Everyone’s telling me about this ugly incident in Colorado, where a lunatic charged into a ski resort with a lot of guns, killed one person, then committed suicide. The relevant part of the story here is that the attack was partly religiously motivated: he shouted, “If you’re not Christian, you’re going to die”.
He was either operating under the instructions of the Lord, or the burden of festering insanity, and the truth of the matter is that there isn’t much difference between either condition. It obviously isn’t typical religious behavior, but next time someone tries to tell you that but for a belief in a god, we’d be robbing and raping and murdering…remember Derik Bonestroo. He seems to have gone on a murderous rampage while believing fervently in that Christian deity.
Reminds me of the Va Tech shootings, and Dinesh D’Souza farting ‘Where be teh atheists now?’ while the murderer Cho had clearly mentioned in his videotapes that he was inspired by Jesus. Of course we are not blaming Christianity for the shootings, nor for the one mentioned in the post, but if any time, any where, a murderer or a criminal happens to be an atheist, the righteous folks will hasten to point a finger at atheism and point out how morally decrepit we are and how belief in a god would have stopped the criminal from committing the crime.
But Dr. Myers, you’re forgetting to report that he wasn’t a “True Christian ™”.
As if Paul Hill wasn’t already a bad enough example…
When does the Not A True Christian defense begin?
Scary stuff, especially considering that the radicalization of the religious right is moving forward at top speed (think Palin).
right-wing Christian leaders should take a good hard look at the radicalization of Islam before they spew their usual hatred. Just because the US is a stable democracy does not mean that radical Christian terror groups couldn’t emerge on a large scale.
The fact is, we don’t know where that tipping point is, and how close nuts like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and the rest have driven us to it.
I’m not saying that Christian terrorism is about to emerge en-masse, but don’t think for a MOMENT that is emerged in the middle east only because that area was “less civilized.”
“Christian leaders should take a good hard look at the radicalization of Islam”
Seems that many of them do, with envy. The woman in Jesus Camp outright admitted it.
I’m in Denver, and the comments have both scared me and given me hope.
Although from a certain perspective I agree with the sentiment here, I have to say that this is probably one of the most inaccurate, and religiously polite, things I’ve seen from you.
I wouldn’t bother Christos much over this, if we hadn’t had to endure so much nonsense about Columbine and the supposed evolutionary reasons for that massacre.
Crazy people do crazy things. The only real difference is that secularists don’t claim a magical sky fairy that could stop any and all crazies from harming themselves and others, while the religionists do–and yet they happen.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
Must have been a Christian ski resort. I mean, “If you’re not Christian, you’re going to die”? One kill? Must have been slim pickings.
(btw, I have a black sense of humour, and live in the UK. It happened too far away to really have much of an impact on me, so if my joke pissed anyone off, sorry, don’t flame me.)
I once had a fundie nutjob admit to me that he would go on a murderous rampage if he stopped believing in Christianity. The thing is though, I didn’t believe him. He was out there, certainly, but he wasn’t a psychopath. He had genuine human emotions, just a crazy worldview and horrible logic skills.
Someone like this shooter likely has the same worldview, but some deeper problem. Sounds most like schizophrenia to me, but I’ll leave that to the experts to judge for sure. Something in him told him that people had to die, and the fact that he was a Christian only told him who.
I’d have to disagree with some other commenters, though; this is a different phenomenon from the religious militance we see in Islam. Here, we have just one unstable person who let religion color his breakdown. There, we have religion pushing people into a wartime mentality, where they dehumanize the enemy and consider it a kill-or-be-killed scenario, which gives them the mental state necessary to cope with killing others.
The former is a problem we’ll likely never get rid of completely, as there will always be lone nutjobs who slip through the cracks. The latter is different, and could possibly vanish if the religious motivation goes along with it.
My friend would say that it’s not the fault of Christianity. He was simply insane. Simple as that. Christianity had nothing to do with it because a person insane enough to shoot someone and before killing himself is insane enough to make up a reason for it. The fact that he fell upon Christianity as his reason is his own problem.
However, I suspect that if the guy said “If you’re not an Atheist, you’re going to die,” this same friend would immediately claim that he did it because he was an atheist, and therefore had no reason not to do it. After all, if there are no consequences in the afterlife, why not just kill somebody and then yourself? In that case he’s not insane. He’s doing the logical thing.
I was just thinking we were about due for another one of these. There always seems to be a 4 to 6 month lull then a few in a row, the initial shooting then a few copycats. I wouldn’t be supprised to see another couple incidents in the comming weeks. Its very depressing how regular this kind of thing is these days.
