american atheist magazine july 2007

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J UL Y 2007

Vol 45, No.6

ISSN0516-9623 (Print)

ISSN1935-8369 (Online)

Editor,American Atheist Press

F r an k Z in d l er

Editor,American Atheist Magazine

E ll en J o h n so n

Regular Contributors

M ar tin F or em an

C on ra d F .G oe rin g e r

F r an k Z in d l er

Designer

E l ia s S c u l to r i

Cover

Design

Tim Mize

Editorial Assistants

G il an d J ean ne G au dia

Published monthly (except June &

December) by American Atheists Inc.

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2007 by American Atheists Inc.

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American Atheist Magazine

C ON T E N T S

4

From The President

u

Department

Of

J u st ic e SeesNeed ToP ro te ct Re lig io u s F reedom

-B ut Isn t It A lrea dy P ro tecte d?

by Ellen Johnson

Amer ican Atheists 33rd Annual National Convention

Appointment of Four New State Directors

A Transi tional Fossil o f Rel ig ion

by Jim Corbett

7

Damnable Syllogism

by Robert M. Price

God Would Be An Atheist

S ed uc ed in to re lig io n - W h y fa ith p ers ists

by Martin Foreman

Book Review

T he M us so lin is A mo ng U s

by Jim Burgtorf

The Probing Mind

Eunuchs Fo r Ch ris t

by Frank Zindler

A Personal Story

by Jorg Aadahl

Ask The Expert

The Book Of Revelation

by Frank Zindler

Foxhole Atheist Of The Month

Ken Bronste in

6

Kansas Outlaws Practice Of Evolut ion

The On ion


4/32

f rom the pres ident

U.S. Departtnent Of Justice Sees

Need To Protect Religious Freedom

-But Isn t It Already Protected?

Ellen Johnson

I

ebruary of this year,U.S. Attorney General Alberto R. Gon-

zalesannounced a newinitiativecalled

T he F ir st F re edom Pro jec t

allegedlyto protect religiousliberty.The attorney general made

his announcement at an ExecutiveCommittee Meeting of the

Southern Baptist Convention. On the same day, the Department of

Justice (DOJ) releasedits Report on LawsProtecting ReligiousFree-

dom, for FiscalYears2001 to 2006.

My first reaction is to say that the words religious liberty

and religious freedom are not found in the Bill of Rights. I have

to throw that in there because so many Theists say this about the

phrase separation of church and state.

Ironically, the DOJ has even appointed a Special Counsel

for Religious Discrimination. Well isn't this a case of the pot call-

ing the kettle black? What single institution in America is allowed

to discriminate against its fellow citizens in the name of Jesus? Yes,

religion. The religious discriminate against each other, and us, and

the law allows them to do this in hiring at their universities for

instance. But they love to cry discrimination every time they are

accused of not abiding by the law.

T he F irs t F re ed om P ro je ct

initiative doesn't confer any added

protections for religious liberty. The law is the law. This initia-

tive is just a bunch of feel-good pandering to the religious by the

BushAdministration. The Department of Justice is even going to

give seminars to the religious to help them to better understand

what their rights are.

Since when does religious liberty need a Department of

Justice initiative to protect it?The majority of U.S. Supreme Court

Justices and most of the Federal District Judges were appointed by

Republicans who overwhelmingly vote conservative on social issues

like state-church separation. Our schools, military and prisons are

overrun with extremist Christians, yet they apparently think they

need the government to provide another layer of protection for

their

rights. This initiative may be a bit extreme but it shows how

worried the Theists are. Religious liberty isn't what is being under-

mined, rather it is their liberty to engage in religious violations that

is being undermined. .

This call to arms on their part reveals that we are doing a

very good job of fighting back against their attempts to use the gov-

ernment to promote their religiosity.We may not be winning all of

the battles but we are fighting back like never before. The religious

are getting suedmore often and people are complaining about their

violations on a large scale.

One of the examples that Attorney General Gonzalez cited

of the government's protection of our religious liberty wasover an

AMERICANATHEIST ~ JULY2007

issue at the Balch Springs, TexasSenior Citizen Center in 2004. At

the city-run senior center, a group of seniors were praying, holding

Bible studies, singing gospel music, preaching and doing blessings.

Another group of seniors didn't like it and complained. The Cen-

ter stopped the proselytizing and rituals and when they did they

were sued. The court sided with the believers. Curiously, the attor-

ney general didn't refer to this as a free exercise or establishment

clause case. He called it a free speech issue.

The court ruled that the Center had the right to allow this

and all other speech. That's not sobad. I suggest that the complain-

ing seniors take them up on that. A bit of

Ath e ist

proselytizing,

singing, studying and more will be just the ticket to get them to

decide that maybe there shouldn't be that much

.fr ee speech.

When the religious give examples of violations of their

rights, they don't usually tell the whole story. In this controversy,

you cannot get the other side of this issue anywhere. There aren't

any reports from the defendants on how bad it was. The attorney

for the defendants wouldn't even talk to me about the case.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Theists at the senior

center went over the line with their religious practices and were

bothering everyone else. This caseshould never have gone to court

or ever had the Department of Justice get involved. It's simply

a case of religious people annoying the hell out of everyone else.

It's about people being obnoxious and the religious are famous for

that.

Attorney General Gonzales asks, Why should it be permis-

sible for an employee standing around the water cooler to declare

that 'Tiger Woods isGod,' but a firing offense for him to say 'Jesus

is Lord?' These are the kinds of contradictions we are trying to ad-

dress.

Our government is investigating contradictions? Surely

there are more pressing issues for our government to focus on. Isn't

drug addiction more harmful? Isn't cancer more serious? Doesn't

mental illness deserve more attention? Nope. We'd rather focus on

a senior citizen center where a group of adults wants the right to

annoy the hell out of other seniors.

There are ten times as many violations of our rights than

there are of the religious. We know this because wehear about these

violations from Atheists like you, all the time. But you don't have

the government on your side. Youhave US on your side. And with

YOU on our sidewewill continue towork, like no other group can,

to protect your rights and the rights of Atheists all acrossAmerica.

So, on behalf of all the Atheists who are helped by

Amer ican

Atheis ts ;

Thank you for your continued support.

*


5/32

Night l ine Debate - We got took

Editor,

I attended the debate on May 5, which was ostensibly to be

about the Way of the Master salesmen Kirk Cameron and Pat Com-

fort's claim that the existence of God can be proven scientifically

without a doubt. There were no surprises. I thought Brian Sapient

and Kelly from the Rational Response group dropped the ball a

few times, but Kirk and Pat weren't even in the game. Which iswhy

in a real sense the Liars for Christ won. They won just by being

there.

After leaving thedebate it occurred to me what I should have

known all along--we got took Kirk and Pat never had any intention

of putting up even a specious scientific argument. What they want-

ed--and got--was the opportunity to preach to a national TV audi-

ence.The whole scientific proof gambit was similar to the girly act

in the old side shows. Some Little Egypt (or a reasonable facsimile

thereof) would sway her hips before the crowd of marks eager give

up their money to the barker hoping they would see something,

which of course they never really did. I'm sure the vast majority of

Kirk and Pat's intended target audience is genuinely naively super-

stitious and susceptible to pedestrian sentimentality masquerading

as ethics and distorted claims peppered with scientific terms pass-

ing for science. But Kirk and Pat are old whores at this game. They

are not merely wrong; they are liars. If they really and truly wanted

to debate the scientif ic proof of god, evolution or the constitutional

basisfor the separation of church and state they would have done

the research at legitimate science and legal websites to support

their view for the express purpose of using the flaws in their op-

ponents' own atheist and evolutionary arguments and evidence

against them. What they were allowed to do was put on their own

Christian girly show, to lure attendees and potential TV viewers

into the tent only to preach to them.

Unfortunately for our side, Brian and Kelly, while well inten-

t ioned and essentially correct with facts and logic, mostly debated

from the standpoint that this whole exercise isabout facts and logic,

which it certainly is not. (Brian sat there with his mouth open in an

understandable state of incredulity while the traffickers in willfull

ignorance regurgitated their preposterous sludge.) I felt while they

were more than qualified from an intellectual standpoint they were

unskilled at handling sl ick charlatans who have been at this game

a lot longer than they. To be fair, we are between a rock and a hard

place here.Torefuse to lower one's self to dignifying

Creationists' drivel by responding to it would only provide

them with an opportunity to portray rationalists as cowards and to

divert attention from their own intellectual and moral cowardice. I

would have l iked to have seen either Edwin Kagin, who does not

suffer fools gladly, or Massimo Pigliucci,* who suffers them grace-

fully, at the helm.

