Atheists Only's topics - tribe.net

C Street House No Longer Tax Exempt

Rocky — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:56:03 GMT

This is awesome news!!!

C Street House No Longer Tax Exempt

"Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a loophole that had allowed the house's owners to avoid paying property taxes.

Previously, the house -- despite being home to numerous lawmakers -- had been tax exempt, because it was classified as a church. That arrangement had allowed the building's owner, the secretive international Christian organization The Family, to charge significantly below market rents to its residents. In recent year, Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all reportedly called C Street home.

Natalie Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Office of Tax and Revenue for Washington D.C., told TPMmuckraker that her office inspected the house this summer. "It was determined that portions of it were being rented out for private residential purposes," she said. As a result, the tax exempt status was partially revoked. Sixty-six percent of the value of the property is now subject to taxation. ...."

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/c_street_house_no_longer_tax_exempt.php

* Join the "Separation of church and state" tribe
http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

* Join the "Solar Mythology ~ Astrotheology" tribe
http://tribes.tribe.net/solarmythologynastrotheology

;

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Atheist harshly discriminated.

Tedster — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:59:46 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-tkQ75_Fc0&feature=rec-HM-r2

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

Belief and the Brain study by Sam Harris

Rocky — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 16:37:48 GMT

Belief and the Brain study by Sam Harris

Belief and the Brain
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007272

Fact Impact
"New study of the brain shows that facts and beliefs are processed in exactly the same way."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/216551

I thought the last two paragraphs had particular significance:

"Harris proves what is self-evident from observing countless faith-versus-reason debates: each side believes firmly in its own truth claims; each side believes that the other's truth claims are absurd. If Harris is saying that Christians and atheists regard their beliefs the same way they regard uncontested facts ("tables and chairs"), it's no wonder that few conceptual bridges are ever built or crossed. (He even noted, with asterisks as to its significance, what he called the "blasphemy reaction": that when atheists disagreed with a Christian belief, or when Christians affirmed one, their pleasure centers lit up—proof that the combatants in the faith-versus-reason wars really do enjoy the fight, equally.)

But for those of us who yearn for resolution, Harris's experiments offer a glimmer of hope. While the brains of believers and nonbelievers do not differentiate between beliefs about God and about mathematics, the believers themselves do, a little. Participants retrieved their religious beliefs and their historical facts from the same place and in the same way, but they showed less certainty when thinking about the religious statements. It took them a little longer to push the button, and a part of the brain having to do with uncertainty, or cognitive dissonance, lit up. If even the strongest believers are a little unsure about God, and the strongest atheists are a teeny bit anxious that they might be wrong, there's room, perhaps, for one person to begin to try to imagine the world view of another, no matter what the brain sees as true. "

I thought this was really interesting. The study makes sense to me because in my own experience the theist vs. atheist debate really does seem endless. Common sense, facts & evidence that actually exist seem to have no effect. That's why I think the mythicist position may do well as a bridge between theism vs. atheism.

What is a Mythicist?
http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/mythicist.html

I'm also reminded of this study which is NOT the same:

God on the Brain
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbrain.shtml

* Join the "Solar Mythology ~ Astrotheology" tribe
http://tribes.tribe.net/solarmythologynastrotheology

* Join the "Separation of church and state" tribe
http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

;

posted in Atheists Only - 2 replies

Whack-assed membership request

patti — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:10:01 GMT

I approve almost all membership requests for this tribe. This one didn't make it through, though. I wonder why. http://whipartist.livejournal.com/655544.html

posted in Atheists Only - 5 replies

Secular Coalition Opposes Amendments to Baucus' Health Care Reform bill

Rocky — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:01:47 GMT

Secular Coalition Opposes Amendments to Baucus' Health Care Reform bill

September 22nd- The Secular Coalition for America is actively lobbying in opposition to two amendments proposed to the Senate Finance Committee's health care reform bill which will be voted on this week.

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) has submitted an amendment requesting that funding for Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage be restored. Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) has submitted an amendment to ensure that conscience protections are applied in the healthcare reform bill. Both of these amendments privilege religious values over patients' and students’ rights to ethical treatment and medically-accurate information.

The letter to the members of the Senate Finance Committee that details why the Secular Coalition opposes these amendments is below.

September 22, 2009

Hon. Senator
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Senator,

On behalf of the Secular Coalition for America and the thousands of nontheistic Americans who support our organization, I write to urge you to vote against two amendments to the Senate Finance health care reform bill that will be offered in committee this week.

Senator Orrin Hatch has submitted amendment #C10 requesting that funding for Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage be restored. Senator Michael Enzi has submitted amendment #C15 to ensure that conscience protections are applied in the healthcare reform bill. Please oppose these two amendments. Both of these amendments privilege religious values over patients and students’ rights to ethical treatment and medically-accurate information.

Congress has already provided $ 1.5 billion for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs since 1996 despite the fact that there is no evidence that abstinence-only programs have been effective in stopping or even delaying teen sex. Numerous studies, including a 10-year government funded evaluation of the Title V abstinence-only program, found that these programs do not delay sexual initiation and have no beneficial impact on young people’s sexual behavior. Please oppose Hatch Amendment #C10.

The Enzi Amendment inappropriately places the religious beliefs of medical professionals above the medical needs of their patients, and undermines patients’ access to contraception, end-of-life care, HIV care, and any other care to which a health care provider may object. In addition, this amendment would allow health care providers and entities to withhold information from patients about their health care status and their treatment options in violation of informed consent and ethical standards.

Medical professionals (whether they are doctors, pharmacists, technicians, or emergency medical technicians) are employed in the field of medicine, not spirituality. They have the right to consider their own religious beliefs in determining what medical decisions they make for their own care, but their personal religion should never infringe on the right of a patient to seek products or procedures that they have a legal right to obtain. Moreover, health care workers or volunteers who have responsibilities for federally funded research or other programs should never undermine a program for which they work because they have religious objections to the program. Please oppose Enzi Amendment #C15.

Please maintain your strong church-state record by opposing these amendments.

Sincerely,

Sasha Bartolf
Legislative Director

http://www.secular.org/news/Senate_finance_healthcare090921.html

* Join the Separation of Church and State tribe
http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

;

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Bible scholar takes Jesus mythicist position

Rocky — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:20:31 GMT

Bible scholar takes Jesus mythicist position

Here's an article about Dr. Robert Eisenman, a well-known Bible scholar, who has summarized 'The Christ Conspiracy' in the Huffington Post.

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-17009-Freethought-Examiner~y2009m9d14-The-Christ-Conspiracy-in-the-Huffington-Post?#commentswww.yahoo.com

So here's a biblical scholar acknowledging that Jesus is a myth i.e. the Mythicist Position.

* What is a Mythicist?
http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/mythicist.html

;

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Freethought Examiner Articles

Rocky — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:13:52 GMT

Freethought Examiner Articles

http://www.examiner.com/x-17009-Freethought-Examiner

;

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Freethought Gear

Rocky — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:08:35 GMT

Here's some pretty cool T-shirts, hats, mugs etc.

Freethought Gear

http://www.cafepress.com/freethoughtgear

;

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Obama's Supreme Court Nominee Why not a Freethinker?

Rocky — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:22:24 GMT

Obama's Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor

Bio - http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=2243

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Sotomayor#Abortion

The New Republic
The Case Against Sotomayor by Jeffrey Rosen
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=45d56e6f-f497-4b19-9c63-04e10199a085

So she's certainly qualified but she's another Catholic (she would be the 6th Catholic), so she's totally against abortion but where is she on ILLEGAL immigration, amnesty and religion?

Why do we need another Catholic - why not a Freethinker? We haven't had a Freethinker on the Supreme Court since 1877.

Justice Affiliation
John Roberts (Chief Justice) Catholic
Stephen G. Breyer Jewish
Ruth Bader Ginsburg Jewish
Anthony M. Kennedy Catholic
Antonin Scalia Catholic
David H. Souter Episcopalian
John Paul Stevens Protestant
Clarence Thomas Catholic
Samuel Alito Catholic

http://www.adherents.com/adh_sc.html

The Supreme Court needs an atheist
http://www.examiner.com/x-8928-Philadelphia-Atheism-Examiner~y2009m5d1-The-Supreme-Court-needs-an-atheist

Religious Affiliation of the U.S. Supreme Court

In the chart at the bottom about half way down:

"David Davis, Ill. 1862-1877 14 Md. 1815 1886 Not a member of any church"

http://www.adherents.com/adh_sc.html

Join the "Separation of church and state" tribe - http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

;

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Double-Crossed by the Bishop

Rocky — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:14:15 GMT

Double-Crossed by the Bishop

On March 4th 2009, Acharya S (D.M. Murdock) was a guest on "The Sacred Division" radio show, hosted by Bishop James Long. She was asked by them to be on the show to discuss her new book titled "Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection" and they told her that they had 1.2 million listeners. She wasn't feeling well but she did the show anyway.

However, it soon became clear that Bishop Long had another agenda. Here are a couple excerpts spliced together in a short youtube video. One is towards the beginning of the show around 10 minutes into the show & the other starting at 5:15 on the youtube version is from around 1 hour into the full version show - where the Bishop gets pissed-off and disrespectfully hangs up on the guest and continues to insult her after he hangs up on her. Later, he incites hatred and violence against the makers of Zeitgeist and all those who had any part in it.

You can listen to the full version by clicking on the link in the information box on the right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP3g66IdSVQ

"Acharya on The Sacred Division" - blog
http://spacemanjupiter.blogspot.com

http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/christinegypt.html

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

David Mills author of "Atheist Universe"

Rocky — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:29:20 GMT

Best-selling author David Mills of "Atheist Universe" has recently written a review of D.M. Murdock's book titled "Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ." Folks here may appreciate his review:

Here are a few of his comments:

"Ms. Murdock is one of only a tiny number of scholars with the richly diverse academic background (and the necessary courage) to adequately address the question of whether Jesus Christ truly existed as a walking-talking figure in first-century Palestine. This question, and many others related to New Testament reliability, are directly confronted and satisfyingly answered in 'Who Was Jesus?' I loved this book. It is absolutely superb in every way, from the eloquence of the writing to the integrity of the scholarship. This book should be required reading in every American classroom....

"My personal recommendation is that 'Who Was Jesus?' should be the first book purchased and studied by anyone, atheist or true believer, who wants to debate Jesus' existence and the Bible's veracity.... You should therefore make this book priority reading even over 'The God Delusion,' 'God is Not Great' and other excellent but, in my opinion, less important books than Murdock's....

"To summarize: D.M. Murdock's 'Who Was Jesus? Fingerprints of The Christ' is unquestionably one of the finest and most enjoyable books I've ever read."

Check out the full review here -
http://stellarhousepublishing.com/david-mills-wwj.html

and here http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/whowasjesus1.html

Here is Davids website - http://davidmills.net

posted in Atheists Only - 5 replies

UN "Blasphemy Resolution"

Rocky — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 06:16:31 GMT

UN "Blasphemy Resolution"

UN Sets Dangerous Precedent with "Defamation of Religions" Resolutions

February 13,2009

"The basic human right to freedom of expression is increasingly under threat as countries introduce and enforce laws that have been wrongfully legitimized by numerous United Nations resolutions on "defamation of religions." In a statement sent to the UN Human Rights Council today, Freedom House and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty strongly urged members of the council to reject any further resolutions when they meet in Geneva for the upcoming 10th Session March 2-27, and to further reject any attempts to create international instruments or mechanisms that would prohibit "defamation of religions."

The statement explains how such resolutions directly violate international law and can encourage countries to increase the repression of religious minorities, political dissidents and human rights advocates. It points to a 2008 joint report by two UN special rapporteurs that soundly rejects the premise that the rights of religious believers are violated by merely hearing statements critical of their faith: "Defamation of religions may offend people and hurt their religious feelings but it does not necessarily or at least directly result in a violation of their rights."

Several recent high-profile cases have highlighted the growing conflict between freedom of expression and so-called religious "defamation." This month, Indian authorities arrested the editor and the publisher of the Statesman, after Muslims protested the newspaper reprinting an article from the United Kingdom's Independent titled, "Why should I respect these oppressive religions?" The article decried the erosion of the right to criticize religions, including Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

In another case, Random House backed out of a deal last year to publish "The Jewel of Medina," a fictional novel about one of the wives of Muhammad citing concerns that "the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community" and that it could "incite acts of violence." In September, Gibson Books announced it would publish the book in the United Kingdom, but the publisher's home and office were fire bombed three weeks later. The book was eventually published in the United States by Beaufort Books.

"Although we are sympathetic to the stated goals of the resolutions of combating intolerance, racism, and religious hatred, we believe that such resolutions do not serve to achieve these goals but rather limit the ability of individuals to raise questions, concerns, and even criticisms at a time when people of all faiths need to engage in more, not less, dialogue," said Freedom House and the Becket Fund.

The full text of the statement follows:

Concern over UN Resolutions on "Combating Defamation of Religions"

1. On the occasion of the 10th Session of the Human Rights Council, Freedom House and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty express concern over the resolutions on "combating defamation of religions" adopted by the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly since 1999[1]. We urge members of the Council to reject such resolutions in the future and further urge them to reject attempts to create international instruments or mechanisms that would prohibit "defamation of religions."

2. Although we are sympathetic to the stated goals of the resolutions of combating intolerance, racism, and religious hatred, we believe that such resolutions do not serve to achieve these goals but rather limit the ability of individuals to raise questions, concerns, and even criticisms at a time when people of all faiths need to engage in more, not less, dialogue. Moreover, we believe these resolutions directly violate existing international law regarding the fundamental freedoms of expression, thought, conscience and religion.

3. In particular, the resolutions should be rejected on the grounds that 1) the term "defamation of religions" is overly vague, open to abuse, and inconsistent with traditional defamation legislation; 2) the resolutions attempt to provide rights to a belief or idea rather than an individual or group of individuals in contradiction of existing international law; 3) the concept of "defamation of religions" restricts freedom of expression beyond accepted limitations defined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; 4) the concept of "defamation of religions" violates the universal right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; and 5) the concept of "defamation of religions" falsely equates religious belief with race.

Problems with the definition of "defamation of religions"

4. The term "defamation of religions" has not been clearly defined and is therefore subject to misuse and abuse. The legal term "defamation" is typically defined as the spreading of mistruths intended to harm an individual's reputation and livelihood. However, by attempting to apply such a definition to ideas or religious beliefs, which by their very nature conflict with opposing ideas or religious beliefs, it is impossible to evaluate whether ideas or religious beliefs represent truths or mistruths. As was noted in the Becket Fund's "Issues Brief for the OHCHR" of June 2008, "religions make conflicting truth claims and indeed the diversity of truth claims is something that religious freedom as a concept is designed to protect."[2] Thus, the concept of "defamation of religions" can be defined as the expression of ideas or beliefs that simply conflict with or offend the ideas of others.

5. Further, because the resolutions call on States to enact necessary legislation to prohibit the advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred, it would be left up to governments to define whether ideas expressed are offensive or, in the language of the resolution, "defame" a religious belief. Governments would thus be forced to pick and choose among competing faith claims.

6. In countries with domestic laws that use equally vague or poorly defined language to restrict individuals from "defaming" or "defiling" religions, the government often "picks" the majority religion over minority religions. These laws are frequently applied to punish individuals from expressing questions, concerns and criticisms of the majority religion.[3] The application of similar legal mechanisms at the international level would not only legitimate such existing problematic domestic legislation, but would result in a greater proliferation of such legislation to other countries.
Problems with providing rights to a belief or idea rather than individuals

7. International law regarding freedom of religion and expression, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), has been established to protect individuals and in some case groups of individuals from the violation of their rights. Thus, Articles 18 of both the UDHR and the ICCPR states, "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion." (Emphasis added.) Articles 19 of both documents define the right of "everyone" to freedom of opinion and expression free from interference. (Emphasis added.)

8. These documents lay out the right of individuals to hold and express beliefs and ideas and are designed to protect them from discrimination based on their beliefs. However, these documents are not intended to protect the beliefs themselves from criticism or even attack.

9. As the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief together with the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance wrote in a joint report presented at a special seminar on this topic held by the OHCHR in October, 2008.

"Defamation of religions may offend people and hurt their religious feelings but it does not necessarily or at least directly result in a violation of their rights, including their right to freedom of religion. Freedom of religion primarily confers a right to act in accordance with one's religion but does not bestow a right for believers to have their religion itself protected from all adverse comment."[4]

Violations of freedom of expression

10. Article 19 of the ICCPR states that, "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice."

11. The right to free expression and the right to impart information and ideas of all kinds is not intended to be absolute, but rather is restricted by Article 20 of the ICCPR, which calls on signatories to create law prohibiting the "advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence." While this language of the ICCPR is itself overly vague and could be better defined, it is our belief that the term "defamation"-because it can be interpreted so broadly-does not necessarily cross the line of inciting discrimination, hostility or violence.

12. In other words, because the definition of "defamation" can be interpreted to include ideas or beliefs that simply conflict with or offend the ideas of others, the term oversteps the restrictions on free expression laid out in international law and places unnecessary and dangerous restrictions on the ability of individuals to freely express conflicting beliefs or to address disagreements through peaceful public debate. Such restrictions will have the opposite effect of increasing religious intolerance and hatred than what the resolutions on "combating defamation of religions" are purportedly designed to combat.

Violations of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion

13. Article 18 of the ICCPR protects not only the freedom to have or adopt a particular religion or belief, but also protects an individual's freedom to manifest his religion or belief.[5] As stated in General Comment No. 22, the freedom to manifest religion includes the sharing of beliefs, thoughts, and ideas.[6] It is this right to manifest belief that allows for inter-religious dialogue efforts to occur within the walls of the UN and around the world. Initiatives like the UN's Alliance of Civilizations[7] and the Saudi Culture of Peace initiative rely upon the free exchange of ideas and beliefs. Yet such initiatives are in direct contradiction to the concept of "defamation of religions."

Conflation of Race and Religion

14. The conflation of race and religion diminishes the uniqueness of both race and religion. Unlike immutable race, religion involves the freedom to follow one's conscience, and implies dialogue and debate with others about the truth claims involved. Treating racial and religious discrimination as the same thing thus confuses racist hate speech with debate about (sometimes controversial) competing truth claims. Whereas one can easily identify and narrowly define racist hate speech, it is not nearly so simple to define what falls into the category of "defamation of religion," which as currently characterized can include any controversial truth claim about someone's religion. Race-based speech restrictions have never been used to cut off discussion about racial identity, whereas the "defamation of religion" measures by definition prohibit controversial discussion of religious belief.

Notes:

1. Commission on Human Rights Res. 1999/82, 2000/84, 2001/4, 2002/9, 2003/4, 2004/6, 2005/3; Human Rights Council Res. 4/9, 7/19; General Assembly Res. 60/150, 61/164, 62/154, 63/3.

2. "Combating Defamation of Religions," Becket Fund for Religious Liberty Issues Brief, p. 5 (submitted June 2, 2008).

3. In Egypt, bloggers, such as Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, have been arrested for posting criticisms of Islam. In Pakistan, defiling Islam is punishable by death and insulting another's religious feelings can result in a ten-year prison sentence. In Saudi Arabia, all Saudis are required by law to be Muslim. Source: Freedom in the World 2008, Freedom House (2008).
In Russia, television stations of have been sued for blasphemous content in the popular television show "South Park." Source: "Russian prosecutors in bid to ban South Park" The Times, September 8, 2008. Available at
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4704089.ece (February 1, 2009).

4. Asma Jahangir, Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion and belief and Doudou Diene, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, "Conference Room Paper #4," presented at the Expert seminar on the links between articles 19 and 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR): Freedom of expression and advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (October 2-3, 2008).

5. ICCPR Article 18: "Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching."

6. CCPR General Comment 22: 30/07/93 on ICCPR Article 18: "The freedom to manifest religion or belief may be exercised 'either individually or in community with others and in public or private'. The freedom to manifest religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching encompasses a broad range of acts."

7. http://www.unaoc.org/content/view/63/79/lang,english/

http://newsblaze.com/story/20090213150511zzzz.nb/topstory.html

U.N. Anti-Blasphemy Resolution Curtails Free Speech, Critics Say http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,432502,00.html

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Church-State Separation Victory

Rocky — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:11:16 GMT

Church-State Separation Victory

The Secular Coalition Thanks the Senate for Upholding Church-State Separation

February 6, 2009

"While the 111th Congress has only been in session for a month, the Secular Coalition for America and its allies won the first battle to protect church-state separation when an amendment by Religious Right favorite, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, was defeated yesterday.

On February 5th, the U.S. Senate voted down (43-54) an amendment that would have stripped important church-state constitutional protections in the economic stimulus package. DeMint's amendment would have allowed taxpayer funds to be used for construction and building rehabilitation for religious facilities at private religious institutions, including divinity schools.

