Vol. 31, No.

10

A Journal of Atheist News and Thought

$2.95

The
Mos(ow
InteEnational
Book
FaiE:
What place
will
Jltheism
have in the
Soviet
Union?
lImeri(an
lit heist Press
found out
while
exhilliting its
wares in the
heart of
Mos(ow

Cathedral onion domes tower over

the Kremlin: A symbol of religion's
new position in Soviet society.

American Atheists, Inc.

is a nonprofit, nonpolitical,educational and public acceptance of a human
organization dedicated to the com- ethical system stressing the mutual
plete and absolute separation of sympathy, understanding, and interstate and church. We accept the dependence of all people and the
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to
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American Atheist

A Journal

of Atheist

News and Thought

Vol. 31, No. 10

Editor's Desk
R. Murray-O'Hair

Masters of Atheism
Robert G. Ingersoll

31

The eloquent agnostic answers the

question "Should Infidels Send Their
Children to Sunday School?"

Talking Back

33

Atheists, long accustomed to defending science classes from Christian

missionaries, take on creationism in
"Biology and Bible Myths."

Poetry

34

American Atheist Radio Series

Madalyn O'Hair

35

Cover art and design by

Greg Anderson.

Director's Briefcase
Jon G. Murray

"Anticlericals, Secularists, and Atheists" and others who are in dissent to

religion exist in every country in the
world. But their priorities and projects
differ as greatly as the challenges they
face in protecting the rights of nonbelievers.

Moscow International Book Fair

Madalyn O'Hair

13

It was not a case of bringing coals to

Newcastle when the American Atheist Press went to Moscow to exhibit at
one of the largest book shows in the
world. If anything, more Atheism is
needed in that city.

Spain was once renowned for its religious tolerance and enlightenment.
"Torquemada" tells the story of the
man who changed its reputation forever and made it a center of Christian
repression.

Dial-An-Atheist"

Directory

38

Under the Covers

The Day I Said Good-bye
John Williamson
To love one's parents, must one be
faithful to their religion? In this short
story, a young woman finds that she
cannot follow in her mother's footsteps.
Austin, Texas

Vol. 31, No. 10

29

39

In a book that became a bedrock critique of dissent to religion, a Jesuit

puts "Atheism Under the Knife."

Letters to the Editor

42

Classified Advertisements

44
Page 1

Allerican Atheist
Editor
R. Murray-O'Hair
Editor Emeritus
Dr. Madalyn O'Hair
Managing Editor
Jon G. Murray
Poetry
Angeline Bennett
Non-Resident Staff
Margaret Bhatty
Victoria Branden
Merrill Holste
Arthur Frederick Ide
John G. Jackson
Frank R. Zindler
The American Atheist is published by American Atheist Press.
Copyright 1991by American Atheist Press.
All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole
or in part without written permission is
prohibited. ISSN: 0332-4310.
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The American Atheist Press publishes a variety of Atheist, agnostic, and freethought
material. A catalog is available for $1.00.
All Christian Bible quotations are from the
King James Version, unless otherwise
noted.
This magazine is printed on recycled paper.

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American Atheists, Inc., P. O. Box 140195, Austin, TX 78714-0195

Vol. 31, No. 10

American Atheist

Editor's Desk

Undoing deceptions

purpose of the American Atheist

is to present the history, views,
personalities, positions, heroes,
and goals of Atheism as the mainline
media cannot and will not. Simply put,
if we expect the story of Atheism to be
fairly told we must tell it ourselves and
not rely upon those blinded by religious
dogma or harnessed by the demands of
the commercial media.
In some issues of the American Atheist, this purpose is even more compelling.Events which gravely concern us as
Atheists are ignored entirely by the outside media - for instance, Bush's comment that Atheists cannot be considered citizens of the United States. If
such incidents are to be discussed at all,
they must find their forum within these
pages. At other times, Atheist happenings or issues are indeed handled by the
mainline media - but in a distorted or
malice-filledmanner. It is the task of the
American Atheist to paint a truer picture of them.
Though my work involves righting
these journalistic wrongs of omission
and commission, I am rarely angered by
them. As a member of America's most
written about Atheist family, my hide
has grown somewhat thick. I have seen
our movement's best spokespersons
treated by the media with more contempt and less objectivity than would be
accorded a confessed child molester.
But then stories both subtly and overt1yhostile are what one may expect from
a culture saturated in a viewpoint opposed to one's own. One might as well
expect Iran's state press to carry fair
coverage of the Methodist church.
The most unfortunate aspect of this
tainted media handling is the tendency
of the American public - even those
persons sympathetic to or in agreement
with Atheism - to lend credence to any
media report. We all know the old canard "Why would they print it if it
weren't true?" but rarely realize the ex~

R. Murray-O'Hair
Austin, Texas

tent to which people believe that. They

give the reporter the benefit of the
doubt, rationalizing that his story perhaps has a grain of truth ("Well,he is tall,
though I myself wouldn't have called
him a 'genetic freak' ").
But would the media disseminate deliberate lies? That is a notion from which
all of us in the United States try to avert
our eyes. It is unthinkable. In our nation
the press is a sanctified institution, administered by Clark Kent and Lois
Lane, overseen by selfless though demanding editors. Its goal is to serve the
public and present the truth; it is protected by and protects the First Amendment. It act in malice? It be motivated by
"market economics"? Perish the thought;
we Americans know that the press
serves the people.
The fact is that it does not. Our newspapers, radio stations, and television
networks are owned by corporations
devoted to profit, not charity - to stock
holders, not truth. And Superman, in
the guise of mild-mannered Clark Kent,
isn't in the press poo\. Instead it's an
ordinary human being, with ordinary
biases and ignorance and the usual concern for retaining his job.
Nonetheless one media story about
American Atheists shocked me - and
that was a Los Angeles Times report on
the American Atheist Press exhibit at
the Moscow International Book Fair in
October 1989. The story was also sent
on the wire service, appearing in many
other papers.
As part of the usual bit of misrepresentation, the _article never mentioned
the name of the press. The stand was
only identified as "Madalyn Murray
O'Hair's booth" - this is the standard
media game of pretending that there is
no American Atheist movement, that
there is only one lone Atheist in the United States. (A mistake on the reporter's
part? Signs announcing "American
Atheist Press" in fivelanguages appeared
prominently on the exhibit.)
From the first line, of course, the article portrayed the American Atheist
Vol. 31, No. 10

Press exhibit as a failure. The reporter

authoritatively stated "no one stopped
to browse through her [O'Hair's] literature." Our translator "intended to help
Soviets with questions, sat idly." Having
laidthis groundwork, the article launched
into an extensive description of the
smashing success of the religious booths
at the Fair. The Los Angeles Times article was not run as an opinion piece but
a news report. "These were the facts,
ma'am."
That at times the American Atheist
Press booth was so crowded we couldn't
move wasn't part of the story. Or that
once, when we were passing out literature and free pens, Noel Scott and I
were almost trampled by the eager
crowd didn't make it into print either.
That our two translators were exhausted
by their work at the end of the day also
slipped through the cracks of fair reporting.
I have thought that perhaps the article should have had a caption stating
that it was provided as a free service for
Christian fund-raisers, for it served that
purpose. Even before American Atheist
Press representatives were back in the
United States, Christian fund-raising letters had been sent out, using the article
as a source for the information that
given a choice of god and godlessness,
Soviets went en masse for religion.
But, as I said, I have grown accustomed to misstatements and misrepresentations concerning Atheism from the
press corps. What shocked me about
this article, what I had not fully understood before, is the ease with which the
press can, if it wishes, deceive us concerning events in foreign lands. For who
is there back home to contradict the reports? The truth is inaccessible, isolated
across borders and language barriers.
Because of production problems and
scheduling delays, this issue of the
American Atheist has long been postponed. But even wrongs on the back
burner eventually come to boil and the
needed correction is now being issued
here in August of 1991. ~
Page 3

Director's Briefcase

Anticlericals, secularists,
and Atheists
merican Atheists has known for
many years that there are Atheists in other countries of the world
besides the United States. In fact, Atheism was alive and well as a point of view
in opposition to religion in Europe and
Asia for hundreds of years prior to the
colonization of the North American
continent. We suspect that there were
also Atheists present in the cultures of
Africa and South America for centuries
before "America" was established, but it
is difficult to find persuasive historical
evidence to support that assumption.
From time to time, I have found myself,
as I wager most other Atheists have,
wondering ifI was the only Atheist in the
world or if there were indeed "others
out there like me." That feeling can be
compared to the wonder of a stargazer
on a clear night who supposes that there
must be "life" as we know it on at least
one of those many, many points of light
in the visible expanse of a nighttime sky.
In the case of the lonely Atheists,
though, it is more like a question of
whether there is indeed other intelligent
life out there in the world somewhere.
To no surprise of my own, I have
found over the years that indeed there
are other Atheists in the world. Not just
Atheists either, but Atheist activists.

Around the world,

those in dissent to
religion face vastly
..differing situations in
their struggle for
intellectual freedom in
their nations.
Their responses vary as
greatly as the
challenges which face
them.

International outreach

A graduate of the University of Texas

at Austin and a second-generation
Atheist, Mr. Murray is a proponent of
"aggressive Atheism." He is an
anchorman on the "American Atheist
Forum" and the president of American
Atheists.

Jon G. Murray
Page 4

American Atheists has made a point

of trying to contact both Atheist groups
and individualAtheists in various nations
around the world. The motive behind
this international outreach was to determine whether those Atheists of other
lands view religion, its philosophical
content, and its sociological effect just
as we do in the United States. There was
a second motive, though, which was to
foster enduring contacts with those of
similar viewpoint and life-styleso that an
exchange of ideas could result. Perhaps
Atheists abroad were facing the very
same fight as American Atheists was in
its own country. If so, perhaps we could
exchange battle plans and learn from
one another's successes and failures.
Vol. 31, No. 10

The outreach began as far back as

1%9, when Dr. Madalyn O'Hair, founder of American Atheists, invited GORA
(Goparaju Ramachandra Rao) of India
to the United States. Since that time
American Atheists has sponsored numerous visits of leaders of foreign Atheist and freethought groups to this country, and the leadership of American
Atheists has journeyed abroad to seek
out other groups on their home turf.
In years gone by, visits by representatives from groups in India, Great Britain,
Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Israel,
Austria, West Germany, France, Canada,
and Ireland have been hosted. Since
1976,these visitors have come chiefly to
participate in annual national conventions of American Atheists. In addition,
the Murray-O'Hairs have journeyed to
Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, France,
Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark,
(former) West Germany, (former) East
Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy,
Finland, Sweden, the Soviet Union,
Hungary, Greece, Turkey, Iran (under
the shah), India, Thailand, Japan, China,
Australia, New Zealand, Kenya, Tanzania, ElSalvador, Mexico, and Canada. In
their travels they have never failed to
meet at least one fellow Atheist leader.
American Atheists has participated in
international Atheist conferences in Vijayawada, India (1980)and Helsinki, Finland (1983), and in a freethinkers' congress in Lausanne, Switzerland (1981).
In more recent years, American Atheist
Press has sponsored literature exhibits
in both Moscow, U.S.S.R., and Frankfurt, West Germany.
This issue of the American Atheist is
devoted to a report on the Moscow International Book Fair exhibit of 1989. I
shall not delve into the specifics of that
Fair, since that topic is covered so thoroughly elsewhere in this issue.

A mixed bunch
What we have found in our meetings
with Atheists of other lands, both on our
soil and theirs, is of great interest and
may come as a surprise to many AmerAmerican Atheist

Below: During his 1969 visit, GORA, the

founder of the Indian Atheist Center,
was interviewed on the "American Atheist Radio Series" by Madalyn O'Hair.
Right: The Thirty-ninth Congress of the
World Union of Freethinkers included
leaders of Atheist, anticlerical, and freethought groups from almost every European country.

ican Atheists. In the beginning we naively assumed that others who were without religion would share all, or most, of
our points of view. That turned out not
to be the case. In fact, we found very few
individuals to whom we could strictly
apply the term Atheist. Most of the persons we met were anticlerical, agnostic,
humanist, freethinking, Unitarian, Ethical Culturist, or rationalist. I willexpand
on those categories a bit, but I must
preface that attempt with a disclaimer
that many of the individuals I have met
could be placed in more than one category.

seat to that desire to pound away at the

institution of their upbringing from
which they have fled.

The anticlerical
The anticlerical is one who mayor
may not be certain, or even have an

opinion, as to the existence of a god, but

for whom the clergy are the enemies of
mankind. With some of the anticlericals,
this opinion extends to all clergy, of every denomination. The majority of this
category, however, aim their criticisms
at the clergy of the Roman Catholic
church. Most of the anticlerical types I
have met are from countries which have
been dominated by the Roman Catholic
church throughout most of their history.
I have also usually found that anticlericals have had a bad personal experience
with a priest or nun while growing up, or
in regard to a marriage or a funeral or
some other church rite. Anticlericals
are primarily concerned with what I call
"clergy bashing," and what could be
other separation of state and church or
civil rights concerns often take a back
Austin, Texas

The agnostic
The agnostic is truly one, in layman's
terms, who "does not know if there is a
god." He cannot bring himself to say
that "god is make-believe," because he
harbors doubts about that fact. Most
cling tenaciously to Pascal's wager. *
The bulk of the agnostics I have encountered internationally deem themselves
to be intellectually superior to Atheists
because they take a nonposition on the
god idea. They hold that a non position
is the only intellectually tenable position
because one cannot "prove" that a god
does not exist. Agnostics are usually
those either schooled in or enamored of
philosophy. They adhere to the same
unflinching line as their counterparts

*Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist. "Pascal's

wager" is an argument propounded by this
philosopher which is roughly as follows: "If
I live my life as if there is no god, and I die
and find that there is a god, then I have lost
everything because (a) my life has been
wasted living without god and (b) I will certainly be damned to eternal hellfire for not
believing in god. On the other hand, if I believe in a god now, if it turns out in the end
that there is one I am covered because I
have believed all along and I have lost nothing during my life. If it turns out in the end
that there is no god, then I have also not really lost anything for being a silent believer."
Vol. 31, No. 10

within the American Atheist organization. Agnostics have an inner fear, in my

opinion, of "just saying no" to the god
idea. They cannot bring themselves to
go all the way because they fear something - which is obviously that they
could be wrong in "denying God."

The humanist
The humanist loves his fellowman not in a solely sexual sense, of course.
The humanist is "friend" to the world, including religionists. The humanist wants
all people, theist and Atheist, to work together as one big happy family for the
good of mankind. The fact that this has
not ever been possible, even within the
ranks of a particular denomination of
belief, much less inter denominationally,
does not faze them in the least. "Dialogue" is the humanist buzzword. Humanists feel that if both sides of any
viewpoint could just sit down and work
things out, lifecould be harmonious, not
to mention homogeneous. What the humanist does not realize is that no dialogue is possible between the Atheist
and the theist because they are operating from different premises.

The freethinker
The freethinker is usually more advanced in age and from the old school of
principally European biblical criticism.
To "think freely" to freethinkers means
mostly one thing: to be able to think
freely about (or criticize) the Bible. They
cling to the idea that biblical criticism is
the essence of fighting religion. If they
Page 5

Left: The second World Atheist Meet was held in Helsinki, Finland. Representatives
came from as far as India to attend.
Below: In 1984, American Atheist leaders met representatives of the Atheist Society
of China. Left to right are Madalyn O'Hair, Zhang Xin Ying (librarian for the Atheist Society of China), Jon Murray, and Professors Gao Wamghzhi and Li Fu-hua,

The Ethical Culturist

The Ethical Culturist is out to prove
a specific point: he can be just as good
as a religionist without the religion.
These individuals want to be thought of
as fine, moral, ethical, and productive
members of the community despite
what the religionists say is their handicap - not participating in traditional religion in one of its more popular forms.

The rationalist

could just personally convince, they

think, every Bible believer on earth (presumably one at a time) that their precious book is flawed, the theists would
all abandon it at once. This is hardly the
case, but the thought is what counts to
the freethinker. The European antichurch movements are particularly
filled with freethinkers who still recall
the "great war" as being World War I.

The Unitarian
The Unitarian is somewhat related to
the humanist, though he does not always
mix well. The European Unitarian believes in god, all of them at once instead
of any particular one. The Unitarian also
adheres strongly to the notion that
things done in a group, in unison, in
quasi-religious-rite format, are more
meaningful than individual accomplishments. The Unitarian champions the
form of religion without, necessarily, the
content. Perhaps it is just an expression
of the herd instinct or, more likely,a desire to preserve what they liked about
traditional church (the music, the comradeship, the stained-glass windows,
the opportunity to "dress up," the socialization) without retaining the theology which bored or disgusted them.

Page 6

The rationalist has before him the

task of rationalizing religious dogma and
ritual, but not necessarily allowing a failure to accomplish that goal to be cause
to abandon it. The rationalists desire to
approach religion with their noses held
high, rational at all times, with no offense given to the religionist at any cost.
They desire to be critical of religion, but
in a nice way. The application of human
reason to religion is fine as long as it
does not go so far as to come to the conclusion that religion is not at all germane
to the human equation.
The current situation in
France, Australia, and New
Zealand is that the word
rationalist but not the philosophy of rationalism is in current use. So oppressive has
religion been against proponents of Atheism that they
have often been forced to
adopt a pseudo-identity, the
least offensive of which appeared to them to be "rationalist." It is also indicative of
the history of many of the freethought/
Atheist groups. At the time organized
dissent to religion was forming "down
under," for example, the dominant
group in this field in England was one
which called itself rationalist. This appellation was chosen by the new groups at least in part - to indicate their affiliation with the English movement.
In my many travels I have met very
few persons who are in general dissent
to religion who do not fallinto one of the
aforementioned
categories. I could
Vol. 31, No. 10

count the number of really hard-core

Atheists whom I have met internationally on the fingers of both my hands. I
am not discouraged by this. On the contrary, I know that it means that there
must be more of the same out there who
just do not know of the existence of their
comrades.

