To all moderators and all members we need to pray for that boy's safe return.

Not to seem snippy, but a bit of information on what's happened here would probably help out a lot more. Maybe a news link, so we know who we should be keeping an eye out for, do the police think he's been taken out of state, how long ago did this happen, etc.?
In instances like this, the more eyes and ears the better, after all.

We don't need to know anything. If we'll just pray then magic. I don't know why we have law enforcement when we could just do this and it would all be better forever and ever.

No need to be mean about it. I Googled and got this http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?s...orld&id=8973913 It's a horrible thing for him and his family.

What exactly to pray for? Best situation would be for saving the boy and the disturbed man, and for no further deaths.

(Emphasis mine).

This is obviously not a thread about some tragic event, but about the requirement that all people pray to some alleged god. In other words, it's a religion thread masquerading as concern about current events. I believe that's why people are disagreeing.

Is there a god? If not, then the original post is bogus.

Does praying actually accomplish anything? If not, then the original post is bogus.

Do we all need to pray? If so, then this clearly won't work, since there is going to be at least one member (me!) who is not going to pray, which will apparently invalidate all other prayers (since we all need to pray). Therefore, the original post is bogus.

Because of this, this post belongs in the Christian debate thread, where people can debate the obvious questions raised by the first post.
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=410488

Alternatively, if the OP didn't mean a Christian god, then it could go into the other religion debate thread:
http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=391956

In any case, I don't think that it belongs in the unreligion thread.

If people want to discuss the tragedy itself, then someone should start a thread which doesn't raise such contentious issues as god, prayer, and requiring people to do something which they don't believe.

Last edited by Mootilda : 31st Jan 2013 at 06:49 PM.

^True. I'm an Ahteist and therefore don't pray (asking something I don't believe exists to do something would be rather silly.) I still hope this ends well - with the kid OK and the kidnapper too, if possible (and caught by the authorities.)
Yes, the OP should have also inclduded a link as there are non-US members here who may not have heard the story.

I think you may be reading more aggression into the OP than was intended, Mootilda. If you live in a community which is very homogenous, religiously, and in which prayer is about as far from controversial as it can get, it's easy to make those kinds of comments without appreciating what you're actually saying.

Agreed. I saw it as just a plea for joining in prayers for some suffering people, not as a command to pray or believe. The address was "To", meaning it was a general call for those who would be willing to pray. It was not a post that meant to affront nor did it call for so much discussion or argument. This is the "other" section of the forums, after all.

When I read the following:I was trying to explain why people are disagreeing with the original post and why the responses were primarily negative. I understand that this person worded their post badly and that they probably don't realize how offensive it is to people who don't share their beliefs.

Likely no one would have disagreed if they had said "Isn't <x and such with references> horrible? I'm praying for that boy's safe return."

I was directing that at Mistermook. I can understand that some people might take offence, and certainly as soon as I read it I thought "oops not a good choice of words" This is a message board where there might possibly be people of many different faiths or of no faith; but then I'm 46 and I've lived and learnt to be somewhat aware of these things. As Whiterider said they may come from a place where using words casually like that is the norm. I've seen posts using words that are insulting to people who are religious and no one bats an eye. I try and remind myself that it's possible this or other posters may be young and thoughtless. So pointing out that hey what you said there could be offensive I think is better than being snarky about it.

Even a poor, lamented atheist as myself knows that Christians often mistakenly allege Biblical origins to Euripides' σὺν Ἀθηνᾷ καὶ χεῖρα κίνει: Along with Athena, move also your hand and Muslims have the Hadith that says أعقلها وتوكل: Trust in God but tether your camel. So it's not like the majority of people don't know that even in the context of their own religion prayer is only meaningful for their personal contentment and personal feeling of grace, that asking for large groups of people to pray for something to physically happen is a lot like asking them to sing a song for Global Warming.

Maybe it's a nice sentiment, but it's useless except as sentiment and even when looked at as sentiment it's a narrow, limiting sort of sentiment when it relies on people keeping with a specific religious inclination. What it is is aggravating, being useless it convinces the sort of people who ask for these sorts of things that they're "doing something" by doing nothing.

