Abortion Doctor George Tiller Murdered

It was probably a Christian.

Sad Yet another terrorist created by the Cult of Christianity

If I said "It was probably a black guy" after reading about a car jacking, would I be a racist? Not saying you can't be right but for fucks sake man.

Not remotely the same thing.

Explain. I'd love to hear you rationalize the outright hate some have around here and why it's utterly acceptable to make those kind of comments.

It is, kind of.

I wouldnt label it as racist. A gross generalization, yes. I personally dont see anything wrong with saying to yourself "It was probably a black guy" upon reading of a car jacking in South Central LA, for instance. Just like I personally dont see anything wrong with someone assuming the person who shot and killed this poor guy was a devout evangelical Christian.

In both cases youre probably right.

Then again, Im less proned to get my panties in a bunch about this type of stuff. But thats just me.

Asians are bad drivers, by the way.

Uhh... because a person's race is completely incidental to stealing a car; but this hypocritical Christian ideology is of central importance to the abortion-violence issue.

Fair enough, and I get where you're coming from with the context argument. But the anti-christian sentiment on the boards has really gotten pretty tacky lately. I get that there is a large portion of people on these boards who think me utterly retarded for believing in God. It just surprises me how hateful some can be in that regard.

What if somebody carjacks an abortion doctor? What then?

Actually, Christian ideaology abhors this sort of thing. You know, it is possible to be against abortion AND be against killing abortion doctors.

The perp would probably look something like this:

Uhhh...saying it was not done by a crazy christian is kind of like saying Nazis did not kill most of the jews in Europe during the 1930s and 40s.

Unless the murder occurred for some personal or random reason that is not all related to the fact that Dr. Tiller performed abortions, there is not any other demographic that would pull this kind of stunt. I mean, if you can think of any other demographic of extremists that stand on the side of the road with posters of bloody unborn fetuses, let me know.

There's multiple groups of people that steal cars.

Black Christian, probably that preacher from Obama's church which would prove Obama's an atheist elitist who eats burgers with Grey poupon on them.

Baptist.

Bingo Chachi, you answered it for me. Until they actually show it's some fundie moron who did this, could there be a possibility that the murder was motivated for another reason?

Oh and I never said a fundie didn't do this, I was commenting on the generalization.

Nothing wrong with saying it was Chrisitian. I mean they're the ones that are constantly making abortion a central religious issue. They are the ones that consistently speak of how it is an abomination upon the world and that the doctors who perform abortions are essentially commiting murder. No doubt in my mind it was a christian. Sadly, there won't be enough outrage from the rational group and instead nothing but excuses from religious zealots.

Feel the Christian love
http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/8967610531.html

True. But what you're describing is a rational christian. Which there are plenty of.

However, the people that generally make a big stink in public tend to be more interested in making a spectacle of their viewpoints. I'm not sure that the 4-year olds that are dragged to anti-abortion picket lines have strong viewpoints on abortion.

While the christian ideology does not support the methods performed by these wackos, the wackos that perform the crimes usually call themselves christians.

IF it turns out to be some crackpot who thinks he's doing "gods work" I'll gladly shout him down as being a monster who has no idea what God's word means and I'm outraged at any murder regardless of affiliation.

I don't like broad generalizations about Christians. I was raised Baptist and respect a lot of very religious people, but it's a realistic assumption. Glib and dickish, but realistic.

Point missed. Regardless of how you interpret Christian ideology, it is being used as justification for these acts. Despite most Christians being non-violent, that still makes it central to this issue. If you don't believe me, believe the people who do these things and those who support them. It's hate preach.

It's completely different from making racist assumption about a car-jacker's ethnicity.

Yeah I noticed that too. I personally was baptized Catholic but have been an athiest ever since about 5th or 6th grade, but the anti-believer sentiment (which obviously spreads far beyond this board...it seems to grow each and every day) kinda baffles me.

If people think theres a Heaven and in order to get there you cant kill anybody, steal anything, cheat on your spouse, etc then I say more power to them.

Yes I do realize that there is a small segment of the supposed "Christian" population that contains nothing but hypocritical douchebags who seem to murder physicians for sport while attempting to deny gays the right to marry, but obviously thats no reason to dog on the entire faith.