"Yesterday's vote is a reminder that the Religious Right has no plans of giving up trying to use the federal government, and our tax dollars, to promote their religious beliefs," said Ron Millar, acting director of the Secular Coalition for America.

This is the first time the Senate has had a direct vote on a church-state issue of this nature in several years and the Secular Coalition is thrilled that 54 Senators opposed permitting federal funds to go towards religious schools and institutions."

http://www.secular.org/news/demint_amdt_02_6_2009.html

* Join the "Separation of church and state" tribe
http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

;

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

Norway criminalizes blasphemy

Rocky — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:55:41 GMT

"The Norwegian parliament has amended the Penal Code to criminalize blasphemy in the wake of the republication of Danish cartoons that lampooned Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) by a Norwegian magazine, Christian and Muslim leaders in Norway said on Tuesday..."

Norway criminalizes blasphemy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5pI-y2t1BM

Norway Criminalizes Blasphemy
http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/26014/norway-criminalizes-blasphemy.html

;

posted in Atheists Only - 6 replies

Help Support Geert Wilders Civil Rights

Rocky — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 02:31:15 GMT

Dutch MP refused entry to Britain
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7885918.stm?lss

"Lord Ahmed's comment: When Lord Ahmed recently threatened to advance to Westminster with 10,000 Muslims, the number was not “just” a number. In fact he referred to the advance of Mohammed in 630 to Mecca with 10,000 followers, and with whom he conquered that stubborn city once and for all. And what’s more, this encouraged them to conquer the rest Arabian Peninsula and beyond as well."

"A Muslim lord, Nazir Ahmed, and other Muslim leaders had vigorously protested Wilders’ visit, causing an initial invitation to be rescinded. It was reported that Ahmed had even threatened to mobilize 10,000 fellow Muslims to block Wilders from entering Westminster..."

"...What disturbs Wilders supporters even more is the hypocrisy surrounding the Dutch filmmaker’s expulsion. In the past, Great Britain has allowed in true preachers of hate like Muslim Brotherhood personage Yusuf al-Qaradawi, invited by London mayor Ken Livingstone in 2004. Al-Qaradawi has justified suicide bombings and condoned the killing of Israeli women and children because they are “militarised.” A more recent example is Ibrahim Moussawi, who was allowed to enter England last November despite his describing suicide bombers as martyrs and his having broadcast a 30-part series on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion on the television station he heads."

A Chamberlain Moment
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=F4BF2126-0D78-48E0-B463-5F7D645E19B6

"Re Lord Ahmed's comment: When Lord Ahmed recently threatened to advance to Westminster with 10,000 Muslims, the number was not “just” a number. In fact, he referred to the advance of Mohammed in 630 to Mecca with 10,000 followers, and with whom he conquered that stubborn city once and for all. And what’s more, this encouraged them to conquer the rest Arabian Peninsula and beyond as well."

Help Support Geert Wilders Civil Rights
http://www.geertwilders.nl/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

Geert Wilders's "Fitna: The Movie" A Review
http://truthbeknown.com/fitnareview.html

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

"Praise Darwin" Billboards going up in the US

Rocky — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:07:18 GMT

"Praise Darwin" Billboards going up in the US

"City of Whitehall, Ohio, Won't "Praise Darwin" . . . So FFRF Billboard Will

Billboard counters mayor calling U.S. "a Christian nation," and dismissing state/church violations because the critics are" atheists, antagonists and a minority."

Feb. 9, 2009

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, which has been tangling with Whitehall Mayor John Wolfe over the city's unlawful Christian display every December, is fighting back with a billboard!

The City of Whitehall refused to adopt a proclamation for Darwin Day, Feb. 12, in honor of the historic bicentennial celebration of Charles Darwin's birth. So the national state/church watchdog has posted a billboard in Whitehall reading "Praise Darwin: Evolve Beyond Belief."

Bearing Darwin's iconic image, the billboard message will be up at East Main and Fountain Lane in Whitehall, a suburb of Columbus, by Feb. 11.

The Foundation, the nation's largest association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics), has 13,600 members nationwide, and 300 members in Ohio. On behalf of its Ohio members, the Foundation has complained about nativity scenes at Malabar State Farm and Shawnee State Park, as well as city-sponsored endorsements of Christianity every December, including a violation in Whitehall. Read FFRF letter of complaint.

"We were so shocked and offended at the statement by Whitehall Mayor John Wolfe to CBNS-TV Channel 10 saying, "We are a Christian nation," and dismissing a constitutional violation because: 'They're atheists, they're antagonists and they're a minority,' " said Foundation co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor.

"Can you imagine him dismissing charges of racial discrimination by the city because, 'They're blacks, they're antagonists and they're a minority'? Or, 'They're Jews, they're antagonists, and they're a minority'? The mayor's intolerant remarks prove the harm of uniting religion and government, which invariably invites persecution of dissenters."

"The Darwin billboard in part recognizes the enduring and scientific accomplishments of a brilliant man," notes David Russell, an area state/church separation activist who first complained about Whitehall's nativity display.

"Darwin not only researched extensively how life evolved through succession, but his work helped shape the modern interpretation of evolutionary theory. He almost single-handedly took the world from blind faith of unproven dogma to an enduring theory that has withstood 150 years of scrutiny.

"The placement of the billboard in Whitehall is especially appropriate since some members of Whitehall city government seem intent on mixing religion and government. The large Christian-only display on the steps of city hall each December serves to remind us that we must be ever-vigilant of the unfortunate mixing of religion and government. Neither is served when religion is given special treatment," Russell added.

The Foundation would like to hear from any resident of Whitehall, or anyone who regularly does business at Whitehall City Hall, who is offended by the annual display of a nativity scene by the entrance of city hall, and wishes to pursue a legal remedy. Such individuals may contact the Foundation at info@ffrf.org.

The Foundation also placed billboards "praising Darwin" this month in Dayton, Tenn., and Dover, Penn., sites of the historic classroom battles over the teaching of evolution, as well as in Madison, Wis., the Foundation's headquarters. This week it has just placed a "Praise Darwin" billboard in Grand Junction, Colo., where local officials also refused to declare a day to honor Darwin.

"Charles Darwin gets such a bad rap in America, and we want to counter that. It's an intellectual stain on our nation that more than half of all Americans reject evolution," said Gaylor. "The Darwin bicentennial is a chance to move our nation forward, to return to the Enlightenment, and give credit where it is due."

The year 2009 also marks the 150th anniversary of the release of Origin of Species, Darwin's seminal work on evolution.

"The double anniversaries of these historic dates make 2009 a blockbuster year for promoting reason and science," adds Foundation co-president Dan Barker, author of Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis., is a national association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics) that has been working since 1978 to keep church and state separate."

http://www.ffrf.org/news/2009/darwin_whitehall.php

* Join the "Separation of church and state" tribe
http://separationofchurchstate.tribe.net

;

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

An interview with Prof. John Rush, author of the new book Failed God, which argues John Allegro's The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross was correct.

Jan_Irvin — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 05:17:24 GMT

Podcast #002 An interview with Prof. John Rush, author of the new book Failed God, which argues John Allegro's The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross was correct.
http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com/

Today I interview Professor John Rush regarding his new book Failed God: Fractured Myth in a Fragile World. This is the first academic book since the publication of John Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970) that argues Allegro was correct - and provides ample support for the mushroom foundations of Judeo-Christianity. This is a very interesting interview, so don’t miss it! John Rush is Professor Anthropology, Sierra College, Rocklin, California. He teaches Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion, Physical Anthropology, and Physical Anthropology Lab. He’s Naturopathic Doctor and Medical Hypnotherapist in Private Practice. His specialty areas of study are Human Communication, Systems Theory, and Symbolism; Cults (He participated in a cult for three years – asked to leave); Tattooing and Scarification (He’s gone through 400 hours of tattooing); Herbs both medicinal and hallucinogens (He maintains a large herb garden full of legal magical herbs.); Clinical Anthropology – the use of anthropological concepts/models in clinical settings. His books include: Witchcraft and Sorcery: An Anthropological Perspective of the Occult, 1974; The Way We Communicate, 1976; Clinical Anthropology, 1996; Stress and Emotional Health, 1999; Spiritual Tattoo, 2005; The Twelve Gates, 2007; Failed God, 2008.

http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com/enclosure/2008-10-28T14_02_00-07_00.mp3

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Idiot Christian in my inbox

patti — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 10:24:17 GMT

I just had someone attempt to join the Tribe not because he wanted to be a member, but rather so that he could use the text of the request to preach to me.

I find this sad, but also profoundly disrespectful. I'm certainly not above discussing and debating religion, but I'm not about to lecture someone who believes differently than I do. To do so would be an insult to them and their beliefs.

posted in Atheists Only - 6 replies

Afghanistan: Atheist Sentenced to Death for Blasphemy

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 13:47:53 GMT

Declare Your Strong Support for Immediate Release of Young Afghan Journalist Parwiz Kambakhsh

http://www.rawa.org/events/parwiz_e.htm

Parwiz Kambakhsh
Galileos are still being interrogated in the disastrous courts of ignorance
Young Galileos are crying
Oh You! Darkness lovers:
We will not be frightened of burns and fires
We are the everlasting flames of history

Sirus Tabristani, an Iranian Poet

The criminals who are in power in Afghanistan have imprisoned Parwiz Kambakhsh, a young journalist, since October 2007 in Balkh province - Northern Afghanistan. He is threatened to be hanged by the dark-minded and ignorant judges in the medieval courts of Afghanistan. The accusations are so ridiculous and injudicious that they make any freedom-loving person want to stand and say enough is enough. Mr. Kambakhsh is accused of printing/distributing an article from the Internet, which points out controversial verses of the Quran regarding women’s rights. The book “Religion in the History of Civilization” (by Will Durant) taken from his living room has been kept as an evidence against him in the court!

In a country where for the last six years there are many claims regarding “democracy”, “human rights”, and “freedom of press”, the religious fascists have their grip on justice and try every possible way to mute anyone who criticizes or comments about the Northern Alliance criminals.

Imprisonment of Parwiz Kambakhsh is not only for his enlightening articles in a local newspaper, Jahan-e-Now (The New World), but also because of his brother Yaqub Ibrahimi, who is a well-known, brave and realistic reporter and exposed many criminal faces from Jehadi mafia in Northern Afghanistan to the world public.

The Jehadi criminals, who could not silence Ibrahimi, now try to pursue a traitorous agenda by unlawfully imprisoning his brother in order to hush him.

The Religious Scholars Council of Balkh province who have never condemned the criminal acts of the fundamentalist warlords in the north, now disgracefully issued a verdict for the execution of Parwiz Kambakhsh.

Above everything, the shocking detention of Mr. Kambakhsh is a great disgrace for Mr. Karzai and his Western patrons who decorated the notorious criminals in pants and ties and brought them in power under the guise of “democrats”. Now Mr. Karzai says he is not as powerful to control them.

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) kindly asks all freedom-loving individuals and organizations who believe in human rights and democracy to stand up against the unjust imprisonment of Parwiz Kambakhsh, and ask for his immediate release. Only your strong support for justice and freedom can stop the mediaeval acts of the Afghan government and its allies, which are in the style of the brutal Iranian regime.

Please email your protest letters to:

Presidential Office:
president@afghanistangov.org

United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA)
spokesman-unama@un.org

The Supreme Court of Afghanistan
aquddus@supremecourt.gov.af

You may also send protest letters to Afghan embassy in your country.

Here is an additional article from the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/world/middleeast/24afghan.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

Quotes by famous people or famous quotes

liabear1 — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:56:32 GMT

Homer (Simpson)While watching a meteor shower, "I wish god were alive to see this."

posted in Atheists Only - 6 replies

Any active member want to be the mod here?

cortelyou — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:24:14 GMT

I'm not on tribe.net as much as I used to be. If you are actively visiting the site daily and want to moderate please post your desire here. Everyone can vote here for people that have nominated themselves.

Obviously this isn't a difficult tribe to moderate. The main responsibility for a moderator here is to vet any new people that are asking to join. And by vet, I mean check their profile for signs they might be a troll.

Thanks.

-Jon

posted in Atheists Only - 4 replies

A new tribe dedicated to humor

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 15:28:16 GMT

This tribe is dedicated to comedy. Whether just good humor, funny statements, jokes, video clips, audio tracks, people who like to laugh, adult jokes, humorous moments in life(Even if they didn't seem that way, at that moment), funny shows, books and movies, etc.
I have been finding, entirely too much seriousness on tribe.net, so..... I created a place for people to come laugh, share humor and relax after a stressful day, night, a nap, lol.
Personally, I am tiring of all the "deep thoughts", argument tribes and tribes that don't follow their main purpose.
Life's too short to spend dedicated to battling.
Life is never too short, for a good laugh.
http://tribes.tribe.net/laughingwithlife

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Spare the life of Afghani atheist

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:23:56 GMT

[please excuse duplicate postings; please circulate widely]

----------

INTERNATIONAL APPEAL

- Spare the life of journalist Parviz Kambakhsh!
- Free him immediately!

We hold the governments of the NATO occupying troops responsible for his life.

Parviz Kambakhsh, a 23-year-old Afghani student has just been sentenced to death after three months of detention under terrible conditions in the state security's detention centre in Marzar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan.

Now in his third year of a journalism course at Balkh University in Mazar-e-Sharif, Parviz Kambakhsh also works as a journalist for the newspaper Jahan-e Naw.

The young journalist was thrown into prison after being characterised as an atheist and an opponent of the regime by the NDS, the Karzai regime's security service. He is also accused of having printed atheist articles off the internet and distributed them among his classmates.

Kambakhsh was tortured continuously during his detention, both physically and mentally, and even threatened with death if he did not admit to the charges leveled against him.

He has not had access to a lawyer. He has not been allowed to see members of his family or friends.

The death sentence was delivered in his absence and in secret by Balkh Province Attorney General Hafizullah Khaliqyar and by the court in Marzar-e-Sharif.

In 2001, when the war started with the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan under the aegis of NATO, the occupying troops from the United States, France, Italy and Germany talked about re-establishing democracy and democratic rights and freedoms.

The Karzai regime that was put in place by the occupying forces has reintroduced Sharia law as the basic law of the land, with the support of all the states participating in the occupation and the war.
It is precisely in the name of the Sharia law that the young journalist Parviz Kambakhsh has been sentenced to death for circulating documents downloaded from the internet.

We, the undersigned journalists and defenders of human rights and fundamental freedoms, call on the Karzai government, NATO and the occupying forces from the United States, France, Italy and Germany, to say:

- Spare the life of journalist Parviz Kambakhsh!
- Free him immediately!
- We hold the governments of the NATO occupying troops responsible for his life.

* * *

Appeal initiated by:

Tristan MALLE General Secretary, on behalf of the General Union of Journalists, Force Ouvrière (France), and Jean Pierre BARROIS Senior Lecturer, University of Paris 12

- Spare the life of journalist Parviz Kambakhsh!
- Free him immediately!

* * * * * * * * * *

ENDORSEMENT COUPON

[ ] I endorse this appeal to spare the life of Parviz Kambakhsh!

NAME:

ORG/UNION/TITLE (list if for id. only):

CITY:

COUNTRY:

EMAIL:

Please fill out and return to
e-mail : <j-p.barrois@wanadoo.fr> with a copy to <ilcinfo@earthlink.net>
Postal Address: Syndicat Général Des journalistes Force Ouvrière, 131 rue Damrémont, 75018 Paris France

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Art

captainstorm — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:29:20 GMT

I posted a piece of art I just finished that you all might appreciate. Its in the photo area.

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

No to Bible Thumping Ron Paul, How We Can Really End the War

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 07:23:07 GMT

"I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want, and get it." Socialist Anti-war Candidate Eugene Debs (who garnered nearly a million votes while he sat in prison for opposition to U.S. involvement in World War One).

"Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action" wrote Ron Paul, who voted against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in Congress, the act that gave Blacks the right to vote, quote from his “Ron Paul Newsletter”.

No to NYC Indymedia Censorship, How We Can Really End the War

By STEVEN ARGUE

Claiming that only an alliance with Ron Paul conservatives can end the war, New York City Indymedia volunteers have allowed blatant slander against Liberation News and have censored attempts to respond to those lies. Among the slanders posted were accusations that Liberation News is opposed to Ron Paul because we support Hillary Clinton and her healthcare program. I tried posting the following response, but it was censored on the site:

Ron Paul supporter: “it's pointed out that yes Ron Paul is a racist but Stevies candidate Hillary is even worse.”

Steven Argue: “I don’t support Hillary Clinton. Never have, but you don’t listen. This is pure slander.”

They then repeat their slander that I support Hillary Clinton for her healthcare plan saying, “It's pointed out that Stevie is willing to sacrifice liberty for a bogus health care plan”

Steven Argue: “Hillary Clinton opposes both socialized medicine and single payer healthcare. She supports insurance company healthcare, the kind that is killing untold millions in the United States. This is one of many reasons I oppose her.”

“And no, I don't see Clinton as a first step towards socialized medicine. Her promise to force people to buy insurance has nothing in common with socialized medicine, nor partially socialized medicine (i.e. single payer). I’m clear about this in my article:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States, and the Struggle to Achieve It, By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

“As for Ron Paul, he wants to privatize everything, including public education, Social Security, and Medicare, eliminate the Voting Rights Act and Roe V Wade in the name of "states rights", signed on to the "Marriage Protection Act", would eliminate every environmental and labor protection, etc. etc. etc. This is a prescription for the slavery of the majority to protect the “liberty” of a tiny handful of capitalists to exploit.

“I oppose both Hillary Clinton and Ron Paul. But I’ve already made that clear as being my position. These accusations are slanderous.”

Ron Paul supporter: “Then Stevie moves the goal posts again. Waaa. He's being censored.”

Steven Argue: “I repeatedly posted a response to the slander that I support Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan, and the response is censored every time. I have no motive to make that up. I mentioned it because I wanted people to see my response. Frankly, I’m quite surprised it is happening. Let’s see if this one goes up.”

That response, as I feared, was also censored. Revealing the reasons behind the Ron Paul censorship at the site, the Ron Paul backers posted the following:

“Get off your sectarianism.

“What you don’t get is that there are only two ways we're going to end the occupation of Iraq:

“1.) A recession, and a bad one.

“2.) Convincing the vast majority of conservative Americans it's wrong. Ron Paul reaches these people. The guy with the Free Mumia shirt selling the "Socialist Worker" doesn't.

“To get anything done in a democracy you're going to have to work with people you don't agree with and people you might not even like. People in grown up countries do this all the time. They're called "coalitions".

“The Labor Party in Israel, for example, makes alliances with the ultra orthodox. The Liberal Democrats have made common cause with the Tories in the UK. The left made common cause with Vicente Fox to get the PRI out of power in Mexico.

“It's only in the puritan USA where everybody thinks you have to like all your political allies and agree with them on everything.”

Besides the fact that the majority of Americans already oppose the war; and besides the fact that these points show a total lack of understanding of the bourgeois nature of the coalitions in the countries mentioned; and besides showing a total lack of understanding of what it will take to end the war (I discuss this at the end of the article); New York City Indymedia’s lack of confidence in the ability of people to change has caused them to build a coalition with a capitalist politician who is a racist, homophobic, anti-worker, anti-environmental, bible thumping, sexist, anti-labor, anti-poor, free-market privatization fanatic. On top of that, they censor the left in order to achieve that coalition.

While a Ron Paul presidency would likely end the war, at what price would this come?

Ron Paul uses the term liberty a lot, so let’s take a look at what he means by liberty.

The liberty Ron Paul demands is:

The liberty of the capitalists to exploit without labor laws and environmental protections;

The "state’s right” to prevent Blacks from voting without the interference of the Voting Rights Act (voted against its renewal in Congress);

The "states right" to ban abortions without the interference of Roe v Wade;

The freedom of the government to deny same-sex rights (was an original sponsor of the "Marriage Protection Act");

The freedom of children not to attend schools (would abolish public education);

The freedom of the elderly and disabled to starve (would abolish Social Security);

The freedom of the sick to die (would abolish Medicare);

The freedom of the U.S. to destroy the planet without even the most basic limits on carbon emissions (opposes signing on to Kyoto and all other carbon limitations);

This is, in short, the liberty of a wealthy minority to make their money from the exploitation of labor and the environment with zero interference from labor laws, environmental laws, and the IRS. While his program is liberty for a minority of rich white heterosexual males, it is slavery for the majority.

Simply put, Ron Paul’s promises to end the war are not enough when one looks at the fact that he would eliminate two centuries of hard fought social progress in the United States.