Dennis Horvits, NYC,NY

Democrats lose My Vote

Editor,

I was not surprised, but am disappointed, to see the number

of Atheists who vote Democratic in the survey result in American

Atheist Magazine. I attended a talk recently at Strand Bookstore in

L et ters to th e Ed ito r

NYCby two Atheist writers (I forget their names) and one of them (a

feminist Atheist) declared we won when referring to the Novem-

ber 2006 election. The people in the audience applauded and yelled

their delight. I almost puked

I don't know about you, Ellen, but I have turned my back on

the Democrats because they have turned their backs on Atheists

and other freethinkers. I recall how many Democrats showed up

at GAMOW and the Atheists in Foxhole rallies in D.c. (Does zero

sound about right?) I recall Sen. Joe Praise Jehovah Lieberman,

who declared that Americans do not have freedom from religion. I

recall every Democratic senator racing out to the Capitol steps with

their GOPcounterparts to yell out Under God as they recited the

Pledge of Allegiance after the 9th Circuit Court ruling. I recently saw

liberal' Senator Chuck Schumer on C-Span declaring that of course

under God belongs in the Pledge of Allegiance Eliot Spitzer, New

York's new Democratic governor, wanted to give $1,000 tax vouch-

ers to parents sothey could send their kids to private schools, most-

ly Catholic (this betrayal of the public school system was thankfully

defeated).

And when Hilary Clinton was reelected this November, the grin-

ning people standing behind her at her victory celebration were not

Atheists, but Hasidim All men, of course The same group that she

pandered to in 2000, and who block-voted for her like they always

do in elections to obtain special privileges no one else receives.

What did she promise these religious bigots and zealots, who are

against gay rights, modern science, abortion, military service and

reporting for jury duty? These people literally get away with murder

in New York,and one day some one will expose their crimes. I know

for a fact that Hasidic slumlords hire drug addicts and gang mem-

bers to terrorize rent-controlled tenants they want removed so they

could turn the buildings into condos or market rentals. Many ten-

ants flee, and some have been killed. The police do nothing. When-

ever, a Hasid is a crime victim, the whole community riots, and in

one instance Hasidim stormed and vandalized a police station The

pol ice did nothing because they know they are dealing with un-

touchables': Any other ethnic group would be greeted with gunfire

if they stormed a police station and attacked police officers. These

are Hilary's allies

The Democrats have also extended their outstretched arms

to the growing Islamic community. Anti-American mullahs are em-

braced and courted for the same reason the Hasidic rabbis are.To

deliver their community's votes to the Democratic party Think of

it, Ellen No Democrat would be caught dead appearing at a free

thought event anywhere in the country, or make any positive state-

ments about Atheists or Humanists. They even give the Ethical Cul-

ture Society and Unitarians a wide berth

But these bearded nightmares from the Middle Ages are de-

clared to be good Americans because they are people of faith

But of course, the Democrats who spit in our faces welcome

our votes. They know that seculars probably account for about

20%-25% of their base.Where else would we go, they say.So they

take our support for granted and reach out, slobbering, to the Re-

ligious Reich, right-wing Catholics, the Hasidim and the mullahs.

After all, the Democrats are a party of faith too

No lesser-of-two-evils approach will ever get me to vote for a

Democrat. The Democratic Party is not our ally and we most cer-

tainly did not win in November

Dennis Middlebrooks

Brooklyn, NY

JULY2007 - AMERiCANA:rnEiST


6/32

K an s as O u t law s P rac t ic e O f Ev o lu t io n

by t he on ion-www. theon ion .com

(Humor)

TOPEKA,S-IN response to a Nov.7 referendum, Kansaslawmakers

passed emergency legislation outlawing evolution, the highly

controversial process responsible for the development and diversity of

species and the continued survival of all life.

Lawmakers decried spontaneous genetic mutations.

From now on, the streets, forests, plains, and rivers of Kansas

will be safe from the godless practice of evolution, and species will

be able to procreate without deviating from God's intended de-

sign, said Bob Bethell, a member of the state House of Representa-

tives. This isabout protecting the integri ty of all creation.

The sweeping new law prohibits all living beings within state

borders from being born with random genetic mutations that

could make them better suited to evade predators, secure a mate,

or,adapt to a changing environment. In addition, it bars any sexual

reproduction, battles for survival, or instances of pure happen-

stance that might lead,after several generations, to a more well-

adapted species or subspecies.

Violators of the new law may face punishments that include

jail time, stiff fines, and rehabilitative education and training to rid

organisms suspected of evolutionary tendencies. Repeat offenders

could face chemical sterilization.

To enforce the law, Kansas state police wil l be trained to inves-

t igate and apprehend organisms who exhibit suspected signs of

evolutionary behavior, such as natural selection or speciation. Plans

are underway to track and monitor DNA strands in every Kansan

life form for even the slightest change in al lele frequencies.

Barn swallows that develop lighter, more streamlined builds

to enable faster migration, for example, could live out the rest of

their brief lives in prison, said Indiana University chemist and pro-

intelligent-design author Robert Hellenbaum, who helped com-

pose the language of the law. And butterflies who mimic the wing

patterns and colors of other butterfl ies for an adaptive advantage,

well, their days of flouting God's will are over.

Human beings may be the species most deeply affected by

the new legislation. Those whose cytochrome-c molecules vary less

than 2 percent from those of chimpanzees will be in direct viola-

tion of the law.

Under particular scrutiny are single-cell microorganisms, with

thousands of field labs being installed across the state to ensure

that these self-replicating molecules, notorious for mutation, do

not do so in a fashion benefiting their long-term survival.

Anti-evolutionists such asHellenbaum have long accused

microorganisms of popularizing an otherwise obscure, agonizingly

slow, and hard-to-understand biological

process.These

repeat of-

fenders are at the root of the problem, Hellenbaum said.We have

the fossi l records to prove it.

No species is exempt, said Marcus HOlloway, a state police

spokesman.Whether you're a human being or a fruit fly-if we de-

tect one homologous chromosome trying to cross over during the

process of meiosis, you will be punished to the full extent of the law.

Although the full impact of the new law will likely not be

felt for approximately 10 million years, most Kansans say they are

relieved that the ban went into effect this week, claiming that evo-

lution may have gone too far already.

If Earth's species were meant to change over successive

generations through physical modifications resulting from the ad-

aptation to environmental challenges, then God would have given

AMERICANArunsr - JULY2007

them the genetic predisposition to select mates and reproduce

based on their favorable heri table traits and their ability to thrive

under changing conditions so that these advantageous qualities

would be passed down and eventually encoded into the DNA of

each generation of offspring, Olathe public school teacher and

creationist Joyce Eckhardt said.Tt's just not natural.

Some warn that the strict wording of the law could have a del-

eterious effect on Kansas'mostly agricultural economy, since it also

prohibits all forms of man-made arti ficial selection, such as plant

hybridization, genetic engineering, and animal husbandry. A police

raid on an alleged artif icial-insemination facility outside McPher-

son, KSon Friday resulted in the arrest of a farmer, a veterinarian,

four assistants, one bull, and several dozen cows.

Agribusiness leaders, who rely on evolution science to geneti-

cally modify crops, have voiced concerns about doing business

with Kansas farmers.

If Kansans want to ban evolution, that is their right, but they

must understand that we rely on a certain flexibility in the natu-

ral order of things to be able to deliver healthy food products to

millions of Americans, said Carl Casale, a vice president with the

agricultural giant Monsanto.We're not talking about playing God

here. We are talking about succeeding in the competitive veggie-

burger market. *

Copyright 2007, Onion, Inc. Al l r ights reserved.

W

Af f i l i a tes

Saint Petersburg Atheists

Free-thought Group

Gary Thompson

PO Box 22304, St. Petersbury, FL 33742

Seattle Atheists

11008 NE 140th Street, Kirkland, WA 98034

www.seattleatheists.org

Western Colorado Atheists

PO Box 23099, Glade Park, CO 81523

[email protected]

St .Olaf Agnostic and Atheist Soc iety

1500 St. Olaf Avenue, Northfield, MN 55057

www.stolaf.edu/people/kato/atheist

Freethinkers United Network (F.U.N.)

3854 139th Avenue, SE,Bellevue, WA 98006

www.freethinkersunitednetwork.com

Oklahoma Atheists

2026 NW 31st Street, Oklahoma City, OK 73118

www.aok.taxreligion.org


7/32

The Essence of Christianity

W

t is Christianity all about? Or, as at least two im-

portant books (by Adolf von Harnack and Ludwig

Feuerbach) from around the turn of the century put

it, what is the essence of Christianity ? For this is

what we want to know, e.g., when we ask in the abstract how Chris-

tianity is to be estimated alongside the other world religions. Is it

just one more can of soup in a row of others? It might be so even if

this can has a label reading Hinds, while that one says Campbell.

