CT Christians want a separate, but equal, gay-free economy

The Hartford Courant is reporting that a venomous faction wants the state of Connecticut to endorse religiously-motivated (read: antirational) prejudice by passing protection for business owners who want to withhold services from gay couples seeking support for the marriage process -- bakers of wedding cakes, wedding photographers, DJ slings of the "Chicken Dance," and so on: all the contractors whose collective work make matrimonial ceremony so impressive and expensive:

The Knights of Columbus, the Catholic Church and the Family Institute of Connecticut are asking the state legislature to create what they are calling a religious liberties exception [to allow businesses to turn away gay couples seeking gay marriage services] when it codifies the ruling that legalized gay marriage here. The effort was turned back in the legislature's judiciary committee, but proponents are hoping it will be brought forward on the Senate floor. A vote could come later this week. [from the April 21st Courant article]

I have no problem with this, as long as they make their case for bigotry on non-religious grounds. Presumably, they can call Yahweh to the stand to testify before the relevant court, or to the table to address the legislators in session? As long as their argument for discrimination does not aspire to transmute Biblical nonsense into legal action, why not? It's a free country. Discrimination against the Christian community has already cost them the Miss USA crown; what other indignations must they endure?

And in this free country, don't we have a history of workable solutions to the problem of an enlightened population wanting not to do business with a polluted minority? I propose we implement the lessons of history and establish a separate-but-equal faith economy, where those who take their moral cues from ignorant and badly edited treatises passed down from the deprived antiquity of certain desert cultures will be free to exchange silver for services in the small business way without ever tampering with their deeply-held and privileged belief that some kinds of love are disgusting.

The rest of us can pity their minority, but be comforted by the protection this solution affords the constitutional rights of all citizens. The division of the economy into two camps -- the Rational Ethical, and the Holy Homobigoted -- ensures through separation equal protection under the law.

I'm being unkind; I believe there are many decent people who oppose gay marriage, for reasons they do not understand and could not defend in earnest discussion. Conversation, outreach, kindliness, and education will go a long way toward curing them of their received prejudice. As for the homobigot leadership -- if they choose to segregate themselves in pockets of hate, what right have I to force them to mix with the general population? As long as they don't raise children (that is, abusively inculcate their offspring into a tradition of indefensible homobigotry) or vote (that is, allow their poisonous irrationality to contravene the political will of other, less delusional citizens), then they and I have no quarrel. Otherwise, quarrel we have. And quarrel I will.

And quarrel I do, with campaigns like that featured at http://www.actnowct.org. I pity their fear, and scorn their efforts to disguise irrationalist bigotry as laudable faith.

NB: The above commentary is provocative and satirical -- which qualities I do not think are sufficient to advance a serious discussion of policy between disagreeing parties -- but it does accurately convey my response to this campaign -- bafflement and outcry. If you run a business that's open to the public, the law does not protect discrimination of any kind, religious, racist, or other. I am willing to share my point of view, informed as it is by knowledge of state and constitutional law and by a surprising (even to myself) grasp of secular ethics, with any interested parties. In good faith, I extend this invitation to members of the Knights of Columbus Connecticut State Council, the Hartford Catholic Archdiocese, and/or the Family Institute of Connecticut, with whom I have shared this commentary by email.

Judge bans religious song from school

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., April 17 (UPI) -- A federal judge has banned a Florida elementary school from having children sing a country song, "In God We Still Trust," at a school assembly.

The lyrics attack the principle of separation of church and state, U.S. District Judge Harvey Schlesinger said. He issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday against the Webster School in St. Augustine, The Jacksonville Times-Union reported.

While some religious songs can be sung in public schools, "In God We Still Trust" by Diamond Rio is "patently religious and proselytizing," the judge said.

He cited some of the lyrics: "There's no separation. ... We're one nation under Him ... Now there are those among us who want to push Him out and erase His name from everything this country is all about ... Now it's time for all believers to make our voices heard."

The parents of two Webster students filed the lawsuit in March, saying their children were being forced to endorse views they do not share.

© 2009 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Iowa Clerks Scorn Homobigotry

Kudos to the Iowa courts for resisting the efforts of a bigoted legislative minority to resist granting equal status before the law to homosexual couples seeking to marry: for now, in that corn-covered state, gay marriage is decidedly constitutional. Kudos also to the Iowa county recorders who are showing backbone and integrity by resisting the pressure homobigot lawmakers are placing on them to refuse to process marriage licenses for gay couples. According to an article in the Des Moines Register, the clerk of Republican Rep. Kent Sorenson called at least one clerk's office to lay a little pressure down. One imagines the conversation thusly:

Homobigot Clerk: "Them gays wants to fornicate on the courthouse law, and get your kids to watch."
County Clerk: "I think they just want to get married."
Homobigot Clerk: "You've been brainwashed by the godless logic of an activist Communist judiciary!"
County Clerk: "It's my job. Why are you bothering me?"
Homobigot Clerk: (hangs up phone, scours self with holy water and Brillo pads, prays for the strength to resist the urge to order a homosexual hooker... again.)

This is the office of the same Sorenson who told the press that he plans to fight to defend the definition of marriage as between 1 man and 1 woman. This, he announced to the world on Twitter -- twit politics for the new era.

Put briefly: the homobigots wanted to disallow gay marriage; the courts squashed their religiously-motivated politicking; the homobigots asked county clerk to implement prejudice as an 'act of conscience'; state officials squashed the hate by issuing strict instructions that marriage licenses are to be issued regardless of clerks' beliefs. The score so far looks like Rational justice in Iowa: 2, Homobigotry: 0.

Sorenson told the press that he did not ask his staff to place the call. He clarified his belief that "she has to do her job. That’s up to her, the oath she took and what she feels she has to do.” What she FEELS she has to do? I hadn't realized that a government official's purview of duties is open to interpretation. The clerks who are repelling this sly pressure don't seem at all persuaded by the same line of thinking, as all their published statements indicate that they'll be discharging their duties as specified by law.

In the Register article, Johnson County Recorder Kim Painter calls the issue cut and dry. "Supreme Courts always have the final word as to the constitutionality of laws passed by the legislature — except in countries like Syria,” she wrote. “Personally, I don’t want to live in Syria, so I am abiding by the system of governance and laws in America.”

Boston Atheists Report 1.7

Our mid-April podcast, recorded 4/14/2009. Topics: American Atheists convention; quiverfulls; infant dead and mother jailed because of Baltimore cult; Iowa declares homobigotry unconstitutional; Joss Whedon receives Harvard Humanist lifetime achievement award.

[Edited on November 2, 2009, to remove link to live download: Only the most current ten episodes of the Boston Atheists Report are available for immediate streaming. Please email us if you'd like to be sent earlier episodes.]

Sources Cited:

• American Atheists National Convention
• NPR story on quiverfulls in Michigan
• Description of quiverfulls (Feminist Philosophers Blog)
• 16 month-old boy dies because of cult in Baltimore (Washington Post)
• Toxoplasma gondii - parasite that causes mice to let themselves be eaten by cats (Wikipedia)
• Iowa Supreme Court upholds ruling allowing same-sex marriages (MSNBC)
• Overview of judges' dismantling of homobigots' arguments (Pam's House Blend)
• Proposition 8 the Musical, starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, Neal Patrick Harris... (Funny or Die)


• Joss Whedon on Humanism at Harvard (YouTube)

Ad hominem

Reductio ad Hitlerum: A Revision of History

One of the most common Ad Hominem arguments made is oddly specific:  You're a Nazi.  On Easter Sunday, The Catholic bishop of Augsburg tried to blame the holocaust on atheists.  Never mind that the Nazi troops wore belts inscribed with “Gott Mit Uns,” and let's ignore all the Catholic signatures on the Reichskonkordat for a second.  Isn't calling everyone Nazis just a little passé yet?  If there were not audible groans when he started in on the Atheism is the cause of Nazism spiel, then the whole place ought to be ashamed.

When the term Reductio ad Hitlerum was coined in 1953 as a tongue-in-cheek rebranding of the association fallacy in logical argument, I'm not sure that anyone could have guessed there would still be a need for another tongue-in-cheek rebranding in 1990 with Godwin's Law, which states, "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."  All the modern presidents and presidential candidates have been compared to hitler, everyone who's ever seen a public debate should be familliar with the tactic.  And yet it lives on.

