Atheism

Greta Christina writes a list of “nine tips for believers who want to reach out” to atheists: 1: Familiarize yourself with the common myths and misconceptions about atheists – and don’t perpetuate them. 2: Familiarize yourself with what it’s like to be an atheist, both in the U.S. and in the rest of the world. 3: Find common ground. 4: Speak out against anti-atheist bigotry and other forms of religious intolerance. 5: Be inclusive of atheists. 6: Don’t divide and conquer, and don’t try to take away our anger. 8: Do not – repeat, DO NOT – talk about “fundamentalist atheists." 9: Be aware of how religious belief gives you a place of mainstream and privilege.Read her article for the details.

Lest there was any remaining doubt that the 1954 insertion of “under God” into the pledge of allegiance was explicitly religious, the news has covered the death of the Rev. George M. Docherty, a Presbyterian minister from Scotland, noting that it was his sermon heard by President Dwight D. Eisenhower that prompted the change: “I didn’t know that the Pledge of Allegiance was, and he recited it, ‘one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,’” he recalled in an interview with The Associated Press in 2004. “I came from Scotland, where we said ‘God save our gracious queen,’ ‘God save our gracious king.’ Here was the Pledge of Allegiance, and God wasn’t in it at all."He delivered his sermon calling for “under God” to be added to the pledge first in 1952 with little effect, but delivered it again on February 7, 1954, while Eisenhower was in attendance at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington D.C., near the White House. Eisenhower immediately let Congress know he wanted it to happen, and Rep. Charles G. Oakman (R-MI) introduced a bill the very next day to make that addition, which Eisenhower signed into law on Flag Day. Michael Newdow currently has a second lawsuit working its way through the courts to remove “under God” from the pledge on the grounds that Congress’s action was a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. His first lawsuit went to the Supreme Court, where the justices declined to rule on the merits of the argument, and instead reasoned that he lacked standing to bring the suit because he was involved in a custody dispute over his daughter, who was the plaintiff because she was required to recite the pledge in school. That ruling, like Eisenhower’s signing of the original unconstitutional bill, was delivered on Flag Day (in 2004).

The FFRF’s “Imagine No Religion” billboard in Rancho Cucamonga, California, is being removed by General Outdoor Advertising after they received a request to remove it from the city. The city asserts that it requested the removal but did not demand it, and therefore did not violate the First Amendment. The contract no doubt gives General Outdoor the ability to back out of the contract and refund the money in response to controversy. FFRF says the company has agreed to refund the money. The city reports that they received about 90 complaints. Has anyone ever heard of a religious billboard in this country being removed after a government request? UPDATE (November 25, 2008): FFRF plans to sue Rancho Cucamonga for this infringement of its freedom of speech. The city’s Redevelopment Director, Linda Daniels, apparently realizes now that she has done something wrong, and has changed her story: Last Thursday, Redevelopment Director Linda Daniels said a member of her staff had informed the sign company about the 90 complaints the city received regarding the billboard. ...

The latest ApostAZ podcast is now available: Episode 011 Atheism and Feces-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Shyness, Group News,Election Post-Mortem, Email from Shawn of Tough Questions Podcasts, Winter Solstice, Musings on Rhetorical Debate Styles, Ridiculous Marriage Amendment.My comments: Duane Gish was vice president of the Institute for Creation Research. Nice listener email on the FLDS members pretending to be truck stop hookers–I like the listener feedback. Obama opposes same-sex marriage. On proving a negative, please see this and/or this.

Good: Washington joins Oregon in allowing doctor-assisted suicide, South Dakota rejects further abortion limits, Michigan allows medical marijuana and stem cell research, California rejects further abortion limits, Colorado rejects the definition of person as beginning at conception. Bad: California, Arizona, and Florida ban gay marriage with constitutional amendments, Arkansas bans gay couples from adopting children. (Results at CNN.) UPDATE: Ed Brayton notes at Dispatches from the Culture Wars that the California result on gay marriage was evidently due to religious bigotry: In California, exit polls showed that those who attended church regularly voted against marriage equality 83-17%. Those who attended church only occasionally voted for marriage equality 60-40%. Those who do not attend church at all voted for marriage equality 86-14%.The same was true in Arizona, where exit polling found that: Protestants generally supported the measure but that Catholics were fairly evenly divided. Nonreligious voters were solidly against it. … Proposition 102 had slight leads among Whites and among Hispanics. … The youngest voters were split for and against, with support for Proposition 102 increasing among voters in older age groups. Voters age 65 or over were solidly for the amendment.Prop. 102 will ultimately be overturned as the older generation dies off. ...

