Your Thoughts and Prayers Won't Help After the Texas Church Shooting

Описание: Your Thoughts and Prayers Won't Help After the Texas Church Shooting


Hemant Mehta (http://www.friendlyatheist.com,   / hemant   ,   / friendlyatheist  )

As I'm sure you've all heard by now, a young man walked into a Texas church recently with a semi-automatic weapon he never should have had access to and killed 26 people inside. It's heartbreaking and upsetting for obvious reasons.

One thing that bothered me specifically was that screenshots of the shooter's Facebook profile said he "liked" my Friendly Atheist page. You may have read other accounts, some of which are fake, that said he was an atheist. I've also seen screenshots of a LinkedIn profile that said he taught Bible school. I don't know if that's accurate. But that's not the point.

Now, I don't know if he "liked" my page because he was a fan of what I wrote. But if he was, he would know I would never advocate violence or anything close to it when it comes to a religious disagreement. I think I'm right about the whole atheism thing, but that means I should be able to convince you I'm right using my words and whatever logic or reason I possess. So if the shooter liked me, well, he clearly didn't read anything I wrote.

It's also possible he liked my page because he wanted to troll me or keep tabs on me. I follow several Christian pages just to know what they're saying, not because I actually like them. I can tell you I never got an email or message from the shooter. As far as I can tell, he never commented on my stuff either.

I would also add that the police have made very clear that there's no evidence at all that this was a religiously motivated attack. This is not a story of an atheist walking into a church to kill Christians. All the available evidence says this was an unstable guy who wanted to go after his mother-in-law and he thought she was inside the church. It was a "domestic dispute," to use the official terminology, not a religious attack.

Okay, enough about that. I wanted to raise one other thing that's bothering me about the response to the shooting, and that's the standard line we now hear after every tragedy like this. A lot of politicians, especially Republicans, will say they're sending their "thoughts and prayers" to the victims and their families.

It's a way of saying you care... just not enough to do anything meaningful.

Prayers are the only thing those families are gonna get from the GOP.

The politicians aren't going to push for gun safety reforms. They won't push for more resources to address mental health. They won't do any of the things that could actually prevent mass shootings from happening with the same frequency they are right now.

Paul Ryan said in a recent interview about this incident that "prayer works."

No it doesn't. 26 people were murdered in church while they were praying. God wasn't listening to them. God wasn't listening to the people who prayed for these senseless murders to stop after Las Vegas. And God's not paying attention to people who offer their prayers now.

There's no need to pray for help to the same God who allowed innocent people to die. Or, depending on what you believe, the same God who planned for it to happen.

Prayers won't stop mass murders. Prayers will, at most, comfort the people saying them. That's it. For politicians who say it, it's the lazy way out.
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