She votes right wing btw
I mean … if I wasn’t already avoiding that shithole state …
I can’t believe this isn’t the onion
Shit man, wait until you hear about Andrea Yates.
her story is actually pretty tragic and fucked up, if you look into it.
Folks on Talk Radio and the Televangelical circuit have been doing dime-store prophecies about the Eclipse being the end of the fucking world for fucking months. I was honestly a bit surprised shit like this wasn’t more common.
Maybe Americans are building up a tolerance to the endless media hysteria.
Not a Florida woman. Georgia woman. Georgia is exporting their crazy to Florida.
this is a lie by Big Florida!
(/s)
actually,
Taylon Nichelle Celestine, 22, of Georgia
Taylon
Well there’s the problem.
Nichelle
Found the second problem.
Disagree. Nichelle Nichols was a fine human being.
It’s so weird that they freaked out this much over just this Eclipse. There was an eclipse last year and I didn’t hear a peep from these people.
I think it’s because giant singing and man-eating plants are a real concern.
Maybe because last year they didn’t have Marjorie Taylor-Greene tell them that earthquakes and eclipse are a warning from god?
2017 was all “Look at the science! Isn’t this cool!”
But then THAT path only brushed the Bible Belt…
They happen about every 18 months, and thus are a rather normal and common natural phenomenon.
Crazies gonna crazy, though.
Every 6 months really. They just happen in places people aren’t a lot of the time. Heck next year north America will get another eclipse… But you’d have to travel to northern Canada in early spring to see it and it doesn’t sound nearly as fun a vacation spot as Mexico I bet to the chasers.
In 1976, Larry Cohen made a film called “God Told Me To,” where random people commit murders in the name of God. The movie explains it as (spoiler alert) the influence of aliens, but apparently such a thing doesn’t actually need science fiction explanations.
Edit: Also, we live in what was the path of totality in Indiana and watched the eclipse in a park. When we came home, my daughter saw a bunch of people in a church parking lot doing some post-eclipse bowing down in prayer (I missed it) and she thought it was hilarious.
I watched a video yesterday about the whole history of TimeCube.com, and it had the same sorts of patterns we see in online radicalization today. Someone with an untreated mental illness posted regularly on a website, and was egged on by people who thought it was funny. Then some kid who also has an untreated mental illness sees it and takes it seriously. Then that kid does something horrific because of it. (In TimeCube’s case the kid jumped in front of a train after meeting the old guy and being rebuffed.)
Fuckin TimeCube, man. That shit was wild back in the day. I hadn’t heard about someone taking it seriously.
“TAIIIIME CYUBE!”
i don’t remember which of them said it so weirdly/dramatically, but it has stayed with me.
Can you please link to the video? That sounds really interesting.
Thanks!
“I fell to my knees in that Aldi parking lot” is a popular meme on instagram currently, due to a sighting of Christians welcoming the end times in an Aldi parking lot.
“Troopers stopped the woman after she drove for about 16 miles (26 kilometers) and found her with an AR-15 rifle and 9mm handgun.”
What was she thinking? You need two hands to shoot an AR-15…
“And we’re also going to cite you for unsafe driving.”
Nah, she was gonna go Schwarzenegger style and just prop it up on her left arm while it’s still on the wheel.
Jesus, take the wheel
That Hod guy sure tells a lot of people stupid things.
Take a society with no mental health assistance and then pepper it with tons of religious fervor. It’s a recipe for disaster.
I’m in the middle of the first episode of the third season of the podcast Long Shadow. This one is going to be about mass shootings. Looks like they haven’t added it to their website yet, but both of the prior seasons were excellent so I expect this to be more of the same.
Take a society with no mental health assistance and then pepper it with tons of religious fervor.
Then add in a whooole lotta guns
Thank God we have laws to keep guns out of the hands of obvious crazy people.
Come on, what do I say here? Lock her in jail? Push her off the cliff?? Craziness should not be supported unless it’s in a tiny padded cell under constant supervision. Too many people in this country claim insanity and if she really is, let her watch Boomerang all day; if she’s not test her boomerang-ability
If God told her to then it should be legal.
No one can prove God didn’t tell her to go on a shooting spree.
We need to subpoena god.
Gonna be hard for the marshalls to deliver it. Or, at least to return from delivering it.
just give it to the pope.
I’m sure he can pass it on.
