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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
 Posted - 04/19/2007 : 17:44:40
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This is an article from Lauren Green, Fox News's Religion Correspondent, about how some "experts" say that Cho (the shooter in the VA Tech massacre) was literally losing the battle between good and evil within himself. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266860,00.html
I wouldn't mind this blather so much if Green hadn't also totally misrepresented both psychologist Philip Zimbardo's new book “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil,” and Michael Shermer: quote:
It's not only theologians who talk of evil. A new book by psychologist Philip Zimbardo, “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil,” offers a perspective that may shed light on Cho's inner demons.
"The Lucifer Effect" is based on the Stanford Prison Experiment of 33 years ago. It exposed how the prison environment creates evil and violent behavior, like at Abu Ghraib. It also explained the group or systemic evil that occurred under Hitler, communist regimes and during the genocide in Rwanda.
Zimbardo says there are prisons that are not confined to a place or building — emotional prisons of “normal” individuals that can create aberrant and evil behavior. Whether that prison is shyness, loneliness, anger or hate, it can grow and manipulate an individual into believing his only course of action is to break out, using any means possible, including violence.
In the case of Cho, he said, the “rich kids,” the “deceitful charlatans" and the women who rejected him may have been people he saw as his “jailers,” the wardens responsible for his emotional incarceration. Cho vilified them, found them guilty of great offenses and then methodically executed his warped sense of justice: the murders of 32 people.
Atheists don't believe in the Devil or demonic possession, but there is some respect for the theological idea of evil. Michael Shermer, editor of the Skeptics Magazine, acknowledges Christianity's take on Satan has a great deal of weight to it. “Religion figured out long before science the pervasiveness of man's 'vil'side, that's why they created so many rules," he said.
The fucking moron who wrote this apparently doesn't realize that Shermer and Zimbardo use words such as "evil" as non-absolute concepts, created out of and shaped entirely by the human experience -- hardly a theological interpretation of the word, at least in any traditional or conventional sense. Shermer's acknowledgement of religious concepts is as outdated mythology which pales in comparison to more progressive and scientific ideas, and the title of Zimbardo's book is intended to be metaphorical, not in reference to some real supernatural entity.
If anyone is interested in Zimbardo's book, here he speaks on the Standford Prison Experiment: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1870756
I really wanna read his book!
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"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Edited by - marfknox on 04/19/2007 17:45:49
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 04/20/2007 : 01:58:07 [Permalink]
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I saw this. On the one hand you expect it from these guys. After all they're always putting Falwell and Robertson comments on blaming God's wrath. But on the other hand, it's mind boggling they could publish that with a straight face.
Worse than that however, is the implication mental illness is that possession by the devil crap. I wonder if they realize the implications of what they've said?
I can't wait to read Shermer's take on that article. I signed up for a year of his skeptic publication. I'll let you know when the next issue is out.
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| Edited by - beskeptigal on 04/20/2007 02:11:49 |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
 Posted - 04/20/2007 : 02:09:26 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by marfknox
This is an article from Lauren Green, Fox News's Religion Correspondent, about how some "experts" say that Cho (the shooter in the VA Tech massacre) was literally losing the battle between good and evil within himself. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266860,00.html...
This is what I emailed the Fox News Editor:
"Do you realize the implications of the absurd claim by Lauren Green (Did the Devil Make Him Do It? 4-18-07) that Cho Seung-Hui's mental illness represents something akin to possession by the devil? I can't imagine a more backward view of mental illness. Green needs to come out of the dark ages. Hello! We practice evidence based medicine in the modern world, or haven't you heard?"
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 04/20/2007 : 03:36:09 [Permalink]
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On the other hand, it was once believed, and might still be somewhere, that the mad were blessed because they had been touched by God. It's as good an explanation as any, if we must go the supernatural hoo-hah route. Biblically speaking, Cho is something that God might do.
Writing to Fox Nooz is a waste of time. You can do it until you get triple-compound, terminal, carpal tunnel syndrome complicated by gangrene, and they will love every word of it. They will publically post the best, to them, of the letters as if to say: "See, we really are fair & balanced!" And the brain-dead will lap it up like blind hogs at the swill bucket.
Good letter though, B'gal, brief and to the point, as the good ones always are.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Fox literally blames devil & evil for VA shooting
