We can all breathe a sigh of relief. The gunman who killed four people at evangelical churces in Colorado was not a buddhist atheist Jew evilutionist. He was a deranged disgruntled former member.
The gunman believed to have killed four people at a megachurch and a missionary training school had been thrown out of the school about three years ago and had been sending hate mail to the program, police said in court papers Monday.
The gunman was identified as Matthew Murray, 24, who was home-schooled by his family and raised in what a friend said was a deeply religious Christian household. Murray’s father is a neurologist and a prominent multiple-sclerosis researcher.
I suppose they could blame it all on the fact his father was a scientist, still.
So, it was an unhinged, home-schooled fundy. Why can’t these people just kill themselves rather than take innocent lives?
Isn’t “deranged” presumed by the fact of his membership?
@PZ :
Despite being a rather fundie sort of guy, love your blog
and science(especially astronomy) too much.
Sorry for being a apologetic, but Christians like these and
the false-witness bearing guys at the DI,AiG,etc are way more detrimental to our religion that the attacks of any freethinker.
That said, the guy, a clear murderer, deserves nothing but hatred and contempt from all sorts of people
He was a former church member AND he was homeschooled?
I wonder how they’re going to spin this one on Conservapedia.
Sorry, but I don’t think I’ll be breathing a sigh of relief over this, anymore than it is a relief that Afghani suicide bombers tend to be Muslim. My opinion on one’s religion doesn’t have much to do with how I view their horrific actions and deaths.
“I wonder how they’re going to spin this one on Conservapedia.”
Former. He left the church and see what happened? And he probably wasn’t even an atheist, just left the church. Imagine how deranged and dangerous atheists must be then!
@ Astrolieber
What happened to forgiveness? As a potential criminal defendant, he deserves his presumption of innocence and his day in court.
Then fundie you are not.
Ok, I knew the Scotsman would show up but not this early. Why would a freethinker be detrimental?
Now you sound like a fundie, so much for love and forgiveness.
Phew. I was really worried that somebody may have been hurt until I read that.
[Offscreen mumbling.]
What? Four people?
Uh, God works in mysterious ways.
From the Yahoo News article: ” “I was just expecting for the next gunshot to be coming through my car. Miraculously — by the grace of God — it did not,” she told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” ”
So using the same logic, by the grace of God the next bullet went through someone’s head? Graceful…
I believe he’s dead so what people wish for him doesn’t really matter. Also, being dead, he doesn’t get the presumption (which isn’t an actual fact, but a starting place) of innocence because we don’t try people when they’re dead.
Or was this rhetorical?
Matt wrote:”As a potential criminal defendant, he deserves his presumption of innocence and his day in court.”
What, did somebody arrest his corpse?
(The shooter was killed, Matt.)
Sorry for being a apologetic, but Christians like these and
the false-witness bearing guys at the DI,AiG,etc are way more detrimental to our religion
Your whole project is false witness.
That said, the guy, a clear murderer, deserves nothing but hatred and contempt from all sorts of people.
Wow, so Christian of you.
Why would a freethinker be detrimental?
Uber, Astrolieber said “attacks
by a freethinker”, not “a freethinker”.
Please, pack etiquette calls for them to start limping before we single them out for destruction.
If you want to know how a man could be inspired to kill because of his religious beliefs, try this article from the Vancouver Sun.
http://tinyurl.com/3996sm
Convicted of 6 deaths, charged with 20 more and once claimed to have done 49.
In correspondence while in custody, he wrote that “I know I was brought into this world to be hear today to change this world of there evil ways. They even want to dis-re-guard the ten command-ments from the time that Moses in his day brought in power which still is in existence today.”
He seems to have favoured the parts of the Bible that condemned fornication, rather than the commandment about killing.
Those of you who think there’s a correlation between faith and violence per se are incorrect. I’m glad he was not an atheist, too; however, I hardly think he killed because of his religion. (Although that happens, too, sometimes: 911, Jim Jones.) Mental illness is no respecter of ideology, though–and cases like these are never idologically driven.
Isn’t this the place with the paramilitary guns’n’camoflage for jesus youth group?
If those folks would have just prayed a little harder!
and cases like these are never idologically driven
Well, I wouldn’t say never, but I agree this case so far looks like the work of an angry loony.
Gunman credits the Holy Spirit for the killings:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/10/colorado.shootings/index.html
Some early headlines stated “Colo. Church Gunman ‘Hated Christians'” link
Nothing new here: People on the scene and in the media jumping to uninformed conclusions. That being said, it is still a tragedy, no matter the motives of the shooter or the beliefs of his victims.
@#16
As the bumper sticker says – Athiests don’t car bomb.
On another note… Did you catch the interview with the security guard who shot this guy? Aside from the usual babble about her bullet being guided by the divine rifling of god, she mentioned that she is a member of the church and was at the end of a three day fast.
What?
I think it’s great that they get their muscle from within the flock. I care not if religious folks think periodic self-starvation makes god like them better. But they let these things happen at the same time? Their security guards are both armed and potentially delusional from a multiple day fast.
Aside from what seems like an obvious safety issue here, I would expect most religious traditions to have taboos against working (at least work that potentially involves taking life) during periods of religious aceticism. But I guess that’s why Ted Haggard runs the megachurch and I just teach social science.
Re: “hatred and contempt”
Sympathy for the victims and their families is a given in cases like this. But without taking anything away from their grief and loss, it seems to me it’s possible to still want to understand other aspects of the situation.
I have many times wondered about the mental illness plea in murder trials. I mean, no matter what else is going on, the moment someone commits a murder they probably automatically qualify as more than a little tweaked.
Certainly this kid was SERIOUSLY disturbed.
But in any case where innocent people end up dead, it sucks the air out of the impulse to feel compassion for the killer. I mean, you’re not allowed to say that a murderer might be having some problems.
But … jeez. Be interesting to know what in his background led to this. I wish there was some way we could objectively research what “deeply religious” Christian homeschooling actually does to kids.
Obviously in this case it didn’t turn out a saint. Be nice to know why not. “He went bad” (or “He was possessed by Satan”) just isn’t enough.
If he WASN’T mentally ill, if there’s a readily-accessible path to where he got that could be traveled by other young people, it sure would help to know what it was, so it could be blocked off.
Every time something like this happens, I can’t help but feel sorry for the parents. They must go through hell — you almost wish there was a support group for Parents of Teenaged Gunmen.
Still … I wonder what this kid’s home life was like.
SC said: If those folks would have just prayed a little harder!
You may have a point. Maybe they were just bush league pray-ers, not focused enough to control the actions of a crazed … um, fellow pray-er?
After all, when’s the last time you heard of a mass shooting in a benedictine monastery? They have proper, professional pray-ers there.
Oh dang: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20020611/ai_n12626430
“I pray, dear Jesus, hear my plea–
And please kill them, instead of me.”
Another case where God is getting all the credit and none of the blame…
This afternoon a church representative thanked God that He had given them the foresight to arrange for an armed security specialist to be on duty during the services and thus saving hundreds of lives.
Of course, that’s little consolation for the family of the two daughters were gunned down before the man was stopped, but then, I guess God can’t be everywhere at once… er…
“Mental illness is no respecter of ideology, though–and cases like these are never ideologically driven.”
However, Jeff, adding religion to mental illness- discounting for the moment that religiosity itself is indicative of such illness- is akin to putting gasoline on the fire. Religion can be- and often is- used to justify the deviant thought processes of mental illness, justifying deluded ideas and behavior and preventing the individual from seeking psychiatric help.
Just makes ya wonder, though – the article I read said that he was killed by one of the church’s armed security guards. I find it difficult to imagine a church that needs armed security guards. I’d be kind of scared to go there if I were a religious type.
I totally want this job (God). A xian goes wild (which god knew about ahead of time and could have prevented), shoots a bunch of other xians (ditto), but god comes out good because he helped the xian guard shoot the wild xian (thus breaking a commandment). God gets through it all with good press. WTF? I totally want this job. Exactly what are the qualifications? Sadism? Wanton cruelty? Lazy and/or apathetic? I’m there! Hire me!
Alison wrote; “Just makes ya wonder, though – the article I read said that he was killed by one of the church’s armed security guards. I find it difficult to imagine a church that needs armed security guards. I’d be kind of scared to go there if I were a religious type.”
One account I read said that the security guard was put there that morning in response to the shootings at their youth group place outside Denver 12 hours before. If true that was a good decision.
Neener Neener, God loved me more than those 4 people…
shiftlessbum: couldn’t agree more. If there is any danger to a true believer’s mortal body, the logical thing to do is to boost the weaponry of the xtians so that any incoming assailants can be killed as quickly as possible. With xtian love, of course.
Sneer at her all you want, the fact is that she saved many lives yesterday. She kept calm under a great deal of stress, and she wasn’t afraid to carry a weapon to protect other people.
-jcr
So, if this is, in fact, a “Christian nation” as the gurgling loons like to say it is, if god told this nutcase to gun down these people, they should see him as a hero, right?
Steve in MI
While I am always willing to giggle at the inanities and foolishness of religious people, I think that in this case your response to my post is over the top. I don’t want them to control our government or dictate our cultural values and would very much like to see them stay the hell out of my life. But snarky comments about the tragedy are not appreciated. I know you don’t give a shit what I think, but that is precisely why I am writing this.
Irrespective of what we may think of the religious or what our opinions on guns might be, if the account I read is true, hiring an armed guard hours after a fatal shooting at a place directly tied to the church was prudent and in this case extremely lucky. My heart goes out to the families of the kids (and they were all young) who were killed.
She’s the next media Superstar! Leno, O’Reilly, Jon Stewart!
I can’t wait for the Guns & Ammo cover: “God Helps Those Who Arm Themselves.”
In Our Glorious Future, all good Christians will pack heat!
Dan #1: I think they do, you just don’t hear as much about it.
Raindogzilla is correct, in my opinion. That said, I’d like to take this moment to posit something: there are Christians and atheists alike who use tragedies to make ideological hay. I am confident that I have more in common with respectful Christians and respectful atheists, than I do with the disrespectful of either stripe. Please note that I mean “respectful” idiosyncratically and situationally; however, I really hope that all of us on the non-theological side will try to squelch indecent urges to make points off of Christians involved in tragedies like this–which are, after all, not ideological at all.
The ghoulish snideness and sneering of some of those on this thread is disgraceful. Village atheism. Philistine atheism.
Whew, I’m sure glad it wasn’t an atheist Jew this time around.
I am a member of the Liberty Forums, it attracts many Jew haters (yes, Jew haters). I participate on the forum in order to humiliate them whenever possible. They have speculated that Murray is a Jooooish name (a lot of Joooos are named Murray, and Joooo haters don’t seem to care that Murray in most cases is the first name).
Of course, Matthew was a biblical Jooooish disciple of a Jesus or something like that. And even if it is proved that Matthew Murray is not a religious Jew, the morons on the Liberty Forum will still say he must have Jooooish blood.
Called it on the first thread. The shooter was going to be either a Moslem, Jew, scientist, atheist, Xian, or something else. Duh.
Thank Cthulhu it was one of theirs. But really these murderers are just loons and belong in their own category.
One always dislikes playing the your side has more loons than ours game. But if he had been an atheist or biologist, the fundies would be screaming, “satan and his atheist hordes are taking over the world” card for the next decade. Nevermind, that atheists don’t believe in satan either. Nothing in fundie land has to actually be true or make any sense.
Speaking of truth and making sense, they will spin him as an atheist anyway.
So they get Seung Cho and the Colorada shooter. The atheists are stuck with the Finnish guy. The Omaha one is apparently awaiting assignment.
“Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee:
While the bombers thunder past
Shelter me from burn and blast;
And though I know all men are brothers
Let the fallout fall on others.”
–Tom Lehrer
It is a good thing that there was an armed security guard there to stop the formerly religious person. It doesn’t mean that everybody should be armed. Or, more to the point, people who have guns around the house should know that they’ve quintupled their odds of killing a family member. Or someone coming to their door. Or a neighbour.
That is a no brainer. They will claim he was gay.
It never even crossed my mind that this fellow could have been an atheist. It’s Springs. Colorado Springs is a hotbed of fundamentalism and if you ask me I daresay somebody who can drop to his knees and “undo the damage” of snuffing out people’s lives is much more likely to do so. Compare that to an atheist who can never undo the damage, can never be forgiven, and for whom the rest of eternity (1-100 years prior to non-function) will consist of living in, what amounts to, a metal and brick hole.
It astounds me that when somebody who consistently backslides rededicates himself to the faith, good Christians don’t do the person a favor and put a bullet in his head. They promptly drop to their knees and ask for forgiveness and have sent one more soul to heaven which may not have gone otherwise. In fact, considering how pointless and worthless life is compared to forever, I daresay any Christians who don’t do such a thing are immoral.
“So, it was an unhinged, home-schooled fundy. Why can’t these people just kill themselves rather than take innocent lives?”
