VLC contributor living in Aleppo writing about the Paris attacks

1.) The boundary of my beliefs - in terms of people offending me by what they say or write - I really don't care and don't get offended. I have zero expectation for people who don't adhere to my beliefs to say things in line with them. If another person who is a Christian says things I think are really out of line, it wouldn't offend me but I'd try to engage them and work it out - but people who don't believe in it, I don't expect to act like they do. If a person who is of another faith or an atheist is interested in discussing something like the validity of the Bible, I'm happy to have that discussion as long as it is a real discussion. If it's a debate with us just mindlessly exchanging arguments, I have better things to do.

2) I don't think IT and religion are at odds in any way. The tension happens more at the level of your next question. IT is too far removed from those fundamental questions. In fact, as someone who's life is focused on sharing a message with as many people as possibe, IT is awesome.

3) This is trickier. If something is for sure a scientific fact and it conflicts with what I believe my faith teaches about the nature of the world then my assumption is that I've somehow misunderstood what my faith teaches. The only authority I recognize for this is the Bible - so to simplify the discussion - if a fact contradicts what I believe the Bible says then I assume my understanding of the Bible is wrong and I adjust. For your two examples - coming to understand evolution and fit it into my faith has been an on-going process for me over a lot of year. The Big Bang is something that fits my world view better than one that proposes God does not exist.

4) Same as above but I think that a lot of what people believe to be "historically proofed facts" about the Bible are in fact wrong and reflect a lack of information with regards to current knowledge on history. A lot of theories about when parts of the Bible were written and who wrote them rest on the bias of the theories authors rather than any facts. For instance I believe the New Testament was written by people who knew Jesus Christ, saw what he did in person or knew people from that group. I do not think it was written much later by people creating a religion.

If I were to find out something I believe to be true is absolutely false - I would evaluate and adjust. I've done it in my lifetime. It's something I do about more than just my faith. My politics have changed during my adult life and lots of beliefs I have, have moved as I experience more and learn more. I've been living in Europe for 4 years, for example, and in that time I've changed my mind about lots of things. It has been a real education. I don't cling blindly to any opinon. I don't mindlessly follow any 'leaders' teaching or instructions.

Hope that's the kind of feedback you are interested in - if you want to continue the discussion feel free to email me if that's easier than here - bittercode@gmail.com

The reason we (i.e. "The West") left Saddam in place until the US needed an easy target after 9/11 is that despite being a dictator and mass-murderer, his reign kept Iraq relatively stable. As soon as he was taken out of the equation other forces began to fight for dominance and now we have a huge mess on our hands that's arguably worse than where we started.

The same is true for most of the dictatorships toppled during the "Arab Spring". This is partially why Russia was against intervening in Syria from day one and why nobody seems to think Saudi Arabia or Qatar or any of the other bloody dictatorships in that region are worth disrupting.

In many cases the actual borders of these countries are pretty arbitrary and split up various ethno-religious groups (that often historically hate each others' guts) in weird ways. As soon as you tell them to self-govern and dispose of the dictators you end up with all these directly opposing interest groups suddenly being able to get at each others' throats.

It's not that Assad is a nice person or that it's more ethical to leave an evil person in place than to dispose of him, it's just that mindlessly handing out guns and expecting an oppressed people to be rational is pretty much the worst thing you can do.

Look at WW2 Germany. Sure, we got rid of Hitler, but in order to prevent Germany from blowing up again (exactly what had happened after WW1) the Allies actually had to work out long-term plans for the occupation of Germany to make sure the citizens were educated enough to understand how messed up their world view used to be and that the country was re-integrated into world economy and politics.

We need a Marshall Plan for Syria with buy-in from several major influencers. THEN we can talk about disposing of Assad.