Look, i'm all in favor of religion. I have one. You can have one. but that doesn't mean you can avoid medicine. Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel, dude.
Another five employees of Tuninter, a subsidiary of Tunisair, were sentenced to between eight and nine years in jail by the court, in a verdict handed down Monday.
Let that be a lesson to anyone who would hire a Muslim. You will also pay the price for them praying in a crisis.
YES, he was a moron. Or at least not sufficiently trained to handle a hard-to-diagnose crisis. But appreciate that he was convicted for not handling the crisis (i.e. being a moron) and not for praying (i.e. being a Muslim). His co-pilot also got ten years and he wasn't praying. Five people on the ground were convicted.
wasn't that my point? Don't get me wrong. Religions are all pretty much ridiculous (even mine) but religious =/= stupid. Just because I pray at home doesn't mean I'm a complete nut job.
Uh, dude, the problem isn't Islam or your moronic, ignorant stereotypes.
The problem is the idiocy required to believe that prayer is useful or productive. Prayer is *stupid*, and the belief in the reality of space fairies is in no way unique to Muslims.
What evidence do you have that he prayed because he thought it was more useful or productive than solving the problem? The black box recording has him saying an Arabic formulation similar to "Oh God, save us!" I can't imagine that he expected results from that any more than the band on the Titanic thought that playing "Nearer my God to Thee" was going to cause a divine rescue.
I'll work on my moronic ignorant stereotypes if you do. I know from firsthand experience that prayer can be useful and productive, especially in a crisis. You do yourself a disservice by being so narrow as to believe that it cannot be.
Yeah, you're right. I shouldn't have written so as to suggest that he was prone to being ill-trained and unable to act properly in a crisis because he was a devout Muslim. I wrote in the same absurdist sense as thinking that a man was convicted for praying when the man in the seat next to him wasn't praying and received the same conviction and sentence, but I can appreciate your attitude that my statements were bigoted all the same. I apologize.
Not really. I'm thinking primarily about first-person meditative prayer for the strength to make it through the end of a hectic work day without losing my shit. There is a body of research on the subject of whether it actually does reduce stress factors, and the scientific community doesn't need my uncollaborated anecdotes to accept or reject those hypotheses.
Needless to say, I'm not asking you to accept that intercessionary prayer is effective, or even that my prayers for strength are "answered" so much as a simple autonomic physiological result of stopping to take a few deep breaths. I will ask you to accept that there is a result of this action, and it includes a sufficient increase in productivity to justify the few moments it takes to perform it. I'd be surprised if someone didn't have their own similar coping rituals even if they aren't religious in nature; I certainly did back in my agnostic youth.
I don't have access to the black box transcript, and I imagine that it wasn't in English anyway, but there are a couple of ways to imagine the scene given the news stories that I've read. You can believe that the guy lost his marbles, pulled out his prayer mat, and spent the rest of the time to splashdown asking Allah and Mohamed to fill his fuel tank. Someone else might believe that the guy turned over the controls for a moment to close his eyes and pray for steady hands and a calm heart and then retake the controls and carry out a water landing that was good enough to save the lives of a majority of the passengers, a result that is sufficiently heroic to escape culpability just about everywhere in the world -- just not Italy. The second story is definitely less funny, but it seems to be more collaborated with the facts.
Between this reply and your total lack of posts to your journal, I can understand why you are entirely Friendless on LJ.
-- Steve thinks that idiocy in a crisis is not the preserve of any particular faith or ethnicity; witness the stampede into the abbatoir recently seen in the WASPy realm of American finances.
Where are you getting this information? Have you found another article? The one linked to doesn't mention the black box recording at all, and it certainly doesn't say what these people were convicted of.
*shrug* I just entered "Tuninter" into the search bar at Google News. The story linked above is part of Reuter's "Oddly Enough" feed, but stories in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/25/tunisian-plane-crash-pilot-prayed) and Aviation Week (http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=comm&id=news/CONVICT032409.xml&headline=Tuninter%20Employees%20Convicted%20In%20ATR-72%20Crash) tell a broader and less quirky story. The American coverage seems to largely pick up on the praying angle, but the international version of the New York Times (http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/03/25/europe/EU-Italy-Pilots-Sentenced.php) points out that the International Federation of Airline Pilots' Associations argues that the crew carried out a properly-executed ditching at sea and the Italian courts are overreaching and violating international precedent to rule that the crew had the means to reach the airport.
But one could argue that I'm cherry picking my news coverage because I refuse to accept that sixteen people are dead because a man prayed.
But one could argue that I'm cherry picking my news coverage because I refuse to accept that sixteen people are dead because a man prayed.
Wow. Biased, inflammatory, and ignoring the facts. Folks, I think we've hit the trifecta!
He wasn't prosecuted for praying. He was prosecuted for praying instead of doing anything else. Praying while instigating emergency maneuvers? This is OK. Praying while shutting your eyes and hoping really hard that someone else will fix the problem? This is not OK.
Based on the links you sent,most of the people who have also been convicted bloody well deserved it--the mechanics and engineers of the company that installed a faulty gas gauge. The crew wasn't charged with anything!
They were convicted for violating basic common sense and safety procedures. No one was convicted "because they hired a Muslim." Where the fuck did you pull that from?
Huh. That's not how I read his first comment at all.
