This Issue:

PAROCHIAID

THREATENS

THE CHOSEN PEOPLE

TOOLS OF TYRANNY

THE U.S.

SHOW & TELL FOR RELIGION

$1.25
A Journal Of
Atheist News
And Thought

Vol. 20, No.4

April, 1978

JI

AMERICAN ATHEISTS
"Aims and Purposes"
1. To stimulate and promote freedom of thought and inquiry concerning religious
beliefs, creeds, dogmas, tenets, rituals and practices.
2. To collect and disseminate information, data and literature on all religions and
promote a more thorough understanding of them, their origins and histories.
3. To advocate, labor for, and promote in all lawful ways, the complete and absolute
separation of state and church; and the establishment and maintenance of a
thoroughly secular system of education available to all.
4. To encourage the development and public acceptance of a humane ethical system,
stressing the mutual sympathy, understanding and interdependence of all people
and the corresponding responsibility of each, individually, in relation to society.
5. To develop and propagate a social philosophy in which man is the central figure who
alone must be the source of strength, progress and ideals for the well-being and
happiness of humanity.
6. To promote the study of the arts and sciences and of all problems affecting the
maintenance, perpetuation and enrichment of human (and other) life.
7. To engage in such social, educational, legal and cultural activity as will be useful
and beneficial to members of American Atheists and to society as a whole.

"Definitions"
1. Atheism is the life philosophy (Weltanschauung) of persons who are free from
theism. It is predicated on the ancient Greek philosophy of Materialism.
2. American Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly
accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a system of philosophy
and ethics verifiable by experience, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of
authority or creeds.
3. The Materialist philosophy declares that the cosmos is devoid of immanent conscious purpose; that it is governed by its own inherent, immutable and impersonal
law; that there is no supernatural interference in human life; that man-finding his
resources within himselt=-can and must create his own destiny; and that his potential for good and higher development is for all practical purposes unlimited.

Vol. 20, No.4

April,

1978

ON THE COVER

EDITORIAL
NEWS
Parochiaid Threatens U.S.
Murray May Sue Schools
Show & Tell For Religion
FEATURE ARTICLES
Godba//, G. Richard Bozarth
What Praying Won't Solve, Ignatz Sahula-Dycke

3
8
9

11
12
14

Atheism In The Philippines

Tools Of Tyranny
Christian Perfection, Ralph Shirley
A Time For Living, Jon Murray
My Lai Post-Mortem, Samuel McMorris
LETTERS

16

20
24

L6
28

TO THE EDITOR

THE CHOSEN PEOPLE - A Position Statement

ATHEIST

30

BOOK REVIEW

How Odd Of God

Bloody Story Of Anti-Semitism

32

Editor-In-Chief: Madalyn Murray O'Hair Managing Editor: Jon Garth Murray

Layout: Frank D~
Circulation: John Mays
Production: Ralph Shirley
Non-Residential Staff: Igfia~ Sahula-Dycke, G. Richard Bozarth, James Ericson,
Warren Shibles, Voltaire E. Heywood.
The American Atheist magazine is published monthly by American Atheists, 2210 Hancock
Drive, Austin, Texas 78756, a non-profit, non-political, tax-exempt, educational organization.
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 2117, Austin, TX, 78768; copyright 1978 by Society of Separationists, Inc.; Subscription rates: $15.00 per year; $25.00 for two years. Manuscripts submitted
must be typed, double-spaced and accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The
editors assume no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts.

THE AMERICAN
ATHEIST
Post Office Box 2117
Austin, Texas 78768
Enter my subscription
NEW
Total Enclosed $,

MAGAZINE

for one year at $15.00

(two years at $25.00).

RENEWAL

Native Canadian Fred Lake has considered himself an Atheist since the age of
seven (he is now 41) when his mother first
sent him to a fundamentalist Sunday school
where he was horrified to find them against
everything from television to dancing. His
refusal then to submit to any more such irrational indoctrination at the hands of religionists was an early indication of Fred
Lake's innate skepticism which would eventually lead him to Atheism.
Fred was born, raised, and still resides in
St. Catherines, Ontario where he is employed as an electrician for General Motors
Corporation. He is currently engaged in a
court battle with his ex-wife who is seeking
to restrict his visitation rights with their 13year-old daughter because, she maintains,
"he is a vehement Atheist and takes great
steps to openly and vociferously advocate
the Atheist doctrine."
Unlike most of the rest of us, instead of
taking the usual two weeks of vacation during the crowded summertime and frittering
it away at some beach or mountain resort in
accompaniment to a great expenditure of
liquid assets, Fred Lake generally takes his
vacation in the dead of the bitter Canadian
winter and spends it in sunny Austin, Texas
helping out in any way he can at the American Atheist Cen ter.
We here at the Center always enjoy his
visits because his infectious laughter can be
heard booming throughout the entire building and his jokes, wisecracks, and the ribbing he is able to take so graciously from
Dr. O'Hair and the rest of us cheer up the
entire staff of the Center.
In any case, Fred Lake is a cheerful and
useful addition to the Atheist Center each
year and we hope that more of you freedmen from out there in the big wide old U.S.
of A. will take a leaf from Fred's book and
make up your minds to spend your vacations here, helping us do the things which
simply would not get done by our regular
staff without volunteer help. There's a lot of
that kind of thing to be done (with the organization of our library heading the long
list), and we promise to make your stay as
pleasant and inexpensive as possible.
Interested fellow Canadians may contact
Fred at the following address:
Fred Lake
121 Highland Ave.
St. Catherines
Ont. L2R4J3 Canada
416/682-4388

Name

Address

City, State, & Zip

Austin, Texas

April,

1978

Page 1

Last year I wrote a letter to the editor of my local

newspaper about prejudice but he chose not to publish it. The letter was not in bad taste or extremely
revolutionary
but simply stated the facts as I saw
them; but the editor didn't see it my way. In the
letter I stated that man is not better than (anything
or anyone else) but simply a part of (a whole).
Man, because of his accumulated knowledge and
his abi Iity to make tools and objects wh ich the rest of
the animal world can't, considers himself above
and beyond everything else. The tool-making
Homo
Erectus of 100,000 years ago had an advantage over
the rest of the animals in that he could reason and
think and use tools to acquire the food which was
necessary for the survival of his family or tribe. In
time the tiny
improvements
over thousands
of
years and the adaptation of man to his environment
brought
man through
his different
stages to his
present condition,
and the last 30,000 years to the
present are what we are concerned with.
From about 60,000 to 30,000 years ago there
lived in Europe an ancestor of Homo Sapiens whom
we have named Cro-Maqnon
Man. He was about
the same size as modern man excepting that his
cranial cavity was larger by about 200 cc as compared
with Homo Sapiens. In the graves of that period
which have been unearthed and identified by anthropologists, the skeletal remains of these people were
found to be arranged in an identical position. They
were laid out on their sides in the fetal position with
tools, objects of decoration and the sku II of a cave
bear included. This indicates they worshipped cave
bears. I believe that this is the earliest known incidence of a religious practice, so religion has apparently been around for a long time.
Today the world has many religions and beliefs
which vary with geographical location. Most religionists worship a god or deity or many gods whom they
believe created them and the world they live in.
The Jewish religion and others which evolved from
it teach that the world was made first, followed by
man and then other forms of life created for man's
use. This, in addition to his intellectual
dominance
over all other species, has caused man to believe he
is "better than."
Because man couldn't empirically
explain why he is dominant,
he invented something
to which he attributed all knowledge and that invention is god.
I do not consider myself "better than" but rather a
part of (a whole). I am just a member of the higher
primates or, as Desmond Morris calls us, The Naked
Apes. The first step I took towards giving up a belief
in a god and recognizing my Atheism was when I realized that I was just an intelligent
animal and that
I was a part of the animal world, not made in the
image of some mythological
god. Religionists cannot

Page 2

April,1978

tolerate being classified as belonging to the animal

kingdom; they have to be "better than."
For many years I have debated with religionists on
the god concept. The question they always get to
eventually is, "Where did we come from?" or "Who
made us?" Science has, as far as I am concerned,
completely
disproved the idea of a heavenly creator.
Most people who believe in a god will acknowledge
that the story of creation in the Bible is metaphorical
and that the world wasn't created in six days as has
been taught by priests for thousands of years. Should
you bring up contradictory
evidence obtained from
the sciences of paleontology
or anthropology,
both
accredited
sciences today which were completely
unknown
to the ancients, religionists still refuse to
give up their belief in a "better
than"
concept,
I have asked many rei igion ists why it is that if
their god did inspire the people who wrote the
Bible, what has happened to god since the Bible was
compiled? The ancients must have been better than
the people of today because god at least spoke to 'and
inspired them to write the Bible. If there is, was, or
ever has been a god, the Bible would be an on-going
soap opera, not just one book. Modern man must be
lesser than the sheep shepherded by the ancients,
because god does not seem to be inspiring even the
pope to produce sequels to the Bible.
All faiths are based on this "better than" principle.
Anyone who believes s/he is "better than" hates the
"lesser than." How someone can believe s/he is better
than another because he adheres to a certain philosophy is beyond me. The only thing that really
counts is how we treat each other, not whether you
bel ieve th is or that.
I as an Atheist have carefully observed the people
and environment around me. I have yet to see anyone
walk across water. I have never met a religious person
or a minister whom I thought was better than anyone
else. I have never seen a miracle. I have been mistreated by the religious community
as a "lesser than,"
but I have yet to see proof that those of the religious
community
are better than anyone else. Do a miracle
you turkeys, and prove it!

Fred L. Lake
GUEST EDITOR
American

Atheist

1111[((____..-

_N_EW_S --"",llI111"fllllltllllltlltlliJI;II"tllllll11illllt"'1

Parochiaid Threatens
Pope Pius, of course, started it all.
On July 5th, 1977, the Sacred Congregation for Catholic
Education, the Vatican, issued a 10,000-word document urging Roman Catholic bishops allover the world to seek government funds to support Roman Catholic parochial school systems. It was a bold political thrust. Confident of numbers in
every country, depending on the concept of "democracy" and
majority rule, knowing that Roman Catholics are carefully
trained to respond to that which will most favor their church,
the Vatican felt certain enough of its adherents to take on all
of the existing governments in the so-called "free" world.
Confident in its expectations, knowing full well that the
Roman Catholic schools already had won the financial support
of the governments of Italy, Spain, Portugal, Britain, the Netherlands, West Germany, Canada, all of South America, Mexico,
and were even gaining points with the ruling communist governments of Poland and Hungary, the Vatican moved to bring
all the governments officially into support of the church, including that of the United States.
The decree spoke openly -of those states which already provide financial support to Roman Catholic schools and which
"guarantee both the preservation of the special status [editor's
emphasis] of the [Roman] Catholic school and its ability to
perform its function adequately.
"[ Roman] Catholic schools are thereby more or less closely
associated with the national svstemts)." the document continued, "and are assured of an economic and juridical status similar to state schools.
"These solutions [state financial support of Roman Catho-

The wolf's with the flock/And

More "liberal" sects attempt to rationalize or modify their

body of ideas to make them more palatable to the. earnest and
young inquiring mind.
As a matter of policy and principle, organized religion
would prefer to maintain an unchanged ideological environment, chiefly by boycotting irreligious "materialistic humanistic" literature, art and ideas while creating a protecting "religious" atmosphere around the child. This is the basis for the
parochial or religious school. It represents an attempt to create
an ideological environment in which the child's mind will repond in a manner favorable to the claims and teachings of a
particular sect.
Unhappily for the churches, traditional religious teaching
conflicts with many scientific ideas and theories, with the
everyday revealed life of humankind and with history, nature,
and all of objective reality. Therefore religious belief cannot be
taught like other subjects. It must be implanted, early and often.
The Jesuit says "Give me a child until he is six and I have
him for life." With other subjects one can wait until the child
has the mental maturify to grasp them. One does not start a
child on analytical chemistry or solid geometry, but rather on
small numbers and lesser skills.
Apart from the desire of religion to capture the mind early
and indoctrinate it constantly, there is no reason at all why religion could not wait, as other subjects wait, until the child is
old enough to understand and appreciate it. But with religion,
it is literally the child or nothing, for if it fails to get the child,
it will almost certainly never get the adult.

the fox with the fowl/

When freedom we trust/With the cross and the cowl. -

lic schools] are an encouragement to those responsible for

[Roman] Catholic schools in countries where the [Roman]
Catholic community must still shoulder a very heavy burden
of cost to educate their own children in their own reliqion."
Indeed all churches have always recognized the importance
of gaining the child early and keeping the child late, in order
to instill into the young mind those patterns of thought that
will preserve the authority of the churches.
They recognize that this need is more urgent today than
ever before because the general intellectual atmosphere is rapidly changing as new technological and scientific ideas shatter
old myths everywhere in the expanding world of knowledge.
The ways in which the churches respond to the changes are
quite various.
Either they can resist the changes and try to maintain a
rigid ideological environment in their teaching of the young, or
they can try to modify a few areas of teaching to meet a
changing world. Some institutions, such as the Roman Catholic Church in its hierarchical structure, are basically unyielding.

John G. Whittier

The desire for the control of education by religion is indicative of the churches' need to dominate the mind of the rising
generation. The struggle for the child is part of the fight for
the future of civilization.
The pope did not need to urge the bishops of the Roman
Catholic Church in the United States to the plan of government support of its schools - those bishops had been carrying
on intensive in-fighting for the same during the past 50 years
of our history.
During the time that it was evident that public education in
every state needed a helping hand from federal funding, the
Roman Catholic Church was successful in blocking that aid unless a commitment would be made to include paroch ial schools
in the largess. The bill was ransomed finally under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 when the Roman
Catholic hierarchy dropped its opposition to it, having had its
schools included to receive benefits.
Since that time, through legislative enlargement and administrative interpretation, the Roman Catholic schools have de-

'The news which fills one half of the magazine is chosen to demonstrate, month after month, the dead reactionary hand of religion. It dictates'
good habits, sexual conduct, family size, it censures cinema, theater, television, even education. It dictates life values and lifestyle. Religion is
politics and, always, the most authoritarian and reactionary politics. We editorialize our news to emphasize this thesis. Unlike any other maga~ine or newspaper in the United States, we are honest enough to admit it.
~

Austin, Texas

April,1978

Page3

manded and received hundreds of millions of dollars of benefits from the bill: purchase of services, salary supplements,
school maintenance
and repair, payments for testing and record keeping, "lending"
of equipment,
of books, grants for
auxiliary services, grants for health and welfare services, grants
for remedial programs and special tutoring, instructional
materials, tax credits, tuition reimbursements.
In an unending series of demands upon state, city, county
and federal governments
the insatiable greed of the churches,
particularly
the Roman Catholic Church, for tax dollars has
been so flagrant and gross that individual American citizens
have filed suit after suit to protect the public school system
and to repair a rapidly crumbling wall of separation of state
and church. Already over 20 cases have gone to federal courts,
the burden of the cost being upon those who believe in the
founding principles of our nation. In each instance the suit was
filed against a government
entity
intent on assisting the
church - usually the Roman Catholic.
Given the admonition
of the pope, nothing else was needed
for the fanatical Roman Catholic (Dem.) Senator from New
York, Patrick Moynihan.
For over 20 years he had assumed
the personal burden of fighting for citizen tax money for Roman Catholic churches, developing a bitter hatred for President Kennedy who refused to see this need.
During the days of his candidacy,
the Roman Catholic
Church had extracted a promise from Jimmy Carter in return
for votes. In mid-October,
1976, two weeks before the election, Carter had sent a telegram to Roman Catholic educators
which said:
"I am firmly committed
to finding constitutionally
ceptable
methods
of providing aid to the parents
children attending parochial schools."

Page 4

acof

April,1978

Seizing upon this as a battle slogan, Moynihan gave interviews to Roman Catholic papers fanning flames. "I'm tired of
people lying to us," he said, and added that if the adm inistration failed in its pledge he'd "go up and down New York
state, telling them to vote Republican."
The idea was not lost on the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
The Rev. Donald Shea, the Catholic priest who is the director
of the Republican
National Committee's
Ethnic/Catholic
division had a ploy. Since 1978 was a congressional election year,
why not try to staff the House and the Senate with Republicans committed
to Parochiaid
(i.e.. tax dollar aid to the Roman Catholic parochial schools).

GOP Election Tactics

Senator Moynihan was the man to do the job and immediately the Republican
minority
leader of the Senate was approached. The plan was seized by Robert Packwood (Rep.) of
Oregon. The ignominy of it is apparent in that Packwood lists
himself in Congress as a "Unitarian,"
which is a cover word for
Atheists.
But, with the Republican
party solidly behind the
ploy, religious distinctions
were forgotten.
The Roman Catholic vote could be purchased with tax aid to the Roman Catholic parochial schools. With a Baptist in the White House; one
who had committed
himself to "providing aid to the parents
of children attending
parochial schools" but who had fallen
back on that promise, there was a possibility of substantial
Republican gains. Ford, who desires to try for the presidency
again, was also impressed with the planning.
Five Roman Catholic priests obligingly wrote a bill proposing aid. They were:
(1) Monsignor Edward F. Spiers, executive director of Citizens for Educational
Freedom, the 20-year-old Roman
Catholic parochiaid pressure group,
(2) Rev. Virgil Blum (S.J. - Society of Jesus, i.e., a Jesuit
of Marquette University).
long-time spokesman
for parochial aid and lobbyist against the First Amendment
of our constitution,
(3) Rev. James Burtchaell, C.S.C., former provost of Notre
Dame University,
(4) Rev. Charles Whelan (S.J. - Society of Jesus, i.e., a Jesuit) of the Fordham
[Roman Catholic]
Law School
faculty
and one-time
advisor to former
President
Nixon's Commission on School Finance. This commission, of course, favored Parochiaid.
(5) Rev. Donald W. Shea, as indicated above, of the Republican
National Committee's
Ethnic /Catholic
division.
When the bill was completed
by these members of the Roman Catholic
hierarchy,
senators Packwood
and Moynihan
placed their names on the same and submitted
the bill
(S. 2142, "Tuition
Tax Credit Act of 1977") to the United
States Senate on September
26, 1977. They had convinced 51
members of the Senate (there are only 100 Senators) to cosponsor the bill! Fourteen of these are members of the Senate
Finance Committee
which has the bill under consideration.
There are, of course, only 18 members on the Senate Finance
Committee,
where it will receive approval. In the House, the
same bill is proposed by Bill Frenzel (Rep.-Mn.) and Jim Burke
(Dem.-Ma.) (HR 9332).
The pope should be pleased with the handiwork
of his
agents in the United States - so thoroughly
does the bill
undermine our traditional
non-sectarian
attempts at public education. In its present form the bill would immediately
cost
the United States approximately
$6 billion during the first
year of its operation,
with an expanding
thrust which could
bring the expenses of this plan into the range of $25 to $30

American

Atheist

billion a year.
Even the modest start (only $6 billion) would be a cost to
each and every American, no matter what his/her religious affiliation, or lack thereof, of $275 a year in taxes. The average
family of four would need to pay $1,100 a year to support religious schools in addition to paying the ad valorem tax on
their properties which support the public schools.
The basic plan is to give a "tuition reimbursement" credit
of 50% of the tuition paid for each child in a parochial (or private) school, up to a maximum benefit of $500 per year.
The Catholic Puerto Ricans and Mexicans flooding over our
borders at the rate of 5,000,000 a year, bringing with them
their broods of children, would be ecstatic with the plan, as
would be the breeders of large families in the United States.
A special part of the plan is that if the parent owed less tax
than the credit was worth, the parent would receive a tuition
refund check from the federal government for the difference.
A parent with four children in a parochial (or private) school
could claim a $2,000 credit, and if paying only $600 taxes,
would receive a check from the Internal Revenue Service in
the amount of $1,400 - in addition to having no tax at all to
pay.
Roman Catholic schools are currently supported by the parishes in which they are located and fees have necessarily been
modest. The average annual tuition costs of Roman Catholic
educatio'n (by percentage in each category) are:
No tuition charge
.
Tuition under $1 OO/year ..
Tuition $100-$199/year
.
Tuition $200-$399/year
.
More than $400/year
.

