It horrifies me that we should have to say this. But I will say it anyway:
DO NOT FUCKING WELL KILL PEOPLE BECAUSE YOU DON’T LIKE RELIGION.
I will quote myself from Why Are You Atheists So Angry?:
So yes, I would like to see religion eventually disappear. I would not, however, like to see this disappearance happen in any sort of coerced or enforced way. I would not, for instance, like to see laws passed against religious beliefs or practices. I absolutely don’t want violence done to people because of their religion. I don’t even want social pressure exerted against religion or religious believers, except to the degree that arguments constitute social pressure. I want believers to be free to practice their beliefs however they choose, as long as that practice doesn’t unreasonably impinge on my life or the lives of others.
Context, in case you haven’t heard: Three young Muslims were murdered in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The man arrested for the murders, Craig Stephen Hicks, is a self-described atheist and opponent of religion. So I will spell this out, as clearly as I can: I unequivocally condemn the Chapel Hill murders. They were unspeakably vile. Killing people because you oppose the harm done in religion’s name — do I even need to explain how repugnant that is, and why? It is repugnant. I unequivocally condemn it.
I can only speak for myself, but if I don’t accept religious morons murdering people, why would I condone non-religious morons doing the same?
Thank you, miss Greta.
Go over to the fucked up PZ blog, where saying someone may have a mental problem is sufficient to get you banned. The incestuous bunch is tarnishing atheism right there, you don’t need any fucked up killer to do that job.
#2 I think you’ll find Greta isn’t going to welcome an ignorant “diagnosis” of mental illness any more than PZ will. I have read nothing that indicates the murderer had a recognizable mental illness. He was just an arrogant gun-fondler, and that, unfortunately, is a very normal thing to be in America these days.
@2:
I don’t think Greta will welcome your mental health diagnosis via the internet any more than PZ did.
[…] this post by Daz, this post by PZ Myers, this post by Aron Ra, this post by Heina Dadabhoy, this post by Greta Christina, this post by Dana Hunter, this post by Ed Brayton, this post by Ophelia Benson, […]
Actually, 9780007103072xxx, Greta will be even less forgiving to your ableism than PZ was, so complaining here is worthless.
Greta… thanks for this. I badly needs to be said, again and again.
Also, totally unrelated, but Greta, I can’t subscribe to your blog at all. The options are there, but I never get an email and it never shows up in my subscriptions… 🙁
‘DO NOT FUCKING WELL KILL PEOPLE BECAUSE YOU DON’T LIKE RELIGION.’
That goes without saying. But equally, what does this loon have to do with you or me? ‘Anti-Theist’ is a sub-set of atheist. It is no where close to describing the whole; even if you think there is an atheist ‘community’. Do we have holy books or a creed that defines us? Even using ‘we’ makes me uncomfortable. Leave the tribalism to the religionists and their ilk.
Steve… quick question:
Do you demand that every theist everywhere condemn and apologize for the actions of fanatic theists?
Re @3: 9780007103072xxx has been banned. Unsurprisingly. I have no patience with deliberate and knowing slurs against the mentally ill — and I have less than no patience with the vile idea that an atheist blogger who bans commenters somehow tarnishes atheism worse than an atheist who literally murdered people.
Carlos Moya @ #1: I appreciate the sentiment. But can you please not use the word “moron”? See above, re: language that’s insulting to the mentally disabled. (I’ll assume that you just didn’t know that, and give you a pass this time, but please don’t do it again in the future.)
Steve Watson @ #7: When religious believers commit violence and murder motivated by religion, atheists are extremely quick to speak out against it. That is especially true when the violence or murder happens to atheists. If we don’t want to be giant hypocrites, we need to speak out against it.
We need to make it clear that this action does not represent our values, and that we abhor it.
And yes, there is an atheist community. A group of people don’t all have to agree about everything, or even about most things, to be a community. Look at the LGB community: technically, all we have in common is that we think people of the same gender are hot, and yet we’ve built a strong community and a powerful political movement. If you don’t like it, don’t comment on atheist blogs. That’s a big part of where this community happens.
Finally: Do not use the word “loon” as an insult in my blog again. Especially don’t reflexively blame violence on mental illness — and don’t use mental illness to explain it away. There are two key things to note here: (1) When black people commit violent crimes, they get called thugs; when brown people commit violent crimes, they get called terrorists; when white people commit violent crimes, they get called mentally ill. (2) When violent crimes immediately get explained as a result of mental illness, it contributed to the harmful stigma against the mentally ill — of which I am one. These are harmful and bigoted patterns. Knock it off, or get out of my blog immediately.