You won’t find more hateful and ugly sentiments on the typical white supremacist boards than you find in this thread. Several innocent people were gunned down by a man who was in all likelihood mentally ill. And the reaction of the PZ’s brownshirts is equal parts “how funny!” and “stupid Xians got what they deserved.” Scumbags.
Let me at least dream about this. I pack a Magnum to Midnight Mass, and when that gunman stands up two pews ahead of me and turns around, I blow his fucken face off. BLAM BLAM. Thank you, Lord, for that satisfying thought!
Once again, and more simply, let me state: the relevant difference is between boorish and narcissistic creeps who jump at the news of tragedy to promote ideology, and the rest of us. In other words, at times like these, the world divides not into the religious and the atheistic, but rather into the tasteless and the civilized. I’m very sorry to see that the latter include Pharyngula regulars.
#45
Apparently irony and sarcasm are hard to understand via the written, electronic format.
And you cannot possibly believe that if this Murray fellow turned out to be Muslim that the rabid Xtian strain in this country wouldn’t be howling for internment camps and extraordinary rendition of anyone with any connections to the Middle East or Muslim.
It is a sad and tragic episode in our culture, just as EVERY OTHER violent act is. I am not blaming religion, but as Carlin said, ‘the more devout a person claims to be, the more negotiable they seem to feel those commandments of theirs are.’
My deepest sympathies go out to the families of the deceased and to the family of the shooter. I’m sure this is a shock to them as well and they are left in the worst position of all. They will be reviled for what their son/brother has done and will be offered none of the sympathy that the other families will receive.
Mr. Randolph, are you determined to be an idiot?
Yes, the guard did a good thing. But it’s STILL questionable for her to have been armed after a three day fast.
Twits like you give gun rights advocates a bad name.
sd you miss the point. The stupid Xtians are always mewling about how the evil atheists will attack and kill them and eat their innards for being True Believers(TM). Whenever something like this happens (as it seems to quite regularly in your country…maybe letting any loonie buy a gun really isn’t all that smart hmmm?), there’s a barrage of “See, the atheists in our schools teach our children evolution, therefore they go on killing sprees.” So, what you’re reading here is the response to that: I’m sure this story will now slink away, same as the Virginia Tech shooting as soon as it’s clear the gunman was a deranged Xtian of some stripe or other. There’s a very quick knee jerk “shooter must have been a hateful atheist/muslim/something else and that’s what led to this” mentality that magically transforms into “Oh, he was a disturbed individual” as soon as it (more often than not) turns out to be one of their own. So sd, get a fucking grip.
Probably a lot like this:
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2007/12/atheist-killers.html
[score points off tragedy] = [unethical + cruel behaviour] .’. [stop]
This kid didn’t leave the church (24 yo a kid? I guess compared to me it is). He was booted out. This was a revenge killing.
And if they were going to have armed guards, they should have been guards on their game, as others here have said. I am old school. If you put out protection, make sure your guards are on their best game. Couldn’t someone who was rested, fed, and alert available? This situation could have been a lot worse, and not just because of the gunman. I hope other groups learn from this. I hope the police will learn–if this guy was sending notes, why weren’t there cops at the other congregations?
Please, let’s everyone observe the mandatory “wailing and rending of garments” period before discussing any ancillary issues with regards to this shooting.
Would it be bad if I said I was home schooled in a deeply Christian family? I’m always quite pissed at characters like this, because they make the rest of us (normal) home schoolers look bad.
>>I can’t wait for the Guns & Ammo cover: “God Helps Those Who >>Arm Themselves.”
Why wait. The advertisements from the WorldNetDaily article on the shooting include:
>>Read the story of how a Christian responded to an armed >>terrorist attack on his worship service!
>>And see the DVD about the famous St. James Massacre
>>When it’s time to shoot back – Get ‘Armed Response,’ the >>guide to firearms, self-defense
>>Perfect gift for pistol-packin’ mama – ‘Stayin’ Alive’ >>shows guns are indeed for girls
>>”Shooting Back: The Right and Duty of Self-Defense”
The female guard who shot the ‘shooter’ gives credit to God.
“I give the credit to God. And I say that very humbly. God was with me and the whole time I was behind cover — this has got to be God, because of the firepower that [the gunman] had vs. what I had — was God. I did not run away and I didn’t think for a minute to run away, I just knew that I was given the assignment to end this before it got too much worse. I just prayed for the Holy Spirit to guide me.”
Discuss….
For the last 24 hours I was wondering whether:
(A) the murderer was a nonbeliever, in which case I would learn that from the fundie blogs, or
(B) the murderer was a fundie, in which case I would learn it here.
We can always count on you to point when bad things in the news were caused by fundies.
The female guard who shot the ‘shooter’ gives credit to God.
Good trigger control, belike.
PZ, the story already blames anti-Christians
I quote this from the following from the yahoo news article:
“Murray’s father is a neurologist and a leading multiple-sclerosis researcher.”
“A neighbor, …. describing the whole family as “very, very religious.”
How the hell can a neurologist and “leading MS researcher be extremely religious? Seriously, what the hell is wrong with these misguided people. To have accomplished yourself and applied your mind to the levels that this man has, and then be described as religious, it’s unbelievable. Seriously, what can be wrong in this man’s brain cells, that keeps him religious? Furthermore, this poison destroyed his town, his son, and all of these unfortunate gullible people.
I can understand ignorant morons being religious, but a neurologist and scientific researcher who is religious is just not fathomable. If he can’t think rationally about religion, then one wonders how he approaches science.
ChrisKG/57: Words fail me.
It’s fortunate that an armed security guard was present and responded appropriately. I’m also glad that it wasn’t a stomach-turningly narcissistic, grand-standing predatory opportunist with a chip on its shoulder, ideological blinders the size of dinner plates, and the extraordinary ability to talk out of its ass despite said orifice being plugged with its neck. That wouldn’t have helped matters any.
PZ, the story already blames anti-Christians
“I find it difficult to imagine a church that needs armed security guards.”
With the kind of money they handle, it’s probably a necessity. Donations, gift shop sales, church cafes, non-meth purchases from male non-prostitutes…
With all the money-changing in the temple, you need a guard in case some long-haired hippy freak tries to come in and mess things up.
ChrisKG/57: Words fail me.
Posted by: Steve in MI | December 10, 2007 9:27 PM
Steve,
Does this mean that God is culpable and may be guilty of manslaughter or at least negligent homicide? I know it could be self defense, but that only applies if you use the minimum force necessary to stop someone, surely God could stop him without using a gun, right?
I’ve looked the thread over, and I don’t see anyone calling the killings “funny”, and there is definitely no one claiming that the victims deserved what they got. I think I’ll reserve the title “scumbag” for people like you who make false accusations.
If he can’t think rationally about religion, then one wonders how he approaches science.
He probably approaches it very well. Just because you know who created something doesn’t mean you can’t be interested in how it works.
Since his initial assumptions are already incorrect, then who knows how much irrationality sneaks through his work. He’s starting from the point of a believer already, so does he then assume miracles take place when he can’t explain them? For example, perhaps a patient he’s treating suddenly gets well with no medically sound reason. Does this mean he suspends his science and assumes it’s a miraculous representation of his faith? Seriously, if you’re starting your initial conditions on faith already, then you can’t think logically. Well, some perhaps can suspend this belief, but in general, few can think logically.
Well, some perhaps can suspend this belief, but in general, few can think logically.
Well there you go, he might be one of the few. You don’t have to think rationally every minute of the day, do you?
#68
He is probably very good at compartmentalizing his thoughts/beliefs. I work at a hospital and I’ve worked with MSF, I have seen extremely religious people who ‘shut that part off’ when dealing with the task at hand. Be that pathology, surgery or just the daily grunt work of medicine.
These same people (who use the scientific method on a daily basis) will immediately thank their *insert deity here* for everything that has happened that day. And many of them will attest to the accuracy (if not infallibility) of their own specific religious text(s), tweaking it to fit into what they feel is a workable relationship between religion / science/ life.
I personally find it rather silly, but many of these people come from tight knit communities where NOT believing is as dangerous as believing in the ‘wrong’ thing. So maybe it is a (social) survival mechanism of some sort?
Behold a moron: “I was just expecting for the next gunshot to be coming through my car. Miraculously — by the grace of God — it did not,” she told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
This person believes that they are further up the scale of God’s grace than the victims. Wonderful.
Look!
A stupid filter.
http://www.tfot.info/news/1065/stupidfilter-time-to-fight-back-the-imbeciles.html
@ #72. Yes, how unfortunately typical of the xtians. “God spared me.” all the while forgetting that others died. It makes mu stomach churn hearing comments like that. It leads me to believe that god is one cold hearted bastard to who delights in killing some while making others believe their “chosen”.
Roger Scott: I hope that you will reconsider the wisdom of saying things like that. I think that humanistic thinkers would try to avoid adding pointless insult to injury. Anyway, I think Dr. Myers is yukking it up, too…so, you’re in pretty well-known company, for what that’s worth.
(As for me: I just wish you’d be nicer. Seriously.)
Laughing and the goofy stuff people say isn’t being mean.
No one put a gun to their head…
oh wait. Well not to make them say the stupid things.
Hey SD, fuck you. Over the course of this thread, you’ll undoubtedly encounter several cogent and reasonable responses to your comment. This isn’t one of them.
I’m sick and tired of you fucking concern trolls. I’ve no more patience for you. I’m done.
Over a hundred thousand people die every day, globally. Nearly all of those are as innocent and undeserving as those who died in this tragedy. The tiny fraction that are the remaining are the unavoidable results of living in a chaotic universe.
This is one of the preventable, and thus all the more repulsive, majority. No one here is applauding this tragedy, and you obviously aren’t either. On other issues we disagree, but this is not one of those.
But if you truly deplored preventable, tragic deaths, you would not be spending your time perusing the blogs of those with whom you generally disagree so you can drop hit-and-run indictments. Those who actually do things about the issues they care about have far less time to waste than you.
So kindly take your unjustified, holier-than-thou comments and shove ’em. Then do something meaningful with your concern.
Let the more reasonable responses commence.
It is a tragedy. Period.
The guy was angry and unstable. Period.
He was in all likelyhood a theist. Big deal.
BTW, SD…
I don’t know if you noticed, but pretty much every time Something Bad happens to People Who Aren’t Them, a sizable percentage of wingnuts praise it as God’s judgement on sinners or some such, and if it’s human-caused, try to use it as ammunition to smear their political opponents by association. You want to talk about callousness? You want to talk about hateful and ugly sentiments? You want to talk about the kind of brain damage it takes to make someone equate expressing relief that this tragedy, as horrible as it was, didn’t play out in such a way that the wingnuts could readily hijack it and fly it into the towers of their political opponents’ reputation, with “laughing at it?”
The fact that you apparently care more about making digs at us than about opposing the people to whom every needless death, every suffering child, every city torn to pieces is nothing more than ammunition completely guts your claims to any kind of moral supremacy. Or any kind of morality. You and your kind are beneath contempt.
I second Brownian’s recommendation.
To those who are so indignant and derisive about the woman who said that “by the grace of God” she wasn’t killed:
Imagine that you were caught up in a terribly tragedy in which several people died. Afterwards, you exclaim “I am so happy to be alive!” or “Thankfully, I wasn’t killed!” Does this mean that you are gloating about those who did not survive?
I can guess what your counter-argument will be: in her mind God decided who lived and who died, so unlike an atheist who thinks it was just bad luck, she thinks that her buddy God had them die in her stead. Or something. Gimme a break.
You are grasping for any excuse to heighten your loathing of these people. That’s where ingroup-outgroup thinking has taken you: a simple, culturally appropriate (for a theist) expression of relief after the threat of violent death is given a strained interpretation as something exceedingly sinister; yet another reason to hate these deluded Bad Guys even more.
So maybe a lot of the fundies are worse when it comes to discussing tragedies like this. So why not try to be far better than them?
Don’t call me a concern troll. If you must, just call me a troll. But you know damn well that I am not a troll. I have commented on various ScienceBlogs blogs for about a year, and even if you think my views are wrong as hell you have to give them more credit than that.
Hey chill out people.
If an atheist gunman, 10 fundie trolls would show up.
If a Xian gunman, 10 fundie trolls would show up.
If a UFO alien gunman, 10 fundie trolls would show up.
Nothing happened, 10 fundie trolls would show up.
I think these people are on automatic pilot and it isn’t a very advanced model.
“I believe he’s dead so what people wish for him doesn’t really matter. Also, being dead, he doesn’t get the presumption (which isn’t an actual fact, but a starting place) of innocence because we don’t try people when they’re dead.”
How do we deal with this as a society. Well, I guess since he was killed in the act we know he was guilty, but what if it had happned some other way and the person was dead, does that make them automatically guilty?
And something to keep in mind is that church shootings aren’t so uncommon.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=church+shooting+&btnG=Google+Search
This one made the news because it happened at an infamous church. And under those circumstances, (speaking of callousness) how many Christians are painting this entire church with the Gay Brush? We’ll be hearing “the penalties of sin” often enough before this is over.
