ERIC

Spring, 1998

ATHEIST

AJoumal of Atheist News and Thought

$5.95

H. G. Wells,Atheist: The Battle for The War of the Worlds Titanic:

Remembered, Forgotten That Colossal Wreck: Zacharias' A Shattered
Visage Blind Faith II Altar Boy Chronicles The Book of Vernon

American Atheists I
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lnIerican Itheist
A Journal of Atheist News and Thought

AMERICAN ATHEIST
Editor's Desk
Frank R. Zindler

H. G. Wells, Atheist: The Battle

For The War Of The Worlds
4
Matthew Bin
How an Atheist book became
religious propaganda on the
movie screen.
In her cover design, Ontario artist
Dubravka
Lisak recreates
a
poster design for the movie version
of H. G. Wells' The War Of The
Worlds.

Titanic: Remembered,
Forgotten
9
Conrad F. Goeringer
The religious and social
repercussions of the demise of
the "ship not even God could
sink."
Irish, Nazis, Threes, and Me
Tony Pasquarello
Another installment from
The Altar Boy Chronicles.

18

Blind Faith, Part II

26
Frank R. Zindler
A leaflet pushed by Christian
college professors who confuse
students for Christ is exposed
as the product of deception and
error.

Volume 36, No.2

Austin, Texas

The Book of Vernon

39
Jackie Johnson
The Director of the Male Bovine
Feces Institute in Cowpaddy,
Kansas, delivers a revelation
regarding the Vernon who
became David Koresh.
Separation of Church and
State: A rebuttal
43
Wayne Aiken
The American Atheists Director
for North Carolina debunks
bogus sayings of the Founding
Fathers, created by ChristianNation revisionists to attack
the ''Wall of Separation," that
were trotted out when the
Charlotte City Council heard
testimony on a proposal to display the Ten Commandments.
Letters to the Editor

49

Book Review
33
Atheist philosopher Doug
Krueger subjects Ravi
Zacharias' A Shattered Visage:
The Real Face of Atheism to a
withering critique.
Summer 1997

Page 1

American Atheist
Volume 36 Number

EDITOR / MANAGING EDITOR

Frank R. Zindler
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Ann E. Zindler
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Conrad F. Goeringer
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Page 2

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American Atheist

Editor's Desk

Judreo-Christiani ty:
Reality-Challenged Religion
udeeo-Christianity, America's
established
religion,
once
again is being attacked by
reality - on both sides of its hyphen.
Unfortunately, the Higher Superstition is so removed from reality that
it may not even notice that there is
a problem. As usual, we Atheists are
probably the only ones aware of the
absurd condition into which the
credulous have been thrust by the
material world.

On the Judreo side of the

hyphen:
The Associated Press reported
from Jerusalem on 17 January 1998
that Melody, thought to have been
the first "red heifer" born on sacred
soil in two millennia, is not going to
be the harbinger either of the
Jewish Messiah or of the restoration
of Solomon's temple on Jerusalem's
Temple Mount (in a spot now occupied by an important mosque).
Truth to tell, it seems that Rabbi
Shmaria Shore (the cow's owner)
discovered some white hairs growing on the heifer's tail. Oi weh! The
white hairs can't, of course, be simply signs of old age since a heifer, by
definition, is a virgin cow and cows
don't usually stay virgins into old
age. (Of course, Ultra-Orthodox
Jews might find some reason to
keep such a cow unmarried until
some auspicious but late occasion
when the bovina inviolata would be
burned to produce the ashes needed
for purification of Jews prior to their
entry into the Jerusalem Temple.)
However this may be, it appears
that even a few white hairs are
enough to spoil the Heap-Big
Medicine of an incinerated red
heifer.

Frank R. Zindler
Austin, Texas

Whether or not the white hairs

of an old dowager cow would also
trash the ashes is a question UltraOrthodox theologians need urgently
to consider. Just where does the
magic reside? Does the purification
ash need to be the residue of
melanin pigments themselves? Or
would oxidized residues of genes
coding for the production of the pigments be equally magical? Since
neither the pure pigments nor their
genes contain any elements capable
of producing ash anyway, why insist
that the heifer have qualities that
don't affect the ashes she can produce?
On the Christian side of the
hyphen:
Right-to-Single-Celled-Lifers,
the pope, and religiously backward
people all over the globe maintain
that a fertilized egg, or zygote, is a
unique person - replete with a soul
and the potential for taking a trip
either to heaven or hell (or perhaps
to limbo, if the single-celled person
happens to be Roman Catholic).
There are some surprising consequences of that belief, however.
What happens when a fertilized egg
(supposedly containing a single
soul) splits into two separate cells,
each of which becomes a separate
fetus? Do we have one person and
one soulless zombie? And what of
identical quintuplets (five babies
from one egg)? Fillet of soul?
But there's a bigger problem. It
is possible to take two fertilized eggs
- each supposedly replete with a
soul - and fuse them into a single
composite organism. We can thus
produce a baby with four parents.
Even though it is only one person, it
must have two souls if the religion-

Spring 1998

ists are correct! This is now a reality. Doctors in Scotland have just
reported the birth of a human child
which is a "chimera," the result of
fusion of two separate zygotes produced by in vitro fertilization.
Although the doctors did not fuse
the zygotes in the test tube, the
fusion appears to have occurred
after they were implanted in the
uterus of the woman who later bore
the child. That the child is indeed a
chimera is proved by the fact that it
is a genuine hermaphrodite, being
both male and female simultaneously. About half of its cells have two X
chromosomes and are genetically
female. The other half of the cells
have one X and one Y chromosome
and are thus male. Clearly, the child
(which in general looks like a male)
is the result of fusion of a male
zygote with a female zygote.
Theologically, this child must be
a living nightmare for religionists
who believe in the existence of that
ectoplasmic entity called the soul.
Does it have two souls? Will it have
to be baptized twice - once for each
soul? And what shall be done when
the child grows up to become a sexually active being? If it behaves like
a male, will its XX cells be guilty of
sin when the body of which they are
a part has intercourse with a
female? If it behaves like a female,
will the XY cells be sinning if it has
sex with a male? And what about
the resurrection? Will the sinning
50% of the body go to hell? Will only
half a body go to heaven? Or will the
entire chimera go to hell by reason
of its very existence being "unnatural"? Inquiring minds want to know!

Page 3

H. G. WELLS, ATHEIST:
THE BATTLE FOR
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS
Matthew Bin

The Wells You Didn't Know

s is the case with many
English novelists, H. G.
Wells' reputation in England
is highly different from that in
North America. The situation is
similar with George Orwell: his
canonical works in Britain are not
Nineteen Eighty-Four
or Animal
Farm, but Homage to Catalonia and
The Road to Wigan Pier. Numerous
reasons for this difference might be
suggested; in Orwell's case they
might be political, as England has
traditionally been less hostile to
socialism than the United States.
Wells' case is somewhat different, for his reputation in the United
States has depended on very different qualities. Wells' novels that
endure in Britain as his finest
works include Love
and
Mr
Lewisham (1900), Kipps (1905), and
Tono-Bungay
(1909), all nearly
unknown west of the Atlantic. The
novel whose publication caused the
greatest sensation is Ann Thronica
(1910), which is today ignored in the
US.
Judging merely by the fact that
American film adaptations of them

Matthew Bin is a Canadian

Atheist living in Southern
Ontario. When not writing
articles such as this, he is a
technical writer employed in
the creation of instruction
manuals for computer software.
Page 4

have been produced, Wells' most

popular novels in the US are The
Time Machine (1895, filmed in 1960,
television version produced in
1978); The Island of Dr Moreau
(1896, filmed in 1977 and 1996); The
Invisible Man (1897, filmed in 1933
and 1975); and The War of the
Worlds (1898, filmed in 1953). The
qualities which distinguish these
from Wells' other novels are those
which make them science fictions (a
term which had not yet been coined
when Wells wrote them). Wells is
now known primarily as one of the
fathers of modern science fiction.
The American concentration on
this aspect of Wells' work is almost
total. One hears and reads mainly of
Wells' ability to weave a gripping
and entertaining tale; his interest in
and response to the scientific
advances of his day, such as
Roentgen's discovery of X-rays and
Schiaparelli's observation of canali
("channels") on Mars; his so-called
prophecies of lasers, space travel,
mechanized warfare,
industrial
robots, and so on. However, this
very common response to Wells'
work is superficial, and has led to a
fundamental misunderstanding of
Wells. Furthermore, it obscures the
goals which Wells was trying to
achieve through his fiction.
Perhaps
the greatest
blow
against the understanding of Wells'
aims has been struck by the film
adaptations of his novels. The War
of the Worlds is probably the most
enduring of them; it is hailed as a
classic of the science fiction film
Spring 1998

genre, and it set new standards for

special effects quality. It is also
praised as a faithful and intelligent
adaptation of the novel, though, and
it is neither. Insofar as the film follows the basic plot of the novel, it is
successful; however, the deeper sentiments expressed by the film are
not only opposite to Wells' own
ideas, but are exactly the ideas
Wells was criticizing in his novel.
This perversion of Wells' novel, furthermore, seems to have become the
accepted version of The War of the
Worlds today.
Although Wells was not working
in a mode which one would call
strictly allegorical, his novels were
no mere speculative fantasies, any
more than Moby Dick was a mere
study of nineteenth-century whaling. Rather, Wells' novels are an
expression of his personal philosophy, and the response of that philosophy to the problems of his own society. To concentrate solely on the
superficial, fantastic elements of
Wells' fiction is to distort and dehumanize Wells' highly humanistic
way of thinking.
Herbert George Wells,
Humanist (1866-1946)
Many North Americans would, I
think, be surprised by the depth and
extent of Wells' Atheism, given his
current
media
representation.
Atheism was something of an intellectual fashion among the English
intelligentsia at the turn of the century, a response to the stifling and
oppressive influence of nineteenthAmerican Atheist

century Methodism and to the stiff

values and morals of the waning
Victorian society. The Atheism of
Wells, as much as that of his contemporaries Arnold Bennett and E.
M. Forster, might be characterized
as such a reaction.
This is not; however, to trivialize
these writers' convictions. Whatever
our present assessment of their society, these Atheists saw their views
as individually conceived and independently held. Wells' own
explanation of the source of his
beliefs is strikingly personal:

his writing for ways to improve the

human condition, either by warning
society of its self-destructive tendencies (The Time Machine) or by suggesting ways of reforming that society to allow for greater human
development (Tono-Bungay ). His
hypothesis is that human society is
encountering problems which must
be solved, lest humanity
be
destroyed. His experimental data
are his realistic novels dealing with

I was a precocious reader by

seven; and in an old number of
Chambers' Journal I read an
account of a poor creature __,...", ."..............
broken on the wheeL I went to bed
and had a frightful nightmare in
which my mind took a rational
leap. I jumped all the intermediaries in the business. I dreamt it
was God Almighty himself who
was breaking that man on the
wheeL Because that followed logically on its happening at all. The
Almighty was responsible for the
whole world; the evil in it, there- .~.'
fore, just as much as the good..
That dream was a perfect resolution of my distresses. I knew He,
that awful He, was impossible, I
was left to struggle with a vast
number of minor philosophical
issues, but I believed in God
Almighty no more. (Quoted in
Foot, p. 7)

Whether or not this narrative is colored somewhat by the benevolent

gaze of a much older Wells, it does
reveal a predominantly rational and
compassionate mind.
Wells was also vocal in his
attacks on English religious institutions. His best non-fiction work, the
monumental Outline of History, is in
many ways a history of the various
outrages that Christianity has perpetrated through the ages; indeed, a
friend of Wells, writer and critic
Hillaire Belloc, broke bitterly with
Wells over the antitheistic tone of
the Outline (Foot, p. 210).
However, Wells stands as an
extremely
moral
example
of
Atheism. He continually searches in
Austin, Texas

human situations; his conclusion is

that, if it is to survive, humanity
must develop its human tools - science and reason - to better deal
with societal problems.
Furthermore, theists recognized
Wells' morally conscientious Atheism, and G. K. Chesterton, a Catholic writer, remained close to Wells
despite Wells' criticisms. Wells once
wrote to Chesterton that, if his
Atheism turned out to be wrong, he
could still pass into Heaven as
Chesterton's
friend. Chesterton
replied, "As to the fine point of theologyyou mention. If! turn out to be
right, you will triumph, not by being
a friend of mine, but a friend of
Man, for having done a thousand
things for men like me in every way,
Spring 1998

from imagination
to criticism"
(Dickson, p. 131). Such praise does
tribute to both men's ability to see
morality as something separate
from theistic issues.
It is worth noting here, I think,
that Wells has been persistently
painted - or perhaps a better
metaphor would be tarred - as
racist and anti-Semitic. A recent
book by Canadian critic Michael
Coren, The Invisible Man (1992), is
the latest reassertion of this
position. The racism of Wells is
an utter fabrication made possible only through extremely
selective quotation. Wells wrote
of the Nazi racial theories, for
example, as the ramblings of a
'.thirteen-year-old mind, and of
.N azi Germany, then, as "a whole
.generation of Germans [that]
/. has failed to grow up," and on
what was called the "Jewish
Question" in inter-war Europe,
Wells repeatedly stated that it
was "a question that ought not
to exist" (Experiment in Autobiography, p. 75). The basis of
Wells' opinion was not that the
plight
of the
persecuted
European Jews ought to be
ignored, but that the very idea of
race was nonsensical. But I
think that the following quotation adequately closes the question of Wells' "racist tendencies":
Man interbreeds with all his varieties, and yet deludes himself that
there are races of outstanding purity, the 'Nordic', the 'Semitic' and so
forth. These are phantoms of the
imagination. The reality is more
intricate, less dramatic, and grips
less easily on the mind: the phantoms grip only too well and can
incite to terrible oppression. (The
Open Conspiracy)

Wells'The War of the Worlds

Wells'The War of the Worlds was
written to express Wells' concern for
the human race. The book is, superficially, a story of a Martian attempt
to take over and colonize Earth, as
Mars has become too cold and barren to sustain its inhabitants. It is
Page 5

told by another nameless narrator,

and can be understood as a metaphor for the impact of mechanization on modern society. Through the
aliens' attack, Wells conducts a
detailed critique of human institutions' inability to deal with the modern problem of mechanization. The
church, the military, political movements, and even the community are
examined as the Martians/mechanization march across the countryside.
The Martians first-land near the
town in which the narrator lives; he
is one of the few to see the Martians
when they come out of their space~~:s~!~!inc;~:!~~y::~y

~~e~a~~~

ing reasonably to him, the curate's

weakness only becomes more apparent.

primitive relationships of selfishness and self-reliance. Wells recognizes a morality that is not very different from that perceived by Karl
. t h e same cent ury.
Marx ear Iier m
Yet Wells' criticism cuts deeper
than merely predicting doom for
some social institutions. He is devastating in his broad critiques of
existing social institutions. Wells'
most prominent target is the
church. The narrator, burned badly
in a Martian attack, begins to travel
.
with a curate (a mmor
cI
enc in th e
Anglican church). Almost t h e fiirs t
words the curate utters set the tone
for their entire relationship:
He

spok1f"'ahiuptl~

1 began to explain my viewof our

position.He listened at first, but as
1 went on the interest dawning in
his eyes gave place to their former
stare, and his regard wandered
fromme.
"This must be the beginning of
the end," he said, interrupting me.
"The end! The great and terrible
day of the Lord! When men shall
call upon the mountains and the
rocks
fall them
upon from
themthe
andface
hide
them _tohide
of

Himthat sitteth on the throne!"(pp.

217-18)

lOOking;~::~~~afe;siiia)ji~ity

to see the

,~;~~~~~~~7f:~~
:t~~:f~~l;r!~

~a~r:eYle:Igt~h~e!r~sct~:o~r~nfucE~I~O~f)t:hie~~Ms~:ar}:t:I:ant~rs~

./< _..

_..

.'

kil.led,for"How can God's ministers

~f~i~1;jrij~';:i'it~~::""~~:;~
however, ~d-thE:)irhEl..a~SraYfi,rst .wailqpgthrq1Jghtfie roads to clear
used, a sta:rtliI),gchaI):ge~omesover}..:.:J:ri:ykrainfor the afternoon, and
the narl'ator./When.h~iea1izesthat.
the"il- fire, earthquake, norrahlAll
the M~rti~nsi~ten<l_._tohiir~
~~;~~r~o~~~o::,d a~o:.~rr:o~k _
humans, he ~.iTarigest;leave town,
What are these Martians?"
and deliver his wife to safety further
"Whatare we?"] answered,clearnorth. To do so, though, he must
ing my throat.
gain transport, so he goes to the
He grippedhis knees and turned
local pub to rent the landlord's cart
to look at me again. For half a
and horse. The landlord, who is
minute, perhaps, he stared silently.
ignorant of the violence and terror
"I was walkingthrough the roads
h
to clear my brain," he said. "And
occurring not far away, asks t e
suddenly_ fire, earthquake, death!"
narrator why he is in such a hurry,
He relapsedinto silence,with his
and the narrator tells a bald-faced
chin now sunken almost to his
lie in order to secure his passage.
knees.
This criticism of community valPresently he began waving his
ues is devastating. The narrator is
hand.
willing to take advantage of the
"All the work - all the Sundaylandlord to save himself and his
schools - What have we done family; the Martians' coming has
what has Weybridgedone? Everyh
thing gone - everythingdestroyed.
torn apart the relationships t at
The church!Werebuilt it onlythree
hold the small village together, and
years ago.Gone!_ sweptout ofexisleaves an every-man-for-himself
tence!Why?"(pp. 215-16)
attitude in their wake. On the
metaphoric level, however, this can
The narrator rather generously
be seen as an example of the dehubegins to suspect that the shock has
manizing effect of mechanization.
severely rattled the curate's nerves.
Old friendships fall by the wayside
However, when he attempts to help
and communities disintegrate into
the curate regain his senses by talkPage 6

Spring 1998

civilization. Unlike the narrator, the

curate will not work to solve immediate problems, and remains stuck
in the irretrievable past; his only
tools for dealing with the present
are a fatalistic fear of a wrathful
god, and a superficially impressive
rhetoric (note his repetition of his
phrase "fire, earthquake, death!" in
the first passage).
Not only is the church an annoy-

ing and useless hindrance, but it is

also an actual threat to humanity's
survival, if Wells' metaphor is extended to its conclusion. The narrator and the curate are imprisoned in
a house which they are ransacking
for food when one of the Martian
cylinders crashes beside it, cutting
them off from any escape. As their
food supply is extremely limited, the
narrator carefully rations it to last a
month, but the curate is unable to
keep himself from eating and drinking. The narrator is forced to continually watch the irrational
and
increasingly childish curate. The
end comes when the curate begins
raving, yelling theistic phrases at
AmericanAtheist

the Martians working nearby. The

narrator smashes him on the head
with a bottle, knocking him out, and
hides when he realizes the Martians
are going to investigate the noise.
They do probe the house with their
tentacles, and take away the
curate's unconscious body.Later, the
narrator regrets his actions, for he
has in effect murdered the curate.
However, the sympathies of the
reader are definitely on the side of
the narrator. .
If one accepts the character of
the curate as a symbol for the institution of the church, then what
emerges is a concept of the church
as an institution useless and powerless - if not actually harmful - in
the face of modern human challenges. Whereas the narrator tries
to look at the situation frankly and
from there to work out a possible
solution to it, the curate supplies
outmoded language and useless
rhetoric. In fact, the one comfort
that one might expect the curate to
supply - hope - is totally missing,
and only the narrator looks to the
future. This is surely an extension of
Wells' own Atheistic thinking.
Other institutions
also fall
under Wells' withering gaze. The
grand plans - yet general inactivity
- of the current English Communist
movement, for example, is caricatured in the Artilleryman, despite
Wells' own sympathy for socialism.
However, no institution is as consistently and powerfully criticized as
the church. This point is well worth
noting when one turns to the gross
misrepresentation of The War of the
Worlds in the 1953 film.
An Inadequate Successor
It is really a shame that such a
bad movie was made from such a
good novel.
The novel's deep concerns about
humanity's ability to cope with the
challenges presented by developing
technologies are ignored completely.
The role of science in today's society
is given a nod in the character of
Clayton Forrester, played by Gene
Austin, Texas

Kelly; he is a research physicist who

seems to enjoy greater celebrity
than Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins,
and Stephen Hawking combined:
everyone from U.S. Army generals
to ministers' nieces are aware of his
work, and full of admiration. Unlike
Wells' narrator, however, Dr. Forrester is fully confident in science's
ability to cope with the alien invasion.
Furthermore, it is not science
that saves earth in the end, but a
god. Religion plays an entirely different role in the film from that in
the novel. The important elements
of the narrative that contribute to
the attack on religion - the character of the curate, for example, and
the implications of the ending - are
quite different from their counterparts in the novel. The film strikes
the greatest blow against Wells'
original ideas through its handling
of the religious aspect of the narrative.
Wells' open attack on the church
is undermined completely in the
film's use ofthe minister. Unlike the
raving lunatic of the curate, the
minister is calm and serene. His
dramatic significance is more to
establish the aliens as heartless,
evil - one might even add, Atheist beings. The minister takes it upon
himself to try to talk some sense
into the aliens, despite the much
more sensible protests of those
around him. He is vaporized as he
marches towards the alien crash
site, chanting the Twenty-Third
Psalm. His end is heroic, and Dr.
Forrester and his girl friend discuss
how much they liked and respected
him - a rather amusing reversal of
Wells' narrator's self-examination
and self-justification when he murders the hated curate.
The reversal in the film's end,
though, is far greater, quite worthy
of a Disney adaptation. Dr. Forrester finds himself in San Francisco as the aliens rain destruction
down on the city. He ducks into a
church for safety, and a curious
change in mood occurs. Whereas
Spring 1998

outside the scene was chaotic and

violent, inside the church all is
unnaturally quiet, still, serene candles flicker, a hymn floats
through the air, we can almost smell
the incense. And then a crash.
Outside, an alien ship has run
aground, right outside the church of
all places. Here a close comparison
with the novel is especially revealing. As the narrator in the novel discovers that the Martians have all
suddenly and mysteriously died, the
strain under which he has lived for
the past few weeks finally causes
him to lapse into a four-day-long fit
of incomprehensible raving. He
praises god for destroying the
invaders and sparing humanity
until he is nursed back to health.
Significantly, though, the novel
does not end there. The novel ends
with a long discussion of what actually happened to the Martians, of
the extent and nature of the damage
they inflicted, and the aftermath of
the attack. Most importantly, however, the narrator discusses the
measures that humanity is prepared to take to prevent the next
Martian invasion.
No god is ever mentioned. The
narrator advocates humans' developing their ideas and innovations
for dealing with the Martian threat
that they now know to exist. Our
success is temporary, the narrator
emphasizes; we must think, advance, improve ourselves.
The resolution in the film could
hardly be further from Wells' original intent. We left our heroes examining the crashed alien. They proclaim the Martians' defeat a miracle, and indeed in the context of the
film it is one. The causal relationship between prayer and human salvation is clear: it is established by
the spatial and temporal proximity
of the church scene and the Martian
crash. Furthermore, there is no epilogue to put the narrative into a
wider context. God has unquestionably destroyed the aliens and saved
his people: let us rejoice.

Page 7

The War for Wells, and the

Cost of Defeat
The issue at hand is not merely
that the film is inaccurate; it is that
the film's misrepresentation of Wells'
message effectively negates it, transforming it into a simplistic, trivial
version that is passive where Wells'
is dynamic, and reassuring where
Wells'is unsettling.
Wells was deeply concerned
about the human race's ability to
deal with the new powers it has
acquired late in its :history. The
increasing drive for mechanization
in human ventures
has given
humanity the power to harm Itself to
a degree never before possible, or
even imaginable. However, Wells
doubts whether this power has developed with the complementary moral
and intellectual ability necessary for
its safe use. In fact, the new mechanization was even more problematic,
for it distanced the human cause
from its dangerous effects with a
metal barrier, allowing humanity to
commit ever greater crimes against
itself.
Wells' fears, unfortunately, were
not long in being realized. The technological advances of the early twentieth century had so far outstripped
military tactics that war became
incomprehensible, horrifying, and
dehumanizing; yet the world powers
dealt with one another in the traditional way, which included warfare
as a valid and even useful tool for
settling political differences. The
result was that millions of people
were drowned and blown to pieces in
the waters of the Atlantic and the
slimy mud of Belgium and France,
not to mention killed on battlefields
in Italy, Austria, Germany, Russia,
Asia Minor, and the Middle East,
between 1914 and 1918. The changes
in warfare were not accompanied by
a change in attitude: war was still
viewed as an honorable and even glorious pursuit. The changes in attitude Wells hoped to stimulate have
begun to occur in these dying years
of the century, when war is often, if
not generally, viewed with fear and
trepidation. However, these changes
have not been earned by humans'
Page 8

intellectual application, as Wells

hoped: they have been bought with
the unimaginable millions of lives
lost in the numerous conflicts of the
twentieth century.
The film The War of the Worlds
ends with a message of complacency.
Don't worry, it says; we have been
chosen, and cannot fail. Wells' position is decidedly less reassuring: the
worst can, and very likely will, happen; we must work hard if we are not
to destroy ourselves, for our grip on
this insignificant bit of dust is tenuous at best. It is ironic that the attitude against which Wells fought is
precisely that embodied in the 1953
film. The popularity of the film,
though, has reduced the original
novel to relative obscurity. The
intense social critique and deep symbolism with which Wells infused the
novel are all but forgotten, for on this
continent Wells' other literature is
all but forgotten.
It is a shame that such a bad film
was made from such a good novel.
But it is also troubling. To a pessimist, it might indicate that our
society is either unwilling or unable
to change itself. Indeed, it reveals a
childish refusal to believe that
change is necessary, or even possible.
This sort of thinking - or rather, lack
The

of thinking - is precisely the kind

that brought about the Great War,
and brought about the Bomb.
As part of a society that is more
and more driven by mechanization
and technology, we cannot afford to
ignore Wells' original message. We
have been warned by a man whose
compassion for all humanity was
matched only by his concern for its
survival. We must look at ourselves,
examine carefully what we are and
what we do; we must unflinchingly
consider the suitability of our institutions for dealing with the great
problems we face; and above all, we
must look to one another to find useful answers. We must look to one
another, for the answers, and indeed
the problems, are, as they have
always been: not in out stars, but in
our selves.
References
Coren, Michael. H. G. Wells: The Invisible
Man.
Dickson, Lovat. H. G. Wells: His Turbulent
Life and TImes. London: Macmillan, 1971.
Foot, Michael. H. G.: The History of Mr.
Wells. Washington: Counterpoint, 1995.
Wells, H. G. The Open Conspiracy: Blue
Prints for a World Revolution.
Revised
Edition. London: Hogarth, 1930.
-. The Outline of History. Third Edition.
New York, 1921.

United

States

government

has,

from

time to time, felt a need to save us from

ourselves. Therefore, it once prohibited the
books of Avro Manhattan and one of H. G.
Wells' most important works from importation into this country.
It refused a visa to
Bertrand

Russell,

who had been

teach

in New

York,

and

it did

while,

permit

John

Allegro's

invited
not,

The

to

for a
Sacred

Mushroom and The Cross into this country.

