huckabee attributes kiddie shooting to separation of church and state

[Londo_Jowo]

I think it's good if you can be honest with yourself. Resentment isn't hate. Pity isn't hate. Boredom isn't hate. Amusement isn't hate.


If christians don't want to be laughed at, they shouldn't say such laughable things.

As agnostic it's so hilarious watching people attack Christians for everything little thing they say yet these same people have a hissy fit when someone else attacks their viewpoints.

 

[Retro Rob]

Praying afterward would seem to be rather futile anyway.

That's the point.

It's like how people love to apologize after doing something stupid. Why try to NOT do it to being with?

I think that was Huck's point, and it's one that I whole-heartedly agree with.

 

[Jeff7]

That's the point.

It's like how people love to apologize after doing something stupid. Why try to NOT do it to being with?

I think that was Huck's point, and it's one that I whole-heartedly agree with.

Alright then. So let's go with that: Is God is just proving a point then, in response to lessened quantities of worship? Or is it the idea that people need the idea of a God to keep them from killing others?

 

[Retro Rob]

Alright then. So let's go with that: Is God is just proving a point then, in response to lessened quantities of worship? Or is it the idea that people need the idea of a God to keep them from killing others?

No -- accountabllity. Not the idea.

Look at it like a child being "in fear" (note -- not morbidly) of displeasing his parents, so he doesn't deliberately do anything to make them unhappy, lest he just messes up, which is acceptable and understandable.

Well, he didn't say that, but I deduced that from the way he initially formed his statement of TV last night.

Just my two cents. I can't tell you what to believe. :\

 

[cwjerome]

Let's face it, Huck's a bible thumper and like most born-again types most issues in life essentially boil down to "bad things happen because there isn't enough of my religion."

I have nothing against religion, it does a lot of good and I'd be perfectly happy if more people were more religious. But my patience is growing thin for a certain group always trying to turn their private religion into bad public policy.

 

[Incorruptible]

LMAO, somehow i doubt someone with enough mental illness to cause mass murder against little children can really appreciate religious doctrine.

And conservatives wonder why the west is becoming less and less religious: it's because of you.

It's not like religion stopped slavery and genocide back in the day.

It was Conservatives that stopped it, the democrats did create the kkk

 

[Jhhnn]

It was Conservatives that stopped it, the democrats did create the kkk

Gawd. Civil War era Repubs weren't "Conservatives" at all. The idea of racial equality was quite radical. They weren't even unified in that view- Reference the movie "Lincoln" for an honest historical understanding.

Prior to the Civil Rights acts of the 60's, northern & southern Democrats were 2 distinctly different groups who found ways to work together. The Republican Party completely reinvented itself under the southern strategy, pandering to southern whites disaffected from the Democratic Party as a result of Civil Rights. They also exploited pro- Vietnam war sentiment in no small way, evolved into the Neocons of today.

Alignment of the Parties before and after the 60's are not rationally considered to be consistent in any way.

Oh, wait... there's that word again, "rational", which doesn't apply to you much at all. Lucky for you, human biology includes autonomic functions, like breathing.

 

[Ausm]

thats insane.

the shooter was bat shit crazy. thats it.

BTW we need to do more as a nation for people like that.

^This

 

[Ausm]

Hope you're talking about rightwing christians. Maybe you should ask them why they hate gays and non-christians so much.

Word!

 

[Matt1970]

The Republican Party completely reinvented itself under the southern strategy, pandering to southern whites disaffected from the Democratic Party as a result of Civil Rights.

You would think that with an entire party completely reinvented itself under the southern strategy you wopuld be able to atleast come up with a boat load of Republicans on record talking about it. All we have is Lee Atwater in the 1980's talking about crap going on before he was even involved in politics.

 

[shira]

I don't completely agree with Huck, but the import of what he said makes some sense seeing how AFTER tragedy strikes, people want to turn to God and "pray" that "God is with them". But during everyday life, God is forgotten. That's what he was saying. If God is that important to people at the end, why is he less important at the beginning?

Maybe things may change if people kept God in their life from the start, was his point. It was easy to pick that up. I don't agree that "religion" (since there are so many different ones out there that teach different things) would have prevented this, or even God... but each person have to take it upon themselves to refrain from stupidity.

