Sam Harris

Ill. state police: 1 killed in church shooting

“Our great God is not surprised by this, or anything,” Nate Adams, executive director of the Illinois Baptist State Association, said in a statement. “That He allows evil and free will to have their way in tragedies like this is a mystery in many ways. But we know we can trust Him no matter what, and draw close to Him in any circumstances.”

Adams knows the innermost feeling of his unknowable god, and yet god is also a mystery . . . whom he can trust. He can draw close to him, even though he might allow him to be gunned down for mysterious reasons. 

This sounds like such an unhealthy relationship.

It sucks when god comes home drunk and angry!

Beam - 08 March 2009 08:52 PM

It sucks when god comes home drunk and angry!

There is a part in “Kalifornia” (1993) where Adele (Juliette Lewis) says about her her abusive husband Early (Brad Pitt):

I ain’t saying Early ain’t never hit me… but he never hurt me. When I was fourteen years old three boys raped me in the back of a truck, and beat me so bad I was in bed for almost four months…

I feel safe with Early, most the time he treats me pretty good. And I know he wouldn’t let nothin’ like that ever happen to me again…

A passenger on a Greyhound bus went crazy and stabbed a fellow passenger (whom he did not know) 28 times, then he beheaded him and cut out some organs (some say that he ate certain parts).  In his trial in Winnipeg, Lee claimed that god told him to kill the innocent 20 year old because he was the devil. 

The judge found him “not guilty” by reason of insanity last week.

It seems to me that when “god told me to do it” is used as an excuse for any human action it should be considered as insanity, but it cannot be used to run from the responsibility for one’s actions.  What has to happen is to widely accept that anyone who believes in god is already flirting with insanity, and if George Bush can use “god told me to do it” and get away with the ultimate murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and some nutcase can use the god excuse to get away with a brutal murder of an innocent young lad, then we must make it manditory that all those who believe in god MUST still be held responsible for their actions.  How does a belief that “god told me” free one from responsibility? That kind of application of justice is surely insane to begin with, and those who accept this kind of “divine intervention” plea are just as guilty and almost as insane as the perpetrators of crime.

Bob

frozen buns - 09 March 2009 05:21 PM

It seems to me that when “god told me to do it” is used as an excuse for any human action it should be considered as insanity, but it cannot be used to run from the responsibility for one’s actions.

If it’s a genuine case of insanity then it wasn’t being used as an excuse or to run from responsibility, but it was a genuine perception of the nature of reality.

Byron