God told her to because of the eclipse
When the Creator tells you to do something like that, you want to get it in writing just in case the judge has a different theological take on the matter.
Blind obedience to god telling you to murder someone, no matter how dear they are to you, is one of the most highly praised actions in the Abrahamic canon.
After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
–Genesis 22:1-2Ya, Yahweh is a bit of a dick.
Is it legally admissible if its on some gold plates that only I can read?
You just have to get God to write it in green ink at a 45° angle, then it’s okay.
Given that the last guy who tried that ended up in jail, again, I would say no.
Only in Utah
To be fair that happened in New York.
But New Yorkers wised up.
And that’s why a bunch of people rode out into the desert for so long that 2 of their leaders died on the way?
Moses need to get “Don’t kill people” written in stone but these folks just believe anything they hear
Organised religion is a cancer of the mind.
Those of us who grew up without it literally can’t imagine scenarios like this, though I’ve heard disturbing things from people who seem otherwise sane that make me understand what drives some to do these things. When you’ve internalised fables of good vs evil and that’s how you define reality, it’s a small step to think you have to commit atrocities to save the innocent. You don’t have to have a very divergent mentality to convince yourself of this.
We will all be better off when the vast majority of people give up these fables and begin to live in the real world.
Ehh I dunno… I’m as atheist as anyone with an IQ above 60, but I think religion is just a convenient scapegoat for mental illness here. I’m pretty sure someone who shoots strangers on the highway would have done it in a world without religion too, and they would say it’s a different mystical force that made them do it. I don’t think Christianity actually moved this person to do this.
I think religion is just a convenient scapegoat for mental illness here.
It acts more as a place for mental illness to be hidden, camoflauged, or accepted as devotion or prophecy.
When someone’s delusions overlap with what a church accepts as their ancient prophets’ experience, that illness doesn’t get proper treatment.
Yep it muddies the waters that distinguish what is rational from irrational. Like a dark damp festering basement, it gives mold a place to fester and grow.
Welcome to a place where you don’t need logic; you just need this magical thing called “faith.” Such mainstream religions were just the most successful cults.
Welcome to a place where you don’t need logic; you just need this magical thing called “faith.” Such mainstream religions were just the most successful cults.
People generally aren’t all or even mostly rational or logical. It’s difficult even for people with deep science or technical backgrounds to think in a structured way for long periods of time.
Even if you got most people off of organized religion they’d be on some other bullshit.
Evidence for that is actually all around us too. Organized religion is seeing more and more people walk away from it, but people remain just as full of shit as they were in church.
To your last point I don’t know if I see that. Most of the religious nutjobs - organized or free of association - seem predominantly concentrated among right-wing circles. See the riding Christian nationalists for instance. Those who are walking away from religious faith tend to be more on the left side of the spectrum and ironically far more adherent to the teachings of Jesus in his best of image.
It’s not one side or another of the political spectrum that’s full of shit, it’s people in general.
I have easily encountered just as many anti vax crackpots for instance coming from the left as from the right.
That is complete and total bullshit and any reputable statistics survey can prove it.
Let’s not bOtH sIdeS this with absurd anecdotes.
Religion isn’t a scapegoat, and it has nothing to do with IQ. Very smart people are roped into it, and that’s what I mean by it being a social cancer.
Very smart people are raised with stories that they take as reality – that supplant their ability to judge reality for what it is – and it at best colours how they interpret everything for the rest of their lives, and at worst amplifies and gives focus to mental conditions they already have.
Religion is a warped lens through which people are forced to see reality from such a young age, they are incapable of seeing actual reality, and in some cases it just amplifies the otherwise mild mental illness they’d likely have had already.
Without it, some people would already have been disturbed, but with it those people are given a purpose for their delusions.
But in this case this lady is obviously mentally ill why are you ignoring that?
I’m not ignoring that.
My point is that religion is uniquely capable of taking the delusions of the mentally ill and nurturing them into violence.
Even for the mentally stable, it often leads to fantasy. But when mental illness and religion coincide, people who would otherwise be relatively benign in their delusions very easily become convinced their delusions are divine and their violent instincts are justified by scripture. It happens so often, we need to begin acknowledging it.
i think religion is one of many things which can weaponise mental illness. i also think, in a world without religion, some people would still hear voices and feel compelled to do terrible or dangerous things as a result.
