2466) New Wave Of Religious Insanity Sweeps Across India (Aug 21) - According to Topix.net and the Associated Press, “Hundreds of thousands of Indians thronged temples across India on Monday in the belief that statues of Hindu gods were drinking milk.

“‘I put a milk-filled spoon to Ganesha's mouth and he drank it,’ exclaimed Akhilesh Shukla, a trader in Lucknow, capital of northern Uttar Pradesh state.

“He was among the countless devotees who carried milk in glasses and pitchers to northern Indian temples where Hindus worship Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of good fortune and wisdom; Shiva, the destroyer, and Durga, the goddess of strength.

“‘It is a miracle,’ said Sudhir Mishra, a priest at a Shiva temple in Lucknow. He said that at least 10 liters of milk had been offered at his temple on Monday.

“‘Look at the floor it is fairly dry. Where's the milk gone? It should be visible on floor. Can you see that.’

[According to Yahoo News and the AFP news agency’s version of this story, “‘Even Shiv's lingam (revered phallus) drank milk. I feel blessed by the god,’ said visitor Rukmani Devi.”]

“But others dismissed the milk-slurping gods as the work of less miraculous forces - surface tension, which pulls the liquid toward the statues, and capillary action, through which the milk is leached into the statues by tiny pores on the surface of the stone.

“‘Milk disappears the same way water reaches the top of a tree through roots,’ said A. K. Sharma, a professor at Lucknow University.

“Indian folklore is replete with tales of miracles, and sociologists said the frenzy over the latest such incident should be viewed through sharp contrasts in education among India's billion-plus people.

“‘Many people in India straddle two different worlds - one world of scientific education and high-tech jobs versus another steeped in their centuries-old beliefs in supernatural phenomena. And they see no contradiction in this,’ said Abhilasha Kumari, a sociologist at Jamia Milia Islamia university in New Delhi.

“The drinking gods craze came after thousands of Muslims flocked to a bay in Bombay late Friday and early Saturday to drink ‘sweet water’ - ordinarily brackish water that was noticeably less salty than usual.

“Scientists said recent heavy rains had lowered the salinity of the water, and officials urged people not to drink from Mahim Bay where the water is reportedly contaminated by raw sewage and industrial waste. Nearly two days later, on Sunday evening, milk was offered to a statue in the town of Bareilly, also in Uttar Pradesh, and the idol absorbed the liquid.

“As the word spread through television reports, crowds swarmed temples in dozens of cities, just as millions did during a similar episode in 1995, when authorities were forced to deploy extra police to control crowds. Some parts of the country also faced a milk shortage.

“At that time, a group of scientists visited a temple in New Delhi and fed a statue milk tinted with dye. The milk was quickly absorbed by the idol, and soon permeated the stone, leaving the statue coated by a colored, milky film.”

According to an Aug 26 bulletin from Sanal Edamaruku and his Rationalist International organization, “India is facing a series of mass ‘miracles’ these days. One by one, they are breaking out like epidemics, throwing changing segments of the population into frenzy. Sanal Edamaruku is leading the greatest rationalist counter campaign that has ever been fought, cutting the heads of the hydra as they appear. The battleground is the Indian television scene, especially the Hindi language channels, where ‘miracles’ are bombing in as ‘breaking news’ from all over the country.

“What is happening? It started 18th August Friday night at Mahim near Mumbai. Young Muslims, after the Friday prayers visiting the Mahim Dargah, burial place of a Muslim saint at the seaside, discovered that the water in the Mahim Creek had turned sweet. The news spread like wild fire and within hours hundreds, soon thousands, of gullible came to see Allah's great miracle. They jumped into the allegedly sweet sea water and started drinking it! A dangerous situation emerged as the water in the Mahim Creek is among India's filthiest and most contaminated waters. 1000 million liters of sewage are flowing every day into the creek and the water is absolutely not potable. But people gulped it in hysterically, fed it even to little babies.

“In the night itself, at 1.30 a.m., Sanal Edamaruku started a non-stop television campaign for reason. He warned people from drinking the dirty water, called upon the authorities to stop the access to the creek, explained the reasons for the change of taste (which occurs during every Monsoon) scientifically. At noon, the tide started to turn. By evening, the hysteric crowds had melted down to a small group of fanatics. The ‘miracle’ that may have caused longtime health damage to thousands of people, was over.

“But the next day, the Hindu temples in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Delhi celebrated their own miracle. The statues of the Hindu gods started drinking milk again as they did in 1995! When the new milk miracle subsided under the weight of Sanal Edamaruku's explanations and demonstrations in the TV channels, it was the turn of the Christian miracle mongers. Virgin Mary started shedding tears in a church in Cochin, Kerala. Soon, the image of the Hindu saint Shirdi Sai Baba (not the curly haired god-man!) appeared in the seepage spots of a multi-storied building wall in Surat (Gujarat). Last night, an olive tree in a monastery in Madhya Pradesh started flowering and two young girls got possessed in Uttar Pradesh.

“In permanent action, Sanal Edamaruku has been debunking the various paranormal claims blow by blow during day and night in more than forty special television programs this week, most of them live, many repeated several times. There may not be many among the millions of TV watchers, who did not see him several times explaining, demonstrating, warning and encouraging to overcome all transcendental temptations.

“So far, we have not been able to keep track with the running TV events and inform our readers in time. Today we can announce a major TV discussion with Sanal Edamaruku about the new miracle wave in India. (Also India's two leading astrologers and a scientist participate in the discussion).”

And another three cheers for OD diarist Deve for directing me to this sweet NPR story about her!

An Atheist Antidote to Religious Fanaticism

(Weekend Edition Sunday, September 10, 2006)

Brought up as a Methodist, Pat Berger, 78, had never been particularly religious.

But for the resident of Manhattan's Hell's kitchen, the attacks of Sept. 11 served as a wake-up call about the dangers of violence in the name of God.

"I really realized that it is all chance, and it is all random," she says. She remembers learning that a woman in her son's apartment building died in the twin towers because she happened to walk into a meeting at the wrong time. "There is no one watching out for anybody," Berger says.

Berger says she'd had a passing knowledge of the history of wars and violence engendered by religious differences: the Crusades, the Protestant Reformation, the Spanish Inquisition. But the terrorist attacks brought that history into focus.

"And I thought, all of this for some -- you know, the imaginary Harvey, the imaginary rabbit," Berger says. "That is how I started to think of this supposed person who held our fate in his hands. Well, I didn't buy it."

On most Saturdays, Berger can be found with other members of the New York City Atheists at a stand in Columbus Circle, in front of the Time-Warner building. She engages passers-by, hoping to interest them in the group's literature promoting atheist thought. Many seem receptive to Berger's message, though she occasionally gets hassled or lectured.

You can hear what else Pat had to say to NPR by going to their website and clicking on the Listen link.

Vashti McCollum died on August 20. If you’re an American atheist or humanist, she may be one of the most important people you’ve never heard of.

The Miami Herald and the Los Angeles Times News Service did a good job summing up her life and significance in a story by Jon Thurber that was published last week.

Here are the key passages (with a few parts underlined for what I hope are obvious reasons):

Vashti Cromwell McCollum, the Illinois housewife whose objection to her son's taking religious training in school led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling affirming the separation of church and state in public education, has died. She was 93....

James McCollum, the first of McCollum's three sons, was in fourth grade in a Champaign [Illinois] school when he was required to take religious classes during the normal school day. The classes were held on campus and taught by a former missionary to China and were mainly a Protestant program.

Although his mother and father John, a professor of horticulture at the University of Illinois, resisted the idea at first, they allowed him to attend the religious classes during that school year. James McCollum told The Los Angeles Times on Sunday that he was initially interested in seeing what the classes were all about but then found them boring and silly.

The next year, he decided he didn't want to go on with the religious training, and his parents supported him. His decision was met with ridicule from other students, but primarily from a teacher who criticized him for keeping the class from being 100 percent in compliance with the religious curriculum.

Vashti McCollum went to the superintendent of schools but was told that there was nothing to be done about the requirement.

After gaining the support of a local Unitarian minister and some financial backing from a group of Jewish businessmen in Chicago, she filed suit against the Champaign school board in July 1945. Six months later, a three-judge circuit court panel upheld the instruction. The Illinois Supreme Court upheld their ruling a year later.

But the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and on March 9, 1948, the justices delivered an 8-1 decision saying that the religious education classes in Champaign's public schools violated the constitutional provisions for separation of church and state.

Writing for the majority, Justice Hugo Black stated: “The First Amendment has erected a wall between the church and the state which must be kept high and impregnable.”

While the final decision was in her favor and set historic precedents, the road getting there was not easy for McCollum or her family. “It was traumatic and expensive,” she told The St. Louis Post Dispatch some years ago.

She lost her job as a part-time dance instructor in the physical education department at the University of Illinois. And while her husband had tenure in his university position, which kept him from getting fired, his promotion to full professor was delayed by “10 or 15 years,” James McCollum told the Times.

Threatening phone calls were received at the family home in Champaign. On occasions the house was pelted with eggs and rotten vegetables. In school, young James was taunted by his peers, and was sent by his family to live with his mother's parents in Rochester, N.Y....

According to a press release issued by the American Humanist Association on Aug 24, “McCollum continued on through her life to fight for religious freedom and Humanism. She was elected to the American Humanist Association board of directors in 1952 and served as president of the AHA from 1962 to 1965. She has won numerous awards and recognitions, including the prestigious John Haynes Holmes Award (now the Holmes-Weatherly Award) from the Unitarian Fellowship for Social Justice and the AHA Distinguished Service Award in 1991. She also wrote eloquently of her 1945 legal battle and the ensuing community assaults and indignities she and her family endured in One Woman’s Fight”....

Vashti’s story is a reminder that many of the rights we atheists enjoy today weren’t graciously given to us by Christians out of the goodness of their hearts but were won by people willing to stand up and demand them in the face of intense opposition. We forget this at our peril....

(NOTE TO SELF: The next time someone suggests that the Ten Commandments be posted on a courtroom or classroom wall or chiseled into a block of marble on public grounds, suggest that a portrait or statue of Vashti be put there instead since Christians seem to need to be reminded not to violate the separation of church and state far more than atheists need to be reminded not to kill or steal.)

Now sit up straight and pay attention - or not. It’s your choice. (Just like it’s my choice when it comes time to decide who gets a cookie later. ‘Nuff said.)

Today’s Lesson: Fundamentalists CAN Change Their Minds

I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: Christians - even fundamentalist Christians - are capable of revising their beliefs for the better. Exposing them to facts and logic is one way we can help them along. Telling ourselves that they can’t change and that sharing facts and logic with them is therefore an utter waste of time is self-defeating and NOT helpful.

Do I have any evidence to back up these claims of mine? Yes.

Exhibit A: Dan Barker. Dan is now an atheist and the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation but that wasn’t always the case. According to the bio on that website, “Dan became a teenage evangelist at age 15.... He received a degree in Religion from Azusa Pacific University and was ordained to the ministry by the Standard Community Church, California, in 1975. He served as associate pastor at a Friend's (Quaker) Church, an Assembly of God, and an independent Charismatic church. Dan was a Protestant missionary in Mexico for a total of two years. Dan maintained a touring musical ministry for 17 years, including eight years of full-time, cross-country evangelism.... Following five years of reading, Dan gradually outgrew his religious beliefs. ‘If I had limited myself to Christian authors, I'd still be a Christian today,’ Dan says.... He announced his atheism publicly in January, 1984.”

Exhibits B-Z+: Edward T. Babinski’s Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists. Some 33 former fundies explain how and why they abandoned their old beliefs. About half ended up as atheists or agnostics. You can learn much more about them and this book in a series of four entries I posted back in the spring of 2003. Those entries start here.

And now a new exhibit: Bart Ehrman.

I’ve written about Ehrman before - perhaps most notably here and here.

I’m now reading one of his latest books, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. Ehrman details his religious history in his introduction. That history starts off like this: Episcopalian childhood; a “born-again” experience when he was about 14; enrollment at the very conservative Moody Bible Institute, where he majored in Bible theology and completely embraced the idea that the Bible was the inerrant word of gOd. After getting a degree there in three years, he went to Wheaton (Billy Graham’s alma mater) and then Princeton Theological Seminary. He was a very devout Christian (as this history indicates) and his goal was to acquire all the tools he needed to go forth and share the “good news” of Jesus with the rest of the world.

A funny thing happened along the way, though. The more he studied the Bible, the more doubts he came to have.

“There was an obvious problem, however, with the claim that the Bible was verbally inspired - down to its very words,” he writes. “As we learned at Moody in one of the first courses in the curriculum, we don’t actually have the original writings of the New Testament. What we have are copies of these writings, made years later - in most cases, many years later. Moreover, none of these copies is completely accurate, since the scribes who produced them inadvertently and/or intentionally changed them in places. All scribes did this.”

That’s obviously a big problem. And things only got worse for Ehrman as time went on.

Christian visitors to this diary sometimes tell me that if I’m confused about the Bible it’s because I haven’t taken the time to read it in the original Hebrew and Greek. Well, Ehrman went on to master both languages. It didn’t help. Far from it! And Ehrman recognized that even if such study had helped, there was a fundamental flaw in any system of salvation that required such an undertaking. “If the full meaning of the words of scripture can be grasped only by studying them in Greek (and Hebrew), doesn’t this mean that most Christians, who don’t read ancient languages, will never have complete access to what God wants them to know? And doesn’t this make the doctrine of inspiration a doctrine only for the scholarly elite, who have the intellectual skills and leisure time to learn the languages and study the texts by reading them in the original? What good does it do to say that the words are inspired by God if most people have absolutely no access to these words, but only to more or less clumsy renderings of these words into a language, such as English, that has nothing to do with the original words?”

(NOTE: The problem is even worse than Ehrman indicates if one takes the Bible literally. According to its Tower of Babel story, gOd himself purposely afflicted humanity with a multitude of languages to keep us ignorant and relatively powerless. What sense does it make for this gOd to then attempt to bestow salvation on humanity in a way that this curse of a multitude of languages foils? Does gOd’s right hand not know what his left hand is doing? Is gOd a sadistic deity who once again is in effect hardening Pharaoh’s heart so he can smite him for having a hard heart? Or is it a reflection of the same sort of cruel mindset which prompted the Bible’s authors to quote Jesus himself as saying in Mark 4:11-12 and elsewhere that he speaks in parables in order to confuse people and deny them salvation? Whatever the explanation, it pretty much destroys the idea that the gOd of the Bible is all-good or omni-benevolent.)

