There was a terrible murder in Chapel Hill last night: three members of a family, Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, were gunned down by a bloody-minded fanatic. Part of the motive was obvious from their names. These were Muslims. We all know how much hatred Muslims get in this country.
Deah and Yusor had just married in December; Razan was her sister. Deah and Yusor were enrolled in the dentistry program. Razan was about to start studying architecture. These were young people in their late teens and early twenties, just getting a start on a happy and productive life. Let’s not forget that. That’s the crime here, three deaths of innocent people. But I have to talk more about the killer, scum that he is and as undeserving of attention.
The cowardly murderer was an atheist.
A regular social media user, his last three posts were a cute dog video about the Pavlov effect, a viral advert for Air New Zealand involving mountain bikes, and a picture from United Atheists of America asking “why radical Christians and radical Muslims are so opposed to each others’ influence when they agree about so many ideological issues”.
TV programmes liked by Hicks include The Atheist Experience, Criminal Minds and Friends, while he describes himself as a fan of Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason and Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.
You can guess what the mailboxes of prominent atheists look like this morning. This is what I saw on Twitter first thing today…and in fact, this is how I found out about the murders.
Was the Chapel Hill atheist killer a reader of @pzmyers?
— Roosh (@rooshv) February 11, 2015
I was actually just thinking about PZ. It's not hard to imagine him (or Rebecca Watson) going on a shooting spree. @rooshv @pzmyers
— Mike Cernovich (@PlayDangerously) February 11, 2015
Radical atheist and reader/fan of @pzmyers could just have likely killed Christians. http://t.co/V7AQ1Jdtn6 pic.twitter.com/lp8cqPQoYM
— Mike Cernovich (@PlayDangerously) February 11, 2015
@rooshv @pzmyers #militantatheism
— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) February 11, 2015
@PlayDangerously @pzmyers Wow. Atheism+ has killed someone. Can we get a statement from Atheism+ denouncing the murders?
— Incompatible (@TwittingSystem) February 11, 2015
And just to be representative of the generic quality of the criticism…
@pzmyers You seem to be quite a fag.
— Mike Grover (@mike02828099) February 11, 2015
My first reaction was simple rejection: you have to be pretty clueless to assume that “Kill all the Muslims” is a philosophy compatible with Atheism+, and you have to not know me (or Rebecca Watson) very well to imagine that we’re sitting around day-dreaming about violently murdering people we don’t like.
You know — Not All Atheists, and Atheism is a Belief System of Peace.
But let’s get real.
People are tribal. People can easily dehumanize others with the right propaganda. It has nothing to do with religion or the lack thereof, and everything to do with the messages their tribe is sending. Religion is wrong and a foolish set of ideas, but religious communities can tell their followers “kill the infidel!” or “live in peace!”, and non-religious communities can do both, too.
Deah Barakat was a Muslim who happened to be in a tolerant community.
It's so freaking sad to hear people saying we should "kill Jews" or "Kill Palestinians". As if that's going to solve anything SMH
— Deah Barakat (@arabprodigy30) January 28, 2015
His murderer was an atheist who seemed to ignore the tolerant part of atheism — neither The Atheist Experience nor Richard Dawkins are advocates of executing Muslims — and translated contempt for bad beliefs into violent hatred for those who hold those beliefs.
It’s easy to do. I don’t think there’s a significant component of atheism that preaches for violence against believers, but there are a large number of atheists who seriously try to argue that atheism should include no moral component at all — that it should be only a narrow set of ideas about the nature of the universe, that we deal only with the hard cold facts of science, and that all that fuzzy emotional humanist stuff belongs elsewhere. They encourage the creation of a kind of moral vacuum in which we don’t judge how we interact with others. Muzzle velocities, blunt force trauma, and exsanguination are all perfectly compatible with the dictionary definition of atheism — why, we don’t even have to consider our godless philosophy when purchasing a handgun. It’s merely an arbitrary act floating in a void filled with other arbitrary actions.
Again, not to detract from the importance of the loss of three human lives, but I think there are two things that atheists have to consider specifically about this crime.
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Maybe next time you determine that all Muslims are savages because some of them engage in terrorist violence, you should stop and think about how you like being judged by the example of the atheist who murdered Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. I don’t think you’re going to be able to forget that, because I guarantee you that every anti-atheist from now on will be throwing the terrorist violence of this killer in your face, just as every Muslim has had 9/11 pinned on them.
-
Maybe it’s time to abandon this pretense that atheism has no moral consequences, that all it means is “There are no gods” and “We are smarter than everyone else”. Atheism should be a philosophy that says we’re all alone in this life together, there is no divine paragon whispering in the ears of our righteous leaders about what to do, and we have to find our moral compass in our relationships with other human beings, the living organisms we are co-dependent upon, and Earth itself, not holy authority.
The killer was one of us. He had received the message that murdering Muslims does not expel one from the community of atheists. That has to change. You cannot say that atheism is merely an abstract idea without implications for human behavior and simultaneously dissociate yourself from this crime.
Wake up, atheists. You can’t hide from the meaning of your beliefs. You must consider and discuss what it means to live in a universe without a god, and think about what living in such a world should tell you about your relationships with others.
Deah Shaddy Barakat’s, Yusor Mohammad’s, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha’s lives mattered just as much as yours does. That has to be incorporated into your philosophy.
The latest news: it really can’t get more fucked up than this.
Police said in a statement Wednesday morning that a dispute about parking in the neighborhood of rented condominiums may have led to the incident.
“Our preliminary investigation indicates that the crime was motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking. Hicks is cooperating with investigators,” Lt. Joshua Mecimore, a police spokesman, said.
It wasn’t even primarily a dispute about atheism and religion. He murdered three people over a parking space. What is wrong with someone that they’d kill over something so petty?
This is terrible, and my heart goes out to the family and friends of Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. Such a loss.
As for Hicks, it doesn’t matter what label is slapped on him, the beliefs which led him to murder were fanatical and wrong. It’s easy enough for me to call to mind the number of atheists I’ve argued with here, who are anti-muslim no matter how much they try to wrap it up in supposed rational thinking.
Oh for…what in hell is wrong with people? All those lives, for a fucking parking space.
This makes me so sad.
Worth pointing out, I think, that one of the murder victims was raising money to provide dental relief to Syrian refugees
( http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/syrian-dental-relief/206249 )
I think it’s relevant because on any day I’ll take someone who’s religious but doing good in the world over someone who contributes nothing but agrees with me about the lack of deities .
I live in Chapel Hill (and actually know a lot of people who live in the neighborhood where the shooting happened) and I’m not sure I’m convinced that this was really about a parking space. Like a lot of liberal places, there is a prevailing mindset that racism and prejudice are things that don’t happen here, even when it is patently obvious that these things are happening right in front of our eyes. To majority populations around here, hate-motivated killings happen away from us and are done by people unlike us “enlightened” folks (and don’t forget the heaping helping of condescending classism that comes with this kind of thinking). So I am going to continue to be skeptical of such an easy “this wasn’t about race or religion, no hate crimes to see here in Liberalville” explanation.
One thing is for sure, all three of these kids were doing great things with their lives and to see that snuffed out over something so petty as their religion or their parking spaces is just a tragic and horrible waste. The way that the police wouldn’t even answer a father’s questions about whether his children were alright was heartbreaking, but hopefully they can correct that horrendous miscalculation with a thorough and professional investigation now.
What a horrible, hateful crime.
Their poor family, their friends, teachers and classmates – I’m so sorry for them.
“His murderer was an atheist who seemed to ignore the tolerant part of atheism”
What you are describing here is secular humanism. ‘Good Without a God’ is not described in any definition of atheism that I have ever read. That seems to be, at least to me, what the Atheism + movement has been about. Treating all people with respect for their humanity *should* be a basic tenet of every belief system.
” a parking space! “
Go to jalopnik.com and tell them about it. People there can be irate at times over “BMW’s parking like douches” [metaphor, yes] That is, – parking ‘on the line’, effectively hogging two spaces with a single car (or parking in handicapped when not, or parking diagonally over 2 or 3 spaces, etc. etc.)
Even IF they were habitually parking so badly, to make their neighbors irate; NOT A JUSTIFICATION for the results perpetrated upon them. This comment is intended to mock the readers of jalopnik, at how angry they get at minor inconveniences related to driving tons of deathsteel. Sorry to bring it here on this sad story.
Absolutely terrible act.
Even the BBC coverage mentions that “Mr Hicks expressed atheist views on Facebook, according to reports, but beyond these details little is yet known about what happened.”
That’s why it’s so important to express morality and humanism along with atheism.
You must have been fucking idiot to assume that it is hate crime, PZ. Who knows it was a parking spate.
Bible Boy, just shut the fuck up.
I live in Chapel Hill (and actually know a lot of people who live in the neighborhood where the shooting happened) and I’m not sure I’m convinced that this was really about a parking space.
Even if the shooter’s ‘tipping point’ was a parking space, the fact he was willing to kill three Muslims over a bloody parking space meant either he didn’t value Muslim lives all that much* or he didn’t value any lives (outside of his own) all that much. Plenty of people can hate that their neighbors for the annoying things neighbors do without escalating it to three murders.
* Suggested given his social media. It doesn’t take a PhD in sociology to wonder if his neighbors hadn’t been Muslim if he would have kept things to passive-aggressive notes when he posts anti-Muslim rhetoric.
That’s quite the tightrope Roosh, Cernovich, and Yiannopoulos are walking. They have plenty of atheist fans so they can’t outright blame atheism, so they’re forced to blame specific feminist atheists who their atheist fans hate.
I think they are trying to blame PZ ala Faux Snooze, when they are very, very afraid it isn’t the SJW end of atheism that is the cause.
Indeed. Blaming the atheists who have been criticized for being too soft & believing in Islamaphobia and promoting inclusivity. My spell checker does not recognize Islamaphobia or inclusivity, for the record.
Bible @ 10:
Seems to me that you must be a fucking idiot (again), for assuming the sole motive was a parking place dispute. Racism and bigotry are alive and well all over the place, just in case you haven’t noticed (see Pita @ 5). Whether or not anyone will ever know the absolute truth behind Hicks’s motive, it’s a tragedy, and it doesn’t speak well of you, that you wish to derail this thread with your petty problems with PZ.