Not even 9/11 could kill the trend, apparently.  The comparisons to terrorists were flying at homosexuals, high school bullies, republicans, democrats, and at everyone who liked civil liberties while the site was still smoking.  So I thought the new comparison might finally overtake the old one.  The new argument (can we call it Reductio ad Terrorem?) wouldn't be any better than the old one, but at least it would be a change of scenery.  So I find myself advocating for two things:  1.  Let's put the silly comparisons behind us, or at least change them up now and then.  2. "a good rule in most discussions is that the first person to call the other a Nazi automatically loses the argument." (from The Economist in 2007).

Also.  The Catholics totally caused the Holocaust.

Think of the Children

How many times have we heard that from the religious right when they spew their anti-same sex marriage bigotry? Yes, we need to think of the children, but not in the way you think.

A young 11-year-old boy killed himself after constantly being bullied and called gay or too feminine. Recently his mother spoke out:

"It's not just a gay issue," Walker said. "It's bigger. He was 11 years old, and he wasn't aware of his sexuality. These homophobic people attach derogatory terms to a child who's 11 years old, who goes to church, school, and the library, and he becomes confused. He thinks, Maybe I'm like this. Maybe I'm not. What do I do?"

I would disagree and say it is a gay issue. Whether this child was gay or not will never be known, but he was referred to as one in such a derogatory way that he eventually killed himself. Is this the kind of behaviour we want in our schools?

In a recent ad campaign the National Organization for Marriage brought up an example of a Massachusetts mom who "helplessly" has to let her child learn that gay marriage is okay. Ignoring the horrible misrepresentation of the facts, at face value is that a bad thing? No! We need to teach our children that being gay is okay, because the fact of the matter as that being gay is a matter of who you are from birth and if you teach your children bigotry the results are as tragic as the example above. Too many children kill themselves when they can't handle the pressures of being gay and living in a world where their parents, their friends, or their perceived God hates them for who they are. This problem is propogated by the child bigots, armed with the teachings of their homophobic parents, who verbally torture students for seeming gay, whether it's true or not.

Gay Marriage is not just about allowing same-sex couples to have the same rights as dual-gender couples, but to also show that being gay is okay. It is so vitally important to let the children who are dealing with their own homosexuality to know that they are not abominations, that they are not wrong, that they have a place in our society.

We absolutely MUST think of the children in order to prevent tragedies like this from happening again.

Our Favorite Heathen is at it Again!

Christopher Hitchen's book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is now available on paperback and so Hitchen's seems to be making the rounds on various shows. He was recently on Real Time with Bill Maher and Hardball with Chris Matthews.

I did however want to point out a couple of appearances in which we see Hitchens in his wonderfully scathing glory. First, Hitchen's was in a 2 hour debate with 4 theists in which the topic was: Does the God of Christianity exist, and what difference does it make? The moderator can hardly be called as such since he was clearly biased and interjected his own apologetics. Despite facing off FIVE theists, Hitchen's managed to come out swinging and never let up, however I would definitely say that whichever side you are on in this debate you would not be swayed one way or another. While Hitchen's is a master of turning points around on the person trying to make them, he does fail to fully rebutt certain points made by the Christians. Mostly this had to do with proving certain points about first cause and the historicity of Jesus. However, that simply is not Hitchen's style. His preference is to debate Christianity on merits and not try and disprove the God hypethesis as Victor Stenger has done. Despite this and completely unbalanced panel it's worth it to listen to what Hitchen's does best.

Next, Hitchens was invited to a radio show where he is supposed to play a game of "What if" in which a fundie tries to trap Hitchen's into admitting that Jesus is his savior. Hitchen's, of course, does not fall into the trap and deftly eludes the bait. Todd Friel can't seem to handle it and often reminds Hitchen's that "it's just a game", a fact which Hitchen's does not forget. Definitely fun to listen to and not as long as the debate above.

Enjoy!

Books of possible interest

Worldview and Mind: Religious Thought and Psychological Development, by Eugene Webb (university of Missouri Press; 312 pages; $49.95). Draws on the theories of Karl Kaspers and Jean Piaget in a study of links between religious belief and aggression or intolerance. [ZB: I think prior to focusing on religious belief, a more foundational study should be conducted to understand the relationship between aggression/intolerance and ideological thinking, of which religious belief is a subset.)

Encountering the Secular: Philosophical Endeavors in Religion and Culture, by J. Heath Atchley (University of Virgina Press; 181 pages; $49.50 hardcover, $19.50 paperback). Argues that a dogmatic separation between religion and the secular impedes the experience of what is termed immanent value. [ZB: Such impediment is an achievement of rationalism.]

Both these authors seem to be trading in nonsense (I've only seen the Atchley book). The supposed experience of those who claim to have encountered immanent is a category error, committed when we attribute existence to a reified percept that doesn't have a counterpart in reality. As when we think of god -- immanent entities may seem to exist, but our experience is no proof of their existence. Atchley's argument may be imaginative, but stumbles out of the blocks and is, by the finish, invalid. Immanence is widely thought to describe a number of entities which exist; I'm still waiting for an argument to be made that the term has any meaning at all in relation to ontology.

"Webb argues that authentic religion need not succumb to dogmatism, or support fanaticism, or be consigned to the stages of immature culture." (from the publisher's website.) There are other reasons for identifying religion as the practice of an immature culture, even if Prof. Webb is successful in demonstrating that the critics of religion do not account for the complexity of the institution they are deriding.

Responding to critics of religion, from Sigmund Freud to Daniel Dennett, he demonstrates that religious traditions have more spiritual depth than these critics have granted and a greater potential for development than they believe, along lines they might even favor. His insightful book proposes that, if religious people can step back from their traditions and consider them as partial ways of relating to transcendent ultimacy, the world’s religions might manage to develop a way of living together with mutual appreciation and respect." Sure they can: just adopt publicly accessible rules for mediating mutually exclusive claims for truth, instead of hiding behind a civil but only seeming tolerance. Jesus came to bring the sword, after all, division -- not peace. If religions can't all be correct, let's get to finding out which one is the right one. I have a guess, of course: the one without the imaginary friends. Oh, they all have such friends? Then maybe they're all equally wrong.

Two more grand expeditions, struck out from the humanities camp in a hunting way. They're after tigers, and more: for they'd like to bag the credit for dressing theistic belief in intellectually defensible skins, as well. Unfortunately for their project -- though I don't really think it unfortunate -- is the reality that transcendent entities have not ever been shown to exist, that the world looks as we would expect given the nonexistence of deities.

(I came across these listings in The Chronicle Review, 3/20/09)

Boston Atheists Report 1.6

Our end-of-March podcast, recorded 3/28/2009. Topics: Religion and atheism in death; pilots and crashes and religion, oh my; integrating Islam and Western society; misguided Texas laws and education guidelines; fundamentalists' amusing uses for technology.

[Edited on October 7, 2009, to remove link to live download: Only the most current ten episodes of the Boston Atheists Report are available for immediate streaming. Please email us if you'd like to be sent earlier episodes.]

Look for us on iTunes!

Sources Cited:

• "Pious fight death the hardest" (BBC)
• Pilot sentenced to 10 years in prison for praying instead of flying (AP)
• Bud Feldkamp and family die in plane crash (NY Daily News)
• Fundamentalists see Feldkamp tragedy as a good thing (Christian News Wire)
• Pharyngula comment on fundamentalist response to Feldkamp plane crash
• Q&A with Geert Wilders (Boston Globe)
• "Free speech aside, paper wrong to grant forum to bigotry" -Mohammed Asmal (Boston Globe)
• Pat Condell's YouTube channel
• Excerpt from The Unlikely Disciple (Salon)
• Texas court upholds moment of silence law (AP)
• Pharyngula on Texas board of education
• InformationAgePrayer.com
  Rapture Letters

Family Guy and Atheism

I love Seth McFarlane. Family Guy is one of my favorite comedies despite not being able to keep up with it thanks to not having cable for a long time. Of course I noticed that all the atheist blogs I read are buxxing about the Family Guy episode in which Brian comes out as an atheist. The episode is really awesome and really gets atheism in how we view things but how hard it is to be an atheist around so many theists. If you haven't seen it, it's on Hulu

As it turns out Seth is an atheist which is really nice to find out. I always focus on the careers on actors or singers I like because I not only respect their privacy, but I don't want to find out if they're into things like Scientology or vaccine denial. But still, it's not a bad thing to find out someone you're a fan of shares some of your views, especially when that view is highly contentious and demonized by society.

