huckabee attributes kiddie shooting to separation of church and state

[Pens1566]

It was only a matter of time for that sort of statement.


Up next: This is God's punishment for <sin of the week>.

Westboro Baptist Church is already on that. "God sent the shooter". Nutbags.

Oh, and Huckabee is a worthless piece of shit.

 

[jstern01]

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.

Not even close.

Germany since 1996 (none since 2009) - 31 people in 3 mass shootings
United States since 1999 - 2011 (Does not include 2012 mass shootings) - 123 in 11 mass shootings.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/mass-shootings-in-the-united-states-since-1999/1/209346.html

 

[jstern01]

Here is a better timeline/picture of mass shootings in the US.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...mass-shootings-in-the-US-since-Columbine.html

 

[Retro Rob]

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.

Actually, I was asking an honest question.

The facts are that people commit crimes, go to jall, find "god" while in jail, and once released, they sometimes pick up where they left off.

It's also a fact that people join gangs and other such groups for protection as well while in prison. I agree with one thing, trying to find a direct correlation between violence and things like race, age, location, religion etc, falls on shaky ground.

It's like trying to directly connect sneezing with having a cold. Many other things can cause one to sneeze.

Start by figuring out what causes people to want to be violent, then you'll get your answer.

 

[Ausm]

Here is a better timeline/picture of mass shootings in the US.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...mass-shootings-in-the-US-since-Columbine.html

Looks like an NRA Utopia!

 

[HomerJS]

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.

It's less about attacking Huckabee for being Christian but more for his stupidity.

If Ann Coulter has said this the reaction would be the same and she is less of a christian then most.

 

[Jeff7]

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. :\

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.
...

So it would seem that this "fear" of accountability from God is also quite flawed.
Heck, numerous outright atrocities have been sanctioned and committed in the name of this same god.

If this religion thing is meant to improve our behavior, it doesn't appear to have a very good track record.
And when you fully believe that the all-powerful creator of everything is on your side, you are therefore incapable of doing anything wrong.

 

[Retro Rob]

So it would seem that this "fear" of accountability from God is also quite flawed.
Heck, numerous outright atrocities have been sanctioned and committed in the name of this same god.

What "God", Jeff? If God is so made-up and non-existent, how can said "atrocities" be sanctioned by a fictional person, expecially seeing how these are real actrocites?

Would you actually be willing to prove that this "god" is sactioning these atrocities and that they aren't due to some crazy killer looking to kill, or are you again spouting off baseless claims about something you obviously know nothing about?

The effort you, and others, are putting forward to directly connect violence to religion is astounding... as if all non-violent people are not religious. No need to keep hiding your hate, intolerance, and bigotry behind vague and sensationalized statistics.

Just come on out and say it.

 

[sandorski]

What "God", Jeff? If God is so made-up and non-existent, how can said "atrocities" be sanctioned by a fictional person, expecially seeing how these are real actrocites?

Would you actually be willing to prove that this "god" is sactioning these atrocities and that they aren't due to some crazy killer looking to kill, or are you again spouting off baseless claims about something you obviously know nothing about?

The effort you, and others, are putting forward to directly connect violence to religion is astounding... as if all non-violent people are not religious. No need to keep hiding your hate, intolerance, and bigotry behind vague and sensationalized statistics.

Just come on out and say it.

Open a History book or hell, even the Bible.

 

[Retro Rob]

Open a History book or hell, even the Bible.

lol, indeed.

 

[alzan]

What "God", Jeff? If God is so made-up and non-existent, how can said "atrocities" be sanctioned by a fictional person, expecially seeing how these are real actrocites?

Would you actually be willing to prove that this "god" is sactioning these atrocities and that they aren't due to some crazy killer looking to kill, or are you again spouting off baseless claims about something you obviously know nothing about?

The effort you, and others, are putting forward to directly connect violence to religion is astounding... as if all non-violent people are not religious. No need to keep hiding your hate, intolerance, and bigotry behind vague and sensationalized statistics.

Just come on out and say it.

To Jeff7 or other non-believers G-d is made-up and non-existent. To believers he/she/it is real and according to "his word" many atrocities directly attributable to him are detailed throughout the OT, including the slaughter of innocent children.

I and a lot of others think that these killings were perpetrated by a emotionally and/or mentally distressed young man. It's Huckabee and his ilk who keep wanting to blame the lack of G-d in schools as the root of all our evils; the efforts they put forward to directly connect violence to lack of religion is astounding. No need to keep hiding their ignorance, fear and bigotry behind a vague and sensationalized book of parables.

 

[Retro Rob]

To Jeff7 or other non-believers G-d is made-up and non-existent. To believers he/she/it is real and according to "his word" many atrocities directly attributable to him are detailed throughout the OT, including the slaughter of innocent children.

If this is the case, then why are there religious people who don't "slaughter childern", and commit many atrocities if they are to follow "his word"?