The possibility that these murders were over a fricking parking dispute is going to make it worse for atheists. “SEE! THE LACK OF A GOD IN HICKS’ LIFE LED TO HIM USING VIOLENCE TO SOLVE A PETTY PARKING DISPUTE! WE THEISTS WOULD NEVER DO THAT!”
My heart goes out to the family and friends of the victims.
pita
It can easily have been both: Feelings of racial and religious hatred and the parking space dispute as the “final straw”.
Was Eric Garner killed for selling cigarettes or was he killed for being black?
+++
It has to be said that Dawkins does regularly engage in the dehumanization of muslims and denies hate crimes against muslims as “pranks”. He’s Dürematt’s Biedermann. Hicks was the Brandstifter.
I think that the same cannot be said of you, PZ.
Caine @16:
What’s the problem? I just pointed out the quick assumption on idiotic PZ’s part in the accepted manner on this blog.
Tragedy for sure, but let us not make it worse by jumping to conclusions.
Heh. Idiot.
Assuming a middle aged angry white dude killed three kids because they were Muslim and therefore he committed a hate crime is not a jump to conclusions. That’s taking a tiny, obvious step and there conclusions are.
Hicks turned himself in. He’s probably already convinced himself that he is an American hero – firm but fair. “Sure, I killed three people for no good reason, but I didn’t try to hide it. I did the right thing and gave myself up.”
FYI
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/02/11/north-carolina-man-charged-in-shooting-death-three-people/
Except that no one has blamed his atheism for his actions. What PZ has said, rather, is that this will make certain atheists look bad and that atheists should really consider the consequences of their beliefs because this man is an atheist and dictionary atheists cannot logically distance themselves from him and his actions.
Of course, they can try, with futility, to further compartmentalise their atheism from all other aspects of their lives, but that rather proves the point that atheism does and must have consequences.
Oops, my message got missed.
FYI – looks like it was not motivated by atheism but by a parking dispute:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/02/11/north-carolina-man-charged-in-shooting-death-three-people/
gregcook, please take the time to actually read the ENTIRE article and the comment thread before posting.
Yes, lets uncritically accept this. (not). What is more likely, that three young people were murdered because of a parking dispute, or because they were part of a visible minority that has recently been in the spotlight (American Sniper, anyone?) and were therefore seen as targets by a murderous person…
yazikus, I actually think that a combination of both is far more likely than even the latter of the two options your present. Becca Stareyes, @ # 12, gives a very succinct bit of reasoning as to how that could happen.
The victims were also college educated which greatly reduces the chances of fundamentalist behavior. They were no threat to him or anyone else.
But it is fascinating how readily people believe that “parking slot dispute” is a reasonable explenation for the murder of three young people because it must. not. be. that their race and religion had anything to do with it.
It would be much more fascinating if this was the first time the murder of people who are not white christians was explained by anything but racism (and islamophobia)
Thomathy,
I agree with you, but also here with Giliell:
I just didn’t express it as well. The whole thing is just a damn tragedy.
And buried in all the Blame Atheism hoopla is any discussion of where and how the lethal weapon came into his possession — the hate crime is surely a key art of this story, but I fear it will bury even a peep about sensible firearms regulation.
It’s an old fiction the religious love to tell.
If one of them does something, “He’s only one person, he doesn’t represent all of us!” Or more likely, they deny he even is one (vis-a-vis “no true scotsman”).
If an atheist does something, “You ALL do it!”
Tabby Lavalamp #13
While some of the pitters were already followers of Return Of Kings, since “GamerGate” began, some of the pitters have thrown support to that vile movement and as well as Cernovich and Yiannopoulos. Wonder how the pit narrative will be written, for a long time PZ has been painted as an accommodationist.
Regardless of whether this was triggered by bigotry or by parking rage, one thing is obvious: if he hadn’t had a gun, it probably wouldn’t have escalated beyond a shouting match.
I’ve had just about enough of this. -______-
There are other words for these philosophies,
stop introducing semantic confusion, please.
For those suffering from reading comprehension problems, I have a task for you: Find the passage where PZ or anyone else here has blamed this man’s atheism on the murders of Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha.
After you fail to do that, please note that stating that you think the motive for the murders was rather a dispute over parking spaces is a non-sequitur.
Hill’s anger may have been triggered by the parking dispute, but from everything he’s stated, it appears he hated Muslims to the point that he considered them inferior and subhuman. The parking space may have fueled his anger, but there is no way that his hatred for Muslims is a coincidence. That is ridiculous. He did not hate Muslims THAT much and then “oops, killed ’em over a parking space, no other reason!” That doesn’t even make rational sense.
The parking space was what made him angry to begin with, maybe … but his hatred is what brought him to murder three people he did not see as fellow human beings.
(An aside: it seems that people are seeing the comments @10 and 19 as being from “Bible Boy” but I am seeing “9780007103072xxx”. What gives?)
alverant
What does that have to do with the price of butter? Last time I looked being a religious fundamentalist was not a crime punishable by death itself.
marilove, I agree. The more parsimonious explanation is that he hated them, Muslims, and then got angry with Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha.
(I’m going to do my best to continue to acknowledge the victims by name. I won’t refer to the murderer by name. I don’t think this is done enough.)
Alverant #29
You are mistaken here. Let’s take an extreme example. And please note, I am not comparing the actions of the murder victims with the group I am about to bring up.
Most of the people who pulled off the terrorist attack on September 11 were college educated.
Instead, look at the words and actions of the three, they condemned religious violence.
Sadly, they were still murdered by a man who believes in culture wars.
nich
The number is the ISBN code for the bible. Don’t ask.
I’ve cussed out people who park cars straddling the lines in the lot. But I’ve never even contemplated lying in wait for them and executing them for their crime when they return to their car. It would require something more than just bad parking.
This event, tragic as it is, should give those of us who are atheists, a pause. How willing we are to quickly buy in religious zealotry argument when something like this happens on the other side of the isle. In most cases, it is a sick mind that does it. Neither theism, nor atheism.
brianpansky @ #36, I don’t think that was intentional semantic confusion, but atheism does have consequences. I don’t know and so I’ll ask, are you a dictionary atheist?
Honestly. Using this as an argument against people who rightly point out what “atheist” and “atheism” actually mean? Low. Really messed up. You can use it against people who reject morality itself in some way, but that isn’t what “atheist” means either. Ugh.
In re jrobie’s statement that one of the victims was trying to raise funds for dental relief for Syrian refugees;
http://www.youcaring.com/medical-fundraiser/syrian-dental-relief/206249
I was wondering if there is a way for people to contribute to this fund in the name of an atheist group or humanist group.
Oops…
Hick’s, not Hill’s.
Thank you, Timothy, and I agree with your last sentence. I’ll remember that for the future when commenting on this in the future.
9780007103072xxx, fuck you. It’s not even just ‘a sick mind’. People don’t exist in bubbles. If his mind was ‘sick’ from where do you think that sickness came? Don’t answer here. Actually, just stop posting if you’re going to continue in your present vein. Just go think about how it simply isn’t possible that this is merely the product of some isolated ‘sick mind’.
9780007103072xxx @ 45
Actually it’s not that either. The mentally ill are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Can we maybe have one fucking thread where we don’t trip over ourselves to throw the mentally ill under the bus? Also, fuck you.
@9780007103072xxx
Don’t bait and switch between a specific religion and “theism”. Theism itself is compatible with many ideologies, just like atheism. But a particular ideology can indeed be a motive for violence.
brianpansky@36, PZ isn’t trying to “introduce semantic confusion”, he is trying to change the meaning of the word “atheist”. Words change meaning all the time, especially in English. You can oppose that change all you want (though I’m not sure why we need a word that just means “someone doesn’t believe in gods”), but don’t mistake what PZ is doing.
Re: the OP, when the news first broke (without names), I assumed a domestic dispute of some sort. Then when the names were released, my mind naturally turned to hate crime. But as suggested by several people above, a combination of the two seems the most likely–the dispute was the trigger, but the hate pulled the trigger. The atheism is a side-show of sorts, in that many Christians hate Muslims as well, but it is an opportunity for some reflection among atheists.
Especially sad is how many “atheists” leap at the opportunity to use this tragedy as an opportunity to attack other atheists!
brianpansky @ #47, no. Just no. You’re welcomed to consider that being atheist has no consequences, that the world must be a fundamentally different place if gods don’t exist, but you may not tell people who acknowledge these things that it is low to make the argument that you cannot distance yourself from an atheist like this murder as an atheist without performing some very impressive turns of logic.
Why the fuck can’t this be a hate crime committed over a parking dispute? The catalyst for the shooting may have been a dispute over parking, but his decision to ultimately gun them down could easily have its roots in anti-Muslim hate. It’s as dumb as saying: “You were stupid to assume the lynching was a hate crime when it was really just about the fact the white guy thought the colored boy was making a pass at his woman!”
So the anti-social justice people are now blaming the murder of three minorities by a white male atheist who was a fan of other bigoted white male atheists on A+ and social justice minded atheists who criticize bigoted white man atheism.
This smearing all started because a woman said, “Guys, don’t do that”. Women wanted to be safe in atheist events they pay to attend, people wanted to see more diversity in our panels and victims of assault, harassment, threats and rape began to come forward.
I’m not shocked at all that an atheist would commit a hate crime. I’ve been watching them threaten to rape and murder for years.
nich @ 39 & Gilliell @ 43:
I do apologize for assuming that Bible was a “Boy.” I don’t recall if they’ve ever mentioned their gender, but they got me angry.
oops, thread moved too fast.
Brian Pansky, you can hold onto your precious prescriptive meanings if you want, but English doesn’t work that way. If enough people agree with PZ’s definition of atheism, then that’s what the word will mean.
I favor his definition, obviously. Let’s take that word away from Thunderfoot and his ilk, make THEM pick a new word for themselves.
@46, Thomathy
I’m a humanist. You’d probably count me as not being a “dictionary atheist”, but I hope you appreciate that the phrase “dictionary atheist” commits the same error I despise (I think).
I realise that my post at # 55 may be very difficult to parse. On third reading I’m unsure if I can parse it anymore. I’m not done my morning tea. If any meaning can be gleamed I welcome someone to reiterate my words, I’m not sure I can right now.
@Giliell
Thanks! My computer is a bit of a piece of crap so I thought it was just another case of it displaying things incorrectly.