Different countries,
different problems
In dealing with the various groups of
persons in dissent to religion outside of
the United States, I have come across
quite a variety of interesting situations.
Unfortunately none of them, so far, are
of sufficient similarity to the position of
those in dissent to religion here in the
United States to make an exchange of
strategies plausible. The largest difference is between the governmental systems, in both theory and practice, of the
other countries vis-a-vis state/church
separation. A prime example of a major
difference can be seen in the school sys-

tems of the various nations. Many of the

state/church separation issues here, in
our country, are school related. Prayer
in classrooms, exhibition of religious
symbols in schools, prayer at graduation ceremonies, state funding of parochial schools, teaching of creationism in
schools, "equal access" of religious
groups to schools are all issues in the
United States of which we find no counterparts in Europe and the "land down
under." Daily prayers and/or religion
classes are commonplace in European
American Atheist

France has several freethought societies,

as well as an Atheist group. At left is the
Paris office and bookshop of La Libre
Pensee, "The Freethinker."

nations willsuffice to give you a flavor of

the situations our comrades abroad
face.

The British situation

schools. Most countries besides the

United States have now opted for a
"separate but equal" concept of state
funding for a dual system of what they
call "government" (public) and "church"
(parochial) schools. The entire arena of
the battle to keep religion out of public
(government) schools is not an issue
outside of the United States. The schools
in other countries have religion as part
of their daily fare for students, and that
fact is not likelyto change. Also, the majority of other nations don't have the
equal of the so-called religion clauses in
our First Amendment in their constitutions or charters. There is, therefore,
little ifany basis for litigation of any separation of state and church issues which
might arise. The church simply relies on
its traditional presence and power to
dominate the culture, particularly in Europe and South America.

Politics and Atheism

There is yet another general observation about groups in dissent to religion
outside of the United States which I
must make. I have yet to encounter
such a group which does not have
strong political leanings. They rely upon
alliance with political parties or factions
to aid them in their outreach.
Here in the United States we have a
"winner take all" type of political system. We have only one party, the capitalist party, with a left branch (the Democrats) and a right branch (the Republicans), the distinction between which
draws closer and hazier by the minute.
In contrast, in most other countries,
there is a proportional representation
system of government in which a range
of parties from fascist to communist is
Austin, Texas

allowed to be seated in a parliamentary

body in numbers corresponding to how
many votes they garner. There are
socialist and communist parties in most
of Europe which can have their representatives seated in their country's governing body. That is not the case here in
the United States.
It is because of this situation that
groups in dissent to religion outside of
the United States are able to find some
representation through which they can
occasionally have an idea passed onto
the table to be considered, however
briefly, in a national governing body. We
cannot say the same. It is simply not
possible for American Atheists to convince a single member of
our national Congress to
sponsor a bill on our behalf
or to mouth one of our positions for even an instant
on the floor of the House or
Senate. Due to the ability of
foreign groups to form an
alliance of some kind with
part of their country's governing structure, most of
the representatives of foreign groups in dissent to religionwith whom Ihave met
have been socialist, communist, anarchist, or at least "left wing"
politically. The governmental representatives who are willingto help them from
time to time are those of the liberal, leftwing parties. Here in the United States,
the majority of the members of American Atheists are hardly "left" politically
and are certainly not socialist or communist.
A few examples of specific instances
I have encountered with groups of other
Vol. 31, No. 10

England presently has a state church.

It has been a theocracy, functionally, for
many hundreds of years. Religion classes in the public schools there are obligatory. There is no "constitutional" basis
for a separation of state and church in
Great Britain. As a result, the British
groups cannot hope to force religion out
of the schools but can only try to obtain
some type of secular presentation in the
schools on equal footing. They are
therefore developing books and a curriculum for "humanist" classes as an alternate to the required religion classes.
The British freethought and humanist
movements fight against such things as
kosher food labeling (an issue long since
lost in the U.S.) which requires ritual (inhumane) slaughter. The increasing Moslem community in Great Britain is asking for more kosher food availability.
freethought and humanist groups are also con.cerned with obtaining and
maintaining state recognition of secular marriages
and funerals. If you are to
be married in England, you
have virtually no choice but
to do so in a church. (The
usual alternative is a regis-

,.""The

The National Secular Society helped introduce Humanism, a short book on the
history and position of the nonreligious,
to the British government schools. Its
author, Barbara Smoker, addressed the
1984 Convention of American Atheists.
Page 7

The government of Belgium issued several stamps in honor of the Belgian secular movement. One features an owl, long used in that country
to symbolize freethought (below).
The Rationalist Society of New Zealand is headquartered in a historic
building in Auckland (right). As well as providing office space, it also
serves as a meeting place for society members.

try hall, hardly a festive facility.) In death

it is hard to avoid a religious service of
some kind. Given an admixture of state
and church which cannot be changed,
the thrust of the British movement must
be in other areas. This basically means
that instead of fighting to keep religion
out of government, they are reduced to
asking for equal recognition by government of the "secular." In simpler terms,
the British movements must try to entangle themselves with government,
next to their religious foes, rather than
attempt to disentangle religion and government.

movements in Belgium is
obtaining permanent, rather
than provisional, govern
ment funding in the future.
In order to do so they must
relegate their opposition to religion to
areas such as biblical criticism and philosophical jousting with religious leaders
over "moral" and "ethical" issues. They
must also develop programs to provide
"social services," just as the churches
do, in order to justify the possibility of
the government's permanent funding of
their efforts. These social services include providing humanist counselors in
hospitals (next to religious chaplains),
establishing substance abuse counseling
facilities, and setting up counseling centers to combat child abuse and provide
refuge for abused women (wives) and
children. Additionally the Belgian groups
provide a job referral service to match
the unemployed with employers. The
secular groups in Belgium cannot discriminate in the proffering of these services: they must accept religious applicants along with those of no religion.

Belgian sponsorship of humanism

In Belgium the government funds
both the religious movements and the
"secular" movement. The religions receive permanent funding and the secular groups have only provisional funding
at the moment. Since the groups of
those in dissent to religion take government funding, they cannot protest funding of religious groups or any of the
other largess of government which the
. religious institutions obtain. The government has, essentially, purchased
their silence.
The main concern of the secular
Page 8

Members of the Bunte Liste Freiberg, a

German Atheist group, were jailed for
displaying this meeting announcement.
Vol. 31, No. 10

Germany and Austria

In Germany and Austria there are five
main issues. The one which receives the
most attention is the blasphemy laws (or
"paragraphs" as they refer to them). Unlike our blasphemy laws, which merely
sit on the books and are not enforced,
German and Austrian citizens have
been jailed under their blasphemy laws.
Another issue is censorship. The German and Austrian groups have been
particularly upset about the Salman
Rushdie affair and its implications for
the European publishing industry. Abortion is an issue now in Germany due to
the reunification movement and the mechanics of the application of current
West German abortion laws to what
was East Germany. Austria is wrangling
over the abortion issue too, but to a
lesser extent due to the pervasive position and historical power base of the
Roman Catholic church there.
The fourth issue in Germany and
Austria is a bit hard for Americans to
understand. A major outreach for German and Austrian groups depends upon
their free access to the university campuses to give lectures to the students
against religious dogma and the church.
Lectures on almost any subject are well
attended at German and Austrian universities, and so it is with the lectures
sponsored by the "anticlerical" groups.
Extracurricular lectures are anathema
on U.S. college and university campuses. Our students won't attend anything
requiring even an ounce of intellectual
strain unless they "get credit" for it. German and Austrian students, however,
do attend such lectures, on a variety of
subjects, in surprisingly large numbers.
In order to promote attendance at
these mostly after-class lectures, the
groups which sponsor them advertise
on the campuses and in nearby cities or
towns through the use of posters. The
American Atheist

The fight to separate state and church is,

for the most part,
long over outside of the United States.

Finally,German and
Austrian groups are
battling the "church
tax." Citizens in Germany have a tax taken out of their earnings on a regular basis
which goes to support the Protestant or
Roman
Catholic
churches. The German groups have protested this tax in every
way possible to no
avail.

India's special

church separation front. Their efforts

must instead be turned to maintaining
equal treatment ("civil rights") for nonbelievers under law. Even that effort,
however, is on a different plane than in
the United States. Here we eschew the
notion of Atheism being classified as a
"religion." In other countries "Atheism,"
"humanism," and all the rest are lumped
together as "secularism," as a kind of
religion of a different color. That group
of "seculars" then seeks - as an "offbrand religion" - to be bestowed with
the same rights that are given to the
various types of religions. Once state
and church are entangled to the point of
no return, the only thing left for the nonreligious to do is to say that their nonreligion is a religion and ask to be included within the circle of rights granted
to the religious and perhaps stand in line
for receipt of some of the largess of government which is proffered to religious
groups.
This is exactly opposite to what
American Atheists does here in the
United States. We are fighting to keep
the state and the church from becoming

Madalyn O'Hair and Jon Murray assemble with the staff of concerns
the Indian Atheist Centre in Vijayawada, India, for a comIn India the main
memorative photograph during a 1978 visit.
. issues of the secular
right to be able to freely display posters
groups are threefold. The first is fighting
announcing lectures on university cam- the caste system with all of its religious
implications. The second is debunking
puses is very important to the German
and Austrian groups. They have been what the Indians call "God-men." These
involved in a large fight over this issue, are fakirs, magicians claiming to have
with religious groups tearing down their supernatural powers, who prey upon
posters as the government authorities
the great masses of illiterates in India.
look the other way. This, to them, is un- They are not too far removed from our
conscionable.
own tent faith healers. The
It seems trivial to us on the surface third issue is lamenting the
that the Germans and Austrians would lack of cooperation between
be upset over posters on campuses, but the various sects, of which
India has many, and calling
it makes sense once one understands
that the principal public free-speech out- for unity toward solving Inreach for those groups is on the cam- dia's population, hunger, dispuses. They have no access to the elec- ease, and illiteracyproblems.
tronic or printed media, so they have
gone to the campuses. One must also The new religion
of no religion
consider that in Europe fewer persons
use automobiles on a daily basis than in
One can see from just An important part of the Indian Atheist outreach is
the United States, and they walk the these examples that the situ- to demonstrate how the "miracles" of the God-men
small, narrow, crowded streets of the ations abroad for non believ- are performed. Here B. Premanand and Lavanam,
cities and use public transportation. In ers are quite different from director of the Indian Atheist Centre, show how to
that setting, posters are very effective the problems we as Atheists make flames spell out a certain word.
because the commuters must walk by have to face here at home. The fight to entangled in the first place. If we can
them more than once a day every day. separate state and church is, for the maintain a secular state, then we can
Posters are not very useful in this coun- most part, long over outside of the Unit- maintain our civilrights within that state
try because we would all speed by them ed States. An alliance of religion and structure without needing to pass ourin cars. Most European cities also pro- government is a foregone conclusion, in selves off as a "religion" to do so. We
vide special municipal structures and perhaps all but France, which leaves have not yet arrived at the point where
areas for the hanging of posters an- groups in dissent to religion in a position there is no separation of state and
where they can do nothing on the state/
church whatsoever. Once we do, and it
nouncing events.
Austin, Texas

Vol. 31, No. 10

Page 9

One obstacle which groups in dissent to religion in other nations must

overcome is language. Europe and India are both patchworks of dialects
and tongues, and the simple problem of not understanding one another
divides groups. In Switzerland, for example, three periodicals must be
produced to serve the freethought community: one in French (upper
left), one in German (lower left), and one in Italian.

is only a matter of time, Atheists in this

country may have to lump themselves in
with all of the other pseudo-Atheists of
the types I have mentioned above, identify themselves as "seculars," and then
try to qualify as yet another branch of
"religion" in the eyes of the state. This
is the core of difference between the situation we face here and what our comrades in other lands face.

The disinterest
in church participation
Then we come to another fact that
Americans will find strange also. Outside of our country there is a general
apathy toward religion. Church attendance across Europe and in Australia
and New Zealand is a small fraction of
what it is in the United States. Despite
the fact that the dominant churches in
other countries have defeated the principle of separation of state and church,
the masses of people in those countries
are more or less unconcerned with the
church. In Germany, for example, there
is no separation of state and church, but
at the same time church attendance is in
the teen percentages. Figure that one
out. We have separation of state and
church in the United States, and our
Page 10

church attendance statistics

are in percentage figures hovering in the forties. When foreign visitors come here from
other groups in dissent to religion, they are amazed at our
bumper stickers for Christ, billboards for Christ, television
evangelists, and public prayers
by government officials. For
the most part, they do not have
these things in their countries,
and we are told that if they did
their citizens would just not pay
any attention to them.
In Australia the prime minister refused to take a "god" oath
to assume office and turned
down a position as honorary
head of the Boy Scouts in that
country because he said that he
did not believe in "God" and therefore
could not take the Scout Oath. Yet, at
the same time, Australia has a system of
complete government funding for church
(parochial) schools. In a dichotomous
situation such as that, what is a "secular" group supposed to do? The only
thing it can do is verbally attack religion
in the form of debates with religionists,
publish biblical criticism, bash the minority cults such as the Scientologists,
or generally make fun of religious ideas.
The Australian groups are doing all of
those things. That does not change anything, though. The church has what it
wants, funding for its schools, so what is
a little taunting from a small group going
to matter?
The battle for separation of state and
church is mostly over, except for the
United States. France is the one major
exception because it has very strong
separation of religion and government
language in its federal founding documerits, language which is largely heeded.
This means that most of the groups in
dissent to religion with whom we are in
contact can only do two things. They
can criticize, taunt, and make fun of religion through the written and spoken
word and, at the same time, attempt to
Vol. 31,No. 10

maintain their civil right to do so by

whatever means possible, including
lumping themselves in with religion as
just another pseudo-religion. The right
to have an opinion in dissent to some
aspects of religion is a very easy one for
institutionalized religion to hand out
once it knows that it has a defined and
permanent place of importance and
dominance within the apparatus of the
state.
American Atheists is fighting in this
country to prevent the organized church
from carving out for itself a permanent
niche in the state as a "civil religion."
Once that happens we would then, like
our foreign comrades, be given the
handout of the right to be in dissent as
long as we did so within certain boundaries of type and kind of expression. The
groups outside of this country must
look toward us to see if we can prevent
the bonding of religion and government
from becoming official here. If we can,
then a glimmer of hope might exist for
them to begin a movement toward reversal of the institutionalization of religion which has already occurred for
them by pointing at the United States as
an example.

M. O'Hair; Ron Marke, secretary of the

Rationalist Association of New South
Wales; Jon Murray; and A. F. Parkinson
gather in front of the Freethought Bookshop sponsored by the Australian group.
American Atheist

Leningrad's Museum of the History of

Religion and Atheism was once a cathedral, but in 1983 it was the site for the
meeting of Atheist minds. At right is its
staff with Pam Thoren (center), curator
of the American Atheist Museum, and
other World Atheist Meet delegates. Below is its director, Yakov Kozhurin (second from left), with Erkki Hartikainen of
Finland, Lavanam of India, and Madalyn
O'Hair of the United States.

I am not trying to denigrate any of the

groups of those in dissent to religion
outside of the United States. They are
doing what they can do in the context of
the situation within their country. I used
the term "group in dissent to religion"
throughout this article because I know
that I can call few of the groups with
whom I have met around the world
"Atheist" organizations because the
majority of their members are simply
not Atheists. They belong instead to one
of the other types of individuals without
religion that I have described. I am only
reporting on what I have found in my
travels and from meeting with representatives of many foreign groups. I have
found but a handful of hard-core Atheists. Most of the persons in general dissent to religion whom I have encountered are just generic "seculars." They
do what they can do, with earnest effort,
given the circumstances in their country.