Those "believers" are taking it upon themselves, that is clear.... unless you can provide me with some observable and testable evidence that God is indeed talking directly to these people and making them do these things. If not, you're quite possibly spreading lies.

I and a lot of others think that these killings were perpetrated by a emotionally and/or mentally distressed young man. It's Huckabee and his ilk who keep wanting to blame the lack of G-d in schools as the root of all our evils; the efforts they put forward to directly connect violence to lack of religion is astounding. No need to keep hiding their ignorance, fear and bigotry behind a vague and sensationalized book of parables.

No, I thought I was clear on this -- I don't attribute violence to the lack of God. It's due to the lack of respect for life, and being void of compassion and emotion, and indeed some form of mental illness.

 

[CallMeJoe]

If this is the case, then why are there religious people who don't "slaughter childern", and commit many atrocities if they are to follow "his word"?

And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

 

[DrPizza]

Actually, I was asking an honest question.

The facts are that people commit crimes, go to jall, find "god" while in jail, and once released, they sometimes pick up where they left off.

It's also a fact that people join gangs and other such groups for protection as well while in prison. I agree with one thing, trying to find a direct correlation between violence and things like race, age, location, religion etc, falls on shaky ground.

It's like trying to directly connect sneezing with having a cold. Many other things can cause one to sneeze.

Start by figuring out what causes people to want to be violent, then you'll get your answer.

I don't think you understand the word "correlation." Correlations are very easy to find. It's causation that requires much firmer ground. However, the context of this thread - the OP about Huckabee's stance that *lack* of religion causes these things - if that's the case, then one would expect AT LEAST some correlation between violence and lack of religion. However, such correlation does not exist. In fact, lack of religion is correlated with less violence, not more violence. That's not sketchy data - that's solid data. It doesn't mean that less religion *causes* a decrease in violence, but it most certainly demonstrates that less religion doesn't increase violence.


e.g., if you notice that when A increases it's associated with a decrease in B, you can claim that there's a correlation. That data alone doesn't mean that A causes the decrease in B.

However, if when A increases then B decreases - if that's what the data says - then I'm flabbergasted that you would conclude that an increase in A *causes* an increase in B (which is what Huckabee has claimed.) I think the people in this thread are using the data to soundly dispute Huckabee's claim - not using the data to actually claim that atheism causes a decrease in violence. (And Shira has posted a very likely reason for the correlation above.)

 

[alzan]

If this is the case, then why are there religious people who don't "slaughter childern", and commit many atrocities if they are to follow "his word"?

Those "believers" are taking it upon themselves, that is clear.... unless you can provide me with some observable and testable evidence that God is indeed talking directly to these people and making them do these things. If not, you're quite possibly spreading lies.

No, I thought I was clear on this -- I don't attribute violence to the lack of God. It's due to the lack of respect for life, and being void of compassion and emotion, and indeed some form of mental illness.

I never said that believers should follow his word; I was pointing out that to many believers the Bible is the inerrant word of God. All do not follow his word, good for them. They've seen through the BS. To them the Bible provides personal guidelines. To believers, I wonder if the questions linger with them: What do they think of a deity who slaughters innocents in neighboring regions, who rains fire and brimstone down upon towns judged to be not holy, who floods the world for forty days killing all but a select few or who brings bears from the woods to slaughter 42 children?

It is not contingent upon me or any other non-believer to prove that something that is non-existent is talking to his believers to convince them to commit atrocities; it wasn't non-believers who foisted this scam known as G-d upon the world. It is however up to Huckabee and his ilk to prove that the removal of G-d from our schools and/or the lack of daily recognition of/to him is directly responsible for this and other atrocities. They are the ones who are most definitely spreading lies.

 

[Retro Rob]

I don't think you understand the word "correlation." Correlations are very easy to find. It's causation that requires much firmer ground. However, the context of this thread - the OP about Huckabee's stance that *lack* of religion causes these things - if that's the case, then one would expect AT LEAST some correlation between violence and lack of religion. However, such correlation does not exist. In fact, lack of religion is correlated with less violence, not more violence. That's not sketchy data - that's solid data. It doesn't mean that less religion *causes* a decrease in violence, but it most certainly demonstrates that less religion doesn't increase violence.


e.g., if you notice that when A increases it's associated with a decrease in B, you can claim that there's a correlation. That data alone doesn't mean that A causes the decrease in B.

However, if when A increases then B decreases - if that's what the data says - then I'm flabbergasted that you would conclude that an increase in A *causes* an increase in B (which is what Huckabee has claimed.) I think the people in this thread are using the data to soundly dispute Huckabee's claim - not using the data to actually claim that atheism causes a decrease in violence. (And Shira has posted a very likely reason for the correlation above.)

Thanks, exuse my ignorance. Just so used to using "correlation" and not "causation". Didn't pay attention to the difference.

 

[Jeff7]

What "God", Jeff? If God is so made-up and non-existent, how can said "atrocities" be sanctioned by a fictional person, expecially seeing how these are real actrocites?

