Well, the only name on that list (apart from Ayaan hirsi Ali) is Ibn Warraq. That is a pen name for a man, probably from Pakistan. Nobody knows for sure.

He is an atheist from the middle east and his real identity is a deep dark secret out of fear for the safety of himself and his family. He is also an author critical of Islam in every form. He has been doing that for roughly 20 years and even pictures of him did not show, even on his own web site until about 4 years ago when he stood openly at the UN. He has since shown up at the Hague standing next to Salman Rushdie.

Curiously, his page on wikipedia mentions one William Dalyrimple who might be a hit. He is the son of a Scottish nobleman and lives in India where he writes extensively about events in the middle east. Out of curiosity, I checked for Theodore Dalyrimple and that goes to the pen name of an unrelated retired psychiatrist who is an atheist and writes on culture but generally not on the middle east.

This guy seems to have been inspired by the idealogy of the Old testament God, and the thinking behind the Crusades. He wrote a long treatise about the Crusades.

The Crusades were directed at rescuing the 'Holy Land' from the Muslims - the parallels to his perception of the 'invasion' of his homeland are obvious.

And he was inspired by the OT God's standard response to 'sin' in a community, ie flood them, send them a volcano or earthquake, whatever it takes to scare the shit out of them, killing as many as he can in the process to ram the point home. And 'command' his people to join in the carnage.

The other references are clearly to anyone who had written anything against Islam, to support his views of it. But his action was purely OT Biblical in inspiration, and its his actions which are to be condemned, which he has to answer for, not so much his thoughts, however batshit crazy.

He is a classic medieval Christian. Blame the f**king religion for once, for at least the major part of his ideas, Capn.

I too am very uncomfortable with Islamic intrusion into our life - I see burkhas frequently when I go for a walk or to the local supermarket .

But this guy's reaction is entirely the wrong way to address the issue. IOW be even a bigger asshole to muslims than they might be to us.

The thing is that, yes, words from otherwise sane people can drive the insane to act. There is a case to be made for the "war rhetoric" of some more conservative and christian people being partly responsible, but I've never heard Ms. Ali or Mr. Harris or Mr. Warraq using that warlike language. I've not seen a "don't retreat, reload" tweet from any of them, nor an essay about how we're fighting a war with islam that didn't specify it is purely an ideological war. Christians and conservatives regularly use that us vs. them war language and display that mentality, and too often assume that we assume they mean a non-violent war.

I definitely don't blame anyone Breivik might have been "inspired by" if they themselves didn't advocate violence. However, it can be quite easy to mistake some people's messages as inciting violence or hatred, and that can't be said for the atheists mentioned. On top of that, however, is the fact that if Breivik did listen to Ali, he didn't pay much attention. He's a rabidly anti-immigrant white nationalist, she's a black woman who immigrated to Europe from Africa. She clearly wouldn't support or like him, even if they agreed on everything but that one issue.

Capn,

you can certainly read from his statements that he wasn't a 'standard' Christian, and definitely not a 'fundie', but he clearly and explicitly bought into belief in God and much of the idealogy, with what struck me as a strong attraction to the medieval version, especially to what inspired the Crusades.

I stand by my statement that he was referencing anyone who opposed Islam to reinforce and justify his extreme views of Islam, but his actions make no sense in terms of what any of those people said, apart from possibly Hitchens, in his support of the second gulf war. I don't regard Hitchens as one of the more consistent or coherent thinkers of the 'New Atheists', and his objection to the first gulf war, launched by Bush senior, always knocked him down in my estimation. I was pissed off at him when I heard him express those views in an interview with an Australian radio host not so long after that exercise.

I based my views on events in Norway largely on what I heard from a twice-a-day BBC News podcast, which does pretty solid reporting and interviews with people involved in any events. I will admit that Jon Stewart's comments on the Daily Show seemed pretty valid too.

I will concede I was being a bit rhetorical that he was a 'standard' medieval Christian, but not that much of a stretch.

Cap Pine Appel: Well, OK, Hitchens is the exception, however he did change his mind on the war in Iraq, and it seemed like everyone else opposed him on his pro-war stance.

EXC: Are you justifying Breivik's actions? Seriously?

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Not at all. We expect humans to be capable of rising a bit above basic stress responses.

Really, are rats technically insane for dealing with too much stress on the only level that their tiny brains are able to manage? If you want to argue that, then knock yourself out. However, that is likely going to the evolutionary root of some human stress responses.

Where it comes down for humans is that insanity is not even a medical term. It is specifically a legal term based on the law having come about before we knew what little we know about human mental states today.

A medical term that might be relevant would be psychosis. However, that actually does have a somewhat clear meaning and I would not be willing to go there without talking to the guy (if I even could break through a potential language barrier).

I would need to see a number of specific things in order to go there. If the guy turns out to be a clinical nutter, then there is that. However, from the small amount of info that I have, he does not seem like that.

For example, if he claims that god told him to do what he did, then that kinds of leads into a diagnosis of schizophrenia with positive symptoms. On the other hand, if he is not getting orders from god but he is sick and tired of moslems, that might go to schizoaffective disorder.

The criteria are fairly technical (to the point where “soft science” comes into play) but simple stress response is not really adequate for this dude.

Because we're not feral...

In what ways are humans still not feral? We still live by the rules of the jungle, we breed like wild animals, population only restrained by hunger, fighting and disease,  kill off our enemies. We domesticate and neuter other species to control problems but not ourselves.

The only difference I can see is that we have more advanced technology, a rat can't kill 80 other rats only because it doesn't have access to technology to do so. So why should we not expect events like this? So I understand people being saddended by events like this, but why be shocked. This is what happens when you put advanced technology into the hands of wild animals.