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1timspalding
FreeThought Blogs: Atheist tribalism poisons everything
http://freethoughtblogs.com/ashleymiller/2015/10/02/atheist-tribalism-poisons-ev...
http://freethoughtblogs.com/ashleymiller/2015/10/02/atheist-tribalism-poisons-ev...
This is not the first atheist shooter, there have been many throughout history. Earlier this year, Craig Hicks took the lives of three brilliant humanitarian Muslims over a parking dispute. Atheists tried to distance themselves and label him as “anti-theist” and others thought he was secretly really a Christian. Still others labeled him as a redneck from NRA-land, because hatred of the ignorant South is acceptable among educated atheists. I am sure atheists will be eager to point out that the current shooter was a Republican and No True Atheist.3… 2… 1 to someone saying that nobody kills in the name of atheism?
I don’t know enough about the current shooter to say. But Craig Hicks was a typical atheist until he pulled the trigger. He was friends with a lot of atheists on Facebook, we had many mutual friends. If you went through his Facebook feed, he did not come off as an Islamophobe or a racist or someone likely to go on a shooting spree. The guy acted like literally hundreds of atheists I know on Facebook. The majority of his posts were reposting things from George Takei. He was friends with feminist activists. He hated right-wingers and country music, but loved Obamacare.
He was one of us. So was the shooter yesterday.
I want us not to flinch away from that fact, because it’s not useful to us to ignore it. Stop with your buts and your wells and whatever you want to add, just sit with it and live with it for a minute. Let it make you uncomfortable.
Atheism can motivate terrible crimes, just like religion can. This is a thing we have to get used to. Atheists are so used to being exceptional, to being smarter and less criminal than other Americans, that the fact that someone was an atheist and did a bad thing seems to be exceedingly difficult for us to understand. Atheist exceptionalism cannot survive the exponential growth of atheism — all atheists are not better than all religious people.
2prosfilaes
>1 timspalding: But Craig Hicks was a typical atheist until he pulled the trigger. He was friends with a lot of atheists on Facebook, we had many mutual friends. If you went through his Facebook feed, he did not come off as an Islamophobe or a racist or someone likely to go on a shooting spree.
Going by the New Yorker:
"Judging by Hicks’s Facebook page, any display of faith infuriated him. He didn’t single out Islam—“I hate Islam just as much as Christianity, but they have the right to worship in this country just as much as any others do,” he wrote in 2012—but he expressed the wish that Jews, Christians, and Muslims might “exterminate” each other."
He should have come off as someone to be concerned about. That people didn't see that is problematic.
3… 2… 1 to someone saying that nobody kills in the name of atheism?
Do you want an argument, or a quarrel?
Going by the New Yorker:
"Judging by Hicks’s Facebook page, any display of faith infuriated him. He didn’t single out Islam—“I hate Islam just as much as Christianity, but they have the right to worship in this country just as much as any others do,” he wrote in 2012—but he expressed the wish that Jews, Christians, and Muslims might “exterminate” each other."
He should have come off as someone to be concerned about. That people didn't see that is problematic.
3… 2… 1 to someone saying that nobody kills in the name of atheism?
Do you want an argument, or a quarrel?
3Jesse_wiedinmyer
DFTT, prosfilaes.
4JGL53
> 1
Firstly, there's been a hundred billion or so people who have lived on earth, and over seven billion are alive today. In crowds that freaking huge I am sure there was at least one person who has murdered in the name of the great purple dinosaur in the sky, or in the name of mashed potatoes and gravy, or in the name of the day of the week we have labeled Tuesday.
Secondly, do we have a huge worldwide problem concerning atheists - or agnostics or secular humanists - murdering people, as opposed to murders attributed to various positive ideologies, both secular and religious? No we don't. Not even close. There's many, many orders of magnitude in degree difference. E.g., if you are murdered tomorrow, Timmy, by someone for ideological reasons, chances are VERY slim it will be an atheist. More likely it will be a Muslim or one of your fellow christians. Thus, in today's world, excepting the worship of Kim Jung Il in Korea and some goodly number of dissenters in some countries that are technically communist (more so dictatorships) and murder by some secular nationalists, who should the innocent in general fear in today's world regarding either ideology-based individual or mass murder?
Answer: Religionists. Straight up. No contest.
So, Timmy, I'm not sure you have demonstrated moral (or immoral, rather) equivalency between the non-religious and the religious in todays world - the one we live in and the one where it is possible to be murdered in - history, you know, being somewhat, uh, irrelevant history.
Firstly, there's been a hundred billion or so people who have lived on earth, and over seven billion are alive today. In crowds that freaking huge I am sure there was at least one person who has murdered in the name of the great purple dinosaur in the sky, or in the name of mashed potatoes and gravy, or in the name of the day of the week we have labeled Tuesday.
Secondly, do we have a huge worldwide problem concerning atheists - or agnostics or secular humanists - murdering people, as opposed to murders attributed to various positive ideologies, both secular and religious? No we don't. Not even close. There's many, many orders of magnitude in degree difference. E.g., if you are murdered tomorrow, Timmy, by someone for ideological reasons, chances are VERY slim it will be an atheist. More likely it will be a Muslim or one of your fellow christians. Thus, in today's world, excepting the worship of Kim Jung Il in Korea and some goodly number of dissenters in some countries that are technically communist (more so dictatorships) and murder by some secular nationalists, who should the innocent in general fear in today's world regarding either ideology-based individual or mass murder?
Answer: Religionists. Straight up. No contest.
So, Timmy, I'm not sure you have demonstrated moral (or immoral, rather) equivalency between the non-religious and the religious in todays world - the one we live in and the one where it is possible to be murdered in - history, you know, being somewhat, uh, irrelevant history.
5timspalding
Timmy
"Captain Reynolds, I should tell you, so that you don’t waste your time—you can't make me angry."
"Captain Reynolds, I should tell you, so that you don’t waste your time—you can't make me angry."
6JGL53
> 5
Anger? The presence of or the lack thereof is your personal problem, Timmy. I could not care less. My job here, as I see it, it to edify you, and your ilk.
Do I actually succeed? No doubt very little, but I will soldier on because I am that kind of a guy - a guy who is concerned by the widespread use of false analogy and thus the need to combat its uncivilizing affect until it is eliminated from the planet. Uh, lol.
Anger? The presence of or the lack thereof is your personal problem, Timmy. I could not care less. My job here, as I see it, it to edify you, and your ilk.
Do I actually succeed? No doubt very little, but I will soldier on because I am that kind of a guy - a guy who is concerned by the widespread use of false analogy and thus the need to combat its uncivilizing affect until it is eliminated from the planet. Uh, lol.
