I Autumn

2002

A Journal of Atheist News and Thought

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American Atheists Inc.

is a nonprofit, nonpolitical, educational organization dedicated to the
complete and absolute separation of
state and church, accepting the explanation of Thomas Jefferson that the
First Amendment to the Constitution
of the United States was meant to
create a "wall of separation" between
state and church.
American Atheists is organized
to stimulate and promote freedom of thought and inquiry concerning religious beliefs, creeds, dogmas,
tenets, rituals, and practices;
to collect and disseminate information, data, and literature on all
religions and promote a more thorough understanding of them, their origins, and their histories;
to advocate, labor for, and promote in all lawful ways the complete
and absolute separation of state and
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to act as a "watch dog" to challenge any attempted breach of the
wall of separatrion between state and
church;
to advocate, labor for, and promote in all lawful ways the establishment and maintenance
of a thoroughly secular system of education
available to all;

outlook verifiable by experience and

the scientific method, independent of
all arbitrary assumptions of authority
and creeds. An Atheist is free of belief
in supernatural entities of all kinds.
Materialism declares that the cosmos is devoid of immanent conscious
purpose; that it is governed by its own
inherent, immutable, and impersonal
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is in
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efforts. This is a commitment which is
in its very essence life-asserting. It
considers the struggle for progress as
a moral obligation that is impossible
without noble ideas that inspire us to
bold, creative works. Materialism
holds that our potential for good and
more fulfilling cultural development
is, for all practical purposes, unlimited.

to encourage the development

and public acceptance of a humane
ethical system stressing the mutual
sympathy, understanding, and interdependence of all people and the corresponding responsibility of each individual in relation to society;
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American Atheist
A Journal

of Atheist

Autumn 2002

News and Thought

EDITOR'S DESK
Godless Americans March on
Washington, 2 Nov. 2002
Frank R. Zindler

AMERICAN ATHEIST

Atheist Station: Coming

soon to a town near you!
5
Lorie Polansky
What a shock, when Atheists go
public in Catholic territory!
Holy Land Experience
10
Cindy F. Sabourin
Religious kitsch on a grand scale
makes it hard for a Florida correspondent to keep a straight face and keep from getting kicked out of
a theme park that's beyond belief.

Cover art: Tom Sullivan's Teeshirt design for the Godless

Americans March on
Washington is superimposed
upon a photo of a graffito
sighted on Rt. 50 near Salem
West Virginia.
'

Breaking the Final Taboo:

Electing Atheists to political
office
15
Eddie Tabash
A lecture given at the 28th
National Convention of American
Atheists. Why we must put peripheral differences aside and elect
Atheists to public office.
In Praise of Public Piety:
Culture, politics, and digital
salvation
20
Conrad F. Goeringer
Disgraced business execs are
learning a few tricks from fallen
political and religious leaders.
When you get caught red-handed
head for church and repent on '
camera.
Sending God into the Ranks of
the Unemployed: What science
is doing to religion
26
Frank R. Zindler
Gods rule only the unknown.
The more we know about ourselves
and the world, the less there is for
gods to do.

Ayodhya: India's flash-point 33

Margaret Bhatty
Hindu fanatics destroy a mosque
in the city of Ayodhya, and that's
just the beginning of the hellish
world born-again Hinduism seeks
to create.
Lord Byron: The demons of
Calvinism
36
Gary Sloan
Sex and religion: things they
never taught you about the great
poet in your Puritan-intimidated
high school English class.
HOLY PARAPHERNALIA
MANIA
Holy Driving Accessories
39
Arlo J. Pignotti
Diplomatic driver's licenses from
the Embassy of Heaven? Almost,
but not quite. The founder of the
science of religiokitschology
explores the phenomenon of
religion on wheels.
POETRY

40

Atheism:
Positive and Negative
42
David Eller
Our American Atheists director
for Colorado, an anthropologist by
profession, shows he is no stranger
to the aeries of philosophical
discourse.
KAGIN'S COLUMN
On the Gospel of Thaddaeus 45
Edwin Kagin
It's a bit early for Easter, but
great discoveries pay no attention
to the calendar.
TALKING BACK

49

About the March

51

Volume 40, No.4

Parsippany, New Jersey

Autumn 2002

Page 1

American
Atheist
Volume 40 Number

Membership Application for

American Atheists Inc.
4

EDITOR / MANAGING EDITOR

Frank R. Zindler
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Ann E. Zindler
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Conrad F. Goeringer
BUSINESS MANAGER
Ellen Johnson
The American Atheist is published by
American Atheist Press four times a
year, in December, March, June, and
September.
Printed in the USA, 2002 by American
Atheist Press. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without
written permission is prohibited.
ISSN: 0332-4310.
Mailing address: P.O.Box 5733
Parsippany, NJ 07054-6733.
Voice:908-276-7300
FAX: 908-276-7402.
E-mail: editor@atheists.org
For information on electronic access to
American Atheist Press publications, consult: http://www.atheists.org
ftp.atheists.org/pub/
The World-Wide-Web edition of
American Atheist can be accessed at:
http://www.americanatheist.org
American Atheist is indexed in Alternative
Press Index.
Manuscripts submitted must be typed,
double-spaced, and accompanied by a
stamped, self-addressed envelope. Documents may be submitted on computer disk
also, but print copies should be included
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Writers' Guidelines is available upon
request. The editor assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts.
American Atheist Press publishes a
variety of Atheist,
Agnostic, and
Freethought
material. A catalog is
available for $1.00.

Subscriptions to the American Atheist

magazine are $20 for four issues ($25
outside the U.S.).Gift subscriptions are
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Page 2

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Inc., said membership being open only to Atheists.
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E-mail: editor@atheists.org
Autumn 2001

American Atheist

Editor's Desk

Godless Americans March on Washington

Saturday 2 November 2002

obin Murray-O'Hair, my predecessor as editor of American

Atheist Press, was once stripsearched and jailed for contempt of
court. What was her criminal act?
Refusing to swear a god-oath prerequisite for serving on a jury in Texas.
Astonishingly, this occurred long after 27
July 1984,when a Reagan-appointed federal district court judge named James R.
Nowlin reluctantly and belatedly had
signed a consent decree ruling that the
anti-Atheist clause of the "Bill of Rights"
of the Texas Constitution was "void and
of no further effect in that it is in violation of the Establishment Clause of the
First Amendment of the United States
Constitution." Article I, Sec. 4 of the
Texas Constitution had stated (and still
does): "No religious test shall ever be
required as a qualification to any office
or public trust in this State; nor shall
anyone be excluded from holding office
on account of his religious sentiments,
provided he acknowledge the existence of
a Supreme Being." Despite the admitted
unconstitutionality
of the italicized
clause, the wording of the Texas
Constitution has never been changed,
and Robin Murray-O'Hair was not only
barred from serving on a jury but was
incarcerated for exercising her constitutional right to freedom from religion.
Madalyn O'Hair and Jon Murray too
repeatedly came to grief and legal disability due to the god-oath problem in
Texas. Some years later, in the supposedly
enlightened state of Ohio, I too was
barred from serving on a federal grand
jury as a result of my request to be
administered a secular oath. Because I
would not swear "so help me, God," I
could not fulfill my civic duty to serve as
a juror.
Texas is not the only state that
explicitly deprives Atheists of their right
to serve as officers in the public service,
however. (Inexplicit bias against Atheists
characterizes the functioning of the governments of all fifty states.) Art. 19, Sec.

Frank R. Zindler
Parsippany, New Jersey

1 of the Arkansas Constitution, for example, states that "No person who denies
the being of a God shall hold any officein
the civil department of this State, nor be
competent to testify as a witness in any
Court." Art. I, Sec. 4 of the Pennsylvania
Constitution declares that "No person
who acknowledges the being of a God
and a future state of rewards and punishments shall, on account of his religious sentiments, be disqualified to hold
any officeor place of trust or profit under
this Commonwealth." Although these
constitutions have been challenged by
Atheists, they are still fully in force.
Over the years, Atheist challenges in
other states whose constitutions contained explicit legal impediments for
nonbelievers have been seemingly successful, yet the discriminatory language
remains in four other state constitutions.
Art. 14, Sec. 265 of the Mississippi
Constitution still reads: "No person who
denies the existence of a Supreme Being
shall hold any office in this state." Art.
VI, Sec. 8 of the North Carolina
Constitution still declares: "The following persons shall be disqualified for
office: First, any person who shall deny
the being of Almighty God."Art. IV, Sec.
2, of the South Carolina Constitution
still says that "No person shall be eligible
to the office of governor who denies the
existence of the Supreme Being (also Lt.
Governor)." And Art. IX, Par. 2 of the
supreme law of Tennessee still says that
"No person who denies the being of God,
or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil
department of the State."
The retention of the unconstitutionallanguage in these constitutions means
that Atheists de facto are still secondclass citizens in the states in question. In
Arkansas and Pennsylvania, of course,
Atheists are second-class citizens dejure.
America is becoming evermore a
hostile environment for those of us who
disbelieve the superstitions of the masses. The US Supreme Court itself has
been taken over by religionists who disavow the constitutional principle that
the state should be kept separate from
the church. The US Congress is tripping
Autumn 2002

over itself in its rush to declare that we

are "One Nation Under God" or to make
"God Bless America" a national hymn.
And then, of course, there is the
Executive Branch of government which,
even when on frequent vacations, seeks
to give "faith-based services" their own
private keys to the Treasury of the
United States.
We Won't Take It Any More!
Atheists cannot take it any more.
Atheists will not take it any more.
Atheists are going to stand up in protest,
and they are going to do so in their
nation's capital city.
On Saturday, 2 November 2002,
American Atheists and perhaps as many
as one hundred different Freethought,
Humanist, Atheist, Agnostic and similar
groups are going to join together in The
Godless Americans March on Washington! They will exercise their FirstAmendment "right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
Government for a redress of grievances."
They will gather on the National
Mall on the west side of the US Capitol
building from approximately 11 a.m.
until 2 or 3 p.m. There will be a canopied
stage area with podium and loudspeakers, rest-room facilities, and support
services. (Updates of details can be
obtained at www.godlessamericans.org
or by calling the American Atheist
Center at 908-276-7300.)
What are the grievances for which
we Godless Americans shall seek
redress? They are:

We demand equal rights including

fair treatment and protection in the
workplace; when seeking public office
and exercising the right to serve on
juries or give testimony; and in having a
voice in the halls of Congress, in our
state legislatures and other government
venues.

We call for an end to discrimination

against Atheists in organizations which
receive public funds and special entitlements, such as the Boy Scouts of
America. Nonbeliefmust not be a litmus
test for inclusion in such groups.
Page 3

 We demand an end to harassment

and other violations of our rights in public schools. "Prayer Bullying" and other
forms of coercive religion cannot be tolerated in what should be a totally secular public school system. Public schools
must not become centers for religious
proselytizing, the unconstitutional promotion of religion through teaching socalled "creationism," or smuggling sectarian beliefs into the schools through
ruses such as "student-led" public
prayer.

We call for an end to the government use of our tax money to subsidize
religious denominations, faith-based
social programs, and other entitlement
schemes.
We demand an end to the exclusion
of Atheists, Freethinkers, and other
"Godless Americans" as full citizens of
this nation. Our leaders, including the
President, must stop calling the nation
to prayer, or claiming that we are a
"Christian" country. Godless Americans
have been patriotic, and many have
served - and now serve - in our nation's
armed forces. We insist on inclusion
when this nation is rallied to appropriate causes.
We call for an end to the display of
religious mottoes and symbols on government property, and especially in public schools and the halls of government.
We also call for the restoration of E
Pluribus Unum ('Out of Many, One') as
the secular, national motto of a free
'people.
There are over thirty million
Godless Americans - more than there
are Jews, Lutherans, Episcopalians,
Mormons, and Orthodox churches combined. It is time our voices be heard. It is
time for us to be accorded full citizenship in the nation that emerged as the
greatest creation of the Enlightenment.
When the elder George Bush declared in
Chicago that "No, I don't think Atheists
should be considered citizens or patriots ... This is One Nation Under God,"he
was grievously wrong. We must demonstrate the fallacies of the father before
the face of his son, who aggressively
seeks to enact the disenfranchisement of
unbelievers propounded by his sire.
You too must join us in Washington,
DC. This is your fight. This concerns
your rights. It is your liberties that are
at stake. You must help us create a "critical mass" at the center of governmental
power - before it is too late. We may not
get a second chance.
Page 4

Published by
AMERICANATHEIST PRESS
Cranford, New Jersey

THE BIBLE
HANDBOOK
Revised Edition
By W. P. Ball, G. W. Foote,
John Bowden,
Richard M. Smith, & others.
Introduction to revised
edition by Jon G. Murray
Foreword to the First
American Edition by
Madalyn O'Hair
ISBN 0-910309-26-4 $17.00
If you are armed with this
nineteenth-century
classic of
Atheist biblical scholarship, no
Bible-thumping missionary will
ever be safe on your doorstep
again! You will have all the devastating evidence needed to
prove that the so-called "Holy
Bible"is actually Wholly Babble.
Many people innocently suppose that the Bible with its 66 (Protestant
edition) or 72 books (Catholic edition) is the inerrant word of a loving god. If
it is inerrant, it cannot contradict itself. If it is the product of a loving deity,
it cannot advocate hatred and evil.
Materials compiled in the nineteenth century in England by G. W. Foote
and W. P. Ball, as well as a twentieth-century study by the Australian John
Bowden, demonstrate that the scriptures considered sacred by Jews and
Christians are actually ghastly, morally outrageous, fatally illogical productions that contradict each other at every turn. The Bible Handbook proves
beyond quibble that the Holy Bible is the most imperfect major book ever
written by uninspired men.
First compiled for American readers in 1983 by American Atheists
founder Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair, it was reissued in an expanded edition
in 1986 by her son Jon G. Murray, then President of American Atheists Inc.
Both the so-called Old and New Testaments are mined for contradictions,
absurdities, atrocities, unfulfilled prophecies, broken promises, immoralities,
indecencies, and obscenities. The King James Version has never been so
much fun to study!
CONTRADICTION
I am the LORD, I change not. Malachi 3:6
And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.
Exodus 32:14
FAMILY VALUES
If a man come unto me [Jesus] and hate not his father, and mother, and wife,
and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot
be my disciple. Luke 14:26

Autumn 2002

American Atheist

Atheist Station
Coming Soon to a Town Near You!
By Lorie Polansky

Background: way, way back!

enealogy holds little appeal for

me, and I am not an adherent of
ancestor worship - but I surely
admire and thank my ancestor who
reached the shores of Virginia in 1633. I
shudder to consider the possibilities had
he stayed in County Fermanagh,
Ireland!
In 1775, my great, great, great,
great-grandfather,
Michael McGuire,
joined the Continental Army. He served
as a captain directly under General
George Washington. In 1787, he was
awarded a land grant as payment for his
service during the Revolutionary War.
This meant he could claim all the land
around which he could walk his horse
from sunup to sundown. He had previ-

As long as it was labeled "Barber

Shop," the rehabilitated building
raised nary a hackle nor ruffled
a feather.
Parsippany, New Jersey

ously traveled through Central

Pennsylvania and decided to
stake his claim there.
At the time, he was co-owner
of a tavern in Taneytown,
Maryland. His partner, also a
veteran, traded his land grant
for Michael's share of the tavern.
Now Michael had two days in
which to block out his territory.
Naturally, he chose the time of
the summer solstice! Upon taking possession, he became the
first white man to inhabit that
part of the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania.
This land is largely in what
is now Cambria County, Pennsylvania. Captain Michael MeGuire died in 1793, bequeathing
one-third of his property to
Bishop Carroll of Baltimore, to
be held in trust for resident clergy. Part of it became the
Ron Stauffer and Chris Davis set up
Borough of Loretto. In 1796,
scaffolding, preparing for the great
Rev. Demetrius
Augustine
transformation.
Smith (the alias used by the
Russian prince/priest, Demetrius
Prince Gallitzin is much revered
A. Gallitzin) arrived at McGuire's
locally. Presently, he is under consideraSettlement, as it was then known. He
tion by the Vatican for canonization. The
saw the potential of the area as a sancsmall town of Gallitzin was, of course,
tuary for Catholics and invested
named in his honor. It is into this com$150,000 of his personal fortune in land
placent nest of Catholics that we move
adjoining that which Michael McGuire
for "the rest of the story!"
had given to Bishop Carroll.
It is mainly because of McGuire's
Making a statement
largesse that Catholicism flourished in
Our little band of heretics has disthis region of the state, but Gallitzin's
covered that nothing is more disturbing
legend of trading princely robes for
to a placid community of Christians
priestly ones gets more attention. The
than painting a building bright red and
town of Loretto has been under church
placing two-foot-high white letters on
control for centuries. It once included
the front that read "ATHEIST STASt. Francis Seminary, which was sold to
TION." It is akin to disturbing a nest of
the federal government when vocations
slumbering rattlesnakes - and once
to the priesthood faltered. It still boasts
roused, the commotion is something to
Prince Gallitzin's Chapel House (hisbehold!
toric site), the Basilica of St. Michael
Last summer, my mother deeded
the Archangel, St. Francis University,
over to me her property at 320 Railroad
and the Carmelite Monastery (strangely
Street in Gallitzin, Pennsylvania. It is
named, since it houses nuns). Retired
located
along the mainline of the old
Franciscans live at the former estate of
Pennsylvania Railroad, at the highest
Charles M. Schwab, steel magnate.
Autumn 2002

Page 5

point between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. It is famous for the twin tunnels,
completed in 1853 and 1905 by immigrant laborers. These tunnels were targeted for destruction during the Civil
War and again by the Nazis during
World War II.

motivated. Next, we painted the windows and trim white and installed a
white steel door. Finally, we repositioned
my mom's hand-made one-foot-high
wooden letters (freshly painted white)
that spelled out "BARBER SHOP."
The work was completed in
early September 2001. Many
favorable
comments
were
heard about the improvement
in the building's appearance.
As a lark, I made a certificate
on my computer, which stated
that the National Railroad
Historical Society (purely fictional) had honored me with
the "Bells and Whistles
Award" and that the work had
been done with the help of
their grant and private donations.
A "for rent" sign was
placed in the window, and several newspaper ads were run.
Only two people responded,
and neither completed a rental
application after I informed
them that a credit check was
required. I put the matter on a
back
burner
as
winter
approached.

The Catalyst
Fast-forward, now, to May
Lorie Polansky in doorway as repair of
of
2002.
The Annual Conventhe front facade begins.
tion of American Atheists in
Boston had instilled Ron and me with
The small lot is the site of a 2-112activist zeal. Upon returning home, one
story frame building - one of the oldest
of our missions was to attempt to conin the town - which had housed her barvince the Veteran's Hospital to disallow
bershop for twenty years. The building
a reprise of last year's bible-thumping
had been vacant and was suffering from
God and Country Rally by Faith Baptist
obvious neglect when I took possession.
Church. I sent a letter to the hospital
In July, I enlisted the aid of my two main
director. When no answer was forthcommen, Ron Stauffer and Chris Davis, for
ing, Ron and I made several follow-up
rehab of the outside.
phone calls.
Five weeks after the hospital
Jesus would have been proud of
received my letter, I received a reply
our carpentry work!
advising me that its policy permitted
If you are not a weekend handyperthis use - and that I was free to peacefully protest (as we did last year) or have
son, you may skip this paragraph and
just study the photos. We stripped off
a similar program. I immediately subthe old shingles and tarpaper. To limit
mitted an application, and our group
vandalism, we closed in the rear and
began planning our "Secular Salute." I
side windows. Then we applied T-ll1
sent a Press Release to every local radio
and primer. Ron (an irrepressible railand television station and to the newspapers, and it was ignored.
road bum suggested we paint the building "PRR red" - in keeping with the
This was not unexpected - but this
time, I became really annoyed. How
theme of the town.
could we ever get recognition by the
The shade of custom-mixed red was
media? The religious dominate the
lighter than expected. Perhaps one more
fourth estate - perhaps because they
application would have produced a truer
can afford to buy so much advertising
match - but none of us were sufficiently
Page 6

Autumn 2002

space. The opinion page is chock-full of

nauseatingly pious pap, and there is a
plethora of "news" articles quote people
invoking their god. Our paper even has
a special Religion section every Friday.
Inspiration struck! Let's use the old
barber shop to get our message out! Ron
and Chris relished the idea. Why not
change the lettering on the front, and
use the blank side wall facing the railroad tracks for a billboard? Chris drew
the letters for ATHEIST STATION on
sheets of three-quarter-inch
plywood
and cut them with a scroll saw. Ron and
I primed and painted them (white).
"The better the day, the better the
deed" - so on the Sunday before our
Secular Salute, we switched the lettering. I put signs in the window advertising our program at the v.A. Hospital
and one saying, "Coming soon - watch
for our window display."
We let the pot simmer, and eight
days later it boiled over. Chris called to
inform me that a notice had been posted
on the building, warning that I was in
violation of an ordinance limiting the
size of signs allowed in the borough to
three square feet. A $500 a day fine
would be imposed if I did not file a
permit application within ten days.
An Altoona Mirror reporter left two
messages for me, requesting an interview (one on my business number and
one on my newly acquired ATHEIST
STATION number). Two days later, the
front page carried the story, complete
with a colorful photo of ATHEIST STATION.

Payback is Hell!
I sweet-talked Ron and Chris into
another day's work at ATHEIST STATION. First, they protected the glass of
both windows with sheets of Plexiglas.
Then, the larger of the front windows
was converted into a display case. The
ledge was widened to 14 inches, the
sides encased, and a set of plywood
doors were cut for the back of the case. It
was painted white.
Ron and I toured the borough, photographing signs that were obviously
larger than stipulated in the ordinance.
I started a file for the ACLU lawyer with
correspondence, permits, ordinances,
and photos.
Goaded by the insults of the Catholic priest, my previously nebulous window display ideas crystallized in my
mind. I would dedicate my first exhibit
to my late husband, Joe Polansky, who
had spent eleven years in a Benedictine
American Atheist

The red flag is ready for waving. The charging of the bulls begins.
monastery and was an Atheist for his
remaining twenty-five years. The theme
would be the Catholic Church. I began
churning out colorful pages with brief,
large-print articles on the following subjects:

Pope Joan (the one woman who

made it to the top of ecclesia)
Adolph Hitler: baptized Catholic,
altar boy, aspirant to the priesthood

Mother Teresa - the Merciless Hag

Fishermen of Men's Money (the

financial reason for eating fish on
Fridays)

Federal prison population statistics

for Catholics vs. Atheists
A pie chart showing 75% of church
donations going to sexual abuse cases
A daisy (he loves me, he knocks me
up) of natural family planning

Bumper stickers: "Thou shalt not

covet thine altar boy" and "Mary was an
unwed teenage mother"

A few pedophilia comics

These I pinned to two 24-by-35-inch
corkboards which I mounted on the rear
doors of the window display.
From the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift
Shop, I acquired five scapulars for a
donation of one dollar (stamped "Separate Church and State"). A sign told the
story of how the Vatican mixed animal
bones with human ones and sold them
as "relics."
Parsippany, New Jersey

A chessboard added another splash

of color on the white background - with
four bishops lying on their sides and a
caption reading:
How many more bishops will fall?
How many bishops are pedophiles?
I had a small faux aquarium: pretty
little plastic fish, sea horses, and clams
bobbing around in a lighted tank. I
made a background of a priest holding a
communion wafer in one hand and a
fishing pole in the other, with dollar
signs here and there. (This was placed
beside the Fishermen of Men's Money
poster.) The small light helps provide
nighttime illumination until Chris, official STATION electrician, has time to
install permanent display-case lighting
with a photoelectric eye.
For the sake of decoration, my final
touches were a basket of ivy and a small
bud vase with berries and flowers. (And,
at Ron's urging, a US flag mounted high
on the side wall - for those whose small
minds equate Atheism and communism
and/or lack of patriotism).
I had made some ATHEIST STATION postcards on my computer, using
a photo of the building for the front picture. As soon as I had completed the
window display, I went directly to the
Gallitzin Post Office and handed the
clerk one of these. It was addressed to
the priest who had equated us with
Autumn 2002

garbage in the Altoona Mirror article. It

read:
Since you are so familiar with
garbage, I'm sure you will appreciate our first window display at
ATHEIST STATION!
(signed) Lorie Polansky

Atheists thrown to the Christians

As required by the notice and a certified letter I received, I submitted an
application, a site plan, and a check for
$10.00. The work to be done included the
signage
The newspaper informed us that a
Council Meeting was scheduled for June
12. Since the matter of our "disgraceful
heresy" would be a hot topic, it was
decided that several of us should attend.
Bill Walker volunteered to join Ron,
Chris, and me. I treated the guys to a
meal at the Hong Kong Buffet, where we
were well fortified for the upcoming
ordeal. Upon our arrival in the small
town of Gallitzin, we noticed an unusual
number of vehicles parked near the borough building. Citizens clustered outside and in the foyer. More people lined
the hallway to the meeting room, which
had standing room only. It is my opinion
that they expected a lone woman to
appear and that they were nonplused by
my sidekicks. All the people outside
council chambers and several from
inside left the premises upon our entry.
Page 7

John Wayne once remarked that

courage was being scared to death but
saddling up anyway. I identified with
that adage! Prior to Memorial Day, my
only experience with public speaking
had been my last - I promised myselfl I
had addressed my fellow recruits at the
Amarillo (TX) Police Academy in the
mid-1970s: I was one of the "old"
recruits, the rest being testosteroneloaded 21-year-old guys. I was a woman,
a feminist - and a Yankee! My topic was
the need for women in law enforcement.
The insolent ennui on the faces of my
classmates spurred me on, but I did not
consider it one of my shining hours.
The borough had not provided me
with an agenda. I glanced at the papers
of the woman next to me and was dismayed to see that I was next to speak.
Between an attack of nerves and the
MSG in the Chinese food I had just
eaten, my mouth felt as ifit were packed
with cotton. Ron left the room to find me
a glass of water, but before he returned I
was front and center. Here are the words
I used to address the members of council:
My name is Lorie Polansky, and
I am owner of the building at 320
Railroad Street. I am also a member of ATHEIST STATION, which
has members from Bedford, Blair,
Cambria, Centre, and Clearfield
Counties.
I am not a public speaker. However, circumstances require me to
address you tonight concerning the
use of my building as a meeting
place for our group and a venue for
displaying our views. Several members are with me tonight to help
answer any reasonable and pertinent questions.
I will try to explain briefly what
an Atheist is - and what an Atheist
is not - by answering some questions that have been asked of me so
far by residents and reporters.
Most Atheists and Agnostics
keep a low profile - in order to avoid
situations such as this. We don't all
declare
our convictions
with
bumper stickers or Letters to the
Editor. But I would hazard a guess
that most of you in this room have
known an Atheist or two in your
lifetimes.
Everyone in this room was born
an Atheist. Most of us were indoctrinated by religious parents in
what they believed to be the "one
true faith." Every member of our
Page 8

group has been in your shoes, yet

we were able to cast aside superstitions that had ruled our lives. It
might happen to you someday, if
you start to think for yourselfl
Discarding one's faith is very
much like an alcoholic opting for
sobriety: each is recovering from an
addiction. Each requires introspection, courage, and self-reliance.
Some Atheists cannot risk their
livelihoods. He could be the doctor
who delivered your babies - or the
mechanic who keeps his mind occupied while his hands fix your car.
She could be the little old lady
beside you in the movie theatre who
will take her secret to the grave
rather
than
offend her dear
Christian friends - and that nice
young neighbor who always offers
to cut your grass. (He learned early
the pitfalls of admitting his enlightened state when he was denied
membership in the Boy Scouts.)
Here are some facts about members of Atheist Station:
We do not believe in god, the
devil, or the bible.
We do not go door to door, as do
Mormon missionaries or Jehovah's
Witnesses, to try to convert Christians to reason.
We do not parade up and down
streets carrying placards and banners - unless we are reacting to
Constitutional violations or we are
lobbying on the other side of an
issue (such as reproductive freedom
for women).
We are not members ofthe KKK
- which, for your information, is a
Christian organization.
We do not ask for donations that is a practice used by churches.
We accept the reality of scientifically verifiable evidence.
We fervently act to safeguard
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND
STATE whenever and wherever it
is threatened (in keeping with this
unique aspect of our country's foundation): for example, attempts to
put prayer back in schools, to place
plaques of the Ten Commandments
in public buildings, or to siphon tax
money into parochial schools or religious organizations ...
At our meetings, we discuss
issues of importance to us. This
could be something that is happening with our activist friends at
Pennsylvania Nonbelievers or on
the national scene with Freedom
Autumn 2002

from Religion Foundation, American Atheists, Americans United For

Separation of Church and State, or
the Center for Inquiry. We plan
events, such as the Secular Salute
we held on Memorial Day weekend
at the Van Zandt v.A. Medical
Center.
Our country was not founded on
a belief in god, nor is it based on
majority rule. In fact, our Constitution and Bill of Rights specifically
protect the rights of the minority.
The July window display at Atheist
Station will be full of information
on our country's godless Constitution.
The latest survey shows that 29
million Americans are nonbelievers.
While that is a significant number,
it still is overshadowed by the number of people who consider themselves to be religious.
We are here tonight to defend
our rights:
to freedom from religion.
to assemble and to express
our point of view
to be treated equally before
the law.
I will not engage in a debate
over the existence of your god. That
would be an exercise in futility.
If your faith in your god is
strong enough, you will not be
threatened by our views.
Thank you for your courtesy.
Following this, the council discussed routine matters at excruciating
length. The only item which piqued my
interest was an argument among council members about what they could do to
condemn an old theatre building which
had been converted to a bed and breakfast but was now idle. Apparently, the
owner had fallen from grace with the
town fathers and they wanted him out.
One member insisted that he should
have the right to inspect inside the
building but was dissuaded because
there were no grounds for such intrusion.
Finally, council members were
given an opportunity to question me.
The first question was "Why did you
choose Gallitzin for your location?" to
which I replied, "Why not? I own a building here."
One member, whom I shall call
Black Shirt, asked the most questions.
American Atheist

He was greatly interested

in our
finances. Obviously, he did not accept my
statement that we do not ask for donations. He wanted to know how we funded
our activities. I asked, "Such as ...?" And
he elaborated, "Whatever it is that you
do." I tried to explain that we have nothing that requires funding. He then wanted to know who paid the taxes, insurance, and utilities on the building. I stated that I owned the building and paid
those bills.
The mayor asked about our coming
trip to Washington, DC, for the GODLESS
AMERICANS
MARCH
in
November. I assured her that we all
assume responsibility
for our own
expenses when traveling. In rehashing
the meeting later that evening, it was
our consensus that council feared we
were affiliated with and receiving financial support from a national Atheist
organization.
Black Shirt then asked if it was my
intention to engage in a battle with the
Monsignor. I had no idea that he was
referring to the priest who was quoted in
the article. When this was clarified for
me, I responded that the Monsignor had
asked for what he was getting.
At last, the meeting adjourned. The
council's vice president - a self-proclaimed eucharistic minister - thanked
us for coming and said we were welcome
to attend any and all meetings. (This is
the man who was quoted in the Altoona
Mirror as saying the building is "an eyesore.") He sported a heavy crucifix and a
Sacred Heart medal around his neck,
probably to ward off our evil vibes!
Reporters from two local TV stations
were on hand during the meeting, and
afterward I was interviewed briefly by
both. There were also two local newspaper reporters on hand. It was while talking to them that Chris mentioned the
fact that most business signs in the town
were in violation of the specified size of
three square feet. (I had neglected to tell
him that I was going to forbear discussing this aspect of the case until the
zoning board had made its ruling.)
The mayor overheard this statement
and interjected that we had the size
wrong, so I showed her the citation I had
received. It was obvious that she immediately grasped the flaw in the borough's
complaint against me.
The following day, one of the TV stations requested a second interview at
ATHEIST STATION. While I was in
front of the building, the zoning officer
(who is also Chief of Police) stopped by.
Parsippany, New Jersey

He asked me to meet him there the next

day. When I asked why, he replied "To tie
up a few loose ends and have a look
around."
I informed him that I would be out
of the county the following day and that
he could phone me Monday. I conferred
with Ron, Chris, and Dave (our ACLU
lawyer) about the advisability of allowing anyone from the Borough into the
building for an inspection. I pointed out
the scheme to condemn the theatre by
just such machinations. We all agreed
that no inspection would be allowed.

