$1.

00
AUGUST 1976
Vol.: XVIII
No.: 8

In This

Issue:

God Comes Out of the Closet

Happiness is "Doing It"
The Myth of Cancer

A Journal

of

and

Thought

OURNE
RELIGION
CHRISTIAi\
SCIE:\CE
i, a
social phenomenon which has att ract ed many authors.
The present
volume is a new examination by an
English historical scholar of distinguished attainments. Mr. Fisher, who
writes with wit and irony and decisiveness, maintains that the faith is
founded upon contradictions of belief
and precept, and has succeeded negatively- by failing to practice what it
preaches or to regard what it dislikes.
The London Times Literary Supplement says of "Our New Religion":

AN EXAMINAliON OF
CHRISTIAN

SCIENCE

H. A,-l. fiSHER
War4.n .f

"It must be evident that there can

be no possible ground of compromise
between Mr. Fisher and the declared
Christian Scientist, who will not be
able to regard this book, written in a
spirit not of attack but of simple in
quiry, save as the hardest blow his
faith has yet sustained."

College, Oxford;
're.id of the British Academy;
AIIthof of H life of lewd Bryce," etc.
NGW

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THE AMERICAN

ATHEIST

MAGAZINE

Vol. XVII, No.8

Editor:
Contributing

ON THE

August 1976
Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Editors:

Isaac Asimov
Anne Gaylor
Jon Murray
Avro Manhattan
John Sontarck

Cover Artist:

Jo Katula

The American Atheist is published monthly by

the Society of Separationists, lnc., 4408 Med ical
Parkway, Austin, TX 78756, a non-profit,
nonpolitical, tax- exempt, educational
organization.
Mailing address: P. O. Box 2117, Austin, Texas,
78768. Subscription rates $12.00 per year; $20.00
for two years. Manuscripts: The editors assume no
responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts. All manuscripts must be typed, double-spaced and accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

CONTENTS-THIS

ISSUE

News
God Comes Out of the Closet
Happiness is "Doing 11':

4
7

Speaking for Women

14

Letters to the Editor

16

Editorial

17

American Atheist Radio Series

The U.S. Congress and the Religionists

18

Honor Roll

21

Feature Article
The Myth of Cancer

22

COVER

Clara Barton was born December 21, 1821

in Oxford, Massachusetts and was educated in the
Clinton
Liberal Institute
in Clinton,
New York.
Because of ill health she could not work as a
teacher, for which she was trained. But after a brief
stint in the Patent Office of the United States, she
became involved in relief work during the Civil
War, distributing
large quantities
of suppl ies to
wounded soldiers. At the close of the war she organized a Washington bureau of records to aid the
search of missing men for whom inquiries were being made. In connection with this work she marked
the graves of more than 12,000 soldiers in the National Cemetery at Andersonville,
Georgia.
Because of her health, she went to Switzerland in 1869. There she met Jean Henri Dunant,
the Swiss philanthropist
and Atheist founder of the
International
Red Cross. The United States had decl ined to become a party to the treaty of Geneva
on the basis of which the Red Cross had been
founded.
Miss Barton,
with
members
of the
national organization,
went to the seat of hostilities of the Franco-Prussian War and assisted in organizing their military hospitals.
In 1837 she retu rned to the United States to
effect the organization of the United States branch
of the Red Cross, which efforts were finally successful in 1881-1882. She was the first President of
the Red Cross and held that position until 1904.
Miss Barton was the author of the American
Amendmen
to the Constitution
of the Red Cross
which provides that the society shall distribute relief, not only in war but in times of such other calamities as famines, floods, earthquakes, cyclones
and pestilence and in accordance with this amendment she conducted the society's relief for sufferers from the yellow fever in Florida (1887), the
flood at Johnstown, Pa. (1889), the famine in Russia (1891), the hurricane along the coast of South
Carolina (1893), the massacre in Armenia (1896),
the Spanish-American
war in Cuba (1898), the hurricane at Galveston, Texas (1900).
It was clear to Miss Barton that god did not
assist the victims and that humankind
must. She
was a dedicated and committed
American Atheist.
Miss Barton died on the 12th of April,

August 1976/American

Atheist - 3

1912.