Is nothing Sacred? In which I defame religion

The Human Rights Council yesterday voted to pass a non-binding resolution, that is, a statement without legal force, which condemns defamation of religion. 23 countries voted in favor. Current member nations of the UNHRC are Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cameroon, Canada, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Germany, Jordan, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Nigeria, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Switzerland, and Uruguay. How countries like Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, China, Nigeria, and Cuba get on the Human Rights Council is not mysterious; that they nonetheless are members, and that their membership is no mystery, induces despair. (Washington Times editorial; Associated Press report)

It should be noted that earlier this week, the Main Assembly of the UN rejected proposed blasphemy "legislation" and upheld freedom of speech (read more at UN Watch). Nonetheless, the resolution which was passed indicates that the representatives of Armageddon and fantasy are yet marginally more effective than those of us with a reality-based worldview.

While I still have the liberty to make my views on the matter known, I would like to observe that Muhammad was warlike and unpoetic, and he most certainly did not have any special relationship with supernatural powers. Neither did the Buddha, who was mostly an unsagacious ninny; nor Jesus, whose teachings were at best derivative and at worst reprehensible. The Hindu pantheon is silly. The Jewish people would be more interesting without theism. Zen is nonsense; the Tao that is Tao is nonsense, too.

I could -- and usually do -- offer similar put-downs for all kinds of religious belief. Deities are psychosocial constructs with no reality outside of the human mind. To think otherwise is to be, unequivocally, wrong. To address such wrongness as "the pluralism of an enlightened society" is to deny that the terms truth, reason, civilization, and enlightenment have any meaning beyond their pious use in politics.

To follow the specific examples into general principles: All varieties of theistic and supernatural belief are unmerited and dangerous. It is doubly dangerous to fuse the moral authority of any institution of values (e.g., religion, though there are others) with the legally sanctioned authority of violence -- i.e., government. We are duty-bound to remain vigilant against such fusion: and are all responsible, when vigilance goes slack and the people with the guns gain the right to dispense moral judgment. You don't want the people with the guns making such calls.

The right to defame, electively and without sanction, must be defended; freedom of speech means less and less as the fictitious right not to be offended continues to ascend.

More on this topic in the next Boston Atheists podcast, as we explore the meaning and implications of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders' op-ed in the March 8 Boston Globe, on the topic of Islam and freedom of speech. The right to defame, electively and without sanction, must be defended; freedom of speech means less and less as the fictitious right not to be offended continues to ascend. I am unsure how I can respond effectively, as an individual. Suggestions are welcome -- let me, us, know what you think on the Meetup message board, or here at the BA blog.

Recommended reviewing: Christopher Hitchens, in a panel discussion with Shashi Tharoor, eloquently argues for the eradication of all taboos.

Atheists in Foxholes

Who hasn't heard the saying "There are no atheists in a foxhole"? It's a sounbite argument meant to show that when you're in one of the worst possible situations it's God that you will turn to for help. The fact of the matter is that there are in fact atheists in the armed forces, but it doesn't end there.

Who hasn't heard of the Miracle on the Hudson in which a quick thinking and logical pilot was able to land a plane by focusing on the task at hand? Since then there have been other plane crashes in which God simply chose not to intervene. One recently involved the death of seven children. In fact there is even the case of a pilot stopping to pray instead of following emergency procedures. This resulted in the death of 16 people. He has since been sentenced 10 years in jail.

Just another reason why the analogy fails completely.

Randi: Amazing. The Bible: Not so much.

There are many claims in the Bible, and in this YouTube video, James Randi casts a critical eye on the "facts" therein. It seems that the archeological record and the Biblical record are somewhat at odds, and despite protests from religious "scholars," the evidence points to the idea that Nazareth, for example, did not exist as portrayed. (from a post by Jeff Wagg on the James Randi Educational Foundation website blog)

The JREF is an educational resources on the paranormal, pseudoscientific, and the supernatural -- the blog and the discussion forum are excellent destinations for anyone interested in learning more about skepticism.

Study: Psychology and Belief

Garrett Kennedy, a Counseling Psychologist-in-training at the University of Wolverhampton (UK) is carrying out research in religious, spiritual and personal beliefs. Participation is through an online text-based survey investigating how personal beliefs operate in times of stress and difficulty. He's seeking as wide a range of participants as possible. Anyone interested may find more information at the study's website.

"There’s a new power in America – atheism"

"The faithless are a growing force as the churches duck the challenges of the age," according to an article by Andrew Sullivan in the Times. What follows are excerpts from his article with a few very brief comments. - ZB

There is one thing that is not allowed in American national politics – and that is atheism. “In God We Trust” is on the currency; and the number of congressional members who avow no faith at all are about as plentiful as those who are openly gay (none in the Senate; five in the House).

As more Americans identify as godless, it will become safer to challenge these manifestations of the irrationalist status quo.

Americans are losing faith, though; and those who have it are moving out of established churches. The nonreligious are now the third biggest grouping in the US, after Catholics and Baptists, according to the just-released American Religious Identification Survey. The bulk of this shift occurred in the 1990s, when they jumped from 8% to 14% of the population – but they have consolidated in the past decade to 15%.

Every loss in faith is a gain for reality-based perspectives.

It is impossible to know where this is heading, but the latest survey is a reminder to exercise a little scepticism when you hear of America’s religious exceptionalism. Yes, America is far more devout than most of western Europe; but it is not immune to the broader crises facing established religion in the West. The days when America’s leading intellectuals contained a strong cadre of serious Christians are over. There is no Thomas Merton in our day; no Reinhold Niebuhr, Walker Percy or Flannery O’Connor. In the arguments spawned by the new atheist wave, the Christian respondents have been underwhelming. As one evangelical noted in The Christian Science Monitor last week, “being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of evangelicals can’t articulate the Gospel with any coherence”.

It is hard to muster more whelming arguments in defense of an ethically and intellectually incoherent tradition. That apologists are balking at the task of wedging their deity into increasing narrow gaps just shows that not even apologists are entirely resistant to reality-based thinking.

What one yearns for is a resuscitation of a via media in American religious life – the role that the established Protestant churches once played. Or at least an understanding that religion must absorb and explain the new facts of modernity: the deepening of the Darwinian consensus in the sciences, the irrefutable scriptural scholarship that makes biblical literalism intellectually contemptible, the shifting shape of family life, the new reality of openly gay people, the fact of gender equality in the secular world. It seems to me that American Christianity, despite so many resources, has ignored its intellectual responsibility. And atheists, if this continues much longer, will continue to pick up that slack.

The cost of admission at any church is that one leave intellectual responsibility at the door.

Pubbing with Tim Farley, Rebecca Watson, and the Boston Skeptics

On February 23rd, a large contingent of Boston Atheists joined the Boston Skeptics at one of their monthly Skeptics in the Pub gatherings. Early in the evening all the booths near the stage at Tommy Doyle’s Pub were already filled up with eager skeptics; those who didn’t get a seat stood at the back around the bar.

The indomitable, industrious Rebecca Watson of Skepchicks was Master (or Mistress?) of Ceremonies, introducing the guest speaker for the evening, Tim Farley, who runs whatstheharm.net. Tim started What’s the Harm after attending one of James Randi’s Amaz!ng Meeting, an annual conference of Skeptics organized by the James Randi Educational Foundation and featuring notable skeptics and critical thinkers. Here he met the Penn Jillette who served as one source of inspiration for What’s The Harm.

