Dr. No said:
See the cool-smiley tiassa assigned to this thread.
Wow. It only took four years for someone to notice.
Moving on to more important things:
Jan Ardena
I do not see anything regarding religion in this thread, only some people saying "see i told you...".
That's a little like me saying I don't see anything about love in Christianity; only a bunch of people saying "Our way or no way."
Don't let the narrow minds define so much of the landscape.
Some points of this topic
not related to the unspeakable phrase:
• I suppose the question really is whether or not this would have happened were she Muslim, Hindu, atheist, or otherwise not Christian? (Tiassa)
• Were she a seccularist, she would claim she had a rational explanation. Were she Muslem, it would be the will of Allah. Were she Buddist, it was the wisdom of Buddah. If she was a Satanist... well you get the idea (Xevious)
• It's easy for people to blame a persons religion for their actions. Many Atheists I know and indeed, some Sciforms members do it all the time. (Xevious)
• . . . I get so angry when I hear about some insane person commiting a crime and then put on trial. It is outrageous that todays' goverment refuses to help mentaly sick people but would rather spend 50k a year incarcerating them for some crime they committed for God or Satan. (Greco)
• Now, christians will call this woman insane, if Muslim committed such horrible crime, they will blame ISLAM for it !! (Proud Muslim)
• Now back to the topic, shall we blame CHRISTIANITY as a whole for the murder of these innocent childern ????? (Proud Muslim)
• I believe PM's point is that people are quick to blame Islam for the acts of Islamic terrorists, while this was obviously a Christian committing "Christian terrorism". (Jenyar)
• What bothers me is that this woman seems to live in a community, Christian or otherwise, who let that kind of mentality go unaddressed an unnoticed. (Jenyar)
• Remember that it doesn't have to be entirely literal inasmuch as it could be that beyond Isaac, the Crucifixion, or others she recalled the bit about leaving your family and transposed the bloody tales of the Scriptures into her apparently-damaged conscience. (Tiassa)
• However, cliché's like "God works in mysterious ways" and "the devil made me do it" hardly illuminate God's will. People attribute things to "God's will" at will, which might explain its objectionability. (Jenyar)
• Pursuing something that can theoretically be accomplished--e.g. world peace--is considerably different from pursuing something that by nature cannot be known. (Tiassa)
• Well, this is an interesting statement. Has world peace ever been known? We only "know" it by its principles - it's laws and requirements. We "know" that if everyone obeyed what one person who experienced of "peace", it is theoretically possible. So we promote those principles we feel will advance peace, even though we can't imagine what it will look like when we actually get there. After all, we're not trying to accomplish "God", only His will. (Jenyar)
• It becomes a religious issue because she stated that God told her to do it. Now honestly, lets think about this now. For the believers of God out there, if you hear a voice in your head telling you to kill your children, you would not think that voice to be God now would you? I hear such a voice in my head and I'm asking for a referral to the local psychiatrist. (Bells)
• I had a chat with my mother, who is a strict catholic, and I asked her if she'd ever kill me if God ordered her to and her reply was to look at me as though I'd lost my mind and she told me no. That if God asked her to do such a thing then she'd stop believing in God then and there. I left afterwards feeling ashamed at myself for even asking her that question. Now I compare that to Mrs Laney. She was the mother of three young children. She was meant to be their protector and provider. And I think to myself, if God did in fact tell her to do this, how could she listen? If I were ever to have children, they'd come first, no questions asked. God would not even factor into that equation. If he asked me to commit such an act, the answer would be no. I wouldn't care who it was that told me to do it, the answer would be no. Laney is not insane, she was just lost in her religion to such an extent that she failed to recognise that her children should always come first in everything. Such fanatacism is always dangerous and she is yet another prime example of how one's beliefs can end up being very bad. (Bells)
The above is taken from what equals "page 1" on my browser--specifically, the topic post and first 19 responses. (Personal settings may vary.)