Victory: have we won the war

orjust the first battle?
Twelve days after the council meeting, I received a FAX from the zoning
officer/police chief advising me that the
building permit was ready. When I asked
for clarification, he said that all our proposed work - including sign age - was
approved. He added wryly that now he
would begin to receive abusive phone
calls.

SNAPSHOTS

Disgruntled citizens spit on the display window. They drive by and hurl
obscenities at me when I am working
alone at the building. The owners of the
insurance company next door had long
been violating the property line. I sent
them a "cease and desist" letter by certified mail and posted a sign designating
the parking for ATHEIST STATION
ONLY. The next day, Chris found our
sign had been hurled next to our building.
Still to come on our slate of work to
be done:
Survey of the property.
Installation of chain-link fencing.
Application of a billboard to the
trackside of the building. Amtrak
passengers will see the name of our
building and a "thought for the day"
to ponder on their trip. The wording
is yet to be determined - but it will
be a hard-hitting Atheist adage.
This almost certainly is not the end
of the story. Stay tuned to American
Atheist for news of new developments as
they occur.

at jasonlove.com

BE~ARE
~OF

~OD
veAl

Autumn 2002

Page 9

Holy La~dExpcric~cc
By Cindy F. Sabourin

ou've probably heard some talk

or commentary about the controversial Orlando biblically based
theme park called the "Holy Land
Experience" that opened in February
2001. The Jewish Defense League and
other members of Orlando's Jewish community worried of "soul snatching,"
appropriation of Jewish symbols, language, and history, and protests were
organized against the park. Numerous
ministers were invited to attend a preopening tour, but no rabbis. Some
Christians also criticized the park for the
"consumerization" of
faith and trivializing
religion.
The plans for the
park
were
first
announced in 1999and are the work of
Marvin J. Rosenthal
(author of The PreWrath Rapture of the
Church,
1990), a
Messianic Jew, or,
Christian Hebrew, or
let's just be simple
and direct: a man

land to the City of Orlando to build an

Interstate 4 (1-4) off-ramp. A $2 million
mortgage is still outstanding. The ministry of Zion's Hope (Rosenthal's nonprofit entity), also located on the property, may indeed be 15 acres, but the park
itself is quite small. You can walk from
one end to the other in a minute. Soft
Middle-Eastern music is played in the
background, but the traffic can be heard
from 1-4 and that certainly intrudes on
any efforts to create a surreal environment. As far as its educational and

=:._---------------

raised Jewish, turned

Baptist minister, but
who still somehow
deems himself Jewish, yet considers
Jesus the Messiah.
The park promotes itself as a "$16 million, 15-acre
'living, biblical history museum,' recreating in elaborate and authentic detail
the city of Jerusalem and its religious
importance between the years 1450 B.C.
and A.D. 66 (through the Old and New
Testaments, from Genesis through
Revelation). It is a total sensory experience that is educational, historical, theatrical, inspirational and evangelistic,
blending sights, sounds, and tastes that
transport guests 7,000 miles away and
more than 3,000 years back in time."
Funding came mostly through private donations, and the sale of a tract of
Page 10

Jerusalem City Gate

inspirational aspirations went, I simply
found the place to be unsettling.
Newspaper
reports
continually
include quotations from Rosenthal
insisting that the park has no hidden
agenda and its only purpose is to share
the word of God and exalt the Bible. I
doubted this, and though suspecting
that I'd be confronted with proselytizing
Christians and evangelical ministers, I
nonetheless took a great deep breath,
dressed (hopefully) in the appropriate
conservative
manner, bit my lip,
engaged the help of my friend Judy
Pruitt-Doyle to keep me from losing my
Autumn 2002

temper, and visited the Holy Land

Experience in June of 2002.

The Holy Land Experience

The Holy Land Experience (HLE) is
visible, in all its tawdriness, from 1-4
which is the main EastlWest thoroughfare running through Orlando. The Universal Studios and Walt Disney World
complexes are located five and fifteen
miles west, respectively. If you've ever
been to Orlando, you will understand
that the HLE is closer
to International Drive
(where the tourists
stay
who
cannot
afford four- and fivestar hotel lodgings)
than to the huge
Universal and Disney
tracts of land. Being
blunt, I'll suggest that
the HLE caters to
those who don't have
a great deal of excess
income to spend. It's a
second-tier
theme
park that
exploits
religion to gain interest.
We entered the
park, one stoplight off
of 1-4, by passing
underneath
large
Roman-looking gates
that hovered over the
entrance. The Parking Lot Attendant
procured our $3 parking charge and
advised us to park anywhere. I estimated that the half-full parking lot could
probably hold about 700 vehicles.
Though the park does not release attendance records, it states publicly that it
needs 1,000 visitors a day to break even.
I estimate there were approximately
300 people there the day we visited. My
un-scientific estimate of the crowd is
that it was 80% white, 10% black, and
10%Asian or Hispanic. No one from the
Middle East was physically identifiable.
There were some children present, but
American Atheist

the majority was over thirty, with a

mean age of about fifty.
Worried of being placed on a
Christian mailing list, we paid cash for
our $22 one-day tickets (an Annual
Membership Pass is $59), up from the
initial admission price of $17 when the
park opened. We also picked up a rather
poorly prepared (yellow paper, purple
print) four-page Schedule of Events for
the day. We approached the entrance,
the so-called "Jerusalem City Gate," and
a nice lady in period costume standing
behind a turnstile greeted us with a
cheerful "Shalom!" I found that to be
quite odd - Christians utilizing the
Jewish word for Hello ('Peace'), and was
already uncomfortable.
Inside, we were immediately confronted with - no surprise - a gift shop
show ground. No "living, biblical history
museum" was visible; we wandered
instead, into the "Jerusalem Street
Market." We viewed a wheeled cart with
flower accouterments displayed, a few
chairs, and women's clothing, presumably for sale, hanging about the walls.
The "Market" was completely empty of
all people and very quiet. It was very
clean, and the walls kind of looked like
brick, but not quite, and certainly not
aged brick. Bypassing, for the time
being, entering the actual gift shop, we
turned and emerged next to the "Wilderness Tabernacle." It's a small, tented,
outdoor theater. Is it representative of
ancient times? I don't know - it looked
like a steamy outdoor venue with
uncomfortable bench seats and a video
screen to me. While Judy and I were
there, we saw no activity in the area
whatsoever, though the Day's Schedule
of Events promised continuous shows
every thirty minutes. From the on-line
reviews I've read, what takes place in
the Wilderness Tabernacle is a video
representation of the life of an Israelite
slave in the desert, taken from the Book
of Exodus.
Nothing even remotely interesting
or impressive so far, except the highquality paper towels in the restroom.
Okay, I'll admit that the landscaping is also impressive. Luscious, full,
wonderfully tended tall palms, olive and
fig trees, aloe plants, oleanders, and various grasses truly created a gorgeous
side effect. It was very much needed
because it soon became evident that the
design of the park itself was going to
leave much to be desired.
ITEC Productions Corp. is responsible for the design and production of the
Parsippany, New Jersey

Jerusalem, a model city

total project. With such previous clients
as Walt Disney World and Universal
Studios one would expect some indication of attention to detail, to authenticity, would be visible. Although the place
photographs quite well, in person it
looks exactly like what is it - a vulgar
and tacky attempt to re-create a modern-day version of an ancient culture.
The "Qumran Dead Sea Caves,"
home to a "future exhibit" and located in
the center of the park, looks like a fake
cave. From a distance it appears to have
the grooves, pits, and rough exterior
generally associated with caves, but
upon closer inspection, one realizes it's
simply painted to look that way and is
actually smooth to the touch.
At "Calvary's Garden Tomb"we witnessed the same dreadful attempt at
ancient cave reproduction. There is a
small entryway into this "tomb" that is
apparently supposed to be Christ's burial place. A small brown plaque with red
ink on the wall inside proclaims, "He is
not here. For' he is risen." There's even
an inane stone-looking bed and pillow,
complete with a white sheet lying on
top. We couldn't help but laugh. In fact,
we did a great deal of snickering, giggling, eye rolling, and laughing that day,
but only in the most discreet manner.
Well, most of the time, anyway.
The HLE has a "Behavioral Policv
Statement" included with the Schedul~
of Events. This includes a Dress Code No halter tops, short shorts, or bathing
suits; they "reserve the right to ask anyAutumn 2002

one to leave who is, in our judgment,

wearing inappropriate
or immodest
attire"; a Worship Code - reserving the
right to remove anyone deemed to be
"causing a disturbance"; a Behavior
Code - no drunkenness, lewd and lascivious conduct; and Miscellaneous Codes don't bring any food or drink, buy theirs,
no smoking, no pets.
I felt at all times that we were being
watched closely for any "inappropriate
behavior" and were at any moment at
risk of being asked to leave. Perhaps this
was simply due to the fact that I was
uncomfortable and hostile to the park
from the minute I walked inside, but
compared to other theme parks, there
did seem to be an inordinate amount of
visible security.
Across from Calvary's Garden Tomb
we found the highlight of our visit - a
small stable of animals that appeared to
be meticulously cared for. They had
plenty of food, water, and shade. There
were a couple of sheep, a few camels
(including a baby, named Ezekiel, born
on May 15, 2002), and a billy goat. They
looked decidedly uninterested in anything. Apparently, they are used in conjunction with a "Historical Presentation" that is presented on a nearby
stage. However, it was performed only
once that day, at 10:15 AM, and we'd
missed the act.
Next, we moved on to view the
"Jerusalem Model A.D. 66." The model
city is actually quite interesting. The 45foot-long by 25-foot-wide reproduction is
Page 11

avoided, but the Theatre of Life, inside

$6.95, they offer such delights as a
surprisingly detailed as it shows human
the Temple, ran a movie every thirty
"Goliath Burger," "Jaffa Hot Dog,""Oasis
beings going about domestic tasks such
minutes entitled "The Seed of Promise."
Chicken," "Bedouin Beef," "Tabgha
as tanning hides or working in gardens,
As we waited outside for the next run of
Tuna," and a "Centurion Salad." There
and animals in courtyards. It's stated to
the movie, we struck up a conversation
are eight entrees in all, and one dessert,
be the largest indoor model of Jerusalem
with two employees in costume dress.
a "Caesar's Delight" for $3.00. I ordered
in the world and claims to be a "historiBoth were in their sixties, very hosthe hot dog, which came with fries and
cally authentic reproduction of the city
pitable and obviously enjoyed working
of Jerusalem, circa A.D. 66, including
was edible, if unremarkable.
Judy
at the park very much. (All 125 of the
ordered the chicken, which came with
the ancient Temple of Jerusalem as it
park's employees have signed statetabouli and cous-cous and was "awful"
had been rebuilt by King Herod the
ments affirming they are Christians.)
and totally inedible. She took the food
Great while the city was under Roman
They explained to us
rule."
that this film was the
We arrived in
"center" of the park
time to hear a lecin that it summed up
turer give a 30the park's purpose.
minute speech that
They also told us not
was just shy of being
to miss the only perblatantly anti-Semitic.
formance that day of
The audience apparthe "Passion Drama ently didn't agree
with me, as I witBehold the Lamb" nessed much nodding
it was a "must see,"
and we had just
of heads and plenty
of "amens." Nonetheenough time to view
the movie, and then
less, when the speakthe Drama directly
er referred to a hisafterwards. I could
torical figure as a
"half-breed Jew," my
hardly control my
jaw dropped. I did get
anticipation.
The movie runs in
a chuckle when he
a nice, air-condispoke of the "false
teachings and hypoctioned theater that
risy" of "man-made" ......
_
could hold 170 peotraditions, oblivious
ple, but was only oneAncient Roman soldiers in modern Florida
to the fact that his
third full the day we
visited. Though they
beliefs are just as
claim it was filmed in Israel, the producback and was told they were "sorry" she
false and man-made as those he spoke
against. And I think I may have growled
tion was so poor it looked to me as if it
could not eat it, did not offer to refund
her money, and charged her again for a
when he kept stressing that non-believers
could have been shot at the HLE itself
were "evil." However, to these fanatics, a
It was enhanced by some in-house speGoliath Burger, of which she managed to
"non-believer" is anyone who doesn't
cial effects, but all in all I found it to be
eat about half. So, not only does the park
overly violent and overtly propagandisdisallow you from bringing your own
agree with the particular flavor of
food into the place, for some people
Christianity being espoused there, so I
tic, i.e., you must accept Jesus Christ as
your savior or else! We were specifically
stomaching their offerings is not an
couldn't take the insult personally. My
option either.
impression of this lecture was that it
told to turn off any beepers or cell
phones because the movie was very emoThe last exhibit the park had to
was a hostile anti-Jewish rant that
offer, besides the gift shops which we
insinuates, but does not literally state,
tional, and nothing could be more
had yet to explore, was the "Plaza of the
the prejudicial perception that "the Jews
annoying than these sounds interruptkilled Jesus" and if you don't believe
ing such an experience. The film begins
Nations/Temple of the Great King/
that Jesus is your Savior, well, then,
with the expected, "In the beginning,
Theatre of Life." Its sheer tackiness is
rather difficult to capture in words. It
you're going to hell, or will be "left
God created Man." We didn't expect, nor
behind."
actually dominates the park, being six
do we see, any discussion or any possiWe next visited the "Oasis Palms
bility of evolutionary theory. It told the
stories high and surrounded by 30
Cafe,"which is located in an unmarked
atrocious Bible stories of Abraham's
columns. It's "simulated white Jerubuilding, next to yet another gift shop
salem limestone and golden filigree."
unquestioning reaction to God's inhuand is the only eating establishment in
mane requests, depicted the crucifixion
Simulated being the operative word, I
think its intended design was to give the
the park. I'd done some reading about
(which is about the time Judy's cell
the HLE on-line prior to my visit and all
phone rang!) and the resurrection,
impression of opulence and grandeur,
the reviews cited the (non-kosher) food
but I found it to look like a tacky white
prophesied the second coming of Christ,
as acceptable, and even quite good. So,
and ended with a final scene of people,
elephant that comes across as an absurd
I'd expected a small restaurant. Instead,
with varying ethnic backgrounds, walkand pretentious facade,
we walked into a 120-seat fast-food
Lectures were given throughout the
ing in a mist, toward a light, looking like
joint. With prices ranging from $4.95 to
zombies. We were appalled. Judy told me
day in the Plaza, which we assiduously
Page 12

Autumn 2002

American Atheist

ridiculous red capes and

plumes spouting from their
helmets!
At that moment, Judy
turned around just as she
drank from her bottled
water, and upon witnessing
the same thing as I, was
unable to keep from spewing the water out all over
my back as she burst out
laughing! It really was an
awful performance. The
Christ figure's make-up
was one shade of purple,
covering his face and torso,
and he held a small cross
across his back. He was
moaning and whining and
the Roman soldiers looked
liked characters from the
Rocky Horror Picture Show.
I then, of course, lost all
pretense of deference and
began chuckling quite loudly
as well. All the other people
in the park were seemingly
enthralled with the performance. Judy struggled and
held her hand over her
One thief taking his break - business as mouth but it was obvious
she was giggling. I also
usual for the others
couldn't stop from smiling
later that when her phone rang she felt
at the silly drama of it all. A security
like she was in a Catholic School and the
guard standing next to me puffed himnuns were going to take her phone away
self up as the Roman soldiers shouted
and beat her for her disobedience.
and the moaning Christ figure dramatiThe worst was yet to come. We'd
cally shuffled past. He turned to me,
tried to remain incognito and polite all
pulled up his trousers at his belt and
day. We had no idea what "Behold the
asked angrily, "Pretty funny, huh?" That
Lamb" was going to portray, only that it
just made me laugh again and I replied,
was a live performance of some kind. It
was presented at 2:45 PM in blazing
Florida heat at Calvary's Garden Tomb
and started off with some shrill singing
by presenters dressed in period costumes. Not really interested in the
singing, I stepped back from the crowd
surrounding the Garden Tomb to take a
photograph of the audience, and was
very much aware that surrounding security was watching me closely. I wasn't
sure why until the female who had been
singing in front of the Tomb was now
directly in front of me and I realized I
was in the middle of the production. I
took two steps back, and while most of
the crowd was still looking at the tomb
singers I saw another vision entirely.
That of a Christ figure, in badly applied
wound make-up, being "whipped" and
prodded in the street by over-acting
Roman soldiers in gaudy uniforms with

still quite amused, "Well, Yeah!" Quite

put off by my less-than-reverential
response, he puffed himself up again
and asked, "Where ya'll from?" Realizing
we were in "danger" of "causing a disturbance" and having no desire to engage
him in conversation, nor to be thrown
out of the park, I just put my hand up,
gave him a "wave off" signal, and turned
my back to him.
Now realizing that they were going
to re-enact the crucifixion scene, we
watched with morbid and horrified fascination. They proceeded to "nail" the
Christ figure to a cross and raise him
over the Tomb. A long, brutal death
scene with more singing ensued until
the ridiculous looking Roman soldiers
took him off the cross. If the movie we
had viewed could be labeled appalling,
this re-enactment was revolting and
nauseating. Yet, the crowd was spellbound. They didn't seem to be exactly
enjoying the performance, but my
impression was they felt it was somehow
awe-inspiring; as if seeing an actor
recreate the death of the Christ figure
somehow supported their beliefs. Creepy
and sadistic, in my opinion, and I can't
imagine it was psychologically healthy
for some of the young children present to
view such barbaric theatrics. Judy and I,
assuming the rest of the performance
would be the resurrection episode did
not linger - we'd had enough melodrama
and freaky religious entertainment. It
was time to explore the gift shops and
then make our escape.
In the shop located in the same
building as the Jerusalem model we
found HLE coffee cups for $9.95, and a

He forgot to make his bed

Parsippany, New Jersey

Autumn 2002

Page 13

Bible "etched in stone" for $295. Also in

stone, pendants featuring a "Jerusalem"
cross (presumably made of stones from
Jerusalem) for $18.95 and Bible verses
for $14.95. Metal statues ranged from
Samson and The Pillars for $216.00 to
Jerusalem
models for $122.00 and
Moses for $73.95. Various religious
study books were situated everywhere
as were maps and posters.
Most interesting at this shop was a
sample copy of the magazine Zion's Fire
- A Christian Magazine on Israel and
Prophecy. Apparently it's a bi-monthly
publication of Rosenthal's ministry.
Offered up for free was the May/June
2000 copy.What a hoot! The cover story
was titled, "The Lady of the Night - She
seeks to seduce your soul!" It's a long
article, written by Rosenthal, and
though I tried to read it, it's so full of
biblical quotations that I just couldn't
understand its intended point other
than as an attempt to demonize women.
What was really amusing though,
was the article written by one Dan
Hayden entitled, "The Unique Christian." Some excerpts: "Unfortunately,
there are many professing Christians
who exhibit behavior patterns that are
not consistent with biblical Christianity." And, "We're not just different we're weird. The world can see it, but
somehow, we don't get it." Also, "The
Christian is different - uniquely different - from every other person in the
unregenerate world. And, according to
the Bible, that difference has radical
implications, not just cosmetic ones. The
Christian no longer loves the world (1
John 2:15-17),which means that there
ought to be an observable difference in
the way Christians live, how they think,
and what they do." And, of course,
"When a woman dresses seductively to
catch a man, we question her moral
integrity."
In the outdoor gift shop we found
nothing except exceptionally unstylish
women's clothing, some incense and candles. Supposedly, most of the products
for sale at the park are produced in
Israel. I couldn't determine if that was
true of the clothing, because all the
clothes bear the label "Holy Land
Experience" and there were no "Made
in" labels to indicate where they had
been produced.
In the final gift shop located near
the entrance/exit I saw, I think for the
first time, crucifixes displayed for sale
next to Stars of David. Also for sale were
"Exact Replicas of Ancient Biblical
Page 14

ministry, but that the attraction should

Pottery" which included a vase with silpay property taxes. The stakes are high
ver art work for $79.95, and a framed
if the expected expansion continues,
"Sermon on the Mount In English" for
which would greatly raise the value of
$220.00. Less expensive items included
the land. A $25,000 bill in 2001 could
an alabaster box with frankincense and
soar to more than $320,000 in 2002. The
myrrh for $10.99, as well as ark and
case is still pending. Zion's Hope and the
manger magnets for $11.99. Original
Holy Land Experience pay no state or
artwork from Israel was on sale for
federal income taxes.
$89.95-$153.85. Also prominently disOther religious theme parks are
played were "teaching cassettes" from
being proposed across the country. A $20
Rosenthal for $29.95 a piece and of
million Messiahville USA in Broomfield,
course, the "Left Behind" novels. Not to
Colorado would also co-opt Jewish symmention the obligatory HLE T-shirts for
bols and culture, hoping to include a
$12.95 and the HLE Polo Shirts for
full-size recreation of Noah's Ark and a
$39.95.
water slide that carries children into the
We didn't purchase anything and
belly of a whale. There's also talk of a
gladly fled the park. I felt I was being
Catholic park called Marianland in
watched continuously as I wrote down
the above information, but I was never
Texas. At this time, neither of these proposed endeavors have sufficient funding,
approached directly by security. All in
and both will need massive donations to
all, we found it to be a creepy expericome to fruition. And they keep insisting
ence. I was uncomfortable every moment
that religion isn't a business.
of the three and half hours I was there.
As far as the Holy Land Experience
However, if a large group of Atheists
goes, it's as ghastly and uncomfortable
invaded the park one day, all could
as I'd imagined, but the Jewish commupotentially have a good time guffawing
nity need not fret about "soul snatchat the absurdity of it all - culminating,
ing." Most visitors are already True
no doubt in all of us being asked to
Believers, which is a frightening
leave.
Though many expected the park to
thought in itself.
fail,
additions
are
planned. The "Scriptorium" is scheduled to
open in August of 2002
and reputedly will hold
"the world's finest private collection of Bibles,
scrolls
and
manuscripts." In 2003, they
hope to break ground
on a $35 million expansion,
which
would
include a replica of
Noah's Ark complete
with
live
animals,
a.nd.an exhibit on creaI
tionism.
/J
In November 2001,
~
Zi~n's Ho~e filed a lawI
suit agamst Orange __ ~ ((~
"County claiming the
county was discriminating against it by
failing to grant a property tax exemption. In
dispute are two tracts
of land, including the
~
land on which the park
is located. The county
contends that Zion's \\ IT'S ~lWUJG $iRAIGJ.lf DOWlJ. THAT S.-lOWS
Hope is entitled to tax- TH~ES NO GOD BECAU~E i-IE'D DO WlklODW~.1l
free status for the 8.57
acres which house the

r---

\?~..::-~

Autumn 2002

American Atheist

Breaking the Final Taboo

Electing Atheists to Political Office
By Eddie Tabash
A lecture given at the 28th National Convention of American Atheists
in Boston, Saturday, 30 March 2002.
Copyright 2001, Edward Tabash

No known Atheist currently

holds any major political office
in the United States.
It is long overdue that people who
do not believe in any god be elected to
significant political office. We Atheists
are the most unjustly despised minority
in America today. Polls show that a
greater number of voters would vote
against someone just for not believing in
a god than they would vote against
someone for being gay. Blacks, Latinos,
women, gays and lesbians, all of these
historically despised and discriminatedagainst groups have managed to elect
some of their own to state legislatures
and to Congress. Members of many religious minorities have had the same success. Atheists are the only holders of a
viewpoint on matters of religion who
cannot point to anyone, serving in either
Congress or in any state legislature, and
claim such an individual as one of our
own. In 2000, I was the only known
Atheist to be a major contender for a
state legislative seat in the United
States. I finished a close second, out of
four candidates, for a seat in the
California State Assembly. My efforts to
gain meaningful support for my campaign from other nonbelievers showed
me how far we Atheists are from understanding and implementing the practical necessities of getting at least some of
our own elected to political office.

The gay community is the

best model for Atheists to follow
in the quest for electing some of
our own to office.
The best model for Atheists to use,
in terms of attempting to climb the political ladder, is the gay community. Gays
and lesbians are the most similar to us
in that the overwhelming prejudice and
hatred they face stems from religious
Parsippany, New Jersey

dogma. The gay community has mastered the art of raising large sums of
money for their candidates. They have
also achieved the discipline of supporting their own in contested elections.

Many Atheists can't even see

the self-evident importance of
electing some of our own to
state legislatures.

Eddie Tabash
Many very active and prominent
Atheists were surprised when I contacted them to ask for a financial contribution to my campaign. For all their intellectual firepower in being able to refute
supernatural claims, they could not see,
even in this day and age, the practical
importance of raising money for an election campaign. Worse, many ofthese colleagues in free thought could not see the
connection between the preservation
and promotion of Atheism in the United
Autumn 2002

States and the election of Atheists to

state legislatures.
That connection should be quite
obvious. If President Bush puts even two
new justices on the Supreme Court, let
alone more, the current blanket protections under the First Amendment,
ensuring equal rights before the law for
nonbelievers, could very well be nullified. If this happens, all nonbelievers
will be at the mercy of the legislature of
every state in which we live. The
removal of the currently recognized
First Amendment ban on any branch of
government's favoring believers over
nonbelievers, will open the floodgates to
myriad state and local legislation aimed
at promoting religion - at the expense of
nonbelief
If a reconstituted Supreme Court
were to weaken the nationwide blanket
protections of the First Amendment, and
thus free the individual states to legislate more broadly in openly promoting
religion, the very liberties of nonbelievers will hinge on who composes our state
legislatures. With such a large majority
of legislators, in virtually all of our
states, always falling all over themselves to demonstrate which one is the
most pro-religion, or pro-god, we will
unfortunately have an avalanche of religion-promoting legislation coming out of
our state capitals. The best way to
counter such state legislative religious
onslaughts would be to have some of our
own serving as actual members of those
state legislatures. Hopefully, we could
continue to rely on very liberal religionists to rise to our defense. However,
given the religious fervor that has
always abounded in state legislatures,
and in Congress, we would be much better off if we could have at least some
people, who don't believe in any god,
elected to these legislative bodies.

