Mr Deity's response to Chapel Hill.......

[Norman Humann]

But Christianity is clean of all things. Christianity is a good worldwide cult. Battle of the crusades? Not christian. Bombing of abortion clinics? Not christian. Denying the gay community rights in America and then playing the victim card screaming persecution when we call them out on bigotry? These aren't true Christians. I think you keep forgetting that.

We should probably assure everyone that the shooter was not a True Atheist™, then.

[Brakeman]

How would you have felt if it were 1945 and the three victims were Nazis. Would you have said that the three held a violent evil position against the American enough to mitigate the evil of his action?

Would the fact that we were at war with the Nazis at the time make any difference?

If you would still hold contempt for the shooter, would it have mattered if the shooter had killed the three from dropping a bomb from a plane.. over Cologne Germany?

Were we at war with all Nazi's during WWII or just the extremists that carried a gun?

Don't get all pissy about the questions, I'm not saying that this is my position or that we should give the guy war medals.. Just an interesting thought.

[SteelCurtain]

Don't get all pissy about the questions, I'm not saying that this is my position or that we should give the guy war medals.. Just an interesting thought.

Nope. Not a good comparison. We are not in a physical war with Christians or anyone else. To compare their feeble attempt at a theocracy with murderous fascism is a stretch.

And to even suggest that this person may have done something to advance anything is ludicrous. The questions are not apt.

[Mister Agenda]

Just for the record the shooter described himself as a "gun toting atheist".

Oh yeah, no doubt of that. Of course, the conservatives are describing him as a 'lefty' despite at least that one glaring exception to usual leftist political stances.

As a libertarian-leaning person myself, I am hesitant to claim him, but his positions as stated on his FB page (pro gun rights, pro choice, and pro marriage equality) are consistent with him being a libertarian.

Of course, that's not why those three students are dead, either. Him being an armed rage monster who had to have his own way seems at the root of it.

One lesson here: if there's a guy in your neighborhood that has a lot of people worried about their safety to the point you have a neighborhood meeting about it, don't decide to do nothing. We have intuitions about people we know being dangerous for a reason.

---

We should probably assure everyone that the shooter was not a True Atheist™, then.

I know you're being tongue-in-cheek, but for the record (as they say), that's something we should not do.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Just for the record the shooter described himself as a "gun toting atheist".

... and just for the record, the vast majority of convicts in American prisons are Christians. I mean, since we're just tossing out random facts.

[Brakeman]

Nope. Not a good comparison. We are not in a physical war with Christians or anyone else. To compare their feeble attempt at a theocracy with murderous fascism is a stretch.

And to even suggest that this person may have done something to advance anything is ludicrous. The questions are not apt.

Yeah..right! That's disingenuous. ISIS & Al Qaeda muslims certainly think they are in a war with the non-believers. Their writings and propaganda is every bit as evil and violent against others as Nazi literature ever was. Your choice to refer to christians instead of muslims is telling. We're not at war with Buddhists either, duh, but it is not so clear that we are not at war with muslims as we just signed war powers acts to fight them in the form of ISIS and Al Qaeda. They are spilling our blood and making non-muslims convert or die.. That's pretty war like even if you don't want to admit it.

At least the Nazis gassed their enemies before burning them..

[Brian37]

Nope. Not a good comparison. We are not in a physical war with Christians or anyone else. To compare their feeble attempt at a theocracy with murderous fascism is a stretch.

And to even suggest that this person may have done something to advance anything is ludicrous. The questions are not apt.

Yeah..right! That's disingenuous. ISIS & Al Qaeda muslims certainly think they are in a war with the non-believers. Their writings and propaganda is every bit as evil and violent against others as Nazi literature ever was. Your choice to refer to christians instead of muslims is telling. We're not at war with Buddhists either, duh, but it is not so clear that we are not at war with muslims as we just signed war powers acts to fight them in the form of ISIS and Al Qaeda. They are spilling our blood and making non-muslims convert or die.. That's pretty war like even if you don't want to admit it.

At least the Nazis gassed their enemies before burning them..

Once again, most humans get focused on the moment, and religion is a much older concept than any current held one today, and we know humans made up gods even prior to the first known written language.

Religion is an unfortunate side affect of our evolutionary grouping, a gap fill, a result of flawed perceptions. Humans create groups that are centered around bad guesses. It does have the benefit of safety in numbers and opportunity of resources and offspring. But in doing this it does not reflect our species knowledge of psychological understanding as why we group around any idea, even when false.

[SteelCurtain]

Nope. Not a good comparison. We are not in a physical war with Christians or anyone else. To compare their feeble attempt at a theocracy with murderous fascism is a stretch.

And to even suggest that this person may have done something to advance anything is ludicrous. The questions are not apt.

Yeah..right! That's disingenuous. ISIS & Al Qaeda muslims certainly think they are in a war with the non-believers. Their writings and propaganda is every bit as evil and violent against others as Nazi literature ever was. Your choice to refer to christians instead of muslims is telling. We're not at war with Buddhists either, duh, but it is not so clear that we are not at war with muslims as we just signed war powers acts to fight them in the form of ISIS and Al Qaeda. They are spilling our blood and making non-muslims convert or die.. That's pretty war like even if you don't want to admit it.

At least the Nazis gassed their enemies before burning them..

Since when is "we" America? "We" as I understood it from the context of the OP is atheists. That's why I chose Christians (you'll also notice the mention of "anyone else") as the main talking point.

What's disingenuous is to say that this outraged asshole who happens to be an atheist murders in cold blood three young peaceful Muslims and extrapolate (and conflate) that with the macrocosm of a war against ISIS. How are these two concepts related? And how is this murderer doing anything like killing Nazis? Dude killed three college students with no connection to radical Islam over a fucking parking spot and somehow you try to compare that with some sort of averted disaster. Based on what?

[Faith No More]

Yeah, pretty weak comparison.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I used to throw rocks at Protestants, but it had nothing at all to do with religion. This is the same sort of thing, I think.

Boru