In Lehmann's Terms

Are Atheists Gullible?

Like many other godless heathens, I viewed the launch of Atheist Nexus, a new social networking site billed as “The Atheist Facebook,” as a welcome development. I’ve long seen the biggest challenge facing nontheists, particularly in America, as the lack of formal social institutions around which to coalesce, placing us at a distinct disadvantage in amassing political capital and cultural relevance in comparison to our theist brethren.

But disturbing evidence has come to light suggesting the site may not be all that it seems. For one, the site shares the same fax number, mail server, and domain name registrant as something called the  Divine Christian Center, an outfit that bills itself as “an Apostolic institution of Christ” that exists “to pioneer and promote the commission of our Lord Jesus Christ the world over.” A search on the domain’s owner, one Kym Membe, reveals him as someone who has posted on discussion boards under the handle IT4Jesus, given positive reviews to A.J. Jacobs’ The Year of Living Biblically, and, as blogger PZ Myers of Pharyngula reports, as recently as a couple months ago posted this letter on a bible college Web site:

We have seen a steady increase in uncommon and deadly events around the world - most recently, the quake in China and the cyclone in Myanmar. This is a call to prayer for the suffering and the hurting. God is calling us all to humble ourselves before Him in prayer. We may not understand what is happening; we may not have answers for anyone asking. One thing we should know without a shadow of doubt is that God loves the world and all who are in it. Let's join forces and pray for those in China and Myanmar.

Let's lift them up before God and ask that He comforts those who need comfort and bring healing to those who need it. Let's pray for the little boys and girls who have lost their parents, and for the everyone who has lost someone or something.

Kym Membe

Mattoon, USA

To his credit, Membe has been out front to try to address the concerns and assuage fears of Atheist Nexus registrants that they have unwittingly signed on to some sort of surreptitious fundie prospecting service that looks to win back the unfaithful. In a letter posted to the LifeWithoutFaith site, Membe declares that he only recently left the ranks of believing Christians and credits reading Dawkins and Harris for his de-conversion. The DCC site, he says, is one that he built as a Web freelancer, but it does not represent his current religious outlook, which he describes as:

Now, I am free from the idiocy of religion. And because I have always stood up for what I believe, I did not think twice about investing my time and effort to create Atheist|Nexus. While some of my language and mannerisms might show through as “religious”, you can be sure that’s only because I have spent the greater part of life speaking that way. I understand completely the questions that people have raised. There is still work to be done, and I am open to learning what I can from the 1000+ freethinkers on this site.

In further efforts to reestablish trust, Membe has tapped LifeWithoutFaith’s Brother Richard to serve as administrator of Atheist Nexus, and he had a personal sit-down with Phil Pherguson of CUFree.net to discuss concerns and vouch for his own sincerity. 

I’d like to believe Membe is above board, and I hope this little foofaraw doesn’t detract from the worthy goal of helping atheists network with one another. But I can’t argue too much if my fellow nonbelievers feel the Atheist Nexus brand is compromised and choose to focus that goal elsewhere. As in all things, a healthy skepticism would not be out of order.

Hitchens on Stalin

Though I bought it the day it came out, I didn’t get around to reading Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great until a recent weekend jaunt up to the old familial homestead in Jersey. As I expected it to be, it is a far superior tome to either Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation and The End of Faith, or Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. Right off the bat, Hitchens clearly outclasses either in eloquence, leaving it not much of a fair fight on that score. But the book also outperformed its predecessors in ways I did not expect.

For one thing, though I am probably closer to Harris’ conservatism than Hitchens’ socialism, I found far fewer objectionable polemic tangents in the latter’s work. Particularly in The End of Faith, Harris is apt to go off the deep end when he moves into the subject of the War on Terror, going so far as to essentially condone torture, so long as it is a Muslim fundamentalist on the receiving end of the scabbard.

And while Dawkins is obviously a more esteemed scientific mind than Hitchens, I actually found Hitchens’ forays into philosophy of science questions far more satisfying, and much less condescendingly smug. This is remarkable in that there are few public figures MORE famously smug than Hitchens, but it seems the difference-maker is that Hitchens retains a sense of humor, both about the world and about himself, that the good professor utterly lacks.

Sitting down recently for a 20-minute chat with Hoover’s Peter Robinson on the Uncommon Knowledge program, Hitchens offers around the 15-minute mark a brief recap of what I think was one of the best sections of his book, tackling the difficult question of the evil done in the name of nominally “godless” communism, particularly by Josef Stalin. As Hitch puts it:

Until 1917, millions of Russians had been told for…hundreds of years that the czar is the head of the church – which he was, the Russian Orthodox Church. That the leader of the country should be something a little more than human. Not a god, but a little more. He’s not divine, but a holy father.