What, then, is What’s the Harm? As Farley explained, it’s a website he’s put together, along with help from contributors, recording cases of people who have been duped, scammed, harmed, or directly or indirectly killed by various forms of pseudoscience and other dubious practices. While this site is merely anecdotal – a fact that Penn Jilette points out while praising Farley’s site – it is meant to be an eye-opener and offer a quick response to anyone who has ever been asked What’s the harm of homeopathy, detox programs, chiropractic treatments, and over seventy other practices.

Farley had a projector set up in the pub and flashed a few sad cases up for his audience: the young woman who had died of a stroke soon after receiving “chiropractic adjustment” on her neck, the young child who died of malnutrition after her parents put her on a stringent vegetarian diet without consulting a doctor, the people who followed their faulty navigation systems against their better judgment, driving their cars right into rivers. Farley points out that in all these cases, critical thinking and some research might have prevented disaster.

Read more at whatstheharm.net.

Why Does the Church Hate Rape Victims?

I was looking around on CNN.com and saw in the top 10 stories column an article mentioning that an abortion doctor was lauded...lauded? When do you ever see lauded and abortion doctor in the same sentence? Of course this article was about the doctor who performed the abortion for a 9 year old girl in Brazil. The girl was raped and pregnant with twins and because of her age unable to bring the twins to term without dying and the twins dying as well. This was the pinnacle of worst case scenarios you could ever possibly have regarding the abortion issue, and how does the Catholic Church react? They Excommunicated those involved with the abortion. Was the stepfather, who committed this heinous act against a 9 year old excommunicated? No. The Archbishop Sobrinho stated, "The law of God is higher than any human."

So let's be clear, the Catholic Church in all it's wisdom excommunicated the people involved in an abortion that I think most sane people can agree was absolutely necessary regardless of moral inclinations. Not only do they cause more anguish for the family and people involved, they have caused a private matter to become world news. Essentially they made a horrible situation absolutely worse. This also coming from a church that has been riddled with sex abuse scandals for quite some time now. The depths that this church can sink seem to be completely bottomless.

Oh, and by the way, they want your money too.

The Misperceived Cheeto Jesus

Over at YouTube, “Finally Tonight, Jesus…” is a compilation of the many, many moments of local news coverage given over to reports of religious apparitions in 2008.

We’ve all encountered theists whose best reason for believing the way they do is personal experience – the voice they hear in the back of their mind, the role they feel their deity plays in their life, the glimpses of the supernatural they see in the world around them. All of which are either signs of gods, or, erroneous interpretations of normal, non-spooky phenomena. Among the false interpretations theists put upon natural happenings, none is more comical than the idea that the all-powerful Author of the Cosmos would choose to reveal himself in a taco shell. And reporters love to meet people who see Jesus in a taco shell.

The widespread and hilarious habit of seeing messiahs in toast is a product of pareidolia. From the Skeptic’s Dictionary:

Pareidolia is a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct. For example, in the discolorations of a burnt tortilla one sees the face of Jesus Christ. Or one sees the image of Mother Teresa or Ronald Reagan in a cinnamon bun. . .

The reason you don’t see are Atheists on the 5 o’clock news, claiming to have seen Darwin’s beardy face peering out the woodwork just waiting for a more theatrical revelation, e.g. the simultaneous appearance of the word “GOD IS REAL” in flaming violet letters, six hundred feet tall, in the sky above every major city of the world. Of course, that is the kind of evidence that no rational person could deny. If the evidence for the existence for a deity were logically compelling (as flaming violent letters would be), then belief in that deity would be logically compulsory, and free will would be subverted, and any religion pretending that free will is compatible with the existence of their favorite god would have to revise their doctrines. Following this line of reasoning, Christians should expect exactly what we see: that the existence of their God will only ever be substantiated by unimpressive evidence. Anything less would be an attack upon free will!

Shoddy ad hoc apologetics aside, the real reason Atheists and rationalists don’t see Jesus in their Cheetos is that people who lack belief in the supernatural aren’t likely to attribute to the divine what can more readily be understood as common cognitive misfiring.

Boston Atheists Report 1.5

Our mid-March podcast, recorded 3/8/2009. Topics: New buses and billboards; secular founding fathers; demographics of atheist groups; religious and secular reactions to loss; cultural aspects of institutions like churches.

[Edited on September 18, 2009, to remove link to live download: Only the most current ten episodes of the Boston Atheists Report are available for immediate streaming. Please email us if you'd like to be sent earlier episodes.]

Sources Cited:

• FFRF's Boise billboards: "Beware of Dogma" (Idaho Statesman)
• Islam bus ads sponsored by CAIR and ICNA roll into San Francisco (Zomblog)
• Seattle atheists use founding fathers to raise awareness of America's secular nature (Friendly Atheist)
• Illinois pastor killed (USA Today)
• Gymnarchus niloticus: the secular natural world provides a sense of wonder and awe. (Abstruse Goose)

On trends

The United States is by an impressive margin the most religious of the developed nations. This should not be a source of national pride. I think, optimistically, that Americans have more common sense and fortitude than our purported piety implies, and that eventually we will slough off superstition and embrace more rational worldviews. The just-released results of the American Religious Identification Survey suggest that my optimism is not misguided: since 1990, Christian belief in this country has declined by 11%, and the percentage of Americans identified as non-religious has doubled.

I note that the Boston Globe reported on Catholicism’s decline (“Number of N.E. Catholics tumbles,” 3/9/09), but did no reporting on the growth of Atheism. The ARIS report indicates that 16% of Massachusetts residents profess “no religion,” meaning that about one million non-believers work, raise families, vote, and volunteer here in the Commonwealth. In light of that omission, I’d like to share a few thoughts about what this huge number of non-believers means – and what it doesn’t mean.

What it doesn’t mean is that the nation is experiencing the effects of new, terrible developments in war or famine, the kinds of trauma that lead people away from belief in gods. Rather, we are beginning to see what happens when the single greatest obstacle to Atheism is removed. Until very recently, people who shrugged off the received wisdom about deities faced a dilemma: either profess false belief and be accepted, or be shunned as an arrogant and probably communist apostate. Enter the Internet. Information technology now provided almost every American with an exit from religious isolation, and with a portal to the information and community available online. My hypothesis is that as technology improves, religion loses its stick and rationality gets the carrot.

I don’t believe this demographic trend is temporary or cyclical. We Atheists have always been here – indeed, it is insulting, even slanderous, to suggest that everyone who has ever professed religious belief actually believes it – but truth be told it hasn’t always been polite, or safe, to make ourselves known. Now that it is easier and more comfortable to admit to disbelief, we are coming out of the woodwork. And the more of us that do, the more able we will be to offer a sense of community to those others who have yet to come out.

News of this survey may well embolden more Atheists to come out of the closet. They should know that groups such as the Humanist Association of Massachusetts, the Ethical Society of Boston, and our own Boston Atheists (a local affiliate of American Atheists), are always pleased to welcome new members. As for myself, I welcome these data as evidence that our society is becoming more tolerant and more rational… and that the increasingly vocal and visible Atheist constituency continues to grow into a thriving community.

Boston Atheists Report 1.4

Our mid-February podcast, recorded 2/10/2009. Topics: Religious hysteria about video games; Daniel Dennett's intentional systems theory; Unitarian-Universalist churches; upcoming Darwin Day.

[Edited on September 4, 2009, to remove link to live download: Only the most current ten episodes of the Boston Atheists Report are available for immediate streaming. Please email us if you'd like to be sent earlier episodes.]

Look for us on iTunes!

Sources Cited:

• Good overview of video game fiasco (Penny Arcade)
• [mp3] Original unintelligible source of objectionable video game material (Mattel shareholder relations)
• [pdf] Daniel Dennett - Intentional Systems Theory
• Daniel Dennett - Thank Goodness! (The Edge)
• First Parish Cambridge Unitarian Universalist Church

Boston Atheists Report 1.3

Our end-of-January podcast, recorded 1/31/2009. Topics: the new definition of saddlebacking; Massachusetts among least religious states; more on the atheist bus campaigns; Christopher Hitchens debate.

[Edited on August 31, 2009, to remove link to live download: Only the most current ten episodes of the Boston Atheists Report are available for immediate streaming. Please email us if you'd like to be sent earlier episodes.]

Look for us on iTunes!

