Days Since Last Shooting II

[Handyman]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

Just remember, when atheists kill they are doing it cause they are atheists. When Christians kill they are doing it DESPITE their religion.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

Just remember, when atheists kill they are doing it cause they are atheists. When Christians kill they are doing it DESPITE their religion.

And when Muslims kill it is because it's in the Quran.

[5mn_Major]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

Just remember, when atheists kill they are doing it cause they are atheists. When Christians kill they are doing it DESPITE their religion.

And when Muslims kill it is because it's in the Quran.

Yeah. Handy's long since left the ranch on that one.

Edit: the guy was an atheist shooting church goers. It doesn't mean that atheism has anything to do with this. The guy was a radical who was been decades in the making.

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

Yeah. Handy's long since left the ranch on that one.

No.

[Kepler]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

But interested...is your broader point that an atheist couldn't possibly commit mass murder?

My point is atheists don't "preach," at least in the sense of preaching the Word. Certainly we can get up and pontificate endlessly and not be fun at parties, same as everybody else about every subject. But I interpreted your remark as you falling into the fallacy that atheism is "just another faith," which has been refuted here many times by myself and others.

Now, to your barb: anybody can commit mass murder. First, anybody can be insane, but that's boring.

Second, anybody can be sane but seduced by an ideology.

Atheism is typically a healthy antidote to ideological fanaticism. An atheist living in a theist society can hardly fail to notice the perils of being on the wrong end of socially- and institutionally-transmitted blindness and ignorance. But atheists, while on the whole (certainly not one-for-one) likely smarter or at least more curious than theists, do not escape the unpleasantness at the bottom half of the bell curve. The more limited ones can have the silicon chip inside their head switched in much the same way as a religious fanatic would, and like him decide the gene pool needs some chlorine.

[5mn_Major]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

No.

OK...you win. He was an atheist killing church goers because of atheism. Does that make you feel better?

[Kepler]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

OK...you win. He was an atheist killing church goers because of atheism. Does that make you feel better?

Most people want that to be true because then it makes more sense. Just as most people want the Christian shooting up the mosque to be doing it for religious reasons. We monkeys really, really want sh-t to make sense.

The irony here given your usual boring sniping, is, you're right. Mass murderers with "reasons" are, by definition, warping whatever it is they have claimed as a reason, whether it's Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, trees, mushrooms, or Isadora Duncan. You are absolutely right: the killer is the gun; the ideology is the bullet. It's not the other way around. Until we really absorb that we'll never, for example, effectively counter terrorism.

[SJHovey]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

A decade is a much larger sample than six months though...

Congrats. You got me.

Look, I realize in today's world reading a HuffPost blog entry or someone's tweet constitutes gospel. So rather than locate actual studies that no one here will read, how about I just link to Wiki and you can decide whether you want to follow the links to the actual studies, or just believe Wiki over HuffPost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federa...lt_Weapons_Ban

[The Rube]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

Ok, let's look at it from a different angle:

Is there a "greater cause" behind the motives for these terrorist acts?

NYC, Boston, OKC, SC....you have extreme religious beliefs/groups, anti-government movement, and a racial war behind those acts.

LV and TX, you have someone with some personal issues going on, no real bigger cause behind the acts.

And trix, I don't watch Faux News, so you can stop that little narrative.

[5mn_Major]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

My point is atheists don't "preach," at least in the sense of preaching the Word. Certainly we can get up and pontificate endlessly and not be fun at parties, same as everybody else about every subject. But I interpreted your remark as you falling into the fallacy that atheism is "just another faith," which has been refuted here many times by myself and others.

Now, to your barb: anybody can commit mass murder. First, anybody can be insane, but that's boring.

Second, anybody can be sane but seduced by an ideology.

