Well, 2 police are among the dead. I'm not clear on whether they were the protection officers for the editor or not. If they were then they would appear to have fallen doing their job.
In any case it sounds like the gunmen were armed with automatic riffles and I would think that the elemnet of surprise with one or two of those would count for an awful lot in a fire fight.

He was under police protection for 8 years and had asked for relaxation because what's the point if it's ruining your life?

Significantly less ruinous than the business end of an assault rifle!

Now a policewoman has died from wounds sustained in a separate attack, this morning.

When those beliefs hold back the rest of the world. When people murder innocent people in the name of those beliefs. When people abuse children in the name of those beliefs. When children are mutilated in the name of those beliefs. When crimes are covered up in the names of those beliefs.

[LIFTED] yes!

Get them the [LIFTED] out of society.

As for me. It is not a "belief" that I have. If someone can prove to me that their god is the real one then yes I would accept that. I wouldn't cut their head off.

These stories were created by man only a few thousand years ago.

I really struggle to understand why people seem to have a barrier in understanding that.

These people were killed over a fairytale.

Atheists - or at least people who are not active participants in any religion - do all those things too. The problem isn't religion per se, it's people. People will always find an excuse to do bad things. If it's not religion it's skin colour. If it's not skin colour it's gender. If it's to gender it's.. well you get the idea. And we can't get rid of people. Thinking that if we got rid of religion the amount of evil done in the world would suddenly drop dramatically is staggeringly naive.


And there are and always will be fairy tales. You're suggesting mass societal whack-a-mole, really think it will work?

In their massively observed forms, none of the mainstream religions of the world require you to murder anyone. The ones who claim that they do have twisted the story to fit their personal maladjustments. If you think they won't just find another story to twist the same way, you're in as big a fantasy land as they are.

I genuinely don't believe it is possible to eradicate violence from the human soul, sad as it is to say. I think religion is something some people use as a system to promote peace and understanding and some people use as an excuse to cause chaos and grief. Both would probably do those things anyway, they'd just find some other justification.

Yes it is.

You believe that religion is completely irrelevant in the modern world.
You believe that it is a relic of ancient times when people used "god" as an answer to things we now understand.
You believe that the sooner it is wiped off the face of the planet the better.
You believe that in 2015 it is a complete farce to pretend that some higher being exists.
You believe that people who continue to believe such things are being stupid.

None of those statements has been shown to be factually true. Therefore you can't know them and they are simply beliefs.

My "belief" seeing as you seem to be going out of your way to force one upon me. Is to look at evidence and learn facts from them about how things work. How the world works, how people work.

Me saying that there is no evidence that any sort of higher being exists. Is not a belief. It is a fact.

Me saying that religion is causing people to abuse and mutilate children, murder innocent people, start wars, etc... Is not a belief. It is a fact.

Me saying that the idea (because that is what it is) of some higher being was created by man a few thousand years ago to control people is not a belief. It is a fact.

If you were to show a religious person absolute proof in something that goes against their idea of the higher being then they will outright refuse to accept it. So far as they may even murder the person who showed them.

This is not a rational way to exist in the modern world.

And if it isn't murdering people it's disowning your own kids because they are gay or because they have fallen in love with someone who isn't of the same religion etc...

Stoning women because they were driving in a car with a man they weren't married to.

Murdering is the extreme end of the scale. There are incidents all the way along that scale.

I have some sympathy with your view, but I debate the causality involved. People do nasty things, some of them do nasty things in the name of religion. It kind of falls into the 'all cats have four legs, all dogs have four legs, therefore all cats are also dogs' logic.

Jon

No doubt. But when someone runs into an office, murders 13 people there and then runs out shouting "The prophet Mohammed has been avenged" then it's hard not to see the causation there.

Yes, I realise that people do violent things without religion being involved.

To quote Steven Weinberg...

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Re the stuff I mentioned that people do.

Rabbis biting (yes with their actual teeth) the ends of the penises off young boys.

Female genital mutilation has now taken on a religious aspect. It didn't come from religion but now it has somehow been tied to it and is now performed because of it.

Parents who find out their child is gay and disown them because it is "against the will of god".

These are things that are done by people purely because of religion.

In this specific case, absolutely. And history is full of people doing awful things in the name of religion - the crusades, the inquisition, Boko Harum, there are even a few records of conflicts involving different sects of buddhism, believe it or not. All I'm saying is I don't think banning religion will particularly stop people doing awful things. There are people in the world who are intolerant, who are insecure, who are even homicidal. They will find reasons/excuses to justify their awful behaviour. If you take religion away, they'll just find another one. Religion is a facilitator, not a cause. Now, that may be enough of a reason to get rid of religion but I personally don't think so.


Don't agree. There's a very obvious example from the last century where some basically 'good' people did some utterly awful things and religion wasn't really anything to do with it, or at least wasn't a major driver. The Standford prison experiment and the famous Asch conformity experiment both showed how basically normal, moral people can and will do utterly immoral things if put in the right situation. Both of those experiment were entirely agnostic.

Ok. Yeah I hadn't thought of the Prison Experiment.

I hadn't heard of Asch, but the Stanford experiment was flawed, unethical and probably borderline illegal - hardly an fitting example of "good" people turning bad.

From what I've read on the Stanford prison experiment, most of the ethical issues came about mostly because those in charge were caught completely by surprise by what happened, rather than them setting out to deliberately cause suffering etc?