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AmericanAtheist
Vol. 21, No. 10

October, 1979

articles
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair
MANAGING EDITOR
Jon Garth Murray
ASSIST ANT EDITOR
G. Richard Bozarth
READING EDITOR
Barry Cashman
NON-RESIDENTIAL STAFF
Bill Baird
Angeline Bennett
Wells Culver
Conrad Goeringer
Connie Perozino
Ignatz Sahula-Dycke
Elaine Stansfield
Gerald Tholen
The American Atheist magazine is
published monthly by American Atheists, located at 2210 Hancock Drive,
Austin, Texas, 78756, a non-profit,
non-political,
educational. organization. Mailing address: P.O. Box 2117,
Austin, TX, 78768. Copyright e 1979
by Society of Separationists,
Inc.
Subscription rates: $20.00 per year.
Manuscripts submitted must be typed,
double-spaced and accompanied by a
stamped, self-addressed envelope. The
editors assume no responsibility for
unsolicited manuscripts.
The American Atheist magazine is
indexed in:
MONTHLY PERIODICAL INDEX.

Elaine Stansfield - Those Outrageous Superstitions

Amedeo Amendola, Ph.D - On Abortion
Christopher Drew - God Theories Mislead People
Conrad Goeringer - Heads I Win -Tails You Lose
Joseph McCabe - Agnosticism and Atheism
Angeline Bennett - His and Hers
,

9
10
15
18
25
28

features
Editorial - Jon G. Murray - Goals
Letters to The Editor
;
Atheist News
Wojtyla - Go Home!
"
You Win Some - You Lose Some
It Ain't Fair .. '
Prayers Get The Boot
Film Review - Elaine Stansfield - The Wicker Man
Poems
Columnists
:
Connie Perozino - Going to The Barricades
Angeline Bennett - It Could Be Verse
Gerald Tholen - The Sensationalization of Brainwashing
Ignatz Sahula-Dycke-Catalyst
for World Liberation-Africa?
G. Richard Bozarth - The Atheist Letters, 5
Lonely Atheists
Roots of Atheism - Joseph McCabe, Part I
American Atheist Radio Series
Madalyn Murray O'Hair - Solicitation
Book Review - Ruins of Empire

2
3
5
6
7
8
39
13
.
:"14
21
30
. 33
37
32
22
35
40

our cover
Pope John Paul I comes to the United States.

October, 1979

Austin, Texas

'/

Page 1

Editorial
Jon G. Murray

"GOALS"
Looking at the American Atheist movement today, one
would think that American Atheists was but one organization
in a succession of groups each building upon the' victories of
the former. That is, however, not the case. The history of
"Freethought"
movements in the United States has been
one of disorganization. A group here and a group there, often
with mediocre leadership and always rent with internal schisms
over "policy" matters. Each little enclave of Freethinkers (or
\whateve~ nomenclature they cared to apply to themselves)
worked mdependently for some small redress for a particular
grievance. The majority of these grievances were violations in
the Constitutional doctrine of separation of state and church.
Tp.~ entire notion of, coming out directly against God or
religious teaching was a bit too much for early groups.
We have now, with American Atheists, become more outspoken in identifying ourselves as Atheists, but have we gained
ground on the separation issues that these diverse groups have
labored for for so long? The answer is no. If anything we are
~orse off today. Though better organized, we have still failed
to .accomplish some of the fundamental repairs required to
keep the wall of separation of state and church from crumbling.

'and penalties of perjury shall be established in its

stead.
7. We demand that all laws directly or indirectly enforcing the observance of Sunday as 'the Sabbath shall
be repealed.
8. We' demand that all laws looking to the enforcement
of "Christian" morality shall be abrogated, and that
all laws shall be conformed to the requirements of
natural morality, equal rights and impartial liberty.
9. We demand that, not only in the constitutions of
the United States and of the several states but also in
the practical administration of the same, no privilege
or advantage shall be conceded to Christianity or any
other special religion; that our entire political system
shall be founded and administered on a purely secular
basis; and that whatever changes shall prove necessary
to this end shall be consistently, unflinchingly, and
promptly made.
Each of these demands is still of concern today. Each is
a must for the eventual restitution of separation of state and
church to the United States. Let's take a look at each of them.

1) Tax Exempt Status of Churches After 109 years of

Back in 1874, one of the early Freethought groups known
struggle, churches in America are still exempt on their personal
as the Free Religious Association sprang out of efforts to
incomes, incomes from non-related business, interest on stock,
amend the Constitution to include religious phrases as well as
bonds and investments, sales tax, personal property and even
efforts to place the words "In God We Trust" on the coins.
license fees for their vehicles.
These sound like current issues, don't they? But the roots of
In 1977, the Internal Revenue Service estimated their
controversies such as these have run deep in American.politics
for years. This group had as its objective .topropound
a re- . total cash donations at some 16.4 billion dollars a year. That
was 46% of all charitable giving in 1977, all tax free. Are we
ligion of humanity, guided by reason, and to provide an organization for those who did not wish to remalrr'with diverse.; betteroff than in 1874? Hardly._
Not only does organized religion still hold its exempt
sectarian Christian groups. In January of 187'1, the 'group
published a list of demands designed to restore the Constitu"status but it has refused to disclose to anyone, even the govtional doctrine -of separation of state and church to working
ernment itself, the extent of its holdings. A battle is currently
order, Those 'demands were:
'
raging in Michigan over the issue of church disclosure of nontaxable holdings. The State is losing the battle there. The In1. We demand, that churches and other ecclesiastical proternal Revenue Service itself demanded that churches begin to
perty shall no longer be exempt from taxation.
report as of January 1978. They refused; as a block, to do so
2. :We demand that the employment of chaplains in'
and IRS could do nothing about it.
Congress, in state legislatures, in the navy and militia,
2)
Chaplains in Congress and Other Institutions They are still
and in prisons, asylums, and all other institutions
there. In the Senate and the House both, the Chaplains have
supported by public money shall be discontinued.
3. We demand that all public appropriations for see- . just received a salary increase to $33,000 and $50,000 a year
tarian educational and charitable institutions shall ' respectively. This is your tax-payer money going into direct
aid to religion. Chaplains not only remain in the U.S. Congress,
cease:
but they open the sessions of most State legislatures as well.
4. We demand that all religious services now sustained by
All on tax-payer money.
government shall be abolished; and especially that the'
use of the Bible in the -public schools, whether os- ' 3) Appropriations to Sectarian Institutions Parochial schools
tensibly as a textbook or avowedly as a book of
in many states are currently receiving tax funds for books, tuireligious worship, shall be prohibited.
tion, transportation and teacher salaries. Parochial hospitals
5. We demand that the appointment by the President
receive Federal funds from the Hill-Burton Act. Church child
of the United States or by the gooernorsof the various'
care centers receive governmental assistance. Year after year
states of all religious festivals and fasts shall uiholly
the churches receive more than the Pentagon. All from your
cease. '
.
tax monies, whether you care to support their work or not.
6. We demand that the judicial oath in the courts and in
4) Religious services still take place in the White House and
all other departments of the government shall be
all over the Nation's capital during religious holidays and
abolished, and that simple affirmation under the pains
I

Page 2

October, 1979

American Atheist

patriotic events. Prayer breakfasts are a common occurrence

now in most government offices on Federal, State, and local
levels.
Bible reading and prayer recitation in the public schools
were ended by the Murray v. Curlett decision of 1963. But
still the churches continue with a series of non-compliance
measures concerned with that decision.
5) Both Presidents Nixon and Ford and now President Carter call for national days of fasting and prayer. Governors cry
out to their God for salvation from natural disasters in their
States. Official governmental policy in the Middle- East rests
on the proposition that Israel exists to fulfill Bible prophecy.
The over-all piousness of our national leadership has increased
dramatically. We now have an official Washington lobby,
called Christian Voice, dedicated to the election of evangelical
candidates to high public office.
6) In every court in the nation thousands of persons each
day still are sworn in under the phrase "So help me God".
Only in the case of the leadership of American Atheists has
this pattern been broken. Many Atheists still take such an
oath, preferring not to rock the boat or prejudice a judge or
jury. Elected officials are sworn in on the Bible on a daily
basis.
7) Sunday closing laws still are in force in every state of the
!l!:!:i!2!L. In Texas, for example, one cannot buy any of a particular list of items on a Sunday, while other items remain for
sale. Differentiation is made between good and bad inanimate
objects .that can or cannot be purchased on Sunday. Sound
like a dream out of the Middle Ages? It is as real as your corner store any Sunday. We still practice taboos, today, in the
20th century.
8) Karen Quinlan was allowed to suffer for months attached
to a life-support system because "Christian morality" dictated
that she could not be allowed to die. A doctor performing
an abortion, even to save a mother's life, is charged with murder. Magazines with nude photography are banned and their
owners are faced with prison terms. The August issue of this
journal reported on a New Jersey community terrorized by

enforced Christian morality.

9) The Constitutions of the states of Texas, North Carolina,
Arkansas, Mississippi, and South Carolina contain provisions
prohibiting the holding of public office by any person who
denies the existence of God. Many state constitutions have
religious mottoes or preambles or contain no mention of
guaranteed religious liberty.
In summary we stand in the same position as that of 109
years ago. Why? Because we have been divided against ourselves. Each group fighting from a different angle for the same
objective: freedom from religion. Freedom from religion and
government neutrality with respect to religion redound' to the
benefit of everyone.
Women face the church as their primary enemy. They
must be free from the 'System' of thought that inspires their
lack of equality, yet they fight for their liberty within the
church, that institution which has led in its denial. Blacks
, have been kept on their knees by the church which condoned
their servitude, yet their leadership leads them to freedo~
through the church. The Mexican-American community that
has suffered at the hand of Mother Rome for generations
works for freedom through church leadership. All these
groups can benefit from Freedom from Religion as well.
Do they help?
It's like the old fable of the little red hen. No one would
help her in each process leading up to the finished product,
a loaf of bread, but all were ready to help her eat it after it was
made.
Freedoms are important, but some are more important
than others. You must free the mind first, before it can work
to free the body. Freedom from religion is freedom for the
mind. Whatever particular thing you're for, be for that which
makes all of them come true, an uninhibited mind. Atheism
can set you free to involve yourself in a number of freedom
struggles, but the battle of the mind must be won first. Let's
cooperate for that.
~

Letters
toThe
Editors
r--------jjk~J
Dear Editor,
Our feelings on procedures that
might be possible now are the following: (1) Refile the claim in another
district court (2) While waiting for
the case to again reach the Supreme
Court, American Atheists should enter
into a unified program of peaceful protest against the religious motto, by
means of "willful obliteration"
of
same, on all currency passing through
their hands. A starting, or kickoff,
date should be set, with all chapters
and individuals notified so publicity
can be prearranged -letters to the editor, newspaper notices, ads, radio and
TV publicity wherever possible heralding the program. Each chapter
can devise the emphasis it feels necessary to promote.
Enclosed is my check in the a0

Austin, Texas

mount of $100.00, to help carry on

the legal battles and other work of the
Society of Separationists.
Margaret Marshall
New York
Dear Editor,
A Pennsylvania state representative,
Ron Goebel, wants to investigate the
"cults" .
In answer to' a question during a
recent talk show, he made the statement that "I have money in my pocket that says 'In God We Trust', that
gives me the authority to investigate
the cults".
That statement was made before
the Supreme Court decision so look
out witches, here we come.
God bless the Supreme Court.
Roz Glick
Pennsylvania

October, 1979

:IS!

Dear Editor,
As an American Atheist, I am opposed to the national motto "In God
We Trust", and I vote for the first
alternative which you have listed, that
is, to refile in another federal district.
I recommend that we try a district
in the northern section of the country,
as the chances of winning in the lower
court are higher. Everyone knows that
"Bible Belt" judges are more likely to
be influenced by their religious bias
from within and also from their social
peers. I feel that, two years may give
us enough time to publicize the case

Page 3

and inform others of our argument.

Perhaps the issue will not be too "hot"
for the Supreme Court to hearin 1981.
The reason I don't recommend obliterating the motto on currency is because Atheists already carry an undeserved aura of evil and this action
may only convince
theists that
Atheists show their scorn for American ideals by mutilating government
property.
However, if the Atheist consensus
is for No.3,
I will participate in
order to show my support in the effort
to ban the current motto.
I appreciate everyone's effort at the
Center and am sending a donation to
help out.
Joye Brooks
Texas
Dear Editor,
In response to the FIGHT FOR
YOUR RIGHTS leaflet which you sent
out with your last newsletter, the
voting in our Chapter went as follows:
(1) We felt that this proposal should
be postponed for the time being, due
to financial reasons. (2) The Chapter
was almost unanimously in favor of
No.2. We felt that this one may get
us some very favorable publicity. (3)
The Chapter voted "No" on No.3,
but almost everyone agreed that they
would go along with it secretly. Some
have already started. (4) Voted out.
Eddie Griest
Secretary & Treasurer,
Colorado Chaper of American Atheists
Dear Editor,
As you have asked for your fellow
members advice as to what to do now
in regards toward the "In God We
Trust" lawsuit, I shall now proceed to
give you mine: (1) Do proceed with
refiling the suit in another district.
The effort to end unconstitutional
government sponsorship of religion on
the state's property, mediums and
procedures is an extremely important
one and as this currency motto dispute
is still unresolved, it should be re-filed
and re-re-filed until the Justices do
make a final judgement on this matter
and resolve it once and for all; (2) Do
not take this matter to the United
Nations Human Rights Commission.
The only cases worthy of the attention
of that august body are ones involving
unjust imprisonment, torture, or executions by a state or movement. This
. case involves only symbolism in theoretical violation of a member state's
internal basic framework of law. We

Page 4

Atheists are not being physically

harmed by the currency motto, and
there is no violation of the International Declaration of Human Rights
involved.
I am especially opposed to any collusion of our organization with any
Communist or Marxist nation. To prevent that old big lie that "Atheists are
Communists" from being raised and
voiced once again, we must scrupulously avoid taking any direct joint
action with Communists or Marxists.
I know that our enemies will continue
to use this lie anyway, but we must
avoid collusions that when publicly
pointed out might lead the public to
think that perhaps Reds and antireligionists are alike.
It is imperative that our organization denounce Albania. The government of that country has declared
their nation to be an officially Atheist
one, with all religious activities illegal
and vigorously repressed. The government is not truly Atheist, of course,
as it has elevated Stalin and its dictator, Enver Hoxhe, to demi-god status.
Such practices are abhoranent to true
American Atheists and should be
denounced as such. The above applies
as well to Equatorial Guinea, and its
dictator, Macias; (3) I am already
obliterating
that obnoxious slogan
from all paper currency I receive, with
an ink pen. If I owned an engraving
tool, I would do the same with all my
coins. What we should do is ask our
members to do it through the Insiders Newsletter, and not announce
publicly and officially. that we are
doing this until the defaced currency
becomes so commonplace that the
newsmedia begin asking: about it.
This way if it does not achieve great
noticeability,
we
will announce
nothing and we won't be caught
hoisting a petard.
If the Treasury Department tries
to prosecute on grounds of violation
of anti-defacing laws, there is a case we
can point to as a precedent in our defense. It seems that a New Hampshire
couple, both 'Jehovah's
Witnesses,
covered up the slogan "Live Free or
Die" on their automobile license plate,
saying that it went against their pacifistic religious beliefs. A prosecutor
took them to court over this, seeking
an injunction ordering them to stop
doing this. However, the judge ruled in
the couple's favor, saying that it was
within their rights to do that. Now, if
theists may obliterate from a government medium, a license plate, a slogan

October, 1979

More
Reader
COlDlDent
that offends their religious conviction,
why can't Atheists do the same on
another government medium, money,
for the same reasons?; (4) It would not
be worthwhile to try to make E Pluribus Unum an Atheist slogan, because
few people outside our organization
would understand or even listen to our
explanation for doing so. The general
public would not see the connection
to the motto on the currency. It
would be a futile, not worthwhile, useless gesture; (5) So of the four possible
paths to follow since the High Court
denied a hearing, (1) and (3) are the
ones to travel.vwith (1) being the most
important and likely to bear success.
I hope that my reasoning and
advice on this matter will be of help
to you all in deciding how to lead our
organization at this particular time. I
am, as ever, a loyal and active member.
Andrew Lutes
Kentucky
P.S. I have enclosed a book order
as well, as you all will need money
for whatever you decide to do. A.L.
Dear Editor,
_
I am not surprised 'that you lost
your case to remove "In God We Trust"
off the money. It is logical that most
religious people would want that
phrase on money since money really is
their god and it is in what they trust,
fight for, and live for.
Hulda Pelzl
Illinois
Dear-Editor,
About the suit to have "In God We
Trust" removed from our money, I
say take the case to the Human Rights
Commission of the U.N. If we still
don't get the results we want, then
refile the case in another federal district court.
Arthur Fliney
Michigan
American Atheists,
About the Pope coming to the
U.S.A.just another imported Polish ham,
Gion Zatilla
New York

American Atheist

NEWS

The news is chosen to demonstrate, month after month, the dead reactionary hand of religion. It dictates your habits, sexual conduct, fainil
size. It censures cinema, theater, television, even education. It dictates life values and lifestyle. Religion is politics and, always, the most authori .
tarianand reactionary politics. We editorialize our news to emphasize this thesis. Unlike any other magazine or newspaper in the United States
we are honest enough to admit it.

Wo;tyla

- GoHomel

If the Pope, or any other head of state, desires to visit the United States, that is their business - and the business
of the United States government, as the host. If the Pope wants to use federally or state owned land or buildings to
conduct religious services, that is our business. We, as a people, cannot permit the abuse of our own Constitution
which protects a principle upon which our nation was founded - separation of state and church.

Upon notification that the Pope was to visit, certain of our political entities began to
plan for religious services, specifically for a Papal mass to be said, under the auspices and
with the approval and aid of the government. Boston planned to erect a podium, at a cost
of $100,000, in the city-owned Boston Commons. The Washington Mall accommodations
are calculated to cost well over $500,000.
It is obvious that this is an impermissible admixture of religion
and government and should not be allowed. The Roman Catholic
church owns real estate in excess of $162 billion in the United
States. It has a string of magnificent cathedrals where Roman.
Catholic masses could be said. The Maryknoll properties throughout the New England and New York area exceed thousands of
acres. There is simply no need for the United States or any state,
county or city government of our nation to accommodate for a
"Papal mass" at tax payer cost.
American Atheists are, therefore, at
the time of the printing of this issue of
the magazine, seeking legal action to
stop this infamous activity.

Austin, Texas

October, 1979

Page 5

NEWS

"You Win Some You Lose Some"

Conflicts in State Stances on Religion
Idaho continued this summer to enforce state/ State Board of Education. promulgated a regulation
church separation generally even though the object of that school districts may not grant credit or take atthe state's concern was, specifically, the Mormons.
tendance for special religious classes.The policy alIn that state, also, the religious schemeof "released lows students to leave school for religious classesif
time" had been introduced into the public schools. written permission from parents or guardians is given.
Now, the religion demanding the "release" was the The board felt. called upon to justify its ruling, alChurch of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the though it had no choice in the wake of the Utah
instructions which the pupils were to receive were in court ruling. Therefore, it went, first, through the ex"seminaries," a simple name change for the religious ercise of a "public hearing" on the matter before
classroomsadjunct to the church.
stating, "These practices are designed to ensure that
Religion has never been able to capture the young the public school operation is not adversely affected
and every scheme available hasbeen devisedto do so, and that public funds and property are not used for
pressing into service (A) the parents, (B) the public sectarian,religious instruction in a way which violated
school system, or (C) the government, which is al- the United States Constitution, the Idaho Constituways eagerly standing ready to do service for any tion or state law."
church.
The releasedtime scheme of religious instruction,
"Released time" is a program whereby students are which is an effort to capture young and impression"released" from public schools during class time to able minds for the church, was reviewed extensively
walk or be transported to a church, there to receive in the April, 1977 issueof the American Atheist. The
religious instruction. While the religious children are United States Supreme Court, in the caseof Zorach v.
gone, public school functions, except for a holding Clauson, 343 U.S. 306 (1952) approved the use of reaction, stop. The children who do NOT go for retigi- leasedtime in the New York City school district in a
ous instruction, usually two-thirds to three-fourths of 6-3 decision. The dissentwas so strong that the Roall the students, are simply held prisoners until the re- man Catholic Church, which was involved in the case,
ligiously instructed return - on the theory that it did not attempt an aggressiveprogram in other areas.
would not be "fair" to continue regular class room
In early 1977, the Montana legislature proposed to
activity which the "released" students would miss. pass a bill to permit state school trustees to provide
Naught is ever said about the "fairness" of the total for releasedtime programs in that state. Althouqh vigdisruption of the public school time, instruction and orously protested by American Atheist Ernie Krumm,
work with those not in the religious scheme.
the legislation was passedand the program put into
Usually the exercise includes record (attendance) effect.
keeping by the public school personnel and some deMeantime, in Tennessee,full scalereligious instrucmands have already been made for public transports- tion was permitted to enter the public schools by
tion.
federal fiat. There, on the 26th of August, 1979, a
Churches' experience has been that "religious in- United States District Court judge, in Chattanooga,
struction" after school hours or on weekends have -approved a "revised Bible study program" for two
not yielded as heavy an attendance record as when elementary school systems. The programs were fashthese instruction periods are contrived for by the "re- ioned for grades kindergarten through sixth grade
leasedtime" method, which is more coercive on both classes in the Chattanooga and Hamilton County
student and parent and which involves the public school systems.
school system asa monitoring and assistingdevice.
Astonishingly, the judge announced that he would
Under the so-called "Dallas" plan, a school district retain jurisdiction in the caseand keep authority to
will often give public school "credits" for such Bible, supervisethe first year's operation.
or religious study. However, in December, 1978, the
In January, 1978, parents of students in the two
Utah Supreme Court ruled that granting credit for public school systemshad filed two different lawsuits
such classeswas unconstitutional. With the pressure (later consolidated) challenging the constitutionality
of the church upon them, the various school districts of the courses. On February' 9th, 1979, the District
in Idaho were reluctant to come into compliance with Court judge ruled that the courses did violate the
the rultng. It was not until August 10, 1979, that the First Amendment clause which prohibits state estab-

Page 6

October, 1979 .