22% of
40% of
17% of
13% of
. 7% of

Roman
Roman
Roman
Roman
Roman

Catholic
Catholic
Catholic
Cathol ic
Catholic

schools
schools
schools
schools
schools

The minimal amount charged indicates that the indoctrination of children into Roman Catholicism is so important to
that church that it has been willing, through its parishes, to asassume the financial burden, asking parents to give only token
tuition fees.
However, if the United States government is going to give
up to $500 per child per year it is easy to predict that tuitions
will rise dramatically. Although the grant is supposed to be
50% of what the parent pays, arrangements will quickly be
made by the churches involved to "paperwork" that difficulty.
Once Congress is pressured into a tuition reimbursement
scheme, state legislatures will be also pressured, perhaps to
take up the 50% which the parent would theoretically pay
under the federal plan. Already the legislatures in New York,
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota and California have had such
legislation passed only to have the United States Supreme
Court rule that it was unconstitutional in 1973.
As reported in previous issues of this magazine, the Nixon
(Republican) administration played with the idea of tuition
grants as long ago as the late 1960s. The Roman Catholics of
America have long been counted in the Democratic camp and
a part of the political gaming has been to transfer the allegiance of this bloc of voters to the Republican camp.

"I can see a very dark cloud on our horizon,

and that cloud is coming from Rome."
Abraham Linco/n

"Was it half a pound this week, Mother Superior?"

Therefore, during the six month period from December

1969 to June 1970, the old Office of Economic Opportunity
(which we dubbed the Office of Ecclesiastical Opportunity)
provided grants totaling $521,143 to a "Center for the Study
of Public Policy" in Cambridge, Massachusetts to design a
"voucher"
experiment under the direction of Christopher
Jenks. From this came a book report called Educational
Vouchers analyzing seven possible voucher plans to win Roman Catholic votes. However, the conclusion of the study was
that any such voucher planning would lead to segregation of
children by race, religion, family income level and scholastic
ability. From this, however, came a recommendation to have
selected school boards throughout the country experiment
with the same.
After studying the plan, school boards in Minneapolis,
Seattle, Gary (Ind.). San Francisco, Milwaukee, Rochester, and
New York rejected it. One school district agreed - the Alum
Rock School District of San Jose, California. However, parochial schools were not included in the plan. This experiment
showed that all desirable "alternatives" can be provided within
public schools, with no need to include either private or parochial schools, and that such alternative programs can be handled without recourse to the mechanism of "vouchers."
Over 90% of existing non-public schools have religious faculties and student bodies, which suggests that this compulsory
citizen tax support would be largely for religious schools. Of
these religious schools, 91.8% are Roman Catholic.
Carter, the good evangelical Baptist, with the powerful Baptist church on his back, was horrified with the bill and gave
everyone to understand he would need to veto it, but Carter's
administration
was not
together
in the act. From
November 29th to December 1st. the U.S. Office of Education
cosponsored a conference with nearly 200 parochial/private
school leaders and tax aid advocates at the Mayflower Hotel in
Washington, D. C. Another cosponsor was the National Catholic Educational Association, as the government trafficked with
religious demands. "This administration and the Office of Education" said U.S. Commissioner of Education E;rnest Boyer,
"are determined to enhance the role of nonpublic education."
Translated, that means that he pledged tax dollars to religious
schools as he promised "more aggressive and sustained effort"
which the Office of Education would "rigorously pursue" even
though hindered by "some constitutional restraints."
The conference left no doubt that the parochial school administrators aimed at expanding public funding for their
schools with no intention of weakening the schools' religious

"Priests, we know, are not remarkable for doing anything gratis; they have in general some scheme in everything
they do, either to impose on the ignorant or derange the operations of government. "
Thomas Paine
thrust.
It was late in the day, therefore,
when during the Senate
Finance Committee
hearings President Carter sent his opposition to the bill through a letter from the Health, Education and
Welfare Department.
Joseph Califano, HEW secretary who is
notorious
for his Roman Catholic affiliation
and his fight
against abortion,
in the letter said that the administration
opposed
the legislation
since it would provide benefits to
people who do not need them, fragment federal educational
policy and siphon funds from other educational
programs, as
well as increase the administrative
burdens of the Internal
Revenue Service.
A Treasury Department
official was also sent to the hearings to testify that tax credits would drive up tuition costs and
make private schools less competitive with public ones.
Because more pressures were brought to bear, by the second week of February
Califano was "acknowledging"
that
Roman Catholic schools are in "tremendous"
financial straits
and "we should try to find ways of assisting them." He reaffirmed that there must be "constitutionally
acceptable methods of providing aid to parents whose children attend parochial schools," and he then officially asked Attorney General
Griffin Bell for an opinion on the legality of the PackwoodMoynihan tuition tax credit bill.
Currently,
the United States government,
under the Primary and Secondary
Education
acts provides, Califano reported, "somewhere
between $55 and $75 per student in public schools. With the Roman Catholic Church officially reporting 8,751,901
students in its schools as of the end of 1977,
this means that the United States government
has been assisting these schools, currently,
with money between the outside
ranges of $481,350,000
to $656,395,000
per year. That is to
say, Roman Catholic schools currently receive about a half billion dollars from the federal government
alone each year, in
addition to the largess bestowed upon them by state, city and
county governments.

try's largest teachers' organization,

also opposes the bill. Stanley McFarland,
speaking for this organization,
noted, "It assumes that the federal government
already pays enough for
publice education.
But the government
contributes
nowhere
near $500 each to children in public schools.
The National School Boards Association
charges that the
tax credits scheme could turn public schools into "a dumping
ground for children who 'cannot afford private education
or
who are otherwise
unacceptable
to private institutions.
Peter
Laarman of the American Federation
of Teachers argues that
it would constitute
"abondonment
of the principle that the
public schools are the main focus of national educational
responsibility."
Other groups which have come out against the
pian include the Baptist Joint Committee
on Public Affairs,
the Southern
Baptist Convention,
the Unitarian
Universalist
Association,
the American Humanist Association,
the American Ethical Union, the National Council of Jewish Women,
the American Jewish Committee,
the Jewish Welfare Board,
the American Jewish Congress, the American Civil Liberties
Union, Americans
United, the American Association
of University Women, the AF L-CIO, the American
Federation
of
Teachers,
the American
Association
of School Administrators, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Nation-

Vatican Vision
For The U.S.

Carter Counter-Tactics
In order to head off the Roman Catholic demands, President Carter in February proposed a $1.46 bill ion expansion of
existing federal grant and loan programs. Under this plan, the
basic Educational
Opportunity
Grants which are scholarships
generally limited to students from families with incomes below $15,000 would be made available to students from families with incomes up to $25,000. The income level for subsidized federal loans would be raised from (roughly) $25,000
to $40,000. These grant provisions should reach an additional 3.1 million students.
The Carter proposal would work within current principles
of federal aid to education,
including need-based criteria and
the limitation
of aid to those in the nonpublic
sector to
higher education.
Nonpublic,
[i.e. religious) primary and secondary education would continue with the helping hand it has
already had from the Primary and Secondary School Aid program which Mr. Califano described as giving $55 to $75 aid
per student per year.
Meanwhile the situation is such that the New York Times,
the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun newspapers have
editorially
come
out
in opposition
to the
PackwoodMoynihan bill. The National Education Association, the coun-

Page 6

April,1978

~/

American

Atheist

al Association
of Elementary
School Principals and the National Congress of Parents and Teachers.
The legal advisors of President Nixon's Commission
on
School Finance in 1971 reported that tax aid for parochial
schools under a voucher plan was probably unconstitutional.
The Law Department
of the Library of Congress on 12 August 1977 issued an opinion
that the Packwood-Moynihan
bill was unconstitutional.
Again, the United States Supreme
Court has ruled against state plans of the same nature, even
as early as 1971.
Admonitions
to the faithful,
issuing from the Vatican
in July, found
culmination
by September
in the United
States Senate and in the United States House of Representatives. Although
rent with theological
schism, the Roman
Catholic Church is still a powerful foe of democracy
and of
state/church
separation.
From September to February - five
short months - 51 senators and 140 members of the House of
Representatives
of the United States Congress have been conned (the word is used advisedly) into cosponsorship
of a bill
which is violative of the United States Consititution
and the
constitutions
of the 50 respective states.
To obtain Roman Catholic votes the architects of this plan
feel that even the First Amendment
of the Bill of Rights of
our nation js fair game. To woo the traditionally
Democratic
Roman Catholic populace into the Republican party the Republicans feel the secular universal education
of our nation
must be sacrificed.
We feel that the price is too high to pay.
As this article was being typeset for inclusion in this issue
of the magazine, the Senate Finance Committee
was voting
upon this piece of legislation. The proposal, vigorously opposed by the Carter administration,
was rushed through the committee on February 24, 1978, in an effort to slow action in the
Senate and House on Carter's own plan to extend existing
grant programs to students.
The vote was 14 to 1, with one abstention.
Against the bill
was Senator Lloyd Bentsen (Oem. Texas). Senator Harry F.
Byrd (Ind. Va.) was present but not voting.
The 14 senators willing to abandon the principle of state/
church separation were: Russell B. Long (Oem. l.a.] Chairman,
Floyd K. Haskell (Oem. Co.). Herman Talmadge (Oem. Ga.),
Daniel P. Moynihan (Oem. N.Y.), John C. Danforth (Rep. Missouri), Carl T. Curtis (Rep. Neb.). Gaylord Nelson (D.-Wisc.).
Robert Dole (Reb. Kansas), Mike Gravel (Oem. Alaska), Bob
Packwood (Rep. Oregon), William B. Hathaway (Oem. Maine).
William Roth Jr. (Rep. Del.}, and Paul Laxalt (Rep. Nev.).

Geographical

Anomaly

The unusual aspect of the preliminary

lineup is that so
many Western state senators have been influenced to cast in
with the Roman Catholic and the Republican plan. However,
there is some logic to their being first induced to the scheme.
There is no large Roman Catholic parochial school problem in
the Western states.
The bulk of such schools are in traditionally
Roman Catholic states: Massachusetts,
Connecticut,
Rhode Island, Maine,
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, Maryland,
Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri,
Louisiana,
California and Southern
Texas. In essence, what
the Western senators are doing is voting to increase taxes on
their citizens to accommodate
the Eastern states where Roman
Catholic enrollment in parochial schools is heavy.
Another anomaly of the situation is that some Democratic
senators, knowing that the Roman Catholic vote has been important to that party in prior elections, feel that they must
cater to the Roman Catholic vote again. Hence, we see bipar-

Austin, Texas

Right To Rob Demanded

tisan support of this destructive bill.
However, this pushed-through
vote drew a strong reaction
from Califano, Carter's spokesman
on this issue (how clever
of the administration
to use the Roman Catholic head of
HEW). He told a news conference
that granting a tuition tax
credit "would deliver a devasting blow to public school education in this country"
and "stand the American tradition
of
public education on its head."
Carter was also pushing his program in the heated battle developing - with a race to the House and Senate floors on both
issues. On the night of February
22nd, his proposal was approved by the education
subcommittee
of the Senate Human
Resources Committee
and the House Education
and Labor
Committee
was working on its approval of the same to bring it
out to the floor.
The proposed
tuition grant is available for parochial and
other private schools at the undergraduate
level effective August 1, 1978 - so anxious is our Congress to comply with the
pope's directions.
The credit would become available to elementary and secondary
students on August 1, 1980. By August 1 , 1981 it would be extended to graduate and part-time

"Children in the Catholic schools are taught

medieval ideas upheld by falsified history."

April,1978

Charles Merriam

Page 7

students.
The Associated
Press reported
on the matter fully and
estimated that the first-year loss in tax revenues would be at
least $5.3 billion.
You know your senators and your representatives
- and
your president.
We suggest that you write a letter in opposition to the Packwood-Moynihan
Bill [S2142) both to your
senators, whose address
is: U.S. Senate, Washington,
D.C.
20510;
and your
letter opposing
the Frenzel-Burke
Bill
[HR9332),
to your congressmen whose address is U.S. House

of Representatives,
Washington,
D.C. 20515; and to Jimmy
Carter, who is everyone's
president,
at The White House,
Washington, D.C. 20500.
General Lafayette,
France's great contribution
to American
independence,
once uttered a one-liner which is important and
compelling
to us today: "If ever the liberty of the American
Republic is destroyed it will be the work of [Roman) Catholic
priests.
This Packwood-Moynihan
Bill is the work of the same.
Let's help to defeat it.
[See related article, bottom of this page)
t

Murray
May Sue
Schools
Jon Garth Murray has said he'll sue
the Austin school district if it doesn't
change practices which he says are violations of state-church
separation.
Murray, director of the American
Atheist Center in Austin, sent a letter demanding that the issue be put on
the agenda for consideration
by trustees.
Murray said his demand was prompted "by the fact that the board had
promised
an official agenda discussion of the issue, but that it had been
dragging its feet."
Murray began this particular battle
on Nov. 14.
"I made an appearance at the Board
of Education to protest a number of
state-church
violations
in which they
engage,"
Murray said in a letter to
board members.
Murray said he was promised the
matters he brought up at the November meeting
would be studied
and
"brought
up at a future board meeting."

Blatant Violations
Murray's complaints
include school
distribution
of Gideon bibles, the Dallas plan of Bible studies
for high
school crecllts,- prayers at PT A meetings, exclusion
of Atheist representatives from Brotherhood
Week activities, the collection of food and money
by the Salvation Army at Christmas,

Page 8

"We made a specific list of his complaints

at the November
meeting,"
Davidson said. "I believe some of the
th ings he mentioned
have already been
changed."
Murray said in his letter that if the
points he brought up aren't corrected
"I contemplate
bringing legal action.
"We are committed
to working
with the community,
but we find that
officialdom
is hostile, belligerent,
unthinking, and dedicated
to god rather
than to the constitutions
of our state
and our country."
.
He warned board members
in his
letter "You must constantly
be forced,
by law, to do that which you should
do out of a love for humanity
and
justice."

MISSOURI and MICHIGAN TOO!

Jon Murray shown addressing the

Austin Board of Education.
and inclusion of religious repertoire in
musical performances.
He also objects to the emphasis on
Easter and Christmas vacations to the
exclusion of recognition
of Hanukkah
and Passover as well as the Atheist solstices,
continuing
prayer
at sports
events,
use of schools
by religious
groups,
private
prayer
meetings
of
staff and the abuse of "my sister and
niece,
Robin
Eileen Murray-O'Hair,
who was driven from Austin by the
Christian
elements
at Lamar Junior
High School."
In replying to Murray's
February
21st demand,
school superintendant
Jack Davidson said there were several
items on Murray's list which were not
brought up in the November confrontation: "But we will be happy to address these issues as well," he said.

April,1978

The difficulty with Atheists is that

they fight a defensive fight. The battle
plans of the Roman Catholic Church
and other religionists often are for as
much as 1,000 years. The Roman
Catholic plan for parochiaid is revealed
in its record. It has attempted passage
of an act for the same as follows:
New York, 1967
Idaho, 1972
Michigan,1970
Maryland 1974
Nebraska; 1970 Washington, 1975
Maryland 1972
Missouri, 1976
Oregon,1972
Alaska, 1976
Each time it has found how to restate the claim, how to avoid constitutional issues, and although there have
been losses at the polls, every year is a
year to try again. Now, a new referendum vote is scheduled in Michigan in
November, 1978 and the Missouri legislation hopes to push through a 100%
tax support tuition grant of $500 per
child per year in this session of its congress.
Imagine the hundreds of millions of
dollars spent already in legislative activity, in the expenses of mounting an
election, in the advertising bills. There
is no end to what the church is willing
to try.
There should be no end in our opposition to them.