Crux Ansata, H. G. Wells' powerful attack
on the Roman Catholic
that

church

deserves

Church (and how well

the

criticism!)

was

one of the books forbidden

into this country. Which is exactly why American Atheist
Press has reprinted it. With 160 pages, in
23 chapters,

including

an appendix

tells of the difficulty

H. G. Wells
this book, it sells for $8.00.

Crux Ansata
#5512
Spring 1998

which

had with

ISBN 0-911826-21-1
$8.00
American Atheist

TITANIC:
REMEMBERED, FORGOTTEN
Much has been written about the
liner Titanic and the events of
April, 1912. The sinking was
rightly called, "the end of an
era." It was also an event which
prompted an outpouring of sentiment, religious musing, and a
painful
re-evaluation
of the
social climate in early twentiethcentury America.

hen James Cameron's epic

film TITANIC
was released in December of
1997, its impressive success at the
box-office testified to the enduring
quality which that mighty
ship and its calamitous
fate have exercised on
the human imagination. Over eight decades separate us
from the time from
when the giant ocean
liner struck an iceberg
in the North Atlantic on
the night of 14 April 1912
sank, claiming the lives of over
1500 persons. In that period, the
Titanic has been immortalized in
songs, books, films, and legend.
Historical groups exist for generations of enthusiasts who study every
intricate detail of the ship and her

Conrad F. Goeringer is an antiquarian bookseller and freelance writer who lives on the
cape of New Jersey. A frequent
speaker at American Atheists
national
conventions,
he is
director of American Atheists
On-line Services and a contributing editor of American
Atheist.

Conrad F. Goeringer
Austin

one, maiden voyage. Indeed, in

September of 1985 a French vessel
discovered the wreckage of the
leviathan in its underwater tomb,
prompting a new wave of interest in
Titanic. If anything, time itself
seems to kindle a renewed curiosity
about the ship, its passengers, and
the events that culminated on that
dark, clear April evening as Titanic
- a ship of which it was "God himself
could not sink it" - headed on its
maiden voyage from Southampton,
England,to NewYork

We know substantially more

about Titanic and the circumstances
surrounding its sinking than contemporaries of the early twentieth
century did. The precise location of
the wreck, her condition on the
ocean floor, even the dynamics of
how Titanic sank, were matters of
spirited speculation until technology allowed cameras, robotic equipment, and human beings to explore
her - a feat surely considered in the
realm of science fiction in 1912.
Artifacts from the wreck have been
salvaged and are now displayed;
even chunks of coal from Titanic can
be bought as memorabilia.
Yet, there remain circumstances
surrounding the story of this magnificent ship which today are conSpring 1998

signed to a kind of collective memory hole. Eighty seven years ago,

America was a different place. The
demise of the Titanic was a catastrophic event in the social fabric of
both this country and Britain that
expressed
itself
in desperate
attempts to divine a religious significance to the tragedy. Religious
groups held forth on the significance
of the calamity that had befallen
this floating palace - she was, in her
time, easily the most splendid, luxurious, opulent, and largest object on
the seas - and the sheer magnitude
of the death toll, and its astounding
circumstances, ignited a debate over the "women and
children first" ethic and
the emergent movement for women's
suffrage. If "God
himself' was said to
have been incapable
of slaying Titanic, how
- and why - had He?
This is not a history about
sinking of the Titanic. Rather,
this article endeavors to locate the
Titanic tragedy in a unique time in
American history and illuminate
how religious groups perceived the
sinking as both an indictment of the
era and an omen of the future.
Titanic was the apotheosis of the
second stage of industrialization,
when terms such as bigger, faster,
more luxurious possessed a nearhypnotic quality. Industrial achievement had become rationalized as
the fulfillment of a divine will,
where mankind - guided by an
unshakable faith in the Protestant
ethic - was subordinating nature,
bending it to our will and, in the
process, constructing a New Jerusalem. The noblesse oblige of feudal
aristocracies had long been replaced
by a drive for the accumulation of
Page 9

capital. This too was part of a divine

plan, as was the structured organization of society into compartmentalized classes.
If society was being convulsed
by the dizzying pace of industrialization, so were religious ideologies.
The Titanic tragedy occurred in the
midst of an intense debate among
religious groups, roughly pitting
adherents of the new Social Gospel
and Modernism against traditional
evangelicals and even more militant
fundamentalists. Both groups had
their own interpretation of what the
Titanic sinking symbolized and foretold.
But Titanic was about more
than technology, human arrogance,
and the caprices of a deity. The sinking touched upon another volatile
issue in early twentieth-century
America, namely, the question of
female emancipation and voting
rights. The technology which had
built Titanic shared common roots
with the growing clamor of the
"shrieking sisterhood" for equal
rights with men - the Enlightenment. The influences of the French
philosophes and their British counterparts spread to the new world,
and by many accounts, American
women participated in public life
more freely than their European
counterparts. More than a century
before the Revolution, women like
Margaret Brent (1600-1671)endeavored to be seated in colonial legislatures, and the question of voting
rights for women was even debated
at length by the Continental
Congress. Suffrage remained an
issue throughout the nineteenth
century, and by the early twentieth
century the role of women in
American society was again being
debated. The passage of the 15th
Amendment to the US Constitution
in 1870 had enfranchised former
slaves (all of them male). Suffrage
battles were being won at the state
level, in Colorado (1893), Utah and
Idaho (1896) and Washington (1910).
Kansas, Oregon and Arizona would
follow suit in 1912, the year of the
Titanic disaster, and the debate over
Page 10

"women and children first" - another of the popular metaphors of the

tragedy - continued in earnest, with
Nevada, Montana, and New York
granting the franchise in coming
years. The 1920, eight short years
later, the 19th Amendment to the
Constitution had been ratified by
the necessary 36 state legislatures.
Women had gone from the protected
embrace of the Victorian era household to the voting booth. Even during this transition, women were
leaving the protective embrace of
"hearth and home" for factories and
new lives - such as they were.
Belief in god and a divine plan,
the arrogance (or virtues) oftechnology and the scientific enterprise, the
stressed but tightly-knit class and
gender structures of Victorian society - all of this was debated endlessly in the wake of the sinking of
the Titanic. Following the sinking,
as officials in both the United States
and Britain scrambled for an explanation of the disaster - how could
this have happened? - myths about
the Titanic arose. Had the tragedy
been foretold with uncanny accuracy in an obscure novel? Was the
sinking a message from God, a
statement on the arrogance, the
hubris, of humanity? Following the
Titanic tragedy, there was an outpouring of collectiveAngst and grief,
much of it replete with religious
symbolism and metaphor. Indeed,
"Nearer My God To Thee" became a
slogan closely identified with the
sinking; it was also the name of a
hymn said to have sung by the men
(and a few women) remaining on the
deck of Titanic after the lifeboats
had been lowered, and the great
behemoth was slowly slipping into
her watery grave.
A Mighty Ship
She was the largest moving
structure ever built at the time of
her launching, aptly being dubbed
"the Wonder Ship." Titanic had been
laid down and built in the Belfast
yards of Harland and Wolff, and
commissioned by the White Star
Line as the second in a class of
Spring 1998

giant, luxurious liners. Construction

on her sister ship, Olympic, had
begun in December of 1908; on
March 31, 1909, hull number 401
was laid down at the Harland and
Wolff yards, and construction of
Titanic began.
Even by today's standards,
Titanic was an exercise in the use of
superlatives, a testament to the
ethos of the early twentieth century
which sought to embraced size,
speed, luxury, and engineering perfection. Cost was no object. Harland
and Wolff had been instructed by
White Star simply to construct the
Titanic, and add a fee to the construction costs. When completed,
Titanic was 46,328 gross tons
(52,250 tons of displacement) and
was 882' 8" (some accounts suggest
882' 9") from bow to stern. (The
third ship in the class, Britannic,
would become the largest of the
three in terms of displacement coming in at 48,158 tons; but that additional tonnage was due mostly to
modifications made after the Titanic
disaster). Her power plant included
29 boilers, 159 furnaces, and was
capable of generating
between
46,000 and 51,000 hp. That, along
with her hull design and three enormous propellers would provide
Titanic with an expected average
cruising speed of 21 knots, and a
maximum rate of 24 knots.
The transatlantic crossing was
still a risky voyage, * and to attract
customers, steamship companies
outpaced each other advertising the
comforts and safety benefits of their
respective liners. Neither Harland
and Wolff nor the White Star ever
advertised Titanic as "unsinkable" they knew better - but the design of

* Geoffrey Marcus in Titanic, The Maiden

Voyage, (Viking, 1974) observes, "The perennial danger of ice in these waters had been
known to seamen for centuries, as is amply
clear from successive editions of the sailing
directions." Other ships had perished in
these same sea lanes with loss of life, and
less than twenty years before Titanic's illfated trip, the "Naronic," also bound to New
York on her maiden voyage, disappeared.
Other ships, "Allegheny," "State of George,"
and "Huronian" were also listed as "missing."
American Atheist

Titanic included twelve water tight

Following a series of sea trials,
unusual sea calm with Second
doors that would seal off compartTitanic arrived in Southampton,
Officer Charles Lightoller. Despite
ments within 25-30 seconds of being
England, on 3 April 1912 to begin
the fact that lookouts were stationed
activated.
provisioning for her maiden voyage.
in the Titanic's crow's-nest high
Titanic carried carried twenty
By the fifth, she was "dressed" with
above the front deck, sighting bergs
lifeboats (which included four "coldecorative flags and pennants, and
could be a problem. With the unusulapsible" boats), a figure which actuthe following day cargo and the last
ally placid seas, waves would not be
ally exceeded the woefully outdated
of the crew were put aboard. On
crashing against the side of any ice
Board ofTrade requirements for
Wednesday, April 10, passengers
formations. It was a dark night as
safety. Alexander Carlisle, the origibegin boarding Titanic, and at noon
well, with no moonlight. Despite the
nal designer of Titanic was not in the
she headed downstream to the
fact that most icebergs have a white
employ of the Harland and Wolff
English Channel en route to Cherluster to them, certain types known
firm; he had recommended more "
as "growlers" are darker, more
davits and lifeboat capacity, but

difficult to detect. And the lookthe sheer size and other safety
It was a dark rright as well, outs had no binoculars; the only
features of the ship suggested with no moonlight ... And the pair
was
left
back
at
that lifeboats would be useful lookouts had no binoculars' the Southampton...
.
only in conveying passengers to a
'
By 9:40, Titamc received
rescue vessel should, by some only pair was left back
at another iceberg warning, but
quirk offate, Titanic's enormous Southampton."
the messa?"ewas lost ..Operators
power plant failed. There were
on the ship's Marcom set were
far too few lifeboats for the
busy with passenger traffic.
capacity of the liner, however, a fact
bourg, France. That afternoon, more
Information from the messages
that played a key role not only in the
passengers and goods transferred,
received in just the past several
subsequent loss of life, but in assessand by evening Titanic was headed
hours would have suggested that
ments of the disaster and new regufor Queenstown, Ireland.
Titanic was steaming into a huge
lations which were enacted later.
Titanic arrived at Queenstown
field of ice nearly eighty miles wide.
The description that Titanic was
the following morning, anchoring
There were other indications that
a "floating palace" is not far from the
approximately two miles off land.
danger was ahead; the temperature
mark. She had capacity for 3547 perMore second and third-class passencontinued to drop.
sons, and the various class sections
gers were ferried out to the giant
At nearly 11 pm, the California
exceeded their equivalent of her day
liner, along with bags of mail. By
was somewhere between 10 and 19
in terms of size, appointments, and
1:30 pm, Titanic headed to sea for
miles north of Titanic and had
services. Titanic also became a
her first transatlantic crossing to
stopped in an ice field. California
metaphor for the social structure of
New York. On board were approxibegan transmitting warning on its
the Victorian era, with the fabulousmately 2227 passengers and crew.
wireless, but Titanic's radio operator
ly wealthy passengers ensconced in
The next two days were relativesignaled back: "Keep out! Shut up!
the luxurious first-class section,
ly uneventful, but Titanic received
You're jamming my signal. I'm worktheir second-class, middle-income
ice warnings - not uncommon for
ing Cape Race ..." Titanic was moving
cousins below, and still further down
that time of year. At least four other
at over 22 knots.
the immigrants and less well-off in
ships broadcast information about
At 11:40 pm, on 14 April 1912,
steerage - while, in the bowels of the
icebergs in the approximate ocean
Titanic struck an iceberg which had
enormous ship, labored a small army
lane Titanic was moving through;
been sighted moments before impact.
of coaliers and others who kept
and in the early evening of April 14,
While the lookouts and other crew
Titanic moving.
the air temperature dropped ten
reacted swiftly, and a "hard-a-stardegrees - an .indication of possibly
board" order given to divert the giant
Maiden Voyage and Sinking
hazardous conditions and ice. At 5:50
ship, momentum and little warning
It was her maiden and only voypm, Titanic's captain, Edward J.
time condemned Titanic to its
age which propelled Titanic into the
Smith ordered a slight shift in the
calamitous fate. Several seconds
annals of history. Other ships had
course - slightly to the south and
prior to impact, Titanic's 16 waterperished on the high seas, but it was
west. Another iceberg sighting was
tight doors were activated. The icethe peculiar confluence of circumreported, this one from the Caliberg struck on the starboard (right)
stances and characters which made
fornia. The message was delivered to
bow side. It is estimated that 37 secthe sinking of this enormous liner
the bridge, but Captain Smith was
onds elapsed between the first sightsymbolic of so much - hubris, the
dining below with the first-class pasing of the berg and the impact which
caprice of fate, corporate greed and
sengers.
dragged along Titanic's hull. For
arrogance, humility, and godliness in
At 8:55, Captain Smith returned
years, historians, naval architects,
the face of death.
to the bridge, where he discussed the
and others debated the extent and
Austin, Texas

Spring 1998

Page 11

nature of the damage.' The doors

worked as planned, and Titanic was
designed to stay afloat with some
compartments flooded; but the interior compartments were designed
with a flaw. As Titanic gradually
sank at the bow, water spilled over
the interior compartments.
History was made, and official
investigations, books, articles, and
movies about the voyage of the
Titanic have recorded - with varying
degrees of accuracy and literary
embellishment - the events of the
next 150 minutes. By '2:05 am on the
morning ofApril 15, 1912, there were
over 1500 people remaining on board
the Titanic, as the last of the
lifeboats - known as Collapsible D pushed away with 44 aboard. The
prominent forecastle of Titanic was
sinking under the cold North
Atlantic, and the tilt of the ship's
deck rapidly grew steeper. At 2:18, a
thunderous roar was heard. Titanic
reared up, her props out ofthe water,
as objects within the ship broke loose
and crashed toward the submerged
bow. Titanic's power plant had
remained operational since the collision with the iceberg, but now the
slights blinked, then went out. There
was a screeching, groaning sound as
Titanic broke in two.
At 2:20 am, the broken-off stern
section settled back into the water,
but it, too, quickly began to flood and
soon hurtled to the sea bottom. Over
1500 lives were lost in what became
known as "the greatest maritime disaster in history."

object lesson, particularly

for
America's religious community. This
aspect remains one of the backwater
eddies in the Titanic story, a curious
fact since the sinking triggered an
outpouring of national (even international) grief and reflection comparable to other tragedies of similar
scale, such as wars or the deaths of
popular leaders.
Titanic's name, of course, was
incendiary in prompting speculation
about the tragedy. "A surprising
number of people indicted the
Titanic's name," noted writer Wyn
Craig Wade in his book The Titanic,
End of a Dream.* And why not? In
Greek mythology, the Titans were
the twelve children of Uranus and

Geea,and were the supreme forces in

the universe. t Was not this name, so
indicative of an arrogance which
would "tempt Providence" simply
asking for trouble?
"On Sunday, the churches of the
American nation were filled to capacity," adds Wade, as a variety of explanations were offered from pulpits as
to the significance of the Titanic disaster. Comparable numbers of faithful filled pews in England. In
Southampton,
the
Bishop
of
Winchester delivered an evocative
sermon, asking "When has such a

* Wade, Wyn Craig, The Titanic, End of a

Dream, Penguin, 1979, p. 103.

SNAPSHOTS

by Jason

t The Titans were Kronos (dethroned by his

son Zeus), Oceanus, Tethys, Mnemosyne,
Themis, Hyperion, Iapetus, Prometheus,
and Atlas. The White Star Line named
Titanic's sister ship, Oceanic, after this class
of gods; but the third ship was called
Britannic.

Lo~e

Aftermath
In the wake of the Titanic disaster, two investigations
(one in
Britain, the other in America), books,
articles, lectures, and sermons
attempted to divine the circumstances and meaning of what happened on the night of April 14, 1912.
Some of the answers were not
revealed until after the wreck of
Titanic was found, by a FrancoAmerican expedition in 1985 led by
Dr. Robert Ballard, lying at a depth
of 12,460 feet on the ocean floor. But
within days of the sinking, the saga
of Titanic became a metaphor and
Page 12

Spring 1998

AmericanAtheist

mighty lesson against our confidence

and trust in power, machinery and
money been shot throughout the
nation ... God grant that we and our
sister nation of America may take to
heart and profit from the lesson. The
Titanic, name and thing, will stand
for a monument and warning to
human presumption."
The religious reaction to the
Titanic sinking represented a number of positions, often reflecting the
peculiar doctrinal .assumptions of
each church. As Wade and others
have observed, Protestant
sects
which had embraced the Social
Gospel often portrayed the disaster
as a leveling of class and other distinctions in the face of death. The
Victorian dream which embraced
successive waves of industrialization
had both a secular and religious component. Class distinction was often
rationalized as both a reflection of
superior ability and talent - a kind of
social Darwinism - and a necessary,
even helpful component in fueling
economic development and prosperity. Wealth was perceived as an entitlement of economic activity, diligence and other moral attributes,
and religiosity. Indeed, for some intoxicated by the prosperity of the
age - the concentration of wealth
was proof that mankind was slowly
crafting a New Jerusalem and that
"Suffering and tribulations could be
borne as long as it was believable
that mankind was improving and the
Kingdom of Heaven was being materialized on earth." t
And such suffering was endurable, as Reverend R.J. Hutcheon of
Toronto declared. "We are... taught
anew the truth of the old saying that
. suffering makes the whole world
akin, and Great Britain and America
are nearer today because citizens of
both countries are lying together in a
common ocean grave.">

Titanic, likewise criticized the presumptive elegance, ostentatiousness

and arrogance that the ship seemed
to embody. The Social Gospel had an
ambivalent relationship with insurgent industrial capitalism: on one
hand proclaiming the New J erusalem, on the other warning of the
excesses and pitfalls
of labor
exploitation and dislocation. MIUlY
ministers took comfort in the claim
that in the final moments of the
Titanic drama, "social caste had disappeared and all stood on the decks
as equals."! That perception became
suspect, however, when debate
began over whether or not a disproportionate number of first class passengers had been rescued in contrast
to those in second class and steerage.
The question remains a lively one to
this day.
Sexual Politics: ''Women and
Children First!"
Along with a hunt to identify
who and what might bear ultimate
responsibility in Titanic's sinking
was a debate over the "women and
children first!" policy. Descriptions of
men (inevitably upper class) graciously and stoically standing on the
decks of the ill-fated vessel while
women and children were hurriedly
loaded into the few lifeboats reached
hyperbole. 'I[One minister assured his
listeners that all might have perished had not such self-sacrifice and
restraint been exercised and "unless
the spirit of 'women and children
first' been made possible." The
images soon translated into a wider
attack, however, against the suffrage
movement. The Rev. Leighton Parks
of St. Bartholomew's Church preached:

, Marcus, op. cit., p. 298..

t As Wade notes, however, this reconciliatory

tone was soon lost as political and financial
interests on both sides of the Atlantic began
hunting for scapegoats in Titanic's sinking.
American interests actually owned the ship J. P. Morgan held paper ownership - but
White Star was still identified with Britain
and considered a "British" concern. Titanic
also fell under the woefully outdated regulations of the British Board of Trade which
were equally as lax as their US counterparts.

t Wade, op. cit., p. 107.

Wade, op. cit., p. 107.

But there was another side to

the Janus-like ideology of the Social
Gospel, one that while lamenting the
terrible loss of life that had befallen

Austin, Texas

Spring 1998

Youand I will be better in life

and in death because of (the men's)
goodexample. The real message of
this great and overwhelmingaffiiction is that it is the latest revelation of the power of the cross... The
men, who stood on that deck, in the
presence of disaster, exhibited a
power of self-restraint, exhibited it
so quietly, too, that it can not be
explained on any ground of mere
evolution... But the Son of Man
came into a world that was lost.
And so the men on the Titanic sacrificed themselves for the women
and children. The women did not
ask for the sacrifice, but it was
made. Those women who go about
shrieking for their 'rights' want
something very different.**
The "women and children first"
policy added fuel to an already heated debate over suffrage and women's
rights. American women were still
eight years away from having the
right to vote, a goal not achieved
until the final ratification of the
Nineteenth Amendment was made
and female suffrage became the law
of the land on 26 August 1920.
Religious groups were deeply divided
over the question of extending such
rights to the "fairer sex," and seemed
to have found ratification of antislavery accords and legislation such as
the Fifteenth Amendment a less
'IIThere can be little doubt that far more
women than men were saved, but when measured against the breakdown in class, the
figures become more complicated. Survival
rates on Titanic were approximately 20% for
men, 74% for women, and 52% for children.
Sex appeared to play more' of a role in who
was saved than did economic class. Thirdclass women turned out to be 41 % more likely to survive than males in first class .
Curiously, men in the third class or steerage
were twice as likely to survive as their second-class counterparts. The demographics in
the Titanic disaster, though, are problematic, and depend on whether one views percentages or sheer numbers: 44% of first-class
passengers were women, for instance, while
only 23% of those in third class were female.
For an exhaustive breakdown of survival
rates and numbers, see Lord Mersey's Report
{British Parliamentary
Papers, Shipping
Casualties (Loss of the Steamship "Titanic"),
1912. on the Titanic incident.

** Wade, op. cit., p. 108.

Page 13

seat with his bride, or surrender it to

demanding task than-taking up the
Woman's Union, was more realistic.
an unknown woman behind him, and
Since men had crafted the safety regmore visceral question of suffrage.
ulations that applied to Titanic, they
make his bride a widow?" asked the
Indeed, male abolitionists had voiced
caption.:j:
should have been the ones to go
their fears that the demands of
down with it, she argued. When
There were indeed evocative,
"shrieking women" for equal rights
asked what her position would be in
tearful episodes concerning who
might well impede their campaign to
would perish and who might survive.
similar circumstances - but with
gain voting rights for male ex-slaves.
Colonel John Jacob Astor, heir to the
women given the vote - she deftly
Clergy had long maintained that
giant real estate fortune, placed his
replied, "Then we would have laws
even the debate over suffrage was an
young bridge into one of the lifeboats
affront to the will of their god. As a
requiring plenty of lifeboats."!
and "stepped back"
consequence, at the
to the deck. Nearby,
London Anti-Slavery
that even the Ida - wife of Isidor
Convention of 1840, Clergy' had long maintained
two American femiStraus, the depart.debete over suffrage was an affront to ment
store magnate
nists - Lucretia Mott
and
former
US Conand Elizabeth Cady the will of their god. As a consequence,
at
gressman - refused
Stanton, were actual~,ymade to sit behind the
London Anti-Slavery
Convention
of to take a seat, and
a curtain during the
instead joined her
feminists - Lucretia husband on nearby
proceedings, forbid- 1840, two American
deck chairs while the
den to speak.
Cady Stanton - were calamity of the sinkThings had pro- Mott and Elizabeth
whirled around
gressed only slightly
actually made to sit behind a curtain dur- ing
by the 1900s. Curithem. "I have lived
this long with my
ously, some of that ing the proceedings,
forbidden to speak.
progress resulted from
husband,
I'll not
leave him now." But there was also
growing industrialization
where
Ministers, political leaders and
the rigid behavior of men such as
women were torn from agrarian,
news pundits were quick to declare
Benjamin Guggenheim who, as
domestic environments and catapultthat the actions of men on Titanic
ed into the mixed-blessing environcarried on a tradition known as the
Titanic's ultimate fate became obviment of industrial capitalism. Along
ous, told a steward, "We've dressed
"Birkenhead Drill." In 1852, a
with sweat-shop conditions came at
in our best and are prepared to go
British troop carrier, Birkenhead,
sank off the coast of South Africa. On
down like gentlemen. Tell my wife I
least one redeeming feature: women
began to have their own money, such
board were more than four hundred
played the game straight to the
end."
as it was. Women, of course, expresssoldiers, fifty wives and children,
ed their own diversity of opinion on
and crew. It was said that the men of
Victorian roles of behavior the Titanic disaster and on what
the Birkenhead lined up on the deck
helpless, near-hysterical women and
soon became a cliche, the idea of
of the ship in formation as the
heroic, stoical men accepting death
"women and children first!"
women and children were off-loaded
."I would a thousand times rather
to the few lifeboats. After "stepping
American History Illustrated, April, 1986.
"As a sense of impending disaster began to
go down with the ship under .similar
back," they sank, along with their
pervade one and all, the code of 'noblesse
circumstances," declared a British
ship, into the shark-infested waters,
oblige' evidenced itself in quiet, stirring
Suffragette, Mrs. Cecil Chapman,* a
and sure death.
scenes."
claim questioned by the New York
"Stepping back," surrendering
Times, which noted her "jangling
their place to helpless women and
One area of inquiry for future generations
of Titanic enthusiasts might be the perplexnote." Indeed, such assertions by
children, became a metaphor that
ing question of why so many of these otherwomen's rights advocates were often
captured the public imagination and
wise dynamic, innovative and self-started
translated by media and clergy as an
was endlessly debated. One St. Louis
individuals spent their final hours and minattack on the more noble and upliftnewspaper ran an article featuring a
utes maintaining a posture of composure and
ing attitudes exemplified by the
sketch of a women in a lifeboat from
noblesse oblige rather than attempt to find
ways of saving themselves
given the
heroic men of Titanic who, it was
Titanic, imploring a man to take the
resources available. Titanic was festooned
said, gladly gave their lives on behalf
one available space remaining.
with objects and materials which might have
of women and infants. Harriet
"Should the bridegroom take the last
been fashioned into floating platforms of
Blatch (1856-1940), the daughter of
some kind, perhaps giving people a better
chance at survival. In my readings on the
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Presit Ibid. Blatch wrote numerous books and
Titanic sinking, I have encountered no eviessays in subsequent years, including
dent of the American Political

Wade, op. cit., p. 108.

Page 14

Mobilizing Woman Power (1918), A Woman's

Point of View (1919), and a biography of her
mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in 1921.

Spring 1998

dence of people tearing up planking or wall

materials in order to construct improvised
lifesaving platforms of some kind.

