March, 1985

A Journal of Atheist News and Thought

$2.95

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it. It holds that man is capable of creating a social system based on reason and justice. Materialism's "faith" is in
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American Atheists - P.O. Box 2117 - Austin, TX 78768-2117

March,1985

Vol 27 , No 3

American Atheist
A Journal

of Atheist

News

and Thought

Editorial: Birthday Gifts - Jon Murray

Ask A.A.
News and Comments: A Right Education
Titan of Reason - Maurice LaBelle
Convention News
Christians! What Will They Think of Next! - Lowell Newby
Ashes to Ashes - Mara J. Beadle
Survey: Profile of An Atheist
The Atheist Next Door - Robert S. Mangus
Maculate Deception: The "Science" of Creationism - Frank Zindler
Historical Notes
While Hell Freezes Over - Gerald Tholen
Poetry
A God That Failed - Margaret Bhatty
Potpourri
D. G. M. Bennett, American Atheist - Madalyn O'Hair
Book Review
Me Too - Clarke Metcalf
Letters to The Editor
Dial-An-Atheist
Classified Advertisement
Reader Service

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On The Cover:
It has taken considerable
time for the American Atheist organization
to redefine the word "Atheism." As you know, dictionary
definitions, formulated by religious bigots, have used the word as a negative footwiper contrary to their "beloved" goddism. But now there seems to have
been a complete social turnaround.
The term Atheism has come to be not only quite differently understood
but respected as well. So, the questions,
"What is an Atheist?", and, "Why are some people Atheists?", have essentially been answered. Yet, in the interest of journalistic reporting, other
questions have remained unanswered;
when, where and who. We have now completed a unique and historical first at the American Atheist Center. Our
recent questionaire/survey
has revealed not only who the Atheists are, catagorically (by sex, race, ethnic origin, etc.), but such interesting information as
where they live, work, attend school, play, - and - when they became Atheists. Some of the information seemed to conform to previously assumed
evaluations of the Atheist community. Yet, there were surprises. At any rate, it was a very interesting (if time consuming) project. It will no doubt be
quoted by researchers
for generations for it is a "one of a kind" report. We are truly grateful to everyone who participated
in the survey. You helped to
make the world a better informed place. - G.Tholen
Editor/Robin Murray-O'Hair, Editor Emeritus/Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Managing Editor/don Murray, Assistant Editor/Gerald Tholen, Poetry/Angeline
Bennett, Gerald Tholen, Production Staff/Bill Kight, Sandra M. P. McGann,
Gloria Tholen, Non-Resident Staff/G. Stanley Brown, Jeff Frankel, Merril
Holste, Margaret Bhatty, Fred Woodworth, Frank R. Zindler.
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is indexed in
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ISSN: 0332-4310

1984 by Society of Separationists, Inc.

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EDITORIAL/Jon Garth Murray

BIRTHDAY GIFTS

Atheist organization has

ThesinceAmerican
its inception, attempted to remain

apolitical and to concentrate its efforts as a

one cause organization in the area of separation of state and church. It has been
difficult throughout the organization's history to remain true to "one causisrri." The
forces of organized religion in this country
continually allow their dogma, with purpose,
to overflow into the political area and the
area of coercion in personal choice on many
issues. It has only been, by and large, when
the religious community in general or some
particular denomination has first intruded its
dogma into political or civil libertarian areas
that American Atheists has had but little
choice in following suit - to carry the
separation principles, upon which our nation was founded, into the field.
Equal Rights Amendment
American Atheists did so during the attempted ratification process for the ERA
(Equal Rights Amendment) when it became
evident that the Roman Catholic Church
was making its passage a religious test for
state legislators instead of a civilrights issue.
Many members of the American Atheist
organization did not like their organization
to take a position on the passage of the ERA
one way or the other. They felt that this was
a political issue and a matter of personal
choice and a subject that had nothing to do
with Atheism or separation of state and
church. It may have started out that way,
but it quickly became apparent that the
most strident opponents of the ERA were
opposed on biblical grounds. It is from this
perspective that American Atheists had to .
let the Atheist position be known on this
issue.
Abortion
We have in this country today another
issue of great controversy the opponents of
which base their stand solely on rleigious
dogma and biblical interpretation. That issue is abortion.Shall a consenting adult fe
male have the right to seek out and have
performed a surgical or other procedure
commonly known as an abortion? I look
upon the abortion issue as a matter of civil
rights first. The bedrock issue in the controPage 2

versy is the extent of a woman's sovereignty

over her own body. As I see it, any female
who is old enough to conceive has the
inalienable right to decide for herself ifshe is
willingto carry a pregnancy to term or not.
Consideration of all social, family, ethical,
economic, and health concerns attendent to
a decision on the part of any woman regarding the seeking of an abortion is, in the
ultimate analysis, her personal choice. It is
only logical that advice from many persons,
doctors; spouses; boyfriends; close relatives; and yes, even the church for a religious
individual, is appropriate. The fact still remains, however, that after the individual has
gathered all the advice she possibly can, it is
up to that woman to make the final decision
to end her pregnancy by surgical (or other
abortive) means or not. Neither the state,
nor the church, nor any individual should
stand in the way of the decision of the
woman involved. Any woman must walk
through the door of any abortion clinic of her
own free will. The same goes for family
planning or the obtaining of birth control
information. It must be asked for as an
independent decision of an individual either male or female in the case of birth
co~trol.
Free Choice
I liken the issue of "free choice" with
regard to abortion to the issue of "free
choice" with regard to pornography. It is
very similar in that the chief opponent of
pornography is the chief opponent of abortion: the organized church. Yet, as with
abortion, the choice of a consenting adult to
walk through the doors of a store selling
pornographic publications, films, or other
articles is a free one. No one forces any
consenting adult to buy pornography or
participte in the viewing thereof. It is a free
choice and something that has to be requested by the individual involved. True,
solicitation is involved but whether or not
one succumbs to that solicitation is a matter
of individual choice.
Birth Control
There is another side to the abortion issue
which is that abortion is not a birth control
method. There exists a variety of birth conMarch,1985

trol methods for both male and female.

When birth control methods are used and
fail or when they are not used and pregnancy results only then can abortion be
considered. It is distinctly separated from all
birth control methods since birth control is a
matter of concern in a pre-pregnancy state.
Once a female is pregnant, birth control is
no longer the issue; it is mute and nonefficacious at that point. Past the point of
verified pregnancy only abortion, whether
surgically induced or spontaneous, is a viable alternative to the attempted carrying of
the pregnancy to term. Once pregnancy is
induced, the male is completely out of the
picture biologically. The male-is very much
socially and logically, even legally, involved,
but from a strictly biological viewpoint after
conception his function is over until the
pregnancy runs some kind of natural course,
successful or not, or is artificially terminated.
Key Points
One of the underlying problems with the
abortion controversy is that persons on
both side of the issue lose track of some key
points:
1. We are animals and not special creations of some god_We are mammals, and we
are, therefore, subject to the same biological
restraints concerning reproduction as other
mammals. The method and time cycle of
human reproduction is biologically and genetically determined, and we must work
within the limitations of the physical system
and its time table.
2. The free and open availablity of birth
control information and counseling to all
socio-economic levels of society has never
been yet achieved. Such a free market place
of information would decrease the number
of unwanted pregnancies. This is a fact that
cannot be disputed. A decreased number of
unwanted pregnancies would decrease the
call for abortions.
3. The chief opponent of a free market
place of information and supplies for birth
control has been the church, with the Roman Catholic Church being the leader of the
pack.
4. The major thrust of the opposition to
abortion and birth control alike is that they
deny the rights of the nborn fetus. Oppo-

The American Atheist

nents of abortion, or birth control, rarely

mention the rights of the involved woman;
they concentrate on the rights of the unborn
fetus. Thus comes the popular tag of "right
to life" which refers to the fetus only - the
right to lifeof the "to be" mother is either not
considered or considered of lesser import
than that of the fetus. But the movements in
opposition to abortion - and birth control
- both utilize the phrase "right to life."
5. The opposition movements to abortion
and birth control base their stand on scriptural dogma contained within their particular "holy" book as interpreted by their
particular denomination.
Religious War
As a result of the above innumerated
points, the abortion and birth control controBombings Begin
To further exacerbate the situation
individual religionists around the coun-

versy in this country has become a "religious war." It is no longer just a matter of civil
rights. The opponents of birth control and
abortion have chosen to fight on religious
grounds rooted in their chosen dogma. The
tragedy is that those persons who wish to
maintain a free market place of ideas on
birth control and civil rights on abortion fail
to recognize this shift in the basis of the
debate. Proponents of keeping the abortion
and birth control issues on the plane of civil
rights have had the rug pulled out from
under them and are now, like it or not,
fighting on the plane of idiomatic religious
considerations. It is like having a fish challenge you to a dual. The fish would want to
fight you in the water, his element, where he
had the advantage. You would want, on the
other hand, to fight the fish on the beach
where he was out of his element and in yours

- to his disadvantage. So it is with the "right

to life" movement. Its proponents want to
pull the abortion/birth control controversy
out of the civil rights arena and into the area
of idiomatic religious dogma where they
have the advantage. The persons who favor
abortion and birth control, being civil nghts
and personal choice issue proponents, have
allowed the arena to be Shifted to the
advantage of the religionist. They now find
themselves fighting the Christian fish in the
water, out of their element, where they don't
belong and where they will surely lose the
fight. They must instead pull the religionists
out of their fantasy world of religion and into
the ring of reality, and then whip them
soundly with logic.

try have taken it upon themselves to

destroy family planning centers or abortion clinics. The pattern of hatred and
destruction, brought on by religion -

by admission of the parties involved has been staggering. The foUowingchronology speaks for itself.

Site:.
St. Petersburg, Florida
Clearwater, Florida
Fairfax, Virginia
Norfolk, Virginia
Everett, Washington
Dover, Deleware
.Norfolk, Virginia
College Park, Maryland
Bellingham, Washington
Everett, Washington
Everett, Washington
Pensacola, Florida
Washington, D.C.
Annapolis, Maryland
Houston, Texas
Houston, Texas
Houston, Texas
Webster, Texas*
Atlanta, Georgia
San Diego, California
Marietta, Georgia
Houston, Texas
Rockville, Maryland
Wheaton, Maryland
Suitland, Maryland
Pensacola, Florida

Date:
May 29,1982
May 29,1982
June 6,1982
May 26,1983
December 3,1983
January 13, 1984
February 17,1984 (same Clinic as '83)
February 28, 1984
March 4,1984
March 26, 1984 (same Clinic as '83)
April 19, 1984 (same Clinic)
June 25, 1984
July 4, 1984
July 7, 1984
August 20,1984
September 7, 1984
September 8, 1984
September 9, 1984
September 13, 1984
September 13, 1984
September 20,1984
November 11, 1984
November 19, 1984
November 19, 1984
December 24, 1984
December 25, 1984

Wa~hington, D.C.

January 1, 1985

(*Houston area)

Soldiers in The War

In all of the above cases of action taken
against abortion clinics or birth control
counseling facilities the individuals apprehended by authorities gave religious justifications for their conduct. The man in the
case of Everett, Washington, said he
Austin, Texas

Destructive method:
Arson
Pipe bombs
Arson
Arson
Arson, a Molotov cocktail
Pipe bombs
Arson
Molotov cocktail
Second Arson
Third Arson
A bomb
Explosion
Bombed
Molotov cocktail
Molotov cocktail
Attempted arson
A fire
Molotov cocktail
Arson
Molotov cocktail
Doctor's office ransacked and set afire
A bomb
.
Bombed
Two bombs
Bombing, 3 facilities within 3 blocks of each
other
Bombed

(All Washington Post, January 6, 1985

bombed the facilities because "abortion is

the greater of two evils." Two of the Florida
clinics and one in Fairfax, Virginia, and the
kidnapping of the operator of a clinic in
Illinois were attributed to a four month
campaign by an individual with two young
followers who said that his acts were "orders from God and the Archangel Michael."

March,1985

He is now serving forty-two years for

kidnapping and the three bombings. In a
prison interview he said that he had been
"called by God" to bomb the clinics and he
blamed the government for forcing him by
its inaction to take action. The perpetrator
in Norfolk, Virginia, was described by a
psychiatrist there as a "religious political

Page 3

fanatic."
In Pensacola, Florida, two men and their
wife and fiancee planned and executed the
bombings saying that they were meant "as a
gift to Jesus on his birthday." The woman
bought the gun powder, and the men made
and planted the bombs. The fiancee felt that
the fact that her husband-to-be had gotten
away with the June 25th, 1984, bombing in
Pensacola was a "sign from God" that he
(god) approved. This prompted the later
attacks on Christmas Day. One of the two
men said that "God inspired him" to team
up with his best friend to attack the clinics.
Both men. told one of the federal agents
investigating the crime that "they decided
that God had called upon them to destroy
these clinics." One of the men admitted that
"He knew the bombings were wrong" but
justified them because he had acted "at
God's direction." This same individual's
attorney stressed to the Court that his client
had actually killed no one and that his client
was only trying "to destroy a place that in
itself was a destroyer of lives." One of the
men said "he felt that God's law was what he
had to follow, not man's law." He also told
authorities that no matter how much time in
prison he got for the acts "if he saved one life
then what he had done was worthwhile."
A frightening aspect of the Pensacola
case was that the local ABC affiliate in that
city conducted a 24-hour poll asking its
viewers the question, "Would your religious
beliefs, under certain circumstances, lead
you to violate civil law?" The answer was
"yes" from fifty-eight percent of the viewers
who responded, with forty-two percent answering "no." One of the bombers had great
satisfaction over this poll and felt that it was
evidence of public support for his actions.
(Source: Washington Post, New York
Times, The Miami Herald, and U.S.A. T 0day on various dates in December 1984 and
January 1985.)
"True Terrorism"
In addition to the fact that religion had
been the the prime motivating factor in the
majority of the bombing cases around the
country, the federal authorities had been
reluctant to become involved because of
what they say is a lack of "an organized
conspiracy." The Director of the FBI stated
in December, 1984, according to the New
York Times, that the FBI only investigates
"true terrorism" that aims to "overthrow the
Government" or "shift the Government"
and that attacks on abortion clinics did not
constitute "terrorism" because they were
not committed by an "organized group."
Therefore, since attacks on abortion clinics
were "not politically motivated" they had a
"low priority" on the list of actions for the
FBI to investigate.

Page 4

Reagan
In the mean time, President Reagan ran
on party platforms in two consecutive races
that pledged him to appoint Supreme Court
justices who are opposed to abortion. His
first official act on inauguration day in 1980
was to hold a White House meeting with
"right to life"_movement leaders. On that
same day, the new Secretary of Health and
Human Services spoke to a right to life rally
and promised a "pro-life" administration for
the next four years. Reagan then proceeded
to appoint a Surgeon General, and the head
of federal pregnancy and family planning
programs for teenagers as Deputy Assistant
Secretary for Population Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services
chiefly because of the anti-abortion stands
of both the appointee and the agencies. He
then iced the cake by holding a White House
meeting with the head of the extremist ProLife Action League who had, prior to the
meeting with the President, openly condoned violence against abortion clinics on
ABC national television.
A National Attitude
All of this federal action, spearheaded by
the President of the United States, in approval of the "pro-life" movement, gives
these demented individuals around the
country the incentive to go out and use
violence to settle the abortion question. In
spite of all of this, the Pope had the temerity,
in his traditional Midnight Mass on Christmas Day, December 25, 1984, to say that
Atheism strips mankind of its values and
brings only hunger, exploitation and the
threat of nuclear war. (Philadelphia Inquirer) I ask you if any of the abortion clinic
bombings or arsons have been at the hands
of Atheists? If Atheism truly strips mankind
of its values and Christianity promotes
those values then one of those values must
be the value of ignoring civil law as expressed by those ABC viewers in Pensacola or
the clinic bomber who said that he had to
follow god's law first.

gious community can get away with its bully

tactics here then it can get away with them
in other areas. If we don't speak up now
about a patriarchal church trying to enforce
its ideology on women, grounded upon
fictitional narratives, then institutions such
as your American Atheist Center will be
next on the hit list. Abortion has now
become an issue of religion vs. reason by the
choice of the church not by the choice of the
clinics or family planning centers. It is tragic
that we must now find ourselves mired inthe
dogmatic bog of the "pro-life" arguments.
We must resurrect the real issues and turn
the tables on those who use confusion and
public misinformation to get their way.
Atheism's

Logic and Common Sense

The position of an Atheist should be not

so much "pro abortion" as it should be a
desire to place this public controversy back
on logical ground, firmly footed on legal
precepts and civil law - and not on the
fantasy world of religion. Regardless of your
personal feelings in this matter the eventual
fate of abortion and birth control information availablity in this country rests on the
manner in which the debate is conducted
and on what principles are involved. Atheists have always opted for logic and common
sense, not fanaticism. We need to do what
we can to see that religious fanaticism does
not dictate policy in any area of civil concern. When it does so in one area, it can and
will do so in all areas. ~
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A second generation Atheist, Mr.
Murray has been the Director of the
American Atheist Center for nine
years and is also the Managing Editor
of the American Atheist. He advocates
"Aggressive Atheism."

Religion vs. Reason

Although the positions of individual Atheists on the question of abortion varies
widely, I think that we can all agree on the
need to confine that argument to established political and judicial arenas and not to
resort to violence as "civil disobedience."
No Atheist has ever bombed an abortion
clinic, or attacked a church facility, to my
knowledge. It has always been the religionist, throughout history, who has resorted to
violence in the ultimate analysis to force
his/her dogmatic view on the majority. As
Atheists we cannot allow this to happen on
the abortion/birth control issue. If the reli-

March,1985

The American Atheist

ASK A.A.
In Letters to the Editor, readers give
their opinions, ideas, and in/ormation.
But in "Ask A.A." American Atheists
answers questions regarding its policies, positions, and customs, as well as
queries 0/ /actual and historical situations.
As I read and appreciated The Peril of
Faith, I wondered why there was no mention of Ayn Rand or Bertrand Russell.
Wiley Morrison
Missouri
Your letter to American Atheists about
my book, The Peril of Faith, was forwarded
to me. It was good to read that you appreciated the book. The omission of references
to Ayn Rand and Bertrand Russell was not
deliberate or intentional.
None of their material was quoted in the
book. Although it would have been of value,
my purposes were amply served by the
quotations of the writers whose words were
used. In the compilation of references for
any book, there is a point at which the need
is satisfied.
The names of some well kown Atheists
were mentioned. These people were famous
and appealing for reasons other than their
Atheism, and by linking them with Atheism
in the thinking of the readers, I was attempting to increase the perception of respectability which Atheism deserves.
It was noted that there were dozens of
such Atheists who were not cited individually. Ayn Rand and Bertrand Russell surely
were among these. While not so prominent
to ordinary citizens as those whose names
were used, their distinction was indeed
attained by means other than the promotion of Athiesm. Their primary interests
were in the furthering of their respective
political concerns. The libertarianism of
Ayn Rand and the anti-militarism of Bertrand Russell are causes which I passionately share with all who claim them, as a
reading of my book will make clear.
Martin L. Bard
Pennsylvania.
C""""

What are we doing to protect the American Atheist Center from vandals and religionists that might get it into their bigoted
heads to destroy or despoil our atheistic
central base? This worries me. Please let me
hear from you.
Mervin Wideman
Florida
The American Athiest Center has been,
on various occasions, the target of such
Austin, Texas

individuals. Various windows still sport

bullet holes. The front of the building has
been spray painted various times; on one
occasion a beautiful mahogany sign donated by a member was mutilated. "Jesus
loves you" - complete with a cross - was
stratched into the attractively carued front
door. A row of mature plam trees were
salted down, died, and needed to be removed.
As a preventative measure, the grounds
of the American Atheist Center were encircled by a six foot, barbed wire topped
fence in 1982. Also, floodlights illuminate all
sides of the building. This has effectively
stopped all instances of vandalism.
C""""

You have sent us your magazine free and

we thank you. In the last issue comments
were made in several places about speaking
up for your beliefs, etc., etc. Why then do
you send your publication in a plain wrapper
that could not possibly identify the work.
Curious? Puzzling? Surprising!
AG. Lewis
Owensboro Public Library
Kentucky
Several years ago, this organization began sending all its mailings in envelopes
clearly marked "American Atheists." It was
felt that this would be one small way of
making our pride in our Atheism known.
Few members and subscribers had any
objections to receiving such mail and for
some years we experienced few or no
problems with delivery. In the past three
years, however, we have had increasing
problems with postal deliveries. After years
of mailing the American Atheist to a subscriber at a particular address, for example,
we are suddenly informed that the address
simply does not exist; yet, mail can be
delivered to that same address if nothing on
the envelope marks it as being from "Atheists." For a period of time, it was almost
impossible to send mail to subscribers in
Chicago. Our Post Master, when we contact her with particular cases of such nondelivery, is very helpful and is anxious to get
to the bottom of this problem. She feels that
all mail should be handled in an identical
manner, no matter who the recipient or the
sender. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to track down the problem. In a
particular area, it might be an individual in
any position in the local post office.
Thus we reluctantly switched to the "plain
wrapper" approach. 'We would prefer to
have "The Americai"l Atheist" proudly on
our envelopes again - if only postal employees would refrain from sabotage.
March,1985

I have read and enjoyed both Dial-AnAtheist, transcripts of the Dial-An-Atheist

service and What On Earth Is An Atheist,
transcripts of the American Atheist Radio
Series. I know that there are as yet unpublished radio transcripts, and I suspect that
more Dial-An-Atheists have been recorded
since the book was published. Are there any
plans to make sequels to the two books?
Also, on what stations in my area does the
AA Radio Series air?
Galen Thomas
Florida
A sequel to Dial-An-Atheist, featuring
more of Newton Berry's excellent messages, will be released during 1985. As was
the case in the first book, the Dial-THEAtheist ([512J 458-5731) transcripts of Mrs.
O'Hair will also be included.
The American Atheist Radio Series is not
currently being domestically distributed.
That is, it is not being aired in the United
States. It is, however, reaching over 2000
stations abroad, by satellite.
The transcripts from the second year of
the American Atheist Radio Series is also
scheduled for release this year in a book
titled The Atheist World. Eventually all
seven years of the Series will be published.

