Stephen Paddock’s Motive for the Las Vegas Massacre

As of this writing (Fall 2018), it has been over a year since the horrendous massacre in Las Vegas by Stephen Paddock. Authorities are still mystified as to his motive.

Back in 1977 I attended the documentary film series: How Should We Then Live? by the theologian Francis A. Schaeffer. In one of the episodes there was a man driving a car who saw an elderly woman struggling to cross a busy street in front of him.

Scenario #1 shows him get out of the car and rush over to help her cross the street.
Scenario #2 shows that upon seeing the tottering woman, he immediately steps on the gas and runs her over.

You can watch the one and a half minute clip here:

Sadly, this permeates our current Western thought and culture to where too many see either scenario as beyond rebuke or praise. The foundation of our current Western thought requires no explanation for whether a person follows Scenario #1 or Scenario #2. The news and law enforcement are constantly digging for a motive for Stephen Paddock’s destructive rampage in Vegas on October 1, 2017. The hope is that finding a motive could lead to taking steps to alleviate this kind of threat in the future. But, Stephen Paddock could well be one of our biggest examples for characterizing our current culture; a culture devoid of any foundational ethical standard; a product of our amoral culture.

A key player in establishing this culture is the constant and pervasive attempt to promote Darwinism as a fact; claiming we are merely an accidental product of evolution to which there are no absolute moral guidelines. Survival of the fittest does not come with the concept of right or wrong. No one condemns animals for killing, even if they slaughter for no apparent reason whatsoever. So why does Paddock need a reason for massacring and maiming hundreds of people?

Our current culture includes the relativity of truth as we see in our politics, and in accusations against a media many perceive to be riddled with falsehoods. The one exception is Darwinian evolution, where most everywhere you turn it is touted as a fact. They only have to say millions of years ago and the vast majority mindlessly figure that is more than enough to convince anyone. When is the last time you’ve heard the millions of years chant and had anyone explain how they came up with that number? Or for that matter, when is the last time you heard evolution expressed as a theory and not a fact?

You’re probably wondering how this relates to explaining what drove Stephen Paddock to go on his destructive rampage? The quickest explanation is by using a theoretical scenario that takes Stephen Paddock through our modern Darwinist culture.

From his first days in school Stephen was taught he evolved by chance into some molecularly produced slime of the ocean. Over millions of years this slime developed into a more complex slime given the name of human. The world of slime taught Stephen that there were no absolutes or morals. Ethics were situational and of consequence only if you got caught. Stephen was brainwashed over and over into believing there is no afterlife for slime. No accountability. To help a lady cross the street was no different than running her over. To take his abilities and resources to help alleviate the pain of hundreds of lives was no different than taking his abilities and resources to Vegas to kill and maim hundreds of people.

The culture surrounding Stephen convinced him that all those who died by his bullets just poofed into nothingness and that by taking his own life that he too would poof into nothingness. Stephen was convinced that when the Sun died out in billions of years, everything would die out into meaninglessness anyways. Stephen was taught by Darwinism that life came into a meaningless existence and would ultimately end in meaninglessness.

Most everyone growing up in a western culture faces the same influences without resorting to the extremes of violence. Yet, most everyone considers Stephen an evil person even though evil does not exist in Darwinism and most embrace Darwinism as a fact.

So, why this anomaly? Why did Stephen take the pathway that led to a massacre?

That brings us to our pivot point. Which is why in such an amorally driven culture do we even consider what Stephen Paddock did as wrong or evil? Why in this Darwinian amoral culture do we seem to have moral laws written in our hearts?

Deep down something is telling us that Darwinism just can’t be the final word. It just can’t all cascade into amoral meaninglessness.

Even atheists might hope that Stephen Paddock was right now in Hell, along with Adolph Hitler and others like him. If our moral gut feeling is right then something is very very wrong with a culture that produces people like Stephen Paddock, Devin Kelley, James Holmes, Adam Lanza, Nikolas Cruz, Eric Harris, or Dylan Klebold.

Are scientists and educators pushing a dangerous lie?

Scientists are taught the scientific method. They know the difference between theory and fact. So why do they constantly tout Darwinism as a fact when they know full well that it is still a theory? They are either purposefully lying to us or just plain ignorant. Any true scientist knows Darwinism is a theory and to assert that it is factual is totally unscientific and a lie.

No true scientist has any problem with a theory no matter how outrageous it might be. But when you take a theory and declare it to be a fact, then you have crossed into the area of faith, thus positioning yourself into the area of religion.