The final breaking point for Ehrman came when he was a student at Princeton and he was required to read Mark in the original Greek and then write a paper explaining the meaning of a passage. Ehrman chose Mark 2 and Jesus’s version of the OT story in which David and his men violated OT law in a time of need by eating bread reserved for the priests. The problem is, Jesus gets the story wrong. Ehrman tied himself in knots trying to explain this problem away. His professor wrote in response, “Maybe Mark just made a mistake.” Bam! “Once I made that admission, the floodgates opened,” Ehrman says.

Suddenly he saw the Bible in a new light. Suddenly he was able to see that when Jesus claims in Mark 4 that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds on earth, Jesus was wrong there, too. And when Mark 14 says that Jesus was crucified the day after Passover and John 19 says that he was crucified the day before, hey - no need to bend over backwards trying to explain away the inexplicable. The Bible is simply wrong.

And of course that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Once one accepts the fact that the Bible can be wrong, hundreds and hundreds of similar contradictions and other errors become obvious.

“In short, my study of the Greek New Testament, and my investigation into the manuscripts that contain it, led to a radical rethinking of my understanding of what the Bible is,” Erhman sums things up. “This was a seismic shift for me. Before this - starting with my born-again experience in high school, through my fundamentalist days at Moody, and on through my evangelical days at Wheaton - my faith had been based completely on a certain view of the Bible as the fully inspired, inerrant word of God. Now I no longer saw the Bible that way. The Bible began to appear to me as a very human book. Just as human scribes had copied, and changed, the texts of scripture, so too had human authors originally written the texts of scripture. This was a human book from beginning to end. It was written by different human authors at different times and in different places to address different needs.”

Ehrman is just one of the latest in a long line of devout Christian scholars who have approached the Bible with a love of gOd and a thirst for knowledge only to end up in a very different place than they expected. It’s a place that’s often far closer to the atheist point of view than to that of the Christian fundamentalist.

If those fundamentalists know something that Ehrman doesn’t, they need to tell us exactly what it is.

And if they don’t volunteer the information on their own, we need to ask them to produce it and defend it or revise their beliefs accordingly.

I sincerely believe that we hold the winning hand here. All we need is the courage to play it.

(For more details on the cards in that hand, check out my very first Monday School lesson.)

(And *Cookies* to everyone who has read down this far!)

The latest issue of Newsweek includes a story that focuses on the atheism of Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins. Although author Jerry Adler approaches their views with what I found to be a generally shallow mentality cloaked in a snide, condescending tone, at least they’re finally getting a bit of the attention they deserve.

Here’s the story itself (along with a few comments of my own):

The New Naysayers

In the midst of religious revival, three scholars argue that atheism is smarter.

By Jerry Adler

Newsweek

Isn’t “naysayer” a pejorative term only slightly better than “wet blanket” and “stick in the mud” and “party pooper”? Why not a title like “Heralds of a New Enlightenment?” instead?

And what religious revival might Newsweek be referring to in its sub-title? I’ve regularly posted articles describing the collapse of Christianity in Western Europe as well as the decline in many American denominations, such as the Lutherans. And I’ve also often cited studies showing that Americans who call themselves “non-religious” have increased sharply since the early ‘90s and represent one the fastest growing groups. Newsweek needs to provide good evidence of a religious revival, not merely assert it. As near as I can tell, it doesn’t.

Sept. 11, 2006 issue - Americans answered the atrocities of September 11, overwhelmingly, with faith. Attacked in the name of God, they turned to God for comfort; in the week after the attacks, nearly 70 percent said they were praying more than usual.

Several sources have told me that this turning to faith and religion was extremely short-lived. The latest was The Christian Post, which posted an article entitled Study: Faith in America Unchanged Five Years after 9/11 on Aug 29. Here’s how it opens: “NEW YORK – As the nation comes to the remembrance of the 9/11 tragedy five years ago, a study released today is revealing how Americans have not risen with more spiritual fervor as many Christian leaders had expected.

“Drawing from surveys conducted before the attacks and after, The Barna Group found that the faith of Americans is virtually indistinguishable today compared to pre-attack conditions. Although church attendance spiked on the Sunday after the terrorist attacks, numbers had leveled back to those of pre-attack days in a matter of months and have not changed ever since.

“Half of all Americans said their faith helped them cope with the shock and uncertainty in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. At the same time, Americans were also less likely to believe God is the perfect, all powerful Creator who rules the world. Data from October 2001 further showed that Americans were less likely to feel a responsibility to share their faith, less willing to reject the notion that good works can earn salvation and more likely to believe that the devil is merely a symbol of evil.

“In the past five years, the proportion of adults who identify themselves as Christians, evangelicals, non-evangelical born again Christians, notional Christians, atheists and agnostics, and non-Christians has not changed. The latest study also revealed that Americans' intensity of commitment to their faith, whether being ‘absolutely committed,’ ‘deeply spiritual’ or not, has remained the same.”

Newsweek’s reporting seems pretty sloppy in comparison....

Confronted by a hatred that seemed inexplicable, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson proclaimed that God was mad at America because it harbored feminists, gays and civil libertarians. Sam Harris, then a 34-year-old graduate student in neuroscience, had a different reaction. On Sept. 12, he began a book. If, he reasoned, young men were slaughtering people in the name of religion—something that had been going on since long before 2001, of course—then perhaps the problem was religion itself. The book would be called The End of Faith, which to most Americans probably sounds like a lament. To Harris it is something to be encouraged.

This was not a message most Americans wanted to hear, before or after 9/11. Atheists "are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public," according to a study by Penny Edgell, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota. In a recent NEWSWEEK Poll, Americans said they believed in God by a margin of 92 to 6—only 2 percent answered "don't know"—and only 37 percent said they'd be willing to vote for an atheist for president. (That's down from 49 percent in a 1999 Gallup poll—which also found that more Americans would vote for a homosexual than an atheist.) "The End of Faith" struggled to find a publisher, and even after Norton agreed to bring it out in 2004, Harris says there were editors who refused to come to meetings with him. But after winning the PEN/Martha Albrand award for nonfiction, the book sold 270,000 copies. Harris's scathing Letter to a Christian Nation will be published this month with a press run of 150,000. Someone is listening, even if he is mostly preaching, one might say, to the unconverted.

This year also saw the publication in February of Breaking the Spell, by the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, which asks how and why religions became ubiquitous in human society. The obvious answer—"Because they're true"—is foreclosed, Dennett says, by the fact that they are by and large mutually incompatible. Even to study "religion as a natural phenomenon," the subtitle of Dennett's book, is to deprive it of much of its mystery and power. And next month the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) weighs in with The God Delusion, a book that extends an argument he advanced in the days after 9/11. After hearing once too often that "(t)o blame the attacks on Islam is like blaming Christianity for the fighting in Northern Ireland," Dawkins responded: Precisely. "It's time to get angry," he wrote, "and not only with Islam."

Dawkins and Harris are not writing polite demurrals to the time-honored beliefs of billions; they are not issuing pleas for tolerance or moderation, but bone-rattling attacks on what they regard as a pernicious and outdated superstition. (In the spirit of scientific evenhandedness, both would call themselves agnostic, although as Dawkins says, he's agnostic about God the same way he's agnostic about the existence of fairies.) They ask: where do people get their idea of God? From the Bible or the Qur'an. "Tell a devout Christian ... that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible," Harris writes, "and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever." He asks: How can anyone believe in a benevolent and omnipotent God who permits a tsunami to swallow 180,000 innocent people in a few hours? How does it advance our understanding of the universe to suppose that it was created by a supernatural being who communicates only through the one-way process of revelation?

These are not brand-new arguments, of course, and believers have well-practiced replies to them, although in some cases, such as the persistence of evil and suffering (the "theodicy" problem), the responses are still mostly works in progress.

A “work in progress” even after thousands of years of hard work, I might sardonically emphasize.

And the fact that believers have “well-practiced replies” to our other arguments doesn’t mean that they’re good replies. I wish Newsweek had taken the time to cite one or two specific ones so readers might have the opportunity to weigh their strengths and weaknesses for themselves.

Neither author claims much success in arguing anyone out of a belief in God, but they consider it sufficient reward when they hear from people who were encouraged by their books to give voice to their private doubts.

Yes, well, I’VE argued people out of their belief in gOd and I’d be very surprised if these guys aren’t having some success doing the same even if it’s hard to document. For many of the atheists I’ve met in real life, the works of Carl Sagan had a tremendous impact, yet he never knew it. Newsweek could have done a much better job analyzing and reflecting upon exactly why millions of Americans have rejected theism. If it’s not because of the facts and arguments presented by people like Harris and Dawkins, why is it? Hmmm?

All the same, this is highly inflammatory material. Dawkins acknowledges that many readers will expect, or hope, to see him burning in hell (citing Aquinas as authority for the belief that souls in heaven will get a view of hell for their enjoyment). Harris says he has turned down requests for the rights to translate "The End of Faith" into Arabic or Urdu. "I think it would be a death sentence for any translator," he says. Harris himself—who traveled the world for a dozen years studying Eastern religions and mysticism before returning to finish his undergraduate degree at Stanford—asks that the name of his current university not be publicized.

And are these fears misplaced? If not, what does that tell us about theists?

These authors have no geopolitical strategy to advance; they're interested in the metaphysics of belief, not the politics of the First Amendment. It's the idea of putting trust in God they object to, not the motto on the nickel. This sets them apart from America's best-known atheist activist, the late Madalyn Murray O'Hair, a controversial eccentric who won a landmark lawsuit against mandatory classroom prayers in 1963 and went on to found the group now called American Atheists. When a chaplain came to her hospital room once and asked what he could do for her, she notoriously replied, "Drop dead." Dawkins, an urbane Oxfordian, would regard that as appalling manners. "I have no problem with people wishing me a Happy Christmas," he says, expressing puzzlement over the passions provoked in America by the question of how store clerks greet customers.

Ok, how sad is it that “America’s best-known atheist activist” was murdered 11 years ago and no one as capable of attracting media attention has come along to take up the cause?

And how much longer will news outlets like Newsweek further the myth that she alone got prayers banned from American public school classrooms? As Rob Boston’s Why The Religious Right Is Wrong About Separation Of Church & State explains, “Briefly, the myth goes something like this: Until 1962, prayers occurred in every public school in America. Madalyn Murray O’hair, an atheist, filed a lawsuit and had them all removed. Millions of people in fundamentalist churches all over America believe this story. There is only one problem with this scenario: It isn’t true. As history indicates, several states had already removed school-sponsored devotional exercises, some as early as 1890, long before O’Hair arrived on the scene. Secondly, O’Hair’s case was only one of three cases heard by the Supreme Court in 1962 and 1963 concerning school prayer” (p. 122).

And when will news outlets like Newsweek take the time to point out that many religious leaders - including Martin Luther King, Jr. - agreed with the Supreme Court’s decision that banned teacher-led prayer in the schools?

And why rope Dawkins into the War on Christmas controversy that’s largely a fiction created and promoted by theists? Why not question the Christians behind this “war” rather than leave the impression that “atheist eccentrics” are somehow responsible?

But if the arguments of Dawkins and Harris are familiar, they also bring to bear new scientific evidence on the issue. Evolution isn't necessarily incompatible with faith, even with evangelical Christianity. Several new books—Evolution and Christian Faith by the Stanford biologist Joan Roughgarden and The Language of God by geneticist Francis Collins—uphold both.

Well, they try to uphold both. Do they succeed? Not that I can see. How can they? Nature and evolution are “clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel” in the words of Charles Darwin; Christians define gOd as the all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good creator of everything (including nature and evolution). There’s an irreconcilable contradiction here, and if Christians (and Newsweek reporters) can’t see it, that says a lot more about them than it does about atheists like Dawkins.

But to skeptics like Dawkins—and to Biblical literalists on the other side—Darwin appears to rob God of credit for his crowning achievement, which is us. In particular, evolutionary psychologists believe they are closing in on one of the remaining mysteries of life, the universal "moral law" that underlies our intuitive notions of good and evil. Why do we recognize that acts such as murder are wrong? To Collins, it's evidence of God's handiwork—the very perception that led him to become a Christian.

But Dawkins [among many, many others] attempts to show how the highest of human impulses, such as empathy, charity and pity, could have evolved by the same mechanism of natural selection that created the thumb. Biologists understand that the driving force in evolution is the survival and propagation of our genes. They may impel us to instinctive acts of goodness, Dawkins writes, even when it seems counterproductive to our own interests—say, by risking our life to save someone else. Evolutionary psychology can explain how selfless behavior might have evolved. The recipient may be a blood relation who carries some of our own genes. Or our acts may earn us future gratitude, or a reputation for bravery that makes us more desirable as mates. Of course, the essence of the moral law is that it applies even to strangers. Missionaries who devote themselves to saving the lives of Third World peasants have no reasonable expectation of being repaid in this world. But, Dawkins goes on, the impulse for generosity must have evolved while humans lived in small bands in which almost everyone was related, so that goodness became the default human aspiration. This is a rebuke not merely to believers who insist that God must be the source of all goodness—but equally to the 19th-century atheism of Nietzsche, who assumed that the death of God meant the end of conventional morality.

But Dawkins, brilliant as he is, overlooks something any storefront Baptist preacher might have told him. "If there is no God, why be good?" he asks rhetorically, and responds: "Do you really mean the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward? That's not morality, that's just sucking up." That's clever. But millions of Christians and Muslims believe that it was precisely God who turned them away from a life of immorality. Dawkins, of course, thinks they are deluding themselves. He is correct that the social utility of religion doesn't prove anything about the existence of God. But for all his erudition, he seems not to have spent much time among ordinary Christians, who could have told him what God has meant to them.