Even worse, how about Christians condemning the victims for acting in whatever way they did during the shooting, and denouncing the entire church group? Oh look, here’s one now!
http://thegrateful.org/articles/2007/12/10/calling-new-life-church-in-colorado-springs-to-repent
And I quote: “Repent, New Life, and mourn your failure to do your Master’s will.”
And so forth. Name some jerk response to this event and you’ll find Christians channelling it from God, and denouncing or demanding on His Behalf.
What the hell are you talking about?
#44 Tatarize wrote:
“It astounds me that when somebody who consistently backslides rededicates himself to the faith, good Christians don’t do the person a favor and put a bullet in his head.”
I daresay it’s not likely to undo the damage to your brain. Perhaps atheism really is a form of mental illness.
#61 Helioprogenus wrote:
“I can understand ignorant morons being religious, but a neurologist and scientific researcher who is religious is just not fathomable.”
Not fathomable by very, very small minds. Perhaps athiesm is a form of cognitive deficiency. I’d be totally disingenuous if I said I’m shocked by the monumental stupidity among atheists. It’s actually quite predictable. Your brain would probably explode if you realized how many people in the sciences are also theists. My father was a professor in Chemistry and a born-again Christian. He died when I was young, but in his 13 years of teaching, he devoted a lot of time to speaking to high-school students through the state high-school science association, encouraging them to study science. I’m sure he did far more to advance the cause of science than you and your fellow travellers, who appear to be full of condescension and arrogance.
BTW, for what it’s worth, New Life has had bomb and death threats in the past, so armed guards are nothing new. It has nothing to do with the money they handle. Now I’ll just wait for someone to claim they deserved the threats.
The difference between an atheist saying “I was just lucky not to be killed” and a theist asserting that “God saved/protected/shielded me” is the fact that the theist believes that they have been selected by their deity for protection, while those who have died were, by clear implication, not protected. This is a slap in the face to the grieving families who have now been told that their deity of choice chose some random person as more deserving of life than their loved ones. Atheists have a much better chance of consoling the bereved than one who believes that some deity mediated the murder of their children, but saved some random Wal-Mart shopper.
I wrote:
“Perhaps athiesm is a form of cognitive deficiency.”
As is dyslexai. Or maybe digital focal dystonai.
One more thing…
#53 Rjaye wrote:
“…if this guy was sending notes, why weren’t there cops at the other congregations?”
This happened quite some time ago. Who knows what precautions they took at the time, but I imagine they couldn’t keep it up forever.
My initial reaction:
Oh good! He wasn’t an atheist.
Oh no! He was a homeschooler.
Not all homeschoolers are rabid fundamentalists. Some actually homeschool in order to up the quality of their kids’ education.
YAR, how exactly does not insisting upon the truth of absurd, ancient mythology constitute mental illness? And most everyone here is well aware of the incidence of theism in scientists and the strong inverse correlation between scientific aptitude and god-belief; it’s one of our talking points.
If God was taking care of the situation, why did she need the cover?
Brings to mind the saying about atheists and foxholes. ISTM that people in foxholes are clearly putting their faith in a pile of dirt rather than a miracle.
Obviously (by her “logic”), God wanted the other four people dead.
For some reason these people never follow through on the application of their own logic.
“Now I’ll just wait for someone to claim they deserved the threats.”
Yes, talk dirty to me! Yes! Be heartless animals! I love you this way! Yes!
Bugger off.
astrolieber wrote:
Do you still feel that way knowing that the shooter was hearing voices?
http://www.religionnewsblog.com/20100/matthew-murray-2
He was seriously, mentally ill.
Two sisters killed, born two years apart. I tucked my boys–also born two years apart–into bed tonight and shuddered to think that there are people in the world who would wish them such harm, and shuddered again to think that those girls’ parents will try to come up with some justification for how a good god could have done this to their family.
New information: the inevitable deranged manifesto.
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=82548
“”You Christians brought this on yourselves,” Murray wrote on a Web site for people who have left Pentecostal and fundamentalist religious organizations.
It was the most recent posting of his on the site, dated Sunday, December 9 at 11:03 a.m.
Murray lived with his parents in a home in unincorporated Arapahoe County where police conducted a search on Sunday night.
In the Web writings, which are now being investigated by Colorado Springs Police, Arvada Police and the FBI, Murray warned, “I’m coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. …God, I can’t wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don’t care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you … as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.” …
“You guys were awesome. It’s time for me to head out and teach these (expletive) a lesson.”
Murray continued, “Thanks for listening and all … even though even many of you ex-Pentecostals don’t understand ……(sic) See you all on the other side, we’re leaving this nightmare behind to a better place.” …
Some of the users tried to counsel Murray and one psychologist even offered her services after reading his poem called “Crying all alone in pain in the nightmare of Christianity”.
Murray rebuffed her offer.
“I’ve already been working with counselors. I have a point to make with all this talk about psychologists and counselors ‘helping people with their pain,'” he wrote.”
——————
According to CNN, five years ago Murray spooked other church members by claiming to hear voices and by performing songs by Linkin Park and Marilyn Manson.
Yes Molly, it’s a nightmare. My friend’s older sister has already buried two of her own children. I can only imagine the depth and breadth of her despair. Fabricated or rationalized justifications are unbearable. The only solace is realizing that there’s no reason for it. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Period. There are causes, but no higher purpose.
Another friend of mine suffers from M.S. – not that it’s particuarly relevant to the discussion, but… damn. There’s no solace for Mr. Murray, either – a man whose career is devoted to improving the quality of human life. Where’s the fairness of a loving god? Oh… yeah. Never mind.
I’d be totally disingenuous
Why wait, YetAnotherDick, when you’re already so close?
Did you have anything to say besides “Athiests are dumb”? Other than that, your post was completely devoid of content. It took me 3 words to summarise it. You used 244. You might have spent some of your excess verbiage supporting your claim, but you didn’t. Clickety-clack, yak-yak-yak.
Perhaps you’re used to sermons, and your writing style has grown to reflect this. After all, they’re basically 20-120 minute speeches about nothing. Or maybe you’re suffering some sort of derangement, in which there’s some disconnect between what you’re saying and what you think you’re saying. An aphasia of sorts, perchance?
At any rate, I helpfully suggest you go and get an MRI or a CT scan, or whatever tests are needed to diagnose your condition. Or fuck yourself. It doesn’t matter much to me.
In either case, you’re uninteresting, uninspired, and unintelligent.
I’m sorry your science-promoting, born-again, chemistry professor of a daddy raised such a dolt.
#89 J Myers:
You are being completely dishonest about what I claimed. Lying seems to be a common pathology among atheists. I’ve spent a lot of time observing this at alt.atheism.
Rey Fox: You’re just too funny. I’m just making fun of all the folks who’ve done the same thing earlier in this thread.
Regarding the postings by Murray, he’s done his homework on Columbine.
Citations please?
Oh, how right you are. Its only symptom: the inability to detect the imaginary. I wonder if that’s in the DSM-IV?
Okay, fucktard, what part of reading is so fucking difficult for you?
You wrote: Perhaps atheism really is a form of mental illness.
You also wrote: Perhaps athiesm is a form of cognitive deficiency.
Do you understand that you’re hypothesising that atheism is a mental illness or an impairment? Do you understand that, brainless?
J Meyers asked how not believing in gods (the definition of atheism, you smoldering manure pile) could possibly constitute either?
That was not a lie. That was a valid question in response to your claims.
The fact that you’ve so egregiously misinterpreted both your own and another’s writing is only further evidence that you should probably put down the keyboard and go lie down in a bathtub somewhere.
And goddamnit, learn to fucking read, you gnat-brained ass!
“Mr. Randolph, are you determined to be an idiot?”
Hey, toss off all the insults you want if it makes you feel better. I’ll forgive you because I’m a better person than you are.
-jcr
“Why wait, YetAnotherDick”
That’s all I need to know about your level of intellectual development.
Cherry-picking among the evidence, eh? You don’t fucking say.
Anytime, you feel like, you know, actually saying something, I’ll be here to help you figure out what words mean.
Hey Rick, explain to us again how you didn’t really write what J Myers quoted you writing.
That was funny.
As in the “how gas leaks smell” sense of the word.
“Okay, fucktard”
The juvenile speaks again.
“You wrote: Perhaps atheism really is a form of mental illness.”
I wrote more than that, but apparently you can’t be bothered to read ALL of what I wrote.
The person to whom I was originally responding wrote “It astounds me that when somebody who consistently backslides rededicates himself to the faith, good Christians don’t do the person a favor and put a bullet in his head.” If you think that’s mentally healthy, you can’t be reasoned with.
“And goddamnit, learn to fucking read, you gnat-brained ass!”
I can only dream of being as articulate as you.
Why dream? Don’t you people believe you’ll get your way if you pray for it?
O ye of little faith….
And so the basis of one individual’s comment, atheism is a mental illness or mental disability. I see.
And why again, exactly, is it that you think you deserve to be engaged at a level above playground insults?
“Hey Rick, explain to us again how you didn’t really write what J Myers quoted you writing.”
You’re being dishonestly selective again. Would it be too much trouble for you to go back and read the relevant comments? I’m sure it would!
“…you should probably put down the keyboard and go lie down in a bathtub somewhere.”
That’s all I need to know about your level of moral development.
Kseniya wrote:
“Citations please?”
If I cared or had the time, I’d dig up a few hundred threads on alt.atheism I’ve posted to. It seems to be the largest cespool of dishonesty anywhere on the Intertubes. Even some die-hard anti-theists I know can’t stand it. Maybe I’m being unfair, but I can’t help noting the mental deficiencies in a large number of atheists I’ve observed. Perhaps Brownian, OM is a regular inmate of the alt.atheism asylum.
It’s probably somewhat ironic, but one of the few places that seems to have some non-hostile atheists is Street Prophets, which is affiliated with dailykos.
It’s evilution, PZ. Natural selection. Survival of the fittest. Species either adapting or not adapting. Makin’ or breakin’…unfortunately, this guy broke. Here’s my two-cents:
He begins to discover that “practicing religion” doesn’t solve his inability to make and keep friends, perform well in school, get and keep a job or “fit in” or maybe he can’t stop using drugs or drinking too much. Maybe a friend recently died and his prayers to save him weren’t answered. Maybe his parents kicked him out.
In short, he’s not delivered but rather he’s dissonant with god. And he begins to search for the truth to set him free from dilusion. He perhaps Googles “famous atheists” and finds people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Ayn Rand, Bertran Russell, Thomas Paine, YOU, Dawkins, Einstein, are all there. So he re-reads revelations and the repeated “I’m jebus, I will be backs” and he soon realizes “the prophecy” has failed.
Now, let’s look at his reported behaviors…or, more specifically the anticedences leading up to the mass murder, ah, er, incident.
So what do we observedly have: male, living in Colorado (a state of poor schooling), early 20s, parents are religious, seemingly well educated parents (at least father), mother’s education is unknown. He was home-schooled, he was kicked out of a church school (how accepting!), he was part of “Youth with a Mission.” He sent hate mail.
Additionally, we observe he was physically functional as he drove, he had resources, he knew about weapons and could physically operate them (was he fearful?), (was he a hunter?), sighting weapons, shooting weapons, reloading weapons.
He knew where these churches/missions were located and drove to them so we can reasonably assume good navigation skills (not drunk or drugs?) he was seemingly functioning on a cognizant/behavioral level.
What else can we figure, anything? …he practiced or once practiced xian like behaviors (memes) like his parents. Did he know where the churches (and victims) were located showing premeditation? I’d have to say, yes. Did he know about alternatives to xian behaviors?
Could he be another “on-ward xian soldier?” Could he be another, “I have faith so god’ll have grace,er” if I smoke these folks? We may never know…
We could consider cognitive dissonace (Festinger, 1956) had settled in to this lad as perhaps he figured out evilution and that after 2000 years of failed xian prophecy from a bullying religion…that it’s all a cruel hoax! Think that might tee you off?
Yeah, it kinda ticks you off when you finally figure out that everyone who said jebus “loves you” is really just a control freak under the influence of a rip-off, bullying, angry, jealous, vengeful, genocidal god and he’s trying to suck you in, too.
“Don’t you people believe…”
Huh? “You people?” Are you talking about me? For the record, I happen to consider myself an apatheist – I don’t know and I don’t care. You seem to have a mind as small as the person who couldn’t fathom a scientist also being a theist. You need to open your mind a little and stop jumping to conclusions based not on actual fact, but speculation. You’re proving my theory that atheism isn’t as rational as most would claim. Are you really just a theist troll/sockpuppet?
“O ye of little faith….”
Oh My Freaking Heck! [1] You just might have stumbled somewhere near the truth! Maybe you aren’t a complete idiot. You’re still awfully juvenile, though.
[1] Today is Talk Like a Angry Mormon Day.
colugo wrote:
What autumn said. Even if a sentiment is spontaneous and not well thought out, doesn’t mean that there’s nothing to criticize.
