God, Guns, and Mental Illness

TV, the blogosphere, and Facebook all agree:  the Connecticut shooting happened because of guns, mental illness and taking God out of schools.  Or just one of those things, depending on your point of view.

So yet another rohrshach test in the news reveals the pet peeves of us all.  We hate and mistrust someone because of something that they do wrong.

Two of my previous blog posts are getting a lot of hits this weekend:
http://ladyatheist.blogspot.com/2011/12/shes-in-gods-hands-now.html
(about stupid statements of "faith" after tragedy)

http://ladyatheist.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-causes-of-rampage-killing.html
(review of some of the research on rampage killing)

People came to my bit about stupid expressions of faith after a tragedy via keywords such as "angel taking children to heaven" or "child angels in heaven."  The latter is due to shameless self-promotion in blog comments at Pharyngula and sharing with some atheist facebook friends.

Rampage murders are not the result of any one thing, much like car wrecks and plane crashes.  They are the result of a toxic soup brewing in the mind of someone who can't or won't put the brakes on their destructive plans.  There have been very few rampage murderers, just as there have been very few airplane crashes.  But because of their shocking nature, we pay more attention to these events than to the uneventful daily events that make up the numbers in the more-likely side of the odds equation.

The Connecticut killings are probably more of a "workplace" killing than "school killing," because the killer wasn't a student, and if he was a former student, he had left the school ten earlier.  The Dunblane massacre comes to mind.

And then there's the problem of fame:  we make these people famous by having nonstop television coverage and ummm blogging about them.  Once that toxic soup of rage, guns, disappointment, resentment and possibly also mental illness starts brewing, the hope of fame through one final grandiose act is the remaining ingredient to cook up a plot like the Connecticut shooter's.  Already his name is a household name, known to us well before the names of any of his victims.  He got what he wanted.

Would belief in God stop someone who's got that toxic soup brewing in their brain?  Maybe, but I doubt it.  More likely, the same forces that make self-annihilation attractive could make belief in God untenable.  Or in the case of Andrea Yates, belief in God would be an ingredient in the toxic soup.

It's easy to understand how primitive people could believe in "demons" that would turn an ordinary person into a killer.  Someone in the right frame of wrong frame of mind might even respond to voodoo designed to cast out those demons, but sometimes the human mind and brain just isn't right and those of us with functioning minds and brains can probably never comprehend their actions completely.  They are alien to us, and so whatever is alien to our self-image would naturally be part of our assumptions.  Atheists are aliens to religious people, so *thwap* there's one assumption slapped onto the story.  Those of us who are sane find crazy people alien so *splat!* there's another one.  The result is a rorschah blot that may resemble the story on the surface but only if we saw that pattern to begin with.

Prayer Memes Erupt on Facebook after School Shooting

20 children and 6 adults dead, non-stop coverage by television all day long, Facebook friends find out by checking Facebook, then they feel silly for all their pointless posting, sharing and liking.  The Christians feel guilty for their selfishness, then they feel they must atone by praying.  But just praying isn't enough to atone for such a wasted life.  They must announce it and make sure that all the people who saw their Facebook posts earlier in the day can see that they're now praying.

Because, you know, prayer is unselfish.

And because, you know, prayer isn't a waste of time like Facebook is.

Cue the meme war.  I only collected two today because apparently the first couple of meme generators got it "right," (added the prayer chain abomination too because it's just so tacky!) and then I saw the atheist response: 

Response from The Atheist Bible Commentary Page

Yeah, pretty much sums it up!

Oh my my my I was far too premature in posting graphics for the infidels.  Here are some more to make you shake your head:

The Week in Links

Older people's brains are more gullible.  Does this explain Mitt Romney's fanbase?

Atheism on the rise in Texas.  The Houston Press interviews vlogger Aron Ra and others at the Texas Freethought Convention, and give a little history of Texas atheism, including the Freidankers, German free-thinkers who settled in the Hill Country (which Austin is part of) in the 19th Century.  (I always wondered about the German names for towns!  Boerne, Kerrville, New Braunfels and Gruene among them)

The National Audubon Society holds an annual Christmas Bird Count.  It's an annual count of bird populations at about Christmastime, not a count of Christmas birds.   The Great Backyard Bird Count is in February.

Hemant Mehta (a.k.a. The Friendly Atheist) writes in the Washington Post about the experiences of non-theistic high school students.