Won’t he just ignore it? I’m sure he’s seen all the MAGAs ignoring subpoenas and court orders with zero consequences.
And morally ok. Because powerful sky man told her so.
Organised religion is a cancer of the mind.
Those of us who grew up without it literally can’t imagine scenarios like this, though I’ve heard disturbing things from people who seem otherwise sane that make me understand what drives some to do these things. When you’ve internalised fables of good vs evil and that’s how you define reality, it’s a small step to think you have to commit atrocities to save the innocent. You don’t have to have a very divergent mentality to convince yourself of this.
We will all be better off when the vast majority of people give up these fables and begin to live in the real world.
Ehh I dunno… I’m as atheist as anyone with an IQ above 60, but I think religion is just a convenient scapegoat for mental illness here. I’m pretty sure someone who shoots strangers on the highway would have done it in a world without religion too, and they would say it’s a different mystical force that made them do it. I don’t think Christianity actually moved this person to do this.
Religion isn’t a scapegoat, and it has nothing to do with IQ. Very smart people are roped into it, and that’s what I mean by it being a social cancer.
Very smart people are raised with stories that they take as reality – that supplant their ability to judge reality for what it is – and it at best colours how they interpret everything for the rest of their lives, and at worst amplifies and gives focus to mental conditions they already have.
Religion is a warped lens through which people are forced to see reality from such a young age, they are incapable of seeing actual reality, and in some cases it just amplifies the otherwise mild mental illness they’d likely have had already.
Without it, some people would already have been disturbed, but with it those people are given a purpose for their delusions.
But in this case this lady is obviously mentally ill why are you ignoring that?
I’m not ignoring that.
My point is that religion is uniquely capable of taking the delusions of the mentally ill and nurturing them into violence.
Even for the mentally stable, it often leads to fantasy. But when mental illness and religion coincide, people who would otherwise be relatively benign in their delusions very easily become convinced their delusions are divine and their violent instincts are justified by scripture. It happens so often, we need to begin acknowledging it.
i think religion is one of many things which can weaponise mental illness. i also think, in a world without religion, some people would still hear voices and feel compelled to do terrible or dangerous things as a result.
i also think, in a world without religion, some people would still hear voices and feel compelled to do terrible or dangerous things as a result.
Religion is just a creation of man. I would argue that we have the relationship inverted and that we have religion partially because people heard voices and felt compelled to do terrible or dangerous things as a result.
i don’t necessarily disagree with you; neither would Julian Jaynes. i’m just not going to blame organized religion for something (hearing compelling voices) that would exist with or without it.
Of course there would still be people like that. What I’m saying is there are exponentially more people like that when they’ve been raised from birth to believe in nonsense that warps their sense of right and wrong.
Take the story of Chad and Lori Daybell. She was a normal, successful woman who wasn’t a psychopath. She fell in with a pastor who convinced her of extreme religious ideals, after which they murdered their own children in a misguided belief they’d be safer in heaven than on earth.
I can list examples like that until the cows come home. Normal people who have become convinced to commit atrocities after being drawn into religion to extremes. It’s a psychological virus that can infect anyone. Most large-scale wars have a religious basis. All the biggest genocides have been committed in the name of religion. The best and fastest way to control people and warp their reality is to make them believe in a god.
We’re better than this.
Take the story of Chad and Lori Daybell. She was a normal, successful woman who wasn’t a psychopath. She fell in with a pastor who convinced her of extreme religious ideals, after which they murdered their own children in a misguided belief they’d be safer in heaven than on earth.
Your re-telling of Chad and Lori Daybell sounds too tidy to be true. It’s like the first fifteen minutes of a horror movie with a completely happy, care-free life and then she bumps into a pastor and that chance encounter did her in.
Like sure, she poison pilled herself on religion partially but the whole “they were a normal couple” dream-scape section of the 48 hours special you’re narrating here is the type of thing that constantly has me talking at the TV when those nuance-bereft junk piles are playing at my house.
She was obviously fucked up before she met the guy, just like a lot of cult followers are fucked up before they seek the guidance of their “guy”.
Some people are fucked up from birth, some become fucked up later, and some are varying degrees of fucked up…but people are messy and it’s not like they all used to be a happy go-lucky adventurer like you until they took one religion to the knee.
I think people get the relationship inverted. Many people become religious to fill whatever gap they had in the first place. Many people become cult-leaders because they were already sick in the head.
I think religion is just a convenient scapegoat for mental illness here.
