This is very sad rant against atheism — sad because this is the guy who shot and killed Asia McGowan and then killed himself:
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does anybody have another link or a description for those of us in non-youtube friendly countries?
The guy who did the murder/suicide going on a rant about how “full of rage” and “pathetic and stupid” atheist are, says that atheists are “from the devil and not even human [sic]“, “children all over the world are being deceived by evolution”, calls atheist “filthy [and] disgusting”.
Then he calls atheists “Monkeys”, “animals”, “flies” and “dogs”.
He talks a lot about some arsehole fundamentalist called venomfangx on YouTube (I think).
He also rants a lot about women in a very mesoginistic way.
He comes across as manic and apparently was diagnosed as depressive.
The guy was disturbed and angry – I think because he was conflicted over his religion and his inability to prove the existence of god – he needed help, and he didn’t get it.
The news is far more sympathetic to him as a murderer than they are to most other insane killers. After all, it was only a dirty atheist he killed.
This is different to the woman who killed her son because she was mentally ill… This really was down to the guy’s religion.
Venomfangx is a story into and of himself. He’s a pastor who posts anti-atheist videos while asking for “donations” in an increasingly sketchy way. There are several videos out there that focus on his money schemes. FFreethinker is a channel that has some stuff on him.
taking your own life is one thing. taking another life in the process is an entirely different thing
the guy seemed like an asshole when he was alive and he went to his grave an asshole
I hope this fool didn’t have a chance to reproduce before eradicating himself from the gene pool.
People like that scare the shit out of me. The very fact that stupidity like this is socially acceptable anywhere is a very good case for us to start colonizing on other planets.
Exactly, Prash. Carl Sagan said the same thing …he said “should we spend the money and time to fix the problems on this planet first, or are they reasons to leave?” That kind of person truly IS scary. He rants about “hateful atheists”, but its ironic that believers are the one who hate and kill over beliefs for eons. Athiests are rational thinkers and believe only in the human effort…we have never killed anyone to further the Atheist agenda!!
Caroline –
I am not sure why but my response to you has been posted in the middle of the comments. Please go read it there, because I don’t think retyping it would work out well.
Thanks!
~Ruthie
The problem is that attacks that will not be accepted anywhere else are completely OK when targeted at atheists. They had captions on the video saying that we should remember that religion was not the only reason for his actions. Can you imagine the field day the media would have had if it turned out some nutjob who went on a murder spree had posted a video about the evil of religion. This guy was obviously disturbed to start with but since even the mainstream religious speakers have no problem going on and on about how without the belief in god atheist have no morals and how god and the fear of hell is the only reason why someone will not just go and start raping and killing give’s a fertile ground to people who are already mentally unstable to jump to the conclusion that by killing atheists they are saving all of the people that said atheists would have otherwise murdered.
Just watched that video, he was obviously Manic at the time he made it and probobly the others, he was also diagnosed as depressive. 1+1=bipolar, or manic depressive. A primary sympton of bipolar mania is “hyper-religiosity”, this is seen as when bipolars think God is talking directly to them (prophecy ect) and become completly obsessed over it. I think that his illness combined with his basic religious education and by talking with many athiests probobly encountered fundamental logic issues which his illness overpowered when he was Manic, but when he crashed from the mania into depression overwhelmed him. I would bet my bottom dollar he was in a “rapid cycling” stage of the illness, which can make a person as energized as what you see in the video but completly depressed in his mindset.
Bottom line, if he had not fixated on religion, it would have been something else. He refused treatment and medication according to his parents. Bipolar killed him, not his faith, lack of faith, or misplaced faith. Another sad statement on the pitiful state of our mental health system in America.
what a jack ass, it would not supprise if that moron had had a history of mental issues which had long been untreated. i would be an athiest somewhere maybe online exposed his non sense. if someone is crazy and you take away a signifigant safety net the consequences of that can be tramautic.
when i stopped believing in god it was one of the most emotionally tramautic things i have ever been through.
These are the type of people christians like me disaprove of. we beleive in God ye, but also in tolerance of other religons. This guy was a total maniac and shouldn’t be representing God in any way.
FYI Caroline and others, that atheists have never killed anyone to further their agenda is untrue. Indeed, in Russia (and China? don’t remember) atheism was the official policy of the state, and religious practitioners, especially those caught in worship, were systematically executed. The murder of churchgoers simply for being churchgoers has happened, is something we cannot ignore and forget, and could happen again. See the Wikipedia entry.