I've read in the past (in the American

Atheist) that Madalyn Murray O'Hair is a
"committed Anarchist." And yet in her recent article on child-rearing (Jan. '85), she
gives advice on how to handle the religious
aspects of the pledge of allegiance, fourth of
July celebrations, P.T.A meetings, etc. without any negative comment on the statist
nature of these activities. Isn't patriotism
just as mindless, irrational, and pernicious a
disease as religion?
AI Medwin
New Jersey

Madalyn O'Hair replies:

Children must live in the real world and
not the imaginary social utopia in which all
we Anarchists dream away our days. It is
necessary to cope with reality not escape
into theory. As Atheists we must face what
exists and teach our children how to handle
situations which they meet in a competent
way, recognizing that we are in a Christian
state in which patriotism is of high value to
the citizenry. To teach our children withdrawal into fantasy would illequip them to
live in our every day world in the United
States.
Page 5

NEWS AND COMMENTS

A RIGHT EDUCATION
As the first federal legislative session
ended in the late summer of 1984, the
United States Congress, badgered into
some concern for the quality of education in the public school system, passed
a Science/Math funding bill which was
titled the General Education Provisions
Act. Buried in that bill was a small
paragraph designated as "Title VII,
PROHIBITION." The provision in its
entirety read:
Sec. 709. Grants under this title
may not be used for consultants,
for transportation, or for any activitywhich does not augment academic improvement, or for courses
of instruction, the substance of
which is secular humanism.
Since every dictionary definition of
"humanism" has to do with "human interests and values" the Congress was
being contradictory - both science and
mathematics are by definition, under
the umbrella of "humanism." It could
only be concluded that the prohibition
was stated in these terms as an unabashed yielding of the United States
House of Representatives to the dictates of the born-again fundamentalists
in the nation.
When the particular provision was
proposed, when it was scheduled to
come up for a vote, on the day when it
was voted into the bill, and afterwards,
American Atheists notified every major
newspaper, all radio and television networks, each national news magazine,
and all educational organizations. But,
characteristically - nothing appeared
in the news. It was August: school was
out, and the media had exhausted itself
reporting the school prayer issue -.
anything else was mundane.
American Atheists closely watched
to see what would appear on the educational scene when school began in September. But it was not until mid-January
that the United States Education Department proposed a rule which would
prohibit school districts from spending
the ear marked federal funds of the
Science/Math bill on any course that a
school district "determines is secular
humanism." There were no guidelines
given as to what "secular humanism"
could be, as seen at the [ederalEducation Department level. Again, the government was back to the game of "local
Page 6

options" where it knew the strength of

the churches was.
Paul Salmon, the Executive Director
of the American Association of School
Administrators, was immediately pleased that "the department made the right
judgment in allowing local school districts to define secular humanism."
Since the prohibition had been worked out between Senators Orrin G.
Hatch (R-Utah) and Daniel Patrick
Moynihan (D-NY), their comments were
sought. Moynihan issued a statement
saying, "This was legislation essential
to the desegregation of our schools.
Preventing money for courses on secular humanism was a prime condition
for Sen. Hatch's approval." With his
comments, he was reflecting on the
congressional game plan whereby votes
for money bills are bought by inserting
language which pleases (a) pressure
group(s). Hatch heads the Labor and
Human Resources Committee through
which the bill had to pass, and in order
to win the approval of that Committee,
Moynihan was allegedly "forced" to pay
the toll that Hatch wanted: a prohibtion
on "secular humanism." What needs to
be remembered, however, is that Moynihan is a Roman Catholic who has,
each term of Congress, fought for tax
money support of Roman Catholic
schools. He is no friend of "secular
humanism," and the myth that he was
"forced" to this attack is just that - a
myth. And, although Reagan had called
for "a teacher" to be the first citizen to
take a space ride, when an actual
choice came, it was Jake Garn, a religious zealot, the other Senator from
Utah and another of Reagan's men in
Congress, who was chosen for this
signal "honor" - if it can be called that.
The nature of legislative thinking was
disclosed by a legal aide of Moynihan
who added, "It [secular humanism}
should have had a definition ... probably in the law ... In part it's a symbolic
thing. It has put the federal government
on record saying that federal funds
should not be spent on propagandizing
an atheistic philosophy for our kids."
An aide for Hatch pointed out that
the proposed rule (of the Education
Department) would permit the local
school boards to decide what a course
of "secular humanism"
might be.
"School Boards depend on sane, reasonable people running them," he noted.
March, 1985

During the last decade we have all been

apprised of what those "sane, reasonable people" do, as reports have appeared in all media of local school
board actions to return prayer to
school, to intrude "scientific creationism" into the class rooms, to heavily
censor reading materiels, to restrict sex
eduction classes, to tighten control of
students, to challenge student free
speech, to institute search and seizure
programs, to restrict lunch programs,
to hold teachers' salaries at low levels,
and to continue racist policies whenever possible.
Hence, the American Atheist Center
was waiting for further developments
when it received a call from Bill Talley,
Director of the Denver Chapter of
American Atheists. The Regional Representative of the U. S. Department of
Education had just finished a peculiar
mailing to all Christian schools in the
six-state federal area - Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, and
Montana. In it was an attack on "secular humanism" and a nostalgic demand
for a return to the re-establishment of
"a Christian nation." Rep. Patricia
Schroeder (D-Colo), apprised of the
mailing, asked the United States Secretary of Education co is it the policy of
your department to establish a Christian nation ?", as the mailing seemed to
reflect. Talley asked Schroeder for a
complete investigation. No Denver newspapers reported on the mailing. There
was one radio news item. United Press
International (UPI), which finally picked
up that radio report, contacted the
federal Education Department in Washington, D.C. There, the acting Education Secretary defended the mailing
and described it as information of interest to "a major constituency."
The mailing was said at first to be a
speech. Bill Talley asked if the American Atheist Center wanted a copy of
the actual mailing made by the Region
Vlll Representative. The cover sheet is
depicted below, containing the seal of
the Department of Education of the
United States of America. The heading
is that of the Region Vlll Representative. Sent under the franking privilege of
the department, it would appear to be
an official statement. Talley later discovered that it was rather a copy of a
speech of Robert Billings, who had been
the executive director of the Moral MaThe American Atheist

NEWS AND COMMENTS

. jority before joining the Reagan Administration. Billings is currently the federal Director, Regional Liaison Staff,
and the immediate superior of the Region VIII Representative. Billings, when
finally contacted, stated that he had
sent the material to the Regional VIII
Representative, who having read it was
so impressed that he had ordered it
distributed.
The U. S. Postal Service prohibits the
use of franking permission (use of free
government postage) to send material
which does not represent official policy.
Since no news media is going to print
the entire letter for your perusal, it is
here presented in its entirety for your
personal evaluation. Absolutely nothing in the text or the cover page indicates the author. The entire statement would, at first blush, seem to
represent the position of the U. S. Department of Education.
.
American Atheists has noted grammatical errors and footnoted historical
and other errors. Dr. Billings, who received his B.A. from the non-accredited
Christian fundamentalist
Bob Jones
University in '56, his M.A. from the same
school in 1963, and his Ph.D. from
Clarksville School of Theology in 1967,
is an important figure in the federal
offices of education. Mr. Tancredo who
issued Billings' statement, is a six-state
area federal supervisor of education. In
those capacities, one would expect both
men to have command of our language
and its grammar in order to be adequate examples for our children under
their care in the nation's public schools.

u, S. DEP/\RTr1EtlT
REG I orl

OF EDUC/\ TI ON
VI I !

1961

STOUT STREET
DENVER, COLORADO 80294

(303) 837-3544
fROU THE OESK OF THOUAS G. TANCREOO
SeC~t~4~y'4 Re9~o"4l Rtp~e,e"~4t~ve

WHERE IS OUR EDUCATIONAL

SYSTEM LEADING US?
In Los Angeles County, parents of a boy
who committed suicide have charged the
pastor of Grace Community Church with
Austin, Texas

clergyman malpractice. Why? He counseled

their son instead of turning him over to
professionals for psychiatric care.
In Arkansas a pastor today sits in prison
for refusing to allow the state to control his
school.'
In 1979 in Lucedale, Mississippi, at a small
fundamental church, the Sunday morning
service was interrupted and the pastor arrested on trumped-up charges of physical
abuse to one of the school's boarding students. Those charges were later dropped
when the boy admitted to lying.
In Victoria, Texas, the Department of
Labor recently sued Central Baptist Church
for failure to pay minimum wages to the
volunteer help of its day care center.
How can these things be happening in
America - this land of freedom, this Christian nation? What has. happened to our
Christian system of values? The change
from "One Nation Under God" to a nation
without God didn't happen over night (sic).
But Christians are just now waking up to the
fact that godlessness is controlling every
aspect of our so-called "Democratic and
Free" Society - it controls our entertainment, our news, and even the education of
our children.
America was once a Christian nation,
founded on Biblical principles, although
some modern historians go to great lengths
to disclaim that fact. (Read The Light and
The Glory by Peter Marshall.)! Democracy
was an amazing and new idea - a complete
reversal of the known forms of government.
Until then, the king had always been law
(sic); democracy meant that the law was
king, and law existed only because of a
Divine Law-Giver. Our Constitution states
that we are" endowed by [our] Creator with
certain inalienable rights."! The writers of
the Constitution recognized God as the
Supreme Giver of Rights, and, therefore, the
law was under God.4
These men also felt it the duty of government to preserve religious freedom. As one
of the Constitution's signers, John Witherspoon," once said: "He is the best friend of
American liberty ~ho is most sincere and
active in promoting pure and undefiled religion." And William Penn stated: "If we are
not governed by God, then we willbe ruled
by tyrants." I doubt Penn realized how soon
his fears would be realized."
American's heritage has been first and
foremost - freedom. In the beginning, two
streams flowed from the bowels of antiquity
- they were individual liberty and religious
freedom. Where these two streams finally
merged, we find a broad and beautiful land
we call the United States of America. And
what makes America so grand and glorious?
It is freedom!
This does not mean that our forefathers
had no struggle to secure this freedom.
March, 1985

Consider with me:

The Declaration of Independence was
started on June 17. Thomas Jefferson took
seventeen days to complete it. It was finally
adopted on July 4. Twenty-four lawyers,
eleven merchants, nine farmers - fifty-six
men in all - signed the freedom document.
During the Revolutionary War, five were
captured by the British and tortured; twelve
had homes looted or destroyed; nine died in
the war.s
Carter Braxton lost his ships in battle. He
sold everything he had to pay his debts, and
died in ragsJ
Thomas McKeen of Delaware moved five
times in five months. Later he served in
Congress without pay.s
Thomas Nelson, Jr. borrowed $2 million,
sold his estate after the war to pay the debt,
was never reimbursed, died in bankruptcy
and now lies in an unmarked grave.?
John Hart was driven from the bedside of
his dying wife. After one year he returned,
but his wife was gone, his children kidnapped, his property worthless. He died in two
weeks of a broken heart.P
John Hancock stood outside Boston one
hot summer night as the British were burning his city and said, "Burn, Boston, Burn;
though it make John Hancock a pauper,
burn!"!'
These were not poor men, but liberty was
all important. They literally fulfilled a vow
when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, "We pledge our lives, our
fortunes, and our sacred honor."
The First Amendment was passed, not to
divorce government from religion, but first,
to keep the government from interfering
with religion, and second, to keep one sect
or religion from forcing others to conform.
(By the way, a number of individual states
had actual state religions, and that was not
considered contrary to the First Amendment.P) The Northwest Ordinance of 1787
stated: "Religion morality and knowledge
. (sic) being necessary to good government
and the happiness of mankind, schools and
the means of learning shall forever be encouraged."
But for the past few generations, we have
abandoned the traditional principles established by our forefathers, many of the ways
in which we now celebrate patriotism are
theatrically shallow or commercially obscene.
Now, it is not wrong to celebrate the "way
we were," provided we take equal pains to
safeguard the road ahead. In the political
inventions of the Founding Fathers, we were
richly endowed, and we can take fresh
resolve from our heritage. But our task is not
to eulogize the past - our real job is to
initiate present action to assure that our
great-grandchildren may be able to enjoy a
tricentennial with the same amount (sic) of
Page 7

NEWS AND COMMENTS

freedoms that we enjoyed in the bicentenniaL
Our strong philosophies have been shamefully watered down, and our wise establishent of priorities has been perverted, We
have lost our national wilLWithout a strong
national will, we are as sounding brass and
tinkling cymbaL However, this strong willis
not manufactured by Madison Avenue or
the news media,
National willis what we have linked to our
deepest values, and we'll help strengthen it
or weaken it. During the past few years, our
willhas been eroded just as surely by some
Republicans as by Democrats, and by conservative preachers as well as liberal journalists. We have changed our virtues and
lowered our moral standards.
May I suggest that what we need is to
revive the American national will.(sic) This
means that we will have to be tougher,
smarter, and more principled in the 80's than
we have ever been for the past fifty years.
This revived national will is not just to be
rhetoric for the reformers, but, hopefully,
the creed of the people.
We must have leadership and followship
(sic) - with credibility, expertise, and trustworthiness. A leadership that offers hope to
the senior citizen, the businessman, the
plant worker, the young person. (sic) We
must also have a followship (sic) of good will
to all where we mutually pledge to each
other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred
honor.
Remember, Valley Force was won by the
grit and stamina of ordinary soldiers, as well
as the genius of Washington. We are not
required, as they were, to stand with bare
feet in the snow and face British artillery
- but can we not expect more Americans to
brave the arrows of criticism and face the
enemies of morality and still be true?
For, if America should, by 1984, be pressed into a corner by a combination of Soviet
nuclear blackmail and psychological warfare
- if we then should be isolated from our
allies and divided against (sic) ourselvesthe epitaph on America's tombstone might
read as follows: "Here lies the only civilization that perished at the peak of its power
with its power unused. Here lies a decent
people who wanted love, not empire, and
got neither; who tried to trade power for
popularity - and lost both. Here lies a
nation of advertisers who knew how to
change consumer taste in cigarettes but
were themselves manipulated on issues that
really mattered to their salvation."
The strength of our nation is the spirit of
the people. The ultimate values of mankind
are spirituaL These include liberty, human
dignity, opportunity and equal rights, and
justice. Our common efforts to strengthen
them must be inspired by national pride, by

Page 8

self-respect, by an eagerness to meet our

responsibilities as free men, by national will,
and recognition of the debt we owe to
generations of men and women who built
this nation - as well as to generations yet
unborn.
In rebibing (sic) the American will, we
must not forget our obligations to God as
well as country. We have departed from our
Godly heritage and have nearly become
paranoid over this matter of mentioning
God. Not so, our early forefathers.(sic)
The first Charter of Virginia in 1606 said,
"Propagating Christian religion."
The Pilgrims, in writing the Mayflower
Compact in 1620, began their document
with "In the name of God - Amen!"
The Declaration of Independence reminded us that "All men are created endowed by their Creator."13
In every inaugural address - andin
every Constitution of every state, reference
is made to God. In the Chamber of the
House of Representatives there is a sign that
says, "In God We Trust."
The Supreme Court opens with - "God
save the United States and the Supreme
Court."14 (Although sometimes we think it
should open with, "God save the United
States from the Supreme Court!")
Up and down the inside of the Washington Monument we read - "Search the
Scriptures" - "Holiness unto the Lord" even the steel cap on the very top says,
"Praise be to God."
And the last verse of the National Anthem, concludes with - 'Then conquer we
must, when our cause it is just, and this be
our motto, in God is our trust."
Charles Dickens' famous novel, A Tale of
Two Cities, begins: "It was the best of times;
it was the worst of times." So it is today. All
of our technology has not ushered in utopia.
Millions of Americans have no convictions
about our country's direction; and countless
others feel that the situation is hopeless. We
need to offer, therefore, for pessimism,
hope; for distrust, integrity; for greed, compassion; for inequality, justice; and for hatred, love.
Man has taken God from his rightful place
in the center of everything and has placed
himself there. This religion (and it is a
religion) of humanism claims no fixed absolutes, but has as its basis man's limited
experience. Humanists call this true freedom, but such a lack of foundation can lead
only to chaos and the bondage of sin.
And let's not be fooled - humanism and
Christianity cannot exist side-by-side in
harmony. They are diametrically opposed.
Humanism, for all its talk of free expression,
is totally intolerant of other viewpoints. We
see this even more clearly in the Soviet
Union, where the state willtolerate no gods

March, 1985

other than itself and has successfully removed all traces of Christian religion from its
schools. (Emphasis added.)
It is not news to anyone here that the
same steps to remove God from our United
States schools have already been taken.
Two U. S. Courts have already ruled that a
group of college students who (sic) wish to
discuss religion could not meet in the context (sic) of a public state university since it
might "establish religion" on the campus.
The state is screening out religious speech
from the otherwise free speech on the
university campus. IS
In the last few years, Christians have
waked up to the desperate need of a truly
Christian educational system for their young
people. Christian schools are springing up
all over the country, and in some states,
such as North Carolina, these schools are
uniting into a strong body to protect themselves.
And as the Christian school movement
grows, and the public schools face bigger
problems, it is important for Christian educators not to forget why our schools are
here - to educate our children in Christian
principles and to shield them from the
pernicious religion of secular humanism.
Pastors and administrators are aware of
this now, and are giving students a totally
Christian education. I am excited to see the
growth of the Christian textbook and curriculum ministries. I'm glad to see young people
who know why they are in a Christian school
and parents who demand much of the
Christian schooL
I'm excited also about the "fringe benefits" of Christian education - the fact that
private school students consistently show
higher academic achievement than public
school students=: the individualized attention available, for the most part, in the
Christian schools; and the variety of fine
arts, laboratory equipmerit, and specialized
services these schools are beginning to be
able to offer.
Private schools have also created competition for the public schools, who (sic) are
seeing an exodus of their best students to
private schools. This competition can only
be healthy for all involved - encouraging all
schools to keep their standards high.
The growth of Christian education has
also united the Christian community and,
more specifically, has helped to unite and
involve Christians in their local churches.
People who were back-row Sunday morning
worshippers find themselves involved parents when their children reach school age.
And although evangelism is not the primary
emphasis of the Christian school, it is certainly a welcome by-product, as the school
spreads the gospel across the community.
But there is no reason for Christian ad-

The American Atheist

NEWS AND COMMENTS

ministrators and educators to think they
"have arrived" and can now relax. There are
still weaknesses in our schools. And if the
Christian school isn't striving to be the best
it can be, there is no reason for it to exist.
Too many Christians, rather than taking an
active interest in how their children are
being taught, are content in just knowing
their children are being taught by Christians.
Research tells us that when all is said and
done, after school superintendents, principals and curriculum developers have made
their decisions, education really comes down
to what occurs in the classroom between
teacher and pupil, and the disheartening fact
is that we are seeing more and more of our
brightest young people rejecting teaching in
favor of more emotionally and financially
rewarding professions. The Department of
Education has collected sobering evidence
in the last year on the quality of students
entering teaching:
Between 1972and 1980,average verbal
scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test
(SAT) among entering education majors declined from 418 to 339;
Average SAT math scores fell from
449 to 418 - both declines steeper
than the average drop of 20 points
experienced overall by all majors;
Of 19fields of study for entering college
freshman, education majors tied for
17th place in math scores and 14th
place in English scores;
A national study sample of graduating
high school seniors in the class of 1976
indicates that, out of 16 prospective
majors, prospective education majors
were 14th in SAT verbal scores, and
15th out of 16 in mathematics.
The picture is equally bleak with college
graduates:
'. Verbal and nonverbal'? scores on the
Graduate Record Examination have declined significantly since 1970;
Scores on the National Teacher Exam
- an eight-hour test of general knowledge, specific subject matter, and
teaching techniques - declined between 1970 and 1975.
In 1975, Graduate Record Examination
results for education majors were lower
than those in eight other professional
fields compared.
All of this is not to say that there are not
excellent Christian school teachers. Every
year God calls talented young men and
women to teach in Christian schools, and
many gladly make financial sacrifice (sic)to
answer this high calling. (But let me add here
that pastors and school administrators

Austin, Texas

should do everything they can to make it

financially affordable for young people to
teach at their schools.) And statistics con:
tinue to show private school students excelling18 public school students in academic
achievement.
But a school whose (sic) purpose is training young people to serve Christ willnot be
content merely to be a little better than
public schools; it will strive for excellence.
Galatians 4:1719says that "It is good to be
zealously affected always in a good thing,"
and Titus 2: 14describes Christians as "People zealous of good works." A philosopher
once wrote: "To believe in God involves
accepting him as the sovereign perfect, thus
establishing the highest possible conception
of excellence." Why should the Christian
school demand less than excellence of its
teachers?
A few weeks ago I had the privilege of
addressing a conference of the North Carolina Christian Educators' (sic) Assocation,
where they (sic) had asked me to give a
synopsis of current legal problems facing
Christian schools. I spoke with several lawyers who are handling current cases, and
they asked me to tell the North Carolina
educators, as I now tell you, that one of the
greatest legal problems our schools face is
this lack of teacher credentials. If we expect
to be permitted to run Christian schools, our
teachers' credentials must be above question. The schools that have balked on this
are some of the ones who (sic) are now in
court, perhaps creating trouble down the
road for all Christian schools.
Ifour schools are to be excellent, we must
demand that teachers be strong in their
subject matter, and they must be given
enough time to do a thorough job of preparation and teaching. I know of many Christian
young people who experience "teacher burnout" and leave Christian schools or the
profession of teaching altogether after only a
few years. They complain that they had no
time for their teaching because they either
taught too many courses (some not at all in
their field of training), or were expected to
spend all of their out-of-classroom time in
church or school-related functions. Good
teaching takes more than enthusiasm and
training - it takes time, and administrators
must either face this fact or see academic
standards drop.
There has been a lot of talk recently about
getting "back to the basics" of education,
and rightly so. A staggering number of high
schools give diplomas to students who are
functional illiterates. To avoid putting
Johnny through the "trauma of failure,"
modern educators have turned school into a
place where children are entertained, taught
to "get in touch with their feelings"; and
"adjust to the world around them," but

March, 1985

never disappointed by a teacher's saying,

"You have not come up to the standard you have failed." Parents are beginning to
demand that school once more be a place
where students are directed, evaluated, and
sometimes even judged as having failed.
Educators are seeing the need to eliminate
the "fluff" in their curricula and concentrate
on the core subjects, such as English, math,
history, and science.
As I discussed earlier, the mission of the
Christian school is to give our children solid
training in these core subjects from a Biblical
perspective. And, as everything in life must
have balance, so must the education of our
children. A wonderful example of balance is
the Apostle Paul, who not only knew the Old
Testament scriptures, but also quoted from
the classic G reek literature as his sermon on
Mars Hill. Paul was a fervent, humble Christian, but he was an educated and cultured
one.20 He was undoubtedly a more effective
witness for Christ because "[he was] made
all things to all men that by all means [he]
might save some." God can use all types of
Christians, from the most poor and uneducated to the man with a string ofPh.D.s (sic),
but God expects the best from all of us and that includes the best curriculum possible in our Christian schools.
I ask, have we gone too far toward humanistic goals? Must we walk the same road
to the same destination that other world
powers have walked? Isay no! No country is
more loved by the rank and file of its people.
I have an abiding faith in the capacity,
integrity and high purpose of true Americans everywhere. Our future is bright with
hope. There yet stands that silent lady in
New York Harbor with her torch held high,
and the message still reads:
Give me your tired, your poor, your
huddled masses
Yearning to breathe free, the
wretched refuse of
Your teeming shore. Send these..
the homeless, tempesttossed to me. I lift my lamp beside
the golden dOOr.21
Finally, let me challenge you with the
reminder of those chilling words of warning
by Winston Churchill that I believe apply so
aptly to the condition we find our nation in
today. "If Y04 willnot fight for the right when
you can easily win without bloodshed; ifyou
will not fight when the victory will be sure
and not too costly; you may come to the
moment when you will have to fight with all
the odds against you and only a precarious
chance for survival. There may be a worse
fate. You may have to fight when there is no
chance for victory because it is better to
perish thanto live as slaves."

