Theists: how do you account for psychopaths?

[Foxaèr]

Didn't god direct men to murder men, kinda murder by proxy?

I guess it depends how rosy your glasses are while you're interpreting the scripture with cognitive dissonance.

[Rev. Rye]

I don't believe in God, but if I did, I suspect my answer would be "because of the fall."

Whether or not it would be because a snake made a woman eat an apple (or made her fuck him, as some of our resident theists believe) or not, it serves as a good mythic shorthand for the root of our imperfections, great and small (when I went to a Catholic High School, that was generally how they treated it). We are all imperfect, and even though most of us have been conditioned against it, we're all capable of becoming evil. Much has been written about the "banality of evil," as coined by Hannah Arendt during the trial of Adolph Eichmann.

Here's a powerful moment I discovered recently from the trial of a concentration camp survivor realising the essential truth of it:





As powerful as this video is, his "Planet Auschwitz" speech was meant to be the opening statement of a longer testimony really going into detail about what went on, but about six minutes into it, Yehiel De-Nur fainted. 21 years, 6 months, and 30 days later, he told 60 Minutes exactly why he fainted:

Was Dinur overcome by hatred? Fear? Horrid memories? No; it was none of these. Rather, as Dinur explained to Wallace, all at once he realized Eichmann was not the god-like army officer who had sent so many to their deaths. This Eichmann was an ordinary man. "I was afraid about myself," said Dinur. "... I saw that I am capable to do this. I am ... exactly like he."

As distasteful as it may be to a lot of people to try and compare themselves to someone who willingly set themselves to the task of destroying an alarmingly large group of people, and managed to go a good portion of the way in the span of less than 3 1/2 years, to just treat it with a little "there but for the grace of God go I," but I've come to realise that, if you want to try and stop evil, othering it is the worst thing you can possibly do. A film released the same year De-Nur gave his testimony concluded "If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe."

You dismiss that idea, you fail to understand evil. You fail to understand evil, it becomes a Hell of a lot harder to take it on.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Well, while Yahweh has supposedly killed billions of people he isn't technically a murderer because he is supposed to be God, which is a different creature.  He would have to be human in order to be classified as a murderer.  If you kill a chicken or a hog or a bug you aren't considered to be a murderer.  The people who kill on his behalf are murderers.  If you kill a cow in India the Hindi will kill you because you have killed their god, represented by the cow.

Didn't god direct men to murder men, kinda murder by proxy?

According to the fairy tale humans know the difference between good and evil.  It's acknowledged that murder is an evil act.  So as it says in the fairy tale, man should be smart enough to tell Yahweh to go screw himself whenever he says that he wants a person to do something evil.  

It's like watching a gangster movie where the brainless thugs beat up and kill people without a second thought just because the crime boss tells them to do it.  They themselves have nothing against their victims and all they will get out of it is a few bucks.  Yet they are doing the most horrible acts because they are too stupid to separate themselves from the situation.

[robvalue]

Thanks for the replies everyone, very interesting

There seems to be an array of reasons even among Christianity.

I wonder if there is any kind of "official" stance?

[The Grand Nudger]

That whatever the answer is, atheists are wrong about it, lol.

[Rev. Rye]

Thanks for the replies everyone, very interesting

There seems to be an array of reasons even among Christianity.

I wonder if there is any kind of "official" stance?

Our understanding of psychopathy is in its infancy even now. By the time anyone noticed it was even a trend, Christianity had already splintered long past the point where any orthodoxy could be created. And I strongly suspect that many Christians will read your OP and reply "who cares? That's their problem."

[Amarok]

Not preventing murder when you could is equal to murder .

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Not preventing murder when you could is equal to murder .

War is murder and we're getting ready to murder some North Koreans and Iranians just because our god (Trump) wants to do it.  The guys doing the killing don't have any grudges against the people they are killing but they do it simply because their god (their national leader) tells them to do it.  So when things like that happen aren't we all murderers because we did nothing to prevent it from happening?

[ignoramus]

100% correct.

Nobody said life is sacred. (except for the salesmen). It's a commodity. Every evolved ape knows that.
How we wish the world to be and how it is will always be are 2 very different beasts.

[Amarok]

Not preventing murder when you could is equal to murder .

War is murder and we're getting ready to murder some North Koreans and Iranians just because our god (Trump) wants to do it.  The guys doing the killing don't have any grudges against the people they are killing but they do it simply because their god (their national leader) tells them to do it.  So when things like that happen aren't we all murderers because we did nothing to prevent it from happening?

To a degree yes but i was talking about something more direct . But i was more talking about the fact that a god could literally have prevented the death of millions but does not .