|
JUNE 2009
STATS SHOW RELIGIOUS BELIEF HARMS
COUNTRIES
APRIL 2009
POLL: RELIGION LOSING INFLUENCE
MANY CANADIAN TEENS DUMPING RELIGION
NOVEMBER 2008
STUDY: STATS SHOW RELIGIOUS BELIEF HARMS COUNTRIES
Ruth Gledhill, Times, UK
- Religious belief can cause damage to a society, contributing
towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide,
according to research. According to the study, belief in and
worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society
but may actually contribute to social problems.
The study counters the
view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral
and ethical foundations of a healthy society. It compares the
social performance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain,
with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather
than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals
in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that
it inspires atheism and amorality. . .
The paper, published in
the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports:
"Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an
exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands
as an impressive example for an increasingly skeptical world.
"In general, higher
rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher
rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection
rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.
"The United States
is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies,
sometimes spectacularly so."
Gregory Paul, the author
of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International
Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to
reach his conclusions.
He compared social indicators
such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.
The study concluded that
the US was the world's only prosperous democracy where murder
rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were
the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhea
in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in
less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from "
uniquely high" adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates,
and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.
Mr Paul said: "The
study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is
actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators,
even though it is now a much less religious nation than America."
He said that the disparity
was even greater when the US was compared with other countries,
including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These
nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates,
early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion,
he added.
He said that the evidence
accumulated by a number of different studies suggested that religion
might actually contribute to social ills. "I suspect that
Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance
of the Christian states," he added.
OCTOBER
2008
SECULARISTS
SUE OVER NATIONAL PRAYER DAY
The
Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national state - church watchdog,
filed a federal lawsuit broadly challenging the federal law designating
a National Day of Prayer and requiring a National Day of Prayer
Proclamation by the President.
Public
Law 100-307 sets the first Thursday in May as "National
Day of Prayer." The Foundation is seeking a declaration
that the law violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution.
"Mandated
Prayer Proclamations by the President exhorting each citizen
to pray constitutes an unabashed endorsement of religion,"
contends the Foundation complaint, filed on behalf of the Foundation
by attorney Richard L. Bolton of Boardman Law Firm, Madison,
Wis.
The suit
alleges that a task force associated with Focus on the Family
is "working hand-in-glove" with the government in organizing
the National Day of Prayer.
The Foundation
charges that the government "aligns and partners" with
the NDP Task Force as the official organizer of the National
Day of Prayer. The NDP Task Force identifies itself online as
"The National Day of Prayer 'Official Website.' " The
task force has close ties to Focus on the Family. Its chair person,
Shirley Dobson, is married to Focus on the Family founder James
Dobson, and the task force is located in the Focus on the Family
headquarters.
The task
force proposes the wording of proclamations and chooses a yearly
theme and a bible quote. In 2008, Psalm 28:7, "The Lord
is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him and I am
helped" was selected by the NDP as its official biblical
reference, and was recited in Bush's proclamation and in at least
15 gubernatorial NDP proclamations. Other governors picked up
variations of the task force resolution template and the annual
theme.
The Foundation
complaint contends that the establishment clause "prohibits
government officials and persons acting in joint and concerted
action with government officials from taking actions that endorse
religion, including specific religions in preference to others,
as well as preferring religion over non-religion."
"Exhortations
to pray in official presidential proclamations do not constitute
ceremonial deism solemnizing some other occasion," the Foundation
asserts, but "constitute an end in itself intended to promote
and endorse religion."
The suit
alleges that the NDP Task Force pressures governors from all
50 states to issue official proclamations, acting "in concert"
in a way that aligns them with "the Judeo-Christian principles
on which the Task Force is based."
SEPTEMBER
2008
ATHEISTS IN THE FOXHOLE SUE OVER
ABUSE
BY MILITARY RELIGIONISTS
JULY
2008
WHAT AMERICAN JEWS REALLY THINK
Richard
Silverstein, Tikun Olam J Street has commissioned its first opinion
survey seeking to determine the level of support among American
Jews for territorial compromise and a negotiated solution to
the Israeli-Arab conflict . . . One of the more interesting survey
results was a mixed finding: when asked whether Israel played
a "big role" in their election vote, 58% answered "yes."
But when listed among a group of other issues, Israel came out
in the bottom tier of issues and only 8% noted Israel was one
of their two top issues in determining their vote for president
or Congress. This interesting outcome indicates that theoretically
Jews believe Israel is an important political issue. But when
push comes to shove there are other bread and butter issues like
the economy and Iraq war which are far more important. To me,
this indicates that support for the Israel lobby is quite shallow
among the Jewish community outside that 8% who are driven by
the issue.
Obama
beats McCain in the poll by 62% to 32%. This is a respectable
showing by McCain compared to past Republican presidential races,
but still quite low. Respondents disapproved of Bush's Middle
East policy and believe he should be much more engaged in lobbying
for peace. 61% believe Israel is "less secure" than
it was before his presidency. Only 26% believe it is more secure.
When asked
whether the solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict involved negotiating
peace agreements or relying on military force alone to achieve
security, the survey endorsed the former over the latter by 50%
to 34%.
Fully
75% of those polled believe that the U.S. should play an aggressive
role in promoting a negotiated peace even if it meant disagreeing
publicly with the positions of the parties to the conflict. 70%
were even willing for the U.S. to exert "pressure"
on those parties it saw as impeding progress toward a settlement.
. .
Joe Lieberman isn't going to like the following results. Only
7% of poll respondents view evangelical Zionist leader John Hagee
favorably. Only 19% have a favorable impression of Christians
United for Israel. Only 1 in 4 said Jewish groups should form
alliances with CUFI. Finally, Holy Joe himself only earns a 37%
favorable rating (48% unfavorable).
Regarding
Iran: 69% said they were more likely to support a candidate who
called for negotiations with Iran and resorting to sanctions
if they failed.
Several
results I found alarming: 48% were more likely to vote for a
candidate who called for supporting Israel if it launched a pre-emptive
attack on Iran. That indicates not enough American Jews understand
that our national interests may diverge from Israel's.
65% were
more likely to support a candidate who said (falsely by the way)
that Arabs have repeatedly rejected Israeli peace offers. Only
44% support the idea of declaring East Jerusalem the capital
of a Palestinian state.
58% support
Israeli withdrawal from the Golan in return for peace with Syria.
59% support withdrawal from "most" of the West Bank.
52% believe the U.S. should tell Israel to "end settlement
expansion." 76% believe Israel should negotiate with Hamas
on behalf of peace. 54% believe that IDF killings of Palestinian
civilians lead to more terror. 61% are opposed to collective
punishment (Israel's current policy toward Gaza). 81% will support
"any peace deal" agreed to by Israel with its Arab
neighbors. One should keep this fact in mind when listening to
the geshrei from the Orthodox community, which calls any territorial
compromise on Jerusalem a betrayal of the Jewish people. Only
a very small minority of American Jews agree.
Quite
frankly, I was shocked that AIPAC itself earned only a 38% favorable
rating (21% unfavorable). 60% say it does not bother them when
American Jews disagree with Israeli government policy. When asked
whether traditional Jewish groups in general do a good job of
representing the community's views on Israel 49% agreed. When
asked specifically whether AIPAC did a good job that number fell
to 34%. All this again showing the weakness of the AIPAC when
it is viewed in the context of the overall Jewish community.
LET'S SAY YOU'VE GONE TO HEAVEN WITH THE
RAPTURE; HOW DO YOU EMAIL YOUR FRIENDS YOU LEFT BEHIND?
JUNE 2008
WHY AMERICANS HAVE A HARD TIME
FACING FACTS
WASHINGTON POST
A poll, by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, has found
that nearly three-fourths of Americans believe in heaven as a
place where people who have led good lives will be eternally
rewarded. And almost 60 percent believe in hell, where people
who have led bad lives and die without repenting are eternally
punished, the poll found. Majorities also believe that angels
and demons are at work in the world and that miracles occur today
as they did in ancient times.
LET'S SAY YOU'VE GONE TO HEAVEN
WITH THE RAPTURE; HOW DO YOU EMAIL YOUR FRIENDS YOU LEFT BEHIND?
YOU'VE BEEN LEFT BEHIND
Store up to 250mb of documents . . . Send to up to 62 individual
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We have set up a system
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6 days after the "Rapture" of the Church. This occurs
when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to
log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail
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We give you 150mb of encrypted
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We give you another 100mb.
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Box #2 is for more generic documents to lost family & friends.
The cost is $40 for the
first year. Re-subscription will be reduced as the number of
subscribers increases. Tell your friends about You've Been left
behind.
MAY 2008
SPIRITUALITY AND THE LAW DON'T
GO WELL TOGETHER
The shelf of a large Toronto bookstore after
students "quietly
moved the contents to other places in the bookstore, like Fiction,
Humor, Sexuality, Erotica, Cuisine, Parenting, Mental Disorder,
Parapsychology and the Occult."
WILL REAR ENDING SOMEONE IN FLORIDA
OR NORTH CAROLINA BECOME BLASPHEMY?
EINSTEIN THOUGHT GOD WAS A CHILDISH
SUPERSTITION
BRITISH TEEN FACES PROSECUTION
FOR SIGN CALLING SCIENTOLGY A CULT
A QUARTER OF SCHOOL SCIENCE TEACHERS
PUSH CREATIONISM ON STUDENTS
EINSTEIN THOUGHT GOD WAS A CHILDISH
SUPERSTITION
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE -
Albert Einstein described belief in God as "childish superstition"
and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter, an auctioneer
said. The father of relativity, whose previously known views
on religion have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion,
made the comments in response to a philosopher in 1954.
As a Jew himself, Einstein
said he had a great affinity with Jewish people but said they
"have no different quality for me than all other people".
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression
and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable,
but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.
"No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change
this," he wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954
to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper.
. .
In it, the renowned scientist,
who declined an invitation to become Israel's second president,
rejected the idea that the Jews are God's chosen people. "For
me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the
most childish superstitions," he said. "And the Jewish
people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have
a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other
people." And he added: "As far as my experience goes,
they are no better than other human groups, although they are
protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise
I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."
WHY IS THE MEDIA CONCEALING
HILLARY CLINTON'S RIGHT WING RELIGIOUS TIES?
Thanks to alternative media coverage
- including that of the Progressive Review - there has been a
slight increase in corporate press coverage of John McCain's
ties to extremist Christian evangelist John Hagee. But even conventional
liberals like Bill Moyers and EJ Dionne, while finally citing
the McCain-Hagee connection, still refuse to delve into Hillary
Clinton's ties to The Fellowship, a secret rightwing religious
group involving a number of Washington big names like herself.
The story has been well documented
by such publications as Harper's, the Los Angeles Times and Mother
Jones. And it's not a new tale, but it's one the Washington media
runs away from, in part because it might wreck the journalists'
comfortably servile relationship with some of their sources -
with the Clintons near the top of the list.
It's Washington journalism at its
worst, the sort of politician-pet relationship that led the media
to so badly mislead the public about the Iraq war and, for that
matter, many other crucial facts about the Clintons. To this
day, for example, the media is tough on Barack Obama's Tony Resko
relationship but doesn't mention Hillary Clinton's much deeper
relationship with Webster Hubbell.
As we noted about a week ago, the
two big exceptions to the media cover up of The Fellowship are
Andrea Mitchell and Jim Popkin of NBC, who reported:
"In his preaching, [Fellowship leader Douglas] Coe repeatedly
urges a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. It's a commitment
Coe compares to the blind devotion that Adolph Hitler demanded
from his followers -- a rhetorical technique that now is drawing
sharp criticism.
"'Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler were three men. Think of
the immense power these three men had, these nobodies from nowhere,"
Coe said.
"Later in the sermon, Coe said: "Jesus said, You have
to put me before other people. And you have to put me before
yourself.' Hitler, that was the demand to be in the Nazi party.
You have to put the Nazi party and its objectives ahead of your
own life and ahead of other people."
Coe also quoted Jesus and said: "One of the things [Jesus]
said is 'If any man comes to me and does not hate his father,
mother, brother, sister, his own life, he can't be a disciple.'
So I don't care what other qualifications you have, if you don't
do that you can't be a disciple of Christ."
The sermons are little surprise to writer Jeff Sharlet. He lived
among Coe's followers six years ago, and came out troubled by
their secrecy and rhetoric.
"'We were being taught the leadership lessons of Hitler,
Lenin and Mao. And I would say, 'Isn't there a problem with that?'
And they seemed perplexed by the question. Hitler's genocide
wasn't really an issue for them. It was the strength that he
emulated," said Sharlet. . . 'They're notoriously secretive,'
Sharlet said. 'In fact, they jokingly call themselves the Christian
Mafia. Which becomes less of a joke when you realize that they
really are dedicated to being what they call an invisible organization.'"
SOURCE WATCH The Fellowship, headquartered in Washington D.C.,
is a humanitarian religious-right Christian organization about
which very little is known. Their signature event is the annual
National Prayer Breakfast but that is only a small part of their
activities. They are heavily involved in the political culture
of Washington, counting at least a dozen Senators and Congressman
as known members. The group has also gone by the names Family,
Foundation, C Street Center, and International Christian Leadership.