Page 9

NEWS AND COMMENTS

Let us work, live, and if necessary, die to
keep men free!
If you desire to write to "Dr." Robert
J. Billings, he is Director, Regional Liaison Stfllf, Federal Office Building, Room
6, Washington, D.C. 20202. His direct
dial telephone number is (202) 245-8787
If you desire to write to the Regional
Representataive
in Colorado, he is
Thomas G. Tancredo, Secretary's Regional Representative, V. S. Department of Education, Region VIII, 1961
Stout St., Denver, Colorado 80294. His
telephone number is (303) 837-3544.
"The famous case was in Louisville, Nebraska,
not in Arkansas. It involved Everett Sileven, a
Southern Baptist preacher and his Accelerated
Christian Education school. See the September,
1984, issue of American Atheist, pp. 4-17, "Mental
Circumcision. "
2 Marshall, Peter and Manuel, David, The Light
and The Glory, , Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1977.
3 The phrase is in the Declaration of Independence. It is NOT in the Constitution of the United
States. It reads in its entirety:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident,
that all Men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these there
are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness ...
The terms used are all those of deism, not of
Christianity.
4 There is no mention of God in the Constitution. The reference is to the "Laws of Nature and
of Nature's God" which phrase appears only in
the Declaration of Independence. Again, these
are terms of deism, not of Christianity.
5 John Witherspoon,
1723-1794 was the only
minister to sign the Declaration of In ' pendence.
He graduated from the University ot"Edinburg,
Scotland, in 1739, received his Doctorate in
Divinity from Aberdeen, and was ordained into
the Scotch Established Church in 1745. He was a
liberal theologian and attacked the abuses in his
own church. He came to the United States to
become President of the College of New Jersey
(now Princeton) in 1768 and there introduced
scientific apparati and improved the natural science courses. In the United States he associated
himself with the American Presbyterian Church.
Today, he would be the object of attack by the
Falwellian types which Billings represents.
6 The Centennial Book of The Signers, Philadelphia, Pa.: J. M Stoddart & Co., 1872, issued in
commemoration of the Centennial of the country
shows no record of either capture or torture of
five signers by the British. Richard Stockton was
captured by the British and briefly confined in
New York. Thomas Heyward, Jr. was temporarily
imprisoned, but also was appointed a state judge
upon his return to South Carolina.
7 Carter Braxton, 1736-1797, a man of considerable wealth, inherited several large plantations.
He spent his final years in the legislation of the
state of Virginia. The close of his life was characterised by pecuniary embarrassment, but there is
no historical proof that Carter Braxton "died in

Page 10

rags." The wreck of his fortune was not related to

his signing of the Declaration.
8 The spelling is erroneous. The man's name
was Thomas M'Kean. He was so wealthy he had
no need of a salary. He was Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania from 1777 to
1790 and Governor of that state from 1790 to
1808.
9 Thomas Nelson, Jr. 1738-1789, also served in
the Virginia legislature until 1786. There is no
historical proof that Nelson "died in bankruptcy ..
. and lies in an unmarked grave."
10 John Hart, whose birthdate is apparently
unknown, died in 1780 at an advanced age. He
was the owner of a large estate in New Jersey.
There is no historical proof of this sad fable.
!l John Hancock, 1737-1793, inherited a fortune
and mercantile house. Billings would be shocked
to know that a large part of his wealth came from
importing and selling wines. He was the first
governor of Massachusetts and remained in that
office from 1780 to 1785, then again from 1785 to

1793.
12 The First Amendment to the Constitution of
the United States was not made applicable to the
states until May 20, 1940, when the United States
Supreme Court in Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310
U.S. 296, ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment
(passed in 1868) made the First Amendment
effective in states as well as at a federal level.
13 See footnote number three, above.
14 The phrase is "Oyez, oyez. God save our
nation and this honorable court, Amen." The
opening of the court by this phrase was challenged by American Atheists in three separate law
suits, to no avail. Allcases were lost on procedural
issues.

15 The United States Supreme Court, when this

case reached that level, formulated the "Equal
Access" rule which now plagues public schools
across the nation. The University of Missouri at
Kansas City, was ordered to provide communication and meeting space for "Cornerstone" an
evangelical, religious, group. Widmar v. Vincent,
454 U.S.263, decided December 8, 1981.
16 The single most discouraging fact for the
A.C.E. (Accelerated
Christian Education)
schools, which Billingsaddresses in this speech, is
the low level of scholastic achievement of its
graduates. The Association of Christian Schools
International has been forced to establish its own
accreditation and certification standards, which
have been challenged. See note one above.
17 The test to which Billings refers has verbal
and mathematical sections, but no "nonverbal"
section.
18 See note sixteen above.
19 The correct citation is Galatians 4:18, which
reads, "But, it is good to be zealously affected
always in a good thing, and not only when I am
present with you."
20 The New Testament does not support this
claim for Paul. He was an itinerant tent maker.
21
The sonnet, written by Emma Lazarus, is
engraved on a bronze tablet. The last lines appear
as follows:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe
free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming
shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed
tome,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Good News - Matthew. here. used to be a tax collector and he

thinks that we can qualify as a non-profit organization
March,1985

The American Atheist

The following is the third of a series of

articles on the French philosophes, the
intellectual leaders of the Enlightenment of seventeenth and eighteenth
century Europe.
Enlightenment crested in France
Thewith the
publication of the Encyclopedie,
that massive work which did a Herculean
task of moving the Western mind toward the
"modern," that is, science, materialism, and
Atheism. The guiding genius of that project
was Denis Diderot (17131784). It was he
who stimulated 140 people to contribute to
it, edited that vast project of seventeen
volumes of text - 11,000,000 words - and
eleven volumes of plates, and then saw the
project through to its completion after many
tribulations. Through all of the trials, a friend
stood beside him. He was Paul-Henri Thiry
Dietrich (1723-1789),and he was so devoted
to Diderot that he was buried beside his
friend. This man was the famous Baron
d'Holbach.
The Baron d'Holbach was a exemplar of
the Enlightenment, especially of its radical
left wing. He came from inauspicious beginnings and wrote some of the most controversial books of his time; his masterpiece,
The System of Nature (1770), remains a
wonder of reason, a triumph of the Age of
the Enlightenment, and a challenge to future
generations.

In what is now Germany, there was a

principality of Speyer, and it was in one of its
cities, Edesheim, that Francis Adam Holbach was born. He went to Paris toward the
end of the reign of Louis XIV (1638-1715),
made a fortune, and became a naturalized
citizen of France. He had no offspring, but
he brought to Paris and cared for the orphan
children, one female and one male, of his two
sisters. His nephew, Paul-Henri Dietrich,
was also born in Edesheim, and he came to
Paris at the invitation of his uncle before he
was twelve years old.
Alma Mater
During the war of Austrian Succession,
Paul-Henri's uncle sent him to an estate he
owned in Holland nearby the famous University of Leyden, which Paul-Henri attended.
The Chevalier de Jaucourt, who was to
make significant contributions to the Encyclopedie, called this university the "first and
foremost in all Europe." W.H. Wickwar, one

Austin, Texas

of the authorities on d'Holbach, adds that

the university
was one of the freest and most modern of any university; it was the only
one that still commanded universal
respect as a seat of learning. Promising young men came there from many
countries. Among d'Holbach's fellow
students were more than twenty English students; two of them became
chancellors of the Exchequer, and
one a Lord Mayor of London.
Paul-Henri was brilliantly educated. He
knew French, German, English, Italian, and
Latin "extremely well." At the University of
Leyden, he attended classes taught by the
great scientist, Herman Boerhaave (16681738), one of the most exciting teachers in all
of Europe and an advocate of reason and
science. As a result of his experience at the
University of Leyden, Paul-Henri became an
authority in natural sciences, especially
chemistry andmineralogy.
After the war, Paul-Henri returned to
Paris, and in August 1749 became a naturalized citizen of France. About 1753, the uncle
died and left most of his enormous fortune to
his nephew. The estates of Westphalia alone
brought Paul-Henri 60,000 liures a year. He
was not only wealthy; he was now the Baron
d'Holbach.

D'Holbach used his wealth to establish a

townhouse in Paris and a summer residence
at Grandval, which was a short drive from
Paris. But it was his townhouse which became important. Many phi/osophes met
there for dinner on Sundays and Thursdays,
and vistors from all over Europe and Americajoined them when they were in Paris. Ten
to twenty guests would dine from 2:00 P.M.
to 8:00 P.M .. The dinners were so lavish
that, according to Diderot's daughter,
Diderot could only dine there once a week.
More than that would have killed him, he
said.
Roll Call
"D'Holbach's dinners attracted some of
the greatest wits and intellects of his century," and a list of them represents a roll call
of the Enlightenment; moreover, the list
provides considerable insight into the intel-

March,1985

lectual interchange of one of the leading

salons of the Enlightenment. The regulars
were Nicholas Boulanger (1722-1759),a very
learned man in history and languages;
Charles Pinot Duclos (1704-1772), a novelist
as well as a widely-read student of social
customs; Frederic-Melchior, better known
as the Baron Grimm (1723-1807), a writer
and friend to many of the progressive thinkers of the time; Claude-Adrien Helvetius
(1715-1771), the author of the famous book
The Mind (1758); Jean-Francois Marmontel
(1723-1799), a novelist and liberal cleric;
Abbe Andre Morellet (1727-1819), a contributor to the Encyclope1die; the historian
Abbe Guillaume-Thomas Raynal (1713-1796);
Guillaume-Francois Rouelle (1703-1770), a
chemist; Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (17121778), a frequent guest until his personal
problems drove him to exclude himself and
be excluded in turn; Jean-Henri Saint-Lambert (1728-1777), a physician and mathematician; Jean-Baptist Suard (1734-1817), a
famous journalist; and Jacques Turgot (17271781), the economist.
Foreigners were most welcome at d'Hol
bach's table. Horace Walpole (1717-1797),
the English author, dined there as did David
Hume (1711-1776). It was he who told the
Baron as they were sitting down to dinner
that Atheists did not exist. D'Holbach
turned to him and informed him that he was
dining with seventeen. John Wilkes (17271797), the English politician was also there,
as well as Galiani, the secretary of the
Neapolitan embassy from 1759-1769. David
Garrick (1717-1779), the celebrated English
Shakespearean actor, was a close friend of
"the good Baron." Benjamin Franklin was an
"old friend." Lawrence Sterne (1713-1768)
joined them, as well as Edward Gibbon
(1737-1794), the author of The Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire. The central figure
of this sa/on was, of course, the Baron
d'Holbach, who was the intellectual equal of
his guests. His knowledge was "encyclopedic," and one of his friends noted that
d'Holbach "had read everything and never
forgot anything of intellectual or artistic
value." No wonder that his sa/on became
one of the most famous in Paris, and his
house "the social centre of the century."
D'Holbach's home was so popular and
important that it was affectionately called
the "synagogue" or the "Holbach Club."
"That was the place to hear the most
enlightened, most vivacious, and most informative conversation - I mean 'liberal' in
regards to philosophy, religion, and government; 'spicy remarks' of another kind
had no place there ... " That statement, by
one of d'Holbach's old friends, written after
d'Holbach's death, is not quite accurate.
The Baron himself had a penchant for salty
comment, and there was the case of his wife
making sexual overtures to Grimm. The
situation became so serious that there was
considerable concern about keeping the

Page 11

matter from the public. In another case,

Diderot took offense at another guest for
making comments about Diderot's wife;
Diderot bluntly told him that, and I cite
Wilson's translation, "the jokester runs the
risk of being thrown out of the f-king
window" (Wilson, Diderot, p. 465).
D'Holbach's publishing career, which
would eventually amount to forty books and
400 essays for the Encyclopedie, began
innocuously. He wrote two pamphlets in
1752 on some controversial musical subjects, and then he wrote a prose work; then
he turned to translating. An overview of
d'Holbach's translations not only shows his
intellectual interest but his initial contribution to the Enlightenment. His first translation was of a work by a professor of chemistry at the University of Upsala in Sweden.
The work had been translated into German,
and then d'Holbach retranslated it into
French; it was called Agriculture Reduced to
Its True Principles (1774). D'Holbach next
translated an Italian work which had been
translated into German (The Art of Glassmaking by Neri, Merret, and Kunckel;
1752,) which was followed by Mineralogy, or
A General Description of the Mineral Kingdom (1753), Introduction to Mineralogy
(1756); Metalurgical Chemistry (1758), and
among others, Essays on Physics, Natural
History, Mineralogy, and Metallurgy.
These works not only reflect the interest
of a mind of the Enlightenment, but contributed significantly to the enlightenment of
his salon. After d'Holbach's death, a close
friend wrote that

David, or The Man after God's Own Heart

(1768), The Ax Laid to The Root of Christian Priestcraft by A Layman (1742), Considerations upon War, Upon Cruelty in
General and Religious Cruelty in Particular
(1761), The Torments of Hell, The Foundations and Pillars Thereof Discouer'd,
Search'd, Shaken and Remov'd (1758), History and Character of St. Paul Examined
(1770), and the Discourse on the Miracles of
Jesus Christ (c. 1780).
The Expert
Toward the end of the time when he was
concentrating on his translations of antireligious works, d'Holbach entered the next
phase of his development: He began to write
his own works. In 1767, he wrote Christianity Unmasked, or An Examination of
The Principles and Results of The Christian
Religion. He published the work anonymously, as he would do for all of his works.
D'Holbach was a self-effacing man, and thus
he did not seek celebrity - people of reason
do not do that. Also, by using the names of
dead writers, he kept their names alive in the
public eye; in the case of this book, the name
of Nicholas Boulanger, and with The System
of Nature, it was M. Mirabeau.

We are greatly indebted for the

advancement of our knowledge of
natural history and chemistry to the
work this man did thirty years ago. He
is responsible for piquing our interest
- the passion of some - for those
disciples because he translated some
very fine works from German whose
subjects were almost unknown to us
or frequently overlooked.
The Author
D'Holbach's translations of scientific
works represent the first phase of his fame,
but he was to do more to advance the cause
of the Enlightenment and Atheism. His great
period was still before him. His achievements have earned him the honor of being
called "one of the paladins of Atheism." He
began by translating The Independent Whig
by Thomas Gordon (1767), which was "a
violent attack on the spirit of domination
which characterized the Christian priesthood at that time." He later translated a
collection of English pamphlets (Popery A
Craft, Apology for The Danger of The
Church, and The Creed of An Independent
Whig), A Discourse on The Grounds and
Reasons for The Christian Religion (1724),

Page 12

The Baron

There were several other reasons for

seeking anonymity. To publish such works
under his own name would doom d'Holbach
to the criminal courts. After the assassination attempt on the king, the government
was quite strict on censorship:
All those who are convicted of writing
or of having had written or of printing
any writing which disturbs the order
and tranquility of Our States will be
sentenced to death. In regard to any
other ... authors, printers, booksel-

March,1985

lers, peddlers, and any other persons

disseminating such writings to the
public willbe sentenced to the galleys
for life, or for a term suiting the
seriousness of the case.
What a work Christianity Unmasked was!
A critic commented that "the author might
be an atheist, a skeptic, a materialist, a
fatalist, or a cynic, but his primarily aim is to
destroy Christianity." Diderot commented
that "Bombs are falling on the house of the
Lord, and I am afraid that one of these
terrible bombers will get into trouble." A
prudent observation. The volcanic nature of
the Christianity Unmasked is reflected in
the fate of some people who possessed it. An
apprentice obtained two copies, and he then
sold one to his master, who, in turn, reported the sale to the police. The apprentice
was arrested, sentenced to nine years in the
galleys, and branded; the peddler was branded and sentenced to five years in the galleys;
and his wife was sentenced to serve in a
hospital for the rest of her life. No wonder
that d'Holbach published anonymously.
La Piece de resistance
The culmination of d'Holbach's development was The System of Nature. The book
is special in the history of censorship. It,
along with d'Holbach's Discourse on Miracles, The Sacred Disease, and Christianity
Unmasked was burnt by the public hangman of Paris. No other author has been so
honored by having so many of his books
burnt at one time. Samuel Wilkinson, the
English translator of the 1820 edition of the
work described it as
without exception the boldest effort
the human mind has yet produced in
the investigation of Morals and Theology. - The republic of letters has
never produced another author whose
pen so well calculated to emancipate
mankind from all those trammels with
which the nurse, the school master,
and the priest have successively locked
up their noblest faculties before they
were capable of reasoning and judging
for themselves.
The complete title of the work indicates
d'Holbach's intent: The System of Nature,
or The Laws of The Physical World and of
The Moral World. As one would expect
from a major thinker of the Enlightenment,
d'Holbach examined the material, mundane
world, rather than metaphysical issues, such
as transubstantiation, consubstantiation, angels dancing on the head of a pin, and papal
infallibility.But in the background there was
always the issue of ethics. Can one live
without religion? D'Holbach answered affirmatively, but he stated categorically that
one must understand the world and human

The American Atheist

nature correctly, that is, without metaphysical illusions in order to do so. Only when a
person comprehends the world realistically
and becomes an Atheist can valid moral
postulates be formulated.
The thesis of The System of Nature is
given in the forward to the work
(1.) "People are unhappy because they do
not understand the system of Nature";
(2.) "Reason must be restored to its proper
position in our lives";
(3.) "Ignorance must be eradicated because
it is a dark cloud which is a major obstacle in
the path of people becoming happy and
improving themselves";
(4.) "The deceit of the priestcraft must be
exposed because its machinations result in
so much misery and error"; and
(5.) Be "fair, compassionate, and peaceful."
In his efforts to achieve those goals, d'Holbach's The System of Nature became an
epic achievement in exposing the pitfalls of
theology, the evils of the priestcraft, and the
consequences of ignorance.
The System of Nature begins with two
statements, (1.) "A human being is the product of Nature; he or she exists in Nature:
The individual is subject to natural laws, and
cannot escape them even for a moment."
Therefore, (2.) "The distinction which has
been so often made between the physical
and the moral man is clearly absurd. The
human being is completely physical."
Nature
Why is it that people fail to realize who
they are and the system of Nature? D'Holbach's answer is unequivocable: People are
enslaved by religion because of their "inexcusable ignorance." The way to knowledge
is for the individual to recognize that everything in the universe is the result of matter
and motion. There is, of course, no god; that
word is only a meaningless expression used
by people trying to explain "causes of effects." God is "something the theologians
dreamed up; an imaginary being." D'Holbach also points out that the term "god"
cannot even be defined. Spare me the usual
drivel about god being "love," "merciful,"
"omnipresent," "seeing every leaf that falls,"
"hearing the cry of every babe". Such descriptions are meaningless because they are not
denotative. "The only logical conclusion,"
d'Holbach rightly notes, "is that the words
God and create are not really definable; thus
these expressions should be dropped from
the vocabulary of any intelligent person who
wants to speak and be understood."
The Soul
D'Holbach rejected, of course, the concept of a "soul." To him, it "is just a bodily
function less obvious than others." He adds
that

Austin, Texas

If the "soul" can be moved or can

cause motion, ... then it is logical that
this "soul" changes its relations with
different organs of the body which it
puts in action; but to change its relation with space and with the organs to
which it imparts motion, this "soul"
must then have extent, solidity.
Anticipating a childish, religious response to
his position d'Holbach rhetorically asks
"Where did 'matter' come from? Logically, it
has always existed. Where did 'motion'
come from? The same answer; motion is
equally existent with matter; both have
eternally existed because motion is necessary to the combinations of matter." Miracles, of course, are contrary to the unchangeable laws of nature. Such is the
concept of an afterlife: According to
d'Holbach, life after death is "impossible!"
Imagine somebody thinking that he or she
will escape the laws of nature and live
forever! What ignorance! D'Holbach cites
Bacon: "Men fear death for the same reason
that children fear being alone in a dark
room." "Human beings," d'Holbach chastises, "will you never understand that your
stay on earth is only for a day?"
Atheist Education
To d'Holbach, education is quintessential.
According to him, it is "the art of inculcating
in people early in their lives, when their
attitudes can be changed, civilized habits,
concepts, and ways of living." His central
point is that children can be trained; the
details of the training can be debated. Nevertheless, d'Holbach's assertion is well made
when he contends that "nothing enters the
human mind except through the senses."
Of course, no priest should be allowed to
participate in the "agriculture of the mind."
D'Holbach goes into a frenzy when he
discusses priests, and he sees them as the
central figures of the tyranny and error
which permeate society. He accuses them of
"always looking around to cause trouble,
being ambitious, and incessantly intolerant."
Moreover, priests incite rulers to ruin their
countries. In spite of such obvious violations
of citizenship, "For thousands of years,
nations and rulers have been jumping over
each other to enrich the ministers of the
gods, enable them to wallow in wealth, give
them honors, decorate them with titles,
privileges, and immunities, and thus make
them bad citizens." "With such teachers,
what could become of our children?" .
All of d'Holbach's powerful and incontrobertible logic leads to the question of ethics:
Should we let religions based on revelations be the basis of our concepts of
virtue? Come now! Look at them.
Don't they agree in their view of a
March,1985

tyrannical, jealous, vindictive, lawless, capricious, whimsical, irrational

and selfish god, who delights in carnage, rapine, and crime; who toys
with his feeble subjects, who burdens
them with irrational and foolish rules,
who constantly tries to trap them in
sin, and admonishes them not to use
their minds? What would become of
morality if people set such gods as
models for conduct?
D'Holbach's hatred of religion as a basis of
ethics becomes almost unequalled:
The same capriciousness and insanity
are reflected in the rites, ceremonies,
and practices, which all religions have.
In one religion, mothers deliver up
their children to feed their God, and in
another people consol themselves for
supposed sins against the god by
immolating human victims. In yet another religion, in order to appease the
wrath of his God, a religious fanatic
mutilates himself and devotes himself
to a life of horrifying torment. The
Jehovah of the Jews is a suspicious
tyrant who speaks of nothing but
blood, murder, and carnage, and who
wants to smell the fumes of burning of
animals. The pagan god Jupiter is a
lascivious monster. The Moloch of the
Phoenicians is a cannibal; the Christians decided, in order to appease the
demands of their god, to crucify their
god's only son. The barbaric god of
the Mexicans demands that thousands of people be killed.
Ethics - Not Religion
Clearly, religion cannot form the basis of a
valid ethical attitude; only reason, to d'Holbach, was adequate for that. "Only by
teaching people, showing them the truth
that we can improve their lot and make them
happier ... Let us use our minds and learn
from our experiences. Then we willsee that
irrationality is the real source of the problems of the human animal." "We must
recognize." d'Holbach continues, "that in
order to establish ethics on a firm foundation
we must throw off the ludicrous metaphysical hallucinations which are based on supernatural superstition. Useless and ruinous concepts."
I know of no statement which represents
the Enlightenment better than d'Holbach's
ringing declaration:
Nature tells you to consult your reason and be guided by it; religion tells
you that your reason is vile, corrupted
- a false guide given to you by a
deceitful god in order to lead you
astray. The truth is that Nature tells
people to learn, seek truth, and to find
Page 13

one's real duties. Religion, on the

other hand, requires that people not
investigate; it tells them to remain
ignorant, and fear learning the truth;
[but] Nature tells people to see glory,
to help other people, to be active in
society, to be courageous and industrious ... Ifyou listen to Nature, it tells
you .that you are free, no power on
earth can logically deprive you of your
rights.
D'Holbach's great period was over when
he finished The System of Nature. It was
enough. "He had fulfilled his mission." He
continued to translate and write, but he
never regained the level of excellence of The
System of Nature. His energy was clearly
spent, and he was unable to work at the
speed which had characterized most of his
productive life. He produced very little for
the last fifteen years of his life. Perhaps he
missed his friends, who were proving indeed
to be "only for a day." Certainly he missed
his dear friend, Diderot, who died in 1784.
"Meanwhile Baron d'Holbach lingered on,
the last and loneliest and longest-lived survivor of the greatest philosophes of the
middle of the century ... At the beginning of
his sixty-sixth year, on January 21,1789, in
the middle of the elections to the revolutionary estates, he died at his home on the
Rue-Royale."
One of his friends from the salon wrote
that "the Baron d'Holbach was one of the
greatest philosophes." The Baron Grimm,
who, next to Diderot, was d'Holbach's closest friend, wrote that "I have never met a
man more learned - a Renaissance mind than the Baron d'Holbach . . . If it had not
been for his enthusiastic support of science,
the world would not have seen his vast,
incredible learning." H.D. Robinson rightly
notes that the Baron d'Holbach's lasting
contribution to the Western culture, The
System of Nature, "will support itself, and
needs no advocate; it has never been answered, because, in truth, it is indeed,
unanswerable." The last word belongs to
"the good Baron": "People, when properly
educated, will stop believing in a God."
"Hope is my motto" - the Baron d'Holbach.

~
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prof. Maurice M. LaBelle holds
a Ph.D in Comparative Literature.
He presently is teaching in the
Department of English at Drake
University in Des Moines, Iowa.
His work has been published in both
French and English in scholarly
journals throughout the
United States, Canada, England,
and France. His book on
the French Atheist Alfred Jarry
(Alfred Jarry, Nihilism and
The Theatre of The Absurd)
appeared in 1981.
Page 14

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you can be included in this great Atheist event.
Convention dates are April 5th, 6th, and 7th, 1985
The location is the AUSTIN HILTON INN in the new
and beautiful northeast section of one of America's
fastest growing cities - Austin, Texas. The Inn is
conveniently located at the intersection of Interstate
Highway 35 and U.S. Highway 290. Its a perfect arrival
location for motorists. It is also within easy commuting
distance from Austin's airport - AND - the Inn
furnishes free bus service to and from the airport. The
Hilton's address is 6000 Middle Fiskville Rd., off IH 35 in
the elegant Highland Mall Shopping Center. Businesses
and restaurants are plentiful in all directions - within
walking distance. The best news of all is the very (attractively) low hotel room rate which has been offered to
the Atheist Convention - $50.00 per night for from one
to four persons.

if YOU haven't already done so. take time rlsht

now to include yourself in this srand event. Fill out
the form below and return it - Now!
SO.