Yes, well, Newsweek’s Jerry Adler seems to have spent far too little time familiarizing himself with the tenets and findings of modern psychology, psychiatry, and neurobiology. What else might explain Adler’s naive emphasis on talking to theists who obviously spout contradictory nonsense they simply cannot support with evidence? Instead of leaving readers with the impression that they ought to take what theists say at face value, he would have been much better off recognizing that there is often very little overlap between what people say, what they believe, and what the truth happens to be. Has he never heard of Freud? Or cogitive illusions??

It is not just extremists who earn the wrath of Dawkins and Harris. Their books are attacks on religious "moderates" as well—indeed, the very idea of moderation. The West is not at war with "terrorism," Harris asserts in "The End of Faith"; it is at war with Islam, a religion whose holy book, "on almost every page ... prepares the ground for religious conflict." Christian fundamentalists, he says, have a better handle on the problem than moderates: "They know what it's like to really believe that their holy book is the word of God, and there's a paradise you can get to if you die in the right circumstances. They're not left wondering what is the 'real' cause of terrorism." As for the Bible, Harris, like the fundamentalists, prefers a literal reading.

Maybe because a non-literal reading produces even worse problems? Like allowing the Bible to mean whatever a reader wants it to mean?

He quotes at length the passages in the Old and New Testaments dealing with how to treat slaves. Why, he asks, would anyone take moral instruction from a book that calls for stoning your children to death for disrespect, or for heresy, or for violating the Sabbath? Obviously our culture no longer believes in that, he adds, so why not agree that science has made it equally unnecessary to invoke God to explain the Sun, or the weather, or your own existence?

Even agnostic moderates get raked over—like the late Stephen Jay Gould, the evolutionary biologist who attempted to broker a truce between science and religion in his controversial 1999 book "Rocks of Ages." Gould proposed that science and religion retreat to separate realms, the former concerned with empirical questions about the way the universe works, while the latter pursues ultimate meaning and ethical precepts. But, Dawkins asks, unless the Bible is right in its historical and metaphysical claims, why should we grant it authority in the moral realm? And can science really abjure any interest in the claims of religion? Did Jesus come back from the dead, or didn't he? If so, how did God make it happen? Collins says he is satisfied with the answer that the Resurrection is a miracle, permanently beyond our understanding. That Collins can hold that belief, while simultaneously working at the very frontiers of science as the head of the Human Genome Project, is what amazes Harris.

What amazes me is that Gould could make his suggestion that scientists ought to limit themselves to empirical questions while letting theologians and others decide how to use the power and technology they unleash. Scientists did that in WWII and what did our great “moral” leaders give us? The Holocaust and Hiroshima.

How can we not apply the scientific method to moral questions? How can we idly sit by and allow people like Collins to not only believe in absurdities like Jesus’s rising from the dead 2000 years ago but use that absurdity as a basis for telling the rest of us how we ought to live today?

Believers can take comfort in the fact that atheism barely amounts to a "movement." American Atheists, which fights in the courts and legislatures for the rights of nonbelievers, has about 2,500 members and a budget of less than $1 million.

But if one takes seriously Newsweek’s own figures indicating that 6% of Americans are atheists, that’s some 18 million people. And the 16% or so of Americans who call themselves non-religious works out to about 48 million people. Only Catholics and Baptists are more numerous. Focusing on American Atheists rather misses the point.

On the science Web site Edge.org, the astronomer Carolyn Porco offers the subversive suggestion that science itself should attempt to supplant God in Western culture, by providing the benefits and comforts people find in religion: community, ceremony and a sense of awe. "Imagine congregations raising their voices in tribute to gravity, the force that binds us all to the Earth, and the Earth to the Sun, and the Sun to the Milky Way," she writes.

Ack! Ack! Ack! Is Porco a Unitarian or what??

How about if we just grow up and learn to get along without fuzzy thinking and goofy rituals instead?

Porco, who is deeply involved in the Cassini mission to Saturn, finds spiritual fulfillment in exploring the cosmos. But will that work for the rest of the world—for "the people who want to know that they're going to live forever and meet Mom and Dad in heaven? We can't offer that." If Dawkins, Dennett and Harris are right, the five-century-long competition between science and religion is sharpening. People are choosing sides. And when that happens, people get hurt.

HA! As if people haven’t gotten hurt much more badly (and for a much longer period of time) by the competition between religions and the need to choose the “right” one!

Instead of subtly implying that Dawkins, Dennett and Harris are in effect pouring gasoline on a fire, Newsweek might have been better off suggesting that they’re the ones trying to douse the flames of religious fanaticism with buckets of cold facts and logic. After all, when was the last time you’ve heard of scientists going to war to settle a disagreement in physics or chemistry - or saying that a colleague deserves death and ever-lasting punishment for being wrong?

I am reminded of a quote attributed to French philosopher Denis Diderot: “Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: ‘My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.’ This stranger is a theologian.”

Apparently Newsweek is on the side of that theologian. How sad....

I hope this article manages to do some good regardless.

2426) Shiite Mob Torches Kurdish Party Office After Cleric Criticized (Aug 11) - According to WorldWide Religious News and the Associated Press, “About 50 gunmen in the northern city of Kut stormed the office of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, headed by President Jalal Talabani, beat up the guards and set the building on fire, said police Lt. Othman al-Lami. The attackers accused the party's official newspaper of criticizing Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammed al-Yacoubi.

“The raid in Kut was another demonstration of Iraq's sectarian and ethnic divisions that have exploded into violence, mostly between Shiite and Sunni Arabs. It came a day after a suicide bomber killed 35 people in front of Iraq's most sacred Shiite shrine, the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf.

“Pamphlets distributed by the attackers in Kut said the Kurdish newspaper accused al-Yacoubi of trying to ‘ignite a war between the Arab Shiites and Kurds’ by claiming that Kurds are targeting other ethnic groups. The largely Sunni Kurds are a separate, non-Arab ethnic group....

“A Sunni extremist group, Jamaat Jund al-Sahaba or Soldiers of the Prophet's Companions, claimed responsibility for Thursday's bombing of the shrine.

“In a statement posted on an Islamist Web site, the group warned that ‘our swords are capable of reaching deep in your regions’ and accused Shiites of killing Sunnis....

“Iraq's rising sectarian and communal violence is claiming about 1,000 lives every month in the Baghdad area alone, raising fears of all-out civil war.”...

2427) Teachers Allege Pulpit Power Trip As Conflict With Pastor Results In Cancelled School Year (Aug 11) - According to Gallatin, Tennessee’s News Examiner newspaper, “The senior pastor’s desire to control his church’s school led to a fallout with staff and the eventual cancellation of the school year at College Heights Christian Academy, former teachers said Thursday.

“Pastor Jeff LaBorg and a supportive pastoral council at College Heights Baptist Church canceled the school year Monday.

“Church leaders explained and defended their decision during a town-hall style meeting Wednesday night at College Heights.

“At a May 25 school meeting, LaBorg told faculty members ‘the honeymoon is over,’ and if they wouldn’t respect his authority in ‘full submission,’ they were invited to ‘pack up their Bibles’ and ‘resign today,’ according to former College Heights teachers, Jeanne Wood and Cloris Denney.

“The following month, 25 faculty members exercised that option, including Wood and Denney....

“The teachers say LaBorg continued scolding them at the May 25 meeting: ‘Remember that God opened up the ground to swallow murmurers, and I will pray for God to do that to those who murmur. And I have the power to do that.’

“Denney and Wood, both broken-hearted, said they didn’t feel they could continue teaching under LaBorg’s leadership.

“‘College Heights was a great and wonderful place, and LaBorg destroyed it,’ Denney said in an interview with The News Examiner.

“Wood said she was concerned with the closure’s effect on students.

‘This was our ministry,’ she said. ‘It breaks my heart to see how these children have been hurt.’

“The mass teacher resignation at College Heights prompted many parents — including LaBorg — to place their children in different schools, which dropped enrollment to 150 for the expected school year....

“At a church service Wednesday night, a visibly distraught LaBorg said he made the decision to relocate his children, prior to closing College Heights, because he felt it was in his children’s best interest....

“The school cancellation is a culmination of problems which started brewing between the faculty and the pastor, after teachers started asking questions about the church’s supposed purchase of 60 acres to be used for the school’s relocation.

“In October, LaBorg told the staff that the church had purchased 60 acres through their fund-raising efforts. School staff and families connected to the school threw a party to celebrate the event, but their celebration was for naught, Wood said.

“No land was ever purchased, despite what was announced to the congregation and school in College Heights’ March newsletter, which stated, ‘We have purchased 60 acres to begin the relocation process!’”...

2428) Pastor Charged With Raping Adopted Daughter Kept Videotapes Of Her Naked (Aug 11) - According to South Africa’s Mail & Guardian newspaper and the SAPA news agency, “An Eastern Cape pastor, charged with having raped his adoptive daughter, kept videotapes showing the alleged victim naked in a bath, The Herald Online reported on Friday.

“His other two daughters told the Port Elizabeth High Court on Thursday they discovered the tapes in the pastor's study. They also testified that they found two holes in the ceiling of their bathroom, as well as two video cameras in the ceiling. They followed the wires to their father's study, where they came across the videotapes.

“One of the daughters said they watched one of the videos, and saw images of their young adoptive sister naked in the bath. They decided to tell their mother about it, but not the sister. After confronting their 54-year-old father about the videotapes, a meeting of the family decided to ‘close the book’ on the matter on condition that he went for psychiatric help....

“The Summerstand pastor, who is in custody, is charged with the rape, between 2003 and 2005, of his adopted child while she was between the ages of 15 and 17. He is also accused of indecent assault involving sodomy and the use of sex toys on the teenager, as well as crimen injuria for spying on the teenager and his own daughters in the bath.

“The pastor was arrested on May 18 last year after the adopted daughter reported the alleged abuse to her boyfriend, who reported it to the police.

“He pleaded not guilty to rape and other charges, but guilty to incest.”

2429) 15,000 Protestants March In Northern Ireland After Night Of Catholic Rioting (Aug 12) - According to Canada’s CNEWS website and the Associated Press, “LONDONDERRY: About 15,000 Protestants paraded through this predominantly Roman Catholic city Saturday following a night of Catholic rioting.

“The parade ended without any clashes between rival mobs.

“Northern Ireland police said rioters in the Bogside, the major Catholic district beside central Londonderry, hijacked and burned at least two cars and threw about 50 Molotov cocktails at police, who were wearing flame-retardant suits, body armour and helmets. Nobody was reported injured.

“The trouble came hours before Saturday's parade in Londonderry by the Apprentice Boys, the city's major Protestant fraternal group. Their annual march through Londonderry's central square and atop its 17th-century walls, which overlook the Catholic Bogside, has inspired violent clashes in the past.

“On Saturday, about 700 police officers kept the Protestant paraders - about 10,000 Apprentice Boys and about 5,000 members of approximately 130 accompanying bands - apart from Bogside Catholics opposed to the march.

“On opposite sides of the central square, police erected high tarpaulin screens to prevent Catholic protesters from being able to see the drum-thumping procession, or for Protestant celebrants to be able to see the Catholic crowd.

“Police said the screens appeared to have deterred direct conflicts between rival groups, who in past years have traded salvos of bricks, bottles and other objects across the square.

“The Apprentice Boys' annual march commemorates the city's survival during a 1689 siege by forces loyal to the deposed Catholic king of England, James II. The group is named in honour of 13 teenage apprentices, all Protestants, who bolted the city gates in front of the advancing Catholic forces at the start of the 105-day siege.”

2430) Evangelicals Urge Kenya’s National Museum To Hide Evidence Of Evolution (Aug 12) - According to Britain’s Telegraph newspaper, “Powerful evangelical churches are pressing Kenya's national museum to sideline its world-famous collection of hominid bones pointing to man's evolution from ape to human.

“Leaders of the country's six-million-strong Pentecostal congregation want Dr Richard Leakey's ground-breaking finds relegated to a back room instead of being given their usual prime billing.

“The collection includes the most complete skeleton yet found of Homo erectus, the 1.7 million-year-old Turkana Boy unearthed by Dr Leakey's team in 1984 at Nariokotome, near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya.

“The museum also holds bones from several specimens of Australopithecus anamensis, believed to be the first hominid to walk upright, four million years ago. Together the artefacts amount to the clearest record yet discovered of the origins of Homo sapiens.

“They have cemented the global reputation of Kenya's Great Rift Valley as the cradle of mankind, and draw in tourists and locals to the museum's sprawling compound on a hill above Nairobi.

“Permanent exhibitions cover Kenya's cultural and scientific history from pre-history to independence. A snake park was added in the early 1960s.

“As part of an ongoing expansion funded by the EU, the National Museums of Kenya, which manages the country's cultural sites, is conducting a survey to determine what visitors to its Nairobi headquarters most want to see.

“Church leaders aim to hijack that process. ‘The Christian community here is very uncomfortable that Leakey and his group want their theories presented as fact,’ said Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, the head of Christ is the Answer Ministries, the largest Pentecostal church in Kenya. ‘Our doctrine is not that we evolved from apes, and we have grave concerns that the museum wants to enhance the prominence of something presented as fact which is just one theory.’

“Bishop Adoyo said all the country's churches would unite to force the museum to change its focus when it reopens after 18 months of renovations in June next year. ‘We will write to them, we will call them, we will make sure our people know about this and we will see what we can do to make our voice known,’ he said.

“Dr Leakey said the churches' plans were ‘the most outrageous comments I have ever heard’.

“He told The Daily Telegraph: ‘The National Museums of Kenya should be extremely strong in presenting a very forceful case for the evolutionary theory of the origins of mankind. The collection it holds is one of Kenya's very few global claims to fame and it must be forthright in defending its right to be at the forefront of this branch of science.’

“Calling the Pentecostal church fundamentalists, Dr Leakey added: ‘Their theories are far, far from the mainstream on this. They cannot be allowed to meddle with what is the world's leading collection of these types of fossils.’

“The museum said it was in a ‘tricky situation’ as it tried to redesign its exhibition space to accommodate the expectations of all its visitors.

“‘We have a responsibility to present all our artefacts in the best way that we can so that everyone who sees them can gain a full understanding of their significance,’ said Ali Chege, public relations manager for the National Museums of Kenya. ‘But things can get tricky when you have religious beliefs on one side, and intellectuals, scientists or researchers on the other, saying the opposite.’”

