Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not matter.
Common evangelical beliefs, right? Many Christians would say “Amen!” to that if it was said by a preacher.
It’s actually taken from the online journal of George Sodini, the man who killed 3 women and hurt 15 by opening fire in a LA Fitness gym a few days ago.
It was his justification for killing people. God forgives sin, salvation is not based on works but on faith. You can kill people — like biblical heroes did — and still have the favor of God.
He knew he had some problems, and he blamed a church he attended for 13 years for them:
“Be Ye Holy, even as I have been Ye holy! Thus saith the lord thy God!”, as pastor Rick Knapp would proclaim. Holy shit, religion is a waste. But this guy teaches (and convinced me) you can commit mass murder then still go to heaven…. guilt and fear kept me there 13 long years until Nov 2006. I think his crap did the most damage.” [December 31, 2008]
I know virtually all pastors would say killing people like this was a sin, and they’d probably be happy to say he went to hell. And I’m thankful they don’t follow what the Bible says about who should be killed, because the God of the Bible certainly didn’t have a problem with mass murder in certain contexts, seeing he did it and commanded it numerous times.
Would this man have killed those people if he wasn’t brainwashed? He was obviously mentally unstable, so perhaps he would have. I don’t know. But what I do know is he killed people with religion as his justification and comfort, like so many others do. Is there any different between him and a brainwashed Muslim who will kill himself for paradise with his God? It seems like you have to be mentally unstable to believe that, too.
George didn’t need prayer. He didn’t need Jesus. What he needed was someone to help him through his problems, and if he couldn’t be helped, to be locked up in order to protect others.
Perhaps some people need religion to be moral, but does that really make up for all the evil people do in the name of religion?
See also: Before Aerobics Massacre, Sodini Read Sexist Christian Author’s Book; Gym shooter posted video monologues online
Religion went from evoking feelings of fear to feelings of comfort, but neither result requires the catalyst to be based in anything truthful.
“George didn’t need prayer. He didn’t need Jesus. What he needed was someone to help him through his problems, and if he couldn’t be helped, to be locked up in order to protect others.”
Perhaps so, but faith/religion has helped a lot of people overcome/live with their issues.
I’ve seen Heifer International advertises here. Do you know they help people in whatever social setting they find them. A lot of their groups are religion-based, (e.g. church) for instance. It’d be great if we (theists and atheists) all help people like they are doing – without judging/preaching/unpreaching to them.
If George Sodini didn’t do this “in the name of religion”, as you claim, he would have done it in the name of something else. There are very few references to anything biblical or Christian in his journal and no reasonable person could draw the conclusion that his act of violence had any root whatsoever in religion. He was mentally unstable, isolated, and suffering from the worst effects of said isolation. He even admits that he thinks everything Knapp taught his was bullshit. Grind your axe elsewhere, pal.
If George Sodini didn’t do this “in the name of religion”, as you claim, he would have done it in the name of something else.
I agree. Mental illness is an incredibly complex thing. If it’s not God’s voice in your ear, then it’s aliens, or past presidents, or the CIA.
I don’t know a lot about this guy, but judging from the quote Daniel drew from his journals, it sounds like he didn’t even buy what his pastor was selling anyway:
“Be Ye Holy, even as I have been Ye holy! Thus saith the lord thy God!”, as pastor Rick Knapp would proclaim. Holy shit, religion is a waste. But this guy teaches (and convinced me) you can commit mass murder then still go to heaven…. guilt and fear kept me there 13 long years until Nov 2006. I think his crap did the most damage.” [December 31, 2008]
Interesting how different people from different perspectives see very different points of emphasis in the same words.
I presume next time someone does soemthing good in the name of Jesus/god/zeus/allah etc. you’ll think “well he would have done that anyway”?
:-)
Very few forms of severe mental illness manifest themselves through random acts of kindness, fellowship, and generosity. In the unlikely event the person in question does suffer from a disease that makes them particularly virtuous, then yes, I would attribute their actions to the disease.
I know you said that partially tongue in cheek, and that’s not lost on me, but I do have to agree with Steve here. Mental illness is the problem here, not religion. It’s frustrating to me how often the two things get confused around here.
But I hear your point, and I’ve never been one to say that religion (much less Christianity) has a monopoly on goodness. I do agree with you there :)
actually, I think misogyny is a big issue here as well… there often is a jump to “mental illness” because we don’t want to believe that he really is “bad like that” but right now we don’t know. He might not be mentally ill, he might just be a disgusting individual.
Yeah, that’s true. We don’t know yet. But, usually people who do this kinda stuff are … that’s the assumption I’m working under. But, I could be wrong; time will tell.
This is the part that gets me: But this guy teaches (and convinced me) you can commit mass murder then still go to heaven.