> but for a belief in a god, we’d be robbing and raping and murdering…
That doesn’t exclude robbing and raping and murdering in the name of a deity, though.
So it’s okay.
According to the article he also killed his cat. Guess that wasn’t a good enough sacrifice for the voices in his head.
Christians don’t usually say “If you’re not Christian, you’re going to die.”
Instead they say “My invisible friend is going to torture you.”
As PZ has said, this is far from normal religious behavior. Would we be blaming atheists if it was someone that came in and said “if you are a believer you’re going to die”?
No.
This person was a more than likely a seriously mentally disturbed individual, and that was the root cause. He probably was a Christian and therefor his insanity fed off / manifested in his personal beliefs in the same way some other equally insane person talking about the next door neighbors dog telling him to kill.
It’s a sad story all the way around.
#11, Infophile, even “atheists” here on the blog daemonize and dehumanize those they disagree with, calling them names and spitting vitriol. I suspect that even atheist wars would manage some dehumanization. I suspect that these emotions and mental self-deceits have been selected for and in some environments must improve evolutionary fitness.
Naturally, it only took four comments for a Christian to start deriding the “lack of moral compass”.
Ah, but he wasn’t a TRUE Christian.
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/dec/31/eldora-back-open-after-shooting/?partner=RSS
Doesn’t even mention the “if you’re not christian your going to die” quote. And you should read some of the responses. Some people said he was anti-christian for some reason. Probably to distance their religion from another murder.
I think he just hated cans.
Not exactly on this topic, religiously motivated shootings, but I’m dismayed to hear about the second shooting in a week of a young black man on his belly by police officers, in suburban Houston. He’s not quit dead, but liver and lungs are not good places to be shot. Is it racial profiling/ I don’t know, but one of the theme’s I seem ot hear from the religious right is, just like religion, cops can do not wrong.
Anybody know if Derik was home-schooled? I’ve been maintaining for years that the Christian home-schooling movement is going to create a cadre of brainwashed amoral killers of non-Christians. Maybe he hatched out of his chrysalis a bit too soon.
Not exactly on this topic, religiously motivated shootings, but I’m dismayed to hear about the second shooting in a week of a young black man on his belly by police officers, in suburban Houston. He’s not quit dead, but liver and lungs are not good places to be shot. Is it racial profiling? I don’t know, but one of the theme’s I seem to hear from the religious right is, just like religion, cops can do no wrong.
Religion and mental illness are a bad mix. Always has been always will be. It gives a focus to the disordered thinking that can lead to this sort of thing.
I’ve spent my whole life dealing with bad decisions that were a result of messed up brain chemistry rather than intelligent thought. With years of experience one can learn to tell the difference even if you can’t always control it. Spending time with people who tell you that those who do not believe the same things you do are evil is a very bad idea.
Part of the problem though is the poor quality of mental health care in this country. I get my meds from a general practicioner. I haven’t seen a psychiatrist in decades.
No doubt Darwinism caused him to become unhinged.
If we believe the preachers, this happens a lot, god being such a feeble counter to atheism’s lies. Of course they might not become atheists, but atheism is just another form of Satanism, so that hardly matters. After all, many forms of Xianity are also part of Satanism. Maybe he was Catholic, and lord knows, he might have been one of those closet atheists, a Xian evolutionist.
Oh, there are so many possibilities for “explaining” how Darwinism/atheism/lack of theocracy are responsible for a Christian becoming a mass murderer. I hardly scratched the surface.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
My only issue with this is that there is no qualifier for the time period, or the religion. There are many time periods and religions where that statement would not qualify as true.
As an atheist (materialist), my take away is only that killing a person for not following a superstitious dogma, is enabled (and sometimes extolled) by religion (not that that was the case for this incident). This is because a control mechanism of religion, IMO, (in very basic terms) is to devalue the self and cripple rational thought.
Clearly a bit of an oversimplification, but I think the main point stands true.
Bonestroo was clearly mentally ill, probably a psychotic suffering religious delusions, but Christianity doesn’t get a free pass even so. Many Christian sects actively promote the us/them mentality, demonizing nonbelievers, that this guy used as the basis for victim selection.
“As PZ has said, this is far from normal religious behavior. Would we be blaming atheists if it was someone that came in and said “if you are a believer you’re going to die”?
No.”
Of course not, but as other pointed out, theists sure as hell would.
