Reed Secular Alliance

You’ve heard the arguments for why shootings happen.  Poverty, rage, mental illness.  Gun access.  But “godlessness”?  I know it’s counterintuitive, but Milwaukie, Oregon resident Russell Mathews believes a downtown Portland shooting was due to high levels of atheism in this metropolis.  “The young shooter,” Mathews explains, “was probably taught about evolution. He was probably influenced by atheism.  This lack of God leads to dangerous things that even the strictest laws cannot prevent.”  The shooter, Erik Ayala, opened fire in downtown Portland on January 24th, killing two and injuring seven, before taking his own life.

While I normally tolerate all points of view, I have difficulty according Russell Mathews’s position any measure of respect.  In this case, the shooter was schizophrenic, denied neuroleptics in 2000 because he couldn’t show proof of Oregon residence.  Yet under Oregon law, only nine years later, Ayala was eligible to buy a gun.  According to a piece in The Oregonian, “A November 2008 state report says 15,521 adults in Oregon have a serious mental illness and are not covered by insurance or otherwise treated by state programs.” And somehow atheists are to blame? 

I sure wonder what kind of God Mathews worships – a God who is supposedly all-good and all-powerful, yet who stikes innocent people with psychosis and poverty, and doesn’t even have the consideration to give Ayala the neuroleptics that would help him?  Instead of attacking those who don’t believe in God, Russell Mathews would do well to spend his time working to get healthcare for uninsured Oregon inhabitants.  Erik Ayala could really have used it.