#54, Doug Hudson
Those two aren’t mutually exclusive. Semantic confusion is an event that occurs. That it occurs is a fact. That it is avoidable with better word use is also a fact.
I’ve heard of men who beat their wives over not having dinner ready on time.
They hit their wives out of misogyny, not over dinner.
I hope I do not have to explain how that is relevant here.
bible number
A) This does most likely not include you
B) What do you think this discussion is?
I’m perfectly willing to accept that his beliefs and world views, which include atheism and the noticable hatred many atheists harbour against muslims played a role in this.
Fuck your ableism
Well said, PZ. Parking or religion or whatever it may be, if it’s convenient to tell ourselves a story that there is only one reason why a person does something like this, there aren’t any good reasons to pick from.
Sorry for the longish rant which follows…. I wouldn’t want to distract from the murders, so I’d be happy to move this to the thunderdome if requested, but the OP isn’t narrowly about that either.
It seems like we could sidestep the neverending “dictionary atheist” nonsense by just insisting on some kind of realism about ethics and responsibility. I know this isn’t an especially popular position, at least not ostensibly (although in practice everyone seems to act as if there were realists, making their inane protestations irrelevant), possibly because it’s not as easy to defend as the sort of nihilistic sophistry some people like to entertain.
My point is simply that we could leave the metaphysics about gods out of it, since it doesn’t make a bit of difference. Putting it in terms of what’s entailed by atheism leads you into this vague territory where it’s about atheism “plus … something” which never gets filled out in much detail; but the perspective that move is presumably supposed to offer is also kind of confusing or confused to begin with. I look at it this way. It’s not really, truly good for religious people do bad things, like murdering somebody. (I don’t mean to strawman anyone, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t be explicit about this premise.) That is, if there were gods or souls or what-have-you, if they were right about any of their supernatural beliefs, it would still not be true that murdering anyone is a good thing to do, whether they are a religious person or an atheist.
That is something we can know, because we exist as the sorts of things that have experiences (subjective ones! … as if there were any other kind) which make such social relationships real features in the world, not determined by anything other than what in fact we are (not determined by the dictates of gods, for instance). I’ve never been able to get myself into the mood to say that’s not “true” or that we don’t “know” such things as “facts,” nor do I feel like there’s anything very odd going on there under the surface: I do know that it’s true that murder is actually wrong, independent of what I personally think about it. In clear examples like murder, it makes no sense to me to be at all hesitant about saying so explicitly. But agree with it or not, it’s not a terribly complicated theory; and you need to make a really fucking compelling case if you want to add any complications to a plain old ordinary realism based on our everyday experiences of the world. If you’re not interesting in seriously doing the work of actually making such a case, please don’t muddy the waters any further than they already are with your half-assed ignorant bullshitting about it, as that is not remotely helpful to anyone.
Anyway…. as I see it, theists are on the same level ground as atheists: it’s wrong from my perspective as an atheist, just as it is from theirs, because who or what I am personally (other than a sentient capable of experiencing stuff, as compared to a rock) has nothing at all to do with it. So what would be the point of talking about such an atheistic perspective in the first place? In that sense, it’s beside the point whether atheism or naturalism is true (or basically any metaphysics you like, if it’s not cooked up to give you the sort of arbitrary or absurd results you might want). Atheism and beliefs systems generally do of course have all sorts of consequences, but it’s kind of murky what exactly the point of that is once you get down to business. However, you could turn the tables somewhat, so that the issue is about which perspective is most compatible with what you can independently learn about what is actually right or wrong, not going in the other direction by supposedly “deriving” it (somehow) from an overall worldview. That sort of approach isn’t anything really new: theism isn’t compatible with lots of experiences I have, and moral ones are very interesting/important/relevant examples that I could cite. Which is probably right, based on those facts, or based on any of the facts whatever they are? But that’s a theoretical argument with religionists, and it won’t fix the world’s problems all by itself: nobody can fight poverty or injustice or whatever, by claiming gods aren’t responsible for it due to their nonexistence. As people, we eventually need to get out of our armchairs and do something.
And that brings us to a sociological question about what beliefs/behaviors atheists do (and should) encourage among themselves. Of course, it’s important that we take a side of some sort, that we have a “belief system of peace” as you put it. I think that is being “real” in a certain way, if you take it seriously that it really is true that peace/nonviolence/etc. is good, and we as a group are making a point to align ourselves with such goals. It’s not “just talk” if that is how we live and make our subculture work, by rejecting not just superstitions but also other sorts of ignorant bullshit (some of which was described above) that gets peddled regularly by some folks here and elsewhere. It obviously won’t mean atheists never do wrong by definition or some stupid thing like that, but it could at least mean that we won’t pretend (anymore?) like we can be above the fray, or that we won’t criticize all of the “bad” people from the sidelines whenever religion plays a role without also taking a good hard look in the mirror.
left0ver1under@33:
That’s a universal characteristic of tribalism (and having spent time on the Christian side of the divide, I’ve seen it come the other way): “$OUR_PHILOSOPHY motivates only virtuous behaviour, and any of us who do something wrong is an aberration who is mentally ill, or doesn’t understand the True Teaching. But when one of you lot misbehaves, well what do you expect from someone who holds such stupid, benighted ideas? It’s amazing any of you manage to stay out of jail….”
So much this. This piece of their failed thinking needs to be pointed out often.
While we’re arguing semantics, can we get away from calling the murders of Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha “tragedies”? In modern usage, an earthquake or a tornado is a tragedy; this is something more. “Hate crime” is better, but I don’t think it goes far enough. This was an act of religiously- and ethnically-motivated terrorism, every bit as much as the murders at Charlie Hebdo.
consciousness razor, I would like to award you with this everything. You have all the internets, keep them well.
“He had received the message that murdering Muslims does not expel one from the community of atheists.” From where? Where did he get this idea? Maybe he came up with this idea himself? Since all Atheists are “Free Thinkers”, we’re all free to come up with, and encouraged to come up with, our own conclusions. Maybe he came to the conclusion that life doesn’t matter so much and taking someone else’s life isn’t that big of a deal? Of course, he’s wrong. Any Humanist would quickly come to the conclusion that he’s wrong. Humanism starts with Atheism and comes to the conclusion that Human life does matter. I doubt he was a Humanist.
I agree that further education is needed and maybe we shouldn’t be quite so quick to say, “come to your own conclusions!” Some people need a little help to come to well supported and logical conclusions. This isn’t dogma, it’s simply helping people’s though processes along.
Yes, he’s one of “us” (Atheists) and, yes, we failed when it came to instilling Humanist values more into Atheism. Atheism doesn’t ever give the message that murdering anyone is “ok”, and anyone is capable of doing this is the circumstances are right, but a little more focus on Humanism would be a good thing.
I wish there were some way the Atheist community could show some support for the families.
9780007103072xxx
There is no reason to believe that the killer had any mental health problems, and this “explanation” does nothing to actually explain anything.
Humans are pretty smart animals, and their behaviours are strongly influenced by their beliefs. Looking at someone’s beliefs for an explanation of their actions seems entirely reasonable.
I don’t think I’d ever heard of Roosh or the others before (or not enough to have them stay on my radar in any significant way). And now that I have….what? This is just picking some name you dislike and trying to attach it to a convenient Bad Thing. These guys actually have a following among atheists?
One of the “extra” things that atheism ought to include (but apparently doesn’t) is “bullshit detector”.
Great, you just ruined Christmas for me. And my birthday. I mean, what do you get, for somebody who has everything?
One of the victims told her father she had a “hateful neighbour”
Caine
11 February 2015 at 9:43 am
Hey, we (i.e., White, American males) can say that it wasn’t over something as trivial as shoes or a coat. We are talking about a parking spot here – important stuff for a manly man! Unlike, you know, ‘those’ people who kill others for the real trivial stuff like food, clothes, or status symbols. In 201 in Fairfax, Virginia you had another person murder another over a fucking speed bump. White males, and their cars, right?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/13/AR2010091306579.html
http://patch.com/virginia/burke/springfield-man-sentenced-for-murder-of-burke-resident
I am disgusted by the actions of Craig Stephen Hicks. I wonder if he rationalized his actions while pulling the trigger. Actually, I could not give a fuck. I hope the murderer gets life in prison. And fuck those MRA/MGTOW diarrhea, ass shits using the murder of three (Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha), hard working, hard studying American students with a sense of social justice, for kindergarten taunts (that is probably an insult to kindergarten kids) at PZ, Rebecca, and A+ is repulsive even based on their low, non-butt wiping standards.
I have seen a lot of people defend the idea that atheism was involved because his facebook page was “full of hatred of religion”
Given the number of gun fondling assholes there are losing their shit over something it was only a matter of time before one of them was one of us. So sorry for the families involved.
Another responsible gun owner… until he wasn’t.
This is a perfect example of how easy it is for disputes to escalate when guns are involved, and is the sort of thing people have to accept and expect to happen when you live in a gun owning and especially gun carrying society.
If Hicks had only killed one man, instead of three people, he might even be claiming he did it in self-defense right now.
From Giliell’s link, #75
But I swear it’s about ethics in automobile parking.
RooshV is a prominent MRA/PUA type so, yeah, a fair bit of overlap between his following and atheism. He’s frequently a subject of mockery and derision at We Hunted the Mammoth.
…neither The Atheist Experience nor Richard Dawkins are advocates of executing Muslims…
Sam Harris is another matter: he’s a well-known torture-apologist, and he’s explicitly said, many times, that Islam is what the Muslim fundamentalists say it is, and less-extremist Muslims aren’t really full Muslims at all, they’re just “nominal” Muslims, and Muslims aren’t really persons, they’re just pod-people carrying a meme that makes them evil and untrustworthy (sort of like what people used to say about Catholics). So if anyone really needs an atheist to blame for this killing, they can look to Harris — and not to PZ, who’s often been known to attack simpleminded atheist rhetoric like Harris’.
Bible @ 45:
No, it isn’t. This is just othering, trying to put this act outside the realm of what ‘normal’ people do. There are a whole lot of people who have deeply ingrained bigotry, there are a lot of people who let their fears overwhelm them, and so on. People are capable of very monstrous acts, which doesn’t make them monsters. It makes them regular humans. Think of all the times someone has been cited saying “they were a nice person” or “a good co-worker” or “they were a quiet neighbor” and so on, after committing a murder.
No. And No.