As I mentioned in my Oct 1, 2005 entry (item 3 - http://www.opendiary.com/entryview.asp?authorcode=C101953&entry=20528&mode=date), the Secular Coalition for America’s Lori Lipman Brown is hard at work in Washington, DC, lobbying our elected representatives and others on behalf of us atheists and humanists.

The Aug 21 edition of New Jersey’s Daily Record newspaper included a very nice update on her activities. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Lobbyist Represents The Nontheistic View by TIEN-SHUN LEE

MORRIS TWP: Lobbyist Lori Lipman Brown told members of the New Jersey Humanist Network on Sunday that she learned how much her role was needed during the first 24 hours she served as a voice for the Secular Coalition for America.

"I started getting phone calls from people near tears saying, 'I am so glad you're there. I don't know anyone else out here who's a humanist, or an atheist,'" she said, addressing an informal gathering of about 25 humanists at a summer barbecue in Lewis Morris Park. Lipman, who began lobbying for the Secular Coalition for America in September 2005, is one of the few people on Capitol Hill that actively represents a nontheistic viewpoint in issues ranging from Hurricane Katrina victims to stem cell research.

After Hurricane Katrina swept through the southern United States, Lipman fought to stop federal money from being funneled to religious schools in the form of school vouchers for children who were victims of the hurricane.

After Eagle Scout Darrell Lambert was thrown out of the Boy Scouts in 2002 for being an atheist, Lipman supported him and declared the Boy Scouts to be an discriminatory organization that should not receive federal funding.

In the past year, Lipman also supported stem cell research and fought against stripping federal courts of the power to decide on cases involving prayer in school.

"It's been quite an eye-opener,"said Lipman of her one-year experience as a lobbyist. "I had no idea how bad the church-state stuff was."

Sometimes, Lipman is alone in her lobbying efforts, like the time she fought against a section of a large defense appropriations bill that would have allowed for chaplins to proselytize military personnel any time they liked.

Other times, Lipman is part of a group of lobbyists, like when she supported stem cell research.

"I have absolutely no problem working with people who have completely different beliefs than I do," the humanist lobbyist said. "When I worked with the homeless, I worked with Catholic charities and Franciscan monks. I did it because I wanted to do good while we're here, and to leave the world a better place; they did it for a different reason. It didn't matter that we were doing it for different base reasons -- we were both doing good."

Lisa Ridge, the president of the NJHN, who lives in Hopatcong, met Lipman in May at an annual conference of the American Humanist Association in Tampa, Fla., and decided to invite her to Morris County as part of a fundraising effort for the Secular Coalition of America.

A wine and hors d'oeuvres reception at a private home in Hopatcong on Saturday night raised about $1,000 for the organization, Lipman said, and a few more donations were collected at the Sunday barbecue.

While $1,000 may not sound like a lot, it is not trivial given that Lipman's total budget for the year is $140,000. Almost all the donations that the Secular Coalition for America receives are between $25 and $100, Lipman said.

"I think we need to stop sitting around and complaining about what the reality is, and get the message out that we have people speaking for us," Ridge said on Sunday. "The Secular Coalition of America is one way to make what we want happen."

Both Ridge and Lipman agreed that the need for an organized secular coalition became stronger after Sept. 11, 2001.

"Before 9/11, my husband and I were fairly content as atheists and not really joiners," Ridge said. "After 9/11 happened, we began to feel uncomfortable. There were memorials with long prayer services, and we didn't know how we could express the pain that we felt, because we're doers, we're not prayers."

Lipman added that it did not comfort her when people told her that the victims were in a "better place with God."

Ridge and her husband, Tim, decided to join the New Jersey Humanist Network to be among other people who held similar viewpoints of humanity, including the ability of humans to solve problems with intelligence and perseverance, and the belief that humans should be held accountable for their actions.

"One of the things that's appealing to me in humanism is that instead of leaving things to some power to be taken care of, you have to be answerable to everything you do. You actually make amends. There's more responsibility, more ethical standards," said Lipman, who was influenced to by her family to start thinking about humanism between the ages of eight and 10.

Before becoming a lobbyist, Lipman was a private practice lawyer, then a Nevada State Senator from 1992 to 1994, then a high school English and drama teacher, and, most recently, a faculty member of the University of Phoenix, where she taught constitutional and education law, and American history.

Aside from providing humanist-friendly forums to discuss politics and other issues, the NJHN also hosts a book club, a bi-weekly movie night, and seminars.

(NOTE: Lori is the daughter of Mel Lipman, president of the American Humanist Association.)

Regardless of whether you believe Israel’s Jews or Hezbollah’s Muslims are most responsible for the recent carnage in Lebanon, there’s another side to this tragedy that’s been under-reported yet may end up generating some of the longest-lasting consequences.

I’m referring to the horrendous environmental damage being done by Middle Eastern theists who apparently believe the world exists mainly as a stage for their quarrels to play out on and other species are nothing more than bit players or props to be used and abused at will. The actions of these theists seem to reflect the same mindset that characterizes Christian apocalyptic literature. It’s a terribly self-centered, casually cruel mindset that chills me to the very core.

Here are two recent news stories that describe some of the latest consequences of this mindset:

Lebanon Sees Environmental Devastation (Aug 1 - http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2261344&page=1) - According to ABC News and the Associated Press, "BEIRUT: Endangered turtles die shortly after hatching from their eggs. Fish float dead off the coast. Flaming oil sends waves of black smoke toward the city.

"In this country of Mediterranean beaches and snowcapped mountains, Israeli bombing that caused an oil spill has created an environmental disaster. And cleanup cannot start until the fighting stops, the U.N. says.

"World attention has focused on the hundreds of people who have died in the 3-week-old conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. The environmental damage has attracted little attention but experts warn the long-term effects could be devastating.

"Some 110,000 barrels of oil poured into the Mediterranean two weeks ago after Israeli warplanes hit a coastal power plant. One tank is still burning, sending thick black smoke across the country.

"Compounding the problem is an Israeli naval blockade and continuing military operations that have made any cleanup impossible. And environmental officials say the longer the problem is allowed to go unchecked, the greater the lasting damage....

"The oil so far has slicked about one-third of Lebanon's coast, a 50-mile stretch centered on the Jiyeh plant 12 miles south of Beirut, said the country's environment minister, Yaacoub Sarraf. It has also drifted out into the Mediterranean, already hitting neighboring Syria.

"Experts warn Cyprus, Turkey and even Greece could be affected.

"Sarraf said Israeli planes ‘purposely hit the tanks which are the closest to the sea,’ and knocked out the berms designed to prevent any ruptured tanks from sending oil flowing into the waters.

"‘Chances are, our whole marine ecosystem facing the Lebanese shoreline is already dead,’ Sarraf said. ‘What is at stake today is all marine life in the eastern Mediterranean.’

"Israel's Environmental Affairs ministry declined comment, referring questions to the Foreign Ministry, which did not immediately return phone calls.

"Lebanon, whose flag features a cedar tree and which is known by many as Green Lebanon for its forested mountains, is one of the few countries in the Arab world that pays attention to pollution. Minibuses that run on diesel have been banned, while factories are forced to abide by strict rules.

"Now, large parts of the country's sandy and rocky beaches, visited in the past by hundreds of thousands of tourists each year, are covered with thick black oil. Many fishermen have been forced out of business, and people are getting scared to eat fish. Baby turtles, usually born in late summer, die after they swim into the polluted water shortly after hatching from eggs.

"Syria was already experiencing similar problems, said Hassan Murjan, who heads the environment department in the Syrian city of Tartous.

"‘The oil pollution has caused serious environmental damage because our coast is rocky and this is very dangerous for marine life,’ Murjan told the official news agency SANA.

"The first country to rush help to Lebanon was Kuwait, which suffered a similar disaster during the 1991 Gulf War. But three truckloads of cleanup supplies the country sent in are stuck in Beirut, with crews waiting for the fighting to wane before beginning work, said the capital's mayor, Abdel Monem Ariss.

"‘We have no access to Lebanon territorial waters,’ Sarraf said. ‘This means that we are already 10 days delayed and in terms of oil pollution, 10 days is a century.’

"Three local environmental organizations demanded a cease-fire to no avail.

"‘Cleanup operations should start as soon as possible; otherwise, most of the damage will be irreversible,’ warned Wael Hmaidan, head of the assessment group on the ground. ‘The more time we allow the oil to settle into the sand, rocks and seabed, the harder it will be to clean it up.’

"Sarraf estimated it will cost $30 million to $50 million to clean up the shorelines, and possibly ten times that much for the entire effort. Optimistic assessments suggest it will take at least six months for the shore cleanup and up to 10 years for ‘the reestablishment of the ecosystem of the eastern Mediterranean as it was two weeks ago,’ he said....

"Sarraf likened the disaster to a spill off France in 1999, when an oil tanker split in two and dumped 70,000 barrels of oil into the Atlantic. But he said this case is complicated by the burning tank and the inability of cleanup crews to begin work.

"We are facing a much more critical problem,’ he said. ‘I say imagine you having your kid sick, knowing that he is sick, and not being able to bring a physician to examine him and to know what is the disease before you start treating him. This is what we are facing.’"

Israel’s Forests And Wildlife Also Victims Of Rockets (Aug 2 - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060802/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_scorched_forests_1) - According to Yahoo News and the Associated Press, "Huge swaths of forests and fields across northern Israel have been scorched by thousands of Hezbollah rocket strikes over the past three weeks, and experts said it would take nature at least 50 years to recover.

"Charred branches stuck out of the ground like grave markers at the Mount Naftali Forest overlooking Kiryat Shemona, where entire fields have been reduced to heaps of ash and countless animals killed. But with 19 Israeli civilians killed by the rockets, the plight of the forest has been overlooked.

"‘Usually when people get hurt so does nature, and the other way around,’ said Yossi Sarid, a former environment minister. ‘People do take precedence over nature and wildlife, but the damage is simply awful.’

"In all, the rocket fire has destroyed 16,500 acres of forests and grazing fields, according to Michael Weinberger, the forest supervisor for the Jewish National Fund, the top administrator of Israel's forests. About 1 million trees were destroyed.

"The Mount Naftali Forest was hit by a series of Katyusha rockets earlier this week, setting it ablaze. Afternoon gusts carried the flames, wiping out some 750 acres and trapping gazelles, coyotes, jackals, rabbits and snakes. The stench of smoke lingered a day later. What was once green is now black and gray. More rockets pounded the forest Wednesday.

"Firefighters have been stretched to the limit battling the blazes caused by rockets in urban areas and are reluctant to enter the dangerous, dry and potentially deadly terrain of the forest fires.

"‘With all due respect to nature, I will not risk the lives of my men for it,’ said Danny Hananiya, the fire department chief in the Northern Galilee, whose men have battled some 1,200 fires. ‘It is painful to see, but I have to decide between nature and the firefighters.’...

"Unlike buildings, bridges and other infrastructure that can quickly be rebuilt, forests will need 50 to 60 years to return to what they were before fighting started, said Omri Bonneh, the director of the Jewish National Fund's northern region....

"‘Our main job will be after the war ends, to rehabilitate the entire system,’ said Amikam Riglin, chief of law enforcement at the Jewish National Fund. ‘This is just the beginning.’

"The agency's chief ecologist, Yoram Goldring, said it would take many years to restore balance to the forest's ecosystem — if they're lucky. While some of the larger animals may have managed to escape, he said, the reptiles and insects were all lost."...

When will the madness end?

*Sigh* 

"I saw the quote on Andrew Sullivan's blog and he expresses well partly what I am trying to say (this quote was part of an entry about Mel Gibson's drunken tirade): ‘Gibson's kind of rigid bigotry is more a function of the fundamentalist temptation within all religion - not religion itself, and certainly not all of Christianity. The biggest lie of our time is that fundamentalism is the only authentic expression of religious faith. In my view, it is often the least authentic.’" - bavmotors1 (8/5/2006 9:43:46-9:44:10 AM)

What we seem to have here is yet one more attempt to make a distinction between good religion and bad religion. Such attempts are doomed to fail because all religions share the same fatal flaws: They’re logically absurd, and their basic claims aren’t supported by good empirical evidence.

The fact that some aspects of a religion agrees with what we want to be true or what we think of as moral and nice is irrelevant. As the old joke goes, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. That doesn’t mean stopped clocks are good clocks.

Consider these two cases:

The "demonic" voices in Joe’s head tells him to kill people.

The "divine" voices in Sally’s head tells her to love people.

Should we condemn Joe if he listens to his voices and kills but praise Sally if she listens to hers and loves? No, because listening to voices in our heads simply isn’t a valid way of discovering the truth or determining what we ought to do. The fact that an internal voice born of drugs or alcohol or mental illness may occasionally say something we know is right or good for other reasons doesn’t change this.

A logician might get the same point across using this syllogism:

All professional basketball players are tall.

Jim is tall.

Therefore, Jim is a professional basketball player.

This argument is logically invalid and must be rejected even if its conclusion just happens to be true and Jim really is a professional basketball player.

People who defend religion because some of its conclusions are sometimes right or good are like people who say a burned down house is a good house because it sits on a good piece of land. No! The two things have to be evaluated individually. After they are, it’s pretty clear that the burned down house of religion is a blot on the land of truth rather than a reflection or an enhancement of it.

Instead of trying to separate religion into good and bad parts or versions, we need to reject ALL religion because it posits the existence of absurd supernatural entities and teaches that absurd practices like prayer can influence the way these entities treat us.

We need to recognize that the voices called "divine revelations" that people hear in their heads (or feel in their hearts) simply aren’t reliable guides to the truth or good behavior.

We need to recognize that the teachings of ancient books shouldn’t be accepted as divine writ and applied willy-nilly to the modern world.

We need to recognize that religious teachers and preachers can’t legitimately claim a hotline to gOd that requires our absolute obedience.

Whether these "divine revelations" and teachings and preachings tell us to hate Jewish people or love them is utterly beside the point. Basing our treatment of others on such things makes no more sense than flipping a coin. The fact that sometimes "heads" will come up and "love Jewish people" is thereby mandated does absolutely nothing to validate the process.

Similarly, the fact that Andrew Sullivan’s version of Christianity may lead him to more good and right conclusions than Mel Gibson’s version does nothing to validate Christianity or religion in general.

