Theodore Dalrymple ruminates on why James Holmes committed mass murder in Aurora and comes to the conclusion that Naturalism provides no answer and can never provide an answer. He is right, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer outside of Naturalism.

Holmes is not unlike a Dostoevsky protagonist who does evil to prove that he has free-will unconstrained by God, is his own master and, thus, is a god himself. The ultimate expression of this brand of “free-will” is to kill oneself – as Kirillov in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed – since it is the indelible denouement of the rebellion against what God intends for us; it is a popular choice for many mass killers, although not James Holmes.

None of this is new: it is as old as Eden when the serpent said to Eve concerning the apple: “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” It has been downhill ever since.

The simple truth is, people do evil for the sake of doing evil, for the sake of demonstrating that they can, for the sake of falling again for the serpent’s fatal lie – that it will make them free.

From here:

By a strange irony, alleged Aurora mass murderer James Holmes was a doctoral student of neuroscience—the discipline that will, according to its most ardent and enthusiastic advocates, finally explain Man to himself after millennia of mystery and self-questioning.

But what could count as an explanation of what James Holmes did? At what point would we be able to say, “Aha, now I understand why he dyed his hair like the Joker and went down to the local cinema and shot all those people?” When we have sifted through his biography, examined his relationships, listened to what he has to say, and put him through all the neuropsychological and neurological tests, will we really be much wiser?

[…..]

We seek a final explanation, but cannot reach one because, as Haitian peasants say, “Behind mountains, more mountains.”