51. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #155648 by ZekeCDN on April 5, 2008 at 6:27 am

Great post. The one they call Cartomancer shall hence forth be known as Peacemaker!

What they feel is the normal empathy and sympathy of their own ...

"I see myself in every stranger's eyes" -- Roger Waters

52. Dawkins warns of human extinction

Comment #155644 by ZekeCDN on April 5, 2008 at 6:16 am

"Mr Dawkins is the devil's speaker and he has expressed this boldly. He believes in evolution, that nothing produces everything. But God produces everything."

A spokeswoman for UHI said they were delighted at the calibre of the event and high standard of debate.

53. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #155623 by ZekeCDN on April 5, 2008 at 5:33 am

Such with accusations of "extreme political correctness"?

Err, I think it was "insufferable", but yeah :-)

I'm done ranting for now, so I do appreciate the restrained reply!

54. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #155615 by ZekeCDN on April 5, 2008 at 5:05 am

Excuse me Steve, but where did you get the notion that I was cheering for this chap's death? I may be a heartless git (hell I've been called worse in this very thread, despite admirably resisting the temptation to stoop to ad-homs myself) but I have never wished death upon another. Ever.

More to the point, I am not deluded as to who the real victims are in this story. That's where the political correctness comes in. Not in the whiny--excuse me--"sensitive to human suffering" white noise, but in some people's pathological inability to see beyond victimhood (for lack of a better word).

When people do bad things, we as a society ask: are they criminal, are they insane or are they criminally insane? Naturally we don't hold the insane responsible for their actions; we treat them in hospitals. We do hold criminals responsible and we incarcerate them in prisons. But guess what? We also incarcerate the criminally insane. We hold them responsible--whether they're responsible or not--because we can't take the chance due to the danger they pose to others. This ought to include Mr. Kuznetsov, because he's either a criminal or he's criminally insane.

Again, I exhort you all to research this story further. Kuznetsov is a monster, who by dint of his personality convinced 35 men, women and children to hide in a cave and promise to blow themselves up if anyone tried to make them leave. In exchange for this he promised them not just a swell afterlife, but the actual ability to choose who (in the entire world) would get to go to heaven and who would be condemned to hell, when the apocalypse came.

He of course, declined to join them, stating that god had "other work" for him. That other work was interrupted when he got arrested for inciting religious and racial hatred. But he was sent to a hospital, instead of a prison, following a competency hearing. And then he was released from the hospital too, because officials needed his help to extricate his followers from the dangerous cave. The cave he told them not to exit alive. Hmm ...

Many other elements of this story do not add up. Early reports, for example, claimed that his own followers had beaten him, presumably dissatisfied with either his prophecy or his leadership. Others said that upon seeing his wounds, the followers declared him to be a resurrected prophet! Even the nature of the injuries is in dispute. Most reports claimed it was a blunt force trauma to the skull, causing a fracture, but the prosecutor's office claimed he had "cut himself". Hmm ...

The Times Online didn't mention that his injuries were not life-threatening and that his health is currently reported as "good". Gosh, you don't suppose a guy with a life-long track record of manipulating the behaviour of others might have inflicted a non-lethal injury on himself for some reason other than suicide do you? Nah [nyet?] I hear the chorus say, he must be a victim of his circumstances just like the rest of us. Perhaps you can get up a petition and have him brought to the UK where he can receive proper, compassionate care ... courtesy of the NHS.

Speaking of compassion, as much as I long for the day when our species learns to extend reciprocal altruism all the way from clan to tribe to nation and then to encompass the whole planet, I accept that we're not there yet. There are a great many deluded individuals--including some with a lot more power and influence than poor Pyotr--standing in the way. If we are ever to overwhelm them with our reason and logic, we had better stop sniping amongst ourselves ... and stop accusing each other of not being sufficiently evolved. When that happens, I'll stop laughing. Promise.

55. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #155605 by ZekeCDN on April 5, 2008 at 3:44 am

Give me "pseudo-psycho-babble" over insufferable political correctness any day.

Perhaps the test of my convictions is to have a child as deluded as Kuznetsov. But in that case, surely your test is to have a child trapped in a cave because of someone as deluded as he. Then we'll see how vigourously you defend the honour of criminals who use mind control as their M.O..

I strongly encourage you to read additional reports of this story, available online from UPI, Reuters, Novosti, Interfax, Russia Today and RTE. The facts in the Times Online story are incomplete and potentially misleading.

I hope you all shed tears for David Koresh, cause he was a pussycat compared with this guy.

56. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #155566 by ZekeCDN on April 4, 2008 at 10:11 pm

So it's okay for a white supremacist to laugh at the suffering of starved Africans as long as he stays away from them?