Can we help
foreign Atheist groups?
I do not see what American Atheists
could do to help any of these foreign
groups besides assisting them with
funding. Their situations are so fundamentally different from what we face
here at home that we really cannot give
them advice. All of the groups involved
are for the most part smaller than American Atheists and are much less wellfunded. In the case of the German
groups, we were able to help by asking
the membership of American Atheists
to send protest letters to German officials concerning prosecutions for blasphemy which were underway in that
country. We are also able to give representatives from foreign groups a limited
platform in the United States through invitationsto attend our annual conventions
and to appear as guests on our "American Atheist Forum" program for cable
access television.
The foreign groups certainly cannot
do anything to help us here in the United
States. The aid we offer is a one-way
Austin, Texas

Soviet Atheism

street. I understand that and do not

mean for that fact, once again, to disparage those organizations in any way.
In summary, then, I can report that
the existence of groups of individuals in
dissent to religion outside the United
States is centered primarily in Europe
and secondarily in India, Australia, and
New Zealand. These groups are not
"Atheist" in a strict sense. They are
mostly composed of "secular" persons
who dissent to the tenets and dogmas of
religion in general for widely varying reasons. The groups are almost all "political" in nature and tend to be on the
"left." The battle for separation of state
and church in their countries has been
won by the church, and they can only
fight now to maintain the civil right to
disagree with religion in a variety of formats. They cannot change the situation
of state capitulation to the church. In
some cases, they can obtain a little piece
of the largess which the state has heaped
upon the dominant church in their
country. This is done through a variety
of mechanisms which all boil down to
calling themselves a kind of "religion of
dissent" in order to fulfillthe old adage
"if you can't beat them, join them."
Vol. 31, No. 10

I want now to speak just a little to the

situation in the Soviet Union. When representatives of American Atheists made
their first trip to the Soviet Union, back
under the reign of Premier Andropov,
we did so hoping to find a nation generally full of Atheists who could perhaps
be our comrades and who could assist
us in our struggle to maintain at least
some separation of state and church in
the United States. We had in mind, perhaps, that we might be able to sell American Atheist Press books in the Soviet
Union to gain some monetary assistance. We also hoped to persuade the
Soviet Union to speak up for the rights
of Atheists through its seat in the United Nations or through diplomatic channels, given its slowly friendlier relationship with the United States. In short, we
thought that we could establish ties
within the Soviet Union through which
we could obtain some form of political
(nonmonetary) assistance from the
nation with the second largest population of Atheists (behind China).
Our second trip to the Soviet Union,
which is chronicled in this issue of the
American Atheist, was a follow-up attempt to put into motion the idea of selling books within that country. What we
actually found out was that the Soviets
were not really interested in promoting
Atheism within their country. They had
made the mistaken assumption from
the time of their revolution that simple
disestablishment of the church in the
Soviet Union was enough. The Soviets
thought that once the church was disestablished, deprived of state support,
Page 11

Atheists were present at the snowy

demonstration of the first of May in 1981
in Lohja, Finland. The banner reads
"Atheism Up," and the picket sign demands "Separate Church from State."

ence in Moscow on a second visit with

the knowledge that Atheists in the United States could not look to the Atheists
of the Soviet Union for any aid. In fact,
it was obvious that the Soviet Union was
on its way to abandonment of Atheism
as a majority life-styleand that there was
little or nothing that the Soviet hierarchy
could do about it because it had not
taken the time to vaccinate the people
against religion in prior decades .
The Atheist leaders I met while in
Moscow had turned into apologists for
the state over the issue of disestablishment of the organized church in the
Soviet Union since the revolution there.
I would not desire even to have any of
the representatives of organized Atheism with whom I met in Moscow come
to the United States to speak because
they have abandoned their principles to
flow with the trend of embracing religion
as a show of being socially progressive.

co

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u
and perhaps persecuted a little here and erly informed as to the dangers of smokthere, which it so richly deserved, they ing, he is less likely to accept that first
would not have to worry about religion cigarette. In a like manner, the Soviet
again. There has been and is no positive government had the opportunity to inprogram within the Soviet Union to form the Soviet people of the dangers of
teach the population about religion in religion before they accepted that first
the sense of demonstrating what is Bible. The government failed to do so,
wrong with it. The government had the and now the rush to religion is on inside
opportunity to educate generations of the Soviet Union. In a childlike way, the
citizens as to the falsity of church dog- Soviets willgrab for that which has been
ma, the errancy of the Bible, the atroc- 'denied to them as a way of rebelling
ities in church history, and the psycho- against an otherwise oppressive syspathology of religion as a mind-set. The tem, whether or not it is good for them
Soviet Union failed to capture this gold- or will bring them less freedom in the
en opportunity.
long run. When they grab for religion,
they do not understand that it willwork
Hunger for Western religions
against their gaining the very liberty that
During our visit to the Moscow Inter- the act of taking it was to symbolize. Renational Book Fair, we saw the result of ligionwillmake them accept greater levthat failure. The Soviet people were as els of oppression in the future than they
hungry for the religious experience as had been willingto tolerate in the past,
an adolescent might be to try his first for that is and has been its function and
cigarette, completely unaware of the usefulness to governments.
medical and psychological consequences
I came away from meetings with Soof that action. If an adolescent is prop- viet publishers and my overall experiPage 12

Vol. 31, No. 10

We as American Atheists are on our

own to try to stop the one remaining
nation in which the idea of separation of
state and church persists from abandoning that ideal. We cannot obtain any
help from the Soviet Union. It is all that
China can do to help itself, much less
help a group outside of its borders. The
groups in dissent to religion in the other
major countries of the world are engaged in an entirely different kind of
fight than are we, one which is more
symbolic at this point than anything
else. The duty falls squarely on us to
hold the line on separation of state and
church here in the United States and
then to help those of like mind in other
countries how we can. Even ifwe should
be able to hold that line, it is only problematical as to whether or not that
would aid or motivate activists in other
nations by setting an example to which
they could point, toward an effort to
reverse or even mitigate the situations
which already exist vis-a-vis the lack of
separation in their countries. ~
American Atheist

Mostow
InteEnational
BookPaiE
The storJ'of the lImeri(an lit heist
Press exhibit at one of the world's
largest book shows.

IJ

t was very bright blue with the

most modern printing and design
in white, five by eight inches, just
sixty-four pages, and poised on the apex
of the design was the famous red star.
But inside, thirty pages were in English
and thirty-four pages in Russian, presumably the one repeating the other we never actually found out for certain.
But that little blue book became our
bible for the next eight months as we
attempted to interpret what the general directorate of the Moscow International Book Fair required for participation in that event from September 12
through 18, 1989.

Serving peace and progress

Several years before we had been
intrigued by an article which appeared
in a popular u.S. magazine showing a
wet and muddy Moscow street, with a
single person trying to avoid puddles as
he leapt cautiously across it, while rain
poured down. The caption read that the
Moscow International Book Fair had
just closed, and that few - if any visitors had been in attendance at the
dreary exhibit. We wondered ifthat was
a correct story or not and wrote to the
directorate asking for the American
Atheist Press to be included in the next
such fair. But the next one came and
went with our knowing about it only
after the fact.

Madalyn O'Hair
Austin, Texas

Vol. 31, No. 10

Page 13

American University Textbooks distributed a bright, inoffensive poster which

could have no meaning attached to it at
all. Being totally innocuous, it was very
much in demand.

the spirit of devotion to the ideals of

humanism and moral values of human
civilization.
The traditional motto of these repeating fairs was "Books Serve Peace and
Progress." That held in 1989 was to be
the seventh in the series.

Invited at last
It was on January 30, 1989,that American Atheist Press received its "We are
pleased to inform you" invitation letter,
dated simply "December 1988."Attached
were scores of papers to fillout and return, formal applications for participation, instructions, labels, and that little
blue book. We must, we were informed,
submit the formal applications by March
30. These included contracts to rent
space, lighting, and guards, for cleaning
our area, for providing identification
cards and credentials, for decoration of
the grounds, and for hiring interpreters,
wardens, and cargo handlers. All the
forms were required to be drafted in
It was then that our man in Washington, D.c., Noel Scott, who reads, writes,
and speaks Russian, decided to write a
letter to the head of the continuing exhibit and ask why American Atheist
Press was excluded from such fairs in

Born on April 13, 1919,Dr, O'Hair

initiated the United States Supreme
Court case Murray u, Curlett, which
removed reverential Bible reading and
prayer recitation from the public
schools of our nation in June, 1963.
She founded American Atheists in the
same year. Together with GORA she
founded the United World Atheists,
sponsor of the triennial World Atheist
Meet. A champion of freedom of
speech, freedom of assemblage, freedom of conscience, and the right to be
free from religion, she is known nationally and internationally as an Atheist
spokesperson.

which other book exhibitors could participate - even if only by invitation.

The Moscow International
Book Fairs were held biannually to further the implementation of the Helsinki Final
Act signed in 1975to:
promote in every way cultural
cooperation among nations,
as well as mutual understanding and cooperation among
people of different politicalviews,
religious beliefs, races, and nationalities;
popularize and disseminate books
contributing to world peace and
progress;
expand mutually advantageous business contacts between book publishers and distributors, stimulate import and export, mutual translation
of books and periodicals; and
bring up the younger generation in
Vol. 31, No. 10

Page 14

"'.

Many of the Soviet exhibitors handed

out wallet-sized plastic calendars on the
reverse side of which was always a
cheery, color photograph.
American Atheist

both English and Russian, including a

permitted small advertisement for the
Fair's directory. We would be notified
within thirty days of the receipt of this
application if American Atheist Press
had been accepted as a participant.

How do you say that

in Russian?
Anyone wanting an exercise in the impossible should move to Texas and
attempt to get Russian forms translated
into English and then have completed

American Atheist Press representatives

did not realize until they first received it
that they would have a veritable "bible"
of do's and don'ts for the Fair.
forms translated back into Russian. We
quickly came to doubt that there was a
Russian typewriter in the state - even
ifwe could have cut through the hostility
with one of our famous Texas chain
saws. We were quickly on the telephone
to Chicago, Columbus, Canada, and
Washington, D.C.
And then, of course, the thirty days
for our "approval" came and went with
Austin, Texas

no word. It was in that interim period that we scrambled

(there is no other word for it)
to put together a little brochure to distribute at the
Fair, describing what the
American Atheist Press was
and why we were exhibiting.
It was decided that little brochure must be printed in
French, Spanish, German,
Russian, and English. First it
had to be written, and arguments went on for a week as
to just what should go into it,
before it was sent off to Austria to be translated into
German, to Canada and Switzerland to be translated into
French, to Washington, D.c.,
for the Russian translation,
and to Costa Rica for the
Spanish translation.
A short history and a presentation of the whys and
Working busily, we had wherefores for the American Atheist Press was put
not watched the time slip by, into French, German, Italian, Russian, and - of
and so it was that on April 26 course - English. They were passed out by the
we became frantic enough thousands at the Fair.
to write, telegraph, and finally to tele- months as we, rather desperately, atphone the directorate that our approved
tempted to bring ourselves into comapplication had not been received as plete compliance with every rule and
yet. Just as we were ready to call the en- regulation of application and admission
tire thing off, on May 13, a Western
procedures, purchase of exhibition
Union Mailgram came in via Morris- space and services, use of stands and
town, New Jersey, Reno, Nevada, and equipment, special payment instrucDallas, Texas, saying that our applica- tions, methods of cataloguing and adtion had been approved on March 31 vert ising, process of entry documents,
and returned to us at that time. We nev- provisions for transportation, tariff barer did receive it, but continued with our riers, and insurance requirements. The
preparations based on the "Mailgram" packing instructions
were explicit;
and the small blue book.
marking had to be precise; transport
We were informed that we could documents in numerous copies were
bring four of each title that we published standard; and the process of clearing
into the Soviet Union, but that we must customs was nightmarish with details.
provide a list of the books, both in English and in Russian. We could sell no Noodles and pasta,
books. Any books brought could be for cookies and tea
Now an application for participation
e;'hibition purposes only. We decided
then, that to augment our titles, we which contained transportation confirwould take four of each issue of the mation, airport and hotel information,
exhibit insurance, and a list of required
American Atheist magazine.
The small blue book, as indicated, services needed was demanded, again
was to become our bible for the next six in English and Russian. Exhibition space
Vol. 31, No. 10

Page 15

Washington, D.C. Atheist Noel Scott

(below) did not realize what he was getting himself into when he volunteered to
translate for the American Atheist Press
at the Moscow International Book Fair.
Exhausting days staffing the display
were ended by grueling hikes to his
room in the Hotel Rossia (right), an enormous structure one block square.

was measured by stand size. Each stand

was a collapsible structure of anodized
aluminum shape with four bookshelves
on each side, with a box for book storage at the bottom. The overall dimensions of the stands were 220 by 100 by
30 centimeters and the orders had to be
received two months before the Fair,
that is, by July 1 - and paid in advance.
We ordered eight square meters indoor
space, with two square meters storage,
all of which was flanked with six of the
stands. In addition, we asked for four
chairs, a writing desk, a coat rack and
one wastepaper basket. We had no idea
why there were order forms for fresh
and canned meat products, soup mix,
canned fish, fresh vegetables and in
cans, fruit juice, fruit mix, beverages,
beer, vodka, cognak [sic], brandy, whisky, gin, rum, wine, chocolate products,
waffles, cookies, tea, ground coffee,
Nescafe, candy without chocolate,
sugar, condensed milk, cheese, nuts,
butter, vegetable oil, noodles and pasta,
spices, and cigarettes.
Another sheet provided a list of "souvenirs" which it might be permissible to
bring into the U.S.S.R. These
included ballpoint pens regular, ballpoint pens several
colours, lighters, tags, namebadges, perfume, cosmetic
products, portfolios (attache
cases), calendars, purses,
and pocket knives. We decided then to order 3,000
ballpoint pens, on which
were printed in red "Moscow
Book Fair"and in blue "American Atheist Press, Post Office Box 2117,Austin, Texas 78768 USA."
Boxes in which the books were sent
had to be:
... not more than 5 kg [in weight],
with the sum of the three dimensions [of the box] not exceeding 90
ern and the biggest dimension 60
cm.
We scoured Austin, and TravisCounty,
Page 16

Texas, for several weeks before we

could find boxes of the right dimensions.
Each box needed to carry a certain
marking, and labels with those markings
were provided, bright red in color, 6 by
9 inches again both in English and Russian. By dexterous packing we were
able to stuff sixteen sets of four books
each in every box and shipped off eight
boxes having a gross mass of 159.21 kg.
Invoices and packing slips, in both English and Russian, were required for
each box. Altogether there were eightyone book titles, scores of Solstice card
designs, and about four years
of the American Atheist magazine. But, then, who would
ship from Austin, Texas, to
Moscow? And this meant
another two weeks attempting to see how such boxes
could get through customs
on both sides of the iron curtain. We were then apprised
that a draft must be wired to
Moscow to pay for the books
being unpacked at the airport, trucked to the fairgrounds, and delivered at our stand inside the building
where we were to exhibit. It also developed that it was necessary to make provisions of which the directorate must
approve for transportation, hotel, and
insurance. All of this next phase had to
be completed, with the books in Moscow, by August 31. About this time, it became apparent that we were in difficulties regarding visas since they would be
Vol. 31, No. 10

for business and not for tourism which is an entirely different world. We
were counseled that they could be obtained only in New York City through a
Soviet consulate affiliate. The process,
however, although begun in New York
was later transferred to Houston. At this
point, the Houston agency informed
that everything had to be approved in
Moscow and that only Moscow could
make hotel reservations. Soon, we were
apprised that Gorbachev had just introduced a new policy of payment in full, in
advance, for hotel rooms and then, finally,that the room rate had been increased
to be more in conformity with that of the
Western world. Hotel rates would be
$500 a night for twelve nights; please
send $6,244 cash in advance. This was
for four persons in a suite of three
rooms; that is, two bedrooms each having two single beds and connected with
a small sitting room between. Each bedroom was to contain a bathroom. Also,
persons entering the U.S.S.R. had to
show proof that round-trip tickets were
in their possession. It was a standard requirement that airfare had to be paid up
front to show proof of return-travel
arrangements.
As we struggled with all of this, the
translations of brochures, of book lists,
of letters, became almost an impossibility - and they were barely finished
under the wire, with a score or more of
intercontinental telephone calls and
one-day air letter deliveries as we went
into proofing.
American Atheist

suggested

American Atheist
introductory reading list
The introductory reading list which appears in every issue of the
American Atheist was translated into Russian and distributed at the
Fair. Visitors showed a particularly keen interest in any material dealing with the sexual origins of religion.

B CInA oveu s TPY.l1HO HaXOJl.I!ITh

Finally on their way that is, just barely

J.1 YR"SepcI!ITElTCKHX

temptation to flyon a people's communist plane, in

first class, was too great,
and the Murray-O'Hairs
booked that from Brussels
to Moscow.
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for the Aeroflot planes in

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September was approaching and

Moscow had still not issued the visas or
1.
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nailed down the hotel. Frantic teleIF. 5416.
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friend and organization officer, fluent in next. Since Soviet depar- 9. '"Ovepxa
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$7.00
The
plane
was
the
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179
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.
cient mileage points on his frequent fly- alent of one of the old U.S.
707s, and first class was quite commo- Scott had arrived several hours before
er discount cards to get two business
class flights from Austin, Texas, to dious. We were barely seated before they. Having some difficulty with his lugBrussels, Belgium,free on Sabina Airlines. caviar and Russian domestic champagne
gage, he soon found that he had to pay
The only costs for the Murray-O'Hairs
were served. The luncheon was com- three separate, different rates to get
back and forth to the airport: one was 15
were for the ticket of Robin Murray- prised of delicacies and the stewardessO'Hair and the flight into Moscow from es, dressed in smart uniforms, were very rubles, another 30 rubles, and a third 60
Brussels for the three of them. Once attentive. The flightwas altogether smooth rubles. Since a ruble was worth more
than a dollar, this was significant.
again, we sweated something out - this and pleasant.
Having arrived a day before the opentime the receipt of the free tickets. As
usual, American Atheist Press could not Battling the hotel bureaucracy
ing of the Fair, we discovered that it took
afford the cost and the trip was paid by
The Murray-O'Hairs had spent a hours to surrender our passports at the
Noel Scott for himselfand by the Murray- month in the U.S.S.R. in 1983 and hotel. We were billeted at the Hotel
O'Hairs for themselves.
thought that they knew what to expect. Rossia across the street from the KremWhen it was discovered that Aeroflot But this time without "Intourist" to pave linin downtown Moscow, directly on the
now had a "first class" section, the the way, everything was different. Noel RekaMoskua (Moscow River). Although
Noel Scott had arrived before the MurrayO'Hairs, he was nowhere to be found.
To our consternation, our room reservations had been lost, and instead of a
suite of connecting rooms with a sitting
room between them, we were unceremoniously dumped, despite our protests, into two double rooms so small
that they did not accommodate our baggage. When we finally found Noel Scott,
who had been playing adventure games
with the airlines over his luggage, we began the long argument to have the
The Kremlin - that most widely known symbol of the Soviet Union - was just steps
rooms for which we had paid. The diffiaway from the hotel in which Fair exhibitors were housed. But for American Atheist
culty that developed was that each time
Press exhibitors it took on a special significance, as the crosses and colorful onion
we were required to produce a receipt,
domes of St. Basil dominated the view of it from the hotel.
or a reservation paper, the clerk with
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Austin, Texas

Vol. 31, No. 10

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Page 17

Right: Colorful banners welcomed visitors

at the entrances to the pavilions containing Fair exhibits.
Below: One of many room cards collected
by American Atheist Press representatives as they were shuffled from room to
room in Hotel Rossia.

whom we were jousting would keep the

paper and we never saw it again. With
an arrangement such as this it was impossible to prove that we had reservations at all.
After several "go-rounds'' with the
desk, at various times, with Mr. Scott
able to speak Russian, we found that the
rooms assigned to us were incorrect,
not matching our invoice at all. Then
suddenly we had no rooms assigned;
then we did; then we
didn't and we waited,
exasperated, in line, or
were told to return later. We were physically
moved from one set of
rooms to another; It
was on the third move
that we were able to
obtain several pleasant
rooms with small living
areas but only by beating another person to
the room by minutes.
He stood outside our
door, with his luggage
in tow, waiting to be assigned elsewhere.
Then again we were moved. Very close
to midnight, with the floor manager act-

ing very mysteriously, Robin

Murray-O'Hair
and Dr. OHair
were moved
from
their
room to a very
grand suite of rooms on the eleventh floor. This suite contained a foyer,
a large living room, complete with a refrigerator and dining room table, a very
large bedroom, and a private bath.
The two women were handled
with deference and much courtesy
from then forward. Noel Scott and
Jon Murray continued to occupy a
smaller double room suite on the
opposite side of the hotel, on
about the sixth level. The total
time for checking into the hotel,
obtaining our rooms, and settling
into them was about eight hours.