AmericanAtheist

gelist whose Pillar of Fire Church

Accounts from passengers, or
and their final obligations on earth and ministry was a major source of
other commentators, often drew parbecame metaphors glorified in songs,
anti-Roman
Catholic sentiment
allels between the fact that Titanic
illustrations, and sermons about the
throughout the early twentieth cenwas the most luxurious, the largest,
Titanic. Those men who survived
tury in America. Concerns about
the "unsinkable" ship, and that her
until the final moments, when
Vatican
encroachments into the
sinking was, likewise, "a symbol of
Titanic's enormous stern was lifted
American
political system - real,
the
approaching
fate
of
Western
into the air as the ship broke apart,
imagined, exaggerated - had long
and then were to perish as it, too,
Civilization."t
stimulated antipapist groups such as
filled with water and plunged into
Another metaphor was that of
the Know-Nothing movement or the
the depths, were embraced as mas"man versus nature," a discussion
American Party. By the late
culine icons of respectability
and decorum. Passenger Law1800s just
one antirence Beesley attributed the
Is it any wonder that MajorButt, Catholic organization, the
American
Protective
seeming calm to "an inborn
respect for law and order and with his message from the Pope to Association, had swelled to
for traditions bequeathed to the President, went to the bottom of over one million members.
them by generations of ances- the sea on the sinking Titanic?"
Most literature from these
groups alternated between
tors ...'"
dark warnings over papal
plots to manipulate Congress and
Other Reactions:
made all the more poignant by the
lurid tales of debauchery involving
Press and Pulpit
odd string of coincidenceswhich surpriests and nuns.
rounded the Titanic's sinking. The
In 1912, with commercial radio
White emerged as a religious
impact with the iceberg was certainvery much in its infancy, news of
spokesperson defending Protestant
ly avoidable had the liner proceeded
events such as the Titanic disaster
values against Catholicism, and in
was delivered through papers that
at a slower clip, taken a slightly dif1901 she founded her Pillar of Fire
competed furiously for readers and
ferent route, even if binoculars had
outreach based in Denver, Colorado,
advertising, even to the point of fabbeen provided for the lookouts in the
and Zarephath, New Jersey. From
ricating whole stories. Titanic genercrow's nest. There was added specucoast to coast there were colleges,
ated a stampede of special editions,
lation in addition to these stark
particularly in major metropolitan
training schools, and churches orgafacts... what if a nearby ship, the
nized under White's banner, and she
Californian, had not misinterpreted
areas such as New York City, and
ground out a steady stream of books
books about the disaster have docuTitanic's flares and distress calls?
mented this incredible rush to delivfocusing on Biblical prophesy and
The peculiar alignment of cirer the latest news of the ship's fate history, as well as her travel advencumstances - and the gnawing
and that of its passengers - into the
tures (With God in Yellowstone) and
"what if?" that was being asked
hands of a voraciously curious pubeven her distrust of other Proabout so many events linked to
lic. But equally revealing was how
testants, especially certain PenteTitanic - gave rise to a sentiment
newspapers - both reflecting and
that with the sinking came the "end
costals.
molding certain cultural assumpof an age of innocence. Survivor John
For White, the Titanic symboltions of early twentieth-century sociized many of the portents other reliThayer was later quoted, "The event
ety - treated this story and reported
gious seers had divined: a chastisewhich not only made the world rub
the musings of survivors and others
ment of humanity for its technologiits eyes and awake, but woke it with
who commented on the tragedy surcal arrogance, a warning that the
a start... To my mind the world of
rounding the Titanic.
today awoke April 15, 1912."
Victorian age, with its wealth and
Thanks to telegraphy, news
splendid opulence, (surely, this was
This notion that Titanic was the
spread at a rapid clip, and the story
embodied in Titanic!) was losing its
demarcation between an age of innowas rendered all the more dramatic
cence (or arrogance) and something
spiritual moorings and floating into
by the use of photographs which
a dangerous sea of lust and material
else resonated throughout media. It
found their way (along with cartoon
indulgence. The Titanic Tragedy also
was also a sentiment expressed
renderings or other illustrations)
included White's message of antivocally from pulpits and in tracts, as
into the steady stream of newspain the writings ofAlma White in her
Catholicism, such as her description
pers, posters, books, song sheets,
book The Titanic Tragedy: God
of President Taft (whose friend,
and other materials pertaining to
Major Archie Butt, perished in the
Speaking to the Nations. t
Titanic.
White, born Alma Bridwell
t Alma White, The Titanic Tragedy: God
(1862-1946) was a prominent evan-

"~====================

* See Lawrence Beesley, The Loss of the SS

Titanic, Boston, 1912.

Austin,Texas

t Osbert Sitwell, quoted in the Virginia

Newspaper Project, a catalogue of press coverage about the Titanic sinking.

Spring 1998

Speaking to the Nations, rev. ed, Pillar of

Fire, Denver, 1945. The book is a curious
blend of published accounts and White's own
religious musings on the subject

Page 15

sinking), "a Unitarian (who) made

his administration obnoxious by
courting the favor of Roman Catholics, for no other purpose, it seems,
than to gain their political support ...
The Stuff of Legends
More than any other maritime
tragedy, the sinking of Titanic has
captivated the public imagination
over decades, and spawned numerous legends, and a surprising
amount of misinformation. Two of
the major ones:
Those left behind sang, to
the accompaniment of Titanic's band, "Nearer My God, To
Thee" as the vessel sank.
Think of the Titanic slipping
beneath the sea, and Hollywood
images often come to mind - the
giant liner, the water steadily rising,
and the unfortunate souls huddled
by the stern singing bravely as they
enter their final moments. While
some continue to believe in this legend, evidence suggests that this did
not, in fact, occur, at least in real life.
It did happen in the Hollywoodversions of the Titanic disaster, though,
starting with the 1953 epic production TITANIC, with Clifton Web,
Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Wagner,
Richard Basehart, and others. The
script won the Academy Award for
"Best Original Screenplay," testament to the departure from fact
which took place in the imagination
of Tinseltown writers. As a series of
unlikely characters and sub-plots
are woven together, Titanic sinks
beneath the waves. An alcohol-besotted priest rediscovers his holy calling, a man surrenders his seat heroically to a woman, Barbara Stan Ibid, p. 156. "Is it any wonder that Major
Butt, with his message from the Pope to the
President, went to the bottom of the sea on
the sinking Titanic?"

Page 16

wyck yells for one of her children

("NOOOORRRRMAAAANNNN..."),
and the ship explodes as the last passengers sing "Nearer My God to
Thee."
J ames Cameron's blockbuster
TITANIC repeats the legend, as the
ship's band hastily assembles, plays
a series of upbeat tunes and, with
the ship's demise imminent, strikes
up the music to the somber hymn.
Walter Lord was the first to
question this scenario, though, in his
classic work A Night to Remember,
published in 1955. He stated that
Harold Bridge, Titanic's radio operated, said that as he swam away
from the ship, he heard the band
playing "Autumn." A wave of Titanic
interest in the mid-1980s, spurred
on by the search and eventual discovery of the Titanic wreck, saw publication of Mr. Lord's next book, The
Night Lives On. t There, Lord suggested that Harold Bridge had heard
"Songe d'Automne," a waltz by
Archibald Joyce.
Titanic buffs and researchers
disagree over what was played that
night on board the stricken liner,
and precisely when. One contemporary claim is that as the lifeboats
pulled away, the men on the Titanic
sang the Gospel song "Rock ofAges."
But leading accounts discount these
claims. The role of the band in the
Titanic story was intertwined with
other elements as well. A broadside
sold by the British Musicians' Union
to raise money for the families of the
lost instrumentalists depicted the
eight men as "The Heroic Musicians
of the Titanic who died at their posts
like men - April 15, 1912." At the
bottom of the poster can be found the
words, "Nearer, my God, to Thee..."
t Walter Lord, The Night Lives On, New
York, Wm. Morrow & Co. (1986). Lord notes
that a newspaper which interviewed Harold
Bride stated that the Titanic went down as
the musicians were playing "the Episcopal
hymn, 'Autumn'."

Spring 1998

with four lines of lyrics from that

piece. This, no doubt, contributed to
the growth of the legend about what
took place on the deck of Titanic during the final moments.
Postcards of the time helped to
reinforce the myth of "Nearer My
God to Thee" and other religious
motifs. One illustration depicted
Titanic upright, sliding into the
water as a glowing cross hovers
above it with the "Nearer My God To
Thee" legend. Another depicted
Titanic in similar condition, with
Jesus imposed over the cross, and a
veiled woman/goddess off to the side.
At the bottom can be found the
words:
"Save Lord, we Perish," was
their cry,
"0 save us in our agony!"
Thy word above the storm rises
high
"Peace, be still."
The Titanic disaster was foretold with astonishing accuracy
by an English novelist in 1898.
This claim appears frequently in
regard to a book titled Futility or The
Wreck Of The Titan, depending on
the printed copy. The book was
authored by an English writer,
Morgan Robertson, and underwent
numerous printings on both sides of
the Atlantic, and was popularized in
America by McClure's Magazine.
Considerable
misinformation
exists about Robertson's book, suggesting that many claims made
about it come from persons who have
not taken the time to sit down and
read its somewhat turgid story.
Robertson describes an enormous
ship (especially for its time) which he
calls "The Titan," a behemoth 800
feet long with 70,000 tons displacement, compartmentalized bulkheads
(supposedly to render her "unsinkable") and luxurious appointments

American Atheist

which do, indeed, seem to presage

descriptions of the Titanic. But contrary to legend, Robertson's Titan is
not on her maiden voyage when she
happens to strike an iceberg. Barely
three pages into his story, Robertson
tells readers, "She has beaten all
records on her maiden voyage, but,
up to the third return trip, had not
lowered the time between Sandy
Hook and Daunt's Rock to the fiveday limit ..." In fact, there are numerous discrepancies between Robertson's novel and the actual story of
.the Titanic. Both ships collide with
an iceberg, both vessels are enormous in size, said to be unsinkable
thanks to compartmentalization, and
offer amenities to the passengers.
Similarities end by the seventh chapter, barely 20 pages into the 243 page
text before me. The Titan strikes an
iceberg while traveling at 25 knots
(faster than the actual Titanic), and
on the port side. The ship falters and
sinks, as the hero - grabbing the
daughter of a former love interest he
has never forgotten - leaps onto the
offending iceberg where he kills a
polar bear in order to survive, rigs a
small boat, is discovered by a passing
vessel, experiences fame and, eventually, gets the girl.
Curiously, this hero - John
Rowland - is introduced to readers
as a drunk and professed atheist who
is bitter at life. The former lover, on
board Titan with her husband,
recounts how she had met Rowland:
"I liked him at first, until I found out
that he was an atheist - why,
George, he actually denied the existence of God - and to me, a professed
Christian. "
"He had a wonderful nerve," said
the husband, with a smile; "didn't
know you very well, I should say."
Rowland "gets religion" on the
ice berg, striking a bargain with the
deity in hopes of saving the waif, the
daughter of his former passions.
"Sinking to his knees the atheist
lifted his eyes to the heavens, and
with his feeble voice and the fervor
born of helplessness, prayed to the
God that he denied. He begged for
the life of the waif in his care - for
the safety of the mother, so needful
Austin,Texas

to the little one - and for courage and

strength to do his part and bring
them together ..."
Following the actual Titanic
tragedy, at least one American newspaper began serializing The Wreck of
the Titan.*
There is actually very little content in Robertson's novel which deals
with ships, or truly can be said to
presage in some way the Titanic, or
the events that happened on April
14,1912.
Denouement
Why do so many remain captivated by the story of Titanic?
Some of the answer must reside
in the human penchant to romanticize an event surrounded by so much
irony - in the case of Titanic, that so
magnificent a vessel could encounter
so calamitous an end under such
unusual circumstances. Even without the Hollywood glitz, or the literary wanderings of writers, Titanic
possessed all of the charms and
extremes of its day. What could not
happen did happen. And this mighty
* The Times-Dispatch of Richmond, Virginia,
did so beginning on April 28, 1912.

Spring 1998

ship embodied so much of the ethos

of its time: adventure and daring (in
putting so spectacular a vessel
afloat), the fascination with machinery and science, a sense that mankind was both mastering the universe and constructing the New
Jerusalem - a floating city or palace,
in the case of Titanic - all of this
mixed with amounts of arrogance,
lack of caution, and a sense of invulnerability.
Titanic rests on the floor of the
Atlantic, 12,460 feet below the surface. The same ingenuity that
launched her evolved a technology
which found her, and her wreck has
been photographed and explored
with submersible craft. Items have
been recovered from Titanic, but the
remains of the two portions of her
hull will probably never be raised.
She sails still, though, in our longings and imaginations. But if that is
not sufficient, a British tourist
agency has just begun to promote the
ultimate in adventure vacations:
minisubmarine deep-diving trips to
view the wreck on the ocean floor.
Just $30,000, starting in early
August.

Page 17

Irish, Nazis, Threes,

an~ Me
Fr. _ T', Alt" B"

Tony Pasquarello is an emeritus

professor of philosophy at The
Ohio State University, Mansfield, a professional musician,
and philatelist. Major articles
by him on the philosophy of
religion have appeared in Free
Inquiry, The Skeptical Inquirer,
and American Atheist. "Irish,
Nazis, Threes, and Me" is
excerpted from his quasi-autobiographical
book The Altar
Boy Chronicles, which we hope
will be published soon.

Tony Pasquarello
Page 18

you open the classroom

door and step inside, your
first impression is one of
unusual quiet, absolute order, military discipline. Simultaneously, you
sense that the room's controlled
state has nothing to do with your
entrance. It was orderly before; it is
always orderly. Order is its normal,
natural status.
Looming large - it seemed that
most of them loomed rather large over a small desk at the front of the
room, the ENFORCER. That would
be a specimen of the good Sisters of
Saint Joseph, arrayed in her (its?)
pitch black, head-to-toe, Darth
Vader uniform, broken only by two
starched, stiff areas of white. One is
the oversize clown bib, so inelegant,
so disproportionate,
that
you
instantly grasp that this is not
designer nunnery finery. What on
earth could have been its purpose?
Surely, the nuns weren't dining frequently on Italian cuisine and spraying sauce in all directions? Nor could
they have been often found chomping on barbecued ribs, lobster, or
crab legs. Not with those infamous
vows of poverty. The bib must have
been there to conceal any suggestion
of curvilinear swellings - a bosom, to
be specific. All the swaths of penitential black habits underneath
would have
been camouflage
enough. But, best to be safe than
sorry. Bibs afforded an extra measure of assurance that no one would
ever suspect they were females itself, a debatable hypothesis.
Then, there were other bands of
starched white running across the
forehead, down the middle of both
cheeks and under the chin, all of
them meshing into a pompous headSpring 1998

C"''I/,I"

piece. These bands created a frontal

rectangle, through which poked all
the angry facial sensory receptors:
the piercing eyes, .the all-sniffing
nose, the harsh mouth, from which
there issued tirades of damnation
and condemnation, punishments,
and penalties.
Ears! Did they have ears? I can't
recall ever seeing any, although
something was able to pick up infinitesimal whispers from the back of
the room, thirty feet away. Did they
have ears! There must have been a
few strategic slits, or some flaps cut
out, permitting even signals at the
threshold of audibility unrestricted
access to those sonic detectors.
Our persistent
query with
regard to our nuns was not over the
existence of ears; of that, we were
certain. Rather, it had to do with
hair and their possession of it. Some
of the boys believed that they did
have long tresses like other females,
but they were rolled up and tucked
away inside their headpieces. Some
went further in maintaining that
they were, in fact, forbidden to ever
cut their hair, once they had taken
final vows. I never could believe that
story, and attributed its origins to
the dim apprehensions of young
boys, encountering, as they grow up,
a constant stream of myths, legends,
and wondrous fantasies. Combine
images of the few pretty girls we had
ever seen, with tales of Rapunzel,
drawings of mermaids and nymphs,
depictions of biblical characters - all
of whom had long flowing locks with the historically accurate (we
thought) accounts of Samson and
Delilah, and of Mary Magdalene's
drying Jesus' feet with her hair, and
I'd say we had a pretty fair explanaAmericanAtheist

tion for the genesis of the fable of the

long-haired nuns.
I much preferred the opposite
rumor; it was so much nastier, it just
had to be the correct one. To wit, on
their wedding night, the night they
became brides of Jesus (I never bothered myself over the details of that
one), their heads were shaved in
some occult ceremony. Perhaps to
ensure that no human male could
ever find them attractive. They had
to be faithful to Jesus by default, for
they certainly couldn't get any other
guys. Indeed, it's quite likely that
the voluminous swaddlings of their
all-concealing garb were a blessing
in disguise. Surely, the sight of one
of them, uncovered, must have been
more than anyone could survive. A
monstrous, hideous vision of a big,
bald abomination. Immediate effects
would be spasms of uncontrollable
retching. Or perhaps, turning to
salt. Or was it stone? Yes, that's it. A
plausible origin for the Gorgon
mythology: someone must have once
glimpsed a nun without her headdress.
Yes, my classroom is quiet; eerily quiet to a contemporary observer
accustomed to the lunacy and pandemonium of today's schools. And
the quiet is even more surprising,
more anachronistic, when you realize that my class consists only of
boys. All boys. All fifth-grade boys,
between the ages of 9 and 11. I was
a baby at just 9 for most of that
grade, since I had a mid-April birthday.All those boys, ofthat age, merely meant that there was enough
crackling, kinetic energy present to
illuminate Broad Street for a year.
Were not the thirty of us just entering the pre-proto-pubertal stages
wherein that biochemical madness
was just beginning to scramble our
guts and brains? Add, too, that we
were just starting to wonder about
the strange beings just under us,
occupying the verboten second floor
of the same school building; the
unknown creatures called "girls."
And yet, we were quiet. The
seething typhoon was held in check;
the energy was suppressed; the roiling passions would not be coming to
Austin, Texas

a full boil. For, this was parochial

school discipline. Stalag Epiphany in
Philadelphia, circa early-mid forties.
The Enforcer was watching, listening, glaring, scowling. But iron control could not be attributed to her
alone.
God, too, was watching, listening, glaring, scowling. Well, no. I
doubt that he scowled so much as
the Sadistic Sisters. Nevertheless,
for us goofy kids, God's presence,
then, was just as real and intimidating.
At least, one-third of his presence. Paradoxically, of the "Three
Persons in One Nature" - that was
the "explanation" we were given the Holy Ghost seemed to me to be
the most "real," most present. God
the Father was real enough and
boasted his usual slew of "omni"
attributes - omni-presence among
them. But reciting the Lord's Prayer
a few zillion times had conveyed, to
our limited understanding, that he
was, unequivocally, in Heaven. "Our
Father, who art in Heaven, ...."
Heaven was, absolutely, his primary
residence. And, if he really was in
our fifth grade, it could only be sporadically, temporarily. Like a summer cabin. (Though one can't imagine why God would want a summer
cabin in South Philly.)
Jesus suffered (amongst other
sufferings) from precisely the same
dilemma except in spades. Because
Jesus had a specific, physical,
human, and (presumably) icky body.And that body, maybe transfigured, ascended into Heaven. And
there he is sitting at God's right.
(God has a right side?)
So, both Father and Son were
unarguably in Heaven. And, whatever or wherever that was, it certainly
wasn't the Fifth Grade Boys
Classroom
of the
Epiphany
Parochial School. If they wished to
know what mischief was taking
place at the latter site, they either
had to be able to see that far - and
that seemed dubious - or maintain
vicarious surveillance, using their
lowest third. That would be the mysterious, somewhat ignored, rather
pathetic Holy Spirit. God and Christ
Spring 1998

each had oodles of special prayers

directed specifically to them: about
ten times more than those addressed
to the Holy Spirit. The poor fellow
hardly got any worship at all! But, I
never forgot him. I'd bet he knew little Anthony from Philly quite well. I
had the distinct impression that my
prayers to him went through directly, air express. No waiting period; no
busy signals. So few others ever
attempted to make that long-distance connection. Like, Paradise's
Maytag Repairman, he was delighted to get my calls.
What made the fellow so much
more accessible a person' was his
penchant for disguises and funny
get-ups. He could be everywhere at
the same time because he had mastered the trick of splitting himself
into an infinite number of different
wacky appearances. Of the three primary ones about which we had been
taught, none was particularly dreadful or genuinely frightening.
He could be, he was, a ghost. The
Holy Ghost. And what was so bad
about ghosts, the most familiar of all
familiars we encountered in books
and films? Of all the fantastic phantasms of the nether world, all the
shadowy personages of the paranormal, ghosts have to rank on the mild
side. They weren't vicious, brutal, or
menacing; just "spooky." And that
was O.K., even a bit endearing. They
merely haunted some spots here and
there, but, like the man without a
country, didn't really belong anywhere. Poor Holy Ghost. Sent on
interminable
spy missions and
assigned menial tasks by his formidable duo of Divine superiors. In
fact, although we naturally thought
of the Eucharistic presence as the
presence of Jesus, the Second
Person, because he had invented the
whole ritual at the Last Supper, it
seemed unlikely that both the First
and Second persons (with all the latter's body and blood) would squeeze
their Supreme Selves into that tiny
host at each and every consecration.
No, this was clearly another job forGhost God! Ectoplasm probably didn't
take up nearly as much room as real
plasma, guts, bones, etc. And since
Page 19

all three Persons were equivalent to

anyone of them, God could be truly
and substantially in the host. Well, if
he were in our classroom, that was
just fine with me. I welcomed his
presence; I knew I'd be a good boy.
Then, it seems, when in his more
pacific moods, he could turn himself
into a dove. Doves were, for all practical purposes, precisely the same as
pigeons to me, and we'd experienced
plenty of those. And their residues.
That was why it was semicomical to
see depictions of the Third Person in
his bird disguise, apparently always
coming in for a landing on somebody's head, hovering just a few
inches above an unsuspecting victim. But then, there may have been
nothing to fear; possibly, divine
doves don't do doo-doo. While there
weren't actually any doves in class,
there were assorted creatures flying
past our lofty third-floor windows.
However, there was no question
that his funniest, yet most confusing
disguise, was as the spectacular
"Tongues of Fire." Unfortunately, no
one had ever bothered to explain the
metaphorical intent of the phrase a reference only to the flames'
shapes.
Literal-minded
me. I
thought they meant tongues; thick,
distended, slippery, pink tongues.
Tongues on fire, was my understanding. Why he had picked that appearance, I never could fathom. Weren't
tongues hard to light? Weren't they
impossible to keep lit? One would
imagine that they were always sputtering from the saliva. Surely, it
made more sense to appear as
"Noses of Fire," or even "Feet of
Fire." But then, who can outguess
the whimsy of a third-rate deity?
Only the kooky charismatics,
those redoubtable fundamentalists,
would have the disarming simplemindedness to repeat the naivete of
my stupid mistake,
and take
"tongues" in yet another literal
sense. With the same child-like mentality responsible for their "Barbie
Doll" conception of the human
embryo, hence, their anti-abortion
stance - ("Mommy, Mommy, I'm a
little person in here, so please don't
kill me") - and, as always, undauntPage 20

ed by complexities and unhindered

by logic, thus do they similarly
image the phenomenon of religious
fervor. They must have in mind the
same pictures I saw, and using
fifth-grade picture-thinking, interpret them as Gospel truth. Why,
there are the actual photographs of
Pentecost; one can easily discern the
flames floating above each Apostle's
head. Apparently, the tongues hovered in the same zeppelin fashion as
the doves. Then, it is written, the
Holy Spirit descended on them, and
sat upon each of them, (without
singeing any hairs). After a pause,
the flaming tongues started down,
settled momentarily atop each head,
then continued right through the
cranium, the gray matter, and the
hard palate, to come to a final landing, neatly slipping into place over
the ordinary, non-flammable tongue.
Lo and behold, the chosen ones now
possess the Gift of Tongues.
This, as we all know, is the
miraculous ability to babble incoherently for extended periods of time, a
power possessed by only a very few
others, such as politicians, and some
philosophers. Ah, that far-out Third
Person; those wild and crazy
Pentecostals.
Unfortunately, the
Holy Spirit never performed his
"Tongues of Fire" routine in our
class; the only fiery tongue there
belonged to the Enforcer, and it was
anything but incoherent.
You've just become accustomed
to the deathly quiet and discipline of
our class when you think you notice
something
else, something
so
mind-boggling to the modern educator that it just couldn't be, could it?
Surely not. Yet, you detect ...something. You note the faces of the first
row, nearest you, nearest the door.
They seem to exhibit an indefinable
attitude, an attentiveness and alertness; cheeks are ruddy; penetrating
eyes appear sensitive to the environment, to your presence; eyebrows
are high; faces glow with health,
with inquisitiveness.
But, as you go to the second row,
something is different. Your gaze
proceeds fairly rapidly from front to
back of each of the five or six rows.
Spring 1998

No doubt about it. You repeat the

experiment several times to be certain. Yes, the deterioration
is
marked, the gradual declination
almost tangible. In the last rows,
how could you but help notice the
slack jaws, the vacant stares ofthose
dead, uncomprehending eyes. The
dullness is oppressive, a kind of
DUMBTH RADIATION oozing from
each blank visage; waves of such low
intensity that they barely contain
sufficient energy to tumble over one
another towards the front of the
room. Picture a molasses waterfall
and you will have some idea of the
vapid vibes filling that remote
wasteland. One can only guess at
what sort of piteous, primitive,
quasi-humanoid creatures lurked in
the dim recesses of that farthest row.
Last Desk, Last Row. Who... What
could have been sitting there?
One can see today's educational
theorists shrieking and rending
their garments over that unbelievably demeaning seating arrangement. But, yes, we were seated by
intellectual rank. Believe it or not.
There ...There I am. First row,
third desk. No, I wasn't first and I
wasn't even second. But, by about
the fourth or fifth grades I had
begun to secure my lock on third
place - the perennial show horse.
Oh, occasionally during those last
four years of grammar school, I drifted back to four or five, and there
may have been a couple of times
when I displaced Charles Dumont,
Mister Two, for brief periods. But
usually, like my favorite god, I could
be found occupying the numberthree position.
I guess our intelligence was
measured by a combination of I.Q.
tests, administered during those
middle
grammar
grades,
and
achievement in class. As for I.Q., the
nun just told us the raw score without interpreting or explaining it in
any way. I swear she said mine was
in the mid-130s, but I'm quite ready
to admit I'm wrong and that 50
years of wishful thinking may have
bloated the correct score by a few
increments.
American Atheist