Wow, what happened to the "clear-thinking oasis"? Perhaps if you tapped yourself in the head a few times you won't be as tempted to make puerile reductio ad absurdum arguments.

If that doesn't work, may I recommend Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death"? In it he describes one of the strangest side effects of living in the new age of instantaneous telecommunications and global media, namely our increasing tendency to obsess over (sometimes trivial) developments on the other side of the world--all the while practicing willful blindness with respect to the (sometimes tragic) plights of our closest neighbours. As the poster who mentioned Bin Laden suggested, empathy is not always the appropriate response. Postman would add that it's often misplaced as well.

Yes, I laugh at an idiot whose answer to the pain and suffering he caused to others is to hit himself in the head with a log. And I also laugh at anyone who thinks I'm the morally suspect one for doing so. I didn't tell those folks that the world was ending and I didn't abuse my authority to make them risk their lives (and the lives of their children) by hiding out in a geologically unstable cave.

If you think that Kuznetsov is deserving of sympathy, then you are welcome to give him yours, but you have no right to demand that I or anyone else do the same.

57. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #155316 by ZekeCDN on April 4, 2008 at 10:19 am

I am disturbed by the comments that suggest it's inappropriate to laugh at such antics, especially in circumstances where we are separated from the actors by time and place. Logically I cannot distinguish such wooly thinking from the hyper-political correctness employed to such devastating effect by the enemies of reason. Both demand that we sacrifice our instinctive, human responses to the supposed greater good of not giving offense.

58. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #154866 by ZekeCDN on April 3, 2008 at 9:16 pm

Richard Morgan wrote:

Because I presume that atheists and rationalists are just as liable to suffer from mental sickness.

I wonder about that. Anecdotally, I worked as an orderly in a mental hospital during my undergrad. It was a decent-sized facility with everything from autistic and mentally-retarded residents (including many with the behaviours Dr. Benway described) to short-term, acute and chronic care units for mentally ill clients. I noticed that by far the most common delusions entertained by the latter group were religious in nature. But in four years of working there I never once encountered a mentally ill skeptic or atheist.

Am I committing small sample error in extrapolating from my personal experience, or has actual research been done comparing rates of mental illness between believers and non-believers? It'd be nice to know that even though we might not live as long as the faithful, we'll at least retain our faculties while we are here :-)

59. I always aim to misbehave

Comment #153043 by ZekeCDN on March 31, 2008 at 11:42 pm

I suspect the tendency to miss the point of the video might be strongest among those who reflexively tune out any rap music they encounter. People unfamiliar with the genre frequently assume (incorrectly) that it's not capable of the subtleties of other art forms, including (as in this case) finely-honed satire. It's not all bit$%es and bling yo!

If you still don't believe, read the transcript of the lyrics (in the Pharyngula thread) and try to imagine a creationist being that historically knowledgeable and witty!

60. Expelled Overview

Comment #149511 by ZekeCDN on March 25, 2008 at 7:22 pm

Well I for one appreciated Josh's scene by scene description. It'll hold me over till a genuine torrent shows up :-)

61. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #148773 by ZekeCDN on March 23, 2008 at 10:24 pm

Re the earlier comment about "Expelled" torrents being available online: the four that are currently listed are ALL fakes. You'll note that each contains two files, a video file and a text file. The text file instructs the downloader to visit a porn site to obtain the password to decrypt the video file. Caveat emptor!

62. The New Atheist Movement

Comment #123313 by ZekeCDN on February 6, 2008 at 11:49 pm

Hold on ... 75% of students lose their faith in college, yet 95% of Americans still believe in god?

How do we reconcile these two claims?

Either an incredibly tiny percentage of Americans are attending college ... or else they're all leaving the country upon graduation.

Which is it?

63. Christmas with Christopher Hitchens

Comment #104005 by ZekeCDN on December 27, 2007 at 2:06 pm

Castletonsnob (if you're still reading): I should have thought it obvious why Hitchens would choose to go to Cuba for Christmas ... it's the closest place where one can totally escape "the season".

Besides, I thought these days even the right wingers understood that it's the US embargo that has kept Castro in power all these years.

64. CBC News: Sunday - Richard Dawkins

Comment #100600 by ZekeCDN on December 19, 2007 at 1:14 am

As another Canadian who has watched many Evan Solomon interviews--including some in which I've detected progressive political leanings--I was actually surprised to learn of his religion major. Like many others here, I was a bit put off by his condescension (particularly on the issues of personal revelation and miracles), however Dawkins was in fine form and, as usual, proved more than capable of dismissing Soloman's "arguments".