Christians are fond of saying that this (the United States) is a “Christian Nation.” That we’re a nation founded on Christian principles and Christian ideals and that the Founding Fathers established this as a Christian nation. Some even believe that the United States was created by God himself.

There’s no doubt that most people in the 1700’s were Christian. The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, written in 1669, read, “[n]o man shall be permitted to be a freeman of Carolina, or to have any estate or habitation within it that doth not acknowledge a God, and that God is publicly and solemnly to be worshiped.” Then in 1776, after the Carolinas split, the newly formed state of North Carolina’s constitution read, “no person who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments” can hold office. “Protestant” was replaced with “Christian” in 1835.

Many of the newly formed states held similar such proclamations, that their elected officials “profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ…” in order to serve the people in a public office.

Yet the U.S. Constitution remains a secular document. It begins with “We the People” and says nothing of “God,” “Christianity,” or “Jesus.” It stipulates that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust” and that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

The Founding Fathers, regardless of their theism, deism or even agnosticism, were clearly aware of the many Protestants pushing for official religious idenfication. They clearly saw the danger in such state sponsored religion, and understood that allowing a single religious cult to dominate the others would give unfair advantage to followers of that cult. Had our Fathers not had this foresight, we could have found ourselves in a predictament similar ot that of the Sunni vs. Shia conflict where two Muslim cults in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East are literally killing each other for dominance.

Or, perhaps we would have gone the way of the Scandanavian countries and much of Europe where state sponsored religions have no competition for funding and, thus, no motivation to develop a customer base –the clergy get paid the same regardless of the number of parishoners.

Regardless of the religious beliefs of our Forefathers, we have the responsibility to base governmental decisions on the information of today. The fact is, there are hundreds of competing religions in the United States and a sizeable body of non-religious. Therefore, on this Fourth of July, a day commemorating our Independence from tyranny, we must not forget that to allow religion to dominate government; to allow the superstitious to influence policy and law; to stand by while science, education, and human rights are trampled by the ignorance and bigotry of fundamental and conservative Christianity –is to give in to tyranny and forfeit all that our Founding Fathers fought and bled for.

Standing up against religious superstition and bigotry is the most patriotic thing an atheist can do, even if it means just blogging or voting in a school district election.

Happy Independence Day to all Americans.

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Posted under Culture Wars

I’m curious how many bloggers and internet forum members in the atheosphere actually visit the “enemy camp” so to speak. Either overtly or covertly.

I moderate at several internet forums where religion is a hot topic, one of which is a science-based forum where the Religion section is dominated by atheists. Yet I see regular postings by Christians and Muslims at each of these forums where it seems their only goal is to provoke and argue. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for it. I think they’re a valueable addition to the forums in most cases (some are just mindless trolls) and I think argumentation and debate in this manner is a fine way to both learn and educate. I’ve observed several Christians and even a couple Muslims soften their religious beliefs or even abandon them altogether (I’ve yet to see the atheist become a Christian or Muslim!).

Lately, however, I’ve taken to visiting the other side. Checking out Christian blogs and forums and even posting here and there. My most recent interactions were at ChristianPost.com, a Christian news site that actually has some interesting stories. They’re not as wacky as World Nut Daily or AFA, so much easier to tolerate (before reaching “punch the keyboard” stage).

I linked two stories on Twitter (follow me on one of the sidebars), but here they are: OnTaking Atheism Seriously, and Religion on the Brain.

The first is a blog entry by Randal Rauser, a professor of theological history who quotes Romans and states, “[s]o the question: is someone who affirms the proposition “There is no God” de facto godless and wicked?” My reply was: Most rational atheists hold that proposition provisionally, citing the lack of good reason to accept the positive claim that a god exists. Certainly that makes them godless (but then so are all humans from the atheist point of view since a god is probably non-existent), but it would be both ignorant and dishonest to label them “wicked,” which is defined as “deviation from morality” by Webster. I could have gone on, but perhaps in the back of my mind I was thinking, “be nice. You’re in their house.”

The second story, Religion on the Brain, is an interesting perspective of an article that ran in the USA Today recently on the sociobiology of belief where it’s argued “that religion can be a force for good or for evil, depending on the conception of God that is the focus of belief.” My comment there was not directed toward the article itelf but one of the other commenters, tipique1, who made some very fallacious arguments about atheism and atheists in general. Here’s my entire comment, which will give the gist of the fallacies.

tipique1,

Your opinion of atheism appears to be one in which you have come to a conclusion and seek only to pidgenhole atheists into it. Your opinion is utterly and completely wrong when you state “atheism affirms a negative.” Atheism is merely the state of being that we are all born into before we become indoctrinated by the cultural memes of religion. If one is lucky enough to become enlightened after this indoctrination, or if this indoctrination isn’t complete, the believer may one day return to that state of refusing to accept the positive claim of theists.

