Now These Assholes Give Atheists a Bad Name

[LAGC]

Cassie Jo Stoddart (Stoddart) was murdered during the night of September 22nd to 23rd,
2006. Brian Draper (Draper), who was sixteen years-old at the time of Stoddart’s murder, and
Torey Adamcik (Adamcik), who was also a juvenile, were arrested and charged with murder and
conspiracy to commit murder, tried as adults, and convicted during separate trials.
..
..
Draper and Adamcik had also begun videotaping snippets of themselves talking about
killing. This videotape was later recovered with other evidence used in the murder and, at trial,
Draper’s counsel argued that this tape was part of a horror movie that Draper and Adamcik were
making. Portions of the transcript from the video include the following, from the night before
Stoddart’s murder:
..
..
Adamcik: Because . . . let’s put it this way . . . parents, along with their parents, along with
their parents, and so on—
Draper: Uh-huh
Adamcik: —taught them about God, Jesus, the whole bullshit—
Draper: *laughing*
Adamcik: —line. I’m sure you guys believe in God as well. I realized when I was in
seventh grade . . . along, you don’t believe in Santa Claus or—
Draper: *laughing*
Adamcik: —vampires, or werewolves, they’re used to metaphor, not let — they teach their
kids back in the 1800s, I learned this in English class, about telling their kids that they can’t
go outside or a vampire will get you — just to make their kids stay and do what they want to
do. God is basically—
Draper: That’s what God’s for right?
Adamcik: —the same way—
Draper: Yep.
Adamcik: —tryin’ to get people to do good, or else “so-called” *air quoting* you go to hell.
Draper: And we’re obviously going to hell if it’s real, but who gives a shit?
Adamcik: And why would you say it’s real?
Draper: *talking over Adamcik* Yeah, but it’s not real. It’s not real, cuz it’s so blatantly
obvious that it’s not real, but *laughing*
Adamcik: People believe it because their parents teach them, and so it’s so hard for them to
let go of it because they’ve been taught their whole life.
Draper: Yeah, I know.
Adamcik: But, fuckin—
Draper: What?
Adamcik: —the point I’m makin’ is . . . we are also taught that things like killing people
and other things is wrong. The only that it’s wrong about is because it’s breaking the law
and the law is only wrong *mumbling searching for words*—
Draper: Natural selection, dude. Natural selection, that’s all I’ve gotta say.
Adamcik: There should be no law against killing people. I know it’s a wrong thing, but . . .
Draper: Natural selection—
Adamcik: —Hell, hell, you restrict somebody from it, they’re just gonna want it more.
Draper: Exactly. Goodbye camera.

http://www.isc.idaho.gov/opinions/Draper%2034667.pdf

Clearly these kids were psychopaths, but sometimes I wonder, in rare cases like these, if maybe these kids hadn't lost their religion they wouldn't have been so eager to kill?

If they still believed there was eternal punishment after death, it might have scared them enough to not carry through their premeditated murder, since they obviously weren't concerned about punishment in the here and now?

Seems like in rebelling from religious norms, they rebelled against even the good things most religions teach, such as "Thou shalt not kill."

Maybe it would have helped if basic ethics were taught in a secular setting like a public school classroom instead of schools relegating such basic moral founding to whatever religious instruction the parents did or didn't offer at home? So that a basic sense of right and wrong was instilled, wasn't associated with just religion, but just basic human decency?

Or maybe they were just warped in the head and were going to kill no matter what they believed, and would have used any excuse to justify it just the same?

Who knows...

[kristopher]

1. Perhaps they are psychopaths because of early attempts to indoctrinate them into a belief...

...system that transparently conflicts with reality. If - as is common in cultures where monotheism is not dominant - they had been reared with due regard for the essentials of human cooperative behavior, then perhaps they would have developed deeper empathetic understanding.

[Common Sense Party]

3. Then why aren't all of us monotheists psychopaths?

There should be a lot more killings, if you were correct.

[kristopher]

6. Appeals to absolutes such as you've made are nonsense.

"Then why aren't all of us monotheists psychopaths?"



If you'd like to have an actual discussion, I'm happy to oblige; but I'm not interested in rants from a zealot.

[Common Sense Party]

7. It's not a rant. It's a question about YOUR rant.

You don't care to answer the question? Just say so.

[kristopher]

8. There is no question.

Your use of the absolute removed the remark from the realm of legitimate inquiry and turned it into nonsense.

If you have an actual question please express it properly so that it can be addressed. I'm fully prepared to amplify my statements.

[struggle4progress]

16. "such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact"

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the old Oolitic Silurian Period, must a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have their streets joined together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. - Mark Twain

[kristopher]

17. ...