I’m pretty confident that the following thought did not cross Hicks’ mind: “Man, if I kill these muslims, all the atheists will shun me. Better not do it.”
Nevertheless, this behavior is predictable. For 14+ years, the powers that be have been hammering us all with the idea that Middle Easterners == Muslims == Terrorists == ‘they will kill you and everyone you care about’.
Is anybody surprised? Richard Dawkins firmly believes in parking dispute theory. Nothing to be seen here, move along, people…
I see what we’re doing here – @54 (is that how we reference here? I’m a bit new) is right when he says that PZ is trying to change the definition of atheism. In the same way that Christians can and do semi-credibly make the “no true scotsman” argument that, while fallacious, relies upon and implies a moral system for most Christians, it would be useful for there to be a similar baseline assumption of some sort of morality for atheists.
Unfortunately for us, there is no central doctrine save for lack of belief in god that is implied to be common to all atheists. There is a vocal and significant portion of atheists (not generally famous, for obvious reasons) who will advocate for the execution of some or all religious people. And in the larger discussion today, it’s hard to say that those who we’d consider militant atheists “aren’t real atheists,” although that’s what PZ is working towards.
It was over a parking space, AND it was over religion and culture. Would Hicks have shot a guy as white as himself over a parking space? Given accounts of his previous behavior, I’m guessing he would not have.
“Our preliminary investigation indicates that the crime was motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking. Hicks is cooperating with investigators,” Lt. Joshua Mecimore, a police spokesman, said.
Sounds like someone is trying to avoid seeing the 800-lb gorilla in the room.
PZ @44
So are we assuming only things we can identify with and what we would do? Would we, you and/or I, allow race/religion to be the “something more”? Disputes and murders over parking spaces *do* happen[1]. Then again hate crimes over race/religion also happen. The fact that neither you nor I would do either just means, well, it means neither you nor I did this one.
I don’t know which is more *likely* to happen but I think which one we find more “understandable” depends on our personal viewpoint.
[1]The family of the murderer are a real piece of work. Tried to sue the victim’s family in a civil suit as being in jail and bad press made it difficult for them to sell the property. Seriously.
Poor victim’s family. They scattered the ashes on a public beach and were arrested for not having proper permits. Poor things never caught a break.
And here is Richard Dawkins being an asshole yet again.
A parking dispute in NRA-land, my fucking ass.
Sorry, Giliell, I did not see your post.
Well surely no True Atheist could have done that. He most likely was a secret Christian.
Talking Points Memo weighs in: 5 Points To Know About Craig Hicks, Man Accused Of Killing 3 Muslim Students:
.
That second item indicates he doesn’t waste much love on our esteemed host, but that’s no comfort from any angle.
I wonder if this was a Muslim man who murdered three young non-muslims whether some people would be as keen to present this as a “parking dispute”.
Why not? John F. Kennedy of Carmel Valley did.
Um, which accounts are you referring to? Posting a comparison of christian and muslim fundamentalists?
Eamon Knight #73
A fair number of the anti-Rebecca Watson and anti-FTB crowd has been long time followers of RooshV and of Return Of Kings. It is not just picking out a random person to toss on the Hate List.
#65 “Fuck your ableism”
What the fuck is wrong with you? Now you are denying mental health problems too? And to say someone may have a mental health problem is ableism?
Get your fucking head checked, fucking quahog.
Well, I would. Would you be as keen to assume it was race/religion motivated in that case? Why or why not?
I haven’t assumed anything. I don’t know what was going through the guys mind. Though I do think there is a double standard when it comes to reporting stories involving Muslims.
Bye, unmemorable collection of numbers and letters.
@96
Assuming that someone who did something bad must have done it because they are mentally ill IS ableism.
Kindly fuck off, you obnoxious, ignorant, arsehole troll.
9780007103072xxx
Yes, deciding that someone has a mental health problem based solely on the fact that they killed people is ableist. You have no reason to think that, and speculating about it adds nothing to the discussion besides shitting on those of us who actually do have mental health issues.
Seriously, could we just once have a discusion of a murder without the “reasoning” of “well, the killer must have had a mental illness, because he killed someone, and we all know normal people wouldn’t do that. There, murder explained!”
Every label that segments humanity has the potential to be used for othering.
Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha are dead.
If atheism had anything to do with allowing their killer to dehumanise them so severely that a fucking parking space could motivate murder, then fuck the dictionary, fuck semantic confusion. Change the meaning of the word, tie it irrevocably to the concepts of humanism.
We owe the dead nothing less.
If I were Hicks’ lawyer I’d be telling him to make it about a parking space dispute too. Hate crimes tend to be punished more severely.
How do the facts of the case (at least what we know so far) support the headline “Beliefs have consequences”? Whose beliefs, or lack of beliefs, had what consequences?
Either the shooter’s or the victims’ beliefs might be relevant to what happened, but at this point we just don’t know. Is it appropriate to make assumptions?
It also seems as if Chapel Hill Murders:Roosh::Hurricane Katrina:Pat Robertson. They’re both misogynist/bigoted assholes attempting to blame a negative event on something they hate. For Robertson it was teh gais, for Roosh et al it’s teh SJW.
You know what they say: birds of an authoritarian right wing feather tend to flock together.
Based on the context, I assume this is a rhetorical question.
You can probably guess my opinion, but I’m prepared to consider arguments that the answer is yes.
rajid @71:
You might want to rethink your premise here. Is it true, in fact, that all atheists are freethinkers (btw, it’s one word, and no need for quotes)?
keiththompson @ 104
Asking the tough questions are we? Clearly someone’s belief that [something] is sufficient reason to kill three people has had the consequence that three people are now dead at that person’s hands. There are clearly people who’d like to pretend there’s cause to debate what the [something] is but trying to dispute that a belief had a consequence here is pretty fucking inane.
9780007103072xxx @96:
What are your mental health qualifications?
keiththompson @104:
I think it’s more of an educated guess. There are atheists that are anti-Muslim bigots. The murders of Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha were committed by an atheist who was an anti-Muslim bigot (and an irresponsible gun owner with no respect for human life). The beliefs he holds had horrific consequences. I wish this would be sufficient for many bigoted atheists to rethink their positions, but somehow I doubt this will happen.
Also, we know enough about the shooter’s beliefs to know that they were relevant. Check out Giliell’s link @75.
Woozy @ 97:
You seem to be ignoring the story Giliell linked to, in regard to Hicks having major problems with the race and religion of his former neighbours. Here in the States, where racism is rampant, it’s usually found to have had a part in a crime where the perpetrator is white and the victims are not.
And my heart drops. This is the first I’ve heard of this.
Of course it was a hate crime and atheism has a problem. We had it before, of course, but now it’s popped out into full view.
Blaming it on PZ and atheists who focus on social justice? WTF. No, I don’t think this guy was focusing too hard on social justice. Or on reason, for that matter, if that’s your special focus.
Um, which accounts are you referring to?
Accounts of earlier run-ins between Hicks and some Muslim neighbors.
Seems that Richard Dawkins has a new mantra, “It Was A Parking Dispute! It Was A Parking Dispute! It Was a Parking Dispute!”.
Janine 115,
Every time I think I can’t lose any more respect for the man…
keiththompson:
and
Meaning it’s not rhetorical, I take it.
The argument I would give goes something like this: there is evidence this fucker considered himself anti-religious. The victims were religious, and this fact must have been obvious to him. There is testimony that it had already been a point of some kind of conflict between them, whether or not it was in some sense “the cause of the murders” — again, as I said before, on the unreasonable assumption that we had to pick just one anyway. Religious conflict is also something that, to put it mildly, has involved more violence throughout history in all societies compared to, say, disputes about parking. Or compared to a fuckload of most other things anybody could imagine. All of this significantly raises the probability that it was a religious hate crime. So even though it’s not an “assumption” anyway but a conclusion, the answer is that yes, it is an appropriate thing to think about and discuss. It’s especially so for us, because as atheists this event will have consequences for us, no matter what the details of the case turn out to be if anyone else (other than the murderer) can ever figure those out.
@Janine and @Giliell and whoever else commented. My post was poorly worded due to time constraints. If I knew how to rescind it, I would. I can’t remember what I was thinking at the time. My apologies.
@the general direction of the now banned 9780007103072xxx, #96
9780007103072xxx responded to “fuck your ableism” with:
Your only evidence of mental health problems is that violence occurred.
Check your local DSM, that’s not near enough to diagnose a mental health problem.
No regular here denies the existence of mental health problems, but your question, “to say someone may have a mental health problem is ableism?” is the purest misleading bullshit.
To say someone may have a mental health problem **solely based on the fact that that someone committed violence** is ableism for fucking sure. Why wouldn’t it be ableism to define away all (or nearly all) the violence of sane people – violence which often targets the mentally ill, not incidentally – by simply using the violence itself to retroactively label “insane” or “mentally ill” the performer of the violence?
You don’t get to blame all or even the majority of violence on the mentally ill and then not get criticized for your bullshit. Run over to whatever other space on the internet will welcome your writing and complain about how we denied the existence of mental illness, but this record is here. This record will stand. Anyone who bothers to check the evidence will see that you’re engaging in the worst kind of crazy-blaming.
Calling you on that isn’t denial. It’s not unreasonable.
It’s ethically fucking mandatory.
Thanks, PZ. I just finished writing a similar sentiment before coming here, and I’m glad to see a prominent atheist taking a stand for what is right.
@102, FossilFishy
I’d like to see the reasoning behind how this is supposed to help. Especially compared to an alternate solution: simply promoting (say) humanism, and combating people’s bad thinking, bigotry, etc.
That’s what we owe the dead.
I don’t think we owe the dead some useless word game.
@alverant, #118:
calling out for standard praise your comment showing:
1) grace under criticism,
and
2) ability to admit error.
Without criticism and ability to admit error, we’d never get anywhere. Thanks for your example.
What a vile crime. My condolences to the families of Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha.
I agree, although of course there’s far worse than Dawkins for this among atheists. One thing we can do as atheists is not to let anti-Muslim bigotry pass when we hear or see it, especially from other atheists. BTW, Giliell, I think you mean Frisch, not Dürematt.
I don’t care if this murder was motivated by atheism or by a quarrel about a parking lot. At the moment I don’t care either if PZ has his terminology right when writing “Atheism should be a philosophy that …..”