Often such redundant products are even made by the same company

To a great degree, I think the analogy is not a bad one. On the one

hand, there are theological differences within each faith that are eas-

ily as great as those separating one faith from another. So no religion

has a monolithic unity of identity. But on the other hand, all of them

sooner or later, here or there, turn out to be facing the same agenda

of issues and to have evolved a similar smorgasbord of responses to

those issues.

So we must ask what makes Christianity unique, or more

modestly, what is distinctive about it in the sense that every religion

is unique or distinct unto itself. Jacques Derrida

(Limited, Inc.)

con-

tends that there is no proper use of any piece of language. There is

no inherent real meaning that governs correct use. There is only

convention. Dictionary writers and grammarians just agree that a cer-

tain cross-section of current usage will count as proper English, the

King's English. But every straight use of it invites twisted use.

Without isn't it would be no fun to say ain't. Everything invites a

parody of itself, a distortion of itself. The straight line doesn't rule out

flexibility; rather, it gives you something to be flexible with.

This implies that any definition ofwhat Christianity really is

or is supposed to be is going to be merely descriptive, not prescrip-

tive. Any textbook orthodoxy will be useful only as an ideal type,

a conceptual yardstick to use in measuring the varying proportions

of real live Christian groups. Their variations from the norm do not

count against them. They are not heresy in the sense of thought-

crime. To the contrary, these differences reveal what is distinctive

about a particular Christian sect or thinker. If they are to some extent

not true to type, unorthodox, sowhat? That just helps to chart their

position on the theological map. It doesn't mean they're charting a

course to Hell, or out of the True Church. Maybe the Moonies or the

Mormons or Matthew Fox are getting pretty far from the essential

Christian norm. That may mean they are in the process of evolution

into something else, just as Christianity eventually reached the point

where it could no longer be counted a Jewish sect. Maybe you. think

they should call themselves something else than Christian. Eventually

they'll probably agree with you. Till then, why be in such a rush to

segregate the wheat from the tares?

Damnable Syllogism

by Robert M. Price

The

Essence

of the

Essence

of Christianity

What is, then, the essence of Christianity? Before we separate

the form from the content, we have to make an even finer-tuned

distinction. We have to use a heuristic device that is sharper than

any two-edged sword, dividing between joints and marrow, soul and

spirit, and, as Seymour Chatman says (Story and Discourse), between

the content of the content and the form of the content. I think

that what constitutes the essential content of Christianity is a central

doctrine, and a theological doctrine is a different kind of thing from,

say, a central principle or a central moral value. It matters a great deal

whether you think the essence of Christianity is love, or you think it

is the doctrine of the atonement. Everything is going to. be different

from there on in, depending on that starting point.

And I am going to argue that the essence of Christianity is

not love, but is in fact the doctrine of the atonement. That does not

mean that the atonement is supposed to be better than love or more

important than love. It's just that love is the common possession of

all the religions. It is not what distinguishes them from each other.

Contrary to what the Johannine Jesus says, all will [not] know that

you are [his] disciples [merely] because you have love toward one an-

other. That wouldn't tell them you weren't Jews, Muslims, Hindus,

Humanists, ete.

If you are thinking there is something wrong here, you are

thinking what Kant and the Eighteenth-Century Rational Religion-

ists thought: it is the distinctives of religion that lead to religious

wars, not what they have in common, certainly not love. Might it not

be better to shear away those distinctives, since they threaten to get

in the way of love?

As I understand it, the Christian doctrine of the atonement

means more or less this. Human beings, thanks to the Fall of Adam,

are fatally tainted with sin, in a fundamental state of moral impotence

and alienation from God. The self is the center of interest, where God

should be. And if God were central, things would fall naturally into

place. Loving and serving God, we would thrive like a heliotropic

plant that always bows in the direction of the sunlight. Such was our

nature till it jumped the track when Adam sinned and fathered a race

and a social system of sinners. We are born in sin like a fish born in

water. Thus it would take radical surgery to lift us out of the briny

deeps of sin and make us breathe air on the surface. We can no more

reform ourselves by good intents and efforts than a fish can simply

decide to live on land from now on.

God would have been well within his rights to wash his hands

of us, but instead he went the second mile and provided the radical

surgery, the means of re-creation, rebirth. This he did by the atone-

ment ofJesus Christ. At the very least this means that Jesus was alto-

gether righteous and thus could not have deserved the punishment of

JULY2007 - AMERICANATHEIST


8/32

death or indeed any punishment at all. But he died a punitive death,

on the Roman cross, to take the punishment for the sins of the hu-

man race. And though his atoning work is said to be all-sufficient, we

are not out of the woods till we consciously embrace his sacrifice on

our behalf. We have to admit we are sinners and accept a salvation

we need and could never have earned. Those who do not consciously

embrace the gospel of salvation will not receive its benefits.

If Jesus Is the Answer What is the Question?

This salvation, this solution, raises more problems than it

solves.

One :

What about the future? Are you on your own with the

sins you may commit before you die and get past the finish line?

Many early Christians lived in fear and postponed baptism till their

deathbed just to play it safe.

say morally noble non-believers are not saved. The options would

seem to be:

1)

You a re sa ved by good wo rks , r egardless o f yo ur be lie f.

This

means God's grace overlooks error in belief, but not immoral ac-

tions.

2) You a re sa ved by o r th odox be li e f, r egardless o f your wo rk s .

This means God's grace overlooks immoral actions but not errors in

belief. He is a strict theology professor, and he doesn't curve grades.

But neither does he care how wild you party, as long as you study for

the exam.

3) Everyone is sa ved by the g ra ce o f God, r egardle ss o f th eir be lie f

o r deeds .

4) The traditional popular Christian view, that you a re sa ve d by

a com bin a tion o f f a ith and wo rks (a diversified portfolio), each being

necessary but neither being sufficient by itself. But in this case, grace

has little to do with it.

I'd say Christian theology has usu-

ally gone with number rwo. You are saved

by right belief. When all is said and done, a

sinner seems to mean simply not a Chris-

tian believer, since the latter is the danger-

ous and depraved state from which one must

be extricated. That is not to say that immor-

al behavior is ignored. No, specific sins are

roundly condemned. But the crucial point is

that conversion does not necessarily change

this. If you're lucky, it may, but stories of

such dramatic night-and-day turnabouts are

tall tales that float around the evangelical

community like water-cooler chatter about

someone on TV who won the Lottery. Most

lives are mediocre and stay that way, despite

all the Dieting with Jesus books.

What conversion does change is your

beliefs, or the intensity of them, or your

membership in a particular religious group.

So belief, being in with in-crowd of the

144,000, is what matters. You can still com-

mit sins and yet be a Christian, as the bum-

per sticker assures a surprised world: Chris-

tians aren't perfect, just forgiven. And why

are they, and not you, forgiven? Because they

are Christians. Not because Christ has died

for them. If that were all there was to it, why,

then you, Mr. Satanist, you, Ms. Secular Hu-

manist, would be forgiven, too But there are

no bumper stickers proclaiming these glad

tidings.

No, they are forgiven because, unlike you, they believe Christ

died for them. It all comes down to passing that exam. Thus the old

joke is no joke: Junior sees his Grampa reading the Bible and religious

tracts and he asks mom why. She says, He's cramming for his finals

Damn right He'd better

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Two :

if the change conversion makes is more than a clean slate

(Go and sin no more, lest something worse befall you John 5:14),

if it is rebirth as a new creature who walks in the Spirit, why do we

still find pretty much the same old temptations and defeats awaiting

us after the initial period of neophyte enthusiasm?

Th ree:

why should your response to the atonement, or even

your knowledge of it, make any difference? If Christ died to save you,

mustn't it have worked?

To make salvation depend on your believing in the atone-

ment, i.e., in the doctrine of the atonement, aren't we simply saying

you are saved by cognitive works? Maybe not doing the right thing,

but by believing the right thing. This is the inevitable result once we

AMERICAN All-IEIST - JULY2007

.

What a Tangled Web We Weave

When We Practice to Believe

You see, Christianity did not bring into the world an answer

to an ancient longing, a long-delayed salve for a festering wound.

No, it created the problem to be able to peddle the solution. You


9/32

only think you have the problem the Christian gospel will solve

if you already accept the Christian bill of goods. Karl Barth put it

euphemistically by saying that we are so blinded by sin that we do

not even know the right question to ask till we hear the answer. But

I think Dietrich Bonhoeffer was more to the point when he said

Christianity survives by circling like a vulture, trying to make the

healthy believe they're sick so they will buy the patent medicine we

have to sell. Like asbestos in your basement: the stuff's only toxic

once the environmental experts get there to remove it and start stir-

ring up the dust of death.