American

Atheist

Show&Tell
Churches Fear Public Audit
As the Roman Catholic Church, first buttress and spokesman for all the other churches, reaches out for more tax money for their schools, hospitals, their social services and their
businesses, it becomes more and more urgent for the people of
the United States to have a look at their books to see if this
money is really needed, where and why.
Feeling that just such a look was needed, a concerned legislator in 1976 introduced into Congress a bill demanding a
disclosure of funds collected. It died in committee. Undaunted, its sponsor, Rep. Charles H. Wilson (Dem.-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, re-introduced his bill (now H.R. 41) in January of 1977.
This bill sought to regulate all charitable fund-raising when
"in any manner or through any means, the remittance of a
contribution by mail" is involved.
It has since been passed by a subcommittee of the House
Committee on Post Office and Civil Service. Were the bill to
become law, enforcement would be by postal inspectors. Any
organization soliciting in violation of the law could have its
mail privileges stopped.
Under provisions of this bill, all non-profit groups, including churches, religious organizations and individual evangelists, would be subject to disclosure requirements, including
the details of intended use of funds and the percentage of
funds applied directly to charitable purposes. Such information would have to be provided before or at the time the
appeals were made.
For example, fund-raisers using television. would have to
highlight such information and allow sufficient time for the
viewers to read it.
Proposed accounting standards being considered by the
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants would
have the churches start including the value of buildings and
equipment on balance sheets, consideration of the credit
standing of donors before counting "pledged" contributions as
assets, reporting the estimated value of donated services as
income and using a uniform bookkeeping system. The CPA
Institute guidelines are expected to be issued early next year.
Although the accounting procedures would not be binding on
churches, church leaders fear that the books audited by the
CPA association's 130,000 members would receive only
"qualified" approval if the new standards are not met.
Qualified approval - no matter how honest a church's dealings - might raise doubts about its operations. The CPA Institute is adamant, saying that its 28 pages of proposed bookkeeping guidelines are designed to make audits of nonprofit
organizations, including churches, more accurate and meaningful.
North Carolina, in late 1977, included religious organizations under its laws governing solicitations for charity. The
new law - the first of its kind in the country ~ requires a religious organization to disclose its finances if it solicits money
from nonmembers. The law is being challenged as an infringement on freedom of religion in violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit was filed in North
Carolina state court by the PTL (Praise The Lord) group,
which sponsors a religious program on 165 television stations
across the country. PTL currently admits to an annual income
of $20 million a year.
In California, bill AB 2058 would require professional
fund-raisers to register with the state, force charities to dis-

Austin, Texas

close certain information to the public about the administrative costs of fund-raising and give the state attorney general
power to establish guidelines for investigation and legal action
against them. The bill establishes mandatory outside review of
financial reports, much like audits, for charities with revenues
of $100,000 or more a year.
Maryland has begun requiring religious and other .charities
to register with the state and file a financial report if the charity mailed more than 500,000 solicitations a year or employed
a professional fund-raiser. Minnesota is also considering bringing religious charities under oversight rules.
Within the last several years, abuses which have been uncovered by media have added to the determination of those who
desire to see an accounting. In San Diego in 1975, a Roman

Evangelists' Annual Take:

Garner Ted Armstrong - $70 million
Oral Roberts - $50 million
Rex Humbard - $20 million

Catholic benefit featured Bob Hope and the event raised

$35,000. Hope received $25,000 for his appearance, leaving
about 28% of the funds for the cost of the hall, etc. and for
the four Roman Catholic schools for which the benefit was
held. The Baltimore-based Roman Catholic Pallottine Fathers
collected $56 million in contributions between 1970 and 1975
and 95% of it went for the fund-raising, for real estate ventures, for loans to businessmen and politicians.
The American Atheist magazine devoted one full issue to an
expose of this particular money-bilking scheme. Rep. Wilson
mentioned the Pallottine affair when he reintroduced his bill
to the Congress in 1977:
"If the Pallottine Fathers could convince anyone to conApril, 1978

Page 9

tribute to them, once the party receiving the solicitation

knew that less than a nickel of every dollar received would
go to the charitable purpose, then so be it. Let the public
make the decision."
In 1973, the Sun Newspapers of Omaha won a Pulitzer
Prize for investigating Father Flanagan's Boys' Home (better
known as Boys' Town) and its apparently misleading charitable solicitations. While Boys' Town at that time maintained
an outward expression of poverty, it actually had a net worth
of more than $200 million and its annual income was nearly
$26 million - to support fewer than 500 boys.
A North Carolina newspaper in late 1977 accused the Billy
Graham Evangelistic Association of "shielding from public
view" a $23 million slush fund. Although Graham promised an
accounting of his finances at that time, he has - of course not provided it.
Billy Graham's Evangelistic Association has not been in
compliance with a Minnesota law requiring registration and
annual reports on annuity plans sold in the state. A recent report claims that this has been remedied, but your editor has
not been able to obtain an alleged "public" report.
In the year ending December, 1977, churches received $15
billion in contributions. They are required to report to no one,
not even their own congregations, as to the use of these funds.
The Council of Better Business Bureaus reports that about
10% of religious-based organizations have provided independent financial statements to the Council. When inquiries are
made, some religious-backed
organizations reply that they
must answer only to god.
Estimates of the annual income for big-time preachers is a
guessing game of the news media and estimates are that Garner Ted Armstrong of Pasadena, California takes in $70 million a year, Oral Roberts of Tulsa, Oklahoma is believed to
gross $50 million a year and Rex Humbard of Akron, Ohio,
about $20 million.
.
As the Wilson bill has moved along in the House, the leaders of the religious community have panicked. U.S. Senator
Mark O. Hatfield, (Rep.-Oregon) a Bible-thumper, felt concerned enough to invite seven leaders of religious charities to
his Senate office to discuss the matter. A member of the board
of "World Vision," a world-wide fundamentalist group, Sen-

at or Hatfield warned them that if the religious groups "don't

do something on their own to bring about voluntary financial disclosure, then it's inevitable that there will be legislation to make the disclosure mandatory."
Senator Hatfield's meetings with the clergy, by and large,
represented his urging to them to police themselves. Hatfield
was said to have been on the verge of introducing a financial
disclosure bill in the Senate during the summer of 1976, but
decided to hold back the legislation unless churchmen failed to
put their own houses in order.
Obligingly, World Vision called a meeting of three dozen
evangelicals in Chicago in July of 1977.
The church opposition was electric, as the bill was denounced by the United States Catholic Conference, the Baptist
Joint Committee on Public Affairs, the National Catholic Development Conference, Americans United, the United Methodist Church, and the National Council of Churches.
A great number of efforts have been made by news media
to find out the wealth of the church and its income. The
United States government has seemed unconcerned although it
is the greatest giver of monetary largess to the church. Without
attempting to evaluate the need, the United States government
has poured out special privileges, tax exemptions, land, buildings and money. The time must come when an accounting will
need to be made to the taxpayer.
Organized religion apparently believes that it will always
have enough legislative influence to expect both exemption
from taxes as well as exemption from laws designed to protect
the public from fraud.
We urgently stress that you contact Rep. Charles Wilson, at
Rm. 2409, Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C.
20515, and support him in his efforts toward such a disclosure.
The churches of the United States, with the Roman Catholic Church out in advance, are asking for over one-half billion dollars in funds for their parochial schools.
With an income of over $15 billion a year from gifts alone,
it is unlikely that they honestly have a need for this additional
income from the taxpayer. However, neither we, nor the
government will ever know if there is not a financial disclosure. We must educate the representatives of government
toward that need.

CHURCH & STATE

There would be a constitutional flaw
If we had any Sunday closing law.
For our great Constitution keeps apart
The church and state: that's at its very heart.
Why should the Jew keep Sunday as a holy day?
Must men remind him of the Inquisition, pray?

IN LATIN AMERICA

FREUD

From Roman Catholic chains the many gain release

As Protestants below the Rio Grande increase.

A Trinitarian Jew was Doctor Sigmund Freud.

True, with no Father, Son, and Holy Ghost he toyed.
But Trinitarian truly was old Sigmund Freud,
For Ego, Id and Super-Ego he employed.
He had his own, his private Trinity
And hardly did it lack divinity.

CHRIST'S FLESH
The perfect Christian is a curious animal
Who makes a religion of being a cannibal

AGOD

RELIGION

A god is he, the manly Atheist!

No superstitions in his mind persist.
A god himself, no gods does he adore
And does in fact divinity ignore
In god-like freedom lives he out his days
And, for the known alone, reserves his praise.

Religion burnt alive the heretic.

Today it's suited to the mentally sick.
Religion held humanity in chains.
Today it flourishes where reason wanes.

Page 10

Maxwell Morton

April,1978

~J

American

Atheist

A JOYOUSATHEIST
g. riehard hozarth
Godball
I'm not much of a football fan, but I enjoy a good game.
The Oakland
Raiders-Denver
Broncos contest for the AFC
championship
promised to be a good game, so I tuned in. I
saw an exciting, rousing, very good game.
What has football to do with the concerns of American
Atheism? Prior to the Raiders-Broncos
game, I would've answered, nothing. Surprise, surprise! The next day I discovered
that god "was there all right" (thus spoke Bill Thompson,
quoted in The Sacramento Bee, 2 Jan. 78)! How about that?
Thompson
went on to confess, "I don't know where he
was, but he was there." I watched the game from every possible angle covered by the TV cameramen,
and I didn't see god
out there either. However, he was a star on two plays, preventing one fumble and causing another to be unseen by the
referees, according to Thompson.
Quarterback
Craig Morton gives the game ball to old Yahweh by saying the Broncos "are very close, a Christian team.
We have given ourselves to the Lord and the Lord has taken
care of us." Makes me want to be born again. After all, NFL
football players make a lot of money. Surely, god can supply
whatever I lack in talent. (That would be a miracle if I could
be turned into an NFL-quality football player.)

Downfield Deity
Consider the ramifications
of god's entrance into football.
In the first place, the Raiders should have demanded the Broncos lose by forfeit, because Denver fielded 11 human beings
and one deity on every play. You're only allowed 11 players
on the field, and by their own admission, the Orange Crush
had 12. In the future, to avoid the immorality of cheating, god
should declare before each game which team he will play for,
then the lucky team must only send 10 humans out on the
field.
God was obviously
invisible during the Raiders-Broncos
game. Is this fair? It certainly isn't, and god ought to be required to be in some manner visible to allow the opposing
team to keep track of him like any other player. Perhaps he
could appear as a burning pom-pom?
Team owners spend a lot of money on coactring staffs. If
the difference between victory and defeat is a team's holiness,
it would be wiser if the owners got rid of the coaches and
brought in preachers to lead their teams. No more grueling
practice sessions -- the players ought to be holding soul-searching prayer meetings instead.
Clearly, studying playbooks and memorizing positions and
patterns is vanity of vanities -- to win, a team should study the
Bible and remember verses. Instead of drafting college players,
teams should get their rookies out of seminaries.
Now, one wonders,
which sect of Christianity
would be
surer of producing winning teams? Will future games be played
by such teams as the Baltimore Catholics, the Dallas Coptics,
the Detroit Lutherans, the Green Bay Presbyterians,
the Philadelphia Episcopalians,
and the Oakland
Evangelicals? What
better way to discover which sect is really god's favorite than
solid proof like Super Bowl victories?
By now, someone
is probably saying, "Hey, Denver was
beaten by the Dallas Cowboys in Super Bowl X II; not just

Austin, Texas

beat, but wiped off the field! That makes all of Morton's and
Thompson's
god-talk a bunch of silly nonsense."
I'm sorry to
smile at such simplistic Atheist reasoning. No theologian could
be beaten by 27-10.
Why did god let such a close Christian team like the Broncos lose to a team so lacking in Christian humility that they
gloated joyously, displaying the sort of arrogant pride in victory that the Babylonians
must have displayed as they rounded up the defeated Jews in 598 B.C.? Susan Morton, Craig's
wife, blamed it on god, saying that god caused the Broncos to
lose because "Craig spoke out all year for the Lord when
things were going good. Now he's got to speak out and praise
the Lord when things aren't going as well." (San Francisco
Chronicle, 16 Jan. 78)
We all remember Job, don't we? Makes me wonder if the
following dialogue took place in heaven (cf., Job 1 :7-12):
Yahweh (to Satan): Where have you been?
Satan: Around the earth. I saw you play in the AFC Championship.
Yahweh: Did you also notice my servant Craig? There is no
one like him on earth: a sound and honest quarterback
who
fears god and shuns pass rushers.
Satan: Yes, but Craig is not god-fearing for nothing, is he?
Have you not put a wall of offensive linemen around him?
You have blessed all he throws, and his receivers throng the
gridiron.
But stretch out your hand and lay a finger on his
throwing arm: I'll warrant you, he will curse you to your face.
Yahweh: Very well, all his passes are in your power.
Possible,
but religious
leaders, particularly
in America,
don't like to blame evil on god, even evil designed to make a
person a better Christian, or to expose that person as unworthy of god's blessings should that person resent being tested
with defeat and humiliation.
Americans are too success-oriented to really like such theology. The average American expects
to succeed if he or she can, then be able to keep the fruits of
success once they are gained. A god who would rip-off one's
success when one had done nothing to deserve it is not the sort
of god Americans expect to have.
All credit must go to god. Blame must always fall upon sinful humans. In this instance, the defeat of Denver in Super
Bowl XII can be clearly, undeniably
blamed on a human
being. God sadly had to cause the Orange Crush to be crushed
because of one man's arrogant boasting. When Bronco defensive end Lyle Alzado was asked to explain the Denver triumph
over Oakland, did he humbly praise the good god who had
taken care of the Broncos? No! This wretched, deluded sinner
had the demon-like
pride to boast, ''We stopped their running
attack with a base defense, a scrapping defense."
(The Sacramento Bee, 2 Jan. 78)

Tut- Tut- Tut

Did god have a choice? No. Foolishly Alzado thought mere
human efforts could have beaten the Raiders. By denying god
his justly due credit, god had to hand the Broncos over to Tom
Landry like he had to hand Israel over to Nebuchadnezzar.
Any self-respecting
deity would have done the same.
Seriously
now, isn't it sad in 1978 A.D. to see human

April, 1978

Page 11

beings reducing. themselves

to utter ridiculousness
from the
delusions of a myth? It's more than sad. It's unhealthy
and
unclean. There is a stench about a person whose mind is so
rotted that all human achievement
must be sacrificed to his
religious needs. It is as the glorious Nietzsche observed, "Only
the bad conscience, only the will to self-maltreatment
provided the conditions
for the value of the unegotistic."
(On The
Genealogy Of Morals)
The value of Atheism is in its healthy cleanness. It involves

us in the least amount of foolishness.

It allows us to be proud
and unashamed
to enjoy our triumphs.
It permits us to bear
the burden of guilt for our failures without the slimey sickness
of sinfulness -- in other words, failure is neither proof of one's
hopeless corruption
for the crime of being born into the human species, nor the punishment
of a vindictive god.
In the same work, Nietzsche also wrote, "Atheism
and a
kind of second innocence belong together."
How joyous I am
that this is true.

ON OUR WAY
Ignatz sahula-dyeke
What Praying Won't Solve-1
This is one of the times when I dream about living in another world, one much more enjoyable than the present one because the people of this dream world are robustly sane and, if
not entirely so, without exception
all behaving as do those
who now in our world of the present use common sense.
Now my own common sense tells me that I risk being called
a fool for expecting such a world to materialize,
but I'm confident it will one day. How can it? Because the broadening
outlook of today's people is bringing it nearer dailv.l expect
that in another generation of two, with a bit more of as good
help as science has been giving us to date, positive signs of it
will be seen and felt allover the globe. Everything going on today promises it.
Don't laugh, for all that is required for this transformation
is a satisfactory
answer to the question which has perplexed
the human earthling ever since it irritated into ferment the
chemistry we call thinking within the convoluted
upper end
of his spine. That answer will come; only man's continuing
floundering
in the bog of superstitious
beliefs, wherein traditionally respected lying about the supernatural
has been keeping him, could ever prevent it.

Yahweh Outgrown
The likelihood of this is very slim. Old homo sapiens is waxing smarter day by day - no longer fearful and trembling
when hearing one or another vicar mention the Big Bad Wolf.
It won't be long therefore,
before religion will have to dismiss
the cruel and vengeful god and hire one that's kind and loving.
Should Christianism not do this, it will wither even sooner
than now expected. But it has ever, though grudgingly, backed
down and made concessions to the believer that kept him in
line buying its wares. As a corroborative
trifle: the pope
no longer excommunicates
divorcees. This long-enforced
interdict was decreasing the numbers of the well-heeled who, come
Sunday, fill the passed hat: that most important
moment in
any religious service. And of the 250 or more denominations
doing business in our U.S., only a few can say that trade at the
old stand is as brisk as it used to be. In short, Thomist religion
has passed its zenith.
But now forward to the big question. As in ancient Cathay,
India, Babylon,
Egypt, Araby and Ethiopia,
so finally in

Page 12

April, 1978

Greece and in Western Europe after Rome's fall, the question

about mankind's
origin was tantalizing
the continent's
best
minds long before the time of Copernicus. When this became
known, it weakened the potency of the biblical version of creation along with other such statements
which until then were
being worshipfully
believed by the Western people.
Thus began the slow erosion of Nicene Christianity's
tyranny over Western man's mind. Protestations
of dissident
churchmen
such as Wycliff, Hus, and Luther were now being
praised; free inquiry
into subjects
long proscribed
by the
Church was begun by star-gazers: the time was Galilee's. Brahe's, Kepler's; and of thinkers, Bacon, Hume, and Kant.
When Kant's Critique of Judgment appeared,
late in the
18th century, it decreed biblical allegations to be inane fables,
and this, superimposed
over Newtonian
physics, quickened
the pace of scientific endeavors, encouraged
Comte to establish Positivism which, to an important
extent. tended to regulate the burgeoning industrial revolution launched in the 19th
century.
So there's no denying that the old question had impact, one
being felt even more keenly today. As before, it still haunts
and taunts: "Who is able to answer how came to be the earth,
the solar system, the cosmos, and life - especially life of our
human kind?"
Were I to list here the names of those who during the past
four or five centuries furthered
the search for the question's
goading answer - the studious, the wisely bold,forthright,
brave and persistent minds of those times - five pages the size
of this one wouldn't hold them all. Were it not for these precursors, many of us would this day serve as the fuel for feeding
the fires in which the church would be immolating
heretics
tied to stakes, as once it did.
Those who dared to ask the question and quested for its answer religion treated as its vile enemies; killed them, because
when alive they were advancing the cause of the intellectual
freedom we benefit from today. Once we will have that answer, practically
everything
of life will brighten all faces. We
will then be not only witnessing life but understanding
it. It
will make us humane - make us as different from the people
of today, as we of today differ from our stone age ancestors.
Try, if you please, to imagine the eventful consequences
of

American

Atheist

having the answer enabling people to know - truly - precisely what took place that made us the beings we currently
are, as well as those into which we can be reasonably expected
to develop at some future time. More pointedly, for instance,
after a period of living in that imagined world of the future.
Having the answer we're now seeking, none of us will be
burdened
with the guilt of "original sin"; none "paving the
way" to a nebulous "heaven"
with stipends given to one or
another of the boys (and nowadays also the girls) who drum
up today's
"Crusades
for Jesus" and similar balderdash;
no
more looking for a parking place at the curb lined with cars
owned by the law-breaking
but "protected"
bingo gamblers
in the "parish hall" of the church next door; no longer the
need to await Christ's second coming; no more letters soliciting funds for missions in India, Uganda, Togoland; no mail
in the box asking for "the most you can afford" to suborn
with "care packages" the homeless waifs in Patagonia, Australian bush, Sumatra, etc.
.
Gar! A complete listing would be endless - but feel free to
complete
it with whatever presently annoys you, the while
remembering
that all flubdub of this kind will in that tomorrow-to-come be dead, and forevermore defunct.
Another very refreshing thing in that life will be our politicians - with pockets no longer bulging with Bibles to be adroitly displayed at the proper moment; and legal testimony
taken and accepted on the basis of personal integrity and honor, not by mumbling "So help me god" with hand upraised or
on a Bible.
Should you wonder what will be done about all the deserted churches, well, some years ago in New Mexico I rented
what once was a Penitente morada for my use as a studio.
Hence I entertain no doubts that the people of the world here
being speculated
about won't do at least as well as I did, albeit they'll surely be more practical about it than any of us
now alive - and surely not as distracted.
History points out that great nations, and entire civilizations, by degrees rotted and disappeared
because they neglected the instinctive human cravings of their populaces. No
nation can persist great if unresponsive to a citizenry yearning
for freedom,
self-reliance,
and opportunity
for self-improvement.
It could be deemed an oversimplification,
but aren't the
founders of any great nation in the beginning always guided by
a selfless respect for the essential dignity of the human being,
their concern for the preservation of equality among their citizens, and a steadfast resolve that the nation be guided by factual truths? Those three ideals are what the founders of this
nation of ours began it with, respected, and rarely neglected.
Whenever they even slightly failed in this as betimes happened, trouble promptly loomed. Could the 13 colonies have
become independent
without
them? Would the Union have
survived the Civil War lacking them? Wouldn't we to this day
be seen shamefaced on the far shores of the Pacific had we not
fortunately
(and almost too late) remembered
and re-embraced them as our guides to decency of comportment?
These queries of mine can be pilloried for seeming triteness,
but only with difficulty dismissed, dealing as they do with humane principles clearly distinguishing
the civilized human being from the barbarian and savage.
The rational person, whether male or female, is aware that
the abeyant solution of the conundrum
of mankind's
beginnings is something that no religious supplication
or prayer to
whatsoever god will ever procure for us, and that the problem
it represents will one day be solved by the patient observation
and unemotional
reasoning of an enlightened people.