I want to live in a free world and as Bakunin already noted: I can only be free if everyone around me is free too. This atheist murderer is a threat to freedom. No matter what name you give it, a moral system should make clear that it’s wrong to kill people. Any atheist who doesn’t have such a moral system is not in my camp.
The links @75 and @92 add up to an, um, “interesting” picture. Generally liberal-ish views, BUT a gun nut, and apparently a bit racist, too (in the case of non-white Muslims it’s hard to separate the “brown foreigners” aspect from the “scary religion” aspect — they easily combine to create The Other). Also an “intellectually active” (thanks, Mikey, for that term) atheist in that he read both modern and historical works on atheism and secularism (Dawkins and Paine). And I’ve read things virtually identical to his anti-religion quotes in atheist spaces (probably even here) over the years.
I’m not sure what all that adds up to. Though at least for me, it confirms my discomfort with the label “atheist” as a significant identification. I’m not interested in fighting the semantic battle, but I am interested in people saying what they *are* and what they’re *for*, not just what they’re *against*.
Because nobody murders someone over a parking dispute in merry ol’ england…
… except for when they do:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2879592/Mother-stabbed-death-street-bitter-row-parking-space.html
But at least banning guns means she only got stabbed to death over a parking dispute. By banning guns, merry ol’ england never has neighborly disputes result in gun fire….
Except when it does…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7281838.stm
Alverant, I have to be honest, I was a bit surprised that I was taking you to task over that statement.
Thank you for not being upset about my answering like I did.
Why is Dawkins so fucking wilfully ignorant and dismissive of social and historical context? Why is he such a reactionary shithead? Why is New Atheism so full of reactionary shitheads? Why is outspoken atheism apparently becoming synonymous with reactionary shitheadery? “Parking dispute” my fucking arse. You don’t shoot people over a fucking parking space without some serious dehumanisation, and “New Atheist” writing is fucking full of it. Harris and Hitchens in particular have blood on their hands.
For the longest time, I just didn’t get it. I thought that it was pretty obvious that when you don’t have gods as an authority, all the stuff had to come from people and therefore atheism as a philosophical position had to come along with necessary corollories about morality and justice and living together as social beings. If there is no divine dictator we as humans must create the context of our lives by mutual consent. I thought that all those asshole misogynist libertarian pro-torture racist douchecanoe atheists just hadn’t thought things through completely and rationally (e.g. substituting the magic of a just god who has a plan, for a magical just world that gives everyone exactly what they deserve). This is probably true to some extent, but I’m now suspecting that maybe the faulty thinking is at a lower level. Instead of concluding that without gods, we as a species, as a community, are beholden to each other, these asshole atheists conclude that they as an individual are beholden to no one. This conclusion is not rare, it’s extremely common, resulting in two different camps reflecting the two completely distinct philosophies. Thus the fight over the “atheism” label. It’s not that PZ wants to “change the definition” of atheism, and the whole “dictionary atheism” thing is a red herring. It’s a fight over which is the default philosophical conclusion: now that gods are dead, are we alone in this together or am I just alone?
having lived for some time now this kind of thing is not so strange or novel to me. I seem to have heard of these murders over small disputes between neighbors ever since I was a kid.
I have not done the study though but I would suspect that none of the killers had very good social support systems of a lot of friends and family. If not just social isolation it sure sounds like there was some emotional isolation involved. Not sharing in the religious community has left me on the outside of some things, it is pretty hard not to feel “dissed” by the majority who are believers in gods. so that may have some contribution to this particular murder, many of these murders have general things in common and they seem to me to be an enlightenment of modern life. I would also include this gangs and terrorist groups which to my understanding are just a more organized subheading under gangs. A way to form a group for the social and emotional support that is lacking in the population as a whole. Is it the magnification of a simple human problem by the modern urbanization going on world wide?
uncle frogy
Plenty of people seem to be willing to murder over a parking space:
http://ktla.com/2014/10/23/woman-stabbed-to-death-in-front-of-children-in-dispute-over-parking-space-police/
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/story/27618967/man-convicted-of-murder-in-parking-dispute-case
http://www.wbaltv.com/news/police-dispute-led-to-fatal-double-shooting-near-school/30660532
And that was just the first page of Google set to filter out anything within the last couple of days.
god dam spell check!!
that is indictment not a fucking enlightenment
uncle frogy
Christopher @ 131
So what you’re saying is that, when you search Google for examples of people killing over a parking space, you find a bunch of examples of people killing over parking spaces? Q. E. Fucking. D. amirite?
Also, none of the links are from “the last couple of days,” in case anyone bothers to actually read them.
But Christopher definitely has a point. Based on the fact that teh Googley-thing contains large amounts of data about everything I type in, I have reached two primary conclusions so far: bigfoot exists and cat videos are sort of funny sometimes. Just moments ago, I got over 30 million and 400 million hits for each, respectively. You can’t explain that.
The assertion was that people don’t murder I’ve parking spaces therefore there must be some sort of underlying hate fueled dehumanizing going on.
By showing that there are many many instances of people killing over parking spaces that lack any element of a hate crime disputes that assertion.
Q E fucking D
I filtered out stories that came from the last couple of days or else the whole page would be different versions of the same story this thread is dedicated to.
Alverant
Thanks
++
If you klick your heels and say “parking dispute” three times in a row, Richard Dawkins will bless your dinner
There is no ‘community of atheists’ and it’s impossible to expel people from atheism, because membership is by conviction, just as other belief systems make it by ancestry, or some ceremony. There are no authorities or hierarchical structures. You’re relying on some kind of post-Catholic idea where they excommunicate people, or Amish-like where they shun. Whereas you know all you can actually do is block people on Twitter. Even if any atheist organisations he was a member of kick him out, he’s still an atheist unless he starts to believe in a god.
What there is is THE community, and long-term incarceration is the expulsion-related option we’re currently able to use. Or possibly, execution, in some places (personally, I’m opposed to that). Atheists don’t ‘own’ that process, needless to say in the United States, but nor should they.
Whether or not he was motivated by hatred of religion is really beside the point. Absent the gun he (lawfully) carried, the worst that would have almost certainly happened would have been a couple of broken ribs and an arrest for assault.
This is not a consequence of religious bigotry and atheism, it’s a consequence of living in a heavily armed society with few restrictions on when and where you can have a gun.
I should think this sort of thing (people labelled atheist commit widely reported crimes) is only going to increase as demographics and belief change and religious privilege becomes increasingly pressured.
It’s only statistics, isn’t it? As the proportion of people who can be labelled Atheist increases so will the probability of them including loons who commit such crimes.
Christopher @ 135
No, it really doesn’t. The fact that a parking space has, at least superficially, precipitated a murder in the past does not dispute the assertion that, as a matter of course, people don’t kill over parking disputes. Nor does it dispute the assertion that one has to have a seriously FUBAR attitude toward the people in question in order to actually kill them over a parking space. The actual nature of that attitude is another question, of course, but murders are not born of healthy attitudes toward other humans.
Nick
Ehm, of course, Frisch. Those Swiss people with their funny names, who can tell them apart?
Bullshit. There is a community of atheists – it is prominent on the internet, and like any community people can be expelled, but it seems like that there are always someone willing to stand up for assholes, bridging the gap that might otherwise be created between the individual in question and the community.
Hicks is part of the same atheist community as most of the commenters here. The one that spans conferences, blogs, facebook, atheist social networks, atheist meetup groups etc. It is a fragmented community, where some of us are very much in opposition with other members, but we are nevertheless all part of the same overall community.
It is no coincidence that Hicks shares more than 50 facebook friends with me (or did when I last checked)
I’m not following. There exist examples of parking-related murders, therefore what? Who was saying it never happens or that it can’t be the case here?
Christopher @135
The assertion that, in this particular instance, there is evidence of the possibility of a hate crime?
No, it does not dispute that assertion. It merely shows that people are willing to kill over a parking space with all kinds of additional elements factored in, too. In this case? Asserting that one of those additional elements was anti-Muslim sentiment is not a contrary conclusion to draw at all.
People kill when they see little to no value in their victim’s lives. Saying that some of that non-value derives from hating them for their religion (in this case) is a valid conclusion.
When I was in my teens I read a ton about Herbert Spencer, Nietzche, Lenin, Stalin, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and Ayn Rand (Yes, I’m aware they’re all very different from each other. That’s not the point). Fights in the non-religious communities over the horribleness of certain vocal non religious people has always been a fixture of non-religious communities. One more awful person is hardly going to change my opinions at this point.
Also, yes, people do kill over parking spaces. But those killings are in the vast majority of numbers rage killing that happen during the dispute, not somebody calmly walking into the flat executing people.
You must have missed the several stories I posted from both the U.S. and the UK where the victim was murdered with a knife over a parking space.
People have been murdering people long before guns were invented.
The ones from England I first linked to were both premeditated.
Feuds between neighbors leading to premeditated murder is neither rare nor novel.
No Christopher, guns don’t cause murder, but they do make it easier.
keiththompson 104
At a bare minimum, this asshole’s beleifs about guns and property rights play into it (because otherwise he wouldn’t have been armed, or willing to escalate such a dispute to violence)
Eamon Knight #125
To me, it appears to add up to ‘Libertarian’, especially with bits like
Definitely a PZ Myers fan then.
When I think of an Famous Atheist who is gun fondler and actively encourages hatred against Muslims in general, Sam Harris comes to mind.
Jackie the social justice WIZZARD referring to Richard Dawkins
Respect for Dawkins is in an exponential decline – it can continue decreasing indefinitely.
The murder rate in the US is four times that of the UK, even though the rates of violent crime is comparable (the actual rates are hard to measure because of differences in reporting, but the general consensus is that they are fairly similar).
I do not dispute the fact that you can kill people without using a gun, and that people can be still be stabbed or beaten to death over trivialities, but nor is there is no disputing that using a gun makes it far easier to kill someone, and much more likely for violent confrontations to result in death or serious injury.
Do you really believe that all three of his victims would be dead today if the perp had only been armed with a knife?
This is horrible evidence that violent tribalism is not the exclusive preserve of the religious. The notional reason was a dispute over parking, but what is the betting that his existing disdain for people unlike himself made it easier for him to dehumanise his victims, and then to act on that dehumanisation with violence? Throw in easy and almost unregulated access to firearms in the US, and this outcome is sadly not very surprising.
