Robert Pickton and al Qaeda

We learn in today’s newspapers that serial murder Robert Pickton claimed he was God’s chosen instrument. “I was brought in this world,” he writes, “to be hear today to change this world of there evil ways.” “You can be sure that no immoral, impure, or greedy person will in-herit the kingdom of God…” (sic- spelling as given).

This is from letters he apparently sent to a hobbyist who enjoys corresponding with serial murderers. Thomas Loudamy, his correspondent, says he has similar letters from 150 inmates, and the tone is not uncommon. “They [the killers] appear to suggest using religion to justify their actions.”

Indeed, Jack the Ripper claimed the same motivation:

“In the name of God hear me I swear I did not kill the female whose body was found at Whitehall. If she was an honest woman I will hunt down and destroy her murderer. If she was a whore God will bless the hand that slew her, for the women of Moab and Midian shall die and their blood shall mingle with the dust. I never harm any others or the Divine power that protects and helps me in my grand work would quit for ever. Do as I do and the light of glory shall shine upon you.”

So it is, apparently, with many murderers. Of course, it doesn’t have to be Christianity, either. New Age notions worked as well for Charlie Manson.

Doesn’t it all remind you of al Qaeda?

Exactly. It is the same thing entirely. And it is obviously unfair that, when a serial killing is done in the name of Islam, we blame Islam. But when a serial killing is done in the name of Christianity, or New Age, we are inclined to ignore the religious association.

Instead, we must consider two possibilities: either all religion, not just Islam, leads to violence—or else al Qaeda’s followers are not religious at all, just garden-variety mass murderers and serial killers seeking an alibi. No nobler, no more exotic, and no more principled than Jack the Ripper or Robert Pickton.

Of these two possibilities, the claim that religion leads to violence is prima facie absurd: religion teaches peace and tolerance. Religion gives us Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Albert Schweitzer, William Wilberforce, and Mother Theresa. Dismiss religion, and, at best, you throw out a large baby for the sake of a little bathwater.

And even if you did, would that end it? For, without religion, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Pol Pot found sufficient justification for murder in a political ideology, in the claim that they were doing eventual good for mankind. Indeed, up until the last decade or two, far more murders were committed in the name of leftist ideology than religion. Ban leftist ideology, and a Timothy McVeigh will kill in the name of Libertarianism.

And if we banned all beliefs whatsoever, and insisted on complete moral relativism? Even better. That’s how Ted Bundy reationalized his rape and murder of an estimated 100 women:

"Then I learned that all moral judgments are 'value judgments,' that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either 'right' or 'wrong.' I even read somewhere that the Chief Justice of the United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than collective value judgments. Believe it or not, I figured out for myself--what apparently the Chief Justice couldn't figure out for himself--that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any 'reason' to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring--the strength of character--to throw off its shackles...I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable 'value judgment' that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these 'others?' Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more than a hog's life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as 'moral' or 'good' and others as 'immoral' or 'bad'? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure that I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me--after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and inhibited self."--Ted Bundy, Quoted from Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 5th edition, p.30

No, it is the second possibility that is obviously correct. Because all human beings are born with a conscience, it is always necessary, when one is doing great evil, to rationalize it as something else—ideally as the very opposite: Pickton, bin Laden, or Vlad the Impaler as doing God’s work. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or Jim Jones in the name of supposedly redressing social injustices. Hitler or Mussolini in the name of advancing the evolution of mankind. Robespierre in the name of Liberty and Reason.

The people who blew up the twin towers were just mass murderers; just Robert Picktons. No more, no less. Don’t give them credit for being anything else.