Two terrorists murder 14 people in San Bernardino and how does New Atheist activist Jerry Coyne react? He blames Republicans:
The Republicans are an odious and now a murderous party.
As I mentioned before, when we should be united against the terrorist threat on us all, you can count on the New Atheists to come up with ways to divide and weaken us.
Shadow To Light 
Mikey-the-Pretender: you, the NRA, & Republicans are dripping in the warm blood of innocent lives; but go right ahead destroying America with your self-absorbed dogma and non-solutions, while also continuing to defend centuries-old institutionalized pedophilia.
By all means though DO keep reading Christ’s teachings (preferably closer to their REAL, original words and NOT the skewed English translations)… with enough effort, one day you might experience a revelation and actually become a Christian! Good luck.
Unless we have killed innocents or advocated the killing of inmocents, not a single drop of blood is on our hands. Do you drink alcohol? If so, your hands are dripping with the blood of innocents.
I have no idea what your rant on pedophilia is about. Nor is it apparent that you have more than a tenuous grasp of what it means to be a Christian.
SheckyR turns up and gives us a live demonstration of “unhinged”, providing further evidence that Michael’s analysis is correct.
Actually, it might be a little hasty to assume that SheckyR is representative of New Atheists, the outstanding demonstration of “unhinged” notwithstanding. I wonder if terrorists actually calculate that their actions will cause in-fighting of this sort? I don’t see why not — when there’s a tense dichotomy like the Democrat/Republican split (which I see from the perspective of a distant outsider), then it’s reasonable to expect that whatever portion of each side is most motivated by hatred of the other will jump at the opportunity to blame and vilify the other side, rather than the actual evildoers. Machiavelli would see the sense in it.
You’re quite right. We had the Planned Parenthood shooting and it was blames on the anti abortion rhetoric of conservatives, Christians, and Republicans. We have Islamic terrorists kill people and it is blamed on the gun position of conservatives , Christians, and Republicans. As Hillary Clinton admitted in the presidential debate, Democrats and liberals consider their enemies to be conservatives, Christians, and Republicans. Hard to get along with people who hate you.
He naturally overlooked two facts that don’t support his narrative:
– California has stricter gun control laws than Canada.
– The gun were NOT bought legally. They were purchased by a neighbor for them, which itself is an illegal act:
http://abc7.com/news/photo-of-neighbor-who-purportedly-bought-2-weapons-used-in-san-bernardino-attack/1111930/
The man lives in Chicago which currently has a Democratic mayor who withheld evidence of a cop executing a teen to win an election, but nah, it’s those pesky Republicans who are shady.
There’s another way in which Jerry Coyne is unhinged — Sam Harris likewise and worse: obesity and antibiotic drug resistance are massive problems, far more massive in terms of the lives and life-years they cost than terrorism is or probably ever will be; yet Coyne, and Harris especially, obsess and obsess and obsess about Islam because of the terrorism they claim is in-built in it.
Shouldn’t they be obsessing and campaigning for — for example — a tax on sugar in drinks, and a mandatory or actualised voluntary reduction of trans-fats in foods.
Coyne campaigns outspokenly for strong gun control, the lack of which apparently results in more deaths in the US (in a day?) than terrorism causes (in a year?); Harris should, on the statistics as I understand them, be campaigning outspokenly against gun ownership, as Coyne is, not outspokenly supporting gun ownership while campaigning outspokenly against Islam.
And these are just the tip of an iceberg of problems which each cause more deaths and shorten more lives than Islamic terrorism; yet Coyne and Harris obsess and obsess and campaign outspokenly against Islam.
With so many major problems in the world to choose to focus on, is it rational for Coyne and Harris to obsess instead about that relatively minor side-issue which is Islam?
I see that Randal Rauser makes a rather similar point, including:
So, add in seasonal flu as yet another of those lethal problems which are far worse than Islamic terrorism and which singly and together make a mockery of obsession, obsession, obsession about Islamic terrorism and Islam.
For the very first time (I think), I would have to disagree with you. Islamic terrorism is a special threat because we are dealing with a group of people who would, if they could, use WMDs are part of their terrorism. And they need only succeed once. If they did that, it could escalate into a societal chaos, economic collapse, and even WWIII. Gun violence, flu, traffic deaths, etc. just don’t represent that type of threat.
Of course, the New Atheist obsession is not rooted in such concerns. To them, they obsess about Islamic terrorism simply to exploit it. In their minds, it gives them the opportunity to preach their “religion is dangerous” message. If the same threat of terrorism were to instead come from a global community of Marxists or animal rights extremists, the Gnus would not bother with it. I’m sure they wish the terrorists were instead Christian fanatics, but they can still work with the Islamic angle.
Even if I had the flu, I would not ignore it if I stubbed my toe, despite the greater health threat that the flu represents. We all have our “hot button” issues that do not usually reflect an overall priority list of body count reduction. Social progressives don’t kill many people, but boy do they get on my nerves when they gain legal power. So in of itself, I don’t care that New Atheists harp on religious violence.
The problem is that the reason they harp on it is not because of the violence, but because they are anti-religious bigots who use incidents of Islamic violence, regardless of frequency, to try and justify their bigotry against all religion. They don’t talk about gun violence because it isn’t violence that bothers them. It isn’t death tolls that bother them, either. Just religion.
Michael > Of course, the New Atheist obsession is not rooted in such concerns. To them, they obsess about Islamic terrorism simply to exploit it. In their minds, it gives them the opportunity to preach their “religion is dangerous” message.
Kevin > The problem is that the reason they harp on it is not because of the violence, but because they are anti-religious bigots who use incidents of Islamic violence, regardless of frequency, to try and justify their bigotry against all religion. They don’t talk about gun violence because it isn’t violence that bothers them. It isn’t death tolls that bother them, either. Just religion.
Those are the messages I was striving towards, rather than the (unreasonable, I think) idea that we should ignore terrorism and take no preventative action.
I note that fellow New Atheist PZ Myers thinks that when it comes to Muslims, and accepting them into the US, “Sam Harris [is] full of paranoid, racist shit.”
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/11/26/i-get-email-sam-harris-edition/