I, like most atheists, state that there is no good reason to accept your theistic claim. A lack of understanding of the universe, claimed by most theists is a terribly fallacious reason to accept a god. Indeed, even if I were to accept that a god were needed in the universe, that hardly gets me from there to your particular notion of a god. To accept such a god would be a massive non sequitur.

On the subject of logical fallacy, I note that you’re quite familiar with them. You’ve made an attempt to poison the well by associating Richard Dawkins‘ well-argued “mind virus” analogy of religious indoctrination to Adolf Hitler in a manner that would make Godwin proud (google Godwin’s Law). But your argument is doubly fallacious in that even if Hitler et al did see religion as a virus more than a tool for genocide as they did, it doesn’t imply that religion does not behave like a virus.

You say atheism is evil. You fail miserably at demonstrating this claim but succeed in showing a certain measure of expected bigotry.

-Yenald Looshi

I fully expect that this one might get deleted, but I am, afterall, experimenting a bit. I noticed one other atheist commenting in that story as well as a liberal theist.

Anyway, I’m going to have a poll up for a while regarding “going behind enemy lines” to post, comment, or just read. I’m curious about the interactions and experiences of other atheists that do this.

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Posted under Atheosphere

1. ACLU condemns U.S. crackdown on Muslim charities [↩]

Posted under islam

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Posted under Culture Wars, New Atheism

I’ve added a couple of links to the menu bar at the top: Godless Resources and Godless Bibliography. The first is still a work in progress right now, but it links to a page of links to many of the works found in the Portable Atheist, edited by Christopher Hitchens. There’ll be some additional links in the coming days. The second is a listed bibliography in APA style, suitable for copy/pasting to plug into your own references or bibliography.

Finally, here’s a fun video. Old, but fun.

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Posted under blogging

One of the many criticisms leveled at George W. Bush by atheists and secular free thinkers was his tendency to favor “Faith-Based Initiatives” as a means to solve social problems such as substance abuse, physical abuse, homelessness, criminal reform and recidivism, and so on. During the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives National Conference on June 26, 2008, Bush was introduced by the Chicano Federation’s Edith Espinoza:

How beautiful was that? From being a homeless mother of two to introducing the President of the United States. There has to be a higher power. I love being with members of the armies of compassion, foot soldiers in helping make America a more hopeful place. Every day you mend broken hearts with love. You mend broken lives with hope. And you mend broken communities with countless acts of extraordinary kindness.

For Bush and others in the political mainstream, Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs) and Faith-Based Initiatives (FBIs) were presented as a viable and efficient means to a social ends. These organizations were, and are, given preferential favor and attention, with the assumption that they exceed secular organizations’ ability to provide the same or similar services. There is also the implied assumption that these organizations are moralistically the right choice since they’re religious in foundation. And not just any religion. These organizations are predominantly Christian with just a few exceptions.

But conservative politicos aren’t the only ones heralding the benefits of FBOs. During his campaign, Barack Obama made a speech promoting faith-based initiatives to which he managed to garner criticism from both sides of the issue: he’s still clearly in favor or using FBOs to address social problems; but he also sees some limitations that should be placed upon how they are funded. He doesn’t believe, for instance, that a federally funded FBO should mandate acceptance of its religion in order to receive services. This, it would seem, is contrary to what many faith-based programs contain in their curricula, since many include “acceptance of God into the heart” and relinquishment of one’s “self to God” as core methods of overcoming substance abuse or adversities such as homelessness.

Funding
Since Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives, government funding to FBOs has increased by 10%. Interestingly enough, CARE, a secular non-governmental agency (NGO) that has been sending aid to developing nations for decades had its funding from the government cut. Republican Senator Rick Santorum alleged that they were not respecting the core values faith-based groups by allowing their aid to favor secular groups.

Meanwhile, the government is generating newsletters and hiring liaisons to get information into the hands of decision-makers who work in faith-based groups on how to take advantage of grants. The Bush administration also funded additional government offices which work within existing government agencies like the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, and Veteran’s Affairs as well as the Small Business Administration, and the Agency for International Development.

