This week in the midst of reports of reports of witch hunts by Christians in Nigeria, a Muslim father killing his daughter for inappropriate attire, we’re told also of the latest shooting spree, and the blame is laid on who? Why, those immoral atheists, of course!
This one took place in Colorado, with the shooter visiting two locations run by the organization that used to be headed by Ted Haggard (you know, the hateful, holier-than-thou evangelist who, it turns out, spent his spare time snorting coke from the ass-crack of a male prostitute?), slaying several at one site before moving on to the next, where a security guard gunned him down after he opened fire on a large group.
Before the victims’ blood was cold, Tony Perkins, Bigot-In-Chief over at the fundamentalist Family Research Council, was blaming the “secular” media for the shootings.
It is hard not to draw a line between the hostility that is being fomented in our culture from some in the secular media toward Christians and evangelicals in particular and the acts of violence that took place in Colorado yesterday.
Interesting theory. Would this be the same hostile secular media that didn’t bat an eye at the passage of this resolution today, which surely further erodes the wall of separation between church and state that Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues had the foresight to write into our constitution?
Well, in any case, it turns out the shooter was a former member of the delegation who had been kicked out a few years back and held a grudge. Another example of a deranged loner looking for vengeance against a world he felt had slighted him. (We’ll leave aside for now the fact that he grew up in a home-schooled, highly religious environment which fostered in him a healthy love for lethal firearms.) A tragic event, to be sure, with the bulk of the blame rightfully placed on the shoulders of the lunatic who pulled the trigger.
Time to mourn and move on, right?
Nope.
A search for the shooter’s internet postings revealed this little gem:
I’m coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. God, I can’t wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don’t care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you … as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.
“He’s an atheist!” screamed the Christian bloggers. “Look! Look! Christians being persecuted!” they cried, a hallelujah chorus ringing out. “Colorado Shooter hated Christians”, said headlines and TV news blurbs.
Turns out, though, that this wasn’t exactly an accurate assessment of the situation. In fact, it was yet another instance of theist quote-mining, pulling out text relevant to their arguments but conveniently leaving out words that might not support them quite so well. To whit, what you won’t find quoted so much are lines like this one:
Thanks for listening and all … even though even many of you ex-Pentecostals don’t understand ……(sic) See you all on the other side, we’re leaving this nightmare behind to a better place.
The other side? A better place? Hmm… those don’t sound like atheist notions.
We can be Christians, we can be spiritual and believe in God/the Cosmic Divine WITHOUT their abusive lying pentecostal charismatic Jesus People movements, groups, false prophets, churches, and programs.
We can be Christians. We can believe in God.
Clearly the writings of a militant non-believer.
In unrelated news, there’s a group that’s calling for the presidential candidates to have a debate on science. It’ll never happen since science isn’t important to most people in this country unless it can get them more cable stations, but I signed the petition anyway. That would be an actual watchable debate, even if only to watch most of them stumbling over words with three or more syllables.
Don’t them christians just love shooting each other?
The security guard who shot the gunman had this to say:
“I give credit to God,” Assam, 42, said. “God was with me.”
I had this to say:
I think Assam should have said:
‘I give credit to Mr Colt .45′ ‘Mr Smith & Wesson was with me’