Blasphemous Blogging: The Blog of Edwin Kagin

Patriotic Atheism

2011-07-02T15:04:00.001-04:00

ATHEISTS ARE EVERYWHERE

There are Atheists in foxholes

Atheists in hurricanes

There are Atheists in all the roles

Denied by your refrains

Atheists are your fellow citizens

People who love and laugh and cry

Atheists are your relatives and friends

Don’t insult them with a lie

Atheists in many foxholes served

And some have had to die

Give Atheists the thanks deserved

Don’t dismiss them with a lie

Atheists are all around you

They work, they help, they care

And no matter what you think is true

Atheists are everywhere

And no matter what you think is true

They do not want your prayer

by Edwin Kagin

September 12, 2005

=======================================================================

ATHEISTS IN FOXHOLES SONG

(May be sung to the tune of the Marine Corp Hymn)

Music: http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/marine.htm

For the Bill of Rights of our free land

For the Treaty of Tripoli

Many Atheists have fought and died

In the air, on land and sea

Atheists in many foxholes served

No task too hard to try

Give Atheists the thanks deserved

Don’t dismiss them with a lie.

(May be sung to the tune of The Army Goes Rolling Along) Music: http://www.defenselink.mil/multimedia/audio

In the field, under sail

Atheists will never fail

Atheists were there all along

Helping us stay free

Protecting liberty

Lying about them is wrong.

So where e’er you go

People need to know

Lying about them is wrong

Where free people go

Let them always know

That Atheists are going along.

(May be sung to the tune of The Navy Hymn) Music: http://my.homewithgod.com/heavenlymidis/USA/usnhymn.html

To Atheists who were so brave

Thank you for all you did to save

Our freedoms that permit a few

To lie about the things you do

From your foxholes hear and see

This thanks from those you helped keep free.

by Edwin Kagin

Permission is given to reproduce without profit so long as credit is given. If you make money on this, I want some of it. Edwin.

Atheist Sign Poem

2010-12-01T13:48:00.000-05:00

While driving down the highways, how many have I seen
Of Christian signs and banners--some pretty, some obscene.
And everywhere are fancy signs to make a Christian out of me
Like “Jesus--the Reason for the Season,” or some such fantasy.
Mangers, Wise Men, Shepherds, a star above a feeding stall
Surround me like a blanket leaving hardly room to breathe at all.
Religious scenes on public lands outside of city halls,
Baby Jesus in the classrooms, bibles passed out in the malls,
Choke reason from the victims of this vast wide sticky net
Of pious talk upon our doors, our roads, and the Internet.
But let some atheists post one sign saying reason should prevail
Over the myth of Christmas, and you will hear the Fundies’ wail
That atheists are not respectful, that they should die, leave, or go to jail.
And thus we learn the lesson, from what we see with solemn awe,
That they think Christians are the only ones protected under law.

Edwin Kagin
November 30, 2010

Look at the Billboard American Atheists is Putting Up for Christmas!

2010-11-04T19:53:00.002-04:00

AMERICAN ATHEISTS
http://www.atheists.org/xmas

ATHEISTS CHALLENGE ''MYTH OF CHRISTMAS' WITH GIANT BILLBOARD
AT LINCOLN TUNNEL

An atheist group intends to get an early start on the holiday season with plans to erect a huge billboard near the Lincoln Tunnel in New York City inviting people to examine their beliefs about Christmas.

The sign will start catching the attention of motorists on Tuesday, November 23, 2010, and remain in place for approximately one month. It will depict the so-called "Christian" nativity and the message:

"You KNOW it's a myth! This season celebrate reason!
American Atheists Reasonable since 1963. atheists.org"

Dave Silverman, President of American Atheists, said that the billboard will target people who "go through the motions" of celebrating the holiday but don't believe in the Christ myth.

"Many people follow religions and observe rituals in which they do not believe," said Mr. Silverman. "They go along to get along, which simply leads to more prejudice and bigotry. Closeted atheists hurt themselves and others like them by remaining silent about what they know to be true."

Silverman added, " None of the traditional Christmas seasonal practices originate with Christianity. What we call Christmas has its origins in secular events like the Winter Solstice and the change of seasons, as well as Pagan holidays like Yule. This season was celebrated long before Christianity usurped it."

The billboard is an invitation to everyone to learn more about the real origins of the so-called "Christmas" season, said Silverman, and to spur discussion of what we know to be true, and what we know to be myth.

"We are encouraging everyone to be honest with themselves and each other about what they truly believe, and to celebrate reason and truth this season. Unlike gods and saviors, reason and truth actually exist."

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights
for Atheists, Freethinkers and other nonbelievers; works for the total
separation of church, mosque, temple and State; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

ABC's Nightline story on Atheism has been rescheduled to July 16th.

2010-07-15T17:40:00.001-04:00

The story on Atheism on ABC's Nightline has been rescheduled from today,
Thursday, July 15, 2010, to tomorrow, Friday, July 16th, 2010.

Apparently it was bumped because of some breaking news story. The
producer just called me with this information.

Please try to let everyone you can know of this change, in that word of
the story has gone all over the known world and elsewhere.

Also, please understand that this is not a guarantee that it will be on
tomorrow, or ever,for that matter.

This is only the best and latest information available.

I did not make the facts.

Regards,

Edwin

Atheism on ABC's NightLine Tomorrow July 15th

2010-07-14T21:05:00.000-04:00

The long awaited segment called "Faith Matters" of ABC's "NightLine" is
to air tomorrow evening, July 15th, 2010, according to the producer who
just contacted me.

No, I cannot guarantee this, but I believe it to actually be true this
time. The show may cover Camp Quest, American Atheist's De-Baptism, and
perhaps interviews with Amanda of Camp Quest, Edwin, and Edwin's son Stephen the minister in Kansas, among other things.

I was flown to New York City by Nightline to be interviewed for the show
and, based on everything I saw and heard, I really do think it is going
to be a major story on Atheism. Hopefully, it will be slanted in a
favorable way, but we have no control over that.

Get the word out:

ABC NightLine.
15 July 2010
On Atheism.

Edwin.

Announcing New Kentucky State Director For American Atheists

2010-07-14T17:49:00.005-04:00

AMERICAN ATHEISTS, INC.
http://www.atheists.org/
http://www.americanatheist.org/

For more information, please contact:
Ed Buckner, President 908-499-9200 (cell) or 770-803-5353 (office/fax)
Ken Loukinen, Director of State Operations (954) 907-7893
Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director 859-384-7000
Edwin Hensley, Kentucky State Director 502-939-9275

Edwin Hensley Named to Replace Edwin Kagin as Kentucky Director

Edwin F. Kagin, who was the first State Director for Kentucky for American Atheists and served for many years, is stepping aside from that role. He has a long, distinguished history of effective, dedicated service for both his state and American Atheists. Kagin will continue to be American Atheists National Legal Director and on the Board of Directors, but he wants to focus more in his national roles. Director of State operations Ken Loukinen noted, "American Atheists in general and I in particular are most grateful for all he has done, not only for American Atheists and the state of Kentucky, but for my own development as an activist as well."

As American Atheists president Dr. Ed Buckner noted, "Edwin Kagin recommended Edwin Hensley as a successor, and after months of communications with Hensley and others that know him, and with the strong recommendation of Ken Loukinen, we are delighted to introduce Edwin Hensley as the new State Director for Kentucky." Hensley is not only a member of American Atheists; he is a plaintiff with American Atheists in the Kentucky Homeland Security Lawsuit. Hensley and his wife, Mikel, are organizers of the Louisville Atheists and Freethinkers; both are also involved with the Louisville Coalition of Reason, the Secular Parents of Louisville, the Louisville Secular Book Club, Atheist Women of Louisville, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Hensley is a 46-year-old software engineer, a husband and father of four children, and a dedicated Atheist. He was once a dedicated fundamentalist Christian but became an Atheist by analyzing the bible and learning about the history of the church and the bible. He comes with high recommendations and will be a major asset for American Atheists.

AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists, Freethinkers and other nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.

American Atheists, Inc. PO BOX 158, Cranford, NJ 07016

Tel.: (908) 276-7300 Fax: (908) 276-7402

Thoughts for Creationists, Intelligent Design Freaks, and Their Fellow Travelers

2010-05-31T11:15:00.006-04:00

Thoughts for Creationists, Intelligent Design Freaks, and Their Fellow Travelers on the 3rd Anniversary of the Opening of their Oxymoronic “Creation Museum.”

Now most people know that watches in pockets
Are made of different stuff than eyes in eye sockets.
A watch doesn’t have wings, or flippers, or feet,
A watch isn’t something another watch might just eat.
A watch doesn’t live in a nest, cave, or hive,
And that is because a watch isn’t alive.

If you can get that small detail resolved,
You can see why it’s dumb to say life hasn’t evolved.
And pretend that making a watch for a wrist,
Is just like making an arm or a fist.
And pretend people were made and clearly designed,
Because life is complex and sometimes refined.

Life didn’t happen by magic or plan,
Like thinking some dirt was turned into a man.
And some folks believe, and this is no fib,
That the first woman was made from first dirt man’s rib.

Evolution happened and it isn’t true,
That people were made by some god from some goo.

Let’s say that you took about ten quillion rabbits,
All alike in their looks, and their hops, and their habits,
And that about half were colored bright snerfell,
And that about half were colored dark murfell.
And if they made babies those snerfells and murfells,
Some of those babies would be colored snerfell,
And some of those babies would be colored murfell,
And some of those babies would be in between,
In some brand new colors no rabbit had seen.
Maybe some would be colored a pleasing snerplean,
Or maybe some awful disgusting murgreen,
And some might be lovely and some quite obscene.

And if the rabbits thus colored should make some more rabbits,
With only those rabbits with their color habits,
A new color for rabbits would finally evolve,
And the colors they started out with would dissolve,
And be completely replaced after enough time,
With snerplean or murgreen not made out of slime.

And enough time and enough rabbit ranges
Could make in those rabbits amazing new changes,
Until they perhaps were no longer rabbits,
But maybe some new type of postrabbitodabits.

A new kind of life we could not invent in our mind,
As new as a timepiece some watchmaker might wind,
But made from the life force creationists mock,
Who think life is something as dead as a clock.

So don’t be confused by people who lie,
Who think truth is found in a book from the sky.
If it weren’t for science we wish they could see,
We would all have to use candles to watch the T.V.

Edwin Kagin

(Reproduced from “Baubles of Blasphemy, 2nd Ed.” by Edwin Kagin,
edited by Frank Zindler, American Atheist Press, 2010).

Permission is given for non-commercial reproduction. If you make money on this, I want some of it.
Edwin

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CREATION MUSEUM, MEMORIAL DAY 2010

2010-05-28T10:21:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday to the Kentucky site
Of religio-fanatic-fiction
That works so hard, as is their right,
At scientific interdiction.

It was on Memorial Day
In two thousand and ought seven
That this Ham and AIG display
Opened as a nonsense Heaven.

Outside their gates protesters stood
In a great “Rally for Reason”
Against an ignorance that would
Reveal that facts are not in season.

In three years many thousand folks
Have by this contagion been infected
As myth the human spirit yokes
As lying grows yet more perfected.

So Happy Birthday truth abusers
As your superstition rages
Make more uneducated losers
And welcome in a new Dark Ages.

Edwin Kagin

Edwin Kagin's Bible Quotes for Atheists

2010-05-20T22:04:00.003-04:00

“…They Bruised the Teats of Their Virginity.”

and other family friendly BIBLE QUOTES FOR ATHEISTS

Being “one liners” or “sound bites” which may be useful in debate, discussion, or argument with those holding the Bible to be the holy and infallible word of god, suitable for reading by children and for meriting honored placement in school libraries. The text used is that of the so called “King James Version” completed in 1611 C.E., and authorized by King James I of England—a homosexual—the version fundangelicals claim is the only true and perfect translation. Copies are readily available in most motel rooms in the U.S., where they have been placed by the “Gideon Society.” It is a naive man who thinks his daughter has religion when she comes home with a Gideon Bible in her suitcase.

Because of the perceived general lack of biblical literacy among our readers, the customary abbreviations used in connection with quotations from individual books of the bible have been replaced with the full names of those books; otherwise, many might never find the verses quoted when they are challenged to prove they did not make them up. Readers are encouraged to become familiar with the bible as it will be increasingly used as a weapon in the American Religious Civil War (ARCW). The following quotes are only teasers. The book is much better than the movie.

Compiled by Edwin Kagin

SONG OF SONGS 5: [4] My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.

SONG OF SONGS 5: [5] I rose up to open to my beloved; and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock.

SONG OF SONGS 5: [6] I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone…

SONG OF SONGS 6: [2] My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies.

SONG OF SONGS 7: [2] Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.

SONG OF SONGS 7: [3] Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.

SONG OF SONGS 7: [7] This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes. [8] I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof: now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine…

PROVERBS 20:1 Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.

1 TIMOTHY 5: [23] Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.

GENESIS 19: [32] Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him…

GENESIS 19: [34] And it came to pass on the morrow, that the firstborn said unto the younger, Behold, I lay yesternight with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him…

EZEKIEL 23: [3] And they committed whoredoms in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth: there were their breasts pressed, and there they bruised the teats of their virginity.

EZEKIEL 23: [32] Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou shalt drink of thy sister's cup deep and large: thou shalt be laughed to scorn and had in derision; it containeth much

EZEKIEL 23: [34] Thou shalt even drink it and suck it out, and thou shalt break the sherds thereof, and pluck off thine own breasts: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.

EZEKIEL 23: [47] And the company shall stone them with stones, and dispatch them with their swords; they shall slay their sons and their daughters, and burn up their houses with fire.

2 SAMUEL 16: [22] So they spread Absalom a tent upon the top of the house; and Absalom went in unto his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel.

GENESIS 35: [22] And it came to pass, when Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine: and Israel heard it…

JUDGES 19:29 And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.

MARK 14: [51] And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him: [52] And he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.

GENESIS 19: [8] Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.

NUMBERS 31: [17] Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. [18] But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

2 SAMUEL 13: [11] And when she had brought them unto him to eat, he took hold of her, and said unto her, Come lie with me, my sister.

EXODUS 21:22 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. [23] And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, [24] Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, [25] Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

2 KINGS 18: [27] But Rab-shakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?

ISAIAH 36:12 But Rab-shakeh said, Hath my master sent me to thy master and to thee to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?

PROVERBS 5: [19] Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.

SONG OF SONGS 8:1 O that thou wert as my brother, that sucked the breasts of my mother! when I should find thee without, I would kiss thee; yea, I should not be despised.

ISAIAH 18: [27] Wherefore David arose and went, he and his men, and slew of the Philistines two hundred men; and David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king's son-in-law. And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife.

2 KINGS 8: [12] And Hazael said, Why weepeth my lord? And he answered, Because I know the evil that thou wilt do unto the children of Israel: their strong holds wilt thou set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with the sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up their women with child.

EZEKIEL 9: [6] Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women…

EXODUS 32: [27]And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.

GENESIS 7: [2] Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. [3] Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

GENESIS 7: [9] There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.

GENESIS 1: [27] So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

GENESIS 6: [6] And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

GENESIS 11: [23] And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

GENESIS 8:20 And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

GENESIS 12: [18] And Pharaoh called Abram, and said, What is this that thou hast done unto me? why didst thou not tell me that she was thy wife?

GENESIS 16: [2] And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai

GENESIS 17: [11] And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.

GENESIS 22: [2] And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

GENESIS 22: [9] And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. [10] And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.

GENESIS 2: [2] And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

GENESIS 2: [7] And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

GENESIS 2: [22] And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

GENESIS 3: [11] And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

GENESIS 6: [7] And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

GENESIS 9: [20] And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: [21] And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.

GENESIS 39:7 And it came to pass after these things, that his master's wife cast her eyes upon Joseph; and she said, Lie with me.

LEVITICUS 18: [19] Also thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness, as long as she is put apart for her uncleanness.

ISAIAH 20: [4] So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.

LAMENTATIONS 4:21 Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz; the cup also shall pass through unto thee: thou shalt be drunken, and shalt make thyself naked.

EZEKIEL 16: [33] They give gifts to all whores: but thou givest thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hirest them, that they may come unto thee on every side for thy whoredom.

EZEKIEL 16: [36] Thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thy filthiness was poured out, and thy nakedness discovered through thy whoredoms with thy lovers, and with all the idols of thy abominations, and by the blood of thy children, which thou didst give unto them…

EZEKIEL 16: ; [37] Behold, therefore I will gather all thy lovers, with whom thou hast taken pleasure, and all them that thou hast loved, with all them that thou hast hated; I will even gather them round about against thee, and will discover thy nakedness unto them, that they may see all thy nakedness.

EXODUS 23: [8] Neither left she her whoredoms brought from Egypt: for in her youth they lay with her, and they bruised the breasts of her virginity, and poured their whoredom upon her.

EXODUS 23: [17] And the Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled her with their whoredom, and she was polluted with them, and her mind was alienated from them.

EXODUS 23: [18] So she discovered her whoredoms, and discovered her nakedness: then my mind was alienated from her, like as my mind was alienated from her sister.

EXODUS 23: [20] For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses.

EXODUS 23: [21] Thus thou calledst to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth, in bruising thy teats by the Egyptians for the paps of thy youth.

EXODUS 23: [29] And they shall deal with thee hatefully, and shall take away all thy labour, and shall leave thee naked and bare: and the nakedness of thy whoredoms shall be discovered, both thy lewdness and thy whoredoms.

EXODUS 23: [43] Then said I unto her that was old in adulteries, Will they now commit whoredoms with her, and she with them?

HOSEA 2: [2] Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts; [3] Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst. [4] And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of whoredoms.

HOSEA 4: [14] I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery: for themselves are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots…

DEUTERONOMY 22: 20] But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: [21] Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

1 KINGS 1: [2] Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my lord the king a young virgin: and let her stand before the king, and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat.

1 KINGS 14: [10] Therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam, and will cut off from Jeroboam him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is shut up and left in Israel, and will take away the remnant of the house of Jeroboam, as a man taketh away dung, till it be all gone.

GENESIS 38: [9] And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. [10] And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore he slew him also.

NUMBERS 22: [30] And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day?

DEUTERONOMY 32: [23] I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. [24] They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.

DEUTERONOMY 32: [25] The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs.

DEUTERONOMY 32: [42] I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revengers upon the enemy.

JOSHUA 11: [14] And all the spoil of these cities, and the cattle, the children of Israel took for a prey unto themselves; but every man they smote with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them, neither left they any to breathe.

JUDGES 9: [53] And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's head, and all to brake his skull. [54] Then he called hastily unto the young man his armourbearer, and said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him.

2 SAMUEL 1: [26] I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.

1 KINGS 3: [24] And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king. [25] And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other.

2 CHRONICLES 22:10 But when Athaliah the mother of Ahaziah saw that her son was dead, she arose and destroyed all the seed royal of the house of Judah.

2 CHRONICLES 23: 14 … For the priest said, Slay her not in the house of the LORD. [15] So they laid hands on her; and when she was come to the entering of the horse gate by the king's house, they slew her there.
ISAIAH 13: [15] Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword.

ISAIAH 13: [16] Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.

ISAIAH 13: [18] Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye shall not spare children.

JEREMIAH 14: [3] And I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the LORD: the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and destroy.

JEREMIAH 18: [21] Therefore deliver up their children to the famine, and pour out their blood by the force of the sword; and let their wives be bereaved of their children, and be widows; and let their men be put to death; let their young men be slain by the sword in battle.

EZEKIEL 26: [6] And her daughters which are in the field shall be slain by the sword; and they shall know that I am the LORD.

JOB 20: [7]Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung…

EZEKIEL 33: [27] Say thou thus unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; As I live, surely they that are in the wastes shall fall by the sword, and him that is in the open field will I give to the beasts to be devoured, and they that be in the forts and in the caves shall die of the pestilence.

AMOS 7: [17] Therefore thus saith the LORD; Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword….

MICAH 4:3 … they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

JOEL 3: [10] Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears….

DEUTERONOMY 28: [53] And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters…

DEUTERONOMY 28: [54] So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave: [55] So that he will not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he shall eat….

DEUTERONOMY 28: [56] The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, [57] And toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them ….

ISAIAH 45: [7] I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

JEREMIAH 19: [9] And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters…..

JEREMIAH 9: [22] Speak, Thus saith the LORD, Even the carcases of men shall fall as dung upon the open field, and as the handful after the harvestman, and none shall gather them.

JEREMIAH 16: [4] They shall die of grievous deaths; they shall not be lamented; neither shall they be buried; but they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth: and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their carcases shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth.

LEVITICUS 20: [18] And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people.

ECCLESIASTES 9: 4 For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. [5] For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.
.
JOEL 3: [3] And they have cast lots for my people; and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink.

JOEL 3: [8] And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the LORD hath spoken it.

GENESIS 30: 3] And she said, Behold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. [4] And she gave him Bilhah her handmaid to wife: and Jacob went in unto her. [5] And Bilhah conceived, and bare Jacob a son. [6] And Rachel said, God hath judged me, and hath also heard my voice, and hath given me a son: therefore called she his name Dan. [7] And Bilhah Rachel's maid conceived again, and bare Jacob a second son.

GENESIS 38: [15] When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered her face. [16] And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Go to, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee; (for he knew not that she was his daughter-in-law.) And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou mayest come in unto me? [17] And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it? [18] And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave it her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him.

GENESIS 38:24 And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter-in-law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.

GENESIS 38:27 And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, twins were in her womb. [28] And it came to pass, when she travailed, that the one put out his hand: and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first. [29] And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? this breach be upon thee: therefore his name was called Pharez. [30] And afterward came out his brother, that had the scarlet thread upon his hand: and his name was called Zerah.

EXODUS 1: [22] And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.

LEVITICUS 18: [16] Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife: it is thy brother's nakedness.

DEUTERONOMY 25:5 If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her.

LEVITICUS 20: [21] And if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother's nakedness; they shall be childless.

DEUTERONOMY 25: . [7] And if the man like not to take his brother's wife…Then shall his brother's wife…loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face…. [10] And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe loosed.

LEVITICUS 20:27 A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them.

LEVITICUS 21:9 And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore, she profaneth her father: she shall be burnt with fire

LEVITICUS 21: [13] And he shall take a wife in her virginity. [14] A widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, or an harlot, these shall he not take: but he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife.

LEVITICUS 21:16 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, [17] Speak unto Aaron, saying, Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. [18] For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, [19] Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, [20] Or crookbacked, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken;

LEVITICUS 26: [29] And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.

JUDGES 11: [30] And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, [31] Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD'S, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering….and the LORD delivered them into his hands….and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him … And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. [39] And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man.

1 KINGS 11:1 But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites; [2] Of the nations concerning which the LORD said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love. [3] And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines….

1 KINGS 11: [5] For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. [6] And Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and went not fully after the LORD, as did David his father. [7] Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. [8] And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.

2 KINGS 9:30 And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window. [31] And as Jehu entered in at the gate, she said, Had Zimri peace, who slew his master? [32] And he lifted up his face to the window, and said, Who is on my side? who? And there looked out to him two or three eunuchs. [33] And he said, Throw her down. So they threw her down: and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and on the horses: and he trode her under foot. [34] And when he was come in, he did eat and drink, and said, Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her: for she is a king's daughter. [35] And they went to bury her: but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands. [36] Wherefore they came again, and told him. And he said, This is the word of the LORD, which he spake by his servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel: [37] And the carcase of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of the field in the portion of Jezreel; so that they shall not say, This is Jezebel.

MATTHEW 10: [34] Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

MATTHEW 10: [35] For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. [36] And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. [37] He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

MATTHEW 26: [51] And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear. [52] Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

LUKE 22: [36] Then said he unto them… he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

LUKE 22: [38] And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.

LUKE 22: [49] When they which were about him saw what would follow, they said unto him, Lord, shall we smite with the sword?

LUKE 22:50 And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear.

JOHN 18: [10] Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear… [11] Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath…

ROMANS 1: 26… for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: [27] And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly,

JOHN 2: 1 …. the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. [4] Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee?...

1 CORINTHIANS 14: [34] Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. [35] And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.

1 CORINTHIANS 7: 36] But if any man think that he behaveth himself uncomely toward his virgin, if she pass the flower of her age, and need so require, let him do what he will, he sinneth not: let them marry.

1 CORINTHIANS 11: [3] But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man

1 CORINTHIANS 11: [8] For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. [9] Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.

1 CORINTHIANS 7: 1 …It is good for a man not to touch a woman. [2] Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.

1 Timothy 2: [11] Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. [12] But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

1 Timothy 2: [13] For Adam was first formed, then Eve. [14] And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. [15] Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

2 Timothy 3: [6] For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts…

REVELATION 14: [4] These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins….

MALACHI 2: [3] Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts

DEUTERONOMY 10:16: [16] Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.

REVELATION 22: 20…Surely I come quickly.

REVELATION 22: 20…Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

I can’t stand it anymore. There is a lot more, but this will have to do.
Don’t blame the reporter. From the word of god, as compiled by

Edwin.

HUNDREDS JOIN PROTEST AT TEXAS CAPITOL

2010-05-16T18:50:00.001-04:00

We cannot permit fanatics, traitors, and fools to defile the graves of our martyrs. One Nation Indivisible; One History Unchangeable!

----------------------------------------------

From American Atheists News for May 16, 2010

HUNDREDS JOIN PROTEST AT TEXAS CAPITOL: BOARD
MEMBER RENEWS EFFORT AGAINST TEACHING SEPARATION!

An enthusiastic crowd estimated at nearly 300 people turned out
for a rally this morning in front of the state capitol building in
Austin, Texas to protest proposed changes in how subjects ranging
from history to science will be taught in public schools.

A religious-right faction on the board last month recommended
sweeping changes in the content of textbooks. Proposals called
for downplaying secularism, the Enlightenment and even Founders
like Thomas Jefferson in favor of a renewed emphasis on religion
as a positive force in American history. In place of the "Sage of
Monticello," one member suggested that students learn more about
religious leaders like John Calvin.

Several speakers addressed today's event including Dr. Ed Buckner
President of American Atheists. A message of support from author
and Atheist Christopher Hitchens was also read. More details will
follow in the next edition of AANEWS.

While Texas citizens were mobilizing against the new guidelines,
however, on of the most strident members of the Board of Education
announced that he will propose even more radical changes before
the Board meets again this week.

Member Don McLeroy (R. - College Station) told reporters that that
he will attempt to mandate that eighth-graders study the issue of
state-church separation from what the Dallas Morning News described
as "a different perspective." The paper is reporting that students
would "contrast the Founders' intent relative to the wording of
the First Amendment's Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause
with the popular term 'Separation of church and state.' "

That story can be found at:

**

A MESSAGE FROM CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
READ AT TODAY'S "TEXANS FOR TRUTHFUL TEXTBOOKS" RALLY

We know of no spectacle more ridiculous - or more contemptible - than
that of the religious reactionaries who dare to re-write the history
of our republic. Or who try to do so. Is it possible that, in their
vanity and stupidity, they suppose that they can erase the name of
Thomas Jefferson and replace it with the name of some faith-based
mediocrity whose name is already obscure? If so, we cheerfully
resolve to mock them, and to give them the lie in their teeth.

Without Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence,
there would have been no American revolution that announced universal
principles of liberty. Without his participation by the side of
the unforgettable Marquis de Lafayette, there would have been no
French proclamation of The Rights of Man. Without his brilliant
negotiation of the Louisiana treaty, there would be no United States
of America. Without Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, there would
have been no Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and no basis
for the most precious clause of our most prized element of our
imperishable Bill of Rights - the First Amendment to the United
States Constitution.

We make no saint of Thomas Jefferson - we leave the mindless
business of canonization and the worship of humans to the fanatics
-but aware as we are of his many crimes and contradictions we say
with confidence that his memory and example will endure long after
the moral pygmies who try to blot out his name have been forgotten.

As Abraham Lincoln died, after a cowardly shot in the back from
a racist traitor, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sighed and said:
"Now he belongs to the ages". Or did he say "Now he belongs to
the angels"? In a roomful of highly literate and educated officers
and physicians, in an age of photography and stenography, and with
newspaper presses around the corner on Pennsylvania Avenue, there
was no agreement among eye-and-ear witnesses as to what Stanton
had actually said.

Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its
approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally
the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who
claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs
and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And
this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who
display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation. They try to
tell us that to do otherwise is to collapse into "relativism". But it
is they who wish to promote the life and work of Jefferson Davis -
an advocate of slavery, backwardness, treason and disunion - to an
equality with Lincoln, who suffered agonies of doubt, who never
joined a church, who was born on the same day as Charles Darwin
and who introduced his colleagues to the work of Thomas Paine -
and who was the last brave casualty of a war: a war begun by
devout and fanatical Christians, that preserved our Union and in
the end led to the striking of the shackles from every slave. It
was inscribed in the documents of the Confederacy that the private
ownership of human beings had a divine warrant. And so it did -
to the everlasting shame of those who take the Bible as god's word.

It is notorious that the news of the Emancipation Proclamation
was kept from the people of Texas and not celebrated until
"Juneteenth". There may be those in Texas now who believe they can
insulate their state - a state that had its own courageous revolution
- from the news of evolution and from the writing in 1786 of a
Constitution that refuses to mention religion except when demarcating
and limiting its role in the public square. But we promise them today
that they will join their fore-runners in the flat-earth community,
and in the mad clerical clique of those who believed that the sun
revolved around the earth. Yes, they will be in schoolbooks -as a
joke on the epic scale of William Jennings Bryan. We shall be fair,
and take care to ensure that their tale is told.

As President, Thomas Jefferson received a letter from a
concerned group of Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut. These people
were the objects of persecution and the victims of discrimination,
and they beseeched Jefferson to uphold their liberties. Of whom were
they afraid? It should be remembered, and taught in our schools,
that these poor Baptists were afraid of the Congregationalists of
Connecticut, who subjected their fellow-Christians to insult and
insecurity. Thus it was the secular and unbelieving Jefferson who
insisted that, by means of a "wall of separation" between religion
and government, all faiths and communities could take shelter under
the great roof of the godless Constitution. From that day to this,
the only guarantee of religious pluralism has been the secular law.

We inherited these principles and these freedoms and we here
highly resolve that we shall pass them on, as we will pass
on an undivided Republic purged of racism and slavery, to our
descendants. The popgun discharges of a few pathetic sectarians
and crackpot revisionists are negligible, and will be drowned
by the mounting chorus that demands: "Mr Jefferson! BUILD UP
THAT WALL".

-- Christopher Hitchens

**

REMARKS BY ED BUCKNER, PRESIDENT , AMERICAN ATHEISTS
PRESENTED AT TODAY'S RALLY

Please join me in thanking American Atheist VP and Military
Director Kathleen Johnson for her leadership in bringing this
rally to life. We're proud of Sgt. Johnson and proud that American
Atheists organized this rally. [applause] Kathleen also lives in
Texas, works at Ft. Hood, and wore the uniform of our country
for over 20 years-and she founded the Military Association of
Atheists and Freethinkers. We're also proud and honored to have
with us today the editor of American Atheist, David Smalley from the
Dallas-Ft. Worth area-who you'll hear from shortly-and I'm especially
pleased to introduce the newest national leader of American Atheists,
Director of State Operations (for all of 16 days now)-Ken Loukinen.
Chris Allen, one of our national board members who was also educated
and lives in Texas is here, as is of course our Texas state director,
Joe Zamecki. Others...

I'm Ed Buckner, the President of American Atheists, and I was
educated in Texas-junior high in Webster, TX, high school in League
City, TX, college in Houston-and my Daddy, a conservative and,
unlike me, a Christian, was a school board member for the Clear
Creek Independent School District. He died in 1996, but if he
were alive now I know he'd be appalled at the Texas State Board of
Education. Many things are wrong with the curriculum changes they're
considering, and I'm going to address one major problem, but the
overall problem is simple-they want to indoctrinate the students
of Texas, not educate them. They're afraid of letting scientists
and historians decide what science and history to teach. They want
their anti-scientific, religious, and political prejudices taught,
not real science and history. To which we say, Indoctrination,
NO! Education, YES! - Indoctrination, NO! Education, YES!

You may have heard of that revolutionary American writer who was
also this nation's third president, who wrote Notes on Virginia, who
won fame as an inventor, an architect, an agricultural expert, and a
writer of thousands of letters, who was Governor of Virginia (which
included then the area now called Kentucky), who also served us as
Ambassador to France and as Secretary of State, who as president
doubled the size of the USA with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803,
under whose administration America won its first military victory
against Islamic terrorists-pirates in the Mediterranean- and whose
face is on every American nickel and on every two-dollar bill. This
man-Thomas Jefferson, of course-is being downplayed by the Texas
State Board of Education because they don't like his religious views
or his role in the separation of church and state. Jefferson was
not a god or anything like a perfect man. He hated slavery but he
owned slaves. He was, like most men of his time, a racist and was
probably as much of a sexist as Phyllis Schlafly. Jefferson was
called an "atheist" by his enemies, and he was indeed no orthodox
Christian-he wrote that he did not accept that Jesus was divine,
did not believe in the resurrection or atonement, etc.-but he did
believe in an afterlife and in a designer god. Jefferson died 33
years before Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published, so
in Jefferson's lifetime there was no reasonable, well-supported
theory of human evolution. But the truth is what matters and no
one-including the Texas State Board of Education -should try to
rewrite history. Jefferson was a genius and he was easily America's
most original and revolutionary thinker and writer. The Texas State
Board of Education doesn't want to emphasize the real Jefferson;
they want indoctrination. To which we say, Indoctrination,
NO! Jefferson, YES! - Indoctrination, NO! Jefferson, YES!

Now, if Thomas Jefferson did not focus primarily on being President
or enlarging the nation geographically or winning wars, what did
he care about, and how do we know? We know because he wrote out,
very specifically, what achievements should be put on his grave
marker-and he listed three-and only three-things. First, he was the
"author of the Declaration of American Independence," the thing he is
most famous for writing, the document known worldwide for changing
the world's understanding of freedom. People all over the world
"hold these truths to be self-evident" because Thomas Jefferson wrote
about them so eloquently, so stirringly. The Texas State Board of
Education wants less independence and more indoctrination. To which
we say, Indoctrination, NO! Independence, YES! - Indoctrination, NO!
Independence, YES!

Jefferson listed second on his marker something else that he was
proud of having written, something not nearly as well known but
maybe even more important: "The Statute of Virginia for Religious
Freedom." That Virginia law declares among other things, "that our
civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more
than our opinions in physics or geometry." That law, written by
Jefferson but passed mostly with James Madison's leadership while
Jefferson was in France, became widely famous in the late 1700s
and is usually regarded as the key basis for the First Amendment
to the US Constitution-the foundation of separation of church and
state that is so despised and misunderstood by the Texas State
Board of Education. They want indoctrination. To which we say,
Indoctrination, NO! Religious Freedom, YES! - Indoctrination,
NO! Religious Freedom, YES!

And the third thing Jefferson asked to be remembered for was as
"Father of the University of Virginia." That university was the first
secular one in America, a university that Jefferson founded and that
he proudly declared would not have a theology department. He wrote to
a colleague that he expected strong opposition to the university from
"the priests of the different religious sects, to whose spells on the
human mind its improvement is ominous." Like the Texas State Board
of Education, those opponents wanted indoctrination. To which we
say now, as Jefferson did then, Indoctrination, NO! Education, YES!
-Indoctrination, NO! Education, YES!