Those who disagree with me here and think that religions that preach love rather than hate are thereby validated seem to be putting the cart before the horse. Judging religions this way is like judging people solely on the basis of whether or not they agree with us. Although the people who do this always seem to have great respect for religion, they’re actually putting it beneath a greater dogma - such as "It’s better to love people than to hate them." That particular dogma may well be superior to its opposite, but it’s empiricism and practicality that allows me to say this - not religion.

If his religion really was the most important thing for Sullivan, he would defend its essence and methods quite independently of the particular conclusions it comes to. After doing this, he would embrace the conclusions it comes to even if one of those conclusions happens to be "Hate Jewish people." Empiricism and practicality would play no role. Instead, he seems to believe (for empirical reasons?) that it’s better to love than to hate and then judges religions on the basis of whether or not they conform to this belief. This would undercut the importance he places on religion even as he seems to be defending it.

If, on the other hand, he actually can make the case that his version of Christianity is somehow better grounded than Gibson’s, I’d love to hear it. Extensive study indicates to me that the two versions are equally arbitrary as religions. It’s only empirical analysis that allows us to say that the conclusions of one are better than the conclusions of the other - but if we’re going to base our beliefs and behavior on empiricism, who needs religion?

Religion in the writing of people like Sullivan seems to serve the same purpose Tiger Woods does in car commercials. People in general seem to have a good impression of Tiger Woods, so companies want him to be associated with whatever they’re selling so people will have a good impression of it, too, even if the two have little or nothing to do with each other.

For a rational person who’s most interested in answering the question "What’s the best car for me to buy?" Tiger Woods is more or less an unfortunate distraction.

So is religion when we're trying to answer questions about the nature of reality or how we ought to live.

Are you still a Christian?

Here are seven more reasons to change your mind before it’s too late!

Baptist Church In Georgia Gutted By Fire Started By Lightning (July 26) - According to the Statesboro Herald, "Thunderstorms bringing lightning and strong winds over the past few days downed trees and limbs, caused minor property damage and resulted in a fire caused by a lightning strike Monday that damaged a southeastern Bulloch County church.

"Lawrence Baptist Church, on Jones Road, off Lawrence Church Road, suffered heavy damage to the sanctuary and smoke damage elsewhere in the building, according to reports.

"The church fire was the worst damage the storms caused, said Bulloch County Public Safety Director Ted Wynn.

"‘We believe (the lightning strike) came in through the steeple,’ he said. The fire was reported around 6 p.m. Monday, and although several fire departments responded ‘with 17 pieces of machinery and 52 firefighters,’ the sanctuary could not be saved, he said.

"However, two social halls were spared, he said. [Evidence that Jesus prefers partying to preaching?]

"The church is an older wood-frame building that was bricked up, ‘a beautiful little church,’ Wynn said. But it had plenty of heart pine, which is highly flammable, in the attic.

"Responding firefighters said they heard the rafters and heart pine wood ‘popping,’ and while they did everything they could, the fire raged out of control and burned that portion of the church, he said....

"The evening thunderstorms over the past few days have brought wind, hail, and rain to the county, as well as lightning, Wynn said. But the strike to the church is the only one reported to have caused damage."...

Thunderbolt Knocks Baptist TV Station In Mississippi Off The Air (July 26) - According to HattiesburgAmerican.com, "Comcast Cable channel 6, the First Baptist Church of Hattiesburg channel, will be off the air for several days.

"‘We were struck by lightning this weekend,’ said Sean Grizzle, media associate for First Baptist Church. ‘Hopefully we'll be back up by the weekend.’

"The channel airs taped church services as well as locally produced shows such as ‘Southern Sketches,’ with Hattiesburg artist and First Baptist Church media director Anthony Thaxton."

Episcopal Church In West Virginia Damaged By Storm (July 29) - According to Maryland’s Herald-Mail.com website, "BUNKER HILL, West Virgina: Strong wind gusts on Thursday night ripped off a large section of the green metal roof of Christ Church, one of Berkeley County's oldest Episcopal houses of worship.

"‘I am deeply saddened that Christ Church, Bunker Hill, has again been damaged by natural or human disasters,’ W. Michie Klusmeyer, the Bishop of the Episcopal Church of West Virginia, said Friday after surveying the damage at the church off Runnymeade Road.

"We continue to be committed to restoring it ... our insurance company is fast on track to protect the building from any further damage from its most recent situation,’ Klusmeyer said.... [Am I the only one who thinks it mighty odd for a church to insure itself against acts of gOd?]

"[Firefighter Brian] Golliday said he had a hard time believing the wind was able to carry such a large section of Christ Church's roof, along with spouting and timbers, more than 50 yards in the air before landing in a crumpled pile next to tombstones dating to the 1700s. [So maybe an angry divinity helped it along, eh? What other possible explanation could there be??]

"A window over the entrance to the church also was blown out by the wind. [Mighty suggestive, isn’t it?]

"Christ Church was built in 1851 on the site where Episcopalians first gathered in 1740. Col. Morgan Morgan, considered to be the first settler in what now is West Virginia, was credited for establishing the first church, and the current structure is believed to be at least the third to be built on the site, according to Don C. Wood, president of the Berkeley County Historical Society.

"In the last 15 years, two fires have damaged the church, and open windows allowed pigeons to wreck the sanctuary with droppings."...

[According to Matthew 10:29, a sparrow can’t fall without gOd knowing it. Can pigeons wreck a sanctuary without his approval? Explain.]

New Hampshire Storm Topples Steeple Of Historic Congregationalist Church</a> (July 30) - According to the Boston Globe and the Associated Press, "PORTSMOUTH, NH: Yellow caution tape blocked off Pleasant Street in Market Square yesterday, as onlookers snapped pictures of the historic North Church, which lost its new spire Friday night during a sudden thunderstorm.

"Officials do not know whether it was wind, lightning, or both that caused the spire to fall and sent scaffolding plummeting more than 100 feet to the street below. No one was hurt from the collapse, but the scaffolding crushed some cars.

"Gloria Wennberg was closing a walking tour and visitor information booth in the lively square Friday evening as the thunderstorms quickly approached the area. ["Surely I come quickly" - Jesus, Rev. 22:20.]

"It was not until she awoke yesterday morning that she learned what had happened to Portsmouth's landmark church.

"‘It was definitely a shock,’ Wennberg said yesterday from the tour booth across the street from the Congregational church, which dates to the 1850s. [I suppose one might even call it a wake-up call, eh, Gloria? Are you listening??]

"The lower portion of the church steeple, which is being renovated, was not damaged. The old spire was removed two weeks ago, but the storm knocked down what had recently replaced it, according to Jameson French, chairman of the Market Square Steeple Fund Advisory Committee.

"While construction crews worked on the roof yesterday, Antonio Peppers, who was sitting at a cafe on Congress Street, said he thought it was ironic that men had put up the scaffold, but nature brought it down.

"‘It was God that brought the storm through here,’ said Peppers, 46, of Portsmouth. ‘God bless that nobody got hurt.’"...

[DOH! I bet Peppers would find a silver lining in Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction, too.]

According to an Aug 3 follow-up story posted by New Hampshire’s Union Leader, "About $100,000 worth of donations have poured into the North Church's restoration fund since its steeple was toppled in a storm last Friday, but none of that money is expected to go toward replacing the lost spire.

"Instead, the money is for an ongoing $1.5 million restoration of the church, while insurance is expected to cover the cost of replacing the steeple, which was brought down by high winds amid the storm last week.

"The steeple's destruction, and its ensuing media attention, has energized church officials and attracted donors from across the state - including Gov. John Lynch, who spoke here yesterday in support of the fundraising drive.

"‘I urge everybody in New Hampshire to contribute along with me to restoring the Market Square steeple,’ Lynch said at a news conference yesterday in the square....

"Community support has run high since the steeple fell, said church Rev. Dawn Shippee, giving the bad situation a silver lining.

"‘All the reasons people live in Portsmouth has been very clear in the last week,’ she said of the generosity. ‘The impact of the spire being gone has allowed people to go, "Wow, that's what it would look like without the steeple."’

"That strong winds, rather than lightning, brought down the steeple also led to an outpouring of support for the church's restoration, Pettis said. [Because lightning is a clearer sign of gOd’s wrath??]

"The extra $100,000 in donations raised the church's total fundraising campaign to more than $500,000, out of the total $1 million needed. Another $500,000 was raised by the church's congregation last year.

"Before the steeple's fall, about $400,000 had been raised for the church's restoration since February of last year.

"Media attention and Lynch's appearance are expected to continue to fuel donations to the restoration fund, which church officials hope will meet its goal by the end of the year. The ongoing restorations and renovations are expected to be completed by year end as well, barring any delays."

[I guess these "Let’s poke a stick in gOd’s eye" people would have eagerly rushed to rebuild the Tower of Babel, too!]

Lightning Topples Cross From Atop Michigan Church, Starts Fire (July 31) - According to the Ironwood Daily Globe, "WAKEFIELD: Wakefield's Immaculate Conception Church is temporarily closed after sustaining fire and water damage after its steeple was struck by lightning early Saturday.

"Mary LaMaide called the fire in at 5:15 a.m. after smelling smoke.

"‘My husband said someone was burning something,’ she said. ‘I said they couldn't be burning because it's raining outside.’

"LaMaide and her family were spending the night at her husband, Gavin's, family home, due east of the church.

"Wakefield firefighters used the electric department's boom truck to reach the steeple. The 5-foot cross atop the spire later fell, breaking the windshield on the truck, according to city lead man John Granato. [A warning to all those who try to frustrate gOd’s will??]

"The Lake Gogebic Volunteer Fire Department brought its ladder truck under the region's mutual aid agreement, Granato said.

"‘Until further notice, Masses will be held in Father Daniel Hall,’ said parish priest the Rev. James Roetzer.

"‘We're bringing a crew in from Washburn, Wis.,’ said Candie Frank, of ServiceMaster of Ironwood. Frank was at Immaculate Conception assessing damage and mapping a strategy to clean up the mess.

"Water was still dripping to the floor of the sanctuary at mid-morning, and the church smelled of smoke. Frank said a breaker tripped during an attempt at restoring electrical power, further complicating the clean-up effort. [Remember - if gOd’s in control, there are no coincidences!]

"The church and steeple had been reroofed a year ago. A construction lift was parked near the church Saturday and preparations had begun to weatherproof the building.

"The fire wasn't the worst in the history of the church. A 1909 fire razed the original church, which was replaced by the brick structure that now stands at the corner of Pierce and Ascherman streets."...

Lightning Sets Catholic Church’s Steeple On Fire In Wisconsin (Aug 3) - According to Janesville, Wisconsin’s GazetteExtra.com, "DELAVAN: A lightning strike Wednesday evening set fire to the 140-foot steeple above the bell tower of St. Andrew's Catholic Church.

"Delavan's Matthew Olson reported the fire about 6:10 p.m.

"‘I was coming back from the grocery store and saw smoke billowing out of the top of the steeple,’ Olson said.

"He called 911 to report the fire then ran to see if anyone was inside. The doors to the church were locked, so he ran to the nearby St. Andrew's School.

"Volunteers and school staff were inside and hurried to the church to save any items they could.

"They were able [to] save the crucifix on the altar, the Eucharist, wine and challises, said Melody Shanahan, who was in the school with other volunteers.

"‘Then we blew out the candles and got the heck out,’ she said.

"The city of Delavan fire department had help from the town of Delavan, Darien, Elkhorn and Walworth.

"About 70 firefighters were on the scene, said Assistant Fire Chief Tim O'Neill, who also is a parishioner at the church and city police chief [Hmmm, can a Christian police chief "turn the other cheek" and "resist not evil" as Jesus demanded? Perhaps he’s the reason the church got zapped!] The fire was under control in about an hour, he said.

"‘Whenever it is a place of worship that is on fire it's always sad for somebody, whether it's me or somebody else,’ O'Neill said. [So is it a happy time for everyone when a house or business burns?? Maybe it’s this sort of attitude that drew gOd’s wrath!]

"Fire crews were able to contain the blaze to the steeple area above the bell tower, O'Neill said. They climbed over the bell tower to battle the blaze from the inside while engines poured water and foam onto the shingled roof.

"Two firefighters were treated for heat exhaustion. [Perhaps a taste of the hellfire they’re destined for if they keep frustrating the will of gOd?] One was hospitalized but released a short time later.

"Water and smoke damage was limited to the areas in the steeple, parts of the build directly below the steeple and the front entry.

"The main body of the church and the choir balcony were not damaged, O'Neill said.

"But fire officials fear that damage inside the steeple makes the structure susceptible to toppling. Two crane operators examined the steeple Wednesday night but didn't believe their equipment was big enough to safely remove it, said Bob Ludowise, Delavan fire inspector.

"‘Our chief concern was the steeple falling into the church and then lighting the church (on fire),’ O'Neill said. [Oh, ye of little faith!]

"Fire officials also were concerned the steeple would fall east onto a power line that supplies electricity to much of Delavan's north side, O'Neill said.

"The large, copper cross that tops the steeple is another reason for worry. [Indeed!] Fire officials aren't sure if its hollow or solid and don't know how much it weighs. [Can you really be a good Christian and know so little about the cross?]

"The plan for today was to bring in two large cranes to remove the cross and assess how much of the steeple needs to come down, Ludowise said.

"The Rev. Brian Holbus said the congregation of about 600 will rally to have the steeple rebuilt. [DOH!]

"‘We'll be selling a lot of cupcakes, tamales and fish fries,’ he said. [Sounds like a combination you might find on Hell’s Menu, doesn’t it?]

"Holbus said he always worried about a fire inside the church caused by a toppled candle, not from a lightning strike.

"‘You always worry in an old church like this that something is going to burn, but not like this,’ Holbus said. [So, churches DO increase worry!]

"St. Andrew's was renovated 11 years ago for its 100th birthday.

"The church was empty when the bolt hit, although a Spanish prayer group was about to start a meeting inside the nearby rectory." [Hmmmm... Pretty suggestive, isn’t it? And just think of all the disasters that befell the US and the world before organized school prayer was banned by the Supreme Court in 1963!] ....