~/

American Atheist

NEWS

Iy have a religious emp asis,

He left with the school boards the full responsibility for employing Bible teachers - at taxpayer expense.
By every criteria, the judge's rul ing and his own
der the tent.
of the courThe Bible study apparently is being presented as continued involvement of "supervision"
ses for one year is an impermissible admixture of
being taught for its "secular, literary or historical
worth."
Because of this, the judge struck down a state and church expressly forbidden by the Constitufourth-grade lesson which proposed the teaching of tion of the United States. It is hoped that the parents
Jesus' resurrection as alleged in the New Testament.
involved will appeal this very bad ruling.
The judge opined that such a lesson would unavoidablished rei igion. He then gave the school boards 45
days to submit revised study proposals. In his decision of late August, he approved most of these revised
Bible study courses. The nose of the camel is now un-

It Ain't Fair!
Each year the Lions Club of Kentucky sponsors a Blue
Grass Fair in Lexington and exhibit booths have been freely
given to Baptists, Methodists, Quakers and Mormons. Yet, in
May, when the Kentucky Chapter of American Atheists applied for such a booth, the request was denied. The fair's executive director proclaimed: "We feel a responsibility to our fair
patrons. Any group or organization we feel would be controversial ... we don't put them in. We don't feel that the fair is
a platform for any group to express controversial ideas."
The fair, scheduled to open in late July featured about 100
commercial exhibits and usually drew about 80,000 patrons.
The Kentucky Chapter Director, John Crump, offered to permit the Lions to select which pieces of its panoply of literature
would be approved for distribution. The offer failed.
The fair is staged each year at Masterson's Station Park, a
public facility, on a yearly contract. The staff attorney inthe
local government's law department, trembling, announced,
"At this point, we really don't want to get involved in it."
Crump, a devout state/church separationist, then complained to the local I.R.S. to see if the Lions Club was violating guidelines on impartiality by prohibiting a non-profit,
educational, tax-exempt organization from exhibiting, and
charged the Lions with discrimination on the basis of religious
belief.
When all moves for assistance in the matter had been exhausted, Mother Nature moved in with some help. Beginning
July 20th and continuing through July 28th, there was rain in
Lexington, Kentucky every day of the fair.
The Lions Club increased its promotional efforts significantly and hoped for an attendance of 110,000. That fell to
67,000 and after deducting all costs, the Lions found that this
year, for the first time, the group lost money on its venture. To be exact it came out in the red slightly over $15,000
in the report which it gave to the club board on August 9th.
Meanwhile, John Crump wrote a "Letter to The Editor" of
the Lexington Herald and Leader newspaper, which was featured with a picture of the raindrenched fair, complete with
umbrellas and 'a muddy midway.
He queried, tongue-in-cheek, "After all, since Atheists were
not allowed to be represented at the fair while gospel groups
sang praises to the heavens, why would God dump his water?"
Why indeed!
Meanwhile, the Utah Chapter and the Houston Chapter of
American Atheists have both been accepted by local fair
committees in their respective areas to have booths at the fall
fairs and the Arizona Chapter just concluded a very successful
fair participation, booth and all, in Tucson.

Austin, Texas

John Crump
Moral: if religious folks really believe that Atheists are in
league with Satan, it might be better for the religious zanies
not to cross them - the situation may work in reverse!
Meanwhile-back at the Kentucky AA Chapter headquarters-the indefatigable John Crump worked on. He has a habit
of charging in all directions to cover all fronts. By August, he
was able to obtain a permanent listing in the Lexington Herald
and Leader's Fayette County Record 'Help Column' for the
chapter's Dial-an-Atheist telephone number.
It is reproduced here, inaccurate spelling and all.

County.record

October, 1979

~I

Help Numbers

..~=

.255-4393
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alternatives for Women
Ambulance..
.
American Alhiests
. .... .2]6;27Q5
.255-2374
Ask Us. Inc
.
.269-6334
Birthright of Lexington .
Cancer Emergency Line .
.253-2822
.233-6333
Cancer Hopeline .
.269-6922
Catholic Social Service
Child Abuse Hotline ..
.252-1456
266-0101.
Christian Counseling.
. ... 252-7426
Citizens' Advocate ..
.252-2410
Civil Defense
Community Action (CALF). ... 254-9354

Page 7

'PRAYER Gets,The Boot

At a time when the United States legislatures, both federally
and on a state level, are attempting to restore prayer into the
public schools, the more sophisticated people of Canada see
that such an anachronism is out of place in the nuclear age.
The Toronto Board of Education, on August 23rd, unanimously decided to ask the Ministry of Education to replace
the Lord's Prayer with a minute of silent meditation in deference to the many different religions - or no religions - in the
Toronto public school population.
The board also wants to drop the provincially required religious education classes now taught twice a week (two thirtyminute periods) in the city elementary schools.
Unlike the United States, no Ontario student can be forced
to study religion or even recite the Lord's Prayer. The province
allows school boards to drop religious classes and establish
"suitable prayers" - including silent meditation, now.
"The society in which our students live is a mutlicultural
one," a board committee report said. "The board itself has expressed its concerns that the identities of the various cultural
groups which constitute the whole community should be preserved."
-----

NEWS

Maintaining the sectarian religious exercises "would seemt

be a dlvisive rather than 'a,unifying.act," in Toronto, but reeognizing that religion is still "an integral part of the life of the
people of this province," the report read,
, The report also said that since not all teachers in the public school 'system are Christians, they are unable "in good conscience to lead their classes in the repeating of the Lord's
Prayer,"
It also asked the board's director of education to draw up a
list of "suitable readings" for use in both elementary and
secondary schools.
, The move is supported by the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto. Unlike the Unitarian churches of the United
States, which are afraid to take any, position of principle,
that church, sent a letter to the board last April saying that
provincial requirements of religious education classes "are an
inappropriate infringement on freedom of religion, a violation
of the principles of the Canadian Bill of Rights and violation
of international agreements ... such as the Helsinki Agreement."
The church also supported the exclusion of the Lord's
Prayer because "no words exist which can serve as a prayer
suitable to all."
..J
The Unitarian churches of the United States could well
take a lesson in courage from their Toronto counterpart. It is
doubted that the politicians of the United States can take a
lesson from anything. However, it is good to know that reason
rears its lovely head elsewhere.

Italian Politics
"Normally the devout kiss my ring, but for you Seignor Morelli,
I maka the exception."

Page 8,

October, 1979

~/

American Atheist

trhose Outra,eousSuperstitions
Elaine

Stansfield

Halloween couldn't be a more appropriate

time for us toso to speak-count
our blessings and boast of our freedom
from .superstitious
ideas. Or are we giving ourselves delusions
of grandeur?
It just may be that in that tiny area between
ghosts and numerology,
many a staunch Atheist has a falling
down without
even knowing
it. Thinking
with a certain
amount of superiority
about this, I suddenly discovered to my'
astonishment
that I am not so pure either. I then began to take
Her boyfriend Jerry laughed. "She sure is doing something
an informal poll of my family and some close friends whose in- , right," he said. "But I thought it was because she has ESP." ,
tellect I admire. Take heart, dear reader and fellow Atheist, if
He whirled at a derisive sound from the other side of the
you recognize yourself in my brief sketches, for you are in the
room. "No, she really has. It's more than intuition,
she hasa
company of many a bright person who harbors a secret flaw
gift, she often knows what I'm thinking almost before I know
which comes from the ages when man had no calendar, no
myself. But more than that, she thinks of somebody and they
medical knowledge to hint to him why the skies sometimes
call. She' 'sees' an accident and it happens. She expects a letter
thundered
wrath or his body doublecrossed .hirn or the fates
and it comes. Sometimes this can get very creepy. Listen, it's
abused him.
true, some people .have this ability more than others."
Believing as he did that the spirits inhabited all things mys- .
There were many heads nodding in the room. This is obviterious to him, naturally the spirits abounded.
However-the
ously a generally held belief. Jenny went a step further. "Well,
last time I knocked wood was yesterday.
Men used to touch
she has good karma," she said. "I know a guy who has bad
the tree to placate the spirit inside when he 'tempted' fate.
karma. He lies, cheats, steals. He treats his girlfriends like dirt.
But what had I done? I, too, had tempted fate by saying
He doublecrosses
his friends-and
he has fewer every year, exthat I was riding high, because things were going so well for
cept that he gets more when he turns on the charm. But, he is
me. "Oh, I am invincible today," I exulted to my friends, "noaccident prone. I swear the fates pay him back every chance
thing. can go wrong." And. then, in a moment of contrition
they can. He broke an arm.and a leg the last time he went skithat I had spoken so rashly, and not wanting to press Lady
ing, and before that he was in a terrible car accident and got a
Luck, I quickly looked for the nearest piece of wood t~ tap.
concussion. "
Nor had the look on my friends faces escaped me-just a touch
"I'm 'just a sun-worshipper,"
said Don, "but I did have a
of anxiety at my words, followed by (or did I imagine it?) ever
dream one night when my dead mother told me where to find
so slightly relieved laughter when I knocked wood, as one of
a large check I had lost." He was a bit embarrassed
about it
them said, "Just so long as you're not at the end of a 'Good
and changed the subject with a question.
"Did anybody here
Things Come in Threes' cycle!"
ever have an out-of-body travel experience?"
Nobody had, but
Later, the general conversation
at the party turned to ESP
three people said they knew someone who claimed they had.
and astrology. It is a subject .that never fails to intrigue at parBut it was Ann who hit a nerve with me. Sitting in the
ties. Sure, it's a party thing to ask "What sign are you?" and
corner silent and thoughtful,
she finally spoke up. "I have a
expect the person to understand
the question, for most of us
kind of compulsive fellow-feeling for all the animals," she said.
have read Linda Goodman's
Sun Signs. It pains me to admit
"It's not just that I love them all, it's that I suffer with them.
that reading her chapter on Aries left very little that she didn't
Every time man, in the name of progress, takes away a wildlife
know about me, but also that she had my Virgo son and my
habitat
to build some dumb shopping
center, or drains a
Leo sister down pat. Now you can take all those silly little
swamp or wetlands which is a bird refuge to build another
astrological daily newspaper columns which suggest such nonmarina, or does some needlessly cruel scientific experiment
on
sense as "don't do any business today" or "visit a loved one
animals, or makes a species extinct in the name of sport, I
this evening" and put them all in the wastebasket.
"But," as
nearly die, too. Zoos are no place to preserve wildlife, but it's
one of my friends put it, "some of those character sketches are
coming to that. And when people don't care for their pets, or
amazing."
let them propagate and then take the babies to the pound to
"Would you choose a man by that?" I asked her.
be gassed, I feel this terrible hate. Sometimes
I .think that the
I could see her begin to blush, for I had touched a nerve.
answEtr to my feelings is obvious: surely I was 'a tortured ani"No, I'd do something worse," she confessed. "I'd read up on
mal in a past life?"
the man I was going with and treat him the way Linda says I
The room fell quiet for a moment, as if in respect to Ann's
should. Not because I believe in horoscopes
or the idea that
deep feelings, perhaps to the point of believing that she had
planets can possibly guide our unimportant
lives, but because
indeed been treated meanly in another life.
somehow, people born at the same time of year tend to have
Finally Jerry broke the silence. "Did anybody read Bridey
the same characteristics."
[continued on page 20]
<

Austin, Texas

October,

1979

Page 9

On Abortion
Amedeo Amendola, Ph.D.
In view of contemporary controversies on abortion arid the different
opinions which Atheists have expressed in The American Atheist,
I would like to present an essay on
the subject.
As in the case of other historical
issues, there are three fundamental
perspectives whereby a resolution to
the ~ssue of abortion may be sought:
the theocratic, which operates according to presumed divine dispositions or laws; the aristocratic, which
operates according to the dispositions
or laws imposed by those who make
themselves lords over others; and the
humanistic, which is rational and autocratic.
[A] An example of the theocratic
perspective is offered by Catholicism,
which proclaims that the voluntary
.destruction of an innocent person is
wrong, a person being defined from
the moment a soul is created by god.
(Born and unborn innocents may die
"by accident" in a war, but this has
never been deemed a sufficient reason
for an official condemnation of war
itself.) However, since there is no
scriptural or other information as to
when god creates a soul, the theologians have had to resort to non-religious grounds to determine whether
a person exists at the moment of conception, three months later, or at
birth. Nevertheless, religionists stamp
their opinions with the seal of divine
authority.
A controversy specifically between
such religionists and Atheists cannot
exist, since they are both on non-religious grounds. Moreover, since all gods
are made in the image of man, any
specifically oracular or scriptural position on abortion will merely reflect
the tribal conditions in which the religion was born or adopted. Thus, for
the Jews, god bade men to grow and
multiply, since, in the face of the powerful Sumerian or Egyptian nations,
the Jews could only hope for safety
and power in numbers. (The god of
Israel spoke to Israel, not to the
world.)
Aristocratic Disparity
[B] Aristocrats, who are not merely the armed extension of theocrats,
operate according to the aristocratic

Page 10

principle of superiors and inferiors

(that is, lords and serfs, kings and subjects, etc.), wherefore a universality
and dignity of the human person is
not recognized to begin with. Their
resolutions about abortion will be and be changed - according to what
appears expedient; that is, beneficial
to the superiors alone.
In a democracy, which operates on
the basis of expediency (as capitalistic
owners and trade-unionists, as well,
operate), even the literal majorityrule by an honest referendum would
not differ in principle from the rule
of a monarch.
The aristocratic disparity of superiors and inferiors, and the ethics of
expediency are also manifest in a
well-known argument: "An embryo
is part of a female organism (the superior or owner). So, when physical,
psychological, or social detriments
might ensue, she (and only she) has
the right of determining what to do
with the embryo." This argument is
as cogent as capitalism in the age of
the capitalists, and monarchy in an age
of monarchs. The argument becomes
practically unassailable when this addition is made, "especially if the embryonic growth was caused against
her will (as in the case of rape)."
Such an argument, however, could
not have been conceived until some
equality of men and women was asserted. In an age of aristocratic disparity between men and women, a
husband would own a wife, fertilize
her, provide nutrition for her and
the embryo - whence it logically
followed that he and only he had the
right of determining what to do with
the embryo as well as the born child.
A rapist would be considered a sort
of imperfect husband, but this imperfection on his part did not confer
masculine rights on the female victim.
Civil Equality
In any aristocratic
framework,
right always belongs to .the superior,
who turns out to be the one who
can implement his will or desires by
force; the idea of some sort of natural
or human right prior to the acquisition
of a civil (enforceable) right can only
be the aspiration of an inferior.
[C] Humanism, in the historio-

October, 1979

logical sense described by Giambattista Vico, recognizes neither gods nor

princes, even though Vico himself
made the greatest effort to recognize
the "real" god. Humanism recognizes
only humanity, which historically has
been interpreted in at least two ways:
a "common nature" (that is, the similar, essential, and defining characteristics of humans which were sought by
Aristotle), and a "civil equality" (that
is, a complex of equal rights and duties
regardless of individual variations and
customs).
While in all societies there are peers,
such as dukes or barons or serfs, and
nations have peers, such as kings or
presidents, "civil equality" is a specific
historic notion which refers to the
supersession of theocratic and aristocratic practices within the city of
ancient Rome, and between Rome and
the cities or countries which had
fallen under her dominion. The making of this civil equality (the conferring of Roman citizenship) can be
called civilization, which, then, is first
and foremost the creation of a civil
universality. (The Roman jus gentium
is the starting point of the modem
philosophy of international law initiated by Gentili and continued by
Grotius and others.)
Pursuit Of Theoc~acy
To use other terms, the Aristotelian
"common nature," which in the footsteps of Plato was considered immutable until the 19th century ideas of evolution, can be called a "bio-constitutional" universality. Through the process of generation, men are born with
a common nature, or, more precisely,
its presence is the reason why certain
individual substances are said to be
human. The Roman civility or citizenship can be called "juristic" universality, which is man-made and may exist
in part, fully, or not at all. For example, the Romans did not establish
male-female equality in civil matters
and preserved the institution of masters and slaves; we have not established world-wide citizenship, and may
prefer the present anarchy of nations
to the Communist attempts to overcome it.
Incidentally,
during the critical
decades of Palestine before the de-

'.American Atheist

struction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., the

Super-Jew ("Jew of Jews") Saul of
Tarsus, alias St. Paul, a nominal Roman citizen, had the bright, imitative
idea toward re-establishing the Jewish
theocracy: to temporarily recruit nonJews (for the multiplication enjoined
by god would be a slow process),
which meant extending the Jewish religion to gentiles. But Paul's feverish
mission within the Roman commonwealth came too late; the sought after theocratic state was suppressed for
nearly two thousand years.
On the other hand, gentilistic Judaism (that is, Christianity) followed
more and more the Roman pattern of
civilization, and was appropriately
called Catholic (which means universal): the god adopted by the tribes of
Israel, namely Yahweh, the son of EI,
became the one and only god and
assumed all the philosophical attributes of Being, while his people coincided with humankind itself. (Inspired
by Catholicism, Dante the poet began
to conceive of a civil commonwealth
which would include all humans.)
The Christian rituals naturally reflected the Greek, Roman, and other
gentilistic religious backgrounds. The
citizens, the genuine citizens, of the
New Jerusalem (the church) enjoyed
only one, but all-sufficient equality:
an eternal reward after the individual's
death. (To be sure, this idea was
postulated
after the apostolically
prophesied end of the world did not
come, and, therefore, Paul's belief in
the resurrection of the bodies had to
be postponed till the remote end of
time.) So, the Christians became in
the world what the Jews became in
foreign nations:
wayfaring aliens.
Cultural Humanity
In Italy, Christian wayfaring can be
conveniently
placed between 313,
when Constantine, a year after the
fateful victory over Maxentius at the
gates of pagan Rome, gave the Christians political freedom, and 1313,
when a Holy "Roman"
Emperor
stepped in Italy for the last time, and
only a few years after the pope emigrated (though temporarily)
from
Italy.
More positively, the 14th century
marks the beginning of a new Humanism: literary, artistic, and philosophical. Typically, it proclaims the dignity
of man on the basis of the admirable
works of man in the course of time.
The humanity in question (that is, the
human universality it pivots on) is
neither Aristotle's generic, or common

nature, nor a civil equality (even

though both may be accepted by a
humanist); it can be called "cultural."
The point of the three universalities
(bio-constitutional, civil, and cultural)
we have been talking about is that
there are three corresponding concepts of person:
[1] A person is an individual or
organism or substance endowed with
the potentials for human activities;
that is, reasoning, deliberating, willing, etc. (Let us notice that in Rome
the farmer and the legislator were
outstanding;
in Renaissance Italy,
the artisans and the artists were; in
classical Greece, verbal technology dramatic, political, philosophical was outstanding. Aristotle would write
works on logic and politics, but not
on ship-building or music-composition.
What is specifically human either in
act or in potency does not include
handiworks. No wonder that Aristotle
defends the aristocratic distinction of
superior and inferior men; that is,
natural masters and natural slaves.)
It is true that we do not know what
potentials exist until they are actualized, but, on the basis of everyday
experience, we know that humans beget humans (at least most of the
time - which is not an insignificant
fact), and we know from biology that
all the ingredients for future human
development are constituted at the
moment of conception.
Hence, if
voluntary dl,lstruction of an innocent
person is wrong, abortion is wrong from the moment of conception. To
be sure, the issue here is not particularly abortion; the destruction byanybody of a fertilized ovum in a testtube would be equally wrong. But
this wrongness (as a wrongdoing)
strictly implies that someone has
the duty of preserving a person, as
by providing nutrients (whether in
the uterus or the test-tube) and
other conditions for the welfare of
the person.
Irrationality Or Hypocrisy
Aside from the difficulties pertaining to the issue of such a duty in
general, we can say at least that, in
a society, a person who has not done
anything to bring about the existence
of a person is not obliged to take
measures to preserve the existence of
that person. Whether we talk about an
embryonic person or an actual person,
it may be a worthy thing for me to
help a person be, and my compassion
may be so great that I may choose to
sacrifice anything to save that person,

Austin, Texas

but no other person should oblige and

force me to provide that help. In
other words, if I do not owe a person
anything, I will not recognize any Jaw
(an enforceable rule made by some
person or persons) which imposes a
fictitious duty on me.
Certainly, the mere fact that a person has been formed (conceived - according to our discussion) does not
constitute either a particular or a.
collective obligation to it for contemporary
governments, since this
safeguarding duty is de facto not recognized by any government which
employs explosive or more unrestricted means of warfare. That a person
as such is inviolable is not recognized
by any government which employs
lethal means either in warfare or in
its penal system. Thus, if someone
granted that any person has an unconditional duty to preserve the existence of any other person, he would
have to strive to abolish not only abortion, but also all present-day governments. Only by irrationality or hypocrisy could one want to use such
governments to make laws to forbid
abortion.
[2] A person is a citizen; that is,
a member of a society on a par with
any other member, so that the possession of any right implies a duty toward others. Since citizens are made
rather than existing by nature, there
is a perennial issue as to who should
be a citizen in a state. A basis has been
sought in the universal (common) nature of men. For the Stoics, every
man should have equal rights and duties on account of the equal nature.
But since actual governments more
often than not did not operate on that
basis, an inevitable distinction was
made between Natural Law (that is,
the Stoic ideal, an echo of which is
the com temporary "Human Rights")
and Positive Law, the laws actually
established by this or that state.
Within this framework, the issue of
abortion does not differ from any
other issue about rights and duties:
can a potential person have rights
when only an actual person can perform duties? Can there be the duty
to defend the life of a minor, when
a minor is exactly one who is not old
enough to defend others? (Of course,
a parent may choose to defend the life
of his infant son, but can anybody be
obliged by others to do the same?)
The extension of rights, dutiless rights,
to minors and to the unborn is arbitrary, though possibly desirable, as is
subsidy to the involuntarily unemployed.