Nevertheless, I discount entirely

the I.Q. aspect of our seating
arrangement because I feel that I
earned that third chair. I earned it
by reading those mountains of
books; by winning interminable
spelling bees; by writing an infinity
of clever, carefully crafted "compositions." I have a jumbled memory of
poster boards hanging in those
rooms, and various devices for keeping a tally of who had read the most
books. Some boards had pockets
with our names, and space for 3x5
cards containing title,. author, and a
brief description of the book. My
pocketswere always full. Others just
used gold or silver stars, or small
cutout pictures of Jesus and Mary.
My spaces had their fill of Jesus and
Mary and other stars. Of course,
there were no cut-outs for my special
cut-up, that daffy deity, the Third
Person.
At the school's graduation ceremonies, my consistent literary
pre-eminence garnered me the prestigious English Award; (actually, just
one among a number of secondary
"subject" awards). I'm certain the
award consisted of either a framed
9x12 picture of the Sacred Heart,
thorn-wrapped and bloody - (the
heart, not the picture) - or a
foot-long plaster statuette of the
Blessed Virgin. One was the prize,
and the other perhaps a graduation
gift. Both still exist. The Virgin even
now graces the Philadelphia home
as a centerpiece decoration for my
mom's dining room buffet. I believe
the two top awards were scholarships to one of the better and more
academically
oriented
"status"
Catholic high schools - staffed, if I
remember correctly, by the Jesuit
order. John Gillin, always top dog of
our class, and Charles Dumont were
awarded these really meaningful
prizes. But, strangely enough, neither took advantage of the educational opportunity. As did I, both
attended
and graduated
from
Southeast Catholic High School for
Boys.
Chubby
and
red-cheeked,
Charles Dumont's appearance belied
his quiet, withdrawn nature. A mysAustin, Texas

tery boy, I never knew much about

him, nor had the faintest idea of
where he lived. Then too, he was
something of an anomaly, with the
unquestionably French surname
branding him as a non-member of
the three major ethnic groups represented in our class - Italian, Irish,
and Mongrel. That last was a grab
bag full of primarily Polacks and
assorted central and southeastern
Europeans. In those days, the
Dumont name signified a superior
brand of radios and phonographs. I
always wondered if Charles were
related to the electronics magnates.
There's no denying that he exuded
an aura of confidence and breeding,
as would a person with secret sources of wealth.
John Gillin was much closer and
friendlier. Try as I might through all
those latter grammar-school years, I
could never displace him from his
premier position - First Row, First
Desk. Like most truly bright persons, his superiority extended to all
subjects. I, on the other hand, came
to a screeching stop after the first
two "R's"; my talents would not
extend to "Rithmatic" or the natural
or social sciences. Besides being
master of all he surveyed, John was
a good-looking boy with pleasant,
regular features, an impish grin,
sparkling eyes, and elfin charm. Of
course, one never knows whether
those attributes are actually there,
or just "perceived" as a consequence
of the knowledge that a person is
Irish. Whichever it was, John was,
intellectually, my closest companion
in The Epiphany School.
I did know where he lived - near
the corner of Eleventh and Jackson,
directly across the street, and about
fifty feet from the front of our
church. Perhaps his brains could be
traced to the benign spiritual influence of such a location, in such proximity to God's house. He would be
constantly bathed in rays of grace
and the abundance of blessings
pouring from the Holy Cathedral.
(And that fortunate location must
have had the desired effect; I
learned, much later at a reunion,
that John Gillin had indeed become
Spring 1998

a priest, and was permanently stationed in Rome! How brilliant of him

to combine Irish charm and Italian
living!)
However, I was a bit taken
aback when he first invited me to his
home. The family lived on the first
floor and seemed to be occupying one
dimly lit, bare room behind a Jackson St. storefront. I immediately got
the impression of poverty - not
"abject," but "moderate" - a standard of living well below my family's
two-story, four-bedroom "mansion"
on Thirteenth St. A little hasty generalization mashed together with
vague historical scraps of potatoes
and famines , and it was easy to
arrive at the conclusion: All Irish are
Poor. Indeed, I didn't know any
whose homes remotely approached
ours in splendor and ostentation. (Of
that third ethnic group, the less
said, the better. They seemed to
have settled in the farthest reaches
of the parish down by the riverside,
and all their family members
worked on the docks. The mind could
hardly begin to envisage images of
the squalid shacks and hovels they
must have called "home.")
In retrospect, I realize that mine
was the duty of upholding the honor
of all Italians; I was the only one in
the first row. Behind me stretched a
string of Irish monickers - Paul
Crossin, Robert Foy, Joseph Lawler.
(In those days, I made no distinction
between Irish, Scottish, and British;
they were all "sort of' Irish to me.)
Ralph Capozzoli may have made the
first row on occasion, and he certainly came into his own in high school,
as did Vince Marino. But my memory classifies them as second-row elementary people. No, I had to perform; I had to prove that Italians
could be smart; that we were not just
wine-guzzling, pizza-tossing, emptyheaded tenors, belting out endless
renditions of 0 Sale Mia in lieu of
any intellectual activity. I, Number
Three, was Italy's hope. I, Antonio
Serioso. So burdened, so dedicated,
so serious. I began to see an important distinction between those boys
like myself and John Gillin who
were serious, and took all the theolPage 21

ogy literally, and the other guys, the

majority, who seemed oblivious to
any inconsistency in being Catholic,
while still cussing a lot, and talking
about sports, girls, and "bad" things.
Logic dictated my actions. God
was in the tabernacle, a few yards
from schooL Why not visit him frequently, even daily? He loves me
more than anyone else, more than
everyone else - including the three
Aunts - put together. And he wants
me to visit and worship, and beg forgiveness for my sins. So, should I be
spending any time at all on baseball,
or stamps? Even piano practice?
Especially when you consider that
even the simplest prayers earned
you huge blocks of release time from
the purgatorial fires. Why think
about girls when you could do a few,
quickie, "Hail-Marys," or rap a
rapid-fire sequence of "J-M-J's,"
(Jesus-Mary-Joseph) and get credited with eons of relief?
When in the upper grades, there
even were a few times when I forgot
to pick up my brother, Phil, the first
or second-grader, after schooL The
poor, little tyke. I was busy, working
on really important things: I was
praying in church. Gosh, I guess I
was really close to cracking up in
those days; on the road to bedlam.
Or the priesthood.
''You were taking it too seriously."
There's the same, old, excuse
whenever religious "fanaticism"
leads to tragedy. But, it seems to me,
that's the same as saying it wasn't
intended seriously; in other words, it
was false. (You mean all the stuff
about God, sin, and salvation wasn't
meant to be taken seriously?)
They must have recruited us at
about the fourth or fifth grades,
when we were still as sweet and
innocent as - my god we could have
passed for - the cherubs liberally
depicted in the church. Strange as it
now seems, I may still have been the
lovable, slender, blond-haired angel
appearing in some of Mom's ancient
photos. It's also quite likely that
they only recruited from among the
first two rows, since only students of
a certain intellectual attainment
Page 22

would be capable of acquiring and

memorizing Latin responses and
mastering all the complexities of
acolytic procedure. Seven or eight
altar boys from each of the last four
grades would provide a corps of
about thirty, enough to handle the
myriad duties for a huge, thriving
parish like the Epiphany, possibly a
hundred or more square blocks of
South Philly.
I can't recall any training in the
details of serving Mass, though
there must surely have been some.
Nor do I remember any lessons in
Latin. I must have picked it up with
the relative ease with which I have
always absorbed the flow and feel of
a new language, though certainly
not the meanings. Of course, one
could be a perfect altar boy without
knowing the significance of a single
Latin term. Besides, the language
seemed to be closely related to and
pronounced just like the Italian I
had occasionally heard from my
grandparents or - still more rarely my parents. I'm sure I believed that
Latin was derived from Italian.
With no recollection of toil and
trouble, of ever "becoming" an altar
boy, it now seems to me that I was
always one. Always in church;
always holy. At first, of course, the
youngest boys were assigned to the
"chorus" - flower strewers on the few
really pleasant holy days and holidays; contributing our innocence
and boy sopranos to winding processions; adding the cherubic touch to
major ceremonies; positioned about
the sanctuary like so much living
altar decor.
Later, as we got older and wiser,
rose in the ranks and ourselves
became acolytic upperclassmen, we
naturally got to serve Mass routinely. Then the High Masses, the funerals and christenings, the cinemascope productions on Christmas,
Easter, Palm Sunday, New Year's oops, the Circumcision - the special
visiting missionary events, retreats
and novenas, and finally, the zenith
of that hallowed vocation, weddings.
For working weddings (holy matrimony), we might get - it happened
only about half the time - a one-dolSpring 1998

lar tip. Nevertheless, even disregarding the tip, weddings were probably the "happiest" of all the sacred
functions at which we served, and
infinitely preferable to the excruciating boredom and eternal duration of
regular Masses.
There were myriad excellent
reasons for being an altar boy,
almost none of them religious. Of
course, I welcomed the spiritual benefits, the additional blessings and
indulgences pertaining to assisting
at Mass, which helped compensate
us for the sacrifices in time and sleep
necessary to the performance of our
duties. More significant was the
sense of constantly being so close to
the Lord of Hosts, Almighty Creator
and Ruler of the Universe, piled, in
multiple enwaferments, in a golden
chalice, in a golden tabernacle, just a
few feet from my worshipful gaze.
Nevertheless, as important as
these were, they could not compare
to the sheer, snobbish satisfaction of
walking into class at 10 in the morning, having just served a 9-0'clock
Mass. Boring though it could be,
church time was still better than
doing class time; I savored the elitist
joys of knowing I had missed, legitimately, hours of classroom drill.
With supernatural sanction; something like having an excuse signed
by God.
What?
Schoolday,
weekday
masses? But of course. At any given
time, we had five or six resident clergy and who knows what other peripatetic priests, visiting missionaries
and papal emissaries? Each one had
to say Mass each day - one of the
earliest of the inviolate rules of the
priesthood we had been taught. No
matter what, in battle, sick in bed,
in outer space, he must celebrate the
sacrament at least once a day. I really can't say whether they were permitted to do two or more. Six Masses
every weekday, more on Saturdays
and Sundays meant a minimum of
twelve altar boys was needed each
and every day.
Then too, the spiritually busy
times of which I write were the war
years. Those middle-elementary
grades, the frightening period when
American Atheist

.,

our forces were being pushed all over

the Pacific. A gargantuan parish,
hordes of parishioners anxious over
their loved one's safety demanded
more church time, more prayers,
more ceremonies. Heaven had to be
hounded, battered with an onslaught of worship, entreating the
powers that be to grant America a
speedy, glorious victory. Not that any
additional prayers should, theoretically, have been necessary, for we all
knew that God wason our side. He
was certainly not a Jap! Hence,
genetically speaking, his son could
not possibly be one either. But the
thousands of pictures of Christ that
we'd seen afforded conclusive confirmation of our belief that Jesus was
no slant-eye. Neither was the Holy
Spirit, though I suppose that would
depend on his disguise for the day.
So, even though all the additional
wartime supplications were actually
superfluous, like chicken soup, they
couldn't hurt.
But the demand for more liturgy
did create an unusual burden, heavier pressures on our clergy and the
church facilities. Occasionally a
priest would try holding Mass at one
of the side altars, either the male
altar featuring Saints Anthony and
Francis, or the female one, to the
left, highlighting Saints Teresa and
Margaret. Devotees ofthose particular luminaries could then occupy the
appropriate side pews for those ceremonies. Of course, that did nothing
whatever to alleviate the crush, and
create the additional space needed to
accommodate the overflow throngs.
Not to mention the confusion: even
though following a side Mass, one
could hardly ignore the fact that
ringing bells at the primary altar
were signaling that God had just
arrived at center stage. And, obviously it wouldn't do to have two
simultaneous sermons going.
What we had there was an enormous logistic problem; before going
off to the chemical plants, refineries,
factories, Jersey farms and the
Philadelphia Naval Yard, our parishioners wanted to sanctify their day
and have their war efforts blessed by
attending Mass. But when? AssumAustin, Texas

ing that they rose around 6 and had

to be on the job around 9, and noting
that the standard Mass, depending
on sermon, can get fairly close to an
hour, there was only one Mass, the 7
o'clock, which they could possibly
attend. We had to have more space,
more services, and shorter Masses.
The solution incorporated two
brilliant strokes of ecclesiastical
innovation. One involved pressing
into service our ample church basement, which had formerly been used
only for meetings, and the ubiquitous Bingo. The other entailed a
great deal of liturgical pruning: it
was possible to clip the Kyrie, off the
Offertory, and eviscle the Epistle.
Even that untouchable, the Sermon,
could be trimmed a bit, excising
some of the homilies, but leaving the
appeals for funds intact, since they
constituted the very essence of the
ritual. The end result is a streamlined service coming in at well under
30 minutes. Thus, can it truly be
claimed that, born of the exigencies
of war and the piety of the laity,
came the invention of LITE MASS.
Haste's great. Less fulfilling. But
precisely the same amazing grace.
Now the lower church could hold
Mass on the half-hour, the upper
every hour, and there would be
enough supplication to go round.
So, more altar boys. More church
time for me. I welcomed it, not
because I was that sanctimonious (I
was!), but because the church building was so dramatically, wondrously
different from our ordinary experience of block after block of row after
row of row house. Its massive scale,
dimensions and decor, its architectural splendor, regalia and trappings
all combined to convey the distinct
impression that this was not like
home. This was something decidedly
different, of another time and place;
it must have been constructed in the
Middle Ages. This resembled the
enchanted castles, royal palaces and
impregnable
fortresses
of our
beloved comics, novels, adventures
and fairy tales. Damn, our church
was an exact replica of Sleeping
Beauty's castle. Or was it one of the
palaces in which Shirley Temple, as
Spring 1998

dewy-eyed urchin, frequently found

herself?
Our church had its dungeons the unrenovated areas of the lower
church, its spires and turrets and
towers, its Gothic arches and unexpected twists and turns, its forbidden zones, its remote, unreachable
heights - the choir-organ loft. Just
inside the church entrance, at either
side, were small staircases leading
to that elevated music level, but we
were not permitted to use them; one
side, in fact, was never used. Who
knew why? Satisfyingly enough, just
a few years later, my wonderful
cousin, Marie, had become the
church organist and secured for me
permission to practice the organ and
roam the loft at will.
There were... secret passages.
How strange that those, more than
most other aspects of my reading,
film viewing and radio listening,
should have impressed themselves
upon my mind in so powerful a fashion. Secret passages. And the entire
family of such: tunnels, camouflaged
cave openings, mazes, trapdoors,
movable panels. Yes, tilt just the
right volume from the third bookshelf and a concealed system of
gears and pulleys swings away one
of the library walls. Touch a certain
spot on that small, irregular stone
below the mantel - 10, the back of
the fireplace slides up to reveal
secret steps descending to... what
unspeakable
horror?
And the
bed-chamber of course always contained its obligatory false panels.
How else were assorted fiends to
gain access to the heroine, when she
had naively barred the stout oaken
door from the inside? That secret
passage often opened just behind an
elaborate Victorian headboard. In
other cases, the false wall was the
one at the rear of the closet; upon
opening, one can see a staircase,
usually an ascending one leading to
... what unspeakable horrors in the
attic?
Well, with youthful enthusiasm,
a runaway fancy could easily transform all the slightly recondite areas
of the church building into "secret
passages." A staircase from sanctuPage 23

ary to rectory; the two prohibited

sets of loft steps; the devious route
connecting upper and lower churches; a space behind the organ pipes
that was an awfully tight squeeze all were slightly illicit, all had a
touch of the arcane about them.
Then, it seemed that the lower
church was in a perpetual state of
construction and renovation, which
obviously created more dangerous
nooks and crannies and obstacle
courses,
more "no-trespassing"
zones, more secret passages. Best
and scariest of all was the long dark
tunnel behind the main altar connecting the priest's ready room with
the altar boy prep room. That was
the storage area for the dozens of
generic surplices and cassocks; we
donned them and primped there
before making our grand entrance.
The collars were ours. Each boy had
to purchase his own. It was with
respect to the collars that there
seemed to be an ongoing, friendly
competition among the mothers as to
which could get her little angel's the
whitest and stiffest. My mom always
did a great job; I always felt that my
collar was vastly superior to the
smudgy and sometimes downright
dirty ones the other boys wore. Of
course, I had three back-up laundresses - the three Aunts - who
would not have permitted one mote
of dust to escape their sterilizing,
x-ray scrutiny.
.Put on the sacred robes, back to
the sacristy, assist at Mass, then
back through the tunnel. There was
no way to gauge its heights; these
were lost in the blackness of the
upper vaults of the church. One side
of the tunnel was just the reverse
side of the altarpiece: high, way up
in the celestial strata, there were
faint beams of light coming through
the altar fretwork, either the dim
church illumination or the candlelight from the very highest, huge
altar candles - those lit only for the
very highest and most elaborate productions. In fact, if I remember correctly, there were ladders in the tunnel, their upper ends also lost in the
blackness, and it was necessary to
Page 24

climb them to light and extinguish

those super-candles.
When traversing the tunnel, you
had to make your best guess as to
when you were directly behind the
tabernacle, just two or three feet the
other side of the altar. At that point,
we were, presumably, breaking the
path of the Divine Rays and must
genuflect. The primary rays from all
those sanctified hosts piled in the
golden containers locked in the
tabernacle must have been strongest
at zero degrees, shooting straight
down the center aisle, through the
vestibule, down the front steps, and
right across Eleventh Street. There
was no doubt the rays went that far,
for we - all Catholics - had been
trained to at least bow one's head, or
cross oneself when crossing the center front of a church. Even when
walking along the street. Even when
in an automobile, where genuflecting would have been somewhat
impractical. The rays must have
weakened a bit at that distance,
since they were entitled to only a
nodding bow,not a genuflection. But
they were still present. However,
those coming from the back, at 180
degrees, must have been considerably more feeble. While we had to
genuflect in the tunnel, nobody
strolling on Twelfth Street had to
bow,nod, or even wave.
That always struck me as a bit
peculiar. One would have supposed
that an omnipotent being, giving off
beams of mega-zap force, would have
radiated from a point-source, omnidirection ally. Like those faceted,
mirrored ballroom globes. Or radiated in several planes. At the very
least, in one plane, at the four compass points. But Nooo; there was
just the one super-beam about a
hundred yards long coming out the
front, and that other mini-ray at the
back which forced our tunnel gyrations. Airplanes didn't have to dip
when passing directly over. Nor did
the worshippers in the lower church
have to make guesses about the
upper; they had their own rays to
contend with.

Spring 1998

All in all, I suppose it was lucky

that the Eucharistic rays weren't
more potent and omnidirectional.
For, considering the location of John
Gillin's home, he and his family
would have been perpetually genuflecting, bouncing up and down in a
kind of spastic, demented Irish jig.
Secret passages. Yes, they transformed the consecrated building into
a secular wonderland of such fascination and mystery. And one other
thing, obviously related both psychologically and in fantasy. Buried treasure. Well, not really "buried" treasure; "misplaced" or "forgotten" treasure. Yousee, if there was one aspect
of the Church which had been
impressed upon us and really made
an impact on the psyche of adventure-minded, comic-book-reared little boys, it was that the Holy Roman
Catholic Church was an institution
of enormous wealth. Incalculable,
groaning wealth.
The Vatican was, to our imagination, some far-off legendary city of
gold, far more fabulous than EI
Dorado or Shangri-La, and more
awesome than the Bat-Cave or
Superman's
shining, crystalline
hideaway. And the riches contained
therein were still more mind-boggling. They owned, for example, just
about every famous painting in the
world, since they were all done by
Italians, and Vatican City was the
capital of Italy. Everything that
Michelangelo,
DaVinci, Titian,
Rafael had ever done was there. All
the sculpture too. In fact, the value
of all those art objects was so enormous that ifthey had just sold a couple of paintings, and perhaps one
statue, they could have fed and
clothed all the poor people in the
whole damned world for about ten
years. I often wondered why they
didn't do exactly that, instead of
always asking our parish to send
them money.
Then, the stamps. I had just
begun to collect those pretty, weird,
and colorful pieces of paper, those
exotic ones that bore little resemblance to the boring, pedestrian
stamps issued by the United States.
AmericanAtheist

This fledgling collector would save

his precious allowance and purchase
those great big, penny stamps, beckoning from the approval selections I
received; crazy, triangular or diamond-shaped
issues
from the
Mozambique Company, Tannu Tuva,
and other bizarre lands, of whose
locations I hadn't the faintest idea.
However, I gathered from snippets
of information in our school magazine that the Vatican, as usual,
owned the world's biggest and best
stamp collection, and. my fevered
imagination could only gasp as I
speculated about its contents. Why,
there must have been rarity after
rarity, cartons of stamps and
envelopes from the medieval period,
from the Crusades, from King
Arthur's days. Maybe even... of
course, they must have some of the
letters sent by the Apostles; certainly some of St. Paul's stuff; all he ever
did was write letters. And, I'd have
bet that locked in the most secure
fortifications, inside ten-foot steel
vaults, they actually had preserved
some envelopes with stamps licked
by Jesus!
The Vatican was wealthy beyond
the dreams of a thousand emperors,
and our church, the old Epiphany
parish, was a part of the same organization, wasn't it? So, it too must be
rich. Certainly, there was sufficient
additional evidence for that conclusion to indicate that my reasoning
was logically impeccable. (It wasn't).
Just the contrast between the
church and our homes confirmed the
vast difference in wealth. The genuine marble everywhere - not marbled formica; the rich woods; the
paintings, statues, and stained
glass. Priestly raiment was all linen,
silk and satin, interwoven and decorated with threads of silver and
gold. Gold, gold encrusted with precious jewels, was the most conspicuous sign of wealth. All the sacred
vessels were gold; the chalices, the
monstrances, the tabernacle itself,
even the paten - the little plate we
held under the communicant's chin
in case a fleck of God should flake
off, or the priest should miss the
tongue altogether.
Austin,Texas

Finally, not only were we surrounded by priceless treasures, but

we came into direct contact with the
concrete, tangible value of money
itself. Money, in jingling piles and
loose stacks, in the wicker baskets
on the ends of long poles we shoved
down each pew so the devout could
pay their dues. I think those were
ancient times, long before the invention of "deacons." What happened to
all that cold, hard cash? Just one
Sunday's receipts?
Couldn't there be a pile of it
lying around somewhere? Forgotten? Misplaced? Couldn't some
priest, long ago, have hidden away a
priceless relic, or perhaps an emerald chalice, then died before revealing its location to anyone? Why not
the Holy Grail itself? Or, maybe
some dusty storage bin containing a
few masterpieces was plastered over
in all the lower church construction.
These were, essentially, what I
meant by "buried" treasure, as we
silly boys whispered our tall tales
and exciting rumors of the wonders
concealed in the vastness of that
church building. Most of the stories
centered about the lower church, the
basement, which our psyches had
transformed into a dungeon; there
was more mystery over its secret
places. Secret passages and buried
treasure kept us going back, serving
again and again, so that afterwards,
we could pursue our primary mission - exploration.
To be continued, explaining
"Nazis" were.

who the

CHECK OUT AMERICAN

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the American Atheist magazine

www.americanatheist.org
AACHAT - send e-mail to

US Supreme Court

24th National
AMERICAN
ATHEISTS
Convention
June 12-14, 1998
Washington, D.C.
American Atheists is bringing back
the National Convention.
Our 1998 gathering, to be held in
the nation's capital, will
commemorate the 35th
anniversary of the
US Supreme Court decision in the
historic Murray v Curlett case.
This important decision helped to
end forced prayer and bible recitation in the public schools, opened
these schools to ALL children
regardless of religious or lack of
religious belief, and was the
first historic and definitive
statement of its kind on behalf of
Atheist civil rights.
Plan to join us at the elegant
Crystal City Hyatt-Regency Hotel
to hear stimulating speakers,
an exciting debate, and musical
entertainment.
Then rally with us on the steps of
the Supreme Court to celebrate
Murray v Curlett.

aachat@atheists.org
ATHEIST FLASHLINE
http://www.atheists.
orgltlash.line/index.html
Spring 1998

Page 25

Blind Faith
Part II

Formerly a professor of biology

and geology, Frank R. Zindler
is now a science writer. He is a
member of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, the New York
Academy of Science, The
Society of Biblical Literature,
and the American Schools of
Oriental Research. He is the
Editor of American Atheist.

Frank R. Zindler
Page 26

Several years ago at Easter time,

the Ohio State University Faculty
Christian
Fellowship
took out a
deceptive advertisement in the student's newspaper,
The Lantern.
Showing a picture of the martyrdom
of St. Sebastian, the ad posed the
question "Would you lie if the truth
hurt this much?" Designed to fool
students into thinking that the earliest Christians (including the unidentified fourth-century St. Sebastian) had died trather than renounce
their first-hand
knowledge of the
Christ story, the ad invited students
to send for a leaflet entitled "Beyond
Blind Faith," produced by Christian
apologist Paul E. Little. In the first
part of his two-part critique, Frank
R. Zindler showed the fallacies of the
ad itself (e.g., there were no eye witnesses) and also showed that Little's
leaflet was based on two fundamental fallacies: it simply assumed that
Jesus was a historical figure and
that the New Testament is a historically reliable document. The nativity
fables were shown to be contradictory and unhistorical. In this second
and concluding part, the resurrection stories are subjected to critical
analysis.
he major argument advanced
by Paul Little, the author of
the evangelical tract entitled
Beyond Blind Faith, is that Jesus
rose from the dead and that this is
proof of his divinity. Apart from the
lack of credible evidence to show
that there even was a Jesus let
alone a Jesus who died and came
back to life, and apart from the sim-

Spring 1998

ple fact that if Jesus died he couldn't

possibly have been a god (since gods
are by definition immortal), Little
seems unaware of the problem
posed by the fact that both the Old
and New Testaments claim other
persons to have been resurrected
from the dead also. Does this make
those characters gods also? If Little
argues that Lazarus and the son of
the Shunammite
woman whom
Elisha resurrected (II Kings 4) did
not raise themselves up but rather
were raised, he should note that St.
Paul quite clearly indicates that
Jesus didn't raise himself up either.
In Romans 4:24-25 Paul makes it
clear that Jesus was raised up by
god, not by himself. There we read,
"It shall be imputed to us who
believe in Him who raised up Jesus
our Lord from the dead, Who was
delivered up because of our offenses,
and was raised because of our justification."
Now of course there is no reason
to suppose that any of the resurrections mentioned in the Bible ever
occurred. All we have are religiously
motivated reports of hearsay piled
upon hearsay - that's the so-called
Holy Bible. But Little can't even get
his bible stories straight - or else he
is trying to fool his readers by distorting some of them. Keep in mind,
Little's whole purpose in this tract is
to convince people that Jesus was a
god. This being the case, we must
wonder why he wrote the following:
"Paul, the great apostle, wrote, 'If
Christ has not been raised, our
preaching is useless and so is your
faith' (l Corinthians 15:14). Paul
rested his whole case on the bodily
resurrection of Christ." What is this
American Atheist

supposed "whole case" which Paul

was arguing? Was he arguing the
divinity of Christ? Not at all. If he
had, he would not have used the
passive voice. He would have said
"If Christ has not raised himself
up," not "if Christ has not been
raised." No, Paul the Saint was not
arguing the same case as Paul the
Little. Paul was arguing whether or
not his readers will be resurrected
from the dead. His simple-minded
argument is nothing more than this:
"Thefact that Jesus was raised from
the dead proves that the dead can be
raised. Therefore, you all too shall
be raised from the dead."
But the argument of Paul goes
further than Little and the rest of
the OSU Faculty Fundies can handle. Paul asks later in Chapter
15:35, "But someone will say, 'How
are the dead raised up? And with
what body do they come?'" Contrary
to the normal Christian teaching
that it is our ordinary physical bodies - ranging in age from 10 minutes
to 100 years - that will be resurrected, Paul makes some fundamental
biological errors about seeds and
then asserts that "15:39 All flesh is
not the same flesh ... 42 So also is the
resurrection of the dead. The body is
sown in corruption, it is raised in
incorruption .... 44 It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual
body. There is a natural body, and
there is a spiritual body." So there
you have it: your physical body is
not going to be raised from the dead.
To clinch this conclusion, Paul adds
in verse 15:50 "Now this I say,
brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor
does corruption inherit incorruption." A corruptible body, one that
can rot, isn't going into heaven. Of
course not!
The Appeal to Emotion
Having used various illogical
arguments to prove that Jesus was
a god and that Ohio State University students should believe the
malarkey of the gospels, Paul E.
Little's leaflet entitled "Beyond
Blind Faith" shifts gears and goes
Austin, Texas

for emotional appeal. "If Christ did

not rise from the dead, Christianity
is an interesting museum piece nothing more," he writes. Of course
we.can all agree with that, because
it happens to be the truth. He continues, "It has no objective validity
or reality." Correct again! Now the
emotional appeal: "The martyrs who
went singing to the lions, and contemporary missionaries who have
given their lives in Ecuador and
Congo while taking this message to
others, have been poor deluded
fools." Of course, Little is correct
again; they have all been poor deluded fools - and deluding fools as well.
Little should know, however,

" Lies are so short in

the stating, so long in
the negating."
that Christianity isn't the only religion that has led innocent as well as
culpable fools to their death. We
think of the ancient Jews who died
at Masada rather than be forced to
eat a pork chop. We think of all the
German Christians who died following the gospel of Adolf Hitler, a
Roman Catholic in good standing
with the Pope until his suicide. We
think of the Muslims who died in
jihad fighting for Iran against Iraq,
or fighting for Iraq against Iran.
Jihad, you know, is a very sacred
principle of religion. Christians
have the exact same sacrament:
they call it crusading. We think of
the Waco Wackos who followed
David Koresh to their deaths, the
deeply religious followers of Jim
Jones who consummated their faith
with the Eucharist of Kool-Aid. If
martyrdom proves the truth of
Christianity, it proves the truth of
Judaism,
Islam,
Buddhism,
Sikhism, and every other ism that
requires its followers to check their
brains at the threshold of its holy
place.
Keep in mind that in our own
era people have thought particular
gurus and leaders were gods and
Spring 1998

have died for them. The Emperor of

Japan, after all, wasn't demoted to
humanhood until 1945. Did all the
kamikaze deaths prove the truth of
the Emperor Cult? How much less,
then, can martyrdoms prove anything when the martyrs lived at a
time when they couldn't have had
any first-hand knowledge of the godman for whom they died? There is
no one known from New Testament
times who can be proved to have
known Jesus personally and to have
suffered martyrdom therefor. The
only martyr claimed in the New
Testament is St. Stephen, and we
have indicated in Part I that he was
a complete fiction. Catholic tradition claims that both Peter and Paul
suffered martyrdom, but there is no
credible evidence to show this. Paul,
if he existed, by his own admission
never met Jesus in the flesh, and so
his testimony is of no more account
than the holy roller at the tent
meeting who gets a message from
Jeezus. St. Peter, on the other hand,
almost certainly never lived at all.
In "Of Bones and Boners: Saint
Peter at the Vatican," which
appeared in the Spring 1997 issue of
American Atheist, I showed that the
supposed bones of St. Peter housed
in the Vatican and Lateran basilicas
are nothing of the sort - they
include the bones of a woman, pigs,
a chicken, and a mouse!
The Appeal-to-Authority
Fallacy
It is astonishing how many
deceptions, confusions, and delusions can be packed into one little
four-page leaflet. As I never tire to
point out, "Lies are so short in the
stating, so long in the negating."
The argument I wish to deal
with next involves the appeal-toauthority fallacy. Little appeals to
the authority of a lawyer to prove
the bodily resurrection of Christ. He
writes:
The attack on Christianity by its
enemies has most often concentrated on the Resurrection because it
has been clearly seen that this
event is the crux of the matter. A
remarkable attack was the one conPage 27

templated in the early ~30s by. a

young British lawyer. He was convinced that the Resurrection was
mere fable and fantasy. Sensing
that it was the foundation stone of
the Christian faith, he decided to do
the world a favor by once and for all
exposing this fraud and superstition. As a lawyer, he felt he had
the critical faculties to rigidly sift [I
think he means "rigorously sift!"]
evidence and to admit nothing as
evidence which did not meet the
stiff criteria for admission into a
law court today. However, while
Frank Morrison was' doing his
research, a remarkable thing happened. The case was not nearly as
easy as he had supposed. As a
result, the first chapter in his book,
Who Moved the Stone? is entitled,
"The Book That Refused to Be
Written." In it he described how, as
he examined the evidence, he
became persuaded against his will,
of the fact of the bodily resurrection
of Christ.

