09.30.06
Posted in Friendly Atheist at 6:15 pm by Hemant Mehta
Harold Ford, Jr. is the Democrat running for the Senate seat currently held by Bill Frist, who will retire after the midterm elections. He’s running against Republican Bob Corker.
Ford’s latest campaign ad takes place inside of a church. Does this blur the line of separation of church and state? Or is it just Ford letting people know who he is?
According to one article,
Gesturing to the pews behind him, Ford in the ad says, “Here, I learned the difference between right and wrong. And now, Mr. Corker’s doing wrong. First, spending millions telling untruths about his Republican opponents, both good men, and now me.” He goes on to tell viewers about his record on national security.
“I love it,” Maury Davis, pastor of Cornerstone Church in Madison, said of Ford’s use of a church as a backdrop. “I like that he brought church back into the political arena.”
That last statement explains exactly why this is a bad move. I’m not sure what the church has to do with his message, other than to tell people he believes in the same god they do, therefore, they should vote for him.
It also bothers me since he’s claiming that going to church is the only reason he knows right from wrong. I mean, I didn’t go to church, but I could tell you from my own (and others’) experience that lying about other people is wrong. I have yet to meet someone who says that’s a good thing to do. Do we want another person in Congress who needs to be told by his church that lying is wrong? (What if he missed the sermons on stealing and murder!?)
Is it a violation of church/state separation? No. Not if the church allows other candidates to film campaign ads in similar circumstances, said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
But he, too, agreed that this was just a bad precedent.
American Atheists released a statement with a similar tone, saying,
“To our knowledge, this is the first time a partisan political ad has been produced using the backdrop of a church,” said Ellen Johnson, President of American Atheists. “It’s part of a larger and disturbing trend where candidates are invoking religion in order to woo constituencies and win elections.”
Johnson added that by “playing the religion card,” candidates like Mr. Ford were marginalizing and excluding millions of Atheists, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and other nonbelievers.
Dave Silverman, Communications Director for American Atheists said that Mr. Ford’s ad is more than a simple statement of personal beliefs.
“It’s pandering, and it raises serious questions about a candidate who does something like this would represent all of the people in his state if elected, or uphold the separation of church and state.”
Here’s where it gets interesting. According to a writer from Scripps Howard News Service, the Ford campaign heard about the American Atheists’ statement. Says writer Bartholomew Sullivan,
Ford’s campaign spokesman Carol Andrews made sure reporters covering the race got copies of the atheists’ statement.
Since the “atheists’ statement” wasn’t exactly positive, you wonder what the motivation was for doing this…
“Look! The atheists don’t want us in church! A vote for Harold Ford, Jr. is a vote against the atheists!”
I doubt Ford will clear up any of this confusion. He wouldn’t want to tread on the heels of his supporters.
Technorati Tags: Harold Ford, Jr., Bill Frist, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Barry Lynn, Bartholomew Sullivan, Scripps Howard News Service, American Atheists, Ellen Johnson, Dave Silverman, Bob Corker, Maury Davis, Carol Andrews, atheist, atheists, humanists, nonbelievers
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09.29.06
Posted in Friendly Atheist at 3:42 pm by Hemant Mehta
Next Saturday, October 7th, I will be speaking about the eBay auction and the upcoming book at the meeting of the Southeast Wisconsin FreeThinkers (SWiFT). If you’re reading this, and live nearby, I hope you can make it! More information can be found here: http://swift.humanists.net/calendar.htm.
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09.26.06
Posted in Friendly Atheist at 10:43 pm by Hemant Mehta
I had 7 minutes to spare last weekend, so I stopped by a bookstore and read Letter to a Christian Nation
by Sam Harris.
It’s a great introduction to the atheist world for anyone who knows nothing about it. For those who understand the basics (like what State-Church separation is or why atheists feel the way they do about religion), the book might be too basic. It didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t read before, and I’m sure the same goes for many people out there, atheists or otherwise. However, the statistics on how red states have more crimes and divorces than blue states may be of interest to many.