An article published in the March 2003 issue of Harper's entitled
"Jesus Plus Nothing" by Jeffrey Sharlet provides an
excellent exposition; however, Sharlet infiltrated only at the
lowest level and so his article is woefully short of details
concerning the organization, its mission, or who runs it.
In a June 12, 2003, followup interview
by Anthony Lappé for Guerrilla News Network, Jeffrey Sharlet
declares that the group's goal and aspiration are "an 'invisible'
world organization led by Christ"; and that in his view,
their "core issue is capitalism and power."
In 1972, The Fellowship was reorganized
to be even more clandestine, shedding the overhead of a typical
high-profile nonprofit so that it was essentially little more
than a holding company disbursing cash to dozens of ministries
beneath it. By 1985, The Fellowship had 150 individual ministries
beneath it. This model continues to this day with countless ministries
coming into and going out of existence depending upon the current
needs of the organization and the initiatives it wishes to fund.
As Sharlet writes in his Harper's piece, The Foundation believes
that its mobile "cell" structure, which it likens to
those organized by Lenin, Bin Laden, and Hitler, makes it far
more efficient than a hierarchical organization. And just like
Enron's many shell corporations, their cell structure has the
additional advantage of being able to move money around very
quickly and in a way that makes it difficult to track or audit.
. .
Those in the Fellowship who are
asked about their role either deny its existence or politely
refuse to answer questions about it. All have taken a vow of
silence not to speak about The Fellowship.
http://www.toobeautiful.org/lat_020927.html
tp://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer.html
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/03/0079525
APRIL 2008
JESUS MADE ME PUKE & OTHER
TALES FROM THE EVANGELICAL FRONT LINES
MORE ON THE POPE AND CHILD ABUSE
DAILY MAIL, UK 2006 The Pope played a leading role
in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic
priests, according to a shocking documentary to be screened by
the BBC tonight.
In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican
edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them
to put the Church's interests ahead of child safety.
The document recommended
that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal
authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and
perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet,
it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would
be excommunicated.
The Panorama special, Sex
Crimes And The Vatican, investigates the details of this little-known
document for the first time. The program also accuses the Catholic
Church of knowingly harboring pedophile clergymen. It reveals
that priests accused of child abuse are generally not struck
off or arrested but simply moved to another parish, often to
reoffend. It gives examples of hush funds being used to silence
the victims.
Before being elected as
Pope Benedict XVI in April last year, the pontiff was Cardinal
Thomas Ratzinger who had, for 24 years, been the head of the
powerful Congregation of the Doctrine of The Faith, the department
of the Roman Catholic Church charged with promoting Catholic
teachings on morals and matters of faith. An arch-Conservative,
he was regarded as the 'enforcer' of Pope John Paul II in cracking
down on liberal challenges to traditional Catholic teachings.
Five years ago he sent
out an updated version of the notorious 1962 Vatican document
Crimen Sollicitationis - Latin for The Crime of Solicitation
- which laid down the Vatican's strict instructions on covering
up sexual scandal. It was regarded as so secret that it came
with instructions that bishops had to keep it locked in a safe
at all times.
Cardinal Ratzinger reinforced
the strict cover-up policy by introducing a new principle: that
the Vatican must have what it calls Exclusive Competence. In
other words, he commanded that all child abuse allegations should
be dealt with direct by Rome.
Patrick Wall, a former
Vatican-approved enforcer of the Crimen Sollicitationis in America,
tells the programme: "I found out I wasn't working for a
holy institution, but an institution that was wholly concentrated
on protecting itself."
And Father Tom Doyle, a
Vatican lawyer until he was sacked for criticizing the church's
handling of child abuse claims, says: "What you have here
is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual
abuse by the clergy and to punish those who would call attention
to these crimes by the churchmen.
"When abusive priests
are discovered, the response has been not to investigate and
prosecute but to move them from one place to another. So there's
total disregard for the victims and for the fact that you are
going to have a whole new crop of victims in the next place.
This is happening all over the world."
WHAT'S AN EXISTENTIALIST?
PHILOS0PHER,
UK - [Jean Paul] Sartre
was an atheist. As God does not exist, there are no 'essences.'
By essence, Sartre is talking about a pre-defined human nature.
What Sartre meant by the phrase 'existence precedes essence'
is this: If there is no cosmic designer, then there is no design
or essence of human nature. Human existence or being differs
from the being of objects in that human being is self-conscious.
This self-consciousness also gives the human subject the opportunity
to define itself. The individual creates his/her self by making
self-directed choices.
As human existence is self-conscious
without being pre-defined, we, as autonomous beings are "condemned
to be free": compelled to make future directed choices.
These choices induce anxiety and uncertainty in to our psyches.
If we, as individuals, simply follow custom or social expectations
in order to escape this angst, we have escaped the responsibility
of making our own choices, of creating our own essence. We have
acted in bad faith.
To act authentically we must take
responsibility for our future. We cannot choose what gender,
class, or country we were born into, but we can choose what we
make of them. We are free to create our own interpretation of
ourselves in relation to the world, to create a project of possibilities,
of authentic actions as the expression of freedom.
COUNTER-INTUITIVE NEWS:
IT'S NOT THE POOR WHO VOTE THEIR FAITH
VOXEU
Barack Obama recently postulated that frustrated poor people
vote based on cultural and religious values. But the data say
exactly the opposite - value voting is a high-income activity.
. .
Regular churchgoers are
about 15% more likely than non-attendees to vote Republican.
Perhaps surprisingly, this big religion gap did not show up until
1992, when Bill Clinton ran against George H. W. Bush. Back in
1980, Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and other Religious Right
organizations played a prominent role in rallying support for
Ronald Reagan and other Republican candidates. But the gap between
religious and non-religious in voting was actually less for Ronald
Reagan-in both 1980 and 1984-than for Gerald Ford in 1976. .
.
Nothing much was happening
until 1992, when all of a sudden George H. W. Bush received 20%
more of the vote among religious than among the nonreligious.
. .
The difference in Republican
support, comparing regular religious attendees to non-attendees,
is huge for rich voters but low among the poor; This result-that
church attendance predicts voting more for the rich than the
poor-is consistent with the finding of Ansolabehere, Rodden,
and Snyder that "low-income Americans are significantly
less inclined to vote based on moral values than are high-income
groups." They find the impact of economic issues on voting
is larger for regular churchgoers, residents of Republican-leaning
states, and rural voters than for non-churchgoers, residents
of Democratic states, and urban or suburban voters.
MEDIUMS THREATENED BY NEW EUROPEAN LAW
Your editor ran into
this problem while putting out a community paper in the 1960s.
On reflection he could discover no difference between a medium
telling someone what was going to happen next week and an established
minister telling someone what was going to happen to them when
they died. So we accepted advertising from both.
INDEPENDENT, UK For centuries,
spiritualists have faced down the challenges of science and established
religion. Now they fear changes to the law could leave them open
to civil action from skeptics. Representatives of British mediums
will march up Downing Street to deliver a petition containing
some 10,000 signatories demanding that the Government change
its decision to repeal the 1951 Fraudulent Mediums Act in favor
of a new EU directive.
While the move has prompted
a flurry of "they should have seen it coming" gags
from detractors, spiritualists are anything but amused about
the new laws.
"What we have here
is a fundamental attack on our right to practice our religion.
We want to stop the charlatans but the existing Act gives us
reassurances which the Government seems unable to do under this
new legislation. They tell us we will probably be all right but
we fear this will end up with one of us in court in front of
a judge," said David McEntee-Taylor, head of the Spiritual
Workers Association (SWA), that organised the protest.
The SWA complains that
the 1951 law, which replaced the 1735 Witchcraft Act, guarantees
"genuine" mediums legal protection, penalizing only
those who seek to hoodwink the public.
However, by treating spiritualism
as merely a consumer service, mediums believe they risk being
sued if customers are dissatisfied with advice brought from the
other side - advice they say they always point out should always
be treated with care. The solution to the present impasse, according
to lawyers advising the crystal-ball fraternity, is via the prosaic
expedient of a pre-consultation disclaimer, describing any dialogue
with the deceased in terms of either entertainment or scientific
experiment. It does not sit comfortably with purist believers.
Psychic mailings netted
L40m from the British public last year and the number of telephone
and internet services are soaring - an unsurprising fact considering
some 50 per cent of the public claims to believe in the phenomenon,
according to Professor Richard Wiseman, a stalwart critic of
the religion. A further third claim to have had a psychic experience.
"The problem is that there is no repeatable scientific evidence
to back this up," he said.
MARCH 2008
TAKING DRUGS, NOT PICKING UP DOG
POOP ADDED TO DEADLY SINS
SOLDIER CLAIMS PROMOTION DENIED
BECAUSE OF HIS ATHEISM
FEBRUARY 2008
3O YEARS AGO: WHEN FAITH BECAME
FATAL
THE LAST MINUTES OF JONESTOWN ON TAPE
JANUARY 2008
THE HIDDEN POWER OF
THE MORMONS
SUZAN MAZUR, SCOOP, NEW
ZEALAND - Mormons are clearly not evangelical Christians. And
there are 11 million of them. They run the "biggest and
best" gun shows nationwide. They tend to vote Republican.
And their church is rich, because it asks its members to tithe
10% of their annual income. . .
Mormons have historically
played a significant behind-the-scenes money and power role in
America. Sally Denton and Roger Morris have written about Mormon
banker Parry Thomas's financing of Las Vegas, for example, in
their book, The Money and the Power: The Making of Las Vegas
and Its Hold on America. . .
Carlyle "founding
fathers" Dan Altobello, Steve Norris, Fred Malek and Dan
D'Aniello, who participated in the catering service buyout by
Carlyle, all came from the Marriott Mormon culture before joining
Carlyle. Malek was number two man at Marriott and a former Director
of the Republican Party; it was Malek who brought George W. Bush
into the Carlyle fold.
Looking closer at the workings
of the Mormon Church and its wealth - it is not particularly
choosy about the source of its tithes. It accepts money, for
example, from a circle of LDS lawyers, bankers and businessmen
who represent the polygamist Mormons living out West. . .
The Mormons have been crucial
to George W. Bush's political campaigns. A major supporter has
been former Utah governor Mike Leavitt, now Bush II's EPA director.
Leavitt is part of a 2,000 member clan. . .
Another LDS star who's
been cheerleading for Bush is Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
. .
Then there's Karl Rove
-- "Bush's Brain". Although Rove is not Mormon, he
was nurtured in the Salt Lake City Mormon culture and educated
at the University of Utah. . .
Harvard Business publications
is Mormon-run. And the editor of Harvard Business Review as well
as the Dean of Harvard Business School are Mormon.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0410/S00296.htm
MORE
TOM CRUISE'S DISCOURSE ON SCIENTOLOGY
IAN McEWAN ON ATHEISM
ISAAC CHOTINER, NEW REPUBLIC
- Do you see religion as ineradicable, or do you think there
is a chance to change people's minds on religion?
IAN McEWAN - I think it
is ineradicable, and I think it is a terrible idea to suppress
it, too. We have tried that and it joins the list of political
oppression. It seems to be fairly deeply stitched into human
nature. It seems to be part of all cultures, so I don't expect
it to vanish. And yet at the same time, if it is built into human
nature, why are there so many people who don't believe in it?
I think it is important that people with no religious beliefs
speak up and speak for what they value. It is a bit of a problem,
the title "Atheist"--no one really wants to be defined
by what they do not believe in. We haven't yet settled on a name,
but you wouldn't expect a Baptist minister to go around calling
himself a Darwinist. But it is crucial that people who do not
have a sky god and don't have a set of supernatural beliefs assert
their belief in moral values and in love and in the transcendence
that they might experience in landscape or art or music or sculpture
or whatever. Since they do not believe in an afterlife, it makes
them give more valence to life itself. The little spark that
we do have becomes all the more valuable when you can't be trading
off any moments for eternity.
NEW YORKER LOOKS INSIDE
SCIENTOLOGY
NEW YORKER - From the outset,
the conversion of celebrities was important to Scientology. An
internal newsletter produced by the Hubbard Communications Office,
probably in the mid-fifties, asserts, "There are many to
whom America and the world listens. On the backs of these are
carried most of the enthusiasms on which the society runs."
. . . The piece concludes with a list of the day's stars - Orson
Welles, Howard Hughes, Walt Disney, and Greta Garbo among them
-referring to them as "game" and "quarry"
for Scientologists to "hunt." Though Scientology is
not known to have had success with this early group, the movement
now counts Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, and many
other celebrities as members.
Celebrity Centre is used
for Scientology courses and for "auditing," a mainstay
of the religion, in which a person undergoes a guided talk-therapy
session, usually while holding a device known as an E-Meter,
which is supposed to measure one's spiritual state. The goal
is to eliminate "mental image pictures" associated
with traumatic events; when a person is "Clear" - freed
of all such associations - he can advance to the mystical and
esoteric levels of Scientology. The path to becoming an "Operating
Thetan," or pure spiritual being ("thetan" being
Hubbard's word for the soul), is laid out in a table called "The
Bridge to Total Freedom: Scientology Classification Gradation
and Awareness Chart of Levels and Certificates." Scientology
is a technological religion and claims to have developed "exact,
precise methods to increase man's spiritual awareness and capability."