Some of the anti-war backers of Ron Paul argue that we don’t have to worry about these things because Ron Paul will never be elected. They think that backing his campaign is a way to win over his supporters. What is clear is that such arguments could only come from people who are utterly lost and rudderless, which leaves unclear the question of what they are winning Ron Paul supporters over to. They are supporting a candidate whose program is George Wallace on crack cocaine! Yet, the ultimate absurdity is the fact that they are backing a candidate whose most reassuring feature is that he won’t get elected! Is this point lost on these people? And is the chance that their support may help him get elected a chance they really want to take? Nobody thought that third party candidate Jesse (the body) Ventura would get elected in Minnesota either, but he was, and as soon as he was elected he discarded his libertarian values on drug legalization and prostitution and instead proceeded to carrying out attacks on labor and carrying out disastrous cuts in education and other social spending.

Others argue that if Ron Paul is elected, he will easily be able to pull the troops out of Iraq, but congress will block him on the other issues. There is no doubt that they would block parts of Ron Paul’s program in order to prevent the social unrest such measures would cause, but with the ruling class’s desire to step up the exploitation of labor and the environment through eliminating regulation and through privatization, there can be little doubt that if he is able to maintain his presidency without being shot, aspects of Ron Paul’s domestic program would be implemented.

Today, in the United States we have two rightwing capitalist parties that rule. The activists who run New York Indymedia are floating around utterly lost and rudderless. On the one hand, their anarchist philosophy prohibits them from putting forward their own leadership or supporting socialist candidates; and on the other hand, they are stuck in the “real politic” of supporting “lesser evil” capitalist politicians. It is these characteristics that made them susceptible to being swept up on the Ron Paul band wagon. Despite their “libertarian” values of “freedom”, they have now taken this to the point where they are even willing to censor critics of Ron Paul on their website.

While Ron Paul, the only Republican candidate opposed to the war, is not worth supporting, the front running Democrats are also very bad. Clinton, Obama, and Edwards, are all pro-war. Both Edwards and Clinton voted for the war. Obama supporters claim that Obama never supported the war. While Obama was not yet in the Senate at the time of the Iraq war vote, Obama, Edwards, and Clinton have all voted for war appropriations. This puts them all in the position of having supported the war. Over a million Iraqis are dead due to the U.S. invasion and occupation, and billions of dollars have been squandered. Obama, by helping pay for the war, has his hands in this mass murder just as Clinton and Edwards do.

Obama’s Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007 supposedly would have begun troop withdrawal in May 2007. Yet, it didn't call for full nor immediate withdrawal. In addition, under the bill, the withdrawal could be halted if the Iraqi government met a number of criteria laid out by the Bush administration. These included a broad number of things such as changes in the use of oil revenue, government reforms, an end to sectarian violence, and other economic and reconstruction criteria. In Obama’s bill we have a crystal ball into the future. The excuses laid out in the bill will be heard once again as Obama, Clinton, or Edwards explain why they are keeping the troops in Iraq for their entire presidency; that is unless other actions are taken by the people to stop the war.

This brings us to the fundamental question of how to stop the war. If we are to listen to the Ron Paul censors / supporters at NYC Indymedia the only thing we can do to stop the war is support Ron Paul or hope for (pray for?) economic collapse. Yet, this ignores other less damaging possibilities. These include the troops refusing to fight, a general strike, strikes against the movement of war materials, or socialist revolution.

1. The troops refusing to fight. This worked in the struggle to end the U.S. aggression against Vietnam. It was the socialist movement who were the primary organizers of the anti-Vietnam War movement. That movement, immediately after the government’s murders at Kent State in May 1970 had 8 million students out on strike, and some Universities, such a Berkley, were taken over by students and faculty as anti-war universities. After May 1970, the majority of those drafted were already opposed to the war before they got to Vietnam. Refusal to fight was widespread, and the fragging of pro-war officers was common. Nixon could not continue to wage a war with soldiers who refused to fight. This, along with the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese, brought an end to the war in Vietnam.

Troops refusing to fight also helped bring an end to Russian involvement in the First World War, and helped bring down two pro-war governments in 1917.

2. A general strike or strikes against the movement of war materials. Strikes with such political demands have a long history of success. France has many good social programs because the workers there were willing to shut down their country to achieve them; and they are still willing to do the same to protect those hard fought gains.

3. Socialist revolution. The October Russian Revolution achieved an end to Russian involvement in the First World War. This was a good thing, despite the undemocratic nature of the revolution. Learning from those lessons, Liberation News opposes the dictatorial system of one party rule and raises the banner of revolutionary democratic socialism, while at the same time learning from many of the revolutionary strategies of Lenin and Trotsky.

Protests, pickets, information distribution, building a socialist movement, and answering pro-Ron Paul and pro-Obama-Clinton-Edwards propaganda all help towards building the momentum needed in achieving the kinds of actions that can end the war. Putting support behind Ron Paul only helps an extreme rightwing movement achieve the mantel of leadership for an anti-war sentiment that already represents majority public opinion. In addition, backing a guy like Ron Paul who just crossed a picket line to appear on Jay Lenno’s “Tonight Show” destroys the anti-war strategy of reaching out to the working class, as does backing a racist candidate like Ron Paul hurt the ability to reach out to the multi-racial working class.

No to the Democrats and Republicans!

U.S. Out of Iraq Now!

No to Insurance Company Healthcare, For Socialized Medicine!

Save the Planet, Curb Carbon Emissions Now!

Vote Socialist, Build the Labor Movement, Build the Anti-War Movement, Build the Socialist Movement.

[Note, small changes were made to the response that was censored at NYC Indymedia to make it more readable within the format of this article. Those wishing to see the original version will be given it upon request. Likewise, anyone wishing further sources will be provided them upon request]

This is an article of Liberation News, a low volume newsletter, Subscribe free!
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:00:55 GMT

The Ron Paul “Revolution”, an Extreme Rightwing Threat

By STEVEN ARGUE

For the most part the Iowa caucuses were business as usual for the Democrat and Republican Parties. Among the Democrats, “Anti-war” and “pro-single payer health care” Democrat Dennis Kucinich put his support behind pro-war anti--single payer health care, Barrack Obama. Yet on the far right, anti-war Libertarian and Republican Ron Paul gained a stunning 10% of the vote.

Seeing the failure of the Democrats to deliver a candidate worth supporting; some left leaning individuals have been suggesting support to Ron Paul. One is anti-war Vietnam veteran Stan Goff, who suggested in his January 4, 2008 article ”Monkey Wrenching the System, Ron Paul’s Revolution” that people vote in the primaries for Ron Paul, switching party registration right away if they live in a state where such a move is necessary to vote in the Republican primaries.

At the root of the Ron Paul "revolution" is the dismantling of Social Security and the Department of Education as well as other basic social programs, and the elimination of worker and environmental protections. Advances like single payer health care? No way. Ron Paul's message is that you need to take care of yourself, and that there shouldn't be such government programs, nor such interference with private profit. While he puts forward reasons for not supporting going to war abroad, his domestic policies would ignite civil war at home.

In addition to pretending he's against all government, he's for outlawing abortion and supports the continued ban on same-sex marriage. He was one of the original co-sponsors of the "Marriage Protection Act".

He's also a religious extremist who thinks that creationism should be taught in the schools.

On race, Ron Paul was one of 33 Congress members to vote against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, an act that was first passed to give Blacks in the south the right to vote. On a similar note, he says the Civil Rights Act violates the Constitution and impedes on individual liberties. Speaking of Blacks in Washington DC he states in campaign literature, "95 percent of African Americans in are semi-criminal or entirely criminal".

No wonder the American Nazi Party has close relations with him (see letter from Nazi Commander Bill White below). In addition, Ron Paul has the support of other white supremacists such as David Duke, and has knowingly taken donations from former KKK Grand Wizard Don Black.

Hell would freeze over before I'd support Ron Paul. And being an atheist; that will be a long time.

There are plenty of candidates to the left of the Democrats worth considering supporting who oppose the war, would preserve public education and Social Security, who would provide single payer or socialized medicine, and who aren’t raving racist, homophobic, and sexist “Libertarian” fanatics. Why not look at them rather than someone from the loony right?

I discuss some of the campaigns that may be worth supporting in the following article:

The Case for Socialized Medicine in the United States,
And the Struggle to Achieve It
By STEVEN ARGUE
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/01/02/18469739.php

Or here is a different version of the same article:
http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2008/01/93820.html

*****************
American Nazi Party Chief says Ron Paul is one of us

Bill White, commander of the American National Socialist Worker’s Party, aka The American Nazi Party, wrote the following on the Nazi Vanguard News Network:

Comrades:

I have kept quiet about the Ron Paul campaign for a while, because I didn’t see any need to say anything that would cause any trouble. However, reading the latest release from his campaign spokesman, I am compelled to tell the truth about Ron Paul’s extensive involvement in white nationalism.

Both Congressman Paul and his aides regularly meet with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review, and others at the Tara Thai restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, usually on Wednesdays. This is part of a dinner that was originally organized by Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis and Joe Sobran, and has since been mostly taken over by the Council of Conservative Citizens.

I have attended these dinners, seen Paul and his aides there, and been invited to his offices in Washington to discuss policy.

For his spokesman to call white racialism a “small ideology” and claim white activists are “wasting their money” trying to influence Paul is ridiculous. Paul is a white nationalist of the Stormfront type who has always kept his racial views and his views about world Judaism quiet because of his political position.

I don’t know that it is necessarily good for Paul to “expose” this. However, he really is someone with extensive ties to white nationalism and for him to deny that in the belief he will be more respectable by denying it is outrageous — and I hate seeing people in the press who denounce racialism merely because they think it is not fashionable.

Bill White, Commander
American National Socialist Workers Party

*********
Poor Bill White. He’s having trouble with his brand of racism, anti-Semitism, mass extermination, and genocide not being "in fashion". But hey, you've got to thank the knuckleheaded Nazi for confirming our suspicions on Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan! -Steven Argue

Liberation News
https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/liberation_news

posted in Atheists Only - 3 replies

When they push you, YOU PUSH BACK.

Poster_Boy — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:46:01 GMT

Hi, this is a cross-post from the Politics tribe. I thought it would be relevant here.

<<I was kind of negatively surprised to hear Ron Pauls statements on evolution..

Another reason i would not vote for this guy..

Ron Paul: I don't believe in evolution >>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JyvkjSKMLw

What a freaking headcase!

Actually, we had some political candidates in Canada who believed in Creationism...and that man walked with the dinosaurs. These politicians were mocked and jeered by everyone who came in contact with them. The head of the Conservative Party Stockwell Day for instance has his campaign bus nicknamed 'Prayer Force one', and the MEDIA (cameramen, anchormen, soundmen) used to mock him by whistling the 'Flintstones' theme out loud whenever they were in his presence. Imagine this for a moment. A reporter asks you a question and your answer is drowned out by twenty people whistling simultaneously as the reporter just grins. Not just any twenty people, but the very same News crew covering your election campaign. This was broadcast live! No one lost their jobs over it either. Since most people who saw the news live thought that this was hilarious, the opposition quickly scored points with the voters when they brought in little Fred and Barney dolls to cabinet meetings with them.

Seriously, if Americans see no problem with a President who thinks that humans walked with dinosaurs and that the planet is only ten thousand years old, then all I can say is good luck with your Science programs and welcome to the new middle ages. The twenty-first century is starting to look more like the twelfth century than the twentieth!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd like to see more Americans doing this in their own country. Whistling the theme to the Flintstones that is.

Whenever someone mentions that they believe in 'Creationism' or 'Intelligent design', start whistling the theme to the Flintstones very loudly until they shut up and leave.

If you see any Presidential candidate on TV saying that he doesn't believe in evolution, start whistling the theme to the Flintstones.

Tell all your friends to do the same thing as well. Go to a bar and do this publicly. They don't listen to you, so why should you listen to them?

DROWN THEM OUT! !

'Intelligent design' is not a Theory, it's an ideology. it wasn't developed by observation and experimentation, but by a group of people with an agenda cherry-picking things that suit them. What is their agenda? To win the battle for your mind. YOUR MIND is all you really have. Don't let these people try and take it from you, or take it from anyone else.

When they push you, YOU PUSH BACK.

After all, when the Creationists are attacking the Theory of Evolution, they are in essence attacking Science itself! Does one really need to re-enact the Scopes trial of 1925 every time some dim-wit tries to shove a Bible down everyone's throats? It's not open to debate! Ever wonder why there are so many foreign scientists working in the United States right now? It's because society is being dumbed down, and replacing the Theory of Evolution with Creationism in public schools and high schools is not only a violation of the First Amendment, it's the virtual equivalent to a national lobotomy. How can one expect American students to possibly excel in Science and technology when they reject the very basis of what has influenced the field of biology, turning the clock back to 1859?

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

THEOCRACY ALERT

Poster_Boy — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 07:38:35 GMT

THEOCRACY ALERT! THEOCRACY ALERT!

WARNING.....WARNING......DANGER!......DANGER!.....WILL ROBINSON!

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:H.RES.888:

Talk about 'Lost in Space!'

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Portland meetup

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 07:18:37 GMT

Hey I just thought I'd let fellow Pastafarians know that we have a Saghetti Monster group here in Portland Oregon. You can check us out on meetup.com or just drop by and join us at The Chapel Pub this saturday January 12th at 2:00 PM. Hope to see you there!
-Sassfire

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Atheist dating

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:13:26 GMT

Hey, I found this atheist dating site last year (freethinkersmatchmaker.com) when I followed a posted article here and saw it advertised. It is a very sad looking set up, but a great idea, I thought. It costs 14 dollars for a year so I figured what the heck. I put a profile up and met some really interesting people. I'd like for more atheist to meet and possibly reproduce so we can grow in numbers :). I am not getting anything out of telling you about it. I just met a great person, am giddy, and want to share the experience.

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

Atheists on Ning

arize — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:41:04 GMT

hi. i just made this group on Ning. consider it a refuge should tribe explode into a million tiny pieces. or not. there are some very nice things about Ning, despite the annoying things. anyway, please consider this your official invite: http://setitoff.ning.com/group/atheists

and my profile over there should you want it: http://setitoff.ning.com/profile/arize

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

What kind of Atheist are you?

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 23:48:41 GMT

Try this Quiz: http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=162436

posted in Atheists Only - 13 replies

The Pharmacratic Inquisition 2007 DVD is now online - FREE!

Jan_Irvin — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 02:08:57 GMT

This is Jan Irvin from The Pharmacratic Inquisition video and co-author of Astrotheology & Shamanism.

I just thought I'd let all of you tribies know that we released our 2007 DVD online last weekend.

This is a complete release. Nothing has been edited out. You just have to deal with a few GnosticMedia ads for our website, but they're not too bad. That's what you get for free, right?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8700041490363244845

Please spread this post around.

Thanks.
Jan Irvin
www.gnosticmedia.com

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Friendly Feudalism: Buddhist Exceptionalism?

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 01:38:17 GMT

Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth
by Michael Parenti
www.dissidentvoice.org
December 27, 2003
First Published in the Michael Parenti Archive

Throughout the ages there has prevailed a distressing symbiosis between religion and violence. The histories of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam are heavily laced with internecine vendettas, inquisitions, and wars. Again and again, religionists have claimed a divine mandate to terrorize and massacre heretics, infidels, and other sinners.

Some people have argued that Buddhism is different, that it stands in marked contrast to the chronic violence of other religions. To be sure, as practiced by many in the United States, Buddhism is more a "spiritual" and psychological discipline than a theology in the usual sense. It offers meditative techniques and self-treatments that are said to promote "enlightenment" and harmony within oneself. But like any other belief system, Buddhism must be judged not only by its teachings but by the actual behavior of its proponents.

Buddhist Exceptionalism?

A glance at history reveals that Buddhist organizations have not been free of the violent pursuits so characteristic of religious groups throughout the ages. In Tibet, from the early seventeenth century well into the eighteenth, competing Buddhist sects engaged in armed hostilities and summary executions. [1] In the twentieth century, from Thailand to Burma to Korea to Japan, Buddhists have clashed with each other and with non-Buddhists. In Sri Lanka, huge battles in the name of Buddhism are part of Sinhalese history. [2]

Just a few years ago in South Korea, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order---reputedly devoted to a meditative search for spiritual enlightenment---fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its additional millions of dollars in property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various duties. The brawls partly destroyed the main Buddhist sanctuaries and left dozens of monks injured, some seriously. Both warring factions claimed public support. In fact, Korean citizens appeared to disdain both sides, feeling that no matter what clique of monks took control of an order, it would use worshippers' donations to amass wealth, including houses and expensive cars. According to one news report, the mêlée within the Chogye Buddhist order (much of it carried on Korean television) "shatter[ed] the image of Buddhist Enlightenment." [3]

But many present-day Buddhists in the United States would argue that none of this applies to the Dalai Lama and the Tibet he presided over before the Chinese crackdown in 1959. The Dalai Lama's Tibet, they believe, was a spiritually oriented kingdom, free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism, pointless pursuits, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society. Western news media, and a slew of travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La and the Dalai Lama as a wise saint, "the greatest living human," as actor Richard Gere gushed. [4]

The Dalai Lama himself lent support to this idealized image of Tibet with statements such as: "Tibetan civilization has a long and rich history. The pervasive influence of Buddhism and the rigors of life amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment." [5] In fact, Tibet's history reads a little differently. In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet. Here is quite a historical irony: the first Dalai Lama was installed by a Chinese army.

To elevate his authority beyond worldly challenge, the first Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with his claim to divinity. [6] The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, writing erotic poetry, and acting in other ways that might seem unfitting for an incarnate deity. For this he was "disappeared" by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized status as gods, five Dalai Lamas were murdered by their high priests or other nonviolent Buddhist courtiers. [7]

Shangri-La (for Lords and Lamas)

Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into religious or secular manorial estates worked by serfs. Even a writer like Pradyumna Karan, sympathetic to the old order, admits that "a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches. . . . In addition, individual monks and lamas were able to accumulate great wealth through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending." [8] Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries went to the higher-ranking lamas, many of them scions of aristocratic families, while most of the lower clergy were as poor as the peasant class from which they sprang. This class-determined economic inequality within the Tibetan clergy closely parallels that of the Christian clergy in medieval Europe.

Along with the upper clergy, secular leaders did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. He also was a member of the Dalai Lama's lay Cabinet. [9] Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some of its Western admirers as "a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma." [10] In fact, it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order and catch runaway serfs. [11]

Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they became bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common practice for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated childhood rape not long after he was taken into the monastery at age nine. [12] The monastic estates also conscripted peasant children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

In Old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the "middle-class" families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. A small minority were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery. [13]

In 1953, the greater part of the rural population---some 700,000 of an estimated total population of 1,250,000---were serfs. Tied to the land, they were allotted only a small parcel to grow their own food. Serfs and other peasants generally went without schooling or medical care. They spent most of their time laboring for the monasteries and individual high-ranking lamas, or for a secular aristocracy that numbered not more than 200 families. In effect, they were owned by their masters who told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. A serf might easily be separated from his family should the owner send him to work in a distant location. Serfs could be sold by their masters, or subjected to torture and death. [14]

A Tibetan lord would often take his pick of females in the serf population, if we are to believe one 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf: "All pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished." They "were just slaves without rights." [15] Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture and forcibly bring back those who tried to flee. A 24-year old runaway serf, interviewed by Anna Louise Strong, welcomed the Chinese intervention as a "liberation." During his time as a serf he claims he was not much different from a draft animal, subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold, unable to read or write, and knowing nothing at all. He tells of his attempts to flee:

The first time [the landlord's men] caught me running away, I was very small, and they only cuffed me and cursed me. The second time they beat me up. The third time I was already fifteen and they gave me fifty heavy lashes, with two men sitting on me, one on my head and one on my feet. Blood came then from my nose and mouth. The overseer said: "This is only blood from the nose; maybe you take heavier sticks and bring some blood from the brain." They beat then with heavier sticks and poured alcohol and water with caustic soda on the wounds to make more pain. I passed out for two hours. [16]

In addition to being under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land---or the monastery's land---without pay, the serfs were obliged to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand. "It was an efficient system of economic exploitation that guaranteed to the country's religious and secular elites a permanent and secure labor force to cultivate their land holdings without burdening them either with any direct day-to-day responsibility for the serf's subsistence and without the need to compete for labor in a market context." [17]

The common people labored under the twin burdens of the corvée (forced unpaid labor on behalf of the lord) and onerous tithes. They were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child, and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a new tree in their yard, for keeping domestic or barnyard animals, for owning a flower pot, or putting a bell on an animal. There were taxes for religious festivals, for singing, dancing, drumming, and bell ringing. People were taxed for being sent to prison and upon being released. Even beggars were taxed. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being placed into slavery for as long as the monastery demanded, sometimes for the rest of their lives. [18]

The theocracy's religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their foolish and wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as an atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve upon being reborn. The rich and powerful of course treated their good fortune as a reward for--and tangible evidence of-virtue in past and present lives.