Which is what makes taking the high road (i.e. not blaming christianity for this insanity) a double-edged sword. The moment an atheist does something like this, or even someone who could even vaguely be called non-religious, they will rain blame, slander and hate on us like a shower of projectile vomit.
(Makes mental note: One more reason always to be polite to the lifties.)
I thought Atheists were supposed to be the militant ones…
Anyhow, in response to the “if he said the opposite, no one would blame atheists” – oh yes they would. C’mon. If he was islam they’d blame islam. If he based it on race… I won’t go there. But, for sure, if he’d said “if you believe in a god I’m going to kill you”, you can bet someone out there would use it to show that atheists are homicidal maniacs, and warn of the ‘dangers’ of a lack of belief in God.
I am now accepting wagers for when the first religionist will bring up the old Hitler/Stalin/Mao strawman in this thread. Winners pay 3-1.
“If you’re not Christian you’re going to die!” Hmmmmm, Sounds like that ol’ gasbag Yaweh himself. Definitely Christian inspired, but fueled by a sadly broken brain.
It’s only a matter of time before they start strapping bombs under their jackets.
Didn’t something like this happen last year at a Unitarian church?
“I am now accepting wagers for when the first religionist will bring up the old Hitler/Stalin/Mao strawman in this thread. Winners pay 3-1.”
Looks like you win! Congratulations.
Wait, and the news media are actually covering this?!
“Wait, and the news media are actually covering this?!”
ummm, don’t they normally cover shootings….especially in CO?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008597989_ricinthreat07m.html
11 local gay bars were threatened with Ricin, local writer Dan Savage doesn’t think it’s religiously motivated.
I’m not really that sure. There have been more gay-motivated acts of violence in the Seattle area as of late and we do have the creepy mars hill compound/church/cult ( http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/09/13/righteous/ ) in the area, so I’ll be interested to find out how this ends.
I do however think it’s a severe bluff.
Seems that many of them do, with envy. The woman in Jesus Camp outright admitted it.
A missionary visitor to my old church back in the ’90’s once said we should admire the Muslims faith for being willing to die for their beliefs. Not like the wimpy American christians who can’t even stand a bit of ridicule. That was his idea anyway. It troubled me then and it troubles me now.
There is a piece of godspam going around that sounds like this:
A new (catholic) friend of mine forwarded it to me, not really knowing I was atheist. Of course, I found it horrifying, and it just amazes me that religious people would find it humorous, or profound in any way.
“Seems that many of them do, with envy. The woman in Jesus Camp outright admitted it.”
My father-in-law does. I find that chilling. He’s a standard guy otherwise….but yearns for a ‘benevolent’ dictatorship in the US.
Jimminy, Does “He was an atheist in disguise” also pay 3:1?
Nope, he wasn’t a home schooler, at least not unless they do yearbook pictures on those learning from home. One news report has his Lyons High/Middle School picture attached to their article. http://www.coloradodaily.com/news/2009/jan/07/details-released-about-eldora-shooting/
Not when they make Christians look bad.
Me thinks you’re employing a bit of confirmation bias….but I could be wrong. I haven’t done the research.
I’m not convinced that this guy was mentally ill: there’s no evidence to suggest that there was any formal mental illness involved. Indeed, several lines of evidence suggest that he did not have a diagnosable mental illness apart from perhaps a personality disorder. He was well organized, held a job, and had a relationship with his parents but was not living with them (and was not homeless). Most untreated schizophrenics can’t hold a job, live either with relatives or on the street, and, when they commit violent crimes, are quite disorganized about it. He may be as sane as any other religious fanatic who attacks those who disagree with them (i.e. the 9/11 attackers, abortion clinic bombers, etc.) Also schizophrenics aren’t particularly likely to be violent.
I do also wonder whether religion was the motive or the excuse for this attack. That is, did he simply find his religion a useful excuse for killing or was the religion partly responsible–would he have simply been a disgruntled loser, but nonviolent, if he were, say, a Unitarian?
the problem is that there doesn’t really seem to be anything with which religion mixes well.
From the same source article as posted @45, “The morning of the shooting, Bonestroo — a lift operator at Eldora — told his co-workers, “If you’re not Christian, you’re going to die.” When he asked Mahon to state his religion, Mahon said “Catholic,” and Bonestroo shot him in the chest and head.”
I guess Catholics don’t qualify as a sect of Christianity anymore.
From the same source article as posted @45, “The morning of the shooting, Bonestroo — a lift operator at Eldora — told his co-workers, “If you’re not Christian, you’re going to die.” When he asked Mahon to state his religion, Mahon said “Catholic,” and Bonestroo shot him in the chest and head.”