Mail to: American Atheist Convention - PO Box 2117 - Austin, TX 78768-2117

Enclosed is my Convention registration payment. Sign me up immediately.

Registration fees: One person $20.00 - Couple $35.00 - Students* and (65 plus) Senior
Citizens* $10.00.
ID required.

Name
~------------------Address
_
City
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Zip
_
Or - charge my ( ) VISA, ( ) MASTERCARD
Number
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AND - be sure to send me ( ) additionalguest registration forms
with my other convention information.
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March,1985

The American Atheist

Lowell Newby

CHRISTIANS!
WHAT WILL THEY THINK OF NEXT!
very time I come to think that ChrisEtians
have surely extended themselves

to the point that the invention of an even

more outrageous absurdity is not possible,
darned if they don't prove me wrong. According to a recent edition of The Clarion
Ledger, a Jackson, Mississippi newspaper,
Wee Win Toys and Accessories, Incorporated, a Texas company, is now presenting a
Christian alternative to secular toys. Debbie
Heck, who is the owner of Victory Toys, the
Jackson distributor for Wee Win, is quoted
as saying that the company began, "as a
result of the Christian realization of the need
for an alternative to secular toys that represent sex, fear, and occultic influences."
Established in October of 1983, Wee Win
first introduced its toys to the public in
September, 1984, and is reported to be
enjoying exceptional sales,
Wee Win's mainstay is to be action figures
(complete with "biographical" cassette
tapes) of Jesus, Samson, David, and Goliath. No rational person who knows the Bible
can help but explode in laughter at such a
selection. Samson: a rampaging sadist who
slaughtered thousands upon thousands with
his own hands - he is an alternative to
violence? David, a murderous adulterer who
once cut off the foreskins of two hundred
Philistines to buy himself a wife - this is an
alternative to sex? Jesus, who once went
sightseeing with Satan; who thought that
epileptics and schizophrenics were demonpossessed; and who spoke longingly of the
infinite pains of hell as a fitting end for nonChristians - this is an alternative to fear and
occultic influences? Surely out of the hundreds of characters in the Bible, Wee Win
could have found at least one who would be
better suited than these scoundrels to be a
role model for children. Or could they? Of
course, Ms. Heck says that, "Wee Win's
number one goal is to spread the gospel of
Jesus Christ." Well, why wasn't she honest
enough to say so in the first place because, if
that's its goal, then these choices are admirable as millions of victims of Christian oppression and torture willsurely agree.
Unfortunately "action figures" are not
Wee Win's only products for the innocent
children of born-againers. It also offers (for
$12.99) "Guardian Angel Bear" which looks
like an ordinary teddy bear but with a
Austin, Texas

drawing of an angel on its chest. And then

there is the "Rex The Righteous Ranger"
coloring book which looks suspiciously like
an old Lone Ranger coloring book only
minus the mask. The list goes on, but aside
from having given a Christian character to
secular toys, the only thing remarkable
about Wee Win Toys is its complete lack of
originality.
It is also interesting to note that of the
products listed, allare either patterned after
men or (as in the case of "Guardian Angel
Bear") they are neuter. One can only wonder how long it will be before Wee Win
corrects this oversight by bringing out something like a "Virgin Mary, Busy Housewife"
doll, complete with a first century house and
real clay dishes.
Heck says that she sees her work as a
ministry (naturally) and that she will gladly
visit homes, schools, churches, and civic
groups to sell the toys and "to educate
people about the dangers of secular toys." If
the thought has occured to you that if
Chloroseptic should attempt such an attack
against Listerine or Ford against Chevy, that
it would be sued, you are probably right.
How smug and secure Christianity must feel
as it peers out at the mean ole world from
beneath the cloak of "Lady Justice."
But before we all fall off our seats with
rollicking (though bitter) laughter, let's conMarch,1985

sider the short term goal of Wee Win Toys. It

is to have one distributer per 300,000 people.
It already has at least one distributer in forty
different states. So since the company was
only established in September of 1983, can
anyone doubt that it will soon realize its
goal? Shame on America that we have advanced so far in so many directions only to
begin to slide backwards into religious retardation. Can it be true that, as paleontologist
Stephen J. Gould has theorized, our species
has reached the end of its evolutionary
development? With minds such as those of
the manufacturers of Wee Winn Toys holding so much social and political clout, the
best that I can do is simply to hope that it is
not so. I.MPI

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lowell newby, afreelance writers, says
of himself, "Being introspective by
nature, my interest in Atheism centers
around the innermost effects that it
has upon the individual, particularly
one who lives in a theistic environment
such as we now have in the United
States."

Page 15

Mara J. Beadle

ASHES TO ASHES

nto the sanctuary they came: the fat, the

Isloppy matrons of the community, radiat-

ing piousness and humility. Their mundane

husbands and hopelessly indoctrinated offspring followed behind. They were here to
bask in the love of god; they were going to
"the table of the feast."
From the beamed ceiling of this suburban
Methodist stronghold hung a psychedelic
banner, so long as to touch the heads of the
taller of the faithful. In crookedly-cut felt, it
proclaimed the words "Joy," "Peace," and
"Love."
The tinny organ spewed forth the sounds
of tortured Franck. The altar was laid with
purple linen, and garish flowers festooned
the pulpit. The temple was in readiness; the
rites had to be observed.
The ringmaster, in the guise of Pastor
Somebodyorother, appeared in a rush of
holiness, his ridiculously pendulous crosson-a-throng hanging almost to mid-thigh.
Beaming benignly on the flock, he shouted,
"Good evening, friends!" The show was
about to start.
Little did this misguided man realize that
he was harboring a freethinking Atheist in
his midst. Sitting in the back row and feeling
decidedly out of place, I was in attendance
to observe an ancient ceremony of the
Christian church known as Ash Wednesday. My system was in shock already, and I
had been there only a few minutes.
Being a former Christian and still an avid
student of religions and the religious, I saw
the glaring incongruities that, to me, summed up most of what is wrong with the
Christian religion as a whole.
Ash Wednesday is the day on which
Christians warm up for forty days and nights
known as Lent, when they are given permission by the church to wallow in their sins and
are further encouraged to give up something in their lives in order to make up for the
sin of enjoying themselves all year long. (It's
not as though Christians don't do a fair
amount of wallowing in their transgressions
during the rest of the year; Lent is just a
painful focus on it. It is a sadomasochistic
activity, especially savored by recent conPage 16

verts to "the faith.")

This is naturally at a time at which Christians, even those who have been indoctrinated with church dogma so long that they
should be declared dead and their estates
probated, find themselves at an impasse.
"Here it is Ash Wednesday," they say to
themselves. "I should be glad to give up
something I love and beat myself over the
head with my 'sins' because Jesus died for
me." This "great sacrifice" myth should be
carefully thought out. If it were, more Christians would see the lunacy of their faith in a
blinding flash.
It is feasible to suggest that a man named
Jesus did in fact exist in history. Knowing
that of course he was not "divine" brings up
the idea that perhaps this man was insane
and really believed himself to be a god's son
and mankind's savior. These sorts of people
abound in periods of strife, as in his time. In
our own era there have been many examples of this sort of person. The troubled and
persecuted Jews of the time were willingto
grasp any straw of hope and believed Jesus'
message of "Live for tomorrow. There is
sure and certain hope that god will get
revenge for you if you follow me." They
became "Christians" and thus the myth has
been passed down. Looked at from this
point of view, the people gathered in the
church around me were worshipping an
accident of history.
Another sticking point that should be
examined is the notion that followers of this
individual need to continually atone for their
misdeeds. According to church dogma, when
Jesus died, he died in order to free man from
sin; no more would man have to worry
about paying for sins as the" great sacrifice"
took care of all of them for eternity. This is
one of the most glaringly obvious contradictions in religion, but the church, as always,
has an "out" clause. The faithful are lured
into believing that man is a putrid, stinking
thing that must crawl forever in apology for
virtually everything he thinks, does, says
and creates. They are held, each Sunday,
personally responsible for Jesus' death and
made to feel enormously indebted to the
March, 1985

"figure on the cross." And yet the Bible,

every word of which they so fervently believe, states that this is not necessary,
indeed is considered almost a "sin': in itself!
Regardless of all this, on Ash Wednesday
the faithful had donned their polyester,
rhinestones, and piety overlaid with an unattractive but obvious layer of guilt and slithered up to the "house of god" - the "house
of love."
The show got under way this particular
evening by the members of the congregation greeting one another. I, as a stranger,
was regarded as a possible "recruit" by
those around me. I was someone to save
and bring into their little fold.
The "father" in "Christ" was getting set
for the main event by placing a wok, a
Chinese cooking device, on the altar rail and
beaming once again at the fold. "We are now
going to pass around these slips of paper,"
he announced, holding up some scraps of
orange paper. "Write your faults and sins on
them and then come forward and drop them
here in the pot and we willburn them so that
you can start fresh for Lent."
As the flock formed a line to get rid of their
sins, I wanted to stand up on my chair and
shriek, "This symbolism is a childish thing! .
The only way to give up guilt is to free
yourself from religion. Run screaming from
this death-trap! Live! Accept your humanness and revel in it!"

The American Atheist

But as the line moved on I could see in my

mind's eye Pastor Whoever in a grass skirt
with a bone through his nose waving a dead
chicken. I could clearly hear the sound of
bongos echoing through the jungle.
Ceremoniously he lit the paper and an
acrid stench rose into the air; the stench of
thousands of years of hatred and death
carried out in the name of the "perfect one."
The next step in the pageant was the
"imposition of the ashes." This is when the
head loony paints a cross on your forehead
with ashes and mumbles something about
love and sacrifice.
Several thoughts sprung up in my mind
immediately as I sat in shock, teeth clenched,
hands gripping my chair, watching this atrocity. This idiot was anointing the people with
the papers he had just burnt. He was
anointing them symbolically with each other's sins! "Hosanna, there's hope!" I thought,
"Each man carrying the weight not only of
himself, but that of others! Not attached to a
divine sugar-tit, but free!"
Apparently the fold didn't think of this as
they crept forward to be marked as Jesus'
own. (The" gospel" message had had something to do with praying and fasting in
private so as not to appear to be bragging
about it. These people were going to walk
out of this building with a cross-shaped
smear of ashes on their faces! What could
be more public!)
The final display was to be communion.
This consisted of partaking of a loaf of
Wonder bread and a shot glass of grape
juice. The woman next to me, having observed that I hadn't participated in the
Austin, Texas

service thus far, invited me to go to communion with her and her family. When I
politely said, "No thank you," she looked at
me with a force of hatred and mistrust that
was nearly a physical blow. I wanted to tell
her rapidly retreating back that, "I don't
hate you! You and I are both people. I, who
have no religion, love you; but you, who
follow the 'perfect love,' have only contempt
for me."
The walls were closing in, as they say, and
I grabbed my things and ran out the door.
But, at the last minute, I turned to look back
and saw the flock kneeling abjectly at the
feet of the "shepherd," arms outstretched in
supplication, and over tliem all a huge cross
superimposed over a hand - a hand big
enough to crush, kill, maim, and destroy.
Needless to say, my sojourn back into
religious ceremony even as an observer
gave me pause and upset me for several
days afterward. However, I think it is vital
that allAtheists attend some sort of religious
ceremony occasionally. It can be church,
temple, or mosque. We need to be informed
of what religion is doing to people. We
cannot become like the religious who are
not only ignorant of the Atheist point of
view, but terrified of it because of their
ignorance. We have to know just what
precisely it is that we are against and up
against.
As Atheists we have an enormous burden
that the faithful do not; we are solely responsible for our actions (up to a point, of
course). We have no deity/crutch, no higher
power on which to lean, or on which to lay
blame. We are in the truest and most awful
sense free.
But our burden is also our greatest asset.
The religious are like rats caught in a maze,
doomed forever to walk a path over which
they feel they have no control. They have no
way out.
When the Christian is "born again," he is
really dying prematurely. He feels that a
god, or a Jesuchrist, or the great whoever is
in charge now and that he has nothing to
worry about. They are condemned to die
the minute they utter the words "Jesus is my
personal savior," or, "It's in god's hands,"
or, my favorite, "It's god's will." They then
proceed to spend their whole lives waiting
eagerly to die. "How miserable is now," they
wail. "How wondrous the 'other side' will
be!"
Atheists are condemned, on the other
hand, to live and to be free. We know that
this is it - now. We are acquainted with the
great aching freedom that comes with responsibility for ourselves.
Occasionally, if one wants to be perfectly
honest, this freedom causes us pain. It is not
precisely the "agony" of the existentialists,
but something very like it. Every now and
then, we feel a need to let someone else take
blame and charge. But we get through these
feelings and we must keep going.
March,1985

Atheists have a task vital to the survival of

humankind. We have to keep alive the
words "Ego," "Dignity," "Freedom," and
"Truth." Atheism is the hand reaching up
from the pile of rubbish that religion has
made of the mind of man. We cannot keep
silent!
Make the Atheist point of view known! So
many feel as we do and are afraid to admit it
to themselves or to anyone else, because
they feel that they are the only ones who
think this way and that to "come out" would
mean being ostracized and scorned. (I felt
this way for many years.) We need to take a
lesson from the religious in that we have to
band together. We need to hold meetings
and discuss the pleasures and pains of
thinking the way that we do. It is a horrible
and debilitating feeling to think that you are
the only person in the world to hold a certain
opinion.
I myself tried to mask my growing atheistic feelings by reading the Bible incessantly, only to more clearly see the obvious lies,
deceits, and contradictions in it. I prayed to
my ceiling without stopping but only felt
stupid and knew that neither I nor any other
person belonged down on their knees. But I,
unlike the religious, had no role models, no
guide to go by, and no way of knowing that I
wasn't the only one.
I wasted precious months and years of my
life trying to fit the Christian "mold," and I
tied my mind up in knots doing it. This is not
right. Someone wiser than me will have to
come up with it, but a plan has to be made to
let people, especially young people as I am,
know that it is all right, marvelous in fact, to
feel the way they do. Too many are slipping
through the cracks and into the dark abyss
of the church who don't belong there. We
cannot let them drift alone to become one of
the fold.
"He whom they call redeemer
has cast them into bondage.
Into the bondage of false
virtues and false scriptures!
Ah, that someone would redeem
them from their redeemer!"
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spake Zarathustra

~
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ms_Beadle reports that
"I have just recently
(a year or so ago)
come out of the
Christian closet and
recognized my Atheism."
She is now a student at the
University of Nebraska
at Lincoln and
works, eventually, to become
a full professor.
Page 17

U/L.
CE.R.TAIN
UNOS/RMLE. SlOE:
EFFeCTS MAY OCCUR ...
TOMASIC

Page 18

March, 1985

The American Atheist

PROFILE OF ANA THEIST

the survey was begun, it was
Before
obvious what the results would be.

American Atheists had been dealing with

individual and Atheists for over twenty-six
years already. Perhaps sixty-five chapters
altogether had been formed during those
years in approximately thirty states, and the
organization had behind it fourteen Annual
National Conventions, half a dozen national
picnics at the American Atheist Museum in
Indiana, and literally scores of Winter Solstice Banquets. A "typical" Atheist was
white, male, professional, about forty years
old, with income which put him into the
middle Middle Class, where he lived uncomfortably with a theistic wife and one and a
half children in a community saturated with
Christianity. He could rarely if ever tell
anyone he was an Atheist, least of all his
employer, and his single reality was the
feeling of being the only Atheist he knew in
his immediate vicinity.
In 1980, a small effort at survey had been
made, and the findings were that 82 percent
of those responding were male, 96 percent
were Caucasian, and 56 percent were single.
Of those, 24 percent had attained a college
degree, and 20 percent more had additional
degrees. Of the annual incomes reported 33
percent were over $20,000 a year, and 62
percent of the respondents owned their own
homes.
In May, 1983, the same survey was again
tried, and the results were not much different. The female Atheists had increased to 26
percent. "Singles" had dropped to 52 percent. Education was still a high value, with a
repeated 24 percent having one college
degree, and 23 percent having more than
one. That year 40 percent of the Atheists
had incomes of $20,000 a year or over, with
62 percent owning their homes.

and currently single (56.6 percent).

Education was still high on the agenda of
Atheists with 24.7 percent having one college degree, 21.2 percent having more than
one, and just over 4 percent in school to
increase their level of educational attain- .
ment. This time, age - forgotten on the first
two surveys - was asked. And, as to age
-32.2 percent were under forty; 31.4 percent were forty to fifty years old; and 36.4
percent were fifty or older. Those families
with an annual income of over $20,000 now
composed 65.1 percent of the respondents.
They read a lot, favored classical music,
for the most part did not drink regularly,
lived in suburbs, usually owned a pet, had
two children, voted regularly,joined "cause"
organizations, were actual members of Amercan Atheists, and bugged politicians and
government officials with letters. Still many
of them were in situations where their
spouses or lovers were theistic.
And when it came to the survey, some
would under "Racial Origin" caustically reply "Human Race," or "Earthling." The
Semite, the Nordic, the Hispanic, and the
Irish American were all settled together as
Caucasian. "Mode of transportation" included "walking" - seemingly a lost art,
van, truck, wheel chair, and crutches as well
as limousine and private plane.
While one chose Lyndon LaRouche's
American Party, yet another labeled himself
a Goldwater Progressive, and offsetting that
was a Barry Commoner Citizen's Party
adherent. Politically Atheists were everywhere, including the two who simply characterized themselves as "Fed up."

In fallof 1984, it was thought that another

more comprehensive survey needed to be
made, and every subscriber received a questionnaire. This time, however, instead of the
usual one hundred or two hundred replies,
there were approximately one thousand
returns. This is enough of a sampling of the
Atheist community to make any sociologist
happy - and it willbe a standard cited by
everyone for years to come. The results are
here for you to survey.

Their occupations were often glamorous

-gentleman farmer, antique dealer, environmental planner, interior designer. But most
often these Atheists are the stalwarts of our
society: teachers, professors, every conceivable kind of engineer, nurses, doctors,
lawyers, judges, journalists, sales representatives, armed forces personnel stationed both
at home and abroad, commercial investors,
computer programmers, beauticians, farmers, and real estate brokers. Or they were
those who are hardly ever mentioned: homemakers, students, or prisoners.

But briefly, the situation was still the

same. An average American Atheist was still
male (83.1 percent), white (96.9 percent),

Education meant everything to them and each had an informal, but hard, education from life itself and from being an Atheist

Austin, Texas

March,1985

in a theistic nation. Formal education ran the

gamut with art school, vocational school,
technical school, corporate training, with
G.E.D., H.S. Equivalent, and Associate Degrees earned, as well as the Masters, the
M.D., the Ph.D., or the J.D. And they were
honest - if their formal education concluded before high school graduation or the
completion of all or part of primary school,
they said so.
Answers came from Canada, from Australia, Ireland, the Virgin Islands, Puerto
Rico, Mexico, and one from "a state of
confusion." They lived in a duplex, a triplex,
a quadraplex, a dormitory, a hotel, a furnished room, a mansion, and a cage - their
prison cell.
We struggled to classify them, failing as
often as succeeding. This one knew the
exact date his cat died. That one lovingly
noted that his was a labrador retriever. And
another sighed that he was without a pet, by
no choice of his own. We could envisage
apartment rules, saw the low income of
students and the retired, and tried to average
it all in anyway. When we saw the typing on
one question we knew we had goofed, and
we here confess that home ownership, as
shown, is nowhere near accurate (being
entirely too low) - our fault. We willcatch it
on the next time around.
Some more than answered a question,
including a letter, a note, or a scrawl long the
sides of the form. Some would omit a
category or note "not applicable" to them.
Using the number of replies to each question
we have given percentage answers. There
has not been time to do cross referencing to find out exactly what education the responding females have, to check if their jobs
are equivalent to the males', or iftheir pay is.
We wanted to know where all the Republicans lived as compared to the Socialists.
Were the Agnostics in any particular area of
the country? Did high income show geographic influence? Did the less affluent have
more children? A more comprehensive
study could go on with the survey.
In the same survey we asked a number of
questions about the magazine, American
Atheist: what you liked, what you loathed,
and what else you wanted. And the response
innundated. Next month, there willbe a long
report on it. Meanwhile, turn the page and
find yourself in the listings.

Page 19

Community College
Undergraduate
Graduate
Doctorial
Other
Voc/Tech/T rade/ Art
Professional Certification

Sex:

Female
Male
Marital

16.9%
83.1%

Status:

Married
Single

43.4%
27.1%
13.5%
7.5%
6.9%
1.6%

Divorced

Living with
Widowed
Other

Employment

Caucasian
Black
American Indian
Mexican
Asiatic

96.90%
1.50%
0.64%
0.53%
0.43%

Occupational

1.0%
12.5%
18.7%
16.0%
15.4%
11.4%
16.6%
8.4%

Children:

yes
one child
two
three
four
five

six
seven
eight
nine plus

54.7%
20.7%
39.8%
21.5%
9.4%
3.8%
3.4%
1.2%
0.2%
0.4%

Annual

Minor children:

one child
two
three
four
five

six
seven
eight plus

Family
43.2%
.43.8%
7.1%
2.9%
0.6%
1.2%
0.6%
0.6%

5.1%
.42.2%
15.2%
4.2%
0.1%
33.2%

Status:

Skilled labor
Executive
Managerial.
Office
Artist/Writer/Performer
Clerical
Professional.
Unskilled
Educator
Farming
Homemaker
Prisoner
Military. . .. .