If you’re Josef Stalin, you shouldn’t be in the dictatorship business if you don’t know how to exploit an inheritance like that: millions of credulous, servile people.

And what does he do? Lysenko’s biology – miracles, we can have three harvests a year if we believe in Lysenko’s biology. Inquisition, heresy hunt, orthodoxy. Everything comes from the top and must be thanked for, and groveled for. A complete replication of the preceding theocracy.

For your argument to have…any force at all, you’d have to point to a society that adopted the teachings of Lucretius, Spinoza, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Albert Einstein…and then fell into famine, dictatorship, torture and genocide. And you won’t, I think, be able to point to such. 

It is an important point, and one that free thinkers do not make often enough. The fact of some deity’s existence is ultimately less important a question than the societal framework in which that question is permitted to be answered. Logic, reason, the scientific method, free inquiry, pluralism -- organized religions have, in all times and in all places, sought to suppress these things. That they are not the only institutions to engage in such suppression is not a credit to religion, particularly not when those other institutions inevitably get away with it by mimicking religion’s installation of an autocratic god-figure…in this case, Stalin himself.

No God, eh?

Our northern neighbor is losing its religion.

From “Who’s Religious?” by Warren Clark and Grant Schellenberg, a Statistics Canada article from its summer 2006 issue, using data from Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey:

• 19% of Canadians 15 and older reported belonging to no religion in 2004, up from 12% in 1985.
• More than 50% of Canadians aged 15 to 29 reported they don’t go to religious services.

From the Canadian Social Trends-Statistics Canada graph “The importance of religion to one’s life, Canada, 2002":

• 20% of men and 15% of women reported having no religion.
• 25% of Canadians aged 15 to 29 have no religion, the highest percentage of any age group.

Stark Speaks

Six months (or roughly the typical interval between my posts on this here blog) after Rep. Pete Stark broke Congress’ proverbial “color line” and became the first member in history to acknowledge publicly that he lacks a “God belief,” the California Democrat is finally ready to talk about it.

Stark will deliver an address titled “Government Without God?” as he is presented by the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy – a 30-year-old group devoted to “ministering,” as it were, to the university’s Humanist, agnostic, atheist and non-religious community – with their 15th annual Harvard Humanist of the Year award. The address is set for Thursday night, Sept. 20, from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. in Emerson Hall’s Room 105.

On the reaction to his decision to come out of the nontheist closet, the program’s flyer states:

Despite the numerous surveys showing atheists to be the group Americans would be least likely to elect to political office, Stark denies that it takes courage to become the first admitted non-theist in the House. "What is courageous," he adds, "is to stand up in Congress and say, 'Let's tax the rich and give money to poor kids."'

Ahhhh, Fortney. I so WANT to like you. But then you gotta go and say something dumb like that.

Ghettoes of Superstition

Our British cousins – under the leadership of Ed Balls, secretary of the Department for Children, Families and Schools – currently are mulling an expansion of the number of state-funded “faith schools,” which currently number 6,850 and make up about a third of all state-funded institutions nationwide. Operating with grant money from Balls’ department, representatives of the Church of England, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Greek Orthodox and Sikh faiths studied the issue and issued a consensus position document on the proposal. Great shocker here – they were for it!

Writing at the Guardian Unlimited, University of London philosophy professor A.C. Grayling lays out his objections, and in so doing, perfectly encapsulates what so frustrates me each and every time I hear self-proclaimed “libertarians” in my own country make the absurd claim that they are striking a blow for “markets” by agitating for massive new public subsidies to the church, in the form of tuition “vouchers.”

That is, representatives of an active constituency of weekly worshippers of 8% of the British population, all of them votaries of ancient superstitions, all of them with grubby hands rummaging in the pot of public funds, and some of them doing it with the useful background threat of violence and civil unrest unless the rummaging pays off. The spectacle is appalling.

The question is not solely one of public policy, or the fact that the government's otherwise admirable desire for social cohesion is going to be negated, not enhanced, by paying to keep children apart from one another in competing ghettoes of superstition. There is the point also that if parents wish to bring up their children in their own traditional superstitions, they should do it on their own time and at their own expense. The secular majority in this country should bitterly oppose the use of their tax money for this misconceived policy. Religion, the bane of the modern world in so many respects, has got to be relegated to the private sphere and kept there.