Let’s say someone reads about this incident and thinks “oh, it’s just Americans shooting each other again, no big deal, at least it didn’t happen here” – if they are not explicitly gloating about Americans dying, would you then find nothing amiss there?
I don’t think you are a troll, but sometimes you get a bit too enamored of the Jiminy Cricket of the Scienceblogs role you’ve chosen.
Wikipedia: “”Jiminy Cricket!” or “Jiminy Crickets!” was originally a polite expletive euphemism for Jesus Christ.”
Awesome.
(Seriously, though, I know what you meant by the reference.)
You have indicated that you are willing, by means of reckless disregard for the risks involved, to purchase your personal emotional satisfaction in the form of your macho fantasies about guns, with other people’s lives. I very much doubt you are a better person than anyone commenting here.
Conservapedia’s spin? Here it is:
Here’s what I don’t get – He came to them looking for a place to crash, and they were a missionary school right? Their mission was presumably to bring members INTO their faith, so to show off their godly compassion they turn him away in the middle of winter? No room at the inn freak, take a hike!
Wasn’t there a fable about some angel looking for a free meal and a place to flop in the bible and because the family was so nice to him (they offered to let him bone their daughter if memory serves) he gave them some magic beans or a talking fish or something? I mean, I know they are under no EARTHLY obligation to help a brother out but I thought that the church was supposed to be all about the charity and goodwill. What’s up with that Mega-church? Think your pews don’t stink?
I won’t pretend to know what’s going on in the mind of one religious fruitcake or another but maybe Ezekial Homeskool figured that of ALL the places he might find help it would be a CHURCH, the very one he was raised in, and when he got turned away – POP.
Maybe the sudden rush of understanding that the church is just a hotbed of hypocrisy was too much for him to bear?
“You Christians brought this on yourselves,” Murray wrote on a Web site for people who have left Pentecostal and fundamentalist religious organizations.
It was the most recent posting of his on the site, dated Sunday, December 9 at 11:03 a.m.
“I’m coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. …God, I can’t wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don’t care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you … as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.”
Christians are to blame for most of the problems in world. Religion poisons everything. Sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it. Atheist illogic is truly astounding… if one were to apply the same reasoning PZ and others have used here to conclude that Murray was a Christian at the time he decided to commit mass murder, one would also have to conclude that atheist icons such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Cristopher Hitchens are all Christians too since they were all raised in the faith.
For that matter, how many atheist posting here would be considered Christians by that measure?
The reason that so many Christian churches around the world have armed guards is that for the last two thousand years, pagans, atheists and Muslims have been attempting to kill those who choose to worship there.
Churches have armed guards because atheists are trying to kill the people inside?
VD, I say this with all due respect – you’re totally full of shit.
VD: Nice name. Does it stand for anything?
I think your unholy bullshit is best refuted with a picture:
HERE
This whole event makes me sad. On top of the tragedy of the shooting, there is bound to be a slew of people who are going to exploit a young man’s mental illness and the senseless deaths of these churchgoers for stupid political means. I’m sure that those shot will become seen as fundamentalist martyrs though martyrdom in my mind implies a willful choice of death over the loss of ideals. However, it is always very sad when this sort of thing happens.
I don’t think you can be too fast to condemn the killer as a person, though his act was contemptible. He strikes me as a mentally unstable person who was pushed over the edge by circumstance. No one deserves to die in such a way and no one deserves the shame of having a relative kill in such a way.
No. It’s precisely the fact that such an expression of relief is ‘culturally appropriate’ that is the problem.
The ironic part is that you’re doing exactly what you accuse us of. You’re spinning comments on a culturally ingrained standard which we find objectionable into hatred of the culture and all its members. You’re part of the ‘I recognize ingroup-outgroup thinking as a bad thing’ ingroup, I suspect.
VD, care to explain how disbelief in any god/s requires that you must kill people? If there have indeed been atheists trying to kill christians for the last 2000 years, a better description for them would simply be ‘homicidal maniacs’. No part of atheism exhorts atheists to kill people who do not agree with them, nor is there any reasonable line of logic following from its grand total of one tenet that could be interpreted to mean this. The same cannot be said about muslims or christians.
I agree with VD about one thing. If that quote is correct, then this guy clearly had clearly given up on the Christian tradition in which he was raised. I agree that suggesting that this guys’ Christian background is responsible for this tragedy is wrong-headed.
That said, the sentiment that Christians are responsible for all the ills of the world is absolutely NOT what you hear Dawkins, Hitch, etc. saying. Get it straight VD.
Eric, it should have been obvious from the beginning that someone who shows up with a gun at a suburban training center at midnight is not looking for shelter. And it was not a megachurch – not even a church, although there was a church next to this facility. Similar speculation can be found here, along with some reasonable responses by people with experience:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/9/16515/2836/125/419914
In the UK we have inquests to work out what happened in such cases. They’re like mini-trials. There’s an interminable Diana one going on at the moment. Judging by US TV (eg Quincy), you have them in the US too. So, no, the dead person isn’t automatically guilty. They just don’t get the option of defending themselves at the ensuing proceedings – owing to mediums etc only ever being conmen.
It looks as though they gave up on or betrayed him first in some way.
That one doesn’t follow at all. His Christian background is about the only thing we know could be responsible for his behaviour at all. He didn’t have any other background – being home-schooled, churched and then abortively trained in a mission school. Where did he learn to hate and to shoot guns if not from his fellow Christians?
With someone less closeted, there’s always the possibility of blaming influences outside the family. Not so with this chap on the currently available evidence. He’s all Christian (plus, given Christian beliefs, he’s the way their god made him including any influence from similarly god-made demons).
NB http://www.seanet.com/~raines/mental.html
+ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folie_a_deux
It’s not the atheists with the mental problem (in general). Religious belief is so obviously a mental defect that psychobabblers have to make up a special exclusion for it (because the social pressure to share religious delusions is much greater).
Churches have armed guards because atheists are trying to kill the people inside? VD, I say this with all due respect – you’re totally full of shit.
Thanks for letting me know. I’ll have to tell the Rangers from the congregation who provide security for the church I attend in the USA that they’re just wasting their time, then. I suppose they just do it for the drama, right? The shooting was the most serious attack on New Life, but it wasn’t the first, they’d previously had blood thrown on their walls. And attacks on churches outside the USA are quite common by both atheists and Muslims, depending on the country.
That said, the sentiment that Christians are responsible for all the ills of the world is absolutely NOT what you hear Dawkins, Hitch, etc. saying.
Not in an explicit manner, but criticism of Christianity and Christians certainly makes up the vast majority of their anti-theist works. None of these writers have much to say about the specifics Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese folk religion or any of the hundreds of other world religions. I think Sam Harris is unlikely to ever write Letter to an Islamic Nation.
VD, care to explain how disbelief in any god/s requires that you must kill people? If there have indeed been atheists trying to kill christians for the last 2000 years, a better description for them would simply be ‘homicidal maniacs’. No part of atheism exhorts atheists to kill people who do not agree with them, nor is there any reasonable line of logic following from its grand total of one tenet that could be interpreted to mean this.
I have put forth a hypothesis in no little detail, but I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait about a month for it. However, you may wish to note that you appear to e abandoning science in favor of a quasi-medieval philosophical logic here. A scientific examination of the matter would first consider the statistical probability of a murder being an atheist to see if there happened to be a significant correlation. Once that correlation is established, the possibility of the relationship being causal can be considered. But even if atheism cannot possibly have a causal relationship to killing, there may be an underlying factor which causes both the atheism and the killing.
After all, disbelief in God does not dictate voting Democratic or employment as a university professor, and yet we can observe reliable behavioral patterns that indicate both connections without difficulty.
In any event, leaping right to the explanatory logic and ignoring all of the observable evidence is an unusual perspective for a well-known science blog.
I did some digging… It _MAY_ be that someone at forums for ex-pentacostals with alias “nghtmrchld26” is Matthew Murray:
http://p223.ezboard.com/Considering-Suicide/fexpentecostalforumsfrm7.showMessage?topicID=2020.topic
The number 26 doesn’t match his age though.
Given that the US prison population is far more religious than the general population, I would suggest that the correlation is likely to be in the reverse direction.
VD, I have no doubt you have guards in your church to protect you from violent atheists. After all, churches are places where delusional people congregate to discuss their delusion.
But your delusion is bullshit. The only reason to have armed guards in church to protect you from atheists is mental illness. There is no threat from violent atheists. Your delusion of such may be real, the armed guards that are the manifestation of the delusion may be real, but there are no marauding hordes of atheists bent on killing the superstitious.
As far as this shooter goes, no. Does not count. A person thrown out of church because he is too mentally ill even for church does not equal an atheist. It seems he was a sick person made sicker by the religious culture that then rejected him.
There are random loonies out there, and given recent events it may well be prudent for churchgoers to have armed guards – such places attract the unhinged.
But its not “atheists” who are a threat to you.
At least not physically.
@all : Sorry for my grammar : it should have been
“an apologetic”. My apologies.
@truthmachine : Please explain why am I committing
“false witness”.
Ur second point is perfectly valid; my anger made me hate the guy. I should have forgiven, though I wonder why you defend the (clearly guilty)perpetrator instead of the completely blameless victims.
The US prison population self-identifies as more religous than the general population. But there are obvious benefits to that, and I don’t mean magic wafers.
Possibly because no one was saying that the victims were deserving of nothing but hatred and contempt.
@uber: what goes for truth machine goes for you as well- why
would you defend the murderer ? I’m sorry, but I’ll spare my Christian love for the victims’ families. The murderer deserves far more censure than forgiveness.
And why the stupid Scotsman mention at all ? I’m sick of
people lumping me with all these people, just as you are
sick of being lumped with Joseph Stalin.
Your salvo,plz
@uber:
Sorry for replying before reading your post properly.
I think that freethinkers have managed to attack my religion
quiet well;that was what I was trying to say.And Christians
have given them enough opportunity to do so.
My point is, not ALL Christians are like these guys. Some of them are quite sane and rational people; some of them can even be good practioners or supporters of science- witness Jesuits like Father Angelo Secchi, an early pioneer of spectroscopy and stellar astrophysics, and the Augustinian monk and early geneticist, Gregor Johan Mendel.
So, “being detrimental” meant “damaging” here.
The murderer was also a mentally ill young man who obviously did not get the help that he needed. I don’t recall anything in new-testament xtian theology that would support the withdrawal of empathy for someone who has committed an injurious act. “He hurt our people, so fuck him?” Sorry, chapter and verse don’t come leaping to mind.
The local Fox morning news just described him only as “a loner who hated Christians.”
Who did that? Your an idiot.
In my theology forgiveness is paramount. In your didn’t he just send some folks to heaven? I would never defend his actions thats absurd but you are mistaking the point of my comment.
You made reference to them not being Christian as opposed to yourself. Thats the Scotsman. Stalin was an atheist. No ones denies that aspect. People correctly show his atheism wasn’t the cause of his problems.
To those who claim that Murray was atheist, perhaps yopu can explain this part of what he is quoted (on the 9news site referred to above) as having said:
“See you all on the other side, we’re leaving this nightmare behind to a better place”
Oddly, given VoxDay’s usual painful honesty and determination to place all quotes in context, this part isn’t quoted in his post also referred to above.
My take on the situation generally: FWIW I sympathise with those who have lost loved ones and condemn the shooter. I also, however, get seriously annoyed by idiots who claim that atheism is an ideology and moral code rolled into one, and accuse me of moral equivalence with Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao on the basis of that claim.
“See you all on the other side, we’re leaving this nightmare behind to a better place”
I didn’t bother mentioning it for two reasons.
1. If atheism is merely “the absence of god-belief”, as many have asserted in relation to this event, then his reference to “the other side” has no relevance to his atheism or lack thereof. One could perhaps make a case for Murray being a pagan nihilist, but regardless, it’s pretty clear that he was every bit as anti-Christian as the most militant atheist here. I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough as more of his pre-rampage rants surface.
2. Nearly half of those who describe themselves as atheist or agnostic nevertheless believe in life after death as well as in Heaven and Hell according to a 2003 study by the Barna Group. In fairness, I must also note that religious self-identifications are equally problematic. It seems the average individual doesn’t classify himself properly according to the abstract definitions preferred by intellectuals as we all might like.
So put succinctly, at the time of the shootings, this guy was a Christian-hater?
I’ve never understood the deep-seated contempt some people hold for Christianity or Christian church members. Then again, I didn’t grow up in a deeply religious household. There were some years my family went to church somewhat regularly, and other years not at all. I grew up being exposed to the concepts of faith, but it was never an overwhelming presence in my life. I haven’t been to a church service in four years — but not because I have contempt, resentment, or hatred of it or its members, but because simply it’s not my bag.
Clearly the missionary school recognized some deep-seated issues, tactifully only recorded as “health-issues”, that prompted them to remove him from the program. So the mere suggestion of pointing fingers at the victims is uncomfortably similar to the concept of blaming the raped, not the rapist.
