Atheist goes nuts, kills 3 Muslims for being theist.

Saw this, thought you guys should be notified.

'Anti-theist' who used Facebook to condemn all religions is arrested over fatal 'execution-style' shooting of three young Muslims

My thoughts, there's crazy theists, non crazy theists, crazy atheists and non crazy atheists.

Every creed has its nutjobs. Just took a while for the atheist one to develop.

shruikan2553

Supposedly it was to do with a disagreement over parking. The religious beliefs of everone involved might have been entirely irrelevant (although with the US opinions on atheism we'll hear lack of morals or something as religious people never kill others and people being shot is a completely new thing over there)

Fox news will be running a peice about how muslims have taken over entire car parks soon if its true.

TheChizler

Thanks for letting us know! We'll summon the Atheist High Council.

Dades

Crazy stuff. People are batsh1t sometimes.

There goes the "Religious Fundamentalists; Atheist Fundamentalists" meme.

Cabaal

TheChizler wrote: »

Thanks for letting us know! We'll summon the Atheist High Council.

They aren't meeting until first Thursday in June, the Gay Lobby have booked up the meeting room for every other day before then....bloody gay lobby and their agenda meetings, always wanting to discuss lists.

Nodin

Deleted User wrote: »

Saw this, thought you guys should be notified.

'Anti-theist' who used Facebook to condemn all religions is arrested over fatal 'execution-style' shooting of three young Muslims

My thoughts, there's crazy theists, non crazy theists, crazy atheists and non crazy atheists.

Every creed has its nutjobs. Just took a while for the atheist one to develop.

No, you just want to get a dig in.

silverharp

Juis suis John Waters

Turtwig

My firsts thoughts:

This was a shooting in the US. That's common. It's also common for people's facebook page's to be scoured. Now maybe this was an anti-theist motivated assault. For the time being it's just a horrible incident that's described mostly by speculation.

Thoughts are with all the families and friends of all involved.

stevejazzx

His names is Hicks
His face looks photo-shopped and hes wearing some bio hazard overalls.
Probably did it because of his deep seated belief in the non-existence of fuzzy bearded gods.

Smiles35

Ah. Freemasons hall. Do I have to invoke a higher power to join in?

Nodin

Nodin wrote: »

No, you just want to get a dig in.

Nah, If I wanted to get a dig in, I'd have said something like "told you so" or something about everything being a belief including yada yada yada yada......

Honestly, just thought it needed posting, and better like this than some god-botherer "I TOLD YOU GODLESS BASTARDS SO!!!!"

Crazies are crazies not because of what they believe, but what they do.

Now if only we could gather all the "vaccine choicers" & put them on the island Typhoid Mary was imprisoned on......

Turtwig

Shutter Island would result.

Aenaes

Taken from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chapel-hill-shooting-three-young-muslims-gunned-down-in-north-carolina-at-their-family-home-10037734.html

"In a statement released on Wednesday morning (local time), Chapel Hill Police said that a preliminary investigation suggested the crime was “motivated by an ongoing neighbour dispute over parking”."

Which deity is reponsible for painting the white lines?

thehouses

Aenaes wrote: »

Taken from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chapel-hill-shooting-three-young-muslims-gunned-down-in-north-carolina-at-their-family-home-10037734.html

"In a statement released on Wednesday morning (local time), Chapel Hill Police said that a preliminary investigation suggested the crime was “motivated by an ongoing neighbour dispute over parking”."

Which deity is reponsible for painting the white lines?

Next few sentences:

But the women’s father, Dr Mohammad Abu-Salha, who has a psychiatry practice in Clayton, told the North Carolina News and Observer that he believed the shooting was based on the religion and culture of the victims."This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime," he said.

Peregrinus

It can be both, obviously. If the guy's a bigot, then he could be picking disputes about parking spaces (or anything else) with people, or he may escalate minor disputes that would ordinarily be resolved or blow over, because they are members of the group against which he is bigoted.

Or not, of course. At the moment evidence suggesting his anger and violence towards the victims is connected with their religion, or with his feelings about their religion, is a bit thin. The father of one of the victims thinks it was a hate crime, but he doesn't give a huge amount of detail to back that up. I'm inclined to suspend judgment.

