This is actually quite simple. People all over the world are generally peices of shit. Period. If it took them getting killed to figure that out then oh well. I am glad to see that stupid hurts. People that stupid and naive are a danger to themselves and others. Good riddance.
There seems to be some sort of correlation involving AKs.
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As a general rule I’d avoid the “stans” whenever possible. But your update is appreciated.
Agreed, unfortunate that people on this board are so keen to gloat as if our fellow Americans being murdered overseas by ISIS terrorists is somehow a positive thing.
no pleasure as you claim
purely ignorance and stupidity on their part and I do think what they wrote and the path they took says it all
what they said from their blog
we’re not ruling out entire nations simply because something once happened there or because our government and that country’s government don’t get along so well.
Despite what the news would have you believe, the world is a really wonderful, caring place,
we just have to trust that the vast, vast majority of humans on this planet are warm, friendly people who wish us no harm.
a travel accident would be they went to London or France and got caught up in something !
as someone who has travelled (maybe 15+ countries) lived 3 years of my life out of a two man tent ! and maybe ten years of my life was 3 bags and that was it
and maybe 15,000-20,000 miles of it on bicycle and public buses and hitch hiking through Central America and lived in Honduras I am very aware of this kinda travel and meet a ton of folks who have done this kinda stuff
in my travels I met tons of wonderful local folks and many are kind BUT at the same time as we all know here predators seek you out and will do things to you and you avoid certain places times method of travel etc…
but most I met were not ignorant about bad people or ignore news or warnings etc…
ironic those that were that way always had horror stories
So they weren’t trying to show that people are basically good? Where did you find the real story, I’d like to check it out? And it’s terrible shame whenever anyone is murdered.
They were not trying to show that people are basically good (though that was a stated belief of theirs), or anything else – that was the implication of a misleading title (that has since been changed) in one inaccurate story (that had to be openly corrected) and other sites and folks ran with it because they uncritically buy into cheap irony and unvetted, shitty narratives if the losers are on the opposite side of the political spectrum, even if that means tacitly approving terrorists murdering U.S. citizens.
Which is f***ed.
The corrections can be found in the source story, linked in the OP.
They may have been idealistic, perhaps even naive but they had biked from South Africa to Europe and across both Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan before going in to Tajikistan. Their confidence was well earned.
“The U.S. travel advisory for Tajikistan on July 29, according to a State Department official, was at Level 1, the lowest, which means Americans traveling in the country should “exercise normal precautions.” (On Aug. 3, the advisory was raised to Level 2: “Exercise increased caution.”)”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/world/asia/islamic-state-tajikistan-bike-attack.html
Even though the headline and the basic premise had changed, it’s still evident that these two folks have a faulty view of humanity. People may demonstrate various degrees of outward kindness or goodwill but they are still fatally flawed at their very root. And their idea that work is a waste of time is just stupid. Maybe the work that they were doing was a waste of time, but that just proves their ideas were faulty not work.
That is the part that is seriously offensive to me.
So the legions of humans throughout history, who have sacrificed their own lives to save others, despite that outward kindness…were they still fatally flawed at their root?
I understand humans are capable of horrible things, but I don’t think they are inherently bad any more than they are inherently evil. I think there are people who are mostly good and I think there are people who are mostly bad and I think a lot of it is environmental.
Probably. One can be flawed and still do great things.
There has only ever been one who was not flawed at heart, Jesus. I do good thing for plenty of people, but I know there is evil in my heart. The entire Bible is full of great hero’s who did great things, yet all but one were flawed, and screwed up plenty of times.
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Steyr, of course we’re going to disagree on our anthropology. I get mine from the bible and you get your’s from the world. You talked about sin and sinners in an early post, and I suppose that was directed at me, since I’m the one who brought up God. I believe God’s testimony about man, not the world’s and especially not an empirical observation of men, because observation can not see, hear, taste, or touch the inner most workings of the inner man, but also because our senses can be deceived and our minds don’t think perfectly. The definition of sin is a violation of or a lack of keeping God’s law in thought word or deed. I doubt seriously you live up to even your own self imposed standards of right and wrong let alone the commandments of a perfectly holy and righteous God. In the end we have diametrically opposed world views and completely different standards about what makes people good or bad and how we justify those beliefs. Because a man or woman does a seemingly wonderful act from our limited perspective doesn’t negate in the least the millions of other ways in which they have sinned against the Lord. We don’t do evil because of our environment, we do evil because we are in and of ourselves corrupt to the core. The bible is THE MOST unflattering book ever written about man, and men hate it and the God who inspired it. So you may put people into your own set of categories of “these people over here are good” and these people over here are evil" based upon your outward observations, but I esteem infinitely more Jesus Christ’s observation and knowledge more than yours’. And Jesus called us evil. History itself isn’t very flattering either.