As someone who has had both a passing familiarity with religion, and an academic familiarity with science, I think a collective of scientists on a science-oriented blog would be more interested in studying the psychology, brain chemisity, genetic makeup, prior disposition, and all social influences (family, friends, employer, and church) of the shooter rather than facetiously ascribing his actions to a previously held religious affiliation.
Unless, of course, there is some other ideology at play behind some of the comments here. In which case it should be pointed out that fanatics of /any/ stripe are kinda disturbing to moderately-minded, tolerant people… just sayin’.
Vox-
Your a really dishonest guy.
Seeing how atheists don’t think there is another side to see you at I would think this compelling to an honest person.
Maybe anti some Christians but that would not make him non Christian personally.
Why is it such a big deal for you to be honest? Christians commit horrible acts every single day of the year. This is just one more. They also do many wonderful things every single day of the year. They are human.
As Barna has noted in the studies you mention above religious belief has no bearing on ones actions in life. We arrive at them in other ways and use religion to buttress the ideas we form elsewhere.
Honesty Vox. Be honest, the man was a theist.
JustAnotherRick:
LOL! Obviously, your eight posts over a five hour period suggest that you do care and that you do have the time.
You don’t get out much, do you?
Perhaps you’ve never heard of Uh Duh.
00Stephen,
Your concern is boring. And you obviously haven’t been paying attention.
Well, however they spin this (and of course they are going to spin it people; that’s all religion is after all, spin), I am reminded of the common cult technique of (if you’ll forgive me) “shoot-one’s-own” as an example to others. In this case, the shooting was done by an outsider (more or less), but it’s being held up as an example to the congregation: “See? This is what happens when you leave… God was with the security guard… And in the case of those who died, be sure you’re ready to meet Jesus,” etc.
The point is, this entire incident is group behavior, including the shooter’s actions – he has and is playing a role in the group, which differentiates between believers and unbelievers. His actions play the role of the outside world determined to persecute believers. This sad tragedy serves to strengthen the group, and they will give their energy now to upholstering their ideology rather than really inquiring as to the cause(s).
The persecutor is a part of their mythology, and believers are not going to differentiate between atheist unbelievers who would never harm anyone, and disgruntled former member “unbelievers” with an axe to grind. They don’t separate that in their minds, ever. So of course they’ll blame it on atheists, because anyone who doesn’t measure up to their perfectionist, self-abusive standards is an unbeliever – even among the present congregation. Believer me, they’re looking at each other, trying to sniff out the “unbelievers” among them right now. This incident just reinforces their groupthink. That’s how it works. They’re nice people, but people in a mob aren’t very nice to each other. (Everything I learned about a mob I learned in church.)
And I understand this man was kicked out because of “health concerns”? I’d like to have a little more concrete information, rather than “he hated Christians” and “he was an atheist.” But of course, what we get is spin, and “explanations” that are beside the point.
#53: Considering the only fatalities were those climbing into a minivan in the parking lot and the body armor clad shooter was killed by an armed congregation member before anybody else could be shot, I’d say the “volunteer security staff” was exceedingly well “on her game” Sunday morning. You may also want to critically consider the formality of any prior security arrangement she had with the pastor, and whether she was deputized by the church after-the-fact to thwart legal action against her.
As for your mention of threatening notes and police concern, have you ever taken a threatening note to the police? I have, and I know how they treat the issue. Congrats, you’ve made an excellent argument for concealed carry laws.
@stevie_c:
And your contribution is trite, without consructive merit, and vaguely trollish. Satisfied?
I predict a healthy dose of the No True Scotsman fallacy in this promised hypothesis.
The bottom line is the guy was mentally ill. There is exactly zero evidence that his mental illness has anything to do with atheism but there is evidence that it may have been helped along by being excluded by he Christians he so wanted to be accepted by and that he was raised by.
From the Barna Group’s website
Even ignoring the obvious slant of this company, I’m not willing to accept lumping agnostics and atheists together. They of course will have differing views on teh afterlife.
You’re the boring concern troll with two different names… not me.
I wasn’t intending to be constructiive. Just dismissive.
“is that for the last two thousand years, pagans, atheists and Muslims have been attempting to kill those who choose to worship there.”
Well, for the last 400 or so it’s mostly been Catholics killing Protestants and Protestants killing Catholics. And both killing a few Mormons, I guess.
It must be past time to nominate Kristine for her second Molly.
Kristine, #144, “So of course they’ll blame it on atheists,”
Doesn’t sound like Murray was much of an atheist. He says he is going to be alive after he dies and in heaven or somewhere nice. A bit odd for an atheist to believe in heaven and an afterlife.
Raven, “Nothing in fundie land has to be true or make any sense.”
I’d like to see a listing of the atheist attack spots that doesn’t include say China where they want no government challenge. Really I’d like to see the places where no belief is assaulting belief.
The rangers? How, well, gay? Your church has armed guards to defend against attacks. What a bizarre and delusional bunch that must be.
Could it be that it’s the dominant religion in the USA, the most powerful nation of Earth? Or maybe that they where raised in it? And actually they do address the others but honestly when is the last time a Buddhist tried to legislate something in the USA?
It wasn’t the christian upbringing that caused the kid to go nuts, it was “secularism”–
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/12/11/religious-extremist-tony-perkins-says-secular-media-partially-responsible-for-church-shootings/
The bottom line is the guy was mentally ill.
I agree, but what I was trying to say is, certain groups endenger irrational reactions in susceptible people if the group is perfectionistic, shaming (despite all the public hugs), and unreasonable in its expectations. I don’t know if New Life Church is like that but I’ve seen groups that are. Likewise, if the disgruntled party has allowed a basically legitimate complaint (of course we don’t know if it was in this case) balloon into an unreasonable grievance, this stokes the fire. It is a cycle, and while the shooting victims are never to blame for what happens to them, dynamics of the group can exacerbate the situation. That and the fact that law enforcement is helpless in the face of threats and likely “future crime” adds to the situation.
What concerns me is that more and more Americans seem to be using a religious outlook to adapt to (or co-evolve with) these so-called random acts of violence (I don’t see them as random), thus accepting them and incorporating them into our expectations, our assumptions, and our view of life – instead of unblinkingly examining the problem so that we can stop it. That’s what I was trying to say above – and it really disturbs me.
Fucking hell.
Fucking fuckwits.
They can’t do anything but spin.
@stevie_c:
An “I’m rubber, you’re glue” response is still neither sophicated or constructive. And yes, I have two similar names I use for car and non-car related boards. I’ll label the mistake as force-of-habit, and overlook your typos as well. If your intent is to be dismissive, why do you insist on drawing fire unto yourself?
You do have my respect for your honesty with your candid admission that it’s not your intent to add constructive content to the discussion though. Isn’t there another community or thread where such idle banter is more well received?
Look at this ridiculous fuck-headedness.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/philosophy/2889/
The morons at UD are trying to pin the shooting on atheism (as we knew they would). Must be nice to be a fundie Christian. It doesn’t matter what happens: if it’s bad, it’s an atheist’s fault, and if it’s good, it’s Fundie Christianity.
Doesn’t sound like Murray was much of an atheist. He says he is going to be alive after he dies and in heaven or somewhere nice. A bit odd for an atheist to believe in heaven and an afterlife.
Raven06480, you and I know that, but at the MN Atheist booth at the GLBT Pride Fest this summer, a woman came up to me and asked “what kind of afterlife atheists believed in.” When I said, “None,” she was shocked! I kid you not. People are clueless, so they don’t differentiate, as I said.
Reading these comments has been a real eye-opener for me. I am astonished by the bigotry, ignorance and hatred shown in these anti-religious comments. I recommend therapy if not repentance and salvation.
Oh, and I just got around to reading Vox Day’s comments above. He’s of the same ilk. Not surprising.
You haven’t become more interesting. Not surprising for a gun loving concern troll. I’m the regular here, I’m usually well received.
For someone to wander in here and tell a group of people who they think we should behave or what to post about it a bit presumptious. We get it all the time, from concern trolls.
Are we up to 3 strikes yet for this one?
Bigotry, hatred and ignorance? Nope.
Antireligious comments? Close.
Keep praying for us Bill. It’ll keep you out of trouble, and hopefully unarmed.
Vox uses his known lying habit to conflate atheists with pagans and Moslems. Atheism is a rather new movement and philosophy at least in terms of numbers. Socrates was an agnostic or atheist but the modern form has always been a minority of a few percent of the population until recently when they might have reach 10% of the population. Atheists never have much of an organization or army, are always vastly outnumbered, and tend not to attack churches because they don’t care about religion.
Paganism is 1000’s of years old and Islam is 1400. Both are rival religions, frequently under attack by Xians, and they do what rival religions do, kill each other.
Speaking of attacks, Xianity has historically been one of the most aggressive and bloodthirsty. Paganism is all but extinct due to Xianity. The Xian church was established by bloodshed as rival cults fought for control and massacred pagans 2,000 years ago. Then there were the crusades. North and South American used to have 1000’s of Native religions that are virtually all gone. The reformation killed tens of millions. The Xian derived Nazis killed the Jews. Today, a christian US army invaded a Moslem nation, destroyed their armed forces and executed their leader, and are occupying Iraq. “As you sow, so shall you reap.” You can’t blaze a trail of 2,000 years of blood, death, and violence without making a few enemies.
And BTW, AFAIK, the vast majority of churches in the US don’t have armed guards. The few that do tend to be in high crime areas and are more concerned with common criminals.
Church shootings aren’t common in the USA. When they happen it is usually intrachurch violence as in Colorado Springs. In Utah, the polygamist sects used to fight it out among themselves. David Koresh gained power by murdering his rival. The Reverend Jim Jones led his followers into the hereafter in Guyana. The Heavens Gaters are now in the Mother Ship. Just business as usual.
Yeah I agree Kristine, my comment was actually more directed at VD.
Boo Hooo
“You need to open your mind a little and stop jumping to conclusions based not on actual fact, but speculation.”
You came onto this blog and started trashing atheists right from the get-go. Gee, could that have possibly led us to believe that you might have been some kind of theist? It’s about pattern recognition. 9 times out of 10 (possibly more), anyone who comes in and slings insults and cherry-picks comments and pre-emptively accuses us of saying things that we haven’t said or wouldn’t say, is a disgruntled theist. But I guess sometimes it’s an “apatheist” (which sounds like code for “snotty teenager”) who just wants to stir shit up. I’ll try to recognize them better next time.
You’re still welcome to answer Tatarize’s question about why a loving minister of God wouldn’t send his flock to Paradise though.
Vox uses his known lying habit to conflate atheists with pagans and Moslems.
It’s possible. But it’s far more probable that you’re simply ill-informed.
Socrates was an agnostic or atheist but the modern form has always been a minority of a few percent of the population until recently when they might have reach 10% of the population.
Actually, Socrates publicly asserted his theism in court. But I suppose it’s possible that he was just another lying atheist. Modern atheism dates back to 1729 and the Abbe’ Jean Meslier, although by the standard that some are attempting to apply to Murray, Meslier would have to be considered a Christian too.
Atheists never have much of an organization or army, are always vastly outnumbered, and tend not to attack churches because they don’t care about religion.
And yet, somehow atheists have managed to destroy tens of thousands of churches and temples in Spain, the Soviet Union, Cuba, Ethiopia, Cambodia and Tibet, just to name a few. Currently, Christians are under violent threat from atheists in China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos.
Advice to me from YetAnotherRick:
You need to open your mind a little and stop jumping to conclusions based not on actual fact, but speculation.
Compare with his earlier comment:
That’s all I need to know about your level of intellectual development.
and another gem:
That’s all I need to know about your level of moral development.
I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that Rick’s house doesn’t have many mirrors in it.
Uh-oh.
Looks like this blog has caught VD again.
Yawn Vox.
Why are you guys taking Vox Day seriously? Doesn’t thinking that this haircut was a good look for him (or anyone else) make it clear that he has no sense and should be ignored on any real topic?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/archives.asp?AUTHOR_ID=175
Vox first conflates atheism with paganism and Moslems. That is silly and won’t work.
I knew he would then conflate atheism with communism. That won’t work either. Communism is a socioeconomic theory, not a religion and some strains of the modern form have an antireligious component. Much of this seems to be the age old struggle between church and state. Totalitarian communism is not primarily run by atheists to advance an atheistic agenda. It is run by totalitarians to advance a sociopolitical agenda and in practice the agenda of the New Ruling Classes.
Next step, the Hitler card for Vox. You do know that Martin Luther was a vicious antisemite who advocated eliminating the jews and Hitler was a devout Catholic?
It’s the classic fall back position for those trying to blame all the world’s ills on atheism.
Hence my Yawn.
I knew he would then conflate atheism with communism. That won’t work either. Communism is a socioeconomic theory, not a religion and some strains of the modern form have an antireligious component. Much of this seems to be the age old struggle between church and state. Totalitarian communism is not primarily run by atheists to advance an atheistic agenda. It is run by totalitarians to advance a sociopolitical agenda and in practice the agenda of the New Ruling Classes.