Completion of the Bridge takes years, and each stage requires
a cash investment. An initial twelve-and-a-half-hour auditing
session costs between six and seven hundred dollars, Greg LaClaire,
a vice-president of Celebrity Centre, says. (Aspiring Scientologists
can mitigate the expense by choosing to be audited by a fellow
initiate rather than by a staff member.) In the Holiday 2007
Dianetics and Scientology catalogue, a deluxe Planetary Dissemination
Edition E-Meter - billed as a "tool for Golden Age of Tech
certainty," to assist in "faster progress up The Bridge"
- was offered, in "Diamond Blue," for five thousand
five hundred dollars.
On Celebrity Centre's upper
floors, there are thirty-nine hotel rooms to accommodate visiting
Scientologists. An undated leaflet advertising "a safe environment
for Celebrities and Scientologists" contains a plug from
Travolta: "Good rest, good food, good service but most of
all I felt very safe in this space"; Celebrity, a magazine
produced by Celebrity Centre, which features a Scientology celebrity
on the cover of every issue, urges readers to stay at the hotel
for five to six weeks "to complete your Basics books &
lectures courses faster!"
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/01/14/080114fa_fact_goodyear
A FREETHINKERS' BILL
OF RIGHTS
[From Sacramento Free Thought]
The freedoms of thought and expression
count among our most fundamental and cherished rights, and promote
both individual welfare and the common good in a democratic state.
Historically, however, unbelievers such as secular humanists,
atheists, agnostics, rationalists, and freethinkers have faced
prejudice, intolerance, and discrimination for their opinions
and discoveries.
In the firm conviction that the
principle of church-state separation guarantees the equal rights
of the religious and non-religious, we the Campus Freethought
Alliance, on this 12th Day of July, 1998, hereby present the
following Bill of Rights for Unbelievers.
Unbelievers shall have the right
to:
Think freely and autonomously, express
their views forthrightly, and debate or criticize any and all
ideas without fear of censure, recrimination, or public ostracism.
Be free from discrimination and
persecution in the workplace, business transactions, and public
accommodations.
Exercise freedom of conscience in
any situation where the same right would be extended to believers
on religious grounds alone.
Hold any public office, in accordance
with the constitutional principle that there shall be no religious
test for such office.
Abstain from religious oaths and
pledges, including pledges of allegiance, oaths of office, and
oaths administered in a court of law, until such time as these
are secularized or replaced by non-discriminatory affirmations.
Empower members of their community
to perform legally-binding ceremonies, such as marriage.
Raise and nurture their children
in a secular environment, and not be disadvantaged in adoption
or custody proceedings because of their unbelief.
Conduct business and commerce on
any day of their choosing, without interference from laws or
regulations recognizing religious days of prayer, rest, or celebration.
Enjoy freedom from taxation supporting
the government employment of clergy, and access to secular counseling
equivalent to that provided by chaplains.
Declare conscientious objection
to serving in the armed forces under any circumstance in which
the religious may do so.
Live as citizens of a democracy
free from religious language and imagery in currency, public
schools and buildings, and government documents and business.
DECEMBER 2007
SPAGHETTI MONSTER SCARES OFF CREATIONIST POLS
TAMPA TRIBUNE - [At the
Polk County School Board] five of its seven members declared
a personal belief in the concept of intelligent design, the religiously
based explanation of the development of life believed in by many
Christians.
Four of those five sympathetic
board members said they would like to see intelligent design
taught in Polk schools as an alternative to Darwinian evolution,
at a time when new state standards mentioning evolution by name
for the first time are under consideration. . .
Yet a few weeks later,
the controversy is dying with a whimper. There's no board support
for a challenge to the proposed standards. Some of the five school
board members blame the local newspaper for trying to start a
fight. . .
What happened? You can
start with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The satirical
religious Web site asserts that an omnipotent, airborne clump
of spaghetti intelligently designed all life with the deft touch
of its "noodly appendage." Adherents call themselves
Pastafarians. They deluged Polk school board members with e-mail
demanding equal time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism's version
of intelligent design.
"They've made us the
laughingstock of the world," said Margaret Lofton, a school
board member who supports intelligent design. She dismissed the
e-mail as ridiculous and insulting.
THE ECONOMIST ON THE
ATHEIST POLITICAL PROBLEM
ECONOMIST - According to
figures compiled by the American Religious Identification Survey,
almost 30m people claimed "no religion" in 2001, a
doubling from 1991. This dwarfs America's 2.8m who describe themselves
as Jews according to the same survey (although other estimates
suggest that the Jewish population is much larger, at about 6m.
. .
And yet those with no religious
beliefs are shut out from political power. Earlier this year,
a secularist group offered $1,000 to the highest-ranking politician
in the land who would publicly proclaim no belief in God. This
turned out to be Peter Stark, a Democratic congressman from the
San Francisco area. He is the only congressman, of 535, who professes
no belief in the Almighty.
Mr Stark suspects that
many of his colleagues secretly agree with him. But they dare
not do so publicly, even Democrats. And every one of the Democratic
presidential contenders has talked about God; they even submitted
to an awkward debate on religion, in which they were asked about
their biggest sin and their favorite Bible verses. The Republicans
were not put through a similar inquisition; their religious bona
fides are apparently not in any doubt.
What accounts for the failure
of atheists to organize and wield influence? One problem is that
they are hardly a cohesive group. Another issue is simply branding.
"Atheist" has an ugly ring in American ears and it
merely defines what people are not. "Godless" is worse,
its derogatory attachment to "communist" may never
be broken. "Humanist" sounds too hippyish. A few have
taken to calling themselves "Brights" for no good reason
and to widespread mirth. And "secular" isn't quite
the word either; one can be a Christian secularist.
But another failing of
the irreligious movement has been its tendency, frequently, to
pick the wrong fights. Keeping the Ten Commandments out of an
Alabama courthouse is one thing. But attacking a Christmas nativity
scene on public property does more harm than good. Such secular
crusades allow Christians - after all, the overwhelming majority
of the country - to feel under attack, and even to declare that
they are on the defensive in a "War on Christmas".
When a liberal federal court in California struck the words "under
God" from the pledge of allegiance, religious conservatives
rallied. Atheists might be tactically wise to accept the overwhelming
majority's comfort with such ceremonial deism.
If atheists, agnostics
and secularists could polish their image they might prove powerful
and increasingly so. If the number of people declaring no religion
can double over the ten years to 2001 who know how many more
there are now or might be in years to come. Polls have shown
that eight years of Mr Bush's mix of piety, divisiveness and
incompetence have pushed young people towards the secular in
higher numbers than before.
If these growing ranks
concentrate on areas where American religiosity can do harm -
over-aggressive proselytizing in the armed forces, undermining
science or AIDS programs, alienating minorities at home and Muslims
abroad - they could wield the sort of influence that any other
minority representing 10% of the country might do. An unbelieving
president still seems an unlikely prospect. On the other hand,
only 53% of Americans still say they would not vote for an otherwise
well-qualified atheist.
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=10277230&fsrc=RSS
[BTW, our name for these
folk is SHAFAR for secularists, humanists, agnostics, free thinkers,
atheists and rationalists]
EXCLUSIVE: THERE IS
A RELIGIOUS TEST FOR HIGH OFFICE AND HERE IT IS
Sam Smith
We are once again being
treated to that remarkably self-serving and hypocritical myth
that there should be no religious test for high office. For one
thing, it's a lie: if you aren't religious, you don't get high
office. For another thing, if you are religious, you spend a
good deal of your campaign convincing some voters just how faithful
you are while trying to fool the rest into thinking that it doesn't
make any difference. In both cases, the unusual aspect of the
test is that no one is meant to think it exists.
As yet another public service,
the Review proposes to bring the religious test out of the closet
and into the debate in a reasonable fashion, helping the voter
judge the relative worth of various candidates' Leave No Apostle
Behind programs. We shall revise the exam from time to time and
welcome any suggestions
RELIGIOUS TEST FOR HIGH
OFFICE
1. Does the candidate belong
to one of the kookier sects such as Scientology or Mormonism?
What does this suggest about the candidate's ability to deal
rationally with real situations and the quality of that candidate's
judgment?
2. Is the candidate a saint
in the church but a devil under cover? As Mahalia Jackson put
it, "I can't go to church and shout all day Sunday, come
home and get drunk and raise hell on a Monday."
3. Does the candidate try
to appear highly religious to one set of voters and highly broad
minded to another?
4. If the candidate is
a Catholic, whoms does he or she most admire: the current Pope,
the Berrigan Brothers or various liberation theologians?
5. If the candidate is
Episcopalian, to which branch does he or she belong: the high
and crazy, broad and hazy or low and lazy?
6. Which aspects of the
candidate's religion or its history will that candidate openly
condemn?
7. Is faith used by the
candidate as a space filler for the absence of facts or is it
used as a false replacement for facts?
8. Does faith primarily
influence the candidate by providing positive values or by supplying
wildly unsupportable information posing as truth?
9. Would the candidate
support the end of discrimination against secularists? For example,
would the candidate support an atheist opening sessions of the
Senate and would the candidate host idea breakfasts as well as
prayer breakfasts at the White House?
10. Does the candidate
think God talks to him? How does one distinguish this from the
heard voices that lead others to be committed to mental institutions?
11. Does the candidate
believe God is responsible for improvements in poll numbers?
Does the candidate agree with Mike Huckabee's assessment: "There's
only one explanation for it, and it's not a human one. It's the
same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves
feed a crowd of 5,000 people?"
12. If, as Mitt Romney
claims, "We are a nation under God, and we do place our
trust in him," and if as Barack Obama says, "What role
does [religion] play? I say it plays every role." then shouldn't
there be a religious test of candidates so we can tell who God
trusts the most?
13. But since there supposedly
isn't a religious test for high office, why does Mike Huckabee
run TV ads proclaiming himself a "Christian leader?"
Or tell a group of evangelicals, "God is not spelled G-O-P,
and if the G-O-P ever leaves G-O-D then the G-O-P will lose m-e?"
14. Why does the media
use the term "pro-family" to describe Republican policies
when the divorce rate in heavily GOP states in the Mid West is
higher than in God-forsaken Massachusetts?
15. If there is no religious
test than why are issues like abortion and gay marriage so important,
since the about the only people worried about them are religious
fundamentalists?
16. Mitt Romney says, "Freedom
requires religion just as religion requires freedom." What
section of the Constitution is that in? What if one seeks freedom
from religion?
17. If there is no religious
test for high office, why does a new president have to take an
oath using a Bible?
OCTOBER 2007
YOUNG FAR MORE HOSTILE TO CHRISTIANITY
BARNA GROUP - A new study by the Barna Group conducted among
16 to 29-year-olds shows that a new generation is more skeptical
of and resistant to Christianity than were people of the same
age just a decade ago. . . For instance, a decade ago the vast
majority of Americans outside the Christian faith, including
young people, felt favorably toward Christianity's role in society.
Currently, however, just 16% of non-Christians in their late
teens and twenties said they have a "good impression"
of Christianity.
One of the groups hit hardest by the criticism is evangelicals.
Such believers have always been viewed with skepticism in the
broader culture. However, those negative views are crystallizing
and intensifying among young non-Christians. The new study shows
that only 3% of 16 - to 29-year-old non-Christians express favorable
views of evangelicals.
The research shows that many Christians are innately aware of
this shift in people's perceptions of Christianity: 91% of the
nation's evangelicals believe that "Americans are becoming
more hostile and negative toward Christianity." Among senior
pastors, half contend that "ministry is more difficult than
ever before because people are increasingly hostile and negative
toward Christianity."
Among young non-Christians, nine out of the top 12 perceptions
were negative. Common negative perceptions include that present-day
Christianity is judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned
(78%), and too involved in politics (75%) - representing large
proportions of young outsiders who attach these negative labels
to Christians. The most common favorable perceptions were that
Christianity teaches the same basic ideas as other religions
(82%), has good values and principles (76%), is friendly (71%),
and is a faith they respect (55%).
Even among young Christians, many of the negative images generated
significant traction. Half of young churchgoers said they perceive
Christianity to be judgmental, hypocritical, and too political.
One-third said it was old-fashioned and out of touch with reality.
Interestingly, the study discovered a new image that has steadily
grown in prominence over the last decade. Today, the most common
perception is that present-day Christianity is "anti-homosexual."
Overall, 91% of young non-Christians and 80% of young churchgoers
say this phrase describes Christianity. As the research probed
this perception, non-Christians and Christians explained that
beyond their recognition that Christians oppose homosexuality,
they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving
attitudes towards gays and lesbians. One of the most frequent
criticisms of young Christians was that they believe the church
has made homosexuality a "bigger sin" than anything
else.
When young people were asked to identify their impressions of
Christianity, one of the common themes was "Christianity
is changed from what it used to be" and "Christianity
in today's society no longer looks like Jesus." These comments
were the most frequent unprompted images that young people called
to mind, mentioned by one-quarter of both young non-Christians
(23%) and born again Christians (22%).
MORE NON-THEISTS
THAN LUTHERANS, PRESBYTERIANS, EPISCOPALIANS, JEWS AND MORMONS
PUT TOGETHER
NON-THEISTS -
or Shafars as we call them - are now up to 12% of the US population.