I think that the intellectual fight of the atheists against religious people is ill aimed. You are not opposing the right concepts. It should be more a fight of scientific & rational minded people against irrationality and superstition. And given your post about why do you hate religion I think you agree with me.
Putting the focus on atheism vs religion is a huge error, because it may be well possible that becoming atheist (in general, not in addition to becoming a rational person) is in average leading (or correlated) to these violent anti-theist mindset. We are not striving for an atheist world but a rational, skeptical, scientific one. Also it allows our opponents to come e.g. with Stalin’s killings. “-Stalin was atheist!” “-Yeah, but he was irrationally following an ideology”, “-But weren’t you on the atheist side? Why don’t you defend Stalin?”.
Rationalism implies atheism/agnosticism, but the other way around is not always true, and the Chapel Hill event makes this crystal clear.
Hence, in my opinion the adequate response to these kind of events is not: “I condemn this because it has nothing to do with atheism”. Because this response is also used by religious people: “I condemn this beause it has nothing to do with Islam”. The correct way should be: “I condemn this because it is irrational”. This is something religious people cannot say.
Another example: “Why are you atheists so angry?”… well this guy is angry but I am sure that you don’t feature his “reasons” in your book 🙂 If your book were titled “Why are you rationalists so angry?” it would be another story. Although maybe not that sellable!
Oh, is that so? Sorry, my fault. English isn’t my first language and I wasn’t aware of that second meaning of the word (I had to look it up). You’re right, I didn’t mean to insult genuinely disabled people by comparing them with murderous bigots; from now on if I end up aiming a negative term at somebody I’ll do my best to avoid any collateral damage (sorry for the euphemism), and doubly so in languages I haven’t mastered. And again, sorry.
PS: I guess “fool” carries the intended sentiment and it apparently lacks unintended insults, am I right?
tl;dr
:%s/moron/fool/gand sorryIgnacio Calvo Martínez #10:
I don’t think it’s the correct way – mainly because I’m one of those who find it quite possible to be both rational and immoral (or cruel, or unfeeling, or self-centered …) at the same time. “I condemn this because it’s horrible/vile/immoral” fares much better. However, even this is not enough.
Greta #9:
I agree. It seems to me also that we need to do far more than that; unfortunately, no single statement will be able to achieve this more far reaching goal. If there is something like “the correct way” (I’m not sure at all if it exists), our point of arrival should be the end of dehumanization. In the end we should be able to tell ourselves “we have a community which doesn’t dehumanize anyone. Even our opponents are treated by us like people, not like ‘obstacles’, not like evil monsters, not like rubbish to be disposed of at the first available opportunity”.
I don’t know if “the correct way” exists. I’m pretty sure though that even if it does, it will take us quite a long time to traverse it.
How about “because it’s monstrous, abominable and inhuman” then?
Criag Stephen Hicks looks like a straight-up Islamophobe, regardless of his atheism.
Truly unnecessary and horrific actions on his part. This man does not represent the ethical atheism that I recognize.
Sad beyond belief. : – (
[…] So let’s say that there was at least some religious motivation mixed in there. A number of prominent atheists have jumped up to publicly denounce these […]
Ignacio Calvo Martínez @ #10: What post about why I hate religion? I’ve written a post (and a book) about why I’m angry at religion. Hatred and anger are not the same thing.
It is possible to oppose irrationality and superstition, and focus your opposition on one particular area of it. Example: People who work to oppose anti-vaxxers or religious homophobia.
Why is it so important to say something religious people wouldn’t say? If atheists and believers alike can look at these murders and say, “This is abhorrent,” why on earth would that be a problem?
And in fact, I don’t condemn these murders because they were irrational. There are plenty of aspects of human life that are irrational, and that I don’t condemn. I condemn these murders because they were morally abhorrent.
[…] from the Freethought Blogs Network have expressed their thoughts on the killings, including Heina, Greta Christina, Dana, Ed, and Jason. I highly recommend reading Jason’s which focuses on tribalism and identity […]
For me, the answer is an easy ‘no’. No organisation of __________ demographic is at all accountable for the crimes of individuals belonging to that group without evidence of involvement, so I don’t agree that there is a necessity to rush to denounce such actions. Unfortunately though, demands are made of muslim group in particular whenever a muslim commits an atrocity, which is unfair on that group. It almost as if this largely christian nation has a history of demonising Islam or something…
Anyway, to a lesser extent this also applies to atheist groups. The christian seem to love nothing more than an excuse to proclaim other groups as being immoral, and you can bet there are many conservatives that are seizing on the word ‘atheist’ and running with it. No word yet on all the christian murderers except cries to “stop making this political!”… Similarly, black people are unfairly smeared by a black murderer, with complaints of playing the ‘race card’ (or even more ludicrously, ‘false flag’) if a white guy murders some non-white people; “oh em gee Obama and his racial politics!”