So, in summary, Jefferson wanted and worked for what we want, what we
demand today: Independence-individual rights and political liberty;
Religious Freedom-including the freedom to not be religious;
and Education, real education. Finally, I'd like to call your
attention to some words of Jefferson that are prominently displayed
at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC. These are words
from Jefferson, in a letter he wrote when he was about to become
president, a letter to his friend Dr. Benjamin Rush, about what
Jefferson called "the irritable tribe of priests" whose schemes
of establishment, of government support for their religious ideas,
he despised. They feared, he wrote, that he would oppose them. And,
said Jefferson, they believed rightly. He wrote these words, words
which could just as well have been written for today's Texas State
Board of Education: "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal
hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." To
which we, even those of us with no belief in any altars or any
gods, say Indoctrination, NO! Education, YES! - Indoctrination,
NO! Education, YES! Thank you.

-- Ed Buckner

Help Hold Back the Night

2010-05-14T18:10:00.001-04:00

AMERICANATHEISTS,INC.

http://www.atheists.org
http://www.americanatheist.org

For more information, please contact:
Ed Buckner, President 908-499-9200 (cell) or 770-803-5353 (office/fax)
Kathleen Johnson, Vice President and Military Director 318-542-1019
Joe Zamecki, Texas State Director 512-968-5048

"TEXANS FOR TRUTHFUL TEXTBOOKS" TO RALLY AT STATE CAPITOL, PROTEST DISTORTED GUIDELINES PUSHED BY BOARD OF EDUCATION

Sunday, May 16, 2010 -- Capitol Steps, Austin, Texas

A coalition of Secularist and Freethought groups will host a rally on the steps of the Texas State Capitol building in Austin, TX, to protest new guidelines authored by a religious-right faction on the state Board of Education. The new standards, which have according to some observers made the Lone Star State "the laughingstock of the nation," downplay important American figures like Thomas Jefferson and the teaching of important events such as the Enlightenment. Instead, students would be given half-truths about religious figures like John Calvin, and falsely informed that separation of church and state is not part of the American law.

The Board has been accused of promoting a fundamentalist religious agenda at the expense of historical and scientific accuracy. Some warn that the guidelines could lead to creationism being taught in public schools, erosion of scientific information about evolution, and a biased revision of American history. Professional academics have circulated a letter calling for postponement of the new guidelines which significantly alter the content of textbooks used in Texas public schools until qualified, academically-trained experts can respond further.

"This is about whether to teach a politically and religiously biased account of history and science in favor of sectarian religious doctrines. This is about substituting miseducation and indoctrination for real education," said Dr. Ed Buckner, the Texas-educated President of American Atheists.

Kathleen Johnson, Vice President of the group and a Texas resident, said that the rally is inviting participation from secular and religious groups.

"The Board faction which has promoted these new standards for what may be taught in our public schools represents an extreme faction," said Johnson. "Many religious leaders and groups are speaking out against this faith-based censorship, and we welcome their participation. Though we're proud of our own Atheism, this is not a rally for Atheism – it's a rally for strong education."

Joe Zamecki, Texas State Director for American Atheists, declared that the public schools "should not become pulpits or vehicles for promoting one religion over another, or religion in general."

WHAT: "Texas for Truthful Textbooks" rally on the steps of the State Capitol, Austin, TX.

WHEN: Sunday, May 16, 2010, 11:00 AM

MORE INFO: See above, also Kathleen Johnson (kjohnson @ athists.org),

Joe Zamecki(jzamecki @ atheists.org)

AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists, Freethinkers and other nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.

American Atheists, Inc. PO BOX 158, Cranford, NJ 07016
Tel.: (908) 276-7300 Fax: (908) 276-7402

Edwin to Speak at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York

2010-04-29T13:20:00.001-04:00

http://insidesu.syr.edu/2010/04/29/edwin-kagin-to-speak-on-atheism-blasphemy-and-the-american-religious-civil-war/

Edwin Kagin to speak on “Atheism, Blasphemy and the American Religious
Civil War”

By SU News Services • (315) 443-3784

Attorney Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists,
will speak on the topic, “Atheism, Blasphemy and the American Religious
Civil War” on Tuesday, May 4 at 7 p.m. in Maxwell Auditorium.

American Atheists is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for
Atheists, Freethinkers and other nonbelievers, works for the total
separation of church and state, and addresses issues of First Amendment
public policy.

Kagin is the originator and was, for its first decade, Director of Camp
Quest, the nation’s first residential secular summer camp for children
of Atheists and other freethinkers. Kagin was also a founder and board
member of Recover Resources Center, which provides an alternative
addiction recovery program to the religiously-oriented Alcoholics
Anonymous. He currently serves on the national advisory board of the
Secular Student Alliance, is Kentucky state director for
American Atheists, and on January 13, 2006, was named national legal
director for American Atheists, replacing the retiring Duane Buchholtz.

As an outspoken public critic of religious intrusions into government,
Kagin is a frequent speaker and debater at local and national events and
has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs, sparring on
more than one occasion with Michael Medved.

Kagin has also run prominently, albeit unsuccessfully, as “the candidate without a prayer”
for the Kentucky Supreme Court (1998) and the Kentucky State Senate
(2000). Moreover, some of his legal work has involved him in religious
issues and church-state separation controversies in addition to other
civil liberties and constitutional issues. He has been a member in good
standing of the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court since 1975.

Currently, Kagin is host for the Internet radio show “Answers in
Atheism. He is also the current National Legal Director, and Kentucky
State Director, for American Atheists. He is on its speaker’s bureau and
in 2008 was voted onto the Board of Directors of American Atheists, Inc.
Edwin and his late wife, Helen Kagin, were awarded the “Atheists of the
Year” award for 2005 by American Atheists, and Edwin was named “Atheist
of the Year” for 2008 “For Organizing The Very Successful Response To
The Creationism Museum In Kentucky.”

Copies of Edwin’s books, “Baubles of Blasphemy,” and his co-authored
book, “The Fundamentals of Extremism” will be offered for sale and
signing.

Contact: James Addoms, Atheists, Agnostics, Freethinkers Alliance at
SU / SUNY ESF, jwaddoms@maxwell.syr.edu

Edwin Speaks

2010-04-18T14:54:00.002-04:00

Monday, April 19th, 2010:

Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists, will be on the Sue Wiley radio call-in talk show in Lexington, Kentucky, on Monday, April 19th, 2010, to discuss the recent Federal case declaring the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional.

The show will be at 10:00 am Eastern Time on WVLK 590 AM radio, Lexington, Kentucky. The show should be available on the Internet, and later archived, at http://radiotime.com/station/s_23550/WVLK_590.aspx

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010:

Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists, and founder of Camp Quest, will speak at the Louisville Atheists and Freethinkers meet-up group. The topic will be the history and future of Camp Quest, the first ever residential summer for the children of Atheists and other non-believers (www.camp-quest.org). He will also present a photo show of the history of the camp. The event will be at 7:00 pm Eastern Time at Mulligans Pub & Grill, 1801 Newburg Rd., Louisville, Kentucky. Details can be found at:
http://atheists.meetup.com/175/

American Atheists Challenges I.Q. Study

2010-03-08T08:17:00.000-05:00

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/atheist-group-questions-study-linking-atheists-to-higher-intelligence

Atheist Group Questions Study Linking Atheists to Higher Intelligence
Opinion by American Atheists
(12 Hours Ago) in Religion

A study claiming that liberals and Atheists are "more intelligent" than religious believers is causing a buzz in the news media and academic circles.

Authored by Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics, the study claims that "more intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences (such as liberalism and atheism...) than less intelligent individuals."

Fellow academics are saying that Kanazawa's research and conclusions are flawed.

And now, some Atheists agree and are speaking out.

Dr. Ed Buckner, President of American Atheists, said that "intelligence" -- especially as reflected by so-called IQ tests -- can be difficult to define and quantify. "There are often cultural, ethnic, and even sexual biases at work here, and a good case can be made that there are actually many different kinds of intelligence," said Buckner. "Something like 'intelligence' has to be understood in a very broad context, and Dr. Kanazawa seems not to have given that sufficient consideration."

"We have never said that Atheists or other non-believers are inherently 'superior' or 'smarter' than religious people, even though we do assert that logic and evidence are on our side regarding our conclusions.

Questions about religious beliefs and whether 'god' exists should be discussed and argued based on the best evidence."

Buckner also noted that members of American Atheists vary considerably regarding political philosophies, saying that "liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and other (less orthodox) categories can all be found

among our members and leaders." He added that a Catholic or Muslim with an IQ score higher than a random non-believer, for instance, does not constitute any special evidence regarding claims any of them might make.

"And we're totally against Atheists suddenly telling the world, 'Hey, look at us, we're right because we're bright!' "

Kathleen Johnson, Vice President for American Atheists, said that she prefers to suggest that all or at least most Americans can, with sufficient reasoning, understand the need to question religion.

"There are all kinds of Atheists, just as there are all kinds of believers," said Johnson. "We advocate a polite, courteous, and 'spirited' exchange of views, and we encourage everyone -- Atheist and religious alike -- to exercise their First Amendment rights by expressing their opinions in a constitutional manner in the public square. We can win in the marketplace of ideas without invidious comparisons or pointless insults aimed at those with whom we differ."

Ed Buckner, President of American Atheists. Debates at Mega Church Near Cincinnati, Ohio

2010-03-07T09:27:00.001-05:00

AMERICAN ATHEISTS
http://www.atheists.org

BUCKNER, PROVINE JOIN FORCES
FOR DEBATE SUMMIT 2010

The Debate Summit series exists as a forum designed to explain, test and defend various aspects of the Christian world view by interacting with qualified representatives of non-Christian worldviews in moderated public debates. The goal is to create and maintain an atmosphere of civility, mutual respect and the open exchange of ideas.

MARCH 12-13, 2010 Washington Court House, Ohio

DR. ED BUCKNER, President of American Atheists will be a participant in the 2010 Debater Summit slated for March 12-13, 2010. He will be joining R. WILL PROVINE, Professor of Biology at Cornell University and an outspoken Atheist in defending the naturalist world view in a debate with leading Christian apologists.

The venue is the
Grace Community Church, 525 S. Glenn Avenue, Washington C.H., OH 43160

The schedule of events includes:

Debate #001
Friday, March 12, 7:00 pm
Dr. Ed Buckner vs. Jay Lucas
Topic: Moral Foundations: "Which makes more sense, Christianity or Atheism?"

Debate #002
Saturday, March 13, 3:00 pm
Dr. Will Provine vs. Dr. Andy McIntosh
Topic: "Flight in birds and bats: Is evolution or creation the best guide?"

Debate #003
Saturday, March 13, 7:00 pm
Dr. Dennis Sullivan vs. Dr. Will Provine
Topic: "Free Will: Does it exist? Does it matter?"

Washington Court House is easily accessible from the interstate and major metro areas. Lodging is available in town; and tickets for the debates ($6 per session) can be purchased on line. For more information, visit http://debatesummit2010.blogspot.com/

WHO & WHAT: Dr. Ed Buckner and Dr. Will Provine participating in Debate Summit 2010

WHEN: March 12-13, 2010

WHERE: Grace Community Church, 525 S. Glenn Avenue, Washington C.H., OH 43160

MORE INFO: http://debatesummit2010.blogspot.com/

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists, Freethinkers and other nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

Announcing the Greatest Event in Publishing Since the Rosetta Stone

2010-03-03T19:57:00.000-05:00

Baubles of Blasphemy, Second Edition, edited by Frank Zindler, American Atheist Press, 2010, www.atheists.org.

The books arrived from the printers a few weeks ago, while my Helen was in the I.C.U. I gave her a signed copy, together with a private writing therein thanking her and saying that without her the work would not exist. She was not aware that I had brought the book, nor was she able to read it. I took it home with me the night she died. But I know she would want you to know about this new edition. And since I believe that humor is the only real way to deal with the deepest grief, I will tell you about it.

The new covers, designed by Helen and my daughter Kathryn, make it look like it was just pulled out of the fundangelical fires set for burning Harry Potter books and other forbidden thought. This is because the cover really is burned. I photographed the cover, glued it onto a copy of a disposable religious book, and tossed it into a blazing charcoal grill. After a few moments, I pulled it out and photographed the result. I rather like it. Some people hate it; they think it is damaged somehow because it looks so real, with important stuff missing. That is because it is real. Thus this explanation is offered.

The back cover contains all of the information needed. The editor, Frank Zindler, insisted it be that way. The back cover submitted was nicely burned as well, but the humorless editor kept only the burned front cover and the burned spine. Oh, lest you think I really believe in book burning, I managed to save “The Case for a Creator,” by Lee Strobel, to which my covers were pasted, in very good order, with only the margins charred.

The Second Edition (or Second Coming if you will) adds a bunch of new material, in addition to reproducing that contained (well, almost all of that contained) in the now famous, and virtually unavailable, First Edition, edited by Ed Buckner and published by the Freethought Press of Atlanta, Georgia, 1995.

As a sample of the work's blasphemous contents, here is the 1995 Edwinian prophesy, contained in both editions, of things now coming so terribly true:

ON THE COMING AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CIVIL WAR (ARCW)

War is hell. Little understood aphorism.

THIS MAY BE YOUR FIRST NOTICE OF THE COMING AMERICAN RELIGIOUS CIVIL WAR (ARCW). If so, you should date and preserve this warning. Then your distant descendants (maybe the "Daughters of the ARCW") can have something to be smug about--in the unlikely event that they, and this notice, survive the fires, and anybody can still read.

The ARCW has already been started by the superstitious. They call it a "civil war of values." The shooting has already started. They call that "protecting innocent life." The purpose of the war is to overthrow science and constitutional democracy and to replace them with the Bronze Age myths and laws of ancient Iraq that became preserved in a collection of writings known, in translation, as "The Holy Bible." They regard this undertaking as "bringing America back to God." Loyal Americans should regard it as treason.

The effects of the stated ends of the traitors include: harming children by not teaching them about human sexuality; harming adults by irrationally circumscribing consensual sexual and reproductive freedom; harming democracy by imposing laws enforcing mythological interpretations of a supernatural being's will; harming civilization by preventing inquiry and suppressing evidence that disproves the myths; harming human development by teaching that humans have a duty to live for some superstitious spiritual world rather than for the world of flesh in which they happen to exist. The traitors do not view their teachings or methods as harmful, but neither did their pious ancestors who beat children and burned women alive for their own good.

The fanatics have declared war on reason and human progress. They have done this because they suffer from fundamental misunderstandings of the nature of American democracy and of the Bible.

History tells lies. It is important to understand this to understand the ARCW. A particularly harmful lie is that the United States of America was founded as a Christian nation. The traitors truly believe this because it has been taught them since they colored pilgrims with crayons in church nursery school while their parents were in the sanctuary learning to be more judgmental. As the young bigots grew into adultery(sic), they accepted this teaching uncritically, just as they accepted that everything in the bible is true, and that science is wrong, if not evil, when it proves that humans have evolved from non-human life forms. The traitors should, in fairness, be permitted to prove the intensity of this mental abuse in their defense at the ARCW war crimes trials.

America was not established as a Christian nation. To the contrary, it was intentionally set up as a godless nation. That's why no god or religion of any kind is mentioned in our Constitution. This was so important that it was memorialized in the first words of the first amendment to our Constitution, to wit, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." The people who started this country knew what religious war and holy terror was, and they wanted to be very clear that America was a democracy set up under human law, not religious authority or rule. This was made exquisitely clear when, in a treaty with Tripoli, signed by President John Adams on June 10, 1797, the United Stated Senate unanimously declared, "...the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." That's that, said the grammarian. People who don't like the American way, and think church and state should not be separated, really ought to move to Serbia where they can kill and rape non-believers with impunity.

The traitors who push the ARCW think they are doing god's will by trying to force their sacred texts and prejudices on those who want to dance to other celestial music or simply stay home Sunday mornings and brush the cat. Before our Constitution, several states made criminals of people who didn't attend the right church, or, whisper the thought, did not attend holy services at all. Some very wise people made us a nation where it is legal to stay home with the cat. If we want to keep it that way, it is necessary to win the ARCW.

As the believers, who think the fault is in the stars and not in themselves, are waging the ARCW on many fronts, thus on many fronts must freedom be defended. Particularly valuable allies can be found among Christians who find attempts to force their foot into someone else's shoe offensive. After all, if the existence and will of any god were clearly known, there would be no need for faith or debate. No one seriously doubts that objects fall down if dropped, but there is murderous dispute over beliefs that cannot be proved as convincingly as gravity.

This is a wake up call. Don't press the snooze alarm. The barbarians are at the gates, and, because they encourage breeding beyond the ability of the breeders to house, feed, and educate the breedees, violence and social disorganization continue. As the most Christian nation on earth watches its civilization dissolve like a Dove bar fallen off of that ark, attempts to enforce irrational superstitious solutions will accelerate. That Branch Davidian thing was a sample. Lots of other messiahs are waiting. Maybe we can have court ordered Branch Davidian Social Services counseling for people who won't share their wives with god's anointed. Maybe courts can acquit murderers if they believe god's finger was on their trigger. Maybe the barbarians will actually succeed in assuring that books, pictures, ideas, doctors, judges and military commanders share their vision. Then we will have a lot of interesting tribal warfare. One useful defense will be humanistic hermeneutics.

"Hermeneutics" is a fancy word for biblical interpretation. When religious types want to make something simple sound holy and mysterious, they often give it an important sounding high falutin' name. This practice contrasts sharply with the usage of secular humanists, who, in explaining their views, employ simple words, that fall trippingly from the tongue, like "eupraxophy."

Hermeneutics can be an important weapon to use against religious fanatics in the coming ARCW. The hard core nut cases-- those who would control every aspect of our lives by forcing us to accept their understanding of the will of their god--tend to share certain operational assumptions. These include the belief that:

1) Every word of the bible is true.

2) The English translation of the bible authorized by King James the First of England, completed in 1611, Common Era, is the only fully acceptable, authoritative, and inspired-by-god translation of holy scripture. This translation is accurate in every respect, including punctuation marks.

3) The bible is the basis of all morality. Without it there can be no morality.

4) The United States of America was established, and should be governed, according to biblical principles.

5) The bible is without error.

6) No part of the bible is in conflict with, or contradictory to, any other part.

7) Hermeneutics can be used to clarify and explain those truths of god in the bible that might appear, to finite minds, to be in conflict. The goal of hermeneutics is to reconcile all portions of the word of god (the bible) into a seamless, complete, infallible, and final statement of all past and future history (the latter is called "prophecy"), of divine law, and of how humans should behave and understand morality. The bible, properly interpreted, is the final word on everything.

Ignorance, while regrettable, can lead to some interesting discussions. As an example of how hermeneutics works, one gospel tells us Judas hanged himself after betraying Jesus. Another gospel says Judas threw himself off a cliff. Proper interpretation, guided by the holy spirit, reveals this to mean Judas hanged himself over a cliff. Then the rope, or branch, broke, and Judas fell down the cliff. If the author of the "Song of Solomon" in the bible appears to drool over a woman's breasts, this is not to be understood in some sexual sense that would keep the bible out of family friendly libraries, but rather as a poetic metaphor of Christ's love for his church. See, it's really quite simple.
Fanatics feel that only the godless and the immoral could possibly understand the bible as a collection of diverse literary myths, sexy stories, primitive laws, and biased histories, unconnected in their presentation, and unworthy of belief in their totality. Such true believers are quite satisfied with the famous refutation of reason of the early Christian church, "I believe it because it is absurd."

The problem is that they are not content to believe what they want and let others believe, or not believe, as they choose. The ARCW they have declared has the avowed purpose of making our democracy one nation under their idea of god. This is treason in its purest and most virulent form.

America was not founded on biblical principles. There is nothing in the bible about democracy. Democracy was invented in Greece, some five hundred years before Jesus. It was overwhelmed for centuries in religious bloodbaths of kings and emperors, and, with minor exceptions, disappeared from human affairs until it was rediscovered and memorialized in the Constitution of the United States of America. To insure that dictators and priests would be kept forever at bay, after much debate, our Constitution was consciously created as a godless document that established a wholly secular state. Love it or leave it.

The religious fanatics who are traitors to our way of life must be stopped before their
un-American attempts to replace our democracy with their mythology causes the ARCW to become a shooting war. Using their principles of hermeneutics, their own book can become a powerful weapon against them in ways reasonable people (including most Christians) can understand.

The bible contains a relatively limited vocabulary when compared with the great contemporary literary works of Greek and Roman writers. The style is also awkward by comparison. One might argue the a work dictated by god should be expected to be better than the writings of heathens, but, alas, it is not. There are no original ideas or thoughts in the bible. Much of it is plagiarized from Egyptian and Babylonian sources. There is little that passes for morality as we understand it. Slavery is condoned, as is the murder of children of non-believers; a rebellious son should be stoned to death, and women are to be totally subjugated to men. A man could have many wives in the Old Testament. If it is argued that the New Testament created a "new covenant" wherein only one wife is permitted, we might wonder if the changeless god changed his mind. If so, how can every word of the Old Testament be taken as the will of god?

From a search of the sacred text itself, using a computerized King James Bible, available in Christian bookstores, we discover that the following words do not appear in the bible: cooperate; cooperation; moral; traditional; values; rational; rights; morals; independence; congress; compromise; progress; republic; republican; democrat; democracy; insight; morality; jury; vote; test; due process; consequences; coincidence; parliament; majority; minority; constitution; achievement; aspire; human; invention; explore; discovery; humanity; humanism; university; universe; homosexual; fairness; harmony; treaty; logic; sexuality; abort; abortion; fetus; poet; poetry; artist; creativity.

If the bible is the foundation of morality and our way of life, we are in serious trouble indeed. If the ARCW is lost, we will have no need for those omitted words.

Edwin Kagin
August, 1995

(permission is given for non-profit reproduction or quoting. If you make money on this, I want some of it) Edwin.

Bible Classes in Kentucky Public Schools

2010-02-26T15:44:00.000-05:00

AMERICAN ATHEISTS MEDIA ALERT
http://www.athe4ists.org

KAGIN TO BLAST KENTUCKY BILL FOR BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Tonight - Friday, February 26, 2010 -- Cincinnati

Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists, will be on a
T.V. news program this evening discussing the legislation in Kentucky to
provide for teaching the Bible in public schools.

WHO & WHAT: Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists on legislation in Kentucky to
provide for teaching the Bible in public schools.

WHEN: Friday, February 26, 2010. 6:00 pm. Eastern.

WHERE: Channel 12 T.V. in Cincinnati, Ohio (http://www.local12.com )
After about 6:30 pm. Eastern, the show should be archived, and available
at www.local12.com

MORE INFO plus Archive: http://www.local12.com

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists, Freethinkers and other nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

For Helen

2010-02-19T21:36:00.001-05:00

For Helen

I am on the waiting list for death
Behind so many friends who jumped the line.
Now you, bad girl, have pushed ahead,
Leaving your once happy flesh
For something neither understood nor known,
At least by me,
Who will, in time, be where you are,
If anywhere.
Forgive me for any unkindness I have done
As I forgive you
For causing me to now so deeply grieve.

Edwin.

Edwin Kagin
February 19, 2010

Helen Kagin Is Dead

2010-02-17T21:02:00.000-05:00

Helen Kagin Is Dead.

Helen Kagin, my wife, and co-founder of Camp Quest, was pronounced dead at 6:55 pm. today, Wednesday, February 17, 2010, at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Helen underwent surgery for lung cancer on January 7, 2010 and never left the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). In conformity with her Living Will, and the opinions expressed to us by six physicians who strongly concurred, her daughter Caroline Good and I agreed that dialysis not be started when she went into renal failure. Helen had been on oxygen for some time, her lungs leaked air, she had developed fungal pneumonia, and systemic sepsis, her body had stopped making red blood cells, and she had suffered multiple systems failures that were incompatible with life. She had been unconscious for days. I know for a certainty that if she had decision making capacity, Helen would not have wanted to live on a ventilator and dialysis. Surrounded by family members, the ventilator was withdrawn and the life force that had been Helen departed within minutes. And she was dead.

Helen was born Helen McGregor Smith in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada on January 31, 1934. She attended Medical school at the University of Saskatchewan and came to Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio as an Intern. She did her residence there, was employed as an anaesthesiologist there, worked there until she retired, and she died there today. She was 76 years old. We celebrated her 76th Birthday in the ICU, but we do not know if she was aware of the signs, the cards, and the well wishers.

Helen was an accomplished athlete. She was a figure skater, an ice dancer, a hockey player, a softball player, a swimmer, a fencer, and a superb human being. She loved the Winter Olympics, and it is fitting indeed that she died during the Winter Olympics now being held in Canada.

Today is Ash Wednesday. Today is also the anniversary of the death of Freethought hero Giordano Bruno in 1600. Helen never did Ash Wednesday, and her death was far more gentle than that of Bruno.

Helen's body is now an empty shell, and it will be treated as such. The body will be picked up tomorrow by a funeral home and immediately cremated. The ashes will be given to her daughter Caroline, who has proved her very substantial character during these past few weeks. A celebration of Helen's remarkable life will be announced later.

And what a life it was! I am honored to have shared it with her for twenty-five years. She will be missed beyond my ability to say. She was the finest human being I have ever known.

If you would honor her accomplishments and memory, do not send flowers; do not send money to some charity.

Help send a kid to Camp Quest.

Edwin Kagin

Edwin Kagin Talk At Syracuse Canceled

2010-02-15T15:49:00.001-05:00

AMERICAN ATHEISTS SPEAKERS BUREAU
http://www.atheists.org

KAGIN TALK AT SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
FOR THURSDAY, 2/18 CANCELED

The talk by American Atheists National Legal Director Edwin Kagin at Syracuse University (Thursday, 2/18) has been canceled. We'll let you know about any re-scheduled event.

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists, Freethinkers and other nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

American Atheists Press Release: EDWIN KAGIN SPEAKS AT SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

2010-02-14T21:09:00.000-05:00

AMERICAN ATHEISTS SPEAKERS BUREAU
http://www.atheists.org

EDWIN KAGIN SPEAKS AT SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
THIS THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2010
"Atheism, Blasphemy and the
American Religious Civil War"

EDWIN KAGIN, National Legal Director for American Atheists will speak this Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010 to the "Atheists, Agnostics and Freethnkers Alliance" (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18129534066 ) at Syracuse University.

Kagin will talk on: "Atheism, Blasphemy and the American Religious Civil War." The gathering begins at 7:00 PM at the Maxwell Auditorium, inside Maxwall Hall, 110 Crouse Dr., Syracuse, NY, and is open to the public.

Copies of Edwin's books, "Baubles of Blasphemy," and his co-authored book, "The Fundamentals of Extremism" will be offered for sale and signing.

WHO & WHAT: EDWIN KAGIN, National Legal Director for American Atheists speaking on "Atheism, Blasphemy and the American Religious Civil War."

WHEN: This Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010 at 7:00 PM

WHERE: Syracuse University, Maxwell Auditorium, inside Maxwall Hall, 110 Crouse Dr., Syracuse, NY

MORE INFO: "Atheists, Agnostics and Freethnkers Alliance" (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18129534066 ) at Syracuse University

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists, Freethinkers and other nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

Annoucnement. Edwin Kagin Speaks at Syracuse

2010-02-12T14:01:00.000-05:00

Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists, and
internationally published author, will speak to the "Agnostics and
Freethinkers Alliance" of Syracuse University on Thursday, February
18th. at 7:00 pm.

The talk, "Atheism, Blasphemy, and the American Religious Civil War,"
combining the serious and the humorous, the sacred and the profane, will
be held at:

Maxwell Auditorium, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.
Maxwell Auditorium is located inside Maxwell Hall, on the Syracuse
University campus hill, at 110 Crouse Dr, Syracuse, New York, 13244.

Copies of Edwin's book "Baubles of Blasphemy, 2nd Edition," and his
co-authored book, "The Fundamentals of Extremism. The Religious Right in
America," will be offered for sale and signing.

Is Your Religious Discrimination Workshop Discriminating Against Atheists?

2010-01-21T11:25:00.002-05:00

Mr. Sexton,

Unless you and your religious panelists would be comfortable with an
Atheist "representing" Christian viewpoints, I respectfully request that
you have an Atheist on your panel to represent the views of non-theists,
who together comprise the largest single block of citizens of our
country.

We understand that, although at least two highly qualified Atheists have
offered to participate, no real live Atheist has been favored with a
seat at your table.

If, in your "Religious Discrimination Workshop" to be held in Lexington,
Kentucky on February 25, 2010, it is your intent to show how religious
persons can continue to suppress Atheists and get away with it, be
assured that American Atheists will let this be known to funding and
regulatory authorities who still respect separation of state and church
in our country.

This message to you will be widely published.

In the sincere hope that there is actually an attempt being made in
Lexington, Kentucky to end religious discrimination, and not to further
it, I am

Sincerely,

Edwin Kagin
National Legal Director
American Atheists, Inc.
Phone: (859) 384-7000
Fax: (859) 384-7324

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lexington Human Rights Commission
Religious Discrimination Workshop:

Thursday, February 25, 2010
Hilton Lexington/Downtown
369 West Vine Street
Lexington, Kentucky
$45.00 per person
Registration: 8:30 am
Continental Breakfast served
Workshop 9:00 am - 12:00 pm

*Registration and fee due February 12th (per brochure form or via
contact with the HRC, attention Tami Reed, at < lfuchrc.org > or (859)
252-4931. Further questions can be directed to Ray Sexton,
rsexton@lfuchrc.org )

Workshop description:

Employers are generally familiar with the protocol for handling sex or
racial discrimination and harassment claims. But what happens when an
employee complains that the employee in the next cubicle is
proselytizing to other employees? Or when an employee demands
accommodation for prayer time, the Sabbath, or ...an objection to
handling pork or alcohol? And what if an employee objects to your
appearance code because she is a member of the Church of Body
Modification?

Although the wide range of possible religious discrimination and
accommodation claims may seem overwhelming, the protocol for handling
each doesn't have to be. Our presentation will walk you through Title
VII's basic requirements, the elements of a religious discrimination
claim - including specifically what constitutes a "bona fide" religious
belief - and how to determine whether, and what, accommodations are
required.

Speaker - Kenneth Brown, Senior Trial Lawyer, EEOC Louisville Area
Office

Kenneth W. Brown is the Senior Trial Attorney with the Louisville Area
Office of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
His practice concentrates on litigating claims under Title VII of the
Civil Rights Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act
and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Mr. Brown is also an
Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Louisville's Trial
Practice. From 1996 to 2001, mr. Brown was a member of the Tort and
Insurance Group for the law firm of Wyattt, Tarrant and Combs in
Louisville. He is a member of the Louisville and American Bar
Associations and he is the immediate past President of the Louisville
Black Lawyers Association. Mr. Brown received his B.S.B.A Degree (high
honors) from the University of Louisville School of Business in 1993
where he was named a WallStreet Journal Outstanding Student, and his
J.D. Degree from the University of Louisville School of Law in 1996.

Moderator/Faciliator - Tracey Dennis

Panelists:

Rabbi Marc Kline
Jenny Sutton-Amr
Larry Johnson

Commissioners:

Biby Tinajero, Chair
Tracey Dennis, Vice Chair
Eli Mertens, Secretary
Beth Hartmann, Treasurer

J. Scott Benton
Chris Ford
Rabbi Marc Kline
Lindsay Mattingly
Dr. Nadia Rasheed
Melanie Tyner-Wilson

NOTICE NOT TO USE RELIGIOUS TALK WITH HELEN KAGIN

2010-01-20T12:00:00.000-05:00

To: Medical, Administrative, and Support Staff of Christ Hospital.
From: Edwin Kagin, husband of Helen Kagin.

Please consider this FORMAL NOTICE that Helen Kagin is an Atheist.

I am an Atheist and National Legal Director for American Atheists.

It has come to my attention that Helen has been subjected (or may be so subjected) to unrequested and unwanted gratuitous religious “god talk” by certain personnel of Christ Hospital.

It is my belief that Helen has been receiving the finest medical care available since her surgery on January 7, 2010, and for that we are extremely grateful.

However, the intrusion of anyone's religious beliefs into her treatment at Christ Hospital is offensive, unacceptable, and will not be tolerated, no matter how much those offending persons may think such behavior is necessary, proper, and well motivated.

Demand is hereby made that all such officious intermeddling stop immediately.

I will aggressively pursue all available lawful actions against the employment and licensing of anyone who violates this request.

Thank you again for the wonderful medical care being provided to Helen.

Edwin Kagin
Husband of Helen Kagin

National Legal Director
American Atheists, Inc.

MILITARY SHOULD SCRAP "JESUS CODE" RIFLE SIGHTS: "PROPAGANDA COUP FOR TALIBAN, OSAMA" SAY ATHEISTS

2010-01-18T23:14:00.001-05:00

AMERICAN ATHEISTS, INC.
http://www.atheists.org
http://www.americanatheist.org

For more information, please contact:
Ed Buckner, President 908-499-9200 (cell) or 770-803-5353 (office/fax)
Dave Silverman, Communications Director 732-648-9333
Kathleen Johnson, Vice President and Military Director 318-542-1019

MILITARY SHOULD SCRAP "JESUS CODE" RIFLE SIGHTS: "PROPAGANDA COUP FOR
TALIBAN, OSAMA" SAY ATHEISTS

An Atheist public policy group said today that rifle sights marked with
a secret "Jesus Bible Code" may provide Islamic extremists with a
powerful propaganda tool and egregiously and dangerously violate the
separation of church and state.

According to a report on ABC News, a Michigan-based company, Trijicon,
has a $600 million contract to provide U.S. forces with 800,000 of the
rifle sights which are being used in Afghanistan and Iraq. The sights
are marked with citations from the Bible, including one that declares
that Jesus is "the light of the world."

Dr. Ed Buckner, President of American Atheists, said that he fears
Islamic terrorists may take full advantage of "a major blunder that
seriously risks efforts to reach out to people in Muslim countries
threatened by groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda."

"Part of the U.S. message abroad should emphasize the core American
value of secular government and respect for individual religious liberty
-- and instead the U.S. military is promoting Christianity, literally
with the barrel of a gun. We call on President Barack Obama to repudiate
this effort immediately."

Kathleen Johnson, Vice President and Military Director for American
Atheists, said that the religious inscriptions "clearly violate the
First Amendment and the U.S. Constitution, as well as armed forces
regulations against promoting sectarian religion."

"We are not going to enjoy much success in trying to achieve 'nation
building' and self-sufficiency for democratic governments in countries
like Iraq and Afghanistan if our troops are seen as modern-day
'Crusaders' out to impose Christian fundamentalism," said Johnson. She
urged the Pentagon and Congress to open an immediate inquiry into how
Trijicon won the lucrative contract and if military brass were aware of
the Biblical citations on the gun sights.

"These rifle sights should be phased out of use as quickly as possible,"
added Johnson. "The mission of the U.S. military cannot include
proselytizing for Christianity or any other religion."

AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for
Atheists; works for the total separation of church and state; and
addresses issues of First
Amendment public policy.