I'm sure you're all enormously

impressed by this argument. I once
owned
the
book
mentioned,
although I can't remember really
reading it, and I can't find it at the
moment to make authoritative comments about it. But I am immediately struck by the fact that whatever Morrison's arguments might have
been, they all would have been
thrown out of an American court of
justice for one simple reason:
hearsay is not admissible as evidence. In the case of the so-called
hiblical evidence for Jesus' resurrection, what we have is hearsay piled
upon hearsay. We do not even know
who the first persons in the chain of
hearsay might have been, nor when
exactly they might have been overheard to make their claims. Not only
can we not ask the question, "Just
what time of day was it, Miss
Magdalene, when you saw the angel
roll back the stone?" (I'm certain a
court of law would be happy to
admit evidence on angel-sightings!)
- not only can we not do that, we
cannot even ask the question, "Mr.
Disciple Number Six, will you
please tell the court exactly when it
was that Miss Magdalene told you
Page 28

she had seen an angel tampering

with a sealed tomb?" Perhaps a
Reagan-appointed
judge
might
accept the latter question, but alas
for the Christian defense, not even
that question can be asked. Hearsay
over the span of two millennia
would be too flimsy as evidence even
if Ronald Religion, while still
Evangelist-in-Chief, had appointed
himself as judge to rule on the case.
During his term of office, his
Alzheimer's disease was not yet far
enough advanced for him to have
swallowed such an argument.
\ Without feeling the need to cite
any evidence at all, Little blithely
states that "Jesus' death was by
public execution on a cross." Where's
the proof? Then he says that "the
government said it was for blasphemy." Perhaps Little has a transcript

SNAPSHOTS

of the trial? While the New

Testament implicates the Jewish
Sanhedrin in the affair, and we
would suppose that any Sanhedrin
records would have been destroyed
in the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.,
the New Testament also indicates
that the trial was before Pontius Pilate, a Roman government official. If
a record had been kept, as we may
suppose was required, we would expect the first Christian emperor,
Constantine, to have referred to it in
his arguments at the Council of Niceea.As emperor, he had access to all
archives and records, and surely
would have used such a documentary witness if there had been one.
But Constantine made no appeal to
documents of any kind. Like the
prelates assembled for the showdown between Athanasius
and

by Jason Love
o

Perhaps less famous than the other Greek deities:

Telamucoue,the God of slimy places.
Spring 1998

American Atheist

Arius, Constantine had no more

than faith to employ in his argumentation. If Jesus never existed
and never was executed, we would
expect that there would be no
records for Constantine to examine.
Ifhe did exist, however, an explanation is needed for the lack of official
records.
Little goes on with assertions,
mindless of the fact that even the
New Testament contradicts him:
"The body of Jesus;" he says, "was
then wrapped in linens covered with
approximately
100. pounds
of
gummy-wet spices. His body was
placed in a solid rock tomb." Can
you imagine the scene? Getting one
hundred pounds of spice attached to
a body? Little gets this supposed
information from the 20th chapter
of the Gospel of John. He could not
have made that statement if he had
followed any of the so-called
Synoptic Gospels. In Mark, the earliest of the canonical gospels, we
learn that. the spices for anointing
Jesus weren't even bought until after
the Sabbath, the day after the burial. Chapter 16:1-2 tells us: "Now
when the Sabbath was past, Mary
Magdalene, Mary the mother of
James, and Salome bought spices,
that they might come and anoint
Him. Very early in the morning, on
the first day of the week, they came
to the tomb when the sun had
risen." Of course, they never got a
chance to use their spices. For all we
know, they cooked with the spices
for the rest oftheir lives. The Gospel
of Luke also makes it clear that no
one ever got a chance to spice up her
guru: Chapter 23:55ff tells us that
"...the women who had come with
Him from Galilee followed after, and
they observed the tomb and how His
body was laid. 56 Then they
returned and prepared spices and
fragrant oils. And they rested on the
Sabbath according to the commandment. 24:1 Now on the first day of
the week, very early in the morning,
they and certain other women with
them, came to the tomb bringing the
spices which they had prepared."
Now,lest some apologist argue that
Austin, Texas

Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea had anointed the body it la

the Gospel of John, without the
women knowing it, and they came
unnecessarily back to anoint a
corpse which by then in that climate
would have smelled to high heaven,
we have Luke's assertion that the
women had-observed ''how His body
was laid." Certainly, the hundred
pounds of myrrh and aloes around
the body of Jesus would have shown
them that their garlic salt and
oregano weren't needed.
An Older Apology
Apologies for the absurd story of
the resurrection of Jesus are much
older than the apology offered by the
Faculty Fundies at The Ohio State
University in the form of the tract
written by Paul E. Little. In his
leaflet entitled "Beyond Blind
Faith," Little unwittingly touches
upon a very early piece of falsification for the faith. "Because Jesus
had publicly said He would rise from
the dead in three days, a guard of
trained Roman soldiers was stationed at the tomb. And an official
Roman seal was affixed to the tomb
entrance declaring it government
property."
Now just where did Mr. Little
get this interesting piece of inform ation? The Apostle Paul doesn't mention it. Mark, the earliest of the
gospels, doesn't mention it. John,
the latest of the gospels doesn't say
anything about it, and Luke is mum
about it as well. Only the gospel
attributed to some unknown person
named Matthew says anything like
this. And an incredibly clumsy job it
is that Matthew did! In Chapter 27,
verses 57-61, we read how Joseph of
Arimathea got the body, wrapped it
in an unspiced linen cloth, and
placed it in his own tomb, and rolled
a rock against the doorway to close
it, with Mary Magdalene and some
other Mary watching. Then, verse
62 tells us:
On the next day, which followed the Day of Preparation, the
chief priests and Pharisees gathered together to Pilate, 63 Saying,
"Sir, we remember, while He was
Spring 1998

still alive, how that deceiver said,

'After three days I will rise.' 64
"Therefore command that the tomb
be made secure until the third day,
lest His disciples comeby night and
steal Him away, and say to the people, 'He has risen from the dead.' So
the last deception will be worse
than the first." 65 Pilate said to
them, "You have a guard; go your
way, make it as secure as you know
how." 66 So they went and made
the tomb secure, sealing the stone
and setting the guard.

Apart from the fact that it was a

Jewish guard, * not a Roman guard,
and a Jewish seal not a Roman seal
that would have been placed at and
upon the tomb, what's wrong here?
The timing, of course. Even if one
supposes Jesus really existed and
was crucified and buried, there is a
whole day during which the tomb
was unguarded, and disciples or
common cat-food makers could have
stolen the body. There's no mention
of the Jews checking the tomb to
make sure there was someone inside
it when they went to seal it. The seal
could very well have been placed
upon an empty tomb! But, of course,
we don't have to suppose any such
thing at all. It is quite clear that this
story intrudes upon the narrative
Matthew stole from Mark.
By Matthew's day, we can be
sure that Jews and all sorts of people were responding to the outrageous claims being made by the first
Christians. Not knowing that Jesus
was a total fiction, these opponents
would have come up with the most
natural argument: "Someone stole
and hid the body you claim was resurrected." To counter such arguments, Matthew preempted his
opponents by making up the story
about the guarded tomb. Significantly, his recipe for Easter fiction*Pilate is made to say "You have a
guard," not ''You may have a guard," as
in some apologetic modern translations.
The Greek verb "EXrEechete ('you [plural) have') used in verse 65 is in the
indicative, not imperative, mood - making it clear that the Jews already have
their guard. Pilate is simply giving
them permission to use it.
Page 29

stew has to leave out the spices altogether. If the women knew there
was a guard at a sealed tomb, they
would not presume belatedly to
come to add a little spice to the situation.
If John knew of the guard - and
he would have had to if he were a
trustworthy
witness as alleged he could not have
had Mary Magdalene go early and
unopposed to the
tomb.A similarargument applies to
Luke and Mark. It
is obvious that the writing of fiction
is one of the earliest of Christian
professions.
But we aren't done yet with our
critique of Little's argument about
the Romans posting a guard and
sealing Jesus' tomb to prevent the
disciples from stealing the body which nevertheless turned up missing according to the Gospel of
Matthew and Little's propaganda
leaflet. Not only is there the problem that Matthew bungled his job,
not having the Jews go to Pilate for
permission to post a tomb-guard
until the day after the burial, clearly giving disciples time to steal the
body anyway, there is a further
problem. You may recall that Matt.
27:63 has the Jews tell Pilate, "Sir,
we remember, while He was still
alive, how that deceiver said, 'After
three days I will rise.' " This is very
:revealing, when we discover that
none of the evangelists report Jesus
ever having said "After three days I
will rise." In Mark 8:31 and 9:31,
passages that Matthew certainly
read when he was plagiarizing this
earliest of the gospels, we find Jesus
telling his disciples that The Son Of
Man will be betrayed, killed, and
will rise either after three days or on
the third day, depending upon how
late a Greek text one consults. Lest
you suppose that the Jews overheard this and concluded that Jesus
was talking about himself, consider
Mark 9:32: "But they [the disciples]
did not understand this saying, and

were afraid to ask Him." So if Jesus'

own disciples didn't understand
Jesus to have said that he himself
would rise after three days, why
would the Jews think so? Clearly,
what we have here is Jews responding to the claims of the early
Christians,
not to the claims of

silly and foolish, he would have

written exactly what he wrote. Does
the OSU Faculty Christian Fellowship believe such transparent apologetic?
Burial and Resurrection
Contradictions
It is a very
embarrassing fact
- embarrassing to
Christian
apologists that is - that
there
are five*
descriptions of the
death and burial
of Jesus and the discovery of his
empty tomb, and all five are mutually contradictory and exclusive.
Paul Little, in his propaganda
leaflet entitled
"Beyond Blind
Faith," is either unaware of this fact
or hopes to conceal it in his argumentations attempting to prove that
Jesus rose from the dead and is
therefore a god - actually, an oxymoronic god, since to be a god
immortality is required and gods by
definition cannot die.
We have already examined the
contradictions and incompatibilities
in the claim that the Jews or
Romans posted a guard at the tomb
of Jesus and sealed it. But Mr. Little
goes further with the improbable
tale. "In spite of all this," he writes,
"three days later the body was gone.
[Weremind readers that his count is
off, since the guard wasn't posted
until the second day of Jesus' supposed residence in the tomb.] Only
the grave linens remained, in the
form of the body, but caved in. The
boulder formerly sealing the tomb
was found up a slope, some distance
away from the tomb."
Now where did he get this information?
The gospel of Mark, the oldest of
the canonical gospels and the source
plagiarized by Matthew and Luke
when they fabricated their versions
of the fable, tells us simply that "the

There are five descriptions of the death

and burial of Jesus and the discovery of
his empty tomb, and all five are mutually
contradictory and exclusive.

Page 30

Jesus. Significantly, when Matthew

repeats Mark's saying about the
three days, he omits the part about
the disciples not understanding it. If
he hadn't, he would have exposed
his deception.
After Matthew has the angel
roll away the stone and make the
guards shake in fear and become
like dead men [Matt. 28:4], he tells
gullible readers [28:11ff] " ... some of
the guard came into the city and
reported to the chief priests all the
things that had happened. 12 When
they had assembled with the elders
and consulted together, they gave a
large sum of money to the soldiers,
13 Saying, "Tell them, 'His disciples
came at night and stole Him away
while we slept.' 14 "And if this
comes to the governor's ears, we will
appease him and make you secure."
15 So they took the money and did
as they were instructed; and this
saying is commonly reported among
the Jews until this day."
Now this phrase, "reported
among the Jews until this day"
reveals both that the story was written long after the supposed time of
the events reported and that it was
these later Jews who prompted
Matthew to make up this story. The
thought that soldiers who had just
seen an angel looking like lightning
rolling a ton of stone as if it were a
marble could be bribed into saying
they fell asleep at their watch is too
preposterous to take seriously. But
if Matthew wanted the Jews to look
Spring 1998