How did the doctrine first emerge? Here is one plausible sce-

nario. Jesus of Nazareth is put to death for anti-Roman sedition. His

followers denied he deserved a criminal death; he was innocent of all

charges. (Was he? That's another can of worms.) His disciples faced

two options for understanding what had happened. Either he was a

sinner abandoned by God to a richly deserved fate, which is what

Jesus' enemies thought, or he did not deserve his fate. They believed

the latter. But then a related problem had to be addressed: how come

God let him die? He wasn't being punished for any sins of his own.

But death is a punishment for sin, so he must have died for some sins.

It must have been the sins of others.

This was nothing new. Jewish martyrs' deaths were typically

explained this way. At this stage of the game there was no central

doctrine of an atonement. It was simply a rationalization for the oth-

erwise apparent failure of divine providence to safeguard Jesus. The

earliest Jewish Jesus sectarians probably did not view him as a savior

in the now-traditional Christian sense at all. Nor were they called

Christians. (The word Christian appears only three times in the

New Testament, and in late writings, Acts and 1 Peter, and it is always

a term applied by outsiders.) This is an important point, implying

as it does that Christianity as such did not exist till the atonement

doctrine existed. Thus the atonement is what constitutes a religion

as Christian.

The atonement doctrine may well have emerged (as Sam K.

Williams argues in Jesus' Death as Saving Event) as a piece of Hel-

lenistic Jewish missionary theology. Gentile God-fearers admired

Jewish theology and ethics, but they remained hangers-on at the

margins of the synagogue, not full, circumcised proselytes, because

they did not relish embracing the whole mass of Jewish dietary and

ceremonial customs. Some of them began to join communities of

Jews who expected the return of Jesus as the Messiah, and a new

problem arose. Jews looked to the Jerusalem temple sacrifices to

atone for their sins. Gentiles were beyond the pale, unclean before

God, outside the Levitical system of sacrificial atonement. How

could God accept them as full members of the household of faith?

In other words, how could they now receive full admission to the

synagogues of Jews who revered Jesus? We can see the controversy

over this point in Paul's Epistle to the Galatians: do Gentile believ-

ers in Jesus have to become full proselytes to Judaism and keep

the Torah regulations? Many Jewish Jesus sectarians assumed so.

Remember, they weren't trying to start a new Jesus religion. That

came later.

A big step in that direction was the theological answer to this

question that said Gentiles did not have to keep the rituals of the To-

rah, because the death of Jesus had cleansed Gentile unholiness, like

the atoning deaths of sacrificial animals had for the Jews. God had

accepted Jesus' faithful martyr death as an atonement on the Gentiles'

behalf The Epistle to the Ephesians and 1 Peter both make this point

clearly. Christ's death has included Gentiles in the Jewish fold. His

death has torn down the Berlin Wall that separated Jew from Gentile.

What was it Gentiles needed to be saved from? Ritual un-

cleanness, being unwashed heathen. Traditionally Jewish thought

held that God required of Gentiles only the rudimentary command-

ments of Noah in Genesis 9, an elementary slate of decency laws.

Non-Jews were not required to keep the 613 commandments of the

Torah. Those were for Jews alone. Gentiles weren't damned, unless

they were immoral pagans, whose idol-worship led them into im-

morality. Righteous Gentiles would be saved all right, but in the

meantime, they just weren't part of the House of Israel. Even so, the

question Paul and others faced was not whether Gentile God-fearers

would be damned. The issue was whether they were entitled to full

membership in the Household of God. And the death of Jesus pro-

vided for their adoption as sons and daughters, as Jews already were

by birth. This early version of the atonement doctrine was still quite

a different thing than it has since become.

The big change came once the Jesus sect had spread further in

time and space beyond its Jewish origin. Since Jewish ritual taboos

were dropped, the distinction between sin as ritual uncleanness and

sin as moral guilt was lost. To say that Jesus died for the world first

meant for the rest of the world outside Israel, but now it came to

mean for the whole human race, including Jews. The original Jew-

ish Jesus sect did not necessarily think their fellow Jews were damned

for not believing in Jesus, any more than Rabbi Akiba would have

damned Jews who didn't agree that Simon bar Kochba was the Mes-

siah in 132 CEo But now Jesus was understood as the Savior from

moral guilt and from divine damnation. So everyone had to jump on

the bandwagon

Epidemic of Salvation

Here is the logic as I see it: Look, we've got an explanation for

the death ofJesus that says he can't have died for sins of his own, so it

Religion

Marx

by Rick B . A . Wise

The news isfull of reports on

the changes in the Eastern Bloc

~

countries, and many of the stories

I

~gion

deal with the demands of religious

M

persons in those nations. And, of

course, for years Americans have

heard generalizations about Marx

and his dialectic materialism. But

what isthat kind of materialism, and

how did Marx come to that position?

RickB.A. WIse

Wise traces the development of

Marx's opinions on religion, from

his early years as a devotee of the

German philosopher George Hegel,

through his embracing Ludwig

Feuerbach forward to his final

evaluation of the importance of

religious criticism.

267 pages.

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JULY

2 fX 7

AMERICAN ATHEIST


10/32

Thumbscrew and R ack

by

George Macdonald

GEORGE MACDONALD

Torture implements employed in the

Fiftheenth and Sixteenth Centuries

for the promulgation of Christianity.

Among the devices pictured and

described are the Spanish Collar,the

Thumbscrew, the Knobby Crown,

the Rack,the Leg Crusher,the Stocks,

Damien's Iron Bed,the Hot Mitten,

the Iron Boot, the Iron Virgin and

many more. These instruments

aroused far more terrifying fears than

any modern day horror movie.

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must have been for someone else's.This means these others must have

needed him to die for them. So their sin must have been something

more serious than the Jewish concept of spot sins that could be

dealt with by spot forgiveness here and there. Otherwise, why go to

the trouble to send a divine savior?Again, Galatians: if things are still

as they were under Judaism, then what was the point of Christ dying?

It must have been necessary, so let's posit a condition serious enough

to require it That's original sin, total depravity, something going way

beyond the

Ye tzer Ha ra h

(evil imagination) that Judaism ascribes to

human nature.

Ironically, redemption theology only begins to make sense

once you drop the expectation that it makes sense That is, you only

begin to see what's really going on once you recognize that it is not

theoretically coherent. You can stop looking for the logic of the thing

and start looking for the psycho-logic that went into it. It is not an

inference inductively arrived at. It is an after-the-fact rationalization.

You stop looking for the reasons that account for it, for there are

none. You seek instead for what the atonement is rationalizing. E.P.

Sanders recognizes this. He observes that Paul thought backwards,

from solution to plight, and ... his thinking in this, as in many re-

spects, was governed by the over-riding conviction that salvation is

through Christ. Since Christ came to save all, all needed salvation ....

Paul did not begin by analyzing the human situation

(Paul, th e Law,

and th e Jewish People , 68 ).

How can the Christian be sure everyone needs Christ's atone-

ment? This is what we are asking when we tell the pushy evangelist

that his faith is fine for him, but that we prefer another way. Why do

I have to go your way?The answer, the real, psychological answer, is

that It has to be the way for everybody without exception. If it's only

for some people, I won't know

i

I am one of the ones it will work

I

ror.

Sometimes, like Paul, who claimed to have been the chief of

sinners, an evangelist will say, If it worked for me, it can work for

anybody. But what this really means is, Since it will work for ev-

erybody, then I can be sure, deductively, that it will work for me.

The revival chorus celebrates All sufficient grace for even me. I

must have certainty So for me to be sure the gospel will redeem me,

I have to believe that you need it, too. Hence I cannot be satisfied

AMEiuCANATHElSf - JULY2007

thinking you might not need it. If admit that something else might

do the trick for you, I have to suspect that something else might work

better for me, too. And since the much-vaunted claims that Christ

changed my life are usually more statements of faith than accurate

descriptions of experience, this suspicion would be fatal. I might then

have to recognize that Christ is not living up to the advertising rheto-

ric and get back on the road looking for another panacea. And I'm

sick of that.

A good but partial analogy might be the disingenuousness

with which certain AIDS activists warn us that heterosexuals are ev-

ery bit as much at risk as homosexuals are. The assumption is that

straights will not get serious abour stamping out AIDS if they don't

think everyone needs a cure or vaccine for it.

It's another version of the problem that plagues Calvinists.

God predestines the elect to be saved; there's no way they can fumble

the ball. So the belief in predestination should be a source of great re-

assurance, right? Calvin thought so. But he was wrong. His successors

realized that since one could never be sure one was in fact one of the

elect, since not everybody was, there was more reason to worry than

ever before This is pretty much the same anxiety that the Christian

evangelist is trying to fend off by insisting that you need his gospel,

too, whether you like it or not. If it's not for everyone without excep-

tion, it may not be for him either. And the fundamentalist wants

nothing so much as security.