Page 15

 Atheists need to learn, just

like other unjustly despised
minorities have learned, how to
put our own interests first.
In my campaign, I also encountered
some ideological barriers among a number of Atheists, that, if these barriers
persist, could be major obstacles to the
prospects of Atheists' supporting other
Atheists for political office. I was running in a Democratic primary in a legislative district in which the Democratic
registration was so lopsided that the
winner of my primary would be assured
of winning the general election. I was
the only white person running in this
mixed ethnic district. My ballot mates,
as I like to call them, were a Hispanic
woman, who won our primary and then
the general election, and two African
American men, one of whom is the son of
the area's Congresswoman.
Many Atheists refused to support
me because I was a white person running against people of color. It didn't
matter to these other Atheists that all
three of my primary opponents would
make frequent references to their god. It
didn't matter to these other Atheists
that our state legislature already had
many black and Latino members. They
were so enslaved by knee jerk left-wing
dogma that they could not bring themselves to support a white male over candidates of color. One colleague in free
thought even angrily asked me why I
would run against a Hispanic woman.
This exposes the inertia that we
nonbelievers must overcome if we are to
ever have a chance of electing any of our
own to political office. You would never
hear of black activists refusing to support a black candidate because that candidate was running against people of
some other race or ethnicity. You would
never hear a gay activist chastise a gay
candidate for running against heterosexuals. The obvious problem is that
many Atheists have not yet internalized
the notion that we nonbelievers have
just as much right to put our own candidates and our own interests first, as do
members of other historically unjustly
despised groups, who have finally succeeded in electing a number of their
candidates.

Prejudice against Atheists is

just as evil and destructive as
racial bigotry.
Prejudice against someone for nothing more than that person's inability to
Page 16

believe in anything supernatural is as

evil and as destructive of the quest for a
modern, enlightened, society as is racial
bigotry. Wanting to deny public office to
someone, just because that individual
holds a naturalistic view of the universe
that rejects supernatural claims, is as
backward and as dangerous to human
progress as wanting to see a candidate
defeated because of that candidate's
race or ethnicity. Accordingly, bigotry
against someone because of that person's Atheism is as pernicious as bigotry
against someone because of that person's race. It follows, then, that if members of racial minorities are morally justified in giving top priority to electing
their own to public office, so are we
Atheists.

WeAtheists need an affirmative-action program of our own

to start electing people of reason to political office, regardless
of considerations of race or ethnicity.
The practical realities of contemporary society are that most, though not
all, people who consciously decide to
become Atheists, after pondering the
nature of existence, will be Caucasian,
at least for the foreseeable future. With
the pervasive influence of the churches
in the African American Community
and the virtual
stranglehold
the
Catholic Church has on Hispanics in the
United States (except for those Latinos
who are being wooed away by charismatic Protestant
churches),
most
Atheists, at this juncture in our nation's
history, are likely to be white. So, while
it would be wonderful if black Atheists
or Mexican American Atheists would
step forward as candidates for political
office, the stark probabilities are that
any Atheist who runs for office in the
near future will be Caucasian. Even
among the ethnic Asians, currently serving in both Houses of Congress, virtually
all of them identify themselves as
Christians, as do most Native Americans who hold public office.
We must learn to shake off the type
of white-liberal guilt that motivates socalled progressives to always choose the
racial minority candidate over the white
candidate. I am not saying that it is no
longer important to continue to try to
elect members of racial and ethnic
minorities to political office. I am arguing, though, that for us nonbelievers, it
is more important at this time to start
electing some of our own. So, rather
Autumn 2002

than giving top priority to always electing people of color, we Atheists need a
new affirmative action program in
which we give priority to electing people
of reason, regardless of their color.
Left-of-center Atheists can continue
to favor the ethnic or racial minority
candidate in many elections. I am only
recommending that if one of the candidates happens to be a colleague in free
thought, then, that candidate should, if
not too ideologically unacceptable,
receive support in that particular election from other nonbelievers.

Another lesson to be learned

from the gay community is how
to show gratitude
for, and
obtain the support of, powerful
and important political figures
who are sympathetic outsiders.
Another phase of political activism
from which we can learn from the gay
community is in supporting sympathetic
outsiders. For many years, even before
they started successfully electing their
own to office, the gay community
learned how to win and keep friends
among heterosexual politicians. They
would shower non-gay politicians, who
were supportive of gay rights, with large
sums of money and campaign volunteers. As far back as 1974, here in Los
Angeles County, powerful politicians visited gay bars in West Hollywood, in
order to curry favor with the gay community. And, of course, would that we
Atheists wielded as much power and
influence in any major American city, as
the gay community does in San
Francisco.
There is only one major American
political figure who has actually taken
risks on behalf of achieving full equality
for Atheists. That is the Governor of
Minnesota, Jesse Ventura. He is the only
governor in the United States to consistently veto the Day-of-Prayer resolutions passed by his state's legislature. In
so doing, he always mentions that
Atheists are as much a part of his state
as anyone else. On page 104 of his book,
Do I Stand Alone?, he mentions Atheists
in a positive way five times. Recently,
when I tried to develop support, from
within our ranks, for Governor Ventura's
possible reelection campaign, I was met
with the objection from a number of nonbelievers that he was not liberal enough
on welfare. Some left-wing Atheists also
claimed they could not support him
because he favored too little gun control.
Some Libertarian Atheists said they
American Atheist

could not support him because he

favored too much gun control. Such attic
tudes are causing considerations extraneous to what is in the best interests of
Atheism and Atheists to ruin support for
the only major political figure in the
country who has truly stuck his neck out
for us. I would be embarrassed to have
to explain these attitudes, held by a
number of my colleagues in nonbelief, to
Governor Ventura, after all he has done
for us, compared to any other major
political office-holder in the United
States.

We Atheists must begin the

task of determining on what
political issues, tangential to
Atheism, we can compromise, in
order to support an Atheist or
Atheist-friendly candidate in a
given election.
If we Atheists continue to allow
other priorities to always come before
the defense and survival of Atheism and
Atheists, we will never be able to win
friends among those already in office,
and we will never be able to elect any of
our own. We must address the question
of how we can compromise on our otherwise personal list of political positions,
when the larger good of Atheism is
involved. We all have criteria that candidates must meet in order for us to be
willing to support them. I am now suggesting that when it comes to an Atheist
candidate, or to a definitely Atheistfriendly candidate, we try to reexamine
our own political priorities to see if we
can make any concessions, even concessions that we otherwise would not make,
in order to achieve the greater good of
electing the Atheist or Atheist-friendly
politician. Each of us must decide on
what issues we can compromise our otherwise existing requirements of a political candidate, if that candidate is an
Atheist or is uncommonly Atheistfriendly, like Governor Ventura.
I cannot tell any of you what issues,
that are otherwise important to you,
should now take a back seat, if a viable
Atheist or Atheist-friendly candidate is
running, who may not agree with you on
such issues. I do hope, however, that we
will all at least think about the issues on
which we can let an Atheist or Atheistfriendly candidate slide, if that candidate has a real chance of winning a
given election. Each of us will have a different threshold, where compromise will
be permitted, in order to support one of
Parsippany, New Jersey

our own, or a candidate supportive of

our interests as nonbelievers.
For me, I can say that I will go very
far in supporting a candidate that I may
not agree with on a variety of issues, in
a contested election, if that candidate is
the most fervent supporter of the separation of church and state.

Colleagues in Atheism, who

did not support me for the
California legislature, because
of my views on immigration,
allowed an issue tangential to
Atheism to deter them from supporting the only Atheist in the
country who had a real chance
of winning a state legislative
race.
Though I disdain labels, as I do not
'believe that such political labels can
accurately always encompass the totality
of the thinking of independent-minded
political office seekers, if! had to accept
any such characterization, I would probably call myself a moderate liberal
Democrat. There is an issue, though, on
which I do deviate from the standard
view currently prevalent in my party. I
do favor drastically reducing both legal
and illegal immigration, not because of
any racial prejudice, but because of the
connection between large numbers of
immigrants and overpopulation, particularly in my home state of California.
There are now over 35 million
people in California and over 10 million
in Los Angeles County. When I was born,
in 1950, California had a population of
around nine million. My heart goes out
to the people' seeking to come to the
United States, and to California, in the
hope of finding a better life. However, I
believe that my nation and my state
cannot afford to absorb everyone who
wishes to come here. I am on record as
stating that Mexico, the country that is
the largest single source of immigration
to California; has a moral obligation to
take better care of its own people, so
that they would not be as desperate as
they currently are to cross the border.
There were a number of Atheists who
refused to support me for the state legislature, because of my views on immigration. Now, I have supported candidates who disagree with me on this
issue. So, I raise this topic not so much
to make points about my views on immigration. Rather my experience here is
instructive in showing how many of our
colleagues in free thought allow issues
Autumn 2002

tangential to what is best for Atheism to

dominate their decisions on whether or
not to support a candidate.
I would hope that even if a colleague in nonbelief were to disagree
with me on immigration, upon understanding that my position is not based
on racial prejudice, that person would
still support me for office, so long as I
was an otherwise viable candidate and
so long as I was the only Atheist in a
given election. My experience with the
immigration issue is one of the best
examples that I can come up with to
demonstrate the type of compromises
that I would like to see other Atheists
make in the interests of the larger good
of getting nonbelievers elected to significant political positions.
If it seems that I am highly critical
of colleagues in free thought, politically
to the left of me, who did not support me
in my bid for the state legislature, it is
because leftists constituted the majority
among those Atheists who turned down
my requests for help. It is a sad commentary on how knee-jerk left-wing
dogma can cloud an otherwise rational
analysis of a situation. California's 55th
Assembly District has the worst toxic
pollution in the state. I was the only candidate who made this a major issue in
the campaign. Even though I was the
only white candidate, I was also the only
candidate who campaigned against
racial profiling by the police. Yet, even
though I was the only Atheist running,
and also the most progressive candidate
on the environment and on ending racial
discrimination in law enforcement, I
was unacceptable to many left-wing
Atheists because I was a white male
competing against people of color and
because of my views on immigration. At
this point, I should point out that there
were also a sizable number
of
Libertarian Atheists who rejected my
requests for support.

Some Atheists,
but not
enough, understood the importance of supporting one of our
own for a major political office.
I should acknowledge that there were
prominent Atheists who did support my
candidacy. Paul Kurtz did the most to
both personally contribute and to help
me raise money from others. However, if
future Atheist candidates for office are
able to generate no greater support for
their candidacies, overall, from nonbelievers nationwide, than I did, such
future Atheist candidates will probably
Page 17

lose, just like I did. I truly appreciate

those colleagues in nonbelief who did
support me. However, they do not constitute a sufficient number of the free
thinkers, from whom I sought help either directly or through other non
believers - in order for me or for any
other future Atheist candidate, to have
any real chance of success. The next
time an Atheist is a major contender for
a state legislative seat, or for some other
important political office, free thinkers
have to respond with much greater support than I received, in order for any
such candidate to have a real chance of
winning.

In order to gain respect in

society-at-large, Atheists cannot
afford to be off-beat or mere
protest candidates, but should
be viable in races in which we
run.
I have been making reference to
Atheist candidates who would be viable.
Given the degree to which so much of
society wishes to marginalize us, we
cannot afford to run as mere protest or
off-beat candidates, who have no real
chance of winning. We need to show that
Atheists can run formidable campaigns
and that we are mainstream people who
can use rational thought to offer effective solutions to the problems that the
holder of a given political office should
be working to solve.

Given the current climate of

pervasive
prejudice
against
Atheists among American voters, we may frequently have to
resort to stealth campaigns,
until the mood of bigotry
against us begins to change, as
did many gay politicians when
they began their careers in elective office.
In my campaign for the legislature,
I did not personally inform the voters
that I was an Atheist. However, anyone
who cared to put my name into any
Internet search engine would have been
able to pull up a plethora of references
to me as a spokesperson for nonbelief. In
my campaign, as I knocked on over
14,000 doors, I did not introduce myself
to t he voters I met by saying: "Hi, I'm
Eddie Tabash, I don't believe in God and
I want to represent you in the State
Assembly." I told each voter that I was
the only candidate in the race who was
Page 18

placing great emphasis on cleaning up

the toxic pollution that was poisoning
our area.
The year in which I ran was the last
year that California still had an open
primary, in which people of all parties
could cross over and vote for whomever
they wished. That meant that every
voter, regardless of registration, had the
same ballot, even for the primary election. Accordingly, I also campaigned to
the registered Republicans in my district. The strategy was that since the
winner of the Republican primary could
not win the seat, under any circumstances, due to the high Democratic
majority in this district, if I could persuade enough Republicans to vote for
me, it might help me win a close
Democratic primary, because the winner
of each party's primary was determined
by which candidate received the most
votes cast for each candidate of that
same party.
Some Republicans, whose homes I
visited, actually asked me about my religious views. I responded by telling them
that my father is an ordained orthodox
rabbi and that my mother was an
Auschwitz survivor. I then said that I
will do everything I can, if elected, to
make sure that all Californians have
equal rights, regardless of their views on
matters of religion. Every word of what
I just said is true, even though I
refrained from volunteering my personal
Atheism to these voters. So, while I
openly solicited support for my candidacy from other nonbelievers, I did not tell
any of the voters in my district that I
was an Atheist. A poll conducted for me
by Fairbank,
Maslin, Maullin
&
Associates, the official pollsters for
California Governor, Gray Davis, and, at
the time, the official California pollsters
for AI Gore, showed that my Atheism
would be the most damaging single
threat to my candidacy, if the voters of
my district ever found out about it.
About a third of Long Beach, currently California's fifth largest city, was
in the district in which I was running. I
was interviewed by the major Long
Beach newspaper. Their political writers
informed me that they had conducted a
Web search on all the candidates and
that they discovered the Secular
Humanist and Atheist references to me
on the Internet. They asked me if my
being an Atheist made me the wrong
candidate for a district with so many
religious African Americans and religious Hispanics. I responded that so
Autumn 2002

long as I am pledged to preserving the

equal rights of everyone, regardless of a
person's views on matters of religion, my
personal nonbelief should be irrelevant
to the campaign.
The interviewers then asked me
whether I thought their newspaper
should reveal my Atheism in the upcoming story about the candidates in my
race. I reiterated that since I was
pledged to preserving the equal rights of
both believers and nonbelievers, my personal views on how the universe is
structured should not become an issue
in the campaign. I then told them that I
hoped we would soon reach a level of
maturity in society wherein voters in
any election would not reject a candidate just for being an Atheist, but, we
were, quite frankly, still very far from
that point. I further said that whether I
won or lost, considering the high level on
which I was conducting my campaign,
considering the in-depth issues I was
raising, and considering that I was also
going to the voters directly by knocking
on thousands of doors, it would be tragic
if my chances of winning were sabotaged
by the voters' finding out about my
Atheism, thus making me the victim of
one of the most horrible prejudices held
by voters throughout
the nation.
Consequently, I did ask the Long Beach
Press- Telegram to refrain from making
any references to my Atheism. They did
as I requested, and their coverage of us
candidates
in the 55th Assembly
District made no mention of my being a
nonbeliever.
I would also like to acknowledge the
honorable conduct of the campaign consultant, Parke Skelton, who ran the winning campaign for Jenny Oropeza. He
could have easily done a campaign hitpiece on me, informing all the voters
about my Atheism, that would have
given his client a much more certain
chance of defeating me in what turned
out to be somewhat of a close race. Yet,
he refrained from doing so. To her credit, Jenny Oropeza herself, though she
had publicly said that she believes her
god put her on earth to serve the poor,
never brought up my Atheism in any of
the public candidate forums in which
the four of us would either speak or
debate. I am thus grateful to now
Assembly member Oropeza.
I make no apologies for being a
stealth candidate in the district in
which I was running. I believe my not
revealing my Atheism directly to the
voters was morally justified. As I pointed
American Atheist

out earlier, prejudice directed against

someone, for nothing more than rejecting belief in unproven supernatural
claims, is a grave threat to human
progress. Society's elevation of people
who believe in some fabricated god to
the highest plateaus of power, and concomitant literal demonization of those of
us who apply the rule of reason to outlandish supernatural stories, is horrendously perverse. The denigration of the
free thinker is one of the most uncivilized affronts to the human intellect in
our world today. Moreover, since I truly
would have never done anything to
diminish the legal freedoms and equality of religious believers, I believe it was
right for me to refrain from revealing to
these voters something about myself
which would trigger in them such a terrible prejudice against me.
As an analogy, I argue that if I were
a very light-skinned African American,
who could pass for being white, running
for election in a district that I knew was
racist, I would feel justified in concealing my true racial status, if such concealment would serve to get a black person elected in an area that needed to
learn to abandon its racist attitudes.
Well, virtually every state legislative district in the United States needs
to learn to abandon its bigotry against
Atheists. Also, please remember that
many now-prominent gay elected officials concealed their homosexuality not
only during their initial successful runs
for office, but until they had been
reelected a number of times.
So, if we are to stop being mere armchair theoreticians, if we nonbelievers
are going to master the art of actually
electing some of our own to significant
political office, we must be willing to
support our own candidates, even if, in
order to have realistic chances of winning, these Atheist candidates at this
juncture in American history will not
openly reveal their nonbelief during
their campaigns. After we have elected
some of our own to office,and the voters
have had the opportunity to see how
capable these Atheist politicians are,
then, maybe, the prejudice against us
will begin to erode, and our candidates
will be more readily able to acknowledge
their Atheism without jeopardizing
their chances of winning their elections.
However, until that time arrives,
considering how completely unjustified
society is in hating and shunning those
of us who don't believe in any god, I
believe we are justified in attempting to
Parsippany, New Jersey

make an end-run around this monolithic edifice of prejudice that we nonbelievers face, by strategically downplaying
our personal views on 'matters of religion during an election cycle, if and
when we run for office.

If a candidate's Atheism does

become known during an election campaign, we must always
remind the public that, unlike
many religionists, we are not
trying to jeopardize the legal
rights of those who believe differently from us. We must
always say - and mean - that we
stand for the preservation of
religious liberty for everyone.
If, however, a candidate's Atheism
does become a campaign issue, we must
always remind the voters that, unlike
many religionists, we are not trying to
curtail the legal rights of those who
believe differently from us. We must
always be ready to defend the constitutionally guaranteed rights of religionists
to practice their faith. We only want to
ensure that we nonbelievers have equal
rights. Further, just like religionists
have the right to declare, in the marketplace of ideas, why they believe a supernatural god exists, we have every right
to publicly articulate our reasons for
believing that such a god does not exist.
We must, however, never slacken our
vigilance in assuring society-at-large of
our commitment to preserving legally
protected religious freedom for everyone.
Our candidates must always reassure
voters that while Atheists want to perpetuate equality for ourselves, we don't
in any way want to jeopardize the liberties of religious believers or spiritual
seekers generally

Considering how religious

dogma causes so much damage
in the struggle for human progress, it is essential for the
achievement of a better world
for the Atheist message to be
disseminated as widely as possible, and for Atheists to begin to
attain positions of real political
power.
I have been urging nonbelievers to
try to give as much priority as they can
to electing other nonbelievers to political
office. One of the reasons why this is so
important is because of the overall desAutumn 2002

perate need for the Atheist message to

become more widely disseminated in our
nation and in our world. There is, in my
view, no task more urgent than trying to
help rescue humanity from the deleterious impact of religious dogma. By definition, we Atheists are the best situated
to assist humankind in the process of
growing beyond superstitious beliefs.
Human history, down to the present
day, is a kaleidoscopic display of neverending horrors that people perpetrate
against each other, in the name of promoting one partisan concept of god over
another. Religion and spirituality are
the last holdouts in which all the now
commonly accepted rules of science and
empirical testing are generally excluded
from participation in assessing whether
a claim is true or not. Who better than
Atheists to point out to our brother and
sister human beings the folly and
defects in belief systems that rely on
purely mythological assertions?
The amount of carnage caused by
religious tyranny throughout history
has been so horrendous; the number of
atrocities committed because of religious disputes has been so staggering;
the degree to which religion has caused
otherwise intelligent human beings to
abandon the most basic principles oflogical, empirical, and fair thinking, has
been so extensive; that there is no
greater service a person could do for our
world than to help spread the message
of Atheistic naturalism as widely as possible.
However, in order for our voice of
reason to be heard, we must preserve
our legal right to express our views and
we must achieve a social climate in
which the general public will at least
give us a fair hearing. In order for this to
be achieved, particularly in the realm of
preserving our equal rights under the
law - as there are many religionists in
our nation, today, who would forcibly
silence us, if they could - we Atheists
must start electing some of our own to
major political offices.

Let me be the only Atheist

candidate, at the dawn of the
21st century, who was a major
candidate for office - and lost.
In closing, I would like all of you to
help me achieve a unique position in history. I would like to be remembered as
the only Atheist candidate, among many,
at the dawn of the 21st Century, who
was a major candidate for political
office,and who did not win.
Page 19

Disgraced business execs are learning a few tricks of the trade

from fallen political and religion leaders. When covered with
the taint of scandal, head for church and repent on camera.

"Open confession is good for the

soul."
-Old Scottish Proverb
"We as often repent the good we
have done as the ill."
- Hazlitt, Characteristics
"] have siiinned ... "
-Jimmy

Swaggart

h
t as become an almost daily, prosaic
affair - revelations of financial
impropriety by a top executive, often
a Master of the Universe at the helm of
one of the Fortune 500 companies or
some other business juggernaut.
Beads of sweat appear as they are
grilled by congressional committees.
Some are hounded by news media, as
they retreat into sumptuous mansions.
Others, like John Rigas of Adelphia
Communications, the nation's number-f
cable provider, are led away in handcuffs. The indictments from agencies
like the U.S. Department of Justice to
the Postal Service seem fit for a perp
line-up, complete with charges of "cooking the books," defrauding stockholders,
and using "dominion and control" of corporate entities on behalf of illegal and
personal gain. Other accusations seem
to fit, too, including bank and wire
fraud, "looting," self-dealing, financial
wrongdoing and embezzlement.
Over a trillion dollars in shareholder equity has evaporated from the
American economy in the past several

Conrad F. Goeringer is Director

of American Atheists On-Line
Services and a Contributing Editor
to American Atheist. He surfs the
Web and writes about the world
from his home on the South Jersey
Shore.
Page 20

weeks, much of it due to investor skittishness and the fallout from the financial scandals. Even so, the beleaguered
executives who fleeced their companies
and became gourmet chefs cooking
accounting ledgers are turning to a
tried-and-true remedy for deflecting
public indignation. Following the lead
from a long chorus line of fallen politicians, clergy, and other rogues, the
deposed Masters are turning to religion.
Some broadcast their credentials as men
of god, stable family-raising, churchgoing paradigms of civility and conscience.
Others, like Rigas, have maintained
a self-righteous high profile dripping
with religious rhetoric, denouncing the
alleged ills of society all the while
allegedly engaging in predatory behavior and raiding the share-holder's portfolios.
Exculpation of wrongdoing through
the public confessional is certainly nothing new. Scandals over the past two
decades, though, have elevated such
mea culpas to a high art form.
Admissions of sin, professions of guilt
and remorse, and pledges of reform are
seen as mandatory steps for those wishing to rehabilitate tottering careers as
political officials, media stars and, more
recently, Wall Street tycoons.
ABC News reporter Catherine
Valenti recently promised tongue-incheek guidance for those implicated in
the widening gyre of white-collar corporate fraud.
Avoid flaunting excessive wealth,
warned Valenti, and don't cry poverty
when it is simply not true. It is difficult
for the public and laid-off workers to
believe such claims, as when disgraced
Enron exec Kenneth Lay's wife went on
national television to insist "we lost
everything."
Autumn 2002

The interview took place in one of

Lay's posh retreats in Aspen, Colorado.
It's also good counsel for Scott
Sullivan, disgraced Chief Financial
Officer at WorldCom, who reportedly
masterminded that firm's $3.8 billion
accounting debacle. He is building a $15
million mansion in Boca Raton, Florida.
"Show up at a church or a baseball
game," Valenti adds. "This gives the
image of being a family-oriented, religious citizen."
The consequences of not hurrying to
the public confessional at the first hint
of impropriety can be fatal for those
whose status depends on high approval
ratings from voters, congregants, or
even shareholders. An instructive case is
former Sen. Gary Hart who was considered a likely winner in the 1998 campaign until accusations of "womanizing"
turned
deadly. The front-running
Senator from Colorado saw his presidential ambitions evaporate in May when
the Miami Herald ran an expose reporting that Hart, a married man, was
involved with a young model named
Donna Rice.
Hart's 20-point lead in polls quickly
eroded as reporters, acting on an anonymous tip, surveilled Hart's Washington
townhouse. Other revelations soon surfaced, including reports that Hart and
Rice had taken an overnight cruise to
Bimini on a yacht aptly christened
"Monkey Business."
Inside the Hart campaign, strategists wrongly pursued a course of denial.
The denouement came when a reporter
for the Washington Post bluntly asked
the beleaguered candidate, "Have you
ever committed adultery?" By now, the
National Enquirer had run a front-page
picture of a smiling Ms. Rice sitting on
Sen. Hart's lap. It was all over by the
time a bitter and disenchanted Hart
American Atheist

returned to Colorado and delivered a

farewell speech on May 8. He subsequently made a career as an author and
public speaker. Donna Rice, the vixen
who fooled around with The Man Who
Might Have Been President, got herself
on magazine covers sporting a bikini,
and even did a "No Excuses" jeans ad.
Later, she went on to establish her own
dubious career. Rice found the Lord and
converted to born-again Christianity.
She now is a noted anti-pornography
crusader.
It could have ended differently,
though. Since the Hart debacle, shrewd
publicity handlers and their clients have
learned the rehabilitative value of public religious confession. Shamed clergy,
politicians, and others have found a new
lease on life after passing through the
fires of avowal, proclaiming guilt, and
begging for forgiveness.
Hart's
political trajectory, for
instance, stands in stark contrast to the
career of Jimmy Swaggart, a brash television evangelist as wild and talented as
his cousins, rock idol Jerry Lee Lewis
and country music crooner Mickey
Gilley.
Swaggart, born into poverty in
1935, grew up in a household which
according to one reviewer prayed to a
god "incomprehensibly cruel and merciful in turns." He was ordained into the
Assemblies of God, one of the many sects
riding the post-World War II boom in
Pentecostal religion. It was a strange
and bizarre ambiance, a confluence of
fundamentalist belief, ecstatic "spirit
filled" tent revivals, and cultic congregations. Swaggart's evocative and frenetic
style of preaching and a sense of what
his followers wanted fit with the emerging medium of television. The tent and
dilapidated rural church were soon
exchanged for broadcast studios that
carried the message of Swaggart and
other "holy-roller" evangelists into millions of homes.
By the mid 1980s, Jimmy Swaggart's Boca Raton ministry was grossing
half-a-million dollars a day. The backwoods pulpit had been replaced by a
evangelistic operation that including a
state-of-the-art media center, a mail.
facility so large that it required its own
zip code, an educational complex, and a
payroll of over 1500 people. Swaggart
had "arrived," along with a new generation of digital preachers like James
Bakker of the PTL ("Praise the Lord")
Club, Jerry Falwell of the Moral
Majority, Oral Roberts, and others.
Parsippany, New Jersey

