Faith in the absence of Reason

On the (mis)use of language.

Idea Lab – Why Are So Many Terrorists Engineers? – NYTimes.com. They say they believe in freedom and share our values. They say a few bad apples shouldn’t bring down judgment on their entire kind. Don’t be fooled. Though they walk among us with impunity, they are, in the words of Henry Farrell, a political scientist at George Washington University, “a group that is notoriously associated with terrorist violence and fundamentalist political beliefs.” They are engineers.

Pop quiz: What country meets the following criteria? Women are told how to dress Christians cannot profess their faith Jews cannot practice their religion You gut instinct may be to think of some state with a repressive interpretation of Islam; perhaps Afghanistan under the Taliban; perhaps Saudia Arabia. If I told you that they had declared weapons of mass destruction – and not that non-conventional stuff dressed up – but real nuclear weapons. Your first thought might be, incorrectly as we know now, of Iraq.