Iowa Catholic Church Leveled By Storm</a> (Aug 3) - According to the Des Moines Register, "A century-old church in Cherokee County lost the battle with strong winds and rain Tuesday night.

"Maryhill Catholic Church outside Meriden was leveled by winds that reached up to 90 mph.

"‘All that's left is the basement,’ Dave Skou, communication center supervisor for the sheriff's department, said of the church. [Apparently the closer you are to Satan during a storm, the better!]

"Maryhill Catholic Church was founded in 1892, but burned down 12 years later after it was struck by lightning. [Yet another church subject to multiple warnings!] It was rebuilt and reopened in 1905.

"‘There's not much point in rebuilding it. The population out here is dwindling,’ the Rev. Gene Sitzmann said. Meriden has about 190 residents.

"Sitzmann, who was Mary-hill's pastor for 30 years before retiring, lived next door to the church. His own home sustained ‘minimal damage,’ he said, including a few broken windows and damaged siding.

"Dan Steward, the church caretaker, also lived on the property and had some broken windows. [Apparently those living further away from the church suffered NO damage. Hmmm....]

"Sitzmann, who will remain at the same location he is now, added that Maryhill church members will more than likely be invited to join nearby parishes, although he couldn't say which ones."... [Heh. I guess they believe that if gOd wants to track ‘em down and hit ‘em again, he’s gonna have to work at it!]

A brief review:

Mel Lipman, President of the American Humanist Association, was in town one recent weekend.

On the Saturday afternoon of that weekend he gave a public speech. My last entry included a transcript of that speech.

When the speech was over, Mel took about 23 questions (and comments) from the audience.

Here is a brief summary of what those questions/comments were and how Mel responded. (NOTE: This highly condensed summary is based upon my notes and recollections. Although I believe it to be accurate as far as it goes, it is my creation and undoubtedly reflects my own limitations in ways I might not even be aware of. If you happen to have been there and believe I’ve gotten my facts wrong, please feel free to tell me.)

*****

Question 1: Your speech pretty much focused on the US. What are things like in the rest of the world? I’ve heard that Ireland used to be 99.9% Catholic and now fewer than 25% of the people are....

Answer: Europe is much more progressive. Norway has a state church - it’s officially a theocracy - but 75% of the people there consider themselves secular. When I visited Germany I found that their humanist association had between 15,000 and 18,000 members. The AHA in our country has 8000 members. That’s about double what it was four years ago but we still have a lot of work to do. I would love for the US to be as progressive as Europe.

Question 2: I’m a former Catholic. My son was raised a humanist-atheist but now he’s married a Catholic and is backsliding. What can I do?

Answer: Accept it. There’s nothing you can do. His wife has more power over him than you do.

(My response: *SIGH* How self-defeating....)

Question 3: With regard to the first question, I’ve learned that Denmark might be the most humanistic-atheistic country in Europe, if not the world. Its people also rank among the happiest.

Answer: Right. (Nods and smiles)

Question 4: (The questioner basically recounted the story of Chuck Smalkowski, the Oklahoma atheist whose family paid a price after his daughter objected to prayer at her school. Details can be found in an OD entry I posted on July 8 - http://www.opendiary.com/entryview.asp?authorcode=C101953&entry=20970)

Answer: It’s cases like that that has prompted the AHA to start a Humanist Legal Center. So far we’ve signed up 10 lawyers across the country who are willing to go to bat for humanists as the need arises. Michael Newdow - who brought the famous case against "under God" in the Pledge - is one of those 10.

Not long ago someone complained to me about a graduation prayer that was being given by a member of the clergy at an Ohio high school. I wrote a letter to the officials there on official AHA stationary, threatening to take legal action if they didn’t stop it. It was pretty much a bluff at the time, since we didn’t have our Legal Center in place yet and, although I AM an attorney, I really wasn’t in any position to follow up on my threat. Fortunately, they backed down and promised to stop offering these prayers - just because I sent a letter. We hope to eventually have volunteer lawyers in every state so we can do more.

Question 5: I’ve found that people are receptive to hearing about my humanist beliefs until I use the word "atheist" - that kills things. We need to avoid that term. It’s all about packaging....

Answer: (I believe what Mel said was that the term is going to come up even if we try to avoid it. I think he even cited his experience during a radio interview the previous day in which he gave an outline of humanist beliefs that included the term "without supernaturalism" and people quickly figured out he meant "without gOd" and that quickly became the focus of the conversation. I think Mel then said that we have to honestly acknowledge our atheism even as we refrain from rubbing people’s noses in it.)

Question 6: You asked "Do your neighbors know you’re a humanist?" Mine do - and I find that they’ve accepted me once they got to know me as a person. It’s the same thing with me as one-half of a lesbian couple. We moved to an area where I thought things might be dicey but once people got to know us, all was well.

Answer: Exactly. We need to come out more.

Question 7: (This question or statement was about humanists coming out. It was too convoluted or trite for me to make any notes regarding it. Or maybe I was just distracted....)

Answer: (Wish I knew!)

Question 8: I’m a humanist mother with humanist kids and I’ve discovered that when I’ve talked to my kids’s teachers about it, they often stop and go, "Hey, that’s what I am, too! I just never knew that was the label for what I believe." The teachers have been very accepting and some have even changed the way they teach about holidays, etc., so that they make students aware that there’s a humanist point of view, too.

Answer: Great.

Question 9: I’m a humanist mother, too, but I and my kids have been shunned as a result. Everything was fine, the kids played together, etc., but when the other kids’s mom found out we were humanists, they told their kids that they could no longer play with mine.

Answer: (I think Mel basically agreed that, yes, prejudice remains and is bad.)

Question 10: (The questioner talked about having just seen author Margaret Atwood interviewed by Bill Moyers on his current PBS series dealing with religion. Atwood identified herself as an agnostic. The questioner wondered about this. I believe Mel responded by mentioning how he had handled things the day before on the radio when asked if he was an atheist. He had said that he doesn’t believe in gOd but that he doesn’t say gOd does not exist. "So you’re really an agnostic?" the caller had pressed. "OK, yes," Mel more or less conceded the point rather than get bogged down in semantics.)

SIDENOTE: This issue came up repeatedly over the weekend - and every time it did I was annoyed by the way it was handled. It reminded me of evolutionist-creationist debates in which creationists say evolution is "only a theory" - which of course betrays a profound ignorance about the way scientists properly define theory. In most evolutionist-creationist debates, however, the scientist quickly sets the creationist straight. When it came to the atheist-agnostic issue this last weekend, however, neither Mel nor anyone else seems to have been capable of explaining things correctly. I suppose this is because the issue is a bit complex and Mel is a spokesperson for humanism - NOT a philosopher.

Here - briefly - is the answer I believe Mel should have given (based on George H. Smith’s book, Atheism: The Case Against God, among other sources):

Although the term "agnosticism" is commonly believed to describe a position halfway between theism and atheism, it really doesn’t. "Atheism" and "theism" relate to belief; "agnosticism" relates to knowledge. Agnostic (derived from the Greek gnosis, "to know"), means "without knowledge" or "one without knowledge."

You can be an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist. The agnostic theist says, "I don’t have any knowledge of gOd - but I have faith and believe anyway." The agnostic atheist says, "I don’t have any knowledge of gOd - and in the absence of knowledge, we shouldn’t believe gOd exists." That kind of atheist is often referred to as a "soft" or "weak" atheist (which Mel seems to be).

"Soft" and "weak" aren’t meant as pejorative terms but are used as a way of distinguishing this sort of atheism from "hard" or "strong" atheism - the kind that says "gOd does not exist." This type of atheism is usually based on the idea that the very concept of gOd is incomprehensible or absurd (as well as the utter absence of evidence for any gOd). For example, the common Judeo-Christian definition of gOd as all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good is inherently self-contradictory (as the quote from Epicurus on my front page explains). The common claim that gOd is a being unlike any other being also seems to generate fatal problems. (For example, gOd is alleged to be a being with a consciousness apart from a brain even though every consciousness we know of is completely dependent on brain. The claim that gOd has a disembodied or "spiritual" consciousness but no physical brain thus appears to be analogous to describing an object as having size or weight but not having height, length, depth, or mass.) The common idea of gOd also seems absurd when the term "perfect creator" is part of it. Why? Because perfect beings wouldn’t need to create anything - by definition, they’d be self-sufficient. Any act of creation would be unnecessary and superfluous - words that simply can’t be applied to perfect beings.

This is some of why I’m a hard or strong atheist - and why Mel’s weak defense of weak atheism really bothered me.

Question 11: (The "questioner" made a statement about her involvement with Camp Quest - the summer camp for non-believers [http://www.camp-quest.org/]. Some 31 kids participated this year. They loved being in an environment where it was ok not to believe in gOd. Yay!)

Question 12: You talked about the differences between the US and Europe but what about regional differences within the US?

Answer: The two coasts seem to have the most humanists. And South Carolina, surprisingly enough. My guess is that’s because religion is so powerful there that humanists and atheists have had to get together out of a sense of self-preservation. Of all the states, though, California probably ranks #1 for humanists. Only four states have no AHA affiliates: Delaware, Arkansas, and North and South Dakota.

Question 13: (The "questioner" made a statement about the years-long lack of public access TV in Columbus and urged people to contact the mayor and city council in an attempt to get this service restored. When Columbus did have public access TV, humanist tapes were regularly broadcast.)

Question 14: (The "questioner" seconded #13's recommendation and recounted seeing one of those humanist tapes on Passover and liking it.)

Question 15: All babies are born atheists. So why do they grow up to be theists? Is it the human need to belong to a group?

Answer: Yes. But there’s a need for answers, too. I have no problem with saying "I don’t know" but a lot of people do. That’s when they resort to the so-called "gOd of the gaps" - whenever they come to something they can’t figure out, well, gOd must have done it. As scientific knowledge has advanced, the realm of this gOd has gotten smaller and smaller.

Question 16: You made a distinction between attacking religion and criticizing religion. What exactly is the difference?

Answer: It’s like being a movie critic. You can review individual movies and say what’s good or bad about them, but you can’t just say "All movies are bad."

SIDENOTE: This was another issue which I think Mel failed to properly address. In my estimation (and that of people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins), we can and must reject all forms of religion because all forms suffer from the same fatal flaws: They simply don’t make sense; there’s no good evidence to support their claims; and they inspire Very Bad behavior.

Mel, however, seems to believe that we can separate good theists from bad theists - the good theists being those who believe in love, and gay rights, and church-state separation. As a practical matter, he believes we need to cooperate with them to get things done and offset the real danger - fundamentalism.

In my estimation, the most important thing we need to do is expose religion for the dangerous absurdity it is. Instead of using a movie analogy, I’d compare it to child abuse. Just as no one should try to defend child abuse on the grounds that it does some good (e.g., it makes the abuser feel better, it teaches kids not to trust adults, it provides huge numbers of clients for psychiatrists and psychologists and social workers, and - when it results in death - it helps with the overpopulation problem), no one should try to defend religion on the grounds that it sometimes does good things. There’s nothing positive that’s associated with religion that can’t be obtained in better, safer ways. Like child abuse, however, there are some Very Bad Things associated with religion that religion simply can’t avoid generating (such as teaching people it’s ok to embrace and act on absurd and empirically unsupported beliefs). We’d be better off dumping it entirely rather than cooperating with religionists to achieve some much less important goal.

Question 17: Are irrationalism and humanism irreconcilable?

Answer: Yes. But we still need to work with liberal religionists to get some things done.

Question 18: On the radio yesterday you said you were a humanist minister. What’s that all about?

Answer: I live in Nevada. We wanted to be able to offer humanist wedding services for our members. Nevada, however, insists you have to be a minister to do this. So I filed the necessary paperwork to have myself listed as a humanist minister. You have to belong to a national organization - which I do - and so on. So now I can perform weddings. It also allows me to participate in my local interfaith group. Some of the others in it grumbled, but now we humanists have a voice there. And I also can now serve as a humanist chaplain in prisons - even though I don’t really need to, since there are so few humanists in prison! (Laughter)

Question 19: (Statement) Unitarian ministers can be atheists. I’ve heard that at least one of the ministers at the Unitarian church you’ll be talking at tomorrow calls himself an agnostic atheist.

Question 20: I’ve listened to your talk but I still don’t get it. What’s THE humanist issue?

Answer: The issue is that we’re being demonized by our culture and society and we need to get together to educate people and stop this. We need to counter the wrong and dangerous idea that in order to be patriotic in this country, you have to be a theist.

Question 21: (Statement) I think some people have trouble tolerating uncertainty.

Question 22: I came in late so maybe I missed this but do humanists have a political platform?

Answer: (I think Mel said that while his organization can’t endorse political candidates it can and does address issues. The AHA is for human rights, gay rights, reproductive choice, and stem cell research. In his estimation, the hot issues of the day - gay marriage, abortion, and stem cell research - are hot issues because of religion.)

Question 23: (This was more of a long, rambling statement by an elderly man. When he first got up and started speaking in a VERY loud voice I thought, "Oh-oh, we have our first Christian witness!" But no - he went into a short dissertation on how the Enlightenment rather than religion inspired the Founding Fathers. But then he talked about how the 9th and 10th Amendments to the US Constitution safeguard our rights from government infringement. In his opinion, if the government actually obeyed these amendments, issues such as gay marriage and abortion wouldn’t be issues at all - the government would simply lack the power to regulate them. Mel was polite in his response. He later indicated at the dinner that followed his talk that the guy was misinformed. Since Mel is a lawyer who has taught Constitutional law, I assume he knows what he’s talking about.)

*****

NOTE: One of the questioners (maybe #7) mentioned how he’d never heard about our local humanist group before and said we needed to do a better job getting the word out. Our local president then stood up and informed him that we’ve tried. In fact, some 29 press packets were sent out recently to local newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations encouraging them to send reporters to a press conference Mel held Friday afternoon. Not one reporter showed up. This news brought audible gasps from the audience. Mel indicated that this was pretty typical. The highest number of reporters that have ever attended a press conference of his is two. The average? 0.25. Our local president encouraged audience members to contact the "Faith & Values" editor at the Columbus Dispatch and ask for more coverage of the atheist-humanist point of view. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if they do - and if it makes any difference.