I'm not the one saying God is real. It's called a "hypothetical situation."
Let's go into a thread about Star Wars.
I can discuss events in Star Wars, or even go into how things would be in our society if light sabers were real.
That doesn't mean I believe in those things, it means I'm working within the fantasy realm being discussed.

Would you actually be willing to prove that this "god" is sactioning these atrocities and that they aren't due to some crazy killer looking to kill, or are you again spouting off baseless claims about something you obviously know nothing about?

I'm not the one who's said that this god has sanctioned these things. Many others have said this to justify or promote their actions (racism, murder of heretics, etc), and I'm simply echoing what they have said.

And how does anyone know that someone who's killing, or otherwise causing society harm, isn't doing God's work? People claim to hear voices in their heads - some of them are called "prophets" and held up as holy people with some direct linkup to God. Nowadays, hearing voices in your head and doing what they tell you can end up with you getting the metnal help you need, provided by the state.

The effort you, and others, are putting forward to directly connect violence to religion is astounding... as if all non-violent people are not religious. No need to keep hiding your hate, intolerance, and bigotry behind vague and sensationalized statistics.

Just come on out and say it.

It actually takes very little effort. The "effort" consists of pointing and saying "Hey look at that." The connections make themselves.

If this is the case, then why are there religious people who don't "slaughter childern", and commit many atrocities if they are to follow "his word"?

Those "believers" are taking it upon themselves, that is clear.... unless you can provide me with some observable and testable evidence that God is indeed talking directly to these people and making them do these things. If not, you're quite possibly spreading lies.
...

Interpretations and prevailing social attitudes change over time, and religions have to adapt and follow suit. Time was, it was perfectly legal and fair to own another person, and the Bible so kindly even provided rules on how to treat them, even so far as how to go about beating them properly. Women were second-class citizens (or just property), and baby-producers. Society's decided that these are injustices, and religion's tried to reconcile that - for example, the whole thing of, "Well that was the old Testament. Things were different back then."
Ok, so this book written/inspired by a timeless and entirely benevolent entity was conveniently written such that it agreed with the prevailing mores of the time? Wouldn't there have been some more compassionate information presented? ("People don't like being owned or beaten. You should really stop doing that.")

And again, I'm simply telling you what others have said - we've been told by religious leaders that bad things happen because people did bad things. In some cases, the people who allegedly caused most of our problems lived a long time ago, such as Adam and Eve. (I'm just glad we don't treat our prisoners like that. Give birth in jail? That kid's got to spend his life in jail, as do any of his descendents. Forever. Sucks to be you, kid.)

Why are they wrong, and you're right?



Testable evidence that God is telling them to do things: Until we can find testable evidence that God even exists in the first place, then there's not a whole heck of a lot we can do to find evidence that God is telling these people to do anything at all. As it stands, such evidence of existence of any gods of any sort is quite exceptionally elusive.

 

[Retro Rob]

I'm not the one who's said that this god has sanctioned these things. Many others have said this to justify or promote their actions (racism, murder of heretics, etc), and I'm simply echoing what they have said.

And how does anyone know that someone who's killing, or otherwise causing society harm, isn't doing God's work? People claim to hear voices in their heads - some of them are called "prophets" and held up as holy people with some direct linkup to God. Nowadays, hearing voices in your head and doing what they tell you can end up with you getting the metnal help you need, provided by the state

Your whole point is well-taken, and well said.

 

[Kadarin]

Over-religious idiots will of course say that bad things like this happen because we don't instill enough fear of God in children in school. Huckabee is an over-religious idiot.

 

[shadow9d9]

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.

You want Republicans openly talking about being racist? Well, they do openly talk about how rape is god's will nowadays...

Go look at the civil rights voting map with the Romney/Obama map of 2012. It is near 100% the same.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

And this is why conservatives need to reform their party. Still have retards like Huckabee that think religion has any place in politics. Fuck, when are these old fucks going to die off? The older generation of stupidity is strong in the republican party. At least the liberals are picking up the new generation of stupidity.

 

[Kadarin]

And this is why conservatives need to reform their party. Still have retards like Huckabee that think religion has any place in politics. Fuck, when are these old fucks going to die off? The older generation of stupidity is strong in the republican party. At least the liberals are picking up the new generation of stupidity.

The problem is that when old fucks die off, they're replaced by slightly younger fucks who have themselves become old fucks. There's never a shortage of old fucks who need to die off.

 

[Ausm]

The problem is that when old fucks die off, they're replaced by slightly younger fucks who have themselves become old fucks. There's never a shortage of old fucks who need to die off.

Key operative.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

The problem is that when old fucks die off, they're replaced by slightly younger fucks who have themselves become old fucks. There's never a shortage of old fucks who need to die off.

Find me a young one stupid enough to say women can reject rape


Seriously, it is the old generation that is dying off - I honestly see nothing wrong with the likes of Paul Ryan.