Turtwig

Pfft fence sitter.

jank

Nodin wrote: »

No, you just want to get a dig in.

Regardless, is it not worthy of discussion?

Many people here get on their high moral horse when some Christian says something offense, back-slaps and thanks whoring for the biggest take down, yet this incident is treated as a joke.

As I have said many many times here, religion is often a proxy for people doing ****ty stuff, there goes religion ain't real the problem but people.

jank

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/02/11/chapel-hill-killings-shine-light-on-particular-tensions-between-islam-and-atheism/

Turtwig

Nodin wrote: »

No, you just want to get a dig in.

Just saw this now.

MOD: If you suspect the intentions of a poster are questionable report the post. Don't make the accusation in thread. I note that this isn't the first time this had to be pointed out. Repeated infringements may result in more severe mod action.

Turtwig

jank wrote: »

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/02/11/chapel-hill-killings-shine-light-on-particular-tensions-between-islam-and-atheism/

Not the greatest article. Trying to attribute more to stuff we really don't know about.

Find it pathetic the way people's social media posts become "analysis". Suicidal teen wrote of hatred of Gaelic football. Yeah, like, seriously?

I digress. I do think the Abrahamic faiths have the some very violent strands. For someone who harps on about pc culture I thought your line on religion would be more nuanced. This notion that religion is a good thing is nonsense. As is the notion that it's a bad thing. Islam is a religion that was born out of political turmoil. It's worse than Christianity and I really don't see what's so wrong about saying that. On the scale of "good" and "bad" ideologies I'd put both Islam and Christianity closer to the bad, with Islam and Judaism being noticeably worse than Christianity. The amount of violent imagery in these religions should be compared to other religions. I suspect the reason that the abrahamic faiths in particular command so much world wide respect and reverence is because of their violent strands and origins. Is that saying the entire ideology and all those following it are bad? Absolutely not, but when it comes to something purporting to be a code of ethics by which lives are supposed to follow, it should be open to question the apparent wrongdoings inspired by these sources. Such questioning should never for any reason be stifled.

I absolutely reject the notion that religion isn't responsible for violence. Anthropologically, violence helps it to spread. It's not that hard to see the possibility of religious violence being a selective pressure by which the religion can propagate. A topic for another thread perhaps. Relevant to the topic at hand, religion like every ideology has potential for good and bad. This notion that religion is inherently good (or bad) is pc (or the opposite) nonsense! Sometimes people do good things because of it, sometimes they do bad because of it, sometimes they do good or bad for entirely different reasons.

BlaasForRafa

jank wrote: »

Regardless, is it not worthy of discussion?

Many people here get on their high moral horse when some Christian says something offense, back-slaps and thanks whoring for the biggest take down, yet this incident is treated as a joke.

As I have said many many times here, religion is often a proxy for people doing ****ty stuff, there goes religion ain't real the problem but people.

If we were to post a new thread every time a christian murders someone in the US this forum would be full of nothing but such threads.

Turtwig

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

If we were to post a new thread every time a christian murders someone in the US this forum would be full of nothing bu such threads.

Ah that's not fair. This thread was created because of the reporting of the potential for this incident being a anti theist motivated attack.

Given that we're talking about the states you'd probably have several hundred atheist murder threads too.

Peregrinus

Turtwig wrote: »

I absolutely reject the notion that religion isn't responsible for violence. Anthropologically, violence helps it to spread.

That would suggest, surely, that the violence was responsible for the religion, rather than the other way around?

But, you will say, this gives religions an incentive to incorporate/encourage violence. In fact you do say more or less that in your immediately following sentence:

Turtwig wrote: »

It's not that hard to see the possibility of religious violence being a selective pressure by which the religion can propagate.

In other words, the violent religions will tend to eclipse the non-violent ones. Survival of the fittest, and all that. Darwinian theory as applied to the world of ideas. Take a bow, Professor Dawkins.

The thing is, though, if that’s true for religions, mustn’t it be equally true for nontheist alternatives to religion? They compete with religions, and with one another, and an affinity for violence will give them exactly the same Darwinian advantage as would accrue to a religion with an affinity for violence. So if religions do have an affinity for violence, it’s not so much because they are religious but because we are human. And it’s not something which we shoujld expect to distinguish religion from atheism.

