Atheist man opens fire on Muslim students at UNC Chapel Hill

[Alcon]

There's almost no part of that Mediaite article that doesn't make me incredibly sad.

[Alcon]

err, this thread is getting weird...

Why are we assuming his actions were motivated by religious issues?  This would seem less presumptive if his feed was littered with references to anti-religious violence, or specifically seemed to target Muslims, but as far as I can tell neither is the case.  The one reference to Islam was criticizing "radical" Christianity and Islam together.  The one reference he had to violence I've seen was criticizing religion for causing it.

Of course, that makes him a hypocrite -- considering he murdered three people, probably the weakest charge against him -- but I don't really understand what here is making it so obvious to people that this was motivated by an ideological conviction relating to religion.

[Alcon]

Because for whatever reason we seem to have collectively given up on the idea that when someone goes crazy and shoots people the fault of it lies primarily on the guy who snapped and it's not in a vague sense "society's fault".

Whether he shot the men because of his anti-theist beliefs or not it's not New Atheism's fault he did it unless the New Atheists told him to; it's his own fault. The same applies to Islam, Christianity, or any other religion, ideology, or negation of.

I don't know what it would mean to be a religion's "fault," but someone's actions can be influenced by sincere beliefs that they were ideologically correct, including if that ideology is religious.  I'm not sure how an abstract idea could be "at fault," but it can be a causal influence.  Or do you disagree?

I think it is clear that if a Muslim had shot a member of a different religion and their newsfeed was found to be hateful toward other religions, people would not hesitate to assume that it was likely religiously motivated, which wouldn't be an unfair assumption. It's not an unfair assumption to assume this was religiously motivated either.

Rest in peace to the victims and may the lesson be one of nonviolence from all sides.

Are we really holding ourselves up to the standards of internet news site commenters here?  Yes, there are some people who would see any Muslim killing any non-Muslim and assume it was religiously motivated.  Those people are probably idiots, since I imagine a majority of murders committed by devout Muslims have nothing to do with religion.  I have no idea how the rate of religiously-inspired murders among devout Muslims relates to the rate of religiously-inspired murders among strong atheists, but in either case, I doubt the rate is near 50% for either group.

In this case, the randomness of the attack may lend greater probability to it being an ideologically-motivated killing.  That's fine.  I don't think it makes it "obviously" a hate crime, but it makes it plausible that it's one.  Here are my problems, though:

1. People (like Lief) who decry assuming that Muslim-on-non-Muslim killings are ideologically-motivated, but jumped on this, are being hypocrites.

2. Like I said before, abstractions like religions can't really have "fault."  However, posts like Beet's ("so much for the superiority of New Atheism") make no sense for two reasons.  First, even if this guy's actions were motivated by distate for Muslims, that doesn't necessarily indicate that he believed this action were morally justified due to anti-theism; that's a little different than the average religiously-motivated terrorism.  Additionally, even if we assume New Atheism was the causal influence, it doesn't make sense to treat all ideologies the same if any people see them as justifying wrong acts.  There are simply ideologies that -- regardless of whether I personally find the interpretations of those ideologies "wrong" -- are more frequently used to justify wrong acts.  If Beet isn't trying to disclaim that idea, I have no idea what he's trying to do.

People are responding to this thread emotionally, and saying intellectually ridiculous things in the process.  Except they're responding emotionally based on defensiveness about their ideological convictions, not about concern for the victims.  I feel like a jerk lately for being down on so many threads...but sorry, this one is pretty disappointing.

[Alcon]

1. People (like Lief) who decry assuming that Muslim-on-non-Muslim killings are ideologically-motivated, but jumped on this, are being hypocrites.

Huh?

Was your first post in the thread facetious?  I know it was mocking, but was it facetious?  If so, then sorry for using you as an example.  Although you can't blame me for assuming it was a serious statement, considering your next post...

[Alcon]

Now this post sounds a bit silly in retrospect.

Wait, so an atheist kills some people and now it's silly to call religious terrorism for what it is?  That makes zero sense.  Islam is not the only religion to be used to justify violence and terrorism.

If atheism can inspire violent acts just as much as religion, it's indeed silly to single out "religious terrorism" as a relevant analytical category.

That's not necessarily true.  There are several reasons that religion might present unique analytical problems.  First, the beliefs are involved are more likely to be fixed and not susceptible to moral appeals.  Second, if you think that religion doesn't serve an overall-positive social utility, you might see its disutility as more trouble than other beliefs, like political ones.  Third, religious beliefs and conflicts probably spread in a somewhat different way than political or ethnic ones -- which I think is worth considering.