Age:

Under 18
19 to 29
30 to 39
40 to 49
50 to 59
60 to 65
65 to 75
75 and over

Status:

Unemployed
Employed by another
or by an organization
Self employed
Student
In prison
Retired

Racial Origin:

22.7%
35.2%
21.1%
12.5%
1.5%
2.3%
0.8%

Personal
Income:
Under $5,000
$5,000 to $9,999
$10,000 to $14,999
$15,000 to $19,999
$20,000 to $29,000
$30,000 to $39,999
$40,000 and up

26.3%
16.4%
16.2%
10.3%
7.8%
7.6%
6.8%
4.8%
3.0%
0.3%
0.2%
0.2%
0.1%

House
Apartment
Condo
Multi-unit/Duplex
Triplex/Town House
Mobile Home/Trailer
Prison
Cottage/Cabin
Dorm/F raternity
Furnished room
Other

5.3%
18.6%
0.4%
26.1%
0.9%
24.7%
14.5%
6.7%
1.1%
0.1%
1.6%
Status

Of those

(4.2%) now in school

High School
Page 20

level:
3.9%

Scatter:

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi

0.7%
0.3%
2.5%
0.5%
16.2%
2.1%
0.7%
0.1%
7.0%
0.7%
0.1%
1.0%
5.4%
0.5%
0.3%
0.5%
1.1%
1.0%
0.2%
1.8%
2.2%
2.6%
3.4%
0.5%

TheA
12.6%
10.8%
15.2%
14.1%
18.7%
14.3%
14.3%

5.2%
6.7%
11.9%
11.1%
20.6%
16.7%
'" .27.8%

Living Accommodations:

primary completed
or H.S. drop out
High School
H. S. Equivalent
Some College
Associate Degree
Bachelor's
Master's (or equivalent)
Ph.D., M.D. or Equivalent
Voc/Tech/Trade/Art
Foreign Degree
Other

Geographical

15.5%
5.7%

Americ:

Reader Suru

Income:

Under $5,000
$5,000 to $9,999
$10,000 to $14,999
$15,000 to $19,999
$20,000 to $29,000
$30,000 to $39,999
$40,000 and up

Education:

Lease
Live with relative/other

63.8%
22.0%
4.8%
3.7%
2.3%
1.0%
0.3%
0.2%
0.1%
1.8%

of Living Accommodations:

Own
Rent
March, 1985

46.4%
32.4%

Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
Nevada
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Puerto Rico

1.1%
0.5%
0.2%
0.2%
1.7%
1.0%
6.1%
0.8%
1.2%
4.8%
1.2%
2.2%
3.9%
0.2%
0.2%
0.1%
0.4%
11.4%
1.0%
3.7%
1.6%
1.0%
1.9%
0.3%

The American Atheist

Virgin Islands
Canada
Australia
Ireland
Mexico

0.1%
1.4%
0.2%
0.1%
0.1%

Place of residence:
Urban
Suburban
Rural

.41.1%
44.4%
14.5%

Population area:
0- 5,000
5,000 - 25,000
25,000 - 50,000
50,000 - 100,000
100,000 - 250,000
250,000 - 500,000
500,000 - 1,000,000
over 1,000,000

12.9%
14.7%
13.2%
12.2%
9.6%
10.4%
9.8%
17.2%

Regular voting habits at various levels:

(percentages of total sample)
city level.
county
state
national
none

54.0%
52.4%
71.4%
83.2%
9.2%

in Atheist
v Compilation

71.6%
28.4%

57.0%
43.0%

Political affiliation:

Austin, Texas

.. ,

5.0%
8.4%
11.9%
15.0%
11.9%
8.7%
8.2%
5.7%
2.4%
7.4%
1.3%
2.9%
2.2%
1.5%
1.6%
0.5%
0.2%
0.4%
0.1%
.4.4%

32.3%
27.7%
11.8%
8.7%
8.5%
4.0%
2.1%
1.6%
0.9%

0.6%
3.5%

Number of "cause" groups

with which involved:
0.8%
39.5%
22.8%
14.2%
6.5%
5.2%
2.7%
1.2%
2.0%
5.1%

Lifestyle designation:
Atheist
Agnostic
Freethinker
Rationalist
Realist
other

86.8%
1.6%
5.2%
1.0%
1.4%
4.0%

Mates share life style:

No
yes

Kind of magazines:
"cause"
philosophic/life style
news
professional
political
general interest
other

25.4%
8.6%
12.3%
16.0%
12.7%
17.5%
7.5%

13.3%
56.4%
17.5%
6.9%
2.9%
3.0%

up to thirty days
thirty to ninety days
over ninety days

12.2%
15.3%
72.5%

automobile
motorcycle or biped
bicycle
public transportation
other

78.6%
3.0%
5.3%
10.8%
2.3%

not at all to once a year

two to five times a year
six to eight times a year
nine to twelve times a year
over a dozen times

55.1%
27.9%
6.6%
2.7%
7.7%

for interstate

airplane
automobile
train

37.5%
54.9%
3.5%

March, 1985

33.7%
66.3%

Description of mate's life style

for "No" answer, above:
Atheist
Agnostic
Freethinker
Secularist
Rationalist
Realist
Deist.
Theist
Other

1.7%
21.6%
.4.6%
3.6%
1.0%
4.0%
8.6%
.49.8%
5.1%

Description of mate's life style

for "Yes" answer,
Atheist
Agnostic
Freethinker
Rationalist
Realist
Deist.
Other
no answer

above:
38.7%
8.8%
23.9%
6.2~
2.5%
2.5%
1.2%
16.2

Readers who are members of

American Atheists:
percentage

82.9%

Music preference:

Traveling out of home state:

Mode of transportation
travel:

bus
other

none
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine

Daily transportation:

Have a pet:

Independent
Democrat
Socialist
Libertarian
Republican
Anarchist
Communist
Objectivist
Apolitical

one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
sixteen
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty or more ..

to which sub

Retain American Atheist magazine:

Individuals who drink one or more

ounces of alcohol daily:

yes
No

of magazines

none
one to three
four to six
seven to ten
eleven to fifteen
over fifteen

79.7%
20.3%

No
yes

Number
scribe:

0.3%
2.2%

Books purchased or read each month:

Customarily write to government

and elected officials:
yes
no

Fascist
Other

Classical
Rock 'n' Ron
Big Band
Country
Jazz
Pop
Folk
New Wave
Punk
other
no preference

31.3%
15.1%
11.0%
10.4%
10.2%
7.4%
7.2%
2.6%
1.2%
3.1%
0.5%

Page 21

THE ATHEIST NEXT DOOR

"The Atheist Next Door" is an attempt to supply information regarding
the contemporary Atheist, his feelings,
problems, and perspectives. And it is
written by the experts in this field:
everyday American Atheists. Each
month the life and opinions of an Atheist are spotlighted in this column through
the answers to a questionnaire. If you
are interested in being "The Atheist
Next Door," just write to: P.O. Box
2117, Austin, TX 78768-2117 and ask
for a questionnaire.
This month's "Atheist Next Door"
is thirty-six-year-old Robert S. Mangus,
Jr. who has been an active member of
American Atheists for eight years and
Executive Director of thf Michigan
Chapter of American Atheists for nearly five.
In your opinion, what is Atheism?
Everyone is an Atheist upon birth. That is,
a (without) theism (theology), without tenets derived by and for the purveyors of
religionisms. Religion is always learned! Atheism is conducting one's lifefrom personal
knowledge and experience on a moment -tomoment basis without a theological premise.
How did you become an Atheist?

esoteric empathy. My family accepts me as Do you feel that Atheism affects your
an Atheist; my activism, however, is reluc- day-to-day life? Your performance on
tantly tolerated. True friends accept me as the job or in personal relationships?
an Atheist; to act otherwise denies selfesteem and the enjoyment of living. I have
Atheism is a bona fide and demanding
been subjected to pernicious personal at- life-style. The hallmark and efficacy of Athetacks by co-workers, but for the most part, I ism is reason. Every waking moment deenjoy live-and-let-live relationships with co- . mands reasoning to resolve issues and probworkers. I don't fret over what "others"
lems that arise between people(s).
think about me. Whose life is it anyway?
How do you deal with traditionally religious activities or ceremonies, like marHas your weltanschauung caused you
riages or wakes?
any personal or professional problems?
One employer overtly threatened to terminate my employment on the basis of
statements attributed to me in a published
newspaper interview; any covert action by
other employers were well-covered up.
Do you feel that the general situation for
Atheists has grown better or worse in
recent years?
Atheists in the United States have seen
declining personal freedoms: due process,
free speech, and governmental injection of
religion into every sector. The mindless reelection of Reagan assures the process will
continue. Supreme Court "packing" (up to
four appointees) by Reagan could mean a
generation of tyranny!

I do not wittingly participate in religious

ceremonies. I do share, in a communal
sense, the joys and sorrows of natural life
events. Funerals are morbid and barbaric,
religious ceremonies, demeaning and nauseating. I wrote my own wedding ceremonies.
If you have children or intend to, how
did/are/will you deal with Atheism and
religion with them?
I encourage my children and stepchildren
to exercise thought and inquiry, freely and
without fear. I teach them by deed and word
that life, from birth through brain death, is a
natural human process of one choice after
another, mixed with emotions. IMPI

I was fortunate to have parents, collegeeducated teaching professionals, who were

Unitarian Universalists. They were openminded and respected their children (I'm the
eldest of seven) as sovereign individuals with
functional intellects. Always a freethinker, I
accept full responsibility for developing my
ethos. I observed and eshewed the neurosis
of religion and assumed personal responsibilitywith a strong sense of dignity and pride.
What do you consider to be specifically
atheist values and ethics?
My personal Atheist ethos is: utilizing my
reason to its fullest; interacting with other
people as equals; initiatingrelationships from
a theoretical "ground-zero"; asserting personal life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness on one's own terms, without physically
interfering with others; integrating and acting upon objective (scientifically demonstrable) and subjective (rational) elements of life.
What have reactions to your Atheism
been? From family, friends, co-workers?
As an Atheist (out-of-the-closet at age
twelve) activist and spokesperson, reactions
have been very broad and have run the
entire gambit: extreme overt castigation to
Page 22

March,1985

The American Atheist

THE PROBING MIND/Frank Zindler

MACULATE DECEPTION:
THE 'SCIENCE' OF CREATIONISM
yramid power, Bermuda and Devil's triPangles,
psychokinesis, astrology, flying
saucers, the Amityville horror, reincarnation, and iridology were just a few of the
topics covered in the course on pseudoscience I used to teach at a small college in
upstate New York. Many of the students
who enrolled in the course were already survivors of my courses in biology, zoology, or
psychobiology, and they brought a fair amount of sophistication to the research
projects they carried out for the course.
Almost every year - at the request of the
students - the topic of creation science was
added to the list of topics to be examined.
The better students rapidly discovered without any prompting from me - that
creationism differs from most of the other
pseudosciences in a rather fundamental(ist)
way. Whereas most pseudosciences - Velikovskyism, for example - are simply the
products of eccentric, quirky minds, creationism appears to be the result of unhealthy
amounts of distortion, deceit, and just plain
dishonesty on the part of its major proponents. It did not take students long to
discover that creationism is just a specialized branch of fundamentalist apologetics.
When one reads the creationist literature,
one quickly comes to see that deliberate
distortion - not just misunderstanding of
the facts - is a major characteristic of the
genre. Furthermore, unlike real science,
which is self-correcting and usually exposes
its own hoaxes quickly, creation "science"
either corrects its frauds not at all, or only
under irresistible pressure from real science.
Like cancer, creationist errors and distortions simply metastasize, becoming more
widely distributed and more deeply implanted.
A typical example of such metastatic
misdirection came to my attention just a
short while ago, when a creationist activist
criticized me in the letters column of one of
the Columbus newspapers. My opinions on
fossil men are of low credibility, he wrote,
especially my opinions on Peking Man. Making no attempt to obtain up-to-date information concernig recent Chinese studies and
referring to Marcellin Boule (a French paleoanthropologist who died in 1942), he took
me to task saying, "Boule, who examined
the Peking man site and the fossils, said the
fossils were from a monkey that probably
was killed for food."
I have met this particular critic, and Iam of

Austin, Texas

Predicting that my critic had been .led

astray by Gish, I reached for Gish's book,
Evolution? The Fossils Say No!, one of the
most popular of all books among creationists, which is to be found in many high
schools for use as an antidote to evolution.
The book appears in two versions: the
general edition (which contains Gish's actual religious beliefs) and the public school
edition (which contains only as much of this
with which Gish thinks he can get away.)
Turning to the section on Peking Man, I
found that Gish devotes considerable space
to Boule's alleged opinions on this genuine
connecting link between ape-like creatures
and humans.
On page 123 of Evolution? The Fossils
Say No!, (Public School Edition, CreationLife Publishers, San Diego, 1978), Duane
Gish says, "In a 1937 publication, Boule
referred to the Sinanthropus skulls as 'monkey-like' (36)." The reference to this quote
reads "36. M. Boule, L'Anthropologie, 1937,
p.21."
Again on page 129, Gish writes:
the opinion that he is an honest man who
would not himself deliberately fabricate such
an absurd claim. Being familiar with the 1957
English edition of Boule's famous paleoanthropology text (Fossil Men, co-authored
with Henri Vallois), I knew full well that
Boule had never said anything so stupid.
Indeed, on page 142 of the text we find the
statement:
Morphologically, there is not the
slightest doubt. Sinanthropus [Peking
Man] confirms and completes the
proof that these are creatures with
physical characters intermediate between the group of Anthropoid Apes
and the group of Hominians [modern
man and his closet relatives].
Ifmy critic did not get the idea of monkeyskulls from Boule himself, and if he did not
fabricate this notion himself, where did he
get it?
Evolutionists who are experienced in combatting the distortions and delusions of
creationism have an adage they use when
creationist material smells ranker than usual: "Cherchez la Gish!" - referring to
Duane Gish, the premier performing artist
of all creationism.
March,1985

In an article published in 1937 in

L'Anthropologie (p. 21), Boule wrote:
'To this fantastic hypothesis [of
Abbe Breuil and Fr. Teilhard de Chardin], that the owners of the monkeylike skulls were the authors of the
large-scale industry, I take the liberty
of perferring an opinion more in conformity with the conclusions from my
own studies, which is that the hunter
(who battered the skulls) was a real
man and that the cut stones, etc.,
were his handiwork [the nature of this
stone industry will be discussed later].'
A quick glance at page 21 of the Boule
article shows nothing like this quotation
anywhere on the page. Nothing about monkeys is to be found. Moreover, the complete
quotation is not to be found anywhere in the
entire article, ruling out the possibility that
Gish, having twice cited the wrong page
number, is merely quilty of sloppy scholarship.
On the preceding page, page 20, we do
find a fair portion of the text in question:
To this hypothesis, as fantastic as it
is ingenious, I may be permitted to
prefer one which seems to me to be
Page 23

just a satisfactory, being simpler and

more in conformity with the totality of
what we know: the hunter was a true
man, whose stone industry has been
found and who made Sinanthropus
his victim!
Assuming the material in square brackets
is material inserted by Gish - in conformity
with accepted scholarly practice - we still
must ask whence came the crucial phase,
"that the owners of the monkey-like skulls
were authors of the large-scale industry"?
That Gish (or a friend who could read
French) had indeed seen page 20 is evident
from his next paragraph, which gives a
reasonable translation for a phrase which I
have translated above: "more in conformity
with our whole body of knowledge." But
where - page 20 or anywhere in the article
- does Gish find justification for the conclusion of this paragraph:"
Sinanthropus
__. must have been a large monkey-like or
ape-like creature" [emphasis mine]?
Nowhere does Boule ever suggest that
Peking Man was monkey-like. Unlike Gish,
Boule actually was an expert in primate
anatomy and it is inconceivable that he
could have been so stupid as to suggest that
the Peking remains belonged to forty monkeys rather than to forty ape-men.
On page 125, we find Gish trying to
discredit Davidson Black, the discoverer of
Peking Man and the originator of that creature's scientific name, Sinanthropus pekinensis, by indirectly accusing him of dishonesty:
In their discussion of the relationship of Sinanthropus to Pithecanthropus (p. 141), Boule and Vallois almost
accuse Black of fraud, and at the very
least accuse him of total lack of objectivity and of twisting facts. Specifically, they say:
'Black, who had felt justified in forging the term Sinanthropus to designate one tooth, was naturally concerned to legitimizethis creation when
he had to describe a skull cap ... '
In other words, since Black had
stuck his neck out on the basis on a
single tooth (remember "Nebraska
Man"!) and had erected the Sinanthropus category around that tooth,
he felt compelled to color the facts to
fit his scheme. What confidence can
we have, therefore, in any of the
descriptions or models of Sinanthropus from the hand of Dr. Black?
In this passage, Boule is not accusing
Black of fraud or of incompetence. What we
have here is a typical scholar's quibble - a
type of argument repeated thousands of
times per year in scientific literature dealing
with the classification of plants and animals.

Page 24

The question was simply this: "Does the

Peking Man differ enough from Java Man to
warrant its being classified in its own genus?
Black thought yes; Boule thought no. But far
from accusing Black of "total lack of objectivity," Boule even points out that Dubois the discoverer of the first Java Man remains
- also did not feel that the two types of
ape-men should be classified in the same
genus. Boule makes it clear that the clinching argument against Peking Man constituting his own genus separate from Java Man
was von Koenigswald's later discoveries of
better preserved Java Man skulls.
Gish apparently did not understand the
import of Boule's use of the word forging in
the phrase, "forging the term Sinanthropus." In the French edition, the verb forger is
used. According to the fourth meaning for
the term given by Cassell's French Dictionary ,forger can mean "to coin" a word or
a term. How sinister of Black to coin a word!
We may wonder if, in the schools where
this book is recommended for student reading, one can reasonably suppose that the
average - indeed the above-average student is likely to be able to see through this
misrepresentation or whether the student is
going to think that there is an element of
fraud behind the suject of Peking Man? Is the
average student going to be able to read
French and other languages in order to
check up on the extravagant claims made in
the creationist literature he is given to read
as a counterweight to genuine science?
Lest readers think that this complaint
about monkey skulls is just another example
of a scholar's quibble which is of no great
significance in the overall scheme of science
education, I must inform them that this type
of twisting, misrepresentation, and misunderstanding is the warp and woof of socalled "creation science." If everything were
quoted in context, with fullunderstanding of
the import of the source material, there
would be no such thing as creationism
books.
In the Gish quotation above, we are asked
to remember "Nebraska Man." Unless one
has read Gish's books or the Chick comic
book Big Daddy, this is not very easy to do,
since almost no scientists of my generation
have ever heard of the creature.
Nebraska Man is a straw man, since no
textbook mentions him, no evolutionary
theory is based upon him, and no evolutionist anywhere has considered him to be a
primate since Beethoven's Birthday in 1927!
Nevertheless, Gish delights in citing the
saga of Nebraska Man as an example of
what a bunch of dummies evolutionists are:
In 1922, a tooth was discovered in
western Nebraska which was declared
by Henry Fairfield Osborn, one of the
most eminent paleontologists of that
day, and several other authorities, to

March,1985

combine the characteristics of chimpanzee, Pithecanthropus, and Man! ..

Osborn and his colleagues could
not quite decide whether the original
owner of this tooth should be designated as an ape-like man or aman-like
ape. He was given the designation
Hesperopithecus haroldcookii and became known popularly as Nebraska
Man. An illustration of what this creature and his contemporaries supposedly looked like was published in the
Illustrated London News . _. In 1927,
after further collection and studies
had been carried out, it was decided
that Hesperopithecus was neither a
man-like ape nor an ape-like man, but
was an extinct peccary, or pig! I
believe this is a case in which a
scientist made a man out of a pig and
the pig made a monkey out of the
scientist!" [pp. 119-120, Evolution?
The Fossils Say No!, pub. schl. ed.]
Space does not permit an examination of
the fascinating reasons why a great scientist
- who as early as 1907 had noted the
deceptive similarity between the molar teeth
of certain fossil pigs and those of primates should have made such a mistake. We may
only mention that the tooth in question was
extremely worn, and that in 1922 fossil
primate and pig teeth with which it could be
compared were only slightly more common
than hen's teeth in 1922!
Suffice it to note that the Illustrated London News was not a science journal but
rather an upper-class version of a supermarket tabloid, devoted to the doings of the
Prince of Wales, Lord Mountbatten, and the
rest of the flapper-era equivalents of Chuck
and Lady Di. Even so, Professor Elliot
Smith, the author of the popular article took
care to warn his readers concerning the
illustration accompanying it:
Mr. Forrestier [the artist] has made
a remarkable sketch to convey some
idea of the possibilities suggested by
this discovery. As we know nothing of
the creature's form, his reconstruction is melely the expression of an
artist's brilliant imaginative genius. But
if, as the peculiarities of the tooth
suggest, Hesperopithecus was a primitive forerunner of Pithecanthropus,
he may have been a creature such as
Mr. Forestier has depicted. [Illus.Lon.
News, June 24, 1922, pp. 942-3]
Of course, Gish knows all this, and he
knows also that Nebraska Man lived in the
scientific literature for only five years, that
the same scientists who created him were
the ones who discovered their error, and
that they confessed their error in Science,
one of the most prestigious scientific

The American Atheist

journals in the world. Gish knows the

error was not discovered by creationists since creationists do not make scientific
discoveries - and that this is actually an
edifying example of the self-correcting nature of real science and of the integrity and
veracity of several of its practitioners. But if
Gish had been accurate (let alone fair) in his
account, he would have had no opportunity
to make his pig-monkey- scientist quip and
his intended teenage readers might not get
the impression that scientists are a bungling
bunch of bimbos.
Getting back to the letter criticizing me in
the paper, my critic also claimed, "The Java
man evolutionary link was rejected by such
authorities on skulls as Marcellin Boule, who
said it was a skull cap of a gibbon."
Now, of course, Boule never said this at
all. What Boule's textbook actually said (p.
118) was:
Taken as a whole, these [skull]
structures are very similiar to those of
chimpanzees and gibbons. Dubois said
that the skull of Pithecanthropus
might be compared to a Gibbon skull
enlarged to twice its size. Figs. 75 and
76 show that, in its characters, the
Trinil skull-cap is really intermediate
between that of an Ape, like the Chimpanzee, and that of a Man of really
low status, such as Neanderthal
Man." [emphasis mine]

the fact that he had possessed the

Wadjak skulls for over thirty years.
His failure to reveal this find to the
scientific world at the same time he
exhibited the Pithecanthropus bones
can only be labeled as an act of
dishonesty and calculated to obtain
acceptance of Pithecanthropus as an
ape-man.
The reader has no way of knowing unless he does a great deal of library work that the skulls were not at "approximately
the same level." The Java Man skull was
found at Trinil in Central Java, and the
Wadjak skulls were found miles away at
Wadjak, near Tulung Agung on the south
coast of Java. The geological levels were
different. The Wadjak skulls (although highly fossilized) were associated with the remains of a modern Javan fauna, and Java
Man was associated with many extinct
forms. Dubois was looking for the "the
missing link," and the Wadjak skulls (which
were considered to be intermediate between
Neanderthals and Australian aborigines in
form) were of little interest at the time.

