Since posting my original entry on this subject, I’ve tried to verify as many details in the WorldNetDaily story about Jesse Kilgore as I could. I wish I had time to do even more research but real life has been keeping me pretty busy this week.

Here’s some of what I’ve discovered:

—– On Oct 8, 2008, the Watertown Daily News published this notice: “Jesse Michael Kilgore, 22, of 25477 Huntley Lane, died Tuesday in the town of Rutland. Arrangements with Bruce Funeral Home, Black River, are incomplete.”

—– Watertown is a town of about 27,000 in upstate New York. Rutland is home to about 3000 people and is about 6 miles east of Watertown.

—– Jefferson Community College is a two-year college in Watertown. It is one of the 30 community colleges in the 64-campus State University of New York (SUNY) system and has an enrollment of about 3100 students.

—– Jesse Kilgore posted online at MySpace. According to the information I found there, he “tried out” the Air Force and was in the Reserves at the time of his death. He also was trying to get a pharmacy degree at Jefferson Community College. The comments left there by his family and friends seem to confirm the time and manner of his death.

—– I have not been able to confirm any of the claims made about his professors, his having read Dawkins, or his killing himself because of his loss of faith. I don’t have a MySpace account myself and am not inclined to get one but from what I can see as a non-member, his postings seem pretty normal. There’s nothing to indicate that he was on the verge of suicide. Perhaps the one thing that sticks out is that he apparently had a friend who died (Will Norman, 1984-2005). It would be interesting to know more about their relationship and how Jesse handled his death.

—– There is a forum discussion about the WND article and Jesse’s death at the Richard Dawkins website. I haven’t read all of the 300+ posts but from what I have sampled they seem to be pretty much in line with the comments that have been left on this diary. (For what it’s worth, one of the more recent posts mentions that Jesse allegedly threatened suicide because of girl problems months before his actual suicide….)

So: Many of the basic facts of the WND story seem to be true. The claims that are of most interest to me as an atheist, however, remain unsubstantiated. The extent to which the truth behind those claims may have been distorted by a father’s grief and WND’s pro-Christian/anti-atheist perspective remains an open question that makes further analysis terribly problematic.

I’d probably leave things at that if it wasn’t for the fact that this story constitutes one of the most serious challenges to atheism in general and Dawkins in particular since I started this diary nearly 9 years ago.

It seems to me to be a very weak challenge, and the fact that it’s the best Christians have been able to come up with seems to me to speak volumes about the one-sided nature of my debate with them, but… others may see things differently. And weak challenges sometimes have a way of taking on an exaggerated life of their own when left unanswered (as perhaps Michael Dukakis and John Kerry can attest to).

Just for the record, here is my response:

—– It’s odd that this story has only appeared on the WorldNetDaily website – an extremely problematic source that (as near as I can tell) hasn’t bothered to run any follow-up stories. It’s as if a very strange man in the corner of a small theater has shouted fire – once – and then fallen silent. It’s hard for me to avoid the feeling that Jesse Kilgore deserves something much better than this whatever the facts behind his suicide might be.

—– A few of the claims allegedly made by Jesse’s father are too dangerous and bizarre to ignore even if made while in the depths of grief. His view that sending Jesse to a secular school was akin to “putting a toddler in the front of my car” slanders both secular schools and his 22-year-old son. Advising Christians to abandon secular schools entirely rather than putting their beliefs to the test in open debate and a free marketplace of ideas seems to amount to a confession that those beliefs can’t survive close analysis or compete with others. The Bible itself warns us not to build our houses on sand – houses which then get washed away when the rains and the floods come (Matthew 7:26-27). It seems that dad helped his son build his house on sand, then blamed the clouds when disaster struck…. Given that Jesse went to Jefferson Community College, I’m also reminded of this quote from Jefferson: “Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must approve the homage of reason rather than of blind-folded fear. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences…. If it end in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others it will procure for you.” Maybe if Jesse had been raised with that in mind from an early age, he’d still be alive today. (And maybe we atheists need to do a better job of offering support and love to each other as well as to those thinking about joining us.)