We have to learn to move on, we really do. I have family members who were victims of racial hate and segregation way back when, and probably some who were slaves. Many were tortured and killed simply becasue of their race -- nothing else. I never have reached back into history and used that as a reason to hate White people.. never. Yet, people make the same argument against religion and even use that as valid reason to not like it.

Religion has plenty blood on its hands, and so does racist and segregationists, some of whom are probably still alive today that still have some hate toward minorities. Yet, we've learned to move on and build a stronger country without banishing their ancestors.

You can feel how you want about God and religion at the end of the day, but keep looking into the past and holding on to it, you would never move forward.

One can claim that the percentage of atheists in the U.S. population is anywhere from 0.7% to 15%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism#United_States

A 2004 BBC poll showed the number of people in the U.S. who don't believe in a god to be about 9–10%. A 2008 Gallup poll showed that a smaller 6% of the U.S. population believed that no god or universal spirit exists. The most recent ARIS report, released March 9, 2009, found in 2008, 34.2 million Americans (15.0%) claim no religion, of which 1.6% explicitly describes itself as atheist (0.7%) or agnostic (0.9%)

But whichever figure you use, the percentage of "atheists" in prison is much lower:

http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm

The Federal Bureau of Prisons does have statistics on religious
affiliations of inmates. The following are total number of
inmates per religion category:

Response Number %
---------------------------- --------
Catholic 29267 39.164%
Protestant 26162 35.008%
Muslim 5435 7.273%
American Indian 2408 3.222%
Nation 1734 2.320%
Rasta 1485 1.987%
Jewish 1325 1.773%
Church of Christ 1303 1.744%
Pentecostal 1093 1.463%
Moorish 1066 1.426%
Buddhist 882 1.180%
Jehovah Witness 665 0.890%
Adventist 621 0.831%
Orthodox 375 0.502%
Mormon 298 0.399%
Scientology 190 0.254%
Atheist 156 0.209%
Hindu 119 0.159%
Santeria 117 0.157%
Sikh 14 0.019%
Bahai 9 0.012%
Krishna 7 0.009%

One can draw one's own conclusions.

 

[blankslate]

So Huckabee is blaming the shooting on some of the founding fathers who liked the idea of the separation of church and state.

Nice I guess he just takes his audience for idiots.

 

[Retro Rob]

One can claim that the percentage of atheists in the U.S. population is anywhere from 0.7% to 15%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism#United_States



But whichever figure you use, the percentage of "atheists" in prison is much lower:

http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm



One can draw one's own conclusions.

Yep.

This is why I said each person, at the end of the day, is accountable for his own stupidity.

I didn't, or didn't mean to, imply that the only ones who commit violent acts are "non-believers" in one form or another.

I do wonder, based on your information, if those religious persons in prision identify themselves as such after they've began serving their sentences. It's a known fact that people find "God" while in prison and identify themselves with whatever religion they've converted to.

Someone being a [insert religion here] while in jail doesn't mean they went in that way.

 

[alzan]

No -- accountabllity. Not the idea.

Look at it like a child being "in fear" (note -- not morbidly) of displeasing his parents, so he doesn't deliberately do anything to make them unhappy, lest he just messes up, which is acceptable and understandable.

Well, he didn't say that, but I deduced that from the way he initially formed his statement of TV last night.

Just my two cents. I can't tell you what to believe. :\

Huck's point was that the "systematic removal of God from our schools" is what causes these tragedies. But if G-d is omnipresent how could we or anyone else have removed him from schools? Would more daily recognition of G-d stop or greatly reduce these acts? Highly doubtful. I'm sure it brings a level of comfort to some, including Huck, to think that way.

My parents never told me I was displeasing G-d when I did something bad, they told me I was displeasing them. My punishment was from them; they didn't invoke G-d or fire and brimstone imagery to get my compliance.

 

[Retro Rob]

Huck's point was that the "systematic removal of God from our schools" is what causes these tragedies. But if G-d is omnipresent how could we or anyone else have removed him from schools? Would more daily recognition of G-d stop or greatly reduce these acts? Highly doubtful. I'm sure it brings a level of comfort to some, including Huck, to think that way.

Right, but I also said that regardless if a person believes in God or not, we are in charge of out own "stupidity". There are believers that commit all kinds of violent acts as well.