Would you object to the separate analytical category of "political terrorism"?

[Alcon]

I know you've made the argument before, Al, that the atheistic elements of the Communist Party had a lot to do with why they persecuted Christians.  I disagree, as it is quite obvious to me that persecution took place as part of an overall power struggle.  The Communists were fighting an element they thought could undermine their ideal government and society... They were not persecuting them in the name of atheism.

So now we have No True Atheist as well. Remarkable.

safasfsafdsfda.

That's not a No True Scotsman fallacy.  A No True Scotsman fallacy is an informal fallacy of goalpost-shifting, where someone makes a universal claim and then backs away from it.  He didn't do that, though, unless he made the claim that no atheists are violent.  I don't see him making that claim.  If he made the claim that no one has ever committed a violent act in the name of atheism, and then changed the definition of "in the name of atheism," that would be an NTS.  Otherwise, you're committing a syllogism error here.

[Alcon]

Maher I believe has said there is no such thing as moderate or liberal Islam and that all Muslims believe X, Y, & Z blah blah.

What quote are you thinking of?

The only one I can find of where he mentions "moderate Muslim" or "moderate Muslims" is this: "Condemning attack is not enough: unless you strongly endorse the right of anyone to make fun of any religion/prophet, you are not a moderate Muslim."

You could argue that this is an unnecessarily strict definition, but it seems totally incompatible with him rejecting the possibility of a moderate Muslim.

[Alcon]

I know you've made the argument before, Al, that the atheistic elements of the Communist Party had a lot to do with why they persecuted Christians.  I disagree, as it is quite obvious to me that persecution took place as part of an overall power struggle.  The Communists were fighting an element they thought could undermine their ideal government and society... They were not persecuting them in the name of atheism.

So now we have No True Atheist as well. Remarkable.

safasfsafdsfda.

That's not a No True Scotsman fallacy.  A No True Scotsman fallacy is an informal fallacy of goalpost-shifting, where someone makes a universal claim and then backs away from it.  He didn't do that, though, unless he made the claim that no atheists are violent.  I don't see him making that claim.  If he made the claim that no one has ever committed a violent act in the name of atheism, and then changed the definition of "in the name of atheism," that would be an NTS.  Otherwise, you're committing a syllogism error here.

'kay

This wasn't some highly technical "gotcha," dude, so if you're being dismissive I don't see why.

[Alcon]

This wasn't some highly technical "gotcha," dude, so if you're being dismissive I don't see why.

It's just that I really don't care about (apparently?) strictly defined terms relating to logic, so was using the term in a very informal sense. So the appearance of a dense block of prim black-coated disapproval was not entirely anticipated.

If an argument sucks, I generally think we should explain why it sucks, not why another, slightly similar argument sucks.

This is definitely the first time in my life I've ever been called "prim," though, so that's something!

Specifically a claim was made that religious persecution by the well-known atheist state the Soviet Union does not count because the attempt by this atheist state to impose atheism at the point of a gun was not motivated by atheism but by other considerations. Which is, for the record, total trash. This bogus and historically illiterate argument was made in the context of a claim about violence almost never being motivated by atheism (a claim that, like it or not, is untrue).

I don't dislike that claim if it's true (besides the fact that it's sad and stuff).  I just get frustrated with the tendency of arguments on this site to vaguely half-engage the opposing side, and substitute intellectual allusions for intellectual arguments.  It's like sometimes the arguments here involve posts that just say things like "lol how post-bolshevik" and I'm thinking, I'm a reasonably smart guy and I have no idea what the heck that means.  And, in this case, I actually do know the allusion you were making, and it didn't really make an explicit logical point, so it didn't serve much purpose besides tonal condescension.  I think the Atlas has enough tonal condescension as it is from idiots that our smart, knowledgeable posters don't need to be doing it too.

All of which is a bit odd because if there was a 'political' motivation to these murders it looks (I've not followed closely so could be missing several very important things) to be primarily anti-Muslim (I would use the word 'racist' but Americans get weirded out by uses of that word that postdate the 19th century).

If HockeyDude doesn't accept the connection between atheism and communistic violence -- hard to know, since you didn't really engage him on the point -- then I don't know how that claim becomes "a little odd" based on this incident.