That's worse than actually doing nothing, in my opinion, because it risks instilling a sense of accomplishment for nothing if the task is resolved: If you ask your god for a better circumstances in life but you do nothing on your own to ensure that happens, then if coincidences change (but you have not) then you're giving credit to a deity for the sheer dumb luck of you not falling off your horse despite yourself and if they don't you're in that mode of doubling down ("It wasn't that I'm a loser who doesn't do things to change my life when I want my life to change, it's God's Will that I'm a loser.") or else your faith falls apart (and despite being an atheist, I think people who've had faith and had it collapse because Jesus isn't magic are annoying as fuck because they're often still looking for magic from somewhere, anywhere, as if some Faustian contract of worship will eventually make up for not getting off your ass and doing what needs to be done.)

So basically I'm not apologizing. The original post is counter-productive, even in the context of religion. If you're going to pray, pray for your own peace of mind or someone else's peace of mind, or whatever. Don't ask God to provide what's actually needed here: A SWAT team or a skilled hostage negotiator. Even if Heaven or Asgard had such things at hand, every serious reading and conversation I've had on religion doesn't support the notion that "...then magic." Even the religions with explicit ritual magic usually don't go there, because they don't want people to do what the OP is implicitly doing: Imagine prayer is in any way an alternative to actually doing stuff.

I wish people would stop wasting people's time with these idiotic entreaties of "action through relative inaction." I don't mind if you pray as you're calling for better law enforcement so much, but to state it as the sole course of action? What can people here do? Nothing, so we're being asked to do nothing. Which amounts to nothing... so why was it brought up at all?

Last edited by Mistermook : 1st Feb 2013 at 02:47 AM. Reason: Edited to edit for my previous poor editing.

So, we can um, belieeeeeve *Jazz hands and nervous smile*

Praying has never really led to anything. Any event influenced by chance, one that you can't directly influence by doing something, will have either a good outcome or a bad outcome (or a more or less neutral outcome), and will not be influenced by the amount of praying you do.

(more rambling about prayer vs not prayer in spoiler)



Anyway...

Yes, it is something terrible that has happened with this boy - but from where I am I can't do anything else than hope things will turn out well for him and his family, and that the kidnapper is caught and gets a proper punishment. I know praying won't lead anywhere, as I'm not religious (I've tried praying when I was younger, and it never lead anywhere that mere chance wouldn't). The boy doesn't need prayers - he needs actions from the police (or whoever is in charge of his rescue) and people wo can actually point them in the right directions by providing evidence.

Unfortunately, the words that one chooses actually matter, especially on the internet where words are all that we have. You may have interpreted the original post in this way, but that's not what the OP actually said. If the OP had been more careful with the words that were chosen, this thread probably wouldn't have turned into a debate about whether prayer is useful.

While I agree that prayer is fundamentally useless, I don't really mind people deciding to pray. If someone says "I pray that <x>", I tend to translate it into "I wish that <x>" or "I hope that <x>" (depending upon the likelihood of <x> occurring). However, I do mind being told that I need to pray.

Such a simple sentence. Sure, it could've been worded better and a link would've been nice. But it is what it is. You know what I see when I read that sentence? A fellow human being who was touched by this young boy's plight to the point that he (according to profile) felt the need to post about it in the hopes that other people would keep this child in their thoughts.

You know what I don't see? Someone making that post to start this great, big religion debate. Why in the world can't people just take something at face value? Why, oh why, do you have to pick each and every word apart and analyze the OP's intentions? Who gives a rat's a** if you believe in the power of prayer or not? I don't. You don't believe, you don't believe. I also don't care if you believe in God or not. Your beliefs are YOUR beliefs.. just as the OP's beliefs are his.

I may or may not believe in the power of prayer. I may or not believe in God. None of that matters- the one thing I will admit to is the ability to HOPE. And I sure as heck hope that this child is returned to his family soon, whole and healthy. That's all that matters in the end...whether prayer and God are involved or not.

So. Rojan. While I may not agree with how you worded your post, I do agree that what happened to that child is tragic. I will keep him and his family in my thoughts and HOPE that there is a happy ending soon. It most likely won't influence a thing- but that's the very least I can do for my fellow human beings. I can only hope that others would do the same for me if it's ever needed.

That is what I see. Feeding the culture of inactivity, where we mourn ad infinitum for tragedies instead of ever working on their prevention. Not to mention the ego feeding that prayer so often seems to deliver to believers.

On the topic of tragedies that gather national attention (my country has recently suffered one, the club fire in Santa Maria - RS, Brazil), I often wonder just how legitimate it is for people to grieve for strangers in these widely reported crimes. Do they grieve in isolated causes too, minor events on their own neighborhood, or only in things the media picks as of uttermost relevance to everyone? Are they doing anything to prevent similar occurances? It often seems that such cases are taken for circus to sate some bloodthirst humans have, along with a fair dosage of excitment at hearing about crimes. Hopefully I'm wrong.

