July 1989

A Journal of Atheist News and Thought

WHO DECIDES?
Abortion: "the most politically
divisive .domestic legal issue of
our time ...
II

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American Atheist

July 1989

A Journal of Atheist News and Thought

Guest Editorial
Madalyn O'Hair

36

Atheists face the question of ethics

head-on and find that "Behaving Ourselves" without religion is simpler
than Christians would think.

Two Supreme Court decisions may

be "Harbingers of a Decade" in which
state/ church separation questions
are settled on a local level.

Director's Briefcase
Jon G. Murray

Talking Back

When is a menorah not Jewish but a

nativity scene still Christian? The riddle is answered when "The Supreme
Court Sends a Message to Christians."
Cover art and design by Nicki
Jensen.

Ask A.A.

18

Who edited the Bible? What's being

done to get "In God We Trust" off our
currency? Should Atheists give television preachers a call?

The Probing Mind

Frank R. Zindler

38

Are professional creationists liars or

just hopelessly confused? A look at
the scientific importance of "The
Rock of Ages and the Age of Rocks"
helps answer that question.

American Atheist Radio Series

Madalyn O'Hair

Religion and the Environment

Victoria Branden

20

Though it is a cheap and easy solution,

politicians will soon find that praying
to their god won't make pollution and
overpopulation go away.

Who Decides?
Madalyn O'Hair

Volume 31, No.7

Austin, Texas

July 1989

Russian widow Helena Blavatsky

made a decent living as a spiritualist
medium until her tricks were exposed.
So she concocted "Theosophy" - a
religion which still survives today.

Under the Covers

23

The Supreme Court's recent decision

on abortion rights stilldoes not answer
the most basic question in the controversy: Who decides whether a woman
should bear a child?

45

48

Christians are now trying to call the

leader of the Third Reich an Atheist,
but a recent book, "Theologians under Hitler," demonstrates the moral
support (and endorsement) the church
gave him.

Letters to the Editor

50

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52
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American Atheist
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July 1989

American Atheist

Guest Editorial

Harbingers of a decade
n the day after the fourth of July members of their congregations in dicelebration of the birth of our rect face-to-face oral confrontations.
nation, fullycognizant of the prin- There it is that individual voters can be
ciples on which the nation was predicat- and are influenced by the rhetoric, the
ed, the Supreme Court of the United personalities, and the symbolic power of
States issued two decisions in related the church edifices which usually domstate/church cases which cast long and inate the landscapes of local communities.
ominous shadows into the future.
The entire abortion issue has been
The United States was rent asunder
thrown into these scattered arenas
in the 1860s over the issue of states'
rights. The Civil War stemmed from where the politically regressive and inthat controversy and not from the emo- tellectually repressing powers are in
tionally orchestrated issue of slavery. positions of dominance. Forgotten in
The situation in respect to abortion is the battle is the fact that there has been
now being used, as was that of slavery, only a short window of hope for progressive ideas, for the Bill of Rights of the
to cover the resurgent issue of states'
Constitution of the United States was
rights.
In that era it was the Supreme Court declared to be applicable to the states
which had been instrumental in empha- only as late as May 3, 1943, in Murdock
sizing the slavery issue when Roman v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (319
Catholic Chief Justice Roger B. Taney U.S. 105,63 S.Ct. 870, 87 L.Ed. 1292,146
issued the infamous "Dred Scott" deci- AL.R. 81). Now the process begins of
sion (Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 the whittling away of those liberties as
[1857])which held slaves to be the per- the Bill of Rights itself comes under
sonal property of their owners and attack.
The Webster v. Reproductive Health
which required that all runaway slaves
be returned to their masters. The federal Services decision reported here on pp.
government at that time was not sup- 23-35 gives rise to the question "Who
decides?" - and it is more than critical
portive of that maxim.
This time, however, the power of the because it extends beyond the abortion
federal government is cast as the ally of issue at hand, positing a premise for
states' rights, and the Supreme Court of future expansion of the idea of local opthe United States is again the instru- tion or states' rights.
In the second case, that of Allegheny
ment which posits abortion as the legal
vehicle through which those rights will County v. American Civil Liberties
first be firmly anchored as the last de- Union, reported in this month's "Director's Briefcase," the shadow cast is even
cade of this century looms ahead.
In the history of the human race, the more ominous, for it speaks to the influmost reactionary political trenches have ence and power of an extremely irratiobeen dug at "local option" levels, with nal religion of a miniscule percentage of
the most progressive outlook, generally, the people in our nation: Judaism. The
being that at a national level. This has American Atheist has carefully, heretobeen increasingly true with the United fore, analyzed the extraordinary power
States as it has expanded across a con- of this group in the influence it has on
tinent. The bastions of regressive poli- both international and domestic issues
tics have been local governments. The 'of the United States. Now, in the case of
churches' strengths have been rooted Allegheny, the Supreme Court of the
at that level where the priest, the rabbi, United States has sanctified Judaism's
and the minister can directly influence power. The legal precedents, the Lemon
tests for state/church separation, and
ruling case law should have required the
Madalyn O'Hair
premises upon which were cast the re-

t+J
I

Austin, Texas

July 1989

moval of a creche to appertain for the

removal of a menorah when both were
displayed in a seat of government.
The number of Jews in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, probably is less than the
number of Black Muslims. Yet, there will
never be a recognition of the symbolism
of that minority. Now, however, the
display of the menorah has been preapproved by the Supreme Court in
every seat of government across the
nation. What is more astounding is that
not one media, not one judicial spokesperson, not one law school, not one lawyer, not one politician across the entire
nation dared to raise a voice because of
the power of "the Jewish lobby." The
only adjective which can properly describe the situation is "disgusting."
The radical right wing fundamentalists, evangelicals, and other assorted
loons support and defend this inappropriate and shocking toadying to the
symbols of the most heinous religion
ever developed: Judaism.
American Atheists must not and cannot fall in with the lackeys who approve
of this unjustified fawning upon the
ignoble.
The Supreme Court of the United
States was wrong in both decisions: (1)
in returning the power of decision on the
issue of abortion to the states, and (2) in
its kowtowing approval of the governmental endorsement of a major symbol
of Judaism.
American Atheists was not surprised
by the latter decision and was convinced that the former would be forthcoming from this Court. Both decisions
only indicate the difficult years ahead in
which American Atheists must take the
lead in challenging these three regressive ideas: local option/states' rights,
the endorsement of religious symbolism
by the government, and the unfettered
power of the Supreme Court to sanctify
either. ~

Page 3

Director's Briefcase

The Supreme Court sends

a message to Christians
n the December 1988(vol. 30, no. 12)
issue of the American Atheist, I
wrote an extensive article entitled
"The True Meaning of Nativity Scenes."
In that article, I ended with a look at the
case of County of Allegheny et al. v.
American CivilLiberties Union, Greater
Pittsburgh Chapter, et aJ. (No. 87-2050),
which was accepted for review by the
Supreme Court on October 3, 1988
(U.S.L.W 3197, Oct. 4, 1988), together
with its companion cases Chabad v.
American Civil Liberties Union et al.
(No. 88-90) and City of Pittsburgh v.
American CivilLiberties Union, Greater
Pittsburgh Chapter, et al. (No. 88-96),
both also on application for certiorari to
the same court. At the time of the writing of that article, it was anticipated that
the Supreme Court would render a decision in the cases by July 1989.That is
exactly what happened. The decision
came on July 3, 1989, the same day as
the ruling by the Supreme Court in the
infamous Webster, Attorney General of
Missouri, et al. v. Reproductive Health
Services et al. (No. 88-605, July 3,1989),
concerning a Missouri statute regulating the performance of abortions, on
appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Eighth Circuit. That abortion
case received tremendous publicity
because of the hopes of the "Pro-Life"
forces that the case would be used by
the Court as a vehicle to overturn Roe
v. Wade (4lOU.S. 113[1973]),the standing legal precedent on the abortion
issue. The media coverage of the Webster case was so intense that it almost
completely overshadowed the decision
in Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh ACLU
The decision on the Pittsburgh case
had been long anticipated because it
was hoped that in it the justices would
more clearly define what was acceptable, vis-a-vis the First Amendment,' in
municipal Christmas displays than they
had in the reigning precedent decision
of 1984, Lynch v. Donnelly (465 U.S.
668). As it happened, the decision in
Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh

The creche is out; the

menorah is in. .

A graduate of the University of Texas

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

Jon G. Murray
Page 4

July 1989

ACLU relied heavily on that prior case.

A short review of the 1984 decision is
then in order to understand the current
ruling.

1984
Lynch v. Donnelly
On March 5, 1984, the Supreme
Court of the United States had issued
an opinion in the case of Dennis Lynch,
Mayor of Pawtucket, et al., v. Daniel
Donnelly et al. That case involved a
creche- or nativity scene which was
erected as part of a larger Christmas
display in a park owned by a nonprofit
organization and located in the heart of
the city's shopping district in Pawtucket,
Rhode Island." In addition to the creche,
the Christmas display contained
a Santa Claus House with a live
Santa distributing candy; reindeer
pulling Santa's sleigh; a live 4O-foot
Christmas tree strung with lights;
statues of carolers in old-fashioned
dress; candy-striped poles; a "talking" wishing well; a large banner
proclaiming "Seasons Greetings";

-Arnendment 1, Constitution of the United

States (ratified by eleven of the fourteen
States, by December 15, 1791):"Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" (U.S. Congress, House, The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution
of the United States of America, 90th Congress, 2d sess., 1968, H. Doc. No. 268).
2"3. a tableau of Mary, Joseph, and others
around the crib of Jesus in the stable at
Bethlehem, often built for display at Christmas. (Taken from French, taken from Old
High German: modification of kripja, crib)"
(The American College Dictionary [New
York: Harper, 1944]).
3 The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1989
(New York: Pharos Books, 1988) lists the
population of Pawtucket as 71,204 in 1980,
the latest statistical year available.
American Atheist

i
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1{...

'.'

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,,'

a miniature "village" with several

houses and a church; and various
"cut-out" figures, including those
of a clown, a dancing elephant, a
robot, and a teddy bear.'
The Pawtucket Christmas display
had been a part of the city celebration of
that holiday for forty years. The city purchased the creche in 1973 at a cost of
$1,365, but it was valued at $200 by the
time of the 1984 case. The erection and
dismantling of the creche cost the city
about $20 a year with nominal expenses
for lighting. It was reported to the court
in 1984that no money had been expended
on maintenance for the creche in the
previous ten years.>
Some Pawtucket residents and individual members of the Rhode Island
affiliate of the American Civil Liberties
Union filed suit in the U.S. District
Court for Rhode Island, challenging the
city's inclusion of the creche in the
annual display. The district court ruled
that the city's inclusion of a creche violated the Establishment Clause> because the city through that inclusion
had "tried to endorse and promulgate
religious beliefs,"7 and it permanently
enjoined (forbade) the city from including the creche in the Christmas display.
The case was appealed, and the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
affirmed (upheld) the lower court injunction.f The Supreme Court granted
certiorari (review) in 1983 and Lynch v.
Donnelly was argued October 4, 1983,
with the decision coming down in March
of the next year.
I shall not here review the entire opinion of the Court in Lynch v. Donnelly,

4The Supreme Court's opinion cites from

the lower, district court opinion, Donnelly v.
Lynch, 691 E2d 1029 (1982).
SLynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984).
6Donnelly u, Lynch, 525 E Supp.1150 (D.R.!.,
1981).
7525E Supp., at 1173.
8691E2d 1029 (1st Cir. 1982).
Austin, Texas

but instead refer the reader back to my

article in the December 1988 American
Atheist. It is important to the understanding of the Pittsburgh case decision,
however, to note a key part of the Lynch
decision which was laid down by Justice
O'Connor in her concurrence in that
case. It is the O'Connor concurrence
that the majority in the Pittsburgh case
used, in part, in arriving at its decision,
because that concurrence "provides a
sound analytical framework for evaluating governmental use of religious symbols." The framework consists of two
parts, according to the majority in the
Pittsburgh case:
First and foremost, the concurrence squarely rejects any notion
that this Court will tolerate some
government endorsement of religion. Rather, the concurrence recognizes any endorsement of religion as "invalid," [465 U.S.] at 690,
because it "sends a message to
nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the
political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored
. members of the political community." ld., at 688.
Second, the concurrence articulates a method for determining
whether the government's use of
an object with religious meaning
has the effect of endorsing reliJuly 1989

gion. The effect of the display depends upon the message that the
government's practice communicates: the question is "what viewers
may fairly understand to be the
purpose of the display." ld., at 692.
The inquiry, of necessity, turns
upon the context in which the contested object appears: "a typical
museum setting, though not neutralizing the religious content of a
religious painting, negates any
message of endorsement of that
content." Ibid. The concurrence
thus emphasizes that the constitutionality of the creche in that case
depended upon its "particular
physical setting," ibid., and further
observes: "Every government
practice must be judged in its
unique circumstances to determine whether it [endorses] religion." Id., at 694.9

The Pittsburgh cases

Given that crucial analysis from the
Lynch case, let us go over the fact situation that led to litigation in Pittsburgh
first before we get into the new decision.
The case in Pittsburgh'? arose out of
separate cases involving two recurring
winter holiday displays, both located on
public property in the downtown area.
The first of these was a creche placed
in the grand staircase of the Allegheny
County Courthouse, which was on display from November 26, 1986, to January 9, 1987. The County Courthouse is
owned by Allegheny County, and it
houses the offices of the county commissioners, controller, treasurer, sheriff,
and clerk of the court. The creche was
donated by the Holy Name Society, a

9Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh

ACLU, 87-2050,88-90, and 88-%, Opinion, p.
18.
lOThe World Almanac and Book of Facts
1989 (New York: Pharos Books, 1988) lists
the population of Pittsburgh as 387,490 in
1986.
PageS

Roman Catholic group.ll The county

has permitted the Holy Name Society to

display the creche since 1981. At the

crest of the manger shed was the figure
of an angel with a banner proclaiming
"Gloria in Excelsis Deo!" (Glory to God
in the Highest) .12 Surrounding the
llAccording to The Catholic Encyclopedia,
creche on three sides was a wooden
the primary object of the Society of the Holy
fence. On that fence was a plaque statName (Confraternity of The Most Holy
Name of God and Jesus) "is to beget due ing: "This Display Donated by the Holy
love and reverence for the Holy Name of Name Society." Around the creche, on
God and Jesus Christ. The secondary ob- the outside of the fence, was a floral
frame of red and white poinsettias
ject is to suppress blasphemy, perjury, oaths
of any character that are forbidden, profan- placed there by the city during the week
ity, unlawful swearing, improper language,
of December 2, 1986.Behind each of the
and, as far as the members can, to prevent
two fence endposts, Allegheny County
those vices in others (Pius IV, 13 April, placed two small conifers decorated
1564)."
with red bows. During weekday lunch
The roots of this society go back to 1274
hours from December 3 through Deand the Council of Lyons. Pope Gregory X
cember
23, 1986,the county invited high
selected the Dominicans to promote the
school choirs and other musical groups
Holy Name ideals in a letter to the master
general of the order dated September 20, to perform Christmas carol programs.
The county dedicated its 1986 Christ1274. "In the sixteenth century Emperor
Charles V [(1500-58),Holy Roman emperor
mas carol program to world peace and
(1519-56)]and King Philip II[(1527-98),king of the families of POWs and MIAs of the
Spain (1556-98)],moved by the prevalence
Vietnam conflict. The creche was unof blasphemy and sacrilege, exhorted and doubtedly the central figure and focal
encouraged the Dominicans to spread the point of the courthouse's grand stairdevotion and to establish the society throughcase, the "main" entrance to that buildout their dominions."
Great encouragement was given to the ing.
The second display was an eighteendevelopment of the society by pope after
foot
Chanukah= menorah'< placed just
pope, all of whom richly endowed it with indulgences. In May 1896, Pope Leo XIII outside the City-County Building, some
decreed that the bishops might dispense
blocks away, next to a forty-five-foot
from the Clementine decree requiring that
decorated Christmas tree:
there should be only one confraternity in a
town or city. "Following the example set in
the Archdiocese of New York, 21 May, 1882,
they have been formed into diocesan unions
under a director general appointed by the
ordinary ....
"They are required to receive Holy Communion in a body at least once every three
months; in most places the rule proscribes
Communion on the second Sunday of every
month, when they may gain plenary and
partial indulgences granted by Gregory XIII.
A complete list of indulgences, all of which
may be applied to the souls in purgatory, is
contained in the 'Pocket Manual of the Holy
Name Society' ... by the Dominican Father
McKenna .... In 1907the monthly publication
of 'The Holy Name Journal' (New York) was
begun by Dominican Fathers." The Catholic
Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (New York: Robert
Appleton Co., 1910),p. 420.
Page 6

The 45-foot tree occupies the central position beneath the middle
archway in front of the Grant
Street entrance to the City-County
Building; the 18-foot menorah is
positioned to one side. IS
The City-County Building is jointly
owned by the city of Pittsburgh and
Allegheny County. The city's portion of
the building includes responsibility for

12Luke 2:13-14: "And suddenly there was

with the angel a multitude of the heavenly
host praising God, and saying, Glory to God
in the highest, and on earth peace, good will
toward men."
July 1989

the Grant Street entrance which has

three rounded arches supported by
columns. The Christmas tree was erected

l3Also spelled Hanukkah, "the Feast of

Dedication, a Jewish festival celebrating the
purification of the Temple in the time of the
Maccabean revolt. On the 25th of Kislev
(December), 167 B.C., during the religious
persecution of the Jews by the Seleucid
Antiochus Epiphanes, the altar of the Temple
was polluted with pagan sacrifices." The
Jews eventually defeated the Seleucids and
cleansed the Temple, rebuilt the sanctuary,
consecrated the courts, made a new sacrificial altar and holy vessels then " 'they
burned incense on the [incense] altar and
lighted the lamps on the lampstand, and
these gave light in the Temple. They placed
bread on the table and hung up the curtains
... ' (1 Macc. 4:50-51).Then, on the 25th of
Kislev, 164 B.C., three years to the day after
the pollution of the altar, the new altar was
dedicated with sacrifices, song, music, and
joyous worship for eight days (vv. 52-58).
Judas and the people determined that those
eight days of dedication should be celebrated
annually beginning with the 25th of Kislev
(December; v. 59). Hanukkah thus became
the only Jewish festival not ordained in the
Hebrew Bible....
"It was apparently the relighting of the
Temple candelabras that led to the festival
also taking the name 'lights' (Josephus Antiquities 12:7:7). Eventually it became customary for Jews to light a special Hanukkah
candelabra in the home, adding one light
each night during the festival. A legendary
story (t.Sabb. 21b) of a small cruse of holy
oil discovered at the cleansing of the Temple
that was miraculously able to light the
Temple lamp for eight days until more oil
could be supplied has supplanted the origins
of the festivalrites" (Harper's Bible Dictionary,
PaulJ. Achtemeier, gent. ed. [San Francisco:
Harper & Row, 1985], p. 216).
14"[A] candelabrum with eight branches,
used by Jews at Hanukkah to commemorate
this event. Each night an additional candle is
lit until finally all are lit on the last night" (The
World Book Dictionary, vol. 2 [Chicago:
Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971]).
ISAllegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh
ACLU, 87-2050,88-90, and 88-96, Opinion, p.
40.
American Atheist

_;at

lOJj

by city employees on November 17,

1986. Subsequent to that the city placed
a sign entitled "Salute to Liberty," and
bearing the mayor's name (Caliguiri), at
the foot of the tree. The sign stated:
During this holiday season, the
City of Pittsburgh salutes liberty.
Let these festive lights remind us
that we are the keepers of the
flame of liberty and our legacy of
freedom.
The city has allowed the display of the
menorah at the Grant Street entrance
of the City-County Building since 1982.
"The menorah is owned by Chabad," a
Jewish group, but is stored, erected,
and removed each year by the city."17

16"Chabad is a combination of the initials of

'Chochmah,' 'Binah,' and 'Daath,' the highest
virtues in the Kabbalistic system. Daath
(knowledge), Chochmah (wisdom) and
Binah (intelligence) are three sephirot on the
Kabbalistic tree." The Chabad is a group
within the Lubavitch, the largest of Hasidic
bodies. Hasidism is a Kabbalistic Judaism
with its origins in the Ukraine. Lubavitch
Hasidism began in 1773 in Lithuania. The
Agudas Chassidas Chabid of the United
States of America and Canada was formed
in the mid-1920sby the sixth generation from
the founder, Rabbi Schneersohn, who met
with President Hoover when he visited the
United States in 1929.By 1970 Lubavitcher
organizations existed in 56 U.S. cities. (J.
Gordon Melton, The Encyclopedia of American Religions, vol. 2 [Wilmington, NC:
McGrath Publishing Co., 1978],pp. 321-22.)
"Kabbalists believe the world can be
grasped through numbers and letters, and
that their job is to discover the meaning
hidden in the numbers and letters through
traditional methods. The number 'ten' is the
basic organizing principle of the universe.
Through the ten numbers (sephirot), the
basic working principles of lifeare organized
and are pictured in the Sephirotic tree. The
Sephirot are emanations of God, who is at
the top of the tree. Man climbs the tree,
through magick, to the divine" (Ibid., p. 252).
17Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh
ACLU, Syllabus, p. I.
Austin, Texas

The Greater Pittsburgh Chapter of

the American Civil Liberties Union and
seven local residents sued, seeking a
permanent injunction to prevent Allegheny County from displayingthe creche
and the city of Pittsburgh from displaying the menorah as violations of the
First Amendment's
Establishment
Clause, which states, "Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, ... " The district court,
relying on Lynch, denied relief. The U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
reversed the district court on the basis
of Lemon v. Kurtzman. 18The ruling was

18Lemonv. Kurtzman (403U.S. 602), decided

June 28, 1971,contains what has come to be
known as the "Lemon Test," which has been
discussed and/or applied in every state/
church separation case reviewed by the
Supreme Court since. That "test" is outlined
at 403 U.S. 612:
Every analysis in this area must
begin with consideration of the cumulative criteria developed by the Court
over many years. Three such tests
may be gleaned from our cases. First,
the statute must have a secular legislative purpose [Epperson v. Arkansas,
393U.S. 97 (1968)];second, its principal
or primary effect must be one that
neither advances nor inhibits religion,
Board of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S.
236,243,88 S.Ct. 1923,1926,20L.Ed.2d
1060 (1968); finally the statute must
not foster "an excessive government
entanglement with religion." Walz,
[Walz v. Tax Commission, 397 U.S.
664 (1970)]supra, at 674, 90 S.Ct., at
1414.
July 1989

that each display violated the Establishment Clause "because each has the impermissible effect of endorsing religion."19Rehearing en banc20 was denied
by a 6 to 5 vote. Allegheny County, the
city of Pittsburgh, and the Jewish group
Chabad each filed petitions for certiorari to the Supreme Court, which granted
all three.
Justice Blackmun delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court in which Justices O'Connor, Stevens, Marshall, and
Brennan joined in various parts, lining
up against Chief Justice Rehnquist and
Justices White and Scalia, who dissented
with regard to the creche. Now, with regard to the menorah, Chief Justice
Rehnquist and Justices Kennedy, White,
Scalia, Blackmun, and O'Connor, though
for differing reasons, concurred on that
symbol's constitutionality as displayed,
while Justices Brennan, Marshall, and
Stevens dissented, feeling that the majority should have ruled on the menorah
with the same logic as with regard to the
creche. There were then a 5-4 decision
against the creche and a 6-3 decision
upholding the menorah.

The justices and the creche

I want to first examine the opinion of
the Court with regard to the creche. I
have said that this part of the opinion
was based on Lynch. The crux of the
reliance on that prior case was stated by
the Court as follows:

19842E2d 655 (1988).

