When atheist Reason succumbs to hysteria we become like Them

The hideous mass killings and attempted assassination of a congresswoman in
Tucson, Arizona last week has created hysteria and knee jerk reactionary response from people from whom I would have least expected it. Perhaps my disappointment is my own fault as I tend to credit freethinkers with using the same reasoned approach to all issues and events, more credit than we apparently deserve.

Over the course of the past few days I received numerous invitations to join causes and pages on Facebook entitled “Prosecute Palin for Incitement to Murder” and “Remove Palin from Facebook.” Curious, I visited those pages and read some outlandishly speculative comments that were proffered as fact; comments so filled with rhetorical hyperbole, so incendiary and worst of all so unsubstantiated that had the people positing them been religionists I’d simply have shaken my head and said: “Typical.”

But these were largely freethinkers, atheists—people who dismiss the supernatural because they demand objective evidence; honor fact not conjecture; and hold rational thought in high regard, or so I thought.

“The shooter is a Teabagger!”; “This was all part of a well conceived Right Wing plan!” ; “Palin knew this was going to happen!”; “She broke the law and is guilty of conspiracy to murder!”; “We should change the laws for high profile people to hold them accountable for words that kill!”; “She went beyond free speech, like yelling Fire in a crowded theater!” When questioned as to the foundational evidence for these statements no substantiations were offered. The pyre was already stacked, the match struck, all they needed was the witch to be delivered to them.

I suggested examination of Brandenburg vs Ohio and Watts vs The United States to better understand the criteria for incitement to murder. Palin’s gun related rhetoric which appeals to her base and is part of her persona, and the crosshair target imagery do not even vaguely approach that criteria. The critical element being that direct intent to cause harm has to be proven and that mere hyperbole, humor, or offensive methods of stating political opposition are protected under the Constitution. I implored them not to confuse legal accountability, with the unethical/insensitive political discourse we all rightly and roundly condemn.

This wasn’t received well.

Never mind that my expressed disdain for the far right in general and Palin in specific are well documented. That I condemned her hate filled and inflammatory speech as ill advised and bad for the nation was not enough. My call for rational thinking was largely ignored, worse, it was taken as evidence of my right wing leanings and proof that I am a Palinist. I was summarily “unfriended” by at least one Facebook “friend.”

In the midst of all this I received this email from an atheist organization in the Southwestern US:

“The WBC [ Westboro Baptist Church] has added another irony as a right-wing extremist took the lifes [sic] of 6 people wounding 14 more (including Gabby Gifford) will be given hero status by this sick group. If you're in the area please do go to these funerals and help the blockade that will keep the evil of the right-wing out.”

I emailed the group’s organizer, commended her efforts to blunt Fred Phelps’ despicable plan, and asked for her evidence of the shooter’s “right-wing extremist” credentials. She replied she had none, but it was obvious. I explained that the right is claiming he was a far leftist, also without evidence. When I suggested that her inventive labeling of this maniac -- who could as well be far left, Independent, anarchist, or simply apolitical but deranged -- could damage her and her organization’s credibility she said this:

“Of course they're saying he's not one of them. That's how they twist things. Why does associating him with the right threaten my credibility? The right associating him with the left only strengthens theirs”. ...” I think that [picketing Fred Phelps’ demonstration] is a legitimate project for atheists who claim they are also humanists. If my credibility is hurt in the process of getting some action, so be it.”

Let me paraphrase her comment:

“... let truth and fact be damned; if they can posit conjecture as fact so can we; the means justifies the end; and besides what harm would it do, if I told a good strong lie for the sake of the cause? A lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be wrong.”

If that last phrase sounds vaguely familiar to you, kudos. You probably read the chapter in The Atheist Camel Chronicles that discusses the Church’s endorsement of lying for the faith. Here’s the actual quote:

"What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church ... a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them." - Martin Luther, in a letter in Max Lenz, ed., Briefwechsel Landgraf Phillips des Grossmüthigen von Hessen mit Bucer, vol. I.)

The lesson here is that the rationality that permits atheists’ rejection of myth doesn’t always translate into clear and measured thinking when facing broader real world applications. Under emotional duress hysteria displaces reason and the ensuing justification for abandonment of truth and fact reads as despicably as it does from a religionist’s pen. Lesson learned.