$2.

50

The Journal

Of Atheist News And Thought

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

i
OSCAR/BIJ

-.- .. -

..

~- ---

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on August 4th,
1792, into great wealth, obtaining his education
in
England's
finest schools,
including
the celebrated
Eton and-Oxford.
There he came in contact with Deism and had a
short lived intellectual
flirtation
with it. He rapidly
became an Atheist, which caused his persecution
at
home. His first love, Harriet Grove, was lost because
of his attitude in respect to religion.
Shelley's first writing was the pamphlet Necessity
of Atheism, -in which he deplored the insufficiency of
the Christian religion for the happiness of man. Sending a copy of the pamphlet to all bishops, 'archbishops
and professors resulted in a trial at which he was expelled from Oxford on March 25, 1811.
His poetry, written chiefly in Italy in the four
years between
1818- i822 are characteristically
atheistic.
He gave glimpses of what life might be in
contrast with life as he found it, emphasizing as he
did the gap between what is and what ought to be.
Twice married, his most famous wife was Mary
Wollstonecraft
Godwin Shelley, the author of the
famous novel Frankenstein.
A champion of the oppressed against the oppressor
- even of ideas, he loved mankind. He was a continuous rebel against all forms of wrongs and human corruption, a reformer of evil in politics, in religion, in
conventional
opinions and customs.
Shelley died in 1822 in a storm at sea. We honor
this great English Atheist in the month of his birth.

Mary Wollstonecraft
was born on August 30, but
the year is not known, since her parents were of both
poor and humble origin. Her father was of violent
temperament
of which Mary was often the object."
Thrust on her own she fitted herself to be a teacher
and finally opened a school at Isl ington, England, in
1783. Three years later she published her first work
on Thoughts on The Education of Daughters.
Most of the great women of the world quickly
came to see the oppression of religion upon their sex,
but few fought so valiantly as did Mary Wollstonecraft, with her pen and words.
By 1791 her writings were numerous but in that
year her most famous work was published
Vindication of The Rights of Woman. This book became a
cornerstone
of the campaign
for women's
rights
fought so valiantly by Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and
Susan B. Anthony.
It is - today - a definitive position statement for all women.
In 1794 (or 1796) she married William Godwin,
the celebrated English novelist and philosopher.
She died the next year, after giving birth to a
daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft
Godwin, who later became the wife of the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley.
We honor this great English Atheist in the month
of her bi rth.

THERMIDOR (August) 11981;Vol. 23, No.8

ON THE COVER
NEWS
Atheists Lose One in New Jersey

p. 4

But Try Again in Arkansas'

6
ARTICLES

The Cosmic Speed Limit - G. Stanley Brown

Teaching Philosophy & Corrupting The Youth

21

FEATURED COLUMNISTS
Digging Out The Pony - James E. Brodhead

10

Jesusism and Atheism - Ignatz Sahula-Dycke

16

Who's Who in Anti-Semitism - Gerald Tholen

18

Religious Bigots Threaten Free Society - Fred Woodworth

19

REGULAR FEATURES
Editorial - Prayer by Legislative Fiat - Jon Murray
Poetry

2
11

. Atheist Masters: On The Value of Scepticism - Bertrand Russell .....

American Atheist Radio Series - The Seventh Commandment
Editor-in-Chief
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
Manager' Editor
Jon G. Murray
Artist
Fel ix Santana
Poetry
Angeline Bennett
Robin Eileen Murray-O'Hair
Production Staff
David Kent
Ralph Shirley
Richard Smith
Gerald Tholen
Gloria Tholen
Non Resident Staff
James E. Brodhead
Ignatz Sahula-Dycke
Fred Woodworth

Austin, Texas

12
22

The American Atheist magazine is

published monthly by the American
Atheist Center, 2210 Hancock Dr.,
Austin, TX 78756, a non-profit, nonpolitical, educational organization.
Mailing address: P. O. Box 2117,
Austin, TX 78768
1981 by Society
of Separationists, Inc.
.Subscription rates: $25/one year;
$40/two years.
Manuscripts submitted must be typed, double-spaced, accompanied by a
stamped, self-addressed envelope. The
editors assume no responsibility for
'unsolicited manuscripts.

St. Bartholomew
was originally
thought to be one of the disciples of
J. C. and a holiday or feast day was
held in his memory on August 25th.
In the year 1572 over a point of
dogma, the French king, Charles IX,
gave his tacit approval to the Roman
Catholic Guise family to kill the Protestant Huguenots. The three day feast
of St. Bartholomew, August 24th to
August 26th was chosen for the deed.
The Roman Catholics, under the
Guise family, used this time for a
savage manhunt and killing spree during which time the Protestants were
stabbed, drowned, hanged, shot, massacred and butchered - in Orleans,
Dijon, Lyon, Blois, Rouen, Bordeau,
Tours,
Toulouse,
Troyes,
Meaux,
Bourges and Angers. Depending on
whose story one reads, the death of
men, women and children counted up
to 5,000 or to 30,000.
The massacre was followed by looting. The object of the killing was to
"redeem France from the heresy" of
Protestantism.
In the 1950's in the United States
a "Nun's Song" became a national hit,
sung in Latin, no one knew that it was
a commemoration of this massacre an event of which the Roman Catholic
Church has always been proud.
History books no longer give it
more than a single sentence, if that,
for mankind must be oblivious of the
small foibles of religion.

---'~--KEEP

AN

'''~~c: OPEN

MINDI

The American Atheist magazine

is indexed in
MONTHLY PERIODICAL INDEX
ISSN: 0032-4310

Thermidor (August) 11981

$UPPORT
AMERICAN ATHEI$M
Page 1

EDITORIAL

JON GARTH MURRA Y

Prayer as Legislative Fiat

The American Atheist organization has had as one of
its principal occupations the litigation of issues involving the Constitutional separation of state and church.
The organization has filed and argued a large number of
such actions since its inception. It is becoming increasingly obvious, however, that the organization and Atheist plaintiffs in general can no longer seek redress for
Constitutional separation violations through the courts.
In 1959 the case of Murray v. Curlett was filed and
taken through the United States Supreme Court, which
rendered a decision in June of 1963. That decision,
theoretically, ended religious ceremonies in public
schools. Since that time neither the organization nor
any individual Atheist plaintiff has "won" (that is after
each side having its day in court in the setting of a full
hearing on the matter at bar). In order to determine why
this is the case one needs to look at the very nature of
constitutional litigation as well as the specifics of the
last in this list of "no win" cases, which is particularly
instructive.
Our country captured a unique place in world history
when it was founded with a constitution that included
the concept of separation of state and church. The First
Amendment to the Constitution divides that separation
into the "establishment"
and the "free exercise"
clauses. The government may not establish the institution of any religion nor interfere with the freedom of any
individual to practice or not to practice any particular
religion. Thus we have separation guaranteed on two
ievels. The level of government involvement with whole
religious institutions or groups and the level of government involvement with individual conscience with respect to religion. Our government has then established
for itself, from the beginning, a standard of conduct
regarding any potential interactions between it and
religion generally or individually. What happens when
our government violates its own standards of conduct in
this area?
The answer to this question is that an individual
citizen (or group of citizens) must call the breach of that
standard to the attention of one branch of government
(the Judicial) and ask that branch to compel the branch
in violation of the standard (Legislative or Administrative) to cease violation by modification of its conduct, or
internal rules, or procedures, or usage, or pronouncements. The burden is then on the individual citizen to
police his or her own government by pitting one branch
thereof against the other. No provision exists for selfpolicing. When such a citizen police action is taken, the
cost to the citizen is often extraordinary and prohibitive.
The defense to the citizen plaintiff is, however, financed
from tax funds. In effect that means that the citizen must
pay for, either directly or indirectly, the sides of both
plaintiff and defendant in any action he or she initiates.
Thus you, as a citizen, must bear the financial burden

Page 2

of forcing your government to adhere to its own standards while doing it the favor of paying for its defense as
well. In this setting the government has no responsibility, only the citizen. It is easy to see then why one of '
the major components ofthe defense in separation suits
is stalling. The longer the defense drags a suit out the
more attorneys fees they collect from your tax funds and
the more you have to spend directly out of pocket. The
same holds true with a suit brought by an organization
on behalf of individuals.
Another aspect of separation litigation is that the
Judicial branch of government has set up internal rules
of its own governing interpretation of Legislative and
Executive branch action in the separation area. The
Judicial branch then violates its own internal standard
by which it determines if a violation has in fact taken
place in one ofthe other branches. This "violation" of its
internal standards is most often in the form of misinterpretation of those internal guidelines. The guidelines themselves are all too often written in an ambiguous form, which lends itself to misinterpretation, or
with the use of undefinable terminology. A good example of an undefinable term is "benevolent neutrality",
which was used to-denote the preferred relationship
between state and church with respect to the part of the
state in regard to taxation of church property. How can
the state be both benevolent and neutral in the correct
sense of either word at the same time? The answer is it
cannot. Neither can the court assume such a position.
For a number of years the courts established various
and sundry internal standards for separatiori determination based on the fact situation of individual citizen
police actions. Then in 1973 in the famous Nyquist case
the Supreme Court laid down a standard test that was a
succinct review of the many individual actions gone
before. This "Nyquist test" has since been viewed as the
best, or governing, internal rule or standard for violation
determination in separation cases. The Nyquist test is:
"[T]o pass muster under the Establishment Clause the
law in question, first, must reflect a clearly secular
legislative purpose, second, must have a primary effect
that neither advances nor inhibits religion, and, third,
must avoid excessive entanglement with religion."
Since the compilation of this test by the Supreme
Court, the lower Federal courts and especially the State
courts have done their level best to circumvent it via
misinterpretation or misdefinition. Notice that this test
applies only to the Establishment Clause. If a given court'
cannot place a particular citizen police action into the
Free Exercise Clause category, then it must deal with
this test for Establishment Clause violations if found.
If an individual asks for taxpayer supported facilities
for practice of his individual religion, and a citizen
complains, the court says that the providing of those
facilities has to do with "free exercise" for the individu-

Thermidor (August) 11981

American Atheist

al, not "establishment" entanglement on the part of

government. In that way such an action is more easily
disposed of by the court. The logic is that the state is not
"establishing" this man's religion by giving him public
property to promote it on, but is in fact guaranteeing him
"free exercise" of his religion, as if he could not have
that "free exercise" on private property. With this kind
of convoluted logic it becomes obvious that it is easier
for the court to dispose of "free exercise" questions or
questions that can be defined, although erroneously, as
such. In many cases, however, they are stuck with
"establishment" determinations.
Such an establishment case is that of Marsa v.
Wernik, which was recently decided by the Supreme
Court of the State of New Jersey. The court in this case,
involving the opening of Borough Council meetings with
prayer, had no choice but to determine "establishment", since governmental officials actually participated in the violation. The court reached the conclusion
that the actions of the council did not violate the Nyquist
test by the following reasoning.
(A) The prayer has a clearly secular legislative purpose of "calling on the consciences and moral resolves
of those in attendance at the council meeting and to
inspire their wisest and fairest participation through a
few opening moments of prayer or reflection."
(B) The prayer has a primary effect of "solemnifying
governmental proceedings" and "in its contextual setting is not suggestive of religion or religious ritual."
(C) The prayer does not foster excessive government
entanglement, since, although it "is conducted by
individual council members, and to that extent is under
an official aegis, it does not purport to be otherwise
officially sponsored or authorized; rather each opening
exercise can be viewed as the beliefs or sentiments of
the individual in his private capacity."
Let us look at the faulty reasoning behind this
decision. Mr. Marsa is an Atheist and a member of
American Atheists. He is a regular attendant at the
Borough Council meetings as a business man in his
community. He is offended by the action of the council
as an Atheist. Let's review the court point by point.
(A) The court says that prayer can be secular under
the right circumstances. In a council meeting they feel
that its purpose is that of acting as a gavel to call the
meeting to order and set the tone for it. Looking at the
terms involved, we find "prayer" defined by The Random House Dictionary of the English Language as "a
devout petition to, or any form of spiritual communication with God or an object of worship"; or, giving the
benefit of semantics, "invocation'Ts
defined first as
"the act of invoking or calling upon a deity, spirit, etc.,
for aid, protection, inspiration, or the like", "supplication", and third as "a form of prayer invoking God's
presence, said esp. at the beginning of a public ceremony".
"Secular" is defined as "of or pertaining to worldly
things or to things that are not regarded as religious,
spiritual, or sacred; temporal".
Noticing the word spiritual in all three definitions as
their nexus (another court term), how can one come to