Here’s what really bothers me. On a page completely filled with writing (no gaps, only one new paragraph), I counted 197 words. There are a total of 96 pages in the book.
How short is that?
Well, Tuesdays With Morrie is a fairly quick read. It had 237 words on a particular page filled with dialogue (and the indentations/space associated with it). There are 208 pages in the book.
So Letter to a Christian Nation is not even half as long as Tuesdays with Morrie in terms of pages, with even fewer words.
It’s an essay sold for an exorbitant amount of money ($16.95, full price).
Still, it’s better than nothing, and as I’m writing this, Dawkins and Harris‘ books are ranked 4 and 5, respectively, on Amazon. That’s incredible, considering how books like these are rarely popular.
Technorati Tags: Letters to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom, Amazon
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09.23.06
Posted in Friendly Atheist at 9:01 pm by Hemant Mehta
Heather Mallick is my favorite person tonight. Mostly because she sounds so perfectly Canadian. This is a “viewpoint” article from CBC news, entitled “Atheists Don’t Get It“:
May I ask for a moment of silence? Consider the plight of the old-fashioned, bewildered atheist in these times where religion is the new black, so to speak.
For I am an atheist and I am out of my depth. I watch the news about religion with a puzzled stare, unable to fathom the motives of the ultra-religious. What’s going through Mel Gibson’s tiny little brain?
I read of this new Pope, the one who blue-skies in public and makes silly, ill-considered remarks about Islam and apologizes, only to insult Jews in the next breath. This leads to ponderous BBC backgrounders asking: “How infallible is the Pope?” But to an atheist, you’re either infallible or not. By apologizing, he proved himself fallible. Does this mean he has to resign?
The BBC says no. Apparently the Pope only speaks infallibly when he announces ahead of time that he?s going to. This is the journalistic equivalent of “going on the record.”
Also, and I could have told the Pope this, never quote anyone from the 14th century. With the exception of Chaucer, people weren’t at their brightest then. Things didn’t perk up intellectually until the Renaissance. And one word reverberates: Crusades. Blood. Axes. Spikes. Takes two to go on a crusade, and I mean you, Pope Urban II.
As for the Pope pointing out that worshipping the cross was really worshipping the Jewish tool of execution of Christ, it only made this atheist think of that Lenny Bruce line about how if Jesus had been killed 20 years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.
And all of the above reveal the problem suffered by people like me when the world’s religious types get upset. Devoid of religious belief or interest, I don’t have the faintest idea what people are angry about. Atheists don’t get it. The only joy in these disputes is one I share with the British writer Marina Hyde: She loves to see mad placards in demonstrations. Her favourite was the American soccer mom who had embroidered “God Hates Fags” on the Confederate flag. My favourite is Father Ted’s “Down with this sort of thing.”
Views on mixing religion with news
All I think about religion is that it is a private matter that should never be referred to, in the same way that we are taught never to discuss money. By age six, we know it’s rude to ask what something cost, it’s double rude to say the word “underpants” and it’s double super rude to ask people what religion they are.
This is why stories about religion should never be on the front page of a newspaper. The front page is for facts. Belief should go somewhere else.
But thanks to George W. Bush getting Christian after he quit drinking and Osama bin Laden being upset about American bases on Saudi land (not for nationalistic reasons, I take it), the news just today, to pick one day, is all about Israel killing Muslim (I assume) children in Gaza (the Independent), the Pope attacking non-Christians (the Guardian), Indonesia planning to execute Christian militants for inciting attacks on Muslim militants in the 1998 riots (BBC Online) and the religious right taking over Stephen Harper’s government (The Walrus).
If you believe in one of these religions — and may I say politely, gosh, that’s awfully nice — try to imagine someone like me who can’t fathom the fervour.
