Pondering since yesterday whether this deserved mention, eventually I moved beyond my own anger at such lies and deceptions and concluded I would share it with you and let you decide whether it was worth your time.

Melinda Barton wrote this editorial about atheists for The Raw Story.  Sadly, there is not one shred of truth to be found in the entire piece.  She invents her own facts, argues against a straw man of her own creation, and ultimately demonstrates ignorance and bigotry regarding a topic about which she apparently has no clear understanding.  Her diatribe is vitriolic at best, misleading at least, and entirely fabricated to boost her own ego as far as I can tell.

My first response was to post a blow-by-blow rebuttal against her fallacious fictions, or “outrageous claim[s]” by atheists as she calls them.  These assertions can not be reconciled with any atheist I know, nor does she support them with any evidence to indicate they are widely held beliefs — or even beliefs shared by only a handful of people — yet she decries them as proven attributes of all atheists.  She then argues against each one.  The result is that she is arguing against herself, a fact she seems entirely unaware of yet happy to endorse with daffy gibberish and outlandishness.

Luckily, I was not the only person to stumble upon this and to find it offensively childish and misrepresentative.  Instead of clamoring on ad nauseam in response, allow me to point out some of the better rejoinders already available.

PZ does the first and best job of kicking her to the curb and eviscerating her downed carcass.  If you want to skip Melinda’s post and get right to the truth of the matter, I suggest you read PZ’s reply.  He nicely identifies and responds to all of her questionable accusations.

When he noticed the editor’s update to the post in response to the rapid and unrelenting backlash, like me he was disappointed to note they did not bother to correct the falsehoods and spin offered as supporting data.  As this is an editorial piece, it is certainly reasonable to voice opinion even if it is unpopular or unsupportable, but it is never acceptable to claim to be factual that which is irrefutably untrue — you know, like the whole of this particular rant.  Proffering mendacity in lieu of outlining evidence in support of an opinion is the problem, not the opinion itself, yet the editors ignore this problem and stand in support of the piece nonetheless.  You already know I support freedom of speech that stands inherently in this debate, so perhaps I understand their position to a small degree.  It still can not be denied that I abhor any support of opinions which are documented with “proof” that is incorrect and manufactured.

Just as I intended to do, PZ again responds appropriately by taking the editors to task for attacking the critics of the piece instead of admitting it was contrived in her head and bears no relation to reality.  You may support her right to voice her opinion, but how can anyone support her right to advertise such personal beliefs by way of deception?

PZ also points out even the editors erred by alleging insult at a time-honored, respected, and oft practiced journalistic tool that is a common rhetorical technique: take a quote, change one or two words so as to associate it directly with the author, and thereby “illustrate that when you remove the kneejerk [sic] contempt that the label elicits, the dependency of the argument on bigotry becomes more apparent.”  I find the editors’ stance on this issue to be laughably derisive and scornful.  True journalists would recognize this practice and understand its use, and they would therefore not cite it as intentional and questionable misquotation of the original.

Some additional responses to this rubbish can be found at Neural Gourmet and Austin Cline, both of whom address this silliness from different yet equally compelling perspectives.  As with PZ’s responses, they too make clear that her denunciation of atheists is perpetrated by way of the normal extremist tools: make things up, redefine words, and make more things up.  What does that say about her?

As ad hominem pieces go, Melinda’s takes the cake for being the best fiction ever presented as opinionated truth.  Lacking credible, significant, and influential examples of her claims, all of which I find to be false and misrepresentative, she demonstrates her own religious bigotry, intolerance, and overall ignorance, the very things she expects us to believe she is speaking out against in others.  What a sad display this is.  How disappointing for the editors to support such untruthfulness even in an op-ed.  Sure, say what you will, but be sure that any claims you make are accurate if they are presented as veracious.  Had she simply written her opinion and not included finger-pointing indictments that have no factual basis, despite her apparent need for us to accept them as absolute truth without evidence (like religion, and I find that ironic), there would have been nothing but disappointment to levy against her work.  Now, however, she is seen as someone who readily lies to support her positions, and Raw Story is seen as an organization prepared to support such lies in the name of freedom of speech.

And a final note that will help you understand why this is so worthy of response.  I mentioned a recent study indicating atheists are America’s most distrusted minority, indicating religious acceptance in America extends only to those with religious beliefs and not to those with none.  The study even showed atheists “are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.”  In addition to the study, I also linked to a disturbing report in which evidence indicates courts regularly discriminate against atheists in child custody cases, a trend in which children are oftentimes remanded to the parent with religious beliefs and non-believing parents are subjected to limited or no rights.  In light of the obvious disparity of treatment and respect between believers and non-believers, prudence dictates Melinda and her editors should be especially mindful of falsified derogatory invectives against atheists, a group representing only 1% of America’s population.  Instead, this episode demonstrates a clear intent to do harm by way of falsification and editorial protection of misleading reports.  We atheists are endangered by the mindset that preaches equality and respect on one hand while using the other to sharpen and wield the blade of deceit and contempt.  As a Jew and a lesbian, one would think Melinda might have a better understanding of that concept than is demonstrated by this odious gobbledygook.  I remind such vile people of what Thomas Jefferson had to say:

…our rulers can have no authority over such natural rights, only as we have submitted to them.  The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit.  We are answerable for them to our God.  The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.  But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say that there are twenty gods, or no God.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

And to the editors whose inept lack of constancy with regards to truth seems forsaken in this regard, let me finish with yet another quote from Thomas Jefferson:

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error … They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only.