I BELIEVE YOU
If you told me, clearly and specifically, that you went to Hawaii to swim with the dolphins and turtles I would say you had swimming or marine mammal-related motivations. If you said you had a fantastic dream about swimming with sea turtles and couldn't stop thinking about them, and that's why you went, I could easily take your word for it. Even if you'd never gone to Hawaii before and never swam in the sea I'd simply think you were highly motivated by your love of turtles and dolphins, just as plenty of folks are. I would not ascribe some ineffable ulterior, possibly related to the geopolitics of whaling, or your personal economic situation, or say that it's actually all about that time in grade four when you were bullied.
If you told me that you watched baseball three times a week and still, at age 30, collected baseball cards – and, further, that you were planning a trip to Chicago just to watch both the Cubs and the White Sox play – I would take your word for it. I would call you a passionate baseball fan. I may even call you a sports nut, a crazy baseball fanatic, and doing so would be good and fair and true.
If you said you listened to Justin Bieber on your drive to work everyday, and had a picture of him as wallpaper on your phone, I might be confused but I'd believe you. If you said you knew all his songs by heart, learned to play piano because of Justin Bieber, and even travelled to Australia to see him in concert, I would be free to say that you were, maybe, a bit obsessed, fanatical even. If you told me you loved Bieber more than I could possibly know, I would take your word for it – and I would probably be right to think that there's almost nothing you wouldn't do for the Bieb.
But when a devout religious person goes on a murderous rampage, or attempts to do so, and declares they did it for religious purposes, that "God made me do it", we are obligated to ignore the stated motivation. We would rather send out a team of investigative journalist, sociologist, and psychologists to piece together the hidden and inexplicable that surely must be there. No one is permitted to describe what they see or take what they are given. No, we have to perform mental surgery and sever the strongest and most obvious connections, and everything we surely know, and implant alien motives and connections – ones that clearly don't belong, that the host did not want or make and even now emphatically rejects.
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