Once unleashed, the doctrine of the atonement runs amok

like a computer virus, corrupting every file. Once the question arises

as to how sin could first have entered the picture in Eden, how the

Fall ofAdam was even possible in the first place, God himself gets im-

plicated. (And it is himself, not herself half the time, because I am

willing-to argue that the maleness of God is a structural necessity in

traditional Christian theology, the kind we are discussing here.) The

logic will sound familiar to us by now, though no less pernicious. And

Calvinists did not hesitate to embrace it. God, being all-knowing and

all-powerful, cannot, in the nature of the case, have merely waited to

see whether Adam would obey or disobey him. No, God must actu-

ally have caused the Fall of Adam. Oh, don't worry, Francis Turretin

reassures us, God didn't force Adam's hand. He just pulled the plug

of sustaining grace at the crucial moment so that Adam lacked the

wherewithal to resist Satan's temptation. (As if that gets God off the

hook At least it shows the uneasy conscience of the Calvinist in the

matter.) Why would the Almighty pull such a stunt? Well... if it's not

broke you can't fix it, and God had this little plan of salvation in his

pocket, see?

This doesn't sound kosher to you? Despite their protests that

it all makes perfect sense, theologians know how it sounds to any

fair-minded person. Youwill say to me, then, 'Why does he still find

fault? For who can resist his will?' But who are you, a mere mortal,

to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, 'Why

have you made me thus'? (Romans 9:19-20). In other words, Sit

down and shut up But we are not answering back to God; we are

answering back to fellow mortals who seem to think they are God.

Mortals who think it lies in their power to condemn you to Hell for

not believing in the doctrine of the atonement.

Apologetics Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry

Once things assume such nightmarishly surreal proportions,

wouldn't you think someone would conclude their theory had, like

Bugs Bunny, made a wrong turn at Albuquerque? How much more

could the atonement doctrine find itself reduced to absurdity? By


11/32

now, merely to explain it is to refute it. Perhaps it isno surprise, given

the male monopoly on theology, that theologians would show the

male propensity, when hopelessly lost, to just keep going and not ask

directions. To stop and double back now would be too devastating an

admission of error. It is all a matter of cognitive dissonance reduction.

If you're hell-bent on hanging on to the paradigm of classical Christi-

anity, there is no expedient you won't seize upon to patch the rags.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith hits the nail on the head:

Actua lly th e only ba sis on wh ich th eir posi t ion can and

do es rest is a lo g ica l in fe rence. It s eem s to th em a t h eo re t i-

ca l im pl icat ion o f wha t th ey th em se lv e s c o ns id e r to be true ,

t ha t o th er peopl e 's fa it h mus t be illusory. Per sona lly , I th in k

tha t th is is to pu t fa r to o m uch w eigh t on log i cal im pl ica -

ti on. Th er e have be en in nu m er abl e illustra tions o f man' s

ca paci ty fo r sta r tin g from some cog en t th eo re tic a l p o s it ion

and then in fe rrin g fr om it lo gica lly s ome thing else th at a t

th e tim e seem s to h im persuasive but tha t in fact turns ou t

on pra ctica l exa mina tio n no t to h old. It isf a r t oo sw ee ping

t o c o nd e mn th e g re a t ma jo rity o f m ankind to liv es o f utte r

mean inglessnes s and per haps to He ll, si mpl y on th e ba si s

o f wha t seem s to some indi vi dua ls th e fo rce o f log i c.... Th e

da mna tion o f m y ne ig hbor is too we igh ty a ma tt e r to res t

on a sy llog i sm . (Th e Fa ith o f O th er M en , 122-123 )

But such hobgoblin consistency is just what we might expect,

seeing that the whole thing began as a cognitive dissonance reduction

maneuver. In the wake of the execution of Jesus, somehow virtue

had to be made of necessity. The atonement doctrine was the result.

Otherwise, Christ died to no purpose (Galatians 2:21). And we

can't have that. We can't brook genuine tragedy. It must have a happy

ending. Forgive me for paraphrasing Paul: I have been crucified with

Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life I

now live in the flesh I live in denial.

The history of the doctrine of the atonement is a long seriesof

proposals for lending some sense to the thing. One grotesque analogy

follows another, but, recalling what the Epistle to the Hebrews said

of the Levitical sacrifices, if anyone of them had possessed any merit,

the rest wouldn't have been necessary

It is not merely a question of cross-cultural equivalencies, find-

ing the appropriate counterpart in our cultural frame of reference.

The problem is that of a drastic discontinuity of values between the

biblical culture and our own, something far more serious than the an-

cients believing heaven was literally above us, while we imagine it as,

I suppose, another dimension. No, the whole atonement transaction

presupposes the ancient confusion of criminal law with tort law, as if

the sins of the world merely required a fine which a generous friend

could payoff for us. Once one sees the logical difference between the

two, as we have long ago drawn the distinction between astronomy

and astrology, we should see that the atonement doctrine really has

nothing at all to do with justice aswe define it. The closest analogy in

our justice system might be a friend posting bail for a criminal pend-

ing trial. This is a buying of someone's freedom by paying the price

he cannot pay for himself But I doubt that this is really adequate.

And nothing elseis.

If we bemoan the unreasonableness of Christian spokesmen

who insist on belief in the cross, we should not be surprised at it.

How can one hold fast to such a doctrine except unreasonably? If

they could coherently explain it to anyone's satisfaction, you can be

sure they would.

Physician, Heal Thyself

Don't you see the irony of the situation when modern theolo-

gians claim that, against critiques like mine, some sense can be made

of the atonement? We are not talking anymore about a savior of sick

mankind. Now we are talking about whether we can save the ailing

doctrine of the atonement itself It is like the Ottoman Empire in its

declining days, the Sick Man of Europe. It is no longer saving us;

we must save it. But I say,why bother? The patient's brain-dead; why

bankrupt the family by paying for the life-support contraption? Pull

the plug

I personally do not see how the centrality of Jesus Christ can

be maintained without the doctrine of the atonement. If he is not

central in this way, what is left? Harry Emerson Fosdick held that it is

the personality of Jesus (as if we knew anything about it) that is the

soul of Christianity. But this is to make Christianity into sentimen-

tal fan-worship, a maudlin personality cult like the Elvis Cult.

Neither will it do to hold, as Tillich did, that we value Jesus

only insofar as that which is Jesus in him yields to that which is Christ

in him, so that he becomes a perfect window through which we can

behold God. If Jesus in this way tells us anything about God we did

not know before, then it is something his individual personhood has

contributed, and we are back to worshipping him as God. To say that

God is like Jesus is really to say, we worship Jesus as a god. Ritschl

admitted it when he redefined the Incarnation as the belief that Jesus

has the value of God for us.

I do not see how one can get around the simple truth of

Socrates, when he admonished his disciples to think not of Socrates,

but think of the truth. We dare not raise any idol up to a level equal

with truth, or it will soon eclipse the truth, and the truth will become

lost in its shadow. That has long since happened with the idol ofJesus

Christ and Christianity. And this is why I believe those who see the

chief attraction of religion in its lip-service to truth and love, more

than in any trademark theological doctrine, ought to clear the air and

confess their allegiance to truth and love rather than to any religion.

Truth and love might be judged the true essence of all religions alike.

But if that is so, then the inessentials, the secondary trademark doc-

trines that lend any particular religion its distinctiveness, might better

be dropped, and with them any particular religious label at all. *

Robert Price fo un ded (a nd contin ues to edit) The Journal of

Higher Criticism. He taug h t Ph ilo soph y a nd Re lig ion fo r a few yea rs

a t Bergen Community Co llege in New Jer sey, th en New Tes tament In-

terpre ta tion a t Drew fo r a coup le more . In 1999 he cam e on board w it h

th e Council fo r Secula r Humanis m and fo un ded the No rth Je rs ey C en te r

fo r In quiry . He and h is f am ily , now inc luding two daug h te rs , Victo ri a

and Ver oni ca , re tu rn ed to North

Caro lin a in 2001, wh ere he con-

ti nu es to teach , wri te , and edi t .

H is bo oks inc lud e Beyond Born

Again, The Widow Traditions in

Luke-Acts, Deconstructing Jesus,

The Incredible Shrinking Son of

Man, The Da Vinci Fraud, The

Reason-Driven Life, and The

Pre-Nicene New Testament. He is

a Fel low o f th e Jesus Sem ina r a nd

o f th e C om mittee fo r th e S cie nt ific

Examinat i on o f Religion . He ca n

be re ached a t crit icus@ao l.com .