*The four gospels plus the speech

accorded to Paul in Acts 13:26-34.
American Atheist

~~~~~

stone had been rolled away - for it

was very large." No indication that
it had rolled up-hill. Nor do any of
the other evangelists indicate that
the stone had been rolled up-hill.
Little appears to have extended the
art of myth-making beyond the official collection of fairy tales. Mark
also makes no mention whatever of
the grave cloths, In fact, one would
naturally conclude from the text
that the tomb was absolutely empty
save for the "youngman" who tells
Mary, Mary, and Salome that Jesus
has risen. "See the place where they
laid Him," Mark 16:6 has him say. If
linens were there, surely Mark's
"young man" would have said something like, "Looky thar! Take a gander at them grave rappins! He
slipped right out of 'em jest like a
snake what shed 'is skin!" (Mark's
Greek is rather rustic.) But it would
be natural to conclude from Mark's
story that Jesus took his linens with
him - and might even still be wearing them!
Matthew, the evangelist who
made up the story about the guard
being posted at the tomb, also
makes no mention of the linens and
implies an empty tomb.
Luke has a veritable herd of
women find the stone rolled away
from the tomb and makes them
enter it; but Peter [Luke 24:12] has
to stoop down to look into the tomb
previously filled with a bunch of
women and two shining men in
order to see "the linen cloths lying
by themselves." (Perhaps the tomb
has shrunken in the meantime. On
the other hand, verse 12 is not found
in the best manuscripts of Luke and
appears to be a later interpolation!)
There is no indication that they
were in the shape of Jesus' body, and
no indication that a photographic
negative like the Shroud of Turin
was present on them.
John's gospel does mention the
linens - in enough detail to discredit both Little and the Shroud of
Turin. John 20:5 tells us that "the
other disciple" stooped down and
"saw the linen cloths lying there."
No details about their shape. In
Austin,Texas

verse 6, Peter "went into the tomb;

and he saw the linen cloths lying
there, 7 And the handkerchief that
had be~n around His head, not lying
with the linen cloths, but folded
together in a place by itself." Of
course, now that I think about it,
you don't usually find the headpiece with snake-skins either - a
fact ignored by the painter of the
Shroud of Turin, who put the face of
Jesus on the same piece of cloth as
the body.

~~

~~-

news that the body was gone. They

gave the soldiers money and told
them to explain that the disciples
had come at night and stolen the
body while they were asleep. That
story was so false that Matthew didn't even bother to refute it! What
judge wouldlisten to you if you said
that while you were asleep you
knew it was your neighbor who
cameinto your house and stole your
television set? Who knows what
goes on while he's asleep? Testimonylike this wouldbe laughed out
of any court.

"Accounting for the Empty

Of course it would, and that is
Tomb"
precisely why the unknown author
We come finally to the last secof Matthew's gospel put the story in
tion of Little's little propaganda
there! He had to refute the argupiece. This section is entitled
ment that Jews and others were
"Accounting for the Empty Tomb."
using at the end of the first century
The empty tomb, you will rememthat the disciples had stolen the
ber, is supposed to be proof that
body - a perfectly plausible arguJesus was a god, having been buried
ment, since they had no way of
in the tomb but coming out alive knowing that Jesus had never existsupposedly something only a god
ed at all. The evangelist wanted to
could do. As always, Little begs the
make the Jews look stupid, and so
question that there ever was such a
he made them look incredibly stutomb in the first place. No ancient
pid. How smart we Christians are
authority mentions it, and the five
compared to those hopelessly dumb
contradictory accounts in the New
Jews! I can hear the echo of those
Testament can properly be ruled out
ancient Christians laughing every
as evidence by virtue of their contradictions. So after
begging the question that there was
an empty tomb,
Do you knoww!rt Christians use a ~sh
Little takes up the
argument
which
as the sign of their religion?
we have already
No, vIrr(?
examined:
"The
earliest explanation circulated was
that the disciples
stole the body!" He
then goes through
the
story
in
Matthew 28:11-15
agarn:

THE "REEL" TRUTH

We have the
record of the reaction of the chief
priests and the elders when the
guards gave them
the infuriating
and mysterious

Because the preachers have reeled them in hook, line, and linker!

L--

Spring 1998

--I

Page 31

time I read Matthew, ehapter. 28.

What we are reading in that chapter
is dishonest polemic, the same sort
of stuff Little has written in our own
times. But Little extends his argument:
...we are faced with a psychological and ethical
impossibility.
Stealing the body of Christ is something totally foreign to the character of the disciples and all that we
know of them. It would mean that
they were perpetrators of a deliberate lie which was responsible for the
deception and ultimate death of
thousands of people. It is inconceivable that, even if a few of the disci-

ofwhom had ever met any ofthe disciples. The evangelists can't even
agree on the names of all the disciples! The political purposes of the
evangelists make their descriptions
of virtually everything of no veridical significance. Ai:; to the argument
that the disciples would not have
suffered martyrdom for something
they knew to be a lie, Little is really
on shaky ground. For not even the
New Testament claims that any of
the disciples suffered martyrdom for
their beliefs. Later on, to be sure,
traditions developed about the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul (the lat-

Mormon. If, as I believe, Christianity began as a solar religion

with Christ as the sun-god and the
twelve disciples as zodiacal figures,
the whole argument of Little is rendered meaningless.
The twelve
apostles or disciples are purely theoretical creations of the anonymous
evangelist known as Mark - or more
likely, a creation of one of his
sources. Their characters, if one can
ascribe any character to them at all,
are astrological. Not one ofthem can
be shown to have existed in history
- not even St. Peter, whose bones
the Vatican fraudulently claims to

The evangelist wanted to make the Jews look stupid, and so

he made them look incredibly stupid.
ples had conspired and pulled off
this theft, they would never have
told the others. Each ofthe disciples
faced the test of torture and martyrdom for his statements and beliefs.
Men will die for what they believe to
be true, though it may actually be
false. They do not, however, die for
what they know is a lie.

How does Little know anything

about the character of the characters known as disciples? All he has
is the shapeless portraits of them
created by the evangelists, not one

ter, of course, not even a disciple)

and
various
other
supposed
acquaintances of Jesus. But there is
even less reason to believe these socalled apocryphal sources than
there is to believe the gospels that
"made the cut" when early politicians decided which ones should be
included in the official Bible. For all
we know, if the disciples actually
existed they might not have been
any more trustworthy than the
eleven witnesses to the Book of

have found in its basement during

the Second World War.
Little argues that an empty
tomb is proof that Jesus rose from
the dead, but - as I must repeatedly
impress upon my readers - carefully
overlooks the fact that there is no
historical evidence that Jesus ever
lived at all, let alone died and rose
from the dead. If Jesus did not rise
from the dead, he argues, the
Jewish authorities could just have
See Blind Faith, page 48

The Creationists' explanation for the disappearance of the Dinosaurs

"Honey I love you, BUT ONE MORE DAY OF NOTHING BUT FISH AND I'M GOING
TO HAVE A DINO STEAK FOR D!NNER!"
Page 32

Spring 1998

American Atheist

That Colossal Wreck:

Bouk Rerieu:

A Review of Zacharias'

A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism

(Baker Books, Grand Rapids, 1990)

avi Zacharias' A Shattered

Visage: The Real Face of
'Atheism is an unsuccessful
attempt to refute or discredit
Atheism. He concentrates on some
of the more pronounced problems
with Atheism, as he perceives them,
and in the course of this review I
will show why some of his approaches fail. I say "some" because I will
address only the most salient errors.
A thorough refutation of all of the
mistakes in his 200-page book
would require another 300 pages or
more, as these sorts of things are
short in the telling and long in the
refuting.
Incidentally, the title of Zacharias' book is taken from the Atheist
poet Shelley's Ozymandias, in which
a statue of a great king is described.
The statue is fallen and broken, and
its face is the shattered visage, suggestive, according to Zacharias, of
the fallen greatness ofAtheism. The
title of my review, too, is taken from
that poem.

Doug Krueger pesently is completing his dissertation for the

degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in philosophy at the University
of Arkansas. He has written an
excellent book on Atheism
which will be published shortly.
American Atheist Press hopes to
carry it in its catalogue.

Doug Krueger
Austin, Texas

Zacharias ignores Atheism

and attacks Atheists.
In the first chapter, "Morticians
of the Absolute," Zacharias quickly
demonstrates the futility of his
endeavor. His target is, presumably,
Atheism. Atheism denies the truth
of the theistic claim that god exists.
In order to refute Atheism, one
would think that what would be
needed would be a demonstration of
the truth of theism or a refutation of
the arguments for Atheism. Think
again. Instead of attacking Atheism,
Mr. Zacharias makes the typical
apologist's error of choosing a
spokesperson for Atheism - in this
case Friedrich Nietzsche - and he
Spring 1998

proceeds to rail against various

aspects of that person's philosophy,
character, and influence. Unfortunately, Zacharias displays a poor
understanding of all of these areas.
For example, Zacharias states
that "Nietzschean dogma" influenced Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini
[1], and he spills a great deal of ink
insisting that there is a logical connection between between Atheism,
Nietzsche's views, World War II and even Hugh Hefner's degradation of women! Zacharias further
elaborates on the supposed connection between Nietzsche and Hitler
in chapter three (pp. 59-62), but
throughout he displays a profound
ignorance of several important and
relevant issues.
First, Atheism is not the result
of Nietzsche's views. There were
Atheists long before, centuries
before, the "god is dead" movement
- whose proponents are those whom
he calls the "morticians of the
absolute" (god). Thus, refuting some
of Nietzsche's views, insofar as. the
view refuted is not the claim that
there is no god, is pointless. True,
Zacharias scores a lot of emotive
points with those who don't know
any better than to recognize an ad
hominem attack on a straw man,
but readers with their wits about
them will just roll their eyes. What
Zacharias attacks in Nietzsche's
philosophy is not relevant
to
whether god exists. To show that
Atheism is false, show either that
god exists or that the arguments
against the existence of god fail.
Zacharias steadfastly refuses to do
either (until the first appendix to
his book - more about that later).
Instead
of attacking
Atheism,
Page 33

Zacharias merely attacks Atheists.

He tries to show that some of them
were unhappy, gloomy, or responsible for the immoral conduct in others. However, all of this, obviously,
is as irrelevant as trying to show
that god does not exist by attacking
the immoral conduct of Jim Bakker,
Jimmy Swaggart, or the latest
priest to be jailed for molesting
young boys. Attacking the person or
his or her disposition does not
attack the philosophical position, as
students learn within the first two
weeks of a college course in logic.
It is also a mistake on the part
of Zacharias to assume that Atheists
share a worldview. He often talks of
the Atheist worldview as if there is a
particular set of beliefs which all
Atheists share. This is sheer nonsense. Atheism is defined by its
denial of a worldview - the theistic
one - not by its adherence to certain
beliefs. This is another typical mistake by apologists,
and Mr.
Zacharias is unable to avoid this alltoo-common blunder. As a result, as
noted above, he attacks what he perceives to be the views of some
Atheists, but views which are not
logically related to Atheism itself. I
know many Atheists, but I know
only one or two who may be fans of
Nietzsche. Nietzsche is not the originator of Atheism or the spokesperson for it. Much of Zacharias' criticism of Atheists, then, is a waste of
time.
Further, it is obvious that
Zacharias has not done his homework with regard to Nietzsche, so
even the attacks on his influence
and character misfire. Zacharias
asserts a direct, logical relationship
between the views of Nietzsche and
the carnage caused by Hitler. He
states that Hitler used Nietzsche's
philosophy as a "blueprint" for his
war, and that he "took Nietzsche's
logic and drove the Atheistic world
view to its legitimate conclusion" (p.
59). This assertion is easily disproven. Zacharias is obviously
unaware that Nietzsche had contempt for Germans. Nietzsche preferred to consider himself a EuroPage 34

pean. In fact, In The Antichrist,

Nietzsche accused the Germans of
playing a major role in inhibiting
the spread of the beneficial effects of
the Renaissance. He wrote:
They are my enemies, I confess it,
these Germans: I despise in them
every kind of-conceptual and valuational uncleanliness, of cowardice
before every honest Yes and No. For
almost a thousand years they have
messed up and confused everything
they touched with their fingers ...[2]

Nietzsche was also quite clear

about the fact that he detested antiSemites. In a .letter to a friend he
stated jokingly that he was ''having
all anti-Semites shot" [3]. In The
Antichrist Nietzsche states that "an
anti-Semite certainly is not any
more decent because he lies as a
matter of principle" [4]. These and
many other vitriolic attacks on
Germans, anti-Semitism, nationalism,and other concepts central to
the Nazi worldview, as well as occasional praise for Jewish culture and
courage, show quite clearly that
Nietzsche's true philosophy could
not have been responsible for the
worldview of Hitler, as Zacharias
asserts. These are aspects of
Nietzsche's writing that Zacharias
would just as soon not mention, or
else he is unaware of them.
Hitler was unaware of them,
incidentally, since Nietzsche's sister,
an anti-Semite herself, purged his
work of anything which she believed
the Nazis might find objectionable
before allowing its publication. By
that time Nietzsche was gone and
unable to protest. Thus, Hitler and
the Nazis were completely unaware
of Nietzsche's real views on important matters, and so the supposed
link between them, of which
Zacharias makes so much, is illusory. Oddly enough, Zacharias also
neglects to mention that Hitler was
not an Atheist! In many of his
speeches, Hitler asserted that he
was acting in accordance with god's
will. Readers may wish to consult
Walter Kaufmann's popular work
Nietzsche: Philosopher, PsycholoSpring 1998

gist, Antichrist, especially chapter

10, "The Master Race," for further
details on the misunderstanding
regarding the alleged link between
Nietzsche and the Nazis [5]. One
can hardly blame Nietzsche for
Hitler's views if Nietzsche's philosophy had to be significantly altered to
fit Hitler's warped frame of mind, so
even. this avenue of criticism fails
due to Zacharias' shoddy scholarship. Kaufmann's book, by the way,
was published decades ago, and it
clearly dispelled the myth that
Nietzsche would have approved of
the Nazis. Other works, such as
Ronald Hayman's Nietzsche:
A
Critical Life, do the same [6].
Zacharias has no excuse for not
being aware of this. A beginning philosophy student would receive a failing mark for handing in such nonsense in a term paper. Before writing a book which attacks Nietzsche
- and which all but accuses him of
starting World War II! - Zacharias
should have done some competent
research.
Similarly, other attacks on
philosophers show Zacharias' ignorance of their views. He attacks
Sartre for being the "academic
grandfather" of wholesale slaughter
in Africa and Cambodia (pp. 57-59).
Zacharias does not present any
argument
for the relationship
between Sartre and these historical
events other than to simply quote
someone who mentions that five
Cambodian leaders had studied in
France in the 1950s, had joined the
Communist Party there, and had
allegedly "absorbed Sartre's doctrines of philosophical activism and
necessary violence" (p. 58). These
doctrines are not made explicit by
Zacharias, nor does he mention that
Sartre himself never joined the
Communist Party or that Sartre
was highly critical of Soviet communism. Zacharias leaves these mere
assertions unsupported and undeveloped, in the hope that his readers
will attribute Sartre with guilt by
this questionable circumstantial
evidence. There were thousands of
professed communists in France in
American Atheist

moves on to other issues which he

ever to show that Kant's project, of
the 1950s, but somehow we should
considers more important. What's
constructing an ethical system
just blame Sartre for events which
wrong with the argument, by the
which does not make reference to
happened abroad decades later? The
way? The Atheist never claims to
leapsfrom Atheism to Sartre's politgod, cannot work. Instead, he simhave infinite knowledge, so Zachaply indulges in this name-calling.
icalviews to tragic events in distant
rias is attacking a kind of Atheist
Zacharias' obvious ignorance of
countries - all this requires support
which does not exist, another straw
if it is to be credible. Zacharias prothe views of Atheists displayed in
person.
his attacks on them, his unwillingvides none. And of course it would
Arguments for god's nonexisness to develop any coherent argudefeat his purpose for Zacharias to
tence typically rely on claims about
ment against Atheism, as well as his
mention other Atheists, such as
god's nature made by theists, not by
penchant for making strong claims
Bertrand Russell, who were highly
Atheists. For example, the arguwithout
bothering
to
support
them,
critical
of
the
communists.
ment from evil ~ the argument that,
Interestingly, Zacharias also forgets
make the portions of his book in
given the existence of evil (sufferto mention that Sartre fought
which attack the views of specific
ing),
the existence of an omniscient,
against the Nazis in 'World War II.
Atheists completely ineffective.
omnipotent,
and omnibenevolent
Sartre was a POW, and he later
god
is
either unlikely or
became an active member of
impossible,
depending on the
the French Resistance. After The argument that the concept of god
of the argument - is
having worked for a couple of
is incoherent, and thus god cannot version
not based on infinite knowlchapters to create the illusion
that Atheists support Nazis, exist, is also an effective argument for edge. It is based on what the
Zacharias would sooner lose a Atheism, yet it does not require that theist claims to know about
god's nature and how this conlimbthan reveal to his readers
Atheists first be omniscient.
flicts with the known fact of
that Atheists opposed them.
suffering.
Immanuel Kant made his
Similarly, the argument from nonmark in the field of moral theory in
Flawed Arguments
belief, that if salvation were depenhis Groundwork for the Metaphysics
The second chapter of the book
dent on holding certain beliefs, such
of Morals in 1785. Kant developed a
is an attack on the theory of evoluas the belief that god exists, or that
powerful moral system which relies
tion, and Zacharias makes it clear
Jesus died for your sins, and so on,
upon pure reason and which does
that he is not concerned with showthen a supreme being, who is,
not make reference to any gods. In
ing that Atheism is false so much as
among other things, omnibenevoan effort to refute Kant, Zacharias
attempting to show that it cannot
lent, would see to it that everyone
quotes novelist Iris Murdoch's
cross the hurdles of "logical, existenassertion that the incarnation of
tial, and pragmatic viability" (p. 29).
holds those beliefs. Not everyone
Kant's ideal man is Milton's Lucifer
holds those beliefs. Thus there is no
Zacharias is terribly vague about
(p. 139)!On Kant's moral view, there
such being [7].
the latter two categories, and he
are some principles of morals which
The argument that the concept
makes only a half-hearted, and
of god is incoherent, and thus god
are inviolable. Keeping promises,
inadequate, attempt at showing
cannot exist, is also an effective
always telling the truth, helping
that Atheism fails to clear the logithose in need, not killing others (or
cal hurdle. Zacharias writes:
argument for Atheism, yet it does
oneself), and other such moral prenot require that Atheists first be
Postulating the nonexistence of
cepts are an important part of
omniscient. For example, a sadistic
God, Atheism immediately comKantian ethics. The individual's
mass murderer knows from experimits the blunder of absolute negaown desires or interests take a back
ence what it is like to derive pleation, which is self-contradictory.
seat to the moral law, regardless of
sure from killing his or her innocent
For, to sustain the belief that there
any undesirable consequences to
victims. If god knows everything,
is no God, it has to demonstrate
oneself. Does that sound like the
then god knows from experience
infinite knowledge, which is tantamoral system of Lucifer? If Lucifer,
what it is like to derive pleasure
mount to saying, "I have infinite
on Milton's view, does share much in
from killing his innocent victims.
knowledge that there is no being in
common with Kant's ideal moral
existence with infinite knowledge"
But god is supposed to be morally
(p.30).
person, Zacharias should explain
perfect, so god cannot know this. So
how this is so. Otherwise, it would
a human being could know someObviously this argument is
appear, falsely, that Kant's ideal
thing which an all-knowing being
flawed, and it is perhaps for this
person is an evil demon. Here
cannot. The concept, then, is incoreason that Zacharias himself
Zacharias grossly distorts Kant's
herent. Similarly, if god does not
quickly dismisses it as one of those
view.And, of course, Zacharias does
exist in space and time (if god is
"pedantic
verbal dead ends" and
not develop any argument whatsotranscendent),
then god cannot
Austin, Texas

Spring 1998

Page 35

Atheism is either true or not regardless of

whether the results of accepting it are desirable.
Crying because there is no god will not make a god exist.
move, since movement requires both
space and time. If god cannot move,
then god cannot pick up a pencil.
But god is supposed to be omnipotent. Thus, the concept is contradictory. This argument points out that
some of god's attributes cannot exist
in the same being "because they
entail contradictions. A being with
contradictory
attributes
cannot
exist, so god cannot exist. This argument, too, does not require omniscience on the part of the Atheist. It
just requires a little knowledge of
what the theist claims about god [8].
History of Science?
A real howler can be found on
page 122, where Zacharias states:
It is not accidental that it has generally been in the milieu of
Christian belief that investigation
in science and thought have flourished. A love for God prompts a love
for knowing the world that He has
created.

Someone buy this guy a history

book! The history of science is in
large part the history of the struggle
to free human thinking from the
bondage of religion. Religious
authorities opposed the assertion
that the Earth was not flat, the view
that the Earth moved, that heavenly bodies did not orbit in perfect circles, that illness was not caused by
devils, the use of the lightning rod
and anesthesia, and thousands of
other intellectual and technological
advances in science. Many scientists
had their works banned, burned,
and in some cases the scientists

themselves were killed or punished.

Can Zacharias really be so ignorant
of this aspect of Western civilization, or is he just lying to promote
his cause? You be the judge.
The Wishful Thinking
Approach, or Hey,
It's Still Better than Trying
to Refute Atheism, Isn't It?
Chapter 4 of Zacharias' book is
about meaning in life. He tries to
explain how meaningless life would
be if Atheism were true. Chapter 5
is about how terrible it would be if
death were final. Relationships
would end, hope would be abandoned, and there would be no "final
justice." I guess we wouldn't want a
few evildoers to escape eternal torture, would we? These would be sad
states of affairs, according to
Zacharias. The suggestion, then, is
that we should therefore not believe
it. If Atheism were true, then that
would result in undesirable consequences. We don't want undesirable
consequences. Therefore, Atheism is
false. Of course, Zacharias would be
a fool to state his approach in this
way, but that is clearly his method.
There are two problems with that,
however.
First, even if there were undesirable consequences if Atheism
were true, this would not make
Atheism false. To think otherwise is
to simply engage in wishful thinking. "If death is final, that would be
a bad thing. I don't want to believe
anything which results in bad
things. Therefore, death is not
finaL" Compare that with the fol-

lowing, which is no doubt on the

minds of millions every week: "If
this is not the winning lottery ticket,
then I will be terribly disappointed.
I do not want to believe anything
which results in my being terribly
disappointed. Therefore, this is the
winning lottery ticket." By similar
reasoning, no one's house would
bum down, no one would go bankrupt, no one would be killed in automobile accidents. All that would be
required to avert such disasters is to
realize that terrible consequences
would follow if those things happened and then realize that one does
not want to believe it. Then it
wouldn't happen. But clearly that is
absurd.
If one wants to show that
Atheism is false, one needs to attack
the view itself. Atheism is either
true or not regardless of whether
the results of accepting it are desirable. Crying because there is no god
will not make a god exist.
The entire chapter regarding
the ill effects if death is final is also
the result of a misunderstanding.
Atheism does not logically entail
that death is final. Belief in souls
and immortality can be held in the
absence of belief in gods. In Jainism,
for example, a branch of Hinduism,
there is belief in souls and reincarnation although Jainists are Atheists. There is no logical connection
which requires that souls, immortality, and gods always come as a
package deal. Again Zacharias has
attacked something other than
Atheism, and this attack is ineffective.

Someone buy this guy a history book!

The history of science is in large part the history of the struggle
to free human thinking from the bondage of religion.
Page 36

Spring 1998

American Atheist

Zacharias makes much of the

supposed hopelessness of life if
there is no god. But would it be
hopeless? Why? Zacharias states
again and again that it would be,
but he gives precious little support
forthis assertion. He quotes a lot of
poetry, and he quotes a lot of people
restating his assertion, but where is
the evidence that life would be hopeless?
A Humanist is an Atheist or
Agnostic who holds a set of related
beliefs which form a worldview.
Remember, Atheism is not a worldview itself. Atheism is defined by
the view it does not have - theism.
Zacharias ignores the volumes ofliterature by Humanists who celebrate
the meaning they have in their
lives. In Exuberance: A Philosophy
of Happiness, Humanist Paul Kurtz
states, "Those around me seem to
moan and complain, while I usually
wake up singing and am joyful
throughout the day. Life is so wonderful. I feel literally as if I am
bursting at the seams" [9]. Readers
may also wish to take a look at
Bertrand Russell's The Conquest of
Happiness [10]. Many Atheists are
excited about living and enjoy full,
rewarding lives. Zacharias does not
give an accurate portrayal of the
viewwhich he pretends to attack.
But not all Christians feel that
life is hopeful or enjoyable. Why
doesn't Zacharias quote those who
believein predestination? If you are
either already saved or damned, and
this is determined even before you
are born, and there is nothing you
can do to change that, wouldn't that
weigh heavily on one's attempt to
live a meaningful life? Would it not
preclude a meaningful life? And
what of salvation by grace? If there
is a god, and we cannot be saved by
anything we do, and, since we would
deserve damnation, we could not
deserve any worse than we do
already, what would be the point of
performing anyone
action as
opposed to any other? How do these
Christians get meaning in their
lives? These are well-known theological problems which have never
Austin,Texas

been satisfactorily resolved. None of

these issues are addressed by
Zacharias.
The Humanist view is misrepresented, and problems with the
Christian view are ignored. Again,
Zacharias misses his target.
The Bug-eyed Deity.
The chapter "With Larger Eyes
Than Ours" purports to be a defense
of Christianity and an explanation
of how it avoids the pitfalls of
Atheism. However, Zacharias' version of Christianity is extremely
vague, and his use of the Bible is
often confused and misleading.
What is Christianity according
to Zacharias? He talks vaguely of
god's love, sin, the good news, and
other broad terms, but he does not
define any of them in any meaningful sense. For example, he insists
that an understanding of sin is crucial to any moral theory:
Until we understand what the
Biblemeans by sin, our moral definitions will never find solutions(p.
141). The problem is not the
absence of education or culture, it
is the presence of sin (p. 142)
...people constantly fail to understand what sin is (p. 142).
Okay, Zacharias. Tell us what sin is.
He states:
Those who recognize the nature of sin understand that what
renders someonea sinner is not the
scale of human wickednessbut the
very nature and character of God.
It is God's purity that we stand
before,not a fluctuating moralcode
that varies from one society to
another. [As from the Old Testament to the New?!- DKJWhen sin
is understood, a moral discussion
can begin - for each one of us
stands accountablebeforeGod.An
accountabilitythat high makes the
moral law of any land secondaryto
the moral law of God.Honestyand
virtue are embraced because our
motivationis to honor Godand not
merely to appear right before others (p, 143).

Spring 1998

Zacharias seems to be trying to

say that sin is the difference
between our moral status and that
of God. Apparently, our sin lies in
the fact that we don't match the
moral purity of God. If that's
Zacharias' point, his view is in deep
trouble.
First, the god of the Bible measures up to the level of a petty and
vicious tyrant. The god of the bible
punishes babies for the sins of their
parents (Exod. 20:5, 34:7; Num.
14:18; 2 Sam. 12:13-19); punishes
people by causing them to become
cannibals and eat their children (2
Kings 6:24-33, Lam. 4:10-11); gives
people bad laws, even requiring the
sacrifice of their firstborn babies, so
that they can be filled with horror
and know that god is their lord
(Ezek. 20:25-26); causes people to
believe lies so that he can send them
to hell (2 Thess. 2:11); and many
other atrocities, far too many to list
here. It would not be hard to measure up to, and exceed, that level of
moral purity. Atheists surpass it
every day.
Second, according to the Bible
story, our level of perfection is not
something we should be ashamed of.
The Bible states that god made
humans in his image, but it is also
clear that he did not make them
gods. If humans were made inferior
to god, why should we be held
accountable for that? Why should
we feel guilt over something over
which, according to the myth, we
had no part in at all? Furthermore,
the story of the Fall suggests that
original sin consisted in human
beings becoming more like god. Both
the serpent and god state explicitly
that Adam and Eve sinned in that
they became more like god by gaining knowledge of good and evil
(Genesis 3:5, 3:22). If sin is the wide
gap between us and god, why is narrowing the gap a horrible sin and
not a virtue? Aren't we supposed to
aspire to be more like god? And why
were Adam and Eve punished, anyway? If they did not, by god's design,
know the difference between good
and evil before eating the magic
Page 37

fruit, they could not have known

that disobeying god was evil. Isn't it
immoral to punish someone for
something he or she could not possibly have known is wrong? Zacharias
leaves us in the dark on all these
matters. His vagueness with regard
to important definitions of theological concepts is no doubt due in part
to his desire not to offend some of
his intended audience, but his
exposition suffers much from the
neglect.
Zacharias also misrepresents
the Bible in a number of ways.
For example, he quotes Robert
Jastrow's assertion that "the
details differ, but the essential
elements in the astronomical and
biblical accounts of Genesis are
the same" (p. 133). Zacharias does
not support the citation with evidence, and the prima facie evidence
weighs heavily against this claim.
To cite just a couple of instances: the
Bible states that the Earth and
water were created before light, and
that grass and trees were created
before the sun and other stars.
Scientists know that this is clearly
incorrect. The Bible also has contradictory creation accounts. Zacharias
does not even attempt to clear up
any of these discrepancies.
Zacharias also displays his ignorance of biblical knowledge in
claims such as the following:

ters of Paul and the gospel of Mark,

say nothing of it. It is a later development in the Jesus legend as the
early Christians attempted to convert the Romans and Greeks.
Anyone who was anyone in those
cultures was born of a virgin. Julius
Caesar, Hercules, Plato, and many
other notables, both historical and

many serious weaknesses. Some of

them are the following.
First, premise #2 is false. It is
not the case that good must exist
where there is evil. Is there good in
hell, then? Theists sometimes argue
that evil must exist so that we can
know what is good, and I suppose
Zacharias is just arguing the
reverse of this, but the claim is
false. All that really follows is
that the concept of good or evil is
required to exist in order to
know its complement. As far as
explaining why there is good, the
Atheist need only point out that
there are good people in the
world. Many Atheists have
championed social causes and
helped
alleviate
suffering.
Atheists sometimes have well-developed, nontheistic moral systems.
The existence of good is easily
explained. Zacharias does not make
clear what the supposed problem is
with regard to the existence of goodness.
Premise #3 is poorly worded. In
order to judge good and evil, what is
needed, strictly speaking, is a moral
system. To call that a "law" is to
introduce more than is necessary to
explain the distinction between good
and evil. Zacharias obviously uses
this loaded word in order to set up
his next premise. If the more neutral premise "If there is good and
evil, then there must be a moral system on which to judge good and evil"
were substituted
for his own
premise #3, his argument would collapse, and Zacharias gives no
defense for why his version must be
used instead of the other.
Premise #4 fails, and thus so
does the argument as a whole, since
the notion of a "law" is not required,
at least not in the sense in which
Zacharias intends, in order to judge
good and evil. Thus, no law giver is
required
either.
For example,
Immanuel Kant's moral system
functions, Kant states, because it
uses pure reason as its foundation.
Logic itself shows which moral precepts can be used to guide conduct,

His last-minute attempt to

throw in some arguments
against Atheism are in vain.
The "starting points" are
non-starters.

Paul encountered Him [Jesus] in

the logical sequence of His resurrection, death, life, and birth.
Through the keyhole of the
Resurrection, he argued backwards
in time; for through it he saw the
authentication of Christ's message,
the explanation of His death, the
meaning of His life, and the
prophetic fulfillment of His birth.
(p. 159)

The prophetic fulfillment of his

birth? Paul never mentions the supposed virgin birth of Jesus or any
prophesies regarding it. Bible scholars tell us that Paul probably never
even heard of the virgin birth story
in relation to Jesus. The earliest
known Christian writings, the let-

mythical, were said to be born of virgins. It had to happen to Jesus too,

eventually, if the Christians were to
gain converts in the Greco-Roman
world.
Zacharias tries to present Christianity and the Bible as a coherent,
tidy, well-structured package, but
they are not. The radically differing
denominations of Christianity, and
the scores of major and minor biblical contradictions, attest to that.
Zacharias' presentation of Christianity as a solution to all ofthe hurdles which Atheism supposedly fails
to cross, is unsuccessful.
The Appendix That Does Not
Perform Its Function.
In one of his book's two appendices, Zacharias finally presents
some bona fide arguments against
Atheism which he can endorse - sort
of. He states that they are just
"starting points" for an argument
from evil for the existe-nce of god.
Here's one:
1. Yes, there is evil in this world.
2. If there is evil, there must be good
(problem the Atheist has to
explain).
3. If there is good and evil, there
must be a moral law on which to
judge between good and evil.
4. If there is a moral law, there must
be a moral law giver.
5. For the theist, this points to god.

The argument, unfortunately, has

Page 38

Spring 1998

