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Old 02-13-2015, 06:09 AM
 
Location: Hyrule
8,390 posts, read 11,574,188 times
Reputation: 7544

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Quote:
Originally Posted by AREQUIPA View Post
I hadn't had the heart to post before because this makes me sick. It makes me feel even worse that my sympathy for these victims is being pushed aside by the bad publicity - this inevitably is going to be used against atheism. It's well observed that there are bad apples in every barrel and the violent will do violence, using what they believe -or don't - as justification, but I really hoped for better from an atheist.

Of course, innocent until proven guilty and all that rubbish..but if it is Guilty, I hope they throw the book at him.

Both Books.
Yes, I felt sick as well Arq, yikes, now that Atheists unit for the cause we also have to take responsibility for the crazies that can infiltrate as well. If he is guilty of a hate crime he needs to be led to the small concrete building for sure.
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Old 02-13-2015, 06:54 AM
 
Location: Northeastern US
19,825 posts, read 13,361,179 times
Reputation: 9821
Quote:
Originally Posted by PoppySead View Post
Yes, I felt sick as well Arq, yikes, now that Atheists unit for the cause we also have to take responsibility for the crazies that can infiltrate as well. If he is guilty of a hate crime he needs to be led to the small concrete building for sure.
I am not so sure this is a hate crime. The argument for it is, "All the victims wore unusual garb. Coincidence? I think not!" -- coupled with incredulity that someone could commit such mayhem over an argument about parking and noise. Both are false associations IMO. This is a guy with anger and impulse control issues who had a persistent irritant in his field of consciousness, and snapped. This likely had little or nothing to do with atheism or racism and everything to do with mental health issues.

That isn't to say that the overtly Muslim nature of his victims didn't help him to otherize and dehumanize them and help rationalize lashing out at them. But my guess is that simple generational differences would have sufficed, too. Someone more mature would have probably been more aware of and respectful of his personal space and might have been seen to have more in common with the perpetrator, and thus might have escaped his wrath.

But in the rush to "make sense" of his actions it's of course appealing to take the easy way out. By all accounts these were straight-up fine young people who look like children I would have loved to be a parent to. So the argument for Islamophobia is easy to sell. It just doesn't make the cut for me, although later evidence may bring it at least partially into play.
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Old 02-13-2015, 08:21 AM
 
Location: S. Wales.
50,083 posts, read 20,582,163 times
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We'll have to see, but reading up on this atrocious crime makes it clear that, if this person's actions were not exacerbated, if not motivated by a racial prejudice based on an atheist rejection of all religions, it will certainly be presented like it was.

And again I'm letting my concern with bad publicity override my sympathy for the victims.
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Old 02-13-2015, 08:56 AM
 
Location: Hyrule
8,390 posts, read 11,574,188 times
Reputation: 7544
Yea, we will have to see what transpires. But, I digress, the things heard by him over the years by his neighbors paints him in a prejudice light, so regardless of it actually being a hot headed response to a parking spot, I think he thought of Muslims as less credible and reasonable than others and that is part of this, like it or not. I don't think if it were an atheist neighbor that he knew was atheist he would have gone that far, I just don't.

Of course it could be the other way around as we've seen many times but I have to call it like I see it and this guy had a thing against religious people that went beyond simple objection, or disagreement. He was agressive. He was also prejudice. I don't think it really matters in the arena of the murders but it will damage all atheists reps, and we should do our best to correct it. I don't want people afraid of me, I've been afraid of others who hated my choices before and it's not a fun camp to be in. I will do my best to ease that fear for sure.

I'm sort of waiting to see other atheists speak up about this publicly. I hope they own it. There are people who are atheists and nut-jobs simultaneously. We don't escape that one. IMO.
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Old 02-13-2015, 10:17 AM
 
7,381 posts, read 7,678,753 times
Reputation: 1266
Quote:
Originally Posted by PoppySead View Post
Yea, we will have to see what transpires. But, I digress, the things heard by him over the years by his neighbors paints him in a prejudice light, so regardless of it actually being a hot headed response to a parking spot, I think he thought of Muslims as less credible and reasonable than others and that is part of this, like it or not. I don't think if it were an atheist neighbor that he knew was atheist he would have gone that far, I just don't.