Swaggart's fall from grace involved

forces plaguing America's burgeoning
industry of electronic salvation. Success
had come with hidden costs. Despite
their denominational affiliations, most
of the televangelists had established
separate and competing empires which
required business decisions these men
were often ill-equipped to make. Oral
Roberts, for instance, embarked on a
lavish fund-raising campaign to raise
money for an enormous medical center
that quickly became a financial drain.
Bakker's "Heritage USA" theme park
and other enterprises were ridden with
debt, and required a steady round of
money-raising marathons and pleas to a
list of 600,000 or so gullible contributors.
In 1987, Swaggart was among the
cadre of popular evangelists criticizing
Jim Bakker for his lavish lifestyle and
sexual peccadilloes. Bakker and wife
Tammy Faye had worked their way up
the ministerial ladder of success, and
during an eight-year period received $9
million in "excess compensation" from
the various tax-exempt religious groups
they controlled. Worse yet, Bakker had
sexual liaisons with Jessica Hahn, an
impressionable and attractive woman in
the PTL coterie. Those revelations
meant that Bakker's vast empire of real
estate including the theme park and
other resources were up for grabs.
Bakker was hustled off for a brief jail
term, and wrote a book of his travails.
He is now cautiously "stepping out"
again in the public limelight.
Swaggart met his fate when photographs surfaced of him employing the
services of a prostitute. Despite calls for
his resignation from the ministry, he
persisted in his preaching theatrics and
delivered his famous tearful mea culpa.
Three years later, he was again back in
the action where he remains on the air,
raising money as aggressively as ever.
The demand of worldly business
success was not the only reason for the
stumbling of men like Swaggart and
Baker. There was also the harsh ideology
of evangelical culture. Those who sinned
and found deliverance were "saved," but
were then expected to be paragons of
religious probity. "It left little room for
ordinary imperfections or failure and
produced enormous guilt," notes Charles
L. Harper of Creighton University. An
observer of Swaggart's meteoric career,
Harper adds that unlike the Catholic
religion that permitted an endless cycle
of transgression, repentance and forAutumn 2002

giveness, "there is no room for failure" in

the Pentecostal system.
In practice, though, public confession usually works. Swaggart's current
ministry is considered a shadow of its
former self, but he remains on the airwaves. His repentant "I have sinned"
sermon delights and offends listeners on
the Internet. With his theatrical style of
wretched repentance, tears, and a grimacing face, though, Swaggart was
"born again" in the hearts and wallets of
many of his followers.
In contrast to Gary Hart, public
confession in the face of moral condemnation and public outrage has worked
for politicians like Bill Clinton and the
Rev.Jesse Jackson.
Clinton's long-standing rap sheet
for alleged philandering was endless
grist for the religious-right gossip and
conspiracy mill, and fueled more unsavory speculation about fraudulent land
deals and even drug dealing. True to
form, conservative icons like Richard
Scaife and Pat Robertson saw the dashing Clinton with his magnetic charm
and political savvy as someone akin to
Beelzebub himself. Republicans succeeded in unleashing the tenacious
Kenneth Star, who literally dragged
dirty laundry (a semen-stained garment) before the courts and television
cameras for a salacious orgy of public
consumption. Jokes about oral sex
became stock-in-trade for late night
comedians, while more staid media pundits managed to discuss, with straight
faces, whether the saturation coverage
of fellatio was appropriate subject matter for underage viewers.
Faced with the bulldog tenacity of
Mr. Starr who seemed determine to ring
every drop of details from l'affaire
d'Monica, Clinton soon went from his
declaration ("I-did -not- have-sex -withthat-woman") to a more atmospheric
and less belligerent admission that, yes,
he too had sinned. A stable of "spiritual
advisers" and confessors led by "pastoral
counselor" Tony Campolo were soon
buzzing about the White House. Also on
board this political rescue mission was
Rev. Gordon MacDonald, the senior pastor of Grace Chapel in Lexington,
Massachusetts. Somehow, the Boston
Globe and New York Times discovered
that the President was seeking spiritual
succor. Is it gauche to ask if that information was leaked?
The repentance treadmill regimen
that followed, and was extensively covered by media, sounded like the spiritual
Page 21

equivalent of a Jake LaLanne workout

program. "At least one of us will meet
with the President weekly," Campolo
assured the voracious stable of White
House reporters, "and we'll do our best
to help him as he searches his heart and
soul."
''We want to provide all the help
that we can to spiritually strengthen
him against yielding to the temptations
that have conquered him in the past."
Campolo was adamant in waving off
any "political" question, insisting "Our
responsibility and our desire is to rescue
a fallen brother." Everyone was reminded about Clinton's strong Baptist background, which Campolo gushed was fitting reason "that he should call upon
brothers in his own religious tradition to
help him on his journey of faith in the
days that lie ahead."
The journey was made more bearable by high public approval ratings, not
necessarily in Clinton's moral department, but in managing to keep profits
high, unemployment low, and the nation
minimally involved in foreign entanglements. It was a combination of factors
that bedeviled the Republicans who in
1996 and 1998 insisted on making
"morals and values" part of political
campaigns.
Clinton survived, and Mr. Campolo
may have played more of a role as a
strategic political adviser than hired
guns like James Carville and Karl Rove.
The "spiritual counselor" liked to tell the
story of Lorraine Hansberry's play,
"Raisin in the Sun" (reputedly a favorite
of Clinton's as well), the story of an AfroAmerican man whose mistakes tear
apart his family. "When he confesses and
asks for forgiveness," said Campolo, "his
sister, in great anger, screams at him
and calls him despicable names.
"The mother interrupts her to say, 'I
thought 1 taught you to love him.'
"The sister shouts back, 'Love him?
There is nothing left to love'."
The mother reminds her offspring,
"There is always something left to love."
Among the small brigade of Bibleclutching advisors and counselors rescuing Clinton from potential political exile
was Rev.Jesse Jackson. He too would be
pilloried when in January, 2001 he
admitted fathering an illegitimate child.
Jackson's Rainbow Coalition was hard
at work planning an inauguration day
protest over the swearing-in of George
W. Bush, another repentant "sinner"
who reportedly battled boozeand assorted
drugs. The woman in question, identified
Page 22

as Karin Stanford, was a former university lecturer who at the time worked for
Jackson's non-profit activist group.
The story was first run in the
National Enquirer (which had linked
Hart and Donna Rice) and then confirmed by mainstream media led by
Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. Ms.
Sanford
was reportedly
receiving
$10,0000 a month for personal expenses,
and had been given a one-time payment
of $40,000 to cover moving costs when
she took maternity leave from Jackson's
Washington campaign office and relocated to California. Critics dubbed the payments "hush money."
Reports in some media suggested
that Jackson, discredited and disgraced,
was on the verge of withdrawing from
public life. Coalition spin doctors then
quickly announced that the Reverend
was temporarily exiting the limelight of
media scrutiny for a period of time to
"heal" and make himself right with God.
Less than a week later, Jackson was
back at work.
The British tabloid The Independent
noted that the real beneficiary of the
Jackson imbroglio was George Bush,
who began in earnest a campaign to
emphasize "family values," wholesomeness and religious sensibility as a
benchmark for his presidential run.
Jackson had used similar rhetoric in his
own defense and that of Bill Clinton.
While serving with Tony Campolo and
other men-of-the-cloth in Clinton's spiritual advisory force, Jackson gushed:
The nation must take the test: if
there are any among us who have
not known the trials and tribulations and temptations, then throw a
rock ... At some point we have to forgive, redeem and move on.
George W.Bush was not free oftaint
himself.
Religious themes dominated the
Republican campaign in 2000, with
Democrats coming in a close second
thanks to Sen. Joseph Lieberman as the
Vice Presidential contender. The GOP
had already consecrated its marriage
with the religious right (something
which
Pat
Robertson's
Christian
Coalition had yearned for since the early
1990s). Bush's mainstream affiliation
and his rhetorical emphasis on "compassionate conservatism" lacked the edge of
the evangelical right wing. The new
President, however, capitalized heavily
on his born-again credentials as a
Autumn 2002

reformed playboy bon-vivant who found

stability in the arms of a good woman,
and sanctity through long walks and
soulful discussions with Rev. Billy
Graham.
The association with the elder evangelist once dubbed "Preacher to the
Presidents" gave the younger Bush a
badly-need link with credible political
figures. Graham had been a frequent
guest at the White House since the
1950s when then-President Eisenhower
instituted the constitutionally suspect
practice of holding official "prayer
breakfasts" and other religious services.
Bush's father was identified closely with
Graham as well. This contrasted with
the Clinton era, when "religion" meant
Bill and Hillary taking time off for
"Renaissance Weekends." These gatherings of leading financial, media and
political personalities featured "personal power coaches," motivational speakers, peddlers of new-age and holistic
lifestyle regimens and others identified
with the latest incarnation of the human
potential movement.
Graham's ties to the Bush family
were particularly convenient in the
waning days ofthe 2000 campaign when
allegations of abortions, drunk driving
arrests and even cocaine use by the
younger Bush hit the wires. "W" had
already played the religion card, citing
religious faith and his lengthy discussions with Graham as elements in the
redemption of his personal life. This mirrored the early life of Franklin Graham,
son of the evangelist who in his youth
enjoyed a reputation
for rebellious
behavior as well. That narrative, of a
fallen "sinner" transformed, like Paul on
the road to Damascus, quickly segued
into proposals on behalf of "Compassionate Conservatism," and efforts to
encourage faith-based social services.
Using his own life as a template, Bush
denounced welfare programs that met
material needs yet failed to "heal the
spirit" and inculcate religious virtue.

Bare Souls and Bull:

Mea Culpa on Wall Street
There have always been political
and financial scandals in America. What
distinguishes the recent wave of fiscal
wrong-doing from its historical antecedents, though, is its sheer magnitude.
WorldCom, for instance, has just discovered another $3.5 billion in accounting
"errors" - and there are efforts to "spin"
and rehabilitate fallen Masters of the
American Atheist

Universe. The term comes from Tom

Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, but is
perhaps best characterized by Michael
Douglas's fictional character portrayal
in the film Wall Street. There, Douglas
played Gordon Gekko, a Wall Street
player whose wealth accumulated not so
much by producing a product or service,
but instead the constant buying and
selling of real estate, businesses, and
ultimately the lives of other people.
Gekko, the consummate
corporate
raider encounters an up-and-coming
Charlie Sheen who trades inside information and finds himself drawn deeper
into the glitz and treachery of high
stakes financial intrigue.
The closest Gordon Gekko comes to
being an evangelist is when he lectures
stock owners of a slumping corporation
on the virtues of Darwinian capitalism,
declaring "Greed is good!" He extols
"greed for life," for possessions, for the
fulfillment of desires. He is past the
mere love of money - after all, he owns
the Long Island beach front mansion,
has a wife and mistress and all of the
material comforts anyone could possibly
need. It's the chase, the hunt, the deal,
the "game" that drives him.
"His frankness is refreshing," noted
critic Roger Ebert in a 1987 review.
Today's fallen masters are, well,
perhaps as corrupt as Douglas's character, but far less frank. Some are like
John Rigas who built Adelphia
Communications from a small regional
provider into the nation's sixth-largest
firm, all the while showcasing his personal religiosity and refusal to carry
adult content. He stepped down from the
Adelphia board in late May, and has
been charged along with sons Timothy,
James, Michael and son-in-law Peter
Venetis in a scheme to divert corporate
resources to private accounts.
Under a negotiated agreement,
Rigas-controlled corporations would
return $567 million back into Adelphia,
and surrender their stock which will be
placed in trust pending repayment of
other moneys. All told, this financial legerdemain involved more than $3.1 billion in loans according to the Securities
and Exchange Commission, none of it
revealed to shareholders, workers or
other officers.
"They used Adelphia like a personal
bank any time they needed money,"
quipped one investigator.
Rigas remains under investigation
by the SEC and grand juries in two

Parsippany, New Jersey

states. The company also failed to make

a $38.3 million interest payment, and
fell short on a $6.5 million dividend.
John Rigas has been discharged as
Adelphia president, CEO, and Chairman, but managed to garner a handsome $4.2 million severance package to
run over the next three years.
Unlike Gordon Gekko, Rigas is less
likely to preach the virtues of greed and
materialism than he is to crusade
against salacious program content that
subscribers may allow into their homes.
The Los Angeles Times noted that the
76-year-old telecommunications executive "has operated his business and personal life in line with Christian principles," which included turning Adelphia
into "the only one of the nation's eight
largest cable companies that lacks adult
programming."

While the Rigas patriarchs were

being led off in handcuffs for an appearance in Federal Court before Magistrate
Gabriel Gorenstein, on the other side of
the country Los Angeles sex therapist
Dr. Susan Block was finally getting her
measure of justice.
"Susan Block thinks that the
Rigases belong in prison for something
far more important than massive theft,"
noted pundit Jimmy Breslin in the July
25,2002 issue of Newsday.
Block charges that Adelphia, under
the control of the Greek Orthodox Rigas
clan, violated everything from the
Constitution to the rules governing public-access television by pulling Block's
popular and edgy "Sex for Wisdom"
program. The half-hour cable show had
been airing on community television in
Los Angeles since 1992, until Adelphia

"No, I've never heard of an 'Ave Maria' ending

in an American football game."
Autumn 2002

Page 23

gobbled up a local provider, and quickly

began screening and censoring all fare.
"The cable company is based in a
tiny backwater town called Coudersport," griped Block, a Yale-minted
Ph.D., "which according to a New York
paper, is the next possible home of the
Aryan Nation. John Rigas and Sons rule
the town like a Greek Mafia, surrounded by lawyers. They tried to force their
morals on every place that had their stations. The only morals they did not try to
force on us were their quaint notion of
what to do with other peoples' money.
Steal it."
Breslin noted that whenever Block's
program was aired on the Adelphia-controlled public access channel, "When she
talked about the body and started to
show images, the screen went black."
Block retaliated. The black background was soon adorned with letters
proclaiming "This is what censorship
looks like." Block then launched a special half-hour attack program blasting
Rigas, and naturally
dubbed
it
"Adelphiagate."
Other content was censored as well,
most of it popular adult programs
including "Spice" and the "Playboy
Channel." Rigas defended the prudish
policy, issuing a statement that Adelphia would persist in restricting all
mature content, including the lucrative

pay per view. Guidance from the U.S.

Supreme Court didn't seem to help the
situation. The justices had designed a
cumbersome test for "obscene," defining
it as: Whether the average person,
applying
contemporary
community
standards, would find that the work,
taken as a whole, appeals to prurient
interest; whether the work depicts or
describes in a patently offensive way
sexual conduct specifically defined by
applicable state law; and whether the
work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific
value."
These standards vary considerably
from place to place as any civil rights
attorney knows. What is welcome into
the bedrooms of Los Angeles may not
pass muster in the boardrooms of
Coudersport.
John Rigas and Adelphia became
media celebrities with the religious
right for their on-air purity efforts.
James Dobson, the avuncular head of
Focus on the Family ministry, urged followers to contact Rigas and praise the
company for being "the only major cable
operation
with a policy against
pornography."
Rigas "believes that it undermines
family values," declared Dobson. Other
organizations
such as "Hollywood
Prayer Digest" joined in the outpouring

"Born again birthdays

Page 24

don't count."
Autumn 2002

of support, lauding Rigas for "carrying

the torch for cable pioneers who long
shunned adult programming."
Crusading against smut is often a
useful political fashion to distract the
public from more pressing concerns such
as financial accountability.
It also appeals to scoundrels.
George Bush, for instance, vowed
during the year 2000 campaign to carry
on the flagging "war on obscenity," and
declared that "pornography has no place
in decent society."
If all of this sounds familiar, well,
recall the case of Charles Keating.
During the 1980s, Keating was one of
the actors in the infamous savings and
loan (S&L) scandal that closed numerous financial institutions and fleeced the
pockets of taxpayers for bailout cash.
Keating, a staunch Roman Catholic,
poured millions of dollars of somebody's
money into anti-pornography crusades
including his Citizens for Decency
Through Law. While pointing the accusing finger at porn peddlers, though,
Keating-controlled companies like Lincoln Savings & Loan and American
Continental Corporation were bilking
investors - many of them elderly - out of
their last dollars by hawking unsecured
and worthless junk bonds, or underwriting risky real estate partnerships.
Keating was later convicted in federal
and state courts of numerous counts,
and served five years in prison.
Another figure in the current financial meltdown is Bernard J. Ebbers, the
CEO of beleaguered WorldCom, which
now boasts the most massive bankruptcy filing in world history.
When Ebbers came under the glare
of publicity, he dodged an onslaught of
questions from members of the US
House of Representatives and instead
performed public ablutions at his local
Baptist Church in Brookhaven, Mississippi where he also teaches Sunday
school. At times he sounded like Richard
Nixon in front of the cameras. Ebbers, a
staunch fundamentalist and member of
the Promise Keepers men's group
preached from the pulpit and assured
fellow congregants, "I want you to know
you aren't going to church with a crook."
Even the religious were slightly
skeptical. William Bole of Religion News
Service mused, "Did Ebbers go before
the faithful because he knew they would
go easy on him, easier than secular
authorities would?"
Good question. Investigators say
that Ebbers began cooking the books at
American Atheist

WorldCom back in 1999. The company

had entered into a deal with the thenthriving Promise Keepers to generate
extra revenue for the Christian group by
providing long distance and other telephone services to members. Amidst the
growing scandal, Ebbers resigned early
this year after funneling $408 million
from WorldCom accounts to cover personal stock losses.
While the Enron roller coaster was
crashing, not all of the heat was on CEO
Kenneth Lay, who took advantage of
trips to church for photo ops and media
rehabilitation.
The
firm's
Chief
Financial Officer, Andrew Fastow was
also coming under scrutiny, and in news
reports was described as an up-and-coming figure in corporate America as well
as a devout Jew.
That generated concerns within the
Houston Jewish community, where
Fastow was known for philanthropic
beneficence, and construction of a $1.3
million home in the posh River Oaks
section of town - a neighborhood where
for decades Jews and blacks were not
exactly welcomed.
In reporting the Enron scandal, no
one seemed to be mentioning the subject
of religion until Fastow himself sought
public redemption through the support
of a local rabbi. After all, one of the
courageous whistle blowers in the Enron
debacle is Jordan Mintz, a senior lawyer
who sent memos to corporate execs at
the company warning that something
was seriously amiss with the accounting
ledgers.
"Some Houston Jews say that Mr.
Fastow is being singled out for blame
even more than former Enron chairman
Kenneth Lay,"noted the Jewish newspaper Forward. "Others see Mr. Fastow's
prominence at Enron as a sign of just
how far Jews have come in an oil town
where memories of anti-Jewish discrimination are still fresh."
The Anti-Defamation League was
quietly monitoring the coverage of the
Enron debacle for possible signs of antiSemitic bias. Forward noted, though,
that "it appears that Mr. Fastow himself
has been playing the religion card by
directing calls (from media) to his rabbi,
who has vouched for his moral character."
Indeed, Rabbi Shaul Osadchey of
Houston's
Congregation
Or Amni
describes Fastow as "a mentsch."
"He's a very committed member of
the community," Osadchey assured
reporters. "He's active in supporting
Parsippany, New Jersey

Jewish causes and he's a devoted supporter of Israel."

The mentsch label played well in the
press. Stories of glowing adulation and
unction appeared in Newsweek,
the
Atlanta
Journal
and Constitution,
Washington Post, Cox News Service, and
U.S. News and World Report. It raised
ethical
and journalistic
concerns,
though, for Post reporter Lois Romano,
who was shuttled by Mr. Fastow to
Rabbi Osadchey.
"When does religion come into a
story?" she asked. "When the subject
brings it into play. And the subject
(Fastow) brought it into play."
Not all Jews agree that Fastow is
acting properly in turning a close adviser and friend into a public relations flak
catcher. Evan Smith, editor of the Texas
Monthly magazine and a Jew said, "It's
the marketing of religion as a cure-all
for sins. Now,when the white collar guys
are in trouble they quote the clergy as a
way to sanitize their sins."
Kenneth Lay's playing of the religion card served a similar purpose noted
Martin Cominsky of the ADL.
"I see religion and people's faithbackground coming into all of the stories," he observed. Cominsky added that
the media scrutiny and reporting of the
Enron collapse has located the former
Enron boss "within a Christian narrative of sin and repentance, even casting
him in the time-honored Texas role of
prodigal son." Indeed, the February 11
issue of the New York Post conspicuously splashed the Enron exec on the front
page with a banner headline declaring,
"Lay Prays." A story accompanying the
"photo exclusive" noted that Mr. Lay,
fresh from the stinging revelations of
financial impropriety and stonewalling
of investigators, emerged from seclusion
to make a public appearance
at
Houston's First United Methodist
Church.
"With God's help, we'll get through,"
Lay told eager reporters in search of a
sound byte.
The ties go even deeper, of course,
linking Enron, Lay, and people like
Ralph Reed, the former whiz-kid director of the Christian Coalition and now a
political gun-for-hire operating out of
Atlanta. Religion seems to play a less
improvisational
role
here,
tying
America's faith-driven Christian conservatives with grand corporate strategies
unfolding on a global scale.
Reed's firm, Century Strategies,
had approached Enron with a proposal
Autumn 2002

to stage a publicity blitz using a select

list of religious-right political contributors, friendly talk shows and shadowy
advocacy, non-profit groups to press
Congress for favorable legislation. A
February
17, 2002 story in the
Washington
Post revealed that the
$380,000 fee also covered "blast fax" saturation of Capitol Hill lawmakers.
Others on the Enron consulting
payroll include Bush economic adviser
Lawrence B. Lindsey, William Kristol of
the Weekly Standard, and even Republican National Committee Chairman
Marc Racicot.
Even more atmospheric has been
the speculation that Enron amounted to,
well, a quasi-religious cult with Chairman Lay operating in a manner hauntingly reminiscent of David Koresh or
Marshall Applewhite of the Heaven's
Gate sect. The similarities are hard to
ignore asserts David Arnott, a management professor at Dallas Baptist
University and the author of the book
Corporate Cults which describes how
some aggressive companies take over
the lives of workers and foster a totalistic environment in the job place.
"There are elements of cultist
behavior in Enron," said Arnott. These
included the requirement that workers
yield their complete devotion to corporate culture; the presence of a dynamic,
charismatic leader; and the fostering of
a climate separate from the larger community. The same authoritarianism
runs deep in many of the nation's
churches, of course, and it may be said
that at least corporations give a pay
check. But the Enron work place was
awash in intense motivational sessions,
emphasis on "team play," and long
hours.
"At any hint of attack," notes journalist Froma Harrop, "they'd rush to
their company's defense." And like a
cult, Enron management sought to keep
the inquisitive outside world at bay.
Religion is not the pivotal motivation behind the looting of corporate
assets, worker's pensions and job security, and the wealth of shareholders. It is,
however, playing a role for those seeking
redemption through public religious
spectacle. Lay, Ebbers, Rigas, and other
fallen "Masters of the Universe" - still
bear the responsibility for bringing
down companies and ruining the lives of
others.
For that, Jesus may forgive. Caesar,
hopefully, will not.

Page 25

Sendinfl God Into The Ranks

Of The Unemployed
What Science Is Doinf} To ReliQion
An address given by Frank R. Zindler at the Annual Oregon Secular Symposium
Saturday, June 22, 2002, Portland Conference Center

ods govern only the unknown. As

the unknown becomes known,
the space in which the supernatural can hold sway shrinks to smaller
and smaller dimensions. The conquest of
the unknown by science has progressed
to the point where today there is no
room left in which gods can function at
all. Already in 1941,Albert Einstein saw
clearly that this was true. In his essay
"Science and Religion," he observed,

The more a man is imbued with

the ordered regularity of all events
the firmer becomes his conviction
that there is no room left by the side
of this ordered regularity for causes
of a different nature [i.e., supernatural causes). For him neither the rule
of human nor the rule of divine will
exists as an independent cause of
natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering
with natural events could never be
refuted, in the real sense, by science,
for this doctrine can always take
refuge in those domains in which
scientific knowledge has not yet
been able to set foot.
But I am persuaded that such
behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only
be unworthy but also fatal. For a
doctrine which is able to maintain
itself not in clear light but only in
the dark, will of necessity lose its
effect on mankind, with incalculable
harm to human progress. In their
struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature
to give up the doctrine of a personal
God, that is, give up that source of
fear and hope which in the past
Page 26

placed such vast power in the hands

of priests. In their labors they will
have to avail themselves of those
forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the
Beautiful in humanity itself. [Out
Of My Later Years, Rev. Ed., The
Citadel Press, Secaucus, NJ, 1956,
pp.28-29]
Study of the history of the long war
between science and religion in the
western world shows that with every
victory of science over superstition, the
gods of the Christians, Jews, and Muslims have had one less function to fulfill,
and item after item has had to be
removed from their job descriptions.
Step-by-step, with each advance of science, the gods of the Abrahamic religions have been pushed further and further into the ranks of the unemployed.
Now,at the commencement ofthe twentyfirst century, the objective triumph of
science over superstition has been so
complete, so shockingly clear, so logically
indisputable, that the gods have had to
apply for welfare.
President Howdy Dubyah Doody,
although he has been unsympathetic to
mere mortals in need of welfare assistance, has sought to create a Department of Faith-Based Services. The purpose of that department, despite its
intentionally misleading name, is to provide. welfare funding for out-of-work
deities. The real nature of the program
is not immediately obvious, since the
gods themselves never collect their welfare checks in person, and they have
never been seen to use the standard
check-cashing services that prey upon
the working-welfare poor. Instead, their
Autumn 2002

checks are always picked up by "Persons

of Faith" - almost always men of faith who have had no trouble convincing the
Evangelist-in-Chief
that they know
exactly where their gods are hiding and
will see to it that the the deities of their
choice get their checks.
Although the gods of the Catholics,
Baptists, Pentecostalists, and Salvation
Army generals have had no problems in
being enrolled in our pious president's
welfare program, the gods of the
Muslims, Hare Krishnas, Moonies, and
Saucer Salvationists seem to be meeting
with some resistance. It would seem
that not all gods are created equally
worthy of our government's largesse.
Just how is it that we have arrived
at this situation? If the gods go on welfare, is there any likelihood of their
rehabilitation? Is there any likelihood
that they can ever again find employment? Before we start shelling out more
shekels to out-of-work divinities, we
need to adopt the tough-love attitude
that both Democratic and Republican
politicians have employed with unemployed humans. We need proof that the
welfare assistance is only temporary,
that the recipients will be returned as
soon as possible to the work-force.
Better yet, make them work for their
welfare check. Gods who won't work can
go begging or starve.
But can the gods go back to work?
What job is left for them to do? A quick
survey of the history of the struggle of
science with theology will show us, I
believe, that the gods today are not only
unemployed but unemployable. Let us
look at that history to see why this is so.

American Atheist

The Flat Earth

In the beginning, the world was flat.
At least that is the theory embodied in
the Bible. When Yahweh created the
world and its inhabitants, he did it in six
successive, discrete days: no more, no
less. Now that simple fact requires a flat
earth, since only on a flat earth can
there transpire a single day at a time.
On a round earth, there are always two
days occurring at a given time. Genesis
speaks of "the evening and the morning"
of the first and subsequent days. Only
on a flat earth can you have a single
evening or morning for everybody everywhere simultaneously. For people living
on a spherical earth, however, when it is
evening or morning for some, it will be
high noon or midnight for others. (And
what about people living in the polar
regions? Their "days" may be months
long!)
While this six-day proof of the planarity of the earth is overly subtle and
requires some amount of thought-experimentation before you can convince
yourself of its correctness, there is a passage in the New Testament that makes
it clear beyond cavil that the earth must
be flat. In Matthew's improved version
of Mark's gospel, we read [24:29-31}:
29. Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be
darkened, and the moon shall not
give her light, and the stars shall
fall from heaven, and the powers of
the heavens shall be shaken.
30. And then shall appear the sign
of the Son of man in heaven: and
then shall all the tribes of the earth
mourn, and they shall see the Son of
man coming in the clouds of heaven
with power and great glory.
31. And he shall send his angels
with a great sound of a trumpet,
and they shall gather together his
elect from the four winds, from one
end of heaven to the other.
For all the tribes of the earth to see
Christ at the same time, the earth has to
be flat. If it were spherical, only people
in the event hemisphere could see him
at the same time. Even then, most of
them could only see him when he was at
a very high altitude: so high, in fact, that
all would need powerful telescopes to
identify him and be sure he wasn't a
small comet.
When Magellan circumnavigated
the globe in 1519, he demonstrated the
falsity of the biblical notion that Yahweh
Parsippany, New Jersey

had created a flat earth. Of course, the

ancient Greeks had known the earth
was a sphere since at least the time of
Plato and Aristotle. Greek knowledge
was never completely lost, and by the
time Columbus was bested by the
Portuguese Bishop of Ceuta on this
issue, a number of Christian scholars
had grudgingly come to accept the
sphericity of the earth. Because of the
problem in Matthew 24, however, they
had to stipulate that if there were an
opposite hemisphere of the earth, it
could not be inhabited. There could be
no people at the antipodes. Magellan's
voyage revealed the antipodes were populated, and gave the lie to Matthew
24:30 - but not completely.
In our own time the Reverend Pat
Robertson - the would-be President of
the Theocratic States of America - realized that this passage in Matthew was
not really wrong. It did not imply a flat
earth after all. It was actually a hitherto unrecognized prophecy, a prophecy so
wondrous it puts all the other prophecies to shame. For you see, Matthew
24:30 is actually a prophecy of television.
Yes, sir. Yes ma'am. Television.
Pat Robertson has all his equipment
in place to televise the Second Coming of
Christ. With cameras strategically
placed all around the world, no matter
which airport Christ chooses for his
landing, Robertson's cameramen will be
transmitting his image to the antipodes.
People on all sides of the earth will be
able to see him at the same time on television, just as Matthew prophesied.
(I'm not sure, however, if Robertson is
ready for the possibility that the Son of
Man might want to pay a visit to Santa
at the North Pole first, before dropping
in on Jerusalem or Virginia Beach.)
There is a more serious worry, however.
With the sun being darkened at the time
of the Second Coming, sun-spot activity
will be raising hell with satellite transmissions. Worse yet, there probably will
be world-wide power outages, and only
battery-powered TV sets will be able to
receive Pat's broadcast - if it should be
able to get through at all. A worrisome
problem!