See Colossal Wreck, page 48

American Atheist

Qtbt _ook of ~tmon

Jadde 'jobnson

nd the King made an image

of gold and set it up before
the people. He set it upon the
billboards along the highways, and
he set it upon the video and audio
waves. And he commanded the people, "Yeshall fall down and worship
the golden image that I have set up
for you. And whoever falleth not
down and worshippeth should be
cast into the midst of a fiery furnace." And in one way or another,
most everybody fell down and
played the harlot before the false
profits.
And it came to pass, in the
ancient and time-honored traditions, the prophets blared over the
video waves, like carny hucksters
peddling exclusive tickets to god.
''You were born a sinner. Atone.
We accept Visa, MasterCard, cash,
and checks."
"God is great. God is good, but
white skin is best, queer is an abomination, and women must be taught
to know their places and remain
there within. Forever." In the name
of their god, all was commanded.
And too many believed the true
words. And they hated coons and
they hated queers and they gathered in packs and they shaved their
heads and they drank six packs and
they hunted 'em down and beat 'em
up or hung 'em by the neck until
dead.
And all alone behind closed
doors they beat their women into
submission. And the women bled.
And the women died. And the little
children watched and learned the
true family values.
Knowing not what to believe,
many souls drifted, spiritually

In addition to being an elementary

school teacher, Jackie Johnson
claims to be the Director and Chief
Executive Officer of The Male
BovineFeces Institute of Cowpaddy,
Kansas.

Jackie JobnJon
Austin,Texas

Spring 1998

bereft and cosmically unconscious,

open and prone to the sales pitches
of a dozen, gross, fanatical cults,
false prophets and yuppie gurus.
But this epistle concerns only
one of these fanatical cults and the
false prophets thereof.
And it came to pass at the
onslaught
of the first Great
Depression that the prophet Houteff
envisioned his most holy vision and
branched off to form the branch of
the Davidians.
Now it was said that Houteff
held some particularly
different
beliefs, beliefs so different as to
have caused his expulsion from his
mainstream church. It seemed that
Houteff claimed that his god
appeared to him personally and told
him that he and his soon to be
acquired flock were chosen to lead
the Chosen People to the Pearly
Gates of Heaven, right past St.
Peter and into the presence of god
Himself.
Over the millennia, many have
claimed to see god, and many more
have claimed to talk to him and
most every prophet worth his
weight in gold has always claimed
his own path, the only true pathway
into the presence of the Only True
God. What made Hoteff's ideas so
different was the fact that his god
also told him, "Come on Houteff, I'm
tired of waiting. Apocalypse now!"
Luckily, though Houteff's god
gave these orders, he never bothered to tell exactly how to accomplish this monumental feat. So it
cameth not to pass.
But it mattered not, and for a
generation Houteff's flock swelled
and they reveled in the impending
and final destruction of the Earth.
The blissful day when they would
Page 39

meet the almighty in person. -And

just to keep his flock primed and
ready, in the mean time Houteff
preached hellfire and damnation to
his sheep and waged holy wars
against his neighboring rivals.
After Houteff passed on to his
grand reward and his rightful place
at the right hand of his lord, the
aging prophetess Roden took over
his priestly position as the spiritual
leader of this particular branch of
this particular
cult. Following
Houteff's footsteps, Roden preached'
hellfire and damnation to her flock,
waged holy wars against the neighboring rivals and took an occasional
young lover.
After much prayer, meditation,
and diligent commune with her god,
Roden boldly prophesied the end of
the world at exactly 4 pm ,Friday.
When the date came to pass and
the prophesied destruction didn't,
Roden was sorely embarrassed and
though she remained in a position of
counsel, she passed leadership of
the Davidians to her son Benjamin.
And for many years Benjamin
preached hellfire and damnation,
escalated his holy wars against his
neighboring rivals, took a few young
lovers, while his none too stable
brain baked under the hot Texas
sun.
Then, as if by a divine miracle,
the prophet Vernon came into the
desert near Palestine and knew his
destiny. An avid believer, like
Houteff himself, Vernon too was
expelled from his mainstream
church. Knowing now the transgressions he later perpetrated, the exact
nature of his original sin we can
only imagine. Being a charming and
charismatic young man, Vernon
soon became consort to the aged
prophetess, and the two star-crossed
lovers plotted Benjamin's ultimate
overthrow.
Though the exact blow by blow
of the ensuing battle is shrouded by
the mists of time, Vernon and the
queen mother forcibly ousted Benjamin from his divine position and
sent him into exile in Palestine, at
gun point. There with the ragged
Page 40

remnants of his flock, he wandered

the desert for what to him must
have seemed forty years, plenty of
time to plot his vengeful second
coming.
Not long after, it came to pass
that a young woman of the congregation died. To which particular
flock she flocked was hard to say,
but this was the opportunity for
which Benjamin had prayed. Finally
his big chance to prove himself the
true priest of the Davidians and second in command only to god himself.
All he had to do was resurrect the
corpse. All too easy for the True
Chosen One.
After the lady's funeral, Benjamin and his mighty men, in the
dark of night, crept to the graveyard. There, they disinterred the
young woman's body, and the high
priest Benjamin began a series of
sacred rites and rituals, the nature
of which might be too disgusting to
imagine.
At the same time, by some miracle of insight, or a strategicallyplaced mole, it also came to pass
that Vernon heard of Benjamin's
ministrations upon the deceased
and was naturally appalled. Mostly
because he didn't think ahead and
perform the act upon the lady himself.
"But at this late date, everybody
knows you can't make a body come
back to life after it's been embalmed,
all the innards and blood removed,
all shriveled and wrinkled. What a
turn off."
So Vernon accused Benjamin of
performing unnatural acts upon the
dead. And in all probable truth,
Benjamin probably did.
Righteously outraged, Vernon
gathered his own mighty men and
sought to utterly destroy the tribe of
Benjamin for this abomination performed before the eyes of their lord.
Somehow, just in the nick of
time, the authorities caught wind of
the intended mayhem and the massacre was averted. When brought
before the judges, the faithful of
both branches were acquitted of any
wrongdoing.
Spring 1998

In the meantime, Benjamin was

found criminally
insane
when
charged with a completely unrelated
slaying, with a oorpse that for reasons of his own, he could not or did
not choose to resurrect. But regardless, thereafter he resided in the
local funny farm under terminal
psychoanalysis.
With Benjamin safely imprisoned in a padded cell, and Roden a
sexual slave to his own divineness,
Vernon now wielded complete and
undisputed control and influence
over an entire cult of avid believers,
who had so recently' submitted complete and total control to the influences of the certifiably crazoid Benjamin.
Like it might make a difference
and simply because it had been done
before, Vernon changed his name.
Now David Koresh, consort to the
divine prophetess and Supreme
Priest of the Branch Davidians, proclaimed Himself the only mortal son
of the only true god.
Redundantly, with a goodly portion of brainwashing, Vernon told
His followers many things, but first
and foremost He told them, "thou
shallt not bow to the golden image.
And through Me alone, ye shall be
delivered to the gates of Heaven."
And His faithful believed in
Him. And they adored Him. And
they fell down on their knees and
worshiped Him.
Vernon reportedly told one of
His lieutenants that He especially
liked the 'down on' - especially from
the women ... no, especially from the
young girls, eleven and twelve.
From His flock and for Himself,
Vernon relieved all the golden
images. And He used the gold to buy
for Himself a too-cool Camaro, fancy
guitars and recording equipment,
and trips to far away cities to visit
the harems He'd stashed therein.
And He took holy vacations to far
away countries to convert new converts, so He could relieve them of
their golden images. And He bought
guns and night-scopes and high tech
weaponry and grenade hulls and
black powder.
American Atheist

"There will be a final battle

between the sons of light and the
sons of darkness. We are the sons of
light. Bright like' a fire," Vernon
assured His faithful.
In preparation for the upcoming
battle His troops must be tempered,
honed to a fighting edge. Within the
compound, food was often rationed,
specific or sparse as it would be
when the battle began. Sleeping
quarters were airless barracks, separating families, segregating men,
women, and children. Vernon's
orders were obeyed to the letter or
punishment proved swift and harsh.
Everyone labored in some capacity or another. They cared for the
many children, cooked, cleaned,
farmed the ranch, begged donations
in the streets or toiled in the true
capitalistic fashion, for whoever
offered the most money. But
regardless of the labors, all the
profits of these endeavors went
straight to the profit-making
Prophet.
But Vernon, The Anointed
One, The Lamb, The Chosen of the
One True, suffered none of these
deprivations or labors. He ate of the
choicest delicacies
and drank
Budweisers and air-conditioned His
suites and picked up His guitar and
played. He won't get fooled again.
And all was well within the realm of
the righteous. At least for a while,
Soon it came to pass, that
Vernon decreed that all His men
should swear to celibacy,
Sex could only distract His men
from their destinies.
And His
mighty men could not even come in
unto their own wives, for now their
wives belonged to God.
At first Vernon's mighty men
grumbled and thought, lamb or no
lamb, Vernon's god was getting a little demanding.
, But their wives and daughters
said, "What if Vernon is the sinful
Christ, sent to earth by god himself
to personally sample of the sins of
man, so He might better advise His
father as to the exact weight of each
sin?" And if this were true and they
did not follow Vernon's commandAustin, Texas

ments, they would all surely die and

burn in hell forever.
Then, through Vernon, His god
declared Vernon the Most Holy and
Divine Seed and the only mortal
man worthy to procreate: And He
alone could bed the women of His
choice. And His choice was to bed
them all, from the oldest to the very
youngest. All women in the world
belonged to Vernon. It was the will
of His god.
When the judges heard that
Vernon was doing the nasty with
very young girls, they sent sheriffs
and marshals
to verify these
charges. Though the charges eventually proved true, at the time none
of the righteous
within
the
Davidians would nark out their
Messiah. And with no witnesses

Wnlike j!)is flock, l'ernon

preterreb not to be srcemetr.
willing to testify against god's own
chosen, the sheriffs and marshals
had no recourse but to wait for further proof.
History proved - they waited too
long.
In the meantime, Vernon raged
at this affront to His self-proclaimed
divineness. "How dare' these blasphemers question My motives and
actions? I am equal to the great
prophets of old and they possessed
all the wives and concubines they
wished and always the younger the
better. Why King David himself had
a thousand wives and twice that in
concubines," Vernon justified. "All
women are Mine, to do with, as I
please. I am the Lamb. I shall
destroy these unbelievers. It is god's
will," He fantasized.
The Davidians were joyous, for
any battle was better than no fight
at all. And any battle could eventually escalate into the much anticipated Apocalypse. And they rattled
their shields and puffed their chests
and bristled with arms. For they
were the righteous of the one true
Spring 1998

god and he would surely bring them

victory,
Vernon armed His flock with
semi-automatic weapons, illegally
rigged to be fully automatic. He
taught them their use with deadly
accuracy. And He taught the divine
secrets of hand grenades and night
scopes and land mines and electric
fences and gas masks and murder.
In the unlikely event that the
infidels should win this holy war,
besides the use of gas masks,
Vernon taught the children exactly
how to bite the gun barrel for a
clean suicide. Not too far to the back
or up too close to the front, lest they
bungle the job and become vegetable
captives of the nonbelievers.
Outside, the infidels raged at
Vernon's affront to their own divine
laws,
specifically
automatic
weapons and child-molestation.
Flanked by the telephoto lenses
of CSPAN, CNN, and Comedy
Central,
they beat
their
chests and bristled with arms
and advanced upon the Ranch
most Holy.
"Piece'a cake," they all agreed.
From the windows of His suite,
Vernon looked out upon the besiegers and became sorely egomaniacal. He phoned up the press. "If
this country could learn the sacred
seals," He broadcast over the air
waves, "they would respect Me. I am
the Anointed One ... It is the fulfillment of prophecy."
In the mean time, He told his
faithful, "If they capture us, they
will surely torture and kill us all,"
But He knew it wouldn't be His
faithful tortured and killed. Vernon
truly feared capture, imprisonment,
and the gang rapes that always
befall child molesters in the confines
of the penal system. Unlike His
flock, Vernon preferred not to be
screwed.
But He need not have worried,
for His faithful would defend their
Lamb to their deaths, if necessary.
On CNN Vernon challenged the
infidels ''Your talk is becoming vain.
I will give you one more chance
before you get blown away. I offer
Page 41

you My wisdom. I offer to you My

sealed secrets. I am the Son, bright
like a fire."
And the armies of infidels said,
"Crackpot," and advanced further
and even dared to threaten the most
sacred and cherished black Camaro.
"How dare you turn away My
invitations of mercy? And nobody
touches My ride. You shall die for
that. The law is Mine. The truth is
Mine. I am your God. You fools will
not proceed much further. Do you
think you have power to stop My
will? I laugh at your pending torments. I shall pull back the Heavens
and show you My anger. Fear Me,
for I have you in My snare."
And the infidels said, "Weirdo."
And they feared Him not, and they
stormed the compound.
True to the ancient traditions of
warfare most holy, Vernon's mighty
men set the little ones, the children,
up before themselves as shields and
laid in ambush and devastated the
first wave of invaders.
Though outgunned and outnumbered, the Davidians had won the
first battle, proving that the god
who protects children, drunks, and
the feeble-minded was truly with
them, at least that one time. If only
they had more weapons, bigger
weapons, more destructive weapons,
they could take over the whole
world. In the name of god, of course.
On the outside the infidels
found themselves guilty of the sin of
overconfidence. But through the
proper channels they channeled the
excuses and properly blamed the
blame. Then against all their own
rules and regulations, they took it
all too personally and sought
revenge against the Davidians.
"An eye for an eye," they said,
"a tooth for a tooth and an ass for an
. ass" - specifically Vernon's ass for
the one He made of them. And without considering Vernon's unstable
mental frame, they ordered in more
weapons, bigger weapons, more
destructive
weapons. More than
enough weapons to blow away
Vernon's whole world. In the name
of government, of course.
Page 42

The siege lasted a grueling, and

very expensive, two months and the
stress of the stalemate took its toil
on both sides. Tempers flared and
trigger fingers itched.
Finally, upon the final day,
Vernon decreed upon the nightly
news, "If this is war. Let's get on
with it," and the infidels stormed
the ranch apocalypse with tanks
and armored cars.
Preferable to capture, in the traditions of their forefathers, Vernon
and His lieutenants torched their
tinderbox compound and utterly
destroyed everything that breathed
within their tiny world.
But the true believers feared not
for their own lives, for Vernon, the
Messiah, the Lamb, the Son of god
himself, quoted the testament and
promised that their god would allow
"that the fire would have no power
upon their bodies and their hair
would not be singed, nor their coats
harmed."
But Vernon lied.
The children went up first. They
were herded to the center of the
cheap wooden construction and left
as burnt offerings to Vernon's one
true god.
And the fire had power upon
them. Their cheap plastic sandals
melted and bubbled upon their little
feet and their tiny toes burned away
to their tiny little bones. Their
clothes smoldered, then flared and
their skin parched, crispied, and
fried from their innocent little bodies. Their hair flamed like burning
bushes and the divine gas masks
melted and oozed upon their faces.
Finally their blood boiled until their
eyeballs burst and their little brains
exploded within their skulls. Then
mercifully, they died.
AI; the inferno raged uncontrollably, some of the elder righteous
faltered in their faith and made for
escape, burning from the flaming
inferno, only to change their hearts
and return to salvation within the
divine crematory of the Lamb. For
their god swore that the fire would
have no power over them and
through Vernon alone they would
Spring 1998

see the gates of Heaven. But the

gates they saw just before their eyeballs exploded looked more like the
fiery gates of Hell. And they too
fried crispy and died.
After the holocaust the infidels
combed the destruction and claimed
nearly a hundred bodies, a full quarter of them children. The bodies
were all burned beyond recognition,
but using dental records most were
identified as followers, but one in
particular was undeniably that of
Vernon, the Lamb of the one true
god.
Now at that time, everybody in
the know, knew that Houteff, then
Roden and even Vernon Himselfhad
laced intricate catacombs neath the
ranch apocalypse. And of these
believers, most believed that Vernon
the fanatic, the psychopath, and
coward had made His escape
through these tunnels, while the
bar-b-que upstairs distracted the
infidels. But the officials swore that
they found the true mortal remains
of Vernon. And there was no possible
way He could have escaped through
His series of well-plotted escape
tunnels with them standing a vigilant guard.
Despite the officially overwhelming evidence that the Lamb
was in fact well done and not raw,
three days later, four reliable witnesses reportedly spotted Vernon at
the Waco diner ordering donuts and
flirting with the young waitresses.
Noone seemed to remember that a
week earlier, the same reliable witnesses reported spotting Elvis at the
Waco diner, ordering donuts and
flirting with the young waitresses.
But not unlike the escape tunnels, these slight inconsistencies
within the divine and most true
words became lost within the legends of the Lamb. For 'twas truly a
miracle, for the fire had no power
over Him. And it harmed not His
clothes nor His hair.
On a tiny, gospel radio station,
deep in the heart of Texas, Vernon
spoke a few words to His surviving
disciples and with this most recent
See Vernon, page 49

American Atheist

SEPARATION OF CDURCBiNI STATE:

A REBUTTAL
Introduction
When a proposal was made in
the Charlotte City Council to display the Ten Commandments
in a
public building, American Atheists
Director for North Carolina Wayne
Aiken was there to challenge it. (The
idea ultimately was voted down, 10to-L) During the debate, petitioners
from the audience as well as council
members used a large number of
quotes allegedly from historical figures in order to advance the notion
that America was supposed to be an
officially religious country - a
Christian nation - as far as its
Founding Fathers were concerned.
Moreover, they allegedly
never
intended for church and state to be
separated. Most of the out-of-context
quotes and misquotes supporting
this revisionist
"history"
were
derived from the works of David
Barton, an exponent of the group
ironically
known as the Wallbuilders. After studying a videotape
of the session, Mr. Aiken set about
finding out the real stories behind
these supposed facts. We present
here a part of the rebuttal he sent to
the City Council.

Wayne Aiken is the

American Atheists Director
for North Carolina. He
thanks Jim Allison
(jalison@infi.net) for
original material and
research.

Wayne Aiken

ecent events have indicated

the existence and influence of
a pervasive historical revisionism movement designed to marginalize and deny the constitutional
principle of the separation of church
and state. Through the works of
evangelists such as David Barton
and his "Wallbuilders" organization,
books, movies, and seminars are
used to present a highly selective
and biased account of the founding
period of this country. The purpose
is to mislead the public into believing that government and religion
were intended from the beginning to
be mixed, and that an evil cabal of
politicians and judges have somehow cheated us out of a "Christian
Nation" to which we must return.
Designed to be impressive-sounding
to a public otherwise unfamiliar
with early American history, this
misleading information is used as
"sound-bites" in publicity campaigns and public arguments in
favor of increased religious intrusion into government affairs.
The truth, however uncomfortable it may be to those whose religious faith needs government support, is different. It is true that the
debate over the relationship between state and church was heated,
and this was a major issue which
motivated many to oppose the ratification of our country's Constitution. History, however, clearly
records the prevailing philosophy,
and it was determined that our government must not only be separate
and isolated from religious faith
and practice, but that this arrangement was a necessary component of
true religious freedom.
This is the view of credible historians, academics, legal commenta-

Spring 1998

tors, judges, and the Founding

Fathers themselves. However important, and to what degree these
people held their own personal religious beliefs, they agreed that such
practices are a private affair, and
that people cannot be free to hold
and practice their own religion,
unless they are free from having
someone else's beliefs imposed upon
them. This is the essence of the separation of church and state: freedom
from government-imposed religion.
It is this principle, and not the doctrines of any particular faith, that
form the basis for the peace that
America has enjoyed from the spiritual tyrannies and violence that
plague other parts of the world to
this day.
Statements made in the 24
November 1997 Charlotte City
Council meeting:
Audience participant Nick Cilali:
Claim: Alleged George Washington
farewell address: "of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity religion and morality
are indispensable supports ...'
Rebuttal: According to the text of
Washington's Farewell Address in
1796, he did make this statement,
and goes on to say that patriotism
and morality cannot exist without
religious principles. He does not
specify which religion. Washington
was a Deist, like Franklin and
Jefferson, and never mentioned
Christ in any of his writings. Note
that this statement does not in any
fashion imply that government
must be involved in religion or
morality, only that it depends on it.
Quite to the contrary, Washington
was deeply committed to religious
freedom and the separation of
Page 43

church and state - so much so that

when many clergymen complained
that the Constitution lacked mention
of Jesus Christ, Washington responded: "...the path of true piety is
so plain as to require but little political direction."
Claim: Alleged of John Adams: "it is
religion and morality alone which
can establish the principles upon
which freedom can securely stand ...'
Rebuttal: This implies absolutely
nothing regarding the 'promotion or
recognition of religion by the government. To the contrary, John Adams
was a staunch supporter of religious
freedom and of separation of church
and state. His specific position was:
"Nothing is more dreaded than the
national government meddling with
religion."
Like many other Founders,
Adams goes much further in his private letters, which were never
intended to be made public. Despite
public statements on the value of
religion and morality, many of the
Founders were not Christians. John
Adams writes to fellow Deist Thomas
Jefferson:
I almost shudder at the thought
of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the
history of mankind has preserved the Cross.Considerwhat calamities
that engine of grief has produced!
Claim: Alleged Thomas J efferson
quote from the Jefferson Memorial
monument in Washington DC: "God
who gave us life gave us liberty," and
"can the liberty of a nation be
thought secure when we have
removed their only firm basis - a
conviction in the minds of people
that they are the gift of God..."
Rebuttal: Jefferson did say this, but
it has nothing whatsoever to do with
the issue of government support of
religion. This quotation is taken from
a famous letter in which he argues
against slavery. Jefferson claimed
that slavery violated a person's Godgiven freedom, although he also
owned slaves. Jefferson's unorthodox
Page 44

views on religion, as well as his distaste for Christianity, were wellknown even in his own day, and he
was often scorned by clergy as an
"atheist." In his private letters, he
writes to Dr. Woods:
I have recently been examining
all the known superstitions of the
world,and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one
redeemingfeature.Theyare all alike
foundedon fables and mythology.
Few of the other Founders were
as strong or prolific supporters of the
principle of separation of church and
state as Jefferson. His most famous
statement, where he popularized
that phrase as an interpretation of
First Amendment principles, was to
the Danbury Baptist Association,
who asked him to issue a Thanksgiving proclamation:
Believingwith youthat religion
is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he
owes account to none other for his
faith or his worship, that the legislative powersofgovernmentreach
actionsonly,and not opinions,I contemplate with sovereign reverence
that act of the wholeAmericanpeople which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and state.

His other pronouncements on

the proper role of government are
equally explicit:
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as
are injurious to others. But it does
me no injury for my neighborto say
there are twenty gods,or no God.It
neither picks my pocket nor breaks
my leg.
...no man shall be compelledto
frequent or support any religious
'worshipministry or shall otherwise
suffer on account of his religious
opinionsor belief,but all men shall
be free to profess and by argument
to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same
shall in no wise.. affect their civil
capacities.
Spring 1998

Tocompela man to furnish contributions of moneyfor the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and
tyrannical.
...our civil rights have no
dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinionsin
physics or geometry.
I consider the government of
the United States as interdicted by
the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions,
their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.
I am for freedomofreligion and
against all maneuvers to bring
about a legal ascendancyof one sect
over another.
These were not idle words.
Jefferson's administration included
absolutely no religious proclamations of any kind. He responded to
reaction over this by explaining:
I know it will give great offense
to the clergy, but the advocate of
religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from
them.
Additionally, Jefferson made it quite
clear that religious liberty included
all people, not only Christians:
The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of
which had, to a certain degree,been
enacted before, I had drawn in all
the latitude of reason & right. It
still met with opposition;but, with
some mutilations in the preamble,
it was finally passed; and a singular
proposition proved that its protection of opinionwas meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares, that coercionis a departure
from the plan of the holy author of
our religion, an amendment was
proposed by inserting "Jesus
Christ," so that it would read "A
departure from the plan of Jesus
Christ, the holy author of our religion;"the insertion was rejected by
the great majority, in proof that
they meant to comprehend, within
the mantle ofits protection,the Jew
and the Gentile, the Christian and
Mohametan, the Hindooand Infidel
of every denomination.
AmericanAtheist

To claim Thomas Jefferson as an

advocate of government involvement
with church doctrine, based on vague
endorsements of religion and morality,is not only incorrect, but perverse
in the extreme.
Claim: Preamble to the Constitution
of North Carolina: "grateful to almighty God, the sovereign ruler of
nations... and acknowledging our
dependence upon Him for the continuance ofthose blessings ...
Rebuttal: The current Preamble to
the Constitution of North Carolina,
does contain this wording. A preamble, however, is merely an introduction and carries no legal weight. The
14th Amendment to the US Constitution subordinates all State laws at
all levels to the federal Constitution;
additionally, the NC Constitution
explicitly subordinates itself to the
US Constitution in Article I section
(5). Explicitly religious mandates
within the NC Constitution, such as
Article VI Sec. (8), have been found
unconstitutional and struck down.
This section, "Disqualifications of
office," disenfranchising "First, any
person who shall deny the being of
Almighty God," was overturned by
Voswinkel u. Hunt (1979). All other
legally binding sections of the NC
Constitution are subject to the same
provisions of the First Amendment.
Councilman Don Reid:
Claim: Councilman Don Reid made
no quotes from the founding fathers
but asserted, "This country was built
on Judeo-Christian principles, the
basis of which
is the
Ten
Commandments, no one can deny
that ..."
Rebuttal: The Constitution of the
United States and the legal system
which comes from it, was influenced
by many sources, but primarily the
philosophical works of Locke, Hume,
and Rousseau - thinkers most commonly associated with the "Age of
Enlightenment." This radical new
worldview affected nearly every
aspect of life, including traditional
"Judeo-Christian" doctrines, partieAustin,Texas

ularly the relationship between spiritual establishments and temporal

government. The uniquely American
approach involved a complete separation.
(The Enlightenment
in
America, by Ernest Cassara, 1988,
University Press of America)
Reid is merely echoing the longdebunked "Christianity is part of
common law" theme, without bothering to think it through. Our system
of law is noted, quite to the contrary,
for its complete and total lack of
recognition and special status for
religious doctrines of any kind.
Councilman Tim Sellers:
Claim: Alleged quote from George
Washington's farewell address: "let
us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained
without religion ... Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that
national morality can prevail in the
exclusion of religious principle ...
Rebuttal: Washington was wellknown for making any numbers of
quotes which led many people to
infer that he was a practicing
Christian; he often spoke on religious themes, and he often attended
the Episcopal churches in Philadelphia, although he always left
before the communion was administered, arousing controversy among
the congregation. This "Farewell
Address" is the last and best known
speech in which he advocates religious sentiment, however even it
conspicuously fails to endorse Christianity, or any other brand of religion. Those who knew him well,
knew that he was in fact, a Deist.
Even the ministers of the churches
he attended
commented
upon
Washington's refusal to take communion and his silence regarding his
belief in Christianity.
Claim: Alleged quote from Patrick
Henry: "It cannot be emphasized too
strongly or too often that this great
nation was founded, not by religionists but by Christians, not on religion
but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ"

Spring 1998

Rebuttal: This quote has not been

traced back to an original source,
and is a questionable quote used by
David Barton. Based on other quotes
made by Patrick Henry, it is not
inconsistent with his general opinions. His claim to fame rests in the
founding of the Nation of Virginia,
his battle with Jefferson
and
Madison
in
trying
to
keep
Christianity as the legally established religion of the Nation of
Virginia, and his efforts in trying to
keep the Constitution from being
ratified. He lost both of those battles
with Madison. If his claim is true, it
is odd that the primary legal document which defines the government
of this nation has no references
whatsoever to Jesus Christ or any
deity whatsoever, basing its authori. ty instead on "We the people."
Claim: Alleged quote from US
Supreme court decision Church of
Holy Trinity v United States (1892):
"Our laws and our institutions must
necessarily be based upon and
embody the teachings of the Redeemer of Mankind, it is impossible
that it should be otherwise ... Our civilization
and
institutions
are
emphatically Christian .."
Rebuttal: This is yet another inaccurate statement from David Barton,
and he has admitted that this quote
appears nowhere in the Trinity v
United States case. This case was not
a church/state separation case but
rather on whether an alien labor law
passed by Congress in 1887 referred
to only manual labor and not professional or skilled labor. In the legally
non-binding obiter dictum, or "footnote" section, Justice Brewer went
off on a tangent and wrote a completely unrelated discourse on religion and this nation:
These, and many other matters
which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficialdeclarations to the
mass of organicutterances that this
is a Christian nation.
This case is frequently cited by
organizations seeking to amend the
Constitution to include an endorsePage 45

ment of Christianity. To correct this

misinterpretation, Justice Brewer
himself wrote a book in 1905 to correct the record, titled The United
States: A Christian Nation. He
explains:
But in what sense can [the
United States] be called a Christian
nation? Not in the sense that
Christianity is the established religion or the people are compelled in
any manner to support it. On the
contrary, the Constitution specifically provides that 'congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof.' Neither is
it Christian in the sense that all its
citizens are either in fact or in name
Christians. On the contrary, all religions have free scope with in its
borders. Numbers of our people profess other religions, and many
reject all.
...Nor is it Christian in the
sense that a profession of Christianity is a condition of holding
office or otherwise engaging in public service, or essential to recognition either politically or socially. In
fact, the government as a legal
organization is independent of all
religions.

VVhatever his ideas about the

United States as a Christian nation
may have been, that did not include
any official endorsement or special
status for religion by government,
and this position is reflected in
other legal decisions he made.
Claim: Alleged quote from John
Adams, second President of the
United States: "We have no government armed with the power capable
of containing human passions unbridled by morality and religion.
Our Constitution was made for the
governance of a moral and religious
people. It is wholly inadequate for
the governance of anything else."
Rebuttal: This remark has absolutely nothing to do with government
support for religion, nor does it in
any way specify Christianity or any
other religion.
Page 46

Claim: Alleged quote from James

Madison: "We have staked the
whole future of American civilization and political institutions to our
capacity to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of
God."
Rebuttal: This is yet another unverified quote spread by David Barton.
According to Church & State magazine (July/August 1996), "Christian
Nation," Barton has issued a statement admitting that certain quotations attributed to prominent historical figures in his 1992 bookMyth
of Separation, are either false or, at
best, questionable, and he admits
that this is one of the most controversial among them.
In fact, no such quote has ever
been found among any of James
Madison's writings. None of the
biographers of Madison, past or present, has ever run across such a
quote, and most if not all would love
to know where this false quote originated. Apparently, David Barton
did not check the' work of the secondary sources he quotes. Robert
Alley, a distinguished historian at
the University of Richmond, has
recently made an attempt to track
down the origin of this quote. You
can read about his effort in "Public
Education and the Public Good,"
William and Mary Bill of Rights
Journal, Summer 1995, pp. 316318. Madison makes his position
regarding church/state separation
quite clear in his statement, "A
Memorial
and
Remonstrance,"
addressed to the General Assembly
of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in
1785:
What influence, in fact, have
ecclesiastical establishments had
on society? In some instances they
have been seen to erect a spiritual
tyranny on the ruins of the civil
authority; on many instances they
have been seen upholding the
thrones of political tyranny; in no
instance have they been the
guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the