News
The news presented in these columns, which
fills approximately one-half of the magazine, is
chosen to demonstrate to you, month after month
that the dead reactionary hand of religion is always
on you. It dictates how much tax you pay, what
food you eat and when, with whom and how you
have sexual relations, if you will have children and
how many, if you are a woman whether you will or
will not become pregnant and if you will or will
not remain so, what you read, what plays, cinema
and television you may see, and what you should
or should not believe about life.
Religion is politics and, always, the most
authnritarian and 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.

gelical credentials,
recently spoke' at Wheaton College (IlL). the nation's most prominent evangelical college and alma mater of evangelist Billy
Graham.The
President
has also addressed
the
Southern Baptists (Carter's denomination),
the nation's largest Protestant
body. at it's national eonvention in Norforlk. Va.
Ronald Reagan. perhaps noticing t hat Carter had found the religious waters inviting has also
plunged in. He granted his first indepth interview
on his deepest
moral and spiritual
beliefs for
television program.
Allowing that he. like Carter. had experienced Ihe t ransforrna t ion th ha t tundarnen talist and evangelica I Christ ians ca II being "born again," Reagan
declared. "I think there is a hunger in this land for
a spiritual revival."
Not since 1960. when John F. Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic 10 be elected Presidcn t , has re I igion surfaced
so prom i ncn tly as J
political issue in the race for that office.

GOD COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET

Remarks by pundits, like the one by author

Gore Vidal that Jimmy Carter "is taking his initials (J.e.) too seriously," don't get the laughs they
used to.

In fact, Time magazine said this month, "if

the economy continues to improve and no foreign
scares intervene, this spiritual issue could transcend
all others this year."

For the so-called "religious

factor"
presidential
race is becoming
increasingly
tant.

In 1960, the question was whether a Catholic could be elected to the country's highest office,
and, if he could, what it would mean for churchstate rela tions.

in the
impor-

And the candidates

are discovering-ever
since Democratic
front-runner
Carter successfully
tested the religio-political
waters during the North
Carolina primary in March-that
openness on religion may help, rather than hinder, their chances
at the polls.
Since the former Georgia governor began his
unashamed
Southern
style
god talk, more than
lOO articles have been written about Carter's religious life, and not a few political observers consider his evangelical commitment
to be a large part
of his popularity.
He and California Gov. Brown, a onetime
Jesuit seminarian with a flair for 'Eastern mysticism' and monkish
austerity,
have found church
people along the campaign trails receptive. They
have made it a point to include meetings
in
churches, especially black ones.
President

Ford,

an Episcopalian

August 1976/ American Atheist 4

with evan-

In a widely publicized
speech before the
Greater Houston Ministerial Assn., Kennedy apparently laid to rest fears of Vatican domination.
"1 do not speak for my church on public
matters,"
he said, " and the church does not speak
for me."
In 1976, Commonwealth, the liberal Catholic magazine editorialized,
"with god not only alive
but stumping with the candidates, the discussion is
more subtle and personal. ..
"Paradoxically,
while our Constitution
guarantees the separation of church and state and our
dominant
cultural values are increasingly seculareven pagan-we
remain, in some ways, the Western
World's most religious people. Deep in many Americans, sometimes
only on the level of instinct, is
the conviction
that this nation has an Agreement

gan if he believed in prayer-- "that somebody

tening up there."

is lis-

"Oh my! If I didn't believe that I'd be scared

to death," Reagan exclaimed.
Reagan recently told a Christian group in
Florida that the time had come "to turn back to
god and reassert our trust in him for the healing of
America" and to reaffirm a belief in the JudeoChristian heritage upon which the nation was
founded.
President Ford has been publicly reticent about his personal faith.
"Jerry Ford doesn't wear his Christianity on
his coat sleeve, and you never hear him talking about it. But he's a Christian, a growing Christian,"
says Michigan evangelist Billy Zeoli. As the Ford
family's closest spititual adviser and a longtime
friend, he sends the President a weekly memo, usually containing a Scripture verse and a prayer.
In a letter to Zeoli, Ford said: "Because I've
trusted Christ to be my Savior, my life is his ... "
"The President said 'man's wisdom and strength
are not sufficient,' and he quoted Proverbs 3:5-6:
'Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and
do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways
acknowledge him, and he will make straight your
paths.'
A lifelong Episcopalian, Ford frequently attends the "church of the Presidents" -St. Johns
Episcopal-across
the park from the White House.
Ford encouraged his son, Michael, to attend
Gordon-Conwell
Seminary in Massachusetts, an
evangelical theological school that holds to an inerrant (error-free) view of the Bible.
But Ford smokes a pipe, dances and drinks
coctails-practices
disturbing to some conservative
Christians. And his wife has alarmed others with
her frank and generally liberal views on premarital
sex, abortion and the
women's
movement.