the conclusion that "prayer" (which equals "invocation" by the above) can be "secular" under any set of
circumstances? It cannot. Prayer is not and cannot be
construed to be secular.
(B) If this prayer "solemnifies governmental proceedings" and acts as a gavel, then why have a gavel at all? In
fact, the Borough Council meeting is gaveled to order
first. then a formal announcement of such a calling to
order being in compliance with requirements of the
Open Public Meetings Act of that state is given, then a
roll call of members is taken, then the mayor asks for
those who wish to, to rise for the invocation.
After all of this, the gavel, notice of compliance with
the Open Public Meetings Act, and roll call, is a prayer
needed? Would one not assume that the meeting had
been called to order by the end of three official actions
by the mayor? Should not everyone be quiet and set for
the meeting by that time? Yes, they should. Even a room
full of children would be quiet, have their attention
properly called, and be ready to listen well before the
call for prayer. The prayer is then gratuitous.
(C) Until June of 1976, Borough Council meetings
were opened by local clergy. After that, individual
council members began giving the invocations. The
court says that because individual members give personalized invocations, they cannot be said to entangle
government. Prayer is by its nature an individual act.
When you pray you ask for God to grant you a wish that
will redound to your benefit either directly or indirectly;
otherwise why ask for it? Even if a group leader says a
prayer while others assume a reverential posture, each
person in the group is hoping for a result from the prayer
that meets his individual needs, even if it also meets the
needs of a group incidentally. All that is really important
to any group member is that his wish is fulfilled, even if
the larger group wish often given in a general way is not
fulfilled.
:';
Therefore, the fact that the prayer is given by and
composed by individual council members is of no
significance to the act itself. Prayer is individual, no
matter how it is presented. The entire history of religion
points to individual "judgment" by a deity in reply to
supplication and individual "salvation" or lack thereof.
What is important is government authorization or the
placing of a governmental seal of approval on the
prayer. The mayor goes throuqh three steps in order to
prepare the room for the prayer. The mayor gets the
attention of all those present and even cites the legal
aegis by which their attention is commanded prior to the
prayer. The presiding government official, in an official
manner, sets the stage and prepares the audience for
the prayer as an obviously important part of the proceedings. Such preparation signals to me the importance
placed on the prayer by the mayor and council members.
It is then in fact authorized and approved as an appropriate action by the council in its official capacity. Marsa
is not complaining about the content of the prayers, but
their use generically. Preparation for the prayer and
giving it an official place in the meeting agenda is the
entanglement. The content of the prayer could only be
properly addressed under A or B above and not under the

Austin, Texas

(August) 11981

Thermidor

Page 3

..front ~agt l\tbittu

Wt art mati a~ btll ...------------------------~

Atheists Lose In New Jersey

On Juhe 9th, the Supreme Court of the State of New Jersey
rebuffed
Paul Marsa in his bid to remove prayer from the
meetings of the Metuchen Borough Council.
Paul, for many years the New Jersey Chapter Director of
American Atheists, had challenged (in 1977) the practice of
:opening the borough council with a prayer. The case had been
. working its way up through the New Jersey court system for
the last four years.

Editorial

Con't.

PRAYER BY LEGISLATIVE FIAT'

third part of the Nyquist test.
..
The point to be gained from this is thar reliqious
persons in the United States are.determined to make
their religion a pervasive part of our culture from every
official standpoint. Any tool for promotion oftheology in
general is a valid tool, including the State, from the
standpoint of a religionist. Judges, as people, cannot
rise above their theological upbringings or positions in
their decision making. The faith must be defended, even'
if it is watered down to the point of nonexistence first.
We seem to be at the same old mentality of "we had to
burn the village in order to save it" again, as were were
during the war in Vietnam, which we called a police.
action in the nomenclature style of the court.
The lesson for Atheists is that until we can capture
the power to define, litigation can only serve the
purpose of raising public awareness on selected issues.
You cannot fight an opponent capable of redefining or
changing the rules every time you challenge one. Prayer
cannot be secular in one context and nonsecular in
another at the whim of the court and make Atheist
police actions on government either effective or practical. The seizure of the power to define comes with
numbers. Identification on the part of individual Atheists is the key to gathering the numbers and cooperation
between those numbers needed to seize the power to
define, so that Constitutional violations of state/ church
separation become just that, violations, instead of
hallowed institutions.

Page 4

Thermidor

~/

(August)

The state's highest court, in an incredible decision, ruled

that prayer was part and parcel of the legislative process.
Marsa, in typical fashion declared
that the decision was
"outrageous
and more political then legal."
"This is a giant step back to the Dark Ages," he said. "This
is a reflection of the mood of the country, the president who
sits in the White House and the so-called Moral Majority.
"A prayer is a prayer is a prayer, no matter how you look
at it, and has no place in such public meetings."
When asked if he would. appeal, he replied, "If need be, and
if I get the support,
I would take this case to the Pearly
Gates."
.
Marsa has such sunoort. In a subsequent
telephone conversation with his attorney the American Atheist Center pledged
whatever financial support was necessary to appeal the case to
the United States Supreme Court. Such an appeal is expected
to be filed before the end of July.
The decision was particularly
galling to American Atheists
because it flew in the face of reason. There are four such cases
currently in the United States: a case in which the national A
merican Atheist Center is attempting
to stop prayer in the
Austin City Council, a case in which the Tucson Chapter of
American
Atheists is attempting
to stop prayer in the City
Council in Tuscon, a case in which Jon Murray, the Director of
the American Atheist Center is attempting
to stop the United
States Congress from paying chaplains for prayers in the U. S.
House of Representatives
and in the U. S. Senate and, of
course, Marsa's case in Metuchen, New Jersey.
An appeal will clarify the issue. Meanwhile,
the case of
prayer at the City Council of Austin, Texas, is already before
the U. S. Supreme Court, awaiting its decision as to whether
that court will review the lower court's adverse decision.
It all teaches the American Atheist community
two lessons:
(1) the only avenue currently open is the legal route of challenging religious practices through court suits; and (2) evidence
that American Atheists can hardly win those cases.
Unless and until we are known lor our stre.ngth of numbers;
and dollars, we will be a despised and ineffective minority. The
adage is upon us: in union, and money, there is strength.

11981

American

Atheist

,10CU5

on~tbtt5t5

... anb we won't take It anrmoret

But Try Again In Arkansas

If at first you don't succeed, - and American Atheists
often do not - try, try, again.
On Bastille Day, July 14th, the American Atheist Center
and several very courageous Arkansans filed a suit in the thick
part of the Bible Belt asking that the State of Arkansas be precluded from federal revenue sharing until that state brought
itself into compliance with the First Amendment to the Con.stitution of the United States.
Arkansas is the one state in the union which not only prohibits Atheists and agnostics from public office (as do South
Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas) but also holds that an Atheist
or agnostic is not competent to testify as a witness in any
Court.
After listening to the rhetoric about "Human Rights" coming from the Reagan administration also, it was decided that
.the United States should tend to the Human Rights violations
in its own Southern states - which was essentially why these
suits were filed. When the deed was done in Arkansas, on the
next day, July 15th, a similar law suit was filed in Mississippi,
with the Northern and Southern Mississippi Chapter Directors,
Paul Tirmenstein and John Marthaler as the litigants.
The cases were substantially the same and calculated to be
companion cases to the litigation which has been going on in
the Texas court for the past four (4) years.
The attorney handling both cases is Christopher Rand, a
new name in the ranks of Atheist heroes.
Litigants in Arkansas include Frances Flora and Erin Leary.
There is something special about two women braving the
Christians of Arkansas and we tip our hats to both of them.
In old common law, a person was not competent to testify
in court unless (slhe could subscribe to a belief in a supreme
being, who - it was thought - would punish false swearing.
This rule disqualifying a prospective witness has been abolished almost universally - except for Arkansas. In every other
state of the union, an Atheist's affirmation is today accepted
as just as effective an oath in ensuring truth and reliability.
Also, in the Dark Ages, the hoary notions of divine right,
established churches and religious loyalty to the sovereign
reigned. There were once - almost universally - requirements
of religious or theistic belief as a condition for holding employment or civil office with the state. However, when the
United States was established as a nation, a republican form of
government was mandated and guaranteed so that this religious requirement became absolutely invalid under the Constitution of the United States. However, Texas, North and South
. Carolina, Arkansas and Mississippi clung to the illegal and un-

Austin, Texas

constitutional requirement
incorporating the same in the
constitutions of those states. In 1979 Patricia Voswinkel, the
Director of the North Carolina Chapter of American Atheists
filed a suit in the federal district court in Charlotte and within
months had obtained an agreement. and a "consent decree"
from that court which held the North Carolina provision to be
unconstitutional.
Despite appeals to law schools, governments, the American
Civil Liberties Union, editors of newspapers and magazines,
fedearl government officials and opinion makers at both state
and federal levels, the other four states have continued to discriminate against the Atheist and the agnostic as well.
.
The item, in all four state constitutions is similar: "No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the
civil departments of this State, ... " and Arkansas adds, "nor
be competent to testify as a witness in any Court."
Theism may be defined as the belief in a god or gods. The
prefix "a" means with "without," so 'the term "A-theism"
literally means without belief in a god or gods. Atheism, therefore, is simply the absence of theistic belief. It was put as sim- ",
ply as that by the attorney in the suit.' His petition went further: "Plaintiffs are explicit Atheists. They contend, on philosopical grounds and as matters of deeply-felt personal convictions, that the belief in a god or supernatural being is irrational and should be rejected."
Attempting to assist the court, the petition by the Atheists
continued in this wise:
"There are widespread differences in beliefs and opinions
concerning the meaning of 'God.' There have been many historical concepts of god, from the anthropomorphic
deities
of the Greeks to the omnipotent father-son-duo of Christianity. It is impossible to give a detailed description of 'God'
that will encompass every religion.
"Even if the concept of 'God' could be clearly defined, a
state could not inquire into the beliefs of its citizens in that
regard. Freedom to believe as well as to not believe in 'God' is
absolute. Under the United States Constitution, Arkansas is
prohibited from intruding on Plaintiffs' privacy and from punishing them for beliefs which are of no legitimate state concern. The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly held
that government's duty is to maintain strict neutrality between
religion and non-religion.
"The framers of the Bill of rights put freedom of conscience first. They were concerned above all else with this
liberty. They knew that a union of government and religion
tends to destroy government and to degrade religion. They

Thermidor (August) 11981

Page 5

were aware of the historical fact that governmentally

established religions and religious persecutions
go hand in hand. At the
heart of the First Amendment
is the notion that an individual
should be free to believe as she or he will, and that - in a free
society' - one's beliefs should be shaped by one's own mind
and conscience, rather than coerced by the state."
In both Arkansas and Mississippi the suits were filed against
the governors, the attorneys
general, the secretaries of state,
the treasurers,
the auditors and the justices of the supreme
courts. On the federal level the suits were filed against President Ronald Reagan, the Attorney
General of the United
States, the Secretaries of the Treasury, of the Interior, of Agriculture, of Commerce,
of Labor, of Health and Human Services, of Housing and Urban Development,
of Transportation,
of Energy and of Education. These latter were included since
federal grants to the states of Arkansas and Mississippi come
from these bureaus, or with their approval, through the Treasury of the United States.
The suit charged that the states were laying, collecting and
spending taxes while imposing upon a section of the population an exclusion from participation
in the spending of those
taxes where the persons could (or should) be employed by the
state. It charged that this was tantamount
to a bill of attainder
which is precluded by our constitution,
that it destroys the
concept of a republican form of government, that it imposes a
religious test as a qualification
to hold office or give testimony
in court, that it is an establishment
of religion by the states,
that it prohibits the free exercise of Atheism in respect to religion, that it invades the privacy and freedom of conscience
and thought of Atheists (and agnostics) and that it deprives
the plaintiff Atheists of their liberty and property and other
interests without
giving them an avenue to challenge
the
deprivation
- all of which is cruel and unusual punishment
for
holding an opinion in respect to. religion.
Atheists (and agnostics) by these .constitutional provisions
are not able, therefore,
to enjoy all of the privileges and immunities of the laws of the United States or of the states of
Arkansas and Mississippi and do not have either due process
of law or equal protection under the laws.
The suit, because of the situations inherent in the discrimination, asked that all federal funds of all the numerous federal
statutes and programs, administered
by the agencies above, be
suspended
from federal funding until the matter of the exclusion of Atheists from public office or public trust be remedied by law. The court. was asked to enjoin the federal
defendants from making any more payments to the states.