So where did my critic get the gibbon

idea?
Gish (p.115)gives an out-of-context quote
of the first part of this passage ("Taken as a
whole, these structures are very similiar to
those of chimpanzees and gibbons"), but
conveniently leaves out the last part ("is
really intermediate between that of an Ape ..
. and that of Man ... "). Thus my critic
drew the logical - but false - conclusion
that Boule had diagnosed Java Man as just
another ape. My critic, like so many other
honest -but-ignorant grass-roots creationists,
was just one more innocent person gored by
Gish's 'bull'!
Gish's treatment of Eugene Dubois, the
discoverer of the first Java Man skull, is
quite outrageous. On page 114, Gish alleges:

Dubois concealed the fact that he

had also discovered at nearby Wadjak
and at approximately the same level
two human skulls (known as the Wadjak skulls) with a cranial capacity of
about 1550-1650c.c., somewhat above
the present human average. To have
revealed this fact at that time would
have rendered it difficult, ifnot impossible, for his Java Man to have been
accepted as a "missing link." It was
not until 1922 [actually 1921, FRZ],
when a similiar discovery was about to
be announced, that Dubois revealed

Austin, Texas

Moreover, William Howells (Mankind in

the Making, 1967, p. 154, in a book cited
(and presumably read) by Gish, tells us:
. _ .a Mr. van Rietschoten found a
fossilized skull at Wadjak in neighboring Java. It was passed on by the
Royal Society in Batavia to Dubois __.
He [Dubois] went to Wadjak and
found another of the same sort himself!They were interesting and like the

Marcb,1985

living natives of Australia in appearance. But they were not missing links
- not what he was seeking.
So if Dubois was guilty of "an act of
dishonesty," van Rietschoten was too, along
with the Royal Society. But the fact of the
matter is there was no conspiracy to suppress the Wadjak skulls. The true story and it is certainly known to Gish as well as to
competent scholars - is actually a rather
tragic one: The controversy surrounding his
discovery drove Dubois, if not quite mad, at
least into a paranoid state of seclusion.
Howells (whom Gish supposedly has read)
describes the situation on page 155 of his
book:
Dubois began to feel an identity
with the fossil. Its detractors were his
own enemies; his anthropological colleagues all became suspect, and Dubois was not at home to them any
longer. And at last he withdrew the
bones from scientific contact. He took
them to his house at Zijlweg 77, Haarlern; he put them in a box; he took up
his dining-room floor and buried the
box in the ground below it; he put
back boards, liner, and carpet; and he
ate his meals above the Java man for
many long years. Jealous adversaries,
he had come to think, might even steal
the precious fossils. For all those
years he kept the Wadjak skulls in a
glass case, but with newspaper pasted
to the inside of the glass, so that the
skulls could not see out, and nobody
else could see in. Only in the 1920's
did he relent and expose the Wadjak
crania to science. Later still, he was
persuaded to put the remains of Pithecanthropus in the museum at Leiden,
in a small safe inside a larger safe -.
Gish's mistreatment of this unhappy man
is disgraceful. He will stop at nothing, it
would seem, for the cause of converting
children to creationism.
Should books like this be bought and
recommended for student study? Ifschools
are willing to purchase all the source materials quoted in the creationist literature
and have students learn to track down the
mistakes of creationists, Iwould be tempted
to say "Great! Do it!" But the sober fact is
that there is not enough time for such
exercises, regardless of how exciting and
stimulating they may be. Too little time
already is spent on learning the fundamentals of science, and to lose more time in the
exposure of pseudoscience cannot be justified.
The deceptions of Gish and his creationist
cohorts are not restricted, however, to their
printed productions. Their procedures are
even more outrageous on the lecture podium and on the debate circuit. Usually their

Page 25

practice of genuine creationism - creating

"facts" ex nihilo to support the exigencies of
the moment - goes unnoticed and unavenged. But once in a while they get their
due.
Robert Schadewal, a talented science
writer and debater, and John Patterson, an
irrepressable professor of engineering at
Iowa State University, published a joint
letter in the Spring/Summer 1984 issue of
Origins Research (a creationist publication)
in which they accused Gish of lyingon a 1982
PBS telecast. In that program Gish was

presented with biochemical evidence that

human and chimpanzee proteins are extremely similiar and, in some cases, identical
- the implication being that apes and men
are very closely related. Gish countered
these data with the claim that there were
other proteins which showed that chickens
and bullfrogs were closer to men than the
corresponding chimpanzee proteins.
Since that PBS program, scientists have
pressed Gish incessantly to reveal his
sources and identify these marvelous proteins. At a recent "Bible-Science Conference" held in Cleveland (see my article
"Report From the Center of the Universe,"
American Atheist, November, 1984), Patterson and Schadewald pressed Gish once

again for his proteins, only to be told that he

has no responsibility to produce them.
We hope that henceforth every scientist
who debates Gish begins every speech with
a request for the protein sequences: "Come
on, Duane! We're interested in bull-frogs.
Not just your plain old bull!" II

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Formerly a professor of biology and
geology, Frank R. Zindler is
now a science writer. A member
of the American Assoc. for the
Advancement of Science, the
American Chemical Soc., and
the American Schools of
Qriental Research. He is also
co-chairman of the Ohio Committee
of Correspondence on Evolution
Education, and Director of the
Central Ohio Chapter of
American Atheists

--

----The toothfairY must be a fundamentalist

-I Slota TOOTH for a tooth.
Page 26

March, 1985

The American Atheist

HISTORICAL NOTES

100 Years Ago ...

The following appeared in the March 28th
edition of The Truth Seeker under the title
"Freethought in the Wisconsin Legislature":
"While New York is seemingly captured
by the church, and Christianity is being engrafted upon the statutes as a part of the
state's corporate being without much opposition, it is pleasant to know that there are
a few men in the country holding official
positions who are opposed to giving public
money to the clergy.
"It has been the practice, heretofore, for
the Wisconsin legislature to invite the resident clergy of Madison to open the sessions
of the senate and house with prayer. This
year, when the usual resolution to that effect
was brought up, it met with considerable
disfavor. In the senate Mr. N. D. Comstock
led the opposition. He said he considered
prayer in that body to be an invasion of the
rights of conscience, and was opposed to
forcing senators to listen to orthodox sentiments they might not believe in. The resolution, however, was passed ...
"Mr. C. E. Estabrook, in the house, led the
opposition to prayer. Altough there was no
debate on the subject, the vote shows, says
the Milwaukee Sentinel, that the assembly
contains a larger number of persons tinctured with Infidelity than in former years ...
"Subsequently Senator Ginty offered a
resolution in the senate ridiculing the prayermen by providing chaplains for all the courts
of justice, including justice courts, county
boards of supervisors, town boards, common councils, and boards of Aldermen, etc.,
etc., on the ground that, if praying was a
good thing for the legislature, it was equally
good and desirable for all public functions.
"From information from a private source,
we know there are other members of the
Wisconsin legislature who, had they voted
as they believed, would have been included
in the honorable list of Nays. But hankering
for future votes and elections, and fearing
the loss of them ifthey voted right, they sunk
manhood in the dirty pool of politics and
personal ambition. Such men are what the
chairman of the League executive committee would call mollusks. However, under the
stimulating influence of the braver ones,
they may, in time, find their backbones ... "
60 Years Ago ...
E. Haldeman-Julius published the following words under the title "Church Progress x,
in the March, 1925 issue of his journal Haldeman-Julius Monthly.
"Up bobs an earnest Methodist reader,
Austin, Texas

full of grace and good intentions, and tells

me that the Church has made progress. It is
not the institution that it was in the days
when a serious issue with the theologians
was whether God liked better the taste of a
heretic stewed or fried. We can agree that
Reason is safer than when the Church
stood, dripping sword aloft, on the neck of
mankind. We know that the Church works
less havoc and hates less successfully than
when it was in power; and we know, too, that
we enjoy this comparative safety simply
because the Church is not wholly in power,
although it is not powerless. But progress in
the Church? That is another question. We
may consider one example of this boasted
progress. Not long ago the Methodist Church
finallyreached the point of declaring that it is
no longer a sin to dance. Isn't that remarkable? Don't you feel dizzy when you read of
such swift, amazing, defiant progress? Yes,
the Methodist bishops have at last told us
that "the poetry of motion" that artistic,
joyous expression that is as old as the
human race - is not a mark of wickedness.
That's CHURCH PROGRESS, brethern.
That shows how the Church keeps pace
with human evolution, and even steps daringly and jazzily ahead of it. When one
com templates the wonders of science; when
one beholds the record of the artistic creations of man; when ones sees how man has
devoloped standards of ethics, governmental institutions, complex social machinery,
infinite and subtle relationships of every
kind, and immense agencies of education when one view the spectacle of ordinary
human progress, it is only then that one can
properly appreciate how very extraordinary
is the record of Church Progress."
35 Years Ago ...
At one time, the Progressive World, the
monthly journal of the United Secularists of
America, featured "The Question Box", a
column much like this journal's "Ask A.A."
One of the questions answered in the March
1950 issue was:
"Question: 'Why are so many progressiveminded freethinkers afraid to speak out and
let their beliefs or unbeliefs be known?'
"- Thomas Buckley, Ohio
"Answer: There are doubtless many reasons and the reasons differ with different
persons. Some people are just naturally
timid about expressing their private convictions on controversial matters. Some are
afraid of forfeiting the approbation of their
associates. Some do not realize, perhaps,
the need for "speaking out" for the cause of
free thought and free speech. And some
March, 1985

don't like to take a chance on losing their

jobs. A poor man with a family to support in
a time when jobs are hard to get knows the
importance of keeping his mouth shut on
such matters. The job hunters know this
also, or ifthey don't they willlikely find it out
soon enough. Freethought cannot flourish
so well where freethought means suicide.
Fortunately there are exceptions to the rule,
but the general rule is that freedom to think
is regarded as a luxury by the man suffering
from the belly pains of hunger and the
prospects of having his family evicted from
their home. Maybe this is something for
freethinkers to think about - with due
caution!
25 Years Ago ...
The March 25th, 1960 edition of The Freethinker, published from London, printed the
following letter from the Secretary of the
National Secular Society, of England, to
"prominent politicians, religionists, newspapers, etc."
"Dear Sir or Madam,
We want to draw your attention to the
very serious dangers inherent in Sir Leslie
Plummer's "Racial and Religious Insults"
Bill, whereby "Any person who insults publiclyby speech or by writing or by illustration
or advisedly incites another person publicly
to insult any person or persons because of
their race or religion shall be guilty of an
offence under this Act," as shall be "Any
person who prints, publishes, distributes or
circulates any written material or illustration
insulting to any person or persons because
of their race or religion ... "
"... but the passing of such a Bill might,
we think, have very grave consequences on
the important civil liberties of freedom of
speech and publication, particularly in the
field of religious criticism.
"Consider, for example, one of our own
National Secular Society speakers who, in
Voltairean fashion, ridicules an aspect of
Christianity that a believer holds dear. May
not a Christian feel 'insulted?' May not the
same apply to the publication of a religious
satire? It does seem to us that, in order to
meet a specific problem, anti-Semitism, too
little thought has been given to the way in
which the proposed Billcould be interpreted
... For years we have been trying to abolish
the Blasphemy laws; now, in effect they are
being extended ... "
"Yours faithfully,
"National Secular Society,
Colin McCall, Secretary."

Page 27

WHILE HELL FREEZES OVER

s the winter of 1984-85. An unusual chill
Itigrips
the continental United States. Indeed, the chill extends throughout most of
the northern hemisphere. Places that are
usually regarded as retreats from ordinary
winter harshness are themselves blanketed
by record- breaking cold. Sub- zero temperatures alter even the elaborate multi-milliondollar presidential coronation - how more
symbolically can it be demonstrated that
"things are tough all over."
It is at times such as this, when moving
about is physically restricted by ice and
snow, that people have limited opportunities
to sit quietly and reflect on situations that
might otherwise slip by without notice.
Today, in the lives of busy people, the
usual humming vibrations of daily events
ordinarily offer only fleeting glances of the
social trends and interactions which will
soon become the history of their culture.
Through closer examinations, with time to
think and evaluate the events, a clearer
picture of society is occasioned.
The temporary beauty of the snow that
presently blankets my yard has caused me
to understand more completely some of the
reasons why people are often blinded to
reality. The crisp white sheet molds and
contours even over the weeds in the vacant
surrounding lots and down the hillside
slopes. It creates a seemingly untroubled
picture worthy of viewing, and it provides
poets and writers a time to work creatively
at their trade or, perhaps, allows revelers a
day to enjoy the majesty of classical winter
regale.
Why then should I name this article,
"While Hell Freezes Over"? Perhaps it is
because my appetite for inquisitive understanding tempts me to lift the edge of the
elegant white blanket so as to reassure
myself about the cause and nature of each of
the lumps that I see on the surface. I have
never agreed that beauty is only skin deep.
Tome true beauty is very penetrating. But
. then - so is true ugliness.
With this in mind, I try to see beyond the
translucent surface of society. Whether or
not I am successful determines, I suppose, if
my written comments willbe worth the time
anyone spends reading them. Nature provides a cyclical system from which nothing is
excused. Everything, both people and planets, comes into one state of existence and
then eludes to some subsequent transformPage 28

ed state. Whatever the memory of that one

existence might be, no one can deny that it
represents a true history of the era. But what
if that history becomes placated by human
vanity? What ifwe never become aware that
the beautiful, snow-covered social scene
actually conceals an open garbage landfill
underneath? What ifour mental images, like
the "magic mirror on the wall," reflect only
the fictitious beauty that humans like to
imagine?
I hear the gutteral sounds of the gorging
conservative jackals as they drool over a
land-slide electorial kill, and I try to peer
under the frenzy to see what is actually being
consumed. I am not surprised to see
glimpses of torn and bloody housing and
agriculture programs; energy and development grants; state, local, and educational
aid; job, food, and social service help and a
host of other totally "communistic" ideas
that have "corrupted" our system of free
enterprise. But you know what else I see
ripped and dismembered in the pile? I see
the bare bones of a once idealistic Small
Business Administration program. Do any
of the shoe-string-funded, amateur "captains of business" know the intended purpose of the SBA? It was intended to aid
those who wanted to become legitimate
players in the economic system we lovingly
call free American enterprise. So, not only is
the independent farmer on the endangered
species list now, but joining the ranks of the
"unnecessary" willbe the independent truckers, marketers - thousands of truly small
business people. Of course, anyone who can
March,1985

afford to pay corporate banking finance

charges, while risking at the same time the
regular dangers of walking the tight-rope of
new business, can avail themselves of the
services of various branches of the grand
American banking conglomerates: the true
"captains" of the business world.
It may take awhile for those who do not
really understand the baron/serf connection
that has always existed in every society.
Perhaps it bears repeating again: "There are
the masses who owe - and there are
masters who own."
There was a time during the industrial
revolution when a relatively small number of
hard-nosed entrepreneurs, aided by some
unique technologically conceived ideas,
were able to market products or services
that immediately established business empires which soon out distanced most com.petition. A motion picture empire grew out
of the era. It successfully turned the eyes of
the public away from the pains of reality by
Hollywoodizing the ongoing American saga.
The question remains: How many railroads,
factories, or industries does the average middleclass American own? A more interesting
question might be how many bureaucrats
and politicians does the "average" billionaire
own? An unfair question, you say? Do you
know the going rate for campaigning for
political offices these days - or am I the only
person who reads the newspaper?
I suppose that right about now there may
be another, and perhaps even more relative
question in the minds of some of you - what
does this have to do with Atheism? The
The American Atheist

answer is quite clear. It is found in the

meaning of Atheism which, after all, is
synonymous with reality. If our perceptions
can be so noticably misdirected by the
glossing of the true history of our nation, can
we expect that they willbe any different with
regard to our continuing methods of decision making and of the education of future
generations of people who will inhabit this
world? Like Alice in Wonderland, we have
come to this place called the "New American Patriotism," followingthe rah-rah cheerleading of an ex-actor. The "haves" have
essentially been able to forget the plight of
the "have-nots." Twelve milliondollars worth
of "inaugural balls" - two hundred and
seventy-seven more billions of dollars worth
of "defense" have closed our eyes to a
starving Africa and an impossibly anguished
Central and South America. We may not be
able to cure their problems but, at the
slightest provocation, we could surely-ashell blow them away! And who is paying for it
all - the barons or the serfs?
There is an unwarranted feeling of pride
and security which is again in vogue in our
nation. It happens quite frequently when we
get our patriotic dander up. When it happens we usually elect a "Richard Nixon" or
tilt at a Vietnamese windmill. After such
episodes we seem to return to sanity for a
time as if someone, hearing our frightful
screams, had entered our nightmarish bedrooms and turned on the light of reality.
With sweaty palms we regain our composure until the next time. Yet, it seems that
our horror episodes are beginning to bunch
more closely - at a rate paralleling our everincreasing numbers.
I received a letter recently from a man in
Canada. (Originally he was from Germany.)
He stated something which should be very
pertinent to the concerns of all Atheists. I
quote:
You are allstrong individuals in The
Center, as we were in the thirties, in
Germany. As a young student Ijoined
the Freidenkers. While we were debating and writing about symptoms the
steamroller went over us. How could
that have happened? The question
was asked a thousand times. Today I
know, we were more a bohemian club
where the intellectuals tickled each
other, with exceptions, of course.
Don't kid yourself for a moment that it
could not happen in America ... IfThe
Center is secure and on a broad base
then is the time for real education.H.J.W.
How often we have tried to say the same
things to the American Atheist community!
And, also how often we find ourselves
talking to doubting countenances, empty
chairs, partisan groups - ultimately more
interested in some benign cause program-

Austin, Texas

is because of my lack of interest in what has

or philosophical procrastinator/agitators.
been described to me, in the words of Mr.
It is not at all surprising that Mr. H. J. W.
Schramm, as "Buck Rogers science" should be incensed at the events of pre-war
Germany. It is entirely conceivable that he . something I can do without. The idea of
"generating space-time, matter, and everyalso was proud of his country and very
thing else from nothingness" is neither scipatriotic before he realized that situations,
entific nor amusing. If I should wish to be so
unguarded, can change amazingly quickly.
amused, I have simply to turn on one of the
He, as do we, probably felt that "hell would
popular science-soaps on T.V. and munch
freeze over" before his proud Germany
on popcorn while being entertained.
would ever stumble and fall again.
The inference that "something" can be
Conservatism and economic elitism are
not, however, the only areas that are in a derived from "nothingness" is not new to
human imagination. It is as old as religion. In
current, quick-chilling state. I was also reminded of the deteriorating condition of fact, it is religion. In case I have never stated
my perceptions of the. difference between
natural knowledge within our nation by yet
religion and reality (Atheism) clearly, let me
another letter I received from a member and
close associate from New Jersey. This parrun through it once again - quickly. Religion is fostered by a particular philosophical
ticular friend/member shares with me a
concept called idealism. Simply put, idealconcerned interest in what she describes as
ism states that the idea preceded the brain;
"the new physics." I hope, however, to be
able to convince her that, in reality, there is a "thought" issued forth matter, i.e. organic
cells! In other words a (divine) idea is
no "new physics." There are only newly
capable of "creating" the organic substances
perceived understandings of the same "old"
of living tissue (or anything else, presumphysics that has always governed nature.
ably). More correctly, this philosophy is
Only perceptions change - the rules by
called absolute idealism. In south Texas we
which the "universe" exists are inviolate. At
(Atheists) call it horse crap! In opposition to
any rate, she sent me a copy of a book
idealism, Atheism is an acceptance of the
review covering the recent release of two
materialist (philosophy) or its direct descenbooks: Superjorce (The Search/or a Grand
dent, scientific materialism, which states
Unified Theory 0/ Nature) by Paul Davies,
that, so long as matter (and/or its tranforand The Particle Connection by Christine
mation to energy) has always existed, it is
Sutton. The review was issued by none
understandable that the brain developed in a
other than the prestigious New York Times
(therefore) natural state and subsequently
Book Review. This particular review was
became able to have - that's right - ideas!
authored by one David Schramm, Louis
It is not surprising that religionists are
Block Professor of Physical Science at the
attempting to infiltrate and influence the
Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of
various branches of knowledge. They have
Chicago. To say that I was astonished by
made other efforts lately with their equally
some of its language would be quite inadeimbecilic "scientific creationism" scam. Do
quate. I was staggered by the incredible
not think badly of them, however. Rememstatements of its two opening paragraphs:
ber that it is their insane duty to bring to the
world - the Word!
The benediction from Star WarsWhat bothers me most is that they have
"may the force be with you" - is no
the money, the machinery, and the ignolonger science fiction. There is a superrance of the majority of "the masses"
force that encompasses all forces and
through which they can pipeline their archaparticles. This "holy grail," which
ic garbage to us all.
Einstein searched for and failed to
So you see, it is quite possible that the
find, is finally being unveiled. This
world may indeed suffer another Ice Age-a
ultimate force seems not only to enmental ice age wherein humanity willsuffer a
compass the known forces, but also
frozen inability to think empirically and
to explain the origin of the universe
correctly. From what I can ascertain, hell is
itself. Its existence alone can enable
freezing over at this moment. I only hope
space-time, matter, and everything
that, as in the past, a releasing thaw will
else to be generated from nothingeventually follow. 1..4QP1
ness.
These ideas are not the preachings
of some Himalayan mystics but come
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
from respected physicists and cosmologists. We seem to be living
The "common sense" man of Atheism,
through a scientific revolution that
Mr. Tholen is the product of
may surpass the conceptualization of
the GuH Coast marshes of Texas.
relativity and quantum mechanics at
When he's not slaving over
the beginning of this century.
the American Atheist
as its Assistant Editor,
I have read neither of the two books in
he's writing poetry of which
question, and I doubt that I shall. This is not
an Atheist movement can be proud.
because of any lack of interest in physics. It

March,1985

Page 29

POETRY

A CHANGE OF CHANNELS
Reverend Telly is a people hater
probably a closet masturbatorA miserable creature, a simple creep,
no one for whom we'd care to weep,
A shame to have to live with such trash,
to watch his poor victims twists and thrash,
about in the little webs he weaves,
and taste the bitter taste he leaves.
Better to learn what's bright and gay,
what's filled with love and light of day.
We waste our time on such as he
no matter what his place in history.

FUNNY THOUGHTS?
Tiny ant, upon the ground
are you praying still?
What lofty thoughts run through your brain
tell us your metaphysics if you will?

Time would be far better spent,

if we could only circumvent
the merely necessary, merely must,
and let the have-to's gather dust.
.
Charles L. Carr

TV PREACHER
TV preacher burning books
Hanging freedom on a hook
Destroy Destroy Destroy
All sin
Like Adolfs simple foolish kin
Praise bombs of atoms to resist
Those dreaded, dreaded communists
Those evil, evil Atheists
Those ones of difference IAIhopersist
TV preacher burning books
Judging people by their looks
Repress Repress Repress
The mind
From ever thinking what to find
Curse they who try to modernize
Your theories that you fertilize
Your ways you tend to mesmerize
Your group who wants to polarize
L. Marcinek

Slimy worm, fisher's bait

to church do you take your kin?
And when you meet another worm
do you think of mortal and venial sin?
Oh slippery fish in the murky depths
do you often stand and stare?
And with little ones do you rush to a priest
wanting to baptize with air?
Kindly porpoise, friendly and free,
do you remember Noah's ark?
And as you breath your last few breaths
do you dream of reincarnation as a shark?
Stealthy lioness, mistress of the plain,
to all is known your will,
with jaws clenched firmly at a victim's throat
do you think of the commandment Thou
Shalt Not Kill?
Sniffing canine, marker of scents,
Whose coat is shaven and shorn
when you're out for a walk and you find a
mate
does it matter if she's a Cancer or Capricorn?
And what of we sapiens, lovers of power,
why do we hold and clutch?
I've a sneaking suspicion that if the truth be
known
man is the animal who thinks too much,
Edward Krall

Page 30

THE SALVATION OF ST. BESS

OR
TH' CREATION OF ST. PADDY
When Paddy th' Drunkard arrived in St. Bess
Th' whole town was sure in a heck of a mess
No angel, no tourists - my god, what a plight
For Bessie th' Angel was nowhere in sight
There were no tourist dollars - not even a cent
Not a man in a hundred could half-meet his rent
Depression had hit 'em (they'd tried prayer and tears)
But Bessie their angel'd been absent for years
Well, Paddy th' Drunkard arrived just in time
Drank a gallon of whiskey and chased it with wine
He saw Mary and Jesus and angels galore
And St. Bess wasn't short of those tourists no more
Paddy died of VD but they claimed he was pure
(Like so many church stories it was just plain manure)
But they renamed St. Bess and it's now called St. Paddy
(They tell all sorts of tales of that virtuous laddie)
If you go to St. Paddy you can visit his tomb
See th' spot where he spit and made nine roses bloom
For five dollars more you may kiss his pet cat
And sit in th' outhouse where Paddy once sat John B. Denson

March, 1985

The American Atheist

REPORT FROM INDIA/Margaret Bhatty

A God That Failed

Krishnamurti, described by one writer
rather strangely as "the last of the
mystics," is quite unlike the normal breed of
god-creeps India spawns. Now ninety years
old, he remains an iconoclast. He spurns
religious ritual and idol worship, denounces
organised religion and gurus, and claims
there is no god, no heaven, no hell, no past,
no after-life.
This article is not about Jiddu Krishnamurti's modest message but about the remarkable frauds who tried to shape him into
a new messiah, a role he rejected outright at
the age of 35. The cult was the Theosophical
Society, of which small splinter groups still
survive today.
The Theosophical Society was founded
by the flamboyant fraud Helena Petrova
Blavatsky. Born in 1831 in the Ukraine, she
had a bizarre career as medium, magician,
and bigamist in Constantinople, Cairo, Russia, Paris, and finallyNew York. In 1874,she
met Co!. Henry Steel Olcott at a spiritual
seance in Vermont. So impressed was he by
her "powers" that he was prepared to abandon his wife and children and endure her
massive build, heavy Russian accent, foghorn voice, frizzy hair, bright red shirts, and
her addiction to pot.
The Theosophical Society was founded in
1875. Over the years Blavatsky grew in
wisdom and understanding, adding cabalism, numerology, prophecy; astrology, and
other trivia to her uneducation, along with
more weird wisdom like the Hindu concept
of rebirth and karma. She claimed she was in
touch with Maha-atmas (Great Spirits) who
kept up a coded system of communication
with .her and lived on the lofty plateau of
Tibet - a place much too far for any skeptic
to go out and check.
Declaring themselves the "Theosophical
twins," Blavatsky and Olcott came ashore at
Bombay in December, 1898. They toured
the country and created a considerable stir.
Blavatsky enlisted the help of a house servant who knew a lot of parlor tricks, and
table-rapping became the rage. In northern
India, in the Himalayas, she was very close
indeed to her Mahatmas. Astral bells pealed
near the ceiling and moved about darkening
drawing-rooms where she held seances.
Spirits rapped on the furniture and, with
unconscious humor, even rapped on the
bald pates of high government British officials present in the assembly. We're not told
whether they rang hollow.

