Thoughts on Aurora

I am certain I speak for Pandeists everywhere in offering our heartbroken condolences for the victims of the Aurora shootings -- those injured by the gunman's bullets, those who escaped physical injury but experienced the trauma of being there during this horrid event, and those who lost loved ones this day.  The perspective of Pandeism may do little to salve such pain, but know that Pandeists believe that we are all simply fragments of our Creator, existing so that our Creator could share in the awesome variety of experiences attending existence as our Universe, though it could not have known before such Creation the depths of pain which life in such a Universe could experience.

But, in the end, Pandeists believe, all things return to one, and all lives share in oneness with our Creator, there for those whose lives brought joy and happiness to others to experience this joy and happiness just as it was received by others; and for those who bring anguish and suffering to other to equally experience this anguish and suffering as it was received by others.


Let us walk from this experience holding in our hearts the possibility that those who have suffered so undeservedly will experience an ultimate reward of sharing in lifetimes of positive experiences; and that, for the anguish and suffering brought into the world on this day, all men work together to create an overwhelming response of joyful and positive experience for all the world to share in.

And some additional observations....



Let us not join in the blame game instantly, if inevitably, sprung up over this sorrowful event. Rick Warren, who pastors one of the nation's leading mega-churches, tweeted on the shooting: "When students are taught they are no different from animals, they act like it." He fairly quickly deleted that tweet, once controversy sprouted. In the same vein, US Congressman Louis Gohmert commented that people have asked where God was on that day, and concluded that God didn't intervene to prevent these killings because secularists have banned God from high school graduation ceremonies and the like.

At the other end of the theological spectrum, Atheists have reacted with equally broad pronouncements, pointing to the Christian upbringing of the shooter (and that faith being shared by most of the victims) and contending that it is the violence of theistic scriptures which leads to such acts. Across the spectrum of politics as well blame has been aimed, against lax gun laws, movie and video game violence, lax policies allowing someone like this gunman to be admitted to a graduate program, and most everything else one can think of.

And the bottom line, the truth of the matter, is this. Some people are off-balance. It's not because of religion or politics or policies. It's simply the occasionally hampered workings of nature. If it were a product of religion or lack thereof, there'd be more of it, or it would correlate with the religiosity of nations. And sometimes, no matter what rigor is put into checking the mental health of people in whatever situation, whatever restrictions are put on access to weaponry, some tiny portion of people are born with an ingrained snapping point, whereupon they will find a way to wreak some degree of havoc. Such people are like a force of nature, like a tornado. And blaming religion or politics for people tipping past the fold is no sounder a thing to do than to point fingers of blame for the happening of the weather.