Atheism is typically a healthy antidote to ideological fanaticism. An atheist living in a theist society can hardly fail to notice the perils of being on the wrong end of socially- and institutionally-transmitted blindness and ignorance. But atheists, while on the whole (certainly not one-for-one) likely smarter or at least more curious than theists, do not escape the unpleasantness at the bottom half of the bell curve. The more limited ones can have the silicon chip inside their head switched in much the same way as a religious fanatic would, and like him decide the gene pool needs some chlorine.

Not true. The one thing in common with all atheists is that they don't believe in God. And they do 'preach' that all the time. And no, atheism is not any more 'healthy' than anything in life it tries to cure.

Case in point...would you say that you never post in the religion thread? Afterall, why would you...you don't believe in God. In reality, you post there more than any other poster including the religious - in the current religion thread alone, over 85 of 340 come from you or about 25% of all posts. 25% of the posts advancing anti religious messages. Doesn't sound particularly healthy.

In the end, atheists can and do commit murder just like anyone else. We have a pretty sad example.

[jerphisch]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

Congrats. You got me.

Look, I realize in today's world reading a HuffPost blog entry or someone's tweet constitutes gospel. So rather than locate actual studies that no one here will read, how about I just link to Wiki and you can decide whether you want to follow the links to the actual studies, or just believe Wiki over HuffPost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federa...lt_Weapons_Ban

I'm not convinced you've read as much as you claim either. From the little bit of reading I've done on it, it feels like the actual studies say it kind of worked. They say that crimes committed with the specific banned weapons were down, but crimes with other weapons were up offsetting that. So the ban was successful on the actual weapons it targeted, but due to the wide availability of substitutes there was no impact in the larger sense. So to say all the studies said the ban didn't work is stretching what they say to your benefit, I could just as easily say they found the ban did work, and we're both right. But in the larger context they do show that bans CAN be effective, if there aren't a wide range of easily available substitutes.

[5mn_Major]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

Will move this to the religion thread and get back later.

[alfablue]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

Congrats. You got me.

Look, I realize in today's world reading a HuffPost blog entry or someone's tweet constitutes gospel. So rather than locate actual studies that no one here will read, how about I just link to Wiki and you can decide whether you want to follow the links to the actual studies, or just believe Wiki over HuffPost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federa...lt_Weapons_Ban

I'm not reading the Huff post for it's opinion, I'm looking at the data that has the # of deaths per year in "spree" shootings. It's not really hard to run data that shows for that 10 year period, the overall average during that span is lower than before it and lower than it is after it. And that includes on really high year.

The data in your WIKI page references the MotherJones data. You are saying that the HuffPost article is wrong because Wiki says so, but Wiki data shows the exact same trend (thanks to the MotherJones study. There is data in the effectiveness area that shows the data I'm talking about and you are dismissing. Here's the core data- http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...nes-full-data/

You are suggesting that the 10 year lull was all due to chance? IMHO, that's seems far more dubious, statistically, than suggesting that the ban was effective.

[SJHovey]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

I'm not convinced you've read as much as you claim either. From the little bit of reading I've done on it, it feels like the actual studies say it kind of worked. They say that crimes committed with the specific banned weapons were down, but crimes with other weapons were up offsetting that. So the ban was successful on the actual weapons it targeted, but due to the wide availability of substitutes there was no impact in the larger sense. So to say all the studies said the ban didn't work is stretching what they say to your benefit, I could just as easily say they found the ban did work, and we're both right. But in the larger context they do show that bans CAN be effective, if there aren't a wide range of easily available substitutes.

But that's been my whole point. It's not effective because there are so many substitutes. Yeah, you've banned the guns that look really scary. But in reality all the guns that don't look really scary work the exact same way, so as a result, the ban doesn't reduce deaths. It just causes the deaths to occur by some other gun. Which, leading back to my initial response to Handy, is why to really solve the problem you're going to have to ban private ownership of guns, period. And if you're not willing to do what is necessary to get that done, then everything else is just noise.

[Kepler]

Re: Days Since Last Shooting II

Will move this to the religion thread and get back later.

Done.