20Federal appellate courts consist of a number of judges, greater than three, depending
on the size of the circuit area from which
appeals come. Out of the entire group of
judges, three are usually randomly selected
to sit on each ease taken on appeal. Those
three judges form a "panel," After a panel
rules on a given case, either side can request
an en bane rehearing of the case, that is by
the entire contingent ofjudges in the appellate
circuit which can be as many as twenty,
sitting all at once. En bane review is not
often granted.
Page 7

Thus, despite divergence at the

bottom line, the five Justices in
concurrence and dissent in Lynch
agreed upon the relevant constitutional principles: the government's
use of religious symbolism is
unconstitutional if it has the effect
of endorsing religious beliefs, and
the effect of the government's use
of religious symbolism depends
upon its context. 21
In other words, the majority finding
that the creche was unconstitutional
was based on the assumed effect that
viewing it had on Pittsburgh residents
and the context, or physical setting, in
which it was found. The Court explained
it this way:
Since Lynch, the Court has
made clear that, when evaluating
the effect of government conduct
under the Establishment Clause,
we must ascertain whether "the
challenged governmental action is
sufficiently likely to be perceived
by adherents of the controlling denominations as an endorsement,
and by the nonadherents as a disapproval, of their individual religious choices." Grand Rapids, 473
U.S., at 390 [1985]. Accordingly,
our present task is to determine
whether the display of the creche
and the menorah, in their respective
"particular physical settings," has
the effect of endorsing or disapproving religious beliefs."
The county and the city both argued
that in order for the religious symbols to
violate the Establishment Clause they
had to be shown to be "coercive." The
majority disagreed because the Court
had stated in more than one previous
decision that "proof of coercion" is "not

21Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh

ACLU, Opinion, p. 20.
22Ibid.
Page 8

a necessary element of any claim under

the Establishment Clause."23
The Court first quickly confirmed the
religiosity of the creche on its face and
dispensed with any extended arguments
on that score. The "Glory to God in the
Highest" banner carried by the figure of
an angel at the top of the creche only
made that conclusion more secure.
There is no doubt, of course,
that the creche itself is capable of
communicating a religious message. Indeed, the creche in this
lawsuit uses words, as well as the
picture of the nativity scene, to
make its religious meaning unmistakably clear.24
That settled that in relatively short order
and right up front.
The Court then turned its attention,
with regard to the creche, to its setting.
It found nothing in the setting that detracted from the creche and the religious meaning it conveyed. The poinsettias may have been a good try by the city
to constitutionally camouflage the creche
under the Lynch ruling logic (the nativity scene in that case was outnumbered
by secular symbols), but the Court did
not find it convincing. In fact, the justices came to the conclusion that the
only thing that the floral display accomplished was to frame the creche and call
greater attention to it. The justices
thought that the annual Christmas carol
program had no bearing on the overt religious effect of the creche either. The
fact that it was located on the main staircase of the courthouse would, in the majority opinion, only emphasize to any citizen that the creche was indeed approved and supported by government.

23Committeefor Public Education v. Nyquist,

413 U.S., at 786 (1973); Murray v. Curlett, 374
U.S., at 222-223 (1963); Engel v. Vitale, 370
U.S., at 430 (1962).
24Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh
ACLU, Opinion, p. 21.
July 1989

The sign disclosing the ownership of the

scene by the Holy Name Society, a
Roman Catholic group, would cause
viewers to conclude that the city was endorsing a religious message of that organization in particular. On this point, the
Court said:
Indeed, the very concept of "endorsement" conveys the sense of
promoting someone else's message. Thus, by prohibiting government endorsement of religion, the
Establishment Clause prohibits
precisely what occurred here: the
government's lending its support
to the communication of a religious
organization's religious message.P
The county argument that the creche
could be validated by the fact that it
celebrates Christmas, which is a national
holiday, drew this reply from the Court:
The government may acknowledge Christmas as a cultural phenomenon, but under the First
Amendment it may not observe it
as a Christian holy day by suggesting that people praise God for the
birth of Jesus.>
All of the above led the Court to easily
conclude:
In sum, Lynch teaches that government may celebrate Christmas
in some manner and form, but not
in a way that endorses Christian
doctrine. Here, Allegheny County
has transgressed this line. It has
chosen to celebrate Christmas in
a way that has the effect of endorsing a patently Christian message: Glory to God for the birth of
Jesus Christ. Under Lynch, and
the rest of our cases, nothing
more is required to demonstrate a

25Ibid., p. 23.
26Ibid., p. 24.
American Atheist

violation of the Establishment

Clause. The display of the creche
in this context, therefore, must be
permanently enjoined."

The Kennedy dissent

In leading the dissent on this creche
part of the decision, Justice Kennedy argued from the basis of Marsh v. Chambers-" which had upheld legislative
chaplains and prayer. Justice Kennedy
concluded from that perspective that
the creche poses "no realistic risk" of
"represent[ing] an effort to proselytize."
He also charged the majority with a decision that "reflects an unjustified hostility toward religion."29
Justice Kennedy's logic for his dissent
on the creche, joined by Chief Justice
Rehnquist and Justices White and
Scalia, is summarized nicely in the Syllabus to the opinion. This dissent is a
lengthy quote but is extremely important because it represents a radical departure from past state/church separation cases, formulated by the newest
justice but, significantly, supported by
the chief justice.
The requirement of neutrality
inherent in the Lemon formulation
does not require a relentless extirpation-? of all contact between
government and religion. Government policies of accommodation,
acknowledgment, and support for
religion are an accepted part of
our political and cultural heritage,
and the Establishment Clause permits government some latitude in
recognizing the central role of religion in society. Any approach

27Ibid.
U.S. 783 (1983).
29Allegheny County u. Greater Pittsburgh
ACLU, Opinion, p. 25.
30"extirpate: 1. to remove utterly; destroy
totally; exterminate; do away with. 2. to pull
up by the roots; root up" (American College
Dictionary [New York: Harper, 1944]).
28463

Austin, Texas

'~i~
;~:

less sensitive to our heritage would

border on latent hostility [emphasis
added] to religion, as it would require government in all its multifaceted roles to acknowledge only
the secular, to the exclusion and
so to the detriment of the religious. Thus, this Court's decisions
disclose two principles limiting the
government's ability to recognize
and accommodate religion. It may
not coerce anyone to support or
participate in any religion or its exercise; and it may not, in the guise
of avoiding hostility or callous indifference, give direct benefits to a
religion in such a degree that it in
fact establishes a state religion or
tends to do so. In other words, the
government may not place its
weight behind an obvious effort to
proselytize [emphasis added] on
behalf of a particular religion. On
the other hand, where the government's act of recognition or accommodation is passive and symbolic, any intangible benefit to religion is unlikely to present a realistic risk of establishment. To determine whether there exists an
establishment, or tendency toward
one, reference must be made to
the other types of church-state
'contacts that have existed unchallenged throughout our history
or that have been found permissible
in our case law....
In permitting the displays of the
menorah and the creche, the city
and county sought merely to "eelJuly 1989

ebrate the season," and to acknowledge the historical background and the religious as well as
secular nature of the Chanukah
and Christmas holidays. This interest falls well within the tradition
of governmental accommodation
and acknowledgment of religion
that has marked our history from
the beginning. Ifthe government is
to participate in its citizens' celebration of a holiday that contains
both a secular and a religious component, enforced recognition of
only the secular aspect would signifythe callous indifference toward
religious faith that our cases and
traditions do not require; for by
commemorating the holiday only
as it is celebrated by nonadherents,
the government would be refusing
to acknowledge the plain fact, and
the historical reality, that many of
its citizens celebrate the religious
aspects of the holiday as well.
There is no suggestion here that
the government's power to coerce
has been used to further Christianity or Judaism or that the city
or the county contributed money
to further anyone faith or intended
to use the creche or the menorah
to proselytize. Thus, the creche
and menorah are purely passive
symbols of religious holidays and
their use is permissible under
Lynch. If Marsh allows Congress
and the state legislatures to begin
each day with a state-sponsored
prayer offered by a governmentemployed chaplain, a menorah or
creche, displayed in the limited
context of the holiday season,
cannot be invalid."

The majority replies

This assertion and accusation by Justice Kennedy caused the concurring

31Allegheny County u. Greater Pittsburgh

ACLU, Syllabus, page IV,V.
Page 9

majority to launch into an eleven-page

attack on his position in the middle of
their opinion. I shall attempt to summarize, in outline form, the major points of
the reply of the majority to Justice
Kennedy, quoting them here and there.
In doing so, I will refrain from comment
upon their rebuttal until later.
1. In Marsh the Court relied on the
fact that the authorization by Congress
of legislative prayer could be directly
traced back to being coincidental with
the production of the Bill of Rights. But,
However history may affect the
constitutionality
of nonsectarian
references to religion by the government, history cannot legitimate
practices that demonstrate
the
government's allegiance to a particular sect or creed.F
The legislative prayer at issue in Marsh
had no reference to "Christ" in it so it
did not command allegiance to a particular sect or creed.
[S]urely he [Justice Kennedy] is
able to distinguish between a specifically Christian symbol, like a
creche, and more general religious references, like the legislative
prayers in Marsh.33
2. The history of the United States is
full of examples of official government
acts that have endorsed Christianity.
This does not, however, bear on the jurisprudence of the Establishment Clause
as interpreted by modern courts. " 'The
clearest command of the Establishment
Clause is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over
another.' Larson v. Vaiente."34 Any historical departure
from this principle
does not negate the principle itself.

32Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh

ACLU, Opinion, pp. 25-26.
33Ibid.,p. 26.
34456 U.S. 228, 244 (1982).
Page 10

3. The majority did not care for Justice Kennedy's characterization

of their
past and current method of examining
the particular contexts of any government employment of religious symbols
to determine
their constitutionality
under the Establishment
Clause as a
"jurisprudence of minutiae,"35 in the full
text of his dissent. They countered by
citing instances of criminal law in which
an examination of "the particular context" is both necessary and inevitable
due to the broad language of the Bill of
Rights which in turn must be applied by
the Court to individual fact situations.
4. The majority did not care for Justice Kennedy's substitution of the term
proseiytization for their well-used endorsement [of religion] in Establishment
Clause cases. The majority said:
In order to define precisely what
government could and could not
do under Justice Kennedy's "proselytization" test, the Court would
have to decide a series of cases
with particular fact patterns that
fall along the spectrum of government references to religion. . . .
But because Justice Kennedy's
formulation of this essential Establishment Clause inquiry is no less
fact-intensive than the "endorsement" formulation adopted by the
Court, Justice Kennedy should be
wary of accusing the Court's formulation as "using little more than
intuition and a tape measure," lest
he find his own formulation con-

35Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh

ACLU, Opinion, Dissent of Justice Kennedy,
Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Justices White,
and Scalia joining, p. 20.
"In 'addition to disregarding precedent
and historical fact, the majority's approach
to government use of religious symbolism
threatens to trivialize constitutional adjudication. By mischaracterizing the Court's
opinion in Lynch as an endorsement-incontext test . . . the majority embraces a
jurisprudence of minutiae." Section B.
July 1989

victed on an identical charge.36

5. It is pointed out that what Justice
Kennedy is actually doing by advocating
a switch from "endorsement"
to "proselytization" as an Establishment Clause
test is to "lower considerably the level of
scrutiny in Establishment Clause cases."37
The majority reminds him that they prefer to maintain their past level of vigilance.
6. The majority, rankling under the
accusation of harboring "latent hostility"
or "callous indifference"
toward religion, wrote that prior rulings fall rather
under the category of a respect for religious pluralism in our nation. "A secular state, it must be remembered,
is not
the same as an atheistic [sic] or antireligious state,"38 cautioned the majority. What this means with regard to
Christmas, according to the Court, is
that government can only celebrate the
secular aspects of the holiday, or it can
acknowledge
the holiday without expressing a preference
for Christian
beliefs.
7. Finally the majority makes the
point that:
It is thus incontrovertible
that
the Court's decision today, premised on the determination that the
creche display on the Grand Staircase demonstrates
the county's
endorsement of Christianity, does
not represent a hostility or indifference to religion but, instead,
the respect for religious diversity
that the Constitution requires."

The menorah
Having said all of that about the
creche, let us now turn to the second
half of this case, namely, the menorah.

36Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh

ACLU, Opinion, pp. 30 and 31.
37Ibid.,p. 32.
38Ibid.,p. 33.
39Ibid.,p. 35.
American Atheist

The primary distinction between the

display of the menorah and the display
of the creche, according to the Court, is
that:
The menorah, one must recognize, is a religious symbol: it serves
to commemorate the miracle of
the oil as described in the Talmud.
But the menorah's message is not
exclusively religious. The menorah
is the primary visual symbol for a
holiday that, like Christmas, has
both religious and secular dimensions. (Emphasis added.P?
The menorah was also not standing
alone, as was the creche in the grand
staircase of the county courthouse. It
was displayed next to a Christmas tree
and a sign saluting liberty. The presence
of a tree and the menorah together created, so says the majority, an "overall
holiday setting" representing both the
holidays of Christmas and Chanukah
simultaneously. However, if both of the
holidays are celebrated by the city together as religious rather than secular
holidays, that would still constitute a
violation of the Establishment Clause,
said the Court. The logic of the majority was that if Christmas may be celebrated by government as a secular holiday40then it only stands to reason that
Chanukah could be acknowledged in a
like manner. With that consideration
behind, the Court said that the relevant
question then becomes whether the display of both the Christmas tree and
menorah together has the effect of endorsing both Christianity and Judaism,
or if their side-by-side display simply
denotes that Chanukah has attained the
same secular status as Christmas in
society. The Court felt that the latter in-

39Ibid.,p. 36.
40"1tis worth recalling here that no member
of the Court in Lynch suggested that government may not celebrate the secular aspects of Christmas" (Ibid., p. 38, footnote
63).
Austin, Texas

terpretation fit the fact situation the best

because the Christmas tree is not in itself a religious symbol and it is, after all,
the more predominant of the two items
on display. It is also the case that the city
really does not have an alternative symbol of Chanukah that may be less "religious" than the menorah to display next
to the Christmas tree, a symbol of the
"winter season." The Court concluded
In these circumstances, then, the
combination of the tree and the
menorah communicates, not a simultaneous endorsement of both
Christian and Jewish faith, but instead, a secular celebration of
Christmas coupled with an acknowledgment of Chanukah as a
contemporaneous alternative tradition.s!

The presence of the mayor's sign which

says that the combined display for the
holiday season salutes liberty and mentions the common theme to both festivals of "light," was a further indication to
the Court that no government sponsorship of religious beliefs is intended by the
city. All of these foregoing factors taken
into account made it "unlikely," in the
view of the majority, that Pittsburgh citizens would find the display of the
menorah "an endorsement of religious
faith but simply a recognition of cultural
diversity."42
The final conclusion of the Court on
the menorah then was:
The Christmas tree alone in the
Pittsburgh location does not endorse Christian belief; and, on the
facts before us, the addition of the
menorah "cannot fairly be understood to" result in the simultaneous endorsement of Christian
and Jewish faiths. Lynch,43 on the

41Ibid.,p. 40.
42Ibid.,p. 42.
43465 U.S., at 693 (O'Connor, J., concurring).
July 1989

contrary, for purposes of the Establishment Clause, the city's

overall display must be understood as conveying the city's secular recognition of different traditions for celebrating the winterholiday season+'
So, with regard to both symbols the
final ruling of the Court was:
Lynch u. Donnelly confirms,
and in no way repudiates, the longstanding constitutional principle
that government may not engage
in a practice that has the effect of
promoting or endorsing religious
beliefs. The display of the creche
in the County Courthouse has this
unconstitutional effect. The display
of the menorah in front of the CityCounty Building, however, does
not have this effect, given its "particular physical setting."45
Thus far I have attempted to deliver
the facts on the matter of the decision of
the Supreme Court on the case of Allegheny County u. Greater Pittsburgh
ACLU as dispassionately as possible to
you, the reader, so that you may simply
see how the Court considered and ruled
upon the subject. I want now to do some
"concurring" of my own with Justice
Brennan of the Court. In his dissent,
Justice Brennan articulates a number of
my own positions on this matter.

The Murray conclusion

It is my opinion that the analytical
method employed by the Court in both
Lynch and the Pittsburgh case is entirely
based on false premises. Both decisions
are predicated on the assumptions that
Christmas is a secular holiday, a creche
can be a secular symbol depending on
its surroundings, a menorah is a symbol

44Allegheny County u. Greater Pittsburgh

ACLU, Opinion, p. 43.
45Ibid.,p. 44.
Page 11

with some secular dimensions, and that

it is possible for government to sponsor
the erection of symbols with strong religious connotations, on or off public
property, so long as they claim to do so
in the spirit of "pluralism" and in a
collage format, and still. pass muster
under the Establishment Clause. All of
these assumptions are also built upon
what a "reasonable observer" is "sufficiently likely" to think upon viewing the
symbols in question.
Christmas has now undergone almost
. total commercialization, this is true, but
that does not diminish in the slightest its
origin,history, or development. It remains
the central, pivotal story of Christianity.
Without the "nativity," there would be
no Jesus character in the narrative and
hence ultimately no New Testament at
all. Christmas is, indeed, a "Christian"
holiday (or "holy day") of some magnitude.
A creche, or nativity scene, is not just
a bunch of figurines, it is a depiction of
the alleged birth of the central character
of the Christian story. Regardless of
what it is near, or surrounded by, it retains that religious meaning - as does
a cross. A cross on top of a church or
on a tombstone does not suddenly lose
its meaning when it shows up on a city
seal.
The origin and history of the menorah
demonstrate conclusively that it is a
central symbol of a religious observance
held with deep emotional feeling by Jewish religionists. It has come to represent,
to the non-Jew, the Jewish faith in the
same symbolic manner as the Magen
David.
"Pluralism" is another word for taking
into account only freedom of religion
and not freedom from religion as a part
of our First Amendment guarantees.
The intent, in the use of that term, is for
equal treatment or representation among
religions, but what of the individual who
has no religion? Do we count as citizens
in the analysis of "what viewers may
fairly understand to be the purpose of
the display"46- or do only the sensibilPage 12

ities of the religious matter? Are Atheists to be included under the umbrella of
"nonadherents," or does that narrowly
apply only to minority religious denominations?
I ask you if, logically, you could honestly say that if you showed a picture of
a "Christmas tree" to any average
American you may stop on the street he
or she would tell you that it was a secular symbol? I dare say not. The average
American would only associate a Christmas tree with what? Let's not see everyone's hands up at once, class. "Christmas." Very good! And what is "Christmas"? It is the "mass of Christ," a holiday with religious origin and history that
cannot be denied, Clement Clarke
Moore's poem notwithstanding." Try
the same thing with a picture or model
of a creche and I am certain that not one
individual will fail to note its religious
significance. Ask a "reasonably prudent
man (or woman)" what a menorah
brings to mind and the answer will invariably be "Jews" or "Judaism." I am
certain that (s)he would not answer,
"Oh, it symbolizes the winter holiday

46Lynch, 465 U.S. at 692.

47A Visit From St. Nicholas (1823), a poem
by Clement Clarke Moore (17791863)famous
for its first line "Twas the night before
Christmas ... " Moore was a scholar who
taught oriental and Greek literature at the
General Theological Seminary in New York
from 1823to 1850(Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, 3d ed. [New York: Harper & Row,
1987],p. 1033).
July 1989

season!" that is, if (s)he even knew what

it was if (s)he were not Jewish. I also
cannot understand why a creche standing
next to a snowman is any more or less
religious than a creche standing alone.
Why is a menorah next to a Christmas
tree less "religious" than a menorah, for
example, next to a Latin cross?
I can tell religious from secular symbols very easily, so I wonder why the justices of the Supreme Court have such a
dificult time distinguishing between the
two? It seems to me that they see what
they want to see in order to maintain a
tradition of favoritism toward religion in
general, or "benevolent neutrality" as
they have put it in many prior cases.
Even that designation is a nonsense
term. Neutrality is neutrality; if something is neutral it cannot be either benevolent or malevolent.

The Brennan dissent

Well, I said that I was going to "concur" with Justice Brennan's Pittsburgh
dissent, so let us get to it. I feel that in
his dissent Justice Brennan makes the
most logical observations of the entire
decision. It is sublime indeed for an
Atheist to read a dissent in a Supreme
Court decision, for once, with which he
so thoroughly agrees. While reading
what Justice Brennan had to say in this
case, I found myself shouting one silent,
inner, hurrah after another. I shall try to
pick out the most succulent morsels of
his extraordinarily brave rebuttal of his
fellows for you, with which you will
perhaps agree also.
I continue to believe that the display of an object that "retains a
specifically Christian [or other] religious meaning," [Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. at 708] is incompatible with the separation of church
and state demanded by our Constitution. Itherefore agree with the
Court that Allegheny County's
display of a creche at the county
courthouse signals an endorsement of the Christian faith in vioAmerican Atheist

lation of the Establishment

Clause, . . . I cannot agree, however, that the city's display of a 45foot Christmas tree and an I8-foot
Chanukah menorah at the entrance to the building housing the
Mayor's office shows no favoritism towards Christianity, Judaism, or both. Indeed, I should have
thought that the answer as to the
first display supplied the answer to
the second ....
[T]he decision as to the menorah
rests on three premises: [A] the
Christmas tree is a secular symbol;
[B] Chanukah is a holiday with
secular dimensions, symbolized
by the menorah; and [C] the government may promote pluralism
by sponsoring or condoning displays having strong religious
associations on its property. None
of these is sound. [Emphasis and
letters [A], [B], and [C] added.j=
In reference to the premise which I
have labelled [A] above, Justice Brennan
stated:
In my view, this attempt [Justices
Blackmun's and O'Connor's opinions] to take the "Christmas" out
of the Christmas tree is unconvincing. That the tree may, without controversy, be deemed a
secular symbol if found alone,
does not mean that it will be so
seen when combined with other
symbols or objects ....
In asserting that the Christmas
tree, regardless of its surroundings, is a purely secular symbol,
Justices Blackmun and O'Connor
ignore the precept they otherwise
so enthusiastically embrace: that

48Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh

ACLU, Dissent of Justice Brennan, with
whom Justices Marshall and Stevens join,
concurring in part and dissenting in part, pp.
1-2.
Austin, Texas

context is all-important in determining the message conveyed by

particular objects ....
Positioned as it was, the Christmas tree's religious significance
was bound to come to the fore.
Situated next to the menorah which, Justice Blackmun acknowledges, is "a symbol with religious
meaning," and indeed, is "the
central religious symbol and ritual
object of' Chanukah, (O'Connor,
J.) - the Christmas tree's religious dimension could not be
overlooked by observers of the
display. Even though the tree
alone may be deemed predominantly secular, it can hardly be so
characterized when placed next to
such a forthrightly religious symbol. ...
Justice Blackmun believes that
it is the tree that changes the message of the menorah, rather than
the menorah that alters our view
of the tree. After the abrupt dismissal of the suggestion that the
flora surrounding the creche might
have diluted the religious character of the display at City Hall, his
quick conclusion that the Christmas tree had a secularizing effect
on the menorah is surprising ....
As a factual matter, it seems to
me that the sight of an I8-foot
menorah would be far more eyecatching than that of a rather conventionally sized Christmas tree.
It also seems to me likely that the
symbol with the more singular
message will predominate over
one lacking such a clear meaning.
Given the homogenized message
that Justice Blackmun associates
with the Christmas tree, I would
expect that the menorah, with its
concededly religious character,
would tend to dominate the
tree ....
I shudder to think that the only
"reasonable observer" is one who
shares the particular view on perJuly 1989

spective, spacing, and accent expressed in Justice Blackmun's

opinion, thus making analysis under the Establishment Clause look
more like an exam in Art 101 than
an inquiry into constitutionallaww
To tackle premise [B], Brennan pointed
out:
The second premise on which
today's decision rests is the notion
that Chanukah is a partly secular
holiday, for which the menorah
can serve as a secular symbol. It is
no surprise and no anomaly that
Chanukah has historical and societal roots that range beyond the
purely religious. I would venture
that most, ifnot all, major religious
holidays have beginnings and enjoy
histories studded with figures,
events, and practices that are not
strictly religious. It does not seem
to me that the mere fact that Chanukah shares this kind of background makes it a secular holiday
in any meaningful sense. The menorah is indisputably a religious
symbol, used ritually in a celebration that has deep religious significance. That, in my view, is all that
need be said. Whatever secular
practices the holiday of Chanukah
has taken on in its contemporary
observances
are beside the
point. ...
I cannot, in short, accept the
effort to transform an emblem of
religious faith into the innocuous
"symbol for a holiday that ... has
both religious and secular dimensions." (Blackmun, J.)so
As for premise [C], that "the government
may promote pluralism by sponsoring
or condoning displays having strong religious associations on its property,"

49Ibid.,pp. 3-7.
sOIbid.,pp. 7-8.
Page 13

Brennan wrote:
Justice Blackmun, in his acceptance of the city's message of "diversity," and, even more so, Justice O'Connor, in her approval of
the "message of pluralism and
freedom to choose one's own beliefs," appear to believe that,
where seasonal displays are concerned, more is better. Whereas a
display might be constitutionally
problematic if it showcased the
holiday of just one religion, those
problems vaporize as soon as
more than one religion is included.
I know of no principle under the
Establishment Clause, however,
that permits us to conclude that
governmental promotion of religion is acceptable so long as one
religion is not favored. We have,
on the contrary, interpreted that
Clause to require neutrality, not
just among religions, but between
religion and nonreligion."
Nor do I discern the theory under which the government is permitted to appropriate particular
holidays and religious objects to
its own use in celebrating "pluralism." The message of the sign announcing a "Salute to Liberty" is
not religious, but patriotic; the
government's use of religion to
promote its own cause is undoubtedly offensive to those whose religious beliefs are not bound up with
their attitude toward the Nation.
The uncritical acceptance of a
message of religious pluralism also
ignores the extent to which even
that message may offend. Many
religious faiths are hostile to each
other, and indeed, refuse even to
participate in ecumenical services
designed to demonstrate the very

51See,

e.g., Everson v. Board of Education,

330 U.S. 1, 15 (1947); Wallace v. Jaffree, 472

U.S. 38, 52-54 (1985).
Page 14

pluralism Justices Blackmun and

O'Connor extol. To lump the ritual
objects and holidays of religions
together with regard to their attitudes toward such inclusiveness,
or to decide which religions should
be excluded because of the possibility of offense, is not a benign or
beneficent celebration of pluralism: it is instead an interference in
religious matters precluded by the
Establishment Clause .... 52
Early in his dissent, Brennan had
pointed the following out:
"By accompanying its display of
a Christmas tree - a secular symbol of the Christmas holiday season
- with a salute to liberty, and by
adding a religious symbol from a
Jewish holiday also celebrated at
roughly the same time of year, I
[Justice O'Connor] conclude that
the city did not endorse Judaism
or religion in general, but rather
conveyed a message of pluralism
and freedom of belief during the
holiday season." But the "pluralism" to which Justice O'Connor
refers is a religious pluralism, and
the "freedom of belief" she emphasizes is a freedom of religious belief. [Emphasis in the original.]
Those were long quotes but well
worth it.

