IMO, the apologist is a hypocrite. If his religion has mainly good people, then he should accept responsibility for ensuring that religious people know the difference between literal belief/fundamentalism with its hating mentality and ethical belief with its reasoned behavior. The apologist implies it was okay to ignore a potential ax murderer because he didn't plan to murder, yet a religious voice ordered him to do it. The apologist implies the ax murderer's beliefs have a right to exist alongside the ethical person's beliefs because they are both parts of the rich religious cultural tradition. He needs to accept the consequences for tolerating and thus fostering that violent mentality.

Well, there's the rub. One is a deluded psychopath. The apologist is a full blown sociopath who not only lacks any empathy, but is intent on gaining power derived from violence and wrongdoing. Sound familiar?

This is why I am not understanding why they are not charging all the j/6 seditionists with murder since people died.
Normally if you even in the car if a felony happened and somebody died you are charged with murder as well as the person who fired the gun.
Oh wait, they are all white.

The people that do not address the root cause of these heinous acts help perpetuate them. A friend was saying he watched CNN's story about the Oklahoma City bombing. I still resent the fact that there was not more public outrage and analysis of the fact that the murderers were gun loving right wing domestic terrorists. Instead they did all of these speeches about the wonderful Oklahoma people who are coming together because of the bombing. They labeled this activity as the Oklahoma Standard which is definitely an example of diverting our gaze from the evil.

Wrote this a long time ago. I think I even posted it here because I remember getting into a ridiculous argument with TMW (who I won't bother tagging because he refuses to talk to me anyway) about it.

It is quite possible that religious moderates are not only part of the problem, but the biggest part of the problem. Their large base gives an air of legitimacy to the belief system and provides an environment in which religious extremism can survive and thrive. Compare the "crazy" beliefs of the marginalized with those of the religious. How different are they, really? A man wearing a tinfoil hat pleading for people to heed his warning about alien abductions and the anal probes that went along with them is not taken seriously by anyone, except maybe those that are also wearing similar hats. So how is it that we're legislating morality based on stories that contain taking snakes and donkeys and people that rise from the dead? It's because there's a huge portion of the population that doesn't think these are ridiculous things to believe. Without religious moderates, religious extremist groups would have no where to recruit members or obtain funding. They would, in effect, be reduced to another crazy, yet powerless person we ignore in the course of our everyday lives, albeit with more asinine headwear.

Who is the greater fool, the fool, or the fool who follows the fool.

Some of the fools are already finding out.