matter of civil and human rights, the response by his administration can be be instructive to Atheists (and agnostics) everywhere as to what his true attitude and administrative
posture is
toward the Atheists (and agnostics) of the nation.
It should be noted that again the American Atheist Center
is fighting for the rights of agnostics as well as Atheists - despite the fact that agnostics cannot, will not and do not, fight
for the rights of Atheists. Once again it should be pointed out
that the A.C.L.U. has been notified repeatedly of the situation
in all of these (formerly five but now) four states of the union
and that the national A.C. L.U. as well as the state chapters of
the A.C.L.U. in the affected states have done nothing to remedy the situation. Since Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair has lectured at law schools in all of the states, law school deans, attorneys and law professors have known of the situation. None of
these groups or people have given a damn, or moved a finger to
assist.
Atheists must take care of themselves. There is no god to
take care of them. Either we do it or it is not going to be done.
The American Atheist Center is going to do it - suit by
suit, violation by violation, piecemeal if we must, but it will be
done. It will be financed as it can be financed. It will be undertaken as our staff can get to it. But, the future belongs to Atheism and the American Atheist Center is working to claim
that future so that humankind
can live in a logical world.
American Atheists salute these five brave people who dare
to be Atheists openly and notoriously
and to be associated
with an Atheist suit in two states which have not as yet moved
into the twentieth century.
Our laurels - and all the assistance we can give - go to
Frances Flora, Erin Leary, Paul Terminstein,
John Marthaler and Christopher
Rand.

On-the states' level, the court was asked to issue an order to

compel the states of Arkansas and Mississippi to change this
constitution
or to render it null and void and to pay damages
to the injured Atheist taxpayers because of the states' and the
federal government's
continuing financial support of an unconstitutional situation existing in both states.
Each litigant, being Frances Flora and Erin Leary of Arkansas and Paul Terminstein and John Marthaler of Mississippi and
the Society of Separationists,
Inc. of Austin, Texas, headquartered
in the American Atheist Center asked that he be
. awarded $10,000 each, for such damages. The suit also asked
for all legal fees.
Since this is the first suit filed against President Reagan on a

Page 6

Thermidor

(August)

Contributions

11981

for these cases may be sent to:

Legal Fund, American Atheists
P. O. Box 2117, Austin, TX78768

American

Atheist

THE COSMIC SPEED LIMIT

G. Stanley Brown

With this issue, G. Stanley Brown joins the contributors to

American Atheist magazine. Dr. Brown received a B.A. in
mathematics and physics from Emory & Henry College, and a
Ph.D. in astronomy from The University of Texas at Austin. He
was Assistant Professor of Astronomy at The University of
Arkansas at Little Rock for 4 years, and is now employed as a
computer scientist for a defense contractor.
Common sense is an important tool of Atheists, and
Atheists are suspicious of ideas which appear illogical. But the
physics of the twentieth century has confounded the apostles
of common sense. We now know that there is a limit on howfast matter can move in the real world. Common sense is
inadequate when applied to speeds outside the world of
common experience.
The developments leading to discovery of a cosmic speed
limit started with an attempt to measure an "absolute" speed
for the movement of the earth. Since the time of Copernicus,
scientists had known that the earth goes around the sun. After
they figured out how far away the sun is, they knew how fast
the earth moved, relative to the sun. But astronomers knew
the sun moved too. So physicists wondered if there were a
final absolute speed of the earth that could be measured.
In 1887 the physicists Albert W. Michelson and Robert W.
Morley designed an optical system to measure changes in the
earth's speed. It had mirrors and intersecting beams of light
and lenses to permit examination of the interaction of the
beams. The exact form of the interaction was known to depend
on the difference in the speed of light in the two beams. A
speed difference was expected because of the movement of
the earth. The movement should cause light traveling in the
same direction to appear to go slower than light traveling in a
perpendicular direction.
To the great surprise of physicists and astronomers, no
difference in speed could be detected I Michelson and Morley
rotated their apparatus, and used it at all hours of the day and
night. They tried again three months later when the earth's
direction of motion had changed by 90 degrees. They repeated
the experiment several years later. The speed of light in all
directions was always the same. Either the earth did not move
or the speed of light was independent of the motion of the
observer. Neither conclusion made sense at the time. The first
would say that Copernicus was wrong. The second would say
that there was no absolute frame of reference and material for
light to move in.
Proving that the earth moves is beyond the scope of this
story. However, we can consider an astronomical example of
the second alternative. The stars you see at night appear as
single points of light. Yet many are actually multiple systems
of two or more stars revolving around each other as in Figure
1. Their motion means that half of the time they move toward
the earth and half of the time away from it. Common sense
tells us that when a star moves toward the earth, the velocity
of the light we receive should be increased by the speed of the
star. When the star moves away, the speed should be
decreased. Since stars are far away, the speed difference
should result in an easily detectable difference in the travel
time for light from the star to us.
-

Austin, Texas

Referring again to Figure 1, there are realistic circumstances in which light emanating from positions 2, 3 and 4
could all arrive at the earth at the same time. Light from 3
would get a later start than light from 2, but the speed of light
relative to the earth would not be reduced by the stellar
motion, as in 2. Light from 4 would get a still later start, but its
speed would be increased by the stellar motion. So light from
position 1 would be out of step with the simultaneous arrival
from 2, 3 and 4. Such a state of affairs would be easily
detectable by astronomers, but it has never been seen.
Astronomers always see a smooth progression of one star
about the other.
This violation of the expected forces us to ask what is really
going on. Does the speed of light decrease when a star
approaches us? Does the speed of light increase when.a star
recedes from us? That is not likely. Until 1905 there were no
good explanations. But in that year Albert Einstein assumed
as fact that the speed of light is the same for all observers,
regardless of whether they are moving with the earth or with
one of the binary stars. He noted that as a consequence,
measurements of distance and time would be different for two
persons who are moving with respect to each other.
Let us consider how two people can disagree on a measurement of distance and time, but agree on speed. Speed is
obtained by dividing an interval in space by an interval in time.
Suppose you drive to visit a friend and use yd:ar automobile
odometer and watch to calculate your average speed. You find
that you made a trip of 50 miles in 60 minutes, for an average
speed of 50 mph. Next month your friend visits you and says
the trip took him 66 minutes to cover a distance of 55 miles, so
he too had an average speed of 50 mph. You are skeptical
because you know the road is 50 miles long. So you check his
odometer and watch and find that both turn too rapidly. If there
were no standards, such as radio and measured miles, your
friend could claim that your odometer and watch turn over too
slowly.

On the cosmic scale Einstein found that when two observers are moving with respect to each other, they each think the
other's clocks are too slow and the other's distances are too
short. Disagreements over both must occur and there is no
way resolving who is right because each has his own standard
references. However, if they stop moving with respect to each
other they will agree on measurement of space and timel And
they will agree on the speed of light in all cases. Slow clocks
and short miles produce the same calculated speed.
Einstein also noted that space and time have an interchangeable relationship. We can illustrate this with words by
describing two reference points: a low flying- 747 and a ship.
One statement is obvious: Events occurring in the same place
on the 747 but at different times will be considered by the

Thermidor (August) 11981

Page 7

STELLAR

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sailor on the ship to be occurring in different places, Another

statement is not so obvious but is equally true: Events
occurring at the same time on the 747 but in different places
will be considered by the sailor to be occurring at different
times. We can turn the observations around and say that
events occurring in the same place on the ship but at different
times will be considered by the 747 pilot to be occurring in
different places, if he uses himself as the point of reference.
Also, events occurring at the same time onship but in different
places will be considered by the pilot to be occurring at
different times.
Some readers may protest that the not so obvious statements are true because of the different amounts of time
required for light to convey the facts of the two events. Not sol
We can allow for this effect and we will still find different
times. let us demonstrate this with another example.
A world with no absolute reference points is portrayed in
Figure 2. Three space ships are shown, with the distance
between them increasing. The passengers on each ship think
their ship is motionless, but the others are moving, and the
viewpoint of each is illustrated. Passengers on A and C think B
is moving away at 87% of the speed of light and passengers on
B think A and C are moving away at 87% of the speed of light.
But what do passengers on A think about the speed of C, and
vice versa? Experience on earth would indicate a separation
rate between A and C of 174% of the speed of light. However,
the observed velocity is 99% of the speed of lightl How do we
explain this discrepancy?

Page 8

let us assume that all three ships were once close together
and unmoving relative to one another. At that time they
synchronized their clocks. Now they are moving and each
transmits radio pulses at 1.00 second intervals, according to
his own clock. What is the time interval between receipt of
these pulses by the closest neighbor? There are two sources of
delay. First, each pulse must go over the increased distance
between the ships since the last pulse, and second, there is an
apparent slowing down of clocks due to relative motion at high
speeds. The 1.00 second interval at transmission time is
stretched to 1.87 because of the increased distance when the
receiver is moving at 87% of the speed of light. And this
number is doubled to 3.74 seconds by the clock of the
transmitter running half as fast as the clock of the receiver.
Both A and Band Band C observe the same effect. They
send pulses at 1.00second intervals and receive them at 3.74
second intervals. If they send them at 3.74 second intervals,
they receive them at 3.74 x 3.74 or 13.9 second intervals. If B
receives pulses from C every 3.74 seconds and retransmits
them immediately, they will be received every 13.9 seconds.
As.a check we should find out how often pulses received by A
directly from C will be received. C is moving relative to A with a
speed of 990/0-of the speed of light. The interval due to
increasing distance will be 1.99 seconds, always less than
2.0. Also, the clock on C will appear to A to run so slowly it
transmits pulses every 6.99 seconds, so the time interval
between receipt of pulses is 1.99 x 6.99, or 13.9 seconds. This
agrees with the case of retransmission by B.
The foregoing paragraph may appear to pull numbers out of
the air. But they are obtained by using small algebraic
formulas provided in any discussion of special relativity but
this one. The reader may check an encyclopedia for a
discussion of this subject with formulas. What is clear here is

Thermidor (August) 11981

American Atheist

a denial of the concept of simultaneity. The clocks were

synchronized when the ships were together, but now that they
are moving apart at high speeds, they are not synchronized.
Simultaneity is not possible because we cannot transmit
information with infinite velocity. We cannot measure our
absolute speed in space, so we cannot set two clocks in
precise synchronism. Space and time are inextricably connected. An example of this may be had by considering two
rockslides on a mountain road, a pedestrian, and a moving
automobile. Suppose the pedestrian sees one slide 100 feet in
front of him and the second 200 feet in front of him. They
appear to occur at the same time. Also at that time the
pedestrian is aware of the automobile passing him moving
, toward the slides. The driver sees the slides, but sees
something different. He sees that the pedestrian's estimate of
distance is too great because his yardstick is too short. The
slides actually occurred at say, 75 and 150 feet ahead. Also,
the more distant slide occurred first. This will be clear from the
following.

Finally, we may eonsider what would happen if a very

powerful rocket took off from the Earth and continued to
accelerate. What would happen as it approached the speed of
lightl To us on Earth, all processes on the rocket would appear
to slow down. The quick thinking astronauts would appear to
become slow learners. The powerful rocket engines would do .
less work per unit time; i.e., slow down. As the ship approached closer and closer to the speed of light its engines
would contribute less and less thrust to increasing the speed.
As the speed converged to that of light. the increases in speed
would converge to zero. All the while the astronauts would
consider the engines to be working at their maximum rate. But.
the astronauts will never travel as fast as light. and a beam of
light directed ahead of the ship will appear normal. The speed
of the light photons will appear the same to the astronauts and
to anyone watching the ship pass.
Common sense is vital to solving problems in our immediate
environment. But on the very large scale things are not always
the same. Common sense was once objecting to the idea that
the earth is round.