Diagnosis: exhaustion
Insofar as the Fair was concerned, free shuttle bus service
was provided between the Rossia
Hotel and the U.S.S.R. Exhibition of
Economic Achievements Park - a
good one-hour ride in the morning

The USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements Park - where the Fair was held
- was built on a grand scale, with majestic park grounds. Unfortunately, little
attention was devoted to the upkeep of the buildings or grounds. Here Jon Murray
displays the official tote bag of the Fair.
Page 18

Vol. 31, No. 10

which terminated at a drop-off point

about one mile from the exhibition site.
With the U.S.S.R. being a nation of
walkers, this did not seem to them to be
untoward at all. It was totally impossible
to go anywhere else in Moscow. One
would rise at 7:00 A.M. to try to get into
the crowded hotel restaurants, or cafes,
and then catch the shuttle to the park.
At night, when the booths at the Fair
closed at 7:00 P.M. and one walked back
to the bus pickup point and had a onehour journey home, Moscow was in bed
for the night and Fair exhibitors were totally exhausted and ready for bed also.
At the entrance to the park in which
the Fair was held was the enormous
Kosmos Hotel. No one ever figured out
why the participants in this Fair were
not quartered there instead of in the
Rossia, which was an hour's drive away.
The day after our arrival we found our
own way to the park and managed to
find the pavilion to which we were assigned. The weather was quite pleasant,
many fallflowers were in bloom, and the
park was quite beautiful. Finally, we sat
in the open on the big wooden benches,
ate hot shish kebabs on sticks, and
drank a foul-tasting Russian soda pop
while bees buzzed around our heads.
When we returned to the Rossia, we
could not find an open restaurant in the
hotel which, curiously, had even many
locked doors and closed restaurants. Finally we prevailed' upon a woman at a
guarded door to permit us to enter. She
agreed to this only if we had American
money. Inside the restaurant was largely empty and we ate our first of the same
menu which was to be repeated every
night for the twelve nights we were in
Moscow. A loud band furnished what
American Atheist

Before and after: It was a hard two days

job to turn an area cluttered with debris
(above) into an attractive display area
for American Atheist Press wares (right).

we presumed was music, which blared

through the empty room. We were tired
and hungry and the woman brought
food quickly. At the next table several
men had passed out cold and one was
lyingwith his face in his plate. At the end
of our repast, not knowing what else to
do, we gave the waitress the standard 15
percent tip in American currency. She
came back again and again to the table,
to warm up our tea and to warn us to be
careful of some younger men at a nearby table. Later she was to follow Dr.
O'Hair to the door and press into her
hand a small piece of paper on which her
name and address were written.

table next to ours, where he proceeded

to get gloriously drunk in the next several hours as we waited patiently for
food. The other waiters did not seem to
mind this at all, and we managed to get
our meals by going to a central area to
ask diverse persons for the various
courses.

Enter Natasha
We had paid for an interpreter to be
with us in Moscow, although Noel Scott
was adept in the language. She met us
at the Fair, a petite, very charming, especially attractive woman, age about

The case of the drunken waiter

At other attempts at evening dining
we found that the doormen or hosts
would carefully question one as to the
method of payment or the kind of money involved, obviously preferring foreign
currency or credit cards. The standard
meal, of an evening, was about $25 a
head, U.S. hard currency. And there
was no way one could be served in less
than two and a half or three hours with
the indifferent waiters at hand. The meal
invariably consisted of small dried sturgeon strips and caviar for appetizers,
with an orange soda drink. A standard
Russian champagne of poor quality was
also routinely served. The entree was
always greasy fried chicken with plain
boiled white potatoes. Hard bread was
invariably served, with butter. Dessert
was a scoop of ice cream.
On one occasion our waiter simply
abandoned his tables in order to sit
down with several young women at a
Austin, Texas

they took offense. It appears that in the

U.S.S.R. "Boris is a Jewish name." The
most common male name for a Russian
is Ivan. Both husband and wife were
graduates of the University of Moscow,
and they had two children. Natasha was
working on her Ph.D., the subject of
which was the time of the ending of the
reform movement which Franklin Delano
Roosevelt had started. The standard reply of Russian historians is that his reform movement ended before the beginning of World War II and she thought
not. Her English was impeccable; she
was thoroughly politicized, worldly,
knowledgeable, always smartly dressed
and coiffed, and it was a great pleasure
to work with her.

The struggle to set up the display

Robin Murray-O'Hair, translator Natasha,

and Jon Murray smile during a few moments of sunny Moscow weather.

thirty, and her name was Natasha. Her

husband, Ivan, about the same age, was
translating for the book publishing company which had come in from Cuba for
the Fair. When Jon Murray told them of
the popular cartoon in the United States
of the two spies, Boris and Natasha,
Vol. 31, No. 10

We reported in at the appropriate

pavilion on September 11, one full day
before the Fair opened, and it was
chaotic. The stands had been erected
but few rugs were down, the building
was cluttered with shipping boxes, and
it was cold. To our dismay we found that
we had been assigned an area that was
already filled with a large heating unit
and it was necessary to immediately begin negotiations for another area. After
a long useless effort to obtain redress,
we - simply - finally carved out an
area for ourselves and ordered our
stands to be put up. We then stopped
several workmen in their tracks and demanded that they help. We had paid for
two such laborers, in advance, each for
an eight-hour workday. We then simply
Page 19

Exhibitors were invited to a variety of social events and special ceremonies held in
the vast grounds of the park on which the Fair was held (map below). But tending
the booths proved to be so demanding a task that few exhibitors managed to take
the Soviets up on the various invitations. The American Atheist Press display had
a steady stream of visitors, many of whom paused to take a leisurely look at the
works available (right).

found the persons carrying rolls of rugs

and ordered enough laid down to fillthe
space. We then went on the hunt for
electricians, dragged one to our display
area, and ordered our lights connected.
It all worked out - it was an excellent
location and we were .quite happy with
it for the duration of the Fair.
Late in the afternoon we were told
that the ambassador of the United
States and Mrs. Matlock had invited the
American participants of the Fair to
have tea with them at 6:00 P.M. at Spaso

CLASSICAL
BALLET
GALA
PERFORMANCE

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Page 20

House. Of course there was no transportation available, no one knew where

Spaso House might be, and everyone
was so involved in waiting for their cargoes to arrive that it was impossible to
attend.
Something should be said about the
park in which the exhibition was held. It
is an enormous area, stretching for several miles, filled with exhibition halls of
various designs, an established showcase for the Soviet Union. Entry is
gained through turnstiles in front of

which are further vast reaches of park.

It is impossible to get a taxi since they do
not come up to the park entrance. The
closest subway stop is literally miles
away. Even attempting to get near the
entrance by automobile is out of the
question, and no buses service it. Here,
as elsewhere in Moscow, although traffic
was heavy, buses and taxis full,and subways jammed, there were masses of
people walking - sidewalks were most
often filled.
Vol. 31, No. 10

You are invited to attend

The opening ceremony of the Moscow International Book Fair 1989 was
held on September 12 at 10:00 AM., but
actually, the workmen had not, even
then, delivered all of the book crates,
cleaned up the hall, put in electrical lighting on each stall, or finished laying down
the rugs. We were still missing our desk
and the chairs we had ordered. Few, if
any; persons could attend the outdoor
opening, where rain was coming down
in any event.
Inside at the time we were trying to
nail down a worker or two to assist us,
since we had paid in advance for several.
Exhibitors were told that the snack bar
Tsentrainaya, and the cafes Vystavochnoye and Lebed were open for them,
but there was seating for perhaps twenty
people at any of them, whereas the exhibitors in our pavilion alone numbered
at least 200 persons. Even with our
guide we never found the restaurants
Podkova, Zolotoy Kolos, or the cafes
Yubileynoye, Otdykh, and Rus.
On the same evening we were all invited to attend "A Programme of the
Gala Concert" in connection with the
opening of the Moscow International
Book Fair, featuring Soviet ballet stars
and held at the Main Department of Culture. There was, however, no way to get
there and no time to go. We finally staggered onto the homeward-bound buses
about 8:00 P.M. that first evening.
That week, from Tuesday through
Sunday, the Fair was open for business
meetings and contacts between the
publishers so that the representatives
from the various nations could exchange
information, bargain for reprints, and
see what was being published in other
countries, from 10:00, AM. to 2:00 P.M.
each day. Entry was available only by
passes which identified publishers and
American Atheist

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

COE.lI.HHEHHbIE

WTATbl

The

AMEPHKH

United

CoeaUHeHHble

Stales

of America

tliraru

AMepUlW

AMERICAN ATHEIST PRESS, INC.

i215 Cameron Road, P.O. Box H0195.

Austin.

ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PUBLISHERS

USA

'220 Ea,t 23rd Street,

(212)689-8920

T~lex; niH-0195
(:ountry ~ode: !.(S12HSS-12H

A catalogue of all exhibitors was formally issued. American Atheist Press was
the first in the listing of the exhibitors
from the United States.

Church/staTe
H.uaIlH~
11.8!lrl{ll~1

separation;

civil

of

no eonpucaa
OTACJJCIlHH
uepxnu
npanaa
~H'\I{'TOII: aTe".lM),

Athei~I<:

or rO"Y,1nl'rTn.l:

The Fair was situated in Moscow in

the U.S.S.R. Exhibition of Economic
Achievements, in Intersectoral Exhibition Pavilions Nos. 1 and 2, ElektrotekhAustin, Texas

rpall<'

New

York,

NY

10016,

USA

U.s.

AMERICAN BOOKSELLERS ASSOCIATION

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

COE,LIJ1HEHHbIE

WTATbl

AMEPI1KI1

AMERICAN ATHEIST PRESS. INC.

7215 Cameron
Road, P.O. Box
Telex:
78714-0195
Country
code: 1-(512)458-1244

140195,

Church/state

rights

Hatanua

A brutal schedule

A publishing cornucopia

Floor,

The A~.ociation
of American
Publishers
is sponsoring
an exhibition entitled
"Thr<;mgh
American
Eyes".
which includes
250 books
that
reflect
current
life and thought
in the U.S,
and about
50
boob
about
the Soviet
Union
published
in the
and widely
available
to American
readers.
All books in this exibit have been
published
in the past two years
and include
worb
of fiction,
poetry.bio!:raphy.theartJ.(urrentevents,etc.

Atheism

their agents. At 2:00 P.M. the

general public was permitted to
enter and the exhibits closed
each night at 7:00 P.M.
This was a brutal schedule,
for one left the hotel by 8:00 A.M.
and returned about 8:00 P.M.
and then it was necessary to
scrounge for dinner. There was
no time for sight-seeing; no
time for cultural events; no time
for visiting with anyone. The
hotel was guarded also so that
only those with tags indicating
that they were there for some business
or other were permitted. We watched,
one night, as two (obvious) prostitutes
were hustled out the door. The hotels
were for foreign guests only and no
ordinary Russian citizens were permitted
past the door. Inside, the hike to one's
room could take ten to fifteen minutes.
The Rossia was at least two blocks long
on all sides. Counting windows, and
floors, together with inside corridors
and courts, we estimated that it might
have 1,000 rooms. On each even-numbered floor, there were small cafes
where one could take breakfast of a
hard roll, butter, sometimes a sausage,
rotten, wormy apples, an unidentifiable
juice drink, and coffee or tea. The tea
was available, however, only for several
mornings before the hot water dispensers broke down, not to be fixed for the
duration of our stay.
One could go outside the building to
a small Baskin Robbins ice cream store
where a single scoop of ice cream cost
$5.00 U.S. Vodka and champagne were
also sold there by the glass. Rubles were
not accepted, however; payment could
only be made in hard currency or by
Western credit card.

2nd

-ra..
righl!

separation;

Statutes of Lenin were, of course, everywhere evident. Most often they were before the most impressive buildings.
Always they stood alone, even isolated,
as if no man could rank with him.
Vol. 31, No. 10

USA

of Atheists;

Atheism.

no eonpocaa ornenenua uepxan or rocynapcraa;

J.aHCKH~1np a aa a arencroe;

nika Pavilion
No.3, Zerno Pavilion
No.4, and Sovietskaya Pechat
Pavilion. In Pavilion 1 was the Soviet exhibit of central publishing houses which
issue political and socioeconomic literature, the publishing houses of the Union
Republics, and the exhibits of the Western bloc nations, with that of the United

civil

Austin,

rpa ac-

aTeH3MY.

States being the largest. Pavilion 2, the

largest building, accommodated the
publishing houses of the socialist nations,
and those of the Middle East, the Far
East nations, Cuba, Central and South
American countries. Pavilion 3 featured
exhibits of magazine publishers, and Pavilion 4 those dealing with displays for
solving the World Food Problems.
When finally we were inside the pavilion to which we were assigned we
learned, casually from others, that the
Catalogue of Exhibitors was being distributed in a larger pavilion across the
way. We dutifully trudged there so that
we could see what exhibitors had come
to the Fair and stayed to be entranced
by a magazine display that was extraordinary.
The 4SS-page catalogue offered a cornucopia: business contacts with more
than 1,000 companies in 140 countries.
The copy distributed to American Atheist Press gave the names and addresses
in both Russian and English. The comPage 21

There were constant visitors at the American Atheist

Press exhibit (left), pressing to talk to anyone who
spoke Russian. Natasha and Noel Scott were always
busy, and both Jon Murray and Robin Murray-O'Hair
did the best they could by being friendly, waving, and
shaking hands a lot (below and right).

panies from each nation were given similar books, in their own languages - and
Russian. Eighty-nine United States
firms were listed alphabetically, with the
American Atheist Press always the first.
Of those eighty-nine firms, fifty-two (58
percent) were religiouspublishing houses
coming like vultures to feed on the
carrion of decaying communism in the
U.S.S.R.

Bringing coals to Newcastle?

There was an immediate interest in
the Atheist display. The Russian publishers very quickly learned that it was period. But it must be pointed out that
there and sent representatives to see if the Fair was for business exchanges of
any of the books of the American Athe- book publishers and not for the generist Press could be published in the al public, which had access to the Fair
Soviet bloc countries which they ser- only from 2:00 to 7:00 PM. for four days.
Every exhibitor at the Fair had the
viced. Those who came to visit included
representatives from Politizdat Pub- same problem as we. The Russians
lishers, Nauka ireligia (Science and Reli- would crowd in, pick up books to look
gion) magazine, the Academy of Sci- at them, and then, later, we would find
ences of the Ukrainian SSR, the Copy- that some were missing. Since we had
right Agency of the USSR,
the Academy of Sciences of
Moscow, Progress Publishers, and the Central House
of Scientific Atheism in Moscow. We were also interviewed by the Russian News
Agency (the equivalent of
Associated Press in the United States), the Soviet television, and Soviet radio.
Since we had taken 3,000
ballpoint pens to the Fair for
distribution, we can state
rather authoritatively that
3,000 persons stopped at Dr. O'Hair was often cornered at the side wall of the
our exhibit. We think that American Atheist Press exhibit where one earnest Soperhaps twice that number viet after another could talk to her privately. The wall
stopped during the six-day featured portraits of famous Western Atheists.
Page 22

Vol. 31, No. 10

been permitted only four copies of each

book it became critical to guard the
display.

The evangelical
disruption

On the third day into the

Fair, suddenly word was
passed around that the
evangelical publishers had
brought 10,000 Bibles
which they were distributing. This was not kosher,
according to our little blue
book. Very quickly the
pavilion was invaded by
Russians hoping to obtain
the Bible. A four-abreast
queue formed and for several days this ended the
business of the Fair. The
evangelicals built a wall of
the boxes of Bibles in front
of their display, leaving
room for only one person
at a time to enter and receive the Bible, the lord's
Jon Murray pauses t
blessing, and a Christian
further information.
line of salvation. They were in the United States.
American Atheist

Natasha seemingly never tired. Always

cheerful and smiling, well dressed, exquisitely groomed, and very attractive,
she was one of the most valuable assets
at the Fair. Here Dr. O'Hair is interviewed by Soviet television, with Natasha
assisting with the translations.