JULY2007 - AMERICAN ATHEIST


12/32

Niles Rumfoord). He

wrote,The name of

the new religion,

said Rumfoord, is The

Church of God the Ut-

terly Indifferent. The

two chief teachings

of this religion are

these: Puny men can

do nothing at all to

help or please God

Almighty; and Luck is

not the hand of God.

Freethought au-

thor James A.Haught

in his work 2000 Years

of Disbelief: Famous

People with the

Courage to Doubt,

quoted Vonnegut, as

saying, How on earth

can religious people

believe in so much arbitrary, clearly invented balderdash? The ac-

ceptance of a c reed,any creed, entitles the acceptor to membership

in the sort of artificial extended family we call a congregation. It is a

way to fight loneliness. Any time I see a person fleeing from reason

and into religion, Ithink to myself, 'there goes a person who simply

cannot stand being so goddamned lonely anymore,

Another entry from Haught reveals that Vonnegut clearly

rejected the supernatural and other trappings of religion. I am of

course a skeptic about the divinity of Christ and a scorner of the

notion that there is a God who cares about how we are or what we

do .... Religious skeptics often become very bitter towards the end,

as did MarkTwain .... I know why Iwill become bitter. I will finally

realize that I have had it right all along, that I will not see God,that

there is no heaven or Judgment Day.

In Bluebeard, Vonnegut combined satire with philosophical

insight.The trouble with God isn't that He seldom makes Himself

known to us. He's holding you and me and everybody else by the

scruff of the neck practically .... Contentedly adrift in the cosmos,

were you? ...That isa perfect description of a non-epiphany, that

rarest of moments, when God Almighty lets go of the scruff of your

neck and lets you be human for a little while.

Writing in FatesWorse than Death: An Autobiographical Col-

lage of the 1980s,Vonnegut deciared,1 am an atheist (or at best a

Unitarian who winds up in church quite a lot). He also cautioned,

Saywhat you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I

consider the capacity for it terrifying.

During his lifetime, Vonnegut was the quintessential liter-

ary provocateur, critic, nonconformist and a bit of a polite cultural

bomb-thrower. Many have compared his wit and writ ings to those

of Mark Twain. Hisessaysand novels were a staple, particularly of

the generation that came of age in the 1960s,and was at the chaotic

center of the civil rights struggle, opposition to the Vietnam conflict

and other movements for social change. In death, Vonnegut's

creative output will hopefully inform, stimulate and motivate future

generations to doubt, question, investigate and, if necessary, rebel.

K u r t V o n n e g u t

1922-2007

ob i tua ry

K

RTVON-

NEGUT

whose liter-

ary works

used satire,

social commentary

and philosophical

criticism, died April 11,

2007 at his home in

Manhattan. Hewas 84.

Vonnegut was

a staple for several

generations of readers,

beginning with his

dystopian science fic-

tion novel PlayerPiano

published in 1952. It

established some of

the key literary themes

that characterized his

future work, including

a caution about the

effects of technology on the human community and the dangers of

media indoctrination and government bureaucracy.

Vonnegut grew up in Indianapolis, IN,and during high school

was editor of the school newspaper. After a short stint at Cornell

University, hejoined the u s Army in 1942,and became an infantry

scout in the European theater of operations. In December, 1944, he

was one of several thousand Americans captured by the Germans

during the Battle of the Bulge, and ended up in a POWcamp in

Dresden. Heand fellow Americans were secured in the basement

meat locker of a slaughterhouse, where they were fortunate enough

to survive the devastating firebombing of the city. An estimated

135,000 civilians and soldiers were killed. His experiences in

Dresden became the basis of his future novel, Slaughterhouse Five,

published in 1969. Its pacifist and humanitarian themes resonated

with the growing opposition to the Vietnam War.

Other novels and collections of short stories included The Si-

rens ofTitan (1959); eat's Cradle (1963); God BlessYou,Mr. Rosewater

(1965); Breakfast of Champions (1963); Galapagos (1985); Bluebeard

(1987); Hocus Pocus (1990) and Timequake (1997).

In his political essays,Vonnegut was a relentless critic of the

Bush administration. He spoke out against military adventurism,

economic inequality and other government policies. He served as

honorary president of the American Humanist Association, replac-

ing the prolific science-fiction author IsaacAsimov, in what Von-

negut described as that totally functionless capacity. Nevertheless,

Vonnegut expressed his Humanism and Atheism in talks,essays

and opinion pieces. A survey of his writing, particularly his novels,

reveals a spectrum of attitudes in respect to religion, ranging from

the humorous to the acerbic.

In Slaughterhouse 5,Vonnegut wrote:What the Gospels actu-

ally said was: don't kill anyone until you are absolutely sure they

aren't well connected.

His novel The Sirens ofTitan presented readers with a bizarre

alternative reality (complete with a manipulative spiritual move-

ment headed by a wealthy, interstellar vagabond named Winston

AMEuCANATHEISf - JULY2007


13/32

Tran sition al F ossa of R e ligion

I

ecently read an article on the CNN website (April 6, 2007) by

Dr. Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., who is the director of the

Human Genome Project. Dr. Collins also has a new book titled,

The Language of God: A Scientist Provides Evidence for Be-

lief, and one presumes the article was meant to promote the book.

Collins is another in a long line of authors who will make a

une by cashing in on the easiest Ponzi scheme that ever existed-

selling books by saying, I used to be an Atheist until I read C.S.

Lewis and now I've committed my life to Jesus. (Personally, I used to

be a Christian until I read C.S. Lewis; when I realized how lame the

arguments were, I became an Atheist. Regrettably, one cannot make

a

fortune

selling that conversion story. But I digress.)

Collins says a big influence that started him questioning his

theistic leanings was that the world of science had no answers for

the nagging questions that people tend to ask about the human con-

dition. These are questions that Dr. Collins felt science has failed to

address: What is the meaning of life? Why am I here? If the

universe had a beginning, who created it? Why do humans have

a moral sense? and What happens

after I die?

In his favor, Collins acknowl-

edges that science has gotten it right

on topics like evolution through

descent. Since he is the head of the

Human Genome Project, we can

feel good about the fact that he asserts that if any doubts lingered

about evolution using only the fossil record as evidence, the study of

DNA makes it abundantly clear that humans are related to all other

living things. And he recognizes that this is in conflict with an ultra-

literal interpretation of Genesis, but sides with religious thinkers like

St. Augustine, who found it impossible to be exactly sure what the

meaning of that amazing creation story was supposed to be. (Imag-

ine that I have that same problem.)

Collins boldly asserts that attaching oneself to such literal in-

terpretations in the face of compelling scientific evidence pointing to

the ancient age of the Earth, and the relatedness of living things by

evolution, seems neither wise nor necessary for the believer. Actu-

ally, I'm in complete agreement with the unwise part, but I think he

needs to review the unnecessary part. The whole reason that funda-

mentalists stick to the fundamentals is because they recognize that

the entire story is a house of cards and if they let one card topple, the

total structure collapses. But-hey, whatever. Right? He wraps up

the whole thing in a neat little package by waxing poetic with, By

investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actu-

ally be a means of worship. (Presumably there is no genuflecting in

the lab, however.)

by J im Corbet t

But, wait. What really struck me about the entire article was

that the premise Collins was actually asserting, though unwittingly,

is a form of transitional fossil itself The premise follows along the

evolutionary line that leads away from religion and to complete ac-

ceptance of science as the only necessary tool for learning about and

interpreting the universe in which we live. His observations are like

a little mutation in a gene that may help people who are trapped in

their fundamentalist way of thinking. And by exposing them to a

radical new idea (i.e., Genesis doesn't have to be taken literally) they

may move their thinking in the correct direction.

We know that life forms did not emerge all at once in their

final forms. Even Dr. Collins knows this. Creatures evolve in tiny

increments that provide some benefit to the organism, and then an-

other change occurs and another and so on until a new entity is cre-

ated. There is neither a set time schedule nor a preferred end game to

the process; it simply changes in the way that nature provides. Well,

ideas evolve in the same way and some ideas require a longer time to

be accepted and integrated into a culture than others do.

i d ea s e vo lv e and som e ideas requ ire a longer t im e

to

be

accepted and in tegra ted in to a cu ltu re than o thers do

For example, when Paul of Tarsus (St. Paul to some reli-

gions) began preaching about a new god named Jesus, shortly after

the alleged resurrection of same, he was introducing a wholly new

concept to the communities in which he visited. Those people al-

ready had gods of their own, with whom, we presume, they were

perfectly happy. Those gods had served their purposes for many years

and had seen the people through thick and thin, to the extent that

gods can do that-thank you very much.

So along comes this new idea about a god who sent his son to

die, ete., ete., and we all get eternal life if we just play by these rules,

yada, yada, yada. And the upshot of all this was that many of the peo-

ple preaching these new ideas were sent to the lions for asserting such

nonsense. But the new idea stuck around and it evolved to incorpo-

rate some of the existing lore from the surrounding communities, and

1 and behold, it became the new religion of the land. But remember

this: it took 300 years from the time that Paul started preaching until

Constantine made Christianity the religion of the land.