public liberty may have found an
Spring 1998

established clergy convenient auxiliaries. Ajust government, instituted

to secure and perpetuate it, needs
them not.

In his letter to Rev. Jasper

Adams in the Spring of 1832, he
once again makes his position
regarding government's proper role
quite clear:
[I]t may not be easy, in every
possible case, to trace the line of
separation between the rights of
religion and the Civil authority
with such distinctness as to avoid
collisions and doubts on unessential
points. The tendency to usurpation
on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded
agst. by an entire abstinence of the
Gov't from interference in any way
whatsoever, beyond the necessity of
preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on
its legal rights by others.

Councilman Mike Jackson:

Claim: Alleged charge to the framing committee of the first constitution in America in the state of
Connecticut in 1639: "to frame a
constitution as near the law of God
as they can."
Rebuttal: This is irrelevant to our
current system of laws. In fact, the
early colonies were theocracies with
established churches; Anglican in
the south and Congregationalist in
New England. Even Rhode Island,
founded as an experiment in religious freedom, limited full citizenship to Trinitarian Protestants. Our
present system, with separation of
church and state, is a deliberate
departure from these and earlier
European governments. Our current Constitution was noteworthy in
its absence of religious recognition,
and this formed the basis for much
intense debate and opposition to its
ratification. Rev. Doctor Wilson, in
an 1831 sermon protested that it
almost seemed as though God had
been deliberately excluded from the
origins of the new government:
American Atheist

... the Constitution was framed and

God was neglected. He was not
merely forgotten. He was absolutely
voted out of the Constitution. The
proceedings, as published
by
Thompson, the secretary, and the
history of the day, show that the
question was gravely debated whether God should be in the Constitution or not, and after a solemn
debate he was deliberately voted
out of it ... There is not only in the
theory of our government no recognition of God's laws and sovereignty,
but its practical operation, its administration, has been conformable
to its theory.

Claim: Alleged quote from John

Quincy Adams, sixth President of
the United States: "The highest
glory of the American Revolution
was that it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil
government with the principles of
Christianity."
Rebuttal: John Quincy Adams was
not a "Founder," nor was he involved
in any way with the writing of the
Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
Nor did he ever make any public
admission that he followed the
Christian religion.
This quote is taken from the
first edition of David Barton's videotape, America's Godly Heritage. The
original source for this quote is the
book The Pulpit of the American
Revolution, 1860, by John Wingate
Thornton. This particular quote
attributed to John Quincy Adams is
not documented with footnotes, nor
is it even enclosed in quotation
marks as all other quotes in the
introduction to this book; instead, it
reads like Thornton's own conclusion about what John Quincy
Adams believed. These words are
not documented nor attached to a
date, and have not been traced back
to an original source. Elsewhere in
this book, Adams' father, John
Adams, is quoted properly with footnotes and quotation marks. In the
absence of proper documentation,
this quote should be considered
questionable at best.
Claim: Alleged quote from James
Austin, Texas

Madison: "Religion is the basis and

foundation of our government."
Rebuttal: James Madison was sympathetic to religion, but he was also
a staunch supporter of state-church
separation. As the First Amendment's author, he shared Jefferson's
broad reading of the amendment.
Madison vetoed a bill in 1811 passed
by Congress that simply gave a
charter to an Episcopal church within the District of Columbia. The bill
referred to the functions of this particular church in dispensing charity
and education to the neighboring
poor. Madison's veto stated that the
legislation
violated
the First
Amendment and "would be a precedent for giving to religious societies
as such a legal agency in carrying
into effect a public and civic duty."
The bill, he contended, would blur,
and indeed erase, "the essential distinction between civil and religious
functions." That same year Madison
vetoed legislation that would have
given federal land to a Baptist
church in the Mississippi Territory.
Clearly, the establishment of a
national church was not at stake,
but Madison stated the bill violated
the First Amendment, comprising "a
precedent for the appropriation of
funds of the United States for the
use and support of religious societies." He also, unsuccessfully,
opposed the appointing of chaplains
to Congress. Whatever his opinions
may have been on the relationship
of religion to the foundation of government, he clearly did not include
religion as part of its workings. In a
letter to Edward Livingston on July
10, 1822, he wrote:
Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical
and civil matters, is of importance;
and I have no doubt that every new
example will succeed, as every past
one has done, in showing that religionand Govt (sic) will both exist in
greater purity the less they are
mixed together.

George Washington to declare the

Thanksgiving holiday and allegedly
justified it, "as warranted by the
number of precedents in the Holy
Writ, for instance, the solemn
thanksgiving and rejoicing which
took place at the time of Solomon
after the building of the holy temple,
...this example was worthy of
Christian imitation on the present
occasion."
Rebuttal: Washington and Adams
both did declare Thanksgiving proclamations, with Jefferson breaking
this new tradition with his famous
letter to the Danbury Baptists. John
Adams later, in his retirement,
regretted re-starting this practice
after Jefferson's totally secular
administration. (It should be noted
that when Washington first began
this practice (1789), the First
Amendment had not yet been ratified and would not be in force yet for
several years (1791).
Claim: US Supreme Court Justice
Joseph Story (served 1811-1845) in
a Harvard speech in 1829: "There
has never been a period of history in
which common law has not recognised Christianity as lying (sic) as
its foundation." Another misquote:
"we are not to attribute this prohibition of national religious establishment in the First Amendment to
religion in general and especially to
Christianity which none can hold in
more reverence than the framers of
the Constitution ... the general if not
universal sentiment was that Christianity should receive encouragement from the state."
See Separation, page 49

Religion is a conceited
effort to deny the most
obvious realities.
-

H. L. Mencken

Claim: Alleged quote from founding

father Roger Sherman who lobbied
Spring 1998

Page 47

Blind Faith, from page 32

paraded his body through the
streets of Jerusalem to prove that he
had not been a god. "In one fell
swoop,"he writes, "they would have
successfully smothered Christianity
in its cradle. That they did not do
this bears eloquent testimony to the
fact that they did not have the
body."
The fact that Jewish purity laws
would have made such a thing
impossible seems unknown to Mr.
Little. Moreover, the Jact that even
if some renegade officials had
indeed done such a thing, there is
little reason to suppose that we
would have received any record of it
from antiquity. When the city of
Jerusalem was destroyed in CE 70,
all official records were destroyed
also. Furthermore, any copies of
unflattering records surviving outside Jerusalem almost certainly
would have been destroyed during
the myriad book-burnings that characterized the history of Christianity
evenbeforeit came to power.
Mr. Little criticizes the naturalistic argument that Jesus did not
die, but merely swooned and revived
later in the coolness ofthe tomb. We
may agree that this and other naturalistic attempts to account for the
Jesus story don't hold water very
well. But instead of concluding that
Jesus therefore was a god, we would
conclude something very different:
If no naturalistic explanation can
convincingly explain the various
contradictory biographies of him
found in the New Testament, the
only rational conclusion to draw is
that the biographies are fictional.
Lack of a natural explanation is not
evidence for a supernatural explanation! As the philosopher David
Hume once said, in his essay entitled "Of Miracles," "No testimony is
sufficient to establish a miracle,
unless the testimony be of such a
kind that its falsehood would be
more miraculous than the fact
which it endeavors to establish ...
When anyone tells me that he saw a
dead man restored to life, I immediPage 48

ately consider ... whether it be more

probable that this person should
either deceive or be deceived, or that
the fact which he relates should
really have happened. I weigh the
-one miracle against the other ... and
always reject the greater miracle. If
the falsehood of his testimony would
be more miraculous than the event
which he relates - then, and not
until then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion."
Certainly, we can conclude that
the writers of the New Testament
were both deceived and deceivers.
The evidence is in the texts themselves. We need not worry if Jesus
arose from the dead any more than
we might worry about what happened to Wiley Coyotee after the
Roadrunner dropped the anvil on
him from the top of the mesa. No
work of fiction should trouble our
sleep.

Colossal Wreck, from page 38.

and those which are inappropriate
are recognized because they are contradictory. No "law giver" is needed,
since the rules oflogic are necessary;
that is, they are always true in every
possible set of circumstances, not
because they are "given." Other
philosophers have also created
moral systems which can judge good
and evil without reference to gods.
Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill,
W. D. Ross, and other philosophers.
All of these moral theories function
quite well in the absence of belief in
gods. This is all that is needed to
judge good and evil, so Zacharias'
argument does not succeed.
There are other major problems
with the argument, and the one on
the next page of Zacharias' book -which asserts (without supporting
arguments) that love and goodness
are unexplainable unless there is a
god - is even more untenable.
Zacharias shows his lack of familiarity with the views of many philosophers, and especially with the writings of contemporary Humanists, in

Spring 1998

making such a bold and problematic

claim regarding love and goodness.
Of course, he does not support the
claim at all. His last-minute attempt
to throw in some arguments against
Atheism are in vain. The "starting
points" are non-starters.
Conclusion.
Ravi Zacharias does not provide
any reasons for thinking that
Atheism is false. His exposition of
the views of Atheists shows serious
misinterpretations, important factual errors and oversights, and unjustified conclusions regarding the consequences of their philosophies. His
attack on evolution reveals an astonishing lack of understanding of both
the nature and history of science and
of the claims of, and evidence for,
evolution. His exposition of the ill
effects of Atheism on the meaning of
life and other related issues both
avoid the real issue of the truth of
Atheism and fail to realistically and
conscientiously represent the beliefs
of Humanists. Zacharias' proposed
Christian solutions to many of the
problems which he tried to develop
with regard to Atheism suffer from a
striking lack of clarity and coherence, and his final attempts to present arguments against Atheism are
clumsy, ineffective, and obviously
not well thought out. Peppered
throughout the book are scores of
mere assertions, innuendo, wild and
unfounded speculation, and assorted
non sequiturs.
In brief, with regard to Atheism,
Mr. Zacharias does not know what
he ought to talk about, does not
know what he is talking about, does
not understand what's been said
about it, does not know whom to
quote with regard to it, and does not
know how to go about saying it.
He quotes Don Marquis on page
170: "If you make people think
they're thinking, they'll love you: but
if you really make them think,
they'll hate you." Zacharias just
wants to be loved.
(For end notes, see next page.)

American Atheist

EndNotes
A Shattered Visage:
The Real Face of Atheism (Grand

1. Ravi Zacharias,

Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1990), p. 18.

Friedrich
Nietzsche,
The Portable
Nietzsche, Walter A. Kaufmann, ed.
(New York: Penguin Books, 1981), p.
654. Called "TPN" hereafter.
3. TPN, p. 687.
4. TPN, p. 64l.
5. Walter A. Kaufmann,
Nietzsche:
2.

Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1950).
6. Ronald Hayman, Nietzsche: A Critical
Life (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1980).
7. Theodore Drange, the originator of the
argument from nonbelief, has an excellent essay on that argument and the
argument from evil at http://www.infidels.orgllibrary/modernltheodore_dran
gelaenb.html.
8. Readers may wish to consult chapter
12 of Michael Martin's Atheism: A
Philosophical Justification (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Books,
1990) for a detailed exposition of the
argument
that
god cannot
exist
because the concept of god is incoherent.
9. Paul Kurtz, Exuberance: A Philosophy
of Happiness (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1977), p. 9.
10. Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of
Happiness
(New York: Liveright
Publishing, 1930).

Vernon, from page 42.

miracle, recruited many more. He
told them that indeed He was the
Lamb, resurrected and not rotisseried and from there He walked
into legend.
Not to be outdone, on an unscheduled outing from His padded
palace and fully expecting to ascend
directly to Heaven (it could happen),
Benjamin took a dive from an unbarred, four-story window. He landed with a splat that dented the concrete and splattered his brain cells
across the lawn and half-way up the
drive.
But still, three days later the
same four reliable witnesses saw
him in the Waco diner ordering
donuts and flirting with the young
waitresses.
Austin, Texas

Though stranger things have

been known to happen, it was surprising that these dual second comings gained believers as rapidly as
they did. But a resurrection is a resurrection, and this one was in
stereo. And the generations of the
cults of the Davidians were many.
And in a much shorter time than the
last time it happened, the armies of
the Lambs strong-armed
their
divine commandments upon the
lands.
Killing all who refused to submit, they took control of the countries, and the governments and the
nuclear weapons therein. Then they
battled among themselves over
whose lamb was real and whose was
bad copy. And joyously they murdered everything that breathed
within the entire world.
Maranatha!
Separation,

from page 42

Rebuttal: This second statement is a

classic example of quoting a source
out of context. In 1851, while serving as the Dane Professor of Law at
Harvard University, he published
his Commentaries
on the Constitution of the United States, which
included a short section on religious
liberty. In the opening pages of this
section Story argued for the importance of religious faith for good government, and noted that, at the time
of the adoption of the Constitution,
there was widespread sentiment for
aiding Christianity. What Story did
not claim here is that the Constitution empowered the federal government to give such aid. Indeed,
only a few pages latter in his
Commentaries he explicitly denied
that the federal government had
such power.
Story clearly believed, along
with Madison, Jefferson, and other
founders, that the federal government had no ability whatsoever to
aid religion, and thus was a separationist, regardless of his other opinions regarding religious morality or
common law.

Spring 1998

Letters to the Editor .

"Letters to the Editor" should be
either questions or comments of
general concern to Atheists or to
the Atheist community.
Submissions should be brief and to
the point. Space limitations
allow that each letter should be
three hundred words or, preferably, fewer. Please confine your
letter to a single issue only. Mail
letters to:
American Atheist
P.O. Box 140195
Austin, TX 78714-0195

Agnostic criticizes
"Modeling God"
I must express my disappointment with the American Atheist.
Being an agnostic, I was hoping to
discover some substantial arguments
in your journal. Unfortunately, most
were extremely weak and entirely
unconvincing. I cite as an example
the article of Mr. Pasquarello,
"Modeling God," (Autumn 1997
issue) in which he pits an ignorant
"believer" against a clever Atheist in
an exchange concerning the properties of God. Mr. Pasquarello uses a
method of his philosophy teacher:
My first philosophy instructor, a savagely brilliant professor
at the University of Pennsylvania, shocked his introductory
logic class by boasting that if you
gave him any two of God's properties, he could derive a contradiction from them. Few, perhaps,
believed him, and fewer still
would have dared challenge him.
However, it now appears that he
was absolutely correct, though
unduly modest. Take anyone
property; when unpacked, a contradiction can usually be found
lurking therein.
Let's try "perfect," unarguably a fundamental, defining
property. These brief, familiar
scenarios afford an inkling of
just how quickly the analysis can
Page 49

bog down in confusion and inconsistency:

(1) "Perfect" means that God is
ultimate Being
And that means ...?
He includes all Being within
Himself.
Even germs, cancer, and bad
breath?
No, those are aspects of NonBeing
And what's that?
OR
(2) "Perfect" means that God has
all perfections.
What's a perfection?
Well, a desirable, positive
attribute.
For people? Or for bacteria?
For people.
So God is healthy, wealthy,
and wise?
Wise, yes. Not healthy or
wealthy, except metaphorically.
So God has only those perfections applying to minds?
Yes, that's it.
Then, He must have a great
sense of humor?
OR
(3) "Perfect" means that God is
the best, the highest,
the
Supreme Being.
Can He react, respond,
answer prayers, know a changing
event?
Of course! Why not? If He
couldn't He wouldn't be perfect.
But all of those necessitate
change in Him.
So what?
A perfect being can't change.
That's "what."
Why not?
If your bowling score changes
from 300, it's worse.
If a perfect being changes, it's
a change from perfect. So He's
worse.
O.K. So He doesn't change.
But, you just said that would
mean He was imperfect, since He
couldn't react, respond, or do
anything.
The danger of being able to find a
contradiction in one or two statements about God's properties is that
it may actually require three or four
Page 50

to clarify the answer. Noone said the

problem was simple. Merely cutting a
chain ofreasoningshort doesn'tdisprove
the conclusion. Moreover, setting up
a weak opponent gets us nowhere. If
such questions were put to an
Aquinas, a Tillich, or a Buber, etc.,
the results wouldn't be so cute. Let
me deal with each ofthese arguments
separately:
(1) The first argument is a good
example: Mr Pasquarello's "believer"
never gets to define "non-being."
Granted, Mr. Pasquarello's believer is pretty dim philosophically:
why "germs, cancer and bad breath"
should be defined "non-being" is
beyond me, since they obviously
exist. But then, we never learn why.
The argument simply does not
address the issue.
(2) A good sense of humor? Why
not, if god is "that which nothing
greater can be conceived." Where is
the contradiction, unless having a
sense of humor is not a "desirable,
positive attitude"?
(3) Why should a change necessitate imperfection? Why can't I bowl a
perfect game and then go play a perfect round of golf? There has been
change, although not in the bowling
score. If one objected that I've cheated by changing the context, I'd have
to reply that the context was never
clearly defined, because bowling perfectly is not the same as a perfect
bowling score. I can imagine throwing the ball with more grace, the ball
striking the pins at a point where the
probability of them all falling is even
greater. The confusion arises between "numerical" perfection (a
closed system which defines its own
rules) and the perfection imagined in
a lived world (and to what degree
have we defined those rules?). Moreover, why can't one conceive of a perfect process? A fire may not reduce a
house entirely to ashes, but we can
certainly imagine one that does.
Admittedly, this article had a
humorous slant, and it awakens us to
. the weakness and frequent silliness
of our own arguments. But the tone
belies an attitude of mockery and
over confidence, as self-satisfied as
Bible Thumping publication. If any
genuine dialogue is to develop, these
Spring 1998

attitudes
must be put aside.
Questions of whether or not God
exists or that religion is harmful may
never be resolved, but one must
admit that Atheism is defined by this
idea of God, and that this idea must
be taken seriously if any serious position is to be taken.
Lyndon Thompson
(Received via e-mail)

Prof. Pasquarello replies

Mr. Thompson scolds me for my
dialectical brevity and accuses me of
"cutting a chain of reasoning short";
my example did not "... address the
issue." I failed to recognize that
"...Aquinas, Tillich or Buber" would
have had much more to say. (I'm sure
they would.) My attitude is "over-confident and self-satisfied"; the "idea of
god" must be "taken seriously"; and, I
didn't. "No one said the problem was
simple," .he cautions. Apparently,
Thompson wanted a Scholastic tome,
on the order of a Thomistic Summa.
While I claim only a pitifully limited grasp of the entire history of
philosophical-theological speculation,
I defer to no one in my admiration
and respect for the intellects of giants
like Plato, Descartes, and Aquinas.
Every paragraph of my article is a
testimonial to my recognition of the
complexity of the problem and the
tentative status of my conclusions:
"these, of course, are only sketchy
indicators ... ; "...we hesitate to pronounce semantic judgment "; "This
analysis has suggested "; "With
understandably Draconian simplification, these remarks have attempted ... "
My entire piece was a serious
effort to explore the meaning, in the
logical sense, of the concept of "God,"
the "idea of god" as Thompson puts it.
But, he never mentions that central
issue. I did state that such an exploration was "endlessly fascinating"
and "addictively compelling." Wasn't
that "serious" and "respectful"
enough?
However, I must apologize if
Thompson finds my writing too
''humorous''; he undoubtedly believes
AmericanAtheist

that the mirth is camouflaging a lack

of profundity, and he may well be
right.
On two specific points (1) Virtually all Christian apologistshave been tempted to "solve"the
problem of evil - and some, like
Christian Scientists, have succumbed
- by declaring that evil, pain, sickness, etc. are "negations," "unreal,"
and "illusory." If so, God could be
absolved of causal responsibility
sincethere is nothing "real" to cause.
Hence, my reference to "Non-Being."
Ihoped the futility of resorting to this
patently deceptive and dishonest
strategy would be obvious.
(2) Actually, Thompson's comments on "perfect" do a splendid job
of proving my contention - "...how
quicklythe analysis can bog down in
confusionand inconsistency." His references to a "perfect round of golf' (is
that 72, 54, 36, 18, or some other figure"), "a perfect process," "numerical
perfection,"and "the perfection imagined in a lived world" (?) amply
demonstrate that neither of us can
make any sense of the concept. My
point exactly!
However, my dictionary's first
entry under "perfect" - "complete in
all respects; without defect or omission" - does reinforce my conclusion.
Any activity at all would mean the
acquisition of a new property, a logical impossibility for a perfect being
who is already "Complete."
Lurking behind Thompson's comments, the typical agnostic mind-set
is detectable. It delights in ambiguity
and vagueness; it welcomes reams of
rhetoric; it thrives on endless discussion and debate, ever more subtle distinctions, and prolonging "genuine
dialogue." A creature of the fog, it
shrinks from clarity, finality, and closure, no matter how provisional.
What, a proof? A definitive argument? A conclusive piece of reasoning? an issue settled? Well, Aquinas
would have lots to say about that! We
have not yet begun to obfuscate!
These agnostics revel in the role
of perpetual voyager, welcomed at all
ports in the hope that they may eventually select one for mooring. But
zealous agnosticism has a way of
becoming a compulsive mind-style Austin, Texas

the tragic Flying Dutchman assiduously shunning all landfalls. The

seeking and searching become ends
in themselves, like professional travelers who staunchly refuse ever to
disembark.
There are complex issues, e.g.,
the physics of black holes, where
agnosticism is the judicious stance.
But there are other, admittedly complex matters where we have seen,
and heard, and researched enough.
On these, in all due humility and
with the recognition that we are not
omniscient - no being is - it is time to
take a stand, to stand for something.
Nixonian duplicity or Nazi atrocities
are just such issues. So is the reality
of Santa Claus, though somewhat
simpler. There is a rational alternative between a rush to judgment and
eternal agnosticism; it is considered
judgment.
Thompson's own words confirm
my guess as to his sort of agnosticism: "Questions of whether or not
God exists or religion is harmful may
never be resolved ..."And, (sotto voce),
he devoutly hopes they aren't, so that
he can remain perched on the gangplank. If several thousand years of
superstition, persecution, specious
reasoning, and fraudulent evidence
have not provided sufficient data for
drawing a conclusion, I would ask
him, and all agnostics, "What are you
waiting for?"
Tony Pasquarello

Engineer criticizes
American Atheist
and Prof. Patterson
I have reviewed some of your
articles in the American Atheist, and
I have a few comments.
Do the American Atheists believe
that Jesus Christ never existed? I do
not have a formal education in either
Bible or history, but Jewish and
Roman history both declare Jesus
Christ as a powerful political and
religious leader. What evidence are
you looking for?
Why does the American Atheist
journal stereotype Christian believers? (This is also true of believers.) To
Spring 1998

say that all Christians will declare or

deny certain truths is absurd. I
regard this viewpoint highly unprofessional.
Let's assume for a moment that
there exist supernatural beings, who
have provided us with supernatural
events in history. How does science
disprove this? Science deals only with
the NATURAL world, and therefore
must stand back and speculate on the
supernatural. How can you deliberately declare (as in the excerpt below)
that anything dealing with the supernatural is not science, and therefore
cannot be real? In his article "Thermodynamics, Creationism, and Evolution" (Summer 1997), John W.
Patterson states that:
Supernaturally based ideas,
such as Design in nature, miracles and such, are never to be
seriously considered in modern
science, not even when science
itself is in disarray because it has
no explanations to offer. The bottom line: Even when all observed
phenomena defy all attempts at
scientific explanation, science
still cannot budge on supernaturalism.
This viewpoint is just as hardheaded as the stands that some uneducated Christians take. The REAL
bottom line is this:
Modern science CHOOSES not to
believe in the supernatural,
and
since supernatural events cannot be
reproduced and verified, they cannot
be associated with reality. By choosing to REJECT any form of supernatural event, then, modern science is
able to discredit all religious beliefs
about God. This is one of the platforms of modern science. To say that
something CANNOT exist, or DID
NOT exist, is pure idiocy. I will much
more admire the person who will
humbly admit, "There may be a God.
Whether He is concerned with our
lives or not, I cannot say."Therefore,
to say that there is no God, as the
Bible says, is to declare your own
foolishness.
Matthew D. Gose
Process Design Engineer
West Virginia
(Received via e-mail)
Page 51

Prof. Patterson replies

Matthew D. Gose is upset
because science refuses to consider
supernatural
explanations,
even
when no naturalistic (i.e., Atheistic)
alternatives are available. This, he
says, is "just as hard-headed as the
stands that some uneducated Christians take."
Matthew would be right, except
for this important difference: whereas ''justification by faith alone" carries the day for your run-o-the-mill,
hard-headed Christian, the justification in science is based, not at all on
faith; but on two undeniable track
records: A. The thoroughly pathetic
track record that the advocates of
supernaturalism
have registered
with all their explanations and
descriptions, and, B., The remarkably successful track record of Atheistic explanations. So superior are
the latter, they have supplanted all
the former, including even the most
widely accepted supernatural explanations ofthe past. But I refrain from
repeating here the lines of argument
already detailed in the article.
Scientists aren't alone in rejecting supernatural explanations, even
when no mundane, naturalistic alternatives are available. Competent
police workers obstinately refuse to
consider supernatural explanations
for their missing-persons cases or
homicides. According to Gose's logic,
the police, too, are being as hardheaded as some uneducated Christians. After all, God or any number of
supernatural agents could easily
"rapturize" missing persons or effect
their deaths with a miracle, if necessary. Again, supernatural explanations cannot be ruled out, at least
according to Gose's logic, and yet the
police never close cases based on
supernatural explanations. Like scientists, they hold them "open" as
unsolved cases - indefinitely if necessary - and may offer a reward to help
solve the crime. Anything is better
than opting for a supernatural expla- .
nation. But perhaps Mr. Gose thinks
there may be cases where the police
should payout such rewards to persons "solving" such cases with the
Page 52

explanation that "Jesus took them

home to heaven"?
All the huffing and snorting Gose
directs toward scientists for holding
their cases open - rather than succumbing to closure with supernatural
or theistic explanations - could as
well be directed at police officials
across the nation. In my view,however, softening the "hard-headed" police
strategy in favor of the (theo)logicof
Gose would be tantamount to incompetence at best, dishonesty at worst.
.
John W. Patterson

The editor replies

Tothe question "Dothe American
Atheists believe that Jesus Christ
never existed?" I can only answer,
"Some do, some don't, and some are
undecided." Speaking only for myself,
however, I would assert that there is
absolutely no evidence convincing
enough to make one believe that
Jesus was a historical personage. Mr.
Gose's claim that "Jewish and Roman
history both declare Jesus Christ as a
powerful political and religious
leader" could not be further from the
truth. There are absolutely no Jewish
sources contemporaneous with the
period in which Jesus supposedly
lived that know anything at all of
that supposed wonder-worker. The
passages in Josephus (a Jewish historian) mentioning Jesus have been
proven quite certainly to be late
interpolations by Christian apologists. But even if they were not fraudulent, since Josephus was born in 37
CE, after the supposed death ofJesus,
and wrote his history at about the
same time the gospels were written
(at the end of the first century), he
could not have been an eye-witness of
Jesus. One would conclude simply
that his story was told to him by
Christians, a tribe of trouble-makers
that certainly existed in abundance
by that time. The oldest Talmudic
notices of Jesus are centuries too late
to be of any evidential weight, being
compiled in the 4th-5th centuries CE
Amusingly, the "Jesus" of whom the
Babylonian Talmud speaks is alleged
to have lived at the time ofAlexander
Spring 1998

Janneeus, who ruled 104-78 BCE.

(Another Talmudic Jesus met his end
at Lydda, in the early second century
CE.)

While not as late as the Jewish

notices, the comments alleged to
have been made by Roman historians
are all later than those of Josephus.
The comment by Tacitus (b. 55 CE)
that "Christians derive their name
and origin from Christ, who was executed by sentence of the procurator
Pontius Pilate in the reign of
Tiberius," is almost certainly an
interpolation. (Official archives, had
Tacitus consulted them, would have
referred to Pilate as "Prefect," not
"Procurator," a title current only in
the second half of the first century
CEo Moreover, the passage uses the
term "Christ" as if it were a name
rather than a title meaning "Messiah." The archival record most
assuredly would not have said "the
Messiah was executed last Wednesday." Rather, it would have said
something like "the Galilean troublemaker Jesus ben Joseph was condemned to death by Prefect Pontius
Pilatus.") But even if this passage
had been written by Tacitus himself
without consultation of official archives, it would be of no evidential
weight due to its lateness.
The other Roman historians are
even later than Tacitus, leaving neither eye-witness accounts of Jesus
nor any accounts that could be
derived from authoritative sources.
Considering the large number of historians known to have lived at the
time Jesus is supposed to have lived,
their combined universal lack of
mention of Jesus is a powerful "argument from silence" against his historicity. Certainly, any historian who
would have mentioned Jesus would
have been preserved, and it would
not have been necessary for the
Christians to commit all the forgeries
that besmirch the early centuries of
Christian history.
Frank R. Zindler

AmericanAtheist

The Legend of Saint

Peter

THE
LEGEND

OF
~fIlNT

12ETER

--... --~
~

"""-''''''F,,",_

...

Women, Food and Sex

in History vols. 1,2,3,4,

by Arthur Drews. Early 20thcentury German scholar demonstrates that St. Peter was not a
historical person, but evolved
from gods such as Janus,
Mithra, and the Tyrian Hercules
(Melkart). An appendix provides
full texts of classical, biblical,
and patristic sources cited.
Translated by Frank R. Zindler.
182 pp. Paperback.
#5580
$12.00

by Soledad de Montalvo. A
frank overview of three basic
elements of human society and
how religion has influenced
them. Paperback.
#5421 (Vol. 1, 277 pp.)
#5422 (Vol. 2, 298 pp.)
#5423 (Vol. 3, 319 pp.)
#5425 (Vol. 4, 300 pp.)

Thomas Paine

The X-Rated Bible

1he

by Ben Edward Akerley. Is the

Bible a dirty book? Read this
examination of the sexual antics
and mores of biblical characters
and judge for yourself.
428 pp. Paperback.

#5000

$14.00

by Ben Edwald Aker:Ey

95 pp. Paperback

THE
BIBLE

',".'i;!i'.1

Ii..-....;;;;.....;;;;. __

Examination of the Prophecies. Edited and annotated by

Frank R. Zindler. Founding
Father Thomas Paine shows
that supposed Old Testament
prophecies of Jesus where
nothing of the kind - coming
to the conclusion that Jesus
Christ was as mythical as
Jupiter or Minerva.
#5575
$12.00

by W. P. Ball, G. W. Foote, and

others. The absurdities, indecencies, contradictions, and unfulfilled prophecies to be found in
the Christian Bible. Clearly referenced, it is a helpful aid for
debaters.
372 pp. Paperback.

by Rius. One of Mexico's most

sacred and beloved myths is
that of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Rius' light-hearted
cartoon treatment shows how
and why it was fabricated.
69 pp. Paperback.

#5008

#5439

$14.00

Manualofa
Perfect
Atheist

by Mexico's irrepressible "Rius,"

Satyrical cartoon and photographic treatment of the
"great questions" of religion
.......;";';';"..;..;....J and philosophy.

156 pp. Paperback.

#5441

Thomas Paine, The Age

of Reason, Part III.

The Myth of the Virgin

of Guadalupe

The Bible Handbook

HANDBOOK

$12.00
$12.00
$12.00
$12.00

$13.00

$9.00

Crux Ansata: An
To order, please include check
Indictment of the
(payable to American Atheists) or
Roman Catholic
credit card payment for the price
of the books desired plus shipChurch
ping and handling ($2.50 for
by H. G. Wells.
first title plus $1.00 for each
The author relates the
additional title) along with a list
thousand years of
of titles with stock
church history that led
numbers.
him to conclude that the
Send order to:
Roman Catholic church'
American Atheist Press,
"stands for everything
P.O. Box 140195,
c::=::::::==::::::::::=:J most hostile to the menAustin, TX 78714-0195
tal emancipation and stimulation of
Credit card orders may be faxed mankind."
to:
160 pp. Paperback.
(512) 467-9525.
#5512

$8.00

Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,

or prohibiting
the free exercise
thereof;
press;

or abridging
or the right

ble, and to petition

the freedom

of speech,

of the people peaceably

the Qovernment

or of the

to assem-

for a redress

of

grievances.

'e

"0 Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to

bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their
smiling field with the pale forms of their patriot
dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with
the shrieks of their wounded, writhing In pain; help
us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane
of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffendin g widows with unavailin g grief; hel p us to tu rn
them out roofless with their little children to wander
unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rage
and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of
summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit,
worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of
the grave and denied it ... "
- Mark Twain
The War Prayer