A Solid Sky
According to the infallible authors
of the Book of Genesis, the sky is a "firmament" - a solid dome arching over the
earth. The Hebrew word translated as
firmament (and deliberately mistranslated as "expanse" by modern translators who have heard about outer space)
Autumn 2002

is raqia', The Semitic root of the word

relates to smithing, to hammering
things out like metal into a thin sheet.
The firmament is transparent, separating waters above it from waters and seas
below it. The sky is blue because of the
waters above the firmament, you see.
There are windows in the firmament [Gen 7:11], and these were opened
on the occasion when Yahweh flooded
the earth at the time of Noah. The wise
and scientific authors of Genesis knew,
of course, that condensation of all the
water vapor in the atmosphere would
not have been adequate to flood the
earth above the highest mountain peak.
They had to have supplemental sources
of hydrogen oxide. The waters above the
firmament - together with the "fountains of the deep" were what saved the
day - if you can call drowning the entire
planet "saving the day."
Set into the underside of the firmament like jewels set in socket mountings
are the sun, moon, and stars. The residence of Yahweh and his army of angels
is above the firmament, but exactly
where heaven is situated with respect to
the waters above the firmament has
never been clear to me. Perhaps heaven
is a big rowboat floating upon the supernal waters. Perhaps heaven was drained
at the time of the flood - leaving just
enough celestial swampland to make the
sky blue, yet provide dry housing for the
denizens of Paradise.
Although conclusive disproof of the
firmamental theory of the heavens did
not appear until the 1960s, the advance
of astronomy by the time of Galileo and
Newton had already disemployed the
Lord as a celestial smithy who could,
when necessary, hammer out firmaments of the sort referred to in Job
37:18, where Job is asked, "Can you beat
out the vault of the skies, as he [Yahweh]
does, hard as a mirror of cast metal?"
The conclusive demonstration ofthe
falsity of firmamental theory came at
Christmas, in 1968, when Apollo-Saturn
8 astronauts
Borman, Lovell, and
Anders carried out the first-ever lunar
orbit. As you know, they had been scheduled by the religionists at NASA to experience spontaneous, profound religious
awe at a precise moment in their mission. (It seems appropriate, therefore, to
refer to these astronauts as "missionaries.") At that precise moment, they
began to read from a Bible that just happened to be floating around in the spaceship: "And God made two great lights:
the greater light to rule the day, and the
Page 27

lesser light to rule the night: he made

the stars also. And God set them in the
firmament of the heaven to give light
upon the earth." [Gen 1:16,17]
Ironically, the irony in this was completely lost on the politicians and priestly
pressure groups to whom the astronauts
and NASA were pandering. If in fact the
moon had been set into a firmament like
a jellybean in cake frosting, at the exact
moment that they pronounced the word
"firmament," they should have been
crashing into it! Instead, the pious pilots
flew safely around the moon and returned
to earth with nary a bruise to show for
their fracturing of the firmament,

Navel of the World

Probably the most famous - or infamous - battle in the war between science and theology in Christendom was
the lengthy fight over the positioning of
the earth in the universe. We knew, of
course, from Ezekiel 5:5, that Jerusalem
was the center of the earth. (The
Septuagint Greek version calls it "the
navel of the earth." Since navel oranges
were not known at that time, I take this
as yet another proof that the earth must
be flat.) But where does the earth itself
stand? Is it at the center of the universe,
as the Bible implies, or is it not? Does
everything else in the universe revolve
around it, or does the earth revolve
around the sun? After all, Joshua at
Gibeon [Josh 10:12] commanded the sun
to stand still, not the earth! Did Yahweh
create the sun, moon, and stars as
appendages to the earth, or is the earth
an appendage of the sun? Did Yahweh
create the universe for the sake of
mankind - creatures in his own image and design the world so that his most
important creation would be at its center, or are we not the apple of God's eye?
The geocentric theory - the biblical
theory - reigned more or less unchallenged for one and a half millennia. In
the year 1500, Nicolas Copernicus realized that planetary motions could be
reduced to simple orbits if he could suppose that the earth and other planets
revolved around the sun, as had been
accepted by Pythagoras, Aristarchus,
and Eratoshenes in pre-Christian times.
He dared not publish this finding, for
fear of the inquisition. Much later, in
1543, back in his native Poland, he readied his 1530 treatise on the heliocentric
theory, De revolutionibus
orbium
coelestium, for publication. This he
entrusted to his friend Osiander, who
added a preface making it appear that
Page 28

Copernicus thought the idea a mere

hypothesis - a fanciful hypothesis at
that. Copernicus was on his death-bed
when he first saw his published book
and learned of the friendly treachery
that probably had saved not only his life
but saved his precious book from the
flames of the Inquisition long enough
that his logic and evidence could become
widely known. Ultimately, of course, his
book was placed by an infallible pope on
the Index Librorum
Prohibitorum,
where it remained until 1835, when
another infallible pope removed it along with the prohibition against
teaching the double movement of the
earth.
The Dane Tycho Brahe (1546-1601),
being intelligently wary of ecclesiastical
authorities, rejected absolute heliocentrism and concocted a hybrid theory in
which the planets revolve around the
sun, but the combination revolves
around the earth as the center of the
universe. This so-called Tychonian
Theory is the one still favored by geocentrist creationists.
Yes, many creationists today still
refuse to believe the earth moves. As
late as 1985, at a creationism convention in Cleveland, Ohio, a debate was
held on the question of whether the
earth goes around the sun or the sun
goes around the earth. No creationist
was willing to defend the heliocentric
theory, so an actual astronomer had to
be recruited to uphold the scientific side
of the argument.
Giordano Bruno appears to have
been the only person after the time of
Copernicus who openly defended the
heliocentric theory, with its corollary of
the double motion of the earth, viz., that
the earth rotates on its axis and revolves
around the sun. After seven years'
imprisonment, in the year 1600 Bruno
was excommunicated and burned in the
capital of Christendom.
Then came Galileo Galilei (15641642) who proved, for once and for all,
that the earth does move about the sun.
His proof itself was heretical, for he used
a telescope and observation instead of
Bibles and syllogisms. In 1610, he
reported that Jupiter had moons, which
he had observed revolving around
Jupiter, not around the earth. Shortly
after that, he made the observation that
clinched the heliocentric hypothesis. He
reported that Venus showed phases like
the moon. Copernicus had been twitted
that if his theory were correct, the inner
planets should show phases like the
Autumn 2002

moon. Having no telescope, Copernicus

could not answer the criticism. Now
Galileo had the proof.
You all know the shameful story of
the persecution of Galileo: how, under
threat of torture, he was induced by the
Inquisition to renounce his wicked theory of the double motion of the earth.
I, Galileo, being in my seventieth
year, being a prisoner and on my
knees, and before your Eminence,
having before my eyes the Holy Gospel, which I touch with my hands,
abjure, curse, and detest the error
and the heresy of the movement of
the earth.
You all know also the story that as
Galileo tottered away he muttered sotto
voce, "Eppur si muove" - "But it does
move!"
Copernicus and Galileo removed
humanity from the center of the universe. It was a serious blow to the
human ego, and it undermined the
notion that Yahweh had designed the
world for the purpose of human habitation. God the designer suddenly had less
work to do - or more accurately, he was
seen to have done less work than was
reported on his time-card.

Gods, Motions,
& Planet-Pushers
The process begun by Copernicus
and Galileo found its culmination in the
work of Isaac Newton (1642-1727), who
used his theory of gravitation to account
for most of the phenomena of the heavens. A devout religionist of his time
attacked him on the ground that he
"took from God that direct action on his
works so constantly ascribed to him in
scripture and transferred it to material
mechanism." Indeed, the physics of
Newton not only deprived Jehovah of
much employment, it almost put him
out of existence altogether.
This came about because Aristotle
had taught that a body in motion would
come to a halt unless acted upon by an
external force. Applying this principle to
astronomy, Christian theologians - who
since Aquinas [1225-74] had adopted
Aristotle's physics - supposed that the
planets kept moving in their appointed
orbits because they were being acted
upon by a supernatural force - the
Christian god. Of course, Jehovah might
not be pushing the planets with his own
hand. He might use intermediates of his
own creation, angels, to do the work.
American Atheist

(Aristotle himself had taught that the

heavenly bodies "naturally" moved in
circles, in contrast to sublunary objects
for which rectilinear
motion was
natural. Once in motion, heavenly bodies would move forever.)
Newton's First Law of Motion was a
shock to the Christian system of celestial mechanics. Newton turned Aristotle
and the clergy on their heads: ''Abody in
motion will continue in motion unless
acted upon by an external force." God,
the Little Old Planet-Pusher, was out of
work. Worse yet, one of the major
"proofs" for the existence of a god was
derived from Aristotle's law of motion.
Aristotle's First-Cause Argument for the
existence of a god was intimately related
to the Prime Mover idea. Every body in
motion, he supposed, has been placed in
motion by some other thing that was in
motion. God to Aristotle was the originator of all motion, but he was not himself
moved. God became the Primum Mobile
- the Prime Mover, the origin of all
motion.
Newton's First Law gave respectability to the notion of the eternity of
motion. If objects don't need to be continuously pushed to stay in motion, why
suppose they needed a push to start
moving in the first place? Why can't
motion be an inherent property of matter? Why can't motion be eternal?
Does it make any sense to suppose a
god was needed to start the Brownian
movement of motes of dust? The thermal vibrations of atoms? The orbital
motions of electrons? Who needs a
Prime Mover any more? Like the
Designer of the World, the Prime Mover
seems to have fudged his time-card. He
never kicked the cue ball, pushed the
Ping-Pong ball, or moved the meatball.
Newton and his successors have shown
the Prime Mover doesn't deserve his
wages.
Although the Big Bang theory
would suggest that all motion can be
traced back to the singularity of an
exploding primordial particle, there certainly is no reason to identify that singularity with a god. Moreover, despite
the immense amount of evidence supporting the general premise that the
universe as we know it began in a cosmic explosion, there are still problems
and we surely haven't heard the last
word yet. There is still the possibility of
an oscillating universe that explodes
and collapses, multiple universes that
bud off from one another, and vacuum-

Parsippany, New Jersey

fluctuation universes that spring from

the void like the virtual particles of
quantum physics and then, just like
those particles, disappear into the void
from whence they came. Nowhere in any
of these theories, however, is there a job
for a god to perform. The Creator of
Universes is out of work.
The growth of astrophysics and
quantum chemistry has resulted in an
understanding ofthe origin ofthe chemical elements themselves. No superduper alchemist was needed to produce
thallium or thorium or thulium. They
and the rest of the elements can be
formed from the hydrogen and helium
produced by the Big Bang. All the elements of which living systems are composed are the result of the mindless
thermonuclear processes that have powered the stars of the universe as they
have been born and died in grand explosions called novae and supernovae.
As Carl Sagan so eloquently
observed, we are nothing more nor less
than star dust. We are older than the
earth as a planet. We are many orders of
magnitude older than the world allegedly
created by Yahweh or Allah. We have

"You missed Nietzsche

Autumn 2002

come from the heavens, but not from

Heaven. As we shall see shortly, the star
dust that became mankind was not
shaped into its featherless, bipedal form
by a supernatural
sculptor, but by
unconscious evolutionary processes.
The ancient Atheist philosopher
Democritus (c460-c370 BeE) said that
the world is composed of atoms and the
void. Period. Even the human soul was
composed of atoms and was, thus, as
physical as the body.Modern science has
confirmed the materiality of existence,
although Einstein's discovery of the
equivalence of matter and energy has
given us a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of atoms and
matter itself, and our understanding of
the void has been made more detailed by
the discovery that the void is filled with
fields. Nevertheless, modern physics in
general confirms the materialism of the
ancient Thracian philosopher. Democritus found no room for the gods. Yuri
Gagarin, the first man to fly in outer
space, confirmed that there was no god
in heaven. Perhaps Jehovah was out of
the office visiting a soup kitchen.

and hit Archduke

Ferdinand."

Page 29

God the Law-Giver or

God the Crapshooter?
As physics, chemistry, astronomy,
and the other sciences evolved, the concept of Natural Law came to be seen in
a new light. It had been believed that
Jehovah or whoever had ordained the
laws of nature in the manner that a
human lawgiver such as Hammurabi or
Moses or Solon had promulgated the
statutes by which men and women were
to direct their lives. Gradually, it was
realized that the so-called laws of nature
were nothing more than elegant - usually mathematical - ways of saying,
"That's the way it goes."
Unlike human laws - which do
require a law-giver - natural laws cannot be violated. Since they are merely
descriptions of reality, they need no
author. To be astonished at the so-called
lawfulness of the universe is no more
justifiable than to be astonished that
like causes regularly produce like
effects.
But the threat to God the LawGiver is even more dire than this analysis might suggest. The very concept of
causality itself has been called into
question due to the development of
quantum physics, in which probability,
not causality, is the operational concept.
Causal laws are being replaced by probabilistic "laws." Theology is being
replaced by statistics. God the crapshooter, however, does not appeal to
most Christians. As you know, many of
them consider gambling a sin.

The Coming of
Evolutionary Theory
While Copernicus pricked our pride
when he kicked our species out of the
center of the universe, the human ego
suffered a much greater insult from
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel
Wallace when they propounded their
theory of evolution by means of natural
selection. The discovery that we were
not specially created by a loving, albeit
tempermental, deity was a bitter pill to
swallow.As we shall see a bit later, the
medicine still hasn't been assimilated
completely into the body politic.
The discovery that the apparent
design evident in the human eye, brain,
ear, and intellect could be produced by
completely unconscious physical and
chemical processes was really the main
reason for termination of god's employment. It was Charles Darwin who delivered the pink slip. The later discovery
Page 30

that evolution is nothing more than an

epiphenomenon dependent upon the
chemistry of DNA was what booted God
the designer out the door into the ranks
of the unemployed.
The firing was for the most obvious
of reasons: incompetence. What kind of
designer would make his masterpiece
from blueprints that are 99% identical
to those for making a chimpanzee? What
kind of designer would put vertebrate
retinas on backwards and mar them
with a blind spot? Why give the crown of
his creation pseudogenes - genes that
clearly code for useful proteins but
which can never be activated to function? Why would supreme intelligence
give the same pseudogenes to apes and
even monkeys? What sort of designer
would give humans muscles to wiggle
their ears and erect their body hair? Was
it incompetent design or whimsy that
outfitted male creationists and tomcats
with nipples?

Spirit, soul, and mind

The men who wrote the Hebrew
Bible were woefully ignorant of the science of life. Still less was their understanding of what we now would call psychology or neuropsychology. According to
the second creation myth in Genesis,
Yahweh Elohim molds Adam from the
dust to make his body, but then the
double deity has to breathe into him the
"breath of life." It is breath that makes
us alive. Breath is the elan vital, the
vital force, the spark of life. In fact, your
breath is the you that inhabits the flesh
and bones that others recognize as your
earthly presence. "Breaths-R-Us" could
be the take-home lesson from Genesis
Chapter 2.
The Latin word for breath is spiritus, and it is the obvious source of both
the English word 'spirit' and the theological concept of spirit. In Greek, the
Holy Ghost is actually the Holy Breath
(hagion pneuma). The take-home lesson
here is that Jehovah breathes just like
the people who created him.
Why a god should have to breathe is
a mystery as impenetrable as the mystery of the Trinity, one-third of which is
breath. Most of the realm of the gods is
now known to be a vacuum, an airless
void. You can't breathe in those parts of
the universe. A god's breath there is
about as useful as an Albanian credit
card. In most of the universe, god's
breath is unemployed even if the rest of
him may occasionally find something to
do.
Autumn 2002

Scripture records a psalm of Asaph

[Psalms 73:21] wherein Asaph exclaims
"Thus my heart was grieved, and I was
pricked in my reins." 'Heart' is heart;
'reins' are kidneys. The heart was
thought to be the seat of the emotions.
The kidneys were the seat of shame and
guilt. We now know that both of these
mental phenomena are associated with
the brain. Unfortunately, the word brain
does not appear even once in the entire
Hebrew and Greek bibles. The Bible is
literally a brainless book.
One must admit the practical wisdom, however, of putting shame and
guilt in the kidneys instead of the brain.
The kidneys are much more closely connected with the organs that most often
cause the offenses which produce the
guilt. Even so, the Bible's total misunderstanding of the biological basis of
mind and the physiological basis of life
forces the conclusion that the Book of
Books is not an inspired source of truth.
It should be noted, furthermore, that the
word inspired
means 'breathed in,'
alluding to the primitive belief that biblical authors literally breathed into
themselves the breath of Yahweh, the
Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit. Once the holy
breath was inside their lungs, it took
possession of them and made them write
all the books that anyone has ever considered 'inspired'.
'Possession', incidentally, can be
good or bad, depending upon whose
breath is inhaled and sets up housekeeping in your body. If it's the breath of
devils or demons, you're in trouble. If
you can convince the masses it's Jesus or
Jehovah possessing you, you can make a
lot of money. To prevent evil breaths
from taking possession of you, you must
make the sign of the cross whenever you
sneeze. Friends standing near you
should say "God bless you!"

Bible-Study Backfires
Not only biology debunks the claim
that the Bible is a book written by
inspired authors, however. The scientific
study of the Bible itself long ago showed
that the 'Holy Scriptures' are the uninspired concoctions of mortal men. Some
of the supposedly sacred material was
actually purloined from the myths and
literatures of pagan cultures. It was
shown over a century ago that the creation and flood myths in Genesis were
filched from the Babylonians who in
turn had taken
them from the
Sumerians. Some of the Psalms are
American Atheist

derived from Egyptian hymns to the

sun. Most embarrassing of all, however,
has been the discovery that one of the
sayings attributed to Jesus Christ is
actually a line from one of Aesop's
Fables. In Matt 11:17 we read "... We
have piped unto you, and ye have not
danced; we have mourned unto you, and
ye have not lamented." Luke 7:32 reads,
"... We have piped unto you, and ye have
not danced; we have mourned to you,
and ye have not wept." The first part of
this is derived from Aesop's fable about
the fisherman who piped to the fishes.
The discovery that there are hundreds if not thousands of contradictions
in the Bible provides the logical proof of
its inauthenticity and uninspired origins. Much of the so-called Holy Bible is
actually the party propaganda put out
by different
theopolitical
interest
groups. Beyond the contradictions of the
Bible as we know it in the English
Authorized Version, however, is the fact
that the different Hebrew, Aramaic,
Greek, Latin, Syriac, and other manuscripts not only contradict each other in
thousands of particulars, they often
reflect different texts altogether. Thus,
the oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of
Mark lack the last twelve verses that
deal with the postresurrection story of
JC and all that silly stuff so sacred to
snake-handling charismatic Christians.
Then again, no Greek MS older than the
fourteenth century contains the trinitarian proof-text in I John 5:7: "For there
are three that bear record in heaven, the
Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost:
and these three are one."
Both biology and the Bible itself,
then, have sent God the Inspirer into the
ranks of welfare-seekers. The god who
inflated the tires of the juggernaut of
scripture - that malignant machine that
for so long has mangled so many
thinkers beneath its wheels - cannot
now reinflate those tires since they have
been punctured so decisively by science.
There is a job for him to do, but he cannot do it. God the Inspirer of prophets,
evangelists, and seers has not the
strength required to jack up the juggernaut. He has had to go on long-term disability. He too is now unemployed.

Studying the Brain

Of great relevance to the demise of
gods who breathe and inspire are recent
discoveries in the field of brain physiology. Studies of the organ so completely
overlooked by sacred scribblers have
Parsippany, New Jersey

shown that stimulation of particular

parts of the brain can produce the religious awe and sense of theophany that
religious mystics have claimed were evidence of a supernatural realm. The
physiology of the feeling of inspiration
can now be elucidated in the laboratory.
Certain drugs can produce those mystical sensations also. The reduction of
'inspiration' to electrophysiology evicts
yet another god from his office.

Gods in the Gaps in Knowledge

As I observed at the beginning, the
gods rule only the unknown. This
means, however, that one god or another
is still in control of those fields in which
science has not yet been able to give
comprehensive and compelling explanations of the facts or to probe problems to
the materialistic bedrock from which
they sprang when no scientist was looking. In a sense, there are billions of sites
suitable for hallowed habitation. After
all, for every experiment to be performed by a researcher, before the
results are collected the answer to every
question is unknown. Potentially, there
is a god sitting at the end of each experiment, a god who flies off to the unemployment office in the instant that each
scientific question is answered and any
problem is solved.
Of course, all such gods have to be
very, very tiny - in proportion to the size
and importance of the mystery being
investigated. It is a fair complaint, however, that gods so small are hardly worthy of the apellation 'god'. Better they
should be thought of as fairies, gnomes,
trolls, or wills-o'-the-wisp.
Faith-based terrorists remind us,
however, that Allah akbar - god is large.
The hemisemidemigods of which I have
just spoken are not worthy of the name
'god'. The word god should be reserved
for bigger bogeymen.

Two Questions
It might be prudent to pay attention
to the claims of the Muslims on this
score, however, and we may ask if there
remain any territories unconquered by
science that are large enough for a fullgrown god to haunt. While my considered answer to this question is "no," I
must concede that there are two questions concerning which benighted
defenders of the faith can still find sufficient uncertainty to allow them to
declare "Christ is the answer."

Autumn 2002

Beginning or Eternity of the

Universe
The first of these I have already
examined somewhat. This is the question of the origin or eternity of the universe itself. Was there a Big Bang and a
beginning of time itself, or has the universe been exploding and collapsing
repeatedly for an eternity? Actually, it
doesn't matter what the answer turns
out to be, for if the term 'universe' signifies everything that exists, then a god
could not have created it. Had the universe been created by a god, that god
would have been outside the universe.
But by definition, the universe is everything that exists. There cannot be anything outside it. (In the theories of multiple universes, obviously, each universe
must actually be a subuniverse, with the
total of all the subuniverses making up
the Universe with a capital-U.)

The Origin of Life

The other big question concerns
how life on earth began. It must be conceded that science has not been working
long enough on this problem to have produced a comprehensive answer. While
theists may yet rejoice in this fact, their
exultation cannot be sustained for long.
A quick progress report concerning
research on this problem will show why
I think this is so.
A wide variety of experiments simulating primitive-earth conditions have
shown that essentially all the types of
chemicals needed for life could have
been formed in the atmosphere and
waters of the nascent earth. Indeed,
amino acids, lipids, and other simple
organics needed for life have been found
in meteorites, and many of their precursors have been detected in interstellar
gas clouds - showing that the raw materials for life were available even before
the earth was born.
It is very easy to produce 'proteinoids' from aqueous solutions of
amino acids simply by letting them
evaporate on the surface of hot lava. The
microspheres that result are very much
like proteins, and many have simple
enzymatic properties. Enzymes, you will
recall, are the chemical clergymen that
preside over every chemical wedding
and divorce that occurs in a living cell.
Moreover, these proteinoid droplets are
able to grow and reproduce for several
generations before petering out. Short
chains of RNA and DNA can be formed
on the surfaces of certain crystals of
Page 31

clay. Simple membranes resembling

those of living cells have been observed
to form spontaneously from lipids
extracted from meteorites. Biopoiesis
research has advanced to the point that
today I can claim that plausible
accounts are at hand for the origins of
all the necessary chemicals of which living systems are composed.
It is much harder to account for the
dynamic organization of living systems,
however, and we have a long way to go
yet before we shall understand how the
genetic code, say, arose out of a soup of
nucleotides, amino acids, and who
knows what else. Even so, great
progress has been made in the study of
the evolution of metabolic pathways. We
understand now that their present complexity is not primordial. The first living
cell was not nearly as complex as the
simplest cell now living. Recently,
biopoiesis experiments simulating the
high pressures and temperatures of
deep-sea vents along the Mid-Atlantic
Ridge have shown that very simple carbohydrate metabolic cycles can develop
spontaneously, without even being
bounded by cell membranes! The next
few decades will put all these pieces
together. The comparative analysis of
microbial genomes is allowing the reconstruction of hypothetical
minimal
genomes, and they in turn will give us
clues to the protometabolic stirrings
that first quickened into the ancestor of
all that dwell upon this spaceship we
call Earth.
The intelligent-design creationists
still try to plant their god in this gap in
understanding, a gap which remains to
be completely filled with scientific
knowledge. However, as is the case with
welfare housing generally, their god's
lease for this space is short-term at best.
Indeed, I believe his eviction notice has
already been served. He soon will be not
only unemployed, he will be homeless as
well.

Gods and Goodness

The last area in which a god was
believed to have found employment is
actually the first one that was shown to
be illusory. That is the job of defining
what is right and what is wrong, the job
of separating good from evil. If a certain
god were not continuously showing us
the road of righteousness, it has been
argued, the world would be a moral
chaos - as if'moral chaos' were not a fair
description of those parts of the world
where that deity supposedly has been
hardest at work.
Page 32

Plato showed long ago, in his dialogue Euthyphro, that we cannot depend
upon the moral fiats of a deity. Plato
asked if the commandments of a god
were "good" simply because a god had
commanded them or because the god
recognized what was good and commanded the action accordingly. If something is good simply because a god has
commanded it, anything could be considered good. There would be no way of predicting what in particular the god might
desire next, and it would be entirely
meaningless to assert that "God is good."
Bashing babies with rocks would be just
as likely to be "good" as would the principle "Love your enemies." (It would
appear that the "goodness" of the god of
the Old Testament is entirely of this
sort.)
On the other hand, if a god's commandments are based on a knowledge of
the inherent goodness of an act, we are
faced with the realization that there is a
standard of goodness independent of the
god and we must admit that he cannot
be the source of morality. In our quest
for the good, we can bypass the god and
go to his source!

Other Wars
Even though I have had to leave out
a number of important battles in the
war between science and theology, I submit that it has been demonstrated now
beyond doubt that there is nothing left
for gods to do. This is, however, an inference from rational and scientific analysis. Only on the objective plane has science bested religion. There is, unfortunately, an economic and political war
being fought between science and religion, and the outcome of that war cannot
be predicted at present. That wicked old
bigot in Rome - with the help of our own
Evangelist-in-Chief - still has great
power to suppress the progress of scientific research in medicine and other
areas.
Meanwhile, the creationists here at
home are waging a jihad against science
that would, if won, restore Jehovah to
his throne and place the practitioners of
science directly beneath it - with no
umbrella to shield them. Remember, if
their deity breathes, of necessity he carries on metabolism. If he has to maintain metabolism, he has to digest food. If
he has to digest food... You can see why,
in "One nation under God," it would be
useful to have sturdy umbrellas ever at
the ready.

Serious threats to civilization at the

moment are the intelligent-design creationists, who seek to replace the naturalistic philosophy of science with a theistic science - a science that could have
a supernatural component when it needed one. They argue that science is
unfairly biased against supernaturalism; they challenge what they call the
naturalistic monopoly of modern science. But in trying to explain the complexities of living things in terms of a
supernatural designer, the intelligentdesign creationists are not just guilty of
practicing pseudoscience, they are committing an informal fallacy of logic.They
are trying to explain the unknown in
terms of the more unknown. Old-time
logicians called this the ignotum per
ignotius fallacy - 'the unknown by
means of the more unknown'.
Real science, by contrast, must
eschew this fallacy. Real science must
explain the unknown in terms of the
known. It must emulate Benjamin
Franklin, who explained lightning in
terms of electricity. The intelligent
designers of his day, of course, explained
lightning as the wrath of Jehovah - as
though they could know anything at all
about the psychopathology of that
unpleasant
deity. When Franklin's
understanding led to the invention of
the lightning rod, the intelligent designers of his day could only denounce it as
blasphemy. Intelligent designers cannot
increase the sum of human knowledge.
They cannot help humanity. Only real
science can do that.
As I have shown, the objective war
between science and theology has been
won by science. This victory could easily
be overthrown, however, if the religionists win the economic and political war
now raging all around us. Atheists,
Agnostics, Humanists, Rationalists, and
Freethinkers of all kinds must not be
pacifists in this war. The stakes are too
high. We all must do everything we can
to plant the flag of reason solidly on
planet earth - and keep it there.
The Tower of Knowledge has been
built at great cost. Every temporary halt
in its construction that has been caused
by church authority has resulted in
immense loss of human life and monstrous
misery.
If for centuries
Christianity had not prohibited medical
research, just think how long ago we
would have had a cure for cancer.
Benighted legions of popes and
presidents alike are swarming upon the
See God Unemployed

Autumn 2002

page 52

American Atheist

AYODHYA - INDIA'S FLASH-POINT

By Margaret Bhatty

Ujarat didn't need an earthquake. Indians themselves have

out-done anything Nature ever
intended. Devastation and destruction
has been perpetrated ten-fold by frenzied zealots burning men, women, and
children in their homes, raping and
looting. The level of violence in the
state
has left us stunned
and
benumbed - and ashamed. Are we a
civilized people? Last year Gujarat had
our sympathy. This year we are
revulsed.
The nuclear device tested at
Pokharan by the newly-elected Bharatya Janta Party (BJP), and the
euphoria among its followers over having acquired a Hindu Bomb to counter
Pakistan's Islamic Bomb, is nothing
compared to the deadly timed device
we are now sitting over. March 15th
could have been the day it blew up in
our faces. The nation watched tensely
the events unfolding on TV screens as
lunatic elements converged on the
small dusty town of Ayodhya in Uttar
Pradesh to build a temple to the Hindu
god, Ram, over the spot where the
Babri Masjid once stood. Blood-letting
was averted by the protagonists backing off from their proclaimed plan
when the Supreme Court disallowed
the raising of any kind of religious
structure on the disputed plot of land.