A brief review:

Mel Lipman, President of the American Humanist Association, was in town one recent weekend.

On the Saturday afternoon of that weekend he gave a public speech. My last entry included a transcript of that speech.

When the speech was over, Mel took about 23 questions (and comments) from the audience.

Here is a brief summary of what those questions/comments were and how Mel responded. (NOTE: This highly condensed summary is based upon my notes and recollections. Although I believe it to be accurate as far as it goes, it is my creation and undoubtedly reflects my own limitations in ways I might not even be aware of. If you happen to have been there and believe I’ve gotten my facts wrong, please feel free to tell me.)

*****

Question 1: Your speech pretty much focused on the US. What are things like in the rest of the world? I’ve heard that Ireland used to be 99.9% Catholic and now fewer than 25% of the people are....

Answer: Europe is much more progressive. Norway has a state church - it’s officially a theocracy - but 75% of the people there consider themselves secular. When I visited Germany I found that their humanist association had between 15,000 and 18,000 members. The AHA in our country has 8000 members. That’s about double what it was four years ago but we still have a lot of work to do. I would love for the US to be as progressive as Europe.

Question 2: I’m a former Catholic. My son was raised a humanist-atheist but now he’s married a Catholic and is backsliding. What can I do?

Answer: Accept it. There’s nothing you can do. His wife has more power over him than you do.

(My response: *SIGH* How self-defeating....)

Question 3: With regard to the first question, I’ve learned that Denmark might be the most humanistic-atheistic country in Europe, if not the world. Its people also rank among the happiest.

Answer: Right. (Nods and smiles)

Question 4: (The questioner basically recounted the story of Chuck Smalkowski, the Oklahoma atheist whose family paid a price after his daughter objected to prayer at her school. Details can be found in an OD entry I posted on July 8 - http://www.opendiary.com/entryview.asp?authorcode=C101953&entry=20970)

Answer: It’s cases like that that has prompted the AHA to start a Humanist Legal Center. So far we’ve signed up 10 lawyers across the country who are willing to go to bat for humanists as the need arises. Michael Newdow - who brought the famous case against "under God" in the Pledge - is one of those 10.

Not long ago someone complained to me about a graduation prayer that was being given by a member of the clergy at an Ohio high school. I wrote a letter to the officials there on official AHA stationary, threatening to take legal action if they didn’t stop it. It was pretty much a bluff at the time, since we didn’t have our Legal Center in place yet and, although I AM an attorney, I really wasn’t in any position to follow up on my threat. Fortunately, they backed down and promised to stop offering these prayers - just because I sent a letter. We hope to eventually have volunteer lawyers in every state so we can do more.

Question 5: I’ve found that people are receptive to hearing about my humanist beliefs until I use the word "atheist" - that kills things. We need to avoid that term. It’s all about packaging....

Answer: (I believe what Mel said was that the term is going to come up even if we try to avoid it. I think he even cited his experience during a radio interview the previous day in which he gave an outline of humanist beliefs that included the term "without supernaturalism" and people quickly figured out he meant "without gOd" and that quickly became the focus of the conversation. I think Mel then said that we have to honestly acknowledge our atheism even as we refrain from rubbing people’s noses in it.)

Question 6: You asked "Do your neighbors know you’re a humanist?" Mine do - and I find that they’ve accepted me once they got to know me as a person. It’s the same thing with me as one-half of a lesbian couple. We moved to an area where I thought things might be dicey but once people got to know us, all was well.

Answer: Exactly. We need to come out more.

Question 7: (This question or statement was about humanists coming out. It was too convoluted or trite for me to make any notes regarding it. Or maybe I was just distracted....)

Answer: (Wish I knew!)

Question 8: I’m a humanist mother with humanist kids and I’ve discovered that when I’ve talked to my kids’s teachers about it, they often stop and go, "Hey, that’s what I am, too! I just never knew that was the label for what I believe." The teachers have been very accepting and some have even changed the way they teach about holidays, etc., so that they make students aware that there’s a humanist point of view, too.

Answer: Great.

Question 9: I’m a humanist mother, too, but I and my kids have been shunned as a result. Everything was fine, the kids played together, etc., but when the other kids’s mom found out we were humanists, they told their kids that they could no longer play with mine.

Answer: (I think Mel basically agreed that, yes, prejudice remains and is bad.)

Question 10: (The questioner talked about having just seen author Margaret Atwood interviewed by Bill Moyers on his current PBS series dealing with religion. Atwood identified herself as an agnostic. The questioner wondered about this. I believe Mel responded by mentioning how he had handled things the day before on the radio when asked if he was an atheist. He had said that he doesn’t believe in gOd but that he doesn’t say gOd does not exist. "So you’re really an agnostic?" the caller had pressed. "OK, yes," Mel more or less conceded the point rather than get bogged down in semantics.)

SIDENOTE: This issue came up repeatedly over the weekend - and every time it did I was annoyed by the way it was handled. It reminded me of evolutionist-creationist debates in which creationists say evolution is "only a theory" - which of course betrays a profound ignorance about the way scientists properly define theory. In most evolutionist-creationist debates, however, the scientist quickly sets the creationist straight. When it came to the atheist-agnostic issue this last weekend, however, neither Mel nor anyone else seems to have been capable of explaining things correctly. I suppose this is because the issue is a bit complex and Mel is a spokesperson for humanism - NOT a philosopher.

Here - briefly - is the answer I believe Mel should have given (based on George H. Smith’s book, Atheism: The Case Against God, among other sources):

Although the term "agnosticism" is commonly believed to describe a position halfway between theism and atheism, it really doesn’t. "Atheism" and "theism" relate to belief; "agnosticism" relates to knowledge. Agnostic (derived from the Greek gnosis, "to know"), means "without knowledge" or "one without knowledge."

You can be an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist. The agnostic theist says, "I don’t have any knowledge of gOd - but I have faith and believe anyway." The agnostic atheist says, "I don’t have any knowledge of gOd - and in the absence of knowledge, we shouldn’t believe gOd exists." That kind of atheist is often referred to as a "soft" or "weak" atheist (which Mel seems to be).

"Soft" and "weak" aren’t meant as pejorative terms but are used as a way of distinguishing this sort of atheism from "hard" or "strong" atheism - the kind that says "gOd does not exist." This type of atheism is usually based on the idea that the very concept of gOd is incomprehensible or absurd (as well as the utter absence of evidence for any gOd). For example, the common Judeo-Christian definition of gOd as all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good is inherently self-contradictory (as the quote from Epicurus on my front page explains). The common claim that gOd is a being unlike any other being also seems to generate fatal problems. (For example, gOd is alleged to be a being with a consciousness apart from a brain even though every consciousness we know of is completely dependent on brain. The claim that gOd has a disembodied or "spiritual" consciousness but no physical brain thus appears to be analogous to describing an object as having size or weight but not having height, length, depth, or mass.) The common idea of gOd also seems absurd when the term "perfect creator" is part of it. Why? Because perfect beings wouldn’t need to create anything - by definition, they’d be self-sufficient. Any act of creation would be unnecessary and superfluous - words that simply can’t be applied to perfect beings.

This is some of why I’m a hard or strong atheist - and why Mel’s weak defense of weak atheism really bothered me.

Question 11: (The "questioner" made a statement about her involvement with Camp Quest - the summer camp for non-believers [http://www.camp-quest.org/]. Some 31 kids participated this year. They loved being in an environment where it was ok not to believe in gOd. Yay!)

Question 12: You talked about the differences between the US and Europe but what about regional differences within the US?

Answer: The two coasts seem to have the most humanists. And South Carolina, surprisingly enough. My guess is that’s because religion is so powerful there that humanists and atheists have had to get together out of a sense of self-preservation. Of all the states, though, California probably ranks #1 for humanists. Only four states have no AHA affiliates: Delaware, Arkansas, and North and South Dakota.

Question 13: (The "questioner" made a statement about the years-long lack of public access TV in Columbus and urged people to contact the mayor and city council in an attempt to get this service restored. When Columbus did have public access TV, humanist tapes were regularly broadcast.)

Question 14: (The "questioner" seconded #13's recommendation and recounted seeing one of those humanist tapes on Passover and liking it.)

Question 15: All babies are born atheists. So why do they grow up to be theists? Is it the human need to belong to a group?

Answer: Yes. But there’s a need for answers, too. I have no problem with saying "I don’t know" but a lot of people do. That’s when they resort to the so-called "gOd of the gaps" - whenever they come to something they can’t figure out, well, gOd must have done it. As scientific knowledge has advanced, the realm of this gOd has gotten smaller and smaller.

Question 16: You made a distinction between attacking religion and criticizing religion. What exactly is the difference?

Answer: It’s like being a movie critic. You can review individual movies and say what’s good or bad about them, but you can’t just say "All movies are bad."

SIDENOTE: This was another issue which I think Mel failed to properly address. In my estimation (and that of people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins), we can and must reject all forms of religion because all forms suffer from the same fatal flaws: They simply don’t make sense; there’s no good evidence to support their claims; and they inspire Very Bad behavior.

Mel, however, seems to believe that we can separate good theists from bad theists - the good theists being those who believe in love, and gay rights, and church-state separation. As a practical matter, he believes we need to cooperate with them to get things done and offset the real danger - fundamentalism.

In my estimation, the most important thing we need to do is expose religion for the dangerous absurdity it is. Instead of using a movie analogy, I’d compare it to child abuse. Just as no one should try to defend child abuse on the grounds that it does some good (e.g., it makes the abuser feel better, it teaches kids not to trust adults, it provides huge numbers of clients for psychiatrists and psychologists and social workers, and - when it results in death - it helps with the overpopulation problem), no one should try to defend religion on the grounds that it sometimes does good things. There’s nothing positive that’s associated with religion that can’t be obtained in better, safer ways. Like child abuse, however, there are some Very Bad Things associated with religion that religion simply can’t avoid generating (such as teaching people it’s ok to embrace and act on absurd and empirically unsupported beliefs). We’d be better off dumping it entirely rather than cooperating with religionists to achieve some much less important goal.

Question 17: Are irrationalism and humanism irreconcilable?

Answer: Yes. But we still need to work with liberal religionists to get some things done.

Question 18: On the radio yesterday you said you were a humanist minister. What’s that all about?

Answer: I live in Nevada. We wanted to be able to offer humanist wedding services for our members. Nevada, however, insists you have to be a minister to do this. So I filed the necessary paperwork to have myself listed as a humanist minister. You have to belong to a national organization - which I do - and so on. So now I can perform weddings. It also allows me to participate in my local interfaith group. Some of the others in it grumbled, but now we humanists have a voice there. And I also can now serve as a humanist chaplain in prisons - even though I don’t really need to, since there are so few humanists in prison! (Laughter)

Question 19: (Statement) Unitarian ministers can be atheists. I’ve heard that at least one of the ministers at the Unitarian church you’ll be talking at tomorrow calls himself an agnostic atheist.

Question 20: I’ve listened to your talk but I still don’t get it. What’s THE humanist issue?

Answer: The issue is that we’re being demonized by our culture and society and we need to get together to educate people and stop this. We need to counter the wrong and dangerous idea that in order to be patriotic in this country, you have to be a theist.

Question 21: (Statement) I think some people have trouble tolerating uncertainty.

Question 22: I came in late so maybe I missed this but do humanists have a political platform?

Answer: (I think Mel said that while his organization can’t endorse political candidates it can and does address issues. The AHA is for human rights, gay rights, reproductive choice, and stem cell research. In his estimation, the hot issues of the day - gay marriage, abortion, and stem cell research - are hot issues because of religion.)

Question 23: (This was more of a long, rambling statement by an elderly man. When he first got up and started speaking in a VERY loud voice I thought, "Oh-oh, we have our first Christian witness!" But no - he went into a short dissertation on how the Enlightenment rather than religion inspired the Founding Fathers. But then he talked about how the 9th and 10th Amendments to the US Constitution safeguard our rights from government infringement. In his opinion, if the government actually obeyed these amendments, issues such as gay marriage and abortion wouldn’t be issues at all - the government would simply lack the power to regulate them. Mel was polite in his response. He later indicated at the dinner that followed his talk that the guy was misinformed. Since Mel is a lawyer who has taught Constitutional law, I assume he knows what he’s talking about.)

*****

NOTE: One of the questioners (maybe #7) mentioned how he’d never heard about our local humanist group before and said we needed to do a better job getting the word out. Our local president then stood up and informed him that we’ve tried. In fact, some 29 press packets were sent out recently to local newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations encouraging them to send reporters to a press conference Mel held Friday afternoon. Not one reporter showed up. This news brought audible gasps from the audience. Mel indicated that this was pretty typical. The highest number of reporters that have ever attended a press conference of his is two. The average? 0.25. Our local president encouraged audience members to contact the "Faith & Values" editor at the Columbus Dispatch and ask for more coverage of the atheist-humanist point of view. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if they do - and if it makes any difference.

Kuwait’s Women Savor Right To Vote (June 30) - According to the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press, "Female voters Thursday went to the polls for the first time in Kuwait's parliamentary elections, many delighted to cast their ballots.

"‘It feels like a wedding day,’ said Salwa Sanoussi, 45, one of the first to arrive at the women's polling station in Dahiya, one of Kuwait's wealthiest areas. She wore black and covered her hair with a matching head scarf.

"Some women arrived in buses and others stepped out of chauffeur-driven cars. Women, who got the right to vote and run for office last year, constitute 57% of the electorate....

"In Washington, the State Department said the participation of women in the elections was ‘a huge step forward’ for Kuwait and the region. Saudi Arabia is now the only Arab country that doesn't allow women to vote."...

Danish PM Against Politicians Referring To God In Speeches (June 30) - According to WorldWide Religious News and the Associated Press, "COPENHAGEN: Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen appealed to politicians and public figures in comments published today to refrain from referring to God in their official speeches and campaigns.

"‘I certainly don't like that political leaders publicly involve God in their speeches,’ Fogh Rasmussen was quoted as saying by Denmark's Kristeligt Dagblad, or Christian Daily.

"Without identifying lawmakers, public figures or groups by name, Fogh Rasmussen said that frequent reference to God represents a ‘dangerous cocktail’ - especially when rivals and warring sides each claim God is on their side.