Im tempted to start a new thread calling all Muslims terrorists just to see all the vocal anti-Christian folks show up and tell me what a horrible person I am for doing so.

Again, I would not argue that it was unrealistic. I'm just pointing out that dickish'ness. I know that there is probably a 99.9% chance the guy who did this will call himself a christian. Thing is, he doesn't represent me or speak for me or any other rational Christian. Yet we'll get lumped in because "Christian" means backwoods, inbred, moron.

Theres a big difference between making it an issue and gunning some guy down because he happens to not believe in the same things you do.

That kinda stuff is best left to those mooslims.

This thread has brought up a question for me. I honestly wonder why christians are generally the only religious group to regularly protest abortion in public, and commit these types of crimes against abortion clinics and physicians.

Jews and modern-muslims (not the jihadists) are against taking the lives of others as well, but you don't ever really see any of them organizing pro-life rallies or protests. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

No, that's not just what you were doing. You were also drawing a completely false analogy.


Oh, boohoo. You do not. Most non-religious people do not assume the average Christian wants to bomb abortion clinics. If you have an issue as a group, do more politically to distance yourselves from the wackos on the far right. Don't cry about the people calling a crazy Christian a Christian.

B_MetalSucks:

Cry me a river. When your brethren stop being dictatorial, self-righteous asshats, the rest of us will stop characterizing them as dictatorial, self-righteous asshats. If you want to be butthurt about this, try getting angry at the idiots who are ruining your reputation. They're doing more damage to your religion than all of our insensitive generalizations.

edit:
I would also like to point out that the guy was shot in a fucking church. How does that fit into your whole "unfair assumptions" diatribe?

Yah what Bailey said. I dont think people intelligent enough to actually think about religion and recognizing certain actions as something that is very likely done with an agenda motivated by (maybe misunderstood, but still) religion think even for a second that ALL christians, or even the majority of them, are of the kind.
Its just because the rightwing christian nuts are so incredibly vocal about their moronic intentions and views that it has become a shorthand to actually refer to these nutjobs as the "christians".

Its a bit like when you talk about young african american males, you are usually talking about the LA South Side demographic, not the well-educated young Obamas.
I dont think it serves anyone well to nitpick this on a discussion board with a pretty high intellectual standard, because we all actually do know what is meant, and what is NOT meant.
Every religion, and incidentially atheism as well, has their extremists. However, in the USA, it just happens to be the christians ones with the loudest voice.

I believe and others have agreed that the analogy is not that far off.

I'm far from crying. But I do love that you again lump all Christians together with the bolded statement. I have no reason to distance myself from anyone as my religious beliefs are a personal thing that I choose not to make a political statement with. I don't picket abortion clinics, I don't care if gays marry, those issues do not effect me.

I wasn't lumping all Christians together- I was saying, if anything, your beef is with the wrong side.

ETA- so you're comfortable equating the assumption that someone who carried out a violent action in keeping with a particular group's radical ideology was of that ideology with the assumtption that a guy who stole a car was black? Okay...

Would you care to provide an example of what an atheist extremist is? I don't recall any atheist organizations taking credit for any bombings or murders.

The people who do those things do affect you, like it or not.

Like I've tried to say before. I don't consider those people my brethren, but you guys do. And nothing I say or do will effect the fundie's who do the shit you're talking about.

Anyone could have followed him to his church. Real simple.

That damn Dawkins, he can be really rude sometimes.

They tend to be sporadically funny comedians. Definately not as bad as an actual religious extremist, but you better believe their jokes miss more than they hit.

I believe what B_Metalsucks is trying to say (and I agree) is that in this situation, people use the actions of a nutjob to justify their prejudice against ALL Christians.

And that Chris Hitchens guy, boy he does seem angry. I mean true, he hasn't shot anyone or blown up a mosque yet, but you can totally tell that he wants to.

And it could have been elves.

Honestly, do you actually believe what you're saying? Are you so desperate to defend your faith's reputation that you're going to completely overlook the odds just for the sake of your argument? If you see a flattened raccoon in the middle of the road, you can be pretty sure it was hit by a car. If an abortion doctor is murdered in a fucking church, then I think our assumptions are on pretty safe ground. Saying that we're leaping to unfounded conclusions is just willfully retarded.