It acts more as a place for mental illness to be hidden, camoflauged, or accepted as devotion or prophecy.
When someone’s delusions overlap with what a church accepts as their ancient prophets’ experience, that illness doesn’t get proper treatment.
Yep it muddies the waters that distinguish what is rational from irrational. Like a dark damp festering basement, it gives mold a place to fester and grow.
Welcome to a place where you don’t need logic; you just need this magical thing called “faith.” Such mainstream religions were just the most successful cults.
Welcome to a place where you don’t need logic; you just need this magical thing called “faith.” Such mainstream religions were just the most successful cults.
People generally aren’t all or even mostly rational or logical. It’s difficult even for people with deep science or technical backgrounds to think in a structured way for long periods of time.
Even if you got most people off of organized religion they’d be on some other bullshit.
Evidence for that is actually all around us too. Organized religion is seeing more and more people walk away from it, but people remain just as full of shit as they were in church.
To your last point I don’t know if I see that. Most of the religious nutjobs - organized or free of association - seem predominantly concentrated among right-wing circles. See the rising Christian nationalists for instance. Those who are walking away from religious faith tend to be more on the left side of the spectrum and ironically far more adherent to the teachings of Jesus in his best of image.
It’s not one side or another of the political spectrum that’s full of shit, it’s people in general.
I have easily encountered just as many anti vax crackpots for instance coming from the left as from the right.
That is complete and total bullshit and any reputable statistics survey can prove it.
Let’s not bOtH sIdeS this with absurd anecdotes.
Agreed. I was raised Catholic but I rebelled every step of the way and GTFO as soon as I could. Yeah angels will get you stuff like this.
Big difference in intended meaning between revel and rebel.
Fixed kind yet annoying Internet entity who I will assume is probably a person. This will probably be the only way to know if a user is a person. AI would probably not bother.
friend, just reading the headline - this isn’t organized religion at work, this is psychosis. she could have said the Care Bears told her to do it - same thing.
Psychosis PLUS organised religion. That’s my point, friend. Psychosis alone is a tragedy we should work to address as a society. But many of these stories would not end in senseless violence if there weren’t an underlying system of fantastical belief that bolstered people’s delusions and convinced them their delusions were divinely inspired.
if you have been close to or worked with psychotic people, you might recognize they don’t necessarily need religion to come to fantastical conclusions and potentially act on them. i mean, maybe the radio told her. or the coffee pot. or the person who lives in the walls. or the cat.
fwiw, i’m not a massive defender of religion (nor especially a hater). i just think it’s a mistake to blame religion for what is sometimes organic disease of the brain (among various possible causes).
No, but if you have a person without glaring mental health issues, adding religion can put them in a state of mind very similar to madness.
This bullshit has convinced non-psychotic people to commit atrocities. It’s not a leap to think it convinces actually psychotic people their delusions are true. Especially when they say so themselves.
If you liked “Florida Man”, you’re gonna love “Florida Woman”
deleted by creator
Yeah, I mean, the divine commandment kind of places her in a difficult position. God doesn’t have a lot of tolerance of people that don’t do what He wants them to.
Judah got a wife for Er, his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death.
Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.
Onan is such a wanker!
It’s dumb that this story got turned into an anti-masturbation edict. Onan was pulling out because he wanted his brother’s inheritance, he was punished for his greed.
there was also that time that Elisha, when a certain king came to him to; basically, cast auguries. (oh yeah, that’s not wish craft when a prophet does it, huh?) so he tell this king… who god doesn’t really like anyhow… to shoot an arrow out the window. “Oh good. you’ll defeat that one asshole. now, take up a bundle of arrows. hit the ground.”
Of course, the king, being used to weird rituals and stuff, strikes the ground 3 times. (what’s not mentioned is why- 3 is a holy number. You see it in all sorts of places in semetic religions.)
So elisha says to him, “You idiot, you should have struck the ground more times. five or six, at least. Now… you’ll beat that other asshole 3 times, but you won’t defeat him totally. so, you know. He’s gonna come back.”
so, basically, god decided to let the israelites suffer under some douchenozzle’s rule because… his prophet couldn’t give clear instructions and the king went for symbolism over maximum effort…
It breaks my brain to remember that I was raised to believe this garbage
We put the Wo in Man!
It’s not the Sunshine State when there’s an eclipse going on. Doh!
A meeting technicality!