This makes them twice as common as Lutherans, four times as common
as Presbyterians, six times more common than Episcopalians and
9 times more common as Jews. They have, however, yet to have
appeared on any US coinage nor have they been invited to open
a session of the US Senate. Nor has the media noticed.
Incidentally,
in compiling these stats, we came across some 2002 figures that
show which religions are the smartest based on SAT scores.
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post recently covered a rightwing
conference dealing with the question on why Jews were smarter
than everyone. In fact, these score show Jews ranking second
to Unitarians (Once again Shafars are not included) and barely
ahead of Quakers. What this suggests is that relative non-theism
is more significant factor than simple chosenness.
Average SAT score
by religion
1 Unitarian/Universalist
1209
2 Judaism 1161
3 Society of Friends (Quakers) 1153
4 Hinduism 1110
5 Mennonite 1097
5 Reformed Church of America 1097
7 Episcopal 1096
8 Evangelical Lutheran Church 1094
9 Presbyterian Church (USA) 1092
10 Baha'i 1073
National Average
1020
[Shafar = Skeptics,
humanists, agnostics, free thinkers, aethists & rationalists]
MILBANK ARTICLE
HEY KIDS, READ THIS
YOUNG FAR MORE HOSTILE TO CHRISTIANITY
AUGUST 2007
LOCAL TV STATION GIVES APPROVING REPORT
ON THEOCRATIC ROLE IN MARTIAL LAW
KSLA-TV SHREVEPORT, LA - Could martial
law ever become a reality in America? Some fear any nuclear,
biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil might trigger just
that.
KSLA News 12 has discovered that the clergy
would help the government with potentially their biggest problem:
us. Charleton Heston's now-famous speech before the National
Rifle Association at a convention back in 2000 will forever be
remembered as a stirring moment for all 2nd Amendment advocates.
At the end of his remarks, Heston held up his antique rifle and
told the crowd in his Moses-like voice, "over my cold, dead
hands." While Heston, then serving as the NRA President,
made those remarks in response to calls for more gun control
laws at the time, those words live on.
Heston's declaration captured a truly American
value: An over-arching desire to protect our freedoms. But gun
confiscation is exactly what happened during the state of emergency
following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, along with forced
relocation.
U.S. Troops also arrived, something far
easier to do now, thanks to last year's elimination of the 1878
Posse Comitatus act, which had forbid regular U.S. Army troops
from policing on American soil. If martial law were enacted here
at home, like depicted in the movie "The Siege", easing
public fears and quelling dissent would be critical.
And that's exactly what the 'Clergy Response
Team' helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina. Dr. Durell Tuberville
serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the
Caddo Sheriff's Office.
Tuberville said of the clergy team's mission,
"the primary thing that we say to anybody is, 'let's cooperate
and get this thing over with and then we'll settle the differences
once the crisis is over.'" Such clergy response teams would
walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the
government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on
the other.
"In a lot of cases, these clergy would
already be known in the neighborhoods in which they're helping
to diffuse that situation," assured Sandy Davis. He serves
as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security
and Emergency Preparedness. For the clergy team, one of the biggest
tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or
to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13.
Dr. Tuberville elaborated, "because
the government's established by the Lord, you know. And, that's
what we believe in the Christian faith. That's what's stated
in the scripture." Civil rights advocates believe the amount
of public cooperation during such a time of unrest may ultimately
depend on how long they expect a suspension of rights might last.
http://www.ksla.com/Global/story.asp?S=6937987
HOW ABE FOXMAN AND THE ADL HURTS JEWS
JOEY KURTZMAN, JEWCY - Abdullah Gul needed
a favor. It was February 5 of this year, and the Turkish foreign
minister was fighting a push in the U.S. House of Representatives
to recognize the Turkish murder of one million Armenians during
World War I. In past years the House had placated Turkey by dropping
similar resolutions. But now, with the American-Turkish alliance
weakened by the Iraq war, the resolution had found renewed support.
Gul summoned representatives from the Anti-Defamation League
and several other Jewish-American organizations to his room at
the Willard Hotel in Washington. There he asked them, in essence,
to perpetuate Turkey's denial of genocide. . .
Foxman's statement is in every way that
matters equivalent to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim that he takes
no position on the historicity of the Jewish Holocaust, but only
hopes to see the matter resolved by dispassionate study. Throughout
the congressional saga surrounding the resolutions, virtually
no one other than Turkish lobbyists had explained their opposition
by challenging the nearly undisputed consensus among historians
that a genocide did indeed take place. . .
Foxman's ADL no longer represents the interests
of the Jewish community. In fact, it seems the only interests
it represents are its own.
What's surprising is how unabashedly forthright
Abraham Foxman has become about what motivates him and his institution.
In October of 2005, Foxman addressed a classroom of Jewish students
at New York University. Young heads nodded and brows furrowed
as Foxman riled them with his customary rhetoric: Isn't it anti-semitic
for pro-Palestinian groups to seek divestment only from Israel,
ignoring the far greater crimes of regimes like Sudan or North
Korea? How do we describe this sort of selective flagellation
of the world's only Jewish state, if not as antisemitism?
"What if the campus Free Tibet club
campaigned for divestment from China? Would that be anti-Chinese
bigotry?" asked Asaf Shtull-Trauring, a 20-year-old student
and conscientious objector from the Israeli army.
Of course not, answered Foxman, but it
was preposterous to compare the two conflicts, what with the
Jews' experience of two millennia of murderous persecution. Shtull-Trauring
responded with two questions: Did Foxman mean that selective
treatment is okay so long as it's not directed at Jews? And where
did the Anti-Defamation League get off telling Jewish university
students which opinions about Israel were acceptable and which
verboten?
The dialogue spiraled into a confrontation.
Shtull-Trauring says Foxman, frustrated and under attack, placed
his cards on the table, angrily retorting: "I don't represent
you nor the Jewish community! I represent the donors."
Foxman's outburst was surprising not because
of its content, but because of its candor. Foxman needn't bother
himself with the trifling concerns of American Jews who happen
not to be multimillionaire philanthropists. If he makes the Jewish
community less appealing to young Jews, if his theatrics turn
us off and turn us away, that's all beside the point. Foxman's
job is to keep the millionaire benefactors happy: the rest of
us can go jump in the Kinneret.
Without a meaningful mission to pursue,
the ADL has resorted to scaremongering to fill its coffers and
justify its existence. These efforts have grown increasingly
bizarre and damaging. For example, the ADL website surveys the
vast changes in Jewish-American life over the past century and
offers the grandiose judgment that they "are due, in large
measure, to the efforts of the League and its allies." Yet
Foxman also claims that today the Jewish people face as great
a threat to their safety and security as they did in the 1930s.
In other words, the ADL takes credit for the vast improvements
in the circumstances of American Jewry, and then denies that
those changes have taken place. It is still 1939. It will always
be 1939. . .
The ADL can libel American Christians in
general without fear of legal consequence, but when it goes on
to identify specific "anti-semites" it leaves itself
more vulnerable. Time after time, Americans who resented being
named-and-shamed as anti-semites have sued the ADL for libel.
. .
Foxman's ADL justifies its existence by
beckoning us backward, encouraging us to hide from the ever-present
Cossacks in a psychological shtetl. It's a dark vision that serves
the ADL's interests, but not ours. . .
http://www.jewcy.com/feature/2007-07-09/fire_foxman
LOCAL TV STATION GIVES APPROVING REPORT
ON THEOCRATIC ROLE IN MARTIAL LAW
"The government's
established by the Lord, you know.
And, that's what we believe in the Christian faith. That's what's
stated in the scripture."
JULY 2007
JEWISH STATS CHANGING
ABC NEWS - The Jews of the United States
and Israel are growing further apart, and the schism is a contributing
factor to the declining numbers of Jews outside of Israel, a
Jewish think tank concluded in a report. The Conference on the
Future of the Jewish People brought together 120 leaders to address
issues facing Jews. It cited intermarriage, lack of affordable
Jewish education and diminishing Jewish identity in the Diaspora
as the leading factors in the decline in Jewish numbers.
According to statistics presented at the
conference, the world's Jewish population stands at just over
13 million. The population remains stable thanks to Israel's
natural growth, which offsets the continuing decrease in Jews
elsewhere. Jews today represent only two out of every 1,000 people
in the world, compared to a ratio of 3.5 to 1,000 in 1970, 4.7
to 1,000 in 1945, and 7.5 to 1,000 in 1938. Israel is home to
5.4 million Jews. Last year it became the largest world Jewish
community, passing the U.S. with its estimated 5.3 million Jews.
Jewish leaders have long warned that the
Diaspora's identity is eroding as more Jews marry non-Jews and
blend into the mainstream, a phenomenon known as "assimilation."
In contrast, Israel has established its own intense Jewish character.
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=3372285
POPE SAYS ONLY CATHOLICS ARE TRUE CHRISTIANS
AP - Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the
universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document
released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and
that other Christian denominations were not true churches. .
.
In the latest document - formulated as
five questions and answers - the Vatican seeks to set the record
straight on Vatican II's ecumenical intent, saying some contemporary
theological interpretation had been "erroneous or ambiguous"
and had prompted confusion and doubt.
It restates key sections of a 2000 document
the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, "Dominus
Iesus," which set off a firestorm of criticism among Protestant
and other Christian denominations because it said they were not
true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore
did not have the "means of salvation."
In the new document and an accompanying
commentary, which were released as the pope vacations here in
Italy's Dolomite mountains, the Vatican repeated that position.
"Christ 'established here on earth'
only one church," the document said. The other communities
"cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because
they do not have apostolic succession - the ability to trace
their bishops back to Christ's original apostles.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/07/10/ap3898289.html
JUNE 2007
ON DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES PANDERING ON
FAITH
TERRY MICHAEL, POLITICO
- Having worked as press spokesman for the Democratic National
Committee 20 years ago, when the late Rev. Jerry Falwell's Moral
Majority was in full flower, I am appalled at how little possible
future leaders of the free world have learned from decades of
mixing "faith" and politics.
I came to Washington in 1975 with the late
Paul Simon, working for five years as his House press secretary
and later traveling with him for seven months as spokesman for
his 1988 presidential campaign. Never once in the almost four
decades I knew the Illinois Democrat did I ever hear him invoke
religion or mention God in a speech, or even in private conversation,
though I assumed his religious views were probably those you
would expect from the son of Christian missionaries to China
(where he was conceived in 1928) and the brother of a Lutheran
minister.
A man with the moral rectitude of an Eagle
Scout, Simon understood why the Founders included not a single
reference to a deity in our Constitution. The best way to protect
your right to be guided by faith (and mine to be guided by reason)
is to keep our understandings of where we come from and how we
come to be moral animals on the other side of a very high wall
between the state, with its coercive powers, and the temples
created by believers.
The willingness of Democratic candidates
to breach that barrier reflects a failure of nerve in a political
party that ought to be our best hope for secular governance in
a world where so much hate and murder is still being unleashed
by "people of faith," whose beliefs were never touched
by The Age of Reason and The Enlightenment -- the same felicitous
era in human history that gave us Jefferson and others averse
to the mingling of religion and governance.
MAY 2007
|
GOD'S
MY SPACE PAL OF THE DAY
God has spoken to me. I
listen to God and what I've heard is that I'm supposed to devote
myself to rebuilding the conservative base of the Republican
Party. - Tom DeLay |
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS ON MORMONISM
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, GOD IS NOT GREAT
- In March 1826 a court in Bainbridge, New York, convicted a
twenty-one-year-old man of being "a disorderly person and
an impostor." That ought to have been all we ever heard
of Joseph Smith, who at trial admitted to defrauding citizens
by organizing mad gold-digging expeditions and also to claiming
to possess dark or "necromantic" powers. However, within
four years he was back in the local newspapers (all of which
one may still read) as the discoverer of the "Book of Mormon."
He had two huge local advantages which most mountebanks and charlatans
do not possess. First, he was operating in the same hectically
pious district that gave us the Shakers and several other self-proclaimed
American prophets. So notorious did this local tendency become
that the region became known as the "Burned-Over District,"
in honor of the way in which it had surrendered to one religious
craze after another. Second, he was operating in an area which,
unlike large tracts of the newly opening North America, did possess
the signs of an ancient history. . .
The actual story of the imposture is almost
embarrassing to read, and almost embarrassingly easy to uncover.
(It has been best told by Dr. Fawn Brodie, whose 1945 book No
Man Knows My History was a good-faith attempt by a professional
historian to put the kindest possible interpretation on the relevant
"events.") In brief, Joseph Smith announced that he
had been visited (three times, as is customary) by an angel named
Moroni. The said angel informed him of a book, "written
upon gold plates," which explained the origins of those
living on the North American continent as well as the truths
of the gospel. There were, further, two magic stones, set in
the twin breastplates Urim and Thummim of the Old Testament,
that would enable Smith himself to translate the aforesaid book.
After many wrestlings, he brought this buried apparatus home
with him on September 21, 1827, about eighteen months after his
conviction for fraud. He then set about producing a translation.