I do so love what passes for atheist reason. A logically similar argument would be to argue that because one does not smoke cigarettes to advance a smoking agenda, smoking cigarettes does not cause cancer. By the way, what does Communism not being a religion have to do with anything? Atheism isn’t a religion either. Nor is Communism is a socio-economic theory, that’s scientific socialism. Communism is a political ideology historically very popular among atheists.
That avowed atheists murdered tens of millions is a matter of historical record. Only the historically illiterate think it’s a mere matter of Stalin and Mao, as there were also Choibalsan, Bierut and dozens of other, less famous atheist killers. The atheist propensity for mass slaughter is several orders of magnitude higher than that of any other belief system; the most murderous Christian king of historical Christendom wouldn’t rank among the sixty most lethal atheist leaders even if you doubled his body count. And there have been more than 20x more Christian leaders than atheist leaders.
Hitler, on the other hand, was definitely not an atheist. Nor, as Richard Dawkins correctly concluded, was he a Christian. He was a pagan who invested the modern equivalent of millions of dollars into occult research. Murderous madness obviously doesn’t require atheism, but the historical evidence strongly indicates that it helps.
YAR, it is absurd to allege that I was somehow misrepresenting what you said, or that I was in any way dishonest. If I had quoted your entire post when I posed my question, your statement would have been just as ridiculous, because nothing else in your post substantiated it. Your “explanation” in #105 doesn’t even attempt to address the question; you merely reiterate that you think that a certain statement from post #44 might be evidence of mental illness. Even if I were to grant you this preposterous premise, I still would like to know why, exactly, you find it reasonable to suggest that atheism itself might be responsible. Even as hyperbole, it simply does not follow.
Now, I’m also genuinely curious as to how my original post could possibly be perceived as dishonest or misleading in the slightest. Is it possible that these other alleged instances of atheist “dishonestly” you keep referring to are actually other reasonable questions and comments that you have managed to horrendously misconstrue?
#142 Kseniya wrote:
“LOL! Obviously, your eight posts over a five hour period suggest that you do care and that you do have the time.”
Over the period of time I’ve read and posted to alt.atheism, there have been several million posts. It would take just a wee bit over 5 hours to slog through those.
#166 Rey Fox wrote:
“9 times out of 10 (possibly more), anyone who comes in and slings insults and cherry-picks comments and pre-emptively accuses us of saying things that we haven’t said or wouldn’t say, is a disgruntled theist.”
Should I ask for a cite from a peer reviwed journal? BTW, about 9 times out of 10, when someone claims to be an atheist, they’re really a militant, hostile anti-theist.
“You’re still welcome to answer Tatarize’s question about why a loving minister of God wouldn’t send his flock to Paradise though.”
Oy vey. It’s the good ol’ “No True Scots-Loving Minister of God” logical fallacy. I don’t believe there’s any rational response to such idiocy. If theists bother you so much, why don’t you just kill them all?
That said, the guy, a clear murderer, deserves nothing but hatred and contempt from all sorts of people
Posted by: astrolieber |
Gosh, you can’t think of a single person who might recommend aproaching even that person with compassion?
Now, who might that be? Somebody you seem to have forgotten since the first sentence of your post?
Dishonesty and delusion, every time.
Considering that Communist theory superstitiously posits a cohesive driving force behind the events of history, was received from a single founding authority whose followers have now split into multiple camps quarreling over who has the “true” interpretation of his teachings, effectively posits magic via its economic premises, discourages and in practice violently suppresses free thought and individualism, demands absolute loyalty, promises a paradise to its followers, and in any given Communist state almost invariably treats its founder as a Messiah figure, Communism is arguably more of a religion than Buddhism.
Vox, your arguments are rife with discrepancies, half-truths, and outright fabrications, but worse, they suffer from a terminal lack of originality. I could spend about a semester in a couple programming classes and write a script that would perfectly emulate your posting behavior. Pathetic.
Don’t confuse the Legal System with reality. The indictment or formal charge against any person is not evidence of guilt for the legal process. In our system, the law does not require a person to prove his innocence or produce any evidence to his innocence.
Rather, the “presumption of innocence” is the corner stone for determining who must bear the burden of proof to guilt. In our legal system we have placed the burden of proving a party guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, on the Government. If the Government FAILS to meet it’s burden, the person is “innocent” in the eyes of the law, even if they’re guilty as hell.
As a member of this society, I believe OJ Simpson was guilty in the murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman. I also believe that the State failed to meet it’s burden and OJ Simpson is, in the eyes of the law, innocent of these crimes. Therefore, the State has no right to sanction Mr. Simpson because it failed to convince its citizens of Mr. Simpson’s guilt.
If the presumption was “guilty until proven innocent” it would place an incredible burden, that couldn’t be afforded, on the charged. This would, naturally (as demonstrated through-out history), lead to many abuses, which is why we don’t.
VD:
“Communism is a political ideology historically very popular among atheists.”
I’d LOVE you to provide even one reputable source for this.
“…Nor is Communism is a socio-economic theory, that’s scientific socialism…”
Communism is NOT a socio-economic theory? Then why is the primary argument against it (government control of economy and labor) specifically based in the socio-economic realm?
“…That avowed atheists murdered tens of millions is a matter of historical record…”
No, it’s a matter of your stupidity and neglect in learning history. You seek to believe things that are not so. That is your problem, not anyone else’s. You are wrong, period, end of story. Stop lying.
“…The atheist propensity for mass slaughter is several orders of magnitude higher than that of any other belief system…”
How is atheism a belief system if it’s not a religion? Explain. Atheism killd more than any religious leader ever? Funny, that’s not waht I learned in my private Catholic grade school and high school. In fact, atheism was never taught as the reason any of history’s massacres were committed. It had more to do with god-belief in human or divine godliness, not atheism. You guys stroke yourselves night and day wishing it were true that atheists are the problem, and your view of history so perverse that you’ve whipped yourselves into collective madness. You really are making humanity dumber.
“…Murderous madness obviously doesn’t require atheism, but the historical evidence strongly indicates that it helps.”
So which is it? Atheism does kill, or does not? Because in the paragraph above that you are blaming atheists and atheism for just about every evil committed in the last 200 years or so. It “helps”? How do you know this? What studies can you point us to? What research by objective, non-religiously motivated parties? What theories?
You aren’t offering anything but heresay and accusation. You offer no proof of anything, and the revisionist history you spout goes against the historical record.
BTW, Vox Taedium, does the phrase “Taiping Rebellion” mean anything to you?
Oooooh… Now tell us about the New World Order, Black Helicopters and the Jooos… And do us a favor and get a vasectomy. Please.
looks like BarryA at UD is blaming atheists
Do Dawkins and Dennett Incite to Hatred?
BarryA
I live in Arvada, Colorado, and for many years I attended the church associated with the YWAM shooting on Sunday. Earlier this year I befriended two of the young men going through the training program there, one from New Zealand and the other from England. I am numb with sorrow, and my prayers go up for the families of the victims.
The media is reporting that Matthew Murray posted the following on the web: “I’m coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. …God, I can’t wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don’t care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you … as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.”
Look at the last part of that quote closely. One wonders if Murray has been reading Dawkins or Dennett. By blaming the world’s ills on religious people do Dawkins and Dennett incite to hatred and make it more likely that tragedies of this sort can occur? I don’t know, but it is an interesting question.
VD: “millions of dollars into occult research.”
SS research into occult nonsense and bogus anthropology (e.g. the Tibetan-Aryan connection) was more Himmler’s obsession.
This article sheds light on Nazi views on Christianity. Elite Nazi spiritual/mystical views are certainly not mainstream Christianity and they are arguably “pagan” in that esoteric influences like Theosophy and Ariosophy are clear – yet the (Aryanized) figure of Christ is cited as a rationale for antisemitism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Christianity
You know, no matter how many times you try to sound intelligent by cribbing right-wing talking points and tarting them up with your polemics, you don’t fool anyone. Well, anyone with a brain and an education. I suggest you get the second, it might fix the problems you’re having with the first.
Oh, and the obvious narcissism and grandiosity which routinely infests your “columns.” Do yourself a favor and get some help for that. You’re really not as special as you think you are. No matter how many times you tell us.
looks like BarryA at UD is blaming atheists
Do Dawkins and Dennett Incite to Hatred?
BarryA
Yeah, well BarryA at UD who is blaming atheists gets his ass kicked, and by some commenters at UD as well.
The security guard who credited God for shooting the shooter was kicked off the Mpls Police Force for lying.
I’ll bet that post gets deleted. But I’ve archived it anyway. It’s a real beaut.
I think I can sum up Rick’s entire batch of comments here: “I am rubber, you are glue”. No need to engage him any further.
“If theists bother you so much, why don’t you just kill them all?”
You are a sucker for the dirty talk, aren’t you? Yes, we must kill them all! I’m a naughty atheist, spank me!
VD
Humm. My comment was cut off…
add to that
So I guess that whole proletariat vs. bourgeoisie thing was a joke?
This story just takes an interesting turn: the shooter actually died of a self-inflicted gunshot.
So apparently, this armed church security guard who used God’s guidance to take him out (or whatever) had some help by the shooter.
I’m glad she was there, though, to fire a couple of extra bullets into him after he was dead.
It is very ugly to gloat about the fact that Murray was a Christian. Saying that “if he was an atheist the Christians would capitalize on that fact to demonize atheists” is just a tu quoque. Complaining about “observing a mandatory garment rending and wailing” period as if showing respect for the dead is some kind of tedious, useless obligation bespeaks a deep lack of emotional maturity.
Why in the world This Parasite is taken seriously is beyond me.
I HAEV TEH POWARRR!!!11
I wonder if VD is compensating for something……
Vox like most fundies is predictable. When you call him on his lies, he lies some more and then rants and raves and makes wild accusation. Hitler was a Xian who invoked Xianity often, it is all through Mein Kampf. He thought the occult pagan stuff was nonsense and anti-New German.
Communism isn’t a socioeconomic system? That would be news to Marx, Lenin, and all the rest.
I can see why he created his own blog to haunt. Reading his incoherent gibberish gets old fast.
Also, saying that evangelical megachurches are not like other kinds of Christianity is not a “no true Scotsman” argument. There is much more fundamentalism in these churches than in Catholicism, for example. The poster was not saying he was not a Christian, the poster was saying he was a different kind of Christian than I am familiar with.
The female guard who shot the ‘shooter’ gives credit to God.
Turns out, God can’t shoot worth a shit, either. He is definitely not a Texan.
That is a sweet picture.
BarryA quote mined Murray. Typical. After his threats, he said he was going to the afterlife which he thought was a nicer place. Not exactly the views of an atheist.
BarryA left those lines out. The dishonesty of the fundies is astounding.
I called it in this thread above. It didn’t matter who or what Murray was. The fundies would spin it as an atheist act. The shooter could have been a giant cockroach from a space ship and they would have done the same. Predictable.
Well, to be fair, she did hit him a few times. Good for her, she did her job… .he just helped.
“It is very ugly to gloat about the fact that Murray was a Christian. ”
Who the hell is gloating here?
“Complaining about “observing a mandatory garment rending and wailing” period as if showing respect for the dead is some kind of tedious, useless obligation bespeaks a deep lack of emotional maturity. ”
I’m more inclined to think that mandated public grief-fests are emotionally immature.
YAR:
*sigh*
Who’s suggesting that you should do that?
But maybe you can find ONE example in support of your claim?
Or perhaps two?
Without serially reviewing five million threads?
Can you think of a way to do that?
Hey, I realize the fate of the world doesn’t rest on this point, nor on the disposition of this topic, but look at it this way:
You come in here, make a couple of ridiculously broad-brushed assertions about atheism being a form of mental illness and cognitive impairment, allege a high correlation between atheism and lying, claim you have mountains of evidence (to support the latter, at least) and provide… lessee… NOTHING to back any of it up.
(For the sake of simplicity, I won’t address your mind-numbingly inane response to J Myers, but it does merit a mention.)
Total and complete bullshit. Catholicism just has a different kind of fundamentalism not a lack of it.
In some ways the Protestant branches of the religion are far more rational and less fundie by far than the superstition laden RCC.
Thats just clueless.The problem with this is it has been shown again and again that religious belief does nothing to stop or change behaviour. So you are in effect arguing that having no belief does in God causes aberrant behaviour when studies(Barna included) have shown time and time again that no such thing occurs.
I can’t believe Vox is in Mensa. I had heard the organization was leaving many people who didn’t deserve membership in but he clearly doesn’t have the education to back up the alleged IQ.
These are totalitarian regimes. How can someone who claims to be so smart be so absolutely stupid?
I also noticed a comment about lying atheists, seriously what is your problem? You produce no real meaningful evidence to buttress your own religious case and then attack atheists for saying you alleged evidence stinks. Then attack atheists for simply not agreeing with your unsupported position and call them all sorts of names and think ill of an entire group of people for essentially not being gullible.
All the while religious people go around believing all manner of strange ideas that you ignore while they do great harm to many. Your mindset is really, really, bizarre.
lying atheists huh?