Margaret Bhatty comes from a

Christian missionary family in
India. She is a free-lance journalist and author of books in English
for Indian children. She lives in
Nagpur. For many years a columnist for American Atheist, she is
the author of the AAP book An
Atheist

Reports

From

India,

which is available from American

Atheists ($9.00, ISBN 0-91030942-6, Stock #5026)
Parsippany, New Jersey

However, the Vishva Hindu Parishad,

Bajrang Dal and other militant elements of the fascist RSS organization
have merely postponed the construction of the Ram temple until after they
meet in conclave in June. Their argument is that this is a spiritual matter
which cannot be judicially directed
since it touches people's faith. This is a
super-spiritual nation unlike any on
the face of the earth.
The Gujarat killings are a warning
to all as to what lies in store for the
rest of the country. Observers visiting
refugee camps in the state heard stories from victims which were reminiscent of the holocaust of the 1947
Partition riots. The entire game-plan
has been carefully orchestrated by elements both within and without the
present government.
In 1992 the BJP - in a bid to capture power at the Centre - put a circus
on the road in the shape of a mechanized prototype of the god-king Ram's
chariot. It was driven through parts of
north India to make Hindus aware of
how impoverished their spiritual life is
without a temple rebuilt on a site now
occupied by a mosque, a symbol of the
abominable injustice visited on their
forefathers by Muslim conquerors. The
motorcade
was flagged off from
Somnath in Gujarat. The man who
rode the chariot was L. K. Advani, now
our Home Minister. The yatra - pilgrimage - was planned in meticulous
detail by Narendra Modi, now Chief
Minister of Gujarat, accused of having
sponsored the March pogroms carried
out by Hindu zealots on the Muslim
population. Riots broke out not only
along the route of the Ram Rath Yatra,
but in other parts of the country, where
illiterate and innocent people had no
idea why they were suddenly being
attacked. Over 1500 of my fellow-countrymen perished - both Muslim and
Autumn 2002

Hindu. Any man of conscience would

have called off the campaign after the
very first casualty, but life is cheap in
India, and memories are short - and L.
K. Advani knew that.
On 6 December 1992, thousands of
Hindu kar sevaks - religious workers traveled from all over the country and
converged
on Ayodhya in Uttar
Pradesh. The BJP state government
did nothing to stop them, nor did the
Congress government at the Centre.
The three domes of the Babri Masjid
were brought down within an amazingly short time, confirming suspicions
that there were demolition specialists
among the kar sevaks.
Ayodhya has a small population of
about 20,000, with most people visiting
it chiefly on pilgrimage. It is on the
sacred Saryu river and has scores of
temples. There are at least ten where
the presiding priest will tell you his
temple is on the exact spot where Ram
was born.
From the beginning of time it has
been a custom among humans in warfare to capture the women and the
deities of the vanquished
enemy.
Ancient Hindu kings had special officers placed in charge to take over all
the wealth and jewels of their gods
after smashing their idols. Religious
domination has always been demonstrated by knocking off the other fellow's gods and setting up one's own in
their place. In India we have had
Hindus doing it to each other, then
doing it to Buddhism, culminating in
that religion finally shifting its focus to
the Far East and southern Asia.
Iconoclastic Muslims then came along
and in their turn demolished Hindu
shrines and erected mosques and
masjids on their foundations. After
them came the Europeans - French,
Portuguese, and English - who weren't
any different. Some of their churches
Page 33

and cathedrals stand on the foundations of Islamic mosques and Hindu

temples. Hindu fanatics now talk of
"liberating" all their shrines by doing
another Babri-masjid on these structures as well. They claim 30,000 structures are slated for demolition. Indeed,
you'd think we have nothing better to
do than undo centuries of mischief
perpetuated by history. I read a letter
to the editor of a newspaper wherein
the writer said what we really need is
roti, kapra and makaan - food, clothing, and housing. But all we are being
promised is mandir,
masjid
and
samshaan - temple, mosque, and cremation ground.
The destruction
of the Babri
masjid is likely to prove a watershed in
India's history. Certainly, it proved that
there is now a bitter wind of intolerance and hate blowing through the corridors of power, and our much vaunted
"secularism" is like a flickering candle
about to be snuffed out. Political leaders who were 'caught on camera at
Ayodhya dancing and clapping gleefully as the masjid tumbled are now in
charge of the country.
The Ayodhya dispute dates back
into an unverifiable past, the way all
mythology free-floats. Ram is said to
have been born in the Treta Yug (Silver
Age) of the Hindu calendar. There are
four World Ages, vast stretches of time
which cannot be pegged to any earthly
event of chronological significance.
They just are. So trying to date the
birth of Ram is like trying to carbon
date Adam's rib. And identifying the
exact location of the lying-in chamber
is an exercise in futility. But not for
believers.
For centuries Ayodhya remained
without distinction, though various
Hindu kings patronized it, and one
even moved his capital there from
Patliputra (Patna). After the Moghuls
established their rule from Delhi,
around 1528 CE, one of Babar's generals, Mir Baqi, ordered the construction
of a mosque in place of a temple. By the
18th century, Ayodhya had become a
major centre of Hindu pilgrimage - not
under the patronage of a Hindu king,
but the Muslim Nawab of Awadh
(Oudh). Major riots took place in 1855
when the nawab's power declined and
British influence grew with the annexation of Awadh. In 1856 the British
erected a railing around the actual
Page 34

masjid to protect the Muslim area of

worship, and a platform was erected
outside the fence, but within the disputed site, for Hindus to worship their
gods. Other major sectarian
riots
occurred in 1893, 1912, and 1934,
though these weren't all related to the
actual dispute.
On the night of 22 December 1949,
two years after India became independent, a miraculous event took place
in the precincts of the mosque - idols of
Ram, Sita, and Laxman emerged from
within the earth. The administration,
fearing a serious breach of peace,
attached the mosque and put padlocks
on the gate to prevent Muslim and
Hindu worshippers from entering, but
no one had the courage to remove the
idols. In October 1984, the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad (VHP) launched a
mass awareness campaign for the liberation of Ram's birthplace. By 1989
the campaign had gathered considerable steam and organizers called for
donations of bricks for the temple.
Many pious Hindus, thriving abroad
and unprepared to return to their
impoverished
motherland,
donated
bricks of solid silver and gold. The huge
funds which the VHP have is chiefly
from Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) who
voted against our country with their
feet. Meanwhile, political parties, like
Rajiv Gandhi's Congress, took up the
issue as an election plank, and he even
ordered the locks to be removed to garner Hindu votes.
The poor performance
of the
incumbent government and the spectacle of various
coalitions proving
unworkable, the Bharatya Janta Party
won enough seats in the general election to enable it to form a government
at the Centre, propped up by smaller
regional parties. The Ram temple was
put on a back burner, and we saw what
everyone thought was a moderate man
taking
over as Prime
Minister.
However, the media often hinted at "a
hidden agenda," and many commentators described Atal Bihari Bajpai as a
mukhauta
- a man with a mask.
Events in Gujarat have proved them
correct.
While the party bigwigs, many of
whom had been present at the demolition, kept a low profile and spouted
time-worn platitudes about Gandhi
and secularism, their Hindu supporters, who are all of similar mind though
Autumn 2002

under different names, kept the issue

of the Ram temple at the boiling point.
After consulting astrologers, March
15th was chosen as the most auspicious day to conduct a puja and start
the construction. Over the years enormous sums of money have been spent
on preparing the stone pillars, friezes,
plinths, roofing, arches, etc. much of it
in Rajasthan. It was to be hauled to
Ayodhya and assembled in a jiffy by
kar sevaks much like a prefabricated
house.
In anticipation ofthis grand event,
kar sevaks were traveling to Ayodhya
on pilgrimage, many of them with families. They came from all over the country, with saffron bands on their heads
and flags and other emblems. Wherever their trains stopped, they shouted
slogans for Ram, and their intention of
raising his temple. Many of these 'pilgrims' went from Gujarat and returned
by the Sabarmati Express. On the way
they passed though a place called
Godhra.
The town of Godhra has a mixed
population, sixty percent Hindu and
the rest Muslims drawn from a tribal
group called Ganchi. Grinding poverty
has pushed the Muslims into petty
crime, theft, and smuggling. The railway yard is their stamping-ground,
and they filch coal, wood, iron, and
other commodities from the warehouses. The station has Muslim vendors
and porters. Hindu zealots traveling on
trains raised provocative slogans, and
some got into minor skirmishes with
stall-keepers, probably refusing to pay
for what they took by divine right.
Godhra's political equations are drawn
on communal lines.
It seemed almost inevitable that
the kind of provocation presented by
trainloads of Ram's devotees had to be
given a fitting reply. Petrol, stones,
kerosene, and other inflammable materials were stocked in readiness. A criminal politician who is the Muslim Mafia
boss in Godhra's railway yard, instigated his followers. A carriage filled with
Hindu kar sevaks and women and children was pelted with stones. When the
passengers put up shutters and bolted
themselves in, it was doused with
petrol and set alight. About 58 Hindus
perished most horribly. When, in retaliation,
Vishwa
Hindu
Parishad,
Bajrang Daland RSS storm troopers
unleashed unspeakable violence on
American Atheist

Gujarati Muslims, the man presiding

over the carnage, Chief Minister
Narendra Modi, said "To every action
there is an equal and opposite reaction" - putting poor Newton to shame.
The equal and opposite reaction
involved the slaughter of two thousand
Muslims, their homes burnt, their
shops, factories, and business utterly
destroyed. Mobs rampaged through
cities and towns - not local people but
'outsiders' who couldn't be identified by
their victims. These mobs were often
15,000 to 20,000 strong.
Even Muslims who chose to live in
mixed neighborhoods among their fellow-Indians were set upon. Killers
hunted down couples who had dared to
go for a Hindu-Muslim marriage and
murdered them. Muslim High Court
judges fled when their houses were
attacked. Re-enacting the Godhra fire,
arson was the main weapon. Shanty
towns were set alight, and women and
children were caught and thrown into
the flames when they tried to escape.
Today, over 300,000 Muslims are
crammed into camps - refugees in
their own country. Many search in vain
for loved ones who ran helter-skelter
when the killers descended. They have
been told to return to their homes
because the Gujarat government cannot feed them indefinitely. They are
now stateless people - their identity
wiped out with the loss of their ration
cards, passports, examination certificates, and other little scraps of paper
we are expected to produce as proof
that we are Indians and not illegal
immigrants from Pakistan or Bangladesh. They have also been disenfranchised, since they have no addresses or
identity papers. The BJP held a twoday conference in Goa during the riots,
and Modi was urged to call a snap poll,
to cash in on the Hindu Wave - over
the corpses of two thousand Muslims!
He was given a hero's welcome on his
return to Ahmedabad.
Our supposedly moderate Prime
Minister delivered a speech in Goa condemning Muslims in general, saying
wherever they are they cannot live in
peace with their neighbors. He shed
tears when he visited Godhra and was
shown the burnt-out railway carriage,
now to be preserved as a relic, but
didn't expend much sympathy on the
hundreds of innocent Muslim victims.
The Gujarat government announced
Parsippany, New Jersey

Hindu victims would be given two hundred thousand rupees in compensation, and Muslims half that; but it is
doubtful if they will get anything with
a prejudiced administration
unprepared to look into their individual
cases. Hindu families of the Godhra
incident have already received compensation, and Hindu organizations
are to pay for the education of
orphaned children, even providing
dowries when the girls marry.
The entire scenario has unfolded
as a pre-planned campaign, with thousands of Hindu zealots trained, armed,
and ready to do their duty. RSS men
have been appointed into top police
posts. During the killings, politicians
manned phones at police stations and
monitored the calls that flooded in
from people under attack Government
officials waited for orders from above
which never came. Policemen either
didn't respond to frantic calls for help,
and if they did, they joined the rioters.
They shot dead more Muslims than
Hindu rioters. The army was called in,
but the Chief Minister didn't deploy
them for three days, saying there were
not enough trucks available. Fact-finding missions have come away with
alarming
evidence. The National
Council for Human Rights, headed by a
former chief justice of our Supreme
Court, condemned the violence as
state-sponsored terrorism. There is a
general call for Modi to resign. But the
BJP is adamant that he will stay. He is
the first man from the upper RSS
cadre to become a chief minister.
The mood in my country today is
one of gloom and doom. Where are we
heading? Anyone watching events
unfold must notice how similar the
campaign is to what Hitler did in
Germany. The RSS and its associations
are great admirers of Hitler. One of the
chapters in a school text in Gujarat is
headed "Development and Progress
under Fascism." Another school textbook in Social Science says "India is a
Hindu-majority country. But there are
also Muslims, Christians, Parsees, and
other foreigners."
Hitler started by giving Germans a
sense of pride, by redefining ethnic
identity. The first phase of the saffronizing ofIndia involved the question
of 'nationhood.' One popular slogan
seen all over was Gaurav say kaho
main Hindu hun - "Declare with pride
Autumn 2002

I am a Hindu." Patriotism was equated

with nationalism found only among
Hindus since they constitute
the
nation. This meant defining in sectarian terms those who could have full
rights as citizens, and those who didn't
deserve them. The founder of the RSS
always said Muslims, Christians, and
other minorities would be given second-class status in a Hindu India without the right to vote. True patriots and
nationalists were identified, by demonizing these communities. In Gujarat,
the Christians were attacked by VHP,
Bajrang Dal, and RSS men. A Hindu
Wave was created which brought the
BJP to power in the state.
In the March riots economic sabotage was used along with the blood-letting. Teams of Hindu investigators
went around scanning electoral rolls,
municipal files for Muslim residences,
and income tax records to identify
those Muslims who are doing well. In
the subsequent mayhem, every one of
these establishments
was razed. So
meticulous was the destruction that
solitary
Muslim shops in Hindu
bazaars where singled out and burnt.
The demonizing of Muslims has been
an on-going process from the time of
Partition. Ironically, while millions
trekked out to Pakistan,
millions
either chose to stay on here because
this was their country, or they were too
poor to move. Today, to the lumpen and
more barbaric
Hindu
mind, all
Muslims are Pakistani agents, and all
Christians are funded by 'foreigners' to
convert Hindus.
Hindu fundamentalist groups now
believe India must be transformed into
a Hindu raj. The Web-site of the
Bajrang Dal declares the constitution
must be thrown out because it is antiHindu and Family Planning must go!
These are the very people who made
such fine showing at Kofi Annan's congress of religions at the United
Nations. If a Hindu state is to be
achieved by repeating the Gujarat
exercise across the country, there still
remains a great deal of killing to be
done. The BJP government has made
repeated appeals to our newest allies,
the Americans, to stop cross-border terrorism from Pakistan. Who needs terrorism from across our borders? We are
doing a splendid job all on our own,
thank you!

Page 35

lor" 13\irot1:
The Demot1s of Calvit11sm
By Gary Sloan

eorge Noel Gordon, Lord Byron

(1788-1824) was once the most
celebrated
poet in Europe.
Handsome and charismatic, he was
the darling of polite society, the cynosure of salons, a pacesetter in fashion
and mannerism, the observed of all
observers.
Smitten
debutantes,
madams, and maidservants vied for
the attention of the dashing peer of
the realm. Men envied him. Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage, published when
the poet was twenty-four, captivated
the romantic imagination of a continent. "I awoke one morning," said
Byron, "and found myself famous."
Despite his demurrals, readers fused
him with Childe Harold - a brooding,
enigmatic pariah haunted by a dark
past and nameless guilt.
Though he cloned Childe Harold
several times, Byron was no one-trick
pony (or poet). Don Juan, his epic masterpiece, is, as he said, "a little quietly
facetious on everything." It bristles
with trenchant quips on the eternal
human comedy: "<Life's a poor player'
- then play out the play, I Ye villains!
And above all keep a sharp eye I Much
less on what you do than what you
say: I Be hypocritical, be cautious, be I
Not what you seem, but always what
you see." "All present life is but an
interjection, I An 'Oh!' or 'Ah!' of joy or
misery, I Or a 'Ha! Ha!' Or 'Bah!' - a
yawn or 'Pooh!' I Of which perhaps the
latter is most true."
Byron was a master of the ingenious rhyme: "Christians have burnt
each other, quite persuaded I That all
the Apostles would have done as they
did." "But - Oh! ye lords ofladies intellectual, I Inform us truly, have they
not hen-pecked you all?" Even his
wife, no fan, conceded his verbal brilliance: "He is the absolute monarch of
words."
Page 36

When he died of a fever in

Missolonghi, where he was aiding the
Greeks in their struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire, newspapers called him and Napolean the
greatest men of the era. Goethe, the
reigning monarch of belles lettres,
hailed him as "a personality of such
eminence as has never been and is not
likely to come again."

Lord Byron by Thomas Phillips

1814
"Eminence" played better on the
Continent than in England. There,
long before his death, Byron's fame
had mutated to infamy. In separation
papers, Lady Annabella Milbanke, his
wife and the mother of his infant
daughter, Ada, accused him of psychological and physical abuse, including
attempted rape. Soon, his private history, sordid and profligate, became
Autumn 2002

public. One report had him and some

Cambridge cronies, dressed as monks
and using skulls for bowls, keeping
wassail at his abbey. Gossip sheets sizzled with lurid tales of homoeroticism,
pederasty, whoremongering, adultery,
and an incestuous liaison with his
half-sister, Augusta Leigh. Throughout England, the clergy thundered "on
his head pious libels by no means few."
Ostracized in London, where he
was then living, Byron fled England in
April 1816. He never returned. He
spent his final eight years in Italy,
Switzerland, and Greece. Reviled at
home, he was feted abroad.
Caroline Lamb, a blue blood who
hounded Byron into an affair, said he
was "mad, bad, and dangerous to
know." (Her kind of guy, apparently.)
George Ticknor, a literary acquaintance, described him as "gentle, mannerly, natural, affectionate, and modest." Both were right. Byron was an
amalgam of disparate traits: cruelty
and kindness; misanthropy and philanthropy;
cynicism and idealism;
affectation and sincerity; arrogance
and self-mockery; pettiness and magnanimity; intemperance
and asceticism; self-pity and courage. On balance, the virtues trumped the vices:
"For all his flashes of vulgarity, his
unworthy intrigues, his intellectual
caprices," biographer
Ethel Mayne
concluded, "Byron was a man of daring, tenderness, and candor, and one of
the most generous spirits of his age."
His vices were aggravated
by
indoctrination to Calvinism, which he
could never quite shake despite "an
early dislike to the persuasion." Of his
first grammar school, in Aberdeen,
Scotland, he later reminisced:
"I
learned little there - except to repeat
by rote the first lesson of monosyllables
American Atheist

- 'God made man - let us love him' by hearing

it often
repeated."
Harangued by a pious, domineering
mother and catechized by a string of
Presbyterian
tutors and Scripturequoting nurses, young Byron perversely deduced he was irremediably
damned. A clubfoot (his mark of Cain),
the mockery of playmates, and the
early loss of his father confirmed his
reprobate status. His wife, who wrote
a book on their marriage, limned a victim of religion gone haywire: "His
principal insane ideas are - that he
must be wicked - is foredoomed to evil
- and compelled by some irresistible
power to follow this destiny."
Possessing a Puritan conception
of wickedness, Byron wallowed in
Olympian
debauchery,
oscillating
between "ungodly glee" and selfloathing. His Calvinistic conscience
doomed him to a repetitive round of
sin, remorse, and desire for punishment. "Byron," said critic Mario Praz,
"wished to experience the feeling of
being struck with full force by the
vengeance of Heaven. The gloomy
tragedy of his life was set in a moral
torture chamber." Like Childe Harold,
Byron was tormented "by demons,
who impair / The strength of better
thoughts, and seek their prey / In
melancholy bosoms, such as were / Of
moody texture from their earliest day,
/ And loved to dwell in darkness and
dismay."
His unmerited reprobation led
him to identify with Lucifer and Cain:
"Souls who dare look the Omnipotent
tyrant in / His everlasting face, and
tell Him that / His evil is not good." In
Cain, a closet drama on the Fall, the
scofflaws collaborate on an indictment
of the Almighty.
Why, Cain grouses, should he be
punished for his parents' disobedience? He didn't pluck the forbidden
fruit: "What had I done in this? I was
unborn." Besides, wasn't Jehovah
guilty of entrapment: "The tree was
planted, and why not for him [Adam]?
/ If not, why place him near it, where
it grew, / The fairest in the center?" In
any event, why proscribe knowledge
and life: "How can both be evil?"
When he queries his parents, he
gets naught but sophistry:

Parsippany, New Jersey

They have but

One answer to all questions, "Twas
his will,
And he is good." How know I that?
Because
He is all-powerful, must all-good, too,
follow?
No, Lucifer tells him: "Evil and
good are things in their own essence, /
And not made good or evil by the
giver." Knowledge and life are inherently good. Lucifer, a proponent of
both, is called wicked because conquerors define morality: "Were I the
victor, his works would be deemed the
only evil ones."
Most
ethereal
beings,
says
Lucifer, are servile hypocrites who
worship the Almighty out of fear, not
love. Those (like him) who refuse to
kowtow are treated to draconian punishment: "Higher things than ye are
slaves: and higher / Than them or ye
would be so, did they not / Prefer an
independency
of torture / To the
smooth agonies of adulation / In
hymns and harpings, and self-seeking
prayers."
Ever since they ate the apple,
Cain notes, his parents and siblings
have been like mindless serfs: "My
father is / Tamed down; my mother
has forgot the mind / Which made her
thirst for knowledge at the risk / Of an
eternal curse; my brother is / A watching shepherd boy, who offers up / The
firstlings of the flock to Him who bids
/ The earth yield nothing to us without
sweat; / My sister Zillah sings hymns."
Jehovah, Lucifer assures Cain,
wanted humans to live as beasts in "A
Paradise of Ignorance, from which /
Knowledge is barred as poison." He
inflicted the race with such "poor
attributes as suit / Reptiles engendered out of the subsiding / Slime of a
mighty universe, crushed into / A
scarcely-yet shaped planet, peopled
with / Things whose enjoyment was to
be in blindness." Thought he imprisoned in "foul and fulsome" flesh
racked by hunger, thirst, deprivation,
sickness,
debility,
disease,
pain.
Sexual
pleasure,
the
Puritan
archangel advises, was a machination
to perpetuate misery: "A sweet degradation / A most enervating and filthy
cheat / To lure thee on to the renewal
of / Fresh souls and bodies, all foredoomed to be / frail and unhappy."
Autumn 2002

Lucifer sums up the fated human lot:

"Eat, drink, toil, tremble, laugh, weep,
sleep, and die."
The tree of knowledge, Cain carps,
"was a lying tree, for we know nothing." Or, rather, he knows only that life
isn't worth the living: "I live, / But live
to die; and, living, see no thing / To
make death hateful, save an innate
clinging, / A loathsome, and yet all
invincible / Instinct of life, which I
abhor, as I / Despise myself, yet cannot
overcome / and so I live."
Lucifer, no false comforter, tells
Cain his posterity will have it worse
than he. His suffering and sorrow "are
both Eden / In all its innocence compared to what / Thou shortly mayst be;
and that state again, / In its redoubled
wretchedness, a Paradise / To what
thy sons' sons' sons, accumulating / In
generations like to dust (which they /
In fact but add to), shall endure and do."
Before disappearing,
Lucifer perhaps recalling he is (etymologically,
at least) a bearer of light - rouses
Cain with a pep talk on the power of
reason to surmount celestial despotism:
One good gift has the fatal apple
given Your reason: let it not be over-swayed
By tyrannous threats to force you into
faith
'Gainst all external sense and inward
feeling:
Think and endure - and form an inner
world
In your own bosom - where the outward fails.
Whenever Byron surfaced from
the undertow of Calvinism, he wrote
like an Enlightenment rationalist. "In
morality," he remarked,
"I prefer
Confucius to the Ten Commandments
and Socrates to St. Paul." He disdained revelation and mystery: "God
would have made his Will known
without books," he told his lifelong
friend Francis Hodgson, a cleric, "considering how very few could read
when Jesus of Nazareth lived, had it
been His pleasure to ratify any peculiar mode of worship."
"I wouldn't subscribe to some of
the articles of faith," he told a correspondent, "if I were as sure as St.
Peter after the Cock crew. I refuse to
take the Sacrament because I do not
Page 37

think eating bread or drinking wine

from the hand of an earthly vicar will
make me an inheritor of Heaven." On
miracles, he sided with the skeptics: "I
agree with Hume that it is more probable men should lie or be deceived
than that things out of the course of
nature should so happen." Resurrection made no sense: "If people are to
live, why die? And are our carcasses
worth raising? I hope, if mine is, I
shall have a better pair of legs than I
have moved on these two-and-twenty
years, or I shall be sadly behind in the
squeeze into Paradise." Like eternal
punishment, eternal bliss was unjust:
"All the pious deeds performed on
Earth can never entitle a man to everlasting happiness."
The Christian scheme of salvation
was superfluous: "Christ came to save
men, but a good Pagan will go to heaven and a bad Nazarene to hell. If
mankind who never heard or dreamt
of Galilee and its Prophet may be
saved, Christianity is of no avail. And
who will believe God will damn men
for not knowing what they were never
taught?"
Even were Christianity
valid, the Christian is no more spiritually secure than the ancient Roman:
"According to the Christian dispensation, no one can know whether he is
sure of salvation-even the most righteous-since a single slip of faith may
throw him on his back, like a skater,
while gliding smoothly to his paradise.
Therefore, whatever the certainty of
faith in the facts may be, the certainty
ofthe individual as to his happiness or
misery is no greater than it was under
Jupiter."
Byron anticipated Freud's "moral
fallacy" of Christianity: "The basis of
your religion," he wrote Hodgson, "is
injustice. The Son of God, the pure, the
immaculate, the innocent, is sacrificed
for the guilty. This proves His heroism; but no more does away with
man's guilt than a schoolboy's volunteering to be flogged for another would
exculpate the dunce from negligence
or preserve him from the rod. You
degrade the Creator by converting
Him into a tyrant over an immaculate
and injured Being, sent to suffer death
for the benefit of some millions of
scoundrels, who, after all, seem as
likely to be damned as ever."
Byron judged religions by the
moral character of their adherents. On
Page 38

that
score, Christianity
did not
impress him: "Talk of Galileeism?
Show me the effects - are you better,
wiser, kinder by your precepts? I will
bring you ten Mussulmans
shall
shame you in all good will towards
men and duty to their neighbours." On
the efforts of Hodgson and another
Christian friend to proselytize him,
Byron commented: "If Hodgson takes
half the pains to save his own soul,
which he risks to redeem mine, great
will be his reward hereafter; I honor
and thank you both, but am convinced
by neither."
Byron despised institutionalized
religion: "I know nothing, at least in
its favour," he wrote. "We have fools in
all sects and impostors in most."
Elsewhere, he said: "I am no Platonist,
I am nothing at all; but I would sooner
be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist,
Gentile,
Pyrrhonian,
Zoroastrian,
than one of the seventy-two villainous
sects tearing each other to pieces for
the love of the Lord and hatred of each
other."
In The Vision of Judgment,
a
satirical tour de force on Christian
eschatology,
Byron ridiculed
the
Church of England:
I know this is unpopular; I know
'Tis blasphemous; I know one may be
damned
For hoping no one else may e'er be so;
I know my catechism; I know we're
crammed
With the best doctrines till we quite
o'erflow;
I know that all save England's church
have shammed,
And that the other twice two hundred
churches
And synagogues have made a damned
bad purchase.

Don Juan percolates with saucy

irreverence. Imperiled by a sinking
ship, a passenger asks a clergman
(Pedrillo) to pray for him: "And there
was one / That begged Pedrillo for an
absolution / Who told him to be
damned in his confusion." For spiritual solace, religion had a worthy competitor: "There's naught, no doubt, so
much the spirit calms / As rum and
true religion." Then, there was the
Reverend Rodomont Precisian: "Who
did not so much hate the sin as the
sinner." Don Juan's mother is stumped
Autumn 2002

by an English idiom: "'Tis strange the Hebrew noun which means 'I am,'
/ The English always use to govern
'damn'." The son, too, was baffled:
Juan ... did not understand a word
Of English, save their shibboleth,
"God damn!"
And even that he had so rarely heard,
He sometimes thought 'twas only
their "Salaam,"
Or "God be with you!" - and 'tis not
absurd
To think so: for half English as I am
(To my misfortune), never can I say
I heard them wish "God with you,"
save that way.
For the narrator bouts of illness
authenticate orthodox doctrines:
The first attack at once proved the
Divinity
(But that I never doubted, nor the
Devil);
The next, the Virgin's mystical virginity;
The third, the usual Origin of Evil;
The fourth at once established the
whole Trinity
On so uncontrovertible a level,
That I devoutly wished the three were
four
On purpose to believe so much the
more.
Despite the antic impieties, Byron
was never secure in his apostasy. "He
had read enough of Hume and the
Voltairian
skeptics before he left
Cambridge to unsettle his faith in the
dogmas of the established religion,
both Catholic and Protestant, and to
make him an agnostic," noted biographer Leslie Marchand, "but he never
completely made up his mind." Percy
Bysshe Shelley, his neighbor and fellow exile in Switzerland, bemoaned
his own inability to "eradicate from
Byron's great mind the delusions of
Christianity, which, in spite of his reason, seem perpetually to recur."
"Let us ponder boldly," Byron
wrote, "'tis a base / Abandonment of
reason to resign / Our right of thought
- our last and only place / Of refuge;
this, at least, shall be mine."
But the demons of his childhood
dwelt there, too.

Gary Sloan is a retired English

professor who resides in Ruston,
Louisiana.
American Atheist

Holy Paraphernalia

Mania

Holy Drivin~Aeeessories
I

nthis edition of "Holy Paraphernalia Mania" I would like to

share my experience concerning
holy driving accessories. We all have
seen Jesus-fish car plaques of every
kind: from the fish plaque with the
cross over its eye (making the fish look
dead), to the plaque of the Jesus fish
biting the head off the Darwin fish,
which I think should be offensive to
naturalists and Christians alike.
Bumper stickers were originally
placed on cars to provoke thought, but
then came Christian bumper stickers.
I think everyone has spotted the classic "WARNING: In case of Rapture,
this car will be unmanned!" But there
are countless other wacky bumper
stickers floating around out there. I
have spotted "WARNING: Exposure to
the Son may prevent burning!" ; "All
work and No PRAY makes Jack a dull
boy!" ; "Don't steal my car. God will
catch you RED-HANDED!" I have
even seen political Christian bumper
stickers such as "IMPEACH the devil
and elect JESUS CHRIST!" Obviously
they put that on their car when
Clinton was president. But now Bush
is in office, and people are too lazy to
peel the stickers off
There is the "Fish don't walk and
Jesus lives!" sticker. So Christians
don't believe in walking fish? What
about "snakeheads"? Snakeheads are
a species of fish possessing lungs that
can survive up to three days on land,
using their strong pectoral fins to
walk. Recently snakeheads are overpopulating a lake in the state of
Maryland. I guess Darwin fish are
sick and tired of being neglected by
creationists and are ready to march
with American
Atheists
in the
"Godless
Americans
March
on
Washington" November 2nd.

Arlo J. Pignotti
Parsippany, New Jersey

Here is a bumper sticker appropriate for those guys who drag around
full-size crosses.