It echos the quote from his blog on Aug. 3rd that Daniel led with. It seems like Sodini outwardly rejected the preachings of his former church, while at the same time internalizing some of the message.
I wouldn’t lay the blame on religion in general, or on Christianity as a whole. It seem like he’d gotten involved in a very toxic church – the Tetelestai Church according to the Daily Kos article – which seems to be an odd blend of Calvinism and Men are from Mars ….
Yeah, that’s a fair statement I think.
Correct me if I’m wrong (Because I really have followed this closely), but didn’t the guy leave the church in 2006?
Further, should we really just take this guy at his word and accept that he presents a realistic picture of his former church and pastor? I mean, the guy is a mass murderer; maybe he’s not representing that church and pastor fairly. I don’t know for sure, like I said, just a thought.
So let’s change the type of religion. Muslim terrorists. Would those teens who blow themselves up do it if it wasn’t for religion? Or would they have done it anyway because they are mentally unstable?
Seems to me religion plays some part and encourages the extreme acts these folks are attracted to.
Muslims blow themselves up because they will be rewarded with a harem of virgins.
Apples and oranges?
Hold you horses there … how many Muslim suicide bombers have there been compared to Muslims. If it was a simply as you describe there wouldn’t be any Muslims left.
I meant to include the word “terrorists” like Daniel did above. An innocent typo, but it obviously communicated something I didn’t intend to.
Obviously, not all Muslims believe that; the terrorists who blow themselves up do.
Even inserting the word terrorist doesn’t really explain such a complicated action such as taking you own life and others. To just say ‘they believe they will be rewarded in heaven’ is a really simplistic viewpoint.
I gotta big-time disagree with you there, Gulker. You don’t get to plead for tolerance for your faith (whatever it is), and then go and malign a giant swath of the human race like that.
Read “Three Cups of Tea”, and you will see how irrelevant religion is to philanthropy and evil alike.
I misspoke; it was a typo. See above. I didn’t intend to malign a giant swath of the human race … I thought it would be understood I was talking about “Muslim terrorists,” since I was directly responding to Daniel who used those words.
Anyway, insert the word “terrorist” after Muslim, and you’ll see what I intended to say.
In once case people are rewarded because they are mass-murders. In the other, they’re rewarded despite the fact that they’re mass-murderers. Yes, there’s a difference there. No, it’s not a big one. Apples and pears, maybe.
Yes, there’s a difference there. No, it’s not a big one
If you kill yourself while killing infidels, you get a harem of virgins as a reward. That’s extremist Islam.
Christian teaching is that no one is beyond redemption, even a killer. “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission” seems to be how people are reading that statement. But that’s not Christianity.
So, I still think it’s apples and oranges to compare the idea of forgiveness/redemption with the harem of virgins.
I have to agree. Since both rationales end in murder, it’s apples and pears.
I believe in forgivenness and redemption; yet, I’m not a murder. The same holds true for the overwhelming majority.
There is an enormous difference between believing:
No one is beyond redemption AND murdering infidels fetches a reward in the afterlife.
I agree there is a difference. One expects a reward for the valor of his actions. The other seeks to escape punishment. So it’s not apples and apples, necessarily. But since they both use religious justification they have something in common. Though Sodini rejected the specifics of his religious group, he nevertheless retained the precept of (can’t think of the word) “preordained” forgiveness.
Lots of Muslims also don’t randomly go around killing infidels, either. Possibly because they don’t read it as killing so much as converting them.
The crazies, however…
The crazies, however…
But that’s precisely the point. The crazies are crazy because they are crazy, and any ideology or belief structure that gives shape to their particular crazy is tangential at best to the important part: they’re crazy. I have seen no credible evidence that Christianity or Islam or Libertarianism or Communism have a causative relationship with crazy. They are rather epiphenomenal hangers-on, and most people who are of those (and many other) ideologies and/or belief systems are decidedly not crazy, esp. in the homicidal sense.
Elemenope: agreed. The crazies just get a nice justification like they would with any other belief system, or none at all.
Is this any different than if he was an atheist white supremacist justifying himself through the non-existence of God and some warped interpretation of evolution to support eugenics? Give me a break. People do crazy stuff because they are messed up people, not because “Jesus made them do it.” I consider myself a humanist before anything else, and FFS I get sick of all this BS fingerpointing and hand-wringing every time some nutjob does something insane in the name of Jesus. If more people knew about that Flying Spaghetti Monster and Cthulhu, people would do crazy stuff for them too. Maybe people who are serious about atheism/humanism should think about quitting participating in this tiresome pissing contest between “religious” and “non-religious.” The US-THEM dichotomy is pretty counterproductive to ostensible humanist goals as well as pretty much all benevolent goals of religion. Geez.