Sources Cited:

• Savage Love: Saddlebacking Defined!
• Saddlebacking.com
• Santorum.com
• Massachusetts among least religious states (Boston Globe)
• Photoshopped: theist bus vs. atheist bus
• Christopher Hitchens at the Connecticut Forum

He studied Islam and became an Atheist

BA member Gene Gorter recommends an essay by Douglas Murray, who says he stopped being an Anglican after studying Muslim texts and deciding that no religious text can be called infalliable. An excerpt from the essay in the Spectator:

"Many people hold on to belief as an unquestioned part of their make-up. They never have to confront the source of their belief, and as long as nothing actively pushes them into addressing it, they keep it as something which rarely does much harm and might actually do some good. I have been an Anglican since birth — and not just a cultural Anglican but at times (rarest of things) a real, worshipping, believing Anglican. Like a lot of believers, I knew that there were parts of my belief that wouldn’t stand up to analysis. But that was fine. I didn’t need to analyse them. I only lost faith when I was forced to."

Science: Metaphysical Party Pooper

Many thanks to BA member Robert Wilfong for pointing out this humorous and high-minded Non Sequitur strip from January 19th.

Boston Atheists Report 1.2

Our mid-January podcast, recorded 1/15/2009. Topics: the widespread failure of Christian abstinence pledges; the British atheist bus campaign inspiring Spanish
freethinkers, irritating the Vatican; a Biblical scholar's announcement that Jesus is not God; and reactions to Rick Warren's role at the inauguration.

[Edited on August 31, 2009, to remove link to live download: Only the most current ten episodes of the Boston Atheists Report are available for immediate streaming. Please email us if you'd like to be sent earlier episodes.]

Look for us on iTunes!

Sources Cited:

• Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds (Washington Post)
• Spanish atheists put faith in bus ads (Sunday Herald)
• Atheist adverts reported to industry watchdog (The Times)
• Richard Dawkins on board with a pro-atheist message (LA Times)
• Bible 'expert' proclaims: Jesus is not God (World Net Daily)
• Regarding Pastor Rick Warren (Candy Coloured Frown)
• Obama's Inaugural Choice Sparks Outrage (CNN)
• Obama Defends his choice of Rick Warren (Washington Post)
• Homobigot Rick Warren to deliver invocation at inauguration (Pam's House Blend)
• Is this really a big deal? (Friendly Atheist)
• Obama's Inaugural Blunder: Rick Warren (Atheist Revolution)
• Burning Condoms for Jesus (Atheist Revolution)
• Let Rick Warren raise money for the LGBT Cause (Friendly Atheist)

Homeopathy and the placebo effect

This week on eSkeptic, the email newsletter of the Skeptics society, Dr. Harriet Hall takes on homeopathy in an article aptly titled "Homeopathy -- Still Crazy after all These Years." Why, she asks, should this long-debunked pseudoscience still remain popular (and practiced, amongst others, by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles)? Hall writes that

Oliver Wendell Holmes recognized that it was nonsense back in 1842 when he wrote “Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions.” We long ago gave up the nonsense of trying to balance the four humors by bloodletting and purging, but the homeopathy Energizer Bunny is still marching on. What makes it so indestructible?

What, indeed? Homeopathy is based on the idea that "like cures like" so homeopathic treatments are highly diluted substances that cause the original ailment (Hall gives the example of coffee--homeopaths say that if coffee keeps you up at night, drink diluted coffee and hey-presto! You will get better.) Things get more suspect when we consider the amount of dilution. "How dilute?" Hall asks. Well, seriously dilute,

as in comparable to one drop diluted in all the water on Earth. When they realized that no molecules of the original substance were left in most homeopathic dilutions,homeopaths rationalized that the water must “remember” what it had come into contact with — as in clusters of water molecules somehow holding the memory of their encounters with the allegedly curative substances. Unfortunately, homeopaths have failed to explain how water can remember what it’s supposed to remember, and forget all the other memories of coming into contact with various trace contaminants, elements, bacteria, and whatever else happened to float by at the time.

Essentially, homeopathy is, as Hall says, "the ideal placebo. It’s great for the worried well and the hypochondriac. It’s great for those elusive symptoms scientific medicine cannot diagnose and cure. It’s harmless except in cases where patients are persuaded to forgo effective medical treatment, or when homeopathic vaccines are offered in lieu of real vaccines."

In other words, homeopathy "works" because people suspend their disbelief and trick themselves into thinking it is somehow, mysteriously, medically effective. They talk to a sympathetic homeopath who listens, seems to care, and spends time working with the patient. Homeopathy appears to work because patients report that "they feel better. That’s why bloodletting and purging lasted so long: patients got better despite the treatment and the treatment got the credit." It is only a matter of time before homeopathy is tossed out as well.

Boston Atheists Report 1.1

Our first podcast episode, recorded 1/15/2009. the widespread failure of Christian abstinence pledges; the British atheist bus campaign inspiring Spanish freethinkers, irritating the Vatican; a Biblical scholar's announcement that Jesus is not God; and reactions to Rick Warren's role at the inauguration.

[Edited on August 31, 2009, to remove link to live download: Only the most current ten episodes of the Boston Atheists Report are available for immediate streaming. Please email us if you'd like to be sent earlier episodes.]

Look for us on iTunes!

Sources Cited:

• Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds (Washington Post)
• Spanish atheists put faith in bus ads (Sunday Herald)
• Atheist adverts reported to industry watchdog (The Times)
• Richard Dawkins on board with a pro-atheist message (LA Times)
• Bible 'expert' proclaims: Jesus is not God (World Net Daily)
• Regarding Pastor Rick Warren (Candy Coloured Frown)
• Obama's Inaugural Choice Sparks Outrage (CNN)
• Obama Defends his choice of Rick Warren (Washington Post)
• Homobigot Rick Warren to deliver invocation at inauguration (Pam's House Blend)
• Is this really a big deal? (Friendly Atheist)
• Obama's Inaugural Blunder: Rick Warren (Atheist Revolution)
• Burning Condoms for Jesus (Atheist Revolution)
• Let Rick Warren raise money for the LGBT Cause (Friendly Atheist)

More about Atheist bus advertising

You'll have already seen reports about the success the British Humanism Association has had with putting atheistic ads on the sides of British buses. With the endorsement of Richard Dawkins, their members raised over 130,000 pounds, and have put ads on 800 buses. The slogan, a modest enough one, reads: "There's probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Of course a transit advertising campaign would never work in Boston. Commuters are putting their lives and their itineraries in the hands of providence when they ride on the MBTA -- we can't ask them to give up their faith, their hope, that all the delays are part of a greater plan, a divine timetable. Commuters trapped on a subway car stuck between Andrew and JFK need a religious source of comfort if we want them not to give in to despair. Do we really need more despair on the Red Line? Do we want to associate atheism with that despair? Maybe instead we could do ads on the back of bottles of Sam Adams: "Hi there, New Englander... enjoying your drink? You might want to open another one, because boy do I have some upsetting news for you about the afterlife."

Actually, the BA is developing plans for just such an advertising campaign here in Boston. For several years, we've been seeing subway and bus ads for Christian groups like The Vineyard and the storefront Reunion Church. These are being peddled as fresh alternatives to traditional congregations. These aren't your parents' religion, folks -- this is church for the iPod generation. I'd like to see ads for Boston's secular institutions, social groups, right alongside ads for the Vineyard and other hipster ministries. You'll hear news about that as that project moves forward.

Not everyone's pleased about these blasphemous buses. Stephen Green, the national director of Christian Voice, has filed a complaint with the British Advertising Standards Authority, saying that the advertisements broke codes on substantiation and truthfulness. Says Green, "It is given as a statement of fact and that means it must be capable of substantiation if it is not to break the rules. There is plenty of evidence for God, from people's personal experience, to the complexity, interdependence, beauty and design of the natural world.h The regulations he cites state that marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove all claims, whether direct or implied, that are capable of objective substantiation."

I came across a report in the Scottish Sunday Herald: apparently the Spanish are atheisizing their buses, too. The Catalan Union of Atheists and Freethinkers has just signed a contract to put ads similar to those in Great Britain, on buses on Barcelona, and have plans for the same slogan to appear in Madrid, Valencia, Seville, Saragossa and Bilbao.