I am an atheist, but in practice, atheism, like many religions, is a set of beliefs — I think of it like a toolbox with which you approach the world. Atheism has different tools than most deist religions, and those tools serve different purposes, but like all tools can be used for harm or good, depending more on the wielder than anything. It is not a stretch to say that those who say “religious people will destroy us all” can be taken beyond the pale to, “religious people should be executed for the good of the larger group/humanity.” They (some of them) do the same thing to us. While atheists do not have AS LONG or AS LARGE a record of murder and “justified killing,” the record is there. I suspect that the only reason it’s less grim is because historically, atheism hasn’t had as much time to get screwed up and perverted into a weapon of war and persecution as religious systems. Like many belief systems, how much and how effectively it is used this way is only a matter of time and a matter of having the “right person” to execute it that way.
I believe strongly in moral atheism. But I also know that anyone who thinks that their belief system is antithetical to “evil” or violence or malicious intent is becoming complacent. It doesn’t matter if you’re a religious evangelical Christian who thinks that “God is love” and anyone who doesn’t believe so is not a “real” Christian (and therefore, the beliefs you ascribe to are not responsible for any violence, despite the hate and disdain regularly and publicly directed at non-Christians by your fellow believers), or an atheist who insists that atheism is truly moral, that atheists are indeed motivated by an even stronger moral compulsion, who denies the murders that HAVE been perpetrated “for the cause” or insists that that isn’t what your belief system is about. It may not be for you personally, or even for the larger group, but there are always outliers who are willing to pervert your beautiful belief system for their own cause, for their own gain, for whatever. Christians have Hitler, we have Stalin. Neither groups can deny their existence and be intellectually honest.
The fact is, atheism can be and has been used for evil, as can Christianity, Islam, and any religion you care to name. It doesn’t matter if your belief system strictly, directly, and explicitly opposes such tactics — they can be, and are, used anyway, integrated by others outside of your influence or control.
This guy was manic depressive, I think that’s relatively obvious. People with mental illnesses who are predisposed to this sort of outburst will seize on whatever belief system is close by. There is NO evidence and NO reason to suspect that fundamentalist religious people are any more dangerous or hateful than fundamentalist atheist people (see: Stalin). To declare otherwise is the height of paranoia and reflects a hypocritical, non-scientific, anecdotal conclusion that atheists so pride themselves on rejecting. If you are not a fundamentalist who is willing to hurt or kill others for your belief system, regardless of whether that’s atheism or something religious, you are not a problem. But if you DO see extremists and fundamentalists within your ranks, you should feel morally obligated to speak to them, simply because we are all more likely to listen to people who agree with us, more likely to be persuaded by someone who shares our overall worldview, atheist and Christian/religious alike.
We need to take the logs out of our own eyes before focusing on the splinter in others’.
(Yeah, the Bible does have _some_ good stuff in it. This is one of them.)
Anyone who thinks that atheism CANNOT be used for evil (or that that’s not “real” atheism, code for “it’s not my problem”) is just as scary to me as similar Christian denialists.
She was no more mentally ill than this guy. They both did it for their religion.
To be honest, I disagree. She was schizophrenic and delusional. This guy was enraged over his inability to reconcile his faith with reality. There’s a big difference.
OK. True. What I meant, though I suck at writing, lol, is that religion was the instigator of both. In his case because it bred hate and in hers because she wasn’t crazy, she was just filled with the spirit of God.
Or at least that’s how I look at it in her case. Until she killed someone she was just a Jesus Freak. After that she became insane. At least according to the religious folks who decided that talking to God or seeing him or feeling his spirit was completely sane but not when it makes you kill someone. I personally don’t understand the distinction since their is no difference. Except that one takes their insanity too far.
/rant
lol, no need for the rant HTML tag, mate. She actually thought she was Satan and her son was the anti-Christ. That’s insane. This guy, however, was trying to deal with the idea that everything that was most important to him, his ultimate truth, the thing that he believed more than any other thing, has no evidence to support it and was a fairly easily disproved lie. It’s rage versus madness, though he might have been depressive – but I would contest that his depression was triggered by his confliction over his religion. And I know whereof I speak where mental illness is concerned :-)
damn. well thanks for the description; that guy sounds like a piece of work.
The news is far more sympathetic to him as a murderer than they are to most other insane killers. After all, it was only a dirty atheist he killed.
Waitaminute, your wrong, he didn’t kill the woman because she was an atheist.