RE: Men & children killed & dismembered by an atheist.
February 8, 2013 at 2:54 pm
(This post was last modified: February 8, 2013 at 3:01 pm by naimless.)
(February 8, 2013 at 1:04 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: There can't be an ideology of atheism for the same reason there can't be an ideology of theism. You can have an atheistic ideology, which isn't the same thing.
And for what it's worth, Dahmer didn't claim he killed because of atheism, he claimed atheism didn't stop him from killing. Of course it didn't, it's not an ideology, it doesn't justify any action or inaction. Normal people don't need a justification not to murder, because they don't want to murder anybody. Nobody kills in the name of atheism OR theism. Where ideology or religion enters into it, it's a specific ideology or religion, and not a synonym for atheism or theism.
Yep, but I think the OP was more concerned about the motivations of murder. You say "normal" people don't want to murder anybody yet plenty of people vote for wars. Plenty see oil as a justification of murder.
If you are talking about the act of an individual murdering, that can also be in self defence or due to a range of other stresses - stresses that could include existential angst or un/resolved existential matters conflicting against others' views.
Put simply, as with everything in life, the discovery of atheism or theism would have partly contributed to whatever their actions were. Of course it isn't solely because of these lazy labels but they have a part to play. Different people react differently to changes in existential thoughts.
One possible resultant action, for example, could be suicide, which we do not often consider when talking of murder, as with war.