Now, let's fast-forward a few centuries and what do we find?

Charles Darwin comes along and asserts a new scientific theory that

upends a number of the core tenets of this now-long-established

behemoth of a religion and many people naturally resist. They are

JULY2007 - AMERiCANAnmsr


14/32

content with their religion; their social structure is built around that

religion; people are naturally resistant to change and, of course, they

are really invested in the whole life after death thing.

But Darwin's idea is compelling. So scientists continue to in-

vestigate, and much to the dismay of the fundamentalist believers in

religion, the scientists make an escalating number of discoveries that

make it really hard to accept some of the religious tenets on their face.

But ideas evolve. So now, instead of rejecting the scientific theory in

its entirety, the religious community is taking steps to accept the hard

evidence but continue to pander to their audience with the soft-sell

stuff of we can have our cake and eat it too, which is the position

espoused by Collins.

This transitional phase will lead to the next one after more

compelling information is discovered. Scientists will get inside the

DNA and unlock its secrets, and life forms that share the DNA of

earth creatures will be discovered on other planets and numerous

presently-unthought-of discoveries will be made. When that hap-

pens, new generations will look back and realize that the comment

by Collins, in which he says that science cannot answer the questions

listed above, is really incorrect. Science CAN answer those ques-

tions-Collins just doesn't like the answers.

It took 300 years for Christianity to become fully accepted in

the community at large. But Darwin's revolutionary idea was only

introduced a little over 150 years ago. So clearly, more work needs to

be done to educate the masses, and patience and perseverance will be

needed to wait out the evolutionary process of teaching a society a

new set of rules and values. Along the way we should be thankful for

the transitional fossilslike the one provided by Dr. Collins. That will

help move people away from superstition to acceptance of rational

thought.

It can be done, but it will take time. And even though Dr.

Collins will make a fortune on his book by pandering to fools (and I

won't make a nickel by sharing my observations) I am grateful for the

service he provides by stepping into the role of gene mutation that

may ultimately help humanity to move in the right direction.

Humanity needs all the

help it can get. *

Jim Corbett lives in Ed-

monds, Washington with his fam-

ily and works as an executive in

the online legal research business.

He also runs two golf web sites

and his most recentgolf book, The

Pocket Idiot's Guide to Golf Rules

and Etiquette came out in May,

2007. Mr. Corbett can be reached

at mrgoj@mrgo/fcom

NEW Life M e m b e r s

AMERICANTHEISTSW elcom es N ew L ife M em bers

ROGER MARTINEZ - Law nda le, C A

Kenneth H. Bonnell -

Los Angeles, C A

AMERICAN ATHEIST - JULY2007

D en y in g Ev o lu tio n

by Massimo Pigliucci

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H is to r y s G re at es L ia rs

by Joseph McCabe

introduction by Madalyn Murray O'Hair

At a time when the school

books of the nation are under

attack by right-wing religious

fundamentalists, this small book

of Joseph McCabe's becomes

critically important. McCabe was

a scholar of the old school of

original objective research. He

combed through the voluminous

tomes of his day to seek out the

inaccuracies and the errancies

which he knew existed because

his own church had educated

him well in how to rewrite

history. He could recognize and point out the fallacies, the

distortions, the deliberate lies and deceits. In addition, from

his own independent research,after having been freed from

the intellectual strictures which the church had imposed

upon him, he was able to weigh the material at hand.

With this small handbook as a guide, any amateur historian

can start to take an educated look at what is offered to us

today in place of real history and immediately uncover the

fraudulent posits which are so apparent when once we

have a guiding light.The scholarly historian can now peel

back the layers of religious accretion and find some small,

true, semblence of truth - what might have really happened.

The raison d'etre of American Atheists is to educate: to

sort out fact from fiction, truth from fantasy. But, again

and again we are faced with a job which is overwhelming.

How does one deprogram an entire nation,a group of

nations, the world? How does one dig out from the myriad

of lies, that which has some semblance of reality? When

religious fanatics have systematically, for hundreds of years

perverted the truth, from whence can come a viable and

accurate record?

Hope is here at last in this small book. It is highly

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The M ussolin is

Am ong Us

by Jim Burgtorf

C

hris Hedges, like Michelle Goldberg in

K ing do m C om in g,

provides an overview of the Christian Right and attempts

to raise awareness of it as a dangerous mass movement

with totalitarian, fascistic tendencies posing a very real

threat to American democracy and individual liberty. There are many

similarites to

Kingdom,

but a rather different perspective due to the

two authors' differing backgrounds. Goldberg is a secular Jew, while

Hedges is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and still considers

himself a liberal Christian:

Many have observed that if fascism comes to America, it will

not come with brown shirts and swastikas, but with familiar Ameri-

can symbols and trappings. The core of the Christian Right move-

ment is dominionism, which teaches that Christians have a divine

right to rule all non-Christians, and that the Bible, literally read and

inerrant, isthe source of all law, history, and science. The dominion-

ists believe that America has been divinely ordained to impose this

rule on the world, and only after this has been accomplished can

Christ return to carry out the final, grisly destruction of all unbeliev-

ers (including liberal Christians and most Catholics), laTimothy

LaHaye's Left

Beh ind

novel series.

Hedges' mentor was Dr. James Luther Adams, who had been

his ethics professor at Harvard 25 years ago. Adams, who was then

nearly 80, had been in Germany in the mid-1930s and saw first-hand

the pro-Nazi German Christian Church. He recognized early on the

disturbing similarities with the Christian Right in the US - the con-

flating of religion and worldly power, nationalism, militarism, and

intolerance.

The bulk of the book is an inside look at the movement's

means and methods. Hedges blames the rootlessness, anomie, and

despair of modern life for much of the appeal of the Christian Right,

which gives recruits a sense of belonging, purpose, and enemies to

blame and hate. Scapegoating is always one of the most important

techniques of fascist movements-the Nazis blamed the Jews for

Germany's problems, and the dominionists blame liberals, homosex-

uals, feminists, and secular Humanists for America's alleged moral

decline. In place of the mass rallies and torchlight parades of Hitler's

Germany, the Christian Right has its megachurches, loosely defined

as churches with 2,000 or more members (some have as many as

10,000). And, as in previous movements, control of the media is cen-

tral-Christian broadcasting is a multibillion dollar business, with

hundreds of radio and TV stations spewing fundamentalist propa-

ganda around the clock. Dr. Goebbels could only be envious.

In a revealing chapter called Conversion Hedges tells of at-

tending the Evangelism Explosion workshop run.by D. James Ken-

nedy, one of the heavyweights of the Christian Right. In keeping

with the military leitmotifs the movement is so fond of, Kennedy

calls himself and other pastors generals or admirals and evange-

lists soldiers. The conversionlrecruitment process is riddled with

lies and deception - evangelists at the workshop are told to hide their

Bibles at first when approaching prospects and to pretend they're tak-

ing a survey of religious belief They are required to write and rewrite

their personal testimonies and practice them with the help of an

book rev iew

0 0

AMERICAN

FASCISTS

I I 1 C t l l 1 l1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 l 1 I 1 1 U 1 I l I I itl

rev iew o f C hris H ed ge s'

American Fascists:

The Christian Right and

the War on America

[F re e P re ss , 2 00 6, 2 54 p p.l

assigned prayer partner until they are delivered flawlessly. It is con-

sidered essential that the testimony explicitly state that the fear of

death has been banished forever.

Hedges does fault liberals for being too tolerant-too eager to

be inclusive, to engage in debate and dialog. It is time, he feels, to

be intolerant of intolerance. The dominionists, for their part, have

no interest in any dialog with evil. Their enemies can only be van-

quished and destroyed. But, he puts

forth

no coherent program for

countering this movement, as if awareness alone is adequate. Surely

something more is necessary.

The biggest problem this reviewer sees with Hedges is that

after throwing out the baby, he clings desperately to the bath water in

the form of a supposedly compassionate liberal Christianity. In the

book's first chapter, he does indulge in some biblical criticism, and

accuses the dominionists of being selective literalists, picking and

choosing Bible texts that conform to their ideology, and ignoring or

distorting what doesn't. And he correctly observes that the literalists

can't have it both ways. But, after admitting that mainstream Chris-

tians can also cherry-pick the Bible, he insists that it must be read

in another way. Somehow he thinks that this can salvage an ethic of

tolerance and compassion, often exemplified, he claims, in the life of

Christ. Is this the same Christ who said, But those mine enemies,

which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay

them before me (Lk. 19:27)? And told his followers they must hate

their families (Lk. 14:26; Mt. 10:21, 10:34

ff.),

and that he came not

to bring peace, but a sword? Hedges can't have it both ways, either.

