The True Believers: The Golden Age of Terrorism

By Robert Milton

In this timely, but controversial book, Dr. Robert Milton offers new scientifically oriented explanations for the events of 9/11 and 7/7. The attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and London mass transit, says Dr. Milton, represents an unsavory historical summit - a kind of new age - related to genetic, neurological, and psychological motivation.

The Golden Age of Terrorism is upon us! The why, he answers with compelling succinctness: is because we learn to believe before we learn to think.

While he gives a realistic nod of acknowledgment to economic inequities, abject poverty and exploitation of Middle East oil as contributors to Terrorism, he pursues - to a logical scientific end - what he calls a still more basic cause: the motivations of belief.

While Western Imperialism, the US support of Israel, and the war in Iraq capture the headlines as primary causes of todays Terrorism, Dr. Milton demystifies the myriad of alleged causes put forth by politicians and the media - even agreeing with those who say the emergence of Islamic extremism as a result of Quran teaching, is preposterous. True! Says Dr. Milton, it is not the words of any scripture - Christian or Muslim - that cause the problems of Terrorism. It is belief in interpretations of them.
To instill a particular religious belief as the prime motivating directive is the goal of terrorist training. How such beliefs obtain and remain within our nervous systems is the subject matter of this book.

The tendency to believe, this book asserts, is hardwired into the human nervous system. The content is not. Perhaps, we have no more choice about believing than we do about the color of our eyes. The cultural, psychological, and neurological basis of belief is explored and exposed, revealing one enlightening twist after another. Even the chapter on intelligent design, which Dr. Milton, as a scientist, advocates, reveals still another point of view.

Terrorisms Golden Age is timely update on the sciences related to malevolent human motivation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 18, 2005
• ISBN: 9781468519440

Robert Milton

Dr. Robert Milton is a graduate of the University of Southern California’s Clinical Psychology program. He has authored six books including three novels available on Amazon.com    While his world travels and interests reveal a kaleidoscope of themes, his curiosity recently led him to neuro-science and religion, particularly mysticism, which is touched upon in this novel and his recent non-fiction book Your FLEXXIBLE Brain published last year. Currently he lives in Southern California with his dog, an Ozzy Shepherd, named Mr. Dugan. He can be contacted at www.robertmiltonphd.com

Book preview

© 2005 Robert Milton Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 10/14/05

ISBN: 1-4208-8484-0 (sc)

ISBN: 1-4208-8483-2 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-1944-0 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2005908232

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

To

Isaac.

My meshugge atheist friend.

Thank you for providing a strange and twisted trail.

Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1  THE TRUE BELIEVER

Chapter 2  OUR FEAR OF CHANGE

Chapter 3  BEYOND PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter 4  BRAIN TALK

Chapter 5  GENOME MAGIC

Chapter 6   THE AUDACIOUS PHYSICISTS

Chapter 7  SUPER SUBLIME DESIGN

Chapter 8  CONSCIOUSNESS

Chapter 9  WEIRD THINGS TERRORISTS BELIEVE

Chapter 10  WAR’S GOLDEN AGE

Chapter 11  CHILDREN OF TERROR

Chapter 12  CAN TERRORISM CHANGE NATIONS?

Chapter 13  CONVERSATIONS

Chapter 14  ALLUSION, ILLUSION AND THE FUTURE

RESOURCES & RELEVANT READINGS

Introduction

Closed. You’ve seen the sign in dozens of storefront windows. It’s pretty obvious to everyone the sign means that neither future communication nor commerce will be conducted. To emphasize a point, it could be read as: stay out; we don’t want your questions or your business.

The closed signs hanging on the borders of various countries may have similar implications. In contrast, stores that place a sign in the window saying Open for business 8-5 Monday through Friday offers the possibility of a different interpretation altogether.

My personal endeavor in life, as well as in this book, is to be ‘open’. While I am not an atheist, I do not subscribe to beliefs that insist on closing down new ideas because they are contrary to established dogma or that separate people into groups of ‘our people’ and ‘not our people’. Neither do I subscribe to revealed religious doctrines  the reasons why are covered in chapters 3 and 4. At the same time I want to be always open to new thought and new findings. What I have thus far discovered about life and the universe is that the human brain  even with its hundred billion neurons  is still incapable of solving the ultimate mysteries or containing an inclusive definition of the Divine. However, I am unwilling to ‘close down’ my brain and trust to conventional interpretations of the ultimate questions simply because they are popular.

