Reciprocating Bill
Posts: 4265
Joined: Oct. 2006
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It's hard to believe, but BarryA has stepped into the same bucket of shit yet AGAIN:
| Quote | 4
BarryA
09/20/2008
3:17 pm
Jerry...As to your second question, the answer is also “yes.” Both Harris and Klebold were self consciously acting out their Darwinian ideas. They believed (or at least said they believed) they had evolved to a higher plane of existence and owed no more duty to respect the lives of their fellow students than they might owe to livestock (which is to say “none”). |
I'll reprise an earlier response to a similar statement:
Barry: You are an attorney. Let's follow the implications of your argument.
Because Eric Harris was obsessed with and cited concepts drawn from evolutionary theory as justification for his actions at Columbine, it follows that belief in evolutionary theory ("Darwinism") contributed to his horrible, violent acts.
Ergo, more generally, when disturbed people do disturbed things, such as shooting and murdering schoolmates, we should accept at face value their own account of the motivations for and causes of their behavior.
It follows that belief in Christian concepts such as God, heaven, hell, and eternal damnation results in mothers drowning their children.
Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub. Although she knew that what she was doing was illegal, she nevertheless thought it was the right thing to do to save her children from eternal damnation.
You might protest that this was an aberation. But a thorough psychiatric evaluation conducted by one of the country's leading forensic psychiatrists (Philip Resnick, whom I have met) showed that she was obsessed with religious concepts and the implications thereof for her children. There cannot be the slightest doubt that Yates was a worshiper of Christ and saw herself as acting on Christian principles.
I am not suggesting that Yates' actions are the inevitable consequences of believing in Christianty. It is, however, clear that at least some of Jesus' followers understand “heaven, hell and eternal damnation” and the attendant moral structure of Christianity as a license to kill those whom they fear are at risk of eternal damnation - even their own small children. Nothing could be more obvious.
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Barry, I hope the above illustrates for you how mistaken and, frankly, ridiculous your reasoning is. As disturbed people do disturbed things, they often incorporate elements from their environments into delusional, idiosyncratic systems of thought that they believe motivate or justify their actions. However, in the 21st century we understand that disturbed people often have poor insight into the actual basis of their own motivations and behaviors, and are often unable to discern the distortions that may be introduced into their thinking by their disturbed mental state. Nevertheless, it is the mental disturbance that accounts for the behavior that follows, not the ideas that were recruited into a disturbed or distorted system of thought by a mental illness into which the individual has no insight.
Shame on you, Barry. Shame on you.
Also, see my bit 'O research into BarryA's background, particularly vis gun legislation.
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Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be.
"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."
- David Foster Wallace
"Here’s a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down."
- Barry Arrington
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