Brownback spreads greenbacks for his fundie friends

Buried deep in the text of H.R. 3074, the $106 billion transportation and HUD porkfest the Senate passed Wednesday by an 88-7 margin, one will find an $850,000 appropriation, originating with the office of erstwhile presidential candidate Sam Brownback, for the renovation of one Morning Star Ranch in Florence, Kan.

The camp is situated an hour northeast of Wichita on a 650-acre site that includes, according to its Web site, “facilities for 72 campers and a year-round retreat lodge for 40…a dining room that seats 120 and a meeting room that seats 110 “ as well as “a swimming pool, a basketball/tennis court, a sand volleyball area, a horseshoe pit, hiking trails, biking trails, a baseball/softball diamond, playground equipment, and a park area for games.”

Oh, and one more thing. It is owned by the Los Angeles-based World Impact Ministries, whose stated purpose is to “minister cross-culturally to people unreached by the gospel of Jesus Christ through evangelism, follow-up, discipleship and indigenous church-planting.” (Well, if nothing else, they certainly won’t lack for fertilizer.) The camp is used as the headquarters for the group’s Christian Leadership Training Program, which describes itself thusly:

This two-year program is for single, urban young men, ages 18-25, who have made a commitment to Christ and want to grow in their walk with Him. Applicants are encouraged to have a church sponsor them. 

But lest you heathens think this is just a gift from Brownback to help some fundie group back home repaint the tennis courts at their personal propaganda resort, oh no no no. While this may be a faith-based initiative, these guys are inclusive! After all:

The facilities are available to other Christian groups.

You see, they have both kinds of music…country AND western!

Pete Stark!

Wow, didn't see that one coming.

Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), a member of Congress since 1973, acknowledged his nontheism in response to an inquiry by the Secular Coalition for America (www.secular.org ). Rep. Stark is a senior member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and is Chair of the Health Subcommittee.

Although the Constitution prohibits religious tests for public office, the Coalition's research reveals that Rep. Stark is the first open nontheist in the history of the Congress. Recent polls show that Americans without a god-belief are, as a group, more distrusted than any other minority in America. Surveys show that the majority of Americans would not vote for an atheist for president even if he or she were the most qualified for the office.

Herb Silverman, president of the Secular Coalition for America, attributes these attitudes to the demonization of people who don't believe in God. "The truth is," says Silverman, "the vast majority of us follow the Golden Rule and are as likely to be good citizens, just like Rep. Stark with over 30 years of exemplary public service. The only way to counter the prejudice against nontheists is for more people to publicly identify as nontheists. Rep. Stark shows remarkable courage in being the first member of Congress to do so."

In October, 2006 the Secular Coalition for America, a national lobby representing the interests of atheists, humanists, freethinkers, and other nontheists, announced a contest. At the time, few if any elected officials, even at the lowest level, would self-identify as a nontheist. So the Coalition offered $1,000 to the person who could identify the highest level atheist, agnostic, humanist or any other kind of nontheist currently holding elected public office in the United States.

In addition to Rep. Stark only three other elected officials agreed to do so: Terry S. Doran, president of the School Board in Berkeley, Calif.; Nancy Glista on the School Committee in Franklin, Maine; and Michael Cerone, a Town Meeting Member from Arlington, Mass.

Rudy and the Church

In a post primarily devoted to laying out the awesomeness that was Rev. Thomas Eutenauer's smackdown of Sean Hannity for publicly supporting access to birth control, Andrew Sullivan wonders aloud about what sort of scrutiny awaits the twice-divorced, gay- and abortion-rights supporting Rudy Giulliani from his own church:

If Benedict wants to enforce total public orthodoxy on issues important to Catholicism, he should be consistent. He should demand obedience not just on abortion, but gays and contraception as well. I have a feeling a lot of Catholic conservatives are going to find themselves seeing the bright side of secularism all of a sudden. Which leads to a fascinating question: will the Catholic hierarchy treat Giuliani the way they treated Kerry? And will the theocon right react the same way?

That post was composed shortly after 2 p.m., so I guess Sullivan hadn't yet gotten around to reading the editorial in this morning's National Catholic Register. If he had, he'd see it's already begun!

A Republican Party led by a pro-abortion politician would become a pro-abortion party. Parents know that, when we make significant exceptions to significant rules, those exceptions themselves become iron-clad rules to our children. It’s the same in a political party. A Republican Party led by Rudy Giuliani would be a party of contempt for the pro-life position, which is to say, contempt for the fundamental right on which all others depend.