As PZ says, atheism should amount to more than a rejection of the existence of god(s) and a smug sense of your own intellectual superiority. We should examine the consequences and social and ethical significance of our non-beleif in god. There is no sky fairy up there looking after us (which, given the judeo-christian description of the character of their god, and indeed the nature of most god myths from religious traditions, really isn’t a bad thing), and that means that all we truly have is one another.
We know that the angelic cavalry aren’t coming because they don’t exist.
We know that no one else is is going to fix the injustices in the world or clean up our collective messes for us.
And we know that if one of us stumbles, the only people who can lend a helping hand are other humans.
Knowing this should place ethical obligations on us to live our lives accordingly. We can’t in good consicence walk on by and do nothing when we see suffering and injustice, because we know that no divine inetrvention is going to fix it. Our rejection of the notion of god means that the buck can only stop with us. We must have the integrity and the moral strength to follow through on the implications of what we (don’t) believe.
“but
nor isthere no disputing”militantagnostic
Let me hand you a freshly baked internet.
While I do not expect an answer (No one is under any obligation to answer questions from a random stranger.), I did direct a question at Richard Dawkins. I asked him if the murder of Emmett Till was about showing disrespect to a woman.
I am so disappointed in all y’all.
People don’t kill people. Parking spaces do.
Duh.
The father of two of the victims, Dr Mohamad Abu-Salha, has said the murderer had picked on his daughter and her husband before this. So the parking dispute is in all likelihood a smoke screen for hatred and the execution-style killings a hate crime. All those smug people (Dawkins included) who want to go no further into analysing this than saying “people kill one another over parking spaces” are below contempt.
Source: read the article.
One dude killed three younger, fitter people.
If he hadn’t had a gun, do you think he’d have still tried to murder those three people in public?
I don’t.
What makes you think they wouldn’t be dead?
The asshole in question apparently came to the victims’ apartment with the intent to murder them all. Since most people aren’t prepared for being thrown into a kill-or-be-killed situation at a moment’s notice, it is unlikely that any of the three people would have had the time or inclination to defend themselves with leathal force. Thus, even if the asshole in question was armed with a tire iron, or a knife, or a pointy stick, the end result would likely be the same.
The guy was a grade A asshole itching to get into a blood feud with his neighbors. I have little doubt that his animosity towards religion, Muslims, immigrants, etc added fuel to his rage. But it isn’t like he went out hunting for a random Muslim to murder because they were Muslim, instead he murdered his neighbor who happened to be Muslim because he worked himself up into a rage over stupid shit that he blamed on them.
I mentally agreed to disagree with you when you were talking about a knife. I personally don’t agree, but it has been done. But then you had to go full idiot. You’ve really drunk the fucking NRA Kool-aid if you are claiming that no matter what this piece of shit carried into that house, the end result would have been the same. And please spare me a link to an article about a tire iron ambush or pointy stick killing. We’re all capable of making Google agree with us. If you really think all killing implements are pretty much equal, you have to ask yourself why just about every damn military in the world adopted the firearm as its primary piece of weaponry.
Christopher
Clearly, they were asking for it.
For goodness shit, stop that shit. deadly attacks with knives are rare, deadly attacks with multiple victims almost unheard of. If guns weren’t much better for killing people than knives they’d never have taken off because in case you didn’t notice, you can get a hundred decent knives for the price of a single gun. Your gun apologetics are pathetic.
I agree. Having been the victim of violence by someone physically smaller than me, and less fit besides, I can certainly attest that there’s a tactical advantage to being the person who contemplates the violence pictures the different possibilities, and chooses the time and place of initiation.
This is all without assuming a planned weapon (since the horrific murderer of Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha chose a gun and we’re contemplating a different weapon). But the truth is that with everything else planned, the weapon probably **also** would have been planned, even if a gun was unavailable/undesirable to the murderous, outer-college town, white thug. Knowing the weapon to be used would give even a further advantage.
Guns certainly are more lethal than many other weapons (duh, that’s why those other weapons were dropped in favor of guns), for a given level of training and fitness, but it’s one thing to go into a war against a trained adversary on ground known (to both/all sides) to be dangerous and in that situation choose a knife instead of a gun. Though I don’t have any empirical studies on it, I’d be quite surprised if replacing a gun with a knife is nearly the tactical sacrifice when cornering random civilians in their own homes in College Town, USA.
Christopher @ 162
And, absent said “animosity towards religion, Muslims, immigrants, etc”, what are the odds that this man works himself into a rage over a parking space? You’re getting very close to “it’s not X it’s just [a bunch of words that mean the same thing as X] territory here.
Further, why the fuck would his wife say in public that she totally believes her husband committed a hate crime? Quoting her denying that his views about religion or race had anything to do with this is about as useful as you citing the fact that when you searched Google for something, Google found it.
Christopher
So why are the Muslim neighbours dead and not the other neighbours with whom he had nasty parking space disputes?
You said it yourself: his animosity towards religion, Muslims, immigrants, etc. added fuel to his rage. And it is this aspect that makes it more than just murder over parking, but also a fine candidate for a hate crime.
And sorry if I don’t take the words of his wife at face value – it’s highly likely she shares a lot of his views and may not be consciously aware of any biases in their personal beliefs that might make the murder of the Muslim neighbours more likely than that of the non-Muslim neighbours.
You don’t have to identify yourself as a racist person in order to be one; same applies for all forms of bigotry.
Dammit, Seven of Mine, stop doing that!
Or actually, I’ll stop, you go on, you write my thoughts so well. :)
A difference between PZ Myers & this killer is that he was a gun nut. He posted pics of his gun o0n Facebook.
Because the military is designed to try to kill people who are prepared to kill people who want to kill them.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8
Bullshit. Knives are used to murder ~1,500 people per year in the US. Blunt objects ~500. Fists and feet ~800. Rifles and shotguns each at ~350.
Sure, unheard of…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_%282010%E2%80%9312%29
Gosh, it’s almost like there was almost a word in front of “unheard of” that you chose to ignore. I almost think I can remember what it was….
Not trying to add fuel to fire but I used to live in that condo complex (Finley Forest) and parking was a total nightmare. There are 4 very busy bus lines that stop there and many people use it for free parking (Chapel Hill recently started charging for the public park n ride lots) as these service UNC, the hospital, and other high traffic areas. If you try to park at the wrong time you are SOL as every spot in the complex will be taken by non-residents – and street parking gets ticketed. Just some background information for discussion.
Oh those poor Christians all upset and pointing fingers. They must be foaming in the mouth with all the outrage because of an atheist killing 3 muslims while at the same time having a massive erection because of the thought of 3 muslims being killed. Only if they can get past their guilt complex and liberally apply all that drool onto their throbbing dicks and just jerk it off then the world would be a much better place.
tacitus @139:
It’s also a consequence of living in a society where Muslims are demonized and othered all the fucking time. And Hicks is an anti-Muslim bigot.
@153:
It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what Christopher thinks. We’ve had more than a few people on gun threads try (and fail) to make the claim that it doesn’t matter if a killer has a gun or a knife.
****
Dalillama @151:
I’m thinking libertarian too.
If he is, I wonder how he squares his horrible actions with the libertarian doctrine of personal liberty.
****
I had almost forgotten how full of awesome Crip Dyke is, but then she reminded me @158.
****
Christopher @161:
Do you not realize that guns make killing people far easier than knives?
Christopher @ 162:
Um, do you have any idea of how that whole marriage thing works? Y’know, the bit about most people having a fair amount in common when it comes to beliefs? Did you expect the wife to say “Oh, yep, big ol’ bigot, my husband. Can’t stand those brown people with the funny religion!”, especially prior to a trial?
adobo @ 173:
Well, my world would be a better place without posts like that one.
Christopher @ 170
From your link: Total firearms ranged from 8500 to over 10,000. Dishonest piece of shit.
Ah, so Christopher is one of those guns are as bad as knives fools. It’s been a while since one of them showed up around here.
Christopher
That’s fucking dishonest quotemining. Firearms are responsible for 8500 murders. That’s just murders, not all fatal shootings
You know, if you’Re so fucking dishonest, try at least to be a bit more clever and don’t quote my almost unheard of right above. Also, reading through that list, yep, most of the attacks did not kill anybody. The three with deaths were executed with an axe, a cleaver and a 60cm (that’s 2 feet for you) knife. So your best evidence for a mall killing with a knife is…
…saying the opposite.
Awww. Isn’t that sweet? KH believes devoutly that no role was played in the killings by rage or fear towards people who participate in a system that whips people for having opinions, imprisons people for expressing something unfriendly towards religious or national leaders, and kills people for being unconvinced that the available evidence proves the existence of a specific god with specific opinions about specific things and behaviors.
Nope. Such fear was not misdirected at because they happen to identify their own theological system using the same word employed by people who do such tearing of flesh, caging of bodies, and threshing of lives.
No, stupid and bigoted misdirection of righteous anger or only somewhat-unreasonable fear played no role in the callous murderer’s actions, she believes.
Using the intimate knowledge available to a spouse, she wants to convince the public that her husband would happily kill anyone, whether or not they were actually or even vaguely and erroneously associated groups constituting an organized threat to limb, liberty, and life.
Some people are too stupid to realize that Yusor Mohammad, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Deah Shaddy Barakat were unassociated with the Wahhabbist Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice or IS or al-freakin’-Quaeda.
She wants everyone to know that her husband is the good kind of murderer who would never make that mistake. He just killed three people over a parking space. That’s all. He could’a done it to anyone.
Because he’s a good person.
Thank you so much, person with intimate knowledge of a violent jerk. I feel like I know so much more about this killer’s private life now.
Christopher@170:
Holy shit man. It took TWO years and SEVEN separate attacks to equal the death toll of what the Sandy hook shooter did in about 5 minutes.
beatgroover @172:
Ok. There’s bad parking there. So the fuck what?
Two QFTs* is all:
Ibis3 on dictionary atheism:
Janine on context:
* I do apologize for the lack of original contribution. After having read the thread, the inchoate thoughts which I might labor to express have already been bettered by consciousness razor, et al. — and on this topic I have absolutely no desire to drop a one-liner…..
Giliell@179:
Which also puts the lie to the whole “If a person shows up with an intent to kill a person, then he’ll do it even if he’s usin’ a rolled up copy of the Sunday Times!” BS.