You asked me once why I believe all this because of idea of a god seemed so weak to you or something to that effect. Well I can’t think of a more profound idea than the God of the bible. It sure seems to have had a big impact on the world. But I would ask you why you believe your position is any better? What’s so profound or hopeful even about the idea that all that you are is just a chance happening of an unthinking and uncaring universe? That the universe doesn’t care whether you are here or not, that ultimately everything you think is just a chance electro/chemical reaction going on in your head, which the universe doesn’t think is any more important that the dirt on bottom of your shoe…because really their just the same things rearranged.
thought I posted this ?
Marcus Luttrell (spelling?)
folks in bad areas saved his life and stood up to the bad people so yeah their is good
again the problem is bad folks hunt down good folks and the guy that saved Marcus I reckon is on a whole other level than the bicycle folks about reality of life and bad people
And that is why I’m not religious.
When a man with all of the ordinary human weaknesses puts aside his fears, doubts, selfishness and a host of other considerations to go inside a building that’s on fire to rescue children because he knows nobody else is in a position to do it I’m going to say his heart is pretty devoid of evil. I’m not saying he’s a perfect person, I’m just saying there are a LOT of good people and they are good by every metric except the “everyone is born in sin” nonsense.
And honestly if people mostly do good things, but sometimes harbor bad thoughts that they don’t act on, at the end of the day actions are what they are judged by.
Of course it’s all foolishness to you.
Do you hope there is a loving god, do you hope that there is ultimate justice, do hope that the grave your heading to isn’t the end and do hope that your not an accident?
Yet, this man could be a child molester when he is not fighting fires.
I might do a good deed, but if I hate doing it, does it matter?
People will judge us by our actions, but God will judge our hearts.
Of course the great news is, he provided a way to wash away all that evil in our hearts, and that is with the blood of his Son. Jesus is the guy who ran into the burning building and gave his life for humanity.
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I do my best to live according to values I deem important. Isn’t always easy or even possible, but I do my best. I don’t worry about the values of a deity I don’t believe exists.
Just to clarify my position, I don’t believe in the supernatural and as a consequence don’t believe in Yahweh. I also don’t believe the the Hebrew religion answers any of the big questions, it simply relocates them.
In the simplest terms, if everything needs a creator, then who created that creator and if a creator can be eternal and without beginning then so can the origins of the universe.
Additionally, if Yahweh is real, he knows that I base everything on evidence and it would take very little for me to accept as proof of his existence. So I am currently forced to conclude Yahweh, and any other creator simply doesn’t exist or they are unwilling to afford me the scant amount of evidence I would need to save me from the damnation they created so they must not care at all.
I would like to think something else exists after we die, but given the lack of evidence either way I’m stuck at agnostic. I would like to think it’s not all just for nothing and would love to think we see our loved ones after death, but again we can’t prove anything either way so it remains just an idea.
But Pascal’s Wager works both ways, if there is nothing then I will have lived my life with enough meaning and purpose as I reasonably can and that will have to suffice since I cannot change anything anyway. And if I die and I suddenly find myself in the presence of a given deity, well that’s evidence and it’s all I ever needed.
And if I end up in Gehenna for eternity I will take comfort in the fact that there is “something after death” even if I’m consigned to the low rent district in Israel and I can take comfort in the fact that my loved ones simply aren’t “gone forever.”
As for ultimate justice, if there is existence beyond death, I don’t know that I will bring as much hatred with me. If everyone that was murdered went to a “next plane of existence”, my anger at their destruction won’t be as severe so long as the “next life” has some justice to it.
There were qualifiers in there that don’t allow for the rescuer to be a pedophile. I didn’t talk of somebody who did good on tuesday but raped kids on thursday.
And if a person HATES running into building that are on fire and rescuing children, then that person is even a better person than one who isn’t afraid. Even though it might be the last thing they want to do, that they still do it anyone, just puts them higher on the good person ladder than they might have been otherwise.
It’s a lot like the person who only does good because they fear divine judgement, in my opinion they aren’t really a good person, they are afraid of getting caught. A person who does good things because it is just how you should live because it’s right is far more impressive to me.
We are probably getting off topic, but I reread your post, and did not see any qualifiers.
I am guessing you were poking fun of gehena/gey Hinnom, but if you look at the history of that area you would understand why what we call hell is described as that area.
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