Page 11

October, 1979

._------'-'---

Natural

Law

Arbitrary duties may be desirable

o '-{he grounds such as the preclusion
of s(y~_evils
(theft, murder, etc.).
But, on .this- basis, given detrimental
-ef(~ets of "~opulation,
abortion
may be a wor.tb:wh!!e,'undertaking and
may become a dut . At any rate,
anti-abortionists
who appeal to the
Natural Law in any of its historical
variations should logically promulgate
the collective duty of mankind to do
everything possible to preserve the life
of the unborn and of those who cannot provide for themselves.
The idea of a common nature lies
at the basis of Natural Law, but, aside
from the issue as to how common is
the nature of those whom we call human, there is nothing in this common
nature which implies rights and duties.
For example, there is nothing in any
individual whereby he could be called
a proprietor (one entitled or having a
right) - which is the reason why
some people have judged property and
other things fictitious. Indeed, neither
the will of a god nor the will of a
prince nor the mere will of any man
creates proprietorship.
Neither will
nor knowledge nor weapons.
But a farm, a house, and a pair of
shoes are offsprings of man and the
earth. To the extent that man is a
maker, he is a proprietor and, socially
speaking, has the right to the artifact.
Thus, in Roman law, proprietorship
by "specification" is the most valid
concept. (Probing into the past, Vico
re-discovered the relationship between
authorship,
proprietorship,
and authority.) Civil rights and duties can be
meaningfully created only after there
is an actualized procreativity to serve"
as a foundation.
Men who roamed the earth used
the natural fruits they found, but it
would make no sense and there is
no reason to say that they had a right
to the fruits or to the life which they
preserved thereby. The civil person
emerged to the extent that (associated) procreative men emerged. Rights
are founded on certain actualities, not
abstract potentialities. (The foundation of the Stoic ethics on the "Logos" or cosmic reason, in which we
share, has the consequence, as in the
case of any theology, that either
wrongdoing cannot exist or it exists
inevitably according to the very nature
of the universe.)
Cultural

Universality

In the United States, the treating

Page 12

of embryonic
persons as citizens
follows the general pattern of inherent
human rights which Jefferson affirmed
thus: "We hold these truths to be self
evident: that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their
creator with inherent and inalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ..... "
The revisers of the text eliminated "inherent," otherwise there could be no
forfeiting of life, liberty, or property.
The idea that rights exist insofar as
men create them for themselves is
naturally blasphemy, and to Puritans
and other religion-infected persons,
it would have appeared more nefarious
than the idea that rights, rather than
coming from a god, exist for commoners insofar as they are granted by
lords.
[3] Cultural universality - according to which "person" is also defined - includes the fine and useful
achievements which are common to
all men. (They are historical actualizations in contradistinction to generic
potentialities.) But what is culturally
similar in many does preclude good
differences and disparities. The disparity between parent and offspring,
teacher and pupil, etc., within the
humanistic goal of excellence (which
is exactly what confers dignity and
worth), is the very opposite of aristocratic disparity. Striving toward that
goal implies that in one way or other,
at some time or other, a person is a
(cultural) carer, a provider, an educator, one who raises others and himself.
We strive toward a better and better,
greater and greater, humankind; the
actual humankind of works (deeds
and products).
The striving in question is concrete
love. It is a love of humanity which
brings joy as well as grief. Grief, when
despite all fine, human works, there
is birth of deformed or retarded
people; mutilation or destruction 'of
worthwhile people carried out by
criminals, by unjust laws or private
decisions, by war, or by the blind
forces of nature; and either voluntary or involuntary - termination of
an embryonic human life which might
have developed into a worthwhile
human being. It is a great pity that
such things should take place.
<

the striving toward excellence.J Is

abortion, then, wrong? Should an embryonic human life have the chance
of attaining a worthwhile human
existence?
Anyone who chooses to assist the
actualization
of human potentials
which make for a worthwhile human
existence, for an excellent world of
humans, is certainly praiseworthy,
but no person, no matter how good
his disposition may be, has the right
of forcing another person to perform
this or that worthwhile action. Love
may be encouraged, but it cannot be
enforced; hence, it cannot be decreed.
On the other hand, any person who is
being hindered to successfully' strive
for excellence (for anything which
makes for a fine human world) should
have, or should strive to have, the
civil right (the freedom) to strive for
excellence. Having this freedom implies eliminating the presumptuous
superiority (the crime) of the hinderer,
by whatever means necessary.
A parent who loves his offspring
(at any stage of development) or anyone who has the same love for a humail being in view of what the 'latter
can become, naturally wishes to destroy anyone who attempts to destroy
that offspring. (Cicero was the first
philosopher to recognize the power
and value of love, which is the beginning and the background of his
treatise on duties.) But dealing with
bare possibilities is little more than
wishful thinking.
In the world of actualities, where
alone dignity is attained-and found, an
unborn human life (biologically human) has near-zero dignity. (We say
"near-zero" rather than simply "zero,"
not because of some few or little achievements on the part of an embryo,
but on account of the fact that cultural achievements are neither un precedented .happenings nor mere automatic human growths; they presuppose incubations of experiences which
may be presumed to start at the moment of conception.) If we were to
use a numerical scale for a highly approximate comparison, we might say
that the worth of a human life from
conception to birth runs from zero to
one-millionth, while from age one to
death, it may run from one to one
million.

The Civil RiUht For Excellence

Abortion

The importance of potentiality is

recognized by a humanist, since it
is always part of us in one degree or
another, and is presupposed by the
postulated 'goal (our chosen goal):

October, 1979

Not Wrong

A human embryo is practically

insignificant, hardly a person, but it
is not reducible to a rock, a wooden
crate, or a dog; it cannot be presumed
[continued on page 40 1

American Atheist

A MATTER OF CHOICE
The mountain sides don't interest me
Nor fields of aspen green
Th'river banks can go to hell
I love a barroom scene
I care not for some flower rare
Or geologic scar
I'd rather see th' topless dame
Who's in th'Sandfire Bar
FALSE CLAIMS

Some would condemn a dirty joke

I find a war obscene
And congressmen who rip us off
Not Playboy Magazine

All religions claim to "bind together"

The "children of the lord."
Regardless of their color
Or difference in their word.

So take your sermons somewhere else

Religion, it's been told to me

Stands for what's good, it seems,
But when caught in hypocrisy
Claims "the end justifies the means."

Christ drank and so do I

I'll have a blast for it's my last
Tomorrow I must die...
John B. Denson

Religion claims to save your "soul"

And cleanse it of all "sin."
If only you will "pay the toll,"
And change from what you've been.
Its
Its
Its
Its

FLOWERS AT A FUNERAL
Reticence flows through the rite.
Flowers guard the casket
And remind one of a Brazilian sun,
Miniaturized, but more powerful
Than any person laughing from fear
Of fear.

The greatest thing in all the world

Is a free untrammelled mind;
But religion like a serpent coiled
Is, with venom, poised to blind.

(This memory lurks in a brain trained as a sieve.

Thinking is easily dispersed.)
A half-made man crouching in celibacy
Deigns to eulogize a life wasted
In a Western-Third World contradiction.
"He loved his wife, his work,
His poverty."

claims are purely hokum.

acts are that which tell.
strength is dollar income.
history reads like hell.

Karl E. Pauli

'

(The last unsaid,

But filling the home like smoke.)
The burial will be
Anti-climactic.

Barrv Cashman

Austin, Texas

October, 1979

Page. 13

Ta~estry

COllille Pe ro z i no

Going 10 The Barricades

Holy Subsidiaries

The Roman Catholic hierarchy, operating under the misnomer "pro-life"

and surely in violation of their tax exempt status, is tearing apart the democratic process in America through their
monomaniacal insistence that "our
way" be the "Only Way" or "we will
go to the barricades," vowed Bernard
Casserly, editor of the Catholic Bulletin, a Minnesota theist newspaper.
Their perverted efforts to deny poor
women equal access to abortion is
reprehensible, proving once again they
pander to the wealthy - who can finance their myopic crusades - while
enslaving the indigent, in this instance!
by forcing women to serve as brood
cows to increase their Catholic numbers.
They cannot use that truth to stir
up their parishioners so they blast
abortion from the pulpit as "murder,
most foul" and send forth their brainwashed to do battle against the "baby
killers," and a glance at the single-issuite's policy towards political contenders will clearly bespeak the height
of their fanaticism. Morton Downy,
Jr., one of their national leaders, said,
"If he's right on everything else and
wrong on the issue of abortion, he's
wiped out as far as we're concerned."
Ergo, they would have sent Hitler to
Congress because he was "right" in
his anti-abortion posture. An exaggerated analogy, but no more so than
the Catholic's categorical cry of "infanticide! "
The tunnel vision of the anti-abortion lobby continues to dilate and,
paradoxical as it is, they have now excommunicated many family planning
methods as a means of preventing the
abortions they so adamantly declare
to be "murder." Recently, one of their
"pro-decency" legislators in Minnesota
introduced a bill which would prohibit, sans parental notification, the'
counseling of a juvenile "girl" seeking
birth control information. Provincial
lobbying efforts such as these indicate
the single-issuites have some unhealthy
hang-ups where sexual freedom is concerned.

Page 14

Many Americans are convinced the

Roman Catholic Church is orchestrating, and provides the massive funding
for, the anti-abortion plot, and we can
no longer afford to pussyfoot around
those allegations. If we allow them
success in covertly compelling all
women to knuckle under to their
gospel regarding freedom of choice,
rest assured there will be further
religious invasions into our other
Constitutional rights, Pertinent questions must be publicly raised as to the
tax exempt status religious organizations enjoy in return for their promise not to lobby, which covenant is being disregarded at every governmental
level, and we must advertise their true
wealth - plus the sources of income of those religious institutions who
would wrest control of our reproductive systems from us.
It is well known that the Roman
Catholic Church is the wealthiest of
the denominations, so I won't belabor
that fact, but it's intriguing how their
subsidiaries - the fraternal organizations and religious orders - help to
generate vast amounts of that wealth
by capitalizing on their tax exempt
status. For example: the Knights of
Columbus owns the. land under Yankee Stadium, which it "leased-back"
to the Yankee organization in 1961
for 24 years at $180,000 per year, tax
free.
In 1978, there were about 414
Catholic women's orders and 125 orders for men in America. To mention
only a few, the Jesuits are one of the
largest stockholders in National and
Republic Steel Companies; they are
among the most important owners
of the four biggest aircraft manufacturers in America (Boeing, Lockheed, Douglas, and Curtis-Wright),
and own controlling interest in Phillip's Oil Company and Creole Petroleum.
.
Holy Speculation

The Society of Jesus is one of the

richest orders; with an unreported in-

October, 1979

come estimated at $250 million. They

operate 28 universities, such as Fordham, Marquette, and St. Louis University, vast institutions
which have
drawn enormous subsidies in U.S. tax
dollars.
On a smaller scale, there is St.
John's Bread,a product of the monks
of St. John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota, which is actually made by
commercial bakeries under a franchise
from the monks, who pay no taxes on
their profits. Other orders are in widely unrelated businesses such as plastics,
gravel quarries, commercial parking
lots, foundries, window manufacturing, sawmills, dairy and beef businesses, publishing houses - 94 of them
for Catholic books and pamphlets in
the United States alone - garbage
dumps, etc.
The holding of tax-exempt real
estate for speculative purposes is a
common church practice. The Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut bought 121.5 acres of unused land
in New Britain, Connecticut for $23,
500. To protect itself from high taxes,
the church "put a body" on it and
listed the property as a cemetery. Over
the years, the church evaded about
$200,000 in taxes. In 1966. they
removed the body and sold the acreage
for $607,500. No capital gains tax, of
course, was paid. The Chicago Archdiocese owns and operates 24 tax-exempt cemeteries, from which it derives a substantial tax free income.
(The Gospel Truth, Vol. L-106)
There are reams of facts and figures
documenting the colossal wealth controlled by organized religious groups,
and they are mind-boggling. Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, former President
of the National Council of Churches,
said it all when he declared, "In view
of their favored tax position, with
reasonable good management, America's churches ought to be able to control the whole of the nation's economy within the predictable future." To
insure that prediction, the churches
will have to carefully protect their
status quo, and preventing freedom of
choice is not an illogical place to
begin.
[continued on page 21]

'.American Atheist

God Theories Mislead People.

Drew
The origin of God ideas is lost in
antiquity. At least one reason for
advocating a God idea was to explain
natural phenomena such as floods and
pestilence. Such God ideas affect
behavior, like causing people to offer
sacrifices. Rulers encouraged those
beliefs which reinforced their control.
Most surviving religions owe their
existence to government support
which continues out of habit.
ALTERNATIVES
Better explanations have been obtained by free thinking, experiment,
free discussion and free publication.
Better behavior has come about by
improved political systems, separated
from church influence, which base
.their laws on public discussion, experience,and the wishes of the governed.
SCRIPTURES
The main reason for writing religious scriptures is to induce desirable
behavior. One method is to picture a
God who created the world and therefore must be very powerful. He then is
made to write the law. After a few
generations the law is rigidly enforced.
New scriptures then have to be written
in an attempt to soften the unnecessary harshness of the old. The aim of
the scripture writer is to build faith
and control behavior. He is not primarily interested in recording history
except when he can present it to suit
his purposes. The authors of the Jesus
Christ myth included teachings directed at softening some of the laws of
Moses as recorded in Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers and Deuteronomy.
IS MAN EVIL?
The religionist is apt to view
people as being basically evil and
rather stupid. He feels it is necessary
to press religious observance on them
for proper behavior. However, if you
study people you know and understand, you will realize that man is a
social animal. He chooses behavior
which is acceptable to his fellows.
He is not intrinsically evil. He doesn't
need to be a church member or believe
in God to be a useful member of
society. He isn't stupid.
To obtain belief, the religionist
has to teach improbabilities as certainties and often make belief a condition

Austin, Texas

of church membership. The Christian

and Jewish scriptures depict God as
being extremely intolerant of nonbelievers and infidels. Rejecting people
because of their beliefs coupled with
a tendency to indoctrinate church
youth in separate classrooms causes
unresolvable misunderstandings between people of different religious upbringing.
The religious can't compromise
when the compromise requires abandoning religious doctrine. Religious
doctrine has prevented the solutions
to many political problems throughout the world. Some of these problems
have existed for centuries.
World better for religion? The religionist is apt to believe that if everyone followed his religion, the world
would be a better place. This theory
is not supported by history. When one
religion dominates, there is corruption
at the top level of authority, zero
social progress and persecution of dissenters. The religionist usually explains
this as being caused by men and not
by the doctrines. He forgets or doesn't
know that the doctrines and myths
were invented to improve men's behavior.
Nature of God belief The believers I have talked to in as much
depth as I can, think of God as a personal friend and a personal guardian.

October, 1979

I feel that this is an unhealthy belief.

The risk is that the belief is actually
believed by both heart and mind as advocated by most religionists. It is unhealthy because it is unrealistic.
Those who actually succeed in certainty of belief are, in my opinion, the
most likely to become frustrated. Prolonged frustration leads to anti-social
behavior such as irritability, nervous
breakdown, alcohol ana drug abuse,
suicide and crime. Fortunately, believers are more certain in their hearts
than in their minds. In my opinion,
skepticism is a healthy attitude, especially if it leads to research.
The path to disengagement from
traditional beliefs lies in a search for
knowledge by the mind. Over a period
of months or years, the mind can reprogram the emotional response of the
heart. No one should feel inferior because they have allowed themselves to
be misled by religion. Religious doctrines and rituals have survived precisely because of their ability to mislead people.
What replacement for religion?
None. God theories confuse people.
Disengagement from teaching God
theories as certainties would reduce
human confusion. Social clubs and
volunteer work don't have to be
church connected. Many religionists
fear' that religious doctrine will be
replaced by a political doctrine pur-

Page 15

sued with religious fervor. This has

generally occurred in those countries
that were previously dominated by
strong, authoritarian organized religions such as Russia, Poland, Cuba,
etc. In my opinion, all doctrines
should be openly discussed and subjected to objective testing. No one
value such as kindness, truth or freedom, should be rated above the
others. Circumstances often dictate
which value is most important such as
choosing between saying the truth or
being kind to a friend. In the discussion of philosophy, the truth must
have the greatest value or the discussion is useless. This puts the religionist at a disadvantage because he cannot
publicly admit that he approves of
tricking people into desired behavior.
The Clergy are the same as the
rest of us. They want to help their
fellow man. They have been led to believe that this is a good way to be
helpful. The decision is usually made
at a young age when experience of the
world is lacking. They are trained in a
seminary. The purpose of a seminary
is to produce clergy who will carry on
the mission of the sponsoring churches.
The seminary is charged with the
training, not with objective questioning of the myths and doctrines.
Promises of faith, obedience and service are obtained as a requirement for
ordination. Such commitments make
it hard for the clergy to abandon their
calling. When new clergymen begin
their ministry, they soon find themselves saying things in public which they
don't believe in private. In spite of
their vows, some leave while they can
still find a different job. Some stay
and make the best of it. The best they
can do is try to soften the harm done
by the official policies and doctrines
of the church. Some come to believe
that it is acceptable to trick people
and they become professional at it.

tract students and state support, they

can become a university where knowledge is preferred over ancestral beliefs. Universities cost money, so the
church usually loses control. The
church may lose interest in the seminarians as well if they become infected with zeal for research.

SCHOLARSHIP
Church leaders generally .have not
encouraged scholarship except for efforts to refute independent scholars.
Bible commentaries are church oriented and are intended to put the
best interpretation on the scriptures.
The faithful are usually more concerned with strengthening their faith
than with research into its historical
foundation. They don't read independent scholarship. Non-believers are not
interested and they don't read it
either. Libraries get rid of books that
are not read. The better encyclopedias
are quite good, provided the subject
is not written by a religionist.
RADIO, TV & NEWSPAPERS
The religionist must be constantly
on guard against public criticism of religious beliefs lest the faith of the
faithful be shaken. Hence, conservative church leaders are willing to use
boycotts of news and entertainment
media to restrict unfriendly comment.
They do it and it frightens advertisers,
newspaper editors, TV and radio commentators and movie makers. The absence of public criticism of God
theories lulls people into assuming that
they help people. Many people in the
media are misled by their own media.
HOSPITALS
The Jesus Christ myth promotes
faith healing over medicine and implies
that disease is due to sin. This myth
delayed medical research in Europe by
1000 years. Many modern hospitals
owe their origin to a religious sect because, in my opinion, the humanitarian instincts in man can overcome religious doctrine. Churches often have
money, organization, influence with
legislators and the need for a good
public image. Some have low paid
celibates available, which is a competitive advantage. Hospitals can
actually be a source of church income,
so they remain under church control.
UNIVERSITIES
Seminaries are needed to train the
clergy. If these choose to grow by
teaching non-religious courses to at-

Page 16

October, 1979

POVERTY
The cure for poverty is knowledge, self-help and family limitation.
Sources of knowledge are suppressed
by dominant churches because knowledge often undermines the church
teachings. Church scriptures teach dependence on God. They do not teach
self-help. The New Testament glorified the giving of all money to the
church. The Catholic Church is against
contraception. It extends this ban to
everyone by secular law where its political strength is strong enough. Charitable efforts to feed the hungry while
blocking long term solutions have led
to hunger on a gigantic scale.
Conservative or Liberal? Conservative churches grow, liberal churches
disintegrate.
The fundamental
churches are growing in numbers,
wealth and influence. Liberalism allows people to think for themselves.
When they do so, they find they don't
need the church themselves and they
see no reason why its doctrines should
be imposed on others. So they leave
the church. Current problems of
membership and income of the Catholic Church are partly due to the liberalizing moves of Pope John 23.

CREATION
Matter has probably always existed in some form or another. If so,
it makes it unnecessary to explain the
creation of matter. Attempts to describe God and explain his method of
creation bog down in contradictions.
Explaining one mystery with another
is hardly a contribution to knowledge.

American Atheist

Evolution of Life. Present knowledge of the origin of species is incomplete .. However, the Genesis descriptions of the origins of species are obviously myth intended to show the
power of God. The two stories contradict each other. They are presented
as fact with no reservations at all. The
stories indicate a lack of understanding
of the sky and the solar system so they
could hardly be inspired by an allknowing God.
Religious Words like God, sin, salvation, spiritual need, atonement, etc.,
have a vast range of meaning. A
speaker uses them to suit the purpose
he has in mind at the moment. It is
necessary for the listener to guess at
the meaning by the way the word is
used. This is an exhausting process and
makes communication quite difficult.
In my opinion, these are nonsense
words that cannot be precisely defined
as they do not represent a realistic way
of thinking. Theology is not real
knowledge.

bers to go into politics and provide

them with supporters. Such politicians
are apt to be helpful to their church.
Churches have income and voting
strength which permits them to lobby
effectively. It is hard to organize
lobbies around non-belief, because
non-believers feel little need to reinforce their non-belief by belonging to
an organization.
ACTION NEEDED
People should neglect their
church because church rituals reinforce the faith. If this' neglect causes
guilt feelings, then they should do
their own homework on religion and
rethink their own personal philosophy.
At least some will obtain sufficient
conviction and self-confidence to permanently abandon their religious beliefs.