The effects of the decisions

I must say that I was astonished by
the decision in Lynch v. Donnelly when
it came down back in 1984. What that
decision did was to begin a blueprint for
government on all levels to erect, fund,
and exploit religious symbolism during
not alone the winter season but any
"holiday" season. All that has been

52Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh

ACLO, Dissent, p. 9.
53Ibid., p. 4.
July 1989

accomplished by Allegheny County v.

Greater Pittsburgh ACLU is for that
blueprint to be enlarged upon and refined. The Court in Lynch said that religious symbols could be erected by government depending on the context and
extended a formula for government use
of hiding the religious symbol it wished
to display among as many allegedly
"secular" objects as possible. Allegheny
County did not take the Lynch prescription for circumventing the Lemon Establishment Clause test seriously enough,
so it got "caught." The county just had
to put up a creche on its own instead of
camouflaged. The Pittsburgh case only
now drives home the point to local government authorities that if they are to
sponsor religious symbols during holidays they must either hypocritically redefine them or submerge them in a
gaudy carnival type "winter display."
The Jewish community has been
passing its most sacred rites, and even
its very identity, off as "cultural" since
the end of World War II. It has fought so
hard to define itself as a distinct "race"
or "culture," that many Americans now
find it hard to view Judaism as a religion
at all. In the battle of Christmas present,
it looks as though that assumed cultural
identity has paid off. We can now brace
ourselves, in the wake of the Court's
decision, for a veritable forest of menorahs to spring up at the end of this year
all over this country.
What is perhaps most frightening in
all of this is the emergence in the Pittsburgh case of a new interpretation entirely of the Establishment Clause under
the leadership of Justice Kennedy, the
new kid on the block. He proposes that
unless government can be convicted of
blatantly proselytizing a particular religion, not even religion in general, it can
do as it pleases with total disregard for
the Establishment Clause. That is disturbing enough on its own if it were not
for the fact that the chief justice and two
other justices have joined him. That
makes a solid minority of four who, for
the time being, are being held marginally
American

Atheist

in check by their five colleagues. This

means that the Reagan clone now occupying the White House could, upon the
death or resignation of one of the majority five, radically alter the view of the
Court, with a single nomination, toward
a posture that would-drop the Establishment Clause from further adjudication.
The Pittsburgh case also reaffirms
what Atheists had long known about
religion: it is a survival specialist. The
chameleon nature of religion will allow it
to be defined as any governmental system may decide as long as it survives
and can remain in public view on public
land supported by public tax dollars.
The average citizens know, when
they see a religious symbol in or on a
public building, what that means in
terms of what is expected of them. They
know that to be considered
"good
citizens," they must respect, honor, and
patronize religion, if not in earnest, then
for show. Anytime, in any context, that
a religious symbol appears on government property, it conveys the meaning
to the common people of endorsement
and due subjection, and to the powerful
and wealthy, of usefulness.

Media reactions
What of public reaction
to this
decision?
In Pittsburgh,
City Solicitor Dan
Pelligrini has revealed that city and
county officials had agreed before the
case was appealed
to the Supreme
Court that one display would not be
erected without the other. In keeping
with that agreement neither symbol will
be put up this year. Pelligrini said,
We're not interested in having
the menorah and not having some
Nativity scene. From a social policy point of view it would not advance any harmony. 54
County

Commissioner

54Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
Austin, Texas

Lawrence

4 July 1989, p. 5.

Dunn said he would consider asking the

religious groups to alter their displays to
meet Supreme
Court criteria. Peter
Buscemi, the attorney from Washington,
D. c., who argued the case on behalf of
the city and county in front of the
Supreme Court, said:
The answer in the abstract is yes,
it could be changed. What specific
changes would be required, I don't
know. 55
The
of the
Name
of the

Rev. Paul Yurko, spiritual director

Pittsburgh Diocese of the Holy
Society, owner of the creche, said
decision:

In a way, it's a disappointment,

but we have no objections
to
putting it in with other traditional
Christmas customs. We'll do whatever the commissioners say and if
they want it with other displays,
that's fine with US.56
In another

sends a message that the government has to stay neutral. The

really important
thing is that
nobody's
religious
freedom
is
being impaired in the slightest.
The only restriction that the [separation of church and state doctrine] puts on anybody is the governrncnt.w
Charles Saul, an attorney for Chabad,
the Jewish organization which owned
the menorah, exclaimed:
Thank God for the Supreme
Court. ... I think when the decision is viewed as a whole, it will be
seen as a clear victory for freedom
of religious expression in America .... The ACLU wanted a total
quarantine
on these symbols.
Clearly the Supreme Court hasn't
gone that far. To the contrary,
most of these displays will be
legal.60

report, he continued:

I feel that as long as we can represent the true meaning of Christmas alone with other representations of Christmas, that is some
inroad there. We're not out com-

plately"
Roslyn Litman, the American Civil
Liberties Union attorney who filed the
suit in 1986, commented:
Overall, I think this is a victory
for religious freedom. They [the
Court] clearly said government
has to remain neutral.v
She also claimed:
It's a clear

victory.

It clearly

55Ibid.
56The Pittsburgh Press, 3 July 1989, p. A4.
57Pittsburgh Post/Gazette, 3 July 1989, p. 5.
58Pittsburgh Press, 3 July 1989, p. A4.
July 1989

Then Malik Tunador, a Moslem, one of

those on whose behalf the ACLU brought
the action, said:
I welcome the court's decision as
far as the Nativity scene is concerned, but I wish they would have
included the menorah. That's a religious symbol, too. . . . I'm not
against religious symbols being
displayed. But it shouldn't be on
public property.s"
The editorial desk of the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette got the postmortem on the
ruling started with its editorial of Wednesday, July 5, p. 6, in which the editor
opined:
One needn't be a lawyer or a
theologian to see the flaws in Jus-

59Pittsburgh Post/Gazette, 4 July 1989, p. l.

6Ibid., p. 5.
61Pittsburgh Press, 3 July 1989, p. A4.
Page 15

tice Blackmun's analysis. Even

without the angel's message and even with the addition of
Pawtucket-style secular symbols
- placing figures of Jesus, Mary
and Joseph in an honored place in
a government building"resonates
with religious meaning ....
As for the menorah, the appeals
court that invalidated both displays had it right when it held that
"neither the creche nor the menorah can reasonably be deemed to
have been subsumed by a larger
display of religious items." Mayor
Caliguiri's description
of the
menorah as a symbol of the secular
value of liberty was an exercise in
legal cuteness. More likely, the
menorah represented a rather
patronizing
attempt
to give
Hanukkah equal time with Christmas as a city-approved holiday.
The Los Angeles Times quickly followed along on the same day, also on p.
6 of Part II, with its "Blurring the Line"
editorial.
... Such a standard, which invites the appropriation of religious
symbols for a purely secular purpose - be it political or commercial - is and should be offensive
to sincere believers. More to the
point, it is an open invitation to
endless and needlessly divisive litigation. The fact is that a creche is
a symbol of a Christian feast day;
a menorah represents the Jewish
festival of Hanukkah. To pretend
otherwise is to invite the insensitive
and the unheeding to affront others
through subterfuge.
The Michigan's Flint Journal of July
13 offered this little bit of twisted wisdom
on p. A18.
There is now a way to display
religious symbols on public property without violating the ConPage 16

stitution's establishment clause

prohibiting governmental actions
that either promote or inhibit
religion....
Let us hope this decision will
end Christmas time legal battles
over displays of religious symbols
on public property.
So long as other yuletide symbols
are included in the displays, governments may now celebrate religious holidays.
The New York Times, being "all the
news that's fit to print," could not resist
taking its own editorial shot at the
Pittsburgh decision on July 12at p. A22.
... That [Justice Kennedy's dissent] is deceptively simple: in fact,
the Constitution requires Government neutrality on matters of personal conscience; it is hostile to
departures from neutrality. It protects the rights of believers and
non-believers to follow their own
faith with or without public symbols.
After the editorial departments got
through with the decision, the syndicated
columnists lined up and - at least in
terms of verbiage - more so on the
right.
George Will, the darling of the
Russophobe set, lashed out against the
ACLU, the Supreme Court, and anything
else conceived by him to be left of
Reagan.
Card-carrying members of the
American Civil Liberties Union
have rescued Pittsburgh from a
seasonal menace that must be
slain annually. The menace is
theocracy, the "establishment" of
religion....
At a big banquet in Washington
a few years ago, a Washington
Redskins running-back, in his
cups and overflowing with advice,
said to a Supreme Court justice,
July 1989

"Lighten up, Sandra baby." His

manners were bad, but his advice
was good for all five justices who
kicked over Pittsburgh's creche.
If they took that advice, they also
could take Will's Generic Opinion. It is
a one-sentence wonder that is sufficient
to dispose of almost all constitutional
questions arising from the December
decoration of public spaces. The opinion
is:
The practice does not do what
the Establishment Clause was intended to prevent - impose an
official creed, or significantly enhance or hinder a sect - so the
practice is constitutional and the
complaining parties should buzz
offand go knock off enough eggnog
to get in the holiday mood.
The justices spend their spare
time lamenting the caseload that
leaves them with so little spare
time. They would have more of it
ifthey wasted less time helping the
ACLU turn America into a nation
of irritable individualists throwing
elbows and deriving malicious
pleasure from censoring the community's ceremonies that give the
community pleasure and injure no
one.62
Another right-winger, Michael Novak,
the director of social and political studies at the American Enterprise Institute,
a conservative think-tank, took his shot
at secularism in his "The New 'Secular'
Orthodoxy."
... Take away our grounding in
the Jewish and Christian belief
that there is a Creator, who made
each of us in his image and thus
gave to each of us the liberty and
responsibility that is the ground of

62George Will, "The ACLU Bags Another

Creche," Detroit News, 9 July 1989.
American Atheist

our inalienable rights, and you

take away from us the truths on
which many of us base our esteem
for the American Proposition.
Blackmun and the majority may
not recognize how their own secular orthodoxy is undercutting the
sense of "affiliation" many of us
have experienced
between our
faith and our country's Constitution. We want no one religion established. But we do expect, given
their intertwined
history, some
mutual exchanges of public recognition between our civic and religious selves.
Our faith is an inalienable dimension of our citizenship. A citizen divided against himself, half
religious and half secular, cannot
stand. We expect wise and generous accommodation, not niggling
mutual hostility
The other side took its turn in the war
of words also. James J. Kilpatrick,
Universal Press Syndicate, had this to
say:
Four members of the court ...
take a tolerant view: They would
give government wide latitude in
accommodating
religion. Three
justices ... take an intolerant view:
They would maintain a wall of separation between church and state.
The other two justices (Harry
Blackmun and Sandra Day O'Connor) say it all depends.
It all depends on what? It depends on "the context," said Black-

63This statement is shades of Margaret

Thatcher; see my article in the June 1989
issue of this journal.
64Talkabout similarities, he and Thatcher
must have read the same books. And isn't
his Lincoln's Gettysburg address reference
cute?
6sOp-Edpage, The Washington Post National
Weekly Edition, 24-30 July 1989.
Austin, Texas

mun. It depends
on "circumstances," said O'Connor ....
Blackmun and O'Connor have
the common-sensical
best of it.
These difficult cases do indeed
depend on the context and circumstance. That may not be much
guidance to lower courts, but it is
all they are likely ever to get.66
And Nat Hentoff who writes for The
Village Voice gave one kind of minority
point of view:
... When I was growing up in a
Jewish neighborhood
in Boston
and going to a public school where
we had to sing Christmas carols
about "our Lord, Jesus" and seeing
crosses displayed in seats of government throughout the city, I was
convinced this was a Christian
country and that I was surely an
outsider.
I did not dream the Supreme
Court would order a nativity scene
taken from a courthouse because
its presence indicates state preference for a particular religion. But
so does the presence of the menorah in a public place ....
If ever a case indicated that the
court, however well-intentioned,
should not allow any religious displays in public places, the pat on
the head for the menorah - unwittingly devaluing its religious significance - is such a case ... p
Last but most certainly not least
comes the parade of commentary from
the religionists.
The court's holding, according to Phil
Baum, associate director of the American
Jewish Congress,

66Saint Petersburg [Florida] Times, 23 July

1989.
67The Des Moines Register, 19 August 1989,
p. 14A.

July 1989

will further hasten the transformation of Hanukkah from a religious

to a cultural event. This is the inevitable price paid for seeking to
enlist official endorsement
for
religious practices.w
Sholom D. Comay, president
American
Jewish Committee,
mented:

of the
com-

There is simply no religious

need for the display of sacred symbols of any faith in or at government buildings. There is ample
private space available for the
public display of sacred symbols in
churches,
synagogues,
religious
schools, private homes, lawns and
storefronts. 69
Robert K. Skolrood, executive director
of the National
Legal Foundation,
claimed:
A lot of bigots have been hiding
behind the skirts of the First Amendment. ... Showing no true concern
for free speech or freedom of assembly, these anti-religious fanatics are out to destroy the beliefs
and cherished values that made
our nation strong. 70
Americans United for Separation of
Church and State, a Baptist group, said,
according to its director, the Rev. Robert
L. Maddox, that it "would have preferred
a clean sweep, that is, n6religious symbols at all." But added, "this is something we could live with, even if it is
another scary 5-4 decision."?'
The word from the Roman Catholic
spokesman,
Mark Chopko,
general
counsel of the U.S. Catholic Conference,
(See "Supreme Court" on page 52)

68Los Angeles Times, 8 July 1989.

69Ibid.
7Ibid.
71Ibid.
Page 17

Ask A.A.

News or nonsense?
On December 25, 1985 KERA (Dallas
Public Television) broadcast a McNeil!
Lehrer show which stated "in Bethlehem,
on the occupied West Bank of the
Jordan the birth of (Jesus Christ) was
marked on the spot where he was believed to have been born." How do they
get away with this fantasy and don't you
think this is political? What are your
thoughts on this drivel?
Richard Curtis
Texas
Since there was no J. C. it is doubtful
that anyone would know where he was
born. Most probably the showing of the
birth site is a way to make bucks, what
with entrance fees being collected.
Newscasters who go through this
nonsense are probably devout Christians
who really believe it. Since it is backed
by most Western governments, they
simply repeat it without thinking - just
as they repeat other maxims which
have no truth to them.

Bible banter
I have been informed that somewhere,
at sometime in our history, a council
meeting was held to determine what
should be included in the Bible, and
what should be left out, etc.
I'm sorry Icannot provide you with
more detailed information. However, I
would be grateful if you would assist me
in my search for more concrete and
accurate information about the alleged
council meeting.
In "Letters to the Editor," readers give
their opinions, ideas, and information.
But in "Ask A.A.," American Atheists
answers questions regarding its
policies, positions, and customs, as
well as queries of factual and historical
situations. Please address your
questions to "Ask A.A.," P. O. Box
140195, Austin, TX 78714-0195.

H. Calvin McKenzie
Maryland
The Roman Catholic church has had
a number of "councils" over its history.
The first one was called by the Emperor Constantine' because his mother,
Helen, was a Christian and nagged him
ld. 337, emperor 306-337.

Page 18

July 1989

to help the beginning religion. There

were an incredible number of factions
of Christians at the time. Finally one
question of dogma arose which threatened to tear the new religion asunder:
Arianism. Briefly this position held that
the son (d.C} is not of the same "substance" as the father (god) but was created as an agent for creating the world.
In order to settle the question, Constantine called and paid for a council to meet
in the year 325 in Nicaea, an ancient
city of the Byzantine Empire. It was at
the site where the modern village of
Iznik in northwest Turkey in Asia stands
today, at the end of Iznik Lake. Constantine paid for all the costs of transportation of Christian "bishops" to and
from the council. Many of these were
illiterate religious fanatics. Some were
shepherds. One man brought his flock
with him. Many could neither read nor
write - only rave. Some were the dregs
of society. Constantine paid for the
provisions needed to keep those first
assembled Christians in high style at
the meeting place. He himself presided
over the ceremonies while the rival
factions fought it out. He made the determination as to who was right and
who was wrong and exiled from the
Roman Empire those against whom he
ruled - Arius (A.D. 250-336, Greek
theologian) for one. It was at this
council that the first Christian theology
was really put together, a mere 325
years after the alleged birth of the
alleged J.e. Incidentally, Constantine,
before his death, accepted Arianism as
the true Christianity.
The Arian heresy, and its effects on
civilization, can only be told in a very
long, convoluted story and this column
is not the place to do that. However, at
another time it will be presented in the
American Atheist, perhaps in a series of
articles. Actually it was the basis for the
splitting of the church into the Eastern
Orthodox and the Western Roman
Catholic Christian religions.
In a number of subsequent councils
there was a meeting of minds as to what
American Atheist

WHO IS
fr

"books" (really, little stories) should be

retained to be put together in an official
book of dogma. There were, literally,
thousands of them. Those that, in the
final choosing, came in close were
called apocryphal books - and many
are still extant. The Roman Catholic
church accepts apocryphal literature
yet. The Protestants do not. Sixty-six
books were finally chosen as "orthodox" to be included in the "Bible." It
actually took hundreds of years and
many "councils" to sort them all out.
For example, it was none of the business
of the Roman Catholic church as to
which "books" the Jews wanted to
include in their holy literature - and the
rabbis went about this matter separately,
and that is another story.
It is allfascinating and it needs to be
retold in our times. Once again, this
must wait on time and money to be
assembled so that we can get it all to
you either in book form or in articles in
the American Atheist.

of Appeals and the Supreme Court of

the United States refused to grant
certiorari (review). The federal courts
held that the phrase "In God We Trust"
had nothing at all to do with religion,
that it was only a patriotic ceremony.
In 1989, American Atheists expects
to file a similar suit, this time going up
the appellate ladder through Utah and
the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. It
will be reported in the American Atheist
magazine.

Cleaning up our currency

I am curious about the suit that was
filed in 1977, I believe, to have the inscription "In God We Trust" removed
from our currency and coins.
In fact, I wrote a letter to an editor of
a newspaper telling of this fact. Could
you let me know how this suit came out
or if it is still pending.

Oppie Gulley
Kentucky
American Atheists attempted a federal suit against the Department of the
Treasury of the United States (O'Hair
v. Blumenthal-) to force the removal of
the phrase "In God We Trust" from
currency and coins in 1979. The case
went up through the Fifth Circuit Court

2Madalyn Murray O'Hair, et al. v. Michael

Blumenthal, Secretary of the Treasury, et
al. 588 F.2d 1144 (1979) in the United States
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Austin, Texas

Save the satellite suckers

I just had an idea. What do you think
of it? I suggest that all of the Atheists call
the toll-free numbers that the radio and
television preachers use to solicit funds
from the gullible suckers who send them
money, and stay on the air as long as
possible to keep the preachers from getting a crack at their victims. A further
idea: let everyone of us give a call and
give false addresses so that the preachers
will lose this way, inasmuch as they will
not get paid for their products.
We got a satellite and the channels
are full of them. There must be at least
a dozen different preachers on at one
time, each one trying to wring money for
his church. I just saw Billy James Hargis
asking to be the preacher for all the
owners of satellites - all 1.5 million of us
- so that he could spread the gospel
better. This is the same fake who slept
with the bride and bridegroom that he
married, subsequently
losing his position as teacher and official of the ChrisJuly 1989

~?
WE.

tian crusade.
What do you think of my ideas? I intend to make many calls anyway, as
they have lied and vilified us so long that
I feel no compunction
about it, and I
don't see how it could be illegal; do you
think it is illegal?
Jean Bertolette
California

Jerry Falwell was able to have stopped

a young man who rigged up a computer
to call Falwell's 800 number every several minutes. He was charged with
harassment.
American Atheists likes a clean, hard
fight. If we began something like this,
the Christian community could put us
out of business very easily by jamming
our telephone numbers constantly and they could afford to pay for the calls
to do it.
They could easily bankrupt American Atheists by sending in requests for
information and giving false addresses
so that our return postage guarantee
iuould run into astronomical figures.
This is all dirty pool on a level having
nothing to do with the substantive difference between theism and Atheism.
So we really do not want to get into it
because we have always played the
game up front and deliberate.
Take pleasure in being tempted - for
the idea is delicious. But we would appreciate it if you really did not do
that. ~
Page 19

Religion and the environment

t was quite funny, if you could keep
from bursting into tears, to watch
politicians jumping on the environmental bandwagon at election time.
That good ole boy George Bush
claimed not only to be a dedicated environmentalist, but to have been one all
his life. Further, the frightful pollution of
the East Coast - notably Boston Harbor
- was the fault of Michael Dukakis,
according to George, although the
Reagan administration's slashing of environmental funds might be considered
to have had some responsibility.
Unfortunately, the Bush passion for
the environment never manifested itself
during the eight years of the Reagan administration, which stood firm on its
policy of doing nothing about acid rain,
which the president once blamed on
killer trees.
Reagan's secretary for the interior,
James Watt, of the Assemblies of God,
believed that the new order of Jesus
Christ called for "the opening of federal
parklands and protected seashores for
mineral and oil exploration, and turning
over great tracts of wilderness land and
government -owned properties to private
developers."*
He also suggested that there was no
point in spending money on environmental issues. We did not have to worry
about the kind of world we left to future
generations because (said Mr. Watt)
"there won't be many more generations
before the return of Christ to earth."
The imminence of this event was apparently not to interfere with mineral and oil
exploration or development of wilderness for private profit. What use is money ifthe end of the world is at hand? Lay
not up for yourself treasures on earth,
Mr. Watt! The mind of the good Christian
has a most extraordinary capacity for
doublethink.
Up here in the frozen north, the same

[J

Victoria Branden was educated at the

Universities of Alberta and Toronto,
earning an M.A. in English. In the
midst of work in publishing, journalism, and education, she has written
three books: Mrs. Job, Flitterin' Judas,
and Understanding Ghosts. She notes,
"I started on a career of Atheism at a
young age when I was trying to teach
the story of Noah's Ark in Sunday
school, and one of my students burst
into tears at the thought of god
drowning all the poor little bunnies and
pussycats."