In fact, the told-you-so arguments don't seem at all apparent to me. Perhaps you could point them out? I see M*W putting up the argument that "
religion is a mental illness," but that's the fifty-ninth response to the topic. Most of the rest of the fighting seems to have to do with how people regard the acts of individuals within
differing faith paradigms. But, I do think you're overstating the case, especially at the point that you addressed me to "question" (not "complain," apparently):
Jan Ardena said:
All you have done, is reinforce negative ideas in negative people.
You sure about that "questioning," Jan?
But in this case there is no evidence to say that religion or God was responsible for the woman's actions. If i said i won a million dollars and it was God who gave me the winning numbers, would my claim be believed/accepted as easily as this woman's claim is believed/accepted?
You're putting the cart before the horse.
• If you claimed that God revealed the winning numbers to you, yes.
• However, that doesn't mean that God actually revealed the numbers to you.
Go back and read the first twenty or so posts of this discussion, such as those I quoted earlier in this post.
That is a contradiction, it is due to faith that they become suseptible to those genre's. We all have faith, it is not subjected to religion or God. We simply choose to develop our faith in whatever we like.
So ... we should never look at the underlying faith and the conflicts it presents within a given individual?
Additionally ... someone chooses to invest a certain degree of faith in heavy metal or rap; it's a different situation from those that are taught to believe in God at the stake of punishment; part of it indeed is how religion is passed from one generation to the next in this country. It is still the people; one need not blame Christ or "Christianity," but it might profit us to pause every once in a while to examine the relationship between a religious paradigm and the believer, especially after something like this happens, when religious faith and mental illness meet in such a spectacularly morbid result.
Probably! People have been known to kill themselves without listening to such music.
What ACTUALLY made them commit suicide?
There you go. I just don't understand why you're so upset about it.
Then we cannot put this in the religion pigeon-hole. And if someone claimed Albert Einstein told them to kill someone, we couldn't put that in the modern science pigeon-hole.
I don't think you have an accurate comparison. Most Americans don't learn as children that Albert Einstein is waiting to punish or reward them after death. If they did, we'd have a nation of super-bright physicists killing one another over the applicability or inapplicability of General and Special Relativity. In the name of the Einstein, the Oppenheimer, and the Harry S . . . .
At some point the discussion can examine not only the idea of a specific religious paradigm, but the idea of religions in general. I may be a Sisyphan Camusite, anarcho-pacifist, bleeding-heart, artist, and these things might support the platform by which I view and judge the world--my basis for thought and action--but none of it is empowered by a declaration of divine Truth. Is one's identity as a Christian or as a Democrat, as a Christian or an American, as a Muslim or a subject of Shah Reza Pahlavi . . . which identity will take precedent?
For this we need to understand Religion, and human nature on a day to day basis, in accordance with the changing face of society.
You'd be amazed at how many people claim such understanding; a topic like this gives them an opportunity to show it or go back to the library. You'll notice that nobody's laying large psychiatric articles into the topic yet; this isn't something that can be undertaken and judged lightly.
This thread lumps the two together, which is IMHO, serioiusly inconsistent.
It is if we let the "negative" people define the course of the debate. Otherwise, the appearance of inconsistency resolves itself to fluid union as one draws closer and closer to the underlying reality.
I am not worried by bigots, if i was to be worried at all, it would be at the lack of understanding being banded about in general. We are,most probably, all bigoted, in some way.
Something about questioning goes here. Are you sure about that, Jan?
I believe, in a situation such as this, we should try and see the big-picture instead of defaulting to the lowest common denominator, fear.
Before us is a chasm. We can call it "ignorance," except that really pisses some people off. And it's hard to call it "ignorance," when some of us know that the Abyss does indeed have a bottom, and are aware of some of the wonders hiding inside the murk. And yet there are those who look into the Abyss and are afraid. Certes, they will find the fruits of their daring should they leap into the Abyss with an eye toward discovery, but if they're truly unwilling to do that, we can either complain about their lack of resolve, or carve some comfortable steps to lead them partway into the darkness until they find that no, they're not blind when delving the mysteries of the deep.
