Yes, I am a sensationalist prick, and I'll make a better attempt at not being as bad as I have been about it. I'm sure to some of you it's getting old.


however....


I am honestly wondering why people never kill due to the easter bunny telling them, or Santa Claus, or Nico Bellic told them to run people over, or because they heard the voice of Charles Manson tell them...


...better yet, why is it never that they kill someone because they think they are a psilon? or that the A-Team was after them?


Why is it always religious in nature? Is it because religion blurs the lines of fantasy and reality?

Let's face it, someone heavily religious is actually in the mindset that angels and demons(or djinns) or god and the devil are actually trying to tempt them or, in Li's case, trying to protect them from something/someone.

I would say them, that maybe deeply religious people could be more likely to be out of touch with reality?

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?doc...73856673430950

There are cases where the mentally disturbed kill people due to voices that aren't relgiious in nature. Statistically it's not nearly as high, but that's because it takes greater leaps of logic to believe something outside the norm, which is more work than it's worth to most crazed psyches when religion is right there with easy answers.

Religion acts as a lightning rod for crazies. Unseen being tells you what to do? Hey, that sounds like what's happening to me! So it's actually God that has been telling me to do these things. That makes sense. Guess what everybody, I'm Christian. God is my Shepard.

When millions of people believe what you believe, and there is a massive network set up to support believers, it's down right easy for a demented mind to use that as a rationale. There's not nearly as much cognitive dissonance required.

Someone saying that aliens are coming to to get him is ID'd as a nut pretty quickly and his beliefs very directly challenged. Someone that says they are talking to God on a daily basis is just accepted as deeply religious, and as long as they can keep it together enough to not mention homicidal urges, can just blend right in.

It's the same idea about how the majority of non-crazy criminals are not religious. Being religious requires you to be good, and has nothing of real substance to force people to join. So if someone has criminal tendencies, what would be the pragmatic benefit to them to be religious? It'd be just another thing they ignore. It'd be like me wanting to swim but hanging chains off my neck.

It doesn't prove that atheists are naturally more likely to be criminals any more than religious people are likely to be homicidal maniacs due to their religious affiliation. It's a coincidence.