*looks up at above religious debate clusterfuck* Holy shit (no pun intended)--Back In Before Lock at this point I guess.

Thanks for helping with that. Judging by the OP, I thought that it was a kidnapping, but this is really much more of a hostage situation.

That said, I (non-religiously) hope that that boy's alright, the asshole hostage-taker can take a few bullets to the brain for all I care. Seriously, why wasn't this guy already locked up before he had a chance to do this, seeing as how he had a very clear and documented history of very real violence?! It sounds like he already had a history of threatening people even before the speed bump incident he was supposed to show up in court for, but was still allowed to run free and end up beating someone's dog to death, later shoot at a car filled with three people (one being an infant), and then murder a school bus driver in front of almost two dozen elementary-school kids, and take one of them hostage (with no real seeming motivation other than the fact that he's "anti-government")?!

We used to lock up people with mental illnesses, even those that were unlikely to cause harm to anyone but themselves. Now we let them out on the street, even those who are obviously violent and a threat to everyone that they meet. It's a shame that we can't find a better compromise. Of course, that might not help in this case, unless the man is proven to have a mental illness.

The law in the States does not allow people to be locked up for crimes before they commit those crimes. It does not allow a judge to decide that someone is likely to commit a more violent crime and lock them up permanently for a lesser offense. Remember "innocent until proven guilty"? How can you possibly prove someone guilty of a crime which hasn't occurred yet?

Now that he has committed the crime, it's hard to believe that he will not be locked up (assuming that he manages to survive being captured).

To prevent crimes, one has to look at the roots of these kinds of crime. What caused this man to behave this way?

Does he have a mental illness? If so, why didn't he get help for that illness? Could this problem have been avoided if medical care in the States wasn't so expensive and inaccessible?

Was he abused as a child? If so, what can we do to prevent child abuse? And, what should we do with existing victims of abuse, who have become violent? Can we get them help before an incident like this occurs?

Why did he have access to guns? Does the right to bear arms override the rights of children to be safe? Obviously this is an ongoing debate in the States, but it sounds like many people would prefer to give every child an armed bodyguard than to make it more difficult for people to get access to guns. Some people are likely to argue that every school bus should have guards armed with high-powered weapons.

Last edited by Mootilda : 1st Feb 2013 at 06:10 PM.

That's just it though, he had already committed multiple crimes well before this hostage situation took place, or even before he shot at that truck full of people. He has a history of repeatedly verbally threatening to shoot people (I forget what the exact term/charge is for that one, but you can be locked up for it, or at least sued), he possibly has fired "warning shots" at people before who have ventured too close to what he sees as his property, and he beat that dog to death with a lead pipe (extreme animal abuse). And all of these incidents were before he shot at the people in the truck (assault with a deadly weapon), and even when that happened he wasn't immediately arrested, not even to be brought in for questioning, but was instead served court papers several days later, all of which gave him time to prepare for the subsequent murder and hostage standoff. In other words, he had enough arrestable offenses on his record before this, and therefore, yes, he should have been already locked up and be denied the right to purchase a gun (which yes, second amendment or no, you can still be denied the right to a gun if you have a criminal background).

On top of all that, it's come out now that he was a Vietnam vet with suspected PTSD. And yet, he was left to his own devices for decades even though he obviously needed help.

Like I said in my last post, this guy had a history of known violence, and yet he was still allowed to roam free, with a stockpile of weapons, without any attempts, court-ordered or otherwise, to get him some kind of help, or at least away from others so that he wouldn't present a danger to himself and others. The law enforcement and judicial services in the area should not have let this happen.

Boy is safe, kidnapper dead.

Since we don't have cable I've been checking for news about this every day. The above is the latest news.

Neighbors report hearing a boom and then gunshots - so it sounds like the police went in with a flashbang and the kidnapper resisted.

the boy has been rescued and the kidnapper is dead, they reported just now on my CTV Canadian News on TV

It disgusts me how 90% of this topic is just believers and non-believers rambling on about this when there was a 5 year old boy being taken hostage by a crazed man while their family was probably praying he would be OK, and a bus driver dead with his family lamenting. But "the boy has been rescued and the kidnapper is dead", so thank goodness. I can only imagine what it would be like to be stuck in a bunker with a crazy man for an entire week...