You’ve probably noticed as I have, that some religious groups carry their closed signs proudly. They are closed-minded and closed to new information, which is not consistent with their beliefs’. Tradition and their cleric’s interpretations are considered the final word on any subject. Be they Muslim or Christian, these are the people who would close down the world for the sake of their beliefs.

I am well aware that Western imperialism, economic inequities, abject poverty, societal desperation, exploitation of Middle East oil, secularism, and US support of Israel have been proclaimed as the root causes of today’s Terrorism. However, in this book we will examine a still more basic cause: the motivation of belief. A few defenders of Terrorism say the emergence of Islamic extremism as a result of the Quran is preposterous. I agree. It is not the words of any scripture that cause the problem ─ it is belief in them.

Ultimately, belief in dogmatic pronouncements may be interpreted as a need for security and emotional comfort. In other words, the big questions can often result in feelings of angst and uncertainty. At the same time, the more open you are, the more information you acquire, the more self-assurance you gain. Self-assurance allows for the diminishment of superstitions, biases and myths. A lack of openness, a lack of information, a lack of self-assurance usually leads to fixation and a chewing on dry bones of the past. For many, the past represents the right track to travel but as an American humorist once said, Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you sit there long enough.

This book is about the present and the future. We have arrived at the information age, which has evolved into A Golden Age of Terrorism. Whole countries, including our own, have been sitting on the tracks of political correctness and they are about to feel the consequences of just sitting. Attitudes and culture reflecting a ‘closed’ approach to the approaching world-wide paradigm shift will be run over. A belief system or country that incessantly chews on its past, rather than ingesting current intellectual nutrition, is going to stagnate.

Our entire global community is moving from top-echelon command and control to grass-root connection and collaboration. If your sign or your mind says closed the swift move around you and away from you will be profound and will no doubt go unnoticed until it’s too late. If guys like Osama Bin Laden have their way they will hang CLOSED signs all over the Middle East. Their fixated mind-set is anathema to openness, especially if the open sign is hanging on world trade centers or high tech institutions around the globe. If the Middle East remains closed ─ with exception of oil production ─ it will go the way of the dinosaurs and primeval forests that formed the base for that oil in the first place.

Bin Laden tried to hang a closed sign on America. Our post 9/11 strategies and attitudes suggest that he almost succeeded: We closed our airports and reflected on national fear. We closed our minds and started chewing on the aged skeletons of dogmatic pious thought. Bin Laden would like to close Arabia to the developing world. He would like to close the borders and purge the land of non-believers. He wants a religious revival to sweep the land so that government and religion are seen as one. Some have suggested that similar strategies are afoot in America.

To instill a particular religious belief as the prime directive is the goal of terrorist training. However since 9/11 we have entered The Golden Hour. This is the critical time where our hearts can be restarted or we’ll die. In order for the creative life beat to continue we must move forward not backward. The tendency to believe may be hardwired into our nervous system  the content is not. Yes, belief for human beings matters. It’s probably nestled in our DNA but the context is not. Dogmatic religious belief systems have left most of the Middle East without the technology necessary to proceed into the future, just as the lack of such dispiriting dogma in the USA has allowed us to become world innovators. The open signs in America give rise to new ideas and thought. My hope is that this book may contribute to keeping minds and hearts forever open.

P.S. An open mind does not mean an empty mind.

Robert Milton Ph.D.

Kona, Hawaii Fall 2005

Acknowledgements

I know, I know, this page is supposed to list all the people who help make this book possible. It’s impossible. Although many writers wince and whine about the loneliness of writing, for me, it is hard to imagine writing anything, without acknowledging the many others involved in the process.

The muse I experience is not just a ghost in the writing machine but rather the ongoing voices of those who are willing to graciously give of their time and talent to a project like this.