California moron calls atheist attempts to insist on compliance with the First Amendment "unconstitutional."  She doesn't seem to have read the Constitution, though.  Typical.

Atheists Anonymous, support group for oldsters in California.  No, they're not giving up atheism, just being treated like dirt.

Election post-mortem from Pew:  White evangelicals weren't turned off by Romney

Evangelicals want to abolish electoral college.  Gore would have been the winner over their idiot Dubya, so I can't see why.  Maybe they want attention if they live outside of a swing state.  Who wouldn't want nonstop robocalls and endless TV and radio commercials for months on end?

Notre Dame has decided to be more gay-friendly.  And in Germany, gay pedophile priests have been shown to be psychologically "normal," at least according to a study put out by one church.

Hindu schools in Nepal borrow from the Catholic practice of making students classless with uniforms, in the mass prayer day.  (That was what my Catholic friends always said justified having uniforms, though everyone seemed to know who the rich kids were)

A West Point senior leaves the school because of religiosity on campus.  He wrote “I do not wish to be in any way associated with an institution which willfully disregards the Constitution of the United States of America by enforcing policies which run counter to the same,” Mr. Page wrote in his letter of resignation.

Meanwhile, in India, the courts have decided not to force religion on children, or at least one.  

Tonight is the beginning of Hanukkah, or Chanukkah, or Channukkahhh...

Charity Link Round-up page

Check out my new list of charities that I feel confident don't include prosletyzing in their work.

I didn't list secular charities like Freedom From Religion Foundation, because there are lots of lists like that on the web.  There's so much begging for charity money this time of year I decided to look into which ones I would want to donate to... assuming I had disposable income.

Feedback & suggestions welcome, though if you have a boatload of criticisms or ideas of how I could do it better if I had another thirty or so hours to spend, then do it yourself and send me the link.

Sad News for Eagle Watchers

This year I became enthralled by the nest-cam in Decorah, Iowa, that watched a clutch of American Bald Eagles from egg-laying to fledging.  I learned that last year the Raptor Resource Center that runs this project had put a transmitter on one of the babies and I checked periodically to see her progress on their map.

This year, the first baby eagle (D12) died from electrocution on a power pole near the nest soon after fledging.  It was shocking because of the suddenness, but also because it was a bird that I "knew."  The team posted about electrical poles' danger to birds, especially large raptors.  With their large wingspan, there's more chance of a bald eagle being electrocuted.  A group inspired by D12's passing worked to make poles in the area safer for the fledglings.

Last week another of the clutch was found dead from electrocution:  D14 had been equipped with a transmitter and was being tracked like his older sister.  He was found in Iowa at the foot of an electrical pole.

The sad blog post is here:  http://raptorresource.blogspot.com/2012/11/112712-d14-announcement.html

The previous year an eagle (D1) was fitted with a transmitter, and she has returned to her natal home after summering in Canada.  Her survival seems even more miraculous fortuitous after seeing what happened to two of the three eaglets from this year's nest.

A raptor-safe power pole is amazingly simple to make.  I hope more people will be inspired by this new tragedy to make their area poles safe:

Links

Wasn't going to do a link round-up this week but a few things caught my eye:

The Religion Clause blog has a list of the religious mentions in the proposed Egyptian constitution.

Leesburg, Virginia is Ground Zero in the War on Christmas again.  I can't say I support the atheists on this one.  One Leesburg official (who was apparently in a coma on 9/11/2001) called atheists "fanatical terrorists."

Can Islam be a force for good in climate change?

Can Islam be gay-friendly?

Robert Schuller & his family have to survive on less than a million dollars after the bankruptcy of their Crystal Cathedral ministry.  Oh boo hoo  Maybe they should pray to win the lottery.

A priest named Schueller pisses off the pope by wanting women to be ordained & questioning celibacy.  It's too bad he isn't also a pedophile.  The pope would have ignored him.

Former Episcopal priests are turning Catholic, and for these guys it's okay to be married priests.  (similar to the rule in Eastern orthodox churches).   How does the vatican wrap its head around its head?

Presbyterian parishes are leaving the denomination to join a more conservative version.   Would Calvin be proud?

Religion gives me a headache.  It's no wonder fundies look so glassy-eyed.

Bill O'Reilly says Christianity is not a religion!

What a ninny! (or pinhead)