Of course it could be the other way around as we've seen many times but I have to call it like I see it and this guy had a thing against religious people that went beyond simple objection, or disagreement. He was agressive. He was also prejudice. I don't think it really matters in the arena of the murders but it will damage all atheists reps, and we should do our best to correct it. I don't want people afraid of me, I've been afraid of others who hated my choices before and it's not a fun camp to be in. I will do my best to ease that fear for sure.

I'm sort of waiting to see other atheists speak up about this publicly. I hope they own it. There are people who are atheists and nut-jobs simultaneously. We don't escape that one. IMO.
Our local critical thinkers' group released a press release condemning these murders and the murderer, though I don't think it was published or broadcast. One can only try. One doesn't kill because one has no belief.
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Old 02-13-2015, 11:36 AM
 
6,324 posts, read 4,307,929 times
Reputation: 4333
Ugh, I just wish people would stop posting this so I wouldn't have to keep writing refutation posts.

So, let's break it down (*sigh*)

Quote:
Originally Posted by godofthunder9010 View Post
It greatly depends on what sort of atheist you are. Militant atheists like Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Zedong went out of their way to massacre millions of theists. This was ideologically based in Marx's contempt for all religion. Churches were burned, shrines were destroyed, mosque's were razed, believers were tortured, etc.
Bzzzzt! WRONG!

These "militant atheists" were absolutists, they were dictators, they were authoritarians AND, most importantly, they were megaolomaniacs.

Sure, yes, I agree that their political ideology - communism - is inherently atheistic. I grant you that. However, does communism require that all religions be stamped out, believers killed, and churches burned?

Uh ... no. It doesn't.

And neither does atheism.

I'm going to repeat that because it's, well, vaguely important.

Neither communism or atheism requires or demands that religion be stamped out, believers killed, and churches burned.

In other words, there is no real connection between the megalomaniacal and paranoid actions of an authoritarian and the doctrines of communism OR atheism. What you're looking at with these particular leaders is mental illness. Yeah, that's the truth. Stalin, especially, was clinically diagnosed as being paranoid. All dictators are afraid, desperately afraid, of losing their grip on power and that causes them to be especially brutal in projecting their power.

In short, they do not want their populations obeying two masters - so God has to go. It's not really about atheism. It's about the ego and paranoia of the dictator.

Now, take this story about the murders. The fact that the guy was an atheist is a red herring. It is completely irrelevant to the story, but because the news felt it HAD to report on his atheism, people are jumping to the conclusion that the murders happened because he was an atheist.

No, they happened because the guy is screwed up mentally and doesn't no how to contain his rage.

It had nothing whatsoever to do with furthering the cause of atheism - and the last I checked, getting the parking spots you want isn't one of the doctrines of atheism.

You don't see atheists on this forum posting about every random street crime and saying, "See? Statistically I bet the criminal is a Christian ... and see what Christianity causes people to do?!"

Nope, we don't do that. Therefore, people need to show atheists the same respect by not assuming a murder spree was because of his religious beliefs - or lack of them.

It's the same story with people like Stalin (and Lenin never advocated violence against believers so I'm not sure why you're pulling Lenin's name out of a hat other than he was a communist and thus an atheist and he ruled over the same nation as Stalin; Lenin actually warned the communist party NOT to allow Stalin to take over because, as Lenin said on his deathbed, "he is too harsh.")

Quote:
Originally Posted by godofthunder9010 View Post
At the end of the day, atheism is a religious ideology.
At the end of the day, maybe, but it's an awfully long day and it hasn't ended yet. Which is just a way of saying, uh, no ... atheism is not a religious ideology. I know already where you're going and you're as wrong as rain on a picnic.

Quote:
Originally Posted by godofthunder9010 View Post
It insists that there is no higher power, no spirits, no magic, no nothing supernatural. By asserting that claim, an atheist is actually taking a stand.
So what? Is every cause considered a religion? If a teenager takes a stand against having to clean his room, does that mean he's founded a religious ideology against room-cleaning? Yeah ... put it that way and you should already see your assertion melting like candle wax.

Quote:
Originally Posted by godofthunder9010 View Post
Marx and Marxist leaders certainly weren't the first to try to spread the lack of belief by violence.
What the ...? MARX? Marx was an economist and never ruled a nation. You might as well say Alan Greenspan was once the president. Nor did Marx ever advocate spreading atheism with violence. You need to bone up on your Soviet-era history. And what OTHER Marxist leaders aside from Stalin (who was not even a true communist) advocated spreading atheism with violence? Lenin? No. Stalin's successor Khrushchev? No. Andropov? Nope. Brezhnev? Nope. Chernenko? Nope. Gorbachev? Hardly.