American Atheists, Inc.
PO BOX 158
Cranford, NJ 07016
Tel.: (908) 276-7300
Fax: (908) 276-7402

Christmas Letter, by Edwin Kagin

2009-12-24T13:22:00.000-05:00

Dearest Beloved of Our Family in Christ,

There have been many changes this year for our family. Our beloved 17 year old daughter suffered blindness and paralysis after being struck by a drunk driver on her way home from Wednesday night church services. Aunt Polly died of liver cancer, following a long and painful illness. The family cat was smashed by a UPS truck. Mabel’s M.S. is getting worse and she can hardly do anything much anymore. Father had to have a triple bypass operation, and now uses a breathing tube. The house was burned down by sparks from the burning of Harry Potter books in our yard. Little Marvin got a chicken bone stuck in his throat at a church picnic and was rushed to the hospital where doctors had to remove his voice box, so he can never talk again, but God miraculously saved him. Miranda is now being home schooled after she left eighth grade to become a single mother. An abortion was out of the question, and we know God has given us a hydrocephalic grandchild for his own good and perfect reasons. Our oldest son had his left foot blown off in an ambush in Iraq while helping to bring Christ and Democracy to those poor heathens. We rejoice in the wisdom of our God, in His gifts, and in His plan for our lives. We bear grateful witness to all that our great and merciful God has done for us in the past year, and we praise the works of His hand. Oh, almost forgot. The dog died.

In His Holy Name,

The Fundangelical Family

© Edwin Kagin. December, 2006. Permission to reproduce without profit is given. If you make money on it, I want some of it. Edwin)

Time Once Again for Edwin Kagin's Immortal Classic, ON CHRISTMAS, or "NO, VIRGINIA, THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUS"

2009-12-10T15:30:00.001-05:00

If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on
his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried
with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!
Uncle Ebenezer Scrooge (not to be confused with Uncle Scrooge McDuck)

I can’t prove that no ungulate unit of reindeer persuasion can fly, any more than you can prove I don’t have two invisible unicorns that frolic in benign innocence at
Camp Quest. I can’t prove there are no living dinosaurs (as the arkonuts challenge the skeptical to do) anymore than the arkonuts can prove the English text of
Genesis they rely on is identical to the original version they hold was dictated, or inspired, by god. But if one says that all crows are black, there is no need to check
every crow to falsify that assertion. All that is needed is to find one white crow, or any crow of a different color. Similarly, Santa skepticism can be soundly silenced
by the production of one flying reindeer. Yet Christmasterians insist doubters disprove Santa, sleigh, and such, or keep silent, lest they destroy a child’s simple
(mindless) faith. This method of proof proves useful later, as children, programmed to believe fantasy is truth, grow to adultery and unquestioningly follow the
fantastic follies of faith of their fathers (and mothers--political correctness must not be permitted to fall down a personhole).

To be sure, Plato (not to be confused with Mickey Mouse’s dog) argued that, to conceive of something that is real, one must somehow get the perfect idea of that
something from the place it really exits, to wit, the world of forms--a place somewhere that no one has ever seen. Reality alone wouldn’t do. Thus, everyone but
philosophers know what a horse looks like, and kids know all about Santa without having to survive Philosophy 101.

Can we imagine, or even believe in, something that doesn’t exist? Sure we can. Just talk with those who have been abducted by aliens. If some unseen thing is
believed by many, e.g., angels, it is called faith. If a thing is believed by only one, and is wildly outside the gates of common sense and experience, then the belief,
e.g., suddenly realizing that one’s guardian angel is made of grape jelly and having him (there are no female angels--check your bible, you can win bets on this) on
toast, it is called psychosis. The problem is that the invisible and the non-existence look much the same. Christmas beliefs fall somewhere between the province of
priest and psychiatrist.

Christmas combines two contradictory images of godlike characters: Jesus, the Christ, who taught that to be saved one should sell all of their property and give it to
the poor (the church later declared belief in this teaching a heresy), and Claus, the Santa, to whom children are taught to write letters requesting property--believed
to be given by Santa, in one night, to those children of the world found worthy--in direct challenge to the counsel of the Christ. One should note, before teaching the
latter belief system, that an anagram of Santa is Satan.

The day itself, meaning Christ’s Mass, is the same day the Romans used to honor their sun god with gift giving and feasting. Christmas is quite pagan. Its secular
celebration involves rituals specifically forbidden by holy writ, like hewing down a tree, bringing it inside the house, decorating it, and praising it. This is as clear a
violation of divine decree as public prayer, or celebrating the Sabbath on the first day of the week instead of on the seventh day as ordered (Commandment IV). No
wonder we are in such trouble these days with crime, inflation, and teenage pregnancies.

Unfortunate cultural consequences flow from the forced frivolity and jejune joy Christmas creates and requires. People get depressed when they don’t feel happy as
they should, when they do not have their artificial expectations fulfilled, and when they cannot meet the unreasonable artificial sessional needs of others--like their
mercenary relatives, and their materialistic, greedy, spoiled children--and get even deeper in debt by trying to behave as expected. Thanks to Tom Flynn, and his
wonderful heresy The Trouble With Christmas, I chucked the whole thing a few years ago, and lived. Try it. You will feel better for it.

Should I be granted a Christmas wish, it would be that the holiday be cancelled, and that the whole show appertaining to this business of Christmas not be done at all.
Please understand that I do not care if others celebrate Christmas if they wish, nor would I suggest that they be prevented from doing so. I just don’t want the
holiday to be compulsory for me or anyone else--any more than I want other people’s prayers, that they have an absolute right to pray, to be forced upon me by
public officials or upon children by public schools. One who would rather decline gets somewhat tired of listening to those who absolutely and uncritically assume all
good people celebrate Christmas, and that something is horribly wrong with anyone who ignores the invitation to attend their compulsory party. Failing the unlikely
event of Christmas being made optional, I would alternatively wish, in seasonal answer to Virginia’s famous question, that we might see something in the public press,
for innocent children, like:

Dear Virginia,

No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. It is a myth that has been cruelly used to deceive children for the pleasure of adults who unwittingly destroy
children’s sense of basic trust by teaching them that the world is something other than it really is.

I know this news must be a shock to you, and I am truly sorry for your discomfort. But it is not my fault. The person who tells you the truth should never
be blamed for the hurt that comes from learning that others have lied.

You should not believe in Santa Claus any more than you should believe in fairies, or in demons waiting around to pull you under the earth, or in angels
lurking about to transport you above it. People do not need to believe foolish things to have love and compassion and caring, any more than they need a
special season or holiday to be nice to one another.

If things believed prove false, does that mean peace, and sharing, and kindness must dissolve like mist along with the untrue things? Of course not! We
don’t need magic to have happiness, and wonder, and joy. Our beautiful world is full of these things, and they are very real, and our real world holds
more interesting and wonderful people and things than any fairyland anyone could ever even imagine.

Some adults are afraid of things they don’t understand, and they teach children to believe in magic. But the truth is really far more exciting. Wouldn’t you
rather learn what is on real planets, that are millions of miles away, than believe reindeer can fly? Have you ever seen the northern lights? I have, and I
can tell you they are more beautiful, more mysterious, and more wonderful than any pretend story anyone could ever invent about elves that have
workshops at the North Pole.

Is it okay to pretend and to believe things we know are not true? Of course it is! And it can be a lot of fun. Intelligent people love to play. Any time you
watch a movie or a play or go to a costume party you are playing and pretending something is so that is not.

We know those aren’t real people in the TV--only images of them--but we know we are pretending, and this is fun and much different from believing a
falsehood. Would it be wrong to tell a friend of yours, who firmly believed there were really small people inside the television set, that his or her belief was
not true? Would it be right for you to be condemned for destroying that friend’s childlike faith? What if several of your best friends thought they could fly,
and set off for a bridge over a 600 foot deep gorge to prove it? Would it be wrong for you to politely try to convince them that they just might be
mistaken, no matter how firmly they believe they are right? Would you be destroying their childhood or saving their future?

Follow the truth, no matter where it may take you. And don’t pay any attention to those who think comforting falsehoods are better than understanding
the world as it is. If you ever have children, teach them trust by telling them the truth. By the way, just in case you didn’t know, the stork didn’t bring you.
You are here because your parents had sex.

Keep questioning, Virginia, and don’t feel it is the least bit wrong to demand correct answers.

Asking questions is what makes us human.

Your friend,

Uncle Edwin

Copyright © 1999 by Edwin F. Kagin

Today is the 25th Anniversary of the Marriage of Helen and Edwin Kagin.

2009-11-11T10:13:00.000-05:00

Helen and Edwin were married on Veterans Day, November 11, 1984, and that means that today, Veterans Day, November 11, 2009 is our 25th Wedding Anniversary. I went to school when math was still taught.

This means that 98.376 percent of our critics have been wrong for 24 ½ years. Many of them are dead. Many not yet dead are divorced. We know people who have gotten married and divorced several times during our period of coverture. We have been married as long as John Keats was alive.

The most frequently asked question of my Helen, now as then, is still “How do you put up with him?”

My Helen is a direct descent of one of the witches of Salem. This explains much.

For our 25th Anniversary, I have constructed a wonderfully romantic adventure. I have booked the very same room in the very same luxury hotel in which we spent our wedding night, 25 years ago this very day. No Motel 6 for us this night. The staff of the hotel were all a giggle at the outrageous romance of the idea. The very same room, by dog!

I decline to here reveal the hotel or the room number. For once, we would like this evening to be free of supplicants seeking healings and such.

Oh, how do I happen to remember the exact room number? I wrote it down in the Gideon Bible I stole from the room on our wedding night, that's how. In this family bible is notated the date and the event and the hotel and the room number. This may make it worth 35 cents more on e-bay in 375 years.

Tonight I plan to steal another such bible from the same hotel room, and to annotate it as well, to add to my growing collection of stolen and annotated Gideon Bibles. Assuming, that is, that the bible has been replaced sometime in the intervening quarter century.

Thus as it is written, thus let it therefore also be done. And remember, it is a naive man who thinks his daughter has religion when she comes home with a Gideon Bible in her suitcase.

Edwin

Edwin Kagin on Happy Birthday Earth

2009-10-23T12:08:00.003-04:00

Today, October 23rd, is a very important birthday. Maybe the most important birthday of all.

Because, you see, according to Bishop James Ussher, god started the creation of the Earth, and all that in it is, on October 23, 4004 B.C. Yeah, that's right. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology

This incredible fallacy of thought forms the basis of the Fundangelicals' world view, including the absurdity known as Creation Science, and leads them to cute little conclusions like, "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."

To which one might reply,

"And Cain and Abel, if your brain is not stable."

Or "The Fruit on the Tree is stupidity."

Or "Eve got the blame, she was framed, what a shame."

Help hold back the darkness.

Join American Atheists. It is only $20 and you can then be a card carrying Atheist.

See: www.atheists.org.

Tell them Edwin sent you.

Edwin Kagin says "Become a Card Carrying Atheist"

2009-10-21T12:14:00.000-04:00

BECOME A CARD CARRYING ATHEIST
It’s easy
Join American Atheists
You send us $20
And we will send you the card
www.atheists.org

The Reason Insurance Companies Lie by Edwin Kagin

2009-09-25T21:56:00.001-04:00

The reason insurance companies lie
And profit as sick people die
Is that their bonuses and wealth
Are more important than our health.

by Edwin Kagin
September 25, 2009

Edwin Kagin Presents Kentucky Atheists News & Notes

2009-09-06T22:51:00.000-04:00

KENTUCKY ATHEISTS NEWS & NOTES Date: September 6, 2009, 2009

Kentucky Atheists, P.O. Box 666, Union, KY 41091; Email: ekagin@atheists.org

Phone: (859) 384-7000; Fax: (859) 384-7324; Web: http://www.atheists.org/ky/

Editor's personal web site: www.edwinkagin.com

Editor’s personal blog: http://edwinkagin.blogspot.com

Edited by:

Edwin Kagin, Kentucky State Director, American Atheists, Inc.

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

What Is An ATHEIST?

“ANOTHER THINKING HUMAN ENGAGED IN SEEKING TRUTH”
(Edwin Kagin, 2008)

To Unidentified Recipients:

“Answers in Atheism,” the Internet radio sensation, will (should be—this is not a precise science) be on today, Sunday, September 06, 2009, at 8:00 pm Eastern Time. Topics discussed will (should) include Camp Quest reports, and the lawsuit filed by American Atheists that resulted in a declaration of unconstitutionality of the part of the Kentucky Homeland Security law that required a belief in god. For details see: www.answersinatheism.net

JOIN AMERICAN ATHEISTS.
THE FEE HAS BEEN REDUCED TO ONLY $20.
THAT IS BECAUSE WE NEED TO COUNT YOU MORE THAN WE NEED TO COLLECT FROM YOU.
YOU CAN STILL BE A MEMBER OF ANY OTHER GROUPS OR ORGANIZATIONS.
SEE: www.atheists.org

Edwin.

=========================================================================================================================

From:

A M E R I C A N A T H E I S T S
A A N E W S
#1274 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 09/05/09
http://www.atheists.org
http://www.americanatheist.org
http://www.atheistviewpoint.tv

KENTUCKY TO APPEAL RULING AGAINST HOMELAND SECURITY
GOD PROMOTION PLAQUE, PROGRAMS
KAGIN: "REGRETTABLE" WASTE OF TAXPAYER MONEY
, Ready For Supreme Court If Necessary

The State of Kentucky announced Friday that it would appeal
a court ruling that struck down legislation requiring the
Commonwealth's Homeland Security Office to display a religious
plaque and incorporate "dependence on God" in its training
programs.

Two statutes, passed in the wake of the September 11, 2001
faith-based terrorist attacks, were challenged by American Atheists
and a cohort of plaintiffs who maintained that they violated
key portions of both the U.S. Constitution and the Kentucky
Constitution's prohibition about establishing religion.

The hastily passed bills mandated that the new department "publicize
the findings of the General Assembly stressing the dependence on
Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth."
Another statute called upon the Director of the new office to
promote the religious message, and prominently display the plaque
"at the entrance to the state's Emergency Operations Center..."
The text of the statue declared:

(1) No government by itself can guarantee perfect security from
acts of war or terrorism.

(2) The security and well-being of the public depend not just on
government, but rest in large measure upon individual citizens
of the Commonwealth and their level of understanding, preparation
and vigilance.

(3) The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved
apart from reliance on Almighty God as set forth in the public
speeches and proclamations of American Presidents, including Abraham
Lincoln's historic March 30, 1863 Proclamation urging Americans to
pray and fast during one of the most dangerous hours of American
history, and the text of President John F. Kennedy's November 22,
1963, national security speech which concluded: "For as was written
long ago: 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but
in vain.' "

Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists took
the issue to court. The Kentucky Attorney General promptly
filed for a motion to dismiss, and disingenuously argued that the
statutes honored god and had little or nothing to do with religion.
On August 26, however Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate denied
the Commonwealth's request, and made a summary judgment in favor of
the plaintiffs. Wingate opined that the statutes clearly established
religion, and said that while the legislature had broad authority, in
the case of the two statutes, "the secular purpose has to be genuine,
not a sham and not merely secondary to a religious objective."

Despite the 17-page rebuke of the Commonwealth's arguments,
though, the Attorney General's office decided to appeal at public
expense. Mr. Kagin called the move "regrettable," and told reporters:
"I would not be at all uncomfortable taking the facts of this case
before the U.S. Supreme Court. I think the statue is so blatantly
unconstitutional that any court would find it unconstitutional."

Shelly Johnson of the state's Attorney General office declared:
"We believe there is a clear distinction in the law between
acknowledgement of religion, which has been permitted for years,
and the establishment of religion, which is prohibited by the
Constitution. The statute in question merely acknowledges religion
and should have been upheld by the court."

Associated Press writer Roger Alford noted the importance of the
case. "States in the Bible Belt such as Kentucky, cannot afford to
concede this court battle, even when legal grounds are shaky..."

Western Kentucky University political science professor Scott Lasley
concurred, noting the partisan electoral aspects of the case.
He observed that Attorney General Jack Conway is seeking the
Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in the 2010 race.
"The reality of the situation is that for most attorneys general
that (not challenging the court ruling) would be the end of their
political careers. It's just the reality of the situation, given
the political environment you're operating in."

**
====================================================================================================================================
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090906/focus/focus3.html

The rise of militant atheism

Published: Sunday | September 6, 2009

Is religion good for society? Is the Bible really a good book let alone 'The Good Book'? And does God really exist? Can we prove it? A group of militant atheists have been giving a resounding and vehement "No!" to all these questions, much to the consternation of Christians.
In the last few years, Christians have experienced their own Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. There is no mystery to them, as they have made no attempt to disguise their identities or agenda. They are named Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens. They have written some profoundly disturbing books in the last four years: The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins); The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation (Sam Harris); Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Daniel Dennett); and god is not Great (Christopher Hitchens). Hitchens and Dawkins are the most dreaded of these four "beasts" in Christian fundamentalist demonology.
Unknown to most Jamaican Christians, including many pastors and theologians, there has been an intense, fierce and furious intellectual battle taking place over God in North America and Britain particularly, in the last four years. A new, militant atheism has arisen. The New Atheists, as they have been dubbed, have been carrying out their work with evangelistic and evangelical zeal. It's about time, they say, as for too long thinking, rational people have allowed Christians to dominate the public space, influencing public policy to great societal damage, with their myths and dogmas.
Struggle
Christians, for example, have been at the forefront of the struggle against the right of gay people to live without stigma and prejudice; the right to have a "loving and legal marriage"; the "right" to adopt and rear children. Christians have stoutly opposed women's sovereignty over their own bodies, tyrannising public policy on abortion, as the atheists would see it. Christians have opposed stem cell research which would benefit people undergoing intense suffering. They are said to be responsible for untold suffering in places like Africa where AIDS has been rampant, because of the teaching of Christianity's largest denomination (Catholicism) against the use of condoms. Catholic teaching forbidding policy on artificial birth control has both swelled and harmed populations in Latin America where Catholicism has been strong.
Christians, charge the New Atheists, have been responsible for supporting or giving justification to some of the most obnoxious social evils which mankind has known. Christopher Hitchens sees religion as child abuse and devotes a whole chapter in his book, "god is not Great, defending that thesis.
"Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry; invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry; contemptuous of women and coercive toward children, organised religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience," Hitchens spews in his highly polemical and angry book. (He sees it as justified outrage; the sort rational persons should exhibit to the kind of atrocities religion fosters, in his view).
Atrocious behaviour
And it is not only that Christians, as fallible human beings, have not been able to live out the ideal of the Bible and, therefore, they engage in atrocious behaviour. No, say people like Dawkins and Hitchens. That is how the Christians' God behaves. Explains Dawkins in his book, The God Delusion: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, blood-thirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticide, genocidal, filicidal pestilential, megalomanical, sadomasochistic, capriciously bully."
Some Christians might even condemn me for quoting this "blasphemous" passage from the Gospelof Dawkins; a passage which would, under previous era, land him in jail. But people would be shocked to know that long before Hitchens wrote that, the revered American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson said, "The Christian God is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust". But now the New Atheists are popularising their ideas through the big American media, of which they have become darlings. Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens' books have been best-sellers on the New York Times lists (Dennett is more sober and restrained, hence less of a pull for media.)
The New Atheists have been helped considerably by a growing group of Christians, including scholars and pastors, who have become atheists and who are now openly confessing their atheism. From the 19th century particularly, with the rise of Biblical criticism, a huge percentage of Biblical scholars have rejected conservative views that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. Many Biblical scholars see the Bible as a human book, limited by culture and history and not by any means immune from error.
One prominent Biblical scholar who has become an atheist and who is a celebrity in the big American media is Professor Bart Ehrman who over the last few years has produced a stream of books devastating to Christianity and the Bible: Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind who Changed the Bible and Why; The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture; Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths we Never Knew; Lost Scriptures: Books That Did not Make It Into the New Testament; God's problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer our Most Important Question - Why we Suffer and his most recent; Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't know About Them).
Ehrman was a Bible-believer, Gospel-toting Fundamentalist Christian schooled in the most conservative Evangelical seminaries in America - Moody Bible Institute and Wheaton. But he later went to Princeton where he gained a PhD in New Testament studies. In his book God's problem he tells how he lost his faith after becoming a pastor and preaching every Sunday and holding prayer group and Bible studies.
"I realised that I could no longer reconcile the claims of faith with the facts of life. I could no longer explain how there can be a good and all-powerful God actively involved with this world given the state of things. For many people inhabiting this planet, life is a cesspool of misery and suffering. I came to the point where I could not believe that there is a good and kindly disposed Ruler who is in charge of it."
I could no longer believe
Unlike what almost every Christian might believe, Ehrman did not leave willingly, but tried to hang on to his faith until he simply could not anymore, his faith bursting under the weight of contrary evidence, as he would see it. "I did not go easily. On the contrary, I left kicking and screaming, wanting desperately to hold on to the faith I had known from my childhood. But I came to the point where I could no longer believe".
In the view of the New Atheists like Harris, Dennett, Dawkins and Hitchens, only the tiniest minority have the courage to leave an unthinking faith, which is what all religious faith is ultimately. Besides, the vast majority are simply not bright enough to realise they what they believe is an illusion, a myth, a fable like those from Greek legends. In fact, Dawkins has angered Christians for years by saying he cannot see how any educated person can believe in God. He says the evidence for evolution is too overwhelming and coercive for any person who claims to be educated to deny that evidence and say he does not believe in evolution.
He says atheists should be simply called Brights for those who are not atheists are not bright. (Dawkins , from the prestigious Oxford University, is considered the most arrogant of all the new atheists, followed closely by Hitchens). Hitchens says in his book, god is not Great: "Religion comes from a period of human pre-history where nobody had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from bawling and a fearful infancy of our species and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as for comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion."
The growth of Islamic fanaticism and terrorism; the danger of militant Islam to democracy and peace and the 9/11 experience have served to reinforce the view that religion is bad for society. In addition, the New Atheists are buttressed by scientific evidence which seems to prove that religion is harmful to sociological and psychological health.
The facts
An international survey of 23,000 persons in 17 democracies shows that "in general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with high rates of homicide, juvenile and early mortality STD-infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies". (See Gregory Paul's article in Vol. 7, 2005 issue of The Journal of Religion and Health).
Secular Europe scores higher on a number of indices of social health than the more religious United States. Japan, which is a highly secularised society, is far more peaceful and sociologically healthy than religious America.
Says Gregory in his Journal of Religion and Society essay: "The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the democracies, sometimes spectacularly so. No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of evolution with high rates of societal health. The US is the least efficient Western nation in terms of converting wealth into cultural and physical health". And a religion is a major factor say the militant atheists.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.

Edwin Kagin provides American Atheists Press Release

2009-08-26T22:53:00.001-04:00

AMERICAN ATHEISTS, INC.
http://www.atheists.org
http://www.americanatheist.org

For more information, please contact:
Ed Buckner, President 908-499-9200 (cell) or 770-803-5353 (office/fax) Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director 859-384-7000

ATHEISTS WIN IN KENTUCKY CHALLENGE TO HOMELAND SECURITY PLAQUE CALLING ON GOD

A Kentucky Circuit Court ruled today that the state Office of Homeland Security violated the separation of church and state when it erected a plaque calling upon"Almighty God" to protect citizens from "acts of war or terrorism."

In response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Kentucky legislature created the state office, and ordered the placement of the display. It also required that the theme of dependence on a deity be included in "agency training and educational materials."

American Atheists and other plaintiffs filed suit. Today, Judge Thomas D. Wingate ruled that the purpose of the legislature's action "was to declare publicly that the position of the Commonwealth of Kentucky that an Almighty God exists and that the function of that God is to protect us from our enemies." The Judge found that the legislation violated both the Constitution of the United States and Constitution of Kentucky."

Ed Buckner, President of American Atheists, hailed the ruling.
"Kentucky lawmakers tried to exploit the threat of terrorism to promote religion, and ignored the many citizens of the Commonwealth who are Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists and other nonbelievers. We are pleased to see that the court saw through this charade."

Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists and the attorney who argued the case for the plaintiffs issued the following
statement:

"The plaintiffs, and all citizens of Kentucky, are more safe as a result of this thoughtful ruling by Judge Wingate. Threats to our security from within are even more frightening than threats from without. Those who seek to attack our freedoms by imposing their religion upon us have been pushed back a bit by this ruling. The Wall of Separation between government and religion continues to hold. I think Thomas Jefferson would have been pleased."

AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.

American Atheists, Inc.
PO BOX 158
Cranford, NJ 07016
Tel.: (908) 276-7300
Fax: (908) 276-7402

Historic Note: Edwin Kagin on OmniMyth of Kentucky and the "Creation Museum."

2009-08-10T18:29:00.000-04:00

OmniMyth of Kentucky Theme Park Proposal

Answers in Genesis has led the way with its brand new, soon to be opened, multimillion dollar extravaganza in Kentucky, called the “Creation Museum.” This delightful diversion into fantasy could be but the first in a major undertaking to expand the area into a world class amusement theme park complex in rural Kentucky. Permit me to propose that this pooling of the preposterous be known collectively as “OmniMyth of Kentucky.”

This suggested grouping of sites, featuring magical explanations for everything, is an idea whose time has come. OmniMyth could provide genuine creative comedy relief in a world all too weary with the mess created by failed attempts to solve real problems with make believe. The theme parks could also make their owners a decent profit.

The possible recreational facilities that could be constructed are limited only by the creative imagination of potential designers. The Creation Museum, after all, posits the proposition, which no educated person would hold as true, that the Earth is only a few thousand years old and that it and all life on it were created by magic. The lushly exhibited creationist fantasy rejects, as its central premise, the fact that humans developed from less complex life forms in the process of change over time known as evolution. Instead, the visitor is treated to the myth, presented as true, that humans were magically made from dirt. One can be transported to a time before computers, space stations, and wireless telephones when people wrote on rocks, set broken bones without x-rays, and answered tough questions, like where did people come from, by saying a god did it.

Similar delightful ideas could be represented by similar theme parks grouped in OmniMyth of Kentucky, making the attraction truly international in scope. The diversity of the project might contribute to a lessening of tensions among the world’s peoples, who could come to visit and to see and to laugh at our commonality of recognition that we all share primitive pasts in which our ancestors created make believe stories to explain things not understood. Ancient Greek stories of gods living on a mountain and hurling thunderbolts of lightening. Egyptian stories of preparing the dead for an afterlife by removing the brain. Indian stories of a god who was crucified and arose from the dead. Eskimo stories of a raven who made the sun, moon, stars, the earth, people, and animals.

OmniMyth of Kentucky can put Disney to shame. Thanks to Answers in Genesis, without which this project would not have been birthed, for such creative leadership in education.

Here is a possible advertisement:

“Antidotes to thought. Magical reasons for everything. Fantasy is made real and Myths become true. Pretend it is so and it will be so. See models of humans and dinosaurs together—and you can believe they lived at the same time. See a model of a god pulling the sun across the sky in a chariot—and you can believe it is true. Forget reality for a few hours at OmniMyth of Kentucky where Reality is Fantasy and Fantasy is Reality.”

Edwin Kagin
January 6, 2005

Atheist News from Edwin Kagin

2009-07-19T17:56:00.003-04:00

KENTUCKY ATHEISTS NEWS & NOTES Date: July 18, 2009

Kentucky Atheists, P.O. Box 666, Union, KY 41091; Email: ekagin@atheists.org

Phone: (859) 384-7000; Fax: (859) 384-7324; Web: http://www.atheists.org/ky/

Editor's personal web site: www.edwinkagin.com

Editor’s personal blog: http://edwinkagin.blogspot.com

Edited by:

Edwin Kagin, Kentucky State Director, American Atheists, Inc.

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

What Is An ATHEIST?

“ANOTHER THINKING HUMAN ENGAGED IN SEEKING TRUTH”
(Edwin Kagin, 2008)

-----------------

To Unidentified Recipients:

“Answers in Atheism,” the sensational Internet live radio talk show that is heard regularly on www.answersinatheism.net at 8:00 pm Eastern Time, except when it isn’t, will be on again Sunday, July 19, 2009 at 8:00 pm. Check the website for details. We wish we could have this on every week as we want to do, but if wishes were horses then beggars would ride. Our unpaid and overworked production and engineering staff have other things to do, like trying to stay alive, and decline to starve to death on an empty stomach. So, we do it when we can and as often as we can (the radio show that is). Hopefully, such doing will be more rather than less, but hope is not the best way to run a interesting robust life or a live Internet radio show.

Next week, your beloved Editor goes to England to help open the first ever Camp Quest U.K. Many thanks to Samantha Stein and her volunteer staff for getting this together. Enrollment is completely filled up, and applications are being taken for next year. You can find out about this worthy effort here: http://www.camp-quest.org.uk .

Camp Quest Michigan still has a few bunks left we are told. And moreover, there may well be Camperships available for the campers willing to make the effort to apply for such. You can learn all about CQM and its programs and Camperships here: http://michigan.camp-quest.org/main.html .

P.Z. Myers, the professor with the unlikely name, will be visiting Kentucky on a pilgrimage to the museum of nonsense in Northern Kentucky, laughingly named the “Creation Museum,” and run by our friends and neighbors, the purveyors of superstition and medieval science known by the even more laughable name of “Answers in Genesis.”

And P.Z. is taking some students on the tour with him, at reduced group rates.

Do not miss this opportunity to see this adventure in money spent on miracles and madness. I strongly endorse everyone going to see it. Never mind that the fee gives money to people who would abuse children with ignorance and commit terror on our free land by vending anti-scientific ways of viewing the world. It is important that you see this place. And that is because it is worse than you think it is. Really. It really is.

So, y’all come on down y’hear and see humans and dinosaurs (missionary lizards, say the arkonuts) living in harmony with one another 6,000 years or so ago. It is the dog dangest thing you ever seen in your life. They even have a statute of a barefoot and pregnant Eve.

Information on where and how is findable below.

You can still get in on the reduced rate, or so thinks

Edwin.

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http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/important_information_about_th.php

Important information about the Creation “Museum” trip!
Category: Creationism
Posted on: July 8, 2009 12:04 PM, by PZ Myers
I'm going to be speaking at the Secular Student Alliance conference on 8 August, and before that, you may recall, I announced that we were going on a little field trip to Ken Ham's bunco joint in Kentucky, on Friday, 7 August. We're trying to organize a bit, so SSA sent me the notice below. Preregister and get a big discount on the entry fee, and SSA is also looking for more people to help with coordinating travel.

Register to get the $10 entry fee athttps://secularstudents.wufoo.com/forms/creation-museum-with-pz-myers-registration/. You have to pay in advance but you get the $10 entrance rate, rather than the $22 that you'd have to pay at the door. People have to register by 7/23 to get this rate.

We're arranging carpools through www.rideshare.us using lookup code PZ2Creation. Anyone coming to the Museum and/or heading up to Columbus afterwards for the conference is strongly encouraged to post their rides if they'd be willing to take a student along with them. Students can also post ads for rides if they need to get from one place to the other.
We also have some (free!) housing available in Columbus for Thurs night for any students from out of town who need a place to crash before heading down to the museum. Interested parties should contact Jon the Intern In Charge of Housing at jonathan.sussman@secularstudents.org.

--------------------------------------

From reader Conrad:

Americans favor science, but less than before
AP Science Writer
Published Thursday, Jul. 09, 2009

WASHINGTON -- The share of Americans who see science as the nation's greatest achievement is down sharply, even as the public continues to hold scientists in high regard. A new Pew Research Center poll indicates that 27 percent of Americans say the nation's greatest achievements are in science, medicine and technology, more than any category other than don't know.
But that's down from 47 percent in a similar study a decade ago, the center reported Thursday.
The decline comes even as technology reaches out to connect people worldwide via the Internet.
But the era of "Big Science," like the moon landings, has receded into history, while one-time wonders such as organ transplants seem increasingly routine and the battle against cancer drags on.
Probably reflecting last fall's historic election of Barack Obama as president, the poll found that people rating equal rights as the nation's top achievement jumped to 17 percent, compared with just 5 percent 10 years earlier.
Most Americans - 64 percent - see this country's science as "above average," but with advances by other countries getting increasing attention, just 17 percent say it's the best in the world. Indeed, the European Union currently published more scientific papers than the United States.
There is the danger, over time, that the United States could lose its pre-eminence in science and efforts to interest more young people in research are under way, said Alan I. Leshner, head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Overall, the new study found that science remains well thought of by Americans, with 84 percent of respondents saying it has a mostly positive effect on society. Only 6 percent rated science as largely negative for society.
There was no exact earlier comparison for those numbers, but Scott Keeter, director of the survey, said other studies over the years have shown consistently positive views of science and medicine.
"The U.S. public recognizes research and development, perhaps especially to drive medical advances, as an investment in the future. Yet, researchers and the public too often are separated by a communications gap," said Leshner. He said his group is conducting seminars teaching scientists how to better communicate with the public.
Even when they disagreed with some findings, people showed an overall positive outlook for science.
For example, 63 percent of respondents who believe in creationism and 64 percent of those contending there is no evidence of global warming still said science does much to contribute to the well-being of society.
The new report is based on a series of three polls. The first was a telephone survey of 2,001 members of the general public April 28-May 12, asking their opinions of science. The second, testing the public's scientific knowledge, was a sample of 1,005 adults June 18-21. For comparison, the Pew researchers also conducted an online random sample of 2,533 members of the AAAS from May 1 to June 14. AAAS is an international organization of scientists and those interested in science. The error margin for the polls ranged from 2.5 percentage points to 3.5 percentage points.
Among the findings:
- About 91 percent of the general public knew that aspirin is recommended to prevent heart attacks, 82 percent knew that global positioning systems rely on satellites and 65 percent correctly linked carbon dioxide gas to rising temperatures.
-On the other hand, just 54 percent understood that antibiotics do not kill viruses and fewer than half - 46 percent - knew that electrons are smaller than atoms.
-Men have a more favorable outlook about science than women, 86 percent saying it has a mostly positive effect, compared with 81 percent.
-Science got an 87 percent favorable rating from whites, compared with 76 percent among blacks and 75 percent for Hispanics.
-The public and the science association members did not always see eye-to-eye. For example 87 percent of AAAS scientists believed that humans and other living things evolved naturally, compared with 32 percent of the general public. And while 84 percent of the association members say the Earth is getting warmer because of human activities, just 49 percent of the public agreed.
-A majority of the public - 58 percent - favor federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, but that is well short of the 93 percent of scientists who feel that way.
- And 69 percent of Americans say all parents should be required to vaccinate their children, compared with 82 percent of scientists.

-----------------------------------------------

Fan Mail Department:
If folks are going to gratuitously write us about how awful we are, they can expect to get published, together with their email, so that their potential victims can respond.
Here is one such, followed by the response of American Atheist’s President Ed Buckner (NOTE: we do not answer all emails. But some we do).
Name: Mr. Bynum

Edwin.

