People think atheists are more likely to be serial killers, …
Interesting research here…
[People think atheists are more likely to be serial killers, but also more ‘open-minded’ and fun at parties (msn.com)]
People believe all kinds of garbage.
The military (for example) screens recruits for spiritual fitness, and atheists are punished for their beliefs.
Part of this is because a commander is often expected to pray with his (or her) soldiers before a battle, and morale may suffer at a crucial time if the commander is perceived as sarcastic and/or insincere . . . which may contribute to friendly casualties.
Also, atheists are believed to be cowardly in battle, as they have no afterlife to look forward to.
Of course we know this is all nonsense, but that’s how it works.
Sorry ,can’t resist this; “there are no atheists in foxholes” (anon)
It’s actually quite subtle and utter bullshit.
As far as I’m aware atheists are far less likely to be criminals than any other group.
People who attack us for our lack of belief often have the odd belief that a person cannot be moral unless they are religious. I blame our education system for not teaching children critical thinking. I also think that a high level of computer literacy should be taught.
Survey reveals only .02% of prisoners identify as atheists
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…"atheists are associated with immorality [and] narcissism,”
Well if theistic morality involved religious doctrine and dogma that’s a no brainer, but narcissistic ffs? Give me a break. I can’t speak for other atheists, but I don’t believe the universe and everything in it is a stage created by a deity specifically for me to be tested on my suitability for an eternity of bliss after I die.
“Even atheists tend to show some level of intuitive distrust toward atheists.
Give me strength, what utter garbage. Again I can’t speak for other atheists, but I don’t distrust atheists per se any more than any other demographic.
"My coauthors and I reasoned that, at least in some contexts, being an atheist must be viewed positively.”
Wow, that sounds profoundly condescending, seriously.
Moon said. “Atheism might not necessarily boost perceptions of trustworthiness, but it might make people be viewed as more fun, open-minded, or scientific. In those contexts, people are probably more open to interacting with atheists.”
They can fuck off, why would I want to interact with bigots who think my lack of an unevidenced superstitious belief in a deity, makes me more likely to commit mass murder?
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As is typical, people who make the kinds of claims cited reveal a profound misunderstanding of the term ‘atheist’ IE that it is simply the lack of belief in god(s) . That nothing else is implied or may be inferred.
Prior to fucking off, those drongos need to be smacked about the left ear with a maggoty possum. 
I suspect that most that make this judgement associate Mao and Stalin with atheism and being serial killers. Yes, both of those individuals were monsters, but it was not atheism that had anything to do with their murderous intent.
This is also another reason not to classify people into groups.
Indeed. As far as I can tell, each of those individuals were far too narcissistic to have any motive apart from self interest, certainly not any ideology. I’ve long thought that those individuals were also quite psychotic, although I’m not a psychiatrist, so could be wrong.
I guess along with many others, I find it hard to accept that sometimes a human being is simply evil. IE that there has to be something wrong with a person to commit evil acts. Probably because I don’t have a satisfying definition of the term ‘evil’. Not not convinced there is such a thing as evil in any objective sense.
Nothing is more fun that going to the store and buying those big boxes of corn flakes. I get about 10 of them. Line those puppies up on the firing range and blow the hell out of them. Cereal killing is a hobby worth having.
I can honestly say, I have killed all the cereals I have ever meant to kill and I will kill more if the opportunity presents itself.
Really? Probably the healthiest use of corn flakes.
I haven’t actually fired a weapon since 1970. Then, at the range, we had cutouts of vaguely sinister soldiers. We tried to shoot out the supporting stakes. Alternatively, we used sandbags. 7.62 round; tiny entrance hole, massive exit hole.
I have not fired a gun in 20 years. They are illegal, to a degree, in Korea. You can own a gun but you have to register it with the police department and store it in a gun club. You can never take it home with you. Also, many kinds of guns just aren’t allowed.
When someone owes you money in this country, you cut off his feet. Knives and swords accomplish pretty much the same thing guns do. If you want to off someone, it’s just not that hard to do it.
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They believe morality is only possible if their delusional belief is true, so they make the asinine and demonstrably false assumption that anyone who lacks that belief is immoral. They can’t even get the context right after their false conclusion, as that would make us amoral, not immoral. You be can’t be fucking immoral if morality doesn’t exist, fuckwits.
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Ah, the Peter Hitchens rationale. Being a Marxist he went on a tour of the former Soviet Union. He was appalled at the terrible society he encountered, and reasoned it was atheism that had caused it, them immediately became a right wing christian, writing the Daily Mail.
Peter is the dimwitted brother of the late great Christopher.
Peter is so dimwitted he failed to notice any other contributory factors beyond atheism, and clearly doesn’t understand that correlation isn’t causation. I bet he utters phrases like “I don’t believe in coincidences”, without grasping how idiotic it is.
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This scene is the one I always remember from Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket: [Classic Movies] Full Metal Jacket- The Virgin Mary - YouTube
Cut off people’s feet? Really? Farrrk.
That’s how it’s been here since 1996. The government changed the gun laws here after the mass shooting in 1996.
By some weird coincidence, there have been no mass shootings in Oz since, and armed robbers now rarely use guns. Usually something like a hammer or, screw driver, with the odd katana. One bloke robbed a place claiming the syringe he was carrying had HIV in it.
When a miscreant does not have gun, victims are far more likely to fight back .
Here it’s an offence to carry a blade longer than 5 inches (12.7 cm). Katanas and all manner of martial arts weapons are banned outright. Bows are also restricted.