The Vatican's cultural spokesman, Cardinal Paul Poupard, has dismissed this Spanish bus blitz as "stupid, superficial and ridiculous". Then, Cardinal Poupard heplfully provided an example of stupidity and ridiculousness, by inviting people of faith "to continue enjoying life believing in the love of God".

Of course Catholicism does not have a monopoly on stupid or ridiculous. To say more about that, I'll turn the mic over to Jackie who wants to tell us about a recent article on World Net Daily -- a fiercely independent news company dedicated to uncompromising journalism.

Sources cited: ATHEIST BUS CAMPAIGN
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-dawkins-qa12-2009jan12,0,3974830.story
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5478036.ece
http://www.sundayherald.com/international/shinternational/display.var.2480793.0.0.php

Boston Atheists Report References

Here are all the articles referenced on show 1.1 of the Boston Atheists Report:

Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds (Washington Post)
Spanish atheists put faith in bus ads (Sunday Herald)
Atheist adverts reported to industry watchdog (The Times)
Richard Dawkins on board with a pro-atheist message (LA Times)
Bible 'expert' proclaims: Jesus is not God (World Net Daily)
Regarding Pastor Rick Warren (Candy Coloured Frown)
Obama's Inaugural Choice Sparks Outrage (CNN)
Obama Defends his choice of Rick Warren (Washington Post)
Homobigot Rick Warren to deliver invocation at inauguration (Pam's House Blend) Is this really a big deal? (Friendly Atheist)
Obama's Inaugural Blunder: Rick Warren (Atheist Revolution)
Burning Condoms for Jesus (Atheist Revolution)
Let Rick Warren raise money for the LGBT Cause (Friendly Atheist)

Skepticism of skepticism of skepticism, and wi-fi woo-woo

One often meets a theist who believes, erroneously, that atheism is in all its forms accounted for by a hatred for whichever deity failed to deliver on the wanted goods. This is an unfortunate assumption, however common -- it presumes that there couldn't possibly be reasonable reasons for one's disbelief. Contrary to their theory about our collective god-hating, the majority of atheists I've known arrived at their position via a process of self-inquiry, consideration of the evidence, and skeptical thought. That is, their atheism is more of a judgment arrived at, rather than a reaction brought about by fear or anger. When I try to explain the true origins of such atheism to the folks who think we're just irritated that our prayers weren't answered, I encounter an interesting attitude: skepticism of skepticism.

This recursive skepticism is terrifically convenient for theistic apologists, double-standard though it is, since it de-legitimatizes skepticism as a way of considering the question of the existence of gods, while reserving the right to exercise skepticism to cast doubt on any claim skeptical of theism. It reminds one of the old atheistic bromide -- "We are both atheists, my dear Christian. I simply believe in one less god than you" -- turned on its head "We are both skeptics, my dear atheist. I simply am skeptical of one more thing than you are, that is, I am skeptical of your skepticism." We might fall into a recursive tumble chamber here, flexing our own reciprocal skepticism at this skepticism of skepticism, and so on, if we didn't sit up right straight and say: hey, this is wolfish disingenuity in skeptic's clothing. Skepticism is a tool for evaluating claims, and as there is a right way to employ it, there certainly are wrong ways. One of those wrong ways is to impishly turn this tool of inquiry upon itself, and call the entire scheme of rationality into question.

Of course, if we abandon skepticism, we have few other options aside from dogmatism and relativism, the former being the principle that certain things are true because someone said so a long time ago in an impressive way, the latter being the principle that anything a body says is true because, well, who are we to say otherwise. These are dangerous enemies, these too, and recent news from England gives us a reminder of how seemingly innocuous skepticism of skepticism can allow nonsense to flourish and bear alarming fruit.

The headline reads: "Mystics Combat Wi-Fi With Orgone"

In the alternative health-crazed community of Glastonbury, "healers" are demanding the removal of the nation's first free community wi-fi network. Their protest is grounded in concern for public health, they say; for the radiation emitted from and electromagnetic fields generated by the various wi-fi components are disrupting the energy balance of human bodies and the living earth. Chakra pollution and ley line imbalance have prompted all kinds of complaints, from headache and soreness, to fatigue and, er, headache.

Matt Todd, identified by the Telegraph as a campaigner against electromagnetic fields (is he boycotting the sun, as well?) has responded to these health complaints by planting orgone generators around the town: "The pyramid-like machines use quartz crystals, selenite (a clear form of the mineral gypsum), semi-precious lapis lazuli stones, gold leaf and copper coil to absorb and recycle the supposedly-negative energy."

Todd and other alternative health advocates have bought into Wilhelm Reich's orgone theory, which posits the existence of a biological energy flowing through and vitalizing all living things, including the good green Earth. This orgone flow is unfortunately vulnerable to disruption by our modern savage gadgetry. Sounds reasonable, no? Electrons flow through metal, orgones flow through marrow, nucleons flow through nuclei, bobitrons flow through roberts, all is right with the world.

Or perhaps it sounds incredible to you -- there wasn't any mention of orgone energy in freshman bio that I recall. But don't bother bringing your skepticism to bear on these claims, since orgone theory isn't empirically valid. It is dogmatic -- Reich made his claims, and his followers accepted and continue to promote them, and there is nary a moment to ask about "evidence." Ah -- but such proponents are terrifically skeptical when asked whether the complete absence of orgone theory in science and industry implies anything about its credibility. Says Mr. Todd in the Telegraph article, "The science hasn't really got into the mainstream because the Government won't make decisions which will affect big business, even if it concerns everyone's health."

The scenario plays out as follows: The government constructs a free wi-fi network for common good. The dogmatic orgonians oppose this effort, since their opposition is an opportunity to exercise their right to be heard as a constituency, and from political acknowledgment follows a passive endorsement of their crackpot theories. Skeptics point out the crackpottedness running amok; the orgonites retaliate with their own skepticism, and the objective media fail to distinguish between the honest skeptics and those who are full of it (full of orgone, presumably).

Among the possible outcomes, I fear two. One, that the government, reluctant to impose an obviously unwanted technology on the community, dismantles the wi-fi network. The community has one less access point to the realm of information, and settles comfortably back into its medieval woo-woo ignorance. The other, is that though the network remains, the orgone fringe continues to make its silly noise, and the media continue, with their obliviousness which wears the colors of neutrality, to imply that orgone theory and its ilk are as valid as science, just woefully opposed by dogmatic empiricists. The community suffers all the ill health of EMF immersion (that is, none) and pseudoscience enjoys visibility and normalization. Relativity reigns. Sales of selenite skyrocket.

I do think one should be skeptical of one's self. But it does not follow that all skepticism is equal; as the Devil may quote scripture, skepticism can be used to dishonest purposes. Orgone energy does not exist; the citizens of Glastonbury are not necessarily healthier without a free wi-fi network; it is not fair to say that the skepticism which Mr. Todd shows toward science is of the same species as that directed toward alternative medicine by skeptics.

NB: Over at the Skeptico blog post about this Glastonbury nonsense, one commenter has a great suggestion: the town council can sell the orgone generators, for "entertainment purposes only," and thus the New Age brigade can help subsidize the wi-fi network.

Fundamentalism seems to hate women

The Taleban has been closing girls’ schools in the northwest Swat district of Pakistan, and threatening to blow up schools which do not comply. Scores of schools have already been burned to the ground. This is a further putting-into-effect of the policies of Mullah Fazlullah, whose fundamentalist brand of Islam is propagated through the region via his illegal FM radio broadcasts. This ‘Mullah Radio’, as he is known, “has long been exhorting people to stop sending their daughters to schools, which ‘inculcate Western values’” (EarthTimes.org).

I’ve spent a few hours thinking over how to frame my response to these most recent crimes committed by the Taleban. Disgust is followed by a provocation to action, but I am unsure what I could do from my Boston home that could keep safe any Pakistani teachers and students who want to continue their lessons despite the threats of these fanatics. What I’d like to do, at least, is to share my view of a root cause of such conflicts between “Western values” (the right of all children to an education, without regard to their gender) and Islam.