----------------------------------------

Email: lkbandgeek2011@yahoo.com
Re: Why God is real and why you are a fool

Hello,
My name is Mr. Bynum. In no way is this message threatening, or filled with anger and hate. If you wish to try and prosecute me on false charges of hate/threatening mail, I just want you to know you will end up fighting a losing battle, for my God is not invisible, but very, very real.
The subject of my message is this: atheism is a pearl in the necklace of wrong ideas.
And there is a God, in a real place called Heaven, and there is a real place called Hell, where those who reject God will spend eternity.
You claim that you have given reasonable evidence against religion, and yet people won't turn from their religion. You wonder why this has occurred. Well it's because your alleged 'evidence' is actually nothing but washed up ideas that that have been proven worthless for decades.
The declaration â€˜There is no God, god, gods, is an absolute statement. For an absolute statement to be true, you must have absolute knowledge, of all things. You would have to know every detail of History, how many atoms there are in all the rocks, know how many hairs are on the head of every human, and the thought of every mind.
So do you have complete and absolute all knowledge of everything? If not, to be reasonable and logical, then you would have to state â€˜Using the limited knowledge that I have, I believe that there is no God, god, gods.â€™
Let me in turn ask you a question: if you were to send me a list of any and all questions you have regarding God's existence and other religious questions, and I answered them to your full satisfaction, would YOU then turn to God and be saved?
Here are some other questions for you to seriously consider:
How can morality exist in a world, without a complete and totally moral God?
How can there be an intelligent design (the universe, especially the Earth) without an intelligent designer (God)? Think of a soda can- do you think it is logical or intelligent to say that a soda can has no designer or creator?
Did you know that the eye has 40,000,000 nerve endings, the focusing muscles move an estimated 100,000 times a day, and the retina contains 137,000,000 light sensitive cells? The idea that the eye could have formed in such a way from evolution or natural selection seems undoubtedly absurd to the highest degree. So why do you think itâ€™s logical or even intelligent to believe that the world formed from a big explosion or any other form, other than a creator?
I invite you to come and veiw this website:
http://www.gotquestions.org/argument-existence-God.html
If you have any answers to my questions, feel free to contact me at lkbandgeek2011@yahoo.com. The following statement is not a threat but a simple statement to whomever reads this message-Rest assured, I will always have a counterargument to anything you try to use to try and prove my God does not exist.
May God bless you,
S. G. Bynum
---------------
Ed Buckner Response:

Mr. S. G. Bynum,

Your message may indeed be characterized, plausibly, as not filled with anger and hate--but surely you realize that calling someone a fool in a subject line isn't likely to begin a meaningful dialogue? (And yes, I know your Bible calls me that as well in two nearly identical verses--but I don't see any good reasons to accept your Bible as an authority.)

Despite your apparent rudeness, I read your assertions and claims. They are neither as persuasive nor as original as you seem to think they are. If you really think this is an interesting set of arguments and want to pursue discussion of them, please first read Richard Dawkins, Keith Parsons, David Eller, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and the many essays on our web-site--and get back to me then.

Regards,

Ed B.
Ed Buckner
President
American Atheists
www.atheists.org
ebuckner@atheists.org
Something To Do Department:
Read this from the President of American Atheists and then send your letter to the magazine.
Edwin.

----------------------------

From: Ed Buckner, President [mailto:ebuckner@atheists.org]
Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 4:05 PM
Subject: Amazing--and distressing--article in August Harper's

All,

In this month's (August 2009) Harper's Magazine there is an article, "Like I was Jesus: How to Bring a Nine-Year-Old to Jesus," by Rachel Aviv, that stirs real anger in me and reminds me of Richard Dawkins's comments in The God Delusion about child abuse and religious identification, Edwin Kagin and Camp Quest (and the gross distortion in the press recently regarding Dawkins and CQ), the Jesus Camp tape of a few years back, and much else.

This article describes, in chilling detail (sometimes humorous, but overall frightening as hell) efforts in Connecticut to bring unwary children in public schools and public housing projects to Christian salvation. Aviv makes its abundantly clear that efforts such as the ones she describes so well are not mere academic questions, but are instead a real danger, to these children (including the young people, most of them little more than children themselves, who're doing the proselytizing) and to a secular, rational culture.

It's worth your going to the library or newsstand and buying the issue if you're not a subscriber. (An online link is below--but it only links to a teaser, nit to the whole article.)

Regards to all,

Ed B.

Ed Buckner
President
American Atheists
www.atheists.org
ebuckner@atheists.org

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/08/0082606

On Genital Based Morality by Edwin Kagin

2009-06-25T11:30:00.001-04:00

Traditional Family Values Department:

The Governor of South Carolina is the latest church going, god fearing, male politician to get caught having an affair, and the press is once again going into predictable moralistic orbit, treating the phenomenon as worthy of news coverage.

The obvious reason for this phenomenon is that human beings like sex. The obvious solution is to require that all American male politicians be eunuchs.

In a spirit of analysis of what this is all about, the following is reproduced for your thoughtful enjoyment. It is from “Baubles of Blasphemy,” by Edwin F. Kagin, second printing, American Atheists Press, edited by Edward Buckner. You can get a copy here: www.atheists.org There is a rumor that there may be a Second Edition of this work coming out sometime before the Second Coming of the Messiah.
Edwin.

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ON GENITAL BASED MORALITY (GBM)

Morals are manners, and manners are subject to change.
Mrs. Carolyn Benton Cockefaire

As this blasphemy goes to press in early February of 1999, the next to the last year of this millennium, a sideshow skirmish in the American Religious Civil War (ARCW) whimpers to an end. This fanatic digression from reason (fortunately doomed to failure--for now at least) was flamed by attempts of the storm troopers of the religiocencratic forces to kick out the President of the United States because they deem him immoral and unfit to govern because of what he and a human of female persuasion did with his and her genitals, and that he then allegedly lied concerning the doing thereof.

Voluntarily, with the consent of the victims, our nation has managed to become a joke among nations because the piously powerful refuse to recognize or admit that human beings are sexual beings, and not necessarily monogamous ones. In furtherance of this fool's folly, they ground their understanding of morality on a vain attempt to define humans as somehow outside of the natural world (the only one we know) and apart from other living creatures with whom it is imperfectly shared. If humans were monogamous, they would behave in monogamous ways, as do monogamous animals. To cope with not being monogamously made, rules have been invented requiring monogamous behavior from non-monogamous creatures. These made up rules, that human nature deplores, are defined and presented as the unchangeable moral law of god. In consequence, pretentiously pious persons lie about sex and delude themselves about morality by genitally defining goodness, and damning, as morally defective, all who dissent, detract, or disobey--including our head of state who also just happens to champion a variety of humanistic causes his detractors undauntingly damn.

Incredibly, the miserable monolithic moronic moral code of those ethical paupers who would destroy us and our democracy in the ARCW is based on genitals (not to be confused with gentiles). This is indeed curious in that sex (not gender--gender is a term of grammar), would be hard pressed to get along without genitals. Where there is sex, there are genitals. It's god's plan; "male and female created he them." The god the stories say ordained procreation wisely gave created creatures the tools with which to procreate. These tools of god's plan are the very genitals conjugally challenged sufferers of moralist madness abhor. Rejection of dreaded essential genitals is the center, the very essence, of their nutty notions of moral law. This idiotic and evil short circuiting of reason, this delusional deduction of dunces, may be understood as Genital Based Morality (GBM).

GBM is an infantile system of primitive simplistic thinking, involving magical make believe, and is thus quite easy to understand. Abortion, homosexuality, pornography, prostitution, unmarried sex, oral sex, sodomy (maybe Gomorra), non-monogamous sex, "adult" videos, nudist clubs, nude beaches, nude dancing--anything that touches upon, views, uses, or has anything whatsoever to do with, genitals, is immoral and bad. See how easy it is. Further inquiry, reasoning, or evidence is superfluous and irrelevant. If it is genital, it is bad. Barbie and Ken must not have genitals lest they display the ultimate reality of being human, and thereby educate, confuse and corrupt little children who should be taught to believe the world works in ways other than it does. Legislatures and judges should let a relgiocrazy kill their kid by denying medical treatment, yet prosecute nudist clubs for permitting people to walk around in the uniform of the day of Eden. Steal from widows and orphans if you must, so long as you don't do the dirty in forbidden ways, or watch others do it, or pay for it, or, god help us all, enjoy it. Rather think of England and canning apricots than be damned by those damned genitals causing forbidden thoughts or, in cases of extreme sin, actually giving their owner(s) forbidden pleasure. GBM subordinates every other consideration regarding personal and group thought and behavior to this prime (not primal) directive.

How did we come to this unhappy state? Scene shifts to downtown Baghdad, Iraq. Where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet. Garden of Eden. Year the first. Setting of a bronze age myth that has done much mischief whenever and wherever believed. Adam and Eve were set up by god. They were naked. They didn't know this was bad because god didn't tell them. God knew it was bad, but they didn't. So there they were, the first nudists, as innocently unclothed as the heathen participants in the first Olympic Games, put naked in paradise by a voyeuristic god in a place where snakes talked and had legs and told the truth about knowledge not killing people. Then Eve got Adam, per snake advice, to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, of which god had told them not to eat. And he did, and she did, and women have been blamed for this ever since, for god was displeased that they had disobeyed, listened to that snake, and acquired the nasty knowledge that the only human genitals on earth were shamefully exposed. God then killed some innocent animals to clothe our first parents so they would not be in a state of shame with their genitals showing. Some believed this story and taught others to believe it. Some believe it today. Thus was Genital Based Morality (GBM) born. We don't know what god wore

It is unclear just how A & E could have been expected to know it was wrong not to obey god before they had knowledge of good and evil. But religion need not be rational. The lesson is that knowledge is bad, and that nakedness is shameful. With full knowledge of their shameful state of genital visibility, Adam and Eve were booted out of Eden by a loving and all knowing god, a god without whose knowledge and approval no sparrow falls. Ever since, those predestined to sin by this same all merciful god have been damned to eternal suffering for sinning. GBM has never claimed to be logical or fair. Neither has god. Actually he/she has, but this claim is not supported by the record.

Secular humanists, and others who think an ethical system should extend beyond the groin, are condemned by those who see themselves as righteous and saved. The self-righteous contend non-believers cannot be good people, for such sinners lack a proper sense of shame and guilt derived from an alleged moral base. This fantasizes an objective, defined, findable, and absolute moral authority that tells good people what is right and what is wrong, a moral compass without which there can be no values. In this understanding, it is a lack of belief in "natural law" (a misunderstood term) that has spread from godless humanism to science, to classroom, to generate the corrosive moral rot that is wrecking our society, denying us the intervention of a displeased god, who we offend with abortion, homosexuality, unwed sex, pornography, and god help us all, evolution. Oddly, all of these but the evolution thing seem to have something to do with sex. Come to think on it, the evolution stuff does too. The bottom line says if you aren't guilted out by GBM you are a bad person who is going to spend eternity in Hell.

GBM is a relatively recent religious repression. Apart from the Eden tradition, religious teachings of the past (including lots of really sexy bible stories they don't tell you about in Sunday school) haven't made anything like this much of a fuss over genitals. Indeed, they seem to have been rather favored--both kinds (genitals, not religions--there are lots more than two kinds of religions). The ancient Greeks made much larger than life models of them (genitals) and put them (the models) on display at public theatres. Such a display in modern moral middle America would get you sent to the cooler in seats of learning like Cincinnati. Genitals probably haven't changed much, but attitudes toward them have. The fault is neither generic nor genital. It is the miasmal moral morass of garbled glib guilt gilded gibberish packaged, proclaimed, and peddled as the will of god given unto lesser mortals by those who interpret the truths of natural law. You know, people like Dr. Laura, Henry Hyde, and the bigots who run "Right to Life," claim to be "family friendly," seek “answers in genesis” (not genitals) and, because of the GBM that guides their petty lives, want to kick our President out of the White House, as the naked A & E were kicked out of Paradise (not to be confused with Club Paradise) because they acquired knowledge and an awareness of being attached to their genitals.

Those waging the ARCW claim our head of state lied under oath about his private conduct with his privates. Ah, wonder if they know of the manner of swearing when one swore a mighty oath before the holy Patriarchs of the bible? Abraham and Jacob's method of swearing required the placing of "his hand under the thigh." This involved, I swear, the person giving the oath putting his hand on the genitals of the one to whom he swore. This practice gave weight to the oath. Don't know why this method was adopted, or when it was abandoned (am just glad it was). At least GBM had a real, if different, meaning back then. Maybe the President was attempting the reintroduction of this ancient practice. Don't know how women took oaths, or if such was even permitted. After all, who could trust any woman after Eve? My Helen has a bumper sticker that says, "Eve was framed."

Genitals were so important in the bible that trimming the male version via circumcision was a religious requirement. And it is written in the word of god that a eunuch cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, nor can one who has had his "stones crushed," i.e., had his testicles smashed. Doesn't seem right or fair somehow, but it does show how much genitals meant to those who penned those bronze age writings. Jesus later suggested that it would be better if a man cut off his genitals. Some early church fathers, like Origen, did just that. Don't know if the "crushed stones" rule applied and kept him out of heaven. That would have been a shame indeed. After Jesus, genitals did not seem so highly regarded, but they were made even more important by being used to define all aspects of the moral law--by becoming the basis of good and evil. Maybe Jesus started GBM. Whoever did was probably scared of women.

The pre-GBM bible book, the Song of Songs, sometimes erroneously called the Song of Solomon, has quite a bit to say about genitals. It is Jewish, and pre-Christian. Puritans, not daring to recognize it for what it is, say this bible story is an allegory touching on Christ's love for his church. It is actually an erotic work (seems Egyptian, really) about a man’s lust for his sister, touching on his desire to climb her branches and, like a young roe, graze about her breasts and genitals. Christ’s love for the church, indeed! How much in general genital denial these clever clerics be, especially those proudly proclaiming the cults of celibacy and cloister.

Consider as an alternate approach, one in marked contrast to modern GBM, the ancient Egyptian creation myth. It was a bit different from the one taught in Christian Sunday schools. The great god Rah ejaculated (yes, from his genitals) the stars and all that is--sort of a climactic cosmology. The Egyptian version of the Holy of Holies held a statute of the god with erect phallus. Priestesses and priests held sacred ceremonies reenacting, with the pharaoh, the living god, the comic climax. Now how’s that for a religion? Gives a whole new meaning to the idea of handmaidens. Archeological evidence of these religious beliefs and practices were suppressed by modern puritans who displayed some of the sacred religious art of the Egyptians with an informational museum type sign placed, like a fig leaf, over the essence of the religious symbolism of the pictorial depiction of the turgid pharaoh, the living god. Only by moving the sign could the true meaning of the mysteries of Egyptian religion be revealed, truths once commonly accepted and viewed openly by all, including little children who were not taught to be embarrassed or shamed by genitals. After all, reasoned our unsaved predecessors, where would we be without them?

Then there was sacred prostitution. And there were seasonal approved-by-prevailing-local-religions orgies to teach the crops and herds to reproduce and grow, and to encourage the gods to let them do so. The great men of the bible had many wives, with no complaint from god. When king David was old, they put two young women in bed with him to keep him warm. Lot's daughters got him drunk and seduced him. If a king could not get an erection, it was felt he could no longer rule. No impeachment plot nonsense over sex then. Genital shame is a modern Christian phenomenon. GBM has replaced ethics. Denial has become duty and holiness has been traded for honor. Repression has pushed reason from the banquet table of life. Moralists who think everyone should follow their GBM are generally good persons in the worst sense of the word. If they tell you they are "born again Christians," thank them for the warning. They are usually more tedious and venal the second time around.

Do you find all the moralizing and genital ranting going on these days just a little silly? Good. It is. GBM denies the realities of the world. The preacher doesn't tell on the deacon when they meet in the whorehouse. Everybody lies about sex. Under oath too. Ask any divorce lawyer. This is because of GBM and the failure to admit that we, who some say are made in the image of god, are not all monogamous creatures, and monogamous or not, we tend to like sex (the exceptions to this are beyond the scope of this discourse). This causes problems when a moral code is imposed and accepted that denies our mortal nature. Our kind would have become extinct long ago if we had followed such a moral law and actually repudiated the idea of deflowering virgins. Enforcement of rules that try to cancel out the very chemistry of life will be about as successful as attempting to plow the sea or baptize a cat.

So we laugh when moralists like Dr. Laura get caught with their pants down in indiscreet photos--from a less famous time--posted on the internet, or when those who accuse the President are found to have themselves tasted forbidden fruit. Hate and hypocrisy are the twin tyrannies that fuel GBM. Surely there is more to living a good life than making ethical judgments based on genital repression. Consider, dear reader, if you would care to spend eternity in the company of those who do.

If history teaches anything, it is that moral judgments change. This applies to everything from sexual behavior to smoking in public (some say they smoke after sex--others say they never noticed). Today's customs can become tomorrow's perversions, as we make taboo the thrills of our fathers, or heap honor on persons and ideas they hated. Things change. That's the one universal truth.

And there are, to be sure, decent monogamous (not to be confused with monotonous) humanistic humans. There are also humans who can eat spaghetti with chop sticks. This does not mean we should outlaw forks.

Edwin Kagin

February 7, 1999.

On the Mythology of Abortion by Edwin Kagin

2009-05-31T18:01:00.002-04:00

There has been another murder by the lovers of life known as the Fetus People.
Here reproduced is a writing published a few years ago after a similar act of Christian love. It is from the book "Baubles of Blasphemy," by Edwin F. Kagin, American Atheists Press.

ON THE MYTHOLOGY OF ABORTION

Beware the man whose god is in the skies.
-George Bernard Shaw

There is a movement afoot in America to prevent pregnant women from deciding whether or not to have a baby. The control freaks who advocate this view characterize their beliefs as "pro-life" or "right to life." Those who hold that they, and not the woman, should decide whether to let a fertilized egg develop into a living child share a common mythology. It goes roughly thus: all life comes from the deity. The deity gives life, and every zygote is imbued by the creator deity with an "immortal soul" (a concept found nowhere in the Bible). Microscopic products of conception are perceived to be persons vested by the deity with the right to be born. The exercise of rational reproductive choice in obtaining an abortion is viewed as the murder of a person.
The mythology is powerful enough that its advocates think they can ignore the laws of nations and impose their will on those who disagree. Basically, they have initiated a holy war--us against them, good verses evil, we are right and you are wrong--the same primitive absolutism and lust for power over others that produced the Crusades. Moralists have declared war on reason. With aborted fetuses emblazoned on their shields and chastity belts secured, the armies of God, like ancient pestilence, are marching to stop forbidden sex and to ensure all products of ill advised copulation be born. The births proclaim the truth that the only reason sex is lawful at all is to make God's babies.
According to the theocratic understanding of biology of the anti-choice movement, at the moment the sperm penetrates the egg, the mythical "soul" is placed in the zygote, presumably whether it is in a uterus or a petri dish. That which God has infused with soul may not be removed by the mere mortal choice of not wanting a baby. This notion of a soul inhabiting a collection of cells that may, barring accident, abortion, or whatever, become a child is rather new in mythological thought and bears analysis.
There must be a soul bank somewhere for the almighty to draw from to implant the soul moments after male orgasm (female orgasm is unnecessary for this or any other reproductive function, and is therefore discouraged), or the heavenly power must create new souls in a soul shop for all of the fertilizations. This would cause the creator to work after midnight most Friday and Saturday nights and thus violate the day of rest established by God for the Sabbath. Even a large soul bank would need replenishing, because surely no rational God would have planned for sufficient souls to overrun the resources of his creation like maggots on a dead possum. And people do die, and new souls are needed. The anti-choice forces reject the idea of recycling the souls through reincarnation. It is really quite confusing, until, upon reflection, the answer becomes clear: the anti-abortion movement is a tool of Satan.

Consider that Satan wants to create as much chaos on Earth among humans as possible, to make people unhappy and to grab souls for himself. The Satanic solution is to prohibit abortion. Force the heavenly powers to work sabbaths and all to crank out souls for crack babies and AIDS babies, incest and rape conceptions, souls for babies who aren't wanted, aren't cared for, aren't educated, babies who can create crime, war, disease, poverty, famine and all of the evil and sin Satan needs to destroy the beauty of the Earth and shatter human aspirations for peace, love, and contentment. As further proof, remember that an innocent soul not tempted to sin goes directly to his creator God (perhaps after a period of dry cleaning), a better place than prison, hospital, or hell. A soul aborted is a soul lost to Satan, but one unwanted and forced to be born can produce unspeakable evil, to do glory to Satan and mock a caring, benevolent God.
This mythical interpretation is obviously correct. Consider that all of the Satanic anti-choice fetus people prayed that an American president not be elected who believed a woman has a right to reproductive freedom. They abraded their knees and polished their prayer beads to beseech God to elect a bigot president. The very heavens rang with the noise of their prayers and rantings. God either did not listen, or disagreed with their position. Their candidates were defeated, and pro-choice was affirmed as the law of the land. Never has the will of God been so clearly seen. God saw through Satan's motives and rejected the prayers of those who would let Satan get his paws on God's little souls.
Totally undaunted by this most obvious expression of the divine will, the unwitting forces of darkness have increased their efforts to control those who disagree with them. Indifferent to the laws of God and man, and the rules of basic humanity and courtesy, they have engaged in a reign of terror against doctors, facilities, and personnel dedicated to following the law and assisting women who don't want a conception to become a child. The tactics have included bombings, threats, harassment, intimidation, assaults, and now, finally and predictable, cold blooded murder. A gently healer was shot in the back by one of Satan's converts who wanted to stop the doctor from helping women. The murderer's fellow travelers have raised funds for him and have implied, and sometimes stated, that the murder was morally correct. There was despair in heaven and rejoicing in hell. Satan had succeeded in making evil appear to be good.
But God is not mocked. He who sits in the heavens will laugh them to scorn. Satan's siege against dignity and humanity will be long, but reason will prevail. If it does not, these demonically possessed people will kill everyone who disagrees with them on abortion, and then turn their efforts to those who believe in evolution, who read forbidden books, to all of those who do not want to be ruled by evil people purporting to speak for God.
Defend our constitution. Speak out against wrong misguided mythology. You must. For your own safety's sake.
Don't tell them about the I.U.D. It has been sloughing fertilized eggs for years, and has thus far escaped their notice.

Edwin F. Kagin

Edwin Kagin on Atheist News in Kentucky

2009-05-30T00:54:00.001-04:00

AMERICAN ATHEISTS ACTION ALERT
http://www.atheists.org

ALL OUT! MONDAY, JUNE 1, 2009-- 10:00 AM

SUPPORT AMERICAN ATHEIST

LAWSUIT AGAINST HOMELAND SECURITY CALL UPON "GOD" IN TERRORISM FIGHT!

Franklin County Courthouse, 218 St. Clair St., Frankfort, Kentucky

On behalf of several plaintiffs, AMERICAN ATHEISTS has filed suit against the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the state Office of Homeland Security over a statute which calls upon "God" to protect the citizenry from terrorism. The lawsuit also contests a requirement that a statement to that effect must be posted in the entrance to the Homeland Security office.

Background is included below, and is posted in the ATHEIST NEWS section of our web site at http://wsww.atheists.org. The full text of the suit can be found at http://www.atheists.org/upload/aavky.pdf .

Rather than admit wrongdoing in this unconstitutional promotion of sectarian religion, the Commonwealth of Kentucky is squandering taxpayer funds and defending its position in court. On Monday, government attorneys will be at the Franklin County Courthouse, 218 St. Clair St. in Frankford, KY to ask the court to dismiss the Atheist lawsuit. American Atheist Legal Director Edwin Kagin will be present to rebut their arguments; and outside, Atheists, Freethinkers, state-church separationists and civil libertarians will hold a peaceful demonstration in support of the suit. Bring appropriate signs and banners; the demo begins at 10:00 AM Different organizations are cooperating in this project. For further information, contact Ed Hensley (plaintiff) through edwin.hensley@insightbb.com or Kate Miller of the Kentucky ACLU (kater@aclu-ky.org .

WHAT: Demo to support the American Atheist lawsuit!

WHEN: This Monday, June 1, 2009 at 10:00 AM

WHERE: Franklin County Courthouse, 218 St. Clair St. in Frankford, KY

MORE INFO: Ed Hensley (plaintiff) through edwin.hensley@insightbb.com or Kate Miller of the Kentucky ACLU (kater@aclu-ky.org .

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists, Freethinkers and other nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

**

GOVERNMENT MOVES TO DISMISS ATHEIST LAWSUIT OVER
GOD PROMOTION AT HOMELAND SECURITY
Does "God" Protect Kentucky From Terrorists?
Hearing to Dismiss, demo Set For Monday!

Does the Bluegrass State of Kentucky enjoy God's special protection
against terrorism?

Some people, including the legislature and the State Office of
Homeland Security think that it does; and they proclaimed their
belief in a post-911 statute to that effect. Indeed, the 2002
law has the deity fighting alongside policy, fire departments, the
National Guard of Kentucky and other first responders. It declares,
in part:

1) The Kentucky Office of Homeland Security shall be attached to
the Office of the Governor and shall be headed by an executive
director appointed by the Governor.

2) The executive director shall:

a) Publicize the findings of the General Assembly stressing the
dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of
the Commonwealth by including the provisions of KRS 39A.285(3)
in its agency training and educational materials. The executive
director shall also be responsible for prominently displaying a
permanent plaque at the entrance to the state's Emergency Operations
Center stating the text of KRS 39A.285(3)

That text pompously declares that the General Assembly "finds that:
The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved
apart from the reliance upon Almighty God as set forth in the public
speeches and proclamations of American Presidents, including Abraham
Lincoln's historic March 30, 1863 Presidential Proclamation urging
Americans to pray and fast during one of the most dangerous hours
in American history, and the text of President John F.. Kennedy's
November 22, 1963, national security speech which concluded:
'For as was written long ago, 'Except the Lord keep the city,
the watchman waketh but in vain.' "

Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists took
action along with several plaintiffs, and in December of 2008 filed
suit to have the Kentucky statute declared unconstitutional.

"It is one of the most egregiously and breathtakingly
unconstitutional actions by a state legislature that I've ever
seen," Kagin told reporters. Democratic State Rep. Tom Riner,
however, who happened to also be an ordained Baptist minister from
Louisville and the architect of the controversial law, disagreed.

Echoing the rationale in the Kentucky statute, he declared, "No
government by itself can guarantee perfect security," he said.
"There will always be this opposition to the acknowledgement of
divine providence, but this is a foundational understanding of
what American is." Riner also described the Atheist lawsuit as
"frivolous" and "an attempt to censor and suppress the publication
of a key law that acknowledges divine providence."

Fox also quoted Ed Buckner, President of American Atheists, who
said that despite the heightened religious climate in post-911
America, Kentucky was the only state trying to enlist the deity
in the formidable task of homeland security. "I'm not aware of
any other state or Commonwealth that is trying to dump their clear
responsibility for protecting their citizens onto God or any other
mythological creature," Buckner said.

Kentucky has a long record of problems involving unconstitutional
efforts to promote sectarian religion. Many involve the display of
the Ten Commandments on public property, and in one decision the
U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the state in two cases involving
nativity creches on courthouse property. Rev. Riner's wife Claudia,
served in the state legislature and in 1979 sponsored a bill
mandating display of the Commandments in all public school classroom.
That led to another lawsuit, and in STONE v. GRAHAM, the Supreme
Court found the practice blatantly unconstitutional. Ironically,
that case is now part of the legal record and is cited in the
American Atheist lawsuit.

Mr. Kagin says that the Kentucky statute "is facially volatile"
of the Constitution, adding that "The challenged laws unlawfully
attempt ... ot establish religion, endorse belief over non-belief,
set up a religious test, indoctrinate Kentucky citizens and state
employees in this theistic religious belief, and diminish the civil
rights, privileges, or capacities of Atheists and others who do not
believe in a god, or who believe in a different god or gods than
the presumed supernatural entity unconstitutionally endorsed by the
legislature ... The challenged laws are grossly, and outrageously
, at variance with the Constitutions of the United States and of
Kentucky, and are retrograde to the very purposes of protecting
American freedoms for which the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security
was established."

On Monday, June 1, the State of Kentucky will be in court presenting
a Motion to have the American Atheists complaint dismissed.
The hearing begins at 10:00 AM, at the Franklin County Courthouse
in Frankfort, KY. Outside, supporters of American Atheists,
state-church separation and civil liberties will hold a peaceful
rally supporting the lawsuit.

The full text of the AA complaint can be found at:
http://www.atheists.org/upload/aavky.pdf

Atheist News by Edwin Kagin

2009-05-24T12:41:00.001-04:00

KENTUCKY ATHEISTS NEWS & NOTES Date: May 24, 2009

Kentucky Atheists, P.O. Box 666, Union, KY 41091; Email: ekagin@atheists.org

Phone: (859) 384-7000; Fax: (859) 384-7324; Web: http://www.atheists.org/ky/

Editor's personal web site: www.edwinkagin.com

Editor’s personal blog: http://edwinkagin.blogspot.com

Edited by:

Edwin Kagin, Kentucky State Director, American Atheists, Inc.

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

What Is An ATHEIST?

“ANOTHER THINKING HUMAN ENGAGED IN SEEKING TRUTH”
(Edwin Kagin, 2008)

To Unidentified Recipients:

“Answers in Atheism,” the international Internet radio talk show sensation, is now on live weekly (usually / often / when we can do it) on Sundays at 8:00 pm. Eastern Time.

For finding out if it will (should) be on, and for listening to it and for call in information, see: www.answersinatheism.net

This week’s offering is (should be): Brad Cupples, Playwright, Blasphemer, Fighter of Beasts.

Edwin.

Introducing Mr. Eric 0. Husby, Esq.

The owner of this improbable name is a young Florida lawyer who seems willing to risk ruining his life and reputation by helping out in causes touching on keeping the paws of religion out of the bowels of our government that is supposed to serve all of We the People. We welcome him to the American Religious Civil War (ARCW). There follows what we hope will be only the first in a great series of clever and informative articles.

NB. He is reported to be single. Email available upon appropriate application.

Edwin.

--------------------------------------

Legal News Brief
California Court Finds Teacher Liable for Calling Christian Creationism "Superstitious Nonsense."
By: Eric O. Husby, Esq. May 6, 2009
On May 1, 2009, the United States District Court for the Central District of California decided the case of C.F. v. Capistrano Unified School District. In Capistrano, the court held that a California public high school teacher, Corbett, violated the First Amendment rights of a student, Farnan, by making a comment that disfavored religion (and particularly Christianity).
In finding an Establishment Clause violation, the court applied the classic "Lemon Test."1 Under the Lemon Test, to be proper, governmental action (including action by a public school teacher) must satisfy each of the following requirements: (1) have a secular purpose; (2) have a principal or primary effect that neither advances nor inhibits religion; and (3) not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion.
During the course of the school year, Corbett made numerous statements which Farnan alleged violate the Establishment Clause. The only comment that the court found constituted a violation involved a classroom discussion in an Advanced Placement (AP) European History class. During that class, Corbett stated an unequivocal belief that Christian Creationism was "superstitious nonsense." Applying the Lemon Test, the court found that there was no legitimate secular purpose for the statement, even when considered in context, and the statement had the primary effect of inhibiting religion.2
The court went on to address a variety of other comments made by Corbett. Farnan complained about certain of Corbett's comments regarding the availability of birth control pills at middle school health centers, indicating that abstinence only policies did not work. The court did not analyze explicitly each and every statement, but noted that many of Corbett's statements indicated a "liberal" versus a "conservative" viewpoint. However, even though the statements might have been antithetical to or offensive to a religious person, statements that did not criticize or mention religion could not support an interpretation that they demonstrated hostility toward or disapproval of religion.
The court explained that a statement does not violate the Establishment Clause merely because a religious person finds them incorrect or offensive. Were that the case, according to the court, teachers and schools would have to navigate a variety religious objections. To eliminate everything offensive to the hundreds of "warring sects" in the United States would be to leave the educational system "in shreds." This would result in teachers effectively having to teach in accordance with religious principles, which itself would violate the Establishment Clause.

The court examined other statements that "touched on" religion, but nevertheless found that they did not violate the Establishment Clause. The court did not address all of Corbett's statements explicitly, but provided examples. In one example, Corbett asked in class what a particular student thought about a person who had to lie to make a religious point, and made disparaging comments concerning a college called the Bible Institute of Los Angeles ("BIOLA"). The court found that in context the statements were respectful of the student to whom the question was posed, and Corbett's criticisms of BIOLA were based on its academics and not primarily religion.
In another example, the court addressed statements that were critical of the Boy Scouts. Corbett called them racist, homophobic and religious, and that meetings of the Boy Scouts at schools violated principles of separation of church and state. The court found that these comments critical of the Boy Scouts and regarding the separation of church and state did not indicate hostility towards religion. The court noted that respect for religion and a strong belief in separation of church and state are not mutually exclusive. Quoting prior United States Supreme Court precedent, the court noted that separation of church and state mandated by the First Amendment "rests upon the premise that both religion and government can best work to achieve their lofty aims if each is left free from the other within its respective sphere. . . . [T]he First Amendment ha[s] erected a wall between Church and State which must be kept high and impregnable." McCollum v. Board of Ed., 333 U.S. 203, 235 (1948).
The court next addressed the following statement: "What was it that Mark Twain said? 'Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.'" The remark was part of a historical discussion of the tension between religion and science. Corbett contrasted the continuing search for "rational" explanations when one explanation proves insufficient as opposed to stopping the inquiry in favor of "magic." Notwithstanding the biting nature of Twain' s observation, the court found that it illustrated a turn to the non-rational when man cannot, or is unable, to develop a rational solution. The court also found that it was not clear whether Corbett was "espousing" Twain's view rather than "merely quoting" it.3 Nevertheless, in context, the Court could not find that the primary purpose of the quote was to disparage religion.
The court also addressed one of Corbett's lectures in which he stated, "when you put on your Jesus glasses, you can't see the truth." The court analyzed this statement in the context of the general class discussion. The statement was made in the context of a discussion about how certain peasants did not support Joseph II's reforms for religious reasons, even though the reforms were in the peasants' best political and economic interests. Also, the statement may have been intended to show the larger point that people sometimes make choices that are against their best interests for religious reasons and that religion has and can be used as a manipulative tool. The court relied on the principle that courts should be cautious in attributing unconstitutional motives to government officials, and found that in the context of an AP European History course that the comment was not hostile to religion.

The court then addressed Corbett's discussion of religion and morality. For example, Corbett stated that the people least likely to go to church, the Swedes, had the lowest crime rate in the industrialized world. He called upon students to ask for an explanation about that the next time someone connected religion with morality. The court found this statement could not reasonably be found to be disapproving or hostile to religion because Corbett disclaimed a "causal link" and because the statement was an interesting sociological fact appropriate for discussion.
In conclusion, the court granted summary judgment for Farnan on only one out of the many allegations. The court granted summary judgment for the defendants on all other allegations. The court specifically declined to hold the school district itself liable under the circumstances.
As a guide, the case presents a fairly detailed map for teachers as to what they can and can not say about religion in the classroom (at least in this one district judge's view). The court appears to have established a bright-line view that is helpful to teachers. While placing a limitation on what a teacher can say about religion, wide latitude is given for teachers to make statements that are critical of, contrary to and even offensive to a particular religion. To be a violation, a statement about religion must be clearly and explicitly disapproving or hostile toward religion, without any other reasonable secular discernable purpose. Merely offensive statements or statements on which a religious person may disagree are insufficient. Statements that merely imply hostility are likewise insufficient. However, where a teacher says that a religion is "superstitious nonsense" for the primary purpose of inhibiting religion, then the court will find a violation. That rule, while perhaps not welcomed with open arms by educators, it appears that the court has at least attempted to craft a rule that most teachers can follow: avoid direct, explicit and hostile attacks on religion that do not have a bearing on the task of educating students.
Since the court ruled for and against each of the parties to the case, any party may be likely to appeal it to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.4
Eric 0. Husby is a Florida attorney and solo practitioner serving primarily Hillsborough and surrounding counties. In addition to private for profit and nonprofit organization clients, Mr. Husby serves as counsel to atheist and freethinker organizations nationwide.
1 The "Lemon Test" is so named because it originated in the United States Supreme Court Case of Lemon v Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971).
2 While the court did not find any excessive entanglement with religion, it nevertheless found a violation of the Establishment Clause because a failure to satisfy either of the first two prongs of test constitutes a violation.
3 The court did not make it clear whether a teacher "espousing" Twain's views would necessarily be found to have violated the Establishment Clause.

