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Tag Archives: political science
Hunger (Strikes) Games: Palestinian Prisoners in Israel
This post has little to do with religion (aside from the Israel/Palestine debate), but I thought the subject worthy of an article on this blog. In 2012 Palestinian prisoners being held indefinitely in Israeli jails staged a massive and highly … Continue reading
Posted in Political Science
Tagged Atheism, game theory, Israel, Palestine, political science, Religion
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A Quick Quote from a Research Project I’m Working On
One of the main projects I’m tasked with this semester is to empirically analyze Islam in contemporary Europe since March 11, 2004. To do this I’m using World Values Survey data. Doing this as someone who is biased against Islam is … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
Tagged Atheism, Islam, political science, radical Islam, Religion
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Martyrs for Fundamentalism: Signaling High Costs for Religious Mobilization
By now Kim Davis is old news. She’s had her 15 minutes of fame, but several questions still linger on. Mostly the debate is settled; she broke the law and paid a very public price for it. Most of the … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
Tagged Atheism, Christianity, Fundamentalist Christians, Kim Davis, LGBT, political science, same-sex marriage
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Google Searches for “ISIS” and “Join ISIS” Compared
The other day I posted about a remarkable surge of people using Google to search for ISIS at a rate that dwarfs the previous 11 years of searches for other terrorist organizations. I discovered this using Google Trends. The visual … Continue reading
Interest in Islamic State Unprecedented: And Why Do We Care So Much?
[NOTE: Most of this was originally posted to my personal blog yesterday. For this post I’ve made some alterations appropriate to this blog’s theme.] Today I started playing around with Google Trends, a web search analysis of Google searches in real time, … Continue reading
Sicarii, Assassins, and the Islamic State: A Pattern Emerges
Total holy war and suicide attacks are nothing new. History has kept a long list of organizations popping up, committing atrocities in the name of god, and then suffering absolute defeat—sometimes these campaigns are coupled with ironic consequences for the … Continue reading
Posted in Politics
Tagged Atheism, Islam, Islamic State, political science, politics, Religion
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The Islamic State and the Obsolescence of Terrorism (SS#16)
When terrorism enters the repertoire of contention, it does so attached to a socially ticking clock. As is often the case, the clock begins its countdown well before newly emerging terror groups begin their bloody campaigns. The Islamic State (IS) … Continue reading
Posted in Science Sundays
Tagged Atheism, Islamic State, political science, Science, terrorism
2 Comments
Will the Islamic State Succeed?
This is a question I’ll be attempting to answer tomorrow. The Islamic State appears to have a lot of small and immediate victories under its belt, thanks to its willingness to use terror as its primary—if not only—weapon. In order … Continue reading
The Is-Ought Dilemma: And How a Young Suicide Bomber Learned Nothing
All we can talk about today is the reported suicide attack in Iraq by Australian teen and convert to Islam, Jake Bilardi. Jake defected from his home country and middle class Melbourne family to join the Islamic State (IS) with dreams … Continue reading
Posted in Political Science
Tagged Atheism, God, Is-Ought Problem, Islam, Islamic State, Philosophy, political science, Religion
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Self-Immolation and the Threat of Hell: Why Is Hell Insufficient to Prevent Altruism?
In my academic life I’ve been called a person who is interested in the “strange.” While most people in my field research the international political economy or diplomacy, I’m out there researching suicide protest and — the latest interest of … Continue reading
The Atheist Papers 