Brown, on the day he announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination,
said his philosophy was a product of a "liberal humanist tradition."
Although his Jesuit siminary experience was
augmented by pauses for meditation at Trappist
and Zen Buddhist retreat centers, he is basically
Catholic.
Although Brown has refused to pinpoint
specifics of his present Catholicism, he seems unquestionably shaped by his rearing and schooling,
stimulated by heavyweight moral and metaphysical
thinkers and convinced that such interests are in
tune with the times.
"People are seeking and are more interested
in spiritual realities than at any time I can remember," Brown told the editor of the San Francisco
archdiocesan newspaper adding:
"I would like to see a greater commitment
to basic moral values articulated in a credible
way."
Among other Democratic contenders were
Alabama's Gov. George C. Wallace, a Methodist
who seems to fit a Baptist mold better; Sen. Henry
M. Jackson, a Presbyterian; Rep Morris K. Udall,
who was reared a Mormon but who left the church
because
it bars blacks from the priesthood, and
Sen. Frank Church, a Presbyterian who has called
for renewed dedication to biblical principles of
integrity.
Wallace appears to have been the most vocal
of these candidates about personal faith. At a recent religious gathering in Birmington, he urged a
return to old values and morality and said that he
knew "from experience that god is alive and that
Jesus saves."
Udall, a IS-year member of Congress from
Arizona, considers himself a religious person. But,
he said,"I have no personal need for organized religious activity."

Religion and philosophy are natural topics

for Carter and Brown, for religion has been the
warp and woof of their training since childhood.

Although Sen. Jackson, a onetime Sunday

school teacher, called himself a "deeply religious
man," he said he never talked about it "until I'm
pushed, and that's as far as I go."

But they speak

tions. Carter's context
his references to liberal
and Reinhold Niebuhr
fundamentalism.

Also worth noting from a religious perspective is Ellen McCormack, the New York Catholic
grandmother running in most state primaries on a
single moral issue-anti-abortion.
Her goal is to promote a constitutional amendment to overturn the

from very different tradiis Southern Baptist, though

theologians like Paul Tillich
set him apart from typical

August 1976/American Atheist- 6

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

-------

1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling permitting abortion during the first six months of pregnancy.

have at levels wehn the policy trickles down to the

level of local functionaries.

And there's Sen. Hubert Humphrey,

a
noncandidate, who many say may nonetheless figure in the nomination struggle at the Democratic
convention.

However, a feeling for it could be had listening to the representatives assembled as they called
for more vigorous efforts to win people to the
faith. The official report from the convention was:

Humphrey, an active member of the United

Church of Christ, says that Judeo-Christian influence built the nation and has spearheaded its social
gains.

"We hear the call from people throughout

the world church (it has 10 million members) for
a renewed emphasis on personal conversion and a
more vigorous proclamation of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord."

"My religion is to do good," Humphrey said

recently, "To help those less fortunate ... Helping
one's brother is my religion."
There are, of course, those who wish that
the election of John Kennedy in 1960 had buried
forever the issue of religion in the selection of a
President.
But religion clouds the political air in 1976
-not as an issue to be quietly relegated to the private sphere, but as an object of public scrutiny,
curiosity, wonderment and sometimes nervousness,
when a candidate talks about his relationship with
god.
[source:

Los Angeles Times,

5/30/76]

"NOT THAT ECUMENICAL"

In the May, 1976 issue of the American
Atheist magazine, on page 4, under the title of
"Honest Atheist Causes A Quandry" we reported
on Gloria Perez who was on the payroll of the
United Methodist church as a "community developer" in Chicago.
The United Methodist Church officialdom
was shocked at both the news and the warm, human competency of Ms. Perez.
Repercussions reached the 1976 General
Conference of the United Methodist Church, a
twelve day conclave in Portland, Oregon, in early
May, 1976.
With a focus on the "Perez Issue" and, considerable grassroot pressure to tighten the reins on
its agencies, the United Methodist Church officially ruled that staff members for its boards and agencies have to be Methodists. The ruling specifically
demanded that "members and executive staff' of
the national departments must be "denominational
adherents."
It is unknown what effect

the ruling will

ago,
had
who
ened

Ms. Perez, contacted by telephone in Chicstated that she believes her job is secure. She
received "the usual backlash" from persons
are "ultra religious" but did not feel threatby it in any way.