That is not what i'm saying. Don't give them the ammunition, think about what we say and how we put it across.
To a certain degree yes. But to use the Palestinians as an example: if you don't give them ammunition, they'll still throw rocks.
They may always be negative, but this kind of propoganda is not going to help them in becoming positive for the better.
Have you ever had that kind of "too much to drink" that leaves your friends looking at you strangely the next day and you don't remember why?
Let them be negative. They'll either figure it out or they won't. If it's that important to us, we will continue to try to communicate across the gap.
Neither enlightenment nor the search for enlightenment are intended to be easy. If it was, humanity would have evolved past these issues ages ago.
Then first be sure that what you are saying is valid, then if they are still negative, it would not be your doing.
If you dislike the open question of the relationship between this specific, any religious, or any paradigm and the individual who believes in it, show us, please, how the issue is invalid.
I think what you're "questioning" is a valid consideration to an extent, but I see necessity where you apparently see extraneity. I see vital, integral connections to examine where you apparently see negativity and propaganda. I may be missing the degree of your disagreement, but to me the connection to religion is the very idea that the catalyst for the murders was allegedly a religious delusion. From there we can start extricating the idea of religion--clearly people are inclined
against blaming religion. Even if we look to the part of the discussion that most people are looking at as a "pissing contest" by this point, I'm rather impressed by the implications for that portion of the discussion that our discussion raises.
Mental health is not a religious issue.
Are you
sure about that? Consider:
Religion is a code of living for humans according to time, place and circumstance.
I won't quibble the definition; it works and I don't object. Some, however, would. But mental health within one's community
is a religious issue where that community is defined in any way by religion. Family, a circle of friends ... a church congregation ....
Especially Christiainity:
Then the King will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?' And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.' Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?' Then he will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.' And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." (Matthew 25.34-ff, RSV)
I just think mental health is definitely an issue for the religious to consider.
Violence, under extreme circumstances is also taught, but as i said, religion is connected to time, place and circumstance.
What can I tell you? If I pass a religious notion on to my child, but do it incompletely because "I don't have the time," or, "It's just not important enough," that's all of the religious idea that gets handed down, and with that incomplete guidance she may or may not continue along a religious path. Religions, even if we choose to not believe in them, constitute
disciplines unto themselves. Part of the circumstance of the religion is the method of its transmission and growth. From there, all manner of problems can result in the execution.
Are there people with mental health problems, who do not believe in God, and are not, nor have ver been religious?
Imagine . . . .
After the trial is done the family and friends come together and say, "What happened?" They talk about the Devil, they talk about bad television, they talk about whatever. But it has nothing to do with religion, right? So they never look at how her faith constrained her more legitimate outlets for her feelings.
Think of the myth of America. What these United States of America are "supposed to be" has
nothing to do with what's going on in the world today, but what America "is" has much to do with it. Regardless of what the Religion of America says on paper--"Liberty and Justice for All," "all men are created equal," &c.--we cannot hold those ideas responsible for an American soldier in Iraq punished for improperly handling Iraqi prisoners of war. But what he
thinks America is may well have contributed to the acts.
• Religion/God
• Nation
• Ethnicity
• Politics
• Capitalism
Just a short list of things that can, when unleashed by a deviant and unstable conscience, can have wicked effects on others.
But as I read your Argument, ethnicity has nothing to do with the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Religion and God have nothing to do with militant extremism that abuses religious paradigms in order to con weak faith into compliance.
Why are there so few Democrats in militias in the US? Because Democrats allegedly (are supposed to, are purported to, something like that) believe in standards for judgment, choice, and action that lead to different ends.
And, of course, we shouldn't pause at any point to consider that American society, valuing so greatly the accumulation of wealth and possession, might have something to do with the fact that people are willing to steal extraneously. In fact, that we place value on something has nothing to do with why someone else might value it as well.
I hope these last few paragraphs read absurdly. They certainly look that way to me.
____________________
• The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version. See http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/rsv.browse.html