=====================================================================================

Intelligent Email Department:

The following was received from a person who is, presumably, permitted to vote and to sit on juries:

Name: Anthony Cook

Email: jimi_h420@yahoo.com

Here is a thought: WHY don't we have all the athiests move to 4 NW states (because that's all you can take up in America) and all the christians stay where they are and then just wage war on eachother? See who wins...like in the Civil War. Then the winner can make rules about where people can practice thier religion and where they can't. You are lost sheep who are big whiney babies because you feel like outsiders when others speak about thier religions. I think anyone can say anything about any religion in public places on the largest megaphone without offending me, so grow up and do the same. If Jewish people were the majority of this coutry and it was founded by jewish forefathers, I would expect that our money and national traditions would have jewish symbolisim, people would make SMALL references to this religion at public events, such as national historic gatherings, graduation cerimonies, and political events. As a minority in this circumstance, I wouldn't be complaining to the government every 10 minutes like you. If I didn't like it, I would simply move to a country that wasn't religious or freaking start my own country instead of trying to ruin this one. Your group acts like a baby brother tattling on an older sister for calling you a meanie poopoo head. When in rome, do as romans. Majority Rules. Get over it and worship yourselves in YOUR own basement while having your seperate schools. Segregate YOURselves, We shouldn't have to segregate ourselves because of a crybaby group like yours just to Pledge Allegence to the United States of America under God as has been done for 200 years. I don't care what you believe, you can believe that there isn't sand on a beach because you have never been to one, but every time your group cries to the government about this and that, just makes you look like little wimpy complainers. Seriously, you need your mommy and daddy to spank your butt for being so retarded and stupid.

P.S. I really like your note about REAL technology, REAL attorneys, and REAL prosecution, now why don't you get a REAL life. I can say anything I like, where I like, as long as I don't threaten to kill or Beat the CRAP out someone. OOPS call the cops! I said "Meanie PooPoo Head"! You should be posted in your own HATE MAIL for hating my country's history and tradition.
-Signed a GREAT LOVER OF AMERICAN TRADITIONS,
Anthony Cook
Come to my house if you want, we can say the rosary in my basement and leave out all the references of Mary, Jesus, and God. If you do, I'll donate a dollar to your cause.

And the following reply was sent to this rustic genius by American Atheists President, Ed Buckner:

From: edbuckner@bellsouth.net [mailto:edbuckner@bellsouth.net]
Sent: Friday, May 22, 2009 8:48 PM
To: jimi_h420@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: You guys are HILARIOUS! My advice...

Mr. Cook,

You misunderstand a core American ideal: individual rights cannot be taken away by a majority, even a large one. If the 70+ per cent majority of white Americans want to deny rights to blacks or Hispanics, they lack that power; if the 51% of Americans who are female want to deny men rights, they cannot, so long as our constitutional principles are in force; etc.

And you don't know your history, either, or you'd know our nation was founded by people who didn't want the majority to use the power of government to impose religious ideas on others. And the Pledge of Allegiance wasn't thought up at all 200 years ago--it was written about 120 years ago and had no reference to God in it at all until 60 or so years later, when Congress unconstitutionally divided "one nation indivisible" with religious claptrap.

I'd suggest you retire to your basement and do some serious reading--you are quite literally unAmerican, profoundly ignorant of American traditions and principles, and apparently don't even know it.

Ed Buckner
President, American Atheists

Edwin Kagin on Thoughts for Atheists at Graduation.

2009-05-16T20:53:00.003-04:00

It is graduation time again. Therefore, here reproduced is a Graduation address I constructed for an Atheist student a couple of years ago. It was actually delivered! So, if you want to use this, feel free, so long as credit is given. If you make money on my creation, I want some of it.

Edwin.

Thoughts for Atheists at Graduation.

Good evening sinners.

At High School graduations throughout our country, it is customary for older people to tell younger people what the older people were told by older people, who are now probably dead people, at their own High School baccalaureates and graduations. This is usually some sad, emotional, and boring commentary on how the world and the future is yours, how you are the future, that we are leaving it to you, and that the speaker’s generation messed up the world, but the future if still full of limitless possibilities, and that it is up to you to straighten it all out for the generations to come, and that with hard work, faith, and god’s help it can all be done. There, I have just summarized every known High School graduation speech. When you are old you can tell the same rubbish to a new generation of bright eyed graduates ready to go forth into the world to breed, grow old, and die.

The problem with all of these far too long and whining baccalaureate and graduation speeches, or sermons, is that they usually call for more of what has caused the problems complained of. The baccalaureate talks are the worst. That is where educated adults, who should know better, pray to invisible imaginary friends for wished-for things that never happen.

What is wonderful and different tonight is that this is an Atheist Baccalaureate. And it may be the first such in the history of the United States. So you will go down in history. Some will say you will go to in Hell.

As Atheists, you know that the world is not run by magic and magical thinking. Atheists do not bring up their children in a land of make believe.

We have tried to teach you the principals of reason, critical thinking, logical fallacy, ethical behavior, and the methods of science and evidence. We want you to know that there is a big difference between Righteousness and Self-Righteousness.

We want you to know and understand the difference between belief and proof; between faith and fact. We want you to know that you are part of a great historic tradition of bringing light unto darkness; that there is a difference between that which is ethical and that which is expedient; a difference between being truly moral and being a follower of religious rules. We want you to know that science is based on facts, not on fairy tales. That evolution is a fact and that “Creationism” is a fairy tale. That there is a difference between coincidence and causation. A difference between potential and actual. That an egg is not a chicken and that an acorn is not an oak tree.

At this rite of passage, we want you, our children who are our future, to understand that what happens to each of us and to our world is based on cause and effect—not on faith and miracles. We want you to know that behavior has consequences. If you run on a wet trail you can slip and be hurt. If you let fools be your rulers, you will be ruled by fools.

We want you to live—not for life after death, but for life before death. We all share the mystery of having been born human. As humans, we are many races, many nations, and many religions. We can learn to live together or we can destroy ourselves. No god is going to save us. We must save ourselves.

For your own safety’s sake, we have tried to help you learn to distinguish between logic and fallacy; between science and superstition; between real and pretend; between the wonder of discovery and magical thinking. We want you to know the difference between doing and dogma; between imagination and mythology. And we want you to understand that learning never ends. We want you to know, as many do not, that life does not stop with High School graduation. None of us know the limits of what you may yet learn and what you may yet become. There will also be some pain and some disappointments. It is all part of the deal. We did not make the rules.

Most importantly, we want to help you, our children who are now young adults, to be competent. You will be competent when you can survive, thrive, create, empathize, and interact justly with others, free of pain, fear, and guilt—without gods, without religion, and without us. If you can achieve, as we know you can, self-reliant adulthood, you will not need the gods or the religion, and you will not miss them. If we have done it right, you will not need us either. But perhaps you will miss us.

There is one thing we want. We want you, and your children, and your children’s children, to be able to live in a world where it is okay not to believe in god. To do otherwise is to defile the graves of our martyrs.

May your future be better than your past, and may that measure of peace, justice, harmony and understanding denied religion and its deities be attained by you as mortals through the use of your minds, and may reason, science, curiosity, and discovery replace the fear, the guilt, the pain, and the ignorance of trembling in terror before capricious gods.

by Edwin Kagin
Graduation, 2006

Edwin Kagin, On Public Prayer

2009-05-07T14:05:00.003-04:00

In honor of the unconstitutional “National Day of Prayer,” here reprinted is the commentary contained in the collection “Baubles of Blasphemy,” available from American Atheists Press.

Permission is given for non-profit reproduction. If you make money on this, I want some of it.

Edwin.

------------------------------

KAGIN'S COLUMN

ON PUBLIC PRAYER

The family that prays together stays together. Religious putdown of the families of non-believers.

Prayer is the means whereby humans communicate with the supernatural deity or deities in whom they believe. Most religions accept uncritically the reality of beings who exist outside the laws of nature and who can, upon appropriate application, alter those laws for the benefit of the believer. One makes supplication to the god of choice by silent or vocal praise and the lodging of requests for divine intervention. This practice is known as "prayer."

Christianity is the dominant religion of the United States. It is mythically based on the life and teaching of Jesus, the deity made man. Fundamentalists believe every word of the Bible (the sacred texts) to be the word of God. Here's what God, through Jesus (also God), said about prayer: "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you they have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Jesus Christ, Matthew 6:5-6 King James Version in a stolen Gideon Bible. We need not bother with the more recent translations. If the King James Version was good enough for the Apostle Paul, it's good enough for us.
What we have here is the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior of the World, God Incarnate, the Light of the World giving definitive, authoritative, and unimpeachable information on how to pray if the person praying wants God to pay attention. Preempting all contrary mandates, the one God has given his orders on prayer to all people for all times until the end of the world. The instructions are strict and inflexible. There are no exceptions. When one prays he should go into his closet and shut the door.

This command of the deity on earth in human form was given publicly in the "Sermon on the Mount," wherein the Christ conveyed the will of the Father. The Lamb of God went on to dictate into the record an example of how to pray: "Our Father which art in heaven," etc. (How Jesus was God and discussed the will of his father, who was also God in heaven must wait for a future consideration of the mythology of the "Holy Trinity.") This is known as "The Lord's Prayer." When one prays it, or any other prayer, one has to do so behind closed doors in one's closet, not publicly. The "Lord's Prayer" was not openly prayed by Jesus, but was taught to be repeated only in private. When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, before being crucified, he prayed privately. He probably didn't have a closet. While hanging on the cross, he prayed with others about, but he really couldn't, under the circumstances, be expected to deliver these final prayers elsewhere. Thus, prayers are to be given from behind closed doors unless you are alone in the mountains or trussed up for execution. In fairness, the orders probably leave room for any silent or quiet prayer that is not rendered in public. All public prayers are forbidden and are a deliberate disobedience to the will of god.

The Son of Man not only set out the rules for prayer and other matters in the sermon on the mountain but concluded with a warning of the dire consequences of disobedience: "And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it."
Matthew 7:26-27.

So there it is. Our world is coming unglued and we suffer crime, violence, and war because of public prayer. The more out of the closet prayer, the more awful things get. Those who yell loudest that the Bible is the inerrant word of God are the worst offenders. The more they argue that we must return to the Bible, the more they blasphemously engage in uncloseted prayer. They doom us by their forbidden entreaties to the Almighty whose commands they flaunt. Nowhere is the influence of Satan clearer seen. Satan has deceived the faithful to engage in prayer meetings, prayer breakfasts, and all manner of condemned celestial communications reaching into the very foundations of government. Heaven help us, there are even those who advocate publicly praying in our schools as a solution to the problems directly created by that very disobedience to ultimate authority. There are prayers on radio and on television, in churches, in homes and in auditoriums. The more we publicly pray, the more we become the most violent and crime-invested nation on earth. Is this our American heritage, our family values? Why do we deliberately disobey God? The American civil war was conducted by armies who publicly prayed and believed god supported their cause and was on their side. Lincoln observed that "both sides may be, and one must be, wrong."

Humanists who wrote our Constitution tried to prevent the problem. God is not mentioned in the Constitution, and church and state are separated in the Bill of Rights. This is probably all that has kept Satan from totally leading us to destruction. Our greatness comes from humanists, our problems from the folly of those who advocate and practice public prayer.

It is all so simple. A believer is not permitted to disregard a direct order from the deity without consequences. Better to be a non-believer than one condemned under one's own rules. Examples that impious prayer doesn't work are legion. Every fundamentalist bigot in the country publicly prayed that Mr. Clinton not be elected president of the United States. The prayers failed. God is not mocked.

So if you must be a believer, get it right. Read your Bible. Do you think Jesus was wrong? Obey your God. Stop all forms of public prayer. It's hard to stand on your feet when you're on your knees.

And don't naively assume your daughter has religion when she comes home with a Gideon Bible in her suitcase.

Ed Kagin

March, 1994

Atheist News from Edwin Kagin

2009-05-05T22:20:00.000-04:00

KENTUCKY ATHEISTS NEWS & NOTES Date: May 05, 2009

Kentucky Atheists, P.O. Box 666, Union, KY 41091; Email: ekagin@atheists.org

Phone: (859) 384-7000; Fax: (859) 384-7324; Web: http://www.atheists.org/ky/

Editor's personal web site: www.edwinkagin.com

Editor’s personal blog: http://edwinkagin.blogspot.com

Edited by:

Edwin Kagin, Kentucky State Director, American Atheists, Inc.

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

What Is An ATHEIST?

“ANOTHER THINKING HUMAN ENGAGED IN SEEKING TRUTH”
(Edwin Kagin, 2008)

To Unidentified Recipients:

Now “they” want the government to support teaching the history of religion.

Well, maybe we should do just that—teach the history of religion: the Crusades; the Inquisition; the Salem Witch Trials. That sort of thing.

And, there are more of us than “they” know. Maybe a lot more.

Your narrator was honored to be a guest on a Channel 12, Cincinnati, two part news story on Heaven and Hell. The actual electrons can be found (for now at least) here:

http://www.local12.com/content/special_coverage/story/What-Happens-After-You-Die/7ohx0EU6F0OXXXVsnAAVOg.cspx

http://www.local12.com/mediacenter/local.aspx?videoid=39536@video.wkrc.com

Don’t miss the commentaries on the stories. You might want to join it.

Edwin.

===================================================================================================================

AMERICAN ATHEISTS
http://www.atheists.org
May 5, 2009

AMERICAN ATHEISTS
ACTION ALERT
House Resolution on "America's Spiritual Heritage"
Would Promote Religious Heritage Week

Action Needed Now to Stop Government Promotion of Religion!

On Thursday, May 7, 2009, members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus will hold a press conference in Washington, DC to launch a new effort at passing the "America's Spiritual Heritage" resolution, formerly known as HR 888.

Introduced by Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA.), the measure would put Congress on record to "Recognize that the religious foundations of faith on which America was built are critical underpinnings of our Nation's most valuable institutions..." It would also decree establishment of a "Religious Heritage Week" "for the appreciation of and education of America's history of religious faith."

Among the religious right luminaries slated to appear at Thursday's conference are Gary Bauer ("American Values"); Maureen Wiebe (American Association of Christian Schools); Wendy Wright (Concerned Women for America); and William Murray (Religious Freedom Coalition); and James and Shirley Dobson (Focus on the Family). The event is schedule to coincide with ceremonies marking the National Day of Prayer, a Dobson-run event.

***

Legislators, particularly Congressional representatives in the House, need to hear from America's Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists and other secularists who are marginalized by this exclusionary and unconstitutional measure. Government has no business promoting religion, especially in the form of a one-sided "history" that ignores the important role of the First Amendment and Separation of Church and State. This bill is also being seen as a reaction to President Obama's recent statement in Turkey to the effect that America is not as "Christian nation."

LEARN MORE:

Visit the American Atheist web site at http://www.atheists.org and Dave Silverman's NO GOD BLOG (http://www.nogodblog.com) for more background on this story. The full Resolution text can be found at the Congressional Prayer Caucus web site, http://www.house.gov/forbes/prayercaucus.htm/

CONTACT CONGRESS:

Send letters, faxes and E-mails to your Congressional Representative. Better yet, call. Visit http://www.visi.com/juan/congress for a complete listing, or the office House of Representatives site at http://www.house.gov . Be concise and polite. Tell your representative that this bill is a ploy to promote a "revisionist" view of American history, and that it does not mention the many negative effects religious orthodoxy and strife have had in our nation! Point out that government has no proper role in promoting religion, or a biased and un-balanced view of American history. Ask for a written response from your representative!

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS:

Join the conversation at the NoGodBlog.

SPREAD THIS ACTION ALERT!

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists, Freethinkers and other nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

=========================================================================================================

AMERICAN ATHEISTS, INC.
http://www.atheists.org
http://www.americanatheist.org

For more information, please contact:
Ed Buckner, President (770) 803-5353
Dave Silverman, Communications Director (732) 648-9333

ATHEISTS SEEK ROLE IN PROPOSED FEDERAL "RELIGIOUS HISTORY WEEK"

An Atheist public policy group says that it supports the call by conservative Christians to establish a Federal "Religious History Week,"
and already has suggestions for a proposed curriculum.

A federal bill, the Spiritual Heritage Resolution introduced by Rep. J.
Randy Forbes (R-Va.) details how religion and politics have played vital roles in American history. The measure has won enthusiastic support from members of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, as well as Gary Bauer and James and Shirley Dobson of the Colorado-based National Day of Prayer.
The bill will be re-introduced after NDOP events this Thursday.

"We think that 'Religious History Week' can be a tool for informing the public about the positive and negative roles that religion has played,"
said Dr. Ed Buckner, President of American Atheists. "Our organization would like to participate and make sure that this federal event presents an objective, scholarly view."

Among the topics Buckner suggested were discussion segments on religious authoritarianism in colonial-era America; the notorious "Blue Laws" that punished those not observing the Sabbath; the use of public taxes to support "Established" religions prior to the American Revolution; the effects of religious orthodoxy on free speech and other civil liberties; the resistance of religious groups to the Revolution and "disestablishment" of churches; support by religious groups for segregation, racism and stopping women from having voting rights; and the more contemporary role religious groups play in opposing equal treatment for gays, lesbians, youth and women seeking abortion and birth control.

"We have other topics we'd like to bring up, too, as part of this wonderful event," said Dr. Buckner.

Dave Silverman, Communications Director for American Atheists cautioned that those introducing the Spiritual Heritage Resolution "should refrain from cherry picking only the positive things some religious groups have done throughout our country's history."

"We have to acknowledge that, yes, many progressive religious leaders had good ideas. These must be weighed against the role religion, particularly fundamentalist Christianity, has played in retarding political, social and even technological progress."

Mr. Silverman added that he and Dr. Buckner look forward to working with any federal or private agencies planning the "Religious History Week" if the bill is passed by Congress.

"We just have so many wonderful topics to bring up," said Dr. Buckner.

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists, Freethinkers and other nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

American Atheists, Inc.
PO BOX 158
Cranford, NJ 07016
Tel.: (908) 276-7300
Fax: (908) 276-7402

================================================================================================================

From reader Jan:

(hyperlinks to other stories at main link below)

http://www.alternet.org/rights/139788?page=entire

40 Million Nonbelievers in America? The Secret Is Almost Out
By Ronald Aronson, Religion Dispatches. Posted May 5, 2009.

Secularists have very quietly become one of America’s largest minorities -- how long before they use their power?

As reported recently in the New York Times, a South Carolina chapter of Habitat for Humanity prohibited a group of Secular Humanist volunteers from wearing their “Non-Prophet Organization” T-shirts; a Charleston-area teacher “came out” as a nonbeliever after years of church dinners and demurrals; and Humanist Loretta Haskell struggled over her role as a church musician. While such stories remain commonplace, a related story with a substantial bearing on these anecdotes is one of America’s best-kept secrets.
A recent Newsweek cover—in a bid to (finally) match the celebrated 1966 “Is God Dead?” cover of Time—read, in the shape of a cross: “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” Editor Jon Meacham’s story highlights Newsweek’s latest poll results showing that 10% fewer Americans identify as Christian today than twenty years ago. But more importantly, and mentioned only in passing, is the growth among atheists and secularists of all stripes.
According to the latest American Religious Identification Survey(ARIS) of more than 54,000 adults, between 2001 and 2008 the number willing to identify themselves as atheist and agnostic has gone from under 2 million to 3.6 million. Small numbers compared to the whole, of course, but most notably it’s a rise of 85% of those willing to describe themselves as living without God during the years of our most overtly religious presidency!
Even more newsworthy, when the widely-scorned labels “atheist” and “agnostic” are replaced with specifics about beliefs (“There is no such thing” as God, “There is no way to know,” or “I’m not sure,” and added to those who refused to answer) it turns out that over eighteen percent of Americans do not profess belief in a God or a higher power.
According to ARIS, then, there could be as many as 40 million adult nonbelievers in the United States!
Personal God Going the Way of the Dodo?
Consider: If these numbers are correct, nonbelievers amount to more than the highest estimates of African Americans or gays. Secularists are one of America’s largest minorities. It is no longer possible to proclaim, as the Gallup Poll announced fifty years ago: “Nearly all Americans believe in God.” That is today’s most significant change.
So what explains the impressive increase among those willing to identify as atheist or agnostic? For those who think that books and ideas simply don’t matter, it is dramatic tribute to the success of the “new atheist” writers—including Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens. To paraphrase the title of Dennett’s book, their goal has been to “break the spell” of religion—and they have evidently helped more Americans “achieve” that goal.
If a new confidence is in the offing it is also visible in the American Humanist Association’s scandalous Christmastime bus ads in Washington DC (“Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.”). No less striking is the “Out” campaign (“Come Out,” “Reach Out,” “Speak Out,” “Keep Out,” “Stand Out,”) especially among students and young people.
One of the few writers who has paid attention to these phenomena, Konstantin Petrenko, writing for Religion Dispatches, does so in order to dismiss them [see “Godless America? Say Hello to the ‘Apatheists’,” March 19, 2009]. He stresses the discrepancy between those embracing the “atheist” or “agnostic” label and those who describe themselves as not believing in God. “It appears that most of the unaffiliated individuals are not atheistic or anti-religious in any activist sense, but are rather apathetic toward organized religion and reluctant to join any particular denomination or sect.”
True enough, but the same can be said of most religious believers. This is no reason to downplay the fact that so many have clearly fallen away from religion—that is, they live their lives without any sort of God. Nor can we ignore ARIS’s statement that the six percent of Americans who refuse to answer the question about their beliefs “tend to somewhat resemble ‘Nones’ in their social profile and beliefs.” Which means, according to ARIS’s most striking conclusion: “The U.S. population continues to show signs of becoming less religious, with one in five Americans failing to indicate a religious identity in 2008.”
Furthermore, among those who do, over 12% of the total sample describe their belief in ways that ARIS concludes are “deistic (a higher power but no personal God).” One in eight American believers are as religious as... Thomas Paine. Those who continue to believe in a traditional Jewish, Christian, or Muslim personal god have dropped to under seventy percent of the American population. Despite all efforts to ignore or minimize this, it is big news.
Moments of Prayer into Moments of Silence
And the discrepancy between those willing to be public and open about their religious disbelief and those who are not is also big news. Among nonbelievers, judging from my discussions with hundreds of them over the past several months, many are not “new atheists” (militantly doing battle with religion) but are, inPeter Steinfels’ terminology, “new new atheists.” These people are not primarily concerned with arguing against the belief in God, but are trying to find ways of coexisting in a society in which both nonbelievers and believers can expect to be around for a long time to come. They shy away from labels as they seek their own bearings and their own comfort zone in today’s America.
Secularists welcomed President Obama’s shout-out to nonbelievers during his inaugural address, but are painfully aware that when launching his campaign he criticized them for trying to keep religion out of the public square, but not the religious right for its attempts to erase the line between church and state.
They worry, along with Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, that Obama’s renewal of the Bush Faith-Based Initiative in the new Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnerships has not ruled out proselytizing and discriminatory hiring for religious social service programs that are granted Federal dollars. And they wince when recalling that he subjected himself to the informal religious test of being drilled like a catechism pupil by Rick Warren on his own particular way of believing in Jesus Christ (the same Rick Warren who announced that he would never vote for an atheist for president).
Above all, rather than combating religious belief at every turn, many nonbelievers would cheer if the President initiated a genuinely multicultural approach to both believers and secularists in today’s America. This might entail, as was not done at the Democratic National Convention last August, inviting secularists as well as believers to platforms that normally exclude the irreligious (i.e. the “values and unity” event preceding the Convention that was exclusively for religious believers). It might entail as much political attention being paid to nonbelievers as believers at public events—transforming moments of prayer into moments of silence. In other words, it would mean abandoning the implicit assumption of so much of American public and private life that religious values, norms and practices apply to everyone—and show respect to American’s enormous nonreligious minority.

Ronald Aronson is author of Living without God: New Directions for Atheists, Agnostics, Secularists and the Undecided (Counterpoint, 2008). He teaches history at Wayne State University.

Atheist News by Edwin Kagin

2009-04-23T23:29:00.000-04:00

KENTUCKY ATHEISTS NEWS & NOTES Date: April 23, 2009

Kentucky Atheists, P.O. Box 666, Union, KY 41091; Email: ekagin@atheists.org

Phone: (859) 384-7000; Fax: (859) 384-7324; Web: http://www.atheists.org/ky/

Editor's personal web site: www.edwinkagin.com

Editor’s personal blog: http://edwinkagin.blogspot.com

Edited by:

Edwin Kagin, Kentucky State Director, American Atheists, Inc.

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

What Is An ATHEIST?

“ANOTHER THINKING HUMAN ENGAGED IN SEEKING TRUTH”
(Edwin Kagin, 2008)

To Unidentified Recipients:

They just won’t stop. What part of “no” don’t they understand?

Happy 445th birthday William Shakespeare. I do not think these happenings would surprise you one bit.

Edwin.

From reader David Kong:

San Leandro Times - Thursday, April 23, 2009

Trustee’s Wife: No Religious Songs in School

By : Amy Sylvestri : 4/23/09

Margarita Lacabe enjoyed her daughter’s performance in the McKinley Elementary School holiday show last December — children signing secular favorites like “Frosty the Snowman” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” when she was shocked by the choir’s next tune.

“The children were singing and they were all regular Christmas songs, but then I heard ‘Silent Night,’” said Lacabe. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Lacabe, who is the wife of School Board President Mike Katz-Lacabe and mother of two, said that she objects to the religious theme of the song because she and her family are atheists. She said that songs like “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” are more inoffensive because, while they are in celebration of a Christian holiday, they don’t feature overtly Christian lyrics.

“To me, there is a huge difference between what is cultural and what is religious,” said Lacabe. “Songs like ‘Feliz Navidad’ or even ‘Dreidel, Dreidel’ are about the cultural celebration of the holidays, whereas ‘Silent Night’ is sung in churches as a religious hymn. It is ridiculous to say it has one meaning in a church and then bring it out of a church and say it means something else.”

Lacabe was so incensed by the song that she left the auditorium while the children were still singing and spoke with McKinley Principal Cher Mott.

“I was so incredibly mad,” said Lacabe. “She said that she hadn’t seen the song book and I asked her to please refrain from teaching religious songs to my daughter. We had a conversation that didn’t really go anywhere.”

Lacabe said the McKinley music teacher Kathy Maier said she would remove the song from the rest of the seasonal holiday curriculum, but would not commit to permanently getting rid of it.

Some would say that teaching a Christian song is an example of celebrating one of many different cultures present in public schools. But Lacabe said that, because Christianity is so prevalent, teaching it becomes a form of indoctrination.

“They are not teaching Muslim songs, or Wiccan, or Pagan, they are not teaching atheist songs, if they are supposed to be teaching different cultures,” said Lacabe.

She suggested R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” as an example of a song with atheistic themes and suggested a web site full of songs that are from an atheist perspective.

In a follow-up email, Lacabe also acknowledged that, while some religious songs are holiday “classics,” they need to be put in context if they are going to be sung at public schools.

“Moreover, the song ‘Silent Night’ was taught without any cultural context whatsoever. (My daughter) was not told the history of the song... wasn’t at any point told that just because a song says something, it doesn’t mean it is true,” wrote Lacabe. “Children her age are very easy to influence. We tell them to listen to their teachers, so when the teachers tell them that jesus is the savior, they have no reason to not believe it... this is true of other songs — think of how many kids believe in rudolph the red nose reindeer or frosty the snowman.”

After asking McKinley staff to not teach her daughter religious music, Lacabe was disappointed that they would not make a blanket change of their policy, so she filed a complaint with the district. At this point she is considering either bringing the issue up to the school board or school the district.

Lacabe added that she believes that the school was aware of her atheism, because when her daughter was in kindergarten last year she fought to have the words “Under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. She believes that the school knew about her atheism and purposefully ignored it.

“I feel they did it intentionally to indoctrinate my daughter in Christianity,” said Lacabe. “They are discriminating against my daughter because she is not a Christian and that discrimination is against the constitution of the state of California.” Lacabe and her husband both acknowledge that putting the issue before the school board will be awkward for Katz-Lacabe as board president.

“I agree with her and, of course, I support her because she is my wife, but since I am on the board, I would of course recuse myself form any hearing,” said Katz-Lacabe. “This is an issue that is between my wife and the board.”

Katz-Lacabe was also at the concert, but declined to discuss his personal reaction to the song. McKinley Principal Mott and music teacher Maier did not return calls for comment. The school district office said that they have a no-discrimination policy but didn’t comment specifically on the Lacabe complaint.

School board trustees Diana Prola and Morgan Mack-Rose said that they would deal with the issue as it happens and currently are not familiar enough with the case to offer opinions.

Meanwhile, Margarita Lacabe said that she may pursue the possibility of a legal injunction on the “Silent Night” matter, as well her complaint about the Pledge of Allegiance, depending on the results of other similar lawsuits in the state. But for now, her daughter continues to say the pledge every Wednesday morning at an assembly with the rest of the school.

“She is seven-years-old and wants to be like everyone else,” said Lacabe. “Basically, that is what I’m talking about. When you have this type of indoctrination, you are telling a group of kids that, because they don’t believe in the same things, they are not like everyone else.”

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/99844

Atheists Hail Florida Decision Protecting Third Graders From Religious Proselytizing

National Desk
April 23, 2009

An Atheist state-church separation group has heralded a decision by a Federal Judge that struck down a move by a Florida grade school to include an overtly religious song in an end-of-year assembly.

This past week, Judge Harvey E. Schlesinger ruled that teachers and officials at the Webster School in St. Johns County acted improperly by having third-grade youngsters practice "In God We Still Trust," composed by the country singing group Diamond Rio. Judge Schlesinger opined that students had their First Amendment rights violated when they were forced to choose between performing "proselytizing" and "sectarian" music or skipping their school assembly. He described the song as "espousing a specific religious viewpoint and attacking those who do not share in the same belief."

Dr. Ed Buckner, President of American Atheists, praised the ruling but regretted the need for legal intervention.

"It has been over 46 years when coercive prayer and other religious exercises in our public schools was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court," said Buckner. "We still see evidence that some teachers and school officials flaunt the law, and are attempting to enlist our children in religious proselytizing and indoctrination."

Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists also praised the ruling.

It would be difficult to find a more blatant violation of the First Amendment prohibition against government establishing religion than a song requiring public school children to sing ""There's no separation.

We're one nation under Him ...... Now it's time for all believers to make our voices heard."

AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.

New song at Webster draws 2nd injunction

Religious lyrics bring school more trouble

By MARCIA LANE
marcia.lane@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 04/22/09
Attorneys are seeking to halt teaching of a song they call a "blatantly sectarian and proselytizing religious song" to third-graders at The Webster School until the case can go to court.
This is the second time in less than a month that attorneys asked the United States District Court in Jacksonville for a preliminary injunction to stop a song at Webster.
School district officials said they knew nothing about the amended complaint until contacted by The St. Augustine Record Tuesday evening.
"Our attorney (Frank Upchurch) had not heard of it. No one knew about it," said Margie Davidson, spokeswoman for the St. Johns County School District.
Attempts to reach Superintendent Joe Joyner were unsuccessful.
The amended complaint, filed Tuesday, comes less than a week after a federal judge ruled the School District, a school principal and two teachers violated two students' First Amendment rights by making them choose between practicing what he called a "proselytizing" and "sectarian" country music song for an end-of-the-year assembly or sitting out the performance.
The song was "In God We Still Trust," released in 2005 by Diamond Rio. Two parents and their third-graders filed a lawsuit in protest in March.
The teachers and principal said in affidavits the children were told participation in the assembly was voluntary and the children did not have to sing the song.
The case still must go to trial.
On Tuesday attorneys Bill Sheppard and Gray Thomas sought another preliminary injunction for a second tune also being taught to third-graders at Webster. They're asking the judge to order the school to stop having the pupils sing the song until the judge can decided if they should be prohibited from learning it in school.
Theyre also asking the judge to rule, as in the first case, that their constitutional rights were violated by making them either learn a song that runs counter to their religious beliefs or be ostracized by their classmates.
This injunction request named the school board, Joyner, the principal and three teachers, including the music teacher.
At issue this time is the music teacher's introduction of "Chatter With the Angels," a song the suit calls "sectarian" and "proselytizing."
The suit claims directing the students to rehearse or perform the "Chatter" song constitutes "retaliation against Plaintiffs for their having instituted" the case for "In God We Trust."
The injunction ruling came April 15. Webster began teaching the song on April 20, according to the amended complaint.
Chatter with the Angels
Soon in the morning
Chatter with the Angels
In that land!
Chatter with the Angels
Soon in the Morning
Chatter with the Angels
Join that Band!
I hope to join that band and
Chatter with the Angels
All day long!
I hope to join that band and
Chatter with the Angels
All day long!
Chatter with the Angels
Soon in the morning
Chatter with the Angels
In that land!
Chatter with the Angels
Soon in the Morning
Chatter with the Angels
Join that Band!
I hope to join that band and
Chatter with the Angels
All day long!
I hope to join that band and
Chatter with the Angels
All day long!
6
Chatter with the Angels
Soon in the Morning
Chatter with the Angels
In that land!
Chatter with the Angels
Soon in the morning
Chatter with the Angels
Join that Band!
I hope to join that band and
Chatter with the Angels
All day long!
I hope to join that band and
Chatter with the Angels
All day long!
Chatter with the angels all day long.

Click here to return to story:
http://staugustine.com/stories/042209/news_042209_016.shtml

© The St. Augustine Record

Atheist News by Edwin Kagin

2009-04-18T15:32:00.000-04:00

Edwin Kagin, Kentucky State Director, American Atheists, Inc.

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

What Is An ATHEIST?

“ANOTHER THINKING HUMAN ENGAGED IN SEEKING TRUTH”
(Edwin Kagin, 2008)

To Unidentified Recipients:

The 2009 American Atheists Convention in Atlanta was a screaming success. Hopefully, there will soon be on the Internet a video of the completely outrageous Mass Blasphemy, Dance of the Vestal Vegans, and Mass DeBaptism. There are already a fair number of photos here and there on Facebook and other repositories of cultural knowledge.

Speaking of blasphemy, by some coincidence of fate, a second printing of that universally banned work, “Baubles of Blasphemy,” by Edwin F. Kagin, has been released by American Atheists Press to a stunned world. A copy is now (should be—this is not a precise science) available from www.atheists.org or perhaps even www.amazon.com , where prices for a copy of the first edition run from $8.75 to $95.00. No, I have no idea why.

Edwin.