Weren’t the Republicans supposed to be against big government? Perfectly good agencies and departments now have increased funding and probably personnel to promote faith-based initiatives within these agencies.

Do FBOs actually work?
There are many, many different types of faith-based services that target various groups. Among the most notable perhaps is Alcoholics Anonymous which includes a 12-step program that demands the person receiving service to accept a particular notion of god -the Christian god. It doesn’t matter if you’re a drunk Arab or Navajo, or just an atheist, if you want to complete AA, you’ll need to admit your shortcomings to God and beg him to remove these shortcomings.

The efficacy of AA, however, has been shown to be poor. AA brags that anyone that completes their 12-steps is successful, but they fail to count the vast majority who do not.

This seems to be the same fallacious trend in all attempts I made to find outcomes of service delivery for faith-based organizations: they counted only those participants who complete their programs and exclude from their metrics anyone who is kicked out, quits, fails, etc.

I’m still looking for outcomes. I’ve scoured some obvious journals and government websites. Tried Google for search terms like “faith based service delivery outcomes” and the like. All with low results. There is a lot of discourse on how to measure and the importance of measuring, but I’ve found no data as yet. As an interesting aside, the website to the Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives (http://www.fbci.gov/) appears to be down since March 2008.

The funding of FBOs in the manner they are is fundamentally wrong. This practice didn’t begin with George W. Bush, but rather Bill Clinton. Bush did, however, set the Executive Order in motion that would effectively remove any check and balance from funding Christian organizations who are willing to proselytize and witness to those in need of services.  Obama has stated several times that he’ll ensure that FBOs that receive funding won’t be able to do this, but if the playing field is intended to be fair, why bother with “faith-based inititives” to begin with. Why not just be willing to fund charities with sound proposals and continue to fund those with proven outcomes regardless of their “faith?”

Bibliography

Ebaugh, Helen Rose; et al (2008). Where’s the Religion? Distinguishing Faith-Based from Secular Social Service Agencies. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 42 (3), 411-426.

Hula, Richard; Jackson-Elmoore, Cynthia; Reese, Laura (2007). Mixing God’s Work and the Public Business: A Framework for the Analysis of Faith-Based Service Delivery. Review of Policy Research, 24 (1), 67-89.

Wuthnow, Robert; Hackett, Conrad; Hsu, Becky Yang (2004). The Effectiveness and Trustworthiness of Faith-Based and Other Service Organizations: A Study of Recipients’ Perceptions. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 43 (1), 1-17.

Fischer, Robert L. (2004). The Devil is in the Details: Implementing Secular Outcome Measurement Methods in Faith-Based Organizations. Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 15 (1), 25-40.

Gibelman, Margaret; Gelman, Sheldon R. (2002). Should We Have Faith in Faith-Based Social Services? Rhetoric Versus Realistic Expectations. Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 13 (1), 49-65.

Washington Post (2008). Faith-Based Obama. Editorial in the Washington Post, found online at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/20/AR2008072001658.html

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Posted under Uncategorized

Image by Atheist Bus Canada via Flickr

H/T Vjack @ Atheist Revolution

The Ottawa citi council overturned a ruling that previously restricted Atheist bus ads.

As many are already aware, there has been an increase in the proliferation of public service ads that promote atheist, agnostic and freethinker points of view. The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has sponsored many of these from Phoenix to Tennessee and other humanist and freethought groups have as well. In Great Britain, adverts that read, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” ran (and still are, I believe) with much success.

Recently, a similar campaign in Ottawa, Canada met with some resistance but a previous decision to restrict these ads was overturned 13 – 7. The chairman of the Ottawa city council’s transit committee stated, “the right to express opinions is fundamental to a free society and a precious part of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

From the article quoted above [examiner.com -atheist examiner]: It was reported that a crowd of people wearing t-shirts with the atheist message, ”There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life,” on them sat quiet through the deliberations. They were pleased by the outcome, not surprisingly. One of those onlookers, Paul Bendus, said “Do we have the right to be non-religious? Council has voted that yes, we do.”

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Posted under Culture Wars

Source: AFA

The dubiously named “American Family Association” (AFA) has a new campaign they call “Project Push Back” in which AFA Founder and Chairman Donald E. Wildmon is requesting his followers pass out “Push Back” cards to people at church, sunday school, or their friends.

These are cards that can be purchased from the AFA store for a nominal fee (according to Wildmon, “We would give them away for free, but our friends on the other side would simply order the packets and then throw them away. The price covers our cost for printing and shipping”).

