The Discovery Channel Gunman

This was the lead story yesterday.  A gunman/bomber took hostages at the Discovery Channel headquarters and made demands regarding programming changes.  I'm not going to rehash all his demands, but one of the bigger ones is that we should all stop having babies and stop farming.  He was also enamored with the stories of eco-author Daniel Quinn.  So, this was really nothing more than an eco-terrorist gone off the deep end.  Fortunately, nobody got hurt except the gunman, who was killed.  That fact does not bother me in the least.  One fact that did come out from this was that the gunman considered himself to be an atheist.  As you can imagine, there were certain elements that jumped all over this.  Namely David Klinghoffer at the Discover Institute, a think tank on Creationism and all attempts to debunk the science behind evolution.  He is greatly excited to point out that Lee was an atheist and apparent proponent of Darwinism.

My purpose here, of course, isn't to suggest that Darwinism drives people mad or anything like that, but merely to point out, as I've done in the past, the strange attraction Darwinian theory exerts on some people who are crazy, or wicked, or both. This is a truth that's suppressed again and again, yet it remains true.

I am going to take license here and make one minor change to the above quotation.  See if you can pick out the difference.

My purpose here, of course, isn't to suggest that Christianity drives people mad or anything like that, but merely to point out, as I've done in the past, the strange attraction Christianity exerts on some people who are crazy, or wicked, or both. This is a truth that's suppressed again and again, yet it remains true.

Is it really any different?  Replace Christianity with Islam if you like.  The point is that someone who is crazy, or wicked, or both, doesn't need a whole lot to push them over the edge.  You can take pretty much anything and plug it into the quote above and it would read true.  Let's try one more for fun.

My purpose here, of course, isn't to suggest that Sesame Street drives people mad or anything like that, but merely to point out, as I've done in the past, the strange attraction Sesame Street exerts on some people who are crazy, or wicked, or both. This is a truth that's suppressed again and again, yet it remains true.

Or Jodie Foster, or John Lennon, or Mafia Wars, etc.

PZ Myers does a good debunking of the Klinghoffer hypothesis in this blog post.