ApostAZ podcast #10 is out: Episode 010 Atheism and Dogma-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Quiverfull, Innocence, Over-population, Which Came First, Religion or Ignorance? (Some of David’s artwork: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidbessent/), Fear and Dogma, Ignosticism, Priming the Gish Gallop.There’s some discussion of what the legal standards should be for government prevention of abuses by separatist religious groups like Warren Jeffs’ FLDS group. It’s a tough problem, especially when various child protective agencies themselves have a poor reputation and cause harm themselves. In the FLDS case in Texas, the state raided the FLDS compound on the basis of a hoaxed complaint, adult women were taken and held as minors, and the Texas CPS repeatedly misrepresented the facts to try to justify its actions (links are to several of numerous blog posts by economist David Friedman, who blogged the FLDS situation in detail). ...

The Door Christian Fellowship, a creepily cultish Pentecostal Christian sect that’s an offshoot of Aimee Semple McPherson’s Foursquare Gospel Church, is putting on a “hell house” in Chandler. They’re calling it “Hell 101," and, as usual, they are advertising it in a deceptive manner that attempts to hide the fact that it’s religious propaganda. I say “as usual” because not only have they put on such “hell houses” for years around Halloween, they’re also known for advertising events such as Christian rock concerts while conveniently forgetting to mention the “Christian” part. Such deception has long been associated with Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), who was a fraudulent faith healer, alcohol Prohibitionist, and anti-evolutionist who later in life faked her own abduction in order to run off with her lover, Kenneth G. Ormiston, who had been an engineer for her radio station KFSG in Los Angeles. After disappearing for 35 days, she stumbled out of the desert in Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico, just south of the border from Douglas, Arizona, and told a phony story of kidnapping which quickly fell apart when witnesses came forth who had seen her at a resort in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. She ended up dying of an accidental drug overdose from taking too many Seconol sleeping pills, but her Foursquare Gospel Church still exists today with over two million members, mostly outside of the U.S. (Interestingly, as a teenager McPherson was an agnostic who defended evolution in letters to the newspaper.) The Potter’s House, The Door, Victory Chapel, and other Foursquare Gospel spinoff churches are Pentecostal churches that engage in faith healing, speaking in tongues, being slain in the spirit, and other activities of anthropological interest. They can be very hardcore in the pushiness of their evangelism, and engage in cult-like conversion techniques such as separating people from groups they come with, pairing them off with someone of the same approximate age and sex, and bombarding them with rehearsed questions designed to push someone to a conclusion that they need to accept Jesus and join their group. (The Wikipedia page on The Potter’s House describes this particular sect’s origins in Prescott, Arizona in 1970, originally officially affiliated with the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. The Wikipedia biography of its founder, Wayman O. Mitchell, is also of interest. The sect’s origins trace back to Los Angeles, as does the Pentecostal movement in general.) “Hell 101”’s website calls it “Final Destination III,” and describes the hell house as “a twist on a haunted house style attraction that was described by Phoenix Arizona NBC News Affiliate Channel 12 as ‘scary, horrifying, suspenseful, sick….’ NBC 12 News had a live video feed from our annual event where hundreds waited up to two hours in line to have the hell-scared out of them.” Their FAQ has the question “If I quit because I was scared or anything else can I get a refund?” The “anything else” would include feeling defrauded by having paid money for a haunted house, but getting instead Christian propaganda. The answer: “There are no refunds if you get scared, cry, feel angry, get sick, hate it, love it or just want to run!!! Our job is to confront your senses and that we do!" A Christian hell house can be quite entertaining, so long as you know what to expect and are prepared to exercise your right to walk away at the end when the attempts at conversion go into overdrive (they may suggest that the doors are locked and that you may not leave). George Ratliff’s documentary film “Hell House” is a great way to get a preview, and shows some of the unintentional comedy that can be produced when a bunch of ignorant people try to put together a scary haunted house designed to persuade you that you’re going to hell unless you believe the way they do. That documentary also shows how ineffectual some atheists can be in their confrontation of Christians, and I highly recommend that anyone planning to visit one of these hell houses for any reason give it a watch before going. A “hell house” usually follows a common script template which the churches purchase and customize. They go through a writing, casting, and production process similar to a high school stage production. The “hell house” script typically guides a group of visitors through a series of rooms, each of which contains a brief performance by actors portraying some scene that argues for certain practices, beliefs, or actions as likely to terminate with eternity in hell, though that latter point may initially be somewhat subtle. (By the end, it is anything but.) I attended a hell house at a Potter’s House church in Tucson in 1990, from which the flyer image was obtained. (Also see this PDF of an Arizona Daily Star newspaper story about that particular hell house, which got in trouble with the local fire department for fire code violations.) That hell house followed a female character from scene to scene which included a car crash caused by teenage drinking (featuring an actual wrecked car and empty beer cans), a band of demons playing AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” (suggesting that at least some rock music is demonic in origin and consequences), and the ever-popular hanging nun in hell (Catholicism is regarded by this sect as ruled by Satan) and young woman on a stretcher with a pool of blood between her legs shrieking that she’s killed her own baby (the anti-abortion segment). At the end, there’s a high-pressure call to Jesus which provides an opportunity to argue with someone who may be something like a street preacher in their skill of providing pre-programmed responses to common objections they’ve heard many times but is unlikely to have actually thought deeply about. If you do choose to visit one of these, I advise not getting involved in such a discussion if you’re somebody who is likely to blow up, call people stupid, or otherwise lose your cool–that’s just going to be seen as confirming evidence that you’re under the control of the devil and anything you say can be dismissed without consideration. UPDATE (October 31, 2008): New Times has a review of The Door’s “Final Destination III” hell house. ...