I guess Catholics doesn’t qualify as a sect of Christianity anymore.
Personally I do blame religion. Had this guy not been so indoctrinated in religion somebody might have noticed how odd he was acting before everything went to shit instead of simply believing he was just exceptionally reverent in his beliefs. Hell, his parents let him move out without questioning what he needed a pair of hand guns for in his job at a ski resort. The simple fact that his parents noticed that he had two handguns with him when he was moving out makes me think that it caught their attention at that time. That makes it unlikely that this was normal behavior for this guy. If my oldest was moving out and started collecting guns I’d at the very least ask him about them. Maybe he just liked collecting firearms (I have a few friends that do) but I’d defiantly ask about it if it was a change from normal behavior. But xians never believe that other xians will do such horrible things even in the face of mounting evidence. Then after some crazy shit happens, the xians blame Satan instead of accepting the fact that they just let one of their own go off the deep end and take somebody else along for the ride.
Most of the “newsstories” I’ve seen say the he “yelled something about religion” before firing the shots.” I just can’t wait to see the editorials talking about how evil christianity caused the murders. We’ll probably get blamed, anyway.
If those damn Atheists woulda just shut up and pretended to be americans, none of this would have ever happened.
Sorry for the double post. Dianne, you bring up some good points. It’s true that many of the characteristics don’t match some types of schizophrenia (e.g. thought-out organization), but this doesn’t rule out he was psychotic or delusional. I know of a few paranoid schizophrenics who kept detailed journals with their future killings planned in detail. Re living with his parents or on the street, he’d very recently moved out of his parents’ home and rented an apartment. Shortly before the shootings, he fatally stabbed his cat (multiple wounds). He was on some kind of psychiatric med, per police. My bet is maybe some kind of precipitating stressor event, which may/may not have been related to religion, possibly in combo with discontinuing his meds.
Earlier in the week, also in Colorado (in Steamboat Springs), two men beat another man to death because the victim selected “Margaritaville” on the jukebox.
I’m not kidding.
If you can stomach it, here’s another appalling article about some Real ‘Murkin Gun Nuts.
Be warned, it’s a rough read.
@52 — “The simple fact that his parents noticed that he had two handguns with him when he was moving out makes me think that it caught their attention at that time.”
He was studying gunsmithing at a local community college. The parents might not have thought as much about him having a few guns around as they might have had this not been the case.
Re: #55
If someone overrode my Jimmy Buffett selection to play Kanye West, I’d fight, too.
@58, I see your point. I made my daughter sit in her room for 2 hours because she changed the Sirius station from Sinatra to Miley Cyrus.
Jeebus only knows what that’d lead to.
The worst part of the Margaritaville situation is that they let the alleged killer out on his own. Not even held for assault. What sense does that make?
(Cop musta been a Kanye fan…?)
I am so wise wrote:
And he probably listened to non-true Christian heavy metal. And who knows what psychiatric drugs he was taking? And what about his astrological sign, it might have been a bad one. And maybe the devil made him do it?
“He was insane.” “Christianity has no blame.”
I really hate stuff like this. Either he was a Christian or he was insane. Not both. Either all Christians are insane or they aren’t. You can’t have it both ways.
God tells me to tell you to give me money. = Christian
God tells me that you will be healed by his divine light. = Christian
God tells me to go kill a lot of people. = Insane
In all 3 God told the person something but he is perfectly sane until God tells him to kill people. I find that a bit troubling.
Beth #42: Ugh! I’d blissfully forgotten that bit of Christian urban legend until now. I first heard it back in the early 1990s when I was still a regular church-goer (I got better). In that version it took place “somewhere in South America” and the gunmen threatened to kill everyone who would not deny Jesus as lord and savior. The gunmen then stayed for worship after nearly everyone else had cleared out. It’s a horrible little story that’s intended to make believers feel guilty when they admit to themselves that they really don’t want to die for their faith.
“He was studying gunsmithing at a local community college.” Really? I didn’t see that in any of the articles on the story. You’d think that would be important to the story.
I guess Catholics doesn’t qualify as a sect of Christianity anymore.
Evangelicals and various shades of protestants often think Catholics are Not Christian/Teh Evil, for reasons that are unknown to me.
MikeM @55: from what I read the victim (Army Sgt. 1st Class) played “Margaritaville” on the jukebox, other people made complaints. I have no idea as to the extent of the ‘complaints’. This was in a bar so it could have been anything. The victim then got into a scuffle with the non-Margaritaville persons and died as a result of head trauma.