The pedestrian saw the slides occur simultaneously because the light from the distant slide passed the closer slide as
it happened. The driver finds that light traveled between the
distant and closer slides in less time than the pedestrian.
would estimate, because there is less distance between the
slides. So light passed the location of the closer slide before it
occurred, and reached the driver first.

V IE

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VIE.VJPOINT
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A

&

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FIG-URE

Austin, Texas

::2.

Thermidor (August) 11981

Page 9

THE ATHEIST AT THE SUPPER TABLE

JamesE.Brodhead

DIGGING OUT THE PONY

Thinking is hard work, compared to most of the things that
animals do. Thinking for yourself is the hardest work that any
human animal can undertake, which may be why it's so
unpopular.
Humans, like most other animals, have a herd instinct. They
want to be accepted by others of their kind; and if everyone
else feels a certain way about certain things, it's so much
easier to go with the flow than to nettle them with prickly,
independent ideas. "To get along, go along," said the late
congressman Sam Rayburn - a protean philosophy that
propelled him to the Speakership of the House of Representatives, and kept him in it more than twice as long asany of his
predecessors.
Three decades of television, combined with an exponential
increase in the pace of human affairs, have aggravated the
tendency to the point where popular opinion has degenerated
into faddism. Concern about crime has become a fad: newspapers intersperse their ads for martial-arts and Mace classes
with bathetic stories about people cowering in their locked
homes, afraid to sally forth into the mean streets; television,
among the shoot-rem-ups and car chases, gawps at bloviating
politicians and editorials calling for cracking down on crime.
Cowboy chic and "country"
music have become fads,
generally credited to the movie Urban Cowboy. All over
America, stockbrokers, accountants, parking-lot attendants,
typists and waitresses are swaggering about in pointycrowned, feather-bedizened straw cowboy hats and bizarre
shirts, bawling and whining simple-minded songs through
their noses, and affecting (at least, those who know better) bad
grammar It is a stunning example of missing the point, since
Urban Cowboy is a study of frustrated, semieducated oil-field
workers trapped in dead-end jobs, whose only pleasure comes
from getting drunk, posturing and fighting in a cavernous,
raucous roadhouse on weekends. Without thinking, jostling in
the herd, hundreds of thousands of Americans have adopted
their costumes and mannerisms, under the illusion that
they're being fashionable.
"Country" music has become such a fad that one Los
Angeles radio station has plastered the city with billboards
picturing singers like Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, all with
the slogan "We all grew up to be cowboys." The music itself,
for the most part, with banally sentimental and often ludicrous
lyrics, maddeningly simple tunes, is a pervasive example of
the denigration of excellence and professionalism, the devalua- .
tion of music to its lowest common denominator. In at least
one Los Angeles suburb, junior-high students amuse 'themselves by making up "country" song titles like "If You Wanna
Keep the Beer Cold, Put It Next to My Ex-Wife's Heart"; "I Gave
Her the Ring, and She Gave Me the Finger"; and "When You
Leave Me, Walk Out Backwards, So I Can Pretend You're
Comin' Home." (Having played the great folk-music scholar

Page 10

John Lomax in Paramount's Leadbelly, I hasten to affirm my

admiration for a great deal of authentic folk music. It's the
commercialized pop "country-and-Western"
trash I'm referring to above.
And religion, of course, has evolved from being simply a
refuge from reality, into the biggest fad of all. There are days
when it seems as if civilization, a 5,OOO-year-old struggle of
logical and rational thought against the soupy comforts of
magic and superstition, has collapsed into the kind of mind-set
reflected by a newly-popular bumper sticker: "GOD SAID IT, I
BELIEVE IT, AND THAT SETILES IT."
Swell.
For this, Socrates and Hypatia died? For this, Galileo faced
the Inquisition? For this, tens of thousands of free-spirited
men and women uprooted their lives, fled religious persecution, and carved a new nation out of a wilderness continent
(admittedly, decimating the native population) to create a
secular state free of church domination?
Of course not. The sheep are with us always, but that
doesn't mean they can rule. There are plenty of people who
think for themselves: if there weren't, how could you be
reading this magazine, and how could I have such a splendid
forum? So ours is a specialized forum - but just this week's
reading has turned uptwo samples of independent thinking in
the general press.
.'0:
Chicago's irrepressible columnist Mike Royko, in a syndicated column, addressed a savagely satirical memo to "God,"
discussing the atrocities committed in Ireland, Lebanon, Iran
and elsewhere in his name (the god's, not Royko's). And the
May 18th issue of The New Yorker devoted what seemed like
half its pages to Frances FitzGerald's devastating dissection of
the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lvnchburq. Virginia, and
its smarmy hypocrite of a guru, whose name I insist on
spelling Jerry Foolwell.
FitzGerald's article is a satisfying example of careful research and dispassionate reporting, and I wish we could afford
to buy the rights to reprint it, and trumpet it across the land.
(That we cannot. doesn't mean that you can't write to The New
Yorker and offer to pay for a back issueor a reprint. Believe me,
it's worth it.)
She quotes at length from FoolweWs 1965 sermon, "Ministers and Marchers," which condemned clerical involvement
in civil-rights protests, and then lays bare his hypocrisy in his
October 1980 speech to the National Religious Broadcasters'
convention, in which he repudiated his earlier objection to
politically active preachers as "false prophecy," and "moved a
hundred and eighty degrees from his former position .... "

Thermidor (August) 11981 .

American Atheist

'"

FitzGerald acknowledges that Foolwelrs church is "nothing

like a Jim Jones cult," but adds that the Liberty Baptist College
"women, with their mid-calf dresses. andthe ...men, with
their clipped hair and white shirts ...[have a) moon-child
quality .i.," In one of the most telling passages, FitzGerald
writes:

Remember the old joke about the little boy who was a
compulsive optimist? His world-weary father decided to teach
him a lesson, and on Christmas morning heaped an enormous
pile of horse manure under the tree. The child leaped into it
and began burrowing, crying joyously, "There's gotta be a
pony in here somewherel"

"I'm totally against the E.R.A., " Nancy James told me during
a visit I paid to her house. When. for the purposes of
discussion. I recited some of the pro-E. R.A. arguments, she
listened seriously and apologized for being so uninformed on
the subject. I thought at the time that the arguments had made
some impression on her, but later. as I was leaving. she came
out after me to apologize again and tosev, "I will find out more
about the E.R.A. I know I'm against it. I'm just not sure exactly
why."

Spin out the reverberations of that inelegant metaphor as

you will: in a single week, Royko and FitzGerald have suggested that somewhere under that steaming, malodorous pile
of superstition that threatens to smother our society, independent thinkers are reaching for vital ideas, and beginning to dig
the pony of reason out of all that slop.

FitzGerald's brilliant reporting and Royko's satire are signs

that more and more people are being alerted to the dangers of
letting others do their thinking for them. As I've said before,
I'm an optimist: I believe the country always manages three
steps forward for every two steps backward.

PJ>oemd
.~~----AN ARTIST

WHEN
Who dares to garb himself in fear
And never understand
The countless things that we must wrest
From nature's awesome hand

An artist sits upon his bench,

Struggles with his work,
Attempting to create perfection,

Compelled we quaked at fear's command

Or clutched her to our breast
Such passions fade when answers rise
With understanding's quest
And bits of wisdom wind their way.
To thread the needle mind
Let reason finally come of age
What treasures then to find

Sweat pours in vain; new thoughts

stream in,
But cannot be formed.
He gives his life to the figure.
Soon it forms itself,
Creates perfection,
Venus's beactv,
And Hercules' strength,
Mixed and perfected.
While he watches, it grows.
It is all his dreams.
It is his life's breath.
It is his glory.
It exults in itself.

The mental mist will slowly clear

We'll know of every thing
No longer any need for fear
Nor problems fear can bring
Departed thus from ancient creed
And superstitions past
Will science light the darkened way
Will knowledge breathe at last.
Gerald Tholen

It is done, but there is one flaw;

He must see that gone.
With a touch, it crumbles to dust.

Thermidor (August) 11981

Austin, Texas

II

Robin Eileen Murray-O'Hair

Page 11

Bertrand Russell
ON THE VALUE OF SCEPTICISM
I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly
paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is
this: th~t ~tis undesirable to believe a prop!>siti.onwhen
there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. I
must,of course,admitthat if such an opinion becamecommon
it would completely transform our social life and our
political system; since both are at present faultless, this
must weigh against it. I am also .aware (what is more.
serious) that it would tend to diminish the incomes of
clairvoyants, bookmakers, bishops, and others who live
on the irrational hopes of those who have done nothing
to deserve good fortune here or hereafter. In spite of
these grave arguments, I maintain that a case can be
made out of my paradox, and I shall try to set it forth.
First of all, I wish to guard myself against being
thought to take up an extreme position. I am a British
Whig, with a British love of compromise and moderation. A story is told of Pyrrho, the founder of Pyrrhonism
(which was the old name for scepticism). He maintained
that we never know enough to be sure that one course
of action is wiser than another. In his youth, when he
was taking his constitutional one afternoon, he saw his
teacher in philosophy (from whom he had imbibed his
principles) with his head stuck in a ditch, unable to get
out. After contemplating him for some time, he walked
on, maintaining that there was not sufficient ground for
thinking he would do any good by pulling the old man
out .. Others, less sceptical, effected a rescue, and
blamed Pyrrho for his heartlessness. But his teacher,
true to his principles. praised him for his consistency.
No, I do not advocate such heroic scepticism as that. I
am prepared to admit the ordinary beliefs of common
sense, in practice if not in theory. I am prepared to admit
any well-established result of science, not as certainly
true, but as sufficiently probable to afford a basis for
rational action. If it is announced that there is to be an
eclipse of the moon on such-and-such a date, I think it
worth while to look and see whether it is taking place.
Pyrrho would have thought otherwise. On this ground, I

Page12

feel justified in claiming that I -advocate a middle

position.
.
"There are matters about which those who have
investigated them are agreed; the dates of eclipses may
serve as an illustration. There are other matters about
which experts are not agreed. Even when the experts all
agree, they may well be mistaken. Einstein's view as to
the magnitude of the deflection of light by gravitation
would have been rejected by all experts not many years
ago, yet it proved to be right. Nevertheless, the opinion
of experts, when it is unanimous, must be accepted by
non-experts as more likely to be right than the opposite
opinion. The scepticism that I advocate amounts only to
this: (1) that when the experts are agreed, the opposite
opinion cannot be held to be certain; (2) that when they
are agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a '
non-expert; and (3) that when they all hold that no
sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the
ordinary man would be well to suspend his judgment.
These propositions may seem mild, yet, if accepted,
they would absolutely revolutionize human life.
The opinions for which people are willing to fight and
persecute all belong to one of the three classes which
this scepticism condemns. When there are rational
grounds for an opinion, people are content to set them
forth and wait for them to operate. In such cases, people
do not hold their opinionswith passion; they hold them
calmly and set forth their reasons quietly. The opinions
that are held with passion are always those for which no .
good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure
of the holder's lack of rational conviction. Opinions in
politics and religion are almost always held passionately. Except in Chifla, a man is thought a poor creature
unless he has strong opinions on such matters; people
hate sceptics far more than they hate the passionate
advocates of opinions hostile to their own. It is thought
that the claims of practical life demand opinions on such
questions, and that, if we became more rational, social
existence would be impossible. I believe the opposite of
this, and will try to make it clear why I have this belief.
. Take the question of unemployment in the years after