Church Rituals have the effect of

helping people to be more comfortable with their own religious programming. This is upset by changes in
the ritual. Successful churches change
their rituals slowly and cautiously.
They stay with the old hymns and
melodies. The altar was originally used
for sacrificing. It has been retained
centuries after sacrificing was discontinued.
Reform in such areas as birth control, abortion, divorce, and voluntary
euthanasia has been impeded by religious doctrine. Believers are apt to
follow their church teachings and vote
against politicians who stand for
change.
POLITICIANS
The problems caused by religions
tend to be long term ones, such as how
should Jerusalem be governed?
Politicians have to have quick solutions. Advocating disengagement from
religious belief is a long term solution.
Some churches encourage mem-

50 copies of this article available

for $1.00. Order by Title from American Atheists, P.O. Box 2117, Austin,
TX 78768.

City
Council

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\lOUR GUEST MINISTER WilL OPEN THE MEETING

WITH A PRAYER~'
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Austin, Texas

October, 1979

Page 17

"Heads

I Win
- Tai 15 You Lose"

Conrad Goeringer
It happened to all of us when we
were kids, probably even Jimmy the
Greek: some older neighborhood pal
'would make a bet with you on the
flip of a quarter. "Heads I win, tails
you lose!" he would quickly say
as he tossed your two-bits skyward.
Naturally you lost. That other kid
would always win .....
Religion today is much like a tossed
coin where the rules of the game resemble the "Heads I win, tails you
lose!" scam. We Atheists, of course,
have a tendency to pick on the tails
of organized religion (more appropriately called "asses"). The tails are the
Bible-thumping, hellfire-and-brimstone
fundamentalists who make convenient
targets. The tails are "out of step"
with modern times; they preach the
evils of the flesh in a society more dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure, the
"wickedness of godless Communism"
in a liberal age, and bizarre theories of
creation, when most of us accept scientific evolution.
Tails make good targets since they
present the more grotesque and fanatical side of the religious coin. Faith
healers are inevitably tails, as are the
Sunday TV preachers berating us for
loose living, drinking, smoking, reading Playboy, or supporting abortion.
Politically' and socially, the tails are
reactionary. "Better dead than red"
or "Where would you be if your mother had had an abortion?" are Slogans
in the tails' lexicon. In the ranks of the
tails, one finds an assortment of religious ilk ranging from Billy James Hargis or some tent-evangelist to a fanatic
bombing an abortion clinic.
Being the more orthodox and reactionary wing of the religious behemoth in America, the tails do not get
along well with their more liberal
counterparts, or "heads." The heads
do not, unfortunately, get their fair
share of attention
from Atheists,
though they are more visible and better organized than the tails. The heads
are the respectable, liberal, "progressive" side of the religious coin; often
they are found mingling in movements
we Atheists may even support. Heads
sign petitions against war, oppose con-

Page 18

scription, support unions, agitate for

social programs, and even support abortion and gay rights.
Daniel Berrigan is a head; so is
William Sloan Coffin, who spends
more time in picket lines than in the
pulpit. Martin Luther King was a head,
and a good number of the "left-wing"
priests in Latin America are also in the
ranks of the heads.
Velvet Over Iron
The irony of all this, of course, is
that regardless of your personal social
and political beliefs - be you right,
left, conservative, Communist or a
Nazi - there is a religious outfit for
you. Hate gays? Anita Bryant and her
Christian bigots welcome you with
open arms. Of course, if you happen
to be gay, religion has a place for you,
too. "Gay ministries" like the Metropolitan Community Church are alive
and well, complete with slogans such
as "Jesus loves me and he knows I'm
gay." If you support a liberal brand of
politics, the National Council of
Churches provides religion with a progressive mask of respectability.
A
sizable number of churches today are
busy operating sex-therapy clinics, organizing community groups, and sponsoring rock 'n' roll bands on college
campuses.
Liberal clergy represent the velvet
glove on the iron fist, and a crucial
challenge for Atheists. We might begin exploring the pathology of this
so-called "liberation theology" - the
view that JC was a "revolutionary"
dedicated to improving life on earth by finding its common ground with
more fundamentalist religious movements.
All Christians of both the heads
and tails varieties share in common a
desire to insinuate religion into everyday social life. The differences between a William Coffin and Billy Hargis may, superficially, appear substantive, yet both men would inevitably
perceive the United States (or wish
to see it) as a "Christian nation."
Heads and tails agree; both hold that
religion in some form must play more

October, 1979

of a role in the country's socio-political system. The tails are busy implementing censorship ordinances, lobbying for the "Human Life Amendment"
and protecting blue laws, while their
heads counterparts fund liberal politicians, support welfare spending, and
lobby on behalf of illegal aliens.
Whether we as Atheists agree with
any of these positions is one thing; the
political clout of religious organizations in America, even when used on
behalf of "good" causes, is another.
A Common Perception
Neither head of this religious hydra
is apt to support, in principle, separation of government and church, let
alone taxation of religious bodies. The
"liberal" Council of Catholic Bishops,
for instance, recently announced its
opposition to de-regulation of the
radio industry, claiming that media
would become "unresponsive" to community needs. In fact, what the Bishops fear is the loss of vast chunks of
free air time now allocated under the
guise of "public service."
Heads and tails are active in causes
which will allow religion to find powerful allies, usually governments. Rarely do either conservatives or liberals
engage in activities which would weaken the power of the State. True to its
historical bent, the church seeks a
strong governmental ally. Whether the
issue is busing, pornography, or feeding the poor, the outcome - thanks to
religious agitationis more laws, regulations, and State power.
Similarly, no action taken by either
wing of the clergy is designed to weaken the grip of the religious establishment. In one Arizona town, for instance, local ministers and priests have
proposed a community obscenity review board, which churchmen will
inevitably sit on. And while hip-looking, "radical"
priests will march
and shout for more food stamps and
public relief, it will be the taxpayer
(not the church treasuries) who will
do the paying.
Both heads and tails share a common perception of human society;

American Atheist

both are firm in their conviction that

humanity is blemished by "original
sin" (or that human nature is corrupt),
and that the "good" must be imposed
by powerful institutions under the
tutelage of the "Lord's" representa.. tives. To the conservatives, the influence of Satan is omnipresent; the tinls
speak frequently of maintaining a
"Christian America," or lobbying for
specific restrictive legislation, and "electing good Christians" to public office. Liberal clergy are also active;
speaking as Christian leaders, the heads
e often found in liberal causes depending-on a powerful State apparatus - one which they hope someday to
control "for the good."
Liberals are notorious for a social
view in which we are a society of helpless victims to be aided by the potent
forces of government and church.
Heads will usually promote social programs designed to increase popular
dependency on either or both of these
institutions.

trol and abortion is easier to identify

as a blatant, self-serving gesture. All of
the talk of the "sanctity of human
life" is like so many crocodile tears
from so bloodthirsty an institution.
.Fewer condoms and abortions mean
more potential sheep In a bountiful
and lucrative parish flock.
Another example of the illusion of
"progressive" religion is found in Iran.
Religious fanatics there masqueraded
as "revolutionaries"
and "friends of
the people," joining in popular fronts
with everyone from Communists to
dissident students and workers in opposition to the Shah. The reality of
political power, however, is different
from the promises. The "progressive"
mask of the Ayatollah is off, and the
iron fist of reaction is exposed. Religion poses as a progressive social movement, complete with a banal "theology of liberation,"
until political
power is achieved. Then .....

"Religion Is Bad, BUT... _."

Bob Dylan told us long ago that we

don't need a weatherman to tell us
which way the wind is blowing - and
neither does the church.
When anti-Communism
was in
vogue, the church was there to lend
its voice to the holy crusade of the
cold war. When that cold war failed

Nearly. every Atheist sooner or

later encountersan old stand-by argument which is rampant among agnostics, humanists and other fence-straddlers. "Yes, religion certainly has bad
aspects, but .....
" We are then read
a chronicle of good deeds - feeding
the poor, organizing tenants against
slumlords, supporting
farmworkers,
providing counseling on college campuses, and organizing neighborhood
groups. Much of this "progressive"
aspect of liberal religion, however, is
self-serving.
The Catholic Church, for instance,
. is loud on the issue of illegal aliens
coming into the U.S., particularly
from Mexico. Catholic bishops are
vociferous in their opposition to the
"tortilla curtain." Suddenly, the historic ally of the propertied class in
Mexico and the southwestern U.S. is
now the new friend of the landless and
nationless. Or is it? The truth is less
noble than the illusion. Actually,
many of the illegals are the products
of the strict and pervasive Catholic
culture in Mexico, complete with
gaudy marches on behalf of the Virgin /'
Mary and its child-like father-image?
worship of "Papa," the pope. Catholic
parishes in parts of Los Angeles, which
just a few years ago were in trouble,
are now thriving with a new membership - illegal Mexican, Catholic aliens.
The Roman church knows no national
boundaries.
Religious opposition to birth con-

"They Don't Need A Weatherman"

7------m --

Austin, Texas

October, 1979

1/

[-------

miserably, when ostensibly Atheistic

socialists remained in power, when the
winds of political power shifted, so
went organized religion.
Religious liberals such as Eugene
Carson Black, the late president of
the World .Council of Churches, was
perhaps the most crafty and farsighted
of the heads. Blake declared that Communism was Christianity in action
(Lenin would have disagreed), and
urged close cooperation between Russia and the West. It was not long hefore the wave of "liberation theology"
spawned a school of "radical priests"
throughout South America and Africa.
And today, the respectable, well-fed
hierarchy of liberal Christendom openly supports guerilla movements in
places such as Angola and South
Africa.
.
We would be badly mistaken to
assume that suddenly the church has
transformed itself to begin the longoverdue task of bettering the human
condition. What is taking place when.
. Maryknoll priests lead guerilla bands,
or when Pope John Paul II hob-nobs
with Communist
bureaucrats
from
East Europe, or when churches invest
heavily in American corporations and
banks, is a sophisticated version of the
"Heads I win ..... " game. All bets are
covered, and the churches are assured
of a role regardless of who happens to

- ---

T----------~\
Page 19

be in power, or who happens to come

to power.
It was nearly half a century ago
when Joseph Stalin disbanded the
Atheist group in Russia, the League of
the Godless, so as to mobilize the disenchanted peasantry with the help of
the Russian Orthodox Church to maintain his grip on Soviet power. Dictators of all shades and varieties, be they
doctrinaire Communists, Fascists, conservatives or liberals all share a comm~insight
- alliances with organized
religion can be helpful. Churches also
realize that alliances with nearly anyone, be they established rulers or ascending revolutionists, are important
ingredients in any formula for power.
The Faustian Bargain
American Atheists are confronted
with this heads-or-tails game. Religion
casts off one public position only to
adopt another more respectable or
popular one. Liberals and conservatives can easily reach into the murky
phraseology of the Bible to justify any
issue at hand. Gays can be condemned
or supported, depending on which
biblical ranting one quotes. Blacks
can either be hanged as the "bad seed"
of Cain, or treated as brothers in the
"Christian spirit." An ideology can be
supported or opposed; the "spirit of
capitalism" can be sanctioned if necessary, or socialism can be viewed as a

"Christian ideology in the spirit of

Jesus and the apostles." Every conceivable social doctrine, movement or
issue can be either condemned or
praised in lieu of different biblical
tongue-twisting.
So when we see priests leading demonstrations on behalf of the poor or
ministers taking political stands on
community issues, we Atheists should
remember three things. First, ANY
politicking by religion merely increases
the power and presence of organized
religion, insinuating church power into
more areas of social life. Second, since
the position of any religion is based on
myth, lie, and selective interpretation
from a jumble of contradictory rantings, one must ask how and why a
particular church or clergyman happened to choose a particular stance on
an issue. This lack ,of well-reasoned
principle makes church people both
unreliable and untrustworthy allies in
any social cause. Finally, churches
have a hidden motive for doing just
about anything - power. Churches
WOULD sell their souls to the devil,
if such were possible, in history's biggest Faustian bargain.
And what can we do about it? How
do we beat the "Heads I win, tails you
lose!" scam? AMERICAN ATHEISTS
seek to "promote the study of the arts
and sciences and of all problems affecting the maintenance, perpetuation
and enrichment of human (and other)

This article available in leaflet form - 50 for

1.00: Order b

title from American Atheists

life .....
" It becomes imperative to
see that religious organizations and
persons are kept out of progressive
social movements.
When a priest, rabbi, nun or minister, for instance, runs for public office as a religious person, the issue of
government/church separation must be
raised. When churches speak out on
public issues, whether it is the construction of a freeway or nuclear disarmament,
Atheists should quickly
point out the sorry track record of religion in the betterment of human life.
Regardless of one's political or social
philosophy,
we are all threatened
when religious outfits, with their tax-exempt status, become active in the
public arena for any reason. Just because a campus ministry suddenly
sponsors a rock concert to attract students, or takes a position we might
personally agree with, is no reason to
put our Atheism on the back burner.
Today there is a growing tendency,
particularly in humanist and freethinker circles, to "work with progressive
churches" on behalf of social change.
Faced with declining membership and
acceptance, churches badly want a
new image, a new mask, a new PR job,
a new lease on life. To "work with
progressive churches" is merely to give
religion, and everything it stands for,
another flip of the coin. ~
~
P.O. BoX 2117, Austin, TX, 78768

~c~~

[continued

from page 9)

Those Outrageous Superstitions

Boy, that was some crazy story and it all came out
under hypnosis, just the way a lot of UFO stories have come
out. The psychiatrists said-at least according to the bookthat she couldn't possibly have known some of the stuff about
Bridey that she told under hypnosis."
"Well, what about hypnotism and the warts?" asked my sister.
"Warts?" we asked, almost in unison.
"Haven't you read about that latest experiment? A couple,
of doctors have written about it; people who were afflicted
with lots of warts were told under hypnosis that they would
disappear from one side of the body, and they did! Leaving
the other side uncured."
"Do you believe that?"
"I certainly do. It's the power of the mind, isn't it?"
"I don't know," said Jerry. "It's creepy. I don't know how
much of it is superstition. It's a fine line, isn't it?"
Yes indeed. We're only beginning to come out of the woods
in trying to understand what goes on in our minds and how
much of it belongs to another age.
Murphy?

October, 1979

Page 20

--

'I:~

--

-_._'-

---------

-'

"w a r t s.1"
we asked ...

American Atheist

--'--'.--.--------------_-------.l-----l

Connie
[continued

Perozino

from page 14)

CfJouid f!JJeUi6e

~:;;';-"l1~~,::;.<.~!9t,,~y..wI\"';j~""'~'i~f"~~i?

Angeline

Holy Slavery
Their counterfeit rhetoric aside, the Roman Catholic
Church is determined to outlaw legalized abortion in America
at any cost, and given the unlimited tax free monies available
to that totalitarian goal, I fear they might succeed. If we are to
circumvent such an unjust conclusion, we must locate its
Ac hill
i th e fiman cia
. I empires
"
I es 'h ee,I w h'IC h WI'II b e f oun d m
it IS
building by virtue of its tax exempt status, and apply the fatal
arrow there.
Concerned Americans must begin organizing to bring pres-S
sure upon elected officials (those whose seats were not bought
and paid for with the tax free dollars of the religionists) to
stop the legalized rape of our economy, which is achieved
through religion's tax-exempt position. We can beat them at
their own game by not voting for any candidate who struts

.....

Bennett

.\

~
~
!:'t

"THESE TROUBLED TIMES"

-1,l~'

.~

1J1.~'...'

.~

I'

f,Jf
i:r:.:
""

As far back as you care to go

This weary phrase is found

~
'.
~

Which proves (by reason) that this state

Prophets seized its panic value- _

around waving his born-again Christianity as though it were a '~

.,-~
.
white badge of courage, when in truth it is a scarlet letter. -;.
Damn whatever else he stands for, just check out his religious
persuasion and vote accordingly.
;.~.'
Make no mistake about it, we are presently engaged in the ~

S:OadtaesymaeSno~ot_V:veo,i'ctsedsOUUrngd"n-g-

ultimate power struggle, with traditional institutions

historically discriminated against women and the
they will "go to the barricades" to keep us in that
place they have assigned to us, Our position must
clear: "We are fully prepared to meet you there!"

So bas,'cally conditions

;S

that have
poor, and
powerless
be equally

3t

:~;.~

I~

Used the same guile to expound.

I~.

stay

The same with faults and crimes

.
:~'

There really were no 'good old days'

They all were troubled

:~

:&

L---,

"J.':.

I.

times.

--.J

'!~:~DecelDber
~{;.,

Austin, Texas

World Atheist Meet Two will be held at The Atheist Center,

Patamata, Vijawada, Andre Pradish, India in December, 1980,
sponsored jointly by the American Atheist Center (Director Jon Murray) and the Atheist Center of India (Director - Lavanam) in the tradition of international cooperation begun by
Dr, Madal n O'Hair and Gora throuh United World Atheists,

October, 1979
'l

Page 21

t
S
B
O
of theism

"A very large part of the genius of

the race has been absorbed in the
search for traces of god and has
found none."

-Jo,"phM,C,b,

Joseph
.
McCabe
[Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes are from JosephMcCabe's 80 Years a Rebel and Twelve Years In a Monastery.}
In his paean, Joseph McCabe: Fighter for Freethougtit."
Isaac Goldberg wrote: "Had Haldeman-Julius done nothing
else than to make the writings of Joseph McC~be accessible to
the poorest reader, he would have earned his title as one of
the more important of the educators in this country." This
1936 statement stands unchallenged today. Rarely has Atheism had a more valiant fighter than Joseph McCabe; rarer still
one more universally educated.
The adjective in America is Jeffersonian. Like that more
famous freethinking skeptic, McCabe was an enemy of every
form of tyranny over the human mind, and he never would
have argued with Jefferson that the true secret of human happiness lay in possessing the rights to "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness." Also like Jefferson, McCabe had a hunger to know everything, and in his long life, he did his best to
satisfy that hunger. Jefferson awed his contemporaries with
the range of his learning; McCabe would have awed Jefferson.
In his autobiography, McCabe stated that the acquisition
of knowledge was the main pleasure in his life. It was not a
selfish acquisition to enable him to sneer down at the masses.
McCabe could never have taken pleasure from such a mean
goal. The pleasure of scholarship came from his uses of it.
Knowledge armed him formidably to become an "almost
gay fighter against powerful evil." The manner in which he
used his weapon was "to stimulate men to think and to
teach them such facts as, in my conviction, will help them in
their search for the way to a social order without wars, poverty, blunders, and cruelties that disgrace what we call our civilization."
Without, too, religion. The former Franciscan monk
claimed his creed was: "Consistency is the virtue of cowards."
Yet, once he quit the Roman church, he never wavered in his
opinion, backed up by hard, cold, damning facts, that religion
in general and the Roman church in particular were evils to
be, as Voltaire had declared, crushed. When he finally resolved that Agnosticism was intellectual hypocrisy, he never
wavered in his firm, militant commitment to Atheism despite
what that commitment cost him.
His real creed is expressed in the simple epitaph he asked
for in his autobiography at age 79: "He was a rebel to his last
day. "
In his life he wrote, in longhand, over 200 books ranging
from the slim Little Blue Books to the 450,000-word Rationalist Encyclopedia. He delivered so many lectures in 50 years
after leaving the clergy he could only estimate the number, at

Page 22

October, 1979

"some 3,000 or 4,000." Not a narrow specialist, only about a

quarter of this mindboggling labor was on ~eligion and .Atheism. Most of it was directed into fields of history and science,
He claimed to be only a camp follower of science - "populizer" the specialized midgets of science snidely put it - .and
was not a "modern" historian because he never specialized on
one aspect or one period of the past. Yet he could write with
satisfaction after 50 years of writing history and science that
for all his wide field and many eager critics, only "a paltry
number of errors have been detected" in his work, and could
boast with justice the distinction of being "the first 'Yriter on
the evolution of civilization to point out that the mam factor
of social progress is the friendly contact of different minds or
of bodies of men with different cultures."
McCabe was one of England's most illustrious citizens of
this century, a peer among men like Bertrand.Russeli
and
H. G. Wells, thanks probably to the horrible' Irish potato
famine of the 1840s. This catastrophe sent hundreds of thousands of desperate, starving Irish fleeing to America.' which
gave the Roman Catholic Church a. much nee?ed ~ncrease
in its share of the national population to begin With real
strength its long, long assault on American civil liberties and
the Bill of Rights. Some, though, went east to England. One
of those nonconforming immigrants was Thomas McCabe,
Joseph's grandfather.
Thomas McCabe settled his family in Macclesfield 40 miles
from Liverpool. This town "had a silk-weaving industry that
McCabe's father William Thomas, became a part of as soon
as he could learn to operate a handloom. In this town William
met Harriet Kirk and married her. Originally Protestant, whe~
Harriet married William, she also married his Roman Catholicism enthusiastically. This fact was crucial to the fate of the
son yet to be born.
On St. Martin's Day, November 11, 1867, Harriet gave
birth to a son she wanted to commit to the priesthood. The
superstition of that day was if a new born son was put under
the patronage of St. Joseph, he would grow up to be a priest.
'I'hus Harriet named her new son Joseph Martin, and considering McCabe means "son of the abbot," one could say she put
a triple-whammy on the infant.
.
Home life influenced him greatly. Grandfather McCabe had
left to his son William a tiny treasure in the form of books

