Sunday, July 22, 2012

The Aurora shootings: "explanations" that don't explain much of anything

By now, any number of unlucky people have run into some serious whoppers that  purportedly "explain" the root cause of James Eagan Holmes' rampage at a Aurora, Colorado cinema during the midnight preview of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises on July 20th. Other than predictable missives full of irrationality from all the usual suspects (including such piles of  self serving drivel as Louis Gohmert's "it's all the fault of atheism!", Rick Warren's equally hideous "it's all the fault of the Theory of Evolution!" and a hackneyed laundry list of convenient scapegoats provided by the American Family Association), I'm sure that there will be the usual reams upon reams of nonsense generated by people who - much like Columbine - have decided to use this tragedy to fill their coffers with donations and generate unwarranted media attention.

Add to this the fact that Holmes previously was a honors student in neuroscience and you have all the makings of another parade of idiots attacking science and scientists for no good reason except that it earns them easy points with people dumb enough to agree with them. It'll happen. Just you wait.

(For those of you who'd like to read a far more exhaustive list of articles both good and bad on the subject of the Aurora shootings, Gawker has provided one.)

(Also on WTTFTG)

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