Thermidor (August) 11981

American Atheist

1920. One party held that it was due to the wickedness

of trade unions, another that it was due to the confusion
on the Continent. A third party, while admitting that
these causes played a part, attributed most of the
trouble to the policy of the Bank of England in trying to
increase the value ofthe pound sterling. This third party,
I am given to understand, contained most of the experts,
but no one else. Politicians do not find any attractions in
a view which does not lend itself to party declamation,
and ordinary mortals prefer views which attribute
misfortune to the machinations of their enemies. Consequently, people fight for and against quite irrelevant
measures, while the few who have a rational opinion
are not listened to because they do not minister to any
one's passions. To produce converts, it would have been
necessary to show that directors of the Bank of England
are hostile to trade unionism; to convert the Bishop of
London, it would have been necessary to show that they
are "immoral." It would be thought to follow that their
views on currency are mistaken.
show that they are "Immoral." It would be thought to
follow that their views on currency are mistaken.
Let us take another illustration. It is often said that
socialism is contrary to human nature, and this assertion is denied by socialists with the same heat with
which it is made by their opponents. The late Dr. Rivers,
whose death cannot be sufficiently deplored, discussed
this question in a lecture at University College, published in his posthumous book on Psychology and
Politics. This is the only discussion of this topic known to
me that can lay claim to be scientific. It sets forth certain
anthropological data which show that socialism is not
contrary to human nature in Melanesia; it then points
out that we do not know whether human nature is the
same in Melanesia as in Europe; and it concludes that
the only way of finding out whether socialism is
contrary to European human nature is to try it. It is
interesting that on the basis of this conclusion he was
willing to become a Labour candidate. But he would
certainly not have added to the heat and passion in
which political controversies are usually enveloped.
I will now venture on a topic which people find even
more difficulty in treating dispassionately, namely marriage customs. The bulk of the population of every
country is persuaded that all marriage customs other
than its own are immoral, and that those who combat
this view do so only in order to justify their own loose
<.\ives.In India, the remarriage of widows is traditionally
regarded asa thing too horrible to contemplate. 111
. Catholic countries divorce is thought very wicked, but
~'5omefailure of conjugal fidelity is tolerated, at least in
men. In America divorce is easy, but extra-conjugal
relations are con"demnedwith
the utmost severity.
Mohammedans believe in polygamy, which we think
degrading. All these differing opinions are held with
extreme vehemence, and very cruel persecutions are
inflicted upon those who contravene them. Yet no one in
any of the various countries makes the slightest attempt
to show that the custom of his own country contributes
more to human happiness than the custom of others.

Austin, Texas

Thermidor

When we open <PlY scientific treatise on the subject,

such as (for example) Westermarck's History of Human
Marriage, we find an atmosphere extraordinarily different from that of popular prejudice. We find that every
kind of custom has existed, many of them such as we
should have supposed repugnant to human nature. We
think we-can understand polygamy, as a custom forced
upon women by male oppressors. But what are we to
say of the Tibetan custom, according to which one
woman has several husbands? Yet travellers in Tibet
assure us that family life there is at least as harmonious
as in Europe. A little of such reading must soon reduce
any candid person to complete scepticism, since there
seem to be no data enabling us to say that one marriage
custom is better or worse than another. Almost all
involve cruelty and intolerance towards offenders against
the local code, but otherwise they have nothing in
common. It seems ~hat sin is geographical. From this
conclusion, it is only a small step to the further conclusion that the notion of "sin" is illusory, and that the
cruelty habitually practised in punishing it is unnecessary. It is just this conclusion which is so unwelcome to
many minds, since the infliction of cruelty with a good
conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they
invented Hell.
Nationalism is of course an extreme example- of
fervent belief concerning doubtful matters. I think it may
be safely said that any scientific historian, writing now a
history of the Great War, is bound to make statements
which, if made d~ring the w~r, would have exposed him
to imprisonment in everyone of the belligerent countries on both sides. Again, with the exception of China.
there is no country where people tolerate the truth
about themselves; at ordinary times the truth is only
thought ill-mannered. but in war-time it is thought
criminal. Opposing systems of violent belief <}febuilt up.:
the falsehood of which is evident from the fact that they
are believed only by those who share the same national
bias. But the application of reason to these systems of
belief is thought as wicked as the application of reason

there is no country
.where people tolerate
the truth about themselves

(August)

11981

Page 13

to religious dogmas was formerly thought. When people

are challenged as to why scepticism in such matters
should be wicked, the only answer is that myths help to
win wars, so that a rational nation would be killed rather
than kill. The view that there is something shameful in
saving one's skin by wholesale slander of foreigners is
one which, so far as I know, has hitherto found no
supporters among professional moralists outside the
ranks of Quakers. If it is suggested that a rational nation
would find ways of keeping out of wars altogether, the
answer is usually more abuse.
What would be the effect of a spread of rational
scepticism? Human events spring from passions, which
generate systems of attendant myths. Psychoanalysts
have studied the individual manifestations of this process in lunatics, certified and uncertified. A man who
has suffered some humiliation invents a theory that he
is King of England, and develops all kinds of ingenious
explanations of the fact that he is not treated with that
respect which his exalted position demands. 'In this
case, his delusion is one with which his neighbours do
not sympathize so they lock him up. But if, instead of
asserting only his own greatness, he asserts the greatness of his nation or his class or his creed, he wins hosts
of adherents, and becomes a political or religious
, leader, even if, to the impartial outsider.his views seem
just as absurd as those found in asylums. In this way a
collective insanity grows up, which follows laws very
similar to those of individual insanity. Everyone knows
that it is dangerous to dispute with a lunatic who thinks
he is King of England; but as he is isolated, he can be
overpowered. When a whole nation shares a delusion,
its anger is of the same kind as that of an individual
lunatic if its pretensions are disputed, but nothinq short
of war can compel it to submit to reason.
The part played by intellectual factors in human
behaviour is a matter as to which there is much
disagreement among psychologists. There are two quite
distinct questions: (1) how far are beliefs operative as
causes of actions? (2) how far are beliefs derived from
logically adequate evidence, or capable of being so
derived? On both questions, 'psychologists are agreed in
giving a much smaller place to the intellectual factors
than the plain man would give; but within this general
agreement there is room for considerable differences of
degree. Let us take the two questions in succession.

therefore, derivatively, in all that is entailed by this

choice.
At the office, if he is an underling, he may continue to
act merely from habit. without active volition, and
without the explicit intervention of belief. It might be
thought that, if he adds up the columns of figures, he
believes the arithmetical rules which he employs. But
that would be an error; these rules are mere habits of his
body, like those of a tennis player. They were acquired in
youth, not from an intellectual belief that they corresponded to the truth, but to please the schoolmaster,
just as a dog learns to sit on its hind legs and beg for
food. I do not say that all education is of this sort, but
certainly most learning of the three R's is.
If, however, our friend is a partner or director, he may
be called upon during his day to make difficult decisions
of policy. In these decisions it is probable that belief will
playa part. He believes that some things will go up and
others will go down, that so-and-so is a sound man, and
such-and-such on the verge of bankruptcy. On these
beliefs he acts. It is just because he is called upon to act
on beliefs rather than mere habits that he is considered
such a much greater man than a mere clerk, and is able
to get so much more money - provided his beliefs are
true.
In his home-life there will be much the same proportion of occasions when belief is a cause of action. At
ordinary times, his behaviour to his wife and children
will be governed by habit, or by instinct modified by
fiabit, On great occasions - when he proposes marriage, when he decides what school to send his son to,
or when he finds reason to suspect his wife of unfaithfulness - he cannot be guided wholly by habit. In
proposing marriage, he may be guided more by instinct,
or he may be influenced by the belief that the lady is rich.
If he is guided by instinct, he no doubt believes that the
lady possesses every virtue, and this mayseem to him to
be a cause of his action but in fact it is merely another
effect of the instinct which alone suffices to account for
his action. In choosing a school for his son, he probably
proceeds in much the same way as in making difficult
business decisions; here belief usually plays an important part. If evidence comes into his possession showing
that his wife has been unfaithful. his behaviour is likely
to be purely instinctive, but the instinct is set in
operation by a belief, which is first cause of everything
that follows.

How far are beliefs operative as causes of action 7

(1) How far are beliefs operative as causes of action?
Let us now discuss the question theoretically, but let us
take an ordinary day of an ordinary man's life. He begins
by getting up in the morning, probably from force of
habit, without the intervention of any belief. He eats his
breakfast, catches his train, reads his newspaper, and
goes to his office, all from force of habit. There was a
time in,the past when he formed these habits, and in the
choice of the office, at least, belief played a part. He
probably believed, at the time, that the job offered him
there was as good as he was likely to get. In most men.
belief plays a part in the original choice of a career, and

Page 14

Thermidor

(August)

Thus, although beliefs are not directly responsible for

more than a small part of our actions, the actions for
which they are responsible are among the most important, and largely determine the general structure of
our lives. In particular, our religious and political actions
are associated with beliefs.
(2) I come now to our second question, which is itself
twofold: (a) how are are beliefs in fact based upon
evidence? (b) how far is it possible or desirable that they
should be?
(a) The extent to which beliefs are based upon
evidence is very much less than believers suppose. Take
the kind of action which is most nearly rational: the

11981

American

Atheist

investment of money by a rich City man. You will often

find that his view (say) on the question whether the
French franc will go up or down depends upon his
political sympathies, and yet is so strongly held that he
is prepared to risk money on it. In bankruptcies it often
appears that some sentimental factor was the original
cause of ruin. Political opinions are hardly ever based
upon evidence, except in the case of civil servants, who
are forbidden to give utterance to them. There are of
course several exceptions. In the tariff reform controversy which began several years ago, most manufacturers supported the side that would increase their
own incomes, showing that their opinions were really
based on evidence, however little their utterances
would have led one to suppose so. We have here a
complication. Freudians have accustomed us to "rationalizing," i.e. the process of inventing what seem to
ourselves rational grounds for a decision or opinion that
is in fact quite irrational. But there is, especially in
English-speaking countries, a converse process which
may be called "irrationalizing." A shrewd man will sum
up, more less subconsciously, the pros and cons of a
question from a selfish point of view. (Unselfish considerations seldom weigh subconsciously except where
one's children are concerned.) Having come to a sound
egoistic decision by the help fo the unconscious, a man
proceeds to invent. or adopt from others, a set of highsounding phrases showing how he is pursuing the
public good at immense personal sacrifice. Anybody
who believes that these phrases give his real reasons
must suppose him quite incapable of judging evidence,
since the supposed public good is not going to result
from his action. In this case a man appears less rational
than he is; what is still more curious, the irrational part
of him is conscious and the rational part unconscious. It
is this trait in our characters that has made the English
and Americans so successful.
Shrewdness, when it is genuine, belongs more to the
unconscious than the conscious part of our nature. It is,
I suppose, the main quality required for success in
business. From a moral point of view, it is a humble
quality, since it is always selfish; yet it suffices to keep
men from the worst crimes. If the Germans had had it,
they would not have adopted the unlimited submarine
. campaign. If the French had had it, they would not have
behaved as they did in the Ruhr. If Napoleon had had it,
. he would not have gone to war again after the Treaty of
Amiens. It may be laid down as a general rule to which
there are few exceptions that. when people are mistaken as to what is to their own interest, the course that
"they believe to be wise is more harmful to others than
the course that really is wise. Therefore anything that
makes people better judges of their own interest does
good. There are innumerable examples of men making
fortunes because, on moral grounds, they did something which they believed to be contrary to their own
interests. For instance, among early Quakers there
were a number of shopkeepers who adopted the practice of asking no more for their goods than they were
willing to accept, instead Of bargaining with each