Victoria Branden
Page 20

*Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, Holy

Terror (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982),
p.339.
July 1989

pattern of non-thought emerged. President Reagan was the idol of our Prime
Minister Mulroney, who devotedly followed his example in every respect. Tax
reform policy: tax breaks for the rich,
sales taxes which penalize the poor.
Finance Minister Michael Wilson yearns
to put a tax on food and to cut old age
pensions, although he has been thwarted
by public outrage until now. Defense
policy: cut social welfare, education and
medical care spending, and squander
billions on unusable weapons, especially
nuclear submarines. Environment: cut
appropriations, but make pious noises
while laying waste to forests and embarking on dangerous oil-drillingprojects
that will pollute sensitive areas both on
land and at sea, destroying habitats for
already threatened animal species.
Mr. Mulroney believes in magic: he
thinks that if he says something is so,
then that is as good as (and a lot cheaper
than) actually doing it. So if he says he
is concerned for the environment, he
may genuinely believe that is quite as
satisfactory as spending real money on
boring things like cleaning up lakes and
harbors, finding genuine answers to pollution, and solving the question of garbage disposal.
George Bush works on a similar plan.
In 1983 and 1986 he cast tie-breaking
Senate votes to continue United States
production of chemical weapons. During the campaign, he urged a global ban
on chemical warfare, claiming there was
no conflict with his former position. Figure that one out.
President Reagan, dreaming of a
place in history as the Great Peacemaker, as one of his final acts in office signed
a $300 billion defense bill which included aid to Nicaraguan rebels and more
money for Star Wars. The bill permitted
the president to release $16.5 million in
military aid now held in Honduran warehouses, on top of $27 million in nonlethal Contra aid, so that a cruel and
useless war can go on still longer, shattering a fragile peace. SOl got $4.1
billion, an increase over last year; this in
American Atheist

spite of the fact that war is the ultimate

polluter.
Nuclear weapons bequeath thousands of years of radioactivity, as well as
cancers and other hideous illnesses.
Just manufacturing the weapons leaves
us with a heritage of nondisposable
waste. Nevertheless, good Christians
seem to believe implicitly in the virtues
of these weapons.
Mr. Bush, according to a Time story,
belabored the "liberal elite" for failingto
understand that "peace flows from
strength," strength being equated with
destructive weapons and huge military
budgets. Peace Through Strength is
really the recipe for an arms race, as a
glance at the history of the last fifty
years must make painfully apparent. It is
also the recipe for fascism, vide the
philosophy of Adolf Hitler and Co.
To anyone who pauses to think, it
must be obvious that there is no strength
in nuclear weapons. They are bankrupting all of us. We cannot use them without damaging ourselves as much as the
enemy and turning the planet into a
radioactive coal.
Canada, always following the United
States at a distance, is mobilizing to fight
World War I, with our defense minister
gleefullyplanning to spend vast sums on
submarines to convoy ships across the
Atlantic Ocean, apparently in the belief
that the war willbe fought in Europe like
the last two; he keeps forgetting about
airplanes and intercontinental missiles
and all that newfangled stuff. Ten years
ago we spent millions on tanks which
became obsolete without ever being
used; now the government wants another hundred million dollars worth of new
ones - to become obsolete in their
turn. Our Mr. Beatty wants them terribly,
though, in case the Russians scull their
tanks across the Bering Sea and Alaska
to take us over.
Or possibly in the event of an invasion
from the south? Would you guys do that
to us? You look out, we are going to
have nuclear subs in about ten years!
We have to cut day care and hospitals
Austin, Texas

and education subsidies, and we can't

keep raw sewage out of the lakes from
which we also draw our drinking water,
but first things first. We are also going to
have some fancy minesweepers. Look
what has happened in the Persian Gulf,
cries Mr. Beatty, failingto notice that the
Canadian situation is hardly comparable, and that even Iran and Iraq, after
eight years of destructive war, have
decided that it is no way to settle differences. One of Mr. Beatty's aides has
suggested that the minesweepers could
be useful in intercepting boatloads of
illegalimmigrants trying to sneak ashore,
although some spoilsports argue that
this could be done better and infinitely
more cheaply by improving our neglected
coast guard service.
For such absurdities we are impoverishing old age pensioners and closing
day care centers? Canada has an excellent system of universal medical insurance, by which every citizen is covered
from cradle to grave for essentials. It is
not free: we all contribute through premiums deducted from income. But our
government, though lavish with cash for
nuclear submarines, has progressively
impoverished the health system, so that
hospital wards are closing for lack of
funds, and patients are being turned
away. This follows the model of the
Thatcher Conservatives in Britain who
have effectively dismantled the British
system which was once a model for the
world.
Having destroyed it, Mrs. Thatcher
announced that it was no good anyway
- and neither was it, after she had
starved it into impotence.
The Conservative government in
Canada is also busily engaged in destroying our postal system. It is supposed
to show a profit in order to conform with
the private enterprise philosophy of this
administration. In a country the size of
July 1989

Canada, with a small population thinly

distributed over thousands of miles of
territory, it can only show a profit by
penalizing small and remote areas. The
real purpose, which the government
thinks taxpayers are too stupid to see,
is to turn the post office over to private
interests to make a buck, at which time
only the areas producing a profit willget
service. People who live in small centers,
remote from large population centers,
may be cut off from mail service.
altogether.
Right-wing governments everywhere
display the same philosophical patterns.
They make pious professions of religious dedication, but their real religion is
the quick buck. This has always meant
a disregard for the environment, which
has only one function: to be exploited
for profit. The long view, that future generations will be impoverished, never
enters their calculations.
It is catching up to them, of course.
This year it was discovered that the
huge tuna in the seas around Prince Edward Island, once the mecca of sports
fishermen around the world, have simply disappeared. The "sportsmen" who
contributed to their disappearance
went home to South Africa and Australia
and Hong Kong empty-handed. Now
France, Canada, and the United States
are competing ferociously, sometimes
coming close to armed conflict, for the
meagre commercial catches off Newfoundland and the little islands of St.
Pierre and Miquelon.
When John Cabot first sailed those
seas in 1492,he found them "so swarming with fish that they could be taken not
only with a net, but in baskets let down
with a stone." Near the end of the sixteenth century, Richard Whitbourne
wrote that he took 125,000cod, some of
them seven feet long and weighing two
hundred pounds. (Today's cod average
five to six pounds.) In 1535, Jacques
Cartier found large numbers of grey
seals as far up the St. Lawrence River as
the site of Quebec City. We immediately
did our damnedest to exterminate them,
Page 21

as we also did with walruses, whales,

and passenger pigeons.
Nowadays the animals are becoming
so scarce that we are being forced into
conservation policies, but our irresponsible use of the ocean as a sewage dump
is destroying them regardless. Whales
and dolphins are dying of pollutionborne diseases; seals in the North Sea,
their immune systems damaged by
toxins, have been infected with disease
from dumping of slaughterhouse wastes,
and are dying by thousands.
In this behavior, of course, we are
dutifully following the example of the
Christian god, a truly resourceful polluter. His system, when he disapproved of
some human activity, was wholesale
destruction. Drown the whole world, innocent and guilty, with a universal flood.
Burn cities. Send plagues of frogs and
lice and flies and locusts, of hail and fire
and rivers turned to blood, boils on man
and beast and blights on crops. The
pharaoh would clearly have loved to see
the back of the Jews, but every time he
told them to go, "the Lord hardened
Pharaoh's heart" and made him rescind
the order. Presumably he was enjoying
himself. What an example for all of us!
With a deity like that to guide us, no
wonder we are poor environmentalists!
Of course, not many people consciously abuse the environment because
of biblical precedents. However, deep in
the Christian unconscious is a longstanding conviction that this world does
not matter: it is corrupt and vile, and only the hereafter is important. There is
also a lingering belief in the biblical nonsense about everything being created
for the benefit of man, to do with as he
wishes. Both of these ideas, functioning
somewhere at gut-level, have an insidious influence on man's contemptuous
treatment of the rest of nature.
When will we clean up our act? Is it
possible to get through to the BushThatcher-Mulroney
axis (all good
Christians) to make them understand
the seriousness of their situation? And
can we do it before it is too late? 00
Page 22

Dial A Minister Dial A Pastor - _ial A Prayer - D

. I 1\ Prp.acher
--------

_- - - - - - 4:...
__----- 385- .

DIAL-AN-ATHEIST
The telephone listings below are the various services where you may listen to
short comments on state/church separation issues and viewpoints originated by
the Atheist community,
Phoenix, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Los Angeles, California
San Diego, California
San Francisco, California
Sonoma County, California
South Bay (San Jose), California
God Speaks
Greater DC
Denver, Colorado
Southern Florida
Tampa, Florida
Atlanta, Georgia
Northern Illinois
Dial-a-Gay-Atheist
Detroit, Michigan
Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
Northern New Jersey
Keene, New Hampshire
New York City, New York
Dial-a-Gay-Atheist
Mansfield, Ohio
Columbus, Ohio
Findlay (Toledo), Ohio
Portland, Oregon
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
DIAL-THE-ATHEIST
Austin, Texas
Dallas, Texas
Houston, Texas
Dial-a-Gay-Atheist
Salt Lake City, Utah
Seattle, Washington
July 1989

(602) 273-1336
(602) 623-3861
(213)823-2445
(619)660-6663
(415)647-8481
(707)792-2207
(408)377-8485
(408)257-1486
(703) 280-4321
(303)252-0711
(305) 474-6728
(813)677-7731
(404)662-6606
(312)506-9200
(312)255-2960
(313)272-1981
(612)422-1126
(201) 777-0766
(603) 352-0116
(212)861-6520
(718)899-1737
(419)522-2686
(614)294-0300
(419)423-4090
(503) 771-6208
(215)533-1620
(412)683-5797
(512)458-5731
(214)824-5800
(713)776-3309
(713)880-4242
(801) 364-4939
(206) 859-4668
American Atheist

Who decides?

The Webster decision

of the Supreme Court
of the United States
"involves the most
politically divisive
domestic legal issue
o f our tiune. "

he hysteria around the abortion

issue has obscured the primary
questions and principles that need
to be addressed in the matter of "rights"
and to whom those "rights" belong Mother Nature (for want of a better
name), individual human beings, the
church, or the state - all of which are
claiming dominion over the decisionmaking.
Each is actively participating in pitched
battles which are being carried on in legislative bodies, in executive branches of
government at city, county, state, and
federal levels, in both the state and the
federal judiciary system, in medical facilities both public and private, in allmedia,
in the streets of the nation, in churches,
in homes, and ultimately in the baths or
bedrooms of individual persons.
The basic underlying problems are
the sex drives and the fecundity of the
human race in direct confrontation with
the desires of a percentage of the female
of the species not to become impregnated through sexual activities and alternatively desiring not to carry to term the
fetus which is a direct consequence of a
sexual act.

Some first solutions

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

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

Madalyn O'Hair
Austin, Texas

Several ordinary solutions have been

at hand to solve the basic problems. The
first and foremost has been to block the
spermatozoa ejaculated by the male of
the species during intercourse from entry into the vagina and the uterus where
an ovum may be available for attack. For
the male to control, traditionally, his
solution has been the utilization of an
impenetrable cover (a baudruche, letter,
glove, condom) over the penis to contain
the sperm ejaculated. The first such
sheaths were made from fish, sheepskin, or snakeskin. In the seventeenth
century, a Dr. Condom in London, England, refined and popularized such a
sheath. Rubber did not supplant the animal membranes until late in the nineteenth century. Since that change in material, the generic name of the devices,
by which they were commonly known,
July 1989

was "rubbers." For the female to control,

her solution has been to place a blockage (atokia, pessary) over the entrance
to the uterus (os uteri). This method was
suggested by the Greek physician,
Soranus! in his work, Gynecology, in
which he placed a small section on contraceptives, giving them the suggested
generic name of atokia. Soranus practiced medicine in Alexandria, Egypt, and
Rome in the years 91-117.His works first
differentiated the uterus from the vagina. Currently this method relies on the
use of a diaphragm (cervical cap) which
usually must be specially fitted for the
woman. A sponge dipped in any natural
acidic and inserted into the vagina was
also recommended. Soranus particularly held sour oil, cedar gum, myrtle oil,
and alum to be most efficacious.
A religious solution which could be
utilized by the male was to "spill the
seed of the male upon the ground"
(coitus interruptus), that is, for the male
to withdraw the penis from the vagina
prior to ejaculation (Onanism). The Roman Catholic solution for the woman
was for her to engage in "oral contraception," i.e., fellatio, in order to give
sexual satisfaction to her male mate. (In
the Roman Catholic theology, the female is not to have any gratification.)
However, if both members of the noncopulating couple desired to play the
game of mutual oral stimulation to orgasm, soixante-neuf certainly precluded
impregnation. Mutual masturbation
(heavy petting) also avoided pregnancy,
as did total abstinence, still being advocated by the Roman Catholic and other
religious groups for priests, nuns, teenagers, and unmarried lay persons. In recent history, after the ovulation cycle
had been disclosed, some control was
had by avoiding sexual activity during
the time that an ovum was lurking in the
female (the Roman Catholic rhythm
method). Another course of defense for
the female has been to killthe ejaculated
-Soranus of Ephesus (98-138).
Page 23

sperm immediately by use of a spermicide, usually in the form of suppository, injected into the vagina before intercourse or introduced therein immediately thereafter, In the early 1900s in the
United States, the most commonly used
method was to douche, after coition,
with water infused with vinegar.

How to know
Education
regarding any of these
attempts at birth control or information
regarding sexual activity were, of course,
suppressed
by the dominant JudeoChristianity of the Western world. In
1825 Richard Carlile," an Atheist, wrote
a small pamphlet in which he described
the method of coitus interruptus,
the
use of the letter or glove, and the insertion of a sponge into the vagina as
means of birth control. In 1831 Robert
Owen," an Atheist, produced another
small pamphlet, Moral Physiology with
the same information. The first modern
book on birth control techniques, put
together by a medical doctor, was written by an Atheist, Charles Knowlton,

2Richard Carlile (1790-1843),Englishpublicist.

3Robert Owen (1771-1858), Welsh social
reformer.
Page 24

M.D., in 1832.4 Although the distribution

of it in the United States was proscribed
by legal edict, a republishing of it in England by Charles Bradlaughf and Annie
Besant- in the early 1870s created a sensation and resulted in prison sentences
for both. This is to say that the religious
in Christianity suppressed information
regarding birth control for at least 1,800
years and that the forefront fighters attempting to disseminate it to all people
were Atheists.

Modern methods
In our modern era, diverse medications containing progestin have been
made available to thwart the production
of the ovum. Surgery has also been
utilized to cut or ligate the Fallopian
tubes in the female or the vas deferens
in the male (vasectomy) so that neither
the ovum nor the sperm may be acces-

4Charles Knowlton, M.D., Fruits of Philoso-

sible one to the other. A more radical

solution has been the surgical removal
of the uterus (hysterectomy).
But there has been a secondary problem arising from the fact that, try as they
may with the preventative measures on
hand, in any era of human history some
women have discovered, to their dismay, that they were pregnant when they
did not desire to be. What, they asked
themselves, could they do in that situation? Nature had shown the way each
generation, for the uterus seemed to
separate from and expulse a morbid
fetus that was defective. Occurring usually in the first trimester of pregnancy,
this was known as a "miscarriage." The
obvious conclusion to the women con-:
cerned was to deliberately induce a similar separation and expulsion of the fetus. If, however, this was not effective,
and the fetus was brought to term and
delivered, if it were still unwanted, infanticide could be practiced.

Abortion, a short history

The first writings concerned with the
practice of abortion appear in ancient
Persia and Greece. The Ebers Papyrus
(circa 1550 B.C.) contains prescriptions
for causing abortions. Indeed the Hippocratic
Oath,? circa 400 B.C., forswears the use of abortifacient. Many of
the classical authors refer to abortion
(Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Lysias, Ovid,
Juvenal, .Seneca, Galen, Cicero, and
Musonius) and it appears to have been
acceptable prior to the quickening of
the fetus. The Pythagoreans,"
who accepted the transmigration of souls, held
that the embryo was animate from the
moment of conception
and abortion
meant destruction
of a living being.
However, the question generally in antiquity was whether or not the child in

phy (Austin, Texas: American Atheist Press,

1980).
5Charles Bradlaugh (1833-1891), English
Atheist, founder of the National Reformer
(1860) and the National Secular Society
(1866).
6Annie Besant (1847-1933),English Atheist.
July 1989

7Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.), Greek philosopher and priest-physician, father of medicine.

8Agroup following Pythagoras (582-ca 497
B.C.), a Greek philosopher and mathematician.
American Atheist

utero was an animal, and also whether

it was capable of separate existence.
In any event, with the spread of
Judeo-Christianity, foeticide was theologically viewed as criminally equal to
the murder of an adult and was a crime
punishable with death. Before that abortion appears to have been an acceptable
solution to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. This religiously inspired penalty
remained in force in all of the countries
of Europe until the Middle Ages. It was
thought at the time that with the quickening of the fetus, it was ensouled.
Abortion prior to the quickening did not
carry a severe penalty at all. Thomas
Aquinas? held that the "quickening"
movement indicated life in the fetus.
The Council of Trent (1545-1563) restricted penalties for homicide to abortion of an animated fetus only. After the
Middle Ages, Christian theology began
to hold that "animation" began in forty
days for the male, but that the female
fetus lagged by twice that number,
eighty days. The animation, of course,
came from the infusion of the soul into
the fetus. This view persisted until the
nineteenth century.

Abortion and the law

With the United States taking many
of its laws from England, as it did, it is
necessary to note what went on there
after the Middle Ages concluded. The
Anglo-Saxons held foeticide (abortion)
as a religious offense. The jurist Sir
Matthew Hale'? recorded that "the child
within" was not considered to be in
rerum natura.t' However, the most
famous jurist, Sir William Blackstone"
recorded:

9Thomas Aquinas (12251274), Italian

theologian.
IOMatthewHale (1609-1676),English jurist.
llEncyc/opaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (Cambridge, England: University Press, 1910).
12William Blackstone (1723-1780), English
jurist.
Austin, Texas

. . . if a woman is quick with

child, and by poison or otherwise
killeth it in her womb, or ifanyone
beat her, whereby the child dieth
in her body, and she is delivered of
a dead child, this, though not murder, was by the ancient law, homicide or manslaughter.
The offense was made statutory law
in 1803,I3 carrying a penalty of fourteen
years for "making the attempt to cause
the miscarriage of a woman, etc." If the
fetus had "quickened" the attempt was
punishable by death. In 1861 this law was
codified in the "Offences against the
Person Act"14and brought with it a sentence of "penal servitude for life."
In Europe, abortion was seen as a
crime against the unborn child and the
lifeof the fetus was recognized en ventre
sa mere, in law, actually "to have been
born"; for example, it could inherit. In
France, the Code Napoleon prescribed
five to ten years' penal service for an
abortion. In other European states, the
punishment was more severe. In the
United States abortion was not punish-

able by common law but was restrained

by statutes in the various states generally enacted after the Civil War, in the
latter half of the nineteenth century. By
1911 abortion was a statutory offence in
all states of the Union. By the time of
World War II,every country in the world
prohibited it.
There was a constant underground
activity of abortions, self-induced or
other. For as long as there have been
pregnancies there have been abortifacients for women who practiced selfhelp or mechanical aids for those who
sought assistance in inducing an abortion. Governments were at a loss to control either the use of the abortifacient or
the bootleg abortionists, punish as they
might.
In 1914, another Atheist, Margaret
Sanger, began publishing a magazine
called Women Rebel, one object of
which was to advocate the prevention of
conception, which was in theory a continuation of the ideas of Charles Knowlton that pregnancy had better be avoided
than aborted. She immediately ran afoul
of the Comstock laws" in the United

13LordEllenborough's Act, 43 Geo. 3, c. 58.

1424& 25 Vict., c. 100, 59.

ISNamed after Anthony Comstock

1915),American religious reformer.

July 1989

(1844-

Page 25

States which specifically forbade information concerned with birth control or

abortion to be placed in the U.S. mails.
To avoid arrest and severe persecution
it was necessary for her to flee to England.
The British again altered their law in
1929,with the Infant Life (Preservation)
Act,16 which focused on the crime of
destruction of "the lifeof a child capable
of being born alive." In 1939,in the case
of Rex v. Boume.F it was held that an
abortion necessary to preserve the life
of the mother was excepted from the
1861act.
The situation did not improve until
the British Abortion Act of 196718which
influenced laws in other nations of the
world. However, that law, itself, was
leveraged into being by the Thalidomide
drug (marketed for morning sickness
from 1957to 1962)which resulted in the
births of deformed children. It was, of
course, the case of Sherri Finkbine
which focused attention of the world.
Mrs. Finkbine, a television personality
on a children's television show in Ari1619& 20 Geo. 5, c. 34.
171 K.B. 687.
1815& 16 Eliz. 2, c. 87.
Page 26

zona, had used Thalidomide during her

early pregnancy. Examination revealed
that the fetus was deformed. Refused an
abortion in the United States, she flew
to Sweden for the operation. This
brought the issue to the House of Lords
in England and it was there decided that
abortion could be made legal on the
grounds of physical or mental health of
the woman, but not on the grounds of
possible deformity of the child.

The 1960s
It was in the 1960sin the United States
also that attitudes began to change.
Curiously Planned Parenthood was not
a part of the cry for liberalization of the
laws and as an organization it continued
to take an anti-abortion stance. For example, a 1963Planned Parenthood pamphlet read:
Abortion requires an operation.
It kills the life of a baby after it has
begun. It is dangerous to your life
and health.
It was not until 1967that the Committee
on Human Production of the American
Medical Association (AMA) considered
a policy of recommendation on abortion.
This proposed that abortion should be
July 1989

allowed for threats to the life or health

of the woman, where the infant might be
born with incapacitating physical or
mental deformity, and where there was
evidence of rape or incest. Some caustic
analyses have been made of this recommendation by a number of the women's
groups, pointing out that the AMA had
found abortions to be profitable endeavors for medical doctors and that the
AMA moved only to maintain the monopoly in this lucrative trade. Colorado
passed such a law in 1967,with California
and North Carolina following. In 1968
the laws in Georgia and Maryland were
liberalized. In 1969 Arkansas, Kansas,
Delaware, Oregon, and New Mexico followed suit. Later resolutions of the
American Medical Association'? did
assert that abortion was a medical procedure and that it should be performed
by a licensed physician in an accredited
hospital only after consultation with two
other physicians and in conformity with
state law.

The 1970s
In 1970 New York was added to permissive states. During these years and
into the 1970s, public opinion polls continued to show support that the decision
for an abortion should be left to a woman and her doctor. The American Bar
Association (ABA) finally also came out
with a recommendations' based on the
New York abortion act which had been
bitterly opposed by the Roman Catholic
church in that state. The suggested
"Uniform Abortion Act" which the ABA
recommended be adopted by state legislatures included that any abortion
must be performed by a licensed physician, but only if the continuance of the
pregnancy would gravely impair the
mother's mental or physical health or
endanger her life.
The primary opposition to any abor-

19Proceedings of the AMA House of Delegates

220 (June 1970).
2058 A.BA J. 380 (1972).
American Atheist

.1

tion laws, or liberalization of abortion

laws came from the Roman Catholic
church, with an escalation in the pugnacity of its approach and the methodology to gain its ends. The church equally fumed at sex education and dissemination of birth control information,
devices, or medications. The zenith of
its fight against the latter was reached in
Griswold v. Connecticut= There, however, the Supreme Court of the United
States held that the use of contraceptives by married persons could not be
prohibited because of a constitutional
right of privacy within marriage. Just six
years later in Eisenstadt v. Baird,22 the
Supreme Court invalidated a Massachusetts statute which prohibited distribution of contraceptives to unmarried
persons. The "Baird" in that case was
Bill Baird, longtime friend of American
Atheists, who has appeared as a featured speaker at its conventions several times. In the former, the Supreme
Court cut out a new right protected by
the Constitution, "the right of privacy,"
and reinforced that right in the latter.

Meanwhile, back in Texas

Texas, of course, was one of the
states of the United States caught in a
cultural lag, with a criminal law on its
books, enacted originally in 1854 and
modified in language in 1898,prohibiting
abortions for whatsoever reason. And it
was in this state that one of the cases
was filed seeking a liberalization of the
abortion laws. That case, titled Roe v.
Wade,23 worked its way to the Supreme
Court of the United States and a decision was ultimately handed down on
January 22, 1973.Decided with it was a
companion case from Georgia, Doe v.
Bolton.24 The Griswold and the Eisen-

21381U.S. 479,85 S.Ct. 1678,14L. Ed. 2d 510

(1965).
22405U.S. 438, 92 S.Ct. 1029, 31 L. Ed. 349
(1972).
23410U.S. 113,93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147
(1973).
Austin, Texas

stadt decisions were relied upon by the

Court to come to a decision in Roe. Indeed the kernel of that case spoke specifically to the "right of privacy" predicated in both:

and that she is entitled to terminate

her pregnancy at whatever time,
in whatever way, and for whatever
reason she alone chooses. With
this we do not agree.