Of course there would still be people like that. What I’m saying is there are exponentially more people like that when they’ve been raised from birth to believe in nonsense that warps their sense of right and wrong.
Take the story of Chad and Lori Daybell. She was a normal, successful woman who wasn’t a psychopath. She fell in with a pastor who convinced her of extreme religious ideals, after which they murdered their own children in a misguided belief they’d be safer in heaven than on earth.
I can list examples like that until the cows come home. Normal people who have become convinced to commit atrocities after being drawn into religion to extremes. It’s a psychological virus that can infect anyone. Most large-scale wars have a religious basis. All the biggest genocides have been committed in the name of religion. The best and fastest way to control people and warp their reality is to make them believe in a god.
We’re better than this.
Take the story of Chad and Lori Daybell. She was a normal, successful woman who wasn’t a psychopath. She fell in with a pastor who convinced her of extreme religious ideals, after which they murdered their own children in a misguided belief they’d be safer in heaven than on earth.
Your re-telling of Chad and Lori Daybell sounds too tidy to be true. It’s like the first fifteen minutes of a horror movie with a completely happy, care-free life and then she bumps into a pastor and that chance encounter did her in.
Like sure, she poison pilled herself on religion partially but the whole “they were a normal couple” dream-scape section of the 48 hours special you’re narrating here is the type of thing that constantly has me talking at the TV when those nuance-bereft junk piles are playing at my house.
She was obviously fucked up before she met the guy, just like a lot of cult followers are fucked up before they seek the guidance of their “guy”.
Some people are fucked up from birth, some become fucked up later, and some are varying degrees of fucked up…but people are messy and it’s not like they all used to be a happy go-lucky adventurer like you until they took one religion to the knee.
I think people get the relationship inverted. Many people become religious to fill whatever gap they had in the first place. Many people become cult-leaders because they were already sick in the head.
i also think, in a world without religion, some people would still hear voices and feel compelled to do terrible or dangerous things as a result.
Religion is just a creation of man. I would argue that we have the relationship inverted and that we have religion partially because people heard voices and felt compelled to do terrible or dangerous things as a result.
i don’t necessarily disagree with you; neither would Julian Jaynes. i’m just not going to blame organized religion for something (hearing compelling voices) that would exist with or without it.
Agreed. I was raised Catholic but I revelled every step of the way and GTFO as soon as I could. Yeah angels will get you stuff like this.
Big difference in intended meaning between revel and rebel.
friend, just reading the headline - this isn’t organized religion at work, this is psychosis. she could have said the Care Bears told her to do it - same thing.
Psychosis PLUS organised religion. That’s my point, friend. Psychosis alone is a tragedy we should work to address as a society. But many of these stories would not end in senseless violence if there weren’t an underlying system of fantastical belief that bolstered people’s delusions and convinced them their delusions were divinely inspired.
if you have been close to or worked with psychotic people, you might recognize they don’t necessarily need religion to come to fantastical conclusions and potentially act on them. i mean, maybe the radio told her. or the coffee pot. or the person who lives in the walls. or the cat.
fwiw, i’m not a massive defender of religion (nor especially a hater). i just think it’s a mistake to blame religion for what is sometimes organic disease of the brain (among various possible causes).
This bullshit has convinced non-psychotic people to commit atrocities. It’s not a leap to think it convinces actually psychotic people their delusions are true. Especially when they say so themselves.
She votes right wing btw
If you liked “Florida Man”, you’re gonna love “Florida Woman”
It’s not the Sunshine State when there’s an eclipse going on. Doh!
A meeting technicality!
We put the Wo in Man!
I mean … if I wasn’t already avoiding that shithole state …
In 1976, Larry Cohen made a film called “God Told Me To,” where random people commit murders in the name of God. The movie explains it as (spoiler alert) the influence of aliens, but apparently such a thing doesn’t actually need science fiction explanations.
Edit: Also, we live in what was the path of totality in Indiana and watched the eclipse in a park. When we came home, my daughter saw a bunch of people in a church parking lot doing some post-eclipse bowing down in prayer (I missed it) and she thought it was hilarious.