. [Part two, concluding this article, will appear in the May

issue of The American Atheist.]

Austin, Texas

scafN 11[-

ALL tr rOIl
I?fL/(;/OIJ.5 17t'lrS
f)JN'T ~ffllJlf IT ..
MT /~ f))/iY6 .
EIICl.rOlVf A 6A()OI/fJN{D
rAY"/?..

sn
aar r

r..

THE8/8L-t/AVING, SCtlff{Jt[707i/'/6 f"ifI.JIT{Atff f";f'OI'1

/'IA/r/iVG AN lA/ACT ON
TfllS S{)(I[Tr.
{

~~

~
~~
~C"/

imp

C{/~SE!'If AND
T 0/'1 fI1
fJ/flN 10 kEEf

{j-J

111

CAII{)OAMNED HAf/'Y
To 8[' A CUJG
IN THE (fLEtT/ilL
/)/{IIIN .

Lest You Forget

The continued success of our litigation to return America to its original posture of a strict
state/church separation is dependent upon your

support.
The pink envelope you found enclosed with
this copy of The American Atheist magazine is provided for your convenience in supporting the critically important legal suits to remove "In God We
Trust" from the nation's currency and to end the
mindless chanting of prayers at all government
meetings.
Pleasesend what financial aid you can!
As an additional means of speeding the nation's
return to reason and constitutional secularism, why
not make a gift subscription of The American
Atheist magazine to your freethinking friends, relatives or local library?

April,1978

Page 13

United

World

Atheism
in the
Philippines
By

Halford Jones

Atheism in the Philippines suffers from many drawbacks as

might be expected in a country that is over 80 percent Roman
Catholic. Probably less than half of one percent could qualify
as bona fide Atheists, which means something should be done
to make known the tenets and benefits of Atheism. If this figure is true, then perhaps another 50 percent might qualify as
"free-thinkers," a term that is certainly far from satisfactory
but which is often used to describe persons who do not go to
church or who might be leaning towards Protestantism. Ironically, Protestantism is often considered a sect, termed
Pro testan te, a catch-all term for what elsewhere would include innumerable sects such as Methodists, Holy Rollers, Baptists, Greek Orthodox, etc.
Persons who do qusestion religion are given the appellation
of filosofo or "philosopher," a term of derision in the Philippines largely because of a novel in which such a person appears to question things but who is unable to do much of anything and gets in trouble with the authorities for his thoughts
and sayings.
For example, a person recently asked a religious leader if
prayer could qualify as communication, since the leader had
stated that communication is a two-way street. "Does God
communicate to those who pray?" he asked. He was called a
"philosopher" and ridiculed by the leader who could not, of
course, really answer him.
Atheism and Freemasonry are often confused in the Philippines because many of the early revolutionists were members
of Masonic lodges, had read Atheistic and Deistic writings, and
so on. One of two were out-and-out Atheists. These early Filipino patriots, of course, were seeking to break Spain's 300year colonial rule and domination. They almost succeeded except for the American intervention and the Spanish-American
War, which saw the annexation of the islands and a 50-year
occupation by Americans until 1942.
The Americans did bring Protestant religion to the Philippines and had some success, primarily among pagans and headhunters in the mountains who had not been "Christianized" or

Page 14

April, 1978

Atheists

defeated by the Spanish. Another group that was never defeated or "Christianized" were the Moros or Muslims in the south,
namely in Mindanao, where a semi-religious civil war between
Christians, represented largely by Catholics and Muslims is currently raging.
The old anti-government underground, the "Huks" of the
last generation have been replaced by the Maoist-oriented New
People's Army (NPA), which is gaining strength rapidly in the
central and northern parts of the island of Luzon.
Thus far the communist insurgency of the NPA has been essentially localized in the northern Philippine provinces. But in
the southern region of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago, another even more bitter and explosive struggle is taking place.
Reaching back to Spanish rule in the 16th centruy, skirmishes between these opposing forces have accounted for well over
3,000 dead over the last five years. Add to that the innumerable other losses in injured and in property on both sides.
Often paralleling Northern Ireland in its ugly violence, this
bitter animosity between Moslems and Christians caused mobilization of opposing rebel forces estimated at 14,000 to
16,000 troops. Taking the bizarre nickname of ilaga.s or "rats,"
Christians formed vigilante bands to fight maraudmg Moslem
grou ps known as "barracudas."
Though officials in Manila stress that the Moslem-Christian
in-fighting does not constitute a jihad, or Moslem "holy war,"
the dangers involved are serious. Among the 3.5 million Moslems heavily clustered in Mindanao's Cotabato Province and
much of the Sulu Archipelago, there is talk of sucession from
the Philippine nation. Certain Moslems have dreamed of a link
up with neighboring Sabah, Mindanao and the Sulu island
chain.
The Americans did bring to the 7,083-island archipelago
nation a system of public or secular education, but they centralized it. This fact has made it easier for the church to infiltrate into the school on a gradual basis though under the Constitution of the Philippines, modeled largely after the American under which separation of church and state is guaranteed.
It need hardly be said that in areas where the population is
largely Catholic, such things as prayers in school, ceremonies
involving school youth, excursions to churches, having priests
and nuns present at school functions does not seem a violation
of anyone's rights, but more of a social context due to historical circumstances.
State-Church Rift
With the country under martial law since September of
1972, the government has considered taxing the church institutions, especially their large land holdings. Government investigators have also found "subversive" priests, that is, those
with clearly defined Marxist tendencies, communist connections, and the like. The church has opposed martial law to
some extent and many of the reforms under it, particularly
land reform.
Dr. Jose Rizal, the martyred national hero of Spanish times,
may be considered the "Father of Philippine Atheism" although, like Voltaire is said to have done, he died, according
to the church, in its bosom. There is a most controversial retraction signed by him moments before his death by firing
squad on the famous Luneta in Manila. Dr. Rizal was highly
educated, a man of many talents, and soon identified the
"friars" as the archenemy of the poor and the Philippines because of their land-grabbing tactics, among other things.
His writings led to the revolution, ill-fated as it was, and
caused many to think. He questioned religion and analyzed it

American Atheist

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos shown in a recent

address to the Philippine people in Manila.
for what it was, as much as he dared. He was known as a "freethinker" "deist" and a Mason. He had traveled and studied in
France, Spain, Germany and other countries, including the US.
Atheism had one advocate in the Philippines who used to
broadcast over the radio before martial law was declared but
now cannot do so because the station was closed down as soon
as martial law came into effect on 23 September 1972.
Travel abroad was restricted, and the nation's three airlines
placed under government control, as were all utilities. Civil
government functions are being supervised by the military.
Mass arrests took place, jailing journalists critical of President
Marcos, politically active young people, and key members of
the opposition Liberal Party leadership. Only one newspaper,
the Marcos-owned Daily Express, was allowed to continue
publishing. All dispatches from the Philippines must now be
cleared with the newly-created Department of Public Information. In Manila, Philippine Constabulary police walk the streets
with US-supplied M-16s,loaded clips in place.
The martial law decree was signed six hours after an alleged
assassination attempt on the life of Defense Minister Juan
Ponce Enrile, which failed to harm either him or his armed
guards. The latter happened to be in a vehicle driving behind
Enrile's official car at the time.
Marcos portrayed the "attack" as the culmination of a
string of urban violence going back into early summer, and laid
blame for it all at the doorstep of the Communist New People's Army. But Reichstag fires are not unknown in the Philippines, and few people consider the incident a bona fide attempted assassination.
Although the Philippines has diplomatic relations with
atheistic and communist countries, little is expected to come
of it on the ideological level. The same holds true for abortion,
which is opposed by most Filipinos, who while they may listen to family planning lectures, adhere to the church's basic
position, namely use of the rhythm method of birth control.
Humanism, that weak stepbrother of Atheism, of course
has some advocates. They seek to install man as the central figure in life but have not met with much success since the

Austin, Texas

church also does the same on a religious basis.

Philippine Atheists are under great pressure to conform to
social and cultural practices, to obey and follow and preserve
age-old customs, religious habits and celebrations, and dutifully accept church-dominated programs. An Atheist in the Philippines will suffer isolation and ostracism even by members
of his family.
Atheism in the Philippines needs to have some kind of educational program. It has to confront the entrenched dogma
and superstition that is rife, especially in the rural areas,
where demons, fairies, spirits, giants and monsters still lurk
and which must be appeased. Even the most educated are not
immune to the influence of such beliefs on their behavior.
Religious fanaticism is still rampant, especially during
Easter celebrations, when flagellants imitate Christ by either
having themselves beaten with whips until bloody or by having themselves nailed to a cross. There is neither time nor
space to give more graphic descriptions of these as they lie
outside the scope of this article.
American Atheists would do well to act now before they
find that their chances to express themselves are modified
and supressed. They can learn much from the history of
Atheism in the Philippines where the line separating state
and church is worn extremely thin, as the church sets up
indoctrination
programs that function almost daily and
regiment the lives of people to a fearful monotony, with myriads of duties, obligations, penances, etc.
.
American Atheists would do well to learn their lessons
from the Philippines where a Vatican-oriented clergy continues
to dominate crucial social, cultural and political areas.
[EDITOR'S NOTE - The above article updating American
Atheists on the situation of freethinkers in the Philippines was
reproduced so that our readers might appreciate how tight the
grasp of religion is - not alone in the U.S., but in many countries of the world. We include author Halford Jones' personal
letter in hopes that some of our readers might lend a helping
hand to fellow seekers of truth.]

April, 1978

1/

Dear Friends,
Thanks for the copies of your interesting and informative
magazine,
which I hope readers will continue to
send us here to keep us enlightened as
we cannot afford to subscribe to it.
Also, we ask that your readers send us
books on this highly important subject whenever possible and on related
topics to keep us informed and aware.
Such things are hard to obtain for innumerable reasons. Aside from sending books and magazines to help us,
donations of cash in currency of any
denomination by registered mail will
be appreciated to help us in our work
and to organize a group of local Atheists, etc.
Yours truly,
Halford Jones
Santa Cruz, Marinduque
Philippines 3805

Page 15

Tools

Of
Tyranny
9

15
Page 16

April, 1978

Church Torture
Weapons Shown
Wondering through the back streets of the famous Waikiki
district of Honolulu amid the multitudes
of tourist shops, one
would hardly suspect that he was in the neighborhood
of one
of the most startling museums in the world. In the middle
of this dream world of sunburnt snowbirds and shapely bikinis
the ugly reality of man's inhumanity
to man lies waiting to enthrall the mind and in some cases turn the stomach.
The entrance to this bit of the bizarre is obscured by young
street merchants
with their tables full of trinkets. At the entrance you are met by a small but determined
man by the
name of Arne Coward. For 13 years now in Hawaii Arne has
been amassing the world's largest collection of solid iron torture instruments.
He doesn't own a car, a suit, a tie or a pair of
shoes, but his passion for metal engendered
in his youth mixed
with the right measure of curiosity and concern for the truth
has led him on a 32-year career of obtaining the instruments
of
enforcement
for almost every regime of tyranny since the 12th
century.
Over 1,000 instruments
of persuasion adorn the walls and
display cases of Coward's museum and adjacent Iiving quarters.
The assemblage
includes about 80% of the most infamous
compendium
of horror instruments
in recorded history, which
was until 1890 housed in Nuremberg's
royal castle. Each has
been carefully documented
by Arne who knows their gruesome history inside out.
These are not empty threats, replicas or wall decorations
each instrument
has been used, and used often. Some of the
executioner's
swords still have a soft sticky crust on the blade,
and "If you'll look closely," points out the proud owner, "you
can see that they have been sharpened many times. This is because they got blunt from use."
Nearly all the instruments,
from the "spider"
to the
"wheel" are forged from iron - built to last forever. The ingenuity and workmanship
illustrates a lesson in the history of
human nature which few would believe, if the evidence were
not in Honolulu to behold.
American

Atheist

12

7
Page 16 photos, top to bottom: 9.) Shame Mask 11.) The
Spiked Hare - used for disemboweling victims over the rack.
15.) Shin Crusher.
This page: 12.) Ear-cutting set. 8.) The Spider, used for
tearing female breasts. 3.) Ingenious Witch Catcher used to
hold victim at bay. 5.) A Jawbreaker, a Tongue Tearer, and a
metal gag. 7.) Iron mask with funnel for pouring boiling oil
into victim's mouth.

Austin,

The "spider" has thin, curved-in claws and a hinged handle

with a small chain at the end. To pull the chain even lightly
forces the knife-sharp
claws to close in a vice-like grip. Only
female victims knew the bite of the spider during the Dark
Ages. It was used to rip off their breasts, a permanent
reminder that obedience is the better part of valor.
Women seem to have been the favored target for those
early, primarily religious, appliers of these vicious instruments.
From about the time when Italian philosopher
Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600 because he did not agree
with the religious doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church to
almost our own day more than 300,000
innocent
women
and girls were similarly burned at the stake because the Roman Catholic and later the Protestant
clergy accused them of
being witches.
"Breaking on the wheel" was another popular method especially in France. The victim was strapped to a cross with
places hollowed
out under all his limbs so only his joints
touched the wood. The heavy wheel equipped with iron blades
was rolled by the executioner
over each hollow in the cross,
breaking each limb in two places. After the eight required
blows the victim was removed from the cross and attached to
the wheel for the pleasure of the audience. The executioner
would then add two wheel blows to the chest, ending the
agony.
Arne's fascination
with solid iron began in his childhood.
"I grew up behind the counters in a hardware store. But the
real key to the situation is that I was tremendously
spoiled. I
was told as a boy to pick out a bicycle for myself fr.om the
stock. I picked one of each color. When I left home, everywhere I went my luggage cost more to send than my ticket
cost. I am fascinated by metal because it's so permanent ... and
history, too. All my life I've been surrounded
by countless metal objects ... with a history."
Arne, like his collection,
has quite a history. Born to a
prosperous Norwegian family, he has lived in 60 different countries, has been around the world six times and speaks 12 languages fluently.
But more importantly,
he does not collect
from a fascination
for metal alone. He has a genuine concern
for the history of each and every object he obtains; a history
that tells the story of human suffering from Egypt to Auschwitz. Suffering not for the sake of suffering alone, for Arne
could never be called a sadomasochist,
but suffering for a
cause. The cause of freedom of mind.
Throughout
history the quest for freedom has surfaced in
every human community.
With that surfacing, however, has
been an ever-present
suffocation
of that instinctive design to
speak one's mind. That suffocation
has come from two major
sources: government
and the church. Boiled down to its principle, all good government measures its goodness by the extent
to which it can control a populace with the least possible rejection of the control measures.
The more force required to make often tasteless controls
palatable the worse the reputation
of that particular government or governmental
system. The master of the art of government is the one that can lay in the hearts of the governed the
willingness to subjection,
the controls that no longer become
controls because they are so ingrained in the individual that
they are followed instinctually,
replacing normal drives.

Church, State Allies

This conditioning
from the inside has been held dear by
government
after government
throughout
the history of civilization. The most effective ally in its application
has been the
church. For what is church doctrine in its essence, any church
doctrine,
but submission
to authority.
The gauntlet
of the
church shrouded
by its message of mercy is the perfect com-

April,1978

Texas

Page 17

10
The photographs included in
this article were provided courtesy of museum director Arne
Coward.
"

The photographs on this page show: 4.) Chain

Glove - heated red hot with the victim's hand inside.
2.) A perforated sieve for molten metal or boiling oil.
10.) Spanish Collar. 14.) The Flute - a finger pillory.
13.) A leg breaker.
pan ion to the sword of the state.
Arne knows all to well of the result of this marriage of
church and state as demonstrated
by the bridal-shower gifts to
humanity
in his museum. The tools of the Inquisition
comprise most of his collection.
Even the church could not enforce its mind controls without a little arm-twisting,
knee-crushing and tongue-tearing.
Little rhymes of obedience were chanted to the beat of the whip
or the turn of the wheel. The heretic, the one who questioned
the rules, was exterminated
ultimately
in any event. Whether
or not the required confession was forthcoming,
the victim always got it in the end. If you confessed, you died, were saved
and went to heaven. If you refused and preferred the dignity
of your autonomy,
you died and went to hell. Either way,
however, you died.
After a few thousand
such public lessons the populace of
any state would come to the conclusion
that "silence
is
golden."
On top of such physical coercion the church then
laid heavy mental reinforcement
week after week, month
after month, on one and all. The result was a society unconcerned with liberty, equality or even education.
"People should realize that the history of torture is not
continuous,"
says Arne. "In ancient times it was almost unknown. Slaves were sometimes
tortured
in the Roman Republic, Egypt, Assyria and in some Greek cities, but not in
other cultures.
It wasn't until the 12th and 13th centuries
that it began to be used in cases of heresy. During the In-

Page 18

April, 1978

American

Atheist

Photos above show: Left) Copper Boot - boiling oil was poured around victim's naked foot. Center) Torture Chair - victim was seated naked with weights in lap. Right) Museum curator Arne Coward displays a
Beheading Sword.
quisition and into the 17th century it spread throughout
most
of Europe. But it fell from favor during the 18th and 19th centuries and only traces remain in the 20th century."
This speaks to the point of torture in the first place: the
suppression of inquiry and individual thought.
For during the
12th and 13th centuries science - that wicked art of impartial
investigation
- was struggling to bloom against the stifling hindrances of religious dogmatism.
The height of the Inquisition
came at the birth of true
science as it was about to emerge, thereby bringing to mankind
scientific methodology
which would dispel the authority
of
the state and give to man the tools of liberty: orderly thought.
As a result, that birth was put off for hundreds of years. Imagine what could have been accomplished
had science been fed
and nurtured,
rather than hindered and condemned.
Imagine
Abraham
Lincoln witnessing the landing of Apollo on the
moon. It could have been, but it was denied.
Medical pioneers who probed the complexities
of the human body, freethinkers
who tooled with the powers of medi
cinal plants and potions, astronomers
who charted the stars,
wordsmiths who toyed with the joys of words and the humor
they could bring, and sensitive artists who experimented
with
colors and the happiness of art, all were subject to the application of the torturer's
"art."
This was the greatest injustice ever done to man: the retardation of reason. Arne put it well when he said, "We speak
of the 'Good Old Days,' and complain about infringements
on
our rights. It's time we took a hard, cold look at what actually
went on during those 'Good Old Days,' then maybe we can appreciate a lot more the fact that we have any rights at all.
There is a message here ... especially for young people."

