While we now know the shooter was a South Korean who had any possible number of motives (depression, jealousy, rage, etc.), here’s a small compilation of what was said in the past 24 hours by some of our favorite public intellectuals:
Political commentator Debbie Schlussel assumed the killer was a Muslim:
Why am I speculating that the “Asian” gunman is a Pakistani Muslim? Because law enforcement and the media strangely won’t tell us more specifically who the gunman is. Why?
Even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to shoot and kill multiple American college students.
Jack Thompson, an attorney and “school shooting expert,” blamed video games:
Answers in Genesis president (and the man behind the Creation Museum) Ken Ham blamed Darwinism/Atheism/Abortion/Western Culture/Naturalism:
We live in an era when public high schools and colleges have all but banned God from science classes. In these classrooms, students are taught that the whole universe, including plants and animals—and humans—arose by natural processes. Naturalism (in essence, atheism) has become the religion of the day and has become the foundation of the education system (and Western culture as a whole). The more such a philosophy permeates the culture, the more we would expect to see a sense of purposelessness and hopelessness that pervades people’s thinking. In fact, the more a culture allows the killing of the unborn, the more we will see people treating life in general as “cheap.”
That paragraph was then followed by:
I’m not at all saying that the person who committed these murders at Virginia Tech was driven by a belief in millions of years or (sic) evolution. I don’t know why this person did what he did, except the obvious: that it was a result of sin. However, when we see such death and violence, it is a reminder to us that without God’s Word (and the literal history in Genesis 1–11), people will not understand why such things happen.
So Ham doesn’t know why the shooting happened… but he is content to blame it on all things outside the Bible.
Not that these people represent any rational subset of the population, but it just goes to show how far off the mark people can be when they jump to conclusions.
(via Infophilia)
[tags]atheist, atheism, South Korean, Debbie Schlussel, Muslim, Islam, Asian, Pakistani, Jack Thompson, Answers in Genesis, Creation Museum, Ken Ham, Darwinism, Abortion, Naturalism, God, Bible, Infophilia[/tags]