Whose the bigger liar a fella who says I don’t know and neither do you or the guy who gets up every Sunday and tells people he knows things he can’t possibly know.
I’d LOVE you to provide even one reputable source for this.
Christopher Hitchens talking about Marxism on June 1, 2007, quoted by Frontpage Magazine: “No, it’s not a religion; it is defined as a non-belief in the supernatural and as a repudiation of anything [that] could be called a faith.”
“Atheism is the core of the whole Soviet system.” –Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, “The Oak and the Calf”
“The program of the Communist International also clearly states that Communists fight against religion. . . . Remember that the struggle against religion is a struggle for socialism.” –Emilian Yaroslavsky, quoted by Time Magazine on February 17, 1936.
Communism is NOT a socio-economic theory? Then why is the primary argument against it (government control of economy and labor) specifically based in the socio-economic realm?
No, because Communists are dedicated to the socio-economic system known as socialism. See Yaroslavsky’s quote above. It’s pretty funny to see you try to argue about this when you don’t even know the difference between Communism and socialism. It’s like being unable to distinguish between capitalism and the Republican party.
No, it’s a matter of your stupidity and neglect in learning history. You seek to believe things that are not so. That is your problem, not anyone else’s. You are wrong, period, end of story. Stop lying.
You are seriously trying to argue that atheists haven’t killed tens of millions of people in the 20th Century? I don’t think you’re lying, I’m quite confident that you’re utterly ignorant. You see, the conventional atheist position is to argue that even though atheists killed all those people, they weren’t motivated to do so by their atheism. This is a very interesting new argument on the atheist front, I have to say. I quite like it!
How is atheism a belief system if it’s not a religion? Explain. Atheism killd more than any religious leader ever?
This really shouldn’t be that hard. Not every belief is a religious one, which is how there can and does exist a system of beliefs which many atheists hold in common that is, nevertheless, not a religion.
My statement was that sixty atheist leaders each killed more than twice as many as any Christian leader ever. This is a matter of historical fact.
Atheism does kill, or does not?
Atheism does not kill. Atheists, particularly those in positions of political power, are inordinately inclined to kill large numbers of people.
Hitler was a Xian who invoked Xianity often, it is all through Mein Kampf. He thought the occult pagan stuff was nonsense and anti-New German.
For Darwin’s sake, I know few of you know the first thing about history, but don’t you guys even read your own literature? None of the major atheist writers except Onfray believe Hitler was a Christian anymore, they all know better. I have some shocking news for you: politicians lie, especially when they’re running for office.
I can see why he created his own blog to haunt. Reading his incoherent gibberish gets old fast.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from insanity… in the minds of the significantly less intelligent.
Well at least your getting something into your limited intellect. Atheism espouses no belief. Atheists may have killed many as the religious have killed many, so what?
What does a death toll have to do with one claim being correct or the other. Clearly the majority of atheists harm no one. It absolute power that corrupts theists and atheists alike.
You don’t sound insane, just silly and immature maybe morally compromised.
And the RCC don’t forget them, they have kept him.
Not any more so than the religious. Witness our current war and muslim atrocities. If Christians had the weapons we have now back when we where running the show it would have been worse but in the end WHO cares. Number of dead doesn’t equate to correct argument.
Christopher Hitchens talking about Marxism on June 1, 2007, quoted by Frontpage Magazine: “No, it’s not a religion; it is defined as a non-belief in the supernatural and as a repudiation of anything [that] could be called a faith.”
So the opinion of one person = fact?
Your arrogance prevents you from seeing that you are completely dishonest and fecklessly ignorant to history. Your notions of atheists killing millions of people are beyond wrong: they are a poison idea with no parallel. What are you going to claim next, that the Crusades were actually carried out by atheists against xtians?
Communism has no meaningful philosophical relationship to atheism as espoused by commenters here. Additionally, as I have argued, Communism is not “atheistic” except in the most strictly technical sense of not positing the existence of any being specifically identifiable as “gods”, a description which also fits most varieties of Buddhism.
Then it should be simple to produce some citations from reputable sources to back it up. I cannot imagine why you have failed to do so.
I can’t imagine why anyone who is actually a member of Mensa would boast Mensa membership as an appeal to themselves as authority.
Must be a cusper. 140s are so gauche.
You know, atheists do have a lot to be angry about, but so does every body. However, for new atheists coming from such a church it’s bad enough that many former fundamentalists face enough recovery issues that it requires psychological counseling to help them get over their fear and anger and get out of their churches.
I blogged on it here:
The ugly and vile spin some Christianists put on the Colorado church shootings.
I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have me as a member. ;-)
Additionally, you are definitely lying. The lower end estimates of the death toll from the Taiping Rebellion are about 20 million (at a time when that was a far smaller fraction of the world’s population than in, say, Stalin’s day). That means that your 60 atheist leaders would have to have been responsible for a total of 2.4 billion untimely deaths – roughly the population of the world in the 1950s, and 40% of the world population today. Meanwhile, the Communist governments of Mao and Stalin are each estimated to have respectively killed between 16 and 40 million, and between 30 and 50 million (the higher numbers include incidental deaths due to famine related to collectivization and the like are included, as opposed to deliberate and direct killing). Even assuming your claims about Hitler are accurate, only two “atheist” leaders (per your definition) seem to have been responsible for even an equal count of casualties to the Taiping rebellion, let alone twice it.
Additionally, even assuming your claims about Hitler’s personal religious belief have some basis in reality, he presented himself as a Christian, he claimed to be a Christian long before he ever ran for office, and his people who carried out his orders were Christians, so the 9-11 million death toll from the Holocaust and ~60 million death toll resulting directly from World War II which he basically started, and which he bore the responsibility for bringing the Soviet Union, which took roughly half of the conflict’s losses, into the war, can reasonably be ascribed to a Christian leader. Looks like the Christians are still winning and Vox Taedium is still a liar.
This is of course to say nothing of World War I, a conflict fought by Christians on all sides including their leadership and sold to the public, particularly by Kaiser Wilhelm II (with whom comparing our present chief executive might but by other leaders as well, using religious language.
Communism is a socioeconomic ideology. It is not necessarily atheistic. There are many varieties. It is even in the bible, some very early Xians were communalistic.
That is why I used the term Totalitarian Communists. Even these varied among themselves on how antireligious they were. Authoritarian regimes no matter what their underlying ideology all seem to end up looking similar. Theocracies have been no different.
Sounds like another Vox lie. Most serious mainstream historians trace the roots of Nazi antisemitism back to German Xianity. Martin Luther proposed a final solution to the Jews 400 years before them. At Nurenberg, some of their leadership said they were just carrying out Luther’s plans.
If the Nazis were atheists, why did the Wehrmacht have “Gott Mitt Uns” (God is with us) on their beltbuckles?
You people are so going to mock me when you learn that I’m speaking at the Mensa convention in Colorado this summer.
(No, I’m not a member.)
Behold!
“Give me the boy until he is seven, and I will give you the man.”
I wonder: How many people who were raised in atheistic homes grew up to be serial killers, mass-murderers, or genocidal megalomaniacs? More to the point, how many of Vox’s Sixty were raised in religious households? It would be interesting to find out, and to see what conclusions (if any) could then be drawn.
John (#83) –
I run thegrateful.org and I am curious to know why you called out my post as something hateful. The content of my post, which you did not depict accurately, was that Christians are called to love _everybody_, even those who are shooting at them. That being the case, it was not an act of love which caused the security guard to kill the shooter.
Also, you claim that I “condemned” the “whole group” for their response. First, I condemned nobody. Condemnation is declaring a punishment on somebody, which I did not do. The security guard, on the other hand, did so to the shooter when she deemed him worthy of death. Second, I called those people who condoned the guard’s response to repentance, not the entire church. Surely there was somebody there who was grieved by the lack of love shown to the shooter.
Finally, it was out of love, not anger or hatred, that I wrote that post. It is good to do good, and when somebody is doing evil and thinking it is good, then we should let them know. Then they can stop doing evil and start doing what is right (aka, repent). I suppose you are the kind of guy who thinks the word “repent” only belongs on the signs of fundamentalist protesters or something?
Go and learn what Christ meant when He said, “Love your enemies.” Also learn what He meant when He declared that to be angry with somebody is the same as murder. When you stand before God, how will you answer for the times that you have murdered others in your heart by anger? Please repent of your sins and turn to Christ, who paid for your life with His own. Only then can you see clearly to help your brothers and sisters repent of theirs.
@everyone :
I apologize for any mistakes that I’ve made.
That said, I think that psychiatric treatment *might*
have cured the guy; a lot of lives could’ve been saved
When you stand before Odin, how will you answer for your pacifistic cowardice?
Hey, it has about the same chance of happening.
He didn’t mean you where actually comitting murder doofus. He was stating that the origins of sin begin there.
Who would call someone who gets angry the equivalent of a person who kills another? Please attempt even a minute amount of rationality.
Like what? Maybe if they are doing good it’s actually good. Maybe you should let them keep doing good and not pretend it’s evil. Repentence is a change of heart,many actions cannot be changed and shouldn’t be. I can’t parse the rest of your commentary.
“We can be Christians, we can be spiritual and believe in God/the Cosmic Divine WITHOUT their abusive lying pentecostal charismatic Jesus People movements, groups, false prophets, churches, and programs.” – nghtmrchld26
Doesn’t sound like an atheist to me. Sounds like a “true” Christian disgusted by what they derisively call “Churchianity.”
Besides, why did this cult product pack up and drive 70 miles to target his mother’s favorite megachurch, rather than find any old Christians closer and more convenient to home?
“Go and learn what Christ meant when He said, “Love your enemies.” Also learn what He meant when He declared that to be angry with somebody is the same as murder. When you stand before God, how will you answer for the times that you have murdered others in your heart by anger? Please repent of your sins and turn to Christ, who paid for your life with His own. Only then can you see clearly to help your brothers and sisters repent of theirs.”
How competely fucked is that? wow.
Waitaminnit there, Azkyroth. According to your LIEberalpedia link, the Taiping Rebellion was led by a Christian convert, yet pushed for land socialisation. Now, Ah may be a simple country hyperchicken, but Ah know Vox D’uh said that atheists love socialism. Not Christians. Atheists. So how can that be?
Now, we are truly faced with a conundrum that science cannot answer.
Therefore, Goddidit. He led the Taiping Rebellion all by His Lonesome.
Try to use your atheistic, evolutionist, materialistic, scientific RELIGION to refute that.
Can I has Theology degree now plz?
Good find Scarlatti. The press releases said that his internet postings have been removed from the places he frequented. I haven’t checked and don’t intend to, too busy and have had enough exposure to this disturbing event.
If so, this sounds like a coverup. The spin job commences, the giant green cockroach from outer space will eventually be found to be…an atheist. Everything is the fault of atheists. The crusades, Jonestown, Reformation, Iraq, jaywalking.
“New Life is offering trauma counseling to those affected by the shooting.”
Do you hear that, Vox Day?
Take them up on it, before it makes you even stupider.
#190 Pablo wrote:
“I’m glad she was there, though, to fire a couple of extra bullets into him after he was dead.”
The precise order of the shots may not be relevant. Do you know for a fact that he was dead when she shot him? Do you know for a fact she was aware that he had fatally shot himself? Do you think that if she hadn’t been there he would have shot himself at that point and not continued to kill? Is it possible that she wounded him first, and then, deciding he didn’t want to be taken alive, he shot himself?
Is that because you’re not as smart as Vox D’uh, PZ, or because you don’t buy into their motto:
Mensa: Reminding people that we may not be geniuses but we’re pretty darn close since 1946.
There are dozens of his posts still at the “Azusa Street Survivors – Ex Pentecostal Forum.” They’re hardly the scribblings of a “militant atheist.” They’re the product of a deeply disturbed victim of a Pentecostal cult.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/11/colorado.shootings/
“It should be noted that he was struck multiple times by the security officer, which put him down. He then fired a single round killing himself,” the statement said.
Pablo’s gorgeous theory has been shot down (excuse the pun) by an ugly fact.
Pablo’s gorgeous theory has been shot down (excuse the pun) by an ugly fact.
Yeah, and likewise was yours that J Myers dishonestly represented your comment.
I guess that makes you even. Whaddaya want, a gold star?
I want you to keep coming back and making a fool of yourself. But I’d settle for a few honest responses to my questions.
I want you to keep coming back and making a fool of yourself. But I’d settle for a few honest responses to my questions.
Try ponying up some honesty yourself first, and address your mistaken accusation of J Myers.
With someone less closeted, there’s always the possibility of blaming influences outside the family. Not so with this chap on the currently available evidence. He’s all Christian (plus, given Christian beliefs, he’s the way their god made him including any influence from similarly god-made demons).
Apparently you haven’t heard of the Internet.
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=82548
“You Christians brought this on yourselves,” Murray wrote on a Web site for people who have left Pentecostal and fundamentalist religious organizations.