Mullah Radio can expect action when he declaims the Western brainwashing of Pakistani girls, because he has positioned himself effectively within the system of Muslim authority. In his whereabouts, moral authority derives from one’s scrupulous use of Koranic justification — really, interpretation — or at least from the perception that one is working out of that book. Humanism — and the gender equality which accompanies its more ideal manifestations — isn’t as attractive in the marketplace of ideals as revelatory religious traditions, which have claimed for their exclusive use the virtuous terminology of faithfulness: fidelity, truth, meaning, hope, charity. Until a humanism is articulated which somehow engages the latent cultural forces which associate “credo” with “authority,” the conflict between reasoning humanism and dogmatic institutions will be largely communicated through force, not communication. Western humanism has no seat at the table, in Pakistan or elsewhere, as long as adults continue to admit supernatural sources for moral claims. The moral claims of humanism (”all persons are created equal,” etc.) and the moral claims of theology (”For our way is the true way, as revealed to us exclusively by our Creator,” etc.) are simply incommensurable.

I don’t mean to suggest that religion need be eradicated before feminism can get girls in school throughout the world. Rather, I have a question: why must religion (the institution where communities pronounce, attempt to understand, and preserve their values) be supernatural? If there were a Church that could credibly command all the language of religion, as well as the right of religion to distinguish between right and wrong, then we would have an institution suitably equipped to oppose Mullah Radio.

Anyone who is freedom-loving, anti-fundamentalist, and interested in taking some kind of action, might start at http://www.rawa.org.

NB: This post cross-listed from the Hoochie Woman blog, since it engages with the issue of secularism as well as feminism.

Know Your Proofs of God

You'll find more smart whimsy at Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

The Boston Atheist: July 13 - 19th, 2008

UPCOMING EVENTS
Programs to look forward to this month: an evening get-together for drinks and blasphemy, on July 21st at the Redline in Harvard Square, and an Atheist Brunch on the 27th at the White Horse in Brighton. BA member Sarah Tractenberg is hard at work organizing our first film festival, which should go up next month. She's made use of your suggestions to develop a program, has secured screening permissions, and is now pulling together a good location. When details have been finalized, I'll send invitations out to this mailing list, and will also be advertising the event in hopes of having members of the public join us for movies, food, and conversation.

PROTESTING WOO-WOO IN ALASKA
I'm writing to you from Anchorage, Alaska, where the moose ply the glacier-fed streams, the noble salmon roams the forests, and men hawk six-foot lengths of whale baleen on street corners (really). I spent a few pleasant hours wandering among the booths of a weekly weekend merchant fair downtown. Vendors were selling elk and caribou burgers, all variety of trinkets and carvings made from fossilized mammoth ivory or walrus tusks, and the usual hodge-podge of trade goods: knives, scarves, handbags, and baseball hats. I would have liked to bring back a polished oosik, but they are more expensive than you might expect. Would you believe, that there was, on the day I was walking through downtown, a protest against Scientology in Anchorage? I do now know whether the Guy Fawkes-mask-wearing protesters are directly affiliated with the group Anonymous which has been organizing protests in Boston but if not they certainly are adopting their model. The protest isn't just an expression of distaste for the Scientology brand of crazy; in the past few years, Scientologists have been peddling their wonky detox system, called Narcanon, among addiction-ravished population of poor Alaskans. It's good to want to provide support services to people struggling with addiction. It's bad to want to replace medical therapies with a system that is as medically fantastical, psychologically damaging, and autonomy destroying as Narcanon. As I drove past the Alaska protesters, I honked my support. - Zachary Bos, Director of Boston Atheists

ATHEIST DAYS 2008
The members of the Beltway Atheists group – for secular-minded citizens near Washington, D.C. – are organizing a first-ever "Atheist Days" festival. Visitors are invited to travel down to Half Moon Beach in Virginia, pitch a tent at the campgrounds there, and enjoy music and entertainment all weekend long. The event takes place from August 15th through August 17th, and it is highly recommended that you get a ticket now if you intend to attend.

WHAT, BIAS? IN THE HERALD?
In her column titled "The Star(bucks) Stop Here," Boston Herald writer Margery Eagan reveals that she, too, subscribes to a common prejudice: that atheists are latte-swilling urban foot soldiers in the assault on good ole American salt-of-the-earth Christians whose caffeine of choice comes, one assumes, from Dunkin Donuts only. Eagan asks, "Do you want to sit next to totally pretentious secular humanists, agnostic/atheist effete pseudo-elites (Starbucks)?" God no, who would. The article is now available for reading online only with a Herald subscriber code; however, the comments section is worth reading for the range of responses -- outrage, bemusement, confusion.

THE DEFAULT POSITION
David Nicholls, the president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, has penned an eloquent op-ed explaining his view that atheism quite as unconventional as some folks might have it.

AN OBJECTIST CRITIQUE OF ATHEISM
BA member Dan Caless has sent in a link to the blog of Diana Hsieh, in which the "overworked graduate philosophy student" author argues that the "New Atheism" that has been prominent in the news in the past few years, via the activities of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris, fails to meet the challenge put to it by the religious apologetics of Dinesh D'Souza and other commentators – the challenge of understanding the source of values and morality. Hsieh constructs a straw-man version of atheists, however, in order to evaluate atheism (as if it were a homogenous philosophy?) as being less objective and rational than Ayn Rand's Objectivism. Hsieh's blog post is interesting if for no other reason than for being a succinct example of the most common kind of wrong-headed objection to atheism – namely, that atheists are relativists or nihilists.

A NEW ATHEIST BOOK
San Francisco Bay-area Atheist and prolific letter-to-the-editor writer David Mandell has written and published his first book, "Atheist Acrimonious." In David's own words: "This book is for the religious and the non-religious. Atheist acrimonious means an angry atheist; and why should I be angry? For one, I was brainwashed as a child into the Jewish religion and suffered because of it for over 35 years. Now that I am an atheist, I am still suffering but for different reasons. Atheists throughout history have been killed, hated, discriminated against, abused and tortured by religionists. And today it is still going on! It is time for all this to stop! I am the winner of the 2002 American Atheists "Letters to the Editor" contest. In my book there are over 70 published anti-religious "Letters to the editor", exposing my anger. Also included are many dedicated atheists with articles, essays, poems, quotes, songs, stories, and dialog. This is a one of a kind book because of its unusual contents. It is straightforward in the explanations and honest in its contents. It is a book of knowledge and should be read in the schools. It is dedicated to atheism in the hope that atheists come out of the closet."

SCIENTISTS' SUPERSTITION IN INDIA
BA member Raja Bhattacharyya has brought to our attention an interesting survey from the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (ISSSC) about the worldviews and opinions of scientists from India. Here are some highlights:

49% scientists of a country as important as India in today's world believe in prayer as efficacious traditional, alternative curative and diagnostic techniques? Homeopathy being the other; 50% Indian scientists believe in this

44% India's scientists approve a degree course in Vedic Astrology

41% scientists approve the rituals of Indian's space scientists going to a Temple called Tirupati to seek the blessing of Lord Venkateswara before launching the rocket and satellite.

Raja writes: "A stunning survey! Although surveys are not always reflection of reality, but this one is fascinating, and very depressing to me in particular. The matter is more depressing, because this is a survey of 'scientists.'"
Many thanks to Raja for passing this along, and to Debasis Bhattacharyya, who works with the Rationalist Society of India out of Calcutta, for bringing it to his attention originally. James Randi, in his weekly "Swift" newsletter, has often praised the incredulity and integrity of Indian skeptics and rationalists whose willingness to challenge the superstition and fundamentalism common in Indian culture puts them at great professional risk. I think this survey is uplifting news – not because we should be gladded by the high proportion of Indian scientists who reportedly believe in a lot of woo-woo, but because such surveys are being conducted at all. "Sunshine is the best disinfectant," I agree – the mystical attitudes which congregate like condensation in the dark spaces of culture quickly evaporate when exposed to skeptical inquiry. At a time when religious leaders – Christian, Muslim, and Hindu – in India are mobilizing against education officials and modern textbooks for promoting "atheism" and "secularism" (as opposed to superstition and false history?), such dissent is even more dangerous, and more necessary. A little Googling will quickly alert you to the conflict between modernity and myth in Indian classrooms, e.g. the current fracas in Kerala.