There’s a moral in there somewhere.
Moral:
If you do something and then other people complain then you might want to count how many people are in their party before you take offense and escalate the situation. Especially when you can’t call upon fire support from the nearest artillery battalion.
Any sergeant worth anything should have learned that back when they were a private.
But then military types getting drunk and starting fights is SOP.
If this bozo was an Atheist it would be headline news..no doubt…
But Christians are very slippery…’not a true Christian’….’Possessed by demons’.. ‘nothing to do with Christianity just insanity’…all is part of the distancing and damage control mantra!
One thing for sure religion in and of itself harbours many disturbed and barking individuals…but because they profess jeebus lust are left to their own devices…
It is probably a matter of the fact that b’twixt ‘n’ b’tween religion and insanity there is a very thin but blurred line…it might be difficult to separate the two…and who assesses the assessor’s…the blind leading the blind…or the ignorant leading the ignorant…tis a sad state of affairs for sure!
I’ve been following this story pretty closely, because I live in a Colorado snow resort area.
Yes, Derik Bonestroo did study gunsmithing. He wasn’t particularly religious in high school. His last girlfriend has purplish/blue hair and facial piercings. One of his high school football coaches has said he saw Derik a few months back and thought he wasn’t doing too well. That’s all I can think of off-hand.
Check out this ridiculous reactionary story and comments from “Anne Coulter want-to-be “Chicago Ray”.
http://chicagoray.blogspot.com/2009/01/bds-infected-atheist-kills-christian-at.html
Religion mixes well with people who want to be of service to others, but not convert them. I’ve met lots of people like that. I’m fortunate to have met very few of the force-feed religious types. As far as crazy people go–it’s the gun wielding that bothers me more than the religious pronouncements. IE the easy access to handguns. If he was shouting that all non-Christians have to die while waving, say, a necktie, it would be hardly scary at all.
So guess who went into our (then) recently renovated, and historic, San Fernando Cathedral, and smashed up statues while people were inside praying or whatever they do when a service isn’t going on?
Hint: It wasn’t an atheist.
I was horrified that someone would vandalize a church while it was in use. I was horrified at the broken statues, some of them very old, some of them very beautiful. I would never have done that, and I can’t think of very many atheists who would.
The vandal was a fundie screaming about the idol worship of Catholics. You see, some of the nuttiest strains of fundagelicals think that Catholics are idol worshippers, what with the saints, and the statues, and the rosaries, and the stations of the cross, and the medals, and the relics, and the candles, and the chalices and thuribles, and incense–sheesh, if nothing else, the Catholics are the PT Barnum of Christianity. You never have all that to check out in a Baptist church!
Which might answer your question about why some of these fundies get so worked up about Catholics.
@ Janine #4
As soon as a Christian has internet connectivity.
I know someone on a skiing trip there right now. That’s not a nice first sentence to read…
qwerty017 wrote:
God didn’t tell him to give anyone money, nor how one will be healed by his divine light. Those are things preachers say. It’s only number 3 that might involve hearing God’s actual voice.
We have a winner of the “It Was Really An Atheist Who Done It, Not a Real Gawd-Fearing Christian” Contest.
One of Chicago Rays comments states, “Thanks for the info, but I’ll stick to my assessment thank you. Who says these people are telling the truth about anything? They could be sociopaths themselves rooming with a potentially sick killer like that and only protecting themselves with misinformation is my educated guess. Shooting a Christian sure doesn’t sound like converting people to Christianity now does it? That story makes no sense whatsoever, a Christian wacko who converts people to Christianity by shooting a catholic , yeah OK I buy that, not. Sounds more like the BDS infected Atheist I called him in the headline to me.”
Love how he conveniently ignores that the shooter said all people who WEREN’T Christian were going to die. Ooops, Ray just happened to leave that out of the piece he did. Wonder why?
Thanks for blaming the victim, WRMartin. You stay classy, you hear?
Nice find, Sherry. Chicago Ray has lost his grip on reality, if he ever had one.
I thought that was one of Luther’s main complaints with the RCC. As I understand it all Protestant sects consider Catholics idol worshippers.
*sigh* Reading the comments on the Denver Post article is depressing. I find it worrying that christians either cannot or will not read (and/or comprehend) their own holy book:
Seriously? It has been a while since I read the bible but there are several parts about killing the non believers, and as for acts of vengeance; where to begin…
This is an important way to rebut that claim, but I would suggest that murder, especially mass murder, relies on much deeper psychological constructs than beliefs in and of themselves. I am thinking that beliefs can facilitate murder but don’t cause murder (they are insufficient but necessary unless it is an accident). Isn’t insanity a much broader psychological term than belief, kind of on the scale of religion to faith?
