Tom

“When one considers deconversion narratives...it becomes apparent that a common thread woven throughout the stories of ex-Christians is the role of the church in their deconversion. Time after time, former believers claim that being wounded by church leadership or rank-and-file believers was the catalyst that started their deconversion. Therefore, if deconversion necessarily means no longer believing the claims of Christianity are true, it appears being mistreated by fellow believers has the power to elevate doubts and uncertainties to critical levels. Undoubtedly, experience shows the body of Christ has an unfortunate practice of executing their own wounded. Rather than coming alongside struggling believers and helping to bear their burden, the testimony of former believers indicates that, all too often, we (the church) add to it.”
― John Marriott, A Recipe for Disaster: Four Ways Churches and Parents Prepare Individuals to Lose Their Faith and How They Can Instill a Faith That Endures

“In 2081, the individual human in war will no longer be the hero of romantic history, but only a shivering, naked hostage to fortune: a victim. The research that first develops human-level robots, whether or not they are furnished with bodies in human shape, will be funded primarily by the military. As we already see in the development of cruise missiles, human warriors are being replaced by machines. Ultimately the glamorous figure of the wartime fighter-pilot will give way to the robot: able to withstand thousands of gravities of acceleration while the human can withstand only ten; needing no complicated life-support system; far tougher than fragile human flesh in surviving radiation; knowing no fatigue; never subject to doubt, despair, or pangs of conscience; merciless.”
― Gerald K. O'Neill

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“(Somalia) was a watershed," said one State Department official, "The idea used to be that terrible countries were terrible because good, decent, innocent people were being oppressed by evil, thuggish leaders. Somalia changed that. Here you have a country where just about everybody is caught up in hatred and fighting. You stop an old lady on the street and ask her if she wants peace, and she’ll say, yes, of course, I pray for it daily. All the things you’d expect her to say. Then ask her if she would be willing for her clan to share power with another in order to have that peace, and she’ll say, 'With those murderers and thieves? I’d die first.' People in these countries - Bosnia is a more recent example - don’t want peace. They want victory. They want power. Men, women, old and young. Somalia was the experience that taught us that people in these places bear much of the responsibility for things being the way they are. The hatred and the killing continues because they want it to. Or because they don’t want peace enough to stop it." (pg 334-335)”
― Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War