I know you're trying really hard to make a case against atheism by using communism and some of its mentally imbalanced leaders as proof, but it isn't. Just like I don't point to every Christian who commits a crime and howl from the rooftops about religion - unless there is a proven link between the violence and the criminal's beliefs. Even then, mental disorders muddy the waters considerably.

Quote:
Originally Posted by godofthunder9010 View Post
There are atheists today that make no bones about saying, "What will it take to force you to wake up and realize that you're being deceived?? You're believing in myths and fairy tales!! Wake up!! What's wrong with you??" That line of thinking leads directly to violence on behalf of atheism.
Congratulations, you won the silliest post of the week. Seriously? REALLY?

Because the word "force" was in that sentence, it means atheists are advocating violence?!?

Holy cow, man, you couldn't have stretched that any further to make it say what you wanted if the phrase had been made from the flesh of Stretch Armstrong.

YOU, sir, are on the threshold of a bald-faced lie when you say something like that. You have absolutely NOTHING with which to back up that assertion and yet you say it to slander every atheist who actually DOES speak out against the encroachment of religion into our governments and laws.

Nice try, but ... no, it wasn't even a nice try.
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Old 02-13-2015, 02:06 PM
 
Location: Sierra Nevada Land, CA
9,455 posts, read 12,507,029 times
Reputation: 16451
Quote:
Originally Posted by cupper3 View Post
Actually it did, but it appears to be changed. There was no reference to parking spot disputes in the original article. The only thing that is left as far as atheism is concerned is this quote by the perpetrator:

“People say nothing can solve the Middle East problem, not mediation, not arms, not financial aid. I say there is something. Atheism.”
Quote:
Originally Posted by mensaguy View Post
I didn't see in the article where it said the shooter was an atheist, nor did I see anything other than speculation that the religion of the victims had anything to do with the dispute over parking.
From today on CNN:

A Facebook page that is believed to belong to Hicks includes many posts that are critical of religion, particularly Christianity.
"If you plan to be enjoying heaven while multitudes are tortured ... then you are as much a sociopath as the god that you worship," one photo says. Another post describes religion as "the world's most successful pyramid scam."

The page describes Craig Hicks as an atheist and an anti-theist.

Anti-theists are a particularly outspoken group of atheists who can be confrontational about their disbelief, researchers at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga said in a recent study.
"Anti-theists view religion as ignorance and see any individual or institution associated with it as backward and socially detrimental," the researchers wrote. "The anti-theist has a clear and -- in their view, superior -- understanding of the limitations and danger of religions."

Who is Chapel Hill shooting suspect Craig Hicks? - CNN.com

Anti-theism appears to be a factor.
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Old 02-13-2015, 08:14 PM
 
Location: USA
18,461 posts, read 9,106,258 times
Reputation: 8495
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr5150 View Post
From today on CNN:

A Facebook page that is believed to belong to Hicks includes many posts that are critical of religion, particularly Christianity.
"If you plan to be enjoying heaven while multitudes are tortured ... then you are as much a sociopath as the god that you worship," one photo says. Another post describes religion as "the world's most successful pyramid scam."

The page describes Craig Hicks as an atheist and an anti-theist.

Anti-theists are a particularly outspoken group of atheists who can be confrontational about their disbelief, researchers at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga said in a recent study.
"Anti-theists view religion as ignorance and see any individual or institution associated with it as backward and socially detrimental," the researchers wrote. "The anti-theist has a clear and -- in their view, superior -- understanding of the limitations and danger of religions."

Who is Chapel Hill shooting suspect Craig Hicks? - CNN.com

Anti-theism appears to be a factor.
Being harshly critical of religion is not immoral or illegal. Nor does it necessarily lead to murder or violence. This particular individual apparently had an irrational rage which he couldn't control.
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Old 02-13-2015, 08:47 PM
 
Location: Ontario, Canada
31,374 posts, read 20,091,717 times
Reputation: 14069
Every group has a lunatic fringe.
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Old 02-14-2015, 03:08 AM
 
Location: Florida
23,164 posts, read 26,118,923 times
Reputation: 27898
Being an atheist, even a staunch, outspoken atheist, does not protect one against mental illness.
If being Muslims factored into it, he could well have had a hatred based on the current political climate and events.
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