Torture and Mutilation in Shanghri-La

In the Dalai Lama's Tibet, torture and mutilation---including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation of arms and legs--were favored punishments inflicted upon thieves, runaway serfs, and other "criminals." Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: "When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion." [19] Some Western visitors to Old Tibet remarked on the number of amputees to be seen. Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then "left to God" in the freezing night to die. "The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking," concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet. [20]

Some monasteries had their own private prisons, reports Anna Louise Strong. In 1959, she visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, and breaking off hands. For gouging out eyes, there was a special stone cap with two holes in it that was pressed down over the head so that the eyes bulged out through the holes and could be more readily torn out. There were instruments for slicing off kneecaps and heels, or hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disembowling. [21]

The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master's cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away. [22]

Theocratic despotism had been the rule for generations. An English visitor to Tibet in 1895, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the Tibetan people were under the "intolerable tyranny of monks" and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama's rule as "an engine of oppression" and "a barrier to all human improvement." At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O'Connor, observed that "the great landowners and the priests . . . exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal," while the people are "oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft the world has ever seen." Tibetan rulers, like those of Europe during the Middle Ages, "forged innumerable weapons of servitude, invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition" among the common people. [23]

In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, "The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them, nor do laymen take part in or even attend the monastery services. The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth." [24]

Occupation and Revolt

The Chinese Communists occupied Tibet in 1951, claiming suzerainty over that country. The 1951 treaty provided for ostensible self-government under the Dalai Lama's rule but gave China military control and exclusive right to conduct foreign relations. The Chinese were also granted a direct role in internal administration "to promote social reforms." At first, they moved slowly, relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect change. Among the earliest reforms they wrought was to reduce usurious interest rates, and build some hospitals and roads.

Mao Zedung and his Communist cadres did not simply want to occupy Tibet. They desired the Dalai Lama's cooperation in transforming Tibet's feudal economy in accordance with socialist goals. Even Melvyn Goldstein, who is sympathetic to the Dalai Lama and the cause of Tibetan independence, allows that "contrary to popular belief in the West," the Chinese "pursued a policy of moderation." They took care to show respect for Tibetan culture and religion" and "allowed the old feudal and monastic systems to continue unchanged. Between 1951 and 1959, not only was no aristocratic or monastic property confiscated, but feudal lords were permitted to exercise continued judicial authority over their hereditarily bound peasants." [25] As late as 1957, Mao Zedung was trying to salvage his gradualist policy. He reduced the number of Chinese cadre and troops in Tibet and promised the Dalai Lama in writing that China would not implement land reforms in Tibet for the next six years or even longer if conditions were not yet ripe. [26]

Nevertheless, Chinese rule over Tibet greatly discomforted the lords and lamas. What bothered them most was not that the intruders were Chinese. They had seen Chinese come and go over the centuries and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo and his reactionary Kuomintang rule in China. [27] Indeed the approval of the Kuomintang government was needed to validate the choice of the present-day Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama. When the young Dalai Lama was installed in Lhasa, it was with an armed escort of Chiang Kaishek's troops and an attending Chinese minister, in accordance with centuries-old tradition. [28] What really bothered the Tibetan lords and lamas was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be only a matter of time, they were sure, before the Communists started imposing their egalitarian and collectivist solutions upon the highly privileged theocracy.

In 1956-57, armed Tibetan bands ambushed convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA). The uprising received extensive material support from the CIA, including arms, supplies, and military training for Tibetan commando units. It is a matter of public knowledge that the CIA set up support camps in Nepal, carried out numerous airlifts, and conducted guerrilla operations inside Tibet. [29] Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance. The Dalai Lama's eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, played an active role in that group.

Many of the Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety percent of them were never heard from again, according to a report from the CIA itself. [30] The small and thinly spread PLA garrisons in Tibet could not have captured them all. The PLA must have received support from Tibetans who did not sympathize with the uprising. This suggests that the resistance had a rather narrow base within Tibet. "Many lamas and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army joined the uprising, but in the main the populace did not, assuring its failure," writes Hugh Deane. [31] In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar conclusion: "The Tibetan insurgents never succeeded in mustering into their ranks even a large fraction of the population at hand, to say nothing of a majority. As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and as it progressed." [32] Eventually the resistance crumbled.

The Communists Overthrow Feudalism

Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese in Tibet after 1959, they did abolish slavery and the serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They built the only hospitals that exist in the country, and established secular education, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. They constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa. They also put an end to floggings, mutilations, and amputations as a form of criminal punishment. [33]

The Chinese also expropriated the landed estates and reorganized the peasants into hundreds of communes. Heinrich Harrer wrote a bestseller about his experiences in Tibet that was made into a popular Hollywood movie. (It was later revealed that Harrer had been a sergeant in Hitler's SS. [34]) He proudly reports that the Tibetans who resisted the Chinese and "who gallantly defended their independence . . . were predominantly nobles, semi-nobles and lamas; they were punished by being made to perform the lowliest tasks, such as laboring on roads and bridges. They were further humiliated by being made to clean up the city before the tourists arrived." They also had to live in a camp originally reserved for beggars and vagrants. [35]

By 1961, hundreds of thousands of acres formerly owned by the lords and lamas had been distributed to tenant farmers and landless peasants. In pastoral areas, herds that were once owned by nobility were turned over to collectives of poor shepherds. Improvements were made in the breeding of livestock, and new varieties of vegetables and new strains of wheat and barley were introduced, along with irrigation improvements, all of which led to an increase in agrarian production. [36]

Many peasants remained as religious as ever, giving alms to the clergy. But people were no longer compelled to pay tributes or make gifts to the monasteries and lords. The many monks who had been conscripted into the religious orders as children were now free to renounce the monastic life, and thousands did, especially the younger ones. The remaining clergy lived on modest government stipends, and extra income earned by officiating at prayer services, weddings, and funerals. [37]

The charges made by the Dalai Lama himself about Chinese mass sterilization and forced deportation of Tibetans have remained unsupported by any evidence. Both the Dalai Lama and his advisor and youngest brother, Tendzin Choegyal, claimed that "more than 1.2 million Tibetans are dead as a result of the Chinese occupation." [38] No matter how often stated, that figure is puzzling. The official 1953 census---six years before the Chinese crackdown---recorded the entire population of Tibet at 1,274,000. Other estimates varied from one to three million. [39] Other census counts put the ethnic Tibetan population within the country at about two million. If the Chinese killed 1.2 million in the early 1960s then whole cities and huge portions of the countryside, indeed almost all of Tibet, would have been depopulated, transformed into a killing field dotted with death camps and mass graves---of which we have seen no evidence. The Chinese military force in Tibet was not big enough to round up, hunt down, and exterminate that many people even if it had spent all its time doing nothing else.

Chinese authorities do admit to "mistakes" in the past, particularly during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when religious persecution reached a high tide in both China and Tibet. After the uprising in the late 1950s, thousands of Tibetans were incarcerated. During the Great Leap Forward, forced collectivization and grain farming was imposed on the peasantry, sometimes with disastrous effect. In the late 1970s, China began relaxing controls over Tibet "and tried to undo some of the damage wrought during the previous two decades." [40] In 1980, the Chinese government initiated reforms reportedly designed to grant Tibet a greater degree of self-rule and self-administration. Tibetans would now be allowed to cultivate private plots, sell their harvest surpluses, decide for themselves what crops to grow, and keep yaks and sheep. Communication with the outside world was again permitted, and frontier controls were eased to permit Tibetans to visit exiled relatives in India and Nepal. [41]

Elites, Émigrés, and CIA Money

For the Tibetan upper class lamas and lords, the Communist intervention was a calamity. Most of them fled abroad, as did the Dalai Lama himself, who was assisted in his flight by the CIA. Some discovered to their horror that they would have to work for a living. Those feudal elites who remained in Tibet and decided to cooperate with the new regime faced difficult adjustments. Consider the following:

In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited the Central Institute of National Minorities in Beijing which trained various ethnic minorities for the civil service or prepared them for entrance into agricultural and medical schools. Of the 900 Tibetan students attending, most were runaway serfs and slaves. But about 100 were from privileged Tibetan families, sent by their parents so that they might win favorable posts in the new administration. The class divide between these two groups of students was all too evident. As the institute's director noted:

Those from noble families at first consider that in all ways they are superior. They resent having to carry their own suitcases, make their own beds, look after their own room. This, they think, is the task of slaves; they are insulted because we expect them to do this. Some never accept it but go home; others accept it at last. The serfs at first fear the others and cannot sit at ease in the same room. In the next stage they have less fear but still feel separate and cannot mix. Only after some time and considerable discussion do they reach the stage in which they mix easily as fellow students, criticizing and helping each other. [42]

The émigrés' plight won fulsome play in the West and substantial support from U.S. agencies dedicated to making the world safe for economic inequality. Throughout the 1960s the Tibetan exile community secretly pocketed $1.7 million a year from the CIA, according to documents released by the State Department in 1998. Once this fact was publicized, the Dalai Lama's organization itself issued a statement admitting that it had received millions of dollars from the CIA during the 1960s to send armed squads of exiles into Tibet to undermine the Maoist revolution. The Dalai Lama's annual share was $186,000, making him a paid agent of the CIA. Indian intelligence also financed him and other Tibetan exiles. [43] He has refused to say whether he or his brothers worked with the CIA. The agency has also declined to comment. [44]

While presenting himself as a defender of human rights, and having won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, the Dalai Lama continued to associate with and be advised by aristocratic émigrés and other reactionaries during his exile. In 1995, the Raleigh, N.C. News & Observer carried a frontpage color photograph of the Dalai Lama being embraced by the reactionary Republican senator Jesse Helms, under the headline "Buddhist Captivates Hero of Religious Right." [45] In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, and the first George Bush, the Dalai Lama called upon the British government to release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who had been apprehended while visiting England. He urged that Pinochet be allowed to return to his homeland rather than be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted by a Spanish jurist to stand trial for crimes against humanity.

Today, mostly through the National Endowment for Democracy and other conduits that are more respectable-sounding than the CIA, the US Congress continues to allocate an annual $2 million to Tibetans in India, with additional millions for "democracy activities" within the Tibetan exile community. The Dalai Lama also gets money from financier George Soros, who now runs the CIA-created Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and other institutes. [46]

The Question of Culture

We are told that when the Dalai Lama ruled Tibet, the people lived in contented symbiosis with their monastic and secular lords, in a social order sustained by a deeply spiritual, nonviolent culture. The peasantry's profound connection to the existing system of sacred belief supposedly gave them a tranquil stability, inspired by humane and pacific religious teachings. One is reminded of the idealized imagery of feudal Europe presented by latter-day conservative Catholics such as G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. For them, medieval Christendom was a world of contented peasants living in deep spiritual bond with their Church, under the protection of their lords. [47] Again we are invited to accept a particular culture on its own terms, which means accepting it as presented by its favored class, by those at the top who profited most from it. The Shangri-La image of Tibet bears no more resemblance to historic reality than does the romanticized image of medieval Europe.

It might be said that we denizens of the modern secular world cannot grasp the equations of happiness and pain, contentment and custom, that characterize more "spiritual" and "traditional" societies. This may be true, and it may explain why some of us idealize such societies. But still, a gouged eye is a gouged eye; a flogging is a flogging; and the grinding exploitation of serfs and slaves is still a brutal class injustice whatever its cultural embellishments. There is a difference between a spiritual bond and human bondage, even when both exist side by side.

To be sure, there is much about the Chinese intervention that is to be deplored. In the 1990s, the Han, the largest ethnic group comprising over 95 percent of China's vast population, began moving in substantial numbers into Tibet and various western provinces. [48] These resettlements have had an effect on the indigenous cultures of western China and Tibet. On the streets of Lhasa and Shigatse, signs of Chinese preeminence are readily visible. Chinese run the factories and many of the shops and vending stalls. Tall office buildings and large shopping centers have been built with funds that might have been better spent on water treatment plants and housing.

Chinese cadres in Tibet too often adopted a supremacist attitude toward the indigenous population. Some viewed their Tibetan neighbors as backward and lazy, in need of economic development and "patriotic education." During the 1990s Tibetan government employees suspected of harboring nationalist sympathies were purged from office, and campaigns were launched to discredit the Dalai Lama. Individual Tibetans reportedly were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, and forced labor for attempting to flee the country, and for carrying out separatist activities and engaging in political "subversion." Some arrestees were held in administrative detention without adequate food, water, and blankets, subjected to threats, beatings, and other mistreatment. [49]

Chinese family planning regulations that allow a three-child limit for Tibetan families have been enforced irregularly and vary by district. If a couple goes over the limit, the excess children can be denied subsidized daycare, health care, housing, and education. Meanwhile, Tibetan history, culture, and religion are slighted in schools. Teaching materials, though translated into Tibetan, focus on Chinese history and culture. [50]

Still, the new order has its supporters. A 1999 story in the Washington Post notes that the Dalai Lama continues to be revered in Tibet, but

[F]ew Tibetans would welcome a return of the corrupt aristocratic clans that fled with him in 1959 and that comprise the bulk of his advisers. Many Tibetan farmers, for example, have no interest in surrendering the land they gained during China's land reform to the clans. Tibet's former slaves say they, too, don't want their former masters to return to power.

"I've already lived that life once before," said Wangchuk, a 67-year-old former slave who was wearing his best clothes for his yearly pilgrimage to Shigatse, one of the holiest sites of Tibetan Buddhism. He said he worshipped the Dalai Lama, but added, "I may not be free under Chinese communism, but I am better off than when I was a slave." [51]

To support the Chinese overthrow of the Dalai Lama's feudal theocracy is not to applaud everything about Chinese rule in Tibet. This point is seldom understood by today's Shangri-La adherents in the West.

The converse is also true. To denounce the Chinese occupation does not mean we have to romanticize the former feudal régime. One common complaint among Buddhist proselytes in the West is that Tibet's religious culture is being destroyed by the Chinese authorities. This does seem to be the case. But what I am questioning here is the supposedly admirable and pristinely spiritual nature of that pre-invasion culture. In short, we can advocate religious freedom and independence for Tibet without having to embrace the mythology of a Paradise Lost.

Finally, it should be noted that the criticism posed herein is not intended as a personal attack on the Dalai Lama. He appears to be a nice enough individual, who speaks often of peace, love, and nonviolence. In 1994, in an interview with Melvyn Goldstein, he went on record as having been since his youth in favor of building schools, "machines," and roads in his country. He claims that he thought the corvée and certain taxes imposed on the peasants "were extremely bad." And he disliked the way people were saddled with old debts sometimes passed down from generation to generation. [52] Furthermore, he reportedly has established "a government-in-exile" featuring a written constitution, a representative assembly, and other democratic essentials. [53]

Like many erstwhile rulers, the Dalai Lama sounds much better out of power than in power. Keep in mind that it took a Chinese occupation and almost forty years of exile for him to propose democracy for Tibet and to criticize the oppressive feudal autocracy of which he himself was the apotheosis. But his criticism of the old order comes far too late for ordinary Tibetans. Many of them want him back in their country, but it appears that relatively few want a return to the social order he represented.

In a book published in 1996, the Dalai Lama proffered a remarkable statement that must have sent shudders through the exile community. It reads in part as follows:

Of all the modern economic theories, the economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability. Marxism is concerned with the distribution of wealth on an equal basis and the equitable utilization of the means of production. It is also concerned with the fate of the working classes-that is the majority---as well as with the fate of those who are underprivileged and in need, and Marxism cares about the victims of minority-imposed exploitation. For those reasons the system appeals to me, and it seems fair. . . .

The failure of the regime in the Soviet Union was, for me not the failure of Marxism but the failure of totalitarianism. For this reason I think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist. [54]

And more recently in 2001, while visiting California, he remarked that "Tibet, materially, is very, very backward. Spiritually it is quite rich. But spirituality can't fill our stomachs." [55] Here is a message that should be heeded by the affluent well-fed Buddhist proselytes in the West who cannot be bothered with material considerations as they romanticize feudal Tibet.

Buddhism and the Dalai Lama aside, what I have tried to challenge is the Tibet myth, the Paradise Lost image of a social order that was little more than a despotic retrograde theocracy of serfdom and poverty, so damaging to the human spirit, where vast wealth was accumulated by a favored few who lived high and mighty off the blood, sweat, and tears of the many. For most of the Tibetan aristocrats in exile, that is the world to which they fervently desire to return. It is a long way from Shangri-La.

Michael Parenti is a noted author and political commentator. Among his widely read books are The Terrorism Trap, Democracy For the Few, History as Mystery, and Against Empire. His latest book is The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome (New Press, 2003). This article first appeared on Michael's website: www.michaelparenti.org

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

Call for a Coalition Against Arming Theocratic States

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 15:24:52 GMT

Call for a Coalition Against Arming Theocratic States
By Lenni Brenner

It is time for enlightened Americans, religious or unbelievers, to unite in a coalition against arming theological states. Its immediate task would be to help defeat both parts of President Bush's scheme to sell $20 billion worth of satellite-guided bombs, fighters and naval vessels to Saudi Arabia and five other Persian Gulf states, and increase US military grants to Israel by 25%, to $30.4 billion over 10 years.

No mincing words: Since the beginning of the cold war against 'godless Communism,' ne of Washington's overriding Middle Eastern strategies, arming religious states, has been catastrophic for the region's people. Bush's extension of it guarantees more disasters for them and Americans.

The 7/28 New York Times described his strategy:

"[T]o contain the growing power of Iran in the region and to demonstrate that, no matter what happens in Iraq, Washington remains committed to its longtime Arab allies."

Everyone old enough to cross streets alone knows that oil is the consideration. After WW ll, the US replaced Britain as the Gulf's imperial overlord, and he seeks to dominate the economically crucial region. But the vast majority of Arabs and Iranians know, thru experience, that official Washington remains their nonstop enemy.

In 1948, Democrat Harry Truman, needing campaign funds from wealthy pro-Zionist Jews, recognized officially Orthodox Jewish Israel. He loaned it money used to buy weapons to drive hundreds of thousands of native Palestinians into exile. In 1953, Republican Dwight Eisenhower shifted gears. He brought Said Ramadan of the Muslim Brotherhood to the White House. The US patronized Islamic fundamentalism against the Soviets and those Iranians and Arabs seeking to nationalize their countries' imperialist owned oil industries.

That year, Eisenhower's CIA overthrew Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad Mosaddegh for nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. It restored Shah Muhammad Reza alevi's "For the Shah, Iran and Islam" despotism. Regime opponents were tortured and murdered for 26 years. Eventually the Shia clergy broke with the US puppet, bringing him down in 1979. That's their valid domestic claim to legitimacy. But their Islamic republic is brutal. Nevertheless, its millions of internal opponents, anti-regime Muslims, atheists, drinkers, feminists, gays, Marxists, Baluchi and Kurdish nationalists, etc., don't want the US or Israel
bombing Iran's nuclear installations, or the US trying to replace the Ayatollahs with yet another marionette.

The US learned nothing from its Iranian debacle. That same year, Democrat Jimmy Carter secretly started arming Afghan Sunni fundamentalists against the Soviet-imposed regime in Kabul. They won under Republican Ronald Reagan, who allied with the Saudis in a jihad against 'godless' Communism. The first thing America's fundos did was take away rights women had under the pro-Soviet regime. Then they fought among themselves, with the Taliban winning.

In 1991, Iraq's Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and old Bush sent thousands of troops to Saudia to protect the pro-American regime. Osama bin Laden, a leader of bipartisan Washington's terrorist allies in Afghanistan, finally realized that the Saudi dynasty were American dependents. He broke with them and the 'Crusaders' and, in time, blew up the World Trade Center, killing thousands of innocents.

"Blow back" is CIA slang for unforeseen negative consequences of its plots and 9/11 was truly the inevitable result of Washington's using religious fanatics in its imperial machinations. Although bin Laden had broken with the dynasty, post-9/11 Saudia is absolutely unpopular here. Fifteen of the 19 plane hijackers were Saudi citizens. Americans, right to left, understand that they were inevitable end-products of the regime's indoctrination.

The country's male chauvinism is spectacular. Women must wear veils in public and can't drive cars. They need their father or husband's approval to leave the country. There is blatant discrimination against Shia Muslims. Open Christian churches are forbidden. So it isn't surprising that the proposal to further arm this ultimate high-tech medieval regime has generated A to Z opposition to Bush's scheme.

American Atheists, Inc., founded by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who got prayers tossed out of US public schools, warns that

"Bush's plan to sell $20 billion of advanced military hardware to Saudi Arabia and five other Persian Gulf states, and provide more aid to Israel threatens to further destabilize the region and fuel religion-based terrorism."

Ellen Johnson, AA's President, added that

"Creating jobs and economic opportunity, securing full rights for the region's women, encouraging an authentic civil society with personal rights -- all of this is needed to challenge the rampant clerical terrorism that plagues the Middle East."