In short, the notion that a murderous atheist is murderous because of an atheist ideology that he espoupses is no more improbable than the notion that a murderous Islamist is murderous because of a theist ideology that he espouses.

I suspect, though, to go back to where I came in, the causation is more likely to be the other way around. All human beings have the capacity for aggression and violence; some realise that capacity more regularly, or more frequently, or more horribly, than others. Much of this is situational; atrocities get committed in warzones more than in bucolic, prosperous and peaceful villages. Much of it is also down to personal psychology, which in turn is shaped by experiences and relationships much more than by beliefs and convictions. My guess would be that individuals psychologically or situationally disposed to violence gravitate towards ideologies (or particular versions of ideologies) which will affirm the expression of their violence, rather than peaceable and well-adjusted individuals being brutalised and made violent by the beliefs they have selected or acquired for other reasons.

Turtwig

Peregrinus wrote: »

That would suggest, surely, that the violence was responsible for the religion, rather than the other way around?

But, you will say, this gives religions an incentive to incorporate/encourage violence. In fact you do say more or less that in your immediately following sentence:


In other words, the violent religions will tend to eclipse the non-violent ones. Survival of the fittest, and all that. Darwinian theory as applied to the world of ideas. Take a bow, Professor Dawkins.

The thing is, though, if that’s true for religions, mustn’t it be equally true for nontheist alternatives to religion? They compete with religions, and with one another, and an affinity for violence will give them exactly the same Darwinian advantage as would accrue to a religion with an affinity for violence. So if religions do have an affinity for violence, it’s not so much because they are religious but because we are human. And it’s not something which we shoujld expect to distinguish religion from atheism.

In short, the notion that a murderous atheist is murderous because of an atheist ideology that he espoupses is no more improbable than the notion that a murderous Islamist is murderous because of a theist ideology that he espouses.

I suspect, though, to go back to where I came in, the causation is more likely to be the other way around. All human beings have the capacity for aggression and violence; some realise that capacity more regularly, or more frequently, or more horribly, than others. Much of this is situational; atrocities get committed in warzones more than in bucolic, prosperous and peaceful villages. Much of it is also down to personal psychology, which in turn is shaped by experiences and relationships much more than by beliefs and convictions. My guess would be that individuals psychologically or situationally disposed to violence gravitate towards ideologies (or particular versions of ideologies) which will affirm the expression of their violence, rather than peaceable and well-adjusted individuals being brutalised and made violent by the beliefs they have selected or acquired for other reasons.

I don't disagree with any of that. Given the thread context and my use of the term violence you'd all might forgive for not clarifying that violence didn't mean killings of other humans?

In other words, the violent religions will tend to eclipse the non-violent ones. Survival of the fittest, and all that. Darwinian theory as applied to the world of ideas.

It's actually a good bit more nuanced than that.

Very often a religion that is less violent finds ways to incorporate the violence into it but still remains as pleasant. This is a very subtle point which I will undoubtedly butcher. Here goes nothing:

Suppose there exists culture K who mutilate parts of their own genitals for some religious reason. Suppose culture P sacrifice donkeys. Both cultures are inherently at war with one another even though culture P is pacifist. There is so many ways things can go so the progression I'll try to illustrate is the counter intuitive one. Everyone more or less understands the linear killer beats pacifist. But if everyone is a killer nobody can win and for simplicity let's assume a pacifist cannot beat another pacifist.

Are there any circumstances in which a pacifist can beat a killer?
One way is to absorb more violence into it. Culture p starts mutilating its own genitals. Before you know it the identity of culture p is similar to k and vice versa. Now the denizens of k face a new ethical dilemma culture p is 'like' them. They may still opt to kill them. Even if that means some of their own. Whatever the outcome the equilibrium of the two cultures has changed. If culture k starts killing suspected p it may invariably do more harm to itself in the long run by over killing. There are two distinct outcomes that could favour p. The aforementioned overkill by k of itself and the acceptance of p by k. As they dilute more and more another cultural identity that is a mesh of a p and k may emerge. Depending on the outcome it may or may not be more violent than before. For example you may find donkey killing becomes more frequent and human mutilation is less frequent.