American Atheist

Roots of Atheism

such as Emerson's Essays and a Cyclopedia of the Arts and

Sciences. Perhaps this exposure to knowledge and philosophy
accounts for the spirit of tolerance and independence that
both parents, but more so his father, had despite their devotion to Roman Catholicism. Certainly McCabe's lifelong hunger for knowledge owes its origin to that small library.
McCabe describes his father as "industrious (this perhaps
a little beyond the Irish standard), temperate, faithful, brimming to the lips with good humor and readiness to laugh. He
neither smoked nor swore - just two of his few stories contained one swear-word each - but liked his beer." He recalled
his father spanked him only about once a year, and McCabe
carried this example with him into parentage, only he never
spanked his children.
The character of McCabe's mother is seen in this incident
when McCabe was in school: "One winter's day the ice on a
nearby pond had tempted a score of us to stay, sliding, a half
hour after the school opened. The 19 marched automatically
to the punishment spot while I, just as automatically, went to
my seat. To my astonishment the master called me out and
caned me; and it was obviously more painful to him than to
me. My mother had seen me lagging and, Spartan as she was
in the cause of virtue and knowing that I was the master's
favorite as well as hers, she had gone to the school and bullied
the poor master until he promised to punish me."
Nevertheless, when McCabe broke her heart by leaving the
priesthood, and wounded her further by becoming a dedicated
Atheist foe of Roman Catholicism, she did not love him the
less and her home was still his home.
Being good Roman Catholics, William and Harriet bred
themselves into poverty. To increase the family income, the
McCabe's relocated to Manchester 20 miles away where
William got a position as an overseer in a small mill. Joseph
was two or three at this time.
McCabe never believed that "blood" had anything to do
with character. He was "disposed to recognize some lifelong
influence of the great northern city in the creation of the
order and industry of mind to which I owe such success as
I have had." Or perhaps his family's, and other familys', order
and industry came to symbolize in later years the spirit of
sprawling industrial cities like Manchester.
His father never earned more than $10 a week, yet this
was three dollars above the average income in those days in
their neighborhood. Such prosperity allowed them to have
at first a home in one of the best rows of the district; a fine
six-room place for which they paid two dollars a week in rent.
The move to the Manchester suburb of West Gorton was
also to have a Roman Catholic parochial school to send their
pack of children to, lest they be lost to the church. The MeCabes lived across from a Franciscan monastery. The young
Joseph's first impression of the Gothic structure and itsbrown-robed inmates was one of slightly sinister mystery that
repelled him to a degree.
But he learned from his elders, especially his mother, that
these celibate monks were "saints in the terrestrial phase." The
monks, who ran the parochial school, did nothing to disabuse
him of that myth. Before long the future champion of Atheism was serving "at their altars with white hot zeal." As he "
learned later, the Roman church relies on its parochial schools
to indoctrinate children with the desire to be priests and nuns
when they graduate.
Soon the McCabes, ever loyal to one of the most cherished
dogmas of the church, had bred themselves into poverty again.

Austin, Texas

One wonders why they did not begin to question why their
god of Catholic fertility never bothered to insure a rise of income to feed the new mouths lie "blessed" them with. The
family, now eight "in number, had to move into a four-room
house in one of the poorer West Gorton rows. One room they
used as a shop where they sold "a variety of things from beer
to bacon and potatoes."
At 12 McCabe became a productive member of the family.
He learned to cut bacon and cheese and butter. He learned to
deal with butchers and egg-sellers in the market. "The work
lodged in my memory impressions that are part of the fuel
of my rebellion."
West Gorton made a socialist of McCabe, and his memories
of that place kept him a believer in the socialist promise when
he became prosperous enough to be a bourgeois. This important aspect of Joseph McCabe's philosophical development
can only be understood by a detailed picture of the social
environment in which he grew up. It is a picture that McCabe
at 79, when he painted it in painful words, still found "ghastly." His description cannot be improved upon:
"For the majority life benumbed the mind; for a large number it was brutalizing, We McCabes were not counted poor,
but eight of us lived in a four-room house, and one room was
the shop. Fifty families lived in the remaining dirty brickboxes with slate roofs of the row or block. It was back to
back, separated by a narrow passage, with the row of larger
houses, and the privy of each was at the bottom of the small
flagged yard - an open muck-heap.
"There was, except in the monastery and the house of the
Protestant minister, not a bath or a water closet in a square
mile of congested houses. The stench in summer was appalling,
and funerals were as common as stealthy removals by night or
'moonlight flits.' Yet all around us was an acreage of real poverty, sinking in places to a level at which life was close to that
of the brute. I knew boys from these areas. They were thieves
at eight and rapers of girls at 14. I have known them crowd
round in excitement when a man coupled with a sow.
"Fighting and copulation were the outstanding pleasures of
life, the only pleasure for which they" paid nothing. At 12,
usually, the boy or girl entered a shop or factory, and there
was commonly, at the end of the first day, a ceremony of
initiation, for boy or girl, churchgoer or not, that I need not
describe. From that day their ears were drenched with obscene
talk.
"On Saturday they saw their elders flock to the squalid
public houses, and by evening the streets were enlivened with
group-fights. The men wore thick leather belts, and they
usually strung several heavy, brass buckles on them. In their
fights they wrapped the leather around their hands and used
the brass-weighted end. Many a time I saw some drunken,
grey-headed woman reel out of the fight with a bloody head.
"Our corner shop was a social observatory from which,
across a waste space or sea of mud after rain, we could not but
see the life of the poorer streets. The one or two police - to
tens <of thousands of these folk - rarely intervened, but I have
seen my father, in white apron and broad-brimmed, whitestraw hat, push his way into a group, though he had neither
the physique nor the temper of a fighter, and drag them apart.
"Before six in the morning the paid 'knocker-up' went
round the streets and beat on the windows of the bedrooms
with a bunch of wire at the "top of a long pole. In ten minutes
or so, for they slept in their day shirts (in which the almost

October, 1979

Page 23

universal bugs and lice were rarely disturbed) and did not wash
or shave or get even a cup of tea, they-roused the street with
the clatter of their clogs (heavy shoeswith iron-shod wooden
soles, which all wore)."
"The trickles of men and girls, their breakfasts and dinners
(bread and cheese or a little bacon or meat - there was no interval for tea) carried in knotted, large, red or other colored
and grimy handkerchiefs, blended in the La,ne, our chief street,
and a grim procession, looking, on the bleak winter mornings,
like a march of the damned, thundered its way to the mills,
a mile or two away, to make the fortunes of the great cottonspinners and merchants and to build up England's greatness.
"The older folk told them how they had once worked 14
to 15 hours a day. Now Parliament had, after a fierce fight, for
it was un-English to interfere with Free Enterprise, given them
a ten hour day. They reached home after those strenuous
hours in a fetid atmosphere, and no man then knew or cared
to know how many calories to eat, about six or seven in the
evening.
"What concern for our 'spiritual realities' would you expect? After paying for what food they could on Saturdays
and for indispensable clothes and shoes they drank what remained of the wage. On Monday morning the wife pawned
the Sunday clothes of the family, but there was nothing to
do with the money except buy more beer and food. Not one
adult in four could read, and the fourth had as a rule little
inclination.
"Few of them ever went five miles from their ant-hill. The
only shows were a tawdry circus that pitched its tent on our
waste ground once a year and a still more tawdry and entirely
vicious four-cent theater, 'Simpson's Slang,' that brightened
the district every few months with its naphtha lamps and lewd
jokes. The 'respectable,' like my father, took their children
(walking, for cents had to be counted) occasionally to the
city museum, three miles away, and once a year to the pantomime at the city the~ter or to the Zoological Garden. Drink,
fighting (as participants or spectators), and sex were the pleasures of life."
It is easy enough to comprehend why McCabe had no love
for capitalism. He came to see later that the churches conspired closely with the industrialists to defeat unionization and
keep the workers in the condition in which McCabe grew up.
McCabe took his "place in the industrial army" at 13. This
was after eight years of parochial school that imparted to him
only the ability to read and write and do arithmetic. That he
had any morals left was due entirely to his home life. Parochial
school was a pit of cruelty and crudity reflecting the neighborhood, and the heavy presence of religion did nothing to inhibit
it. Only the personal presence of a priest had any effect at all.
McCabe, though, was a bright lad and he did not begin his
working life in one of the hideous lower circles of a factory.
He got a job as an office boy - go-for would be the term used
today - at one dollar a week; easily he was in the first circle
or no lower than the second. Only the three youngest children of his family were not working, and his mother conceived
no more after the tenth member joined them. Freed from a
Catholic birthrate, the industry of the family began to lift it
out of poverty.
From errand-runner, McCabe rose quickly to clerk and the
future was bright. He worked in the merchant-house of the
millionaire John Rylands. This "prince" he saw every day and
began to have the stirrings of distinctly capitalist ambitions.
He saw himself rising to the position and income of Rylands.
This was not to be. His mother had at birth committed this
son to the priesthood, and her desires, though never fanatically
pressed upon him, -naturally were a constant pressure the boy
in the end could not resist because he loved his mother and

Page 24

wanted to please her. To this add the prestige the "saints"

enjoyed among the common people. Aside from being closer
to their god, their lot in life was one to envy, at least from the
outside. Keep in mind the conditions of West Gorton, and it
is easy to comprehend how marvelous the life of the monks
seemed; little gruelling work, plenty to eat, public respect
and security.
The Franciscans were also hot for McCabe. He was a good
boy, which must have been a rarity in West Gorton, and the
brightest student in the school. During the last couple years
of his education the monks hinted to him he ought to join
the order to see how agreeable he was to the idea. This was
standard operating procedure, for the parochial schools
were, and are, meant to provide warm bodies for the ranks
of priests and nuns.
All this did not bear fruit until McCabe's father, whose
book-corrupted mind made him bold enough to quarrel with
the Franciscans, moved the family to a part of Manchester
under the control of the Jesuits. It says a lot for the morality
of the church that the family had to leave in exile for the
crime of upsetting the shepherds of whom they were supposedly the sheep. At 14, though, McCabe could not understand
this.
The Jesuits tried to recruit him, but he could not find for
these strangers the affection he had for the Franciscans. He
was homesick for the old neighborhood where all his friends
and all he was familiar with were. How to get back? The
Franciscans of Gorton were offering the way! And how happy
his mother would be! No doubt he saw himself conducting
mass before an adoring congregation whose harsh life he
would no longer be a part. The monks "recruit their body by
persuading the boys that the career of a priest is one of such
prestige as they would never normally attain."

At age 16 McCabe began -the priestly phase of his life by

studying Latin in the preparatory college at the Gorton
monastery while still living at home. He demonstrated the
type of man he was to become. He found that the Latin offered was "a nerveless medieval Latin. Few priests can read
even Cicero. I worked so hard privately, at home, that by the
end of the year I had read all Cicero's speeches and most of
Vergil."
Such was Joseph McCabe's nature at 16, and such it remained to the end of his life. It saved him from the priesthood, and religion, but not before 12 years of "holiness"
passed.

October, 1979

[to be continued next month]

American Atheist


gnos tIClsm
and Atheism
Joseph McCabe
AGNOSTICISM
The
Agnostic is defined by the
highest authority on the English language, Murray's (Oxford) Dictionary
(in 40 large volumes), as:
One who holds that the existence
of anything beyond and behind
material phenomena is unknown
and (as far as can be judged) unknowable, and especially that a
First Cause and an unseen world
are subjects of which we know
nothing.
With this all the best dictionaries
(Webster, Funk and Wagnall, etc.) agree, and it accords with Professor
T. H. Huxley's account of how he
came to coin the word. Julian Huxley
unduly softens the position of his
famous grandfather in a recent pamphlet when he says of him:
Most religious people, he said, are
sure that they have a solution of
the problem of existence and know
that god exists and something of
what his nature is. Huxley was sure
that he did not know and affirmed
that there were certain questions
which it was impossible to answer.
The truth is that Huxley wanted
even more anxiously to dissociate himself from Atheists than from religious
folk, and for this novel position he
found a basis in the philosophy of
David Hume. It is true that Herbert
Spencer had already written a fat volume about The Unknowable (the ultimate reality) but Huxley did not particularly like Spencer.
Half a century earlier Hume had
said that the human mind can perceive
only the material phenomena (colors,
sounds, movements, etc.) in nature
and the mental phenomena (thoughts
and emotions) in itself. If there was
any reality - god, soul, or matter behind or below or beyond these
"phenomena" it was unknowable, because the mind could see things only
through the windows of the senses.
Hence, said Huxley, neither I nor the
theist nor the Atheist can know
whether there is a god or not, and it is
no use arguing about it.

Austin, Texas

Looking about for a label for his

position he recalled how the ancient
gnostics had professed to have a full
knowledge (in Greek gnosis) of god.
Very well, he said, I am an A-gnostic.
I have not and cannot have any knowledge of him or whether he exists or
not.
Such jibes as that Agnosticism is
"a philosophy of nescience" or that
Agnostics
are
"knownothingites"
ought to be restricted to the nursery
or the colored Sunday School. Just
as silly is the more recent pleasantry
that you want to know what a man believes, not what he does not believe.
Any boy of 13 knows that if you ask
him what he believes you are referring to religion and that if a man calls
himself an Atheist he is referring only
to the belief in god. Nobody ever had
the least misunderstanding about that.
Respectable

Currency

Yet in the sense in which Huxley

coined the word Agnosticism is obsolete. In 1869 the poet Tennyson suggested that the higher representatives
of all the 'isms in London; from the
cardinal-archbishop
to the skeptics,
should meet occasionally in a very
select debating society called the Metaphysical Club. Huxley had to decide
which 'ism he would represent and, as
Atheism was at that time identified
with rude men like Charles Bradlaugh,
and (like Bolshevism today) with rapers and wine-bibbers, he coined the
new word. It was accepted as respectable currency because even men of
science still talked about "phenomena" and realities that were "beyond"
or "beneath" the phenomena; as if nature were a sort of gigantic coco-nut
with its reality hidden behind or within an impenetrable shell.
It was the early age of appeasement, and this theory left philosophy
and religion free to discover reality by
means of intuition or revelation while
-science confined itself to mere phenomena. All this is nonsense to the
modem scientist; and to say the truth
it was more convenient than deep 70

October, 1979

years ago. As a matter of fact Huxley

spent as much time as anybody else
arguing about god.
Even in Hume's philosophy a man
could know not only what his senses
perceived but what his intelligence or
reason inferred from his senses; and
the existence of god is supposed to be
inferred from our perception of movement, order, or beauty in nature.
Hume, Spencer, and Huxley were
skeptics for the same reason as Bradlaugh. They had examined the arguments of the theist and rejected them
as invalid.
Many, if not most, folk who still
call themselves Agnostics do so because they wrongly believe that
Atheism is a denial of the existence
of god; and in any case it is a more
elegant label and has quite a cultural
air. The second principal leader of the
British Agnostics, my friend Sir Leslie
Stephen, genially admitted to me that
the wicked definition of an Agnostic
as "an Atheist in a silk hat" - which
is wrongly attributed to Schopenhauer, who died before 1869 - was not
much astray. In his Agnostic's Apology he says that, as a good deal of odium sticks to the word Atheist, it is
useful to have an alternative. I have
probably in my travels and mail been
in touch with more Agnostics than any
other man and apart from a few aged
devotees of Herbert Spencer, they
differ from Atheists of my acquaintance only in their headgear.
Both. have examined the so-called
evidence for the existence of god,
which Stephen used to call "weaving
faith out of moonshine," and rejected
it. They are both simply men who
have no belief in god and would resent the idea that they are incapable
of discussing that belief. It is another
trick of the clergy to talk about the
"reverent" or "open-minded" Agnostic and the "dogmatic" Atheist. The
truth is that they find the man who
calls himself an Atheist more aggressive and they want to discourage outspokenness - in folk who "differ"
from' them. It is, however, wise to
bear in mind that most Agnostics

Page 25

choose that word because they have a

wrong idea of the meaning of Atheism.

ATHEISM
The same authoritative dictionaries
which define the Agnostic as one who
holds that the mind cannot even speculate as to whether there is a god or
not define the Atheist as "one who denies or disbelieves the existence of
god." The compilers of these leading
dictionaries weigh each word in their
definitions very carefully and therefore they mean - and some of them
say - that there are two kinds of
Atheists: the one who denies and the
one who, without going through the
form of denial, just does not share
the belief in god. For instance -you
may share the belief of Christians
that there was an historical Jesus,
you may say simply that it is not
proved, or you may, like some writers,
deny that there ever was such a person.
The findings of the dictionary-compilers are based upon the writings of
recognized experts, as when the American expert Professor Flint says that
"every man is an Atheist who does not
believe in god," or the leading Unitarian Dr. J. Martineau defines Atheism as "the rejection as absurd" of a
belief in god. More particularly such
definitions are based, as is natural,
upon the meaning attached to the
word by the leading writers who profess Atheism. Almost without exception they do not take the trouble
to deny the existence of god but mean
only that they have examined the arguments, found them worthless, and
have no belief in any being whom (or
which) any large body of people call
god.
The Greek derivation of the word
(a-theos) does not help. This Greek
"a" is not always "merely privative"
as some say. Acosmism, for instance,
denies the existence of a material
world. In ancient Greece, in fact, the
word was used only for those who denied or were suspected of denying the
existence of the Greek deities, so that
some German scholar has been able to
prove that there were not many Atheists there. The luxury of denying the
existence of the Olympian family was
hardly worth suicide.
In short, according to the recognized authorities an Atheist is a man
who either says' that there is no god
or simply has not himself a belief in a
god; and since it is rare for an Atheist
to indulge in denial, Atheism is, ac-

Page 26

cording to these authorities,

lack of a belief in god.

just the

Falsehoods
Those who prefer the label Agnostic are apt to point out that, whatever
the big dictionaries say, in popular usage an Atheist means one who denies
and so they prefer to avoid the word.
I always envy the man who can treat
even the standard dictionaries in this
cavalier fashion but in. point of fact
popular usage is not consistent. If you
tell a man that you are an Atheist he
will, it is true, be very apt to say, "So
you deny the existence of god," yet
the same man will call you an Atheist
if you merely say that you have no belief. We do not usually fix the meaning
of our words on such loose authority
as this.
As a matter of fact it would be far
easier logically to prove the non-existence of god from the waste, cruelty,
evil, ugliness, etc., in nature and human history than to prove his existence from beauty and order, especially
as science now easily explains these. A
very distinguished American biologist,
Professor H. S. Jennings (The Universe
of Life, 1933) said, referring to this
subject, that the course of biological
evolution is "not the kind that would
be anticipated if life were following a
certain existing pattern, seeking a goal
already set, or being guided by an allknowing and all-powerful god." However, the way the mind normally
works is that we just examine the arguments of the believer, find them
worthless, and so do not share his belief. That is Atheism.
I enlarge upon this point because it
is so often discussed and not always
satisfactorily. There are two further
points to be noticed. I pointed out in
the section on Agnosticism how stupid it is 'to say that the Atheist's position is "merely negative," when he is
simply intimating that he does not
share one particular belief (but may
share a thousand others), and the
equally foolish, or in this case utterly
false idea that Atheists. are selfish and
not inspired to help the world along.
On the other hand the old fable
that the Atheist must necessarily
throw over the whole code of conduct and wallow in every sort of
sensual pleasure from caviar to hot
dogs or from champagne to chorines,
is too naive. For 50 years I have been
accustomed to the tremulous maid or
Y.M.C.A. youth asking me with. a
blush "why you can't do what you
like if there's no god!" As if folk, who

October, 1979

consider that moral law is divine law,

don't already do what they like! In
so far as moral law is sound it is social
law and it is far better observed today
than it was in the Ages of Faith.
"What really troubles us most in your
propaganda;" said a religious writer
once to me privately, "is the fact that
the world does get better in proportion as it loses faith."
Historic~1 Perspective
These are questions on which most
readers have experience to guide them.
It is more important here to explain
the real position of Atheism in the history of thought and the record of civilization. It is an historical law or consistent fact of history that Atheism has
always increased with the advance of
civilization, and it is in strict accord
with this law that it spread in our time
more rapidly than ever - much more
rapidly than any religion in history
ever did - until Fascism allied itself
with clericalism to strangle the development.
Briefly, we have ample traces of a
growth of skepticism in the bestperiods of the ancient Egyptian civilization, and it spread very considerably
in Asia (Buddhists, Jainists, Confucians, etc.) and in the earliest Greek
or Ionian civilization in the 6th century B.C., when the world began to
move to a higher cultural level. Ninetenths of the Greek philosophers and
their followers were Atheists - the
highest authority
Gomperz admits
that they were Materialists - and it
was the general position" of the educated class when the Greek-Roman
civilization was fully developed (1st
and 2nd centuries A.D.). It flourished
in the best periods of India (Asoka)
and China (Han and Tang dynasties),
and it was at its lowest vitality, or almost extinct, during the most debased
period of European civilization. It
spread again in the rich Arab-Persian
civilization and the European Renaissance, but its growth was restricted by
the recrudescence of fanaticism after
the Reformation and the gross ignorance in which rulers and churches kept
the mass of the people.
Clerical-Fascist Alliance
With the. gradual gain of freedom
and education in the 19th century it
spread more rapidly, and particularly
during the present century. In ten
years (1920-30) it made a hundred
times more progress than early Christianity did in two centuries. In Russia