The resulting "books" turned
out to be a record set down by ancient prophets, beginning with
Nephi, son of Lephi, who had fled Jerusalem in approximately
600 BC and come to America. Many battles, curses, and afflictions
accompanied their subsequent wanderings and those of their numerous
progeny. How did the books turn out to be this way? Smith refused
to show the golden plates to anybody, claiming that for other
eyes to view them would mean death. But he encountered a problem
that will be familiar to students of Islam. He was extremely
glib and fluent as a debater and story-weaver, as many accounts
attest. . .
it is. . . a simple if tedious task to
discover that twenty-five thousand words of the Book of Mormon
are taken directly from the Old Testament. These words can mainly
be found in the chapters of Isaiah available in Ethan Smith's
View of the Hebrews: The Ten Tribes of Israel in America. This
then popular work by a pious loony, claiming that the American
Indians originated in the Middle East, seems to have started
the other Smith on his gold-digging in the first place. A further
two thousand words of the Book of Mormon are taken from the New
Testament. . .
They have assembled a gigantic genealogical
database at a huge repository in Utah, and are busy filling it
with the names of all people whose births, marriages, and deaths
have been tabulated since records began. This is very useful
if you want to look up your own family tree, and as long as you
do not object to having your ancestors becoming Mormons. Every
week, at special ceremonies in Mormon temples, the congregations
meet and are given a certain quota of names of the departed to
"pray in" to their church. This retrospective baptism
of the dead seems harmless enough to me, but the American Jewish
Committee became incensed when it was discovered that the Mormons
had acquired the records of the Nazi "final solution,"
and were industriously baptizing what for once could truly be
called a "lost tribe": the murdered Jews of Europe.
http://www.slate.com/id/2165033/entry/2165039/
ORDER GOD IS NOT GREAT
DEATH OF A CON MAN
ANDERSON COOPER: Christopher, I'm not sure
if you believe in heaven, but, if you do, do you think Jerry
Falwell is in it?
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: No. And I think it's
a pity there isn't a hell for him to go to. . .
The empty life of this ugly little charlatan
proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary
offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will
just get yourself called reverend. Who would, even at your network,
have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks
of September 11 were the result of our sinfulness and were God's
punishment if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification?
People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering
with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup. . .
COOPER: Do you believe he believed what
he spoke?
HITCHENS: Of course not. He woke up every
morning, as I say, pinching his chubby little flanks and thinking,
I have got away with it again. . .
COOPER: You don't believe that, I mean,
in his reading of the Bible, you don't think he was sincere in
his - whether you agree or not with his reading of the Bible
- you don't think he was sincere in what he spoke?
HITCHENS: No. I think he was a conscious
charlatan and bully and fraud. And I think, if he read the Bible
at all - and I would doubt that he could actually read any long
book of - at all - that he did so only in the most hucksterish,
as we say, Bible-pounding way. . .
COOPER - Coming up, we are going to look
at Jerry Falwell's war on homosexuality, blaming gays and lesbians
for 9/11, among other things [and] even warned about the Teletubbies."
CHRISTIAN EXTREMISTS TAKE OVER VETERANS
HOSPITAL
WILLIAM PETROSKI, DES MOINES REGISTER -
Navy veteran David Miller said that when he checked into the
Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City, he didn't realize
he would get a hard sell for Christian fundamentalism along with
treatment for his kidney stones. Miller, 46, an Orthodox Jew,
said he was repeatedly proselytized by hospital chaplains and
staff in attempts to convert him to Christianity during three
hospitalizations over the past two years.
He said he went hungry each time because
the hospital wouldn't serve him kosher food, and the staff refused
to contact his rabbi, who could have brought him something to
eat. . .
He described the Iowa City facility as
an institution permeated by government sponsorship of fundamentalist
Christianity and unconstitutional discrimination against Jews.
. .
The hospital's chaplains and staff, Miller
said, have the attitude that you either accept Jesus Christ as
your personal savior and you are saved, or you are damned. He
said he has tried to resolve the problems with the hospital's
administration without success.
"I am not trying to get rid of the
chaplain corps," Miller said. "When I was in the Navy,
I was a religious program specialist. I worked with Christian
chaplains, and I believe in the value of the chaplain corps,
but not using it to bludgeon people, for heaven's sake."
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/05/navy_conversion_070513w/
|
THE
WIT & WISDOM OF JERRY FALWELL
If you're not a born - again
Christian, you're a failure as a human being
I hope I live to see the
day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have
any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again
and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will
be.
AIDS is not just God's punishment
for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that
tolerates homosexuals
The idea that religion and
politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians
from running their own country.
The Jews are returning to
their land of unbelief. They are spiritually blind and desperately
in need of their Messiah and Savior.
I do not believe the homosexual
community deserves minority status. One's misbehavior does not
qualify him or her for minority status.
We're fighting against humanism,
we're fighting against liberalism ... we are fighting against
all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today
... our battle is with Satan himself.
The ACLU is to Christians
what the American Nazi party is to Jews. |
PHILADELPHIA BANS FORTUNE TELLERS, PERMITS CHURCHES
TO REMAIN OPEN
TIP TO PHILLY DEFENSE LAWYERS: We ran into
this problem when publishing an alternative newspaper. Should
we accept ads from fortune tellers? We finally decided to do
so on the grounds that they were indistinguishable in their unscientific
prognostications willingness to take money for them than most
churches.
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER - Alerted to a forgotten
state ban, Phila. authorities have closed at least 16 storefront
fortune-tellers. One alleged discrimination. A city official,
however, said most psychics were con artists who prey on vulnerable
people."
Fortune-telling for profit is a third-degree
misdemeanor. The law has been on the books for more than 30 years.
. .
The owner of Psychic, a fortune-telling
shop at 2041 Walnut St., sat on his steps yesterday and complained
bitterly about the police action. He would not give his name
or his lawyer's name. . . "They're discriminating against
Gypsies," he said, although he said he was born and raised
in Philadelphia.
Finally, he noted that critics "considered
that Jesus was a psychic, a fortune-teller, and they crucified
him." He saw a certain parallel. "Look what they want
to do with the fortune-tellers," the man said. "We
might be coming to the end of the world."
NON-THEISTS
AROUND THE WORLD
|
Nbr |
Country |
Non-Theists |
|
1 |
Sweden |
46-85% |
|
2 |
Vietnam |
81% |
|
3 |
Denmark |
43-80% |
|
4 |
Norway |
31-72% |
|
5 |
Japan |
64-65% |
|
6 |
Czech Republic |
54-61% |
|
7 |
Finland |
28-60% |
|
8 |
France |
43-54% |
|
9 |
South Korea |
30%-52% |
|
10 |
Estonia |
49% |
|
11 |
Germany |
41-49% |
|
12 |
Russia |
24-48% |
|
13 |
Hungary |
32-46% |
|
14 |
Netherlands |
39-44% |
|
15 |
Britain |
31-44% |
|
16 |
Belgium |
42-43% |
|
17 |
Bulgaria |
34-40% |
|
18 |
Slovenia |
35-38% |
|
19 |
Israel |
15-37% |
|
20 |
Canada |
19-30% |
|
21 |
Latvia |
20-29% |
|
22 |
Slovakia |
10-28% |
|
23 |
Switzerland |
17-27% |
|
24 |
Austria |
18-26% |
|
25 |
Australia |
24-25% |
|
26 |
Taiwan |
24% |
|
27 |
Spain |
15-24% |
|
28 |
Iceland |
16-23% |
|
29 |
New Zealand |
20-22% |
|
30 |
Ukraine |
20% |
|
31 |
Belarus |
17% |
|
32 |
Greece |
16% |
|
33 |
North Korea |
15% ( ? ) |
|
34 |
Italy |
6-15% |
|
35 |
Armenia |
14% |
|
36 |
China |
8-14% ( ? ) |
|
37 |
Lithuania |
13% |
|
38 |
Singapore |
13% |
|
39 |
Uruguay |
12% |
|
40 |
Kazakhstan |
11-12% |
|
41 |
Estonia |
11% |
|
42 |
Mongolia |
9% |
|
43 |
Portugal |
4-9% |
|
44 |
United States |
3-9% |
|
45 |
Albania |
8% |
|
46 |
Argentina |
4-8% |
|
47 |
Kyrgyzstan |
7% |
|
48 |
Dominican Rep. |
7% |
|
49 |
Cuba |
7% ( ? ) |
|
50 |
Croatia |
7% |
Source: Cambridge Companion to Atheism
APR 2007
THE FIVE JUSTICES
who voted to restrict abortions
were all Catholic men.
D.M BENNETT, THE TRUTH SEEKER
Roderick Bradford
AMAZON - D. M. Bennett was the most
revered and reviled publisher-editor of the Gilded Age. Loyal
supporters lauded Bennett as the "American Voltaire"
while his Christian adversaries called him the "Devil's
Own Advocate." Inspired by Thomas Paine, Bennett founded
the Truth Seeker in 1873, devoted to science, morals, and free
thought. Bennett promoted birth control, supported women's rights,
and opposed dogmatic religion. In less than a decade, he became
the country's leading publisher of liberal literature. Mark Twain,
Clarence Darrow, and Robert G. Ingersoll-"the Great Agnostic"-were
only a few of the illustrious freethinkers who subscribed to
the Truth Seeker.
Bennett took great pride in debunking
the Bible and exposing hypocritical clergymen. He was the first
editor in America to routinely report the misdeeds of ministers,
compiling a list of crimes by clergymen that he published as
"Sinful Saints and Sensual Shepherds." A prolific and
provocative writer, Bennett was vilified by religionists for
denouncing Christianity, which he called "the greatest sham
in the world."
Bennett's publications were censored,
prohibited at newsstands, and denied access to the US mail long
before the expression "banned in Boston" was heard.
At the same time Bennett began publishing the Truth Seeker, free
speech came under attack by Anthony Comstock, the US Post Office's
"special agent" and America's self-appointed arbiter
of morals. Comstock, who bragged of driving fifteen persons to
suicide in his "fight for the young," was the chief
vice-hunter of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice,
an organization founded by wealthy and powerful purity crusaders
including soap tycoon Samuel Colgate.
Bennett's opposition to religion
and puritanical obscenity laws infuriated Comstock, the self-proclaimed
"weeder in God's garden." Comstock arrested Bennett
for publishing his incendiary "An Open Letter to Jesus Christ"
and entrapped the elderly editor for mailing a free-love pamphlet.
Bennett was prosecuted, subjected to a widely publicized trial,
and finally imprisoned in the Albany (New York) Penitentiary.
. . .
Roderick Bradford follows Bennett's
evolution from a devout Shaker to an unremitting skeptic and
America's most iconoclastic publisher.
ORDER
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1591024307/progressiverevieA/
STUDY FINDS PRAYER DOESN'T WORK - AT
LEAST IN HEART BYPASS SURGERY
MSNBC - In the largest study of its kind,
researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery
patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who
knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of
complications. . . Critics said the question of God's reaction
to prayers simply can't be explored by scientific study.
The work, which followed about 1,800 patients
at six medical centers, was financed by the Templeton Foundation,
which supports research into science and religion. It will appear
in the American Heart Journal.
Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School
and other scientists tested the effect of having three Christian
groups pray for particular patients, starting the night before
surgery and continuing for two weeks. The volunteers prayed for
"a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and
no complications" for specific patients, for whom they were
given the first name and first initial of the last name.
The patients, meanwhile, were split into
three groups of about 600 apiece: those who knew they were being
prayed for, those who were prayed for but only knew it was a
possibility, and those who weren't prayed for but were told it
was a possibility. . .
59 percent of the patients who knew they
were being prayed for developed a complication, versus 52 percent
of those who were told it was just a possibility.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12082681/
NEARLY HALF OF ALL AMERICANS - INCLUDING
A THIRD OF COLLEGE GRADUATES - BELIEVE CREATION MYTH OVER EVOLUTION
SCIENCE
BRIAN BRAIKER NEWSWEEK - Nearly half (48
percent) of the public rejects the scientific theory of evolution;
one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the
Biblical account of creation as fact. Seventy-three percent of
Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans
in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent
of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree
with that view. . . ajorities of each major party - 78 percent
of Republicans and 60 percent of Democrats - rule out [voting
for an aethist]. Just under half (45 percent) of registered independents
would not vote for an atheist. Still more than a third (36 percent)
of Americans think the influence of organized religion on American
politics has increased in recent years.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17879317/site/newsweek/?from=rss
MARCH 2007
INFALLIBLE POPE, DIFFERING WITH PREVIOUS
INFALLIBLE POPE, SAYS HELL AND DAMNATION ARE REAL AND ETERNAL
RICHARD OWEN, TIMES, UK - Hell is a place
where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not
just a religious symbol designed to galvanise the faithful, Pope
Benedict XVI has said. Addressing a parish gathering in a northern
suburb of Rome, the Pope said that in the modern world many people,
including some believers, had forgotten that if they failed to
"admit blame and promise to sin no more", they risked
"eternal damnation - the inferno". Hell "really
exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any
more". . .
In 1999, pope John Paul II said heaven
was "neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the
clouds, but that fullness of communion with God, which is the
goal of human life". Hell, by contrast, was "the ultimate
consequence of sin itself. Rather than a place, hell indicates
the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves
from God, the source of all life and joy".