Israel, worried about Shia Iran's nuclear ambitions, backs Bush's sales to Sunni Saudia. But some pro-Zionist Congressional Democrats are opposed. They claim that the Saudi regime backs Sunni terrorists in Iraq, killing American troops. More important. they fear for Israel if the dynasty were to be overthrown. Alternative regimes, left or Al-Qaeda, would be serious foes. They feel that increasing US arms to Israel can't compensate it for the risk that the weapons sold to the Saudis would ultimately be used by its determined opponents.

When Israel is denounced for its crimes, Zionists typically respond by asking 'why is Israel being singled out? Why aren't people also crying out against Saudi Arabia's crimes?' Israel shouldn't be singled out. Americans must oppose arms going to all governments violating human rights. But aren't these Democrats now singling out Saudi Arabia? Why aren't they likewise excoriating Israel for its political sins?

Moshe Katsav just resigned as Israel's President. The Attorney General announced sufficient evidence to indict him for raping his office manager. Eventually he pled guilty to committing an indecent act under coercion. This is usually punished by up to 10 years imprisonment but he got a one-year suspended sentence. Twenty-thousand people demonstrated in the streets, demanding that he go to prison.

Katsev was President of an Orthodox Jewish state. Every morning an adult Orthodox male thanks God for "making me a man, not a woman." Women thank him for "making me what I am." They are segregated in Orthodox synagogues. Wives can't divorce their husbands in the country's religious courts and there is no civil divorce. If their husbands won't divorce them, they can't remarry. There are thousands of women in this situation.

"Reform Judaism" is America's largest Jewish sect. "Conservative Judaism" its 2nd largest. Orthodoxy is 3rd, ca. only 10% of US Jews. There are Reform and Conservative Israeli rabbis, but they can't perform legal marriages. Only Orthodox rabbis can. And of course there is no Israeli civil marriage. Israel's Palestinian minority must also marry in religious ceremonies. In the ultimate theocratic state comedy, an Israeli supreme court judge had to go to Cyprus to marry a Conservative woman.

Theoretically, all Israeli male Jews must serve in the military. Some Orthodox become regular soldiers. But others do their hitch in Orthodox-only units, shielded against contact with Jewish women soldiers who might be menstruating. Another 11% of 18 year olds are completely exempt from the military so they can study theology, while Israel's many atheists must kill or be killed, fighting for a state rooted in their legal inequality.

Orthodox superiority over rival Judaic sects is superimposed on massive colonial inequality for native Palestinian Muslims, Christians, Druze and atheists. In 1948, Israel drove hundreds of thousands from their homes. The truth is in the uncensored University of California edition of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's Memoirs, published after his 1995 assassination by a Zionist:

"'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring. Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook. The population of Lod did not leave willingly. There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the ten to fifteen miles to the point where they met up with the legion. The inhabitants of Rami watched and learned the lesson. Their leaders agreed to evacuate voluntarily, on condition that the evacuation was carried out by vehicles."

Religious inequality went further after Israel's 1967 victory. All 'Israeli' settlements in the West Bank are Jews-only, even though 1.4 million of Israel's 7.1 million citizens are Palestinian. Some of these, male members of the Druze sect, Muslim Bedouins, and some Christians, fight in Zionism's wars. Yet none can live in the settlements. And some Jews-only settlements are Orthodox-only. Not even atheist Zionists can live in them.

Bush just signed an "Advance Democracy Act," requiring the State Department to develop strategies helping tyrannies turn into democracies. No one takes it seriously. The pro-Bush NY Sun reported that "passage into law comes as Mr. Bush himself has abandoned most of his democracy promotion agenda." The Gulf arms deal means the end of "any remnant of public pressure for these states to afford their citizens the rights to assembly, free speech, or petition." And Bush and the Democrats wouldn't dream of applying the law to Israel. To hear them tell it, 'Israel,' with its legal ethnic, religious and sexual inequalities,
'is the only democracy in the Middle East.'

The proposed coalition's constant task must be education. Few Americans are familiar with Washington's Middle Eastern history. Few know their party's role. Even fewer understand the theological distinctions between Sunni and Shia Islam, or know that Israel has no civil marriage or divorce. The young never heard of the Shah. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was Reagan's favorite among his Afghan anti-Soviet "freedom fighters," but how many voters know that he is now killing American troops? How many can explain the conflict between Palestinian Hamas and Fatah or why the US backs Fatah?

The coalition must establish a "just the facts, ma'am" website where everyone can get the details re the above topics and more. Among other things, the public should be able to conveniently read the program of the major political players in the region, theological or secularist.

Members must agree to its prime demand, no weapons to theocratic states, anywhere. But disagreement is inevitable re how to get to a democratic secular Middle East in a democratic secular world. That's good because debates between members, and with supporters of Washington's policies, would attract attention to the coalition message.

Every wannabe presidential candidate of every party expected to be on the 2008 ballot should be questioned, ASAP, re arming religious states, and the public should be informed of their answers or failure to answer.

Given the disastrous history of Democratic and Republican arming of religious fanatics, the coalition and the public would benefit from debating whether it should endorse a candidate of a 3rd party committed to ending arming religious states, particularly Saudi Arabia and Israel, but with the proviso that individual members would still be free to vote as they wished.

There are existing rival coalitions dealing with aspects of the Middle East. Many demand that the US get out of Iraq. Others call for justice for Palestinians, others oppose war with Iran. US gays speak out against gay executions in Iran. Feminists demand equal rights for Afghan women. The proposed coalition should always act as a catalyst trying to unify the broad movement in action. In general, it should ask to speak at anti-war rallies on issues related to its mandate and, where invited to do so, help build such actions, especially among secularists.

Allow me a personal theological/political point as the proponent of such a coalition. I'm an atheist. But the new movement shouldn't be an atheist front. There are atheist Zionists. There are atheist Arab nationalists who use terror against Israel. But every July 4th, Americans remember Thomas Jefferson, a deist, not an atheist, who did his best to separate church and state in his new republic. The new coalition can end arming of bigot states if it educates America about what he meant by religious freedom.

Some readers are atheists, some are religious. That's fine. His last written words were about his Declaration of Independence and its meaning for the world. If you are interested in scrolling him up to our times and building such a coalition to operate in their spirit, contact me:

"May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.

The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them."

***

Lenni Brenner was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. He became an atheist at 10 and a left political activist at 15, in 1952. He was arrested 3 times during 1960s Black civil rights sit-ins in the San Francisco Bay Area. He spent 39 months in prison when a court revoked his probation for marijuana possession because of his activities during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement at the University of California in 1964.

Immediately on imprisonment, he spent 4 days in intense discussion with Huey Newton, later founder of the Black Panther Party, whom he encountered in the court holding tank.

He was an antiwar activist from the 1st days of the Vietnam war, speaking frequently at rallies in the Bay Area. In 1963 he organized the Committee for Narcotic Reform in Berkeley. In 1968 he co-founded the National Association for Irish Justice, the American affiliate of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.

He worked with Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), the legendary "Black Power" leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, in the Committee against Zionism and Racism, from 1985 until Ture's death in 1998.

Brenner is the author of 4 books, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, Jews in America Today, and The Lesser Evil, a study of the Democratic Party. His books have been favorably reviewed in 11 languages by prominent publications, including the London Times, The London Review of Books, Moscow's Izvestia and the Jerusalem Post.

He has written over 120 articles for many publications, including the American Atheist, New York's Amsterdam News, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, The Atlanta Constitution, CounterPunch, The Jewish Guardian, The Nation, The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Middle East Policy, Middle East International, The Journal of Palestine Studies, The New Statesman of London, Al-Fajr in Jerusalem and Dublin's United Irishman.

In 2002 he edited 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis.It contains complete translations of many of the documents quoted in Zionism in the Age of the Dictators and The Iron Wall.

In 2004 he edited Jefferson & Madison On Separation of Church and State: Writings on Religion and Secularism.

He blogs at www.smithbowen.net/linfame/brenner and can be reached at BrennerL21@aol.com

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 01:20:04 GMT

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

http://www.cabrillo.edu/~jcarothers/extras/Intelligent%20Falling.pdf

posted in Atheists Only - 2 replies

Video: scientists and theologians discussion

cortelyou — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 03:00:55 GMT

http://bloggingheads.tv/video.php?id=337&cid=1938

Both talk about their experiences with scientist theologians and god belief in general in this group. An interesting discussion.

This is part of http://bloggingheads.tv weekly Science Saturday video blog.

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

New Pharmacratic Inquisition 2007 DVD release - TODAY!

Jan_Irvin — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 04:19:48 GMT

It’s 07-07-07 and the new Pharmacratic Inquisition 2007 DVD is now available for purchase!

The DVD is available for order as of TODAY for only $19.95 at www.gnosticmedia.com or www.pharmacratic-inquisition.com

Watch a free 10 minute preview on John Marco Allegro from our video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuIQVfmBEp8

The content of the new video focuses on the suppression archaeoastronomy / astro-theology and entheogenic shamanism as they apply to the core of the world’s religions (especially Christianity). The DVD is meant as a companion for our book Astrotheology & Shamanism, but is great with or without the book.

This all new video is just under 2 hours in length, and much more succinct and to the point – that’s opposed to our 3.5 hour 2004 lecture version (under the same title) and currently available for free download on our www.gnosticmedia.com website.

We’ve updated information and corrected errors that were in the old version. We’ve given the entire video a new look and layout, and best of all, it’s available on DVD! You can finally take it with you to your friends and family to watch on their TV!

We’ve also got package deals for 5 DVDs or more and book/DVD combo deals too.

The new DVD includes original audio and images of John Marco Allegro - author of The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross - kindly provided for this production by Judith Anne Brown and the Allegro family. We owe the Allegro’s a huge thanks!

To those of you who’ve already ordered since midnight, many thanks for your much needed support!

Please distribute this email to everyone you know!

Best,
Jan Irvin & Andrew Rutajit
www.gnosticmedia.com
www.pharmacratic-inquisition.com

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

The Meaning of 'Atheist'

cortelyou — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 23:33:11 GMT

http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2006/08/meaning-of-atheist.html

"In an article in American Chronicle, David Glesson decides to address some 'Common Misconceptions about Atheists and Atheism.' He starts off with the 'misconception that, 'Atheism is the belief that no Gods exist.'

I deny that this is a misconception."

posted in Atheists Only - 9 replies

What happened to the news?

nefariousnexus — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 12:07:37 GMT

I seem to recall, just a few years ago, that the news media just reported the news. Today I can't watch the news without getting some imbecile's opinion about what happened. I don't want to know what Bill O'Reilly thinks about the days events, I just want to know what happened, that's it.

posted in Atheists Only - 2 replies

A good Canadian, who happened to be an atheist, died last week

Kai_le_Flaneur — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 19:09:22 GMT

A week ago, June Callwood died; an author, founder of an AIDS hospice, social justice activist, and much more. I think she deserves some recognition here.

Her last CBC interview: www.cbc.ca/thehour/video.php

www.cbc.ca/canada/story...callwood.html

During this interview George Strombolopolis, the host of the CBC show The Hour, asked her if she had any thoughts this close to death on "what's next":

June: No, there's nothing next. That's all right. What you get is a life. A baby's a miracle. You open a baby's fist and they'll close their fist on your hand and hold on. And what they've got is a life. And, ah, to live it as best they can, that's what you get. And you don't need anything else, you know, when you've got that.

George: You don't believe in a God, I guess, if there's nothing after death -

June: I believe in kindness. I think it's very communicable. Just as meanness is, too. But even more so, more powerful. Strangers hold doors for one another in the downtown there, always... um, almost always. Sometimes they say thank you, sometimes they don't, but there's something in us that says, ah, if I hold this door, it helps this other person. And the person who comes through the door is a little bit changed, a tiny, tiny little shift in the plates: that someone held a door for me instead of it shutting. Great consideration for one another: that's what's gonna save the world.

posted in Atheists Only - 2 replies

War On Easter - 2007

angelasland — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 16:38:19 GMT

In anyone here participating in the War On Easter This Year? www.waroneaster.org

Just curious....

Here is a Video on the "How-To" For The War On Easter... Made by My Primary For The RRS

http://one.revver.com/watch/223720/flv

For those of you who do not know about www.revver.com as of yet, please look into it. Every time your video is watched and then someone clicks on the Advertisement at the end of the video, the person who posted the video gets paid..... Not much, but a good idea...

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

Rational Response Squad Northern California Chapter - Tribe

angelasland — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 16:23:33 GMT

In Case Anyone Is IIn Case Anyone Is Interested…. I’m Co-Founder Of The RRS Nor*Cal Chapter. We Have A Myspace Page Site (http://www.myspace.com/rrsnorcal) as well as now a Tribe here on Tribet.net (http://tribes.tribe.net/rrsnorcal). If interested please join!!

RRS Nor*Cal will be having our first meet-up in the East Bay on Saturday, April 14. If interested please let me know and I can give you the details. Also if you are interested in having a RRS Badge Picture, Please let me know and I can make on up for you with either the USA Badge or the NorCal Badge, etc..

Thank You!
~Angela (aka IvyFairy)

http://www.rationalresponders.com
----------------

-- Rational Response Squad Northern California --
Will Be Having The First RRS Nor*Cal Meet-Up.

This Will Take Place On Saturday April 14th.
The Meet Up Would Be Held In The San Francisco East Bay Area (Probably Hayward).

If You Are Interested In Attending, Please Let Us Know.
We Will Give You The Greater Details Once You RSVP (Time & Place).

This First Meet-Up Is Just To Meet, Say Hello, And Hang Out.
Yes We Will Get To The Atheist Activism,
But For Our First Meeting We Want To Meet And Have A Good Time.

Reminder… Atheist Day Is On Friday April 13

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Y backtracks on caving in to Hasidim objections to sight of women exercising

Kai_le_Flaneur — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 12:23:46 GMT

http://w5.montreal.com/mtlweblog/2007/03/park-avenue-ymca-changes-windows-again.html

'A Montreal YMCA will remove the frosted glass it installed last fall to protect the innocent eyes of young Orthodox Jews from spandex-clad exercisers.

The glass will be replaced with clear windows and blinds to be closed or opened at the request of Y members, restoring the view from the exercise room.

It was installed at the request of a synagogue across the alley where some young male students found the state of undress of some exercisers a distraction. Also, some Y members had complained about peeping toms.

The glass fast became a flashpoint in Quebec political debate over how institutions are adapting to religious minority views.

"It was never our intention to hide women who are training," said Serge St-Andre, director of the Park Avenue YMCA.

"We wanted to protect the privacy of our members while respecting the wishes of our neighbours," he told media yesterday.

Renée Lavaillante petitioned against the frosted glass, saying the Y should not be veiling women to appease a minority. "I won't be closing the blinds, because it would be collaborating with creating our own ghetto, one I don't wish to be part of." '

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Interesting history - the secularizaton of Québec

Kai_le_Flaneur — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 19:29:32 GMT

One of the more remarkable chapters in the history of secularism and atheism is the mid-20th century rejection of the Roman Catholic Church by large numbers of Québecois, which culminated in "The Quiet Revolution" of the 1960s, the time when, as many Québecois say, "everyone stopped going to church."

In light of that, there's an interesting story from the CBC website archives on an artistic movement, Le Refus global, beginning in the late 40s, that was at the vanguard of the secularization of Québec:

http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-68-109/arts_entertainment/refus_global/

They note that at the state funeral of the artist who started the movement, Jean-Paul Riopelle, some of his friends refused to attend, because it was held in a church.

The Church had been intimately bound up in the provincial power structure for two centuries, as the intermediaries for the Anglais who dominated both the capitalist hierarchy and the federal government. They ran the schools and the hospitals. In the rural areas, the priests were the main authority figures. It seems that resentment against the Church for being the enablers of English oppression built up over the many decades and finally resulted in its being cast off. So that rejection was intimately bound up in the story of Québec separatism, making it a complex tale, which most commentators have tended to oversimplify by concentrating just on the separatist side of it.

Joel Garreau's chapter on Québec in his book The Nine Nations of North America has some good descriptions of this background and the subsequent secularization:

"But the British, after the fighting, offered a canny deal that, for all practical purposes, started to freeze the development of Quebec society right where it was. All sides ended up accepting it with gratitude. The habitants got to keep what they wanted - their rural French North American society. The French elite was saved from instant ruin, although in short order they found themselves in decline, as some merchants and administrators left for greener pastures and others were crippled by the disruption of their lines of credit and sources of goods on the continent. The British got the peace and quiet that they would have loved to obtain from their thirteen Atlantic colonies to the south. And the big winner under the new English Protestant regime, ironically, was the Roman Catholic Church, which became the executor of this deal, and thus, in effect, the real wielder of secular power over the vast majority of the inhabitants of Quebec.

"The political authority of a Protestant society," writes Alfred Dubuc, "thus became the defender of the values and institutions of the Catholic Church, while the religious authorities of French-Canadian society upheld, in the eyes of their flocks, British institutions."

and

"What you had, until the "Quiet Revolution" began in 1960, was a society that, in hindsight, was amazingly backward and ingrown by North American standards.

In fact, many Quebecois now date the dark ages of their society not from the Conquest of 1760, but from the 1830s, when the democratic liberal secular elite from within the Quebecois society began to try to wrest power away from the Church and the English. This resulted in armed revolution by 1837, but the Patriotes, as they were called, were defeated by the same old coalition: French Catholic denunciation from the pulpit, and professional English military tacticians on the ground. It was after the crushing of the Patriotes that the Quebecois, while still far and away the majority in Quebec, began to think of themselves less as one of the races destined to rule North America than as a minority. In order to convince themselves that their survival was worthwhile, they immersed themselves in their ancient traditions, and thus was launched 150 years of petrifying conservatism. "

and

"Another measure of how far things have come is how rapidly the Church has lost power. Since its authority as an elite was inextricably intertwined with the old secular order, it crumbled under the assault on other values. Not only did it lose communicants in droves, but it lost nuns and priests at a rate so extraordinary that Quebecois now feel a little sheepish at how long the Church was considered a bastion of their nationalism. The change suggests strongly that the Church's foundations had been rotting for a long time, and the only reason it stood so long was for lack of attack. The Quebecois know well the wisdom of the line from the Pogo comic strip: "We have met the enemy, and he is us." The speed with which the Church lost influence in Quebec is still as much of a puzzle as the speed with which Islam gained power in Iran. As one anthropologist observed:

Religion became another cultural trait. It was never discussed. There was no opposition. It was the thing to do. It was a given.

When spring comes, the habitant discards his mittens. The Quiet Revolution came, and religion became a thing of the past.

In my village, nobody had ever met a Protestant. You didn't have to fight for your religion. When a cultural trait becomes so ingrained, so naturalized, it no longer means what it was supposed to: revolutionizing your life. It was a custom. Something you had to do.

The anthropologist could take a great Gallic delight in recounting in ribald detail the manner in which, even in the forties and fifties, and even in the small rural parishes, Church teachings on such matters as eating fish on Friday, abortion, fornication, moderation in the use of alcohol, and respect for the parish priest were routinely ignored.

You have to remember [he said], what Mass was. Sunday was a holiday, and you put your good clothes on, and you go to see your neighbors, and you arrive as late as you can. In one village [near Quebec City], there were these big processions and the priest said everybody had to be there. Everybody took his place in the procession, so I took a place in the procession, and there were two files. The priest was walking down the rows, and, when he was at the far end, the people near me were laughing and telling dirty stories. It was terrible. The priest came near us, and he was telling the beads, and everybody bowed his head, and when he was gone, they'd go back to telling their dirty stories."

It doesn't mean that church-going died out altogether, but to this day the Québecois are largely secular. Many may be holiday, wedding and funeral attendees, but it's not a significant force in their lives.

I live in an immigrant neighbourhood, and there's far more church-(and mosque-)going among them, with various evangelicals making inroads, than among the French. In fact, I think one the many tensions that characterize conflicts over what's called l'accommodation raisonable (the government policies of multicultural tolerance extended toward immigrant cultures, which has involved bending over backwards to accommodate requests by ultra-Orthodox Jews and hijab-wearing Muslims, for instance) is the Québecois distaste for religious dominance, rooted in their own cultural memory. (They can also just be racist mofos at times, too.)

It's hard to imagine an America where "religion became a thing of the past." I hope it doesn't mean a nation has to go through a period of total dominance by religion before people finally shrug it off. (As may yet happen in Iran, where half the population is under 25 and have never known anything other than Islamic totalitarianism.)

posted in Atheists Only - 2 replies

NYT: Darwin's God

cortelyou — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:42:11 GMT

Long article about why people have come to believe in God from this Sunday's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html

(Posted in full here because NY Times articles stop being free to read after 2 weeks)

God has always been a puzzle for Scott Atran. When he was 10 years old, he scrawled a plaintive message on the wall of his bedroom in Baltimore. “God exists,” he wrote in black and orange paint, “or if he doesn’t, we’re in trouble.” Atran has been struggling with questions about religion ever since — why he himself no longer believes in God and why so many other people, everywhere in the world, apparently do.