American Atheist

it had been almost confined to the

relatively small middle class before the
Revolution. By 1930 there were at
least 100,000,000
Atheists in the
Soviet Union. As Socialism and Communism are, apart from their anaemic
American and British varieties, loyal
to the Atheism of their founders, election-figures clearly testify to the
growth in Germany, Italy, Spain, most
of the smaller European countries, and
Latin America. France has been predominantly Atheistic since the end of
the last century. There we learn that
there were at least 100,000,000 Atheists in' Europe apart from Russia,
50,000,000 in America, and an indeterminable number of millions in
China and Indo-China
by 1930.
Atheists were much more numerous
than the adherents of any religion. The
reaction against this growth began in
Italy in 1930 with the rise of the
clerical-Fascist alliance, spread in 1934
to Spain and Spanish America, infected (and ruined) France, and at last
with the triumph of Nazism and the
suppression of Socialism and Communism drove the Atheist movement
under ground. The peace will, unless
it leads to a semi-Fascist regime as
the clergy hope, see the revival.
The superior person who remarks
that this was a working class movement may be reminded that the workers involved in it were notoriously
those who read most. But this snobbish reproach is seen to be even feebler
when we inquire what happened in
countries like the United States, Britain, and France where the movement
mainly developed apart from politics.
Here one finds the second general
characteristic of Atheism: that the
higher the cultural level the higher is
the proportion of Atheists while the
more dogmatic churches have their
chief support in the lower cultural
levels.
An analysis of the names in Who'5
Who in America that was published
some years ago by Professor Huntington showed that large bodies like the
Catholics and Baptists had only about
7 per 100,000 of their members and these are for the most part just
prominent clerics - in the golden
book while the=Unitarians, who are
to a large exten't not even theists, had
1,185 per 100,000. Atheists are not
invited to declare themselves - men
were asked only to say which church,
if any, they favored - and were for
obvious professional reasons not likely
to do so, but in 1914 Professor Leuba
made a more serious and confidential
inquiry amongst American men of

Austin, Texas

science and showed (Belief in God and

Immortality) that only 13 per cent of
the greater men of science believed in
.god and only 35 per cent of the lesser.
The Numerous "Rarity"

He made another inquiry in 1933

and found the proportion of believers
still less. And it is interesting to note
that he divided them (in virtue of
their replies) into men who "disbelieved in god" (which is the exact
dictionary definition of an Atheist)
and what he calls "the Agnostics or
doubters," and he found the Atheists
far more numerous in every branch of
science than the Agnostics. Yet in
spite of this exact determination of
the position by one of the highest
authorities in America, and on the
ground of personal professions of belief or unbelief, not only religious
writers but more respectable guides
of the public repeat daily that Atheism is rare. and due to a combination
of bravado and ignorance. They repeat also the old tag that "a little
learning is a dangerous thing" - mean-.
ing that it leads to a profession of Atheism - whereas Professor Leuba
proved, as others have done repeatedly, exactly the opposite.
He extended his inquiry down to
sophomores and the replies put beyond question the fact that with
every rise in the scale of culture the
proportion M Atheists increased and
was greatest of. all amongst the 500
most distinguished men of science and
historians in America. It was less in
the next lower category but in this he
had included teachers in religious (but
not Catholic) institutions.

This is, when we take the word Atheist in its most accredited definition, the real world-situation. To the
clergy and the politicians who play up
to them it is a very unpalatable situation, and in speeches, sermons, and the
press it is totally misrepresented. It is
suggested that if there is such a. thing
as Atheism it is either the braggadocio
of a few youths and long-haired cranks
or the philosophy of gunmen, rapers,
or Nazis. This hatred and persistent
misrepresentation of the word are not
difficult to understand. The one point
on which the clergy of all denominations can unite is in hating the man
who has no religion.
But these facts and many others
given in the above work - the immense number of declarations of "no
religion"
in countries
where the
census-taker asks one's creed, the high
proportion of Atheists amongst the
greater and more influential writers
of the Nobel Prize List, etc. - show
unmistakably that the world is advancing toward a condition of general
Atheism. This opens up a fine prospect of social progress instead of the
ruin which hostile or ignorant critics
have suggested.

r,=================

"Wow, have the birds been busy!"

October, 1979

Page 27

----His andHers--Angeline Bennett

bug his opponent.
"I hear you're creating again. That's one hell of a big job
you're undertaking. Should keep you busy for some time."
God looked up from his blueprints, frowning. "I plan to
complete the whole thing in six days. And you, wise guy, keep
out of my way."
Satan let out a long, low whistle. "My, aren't we touchy
today. What's this my informers tell me about a new creature
called 'man'? Another idea for acquiring more adoration?
What if your idea backfires and he tells you to stick it?"
Now the unholy one laughed as only he could (satanically)
and let his imagination carry on uncontrolled.
"What if he won't buy your demands and ballyhoo? What i
he gets smart .... .intelligent, that is?"
Now he added the topper, "What if he likes me best?"
God turned to him like one of his thunderclouds. He was
livid.
"Get out of my sight you miserable mutation. You embodiment of blasphemy. I am supreme. Do you understand?
SUPREME, SUPREME, SUPREME!" He stamped his holy
foot.
Satan left in a puff. A thin trail of laughter mockingly J;"emained.
Three

Another revised edition, completely fictional and not

meant to be taken any more seriously than the
original
One
He was restless. He paced back and forth. A great surge of
reative desire ran through him. He mounted the two steps to
is throne and threw himself into its golden embrace. He
called to his angels. They gathered around and stood in subiective silence, their faces expressionless.
He spoke: "I have decided to create another planet. I will
call it earth. It will be populated with various forms of life
s are the other planets. However, there will be one distinct
difference."
A wild, almost fanatic look came into his eyes, but quickly
passed. His listeners did not notice. He leaned forward, caught
and held their vapid gaze.
"This time I will make a creature in my own image!"
A gasp of horrified disbelief shivered through the crowd,'
They drew closer together, eyes wide and now fully attentive.
He paused, enjoying their stir of emotion.
"Well, he won't be in my exact image. He will be somewhat
less' comely so as not to become carried away with his importance and so get out of hand. He must remain obedient, worhipful and above all. .... faithful. I will call him 'man'."
The host of angels bowed and whispered, "Yes, Father."
The speaker was God.
Two

Satan leaned carelessly against a tall, white pillar, his attiude one of 0 en defiance. A derisive smile was intended to

Page 28

October, 1979

Eve lay on the ground, hands under her head. The sun
through the trees played over her body in streaks of light and
shadow. She 'was naked as the day she was made. Created,
that is. She hadn't been made yet.
"Adam?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you believe what God told us yesterday?"
"Which do you mean?"
"About how he created this garden and a lot more stuff
out there in six days?"
"Yeah, I guess so. He says he created us, too. If he could d
that, I guess he could do the whole bit in any length of time
he wanted."
"Adam," softly, "what was it like when you were alone
here ..... before God created me?"
Adam came over and looked down at her. "It was lonely.
Nothing but the other animals around and they couldn't
talk to me. Did I tell you ..... God made me name the whole
bunch of them? What a job. Took me days to think up that
many names. Before I was through I wished he'd done it himself. I'm glad he created you."
"Adam, doesn't it seem a little strange that God created us
in two different ways? He says he made you out of the dust
of the ground and breathed into your nose and you came to
life. I was an afterthought. It finally dawned on him that you
needed a companion and he made me out of one of your
ribs. By the way, does that place bother you where he closed
you up again? Where was I? Oh, yes .... .I'm a little pissed
off that I wasn't created like you were."
"Ssh ..... Eve..... he might hear you. You know how he
comes pussy-footing through the garden now and then. I
think he checks up on us. Probably watching to see that we
don't touch that tree of knowledge. Fat chance of us doing
that if it would make us die like he sa s. And Eve while we're

American Atheist

on the subject of differences .....

don't look alike? You have those
of you and not the other things
"I've noticed. Especially those

11

have you noticed that we

two protrusions on the top
lower down that I have."
things lower down."

was going on, he made a little game of it so as to zing them

good.
"Where are you?" he called.
"Here, Sir," Adam answered. "We're not decent, so we
hid."
-

Hiaryou

F.o.u.r..............

Eve and Adam had feasted on fruits and nuts in the early
morning. There was such an abundance of everything that they
were inclined to waste a lot of it; onl~ choosing the most
choice parts of the food and tossing the rest aside. This caused
a small garbage problem and a bit of slothfulness at not having to work for a living. It was still early and they had already
gone for a swim in the river, played with the animals and
walked twice around the perimeter of their paradise. Bored
is what they were. Adam decided to stretch out on the ground
and take a nap, and Eve sat and twiddled the thumbs that
made her different from some of the other animals.
Having tired of thumb twiddling and Adam's snoring, Eve
sauntered around the garden again. Eventually she happened
in the vicinity of the tree of knowledge. Curiosity drew her
ever closer. She jumped when she heard a smooth, deep voice
say, "Hi, Kid." She looked toward the sound. He was coiled
around a limb of the tree, grinning down at her. The serpent.
"Hello. You startled me."
"Sorry, Kid. Have an apple or whatever this fruit is."
"I wouldn't dare. God says if we eat of the fruit of this
tree we shall surely die. Besides, I'm not hungry."
"OK, Kid. Some other time maybe. But don't be so naive.
Nobody dies from eating an apple ..... or whatever."
Eve left the area, but the seed of doubt had been planted.

"And who told you

are naked? Have you been
eating the special stuff?"
"Eve talked- me into it:'
"Squealer!" Eve hit Adam where it would do the most
harm. "The serpent showed me."
God put a curse on the serpent. Forevermore he was to
crawl on his belly and eat dust. The serpent didn't understand the punishment because he'd been crawling on his
belly anyway, but being wise, he kept still and was glad to
get off with such a light sentence. Adam and Eve didn't get
off so easy, though.
" God was really ticked at their effrontery to his holy author
ity, so he spake thusly: "OK, smart lady, you're going to have
kids, and I've made just enough boo-boos in your construction
to make that whole bit a real bad trip. Furthermore, your
husband has my permission to boss you around."
To Adam: "Now, big shot, you'll lift and tote and sweat
and strain and smell bad and bring home the bacon and
probably have a heart attack."
Being "rather prudish, God was embarrassed by just fig
leaves, so he made them coats of skins. Eve and Adam looked
at each other and Eve whispered, "Where did he get the
skins?"
Adam, with his new knowledge of good and evil, said, ."My
God, he must; have slaughtered some of our four-footed
friends! How cold blooded!"

Five"

Seven

Now every day Eve encouraged Adam to nap, and she

sauntered into the forbidden fruit place. Being the most
subtle of the animals, the serpent.was always there. Usually
in THE tree showing off his glistening coils.Today he leered down at her. "Do I remind you of anyiLhing?"
Eve thought a while and though an idea struggled to surface, she finally had to say, "No."
"Sooner or later, Kid, sooner or later. How about an apple?"
"Are you sure I won't die? Would I really be smarter and
know good from evil?"
"You won't die and boy will you know good from evil!"
"OK."
One bite and she realized that serpent was one smart snake.
She picked another apple and raced back to share with Adam.
"Eve, how could you? God said ..... "
"Adam, don't be such a chicken. Eat it. You'll like it."
"But, Eve ..... "
Some sort of threat of celibacy was in Eve's eyes. Adam
ate.
They looked down at themselves. They looked at each
other.
"We're naked," Eve said.
"Are we ever!" Adam replied, grinning.
"We'll have to make fig leaf aprons," Eve said.
"Tomorrow," Adam countered, and it came to pass that
the first pass was made.

Now that Adam and Eve were knowledgeable, there was

the possibility of their eating from the tree of life, also, and
living forever. This was a threat that had to be nipped in the
bud. Eight or nine hundred years was a long enough lifetime.
So God, disappointed in his newest venture, drove Adam and
Eve from Eden and posted second grade angels asguards at the
east side of the area. Sort of a magic, flaming sword was also
used as a deterrent in case the banished couple should try to
sneak back and filch fruit.
Adam and Eve stood outside paradise and tried to figure
out what had happened.
Adam said, "If all that has happened to us came about because of our sin and disobedience, how come you were already
made to be able to have children? How come I was already
made to be able to impregnate you? Is it possible that God is
not really omnipotent? Is it possible that he knew all along
what would happen? If so, was he playing cat and mouse with
us knowing we couldn't win?"
Eve said, "Is it possible that he is not the compassionate,
forgiving father he claims to be?"
"They gave a final salute to Eden (a raised middle finger),
and Adam said, "Come on, baby, let's go raise Cain."
,\

Six
Sure enough, that evening God came walking through the
lzarden and althouzh he was omniscient and alreadv knew w.hat

Austin, Texas

October, 1979

Page 29

NATURE'S
Gerald

WAY
Tholen

The Sensalionalizalion
of Brainwashing
Sensationalism continues to be the chief means used by the
media in order to "sell" their wares to the public. So effective
has it been. that most scientifically valuable knowledge offered
by the media is often given only token space and obscure mention. "Front page" newspaper articles and "headline TV commentaries" are usually reserved for the more perverse and
socially "suggestive" type story. This method of transferring
information has even seemed to carry over into other areas.
The melting wings of Carter's Icarian political machine
cause him to spontaneously lash out at his underlings in an
attempt, like Nixon, to sensationalize a cover-up of his own
bungling. He seems to forget that it was himself who was
chiefly responsible for the positions that were held by those
individuals he now chastises. If they were indeed inept, why
attempt to stir the nation emotionally with a mass purge of
people who only work for him? I will not go into the inadequacy of his past presidential performances for they are
already well known and adequately judged by the vast majority of the people. If he had observed a real feeling of patriotism and self-respect, the proper thing to do would be resign
the office rather than lay the blame on others.
His actions can only be viewed as another "sleight of hand"
maneuver which delves into one of my pet subjects: brainwashing. You may ask, how can I make such a connection?
Let me here inform you: brainwashing is one of the most
elusive of all subject matters..
The average person "knows positively" that brainwashing
is something that only happens to other people - never themselves! The fact is that every human, indeed every creature,
experiences daily brainwashing. Technically speaking, education itself may be defined as a form of brainwashing; i.e,
(from the Random House Dictionary) "1. A method of systematically changing attitudes or altering beliefs, especially
through the use of torture, drugs, or psychological techniques.
2. Any method of controlled systematic indoctrination. 3.
An instance of treatment by such methods." Therefore, one
may say that any change of attitude or an establishment of
intellectual attitude in one's mind, at the suggestion of another, meets the criteria of brainwashing.

Therefore, Carter is attempting to subversively shift his past

inadequacies onto the framework of lesser political characters.
By and large, the American public is very gullible. In most
cases people are influenced not by who is right, but by those
who shout loudest and those who are considered most "newsworthy" by the media. The "Carter Characters" are front page
material, but only rarely are our Einsteins given that position
of importance. When the president reprimands a figure of
secondary political influence, he does so with complete
parental authority maintained by that office, and every word
. is spontaneously seized upon by a ravenously news-hungry
media.
Similarly, the most recent explanation of brainwashing
was unfortunately
misrepresented, at least in part, in an
article published in a Houston, Texas newspaper and authored
by Dr. Joyce Brothers, who is nationally accepted as a psychiatric and psychological expert. In this column Dr. Brothers
attempts to deal with the subject of brainwashing, apparently
because it is a prominent subject of our particular time era.
It has been chiefly through the media that the averager person
now sees brainwashing as a tool of the Viet Cong, Dr. Moon,
and the late Rev. Jim Jones.
The Dr. Brothers column is presented as a question and
answer forum aimed at testing the readers knowledge in the
area of brainwashing. I will admit that the majority of "correct" answers supplied by Dr. Brothers are acceptable. This
would suggest that she is earnestly encouraging a truthful
understanding of the implications of the science of mind control. Out of the eight questions included in this test, there
are several answers offered by the "psychiatric profession"
which are actually wrong, or are at least intended to suggest
that brainwashing is limited to the guise of something totally
subversive.

The Real Villain

Certainly, we cannot then indict the idea of brainwashing
as a subversive method of inducing anti-social conduct in
human activity. Had we not ALL been- "brainwashed" since
birth, we would not have reached increasing intellectual
levels in later life. Brainwashing is not the exclusive "culprit"
involved in the formation of "evil" individuals. Brainwashing
also lays the foundations of genius that occasionally super-develops in persons of superior intellect by establishing fundamental knowledge in their minds during intellectually
formative years.
The real villain, as far as brainwashing is concerned, is the
Liar - the one who unnoticingly uses influence over others
to subject them to acceptance of erroneous theory in lieu of
reality and fact! The breeder of misinformation so to speak.

Page 30

Ocotber, 1979

Truth and Falsehood

It is this sinister suggestion which tends to lull people into
the misconception that the word brainwashing can be redefined into a "cloak and dagger" style public realization. This,
while giving the author an air of legitimacy, hides several
truths from the readers by not acknowledging certain facts
about social conditions that have surrounded everyone for
all of human history. Brainwashing is for everyone: grandmothers, popes, presidents, mail carriers, Indians, bootblacks,
etc., and even ourselves.
Item No.1 of the questionnaire reads: "(True or False)
It takes an experienced person using very sophisticated techniques to make use of brainwashing." The supplied answer
was: False.
This answer is obviously aceptable to everyone. The vast
majority of children throughout history are taught that there
is a "life after death" in order to align them with local religious beliefs and customs. This is a perfect example of brainwashing applied - not by CIA agents or Dr. Moon's minionsbut by parents and acquaintances.
Question No.2: "If an individual is brainwashed, he can be

American Atheist

made to do anything! True or False?" The -supplied answer,

false. However, there is an allowance that "these limits depend
upon the individual."
Of course, it was this "allowance" that explains why certain individuals can be "made" to give poison to their infant
children, as was the case in Guyana. I certainly interpret this
as being able to make an individual do "anything."
Question No.3: "Brainwashing or mind control is a new
technique that came into use in the Korean War." The supplied answer, false.
Here we may be in total agreement with the supplied answer that brainwashing "is as old as man."
Question No.4: "It takes months of deprivation in order to
alter a person's thinking enough to be called brainwashing."
Theprofessional answer, false.
Here we may find a slight discrepancy in the validity of
the so called professional answer. The explanation of the
"false" answer cites "behavioral and ideological transformations sometime occur almost spontaneously under conditions
of stress." This tends to hide the fact that years of PRE-indoctrination may have prepared an individual for a sudden "spontaneous" change upon reaching a final breaking point. I suggest that a person, properly informed and adequately educated
in the rational acceptance of life and/or death.ris not so easily
broken when confronted by such sullen and devastating confrontations. They were, in a sense, "prebrainwashed" and
waiting for an appropriate circumstance for a final condition
of degeneracy.
Question No.5: "The effects of brainwashing never fade
away completely." The supplied answer, false.
Technically speaking this answer is incorrect. If the word
"COMPLETEL Y" had not been incorporated in the question,
I might agree with the included answer. By including the
word completely, one must first realize that thoughts, once
implanted in the human mind, can never be totally erased.
Re-evaluated, yes. Revised, perhaps. But a thought is not
erasable from human mental facilities. It will remain until
that brain ceases to function (death) and must be continually
rationalized out of the category of importance to that individual's existence.
.
Question No.6: "Scientists know exactly how brainwashing works." The supplied answer, of course, false.
The intricacies of the human mind are not clearly understood, chiefly because we do not even yet realize the fact
that we ARE brainwashed. The first realization that we must
come to before we can even imagine a truer outlook concerning our existence is that we have intellectual problems ..
Question No.7: "In order to brainwash, the victim must be
made to feel worthless." The supplied answer, true.
This would seem to be an understandable assumption. A
feeling of self-inadequacy must be incorporated with a person's acceptance of coercive influence of another. This is why
inadequately educated people are the first to fall prey to unscrupulous evangelists of religious history. Need I offer more
explanation than that of the circumstances surrounding the
American Indians or the peoples of lesser nations when "benevolent missionaries" converted them to an existence comparable to mindless puppets?
Question No.8:
"The only true examples of mind control or _brainwashing have occurred in the political area."
This final question strained my patience to its absolute limit!
How preposterous would an answer have been other than that
which was supplied by the "professionals of psychiatry" false! Totally and unreservedly false!
Politicians learned their wiles and guises from the mental
and physical torture chambers of the religionists of history.
It would be unthinkable to consider the subject of brain~ash-

Austin, Texas

ing in any capacity without giving due credit to the sole authors of "belief induced by fear" - the church! This, my
friends, covers everyone. Have you, or any of your friends,
never been approached by such infantile claims that you "will
never receive your just rewards" unless you prostrate yourself
before an appropriate "god''?
Surely Dr. Brothers could have elaborated more on the obviousness of this answer! But then, she would have alienated
those of her readers who have been pre-indoctrinated (brainwashed). In not doing so she has become a part of the human
pattern of "brainwashing" that I am trying to elucidate blame the other guys; don't associate our own acceptances
within the arena of brainwashing.
Why do such authors inadvertently support the cover-up
of a system of inappropriate education that does nothing to
solve an existing dilemma? How can society evaluate the
problems of mankind's preconceived, brainwashed existence
unless it realizes it is a product of that system? The Baptists
and the Moonies come from the same seed. The lack of factual
fundamental education.
Forgive me for these observations, Dr. Brothers, for, unlike
that famous biblical passage, I KNOW what I am doing.

October, 1979

1/

By Wells Culver
0

~
~i

,.