And now a white atheist guy has murdered three muslims. The cynic in me suggests that this is not very different to what the American military routinely does abroad, but of course having a foreign policy of war against brown people is totes nowhere near as bad because freedom and terrorists doncha know… anyway, now the largely christian establishment has turned its suspiciour gaze on us. Sadly, we kinda have to denounce this shit lest we be considered to be tacitly endorsing the murder or some shit. It’s unfair, but I would guess Islamic-looking people have it worse.
It occurs to me belatedly that christians aren’t the only ones prone to gleefully tarnishing groups based on such tenuous grounds: atheists do too. Well, all groups do, but we can’t exclude ourselves just because we aren’t nearly as influential as christianity. I hear Sam Harris in particular is fond of this smear bullshit.
So, I must be missing something in this whole story. I have yet to read any information that directly links mr. HIcks non-religious beliefs with these murders. The police have only said it’s unclear if religion played in role in the actions and apparently the murders were committed due to continued feuds over noise and parking situations. What I’ve read indicates HIcks was merely an angry gun-toating dick and it was these three students bad-luck that their feud with him happened to be the one that set him off. The fact that they were muslim and he atheistic seems to have nothing to do with the situation so why are we dragging that into it?
Greta if you’re just condemning the murders because they’re morally abhorent that’s fine but on average there are about 40 murders every day, so unless you’re writing a shit ton of these blurbs every day I’m not sure why you’re targeting this situation and presenting it in the light of murder due to religious persecution, I’m not sure where that angle is coming from. Has the perp made claims or admissions I’m unaware of?
I would suggest that it is because there is a twisted expectation every time something horrible like this happens: if the person is christian, then religion played no part of the killing; if the person is non-christian, then that group is tarnished by association unless they immediately and earnestly condemn the killings. And even then, the suspicion remains… this will remain a factoid for abuse every time some conservative politician wants to pander to the religious base by passing some new bullshit legislation. In certain Fox-watching circles, this will forever be a Mass Murder By An Evil Atheist.
Thus, we jump through hoops time and time again to try to get the unreasonable suspicion to abate. I can only speculate how tired muslim groups are of this shit, they have it worse.
As for this particular travesty, I think I agree with you: as yet, no evidence that this was anti-muslim specifically, though there is always the hard-to-pin-down possibility that religion coloured things slightly even if it was not a primary motivator. So far, what I have read leads me to believe that this was an acrimonious fued + gun + anger. A clear argument against widespread gun ownership, or at the very least an argument against public carrying, but of course guns can’t be mentioned any more than christianity can.
Holms @ #16: I think that’s too simple. Of course individuals are ultimately responsible for the crimes they commit (with the exception of a few situations). But culture and sub-cultures can create climates that make people more likely to commit certain crimes. We can create climates that make people think certain kinds of crimes are morally acceptable, less likely to be prosecuted, etc. That’s what we mean when we talk about rape culture. If atheist culture is in any way contributing to anti-Muslim hatred and bigotry, we bear some responsibility for it. At the very least, we bear the responsibility for pushing back against that part of the culture by denouncing it.
queermodernhippie @ #18: I will warn you right now: have a very short fuse for this particular form of defensive wagon-circling. I will explain this once, but I will have little or no patience with further attempts of this nature.
So. To answer your question:
1: Hicks posted several anti-religious posts online, including posts against Islam.
2: Hicks had repeated disputes with the neighbors he murdered, in which he bullied and threatened them.
3: Hicks had disputes with other neighbors as well over similar issues — but the Muslims were the ones he murdered.
4: The murders were described as “execution-style,” which, if so, is indicative of an intentional hate crime.
5: The murders could have been motivated by a parking dispute, and also by anti-Muslim bigotry. Those are not mutually exclusive. Saying, “This was about a parking dispute” does not rule out the idea that it was also a hate crime.
6: Anti-Muslim bigotry is common in the United States (and elsewhere), and it’s common in the atheist community, which often uses atheism and reasonable opposition to religion as a way of masking or justifying it. It’s not exactly an extraordinary claim to think that this was part of the motivation for these murders.
I don’t know if the evidence will eventually support a legal case of a hate crime. But we’re not on a jury. We don’t have to use the stringent legal standard to make a reasonable conclusion that anti-religious and anti-Muslim bigotry was very likely at least part of the equation.