==========================================================================================================================================

AMERICAN ATHEISTS MEDIA
http://www.atheists.org

SILVERMAN ON ANSWERS IN ATHEISM
INTERNET RADIO THIS SUNDAY, 4/19

Dave Silverman, National Communications Director for American Atheists will be the guest on this weekend's installment of the Internet radio program "Answers in Atheism."

A veteran of media and public affairs programming, Mr. Silverman will be discussing Atheism, state-church separation, religious fundamentalism and related topics.

You can listen in by visiting http://www.answersinatheism.net at 6:00 PM ET on Sunday, April 19, 2009. You may also call in to the program toll free, 877-814-9287. and communicate through E-mail at theshow@answersinatheism.nhet .

The host is Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists. Along with his wife, Helen, Edwin co-founded CAMP QUEST, a summer camp for non believing children. He is also the author of "Baubles in Blasphemy," now in its second printing through American Atheist Press.

WHO and WHAT: Dave Silverman, National Communications Director for American Atheists on the "Answers in Atheism": Internet radio show.

WHEN: This Sunday, April 19, 2009 at 6:00 PM ET.

WHERE: http://www.answersinatheism.net . Listener feedback at 877-814-9287. Communicate through E-mail at theshow@answersinatheism.nhet .

MORE INFO: http://www.answersinatheism.net

AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.

American Atheists
http://www.atheists.org

KAGIN, RANKIN DEBATE: WAS THE U.S.
ESTABLISHED as a CHRISTIAN NATION?

Monday, April 27, 2009 ~ University of Southern Maine

EDWIN KAGIN, National Legal Director of American Atheists will debate the Rev. John C. Rankin of the Theological Education Institute at the University of Southern Maine on Monday, April 27, 2009. The Question will be: "Was the United States Established as a Christian Nation?"

The debate, sponsored by the Southern Maine Association of Secular Humanists (SMASH) will take place at 7:00 PM in the Hannaford Lecture Hall at USM Portland,

Edwin Kagin, AA Legal Director is also co-founder (along with wife Helen) of the renowned CAMP QUEST, a secular summer camp for Atheist, Humanist and Freethinking youngsters. He is a leading national critic of "creationist" pseudoscience, and author of numerous articles and the best-selling book "Baubles of Blasphemy." He is also host of the Internet radio program "Answers in Atheism."

The Rev. John C. Rankin is President of the Theological Education Institute and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. As a youth, he was a Unitarian and strongly influenced by the teachings of Charles Darwin. He is the author of several books including "First the Gospel, Then Politics."` He is an alumnus of the Fellowship of Christians in Universities and Schools (FOCUS).

For more information, visit the SMASH Facebook web site at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22116550413 or contact maine@secularstudents.org .

WHO and WHAT: A "spirited" debate between Edwin Kagin and Rev. John C. Rankin: "Was the United States Established as a Christian Nation?"

WHEN: April 27, 2009 beginning promptly at 7:00 PM

WHERE: The Hannaford Lecture Hall at the University of Southern Maine, Portland Maine. The Hannaford Lecture Hall is in the Abromson Community Education Center, on the University of Southern Maine campus, 88 Bedford St., Portland, ME 04101.

MORE INFO: Southern Maine Association of Secular Humanists (SMASH) --
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=22116550413 or contact maine@secularstudents.org .

BRING EDWIN KAGIN OR OTHER OUTSTANDING ATHEIST SPEAKERS to your next Freethought event! From debates to discussion of philosophical topics, current events reflecting the intersection of politics and religion, or the separation of church and state, the Bureau is an outstanding resource! Visit http://www.atheists.org/about/speakers_bureau for more details.

AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.

ON EASTER by Edwin Kagin

2009-04-01T16:52:00.000-04:00

In honor of April Fools Day, we herewith present that seasonal classic,

ON EASTER

The things you are liable to read in the Bible, they ain't necessarily so. Porgy and Bess

Easter is the High Holy Day of the Christian religion. In its many manifestations, Easter celebrates the myth of the reanimation from death of the god Jesus, aka the Christ. Like its womb mate Christmas, Easter is a marvelous blend of Christian and non-Christian nonsense. The Christian side is represented by "Handel’s Messiah" and hot cross buns (a seasonal pastry with a sugar cross on it) and the non-Christian nonsense side by "In Your Easter Bonnet..." and hunts for Easter Eggs (dyed boiled eggs in the shell--laid, young minds are taught to believe, by rabbits. Some hold the rabbits don’t lay the eggs, only deliver them. What do you think?).

To understand the phenomena of Easter, one must understand the Christian "Gospels." These four small propagandist tracts, written long after the supernatural fact, by unknown authors who did not know Jesus, contain the only known evidence for the existence of Jesus. Believers will argue other historic proofs, but these are provable forgeries added centuries later by pious priests who copied or translated Jewish, Roman and Greek texts. If the ancient writers had deliberately omitted Jesus merely because they had never heard of him, this error was often fixed for later Christian editions. The only evidence for Easter beliefs comes from the gospels.

Here's a neat bible study exercise for non believers. It will help you learn something of the Christian belief system and will prove useful in the American Religious Civil War when believers try to force you to play in their sandbox. Read all four gospels and, including every fact contained within them, write a concise, noncontradictory chronology of what happened between the time Jesus was crucified on a stake (the Greek word translates "stake" not "cross"--tell that to your preacher and watch him ring them bells) and the moment he went up to Heaven. Then you will know what Christians believe. To make the challenge more exciting, be sure to include facts, for the same time frame, from "The Acts of the Apostles" and from the letters of Paul. Paul really got Christianity going. He claimed to have seen Jesus after Jesus had gone to Heaven. Lots of people believed him. Lots of people believed Joseph Smith too. Joseph Smith wrote "The Book of Mormon" and claimed an angel helped him translate buried gold plates the angel later reburied. At least Paul had honest delusions.

The reason the death of Jesus is of importance to Christians is because if they believe Jesus died for their sins they get to live forever with him when they die. Because Jesus survived death, believers will too. Somehow Jesus’ "sacrifice" doesn't seem like such a big deal, being a god and all, and getting to come alive again after being dead only one day and two nights. Many people have died for others and have stayed dead. There should be no shortage of volunteers willing to die to save everyone forever and be worshipped as a god if they could come alive again after being dead between Friday evening and Sunday morning.

Once you finish the bible stories about Jesus, you may well wonder how anyone could believe this stuff, and you should understand why the events were omitted from every other history of that time. When Jesus died on the stake, the bible reports that dead people came out of their graves (whether decomposed or not isn't revealed), walked around the city and were recognized by many. This should have provoked some interest by the scandal sheets of the day, but no other reference is found of it. We might wonder if the risen dead sued to get their property back from their useless heirs.

You will note from your Easter biblical studies that the primary witness to the resurrection of the Christ was one Mary Magdalene, a woman thought to be a prostitute who had been possessed by seven demons, i.e., she was nuts. Wouldn't it have been nice if the risen savior of the world had appeared in all his glory to the Roman Senate where literate rational humanists could have recorded an accurate account of this miracle? Why have your immortal soul hang in the balance on less than credible evidence? Should one accept that laws of nature have been broken and that a dead body has come alive again on the word of a deranged hooker? Would a just, rational, compassionate god condemn one to eternal torment for doubting such evidence? Clearly the Senate, or even a meeting of the Aqueduct Committee, would have been a better place to break the good news of salvation.

But we are not dealing with a rational god or even decent moral behavior in the Easter story. The god the myth says was the father of Jesus believed in child sacrifice. Previously content with blood drained from the slashed throats of sheep, goats and such, god needed more gore to save everyone. He wanted his own kid killed as a blood sacrifice for the sins of the world. This is what little children (kids) are taught in Sunday School (that's where Christians violate the Fourth Commandment by worshipping on the first day of the week instead of the seventh as god ordered--no wonder we are in such trouble). But if child murder for the sins of others isn't bad enough, consider this. Christians celebrate the death and rebirth of the god Jesus in a grotesque cannibalistic ritual of (symbolically if Protestant; for real if Roman Catholic) eating his flesh and drinking his blood! This bizarre custom is known as "Holy Communion"--dare we call it "swallow the leader?"

If Jesus rose from the dead, and if he went to Heaven, and if Heaven is outside the known universe, and if the laws of nature invented by god apply to god, then Jesus could not travel faster than the speed of light. If he left for Heaven two thousand years ago, he isn't there yet, and won’t be there for some time. Therefore, we really need not concern ourselves at this point about his return to earth. Presumably he will return sometime after he gets there.

So now you know about Easter. You will probably be a happier and better adjusted human being if you stick to the Easter Parade and pass on the eating of human flesh and blood. And please remember that this disgusting rite is practiced in buildings owned by Christian groups who do not have to pay taxes on their property or income.

And the next time some un-American lunatics want to have forced Christian prayer in public schools, tell them you are a spiritual vegetarian. Happy Easter.

Edwin Kagin

Y'all Come Y'hear to American Atheists Convention

2009-03-03T18:29:00.003-05:00

AMERICAN ATHEISTS
http://www.atheists.org

The Time Is Near...
Make Your Reservations Now!

March 10, 2009 is the deadline to reserve your room at the Emory Conference Center in Atlanta, GA. for the blockbuster Freethought event of the year!

DAWKINS * GOLDBERG * TOSTI * BUCKNER * PHELPS * MORROW * THOMPSON and more...

The 35th Annual National Convention of
AMERICAN ATHEISTS
April 9-12, 2009 ATLANTA, GA.

JOIN HUNDREDS of fellow Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists and other nonbelievers for a weekend of lectures, social events and workshops. Register on-line using our secure transaction server -- just visit http://www.atheists.org/events/National_Convention to sign up.

The venue is the magnificent Emory Conference Center at 1615 Clifton Road, Atlanta. We have arranged for special rates -- but to take advantage, you must make your reservations directly with the hotel and tell them you are with The American Atheists National Convention. The deadline for obtaining this special rate is March 10, 2009 -- so register now and contact the Emory at 404-712-6000, or visit their web site at http://emoryconferencecenter.com .

WHO & WHAT: AACON XXXV

WHERE: Atlanta, GA., The Emory Conference Center

WHEN: April 9-12, 2009 -- deadline for hotel reservations is March 10, 2009

MORE INFO: http://www.atheists.org/events/National_Convention

Atheist News by Edwin Kagin

2009-01-24T20:37:00.001-05:00

KENTUCKY ATHEISTS NEWS & NOTES Date: January 24, 2009

Kentucky Atheists, P.O. Box 666, Union, KY 41091; Email: ekagin@atheists.org

Phone: (859) 384-7000; Fax: (859) 384-7324; Web: http://www.atheists.org/ky/

Editor's personal web site: www.edwinkagin.com

Editor’s personal blog: http://edwinkagin.blogspot.com

Edited by:

Edwin Kagin, Kentucky State Director, American Atheists, Inc.

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

What Is An ATHEIST?

“ANOTHER THINKING HUMAN ENGAGED IN SEEKING TRUTH”
(Edwin Kagin, 2008)

To Unidentified Recipients:

American Atheists: Congratulations and Thanks, Mr. President

For Immediate Release

(Cranford, NJ). Americans throughout the nation’s history have included millions of Atheists and others who could be labeled as “non-believers,” in every walk of life, in military foxholes and high government offices, among the elites and among the downtrodden. Every American politician, every elected leader should routinely acknowledge us as the good, patriotic, taxpaying, and contributing citizens we have always been. Before today that routine acknowledgement has rarely been offered. As our own president, Dr. Ed Buckner, noted, “We should be able to take for granted that we will be considered as full and honorable citizens of this nation, but we usually have not been so recognized. In his Inaugural Address today, President Barack Obama finally did what many before him should have done, rightly citing the great diversity of Americans as part of the nation’s great strength—and including ‘non-believers’ in that mix. His mother would have been proud, and so are we. Congratulations and best wishes on your presidency, Mr. Obama. And thanks for including us all, right from the start.”

American Atheists Communications Director David Silverman added, “While President Obama’s words were very encouraging, we are hopeful that his actions will justify our optimism. We look forward to working with a president who understands that true religious freedom relies on true separation of religion and government.”

*** *** ***

AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.

American Atheists, Inc. P. O. Box 158, Cranford, NJ 07016
Tel: (908) 276-7300 Fax: (908) 276-7402

American Atheists, Inc. For more information, please contact:
http://www.atheists.org Ed Buckner, President (770) 803-5353 or (908) 499-9200
http://www.americanatheist.org Dave Silverman, Communications Director (732) 648-9333

=========================================================================
http://news.aol.com/main/obama-presidency/article/obamas-nonbeliever-nod-during/316339
Obama's Nonbeliever Nod Unsettles Some
By MELINDA HENNENBERGER
AOL

(Jan. 23) - Not everyone was happy with President Barack Obama's nod to nonbelievers and non-Christians in his inaugural address. And some of the stiff criticism about Obama’s religious inclusiveness is coming from African-American Christians who maintain that no, all faiths were actually not created equal.

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness," the new president said. "We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this earth," he also said. Nothing too controversial, proclaiming that America's strength lies in its diversity.
But between those two statements, the new president got specific: "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers."

By mentioning, for the first time in an inaugural address, the 16.1 percent of Americans who check "no"’ when asked about religion, Obama turned it into the most controversial line in his speech -- praised by The New York Times editorial board and cited by some Christians as evidence that he is a heretic, and in his well-spoken way, a serious threat.

With that one line, the president "seems to be trying to redefine American culture, which is distinctively Christian," said’ Bishop E.W. Jackson of the Exodus Faith Ministries in Chesapeake, Va. "The overwhelming majority of Americans identify as Christians, and what disturbs me is that he seems to be trying to redefine who we are.’"

Earlier this week, Jackson was a guest on the popular conservative Christian radio show 'Janet Parshall's America,' where a succession of callers, many of whom identified themselves as African-American, said they shared the concern, and were perplexed and put off by the president’s shout-out to nonbelievers.

Parshall noted that atheists were celebrating the unexpected mention, and indeed they were: "In his inaugural address … President Barack Obama did what many before him should have done, rightly citing the great diversity of America as part of the nation's great strength, and including 'nonbelievers'’ in that mix,’" said Ed Buckner of American Atheists.

"His mother would have been proud,"’ Buckner said, referring to the fact that Obama’s mother was not a church-goer. "And so are we."

Jackson said he and others have no problem acknowledging that "this country is one in which everybody has the freedom to think what they want.’" Yet Obama crossed the line, in his view, in suggesting that all faiths (and none) were different roads to the same destination: "He made similar remarks in the campaign, and said, 'We are no longer a Christian nation, if we ever were. We are a Jewish, Hindu and non-believing nation.'"

Not so, Jackson says: "Obviously, Jewish heritage is very much a part of Christianity; the Jewish Bible is part of our Bible. But Hindu, Muslim, and nonbelievers? I don't think so. We are not a Muslim nation or a nonbelieving nation."’

With all the focus on Obama as the first African-American president, the succession of black callers to Janet Parshall's show was a reminder that the "community"’ is not a monolith, and that many socially conservative black Americans are at odds with Obama's views, particularly on abortion and gay rights. Nor do they all define civil rights in the same way.

The Rev. Cecil Blye, pastor of More Grace Ministries Church in Louisville, Ky., said the president's reference to nonbelievers also set off major alarm bells for him. "It's important to understand the heritage of our country, and it's a Judeo-Christian tradition,"’ period.

American Atheists: Well Deserved Promotion for Blair Scott
For Immediate Release

(Cranford, NJ). American Atheists, Inc., announced today that Blair Scott of Huntsville, Alabama, has been named National Affiliates Director for the group. According to AA President Ed Buckner, "Blair Scott has been working long and very effectively in this arena on our behalf as our National Outreach Director for Affiliates. He richly deserves the enhanced visibility that goes with his new, broader title." Dave Kong of California, National Director of State Operations and Board Secretary for American Atheists, added that Scott "has earned his spurs and the respect of Atheists across the nation with his work. We expect his success, like his hard work, to continue." (Kong has overall responsibility for state directors and thus for our relationships with state and local groups.)

Blair Scott, who already holds the title of State Director for Alabama, has succeeded in recent years in convincing dozens of local groups to adopt the "affiliates" category with the national organization. Affiliates are loosely connected to the national group, without formal or legal ties but with mutual promises of friendship and support.
http://www.atheists.org
American Atheists, Inc.
For more information, please contact:
Ed Buckner, President (770) 803-5353 or (908) 499-9200
Dave Silverman, Communications Director, (732) 648-9333
Blair Scott, Affiliates Director, (256) 701-6265
Dave Kong, Director of State Operations, (510) 836-6336 *** *** ***

AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.
American Atheists, Inc. P. O. Box 158, Cranford, NJ 07016

================================================================================

American Atheists

From the Office of Blair Scott

National Affiliate Outreach Director &

Alabama State Director, American Atheists, Inc.

PO Box 41, Ryland, AL 35767-2000

Office: (256) 701-6265 Cell: (256) 503-1123

bscott@atheists.org www.atheists.org/al/

ACTION ALERT: MISSISSIPPI

Proposed Mississippi legislation will put “just a theory” stickers in biology textbooks.

Representative Gary Chism from District 37 in Mississippi, has sponsored legislation to amend the state’s constitution in order to place “just a theory” stickers in Mississippi biology textbooks. The legislation, HB25, has been referred to the Education and Judiciary A committees for review and has a good chance of passing the committee for a House review.

You can read the entire proposed legislation, which will enact a constitutional amendment, online at:

http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/2009/pdf/HB/0001-0099/HB0025IN.pdf

The proposed constitutional amendment includes different definitions of the word theory instead of the scientific one.

It describes evolution as a “controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things.” It goes on to state that, “No one was around when life first appeared; therefore statements about life’s origins should be considered a theory.

It then makes the statement that, “Evolution refers to the unproven belief that random undirected forces produced living things.” It then goes on to list a creationist manifesto of “problems with evolution” such as the Cambrian Explosion, “lack of new major groups of other living things appearing in the fossil record,” “lack of transitional forms,” and the “complete and complex set of instructions for building a living body” (read as Irreducible Complexity).

The proposed legislation, while unconstitutional in and of itself, is full of scientific misunderstanding, a misrepresentation of scientific theory, false statements about evolutionary biology, and a gross ignorance of the Theory of Evolution.

What can you do about it? You can contact Rep. Gary Chism and the Chairs and Vice-Chairs of the Education and Judiciary A committee and ask them to vote against this bill and keep it from being forwarded to the floor for a vote.

You can contact Gary Chism via email at gchism@house.ms.gov, by phone at (662) 327-0777, or via USPS at PO Box 1018, Jackson, MS 39215. His online biography is located at: http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/members/house/chism.xml

The Chairman of the Education Committee is Cecil Brown (cbrown@house.ms.gov or (601) 359-3330). The Vice-Chairman of the Education Committee is Sara Thomas (sthomas@house.ms.gov).

The Chairman of the Judiciary A Committee is Edward Blackmon, Jr. (eblackmon@house.ms.gov or (601) 859-1576). The Vice-Chairman of the Judiciary A Committee is Angel Cockerham (acockerham@house.ms.gov or (601) 783-6600).

Make sure you reference HB25 in any email, letter, or phone call. Do not insult the Representatives or use derogatory language. Please keep letters and phone calls polite and professional.

For legal purposes, you can reference the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf) and Selmer v. Cobb County Schools (http://alt.cimedia.com/ajc/pdf/evolution.pdf).

You can also contribute funds to American Atheists, Inc. to help fight legal battles just like this. You can designate your contributions to the “Legal Action Fund” and your donation will be spent exclusively on legal action against those that would infringe upon the Separation of Church and State. Please visit http://atheists.org/contribute to donate.

Thanks to Micah C. for bringing this legislation to our attention. It is the work of volunteers that help catch SOCAS violations and report them. Without the diligence of local volunteers many more violations would go unreported and unchallenged than already do.

Traditional Family Values Department:

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20090124/REL.Haggard.New.allegations/

Disgraced pastor faces more gay sex accusations

DENVER — Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard's former church disclosed Friday that the gay sex scandal that caused his downfall extends to a young male church volunteer who reported having a sexual relationship with Haggard — a revelation that comes as Haggard tries to repair his public image.

Brady Boyd, who succeeded Haggard as senior pastor of the 10,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, told The Associated Press that the man came forward to church officials in late 2006 shortly after a Denver male prostitute claimed to have had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with Haggard.

Boyd said an "overwhelming pool of evidence" pointed to an "inappropriate, consensual sexual relationship" that "went on for a long period of time ... it wasn't a one-time act." Boyd said the man was in his early 20s at the time. He said he was certain the man was of legal age when it began.

Reached Friday night, Haggard declined to comment and said all interviews would have to be arranged through a publicist for HBO, which is airing a documentary about him this month.

Boyd said the church reached a legal settlement to pay the man for counseling and college tuition, with one condition being that none of the parties involved discuss the matter publicly.

Boyd said a Colorado Springs TV station reached him Thursday to say the young man was planning to provide a detailed report of his relationship with Haggard to the station. Boyd said the church preferred to keep the matter private, but it was the man's decision to go public.

The disclosure comes as Haggard, 52, is about to give a series of high-profile interviews to promote the cable documentary about his time in exile. He is scheduled to appear on CNN's Larry King Live on Thursday, the date of the documentary's premiere, and already has taped "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

In early 2007, New Life Church disclosed that an investigation uncovered new evidence that Haggard engaged in "sordid conversation" and "improper relationships" — but didn't go into detail. Earlier, a church board member had said there was no evidence that Haggard had sexual relations with anyone but Mike Jones, the former male prostitute.

Haggard confessed to undisclosed "sexual immorality" after Jones' allegations and resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and from New Life Church, where he faced being fired.

Anticipating criticism of the settlement with the former church volunteer, Boyd said Friday that it was in the best interests of all involved. He would not name the volunteer or the settlement amount.

"It wasn't at all a settlement to make him be quiet or not tell his story," Boyd said. "Our desire was to help him. Here was a young man who wanted to get on with his life. We considered it more compassionate assistance — certainly not hush money. I know what's what everyone will want to say because that's the most salacious thing to say, but that's not at all what it was."

He said that "secondarily, it's not great for our church either" that the story be told. Boyd said Haggard knew about the settlement two years ago.

In a letter e-mailed Friday to New Life Church members, Boyd said of the settlement and agreement not to talk: "This decision was made not as an attempt to conceal wrongdoings, but to protect him from those who would seek to exploit him. His actions now suggest that he has changed his mind."

The letter said the church "received reports of a number of incidents of inappropriate behavior" after Haggard's fall. "In each case, we have tried our very best to do the right thing each time, including disciplinary action when appropriate."

Boyd said the "inappropriate behavior" referred to the man who was the volunteer involved with Haggard. After Haggard's fall, another church staff member resigned after admitting to what was described as "sexual misconduct."

Boyd said the church will not take action against the man if he tells his story in the press.

"We have legal standing to do that, but not the desire to," he said.

Boyd said he had spoken to the man once and came away with the impression that he was speaking out because of the documentary. "I think what caused this young man to be a bit aggravated was Ted being seen as a victim, when he himself had experienced a great deal of hurt," Boyd said. "I seriously doubt this man would have come forward if the documentary had not been made."

A spokeswoman for the documentary, "The Trials of Ted Haggard," declined to comment Friday.

David Clohessy, national director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests — which has largely focused on the Catholic sexual abuse scandal but also speaks out on cases involving Protestant clergy — said the new disclosures about Haggard are more disturbing because they involves a church volunteer.

"Technically, legally, they were both adults," Clohessy said. "Psychologically and emotionally, Haggard was dramatically more powerful. ... By definition, any sexual contact between a congregant and minister is inherently abusive and manipulative."

In an AP interview this month before an appearance in front of TV critics in California, Haggard described his sexuality as complex and something that can't be put into "stereotypical boxes."

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Inauguration

We had seen sights, but this mocked our imaginations

We had used words, but this defied our metaphors

We had once been, our heritage proclaimed,

“One Nation Indivisible,” and “Out of Many, One”

Until smallness of soul began to smother dreams.

Then, suddenly, sorely profaned, and wounded, soon to die

Our nation did an unimagined thing

We rolled away the stone

We shook the heels of history upon retreating wrongs

We watched as hope, long dormant, bloomed

And, through eyes blurred with tears,

We went outside and raised the flag.

Edwin Kagin

January 20, 2009

Inauguration by Edwin Kagin

2009-01-20T11:45:00.000-05:00

Inauguration

We had seen sights, but this mocked our imaginations

We had used words, but this defied our metaphors

We had once been, our heritage proclaimed,

“One Nation Indivisible,” and “Out of Many, One”

Until smallness of soul began to smother dreams.

Then, suddenly, sorely profaned, and wounded, soon to die

Our nation did an unimagined thing

We rolled away the stone

We shook the heels of history upon retreating wrongs

We watched as hope, long dormant, bloomed

And, through eyes blurred with tears,

We went outside and raised the flag.

Edwin Kagin

January 20, 2009

On the Legal Philosophy of American Atheists by Edwin Kagin

2009-01-01T11:09:00.003-05:00

On the Legal Philosophy of American Atheists

As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. observed, the law “is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky…” Understanding this basic truth can prevent much confusion in thinking about the law.

Most people would not be so uninformed, or so foolish, as to think they know more than their doctor if told they need to have heart surgery or die. Yet the same people will, without skipping a beat, presume that they know what the law is, how the law works, and what a proper legal judgment should be. Everyone seems to have an opinion on the law, and if one’s grocer unlawfully provides legal advice, the average person is likely to give that view some undeserved merit. A few years ago, a young counselor at Camp Quest informed me, with proud conviction, that “possession is 90% of the law.” I told him that this was a testable hypothesis. All he needed to do was to take someone’s car without their permission, drive it around until he was stopped by the police, and then argue that the car was his by right of possession. He is now a fine young lawyer who does not now issue those kinds of incorrect generalities. Be assured that almost everything you think you know “for certain” about the law is almost certainly wrong.

It has fallen my lot in history, and it is my honor, as National Legal Director for American Atheists, to set forth the current legal philosophy for the organization. An understanding and acceptance of this will answer many questions, and hopefully prevent any hard feelings, in that the national office receives daily requests for legal advice and requests for help on issues involving matters of church state separation, only a fraction of which can be addressed. A process is required to aid in deciding with which cases American Atheists should become involved. This is not to say that a perceived problem is without merit. Most claims sent in do have merit. The problem is that there is not world enough or time or money available to deal with any but a few of them. The assaults on our First Amendment freedoms must be triaged.

What is “the law” anyhow? Even that is not a simple answer. For openers, it consists of written statutes and local ordinances, both federal and state. We have a system of United States Courts, created by the Constitution of the United States, that deals with matters of federal law. The judges are appointed by the President of the United States, to serve “during good behavior,” or essentially for life. Each state has its own laws, courts, and court rules—occasionally wildly at variance one with another. Behavior lawful in one state can get you thrown in the slammer in another. The judges are usually elected or appointed, or a combination of both, for a fixed term of years. Additionally, individual counties and cities can make their own laws, or ordinances, provided a grant of authority has been given by the state or federal government to do so. There are methods of appeal from the ruling of judges to higher courts. Each state has its own appellant system; the courts of the United States have another, both ending at the United States Supreme Court. One does not, despite their bravado, “take the case all the way to the Supreme Court.” No one “takes” a case to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). One petitions SCOTUS to hear a case, and the odds are several thousand to one against a given case being granted review. If the high court does take a care, and makes a ruling, whether the case comes up through the federal or state system, the holdings of the court make legal rulings that become “precedents” that are binding in every court of the United States. A ruling of SCOTUS may not be correct, but it is final.

In addition to the written laws, the concept of “the law” also encompasses the “common law” as it has developed over centuries. This is the body of law, the corpus juris, as decided in actual justicible cases by courts of record, and the law requires that such rulings are to be followed until changed by a higher court. And the rulings of appeal courts do change. One day “separate but equal schools” may be constitutional and, upon a different ruling of SCOTUS, the law is changed, and separate but equal schools is an unlawful concept. One day abortion may be unlawful, while the next ruling might permit abortion, and SCOTUS has the power to reverse that ruling at any time.

The scope of a given court ruling depends on the “jurisdiction” of the court, or the area over which that court has power. A city court ruling might only affect the city in which it is made, and a state court holding, or a federal opinion, affects only the area served by that court. The appeal courts have a wider net. The Supreme Court of a state can make precedents that bind all courts of that state. A federal court usually covers a specific geographical portion of a state. A United States Court of Appeal covers several states. If, by way of example, a bad decision is made in a federal court in Louisville, Kentucky, it only has binding application in about half of the state of Kentucky. If that horribly bad holding is appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers all of the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee, and that bad ruling should be affirmed, the party taking the appeal has thereby managed to expand a horror story from their own back yard into bad law for four states. If SCOTUS should take the case, and affirm the bad ruling, then a major legal disaster has occurred that affects the way the law will be decided in the future throughout the entire United States and in every court therein. If one has any concern for the future of our freedoms, one should proceed with caution. This is not a suitable sport for amateurs.

Bad facts make bad law. It should be considered an act of legal negligence for one to take a case to a higher court where it is completely predestined that the court will rule against a meritorious cause, and thereby make bad law not only in that case, in that region of the country, but, depending on which appellate court is chosen, make bad law for a much wider area, where the bad ruling will be the law until the case in question is ultimately, if ever, overruled. By building on bad precedents, in time the very concept of separation of religion and government could be destroyed. The religious right understands this. We would be well advised to understand it as well.

The elected legislative bodies, both nationally, and in each state, create the written statutory law. Judges, who are required to be fair minded and objective, rule on the interpretation of the laws passed by these legislative bodies and state, in appropriate cases, whether or not a given law is or is not unconstitutional. The Constitution of the United States, and its Amendments, is the supreme law of our land, followed by Treaties between nations, and then by statutory laws. An independent judiciary decides if a given law is constitutional and, if so, how it is to be interpreted. The Legislative and Judicial branches of government are both created by the Constitution, as is the third branch of government, the Executive, consisting of the elected President of the United States, or the Governor of a state or commonwealth. Neither the Congress of the United States, nor the legislative body of any state, may lawfully pass legislation that is contrary to the Constitution of the United States, nor may the Executive branch lawfully enforce such laws.

If all of this is not confusing enough, consider the fact that the prejudices, beliefs, politics, religion, etc. of the judges on a court determine in large measure how they will view a given legal question. They may or may not be conscious of these factors, but they are there nevertheless. It has something to do with being human. Thus judges with liberal backgrounds are likely to decide an issue one way and judges who are proudly conservative will decide the same issue another way. And there are many highly emotionally charged, and controversial, issues around these days, issues for which there is no plain and clear answer, like “gay marriage.” In such cases, only the personal architecture of the individual judges deciding the questions will form the basis for decision. The Constitution could not predict, and give answers for, every fact situation that might arise in our nation’s history. This is where mature, well grounded, legal judgment is needed. There can be law quoted to support any kind of idea, noble or base, that anyone might ever present to a court. Go to a law library and look at the rows of stacks of law books containing written decisions. Someone lost every one of those cases.

It is the philosophy of American Atheists to win cases and to create favorable law. This is a change from the policy of the organization in the past. That philosophy was to file the case, no matter how unlikely a court victory might seem, to make the point urged. If something was wrong, it was felt that action should be taken, regardless of the immediate outcome. That philosophy had merit when different people were on the higher courts of our land. In the 1960s, a lawyer could bring a case of civil rights violation before the courts, be quite sloppy in pleading practice and, in the interests of substantial justice, the courts might well carve out an opinion that granted relief and that comported with basic due process of law considerations and with the guarantees of our Bill of Rights. This was a golden age of civil rights litigation. And the religious right hated every moment of it.

Things have changed. The persons of high vision on our highest court have gone to honored places in the history of the law. Justices Black, Douglass, Warren, Marshall and many other great defenders of freedom are no more. By virtue of the philosophy of their appointers, persons of less noble character and less shining intellect, have taken their places. The past few years have seen an erosion of civil liberties, and a battering against the Wall of Separation between Church and State that is without equal in our history. Irreparable damage to the First Amendment has been done that may not be repaired within the life span of our republic. The forces that would establish a theocracy in our free land are not only beating on the gates of freedom, they are trying to pull down the wall of separation from within. Mean spirited people are in positions of power, and those who would destroy us are able to vote and to sit on juries. Sadly, many are able to rule on legal cases and to create binding precedent.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact. We do not have to take every wrong to court and thereby give some theocrat the right to say that the wrongful behavior is lawful and to let that vile ruling become part of the body of the law that future judges are required to follow. This is both the glory and the danger of the legal doctrine of stare decisis, which means to “stand on the decisions” that have gone before. Brilliant, bold, freedom friendly rulings of prior courts are being systematically swept away by courts that are rendering disastrous rulings in cases with poor facts that provide them with seemingly rational reasons to rule in abominable ways.

American Atheists declines to give those theocrats now in power the ability to destroy the dream of our founders that citizens of our nation would enjoy the right to not be religious.

We will respectfully decline to do battle on any issues other than those where the facts and the law will compel a favorable ruling, no matter how biased the court against us. And thus we will, brick by brick, rebuild the Wall.

For every case presented to us, we must ask, “Is this a hill worth dying on?”

Litigation is expensive. We do not need to waste thousands of dollars on lawsuits that, given the facts at issue, the state of the law at this time, and the disposition of a given court, are doomed to certain failure. And in losing such actions, we do not need to be in the position of creating even more bad law for our descendents to clean up. We cannot make good law and ensure freedom within our nation by litigating bad, or even marginal, facts. And we will not gain credibility by losing cases and thereby permitting the other side to mock our efforts and to laugh at us. “There go those Atheists again. They will lose like they always lose. When will they learn to sit down and shut up?” We must not give them that ammunition.

There are plenty of civil liberties abuses against Atheists around these days. Far more than we can handle. Many abuses are better addressed by protests, letter writing, political action, interviews, debates, oratory and by using all of the free speech options still left to us, rather than by reflexively resorting to legal actions.

We can afford to be picky and wait for those fact situations that fit clearly into the entire body of both written law and common law. In short, we should wait for cases that we can win based on the present state of the law. Then we can make some positive changes. We can cause even the most blinded-by-heavenly-light jurists to see that the actions complained of in our lawsuits are unlawful and are not to be permitted in a free nation that, in its founding document, prohibited its government from engaging in making laws “respecting an establishment of religion.”

There of course may be certain exceptions to this policy. We will litigate, regardless of consequences, if a situation should arise that is so egregious we cannot let it pass unchallenged. We will litigate if the perceived consequences of not litigating would be worse than the possible adverse consequences of litigating. This will have to be based on sound legal judgment and decided on a case by case basis.

There are in fact some hills worth dying on.

And the word will get out to those bent on imposing their religion upon us that, if American Atheists threatens a lawsuit, they had best pay attention. Because they will know from our record that American Atheists will probably win.

Because American Atheists has a history of winning.

And that is a lot more powerful than having a history of losing.

Edwin Kagin
National Legal Director
American Atheists.

January 01, 2009

.

On the Legal Philosophy of American Atheists by Edwin Kagin

2009-01-01T10:52:00.001-05:00

On the Legal Philosophy of American Atheists

On the Legal Philosophy of American Atheists

As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. observed, the law “is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky…” Understanding this basic truth can prevent much confusion in thinking about the law.