Austin, Texas

Finding the entire freaky scenario in India

entirely suited to their absurd antics, they
established the headquarters of the Hindu
Theosophical Society at Adyar near Madras. A Buddhist Society was also set up in
Ceylon. The membership swelled with Madame Blavatsky in charge of the special
effects department - the Esoteric Section.
What was their belief? Not much different
from other cults. They preached a Universal
Brotherhood of Humanity and the law of
Karma, in which the ego is recycled until it
reaches the Path of Discipleship eventually
leading to Adepthood and membership of
the Great White' Brotherhood of perfect
beings. Later, Blavatsky evolved more complex concepts from her drug-induced hallucinations, the chief being the imminent arrival of another messiah as World Teacher.
Also, his advent always ushered in a new
sub-race. This time it was to be the sixth
sub-race of the fifth root-race that was to
develop in Australia.
Among the ones who had achieved Adepthood there were some who preferred to
postpone taking their prizes and instead
stayed on among humans to help them along
the stony Path. These were two Mahatmas,
Master Morya and Master Kuthumi (Koot
Hoomi). They both live in Tibet, though I

(/,
\

imagine things must have changed somewhat for them after the Chinese occupation.
Ethically, Big Brother Kuthumi is a Kashmiri Brahmin and decidedly Aryan with fair
skin, sparking blue eyes and a long brown
beard. His friend Morya is a dark, handsome
Rajput prince with long black beard and
flashing eyes. Blavatsky met them often in
their human form which makes one suspect
she was probably onto something harder
than pot. She and Olcott also hobnobbed
with them on an astral level when the two
beamed in at Adyar in their etheric form.
Then they slipped through the keyhole into
the closed room and chatted with the Theosophical twins - at least, this is what
devotees were asked to believe, and so they
did.
Climbing higher up the ladder crowded
with glorious beings, at the very top of the
hierarchy is the World Teacher, the messiah, who is Christ to the West, Buddha to
the East, and Lord Maitreya to the Hindus.
This being has appeared already, once as
Krishna, once as Christ. It was now time for
him to make a third appearance on-stage,
but while he waited to be cued in, he was
living next door to Morya and Kuthami in a
small cottage with a beautiful garden somewhere in Tibet. Lord Maitreya was also very
handsome, but his taste in colors ran to
violet eyes and red-gold hair.
Blavatsky's declared mission now was to
prepare the world for the coming of the
messiah, Lord Maitreya. The upper story of
the bungalow at Adyar had an occult room
with a shrine covered with thick curtains. In
this the Mahatmas obligingly tossed answers on notes in reply to devotees' questions. The housekeeper at Adyar was Blavatsky's old friend from her days in Cairo,
Emma Cutting, now married to Coulomb, a
Frenchman. He looked after the estate while
she depositioned the missives in the shrine
through a sliding panel behind the shrine.
On a visit to London, Olcott and Blavatsky were grilled by the Society for Psy-

March, 1985

Page 31

chical Research and came off very poorly,

with Madame losing her temper when questioned too closely. Back in India, meanwhile,
the lidwas blown when the trustees accused
the Coulombs of embezzling the Society's
funds and expelled them from the premises.
They handed forty of Blavatsky's letters to
the press for publication. These gave details
on how to produce certain magical effects.
The Psychical Society promptly sent out a
Cambridge graduate, Richard Hodgson, who
questioned the Coulombs and some members. But when he finally got to examine the
upstairs shrine he found a freshly-plastered
wallin place of the secret panel. Handwriting
experts, however, established that the notes
written by the Mahatamas were in the hand
of Blavatsky and an Indian convert, Damodar.
Blavatsky returned from England shortly
after, bringing with her an ex-curate named
Charles W. Leadbeater, middle-aged and
with a sadistic penchant for debauching little
boys. She was now threatened with law suits
and disgrace because of the Coulombs'
expose, so the Society sent her back to
England where she settled until her death.
It was at this point that Annie Besant
made her debut, having already earned
considerable notoriety by her declared Atheism. But all the causes she supported she
did with great fervor, from feminism to birth
control, then socialism and finally spiritualism. Involved in a passionate affair with
playwright George Bernard Shaw at the
time, she fell under Blavatsky's spell and,
turned from socialism to theosophy. Shaw
confronted her and reminded her that Blavatsky had been exposed at a meeting of the
Psychical Society where he himself had been
present, but she refused to take it seriously.
"Why need you go to Tibet for a Mahatma?"
he cried facetiously. "Here and now is your
Mahatma. I am your Mahatma."
Besant toured the United States declaring
the imminent arrival of the messiah, and
after the old fraud Blavatsky succumbed to
'flu, she took on her mission of preparing the
world. Olcott remained president of the
Society until his death in 1907, and Besant
arrived in India and fervently embraced
Hinduism.
Today most Indians remember her for her
part in the freedom movement. She was
even elected President of the Indian Nation
Congress founded by Octavian AllenHume,
an Englishman sympathethic to the Indian
cause. Hume had also come under Blavatsky's spell, thrown up his job, and gone
offto Tibet to find her Mahatmas. He left the
Society a wiser man.
Besant concentrated her energies on finding a suitable candidate for messiahship. She
took a fourteen year old American lad with
his mother over to India but found that
Leadbeater had already found a likely messiah in an Indian boy named Jiddu Krishnamurti.
Born in May, 1895,in a hill-town some 150
miles north of Madras, Krishnamurti came
Page 32

to the Adyar ashram with his father and

brothers. Leadbeater was struck by the
"luminous aura" of the fourteen year old boy
and declared that he would be the World
Teacher. Nobody believed him. The boy
was moronic, shabby, and sickly, lagging
behind his classfellows and often cuffed
soundly for his stupidity.
Undaunted, Leadbeater now began making startling revelations. In the Society's
journal he declared the lad was a spiritual
being named Alcyone. Investigations of his
former existences turned up thirty incarnations, the first as early as 11,622 s.c. and
the most recent in A.D. 624. In eleven incarnations Alcyone had been female. In addition, Besant had been present in all these
former existences, along with others, under
outlandish pseudonyms.
Krishnamurti was now groomed for messiahship. Scrubbed, deloused, and dentally
braced, he was introduced to the English
language, with great care devoted to his
diction. Every night he made an astral trip to
Master Kuthumi's cottage in Tibet and
Leadbeater wrote down all he recalled in the
morning. This book; At The Feet Of The
Master, was Krishnamurti's first book. Today it runs in fiftyeditions in forty languages.
His father, an employee at the ashram,
resented the time spent with Leadbeater.
The ex-curate had already caused a scandal
by his homosexual activities among the boys
at the ashram. Krishnamurti's father tried
without success to get the boy out of the
curate's clutches. But Besant proved too
formidable for him.
Details were announced of the ritual for
the messiah's initiation, in which he would lie
naked on Besant's bed and Leadbeater
would lie on the floor for two nights and a
day. After this Krishnamurti supposedly
recalled conversations he'd had with Christ,
Buddha, and the Mahatmas. Besant's house
servant, however, said he had seen the pair
prancing about the room nude and some
rather un-messiahlike frolics in the bath.
Krishnamurti's father demanded the boy's
return, but Besant foiled his efforts. She now
announced the Order of the Star in the East.
Disciples came flocking. The organising secretary was A. E. Wodehouse, brother of the
famous P. G. He edited their quarterly. By
1928, 45,000 members had joined this moronic mob.
Besant took the messiah off to England to
open a new headquarters. Krishnamurti's
father filed a suit in 1913 to recover his son.
In his complaint he said he had actually seen
Leadbeater sodomizing his son. The house
servant was also called as witness. Besant
hers'elf argued the case in the Madras High
Court. Leadbeater was let off, and the boy
was declared a ward of the court. Undeterred, Besant went on to the privy council and
finallywon custody. But Krishnamurti's own
sympathies were with the Society, and he
broke with his father.
Launched as a god-man, he had a vast
March,1985

organization working to promote him. The

rich and the brainless thronged about him,
gifting him with money and real estate. He
was a failure in other areas, unable to get
through high school in one attempt and
refused admission to Oxford and Cambridge.
Public lectures, spiritual congresses, and
travel around the world now took up all his
time. He was fawned upon, imposed upon,
and overwhelmed. His frequent physical
collapses were discribed as psychic traumas. He hallucinated and spent sleepless
nights. Pushed beyond all endurance by
fakes, frauds, and freaks, he began to crack
up.
Somewhere in all the welter of fame,
money, and fraudulence, he had his moment
of truth. Turning on his creators, he suddenly declared he was not the World Teacher.
He was no teacher. Since the truth lies
within each of us no one can show anyone
the way.
Besant was appalled. She promptly thought
up a stop-gap savior in the person of a
famous dancer from Madras and declared
that she was a reincarnation of the Virgin
Mary! In 1929, at the age of thirty-five,
Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the
Star, returned the gifted real estate, threw
the other properties open to the public, and
declared his resignation from the Theosophical Society. There is no teacher, he said,
there are no students. Religion is a fake. God
does not exist.
The faithful scattered over the face of the
earth and survive today in small Theosophical societies around the world. Leadbeater died in 1934. Besant receded into
twilight in her closing years and died in 1933.
Hesketh Pearson, Bernard Shaw's biographer, tells of how the playwright met Krishnamurti once in Bombay. Shaw thought
Krishnamurti was the most beautiful human
he had ever seen. He also admired him for
his common sense and high character in
refusing to be a messiah. He asked how Mrs.
Besant was. "Very well, but at her great age
she cannot think consecutively," replied
Krishnamurti.
"She never could," whispered Shaw.
Krishnamurti smiled. ImPl

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In 1978 your editors
assisted by Joseph Edamaruku,
editor of an Indian atheist publication,
combed India seeking writers
who would consistently offer an
interpretation of
Indian religious events.
Margaret Bhatty, in Nagpur,
a well-known feminist journalist, agreed
that she would do so in the future.
She joined the staff of
the American Atheist in January, 1983.
The American Atheist

POTPOURRI
DO THE HEAVENS PROCLAIM THE GLORY OF GOD? / God-believers point to the night sky and insist that "the heavens proclaim
the glory of god." Yet, to the Atheist, the conclusion is quite different. What the Atheist sees are the blind forces of nature acting and reacting
without any evidence of cosmic guidance.
Our solar system exists in a vast, dark vacuum interspersed with gas, dust, and cosmic radiation. In the center of this system is a huge
nucleus known as the sun. As it was forming from a giant dust cloud, the fallingin of concentrated matter raised its temperature. Finally, the
internal pressure reached a point where atomic structures began to break down. Nuclear energy was released, and the glowing sun resulted.
Around this center, and at great distances, a few orbiting rocks exist. They were formed from the same cloud of dust of long ago which
formed the sun. Their size, however, was not sufficient to raise their internal temperatures enough to form nuclear fusion like the sun. They
are called planets. A very small part of the energy radiation from the sun rains on their surfaces. The rest of the energy is dispersed into space
in all directions. From an engineering point of view, this prodigious waste of energy hardly "proclaims the glory of god"! Any engineer who
designed such an inefficient machine would be confined to a mental institution.
And what of the planets themselves? Allevidence available from fly-bys, instrument landings and spectroscoptic analyses from telescopes
indicate that only one supports life.That one is our earth. If the solar system was "designed" to support life, it was rather a pathetic effort.
Nine planets and only one works! It appears that blind luck was in force, and cosmic intelligence was not manifesting itself.
Around the earth, a moon orbits senselessly. While it may light up a cloudless night with dim, varying illumination, it is hardly sufficient to
be practical. Ifa city engineer tried to use anything as inefficient as the moon for street lighting, he would be lucky to escape with his life.Also,
the side-effects of tides caused by the moon make more trouble than benefit. So ifgod made "the lesser light to rule the night," (Genesis 1:16)
he definitely bungled the job. Isn't it simpler to assume that there wasn't any god involved at all? It just happened.
As far as the rest of the solar system is concerned, other moons circle dead planets, comets swing meaninglessly around the sun at regular
intervals, and meteors crash into whatever gets in their paths. God, if there was one, would indeed work in "mysterious ways." And so it
goes, millennium after millenium down the millennia. Meanwhile human life is hardly more than what Jack London once noted, "the mayfly
lifedance of an hour." The brevity of our personal existence makes it difficult to achieve a realistic interpretation of what should be obvious:
There is nothing in the night sky but blind, amoral forces at work.
.
Beyond the solar system are stars and star systems. The system of billions of stars in which we are is called the Milky Way Galaxy. Our
little solar system is near the outer edge of one of the spiral arms of this galaxy. It completes a revolution every 240 million years as we race
through space going nowhere and arriving at nothing. Only unguided matter and energy could present such futility.
Beyond our galaxy are other galaxies, each one averaging around fiftybillion stars. At this time there is fairly good evidence of at least 300
million stars.
Taken in this context, where does that leave us earthlings in the alleged cosmic scheme of things? Rather than the glory of god, the
heavens proclaim our extreme insignificance and the heedless, indifference forces of nature. / James Gardner Erickson

NOT FOR LONG / Two Atheists were having lunch and a quiet, peaceful conversation in a booth at a local restaurant. When they got
around to commenting on the subject of the recent Republican convention and the growing influence of right wing Christianity on
government, it became apparent that the people in the next booth were overhearing some of the conversation, probably the part that went,
"Christians say they want peace, but they are out to get anybody who disagrees with them. I don't think fundamentalists are the 'moral
majority.' Judging by their leader, Jerry Falwell, they are undoubtably well within the lunatic fringe. Ifthey think we are going to follow their
party lines or just fold up and die, they are experts at underestimating intellectual pluck."
A young man in the next booth spat the following remark from a face wearing a hypocritical, but beautific, sneer: "You should never
criticize a person until you have walked a mile in his shoes."
The one Atheist, always logical when facing religious emotionalism and amazingly quick with the asked-for, and therefore deserved,
retort, replied, "IfIwalked a mile in a Christian's shoes, I'd only be walking backward. No body in his right mind does that for long." / Ronald
B. Zeh

Austin, Texas

March,1985

Page 33

AMERICAN A THEIST RADIO SERIES/Madalyn O'Hair

D. G. M. BENNETT
AMERICAN ATHEIST
When the first installment of a regularly scheduled, fifteen minute, weekly American Atheist radio series on KTBC
radio (a station in Austin, Texas, owned by then president Lyndon Baines Johnson), hit the airwaves on June 3,
1968, the nation was shocked. The programs had to be submitted weeks in advance and were heavily censored.
The series was concluded on October 18,1975 when no further funding was available.
The following is the text of American Atheist Radio Series No. 122, first broadcast on November 9, 1970.
hen I started these programs a good
W
three years ago, I had no idea that
Atheism had the history that it does and that
so many good persons had worked so long
and so hard to give it birth into the mainstream of American culture.
I have found another such person now:
DeRobigne Mortimer Bennett, who always
called himself "D. M." He was born in
Springfield, New York, in 1818, two months
prematurely. He remained small of stature
during his entire life.
D. M. obtained a public education in
district schools until he was about twelve
years old when he, as most everyone did in
those days, abandoned school for employment. Atthe ripe age of twelve, he found a
job as a printer's devil in a Cooperstown,
New York, press. A printer's devil applies
ink to the type and washes the stereotype
plates, plus doing any other menial tasks at
hand. When he was fourteen, however, his
parents separated, and he was sent to live
with a physician uncle in Massachusetts with
the express purpose of being turned into a
doctor. When he arrived at the uncle's home
and it was seen how small young Bennett
was the uncle turned him out with the
admoniton to come back when he was fully
grown.
D. M. tried to get back home again, but on
the way he fellin with and was befriended by
a family of Shakers. He thought at this time
that he would like to "spend his days among
such kind and happy people." He persuaded
his mother and sister to join him there the
next year, which they did. Bennett attended
the Shaker school and eventually was given
a job in the seed garden for the Shaker
colony at that time derived part of its income
from the sale of packets of seeds.
Let me stop here just a moment to tell you
about these Shakers. They were known officially as the United Society of Believers in
Christ's Second Coming. The sect held that
its founder, Mother Ann Lee (17361784),
personified this second appearance of Jesus
Christ. The sect originated among the English Quakers. In obedience to a vision of
Mother Ann, the first group arrived in New
York in 1774 and two years later established
Page 34

a first settlement at Niskayuna, which is now

Watervleit, New York. From there, the
members of the sect conducted evangelistic
tours through New England until the death
of Mother Ann. They totaled eleven cornmunities in New York and, at the height of
their success in 1840, had about 6,000
adherents. D. M. was there when they were
attaining their greatest strength.
These were colonies in which all people
shared everything. There was no discrimination in respect to race or sex, and the
communities freely admitted Negroes and
Jews. Women bore an equal share in the
ministry with the men. The religion had one
very peculiar tenet which doomed it. The
ascetic communal lifewas fine, but everyone
in the colony had to be celibate. The inhabitants of the community refrained from both
marriage and sexual intercourse. With no
children ever born into the community, the
religion could not be carried forward except
through conversions to the faith.
The colony in which the Bennetts were
sold seed. D. M. learned quickly and was
soon reassigned to the raising of medical
herbs and roots. He remained in the colony
at New Lebanon, New York, for thirteen
years. But in the summer of 1846 many of
the younger members of the colony became
dissatisifed with the non-sexual life. Four of
the persons who left were D. M. (then age
twenty-eight), his sister, the young man she
was to marry, and Mary Wicks. The four
proceeded to Cooperstown, New York,
where D. M. and Mary were married. They
soon left for Kentucky where D. M. had a
proposition to join a nursery business. Unfortunately in that day and age Northerners
were not wanted in small Kentucky towns,
and D. M. and his wife found it necessary to
remove to Louisville, where he obtained a
job as a clerk in a drugstore. In a year's time
D. M. opened his own drug store and
conducted business successfully in it for
eight years. He then joined his brother-inlaw in a tree and shrubbery business. Finally
he became a seller of medicine made of
herbs and roots. This business was quite
successful, and he sold out in about six years
time at a large profit.
March,1985

He was fifty-four years old when he finally

started another seed business in Paris, Illinois, and there the trouble began. In the
summer of 1873, he became involved in a
discussion on prayer with two clergymen.
The discussion was to be carried on in the
local newspaper, but the editor published
the clerymen's articles and not Bennett'sproperly infuriating Bennett. He decided
then to start his own newspaper. He printed
12,000 copies of a little publication. His wife,
Mary, dubbed it the Truthseeker, and the
first copies were sent out across the country
- D. M.'s arguments against prayers finally
in print. This first issue purported to contain
articles written by a great number of persons, but they were actually all articles
written by Bennett and signed with pseudonyms. He sent out three more issues. The
returns were at least promising, and D. M.
closed out his partnership in the seed business and moved to New York City.
In New York the little monthly met with
growing success. The next year, 1875, it
became a bi-weekly and in 1876 a weekly
publication of eight whole pages. In two
years time it was up to sixteen pages a week.
Bennett, like all atheist publishers, put in an
eighteen to twenty hour work day to keep
the paper solvent, pay printing bills, and
doggedly see that it was published. By the
1880's the Truthseeker had become the
world's largest and best freethoughtjournal.
Robert G. Ingersoll was popular about this
time, and his lectures usually made their first
appearance in print in the Truthseeker.
I need to regress a little here. It was about
1848 when he was still in Kentucky that
Bennett first got an infidel book in his hands,
and it shook his confidence in the Bible and
Christianity. So, he made a trip to New York
in 1850 to visit the publication office of
Gilbert Vale, who was an early "infidel publisher" - and, I will get to Vale in another
program. Bennett bought twenty books and
turned into an Atheist from reading and
rereading them.
At the same time that D. M. was becoming
an Atheist, the villian in this story was
becoming a fanatical Christian. This man
was Anthony Comstock, a special investiThe American Atheist

gator for the United States Post Office. He

had organized a Society for the Suppression
of Vice and was much interested in censorship activities: He lived in New York, and
when Bennett began publishing an antiChristian paper in the same town, Comstock could scarcely be expected to look
upon it with favor. By 1877 Comstock was
seeking any pretext for the suppression of
Bennett's Truthseeker. He went to the office
of Mr. Bennett, looked over his books for
sale and purchased two pamphlets titled,
"An Open Letter to Jesus Christ" written by
D. M. and "How Do Marsupials Propagate
Their Kind?" by A. B. Bradford. He could
not get Bennett arrested on the spot, so he
took the two booklets home and then placed
an order, under an assumed name, for two
more of the same titles by mail. When the
publications were put into the mail and
Comstock received them he obtained a
warrant and went personally to Bennett's
office wtih a marshall to arrest him for
sending obscene literature through the
mails. All of the unsold copies of the two
tracts were confiscated, and Bennett was
indicted by a grand jury, with bail set at
$1,500. The Post Master General, however,
ordered the case agaist Bennett dismissed.
Comstock was furious and vowed to "get"
Bennett yet.
The opportunity for this came at the
Freethinkers' Convention in Watkins Glen,
New York in 1878. At this convention
several tables were set up by booksellers for
the display and sale of their publications.
Bennett's table was near one occupied by
Josephine Tilton. She was selling pamphlets
published by her brother-in-law, E. H. Heywood. Miss Tilton left the room for a few
minutes and asked Bennett to watch her
table. A Comstock agent, who had been
watching, at this opportunity purchased a
copy of a pamphlet "Cupid's Yokes" from
Miss Tilton's table. We are trying to get a
copy of this pamphlet for our American
Atheist Library and Archives, now. I can't
tell you what it was all about at this point. All
I know is the title and that the author, E. H.
Heywood, had been jailed by Comstock for
putting the pamphlet in the mail. So, when
Bennett sold this pamphlet to the Comstock
agent he was immediately arrested. Comstock then wrote by mail under an assumed
me again and purchased another copy of
"Cupid's Yoke" from the Truthseeker, and,
again, Bennett was arrested.
D. M. was tried and, this time, convicted
of sending an obscene publication through
the mail. The verdict was confirmed upon
appeal. The sentence imposed was thirteen
months' imprisonment and a fine of $300.
And then, here is something else to report
- to you Atheists who are afraid to be
identified. A petition bearing 200,000 names,
. asking for the pardon of Bennett, was sent
to President Hayes. Present Hayes himself
stated that he did not regard the implicated

Austin, Texas

work as obscene. Comstock, however, got

busy and had ministers sign a petition whieh
he sent to Mrs. Hayes, who was very pious.
The substance of that petition was that "an
infidel" should not be set free. Hayes did not
pardon Bennett, and D. M. was taken to
Albany, New York, to serve out his prison
term. He remained in prison from July 28,
1879 to April 29, 1880, being released early
for "good behavior." He was then sixty-two
years old. But while he was in prison, he had
time to write a two volume book, 900 pages
in each volume, titled The Gods and Religions of Ancient and Modern Times. This is
the longest book ever written in prison by
anyone. We are also attempting to obtain
this book for our American Atheist Library
and Archives. It was a source book for allthe
little organizations in the atheist movement
for some time.
Comstock's plan to cause Bennett's paper to failby imprisoning him did not work in
another way. Public interest was aroused,
and new subscribers were obtained by the
jailing. Bennett's release was celebrated by a
reception at Chickering Hall in New York.
Since he had been ill while in prison, he
accepted the financial support of friends to
take a trip to Europe in 1880. But, in another
two years it was all over for he suddenly
became quite ill and died on December 9,
1882. One thousand friends subscribed a
large sum for a monument over his grave in
Greenwood Cemetery, and you may visit
the spot if you ever get to Brooklyn, New
York.
Bennett's magazine, the Truthseeker, and
the associated Truthseeker Publishing Company lived on long after him. It ran through a
series of editors but continued publishing as
a weekly freethought periodical of good
quality until 1930. At that time, it became a
monthly and, in 1960, the editor of the
Truthseeker then, Charles A. Smith, assisted in financing the first part of the
Murray u. Curlett law suit which was the
litigation of American Atheists to remove
Bible reading and prayer recitation from the
public schools of the United States.
Later, the American Association for the
Advancement of Atheism came to be a coorganization of the Truthseeker magazine.
Since this is a continuation of Bennett's
original thrust, let me read to you, the "Ten
Demands of the Four A's" and the "Five
Fundamentals of Atheism" which that organization put out, principally in the Truthseeker". Here is the first.

tian morals;
(4) abolition of the oath in courts
and at inaugurations;
(5) non-issuance of religious proclamations by chief executives;
(6) erasure of the superstitious inscription, "In God We Trust" from
our coins and the removal of the
church flag above the national flag on
battleships;
(7) exclusion of the Bible as a
sacred book from the public schools;
(8) suppression of the bootlegging
of religion through dismissing pupils
for religious instruction during school
hours;
(9) secularization of marriage, with
divorce upon request;
(10) repeal of anti-evolution, antibirth control, and censorship laws.
The Five Fundamentals
of
Atheism:
(1) Materialism - the doctrine that
Matter, with its indwelling property,
Force, constitutes the reality of the
Universe;
(2) Empiricism - the doctrine that
all ideas come from experience, and
that, therefore, man can form no
conception of god;
(3) Evolution - the doctrine that
organisms are not designed, but have
evolved, mechanically, through Natural Selection;
(4) The Existence of Evil - that
patent fact that renders irrational the
belief in a beneficent, omnipotent being who cares for man;
(5) Hedonism - the doctrine that
happiness here and now should be
the motive for conduct.
There is a straight line to be drawn from
D. M. Bennett, through the Aemrican As
sociation for Advancement of Atheism to
this radio program today. American Atheism has had a long history. It is rooted
deeply in our culture. Even I, as a militant
Atheist, did not know this until I began the
research for these programs. What we
demand today is an old demand of yesterday, made by concerned Atheists before
our time. The only difference is that we must
have those demands met this time around.