Austin, Texas

customer, as everybody else did. They adopted this

practice because they held it to be a lie to ask more than
they would take. But the convenience to customers was
so great that everybody came to their shops, and they
grew rich. (I forget where I read this, but if my memory
serves me it was in some reliable source.) The same
policy might have been adopted from shrewdness, but
in fact no one was sufficiently shrewd. Our unconscious
is more malevolent than it pays us to be; therefore the
people who do most completely what is in fact to their
interest are those who deliberately, on moral grounds,
do what they believe to be against their interest. Next to
them come the people who try to think out rationally and
consciously what is to their own interest, eliminating as
far as possible the influence of passion. Third come the
people who have instinctive shrewdness. Last of all
come the people whose malevolence overbalances their
shrewdness, making them pursue the ruin of others in
ways that lead to their own ruin. This last class
embraces 90 per cent of the population of Europe.
I may seem to have digressed somewhat from my
topic, but it was necessary to disentangle unconscious
reason, which is called shrewdness, from the conscious
variety. The ordinary methods of education have practically no effect upon the unconscious, so that shrewdness cannot be taught by our present technique. Morality, also, except where it consists of mere habit, seems
incapable of being taught by present methods; at any
rate I have "never noticed any beneficent effect upon
those who are exposed to frequent exhortations. Therefore on our present lines any deliberate improvement
must be brought about by intellectual means, We do not
know how to teach people to be shrewd or virtuous, but
we do know, within limits, how to teach them to be
rational: it is only necessary to reverse the practice of
education authorities in every particular. We may hereafter learn to create virtue by manipulating the ductless
glands and stimulating or restraining their secretions.
But for the present it is easier to create rationality than
virtue - meaning by "rationality" a scientific habit of
mind in forecasting the effects of our actions.
(b) This brings me to the question: How far could or
should men's actions be rational? Let us take "should"
first: There are very definite limits, to my mind, with
which rationality should be confined; some of the most
important departmentsof life are ruined by the invasion
of reason. Leibniz in his old age told a correspondent
that he had only once asked a lady to marry him, and that
was when he was fifty. "Fortunately," he added, "the
lady asked time to consider. This gave me also time to
consider, and I withdrew the offer." Doubtless his
conduct was very rational, but Icannot say that I admire
it.
Shakespeare puts "the lunatic, the lover, and the
poet" together, as being "of imagination all compact."
The problem is to keep the lover and the poet, without
the lunatic. I will give an illustration. In 1919 I saw The
Trojan Women acted at the Old Vic. There is an
unbearable pathetic scene where Astvanax is put to
death by the Greeks for fear he should grow up into a

Thermidor (August) 11981

Page 15

second Hector. There was hardly a dry eye in the

theatre, and the audience found the cruelty of the
Greeks in the play hardly credible. Yet those very people
who wept were, at that very moment, practising that
very cruelty on a scale which the imagination of
Euripides could have never contemplated. They had
lately voted (most of them) for a Government which
prolonged the blockade of Germany after the armistice,
and imposed the blockade of Russia. It was known that
these blockades caused the death of immense numbers
of children, but it was felt desirable to diminish the
population of enemy countries: the children, like Astyanax, might grow up to emulate their fathers. Euripides the poet awakened the lover in the imagination of
the audience; but lover and poet were forgotten at the
door of the theatre, and the lunatic (in the shape of the
homicidal maniac) controlled the political actions of
these men and women who thought themselves kind
and virtuous.
Is it possible to preserve the lover and the poet
without preserving the lunatic? In each of us', all three
exist in varying degrees. Are they so bound up together
that when the one is brought under control the others
perish? I do not believe it. I believe there is in each of us a
certain energy which must find vent in art, in passionate
love, or in passionate hate, according to circumstances.
Respectability, regularity, and routine - the whole
cast-iron discipline of a modern industrial society have atrophied the artistic impulse, and imprisoned love
so that it can no longer be generous and free and
creative, but must be either stuffy or furtive. Control has

been applied to the very things which should be free,

while envy, cruelty, and hate sprawl at large with the
blessing of nearly the whole bench of Bishops. Our
instinctive apparatus consists of two parts - the one
tending to further our own life and that of our descendants, the other tending to thwart the lives of supposed
rivals. The first includes the joy of life, and love, and art,
which is psychologically an offshoot of life. The second
includes competition, patriotism, and war. Conventional morality does everything to suppress the first and
encourage the second. True morality would do the exact
opposite. Our dealings with those whom we love may be
safely left to instinct; it is our dealings with those whom
we hate that ought to be brought under the dominion of
reason. In the modern world, those whom we effectively
hate are distant groups, especially foreign nations. We
conceive them abstractly, and deceive ourselves into
the belief that acts which are really embodiments of
hatred are done from love of justice or some such lofty
motive. Only a large measure of scepticism can tear
away the veils which hide this truth from us. Having
achieved that, we could begin to build a new morality,
not based on envy and restriction, but on the wish for a
full life and the realization that other human beings are
a help and not a hindrance when once the madness of
envy has been cured. This is not a Utopian hope; it was
partially realized in Elizabethan England. It could be
realized tomorrow if men would learn to pursue their
own happiness rather than the misery of others. This is
no impossibly austere morality. yet its adoption would
turn our earth into a paradise.' ~

ON OUR WAY

Ignatz Sahula- Dycke

JESUSISM AND ATHEISM

Nowadays it's extremely difficult

for Western man to escape the propaganda dished up in the name of Jesus.
The unrelenting harping, exalting
and glorifying ofthe word JESUS by
generation after generation of astute
clerics and acolytes, laboring for the
perpetuation of their extortive privileges, forces most every Western person to take that word into constant
account. Were it not for its intrusiveness into all aspects of Western life,
the word Jesus would simply rank as
another interestingly structured
name. It'spresently so irritating be-

Page 16

cause "donating to Jesus" excuses

religion's greed for the power of
money, escalating ever since the religion took its .organized form more
than fifteen centuries ago.
If we assume that the person of
Jesus actually existed at the time
tradition says he did, then on the
basis of the four gospels we discover
that Jesus was an itinerant and refractory Jewish mystic, self-assured and
outspoken; and are forced to see him
as resembling one of today's humanistic freethinkers. On good terms with
Publicans; Sadducees, and other

Thermidor

III

(August) 11981

lowly esteemed Palestinians, his view

of that day's Mosaic religion resembled that of today's cnucs of religionism and those others who roundly
deplore the constant,
meddlesome inroads into governmentalaffairs by one or another of the
various segments of institutionalized
christianism. Jesus disliked the Pharisaic orthodoxy of his time every bit
as much as today's Atheists controvert existing christianity no matter if
Protestant, Catholic, or of some
other stripe.
.
I'm taking into account here that

American

Atheist

Saul of Tarsus turned what might

have remained a humanistic doctrine
into an enterprise nowadays conducted for profit. The gospels reveal
Jesus to have been an averagely
decent human specimen. of mercurial temperament, rarely given to exuberant joy. Whether he lived or not,
the gospels indicate that this sobriety
induced his listeners to take him at
his word, and that many of them
thought him worth emulating as did
his twelve disciples. So, only by a big
stretch of the imagination could the
Jesus that antedated Saul's plotmanship serve today as a model for any
religiously bigoted politician or officeseeker.
Had Jesus been truly a man of
wisdom and lived accordingly he
would have known - and .being
honest would have pointed out that
he knew - that every person should
aim to live a life all his or her own,
and that no one should take either
him or the odd life he led as exemplary. Except for his advice to "do
unto others, etc." I for one certainly
wouldn't care to live in the way the
gospels plainly say that he did. Never
during all of my life has anything in
the so-called life of Jesus inspired me
to comport myself similarly. At nine
or ten I already saw the gospels as a
pointless compound of woe and needlessly narrated agony. Being a voracious reader, I by twelve concluded
that the Jesus of the gospels reveled
in tragedy - and inclined to display
his ability to face and withstand
'adverse circumstances, including no
few that he actually brought upon
himself, with a mixture of selfrighteousness and effrontery. Although humane, and no bully, I
thought Jesus in some instances was
rude beyond the limits of gentility.
~ Today, as I reflect about these and
other ruminations of my boyhood, I
realize that it was reasonable on my
.part in those days to deem as the
pinnacle of conceit Jesus' idea that
his solitary dying on the cross would
. serve to expiate the sins of all mankind present and future. I then
neither clearly understood nor believed that his dying would wipe out
my sins which, at the time, consisted
mostly in muddying my clothes, disobeying my parents and elders, raid-

Austin, Texas

ing the cookie crock, and knocking

pears, apples and cherries off our
neighbors' trees. And to this day I
remember how relieved and liberated
I felt after realizing that hail, floods,
thunder, fire, and lightning were natural phenomena - and not instruments with which Jesus could at will
maim or some other way punish me.
I'd feel dishonest were I today to
call Jesus wise. If we view him the
same as the protagonist in any story
and evaluate him, we discover that
the gospels offer us less information
than does a novelette or a one-act
drama about its leading figure. And
if we forget the gush about his being a
god, what of any account remains?
Dozens of "saviors", long before
Jesus; performed miracles, were virginborn, healed the sick, revived the
"dead", died for mankind's sins, etc.;
and everyone of them promised 'a
heaven in return for observing the
commands devised by tribal society
- sometimes thousands of years
before - for its survival. Jesus of
course made an ideal subject for
dramatization. Saul of Tarsus made
him known on the northern shores of
the Mediterranean as "the Savior"
whom Atheism decries so acutely
nowadays.
It could be said of Atheism that it
is an outlook conducive to a life of
psychic contentment and happiness.
The Atheist, by having rejected religious superstitions, is mentally liberated. Truths that depress and panic
religious believers don't affect him.
He has faced right along that creature life is short and its ending coldly
bleak. He sees nothing of despair in
such facts. If facts such as these make
some people run panic-stricken to
church, how can the Atheists be at
peace with himself - he having
turned his back on religion's promise
of "redemption", on that eternally
blissful existence in "god's heaven",
and on the other sybaritic pleasures
beyond compare after he dies? Here
let's remember one small but important item: that, by rejecting such
vainglorious religious concepts, the
Atheist regains the sanity with which
he was endowed at birth - and now
enjoys everything that those malignant beliefs had induced him to denigrate. If he examines the matter of

Thermidor (August) 11981

IV

living through and through, he finds

that his life is the most precious of his
possessions and - to cap this - that
.helping others to similarly evaluate
and enjoy it is rewarding, satisfying,
and uniquely humane: all in all an
activity to which he can happily
devote his attention.
This lending of aid to one's neighbor, paradoxically, serves religion as
the barb upon which the preacher
hooks additional converts. The preacher knows that his listeners crave
happiness, and knows just as well
that religion can't provide it. He
therefore arbitrarily promises it to
them - but after death only - in
exchange for their obedience to him
now. But, please remember he promises them a bogus heaven while saying that all this is partly "doing god's
work". Thus appealing to his believers' selfish desires, he's a long way
from altruistically rendering assistance which, as I pointed out, makes
both such an Atheist and the person
he helped as contented as a pair of
mice at a Swiss cheese. Such conduct
is a matter of humanistic mutuality,
not christianistic charity: both parties enjoy its outcome, each realizing
that a life enjoyed is the lone thing
able to make life fully worth living.
Thus an enormous gulf separates
today's religious hucksters and today's forthright Atheists: The religionist adjures his audience to penitently
bow their heads and be obedient; the
American Atheist invites them to
look up at the stars and be happily
free. ~

Page 17

NATURE'S WAY
GERALD THOLEN

WHO'S WHO IN ANTI-SEMITICS?