@woo woozy #73: It is worse that the comment was written by “Chicago Ray” himself.
Even better is this comment he makes:
The strange part is that the very article this comments is linked to is a classic example of reading what he wanted to read, then dumping hate. So by his own rules he looks stupid.
One question though: What the hell is BDS and how is the infection spread?
I’m not sure a random loony deserves this, or any other media attention.
It’s not like he’s part of some big conspiracy out to get us, he’s just a fucked up kid.
Although I despise hardcore religious people ( I blow my nose in your general direction, your grandmother resembled an elderberry ), I think it’s somewhat unfair to pin this one on them.
Might as well blame the xians. If he had been an atheist, you would be hearing it for decades or centuries. The thought free, truth free crowd never lets facts get in the way of their persecution stories.
Cho Seung, the Virginia Tech 33X killer was a fundie xian.
Matthew Murray, that shot up two churches in Colorado was a disaffected member of those churches as well as being a fundie raised in a fundie bubble environment. Within minutes, the wingnuts were pointing out incorrectly, that he must have been an atheist.
Where is Silver Fox, the moron troll? He claims fundie xians never threaten to kill people much less kill them. The truth is they do all the time and xian fundie terrorism is a problem in the USA.
A common fundie belief is that the Catholic church is the church of satan and the pope is the antichrist. They don’t hide it and say it often.
Michelle Bachmann’s church, WELS-Wisconsin Evangelical Lutherans, has exactly that on their website. I wonder how many catholics in her district voted for her? Probably a lot. LOL
What? Since when is only God telling someone to kill Gods voice? There was the guy that said God told him to run around the street naked a couple months ago.
There are people all the time who believe that God talks to them about things. Telling them to do things. But it’s only when that voice tells them to do something bad like run around the street naked or kill people that he is considered insane.
As much as I admire many things American,including many of the people, I have to say that your achilles heel is still guns and Jesus.
Infofile: I once had a fundie nutjob admit to me that he would go on a murderous rampage if he stopped believing in Christianity. The thing is though, I didn’t believe him. He was out there, certainly, but he wasn’t a psychopath. He had genuine human emotions, just a crazy worldview and horrible logic skills.
I think you didn’t understand what he was saying. You understand that the little voice inside you that says — don’t do that, inhibit yourself, be good — is your own voice, is an aspect of your own personality.
The fundamentalist whack-job does not. That’s the voice of God! It’s not “him” — he’s the evil voice that says take any action you want, enjoy every sensation, be selfish.
In short, the fundamentalist ego is is disassociated from the superego, and is primarily oriented toward the id. “We are all sinners, and can only be redeemed by the grace of God” is a very mentally disturbed statement, not just for it’s social insanity, but for the personality distortion it represents.
So if he “stopped being a Christian”, for him that meant abandoning his conscience in favor of an explosion of id-dominated emotion. Which is true – if you get rid of your conscience, you’ll do everything you feel, you’ll love unreservedly, and hate unreservedly. Both of which The Christian rejects in The Human, except as bloodless abstractions of “brotherly love” and “hating the sinner”, at least theoretically.
aratina: This is an important way to rebut that claim, but I would suggest that murder, especially mass murder, relies on much deeper psychological constructs than beliefs in and of themselves.
The beliefs and the psychological constructs that sustain them are very hard to disentangle.
Hasn’t it ever seemed suspicious that the Freudian personality constructs match up so well to traditional Christian theology? The id = Holy Ghost, the ego = The Son, the Superego = The Father? And whether mechanically Freud was off his rocker or not, his structures do describe how people (Western, Christian people) feel the world — they do feel a voice telling them to do that, not this; they do feel desires welling up inside them; they do talk and act as if they were keeping up a self-image.
And not everyone in the world has that kind of personality structure.
IAmMarauder @79
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Derangement_Syndrome.
“As PZ has said, this is far from normal religious behavior. Would we be blaming atheists if it was someone that came in and said “if you are a believer you’re going to die”?
No.”
Apples and oranges. Christianity is an ideology; it it prescriptive. It says who’s good and who’s evil, it says that gays should be killed; it says that non Christians will be tortured forever for merely not believing. If a omnibenevolent, fair and all-moral god can let a person be tortured for eternity, then surely killing and torturing these people is the right thing to do, wouldn’t you say? I mean, wouldn’t it be wise to imitate the most moral being of all? After all, if God thinks they deserve such punishment, why not start to punish them now? Hey, maybe torturing them will make them “see the light” and save their soul? Isn’t it worth trying? I mean, causing finite pain in order to ensure eternal bliss? It was certainly done in a not-so-distant past. If people believed that then, what’s to stop them from believing it again?