Others were not so certain. A representative

to the Convention
from Nashville, Tennessee,
called the new ruling "a great blow to ecumenicity." Pointing out that staff members of the
church's boards and agencies have not all been
Methodists, the representative noted that these persons "members
of other communions,"
always
"enriched the process."
.
[source:

Ft. Worth

Star Telegram,

HAPPINESS IS "DOING

5/7/76]

IT"

An unlimited supply of sex is available to

any man who, when gathering a harem, can "color it" religious.
Alex Joseph is the nation's best-known advocate of polygamy. Though most practitioners
prefer to leave their plural marriages in the closet,
Joseph is different.
When outsiders come to see if polygamy
works, Alex Joseph is more than glad to show
them that it does-at least for him and his family.
The reason polygamy succeeds for the Josephs, the wives say, is because Alex Joseph is a
special sort of man.
"Love doesn't contract with polygamy; it
expands," said Judy Joseph. "Alex showed me
that. Due to the necessity of having to love so many women, his ability to love has just expanded ennormously. It's like living in a house full of mirrors; Alex's love just expands all around."
"In everything Alex does," said Joanie Joseph, "he's trying to build the kingdom of god."
August 1976/ American Atheist 7

gan if he believed in prayer- "that somebody

tening up there."

is lis-

"Oh my! If I didn't believe that I'd be scared

to death," Reagan exclaimed.
Reagan recently told a Christian group in
Florida that the time had come "to turn back to
god and reassert our trust in him for the healing of
America" and to reaffirm a belief in the JudeoChristian heritage upon which the nation was
founded.
President Ford has been publicly reticent about his personal faith.
"Jerry Ford doesn't wear his Christianity on
his coat sleeve, and you never hear him talking about it. But he's a Christian, a growing Christian:'
says MIchigan evangelist Billy Zeoli. As the Ford
family's closest spititual adviser and a longtime
friend, he sends the President a weekly memo, usually containing a Scripture verse and a prayer.
In a letter to Zeoli, Ford said: "Because I've
trusted Christ to be my Savior, my life is his ... "
"The President said 'man's wisdom and strength
are not sufficient,' and he quoted Proverbs 3: S-6:
'Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and
do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways
acknowledge him, and he will make straight your
paths.'
A lifelong Episcopalian, Ford frequently attends the "church of the Presidents"-St.
Johns
Episcopal-across
the park from the White House.
Ford encouraged his son, Michael, to attend
Gordon-Conwell
Seminary in Massachusetts, an
evangelical theological school that holds to an inerrant (error-free) view of the Bible.
But Ford smokes a pipe, dances and drinks
coctails-practices
disturbing to some conservative
Christians. And his wife has alarmed others with
her frank and generally liberal views on premarital
sex, abortion and the
women's
movement.

Brown. on the day he announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
said his philosophy was a product of a "liberal humanist tradition."
Although his Jesuit siminary experience was
augmented by pauses for meditation at Trappist
and Zen Buddhist retreat centers, he is basically
Catholic.
Although Brown has refused to pinpoint
specifics of his present Catholicism. he seems unquestionably shaped by his rearing and schooling.
stimulated by heavyweight moral and metaphysical
thinkers and convinced that such interests are in
tune with the times.
"People are seeking and are more interested
in spiritual realities than at any time I can remember," Brown told the editor of the San Francisco
archdiocesan newspaper adding:
"I would like to see a greater commitment
to basic moral values articulated in a credible
way. "
Among other Democratic contenders were
Alabama's Gov. George C. Wallace, a Methodist
who seems to fit a Baptist mold better; Sen. Henry
M. Jackson, a Presbyterian; Rep Morris K. Udall,
who was reared a Mormon but who left the church
because
it bars blacks from the priesthood, and
Sen. Frank Church, a Presbyterian who has called
for renewed dedication to biblical principles of
integrity.
Wallace appears to have been the most vocal
of these candidates about personal faith. At a recent religious gathering in Birmington, he urged a
return to old values and morality and said that he
knew "from experience that god is alive and that
Jesus saves."
Udall, a IS-year member of Congress from
Arizona, considers himself a religious person. But,
he said,"1 have no personal need for organized religious activity."

Religion and philosophy are natural topics

for Carter and Brown, for religion has been the
warp and woof of their training since childhood.

Although Sen. Jackson, a onetime Sunday

school teacher, called himself a "deeply religious
man," he said he never talked about it "until I'm
pushed, and that's as far as I go."

But they speak

tions. Carter's context
his references to liberal
and Reinhold Niebuhr
fundamentalism.

