[QUOTE="Dracargen"][QUOTE="RationalAtheist"] [QUOTE="Dracargen"]
HEre's a better analogy:
You raise a son. He becomes a murderer.
Should you go to jail for his crime?
RationalAtheist
That depends onthe age of criminal responsibility. In the UK, if he is under 12, the parents would be prosecuted.
Well, Adam and Eve were 930, so I think the UK will let God off on this one.
In humans, sons are independent of their parents and parents have no responsibility over the actions of their offspring.
DING DING DING!! You seem to have gotten the answer, though I anticipate a "But" somewhere up ahead. . .
It's also true that crimial behaviour is learned, so in many cases, parents do have some responsibility in the crimes of their children.
Criminal behavior is learned, but not necessarily from their parents. ;) You learn more about criminal behavior from school and the news than your parents, in normal cases.
930? Really? I'd fail to see how anyone could suggest a human could survive that long.
What has that to do with responsibility? It's not God that's responsible, nor the parents, but the people who commit crime that are responsible for their own actions.
On what study do you base this assumption? In the UK, criminality often tends to run in families.
The point is, they were above the age of twelve.
People are responsible for their own actions? Then by what logic do you reach the conclusion that God is responsible for the actions of humans, who could be considered His children?
http://www.apa.org/ppo/issues/pcornell.html
Motive. The motives are not new, they are familiar to anyone who remembers their teenage years. These are young people who are outcasts from their peers. Often they are victims of bullying and teasing. They join rebellious cliques that are attracted to counter-cultural ideas, whether they are beatniks, hippies, or goths. Within these counter-cultural groups some youth are especially vulnerable -- more angry, alienated, and depressed than their peers, and more susceptible to friends who encourage them to act out or take revenge. In case after case I have seen youth who discussed the possibility of murder with their families and were advised to go ahead and do it.
Method. Even more disturbing is the horrific method of these murders. To charge into a building and try to kill as many people as possible is an enactment of video violence. This is the kind of violence you see in the movies and play on video games. Children of today live in a social environment where violence is a primary form of entertainment, and they are exposed to values and ideas which reinforce and glorify violence. In case after case I have observed just how easily the lessons of well-meaning and capable parents are overpowered by the compelling and pervasive messages of violence in our modern video culture. We protect adults from consumer fraud and deceptive advertising better than we protect our children from these salesmen of hate and violence. As a society, we must be more concerned about the daily does of extreme violence administered to our children through television, video games, music, and the internet. Repeated exposure to messages of violence and hatred over time desensitize many young people, distort their perceptions of personal safety, and erode inhibitions against harming others.
Scientific studies provide overwhelming evidence that television violence encourages aggressive behavior and has a long-term effect on children (see reviews in Berkowitz, 1993; Donnerstein, Slaby, & Eron, 1995; Hughes & Hasbrouck, 1996). Yet the entertainment industry cannot accept these findings any more than tobacco industry could accept that cigarette smoking results in cancer. Concern over our children is cunningly transformed into a debate over constitutional freedom. We have trouble appreciating causal effects that are subtle, indirect, and cumulative over long periods of time. What's the harm in one video game or one cigarette?
I know you will hear representatives from the entertainment industry who simplistically point out that millions of children exposed to video violence never commit a violent act; in reply, be sure to ask them how it can that when millions are exposed to a flu virus, only a small proportion become ill, and only a handful die. The violence pervasive in our culture is like an environmental toxin; everyone is exposed to it, but only those who are most vulnerable or have the greatest exposure, are affected.
Today we have a lot of children infected with violence, but it's not a virus, it's a learned behavior. Violence is learned (Berkowitz, 1993; Perry, Perry, & Boldizar, 1990). Someone taught the kids in the Trenchcoat Mafia to admire Hitler and how to make pipebombs rather than to tolerate differences and respect others.
Means. Finally, the means to carry out these violent plans is the ready availability of firearms. Without access to guns, none of these school tragedies could have take place. Guns are a critical risk factor. When juvenile homicide tripled in this country in just ten years, all of the increase was in gun-related killing (Cornell, 1993; Snyder & Sickmund, 1995). There was no increase in juveniles stabbing or beating one another to death. Guns are not the cause of the violence, but they provide the means.
Violence does not come from just families. That's common sense here.
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