Why would somebody not like Jews? You say they killed Christ? That was a gazillion years ago, surely. Also, being an atheist, this is news to me. (I swear, I thought it was the Romans. Or was that Life of Brian?) And Jews are good looking and smart, liberal in outlook and nice to know. There’s principled Lord Woolf and indomitable Seymour M. Hersh, and adorable Jon Stewart and my wonderful dentist, Dr. Klaiman, and that’s just off the top of my head. I love them all equally. I look at Dr. Klaiman’s pictures of his daughters in his office and I want him to adopt me. Anti-Semitism seems insane. I suspect it’s jealousy.
And what do people have against Muslims? They seem such prayerful people, so elegant in their movements and their dress. Yes, they oppress women, but all religions repress women. I’m told that Hindus don’t like Muslims, which is why the partition of India was a hideous slaughter you don’t hear much about because everyone is so relieved they don’t have to live in an alien neighbourhood. But what is Hinduism? Atheists find all religious details intensely boring.
I do know that all Indian food is delicious. Can we agree on that?
Next on the religion list?
Who’s next? What is a Baptist? There’s something about Episcopalians that sounds posh. Buddhism seems sensible. Am I wrong? Protestants have no fun. I don’t know any Catholics. Actually I do, but they haven’t mentioned it because they’re Canadian Catholics so they don’t want to be loud about it. But I observe that even the anti-abortion Catholics don’t have 13 children. Catholics are always described as “devout” but when it comes to birth control, not so much. I quite like them for this. “Darling, not tonight, we can feed three children, but not 17, the Pope wasn’t speaking infallibly when he said that bit.”
Wasn’t he in the Hitler Youth? I forgive him for that, sort of, so why can’t he forgive other people? Isn’t the beauty of Catholicism that it forgives all? I learned that from The Sopranos. So why is the Pope so irate?
Atheism is relaxing. I cannot grasp the nettle of any news story involving religion because it makes me sleepy. I suspect most Canadians are like me. But they won’t write letters to the CBC defending my right to be clueless about religion. Why? Because they’re Canadian and they can’t be bothered. I think that’s kind of nice.
Technorati Tags: Heather Mallick, CBC News, atheist
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Posted in Friendly Atheist at 4:41 pm by Hemant Mehta
Joe Heller of the Green Bay Press-Gazette had a good one this week:
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Posted in Friendly Atheist at 1:02 am by Hemant Mehta
A friend sent me an advance copy of Richard Dawkin’s new book, The God Delusion, a couple weeks ago. I finally finished reading it yesterday…
Wow.
It is good. Very good. I wish it was around my freshman year of high school– it would’ve provided a lot of confidence to me at a time when my doubts about religion were just forming. Having been an atheist for almost ten years now, I thought I already knew the main arguments in favor of atheism, and yet as I read the book, there were at least four or five separate occasions where I just reread a passage, stunned, by an argument that made so much sense I couldn’t believe I had never considered it.
The book is out next month. Go buy it or borrow it. I don’t know if many religious people will read the book… they might be turned off by the title and not even give the book a chance. But I would like to know what a Christian’s response would be to the various arguments.
In the past fews years, I’ve read a number of books and articles that criticize Christian arguments for God. Some focus on the “proofs” of God and others rip on the accuracy of the Bible. But I rarely see any Christian books that dispose of arguments against religion in a way that doesn’t resort to saying “The Bible Is Always Right.” Then again, before the authors could do that, they’d have to understand what atheists actually believe, and I have yet to see an accurate representation of atheists in Christian literature.
But if there is a response to Dawkins’ points, refuting them, I would love to read it. Show me why he’s wrong.
On another note, the release of the book coincides with the start of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, an organization with a mission to promote rational thinking, original research, and perhaps most importantly, “Charitable giving by secularists to humanitarian good causes” (in other words, they’ll give money to, say, victims of natural disasters, without trying to evangelize/preach/attach religious strings to the money).
Here’s hoping both the book and the Foundation find their way into the public sphere.
Oh! And Dawkins will be on The Colbert Report on October 17. That’ll be fun.
I’d be interested in what your thoughts are on the book, based on the press for it (here, here) and after you’ve read it.
Technorati Tags: Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Colbert Report, Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, atheist, atheism, Christian
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09.21.06
Posted in Friendly Atheist at 10:43 pm by Hemant Mehta
Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation had a Letter to the Editor published in The Capital Times (Madison, WI).