One of the more frequently used words in our world is . do know that somewhere among the agonizing sound of
"anti-semitic." Especially since World War II, the word has
bombs and gunfire from the Middle East there have been
faint cries of "quit" giving those damn planes and tanks to
experiencedhigh mileage. The mere mention of that time
worn expression immediately brings forth feelings of paramaniacs." It seems like an absurd foreign policy to send
noia, pity; or hatred, depending upon the circumstance of its
military hardware to both sides of a political, war-oriented
controversy. We can only be helping the Arabs and the Jews
usage.
What does it really mean? Or rather, what is the intended
to kill each other more easily.
meaning? Most commonly, we hear that it is intended to
Meanwhile, Mr. Begin, almost single-handedly, is not
denote an ingrained hatred of Jewish individuals. If that's
only causing hatred of Jews by Arabs, but he is also causing
so, I suppose the first question one should answer is, "What
a great deal of love loss for the Jews by other nations of the
is a Jew?" According to the Random House Dictionary, a
world. He must surely be VERY anti-semitic! I can't
Jew is I. a person whose religion is Judaism. 2. one of a
imagine why he should be so thoughtless of his own fellow
scattered 'group of people that traces its descent from the
Israeli citizens. Perhaps he can't rise above his terrorist
biblical hebrews or from postexilic adherents of Judaism;
background.
Israelite. 3. a subject of the ancient kingdom of Israel. Now,
I have many Jewish friends. By that I mean, both Jewish
according to these definitions, the word seems to have a and ex-Jewish (in a religious sense). I've said this before: I
pluralistic meaning. Referring to definition I, I could say don't "hate" any of them and never have. On the contrary, I
that I know a lot of Jews who aren't really Jews, simply
have a great deal in common with ex-Jews who became
because they became Atheists. Although they were not born
Atheists. In a similar fashion, I abandoned my protestant
"faith." I get along well with ex-Jews. I also get along well
in Israel or have never seen Israel, some of them still refer to
with my friends who are "Jewish" Jews, to coin an expresthemselves as Jews, others as ex-Jews,
Does a christian who "converts" to Judaism autosion. On many occasions I have discussed religion and,
Atheism with Jews without the slightest hatred or intolmatically fall victim to alleged anti-Jewish animosity? Does
erance. Quite often we joked about our respective viewhe qualify for the same prejudice as those who are "born"
points. I regard them all as friends and acquaintances.
Jewish?
I do, however, reserve the right to be intolerant of those
I'm beginning to feel as though part 'of this ongoing
ignorant dolts who cry "anti-semitic" because Atheists won't
publicity is no more than a "nobody loves me" syndrome.
Truly, injustices have been perpetrated against Jews. Also, make comfortable, accommodating circumstances for the
millions and millions of others have faced injustices. On the Jewish religious philosophy. (One religion is as illogical as
other hand, there has been a great deal of assistance given to another and all of them are insanity of varying severity.) By
Jews, not only by other Jews,but by many other peoples and the same token, and in spite of my lifelong desire to be
nations as well. At no time in history has more aid been friendly toward everyone, I cannot be tolerant of people
given to a particular race, group, nation, or religious who shout "Communist .." at someone who may criticize
assemblage (or whatever the word Jew implies) than has certain deplorable political practices in our nation.
It's about time people started getting their heads straight
recently been given to Israel. Are all peoples of the world
eternally indebted to Israel because of past injustices? Is our about anti-this or anti-that and began thinking in terms of
debt to the Israelis so great that no one will ever be able to people simply being people. Shalom'
consider it paid? Are people eventually going to have to be
massacred worldwide to settle the account?
I have no intention of offending anyone, but it's becoming
apparent that there is ONE person on Earth today who
really has the qualifications to be called anti-semitic:
Menachem Begin. Think about it for a moment. The word
semite ultimately includes more people than just those in
Israel. Arabs are also semites, including the Palestinians, the
Saudis, the Iraquis, et al. Mr. Begin drops bombs on his
neighbors whenever he sees fit. Doesn't this qualify him as
being rather "anti"? But, maybe I have misplaced values. I

Page 18

Thermidor (August) 11981

American Atheist

Fred Woodworth

RELIGIOUS BIGOTS
THREATEN FREE SOCIETY
Christian busybodies
want to control YOU R life. The U
nited States is. currently acting as host for a parasitic swarm of'
religious superpatriots
and authoritarians
whose idea of improving society is for TH EM to tell YOU what to do and how
to live. What's worse, they want to make laws that incorporate
their moralistic
superstitions
so that life will be difficult or
even impossible for anyone who has sufficient education
or
enough plain common sense to reject the absurd edicts of the
'Bible.'
While the William Jennings Bryans of the past have dropped dead, so that their particular voice of intolerance and delusion is no longer heard; and while the Billy James Hargises
of yesteryear have been caught in sexual escapades with their
students
of both sexes (thus shutting up another source of
smug preachments),
a seemingly unending crowd of lunatics
rushes in to replace them. In the last ten years we have seen
the rise to sickening prominence of Anita Bryant on a wave of
homophobia
and fundamentalist
Bible-thumping,
the appear
ance of such figures as Texas jailer-for-Christ
Lester Roloff and
his Jesusist horror farm for 'wayward' young people. We have
seen increasing numbers of foul 'evangelists'
like Cecil Todd
and Jerry Falwell, and the emergence of grim legions marching
under the banner of a so-called 'moral,' so-called 'majority:
goose-stepping
forth to smite Constitutional
guarantees
of
rights with the swords of Jesus.
These grotesque bigots, crawling forth out of the babbling
pages of the book that contains the sanctified ravings of ignorant men from centuries ago,.are making felt a definite pressure of fanatical opposition
to much hard-won progress in the
area of human rights and freedom F ROM religion. Moves are
afoot to turn public schools into religious indoctrination
centers, where students are taught to speak to nobody as if there
were somebody there, to fill their heads with the dim legends
from unenlightened
past as substitute
for the findings of scientific inquiry.
Local laws regulating what is said in print are beginning to
be passed again; sexual conduct is once more falling under the
purview of religious-oriented
or Bible-motivated
statutes. As
Puritanism and censorship hurry on apace, erotic literature is
branded as unlike other literature, and is denied the freedom
of the press; erotic associations are declared to be unprotected
by the quarantees
of freedom of association.
Plainly, these
glittering-eyed
fundamentalists
have a desire to bliqh] modern
society, as far as they can, with the rancid poison that corroded humanity's
social conditions centuries ago. Next come blue
laws, religious test, and the stocks and dunking stool.
Biblical commands
figure prominently
in this lunatic rush
toward social fascism, and, as such, are passively accepted by
many people who think they know what the Bible says, but
who would be vastly shocked if they did in fact bother to read

Austin,

Texas

Thermidor

~/

it. They do not .know, because the archaic language has stopped them or perhaps just because they have never bothered to
look and find out, that the Bible is a volume filled, not with
wisdom or enlightenment
but with brutality
and stupidity.
The edicts of this 'holy' book are replete with grossness and injunctions to do what is clearly the WRONG thing. Chronicle
after chronicle details 'god's' orders to kill and rape, to deceive, to menace or harry anyone who is arbitrarily singled out
for godly abuse. But the fundamentalist
preachers, the gospel
lobbyists, and morbid fanatics who are trying to change laws
and social custom DO know about all this and are so morally
perverted and ethically depraved that it bothers them not in
the least.
Yet these Biblical commands
are absolutely
inimical to a
free society. The attitude of the Bible toward women' is contemptuous;
toward unbelievers it is furious; towards persons of
homosexual orientation
it is rabid with insane rage. But, just as
the Ayatollah
Khomeini was praised and welcomed at first by
the very people who stood the most to lose from his placement in power,'in
this country we find that women, homosexuals, unmarried couples, publishers, science researchers, and
others whom we would expect to react with disbelief and outrage have been notably silent in oppositiorrro
the new wave,
and horrifyingly
enough some of these have even joined pop
churches that pretend to cater to their interests, a ruse to lull
them into overlooking
how their interests are actually being
systematically
bulldozed
by other excrescences
of the selfsame religion.
Atheists of America urge the ABANDONMENT
of belief
in religious superstitions.
No religion is superior to the Jim
Jones cult of death; none is on a higher moral plane than the
cheapest howlings of Jerry Falwell. When interests are tallied'
up, those of a free citizenry do not coincide with the multidraped monolith
of Christianity's
churches, which are always
in utter harmony in their unvarying direction of push: a push
toward dictatorship
by themselves and a return to the worst
abominations
of the Dark Ages. People who would be free of
moral dictates concerning their conduct in matters that pertain
only to themselves have no business being part of any Christian church, since it is part and parcel of Christianity
to order
and compel behavior in .accordance with antique ideas. People
of intelligence and creativity must be awakened to their peril,
and made aware that the function
of Christianity
in all ages
has been to oppose whatever they tried to do that was in any
way new or progressive.
Christianity
has CONSISTENTLY
hated independence
in thought and action, and in a not-too
distant past Christianity
would have put us to death for such
writings as these. Undoubtedly
many of the very fundamentalist assassins of freedom at large in our country at this moment
wish they could do so now, but lack the power.

(August)

11981

Page 19

Any freedom that we have today was obtained only after

prolonged resistance to the backward policies of the churches.
Notice that the 'Moral Majority' group (which is really a de-.
praved, criminal minority), makes use of such developments of
science as radio and television electronics, in spite of the fact
that this group is the direct intellectual heir of those who
hindered and opposed the very researches of science that made
these possible. If fundamentalist religionists were really honest
in their efforts to 'get back to the Bible: they would give up
every material development, from antibiotics and amplifiers to
printing presses, television, and xerography, that science has
had to create in spite of them. If the likes of Jerry Falwell had
had their way, Jerry Falwell himself would not be preaching to
the world over a satellite relay; but would instead still be
screeching from a stump to a crowd of worm- infested, liceridden savages huddling at the mouths of caves.

Christianitv and the current flood of sick evanqelisrn rushing over this country are promoted by wealthy and powerful
interests which desire to enforce blind obedience and prostration before 'traditional' values - i.e, one that suits them to
have other people follow. The religious bigots form a highly
significant threat to many liberties that we have already, and
many others that we need and ought to have.
Tne issues of authoritarianism and religion need to be seriously thought about by every person who is concerned about
his or her rights and freedom. We cannot afford to allow Biblethumping, sexually repressed or mentally unbalanced individuals to make Law out of .their disturbances or greediness and
to thus bind everyone to their dictates,
Think where we'd be now if Christianty had prevailed in all
that it wished to in 'the past,
.

S(f.ct i
\Co~~

\~
Aren't they a little young
for that type of reading
Pastor?

Page 20

Thermidor (August) 11981

American Atheist

Teaching Philosophy and Corrupting the

Youth
by Dr. Dipankar Chatterjee,
We philosophers are members of the world's second
oldest profession. Etymologically, 'philosophy' means
'love of wisdom'; so a professional philosopher is a
professional lover of wisdom. But perhaps that is not the
best way to be, because, as is well known, professional
lovers are the worst of all lovers. To be a professional in
anything often takes the fun out of doing it.
However, professional philosophy has its own reward. A good part of such a profession involves teaching, and this is where the fun part comes in. In the
classrooms a philosophy teacher gets a chance to
corrupt young people's minds, and that is exciting.
Socrates was the first known philosopher who was
charged with this crime, and he was condemned to die.
These days, however, we are spared of hemlock, though
I tend to think that Socrates was the more fortunate
because he at least didn't have to drink the Union's
coffee. Besides, he was not under the pressure of
publish or perish.
To a philosopher, as to a true scientist, nothing is
sacred or profane. To instill this idea in the minds of
students is often a rather difficult task, but a truly open
attitude conducive to philosophic understanding demands nothing less than that. Pursuit of truth and
dogmatism do not go together; but to many people to
help students to be less dogmatic is almost equivalent to
corrupting their precious souls. This is one charge a
philosophy teacher must anticipate and must know how
to live with. In fact, some philosophers develop a martyr
complex in their pursuit of the Socratic profession.
When I said that a philosopher holds nothing sacred, I
did not mean that he cannot have a set of values. In fact,
he must have some values that he can relate to his
students. He must value reason and rationality (but he
should also know their limits), he should appreciate a
life of beauty, harmony, and sensual delight (this can
mean going beyond drinking fruit punch), and he must
- believe in the basic humanistic ideas, such as: all men
(soon to be all people) are equal. (Philosophers are not
particularly convinced by those people who claim that
_the fad of streaking on college campuses proved beyond
doubt that all men are not created equal.) Besides
equality, he ought to value justice and friendship, but he
should not waste too much time explaining to his students why even the best of friends cannot attend each
other's funerals. A philosopher respects these values
because as a rational and moral being he appreciates
their place in a good life. However, nothing ought to be
fixed or sacred to him; he must cultivate an open and
flexible mind.