It isn’t clear, however, what Wildmon wants “push back” on in their webpage or site store. Nor is there an example of the card itself. It’s only mentioned, “[t]hey contain information with easy instructions on how to participate in our Action Alert activities.”

I would presume that there’s a link to the AFA as well as how to sign up for their email “alerts.” Ironically, the reason I know about it is that some anonymous reader signed me up for these “action alerts” (and, whoever you are, I’m eternally grateful. They’ve been a great read and source of blog material!).

Also on the cards are probably snippets of their bigoted world view, including hate-speak toward homosexuals, atheists, and the “liberals” that permit them to continue. Over the past few months, Wildmon, who appears to be just slightly less nutty and bigoted as Fred Phelps (Westboro Baptist Church) and Bill Donohue (Catholic League), has sent out “action alerts” to subscribers requesting bans on Campbell’s Soup and Pepsi products for their audacity to target advertising to, or offer support for, the “gay agenda” and the “homosexual community.”

But its the strategy of disseminating these little propaganda cards (I’m making a assumption here since I’ve yet to see one) that I find fascinating. The target audience for the cards isn’t that of normal evangelicals. They aren’t seeking to appeal to the unchurched or those of other religions. They’re specifically targeting those who already share certain superstitions (i.e. virgin birth, innerency of biblical mythology, magical messiah, etc.).

This, in itself, seems indicative that, at least from Wildmon’s perspective, not all Christians -ostensibly even those of fundamentalist churches- share his bigotry automatically and he seeks to obtain their participation in his agenda of bigotry.

Should anyone come across one of these cards, please scan it or photograph it and email me a copy:

Posted under Culture Wars

As I listen to the inagural speech of President Barack Obama, he proclaims us a nation of Christians and Muslims and Jews and non-believers. He seemed to put a bit of emphasis on that last bit.

Rick Warren’s superstitious moment was disappointing but I was pleased to see that Aretha Franklin got more R.E.S.P.E.C.T. than Warren -the applause seemed much louder and longer. And the John Williams composition was enjoyable too.

But it was Obama’s speech that was moving. Inspiring. Most Inaugural speeches are dry, boring and unremarkable. I predict Obama’s will long be remembered in the same vein as Roosevelt’s “nothing to fear but fear itself” speech or Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you…” speech.

All in all, Obama seems to care deeply about science and is not prepared to ignore non-believers. I give him two thumbs up.

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There are several who consider themselves (or, in the case of Antony Flew, are considered by others) to be in a category of “former atheists.” This, it would seem, gives a bit of “street cred” to their arguments that atheism is wrong and Christianity is the right path. After all, they were once “misguided” and now shown the light.

But how many of these alleged “former atheists” were truly atheists? In the end, it doesn’t really matter since the argument that christianity is true since one or more atheists have recanted is fallacious to begin with. It assumes true the premise that it is possible for a person to be deluded (from their perspective, aren’t they arguing that the atheist was deluded?) but doesn’t demonstrate which is actually the delusion: the atheist or the theist.

If we were to accept that were something to “wake up from” like a dream, then whichever condition had more adult converts would be the more likely. My money, in that case, would be on atheism. But even this line of argumentation would have flaws.

The “former atheist” argument, however, probably isn’t geared so much an attempt to show why theism is more likely but, rather, an attempt by apologists to capitalize on the enormous credibility former theists who now embrace atheism have had. Books by Dan Barker and John W. Loftus have had a profound impact on believers who then begin questioning their “faith.” Leadership within the various superstitions of Christianity want this for themselves and promote their own “former” and “deconverted” stories.

Antony Flew is a much touted case, but his conversion really isn’t that significant when examined closely. As a philosopher, he still rejects the cosmological and ontological arguments for a god favored by many theists. Indeed his philosophical views are that of a deistic perspective and certainly not a Christian one, so for all the “nah nah nana nur nur” generated by Christian apologists, Flews change in philosophy isn’t all that significant or notable.

Two popular Christian apologists and alleged former atheists are Alister McGrath and Kirk Cameron. Both alleged in their adult writings and talks that they were atheists up to their teen years but converted to Christianity as young adults. The gist of it is: “because I was a teenage atheist like you, and now I’ve seen the “light,” you should consider your own atheism as wrong,” or “you’re just a confused kid, when you’re an adult you’ll naturally see “the truth”" and other fallacious assumptions.

The reality is that apologists want the credential of having “once been” where their critics are.

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Posted under Culture Wars, Myths of Atheism