Call it God; call it superstition; call it, as Atran does, “belief in hope beyond reason” — whatever you call it, there seems an inherent human drive to believe in something transcendent, unfathomable and otherworldly, something beyond the reach or understanding of science. “Why do we cross our fingers during turbulence, even the most atheistic among us?” asked Atran when we spoke at his Upper West Side pied-à-terre in January. Atran, who is 55, is an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, with joint appointments at the University of Michigan and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. His research interests include cognitive science and evolutionary biology, and sometimes he presents students with a wooden box that he pretends is an African relic. “If you have negative sentiments toward religion,” he tells them, “the box will destroy whatever you put inside it.” Many of his students say they doubt the existence of God, but in this demonstration they act as if they believe in something. Put your pencil into the magic box, he tells them, and the nonbelievers do so blithely. Put in your driver’s license, he says, and most do, but only after significant hesitation. And when he tells them to put in their hands, few will.

If they don’t believe in God, what exactly are they afraid of?

Atran first conducted the magic-box demonstration in the 1980s, when he was at Cambridge University studying the nature of religious belief. He had received a doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University and, in the course of his fieldwork, saw evidence of religion everywhere he looked — at archaeological digs in Israel, among the Mayans in Guatemala, in artifact drawers at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Atran is Darwinian in his approach, which means he tries to explain behavior by how it might once have solved problems of survival and reproduction for our early ancestors. But it was not clear to him what evolutionary problems might have been solved by religious belief. Religion seemed to use up physical and mental resources without an obvious benefit for survival. Why, he wondered, was religion so pervasive, when it was something that seemed so costly from an evolutionary point of view?

The magic-box demonstration helped set Atran on a career studying why humans might have evolved to be religious, something few people were doing back in the ’80s. Today, the effort has gained momentum, as scientists search for an evolutionary explanation for why belief in God exists — not whether God exists, which is a matter for philosophers and theologians, but why the belief does.

This is different from the scientific assault on religion that has been garnering attention recently, in the form of best-selling books from scientific atheists who see religion as a scourge. In “The God Delusion,” published last year and still on best-seller lists, the Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins concludes that religion is nothing more than a useless, and sometimes dangerous, evolutionary accident. “Religious behavior may be a misfiring, an unfortunate byproduct of an underlying psychological propensity which in other circumstances is, or once was, useful,” Dawkins wrote. He is joined by two other best-selling authors — Sam Harris, who wrote “The End of Faith,” and Daniel Dennett, a philosopher at Tufts University who wrote “Breaking the Spell.” The three men differ in their personal styles and whether they are engaged in a battle against religiosity, but their names are often mentioned together. They have been portrayed as an unholy trinity of neo-atheists, promoting their secular world view with a fervor that seems almost evangelical.

Lost in the hullabaloo over the neo-atheists is a quieter and potentially more illuminating debate. It is taking place not between science and religion but within science itself, specifically among the scientists studying the evolution of religion. These scholars tend to agree on one point: that religious belief is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved during early human history. What they disagree about is why a tendency to believe evolved, whether it was because belief itself was adaptive or because it was just an evolutionary byproduct, a mere consequence of some other adaptation in the evolution of the human brain.

Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity? And if scientists are able to explain God, what then? Is explaining religion the same thing as explaining it away? Are the nonbelievers right, and is religion at its core an empty undertaking, a misdirection, a vestigial artifact of a primitive mind? Or are the believers right, and does the fact that we have the mental capacities for discerning God suggest that it was God who put them there?

In short, are we hard-wired to believe in God? And if we are, how and why did that happen?

“All of our raptures and our drynesses, our longings and pantings, our questions and beliefs . . . are equally organically founded,” William James wrote in “The Varieties of Religious Experience.” James, who taught philosophy and experimental psychology at Harvard for more than 30 years, based his book on a 1901 lecture series in which he took some early tentative steps at breaching the science-religion divide.

In the century that followed, a polite convention generally separated science and religion, at least in much of the Western world. Science, as the old trope had it, was assigned the territory that describes how the heavens go; religion, how to go to heaven.

Anthropologists like Atran and psychologists as far back as James had been looking at the roots of religion, but the mutual hands-off policy really began to shift in the 1990s. Religion made incursions into the traditional domain of science with attempts to bring intelligent design into the biology classroom and to choke off human embryonic stem-cell research on religious grounds. Scientists responded with counterincursions. Experts from the hard sciences, like evolutionary biology and cognitive neuroscience, joined anthropologists and psychologists in the study of religion, making God an object of scientific inquiry.

The debate over why belief evolved is between byproduct theorists and adaptationists. You might think that the byproduct theorists would tend to be nonbelievers, looking for a way to explain religion as a fluke, while the adaptationists would be more likely to be believers who can intuit the emotional, spiritual and community advantages that accompany faith. Or you might think they would all be atheists, because what believer would want to subject his own devotion to rationalism’s cold, hard scrutiny? But a scientist’s personal religious view does not always predict which side he will take. And this is just one sign of how complex and surprising this debate has become.

Angels, demons, spirits, wizards, gods and witches have peppered folk religions since mankind first started telling stories. Charles Darwin noted this in “The Descent of Man.” “A belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies,” he wrote, “seems to be universal.” According to anthropologists, religions that share certain supernatural features — belief in a noncorporeal God or gods, belief in the afterlife, belief in the ability of prayer or ritual to change the course of human events — are found in virtually every culture on earth.

This is certainly true in the United States. About 6 in 10 Americans, according to a 2005 Harris Poll, believe in the devil and hell, and about 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the existence of miracles and of life after death. A 2006 survey at Baylor University found that 92 percent of respondents believe in a personal God — that is, a God with a distinct set of character traits ranging from “distant” to “benevolent.”

When a trait is universal, evolutionary biologists look for a genetic explanation and wonder how that gene or genes might enhance survival or reproductive success. In many ways, it’s an exercise in post-hoc hypothesizing: what would have been the advantage, when the human species first evolved, for an individual who happened to have a mutation that led to, say, a smaller jaw, a bigger forehead, a better thumb? How about certain behavioral traits, like a tendency for risk-taking or for kindness?

Atran saw such questions as a puzzle when applied to religion. So many aspects of religious belief involve misattribution and misunderstanding of the real world. Wouldn’t this be a liability in the survival-of-the-fittest competition? To Atran, religious belief requires taking “what is materially false to be true” and “what is materially true to be false.” One example of this is the belief that even after someone dies and the body demonstrably disintegrates, that person will still exist, will still be able to laugh and cry, to feel pain and joy. This confusion “does not appear to be a reasonable evolutionary strategy,” Atran wrote in “In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion” in 2002. “Imagine another animal that took injury for health or big for small or fast for slow or dead for alive. It’s unlikely that such a species could survive.” He began to look for a sideways explanation: if religious belief was not adaptive, perhaps it was associated with something else that was.

Atran intended to study mathematics when he entered Columbia as a precocious 17-year-old. But he was distracted by the radical politics of the late ’60s. One day in his freshman year, he found himself at an antiwar rally listening to Margaret Mead, then perhaps the most famous anthropologist in America. Atran, dressed in a flamboyant Uncle Sam suit, stood up and called her a sellout for saying the protesters should be writing to their congressmen instead of staging demonstrations. “Young man,” the unflappable Mead said, “why don’t you come see me in my office?”

Atran, equally unflappable, did go to see her — and ended up working for Mead, spending much of his time exploring the cabinets of curiosities in her tower office at the American Museum of Natural History. Soon he switched his major to anthropology.

Many of the museum specimens were religious, Atran says. So were the artifacts he dug up on archaeological excursions in Israel in the early ’70s. Wherever he turned, he encountered the passion of religious belief. Why, he wondered, did people work so hard against their preference for logical explanations to maintain two views of the world, the real and the unreal, the intuitive and the counterintuitive?

Maybe cognitive effort was precisely the point. Maybe it took less mental work than Atran realized to hold belief in God in one’s mind. Maybe, in fact, belief was the default position for the human mind, something that took no cognitive effort at all.

While still an undergraduate, Atran decided to explore these questions by organizing a conference on universal aspects of culture and inviting all his intellectual heroes: the linguist Noam Chomsky, the psychologist Jean Piaget, the anthropologists Claude Levi-Strauss and Gregory Bateson (who was also Margaret Mead’s ex-husband), the Nobel Prize-winning biologists Jacques Monod and Francois Jacob. It was 1974, and the only site he could find for the conference was at a location just outside Paris. Atran was a scraggly 22-year-old with a guitar who had learned his French from comic books. To his astonishment, everyone he invited agreed to come.

Atran is a sociable man with sharp hazel eyes, who sparks provocative conversations the way other men pick bar fights. As he traveled in the ’70s and ’80s, he accumulated friends who were thinking about the issues he was: how culture is transmitted among human groups and what evolutionary function it might serve. “I started looking at history, and I wondered why no society ever survived more than three generations without a religious foundation as its raison d’être,” he says. Soon he turned to an emerging subset of evolutionary theory — the evolution of human cognition.

Some cognitive scientists think of brain functioning in terms of modules, a series of interconnected machines, each one responsible for a particular mental trick. They do not tend to talk about a God module per se; they usually consider belief in God a consequence of other mental modules.

Religion, in this view, is “a family of cognitive phenomena that involves the extraordinary use of everyday cognitive processes,” Atran wrote in “In Gods We Trust.” “Religions do not exist apart from the individual minds that constitute them and the environments that constrain them, any more than biological species and varieties exist independently of the individual organisms that compose them and the environments that conform them.”

At around the time “In Gods We Trust” appeared five years ago, a handful of other scientists — Pascal Boyer, now at Washington University; Justin Barrett, now at Oxford; Paul Bloom at Yale — were addressing these same questions. In synchrony they were moving toward the byproduct theory.

Darwinians who study physical evolution distinguish between traits that are themselves adaptive, like having blood cells that can transport oxygen, and traits that are byproducts of adaptations, like the redness of blood. There is no survival advantage to blood’s being red instead of turquoise; it is just a byproduct of the trait that is adaptive, having blood that contains hemoglobin.

Something similar explains aspects of brain evolution, too, say the byproduct theorists. Which brings us to the idea of the spandrel.

Stephen Jay Gould, the famed evolutionary biologist at Harvard who died in 2002, and his colleague Richard Lewontin proposed “spandrel” to describe a trait that has no adaptive value of its own. They borrowed the term from architecture, where it originally referred to the V-shaped structure formed between two rounded arches. The structure is not there for any purpose; it is there because that is what happens when arches align.

In architecture, a spandrel can be neutral or it can be made functional. Building a staircase, for instance, creates a space underneath that is innocuous, just a blank sort of triangle. But if you put a closet there, the under-stairs space takes on a function, unrelated to the staircase’s but useful nonetheless. Either way, functional or nonfunctional, the space under the stairs is a spandrel, an unintended byproduct.

“Natural selection made the human brain big,” Gould wrote, “but most of our mental properties and potentials may be spandrels — that is, nonadaptive side consequences of building a device with such structural complexity.”

The possibility that God could be a spandrel offered Atran a new way of understanding the evolution of religion. But a spandrel of what, exactly?

Hardships of early human life favored the evolution of certain cognitive tools, among them the ability to infer the presence of organisms that might do harm, to come up with causal narratives for natural events and to recognize that other people have minds of their own with their own beliefs, desires and intentions. Psychologists call these tools, respectively, agent detection, causal reasoning and theory of mind.

Agent detection evolved because assuming the presence of an agent — which is jargon for any creature with volitional, independent behavior — is more adaptive than assuming its absence. If you are a caveman on the savannah, you are better off presuming that the motion you detect out of the corner of your eye is an agent and something to run from, even if you are wrong. If it turns out to have been just the rustling of leaves, you are still alive; if what you took to be leaves rustling was really a hyena about to pounce, you are dead.

A classic experiment from the 1940s by the psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel suggested that imputing agency is so automatic that people may do it even for geometric shapes. For the experiment, subjects watched a film of triangles and circles moving around. When asked what they had been watching, the subjects used words like “chase” and “capture.” They did not just see the random movement of shapes on a screen; they saw pursuit, planning, escape.

So if there is motion just out of our line of sight, we presume it is caused by an agent, an animal or person with the ability to move independently. This usually operates in one direction only; lots of people mistake a rock for a bear, but almost no one mistakes a bear for a rock.

What does this mean for belief in the supernatural? It means our brains are primed for it, ready to presume the presence of agents even when such presence confounds logic. “The most central concepts in religions are related to agents,” Justin Barrett, a psychologist, wrote in his 2004 summary of the byproduct theory, “Why Would Anyone Believe in God?” Religious agents are often supernatural, he wrote, “people with superpowers, statues that can answer requests or disembodied minds that can act on us and the world.”

A second mental module that primes us for religion is causal reasoning. The human brain has evolved the capacity to impose a narrative, complete with chronology and cause-and-effect logic, on whatever it encounters, no matter how apparently random. “We automatically, and often unconsciously, look for an explanation of why things happen to us,” Barrett wrote, “and ‘stuff just happens’ is no explanation. Gods, by virtue of their strange physical properties and their mysterious superpowers, make fine candidates for causes of many of these unusual events.” The ancient Greeks believed thunder was the sound of Zeus’s thunderbolt. Similarly, a contemporary woman whose cancer treatment works despite 10-to-1 odds might look for a story to explain her survival. It fits better with her causal-reasoning tool for her recovery to be a miracle, or a reward for prayer, than for it to be just a lucky roll of the dice.

A third cognitive trick is a kind of social intuition known as theory of mind. It’s an odd phrase for something so automatic, since the word “theory” suggests formality and self-consciousness. Other terms have been used for the same concept, like intentional stance and social cognition. One good alternative is the term Atran uses: folkpsychology.

Folkpsychology, as Atran and his colleagues see it, is essential to getting along in the contemporary world, just as it has been since prehistoric times. It allows us to anticipate the actions of others and to lead others to believe what we want them to believe; it is at the heart of everything from marriage to office politics to poker. People without this trait, like those with severe autism, are impaired, unable to imagine themselves in other people’s heads.

The process begins with positing the existence of minds, our own and others’, that we cannot see or feel. This leaves us open, almost instinctively, to belief in the separation of the body (the visible) and the mind (the invisible). If you can posit minds in other people that you cannot verify empirically, suggests Paul Bloom, a psychologist and the author of “Descartes’ Baby,” published in 2004, it is a short step to positing minds that do not have to be anchored to a body. And from there, he said, it is another short step to positing an immaterial soul and a transcendent God.

The traditional psychological view has been that until about age 4, children think that minds are permeable and that everyone knows whatever the child himself knows. To a young child, everyone is infallible. All other people, especially Mother and Father, are thought to have the same sort of insight as an all-knowing God.

But at a certain point in development, this changes. (Some new research suggests this might occur as early as 15 months.) The “false-belief test” is a classic experiment that highlights the boundary. Children watch a puppet show with a simple plot: John comes onstage holding a marble, puts it in Box A and walks off. Mary comes onstage, opens Box A, takes out the marble, puts it in Box B and walks off. John comes back onstage. The children are asked, Where will John look for the marble?

Very young children, or autistic children of any age, say John will look in Box B, since they know that’s where the marble is. But older children give a more sophisticated answer. They know that John never saw Mary move the marble and that as far as he is concerned it is still where he put it, in Box A. Older children have developed a theory of mind; they understand that other people sometimes have false beliefs. Even though they know that the marble is in Box B, they respond that John will look for it in Box A.

The adaptive advantage of folkpsychology is obvious. According to Atran, our ancestors needed it to survive their harsh environment, since folkpsychology allowed them to “rapidly and economically” distinguish good guys from bad guys. But how did folkpsychology — an understanding of ordinary people’s ordinary minds — allow for a belief in supernatural, omniscient minds? And if the byproduct theorists are right and these beliefs were of little use in finding food or leaving more offspring, why did they persist?

Atran ascribes the persistence to evolutionary misdirection, which, he says, happens all the time: “Evolution always produces something that works for what it works for, and then there’s no control for however else it’s used.” On a sunny weekday morning, over breakfast at a French cafe on upper Broadway, he tried to think of an analogy and grinned when he came up with an old standby: women’s breasts. Because they are associated with female hormones, he explained, full breasts indicate a woman is fertile, and the evolution of the male brain’s preference for them was a clever mating strategy. But breasts are now used for purposes unrelated to reproduction, to sell anything from deodorant to beer. “A Martian anthropologist might look at this and say, ‘Oh, yes, so these breasts must have somehow evolved to sell hygienic stuff or food to human beings,’ ” Atran said. But the Martian would, of course, be wrong. Equally wrong would be to make the same mistake about religion, thinking it must have evolved to make people behave a certain way or feel a certain allegiance.

That is what most fascinated Atran. “Why is God in there?” he wondered.

The idea of an infallible God is comfortable and familiar, something children readily accept. You can see this in the experiment Justin Barrett conducted recently — a version of the traditional false-belief test but with a religious twist. Barrett showed young children a box with a picture of crackers on the outside. What do you think is inside this box? he asked, and the children said, “Crackers.” Next he opened it and showed them that the box was filled with rocks. Then he asked two follow-up questions: What would your mother say is inside this box? And what would God say?

As earlier theory-of-mind experiments already showed, 3- and 4-year-olds tended to think Mother was infallible, and since the children knew the right answer, they assumed she would know it, too. They usually responded that Mother would say the box contained rocks. But 5- and 6-year-olds had learned that Mother, like any other person, could hold a false belief in her mind, and they tended to respond that she would be fooled by the packaging and would say, “Crackers.”

And what would God say? No matter what their age, the children, who were all Protestants, told Barrett that God would answer, “Rocks.” This was true even for the older children, who, as Barrett understood it, had developed folkpsychology and had used it when predicting a wrong response for Mother. They had learned that, in certain situations, people could be fooled — but they had also learned that there is no fooling God.

The bottom line, according to byproduct theorists, is that children are born with a tendency to believe in omniscience, invisible minds, immaterial souls — and then they grow up in cultures that fill their minds, hard-wired for belief, with specifics. It is a little like language acquisition, Paul Bloom says, with the essential difference that language is a biological adaptation and religion, in his view, is not. We are born with an innate facility for language but the specific language we learn depends on the environment in which we are raised. In much the same way, he says, we are born with an innate tendency for belief, but the specifics of what we grow up believing — whether there is one God or many, whether the soul goes to heaven or occupies another animal after death — are culturally shaped.

Whatever the specifics, certain beliefs can be found in all religions. Those that prevail, according to the byproduct theorists, are those that fit most comfortably with our mental architecture. Psychologists have shown, for instance, that people attend to, and remember, things that are unfamiliar and strange, but not so strange as to be impossible to assimilate. Ideas about God or other supernatural agents tend to fit these criteria. They are what Pascal Boyer, an anthropologist and psychologist, called “minimally counterintuitive”: weird enough to get your attention and lodge in your memory but not so weird that you reject them altogether. A tree that talks is minimally counterintuitive, and you might believe it as a supernatural agent. A tree that talks and flies and time-travels is maximally counterintuitive, and you are more likely to reject it.

Atran, along with Ara Norenzayan of the University of British Columbia, studied the idea of minimally counterintuitive agents earlier this decade. They presented college students with lists of fantastical creatures and asked them to choose the ones that seemed most “religious.” The convincingly religious agents, the students said, were not the most outlandish — not the turtle that chatters and climbs or the squealing, flowering marble — but those that were just outlandish enough: giggling seaweed, a sobbing oak, a talking horse. Giggling seaweed meets the requirement of being minimally counterintuitive, Atran wrote. So does a God who has a human personality except that he knows everything or a God who has a mind but has no body.

It is not enough for an agent to be minimally counterintuitive for it to earn a spot in people’s belief systems. An emotional component is often needed, too, if belief is to take hold. “If your emotions are involved, then that’s the time when you’re most likely to believe whatever the religion tells you to believe,” Atran says. Religions stir up emotions through their rituals — swaying, singing, bowing in unison during group prayer, sometimes working people up to a state of physical arousal that can border on frenzy. And religions gain strength during the natural heightening of emotions that occurs in times of personal crisis, when the faithful often turn to shamans or priests. The most intense personal crisis, for which religion can offer powerfully comforting answers, is when someone comes face to face with mortality.

In John Updike’s celebrated early short story “Pigeon Feathers,” 14-year-old David spends a lot of time thinking about death. He suspects that adults are lying when they say his spirit will live on after he dies. He keeps catching them in inconsistencies when he asks where exactly his soul will spend eternity. “Don’t you see,” he cries to his mother, “if when we die there’s nothing, all your sun and fields and what not are all, ah, horror? It’s just an ocean of horror.”