Also worth noting from a religious perspective is Ellen McCormack, the New York Catholic
grandmother running in most state primaries on a
single moral issue-anti-abortion.
Her goal is to promote a constitutional amendment to overturn the

from very different tradiis Southern Baptist, though

theologians like Paul Tillich
set him apart from typical

}{

August 1976/American Atheist 6

1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling permitting abortion during the first six months of pregnancy.

have at levels wehn the policy trickles down to the

level of local functionaries.

And there's Sen. Hubert Humphrey,

a
noncandidate, who many say may nonetheless figure in the nomination struggle at the Democratic
convention.

However, a feeling for it could be had listening to the representatives assembled as they called
for more vigorous efforts to win people to the
faith. The official report from the convention was:

Humphrey, an active member of the United

Church of Christ, says that Judeo-Christian influence built the nation and has spearheaded its social
gains.

"We hear the call from people throughout

the world church (it has 10 million members) for
a renewed emphasis on personal conversion and a
more vigorous proclamation of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord."

"My religion is to do good," Humphrey said

recently, "To help those less fortunate ... Helping
one's brother is my religion."
There are, of course, those who wish that
the election of John Kennedy in 1960 had buried
forever the issue of religion in the selection of a
President.
But religion clouds the political air in 1976
-not as an issue to be quietly relegated to the private sphere, but as an object of public scrutiny,
curiosity, wonderment and sometimes nervousness,
when a candidate talks about his relationship with
god.
[source:

Los Angeles Times,

5/30/76]

"NOT THAT ECUMENICAL"

In the May, 1976 issue of the American
Atheist magazine, on page 4, under the title of
"Honest Atheist Causes A Quandry" we reported
on Gloria Perez who was on the payroll of the
United Methodist church as a "community developer" in Chicago.
The United Methodist Church officialdom
was shocked at both the news and the warm, human competency of Ms. Perez.
Repercussions reached the 1976 General
Conference of the United Methodist Church, a
twelve day conclave in Portland, Oregon, in early
May, 1976.
With a focus on the "Perez Issue" and, considerable grassroot pressure to tighten the reins on
its agencies, the United Methodist Church officially ruled that staff members for its boards and agencies have to be Methodists. The ruling specifically
demanded that "members and executive staff' of
the national departments must be "denominational
adheren ts."
It is unknown what effect the ruling will

ago,
had
who
ened

Ms. Perez, contacted by telephone in Chicstated that she believes her job is secure. She
received "the usual backlash" from persons
are "ultra religious" but did not feel threatby it in any way.

Others were not so certain. A representative

to the Convention
from Nashville, Tennessee,
called the new ruling "a great blow to ecumenicity." Pointing out that staff members of the
church's boards and agencies have not all been
Methodists, the representative noted that these persons "members of other communions,"
always
"enriched the process."
.
[source:

Ft. Worth

Star Telegram,

HAPPINESS IS "DOING

5/7/76]

IT"

An unlimited supply of sex is available to

any man who, when gathering a harem, can "color it" religious.
Alex Joseph is the nation's best-known advocate of polygamy. Though most practitioners
prefer to leave their plural marriages in the closet,
Joseph is different.
When outsiders come to see if polygamy
works, Alex Joseph is more than glad to show
them that it does-at least for him and his family.
The reason polygamy succeeds for the Josephs, the wives say, is because Alex Joseph is a
special sort of man.
"Love doesn't contract with polygamy; it
expands," said Judy Joseph. "Alex showed me
that. Due to the necessity of having to love so many women, his ability to love has just expanded ennormously. It's like living in a house full of mirrors; Alex's love just expands all around."
"In everything Alex does," said Joanie Joseph, "he's trying to build the kingdom of god."
August 1976/ American Atheist 7