How can the life of Jesus-if he lived at all-negate such hateful

words?

Chris Hedges has written a very readable, compelling book

from the viewpoint of a reporter on the scene. Anybody who thinks

it can't happen here should read it. But a non theist cannot help but

be disappointed in Hedges' refusal to take the final step and reject

Christianity and the Bible altogether. The answer to the Christian

Right and the dominionists is reason and critical thinking, not a

more tolerant religion.

*

Ja me s B urg torf is a ch em ist a n d in fo rm atio n sc ien tis t who ha s

be en a ctive in va rious ske ptic and Free thoug th groups fo r many yea rs . He

can be reach ed a t jb ur g to r j@ ca s .o rg

JULY 20 07 - AMERICAN Aruasr


16/32

A m er ic an A th eis ts

33rd A n n u al N at ion

American Atheists held it s

and 8and it was one

of

th e m

was m ild and sunny and

The h ote l m ee ting room s

there

to

film ou r F rid ay ses

There are m any Ath eists in the

help w ith the con ve ntio n. T h

Wendy Britton, Bart Meltze

and Ellen Johnson on the

Spirit of Seattle Train

P.O. Box 5733

Parsippany,

l J

Ruth and John Henderson about to

board the train to the Columbia Winery

Jesus(Troy Conrad) and Bradley Hawkins


17/32

C onvent io

l c on ve nti on in S ea ttle , Wa s hin gto n on April 6, 7

w e hav e eve r held. T he wea ther in Sea ttle

took the time to s ee the beautifu l s ig hts of t he c it y.

h c onventio neers . C -SPANand ABC s 20120 were

eprog ra ms w ill h ave a ired b y the tim e yo u rea d this.

a nd many of th em g la dly vo lu nte ere d th eir tim e to

fee l very w elco me an d ou r con ven tion run sm oo th ly.

B oa rd m em ber S us a n H arring to n 's

d au g hter S a ig e en jo yi n g co n ve rsa tion

d uring a b rea k

We want to thank the

fol lowing people for helping

to make this event possible.

Tina Bader

Arthur Brenner

Renata Brenner

Wendy Britton

Emily Brown

David Carnahan

Rachel Carroll

PaulCase

Silvia Decataldo

Luca Dellamore

Timothy Dicks

David Fitzgerald

EdGauci

Conrad Goeringer

Susan Harrington

Bradley Hawkins

Jim Heldberg

Kyle Hepworth

Lori Howard

Arlene-Marie

Bart Meltzer

Larry Mundinger

JasonTorpy

Tim Tyni

Bob Seidensticker

Dakota Solberg

Megan Spielbusch

RobWilson

Ann Zindler

Frank Zindler

The following awards were

presented:

Blair Scott

Atheist OfThe Year

Clyde Baxley

First Amendment Award

Dr.Gilbert Shapiro

Letter to Editor

Winner

Julia Sweeney

Outreach Award

Dennis Paul Himes

State Director OfThe Year

Dick Hogan

Lifetime Achievement Award

Peter J.Nuhn

Atheist Activist OfThe Year

Award

Dr.Massimo Pigliucci

The Advancement of Atheism

and Science Award


18/32

A m er ic an A th eis ts

33rd A n n u al N at io n al Co n v en t io n

con t inued

S ch o la rs h ip W in n er s

W e fly our scho la rsh ip w in ners to the an nua l con ven tio ns so tha t yo u ca n see the

yo un g d eservin g w in ners w ho yo u help w ith yo ur do na tio ns a nd m em bersh ips.

Our 2006 w in n ers w ere A nn a Ka an d H em an t M ehta .

Our Yo uth a nd Fa mily D irecto r, Da vid S ilverm an a nn oun ced o ur scho la rship

w in ners fo r 2007 . T hey a re M eg ha n Reg is a nd Greg H artm an .

P la y G od

D avid F itzg era ld set up a co ntest in the b o o k a n d pro d uct ro o m fo r peo ple to

cr ea te th eir o w n r elig io n. I t w as ca lled P la y G od . W e'd like to than k the jud ges C la rk

A da m s, L or i H ow ard a nd S usa n H arr in gto n. A ug ust B er ks hir e's S in er gy wa s the

F irst P la ce w in ner . Run ners up w ere Ra ya nn e S ilve rm a n w ith S in gu lis m, David

F itzg era ld w ith D iv in e L ove B oa t a nd H an ley G un m an w ith F itzism .

Syne rgy :

E veryo ne a grees tha t syn erg y is a g ood th in g; the n atura l a nd perfect co min g

to gether an d the synchro nizin g o f va rio us e lem en ts. Is it rea lly a n accid en t then , o r

is it s yn erg y, th at sy ne rg y s ou nd s e xa ctly lik e m y n ew r elig io n S inergy?

T o d o g oo d requires m ere ly do in g n othing . A C hristia n co uch po ta to is g ua ra nteed

he av en m e re ly fo r b elie vin g. N ot so w ith a S in erg ist

A ny sin w orth co mm ittin g - such a s s mokin g, d rink in g, ga mb ling , d an cing ,

fo rn ica tin g, o r d rin kin g c offe e -re qu ire s s om e e ne rg y. T he re fo re , to a ch ie ve th e

H ea ven o n E arth tha t the S in erg y re lig io n prom ises, yo u've g ot to g et up o ff your

butt a n d g o o ut a n d have so m e fun

B l a s p h e m y

D avid Fitzg era ld a lso co ord in ated o ur vers io n o f

Jeopa rd y w hich w e ca lled B la sphem y The three tea m s

w ho pla yed w ere the B aby Jesus B utt P lugs w ith L ori

L ipm an B row n, E dd ie T aba sh an d C la rk A da ms. T h e P ig 's

E y e A th eis ts w e re A ug us t B e rk sh ir e, S te ve P et er se n

a nd Va nila M ishra . A nd Do na te T o C QS SA M AA F w ere

A ma n da W arner , Jaso n T o rpy an d H em an t M ehta . T he

F irst P la ce w in ners w ere the B ab y Jesus B utt P lug s.

Cong ra tu l a tions

Speaker Robert Priceand

AA board member Wayne Aiken

W hen Denn is Pa ul H im es return ed hom e he sen t us the fo llow ing n o te .

In N ovem ber 2002 I a tte nd ed th e G od le ss A m eric an s' M arch o n

W ashing ton . I h ad decid ed to b eco me m ore active in resistin g

theo cra cy a nd ha d recen tly jo ined A merica n A theists. W hile there I

m et Da ve S ilverm an a n d m en tion ed tha t I w an ted to b ecom e m ore

a ctive . H e im m ed ia te ly sa id , Beco me sta te d irector. W e need a sta te

d irecto r in C on necticut. S o tha t's w ha t I d id , a nd in the sprin g

0('03,

ha vin g b een recen tly a ppo in ted C on necticut S ta te D irecto r, I w en t to

m y firs t co nven tio n, in C hica go .

I f o un d m yself very a pprehen sive g oing to C hicag o.

I d on 't think a ny o f yo u rea lized ho w m uch so a t

the tim e. H ere I h ad co m m itted m yself to w ork in g

w ith these peo ple a nd represen tin g these peo ple

a nd I d id n't rea lly kn ow them . I h a d c o rr es po n d ed

w ith so m e o f them b y em ail a n d cha tted b rief ly

w ith so m e a t the m arch, b ut still I d id n't rea lly kn o w

them . W ha t if our idea s a bo ut a ctiv ism turn ed o ut

to b e in co m pa tib le? W ha t if I c am e to th in k they

w ere w asting the ir tim e? W ha t if they tho ug ht I

w as in co m peten t? W ha t if w e just d id n 't g et a lo ng

persona lly? It w as th is la st question I w as m ost

w o rried a bo ut. I c o uld g et a feel fo r the o rga n iza t ion

w itho ut m eeting a n yo n e, but n o t so m uch fo r the peo ple.

W ell, as you ca n tell by the fa ct tha t I 'm still sta te d irecto r a nd th is is

m y f ift h c on ve nt io n , every thin g w o rked o ut fo r the best. I fo un d I lik ed

yo u, I le ft C hica g o kn o w in g I c o u ld w ork w ith yo u, an d a t th is po in t I

co nsider m an y o f yo u m y fr ien ds. I t's a w eird fr iend ship , in tha t w e o n ly

see ea ch o ther o nce o r tw ice a yea r , but it's a rea l fr iendship, a nd o n e I

expect to la st fo r yea rs to co me. (W e d o to o Denn is. E d.)

Special thanks to Edwin Kagin, Bradley H

american atheist magazine july 2007

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