,-------------------------------~

They put as many 7's in the ID

number as they can get away with,
and the license expires after ... you
guessed it, seven years.
Th~ "Embassy of Heaven" also
issues license plates ...

rfto.lr~~.
n
C ,.,.~~-

-"

- TU'N'NG==

Christian
shops sell "Driver
Under Construction" bumper stickers.
I am not sure what that means, but it
makes it sound like they shouldn't
have a license.

So what do you say if you are

pulled over? Here is what they suggest in their Licensed by Heaven manual:

Of course, there are Christian driver's licenses issued by the alleged

"Embassy of Heaven" (in Stayton,
Oregon). Their claim is "Christ's
Kingdom of Heaven is the only
authorized
government
upon the
earth. All other governments are of
the world and are in rebellion to God."
Below is a sample license. Notice
that, rather than give date of birth,
they give the date of baptism (also
notice that this girl looks under age).
Their explanation for this can be
found in their "Licensed by Heaven"
driving manual, which states "We
don't include birthdate
because a
physical birthdate means nothing to
someone who has been born again into
the Kingdom."
DRIVEIlS LlCENSI

10: 1467777

KINGDOM

Sex:F

Baptism: 05/06/2001
Issued: 05/06/200 I
Expires: 05/06/200 I
Height: 5 06 Weight: 130
Eyes: BROWN Hair: BROWN
Skye Rose
Embassyof Heaven Church
87n BaseHill Road SE
Slayton, Oregon 97383-0630

Stup-~

Of HEAVEN

~
m

cr

'<

J:

~
:::J
_

Autumn 2002

State that you are a citizen of

Heaven traveling upon the highways in the Kingdom of Heaven,
for the purpose of evangelizing, in
obedience to our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. If they try to claim
you are on the highways in the
State, remind them that the highways are multi-jurisdictional.
If
you were using the highways in
the State, you would need their
permission in the form of a State
license. But, since you are using
the highways in the Kingdom of
Heaven, you cannot be trespassing upon the State. They normally
will try to have you acknowledge
that you are in their State.
Remember, there is no communion between light and darkness.
Stay in the Kingdom of Heaven,
regardless of their pressure.
In the "Rules of the Road" section
they have managed to find a biblical
verse to match virtually every road
rule. One rule being "Follow local driving customs" for I Peter 2:13. If you
look it up you will find the commandment to "submit yourselves to every
Page 39

ordinance of man." (Yeah, so follow your own scripture

and register a real freakin' state driver's license!)
I almost ordered a license and set of plates for
myself as a gag, but fortunately I read the fine print
where I found that if you title your vehicle with the
Embassy of Heaven Church "The Church owns the vehicle and you." I knew there would be a catch! No wonder
one of their "Rules of the Road" is to ''Allow yourself to
be defrauded and forgive those who wrong you." So ifthe
Church steals your car (even with you in it), forgive
them!
Under "Accident procedures" they don't say anything about checking if anyone needs medical attention,
or calling 911, but "Whoever is involved in an accident
shall: Minister to the accident victims."

Poetry
DI NE lMAGINATI ESSENT,
NON COLUNTUR*
Mankind is curst by the concept of gods,
those febrile figments of our fear and frailty.
Whether plural or mono-omniscient,
we remain unredeemed by our faith in their falsity.
Commencing with the shaman's sly concoctions,
conceived through cupidity and bestowed with
vindiction,
devolving to the Lawgiver, the Savior, the Prophet,
all spawn of the Semite's search for perdition.
Whether Yahweh, Allah, Brahmah, or Ptah,
their acolytes accept each as the font of all
revelation
and glibly endow them with utter perfection
without any regard for their mortal creation.

Many truck drivers express their love for Jesus by

painting large murals on their vehicles. Several times I
have come across truck murals that depict Jesus
appearing in the middle of the road before a semi.
Aaaaagh! Look out!!! Screeeech!!!!!
Or on second
thought, don't put on the brakes. He wants to die for
your sins.
There are even new-age vehicle paraphernalia.
Fung Shui fans can purchase a "Ba-Gua Car Sticker."
(Ba-Guas are mirrors for balancing Chi energy.) The
advertisement says, "Place one on the rear of your vehicle for road rage, increased traffic and general safety."
So it creates road rage, increases traffic, and brings you
safety at the same time? The road rage must be caused
from the fact that it will blind drivers on sunny days.
These things are also advertised for airplanes!

That's all for this

edition.
Drive safely.
Drive RATIONALLY!

We are callously impelled by categorical clerics

whose discordant dicta endorse the narrowest of
creeds,
pitting brother against brother over all of the epochs
by exhorting their fanciful fictions with intemperate
screeds.
Dogmas infected with blind anthropomorphosis
are invoked with a perverse and peevish rigidity,
Kashmir and Kosovo, Belsen and Belfast, forever
Jerusalem,
we are shorn of all scruple by our craven trepidity.
Thus erase the Essenes, stone a Shiite or roast some
Cathars
so we can swiftly ascend to our Elysian station,
shriven of our most monstrous iniquities.
Why is Charity ever secondary to mythic
perpetuation?
If such all-seeing beings are eternally extant,
why have I for seventy winters been immune
from disease and starvation and violence and want?
There is no god but fortune.
By one whom St. Jude described
in his universal letter.
-George

C. Inman Jr.

"If the gods were not imagined (or conjured),

they could not be worshipped (or exalted).

Page 40

Autumn 2002

American Atheist

The Dark Age Comes

The Dark Age comes:
Shadows form, and shadows fall
Upon the threshing-floor of thought.
Free reason's radius is shrunk to fit
Prescribed Procrustean spheres,
While black-robed paladins
Of highest justice drowse Their Grecian hall a sepulchre
Where stalk, immured, the ghosts
Of freedoms, dearly won so long ago,
Now but softly rattling relics
In the memories of the old
Or out-of-style.
The guardians of the torch now nod,
Their eyes grown heavy in the fading light
Of art and ethic, sense and science.
The odor of dead dreams
Hangs heavy in the air.
At every side the supernatural
Billows up like darkling cuttle-fish's clouds,
As hope and heart are come undone,
As learning dims and science sleeps.
Words fall upon us from the Christmas
moonPrating of the phantom worlds created
By the fear-filled minds of men
When first they fled the lightning,
Or quailed before the storm.
With nowhere enemy in sight,
Without a battlefield, or war,
The credulous, the timorous,
The Great God Demos and his mob
Sound everywhere the trumpet of retreat.
They flee the field wherein, near-ripe,
Truth's greatest harvest stands:
Glorious, gold, ungathered,
Exposed to locusts of illogic
And dragons of decay.
Back, backward from the border
Of the known, they slink.
Solemnly, in B-flat minor,
They press their heads back in the womb
Where once, without a reasoned thought,
They slept a thousand years
In darkest night and wit's eclipse.
(Emergent from the womb,
They roused themselves
And came to consciousness
Of worlds without the womb.
Frightened by facts,
Alarmed by liberty,
Their medieval nightmares
Now recalled as pleasant dreams,
They seek again the matrix comfort
Of their old Mother Church.)

Parsippany, New Jersey

So let us sleep, then,

Let us sleep.
The spark of science burns the eyes,
And burning eyes must close,
And tired eyes must sleep.
More pleasant is the world of dream
And easier attained
Than worlds we sought to build.
What deuced bore, how tiring,
The freedom that we gained!
How frightening is our brave, new world.
Though bought with brains and blood,
It rivals not the fantasies of Faith Those specters which, when sense submits,
Draw shut the curtains of the mind
And let benumbing inner plays proceed.
Enshroud, proud universities, and sleep.
Your hard-won wisdom is not wanted.
Somnambulists possess the power
And habit not the world you mapped.
Their shadows darken every path.
Cocoon yourselves, secrete your treasures,
Endure the stellar twilight chill.
Copernicus and Galileo:
Where light their stars today?
Has Darwin's star gone down as well?
Their light first scattered,
Then occulted by the crowd,
One-by-one, the lamps burn out.
One-by-one, the shades are drawn.
And, one-by-one,
The people go to sleep.
Shadows form, and shadows fall.
The Dark Age comes.
- F. R. Zindler

There Is No God
Above the turbulent pandemonium
Of this obtuse insensate age, one song
Truth lifts, with steady roll of encouraging drum,
And trumpets blowing sky-wide and sky-strong:
"There is no God!" (Hear it!) "There never was God,
Except in the sick fantasies of men.
Men grew of some blind virtue in the mud,
Not of prevision, not of will nor plan.
And all their clamor" (Hear itl) "to the wraith,
Their selfish goalless prayers, their pattered psalms,
Waste the brief hours measured them before death,
Pander to dark fevered deliriums.
And for man," (Hear it again!) "let him stand proud
that he can see at last there is no God."
-Clement

Wood

Autumn 2002

Page 41

ATHEISM:
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE
David Eller

na previous article, I discussed the

apparently unconventional notion
that knowledge is not "justified true
belief" but is actually not any kind of
belief at all. In this article, I would like
to expose what I consider to be another
misconception, this time about Atheism
itself As simple and straightforward as
the concept of Atheism seems (no belief
in a god), still there are differing opinions on exactly what Atheism does and
does not assert and what Atheists do
and do not or should and should not
believe. One of the most pervasive distinctions is between "positive" and "negative," or "strong" and "weak" Atheism. I
will argue that there is, in reality, no distinction between these two "types" of
Atheism and that all Atheists are or
should be positive or strong Atheists.

Different Atheisms?
Atheists are a headstrong lot, as
would be expected from a constituency
that distinguishes itself for free thinking. Where thought is free, consensus is
elusive. Yet, the one thing that Atheists
agree on is a lack of belief in a god - any
god, or else they would not be Atheists
but theists. (Theists too lack a belief in
most gods, possessing a belief or "faith"
in only their particular chosen god, but
that is another story and certainly does
qualify them as Atheists!) Atheism,
then, means in essence what the Greek
root of the word means: a- the- ism, or
'no god belief'
What Atheism means beyond this
simple formulation is a matter of contention. One way to look at the problem
involves exactly how we reconstitute
word roots - whether as a-theism or 'no
god-belief' or as athe-ism or 'no-god
belief' This distinction has been variously designated as "weak/strong" or
"negative/positive" or "implicit/explicit"
Atheism, respectively. The divergence
between the two positions in each set is
presumably based on whether the
Atheist is making a claim or merely
refuting a claim (to which we will return
Page 42

shortly). Fundamentally, it revolves

around the contrast between "not believing" and "believing not."
But the issue goes much deeper
than this, for some have maintained
Atheism is really only one or the other of
these two positions or that Atheists only
practice one or the other. George H.
Smith, for example, in Atheism: The
Case Against God, states: "An atheist is
not primarily a person who believes that
a god does not exist; rather, he does not
believe in the existence of a god" (p.7). In
other words, he holds that Atheism really
is negative or weak or implicit Atheism
(a-theism) - the lack of a belief in a god.
No or few Atheists would maintain positive or strong or explicit Atheism (atheism) or the actual position that there is
no god. This distinction has penetrated
the Atheist community, such that the
venerable Internet Infidels could post on
their Web-site this warning to those who
would understand Atheism: "Please do
not fall into the trap of assuming that all
atheists are 'strong atheists.' There is a
qualitative difference in the 'strong' and
'weak' positions; it's not just a matter of
degree" (HYPERLINK http://www.infidels.org/news/atheismlintro.html# atheisms).

Why Make a Distinction?

I do not know for a fact that most
Atheists make this distinction for themselves, although they may, and I do not
know for a fact that most Atheists consider themselves weak or negative
Atheists rather than strong or positive
Atheists. I am certain that all Atheists
are at the very least deliberately and
self-consciously negative Atheists, in the
sense that they do not believe in a god
and' would, as far as they are able, refute
any evidence or argument otherwise. If
they were not minimally negative or
weak Atheists, they would not be
Atheists at all. But why discriminate
between negative and positive, strong
and weak?
Autumn 2002

One obvious answer to this question

is that the terms refer to actual "qualitative" differences in how different
Atheists think or identify themselves.
Some may actually reject positive or
strong Atheism while still considering
themselves Atheists. Another answer is
that Atheists may be trying to be gentle
or polite or acceptable in their position
by saying, "Oh, I don't believe that your
god does not exist, I just do not share
your belief in him/her/it." If this is the
case, and such Atheists actually are positive or strong Atheists, they are doing
themselves and their community a disservice by being intellectually dishonest.
A more insidious possibility, however, is
that the positive/ negative dichotomy is
in truth a false dichotomy, founded on a
false premise that Atheists should recognize and reject.
If there is a false dichotomy within
Atheism, it may be because positive
Atheism, as the name suggests, has
been misconstrued as advancing a positive claim - or even worse, stating a
belief of its own. Negative Atheism
clearly is not making any claim or
advancing any belief but simply rejecting the positive claim or belief of a theist: the theist says, "I believe in god X"
and the negative Atheist says, "I do not
believe in god X."As we all know, in general the burden of proof in any dispute
falls on the party who is advancing a
truth claim; if I say "X is true" or "There
is X," it is incumbent upon me to justify
the claim with evidence or argument (if
I want to be taken seriously). The negative Atheist obviously is making no
claim and bears little or no burden of
proof; he or she is only saying, "I see no
proof of that claim, so I do not accept it."
However, the positive Atheist is interpreted as going further - all the way to
making a truth claim or harboring a
belief himself "I believe that there is no
X" resembles grammatically the theist's
claim "I believe that there is an X."
However, this resemblance is merely
superficial, merely grammatical. In fact,
the positive Atheist's declaration is
American Atheist

nothing more than a restatement of the

negative Atheist's position; it could be
reformulated in the following way: "In
the absence of evidence or argument, I
see no reason to conclude that there is
an X, so I maintain the position that
there is no X." In this version, the positive Atheist bears no more burden of
proof than the negative Atheist; instead,
he accepts the "null hypothesis" or the
"presumption of atheism" (as Antony
Flew termed it) precisely because the
theist has not met his burden of proof.
Another way that positive Atheism
differs from negative Atheism is that,
supposedly, the former is making a
claim of knowledge that there is no god
- that it has absolute certainty of the
non-existence of a god. This, though, is
also a mischaracterization, since by definition the positive Atheist's position is
that she believes that there are no gods,
not that she knows so. No claim to
knowledge is being made at all; in fact, I
would argue that Atheism - positive or
negative - is based precisely on the lack
of god-knowledge: Atheists have no
knowledge of a god, and neither do theists. Therefore, it is only rational to conclude that something about which there
is no knowledge does not exist. On what
possible basis could we conclude otherwise, and if we make that basis a general epistemological principle, then how
will we ever separate the real from the
imaginary, the true from the false?
Finally, as I posited in my previous article on belief and knowledge, it is not
even accurate to portray positive
Atheism as a belief; more appropriately,
it would be considered a conclusion from
(lack of) evidence.
If, as I reason, positive Atheism has
been inappropriately put on the defensive by these (deliberate?) distortions of
its position, then by eliminating the distortions we can show that positive
Atheism is a perfectly reasonable and
consistent position. The speciousness of
the attempt (1) to shift the burden of
proof, which is a well-established fallacy,
and (2) to misrepresent it as constituting a truth claim or worse yet a claim of
certainty (another fallacy, known as the
straw man fallacy), frees positive
Atheism from any logical stigma
(although it may still suffer the social
stigma of not just refusing to share but
thoroughly rejecting the beliefs of the
theist). But the bigger question awaits:
are there really two Atheisms?

Possible and Impossible Beliefs

Having shown that there is no logical
reason why Atheists should be ashamed
Parsippany, New Jersey

of their positiveness, and having introduced the suggestion that positive

Atheism is nothing more than a restatement of negative Atheism, let me proceed to make my case that positive and
negative Atheism are indeed one and
the same. We have here two "variables"
- belief in god and belief that there is a
god - each with two "values," yes and no.
It is easy to see that there are four conceivable combinations of the two variables, as follows:
Believe in god and believe that
there is a god.
Do not believe in god and believe
that there is a god.
Believe in god and believe that
there is not a god.
Do not believe in god and believe
that there is not a god.
Now, obviously combination (1) is
the classic statement of theism; in fact,
if anything it is redundant, since why
would anyone believe in god if they
believed there was no god? Yet that is
precisely what combination (3) amounts
to. And what would it mean to say that
one believes that there is a god but does
not believe in that god, which is the
meaning of (2)? In fact, both (2) and (3)
are incoherent.
Meanwhile, combination (4) is recognizable as positive Atheism. So, what
of negative Atheism? If negative

Atheists do not believe in god, then their

only choices are (2) and (4). Does negative Atheism hold the incoherent position of (2) by claiming that it does not
believe in god but ... what? That there is
a god anyhow? Naturally not. That there
may be a god? On what basis would it
state that possibility? Therefore, in the
final analysis, I propose the following:
only (1) and (4) are consistent and coherent, and (1) equals theism, and (4)
equals Atheism.
One objection might be raised to
this interpretation. The remaining purely
negative Atheists, if there are any - or
the theists who want to discredit positive Atheism - may respond that negative Atheism is not really combination
(2); it does not really say "I do not
believe in god and I believe that there is
a god" but rather says "I do not believe
in god and I don't know ifthere is a god"
or "I do not believe in god but there may
be a god."The latter, however, once again
bears a burden of proof, for if one says
that there may be X, one must demonstrate that there is reason to suspect
there is X. If I say that I do not believe
in Santa Claus but there may be a Santa
Claus, I am at least making the claim
that Santa Claus' existence is possible
and rational, and I need a reason to suggest this. Without a good reason, this
statement is moot at best and silly at
worst. The former, on the other hand,
commits the error we noted above of
substituting knowledge-talk where only

"What an idiot tribe! You people think God is an alligator.

instead of a crocodile!"
Autumn 2002

Page 43

belief-talk was occurring. If an Atheistany Atheist, positive or negative - proclaims that he has no knowledge of a
god, he is absolutely right! The lack of
evidence and argument for a god - the
failure of the claim of god to meet the
burden of proof - is a good reason if not
the best reason to reject not only the
belief in a god but also the existence of a
god.

Conclusion: One Atheism

I conclude, therefore, that there is
only one Atheism. Call it positive if you
like. It goes beyond merely lacking the
belief in some god or another; it goes on
to - truly, it entails - the determination
that there is no such god in which to
believe in the first place. The credo of
positive Atheism ("I believe that there is
no god") is exactly akin to the credo of
negative Atheism ("I do not believe in
god") and not to the credo of theism ("I
believe that there is a god"), although it
appears superficially to resemble the
last. The reason why negative and positive Atheism concur at the deeper level
is that each entails the same implicit
clause, seldom stated but always present. For example, "I do not believe in
god"is logically completed by the implicit clause "because there is no good reason to." Positive Atheism should be read
in precisely the same way: "I believe that
there is no god (because there is no good
reason to)." The difference between
these two and theism is the latter's
implicit clause: "I believe in god (because
of this or that evidence or argument or
feeling or personal experience, etc.)."
The case might be stated in another
way. In my previous article, I argued
that every "belief in" is actually a set of
"beliefs that." When one "believes in" a
god, one necessarily "believes that" this
god exists, as well as that he/she/it has
some particular qualities. Accordingly,
when one "does not believe in" a god or
anything else, one necessarily "does not
believe that" this god or other thing
exists or has the avowed qualities. The
only other possibility would be to believe
that the god exists but not to believe the
avowals of its qualities - that it will save
you or love you or do whatever it is purportedly claimed to do. But this variation seems bankrupt to me, and I would
be extremely surprised if any Atheist
actually holds it.
There is one conceivably useful distinction between positive and negative
Atheism, made by Michael Martin in his
Atheism: A Philosophical Justification.
To paraphrase
Martin,
negative
Page 44

Atheism concerns itself with demonstrating that there are no good reasons
to accept god-claims (i.e., it sets out to
refute theistic evidence and arguments),
while positive Atheism is about demonstrating that there are good reasons to
accept no-god-claims (i.e., it sets out to
present its own evidence and arguments
in favor of Atheism). This is a procedural distinction, however, in regards to
how we want to construct our arguments and whether we want to accept
voluntarily any burden of proof. This is
perhaps what actual negative Atheists
mean by their position: that they see no
need to or are unwilling to mount their
own campaign of evidence and argument, being content to knock down
invalid theistic ones. In this sense they
are justified, for that is all that is
required of an Atheist.
But Atheism is more than procedural; it is logical and epistemological. It is
about truth and factuality. Whether any
particular Atheist wants to employ "positive" procedures a la Martin is irrelevant to what Atheism is. Atheism rejects
belief in a god because there is no good
reason (and arguably, good reason not)
to believe in a god because there is no
good reason (and arguably, good reason
not) to believe/conclude that such an
entity even exists. In this final sense,
there is no such thing as negative and
positive Atheism, only incomplete (not
grasping or accepting the full implications) and complete Atheism.

Editor's Note Added in Press

In preparing Dr. Eller's brilliant
and withering analysis of so-called positive and negative Atheism for publication, it occurs to me that theists are
"procedural positive Atheists" in their
relation to all the gods except those they
have adopted as special pets. The
Christian knows that Ptah, Osiris, and
Amun-Ra do not exist. In the case of the
latter, they are on especially solid
ground, since Ra's list of defining characteristics required him to sail a solar
bark across the sky every day of the
year. Since astronomy has demonstrated
beyond possibility of doubt that no solar
bark exists, a fortiori, it demonstrates
the non-existence of Amun-Ra as traditionally defined. Rarely, if ever, are
Christians challenged on their "strong
Atheism" vis-a-vis the pagan gods and
goddesses. Nevertheless, Christians who
have even a smattering of philosophical
sophistication
routinely
challenge
Atheists for their audacity in extending
Autumn 2002

what appears to be a knowledge claim to

include just one more deity.
Eller's conditional acceptance of
Michael Martin's procedural distinction
between negative and positive Atheism
is, I believe, useful for those of us who
have to have a practical method for dealing with god-claims in daily life. As happens more often than not, we are
queried, "Why don't you believe in God?"
When the questioner is asked, "Would
you please define your god," more often
than not, no operational definition is
forth-coming, or the believer ticks off a
list of qualities which taken all together
are mutually contradictory (i.e., they are
incoherent). Against claims that are
meaningless for want of definition or
incoherence, only the "negative-Atheist"
claim is appropriate: "I have no belief in
the deity you claim to believe in." To say
"I believe your god does not exist" would
be a bit odd - like saying "I believe the
circular square does not exist."
On the other hand, when a deity is
appropriately defined, it is often possible procedurally to be a "positive
Atheist," that is, to make a knowledge
claim that the deity in question does not
exist. For example, ifthe god in question
be identified as "Jesus of Nazareth," the
fact that exhaustive archaeological
searching of the site now called
Nazareth has never turned up remains
of a single building (let alone, a synagogue) datable to the first centuries BCE
and CE would seem to justify the "positive" Atheist claim "I know that Jesus of
Nazareth did not and does not exist."
Procedurally, then, we would seem
forced to be "negative Atheists" when
confronted by the undefined, untestable,
or unknowable. "Positive Atheism" can
be justified, however, when deities are
defined sufficiently to allow their existence or non-existence to be tested
empirically.
-FRZ
Dr. Eller is an anthropologist who
serves as the American Atheists director
for the state of Colorado.

While most Americans are

praying. who is left to do
the thinking?
If the government is
relying on God. who can
rely on the government?
American Atheist

On The Gospel Of Thaddaeus

But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen,
then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain."
-Saul of Tarsus, a.k.a., The Apostle Paul.
For the protection of persons yet
living, the circumstances of the discovery and translation of the following
cannot now be revealed. The authenticity of this document, and its accurate
rendering into English from first-century
common-era Greek, is assured. It is presented now, and with some urgency, for
fear that it might otherwise be lost
through the efforts of persons who are
aggressively attempting to suppress forever any evidence of its existence. The
very zeal of those who seek to prevent
this work from becoming known, when
considered together with the tone and
content of the writing itself, indicates
this is something far different, and perhaps more reliable, than the pseudepigraphical writings of the Canon pronounced holy at Nicaea. efk.

haddaeus, a Jew by birth, a Greek

by temperament, and a scholar of
Alexandria by circumstance and
the Peace of Rome, to Marcus Ulpius
Trajanus, conqueror of Dacia and
Mesopotamia, to the Emperor Trajan, in
Rome, greetings! Long life and good
health most noble Caesar, and thanks to
the gods you worship for keeping you
and making you victorious in battle and
bringing you safe to your throne as the
worthy successor and heir of our late
good and just Emperor Marcus Cocceius
Nerva.
I write, great sir, as a man who has
lived well beyond the four score years
that, by reason of strength, are allotted
to some men. It therefore comes as no
surprise that the most able physicians

Edwin F. Kagin is a lawyer-poet

and the director of Camp Quest, a
summer camp for youthful
Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists,
Rationalists, and kids who simply
think clearly. He can be reached in
care of this publication, or through
e-mail at:edwin@edwinkagin.com
Parsippany, New Jersey

of Alexandria, and therefore of the

world, have assured me I am on my
deathbed, and that I will soon be gathered to my fathers by virtue of maladies
that, while perhaps not beyond the
skills of Aesculapius, cannot be cured by
mortal means. This assurance of imminent and certain death has provided a
surprising sense of tranquillity. I now
fear neither the wrath of men nor the
whims of gods. Neither have I the
slightest concern for debates touching
on any aspect of this world or on the
hoped for world to come, in that I will
soon vacate the former forever, and
learn first hand what truths, if any, are
to be learned in the latter. Socrates was
surely right when he observed that
death is either the most peaceful of all
sleeps or the opportunity to meet souls
who have gone before. Neither option
should cause a dying man any concern,
and neither concerns me. I can truly say
that I am at peace, or, more correctly, I
will be at peace when this testament to
you is completed. Please forgive me the
digressions permitted, and expected,
from old men, be assured that my mind
is sound and my memory good, and I
will explain why my final hours are
spent in writing the Emperor of the
Romans, the oppressors of my people.
It is said that all manner of shameful things wind up in Rome. In the same
wise, all subjects of intellectual curiosity, no matter how obscure, wind up
somehow, eventually, in Alexandria.
Thus I came to learn that you had
inquired, through Pliny the Younger
and others, for information on a religious sect that has come to be known of
late as Christians. I will not reveal my
sources for this information, but assure
you that Pliny did not violate your confidence. There are things known to curious scholars that are denied even to
kings. I also know that you do not
believe the Christians are a serious
threat to the security of the state. From
my deathbed, great Caesar, I write to
Autumn 2002

tell you that you are wrong. This superstition, if left unchecked, will become a
fire upon the earth that will destroy
your empire. This irrational movement,
that you perceive as a religion of slaves,
has the potential to infect even the
imperial throne in Rome, to reduce
learning to a barbarism that will cause
longing for the erudition of the Celts
and the logic of Gaul, and to make men
wish for the return ofthe murdered despot Domitian. How do I know these
things? Permit me to reveal something
of my personal and, until now, secret
history.
I was born two years before the
death of Caesar Augustus, in the village
of Nazareth, in the country of Galilee,
north of Judea, north of Samaria. This
land is, or rather was, part of the region
you Romans called the province of
Palestine before it was destroyed, and
its people dispersed, during the reign of
the Emperor Vespasian, by the authority of his son, that compassionate idol of
the Romans, Titus Flavius Sabinus
Vespasianus, later your predecessor, the
Emperor Titus. My given name was
Judas. My father was Joseph, a carpenter. My mother was Miriam. My older
brother was named Joshua, in full
Yehoshuah, or in Greek, Jesus, whom
some now call Christus, or the Christ,
the Messiah, the anointed one, the son
of god. In consequence of his tragic life,
and of certain beliefs that arose concerning his final end, the cult of
Christianity was born. As your historian Tacitus is no better informed concerning the history of this belief than he
is on the history of the Jewish people,
and as our own historian Joseph Ben
Matthias, better known to you as
Flavius Josephus, understood the true
history of the Jews too well to give any
credence at all to my brother's life and
death, and in that widely circulated
anonymous tracts have built fantasies
around Jesus that many, to the detriment of themselves and the state,
Page 45

believe to be true, so it has fallen to me,

an eyewitness to the events of his life, to
tell the truth of that life, my reliability
and my safety both being assured by the
comforting and certain knowledge of my
pending death.
My brother was over twice my age
when he began his, for want of a better
word, ministry. This ministry lasted
about three years. I, at his urging,
became one of his apostles, whereupon I
was given the surname ofThaddaeus. I,
who had barely become a man under
Jewish law, was the youngest of the
apostles, and not on good terms of
friendship with any of them, all also relatively young men, save for my best
friend, another Judas, "given the surname of Iscariot when, out of friendship, he joined me as an apostle. I did
not know Jesus well. I do not believe
anyone did. He was a man by law when
I was born. I admired him, respected
him, and loved him. He was my older
and wiser brother. But he was a
stranger, even to his own family. He
kept his distance, and brooded often. He
was frequently disrespectful to our
. mother, did not obey our father, and
later even maintained that his followers
should leave their families and responsibilities to follow him to live in poverty,
without giving any thought to how they
might be housed, fed, or clothed. I realize now that my brother Jesus was mad.
It is hard to believe that an illiterate
peasant from the despised Nazareth,
together with twelve equally illiterate
peasants as followers, could start a
movement, a religion, that could change
the world. To appreciate how this could
happen, you must understand something of our people and our times.
The Jews, sir, must be the most conquered, despised, and warred against of
any people. We are not merely a religion, we are a nation, even now in exile
without a country of our own. At the
time my brother and his followers started out to do whatever we were doing,
there were several competing religious
groups seeking to dominate Judaism.
Chief among these were the Pharisees,
the Sadducees, and the Essenes, each
vying to be the most repressive, the
most religiously authoritarian, and the
most holy. Stir into this mix the fanatical Zealots, those Maccabees imitators
who arose during the time of Herod the
Great and were slaughtered by their
own hands at Masada some two or three
years after the destruction of our temple,
and you can come to better appreciate
the instability and uncertainty of our
Page 46

national spirit. Common to all these

groups was a hatred of everything
Roman, and the hope for the coming of
a deliverer sent from god, a Moses, an
Elijah, a David, a Samson, a Judas
Maccabe, a Messiah who would lead the
Jews in glorious war to drive out the
invaders and restore the grandeur of
the reign of Solomon.
There was no shortage of pretenders. The ill-fated John the Baptist
was one. There was also Judas of
Galilee, and Theudas the magician, and
many other rivals for the office of
Messiah. Some, in the manner of Elijah,
were said to be able to raise the dead,
walk on water, cure the sick, and perform other miracles, and all had their
followers. My brother's message was so
unusual, so ill-defined, so incoherent,
and so incapable of being articulated or
understood, that a few thought he must
be the promised one. These shepherdless sheep seemed to believe the more
obscure the speech, the more holy the
speaker. An analogy might be found
among those who find meaning in the
unintelligible utterances of the Delphic
Oracle. Jesus said such things as his followers were the salt of the earth, and
that salt could not be salty if it lost it's
saltiness. Some found this a brilliant
parable. If anyone could explain or
demonstrate just how salt could ever
cease to be salty, there might be some
justification for taking the statements
of Jesus seriously. But all religions have
their mysteries. This is how priests control fools.
My brother was a harmless madman. He didn't view himself as the
Messiah. To my observations, he had no
clear definition of himself, or of anything else, at all. Our little band wandered about for three years, attracting
attention to ourselves, creating some
followers and more enemies. Our mother and father had given up on Jesus
long ago, but still held hope that I would
eventually come to my senses. From the
time we left Nazareth, we never saw our
parents, those rather good people,
again.
But I digress, and grow tired. Death
waits for no man. I must hasten to finish this narrative so you may understand what happened, and appreciate
the threat of the irrationality I fear will
overcome the world.
Eventually we made our way to
Jerusalem. Jesus rode into the city of
David on an ass, and was mocked by
some who threw palms in his path. I
have never been so embarrassed. Few in
Autumn 2002