Would a pro-abortion president give us a pro-life Supreme Court justice? Maybe he would in his first term. But we’ve seen in the Democratic Party how quickly and completely contempt for the right to life corrupts. Even if a President Giuliani did the right thing for a short time, it’s likely the party that accepted him would do the wrong thing for a long time.

Ain't No Man Righteous (No Not One)

So it seems Joey Ratz was rather nonplussed when a certain Robert Zimmerman was included on the bill for a benefit concert thrown in John Paul II's honor ten years ago. The pontiff, who now goes by Pope Ben, reveals his concerns about the troubadour, best known as Bob Dylan, in his new book, which appears to amount to an extended meditation on his boycrush for his predecessor.

The problem? Dylan just wasn't the "right kind of prophet."

Now, I loves me some Bobby Z., but the dude's had more religious epiphanies over the years than Bowie's had sexual orientations. But if we're talking his bona fides as a "prophet," per se, well....it seems he accurately predicted THIS incident way back in 1966.

Now the preacher looked so baffled
When I asked him why he dressed
With twenty pounds of headlines
Stapled to his chest.
But he cursed me when I proved it to him,
Then I whispered, "Not even you can hide.
You see, you're just like me,
I hope you're satisfied."

- "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again"

Heretics at the Book Store

If the New York Times bestseller list is even half the gauge of the public zeitgeist that it so often is assumed to be, then this morning's edition suggests it's an awfully good time for secularists in America. A startling 20% of the Hardcover Non-Fiction Top 25 are tomes that, even where not explicitly atheist, at the very least cast a piercingly skeptical eye on modern religious institutions.

At #7 is Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali native and recently-elected Dutch Minister of Parliament's tale of escaping the horrors of Islamic fundamentalism. In it, she writes: "I left the world of faith, of genital cutting and forced marriage for the world of reason and sexual emancipation. After making this voyage I know that one of these two worlds is simply better than the other. Not for its gaudy gadgetry, but for its fundamental values."

At #12, of course, is The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins.  It has become fashionable among atheists to engage in a certain amount of Dawkins-bashing, which I attribute largely to the contrarian streak to which those of our ilk are so exceedingly prone. I'd be first to say this is far from Dawkins' best work. It's not even his best work on theology. (The Blind Watchmaker holds that title.)  But that misses the point of the book, which is to inject these "memes" into popular culture and get the conversation going. By that measure, it's been a remarkable success.

Just behind Dawkins, at #13, is Chris Hedges' American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. I'm actually currently in the middle of this one, and must admit to some disappointment, coming off Hedges' classic War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. While it makes for a nice catalogue of some of the more frightening elements of the U.S Christian (small "c") coalition, if the very title of your book is going to flagrantly violate Godwin's law, you really need to make a stronger case that you're describing actual fascism, and not just religiously-based right-wing nuttery.

Clocking in at #21 is one I have not yet read, but am very much looking forward to: God: The Failed Hypothesis by physicist Victor Stenger, whose skepticism is trained even on his fellow physicists that engage in the long-standing parlor game of "fine-tuning" cosmological constants in search of the Universal Theory. Stenger's been at these topics for quite some time, and the clarity with which he can relate terribly esoteric concepts has always impressed me. (For a sample, check out this ten-year-old essay on the then-burgeoning "intelligent design" movement, written for Creation/Evolution.) Plus, I'm always a little biased toward fellow Jersey boys, in this case one who shares my dad's alma mater (the defunct Newark College of Engineering, which goes these days by the title N.J. Tech)

Hanging on at #24 is Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation, which I actually enjoyed rather more than Dawkins' book.  Where Dawkins can get muddled, Harris is a master of clarity. Where Dawkins has an unfortunate tendency toward abrasive smarminess and self-satisfaction (and more than the occasional strawman) Harris remains even-handed throughout. These also are the strengths that propelled him to knock-outs blows of Dennis Prager (admittedly, not much of a challenge) and Andrew Sullivan in a pair of recent on-line debates.

And the fun doesn't stop there. Possiby coming soon to a best-seller list near you, there is the just-published English translation of French philosopher Michel Onfray's The Atheist Manifesto; next week will mark the publication of Taner Edis' An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam; in May, we'll be treated to Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great, and I, for one, am relieved to see Hitch pass through his neocon phase and return to the kinds of topics for which his acerbic wit is most apt; and at some point in 2008, Julia Sweeney is set to release My Beautiful Loss of Faith Story: A Memoir, the long-awaited sequel to 1997's God Said, "Ha!"