"‘If all rivals insist on having God on their side in the fight, then it becomes a brutal world,’ he said. ‘Any human being, including politicians, should here show humility and recognize that we don't even know what this or that God would think of our ventures.’

"‘On this particular point, there is a great need for less religion in the public arena,’ said Fogh Rasmussen, who is not known as a churchgoer.

"The newspaper contrasted Fogh Rasmussen's stand with world leaders such as US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

"Bush is known for starting meetings with a prayer and referring to his Christian beliefs in his foreign policy. Blair said in a March interview that God would ultimately judge his decision to go to war with Iraq and that his policy decisions are guided by his Christian faith."...

Catholicism Withering Away In Britain (July 4) - According to CathNews.com, "A bracing 260-page report on the state of the Church in Britain has found that mass attendance has slumped by 40 per cent and Catholic marriages by 60 per cent over the last 30 years.

"Unison reports that the study also shows the number of adult converts fell by 55 per cent and first communions by nearly 40 per cent, describing the crisis as the ‘greatest pastoral and demographic catastrophe’ since the 16th century Reformation.

"The study by Anthony Spencer of the Pastoral Research Centre covers the period from 1963 to 1991. But more recent figures, from 2004, indicate little improvement.

"In 1991, Mass attendance in England and Wales stood at 1.3 million, compared with 960,000 in 2004. Deaths among congregations rose by 40 per cent between 1963 and 1991, reflecting the growing elderly profile....

"The Australian reports that in a separate publication, entitled The Future of the Catholic Church in Britain, a former senior press officer for the Catholic Bishops' Conference called for strategic thinking to fix the crisis.

"In the report, Tom Horwood says: ‘The church in Britain is suffering from a terminal decline in membership, irregular commitment among the remnant, and in the wake of persistent child-abuse scandals, a leadership of bishops and priests that has toppled from its pedestal with a mighty crash.’"...

European Court Rules That Mandatory Religion Classes In Turkey Are A Human Rights Violation (July 5) - According to WorldWide Religious News and the Turkish Daily News, "The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the obligation for children from Alawite families to attend mandatory religion classes in Turkey is a violation of human rights, reports yesterday's Hürriyet.

"According to the report, an Alawite family from Istanbul who wanted to exempt their daughter from having to attend mandatory religion courses applied to the court in 2001 after having exhausted all legal remedies available to them in Turkey. Europe's top human rights watchdog ruled that mandatory religion courses are a violation of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights covering the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. The court is expected to announce the decision publicly this fall.

"Abolishing mandatory religion courses altogether might now be a possibility, according to the Hürriyet report. In any case, children from Alawite families will have to be exempted from mandatory classes as the court's decision is binding for the Turkish ministries of justice and education since international covenants ratified by Turkey overrule domestic law in the Turkish legal system."

US House Rejects Gay Marriage Ban Amendment (July 18) - According to the Chicago Tribune and the Associated Press, "WASHINGTON: The House rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage on Tuesday, a setback that conservatives hope to turn to their advantage in the fall elections.

"The vote was 236-187 with one member voting ‘present,’ a slight improvement over the last House vote just before the 2004 election but still 47 short of the two-thirds majority needed to advance a constitutional amendment.

"Supporters argued that Congress must trump the actions of judges around the country who have ruled in favor of gay marriages. ‘We must not allow an institution of such great importance to be arbitrarily redefined for the entire nation by a small number of unelected judges,’ said Rep. Joe Pitts, R-Pa.

"Opponents, including 27 Republicans, argued that the measure was meaningless -- the Senate rejected the amendment last month, effectively killing it for this session of Congress -- as well as unneeded and mean-spirited.

"‘This is a partisan effort by Republicans to divide the American people rather than forge consensus to solve our urgent problems,’ said Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

"Democrats argued that the House's focus on the GOP's ‘American values agenda,’ which includes votes this week on a pledge protection bill and a vote on President Bush's expected veto of an embryonic stem cell bill, was a distraction at a time the nation faced serious domestic and international problems.

"Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., one of just a few openly gay members of Congress, said he took the proposal personally. ‘I think this is motivated, frankly, by a dislike of those of us who are gay and lesbian,’ he said, and he objected to ‘people taking batting practice with my life.’...

"The proposed amendment says that ‘marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither the Constitution, nor the constitution of any state, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.’

"The House vote in 2004 was 227-186 in favor of the amendment, 49 short of the needed majority.

"‘They have now failed twice in their shameful election-year ploys, using gay and lesbian families as punching bags,’ said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights group. ‘We didn't see any traction’ in Tuesday's vote, he said.

"The Constitution has been amended only 27 times, including the 10 amendments of the Bill of Rights. In addition to two-thirds congressional approval, a proposed amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the states."

Bolivia’s President Tells Catholic Church It Must Change, Respect Freedom Of Religion (July 26) - According to the BBC, "Bolivian President Evo Morales has called for change within the country's Catholic Church, accusing it of acting as in the ‘times of the Inquisition’.

"Mr Morales said Catholic leaders should understand the need for freedom of religion and belief.

"His government recently announced plans to teach a range of religions in schools, as well as native traditions.

"Church leaders have opposed the planned changes, calling on Catholics to defend their faith.

"‘I want to ask the (Church) hierarchies that they understand freedom of religion and beliefs in our country,’ Mr Morales said.

"‘It's not possible to impose their views. I am very worried by the behaviour of some Catholic Church leaders, who act like in the time of the Inquisition.’...

"He spoke out after Catholic leaders criticised the planned reforms, which would break the long-standing dominance of Catholicism in Bolivian schools.

"The archbishop of Santa Cruz, Cardinal Julio Terrazzas, said on Sunday that Catholics were being ‘passive’ in the face of Mr Morales' planned changes.

"‘Great wars begin with small theories... with this discourse of hate, of rancour, of unforgiveness,’ he said.

"On Sunday the country's education minister, Felix Patzi, said Catholic leaders were ‘lying’ over claims that the government was aiming to destroy the Church.

"However, he said the planned changes would allow Bolivians to break down ‘ethnic borders’ that have marginalised native traditions for more than 500 years, the Associated Press reported.

"A majority of Bolivians describe themselves as Catholic, according to census figures.

"After the Roman Catholic Church consolidated its power across Europe in the 12th and 13th Century, it set up the Inquisition to ensure that heretics did not undermine that authority."

An eye-opening essay from syndicated columnist Robyn Blumner appeared in the Columbus Dispatch  on July 24.

Here it is (I’ve taken the liberty of underlining some of the most important points):

"If you're willing to lie, deceive and intimidate others for your beliefs, the Christian Right needs you to staff the nation's Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

"A new congressional study [http://reform.democrats.house.gov/story.asp?ID=10] exposes what goes on in these centers for what it is: religiously grounded anti-abortion stagecraft designed to lure vulnerable, pregnant women and use lies to scare them out of ending their pregnancy.

"So what is the government doing funding them?

"There are about 4,000 CPCs in the country today, as opposed to 2,000 abortion clinics. The CPCs are often affiliated with fundamentalist and evangelical religious organizations and churches. Their modus operandi is to appear to be a legitimate medical facility, like a Planned Parenthood clinic - in fact they are often in the same buildings or shopping centers as abortion clinics, hoping to confuse the clinic's clients. But when unsuspecting women, usually young and low-income, come in for a free pregnancy test or ultrasound, they are bombarded with anti-abortion propaganda that has little relationship to medical truth.

"Since 2001, and President Bush's push to redirect tax money into faith-based institutions, the CPCs have received more than $30 million in federal funds, much of it for abstinence-only education programs, but some for strengthening their operations. Florida spends $2 million a year for a ''pregnancy support' hot line that directs women to their local CPC, and some states send the proceeds from their 'Choose Life' license plate programs to the centers.

"That's millions of tax dollars underwriting religiously motivated fraud that can adversely impact women's lives and health.

"A new congressional study, requested by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., found that 20 of 23 federally funded centers investigated used a variety of well-worn scare tactics. Female congressional staffers who called pretending to be 17 and possibly pregnant were told by CPC counselors that abortion significantly increases the risk of breast cancer, future infertility and suffering 'post-abortion syndrome.'

"It's all bunk. A 1997 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found no causal relationship between abortion and breast cancer, consistent with the overwhelming consensus of the medical community. As to subsequent infertility, there is no more risk of that from an abortion than from giving birth. And 'post-abortion syndrome' is a made-up neurosis that is not recognized by any legitimate psychiatric association.

"The medical facts are that a woman is 11 times more likely to die from complications arising from childbirth than from an abortion. But that never gets mentioned by the CPCs.

"Katie Stephens, an options counselor at a Planned Parenthood affiliate and an abortion clinic in Gainesville, Fla., says she sees the CPCs' handiwork all the time. Stephens estimates that about 10 percent of her clients first had contact with a CPC. She says they often come to her harboring 'real extreme' ideas about the dangers of abortion. They've been told that there is a good chance they won't be able to have future children, Stephens says, and some have asked her, 'Am I going to die?'

"Deb Berry, writing for Orlando Weekly magazine in 2003, [http://www.orlandoweekly.com/features/story.asp?id=3042] described in depth her personal experience with a CPC years ago when she became pregnant with an abusive boyfriend's child. Looking for an abortion referral, she responded to an ad that read 'Pregnant? Scared? We can help.' When she told the Orlando-area center that she had no money, wasn't ready to be a mother and her boyfriend was abusive, a staffer told her to 'just put your faith in God.' And as to the abuse, she was assured that 'he'll change once he sees his beautiful little baby.'

"Yeah, right.

"The CPCs' true purpose is not to serve women in trouble but to proselytize and block women from receiving valid information about their health and options.

"Many CPCs like to claim that they will provide prenatal care to women who plan to have their children, but a telling report by the Christian conservative group, the Family Research Council, worried aloud about the diversion of too many resources to future moms. The report said that 'there are sharply rising numbers of women coming to the centers who are not "at risk" for abortion. These women have decided to carry their children to term and come in for material assistance or other services....

"'These trends,' the report notes, 'could threaten the primary mission of the centers - to reach women at risk for abortion.'

"It would be comforting to think that this is just the work of a narrow group of extremists and leave it at that. But when our tax dollars are supporting this dangerous lunacy and when the president vetoes a bill that supports promising life-saving medical research in order to protect the 'life' of a cluster of cells, the delusional have truly taken over. Medical fraud is official policy when abortion politics are at play."

*****

Here are a few passages from a summary of the congressional study mentioned above:

----- "The centers provided false and misleading information about a link between abortion and breast cancer. There is a medical consensus that induced abortion does not cause an increased risk of breast cancer. Despite this consensus, eight centers told the caller that having an abortion would in fact increase her risk. One center said that 'all abortion causes an increased risk of breast cancer in later years,' while another told the caller that an abortion would 'affect the milk developing in her breasts' and that the risk of breast cancer increased by as much as 80% following an abortion.

----- "The centers provided false and misleading information about the effect of abortion on future fertility. Abortions in the first trimester, using the most common abortion procedure, do not pose an increased risk of infertility. However, seven centers told the caller that having an abortion could hurt her chances of having children in the future. One center said that damage from abortion could lead to 'many miscarriages' or to 'permanent damage' so 'you wouldn’t be able to carry,' telling the caller that this is 'common' and happens 'a lot.'

----- "The centers provided false and misleading information about the mental health effects of abortion. Research shows that significant psychological stress after an abortion is no more common than after birth. However, thirteen centers told the caller that the psychological effects of abortion are severe, long-lasting, and common. One center said that the suicide rate in the year after an abortion 'goes up by seven times.' Another center said that post-abortion stress suffered by women having abortions is 'much like' that seen in soldiers returning from Vietnam and 'is something that anyone who’s had an abortion is sure to suffer from.'"

*****

According to a July 18 story that the Washington Post ran about all this [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/17/AR2006071701145.html], Molly Ford (who is identified as spokeswoman for one of the two large networks of pregnancy resource centers) "agrees with pregnancy counselors who tell women that abortion may increase the risk of breast cancer, infertility and a condition described by antiabortion groups as ‘post-abortion syndrome.’

"‘We have many studies that show significant medical problems associated with abortion,’ she said.

"Those studies are at odds with mainstream medical opinion. An expert panel of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), for instance, concluded in 2003 that an ‘abortion is not associated with an increase in breast cancer.’ The experts said their conclusion was ‘well established’ by the evidence....

"Some counselors also said the psychological effects of abortion are severe and long-lasting, while research generally has found that severe stress reactions are no more common after an abortion than after giving birth."

*****

According to Deb Berry’s Orlando Weekly story that was mentioned above, "The first CPC in the United States was launched in 1967 by anti-abortion zealot Robert Pearson in Hawaii after the state liberalized its abortion laws.... Pearson's manual instructs CPC staff to use vague and evasive language so as not to clue women and girls in to the fact that the centers are anti-abortion. He advises centers to list themselves in the phone book ‘under the headings of abortion, pregnancy, birth control information, clinics, social services, welfare organizations, women's organizations and services, and health services’ in order to mislead women. The manual also suggests that CPCs locate themselves in the same buildings as abortion clinics so that ‘the abortion chamber is paying for advertising to bring that girl to you.’... Pearson's philosophy deems that CPC staffers should use whatever means necessary to prevent a woman from getting an abortion. In a 1994 speech, he declared: ‘Obviously, we're fighting Satan ... A killer, who in this case is the girl who wants to kill her baby, has no right to information that will help her [do that].’...

"Every CPC I visited warned me about ‘post-abortion syndrome,’ a condition not recognized or acknowledged by any legitimate medical, psychiatric or psychological institution. It exists nowhere in the ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,’ the comprehensive reference for mental-health professionals. Research studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, American Psychologist and Professional Psychology: Research and Practice have all concluded that ‘post-abortion syndrome’ is a fiction. The same studies report that the most common emotion reported by women after an abortion is relief."

*****

I guess we really shouldn’t be surprised. Christians have been spreading lies about hell and eternal damnation for centuries in an attempt to scare people into embracing their absurd theology. Spreading lies about abortion in an attempt to get people to embrace their beliefs on that subject, too, is par for the course.

The fact that tax dollars from atheists and other non-Christians have been helping them to spread these lies since 2001 just takes things to a new and especially obnoxious level....