“I fell to my knees in that Aldi parking lot” is a popular meme on instagram currently, due to a sighting of Christians welcoming the end times in an Aldi parking lot.
I watched a video yesterday about the whole history of TimeCube.com, and it had the same sorts of patterns we see in online radicalization today. Someone with an untreated mental illness posted regularly on a website, and was egged on by people who thought it was funny. Then some kid who also has an untreated mental illness sees it and takes it seriously. Then that kid does something horrific because of it. (In TimeCube’s case the kid jumped in front of a train after meeting the old guy and being rebuffed.)
Can you please link to the video? That sounds really interesting.
Fuckin TimeCube, man. That shit was wild back in the day. I hadn’t heard about someone taking it seriously.
Kamoulox
Take a society with no mental health assistance and then pepper it with tons of religious fervor. It’s a recipe for disaster.
I’m in the middle of the first episode of the third season of the podcast Long Shadow. This one is going to be about mass shootings. Looks like they haven’t added it to their website yet, but both of the prior seasons were excellent so I expect this to be more of the same.
Take a society with no mental health assistance and then pepper it with tons of religious fervor.
Then add in a whooole lotta guns
If God told her to then it should be legal.
No one can prove God didn’t tell her to go on a shooting spree.
We need to subpoena god.
Gonna be hard for the marshalls to deliver it. Or, at least to return from delivering it.
just give it to the pope.
I’m sure he can pass it on.
And morally ok. Because powerful sky man told her so.
I wasn’t paying attention was some Alex Jones type telling people to do this last week?
Apparently a lot of people on tiktok thought the eclipse was the rapture
I guess everyone else out of the path of totality just stayed on Earth then?
Removed by mod
Taylon
Well there’s the problem.
Nichelle
Found the second problem.
Disagree. Nichelle Nichols was a fine human being.
There is no mental health treatment in our society.
If anything, there is anti treatment. Organisations are waiting and ready to exploit your mental illness at every turn.
Oh maximizing addictions and false logic are the best ways to make money though. Who the fuck cares if it’s bad for the poors. It will never affect the god holy rich who are above it all.
mental health treatment in america is to grab a gun, wave it at people then drown in your addiction of choice. This woman chose “religious conspiracy bullshit”
I have come to believe that blind faith is a socially accepted mental illness.
The ICD-11 definition for delusion clearly defines religion, but then commits special pleading to excuse religious belief.
That’s because our health system is a fucking joke. Thanks republiclowns!! Working as intended.
So today I drove five hours to see the eclipse, had a tire blow out, didn’t see the eclipse because of thick clouds, and got stuck in traffic for hours on the way back. (I’m still not home.) But at least I haven’t been shot by maniac, yet.
Any updates? It’s been 8 minutes, you’re starting to worry me.
RIP ArbitraryValue. Do you guys remember how excited he was about the eclipse there at the end? It’s all he could talk about. That’s what I’ll remember most.
I’ll miss him too, the eclipse lovin bastard.
If only we could have done something.
You didn’t? I upvoted his last comment.
We did all we could.
Upvote and F in the comments. I loved Arbitrary Value as much as I love any other random commenter.
We should erect a memorial of jeans and beans in their honor. It’s what they would’ve wanted.
I remember when he blew a maniac in traffic who shot a thick cloud on his back for hours that he didn’t get to see because of the eclipse. He never made it home because he was too tired.
That’s close enough to how I remember it, too.
You didn’t shoot anyone either tho, did you?
Asking the important questions
It’s been two hours. They for sure murdered someone.
It’s been 6 hours I’m getting worried
Thank God we have laws to keep guns out of the hands of obvious crazy people.
I can’t believe this isn’t the onion
Shit man, wait until you hear about Andrea Yates.
her story is actually pretty tragic and fucked up, if you look into it.
Folks on Talk Radio and the Televangelical circuit have been doing dime-store prophecies about the Eclipse being the end of the fucking world for fucking months. I was honestly a bit surprised shit like this wasn’t more common.
Maybe Americans are building up a tolerance to the endless media hysteria.