Black market Bibles

then introduced to the display of other

Christian literature before they could
proceed out of the display area. All of
the publishers who had brought only
four copies each of their books were
dismayed. We fielded several delegates
from other displays who asked us to
have the evangelicals stopped in what
they were doing. The presumption was
that because ours was the American
Atheist Press display, we would have
influence with other Atheists - like the
Soviets in charge of the Fair. We tried,
then, to obtain crowd control barriers,
asked for more police, sought to obtain
aid in any way. But then the Jews began

to pass out Jewish calendars. No one

really knew what they meant, but it was
something free and the Russians were
after them. That aisle also became
choked with people. At least three of the
exhibitors simply got fed up, packed up,
and left the Fair. No one was permitted
to purchase any books; allthe publishers
were prohibited from selling any books;
this was a trade Fair, not a book sale.
The evangelicals did not care; they were
in the business of saving souls for Christ
and rules did not count. Once the stock
of Bibles had been exhausted, the evangelicals began to distribute plastic
bookmarkers. The immediate reaction
of the gathering Muscovites, who did not get the
news that the Bible giveaway had been depleted,
was one of discouragement.
The lines dwindled rather
rapidly in the next several
days.
Other publishers had
brought giveaways as we
brought our pens. The University of Maryland (American University Textbooks)
had a particularly attractive
poster, and this was eagerly
sought with long lines of
Soviets queuing for them.
Small lapel pin giveaways
also brought crowds, as did
plastic shopping bags. The
Soviets wanted anything
Western. Of any age, they
seemed like children, in
putmore brochures out, while interested Soviets gather to get their eagerness to grab up
anyvisitors were surprised to find out that there are Atheists what - essentially - was
cheap junk.
Austin, Texas

Vol. 31, No. 10

One of the Jewish publishers came to

slylywhisper that the Bibles were quickly
on Gorky Street, selling on the black
market for 50 rubles. It was also reported
that one Soviet had simply grabbed up
one box of them and ran from the pavilion. Our interpreter, Natasha, got one
to give to a friend.
The evangelicals, of course, made
four attempts to start arguments with
American Atheists, coming in groups
usually - and at one point it was necessary to have the Soviet police in the

Dr. O'Hair speaks with one of the representatives of the House of Scientific
Atheism.

building remove them. They were loud,

insistent, intent on attracting a crowd,
abrasive, and tried to take pictures despite our demands to be let alone.

Soviet Atheism classes

We tried to engage everyone who
stopped in lengthy conversations, asking them if they had been taught Atheism in elementary or secondary school,
in college or at the university. The universal answer was no. Those who joined
the Communist youth organization,
everyone thought, had indeed been
taught about Atheism, but not one of
the persons had been in that group and
were only reporting what they heard.
Noel Scott and Natasha were both constantly busy interpreting for us as we
Page 23

,ll0Cl\oB.ClCAF. llAQ,'HAPCMHAil
:-.10SCOW

L'lTERNATIONAL

KIIHACHAilllPlLIPK\

BOOK FAIR

flPECC-HH(])OP\WlJ1Jl
PRE5SINFORMATION

r:J

ceH'!'J'!6pR: I989

roza

Jon Murray attempts to explain by example in hand as well as

declamation. Quite often it worked.

tried to learn, as best we could, about

the people visiting the Fair.
It also developed that English was not
generally taught in Soviet schools and
very few people knew it. We made a
point of telling people that we would give
an American Atheist magazine to anyone who could read just one paragraph
in one of them - any paragraph. Of at
least several hundred persons who tried
it, none could accomplish it. The persons who were wandering through the
entire American exhibits, we noted,
would mostly look at pictures on the
books, or stop at artistic displays. The
American Atheist Press books in which
they showed the most interest were
Women, Food and Sex in History, Sex
Mythology, The Bible Handbook, The
X-Rated Bible, and Essays on American
Atheism. That immediately reveals their
interest in reading material related to
sex.

Ignorance of religion
Since our earlier visit to the U.S.S.R.
in 1983, American Atheists has been in
a continuing argument with
our Soviet counterparts,
who have held to the principle that if religion was not
emphasized, it would wither
away. The official Soviet
position had been that religion had to be taught in the
home, by familieswho were
religious. The church had
to self-support, paying its
own ministry, purchasing
and keeping in repair its
own buildings, with no help
from the state.
American Atheists had felt that this
was inadequate and that the destructive
Page 24

- ffa 3ana.z!..

history of religion and its

AM.pllXaJ:
s EBpon e , aa Bp
Onpe.ll:9JI9RllH
3BY'lmrxax
rpOBax, B
psychopathology must
"0.300="
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kind. The Soviet Atheist
BOCTZaTe.31.\Y"a ~ ro.!to." llpllHP.
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area31.!a B .fia.n.:auo aJ3;:rycre I$3 ro.zta co~ P8mSRI!e 0 "COzpaae
groups, however, inBan ea.''''C''"H!ia
(llITaT
.!taJJs n.pBW! B Ml!pe """ B.p-.
Bo3'Qms
J:YJ>Raa
I964 ro
l!eBTp
sisted that the "wither
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away theory would
P :T:.!tBa3Baqaaac. = ::;:lJI<aaC""" ar.=:':;CT".CKO!
.lll!BH KliIIra Owra
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work in practice.
OI!l!carm. Bam a
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a
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'u oO~.CTB:am:P::u sa Cl'Paau
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3ar.zraaaeu"
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npo.e""
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To 3POlll!Jr
!Qmr
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I
apparent t hat t heast
..
1.Ia0rne",,"
CKax
THnoI'Jl&/DIa
~C"
'OKpyr
~e
KoroParr
several generations in
or MaraSI!l!Ji llpO.!taB rpawaa OTRe3uaB.lllrCb Ran"Taaa u.p.u.
ae xpamrn~
.!Il!:Taneflaran
dTB" Rmrrn.
S S R. simp Iy
t he U ...
-----_;.:.:.:::;~B~c.~a:T:ea:cT:"":.:CKa:.:::pa:rypy~.:a:o~.O.lll!~otT.:
knew nothing of the ruHO.OCT.no~c s,
inous history of JudeoChristianity. What the evangelicals
to translate into Russian and distribute
dangled before them was exciting, inter- throughout the U.S.S.R. First printings
esting, magical, and they quite suddenly would be 200,000. Among the books
wanted to explore it. There is no way to selected were Jon Murray's Essays on
know how many will be caught in the American Atheism and the MurrayO'Hair book All the Questions You Ever
traps laid by the evangelicals, both
Protestant and Roman Catholic, as well Wanted to Ask American Atheists, with
as Jewish. Never-never land is at hand All of the Answers. Madalyn O'Hair's
for them in the Soviet Union.
An Atheist Primer was to be printed in
one million copies. The Atheism and
rl>i1i~ Importing
Religion magazine decided that it would
American Atheism
take about ten essays out of the American
into the Soviet Union? Atheist magazine, assemble that into a
Both the Progress Pub- book, and make the book available to
lishers and the Politizdat Soviet readers. That too would have an
Publications were quite in- initial printing of 200,000 copies. Such
terested in discussing Amer- issues are unheard of in the United
States, where a first printing of 5,000
ican Atheist publications
with us. We were so busy copies is still felt to garner a sound retalking to visitors that we turn for investment.
American Atheist Press felt that it
did not return their inquiries
until they finally came to should reciprocate and asked that several of the articles from the Atheism and
take us to their offices.
There, it was agreed that Religion magazine be translated into Enthe publishing firms would select about glish so that they could be assembled
ten of the American Atheist Press books into book form for distribution in the
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Vol. 31, No. 10

TRlIO

aTalJCTZIlac~

du

MeM.

-J

American Atheist

Left: A Soviet news agency interviewed Dr. O'Hair and issued a story on the American Atheist Press.
Below: On the days the Fair was open to the public, several authors visited the
exhibit. Each hoped to sell his book to the American Atheist Press.
Below, right: The editorial staff of the Religion and Science magazine. The offices
were very small, the hallways cramped, but the enthusiasm of the staff was
unbounded. The editor-in-chief (center) was Wladimir Pravotoros.

United States.
In between times several Soviet authors appeared with manuscripts in
hand begging to be published in the
United States. We took several such
offerings, demanding that somehow the
author should furnish an English version
of his works. As time passes, these
books may (or may not) develop into an
American Atheist Press offering.

Muammar Al Qathafi's famous The

Green BookThe Commentary on the
Green Book,2 as well as The Great
Green Charter of Human Rights of the
Jamahiriyan Era.' were given to Jon
Murray by a major Libyan publisher, so
delighted was he to meet an American
who did not approve of Reagan's bombing raid on Libya.
When the Fair came to a conclusion
and we were able to break our stands
down, it was decided that all of the
books on display should be donated to
the various libraries. The Leningrad Library, it turns out, is the largest one in
the world and many of the books were
designated for that. Most of the balance
went to the Moscow Library.
Before we left, Robin Murray-O'Hair,
Jon Murray, and Noel Scott went to visit
some of the other pavilions to see what
manner of books were on parade. They
returned exuberant and excited that
learning seemed alive and well in most
other nations. Everywhere they were
warmly greeted as Americans who did
not hate the Eastern bloc or socialist
countries. They were surprised to see a
display of books by Libyan publishers
also and stopped to talk. And they came
back, triumphantly, with a small treasure:
Austin, Texas

Visiting an Atheist publisher

The exhibit pavilion had to be completely clean of all our material by September 20, 21. We accomplished that
early and then had perhaps a day and a
half free, and that was spent visiting the
staff of the Religion and Science magazine and the other magazines associated with it, at its publishing house. The
one magazine has a circulation of 500,000,
of which 2,000 go abroad. The magazine
is currently a money-maker; the profits
in 1988 were over $1 million. Although

1139pages, 10th edition (Tripoli: The Great

Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,
1980)
2263 pages, 1st edition (Tripoli: The Great
Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,
1984)
3(Tripoli:June 1988)
Vol. 31, No. 10

the offices are in Moscow, the magazine

is printed in Kiev. There was not one
computer in the building, but the staff
(about twenty persons) was anticipating
moving into a new building and having
better facilities next year.
The staff participants in a general discussion were most interested in knowing
if Americans really were religious or if
religion was merely traditional. They became quite discouraged with the four of
us and challenged as incorrect our assertions that the vast majority of Americans were really religious. Their reaction to the intrusion of religion into the
U.S.s.R. at this time was, uniformly,
that religion was not a tradition in that

The Fair monitored all. One either had a

tag on one's clothing or there was no admittance.
Page 25

The elegant entrance to the House of Scientific Atheism (left).

Outside was posted an announcement of upcoming lectures on
incredibly obscure topics (right).

nation and, hence, could not now be established. They insisted that prayer was
not an accepted activity and, therefore,
few persons would become involved
with it When we insisted that religion
was for real in the United States, they
quite obviously lost all faith in our judgment since it was something they could
not accept

Working with religion

They explained that both Atheists
and religious persons in the US-SR. desire peace and therefore that each must
respect the position of the other. The
government now is responsible for safeguarding both Atheists and believers
equally. It is a matter of democracy and
equality. Atheists and believers must live
together and progress together on the
disarmament problem. Since the United
States professed to be a religious majority nation, and since the US.SR. desired
to make a political partnership with the
U.S. toward disarmament, the Russians
saw the churches as their allies. Gorbachev turned to the churchmen to explain
to Reagan so that he would understand.
We were quite frank in telling the staff
that both disarmament and peace could
have been negotiated without a sellout
to religion and that there was no way in
this world that Atheists and theists
could live side by side and reach out for
a mutually supportive end: there was no
such thing.

to a more modern building is

anticipated.
American Atheists presented the officers of these
organizations one full set of
the American Atheist books
which had been brought to the Fair and
explained what each book was. It was
during this discussion, as they extolled
"Scientific Atheism," that Dr. O'Hair
quite abruptly asked them exactly what
they meant by the term. They had no
reply.
They were then pressed to explain
what "scientific Atheism" does; the role
that it played in society; the goals it
hopes to attain; the methodology used
to activate it They had no reply. Dr.
O'Hair then asked to see their teaching
facilities, their resource library, their
representative books, booklets, journals, and broadsides. They simply had
none. With Dr. O'Hair absolutely insisting to be shown some measure of activity, the four of us were led to a small
room, about fifteen-foot square, which
contained two glass enclosed bookcases

and two small desks. Dr. O'Hair refused

to accept this as adequate and asked to
know the names of their authors, to see
the books which were used for instruction, to be told their theoretics on the
subjects of prayer, life after death, the

The Institute of
Scientific Atheism
Later on the same day, we stopped to
visit the Museum for Scientific Atheism
and the Institute of Scientific Atheism of
the Academy of Social Sciences. These
were both housed in a "historical building" built at least a century before the
American Revolution. However, a move
Page 26

For the use of the public, the House of Scientific Atheism includes a small reading
room. This included glass enclosed book cases holding current Russian literature.
Vol. 31, No. 10

American Atheist

Representatives of American and Soviet

Atheism review some of the contents of
the library in Moscow's House of Scientific Atheism.

ists, such as Feuerbach. The greatest

Atheist in the U.S.S.R., they explained, is
L. N. Mitrokhin. In regard to Scientific
Atheism, it is based on Darwin, Haeckel,
and their ideas. One of their authors
recently went to the United States to
lecture on the exegesis. At this point Dr.
O'Hair pointed out that evolution was
evolution and that Atheism was Atheism and that the ideas of Atheism
needed to be presented apart from the
theoretics of evolution.
The explanations and apologetics
soul, Bible criticism, exposes of church
history, the Crusades, the Inquisition,
the history of Atheism in the U.S.S.R.
There was nothing.

The literature of Soviet Atheism

books on Voltaire, books on

the state of religion today, on
the Old Testament, and on
the history of religion in Eastern countries. None of the
books appeared to be shelved
and available at the time.
They also claimed to publish
a periodical bibliography on
Atheism, but also that was
not available; however, it
would be mailed. The closest
that they could come to
books on Atheism was one
book for children, with cartoonlike illustrations depicting that humankind is one with nature.
Dr. O'Hair asked for a photocopy of this
book and it was (somewhat) agreed that
it could be sent to the American Atheist Press. There was, in fact, one entire
row (about a yard long) of children's
books.
Attempting to find them,
to show them to us, their
spokesmen were not able
to immediately lay hands
on the history and theory
of religion; no books on
the history and theory of
Atheism were immediately
accessible.

The entire group finallyretreated into

a room about twelve-foot square in
which were four double rows of shelving
set apart by eighteen-inch aisles.Although
the claim was that this was a 20,000book library, it was obvious that no
more than 1,000 books were there. The
display constituted their non circulating
library which "scholars" used. The
newer books were here. Older books
are distributed to other libraries. This is
also the "all-union" house of Atheism,
there being fifty-two such houses in the
U.S.S.R.
As Dr. O'Hair asked for the teaching
books to be pulled from the shelves, she
then asked Natasha to
translate chapter headings,first paragraphs, introductions, to synopsize last
chapter summaries. The
shelves were full of books
on the general literature of
Russia, on the history of
Russia, on mathematics,
on scientificadvancements,
and many were from thirty
to sixty years old. But, Brass plaque affixed to The roots of
the gate of the House of
"Scientific Atheism"
there were, apparently, no Scientific Atheism.
books directly on the subThey finally explained
ject of Atheism. They insisted, however, that they advocate Marxist Atheism,
that they had books on Atheism in Rus- beginning from French materialism,
sia from 1870 to prerevolutionary days, working from the philosophical AtheAustin, Texas

Vol. 31, No. 10

A long line of curious Soviets waited to

receive the free Bibles from the Christian publishers. The supply was soon exhausted, and plastic and paper bookmarks were given to the disappointed
crowd.

Page 27

came through both interpreters, Natasha

and Noel Scott. One of the fields in
which they are working is the teaching
of Atheism to schoolchildren. One such
of their books discusses the Atheistic
approach to teaching the history of the
U.S.S.R. Dr. O'Hair pointed out that apparently no one was aware that Atheism
was taught to them in the schools. Aha!
But the youth organizations also have
courses on Atheism. In Atheist classes,
they would show the children the roots

The staff of the Central House of Scientific Atheism and Robin Murray-O'Hair,
Madalyn O'Hair and Jon G. Murray.

a Russian Atheist - an impossible

notion - and we argued about it.
Nonetheless, we all stood on the
steps to have our photos taken with the
members of the institute which we had
visited. They assured us that they very
much desired to be invited to the United'
States and extended a warm invitation
that we would return to the Soviet
Union. They wanted to work with us for
the "Scientific Atheism."

of evangelical Protestant Christianity.