Alex Joseph and his nine wives are part of

a small minority of Americans who live in polygamy. There are from 25,000 to 35,000 of them,
mostly in the Western states of Utah, Arizona, Idaho and Nevada, or across the border in Mexico and
Canada.
.
Although most polygamists are not as open
about their life-style as the Josephs, their existence
is fairly easy to discover. Some men list up to 25
children as exemptions on tax returns, and, often
brothers and sisters a few months apart in age sit
together in classrooms.
Various state and federal laws against polygamy, bigamy and cohabitation could be applied
against polygamists, but they rarely are. In Utah,
for instance, there have been no prosecutions since
1969 ..
Polygamists
also face excommunication
from the Mormon Church, whose early leaders
brought plural marriage to Utah. The church has
opposed polygamy since 1890.
Joseph has been excommunicated,
but he is
unlikely to be prosecuted, a spokesman for the
state attorney general's office said. Joseph is not
legally married to any of his wives; therefore he is
not legally a polygamist.
To press misdemeanor fornication charges
against Joseph would appear to many as harrassment, the spokesman said.
Joseph, who says his age is 39, and his wives,
who range in age from 16 to 29, live in three small
houses in Glen Canyon City, a jerry-built little
community of gravel roads, old trailers and tiny
plasterboard houses.
U.S. 89-the main road between Salt Lake
City and Phoenix-passes nearby. There's no reason
to stop, except perhaps for a hamburger at the
roadside cafe (owned by Joseph, who is also in the
health food business) or a fill-up at the grocery
store with gas pumps out in front.
Joseph and his family came here in 1969 after he was excommunicated
and thrown out of a
Mormon colony in Montana.
Joseph spends a lot of time fighting various
legal problems. He seems to enjoy them immensly.
The biggest is an attempt by Joseph's family and
200 other heads of households to lay claim to
38,000 acres of federal land near here under provisions of the Homestead Act. Once again "religion
will be used to cover a claim for tax dollars, in this
August 1976/American Atheist 8

case, public

land.

Joseph sat in a reclining chair in his living

room recently. a revolver strapped to his hip. and
talked about his life.
Joseph's wives sat around the dinner table,
knitting,
talking, writing or listening to him.
First of all, said Joseph. whose two monogamous marriages before he entered into polygamy
ended in divorce, monogamy is "impossible and
unnatural" because "men and women are different,
and that difference will prevent a one-to-one relationship working well. It's an intellectual difference, a difference in disposition, a biological difference.
"How many truly monogamous men are
there, really? Not many, if any. Why not acknowledge that and begin to live with it? The only difference between me and the average guy is that I
do it out in the open.
"My wives can't get jealous of me: what's
there to be jealous abou t? There isn't any possibility in the world of me stepping out on my wife.
Your woman is afraid you're going to find somebody you prefer to her, and that is a threat to your
relationship, but my wives only hope that I'll bring
somebody home who can be added to our relationship."
.
Monogamy, said Joseph, is "killing men off
25 years before they are supposed to go because of
the stress of trying to maintain the masculine image and, at the same time, work for a living and be
faithful to one woman."
"I'm a chauvinist pig, no question about it,"
he said. "The women's liberation movement is going to hate me, but women's liberation didn't get
born out of polygamy. It got born out of monogomy. It was monogamy that was holding women
captive. My wives don't belong to a women's liberation group, and III tell you there isn't a woman
who does who has got the same liberties and freedoms my wives do."
Joseph, born Greek Orthodox and Mormon
convert, now calls himself a fundamentalist Christian.
Joseph says he is one of the happiest men alive. His wives were not interrogated as to their feelings.
happily

"I have simultaneously,

the ability to be
married, divorced, separated, a widower

and engaged," he said. "I am all that right now.

That's what you call emotional elasticity."

written complaints to the sponsor,

Council of Catholic Laity.

Joseph wears the gun at his side because he

thinks some people are genuinely out to get him.

After the American bishops' administrative

board objected at its spring meeting to the booklet,
the 24-member board of the lay organization decided to withdraw it.

[source: St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 3/10/76)

BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY

Vatical theologian Gino Conceti attacked
plans by India to encourage sterilization, saying,
"if there is one area in which the state must absolutely not interfere it is that of procreation.
[source:Washington Post, 3/14/76)

the National

A bishops staff critique sent to the lay group

at the time charged that the booklet reflected "extreme anti-institutionalism"
and secular and humanistic, not Catholic, values.
Bishop James S. Rausch, secretary
bishops, said through a spokesman that the
did not arbitrarily suppress the book but
against continuing it, and the lay group

to the
bishops
advised
agreed.