The story ends with David’s tiny revelation and his boundless relief. The boy gets a gun for his 15th birthday, which he uses to shoot down some pigeons that have been nesting in his grandmother’s barn. Before he buries them, he studies the dead birds’ feathers. He is amazed by their swirls of color, “designs executed, it seemed, in a controlled rapture.” And suddenly the fears that have plagued him are lifted, and with a “slipping sensation along his nerves that seemed to give the air hands, he was robed in this certainty: that the God who had lavished such craft upon these worthless birds would not destroy His whole Creation by refusing to let David live forever.”

Fear of death is an undercurrent of belief. The spirits of dead ancestors, ghosts, immortal deities, heaven and hell, the everlasting soul: the notion of spiritual existence after death is at the heart of almost every religion. According to some adaptationists, this is part of religion’s role, to help humans deal with the grim certainty of death. Believing in God and the afterlife, they say, is how we make sense of the brevity of our time on earth, how we give meaning to this brutish and short existence. Religion can offer solace to the bereaved and comfort to the frightened.

But the spandrelists counter that saying these beliefs are consolation does not mean they offered an adaptive advantage to our ancestors. “The human mind does not produce adequate comforting delusions against all situations of stress or fear,” wrote Pascal Boyer, a leading byproduct theorist, in “Religion Explained,” which came out a year before Atran’s book. “Indeed, any organism that was prone to such delusions would not survive long.”

Whether or not it is adaptive, belief in the afterlife gains power in two ways: from the intensity with which people wish it to be true and from the confirmation it seems to get from the real world. This brings us back to folkpsychology. We try to make sense of other people partly by imagining what it is like to be them, an adaptive trait that allowed our ancestors to outwit potential enemies. But when we think about being dead, we run into a cognitive wall. How can we possibly think about not thinking? “Try to fill your consciousness with the representation of no-consciousness, and you will see the impossibility of it,” the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno wrote in “Tragic Sense of Life.” “The effort to comprehend it causes the most tormenting dizziness. We cannot conceive of ourselves as not existing.”

Much easier, then, to imagine that the thinking somehow continues. This is what young children seem to do, as a study at the Florida Atlantic University demonstrated a few years ago. Jesse Bering and David Bjorklund, the psychologists who conducted the study, used finger puppets to act out the story of a mouse, hungry and lost, who is spotted by an alligator. “Well, it looks like Brown Mouse got eaten by Mr. Alligator,” the narrator says at the end. “Brown Mouse is not alive anymore.”

Afterward, Bering and Bjorklund asked their subjects, ages 4 to 12, what it meant for Brown Mouse to be “not alive anymore.” Is he still hungry? Is he still sleepy? Does he still want to go home? Most said the mouse no longer needed to eat or drink. But a large proportion, especially the younger ones, said that he still had thoughts, still loved his mother and still liked cheese. The children understood what it meant for the mouse’s body to cease to function, but many believed that something about the mouse was still alive.

“Our psychological architecture makes us think in particular ways,” says Bering, now at Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. “In this study, it seems, the reason afterlife beliefs are so prevalent is that underlying them is our inability to simulate our nonexistence.”

It might be just as impossible to simulate the nonexistence of loved ones. A large part of any relationship takes place in our minds, Bering said, so it’s natural for it to continue much as before after the other person’s death. It is easy to forget that your sister is dead when you reach for the phone to call her, since your relationship was based so much on memory and imagined conversations even when she was alive. In addition, our agent-detection device sometimes confirms the sensation that the dead are still with us. The wind brushes our cheek, a spectral shape somehow looks familiar and our agent detection goes into overdrive. Dreams, too, have a way of confirming belief in the afterlife, with dead relatives appearing in dreams as if from beyond the grave, seeming very much alive.

Belief is our fallback position, according to Bering; it is our reflexive style of thought. “We have a basic psychological capacity that allows anyone to reason about unexpected natural events, to see deeper meaning where there is none,” he says. “It’s natural; it’s how our minds work.”

Intriguing as the spandrel logic might be, there is another way to think about the evolution of religion: that religion evolved because it offered survival advantages to our distant ancestors. This is where the action is in the science of God debate, with a coterie of adaptationists arguing on behalf of the primary benefits, in terms of survival advantages, of religious belief.

The trick in thinking about adaptation is that even if a trait offers no survival advantage today, it might have had one long ago. This is how Darwinians explain how certain physical characteristics persist even if they do not currently seem adaptive — by asking whether they might have helped our distant ancestors form social groups, feed themselves, find suitable mates or keep from getting killed. A facility for storing calories as fat, for instance, which is a detriment in today’s food-rich society, probably helped our ancestors survive cyclical famines.

So trying to explain the adaptiveness of religion means looking for how it might have helped early humans survive and reproduce. As some adaptationists see it, this could have worked on two levels, individual and group. Religion made people feel better, less tormented by thoughts about death, more focused on the future, more willing to take care of themselves. As William James put it, religion filled people with “a new zest which adds itself like a gift to life . . . an assurance of safety and a temper of peace and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections.”

Such sentiments, some adaptationists say, made the faithful better at finding and storing food, for instance, and helped them attract better mates because of their reputations for morality, obedience and sober living. The advantage might have worked at the group level too, with religious groups outlasting others because they were more cohesive, more likely to contain individuals willing to make sacrifices for the group and more adept at sharing resources and preparing for warfare.

One of the most vocal adaptationists is David Sloan Wilson, an occasional thorn in the side of both Scott Atran and Richard Dawkins. Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at the State University of New York at Binghamton, focuses much of his argument at the group level. “Organisms are a product of natural selection,” he wrote in “Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society,” which came out in 2002, the same year as Atran’s book, and staked out the adaptationist view. “Through countless generations of variation and selection, [organisms] acquire properties that enable them to survive and reproduce in their environments. My purpose is to see if human groups in general, and religious groups in particular, qualify as organismic in this sense.”

Wilson’s father was Sloan Wilson, author of “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit,” an emblem of mid-’50s suburban anomie that was turned into a film starring Gregory Peck. Sloan Wilson became a celebrity, with young women asking for his autograph, especially after his next novel, “A Summer Place,” became another blockbuster movie. The son grew up wanting to do something to make his famous father proud.

“I knew I couldn’t be a novelist,” said Wilson, who crackled with intensity during a telephone interview, “so I chose something as far as possible from literature — I chose science.” He is disarmingly honest about what motivated him: “I was very ambitious, and I wanted to make a mark.” He chose to study human evolution, he said, in part because he had some of his father’s literary leanings and the field required a novelist’s attention to human motivations, struggles and alliances — as well as a novelist’s flair for narrative.

Wilson eventually chose to study religion not because religion mattered to him personally — he was raised in a secular Protestant household and says he has long been an atheist — but because it was a lens through which to look at and revivify a branch of evolution that had fallen into disrepute. When Wilson was a graduate student at Michigan State University in the 1970s, Darwinians were critical of group selection, the idea that human groups can function as single organisms the way beehives or anthills do. So he decided to become the man who rescued this discredited idea. “I thought, Wow, defending group selection — now, that would be big,” he recalled. It wasn’t until the 1990s, he said, that he realized that “religion offered an opportunity to show that group selection was right after all.”

Dawkins once called Wilson’s defense of group selection “sheer, wanton, head-in-bag perversity.” Atran, too, has been dismissive of this approach, calling it “mind blind” for essentially ignoring the role of the brain’s mental machinery. The adaptationists “cannot in principle distinguish Marxism from monotheism, ideology from religious belief,” Atran wrote. “They cannot explain why people can be more steadfast in their commitment to admittedly counterfactual and counterintuitive beliefs — that Mary is both a mother and a virgin, and God is sentient but bodiless — than to the most politically, economically or scientifically persuasive account of the way things are or should be.”

Still, for all its controversial elements, the narrative Wilson devised about group selection and the evolution of religion is clear, perhaps a legacy of his novelist father. Begin, he says, with an imaginary flock of birds. Some birds serve as sentries, scanning the horizon for predators and calling out warnings. Having a sentry is good for the group but bad for the sentry, which is doubly harmed: by keeping watch, the sentry has less time to gather food, and by issuing a warning call, it is more likely to be spotted by the predator. So in the Darwinian struggle, the birds most likely to pass on their genes are the nonsentries. How, then, could the sentry gene survive for more than a generation or two?

To explain how a self-sacrificing gene can persist, Wilson looks to the level of the group. If there are 10 sentries in one group and none in the other, 3 or 4 of the sentries might be sacrificed. But the flock with sentries will probably outlast the flock that has no early-warning system, so the other 6 or 7 sentries will survive to pass on the genes. In other words, if the whole-group advantage outweighs the cost to any individual bird of being a sentry, then the sentry gene will prevail.

There are costs to any individual of being religious: the time and resources spent on rituals, the psychic energy devoted to following certain injunctions, the pain of some initiation rites. But in terms of intergroup struggle, according to Wilson, the costs can be outweighed by the benefits of being in a cohesive group that out-competes the others.

There is another element here too, unique to humans because it depends on language. A person’s behavior is observed not only by those in his immediate surroundings but also by anyone who can hear about it. There might be clear costs to taking on a role analogous to the sentry bird — a person who stands up to authority, for instance, risks losing his job, going to jail or getting beaten by the police — but in humans, these local costs might be outweighed by long-distance benefits. If a particular selfless trait enhances a person’s reputation, spread through the written and spoken word, it might give him an advantage in many of life’s challenges, like finding a mate. One way that reputation is enhanced is by being ostentatiously religious.

“The study of evolution is largely the study of trade-offs,” Wilson wrote in “Darwin’s Cathedral.” It might seem disadvantageous, in terms of foraging for sustenance and safety, for someone to favor religious over rationalistic explanations that would point to where the food and danger are. But in some circumstances, he wrote, “a symbolic belief system that departs from factual reality fares better.” For the individual, it might be more adaptive to have “highly sophisticated mental modules for acquiring factual knowledge and for building symbolic belief systems” than to have only one or the other, according to Wilson. For the group, it might be that a mixture of hardheaded realists and symbolically minded visionaries is most adaptive and that “what seems to be an adversarial relationship” between theists and atheists within a community is really a division of cognitive labor that “keeps social groups as a whole on an even keel.”

Even if Wilson is right that religion enhances group fitness, the question remains: Where does God come in? Why is a religious group any different from groups for which a fitness argument is never even offered — a group of fraternity brothers, say, or Yankees fans?

Richard Sosis, an anthropologist with positions at the University of Connecticut and Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has suggested a partial answer. Like many adaptationists, Sosis focuses on the way religion might be adaptive at the individual level. But even adaptations that help an individual survive can sometimes play themselves out through the group. Consider religious rituals.

“Religious and secular rituals can both promote cooperation,” Sosis wrote in American Scientist in 2004. But religious rituals “generate greater belief and commitment” because they depend on belief rather than on proof. The rituals are “beyond the possibility of examination,” he wrote, and a commitment to them is therefore emotional rather than logical — a commitment that is, in Sosis’s view, deeper and more long-lasting.

Rituals are a way of signaling a sincere commitment to the religion’s core beliefs, thereby earning loyalty from others in the group. “By donning several layers of clothing and standing out in the midday sun,” Sosis wrote, “ultraorthodox Jewish men are signaling to others: ‘Hey! Look, I’m a haredi’ — or extremely pious — ‘Jew. If you are also a member of this group, you can trust me because why else would I be dressed like this?’ ” These “signaling” rituals can grant the individual a sense of belonging and grant the group some freedom from constant and costly monitoring to ensure that their members are loyal and committed. The rituals are harsh enough to weed out the infidels, and both the group and the individual believers benefit.

In 2003, Sosis and Bradley Ruffle of Ben Gurion University in Israel sought an explanation for why Israel’s religious communes did better on average than secular communes in the wake of the economic crash of most of the country’s kibbutzim. They based their study on a standard economic game that measures cooperation. Individuals from religious communes played the game more cooperatively, while those from secular communes tended to be more selfish. It was the men who attended synagogue daily, not the religious women or the less observant men, who showed the biggest differences. To Sosis, this suggested that what mattered most was the frequent public display of devotion. These rituals, he wrote, led to greater cooperation in the religious communes, which helped them maintain their communal structure during economic hard times.

In 1997, Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay in Natural History that called for a truce between religion and science. “The net of science covers the empirical universe,” he wrote. “The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value.” Gould was emphatic about keeping the domains separate, urging “respectful discourse” and “mutual humility.” He called the demarcation “nonoverlapping magisteria” from the Latin magister, meaning “canon.”

Richard Dawkins had a history of spirited arguments with Gould, with whom he disagreed about almost everything related to the timing and focus of evolution. But he reserved some of his most venomous words for nonoverlapping magisteria. “Gould carried the art of bending over backward to positively supine lengths,” he wrote in “The God Delusion.” “Why shouldn’t we comment on God, as scientists? . . . A universe with a creative superintendent would be a very different kind of universe from one without. Why is that not a scientific matter?”

The separation, other critics said, left untapped the potential richness of letting one worldview inform the other. “Even if Gould was right that there were two domains, what religion does and what science does,” says Daniel Dennett (who, despite his neo-atheist label, is not as bluntly antireligious as Dawkins and Harris are), “that doesn’t mean science can’t study what religion does. It just means science can’t do what religion does.”

The idea that religion can be studied as a natural phenomenon might seem to require an atheistic philosophy as a starting point. Not necessarily. Even some neo-atheists aren’t entirely opposed to religion. Sam Harris practices Buddhist-inspired meditation. Daniel Dennett holds an annual Christmas sing-along, complete with hymns and carols that are not only harmonically lush but explicitly pious.

And one prominent member of the byproduct camp, Justin Barrett, is an observant Christian who believes in “an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good God who brought the universe into being,” as he wrote in an e-mail message. “I believe that the purpose for people is to love God and love each other.”

At first blush, Barrett’s faith might seem confusing. How does his view of God as a byproduct of our mental architecture coexist with his Christianity? Why doesn’t the byproduct theory turn him into a skeptic?

“Christian theology teaches that people were crafted by God to be in a loving relationship with him and other people,” Barrett wrote in his e-mail message. “Why wouldn’t God, then, design us in such a way as to find belief in divinity quite natural?” Having a scientific explanation for mental phenomena does not mean we should stop believing in them, he wrote. “Suppose science produces a convincing account for why I think my wife loves me — should I then stop believing that she does?”

What can be made of atheists, then? If the evolutionary view of religion is true, they have to work hard at being atheists, to resist slipping into intrinsic habits of mind that make it easier to believe than not to believe. Atran says he faces an emotional and intellectual struggle to live without God in a nonatheist world, and he suspects that is where his little superstitions come from, his passing thought about crossing his fingers during turbulence or knocking on wood just in case. It is like an atavistic theism erupting when his guard is down. The comforts and consolations of belief are alluring even to him, he says, and probably will become more so as he gets closer to the end of his life. He fights it because he is a scientist and holds the values of rationalism higher than the values of spiritualism.

This internal push and pull between the spiritual and the rational reflects what used to be called the “God of the gaps” view of religion. The presumption was that as science was able to answer more questions about the natural world, God would be invoked to answer fewer, and religion would eventually recede. Research about the evolution of religion suggests otherwise. No matter how much science can explain, it seems, the real gap that God fills is an emptiness that our big-brained mental architecture interprets as a yearning for the supernatural. The drive to satisfy that yearning, according to both adaptationists and byproduct theorists, might be an inevitable and eternal part of what Atran calls the tragedy of human cognition.

Robin Marantz Henig, a contributing writer, has written recently for the magazine about the neurobiology of lying and about obesity.

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

ABC News piece on Atheists

cortelyou — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 06:43:19 GMT

Video link:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2923023

ABC message board on the Atheist piece:
http://forums.go.com/abcnews/WNT/forum?start=0&forumID=159

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Ten questions to ask a Christian

cortelyou — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 16:25:16 GMT

http://sedition.com/daily/20050919.html

1. Biblical Law. Matthew 5:17-18 says quite clearly that Jesus demands Christians follow Old Testament law completely, to the smallest possible point. Why don’t they?

2. Infanticide. The modern Christian churches of the world tend to gloss the fact that God is a child killer—the 10th plague in Egypt—and say that Jesus set this right. Ignoring for a moment that the crucifixion is just one more child killing to fulfill God’s will, why does Jesus say he also will kill children in Revelation 2:23?

3. Fact or Allegory. The Bible says the Earth is between 6,000 and 8,000 years old, that it was created in 7 days, and that Man is made of dirt and Woman a piece of Man. Most churches today say that this is allegory. What passages of the Bible support it all being just allegory?

4. Needle’s Eye. Jesus said rich men don’t go to Heaven easily and even implied that it wasn’t possible. Why are so many people with money and property Christian if they are probably going to Hell?

5. Apocrypha and Biblical Revisions. The Bible of 400 CE and the Bible today differ by dozens of chapters and thousands of parts. Which Bible is the word of God and why does man edit it?

6. Born Fallen. Even in this global age there are millions of persons who never hear the Good News. We are born in sin. Do some go to Hell just because of their birth circumstances?

7. Graven Images. Isn’t wearing the cross and making statues and movies of the life of the Christ a violation of the 2nd Commandment? “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image…”

8. Inquisitions, Crusades, Witch Trials. Historians put the number of those killed and executed by Christian churches at between 2 and 15 million; mostly Jews, witches/pagans, and Muslims. Do Christians retain this murderous nature? If not, why not?

9. Turn the other Cheek. Jesus instructs the saved to love and to forgive even deadly insults (Matthew 5:44: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” et cetera). Why do no prominent Christian leaders to follow this?

10. Free will. Freedom to choose is given to man by God. Man has two main choices: 1) accept the Love of God and, upon death, go to paradise for eternity, 2) Refuse God and, upon death, just die, be utterly damned. How is that freedom of choice when it is the same thing as a gun to your head?

posted in Atheists Only - 7 replies

Jack T. Chick tract marks, and Froggies

Poster_Boy — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 21:32:42 GMT

Have you ever seen these annoying little comic books that are left in laundromats, bus stations, phone booths, and everywhere else? These are the writings and drawings of Jack T. Chick. He wasn't good enough to make a living drawing Superman, so he started drawing fun-for-mental X-ian comics instead.

I like this parody of Jack T. Chick's comics.

www.weirdcrap.com/chick/intro.html

One of the funnier lines from one of the comics there is when Jack T. Chick dies and goes to be judged by God. :

Chick: "But I'm forgiven! You died on the cross for the World's sins! I beleive in you! Jesus Saves!

God: That's Absurd! Why would I need to sacrifice myself to myself, to allow me to change a rule I made myself?

This athiest pardody of those annoying christian comic books encourages everyone to copy and distribute them as freely as desired. One of the creators has a project where he is encouraging people to buy multiple copies of "The Origin of the Species" by Charles Darwin and start putting them in hotel rooms, airports, etc.

Oh, and has anyone heard of a group called F.R.O.G.G.I.E.S? It stands for 'Fundamental Religious (something something something.)' This group encourages it's members to carry party noisemakers shaped like little metal frogs in their pockets. Whenever some religious yahoo comes up to you and wants to speak with you, or ask you for money...point the frog at their face like it was a loaded revolver. Then, press the frog's head and make a "CLICK CLICK CLICK" noise until religious wingnut gives up and walks away. I don't know where to get one of these frogs in Canada. A gift or novelty shop I guess. I suppose any 'Happy New Year' type of noisemaker would work just as well, but I would prefer the Froggie, just for tradition's sake.

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

This is the best

Scott — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 23:20:58 GMT

Christianity vs. Islam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCxsn8DYMBA&eurl=

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Book TV Dawkins lecture with Liberty Students in Q&A section

cortelyou — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 04:17:23 GMT

http://www.mininova.org/tor/485069

(Requires a BitTorrent Client to download the video.)

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

Richard Dawkins National Book tour - Oct. 16th through Nov. 6

George — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 06:17:02 GMT

Richard dawkins will be discussing his new book, The God Delusion.
This list is from The Campus Inquirer Calendar
http://ga1.org/cfi_oncampus/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=2268425#6

October 16 University of Kansas Lawrence, KS
October 18 New York Academy of Science New York, NY
October 19 Harvard Bookstore Reading, The First Parish Church, Cambridge, MA
October 20 PopTech Conference Camden, ME
October 21 McGill University Montreal, QC
October 23 Philip Thayer Memorial Lecture, Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Lynchburg, VA
October 24 Politics & Prose Washington, DC
October 26 University of Washington Bookstore, Seattle, WA
October 27 Powell's Books Portland, OR
October 28 Skeptics Society, Cal-Tech, Beckman Auditorium Los Angeles, CA
October 30 City Arts & Lectures, The Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA
November 2 Free Library of Philadelphia Philadelphia, PA
November 3-4 University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA
November 6 Salk Conference San Diego, CA

posted in Atheists Only - 22 replies

The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:44:26 GMT

This book is an embarrassment to the scientific community.