Christopher @170:
What’s up with the dishonest quotemining? Like others, I clicked your link, and contrary to what you’re trying to insinuate above, guns killed far more people than knives no matter what year you look at.
Take your goddamn gun apologetics elsewhere.
beatgroover
I used to live in a street that was simultaneosly part of the student quarter, the brothel quarter and the where all YUPPIES in the whole state go for partying quarter. Parking was a fucking nightmare, especially when I came home late from work and I remember paying hefty fines for parking in the wrong place because the alternative would have been payig just as much for gas while circling the streets.
What I don’t remember is shooting somebody.
If someone were going to pick a “random” Muslim, for not completely boneheaded values of “random,” that is realistically the sort of person they would pick. They would not need to first conduct an expansive program locating all Muslims on the planet in order to reduce some kind of “bias” in their sample (whatever the fuck that could even mean in this case). Anyway, even if someone did do that (waiting for the miraculous google result to show it’s happened before), that would be an absurd fucking expectation to have, in order for it to qualify as murdering them “because they were Muslim.”
There doesn’t appear to be any support at all for this part of your story.
Why couldn’t he have worked himself into a lather over religion? Don’t people do that quite a bit? I’m sure google could help us with this if need be.
But generally… What exactly is it that makes you suspect his anti-religious beliefs probably aren’t responsible, ought to be diminished or ignored in some way, or whatever the fuck it is that you’re doing here?
Woahhhh let’s not jump on me and say I claimed the shooting was over parking and nothing else. What I’m saying is take hate/racism and add a little anger and that’s when you get hateful, impulsive decisions. Add a gun in the mix and you get tragedy.
Yeah, because it’s such a huge step from “they come over here and take our jobs” to “they come over here and take my parking space”
Yes, people in the US use guns to murder eachother more often than other forms of violence because guns are easily accessible. Yet, even though the country has more guns in private hands than people to wield them, we still murder eachother with knives and fists quite often.
If you go to countries with less guns in private hands, due to laws or cost, people murder each other with non-gun weapons.
Murder rates as a whole have minimal correlation with the availibilty of firearms. Economics is a better predictor of murder rates than the amount of firearms in private hands.
Guns are as lethal as knifes.
I guess that was the reason for trench warfare in the First World War, the combatants were seeking shelter from the bayonets.
“This attack wasn’t about religion or race, it was about a parking space!”
“The Isla Vista shootings weren’t about misogyny, they were about mental illness!”
“That guy wasn’t lynched because he’s black, it’s because he assaulted a woman with his eyes!”
Love the default assumption that effects can’t have multiple causes and that we should always believe the perpetrator’s stated reason for doing a thing. Because bigots are totally always up-front and self-aware about their bigotry.
To the side debates: Semantic confusion entered the conversation re: “atheism” the moment the word became an identity and movement to rally behind, and probably before. It’s a term that had a lot of baggage when the New Atheists adopted it, and that baggage was part of why it was chosen. It’s developing new baggage now, thanks to the familiar crowd of assholes. There are different ways to push back against that, but “no this word just means a very narrow dictionary definition and does not have any additional connotations” doesn’t seem to be a very effective one, based on how other words accumulate and maintain connotations.
Guns don’t kill people. Turning on the “Buy Now with 1-Click” option on Amazon doesn’t purchase lots of books and music. Both share a very important common feature, however. I’ll leave this as a puzzle for the reader to solve.
Wow, that shotgun and rifle stat may be the most disingenuous thing I’ve ever seen on the internet.
Murders by weapon, 2009-2013. Crime in the US
beatgroover @188:
You were not jumped on.
I said “Ok. So parking is bad. So the fuck what?”
That isn’t jumping on you. That’s questioning the relevance of the parking problems that YOU brought up.
dishonest Christopher @190:
No one is arguing that guns are the only means by which people kill people. The argument is that guns make killing people far too easy and that in the US, there are not enough restrictions on firearms. You’re just like every damn gundamentalist that shows up in one of these threads. You argue against shit people aren’t even saying. Why don’t you go ahead and whine about “they’re coming to take our guns” while you’re at it?
NOT NEARLY as easily accessible as all the other killing implements you mentioned yet guns kill way more people. Why is that? Why is it despite the fact a decent knife or hammer or tire iron can be had for a few bucks down at the Walmart. 35 percent of households have a gun, but I’d say pretty damn near 100 percent of them have a knife, tire iron or pointy stick, yet guns still continue to be the number one weapon of choice in a killing. So if your argument is ease of access, guns should be way lower on the list.
Ah well the relevance is that hate-filled killers seem to have a tipping point and that might have been his. I wonder where he kept his gun and how planned out – or impulsive – the murders were. More details would certain aid discussion.
Christopher @190:
And I’m sure they do it in the same numbers as gun toting assholes in the US do…right?
Again, you’re arguing against something no one in this thread has said. Either engage honestly with people or move the fuck on.
[honest] citation please.
What colour is the sky you live on?
All of Germany had 282 murders in 2013. a murder rate of 0.8 per 100k inhabitants. Greece, notably poorer, had 1.8. Canada: 1.6 USA: 4.7, comparable to: Albania, Latvia, Belarus. Bangladesh: 2.7, India: 3.5.
Your argument was what again?
Unevidenced assertion, dismissed as hatred toward PZ fuckwittery.
Tom Foss @192: Semantic confusion entered the conversation re: “atheism” the moment the word became an identity and movement to rally behind, and probably before.
This, yes. Probably at least since “not sharing our religion” (and in lots of places, there was only one in the neighbourhood at any given time) became grounds for othering. Which is to say, at least as far back as David Hume, maybe even Socrates. Joining a movement, being a social outcast, whatever — if you’re not being left in peace, or not content to rest in peace, with your non-belief, then *your* atheism *as lived* is more than a simple absence of belief in gods, whatever the philosophy-seminar definition.
beatgroover @ 197:
I suggest reading the comments, because links to more details have been provided several times.
States with more gun laws have fewer gun-related deaths.
o.o For several reasons.
beatgroover
Wow, really? Where he kept his gun is relevant how? Details in how far he planned this out would be relevant how? He went into their home and shot all three in the head. Exactly which other details would aid discussion (discussion of what, exactly?)?
Don’t tempt it. I don’t think I want to know what the internet is capable of.
Well, holy economic ignorance Giliell, you missed Christopher’s point completely.
Economic success predicts fewer murders that are directly attributable to the wealthy murderer. In other words, there is negative correlation between income and attributable murder.
Bangladeshis? Median wage 420k per year. Murder rate, 2.7
USAliens? Median wage 28k per year. Murder rate, 4.7
Sources:
http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=18&loctype=1
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html
So, the Bangladeshis get 420k pieces of paper each year and murder less than USAliens who get 28k pieces of paper every year.
Economics!
It’s all so clear!
Why are you being deliberately obtuse?
He has personal liberty, not f’uriners with a strange way of dressing, accents, and women to boot who complained about his activities.
beatgroover 172
Well, see, what people who aren’t violent gun-toting assholes do in that type of situation is to go down to the planning commission and file a petition, attend neighborhood meetings, and suchlike.
Tony! 174
Because his personal liberty gives him the liberty to kill people who are infringing on his perceived rights.
Christopher
You really are a disingenuous prat, aren’t you?
Thank you for conceding our point. Anything beyond that is irrelevant fuckwittery from a gun-nut loser.
People USE GUNS to kill people. What world do you live in? Head-up-your-sloganeering-assholia?
“I believe access to guns has absolutely nothing to do with prevalence of murders and violent crime”.
That’s the presupposed point here, and therefore the cause of violence must be literally anything but guns. Economy sounded good so Christopher went with Economics despite the statistics being against them because gun crime can’t have anything to do with guns so it could be anything and they were apparently spitballing.
The relevance of parking being bad is that this is the issue that allegedly focused the asshat’s rage. In another place, maybe it would have been over playing music loudly, or over there being too much clover in their lawn, etc. As with others here, I have difficulty believing that this focus is the *only* thing at play.
Yeah, and remember Jordan Davis? He was totally killed for playing his music too loud. Yup, that’s the only reason.
@Nerd of Redhead #210: Yes, that was the joke.
Nerd of Redhead @200 (referring to poeducker @169):
poeducker’s post is saying that the murderer is a gun nut so, given PZ’s clear attitude towards guns, any claim that PZ inspired the murderer is ridiculous. You know, claims like the ones PZ listed in the OP. Or at least that’s how #169 looks to me; I’m no mind reader.
Where’s the hatred in that?
Nerd of Redhead @210 (referring to Tom Foss @192):
The full paragraph from 192 is:
WTF? Nerd, did you wake up this morning without the ability to read?
And do you deliberately leave out the post numbers so that people won’t bother to go back and check your quotes?
It sounded like a ‘pitter trying to make a point. This is not a thread for Poe style humor. Which includes you Tom Foss.
First off, the deaths of these good young people, Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha is a tragedy and I hope their killer is punished to the full extent of the law.
That said a couple of things that jumped out at me in the conversation thus far:
1) It looks like it was his ex-wife that made the comment that he regularly had at least near violent disputes with neighbors over parking. That she is divorced from him I think does make a difference, particularly if she left him over his violent temper.
2) He was bigoted against religious people, in particular christians and muslims. I have seen no evidence (though it may exist it hasn’t been shown here) that he was bigoted against immigrants or ethnic groups.
3) He was apparently a gun fetishist with a violent temper. Those things go together about as poorly as any two traits can.
4) Discounting his violent temper and gun fetishism as the primary causes of his murdering doesn’t seem warranted. Anti-religious bigotry probably helped tip the situation over, but the first two are more than enough to have this tragic outcome.
————mostly unrelated————–
Atheism as a word, as opposed to a (disjointed) movement, has a specific meaning, just as theism already has a specific meaning. Neither of those are sufficient for forming an ethic. Both need more. Theists generally fill in that more with a specific type of theism by joining a religious community (various sects of christianity, islam, buddhism, etc). Atheists so far as I have seen either consciously fill in that more with various philosophies like humanism, existentialism, etc or have it less consciously filled in by assumptions they build up without much coherent framework to them. The latter type are the ones that seem more likely to fall into the I’m more rational and therefor smarter and better than you crowd. Telling someone you are an atheist doesn’t (and doesn’t need to) tell them any more about your ethical compass than telling them you are a theist.
