Fox news host thinks the Las Vegas shooter didn't have enough god in his life. I'm surprised she didn't try to say he was an Atheist.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/10/03/fox-news-host-ma...
Subscription Note:
Choosing to subscribe to this topic will automatically register you for email notifications for comments and updates on this thread.
Email notifications will be sent out daily by default unless specified otherwise on your account which you can edit by going to your userpage here and clicking on the subscriptions tab.
Sure blame the atheists. How fucking typical. A lot of good all that prayer did for the people shot....THEY FUCKING DIED!
Great point... because as we all know nothing fails as spectacularly as prayer
@Xenoview: "I'm surprised she didn't try to say he was an Atheist."
I think she did say just that: "His brother said he didn’t believe in God".
That's ironic, because many mass-killers, starting with Joan of Arc, claim to have been motivated by the voice of god whispering in their ear. I haven't heard of one who said atheism made me do it.
Prayer : the power to stop any harm from coming to you via deluding yourself into thinking simply putting your hands together or muttering words to an old myth gives you unlimited protection.
Survival Attempt : Actually doing something useful and geared towards getting out of a hostile situation.
There IS a difference.
The people really at fault were the victims. They should have prayed the bullets away.
Nyarlathotep,
Actually most people were perfectly safe given the size of the crowd and the fact that there was only one shooter. It's the fear factor that causes the panic because you have no idea if you will be one of the unlucky ones who get killed or severely injured. But if someone really had faith he would just stay still and not panic. But at that point the main danger would be from other people running around and possibly trampling you.
Yeah, I wonder how many people were injured or killed by trampling. My sick fascination caused me to ask my wife (she was down at the ad-hoc mental health trauma counseling center thing they set up yesterday), but she didn't answer and just gave me a dirty look. I guess I don't really want to know either. And of course I don't blame the victims for any of it; if it did happen.
I haven't really commented much on this tragedy as it kind of blew my mind (it happened less than a mile from where I work, maybe 10 miles from where I live). As far as I can tell: I don't personally know any of the injured or killed; it seems a large percentage of them were tourists, not locals.
Sad reality is, given the unexpected nature of it, for those that do not have training to deal with their fears in unexpected highly fear inducing event, the reptilian brain works much faster and stronger than our mammalian brain. That will be likely 95+ percent of the people that attended that concert.
We would have fight or flight or freeze. It would take over all other reasoning. You can say all you want "oh I would protect and help others even at cost to myself" without training to overcome base instincts in a surprise situation like that, as well as "herd mentality" you are not going to think "oh I am trampling someone to death." I should stop pushing to get away. I am guessing much of the injury count was due to trampling and people attempting to escape.
It is easy after the fact, when you are not there to think "oh I would of calmly directed people to the exits, there is 20k people here, the odds of me getting shot are actually quite small, I can prevent further injury and death calmly directing people frozen in their reptilian brain state how to flee."
There was a 12 foot tall sharp pointed fence around much of the concert's perimeter to prevent people from easily climbing into the concert area. Quite a few people got serious injuries climbing that fence in a hurry. They were not thinking rationally they just wanted to flee, (flight.)
People did not know where the shots were coming from, how many people were shooting and which places were safe, if any. All they had was their reptilian brain going "RUN RUN RUN RUN!." One of the major exits was in the direction towards Mandalay Bay and the shooter, thousands escaped that way. Almost all of them never had it occur to them that the shooter was from that direction, all they were concerned about was RUN!
xenoview,
That's too funny!. If the guy had Yahweh (the God of the Hebrews and the God of the armies) in his life he would have killed everyone in the city and burned it to the ground. Yahweh loves that and gets pissed when people come up short and show mercy.
If he had Yeshua in his life he would have killed all of the believers because a certain number of believers MUST be killed before Yeshua returns and everyone wants him to return, don't they? Besides, you gotta die if you want to get into the golden cube.
The last thing anyone needs is belief in a psycho deity.
If he had god in his life he would have been yelling "God is Great!' when he pulled the trigger.
If I was at that Fox news discussion I would simply fire back:
So why did your all powerful all good god allow this to happen? Does god hate country music fans that congregate in Las Vegas more than serial child molesters and rapists?
-
It also bugs me that nearly all the media outlets perpetuate the lie that this person "successfully" gambled and made a living off of it.
No he did not. You can not "beat" video poker machines. All you can do is minimize your losses, and tell yourself that the "comped" extras make the difference.
Show me a way to get to 51% winning odds at a casino (without cheating) and I will make both of us billionaires, or at least until we drove the casinos bankrupt (if they could not figure out another way to stop us.)
The more you gamble at even very very "good" 49% payout gambling schemes, the more guaranteed you are at eventually losing money. Simple statistical based math that every chronic gambler does not understand. Worse yet, over time, inflation also eats away at that number, further worsening lifetime gambling numbers.
Also gambling loyalty programs that gives freebies etc are way less valuable than people realize. That $500 free bottle of wine? Cost the casino maybe 50 bucks. That comped Grand Suite? Was going to sit empty anyways most of the time. It only "cost" the hotel regular cleaning and maintenance.
I would be interested in how many atheist gamble (percentage wise) versus how many theist gamble percentage wise. I would guess people who identify as atheist tend to realize more frequently we are never "owed" a win. Where a theist believes in the divine...
@Logic, I couldn't find any statistics, indeed an interesting issue. I've come across this amazing study by researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine instead:
Religious and spiritual experiences activate the brain reward circuits in much the same way as love, sex, gambling, drugs and music.
https://unews.utah.edu/this-is-your-brain-on-god/
If this turns to be true, it could explain how indoctrination (and the reverse process) works in terms of addiction...