Oh sure, you might be violating some commandment or other, but hell, this would be for a good cause, right?! Surely, God would forgive you!
As for atheism, it is merely descriptive: it says there’s no god. Period. Anything else you derive from your atheism is a non-sequitur.
I don’t have any problem with someone being willing to die for his belief.
What I do condemn is someone being willing to make other people die for his belief.
BTW, @ Beth- there’s a similar story about one of the ancient Chinese philosophers (can’t remember which) weeding out hypocritical Confucians by persuading the Emperor to decree that anyone who wears Confucian dress without practicing the doctrine be put to death.
I thought that was one of Luther’s main complaints with the RCC. As I understand it all Protestant sects consider Catholics idol worshippers.
To a degree, most do, but not all of them. The Episcopalians/Anglicans still retain many of the Catholic glitches, although certainly not to the same degree. There’s also the Vatican factor that riles most Protestants, since all of them emphasize reading the Bible oneself to determine its meaning, rather than relying on a bunch of guys in dresses to tell you what it means.
My example was one explanation for what the idol worshipper stuff was all about. And the Catholics do have a lot of junk to use for worship. The Catholics say it’s a means to express worship to Yahweh. The Protestants see it as worshipping the items themselves, not Yahweh. They’re arguing about minutiae that amounts to bullshit, sort of an expanded angels on pins debate writ large.
@Aquaria
Catholics are taught to venerate/honor the saints and the Virgin Mary, not worhsip them. Worshipping it left to God.
I cannot believe all the people here saying that the shooter was probably Christian. Clearly he wasn’t! I mean, he flatly stated: “If you’re not Christian, you’re going to die”, and then proceed to shoot himself.
I mean, he of all people should know, right?
qwerty017 wrote:
Ahhh, but that wasn’t on your list of 3.
Sure, like Pat Robertson who gets fuzzy and vague prophesies that don’t quite come true for his TV show.
But we know they’re thinking it. Consider, if Joe Blow sent you a check in the mail for a few million dollars and the letter said “God told me to give you ninety-percent of all I own” are you going to call him crazy?
You might be a scientist, but you’re not a philosopher.
“A search of the room Bonestroo rented in Nederland discovered a blood splattered room and Bonestroo’s dead cat”.
When the cat refused to convert, Bonestroo blew the hell out of it while yelling, “If you’re not Christian you’re going to die”. Another religious killing.
Silver Fox wrote:
I guess that answers the question of whether or not cats are more intellectually honest than (silver) foxes.
“cats are more intellectually honest than (silver) foxes.”
I’m going to have to take up that question with my resident philosopher, Vox Day. Surely a Mensa man like himself would be well schooled in veritas. Certainly his vast knowledge in zoology and comparative anatomy would serve him well.
Good to know your man-crush hasn’t worn off.
Vox Day and veritas in the same paragraph – now that doesn’t happen very often. Well, unless it’s a paragraph he wrote himself, of course. But my mother always said that self-praise is no recommendation.
Why do you associate a narrow aspect of intelligence (such as that valued by Mensa) with truth? Surely that’s at odds with your religion, which holds simplicity and ignorance as far more godly than wisdom.
You can’t possibly begin to imagine what sort of thoughts sprang into my mind after I read that…
I have written about this elswhere on the net- and there are plenty of articles that relate to the distillation of morality from religion and the ineffectiveness of faith in the face of evil (indeed- it is more often the catalyst)- and so will quote from there as to my opinions on the matter. It’s good to try and keep some measure of consistency in one’s ideas, especially when one goes to such hazardous forums such as Pharyngula.
But first i wanted to bring up the other side of the discussion- just for elaboration, just for a change from this very depressing state of affairs. I suppose that ot is OT, but i wanted to know everyone’s opinions on this:
We’re talking about Vox Day and Chicago Ray? Egads… Where’s Kenny when you need him?
Hello, there, Max.
Max/Silver Fox’s current approach is to raptorously quote Vox Day at length. The jury is still out on whether or not this is better or worse than his old approach.
He does seem to have developed a sense of humour, though. I suspect medication.
Appealing to the authority of Vox Day… that’s really sad.
“Why do you associate a narrow aspect of intelligence (such as that valued by Mensa) with truth?”