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21460090-2,00.html
PETER STARK: THE ONLY NATIONAL POLITICIAN
WILLING TO SAY HE'S A NON-THEIST
FRIENDLY ATHEIST -
The Secular Coalition for America announced that Congressman
Pete Stark (D-CA) is the first openly non-theistic congressperson
in history. Congressman Stark has served in Congress for California's
13th District since 1973. He is currently a senior member of
the Ways and Means Committee and the Chairman of its Health Subcommittee.
He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
received his MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.
People were invited to submit the name
of "the highest level atheist, humanist, freethinker or
other non-theist currently holding elected public office in the
United States of America." . . .
Once the nominations were received, the
staff of the SCA sent the named public officials a letter explaining
the contest and requested a response as to whether the person
(1) was a non-theist who would allow the SCA to announce this
fact, (2) was a theist, or (3) felt that this was not a question
they wished to discuss in the context of an elected position.
In many instances, follow-up phone calls were made when warranted,
and in the case of Congressman Stark, there were face-to-face
meetings with his staff.
In all, only four individual allowed the
SCA to identify them as out non-theists. The other three nominated
themselves, and while they are not as highly ranked as Congressman
Stark, they should be commended for publicly coming out as a
non-theist. Those individuals include: Terry S. Doran, president
of the School Board in Berkeley, California; Nancy Glista on
the School Committee in Franklin, Maine; and Michael Cerone,
a Town Meeting Member from Arlington, Massachusetts.
"NONTHEISTIC Americans, including
humanists, are the group most likely to be discriminated against
for their convictions," said Fred Edwords, director of communications
for the American Humanist Association. "Recent polls show
that fewer than 50 percent of Americans would vote for an atheist
presidential candidate, even if that candidate is well qualified.
The fact that Pete Stark's public avowal of nontheism is controversial
reinforces this point. Atheists are the last group that a majority
of Americans still think is okay to discriminate against."
"By contrast, such an announcement
by a politician wouldn't be news in Europe, where the public
has embraced secularism to a degree not seen in the United States,"
Edwords continued. "Clearly, when it comes to American religious
prejudice, we still have a lot to overcome."
FEBRUARY 2007
ON RELIGIOUS SEXUAL OBSESSION
LIBBY PURVES, TIMES, UK -
The Times revealed yesterday some radical proposals to reunite
the Anglican Church - or part of it - with Rome. Twenty years
ago this outbreak of ecumenicism might have caused unaffiliated
Christian believers like me to cry "Halleluiah!" and
whirl thuribles round our heads in glee: it is a scandalous absurdity,
in an increasingly secular age, to have the loving simplicities
of the Christian faith fragmented into squabbling cliques. .
.
But this time, we know what it's all about,
don't we? Not joyful, simplified Christianity but a pulling-up
of drawbridges. . . And it will be the illiberal, genitally-fixated
wing of Anglicanism that sidles towards unity with Rome. . .
We have seen this crab-scuttle towards
Rome before. When the Anglican Synod accepted women priests in
1992 numbers of high-profile Anglicans turned Catholic in disgust.
The other theological differences - the Real Presence in the
Eucharist, Papal infallibility, priestly celibacy - seem suddenly
no longer to matter, compared with the horrible prospect of women
priests. . .
You can see why the obsession began. Nomadic
Old Testament Judaism had to differentiate itself from ritual
pagan and Greek practices. . . In the Christian era various earthy,
bundling peasant values needed to be corseted and codified, as
much for the sake of social coherence and property law as for
any moral reason (priestly celibacy has its origins in the difficulty
of providing for large Catholic families on priestly stipends:
the theology is merely bolted on). Cruelty, snobbery, avarice
and injustice have been tolerated (at times practiced) by clergy
and their cohorts, while sexual sins were berated with unholy
glee. . .
Let the Churches concentrate on condemning
promiscuity, infidelity, exploitation, predation - whether gay
or straight. . . Being gay can, without doing any violence to
the Gospels, be accepted as a potential route to holiness.
NEARLY A QUARTER OF PROFESSORS FOUND
TO BE RATIONALISTS
LIZ YATES, TUFTS DAILY -
Researchers at the Harvard Divinity School recently implemented
a study to determine the religiosity of college and university
professors around the country. The study, entitled "How
religious are America's college and university professors?,"
has been circulating throughout academia since last year. It
will be published in a forthcoming volume entitled "The
American University in a Post-Secular Age," edited by Douglas
Jacobsen and Rhonda Jacobsen, Oxford University Press.
The study found that 23.4 percent of college
and university professors describe themselves as either atheists
or agnostics, with the remainder reporting some level of belief
in God or another higher power. The authors also made a distinction
between the general professoriate and those professors who teach
at "elite doctoral institutions," as defined by the
US News and World Report's list of the 50 best doctoral-awarding
universities. In the latter category, 36.6 percent of respondents
described themselves as atheists or agnostics. . .
The fields of accounting, elementary education,
finance, marketing, art, criminal justice and nursing were found
to have the highest rates of religious professors, ranging from
44.4 percent to 63 percent. Psychology and biology tied for the
lowest percentages of religious professors, with 61 percent of
respondents in both fields describing themselves as atheists
or agnostics.
GOP CANDIDATES LEAD IN DIVORCES
POLITICAL WIRE -
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's entry into the Republican
presidential campaign "gives the emerging GOP field the
edge over the Democrats in the number of divorces or annulled
marriages," according to Cox Newspapers. "The GOP has
long touted itself as the party of family values, but its developing
2008 presidential field has recorded four divorces and one annulment,
compared to three divorces among the Democrats." "In
addition to Giuliani, who has had one marriage annulled and another
end in divorce, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is twice divorced
and Sen. John McCain of Arizona has one divorce. Among the Democrats,
Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio has had two divorces and Sen. Chris
Dodd of Connecticut has one."
NEWSPAPER DISCOVERS PRIESTS DON'T CONSIDER
POPE INFALLIBLE
JOHN HOOPER, GUARDIAN, UK - A yawning gulf
between the stern doctrines preached by Pope Benedict and the
advice offered by ordinary Roman Catholic priests has been exposed
by an Italian magazine which dispatched reporters to 24 churches
around Italy where, in the confessional, they sought rulings
on various moral dilemmas. One reporter for L'espresso claimed
to have let a doctor switch off the respirator that kept her
father alive. "Don't think any more about it," she
was told by a friar in Naples. "I myself, if I had a father,
a wife or a child who had lived for years only because of artificial
means, would pull out [the plug].". . .
The church's official teaching is that
homosexuality is "disordered" and that homosexual behavior
is wrong. Yet a practicing gay man in Rome was told: "Generally,
the best attitude is to be yourself - what in English is called
'coming out'." On one issue alone - abortion - the priests
all stuck firmly to official doctrine.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,,2002487,00.html
FEDERAL COURT SAYS SAYING 'GOD DAMN'
AT PUBLIC MEETING NOT A CRIMINAL OFFENSE
AP - An officer who
arrested a man for cursing in a public meeting violated the man's
right to free speech, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The
6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court's decision
that Montrose Township police officer Stephen Robinson had probable
cause to arrest Thomas Leonard in 2002 when Leonard cursed while
addressing the township board.
"It cannot be seriously contended
that any reasonable peace officer, or citizen, for that matter,
would believe that mild profanity while peacefully advocating
a political position could constitute a criminal act," the
three-judge panel wrote in Friday's decision. "All our client
did was get up at a public meeting and express himself vigorously,
and he was arrested for it," said Glen Lenhoff, Leonard's
attorney.
At the time, Leonard's wife, Sarah, was
suing the township over a towing contract. Thomas Leonard accused
the board members in the meeting of cheating his family and saying,
"That's why you're in a goddamn lawsuit." Robinson
arrested Leonard, charging him with disorderly conduct and using
obscene language. He was held in jail for an hour, and the charges
were dismissed a month later.
SAM SMITH, DC GAZETTE, 1987 - I recently
testified before the city council. The subject was DC statehood
and the bizarre manner in which our elected officials were approaching
the matter. At the end of my statement I told a 19th century
whaling story which concludes with a sailor saying to a tyrannical
captain, "All I ask is a little decency and that of the
most god damn common variety."
David Clarke, the chair of the council
was reading my prepared statement as I spoke. As I approached
this harmless little tale, he raised his gavel and at the precise
moment that I uttered the words "god damn," he banged
his gavel down and, with a ferocity unusual even for him, declared
that such language would not be tolerated in the council chambers.
Startled by the sudden appearance of the
ghost of Jonathan Edwards, I attempted to explain that the usage
was not one of gratuitous profanity, that I had learned the story
from a book printed by a highly respectable publisher and, besides,
as a writer it seemed the words fit the context better than,
say, "gosh darn." It was, after all, a sailor and not
George Bush who was speaking. All of this fell on deaf ears and
it was some minutes before I could turn Clarke's attention to
statehood.
Clarke's curious outburst could be considered
in part, I suppose, an act of loyalty to that not insignificant
portion of his constituency which is occupied in the ministry.
But I think it more likely that the rule I had violated was not
that of the Baptist Church as that of the Fifth Floor Chapel
of the Holy Amendment over which Clarke himself presides. Even
before I had testified, it had occurred to me how much council
meetings had become like going to church.
This is unfortunate, because one of the
important purposes of theological ritual is to provide continuity
in an otherwise ephemeral world, whereas one of the important
purposes of council meetings is to produce change in an otherwise
stultified society. Yet there the thirteen politician-priests
sit (when they bother to come), in front of a wall covered with
deep blue velvet (or is it velour?) upon which is hung in the
place of a cross, a huge seal of the city. The council members
are seated behind a long U-shaped altar-like desk raised high
enough to allow them to be taller in their chairs than anyone
standing below them. Sitting in the audience, the angle is so
great that what one mostly sees are heads and shoulders propped
behind name plaques, giving the impression of a row of bowling
trophies.
The result is that one comes to testify
in an atmosphere designed to make one feel a supplicant rather
than a democratic peer. As I walked up to speak, I found myself
saying to myself, "We do not presume to come this thy table
trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold mercies
...
Then I cleared my head, which is how I
got into trouble. But others are more careful. As a friend notes,
"Why do they always begin, 'We deeply appreciate this opportunity
to appear before you," as if the council were doing them
a favor by letting them testify?
The metaphor breaks down because there
is no collection plate, but that is a mere doctrinal quibble.
And besides, the plate is passed rather aggressively every April
15. . .
Startled by Clarke, who is usually on the
side of civil liberties, engaging in such petty bowdlerization,
I quickly searched out one of the best resources available: H.L.
Mencken's remarkable The American Language, which discusses expletives
like god damn at length. Here is some of what I found:
"God damn is first recorded in English
in 1633. It soon became a sobriquet that the French used for
the English and later was applied, presumably with literal intent,
by the Puritans Cavaliers. Nonetheless, two years after the death
of the foul-mouthed Elizabeth I Parliament passed a ten pound
fine against anyone in a 'stage play, interlude, show, etc.'
using blasphemy. Among the victims of this rule was Shakespeare,
who was convinced by friends to censor his own plays that, as
Mencken put it, "had been full of oaths and objurgations
. . . The editors of the bard in later years had the exhilarating
job of restoring the denaturized expletives.'"
Mencken attributes a more tolerant attitude
in the United States to the decay of the legal concept of blasphemy.
. . While the Puritans in New England did attempt to suppress
the practice, it is clear from the number of offenses recorded
in town records that they failed. Mencken continues:
"The Revolution, like any other general
war, greatly prospered both obscenity and profanity. The admonitions
of George Washington and John Adams against profanity and blasphemy
in the Army and Navy had no effect, and at the end of the century
an English visitor named Richard Parkinson was recording that
the word 'damned' was "a very familiar phrase" in the
new republic, and that even the clergy used language that was
"extremely vulgar and profane." Washington himself,
despite his order to his men, used both damn and hell with considerable
freedom, as have several other American officers since."
By 1931, the use of hell was so common,
despite efforts by the likes of the Holy Name Society, that L.
W. Merryweather in American Speech prematurely worried that it
might be soon worn out. He suggested that "clerical circles
should take it upon themselves, as a public duty, to invest some
other theological term with a shuddering fearsomeness that will
qualify it as the successor to hell when the lamentable decease
of the latter actually takes place."
Incidentally, Mencken gives credit to publisher
Joseph Pultizer, "a great master of profanity in three languages,"
for inventing the insertion of profanity in the midst of a word
as in his attack on an editor; "The trouble with you, Coates,
is that you are too indegoddamnpendent."
Thus, it would appear that Dave Clarke
is on the losing end of history. Others, mostly of prudish and
repressive ilk, have tried to eradicate god damn from the language
and have failed, perhaps, in part, because they, like George
Washington, have been known to use it too. If Dave wants to align
himself with the Puritans and the Holy Name Society that is his
business, but he should understand that he is flogging the dephlogisticated.
And he may also be lending credence to a notion in other parts
of the world that Americans are rather unimaginative and wimpish
on this score. Writing about 'son of a bitch,' Mencken notes
that the phrase seems as pale and ineffectual to a Slav or Latin
as fudge does to us: "The dumbest policeman in Palermo thinks
up a dozen better [oaths] between breakfast and the noon whistle.
