Religious family kills grandpa.

jayleew said:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/17/man-killed-by-family-for-_n_616199.html

Religious people are dangerous. He was killed for just wanting to watch the World Cup instead of a religious program.
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Did you get this conclusion out of the subject news? I am definitely not a religious person, but I am ready to take discussion on how did you come up with this conclusion?

It says the argument was escalated; and maybe victim himself was more religious than other members of the family. Would you consider the possibility that argument can still be broke up for some other reason/programme etc?

How does this incident specifically isolate the "danger of religion"?
 
baftan said:
Did you get this conclusion out of the subject news? I am definitely not a religious person, but I am ready to take discussion on how did you come up with this conclusion?

It says the argument was escalated; and maybe victim himself was more religious than other members of the family. Would you consider the possibility that argument can still be broke up for some other reason/programme etc?

How does this incident specifically isolate the "danger of religion"?
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This is only one example of what I mean when I am talking about in the thread I started a couple days ago, "Why or why isn't religion dangerous."

If you'd like to discuss the danger of religion or the innocence of it. Here is the thread:

http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=102350

This thread here is for reactions of an isolated incident.

Here is what the police report says:

David Makoeya, a 61-year-old man from the small village of Makweya, Limpopo province, fought with his wife and two children for the remote control on Sunday because he wanted to watch Germany play Australia in the World Cup. The others, however, wanted to watch a gospel show.

"He said, 'No, I want to watch soccer,'" police spokesman Mothemane Malefo said Thursday. "That is when the argument came about.

"In that argument, they started assaulting him."

Malefo said Makoeya got up to change the channel by hand after being refused the remote control and was attacked by his 68-year-old wife Francina and two children, 36-year-old son Collin and 23-year-old daughter Lebogang.

Malefo said he was not sure what the family used to kill Makoeya.
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This report clearly states that the family wanted to watch a gospel show, and he watned to watch soccer. That is how the argument started. They were not willing to compromise concerning their religious beliefs enough to allow someone their desires. They had to watch the show and were willing to kill him to watch it.
 
jayleew said:
If you'd like to discuss the danger of religion or the innocence of it, I started a thread a couple days ago:

http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=102350
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If you'd like discuss the danger of religion I can invite you some of my own threads. But this is not a pissing contest on which of us can attack religion better than the other one. As you mentioned in here:

This thread is for reactions of an isolated incident.
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This report clearly states that the family wanted to watch a gospel show, and he watned to watch soccer. That is how the argument started.
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That's right, "that's how argument started" as I already mentioned in my previous post. But unlike your assumption, it is impossible to deduce the "danger of religion" out of this. Because I can equally claim that "the danger of football". I can only find you some examples how football arguments can end up with deaths. You might be aware of the fact that once an "argument start", it sometimes escalates so ridiculously and no one even remembers how the argument started in the first place.

They were not fighting over whose religion is superior to other one. This was not a row between religious and anti-religious ideas: It was a domestic argument, who know what other issues come up during the argument.

They were not willing to compromise concerning their religious beliefs enough to allow someone their desires. They had to watch the show and were willing to kill him to watch it.
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Really, maybe the old sod was not compromising about his football fanaticism; after all it wasn't even a South Africa match; he might have kidnapped the whole TV programmes during the week and the rest of the family could not watch a shit other than football. And just one day rest of the family wanted to make a change and insist upon a particular programme (it could have been a soup opera, that doesn't matter). Grandpa resisted and it was his last resistance.

Yes, I repeat my question: How can you distinguish religion as a unique and/or main reason behind "this particular incident"? Which part of the news signifies that?
 
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Well..I don't think it has anything in particular to do with 'religion', or 'being religious' in itself.. more like when two kids fight over which part of the cake they can have...in this instance it escalated a bit ..
 
baftan said:
That's right, "that's how argument started" as I already mentioned in my previous post. But unlike your assumption, it is impossible to deduce the "danger of religion" out of this.
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I agree, but this displays the danger of religion. Here are a group of religious folks who killed each other in one moment, and pray to God the next. That is a dangerous person, and there are many religious folks who profess to hold outstanding morals and still break the law or hurt others. When do we stop handing out the "It could happen to anyone" pass and start handing out accountability? This shit happens too much.