WELLS

"Alright, Gawdammit, I'm dead.

Now where. the Hell is Heaven?"

Page 31

L.A. No.1

L.A. No.9

Correspondence wanted with single

females. Must be 100% Atheist, 5'5"
or taller, 135 lbs or less, white female
who is free to travel. American, white
male, 51 years old (look 41), 6'1"
tall, 180 lbs, non-smoker, very light
drinker. Am a pipe welder by trade,
and an ex-New Englander, presently
living in Houston, Texas.

Irishman
Atheist, living alone in
Chicago, 64, 5'9", 164 lbs, retired
on social INsecurity, non-smoker, very
light drinker, never married, easy to
get along with, fond of reading,
moderate in all things, wishes to
meet unattached, female Atheist in
Chicago area, object mutual romance,
companionship, comradeship, etc.

L.A. No.3

Divorced, 6', 200 lb., nice looking,

white male. Healthy, sexy, nonsmoker, social drinker only. 65, but
look and act years younger. Work
everyday. Scientific minded, love to
think, reason and wonder. Own home
and business in Texas panhandle.
Interested in nice looking, younger,
slender, non-religious
lady. Please
write.

L.A. No. 12

L.A. No.5
Friendship sought with female Atheist of small stature (about 5'2" or
less), no "clinging" relatives, free to
travel if desired. American, white
male, 5'4" tall, chunky build, nonsm'oker, non-drinker,
live in Ohio
Valley, age 67, retired research chemist. Just damn tired of living alone.
L.A. No.6
White male (English-Irish), 32 years
old, single, 6'2", 180 lbs, college education, dark brown hair, non-smoker,
mail carrier living in Kansas. Will
answer all letters from!onelY females.

Correspondence wanted with single,

female Atheists. Must be pleasant,
easy going, and unemotional and have
a minimum I.Q. of 120. I'm 34 years
old and have never been married. I'm
politically right-wing. My hobbies are
Irish music, art, canary breeding,
and Irish dancing. I live in the Milwaukee area.
L.A. No. 10
L.A. No.4

Correspondence wanted with single,

Atheist woman. Object: to share life.
I'm a single, American Atheist, white
man age 57, '5'9", 160 lbs, college
graduate, don't smoke or drink. I'm
retired, romance and health minded,
like intelligent discussion, table and
lawn tennis, travel.
L.A. No. 13
Gentleman bachelor, age 65, seeks
female companion over 50 for companionship. Floridians preferred.
L.A. No.2
Male, would like to share the better
things in life with fun loving female.
Over 50. Smoker preferred. Likes
dancing and sailing.

L.A. No.7
Bachelor (35, 6'6", 200 lb) wishes
to meet single lady in the Corpus
Christi area with the object of matrimony.
L.A. No.8
Male research
non-smoker,
5'10!h", 170
with similar

Page 32

physicist and musician,

non-drinker,
age 35,
lbs., desires to meet girl
interests in Michigan.

October, 1979

Genuine American Atheist wishes to

exchange
particulars
with. erudite
Atheist ladies who are interested in
contributing and sharing in a harmonious peer-relationship and companionship with a retired Southern
gentleman farmer.
L.A. No.

n'

Correspondence
wanted with trim
female, age 20-30. Male school teacher, age 27,6'5",235
lbs, backpacker/
mountaineer in California.
Address your reply to L.A. No.
(whatever that number may be.) Place
yow sealed envelope in a letter and
address the letter to the American
Atheist Center, P.O. Box 2117, Austin, Texas, 78768. We will see that
all replies are forwarded to the advertiser. No: identities are ever revealed; we protect you from any
harassment which might come from
your home address appearing in our
columns.
All Lonely Atheist ads can be
placed for $1 per word and run for
however long you are willing to pay
for it. The funds raised from these
ads go to help pay for the various vital activities of the American Atheist
Center.

American Atheist

ON OUR WAY
Ignatz Sahula-Dycke

Catalyst

for World Liberation

___ __._ _Africa?

Definition: Cet's-lyst - that which accelerates reaction produced within a

substance, and may at the end of the
reaction be recovered practically unchanged.
With the possible exception of the
U.S. American, the native black African 'has a better opportunity than any
other human to show the world how
. it should comport itself. I deem this
assumption reasonable because the
black African's outlook hasn't been
sullied by thousands of years of opinionated beliefs (sourcing from various
religions) as has been the outlook of
the European and the Asiatic.
Western man's route to clear thinking has always been made extraordinarily difficult by the Christianity
forced upon him ever since the religion's formulization in A.D. 325. As
proved by history, Nicenism has during all those centuries hindered and
never promoted the European's cogency of thinking, and today is - if anything - an even greater impediment
than before.' Formulized, organized
Christianity' turned out to be a detour far afield from the main road to
reciprocity and kind feelings between
peoples and nations.
Our U.S. outlook is akin to the
African's because our Constitutional
structure recognizes and respects the
principle that the state and religion
are to be kept distinctly separate.
This principle of separation enables
us to govern ourselves without interference by religion's bizarre dogmas
and anachronistic tenets. Except for
the religion long now obstructing our
thinking, we North Americans live a
life as free as any anywhere in the
world.
Here let's also keep in mind what
Africa's nominal freedom from Christianity really represents in the matter
of possible world comportment or behavior. The population
of Africa,
roughly, is 340 million; of North America, 285 million - the two land
masses holding over six tenths of a
billion of relatively religiously unbesmirched and independent
people.
And the few millions of Africans that
missionaries tell us are Christians are
about as Christian as are our American

Austin, Texas

Indians whom frenzied Christian padres forced into belief at the point of
deadly weapons.
Think what a tremendous opportunity for setting an example to the
rest of the world this multi-million
population would represent if joining
forces. Yet, if our relations with the
African nations mean something, it's
only that no one in Washington is
aware of its potentiality, and that our
educational methods are channeling
our students in another direction,
further complicated and suborned by
an American officialdom today bragging about being born-again Christians,
yet promising the electorate that
their newly-taken-up
belief won't
creep in and affect their official conduct. Only a fool could believe the
latter.
Gospel Enslavement

It's a crazy world! Here it is 1979,

and promises ~of an immortal life in
heaven still constitute Christianity's
stock in trade, keeping the unthinking masses believing that organized
Christianism is the defender of the underprivileged - despite glaring proofs
that it is overwhelmingly a plutocracy
and all out to exploit the religiously
bamboozled masses.
Recently in Central America, poor
ragged natives left their jungle settleinents and on foot travelled in some
instances 200 miles to Mexico for a
look at the pope, that infallible head
of the Roman Church dynasty which
has been keeping them and others of
nations further down in South America in physical, material, and mental
enslavement by its preaching of the
gospel of resignation to suffering a sure way (says the church) for anyone to earn the everlasting joys and
delights of heaven. Now what's rankling about this isn't only that the ignorant masses believe this, but that
the well-off middle and upper classes
at least tacitly support a cartel that
preaches this rot. Today, this Mexican
idyll to some extent paraphrases the
existing situation here in our USA.

October, 1979

Not enough of our American

citizenry
is aware that religion's
potentates have known for a good 50
years that Christianism has been drifting, rudderless, toward the rocks unable to escape its dooming come it
tomorrow or a century hence. So John
Paul the Second, if he enjoys the papacy, should thank this dilemma for
it. A much younger pope than most of
the previous others, he is at least more
likely to be energetic and - as he demonstrated while in Poland in his dealings with Politburo authorities - is a
cliffhanger steersman good enough to
keep the Vatican's leaking doctrinal
caravels off the rocks a bit longer.
Now, if any are able to summon a
reason why he should be wished well
in this extremity, please advise, and
I'll attempt to dissuade them from
exercising this kind of misdirected
charitableness. The pope deserves no
sympathy.
Any prelate ranking as
archbishop or cardinal is a manipulator par excellence in the craft of
power diplomacy. Religious annals are
crammed full of tricks that such
hierarchs resorted to in order to defeat steps taken against their Christianist cartel by both its rich and poor
victims.
African

Changes

Now - only a few months since

the Polish cardinal became pope, considerable noise is suddenly being heard
from the - clerical sector that religion
must become dichotomic (serving both
man and god) as though it had ever
been different when it was autocratic
and serving itself first and its god
second. I interpret religion's recent
noise-making as meaning that religion is attempting to secure the people's support for its decision to once
agair nter the political arena, while
h0I-.,g that the heads of the various
Western powers won't resent overly
the lip service it has already begun to
render to anything that might encourage the minorities into making
overt revolutionary demands, as, for
example, has very recently already

Page 33

happened, to Westernism's regret, in

Iran. If religion isn't taking the Iran
fiasco seriously, the shah certainly did.
Only a few days ago I ran across
and read a volume titled The New
Africa - published in 1928 - and
written by the then Home Administration Secretary of the Board of
Foreign Missions of the United Free
Church. The Africa he therein wrote
about was new (in 1928, that is), and
I'll even concede he described it accurately just as it was. He left no doubt,
in the minds of the readers who sympathize with missionarying, that missionaries made no few changes here
and there in Africa, and that he believed Africa would thenceforth stay
as changed.
But in the 50 years that flew by
since those days, Africa has changed
not only once but numerous times and each time for the betterment of
its black people; yet remained not at
all as he expected or said it would ..
Despite the labors of the missions,
Africa today isn't a Christian continent, and more than likely never will
be because the native African is systematically and temperamentally not
in favor of it; he's much too rational
to become a Christian of the kind that
missionaries try to make of him.
Today's Africa is trending pretty
much the way the news reports are
informing us: teetering between Christianism of sorts, Islamism, and something yet uncrystallized that could result from Africa's native Nature-Magic.
All three of these are a considerable

distance away from what the Westerner is familiar with as Christianity.

White Religion; White Avarice

Well, why had Europe's colonial

powers encouraged the sundry efforts
of their missionaries? Because the
powers were greedy and Christianity
in sufficient number of instances induced the native to go to work instead
of enjoying the comforts of his kraal,
numerous wives, native beer, hunting,
cattle-tending,
ceremonial
dancing,
and spirit worship. The European
white couldn't withstand Africa's heat,
its mysterious diseases, and the dangers of the veldt. He needed the native; couldn't exploit Africa's natural
resources without his help.
Religious preaching secured it for
him. The' native, once persuaded into
Christianity,
turned porter, miner,
hunter, farmer, or whatever else the
white man was 'unequal to in Africa.
The colonial governments praised the
missionaries and protected them as
much as possible because, as always,
they in this way opened the country's
resources to the white man's supercharged avarice. Hence, although the
African missionary called his work
"caring for pagan souls," "glorifying
Christ," and "education," he was by
no means an altruist, but a hard-working and considerably daring stooge,
working. hand in glove with the foreign office of his government for the
firm establishment
of his nation's
colonial ambitions.

Anyone not indoctrinated in the

enviable .art of wresting from others,
under any pretext, what is theirs, and
not his own, will at the first reading of
The New Africa recognize that the
missionary - whether knowingly or
not - engaged in activities whose
meaning the word "missionary" aptly
conceals disguised as "god's work."
In my opinion, any nation enjoying
an open relationship with another can
obtain through its ambassadorial, consular, military and news channels
whatsoever information it, as a friendly power, requires about its counterpart.
This would dispense to a great
extent with the ridiculously furtive
kibitzing and devious prying that in
the past and even today the governments delegate to people denominated
as military and economic advisors,
agronomists, evangelists, etc.; whom
each such nation makes grudgingly
welcome in its territory for what else
but self-serving reasons. To 'me, today
the only difference between a hushhush operative and a missionary is
the method each uses to gather his
stock of information.
Keep your eye on Africa. Its
people are showing us the mistakes
we are making today, same as in the
past. We're still enmeshed by the
Christianism
that the people of the
African region where it was hatched
wouldn't accept, because it parodized,
even ridiculed, everything they imagined their god or gods would have to
be.

You are Atheists. You want to meet other Atheists. You want to see what they are like. The
place to do it, the time to do it, is DETROIT IN EARLY APRIL when Atheists from both the
U.S. and abroad will convene at the Tenth Annual National Convention of American Atheists
1979 is about over and our get-together is just around the corner. Plan for it NOW by writing for
details from:
Helen Weaver, Convention Coordinator
Detroit Chapter, American Atheists,
P.O.B. 37056
Oak Park, Michigan 48237

Page 34

October, 1979

American Atheist

The American Alheist Radio

Madalyn Murray O'aair

Program 103 ...

29 June 1970 ...

KTBC ...

Nacogdoches, TX

**********************************************
Good Evening,
This is Madalyn Murray 0 'Hair, American Atheist, back to
talk with you again.
I may be more naive than other persons, and often my husband accuses me of that, but I constantly am quite shocked by
what I find in the books I read. While I was doing research on
celibacy in the church, I ran into a shocker for me. The idea
is given in the title of "Solicitation."
Apparently the confessional has been a source of tribulation to the church since it was invented. The trouble began to
be noted particularly at the Council of Toledo in 398. It was
then that there was a canon made forbidding any familiarity
between the virgins dedicated to god and their confessors.
However, sacerdotal confession gradually became customary,
and a decretal was forged in the name of Pope Celestin I
which forbade sexual relations between women who used the
confessional and the priest who was hearing the confession.
The regulation confiscated the possessions of the female
delinquent and confined her in a monastery, while the.priest
seducer was warned of his grave sin, which amounted, in the
church, to adultery. He had to be deposed and undergo
penance for twelve years, provided always that the facts had
become known to the people in the community. This indi. cated that the scandal rather than the sin was the most dreaded by the early church.
The sin came to be known formally as solicitatio ad turpiae;
literally "to entice to vileness," or using the English equivalent
word, "solicitation."
The medieval canonists recognized that a parish priest could
become known to be addicted to this, and rules were everywhere that he forfeited his jurisdiction over his penitents who
were female, who could then seek another confessor at liberty.
St. Bonaventura actually notes that there were very few parish
priests free from this defect.
Pope Calixtus II talked of priests such as this as lions who
devoured the sheep; bears attacking a traveller who has lost,
his way; fowlers spreading lures for birds and attracting them
with sweet sounds. The pope did not treat the woman as a
partner in guilt, but as an unfortunate who found destruction
where she was seeking salvation.
It is easily understood in reading these accounts of early
history that the fault was assumed to lie exclusively with the
confessor. Savonarola, an Italian reformer who lived from
1452 to 1488, said that Italian cities were full of these wolves
in sheep clothing, who were constantly seeking to entice the
innocent with the use of their spiritual directorship. He
pointed out that immunity was virtually impossible for the
woman.

Austin, Texas

Keeping Lust In The Closet

However, like all other sins, this was turned to a profit
for the church. Absolution and dispensation went for the
moderate price of thirty-six gros tournois. Let's take an example of a document case in an episcopal court in Almodovar.
The priest involved was Alonso de Valdelamar, and he was
tried in 1535 by BIas Ortiz, vicar-general of the Archbishop of
Toledo. The charges fully proven against him showed that he
had seduced two of his female penitents and refused absolution to a third unless she would have sexual relations with
him. Besides this, he was charged with theft, blasphemy,
cheating with bulls of indulgence, charging penitents for
absolution and frequenting brothels. For all of this, he was
sentenced to a fine of two ducats and the costs and fees of his
trial, to thirty days' seclusion in the church to repent his sins
and fit himself for celebrating mass after which he was free
to resume his career as a priest. This trial was typical.
Bernal Diaz de Lugo, a church official, felt that improper
relations between confessor and penitent were not worse than
ordinary concubinage, and unless it became publicly known,
there was no point in punishment. If it became public knowledge, it would tend to prevent men from allowing their wives
and daughters to confess, and therefore had to be prevented.
In the same spirit, Archbishop Carranza of Toledo, in 1558,
noted that "the enemy" took full advantage of tNs weak spot.
The implication was to gloss it over .
Therefore, about this time, a preventative effort wascommenced by the invention of the physical confessional. Up to
the year 1540 or thereabout, the priest had heard confessions
in the open, with the penitent at his knees or seated by his
side, which gave ample opportunity for temptation and solicitation. To remedy this, the confessional was gradually evolved.
This was a box in which the confessor sits, while the penitent, outside, heard the tale of her sin through the grille,
neither being visible to the other. The earliest allusion to this
contrivance occurs in a memorial to Charles V, by Siliceo,
Archbishop of Toledo, in 1547. About twenty years later, in
1565, a Council of Valencia ordered its use, especially for the
confession of women. Between 1565 and 1575 it was introduced into the province of Milan. The Roman ritual of 1614
prescribed its employment in all churches.
Catholicism's Pandora's Box
Really now! Did you know that th-e confessional box was
invented to prevent women from the seductive, sexual advances of priests? I read all this to my husband, as shocked as
I could be, and his reply was, "Come on! What do you think
was going on? Madalyn, you' are naive."
Well, when Rome commanded the use of the box, the com-

October, 1979

Page 35

mand was obeyed, but slackly. The innovation had to win its
way against the pronounced opposition of the priesthood, who
objected to its use.
In Spain, there was a hard battle. The Inquisition itself
tried to force the priests to the use of the box confessional
in 1710 through 1720, but as late as 1781, it was necessary
to issue a decree to be printed and sent to all parish priests
and superiors of convents, who were to post it in their sacristies.
One of the problems is that laymen had their jollies by getting into the box and hearing the confession of women. It
was speculated that their reasons were three:
1. From jealousy;
2. To satisfy their prurient interests; or
3. To ask indecent questions.
But in any event, this was a mechanical device to cure a
widespread and persistent evil. The big problem was how to
uncover offenders. The crime was secret and known only to
the priest confessor and the penitent. The woman was deterred
from volunteering a complaint by the notoriety which accompanied it, by the compromising of her with husband or father,
and by the enmity she might excite, particularly if the priest
denied it.
The church courts were not disposed to treat the offending
priest harshly. Not unnaturally, there was an esprit de corps of
the priesthood which led them to reject accusations which
could not be supported by witnesses, and which could be discredited by them because they were "men of god."
Things were in such a sad state in the year 1561 that Pope
Pius IV, by a bull dated 14th April of that year, gave the
inquisitor-general of Spain the power to investigate and punish
all confessor priests who solicited women for sexual intercourse when those women were in the act of confession.
The Spanish Revolution
The Jesuits caused some consternation to the church when
they insisted on trying their own on these charges, and the
cases of Sebastian Briviesca and Cristobal Trugillo were a part
of this inner conflict, as were Francisco Marcen, Francisco
Labata and Juan Lopez. The Jesuits decided to have the
trial. Pope Sextus V evoked the cases to himself. The inquisitor-general refused, and the pope had to threaten him with
deprivation of his office and his cardinalate, which finally
brought the guilty men to the pope for trial.
But the whole influence of Spain was brought to bear, and
after a prolonged struggle, in the presence of Pope Clement
VIII, in a decree issued 3 December, 1592, it was declared
that the jurisdiction of the Spanish Inquisition was exclusive
and that the superiors of the priests involved must give them
over to the inquisitor-general, but not to the pope. In all of
this, the wording of the crimes by definition was so loose
that the priests had little fear of not being able to evade the
law.
At one point, it was decreed that the crime was confined
to women only, and that it must be committed during the
very act of confession, or it was not a crime. Finally one
technicality was pressed, and this was that if the priest solicited the woman, he could then tell her that he could not
hear her confession. He could not then be charged with
solicitation during confession. Frequent and flagrant trials
indicated that often amorous endearments and incredible
indecencies were indulged, and as the confession itself was
repudiated, even if heard, this was a saving act for the priest.
Rules were interpreted in a wide range of protection for
the priest. If he embraced a woman, it was held that he was
really blessing her. Winks, nods, praises of her beauty were

Page 36

October, 1979

17

not regarded as tempting her. It was imprudent to be asked

to her home, but it was not a mortal sin. Another problem
arose for sometimes one priest would pimp for another,
soliciting a woman for another priest, or asking the penitent
to get another woman for him. None of these devices or acts
came under the papal bull definition of solicitation.
In 1622, the situation was so bad that Gregory XV, in a
bull Universi dominici gregis, gave not only inquisitors, but
episcopal officials the right to be judges in the trials of the
clergy, with full power to inflict punishment. However, the
bull was rejected by Spain. It had an inhospitable reception
elsewhere, in France and Germany being neither accepted nor
published. In Bavaria there was talk of receiving the bull in
1733,110 years after its issuance.
Permitted Vileness
Meantime the busy priests decided that if they handed a
love letter to the woman in the confessional, this would skirt
the crime. Saying such things as "Remember me, for I love
you"; "If I were a layman, I would marry you"; and "Wait
for me at your home" were all open to interpretation to save
the priest. Even advising a penitent to kill her husband did not
justify denunciation of the priest.
In a bull, Sacramentum poenitentiae, Pope Benedict XIV
endeavored to define what was or was not solicitation, and this
in 1741. Under these bulls any vileness was to be permitted
so long as it could not be proved that the sacrament was the
instrument of seduction. The solicitation came to be a purely
technical offense and had nothing to do with morals. From
reading this, apparently a priest could solicit a woman any
other time, any other place, under any other circumstances,
and be free of any moral crime in the church, so long as THE
solicitation did not take place during her time of confession.
Some of the details of the trials would be incredible if they
were not a matter of judicial record, with every evidence of
authenticity. It appears also that after the act of sexual relationship, the custom was for the woman to go to the confessional, where the priest with whom she had indulged could
receive her confession for this sin and give her. absolution for
it.
.
Also, another practice developed and this was the granting
of immunity to the offending priest if he denounced himself.
He could then be given a severe reprimand, and the casesare
many where the priest got in his self-denouncing only under
the wire before several women got there with the complaints.
Often the same priest was accused ten, fifteen, twenty or
thirty years after the first accusation, and it is assumed that
there simply were no complaints during that interval, not that
the priest had abated his habit,
I have records only through the 1890's on these cases. Up
to now, I had thought that these were just sneaking little
stories meant to defame the good priests who had sacrificed
-so much. However, after hours of perusing papal bulls, and the
historical evidence available for one who looks, I find that
these are not just sneaky little stories. This is the record of
the priests of Christianity in' history. And, the record is not
nice.
, Christianity has never worked. It has not worked for
celibacy of the priests. It has not worked for the privacy of
the confessional. Nothing that is done today, anywhere, could
be so bad as the history of the church has been. I am scandalized. I hope you are, also, and I hope that you demand that
Christianity show its correct history - instead of its invented
one.
~

