How would an atheist convince a serial killer not to be a serial killer?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

How often do people knowingly run into a serial killer and decide to therapize them?  Many of them get away with their penchant for killing for years before they are caught.

Asking a serial killer, ‘Have you found The Lord?’ is a fast track for meeting Him yourself.

Boru

[Jackalope]

Well, I'd be forced to kill them, except I can't do that because I abhor violence.  Oh fuck, checkmate I guess.

[Fake Messiah]

Not to mention that serial killers are usually Christians: John Wayne Gacy considered becoming a Catholic priest in his youth, Gary Ridgway (The Green River Killer) went door-to-door proselytizing for the Baptist church, Dennis Rader was a leader of a Lutheran Church, Jeffrey Dahmer was a born-again Christian, John List killed his wife and kids so that they could be in heaven before they start sinning, etc.

[Rev. Rye]

Arthur Schopenhauer had a dead-on rebuttal to this dilemma:

If a man feels tempted to commit a crime, you may rely upon it that the first consideration which enters his head is the penalty appointed for it, and the chances that it will fall upon him: then comes, as a second consideration, the risk to his reputation. If I am not mistaken, he will ruminate by the hour on these two impediments, before he ever takes a thought of religious considerations. If he gets safely over those two first bulwarks against crime, I think religion alone will very rarely hold him back from it.

I’d probably add conscience as a third thing, but this doesn’t really change the larger point. Once you get past the hurdles of Earthly punishment, reputation, and conscience, the threat of hot pokers up your ass for all eternity doesn’t really seem to shift the needle.

[Rev. Rye]

Not to mention that serial killers are usually Christians: John Wayne Gacy considered becoming a Catholic priest in his youth, Gary Ridgway (The Green River Killer) went door-to-door proselytizing for the Baptist church, Dennis Rader was a leader of a Lutheran Church, Jeffrey Dahmer was a born-again Christian, John List killed his wife and kids so that they could be in heaven before they start sinning, etc.

Dennis Rader and John List were actually part of the same sub-denomination I was in, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Supposedly, the pastor of Rader’s church stuck by him during his trial… until he described his belief that his victims would be his slaves in the afterlife, at which point, he walked away in disgust. And given that my own former church believed that the ECLA, the larger and more liberal Lutheran denomination, were non-believers (Yes, seriously, and they kept some shit or whatever that was supposed to allow my mother to be a member of a different, ECLA congregation from her for that reason), I can easily believe that this is more because of theological reasons than anything related to human decency.

[Paleophyte]

If one is an atheist and believes that there is no God and no afterlife, then if a serial killer wanted to spend this life harming people because that is what he claims makes him happy, how would you convince him not to do this?

Sure, he may have to fear being sent to prison for his crimes, but it is possible he could simply avoid the law. Therefore, the implication of atheism is that if a person wants to spend their life harming people because they claim this is what makes them happy, there is no reason not to do this.

Remind me how many serial killers religion has cured. And how many it has

[Mister Agenda]

To be fair, I think Dahmer was a prison convert.

[Paraselene]

You clearly do not understand serial killers nor atheism (among other things from having perused your other threads).