This right of privacy ... is broad

enough to encompass a woman's
decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

Before it could go further, the Supreme

Court had to face the argument as to
whether or not the fetus was "a person,"
as the state of Texas urged in asking for
protection of the fetus under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution
of the United States. 25Texas also further
argued that lifebegan at conception and
was present throughout the pregnancy.
Analyzing all of the references to "a person" in the Constitution and other laws,
the Court concluded:

However, the justices held that the state

had a right to regulate areas protected
by that right of privacy.
We, therefore, conclude that
the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but
that this right is not unqualified
and must be considered against
important state interests in regulation.
And the Court went on to find "compelling state interest" and to circumscribe
those rights:
... the appellant ... argue[s]
that the woman's right is absolute
24410U.S. 179,93 S.Ct. 739,35 L.Ed.2d 201.
July 1989

Allof this ... persuades us that the

word "person" as used in the

25Fourteenth Amendment, applicable part:

"No State shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor
shall any State deprive any person of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of
law; nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws." Adopted on July 21,1868.
Page 27

Fourteenth Amendment, does not

include the unborn.
It also refused to make a judicial decision as to "when life begins." However,
apparently, the justices felt a need to review religious determinations and noted
that the Jews hold that life does not begin until after birth, that the Protestants
have "generally regarded abortion as a
matter for the conscience of the individual and her family,"and that the [Roman]
Catholic church's official belief was that
the fetus was" ensouled" from the moment of conception. However, "the unborn have never been recognized in the
law as persons in the whole sense."
The Supreme Court then determined
that
... the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, isfree to
determine, without regulation by
the state, that, in his medical judgment, the patient's pregnancy
should be terminated.
The pregnant woman did not have
this right of judgment, only the physician
did. The Court was specific:
(a) until the end of the first trimes
Page 28

ter/'the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician";
(b) after that first trimester the state
could "regulate the abortion procedure
in ways that are reasonably related to
maternal health";
(c) after the point of viability of the
fetus, the state in promoting its interest
in the potentiality of human life may, ifit
chooses, regulate, and even proscribe,
abortion except where it is necessary, in
appropriate medical judgment, for the
preservation of the life or health of the
mother.
So, why are you being told all of this?
Because every aspect of it was included
in the Supreme Court case decided on
July 3, 1989: Webster, Attorney General
of Missouri v. Reproductive Health
Services.26
That decision was 7-2, with Rehnquist
and White in the dissent. With it, all
existing state laws were overthrown. At
the time of the decision the situation
was as follows:
Alaska, Washington, Hawaii, and
26No.88-605,1988 term.
July 1989

New York had abortion on request. Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado,

Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kansas,
Maryland, Mississippi, New Mexico,
North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina,
and Virginia had laws based on the
American Law Institute model law of
1959.This recommended that a doctor
be permitted to terminate a pregnancy
if (1) its continuation would gravely impair the physical or mental health of the
mother, (2) the child would be born with
grave physical or mental defects, or (3)
the pregnancy had resulted from rape
or incest. New Jersey and Wisconsin
laws had been liberalized by court decisions, and the rest of the states still had
the laws passed in the 1800s.27The Roe
v. Wade case, often cited, has not really
been carefully reported by the media.
Most women erroneously thought the
decision as to abortion was theirs when,
in fact, it rested with their physicians
who had permission from the state legislature to make such a determination.

The aftermath
After the Roe decision, the Roman
Catholic church immediately went to
work. One must remember that the radical religious right and the right wing in
the United States fights harder for "local
option" than for any other issue. This is
because the churches are the prime
grass-roots organizations in the nation
and can exert extraordinary pressures
upon legislative, executive, and judicial
branches of government at this level.
Although the Roman Catholic church,
at the behest of the pope, is the major
driving force of the anti-abortion campaign, it is joined by the Mormons, the
fundamentalists such as Jerry Falwell,
Richard Viguerie, the National Conservative Political Action Committee
(NCPAC), Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Beverly LeHaye and her Concerned

27Colin Francome, Abortion Freedom, A

Worldwide Movement (London: George
Allen & Unwin, 1984).
American Atheist

Women of America, Phyllis Schlafly,

herself a Roman Catholic, and her Eagle
Forum, the National Right to Life, primarily a Roman Catholic organization,
and politicians such as U.S_ senators of
the calibre of Jesse Helms, Mark Hatfield,
and Strom Thurmond, and, of course,
former President Ronald Reagan.
From 1973 forward, with the Roman
Catholics spearheading the battle, state
laws were modified to add impediments
to abortion: a second doctor must be in
attendance, viability tests must be performed on the fetus, the woman needed
the consent of the spouse, record keeping must be had and made available to
public scrutiny, minors must have consent of a parent or of a juvenile court,
waiting periods were imposed, the
women must be subjected to gory details or cautioned against the dangers of
abortions.
While carefully whittling away at the
basic right posited in Roe v. Wade, the
church managed to convince state officials to carry every legal challenge to appellate courts if possible, hoping that a
later case would bring a modification of
the Roe decision as the courts became
more and more conservative under
Nixon-Reagan appointments. Roman
Catholics took to the streets in massive
demonstrations, assaulting abortion
clinics with acts of violence, arson and
bombings, invasions of the premises,
cordoning off entrances, picketing,
seeking arrests to clog already overburdened courtrooms and overcrowded
jails. In every election, those seeking
public office were met with hostility as
they were pummeled with queries concerning their stance on abortion, or they
were greeted with boycotting at the
polls. The plaguing of candidates extended even to aspirants for the presidency of the United States. Geraldine
Ferraro, a Roman Catholic, was severely
berated by her church because of her
cautious statements in support of abortion rights, and both George Bush and
Michael Dukakis had to answer to the
anti-abortionists.
Austin, Texas

Webster v. Reproductive
Health Services
It was in this atmosphere that the
case of Webster v. Reproductive Health
Services wended its way to the Supreme
Court. The decision in the lawsuit was
given on July 3,1989.
The issue was so hot that the Supreme
Court of the United States was unable
to provide copies of the decision for a
month thereafter. Noel Scott, the National Liaison officer of the D.C. Chapter
of American Atheists, on the day of the
decision immediately went to the Supreme Court building to obtain a copy
of the same. After he waited in line for
upwards of an hour, there was a general
call that copies could not possibly be
given. Each person in line was handed a
franked government envelope, told to
write on the outside the name and
address of the proposed recipient, and
leave it with the clerk.
It was early August before a copy of
Webster v. Reproductive Health Services was received by mail in the American Atheist GHQ, a small book, eightynine pages in length.
Meanwhile, there had been a month
of semi-hysterical, semi-lucid reporting
in the media across the nation. The substance was that although Roe v. Wade 28
July 1989

had not been overturned, the Supreme

Court had returned the issue to the
states and that political battles would be
ensuing during the next several spates
of local elections.
Let's take a look at the actual law and
the actual decision ourselves, since the
media in the United States is notoriously
unreliable.

Missouri
One must remember that the state of
Missouri is heavily populated with Roman
Catholics and that, in effect, the city of
Saint Louis is one of their fiefdoms. The
church claims 30 percent of the populace
of that state. It has 5 colleges and universities, 9 seminaries, 28 high schools, 180
elementary schools, and 11 hospitals in
Missouri. It can be expected that the legislative body of that state, as well as the
governor, .would need to cater to the
demands of this group.
The history of abortion laws in that
state bears out the influence of the
Roman Catholic church. The legislature
had many years prior made it a crime to
perform an abortion except when the
mother's lifewas at stake. Since this was
28410

U.S. 113 (1978).

Page 29

"Iswear by Apollo the physician and Aesculapius, and Health, and All-heal,
and all the gods and goddesses, that, ... 1will not give to a woman a
pessary to produce abortion. .. "
- The Oath of Hippocrates
the thrust of the Texas law ruled unconstitutional in Roe u. Wade, the Supreme
Court also held these Missouri statutes
to be unconstitutional later in Danforth
u. Ridgers.29
In 1974 another Missouri law was
passed in which "viability" was defined;
written consent of the woman was required (for abortions during the first
trimester), as was written consent of the
spouse and written consent of one parent (for those under eighteen and unmarried); physicians were required to
"preserve the life and health of the
fetus"; the saline amniocentesis method
of aborting was prohibited; and record
keeping was required. When this case
reached the Supreme Court in Planned
Parenthood of Central Missouri u.
Danforth,30 that Court upheld the definition of viability,the consent provision
and the record-keeping requirements,
striking down the rest.
In 1979,Missouri passed further legislation that required abortions after the
first trimester be performed in a hospital, required a pathology report, required
the presence of a second physician after
fetus viability, and required minors to
secure parental consent or consent
from the juvenile court for an abortion.
This case also reached the Supreme
Court, in Planned Parenthood Assn. of
Kansas City, Mo., Inc. u. Ashcroft.31 In
that the Court struck down the secondtrimester hospitalization requirement
but upheld the other provisions.

The current case

Then in 1986 Missouri passed a law
(House Bill No. 15%) which amended
these existing state laws concerning
"unborn children" and abortions and,
the governor of Missouri signed it in
June 1986. It consisted of a preamble
and twenty provisions.
In July 1986,five health professionals

29414

U.S. 1035 (1973).

3482 U.S. 52 (1976).
31462 U.S. 476 (1983).
Page 30

employed by the state and two nonprofit that a physician, prior to performing an
corporations brought a class action suit abortion on any woman pregnant twenty
in the United States District Court,
or more weeks, had to ascertain whether
Western District of Missouri, challenging the fetus was "viable" by actually perfive of those provisions with a claim that forming "such medical examinations
they violated the First, Fourth, Ninth, and tests as are necessary to make a
and Fourteenth Amendments to the finding of gestational age, weight, and
Constitution of the United States. The lung maturity" of the fetus.
two nonprofit corporations were ReproAnd the issue of the reversal of Roe
ductive Health Services, which offers was raised as well.
The federal district court struck
family planning, gynecological services,
and abortion services (up to a gestational down all of the above provisions, as well
age of twenty-two weeks), and Planned as some others not germane to the suit,
and enjoined their enforcement. WebParenthood which provides abortion
services up to fourteen weeks gestational ster, who is the attorney general of the
age.
state of Missouri, then appealed the
After this case was appealed to and case to the Eighth Circuit Court of
accepted by the Supreme Court of the Appeals. That court affirmed the lower
United States, sixty-seven religious or- court's decision, holding that the proviganizations submitted their views as sions were in violative of the Supreme
amicus curiae on both sides of the case. Court ruling in Roe u. Wade32 and subsequent cases. The Supreme Court
The attorney general of the United
States also filed such a brief, on behalf accepted the case in early 1989and deof the state of Missouri and against the livered its opinion on July 3. That opin1973 Roe u. Wade decision. The litigants ion, although rendered in separate writings by the justices, was upheld by the
found a number of objectional features
of the bill and sued the state to have majority, as follows:
them declared invalid and to enjoin their
operation. These were:
The preamble was simply an
The Preamble (Mo. Rev. Stat. 1.205.1):
explanatory statement of the legislature and could be taken as not
A "finding" was set forth in the preamble
binding for the definitions given in
that "the lifeof each human being begins
it.
at conception," and that "unborn children" have protectable interest in "life,
The state had the right to
health, and well-being." Therefore, the
withdraw any of its institutions or
legislature (and the governor) affirmed
personnel from abortion activity.
that the object of the bill was to require
The viability test was reasonably designed to ensure that
that all state laws be interpreted to provide "unborn children" with the same
abortions are not performed when
rights enjoyed by other persons.
the fetus is viable.
188.21Oand 188.215: There was a
The trimester scheme of Roe
was rigid, and has proven to be
prohibition against the use of any public
facility, or public employees to either
"unsound in principle and unworkable in practice."
perform or assist abortions if they were
not necessary to save the life of the
The state has a compelling
interest in the fetus both before
mother.
and after viability.
188.205: It was made "unlawful" to
use public funds, employees, or facilities
Roe could be dealt with anfor the purpose of "encouraging or
other day.
counseling" a woman to have an abortion
not necessary to save her life.
32410 U.S. 113 (1979).
188.029: There was a requirement
July 1989

American Atheist

Missouri Revised Statute

188.029(1986)Physician, determination of viability, duties.

Rehnquist delivered the majority

opinion, in what was designated as Parts
I, II-A,II-B, and II-C, in which the other
justices concurred or dissented. These
will be dealt with in this article under
those captions, below,
To say that the Court was severely
split is not exactly accurate; the concurrences of the justices overlapped on
every level and were simply posited in
different approaches to each area of
concern. O'Connor wrote a separate
opinion concurring in the judgment, as
did Scalia. Rehnquist delivered the
majority opinion, in which Kennedy,
O'Connor, and Scalia joined. There was
a unanimous decision that Part II-C was
merely an instruction to the state's fiscal
officers not to allocate public funds for
abortion counseling and, since not pursued in the appeal, was moot.
It is necessary to look more closely at
each of the parts of the majority decision,
but the dissent is so compelling that it
needs to be examined first, inverting
normal procedure.

Blackmun dissenting,
joined by Brennan and Marshall
The minority opinion, in so far as it
can be characterized, is simply an angry
one and that anger, resentment, and
hurt is demonstrated in the lead four
paragraphs of the twenty-three page
dissent. The opinion of the Court was
written by Rehnquist and White,
O'Connor, Scalia, and Kennedy joined
in it. The dissent was written by Blackmun, and he was joined by Brennan and
Marshall. Stewart wrote a separate
opinion. Blackmun pointedly refused to
call the Rehnquist opinion the "majority
(more than half)" opinion, and each time
he referred to it his words seemed
almost to snarl as he noted it to be "the
plurality (greatest number of votes
cast)." The four paragraphs were:
Today, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S.
113 (1973), and the fundamental
constitutional right of women to
decide whether to terminate a
Austin, Texas

"Before a physician performs an abortion on a woman he has reason to

believe is carrying an unborn child of twenty or more weeks gestational
age, the physician shall first determine ifthe unborn child is viable by using
and exercising that degree of care, skill, and proficiency commonly
exercised by the ordinarily skillful, careful, and prudent physician engaged
in similar practice under the same or similar conditions. In making this
determination of viability, the physician shall perform or cause to be
performed such medical examinations and tests as are necessary to make
a finding of the gestational age, weight, and lung maturity of the unborn
child and shall enter such findings and determination of viability in the
medical record of the mother."

Preamble
Missouri Revised Statute
1.205.1(1), (2) (1986)
"1. The general assembly of this state finds that:
"(1) The life of each human being begins at conception;
"(2) Unborn children have protectable interests in Iife,health, and wellbeing;
"(3) The natural parents of unborn children have protectable interests
in the life, health, and well-being of their unborn child.
"2. Effective January 1, 1988, the laws of this state shall be interpreted
and construed to acknowledge on behalf of the unborn child at every stage
of development, all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other
persons, citizens, and residents of this state, subject only to the
Constitution of the United States, and decisional interpretations thereof
by the United States Supreme Court and specific provisions to the
contrary in the statutes and constitution of this state.
"3. As used in this section, the term 'unborn children' or 'unborn child'
shall include all unborn child or [sic] children or the offspring of human
beings from the moment of conception until birth at every stage of
biological development.
"4. Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as creating a cause of
action against a woman for indirectly harming her unborn child by failing
to properly care for herself or by failing to follow any particular program
of prenatal care."

pregnancy, survive but are not

secure. Although the Court extricates itself from this case without
making a single, even incremental,
change in the law of abortion, the
plurality and Justice Scalia would
overrule Roe (the first silently, the
other explicitly) and would return
to the States virtually unfettered
authority to control the quintessentially intimate, personal, and
life-directing decision whether to
carry a fetus to term. Although today, no less than yesterday, the
Constitution and the decisions of
July 1989

this Court prohibit a State from

enacting laws that inhibit women
from the meaningful exercise of
that right, a plurality of this Court
implicitly invites every state legislature to enact more and more
restrictive abortion regulations in
order to provoke more and more
test cases, in the hope that sometime down the line the Court will
return the law of procreative freedom to the severe limitations that
generally prevailed in this country
before January 22, 1973.Never in
my memory has a plurality anPage 31

nounced a judgment of this Court

that so foments disregard for the
law and for our standing decisions.
Nor in my memory has a plurality gone about its business in such
a deceptive fashion. At every level
of its review, from its effort to read
the real meaning out of the Missouri
statute, to its intended evisceration
of precedents and its deafening
silence about the constitutional
protections that it would jettison,
the plurality obscures the portent
of its analysis. With feigned restraint, the plurality announces
that its analysis leaves Roe "undisturbed," albeit "modif[ied] and
narrow[ed]." But this disclaimer is
totally meaningless. The plurality
opinion is filled with winks and
nods, and knowing glances to
those who would do away with
Roe explicitly, but turns a stone
face to anyone in search of what
the plurality conceives as the
scope of a woman's right under
the Due Process Clause to terminate a pregnancy free from the
coercive and brooding influence
of the State. The simple truth is
that Roe would not survive the
plurality's analysis, and that the
plurality provides no substitute for
Roe's protective umbrella.
I fear for the future. I fear for the
liberty and equality of the millions
of women who have lived and
come of age in the sixteen years
since Roe was decided. I fear for
the integrity of, and public esteem
for, this Court.
I dissent.
Blackmun was so angry that he refused to speak to the four sectioned
opinions of the "plurality" except in
"margin," which in current typography
is by the use of footnotes in a reduced
type size. In his first such footnote, he
went immediately to the "Preamble" of
the Missouri law and charged that it
could not be construed as "abortionPage 32

neutral" in any way as the plurality had

suggested. The preamble declares" ...
the life of each human being begins at
conception," rules that fetal life begins
upon "the fertilization of the ovum of a
female by a sperm of a male," and holds
that ". . . unborn children have protectable interests in life,health, and wellbeing." This, Blackmun points out, burdens any use of contraceptive devices,
such as the IUD and the "morning after"
pill which may operate to prevent pregnancy after conception as defined in the
statute.
By the specific terms of this preamble,
he stated that the declarations apply to
all of Missouri's laws, including the abortion law in review, and are to be interpreted to protect the rights of "unborn
children" to the fullest extent possible
under the Constitution of the United
States and the decisions of the Supreme
Court. Blackmun points out that such a
statute then depends on the uncertain,
disputed, and changing limitsof Supreme
Court decisions and therefore are expanded or contracted futuristically, not
by the state, but rather by those decisions. This Blackmun felt had the unconstitutional effect of chilling the exercise of a woman's right to terminate
pregnancy and burdened the freedom
of health professionals to provide abortion services.
He further pointed out that the state
of Missouri has the right to withdraw
from the business of abortion but by the
law under scrutiny has also precluded
any private physicians in private institutions from performing abortions by the
simple act of definition. In the act
"public facility," where abortion is to be
restricted, reaches to any facility " . . .
owned, leased, or controlled by this
state [Missouri] or any agency or political subdivision thereof." His example
was Truman Medical Center in Kansas
City where 0/7percent of all abortions of
sixteen weeks or later were performed
in 1985 (last statistics available). That
Center is a private hospital, staffed primarily by private doctors, administered
July 1989

by a private corporation but located on

ground leased from a politicalsubdivision
of the state.
Where the Roe decision held that the
state could not regulate abortion in the
interest of 'potential life until the third
trimester, after the fetus is viable, the
plurality concludes that the state's interest in potential life is compelling before
viability.In regard to the issue of viability,
the statute requires that the physician
"shall" make tests only to determine
viability - that is "gestational age,
weight, and lung maturity" - of any
fetus thought to be more than twenty
weeks gestational age (i.e., within the
second trimester), and "shall" enter his
findings in the mother's medical record.
These tests, all agreed (the district
court, the American Medical Association), would be contrary to sound medical practice, risk the health of both the
pregnant woman and the fetus, and be
useless for the purpose of determining
lung maturity (which can only be tested
at twenty-eight to thirty weeks). Blackmun insisted that such tests should be
made only when feasible and medically
appropriate and after the determination
of viability by the attending physician.
He charged the plurality of going "in
search of a pretext for scuttling the trimester framework" of Roe.
He then pointed out:
No one contests that under the

Roe framework the State, in order

to promote its interest in potential
life, may regulate and even proscribe non-therapeutic abortions
once the fetus becomes viable.
The idea of the state having an interest in "potential life" can, of course,
open up every conceivable attack against
birth control and sex education, Blackmun cautions, when construed to do so
by statute.
All of the litigants, and all of the government agencies and courts involved
have been quite aware in this and in
other litigation over abortion laws that
American Atheist

State funding for abortions for poor women

To preserve
rn Life endangerment, fetal

D woman's health
13 To save woman's life

~;::::

all of the testing required by state laws

would increase the costs of the abortion.
However, Blackmun is in agreement
that:

In case of life
endangerment, rape or incest

tL!I defect or psychiatric

condition that is serious

threat to woman's life

No state funded abortions

Life endangerment,
rape, incest or fear
of fetal defect

... these costs would be merely

incidental to, and a necessary accommodation of, the State's unquestioned right to prohibit nontherapeutic abortions after the
point of viability.
There is no provision, however, anywhere that the state must pay the burden of costs for such testing. The costs
are always to be upon the woman desiring the pregnancy and Blackmun
accepted that argument.
Yet in ordering the tests for viability,
the state insists and the plurality upholds
that the issue of the state's interest in
viability is equally compelling throughout pregnancy and Blackmun questioned this as violative of the trimester
framework of Roe.
Blackmun saw that the underlying
principle in the case was whether or not
the "right of privacy" holds in respect to
a decision for abortion. The Court, he
points out, had extended such a right of
privacy to matters of contraception
(Eisenstadt u. Baird); marriage (Louing
u. Virginia33); procreation (Skinner u.
Oklahoma ex reo Williamson34); and
childrearing(Pierceu. Society of Sisters35).
What Blackmun missed however is that
such a right of decision concerned with
pregnancy was not given to a pregnant
woman in Roe, it was given to her physician. In Eisenstadt it was simply a general statement as a right to be:
... free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so
fundamentally affecting a person
as the decision whether to bear or
beget a child.

33388 U.S. 1 (1967).

34388 U.S. 1 (1967).
35268 U.S. 510 (1925).
Austin, Texas

The case of Roe had a framework of

trimesters set by the Court which gave
a mechanism necessary to give effect
both to the constitutional rights of the
pregnant woman and to the state's significant interests in maternal health and
potential life.Blackmun most desperately
wanted to adhere to that as a sane
guideline.
The plurality desired to abort this
framework of trimesters and viability
because it was not spelled out per se in
the Constitution. Blackmun desired to
keep them because they were judgemade methods of evaluating and measuring the strength and scope of constitutional rights - for balancing the constitutional rights of individuals against
the competing interests of government.
He fumed that the Roe decision had not
abandoned adjudication in favor of regulation as the plurality charged and posited that the Court's job was to balance
the claims between individual rights and
legitimate interests of government. He
opines, ironically, in addition, that if a
fetus is a human being, the permissibility of terminating the lifeof a fetus could
scarcely be left to the will of the state
legislatures. The fetus cannot survive
separate from the woman and cannot
reasonably and objectively be regarded
as a subject of rights or interest distinct
from, or paramount to, those of the
July 1989

pregnant woman. However, as the fetus

evolves into its postnatal form, and as it
loses its dependence on the uterine environment, the state's interest in the
fetus' potential life and in fostering a regard for human life in general, becomes
compelling. There is an "anatomic
threshold" for fetal viability of about 2324 weeks gestation and this, in the beginning of the third trimester under Roe,
is where the interest of the state should
begin.
Blackmun scoffed at what he described
as a "newly minted standard . . . the
State's interest in protecting potential
human life." What are these interests
which regulations or laws can "permissibly further?" he asks.
The plurality, regrettably, did not review the Roe holding: "the Court's recognition that a woman has a limited fundamental constitutional right to decide
whether to terminate a pregnancy." It
simply superseded Roe by holding that
the state law may "permissibly further"
a legitimate state interest "which ifcompelling after viability is equally compelling before viability" and then pretended
that Roe had not been overturned.
Blackmun points out:
Since Roe was decided in January
1973, the Court repeatedly and
consistently has accepted and
Page 33

There can be no interest in protecting the newly

fertilized egg from physical pain or mental anguish, because the
capacity for such suffering does not yet exist.
applied the basic principle that a
woman has a fundamental right to
make the highly personal choice
whether or not to terminate her
pregnancv."

standard medical tests equate "conception" with implantation of the fertilized

egg in the uterus which occurs about six
days after the fertilization. The fertilized
egg remains in the woman's Fallopian
tube for seventy-two hours, then travels
This is to say that after Roe the diverse to the cavity of the uterus; there the cell
states attempted to enact restrictive
division continues for another seventylegislation scores of times, challenges two hours before implantation in the
uterine wall. However, only 50 percent
against sixteen of which finally reached
of fertilized ova ultimately become
the Supreme Court in a thirteen-year
period, in 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, implanted.
Since an intrauterine device (com1981,1983,1986,and now in 1989.In each
prior case the Roe test was applied.
monly called an IUD) works primarily by
Now Blackmun saw that the plurality's preventing a fertilized egg from implantlast paragraph in its decision was an im- ing, as do "morning-after pills," the preplicit invitation to every state to enact amble of the Missouri statute would regmore and more restrictive abortion laws ulate not only abortion but the use of
and to assert its interest in potential life these two forms of contraception. Steas of the moment of conception.
vens would therefore hold that the Missouri statute interferes with contraceptive
Stevens' dissent
choices and would be unconstitutional:
The dissent of Stevens was to only
several features. He agreed with the
The preamble, an unequivocal
majority decision on the issue of viabilendorsement of a religious tenet of
ity.
some but by no means all ChrisHe was worried about the preamble.
tian faiths, serves no identifiable
The Missouri statute defines "concepsecular purpose.
tion" as "the fertilization of the ovum of
a female by a sperm of a male." But
There can be no interest in protecting
the newly fertilized egg from physical
pain or mental anguish, because the
capacity for such suffering does not yet
36Connecticut v. Menillo, 423 U.S. 9 (1975); exist. The preamble is, therefore, unPlanned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. constitutional for two reasons:

Danforth, 438 U.S. 52 (1976); Bellotti v.