People arguing that the simple word atheist needs to have it’s meaning expanded are, I think, missing the point. The discussion shouldn’t be about assigning a specific ethic to the word atheism. Everyone, whether theist or atheist, needs to examine their own lives and ethics in an effort to make themselves better and more fulfilled people. That step is all too often missing in people regardless of whether or not they believe in the supernatural. I used to feel more strongly that atheists as a group were more likely to go through this self examination, if for no other reason than there aren’t pat answers laid out for them in our society that they can easily and unquestioningly follow. I feel that less strongly now. Beyond that we can each promote the actual ethic we support, which most people here already do.
Nerd 216
No, it didn’t. This isn’t the first time, or even the first time this week, that you’ve done this kind of thing, so maybe, just maybe, you should read for full comprehension before jerking your knee.
Ok, where are the indications that they are trying to be snide, rather than serious? Like emoticons or some such indication?
Nerd:
I’ve got to second Dalillama @218. I think you jumped the gun. Certainly, we’ve had our share of Pitters around here employing shitty arguments, but I see nothing in poeducker’s comment that supports the idea that xe is a Pitter:
This reads to me like xe is responding to the accusations in the OP that PZ is anything like the gunman. The point that poeducker was making is that this is one way in which they are nothing alike. There are obviously more. If xe had quoted the material xe was responding to, perhaps that would have provided context necessary for you to properly understand hir comment. Even without quoting from the OP though, it’s clear that poeducker’s comment is nothing like a Pitter would bring up about PZ.
Nerd @219:
Seriously? You’re assuming the comment was snide or snarky. Why can’t it be serious?
PZ Myers is not a gun nut.
Craig Hicks is a gun nut.
Since PZ is not a gun nut and Craig is, that is one of the differences between the two.
(you’ve begun digging; please ditch the shovel and remember that it is ok to be wrong)
What? Me Wrong? Often….
Oh, gawd, it’s descended into gun-fondlery?
Do I need to rad the whole thread, or is it just the standard fetisism of killing-machines?
PZ’s critics should be pressed to find a single post of his where he’s advocating violence.
I think the godless movement(s) should stress more on the difference between attacking ideas and attacking people.
I’ll yell and scream against anyone proposing that the hijab is a good thing.
I’ll yell and scream against anyone harassing someone because they wear a hijab.
People are more fucking important than ideas.
Daz @223
Only one gun fondler, but he did provide this impressive quote mine.
@224: F.O.
Mike Nugent has a lot of wordy things about the violence inherent in PZ. I do not agree with Nugent, but Nugent thinks PZ has violent tendencies.
Of course, Mike is a little obsessed with PZ, so I would hold no stock in the Nuge.
Christopher has a very strong pattern in his posting here, going back several years. The pattern is this:
Christopher will defend guns in every thread even tangentially related to guns or gun restrictions; he will never use an honest argument, he will never acknowledge actual data, he will always insist of obviously ludicrous shit like knives being just as dangerous as guns, or that there is no point in restricting guns because they will just be manufactured in people’s sheds in the same number and quality as current mass production. Disputing any of this drivel with actual reason will prompt him to dash off to google up some cases of knife murders, and he will claim that this proves they are exactly as dangerous yada yada ad nauseum.
He has never made sense.
militantagnostic #225:
One wonders why handguns don’t appear on his list. I kinda notice that all those other things, unlike guns, have legitimate uses, too. What a strange argument.
Donnie @226:
Of course Nugent has no evidence that PZ endorses or condones violence or has violent tendencies, but that hasn’t stopped him from whining at length and incessantly. Of course Nugent is wallowing in the Pitter infused Kool-Aid, so it’s no surprise that he’s bought into their bullshit.
he will always insist of obviously ludicrous shit like knives being just as dangerous as guns
The flip side of the argument that knives are just as bad is that guns are really not necessary for self-defense at all; we could just carry knives instead. When a law-abiding citizen fatally shoots a would-be attacker, we would expect self-defense advocates to roll their eyes and say “Yeah, like you couldn’t have killed that mugger just as easily with a blade.” That door swings both ways.
As far as this asshole goes, his current wife – who just earlier today talked about how he was a decent guy who didn’t have a bigoted bone in his body – has just announced she is filing for divorce. It’ll be interesting to see what prompted that turn-around.
Whatever his issue with his neighbors was, this… this wasn’t the way to resolve it.
Tony! The Queer Shoop @229,
Exactly! In his railing against Professor Myers supposed “smears,” Nugent has become that which he rails against. It would be totally justified (and hilarious) if Professor Myers turned the sea-lioning tactic back on Nugent and started to demand apologies for his smears about condoning violence.
The pitters have taken an obvious joke about shanking overly zealous Christians, just because it was made by their nemesis, and have convinced first themselves and now Nugent that Professor Myers was deadly serious. Dishonest to the core to pretend and act as if an obvious joke was a serious statement. Outside of this they have no evidence and can only cite their own opinions.
Yes, clearly this is the fault of that section of atheism that is concerned with social justice, it’s so obvious. It makes perfect sense. Where else would this murdering arsehole get his ideas other than the blog from a socially conscious, anti-gun, pro-multiculturalism, tolerant, humane, anti-violence atheist….
That fucker reeks of libertarianism…but nevertheless he was an atheist, through and through. As non-believe grows, we should expect to see more such cases, specially as long as there are idiots throwing hissy fits over the idea that atheism should be more than just laughing at religious people for their ridiculous beliefs.
I say one way to do something about it is to make the connection between social and moral values and lack of belief in gods as tight as possible. Make the two concepts intrinsically linked and atheism will have value, otherwise it’s nothing…
Every single home has a knife drawer. Not ever home has a gun drawer. How many toddlers accidentally murder family members with knives? How many people accidentally stab a family member to death while cleaning their knife?
This argument is so stupid.
Jackie, you are the pacifist version of The Bomb. Just wanted to say, I love your voice (online!). :)
1. Guns are efficient killing machines. That’s all they are for. When people use killing machines to kill other killing machine fans come out of the woodwork to deny the link between killing machines and killing.
2. Nugent is a hot mess who supports rapists, liars and harassers. If he tols me the sky was blue, I’d check before I’d believe him.
*told*
CaitieCat,
Back atcha! You’re awesome.
@232: The pitters have taken an obvious joke about shanking overly zealous Christians
I don’t read Nugent — is this that thing about knuckle dusters? From like, seven or so years ago? I mean, I thought that was a bit over the line myself, but it hardly constitutes a pattern.
This just proves that just as one does not need religion to be a good person, neither does one need religion to be a bigoted brain-dead yahoo with a gun either.
So now that the parking space narrative has eclipsed the militant atheist narrative, I guess everybody’s claims of special persecution for atheists just went out the window. And atheists are higher on the totem pole than Muslims. I guess I should feel good about that, but nope.
Eamon Knight @239
Don’t read Nugent either, but pretty sure the shanking reference is to this post about the Kevin Sorbo movie where the ‘just angry at god’ atheist is dying in the street and some Christians work on a death bed conversion instead of rendering medical assistance.
Hmmm, this is interesting:
I’m really, really thinking he is a libertarian atheist.
I haven’t used this one in a while.
When will the JREF be inviting Mr. Hicks to speak at TAM?
Jackie the social justice WIZZARD!!!
Also, how often is an uninvolved person inadvertently killed or seriously as result of being within 100m of somebody else’s knife fight?
Christopher the gun fetishist:
So somehow you can mass murder people with a knife just as easily as with a gun….unless they are expecting it? I’m pretty sure Christopher is forgetting one minor assumption that is integral to his little equations. Here, just mentally add this footnote to every post of his that involve Knife Bad Gun Good:
Note: Assume Knife-Wielder Has Ninja Stealth, Speed, and Blade Skills
There. Now everything suddenly makes sense.
@OP:
I’m not sure if it’s so much a matter of arguing that atheism entails no particular, robust normative conclusions than simply pointing out that “atheism”, when construed as either disbelief in God or as a belief that God does not exist, does in fact not entail any such conclusions. However, if you want to use the word “atheism” to include the sort of normative conclusions embodied in philosophies such as secular humanism and what not, that’s fine. I’ll just have to use a different word to point the still existent distinction that was previously embodied by “atheism.”
After all, Hicks is a murderer. But, he’s not Christian, he’s not Muslim, he’s not Jewish, he’s not Hindu – in fact, he isn’t a theist in any shape or form. So, there must be something we must call him if we wanted to characterize his opinions of God. And given your use of “atheist,” we can’t call him an “atheist” now. I guess we’ll just have to use a different word (“nontheist” perhaps, although that’s a little broad) to characterize the fact that he either disbelieves in God or believes that God does not exist. In the end, the same distinction continues to exist and all that’s been accomplished is that we’re using different marks on a page or a different set of phonemes to refer to it.
Again, depends on how you’re using the word “atheist / atheism” there. If by “atheist” you refer to someone who disbelieves in God or believes that God does not exist, then certainly one can be a murderer and not be dissociated from the community of “atheists.” Murder could no more make you cease to be an “atheist” under those terms than stealing could somehow make me cease to be an ethical antirealist. Again, if you want to expand the notion of “atheism” to mean more than that, something along the lines of “secular humanism” or whatever, that’s fine. Then sure, being a murderer tends to disqualify one from being a good “atheist” under that definition of “atheism.” But, I need only go back to my previous comments – what does this accomplish besides merely using a different set of words to describe the fact that Hicks didn’t believe in God or believed that God doesn’t exist?
I wonder why Christopher hasn’t returned…
When one makes an argument about rarity, presenting numerators without denominators is the height of intellectual dishonesty.
@249: I read Christopher referring to that statistic with regards to measures targeting various sorts of rifles in any effort to curb crime. (Here I would be thinking about the 1994 – 2004 Assault Weapons Ban, the NY Safe Act, and other proposed measures. The gun of choice that is frequently targeted in those sorts of measures are AR-15s and the like, naturally) I could be interpreting him too charitably, but that’s why I thought he was concerned principally with rifles in his citation of the FBI statistics.
The next time someone tries to make a knives/guns equivalency argument, he or she should be challenged to demonstrate how a pot roast can be efficiently sliced with a gun.
Good point, anbheal @32. Why did this person have a firearm? It would be surprising if the FIRST violent act he committed was a triple murder.