It's not the assumption Greg and I'm sure you know it. It's the fact that Christian is now a dirty word. No one says fundamentalist christian or even tries to make the distinction anymore. Anyone who believes in God is looked at like one of those nuts.

Oh and this bit...
Ummm, yeah because I posted this earlier.

I know that there is probably a 99.9% chance the guy who did this will call himself a christian.

But that doesn't support your theory of what my point is so I'm sure you just overlooked that.

But the post that originally set you off was BTSMGL's simple "It was probably a Christian", which apparently, you agree with. So what's the problem? He didn't follow it up with "...and all Christians are basically murderers." If you're not denying that it was likely motivated by religious beliefs, then where does the crass generalization enter into it? It seems to me that you came in here intentionally looking to find insult.

And incidentally, your contention that "christian" has now become a dirty word is ludicrous beyond belief. I don't see any politicians refusing to call themselves christians. Not one of them will toss out the word "atheist", even if they admit that they don't believe in God. Because that would be political suicide. Simply calling themselves christians, though, will get them votes. Where does the dirty word part come in?

And I noticed your coy use of the phrase "call himself a christian". A person who calls himself a christian is a christian. Sorry. Just because you disagree with him, or he's not following the parts of the bible that you personally approve of, you don't get to remove his religion. That would mean that you were casting aspersions on his faith, which is apparently something you don't like people to do.

I actually read BTSMGL's post as a joke, which confirms my belief that every single Christian is a humourless Dr Killer.
Also, big surprise, Bill O'Reilly sucks a whole lot of ass :http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/05/31/tiller/

It was. A sad one, too, since part of the commentary was that a "people loving" Christian probably killed him.

Which explains the "probably" part of my comment. Move on.

Here is my personal promise: if anybody ever shoots O'Reilly, I vow not to have a problem with anybody saying "It was probably an atheist". You can take that to the bank.

Were you awake for September 11th? Or the following couple of years?

I'm pretty sure Christians have gotten a pretty fair pass, especially in this country, for quite some time now.

Of course, this forgives the fact that Christendom has spent the better part of the last 900 years (that's 22% of the Earth's entire existence!) earning a good amount of the animosity it gets.

I wonder about this too - I'm guessing if you swapped out "Christian" with "Muslim" in any one of the many Christian criticisms around here a lot of ppl would change their tunes real quick.

Look, closet racists!

If you started a thread with the sole intention of calling all muslims terrorists, I'm pretty fucking sure everyone on the board would have a problem with it. The fact that you're tempted to start that thread just for that reason shows what kind of person you are. Plus, you have a furry backing you.

This thread is one giant derail. Btw, the doctor was shot as he was entering his church. If the killer is Christian, he needs a new savior. Zing!

Assuming he was Xtian is not the worst thing in the world to do, esp if you disliker eligion in general. It doesn't have to be anti-any one specific religion.

That's a silly argument. If you swapped the word "muslim" into a sentence that was criticizing christians, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. Except in the cases where we're criticizing religion in general, in which case, hey, have at it. I think any one religious belief is as stupid as the next, personally. But I reserve my greatest disdain for christianity, since (in our culture) they're the ones insisting that the rest of us live by their rules. If the muslims were in charge here, I expect that my feelings about them would be pretty much identical, since they have the same kind of cultural control issues that the christians do.

So yeah, not so much changing my tune.

Personally, I was wondering more about the inconsistencies in how different faiths are treated around here - Christianity gets slapped around an awful lot, and holocaust jokes are fine, but any mention of Islam is typically treated with kid-gloves. The Closer hinted at it with that thread notion, and I expounded on it.

Also, I can't believe it took this long for my credibility to be questioned after my "big reveal" - thanks for finally getting that out of the way Alex.

Greg - see, I was speaking more in generalities; of course if you were to literally swap them out it wouldn't really make sense in the given context. Your point about Christianity being more familiar as a perceived hegemon in the west is duly noted; my thing is just that any blanket condemnation of a broad group smacks of bigotry.

When people start using the phrase "Christian terrorist" in regards to such people the way they use "Islamic terrorist", I'll be happy.