The Institute of Scientific Atheism of the
Atheism and Lenin entombed
Academy of Social Sciences
As we turned to go out the heavy iron
has not even given it any
gates, we all turned to one another thought.
The long hallways of this knowing that Atheism in the world was
building featured pictures of represented only by American Atheists.
at least two score men, all This inept Institute of Scientific Atheism
quite large, perhaps twenty- of the Academy of Social Sciences was
going to opt for coexistence with Judeofour by thirty-six inches,
each in an elaborate frame. Christianity, and the offering that was
They were, the Soviets pro- going to be given to Yahwah and his son
claimed, all Atheists. This J.e. was the Slavic people of the nation.
There was nothing for us to do but to
was hardly true, for they included Helvetius, Bruno,
return to the United States and continue
the fight here.
and many others. Several
Later, we went to stand in line to visit
Soviet scientists, known only
in the West for their achieve- Lenin's tomb before we left Moscow. It
In the House of Scientific Atheism, one side of the
ments in physics, were por- was cold and somewhat dreary, and we
long main hall contains a score or more of closely
trayed. One picture which came out of the tomb with the realization
hung reprint pictures of heroes of Soviet Atheism.
was included was the very that not only was Lenin dead in the
of religion and how it was not scientific famous, very well-known portrait of U.S.S.R. - so was Atheism. It only
and then explain the Scientific Atheist Thomas Paine. We remarked on this, needed to be entombed. ~
approach. "What is that?" she pressed
only to be told that it was the picture of
them. They have fictional Atheist literature for children. One story is a child's
first encounter with Protestants. This is
for nine- or ten-year-old children.
At this point, it was apparent to all of
us that really little or nothing had been
done in seventy years in the U.S.S.R. if
what we saw and heard was the result of
that much time, and of the complete financial backing of the government. The
Soviets had simply been sitting there
waiting for religion to wither away, and
they had no idea in this world how to
meet head-on, or even collaterally, the
incoming attack of the evangelicals in
their nation. They did not even know When the Fair was over, a single day was taken to unwind, and finally on this bright,
how to handle the Jews. There is no de- sunny, but chill day, the tomb of Lenin was visited. Here Jon Murray and Noel Scott
fense in the U.S.S.R. against the assault stand in Red Square in front of the tomb and the Kremlin walls.
Page 28

Vol. 31, No. 10

American Atheist

The day I said good-bye

'd wanted for the longest time to get
out of my parents' house, but they
were so strict and closed about the
subject that I didn't even try anymore to
raise the matter with them. They were
Old World Catholics and didn't seem to
want to be part of the modern world.
They belonged to a local group of fanatics who still believed that the Catholic
Mass should be said in Latin. They met
every Sunday at a nearby mortuary
where their Latin mass group held their
special service. I had to go to that all the
time and I'd never been so sick of anything in my whole life.
My mother and I had always been fairly close, however, and it was my father
who mainly had the fanatical feelings
about the Latin liturgy. My mother had
been satisfied that I had gone through
my first communion and my confirmation, and she had been very happy at
those times about those milestones, as
it were, in my religious career. My dad
generally was out of the picture in our
family as far as our home life was concerned, because he spent most of his
days at the factory where he worked as
an accountant. His paycheck enabled
the family to make it and pay the bills,
but he seldom had much participation in
our day-to-day domestic life.
I had, it should come as no surprise,
developed a rather secretive life-style,
because ifmy parents had found out the
details of it, they might have disowned
me for life, which, at that time, didn't
seem to me like something I really
wanted. I was glad to get my meals at
home, have a room, and all the amenities that go with a nice boardinghouse.
I did pay rent with the money I earned
as a clerk at a local bookstore, but, since
I was going to college, studying sociology - something my parents had a hard
time appreciating - it was all a comfortable arrangement. I'd not yet learned
that comfort is not necessarily the best
watchword for freedom and responsibility.But let me proceed with my story.
What happened was that I'd met
Steve Chesterfield and we'd fallen in a

A young woman learns

that at some. point one
must grow up and out
of religion - even if
that means leaving
one's family behind.

A master's degree candidate in

classics at West Virginia University,
John Williamson enjoys writing fiction
in his spare time.

John Williamson
Austin, Texas

Vol. 31, No. 10

collegiate love, I suppose - when you

love your books, your schoolwork, and
your fellow lover in the setting of the life
of the student. Steve and I had become
best friends, especially since he was in
all my sociology classes because that
was his major, too, and he used to come
over to the Happy Bookmark where I
worked to visit with me as I sat by the
cash register and took care of little odds
and ends around the store.
"Sheila," he'd say to me, "my passions
are getting the best of me and I don't
know if I can hold out much longer."
So I told him that I'd look into what
the Student Health Center had to offer
in the way of contraceptive assistance.
Things worked out extremely well up
until that fateful evening when Mom discovered a certain something in my
nightstand when she was dusting around
and through my room in her usual
motherly manner. She'd been cleaning
my room for years and she was just doing what she had always done, you
might say.
"What's this?" she asked me as she
sat at the kitchen table, when I arrived
home from the bookstore, tired from a
busy day at school and at work.
I told her she held in her hand a box
of contraceptive pills.
"This is wrong," she replied after I'd
laid my case before her. "The church
does not approve of this," she added.
Then she gave me an extremely stern
look, as if I'd just committed the most
horrible of sins.
She continued: "You know it's against
god's will to have premarital sex, don't
you?"
I told her that, yes, this was true years
ago, but hardly in today's complicated
society.
"God is the same now as he has been
for eternity," she said, "and his commandments haven't changed one jot,
either."
She stood up with the box of birth
control pills in her hand, walked over to
the wastebasket, and then threw the
small grey plastic container summarily
Page 29

into the trash.

"You can't do that, Mother," 1said to
her as 1went to retrieve the pills from
the wastebasket.
"I'm an adult now," 1continued, "and
old enough to make my own decisions
about my own body whether you approve
of what 1think or not."
Mom looked stunned as 1held the box
in my hand and left the room.
Mother came into my room shortly
thereafter, where 1was lying on my bed
reading a magazine about freethought
I'd gotten at the Happy Bookmark.
"You're not much of a Catholic anymore, are you, Sheila?" she said in a
rather peremptory manner.
~~

sires to earn money just like the men in

our culture."
"That's not how 1 was brought up,"
Mom said. "I was brought up to be a
mother and to obey my husband just as
it says in the Bible."
"But if what the Bible says is not in
your own interest, then the Bible doesn't
seem to be working in your favor, does
it?"
"Sheila, I've had four children, and
I've never regretted it until now, when 1
see that you don't give a damn about
what 1think."
"Youtaught me to believe in something
- to be a believer - so I believe in
myself, then - and isn't that enough?"

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woman's right to be free from enforced

pregnancy and from being a slave to
children she never even wanted. No, I
don't want to be a slave and I don't want
to be unhappy, as I think you are. And,
no, Idon't believe in god anymore, or his
stupid views about birth control. The
hell with it all, period."
"Well, if that's the way you feel, Sheila," my mother replied, "perhaps you
shouldn't live here anymore. You obviously have a different way of thinking
than your father and I."
As I looked at my mother, 1could see
that our lives were going their separate
ways and that we'd never be able to
bring back the old days when everything
made sense and 1had no real perception
of the injustice in the world dominated
mainly by men and pigheaded Christians and people who didn't seem to
want you to think at all or have the
slightest independence of thought.
"Maybe you're right," I said. "Perhaps
you've got a point there."
About midnight, in any case, Steve
came over and picked me up and took
me to his apartment, where I would live
for the next few years.
Yet, in my mind's eye, 1 remember
vividlymy mother standing there by the
screen door in the glow of the porch
light, as I said good-bye. She seemed to
have a vision in her eyes as of someone
who couldn't see beyond where she
thought her children ought to be. She
stood on the other side of a fence, on my
side of which I was discovering freedom
and the world at large. Her look told me
she'd never be able to climb out from
where she was nor understand why
somehow she felt that what I was doing
was right and not immoral - that, indeed, maybe she even wished she were
in my place herself and saying good-bye
to all those experiences which she had
suffered through on her own.
"Good-bye, Mom," I said as I turned
to go.
Good-bye," she answered.
And then I went out to the car where
Steve awaited me.~

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"I've never said I was, recently, have

I?" I replied.
"But you were confirmed and you
had your first communion and wasn't
that a happy time for us all?" she observed, as if she were truly sincere in
what she was saying.
"Your religion, Mother, if that's what
you'd really like to call it, it's more like a
superstition actually, is out of touch with
modern life," I said. "The leaders of the
Catholic church don't understand the
problems women have to face now with
their jobs and career goals and their dePage 30

.'

"But I wanted you to believe in god

first," she said.
"How can I care about a god, let alone
believe in him, who doesn't care about
the female body, or about the problems
which females have in this human life?
No, Mother," I went on, "your god is out
of date, if he even exists. Yes, indeed, I
don't even believe in him anymore, because how can I? What is his church doing for women, for me, and even for you
- perhaps most of all for you - these
days? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, as
long as the pope refuses to recognize a
Vol. 31, No. 10

American

Atheist

Masters of Atheism

Should infidels send their

children to Sunday school?
The "Great Agnostic"
counsels against
infecting one's children
with superstition.

The following essay is reprinted

from volume 11 of the New Dresden
Edition of The Works of Ingersoll
(New York City: The Ingersoll Publishers, Inc., 1900).
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)
was the most prominent spokespersonfor the position of unbelief in the
United States during the nineteenth
century. A lawyer who once had a
promising career in politics, he traveled the country giving lectures
against superstition and orthodox
belief. His eloquence was recognized even by those who opposed
him.
hould parents, who are Infidels,
unbelievers or Atheists, send their
children to Sunday schools and
churches to give them the benefit of
Christian education?
Parents who do not believe the Bible
to be an inspired book should not teach
their children that it is. They should be
absolutely honest. Hypocrisy is not a
virtue and, as a rule, lies are less valuable than fads.
An unbeliever should not allow the
mind of his child to be deformed, stunted and shriveled by superstition. He
should not allow the child's imagination
to be polluted. Nothing is more outrageous than to take advantage of the
helplessness of childhood to sow in the
brain the seeds of falsehoods, to imprison
the soul in the dungeon of Fear, to teach
dimpled infancy the infamous dogma of
eternal pain - filling life with the glow
and glare of hell..
No unbeliever should allow his child
to be tortured in the orthodox inquisitions. He should defend the mind from
attack as he would the body. He should
recognize the rights of the soul. In the
orthodox Sunday schools, children are
taught that it is a duty to believe - that
evidence is not essential - that faith is
independent of facts and that religion is
superior to reason. They are taught not
to use their natural sense - not to tell
what they really think - not to entertain

[i]

Atheism has a long, proud history of

publishing and speechmaking. Unfortunately, however, much of that history
is inaccessible to modern readers, surviving only in rare booklets, books, and
pamphlets housed in scattered libraries and private collections. The American Atheist attempts to make some of
that literature more available to modern Atheists by reprinting essays by
yesterday's "Masters of Atheism."
These reprints are produced courtesy
of the Charles E. Stevens American
Atheist Library and Archives, Inc.

Robert G. Ingersoll
Austin, Texas

Vol. 31, No. 10

a doubt - not to ask wicked questions,

but to accept and believe what their
teachers say. In this way the minds of
the children are invaded, corrupted and
conquered. Would an educated man
send his child to a school in which Newton's statement in regard to the attraction of gravitation was denied - in
which the law of falling bodies, as given
by Galileo, was ridiculed - Kepler's
three laws declared to be idiotic, and the
rotary motion of the earth held to be utterly absurd?
Why then should an intelligent man
allow his child to be taught the geology
and astronomy of the Bible? Children
should be taught to seek for the truth to be honest, kind, generous, merciful
and just. They should be taught to love
liberty and to live to the ideal.

No unbeliever should
allow his child to be
tortured in the
orthodox inquisitions.
He should defend the
mind from attack as he
would the body.
Why then should an unbeliever, an Infidel, send his child to an orthodox Sunday school where he is taught that he
has no right to seek for the truth - no
right to be mentally honest, and that he
will be damned for an honest doubt where he is taught that God was ferocious, revengeful, heartless as a wild
beast - that he drowned millions of his
children - that he ordered wars of extermination and told his soldiers to kill
gray-haired and trembling age, mothers
and children, and to assassinate with
the sword of war the babes unborn?
Why should an unbeliever in the Bible
send his child to an orthodox Sunday
Page 31

Why then should an unbeliever, an Infidel,

send his child to an orthodox Sunday school where he is taught
that he has no right to seek for the truth - no right to be mentally honest,
and that he will be damned for an honest doubt?

Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll with grandchildren

Ingersoll Brown.

school where he is taught that God was

in favor of slavery and told the Jews to
buy of the heathen and that they should
be their bondmen and bondwomen forever; where he is taught that God upheld polygamy and the degradation of
women?
Why should an unbeliever, who believes in the uniformity of Nature, in the
unbroken and unbreakable chain of
cause and effect, allow his child to be
taught that miracles have been performed; that men have gone bodily to
heaven; that millions have been miraculously fed with manna and quails; that
fire has refused to burn clothes and
flesh of men; that iron has been made to
float; that the earth and moon have
been stopped and that the earth has not
only been stopped, but made to turn the
other way; that devils inhabit the bodies
of men and women; that diseases have
been cured with words, and that the
dead, with a touch, have been made to
live again?
The thoughtful man knows that there
Page 32

Eva Ingersoll-Brown

and Robert G.

is not the slightest evidence that these

miracles ever were performed. Why
should he allow his children to be stuffed
with these foolish and impossible falsehoods? Why should he give his lambs to
the care and keeping of the wolves and
hyenas of superstition?
Children should be taught only what
somebody knows. Guesses should not
be palmed off on them as demonstrated
facts. Ifa Christian lived in Constantinople he would not send his children to the
mosque to be taught that Mohammed
was a prophet of God and that the Koran is an inspired book. Why? Because
he does not believe in Mohammed or
the Koran. That is reason enough. So,
an Agnostic, living in New York, should
not allow his children to be taught that
the. Bible is an inspired book. I use the
word "Agnostic" because I prefer it to
the word Atheist. As a matter of fact, no
one knows that God exists and no one
knows that God does not exist. To my
mind there is no evidence that God
exists - that this world is governed by
Vol. 31, No. 10

a being of infinite goodness, wisdom and

power, but I do not pretend to know.
What Iinsist upon is that children should
not be poisoned - should not be taken
advantage of - that they should be
treated fairly, honestly - that they
should be allowed to develop from the
inside instead of being crammed from
the outside - that they should be taught
to reason, not to believe - to think, to
investigate and to use their senses, their
minds.
Would a Catholic send his children to
a school to be taught that Catholicism is
superstition and that Science is the only
savior of mankind?
Why then should a free and sensible
believer in Science, in the naturalness of
the universe, send his child to a Catholic
school?
Nothing could be more irrational,
foolish and absurd.
My advice to all Agnostics is to keep
their children from the orthodox Sunday schools, from the orthodox churches,
from the poison of the pulpits.
Teach your children the facts you
know. If you do not know, say so. Be as
honest as you are ignorant. Do all you
can to develop their minds, to the end
that they may live useful and happy
lives.
Strangle the serpent of superstition
that crawls and hisses about the cradle.
Keep your children from the augurs, the
soothsayers, the medicine-men, the
priests of the supernatural. Tell them
that all religions have been made by
folks and that all the "sacred books"
were written by ignorant men.
Teach them that the world is natural.
Teach them to be absolutely honest. Do
not send them where they willcontract
diseases of the mind - the leprosy of
the soul. Let us do all we can to make
them intelligent. ~
Dial- THE-Atheist
Hear Madalyn O'Hair's thoughts
on the latest news.

512-458-5731.

American Atheist

Talking Back

Biology and Bible myths

This month's question:

"Isn't it only fair to
teach both theories of
the origin of life in the
public schools creation science and
the evolution theory?"

John M. Davis, medical supply buyer

and member of San Diego Chapter
of American Atheists, responds:
Fair to whom? It's certainly not fair to
the students who depend on the public
schools to prepare them for life in the
real world. Nor is it fair to the taxpayers
who expect a return on their investment
in education. The creation fables of the
Bible have no scientific merit and have
no place in a science class. American
students deserve no less than the best
of our scientific knowledge, to give them
a chance in a competitive world. If our
schools teach them to give equal consideration to biblical myths, it will only
further this country's decline into scientific illiteracy. Japan, Germany and the
Soviet Union are already producing
more scientists and engineers than the
United States. It would be a tragedy to
have United States citizens on the sidelines of science in the twenty-first
century because they never learned to
understand the process of evolution.
While Japanese biologists are curing
diseases and solving genetic disorders,
Americans may very well be groveling
on their knees before their imagined
god, begging for relief.
Jim Steamer,
a Texas Atheist,
retorts:
Absolutely not! Creation science is
not science at all but entirely based on
Christian dogma, so to teach this in
public schools would directly violate the
law and not teach children science.

So you're having a hard time dealing

with the religious zanies who bug you
with what you feel are stupid
questions? Talk back. Send the question you hate most and American
Atheists will provide scholarly, tart, humorous, short, belligerent, or funpoking answers. Get into the verbal
fray; it's time to "talk back" to religion.

Austin, Texas

whatever "evidence" they can find to fit

their beliefs, while ignoring all evidence
to the contrary.
Norm R. Allen, Jr., a Black historian
from Maryland, explains:
No. Our just laws guarantee us freedom of religion and freedom from religion, not equal time in the schools. The
real conflict, however, is not between
science and religion,but between science
and pseudo-science. After all, you never
hear of a scientist demanding "equal
time" so that the evolution theory may
be taught in the churches. This entire
issue evolves around the well-deserved
feelings of insecurity which religionists
have regarding Bible mythology. But I
suggest we reserve creation "science"
for the preachers, and true science for
school teachers.
Mark Spencer, Life Member of American Atheists, replies:
First, I dismiss the claim that creation
science even qualifies as a legitimate
theory. Beyond that, though, public
school education has always been oriented towards the provable or logically
discussable subjects necessary to produce a well-informed populace. Creation science falls into neither of those
categories; it is more correctly associated
with alchemy or flat-earth beliefs.