Baird, 428 U.S. 132 (1976); Beal v. Doe, 432
U.S. 438 (1977); Maher v. Roe, 432 U.S. 464
(1977);Poelker v. Doe, 432 U.S. 519 (1977);
Colautti v. Franklin, 439 U.S. 379 (1979);
Bellotti v. Baird, 433 U.S. 622 (1979); Harris
v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297 (1980); Williams v.
Zbaraz, 448 U.S. 358 (1980); H. L. v.
Matheson, 450 U.S. 398 (1981); Akron v.
Akron Center for Reproductive Health, Inc.,
462 U.S. 416 (1983); Planned Parenthood
Association of Kansas City, Missouri, Inc. v.
Ashcroft, 462 U.S 476 (1983); Thornburgh v.
American College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747 (1986); Hodgson
v. State of Minnesota, 109 Sup.Ct. 3240
(1989); and Webster, Attorney General of
, Missouri v. Reproductive Health Services
(1989).
Page 34

1. It has a substantive impact on the

freedom to use contraceptive procedures.
2. It violates the Establishment Clause.
A "woman's constitutionally protected
liberty encompasses the right to act on
her own belief that - to paraphrase St.
Thomas Aquinas - until a seed has
acquired the powers of sensation and
movement, the lifeof a human being has
not yet begun."

The majority opinion:

Chief Justice Rehnquist
The Preamble
As indicated, the ruling decision was
July 1989

written by Rehnquist and joined by

himself, White, O'Connor, Scalia, and
Kennedy. The preamble had been noted
by the Court of Appeals for the Eighth
Circuit which, held that the idea that life
begins at conception was "simply an impermissible state adoption of a theory of
when life begins to justify its abortion
regulations."

II-A
The Supreme Court referring back
emphasized that Roe v. Wade "implies
no limitation on the authority of a state
to make a value judgment favoring childbirth over abortion," and declared that
the preamble could be read "simply to
express that sort of value judgment." It
then with some convoluted logic stated
that since that "value judgment" was
not actually applied in the statute premised upon the preamble, the Court did
not need to rule on it. The state of Missouri, it opined, was the proper entity to
decide if the preamble's language might
be used to interpret other state statutes
or regulations, such as in tort and
probate law.

II-B
In regard to the provision prohibiting
the use of any public facility or public
employees to either perform or assist
abortions, the Court held that although
its decisions define rights, they confer
no governmental aid to gain those
rights. Any woman who desires an abortion suffers no disadvantage if the state
decides not to fund the procedure. She
can pay for it herself. Any indigency
which makes it difficult for some women
to have abortions is "neither created
nor in any way affected" by state legislation.
The state "places no governmental
obstacle in the path of a woman who
chooses to terminate her pregnancy" by
closing state-supported facilities or refusing to supply personnel to her - she
can always go to a private physician or
a private facility. The equivalent is that
there is freedom of the press, but one
American Atheist

cannot require a state-supported facility

to print what one desires to broadcast.
"Nothing in the Constitution requires
States to enter or remain in the business
of performing abortions."

II-C
The entire Court was unanimous that
no public funds, no public employees,
and no speech in public facilities could
be used to encourage or counsel a woman to have an abortion not necessary
to save her life. This was, of course, a
move against Planned Parenthood.

II-D
Viability
In respect to the need to determine
viability, that is, "the point at which the
fetus 'has the capability of meaningful
life outside the mother's womb'," the
Court pointed out that it traditionally
uses three tests when determining the
construction of a state statute:
1. It must look to the provisions of the
whole law, its object and policy, rather
than to a single sentence, or member of
a sentence.
2. Statutes willbe interpreted to avoid
constitutional difficulties.
3. The basic rule is to seek the legislative intention and effectuate it if possible.
In this case, the state's Interest was
clearly in the potential human liferather
than in maternal health and the state
had a right to make that decision.
Therefore, the Court held that there
is a presumption of viability at twenty
weeks, which the physician must rebut
with tests indicating that the fetus is not
viable prior to performing an abortion.
The district court had found that "the
medical evidence is uncontradicted that
a twenty-week fetus is not viable," and
that "23~ to 24 weeks gestation is the
earliest point in pregnancy where a reasonable possibility of viability exists."
Meaning to overcome this argument,
the Court merely noted that "there may
Austin, Texas

be a 4-week error" in estimating gestational age and that this would support
testing at 20 weeks.
Since the Roe framework. divided
fetal periods into trimesters, and that trimester scheme did not give the decision
which the Court wanted now to make,
it said simply:"We think the Roe trimester
framework falls into that category" of
constructions which have been proved
"unsound in principle and unworkable
in practice."
The state, it appeared to the Court
now, could not have a rigid line which
would allow "state regulation after viability but prohibiting it before viability."
"The State's interest [in an 'unborn
child'], if compelling after viability is
equally compelling before viability." If,
however, the state of Missouri "has
compelling interests in ensuring maternal health and in protecting potential
human life, . . . these interests exist
'throughout pregnancy'." The state,
having chosen "viability" as the point at
which its interest in potential human life
must be safeguarded, can regulate by
requiring testing and that is constitutional. "The Missouri testing requirement here is reasonably designed to ensure that abortions are not performed
where the fetus is viable - an end which
all concede is legitimate - and that is
sufficient to sustain its constitutionality."

III
Roe
Roe dealt with a Texas statute that
criminalized the performance of all
abortions, except when the mother's life
was at stake. In the Missouri case, the
issue was viability and the state's interest in potential human life. Missouri
therefore had a right to ensure that
abortions are not performed when the
fetus is viable, "an end which all concede
is legitimate," and that makes the law
constitutional. Since the facts in Webster are not the same as those in Roe,
the ruling held that Roe was to be left
undisturbed. This, of course, is absurd
reasoning for Roe was not alone overJuly 1989

turned, but completely decimated. A

future warning was given as to whether
anyone should rely anymore on Roe:
"To the extent indicated in our opinion,
we would modify and narrow Roe and
succeeding cases."

O'Connor concurring
O'Connor should not have written a
separate opinion. She simply stated that
although the dissent and Stewart thought
that the preamble would interfere with
the spelled out right to use contraceptive
devices in Griswold and Eisenstadt in
her opinion, "nothing ... indicates that
the preamble willaffect a woman's decision to practice contraception." She
saw nothing wrong with Missouri going
out of the abortion business. Likewise
she held that if the state wants to direct1y promote its interest in potential life
when viability is possible, it is within its
jurisdiction to do so. Such tests, she felt,
did not impose an undue burden on a
woman's abortion decision. In actuality
it was a complete backup of the majority
opinion, although her reasoning was a
little more tortured.

Scalia concurring
Scalia supported the opinion of Blackmun that the majority opinion had overruled Roe. But, he argued, this was how
it should be. He held that the circular arguments and the desire not to openly
face the issue only indicated that the
Court knew it was asserting sovereignty
in a field where it did not have proper
business, since the answers to the questions placed before it were political, not
judicial.

How it really is
Scalia, of course, was right. We are,
with this issue, back to the questions
posed at the beginning of the article.
Who should decide whether or not a
woman should terminate a pregnancy,
the woman, a religious institution, the
state legislature, a court, the man who
impregnated her, the physician in attendance upon her, or Mother Nature? ~
Page 35

Talking Back

Behaving ourselves

This month's question:

How can you
have ethics if there is
no god?

So you're having a hard time dealing

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

Page 36

James Manchack, a graduate stu- "ethics" is based on what "god" says,

then a society might burn a witch or slay
dent at the University of Houstona virgin once a month to satiate "god."
Clear Lake, replies:
Atheists have unlimited freedom, but However, if ethics are based on mutual
with unlimited freedom comes unlimited respect for each other's rights (that is,
responsibility. We are responsible for everyone has a right to life, liberty, and
the lives we lead and for our actions. If happiness [provided they don't deprive
we inadvertently or purposely cause the others of these rights]) then a truer form
death of another individual, then we of moral ethics is the result.
Priests who speak for "god" do so in
alone are responsible for that act. There
was no demon or devil which made us an atmosphere of blind authority. Socisqueeze the trigger, nor can we con our- ety is forced to accept the authority of
selves into believing that it was god's will the priests, regardless of how illogicalor
or destiny. After such an action, Athe- unthinking the doctrine. A country such
ists cannot go to an easily forgiving god. as Iran is the end result.
Since there is no evidence of a "god,"
We Atheists must forgive ourselves,
which is one of the hardest things for then priests are lying about their claims
to know what "god" wants. Therefore,
anyone to do.
Ifgod exists, then it is okay for anyone the proper question should be "How
(even an evangelist) to break a marriage can an ethical person presume to speak
vow of monogamy. Afterwards, you can for 'god' or cooperate with a person who
pray and say that god has cleansed you claims to speak for 'god'?"
and has made you into a new man.
If god exists, then it is okay to let Af- Bert Schorlemmer, retired sign paintricans starve, and it is okay to invade er from Texas, replies:
A conscience is an inherited characsmall defenseless countries in Central
America and in doing so, destroy hospi- teristic, while a god is an acquired myth.
tals and kill innocent men, women, and A conscientious person does not require
children. God will separate the good the fear of a god to keep his behavior
people from the bad people. God will ethical.
see to it that justice is done.
For Atheists, there is no god who will Gipson Arnold, assistant director of
the Houston Chapter of American
even up the score in the end. Therefore
we Atheists develop firm standards of Atheists, replies:
How can you have any fears if you
ethics for ourselves, standards which
allow us to lead fulllives without causing don't believe in Martians?
any harm to others. For Atheists this life
on earth is allthere is; therefore we want Richard A. Busemeyer, Life Member
to maximize the pleasure and minimize of American Atheists, replies:
Ethics are not necessarily based on
the pain for everyone.
god fear. The most sensible set of ethics
should stem from fear of man and the
Kenneth E. Pope, a member of American Atheists from California, re- answer is the golden rule "Do unto
others as you would have them do unto
plies:
The obvious answer is that there is no you."
evidence for a "god," and since men do
have a system of ethics, "god" is unnec- Arthur Frederick Ide, author of Unzipped: The Popes Bare All, replies:
essary for man to have ethics.
Ethics spring from the need of two or
Conversely, systems of ethics which
claim to have derived their origins from more interacting people to satisfy or
"god" inherently result in unethical be- protect themselves, their property and/
haviors. For instance, if a system of or ideas. Ethics concerns moral duty
July 1989

American Atheist

The Papyrus of Ani from the Egyptian Book of the Dead: The text is an introductory chapter to the "negative confessions"
which the Hebrews "borrowed" to create the Ten Commandments. Man has always made laws regarding ethics.

and obligation: principles of conduct

governing an individual or group for the
benefit of society.
Ancient cultures that either recognized no god or a multitude of deities
had ethics. "Evil" occurred when a person went against the free will and consent of another. "Good" was defined as
any action that occurred between people
who freely consented.
Society was freer before the advent of
Judeo-Christian/Islamic
ethics. Religion, historically, limits consensual acts.
God squads define evil as "sin" which
can mean eating the wrong food, touching certain body parts, missing parochial propaganda meetings, or failing to
give money to preaching parasites.
Atheist ethics include recognition of
our obligation to protect the environment, defend personal freedom, oppose
censorship, and end superstition clothed
in clerical garments.
Norm R. Allen, Jr., a Black historian
from Maryland, replies:
Ethics come from reason, logic, common sense, understanding and enlightened self-interest. The Ten Commandments were largely copied by the
Hebrews from the Egyptians. For example, ancient Egyptian priests were required to make thirty-seven "negative
confessions," which can be found in the
Egyptian Book of the Dead (originally
Austin, Texas

titled The Coming Forth from Darkness

into Light), in the coffin texts. Examples
of these confessions include "I have not
committed murder," "I have not committed adultery," "I have not stolen," "I
have not coveted," etc. This is the oldest book in the world. As Robert Green
Ingersoll wisely noted, "There have
always been laws against murder, and
always willbe, as long as men object to
being murdered."

that your acts could be universalized;

and using a scientific approach attempt
to find the truth and underlying values in
your approach to all human situations.
The question has an underlying predicate of a fear of god motivating people.
People should be motivated by aspirations of making the world better for all
living things, preserving and protecting
equal rights boldly and with elan rather
than cringing in fear of their individual
conduct.

Madalyn O'Hair, founder of American Atheists, replies:

Atheists conform to a standard of
conduct which is reasonably devised
given the time era, the geography, and
the culture in which they live. All behavioral rules are simply an attempt of humankind to have decent relationships
within groups in which they find it necessary to live. The rules are stylized
attempts to cope. The religious person
attaches a judgment call to all activity,
based upon adherence to a rigid, orthodox, commandment system. An Atheist
must bear the burden of the consequences of his acts. He cannot slough
his errors off on a god with an "Oh
father, forgive me." He must make
amends himself. Generally Atheists use
several rules of thumb: treat yourself
and every other person as if they were
ends in and of themselves rather than
means to an end; act in such a manner
July 1989

Page 37

The Probing Mind

Rock of Ages
and the age of rocks
If Jehovah did make the
earth, he would have
faced a lot of technical
difficulties.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me

hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy wounded side which
flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Save from wrath and make me
pure.
- Augustus M. Toplady
Christians desire that their children shall be taught all the
sciences, but they do not want
them to lose sight of the Rock of
Ages while they study the age of
rocks ....
- William Jennings Bryan
Speech prepared for
the Scopes Trial (1925)

II

Formerly a professor of biology and

geology, Frank R. Zindler is now a science writer. He is a member of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American
Chemical Society, and the American
Schools of Oriental Research. He is
the director of the Central Ohio Chapter of American Atheists.

Frank R. Zindler
Page 38

ike preachers generally, professional creationists make a living

saying things that are not true. As
with their erstwhile standard-bearer,
William Jennings Bryan, their assessment of the age of rocks is predetermined by their uncritical belief in the
"Rock of Ages." Since such a belief is
not reconcilable with the world of reality, creationists again and again must pile
prevarication upon imposture in order
to trick out their system as a would-be
science.
It is a favorite pastime of persons who
have debated creationists to discuss
whether or not the untruths told by creationists are deliberate lies, the result of
stupidity and ignorance, or the product
of some hitherto unclassified psychopathological process. While most are
willing to attribute the creationist babblings of local preachers to ignorance
compounded by stupidity, most cannot
believe that professional creationists i.e., the ones who make money from the
enterprise - can really be as ignorant
as the ideas they publish. Can it be believed that a man is honest who claims
that Connecticut dinosaurs died in a
flood - and cites as proof an obscure
monograph which, upon investigation,
is found to argue that the beasts in
July 1989

question died of drought? Can persons

be thought honest if they repeatedly
take quotations out of context, leaving
out critically important facts while
reaching conclusions utterly at variance
with the views of the author cited? It is
often hard to avoid the conclusion that
there are liars, damned liars, and creationists.
Nevertheless, the possibility that dishonest creationist utterances derive
from some sort of psychopathological
process cannot be ruled out. As an illustration of a case that looked a lot like
bald-faced lying when it occurred, but
which now seems to have been nothing
more sinister than disordered thought,
I can mention an incident that arose
early in 1989,while debating John Morris,
the Noah's Ark "expert."
We were on the Dick Wolfsie show,
"AM Indiana," on Channel 13 in Indianapolis. For one fast-paced hour, we argued furiously over the question, Did
Noah's flood ever occur? Very early in
the show I asked Morris for details
about the fossiliferous sedimentary
rocks which, in his book The Ark On
Ararat, he had claimed existed on Mt.
Ararat.' I noted that more than a year
earlier I had written to him for details,
but my letter had never been answered.
"Just what kind of sedimentary rocks
were these on the top of Mt. Ararat," I
asked, "and what fossils were in them?"
At first, accepting my premise that
such a claim was to be found in his book,
he simply gave the vague answer, "The
fossils were shells." When asked to be
more specific, he replied, "Dated as
Cretaceous sorts of things, supposedly
on the order of a hundred million years
or so old. Now, I don't buy the date, but
that's the normal conventional date for

lMt. Ararat is a dormant volcano, composed

entirely of igneous rocks. If it could be
shown that it had sedimentary rocks on top
of it, it could be argued that the volcano had
once been under water - Noah's flood,
even!
American Atheist

Mt. Ararat

it."
Without a doubt, at this stage in the
debate Morris knew that in his book he
had published the claim that fossiliferous
rocks could be found on Mt. Ararat.
Less than a minute later, however,
Morris made the startling assertion that
he had never claimed there were fossils
on Mt. Ararat:
In this subject, I have never said
that those fossils were on top of
Mt. Ararat. Those fossils are in
sight of Mt. Ararat. ... I reported
that in 1%9 a glaciologist claimed
he found a fossil layer about the
14,OOO-foot
level. The fossil layers
that I've studied are some ten
miles away.

"sedimentary rock" correctly, they do

claim that such is to be found on Mt.
Ararat! Nowhere in the vicinity of the
passage quoted above is there any mention of a glaciologist or the year 1%9, nor
is there any hint that the claim of fossiliferous rocks on Ararat is in any way
discordant with the views of the authors.
The annoying part of all this is the fact
that Morris' denial of his fossiliferous
rock claim was part of an attempt to
show that it was I who was dishonest that I was misrepresenting creationist
claims and arguments:
Frank, let me say that if you're
going to be critiquing my book, or
if you're going to be critiquing the
Bible, which I do believe, what you
need to do is handle that [sic] data
honestly. Now what you just have
said is not what I wrote in that
book!

In point of fact, although Morris had

mentioned sedimentary rocks in the vicinity of Mt. Ararat, he had made no
mention of any glaciologist, and he had
written that fossiliferous rocks were to
The final result of this attempt to
be found on the volcano. If he had not make me look like a liar was a report in
made so absurd a claim, I would not the April 1989issue of Acts and Facts, a
propaganda organ of the San Diegohave written to him the year before!
On pages 10 and 11 of The Ark on based Institute for Creation Research
Ararat, a book co-authored with Tim F. (lCR). In that scrupulously subjective
LaHaye, we find the following claim:
journal it was reported that
A great deal of evidence exists
indicating that not only was Mt.
Ararat once covered by water, but
it even erupted while submerged
under great depths of water. In
common with. many mountains
around the world, Mt. Ararat exhibits fossil-bearing strata. Sedimentary rock (by definition laid
down by flood waters) containing
the fossilized remains of ocean
creatures has been found as high
as the snow line, approximately a
14,OOO-footelevation. Furthermore, on the exposed northeastern face, layers of lava are intermingled with layers of sediments.s
Readers willnote that although LaHaye
and Morris do not know how to define
Austin, Texas

Morris was able to provide answers

to all his [Zindler's] substantive
charges, while exposing his use of
unfair caricatures and "strawmen
arguments. "

me a letter in reply. By then, he seemed

to have forgotten just what it was that
had been in dispute: whether or not he
had ever written that there were fossiliferous rocks on Mt. Ararat. Instead, he
tacitly admitted that such a claim was in
his book, but tried to get off the hook by
attributing the "discovery" to a fellow
creationist, Clifford Burdick.
You willnotice that in this whole
section I am summarizing, in particular, the work of Dr. Burdick,
who conducted a rather extensive
geologic survey over the space of
several summers. He not only has
written that he discovered fossilbearing strata, on the west flank of
Mt. Ararat, but he has told me so
personally, as have Dr. Lawrence
Hewitt and Eryl Cummings ....
As you should well know, it is
most proper for one scientist to
quote from or refer to the work of
others, refuting it or challenging it
only when there is clear evidence
of a mistake ....
Again, the question was not who
claimed to have found the rocks, but
rather, did Morris' book claim that there
were sedimentary rocks on Mr. Ararat?
Although most people would simply
chalk up this episode as but one more
instance of a creationist lying through
his teeth on television, Morris' behavior
probably is better explained as the result of disordered processes of moral
and logical reasoning. Since he knew even though no one else couldknow it
- that Burdick was the original author
of the sedimentary rock claim, Morris
apparently felt he could deny having
claimed it himself: his published claim
was really Clifford Burdick's claim!

One of the "strawman arguments" of

which I was guilty was, without doubt,
my correct claim that Morris had written
about fossils on Ararat!
After the debate, I photocopied pages
10 and 11 of Ark on Ararat and sent
them to Morris, to let him know that I
had seen through his denials during the
debate. A short time later, Morris sent

Varves: the nemesis of Genesis

2TimE LaHaye and John D. Morris, The Ark

on Ararat (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc.,
1976), pp. 10-11.

Most creationists try to follow the

biblical scenario of creation, fall, flood,
etc., as literally as possible. This means
that they must do everything possible to
discredit the notion that the earth is

July 1989

Page 39

millions, nay, billions of years old. This is

so because the chronologies recorded
in the Bible imply that the world was
zapped into existence around the year
4004 B.C. - give or take a few months."
To save the biblical chronology, it has
been necessary for creationists to attempt
a reconstruction of the entire science of
geology.
The facts of nature, however, are
quite insistent: they tell us the earth is
old. Some of the evidence is so clear and
unequivocal that even persons untrained
in the sciences can understand it as
soon as it is presented, and they can see
at once that it deals a fatal blow to the
biblical chronology.
One such evidence derives from
rocks which exhibit unusual structures
called varves. Varves are thin, laminar
structures that, when seen edge-on, resemble the growth rings of trees. Typically, each varve is composed of a couplet of light- and dark-colored layers of
material. In true varves, each couplet of
layers represents material laid down
under water in a single year. Like the
growth rings of trees, the laminations in
varved rocks record an annual climatic
rhythm. In northern lakes during the
spring and summer, because of wave
action, only large particles can settle to
the bottom to form a layer of sediment.
In winter, however, when the lakes
freeze over, even very fine particles (including much of the organic material)
can settle below wave-base and form a
second, darker layer.
The proof that varves represent annual deposits can be quite compelling.
N. J. Berrill, in his book Man's Emerging

3The date of creation can be fudged a bit if

one uses different ancient versions of the
Old Testament. Thus, although the Hebrew
Massoretic text (the text used for most
English translations) gives the period from
creation to the deluge as being 1,656 years
in duration, the Greek Septuagint version
gives 2,263 years. The Samaritan version,
however, gives only 1,307 years!
Page 40

Mind, tells of a varved shale from the

Miocene Epoch of Switzerland:
Certain shales of Miocene age
in Switzerland bring that ancient
world as vividlyto lifeas any poster advertising the glories of a
Swiss canton. For layer upon layer
repeat the following sequence:
compressed in the bottom of each
layer are the blossoms of poplar
and camphor trees, symbols of
spring; immediately above is a thin
region containing winged ants and
the seeds of elm and poplar, all of
summertime; and this in turn is
overlaid by the autumn fruits of
camphor, date-plum and wildgrape.
The whole progression of the seasons, year after year, are there in
the earth like an enchantment.
Time past was as real as time
present. 4

ly according to the season of

blooming. Finally, diatoms are
twice as abundant in the lightcolored layers as in the dark.
From this evidence it is concluded
that the light layers represent
summer seasons and the dark
ones fall,winter, and spring. Counts
of the layers indicate a record extending back to 9,500 yr B.P. ["years
before present").S

Rhythmites deposited in a lake

near Interlaken in Switzerland are
thin couplets, each consisting of a
light-colored layer rich in calcium
carbonate and a dark layer rich in
organic matter. Proof that these
rhythmites are annual and are
therefore varves is established on
organic evidence. The sediment
contains pollen grains, whose
number per unit volume of sediment varies cyclically, being greatest in the upper parts of the dark
layers. The pollen grains of various
genera are stratified systematical-

Since the latter set of varves are at

least 3,500 years older than the earth
itself, according to the biblical chronology, they must surely be a work of the
devil, and it would behoove all profitmaking prophets in the Land of Creationdumdum to do everything possible to
explain them away.
One of the first to attempt this Everest
of biblical apologetics was John Morris'
father, Henry M. Morris. In my opinion,
Morris pere is the person most to be
blamed for the recrudescence of creationist pseudoscience in the space age.
In 1961, along with coauthor John C.
Whitcomb, Jr., Morris published the
creationist "classic," The Genesis Flood:
The Biblical Record and Its Scientific
Implications. That was the volume of
tomfoolery that formed the basis for
what is wishfully called "creation science," an attempt to make biblical
myths look and sound scientific.
In that never-revised book, Morris
and Whitcomb devote eight fullpages to
the explaining away of varves. Citing
genuine scientific authorities on peripheral issues, they attempt to cast doubt
on the thesis that the pairs of layers in
varved sediments are annual in nature.
But do Morris and Whitcomb have an
explanation for Flint's pollen data? Do
they even mention it? Of course not even though it is certain that they have
read Flint's book, since they cite it in

4N. J. Berrill, Man's Emerging Mind, A

Premier Book (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett
Publications, Inc., 1957), p. 24.

5Richard Foster Flint, Glacialand Pleistocene

Geology (New York: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., 1957), pp. 293-294.