BOY SCOUTS FAITH IN GOD REAFFIRMED

A national executive of the Boy Scouts of
America has reaffirmed the organization's stand
"that every member subscribe to a belief in god."
In recent years, this scouting tenet has been
challenged in some circles,"Arch Monson, Jr., national Boy Scout president said recently.
"There are those who believe that reverence
is a fine tradition for those who believe in god, but
that it should not deter others from being active
members of scouting."
Mr. Monson told 300 members and guests
of the National Catholic Committee on scouting at
their 24th biennial conference that the scouting
movement "has been steadfast in its philosophy
that faith in god is a necessary part of life."
"Scouting in America has made many
changes in its program and organizational structure
but it never has and never will tamper with its principals," said Monson, a San Francisco business executive.
[source: Philadelphia, 4/30/76)

BISHOPS HALT CRITICAL

BOOK

Under pressure from U.S. Roman Catholic

bishops, the main organization of Catholic lay
members has ceased distribution of a book critical
of American values, the U.S. government and the
Roman Catholic Church.
The 60-page "A Question
of Values"
printed in January, was attacked as "intellectual
pornography" by one bishop and as biased "against
the church, religion and morality" by another in

"Nonsense,"
charged William Sandweg of
Washington, president of the National Council of
Catholic Men. "Why else was the book withdrawn?"
"The fundamental issue here is whether the
bishops should simply remain passive when a Catholic organization attempts sincerely but mistakenly
to palm off a bad piece of work on the dioceses."
Bishop Rausch said.
The bishops' staff critique
ionable these passages:

cited as object-

-"But what about the suffering the church

has failed to relieve, or even acknowledge, and the
suffering it has itself brought into the world? Just
to focus on the last half century, where was the
church when Fascism and Nazism were on the rise
in Europe? Where was it when the Jews were being
rounded up and shipped to oblivion in cattle-cars?
-"No doubt a great deal of what we have
learned about the workings of our federal government has discouraged and depressed us ... For in
the whole complex of revelations about how our
rulers use their power, a cen tral and staggering
truth has em~rged: that, as a practical matter, our
democracy differs from dictatorship in method only .. .in the means by which the few manipulate the
many ...
- "The rigidity of the churches on sexual
morality in general and on contraception, abortion
and divorce in particular may have done more to
discredit their moral authority than any other factor. .. "
The National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly published in Kansas City, first reported the withdrawal of the book, saying that John
August 1976/American Atheist - 9

Cardinal Krol of Philladelphia, former president of

the bishops, and Archbishop Francis Furey of San
Antonio were among the influential bishops raising
the complaints.

partment
faculty at National
University here
charges that the evangelical Summer Institute of
Linguistics (SIL) has engaged in "proselytism"
and neocolonialism" in Columbia.

William Maher, former staff member of the

National Council of Catholic Men and an editor
for the federal government, wrote the book as a
provocative study guide according to Dandweg,
who commissioned the publication.

Main objective of the report is to persuade

the Colombian government not to renew the recently expired contract of SIL, which is operated
by the Wycliffe Bible Translators.

"Basically it was a discussion guide for adults," Sandweg said, "and you can't discuss with
just one side of the argument.
"I think the real issue is what books are
'safe' for Catholics in they eyes of the bishops.
They are wanting to treat us like children."
[source: Washington Post, 11/5/76]

VA. CATHOLIC

PUPILS SHUN

DIMES DRIVE
Catholic schools in the Diocese of Richmond
will not join in the 1976 March of Dimes until a
commission determines
whether any campaign
money goes to abortion-related services.
Bishop Walter F. Sullivan has placed the
question in the hands of the Commission of Christian Education that met recently.
Sister Lourdes Sheehan, superintendent
of
diocesan schools, directed the moratorium because
of the allegations regarding the pro-abortion positions and activities of members of the campaign's
board of directors. After an investigation last year,
the U.S. Catholic Conference gave the March of
Dimes the go-ahead, but Bishop Sullivan is not
satisfied.
A spokesman for the March of Dimes foundation policy prohibits the use of foundation money for any activity related to abortion.
Some critics have claimed that
has shifted its efforts from trying to
fects to promoting a test that tells
mother whether the infant will

the campaign
cure birth dean expectant
be defective.

Abortion, the critics say, is then promoted

as the alternative to a devective child.