In the area of science, Creationism is a theory. I am a scientist and believe Creationism to be a fact by the inclusion of faith. Recognizing this element of faith puts my belief in Creationism into the area of religion.

Any honest scientist who claims Darwinism is a fact should also acknowledge Darwinism is a part of his or her religion. Unfortunately most Darwinists are dishonest and will not acknowledge their factual claim makes them a part of the Darwinian religion. If Darwinists, who claim that Darwinism is a fact, would declare it to be their religion then they would be both true to science and honorable in character.

The Bible says that God has written his laws within our hearts.

For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) ^{Romans 2:14-15}

This would certainly explain why the majority of people believe Stephen is evil even though our Darwinian brainwashing tries to tell us otherwise. If those laws represent truth and reality then Stephen did not escape from his evil ways but is in Hell awaiting the final judgment. Those same laws were within Sartre when he faced the evils of an unjust conflict, compelling him to contradict himself. Unfortunately there is no evidence that this led him to abandon falsehood and embrace Biblical truth. We can only assume that Sartre is in Hell along with Stephen Paddock and Adolph Hitler.

Where does that leave those of us who are alive and facing all the influences that come with this amoral Darwinian culture? If we are eternal beings then the millions, billions, trillions, quadrillions, zillions of years that lie ahead of us may very well be determined by our actions during this extremely brief time on earth.

Under this scenario, Stephen Paddock doesn’t just poof out of existence when he commits suicide after his brutal attacks. Rather, he faces a Judge who will decide his fate through all eternity and that eternity will most likely involve the eternal Lake of Fire.

You should be asking what can you do when facing an onslaught of destructive cultural falsehoods. The answer is so simple a little child can understand: nothing; absolutely nothing. A person who is drowning has the best chance of being saved by someone coming to their rescue if they do nothing. If that person fights and struggles, he most likely will drown and often end up dragging his rescuer to his or her doom.

Surrender yourself completely to God and he will rescue you and take you exactly where you should be headed; to where you were created to reside. Stop fighting God and he will take you to the truth; to living waters; to the wonderful sacrifice of Jesus for all your sins; and ultimately into the hands of Jesus who will never let you go (never let you drown in the cultural falsehoods that flood into your life).

If you trust the world, it will let you down all the way to the depths of hell. If you trust God and his word, he and his word will never, ever fail.

Unfortunately, most will gamble with their lives like Stephen Paddock with consequences fashioned by the surrounding culture. Stephen gambled his 64 years against eternity. 64 divided by infinity is ZERO. Don’t be a ZERO like Stephen. Surrender to God and the falsehoods of your life and your surroundings will begin to peel away as Truth replaces falsehood; Light replaces darkness; Peace replaces fear.

Ralph Wendt

Addendum #1: Jean-Paul Sartre Quotations

It is unlikely Stephen Paddock was a student of Jean-Paul Sartre. Nevertheless, many of his ideas have permeated our society. Stephen most likely absorbed so many of these and other philosophies like them, that they became what defined him and therefore supplies us his motive for the Vegas massacre of October 2017.

• Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.
• All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.
• It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.
• Hell is other people.
• Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.
• All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.
• I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.
• Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.
• Life begins on the other side of despair.
• I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.
• I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.
• Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.
• The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.
• Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.
• Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.
• What is life but an unpleasant interruption to a peaceful nonexistence.
• Before you come alive, life is nothing; it’s up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.
• Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.
• We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.
• In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations.

 

Addendum #2: A modern injustice that accentuates our amoral cultural foundation.

Here is a list that’s the tiniest tip of the iceberg of immorality run amok: Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Roman Polanski, Jerry Sandusky, and the list seems to go on and on. Society touts the evolutionary model of a caveman with club dragging a female to his lair. So why are those men vilified?

Evolution actually demands that these men should be admired: men who could dominate others with such force, power, or persuasion. Then too our justice system encourages Darwinism by handing so many who are like those on the list with the Statute of Limitations. Commit your crimes and bully the victims to keep silence until a certain time passes; then you will be rewarded with a free pass: a damn the victims pass.

Only evolutionary thinking to reward those criminals could have come up with those kinds of statutes; drag your victims to your lair like the caveman, commit all the sexual crimes you want; threaten them however you can to keep quiet, even to the point of threatening to kill them, and then wait it out for a few years; sometime no more than seven; then society will basically pat you on the back while saying: “Good job my boy. You got away with it and you’re home free!”