There is a message here indeed. A message that should be

screaming
inside all of us. Our forefathers
fought and died
for what little freedom we now possess. Let us not allow it
to slip away through the sieve of complacency.
The fight must
go on against all those persons or groups that would stand in
the crossroads of human growth and lead us down the path of
"due subjection."
Bring on the torturers if you must. Freedom is dear enough
to endure them all. The application
of all that mighty arsenal.
displayed in that small shop in Honolulu could not sway the
hand of progress. Let us hope that we have outgrown them all
- but never forget that they were there.
It did happen. It was not a bad dream. The lesson of history
is there.
So, should you ever go on that dream vacation to Hawaii,
take a minute to stop and take in a little bit of history, a part
of our past that none of us dare forget. Call it an experience
out of the Twilight Zone if you must, but never forget what
Arne's unusual hardware collection stands for.
Arne has been labeled a nut, and eccentric, even as "The
Man Who Collects Halloween,"
but never should he be called
a coward (except as a matter of courtesy of address). Arne
has that rare courage possessed by those who stand for the
truth, for with that commodity
he is forever concerned.
The
truth of our past, of the "Good Old Days'" is precious to him.
He "lets it all hang out" in terms of today's youth who all too
often take for granted the lessons of history he has spent 32
years collecting.
Arne Coward's museum is located
on Kuhio Street, Waikiki
Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii

April, 1978

Austin, Texas

Page 19

POLEMIC SYNOPSIS
ralph b. shirley
Christian Perfection
It is very rarely that I have any memorable dreams but recently I had one that I would like to relate. Quite frequently
I hear or read statements that religion, and Christianity
in particular, is "good," that it is something to be desired and that
its gods - such as plain old "God" or his son Jesus Christ represent the acme of morality, justice and goodness. Everyone is urged to strive to emulate them as far as it is possible to
do so. And contrarily,
anyone who rejects their teachings or
examples must necessarily be "bad."
Now I realize I used the word "gods" and there is only supposed to be one god, but that gets highly technical. You see,
Jesus Christ is God and God is Jesus Christ and both of them
are the Holy Ghost. It is something like being your own grandpa. Then, of course, there are many different gods in other religions. But enough of such technicalities.
My dream concerned one of the Rockefellers following the
example of Jesus Christ and his father as told in the volume
of fiction called the Bible. You see right now the Rockefellers simply give money away for various causes which they
consider to be worthy. There are no strings attached. At least
none of which I know. And they are quite modest about the
whole thing in that they are not asking for public recognition.
But in my dream, one of the Rockefellers decided to be as
nearly perfect as possible and emulate Jesus Christ. So, the
first thing he did was to go to an urban ghetto and when
people gathered around him begging for food and clothes he
boldly declared, "Before you can hope to get anything from
me you will first have to state that I am the greatest thing that
ever wore sandals and that you believe in me and worship me,
because if you will not love me above all else, then I certainly
am not going to put in a good word for you with my father
who art in riches." (Matt. 10:32 - It was reported that Christ
said whomever confesses him before man, he will confess bebefore his Father).
Most of the people bowed down right away and licked his
sandals and received an I.O.U., payable after their deaths,
for the food and clothes. But some of the more brave and rational ones refused to do so, especially since they knew they
were only going to get an I.O.U. anyway.
So this Rockefeller had a retort for them saying, "Anyone
who does not think that I am the greatest and refuses to bow
down and worship me, will go to the poor house, or even
worse, and when he begs for mercy I will deny him." (Matt.
10:33 - Again, Jesus Christ was alleged to have pronounced
that whosoever shall deny him before men, he will deny before his Father).
He then started cursing a bank because he could not get any
money from it. I then discovered that the bank had just been
constructed
and had not yet opened its doors. (Matt. 21: 19 Here Christ was said to have put a curse on a fig tree.).
Later this Rockefeller went to the Chase Manhattan
Bank,
which he owned, and started beating some people who were
in the lobby with a whip made of cords. It turned out that

these people were preachers (witch doctors) begging for alms;

but Rockefeller
drove them from the bank. (John 2:14,15 In the Bible it is stated that Christ found merchants
and
money changers in the temple and beat them with a scourge).
There would have been much more to my dream, but I was
awakened by the loud dichotomous
clangs of a church bell on
Sunday morning.
I am glad and sure that the recipients of
Rockefeller
aid are thankful
that the Rockefellers
are not as
"good" and "perfect"
as the mythological
Jesus Christ.
Christian morality is much-touted
by preachers and their
flocks but no critical examination
is ever made of it by those
believers. It is considered to be the "authority"
and, therefore,
above question or criticism.
It is obvious, however, that they do have questions
and
doubts in their minds because the preachers carefully avoid
certain passages of the Bible or read them to their flocks of
sheep hurriedly
and without
comment.
When they cannot
avoid an unfavorable
passage they concoct some absurd explanation to justify it as the word of god.
If this god killed thousands
of people for a slight offense,
the explanation
is that "they disobeyed
god and had to be
punished."
Obviously, the morality of god and Christ as told
in these tales is far beneath that of most ordinary men of today. Men do not demand worship for charitable acts. They do
not rush in and beat people who are not acting in what they
consider to be a proper manner. They do not become angry at
inanimate objects that are acting in accordance
with nature.
And they do not kill people for looking at or touching their
property as "god" did with his ark. A book like the Bible that
is not only untrue but also immoral should be discarded on the
nearest trash pile.

- TURN

TOME
ANDIE

~oid AdYerti.erfient

Paid Advertisement

AGNOSTICISM

Cho;l B,adlough wo. the flnt militant Ath.ilt in the hlltory of W.It"n
ci.iIIlotion. H. WOl tlected to the BritI.h parilollllllt .Ix ti_.
and lOch
tim. that body refulld to Hat him btcaull he wo. on Atheilt - and becaull
h. would not 'WIO, hi. o"~lonc. to Ow- and country o h p him God.
h.ryon. In England kMw B,adlough and hi. fight and he ,ailld the illu, of
Athel.m to try ptnOIIln .,.bIle lift a. he .ought alliH.
The Int.IIlCtuol community containtd. at the tlnll. Si, Thoma. Huxley. and
hi colntd the word Agnoltlc" In 1869 to kllp from aligning h f with
the ha,d p, 1Id B,adlaugh. The wo,d pno.I.I. the G,Hk fa, knowl.dg..
In words of GrMk demotion the prefix a' i. a pri.ati thot I. -It gi.H the
wo,d a ntgati IInll. LIt"ally It mlOn. "agoinlt knowl.dgt" 0, "n~ating
knowledgt". Huxley in hi.11ttIn to the litlratl community pointed out that
hi did not fHI that IOI.ation could be attaln.d th,ough knowl.dge.
W. don't know what 101.allon i But w. do know that Huxl.y ,.ftrred to
the N.w T tonllnt Blbllcolltory of Act. 17:23 whl,.ln Poul.i.lted Ath.n.
and odmoni.hed the peopI. fa, a .totue h. found th . H oid .. 0. I
r."slld by and beheld you, d otions. I found on alto, with this insc,iption
to the unknown God.:"
Huxl.y h.ld that the" was a 'gad' and this wo.lmplicit In his definition of
Agnolticllm. H. IOId two things which ON quitl different:
"1. God II- and God i. unknown.
2. God i. - and Gad i. unknowable."
Ag"osticlsm il .try close to the ,gioul dogma thot the ways of gad .~
unfathOMable. that human 'lO.on i. fallible. and that mon rlquim a diff.,.nt. non-icillltific. poth to the truth - luch as faith. Agnostic followers
0" alway. all". of the chu,ch. The folll notion that thl wo,ld il
unknowobl und..",i_
ICienC' and ,.inforeH thlOlogy. It inciinH mon to
faith and induc nIIn to t,ull .,.lIgiou. doct,inll. The church doel not
onathematill the ognoltic and 11Ithe Roman Catholic Church will accept
the Agnostic in ill fold.
Popularly. the word has been corrupted just 01 the Wordl Ath.ist and
Epicu,ion ha betn co,rupt.d to mlOn to the mon in the It,HI "I don't
know whtthtt th II a gad 0' not". But an inlpection of that nt.nc.
IlOd. OM into occ.pting the logic of Huxley obo .
The Atheist po.it;on il thot the traditlonolilt hlsto,ical concepts of gad a"
quit. foiocioul and that the notion of IOme 'supe, pow,,' il not now susceptibl. of proof by .xi.ting Icillltific mtthodt 0, by the accumulation of
knowl.dgt p" ntly occH.ible to man. Th"efO,. the Ath.ilts Ii as if
the,. il no gad. no efficacy in proyer. and no lift after death. W.
free
from theilm. W. bet rything on this 01 being occu,at The Agnoltic is
gutles. and pret.rs to kllp one 10ft foot in the gad camp.

0,.

WE ARE ATHEISTS BECAUSE:

The,. il no proof of tIot .xi.tIIIc. of god.

The" i. no need of. 0' UII fa" a gocl:
A good gad would be if he w not powerful.
A pow.rful gad would not dell'.'
wo,ship if h. w nat good.
The,. il no all-powerful good gad; otherwill. th would be no imperflCtion.
If thil i. the bHt world gad can moke, the .to';H of HIO must be IiH.
Hi.tory .how. that gadism i. occomponied by igno,onc. and supt,ltltion.
Th hal n been .uch Intoleranc. and ptrIICution as gadists ho proctictO-Godi.m
had to be fought when ilion mod. hi ucc.lli It.ps
toward scl.nc liberty. and ,.form.
Godism wo. In nted in the 1O,II.st day. of _n.lgnoronc
It is inc,edibl.
that primiti mal g_1Id
wrongly about erything but di.co Nd
tho t,uth about the origin of lif.
herything about which .cilllc, has disco teI the o,igin wo. claimed
pr iously to ho betn the wo,k of gad. Godism ,1C.d when a n.w fact is
disco.trtd.
No n.w di.co.try upports a theistic .xp/onotion of
hl"Sl.
AI ,. otlon pro.H. o. In.Htlgotion.
to be human. and glllerally
f,oudul.nt.
Gadilm I. con.l.tlftt
with c,inll. cMlty. 1IIy. hotNd. malic. and uncho,ltabl

onr

ATHEISM TEACHES THAT:

THERE IS NO HEAVENLY FATHER
. Man mu.t prolKt the orphan. and foundllnRl. or they will not be prOticted.
.
THERE IS NO GOD TO ANSWER PRAYER
Man mu.t hea, and help _n.
THERE IS NO HELL
W. ha no .Indicll god or de.1I to flO, or Imltotl
THERE IS NO AfONEMENT
OR SALVATION
BY FAITH
W. must faC' the C-tct-. of ow och.
THERE IS NO BENEFICENT OR MALEVOLENT IHTENT IN
NATURE
Lif.11 a .truggle agolnlt pm toble and unp"lntable
II The coope,ation of man I. tIot only hope of the world.
THERE IS 1'10 CHANCE AFTER DEATH TO "DO OUR BIT"
W. must do It now or ..
THERE IS 1'10 DIVINE GUARDIAN OF TRUTH. GOODNESS.
BEAUTY AND LIBERTY
Theil a" att,ibolt of man. Man mUlt def.nd th.m 0' th.y will pe,l.h from
the IOrth.
You, cont,lbutlon (tax x,",pt) would help. Won't you IInd a check to:

AMERICAN ATHEISTS, Inc.

P.

o. Box 2117.

Austin. Texas 78768

Ad Paid Fa, By Ha,old

Action Atheist
For the benefit of those Atheists who are searching for a
means of putting their knowledge to work while at the same
time educating their peers as to the folly of religious beliefs.
we offer the example of Atheist Harold D. Church of Columbia. Tennessee.
Mr. Church purchased
ad space in three local newspapers
to clarify the differences
between an Atheist and an Agnostic.
elucidate the positive aspects of the atheistic lifestyle while at
the same time demonstrating
the futility of prayerto
a mythical god and the stultifying effects on the human mind such an
irrational belief fosters. The boxed advertisement
to the left
(or one even larger) was run in The Daily Herald of Columbia.
The Nashville Banner and in The Tennessean.
As you might expect of such forthrightness
in a country
where many still paranoically cling to the delusions of godism.
Mr. Church's advertisement
for reason brought a malevolent
response from some religious irrationals who would deny the
23%-27% of Americans who are Atheists the right to free (in
this case paid for. no less) speech. The letters-to-the-editor
columns of these papers erupted with condemnation
of the
editors for daring to allow an Atheist the rights which are
granted to us all under the First Amendment.
In reply to one such letter (from a Mrs. Baker). Publisher
Sam D. Kennedy of The Daily Herald answered with an eloquent defense of our constitutional
rights to be free from religion and to espouse and defend our beliefs in all public
forums.
Mr. Kennedy's
reply is reproduced
below and we
include both so that other Atheists might appreciate
- and
hopefully emulate - Harold Church's example.
(4Y:,-inch by 6-inch cards printed with the original S.O.S.
text from which Mr. Church's
advertisement
was taken are
available from American
Atheists
for $.05 each plus $.25
postage or 50 for $1.00. postage included.) - Editor.

Editor's note:
Mrs. Baker should understand
that the editorial content of
our paper is ours. The advertising space is paid for by the advertisers and is his space, not ours.
To us free speech is not a slogan, not something we ask for
ourselves and deny for others. We resent that in most of the
world Christianity cannot advertise and struggles for existence.
We editorialize
against such restraint of ideas. Should we not
be bound by our own rules?
As for the charge of "money hungry" which I resent and
which is patently ridiculous, that one ad would hardly pay for
the space and it will come only once in a lifetime. We could
have turned it down and never have known the difference except our twinge of conscience
when next we editorialized
about free speech. Mrs. Baker should also note that her ideas
are expressed free while the man who purchased the advertisement for Atheism paid for the right to express his. He was local and since his ideas were not ours the only way he could
express the ideas was to buy the space and this can be done by
anyone for most any idea. We turn down thousands of dollars
worth of advertising each year for products
we know to be
fraudulent.
But as we would be free to express our belief in
god, it is necessary
that we allow someone else to express
their belief that there is no god. We believe there is precedent for our position.
It is called the Constitution
of the
United States.

Ph. (512) 438-1244

D. Chu,ch

Sam D. Kennedy
Publisher

April. 1978

Austin, Texas

Page 21

Ihe Amtritan Athtist Radio Stri es

HEBREW HOLY FORGERIES
iDrogram 348
KTBC Radio

28 June 1975
Austin, Texas

Hello there,
This is Madalyn Mays O'Hair, American Atheist, back to
talk with you again.
Again, I turn to Joseph Wheless who wrote in the early
years of this century, concerning forgeries and adaptations
in
the Judaic/Christian
religion.
It is the popular supposition that the 66 (Oatholic Bible 73)
books which comprise the Bible are the whole sum of Hebrew
and Christian "sacred writings" which have claimed and have
been accorded the sanction of divine inspiration and treated
by the church as canonical.
The term "canonical"
means
books
accepted
as divinely
inspired.
The Holy Hebrew
"canon" was closed, or the last inspired book of the Old Testament written, according to Jewish tradition,
by Ezra, about
the year 444 B.C. In truth, however, several of the books of
the Old Testament
were written much later, and were never
heard of by Ezra.
There is also a much greater number of such books, of both
Hebrew and Christian origin, which the inspired church formerly and for ages regarded as inspired and "canonical,"
but
which it now repudiates
as "apocryphal"
and acknowledges
as forgeries. The term apocryphal,
which means hidden away
and/or spurious, includes those written either by biblical personages or men in intimate relation with them. Each of them
has at one time or another been treated as canonical.
The early ones were called Hebrew pseudographs,
forged
writings, and were circulated
under venerable Old Testament
names.
But, looking at what we have - there are three stories
concerned
with the Old Testament
that you must know.
There is a remarkable apocryphal
tale relating to the Hebrew
scriptures in Chapter 14 of the Fourth Book of Esdras, which
is a non-canonical
work. This regards the miraculous restoration of the Hebrew Holy Writ after its total perlshment.
In the calamity of the capture and destruction
of the Holy
City by Nebuchadnezzar,
586 B.C., the Temple of Solomon
was destroyed,
together
with the entire collection
of the
sacred Rolls of Scriptures, so that not a scratch of. inspired pen
remained to tell the tale of theocratic
Hebrew history and its
"revealed" religion.
The inconsolable
and apparently
irreparable
loss afflicted
the holy people all the time of the Babylonian captivity. But
upon their return to the restored "City of God," and over a
century after their loss, god, we are told in Fourth Esdras,
inspired Ezra and commissioned
him to reproduce the sacred
lost books, which, judging from the result of his inspired labors, were many more than the supposed 22 of the supposed
old Hebrew Canon.
Accordingly
Ezra, employing
five scribes, dictated
to
them, from inspired memory, the textual contents of the lost
sacred books, and in just 40 days and nights reproduced a total of 94 sacred books, of which he designated 24 as sacred
canon, the remaining 70 being termed esoteric and reserved
for the use of only the wisest.
This tale was accepted
for truth by the early Christian
church fathers. It continued to circulate until the time of the
Reformation.
At that time a Jew by the name of Levita, who

Page 22

April, 1978

died in 1549, invented another tale. According to this Ezra

and the talmudic
"Men of the Great Synagogue"
simply
united into one volume the 24 books which until that time
had circulated
separately,
and divided them into the three
great divisions yet recognized, of the Law, the Prophets, and
the Hagiographa (or holy writings). This fabulous statement of
Levita became the authoritative
doctrine of the orthodoxy
of
the 17th and 18th centuries.
There is still another tale and this is found in the Bible. It
is related in 2 Kings xxii, and corrobated
by 2 Chronicles
xxxiv. In the eighteenth
year of the "good kinq" Josiah of
Judah, while some repair work was being done in the Temple,
Hilkiah the priest, of a sudden, "found the book of the law of
Yahveh given by Moses:"
over 800 years before, and never
heard of since.
Hilkiah called in Shaphan
the scribe, and they took the
great "find" to Josiah the king, Then, to verify the veracity of
the high priest, Huldah the lady prophet was consulted; being
intimately familiar with the sentiments of god, she at once declared that Yahveh was very angry about it, "because:"
as the
king said, "our fathers have not hearkened
unto the words of
this book, to do after all that is written in this book"; and
the king at once set about to carry into effect the laws prescribed in Deuteronomy
- just then, for the first time in the
history of Israel ever heard of or acted upon.