To use the example of Catholicism compare that to more primitive religions and you'll notice that violence in Catholicism is mostly symbolic. There are no physically violent rituals. There is self harm and discipline, of sorts but these are purely symbolic. You have the incredibly violent depiction of a crucifixion. Yet, ultimately you don't have physical reenactments of it. My own personal inking is that an awful lot of this is down to early Christianity (which carried similarities to Judaism) melding into indo European culture. From that mesh Judaism was retrospectively influenced and you ended up with ideologies that were all somewhat different than before.

Hope this makes some semblance of sense.

I

jank

Turtwig wrote: »

I digress. I do think the Abrahamic faiths have the some very violent strands. For someone who harps on about pc culture I thought your line on religion would be more nuanced. This notion that religion is a good thing is nonsense. As is the notion that it's a bad thing.

Humans are violent animals. I think everyone can agree with that. Some of the most violent acts in the past 100 years had nothing to do with religion. From forced collectivisation in the Ukraine, to extermination in Poland, to year 'zero' in Cambodia. None of these acts were inspired by any of the Abrahmaic faiths. However, one could argue that they pursued by a religious fervor in the name of some person or some ideology. Would one then equate the bible to Karl Marx's Das Capital or Hitlers Mein Kampf? Hitler = Jesus/God ? You are then almost redefining the word religion from its traditional sense.

Turtwig wrote: »

Islam is a religion that was born out of political turmoil. It's worse than Christianity and I really don't see what's so wrong about saying that. On the scale of "good" and "bad" ideologies I'd put both Islam and Christianity closer to the bad, with Islam and Judaism being noticeably worse than Christianity. The amount of violent imagery in these religions should be compared to other religions. I suspect the reason that the abrahamic faiths in particular command so much world wide respect and reverence is because of their violent strands and origins. Is that saying the entire ideology and all those following it are bad? Absolutely not, but when it comes to something purporting to be a code of ethics by which lives are supposed to follow, it should be open to question the apparent wrongdoings inspired by these sources. Such questioning should never for any reason be stifled.

I think the reason why these faiths are so ever present and relevant in today's world is because Islam is so current in today's discourse and putting it simply society today has been 'conquered' so to speak by the West. We are living in a Western world, where Europe and now the US are and have been the superpowers of the world for the past 500 years. If some part of Africa had conquered the world I am sure we would be bemoaning its religion and its influence on the world.

I would agree about Islam, it is worse than Christianity because Christianity has 'grown up' in many ways. Islam still thinks we are living in the middle ages. Not sure I would agree with you about Judaism. Sure the Old Testament is full of violence, revenge and retribution but most Jews are not hacking the heads of infidels and generally assimilate quite well in their adopted countries. Plus of course there are so few of them they really hardly matter in the grand scheme of things.

Peregrinus

The bottom line, surely, if we look at this in Darwinian terms, is that in both religious and non-religious philosophies of life, violence will thrive as a characteristic if it is well-adapted to survival and propagation of the philosophy. I agree with Turtwig that it’s too simplistic to see this operating simply in terms of the violent religion/philosophy supplanting the non-violent one. I think the point of his culture K/culture P illustration is that, instead, the non-violent ideology may become more violent in order to survive (by identifying with, and/or absorbing elements of, the violent ideology with which it is in confrontation). That works, too, I think, but again it offers us no reason to think that the religious ideology is more likely to gravitate to violence than the non-religious ideology.

Perhaps a point we need to bear in mind here is that a willingness to use violence is not the only, or the dominant, way in which an ideology may succeed. If we go back to meme theory for a moment, the successful meme is the one which is well-adapted to its environment. A common example of a simply and successful meme is the knowledge of how to use a hammer. This is very successfully transmitted from person to person and from generation to generation without any great effort or organisation, simply because it’s extremely useful. So “usefulness” is a characteristic of an idea that give it a distinct memetic, “Darwinian” advantage.

When it comes to religious and non-religious philosophies of life, the successful ones are going to be the ones that enable individuals and societies to survive, develop and thrive, because they’ll be useful in accomplishing the things that, by and large, most societies want to do, most of the time. A willingness to resort to force may be one characteristic that is advantageous in this respect, but only up to a point. If you have a society that’s too warlike it tends not to thrive, because it consumes a lot of resources in destroying things, rather than building them up, and because it keeps picking fights until, eventually, one day, it loses one more fight than is survivable. And, often, because individual members fights among themselves as well as against external enemies. On the other hand, a society that is too pacifist is easy prey for external enemies who are less scrupulous. From a Darwinian point of view the optimal attitude to violence would seem to be a propensity to engage in violence to the extent necessary to defeat internal and external threats, but not more.