Austin, Texas

Assistant

Professor,

Philosonhy

Doqrnatisrn in any form, including branding things as

profane, is a hindrance to the pursuit of truth.
That
does not mean that a seeker of truth should not get
turned off by certain things, such a glorification of war
and violence, or by any kind of bigotry and chauvinism.
Actually, he should disavow fanaticism in any form, but
he must try to understand what makes people fanatics
in the first place. There could be fanatics of either
extreme. A person who is bent on proving that it is
indeed groovy to drink beer, smoke pot, and copulate
copiously, may not be any more open-minded than a
pathological prude, who is a person with this nagging
fear that somebody is having fun somewhere.
Religious fanatics are of a special breed. Always selfrighteous, cruel, and pathetically confused, but often
rather amiable, with a Pat Boone type smile, they can
perpetuate more harm than a person who openly
resorts to violence. What is worse, they also have a
philosopher-like martyr syndrome. The only thing they
should be commended for is that they make heaven look
a lot less exciting and hell more attractive. The prospect
of spending the rest of eternity-which
is a hell of long
time-with
somebody like Billy Graham, who we all
know is going to go to heaven, is really boring if not
scary. Hell, on the other hand, is where the party is.
To avoid perpetuating dogmatism in any form, the
philosophy teacher must encourage students to explore
all sides of an issue, yet, he must at the same time foster
methodological rigor so that the students know that not
anything goes in philosophy. To help students appreciate the value of such a disciplined objectivity which
is conducive to critical thinking and open-mindedness is
the chief task of a philosophy teacher. To benefit from a
philosophy class, students must engage in a critical
exploration of the very foundation of their beliefs and
value systems. Accordingly, teaching philosophy does
not primarily consist of imparting informations. If a
philosophy teacher lets students believe that he has the
truth which the students must passively accept, then he
is doing a disservice to philosophy.
A student of philosophy is geared towards a cultivation of mind which would not accept passive conformity, nor would it go for deceptively simplistic answers to complex issues. In fact, teaching philosophy is
meant to provide a learning experience where students
are helped to discover that it is more important to find
out how one arrives at an answer than to know what the
answer is. If this constitutes corrupting the youth, so be
it. In a mass society bent on systematic moronization
where education is a commodity, philosophers should
regard such corruption of youth as their sacred duty.

Thermidor (August) 11981

Page 21

THE AMERICAN ATHEIST RADI~SERIES

THE SEVENTH
COMMANDMENT

Hello there/this is Madalyn Murray O'Hair, American

Atheist, backto talk with you again. I continue with
Joseph Lewis, recent American Atheist writer, who
analyses the ten commandments one by one in his
documented sociological study of the bible.
The seventh commandment says merely, "Thou shalt
not commit adultery," and it is to be found in Exodus
20:14 and Deuteronomy 5:18. Again, we must remember that this is the Protestant seventh commandment. Since the Roman Catholics dropped the commandment of not worshipping idols, the numbering
system of the commandment for that church is different.
This commandment, of course, hasto do with sex. Sex
has been under such a taboo in Puritan America that for
centuries the discussion of sex or sexual conduct has
been virtually prohibited. Most severe penalties have
been inflicted onany who strove to throw any light on
the subject. Even today the matter of sex education in
the public schools creates hostilities. the present pornographic flood which i.ssvervwhere in t.he United States
is an over-reaction which came with the breakthrough
- the breakaway - from that Puritanism."
Joseph Lewis asks, "Why should any act dealing with
sex be condemned as a sin? I say that there are no sins of
the flesh, there is only ignorance. Ignorance is the,cause
of mankind's misery. The ecclesiast receives his sexual
knowledge from the bible. Outside of this commandment, the only references to sex in the bible deai with
rape, incest, sodomy, whoremongering, sexual; perversions and other reprehensible deeds within the
sexual realm. There is not one enlight-ening truth about
sex within its pages. Throughout the bible's eleven
hundred pages, the words "adultery", "fornication",
"whore" and "whoredom" are mentioned more than
5000 times, while the word "morality" is not mentioned
once."
What, anyway', is adultery? Jesus Christ says in Matthew 5:28, "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust
after her hath committed aduitery with heralreadv in
his heart." Did Mary com mit adultery by fornicati ng with
the 'holy: ghost, who certainly was not her husband?
Did Elizabeth commit adultery with "the angel of the
lord" who caused her pregnancy and the birth of John
the Baptist? Is polygamy adultery? Did' all of the Old
Testament monarchs commit adultery? What about
Solomon who had seven hundred wives and three
hundred concubines?
'
The Roman Catholic Church condemns as adulterous

Page 22

Thermidor

(August)

the marriage of a Roman Catholic with a Protestant.

Does the man commit adultery or-only the woman?
If adultery is an act which the bible god seeks to
prevent, then a child born of an adulterous union should
in some way be distinguished from children born in the
bonds of matrimony. But children born out of wedlock
are no different from children born in wedlock.
How do we find out if someone committed adultery?
The bible has the answer for that as far as women are
concerned. This is found in Numbers, 5: 11-31. It begins
with, "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying ... " and
then the test is described. It is only to be used in the
instance described, as far as the husband is concerned.
"And the spirit of jealousy come upon him, and he be
jealous of his wife." Whenever this jealousy is aroused,
in god's direct words, the solution is as follows:
, "Then shall the man bring his wife unto the
priest ....
"And the priest shall take holy water in an
earthen vessel; and of the dust that is in the floor of
the tabernacle the priest shall take, and put it into
, the water ....
"Then the priest shall charge the woman with an
oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the
woman, the lord make thee a curse and an oath
among thy people, when the lord doth make thy
thigh to rot, and thy belly to swell;
"And this water that causeth the curse shall go
into thy bowels, to make thy belly to swell, and thy
thigh to rot ... "
"And he shall cause the woman to drink the
bitter water that causeth the curse ... rr
There is no similar "test" in the bible anywhere for the
man who cheats on his wife, or for the wife to settle the
matter of her jealousy and suspicion.
Then, what about incest, sodomy, sexual perversions, '
homosexuality, lesbianism? None of these are prohibited in any commandment. Only adultery is prohibited.
By the fourth century of the christian era, this had
come to be interpreted that if a man fornicated with a
married woman other than his wife, this was adultery. If
he fornicated with an unmarried woman this was
merely fornication and he was guilty of nothing. However, a married woman was guilty of adultery no matter
with whom she fornicated.
This became such a hard and fast rule that in our own
nation, even today, in order to get a divorce in New York
one must prove adultery on the part of the opposite
spouse. Men could constantly "put away" their wives,

11981

American

Atheist

but women could never do the same thing.

In fact, one of the laws of the old Testament is the
duty of any male to impregnate his brother's wife if the
brother dies. In fact, god killed one man who refused to
do this. This is shown in Genesis 38:7-10.
Judah married a daughter of a Canaanite whose
name was Shuah. They had three sons - the oldest one
was Er, the second was Onan and the third was Chezib.
Judah took a wife for Er, his first born, and her name
was Tamar. But Er "was wicked in the sight of the lord;
and the lord slew him" - just like that, wham bam. We.
have no idea how Er was wicked, how the lord judged
him, or where and how the lord killed him. But the lord
was takinq an intense and personal interest in this
particular family. To fulfill the Levirate law the father
told the second son, Onan, that he had to "Go in unto thy
brother's wife ... "which meant he had toforrucate with
her and to take her as a wife. If he had one wife already,
she would simply be the second wife. Well, Onan did not
care to do this. So - to read the bible here: " ... when
he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on
the ground." "And the thing which he did displeased the
Lord: wherefore he slew him also."
The lord was apparently in the tent that night when
the fornicating was going on and he saw what happened. This has come to be a big tenet of the church. It is
called Onanism in theology and it is called medically
coitus interruptus, It means that the man withdraws his
penis from the woman before orgasm and permits his
seminal fluid to discharge outside of her vagina. It is
used as a method of birth control which is acceptable to
the Roman Catholic Church, the Jewish religion and the
protestant religions.
This partiallv completed act was clearly adultery. Yet
it was commanded by the lord and the lord himself saw
Orran's attempt not be involved in adultery, and because
Onan was determined not to father a child by his
brother's wife, the lord slew Onan. If the lord commands
adultery and slays a person who will not be involved in
it, how then can the same lord prohibit adultery?
What do we think about prostitution? Pope Julius II
instituted a brothel in Rome which was regulated by
strict rules after the model of religious houses. None but
good Christians were admitted. Jews and Infidels were
not permitted to enter. The institution was so sacred
that it could not thus be defiled. To maintain its strictly
religious air, it was closed on Good Friday and Easter.
The foundation prospered under the patronage of Pope
Leo X and Pope Clement VII and part of the proceeds
were devoted to providing for the comfort of the Holy
.Sisters of the Order of St. Mary Magdalene,
Yet when Linnaeus made his great discoveries in
botany, religious people tried to suppress them on the
ground that they were based on the discovery of the
sexes in plants and were therefore calculated to cause
immorality.
What are we to say about Pope Sergius II's bastard
son who sat in the pontifical chair? What about John XII
who actually turned the Lateran Palace into a brothel?
What about Pope John XXII who was condemned for

Austin. Texas

notorious incest, adultery, and homicide? He confessed

to having violated over two hundred maidens, including
a number of nuns. But after being deposed as pope he .
became Dean of the Sacred College.
What should be said about adultery and the oractice
of the 'right of the lord' of the manor (Le droit du
Seigneur)? In primitive Christianity and other religions,
the priests had the right to deflower young girls. When
priests lost power over the people due to the decline of
superstition, the secular rulers usurped, wherever pos"sible, the privileges which the priests had enjoyed. The
right of the 'first night' was one of these. The peasant's
..bride was required to be deflowered by the lord of the
. manor. This continued through the age which we call
now "medieval feudalism". Indeed, some theologians
say that the first communion is a survival of the
deflowering of a maiden by the priests in early times.
Of all ofthis Lewis says, "This commandment was not
intended to guard the sanctity of the home. The ethics of
personal sexual conduct up to the time of the biblical
Jews had not yet evolved universally to that state of
morality which condemned adultery as an act of moral
misbehavior. It was still associated with sinful implication, not founded on morality. It was a Taboo based
upon sympathetic magic."
What was this sympathetic magic? Disloyalty on the
part of one was thought to affect the welfare of the
other. Under this superstition, it was believed that the
unfaithfulness of the wife would prove injurious to the
husband's welfare, and adultery therefore became a
taboo. Some of these ideas lingered until recent times,
The Sarawak tribes believed that if wives committed
adultery when their husbands were searching for earnphor in the jungle, the camphor obtained by the men
would evaporate. In Madagascar, it is believed that ifthe
wife is unfaithful while the husband is away at war this
will cause him to be wounded or killed. Elephant
hunters in East Africa feel that if the wives are unfaithful in their absence, this gives the elephant power
over his pursuer. If a Wagogo hunter is attacked by a lion
or is unsuccessful in the hunt, it means the wife is
misbehaving at home. The Moxos Indians of Bolivia
thought that a hunter's unfaithful wife caused him to be
bitten by a serpent when on the hunt.
It is because of this belief in sympathetic magic that
the belief arose that if a child is born with a birthmark it
is because of something the mother saw or heard or felt
during pregnancy.
But more tragic than this was the test to see if the
mother had been unfaithful and had borne a child of an
adulterous relationship. The child was thrown into the
river. If it floated, that proved its legitimacy. If it sank, it
was a bastard. This is thought by many to account for
the story of why Moses was put in the bulrushes. Moses
was the son of Amram, but Amram had married his
paternal aunt. According to Hebrew law, this was an
incestuous union.
If each child born out of an adulterous relationship
had been distinguished by some mark, many deaths of
infants would have been avoided. This tragic com-

Thermidor (August) 11981

Page 23

mandment has caused more difficulties than it has

avoided.
.
Even today, we have no idea what adultery is. Legal
and other dictionaries say that it is voluntary sexual
intercourse of a married person with someone other
than his or her lawful spouse. That accords with the
prevailing ideas in the United States. This does not have
the same meaning in many nations of Africa, in the
Polynesian and Eskimo countries or in many nations of
the Far East. Historically, the meaning of.the word has

changed. As evidenced by this review now, the real

meaning to those primitive persons who invented the
slogan is not really known to us.
Mr. Lewis concludes that we would all be much better
off if we simply had complete information and knowledge about all kind of sexual activities and if we made
our own rules based upon that knowledge and upon our
educated ideas of what is most probably best for the
human community as a whole and for each individual
who goes to make up a part of the whole.

CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING

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Address your reply to No. (whatthat number may be). Place

your sealed envelope in a letter to th
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