This is about the way they think which resulted in this tragedy. This is about rationality. If somone is irrational in one moment in believing there is a God, then that is a greater chance of irrationality when that person has someone else's life in their hands.

baftan said:
Because I can equally claim that "the danger of football". I can only find you some examples how football arguments can end up with deaths. You might be aware of the fact that once an "argument start", it sometimes escalates so ridiculously and no one even remembers how the argument started in the first place.
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If there are less differences between two people they are less likely to want to kill each other.

baftan said:
They were not fighting over whose religion is superior to other one. This was not a row between religious and anti-religious ideas: It was a domestic argument, who know what other issues come up during the argument.
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We don't know exactly what the underlying cause of the argument was. It really isn't the point. The point is it is another example of religious folks killing because the argument started because of their irrationality.


baftan said:
Really, maybe the old sod was not compromising about his football fanaticism; after all it wasn't even a South Africa match; he might have kidnapped the whole TV programmes during the week and the rest of the family could not watch a shit other than football. And just one day rest of the family wanted to make a change and insist upon a particular programme (it could have been a soup opera, that doesn't matter). Grandpa resisted and it was his last resistance.
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If the family was rational, they would have put his wishes in perspective and came to the conclusion that voilence, much less killing him, was not the answer. Irrationality is infectious in the religious.

baftan said:
Yes, I repeat my question: How can you distinguish religion as a unique and/or main reason behind "this particular incident"? Which part of the news signifies that?
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You are thinking about it from the wrong way probably because I didn't explain right.
Religion may or may not have been the direct cause, but rather the way a religious person thinks because of what and how religion teaches. Clearly there was a thinking error that allowed the murder.
Faith naturally encourages fantaticsim.
 
jayleew said:
I'll take that as a compliment. Adult thinking is too adulterated.
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No, a child cannot reason as well as an adult. Bearing in mind the two are comperable and no mental defects are present.

Think about what you are saying because then we would conclude that the other 99% of crimes are due to non religion.
 
jayleew said:
I'll take that as a compliment. Adult thinking is too adulterated.
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I think they are trying to point out that your thinking is adulterated.

Kind of like saying "guns don't kill people. People with mustaches kill people"
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:shrug:
 
That's nothing, the Mexican Drug Cartel known as La Familia uses fundamentalist evangelical Christianity to win the support of the people. Their inspiration is the book "Wild at Heart" by American evangelical author John Eldredge. They produce literally tons of methamphetamine per year, and murder hundreds thousands, while maintaining a facade of righteousness, they call their killing "divine justice".
 
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Why hold religious people to a higher standard? I see it done when it suits an agenda but this is not realistic. If they are religious, many are not, they make mistakes too.
 
Not to mention that a good 90% of the population have some kind of religion in their backgrounds. Do you believe Jeffrey Dahmer when he claims bein an Atheist led him to do what he did?
 
spidergoat said:
That's nothing, the Mexican Drug Cartel known as La Familia uses fundamentalist evangelical Christianity to win the support of the people. Their inspiration is the book "Wild at Heart" by American evangelical author John Eldredge. They produce literally tons of methamphetamine per year, and murder hundreds, while maintaining a facade of righteousness, they call their killing "divine justice".
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What is a society without value systems?
What is a value system without a symbol of authority?
What is a symbol of authority without a person(s)/institution/collective to wield it?

(IOW you can indicate any body/institution/collective that carries some sort of power as social authority that isn't tarred by a certain class of unscrupulous human being ?)
 
That seems rather irrelevant to me. Mexico has an authority, but La Familia is like a second shadow government, they provide services (rebuilding churches), collect taxes (protection money), and provide jobs (making meth). We must admit their existence is due to the failure of Mexico to provide these things, but it's still a disturbing trend. Without religion, they would just be a bunch of thugs. With religion, they have the potential to become the new authority in Michoacan, all because the population has become vulnerable to religious memes.
 
spidergoat said:
That seems rather irrelevant to me. Mexico has an authority, but La Familia is like a second shadow government, they provide services (rebuilding churches), collect taxes (protection money), and provide jobs (making meth). We must admit their existence is due to the failure of Mexico to provide these things, but it's still a disturbing trend. Without religion, they would just be a bunch of thugs. With religion, they have the potential to become the new authority in Michoacan, all because the population has become vulnerable to religious memes.
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If you can't indicate a society that doesn't have some sort of value driven authority bereft of being tarred by unscrupulous individuals, you are not really saying anything.

IOW its the nature of a certain class of person to usurp whatever social authorities exist to suit their own needs interests and concerns (So simply citing the social authorities, whether they be religion, race or even gay rights or whatever, simply acknowledges that in a certain community, certain values are at the fore ..... IOW it says absolutely nothing about the pros and cons of the said social authorities)
:shrug:
 
We are talking about a Mexican Taliban. This is what happens when the central secular government loses control. They didn't start out as a drug gang, they started out as a social justice movement to end the drug violence. Then, fueled by self-righteousness and their own personal bible-fueled values (which are violent and cruel), they took control over the trade as a business to finance their rise to power.

Teetotal Mexican drugs cartel claims divine right to push narcotics

"La Familia uses religion as a way of forcing cohesion among its members," said Raúl Benítez, an expert on Mexican trafficking organisations. "They are building a new kind of disciplined army that we have never seen here before. It makes them more dangerous."​
 
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It seems fairly clear to me that this demonstrates the danger of football. We know that many people are injured in riots at football matches. We know that football hooligans cause much damage and injury outside of football grounds. And now Jaylew offers an example where an intransigent football fan incites his family to violence. Quite right Jaylew , let's ban football.
 
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