It should not be thought that Berrill's

example is a unique or isolated example.
Richard Foster Flint, in his famous textbook, Glacial and Pleistocene Geology,
describes more modern varves ("rhythmites") that have been studied in
Switzerland:

July 1989

American Atheist

Scandinavian varved clay deposit.

their critique. The Interlaken deposits
are ignored totally. And well must they
ignore them, in order to be able to end
their general discussion of varves with
the conclusion:
Thus, it is concluded
that the
varved clays of the Pleistocene
glacial lakes offer no problem to
the chronology of Biblical geology.
The varves were deposited, either
annually or at shorter intervals,
within the post-Deluge period.s
This would not compute if they had to
include the 9,500-year record of the Interlaken varves. According to the Hebrew
chronology, Noah's flood occurred in
the year 2,348 B.C.1Since Morris claims
varves to be post-deluge,
the flood
would have had to be much earlier than
the biblical chronology implies. Inasmuch
as that chronology dates the creation
1,656 years before the flood, combining
the varves with the pre-flood biblical
chronology would push creation back
to around 11,000 B.C. - fully a thousand
years earlier than the most daring of the
seers at ICR would allow!"
In what would appear to be a deliberate attempt to obfuscate
the varve
evidence, Morris and Whitcomb quote
from myoid geomorphology professor,
William D. Thornbury:
There has been criticism of this
method of arriving at estimates of
Pleistocene
chronology.
In the

6John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris,

The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and
Its Scientific Implications (Philadelphia: The
Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co.,
1961), p. 423.
7It is astonishing that the Egyptians, Chinese, and Sumerians did not notice the end
of the world. Since the Great Pyramid of
Cheops is quite a bit older than the flood, it
is amazing that it has no watermarks in it! It
is also surprising that there is a bristle cone
pine tree which was five hundred years old
at the time of the flood - and is stillgrowing!
Austin, Texas

first place, it involves a great deal

of interpolation and extrapolation,
which introduce possible errors.
Secondly, there is some question
as to whether varves actually are
annual deposits.
Deane (1950)
from his study of the varves in the
Lake Simcoe region of Ontario
was led to doubt seriously that
varves represent yearly deposits
and was more inclined to think
that they represent
deposits of
shorter lengths of time.?
From personal experience,
I know
that Professor Thornbury accepted the
Swiss varves mentioned earlier as being
true annual deposits. In the passage
quoted, he was dealing mostly with the
problem of correlating varve deposits in
one part of the world with those somewhere else. As for the idea that varves
in general represent deposits of lessthan-annual periodicity, we note that
our Christian authors have left out the
conclusion
of the passage
quoted.
Thornbury
ended the above passage
with the statement that

8The biblical genealogies generally tell how

old each character was when he sired
("begat") the next person in the list. Although
there are a few places where the genealogies
break down and estimates of elapsed time
can vary by several years one way or the
other, there is no way that the Hebrew
chronology could allow a creation as early,
say, as 4500 B.C. Whereas the creationists
repeatedly claim the Bible to be infallible,
when it comes to chronology they waffle.
They claim that some generations have
been left out, and that the world is perhaps
several thousand years older than what the
Bible says it is! If generations have been left
out of the Bible, is it not possible that whole
sentences have been left out also? Sentences, e.g., saying that Jahweh used natural
selection to create the different "kinds" of
animals?
9William D. Thornbury, Principles of Geomorphology (New York: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., 1954), p. 404.
July 1989

Results from radiocarbon

dating
of late Wisconsin deposits are not
in complete agreement with ages
arrived at by varve counting but
are similar enough to suggest that
varves are probably annual deposits.
It was necessary to leave out Thornbury's conclusion mentioning radiocarbon, because on page 423 they would
make one further attack on varve chronology:
The highly doubtful significance
of any varve chronology has been
demonstrated
plainly in recent
years by its general rejection by
geologists when the newer radiocarbon method was found to be
contradictory to it.
Further insights into the methodology
of Christian geology as practiced by
Morris and Whitcomb can be gained by
noting the fact that on the page preceding the above conclusion they quote a
passage from Flint's Pleistocene Geology (as we have noted, without mentioning
Flint's dramatic description of the Swiss
pollen sequences)
appearing
to cast
even more doubt on the annual nature
of varves and seeming to imply that
Scandinavian varve studies are in disarray. Left out of the quotation, however, is a part saying that the varve
chronology is widely accepted in Europe,
and that there is radiocarbon
support
for it!
Can it be an accident that this was
omitted?
While it is true that back in the 1950s,
when Flint's text was written, there
were some disputes among Scandinavian varve chronologists concerning the
exact number of years elapsed since the
retreat of the Pleistocene glaciers from
various locations, these problems have
now been resolved, and very little uncertainty remains in the varve chronology constructed for the last 10,000-12,000
years. Indeed, varve chronologies
are
Page 41

now so well established, they are being

used to correct radiocarbon dates for
the period 10,000-12,000 years B.P., just
as dendrochronology
(tree-ring dating)
has been used to correct radiocarbon
dates for the period 2000-7000 yr B.P'IO
All doubt as to the animal nature of at
least the Swedish varves has recently
been dispelled by work done by Ingemar
Cato.t- of the Swedish Geological Survey. Cato has studied varves Jormin!{ at
the present time in the estuary of the Angermanalven river in northern Sweden.
He has proved by direct observation
that varves do indeed form as annual
deposits and that their thickness is directly related to the amount of material
carried in suspension by the river. Now
that we know for certain that the Swedish varves are indeed yearly records of
the postglacial world, creationists have
to decide what to do with the fact that
the varve record at Doviken in Sweden
began in 7288 B'C. (i.e., 4,940 years before the date implied by the Bible for
Noah's flood). This means that the biblical chronologies spanning the period
from the flood to the supposed birth of
Christ are in error by more than 310 percent! This is very hard to reconcile with
biblical inerrancy.
Worse yet, the beginning of the varvecount does not signal the end of Noah's
flood (of course!), but rather the end of
the Ice Age (pleistocene
Epoch) -

IORadiocarbon dates for these time intervals

are consistently too low. That is, objects
from these periods seem to be younger than
their true age. This is due to the fact that the
rate at which 14C is formed in the upper
atmosphere can change slightly, as a result
of slight changes in the radiation output
from the sun. Radiocarbon dating specialists
have gradually learned how to correct for
these variations.
llIngemar Cato, "The definitive connection
of the Swedish geochronology time scale
with the present, and the new date of the
zero year in Doviken, northern Sweden,"
Boreas: An International Journal of Quaternary Research, 14 (1985), pp. 117-l21.
Page 42

which epoch most creationists claim is

also post-flood. Allowing sufficient time
for numerous advances and retreats of
continental glaciers, with deep weathering of soils and growth of long-lived
forests in between we see that the date
of Noah's flood is pushed back to far
before 10,000 B.c., i.e., to long before
the beginning of the universe according
to the opinion of creationist savants!

The Green River shale:

A rock far older than god
While ICR creationists probably get a
headache from the contemplation
of
postglacial varves, the problems presented by preglacial varves ought to
squeeze their brains out their hair follicles. Quite a few creationists claim that
all the preglacial sedimentary rocks of
the world were laid down during the
single year of Noah's flood. This would
seem to be preposterous
enough to
make anybody laugh creationism off the
stage; but the absurdity grows even
greater when one considers the problem
creationists
face when they have to
account for preglacial varved deposits
such as the Eocene Green River Shale,
a rock deposit found in Colorado, Utah,
and Wyoming.
The Green River Shale is a deposit of
soft rocks (including so-called oil-shales)
averaging about 2,000 feet in thickness
and covering an area of 25,000 square
miles. A large part of the formation consists of laminated deposits that appear
to be varves - over six million of them!
The first detailed description
of the
varved deposits was published back in
1929 by Wilmot H. Bradley, a geologist
with the U.S. Geological Survey.l''
Unlike most modern varved deposits,
the Green River varves are very thin,
averaging only 0.18 millimeters. In each
pair of laminations, one layer is darker
in color and much richer in organic material than the other, which often is
made of very fine-grained carbonate
minerals. Bradley concluded that the
varves were annual deposits on the
basis of their close resemblance
to
July 1989

varves being formed today in certain

modern lakes and on the basis of the
astronomical
rhythms they appear to
reflect:
Three cycles of greater length
than the varve cycle are suggested by fairly regular recurrent variations in the thickness
of the
varves and in the thickness and
character of certain beds and by
the fairly regular spacing of certain
saltmold layers. The first of these
cycles averaged a little less than 12

12WilmotH. Bradley, The varves and climate

of the Green River epoch, U.S. Geol. Survey
Prof. Paper 158-E, pp. 87-110,1929. Since the
time of Bradley, many geologists have studied the Green River Formation. Not surprisingly, not everything that Bradley said
about the formation is still thought to be
completely correct. Whereas Bradley thought
the Green River lakes to have been of moderate depth, it is now relatively certain that
they were extremely shallow, playa lakes. (A
playa is a desert basin that temporarily
becomes a shallow lake after heavy rains.)
While Bradley's conclusion that the laminations were annual varves is now known
not to apply to all the parts of the formation,
his lowest estimate of the duration of Green
River time (five million years) was only 20
percent higher than the results of modern
determinations. While it is probable that at
least some of the varves reflect less-thanannual periods of deposition, most of Bradley's error seems to have resulted from the
method on which he had to rely to estimate
the total thicknesses of the various types of
rock units. He was not able to crawl along
the outcrops with a microscope and count
all the millions of varves directly. Readers interested in more modern studies of this fascinating geological formation may consult
the article "Green River Formation, Wyoming:
A Playa-Lake Complex," by Ronald C.
Surdam and Claudia A. Wolfbauer, Geol.
Soc. of America Bull., vol. 86, pp. 335-345,
1975; or "Paleoecology of Cyclic Sediments
of the Lower Green River Formation, Central
Utah," by James L. Baer, Brigham Young
University Geology Studies, vol. 16, pt. 1, pp.
3-95, Dee. 1%9.
American Atheist

Nowhere does Morris explain how

varves reflecting sun-spot and higher astronomical rhythms
could have been laid down
during the single year of Noah's flood.
years in length and appears to
correspond to the cycle of sunspot
numbers. The second cycle had
an average length of about 21,600
years and suggests the average
period of about 21,000 years which
is the resultant of thecyclic changes
of eccentricity of the earth's orbit
and the cycle of the precession of
the equinoxes. The third cycle,
which was about fifty years long,
agrees with no well-established
rhythm."
How does Henry Morris deal with this
evidence? The presence of astronomical rhythms in the shale being the most
impressive argument for a generally
annual character of the laminations, we
are not surprised to find that Morris
makes no mention of the evidence and
thus avoids the embarrassment of having to explain it away. Instead, he attacks
Bradley's use of the principle of uniformitarianism in comparing the Green
River varves with the annual deposits
being formed in certain modern lakes,
and he attacks Bradley's calculations
showing that the amount of material
composing each varve was consistent
with the amount of material that could
be brought into the lake each year by
nvers.
Nowhere does Morris explain how
varves reflecting sun-spot and higher
astronomical rhythms could have been
laid down during the single year of
Noah's flood. Nowhere does he let his
readers know the problem even exists.
Although he cites various geological
treatises that contain greatly detailed information about the Green River Formation, most of this is ignored. He
mentions
the extensive deposits of volcanic
ash mingled with the shales and
the almost complete absence of
any graded bedding in the oil-rich
13WilmotH. Bradley, op. cit., p. 87.
Austin, Texas

shales such as would be normally

encountered in any lake-bottom
sediment. Also, there is evidence
of brecciated conditions in many
parts of the formation."
Not only does Morris not explain why
it is implausible to suppose that volcanic
ash occasionally fell into the lake in
which the varves were forming, he neglects to discuss the impossibility of
such ash layers forming if the volcanos
producing them were submerged by the
waters of Noah's flood! With respect to
the supposed lack of graded bedding, IS
he not only neglects to discuss the limy
sandstones which Bradley reported did
display graded bedding, he neglects to
mention that his own hypothesis of how
the deposit was formed during Noah's
flood absolutely requires all the layers to
display graded bedding!
The only certain conclusion,
from the very nature of the deposits, would seem to be that they
could not have been formed as
cyclic varves as claimed. A possible
plausible explanation might be in
terms of a vast sedimentary basin
formed by the gradual uplift of the
land surrounding it, in the later
stages of the Deluge period. A
complex of shallow turbidity currents, carrying the still soft surface
sediments and organic slime from
the surface of the rising lands
would then enter the basin, mingle,
and deposit their loads .... 16
Turbidity currents

would have the

14Whitcomb and Morris, op. cit., p. 427.

bed is a layer of rock in which the
size of the particles it contains decrease in
size from bottom to top. Such deposits usually result from the fact that if particles of
varying sizes simultaneously are suspended
in water, the largest particles will settle out
first, the smallest last.
16Whitcomb and Morris, op. cit., p. 4278.
IS A graded

July 1989

effect of suspending particles of all sizes

in the water. Unless magical powers
were invoked to prevent it, all the laminations resulting from turbidity flows
would show graded bedding, with coarse
particles at the bottom, fine ones at the
top. How each turbidity flow could be
spread out so thinly over thousands of
square miles, Morris does not explain.
Nor does he deal with the problem that
oil and water do not mix, and that if the
oily,organic material forming one part of
each varve pair had been washed into
the lake basin by a turbidity flow, the
organic material would form large blobs,
not microscopically thin, uniform layers
perfectly demarcated from the inorganic
layers above and below. Still less does
Morris explain how six million turbidity
flows could have occurred within the
time frame of Noah's flood. Depending
upon the time allowed, between 700 and
36,000 basin-wide turbidity flows would
have had to occur per hour!'?
Morris, as we have already seen,
mentions that some of the Green River
deposits are "brecciated,"18 as though
that somehow rules out a generally annual nature of the varves. What he does
not tell his readers - even though it is
certain that he learned the truth while
rummaging through the sources he
cites - is that the Green River breccias
resulted from mud-flats drying out, with
the formation of mud-cracks and the
curling up of the resulting algal slimecovered mud shingles. Understandably,

17John Morris apparently disagrees with his

father's absurd explanation. Incredibly, in
his televised debate with me, Morris fils
came up with an even more absurd explanation than that of his father! He claimed that
the Green River laminations could have reo
suited fr.om dry mud-flows associated with
volcanic eruptions such as the one he was
"studying" at Mt. St. Helens. Just how
volcanos produce algal spores and other
organic materials, John did not say.
18Abreccia is a rock composed of sharpangled fragments cemented together by a
fine-grained matrix.
Page 43

Though it was published forty years ago

by Atheist E. Haldeman-Julius, this
cartoon applies to the creationist of
today.

Morris did not want to draw attention to

evidences of drought at a time he claims
the world was under water! This can
hardly be confused with honest scholarship, however.

One week in Wyoming

Given information available concerning the types of things found in the
Green River Formation, it is amusing to
attempt a reconstruction of what Jahweh
would have had to do to form it during
the period allotted for Noah's flood.
Since there are over six million twoply layers, it is clear that our earthdestroying deity had to lay down algae,
deposit carbonate, lay down algae, etc.,
more than six milliontimes! Because the
Green River Formation comes rather
late in the geological column, it is clear
that it would have been formed during
the last days of the flood year. If all 600
million years' worth of Phanerozoic
rocks were actually formed in about a
year, as creation "scientists" claim, formation of the four millionyears' worth of
Green River rocks should have taken
about a week. Whatever Jahweh was
doing that week in Wyoming, he was
doing it at rate of about 600 per minute!
Perhaps he had the help of Speedy
Gonzalez.
Probably the greatest problem the
"Rock of Ages" had in giving the false
appearance of age to the Green River
Shale stemmed from the fact that he
had to do it in the midst of a worlddestroying flood, yet many of the structures of the deposit can only be formed
during drought. For example, there are
many hundreds of layers of salt crystals.
This means that at least once per hour,
Jahweh had to stop rearranging continents, fly to Wyoming, evaporate the
flood waters in just that locality to crystallize and precipitate out layers of salt
- without adding heat to destroy the
aquatic forms of life he would need to
help him form other structures to be discussed later.
Since volcanic ash layers are common in our shale deposit, at least several
Page 44

times per day our rock-making divinity

had to pull back the waters enough to let
the peaks of the local volcanos emerge,
eject ash clouds, and let the ash settle
upon the varves. Then he had to let the
flood waters return (waters five miles
deep, if Mt. Everest was covered!), until
the next drought was needed.
Several times per hour, Jehovah had
to remove the water completely from the
Green River area, so he could form
mudcracks, coat the mud with a varnishlike layer of algal remains, add dead fish,
dry the whole affair until mud shingles
and fish alike curled up. Then, unlike his
trick with Moses in the Red Sea, he had
to let the flood return gently, so that the
mud-curls and curled fish would not be
disturbed, but would be covered by a
delicate cover of varved material. At
least once per day, however, Yahweh
Elohim had to keep the mud-flats dry
long enough for plants to grow and a
weathered soil horizon to form.
Despite the fact that the purpose of
Noah's flood was to destroy all life on
earth, aside from the token delegations
taken onto the ark, the Lord God of
Sabaoth had to keep lots of livingthings
held at the ready so he could use them
to form particular deposits. For example, at least once per day he had to form
algal reefs as much as six feet thick, in
which live algae were caused to secrete
layers of carbonate having the appearance of annual growth rings. Although
he probably had less than a minute to do
it, the Little Old Rock-Maker managed
to form algal reefs looking for all the
world as though they had taken at least
350 years to grow!
Periodically, insect larvae by the billions had to be trotted out to cast their
July 1989

exoskeletons in crowded layers between

the varves. At other times, the deity
took just the eyes and wingscales of
insects and made rock layers from
them. Sometimes, for variety, he made
layers out of the scales of ganoid fishes
instead of the scales of insects. (Most of
the organic layers, of course, are made
up of the spores of algae and fungi and
the amorphous remains of other vegetation.) Occasionally, he drowned a camel
or sank a crocodile, and laid it out upon
the varved clays. Just where these animals had been treading water during the
preceding ten months of the flood is not
revealed in Genesis, although the prophets at leR could get a special revelation
on the subject at any time.
Of all the marvelous portions of the
Green River Shale, the ones that most
vividlydisplay divine design are, without
question, the layers formed mostly of
tiny coprolites - the fossilized excremental pellets of aquatic insects and
other tiny water-dwelling animals. It is
awesome to contemplate a being who
repeatedly would take time off from the
important job of destroying the world, in
order to call out the trillions of tiny insects and crustaceans that he had been
saving from destruction - just for the
purpose of having them all poop on the
playa en masse. Who but a god could
make all those little buggers "hold it"
until that one-tenth of a second when
their colon contents were needed to
form a particular varve?

The problem of deception

If the Lord God of Israel and Wyoming made the rocks of the Green River
Formation just recently, creationists are
faced with the problem of explaining
why he caused them to have the appearance of great age. Why would he deceive
us in the story he reveals in the physical
world? Why would the Rock of Ages lie
about the age of rocks? If Rocky has deceived his creatures in the Book of
Rocks, is it not logical to suppose he has
also deceived them in the Book of
Genesis as well? ~
American Atheist

American Atheist Radio Series

Theosophy
ut of the six or seven hundred
major religions which have been
founded and have flourished in
the history of man, several have been
founded in Western civilization. The
most notable of these, in recent times,
have been Spiritualism, founded by the
Lea Fox sisters, the Christian Science
Church, founded by Mary Baker Eddy,
and Theosophy, founded by Helena Blavatsky. All of these were frauds.
The founder of Theosophy, Helena
Blavatsky, was so notorious an adventuress that, in spite of all efforts of Theosophists to defend her memory, the
record is there. I want to explore Theosophy and Helena Blavatsky.
She was a Russian girl, born in 1831,
who, at the age of seventeen, married
the Russian General Blavatsky, who
was nearly seventy years old. He soon
died and for some twenty years Helena
Petrovna, now Madame Blavatsky, wandered from country to country. She was
a large, fleshy woman of more than two
hundred pounds weight, a great smoker,
and, from reports of her more vituperative critics, she utilized what has been
termed as gross language.
Other names pop up where she is
concerned. A famous spiritualistic medium of that time, one D. D. Home, has
written about how he met her in Paris in
1858 and taught her his religion - or
what he called his "art." Her sister
writes that Madame Blavatsky later
tried, unsuccessfully, to earn a living as
a spiritualistic medium in Russia; and in
1871 she tried to set up in the same
capacity in Cairo, Egypt. She was then
forty years old.
In 1874she came to America, -hearing
that there was a golden opportunity for
mediums - which was indeed the case
as the fad for this at the time was still
high, although waning. She did cooperate with well-known mediums and in the
process met one Colonel Olcott with
whom she became closely associated.
However, more and more the mediums
were being exposed as frauds. So, she
and Olcott founded a "Miracle Club"

t+J
I

Helena Blavatsky took

a pinch of Spiritualism
and a bit of bad history
- and created a scam.

When the first installment of a

regularly scheduled, fifteen-minute,
weekly American Atheist radio series
on KLBJ radio (a station in Austin,
Texas, owned by then-President
Lyndon Baines Johnson) hit the
airwaves on June 3, 1968, the nation
was shocked. The programs had to be
submitted weeks in advance and were
heavily censored. The regular production of the series ended in September
1977, when no further funding was
available.
The following is the text of "American
Atheist Radio Series" program No. 405,
first broadcast on August 7, 1976.

