass murder is their souls would still be saved by a God somewhere.
No serious or significant religion makes that judgment, nor does any serious orthodox believer hold that belief. The only religious justifications for mass killing would be if the targets in question had so greviously offended God that they had it coming, in which case, He is probably not going to exert Himself to save them, or else they are endangering the faith or something by their actions. The commonly heard sayings "Kill 'em all & let God sort them out" or "God will know His own" originated as exhortations in military (i.e. justifiable-killing) situations, intended to overcome the religiously-inspired squeamishness of their subordinates towards killing. You just sound like a horse's ass and reveal your own prejudices when you attribute such inept reasoning to religious believers.What Rand did was demolish those souls with little understanding if those would ever come back - judging from the behavior of him and his companions they all assumed that those souls were gone forever, and I think it's unfortunate that so many of the arguments here bring in RJ's statement to justify it.
Who cares, one way or another? Even if they ARE destroyed for all time (I don't believe that, but don't care about that anyway), it makes no difference. The state or fate of one's soul is strictly a private matter, and irrelevant to the justification of their homicide. If President Bush had decided to nuke Afghanistan and Iraq saying that the souls would be reborn in another few generations, we'd call him insane, yet in the bounds of this fictional world there are too many people IMO willing to concede that this is rational. It was not a rational act. It was the act of the madman and power mad tyrant that Rand stood on the threshhold of becoming.
Good point. But just because they are idiots does not make them wrong about Rand being justified.We actually saw this slipper slope escalate in the books: After balefiring the hundreds of people at Graendals' palace, Rand later threatens to rain fire using the Choedan Kal on the Borderlander army which consisted of thousands of people, and later even then he considers to wipe out the headquarters of the Seanchan incursion with balefire - that is a population that dwarfed what was in Graendal's place.
Thousands of people in uniform, with weapons, under agreement to unquestioningly follow the orders of their rulers who have demonstrated zero good faith, and about whom a strong cause can be made for their presumed hostility. SOLDIERS ARE LEGITIMATE TARGETS. Period. This was not a trade delegation, or convention of merchants, it was an army. They refused to explain their ends to a person they believed to have some connection with Rand, and their words regarding their intentions were all indicative of their displeasure at him. They are not his people, and he owes them nothing. Their demand that he put himself entirely in their power, even as they cozy up to a city that has behaved in an extremely hostile manner towards him in the past, whose current government replaced their former leader for her decision to release him from captivity. Rand had NO reason to think them friendly or benevolent, and they were an ARMY in threatening distance of his own followers and forces. Any other way of dealing with them would have entailed greater risks to people he IS responsible for. He was justified in what he planned to do to the Borderlanders AND to the Seanchan. If they don't like it, they shouldn't have come. The "innocent" civilians have had plenty of time to move away (as for example, the Anan family did, in their moral outrage over the Seanchan institutions), but have chosen the Seanchan. They are all culpable. The problem with rationalizing these types of things is that you lose your humanity by denying that other people have a valid right to existence.
And you moralizers lose your credibility by denying that other people have a valid right to protect their own existence. In other words, no one's right to exist takes precedence over your own. You have the right to kill anyone who endangers your existance, as does Rand.
Cannoli
"Sometimes unhinged, sometimes unfair, always entertaining"
- The Crownless
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Deus Vult!
"Sometimes unhinged, sometimes unfair, always entertaining"
- The Crownless
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Deus Vult!
Rand the psycho?
06/01/2010 02:53:30 AM
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I cannot follow your assumptions.
06/01/2010 04:07:33 AM
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Re: I cannot follow your assumptions.
06/01/2010 04:59:12 AM
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Wait!
06/01/2010 05:10:33 AM
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Re: Wait!
06/01/2010 05:20:02 AM
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Re: Wait!
06/01/2010 05:58:00 AM
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Re: Wait!
06/01/2010 11:46:13 AM
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I doubt he meant 'in one go' as a single stream of balefire.
06/01/2010 07:30:56 AM
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Re: I doubt he meant 'in one go' as a single stream of balefire.
06/01/2010 03:32:24 PM
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Re: I doubt he meant 'in one go' as a single stream of balefire.
06/01/2010 09:52:47 PM
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Re: I doubt he meant 'in one go' as a single stream of balefire.
06/01/2010 11:19:56 PM
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Re: I doubt he meant 'in one go' as a single stream of balefire.
07/01/2010 12:21:50 AM
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Re: I doubt he meant 'in one go' as a single stream of balefire.
07/01/2010 12:56:26 AM
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Re: I doubt he meant 'in one go' as a single stream of balefire.