Question: Is it a thing that one does not punch,/hit a Korean in the face, as it’s criminal assault, as opposed to on the arm or torso?
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It’s punishable to hit with a closed fist anywhere. Koreans used to make a lot of money off foreigners by getting the foreigners to punch them.
You get 5 or 6 Korean guys together. You stick them in an entertainment district where the soldiers like to play. Hooker Hill in Itewan was perfect. On a Saturday night, wall to wall people.
Now, in Korea, wherever there is prostitution, there is a police department on the edge of the area so the cops can get their cut. So the police are in on all the scams. You will never get justice at the police station in these areas. Best to stay away.
So the gang goes out looking for some drunk guy, or someone not very athletic looking. The fight can begin with something as simple as the Korean bumping into the guy and then getting angry and pushing him. It does not take long for most westerners to just close up a fist and punch the guy bothering them.
Well, at that point the six buddies jump in and pull the guys apart. Everyone saw the foreigner strike the Korean with a closed fist, Down to the police department they go. Generally the foreigner must pay between 2 and 5 thousand dollars or risk being put in jail. You pay money to the victim, the guy you struck, and you pay it now,.
As an added incentive to the soldiers, the police agree to keep things quiet and not call the base commander. Guess how fast the money rolls in,. Two or three gangs working the area on a Saturday night can make enough money to buy a fucking house,
Watch for the scams in any country and certainly be aware of the laws concerning battery.
I’m currently looking to move to Arkansas. In Arkansas, I have a duty to retreat from any sort of altercation. Failure to do so will result in my arrest. By law, I must retreat. The only place they have a Stand your Ground law is in your own home. Very important information. The laws in the USA vary from state to state.
Although I agree with the sentiment, I think moving to Arkansas is like killing a mad dog by dropping a piano forte on it.
Here self defence is based on the principle of reasonable force. You need to be very careful before harming or killing a person who attacks you.
There was case here where a burglar sued the house holder for an injury he sustained while robbing the house. ‘Man traps’ are illegal here.
In Britain–a nation of 66 million people–there were 64 total gun deaths for all of 2017 for the entire country . . . while we here in the States lost almost as many people in just one mass shooting (Las Vegas, with 59 dead).
This seems like a great social accomplishment (and it is), but it didn’t change anything with regards to violent crime.
Criminals have started car jacking and mugging people by running up to them and throwing acid (or concentrated lye) into the victim’s face.
If anything, murder and violent crime have gone up in Britain, although I do not imply or suggest that this has to do with them making guns illegal.
When all is said and done, people–especially criminals–are resourceful, and the possibilities for making improvised weapons from innocuous materials are limited only by one’s creativity and imagination.
When I was a troubled teenager, I made a gun that could shoot steel ball bearings through 2 inches of plywood. All I used was a threaded steel pipe, hose clamps, a metal end cap with a hole drilled in it, match heads for propellant, and a few other things.
It was like a half-assed matchlock pistol. I could reload and fire up to three rounds a minute, and I could hit a man-sized plywood target from about 40 feet away.
Looking back, I’m lucky that I didn’t blow my hands (or my penis) off.
I’ve treated a few kids that blew their hands and fingers off while making pipe bombs. To be completely honest, I had no sympathy for them at all, Who knows what damage they would have caused. “Ignorance and gun powder don’t mix,” a statement that any true redneck will attest to. Beer and gun powder on the other hand… well now… that’s just fun!
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Snap. Similar except I was about 11. We used a firecracker as explosive. Shot a ball bearing through a metal fence. Around that time I had a [banned] shanghai. (spelling?) That’s what we called a slingshot. At the local dump we found a pile of small steel pellets, probably from the local car factory. Used them instead of small stones. They would make hole through a large bottle without breaking the bottle.
That was around the time there was a short-lived craze of kids making shurikens out of tin. Some nasty injuries at school. There was this Japanese kids show which featured a ninja with shurikens.
I recently discovered ‘The Purge’. Here one night a year all violent crime was permitted without penalty . The result was the deaths of a lot of poor people.
‘The Thinning’ is also interesting: Ina future in which over population is a problem, every country must reduce its population by 5% each year. This is done by The Thinning. School kids are given tests. Those with the lowest scores are executed. I wonder if that would have the long term effect of raising the IQ of a population? Don’t get put off by the fact that it has Logan Paul.
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Well I think it may be a little more complex than a like for like comparison of numbers, crime is motivated by a wide range of factors from selfish narcissism through rank stupidity to abject poverty and drug addiction. So I’d need to see a lot more evidence for claim 1 than top level stats.
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Again this could have a wide number of contributory factors, that might have been a lot worse if the availability of both legal and illegal guns were not strictly controlled. I think a more reasonable assessment is to compare the effects of such laws across multiple western democracies.
I agree, and of course it is vital that criminality is addressed and fought by widely varied initiatives, and that requires society be at least as ingenious as criminals. this would include fighting factors like poverty, and helping people who are motivated to commit opportunistic crimes, like drug addicts for instance. Hard core criminals who are impervious to any reason to desist from criminality are probably in a minority across the spectrum of crime. all society can do here is be vigilant, and put as much effort into rehabilitation as they put into punishing crime. Societies having the lowest rates of recidivism have learned this, and have lower rates of crime because of it. It’s in our natures to be angered and appalled by crime, but it perhaps handicaps us to a cycle where crime increases when it need not.
Tackling corruption in law enforcement, giving police the tools they need to be as effective as possible, tackling poverty, and social depravation, limiting the availability of lethal weapons as fare as is practical, punishing but reforming people who break the law etc etc etc…
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