Dustin Chalker, stationed at Ft. Riley, Kansas, has filed a lawsuit about being forced to attend Christian proselytization events in the military, including a presentation which claimed that Christianity and creationism give life meaning, while evolution and atheism remove hope. The complaint describes this event, which took place at a U.S. military base in England, delivered by Chaplain Christian Biscotti (!) and was approved by Lt. Gen. Rod Bishop (!) who spoke afterward: Another slide titled “Contrasting Theories of Hope, Ultimate Theories Explaining Our Existence,” has two columns, the first titled “Chance,” and the second “Design,” comparing Charles Darwin, creationism, and religion are also part of a chart comparing the former Soviet Union to the United States, concluding that “Naturalism/Evolution/Atheism” leads to people being “in bondage” and having “no hope,” while theism leads to “People of Freedom” and “People of hope/destiny.” After several more slides like these, the presentation continues with a slide titled “Christian’s Message,” and a slide with an image of a man looking upwards with his hands outstretched and the caption “Please open up both of your hands to receive this powerful tool."This lawsuit, like that of Jeremy Hall, was filed by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Chaplain Biscotti is a real person, currently stationed at the Joint Warfare Centre in Stavanger, Norway. (Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.) UPDATE (October 18, 2008): Jeremy Hall has withdrawn his lawsuit on the grounds that he will soon be out of the military and suspects the case will be dismissed for lack of standing once he’s out. Chalker’s case continues. UPDATE (January 7, 2009): Chalker’s suit has been updated and expanded to add further examples of “the noxiously unconstitutional pattern and practice of fundamentalist Christian oppression” in the military, including the Air Force sponsoring “Team Faith” motocross stunt shows, promoting attempts to convert Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan to Christianity, and the Army’s 2008 manual on suicide prevention, which promotes “religiosity” as a necessary component. ...

ApostAZ podcast #9 is out, and it’s something new and different–atheists Brad and Shannon in conversation and debate with evangelical Christian hip-hop artist Vocab Malone and Omri Miles. Episode 009 Atheism and Evangelism in Phoenix! Go to atheists.meetup.com/157 for group events! What can be euphemistically termed a conversation between two non-believers, an evangelist, and a non-denominational Christian. Guests Vocab Malone and Omri Miles. How long can a civil conversation last? Brad’s brain turns to mush (even more than usual)! Additional info from Susan Jacoby’s History of American Secularism (great book, buy it!)There’s an interesting followup exchange between Vocab and Brad at the Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group forum. The ApostAZ podcast is also now available through iTunes. I’m looking forward to listening to this one, and may add some commentary here and at the Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group forum when I do.

Christina Caldwell has written a thoughtful and positive piece on the FFRF billboards in Phoenix for Arizona State University’s student newspaper online.