What are these narrow aspects that you speak of:
1.Demonstrate wide range of general fund of Information
2.Understand relationships between concepts (comprehension)
3.Reason abstractly
4.Visual synthetic reasoning
5.Conceptualize the whole from parts
6.Negotiate maze designs
7.Visual/motor memory
8.Rote memory
Those are the actual subtests and there are two more that don’t come to mind immediately. So, apparently rote memory would not be my strong subtest
But to the substance of your question: why do you associate this with truth. I don’t. As Indiana Jones said: if you want truth go to a philosophy class. I don’t particularly subscribe to that but I understood what he meant. I do associate them with a person’s ability to reason, think abstractly and do problem solving.
.
1. Fail
2. Fail
3. Fail
4. nonsense
5. more nonsense
6. Time Cubism
7. Masturbatory illusions
8. blah blah
The reason Vox didn’t use stats from the USA in his prison demographic piece was because those stats are aren’t as easy to find as you might think, because the government doesn’t collect them. Apparently it’s illegal (unconstitutional, even) to include an inmate’s religious affiliation or view on his records. IIRC, the numbers I found supported the contention that the irreligious are under-represeted in US prisons, but that could easily be a side effect of the “I found Jesus in jail” phenomenon that we all know so well. It’s also possible that it’s not wise, from a safety standpoint, to self-identify as an atheist in a US prison.
We went around this block several times a couple of years ago. The UK numbers are interesting, but Vox conveniently ignores the catch-all nature of the “no religion” category. IIRC, that includes all manner of inmate who simply isn’t a regular churchgoer. Self-identified atheists are still under-represented in the prison population. Whether the “no religion” category is over-represented is difficult to say. I’m going to guess that the survey of the prison population and the survey of the general population have very little to do with one another. This is all from memory, and I admit that I haven’t thought about this for a couple of years, and haven’t reviewed the material, so I might be off-base on some of these points.
As for Vox, though I still contend that his primary talent is for sophistry, he’s a bright lad and he does do his homework. He does, however, have a tendency to assume his conclusions and cherry-pick stats to support them. Furthermore, his astonishing arrogance is not exactly an asset, but he does approach things with a certain fearless audacity. Close up, he’s a big fish in a small pond, and he owns the pond – a situation that feeds his ego rather nicely. In the big picture, he’s a footnote.
As for the baby-slaughtering thing, it’s fair to point out (for the tenth time) that Vox was responding to a thought experiment proposed by an atheist commenter, and some of the glaringly obvious logical problems with the experiment are not, strictly speaking, Vox’s fault.
I wouldn’t have come up with the same answer as he did, but there aren’t many to choose from that fall within the parameters of the experiment, IIRC. Either you kill the babies, or you don’t. I submit that refusing to kill them requires a level of fearless audacity that not even Vox could bring himself to muster.
A foot note and an impaired Don Quixote figure without the oncoming realization of failure at the end.
I was having a conversation recently with a guy who was brought up non-religious but was thinking of converting to catholosim because “all the catholics he had met were so nice”. In trying to explain to him that they were much more likely to be nice because they were from middle class families from a nice area – not the dodgey neighbourhood he grew up in – rather than the fact that they were christian, I hit upon the example of the Serb/Croat war. Now there are a whole lot of people raping, torturing and killing in the name of religion.
Funny, I just started reading DQ the other day. Not quite what I expected.
The church I attended in my youth, a northern Babtist denomination, taught that the Catholic Church was the Whore of Babylon prophesied in the book of Revelation.
I still recall the first time I doubted my faith: a Sunday School lesson about how the sin of one of Noah’s sons justified black enslavement. Seriously.
No one yet has considered the effect of Nederland itself. This isn’t your average ski resort town at all.This is where a man has kept his grandfather’s carcass packed in dry ice in the tuff shed behind his house for years, waiting for reaimation technology. Now you might think that this would violate local zoning restrictions, but in Nederland it is celebrated annualy with “frozen dead guy days”. Not even Ted Williams has gained so much postmortem celebrity status.
How did he know these people weren’t Christian? I bet they were trying to lead him away from God; the Bible says that’s a valid reason for execution.
Maybe he was just trying to follow what his religion really says, instead of the nonsense Joel Osteen wants people to believe?
You’re saying that Nederland is situated directly over a hellmouth?
I’ve never heard of a hellmouth. I’m picturing something like what underlied the house in the Amityville horror movie. Sort of the antimatter equivalent of a Sedona Arizona vortex.