My parents never told me I was displeasing G-d when I did something bad, they told me I was displeasing them. My punishment was from them; they didn't invoke G-d or fire and brimstone imagery to get my compliance.

I seriously don't know how you got that out of my post....

I didn't say the parents in my example did, either...

 

[alzan]

Right, but I also said that regardless if a person believes in God or not, we are in charge of out own "stupidity". There are believers that commit all kinds of violent acts as well.



I seriously don't know how you got that out of my post....

I didn't say the parents in my example did, either...

We're in charge of our own stupidity period; no need for G-d.

I never said I got that from your post. That was simply a tie-in comment to Huck, Robertson, Falwell, et al and their followers who've all pissed and moaned for years at separation of church and state and what it's supposedly done to our society. Not all are the fire and brimstone-type preachers but a good portion are. And to them and their followers as well as others I ask the same question; How does one remove an omnipresent, omniscient and all-powerful G-d from any locale, school or otherwise?

 

[Retro Rob]

We're in charge of our own stupidity period; no need for G-d.

I never said I got that from your post. That was simply a tie-in comment to Huck, Robertson, Falwell, et al and their followers who've all pissed and moaned for years at separation of church and state and what it's supposedly done to our society. Not all are the fire and brimstone-type preachers but a good portion are. And to them and their followers as well as others I ask the same question; How does one remove an omnipresent, omniscient and all-powerful G-d from any locale, school or otherwise?

I think you already answered this question, when you said "daily recognition",... of course, he was metaphorically speaking.

 

[alzan]

I think you already answered this question, when you said "daily recognition",... of course, he was metaphorically speaking.

So an all powerful, omnipotent and omniscient deity needs "daily recognition"? He sounds rather insecure and possibly narcissistic. Or perhaps it's the followers who are insecure. Hard to tell since they created their deity in their own image.

As for Huck and others, no they're not metaphorically speaking; they truly believe as cwjerome pointed out that "bad things happen because there isn't enough of their religion." Huckabee and others would be happiest in a country where religion controls all aspects of government and peoples lives, as long as it's their particular brand of religion. They truly cannot understand the simple maxim of live and let live.

 

[DrPizza]

One can draw one's own conclusions.

However, when one uses those stats, one is faced with "they converted while in prison!" or "They're not really religious, they're just saying that."

So, a better place to look would be religiosity of the nations with the highest intentional murder rates vs. nations that are least religious. (Same conclusion is found.)

 

[Retro Rob]

However, when one uses those stats, one is faced with "they converted while in prison!" or "They're not really religious, they're just saying that."

So, a better place to look would be religiosity of the nations with the highest intentional murder rates vs. nations that are least religious. (Same conclusion is found.)

Don't worry, one day you'll get your wish. Once religion is gone (or, exiled to Antarctica ... whichever applies) you can have your peaceful and tranquil world back..

It'll be great....

 

[sandorski]

Don't worry, one day you'll get your wish. Once religion is gone (or, exiled to Antarctica ... whichever applies) you can have your peaceful and tranquil world back..

It'll be great....

Works for Sweden.

 

[shira]

However, when one uses those stats, one is faced with "they converted while in prison!" or "They're not really religious, they're just saying that."

So, a better place to look would be religiosity of the nations with the highest intentional murder rates vs. nations that are least religious. (Same conclusion is found.)

Unfortunately, there are no perfect studies, and one can always think of objections to the methodology and the results. But what's absolutely striking about research on the correlation between the various faith groups and various measures (divorce rates, IQ, crime rates, knowledge about religion, income) is that Atheists/Agnostics consistently outperform all of the major world religions. If a belief in God were a strong cause of "better" behavior, one would expect exactly the opposite results.

I would be the last to claim cause and effect. I believe the independent variable is intelligence, not choice of religions. The fact is, being more intelligent correlates with a lack of belief in God. And there's a strong correlation between intelligence and "doing better" on various measures.