Worse, it is frequently transmogrified into the childish 'son
of a gun.' The latter is so lacking in punch that the Italians
among us have borrowed it as a satirical name for an American:
a sanemagogna . . . In Standard Italian there are no less than
forty congeners of son of a bitch and each and every one of them
is more opprobrious, more brilliant, more effective."
http://prorev.com/dcdiary80b.htm
MASSACHUSETTS STATUTE, CHAPTER 272, Section 36 - Whoever willfully blasphemes the
holy name of God by denying, cursing or contumeliously reproaching
God, his creation, government or final judging of the world,
or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching Jesus Christ or the
Holy Ghost, or by cursing or contumeliously reproaching or exposing
to contempt and ridicule, the holy word of God contained in the
holy scriptures shall be punished by imprisonment in jail for
not more than one year or by a fine of not more than three hundred
dollars, and may also be bound to good behavior
http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/272-36.htm
JANUARY 2007
STATES DISCRIMINATE AGAINST NON-RELIGONISTS
Arkansas State Constitution,
Article 19 Section 1: No person who denies the being of a God
shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State,
nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court.
Maryland's Declaration of Rights,
Article 36: Nor shall any person, otherwise competent, be deemed
incompetent as a witness, or juror, on account of his religious
belief; provided, he believes in the existence of God, and that
under His dispensation such person will be held morally accountable
for his acts, and be rewarded or punished therefore either in
this world or in the world to come."
Massachusetts' State Constitution,
Article 3: Any every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves
peaceably, and as good subjects of the commonwealth, shall be
equally under the protection of the law: and no subordination
of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established
by law."
Mississippi State Constitution.
Article 14: Section 265 No person who denies the existence of
a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.
North Carolina's State Constitution,
Article 6 Section 8: The following persons shall be disqualified
for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty
God.
South Carolina's State Constitution,
Article 4 Section 2: No person shall be eligible to the office
of Governor who denies the existence of the Supreme Being. .
. .
Tennessee's State Constitution,
Article 9 Section 2: No person who denies the being of God, or
a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office
in the civil department of this state."
Texas' State Constitution, Article
1 Section 4: No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification
to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any
one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious
sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme
Being."
FROM GODLESS GEEKS
http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/StateConstitutions.htm
CHRISTIAN RIGHT IS BUILT ON SUBURBAN
DESPAIR
CHRIS HEDGES, ALTERNET - The engine that drives the radical Christian
Right in the United States, the most dangerous mass movement
in American history, is not religiosity, but despair. It is a
movement built on the growing personal and economic despair of
tens of millions of Americans, who watched helplessly as their
communities were plunged into poverty by the flight of manufacturing
jobs, their families and neighborhoods torn apart by neglect
and indifference, and who eventually lost hope that America was
a place where they had a future.
This despair crosses economic boundaries, of course, enveloping
many in the middle class who live trapped in huge, soulless exurbs
where, lacking any form of community rituals or centers, they
also feel deeply isolated, vulnerable and lonely. Those in despair
are the most easily manipulated by demagogues, who promise a
fantastic utopia, whether it is a worker's paradise, fraternite-egalite-liberte,
or the second coming of Jesus Christ. Those in despair search
desperately for a solution, the warm embrace of a community to
replace the one they lost, a sense of purpose and meaning in
life, the assurance they are protected, loved and worthwhile.
. .
In the United States we have turned our backs on the working
class, with much of the worst assaults, such as NAFTA and welfare
reform, pushed though during President Clinton's Democratic administration.
We stand passively and watch an equally pernicious assault on
the middle class. Anything that can be put on software, from
architecture to engineering to finance, will soon be handed to
workers overseas who will be paid a third what their American
counterparts receive and who will, like some 45 million Americans,
have no access to health insurance or benefits.
There has been, along with the creation of an American oligarchy,
a steady Weimarization of the American working class. The top
one percent of American households have more wealth than the
bottom 90 percent combined. . .
The danger of this theology of despair is that it says that nothing
in the world is worth saving. It rejoices in cataclysmic destruction.
It welcomes the frightening advance of global warming, the spiraling
wars and violence in the Middle East and the poverty and neglect
that have blighted American urban and rural landscapes as encouraging
signs that the end of the world is close at hand. . .
All radical movements need a crisis or a prolonged period of
instability to achieve power. And we are not in a period of crisis
now. But another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil,
a series of huge environmental disasters or an economic meltdown
will hand to these radicals the opening they seek.
[Hedges is the author of American Fascists: The Christian Right
and the War On America]
http://www.alternet.org/stories/46908/
LOCAL JEWISH GROUPS RETURNING TO SOCIAL
JUSTICE ISSUES THAT NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS LEFT FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS
JAMES D. BESSER, JEWISH WEEK
- In Chicago, a local Jewish group recently helped create a day
labor center for mostly Hispanic workers, many undocumented immigrants.
In Minneapolis, a similar group has been a prominent player in
local efforts to fight predatory lenders who victimize the poor.
In Boston, Jewish activists played a significant role in state
legislation legalizing certain kinds of stem cell research.
What's striking about these and
similar efforts is that they have nothing to do with the major
Jewish 'defense' agencies that once were the heart and soul of
Jewish progressive activism.
As big national agencies pull
back from domestic issues and grass-roots activism to focus increasingly
on Israel and anti-Semitism, innovative, community - oriented
progressive groups are filling the vacuum - and appealing to
a younger generation for whom social- justice issues resonate
strongly.
Some of the most prominent are
actually breakaway chapters of a group that was once the face
of Jewish progressivism: the American Jewish Congress. Others
were created because of the perception that there was little
or no Jewish presence in local coalitions dealing with a wide
range of close-to-home issues. . .
'It's a new mode of Jewish activism,
and it may be the future of Jewish activism,' said Sammie Moshenberg,
Washington director for the National Council of Jewish Women.
NCJW is one of few national Jewish groups still emphasizing progressive
grass-roots activism and increasingly it is finding valuable
partners in the new breed of progressive groups.
In Philadelphia, the Jewish Social
Policy Action Network (JSPAN) is struggling to build the kind
of base JCUA and several others have long enjoyed. While it seeks
a critical mass of donors, the group is taking advantage of some
high-powered legal talent among its volunteers to continue a
tradition of judicial activism started by the group from which
it sprang: the American Jewish Congress.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13504
TAKING OATH ON SOMETHING OTHER THAN
THE BIBLE IN A LONG AMERICAN TRADITION
CHRISTIAN CENTURY - When Keith
Ellison, the recently elected Minnesota Democrat who will be
the first Muslim in Congress, announced that he would take his
oath of office on Islam's holy book, the Qur'an, he provoked
sharp criticism from conservatives . . .
But Ellison would not be the
first member of Congress to forgo a Bible at the swearing-in
ceremony. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) took
her oath in 2005 on a Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, which she borrowed
from Representative Gary Ackerman (D., N.Y.) after learning a
few hours earlier that the speaker of the House didn't have any
Jewish holy books. . .
Hawaii governor Linda Lingle
used the Tanakh when she took her oath in 2002, and Madeleine
Kunin placed her hand on Jewish prayer books when she was sworn
in as the first female governor of Vermont in 1985.
As for U.S. presidents, in 1825
John Quincy Adams took the presidential oath using a law volume
instead of a Bible, and in 1853 Franklin Pierce affirmed the
oath rather than swearing it. Herbert Hoover, citing his Quaker
beliefs, also affirmed his oath in 1929 but did use a Bible,
according to the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.
Theodore Roosevelt used no Bible in taking his first oath of
office in 1901, but did use one in 1905.
House members are sworn in together
on the House floor in a ceremony without any book, holy or otherwise.
But in an unofficial ceremony, individual members reenact an
oath-taking so that it can be photographed - a tradition dating
from the beginning of the wide use of photography.
http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=2751
CHRISTIAN EXTREMISTS MOVING MILITARY
AND LAW ENFORCEMENT TO RIGHT
CHRIS HEDGES, TRUTHDIG - The
drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies,
which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent
of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service
academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the
military and law enforcement. This effort signals the final and
perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical
Christian right to dismantle America's open society and build
a theocratic state. A successful politicization of the military
would signal the end of our democracy.
During the past two years I traveled
across the country to research and write the book "American
Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America." I
repeatedly listened to radical preachers attack as corrupt and
godless most American institutions, from federal agencies that
provide housing and social welfare to public schools and the
media. But there were two institutions that never came under
attack-the military and law enforcement. While these preachers
had no interest in communicating with local leaders of other
faiths, or those in the community who did not subscribe to their
call for a radical Christian state, they assiduously courted
and flattered the military and police. They held special services
and appreciation days for all four branches of the armed services
and for various law enforcement agencies. They encouraged their
young men and women to enlist or to join the police or state
troopers. They sought out sympathetic military and police officials
to attend church events where these officials were lauded and
feted for their Christian probity and patriotism. They painted
the war in Iraq not as an occupation but as an apocalyptic battle
by Christians against Islam, a religion they regularly branded
as "satanic." All this befits a movement whose final
aesthetic is violence. It also befits a movement that, in the
end, would need the military and police forces to seize power
in American society. . .
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20061231_chris_hedges_americas_holy_warriors
THE 4862 NAMES OF GOD
RELIGIOUS CORRECTNESS ON CAMPUS
MARK C. TAYLOR, NY TIMES - At
first glance, the flourishing of religion on campuses seems to
reverse trends long criticized by conservatives under the rubric
of "political correctness." But, in truth, something
else is occurring. Once again, right and left have become mirror
images of each other; religious correctness is simply the latest
version of political correctness. Indeed, it seems the more religious
students become, the less willing they are to engage in critical
reflection about faith.
The chilling effect of these
attitudes was brought home to me two years ago when an administrator
at a university where I was then teaching called me into his
office. A student had claimed that I had attacked his faith because
I had urged him to consider whether Nietzsche's analysis of religion
undermines belief in absolutes. The administrator insisted that
I apologize to the student. (I refused.)
My experience was not unique.
Today, professors invite harassment or worse by including "unacceptable"
books on their syllabuses or by studying religious ideas and
practices in ways deemed improper by religiously correct students.
Distinguished scholars at several
major universities in the United States have been condemned,
even subjected to death threats, for proposing psychological,
sociological or anthropological interpretations of religious
texts in their classes and published writings. In the most egregious
cases, defenders of the faith insist that only true believers
are qualified to teach their religious tradition.
At a time when colleges and universities
engage in huge capital campaigns and are obsessed with public
relations, faculty members can no longer be confident they will
remain free to pose the questions that urgently need to be asked.
For years, I have begun my classes
by telling students that if they are not more confused and uncertain
at the end of the course than they were at the beginning, I will
have failed. A growing number of religiously correct students
consider this challenge a direct assault on their faith. Yet
the task of thinking and teaching, especially in an age of emergent
fundamentalisms, is to cultivate a faith in doubt that calls
into question every certainty. . .
The warning signs are clear:
unless we establish a genuine dialogue within and among all kinds
of belief, ranging from religious fundamentalism to secular dogmatism,
the conflicts of the future will probably be even more deadly.
[Mark C. Taylor is a religion
and humanities professor at Williams College]
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/21/opinion/21taylor.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
TWO-THIRDS OF BRITS NOT RELIGIOUS,
82% BELIEVE RELIGION CAUSES TENSIONS
GUARDIAN, UK - More people in
Britain think religion causes harm than believe it does good,
according to a Guardian - ICM poll. It shows that an overwhelming
majority see religion as a cause of division and tension - greatly
outnumbering the smaller majority who also believe that it can
be a force for good.
The poll also reveals that non-believers
outnumber believers in Britain by almost two to one. It paints
a picture of a skeptical nation with massive doubts about the
effect religion has on society: 82% of those questioned say they
see religion as a cause of division and tension between people.
Only 16% disagree. The findings are at odds with attempts by
some religious leaders to define the country as one made up of
many faith communities.
Most people have no personal
faith, the poll shows, with only 33% of those questioned describing
themselves as "a religious person". A clear majority,
63%, say that they are not religious - including more than half
of those who describe themselves as Christian.
Older people and women are the
most likely to believe in a god, with 37% of women saying they
are religious, compared with 29% of men. . .
Well-off people are more likely
to plan to visit a church at Christmas: 64% of those in the highest
economic categories expect to attend, compared with 43% of those
in the bottom group.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1978046,00.html
DECEMBER 2006
STATE & FEDERAL PROGRAMS
FORCING CHRISTIAN RIGHT ON PRISONERS
NY TIMES - Life was
different in Unit E at the state prison outside Newton, Iowa.
The toilets and sinks white porcelain ones, like at home were
in a separate bathroom with partitions for privacy. In many Iowa
prisons, metal toilet-and-sink combinations squat beside the
bunks, to be used without privacy, a few feet from cellmates.
The cells in Unit E had real wooden doors
and doorknobs, with locks. More books and computers were available,
and inmates were kept busy with classes, chores, music practice
and discussions. There were occasional movies and events with
live bands and real-world food, like pizza or sandwiches from
Subway. Best of all, there were opportunities to see loved ones
in an environment quieter and more intimate than the typical
visiting rooms.