Madalyn O'Hair
Austin, Texas

July 1989

under the spiritual auspices of the

Brothers of Luxor, Egypt. She was, in
this period, involved in extensive reading - primarily on the works of ancient
mysticism. However, the reading was
being done so rapidly that she could not
keep up. Therefore the Brothers of
Luxor (ancient Hindu sages) began to
send letters to their new faithful. She
dressed Colonel Olcott in a leopard skin
and others of her group in fantastic
costumes and set off to seek esoteric
wisdom in the class-bound land of India.
The Hindus, by and large, rebuffed
her, but she gained European converts
by using mediumistic tricks. A favorite
one of these was to have letters precipitated into her room which - she explained - had been instantaneously
transmitted by sages living in distant
Tibet. She also employed juggling tricks
and fake cabinets. The British Society
for Psychical Research sent a competent investigator to examine the reported miracles and published his drastic
exposure of the deceit.
The increasing exposure of Spiritualism compelled Madame Blavatsky to invent a new spiritual profession, and she
shrewdly imagined a source of revelation which should actually agree with
the new mood of America in the sense
that it denounced Spiritualism as a
fraudulent movement. America in the
1870swas then laughing at the idea that
the spirits of dead Indians and others
could come back and, through banjoplaying mediums, teach it a superior
wisdom. On the other hand, many in the
United States then (and now) still flirted
with the legend that in ancient times,
especially in the eastern or Asiatic
world, there had been a wonderful wisdom which had been lost.
Why not try the experiment of saying
that certain of these ancient sages "had
remained on earth and were ready to
teach the great wisdom to men? And
why not Tibet, the land of mystery, a
good place - inaccessible - bizarre a place to locate these Mahatmas?
Therefore in 1875Madame Blavatsky,
Page 45

Colonel Olcott, and a new convert

named Sinnett founded the Theosophical Society, It was an occultist, not a
mystic, movement. That is, a hidden
wisdom was taught to a few favored
mortals. This wisdom was tens of thousands of years old; and, while all the rest
of the race had forgotten it and gone
astray in their religions, a company of
the ancient sages, or mahatmas, had
remained alive through all the interim in
Tibet or on the great mountains that
guard Tibet. These Methuselahs were
now, at last, in touch with Madame

Blavatskv,
Madame Blavatsky did not, like Mary
Baker Eddy, simply tell a few lies to
cover up the real source of her ideas,
she instead invented a bold romance so audacious in its lack of veracity that
even her own followers did not believe
it, but still accepted it.
Her story was that she had spent
seven years in Tibet and had there been
taught the ancient wisdom by two mahatmas, Morya and Koot Hoomi. Every
romantic ingredient was put into the
story. Madame Blavatsky, the brave pupil, went through the ordeals of earth,
air, fire, and water.
She had been admitted to subterranean libraries where millions of books
were preserved from the days of primitive wisdom. She had been permitted to
copy passages from one of these, written on palm leaves in a tongue which no
scholar knows today, and take its marvellous message to India. The mahatmas explained that they had lingered on
earth during many thousands of years,
sustaining life on a handful of herbs now
and again in the solitude of the Kashmir
Pass - but that they could never leave
Tibet because of the foul and sinful
world outside of it. Only the sacred city
of Lhasa could be tolerated by them.
Does it not seem incredible now that
anyone could have accepted this guff
even in 1871? Well, if you live in a major
city, turn to the yellow pages of your
telephone book. The church of Theosophy is still alive and doing well. You can
Page 46

What was found in Tibet, of course,

was that it was the most ignorant and
backward country in the world, low in
moral quality, sordidly ignorant and
filthy, dominated by ignorant and greedy
monks who mercilessly exploited the
people and struggled against each other.
The romantic story was the wildest fico
tion that any person could have invented
- and the seven years Madame BlavatHelena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), sky claimed to have spent in Tibet disfounder of the Theosophical Society, solved as her appearances were recorded
was prominent in the occult scene. She during that time in Europe and in Egypt.
first became involved in Spiritualism
Nonetheless, Madame Blavatsky died
and later made an attempt to unite
in 1891 and there immediately proceedEastern and Western magical traditions.
ed a sordid quarrel for the succession to
the leadership.
The Indo-European
church broke away, as did the American
one. In India the scandal was gross.
In the church of Theosophy - as in
every religion - there was an array of
support, with some literally believing
everything, some liking the speculative
verbiage of the writings, and some apologizing for Madame
Blavatsky
but
adhering to the principles.
The official statement of the aims of
the Theosophical Society continues to
be to study ancient religions, philosophies, and science, and to investigate
nature and the undeveloped powers of
man.
The basis is much the same as in
Christian Science, the oneness of all
things, the recognition of the alleged
truth of the absurd theory that personMme. Blavatsky's mystic brooch, her
initials in a hexagram (spirit and matter
ality is a delusion.
interlocked), was enclosed in a snake
The title of Madame Blavatsky's first
swallowing its own tail (immortality),
and most popular book was Isis Unveiled.
and was topped by a swastika (the
It shows that she started out with - not
ceaseless coming into being of life) and
revelations - but a certain inaccurate
the crown of perfection.
theory of ancient Egypt which was current when she lived.
join it, if you wish.
The Egyptian pyramids, which had
Of course, when the British expeditions broke the sealed frontier of Lhasa
not yet been thoroughly studied, were
nothing
that
Madame
Blavatsky
said by her to embody a most marvellous science - which most Egyptolo. described was there found. And learned
gists now entirely reject.
experts
on oriental literature
soon
proved that the passages translated
As to religion in particular, the further
we go back in Egyptian religious movefrom an unknown tongue were copied
ments, the cruder we find them to be.
from translations of the Vedas and other
sacred books of the East.
And there is the plainest evidence that,
July 1989

American Atheist

apart from a few previous advances in

the direction of civilization that failed,
Egypt rose to the civilized level - and
gradually- only in the fourth millennium
before the alleged birth of Christ.
Plutarch's account of the ancient religions,as seen in his time, indicated that
they had nothing whatever to do with a
concealed "pure" religious doctrine.
Madame Blavatsky was even further in
error when she traced it all to the ancient wisdom of India, where, as we
positively know, all religion was a crude
worship of the elements of nature until
after 1,000 s.c.
Blavatsky's belief even took the incredible and astonishing form of discovering who well-known people were in
much earlier incarnations. Jesus Christ
was - she found - really the wife of
Julius Caesar in an earlier age.
The entire system is an insult to modern culture and science, being - as it is
- a rehash of dreamy speculation,
weird ideas, and the taking advantage of
gullible people.
The difficulty with most of the religious theories is that they assume the
existence of a world of truths apart from
the world of facts. However, there can
be no truth which is without a fact at its
heart, and every fact is a doing or revelation of material nature - open to the
investigation and understanding of all
normal men and women alike. There is
no known fact which is a revelation or
doing of a spiritual world.
As soon as the members of the society
were free to learn truth by their own
research - after Madame Blavatsky
was dead and could no longer interpret
for them - their literature, which had
been senseless before, broke into the
most bewildering variety of absurdities.
Brooding over problems unchecked by
scientific observation and experiment
and by scientific reasoning, the literature
is so erratic that we can take little notice
of it even when the speculators are in
general agreement. Where they differ,
they are hopelessly fantastic - displayingthat they are completely undisciplined
Austin, Texas

From left to right: Annie Besant who took over leadership of the Theosophical
Society upon Mme. Blavatsky's death; Colonel H. S. Olcott, co-founder of the
Society in 1875; and Mr. W. Q. Judge, who was a leader of the American branch of
the Theosophical Society.

mentally.
When Madame Blavatsky died in 1891
her religion claimed 100,000 adherents.
Before the First World War, the number
was at 70,000. The church does not
report too often these days. However,
the population of the United States has
increased, generally, and most probably
this religious body has increased in
number also.
In this religion; as in most Eastern
ones, the happiest state that one can
attain is the extinction of individuality,or
personality. The entire idea of reincarnation is that the spirit must be associated with a body time after time, perhaps
for thousands of years, until it has fully
developed its spiritual faculties and
powers and can directly contemplate
"the eternal law" - whatever that
means.
To the people who find a satisfaction
in this idea - to blot out their egos July 1989

we can only say that if they would take

the trouble to look at themselves, they
would see that they are not all that bad!
Lifeis worth living.Everyone is someone
important and different - why not relax
and enjoy that.
I have taken the material for this radio
program from the writings of William
Montgomery Brown, who was a bishop
in the Protestant Episcopal church of
the United States in the very early
19005. He was tried by that church on
twenty-three alleged heresies stemming
from a booklet which he had written
proving that Christianity and communism were not only compatible, but were
made for each other.
In later broadcasts, Iwillbe approaching this theme which is beginning to be
of interest to more and more persons
now as the world watches the growing
detente between the Vatican and the
Kremlin. ~
Page 47

Under The Covers

Theologians under Hitler

Il

Three theologians
helped convince the
German people that
Hitler was on god's
side.

Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard

Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel
Hirsch
by Robert P. Ericksen
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
Paperback, 1985, 245 pages, $8.95

Page 48

n The Atheist Syndrome, a recent

Christian book that has gained wide
media attention, author John B.
Koster argued that Hitler was an Atheist
and was widely supported by German
Atheists. Robert P. Ericksen debunks
that myth in Theologians under Hitler.
Ericksen points out that numerous
Christian theologians saw Hitler as a
new savior. They raced to support him,
mounting their pulpits, braying to their
flocks, and meeting openly with Der
Fuhrer to strengthen his hand and bless
the Third Reich. The most vocal support
for Hitler came from ordained university
professors of theology, and most Germans supported Hitler because of the
encouragement given them by their
pastors. Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus,
and Emanuel Hirsch, noted theologians
of the day, "openly, enthusiastically, and
with little restraint" supported Hitler
and his policies. Each man saw the Nazi
party as a special Christian instrument
to wipe out the Antichrist: non-Christians
and nonbelievers. Collectively they endorsed totalitarianism, ruthless autocracy, and the subordination of the dignity
of non-Christian life. Hitler was seen as
"the answer" to contemporary chaos
and unbelief. He was also viewed as the
scourge to humanism and irreligiosity,
and as the crusader against Atheism
and its spokespeople: Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)and his disciples who
"lost" "traditional Christian culture and
values." Only under Hitler could the god
that died with Nietzsche be declared
alive.
Any form of liberalism was declared
satanic. This applied not only to liberational theology but to the arts, for Hitler
was also proclaimed the savior of "pure
art." Many Germans in the 1920sconsidered spontaneous modem art an "idiocy."
As the pulpit pounders blasted "modernism," they promised Hitler would restore the art of the Christian Renaissance. All artists who did not conform
were of the devil and thus should be
dispatched.
In the arts and theology, theologians
July 1989

who supported the Austrian-born leader

saw Hitler as a new Martin Luther. Luther had urged, in his Address to the
German Nobility, the state to create a
powerful ruler who would squash all
dissent and nonconformity. Hitler promised to do just that.

Religion and the final solution

Gerhard Kittel (1888-1948)was an expert on Judaism, studying the New Testament in light of its Jewish roots. He
aligned himself with Hitler's "Jewish
solution," publicly admitting that much
of his work was anti-Jewish. While the
Jews were acknowledged by Kittel as
the "chosen people," he blasted them as
a disobedient and cursed people. Secularized Jews, Kittel argued, gave rise to
modernism and Atheism. Neither was
to be tolerated (Meine Verteidigung, p.
16). The Nazis had the only acceptable
"solution."
Paul Althaus (1888-1%6)was a leading
Luther scholar and a representative of
the German Lutheran tradition. He saw
Hitler's putsch as part of god's plan: the
valkisch. The valkisch was the elevation
of the "German race" to the status of
god's "chosen race": the Aryans were to
be the new "Jews."
Althaus was furious that the German
army in 1918had surrendered. The German confession of guilt, Althaus decried,
was undignified. Hitler had to avenge
this "stab in the back," and anyone who
stopped Der Fuhrer was not a good
Christian. Althaus cited Luther's sermon
on Romans 13, prescribing absolute
obedience to the state. To hold back on
obedience to Hitler, and thus to god,
was "German degradation and atrophy."1 Althaus wrote:
In this knowledge we as believing Christians thank God our father that he has given to our Volk

'See Paul Althaus, Obrigkeit und Fiihrertum

(Gutersloh:
1936), p. 52; discussed by
Ericksen, p. 84.
American Atheist

Hitler shakes hands with Reich Bishop Muller and Abbot Schachleiter,
surrounded by Nazi party bosses in September 1934.

in its time of need the Fuhrer as a

"pious and faithful sovereign," and
that he wants to prepare for us in
the National Socialist system of
government "good rule," a gov~ernment with "discipline and
honor."
Accordingly, we know that we
are responsible before God to
assist the work of the Fuhrer in
our calling and in our station of
life.2
Emanuel Hirsch (1888-1972)was a systematic theologian. He believed Hitler
would turn Germany into a Protestant
theocracy. This theocracy was to be intolerant to opposing (non-Lutheran)
viewpoints or vocal expressions of dissent. He saw in Hitler the culmination
and fulfillment of Protestant theology
and spiritual longing. A professor of
church history, Hirsch saw Hitler as the
finalprophecy of god's judgment on the
earth: god's answer to secularism, science, and materialism. Under Hitler's
rule, Luther was to be made "relevant"
to the modern German.
Hirsch was pro-war, seeing war as a
gift from the Christian god. He wrote:

2Ericksen, p. 87; the full text is in Gerhard

Niem6ller, Die erste Bekenntnissynode der
Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche zu Barmen,
vol. 1 (G6ttingen: 1959), pp. 145-146.
Austin, Texas

War is the judgment of God, but

a Volk has the right to demand this
judgment of God only ifit is ready,
if necessary, to bleed to death in
this war. (Ericksen, p. 125)
Hirsch fully backed unrestricted Uboat warfare and maximal annexation.
Fightinga lukewarm war, without
the willto do and sacrifice everything, seems to me to be also a religious crime.
It was imperative to fight to become
"God's Volk."
We Germans must become a
pious Volk, a Volk in which the
gospel has power over conscience.
Private thinking was to be outlawed in
the new Christian age and state of the
Third Reich.
Christians in Germany had to support
Hitler. Supporting Hitler "in all things"
was a "God directed call."!
3Ericksen, p. 143; the full text is in Jonathan
R. C. Wright, Ueber den Parteien. Die
politische Haltung der evangelischen,
KirchenfUhrer 1918-1933 (G6ttingen; 1977),
p. 177; see also Hirsch, Die gegenwartige
geistige Lage im Spiegel philosophischer
und theologischer Besinnung (G6ttingen:
1934), pp. 29-30.
July 1989

A Nazi altar.

So excited was Hirsch about Hitler,

that he wrote:
Now new hope has been given
to us. And should our hearts not
burn with enthusiasm that the
Protestant church now say yes to
this moment, that it seizes this
opportunity to cooperate with redeveloping the order and style of
the German Volk?
Hirsch enthusiastically condemned
anyone who complained about Der
Fuhrer. As dean of his faculty he suppressed dissent. Hitler was the interpretation and instrument of god's word.
Each of these preying prayers endorsed and supported Hitler on a "spiritualleap of faith." Each longed for the
triumph of Christianity over modernism,
Atheism, and individuality, a victory only
Hitler could give the world.
Theologians under Hitler is excellent.
Anyone who believes that Atheists have
brought about the world's tyrants willbe
surprised. Organized religion has supported the tyrants of history in their
power play to impregnate and thus destroy the minds of thinkers. - Arthur
Frederick Ide.~
Dial-THE-Atheist: Hear Madalyn
O'Hairs thoughts on the latest
news. 512-458-5731.

Page 49

Letters to the Editor

A hit-and-miss premonition

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

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

Page 50

We have all heard the stories of various people who have predicted airplane
crashes or other disasters. To these I
would like to add my own first-hand testimony.
The date was March 26, 1989. The
place, San Diego. I was scheduled to fly
to Chicago (en route to Minneapolis) on
United Airlines flight #442, which would
leave around 11 P.M.After we were seated in the airplane, it was announced that
we would allhave to temporarily deplane.
No cause was given, though some passengers at the back of the plane claimed
to smell the odor of fuel.
After waiting in the lounge for about
half an hour, we were again asked to
board the plane. This time, when I arrived at my assigned seat, I found it occupied by a panic-stricken young woman who was in tears as she talked to
the man next to her. He, in turn, was trying to console her. When she realized
that she was in my seat, she tore herself
away and hurried to her own seat at the
back of the plane. The man then explained to me that the woman had had
a premonition that our plane was going
to crash. A few moments later we saw
the woman rush down the aisle and out
the door. At least she had the courage
(or foolhardiness) of her convictions.
It has been four months now since
this incident occurred. Istill have not experienced that plane crash and, frankly,
I'm getting tired of waiting for it. This all
goes to show that out of many predictions
of airline crashes some, by pure chance,
are bound to come true. However, all
we tend to hear about are the "hits,"
never the misses.

aperitifs, and total bliss from the harsh

realities of our earthly sphere.
The article makes the following astounding comment: "the ... Protestant
clergy . . . don't believe in the afterlife
themselves ... The pulpit may be full of
agnostics, but the pews are filled with
believers." If that is the case, then some
"devout" religionists are becoming secular humanists while the ignorant masses
are clamoring for greater biblical mumbojumbo.
According to Newsweek, 77 percent
believe there is a heaven, 58 percent believe in hell, and 94 percent of Americans believe in a god. Nevertheless, the
Unitarians express the belief that god in
his benevolent goodness would never
punish anyone, especially banish unbelievers to the pits of an inferno.
Jacob Neusner, a Judaism scholar at
Brown University in Providence, Rhode
Island, suggests that "If religion announces that life is over at the grave,
then it is not talking about what people
expect religion to discuss."
The crux of the Newsweek article
seems to be saying that religion and
heaven must be made palatable to maintain a hope for. an afterlife. Palatable
indeed! The real fear is that thinking
adults will abandon the notion of the
fairy tale future in which all will live in
harmony with their apartment god. Modern man is therefore wedged between
the trappings of phoney prophecy and
technological truth. In 1989 are we still
wise enough to opt for the truth?
Gerald P. Lunderville
California

We think he likes it
August Berkshire, National Liaison
Twin Cities Chapter of
American Atheists

Life after death

Newsweek magazine's March 27
issue endeavors to portray a heaven for
all faiths. This celestial magic kingdom
promises pliable maidens, abundant
July 1989

Please construct a membership flyer

using the clergy and puppet picture on
the cover of the March issue of the
American Atheist. Such flyers could be
posted on manger scenes, church (i.e.,
prejudice factory) doors, etc. The picture says it all and says it in a glance that will not be forgotten when the
sheep see their next c1ergymember.
American Atheist

Make something that photocopies well.

It is a powerful message. That is why the
Vatican hates it. It is a simple and powerful pairing association.
Paul Keller
North Dakota

Foxhole Atheists
Anent George La Forest's letter,
"Atheist Veterans," in the March 1989
American Atheist: One of the biggest
lies of World II was the "no Atheists in
foxholes" cliche. (Another big lie was
"God Was My Co-Pilot.") I am a stillliving refutation of that lie. I was a confirmed Atheist when we hit the beach in
Normandy, France, and dug our foxholes. My foxhole partner was a quiet,
reserved Bible-reading Christian! He
read his "holy" book, I read my Atheist
book, Bible, Church, and God, by
William McCarthy, which I received in
our mail call just before we left England
and crossed the Channel. And I'm still
an Atheist, only more so. "No Atheists
in foxholes?" Bunk.
Andy Vena
Pennsylvania

Criticism
I decided to write to you to express
my feelings and opinions regarding your
organization and its activities. Although
I was brought up in a Roman Catholic
environment, I consider myself to be an
Atheist of sorts though one-word definitions of myself and my systems of belief

are not major concerns of mine. I find

much to criticize about what is termed
"religious expression" in society and,
although I find many of the spoken
objectives and principles of your organization worthwhile, I don't always feel
the actions of your group meet with
your best intentions.
Through the efforts of your organization and its founder, Madalyn O'Hair,
the many court cases you have been
involved with, and your organization's
publication and magazine you have provided much in the way of beneficial
service and important information to
the public concerning the true history of
different religions as part of human
society and specific harm done to people
by their religious beliefs or the organizations they belong to. One example on a
recent "American Atheist Forum" program was the story of children dying of
disease because their parents who were
Christian Scientists would not let them
be treated with ordinary blood transfusions. This and other stories on your
program indicate the degree in which
religious beliefs can interfere with people's well-being to an extreme degree.
The founder of your organization has
stated that religion should be of the
home and the heart which is true, but it
is also undeniably a large and very pervasive cultural phenomenon. Religion
itself is a complex and diverse subject
and, like any other in society, is certainly
not monolithic having both good aspects
and bad. In my opinion, when your or-

ganization brings suit against a city or

county using religious symbols or references in a representative capacity on
the basis of separation of church and
state, it tends to trivialize the subject in
people's minds distracting them from
the more important issues on the subject
you address.
Religious belief is about as old as
human society itself, and, I believe, as a
form of subjective and emotional human
expression is a basic aspect of human
psychological and social emphasis that
might be controlled to a degree but not
eliminated (as societies such as the
Soviet Union have discovered) and a
basic part of human culture. Your organization most significantly provides an
important source of enlightenment on a
subject that, by definition, tends to be
misunderstood, but I would like to see a
greater consideration in the action of
your organization towards the handling
of significant issues in such a diverse
subject.
Louis Taylor
California

Proud To Be An Atheist
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New York: (718)899-rm; Dial-A-Gay-Atheist,
Chicago: (312)255-2960.Publishes a monthly
newsletter.
Methods of Moderation and Abstinence:
An alternative to M faith healing. Founded
by BillTalley.For information write: MOMA,
P. 0. Box 6120,Denver, CO 80206-0120.

Wanted

Products
Fleming's Collectibles: In the Shenandoah
Valley at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, 620 North Winchester Avenue,
Waynesboro, Virginia. Antiques, collectibles,
quilts. Home occupation.
Rubber Stamps: 3"/3 lines $8.50. Selfinking $12.50. Postpaid. Mail slogan or call.
John O'Neil, 7601 E. Treasure Dr. #703,
Miami Bch., FL 33141-4344.(305) 868-1396.
Baseball style hats inscribed" Atheists Are
Beyond Belief."Six dollars (includes postage).
Profits go to Seattle Chapter of American
Atheists. P.0. Box 1785,Seattle, WA 98111.

Publications
"How to Start Your Own Profitable Religion," "Everlasting Life Guaranteed," plus
other "books" are now in TARUK Bible.
Atheistic, Libertarian, Patriotic commentary.
Not merely another indictment of religions
- more like a massacre. Hilarious, yet dead
serious! Only $9.90, postpaid. Scrooge
Publishing, Box 13, Forest City, IA 504360013.

Announcements

Return form to:

A.A.G.H.Q., P. O. Box 140195,
Austin, TX 78714-0195.

Classified

Atheist doing research

on non-theist
community. Looking for people who are
interested in participating. Please send
correspondence and for questionnaire to:
Sid Smith, P. O. Box 1542, East Lansing, MI
48826-1542.
Free information
about cash contest
awards for poetry, fiction, non-fiction. SASE
for details. CNWC, 9057l!Linden, Shreveport,
LA 71104.

July 1989

Old and used books, magazines, and

pamphlets on Atheism, freethought, rationalism, skepticism, and agnosticism are
needed for the Charles E. Stevens American
Atheist Library and Archives. Send donations of books to: C.E.S.A.AL.A, Inc., P.0.
Box 14505, Austin, TX 78761-4505.
Bequests: Remember American Atheists
when you make your will. For information
on how to help the future of Atheism after
your death, write: Project Wills, AAG.H.Q.,
P. O. Box 140195,Austin, TX 78714-0195.

Supreme Court
(Continued from page 17)

was:
I am disturbed by the idea that
the. only way religious symbols
may be displayed in public is if
their religious message is obscured
by secular symbols. 72
I remain certain that the controversy
over government-sponsored
religious
displays during any season of the year
will continue either until we develop a
rational national policy on separation of
state and church or this nation becomes
a theocracy. Let us work toward the
former to avoid the latter. ~
72Catholic Trends, vol. 19, no. 25 (8 July
1989).
American Atheist

suggested

Amertcan Atheist
introductory reading list

II
Literature on Atheism is very hard to find in most public
and university libraries in the United States - and most of
the time when you do find a book catalogued under the
word Atheism it is a work against the Atheist 'position.
Therefore we suggest the following publications which are
available from American Atheist Press as an introduction

into the multifaceted areas of Atheism and state/church

separation. To achieve the best understanding of thought in
these areas the featured publications should be read in the
order listed. These by no means represent our entire collection of Atheist and separationist materials.

1. Why I Am An Atheist, including a history of material-

14. Atheist Truth vs. Religions Ghosts by Col. Robert G.

ism, by Madalyn O'Hair. Stapled. 41 pp. Product#5416

............................................................................................ 3.25

2. The Case against Religion: A Psychotherapist s View by

Dr. Albert Ellis. Stapled. 57 pp. #5096

4.00

3. All the Questions You Ever Wanted to Ask American

Atheists with All of the Answers by Jon Murray and
Madalyn

O'Hair.

Paperback.

348 pp. #5356

4. What on Earth Is an Atheist! by Madalyn

Paperback.

288 pp. #5412

7.00
O'Hair.
6.00

5. An Atheist Speaks by Madalyn O'Hair. Paperback.

pp. #5098

6. All about Atheists by Madalyn O'Hair. Paperback.

pp. #5097

321
6.00
407
6.00

7. Ingersoll the Magnificent by Joseph Lewis. Paperback.

342 pp. #5216

8.00

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

Paperback.

349 pp. #5349

9.50

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

284 pp. #5350

7.50

10. Essays in Freethinking, vol. I by Chapman

Paperback.

229 pp. #5052

11. Essays in Freethinking, vol. II by Chapman

Paperback.

240 pp. #5056

Cohen.
7.00

13. The Logic and Virtue of Atheism by Joseph McCabe.

3.00

American

3.25

15. Some Reasons I Am a Freethinker

Ingersoll.

16. Our Constitution O'Hair.

by Robert

Stapled. 37 pp. #5184

G.
3.00

The Way It Was by Madalyn

Stapled. 70 pp. #5400

3.00

17. American Atheist Heritage: Jefferson, Franklin,

Lincoln, and Burbank by Joseph Lewis. Stapled. 56 pp.
#5212

4.00

18. Fourteen Leading Cases on Education, Religion, and

Financing Schools. Paperback. 273 pp. #5500
5.00
19. Sex Mythology

by Sha

Rocco.

Stapled.

#5440

20. Women and Atheism,

Madalyn

O'Hair.

21. Christianity
Paperback.

55 pp.
3.00

The Ultimate Liberation by

Stapled. 21 pp. #5420

2.50

Before Christ by John

G. Jackson.
7.00

237 pp. #5200

22. The Bible Handbook (All the contradictions,

absurdities,
and atrocities from the Bible) by G.W. Foote, W.P.
Ball, John Bowden, and Richard M. Smith. Paperback.
372 pp. #5008
7.00

23. The X-Rated Bible by Ben Edward Akerley. Paperback.

428 pp. #5000

5.00

Stapled. 58 pp. #5280

Stapled. 57 pp. #5156

8.00

Cohen.
7.00

12. Life Story of August Comte by F. J. Gould. Paperback.

179 pp. #5132

Ingersoll.

All of the above publications are available at a special set

price of $100.00 - a savings of $25 off the single issue price.
Postage and handling is $1.50 for orders under $20.00;
$2.50 for orders over $20.00. Texas residents please add 7:;4
percent sales tax.

Atheist Press, P.O. Box 140195,

Austin, TX 78714-0195

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

"Humbly [woman] has borne the weight of

man-made laws, surrendering to their tyranny
even her right over her own body. For centuries
she has been the helpless victim of excessive
child-bearing. Meekly she has submitted to undesired motherhood ....
"Against the State, against the Church, against
the silence of the medical profession, against the
whole machinery of dead institutions of the past,
the woman of to-day arises."
- Margaret Sanger
"Shall We Break This Law?"

The Birth Control Review

Vol. 1, no. 1, February 1917

.,

. -:.