ATHEISTS IN LOWELL NEED AN ORGANIZER
The Atheist Meetup of Greater Lowell is still in need of an Organizer. If you'd like to coordinate monthly meetings and additional activities as the occasion calls for it, let me know so I can put you in touch with members of the group and acquaint you more fully with the responsibilities involved.

A quote from Mitchell Cohen

"In my view, a secular state needs a humanist basis. Yes, that means that I think secular humanist culture should be privileged in liberal democracy (or in what I would prefer, social democracy) but not religion. The reason is that it can encompass religious lives, whereas religious culture cannot do the same for secularism and atheism."

-- quoted in "The New Atheism" for the Winter 2008 issue of Dissent

Faithlessness and the Founding Fathers

In her most recent About.com: Christianity newsletter, Mary Fairchild exhorts readers to commemorate our nation's origin "in the spirit of the founding fathers." By implying that this spirit is a Christian one, however, she is mistaken. Either she is unaware that the founders of early America were far more freethinking than her or your fellow believers, or, she is willing to ignore a preponderance of historical evidence in order to rally her audience to the belief that their faith was shared by these great leaders. In case the former explanation accounts for her lapse, I wrote to her to share the following quotes assembled by Steven Morris for a 1995 article in "Free Inquiry", titled "The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians." They're also of certain interest to all red-blooded American Atheists:

1: THOMAS PAINE
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all."

2: GEORGE WASHINGTON
The first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. Washington Championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a universalist who denied the existence of hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washington uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.

3. THOMAS JEFFERSON
"The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained."

4. JAMES MADISON
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." ... "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."

In her email, Fairchild mentions a letter which John Adams wrote to his wife. Perhaps she are unaware that his wife was particularly pious and devout? It's conceivable that Adams was deferring to his wife's religiosity when he made the suggestion that Independence Day "ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty." Certainly such an idea was uncharacteristic of him, as can be seen in this final excerpt from Morris' compilation:

5. JOHN ADAMS
John Adams, the country's second president, was drawn to the study of law but faced pressure from his father to become a clergyman. He wrote that he found among the lawyers 'noble and gallant achievements" but among the clergy, the "pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces". Late in life he wrote: "Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!"

One might recall from junior-high civics class that it was during Adam's administration that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states (in Article XI) that "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion."

I hope, but cannot expect, that Fairchild will in the future give her audience a more historically accurate perspective on the religious views of the founding fathers.Their religious beliefs were quite alien from those she holds, and I think it is likely that they would be quite intolerant of her efforts to align their actions and pronouncements with her doctrines. But this should be no reason for anyone to celebrate less patriotically on the 4th: the deeds of the founding fathers were worthy of our respect and admiration, regardless of their creeds.

A final note. Fairchild writes at About.com: Christianity that "many of the founding fathers of the United States of America were men of deep religious convictions based in the Bible and their Christian faith in Jesus Christ." I won't outright deny this -- my knowledge of history perhaps isn't as deep as yours -- but I can dispute it, with a simple question about the professional roles available to a certain class of citizen in that time: what else was an intellectually-minded man to do? If he was not a lawyer or a merchant, he was bound to be a clergyman. But less important than the actual distribution of authentic religious belief among the founding fathers, is the corollary to your statement. If it is undeniable that many of the founding fathers were men of religious conviction, it is equally undeniable that many of the founding fathers rejected religion.

I hope that Fairchild, and the many thousands of Christians who receive her newsletter, can honor the virtue and legacy of skeptics, freethinkers, deists, agnostics, and atheists, with as much enthusiasm as they celebrate the legacy of the Episcopalians, Lutherans, etc., found among the founding fathers. The good fortunes and freedoms of our United States is due in large part to the work of men who had courage enough to reject the supernatural, at a time when doing so came at great cost, in order to build the world's first first modern democratic republic upon a sound, secular foundation.

For those who want to learn more, here are the sources which Morris gives in his article. It's quite an exciting bibliography, for anyone looking for summer reading.

Sources:
1. From: "The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine, pp. 8,9 (Republished 1984, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY)
2. From: "George Washington and Religion" by Paul F. Boller Jr., pp. 16, 87, 88, 108, 113, 121, 127 (1963, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX)
3. From: "Thomas Jefferson, an Intimate History" by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 453 (1974, W.W) Norton and Co. Inc. New York, NY) Quoting a letter by TJ to Alexander Smyth Jan 17, 1825, and "Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim" by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 246 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to John Adams, July 5, 1814.
4. From: "The Madisons" by Virginia Moore, P. 43 (1979, McGraw-Hill Co. New York, NY) quoting a letter by JM to William Bradford April 1, 1774, and "James Madison, A Biography in his Own Words," edited by Joseph Gardner, p. 93, (1974, Newsweek, New York, NY) Quoting Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments by JM, June 1785.
5. From: "The Character of John Adams" by Peter Shaw, pp. 17 (1976, North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC) Quoting a letter by JA to Charles Cushing Oct 19, 1756, and "John Adams, A Biography in his Own Words," edited by James Peabody, p. 403 (1973, Newsweek, New York NY) Quoting letter by JA to Jefferson April 19, 1817, and in reference to the treaty, "Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim" by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 311 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, June, 1814.

Ellen Johnson to Leave Post as President of American Atheists

[from The Board of Directors of American Atheists]

To Members and Supporters of AMERICAN ATHEISTS...

I want to take this opportunity to tell you about some of the important changes now taking place at American Atheists.

Following over 13 years of outstanding service to American Atheists and the cause of State-Church Separation, Ellen Johnson is leaving her post as President of the organization. Her tenure in this position was marked by some of the most amazing and historic events in our movement's history.

She stepped in following the tragic disappearance of our founder, Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her family, and oversaw the relocation of the American Atheist Center and Charles E. Stevens American Atheist Library and Archives (CESAALA) to New Jersey. She organized the Godless Americans March on Washington, and brought together our nation's diverse and sometimes fractious community of Atheists, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and other nonbelievers. She testified twice before the National Commission on Civil Rights, and made hundreds of media appearances on prime time and cable news TV programs. Ellen also mobilized Atheists and other secularists throughout the nation to speak out on the vital First Amendment issues of our time.


And with all of this, she managed to coordinate the hectic daily activities here at the American Atheist Center.

In the spirit of obtaining all that she (and any other Atheist) can from one life the elegant, energetic and outspoken Ms. Johnson will now focus her passions on a new adventure. Just what that might be we do not yet know. We know, however, that it will be something splendid!

Ellen, who will remain on the Board of Directors, is succeeded by long-time member Frank Zindler.

There have been three presidents of American Atheists since its founding over four decades ago -- Madalyn Murray O'Hair; her successor and son, Jon Garth Murray; and since 1995, Ellen Johnson. They left, as the saying goes "big shoes to fill." We are confident that Frank is fully prepared for this new challenging role. He has a distinguished academic career as a former biology professor, linguist and bible-era historian. He has authored numerous books and articles dealing with a wide range of subjects, everything from the alleged historicity of Jesus to the on-going controversy over teaching creationism in our public schools. His tenure as an activist with American Atheists goes back over 30 years. Frank is a nationally-recognized speaker and debater, and has served as an eloquent spokesperson for our organization.

Frank Zindler will serve as President Pro Temp until a suitable replacement for this office is found. The day-to-day operations at the American Atheist Center will continue -- and so will our activism!

Other Officers and Directors will be staying on as well. Dave Silverman, who has done an outstanding job as our Communications Director, will continue to be the "public face" of American Atheists, working closely with Frank to make sure that our message gets out to the media and others who shape public opinion. Board member Edwin Kagin will remain in his important post as National Legal Director. The American Atheist magazine and all of the other benefits of membership will continue. And so will our efforts to represent you in the important fight for state-church separation, Reason and the civil rights of Atheists.

We're hitting the ground running, folks! The baton is passed -- and we'll continue our all-important work.

Thanking you in advance for your support!