But the only way an inmate could qualify
for this kinder mutation of prison life was to enter an intensely
religious rehabilitation program and satisfy the evangelical
Christians running it that he was making acceptable spiritual
progress. The program which grew from a project started in 1997
at a Texas prison with the support of George W. Bush, who was
governor at the time says on its Web site that it seeks to cure
prisoners by identifying sin as the root of their problems and
showing inmates how God can heal them permanently, if they turn
from their sinful past. . .
For Robert W. Pratt, chief judge of the
federal courts in the Southern District of Iowa, this all added
up to an unconstitutional use of taxpayer money for religious
indoctrination, as he ruled in June in a lawsuit challenging
the arrangement.
The Iowa prison program is not unique.
Since 2000, courts have cited more than a dozen programs for
having unconstitutionally used taxpayer money to pay for religious
activities or evangelism aimed at prisoners, recovering addicts,
job seekers, teenagers and children.
Nevertheless, the programs are proliferating.
For example, the Corrections Corporation of America, the nation
s largest prison management company, with 65 facilities and 71,000
inmates under its control, is substantially expanding its religion-based
curriculum and now has 22 institutions offering residential programs
similar to the one in Iowa. And the federal Bureau of Prisons,
which runs at least five multi-faith programs at its facilities,
is preparing to seek bids for a single-faith prison program as
well.
Government agencies have been repeatedly
cited by judges and government auditors for not doing enough
to guard against taxpayer-financed evangelism. But some constitutional
lawyers say new federal rules may bar the government from imposing
any special requirements for how faith-based programs are audited.
2005
RATZINGER'S
PAST
http://prorev.com/2005/04/ratzingers-past.htm
TIMES UK - Unknown to many
members of the church, Ratzinger's past includes brief membership
of the Hitler Youth movement and wartime service with a German
army anti- aircraft unit. Although there is no suggestion that
he was involved in any atrocities, his service may be contrasted
by opponents with the attitude of John Paul II, who took part
in anti-Nazi theatre performances in his native Poland and in
1986 became the first pope to visit Rome's synagogue. . .
The son of a rural Bavarian
police officer, Ratzinger was six when Hitler came to power in
1933. His father, also called Joseph, was an anti-Nazi whose
attempts to rein in Hitler's Brown Shirts forced the family to
move home several times.
In 1937 Ratzinger's father
retired and the family moved to Traunstein, a staunchly Catholic
town in Bavaria close to the Führer's mountain
retreat in Berchtesgaden. He joined the Hitler Youth aged 14,
shortly after membership was made compulsory in 1941. He quickly
won a dispensation on account of his training at a seminary.
"Ratzinger was only briefly a member of the Hitler Youth
and not an enthusiastic one," concluded John Allen, his
biographer.
Two years later Ratzinger
was enrolled in an anti-aircraft unit that protected a BMW factory
making aircraft engines. The workforce included slaves from Dachau
concentration camp.
Ratzinger has insisted
he never took part in combat or fired a shot - adding that his
gun was not even loaded - because of a badly infected finger.
He was sent to Hungary, where he set up tank traps and saw Jews
being herded to death camps. He deserted in April 1944 and spent
a few weeks in a prisoner of war camp.
A CONVERSATION WITH
GOD
[Encouraged by our two
leading presidential candidates I decided to also try to have
a conversation with the Father Almighty. I got through without
any trouble - Sam Smith ]
SAM - Hey Pops, this is
Sam down on earth just checking in.
GOD - Good to hear from
you. I get so tired of those suck-ups at the Christian Coalition
and the Republican National Committee. Like I told them, the
deal was I work six days, take the next day off, and then get
at least three millennia in comp time.
But, no, they keep calling
me and saying stuff like "You're with us if we take down
Fallujah, right?" and I tell them they're on their own but
then they run it through the spin cycle and the next thing I
know I got a bunch of dead or angry Muslims on my hands.
SAM - Got any thoughts
on the race?
GOD - Well, I wish that
Shilling guy wouldn't give me so much credit for his pitches
in the World Series. I mean, where does that leave me with those
born-agains on the Cards and the Yankees? I try to be fair, you
know, but everyone keeps insisting I'm their God and then using
it as an excuse to beat the shit out of somebody else. Besides,
I've been a Red Sox fan since at least 1932 and it hasn't done
them much good until now.
SAM - I didn't know you
used language like that.
GOD - Where do you think
Howard Stern learned it? I'm God to all people, after all, not
just to George Bush and Michael Powell.
SAM - I was actually asking
about the presidential race.
GOD - Oh that one. Well,
I got to say I'm pretty disappointed in how you all are handling
your democracy. Kind of wished I had thought of that one a little
earlier myself, but then when Tommy Jefferson and the gang came
along I had real hopes that the earth might work out better than
it seemed. Now it's only two centuries later and you folks are
about to blow the whole deal. I don't believe in messing with
things, but I did try to warn them with those Florida hurricanes
and all. I guess I was too subtle. I'd hate to think I'd have
to come back down there but I'm getting pretty pissed. . .
SAM - Sounds like you're
backing Kerry.
GOD - Well, I'm tempted
but my basic rule is create and then stand back. But it's me
damn tough, especially when you've got that Bush guy taking my
name in vain every chance he gets and talking about sanctity
of life and then going out killing a whole bunch of people. Thing
I want to know is why does the sanctity of life expire after
only nine months? It should have a longer warranty than that.
SAM - So you got anything
less than an endorsement, say like a suggestion?
GOD - Me yes, here's my
tip for swing states: vote Kerry and then gain absolution by
voting for every Green elsewhere on the ticket. It's that old
Catholic trick: sin and then say a few Hail Marys. I like those
Catholics because they still sin. The trouble with the born-agains
like Bush is that they think they're always right because they
claim I said so. Never did no such thing. Ever heard of Bush
admitting he was wrong after he found Jesus? I mean, my me, if
that was the case I could close down this place and move to Texas.
You don't need two heavens.
SAM - Didn't know you were
a Green.
GOD - Well, I got to admit
I prefer folks who try to do my will over those who claim I blessed
them and then do whatever they want. Remember my man Frankie
over at Assisi? He said, always preach the gospel and if necessary
use words.
There's too much talk about
me and too little action. For a bunch of humans the Greens aren't
bad. And I'd like to give that David Cobb a big hug for not screwing
up this election more than it was already. If you live in a safe
place like DC or Texas, give the guy your vote.
It was like I was telling
my son the other day: you know, if you go back on earth you might
want to think about registering Green. And he says, but Dad,
I thought Bush was the Big Christian. And I said, my me, if Bush
had been born in that manger instead of you he would have had
cut some Enron type deal with Pontius Pilate, privatized miracles,
outsourced charity, and give a big tax deduction to crucifix
manufacturers.
SAM - I thought maybe you
were more the Ralph Nader type.
GOD - Oh, I like Ralph
and he and I are pretty much on the same wavelength. But it's
like I tried to tell him, you don't have to do my will every
damn moment. I said, why don't you take some time off, and get
back to my will after the election?
SAM - Doesn't look like
he listened to you.
GOD - Nope, but keep in
mind that I'd still take him over the whole Democratic and Republican
Party combined. And, me, have those Democrats been mean to him.
They don't hold a candle to him but they treat him like dirt.
Now I admit, the saintly can be a real pain in the butt, but,
me knows, they do more for the world than the average politician.
SAM - Well, this is quite
a different take on the election than I've been hearing from
certain Catholic bishops and members of the Christian right.
GOD - So you think I'm
going to go to all the trouble to create a world and then pass
on my opinions through the likes of some pompous priest, Pat
Robertson, or George Bush? I am the almighty after all. I don't
have to use charlatans to get my word out. Hell, I'd rather use
Jessica Simpson as my emissary.
SAM - Well, that raises
a whole new issue, but I've taken enough of your time.
GOD - No problem, mate.
Just answer me one question
SAM - Sure
GOD - I thought you didn't
believe in me so how come we're having this conversation?
SAM - Well, you know what
they say about us journalists. We'll do anything for a story.
GOD - Okay, but don't go
soft on me. I get so tired of talking with phony true believers.
Especially the ones who give big tax cuts to the rich and bomb
the hell out of people they don't like.
SAM - If you want I could
get you a list of states with same day registration
GOD - You tempt me but
I think I'll stay here and wait to see how it all comes out..
IN DEFENSE OF BIBLICAL MARRIAGE
PROTESTANTS FOR THE COMMON GOOD
-- The Presidential Prayer Team is currently urging us to: "Pray
for the President as he seeks wisdom on how to legally codify
the definition of marriage. Pray that it will be according to
Biblical principles. With any forces insisting on variant definitions
of marriage, pray that God's Word and His standards will be honored
by our government." This is true.
Any good religious person believes
prayer should be balanced by action. So here, in support of the
Prayer Team's admirable goals, is a proposed Constitutional Amendment
codifying marriage entirely on biblical principles:
A. Marriage in the United States
shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women.
(Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)
B. Marriage shall not impede a man's
right to take concubines, in addition to his wife or wives. (II
Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)
C. A marriage shall be considered
valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin,
she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)
D. Marriage of a believer and a
non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra
9:12; Neh 10:30)
E. Since marriage is for life, neither
this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any
state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut
22:19; Mark 10:9)
F. If a married man dies without
children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to
marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children,
he shall pay a fine of one shoe, and be otherwise punished in
a manner to be determined by law. (Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)
G. In lieu of marriage, if there
are no acceptable men in your town, it is required that you get
your dad drunk and have sex with him (even if he had previously
offered you up as a sex toy to men young and old), tag-teaming
with any sisters you may have. Of course, this rule applies only
if you are female. (Gen 19:31-36)
RECOVERED HISTORY
THE
SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE IN THE NATION'S CAPITAL
A RECENT exchange on the DC History
bulletin board on why Washington attracted so many weddings reveals
just how the sanctity of marriage used to be observed in the
nation's capital right under the nose of the sort of legislators
now demanding a constitutional amendment to preserve the sanctity
of marriage.
MICHAEL WASSERMAN - Based on my
review of the statute applicable between 1901 and 1925, it seems
to me that the reason was the combination of (1) the slight requirements
for obtaining a marriage license; (2) the absence of any waiting
period or residency requirement; (3) the apparent validity under
D.C. law of even an unlicensed marriage; (4) the rather small
penalty imposed on the officiant of an unlicensed marriage (up
to a $500 fine, no possibility of jail); (5) the apparent absence
of any penalty on the parties to an unlicensed marriage; (6)
the low age of consent for a valid marriage (16 for males and
14 for females); (7) the absence of any requirement for witnesses.
. .
Section 1291 specified the requirements
for obtaining a license from the clerk of the court. All that
was needed was for the parties to answer under oath a series
of questions regarding their identity and capacity to marry each
other: ages, consanguinity, prior marriage, parental consent
if under age (21 for men, 18 for women). If the questions are
answered correctly, the clerk must issue a license.
Section 1288 allowed marriages to
be celebrated by any "minister of the gospel"--who
needn't be a resident of the District--"authorized by any
justice of the supreme court of the District of Columbia,"
which was the trial court with general jurisdiction. The 1904
amendment made provision for members of religious societies "which
does not by its custom require the intervention of a minister
for celebration of marriages."
There doesn't seem to have even
been a requirement that the marriage be witnessed by anyone other
than the officiant.
Moreover, if the boy were between
16 and 21 or the girl between 14 and 18, but didn't have parental
consent, they could still get married without a license as long
as they found a "minister of the gospel" (previously
authorized by a justice) who was willing to run the risk of a
$500 fine, imposed by section 1290. (Of course, the minister
was likely to be the only resident of the District who witnessed
the "crime," although even that wasn't necessarily
so.)
Sections 1283 and 1284 specify which
marriages are absolutely void or merely voidable after judicial
decree. Neither includes the absence of a license. Only purported
marriages involving incest or bigamy were absolutely ineffectual.
Marriages could be judicially declared void based only on mental
or physical incapacity (i.e., inability to consent to or consummate
a marriage) or if consent of a party was obtained by fraud. The
fourth paragraph of section 1284 (added in 1902) specifically
declares the age of consent to marriage to be 16 for males and
14 for females, and makes marriages in which one party is under
age voidable at the suit of the party.
Section 1290 is the only section
dealing with the consequence of the absence of a license. It
provided: "No person authorized hereby to celebrate the
rites of marriage shall do so in any case without first having
delivered to him a license therefor addressed to him issued from
the clerk's office ..., under a penalty of not more than five
hundred dollars, in the discretion of the court, to be recovered
upon information in the police court of the District." In
fact, it may have been possible for anyone to "celebrate"
a valid marriage, because section 1289 provides that anyone without
proper authorization under section 1288 was subject merely to
a $500 fine as well. It does not address whether the marriage
so celebrated was or was not otherwise valid.
So, if you wanted to get married
quickly and with a minimum of fuss -- and questions, D.C. was
the place to be.
WILLIAM WRIGHT - Thanks to all of
you who had information about what would have made DC the East
Coast version of Las Vegas, and some additional research confirmed
most of the suggestions you made. Though there were couples from
Pennsylvania and elsewhere, including New York, the majority
of those coming here seemed to be from Virginia; there was even
what the Post called the "Cupid Special," a train from
Richmond that arrived every spring for more than twenty years.
Most women on the train who were identified were under 21, but
there were some exceptions. |