7: If the situation were reversed, and three atheists had been murdered by a religious believer with a history of posting anti-atheist sentiments online and a history of bullying and harassment towards the victims, the atheist community would be all over it. We would be screaming at the top of our lungs about how religion inspires violence, and how religious believers have an obligation to speak out against the violent strains in their culture. It is therefore hypocritical in the extreme for atheists to be responding to these murders with, “No, don’t be ridiculous. there’s no reason to think this had anything to do with atheism or anti-Muslim bigotry. It’s all about ethics in parking.”
As I said above in comment #20: Ultimately people are responsible for our own actions — but we don’t act in a vacuum. Cultures and sub-cultures make people more likely or less likely to commit certain kinds of crimes. If anti-Muslim bigotry in atheist culture contributed in any way to these murders, we are at the very least responsible for pushing back against that bigotry in our culture.
And I will now repeat: You are walking on very thin ice. I have seen way too much of this defensive, denialist wagon-circling from atheists in the last few days, and it is making me sick to my stomach. Knock it off, or get out of my blog.
Greta, I grant that most of your points especially number 7. are extremely valid. If the situation were inverse our community would be all over it I hadn’t really thought about those terms upon making that post but reading your comments I realize you are completely right our reaction would be intense and I can understand the inverse.
I think it’s a shame we all have to be so eager to find and drag larger cultural issues into any event that could possibly be remotely connected. If the opposite of this happened and an islamic believer made a few online posts generally about not liking atheists and then in an incident that was, as far as the evidence shows, only related to atheist-hating in that atheists died instead of religious folk, he murder three atheist students over a dispute, I think it would be the shame that our community would be all over that regarding religious violence. Because that does seem like extrapolation and a major intellectual leap. I understand they’re not mutually exclusive, my point was that I had read nothing indicating there was a direct link between expressing anti-religious ideas and these murders, which your posts and articles all over different news sites are indicating. Your bold quote regarding killing over not liking religion really indicates that there is indisputable evidence that these murders were entirely a result of anti-religious feelings which just doesn’t seem to be the case. Now I know this probably sounds like meaningless symbolic digging in the sand but I’m just trying to explain my objection is to this reactionary culture where we exaggerate connections and extrapolate any meaning to make larger points. Just to be clear I completely agree with your larger point, murdering people over their beliefs is completely fucked up and I 100% support you condemning it and I also think your reacting on this knowing if the situation were reversed you’d be reacting on that is admirable. In the end whether the facts are exaggerated or not is probably of little consequence considering the larger issues deserve to be made, so it is a petty qualm I made and I’m sorry it frustrated you so much. I don’t wish circle-the-waggon in defense of obviously indefensible actions. The fact that a self-described atheist committed these actions is disgusting and frustrating for me I assure you. And whatever role anti-religious feelings played, for I admit you’re right they probably did have some involvement, I universally condemn the expression of them in this fashion as well. I completely and utterly agree with your quote from your book, if force has anything to do with transition from religion than the transition has been comprised. Killing anyone for any belief of any kind goes as fundamentally against my beliefs as anything in the world. I think my personal sensitivity and disgust towards those actions is part of why I wish them to only be acknowledged where they actually exist and why I was defensive in that regard. But again, you’re almost certainly right that those views likely played some role in these murders so I retract my dissent and thank you for making it clear to me why you’re fighting this issue.
carlosmoya @11,
I have called Craig Hicks an asshole. Yes, in its original sense, asshole is a different thing, and I try to use my own of that sense of asshole every day. But I think which sense is clear when calling Hicks an asshole.
Also, thank you for 4. regarding the execution-style thing, I had not read that and that bit of circumstantial evidence does help me understand this link a little more. Again I apologize for aggravating you with my ignorance and symbolic pointing but your reaction really helped me better understand this issue so I appreciate that.
#15 Greta
I stand corrected, although I must say that anger an hatred are very similar by the dictionary (anger: a strong feeling of displeasure or rage; hatred: a feeling of intense dislike).
I don’t say it is not possible, just that it can be counterproductive to stand for atheism since your main arguments against religion can be hold against blind followers of ideologies. And there are atheists in this latter group.
Why are they morally abhorrent? I mean, OF COURSE they are, I am asking where do your morals come from?
#12 Ariel
Well, then I think we don’t agree here. If you are doing actual rational thinking and concluding that you must kill some guys because they are Muslim, I am pretty sure that your premises are wrong. And I will ask you the same I asked Greta: what does “immoral” mean? Or better: where do your morals come from?
Ignacio Calvo Martínez @25
The Golden Rule and empathy are good bases for a moral system. To learn more about atheist morals, you can read Greta’s article The Not So Logical Conclusion: On the Morality of Atheists and Believers.