Holy Hoax
This "book of the law given to Moses" 800 years before
was doubtless the priestly work of Milkiah, palmed off under
the potent name of Moses to force its very reluctant
observance and belief on the superstitious
Jews. The Bible texts
themselves show thai: this holy "Law of Moses" was totally
unknown
and totally unobserved
through all the history of
Israel from its beginnings until Josiah, and then was probably composed by the priest in question and palmed off as an
historic find.
Actually, best of all the tales about the Old Testament
is
the one that I fell for. I am probably one of the most widely
read persons in the United States when it comes to religion.
And, here Joseph Wheless 30 years ago had uncovered
the
fraud I gullibly accepted just until this year. As forged tales
were fabricated
to account for the origin and preservation
of
the Old Testament,
so pious fraud was adopted to account for
their very notable translation
into the Greek, in what was
known as the Septuagint Version.
After the conquests by Alexander the Great and his establishment of the city of Alexandria
in Egypt, a great number
of Jews settled in the new city which had quickly become the
commercial
and intellectual
center of the ancient world. The
universal language used there was Greek. Since the Jews had
been "dispersed"
and had variable mother tongues, synagogue
services could not be conducted except in Greek.
The Alexandrian
Jews were accordingly
under necessity to
render their Holy Law into Greek for their own public use,
and for the use of the Jews of many nationalities
coming into
Alexandria. This, Wheless thought was gradually done, as necessary. However, such a commonplace
mode of translation
was not sufficiently
wonderfrul,
so about the year 200 B.C.
a more satisfactory tale was invented.
Some pious Jew forged a letter in the name of one Aris-

American

Atheist

teas, an official of Ptolemy II, Philadelphus, the Greek king of

Egypt, during the years 285-147 B.C. The letter was purportedly addressed to his brother, Philocrates, and gives a marvelous history of the translation.
Ptolemy had recently established
a library at Alexandria,
which he purposed should contain a copy of every obtainable
literary work extant. This library became the most extensive
and celebrated of the ancient world, containing some 700,000
manuscript books. The tale the pseudo-Aristeas
now told was
that at the suggestion of Demetrius, his librarian, Ptolemy was
convinced to enrich the library with a copy of the sacred Laws
of the Jews. So, Ptolemy wrote to Eleazar, the chief priest at
Jerusalem,
sending the letter and magnificent
presents "to
God" by the hand of a delegation, including the letter-writing
Aristeas, requesting a copy of the law and a number of learned
Jews competent to translate it into Greek.
The embassy was successful; a richly ornamented
copy of
the holy law, written in letters of gold, was sent to the king,
together
with 72 Doctors of Israel, deputed
to deliver the
book and to carry out the wishes of the king, They were received with honor, and feted for several days, then conducted
across the long causeway to the Island of Pharos to the place
prepared for them,
which was a house that was built near the
shore, and was a quiet place, and fit for their discoursing together about their work.
Accordingly
they made an accurate
interpretation
with
"great zeal and great pains."
The work was completed
in 72
days. It was read to the assembled Jews so that they could
make necessary correction suggestions to the 72 learned Doctors who had worked on the text. The translation,
in open
team-work,
with all 72 working together,
was finished. (The
work comprised
the first five books of the Old Testament
only.)
However, this was in the grossest manner inaccurate and imported innumerable
errors so that during the second century
of our era it was discarded by the church. Finally, Louis Vives
(1492-1540),
a professor at Louvain, called into question the
authenticity
of the so-called letter of Aristeas and his work
was so thorough that the tale was "universally"
abandoned.
Instead another tale was told, this time by Justin Martyr
that the 70 were, by order of the king, shut up in as many
separate cells, were obliged by him, each to translate the whole
Bible apart, and without any communication
with each other.
Yet all their several translations
were found to agree verbatim
from the beginning to the end and were by that means demonstrated to be of divine inspiration!
To complete
the tale, Justin Mart"yr says, "These things,
ye men of Greece, are no fable, nor do we narrate fictions; but
we ourselves have been in Alexandria, saw the remains of the
little (cells) at the Pharos still preserved."
But, in repeating the
tale to the Roman emperor, Father Justin makes the unhappy
blunder of saying that Ptolemy, "sent to Herod, who was at
that time king of the Jews, requesting that the books of the
prophets (remember that Aristeas said the books of the Law)

be sent him; and the king did indeed send them."

However, Herod lived some 300 years after Ptolemy died.
So, there goest his story. However another bishop, Saint Irenaeus, went on even further to emphasize that this was a miracle because when the 72 identical translations
were compared,
"God was indeed glorified, and the Scriptures
were acknowledged as truly divine ... even the Gentiles present perceived that the Scriptures
had been interpreted
by the inspiration
of God. And there was nothing astonishing
in
God having done th is."

Wholesale Distortion
In the course of a century or two before the Christian era,
the other Hebrew sacred books were likewise translated
into
Greek for these of the Greek-speaking
Jews of "the Dispersion," and all these were added to the rolls of Scriptures. This
final and adulterated
form of the Septuagint
was the vehicle
which conveyed the Old Testament
to the modern world. The
Catholic Church adopted this Septuagint as its own, it differed
from the Hebrew not only by the addition of several books
and passages but also by innumerable
variations of text, due
partly to the ordinary process of corruption
in the transcription of ancient books, partly to the culpable temerity of correctors who used not a little freedom in making corrections,
additions and suppressions,
partly to mistakes in translation,
and finally in great part to the fact that the original Septuagint
had been made from a Hebrew text quite different from that
fixed at Jamnia as the one standard by the Jewish rabbis. So
Yahveh only knows what he actually said and did in the fabled 4,004 years from the time he created the universe to the
time his son came to try to redeem his people from some of
the tangles of his Holy Law.
Matters grew worse as time progressed. The ex-pagan Greek
Fathers who founded Christianity,
propagated
the new faith
for several centuries only from the tortuous texts of this falsified Septuagint,
which was the only Old Testament
"Scriptures" known and used by them as the source of the prophecies to be fulfilled by Jesus Christ. Both deliberate
and involuntary
changes crept in. So that the Christian faith was
founded
on befuddlement
of the "Blessed Word of God"
which nondescript
scribblers palmed off on holy men.

This informational broadcast is brought to you as a public service by the Society of Separationists, tnc., a non-profit,
non-political, tax-exempt, educational organization dedicated
to the complete separation of state and church. This series
of American Atheist radio programs is continued through
listener generosity. The Society of Separationists, Inc. predicates its phitosophv on American Atheism. For more information, or for a free copy of the script of this program,
write to P.O. Box 2117, Austin, Texas. That zip is 78768.

It's Your Move ....

The pink envelope you found enclosed with this copy of The American Atheist magazine is
provided for your convenience in supporting the critically important legal suits to return our nation
to the posture of separation of state and church - a principle upon which the nation was founded.
Please send what financial aid you can to assist with the suits to remove "In God We Trust"
from the nation's currency and to end prayers at all governmental meetings.

Austin, Texas

April, 1978

1/

Page 23

All Things Considered

Jon
Dl.urray
A Time For Living
Being somewhat of a sports fan, I recently attended a basketball game that was fairly ordinary on the surface except for
the fact that it was a playoff game. The score was close down
to the final seconds of the contest with the home team winning by a narrow margin. As the crowd slowly started to disperse, I followed the stream of humanity to the exits absorbed
in the faces of victory mingled with those of defeat.
As I rounded a corner I almost ran into a young white male
and his date who had just come upon a black man with his
lady friend. The white man, suddenly recognizing the black,
moved rapidly to him shaking hands with the common "How
have you been, long time no see" expression. His female companion hugged ber black counterpart.
It was, in all, a warm reunion of small dimensions.
The couples involved were, at my
best guess, in their late teens.
This scene struck me as so meaningful in the brief moments
it encompassed,
that I stood startled blocking traffic until a
nudge from behind drew my attention
back to the business at
hand, that of making my way to the car. On the way home I
remarked to the friend accompanying
me that the parents of
these couples would never have exhibited that kind of friendship, in public, during their youth - especially in a Southern
state.
The history of the Southern part of our nation is no secret
with respect to attitudes toward blacks. Racism dies hard, as
does any other prejudice, for as is with all biases, the roots
lie in the inability of people to communicate.
Only through
communication
can one group separated by any natural or intellectual differences from another come to understand the nature of those differences
as they relate to the heritage and
founding principles of each. The type of communication
demonstrated
by the young couples in the crowd is an emotional
one, but that type is but the overture to the harmony of intellectual symphonics that should follow.
Communication
is easy in those areas wh ich are of common
concern. Differences
retard the process, almost like trying to
talk through a heavy door, aided by emotion, which acts like
weather stripping as it seals the little spaces around the edges
where words could slip through. Religion is like' this, for religion is chiefly emotion. That is its central quality, for emotion
overrides thought
very effectively.
The result is well documented historically.
Religious wars of every description
have
plagued mankind for centuries:
conflicts which defy logic but
feed on emotion.
I take no exception to emotion.
It is part of all of us and
has its valid place for without it one could no more function
than a continuously
stoked boiler with no outlet for the steam
buildup. The mark of a rational person is, however, his ability
to check that emotion in the cause of communication
and the
ensuing understanding
of others that minimizes conflict.
I do not suggest that such checks are always either possible
or even desirable. In the area of sexual concerns for example,
such checks are usually particularly
elusive. This is good in
some cases since struggle produces a healthier generation from
an evolutionary
standpoint.
In most cases of human contact,
however, rational checks on emotion are well placed. Especially
when that contact is non-physical
in nature.

Page 24

April, 1978

Atheism has always based its life philosophy

on rationality,
or, to put it another way, the scientific examination
of events
and ideas prior to the taking of action with respect to their resolution or the formulation
of opinions concerned
with them.
Thus, Atheism is a logical opponent to religion and cannot exist on the same plane as religion, which turns to emotion first
while Atheism turns to unbiased evaluation.
All religions do this without
exception.
Terms Iike the
"religion of science" or Church of Scientology
as it is called
are misnomers.
Religion and science are mutually
exclusive.
When one considers then that it is science, the very thing that
religion cannot allow, that has brought mankind to the level of
well-being that it has reached today, it is hard to fathom a reluctance to accept it.
I challenge anyone to demonstrate
that religion has been a
catalyst to human progress, as science has been. Yet the idea
of religion has taken precedence
over all else. Our foreign policy has been dictated
by rei igion, our hospitals
have been
taken over by it, our tax structure
has been robbed by it
(keeping monies from needed human applications),
the liberation of our bodies has been controlled by it, even the minds of
our children have been directed
against nature itself by it.
Yet, small sparks of hope are seen here and there. Sparks
like the couples in the crowd I mentioned earlier. The sad part
is that generations have been wasted needlessly in order to generate these sparks. The components
of liberty, equality and
fraternity
have always been around but the catalyst of communication
has been missing. Due to religion's pernicious
influences, scenes like that in the crowd are the exception when
they by all rights should be the rule.

Isolated Animals
Humanity
stands on the brink of self-destruction
over a
lack of communication.
We have even gone so far as to cease
communicating
with nature. We not only don't communicate
anymore,
we even deny any relationship
with nature. Other
creatures are referred to as animals in a derogatory
manner. I
have news for everyone, we too are an imals.
It is no wonder then that our goal is the elimination
of religion. That goal cannot be subverted by anything else, least of
which is a lack of communication
between ourselves. Once religion is removed, humanity
can get down to the business at
hand, the business of life. Life is all we have. It has no purpose
but to continue
as long as possible. The cycle of existence is
good. It is not wicked, or "animal"
(in a derogatory
sense) or
pointless. It is merely something of which we are inextricably
a part of.
The Atheist movement
in the United States has been similarly hampered by this lack of communication.
This deficiency
takes the form of a lack of transmittal
from one Atheist to another the understanding
that life is here and now and is all we
know, and that therefore
it must be rich, and wonderful, and
happy. The very problem that religion presses on everyone has
become part of the movement against it. The problem has become part of the solution. This cannot be.
I am an Atheist first and a member of any other group see-

American

Atheist

ond. Being an Atheist means being part of the life cycle in harmony. Being religious means being part of that same life cycle
but fighting it to the bitter end. Fighting the inevitable becomes unbearable.
You may say that an Atheist then lacks communication
with a religionist, that he has an unwillingness to understand
the religionist's point of view. Consider then that the religionist
does not even understand
himself for he is but a part of the
life cycle and nothing more, and that he denies. Denial of reality is insanity. Atheism is the only position that is consistent
with life itself. Atheism communicates
with life.
If you don't understand something that you are a part of -

Nature'S God
Should Be
Prosecuted
By A. R. Swinnerton
Ecologists are running in packs these days, snapping at our
heels and charging us with violating the inexorable laws of the
Virgin Queen, Mother Nature herself.
Our behavior, these eco-buffs warn, will seal our doom, and
like Martin Luther, they have nailed their edicts to our living
room doors. We must purify the air, cleanse the water, protect
and defend our ozone shield with our very lives, turn our trash
into cash before it buries us, save the eagle, the whale and the
white leopard from extinction and then, in an act of pure contrition, bow our heads each Saturday night when Carol Burnett warns: "Let's get pollution before it gets us."
I'll go along, up to a point. It makes little sense to solve the
energy crisis if we are to be gassed, in the long haul, by our
own station wagons, yet before we enter an abject plea of
guilty, we should hire a good mouthpiece
and make some
charges of our own.
What I had in mind was a class-action countersuit
against
the good Mother herself, who should have been hauled into
court centuries ago for what I consider gross acts of vandalism,
self-abuse and negligent homicide. Never a summer passes but
what she doesn't set her own timberlands
ablaze with random
bolts of lightning, destroying billions of feet of valuable lumber. Charge her with arson. Each spring, in a different mood,
she screws up her own rain machine, causing the very rivers she
has channeled so patiently to overflow, washing out and eroding thousands of square miles of croplands. The charge? Cropslaughter and malpractice.
The case against her is strong and cumulative and should be
pushed to the limit of the law. She is perverse and tricky, however; sometimes she works her M.O. with the speed of light,
while in another mood, she may take centuries to complete a
caper. We will need the best legal brains available to sift
through evidence and nail her.
Gradually, over millions of years, she will tend a global area
with loving care until it is rich, productive and habitable for
both man and beast. Cities will blossom from tribal units,
crops are planted and harvested, a culture develops and a civilization takes root. Then, in a peevish, unlady-like tantrum, the

like it or not - you can do nothing but fear it and resent it.
We simply say, understand!
Don't feel uncomfortable
with
living.
A famous poem says it all. "Life is so full of a number of
things, that we should all be happy as kings." I can't think of
anything that expresses the thought better.
So, next time you are in a crowd look around you closely.
What you see is what there is to work with, to enjoy with, to
communicate
with and to make the best of it all with. To
those who accept life and its wonderful things - bad things included - welcome. To those who would run away, remember
you cannot play another day, you must live now.

good mother shifts a few prevailing winds and in a century or

two this beautiful Eden is turned into a stupid, bone-dry desert such as the Sahara. This is pollution on a calamitous scale;
charge her with gross neglect and disorderly conduct.
We have been conditioned
to accept our guilt over the
dwindling supply of polar bears and whooping cranes, of ocelots, armadillos
and bald eagles. When our attorneys
rise in
court, we will suggest that the point be made that nature is not
now and never has been so selective. A few eons ago, when' the
world was much younger and there were no ecologists around
to bear witness, our queen mother, in one gigantic international rip-off, wiped out a whole species of reptilian lizards mothers, fathers and babies, with not even a token set allowed
to survive for our zoos. So devastating
was her method that
even the bones of these creatures are hard to come by today.
She whips her own planet with cyclonic winds, she lays
waste to whole cities with her nervous tics and shakes, she
drowns her coastal plains with salt water, and as if that weren't
aplenty, she threatens to freeze us into oblivion with another
Ice Age.
The planet Earth which she created is hardly a prototype
for our imitation.
Certain imperfections
persist. Deep inside
she still burns white hot like an unchecked
boiler, and at almost regular intervals, hot ash, soot and molten rock spew out
from volcanic chimneys,
blackening
the skies and burying
whole cities. Her creation, for all intents and purposes, seems
to be finished, yet we have wound up with less land than we
need and more salt water than we can ever use. Charge her
with shoddy workmanship
and poor planning.
In any event, the queen mother should be found guilty as
charged, but if I know the law, she'll be back on the streets
within a year, continuing
her career of crime and self-destruction.
To all ecologists, I say that nature is the real offender, that
we are guilty only by association.

April,1978

Austin, Texas

iI

-,
C>

u:.