Most people would not be so uninformed, or so foolish, as to think they know more than their doctor if told they need to have heart surgery or die. Yet the same people will, without skipping a beat, presume that they know what the law is, how the law works, and what a proper legal judgment should be. Everyone seems to have an opinion on the law, and if one’s grocer unlawfully provides legal advice, the average person is likely to give that view some undeserved merit. A few years ago, a young counselor at Camp Quest informed me, with proud conviction, that “possession is 90% of the law.” I told him that this was a testable hypothesis. All he needed to do was to take someone’s car without their permission, drive it around until he was stopped by the police, and then argue that the car was his by right of possession. He is now a fine young lawyer who does not now issue those kinds of incorrect generalities. Be assured that almost everything you think you know “for certain” about the law is almost certainly wrong.

It has fallen my lot in history, and it is my honor, as National Legal Director for American Atheists, to set forth the current legal philosophy for the organization. An understanding and acceptance of this will answer many questions, and hopefully prevent any hard feelings, in that the national office receives daily requests for legal advice and requests for help on issues involving matters of church state separation, only a fraction of which can be addressed. A process is required to aid in deciding with which cases American Atheists should become involved. This is not to say that a perceived problem is without merit. Most claims sent in do have merit. The problem is that there is not world enough or time or money available to deal with any but a few of them. The assaults on our First Amendment freedoms must be triaged.

What is “the law” anyhow? Even that is not a simple answer. For openers, it consists of written statutes and local ordinances, both federal and state. We have a system of United States Courts, created by the Constitution of the United States, that deals with matters of federal law. The judges are appointed by the President of the United States, to serve “during good behavior,” or essentially for life. Each state has its own laws, courts, and court rules—occasionally wildly at variance one with another. Behavior lawful in one state can get you thrown in the slammer in another. The judges are usually elected or appointed, or a combination of both, for a fixed term of years. Additionally, individual counties and cities can make their own laws, or ordinances, provided a grant of authority has been given by the state or federal government to do so. There are methods of appeal from the ruling of judges to higher courts. Each state has its own appellant system; the courts of the United States have another, both ending at the United States Supreme Court. One does not, despite their bravado, “take the case all the way to the Supreme Court.” No one “takes” a case to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). One petitions SCOTUS to hear a case, and the odds are several thousand to one against a given case being granted review. If the high court does take a care, and makes a ruling, whether the case comes up through the federal or state system, the holdings of the court make legal rulings that become “precedents” that are binding in every court of the United States. A ruling of SCOTUS may not be correct, but it is final.

In addition to the written laws, the concept of “the law” also encompasses the “common law” as it has developed over centuries. This is the body of law, the corpus juris, as decided in actual justicible cases by courts of record, and the law requires that such rulings are to be followed until changed by a higher court. And the rulings of appeal courts do change. One day “separate but equal schools” may be constitutional and, upon a different ruling of SCOTUS, the law is changed, and separate but equal schools is an unlawful concept. One day abortion may be unlawful, while the next ruling might permit abortion, and SCOTUS has the power to reverse that ruling at any time.

The scope of a given court ruling depends on the “jurisdiction” of the court, or the area over which that court has power. A city court ruling might only affect the city in which it is made, and a state court holding, or a federal opinion, affects only the area served by that court. The appeal courts have a wider net. The Supreme Court of a state can make precedents that bind all courts of that state. A federal court usually covers a specific geographical portion of a state. A United States Court of Appeal covers several states. If, by way of example, a bad decision is made in a federal court in Louisville, Kentucky, it only has binding application in about half of the state of Kentucky. If that horribly bad holding is appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers all of the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee, and that bad ruling should be affirmed, the party taking the appeal has thereby managed to expand a horror story from their own back yard into bad law for four states. If SCOTUS should take the case, and affirm the bad ruling, then a major legal disaster has occurred that affects the way the law will be decided in the future throughout the entire United States and in every court therein. If one has any concern for the future of our freedoms, one should proceed with caution. This is not a suitable sport for amateurs.

Bad facts make bad law. It should be considered an act of legal negligence for one to take a case to a higher court where it is completely predestined that the court will rule against a meritorious cause, and thereby make bad law not only in that case, in that region of the country, but, depending on which appellant court is chosen, make bad law for a much wider area, where the bad ruling will be the law until the case in question is ultimately, if ever, overruled. By building on bad precedents, in time the very concept of separation of religion and government could be destroyed. The religious right understands this. We would be well advised to understand it as well.

The elected legislative bodies, both nationally, and in each state, create the written statutory law. Judges, who are required to be fair minded and objective, rule on the interpretation of the laws passed by these legislative bodies and state, in appropriate cases, whether or not a given law is or is not unconstitutional. The Constitution of the United States, and its Amendments, is the supreme law of our land, followed by Treaties between nations, and then by statutory laws. An independent judiciary decides if a given law is constitutional and, if so, how it is to be interpreted. The Legislative and Judicial branches of government are both created by the Constitution, as is the third branch of government, the Executive, consisting of the elected President of the United States, or the Governor of a state or commonwealth. Neither the Congress of the United States, nor the legislative body of any state, may lawfully pass legislation that is contrary to the Constitution of the United States, nor may the Executive branch lawfully enforce such laws.

If all of this is not confusing enough, consider the fact that the prejudices, beliefs, politics, religion, etc. of the judges on a court determine in large measure how they will view a given legal question. They may or may not be conscious of these factors, but they are there nevertheless. It has something to do with being human. Thus judges with liberal backgrounds are likely to decide an issue one way and judges who are proudly conservative will decide the same issue another way. And there are many highly emotionally charged, and controversial, issues around these days, issues for which there is no plain and clear answer, like “gay marriage.” In such cases, only the personal architecture of the individual judges deciding the questions will form the basis for decision. The Constitution could not predict, and give answers for, every fact situation that might arise in our nation’s history. This is where mature, well grounded, legal judgment is needed. There can be law quoted to support any kind of idea, noble or base, that anyone might ever present to a court. Go to a law library and look at the rows of stacks of law books containing written decisions. Someone lost every one of those cases.

It is the philosophy of American Atheists to win cases and to create favorable law. This is a change from the policy of the organization in the past. That philosophy was to file the case, no matter how unlikely a court victory might seem, to make the point urged. If something was wrong, it was felt that action should be taken, regardless of the immediate outcome. That philosophy had merit when different people were on the higher courts of our land. In the 1960s, a lawyer could bring a case of civil rights violation before the courts, be quite sloppy in pleading practice and, in the interests of substantial justice, the courts might well carve out an opinion that granted relief and that comported with basis due process of law considerations and with the guarantees of our Bill of Rights. This was a golden age of civil rights litigation. And the religious right hated every moment of it.

Things have changed. The persons of high vision on our highest court have gone to honored places in the history of the law. Justices Black, Douglass, Warren, Marshall and many other great defenders of freedom are no more. By virtue of the philosophy of their appointers, persons of less noble character and less shining intellect, have taken their places. The past few years have seen an erosion of civil liberties, and a battering against the Wall of Separation between Church and State that is without equal in our history. Irreparable damage to the First Amendment has been done that may not be repaired within the life span of our republic. The forces that would establish a theocracy in our free land are not only beating on the gates of freedom, they are trying to pull down the wall of separation from within. Mean spirited people are in positions of power, and those who would destroy us are able to vote and to sit on juries. Sadly, many are able to rule on legal cases and to create binding precedent.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact. We do not have to take every wrong to court and thereby give some theocrat the right to say that the wrongful behavior is lawful and to let that vile ruling become part of the body of the law that future judges are required to follow. This is both the glory and the danger of the legal doctrine of stare decisis, which means to “stand on the decisions” that have gone before. Brilliant, bold, freedom friendly rulings of prior courts are being systematically swept away by courts that are rendering disastrous rulings in cases with poor facts that provide them with seemingly rational reasons to rule in abominable ways.

American Atheists declines to give those theocrats now in power the ability to destroy the dream of our founders that citizens of our nation would enjoy the right to not be religious.

We will respectfully decline to do battle on any issues other than those where the facts and the law will compel a favorable ruling, no matter how biased the court against us. And thus we will, brick by brick, rebuild the Wall.

For every case presented to us, we must ask, “Is this a hill worth dying on?”

Litigation is expensive. We do not need to waste thousands of dollars on lawsuits that, given the facts at issue, the state of the law at this time, and the disposition of a given court, are doomed to certain failure. And in losing such actions, we do not need to be in the position of creating even more bad law for our descendents to clean up. We cannot make good law and ensure freedom within our nation by litigating bad, or even marginal, facts. And we will not gain credibility by losing cases and thereby permitting the other side to mock our efforts and to laugh at us. “There go those Atheists again. They will lose like they always lose. When will they learn to sit down and shut up?” We must not give them that ammunition.

There are plenty of civil liberties abuses against Atheists around these days. Far more than we can handle. Many abuses are better addressed by protests, letter writing, political action, interviews, debates, oratory and by using all of the free speech options still left to us, rather than by reflexively resorting to legal actions.

We can afford to be picky and wait for those fact situations that fit clearly into the entire body of both written law and common law. In short, we should wait for cases that we can win based on the present state of the law. Then we can make some positive changes. We can cause even the most blinded-by-heavenly-light jurists to see that the actions complained of in our lawsuits are unlawful and are not to be permitted in a free nation that, in its founding document, prohibited its government from engaging in making laws “respecting an establishment of religion.”

There of course may be certain exceptions to this policy. We will litigate, regardless of consequences, if a situation should arise that is so egregious we cannot let it pass unchallenged. We will litigate if the perceived consequences of not litigating would be worse than the possible adverse consequences of litigating. This will have to be based on sound legal judgment and decided on a case by case basis.

There are in fact some hills worth dying on.

And the word will get out to those bent on imposing their religion upon us that, if American Atheists threatens a lawsuit, they had best pay attention. Because they will know from our record that American Atheists will probably win.

Because American Atheists has a history of winning.

And that is a lot more powerful than having a history of losing.

Edwin Kagin
National Legal Director
American Atheists.

.

Christmas Letter by Edwin Kagin

2008-12-20T16:20:00.001-05:00

Christmas Letter.

Dearest Beloved of Our Family in Christ,

There have been many changes this year for our family.

Our beloved 17 year old daughter suffered blindness and paralysis after being struck by a drunk driver on her way home from Wednesday night church services.

Aunt Polly died of liver cancer, following a long and painful illness.

The family cat was smashed by a UPS truck.

Mabel’s M.S. is getting worse and she can hardly do anything much anymore.

Father had to have a triple bypass operation, and now uses a breathing tube.

The house was burned down by sparks from the torching of Harry Potter books in our yard.

Little Marvin got a chicken bone stuck in his throat at a church picnic and was rushed to the hospital where doctors had to remove his voice box. Although he can never talk again, our God miraculously saved him.

Miranda is now being home schooled after she left eighth grade to become a single mother. An abortion was out of the question, and we know God has given us a hydrocephalic grandchild for his own good and perfect reasons.

Our oldest son had his left foot blown off in an ambush in Iraq while helping to bring Christ and Democracy to those poor heathens.

We rejoice in the wisdom of our God, in His gifts, and in His plan for our lives.

We bear grateful witness to all that our great and merciful God has done for us in the past year, and we praise the works of His hand.

Oh, almost forgot. The dog died.

In His Holy Name,

The Fundangelical Family

(by Edwin Kagin. Permission to reproduce without profit is given. If you make money on this, I want some of it. Edwin)

On Christmas, or No Virginia There Is No Santa Claus, by Edwin Kagin

2008-12-18T12:14:00.000-05:00

What Is An ATHEIST?

“ANOTHER THINKING HUMAN ENGAGED IN SEEKING TRUTH” (Edwin Kagin, 2008)

To Unidentified Recipients:
Here, once again please find reproduced, (which may also be found at http://www.edwinkagin.com/columns/christmas.htm ,and in the work Baubles of Blasphemy, one day to perhaps maybe be printed in a Second Edition, depending perchance in some measure on the pleas for such to the editors of American Atheists Press) that seasonal classic:

ON CHRISTMAS, or
"NO, VIRGINIA, THERE IS NO SANTA CLAUS"
If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!
Uncle Ebenezer Scrooge (not to be confused with Uncle Scrooge McDuck)

I can’t prove that no ungulate unit of reindeer persuasion can fly, any more than you can prove I don’t have two invisible unicorns that frolic in benign innocence at Camp Quest. I can’t prove there are no living dinosaurs (as the arkonuts challenge the skeptical to do) anymore than the arkonuts can prove the English text of Genesis they rely on is identical to the original version they hold was dictated, or inspired, by god. But if one says that all crows are black, there is no need to check every crow to falsify that assertion. All that is needed is to find one white crow, or any crow of a different color. Similarly, Santa skepticism can be soundly silenced by the production of one flying reindeer. Yet Christmasterians insist doubters disprove Santa, sleigh, and such, or keep silent, lest they destroy a child’s simple (mindless) faith. This method of proof proves useful later, as children, programmed to believe fantasy is truth, grow to adultery and unquestioningly follow the fantastic follies of faith of their fathers (and mothers--political correctness must not be permitted to fall down a personhole).
To be sure, Plato (not to be confused with Mickey Mouse’s dog) argued that, to conceive of something that is real, one must somehow get the perfect idea of that something from the place it really exits, to wit, the world of forms--a place somewhere that no one has ever seen. Reality alone wouldn’t do. Thus, everyone but philosophers know what a horse looks like, and kids know all about Santa without having to survive Philosophy 101.
Can we imagine, or even believe in, something that doesn’t exist? Sure we can. Just talk with those who have been abducted by aliens. If some unseen thing is believed by many, e.g., angels, it is called faith. If a thing is believed by only one, and is wildly outside the gates of common sense and experience, then the belief, e.g., suddenly realizing that one’s guardian angel is made of grape jelly and having him (there are no female angels--check your bible, you can win bets on this) on toast, it is called psychosis. The problem is that the invisible and the non-existence look much the same. Christmas beliefs fall somewhere between the province of priest and psychiatrist.
Christmas combines two contradictory images of godlike characters: Jesus, the Christ, who taught that to be saved one should sell all of their property and give it to the poor (the church later declared belief in this teaching a heresy), and Claus, the Santa, to whom children are taught to write letters requesting property--believed to be given by Santa, in one night, to those children of the world found worthy--in direct challenge to the counsel of the Christ. One should note, before teaching the latter belief system, that an anagram of Santa is Satan.
The day itself, meaning Christ’s Mass, is the same day the Romans used to honor their sun god with gift giving and feasting. Christmas is quite pagan. Its secular celebration involves rituals specifically forbidden by holy writ, like hewing down a tree, bringing it inside the house, decorating it, and praising it. This is as clear a violation of divine decree as public prayer, or celebrating the Sabbath on the first day of the week instead of on the seventh day as ordered (Commandment IV). No wonder we are in such trouble these days with crime, inflation, and teenage pregnancies.
Unfortunate cultural consequences flow from the forced frivolity and jejune joy Christmas creates and requires. People get depressed when they don’t feel happy as they should, when they do not have their artificial expectations fulfilled, and when they cannot meet the unreasonable artificial seasonal needs of others--like their mercenary relatives, and their materialistic, greedy, spoiled children--and get even deeper in debt by trying to behave as expected. Thanks to Tom Flynn, and his wonderful heresy The Trouble With Christmas, I chucked the whole thing a few years ago, and lived. Try it. You will feel better for it.
Should I be granted a Christmas wish, it would be that the holiday be canceled, and that the whole show appertaining to this business of Christmas not be done at all. Please understand that I do not care if others celebrate Christmas if they wish, nor would I suggest that they be prevented from doing so. I just don’t want the holiday to be compulsory for me or anyone else--any more than I want other people’s prayers, that they have an absolute right to pray, to be forced upon me by public officials or upon children by public schools. One who would rather decline gets somewhat tired of listening to those who absolutely and uncritically assume all good people celebrate Christmas, and that something is horribly wrong with anyone who ignores the invitation to attend their compulsory party. Failing the unlikely event of Christmas being made optional, I would alternatively wish, in seasonal answer to Virginia’s famous question, that we might see something in the public press, for innocent children, like:
Dear Virginia,
No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. It is a myth that has been cruelly used to deceive children for the pleasure of adults who unwittingly destroy children’s sense of basic trust by teaching them that the world is something other than it really is.
I know this news must be a shock to you, and I am truly sorry for your discomfort. But it is not my fault. The person who tells you the truth should never be blamed for the hurt that comes from learning that others have lied.
You should not believe in Santa Claus any more than you should believe in fairies, or in demons waiting around to pull you under the earth, or in angels lurking about to transport you above it. People do not need to believe foolish things to have love and compassion and caring, any more than they need a special season or holiday to be nice to one another.
If things believed prove false, does that mean peace, and sharing, and kindness must dissolve like mist along with the untrue things? Of course not! We don’t need magic to have happiness, and wonder, and joy. Our beautiful world is full of these things, and they are very real, and our real world holds more interesting and wonderful people and things than any fairyland anyone could ever even imagine.
Some adults are afraid of things they don’t understand, and they teach children to believe in magic. But the truth is really far more exciting. Wouldn’t you rather learn what is on real planets, that are millions of miles away, than believe reindeer can fly? Have you ever seen the northern lights? I have, and I can tell you they are more beautiful, more mysterious, and more wonderful than any pretend story anyone could ever invent about elves that have workshops at the North Pole.
Is it okay to pretend and to believe things we know are not true? Of course it is! And it can be a lot of fun. Intelligent people love to play. Any time you watch a movie or a play or go to a costume party you are playing and pretending something is so that is not.
We know those aren’t real people in the TV--only images of them--but we know we are pretending, and this is fun and much different from believing a falsehood. Would it be wrong to tell a friend of yours, who firmly believed there were really small people inside the television set, that his or her belief was not true? Would it be right for you to be condemned for destroying that friend’s childlike faith? What if several of your best friends thought they could fly, and set off for a bridge over a 600 foot deep gorge to prove it? Would it be wrong for you to politely try to convince them that they just might be mistaken, no matter how firmly they believe they are right? Would you be destroying their childhood or saving their future?
Follow the truth, no matter where it may take you. And don’t pay any attention to those who think comforting falsehoods are better than understanding the world as it is. If you ever have children, teach them trust by telling them the truth. By the way, just in case you didn’t know, the stork didn’t bring you. You are here because your parents had sex.
Keep questioning, Virginia, and don’t feel it is the least bit wrong to demand correct answers.
Asking questions is what makes us human.
Your friend,
Uncle Edwin

Fan Letters from Christians by Edwin Kagin

2008-12-03T23:09:00.000-05:00

What Is An ATHEIST?

“ANOTHER THINKING HUMAN ENGAGED IN SEEKING TRUTH” (Edwin Kagin, 2008)

To Unidentified Recipients:

Here is the lawsuit filed by American Atheists and eleven named plaintiffs: http://www.edwinkagin.com/First_Amended_Complaint.pdf

In the past TWO DAYS, American Atheists, and my office, have been flooded with hate emails. To be sure there have been some nice emails, but they are far outnumbered by the hate filled ones.

They are not calculated to make Atheists feel comfortable in our free land.

I am not redacting the contact information of the senders. If they want to act like this, they should not expect privacy. You may want to write some of them.

The following speak, so to speak, for themselves.

What would Jesus do?

Edwin.

From: igotskillz.com [mailto:somedaysomewhere2003@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 9:59 AM
To: edwin@edwinkagin.com
Subject:

You have the right P.O box

I have personally seen God.

You are an arrogant piece of shit.

If it we legal, I would delight in ripping you to pieces.

Have a nice day, shitbag
________________________________________
From: bobbie storrs [mailto:bobbie_storrs@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 12:48 PM
To: ekagin@atheists.org
Subject: Kentucky

No one really cares what such a small, insignificant group such as yours wants. Atheists are such a small minority, why should the rest of America be ruled by what you believe? Do you really have nothing better to do than to waste so much time and so many resources on fighting this? My goodness. Go volunteer for a local homeless shelter or something if you have this much time on your hands instead of letting your life be ruined by hate. On your death bed, do you really believe you'll look back and think you made a difference by doing nothing more than fighting to have something, that so many people believe in, and find comfort in, removed from government? Find something to do so that will make you a productive member of society and not just a hemorrhoid.

From: Greg Deer [mailto:greg.deer@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 12:51 PM
To: edwin@edwinkagin.com
Subject: Your jewish ancestors turn in the grave.

Because of the Jews like you who stink with an ego and mediocrity the world that searches for the Light on to the nations (People of the book) runs into
a dark tunnel of hate. You assult the ability to believe.

People who do not belive create death everywhere - Russia, Kombodia, China - name it.

Your spirital father Marx would be proud of you. But when the hell breaks loose for you
you will see that you squandered G-d given talent for the sake of your immorality that you seem to be justifing.

Study Greek philosophers, you will hopefully understand, that by attempting to redefine the essence you do not touch it but the one who is listening.

You do not believe that you were created and the infinite complexity of you DNA and RNA and protein folds are working correctly.

So let the Almighty show you that when one of the quadrillions of mechanisms in the body fails to do its job (atheists worship statistics )a person may regreat he was put on Earth - the act that he did not choose.

regards my philosopher

From: Jesse Barczynski [mailto:jessebar@hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 12:57 PM
To: edwin@edwinkagin.com
Subject:

Hey Edwin:

This is very simple. If you do not like America, One Nation Under God, Go to a godless country. Any other country is fine. But rest assured, when you die, which from your website picture, isn't to far off, you Will SEE Jesus Christ. I know you don't believe me, you don't have to. But you will see him. I will pray for your conversion before you die, but it still is very simple. Go to russia or any other place & they will tell you what to do, where to go, and how much you have. If you look for Jesus you will find him. Hey, even the devil believes in God. So you must not believe in him either. There is good & bad in the world. How you choose to accept these things will tell you where you will be when you die. Praying for your conversion, I am Jesse Barczynski

From the office of Jesse Barczynski. www.bsgband.com www.divinemercy.org

________________________________________
From: John.Schille@minneapolis.af.mil [mailto:John.Schille@minneapolis.af.mil]
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 1:18 PM
To: edwin@edwinkagin.com
Subject:

You don’t have the right to tell us what is legal or what is illegal. This country was founded on Christian values and morals. We the people, the vast majority of American people will not let you under mind the principles this country was founded on.
I don’t hate you, you are a very wise person, you know this is a Christian country, you live in it, accept it, your views are not shared by 80% - 90% of the people in America. Conform to that 10%, sorry, be quiet while you talk, sorry.
Jesus loves you and so do I
John Schille

'Worry looks around,
Sorry looks back, Faith looks up.'

________________________________________
From: larry & ganell [mailto:lga8627@charter.net]
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 7:49 AM
To: edwin@edwinkagin.com
Subject: your stupidity

Quit infringing on our right to believe. Sit down & shut up!!!

From: Phillip Van Niekerk [mailto:phillwebdesign@yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 3:49 AM
To: edwin@edwinkagin.com
Subject: Need Help Urgent!

Hallo Satan,

Did you know that God already defeated you? So why are you trying to stop him? Shame, you poor old Bastard. Leave Edwin alone. He is an innocent child who doesnʼt need your hell.

-----Original Message-----
From: Sostyling@insightbb.com [mailto:Sostyling@insightbb.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 3:32 PM
To: edwin@edwinkagin.com
Subject: Potential Client Inquiry for Edwin F. Kagin, Attorney at Law from Findlaw

I just read a article on WKYT web page regarding that a group of ATHEISTS filed a lawsuit in KY seeking to remove GOD for the state's homeland security detail. I am very upset about this and the so called Atheistis. Tell me what you need me to do to help with this law suit. I can get petitions signed or do whatever needs to be done to stop this lawsuit. The United States was founded on Christianity and I am so fed up with this so call Atheists group.

Thanks

From: ~Crushed~ [mailto:crushed@npacc.net]
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 5:43 AM
To: edwin@edwinkagin.com
Subject: Your cause

Dear Mr Kagin,
Dear sir, I feel sorry for you and the way you spend your time pushing your self serving beliefs on the rest of the God believing world. I have to wonder what went so wrong in your life that you feel the need to try and erase those 3 letters that are a common binder for all walks of life, even people like yourself that wake up forcing themselves to believe theres no God in this entire picture of life and then go out of their way to do whatever is possible to make sure those letters are erased for all others to see.
I guess what makes me sad about people like yourself is the simple fact that in this day and age and of all the things going wrong in the world let alone just your place of living you feel the need to use your energy and mind to bring the end to the word God instead of trying to better the living conditions of the poor, the hungry and even the homeless. Things that I'm sure are more worthy of your time and talents.
I'm also sure that this isnt the first nor the last time your going to be chastised for your beliefs and I'm just as sure that this is only getting you abit hot about "your" rights not to believe, but tell me, who made you the watchdog of whats right or wrong with those 3 letters of our alphabet... G..O..D...

I'm going to go now but I want you to know this, before I close my eyes today to get some sleep I'm going to ask God to try and understand you so that you too can someday ask his forgivness as you get ready to depart this sad world we live in.

R.W.Assumpcao Jr

________________________________________
From: Thomas Hart [mailto:t.hart@live.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 6:06 AM
To: edwin@edwinkagin.com
Subject:

Dear Edwin, I respect the face that you are an atheist but why must you degrade people who believe in god. Does the sign in Kentucky really piss you off that much? Say you do get it removed will the world be a better place? Why don’t you stop bitching and complaining and do something that is worth -while instead of leading a crusade against god. Yelling long enough and loud enough does not validate facts. Whether we consider the origin of the Solar System, man and animals, plants and rock formations, or read "Evolution," F.H.T. Rhodes book of "proofs," the theory of evolution never sprouted a leg to stand on.

Evolution is not fact! It is not even science!

It cannot stand up to the first two laws of Thermodynamics and the process has only been theorized, but never proved. As a propaganda device devised by those who rejected God while seeking human answers for man's origin, it's a classic. Humanistic evolution is a religion and I agree that it needs to be expelled from school.

In a society that trumpets diversity, open forums and free-thinking, why has creationism been disallowed in the unleveled arena of most public educational systems? Granted it takes faith to believe that, "In the beginning (time) God (intelligent designer) created the heaven (space) and the earth" (matter and activated these with light. But to believe that nothing packed itself into a compact ball of nothingness (why?) and exploded (how? by what?) thus producing hydrogen and helium (from where?) causing meteors (from what?) to fly into frictionless space spinning in different directions thus accidentally forming our perfectly balanced and ordered universe so that after billions of years man evolved from a rock or some primordial soup and somehow whole swimming in water (?) adapted a lung and limbs to crawl up on "land?" that takes faith, a whole lot of faith!

Sincerely,
Tom

From: Schane [mailto:schane@insightbb.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 8:46 AM
To: edwin@edwinkagin.com
Subject: Kentucky Office of Homeland Security.

Edwin,

Do you have nothing better to do in life? I am just wondering as I read an article regarding your filing suit to remove part of a state anti-terrorism law requiring Kentucky’s Office of Homeland Security to acknowledge that it can’t keep the state without God’s help. I mean really, why on Earth do these words really matter to you. Are there not better things in life to deal with, like loving your children, your grand-children, maybe your neighbor, than filing idiotic suits against the Kentucky State government?

I am not a practicing religious man. I have had my bouts with wondering if there is a God. To this day I wonder if there is a God and have always thought of the Big Bang as the true origin of life. This just makes since to me. To me that is my belief and others have theirs. Does it really kill you to let other people believe something different than you? Do you really think you are going to “teach somebody” something by filing this lawsuit? Is it really worth your time to work on this? I mean really, what are you going to get out of it?

I guess I am just writing because I am confused as to why someone would waste one minute of their life trying to do something like this when there is so much more out there to do. If you are bored, I have plenty of extra things that I can not get done because I am running around providing for a family of five. Please feel free to come visit me in Lexington and I will find something more meaningful for you to do with your time.

William S. Simpson

First Name: Steve
Last Name: Carey
Email: gmbiker@hotmail.com

Comment: Benefits of memebership, Ha. Why don't all
you non-believers move to your own Island or
state, and leave the rest of us alone. You
are nothing but a bunch of unhappy, faithless
people without purpose and need. Good luck,
but keep this rediclious argument out of the
court system.

First Name: Kevin
Last Name: Mckee
Email: hampstercaster@yahoo.com

Comment: Do you not understand that you are the same concept as any religion, creed,
or belief system? Without religion in society there never would have been a
basic moralistic structure...period. Godless soceties are thought of as evil
throughout history, and any evil empires such as Rome or Nazi Germany
were athiests like yourselves who used religeon to control the masses
because it was the fastest way to reach their goals of complete dominance.
You think your enlightened but truly enlightened people strive for higher
knowlege without petty persuits such as court battles over what a group of
people can display on a wall! It in no way encumbers your rights or has any
effect on your personal being. It's a frivolous endevour and certainly not one
of higher thinking. All societies who were a god unto themselves quickly
digressed into anarchy and self destructed. If you are able to think moments
before you die you will come to the realization that all your efforts to dispell
so called "mythical creatures" has been in vain and you'll close your eyes
then wake up with God on your mind and not the absence thereof...Deep
down your guilt will finally win out over your denial. Good day.

First Name: Mark
Last Name: Lutner
Email: thelutners@yahoo.com

Comment: I am a Christian and have been all my life
without question. I read a disturbing article
today about your organizations attempt to sue
the state of Kentucky for having God mentioned
as a part of their homeland security statement.

I would like to know why it is that you feel
you must force the ideas of few upon the
many. I respect your right to be atheist, as
you should respect my right to be Christian.
The vast majority of all people in this world
believe in some form of divine power. Why
does your organization treat all of these
people as ignorant? Are we all supposed
to "wake up" and see that 4 billion of us are
wrong and the members of your group are
correct?

I just wanted to let you know how I feel about
this topic and would like to hear your
response to the questions I asked.

My the Lord bless you and keep you safe.

Respectfully,

Mark Lutner

First Name: Mike
Last Name: Perez
Email: backspace6104@yahoo.com

Comment: I read Mr. Kagan's comments abotu suing
Kentucky Homeland Security. You all are
idiots.

The Constitution of the United States, in
spite of the activists on the Supreme Court,
provides for freedom OF religion, not freedom
FROM religion. The Constitution does not give
rights; it guarantees ones given by GOD to all
men which cannot be touched or taken away,
even by you. Your ignorance and arrogance is
astounding. You want people to accept your
beliefs, but you are intolerant of others'
beliefs, what is the majority of America and
is its very foundation - Christianity. There
were even aethiests among the Founding
Fathers, and Jews, and others. But BY GOD,
they didn't demand God to be wiped from
society or public. In fact, they credited and
gave thanks to GOD for their freedom,
Christians and non-Christians alike. That
means you, too. Don't like it, leave the
country. But I bet you'll be the first ones
screaming for someone to protect you when
there's another terrorist attack. Are you
going to demand they turn from God first
before they protect you? Or are you going to
let them turn to the One who can protect them
as they save your sorry asses?

I'm all for your freedom to do as you wish. I
am not for your demands that I cannot worship
in public as I wish and as is guaranteed under
the Constitution.

First Name: Cecil
Last Name: Wheeler
Email: wheeler44@verizon.net

Comment: I'm glad fox news did the report on your fight
in kentucky. Sense you felt to the need to get
organized and fight something you were better
off to leave alone, it brought to my attention
the fact that I need'd to do the same. So I
wanted to say thank you. Me and my church will
do our best to keep you out of kentucky. we
have to many idiots in america as it is, time
for fools like you to leave, or at least start
losing your fights. oh, and being christian
I'm not adverse to telling you where to go but
sense your trying your best to get there I
really dont have to.

First Name: kay
Last Name: m
Email: nerakluvs@gmail.com

Comment: Wow- your eyes of understanding will be
opened. And when it is, tell everyone. God
bless. No need to write me back

First Name: Pat
Last Name: Taylor
Email: eptaylor3@hotmail.com

Comment: My precious friends - My God lives!!! Oh that
you will come to that realization before you
stand before our Almighty God in eternity!!!

First Name: Chris
Last Name: Johnson
Email: iamayoungboi@yahoo.com

Comment: I just needed to write and tell you guys GET A
LIFE. Actually do something with your time
then to ruin everyone else's lifer. Lawsuit
for god being in homeland secuirty well you
need god in your life.
CAUSE YOUR SO STUPID AND YOUR WASTING YOUR
TIME AND EVERYONE ELSES. This is AMERICA, we
have the right to be opinionated and freedom
of speech. People like you people want to
ruin everyone elses life by telling them what
they can and can not say. WELL GOD is REAL
and you are all a joke. I cant even believe a
organization like you evenn exit. Retards. I
hope you lose your law suits fags!

First Name: David
Last Name: Johnson
Email: iriadavid06@netzero.net

Comment: What do you care if a majority of the US wants
God in their lives. Leave it alone and get on
with your own lives!

First Name: debi
Last Name: risinger
Email: debitruckergirl@hotmail.com

Comment: as you well know, Christmas is a celebration of
the birth of Jesus Christ. No one is forcing
this celebration on anyone and you can choose
to continue to work or do whatever you want.
If it wasn't for Jesus you would not even have
a holiday. This country was founded as a
result of a break from the English ruling
through the church. The pilgrims wanted
religious freedom. As a minoirity, you are
trying to dictate the will of at least 86% of
the population. Don't believe, but leave our
God alone!

First Name: Bruce
Last Name: Hensley
Email: Hensley144@hotmail.com

Comment: Dear American Idiots,

For a group that doesn't believe in God
you sure do spend a lot of time acknowledging
Him and battling Him in court.
Another select group of people who don't
believe in God (for if they truly did I don't
believe they would do what they have done
and/or continue to do) are the "Islamic"
terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden.
Congratulations, you are in "good"
company.

American Defender

First Name: janet
Last Name: allan
Email: jallan@sunstateford.com

Comment: you are such a bunch of losers. why don't you
do this, instead of making laws how about you
and everyone that follows your stupid thinking
board a plane,boat, anything, find your own
island or area where you can do what you want
when you want and how you want. do you not
think that there are much bigger problems in
this world than what you think? i am so sick
of your stupidity that is makes me wish all of
you would leave our country. we are much
better off with people to have faith, hope and
belief. your ways have been practiced for way
too long now, and obviously it does not work.
do us all a favor - go where you can make all
your own rules with everyone that wants to
believe that way - or keep your junk to
yourself. i have to put up with you not by
choice.....

First Name: CINDY
Last Name: RAMIREZ
Email: cindy.ramirez.p285@statefarm.com

Comment: I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW THAT I WILL BE
PRAYING TO OUR GOD ALMIGHTY TO HAVE MERCY ON
YOU AND YOUR FOLLOWERS. ALSO FOR HIM TO HELP
YOU FIND OUT THE REAL TRUTH.
HAVE A GREAT AND BLESSED DAY!

First Name: yank
Last Name: yourself
Email: nocrat@hotmail.com

Comment: wow you are so freaking stupid. mytholigical
creatures? yes that is what you are. and your
all fat, and you eat cat turds. how are those
cat turds by the way? is this why you are so
stupid? doest the cat eat things they find in
the fields that when it craps it out and you
run over and eat it, it makes you stupid? you
could just stop eating those cat turds then
you wouldn't have to be atheist anymore. you
could believe in something other than the
stupid rants of hollywood. stop eating those
cat turds my good friends. no need. waist not
your lives on the runny sloppy cat turds you
enjoy so much. they have brought you down low
low low my bro. maybe you'll loose some fat as
well if you lay of those turds. maybe the
smell of you will go away. yes try the
spaggetti and be not a fat stinky stupid.