Adamcik: —tryin’ to get people to do good, or else “so-called” *air quoting* you go to hell.
Draper: And we’re obviously going to hell if it’s real, but who gives a shit?
Adamcik: And why would you say it’s real?
Draper: *talking over Adamcik* Yeah, but it’s not real. It’s not real, cuz it’s so blatantly
obvious that it’s not real, but *laughing*
Adamcik: People believe it because their parents teach them, and so it’s so hard for them to
let go of it because they’ve been taught their whole life.
Draper: Yeah, I know.
Adamcik: But, fuckin—
Draper: What?
Adamcik: —the point I’m makin’ is . . . we are also taught that things like killing people
and other things is wrong. The only that it’s wrong about is because it’s breaking the law
and the law is only wrong *mumbling searching for words*—
Draper: Natural selection, dude. Natural selection, that’s all I’ve gotta say.
Adamcik: There should be no law against killing people. I know it’s a wrong thing, but . . .
Draper: Natural selection—
Adamcik: —Hell, hell, you restrict somebody from it, they’re just gonna want it more.
Draper: Exactly. Goodbye camera

Evolutionary Psychology
www.epjournal.net – 2009. 7(3): 398-441
The Chronic Dependence of Popular Religiosity upon Dysfunctional Psychosociological Conditions
Gregory Paul

...The nonuniversality of strong religious devotion, and the ease with large populations abandon serious theism when conditions are sufficiently benign, refute hypotheses that religious belief and practice are the normal, deeply set human mental state, whether they are superficial or natural in nature. Instead popular religion is usually a superficial and flexible psychological mechanism for coping with the high levels of stress and anxiety produced by sufficiently dysfunctional social and especially economic environments. Popular nontheism is a similarly casual response to superior conditions.

Like it or not, there are far reaching consequences to routine, wide-scale indoctrination of children into vertically oriented authoritarian belief systems centered on the supernatural.

See also: http://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/2005/2005-11.html

[LuvNewcastle]

2. That attitude is shared by a lot of religious

people. I've known plenty of 'good' Christians who think that people who don't have health insurance should be left to twist in the wind. It's the same sort of social darwinist attitude; they ignore one of the first lessons in the Bible, that you are your brother's keeper. I don't think that religious people are any more moral or caring than atheists or agnostics. The prisons are full of religious people.

[MineralMan]

4. That would be interesting, but there are lots of self-styled

Christians who have murdered people, too. Therefore, I say that your theory is bogus. Atheism isn't really anything at all. You can say nothing about an atheist except that he or she doesn't believe in the existence of deities. Beyond that, every atheist is unique. We have no dogma, no scripture, no places where we gather to "fellowship." We're just atheists. Killers are killers, whatever they believe or do not believe.

[rrneck]

5. If they embraced religion

they might have grown up to shoot abortion doctors or something.

[struggle4progress]

9. there are cases like this from time to time. leopold/loeb was a famous example.

it's hard to understand what's going on in people's heads

such lack of empathy seems to me a species of mental defect, a kind of emotional blindness that might occur with varying degrees of severity: in some instances, it might be held in check by the fear of social disapproval or desire not to be punished; in other instances, it might be possible to educate people to become somewhat more sensitive to others

i see no simple way to address your question about the church. the gospel does not claim that those who heed it instantly triumph over evil: it merely promises that, despite all appearances to the contrary, they will in the end triumph

[LAGC]

14. I watched a documentary on Leopold and Loeb not too long back...

To kidnap and kill a boy for no reason at all, just to see what it "feels like" or because they felt somehow "superior" to other creatures -- it just defies all logic.

You'd think they would have at least picked on someone their own size, an adult male, not a helpless little boy.

Some people are just monsters.

[darkstar3]

10. Here's a hint:

"And we’re obviously going to hell if it’s real, but who gives a shit? "

I went to high school with a guy who was very similar, and this type of nihilism is brought about not by the abandonment of religion but by the abandonment of the person. Everyone that guy had ever known, had ever loved, had either left him behind or betrayed him.

[trotsky]

11. Not really.

Since atheism is not a doctrine, has no holy text, and dictates nothing about how one should live one's life, what one atheist does says nothing about any other atheist.

[Deep13]

12. Maybe if the celestial cops wasn't their only basis of morality...

...they would not have concluded it was okay to murder when they realized god was a lie.

In any case, I'm rather inclined to favor the psychopath explanation. I can't really say how they got that way.

[LeftishBrit]

13. I honestly don't think that believing in religion would have changed them

They would then have found a way of justifying their acts in terms of their religion, or just disregarded moral principles.

If people are not deterred from murder by simply knowing and feeling that it's wrong at a deep level, or by the sense of guilt that normal people feel for harming others, or by the knowledge that people who commit such actions are seen as beyond the pale by others, or even by the prospect of spending the rest of their lives in prison - then they are not likely to be deterred by the thought of going to hell sometime in the distant future.

I agree that whatever religion people do or don't follow, all children should learn about basic ethics. However, the people who committed this crime seem to be more than morally ignorant; they are consciously rejecting the most basic tenets of humanity. Either they have always been psychopaths, or they have become warped through life experiences.

[NMMNG]

15. They're sociopaths

They're reflective of nobody but themselves.