…
Murray’s first posting on the day of the shootings is time stamped 10:50 a.m. It begins with a goodbye to those he has corresponded with for the past several months.
“You guys were awesome. It’s time for me to head out and teach these (expletive) a lesson.”
Murray continued, “Thanks for listening and all … even though even many of you ex-Pentecostals don’t understand ……(sic) See you all on the other side, we’re leaving this nightmare behind to a better place.”
Then Murray posted the 11:03 writing quoted above. That writing mirrors written statements by Columbine gunman Eric Harris.
After that final posting, one of the other Web site users realizes what’s happened and wrote, “Oh no. I just saw this on the news.”
Another wrote, “Yes, please don’t do it. You’d only make them into martyrs and yourself into a fanatical, hateful zealot, in the public opinion.”
ATM, apparently you can’t read (or didn’t bother to go through the prior postings) — as D. Scarlatti noted, the shooter also wrote: “We can be Christians, we can be spiritual and believe in God/the Cosmic Divine WITHOUT their abusive lying pentecostal charismatic Jesus People movements, groups, false prophets, churches, and programs.”
ATM where is that quote from? Straight off your post idiot. Can’t you read? Atheists don’t believe that there is another side much less a better place.
There is also a long trail of this guys postings. It is quite clear he still considered himself a Xian, just not a pentocostal cultist.
Next fundie liar. Sort of a redundancy to use fundie and liar in the same sentence.
Even “the other side” and “better place” parts which remain in the selective quotes are still his Christian views! Apparently you just don’t get a decent class of quote-miner round here these days. :-D
So merely going on a web-site (possibly to proselytise his version of religion) doesn’t appear to have done much to alter the damage his religious upbringing had already done. If he had any non-religious mental problems, then his religion (family, church etc) can also be seen as not being able or willing to fix them.
Meanwhile, you’ve completely failed to show how that web-site gave him a gun and taught him to shoot it (since you’re being selective over quoting me too).
Odd. That intervening post (currently #235) wasn’t there when I typed mine and I didn’t think I’d taken as long as the time-gap. Perhaps there was enough of a delay between my opening the page and reading the posts beforehand to account for it. Anyhow, nice to see raven noticed a couple of the same things I did.
Communism is a socio-economic system. Care to read up on the Principles of Communism by Engles 1847
Sure sounds like social and economic class issues to me which it should because communnism is about the class struggle. The communist party was something else. It turned into the totallitarian juggernaught of the last 2/3 or so of the 20th century. The totallitarianism is what was the beast. You trying to say it was all about the atheism shows exactly how dishonest you really are.
It’s as if you think that Communism is only the Communist party or Parties.
tsk tsk.
In other news…
#232 Brownian, OM wrote:
“Try ponying up some honesty yourself first, and address your mistaken accusation of J Myers.”
Try reading what I originally wrote, as well as the post to which I was responding. J Meyers was wrong about what I wrote, and you continue to be wrong about it too. You are hopeless. There’s nothing I can say to those who are willfully ignorant.
@VD (#139)
So can we assume that you will now repent and make quite clear that when you refer to atheism you refer simply to absence of god-belief? Oh no, it seems we can’t – we have you conflating atheism with Nazism, Communism and godknowswhatism above – and even in the post I’m replying to, you seem to believe that being anti-Christian is relevant to the determination of whether someone is an athiest. This is, I venture to suggest, unsurprising since definign ahteism as simple absence of god-belief doesn’t help your thesis that all atheists are evil killers.
So tell me, Vox, what is your own personal definition of atheist?
Indeed. He appears to have considered himself a non-denonimational Christian. Further comment?
“I suppose they could blame it all on the fact his father was a scientist, still.”
I blame it on NOMA.
Christians can be very anti-Christian, Jews anti-Jew and Muslims anti-Muslim etc. The religionists are typically very opposed to other people in the same religion who “aren’t doing it right”. Hence Phelps. Hence the continual splitting into sects throughout history – including the separate existences of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the first place, as well as all the subsequent splits of each of them.
Take the Jesus Christ character. He was very anti his fellow religionists. He wasn’t claiming to believe in and worship a different god, nor that other people (eg at the temples) weren’t believers. So the Christian anti-Christians are, in that respect, very much doing what Jesus would do in hating the attitudes, behaviour and practices of all their fellow religionists. If anything, it’s the non-anti Christians who aren’t true Christians! :-D
Of course the whole thing is absurd anyway.
YAR:
Rick. You seem bright and ernest, so I figured the least I could do is cut you some slack and review the posts. I have done so, a half a dozen times, in an attempt to see what you’re getting at. I am unable to reach a conclusion. Help me out here, please. Either:
1. you’re one of the most dishonest commenters I’ve ever encountered here, or
2. you’re one of the most pointlessly persistent dead-pan comedians I’ve ever encountered here, or
3. your inability to admit a mistake borders on the pathological, or
4. some combination of the above.
So. Which is it? I’m thinking it’s not #3, because you poked fun at your “dyslexia” earlier, but I recognize there’s a difference between acknowledging ones own typographical errors and conceding a point to a ideological opponent, so #3 isn’t out of the running entirely. My money’s on #1, but I really can’t be sure…
YAR, again, in what way was I wrong? In what way is it even possible to interpret my initial post as dishonest? Despite your bizarre, unfounded allegations against me, and your similar, unsupported assertions about atheists in general, I attempted to engage you and gave you ample opportunity to explain yourself. Others have done the same. What are we to think at this point? Why are you concerned about the honesty of others when you can’t be troubled to exhibit any yourself?
Yeah, yeah, blah, blah, whatever.
Okay, I’ll cut Rick some slack too (though for the life of me, I cannot fathom why he should deserve it).
Regarding what Kseniya has nicely written and what I have not-so-nicely written, the prudent thing for you to do here would be to briefly explain the comment you made and why J Myers was incorrect in his interpretation of it. There are obviously a number of us here who have made the same mistake in interpretation, and at this point further exhortations to re-read what you’ve written isn’t going to cut it (it also makes you sound like a substantial asshole).
If we’re all wrong about your comment (and let’s be honest here: on the internet that happens all the time), please explain why.
Until then, you won’t be getting any answers to your questions.
Denver Post article:
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_7696043
Apparently he was involved with Crowleyan occultism after getting disgruntled with Pentecostal crap.
They rejected him too, kicking him out a couple of months ago.
He was a fan of Marilyn Manson, too. (I’m sure some people will make anti-atheist and/or anti-satanist hay of that. Whee.)
He said he believed in a loving god, but not the god of Christianity, so not an atheist.
Sounds like the guy was as a fairly obvious voices-hearing kook nobody wanted, and an unfortunate victim of bad brain chemistry. (If I thought my organization was attracting people like that, I’d have armed guards, too.)
Clearly he was upset and deranged, but his own family and religion seems to have pushed him in that direction:
http://allspinzone.com/wp/2007/12/11/matthew-murray-nghtmrchld26in-his-own-words/
Figures, this is still going.
VD’s whole lame point about atheism and communism is shot down by the fact that a good many libertarians are atheists as well, and few would make the mistake of calling them communists. Maybe VD is one person that would make that mistake…
To rub more salt in VD’s eyes, Hitchens doesn’t agree with your point. I know you probably so cherish using an atheist’s words against him, but sorry to tell you that his debate with D’Souza a couple months ago had him denounce soviet communism as (to paraphrase) its own religion of the state with Stalin as its figurehead. Whatever you thought Hitchens thinks, as usual for you, ain’t the case.
to Ksenya, et al:
Please go back and reread post #44 by Tatarize. Virtually every ersponse to me has ignored the content of that post and my response to it. If you think Tatarize’s post was reasonable and not worthy of condemnation or ridicule, there’s nothikng further to say.
@ 251
While I do not think Tatarize’s apparent disgust for the concept of forgiveness is a tenable stance (Hitchens shows much the same compunction), his point about the belief in an afterlife versus the absence of such belief is pertinent. Nobody can know there IS a god or gods, and nobody can know there IS an afterlife. Conversely, nobody can know there ISN’T either, but evidence for that hypothesis is a long time waiting, and arguments for an afterlife are strictly based in emotion rather than measurable evidence of eye-witness account.
As for your response, which you seem to value a bit too highly as some sort of revealed truth, a statement of lack of belief in a god or gods is not a form mental illness. Some may argue it’s a sign of such, but then there is nothing to preclude statements in support of religion being labeled as such. Thus, the he-said-she-said argument plods along without resolution. If anything, atheists and atheism says only one thing: there exists no evidence for supernatural entities that pull the strings of the universe or that create realities from balls of clay, and until such time that evidence is found definitively proving such entities do exist, there is no reason to believe in them because it is not logical to extract logic, morality or ethics (or all three) from things that cannot be known or serve no enviable mmeans for understanding reality.
In other words, it’s one rather scientific statement of fact. No evidence exists, so there’s no reason to believe, ergo I do not beleive. How atheism implies anything beyond that, and how so many people seem to find it necessary to attribute things to it that do not logically follow, is foolish and absurd. The absence of a belief in divinity != absence of belief in morality or ethics, or any other construct upon which civilization is based. In fact it is quite easy to point to facets of religion (group exceptionalism, use of self-centric hallucination as evidence, etc.) that are more likely to produce evils than the supposed evils that not believing in the divine is said to engender. But then, we’re back at Tatarize’s original argument, aren’t we?
So what are you trying to say, really?
YAR, are you kidding me? Do you honestly not understand that, whether or not #44 was deserving of ridicule, that has no bearing on the statements you made about atheism, nor, therefore, on the wrongness of what you said about me? Did you actually just complain that “virtually no” responses specifically addressed #44, even though I patiently explained in my post #175 that #44 is irrelevant to this discussion, despite the fact that something so obvious should not need to be explained at all? If I were to conclude that your posts are deserving of ridicule, and proceed on that basis to say that, perhaps, everyone named “Rick” is mentally ill, and some other Rick asked me how exactly being named “Rick” might make someone mentally ill, rather than admit that what I said was completely illogical, I should tell him that he is being completely dishonest about what I said, and note that lying seems to be a common pathology among Ricks, and that I’ve spent a lot of time observing this at alt.rick, but not provide any evidence of this (nevermind that, even if it were true, it might have something to do with the particular Ricks I encountered at alt.rick and the behavior I exhibited there, and not necessarily with Ricks in general)? And after I’m repeatedly questioned about my unsupported declarations by Rick and others, and it’s explained to me how it was inappropriate of me to make them, I should keep reiterating the same unhelpful instruction to “go back and read the posts” (which won’t support my case now anymore than they did before) and continue to insist that Rick is “dishonest and wrong”, and those defending him “willfully ignorant” for doing so? Are you trying to set some sort of irony record here YAR, or are you just going for #4 on Kseniya’s list?
Oh hell… minor correction to my last post: I should have said in my hypothetical that “being named ‘Rick’ is a form of mental illness,” not that “everyone named ‘Rick’ is mentally ill”… the original is different fallacy (hasty generalization) than the one YAR is clinging to (non sequitur).
BI, he seems to be saying that I was wrong and dishonest, and that many atheists in general are liars, and that we should all go back and read the posts. Again. And again.
It is interesting to see that the tribal-instinct present in all human apes was once again re-affirmed by the comments on this blog. There are evil athiests and evil christians who initiate unprovoked force against others. That’s why armed self-defense is a natural right. There will always be tyrants and aggressors regardless of belief system. Although some belief systems are more prone to initiation of force than others.
Anyway I still think Christian Fundamentalism is bonkers.
Monado said:
Ahhh, using bogus statements to discredit the right to bear arms eh, Monado? Good thing people like you have no stomach for civil war.
I’m glad he was not an atheist, too; however, I hardly think he killed because of his religion. (Although that happens, too, sometimes: 911, Jim Jones.)
Those who think that 9/11 was a case of killing because of religion are totally clueless, a consequence of watching too much TV “news”, I suspect. 9/11 was about attacking buildings: the icons of American “defense” (that is, military offense), government (that plane missed, due to the valiant efforts of the passengers), and global “trade”. This was a response to U.S. foreign policy, as perceived by ObL and Al Qaeda. Religion is used as a motivating factor, but the underlying issues are political.
As usual, the comments by Christians here further confirm our views about Christians. To sway intelligent people, one must actually present good arguments, not present transparently fallacious arguments and then whine that no one was swayed by them, as folks like VD and YAR do. At the end of the day, no one concluded that “athiesm (sic) is a form of cognitive deficiency” or that “The atheist propensity for mass slaughter is several orders of magnitude higher than that of any other belief system”, probably not even those who wrote such things.
Not in an explicit manner, but criticism of Christianity and Christians certainly makes up the vast majority of their anti-theist works. None of these writers have much to say about the specifics Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese folk religion or any of the hundreds of other world religions. I think Sam Harris is unlikely to ever write Letter to an Islamic Nation.
Mr. Day is apparently the sort who judges a book by its cover, but is obviously not familiar with Islamophobe Sam Harris’s actual writings and views.
truth machine said:
What sort of changes to U.S. foreign policy do you recommend?