(October 9, 2014 at 11:09 am)MusicLovingAtheist Wrote: I have a lot of respect for the columbine shooters though. They stood up to the people who made fun of them and disrespected them in a way I never would. All I can do is glare at people, flick them off, tell them to go kill themselves. They had guts, and I think it reflects on the society we live in more than the people who committed the crime itself.But they also killed themselves in the end. Did they actually shoot every single person who made fun of them, or even any of them? Did they really settle any scores? Did they ruin the lives of only the people who made them miserable, or did they simply make a lot of otherwise innocent people suffer?
Think about their timelines: they lived short lives that were apparently full of angst and bitterness, they took extreme action that may have filled them with satisfaction and power for a very short interval, which they themselves cut short, ending their existence. It's really not much of a life. Most folks go through the angst and difficulties of adolescence; most overcome it, grow up, and build satisfying lives for themselves. I think they're much more deserving of respect.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