 

[boochi]

https://www.facebook.com/mikehuckabeeMike Huckabee's Monalogue


I’ve said some controversial things from time to time, but none which prompted such a backlash as when I stated that the horrific shooting in CT of school children and teachers couldn’t be blamed on God because we’ve systematically marginalized God out of our culture by removing Him from all aspects of the public square. The vicious attacks that have resulted, most of all of which are based on total ignorance of what I actually said have actually validated my point, but I’m quite certain that was not the intent of both the professional and amateur critics who have demanded everything from my being banned from ever speaking in public again, or wished me a slow and painful death. On that alone, I wish to acknowledge that the left has again shown that it defines tolerance and diversity as being tolerant only of that with which it agrees, and diverse only to include slight shades of the orthodoxy of liberalism to which they adhere. They abhor censorship of their own profanity, obscenities, or graphic violence, but are the first to demand that a voice that invokes the name of God to be silenced. A specific act of violence is rarely the result of a specific single act of a culture that prompts it. In other words, I would never say that simply taking prayer and Bible reading from our institutions or silencing Christmas carols is the direct cause of a mass murder. That would be ludicrous and simplistic. But the cause and effect we see in the dramatic changes of what our children are capable of is a part of a cultural shift from a God-centered culture to a self-centered culture. We have glorified uninhibited self-expression and individualism and are shocked that we have a generation of loners. We have insisted on a society where everyone gets a trophy and no one loses and act surprised that so many kids lack self-esteem and feel like losers. We dismiss the notion of natural law and the notion that there are moral absolutes and seemed amazed when some kids make it their own morality to kill innocent children. We diminish and even hold in contempt the natural family of a father and mother creating and then responsibly raising the next generation and then express dismay that kids feel no real connection to their families or even the concept of a family. We scoff at the need for mothers and fathers to make it their priority to train their children to be strong in spirit and soul and responsible for right and wrong and exalt instead the virtue of having things and providing expensive toys, games, and electronics that substitute for parenting and then don’t understand why our kids would rather have ear buds dangling from their ears, fingers attaching to a smart phone, and face attached to a computer screen than to have an extended conversation with their family at dinner. And we don’t teach them there is a Creator God who sets immutable rules, a God who is knowable, and to whom we are ultimately responsible. Instead we teach that God was not involved in our origins, that our very lives are biological happenstances and in fact are disposable should they be inconvenient to us, and that any outrageous behaviors are not sin, but disorders for which we should be excused and accommodated. I realize my viewpoint sounds out-dated and archaic, but when that world view was the foundation of our nation’s social contract, we got in trouble at school for talking in class, chewing gum, pulling a girl’s pigtails, or slouching in our school desks. We took guns to school, to be sure, but they were in the gun racks of our trucks and we used them to hunt before and after school. It never occurred to us to use them to murder our teachers and fellow students. So yes, I can stand the contempt and criticism of the left. I’ll gladly accept their scorn as they substitute creative language with a steady stream of profanity-laced tirades that I’m an idiot, a throwback to the past, and a person who should be forever silenced. But when we as a nation feared God, we didn’t fear that a 20 year old with a high powered rifle would gun down our children in their schoolrooms.

 

[zsdersw]

Huck's point was that the "systematic removal of God from our schools" is what causes these tragedies. But if G-d is omnipresent how could we or anyone else have removed him from schools? Would more daily recognition of G-d stop or greatly reduce these acts? Highly doubtful. I'm sure it brings a level of comfort to some, including Huck, to think that way.

My parents never told me I was displeasing G-d when I did something bad, they told me I was displeasing them. My punishment was from them; they didn't invoke G-d or fire and brimstone imagery to get my compliance.

Indeed. It's completely nonsense that a supposedly omnipresent "God" who created everyone and everything is somehow dependent upon getting daily/hourly affectations, worship, and praise lest there be dire consequences. The all-too-convenient rationale being something to the effect of "we are incapable of understanding his ways". That sounds like a perfect system of control, which is exactly what religions are: systems of control. They have little or nothing to do with spirituality.

Are there other non-religious systems of control? Sure, but none use eternal damnation and misery as a consequence for undesirable acts or promise eternal happiness for performing desirable acts.

 

[rudder]

We can really solve all these problems by just giving everybody a gun. We will be much safer if everyone has a gun...cause you know, that has worked so well.

How many people have to die before these idiots stop claiming that "guns don't kill people"?

How about compare rates of mass killings between the United States and Europe? I think you may find statistics comparable. Even Germany with it's strict gun laws has seen it's share of mass shootings.