First Name: Darla
Last Name: Smith
Email: Smith_darla@yahoo.com

Comment: I was just reading about the Law suit filed
about Kentucky law referring to relying on
God......I must say I am sick to death of
these frivolous lawsuits! Our constitution
was based on the Christian belief that Our
trust as a nation is placed in God. It gives
citizens a choice as to what they wish to
believe but it does NOT give them the right to
change its foundation! I think if you don't
like the fact that our country was formed
UNDER God then leave it and go somewhere
else. We are one Nation under God! That is
what our forefathers believed. They would be
rolling over in their graves to see what we
have done to this country. If we kept our
sights on what our foundation was, we would
not be in the state we are now. You do not
have to believe, but don't try to change what
the rest of us do believe in and that is the
original trust in God. God has not destroyed
this country...we have. Seems no atheist has
any trouble spending the money we use with the
words IN God WE Trust. That is unless God is
money to you. It just makes me angry that in
a world in such despair people like you have
nothing better to do than file law suits for
such nonsense. Believe what you want, but
leave our foundation alone! In God we trust
and apart from him we can do nothing. Do you
believe in Satan? If you do then you have to
believe in God. Even Satan believes in God.
If you do not like the laws that reference God
then go somewhere else. We need to take our
country back to where it was originated.
Founded on the belief and trust in God.

First Name: Some
Last Name: One
Email: someone@somewhere.com

Comment: Well, I see that you are suing to have God
removed from Kentucky's homeland security.
Since Homeland Security only came about due to
us being attacked by Islamic terrorists, a
group who do what they do for their God, I
think that you should sue them also to have
them remove their God from their manifest. I
mean it's only fair if we can't have our God
because of you, neither can they. :-)

First Name: mike
Last Name: anderson
Email: mea07@bellsouth.net

Comment: Two things. First, your page reads like a
teenaged heavy metal fan wrote it. Stating the
new President is a "hardcore" athiest is
pointless. It just sounds childish. Second,
this anti-symbolism campaign for Christmas.
This attitude is also held by the ACLU. Here
is why it is a danger to us as a nation. You
want to take all the Christian symbology away
from the season according to the article on
your site. I get it. You think there is no God
because you can't prove it, and the Bible has
to many "false hoods". Like I said, I get it.
Now, what if we completly abolished all things
christmas? Why even have the holiday since
none of its' real anyway? I mean the date was
taken from the pagens right? Destroy the myth
of Christmas, according to you, then Santa
Clause, who is only a German interpretation
for children to acknowledge God. (everyone
gets a gift) Now after that, imagine how our
economy would stagnate even further? If any
atheist recieves or accepts a gift during the
season, you are a hypocrite. Shouldn't you
just sit back and revel in the fact that you
know the right answer to life and everyone
else is lost? Isn't that enough? However,
thank you for your efforts to abolish God. By
being visible in the media, you strengthen the
resolve of Christians in this trying time.
Keep up the good work!

First Name: David
Last Name: Wilson
Email: drindles@me.com

Comment: I read on Fox News where your organization has filed suit to remove
the reference to God from the Kentucky Department of Homeland
Security. I respect your right to practice your form of religion. I do
disagree with your organization pushing your beliefs on the majority
of Americans.

If you are a scholar at all, you will see that the United States of
America was founded upon Christianity. There are many references to
God in the Constitution and other founding documents.

If you feel strongly about removing God from the foundation of the
USA, I would suggest that you build your own form of government
outside of the USA.

Why is it that you expect the majority to accommodate the minority?
No one is telling you that you must believe in God. Why not allow
those of us who do to continue so without your interference.

God Bless!

David Wilson

First Name: M
Last Name: D
Email: mdell1971@gmail.com

Comment: how far can you go and hard do you need to
work to continue in your lie saying 'God does
not exist'? Even in your statements and
mindsets you know there is a God. Without
the One who loves you and created you
standing by your side to guide you and
protect you it is a dangerous place to be!
God is real. Satan is real. Just look in
the mirror or look outside to what God has
created. Listen to the words that come out
of your mouth and you will hear the lies that
you have believed!
Merry Christmas and God Bless you!

First Name: Paul
Last Name: Pennington
Email: paulmpennington@earthlink.net

Comment: I just read an article that said you are suing
the State of Kentucky's Department of Homeland
Security because they have used "God" in their
printed material. I think to call yourself an
American Atheist is ironic, given that America
was established for those seeking refuge from
Christian persecution. America was
established by Christians, for Christians. A
country seperated from God will fall. Look at
Rome, Russia and China for example. These
countries fought and persecuted to remove God
and they have suffered for it. People, like
your group, have fought to remove God from
America and then when situations occur like
Sept. 11th or Hurricane Katrina people
ask, "where is God?" and "why would he allow
this to happen?" I don't understand why you
feel you have the right to complain that
Christians have pushed their beliefs on you,
but in turn, you are doing the same thing by
pushing your non-beliefs on people. I know my
email will not change your mind, but I do
believe it's time for Christians to stand up
and say that "One nation under God" is our
right and our demand. And unless you fight to
have the two times God is mentioned in the
Declaration of Independence be removed, that
is the right set forth at the forming of our
nation.

Thank you for your time,
Paul

First Name: Paul
Last Name: Pennington
Email: paulmpennington@earthlink.net

Comment: I just read an article that said you are suing
the State of Kentucky's Department of Homeland
Security because they have used "God" in their
printed material. I think to call yourself an
American Atheist is ironic, given that America
was established for those seeking refuge from
Christian persecution. America was
established by Christians, for Christians. A
country seperated from God will fall. Look at
Rome, Russia and China for example. These
countries fought and persecuted to remove God
and they have suffered for it. People, like
your group, have fought to remove God from
America and then when situations occur like
Sept. 11th or Hurricane Katrina people
ask, "where is God?" and "why would he allow
this to happen?" I don't understand why you
feel you have the right to complain that
Christians have pushed their beliefs on you,
but in turn, you are doing the same thing by
pushing your non-beliefs on people. I know my
email will not change your mind, but I do
believe it's time for Christians to stand up
and say that "One nation under God" is our
right and our demand. And unless you fight to
have the two times God is mentioned in the
Declaration of Independence be removed, that
is the right set forth at the forming of our
nation.

Thank you for your time,
Paul

First Name: Sheila
Last Name: Hanson
Email: SHanson@yahoo.com

Comment: F.Y.I.
1. atheists are in the minority in this country
2. there is NO separation of Church and State
in the Constitution, never has been.
3.your organization is founded on a myth
4. the MAJORITY rules in a republic style of
government
5.If there was NO GOD, how do you explain how
you were born?
6.You and your organization are proof positive
of what happens when uneducated and ill
informed people are given free speech rights.
You use them for evil instead of doing good.

First Name: Sherry
Last Name: Berry
Email: sherry38858@peoplepc.com

Comment: I am a Christian and a believer. I was just
reading the article on the controversy in KY>

I have just one question. What does it hurt
to ask God for help in protecting our nation?
The humans are not doing to good a job. Since
God was taken out of our schools, the country
as a whole has went to the pits. Check out
crime rates, and all kinds of lawlessness
since Madelyn O'Hare had her way.

The bottom line is, as Christians, we are
taught to love, not hate, to help, not destroy.
We do not infringe on your right to be a non
believer, why can't you just turn you head
when you see any kind of Christian symbol or
scripture. It certainly would not hurt to ask
for devine help in these terrible times that
are facing our nation.

In Christian love.
Sherry Berry

First Name: Ronald
Last Name: Williams
Email: jacktown47@hotmail.com

Comment: Separation of church and state is a primary
clause in the Constitution. That's a given.
But, even if their is no God, Budda, Mohammed
etc. humans, by definition, must believe that
there is something beyond death, or what is
the point of life. To be an atheist makes
life, meaningless. Atheist are a small
minority. but have the power of the
Constitution behind them. But, this country
was founded on religious freedom and majority
rule. You can try to exclude a God from public
life but you can't stamp it out. It's to
pervasive. You atheist must be very unhappy
people having nothing to believe in.
Personaly, I don't care one way of the other.

First Name: John
Last Name: Drezen
Email: police188@aol.com

Comment: Its amazing how an agency such as your still exists.
You want a divison between state and God but you
seem to forget that the tax dollars that purchase
the land, the buildings and all other physical
structures are paid for by CHRISTIANS, NOT ATHIESTS!

If I believe in a supreme being and I die to find
out none exists, well so be it, but if you go
through life not believing, then die and find out
there is a supreme being, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU
GOING TO DO?

First Name: daniel
Last Name: murphy
Email: drm1086@yahoo.com

Comment: Do you guys realize that you are as wacky as
the religious right?!

First Name: Jason
Last Name: F
Email: fedx2402@yahoo.com

Comment: Atheism is the fear of allowing a supreme
being save your soul. God will pass judgement
and every atheist will burn in the lake of
fire with satan!!
Repent and be saved now, may God have mercy on
you.

First Name: TOM
Last Name: TOM
Email: AC690BPILOT@YAHOO.COM

Comment: IF YOU DON'T LIKE GOD IN OUR COUNTRY THEN
LEAVE AND FIND YOURSELF A GODLESS COUNTRY TO
LIVE IN. THERE ARE PLENTY OF THEM OUT THERE.
WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO
REMOVE GOD FROM PUBLIC PLACES? YOU WANT A
FIGHT? WE WILL FIGHT YOU.

First Name: Brad
Last Name: Anderson
Email: nailer_13@yahoo.com

Comment: Hello I was wondering what your beliefs are so
I decided to read a little on your website.I
am probably wasting my time but you should
really read this. You make logical points but
I am a Christian and there IS a GOD, as you
know he sent Jesus here to earth to pay for
what you and I do wrong. I see what you
believe but our belief is based on faith and
you have to have it. Please explain to me if
anyone even reads these messages, how a lady
in our church could be eaten up with cancer,
go through a few treatments and now be cancer
free. Yes the chemo took care of it, I know
that's what you will say and it may have bit
also it may have been GOD. Another work of GOD
was a lady we knew was going to have to have
both legs removed because of plaque build up
in her arteries, both legs now. When the
doctor checked a couple of days later before
surgery, no plaque could be found in the lady
anywhere, it's called faith and I will pray
you will find it and Jesus also. May GOD help
you.

Brad from Geogia

First Name: cheryl
Last Name: Plowden
Email: gab91494@hotmail.com

Comment: I understand you have your "non-beliefs", and
I respect that. What I have a problem with is
the fact that you are trying to take away OUR
GOD just because you do not believe. If you
do not like seeing his name or believe in him,
then don't read anything that contains his
information. By you filing lawsuits about
this that and the other, to have it removed
from this and that, you are violating MY
Constitutional Right as well as my children,
family and friends. Is it going to take
someone filing a suit against your group for
being Unconstitutional by preventing us from
practicing our beliefs and taking our GOD
away. We can all live here together, you
worship yours and we will worship ours.
Again, if you do not like God or believe in
his, just remove yourself from where he is and
do not read items that represent him.

First Name: Chris
Last Name: Kline
Email: ckandco636@msn.com

Comment: If you athiests and non-believers always
insist on getting YOUR way, do we Christians
and believers not have ANY rights????? You
want God taken out of everything--what about
those of us who love and worship God. This is
a free country--worship what you want and we
will worship WHO we want. If you want to
totally obliterate every mention of God, go to
a country where it is punishable to mention
God!!

First Name: william
Last Name: douglas
Email: cadowser77ca@hotmail.com

Comment: attn ed buckner,its a disgrace that you an
your cohorts want to bring this country down.
you have a right to practice your believe but
you have no right to shove it down someone
else throat.this GREAT COUNTRY WAS BUILT BY
GOD HIMSELF AN SOON YOU WILL FAIL IN ALL YOUR
ENDEAVORS AGAINST THE FATHER.THY WILL NOT LET
YOU DEFILE HIM.SO PRACTICE YOUR BELIEF AN
LEAVE THE COUNTRIES BELIEF IN GOD THE FATHER
ARE PROTECTOR ALONE.GOD the father will show
you within this year your mistakes in
defiling his graces an you will finally
believe. WATCH.AN I WISH YOU NO HARM JUST FOR
YOU TO HAVE THE PLANK TAKEN OUT OF YOUR
EYES,SO YOU CAN SEE CLEARLY. GOD BLESS YOU
ALL I PRAY

First Name: kelly
Last Name: cat
Email: ilovecats02@yahoo.com

Comment: We can all have our opinion on whether there
is a God or not. There is a God and His son
will be coming again. This country was
founded by our forefathers with God in mind.
That's how God got on our money, in our Pledge
of Allegiance, and in many other things. The
pilgrims were from England and were
Christians. I will pray for you and all
around the world that God might have mercy on
your souls. He is a loving and forgiving God
that created all that is seen and unseen. God
bless!

First Name: Travis
Last Name: Beaman
Email: tbeaman@live.com

Comment: I am not trying to step on anyones toes I am
just tryin to understand your positions. You
are sueing the KY government to get rid of
the "God's help" out of the Homeland Security
creed or whatever. I am just wondering Why?
What is it hurting? I take no position on the
issue because I could really care less one
way or the other.

I guess the irony is that in the constituion
there is a seperation between church and
state. But the underlying problem is that it
is the state who decides when that sepeation
applies. Sort of an oxymoron I guess.

So in all seriousness (without trying to
patronize or condescend) why do you care if
the word God is in something or not. Or in
the schools. It seems to me that people (who
are atheist) could just teach their children
their values and beliefs and have them ignore
it. At the same time faithful people could be
able to remove the word with no problem. From
what I understand faith is a feeling not a
visual thing.

Either way you look at it one side is forcing
their beliefs on the other. The pro-God side
by trying to keep it in the open therefor
making the atheist confront it. While the
other (atheist side) is forcing the pro-God
side to give up their right to see it. I mean
sometimes concessions need to be made. Who is
really hurt if God is removed from public
buildings? Also who is really hurt if it
stays?

As I said I don't care either way but I would
like a response please because it intrigues
me to no end.

First Name: casey
Last Name: mincer
Email: the_matrix130@yahoo.com

Comment: i really dont know where to start.i must say
that Jesus is real and God is real.why is it
that we need some sort of proof?you will never
know how bold a thing that is to ask of our
lord.i am not a blind zombie for our father
and nor does he want me to be.i truly believe
with all my heart and in truth i dont even
live the way i should but i still
believe.their is no way you can tell me we
came from apes,their is no way i can believe
when we die thats it,their is no way you can
tell me that people who get away with all sort
of horrific crimes dont pay by going to hell.i
pray to God in the name of Jesus that he shows
you he is real so that you as a people will
change your ways b4 it is to late.no man is
worthy of a sign from God so i ask that he
gives you a light slap in the face so brace
yourself.is it so wrong to believe that their
is something out their bigger than you,are the
things God ask of us so awful to you.LEAN NOT
TO THY OWN UNDERSTANDING.i mean no harm i am
just talking.just think about it, man from ape
dont you here God laughing.evolution omg you
must escape your own wisdom if you want to
find God.man from ape wow!!YOU REALLY CANT
HERE gOD LAUGHING.

First Name: Brad
Last Name: Swidzinski
Email: bradandkarenswidzinski@shaw.ca

Comment: Hilarious.

Have you guys ever bothered to even read your
Web site? The contradictions, leaps of logic
and out-right assumptions make this thing a
comedy and not much more.

Keep it up. This is a better defence of
religion than any priest could ever come up
with.

B

First Name: danny
Last Name: Woodruff
Email: dw82nd@yahoo.com

Comment: Leave Ky alone this is a free country you
better read the Constitution take heed To
this warning we don't fear you or you
legislation only God how can you stop God
you will die eventualy and face the fact God
wont wait, stop this before its to late

First Name: dave
Last Name: mccoy
Email: davemccoy@fuse.net

Comment: I would like to thank you for being another
dumb ass group to try and force your views on
everyone else.If you don`t belive in God,thats
fine,your opinion,but why not just keep YOUR
views to yourself.We never had the problems
with our children when religion was spoke of
in schools.How do you know God can`t help
protect this country,you have no proof,so how
can you waste the tax payers money on
something as stupid as this.It is groups like
yours that have,well since you don`t believe
in God,FUCKED MY COUNTRY UP.Why not just teach
your children what you believe in so they have
no spiritual guidance,and leave every other
God fairing family out of your stupid shit.

First Name: gary
Last Name: houston
Email: gary.houston@gmail.com

Comment: Do the words "BRAINLESS IDIOTS" strike a
chord with you fools? I find people of your
ilk to be so beneath contempt and bereft of
common sense to be laughable.

Why can't you leave absolutely
inconsequential things alone? Such as the
Kentucky Homeland law?

I find it despicable that an organization
whose average member's IQ can't exceed 100
points finds it necessary to use the court
system to force it's inane viewpoints on a
populace whose beliefs, for the most part,
stand in direct contravention of your own
pathetic worldview.

Please, why don't you morons find a nice rock
to sequester yourselves beneath?

First Name: H
Last Name: Young
Email: young1hm@yahoo.com

Comment: I just finished reading the news article on
your recent objections in Kentucky for
referencing God as a source of keeping one of
their cities safe.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't our
ancestors take a stand and break free from
England's monarchy for freedom of religion,
among other things? Doesn't that make
freedom of religion part of the main basis for
the U.S.?

Your quest to erase the element of God from
all American society resembles the extreme
muslim terrorist groups who are traveling the
globe attempting to abliterate all are not
muslim from the earth. You are promoting your
work through the legal system but the goals
are not different than theirs.

You are living in a Christian based country. A
country that fought for rights of ALL
religious beliefs, or in your case none.
Wouldn't the world actually be a better place
if everyone, including you, preached
TOLERANCE, tolerance for that which isn't your
own?

I for one, do not share your beliefs BUT I do
not condemn you or make attempts to eliminate
you.

Please help promote peace and tolerance.

First Name: John
Last Name: Williams
Email: johnhwilliams2@verizon.net

Comment: Which god are you trying to get out of
Kentucky? There is NO GOD at this time in
history, but the Creator of all things; the
first created of all things created. And he is
NO GOD at this time, just a creator. The day
has not come when he will be a God to the
earth peoples, and they will be a people to
him. That day has not come yet. So which god
are you trying to get out of Kentucky when
there is no god at this time. You will rot in
the earth as all peoples do, when you die.
What you are doing now is a waste of your
time, and energy. GET A LIFE.

First Name: Jerry
Last Name: Wright
Email: jw0107@yahoo.com

Comment: Folks, I will support to the death your right
to believe, or not to believe, in anything you
want. You can also speak out publicly in
support of your stance on any subject you
like. I'm pretty sick of ANY vocal minority
trying to impose its view of the world on the
rest of the world, though. America has long
considered itself to be a Christian nation;
our founding fathers often referred to God, as
do the documents that formed our very young
nation. We indeed have freedom of religion
here, and that includes the freedom from
religion, but nothing in the Constitution says
our government is forbidden from mentioning
any opinion about the existence of God, or any
gods, or asking for God's help under the
presumption there may be a God. What we are
guaranteed is that our government will not
force a religion on us, or allow only one
favored religion to be practiced. That's it.
Get used to it, and get over it. Specifically,
if the Commonwealth of Kentucky wants to ask
God to help its Homeland Security group do
their jobs, let them. It really doesn't hurt
you at all if they do, and while logic is on
your side, they could still be right. I say
let's accept help from whatever quarter and
pick nits later.

These are only a few.

There are more. There are a lot more.

Join American Atheists. For your own safety’s sake.

The people who wrote these emails can vote and they can sit on juries.

It is okay to be an Atheist.

It is okay not to believe in god.

Get real clear on that.

It is not okay for the government to try to establish a religion.

Be afraid; be very afraid.

What can you do? You can write letters to the paper. You can talk to people.

You can send us money to help protect your rights.

And after you have become very afraid you can refuse to be afraid.

Here is the simple truth: We are right and they are wrong.

Educate when you can and survive when you must.

And join American Atheists. www.atheists.org

You will feel better for it.

You are not alone.

Edwin.

Atheist News from Edwin Kagin

2008-12-02T19:57:00.000-05:00

What Is An ATHEIST?

“ANOTHER THINKING HUMAN ENGAGED IN SEEKING TRUTH” (Edwin Kagin, 2008)

To Unidentified Recipients:

The lawsuit filed today, “American Atheists, et al vs Commonwealth of Kentucky, et al,” can be found here: http://www.atheists.org/upload/aavky.pdf

The media is going into a feeding frenzy. You are encouraged to write letters to Kentucky papers and papers everywhere on this one.

Some have actually suggested that the Atheists are doing this as part of their annual “War on Christmas,” whatever that is.

Stay tuned.

Edwin.

=================================================================================================================================================

Louisville Courier-Journal

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
Law's use of God challenged
Security bill subject of suit
By Peter Smith • psmith@courier-journal.com • December 2, 2008

Ten Kentucky residents and the national American Atheists Inc. are suing to overturn Kentucky legislation "stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth."

The suit says the legislation, passed with little notice in 2006 to create the Kentucky Office ofHomeland Security
, is "grossly, and outrageously, at variance with" with Kentucky and U.S. constitutional bans on government-sponsored religion.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
In addition to seeking to have the legislation overturned, the plaintiffs are seeking financial damages, saying they "suffer anxiety from the belief that the existence of these unconstitutional laws suggest that their very safety as residents of Kentucky may be in the hands of fanatics, traitors, or fools."
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
At issue are two clauses inserted in a floor amendment by state Rep. Tom Riner, D-Louisville, and approved by lawmakers.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
One clause says the "safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God" and cites statements to that effect by Presidents Abraham Lincolnand John F. Kennedy.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
A permanent plaque quoting that text is posted at the state's Emergency Operations Center, as required by the clause.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
The other clause, listing the executive director's duties, begins with a requirement to publicize "the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth."
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
Edwin Kagin -- an attorney in Union, Ky., who also is the national legal director of American Atheists -- said he mailed the lawsuit to Franklin Circuit Court overnight and expects it to be filed today.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
The suit names as defendants the commonwealth, state Attorney General Jack Conway, the stateHomeland Security office and its director, Thomas Preston.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
Riner and spokespeople for Conway and Preston did not immediately return calls about the suit.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
The individual plaintiffs are identified as Michael G. Christerson, James F. Coffman, Lucinda Hedden Coffman, Jan Ewing, Emmett F. Fields, Alex Grigg, Edwin Hensley, Helen Kagin, David Ryan and James K. Willmot. All are U.S. citizens except Kagin, a Canadian who is a permanent resident here.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
"I'm joining in because I think it's the right thing for me to do as an American," said Hensley, an atheist. "One of the most precious gifts of our founding fathers is the freedom of religion."
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
The New Jersey-based American Atheists says it's representing those atheists reluctant to come forward for fear of retaliation.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
The legislation drew little attention until it was spotlighted Friday in an article in the Lexington Herald-Leader.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
Former Gov. Ernie Fletcher gave prominent credit to God in his annual reports, but Gov. Steve Beshear's administration did not do so in its latest annual Homeland Security report.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
"We certainly expect it to be there, of course," Riner, a pastor, told the Herald-Leader.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
Preston said last week he would "not try to supplant almighty God. All I do is try to obey the dictates of the Kentucky General Assembly. I really don't know what their motivation was for this. They obviously felt strongly about it."
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
Riner said last week the language showed "government itself, apart from God, cannot close the security gap."
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
The lawsuit says the Homeland Security office was created in response to -- the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- which it called a "faith-based initiative" -- and that including the religious language discriminates against those who don't believe in a deity.
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
It says the plaintiffs have suffered "somatic discomforts, and mental pain and anguish, from the knowledge that they are made to feel officially excluded from the ranks of citizens who share the belief in a god that is required by the challenged statutes."
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The lawsuit isn't the only source of criticism directed at the law.
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Such laws "raise serious constitutional questions about their validity," said attorney William Sharp of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky.
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The Rev. Paul Simmons of Louisville, chairman of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, urged Beshear and lawmakers to overturn the legislation, saying the Office of Homeland Security "is not in the business of promoting religion" but of "securing all citizens against harm from enemies."
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And Rabbi David Saperstein, national director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, issued a statement saying the law amounts to religious discrimination because the Homeland Security office's director is required to credit "God's power as protector of the state."
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
Reporter Peter Smith can be reached at (502) 582-4469. The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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From reader Jayne:
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In the 1700s, a group of English men, disciples of the French enlightenment, created the USA, never mentioning God in the Constitution. Washington, in his letter to the Jewish community of Newport, RI, did refer to "the Father" in his well wishes, but also affirmed that being a part of the USA "requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support." KY has violated our founder's principles by requiring an acknowledgement of "God" in the work of a government office. If this means the God of Abraham, only Christians, Jews or Muslims may now work at the Office of Homeland Security; citizens who are atheists, agnostics, or members of non-monotheist religions may not. Is the religious faith of KY Christians so weak that they must force others to bow to their sect, instituting government-backed religious coercion found in oppressive states such as Saudi Arabia? How shameful. How un-American.
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From reader Jim:
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Dear Mr. Riner,

Your successful attempt to link our country's fight against terrorism to faith is not only unconstitutional but also fool-hardy. The success of western democracies is due (in part) to the separation of church and state where people are free to practice whatever faith they wish (including no faith) and government plays no role in such practice. Contrary to your suggestion that the citizens of Kentucky must recognize the 'Almighty' as a starting point in fighting terrorism, I suggest that it is extreme belief in God, belief that God is on their side and belief that others must believe as they do that leads people to commit acts of terrorism. How can we condemn the idiots that think they are performing god's will by terrorist acts when we contend that no, it is our god that is the true god and our citizen's must recognize faith as fact? Your faith may indeed be helpful to you, but that does not make it true. Might I suggest you save up your money, travel outside the US a bit, read a few books other than the Bible, and learn about how western democracies (by the way, the west includes Europe) have flourished despite religion, and not because of it.

Regards,

Jim Willmot
Prospect, KY

PS: Please do not put me on a watchlist since it is my right and duty as an American citizen to speak up when injustices occur. I hope you agree that it is my right to dissent. Legislating that all Kentucky citizens must recognize your sky-god is an injustice and must be reversed.

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812020431
The time is near...
So spread the word!

The 2008 AMERICAN ATHEISTS
Winter Solstice Bash & Open House

Friday Dec. 12 - Saturday Dec.13
Featuring
ED BUCKNER * EDDIE TABASH *
MARGARET DOWNEY * EDWIN &
HELEN KAGIN * DAVE SILVERMAN
* WOODY KAPLAN * FRANK ZINDLER
AND MORE!

Imagine an entire weekend when you can visit New York City, get together with fellow Atheists and other nonbelievers, see the largest private archive of Atheist/Freethought books, and stay in a magnificent hotel convenient to these sites and activities -- and more! That's what we've got for you at the 2008 Winter Solstice Bash weekend!

* On Friday, Dec. 12, tour the American Atheist Center and the Charles E. Stevens American Atheist Library & Archives. This Open House event runs from 1:00 PM to 8:00 PM with a special ribbon cutting event at 1:30 to dedicate the new Eddie Tabash Conference and Media Studio. Complimentary treats, beverages and more, with an opportunity to meet Eddie Tabash and the new President of American Atheists, Ed Buckner! The Center is located at 225 Cristiani St. in Cranford, NJ 07016, and is convenient to the Garden State Parkway and the host Crowne Plaza Hotel. Visit Mapquest for directions.

* Saturday, Dec. 13, join us at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in nearby Clark, NJ for the annual Winter Solstice Gala featuring a lavish lunch buffet, open cash bar, talks and much more, hosted by AA Communications Director Dave Silverman. The fun begins at 11:30 AM. You can still sign up by visiting http://www.atheists.org/wintersolstice.html .

* See New York City and regional attractions thanks to a special rate of only $109 plus tax at the Crowne Plaza. This special rate is in effect from Thursday through Tuesday. You must make your reservations directly with the hotel, by calling 732-574-0100; and be sure to mention that you are with the American Atheists celebration.

* After the Winter Solstice Bash, join us at the American Atheist Center in nearby Cranford for a live taping of The Atheist Viewpoint television show, and more tours of the Eddie Tabash Conference and Media Studio and CESAALA.

THE TIME IS NEAR -- SO BE SURE TO JOIN US DEC. 12-13
FOR THE 2008 AMERICAN ATHEISTS WINTER SOLSTICE BASH
AND OPEN HOUSE!
http://www.atheists.org/wintersolstice.html

AMERICAN ATHEISTS -- 225 Cristiani St. -- Cranford, NJ 07016
908-276-7300
(American Atheists is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

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http://www.atheists.org/wintersolstice.html
From Blair Scott, American Atheists Affiliate Outreach Director
http://www.atheists.org/wintersolstice.html
Subject: New American Atheists Affiliates
http://www.atheists.org/wintersolstice.html
Hello American Atheists!
http://www.atheists.org/wintersolstice.html
I am incredibly proud to announce a lot of new Affiliates to the Affiliate program! I will be making these announcements from now on as new Affiliates join. Please take the time if it so pleases you to contact them and welcome them to the Affiliate program. American Atheists continues to be proud of the Affiliate program and the individual Affiliates that make the program work!
http://www.atheists.org/wintersolstice.html
Also new is the clickable Affiliates Map on the NAOD Web Page. Members and Affiliates have asked me to make finding a local Affiliate easier and complained about scrolling down a long list of states and names, so we've upgrade the Web Page to a clickable map. You can check out the new page at http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://atheists.org%2Faffiliation. To go directly to the new clickable map please go to http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://alabamaatheist.org%2Fnaod%2Faffiliates.html.
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://alabamaatheist.org%2Fnaod%2Faffiliates.html
As always, my door is open and please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, comments, or concerns via any of the methods below.
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://alabamaatheist.org%2Fnaod%2Faffiliates.html
New Affiliates (in alphabetical order):
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://alabamaatheist.org%2Fnaod%2Faffiliates.html
Atheists for Human Rights (national group): http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://atheistsforhumanrights.org%2C communications@atheistsforhumanrights.org
Atheists United for a Rational America (national group): http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://rationalamerica.com%2C rationality.rules@gmail.com Kansas Freethought Society (Kansas City, KS): http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://atheists.meetup.com%2F642%2C dfpeters01@gmail.com Las Vegas Freethought Society (Las Vegas, NV): http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://lvfs.org%2C lasvegasfreethought@gmail.com Memphis Freethought Society (Memphis, TN): http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://memphisfreethought.com%2C memphisfreethought@yahoo.com Miami County Kansas Freethinkers Meetup (Kansas City, KS): http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://atheists.meetup.com%2F733%2C dfpeters01@gmail.com Mid-South Humanist Society (Southaven, MS): http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://midsouth-humanist-society.org
Nashville Secular Life (Nashville, TN): http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://atheists.meetup.com%2F699
Northeast Pennsylvania Freethought Society (Scranton, PA): http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://atheists.meetup.com%2F622%2C alrgc@yahoo.com Rational Response Squad at George Mason University (Fairfax, VA): http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.myspace.com%2Frrs%40gmu%2C gmu@secularstudents.org Rhode Island Atheist Society (Providence, RI): http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://riatheist.com%2C info@riatheist.com Science Club of Long Island (Huntington, NY): http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://sciencecluboflongisland.com%2C presidentscienceclubofli@verizon.net
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://sciencecluboflongisland.com%2C
--
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://sciencecluboflongisland.com%2C
In reason,
Blair Scott
National Affiliate Outreach Director, American Atheists Alabama State Director, American Atheists
Online: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://atheists.org%2Fal and http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://alabamaatheist.org%2Fnaod
Email: bscott@atheists.org or alabamaatheist@gmail.com Pri Phone: (256) 701-6265 Sec Phone: (256) 503-1123
Postal: PO Box 41, Ryland, AL 35767-2000
MySpace: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://myspace.com%2Falabamaatheist
YouTube: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://youtube.com%2Fblairscott
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://youtube.com%2Fblairscott
American Atheists is a nationwide movement which defends the civil rights of nonbelievers, works for the separation of church and state, and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy. American Atheists, Inc. PO Box 158, Cranford, NJ 07016, Tel: (908) 276-7300 Fax: (908) 276-7402
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://youtube.com%2Fblairscott
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http://nky.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20081202/NEWS01/812020317

Kentucky Enquirer, December 2,2008
Creation Museum deal ends
Co-promotion of events produces uproar
By Dan Horn • dhorn@enquirer.com • December 2, 2008
The Cincinnati Zoo and the Creation Museum launched a joint promotional deal last week to draw attention to their holiday attractions.
It worked, but not the way zoo and museum officials had hoped.
The zoo pulled out of the deal Monday after receiving dozens of angry calls and e-mails about the partnership, which offered reduced prices to anyone who bought tickets to the zoo's Festival of Lights and the museum's Christmas celebration, Bethlehem's Blessing.
Most of the protests echoed the same theme: The Creation Museum promotes a religious point of view that conflicts with the zoo's scientific mission.
Some complained that the zoo, which receives public support through a tax levy, should not become involved with a private museum dedicated to the teachings of the Bible's Book of Genesis. Others said a scientific institution shouldn't link itself to a place that argues man once lived side by side with dinosaurs.
"They seem like diametrically opposed institutions," said Dr. James Leach, a Cincinnati radiologist who e-mailed zoo officials about his concerns. "The Cincinnati Zoo is one of this city's treasures. The Creation Museum is an international laughingstock."
Zoo officials said they considered the promotion - dubbed "Two Great Attractions, One Great Deal" - a marketing deal no different than cross-promotions they do with the Cincinnati Reds and other institutions.
Instead, they found themselves mired in a heated debate between creationists and evolutionists over the origins of mankind. Thanks to the Internet, the opposition needed only a few days to organize a worldwide e-mail campaign and to set up a zoo boycott through blogs and a Facebook page.
"It's not about us endorsing them or them endorsing us," Chad Yelton, a zoo spokesman, said. "That wasn't the intention of anything we were doing."
The Creation Museum's founder, Ken Ham, said the Petersburg museum and the zoo spent months preparing the cross-promotion package.
He said the zoo's decision to cut ties after two days was disappointing and a missed opportunity to boost regional tourism.
Ham said he was "personally saddened" by the negative response.
"It's a pity that intolerant people have pushed for our expulsion simply because of our Christian faith," Ham said in a statement. "Some of their comments ... reveal great intolerance for anything having to do with Christianity."
The museum, which opened in May 2007, has been praised by supporters as a bulwark against evolutionary teachings. It also has been ridiculed by critics who say its displays, including a triceratops with a saddle on its back, are based on pseudoscience.
The ticket deal first appeared on Web sites for both institutions Friday, offering a price of $25.95 for one ticket to both the Festival of Lights and Bethlehem's Blessing, which features a live Nativity scene and a recreation of the streets of Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.
But Yelton said the uproar became such a distraction by Monday morning that zoo officials decided to pull it from the Web site.
No package deals had been sold, so no refunds will be necessary.
"When we partner with the Reds, we don't get these kinds of e-mails," Yelton said. "It's pretty clear this is more of a distraction."
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