Jerusalem had heard of Jesus, and,

because our religion prohibits the making of images, even fewer knew how he
looked. Nevertheless, his activities and
small following had managed to attract
the attention of the Sanhedrin, the
supreme national tribunal of the Jews.
One night as we slept, outdoor as usual,
agents of the Sanhedrin came upon us
with torches and weapons looking for
Jesus, who freely identified himself to
them. The band of apostles, weary of our
way of life, missing their families,
uncertain of Jesus and his mission, and
unwilling to confront the intruders, fled
into the night, never to be reunited
again. They were ignored by those who
wanted Jesus. Only I, loyal to the safety
of my brother, remained, together with
Iscariot, who remained from loyalty to
me. We asked to be permitted to accompany Jesus, who appeared unaware of
all that was happening. This was granted, and we were taken to the meeting
chambers of the feared Sanhedrin.
The officials who questioned us
were surprisingly reasonable. They
attempted to interview Jesus, but when
he responded to questions with incoherent answers, for example saying that
faith in the kingdom of heaven is a mustard seed, the authorities realized their
problem was not political as they had
feared. Nevertheless, Jesus had proved
an embarrassment to them, and Roman
authorities had been disturbed upon
learning that Simon, one of the apostles, was a Zealot. The last thing the
Sanhedrin wanted was a Jewish movement in revolt against Rome. They had
worked with Pontius Pilate, the procurator placed in Jerusalem by Tiberius
Caesar, in an effort to maintain safety
through an uneasy peace.
Iscariot's talents had been wasted
in the wilderness, as he proved a master
of sensible compromise. By morning it
was agreed that we would remove Jesus
from the country forever, and word
would be circulated that he had been
crucified for treason. This would both
explain his sudden disappearance and
warn off other potential troublemakers.
Judas was provided with thirty pieces of
silver to finance our relocation. To make
the ruse more effective, the authorities
agreed to use their influence to have a
wreath of thorns placed on the head of
one of three anonymous persons who
had been hanging on stakes of execution on Golgotha for several days, and to
place a sign above the poor victim's
unrecognizable head announcing that
this was the King of the Jews. Officials
American Atheist

would be instructed to keep the curious

at a distance. Finally, the unclaimed
body would be placed in a new tomb
that could be bought from one
Nicodemus, who was suffering financial
difficulties. The timing was perfect, as
the Sabbath started that evening, and
all elements of our departure and the
burial of the surrogate could be accomplished while potentially interested
parties were in their homes obeying ritual Jewish laws. We were provided a
room where Iscariot could wait with
Jesus until sunset, the beginning of the
Sabbath, while I spent the day in
Jerusalem spreading the word of
Jesus's death.
I was successful in locating several
friends of my brother's and wept with
them over the story. As a final assurance that everyone would soon learn of
the tragedy, I went to the lodgings of
Mary Magdalene. Mary was a woman of
loose virtue who seemed to know everyone in Judea. She had a face of angelic
stupidity, and a body that could have
tempted a castrated stoic. Properly
bathed and attired, she might have
been a courtesan in Rome, were she not
so hopelessly ignorant and so subject to
fits of dementia. It was said that Mary
Magdalene wanted only two mites and a
mattress and the wit to fall backwards.

I couldn't say. She had a great fondness

for Jesus, perhaps because he had no
carnal interest in her. Indeed, he
seemed to have no carnal interests at
all, unless credence be given to a work
that has been falsely attributed to the
apostle Thomas. The less said of it the
better for both their memories. Mary
was, in a word, insane, but pleasingly
so. She believed Jesus had freed her
from seven demons. She was overcome
by grief at the story of his death, and
feared the demons would now return. I
left her just in time to return, before
sunset, to the upper room where Jesus
and Iscariot waited. Under cover of
darkness, we hired passage with a caravan bound for Alexandria.
It is difficult enough to predict the
actions of the sane. Mary Magdalene
was unpredictable at her best, but no
one even wildly could have guessed
what she, in her grief and delusions,
would do next. What she did may well
change the world. The next morning,
the first day of the week, by first light,
she went to visit the tomb of Jesus. And
she went to the wrong tomb. She had
somehow gotten the idea, that is now
part of the emerging mythology of
Christianity, that Jesus had been laid in
the tomb of a rich man called Joseph of
Arimathea, and he, enjoying the atten-

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tion, not knowing for sure and not really

caring, never denied it. When Mary
came to this newly finished unused
tomb, she naturally found it open and
empty. She immediately concluded
Jesus had risen from the dead. She told
others who went to the tomb, and, seeing it empty, believed her. Her illness
was such that the story changed in
every telling, and thus grew stories of
angelic visitations, and even visions of
Jesus. Those who believed her added
their own embellishments, until many
accepted the story as too complex and
fantastic not to be true. The three of us
were with the caravan and learned
nothing of these events until it was
much too late to attempt a correction,
had we had any desire to do so. The
story was a more perfect cover for our
disappearance than we could have
hoped. People either believed Jesus was
dead, or that he had ascended to his
Heaven. In either case we would not be
missed. After some days we arrived in
Alexandria.
Words cannot convey how overwhelmed we three from a small village
felt in that great city. It would be error
to say we were out of place, for nothing
ever seems out of place in Alexandria. It
is the crossroads of the world and gives
meaning to the very ideas of city and

LIkE ATTACJ<INI3. A
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Parsippany, New Jersey

Autumn 2002

Page 47

civilization. But we saw ourselves as out

of place, and dislocated from all certainties we had ever known. We rented a
room with the silver of the Sanhedrin.
After refreshing ourselves with sleep
and foreign food, we set out to explore
the wonders of this new world. In one of
the many markets run by persons of
strange race and tongue, Jesus wandered away. At length we found him at
the booth of a trader in exotic reptiles.
He was gesturing and talking wildly, to
people who did not understand
Aramaic, about how those with faith in
his idea of god could handle poisonous
serpents and not be hurt. Before we or
any of the shocked onlookers could stop
him, he somehow grasped an asp from a
closed basket and held it to his bare
chest. He was bitten repeatedly in the
neck and face before the reptile could be
safely removed. My brother Jesus died
before our eyes, in the manner of
Cleopatra, in her city, in the dust of a
foreign market, before horrified gentiles
he had hoped to win to his vision of the
kingdom of god. He had preached his
belief in the virtue of remaining ignorant of the things of this world. In his
death he demonstrated the folly of that
belief Iscariot and I had my brother
buried privately, in a manner and place
I will not even now reveal. This information must die with me. We grieved
for Jesus and for a life wasted and
ruined by destructive beliefs and religious madness.
Iscariot and I changed our names. I
have not used the name by which I now
write since we left Jerusalem. We knew
our money would soon be gone, and we
agreed to part ways. We were grown
men who had to claim our own lives. My
friend, who had helped save Jesus, had
a great love of the sea, and he found
employment on a Roman ship going to
the seaside resort of Pompeii.
He planned to settle there and to
seek his fortune as a servant to the
wealthy. I never heard from him again,
and, ifhe remained there, he either died
before, or in, the great calamity. In
either case, all memory or record of him
is probably forever lost. I resolved to
take advantage of the opportunities to
acquire
knowledge
available
in
Alexandria. I sought out, and became
apprenticed to, that most famous and
worthy Jew known to you as Philo of
Alexandria. The only time I left
Alexandria was when I accompanied
him to Rome where he argued in
defense of the Jews ofAlexandria before
your evil predecessor, the Emperor
Page 48

Caligula. I remained Philo's student

until his death. I note, with some grim
amusement, how his writings on the
Logos have been contorted, by some
Christian writers, to appear to apply to
my poor brother, whose snake bitten
body lies dead in an unknown Egyptian
grave. I became a scholar and teacher in
my own right. Pardon me, and please
understand, when I do not reveal even
to you the name by which I have been
known.
In the many years that have followed our great deception in Judea, I
have had occasion to read diverse and
contradictory tracts purporting to give
truthful accounts of my brother. I am
mentioned by name in some of them,
but, perhaps because of my unexplained
disappearance, nothing else concerning
me is reported. I am almost disappointed at this absence of myths about
myself when they are so liberally
bestowed upon my associates. The stories tell preposterous lies. They usually
even start out as lies, with the unknown
author falsely claiming to be one of the
named apostles of Jesus. This was no
doubt done to give credibility to their
reports, either invented in whole or borrowed from other fictitious accounts. I
will not attempt to recount all of the
nonsense, as unhappily it is all too easily available for you, if you are so disposed, to read and believe, or reject, as
you choose. To mention but a few of the
lies, you will find reports that Jesus was
born in Bethlehem where he was worshiped by goatherds and astrologers,
that our mother was a virgin, that he
was taken as a child to Egypt while
Herod the Great killed all the little
boys, that angels announced his birth,
that the dead came from their graves
when he died, and that he was taken to
heaven after his promise to return
shortly. If any of these things had happened, there would be no doubts, no
excuse for disbelief, and no reason for
faith. If they had happened, Josephus,
you can be assured, would have reported them, as would your own correspondents. You may also note that the promise of my brother's quick return has not
been fulfilled. I believe, great Caesar,
that this superstition would never have
taken root and flowered if it were not
for the work of another madman, a
Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus. His
bizarre life and work are known to you
through his writings under the name of
Paul, assumed after he saw, in a fit that
temporarily blinded him, Jesus arisen
from the dead.
Autumn 2002

I tire, my Emperor, and must end

this writing even as the gods end my
hours of life. Much more could be told,
but I lack the strength, and hopefully I
have given you enough to cause you to
consider my warnings. Much mischief
has been spawned by these Christians,
and many evils lie ahead, the nature of
which can only be seen in dreams. What
can be predicted of men whose main
religious ceremony involves the belief
that they, by consuming bread and
wine, are eating the flesh and drinking
the blood of my dead brother? One
might wonder if they would do this as
eagerly if they knew he had died from
snake venom. I have informed you as
best I can, have cleansed my conscience,
and can die in peace. I will never know
if you receive this, so there is no need
for a reply, even if you knew to whom to
write. I have charged my beloved
daughter, whom I know by our secret
name of Kather, with making three
copies of this writing. One will be sent
to you personally, under seal, through
the usual channels. One will be hidden
in a safe place known only to ourselves
in the Museum, the great library of
Alexandria, for if anything of our time
and culture survives the intellectual
destruction I fear from the Christians it
will be the library's priceless repository
of the collected knowledge of the world
that has survived even the onslaughts
of the great Julius Caesar. The third
copy will be taken for concealment and
protection to a Greek island of Ionia,
where knowledge and science will surely
continue to exist and flourish despite
the mischief of this new superstition.
There, my daughter and a fellow scholar
will see that these words of mine
become known in proper season.
May that measure of peace, justice,
harmony and understanding
denied
religion and its deities be attained by
mortals through the use of their minds,
and may reason, science, curiosity, and
discovery replace the fear, the guilt, the
pain, and the ignorance of trembling in
terror before capricious gods. Ecce homo.
Here the text ends.

American Atheist

Talking Back
nan earlier issue of American
we announced that we
were going to resume publication
of the department "Talking Back," a
column in which our readers and
members could share their responses
to common challenges offered by theists. Fifty-five commonly used "arguments" were printed to start things
off. Responses have begun to be
received, and we are pleased to print
some of them here. If you would like to
join in, e-mail contributions can be
sent to <editor@atheists.org>. Hard
copy can be sent to: Talking Back,
American Atheist Press, PO Box 5733,
Parsippany, NJ 07054. Please be sure
to include a one-sentence biographical
characterization of the author and the
state or country of residence.

Atheist

Challenge # 1. "What is Atheism?"

''Atheism,'' or ''Atheist,'' describes a
wide variety of different philosophies,
lifestyles, and world views which,
although they may be very different
from each other, do not contain certain
characteristics, namely, belief in gods
and deities, and are skeptical of
supernatural
claims
in general.
Despite whatever intellectual
disclaimers or methods of reasoning are
used to explain one's personal position, as long as there is no positive
belief, such positions are accurately
characterized as "Atheist" in addition
to other appellations. Aside from general agreement on the invalidity or
unproved
nature
of god-claims,
Atheists are as diverse as any other
segment of the population with regard
to political, social, or economic positions.
- Wayne Aiken, North Carolina
Every Atheist has his or her own
definition of Atheism. Here is my version. Atheism is the refusal to believe
in the supernatural in any form. To
this end I examine each claim of the
bizarre and attempt to determine if
there is any truth in it. I have found
no evidence to support dragons,
Parsippany, New Jersey

fairies,
speaking
donkeys, leprechauns, or flaming shrubs that talk.
- Angela K. Paolini, Montana

Challenge # 3. "How did you get

here?"
I walked.
- Angela K. Paolini, Montana
By purely natural means, in the
absence of any "supernatural" ones.
- Wayne Aiken, North Carolina

Challenge #26. "How can you

have any ethics if you don't
believe in god?"
Crude forms of ethics were among
humankind before written codes were
ever adopted. Without social tolerance, there would never have been
families and tribes. As a natural part
of evolution's selection process, the
stronger humans deferred the killing
of everyone in struggles for food and
supremacy, thanks to the trait of compassion for the weaker members.
Simple reason and logic brought order
among the tribal
social strata.
Someone ruled and others followed, if
for no other reason than for capturing
and gathering food and preparing it.
Fear of the unknowns in humankind's environment led to the theorizing that supernatural forces affected
natural phenomena. When one person
died and another lived, leaders theorized that hidden entities watched
and struck out to teach those who
lived a lesson. Tribal leadership, consisting of the strongest, the ablest,
and the most imaginative proceeded
to set forth rules of conduct linked to
observations of nature and a leader's
ability to control a family or tribe for
greater benefits. Early ethics, such as
those recorded by the mythical Moses
types, have little in common with
modern ethical systems. They are a
representation of the typical civilized
witchcraft regimes that grew out of
the Middle East. Sacrifices, religious
observances, strict discipline, cruelty,
slavery, possession of women, fear of
Autumn 2002

theoretical gods, came from elementary ignorance of causes and effect

which today are easily explained.
Ethics did not come from a god;
instead gods came from the imaginations of humans. Rudimentary ethics
are easily recognized by social groups.
When presented with the notion that
a god created matter and man, the
ignorant have no better theory. When
peace and order is suggested as an
alternative to anarchy and gang rule,
reason recognizes the peaceful way as
ethical. Disciplined social conduct is
universal among humankind, yet we
have inner conflicts where opportunity
to seize the property of others presents itself For social peace we have
our priests and our legalized law
enforcement.
The inner
conflict
between what we can achieve, and
what is fair, is resolved by an agreement within our social order. Statements about good ethics can be recognized by all people, while statements
about good religion are controversial.
Religion is about theoretical beings
and their requirements, while ethics
are about inter-human relations.
Atheists believe that their treatment of other people and our conduct
in society is very important, but we do
not fear or honor other people's theoretical beings or their demands.
-John

Miller, North Carolina

Challenge #20. "America is a

Christian nation."
If you mean by percentage of population, then I guess so (if you still
count those that call themselves
Christian but seem to have no interest
in following any Christian teaching or
going to church). But if you are going
strictly by percentage of population,
then you would have to also declare
this to be a "white nation" or a "female
nation." If you mean that this nation
was founded on the concept of Christianity, then it's funny how they forgot
to write about that in the US
Constitution and that these words do
not appear at all; God, Jesus, Holy
Page 49

Spirit, Bible, Christ, Christianity, or

Christian. The US Constitution is a
godless document.
-R. Vincent Tuite
Challenge # 32. " Jesus died for
you."
If he
thing for
around to
help your
suicide to

really wanted to do someme, he should have stuck

show me that. If you want to
children, you don't commit
prove it, do you?
-Jim Prater, California

Challenge #41. "What's wrong

with having a moment of silence
in the public schools?"
A "moment of silence" has been
used in seculars ways and is not in
itself of a religious nature. The problem is when the same exact people
who wanted to start the school day off
with a teacher- or administration-led
prayer couldn't get what they wanted
with a "student-led prayer" then ask
for a "moment of silence." It's pretty
obvious what the "moment of silence"
is intended to be and represent. It's
the equivalent of the disingenuous
argument of "what we're teaching is
not religious creationism - it's "intelligent design theory." Crossing out
"prayer" and inserting "moment of
silence" does not make prayer secular.
-R. Vincent Tuite
Challenge #50. "There are no
Atheists in foxholes."
This statement
says little but
implies much. Does it imply that
Atheists really believe in a god but
never realize it until they are under
mortar attack? If so, it is an insult to
me. Or does it imply that belief in a
god is a result of wishful thinking and
becomes strongest when the need is
strongest? If so, it is an insult to you. I
prefer to think that belief or disbelief
in a god is the result of a reasoned
thought process, and the quality of
that process is not improved by direct
canon fire. If there are Atheists who
have been converted by bombardment, I suspect their conversion didn't
last very long. As for me, I'd rather
die!
-Dan Fernandes, California

Page 50

Challenge # 56. "Missionaries

form a valuable service."

per-

Recently,
missionaries
have
received
considerable
attention,
including the two Texas women in
Afghanistan and the married couple
in the Philippines. Nobody, including
the president, questions the value and
motives of missionary activity. It is
accepted as Christian benevolence by
selfless people of faith.
In reality, these attempts to force
religious beliefs on the peoples of
other faiths and nations are acts of
extreme naivete, arrogance, or both.
Such missionaries are declaring that
their religious faith is more truthful
and beneficial than the faiths of those
they aim to convert. The consequence
is resentment.
If they have a genuine concern for
the people, they should be silent as to
religion and bring health care, education and useful skills to those needing
help.
The most Christian
nation in
Africa, Rwanda (65 percent Roman
Catholic and 9 percent Protestant), is
the most war-torn and disease-ravaged. One quarter of the population
that was present in 1994 has died violently or fled the country.
The populace has been ravaged by
disease, including rampant AIDS. A
dense population contributes to food
shortages. The Catholic doctrine on
sex education and birth control has
exacerbated Rwanda's AIDS and overpopulation problems. Education is
sparse and illiteracy high.
The intentions may be good, but
the results may not be. Missionaries
should spread health care and knowledge with its proven rewards, not
superstition with its false promises.
- David Miles, Alaska

7.
8.

9.
10.

11.

12.
13.
14.

15.

16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.

22.

23.
24.

25.
26.
27.

Questions and Challenges

"Talking Back"
1.
2..
3.
4.
5.
6.

for

What is Atheism?
Prove there isn't a god.
How did you get here?
How did life originate?
What started the universe?
If evolution is real, how come
monkeys aren't evolving into
human beings?
Autumn 2002

28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.

Atheism is a religion.
You have faith and beliefs just
like religious people: you have
faith in Darwin.
How does it hurt you to have "In
God We Trust" on your money?
How does it hurt you to have
prayers in the schools? You can
just not pray when everyone else
is praying.
Why are you always insulting
religious people and complaining
about religion?
Atheism is a negative position.
Show me where the Atheist hospitals and orphanages are.
Your organization is tax exempt.
So why criticize churches for not
paying tax? (American Atheists
is classified as a tax-exempt, educational organization.)
If you would accept Jesus Christ
into your heart, your whole life
would be fine.
God bless you! (In reply to a
sneeze)
Where will you go when you die?
What happens to your soul when
you die?
Why don't you go back to Russia?
America is a Christian nation.
There's no "separation of state
and
church"
in
the
First
Amendment.
If you're right about god, when we
both die we both just die. But if
I'm right, then when I die I go to
heaven and you go to hell. So why
not believe in god, just in case?
The universe must have a cause
and that cause is god.
Look at the beauty of the world
around you, the plants, the sky,
the birds. A planning intelligence
must have been behind it all.
I'll pray for you.
How can you have any ethics if
you don't believe in god?
If people didn't have religion, they
would rape, murder, and steal at
every opportunity.
Why don't you believe in god?
What made you turn from god?
Why did you take prayers out of
the schools?
You'll burn in hell!
Jesus died for you.
What do you think about reincarnation?
If you don't believe in god, why
are you fighting against him?
American Atheist

35. Are all Atheists Satanists?

36. What is the purpose of our existence, ifthere is no god?
37. The founding fathers believed in
god and founded this nation on
Christi ani ty.
38. The Ten Commandments are the
foundation of the legal system of
this country.
39. Jesus loves you.
40. God loves you.
41. What's wrong with having a
moment of silence in the public
schools?
42. Isn't it only fair to teach both the-

43.
44.
45.
46.

47.
48.

ories of the origin of life in the

public schools: creation science
and evolution theory?
Well, I'm an agnostic because you
can't prove there is no god.
Atheism is a dogmatic position;
agnosticism is not.
If you reject god, do you worship
the devil?
Separation of state and church
doesn't mean separation of religion and government.
Where did you come from?
What would you put in religion's
place?

49. Why are you an Atheist?

50. There are no Atheists in foxholes.
51. What about near-death
experiences? Aren't they evidence of an
after-life?
52. What's the difference between an
Atheist and an Agnostic?
53 What's stopping you from killing
someone?
54. Why don't you find a real battle to
fight?
55. If the Bible is so faulty, how do
you explain the Hebrew Bible
code?

A\II)()UI1t1tlille ~131()dlllle~~
A\lrnlelriilcallll~

~'aIIIiCIIl 1()11ll\~alsllliilllgI1ll()IIl:~
It's Our Turn Now!
On 2 November
2002, "Godless
Americans" of all stripes will follow in
a grand tradition
and march on
Washington. Just about every political
and social "cause" organization has
done it: women, gays, blacks, even the
Promise Keepers. Groups of every ideological coloration have spoken out
and demanded "a seat at the table" by
mobilizing their supporters
for a
march or demonstration
in the
nation's capital.
It's as American

as apple pie.

"Godless Americans" - individuals

and representatives
of the nation's
diverse community of nonreligious
people - will make history on 2
November
2002 and march
on
Washington, DC. At the 28th National
Convention of American Atheists,
President Ellen Johnson announced
this new initiative in giving "Godless
Americans" a new voice and presence.
We are reaching out to all an everyone
who has no religious
beliefs Atheists,
Freethinkers,
Secular
Humanists. Whatever the label, we';re
asking you to come to Washington and
be part of this important event. Some
of the reasons for the march can be
found in the editorial at the beginning
Parsippany, New Jersey

of this issue of American Atheist, but

all unbelievers will have no difficulty
in finding grievances for which they
will want to seek redress in their
nation's capital.
The Time is Now.
There are millions of Godless Americans. The latest American Religious
Identification Survey (ARIS) reflects
that nearly 13% of the population has
no religion. This includes millions who
identify themselves with labels such
as Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists,
and others. There are over thirty million of us, a figure larger than most
American religious denominations.
President Bush and other leaders
often ignore us and instead rally the
nation to prayer and religious faith.
"Godless Americans" have been marginalized and excluded in everything
from electoral politics to the public
events commemoration the tragedy of
September 11. No other group would
tolerate such bigotry and exclusion!
It's time to speak out and be heard.
The When and the Where ...
When - November 2, 2002. On the
Mall in the Nation's Capital.
Where - The rally is scheduled for 11
am until 2-3 pm, and will include
Autumn 2002

speeches, entertainment,
and other
activities. It will begin with a "March"
to our staging area. The March will
begin on the mall near 14th Street.
This is on the Capitol Building side of
the Washington Monument. We will
assemble there and make a roughly
20-minute march straight down the
mall to our demonstration/stage
site
which is between
3rd and 4th
Avenues. The marching area is on a
gravel pathway, so plan accordingly.
The grassy area up to our staging area
will be closed to the public at that
time. Further details will appear on
the Godless Americans March on
Washington
Web-site,
at http://
wwww.godlessamericans.org
You
may also call the American Atheist
Center for updates at 908-276-7300.
What to Bring ...
The rally will include an extensive
program; so you might consider bringing a blanket or folding chair to relax
on. Washington can be warm at this
time of year, so consider a container of
water, umbrella (in case of iffy weather), and even sunscreen and a hat.
Good walking shoes and appropriate
dress are helpful, too. Please remember, we want to make a good impresSIOn.

Page 51

Many hotels in the Washington

region are convenient to the Metro
system, which is clean, fast, and relatively inexpensive. This may be a factor to consider when booking, so you
don't have to drive into the downtown
area. Consult with a travel agent if
necessary. You might also want to
extend your stay in Washington and
make this event part of a vacation.
Signs and Banners ...
American Atheists will be selling official GAMOW tee-shirts
at the
GAMOW Web-site, http://wwww.
godlessamericans.org
Our march
permit prohibits the selling of anything but books, leaflets, and bumper
stickers at the march location. Please
feel free to bring your own banners
and other signs, however, balloons are
strictly prohibited. Port-a-Johns (regular and handicapped-accessible) will
be located at the site. Food cannot be
sold during the March by participants,
but there are several food kiosks up
and down the mall and some are close
to where we will be located. We will be
providing
free, small
hand-held
American flags as well as GAMOW
stickers to wear. Limited quantities
are available.
We will have marshals located at
various locations to help facilitate a

peaceful demonstration. Please try to

avoid confrontation with any theists,
should that kind of situation arise.
Don't let the nuts spoil our day.
We ask that you leave the Mall as
clean as you found it, by placing all
your trash in trash receptacles.
There will be an information and
lost-and-found booth located at the
side of the staging area for your
assistance.
American Atheists is hard at work
on the details of this event; we're
determined
to make the "Godless
Americans March on Washington" a
successful and historic "first" for the
tens of millions of nonreligious people
in our country.
There will also be a pre-march
press conference and social event on
Friday, November 1, 2002, at the Hilton Garden Inn, Arlington Courthouse
Plaza, located at 1333 North Courthouse road, Arlington, Virginia, 2220l.
Special rates at the hotel are available
for American Atheists and other participants in the march: $89 per night
($15 per night for third person) plus
taxes. Cut-off date for special rate is
October 18, 2002. You must make
your
reservations
directly
through
the hotel. Contact Julie
Duchin, Director of Sales, at 703-5284444, or via e-mail at: jduchin @hgicourthouse. com

There will be a welcoming banquet buffet ($32 per person, including

taxes and gratuities) beginning at 8
pm on Friday night, November 1,
2002, for everyone participating in the
march. Checks for the dinner should
be sent to: American Atheists, PO Box
5733, Parsippany, NJ 07054-6733. Be
sure to include your full name, postal
mailing address, phone number, and email if possible.

God Unemployed

From page 32

Tower of Knowledge like army ants

released from Paleolithic amber. They
labor tirelessly to convert the Tower of
Knowledge into a Tower of Babel. They
are trying to terminate the Age of
Reason and return us to the Ages of
Faith. As you know, the Ages of Faith
are better known as the Dark Ages.
We cannot let them win. We must
fight them with every erg of energy we
can command. We dare not fail. We must
not let reason's lamplight die. We cannot
return to an age of darkness. We will
not bow again to priests and prophets.
We shall not submit to creeds and
credulity. We shall fight to keep the
future free.

WI-IAT'S 71-lE 81C F'U3S A800i

A
LITTLE PFV'iY'R,IN mE c.L..ASSR.OOM?
AFTf..R, AL.L, NO CHILO IS EVER.

FORC.D

Page 52

TO PRAY ...

Autumn 2002

American Atheist

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