Gipson Arnold, assistant director of

the Houston Chapter of American
Atheists, replies:
So-called creation science is not
science at all, but is only religion masquerading as science. Creation science
did not result from application of the
scientific method; it is not based on
observation or evidence. The so-called
creation scientists do not study evidence and then formulate their ideas
based on controlled observation. They
have the answers they want and seek
Vol. 31, No. 10

Page 33

Poetry

Evangelists

Ting-A-Ling

Some people love their Jesus

But I think he sucks
Many can men use the name
Just to make big bucks

The same old ding dong

Same old bell
The same old Heaven
Same old hell
The same old parson
Dressed in black
The same old sermon
Quack,quack,quack
The same old churches
Deep in gloom
The same old faces
Preaching doom
The same old custom,
Hating life
The same old humbugs,
Causing strife
Despite all their cunning
Now so vast
Truth shall destroy it all at last
For men will follow reason's light
In marching upward from the night.

Suckers 'round the country

Send many a dollar bill
Religion is a crutch to them
Because they have no will

Christian friend
What atavistic urge
makes her bow and kneel?
We look into each other's eyes
search deep to find a reason
for belief ... and rejection.

While they make outrageous pay

Bible jockeys rake it in
Preying on their brainwashed flock
Who's afraid of wrath and sin

She probes for my soul

thinks to find a wily clue
finds only my mind.

But now their boots are shaking

They're getting in a mess
Some from followers wising up
But most from the IRS.

I seek her mind

to extract a valid answer
and find instead,
static soul-insistence.

Now they're paying heavy fines

For all the money they took
They pay the expensive lawyers too
From the firm, Shyster, Shyster, and Crooke

Angeline Bennett

Frank W. Ross

Schuller, Swaggart, Bakker too

Will drain you for every dime
They're getting into trouble now
And one is doing time

Sick of the god-game

I'm sick of the cheating god-game,
Otherwise known as Hypocrite's Delight.
I'm weary of the idiotic airheads
So psychologically uptight.

Another losing cold, hard cash

'cuz he faked a China view
And one lost his preaching post
For a sex-filled rendezvous

The threat of religion's taboo

Against my brain to think,
It's the cause of human enslavement;
The supernatural stinks!

You'd think from all that's happened

People would smarten up
I guess they're just too brainwashed
And keep putting money in the cup.

My mental liberty I claim today!

My brain's my own to use
In any which way I best see fit;
I'll think as I jolly well choose.

Mike Fredette

Until all minds are freed

To perpend and select
What makes you happy (not at others' expense),
Human life will continue a wreck!!
George James

Page 34

Vol. 31, No. 10

American Atheist

American Atheist Radio Series

Torquemada

II

The persecutions and

murders of Jews and
Muslims not only kept
the flock in line but also
filled the coffers of the
Roman Catholic
church.

When the first installment of a

regularly scheduled, fifteen-minute,
weekly American Atheist radio series
on KLBJ radio (a station in Austin,
Texas, owned by then-President
Lyndon Baines Johnson) hit the
airwaves on June 3, 1968, the nation
was shocked. The programs had to be
submitted weeks in advance and were
heavily censored. The regular production of the series ended in September
1977, when no further funding was
available.
The following is the text of "American
Atheist Radio Series" program No. 115,
first broadcast on September 2, 1970.

Madalyn O'Hair
Austin, Texas

hen we first moved to the American Atheist Center in Austin,

Texas, an enormous black cat
came first to visit us, then to stay, and
finally to adopt us. When I asked my
husband what we could call this cat who
intruded into our business and our lives
as he did, he said - simply - "We will
call him Torquemada."
Torquemada is a name of significance.
Let me weave you a tale here now.
The Christian Church talks often of
its alleged persecutions, but it is very
quiet about the persecutions against
others which it effected. Presumably in
the early days there was not much massacre, and I must do some more research
in relation to that. But in the fourth century it became firmly established that
heretics or unbelievers in the Christian
religion should be put to death - a
rather extreme punishment for a difference of opinion. From the fourth century onward, the persecution of heretics
was a regular thing, and by the eleventh
century heretics were being burned on
a large scale. In the twelfth century, the
killingof people was a sport of kinds and
the Crusaders of that time were urged
to kill heretics or unbelievers anywhere
they could find them. At one massacre
of so-called heretics of Bezeires, in the
year 1209, the very pious and very
Christian Abbot Arnauld was asked
how one would be able to distinguish the
believer from the unbeliever when large
groups were being indiscriminately
slaughtered. He replied, "Slay them all.
The Lord will know His own." Presumably he was following the dictates of
Jesus Christ who is reported to have
said, "Suffer the little children to come
unto me." The Abbot Arnauld believed
in getting them there rapidly.
But the real father of the worst slaughter was Pope Gregory IX.l In the year
1231he enacted a law whereby all heretics who were stubborn in their opinions

lUgolino (b. bef. 1170-1241), as Gregory

pope (1227-41).
Vol. 31, No. 10

IX,

were to be put to death. Those who repented of their heresy and became good
Roman Catholics were to be let off
rather easily: they were merely to be imprisoned for life. Gregory impressed
upon the bishops the fact that the burning of heretics was to be one of their
principal duties. The bishops, naturally,
for fun and games, turned this duty into
a pleasure. In the city of Verona, they
immediately burned alive sixty men
within a single month in order to get the
ball rolling.

Tomas de Torquemada

The bishops were ordered to hire informers whose business it was to ferret
out and to denounce all suspected
Christians - that is, anyone whose
manner of living was a little different.
There were few rules to this game. The
bishops could examine these Christians
and punish them as they saw fit. Those
of the bishops who failed to punish their
quota of burned heretics were, at the
command of the pope, deposed from
their offices. In some cases when they
showed too much clemency to their victims, they were threatened with arrest
on the charge, or were arrested, for
heresy. I feel a special point should be
here considered: the Church confiscated the property of the condemned.
However, sometimes all did not go
Page 35

probably we got our word

cremate from this man but he came to be generally
known by a slurring over of
his name into Torquemada.
Torquemada perfected the
technique of the Inquisition.
Let's go over how he managed his part of it. This was
the process:
First, the Inquisitor gave
out a general summons for
all the heretics of the city to
When you arrive in a city, summon
appear before him and to abthe bishops, clergy and people,
jure their heresy within a
and preach a solemn sermon on
faith; then select certain men of
period of thirty days. Very
few naturally came forward of their own
good repute to help you in trying
accord. This was much like J. Edgar
the heretics and suspects deHoover putting out a call for every crimnounced before your tribunal. All
inal to appear before him and abjure or
who on examination are found
cleanse himself of his criminal tendenguilty or suspected of heresy must
promise to absolutely obey the
cies.
At the end of the period of grace,
commands of the Church. If they
every Roman Catholic in the city was
refuse, you must prosecute them.
urged to denounce all those whom he
The Inquisition made it its business to suspected of heresy. In order to convict
persecute not only the heretics, that is, a person it was necessary to have only
the Christians who had strayed from the two witnesses, and these witnesses
orthodox path, but also the Moham- might even be murderers - it made no
medans and the Jews. The Moham- .difference - so long as they professed
medans and the Jews had never aspired Christianity. The accused was allowed
to Christianity, but that did not much to have neither lawyers nor witnesses.
seem to matter. As a similar situation Furthermore the names of the spies, the
shows: although many persons in the informers, or the witnesses were not
made known to the accused. With all of
United States today are not Christians,
the Christians intend to run the country, the cards thus stacked against him, the
when they can, as if they were the only prisoner found it virtually impossible to
persons in it. It just so happened that in prove the falsity of the accusation
many cases the Jews and the Moham- against him. If he confessed, he was put
medans were not fullof sin, but they did into prison. If he insisted upon his innohave coffers full of gold. So, first they cence, he was taken into the torture
were compelled to become Christians,
chamber.
and then they were roasted alivebecause
According to the law, the torture
they were bad Christians.
could be inflicted but once, but in order
The man who was most zealous in the to evade the law, after an interval of
burning of the Mohammedans and the some days, the torture could be resumed
Jews was Thomas of Turrecremata- by saying that it was not a repetition, but
rather a continuance of the first torture.
If,finally,the victim confessed under the
2Domingo de Guzman (ca. 1170-1221), Spantorture
and promised to be a good
ish founder of the Order of Friars Preachers.
Roman Catholic, he was imprisoned for
3Tomas de Torquemada (1420-1498), Spanish
organizer of Spanish Inquisition.
life. If, however, he happened to die in
well, and the pope felt that it was necessary to have trained spies and inquisitors. Accordingly, he enlisted the aid of
the Dominicans. They were the followers
of Dorninic.s that saintly advocate of
baptism by the sword. With their help,
the pope turned the .Inquisition into a
powerful and a profitable business.
I have here the translation of a letter
which Pope Gregory sent to this good
order to outline their duties for them.

Page 36

Vol. 31, No. 10

During the thirteenth century, some

rulers in Spain called themselves "Kings
of Three Religions" and acknowledged
the rights of their Jewish, Muslim, and
Christian subjects equally. Just three
centuries later, Muslims were subjected
to forced baptism, as depicted in this relief beside the altar of the royal chapel in
Granada.

the torture - well, mistakes are made

about the limits which the human being
can endure. If he lived through the torture, he was turned over to the state.
Now Church historians always say that
they did not burn anyone - if the state
burned people that was the business of
the state. However, let us just look at
one wee thing. Pope Innocent IV4 enacted a law which compelled the state to
burn, within a period of five days, all the
condemned prisoners which the Church
turned over to the state. All those
princes who refused to kill the condemned heretics were promptly excommunicated by the Church.
The Inquisition in Spain, under Torquemada, was more important than in other
nations of Europe. For the Moors, the
Moslems of Arab and Berber descent in
northwest Africa, had invaded Spain in
the eighth century, conquered it, and
ruled there for several centuries. In the

4Sinibaldo Fieschi (d. 1254), as Innocent IV,

pope 1243-54,
American Atheist

three centuries of their most complete

domination, the Moors brought to
Spain the advantages of the more advanced Arab civilization, far excelling
that of the rest of Europe, still in the
Dark Ages. The capital, Cordova, was
the greatest city in Europe next to
Constantinople. Travelers marvelled
at the splendor of its buildings. At the
great Mohammedan University, mathematics and medicine were taught and
Aristotle was studied long before he
was well known in the Christian countries. An extensive literature was developed. The caliphs themselves were
often poets and authors of note. Commerce was fostered. Moorish fleets
controlled the Mediterranean and carried on extensive trade. An efficient
irrigation system was introduced,
making even the more arid parts of the
country productive. Citrus, olive, and
other fruit-bearing trees were brought
into the country and cultivated. Arabian
horses were brought into the country
and bred there.
The Moors were a tolerant lot. They
did not discriminate against adherents
of other faiths as long as they were not
hostile. The Christians among them
were left undisturbed, as were the Jews.
Maimonides.i the great Jewish scholar,
philosopher and physician, was born in
Cordova in 1135. His great knowledge
brought him to be the personal physician to Saladin," the sultan in Africa. He
later became the rabbi of Cairo. The
Arabic tolerance and devotion to education and culture generally at this period
kept alive the torch of enlightenment for
the future.
And then, with the Moors divided as
leaders of diverse provinces, it was possible for the Christians to make a successful onslaught on the Moors and
make Spain Christian under the rule of

SMoses ben Maimon (1135-1204), Jewish

philosopher.
6Salah ad-DinYusuf ibn Ayyub (1137 or 11381193), Muslim sultan and hero.
Austin, Texas

Under the banner of the Inquisition in

Spain (above), even a dead man could be
tried for heresy. If he was found guilty,
his body was exhumed and burnt and his
property was confiscated from his heirs:

Ferdinand? and Isabella."

I have here a history book which is
used at the University of Texas. In this,
all of the horror of torture, burning, is
diluted into one sentence. I read that:
"The Spanish Inquisition ... sought to
. .. enforce universal Catholicism."
Well, at least, let me tell you about the
children. When a man was burned at the
stake, his property was confiscated by
the Church. His children were not allowed to inherit even a single penny of
it. To this rule, there was only one exception: the children of a heretic father
could inherit a part of his property provided they spied upon him and denounced him to the Inquisition. Pope
Gregory IX said it did his heart good to
see how the children were turning
against their parents for the love of god.
One of the principal acts of the In-

7Ferdinand (1452-1516), king of Sicily (14681516), of Castile (1474-1504), of Aragon (14791516), and of Naples (1504-16).
8Isabella (1451-1504), queen of Castile (14741504).
Vol. 31, No. 10

quisition, and the crowning achievement of Torquemada's life,was the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. The
Jews attempted to stop their expulsion by going to King Ferdinand and
offering him a present of 30,000 ducats.
But Torquemada, who was over seventy years of age at the time, forbade
it. The edict against the Jews was
signed on March 31, 1492. In accordance with this edict, every Jew in
Spain was to be baptized within four
months or leave the country forever.
Three hundred thousand of them preferred exile. The exiles were forbidden
to take any of their gold with them. So
the king got much more than the
30,000 ducats offered to him.
Some of the Jews made it to Portugal where they threw themselves on
the mercy of Emmanuel," the king of
Portugal. Emmanuel plundered the
Jews of anything that they had saved
from Spain, ordered them to leave his
country, and then issued an order to
seize all Jewish children under fourteen
years of age in order that they might be
baptized and brought up as Christians.
But above it all shone the light of Torquemada. How many people died at his
hands in about eighteen years time, we
don't know. The number is never set at
under two thousand and often eight
thousand or nine thousand are cited. He
served as accuser, witness, and judge,
and not infrequently lent a helping hand
in the torture chamber.
The Spanish Inquisition was designed,
apparently, for a specific purpose: the
total elimination of Islam and Judaism in
Spain with the object of placing all
business and commerce in Christian
hands and enriching the crown and the
Church. Not content with trying and
sentencing those accused of being relapsed converts, unjust rules were made
which practically deprived all reconciled
penitents of the means of earning a live-

9Manuel (1469-1521), king of Portugal (14951521).

Page 37

Iihood. They could not hold office, could

not use gold, gems, silk, or fine wool.
They could not engage in any honorable
or independent employment, and good
Christians were forbidden to aid them if
distressed, or to do business with them.
Business and commerce were almost
paralyzed. The money which had been
devoted to trade was diverted to the
Church. Wealthy merchants were transformed to beggars overnight, and financialand business distrust spread throughout Spain. Torquemada instituted the
Order of Santa Maria de la Espada
Blanca, a military organization, and
even Philip IIlOhad a difficulttime stamping it out as a menace to the power of
the crown.
As in no other country, the Inquisition
remained in until the Bourbons occupied the Spanish throne and then it was
made secondary only to the crown. Yet,
when Napoleon entered Madrid, in
1808,the Inquisition was stillin force and
it was not officiallyended until the act of
the cortes on February 12, 1813.Despite
this, it was restored by Ferdinand VIIll
on July 21,1814, only to be abolished by
the Revolution of 1820, but one time
more temporarily restored in 1823.
It was finally(?) dissolved as a principle of the religious liberty proclaimed
throughout Spain and her dominions on
May 8,1869.
At the age of seventy-four, Torquemada retired from the Inquisition and
two years later, in 1498, he died. His
good works continued after him, we
see, for 476 years. Imagine the distress
which people suffered during. that time
because of one fanatic with power.
I have told my husband that we really
can't have a cat named Torquemada.
Somehow, it isn't a joke. ~

lOPhilipII (1527-1598),Roman Catholic king

of Spain (1556-98).
llFerdinand VII (1784-1833),king of Spain
(1808, 1814-33),responsible for loss of all
Spanish colonies in the Americas except
Cuba, and Spain's decline in Europe.
Page 38

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American Atheist

Under the Covers

Atheism under the knife

iceli, a Jesuit priest, uses The
Gods of Atheism as a way to
"prove" that Roman Catholicism
is not only superior to all other cults in
Christianity, but is the vehicle of creation, redemption, and salvation for the
world. The thesis of this book is that
"The atheist deliberately attempts to
break his vital, intimate bond of communion [through prayer] with God" (p. 11).
Miceliargues that Atheists fight god, but
never really "abandon" this supernatural being.
The problem with this book is that
Miceli is totally ignorant of what an
Atheist is. Atheists do not "fight" any
god or collection of primordial deities.
An Atheist does not "abandon" that
which he realizes does not exist.
Unlike other Christian crusaders
against Atheism, Miceli is well-read in
the writings of many classic Atheists provided that the Atheists are male.
Why Christians ignore female Atheists
is never explained. Dr. Madalyn Murray
O'Hair does not even get a footnote, nor
does any other woman (Micelimentions
Mary Bosanquet- only because she
worked with Bonhoeffer.s p. 324).
Miceli moves against Atheism with an
initial attack on G. W E Hegel." From
Hegel it is but a slash of time until Miceli
rips into Ludwig Feuerbach.! Miceli
notes that Hegel opposed Judeo-Christianity "as a backward religion, a religion
of endless, hopeless waiting" (p. 22).
Feuerbach went further, noting that
Christianity is a master-slave relationship (p. 24), the bonds being "illusion, indecision, immorality" spawned by a corrupt and venal church (p. 27). Miracles

A Jesuit attacks
unbelief in a book
which has become the
basis for other
'criticisms of the Atheist
viewpoint.

exist only in man's imagination, Feuerbach states. Miceli argues that if this
thesis is allowed currency, it willenhance
Protestantism (for which he has no
time) and cause humility to disappear in
Roman Catholics (pp. 37, 40).
While Miceli appears on the surface
to be well-read on Nietzsche, he shows
ignorance of what Obermensch really
means. To Miceli, "God becomes Superman" (p. 42). Obermensch, Miceli
argues, is just another "wave of heresy
... treason of the intellectuals" against
Jesus and the Roman Catholic church,
for "god" really wants both destroyed
since Christianity destroyed all classic
(pagan) truths with the apostles forging
a personal savior (pp. 51, 57). This,
Miceli argues, is wrong: Christianity
"saved" the classics, purified scholarship by turning it all Christian, and revealed "absolute" truths (pp. 61,67,89).
Those who do not agree with the Roman
Catholic theory enunciated by Miceli
are "many Catholic journalists, professors and lesser lights, suffering from intellectual inferiority and moral mediocrity." This line (p. 89) makes one wonder
ifMiceliever studied Matt. 7:15 or understood the seldom practiced concept of
"Christian charity." In truth, this comment speaks volumes of truth found in
Nietzsche's= work: the priest, intrinsically ignoble, unnatural, and evil is a
"professional negator, slanderer and
poisoner of life."?
Marxism is excused as a covertProtestant (Marx was baptized a Lutheran), anti-Semitic work in favor of evolution and materialism (pp. 97-99). Far
from being exclusively anti-Semitic, Karl
Marx (1818-1883) wrote: "The criticism
of religion is the premise of all criti-

-Author of The Life and Death of Dietrich

Bonhoeffer (London: Hodder & Stoughton,
The Gods 0/ Atheism
by Vincent P. Miceli, S.J.
New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House
Hardback, 1971,490 pages, out of print

Austin, Texas

1968).

2Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Polish

theologian.
3Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (17701831), German philosopher.
4Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (1804-1872),
German philosopher.
Vol. 31, No. 10

5"Judge not, that ye be not judged."

6Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900),
German philosopher.
7Nietzsche, The Antichrist in The Portable
Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New
York: Penguin Books, 1977), p. 575.
Page 39

cism."8 Religion stops all mental development by means of superstition, inquisition, and illusions.
Miceli attacks communism as being
without ethics and morality (p. 109). Yet
Lenin? wrote: "We repudiate all morality that is taken outside of human, class
concepts ... " and "we repudiate ethics
. . . preached by the bourgeoisie, who
declared that ethics were God's commandments. We of course say that we
do not believe in God .... " Atheist ethics are based upon the need of all thinkers to work for the common good.lO
A flurry of words is hurled at the Soviet system. Miceli argues that communist girls are taught every perversion
(p. 113) to entrap god's capitalist. For
each of his objections to the "Soviet system," a scholar can document the same
barbarity in any "Christian nation":
Eudocio Ravine's Popular Front in Chile
is little different from Ollie North's sale
of arms to Iran, for example.
To refute Soviet Atheism, Miceli selects Divini Redemptoris by Pope Pius
Xf.11This work purports to be a "critical study" of Atheistic communism to
1937 (it was published March 19, 1937). It
cites no Soviet works or thinkers, and
the "facts" have been disproved repeated~y.Pius XI, for instance, wrote that religionwas considered the "opium" of the
people.F The actual term is "opiate."
The term was coined by Richard Bentlev"

8KarlMarx (1818-1883),Toward the Critique

of Hegel's Philosophy of Right in Marx &
Engels: Basic Writings, ed. Lewis S. Feur
(New York: Doubleday Anchor Books,
1959),pp. 262-63.
9Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870-1924), Russian
communist leader.
1Ov.I. Lenin, Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1943),vol. 9, pp. 47475.
llAmbrcigio Damiano Achille Ratti (18571939),pope 1922-39.
12ActaApostolicae Serdia, Pius XI, vol. 24,
pp.65-106.
13Richard Bentley (1662-1742),English clergyman, scholar, and critic.
Page 40

and was used to describe Roman Catholicism and its mission work.
From this point Miceli argues that
communism denudes people by denying them private property. Personal
property has always existed in the Soviet system. Leaving large inheritances or
bequeathing wealth to the dead hand of
the church is, however, forbidden. The
next twenty pages are filled with similar
nonsense, fanningthe flames fullytorched
by Joseph McCarthy14 and the popular
hysteria that accompanied the announcement of his nonexistent list of "Communists, Atheists, and perverts infiltrating
the" United States.
Auguste Comtc" is singled out as the
father of "humanism as God." Comte
saw Atheism as a positive; Christianity
was a negative with its "thou shalt nots."
Fearing god, Comte argued, made mortals fear one another. In this fear they
turned to priests, who promised them a
future without fear; man experienced
afterlife if he permitted himself to be
consumed by fear while on earth. Miceli
defends this, arguing that it is "sin" (fear)
that keeps men enchained, never to be
freed until death (pp. 157, 181). Comte
argued that instead of pouring out love
to an unseen fiction, one should express
kindness, charity, and belief in the human potential. To Miceli this was "god in
man" rather than man turning to god
and being god's willingslave.
Writers such as Camus= and Sartre-?
are dissected under the dull blade of this
Jesuit who dedicates his book to Pope
Paul VI.18To Camus religion is myth and
expresses itself in the absurdities of or-

14Joseph Raymond McCarthy (1908-1957),

American politician.
15f\uguste Comte (1798-1857), French philosopher and founder of sociology.
16AlbertCamus (1913-1960),French novelist,
essayist, and dramatist.
17Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), French philosopher, dramatist, and novelist.
18Giovanni Battista Montini (1897-1978),
pope 1963-78.
Vol. 31, No. 10

ganized worship.'? Camus defines religion as a "heartless silence" and "god"

as one who can never answer "why."
Miceli's argument against Camus is that
some men can have too much knowledge and become dumb (pp. 204-8).
The solution: blind faith. Miceli, however, does not address the question of
how a mortal blinded by faith can then
walk "to the light" of "fulfillment" which
he says religion is.
Jean-Paul Sartre is condemned for
arguing that life has no definite meaning
or purpose - save to live every minute.
Miceli admits that Sartre grew up as a
Roman Catholic, and in his Roman Catholicism found an overwhelming "emptiness in the Almighty" (p. 218). This
"emptiness" is excused on the ground
that Sartre really did not struggle enough
to give up mortal temptations and totally commit himself to the illusion of religion (pp. 222, 243), which he terms "the
gaze of Jesus."
Martin Heidegger20 is one of the most
profound contemporaries to be "analyzed" by Miceli. Miceli sees Heidegger,
a strong proponent for free choice, as a
threat to the concept of original sin and
men's propensity to sin, having only one
hope to avoid sin: J.e. Man's "salvation" is, according to Heidegger, the
acceptance that there is only one life;
that there is no future existence. To worry about it is not only a waste of time and
energy, but absurd, and, in the long run,
keeps priests in power and money as
people pay these ministerial milkers of
minds good coin for flaky promises of
never-never land. Real truth does not
come until man is freed from superstition
and buries religion.s! Miceli retorts
spouting twelfth-century scholasticism!

19A1bert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus,

trans. Justin O'Brien (New York: Vintage
Books, 1955), pp. 25-26.
20Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), German
philosopher.
21Martin Heidegger, Existence and Being
(London: Vision Press, 1968), pp. 330, 377.
American Atheist

He never deals with Heidegger's pregnant points (pp. 261-62).

The remaining philosophers Miceli
discusses (including Bonhoeffer and
Tillich'") are singled out for ridicule because they were, for the most part, Protestants; the rest were "lapsed [Roman]
Catholics." From Maurice MerleauPonty,23who argued that mortals could
enjoy lifeunencumbered with a continuing reflection on god, to Karl Barth.>'
who rejected any efforts to translate
god's revelation to man in philosophical
or human terms, Miceliuses the torch of
the Inquisition to set on fire the philosophies of the current age. Anyone who
would dare to attack or even question
the Roman Catholic church and its pronouncements is a heretic and should be
shunned (pp. 321ff).
The most current thinker in the United States, Harvey Cox,25author of The
Secular City, is denounced for suggesting that religionists spend more time
helping the people in this world than trying to prepare them for the next. Cox argues values and ethics must change
with the times, rather than being a rigid
system. This of course is heresy to Roman Catholics since the Bible is "infallible," as is its chief interpreter: the pope.
The last three chapters of the book
must be a joke. Miceli calls the men he
goes after with a vengeance "Christian
Atheists" (pp. 385fO. That is like suggesting there are such interesting people as Jewish Nazis, Gay Republicans,
and Feminists for Phyllis Schlafly. Overemphasis on the human negates the divine, and rejection of absolutes threatens Miceli's god. Miceli argues that
when this happens all things are in danger that are Christian: capitalism, mar-

22Paul Johannes Tillich (1886-1965), American theologian.

23Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), French
philosopher.
24Karl Barth (1886-1968), Swiss theologian.
2SHarvey Cox, The Secular City (New York:
Macmillan Publishing Company Inc., 1965).
Austin, Texas

riage, the sacraments, and the Bible.

Micelihas written a ponderous, pompous work. The footnotes and bibliography are sterling, but when faced with the
sludge of words in the text, one wonders
if he wrote The Gods of Atheism not as

AN ATHEIST EPIC

an academic exercise but because he

was offered so much per word and he
needed the money to travel to Rome to
meet the pope. The Gods of Atheism is
"a selection of the Conservative Book
Club." - Arthur Frederick Ide W

An Atheist Epic
by Madalyn a/Hair

..

,--~'
~~ ......

'.

On June 14, 1954, the Pledge of Allegiance was changed to include the words
"under God."
On July II, 1955, President Eisenhower
made the slogan "In God We Trust" mandatory on all currency. The national motto was changed to the same god phrase on
July 30, 1956.
And in 1959 a self-admitted Atheist challenged school prayer.
The 1950s - it was the decade of "Father Knows Best" and the
Red Scare. AgoodAmerican was a Christian American - or at least
a religious one. The enemy was "godless communism," and our best
weapon against it was the Christianization of America.
But a Baltimore woman challenged all that.
She simply said "no" to mandatory prayer - and started a controversy that still rages today.
That woman was Madalyn Murray. And An Atheist Epic is her
story, from the first complaint to the public school that required
her child to say the Lord's Prayer to the day the Supreme Court gave
its decision in the landmark school prayer case Murray v. Curlett,
New edition; now includes photos.
302 pp. Paperback. Stock #5376.
$10.00 plus $3.00 postage and handling per book.

.,~..,..
-...
'.

1....

\,./

.",

Available from:

American Atheist Press

P. O. Box 140195
Austin, TX 78714-0195
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just call (512) 467-9525 any time of the day or night.

VoL 31, No, 10

Page 41

Letters to the Editor

The Soviets and religion

"Letters to the Editor" should be either questions or comments of general

concern to Atheists or to the Atheist
community. Submissions should be
brief and to the point. Space
limitations allow that each letter
should be three hundred words or,
preferably, less. Please confine your
'letters to a single issue only. Mail them
to: American Atheist, P. O. Box
140195, Austin, TX 78714-0195.

Page 42

I am curious as to whether the Soviet

Union's population, governed by a totalitarian government whose officialpolicy
has been to endorse Atheism, is actually
welcoming religion into its culture as
state prohibitions against religion are
lifted. Has Atheism in the U.S.S.R. ignored using the schools to showcase
the absurdity of theology and its various
religious scriptures? Has it in any way
attacked the conditions which "lead" to
religious thinking or a dependence upon
religious authority? Or is a totalitarian
government incapable of providing this
instruction when it demands subservience in areas of arts, literature, and science to political and economic ideology?
My questions occur because I detect
alarm by American Atheists that the
first avowedly Atheistic nation in history
is unprepared and potentially unable to
dismiss the tide of religious nonsense
from all quarters as restrictions against
religion are relaxed. If this is the case,
then Soviet Atheism has been little
more than a temporary shield - a
mirage, really - protecting its citizenry
from a stronger belief system, religion,
just outside its borders. If this is not the
case and Soviet education has been diligent in its attack on religious nonsense,
what could account for the danger to
the Soviet peoples by religion? It suggests that two or three generations exposed to Atheism still are incapable of
selecting Atheistic leaders and ignoring
theistic ones. And that would be a sad
commentary on the power of rationalism
to turn back the lunacy of religion.
Phil Nelson
Oregon

In simple terms
The public library is chock-full of literature listed under the heading of "Bible,
Contradiction" and I have absolutely no
intention of reading it all. If we are to
ever free ourselves of organized superstition, or, more specifically, the influences of evangelistic ayatollahs, Jim
Vol. 31, No. 10

Joneses, Rasputins, BillyGrahams, and

popes, we cannot expect them to read
it either.
Personally, I can see absolutely no difference in the "Pagan" practices of the
primitive New Guinea headhunters as
compared to the Coptic Pharaoh's
mummification, or the preservation of
St. John's skull in the cathedral under
his name, the preservation of the blood
of St. George in a cathedral under his
name, and hanging an effigy of a dead
body nailed to a cross in every home in
the country. I'm amused that the same
people who carryon such practices are
the ones who complain about "violence
on television."
Someway I believe it's going to be
necessary to eventually state the matter
in a very few words, of such simplicity
that even the most indiscriminate of the
mentally dense are able to grasp the
meaning as easily as striking a match. If
it cannot be shown that the "holy" scripture of a bunch of ancient philosophers
having been brought together under the
title of the Bible, or the Koran, or the
Pentateuch and all the others is comprised of pure hogwash, then it may be
necessary to demonstrate their messiahs were not nonexistent, as stated in
John G. Jackson's Pagan Origins of the
Christ Myth, but that they each and
everyone did in fact exist, although they
were separately and severally as insane
as "The Buggy One, Shree Rajneesh,"
lately of Antelope, Oregon.
As Franklin D. Roosevelt said, we're
going to have to "speak up, be brief, and
sit down." After all, you know, we're
talking to judges and lawyers who are
also deacons and pastors.
Robert C. Salisbury, Jr.
Washington

Creationism and logic

I can relate to Frank Zindler's experience he had with "scientific" creationist
John Morris (described in "The Probing
Mind," July 1989). Earlier this year, I requested literature from the Creation ReAmerican Atheist

search Society. Wayne Frair, president

of The King College in Briarcliff, New
York, sent me several articles and a
book entitled A Case for Creation. To
be short, they contained what seems to
be typical of creationists' literature:
oversimplifications, misunderstandings,
distortions, and falsehoods. In addition,
hardly any of the information spoke of
positive evidence for creation. Rather, it
was mostly a criticism of biological evolution.
I replied to Dr. Frair telling him of my
observations. I also photocopied information from Laurie Godfrey's Scientists
Confront Creationism, an excellent
book that blows away each of the creationists' arguments in great detail. I
promptly received a response that
made no mention to Godfrey's book.
Perhaps the photocopy miraculously
slipped out of the letter during shipment! I must, though, say that he skillfully replied to my letter.
A point that is not well known is that
creationism has deep social roots. Rural
people's belief in creationism was being
threatened by more urban cultures during this century. As a result, a backlash
resulted which is still in effect. Thus,
thinking of the creationists' argument as
stupid badly misses the core of the
problem.
Zindler seemed to be accurate when
he stated that few creationists really
understand the issue. It seems, however, that the leading creationists' minds
have some unalterable program that
reads like this: Rule One - The Bible is

always right. Rule Two - If the Bible is

wrong, Rule One applies!

created evidence and come to any answer than the one which that god intended? I can't. Then what is the ratioGeorge M. Gumbert III nale for preaching? Why pray? God (an
all-knowing god) knows the future. If it's
Kentucky
known, there can be no deviation. Ifgod
Stuck in Christian muck no more knows I'm to be "saved," then isn't it
For about fifteen years, I sincerely be- rather useless for someone to waste
lieved in the Bible as the written word of time praying for me and "witnessing" to
god. Even though I never found a group me? I don't disbelieve on moral grounds
which agreed with my interpretation of (i.e., how could a loving god do this or
some of the teachings, I joined various that); if there's a god, then by his very
nature anything he did would be moral.
fundamentalist churches. A typical
week would include church twice on He would make the rules, not the creatures. Perhaps "salvation" is achieved
Sunday (at times teaching Sunday
school), Wednesday evening Biblestudy, through the "spirit" and can't be underThursday evening men's meetings, and stood with the mind? Again, where did
the "spirit" come from? I didn't create
Saturday morning prayer breakfasts.
Time was also spent "witnessing" to my "spirit". Whoever did would be in
strangers and "unsaved" friends. In the control of it.
There have been some excellent articourse of these activities, I spent many
hours weekly studying the Bible, books cles in the American Atheist, such as
about the Bible, the doctrines of other one dealing with Alcoholics Anonymous
churches, and the writings of non- and another dealing with the controChristians (I acquired a hardcover copy versy of the "Holocaust." There does
of Robert G. Ingersoll's forty-four com- seem to be an inordinate amount of
arrogance expressed in some of the letplete lectures at a library sale.)
At some point, through a combina- ters and articles. My experience has
tion of finding evidence that couldn't be been that the more we puff ourselves
reconciled with my concept of god and up, the louder the bang when someone
a failure of that god to help me keep my sticks a pin in one of our arguments. We
family together, I became if not Atheis- don't have to be wrong to be made
tic, then at least agnostic. I reached a foolish, we just have to let our argupoint where I couldn't reconcile free will ments go louder and longer than our
with the existence of a creator. If god knowledge. It can be embarrassing for
created me from nothing (or more prop- ourselves and our cause.
erly, my forebears), if everything is a
Fred Tierney
creation of god, then how can I with my
Minnesota
god-created brain, analyze the god-

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Vol. 31, No. 10

American Atheist

suggested

Amerlcan Atheist
introductory reading list

II
Literature on Atheism is very hard to find in most public
and university libraries in the United States - and most of
the time when you do find a book catalogued under the
word Atheism it is a work against the Atheist position.
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349 pp. #5349

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8. Essays on American Atheism, vol. II by Jon G. Murray. Paperback.

284 pp. #5350

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9. Essays in Freethinking, vol. I by Chapman

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back. 176 pp. #5524

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Amendment I
Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government
for a redress of grievances.

"Of course, we say that we do not believe in

god. We know perfectly well that the clergy, the
landlords, and the bourgeoisie all claimed to
speak in the name of god, in order to protect their
own interests as exploiters."
-

V. I. Lenin

Religion