Let that be a lesson to anyone who would hire a Muslim. You will also pay the price for them praying in a crisis.
Actually, I think both interpretations work. Yours is prolly right--it's your journal *and* you have a better track record at interpreting this sort of thing than I do.
Well *geez*, didn't you see the part where he claims that Muslims are untrainable?
he was prone to being ill-trained and unable to act properly in a crisis because he was a devout Muslim
And what do untrainable people do? Pray! And saying it makes it true! Also, atheists eat babies! Baptists are made of cotton candy! Buddhists engage in orgies of sin!! Let's believe whatever crap we make up in our heads, especially if it's about other ethnic groups we've never even met! YAAAAY!!!
It doesn't sound like it's analogous to parents who choose to pray rather than getting medical attention for their children. It sounds more like he freaked out and lost it in a crisis and just started screaming out the Muslim equivalent of "Oh my god!" His sin is more about being incompetent and unfit to be a pilot rather than dependence on religiosity, at least from what I read in this article. I think these sentences are a little harsh. It would seem the onus is more on whoever hired these incompetent people to start with.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 02:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 02:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 04:44 pm (UTC)Look, i'm all in favor of religion. I have one. You can have one. but that doesn't mean you can avoid medicine. Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel, dude.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 04:43 pm (UTC)Let that be a lesson to anyone who would hire a Muslim. You will also pay the price for them praying in a crisis.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 04:45 pm (UTC)that or an inability to do two things at once. maybe he meant to get around to leveling out the plane right as soon as his prayers were done ...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 05:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-26 12:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 04:52 pm (UTC)The problem is the idiocy required to believe that prayer is useful or productive. Prayer is *stupid*, and the belief in the reality of space fairies is in no way unique to Muslims.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 05:13 pm (UTC)I'll work on my moronic ignorant stereotypes if you do. I know from firsthand experience that prayer can be useful and productive, especially in a crisis. You do yourself a disservice by being so narrow as to believe that it cannot be.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 05:28 pm (UTC)Because he chose to do it rather than doing something that had a hope of changing what was going on.
See how he was convicted of a crime for *praying while a sane person would have been doing something useful instead*?
I know from firsthand experience that prayer can be useful and productive, especially in a crisis.
At best, you're being confused by post hoc logical failures. Most likely, you're just an idiot.
And none of that excuses your being a bigot.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 05:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 08:18 pm (UTC)The scientific community at large will be interested in your anecdote to add to the greater reserve of data.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 09:51 pm (UTC)Needless to say, I'm not asking you to accept that intercessionary prayer is effective, or even that my prayers for strength are "answered" so much as a simple autonomic physiological result of stopping to take a few deep breaths. I will ask you to accept that there is a result of this action, and it includes a sufficient increase in productivity to justify the few moments it takes to perform it. I'd be surprised if someone didn't have their own similar coping rituals even if they aren't religious in nature; I certainly did back in my agnostic youth.
I don't have access to the black box transcript, and I imagine that it wasn't in English anyway, but there are a couple of ways to imagine the scene given the news stories that I've read. You can believe that the guy lost his marbles, pulled out his prayer mat, and spent the rest of the time to splashdown asking Allah and Mohamed to fill his fuel tank. Someone else might believe that the guy turned over the controls for a moment to close his eyes and pray for steady hands and a calm heart and then retake the controls and carry out a water landing that was good enough to save the lives of a majority of the passengers, a result that is sufficiently heroic to escape culpability just about everywhere in the world -- just not Italy. The second story is definitely less funny, but it seems to be more collaborated with the facts.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 05:11 pm (UTC)-- Steve thinks that idiocy in a crisis is not the preserve of any particular faith or ethnicity; witness the stampede into the abbatoir recently seen in the WASPy realm of American finances.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 07:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 08:10 pm (UTC)But one could argue that I'm cherry picking my news coverage because I refuse to accept that sixteen people are dead because a man prayed.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 08:33 pm (UTC)Wow. Biased, inflammatory, and ignoring the facts. Folks, I think we've hit the trifecta!
He wasn't prosecuted for praying. He was prosecuted for praying instead of doing anything else. Praying while instigating emergency maneuvers? This is OK. Praying while shutting your eyes and hoping really hard that someone else will fix the problem? This is not OK.
Based on the links you sent,most of the people who have also been convicted bloody well deserved it--the mechanics and engineers of the company that installed a faulty gas gauge. The crew wasn't charged with anything!
They were convicted for violating basic common sense and safety procedures. No one was convicted "because they hired a Muslim." Where the fuck did you pull that from?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 08:45 pm (UTC)He said that they got what they deserved for hiring a Muslim, because Muslims will pray instead of do something useful in a crisis.
It's still a stupid statement, but it's a different stupid statement.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 08:55 pm (UTC)Actually, I think both interpretations work. Yours is prolly right--it's your journal *and* you have a better track record at interpreting this sort of thing than I do.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-25 08:59 pm (UTC)he was prone to being ill-trained and unable to act properly in a crisis because he was a devout Muslim
And what do untrainable people do? Pray! And saying it makes it true! Also, atheists eat babies! Baptists are made of cotton candy! Buddhists engage in orgies of sin!! Let's believe whatever crap we make up in our heads, especially if it's about other ethnic groups we've never even met! YAAAAY!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-26 10:12 am (UTC)