Yes you might even describe his actions as “Unreasonable Faith”, does that ring any bells?
And yet, they don’t. Millions of people know of Cthulhu, and some similar number of the FSM. Yet we haven’t heard of anyone killing for them. Killing using Jesus or Allah or God as the enabler, yes. But not the IPU or any of the other popularly-accepted-to-be-fictional gods.
As for the white supremacists–they tend to advance notions of “White Christian Heritage.” Which suggests that most of them aren’t atheists, no?
In fact, I can’t thing of any of these Nazi outfits that doesn’t tend to emphasize Christianity either in print or by implication. Funny co-incidence, that.
In my experience there are no atheist white supremicists. They all claim to be christian. This guy was taught that no matter his deeds, heaven awaits if he believes. Religion does not have a good history, especially the revealed religions. If you do not accept the reveation that will gain you heaven rather than hell, all to often the religious decide you may as well get to hell a little sooner. You are killed, your property is taken as well as your daughters since that is what god wants.
“Atheist white supremacist” was just a for instance. : )
All I’m trying to get at is that people do bad, crazy things for a whole host of different reasons.
Only about 5% or so of the population in America self-identifies as atheist. That 5% is disproportionately of above-average education and socio-economic status, so I imagine most atheist criminals are committing white-collar crimes. I would suspect though, that the relative non-violence and seeming tolerance and open-mindedness of atheists is not a function of a superior philosophy, but rather of the fact that there aren’t enough of them to constitute a lynch mob yet.
“I would suspect though,”
Not the stronegst argument I’ve heard …
“I would suspect though, that the only reason Christians aren’t killing non-believers is that they haven’t formed a lynch mob yet.”
The bigger a group of people, the larger its Ignorant Jerkwad Quotient. This is true of Christianity. And Islam. And Judaism. And Republicans. And Democrats. And yes, there are even ignorant jerkwad atheists. Bigger groups just have bigger numbers and better ways of coordinating their ignorant jerkwads into displays of public stupidity. Have you checked out the Birthers?
I’ll repeat, saying “I would suspect though, …” really isn’t very convincing is it?
You speak sense, Bridget. I am sad to say I have been more a part of the problem than the solution.
Thanks for the reality check.
“The bigger a group of people, the larger its Ignorant Jerkwad Quotient.”
As a general rule, that’s true. But here’s another: a group people who believe in superstition rather than rationality is going to have a much higher proportion of ignorance and hence a higher Jerkwad Quotient.
I’m disgusted by this fellow also because of his racism and sexism, in bemoaning the fact that he was certain women he was old enough to be father too were having sex with black men instead of himself… and he went out to kill “desirable women” because they had rejected him, while himself not even considering ever asking out someone he considered “undesirable.” His writings referred to having a female companion in the same sort of language as a fancy car or other status symbol, they weren’t human to him. That might also possibly have been driven by religion, but I think this type of misogynistic thinking pervades society and I’m not sure that ALL of it can be pinned on religion.
I think there’s a better argument that this incident reflects popular misogyny than religion causing bad things, unless you want to trace the former to the prevalence of the latter… but it’s an indirect cause at least.
Minor correction: It was an LA Fitness gym outside of Pittsburgh.
I think it’s safe to say that religion wasn’t the catalyst for George’s actions, but I wondered if his belief in a god that had already forgiven him gave him the mental fortitude he needed to carry out his plan.
He stated on his blog that he tried to do the act at least once before, but “chickened out.” I think the last post he made — the day before the murders — was when he made the statement that he was going to see Jesus and that he was already forgiven for what he was about to do.
Is George with Jesus now? I couldn’t say. But he is finally getting something he never got in life — the attention he so craved.
I think this guy was the usual zeta male: Desperate, horny, and so self-un-aware that he couldn’t see the inherent contradictions in his world view–Including the bizarre religious ones.
Still, had no-one convinced him that he could murder and still go to heaven, I don’t believe he’d have done it. The zeta male is usally a timid thing right up until the point where someone supplies him with what he thinks of as power. Such as a gun, an excuse, or a rationale. That it’s inconsistent is of no weight.
This guy was both pathetic and crazy, and the lessons his church set out to teach enabled him. Full stop. Perhaps if religion hadn’t gotten in the way he might have gotten the help he needed.
He was sixth in line of authority? Or do you mean “omega male”? Just because “Zeta” begins with a Z doesn’t mean it’s the last Greek letter…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_(biology)#Beta_and_omega
my question to George is:
How’s that workin for ya?
Hey Daniel—well, I suppose he did need someone to help him through his problems. Would you have been willing to do it? I know many “religious” people whose faith makes them willing to sit with people for long hours, helping them work through problems. Does your belief/unbelief prompt you to do that—or just to write articles critical of others?