07/01/2010 01:46:16 AM
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Of course, I agree with you, esp since I just put forth the idea you support earlier in the thread.
11/01/2010 04:58:26 PM
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Rand crossed a line
06/01/2010 02:36:42 PM
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Doesn't Balefire remove your thread from the Pattern permanently?
06/01/2010 02:55:38 PM
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No, RJ stated balefired people can be reborn. *NM*
06/01/2010 03:26:00 PM
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But not in this turning of the Wheel. So they'd miss out on MANY lifetimes.
06/01/2010 05:46:04 PM
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No, balefire just kills you backwards in time. It is not super-death. *NM*
06/01/2010 09:58:18 PM
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LOL ... super-death!
06/01/2010 11:59:31 PM
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Yes it was.
06/01/2010 06:51:15 PM
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Re: Yes it was.
06/01/2010 07:16:14 PM
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Re: Yes it was.
06/01/2010 08:58:40 PM
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Re: Yes it was.
06/01/2010 10:47:11 PM
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let me ask the question in a different way
06/01/2010 11:26:43 PM
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Re: let me ask the question in a different way
06/01/2010 11:40:56 PM
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actually that quote supports my thoughts
06/01/2010 11:50:40 PM
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Re: actually that quote supports my thoughts
07/01/2010 12:10:07 AM
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yet it could take him some undetermined amount of time to figure out your dead?
07/01/2010 12:34:34 AM
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Re: yet it could take him some undetermined amount of time to figure out your dead?
07/01/2010 01:13:40 AM
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Meh. I just think advocating mass-murder is the opposite direction RJ meant for this to take.
07/01/2010 12:00:44 AM
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Sigh. What mass murder?
07/01/2010 12:15:01 AM
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In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
07/01/2010 03:14:32 PM
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Re: In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
07/01/2010 03:57:43 PM
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Re: In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
07/01/2010 07:13:21 PM
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Re: In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
07/01/2010 07:52:24 PM
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Re: In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
07/01/2010 08:56:43 PM
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Re: In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
07/01/2010 09:26:01 PM
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Re: In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
07/01/2010 09:30:45 PM
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Personally I'm kind of sick of Rand being the only person killing FS!
07/01/2010 09:42:57 PM
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Re: In this book Rand was a wimp and a bully.
07/01/2010 09:56:02 PM
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OK I'm sorry but this gets a huge ROFL :lol:
07/01/2010 10:30:19 PM
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Yes. Anakin Skywalker all over again
06/01/2010 11:01:02 PM
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Meh
06/01/2010 11:30:24 PM
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The worst part about his atrocities is his rationalizing them!
06/01/2010 11:33:32 PM
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Re: The worst part about his atrocities is his rationalizing them!
06/01/2010 11:50:37 PM
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Re: The worst part about his atrocities is his rationalizing them!
06/01/2010 11:55:03 PM
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I do have to guiltily say, though, that if Rand had balefired the Seanchan and THEN became good...
07/01/2010 12:03:20 AM
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Re: The worst part about his atrocities is his rationalizing them!
07/01/2010 12:23:11 AM
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I don't think Rand or LTT (who has/have) little capacity for Healing
07/01/2010 12:52:25 AM
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Re: I don't think Rand or LTT (who has/have) little capacity for Healing
07/01/2010 01:24:32 AM
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Re: I don't think Rand or LTT (who has/have) little capacity for Healing
07/01/2010 03:33:52 PM
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Re: I don't think Rand or LTT (who has/have) little capacity for Healing
07/01/2010 04:28:18 PM
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right cause all Generals are so well versed in medical conditions
07/01/2010 09:44:09 PM
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Nice way to avoid the argument.
07/01/2010 10:00:17 PM
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I'm just done talking in circles. You seem to think that because people
07/01/2010 11:53:05 PM
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I concede
07/01/2010 01:09:11 AM
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You weren't wrong overall, but there were some serious flaws in your reasoning.
07/01/2010 02:43:17 AM
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Morals are subjective anyhow,
07/01/2010 06:23:09 AM
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Re: Morals are subjective anyhow,
07/01/2010 03:23:59 PM
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I have religious beliefs and that is an absurd contention
09/01/2010 12:00:02 AM
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You are treating Graendal's "pets" as though they were enemy combatants
07/01/2010 03:40:03 PM
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Like I give a damn what a group of professional killers would do.
08/01/2010 11:39:11 PM
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Graendal captured these people as part of the Shadows offensive, Operation Chaos Rules
09/01/2010 12:00:40 AM
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Well, I still liked your first argument. It's a freaking war. The argument ...
07/01/2010 07:08:53 PM
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