In this context I’d suggest a slightly different view of Christianity than the one Turtwig suggest. Yes, Christianity has the symbols of the most grotesque violence at its heart - the eucharist is a cannibalistic feast, the crucifixion is a man murdered in a grotesque and humiliating way. But Christianity encourages identification with the victim of this violence, not the perpetrator. In Christianity, Christ doesn’t eat the bodies of others; he offers his own body to be eaten. He doesn’t slay his enemies or offer them violence; he offers himself, defenceless, to their violence. He embraces his fate. And this is what Christians are supposed to model themselves on. The message is that you can’t defeat the violence offered to you by offering your own violence in return; rather, you can transcend the violence offered to you by submitting to it.

That’s an extremely radical message, obviously, and a deeply counter-cultural one both at the time it originated and today. Obviously over time Christianity has departed from its radical repudiation of violence, and a conventional application of meme theory would say that it had to, to survive and prosper as it has done - or, at any rate, that it only survived and prospered because it did this.

But it’s worth looking at the early history of Christianity, because of course it prospered very well in the early period, even before it compromised with violence. It’s estimated that, by the end of the first century, something like 10% of the population of the empire had embraced Christianity. That’s pretty impressive, for a low-status, pacifist religion from the fringes of the empire. And by the time Constantine embraced the movement and gave it power and status something like a third of the empire was already on board. Obviously, meme theory suggests, Christianity must have had characteristics that explain this striking success, and a willingness to use force was clearly not one of them. Christianity was absorbing or supplanting rivals which were much more violent. A propensity for violence, in other words, isn’t always a memetically valuable characteristic.

If, then, we observe that Islam is more violent that Christianity or Judaism or Western post-Christianity (and I think you could dispute that it is, but let that pass) could it be because the terms on which the confrontation between Islam and these other ideologies takes place are such that violence is, memetically speaking, the optimal strategy for Islam?

Kidchameleon

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Every creed has its nutjobs. Just took a while for the atheist one to develop.

Wow who would have thought atheists could be nut jobs!

Brian Shanahan

Aenaes wrote: »

Taken from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chapel-hill-shooting-three-young-muslims-gunned-down-in-north-carolina-at-their-family-home-10037734.html

"In a statement released on Wednesday morning (local time), Chapel Hill Police said that a preliminary investigation suggested the crime was “motivated by an ongoing neighbour dispute over parking”."

Which deity is reponsible for painting the white lines?

Nuggan.

Hotblack Desiato

Couldn't this just as easily have been racially motivated?

In any case, mentally unstable people and guns is not a winning combination

K4t

Of course you can speculate that the murder had something to do with the killer being atheist and the victims being muslims, but why would you choose to do that when the explanation and details given supports the theory that it was over the parking space? It suggests an ulterior motive on the media's part, not the killer. It's a shame the husband is attempting to say it was a hate crime but kind of understandable.

I would sooner speculate whether the man was mentally ill, as murdering people over a parking space is quite deranged. Speculating about whether he murdered them because he was an atheist and they were muslims is more of a theory to suit a particular narrative, when there is a more logical and reasonable explanation available i.e. prolonged stress over the parking space debacle resulting in a mental breakdown.

Turtwig

Somehow, this case has grown into a matter of global concern. Obama has even been criticised by other world leaders for not taking it seriously. The family believe it is a hate crime and the killer's posts on Facebook (the anti theist ones) have reverberated around the world. If it is a hate crime that should be independently determined. Not by cherry picking Facebook quotes and certainly not by political interference.

Words of advice to any potential serial killers out there in the US: don't kill Muslims. Their death get's rigorously investigated by the Fbi, local police, government civil rights division and the atf.
Any ethic group (except puerto Rican, Hispanic, or Cuban) if you want a thorough investigation into your loved one's death consider declaring it's a hate crime.

Sarcasm aside if it is a hate crime then finding out is important. I'm not sure if all the resources being wasted on it are though? They already have the killer.