Normally, that’s not a huge deal, but the letter is sure to get people riled up. Plus, it got Farked.
Annie Laurie and her husband Dan Barker also have a nice podcast, which is worth a listen. Subscribe on iTunes using this link: http://ffrf.libsyn.com/rss.
Technorati Tags: Annie Laurie Gaylor, Dan Barker, Freedom From Religion Foundation, The Capital Times, Fark
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09.19.06
Posted in Friendly Atheist at 7:30 pm by Hemant Mehta
Over at Conversation at the Edge, 8th grader Ben had a wonderful homework assignment: Cut out short phrases and paste them under the categories of Science Is… or Science Is Not…
Some of the phrases include:
– Democratic
– Limited to the natural world
– Fair
– Based on Faith
– Disprovable
Ben says:
… the same person that insisted that God was able to be studied by science also insisted to the teacher that angels could be part of science… The teacher replied that angels weren’t part of the natural word, they were supernatural… The other person said that “Well the other people in my group don’t believe in God so they can’t see an angel! It’s like santa claus, you can’t see him unless you believe in him.”
Why couldn’t my Science classes ever be this fun…?
Technorati Tags: Conversation at the Edge, Science, Christian, atheist, supernatural
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09.17.06
Posted in Friendly Atheist at 11:05 pm by Hemant Mehta
Now this is just frightening. Watch the video, too. It’ll give you nightmares. How can the supporters say this is not complete indoctrination? It teaches kids to hate those who believe differently from you… especially if they’re gay or have an abortion. And they proudly use the term “warriors.” And while some parts of the evangelical community might oppose this extreme camp, will they say anything negative about it? Of course not.
Fark’s comment board is always good for others’ reactions to this story.
Camp Quest, on the other hand, is a summer camp for children of atheist parents. But you won’t see those kids running around saying “Christians are evil.” They’re taught to question what they hear and remain skeptical until they have evidence.
But whose numbers are bigger? Take a guess.
Technorati Tags: Jesus Camp, Camp Quest, Fark, atheist, Evangelical, Christian
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Posted in Friendly Atheist at 6:18 pm by Hemant Mehta
This came in my mail from the American Evangelistic Association. It was addressed to “Dr. Hemant Mehta.” They flatter me so.
GOOD NEWS… for Christians Only!
Dear Christian Friend,
Are your healthcare costs too high? Or maybe you can’t afford health coverage because you’re self-employed or in ministry? Perhaps you are worried that even a small medical problem will wipe you out?
Let me tell you about the breakthrough solution that’s saving thousands of dollars a year for Christians all across the country. It’s called Medi-Share! But there is a catch and here it is. You have to be a Christian and you must qualify for membership…
The good news is that Medi-Share is NOT insurance! That’s one of the reasons members save money. Because as Christians, members don’t have to pay for the worldly lifestyles of others that do not love the Lord…
Medi-Share has become one of the fastest growing healthcare options for Christians. It is specifically designed to meet the needs of God’s people while providing them with the best possible care at the lowest possible cost. Medi-Share: Affordable. Reliable. Flexible… and Biblical!
Surround your family with other Christians that care… and who will pray for you when you are ill…
The italics are mine.
The Washington Post wrote about this company last year, saying:
Critics disagree. They say Medi-Share and other church plans are essentially unlicensed health insurers operating without regulation, protection for unsuspecting consumers or public accountability. Consumers, they say, may not understand what is not covered, know that they are surrendering their medical privacy or that they could be stuck with huge medical bills.
Obviously, I wouldn’t be covered by this insurance because of my lavish, Godless, “worldly lifestyle”… which apparently consists of bungee jumping and trying to contract syphilis.
I am going to fill out the business reply card, though. And where they ask, “Are you a Born-Again Christian?” I’ll check “No.” Let’s see what they send next…
Technorati Tags: Medi-Share, atheist, Christian, American Evangelistic Association, health insurance
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