American Atheist

A JOYOUS ATHEIST
G. R icha rd Bozarth

The Atheist Letters- 5

Shortly before moving from California to become an employee at the American Atheist Center, I had call to respond
to the religious propaganda found daily in all our newspapers.
The first letter (published 16 Nov., 1978) was a response to
a news item in the 10 November, 1978 issue of The Sacramento Bee. While not overly religious in content, it nevertheless slipped in a bit of religious dogma.
The Charge
"Evolution is no more scientific than creation."
"Creationists Attack Evolution Decision"
The Answer
Let me state first: I am an Atheist. So I was pleased to
read in today's issue the wisdom of the Georgia State School
Board to not make mandatory the nonsense called creation
science [see "Monkeys Trounce Christians," The American
Atheist, Feb., 1979, p. 9].
I am writing because your story let pass unchallenged the
statement that "evolution is no more scientific than creation."
That is pure nonsense. I suggest anyone who believes this take
out a subscription to Scientific American. At the end of one
year one will have read enough evolution articles to be thoroughly persuaded on the hard scientific evidence for evolution.
What about creation's scientific evidence? I have a copy
of the creation science textbook Biology: A Search ForOrder
In Complexity. What proof is offered? None. Only sophist
arguments and deliberate distortions that wouldn't fool a
Scientific American reader for a second are offered.
The whole structure of the creation theory is founded on
the hypothetical existence of a god to magically start everything off. To make the theory valid, some scientific evidence
indicating that a god exists should be at hand. There is, after
all, plenty of evidence to base the evolution theory on. If
.I announced to the world that god had revealed to me that
there are five more planets beyond Pluto, would schools be
obligated to teach this even if I gave absolutely no proof
for my "theory" other than I had found a few million people
to believe it?
What is the proof of a god? The textbook I have confesses
that it is impossible to prove a god exists by scientific methods. Yet, what other methods are there acceptable to a rational mind? Faith? Look at the number of gods and goddesses,
faith has produced! How, without scientific methods, can one
credit creation to just one of this holy multitude? And which
one? Creation scientists have given up the only means by
which creation science can claim to be a science capable of
producing scientific theories worthy of being taught in our
schools.
A few days later, on 19 Nov., 1978, the Vacaville Reporter
published a giant article in which the principal of one of
Vacaville's local parochial schools gave a lot of reasons that
parochial schools are the best schools to send children to! The
article did not surprise me. A few days prior to it, I had read

Austin, Texas

in the San Francisco Chronicle that the Christians were getting organized to put tuition tax credits for parochial schools
on the ballot for 1980. The Reporter article was obviously
one of the opening shots of the campaign.
I naturally responded with a long argument. It should be
noted that though my letter was published in full, I was given
only the inferior forum of the "Letters to the Editor" section,
whereas the principal enjoyed the prestigious forum of guest
editorialist, and his essay was printed in giant type so that it
filled up nearly two-thirds of a page. My essay was diminished
to the tiny type used for printed letters, and filled in less than
a fifth of a page. Without equality of forum, there is no possibility that the debate was fairly conducted, or that freedom of
speech was honestly served.
Nevertheless, my argument appeared on 29 Nov., 1978.
The Charges
1. "Careful attention is given to discipline and courtesies."
2. "Many parents are seeking to find a stronger academic
program."
3. "Parents are supporting private schools in increasing
numbers as a reaction against the lunacies of bureaucracy."
4. "Private schools continue to teach morality .....
all declare that the Bible without apology or compromise speaks
to the ethical issues of our day ..... that Jesus Christ is at the
center and heart of education, and that education seeking to
be wholly secular is defective and will lead to succeeding
generations which become progressively worse and more evil."
Deryl Radder
The Answer
In the 19 Nov., 1978, "Viewpoint" you allowed Deryl
Radder full expression for his argument that parochial schools
are the "best way to go." I hope in fairness you will allow me
full expression of an opposing viewpoint .
In the first place, I agree our public school system is not
today as good as when I went through it in the 50s and 60s.
The solution is to work for the end of the "lunacies of bureaucracy" that afflict the public school system. The solution
is not to put America's youth, which means our future, into
the hands of those like Deryl Radder, whose primary goal is
to teach god in the form he imagines him to exist.
When this country was established, a wall of separation was
set up to keep state and church apart. Yet, to read Radder
is to be told that truly great humans like Jefferson, Washington, Madison, and the Adamses blundered. Well, I doubt that.
Any group of humans capable of making real the USA were
not wrong when they decided that absolute separation of
state .and church was essential to a successful creation.
Radder's main' point, however, seems to be that parochial
schools, because they teach Jesus and the Bible, are better
producers of morality. What he is saying is Christianity produces morality when "Jesus Christ is at the center and heart of
education" and the Bible is taught as relevant "to the ethical
issues today."
I fail to see how the Bible can be a source of morality for

October, 1979

~/

Page 37

a nation such as the USA. I have come to this opinion from

reading the book thoroughly. For instance, Leviticus 20 has
some truly charming morals. It teaches that one must kill
adulterers and homosexuals. If a husband and wife make love
during her menstruation, they "must be outlawed from their
people." Really excellent morality for today!
Matthew 5 informs us that divorce, except on grounds of
fornication, is equivalent to adultery. Such wisdom! How
moral is it to demand two incompatible people who made a
mistake to live in unhappiness together until one of them dies?
Actually, why get married in the first place, since 1 Corinthians 7 teaches the marvelous morality that "it is a good thing
for a man not to touch a woman"? Marriage becomes the
union of weaklings who haven't the strength to resist sexual
impulses and are always in danger that "Satan should take advantage of your weakness to tempt you." What a beautiful
moral statement on human sexuality and marriage!
Going over to 1 Corinthians 11, we are taught the lovely
ethic that "man is the head of woman" and "woman was
created for the sake of.man." Is Radder's school teaching its
little girls that they were created for the little boys who attend the school with them? What evils has this ethic not produced? What abuses and cruelties? How does this obscenity
speak to the ethical issues of the day?
What about Ephesians 6? Here the Bible accepts slavery as
moral, going so far as to instruct the slave to be obedient to
his master and to work hard and willingly. Does Radder teach
this ethic in his school? Would he have the courage to take his
Bible to a school in Watts or Harlem and teach ethics based
on Ephesians 6:1-9? I serious suspect he doesn't.
The Bible is useless as a source of morality. Look back a
few hundred years when all education was in the hands of
religion. What were the products of the graduates of those
parochial schools? The Inquisition, the witch trials, the slaughter of "heretics," the persecutions. of humans like Galileo for
teaching facts that contradicted dogma, etc., etc.
Is it better today? Radder brags most parochial schools are

Page 38

October, 1979

desegregated. Why not all if they are such fountainheads of

morality? The answer can be seen on page 12 of the Reporter's "TV Scene" for the week of 19-25 November. There one
can find a review of a PBS program on the Ku Klux Klan.
There is a picture with it of a cute little baby dressed in the
infamous Klan costume. On that costume is sewn a cross. I
don't suppose anyone believes these thugs use the cross as
their symbol because they are Atheists? More of that old
time religious morality!
The 17 Nov., 1978, San Francisco Chronicle carried a story
about a parochial school in Rhode Island that has rewritten
the Pledge of Allegiance so that the concluding phrase reads
"with liberty and justice for all - born and unborn." This is
the inclusion of a religious dogma that has nothing to do with
allegiance to the USA. Yet, this parochial school is indoctrinating its pupils to believe a person, such as myself, who is
pro-abortion, is not a patriotic citizen. They are taught to
deny that I could be a patriot if I refuse to accept this dogma.
Yet, I served nine years in my country's military service, both
in war and in peace. How many nuns at that parochial school,
I wonder, gave as much as I have to our country!
And here's more parochial school morality! As the Chronicle reported, a "mother said parents had not complained because they were worried about reprisals involving their children." No kidding! The whole history of Christianity is a
horrorstory of reprisals against those who got in the way of
the perpetration of dogmas.
Mr. Radder, good SAT scores and conformity to what you
consider are proper dress codes in no way compensate for
what parochial schools do to human beings by indoctrinating
them in the dogmas of religion when their childish intellects
have no defenses against it. You will not produce good citizens. You will produce good religionists who will willingly
sacrifice the First Amendment on the altar of their god.
And when the First Amendment goes, the rest will follow,
and there will be no more USA - except as a meaningless
name describing a few million square miles of this planet's
land surface. ~

American Atheist

............
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Film
Review

The Wicker Man

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The story behind this film is utterly fascinating, but there

are still gaps in what I was able to piece together. It was made
in England in 1973, had a brief exposure here in a highly expurgated version and then disappeared. It is now being released in its uncut form with an R rating, and the advertising
hints that it is a kind of science fiction film.
It stars Christopher Lee, Britt Eklund and Diane Cielento.
It was written by Peter Schaffer, who also wrote the highly
successful Sleuth, which transferred well from the British
theater to the Broadway stage to a movie with Michael Caine
and Laurence Olivier. Those of you who saw Sleuth will
remember it as a bewildering, curious blend of odd characterizations and one totally unexpected plot surprise after another, so that our belief in the situation as set up by the author was placed smack up against our teetering on the edge
of the surreal.
If that is what we thought of Sleuth, the whole feeling is
multiplied by ten in The Wicker Man. Here we have a pragmatic, rather dull police sergeant from Scotland flying his
tiny seaplane to a remote outlying island where an anonymous resident had complained of a missing girl in a letter
addressed to him at the police station. As he tries to unravel
who the girl is and what happened to her from hostile natives,
he finally meets Lord Sunnyside, unofficial ruler of the
island.
And ruler he is, for Sgt. Howie (played almost perfectly
by Edward Woodward) has been unable to get so much as
a satisfactory look at birth, death and school registers, since
civil servants and teachers say, "You have to get permission
from Lord Sunnyside first." That gentleman turns out to be
a handsome, articulate, soft-spoken Christopher Lee - yes,
the same actor who made his fortune in horrorfmonsterfdracula movies. The comparison with Boris Karloff is almost
identical: a fine actor, capable of doing justice to any role,
virtually wasted in horror movies. "Well," we think, "perhaps
he is going to be a hero in this one." And so it seems at first.
It also seems as if he will be a hero for Atheists, as some
scathing comments are made by him about religion, "civilized
man and his god," and we note that Sgt. Howie is a particularly pompous proponent of the Christian party line, going
so far as to kneel by his bed in prayer every night, and sanetimoniously refuse the favors of the local barmaid - not because he is not drawn to her seductiveness, but because, as he
tells her, "I am engaged to be married, and I do not believe in '
premarital sex."
Dark Allegory

Pompous and sanctimonious he may be, but he nevertheless does not deserve the horror he now becomes embroiled
in, as it slowly becomes obvious to us that ancient Celtic
rituals of superstition are not just being practiced but are the
law of this island. Sgt. Howie decides they are all mad, but he
doggedly pursues his investigation because he has deduced the
missing-presumed-dead girl is not dead after all, but may be

Austin, Texas

the sacrificial lamb at tomorrow's May Day celebration. All

the rules' of common sense should have dictated that he get
the hell out of there and hightail it for home, and indeed at
one point he attempts to start his plane and it will not start,
thereby sealing his doom.
And what a doom it is. Those of you who by now wish to
see the film, and do not like a reviewer to tell the ending, may
stop reading here, but since the entire remainder of the story
is so full of religious symbolism and dark allegory and stunning castigation, I would be unfair to the purposes of an
Atheist movie column not to discuss it.
It is now' obvious that the movie is shooting its arrows
at the whole works: any and all cults, religions, superstitions,
from Christianity to May Day, from frogs curing sore throats
to sexy fertility rites. ("Of course they're nude; we couldn't
have them jump over the fire with their clothes on!" patiently
explains Lord Sunnyside when Sgt. Howie is appalled at the
young girls dancing on the green in the nude.) But so intent is
he on rescuing the girl he forgets to consider that she might
be in on that final devastating plot by the entire island that
he shall be their May Day sacrifice.
There is no deus ex machina to help him. He is anointed,
dressed in a white robe, dragged up the hill and placed - at
last we learn the spine-tingling horror of the title - in an
enormous wicker edifice in the shape of a man, already filled
with many animals who are to be his sacrificial companions.
While the people hold hands and sing, the wicker man is set
afire as the sun sets on this beautiful, sunny slope, and the
dying sergeant desperately tries to comfort himself. with words
from the Bible.
I shudder as I write this, for the graphic portrayal had so
profound an effect on me that I sat down at the typewriter
on coming home, and it is now two o'clock in the morning.
I am frightened to realize that people who are so stupid as
to accept a cult, any cult, can be persuaded to do anything.
Yes, I've read about it, I know it intellectually, but a movie
shows it to you; it draws you into it, it sucks your emotions,
and it terrifies you.
Quick Shots

The publicity blurbs for The 111-Laws starring Peter Falk state that it
is one of the funniest films the world has ever known, and that people
were falling down in the aisles from laughing so hard. Not only did no
one laugh that hard when I went, but they weren't even laughing. It is a
stupid story (that a dentist could be involved in international intrigue
because his daughter is about to marry the international agent's son)
and it is told in such a loose, improvised style one wonders if there
really ever was a script. I am not one who thinks it's fine if the actors
had a ball making the film. I want it to do something for me.
On the other hand, the blurbs for A Dream of Passionindicated to
me I would get a double bonus in a modern-day treatment of the Medea
story, in which a religious nut of a woman kills her own sons because
her husband committed adultry , and it offers Melina Mercouri discussing acting problems playing Medea, while she involves herself with the
woman in prison (Ellen Burstyn). Aside from the fact that the film
pictures Burstyn's religion as quite as cracked as she is, there is nothing
much else to recommend it. Everybody over-acts, apparently under the
impression that Medea traditionally demands it. It doesn't.

October, 1979

Page 39

Book Review

Ruins of EmDires
-

The Ruins, or Meditation on The Revolution of Empires:

and The Law of Nature, was written by Constantine Francis
Chassebeuf de Volney, and published in France in 1791.
This edition, 5% x 8%, hardbound, buckrum, 225 pages, is
an edition put out by the Truth Seeker Co. of New York in
1950, following the translation of an earlier Philadelphia
edition of 1803, with corrections by Peter Eckler, incorporated in his 1890 printing.
It has not been offered to our readers before, although it
has been "in stock" at the American Atheist Center for a
number of years - 5 or 6. This is simply because it is a scholar's book - a hard one, on "morality" as viewed from the
discipline of science, expounded in that terminology.
The book is cast in terms of reverie into which the author
fell when visiting, in 1784, an abandoned city of ruins and
wondering upon the desolation. Determining to find out
why such cities would be abandoned, he became finally,
melancholy. At this point an apparition appears with whom he
begins discourse on the misery and desolation he sees everywhere evidenced in the ruins.
In Chapter VI the apparition defines man's primitive state
and goals, the influence of Epicurus on the author being unmistakably shown. The principles of societal formation in
Chapter VII are seen as those of the compelling use of reason
identifying common needs and reaching unity of resources
for a solution ... all the result of man's use of his own faculties of self-love, aversion to pain, the desire for happiness. The
assumptions are charming, albeit naive.
The author is obviously a deist and his attack on Old Testament based faiths (Judaism, Islamism, and Christianity) begins
on page 45. It is the universal cry of wounded man against the
gross injustices of religious insanity. Completely discouraged
In the overview he shrinks into himself to be rallied therefrom
by the apparition's lashing tongue in an argument of "hope
for mankind".
The focus then shifts to the French Revolution which was
in progress as he wrote, which - he hoped - would call for
a "General Assembly of The Nations", as an intellectual world
base for amelioration of the condition of man. The author envisages such a base with "but one law, that of nature - but
one code, that of reason - but one throne, that of justice but one altar, that of union."
Into this assembly come priests of all religions and here, beginning with Chapter XX, is a destructive assault of ridicule
against them all. Following this is an analysis of all major beliefs set in the guise of contending parties at the Assembly
vying for the supremacy of each's "religious truth". It is a
clever structuring and interplay as the author uses one belief
system to attack another, thereby discrediting all. In order to
effectuate this, a succinct statement of the theological tenets
of each faith is put in the mouths of spokesmen for the same.
Explicating footnotes are extensive.
After exposing alike the follies of all religious systems, the
chairman of the "General Assembly" calls for research as to
the origins of the god idea. These origins are found to be based
in the imagination of primitive man, fashioned from misconceived or misinterpreted events in or laws of nature, particularly with reference to the motion of heavenly bodies. The
explanation is lucid, albeit multifarious. In the middle of the
book, then, set apart, with the rest of the book a contrived

Page 40

October, 1979

staging to give expression to it, is a very learned, well-referenced, highly reasonable expostulation of the origin of religions
and the causes of their first corruptions and differences. This,
the eere of the book, covers only 65 pages. Condensed,
written in the prose of that day, depending upon the reader
having, already, a good education, it will be rough going for
any but the scholar. This is probably one of the books which
influenced Thomas Jefferson.
But when the analysis is finished, the argument must reduce
to the line of partition between the world of chimeras and that
of realities, the world of religion and the world of materialism,
i.e. Atheism.
It is at this point our deistic author goes astray, for in the
last 32 pages of the book, ignoring all of his own logic, he
embraces the god he has so thoroughly impugned in the first
176 pages. Attempting to construct a human perfect system,
he commits errors such as equating "justice" to natural law,
forgetting that nature is not tainted with either morality or
justice. The cyclone sweeps all in its path. There is no "justice" in the cancer death of a five-year-old. Nor does nature
have the attributes of pacificness or beneficience. Upon this,
Count Volney attempts to build morality, couched in terms of
(1) education, (2) moderation (or temperance) which he describes as sobriety and chastity, (3) courage, (4) activity (or
love of labor) and (5) cleanliness. Judge for yourself his rules
for a perfect society.
The Appendix contains a masterly letter of put-down
written to Christian ministers of the age and a short explanation of zodiacal signs and constellations, showing a reliance on
Godfrey Higgins, The Anacalypsis.
"The extent and variety of his information, the force of
his reason, the austerity of his manners and the noble simplicity of his character" are all discernible in Count Volney's
writings. For the scholars among you, we recommend this
thought-provoking, but difficult, book.

3rE

ON ABORTION
Amedeo

Amendola

[continued from page 12]

not to be on the way to human fulness (excellence). Hence, a

man who, having nothing else to do, chooses to destroy a human embryo is a criminal hinderer in some degree (aside from
the possible injuries he may inflict on a person and violations
of persons' freedom).
- As for an abortion which is undertaken, or permitted to be
undertaken, by an embryo-carrier: an abortion which consists
in the removal and abandonment of an intact embryo, regardless of the reason why it is undertaken, may involve a missed
opportunity to do something worthwhile, but it is not wrong
in any manner or degree. There are no grounds for a law forbidding abortions of this type, or (if we remember that a law
is an enforceable demand on everyone) for public-subsidized abortions of any kind.
Those who care deeply for humans and are not at ease with
our "no-fault abortion" conclusion should by all means offer
assistances of various kinds to those who plan to have an
abortion.

American Atheist

WE ARE ATHEISTS BECAUSE:

Godism had to be fought when man made his
successive steps toward science, liberty, and
reform.

There is no proof of the existence of god.

There is no need of, or use for, a god.
A good god would be useless if he were not
powerful.
A powerful god would not deserve worship if he
were not good.
There is no all-powerful good god; otherwise, there
would be no imperfection.
If this is the best world god can make, the stories
of Heaven must be lies.
History shows that Godism is accompanied
ignornance and superstition.

by

There has never been such intolerance and persecution as Godists have practiced.

Godism was invented in the earliest days of man's

ignorance. It is incredible that primitive man
guessed wrongly about everything else, but
discovered the truth about the origin of life.
Everything about which science has discovered the
origin was claimed previously to have been
the work of god. Godism recedes when a new
fact is discovered. No new discovery ever supports a theistic explanation of anything.
All revelation proves, on investigation,
human, and generally fraudulent.

to be

Godism is consistent with crime, cruelty, envy,

hatred, malice and uncharitableness.

ATHEISM TEACHES THAT:

There is no heavenly father. Man must protect the
orphans and foundlings, or they will not be
protected.
There is no god to answer prayer. Man must hear
and help man.
There is no hell. We have no vindictive god or
devil to fear or imitate.
There is no atonement or salvation by faith. We
must face the consequence of our acts.
There is no beneficent or malevolent intent in
nature. Life is a struggle against preventable
and unpreventable evils. The cooperation of
man is the only hope of the world.
There is no chance after death to "do our bit."
We must do it now or never.
There is no divine guardian of truth, goodness,
beauty and liberty. These are attributes of
man. Man must defend them or they will
perish from the earth.

redress of grievances . AMENDMENT

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Materialistic Atheism is the best basis for
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