AN ORGANIZATION
IN MINNESOTA
15 TRYING TO GET A I.-AW PAsseD
WHICH
WOUl-O FORCE SCIENCE TEACHERS
TO TEACH THE 8181.. MVTH OF CREATION
ALONG WITH EVOLUTION. IF SUCCESSFUL,
"'"
WILl.- THE NEXT STEP BE TO FoRCE
_ GEOGRAPHY
TEACHERS
TO USE A FOUR'\ COFlI<EI'tEO GLOBE WITH A ROUI<O Ol<?
S~~
R~V.

vn.:

Page 25

My Lai Post Mortem

By Samuel C. McMorris
This essay is intended to be a postmortem commentary on the trial and
conviction of Lt. William Calley for
the massacre of 22 out of an alleged
100 or more helpless and unresisting
women, children and old men during
one of this country's campaigns in the
unhappy
Indochina
War. Because
"post-mortem"
is Latin for "after
death," the phrase invokes in me
thoughts of the religious aspects of
war and death - the part which god, if
any, plays in each, if at all.
It is clear that a belief in god or
gods has had import-ant historical bearing on war as a human institution.
Ironically, or naturally, there has always been a link in men's minds between divinity and government - symbolized by the theory of the "divine
right of kings." Thus, men in political
and religious power have always manipulated the religious beliefs of the
masses into willingness to die for God
and country - to the mutual benefit
of those in power.
Implied in the exhortation to serve
God and country is the belief that God
is "on our side." At this point the irony becomes evident. The major combatants in each of the two great wars
of this century prayed to the same
God for victory, and the Germans,
having lost both wars, must now have
second thoughts about just whose side
God was on.
On the other hand, in the two local
wars of more recent date, in which the
United States has engaged with "underdeveloped,"
infidel peoples in
Korea and Indochina, the most that
can be claimed is stalemate, not victory, for God's chosen people.
Any religion which, like Christianity, teaches belief in an afterlife - especially if that afterlife is enhanced by
serving god and country in war - is especially useful to the ruling classes.
Thus, the early popes, who uniquely
blended the political and religious,
conquered Europe in the name of their
version of divinity.
When, however, in the Crusades,
they attempted to convert the Islamic
heathens, the most that could be
claimed for Jehovah was equal power
with Allah (or Jesus with Mohammed),
the belief in whom strongly persists
until this day in that part of the world
in which the Christian faith came to a
military halt six centuries ago.
Of course, this involvement of god
in the mortal activity of extending political and economic power by military
means, can boomerang or backfire. I

Page 26

GOD
8

WAR
have always felt that one of the primary reasons why Japan lost its part of
World War II was the belief of its soldiers that death in battle, whether by
their own hand or by that of the
American enemy, assured for them a
place in the Shinto heaven. Often in
the heat and emotion of battie, Japanese soldiers or officers committed
hara-kiri, thus doubling their losses
and making victory for the godtrusting, but not suicidal, Americans
somewhat less costly.
Regardless of what appear to be the
lessons of the past, this faith in the
participation of a power beyond man
in the mutual mass murder and destruction of war has continued to the
present
day's highly sophisticated
military-industrial
complex, which I
suggest could more accurately be
called military-industrial-political-religious system.
Recently, as throughout the ages,
American troops were blessed by the
chaplains of their varied Judeo-Christian faiths as they marched forth, or
drove or flew forth, against the unChristian Buddhist or Atheist foe in
Indochina. The lesson of that conflict
is that, at best, Buddha and Jehovah
reached an accommodation or compromise.
Since this country waged that war
for our usual high objective, to make
the world safe for democracy, again
we seemed to consider our military adventure as an act of god. It is difficult
for some, though, to see any divine
guidance in the conduct of our troops
at My Lai six years ago. In the courtmartial of Lt. Calley, it has been proven as undisputed fact that noncombatant civilians - old men, women, and
children - were slaughtered there by
the hundreds.
Additionally,
while
much was made of this one trial, the
most telling reaction came from North
Vietnam, which charged in its press
that My Lai was just routine in the
conduct of the war by our god-fearing
troops.
After we were successful, in World
War II, in keeping the world safe for
our brand of Christian democracy by
defeating, with massive help from the
atheistic Russians and Chinese, the
equally Christian but undemocratic
Germans and Italians and the un-

April,1978

Christian Japanese, we led our allies in

the institution of the new doctrine of
"war crimes." Many of the best military and even industrial and political
minds in the defeated countries were
made to pay before the firing squads
of this New Inquisition, for atrocities
committed by their troops.
The most significant charge against
the Germans was that they had decimated the god-believing but Christdenying Jews in their midst, for reasons which still seem vague but must
have been outwardly politico-economic, and subtly racial-religious. The
charges against the Japanese, on the
other hand, dealt mostly with alleged
massacres by their troops of civilian or
military personnel of lands which, like
the Philippines, they conquered in
their victorious sweeps in the early
years of the war.
In our treatment of the Japanese
war crimianls, we carefully evolved the
General Yamashita Doctrine, under
which the named general and many
others of his hapless colleagues were
made to pay the supreme penalty although it was not shown that they actively participated in, counselled, or
even knew about the murderous acts
of individual units of soldiers, who, as
stated above, thought that death in
battie, perhaps even of the enemy, was
a divine act.
We applied a similar approach in
our famous Nuremberg Trials of leading Nazis. As to our conquered foes,
we adopted a holier-than-thou attitude
that we, the "good guys," should sit in
god-like judgment over the "bad guys"
for their un-Christian conduct.
It was very easy for the whole of
the American people to sit by proxy
at the trials of German and Japanese
war criminals. Then came My Lai, and
charges that military agents of this
god-serving country - troops who
doubtlessly prayed and were prayed
for as they sallied forth - had committed wanton massacres of civilians.
Military

Injustice

In the investigation of our own acts

at My Lai, some could find hope for a
new day in military justice, a vindication of the war crimes trials, a step forward in civilization. However, one by
one the charges were dropped against
all but two of our men, Sgt. Mitchell,
who was found not guilty by a jury of
his military peers, and Lt. Calley, who
was found guilty in thirteen days of
deliberations
following the longest
trial in military history. He was sentenced to life at hard labor.
In the next step of this chronicle,

American

Atheist

the American people as a whole reacted with violent emotions, in their

condemnation of the Calley trial, not
of Lt. Calley. In letters to editors and
telegrams to their representatives in
Washington, even to their president,
they were saying that Calley should
not have been tried, should have been
found not guilty, or guilty of a lesser
offense, and, at worst, should have
been given a minimal, wrist-slapping
sentence.
They were saying, by implication,
that American troops should not have
to account for war crimes for which
we, in victory, held the whole of the
defeated countries responsible. They
were saying that when those "on god's
side" commit atrocities against helpless civilians, it should be accepted as
the fortunes of war. Because the enemy committed acts of harm (upon his
own people in this civil war), we were
justified in compounding the injury by
bombing into oblivion the village
homes of human beings 10,000 miles
away from us who presented no threat
to our homeland.
Because ours was a holy war, we
were entitled to drop napalm on soldiers and civilians alike, to destroy vegetation and forestation, which supposedly god, or nature provided for
the sustenance of this unmechanized,
unindustrial land. It was our divine
right to kill, to maim, to destroy, to

save the world from the encroachment

of godless communism.
This is what was implied in the support of Calley by the overwhelming
majority of the no-longer-silent Americans. Perhaps they were also saying
that no white man should pay such a
penalty as life imprisonment when his
only crime was against non-whites.
The suspicion that this is so may be
justified when it is considered that
those protesting most loudly, screaming with most emotion that Calley was
a scapegoat, were those very elements
most closely identified, by their own
admission and conduct, with America's peculiar brand of racism.
This racism was ironically revealed
by Calley himself when, at his trial,
he said he was in favor of sparing civilians from the atrocities of which he
was accused so that they could be forced to lead his men through mine
fields - hardly a less atrocious way of
being blown to bits to protect the
American soldiers.
Yet, Americans reacted by making
a new national hero of this confessed
murderer. It is significant that a record
justifying or even glorifying his conduct became a natioal best seller. The
final step in Calley's virtual sainthood
occurred when the president himself
ordered the convicted man's release
from cell confinement during the appeal of his conviction and asserted that

New Series:

RootsOf
Atheism
At the American Atheist Center it has been pondered long,
and sometimes loud, as to how the Center could best educate
the great populace of Atheists in the most effective way.
By and large, Atheists do not know their history, their origins, their heroes, their [if you will forgive the overworked
term] "roots."
Meantime, the Charles E. Stevens American Atheist Library
and Archives has been growing at a steady rate. Old book
stores have been combed. Rare book dealers have been contacted. Book auctions have been visited. Every attempt has
been made to bring together under one roof all of the historical expressions of Atheism.
The books have come from Germany, France, England,
Australia, Canada, Italy ... anywhere we could find them. Libraries have been contacted and on an exchange basis books
have been charged out long enough to have them zeroxed [at
fabulous expense it might be pointed out] .

Austin, Texas

Now, assembled at the American Atheist Center, the

Charles E. Stevens American Atheist Library and Archives has
1,000 running feet of shelving which houses over 15,000 hardback books. Associated with this are ten legal size filing cabinets with horizontal storage of over 500,000 articles, leaflets,
pamphlets, booklets, throw-aways and other material written
by Atheists through the ages. Our magazine collection, not as
yet bound, stored in built in closet space numbers about 6,000
articles.
Atheist material of all times and all places has come home.
Up to this point we have used the material for the American Atheist Radio Series, but now we have another idea.
Each month, beginning with the next issue of this magazine
we will introduce you to an historic Atheist. We will publish
his[her] picture, a bit of a biography and examples of the
written word of that Atheist. We plan to begin with some of
the earliest, and - of course - that means we will be dealing
with English Atheism, French Atheism, German Atheism, before we get to what was written and done in the United States.
So much of our development has depended on European contributions that we feel an adequate survey should be made.
You will enjoy this series, weep over, be angered by it,
rejoice in it, and find in it the unique ideas which you, personally, have found after much inner searching to be your value
system - each of these persons having done the same. The
most thrilling part of the exercise will be when you find that
you are not alone, that none of us ever have been. Isolated
one from the other - yes, but, throughout history, many men
and women, independently and alone, have come to the same
ideas that you have. You will be stunned to realize the universal themes of Atheism, transcending all times, all nations,
all cultures and be able to take considerable pride in your heritage.
We plan to add four more pages in the magazine in order to
accommodate this educational endeavour. Look for it next
month.

April, 1978

he, the president, would have the last

word on the nature and extent of Calley's punishemnt.
There is another side to the coin. If
Calley was indeed a scapegoat and
since he admitted at least some of the
charges but blamed them on orders of
his superiors, the answer was not to
exonerate him but to ferret out and
prosecute those both above and below
him who were guilty of My Lai - and
of countless other My Lais.
But where would we have stopped?
If all such incidents were called to account, would there have been any soldiers left to continue that war and to
get ready for our next walk with god?
Should ultimate blame have been
placed upon the commander-in-chief
of our armed forces, the president
himself? Finally, since the American
people as a whole were ratifying and
adopting as their own the conduct of
our troops at My Lai, who among us is
not a war criminal?
If by any combination of circumstances god abandons our cause and
we lose World War III, questions such
as these might well occur at the next
war crimes trials. When others than
ourselves sit in judgment, perhaps our
conduct will be deemed in the same
category as that of which we accused
the Germans and Japanese: criminal,
inhuman, barbaric, atrocious, racist
and just godless.

Page 27

As is the case with most journals of educational organizations, responsibility for the contents of original papers and
communications rests on the writer and not the editor. The
opinion of the author of an article in our field of concern is
not necessarily the opinion of the editorial staff, which does
not hold itself responsible for statements made by contributors.
Normally The American Atheist does not publish letters as
blatantly political and polemical as the one which follows,
rather directing them to the author whose views are under attack for response in kind or with the other cheek. In this case,
however, publication was promised by telephone before a perusal of the contents of the proposed commentary was possible, so we hereby present the promised missive and we will be
pleased to send to the author of this any response which any
of our readers care to make. He may then defend himself
when his time permits, directly to those persons.
In the meantime, we shall proceed to defend what we perceive to be the article's anti-Zionist but not necessarily antiJewish thrust. In the sense of the word anti-semitic,
Mr.
McMorris' article is exactly that, in that it stands against
BOTH the Israelis AND the Arabs for creating with their religions the potential for two supposedly non-religious nations,
the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to begin WW III over their religious
squabbles.
We feel that this is a totally unnecessary argument. We need
not defend the position we take. The thrust of Mr. McMorris'
argument has been lost by the author of the letter below here
reproduced.
Edmund Bojarski, Editor
Dear Editor,
In the January 1978 issue of The American Atheist, I
found an article written by Samuel Carter McMorris. The title
of the article was "The Religious Roots of World War IlL" I
could not escape the conclusion that the article was something I had read before. Under the umbrella of Atheism, Mr.
McMorris simply echoed the centuries-long hatred of all Christianity for the Jews. His article can be summed up in a few
words. It was only another vicious attack on those persons
who will not surrender their Jewish identity. His conclusions
are these: Zionism is evil, Israel should not exist, all Jews who
do not ape the gentiles are evil, and the Jews, because they are
mystically devilish, are the main if not the sole cause of the
next world war. I would like to first explain Zionism. Second,
some history beginning with World War I, and finally, to close
with the hard facts of life which gentiles pretend do no apply
to them.
Zionism is the love of Zion. Zionism is the Jewish people's liberation movement. The quest for equality, fraternity
and liberty with other nations. The Jewish people's long and
continuous struggle to restore its independence and sovereignty is maligned and slandered in an endless stream of malice
and venom. Today, almost any liberation movement will get a
"hail fellow"; the Jewish people's desire for survival gets distortion and vilification. Hitler began by the art of the Big Lie,
by rewriting Jewish history, by fabricating some of the most
odious racial theories, and by using the most foul book of all:
the Russian Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
.
The Arab governments, in their campaign to complete
the Catholic Hitler's crimes against the Jewish people and destroy Israel, have adopted the same method of falsifying Jewish
history and Jews, religious or not. When the world again
wishes to kill Jews, it begins to speak in the name of humanity.
When the Jews, exiled from their land in the seventh century before the Christian era (BCE), sat down by the rivers of
Babylon and wept, but also remembered Zion and sought

Page 28

April, 1978

ways to go home, that was Zionism. When in a mass revolt against their exile, they returned to rebuild, that was Zionism.
When they were the last people in the Mediterranean basin to
fight against mighty Rome and to struggle for freedom, that
was Masada and Zionism. Centuries after the Roman conquest, they refused to surrender and rebelled again and again
agianst the invaders; that was Zionism. When uprooted from
their land by almost all the world's conquerors and dispersed
by them all over the earth, they never stopped the dream and
striving to return to Israel, that was Zionism. During the long
succession of foreign invaders, they tried again and again to
regain sovereignty in their homeland; that was Zioniam. When
they volunteered from Palestine and from allover the world to
establish the first Jewish fighting force since Rome, to fight on
the side of the allies in World War I and helped to end Ottoman subjugation, that was Zionism. When they formed the
Jewish brigade in World War II to fight Hitler, while Arab
leaders supported him, that was Zionism. When Jews, with
their children, went to gas chambers with the name of Jerusalem on their lips, that was Zionism.
In the forests of Russia and the Ukraine and under great
hardship, with no help from the Allies, Jewish partisans battled
with the Germans and sang of a land where palms are growing,
that was Zionism.
Zionism is one of the world's oldest people's liberation
movements. It aims at securing for the Jewish people the right
possessed by all other peoples. Those who attack Zionism also
attack the person, the individual, who is a Jew.
Make no mistake, harbor no illusions, when Zionism is
slandered, it is Jews you mean. What the anti-Semite seeks to
do is separate the Jew from humanity, and in this task he is
not alone.
And now, to interject a point of American history. John
Adams was a self-declared Zionist. The man who led the fight
to independence in Congress, in a letter to Mordicai Manuel
Noah, urged the restoration of the Jewish state of Israel.
But all these arguments have little meaning to the MeMorrises of our world, for their hate for the Jew is mystical
and not based on reason. They consider their anti-Semitism
of a greater reality than mere evidence would call for.
Think now of the turn of the century. While war clouds
were only forming and the guns from the Argonne were still
to come, there was Kishinev of 1903. In the "City of Slaughter" a great and violent pogrom broke out. A pogrom that was
so savage that even anapathetic world took notice. The young
people responded to the killing by forming self-defense squads.
By 1905, the pogrom was beaten out of the city but some people, like Vladimir Jabotinsky knew it was a lonely and hopeless fight as it had been for centuries in Russia and Europe. A
group heeding Herzl's dream cried out: "No more blood!"
No longer waiting for the world to change, they said "Let us
go to Zion."
And so they did.
McMorris says that Israel was an artificially created
state. He also says that the Jewish people and Israel are somehow malevolent because they have the United States as their
principal ally. It may come as a surprise to him that Syria and
Jordan are also "artificially" created states. Both these states
are part of the British and French great-power meddling with
the Emir Faisal after World War L The Balfour Declaration issued November 2, 1917 guaranteed Palestine as a Jewish
homeland.
As for the United States being Israel's benefactor, no
apology will be offered by me. Who would McMorris prefer?
Germany? Italy? Anywhere in Europe or Russia? Perhaps he
likes Turkey, forgetting that the Turks had committed mass
murder of the Armenians as a national policy. Since Israel's re-

American

Atheist

ligion bothers him, perhaps he would like to see Israel as a diversified state like Lebanon. How tolerant the Moslems are ...
I must not forget that McMorris states the Jews own
and control all the economic, political and media industries
here in the United States. Shades of General Brown, did MeMorris write hhis speech, too? Fortune magazine and Dun &
Bradstreet list the 500 major industries in this country. Look
for yourself. You will find McMorris' allegations of total control false. You will find not one Jew actually owns or con trois
a single bank or major national or international industry. In
fact, the Anti-Defamation League is suing the six major oil
companies for refusing to promote Jews past a specific level
in their corporate structure. Furthermore, the Arab boycott
is adhered to by almost every major American industry in a
covert fashion.
It is true, of course, the old Dearborn Independent,
written by Henry Ford or the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion have the facts, "facts" as General Brown sees them
anyway. The Jews were mean to the Arabs, says McMorris and
others of such ilk. Israel should have appealed to people like
him when six Arab armies invaded the tiny new state of Israel. I'm sure he would have written something brilliant on
the subject.
Haj Amin el Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, and all
the 20 Arab governments were filling the newspapers and radio
with calls for a "Holy War," and stating that any Arab remaining in Palestine would be deemed a traitor. The Arabs left to
wait for the glorious victory, with their mouths watering over
the expected spoils of war.
By the way, when was the Roman-named Palestine ever
an independent state with its own government, military, and
diplomats? The answer is that it was never an autonomous
state except when it was known as Israel-Judea! Since 70 A.D.
Palestine has simply been a backwater of some larger empire.
All that worry over oil didn't begin in earnest until
World War II was a looming danger. The great powers asked
Britain if they could hold on to the oil-rich Arab lands. Could
Britain hold on to the Suez Canal? The canal was a key spot in
the empire, but the Mufti was on the Axis side all the way.
What was Britain to do? We all know what the English did,
from a "neutral" mandate power, they scrapped the Balfour
Declaration and went crawling over to the Arabs and the idea
of Pan Arabism.
Is nationalism good for some and bad for others? MeMorris knows; it's bad if Jews do it but fine and dandy for
everybody else.
Despite Britain's cringing in front of the Mufti, he
joined Hitler! For the fact is, the Arabs never sought independence from either England or France. It was the Jews
who actually threw the Mandate Powers out of Palestine, while
the Arabs got into bed with Nazism.
The Zionists' goal is to survive, and that lust for life irks
the anti-Semites no end!
McMorris says: "In the Talmud, God is a Jew." How
stupid a statement. It shows that McMorris must have heard
someone tell him that one of the Jewish books is called the
Talmud. How can god be a Jew, Christian of any other religious follower? Religion, in mystic terms, is the way to unite
your being with the "great spirit." Therefore, how can the
"great spirit" himself be religious?
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) raised their price because they wanted more money!
I would have guessed even a slashing wit like McMorris could
figure that out.
The topper comes over with the big lie of accusing Israel of imitating Nazi Germany. This is a favorite with antiSemites these days. By accusing Israel of following Nazi-like
activities and policies, he is only showing that his true sympathies are in league with the German "super-race" theories.
He is using Israel as a mirror of himself.
Nations around the world are pouring their wealth
into the Arab coffers. Billions of our petro-dollars are swelling the rich Arab shieks' treasuries to the breaking point and

Austin, 1exas

yet these same Arab nations will not come to the aid of their
own supposed blood brothers, the Palestinians.
McMorris is worried about who our enemies will be in
the "final Armageddon." That should not be too difficult to
figure out: the tyrant, the despot, the plutocracy, and the aristocracy. All these and more have long been the enemies of
freedom and free inquiry.
The priest and his black doctrine and the irrational fearridden masses, all oppose mankind's ever upward march to the
stars. In every town there is a light bearer ... a teacher ... of
reality. In every town there is also the purveyor of darkness of
superstition and of fear. There are those who take in anti-Semtism with their mother's milk. McMorris has not yet been
weaned. He, with others like him are our antagonists. Humanistic Atheism is the voice of sanity in a world of myth and
magic. Atheism is the voice of reason in a world of growing
fundamental religions, in a world of UFOism, of "Life After
Life" and of Moonies.
We are the voice of rationalism in a world whose increasing acceptance of irrational beliefs threaten to spill over
into all we hold dear.
Anti-Semitism can never be permitted in our ranks under any guise whatsoever.
Dear Alan,
When I agreed to print your answer to McMorris' column, I
thought your response would be completely rational, knowing
you personally. This tour de force is an emotional outburst
indicating only how upsetting is the issue of Zionism. We are,
therefore, taking a position on it, which is printed on page
30. We close the matter.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair

"Oh God" A Bomb

Dear Editor,
Regarding your review of the movie Oh God, may I please
enter a dissenting vote on this terrible film? It wasn't funny, it
was an irritating bore. Except for a few ecological comments,
which were fine. Your review opens with the suggestion that a
lot of religious people will be furious about the picture. Not
so. The satire (if there is any) was so gentle it wouldn't blow a
sparrow away, and Burns bends so far over backwards to be
adorable I wonder he didn't topple.
To date, I have been astonished at the number of supposedly intelligent friends and acquaintences who have loved this
picture - people of all religions. They laughed. They cried.
They thought it was the ultimate in high religion. It panders to
everyone, in a way that I could only feel was condescending
in the extreme.
Your reviewer made an incorrect paraphrase regarding the
scene in which Burns answers the questions from the religious
leaders. It's only "Burns at his best" if you like his simpleminded style of humor. Your reviewer also indicates the picture is the best "slap in the face for organized religion since
Elmer Gantry - a statement I take issue with on two counts:
first, Elmer Gantry was so far superior there is no comparison;
second, the only slap was administered to an evangelist who
was such an obvious target the whole audience applauded
when he got shot down.
But the thing I found most offensive about the picture was
the fact that no one who has seen it seems the least bit perturbed that at the end Burns tells his chosen patsy not to worry, because he's now a hero - leaving him without a job, his
wife and kids disoriented and the butt of scorn, and with even
a suggestion that the marriage is in serious trouble.
Perhaps your reviewer merely felt this picture is better than
nothing, and may do our cause some good. I disagree. On the
contrary, I think it has only solidified the beliefs of some who
may have been wavering. The picture attempts to be a sop to
everyone, but it can only do us harm.
Elaine Stansfield
Los Angeles

April,1978

Page 29

POSITION STATEMENT
OF
AMERICAN ATHEISTS
read at
The New Jersey Chapter Meeting
11 January, 1978
by
Madalyn Murray a 'Hair
.President
The history of the human race has
been a grim one and in many parts of
the world today the sorrows which
man encounters, the hard realities of
living, the abuses to which he is subject overshadow the pleasures mankind should be deriving from life.
There have always been massacres,
wars of extinction, suppression of civil
liberties, debasement of human dignity, perversion of life goals. It is indeed the wonder of history that man
has survived himself, as so often that
which is inflicted upon mankind is derived from mankind.
Perhaps the single generic group, if
such a one is identifiable, which has
suffered the most from reprisals and
sanctions has been the group which
now can be identified as Atheist, but
who -heretoforehas carried diverse
labels of heretic, nonbeliever and
cetera. The second most abused group
has been women, the objects of attack
by all. Singly and as a group there has
always been open season on this sex,
so long as history has been recordable.
Other groups have suffered because of
their color, their ethnicity. The Poles,
for example, have had a long and tortured history, as have most of the slavic nations. None can deny that the
Chinese people's history is a simple litany of anquish and despair.
Yet recently, certain -but not allof the Jewish community of America
has undertaken to use the battle cry of
persecution to be coercive, in a reverse
discriminatory way, against any target
desired to be hit. More Indonesians
were massacred in Malaya and the
Micronesian Islands since World War II
than were Jews killed by Hitler. The
Utashi murdered more Hungarians
than were Jews killed by Hitler. Bangladesh was decimated. The Turks almost wiped out the Armenians. The
United States leveled two major Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Jews, themselves, attacked and
killed Palestinians - and their history
in the Old Testament is only one of
slaughtering their innocent neighbors.
Yet, none of these persons are heard
often and openly, for generations,
with the cry of "persecution" to obtain their ends. The history of the
Blacks in America speaks to the barbarian residual cultural traits of our
own nation.
The Jews have not been persecuted
any more than has any other group,
their loud and persistent cries to the
contrary.
Our organization has, quite recent-

Page 30

The
Chosen
People
ly, come under attack in New Jersey as
being one of the dominant groups
which suppresses an ethnic group
- specifically we are currently under
attack as being anti-Semitic by a small
group of persons comprised of Marxists and Jews. This attack originated
from an epithet which one man cast at
another, the person casting it unfortunately in a heated passion] being a
national officer. It was a bitter opinion
and personal argument. Instead of it
being contained between the 2 participants, the one, a New Jersey chapter
leader, used the occasion of a letter, in
which the epithet was hurled to permit, encourage, aid or abet persons of
dubious purpose to use this for a
charge to be placed against the national office and the entire organization of
the Society of Separationists, Inc. as
being "anti-Semite." Thus, a difference of opinion between private persons has been, with malice intended,
escalated to a charge against a nationally prominent cause organization.
This is outrageously funny and at
the same time it is very serious and
important. I feel - and I speak for the
Officers and the Board of Directors of
that organization - that we must officially make a statement in respect to
the Chosen People of Yahweh, Jehovah, the "I Am" or whatever the god of
the Old Testament is supposed to have
had for an appellation, these people
being set apart by god, not because of
race for there are many other Semitic
groups, but because of religion.
American Atheists know no such
ethnics groups. We do not set aside
and distinguish the Irish and handle
persons of that origin as special or separate. We do not set aside and distinguish women; or Blacks, or any others
as Chosen People, even if blue-eyed
and blond. We know no such. American Atheists, as the name implies, are
concerned Americans who are Atheist
and who are engaged in the enterprise
of educating all of our citizens as to
the absues of theism. Theistic ideas
which have brought man to grief include those of the Hindu, the Muslim,
and other religions of the Far East, but
in the West these pernicious religions
have been those of Judaism and Christianity. The most despicable of the
Western heritage religions is the Jewish. It is upon the Old Testament that
the insanty of the New Testament is
built. We must, as a group, fight the
Jewish religion with as much intensity

April, 1978

and perseverence as we do the Christian.

Those persons who are Jew first
and American second should not even
ask for citizenship in our nation. They
have their homeland. Those persons
who are Jew first and Atheist second
do not belong in our organization. We
feel the same with the Irish, Poles,
Russians, New Zealanders, Germans or
Finns to name but a few. If their loyalties are elsewhere, they belong elsewhere. The Mafia leaders quite frequently retire to Italy. But, this is
America, the polyglot nation where
people came to be free of the tyrannies of foreign shores. Here, the Jews
need no special handling.
We are inalterably opposed to a
theocracy in the United States, in
Mexico, in South America, in Canada,
in England, France, Germany, Italy, or
Egypt. We are as equally opposed to
the theocracy of Israel.
We believe it is unconstitutional
that the Jews alone of all our nationals
may have a joint citizenship with
Israel. We believe that it is unconstitutional that the Roman Catholics funnel money into Rome and equally unconstitutional
that the Jews funnel
money into Israel. In both instances,
the donor can take a tax-exemption
for the contribution and increase taxation for all our citizens while inequitably and immorally supporting
a
theocracy outside of our national
boundaries.
The Society of Separationists, Inc.,
a/k/a American Atheists is open to
membership for those persons who are
in agreement with our aims and purposes. Its doors are not open to those
persons who have other concerns, other identifications,
other battles to
fight. If you don't like what we do,
or you do not like what we are, you
have a solution: get out of this organization and form your own.
Atheists of any ethnic background
are welcome, but our doors are not
open to Roman Catholics, Lutherans,
Seventh Day Adventists, Unitarians or
any other theists. They are also not
open to those persons who have not
severed their ties with Judaism.
You may make of this what you
will. You may call us what you will.
We know who we are and we take
pride in that.
I would like to make a comment
about my own background. My mother's grandmother was a Jew. It was our
family secret for generations. Her
name was Brightman. My eldest son
married a Jew, her name was Abramowitz and that Jewish woman was the
the mother of our much-beloved
Robin
Eileen Murray-O'Hair,
my
granddaughter. I do not carry with me
any Jewish ethnicity, neither does my
granddaughter. We are simply Americans. We can no longer afford to give a
special place to the Chosen People as
special Atheists. They are what we are:

American Atheist

a part of the American family, not a

part of Israel, or of a special group
chosen by god.
In this particular incident at hand,
there has been an attempt to take a
going organization of pride, distinction
and national thrust and to attempt to
tear it apart for the self-aggrandizement of those who attack it. The motivations of hatred and deceit are upon
their heads and they attempt to label
us so that they make profit of that label. Each and everyone in this exercise
has been relieved of membership in
our organization. They may do what
they will, but not under the banner of
honor, decency, of respect which is
ours. So be it.

Don't worry if you get kicked

from the rear -- it simply means
you are out in front.

Limited. 4th Issue

AMERICAN ATHEIST
Membership Medallions

This Official Issue is certain to rapidly sell

out, so order yours today.
The medallion comes in a velvet-like lined
gift box, with a handsome chain if you desire.
These would make great gifts. Please order
early. American Atheist members have first
chance at this price, but we will soon offer to
the public.
Be proud of your freedom from religion
and other superstitious beliefs.
Show your friends, and the world, you are
not one of the brainwashed. Wearing this
beautiful medallion will say, "I am a freethinking AMERICAN ATHEIST."
This is the same medallion worn by Dr.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair when she appears on
television and in public. Join the unique ones!

(Shown
actual
sizes)

Sterling Silver
or
14K Gold

***********************************************************************************
Mail this order form to:
I enclose

AMERICAN

ATHEISTS,

P.O. Box, 2117, Austin, Texas, 78768

. Please send me

sterling silver large size medallion at $16.00

14-K gold large size medallion at $180.00
sterling silver small size medallion at $12.00
14-K gold small size medallion at $32.00
Enclosed

] check, [

to my MASTERCHARGE

] money order; [

cash, or charge as indicated:

No:

to my VISA No:

which expires:

Signature:

Name:

Address:
City:

State:

Austin, Texas

April,1978

~J

Apt. No.:

Zip Code:

Page 31

How Odd Of God

By Lewis Browne
It is always a disturbing experience to discover beyond a
shadow of a doubt that you have firmly believed from time
immemorial in something which is completely and irremediably' false. For as far back as I can remember, I assumed the
verse which reads, How Odd/Of God/To Choose/The Jews,
had been the work of the redoubtable Dorothy Parker, member of the famous Round Table at New York's Algonquin Hotel, and a biting female wit able to hold her own with the likes
of Alexander Woolcott and company.
In picking up Lewis Browne's 1934 book entitled How Odd
of God: An Introduction to the Jews, I found the poem quoted on the front cover with credit for its authorship given to
one W.N. Ewer, of whom I had never even heard before. He
wrote what is so obviously a Parkerism that I have given the
lady credit for the verse for 10 these many years. In fact, if I
remember correctly, I have seen it over her byline in print
many times.
And so it is with more weighty beliefs as well. If you have
a set of preconceived notions about a group of people commonly referred to as the Jews, you would be well advised to
read Lewis Browne's book on the subject - edited and published by E. Haldeman-Julius and unavailable until now for
well over a generation.
In his treatise
dedicated
to Leon Feuchtwanger
(1884-1958), the German novelist and dramatist, Lewis
Browne edifies his readers through seven carefully and clearly
laid out chapters which allow little if any room for confusion:
"The Secluded Jew," "The Exclusive Gentile," "The Seclusion Wanes," "The Exclusion Continues," "What Are Jews
Supposed to Be?" "What Jews Really Are," and finally,
"What Can Be Done?" This little 250-page volume which
includes a lengthy discussion of Hitler and his Mein Kampf
as well as "Alas, Poor Goy," is an elegantly penned preclude
to the understanding of the tragedy which was to occur just
five years after its publication.
In his beautifully modulated tone and graceful prose style
the author, who is himself a Jew, begins by asking, "Why have
the Jews survived?" People used to believe that it was because
they were god's "chosen people," but their commonplace origin hardly bears such a claim, and besides, why was survival
then denied the 10 Tribes of Israel and reserved only for the
other two small tribes? It was obviously because Judah was
influenced by the prophets who taught the people that they
must suffer until in due course a messiah would redeem them.
Believing this, the Jews walled themselves in with the holy
law, for thus they hoped to preserve themselves. The rabbis
elaborated the Talmudic law into a complex ritual governing
everyday life. This Talmudic ritual saved the Jews, for it secluded them from the gentiles.
In blaming the seclusivity of the Jew on the exclusivity
of the gentile, Browne states that the Jews would soon have
abandoned their seclusiveness had it not been for gentile antipathy - this is clear from what occurred in the time of the Roman Empire, and again and again in the succeeding periods.
In his chapter on the waning of Jewish seclusion, the author
tells us that at the present time the majority of the Jews no
longer try to seclude themselves from the world, and are rapidly abandoning the holy law - especially in the U.S. where,
although the seclusion has subsided somewhat, the exclusion
by the gentiles continues and the Jews are still hindered economically and repulsed socially.
Despite pseudo-scientific claims to the contrary, the author
states that all sober anthropological studies reveal that there is

Page 32

no such thing as a "Jewish race" today.

The 12-page index to this volume ranges across an amazing
galaxy of people, places and ideas, all of which are expected to
make the reader ponder and then note his personal reactions
on the 10 blank pages left for annotation at the end of the
book.
The $5 price tag is a mere bagatell when the clearly reasoned and eloquently stated outline history of the Jewish
people it buys is duly considered. This book is the final answer to Shylock's unforgettable question, "If you prick us,
do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you
poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge?" (Reviewed by Ed Anthony)

Anti -SeInitisIn
Do~n The Ages
By Joseph McCabe
In The Bloody Story of Anti-Semitism Down the Ages,
Joseph McCabe discusses this major problem under five chapter headings which indicate the scope of his booklet: "The
Broad View," "The Ghastly Christian Record," "Modern AntiSernitism," "The Zionist Movement," and "Toward A Solution. "
In his foreword he notes his debt to Gotthold Lessing's
book Nathan The Wise which was based on Boccaccio's stories,
The Three Rings. Basically the idea is to concentrate less on
the fatherhood of god and more on the brotherhood of man.
McCabe's book is particularly interesting from the historical
point of view because it deals with the founding of Israel and
concerns itself about the possibilities of global warfare erupting from such a backwash of civilization because of the intransigence of the two religious denominations squared off in
that bleak area.
He is fair to both Jews and Christians in that he points out
the Jewish isolationism within a community which tends to
provoke attacks by Christians while debunking the supposed
lack of anti-Semitism in the early centuries of church history.
McCabe points out the contributions of the Jews to the development of Europe but brands as false their claims to ownership of Palestine by virtue of conquest.
McCabe's booklet of 29 pages, published by HaldemanJulius in Girard, Kansas is subtitled "A Few Friendly Concepts
of a Freethinker to the Members of Our Three Great Religions" and is exactly that. The author cannot completely hide
his distaste for having to deal with problems caused by a nonexistent god in three different versions, but he strives mightily
to do so most of the time.
This is altogether an effective introduction to the problems
of anti-Semitism as it has developed over the centuries and as
it still exists in our day, and anyone sympathizing with the victims of this human mental aberration will gain new insights.
For those who wonder what germ in man causes this fetid festering there are also answers, but not nearly so good as the descriptions of the disease itself. (E.A.)

April, 1978

American Atheist

AMERICAN ATHEIST
POST CARDS
5 for $1.00

ATHEIST CASSETTE TAPES

Why I Am An Atheist
$14.95
The subject matter deals with the total effort to remove prayer from public schools
in the U.S. as well as Dr. O'Hair's personal philosophy of Atheism.
2 Hours
American Atheist
Set 3
436
437
438
439. . . . . .
Set 4
440. . . . . .
441 . . . . . .
442
443

$10.00
1 Hour
'.'
Joseph Lewis on Robert G. Ingersoll
Ingersoll on The Holy Bible, Part I
Ingersoll on The Holy Bible, Part II
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ingersoll on The Holy Bible, Part III
1 Hour
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ingersoll on The Holy Bible, Part IV
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ingersoll on The Holy Bible, Part V
Ingersoll on The Holy Bible, Part VI
Robert G. Ingersoll on Superstition

A beautiful 4" x 5%" picture post

card of the Atheist Center in Austin.
Send it to your favorite minister.

Radio Series

Abortion is a Blessing
Anne Gaylor
$4.95
From her extensive counseling and
referral experience, Ms. Gaylor has
taken poignant case histories of
women seeking abortions, and combined them with letters, anecdotes,
and even cartoons to buttress her
forthright statement - Abortion is a
Blessing.
An Atheist Epic - Bill Murray,
The Bible, and the Baltimore
Board of Education
$3.00
The complete unexpurgated story
of how Bible and prayers were removed from the public schools of the
United States.
The Letters of Robert G. Ingersoll
Eva Wakefield Ingersoll
$20.00
Eva Wakefield, the grand-daughter
of the famous Robert G. Ingersoll,
the most widely renown Agnostic in
the history of the U. S., has edited
this enormous volume. For the first
time the rich and many-faceted
personality of Ingersoll is revealed.

A Few Reasons for Doubting

The Inspiration of the Bible
Robert G. Ingersoll
$2.00
Robert Ingersoll is the single best
known Atheist writer and orator, of
all time. In this he presents 61 compelling arguments as to the absurdity
of the Bible having come from god.

AMERICAN ATHEISTS, INC.

You have another freedom - freedom from religion. American Atheists,
Inc. is a non-political, non-profit, educational, tax-exempt organization
dedicated to the complete separation of state and church. Membership dues
are $15.00 per person per year, and contributions to American Atheists, Inc.
are tax deductible for you. Members of the organization receive a monthly
copy of "Americn Atheists Insider Newsletter." Membership in the national
organization automatically gives you entrance to your local chapter.
You don't want to miss this road into tomorrow. You will want to be a
part of the decision making, now, for a decent life today as well as in the
future.
What On Earth Is An Atheistl
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
$4.95

Why I Am An Atheist
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
$2.00
One of a series of lectures delivered
to universities and colleges across the
nation.

For the first time in print, the complete texts of fifty two radio programs
presenting the Atheist Point of View.

Freedom Under Siege, The Impact of Organized Religion

On Your Liberty and Your Pocketbook
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
$8.95
Mrs. O'Hair deals with politics, not religion; with separation of state and
church, and not Atheism. This report shows how your treasured liberties are
slowly being eroded as the churches increase their power over every aspect of
American life, limiting your freedom of choice and even your access to in-

'o.mat;on """d;n,

~O C/o

those ,hoke,.

For more information contact:

American Atheists, Inc.

P. O. Box 2117
Austin, TX 78768

~
-~

r "'-

f.-.... "" ~

'I