The Demands of the American

Association for the Advancement
of Atheism:
(1) taxation of church property;
(2) elimination of chaplains and
sectarian institutions from public payrolls;
(3) repeal of laws restricting the
rights of Atheists and enforcing Chris-

March,1985

Page 35

BOOK REVIEW

All Mighty
A Study of
The God Complex
in Western Man
by Horst E. Richter, M.D., Ph.D.
Claremont, CA: Hunter House, lnc.
295 pages, $19.95.

his is a 9%" x 6%" hardback book,

published in English translation, with the
T
author's permission and aid, in the United
States in 1984.. The book was originally
issued in Germany in 1979 under the title
Gottes-komplex. In 1980 the German government awarded the author the Theodor
Heuss Prize for Outstanding Contributions
to Society for this book. Horst E. Richter
received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees in
Berlin and has been, since 1962, the Director of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy at the University of Giessen.
The book contains a twelve page bibliography indicating the author's heavy reliance upon Plato, Aristotle, Empedocles,
Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, St.
Augustine, Fichte, Freud, Fromm, Kant,
and Nietzsche.That is to say the book relies
upon some classic pronouncements as a
basis for its thrust into an "radical rethinking" analysis of our times and future needs.
After the war, returning to his home in a
bombed out German city, Richter - the
author - found his family and most .of his
friends dead. As he sought to reconstruct
his life, he dealt with what he has since come
to believe was the false standard of normalcy which the 'society around him imposed. The irresistable pressures to "fit it"
he saw, finally, to be hierarchial social
structures forcing individual persons to adjustment in a preordained solidarity based
upon value systems which, he felt, were no
longer viable.
There was an obvious need for dispatching old ideologies and replacing them with
those relevent to our times and needs,
taking into account the level of education
and scientific advancement which has been
obtained in recent human history.
He felt the need for radical change, for he
saw that thinking which was not immediately
converted into political action simply was a
retreat into fantasy. Outward submission,
the failure to fight back against a restricting
social order, finally dulled the emotions and
eventually blinded cognitive faculties. Only
total passivity and resignation can finally
come on the individual and societal level.
Page 36

Richter immediately finds that social ills

are rooted in the god idea. The doctrine of
predestination, formulated by the patristic
theologican St. Augustine, called for absolute obedience to god's will. Independence
of thought, a thirst for knowledge, the need
to reason were anathema.
It was not, Richter feels, until the Middle
Ages that mankind began to refuse to go on
obeying blindly, and the refusal took the
form of intensified demand for knowledge
and the right of self-determination. When it
did, it manifested itself in a sudden, radical
swing to the opposite extreme - man
identified with god, seizing his infinite greatness and power for himself. Although this
was the obverse of the prior belief system, it
was still derived from the magical thinking
base. The first tentative efforts to take
himself from this latter quandry was through
his subjecting of church teachings (the religious image of the world) to a critical scrutiny. As these were discovered to be erroneous, mankind increased his confidence in
man's intellectual powers. Soon, this turned
into individual self-conceit: Descartes' Cogito ergo sum. However, even in the discovery of this conceit, Descartes demonstrated that individual ego had not only the
sanction of god, but had been determined by
divine decree. For generations, then, philosophers labored with arguments and theories to avoid confessing the truth: that man
had ceased to rely on god and relied only
upon his own resources.
Technological advances then came, which
gave seeming domination over nature but
obscured man's actual dependency on the
natural world. From this evolved the egocentrism of our times, with man regarding
himself as a self-contained unit totally distinct from all other such units. The idea of
people being interdependent on a horizontal
plane was superceded by the idea of vertical
structure of relationships between subordinates and superiors.
While man wanted to control and supervise everything, he also tried, through his
philosophers, to persuade himself that he
was not withdrawing from god, at the top of
the vertical structure. In his continuing competition with god, however, he had to make
nature itself subservient to the human mind,
not realizing that he was himself a a part of
nature.
Using this as a basis Richter analyzes the
various types of government and "moral"
systems to which mankind has adhered in
various countries and time spans of recent
history. He examines Kant, Fichte, Freud,
and Nietzsche as proponents of solutions
for man injured in the scheme of things,
afflicted by prevailing social conditions. He
March,1985

looks at the works of Pascal, Spinoza, and

Schopenhauer as countervailing solutions.
And, he arrives finally,at the conclusion that
man has been split into an adversary. relationship with himself, unfortunately, however, that split has been along sexual lines.
The male has become the embodiment of
mankind's self-investiture of divine power
while the female has been retired to the
background as the repository of socioeconomic degradation, irrationality, instability, in
significance, and suffering.
Richter, through the use of a case history
of one person, then attempts to show draw
his conclusions. As a psychotherapist, he
individualizes his cultural generalizations
through the interpretation of the record of a
patient. This adds nothing to his arguments
or conclusions but apparently was tendered
to the reader in hopes of showing, through
explicit example, what the reader might not
be able to handle as theory alone. His
conclusion is that an indispensable prerequisite for halting the progressive dehumanization of our civilization is for men to cede a
portion of their seized godlike powers to
women. He analyzes prevailing social norms
and institutions to show the dominant role
of men who are emotionally fixated on those
standards. Man, he finds, is unable to hold
onto his integrity by standing up to self
criticism. He then defaults criticism to
others, from which comes modern ideas of
both racism and sexism. Richter's concludes, then, that mankind has converted
suffering (self-reproach and personal failure) into hatred, with womankind being the
ultimate scapegoat and object of that ha
tred. His examples are not alone the abuse
of the witch and the Inquisition in which the
woman suffered more than the male, but
also the current status of women in all
cultures. A necessary search proceeds for a
meaningful alternative to the hypocrisies
and masquerades of conventional social
behavior, while in all countries, there is a
general, unfocussed feeling of negativity
towards the established society.
His solution is that there must be an
image projected of medium-sized (not godsized) human beings, living in a (world)
community made up of persons of equal
status, who desire to realize their freedom
within the community. Understanding their
mutual dependency they must be able to
affirm life experiences as a meaningful and
reciprocal way of relating to and relying on
each other.
The book, which willintroduce the United
States to the concept of psycho-evaluation
of nations and people, is a thought provoking one - certain meal for the grist of the
Atheist. ~
The American Atheist

ME TOO
"Me Too" is a feature designed to showcase short essays written by readers in response to topics recently covered by the American Atheist
or of general interest to the
atheist community.
Essays submitted to "Me
Too" (P.O. Box 2117, Austin,
TX 78769-2117) should be 500
to 700 words long.
was especially interested in the
article "Some Thoughts On
Evolution" by Dr. Ian R. Bock in
the American Atheist 198384Sampler. He answered many of the
questions that I have recently been
pondering. I do, however, have
one objection and would like to
share this with you and your readers.

Evolution: One of the things

which saddens me about evolutionary apologists is the defensive
stance they take. What I would
rather see is a return to the sort of
thinking which originally led to the
development of the evolution theory. This, in a nutshell, is the lack
of positive evidence for scientific
creationism. According to evolution, the eohippus is the ancestor
of the horse. But scientific creationism has to claim that the horse
is the ancestor of the horse. Therefore the horse and the eohippus
must have coexisted. Fossil strata
should contain the remains of both.
Not only that, but every species of
mammal (and reptile?) that exists
today, and has ever existed in the
past, should also be companions
to our eohippus. This includes
dogs, cats, lions, tigers, and giraffes.
Someone once observed that
every new truth begins as a heresy.
Such heresies as the theory of
evolution would never have arisen
had the fossil record contained
evidence for creationism. Science
in general stems, not from wickedness, but from unsatisfied human
curiosity. Sihce the Bible explanation doesn't fit the facts, truthseekers have to look elsewhere.
Fundamentalists who insist that
the world was created in six days
(144 hours) should be required to
produce the boats, houses, fishhooks, weapons, and pottery that
Austin, Texas

SOMETIMES I FEEL LI KE
D~OWNINGTHESE BABIES IN
THE BAPTISMAL WATE~ ...
would inevitably have littered the
Cambrian seas and lands. We
should find arrowheads in dinosaur bones. We should find trilobite necklaces. We should find
eryops traps and maybe pterosaur
saddles.
Judeo-Christians attempting to
compromise by "interpreting" their
holy writ to grant "day" to be a
code-word for "vast age" still have
to produce the ancestors of modern fish, plants, amphibians, no
matter how much they would like
to reconcile science with their religion. (Also, if the standard is to
remain consistent, that a "day"
could be several hundred million
years of time, then we could well
assume that the seventh day is still
in progress. God is "resting" whatever that means.)
Creationists who deny a descendency relationship to different species must assume that each "kind"
is a separate and unique idea of
god's. Why then do we not find
six-legged mammals, winged serpents, furry turtles? Since a cat
and a dog have no common ancestor, why do they have analogous skeletons, organs, and other
such features? We know from insects that god can think of the idea
of six-leggedness. We know from
birds that god can think of the idea
of feathers. Feathered mammals
would be just as likely to appear
under creationism as not. Yet the
fossil record shows no such uniqueness between kinds.
When evolution and creationism are taught side-by-side in public schools, evolutionists should
demand that the positive evidence
for both be presented also. I fear
that the creationists will find their
coelacanth rather lonely. ~

'"!'I

3>
~

:J:

"':J:
::10

C
3>

SO THE,{'D GO TO HEAVEN
BEFO~E SATAN COULD GET
THEM.

:z
:J:
----------------------------I~Z

BUT THEN THE,{ COULDN'T

G~OWUP AND PA,{ THE
CHU~CHMEMBE~SHIP DUES.

- Clarke Metcalf
New Mexico

March,1985

Page 37

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Iwish to make several points, this time not

all in opposition, as my points s~metimes
are:
1) My experience in Alcoholics Anonymous was similiar to that of John C. Henderson (Ltrs. to Ed., A.A., Jan., '85). I also
sobered up without deific aid. So did the
others, tho' they didn't know it. The only
higher power was the power of cooperating
human beings. We humans gave each other
the only real help we got, and the "spirits" we
"exorcised" were all purely chemical, tho'
highly diabolical, I grant!
2) I agree with Jeff Governale (same issue)
that, while homosexuality is not "natural"
and is not merely an "alternative life style,"
yet neither should homosexuals be denied
any right to which any heterosexual should
be entitled, nor shunned in company. Homosexuality is on par with blindness or hearing
impairment. Ifone homosexual is theistic, as
many are, let us debate that one on Atheism,
not on private matters. If another is an
Atheist, let us accept that one as our equal,
with no comment on private matters.
3) M. L. Schlesinger states re elective
abortion (same issue): "A tadpole is not a
frog. A caterpiller (sic) is not a butterfly." He
could have gone further and said that a
puppy is not a dog and a poult is not a
turkey. Fact is, the tadpole and the caterpillar are much more independent of their
mothers than a human baby is of its mother
- no feeding responsibilities and no umbilical cords either! Then too, frogs and butterflies rarely ifever delete the tadpoles and
the caterpillars. No analogy at all to the
elective abortion question. If this question is
to be regarded as atheistic, it should be
noted that Planned Parenthood and other
pro-abortion groups are virtually all composed of church people, but that Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a former leading abortionist, is now a pro-life Atheist.
4) As a bachelor, I agree with Richard
Curtis that marriage is not necessary to
procreation. What society needs now is a
new form of child-rearing organization suited

.Page 38

to technological and ethical development.

All forms of kinship and marriage, which
once served the purpose of child rearing, in
whatever hit-and-miss way, are now disintegrated beyond repair and no new system has
yet emerged. Day-care centers, orphan
homes and public schools can and do perform much of the work, but far from enough
of it. This need for a new child-rearing
system will grow especially acute as procreation shifts over to baby factories, a la
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the
science fiction of yesterday becoming the
mundane fact of tomorrow. the need will
even more greatly intensify as other solar
systems and galaxies are populated. If we
Atheists to not wish to give thought to this
need, we can rest assured the spiritualists
will.
.
George La Forest
Illinois

The feature on the raising of atheist

children [January, 1985, American Atheist]
was of particular interest to me since it
involved a situation that exists in my home
and with which I am quite familiar. When my
daughter started nursery school at the age
of about four, she was introduced to a
custom of which she had no prior knowledge, viz., the saying of grace before meals.
Having learned the little verses that they
taught them at school, she wanted to recite
them at the table at home. Ididn't forbid her
to do so, but I very carefully explained that it
was all right to say the little verses so long as
she understood that it was all make-believe.
Since my wife (whom I suspect of being a
closet Atheist) and I had never taught her to
believe in Santa Claus, I used this as an
analogy. I explained that although she liked
to go sit on the knee of the jolly old man in
the red suit and tell him the things she
wanted for Christmas, she knew that it was
really her mother and I who provided the
gifts that she found under the tree. "It's the
same with saying grace," I explained, "No
god, goddess, or fairy godmother put the
food on this table - your mother and Idid." I
told her that god was the same for adults as
Santa Claus was for children, an imaginary
character whom they thought would grant
them wishes if they were good. In short, I
made sure that she kept a firm grasp on
reality at all times. The result was that she
eventually lost interest in god and saying
grace, just as she later lost interest in Santa
Claus.
. When she reached about fourth grade,

March, 1985

my wife wanted to transfer her to a private

Catholic school, not for religious reasons,
but because the classes were smaller, the
program of instruction was better, and the
pupils received more individual attention.
I objected to this at first, but finally
concluded that attending such a school
might be actually beneficial in reinforcing her
Atheism. It worked out exactly as I anticipated. Whenever she came home and told
me some particularly blatant bit of nonsense
that they had told her at school, I would
patiently and carefully refute it with reason
and common sense.
Being a normally bright, intelligent child,
she quickly perceived the stupidity of what
they taught her, and came more and more to
embrace the reasonable approach of Atheism. Also, she became thoroughly disgusted
with the idiotic rites, rituals, and practices
that were imposed upon the children. By the
time she graduated, she was completely
"turned off' with religion in general and
Catholicism in particular.
Since we unfortunately live in a predominantly religious environment, it is virtually
impossible to shield children against religious influences completely, but with proper
conditioning and instruction at home, our
children can be somewhat insulated against
the nonsense to which they willinevitably be
exposed from time to time.
John C. Henderson
North Carolina

I particularly enjoyed Madalyn Murray

O'Hair's article "Atheism and Children" in
your January 1985 issue. The examples
were very informative and well chosen.
A particular example that was on the
mark for me was the one that referred to the
Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts (as well as the
Cub Scouts and the Girl Scouts) is for all
intents and purposes a religious organization. Many parents don't realize this; mine,
in fact, didn't until, after a year as a Cub
Scout, I informed them that some of the
readings required for a badge in "good
deeds" were religious in nature. I soon
dropped out of Cub Scouts.
There is a branch of the Boy Scouts called
Explorers which disguises its religious involvement very well. The Explorers Clubs
are geared to academically high-achieving
ninth and tenth graders. Each chapter of
Explorers focuses on a certain profession
(ex: Medical Explorers, Police Explorers,
etc.). These clubs are often recommended
to students by teachers and there is often

The American Atheist

some academic pressure to join one. Iwas in

such a situation, but I walked out of the first
meeting because I found that 1) Explorers
was affiliated with the Boy Scouts, and 2) it
required all members to pledge to "serve
their church." I caused quite a stink about
my teacher's endorsement of the club, and
the teacher apologized, saying that he had
no idea that Explorers was a religious organization.
Remember, before you let your children
join any organization, no matter what it
appears to be, check what the organization's goals are, what membership entails,
and where membership dues actually go.
Edward Stein
Massachusetts

I've read your magazine for years, contributed to our cause as much as I can and will
continue.
The article in the Jan. '85 American
Atheist on "Atheism and Children" moved
me more than any article I've ever read in
your magazine. Moved me to what? Consider with an open mind for the first time that
I too could come out as an Atheist.
Also, I wish I'd read the article when our
daughter (now 14) was younger. We did
some things right, tho, because she has a
questioning mind and enjoys discussion on a
rational basis.
She thought you were a bit hard on Santa
Claus and fairy tales (so did I). Her philosophy is "enjoy life" and I hope she can do
that in this ever more repressive society
Thank you for your hard work. You
[Madalyn O'Hair] are a hero of our times.
Jeanine Emmons
Minnesota

About Alcoholics Anonymous, it is my

judgement after trying for eighteen months
to get it that they are indeed a religious cult.
They deny this and insist that they are
spiritual, ifyou look under spiritual in Roget's
Thesaurus of synonyms you will read Immaterial, psychic, divine, RELIGIOUS, pious, and priestly. Turning everything over to
a higher power is RELIGIOUS. Reading a
twenty-four hour prayer book daily is RELIGIOUS; the serenity prayer to start every
meeting is RELIGIOUS; saying the Lord's
prayer to finish every meeting is RELIGIOUS; making a list of all your shortcomings is RELIGIOUS; it's called confession. Talking about your higher power every
time you open your mouth and what HE has
done for you is RELIGIOUS; and even
taking up a collection is RELIGIOUS. By all
definitions of the word they are RELIGIOUS, more than that they are a religious
cult; they brook no disagreement with the
word of their leader Bill Wilson or what is
WRITTEN in the BIG BOOK. When someone says they can't swallow all that crap the
answer is go to more meetings, in other
words you aren't brainwashed enough. That
answer also is RELIGIOUS. You may also
get a patronizing pat with a phoney smile
telling you not to worry just keep coming
you willGET IT. As with any religious cult, I
discovered that those who drop out are
ostracized. No longer part of the fellowship
so to speak. You are then on your own with
allyour former AA acquintances professing
that you will die of alcoholism post haste.
Also having twelve steps (translates commandments) is religious. You also must get
yourself a sponsor - some sloganeering
idiot with the temerity to tell you how to run
your lifeon a day to day basis. Getting sober
can be a very lonely business. Many people
use AA for a short sobering up period until

the next slip mainly because they need some

human contact and have no place else to go.
It reminds me of those people who are
forever getting born again in the evangelistic
churchs.
Barbara Hemsley
Florida

Concerning Mr. Berkowitz' article "Cults

and The American Compromise," (January
issue).
Any expose of cults that does not contain
an indictment of "organized" religion, leaves
itself open to exploitation by those same
"accepted" religions. They could publish
your article, as is, with great relish. "See the
crazy cultists," they caution, "they're not
'legitimate' as we are."
You fail to point out that the three basic
attributes that define a cult, also applies to
all "established" religions.
Religion is the enemy. We must never
forget that. We cannot wait for inter-religious wars, and watch as the brainwashed
destroy themselves (and us.) Science and
the liberated mind of the (concerned) Atheist can and must provide the remedy for the
disease of self-deception. Joseph Lewis said
it best, "The human race has suffered for
centuries and is still suffering from the
mental disorder known as religion, and
Atheism is the only physician that will be
able to effect a permanent cure."
Kenneth J. Schmidt
New York

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The American Atheist

HISTORY OF A WORLD
The Visitors
This is a hardback book of 245 pages, measuring 5Yz" x
874", published in 1977 by a small publisher (Libra Publishers

Inc.) in New York. The paper is good quality, the printing

quite sharp and legible, and the binding sturdy. The cover is
devoid of graphics.
It is often the case when an author desires to criticise
religion, that a nom de plume or pseudonom is used. In this
case, the author apparently was so "quaking in his shoes"
that no author's name at all is appended. Theoretically the
book is written by "The Visitors" who are extraterrestrial
beings. A short preface is written by unidentified "Redactors" who briefly profess that the history of the world is
more than the approximate 6,000 years decreed by biblical
history.
The Visitors, however, in prior landings had taken the
history of the earth to be that recounted in the Holy Bible the Good Book. They have returned now to the earth for
another look and have left with the inhabitants of the globe
their review of it - a History of A World which they had
written from their prior visits. Their evaluation of the
situation of the earth from the current visit is summed up in
five paragraphs in an "Afterwards" at the end of the book.
Basically it is that "Should our next visit find this planet still
existing, and conditions favorable, perhaps we willcolonize
Earth. And re-create here a world of peace and freedom. A
world free of gods and devils and curses. A world truly
beautiful."
A two page bibliography indicates a heavy reliance on old,
freethought, books.
The first 130 pages are given over to a look at the Old
Testament. There is a short segment which covers the time
period between the Old Testament and the New Testament
and then there is a thirty five page report on the New
Testament, followed by a fiftypage survey of secular writers
of the period of the New Testament, and the impact of the
New Testament on the world. The book winds up with an
approximate 10 page segment of lamentations.
The first section is a somewhat secular look at the Old
Testament and an acceptance of the statements therein,
with an emphasis first on the great ages reported in the
Pentateuch and second on a translation of the meaning of
individual names. Now and then courage on the part of the
author rears its head. An example is that few, ifany, persons
know that when Moses came down off the mountain with
the tablets of stone bearing the Ten Commandments which

were written into the stone by god himself, Moses found

that his people had reverted to the old worship of the
Egyptian golden calf. Thereupon, Moses broke the tablets,
and god slew three thousand of his Jewish followers who
were guilty of such worship. Moses then trudges back up
the mountain to get a new set of stone tablets. In passing a
very famous (for Atheists) event occurs when god moons
Moses.
The follies and foibles of god are reviewed, while being
accepted tongue in cheek. He is revealed as petty, vindictive, vacillating, mean-spirited, cruel, vengeful, angry. His
major prophets and henchmen are the same. It is all
uncritically reviewed as an actual History of A World.
The five hundred years between the Old Testament and
the New Testament is used by the author to cram into the
shortest possible space a review of the gods of the
Mediterranean area. As with most fearful authors, however,
when it comes to the Jesus figure of the New Testament,
this one is afraid to make statements which may be
construed as critical. Therefore, it is the gospel of Paul
which is most minutely examined: whether or not gentiles
must be circumcized as were the Jews in order to accept
the new Jewish religion; whether or not Christians must
eschew sex, flee fornication.
Of course, there is no historian contemporary with Jesus
Christ who even mentions him and this is carefully shown.
The major religions of the era are briefly touched, but
enough to inform. Christianity took from them all and then
with its patchwork doctrine came to power by the sword. It
is difficult to deal with generalities which cover hundreds of
years of time, but the author guardedly makes his points.
It is a good book for an overview - rapid, easy reading,'
and will serve a reader well as a base. It is recommended.
Ninety day sale!
Published at $7.00, recently selling for $8.95, American
Atheists has been able to purchase the balance of the books
in the stock of the publisher and offer this at $5.00 a book,
postage paid, for the next ninety days, or until June 1, 1985.
At that time, the price willrevert back to $7.00 a copy, which
is still inexpensive for a hardback book in today's market.
This is your "bargain for the year."

$5.00 - including postage

(if purchased before June 1, 1985)

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AMENDMENTI

CONGRESS

SHALL MAKE NO LA W RESPECTING

WHAT IS AN ATHEIST?
"... Theism means 'belief in a god or gods.'
The prefix, A-, means 'without.' Thus, Atheism is the absence of a god belief, and an
Atheist is anyone without such theistic
belief."
- American Atheists