—– Jesse’s father also allegedly said this: “If my son was a professing homosexual, and a professor challenged him to read (a book called) ‘Preventing Homosexuality’ If my son was gay and (the book) made him feel bad, hopeless, and he killed himself, and that came out in the press, there would be an outcry. He would have been a victim of a hate crime and the professor would have been forced to undergo sensitivity training, and there may have even been a wrongful death lawsuit. But because he’s a Christian, I don’t even get a return telephone call.” It seems to me that he’s comparing apples and oranges. Sexual orientation – like gender and race – seems to be an intrinsic part of who we are and is not a matter of choice. Christianity, on the other hand, is a collection of beliefs that stand apart from us and can be accepted or rejected on the basis of logic and evidence. Condemning homosexuals as evil beings who deserve eternal hellfire is a very different thing than challenging someone to defend his or her belief system. (A lot more could be said about this, but… I’ll leave it at that for now.)

—– Even if we accept for the sake of argument that everything WND says about Jesse and his death is true, Jesse’s story – tragic as it may be – stands alone. It doesn’t fit a pattern of people who have read Dawkins’s book and then killed themselves. Compare that with the very clear pattern presented to us by Islamic suicide bombers or Christian parents and others who have killed because gOd allegedly told them to. If I’d only read about a single religious suicide bomber or a single murderous Christian mom – or a single child-abusing priest, for that matter – I’d write it off as an aberration, not trumpet it as a reason to condemn theism as a whole as intrinsically dangerous. It’s the pattern that’s developed from many stories from many places and sources over many years that’s important – not any one particular case. The failure of Jesse’s story to fit any such pattern may – in the final analysis – be one of the most important things about it.

The bottom line for me at this point isn’t that atheism drove Jesse to suicide but that Jesse’s Christian upbringing and community failed to give him the tools he needed to survive the pressures of young adulthood. No doubt there were other factors involved – factors involving genes and personal psychology and relationships that seem certain to be forever beyond my understanding – but it seems fair to say that Christianity was unable to compensate for them, whatever they were. Maybe nothing could have, but… if I could rewind history, I’d sure like to test that hypothesis by raising Jesse as a rational empiricist and seeing if his story might not have had a happier ending.

As things stand, his sad story serves to reinforce one of my guiding principles: Beliefs matter because beliefs guide behavior, and it’s important to work as hard as we can to get those beliefs in line with the truth in normal times because those are the same beliefs we’re going to have to rely on during times of crisis.

Had Jesse been raised in a culture that promotes belief in witchcraft, it’s possible that he and his father would have gone out and killed the neighbor they believed had put a curse on him. Had he been raised in a culture that more strongly promoted a modern view of mental health and provided for easy, stigma-free treatment even in small towns far from major population centers, perhaps he’d still be alive today….

That said, I *do* wonder to what extent Dawkins’s The God Delusion may have hastened Jesse’s death. Near the end of the book (pp. 356-358), Dawkins talks about dying and assisted suicide in ways that might nudge a wavering person contemplating suicide to actually embrace it. You can read what Dawkins says for yourself and make your own judgment, but I personally can see how his minimization of the significance of death and his view that suffering people ought to be able to be put out of their misery like sick dogs *might* have had a profound impact on Jesse. This is a possibility that deserves serious examination….

For now, I’ll just say this: It’s a possibility that is only tangentially related to atheism. Atheists like Dawkins who might defend suicide in some circumstances simply aren’t comparable to the leaders of religious suicide cults like Marshall Applewhite, let alone to those Muslim clerics who promise 72 virgins to those who detonate their explosive belts in crowds. (And of course atheism posits nothing remotely comparable to the idea that the greatest thing gOd himself ever did was come to earth in human form so he could have himself killed.)

Whatever your beliefs about gOd may be, if you’re contemplating suicide, please contact a mental health professional.