Buy new:

$9.95

List Price: $11.95

Save: $2.00 (17%)

+ $3.00 shipping

Arrives: Feb 11 - 17

Only 10 left in stock - order soon.

Ships from	NauticalBooks
Sold by	NauticalBooks

Details

Ships from

NauticalBooks

Sold by

NauticalBooks

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See this image

The Pitfall Of Truth: Holy War, Its Rationale And Folly Paperback – January 1, 2005

by Vel Nirtist (Author)

2 ratings

See all formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Paperback, January 1, 2005

"Please retry"

$9.95

$7.96

Paperback
$9.95

2 Used from $7.96 3 New from $9.95

Seeks to understand the rationale of terrorism. Contrary to the prevalent view that sociological forces like poverty are to blame, the author argues that the terrorist believes their violent actions fulfill God's will. He then demonstrates that although such confidence is erroneous, this is the prime driver of religious violence, and needs to be considered if the war on terrorism is to be won.

Special offers and product promotions

Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

SUBJECT: Terrorism; Philosophy; Religion; Spirituality

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Chapter 2: Evil Or Error?

Rather than wasting time in dissecting psychology of people like Abraham, Saul, St. Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Stalin, Hitler, or Osama bin Laden and proving them "evil," we are better off just accepting them at their word. They acted with assurance of following God's will, or worked to advance some other high Truth. The problem is, of course, that their good intentions turned to proverbial flagstones that pave the road to Hell; yet, explanations for this paradox advanced so far are hardly satisfactory. To call those who cause suffering "evil ones" is the easiest thing in the world to do, but such "explanation" simply dismisses the problem rather than help us understand what is going on. "Evil" describes something that is outside of our control and is beyond our understanding. By calling something "evil" we acknowledge that more is going on than human reasoning can explain, and, for all practical purposes, wash our hands of the problem. We give up fighting the adversary with corrective ideas and turn instead to physically wiping the enemy out with missiles and bombs.

Though military response is often an unfortunate necessity, we should not so quickly give up on understanding what is going on in the enemy's mind.

Here is why: one does not need to be "evil" in order to cause terrible suffering to innocent people. Results of an honest mistake in assumptions that underpin a perfectly good and worthy endeavor can be exactly identical to disasters caused by genuine evildoers. It is impossible to tell from results alone whether they were caused by evil, or by error.

In 1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded during the launch, and all astronauts were killed. Was NASA "evil"? Such was not the conclusion of the committee that investigated the disaster. It turned out that the launch occurred during freezing temperatures, and the rubber became brittle and caused fuel to leak, resulting in an inferno. Not "evil" at work, but human error. That same year, Soviet nuclear scientists staged a bit of a scientific experiment using one of the reactors at the Chernobyl power plant. It resulted in the worst ecological disaster in human history. And again, it turned out that Soviet nuclear scientists were not "evil;" they did not conspire to produce such a horrific event. They simply made a wrong assumption.

Perhaps something similar is causing religious violence, too. If such is the case, Osama bin Laden and his ilk are sincere, well-meaning people who cause misery because their underpinning assumptions are wrong.

This is something we can deal with. While it is beyond our powers to understand evil, we should be up to the task of uncovering a mere human error.

Actions of the pure in heart and poor in spirit can be described by a very simple formula: Zeal in pursuit of Truth brings Disaster. Two parts of this equation are not variables. Sincerity of zeal is irrelevant. The disaster it brings is obvious - it has manifested itself through terrible bloodshed on way too many occasions. The only variable left unexamined is the Truth.

Let us presently turn to this stumbling block of the pure in heart.

Product details

Publisher : Overview Books (January 1, 2005)
Language : English
Paperback : 160 pages
ISBN-10 : 1933020180
ISBN-13 : 978-1933020181
Item Weight : 0.08 ounces
Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #8,088,784 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,279 in Political Reference

Customer Reviews:
2 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star 0% (0%)		0%
4 star		100%
3 star 0% (0%)		0%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

A good start on an important subject.

Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2006

Verified Purchase

I agree with N.J. Finkelsteyn's comments. The Pitfall of Truth is a first essay and is short and somewhat incomplete. Even so, it is a good start on an important subject. Vel Nirtist asks the right questions about the truth value of revelation taken from various relgious books like the Bible and Koran.

First, how do we know that God spoke directly to Moses and the prophets? Did Moses himself write down his conversations with God? Biblical scholars continue to puzzle over this important question. Who translated Moses' words into the various languages available to us today? How accurate are these translations?

We know that Jesus wrote no books and Mark is the first Gospel writer to record Jesus's words and actions. Were the various translators of Mark's original testimony accurate or did they modify this Gospel? A fair assessment is that these scribes added and deleted material as they felt it was appropriate for their purpose. We ought not to be surprised when these authors and scribes contradict one another.

Where does this leave us? As Nirtist points out, we may not depend on books like the Bible and Koran as an absolute source of truth for the word of God. Instead, we must use reason to determine what is sensible and what is absurd in all such books. When fundamentalists of all stripes promise martyrdom and heaven as a reward for terrorism, we must reject such teaching as insane and we must censure those who promote terrorism in the name of God, or anyone else, for that matter.

How likely is it that this voice of reason will be heard by religious fundamentalists who ask their followers to substitute faith for rational thought? Not likely. Tradition substitutes for intelligent inquiry. The faith of our fathers takes the place of modern scholarship. Suicide bombers are told that paradise awaits them as a reward for their murderous behavior and every day we read reports that the madness of absolute belief in questionable sources appears to be winning the hearts and minds of true believers in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Anyone who reads Vel Nirtist's brief observations will, at least, begin to question the authority and veracity of relgious teaching in sacred books. For this reason, it is worth the small time and effort it takes to study carefully what Nirtist has to say. It is not the end of the story, but it is Vel Nirtist's thoughtful inquiry.

Helpful

N. J. Finkelshteyn

Very Thought Provoking

Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2006

The basic theme of this book is to show that the various incidents of fanatic religious violence and persecution including today's terrorism are not "perversions of religion" but plausible interpretations of the source religions.

The book is very thoughtful and thought provoking.

While it is critical of religion, it lacks the usual dismissiveness found in atheist critiques of religion and pagan critiques of "Judeo-Christianity".

...Although, the writer does lack some details, making some of his proofs more "strawmanish" then they would be otherwise.

But even with that fault, I heartily recommend it (as a religious person myself) as a "different sort" of criticism of religion - one that encourages the religious to truly examine where he is with his religion.

The weakest segment for me was a sort of "summation" chapter that attempts to give a solution to the described problem.

In my opinion, that solution is a bit circular.

While I hope that the author goes deeper into his subject and puts out a reworked second edition, I definitely recommend this book as is - to anyone interested in any of the topics covered.

2 people found this helpful