My much-respected friend and attorney, Donald, called from Big Bear, California and said, Best thing I could say about the book is that it contained several new ideas. From him, it was high praise indeed. For me, it was the energizing muse in action. Of course, his other suggestions were appreciated as well. D‘Elle has read all of my books and most of my raw thinking. For her ongoing dialog, scintillating suggestions and profound insights, I will always be grateful. I am also indebted to Karl, Bonnie, Maggie and Dorothy, my neighbors and compulsive readers extraordinaire, who gave their energy and talents to this project. Their challenging questions, more than once, allowed for still other muses to breath life into a ragged manuscript. Tina and Randy’s refusal to blow smoke was another kind of muse. Richard ─ whose weighty wisdom and alternative medicine recommendations provided insight and the physical energy to finish this book ─ I thank you.

The source of inspiration, for me, comes in many forms ─ books, journals, magazines, movies, editors and learned experts ─ but mostly it is from caring people. My wife, Verneta, is the most caring person I have ever had the privilege of encountering. She will always have my heart.

Chapter 1

THE TRUE BELIEVER

The power of belief

We have split atoms, spliced genes and sailed to outer space but our achievements seem to pale beside the barbaric pain caused by the current reign of Terrorism. Never before, has the claim been made that it is morally permissible to kill innocent men, women and children. Never before, in written history have so few frightened so many. It’s a pinnacle of a sort — an Age of unprecedented hatred and fear. Day after day, month after month good folks all around the world are being subjected to the unspeakable pain of Terrorism. It’s a pain that renders us inarticulate and destabilized so that our usual passion for life is replaced by a passion for security ─ at any cost.

Thousands  no millions  of innocent lives have been and are being sacrificed on its altar. Our new world has become a more difficult place for our new generation. Terrorism and war have become the new norms. Fortunately, there is hope. Because Terrorism does not represent one political system against another or even one religion against another — Terrorism is something altogether more thorny: Terrorism epitomizes the definitive True Believer!

Assimilating beliefs, without the possibility of doubt as a balance, is the greatest double-cross-con-job of all time. It results in a sheep-like-believer who defines the world without ever being burdened by the need to understand the world. This is the basic definition of a True Believer. Why understand when you can believe? And the real pain in the butt is that most of us learn to believe before we learn to think.

Scriptural programming

Mohammed’s 622 flight to Medina changed the Arab world. Medina became, under Mohammed’s direction, a model community of egalitarian social reform. His wealthy (and considerably older) wife supported him while he moderated the chaotic contests then in play. You’ve got to love it. His wife controlled the purse strings! A woman allowed Islam’s Prophet free time to dictate civic reforms. The power behind all that happened in those first dynamic years of reform was a woman! In point of fact, in these beginning years, women had many important leadership roles. Women’s inequality is not supported by the Quran and is not a legitimate tenant of the early faith. It is rather a result of misguided tradition instituted by male Mullahs.

After his death, seven-hundred-thousand alleged accounts of the Prophet’s words and deeds, called Hadiths came into existence. (Many of which were said to have been fabricated by individuals seeking to legitimize their own particular bias. (Sort of like US pork-barrel legislation.) Out of this tangle, Islam’s cleric establishment emerged triumphant and immediately moved from the middle-of-the-road ideologies and civil reforms, espoused by Mohammed and his wife, into a thicket of legalistic decrees and male supremacy.

These Hadith scriptures, as well as the general development of Islam, have been likened to the early Holy Roman Church which seemed to require the incorporation of apocryphal scriptures to support some of their more arcane doctrines. Further, it took about fifteen centuries for Christianity to undergo a reformation. A similar amount of time has passed since the founding of Islam. Some observers assume it is time for a reformation to break upon the Muslim world, just as it once did upon the Catholic world.

Although Mohammed was illiterate, he dictated a book that is considered by many in the Middle East as a complete education. For hundreds of years, Muslim males have been sent to specialized schools (Madrassahs) where they learn to pray and memorize this book. Their ability to recite the Quran in its entirety is considered a Holy avocation. Tom Friedman’s research revealed that believers who passed certain academic entrance exams went on to become doctors, lawyers and researchers. Those who did not pass became religious instructors. This is consistent with the research of Chris Brand, who found a potent inverse relationship between IQ and authoritarianism. As IQ decreases, authoritarian attitudes increase.