One important thing to consider about morality, nobody, not even the most hardened fundamentalist god-botherers, has an absolute system of morality. All morality is relative.
Ignacio Calvo Martínez #26
You misunderstood me and it is not here where we disagree. There might have been be a lot of false premises, sure, I’m far from questioning it! What I’m saying is rather: it is *not* because your premises were false (or irrational) that your deed was morally abhorrent. In short: it’s not about rationality.
Quick example: sometimes people murder with greed as the motive. Sometimes they calculate, assess the risk, deem it worth taking (very rationally, given their aims) … and carry out the plan. I would say that premeditation and cold calculation (rationality) doesn’t make the deed less morally abhorrent – if anything, perhaps just the opposite. Again, it’s not about rationality.
Sorry, I don’t have a better answer than Al Dente above. Empathy, and in particular the sensitivity to other people’s suffering? The golden rule as an expression of the ability to empathize? These are indeed the ideas which I find congenial. Moreover, at the moment the attempts to subsume them under the concept of rationality (especially on the individual level, as opposed to the social one) look to me like a fool’s errand.
Ignacio Calvo Martínez @ #25: Sigh. Really? Okay, fine.
My morals come from:
1) the fact that human beings evolved as a social species, and that along with other human beings and other social animals, I was born with an innate sense of morality. (Morality has been observed in many other social animals.) As a social animal, I have a sense of compassion, fairness, loyalty: I have an instinctive emotional drive to act with compassion and fairness and loyalty, and a negative emotional reaction when others don’t.
2) the philosophical understanding that other people matter to themselves as much as I matter to myself, and that from an objective viewpoint, none of us matters any less than anyone else.
In other words: Morality, like so much of other human experience, is a blend of a rational experience and an emotional one.
Anti muslim bigotry has been known to lead to attacks on Sikhs, and even latin americans who were unlucky enough to be seen in public by enraged fools. (not to insult the Jester Community)
A deranged, gun-toting, neighbor from hell has killed three people. By all accounts upstanding and noble folks. It may never be possible to parse out the percentages that parking and religion contributed.
And, it is FAR TOO EARLY to make confident claims about Hicks’ theological opinions, as much as it is around his mental health. ‘Atheist’ is not a belief system, nor is the neologism ‘anti-theist’ a clear label either.
If Hicks were a red-diaper Stalinist, a Randroid, or a conventional psychoanalyst, he could with equal justification be called ‘atheist.’ How much would that really mean? Hicks is alive, and ‘cooperating with investigators,’ it would be good to learn more of what went on in his mind.
johnthedrunkard @ #30: Hicks posted his theological opinions on Facebook pretty extensively.
There is no such thing as a No True Atheist. Hicks is an atheist, and I do not doubt that his reluctance to religion played a decisive role in the murders. From what I’ve read the victims seemed to be nice people; creative, intelligent and charitable. I am very sorry for their friends and families.
#31
Yes, and notably, those posts include nothing hostile towards muslims in particular, but plenty of scorn for religion in general and conservative christianity. Notably, he sided with the right for muslims to build that ‘ground zero’ mosque, and said on the topic of banning religion: “Not that I care for religion, as I most definitely do not, but banning it would be taking away a persons rights and I oppose that.”
Thus, as far as I have seen so far – and of course, my reading on this matter may easily be incomplete – there is no reason to consider him hateful towards muslims for being muslim.
Holms @ #33. No reason. No reason at all. Really.
The fact that one of the victims told her father, before she was murdered, that Hicks was hateful and it seemed to her to be anti-Muslim hatred. The fact that he had rage-filled disputes with many neighbors — but the Muslims were the ones he killed. The fact that there was no parking dispute on the day of the murders — the murder victims had been extremely careful not to park in the disputed space. The description of the murders as “execution-style,” which if true is more indicative of an intentional hate crime than an impulsive act of generic rage. And yes, at least some of Hicks’ writing was aimed against Islam and against Muslims — or at least, against radical Muslims. Quote: “Why are radical Christians and radical Muslims so opposed to each others’ influence when they agree about so many ideological issues?”
None of this counts as a reason to think this crime was motivated, at least in part, by anti-Muslim bigotry and hate?
If you were arguing that, on balance, you think the case against this being a hate crime is stronger than the case for it, that would be different. But I am sick to death of this denialist notion that there is zero reason to see this as a hate crime or as motivated even in part by anti-religious sentiment, and that it’s absurd to to see that as likely or plausible. Anti-Muslim hate crimes are not an extraordinary claim. I’m sick of seeing them treated as if they are. I have said this to other commenters here, and I will say it to you now: Knock it off, or get out of my blog.