[in a letter written by a woman who killed her son and herself at a gun range]
"I'm sorry to do this in your place of business, but I had to save my son," one message said. "God made me a queen and I failed. I'm a fallen angel. He turned me into the anti-Christ."
Moore said she could have killed only herself but felt she had to "save" her son and do it in a public way so the world could also be saved. "Hopefully when I die, there will 1,000 years of peace."
54 comments
OK, this is sad, but I don't think it's fundie.
Apologetics frequently ask why the disciples (and, indeed, Jesus himself) would have done all the self-detrimental things they are alleged to have done, risking their lives defying the authorities and so forth, if Jesus hadn't in fact been the son of god and his teachings hadn't all been divine truth; why they would do what seems to make no sense at all if they didn't have some kind of sense that we just can't see.
This is why. Insanity always finds a reason, and perceives sense where there is none.
I've had people ask me "what's the harm with religion?" This is it.
This, along with every kid who's parents prayed rather than seek medical help for them, every gay teen who commited suicide because their religion told them there was something wrong with them, the victims of every other metally unbalanced person who has killed others because of religious delusions that were validated and reinforced by their church, and every person who quit medical treatment because some traveling faith healer or televangelist told them that they were not sick anymore.
And that's just scratching the surface of the harm that religion can cause.
So, the range rented her a gun without doing a background check.
Nice.
Then again, crazy as she was, she would have found another way to kill her son, if she had been refused access to a weapon by the range.
I agree with some that this is not fundie persay. However, I think it still belongs here because it's an example of the way religion can further warp an already fragile mind.
It's very sad and I feel sorry for both the boy and the woman.
Let's face it, if we excluded any fundies that showed signs of mental problems from being on this board we'd lose a lot of entries.
Religion does carelessly toss kerosene on the sparks of madness and fundamental religion has been an opponent of psychiatry for ages. Whether it's Baptists blaming Freud for dehumanizing human (since a mechanistic explanation of human consciousness is contrary to the concept of the soul), Catholics calling Kinsey a deviant or Scientologists doing whatever the hell they do psychology/psychiatry/neurobiology are right behind evolutionary biology and astrophysics in being at odds with religion.
Religion also encourages people to ask god(s) instead of asking for help. As we've seen many times in FSTDT religion can be a means to mask symptoms of psychosis. We've seen the downward spirals of self loathing caused by sites like Rapture Ready. We've seen the religious encourage eachother to listen to the strange voices in their head instead of getting medical help. I say it's not just her insanity that's to blame here. I say the death of her son was not the inevitable outcome. The death of her son was the result of specific psychological construct and even if religion was not the foundation it was a load bearing wall. If she had a different religious outlook or if the social structure of her religion encouraged her to seek professional help or if she had the sensible skepticism of an agnostic or atheist so she'd second guess her action things might have ended with no bloodshed.
I used to make semi-regular visits to a gun range near where I live.
One time when I came in, they informed me that because someone had committed suicide on their range with a gun they'd rented there, they no longer allowed anyone to rent a gun if they came in alone.
Such a policy wouldn't have prevented this murder/suicide, unfortunately.
I've just read the story, apparently as far as background checks go before renting a gun is the honour system. Seriously.
The range requires that customers fill out a form with a series of questions, including whether they have ever been convicted of a felony or been declared mentally unstable. But it has no way to verify the information.
Are you insane?X ] Yes
Uh... right...
Well... her heart was in the right place I suppose...
This is the real, compelling danger of this kind of belief. When people hurt others with the best of intentions.
It's one thing to use God to justify malice, and another more terrible thing to do awful things with all of the best intentions.
As others have said, the real problem here is that she was crazy and was given a gun. Yes, her delusions manifested themselves as religious, but they could just as easily been about aliens or the evil government, or the lizard people etc. Her religious tenancies gave her mental illness a platform, and certainly didn't help her, but I don't think it was the underlying cause of the problem. Don't give crazy people guns. Don't believe crazy people when they fill out forms saying they're not crazy.
As a responsible gun owner.
We really need to tighten up on the gun laws. If the person wants guns because the voices in their heads said it's a good idea, they shouldn't have fucking guns!
To those who say it's not fundie:
So yeah, fundieness has a lot to do with it.
In all walks of life there are good people and bad people but it takes religion, or something like it, to make good people do bad things.
This is just kind of sad.
@giveitaday - Great post.
And then you thought murder was just hunky-dory because you were already bound for hell anyway. How convenient for you!
"She had a history of mental illness, including being involuntarily committed"
Then it's illegal for her to own a firearm.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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