What some politically oriented theorists do not seem to understand is the incredible power a radical born-again type of experience can have in the life of a vulnerable True Believer. It has little to do with global politics or economic opportunity and a whole lot to do with being at one with their newly formed concept of God. Belief is the central issue. They are taught that the only way to be certain of getting to heaven is to die in Jihad (Holy war). To facilitate this vision the True Believer offers his life, believing that momentarily he will join Allah for eternity with eighty thousand servants and seventy two virgins. (Hadith vol. IV). Talk about adolescent fantasies! For the most part Jihadist suicide bombers are egocentric misfits. Uppermost is the promise of entering paradise immediately upon dying as a martyr. Rarely do they talk about how their deaths will lead to some lofty goal. The primary aim is personal reward. Casuistry and fallacious philosophy are at the heart of Jihadist teaching. As you will see in the quotes below, the bomber relies on selected Quran passages as a rationale for his action. He expects to get to paradise even if it is over the dead bodies of friends and foe alike.

The Quran, about two-thirds the size of the Christian New Testament, was at first passed along by readers who knew it by heart. After Mohamed’s death, perhaps to avoid confusion, it was compiled and put into a written format  in what some have called a helter-skelter way. That is, the writings were arranged in rows or suras, not in order of time or topic.

Other scholars consider the Quran confusing because of the arcane concept of abrogation by which one of the prophet’s later revelations may rescind an earlier epiphany without expunging the first. Abrogation could certainly make it tough to be consistent. But since inconsistency is one of the hallmarks of adolescence, it probably works pretty well for radical religious instruction of would-be teen-age bombers. For True Believers, quoting such writings provides a perfect escape from every logical assault on their beliefs.

When a Muslim believer is finished with his training it’s next to impossible to suggest that his learned point of view is just a belief. Like the sands of the Sahara or the palm trees of an oasis, they are just there. Imagine a Clingon from a Trekie film attempting to convince Captain Kirk that he has a belief warp drive. I don’t believe in warp drive. he would protest, It is just there and I accept it!

It may startle Westerners to realize that Quran scriptures define the belief and conduct of over a billion human beings on this earth. It’s especially astonishing when the Quran is quoted: (sura 5:39) Be on guard against Jews and Christians… they are infidels. Then later the same scriptures exhort the True Believers to kill infidels.

How is it that our US of A was so enthusiastic in endeavors to stop the spread of Communism but did nothing about an acknowledged American-hating army of religious men in Arabia? The answer may be found in the word ‘religion’. Steve Weinberg, a well-known scientist and Nobel laureate, has said, With or without religion good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil  that takes religion.

Interestingly, most of the more zealous followers believe the Quran is Holy Scripture only when written in the Arabic language, because, they explain, it existed in that form in heaven before it was handed down to Mohammad. Thus only the Arabic translation is the literal word of God! Americans may be prone to dismiss the idea of a holy language but how many times have you seen Jesus is Lord plastered on the back of some car bumper? Even though the actual word lord didn’t exist in biblical times, yet many Americans believe the word lord is of supreme significance. Actually, it’s a British aristocratic term pushed into the 1611 King James Version of the Christian Bible. In Old English the term lord meant guardian or keeper of the grain or food stores  particularly flour. The man who controlled the bread controlled the folk. I doubt that many students of Christianity would define Jesus as a control freak.

Since its growing popularity, even in the US, some have said the Quran scriptures are cryptic, contradictory and need additional interpretations that lend a truer meaning. For example, here are some quotes that seem to belie Islam as a benign world religion:

Sura 4.89 ─Kill them wherever you encounter them. (Non-believers)

Sura 9.5 ─Slay idolaters, besiege them … ambush them.

Sura 8.12 ─Those who disbelieve…smite the necks.

Sura 3.169 ─ Recon not those killed in Allah’s way as dead, nay they are alive.

It’s pretty easy to see why further interpretations by clerics could provide the yowl to war and create so volatile a reaction in the minds of young, impressionable followers.