I have only read a few chapters, but I'm shocked by the bias and the shadings and the lack of research and the bizarre methods he has of defining religion. If he likes it, it's not religion. If he doesn't like it, it is religion and is evil.

What a huge waste of money.

I'm an atheist, but I don't like the smug righteousness of the "saved," whether they're "saved" by religion or "saved" by atheism. I'm disappointed and angry that Dawkins, who purports to be a scientist and indeed bases his claims to crediblity on that fact, has abandoned scientific method in this book.

posted in Atheists Only - 4 replies

Medieval on your ASS!

Poster_Boy — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 04:23:43 GMT

More wisdom from children.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8x14cLGh5o

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

!!!DOGS!!

Poster_Boy — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 01:38:06 GMT

On a saturday afternoon, the members of our neighbourhood gang used to like to go down to the general store to hang out and watch the people passing by. It was a small town and there was little else for us to do there. We were too young to have jobs so we didn't have any money. We didn't go to school much because we didn't like school much either for that matter.

At that moment, the town preacher came by our small gang and gave us a wide, friendly smile.

"Oh, what beautiful children you all are!" he exclaimed.

The members of our gang looked to the preacher, then looked to each other and nodded. It was true what he said. Indeed, we we were beautiful children.

"Where were you all baptised?" the Preacher asked.

Everyone in the gang looked around at each other. The youngest one spoke.

"We were never baptized. None of us were." The gang nodded their heads, agreeing.

The Priest curled his face in disgust. "Gah! Those who are unbaptized are like the dogs!"

We looked to each other's faces, then the eldest of our gang spoke.

"It is you Christians that are like the Dogs, in that you need a Master!"

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

The Worst Religion

Erik — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 15:32:22 GMT

This is posted on the Secular Humanism tribe. Survey.

posted in Atheists Only - 7 replies

Why I Love Lucy

Sagewomon — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 23:46:06 GMT

Because it is the only TV sitcom that, to my recollection, never had a religious or holiday themed episode; no X-mas, no Easter, not even a Thanksgiving. They celebrated birthdays, an anniversary, and even an actual birth, but no baby jesus anywhere to be seen. That is one of the many reasons why I Love Lucy!

posted in Atheists Only - 3 replies

Michael Shermer interview @ Salon.com

cortelyou — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:23:29 GMT

The joys of life without God

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/08/23/shermer/?source=whitelist

posted in Atheists Only - 2 replies

Who's Who Among the Godless

cortelyou — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 23:19:37 GMT

http://www.beliefnet.com/whoswho/atheists/whoswho_gallery_intro.html

Personally, I would have found room for Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in that list.

posted in Atheists Only - 6 replies

What I did last weekend

patti — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 05:06:17 GMT

Last Saturday night, I officiated a wedding. It was a lot of fun.

When the couple asked me to do it, one of the things they said is that they didn't want any god stuff in the ceremony. OK, I can handle that. I've been a ULC minister for a couple of years, so getting legally qualified wasn't a huge problem. I did have to get a notarized statement from my church and then get the county clerk to issue a special certificate, since I was an out-of-state minister, but it wasn't terribly difficult.

The couple wrote the ceremony, and I made one minor addition to it. I added "by the power vested in me by the state of Nevada" to the part where I pronounced them husband and wife, simply because I found the whole thing terribly amusing.

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Weird and Scary

Poster_Boy — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 18:18:17 GMT

Funny, weird or scary? Maybe all three at once? You be the judge.
This children's TV show explores the possibility that Angels are Space Aliens from another planet.
This can be found in the book of Ezekiel, considered to be the first recorded UFO sighting in history.

http://www.5shock.com/ran/scary.html

posted in Atheists Only - 2 replies

Dear God?

cortelyou — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 03:53:17 GMT

Hi all,

Sorry for the double post for those of you that are also tribe members of the public atheist tribe.

I'm doing my own show (via YouTube) about the questions that surround religion. There are 3 short episodes already recorded and viewable. The 3rd episode is a question for free thinkers. Feel free to watch and comment.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=0923C28FB3C05A59

-Jon

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

Elvis didn't do no Drugs!

Poster_Boy — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 01:10:37 GMT

Penn and Teller investigate the legitimacy of the Bible, while showing us some miracles of their own!

http://throwawayyourtv.com/2006/06/bible-is-bullshit.html

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Atheists Anonymous

Poster_Boy — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 17:04:50 GMT

I found this link on the 'Cults' tribe.

www.bee.net/cardigan/attic/guest09.htm

I have known a few people that have had difficulties battling their addictions with drugs and alchohol, but were unwilling to go to an AA or NA meeting to be preached to. This lists an alternative, secular programme...'Rational Recovery'.

The host site is the 'Atheist Attic.'

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

Dear Dr. Schelesinger

Poster_Boy — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 03:48:59 GMT

You may have heard this before...I've seen it on the internet before. I am transcribing this text directly from 'The New Internationalist: The uses and abuses of Religion.' (August 2004)

***Dr. Laura Schlesinger is a U.S. Broadcaster who dispenses advice to people who call her radio show. This is a letter from an appreciative listener.***

Dear Dr. Laura,
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. when someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle for example, I simply remind them that ~Leviticus 18:22- clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to follow them.

a) When I burn a bull on the altar of sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord. (Lev 1:9). The problem is my neighbours. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

c)I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstural uncleanliness. (Lev 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.

d) Lev 25-44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't own Canadians?

e)I have a neighbour that insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states that he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev 11:10), it is less of an abomination than homosexuality. Can you clarify this?

g)Lev 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if there is a defect in my sight. I have to admit I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev 19:27. How should they die?

i)I know from Lev 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

j)My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/ polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. is it really necessary to go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev 24:10-16) Couldn't we just bring them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev 20:14).

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your faithful listener,

P. Uzzled.

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Atheist Church from MadTV

cortelyou — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 02:13:33 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alLkRcQcwk0&search=atheist%20church%20madtv

Not really that funny but I'll post it.

posted in Atheists Only - 3 replies

Ali G's religion round table

cortelyou — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 01:03:26 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7C_Nwurunw

Funny!

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Theisms as arrested development

Kai_le_Flaneur — Tue, 09 May 2006 07:00:33 GMT

Maybe it's Arthur C. Clarke's book title "Childhood's End" kicking around in my subconscious since grade school days, or watching my little nieces slowly developing their rational capacities, but more and more I see beliefs in deities as being stuck in a kind of permanent childhood, and atheism as the state of having truly arrived as a rational adult.

Last year I was reading Ariana Huffington's blog a lot and one blogger on there, Cenk Uygur, stands out as a pretty militant atheist. The comments thread on his blog overflows with rabid American Taliban apologists, predictably enough, whenever he raises a theme of atheism in one of his posts, but there are also the folks who try the angle of "but God makes me a loving person who goes out and helps people". There were some like that about a month after Katrina, who were trying to assert that there were no atheists helping the New Orleans victims. I posted the following in response concerning what motivates compassionate action, quoting one Christian's comment:

' "They are out in force giving the love that you say does not exist."

This love they're giving comes, in fact, from them, regardless of what they may conceive of as its source. Their imagining of the presence of a God as the source of their love doesn't prove there actually is one, and constitutes a useful placebo effect at best.

As for me, I'll trust someone whose caring comes from an understanding that one should do the right thing simply because it's the right thing to do, because it's in one's enlightened self-interest to do (the Golden Rule), far more than I would trust someone's motivation to do right which flows from their fear of punishment or hope of reward from an imagined God in an imagined afterlife. Internally motivated by one's here-and-now understanding of verifiable reality - not externally motivated by a blind faith in something imagined, invisible and unprovable.

An external, faith-based motivation is inherently a rickety structure, and is the stance of a child who has not yet developed full rational capacity, towards an invisible Parent whose supposed Word substitutes for, and stifles the development of, their own moral, rational code of behavior, which can only be developed in our interaction with each other.

We really are on our own, and this requires us to grow up, to become rational, compassionate adults. The good news is that we are capable of this if we can cast off this infantilizing blind faith.

By: MoralAtheist on September 26, 2005 at 11:06am '

posted in Atheists Only - 17 replies

A theme song?

Kai_le_Flaneur — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 16:04:50 GMT

dumbreligion.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

It doesn't really articulate any detailed arguments - but it's fun!

posted in Atheists Only - 2 replies

"In God We Trust" suit thrown out

cortelyou — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 19:46:20 GMT

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/06/12/national/a180803D37.DTL

(06-12) 18:08 PDT Sacramento, Calif. (AP) --

A federal judge on Monday rejected a lawsuit from an atheist who said having the phrase "In God We Trust" on U.S. coins and dollar bills violated his First Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. said the minted words amounted to a secular national slogan that did not trample on Michael Newdow's avowed religious views.

---

"In God We Trust" amounts to a *secular* slogan?

posted in Atheists Only - 2 replies

Hope for the future

SpiNSycLe — Thu, 18 May 2006 15:14:07 GMT

at least kids a re smart enough to know to question what's around them

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,195897,00.html

posted in Atheists Only - 4 replies

Ian McKellen

SpiNSycLe — Wed, 17 May 2006 17:43:58 GMT

I've always liked this guy but I think my pool of like for him just swelled a little more

http://newsbusters.org/stories/dv.html?q=node/5402

posted in Atheists Only - 4 replies

Creationism vs. Evolution Simpsons style

cortelyou — Wed, 17 May 2006 20:53:30 GMT

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2006/05/the_simpsons_an.html

Watch the video. Pretty funny.

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

a thing i like about monkeys

arize — Thu, 11 May 2006 01:16:51 GMT

http://www.plaxo.be/

hehe

something athiests probably appreciate more than others.

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

discrimination against atheists

arize — Thu, 11 May 2006 01:18:25 GMT

hi. this is a thread in the politics tribe that i thought ought to be shared here. and elsewhere. at least the initial post. i havent read the 400+ replies.

http://uspolitics.tribe.net/thread/957568cb-99f6-4843-ad62-2a9ef3f4b952

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

Atheism and Antitheism

cortelyou — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 04:29:12 GMT

We atheists not believe in god or at least lack a belief about the existence of god(s). Therefore we do not believe certain texts were written or influenced by a supreme being. We see a clear majority of people in America basing core beliefs and assumptions about how to live one's life based on these texts. Beliefs that have little to no justification beyond a blind faith than it is correct. Many of these believers even go as so far as to lobby for laws or policies to be made to enforce these beliefs.

Yet many atheists claim they are not antitheists. Is it immoral to remain silent in these instances? How many here consider themselves antitheists?

posted in Atheists Only - 4 replies

well.....that just sucks

SpiNSycLe — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 02:02:06 GMT

chef quit 'south park' citing too much religion bashing

posted in Atheists Only - 8 replies

relationships

richl — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 05:39:12 GMT

I'm poly and was recently exploring a relationship that would have been both long distance and definitely not primary for any of us but did seem like a nice idea. Upon telling my potential sweety that I was an atheist, and describing my particular views that people are responsible to themselves to act morally and kindly to others based soley on their own inherent responsibility without needing religion or dieties to make that happen,
I was met with a horrified..."I could never have a relationship with someone who didn't understand spirituality". Understand, this is not a traditional bible thumper, mainstream old time religion type, but someone who considers herself Wiccan, and talks of two particular goddesses she likes to lean on for help.

Do you find that even among friends who have alternative spiritual views and practices, that atheism is often treated with shocked disbelief, as well as quite a bit of derision. Sort of a "if you don't believe you can't be spiritual, and therefore are a lesser human being because of it" type of attitude. I'm trying not to be angry, but I was shocked at the predjudicial sting of this attitude.

posted in Atheists Only - 5 replies

commercial

SpiNSycLe — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 19:28:02 GMT

for maybe the past week CNN in the morning has been running an ad for a brokerage firm, iwas wondering if anyone else has seen it & could remember the name of the bunch....their catchy selling phrase was "intelligent design that even darwin could be proud of." (not sure if this is clever or offensive....or maybe just trying to make money off of headlines) anyway, just curious if anyone else saw it

posted in Atheists Only - 2 replies

Godless Grief Forums

Tue, 21 Feb 2006 06:43:13 GMT

Hey all,
Thanks for those who have signed on. We're starting to get press supportive our Atheist Free Speech, and the GG forum is getting singled out. I hope that some of you are signed onto it. The book is due to the publisher in August, and there's still time to relay your stories. (Until the end of April, that's when the edits start.)
The url is either through the website godlessgrief.com, or directly by going to : http://bboard.godlessgrief.com/phpbb/index.php

I hope to chat with you there.

Cathe Jones, Devout Atheist, author

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

We're being invaded!

SpiNSycLe — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 19:32:31 GMT

but what else is new...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11078887/site/newsweek/

posted in Atheists Only - 2 replies

here we go again!

SpiNSycLe — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 18:15:28 GMT

this is what happens when pat robertson forgets to take his meds:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/05/robertson.sharon/index.html

posted in Atheists Only - 5 replies

World's religions rooted in Sun worship?

cortelyou — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 05:45:27 GMT

http://bblc.tv/rebels.htm

Episode 7: Are the world's religions rooted in Sun worship?

An interesting video interview into commonality of Christianity and the myths of many ancient religions. The interview covers much ground and isn't just about Sun worship like the title suggests. Worth a view, IMO.

posted in Atheists Only - 2 replies

Another lively atheist forum

cortelyou — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 19:57:55 GMT

The Infidel Guy's forums are great if one is interested in atheistic/philosopic debate.

http://www.infidelguy.com/forum-7.html

The Infidel Guy's Internet radio show is good too.

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

proposed new word

Roy — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 13:47:37 GMT

A proposed new word on another tribe, Lingo Factory:

Religerish. This is for religious gibberish!

posted in Atheists Only - 3 replies

Darwin

cortelyou — Mon, 26 Dec 2005 09:49:22 GMT

This was a very good Charlie Rose (PBS show) interview. Probably the best I've seen.

Download it here via bittorrent:

http://www.mininova.org/tor/177715

Deep discussion about evolution, atheism, Darwin's place in history. Good stuff. A must see, IMO.

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

Law about religious holiday decorations?

Curran — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 03:34:27 GMT

I'm having a hard time finding out specific information about the legality of displaying religious decorations in common spaces, such as the lobby of an apartment building. Does anyone have any references or sources I can consult? Our apartment building manageress has been putting up crosses for holidays like Christmas and Easter, and we want to have the official word with which to compel her to stop.

posted in Atheists Only - 4 replies

94% of Americans that believe in heaven think they're going to heaven

cortelyou — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:31:53 GMT

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Beliefs/story?id=1422658

No wonder people don't want to part with their "beliefs" here in America. They *all* think they are going to heaven.

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/994a1Heaven.pdf

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

:D my holiday offering:

SpiNSycLe — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 18:50:39 GMT

A Festivus for the rest of us!

yeah, I like that episode....

posted in Atheists Only - 3 replies

What do you think of "The Great Story"

craigragland — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 23:31:07 GMT

Wikipedia Description:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Story

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

new debate

SpiNSycLe — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 17:18:16 GMT

unfortunatly, I can see an all out war betwee believers and nonbelievers starting out of this:

http://g.msn.com/0MN2ET7/2?http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10351693/from/ET/&&CM=EmailThis&CE=1

I only hope that some itellectual good comes from it...

posted in Atheists Only - 5 replies

An Atheist Manifesto

cortelyou — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 05:55:26 GMT

By Sam Harris

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl’s parents believe—at this very moment—that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?

No.

[more]

http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/200512_an_atheist_manifesto/

posted in Atheists Only - 0 replies

There is No God by Penn Jillette

cortelyou — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:30:36 GMT

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5015557

Morning Edition, November 21, 2005 · I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond Atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do. You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word "elephant" includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?

So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The Atheism part is easy.

But, this "This I Believe" thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life's big picture, some rules to live by. So, I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God."

Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.

Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.

posted in Atheists Only - 3 replies

would anyone know if?

SpiNSycLe — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 15:05:42 GMT

does the church of freethought do naming ceremonies of some sort? i got into a huge fight with the other half last night, he was angry because he was a christening for our children, not for any religious purpose he claims, but because of family tradition and "i should learn how to compromise". my compromise is that i don't want something like that done in a church, if we're going to have a public ceremonial acknowledgement of children, i'll either do it through a buddhist ceremony or through the church of freethought, if they do such a thing. any help?

posted in Atheists Only - 3 replies

Dating

cortelyou — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 07:07:24 GMT

Do you exclusively date non-believers or the non-religious?

Fortunately I live in SF, so there are many people here that are non-believers or close to it. However, I rarely meet women that admit they are atheists. I do not think I could seriously date a regular churchgoer. Having said this, I am pretty infatuated with a "semi-new age" fundamentalist Christian girl I know that lives in my neighborhood. Attraction is not a choice.

Where do (or did) you draw the line, if anywhere?

posted in Atheists Only - 8 replies

Hi all, how's your friday!

SpiNSycLe — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 21:26:50 GMT

just started a new group, should any be interested. It's for atheists who are having problems getting pregnant and havn't had children yet. the name of it is "Atheist and Infertile"....If that fits you, please join!

posted in Atheists Only - 2 replies

Atheists Have A Lobbyist, Too

cortelyou — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 21:39:47 GMT

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/10/25/politics/main974730.shtml

(CBS) By Sarah Mirza of the CBS News Political Unit

It's quite possibly the last special interest group to establish a voice in Washington. The Secular Coalition for America has hired Lori Lipman Brown as its congressional lobbyist and national voice. Brown's main job? To educate the public about mistaken notions regarding atheists while making sure religion doesn't get a ringside seat at issue debates.

"My beef is with people who have taken [religion] out of the 'sacred' sphere and used it instead as a political tool," Brown told CBSNews.com. "Having done that denigrates religion."

In today's climate of piety, when the president unabashedly uses religious imagery in his speeches and touts a Supreme Court nominee as a woman of faith, the new lobbyist in town has an uphill battle to change the spiritual status quo.

"She’s really swimming against the political tide," Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Thomas Mann said. "The Republicans are committed to promoting religion in life and see religious people as their base."

The Democrats, Mann said, have been "tainted as the party of secularism" and are trying to change that image.

Brown started her new job in mid-September with a flurry of hot-button social issues roaming the national landscape, from staples like same-sex marriage and abortion to new ones like a federal trial dubbed "Scopes II," which looks at a school board's mandate that "intelligent design" be taught in Dover, Pennsylvania.

Brown plans to monitor several issues closely, including stem cell research, access to emergency contraception, physician-assisted suicide, school vouchers and faith-based initiatives. But her first foray into federal lobbying focused on an issue that caught the eye and ire of Brown: an education reauthorization bill that passed last month.

The House reauthorized Head Start with a controversial provision allowing faith-based organizations that run Head Start programs to hire teachers using religious preference as a qualification. Brown calls the provision "religious discrimination" and has joined the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Interfaith Alliance and the Coalition Against Religious Discrimination, among other church-state separation groups, to lobby the Senate to strike out any religion-based hiring provisions.

"When you give my federal tax dollars to a religious institution, you're freeing up other money for religious activities," Brown said.

The Secular Coalition for America is a non-profit political organization for Atheist Alliance International, Secular Student Alliance, Institute for Humanist Studies and other groups that do not believe in a deity. Private donations fund the umbrella group and are earmarked for administrative purposes to run the two-person office. Brown brings to Washington her experience as a state senator in Nevada, a self-described budget hawk and "secular Jew."

The White House has floated whispered assurances of Harriet Miers' strong religious convictions among Christian leaders, and although it didn't quiet complaints from the Republican faithful, Brown had more proof that atheists and non-believers are treated unfairly.

"As we now watch a Supreme Court [nominee] being touted as the right person for the highest judicial court in the nation because of her religion, there's no doubt now that people who are not religious are clearly discriminated against in terms of being looked at as fit for higher office," Brown said.

Brown has strong convictions when it comes to keeping religion out of government. She would like to spread the word that even people without religion have morals. Brown believes the secular people her group represents can work side by side with religious people.

"We don't have to share beliefs," Brown said.

©MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

posted in Atheists Only - 1 reply

Need a new moderator

frykitty — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 16:31:12 GMT

I'd like to back away from Tribe a bit. Not for any bad reasons, but just because I could use fewer distractions.

This tribe is closed, so new members must be approved by a moderator. Any volunteers?

posted in Atheists Only - 8 replies

our hopes have been dashed before BUT...

SpiNSycLe — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:37:25 GMT

Federal Judge Declares Pledge Of Allegiance Unconstitutional The Pledge of Allegiance is ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge.

MORE DETAILS: <http://treets.click2houston.com/svc/lnk.cfm?l=59749597&t=1>