Overview
The last ditch for Dante is the home of Alchemists, Evil Impersonators, False Witnesses, and Counterfeiters. In The Infernova, the final Bolgia is the home to Terrorists, specifically the ones motivated by religious fervor. What else can be said about them? What more can be said of the efficacy of irrationality in motivating otherwise intelligent and normal young people to commit such heinous crimes? How much harder is it to sway someone to give their life and take the lives of innocents without the promise of eternal rewards?
Comments
Until religious fundamentalism disappears, this ultimate manifestation of irrationality is not going to go away. The "solution" proffered by Christian fanatics to deal with Islamic fanatics isn't any better than the problem itself. In the film Jesus Camp, the preacher Becky Fischer says:
"It's no wonder, with that kind of intense training and discipling, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have... excuse me, but we have the truth!"
No, you don't have the truth. You have fantasies that cannot be supported by anything concrete, which is why indoctrination and violence are the tools that religious fanatics eventually have to turn to. The segment of human society that actually pursues matters of truth and knowledge don't train their youths to readily accept suicide bombing missions. Scientific conferences do not culminate in different sides of an issue "radically laying down their lives." This isn't necessary when reality is the final arbiter of claims -only when the claims are so vapid and insubstantial that they have no basis in reality at all.