According to the anthropology

professors,
"the analyzed objective of the organization is to
penetrate and dominate (Indian) communities by
means of religious ideology that is the servant of
neocolonialism's
plans, politics and conceptions."
Al though the report acknowledges that the
Wycliffe organization is n?t menti~n~d in SIL li~~
erature , "nor any kind of proselytizing activity,
it asserts that "there is a clause in all their contracts which includes 'the moral betterment of the
communities.'
This is how the "Wycliffe Christian
soldiers" make a pathway into Catholic Latin
America.
The National
University
anthropologists
charge that SIL "serves to legitimate imperialism,
making the racist character of its missionary objectives acceptable. Its purpose is to veil the advance
of imperialism with eyes fixed on the celestial vision of another life. They also attempt to obscure
the process of colonialism suffered by the Indians
for five centuries with the thesis that the Indi ins'
state of 'prostration'
is due to their lack of technical knowledge and revealed truth."
In response to the report, James Wroughton,
SIL's director for Peru, commented that it "has the
appearance of being impartial but has a lot of
loaded materials in it. Our doors are open all the
time for improving our operation to better meet
the goals of the governments with whom we work
and the needs of the Indian people."
With regard to the charge of "proselytism,"
Wroughton said,"We would like to see people come
to Christ. If that is what is meant, we'll let it stand.
We make available the basic document of Christianity, which we think is clearly superior to paganism.
Proselytism implies something imposed which we
do not subscribe to. If if it is paternalistic to apply
modern medical methods to human needs, we'll
have to be termed paternalistic."
[source: Washington Post, 6/18/75]

[source: Washington Post, 3/19176]

****************************************
BIBLE GROUP ASSAILED
A report

issued by the Anthropology

August 1976/American Atheist 10

De-

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer

said, "Intellect is invisible to the man who has
none. "

VATICAN ASSAILS UNBRIDLED

SEX

siveness of behavior."

Assailing "the unbridled exaltation of sex,"

the Vatican renewed the Roman Catholic Church's
condemnation of sex outside marriage but broke
new ground in the treatment of homosexuals.

The corruption of morals has increased, and

one of the most serious indications of this corruption is "the unbridled exaltation of sex," the declaration said.

While condemning homosexuality as intrinsically wrong, the Vatican statement drew a distinction between "transitory"
and "incurable"
homosexuals. It said the latter should "be treated
with understanding" and "their culpability ...
judged with prudence."

"That sexual function has its true meaning

and moral rectitude only in true marriage."

The 6,000 word "Declaration on Certain

Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics" was issued by
the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith
with the approval of Pope Paul VI.
Vatican experts said the document
was
aimed at those persons challenging the traditional
sexual morals of the church, including some priests
and theologians. Among ... the sexual acts condemned in the statement were premarital sex and
masturbation.
The president of the United States conference of bishops, Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin
of Cincinnati, called the document a "clear, pastoral and timely proclamation of values which are
fundamental to the defense of human dignity."
The Vatican declaration asked parents and
teachers to educate the young on sexual matters
with prudence and with "information
suited to
their age." It said the mass media, the entertainment world and artists and writers "must show
tact, discretion, moderation and a true sense of
values" so as not to add to "the growing permis-

It said masturbation is "a seriously disordered act," premarital sexual relations are "contrary
to Christian doctrine," and "homesexual acts are
intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of."
But it said a distinction is drawn, "and it
seems with some reason, between homosexuals
whose tendency comes from a false education,
fro~ a lack of normal sexual development, from
habit, from bad example, or from other similiar
causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable."
It is said this latter category of homosexuals
must be treated by the church "with understanding
and sustained in the hope of overcoming their inability to fit into society. Their culpability will be
judged with prudence. But no pastoral method can
be employed which would give moral justification
to these actions on the grounds that they would
be consonant with the condition of such people."
The declaration, which generally avoided discussion of sexual acts within marriage, called attention to Pope Paul's 1968 encyclical renewing the
Church's condemnation
of artificial methods of
contraception.
[source: Washington Post, 1/15/76]

OB~OmNHI~1I0llN~~

~~ED3(l,1E

COMMUNI5I$.JN THE
GRaNDJ

[source: Austin American Statesman, 6/7 i76]

..~
August 1976/American Atheist - 11

KISSINGER

& THE PONTIFF

When See. of Stall' Henry Kisscngcr LlnLi

Pope Paul VI unite in opposing something. it is a
reasonable
supposition
that that something
will
soon come to pass.
Thus it seems probable that the Italian Comunist Party (PCI) will he a partner in one of the
governments
that succeeds that of Prime Minister
Aldo Moro.
Ever since his visit to Western Europe early
in April Kissinger has been urging continental
statesman to do what they can to keep the PCI out
of power in Rome. Since Dec. 1975. the Central
Intelligence
Agency, with Kissinger's enthusiastic
support. reportedly
has pumped $6 million into
the coffers of anti-Communist
Italian politicians.
In a European version of the domino theory,
Kissinger holds that PCI participation
in an Italian
coalition
government
ultimately
would lead to
Communist
power-sharing
in France, Portugal and
Spain, withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe and
the collapse of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
In December,
the Italian Catholic Church,
which in recent years has followed a policy of
pray-and-let-live
toward
the PCI, declared
that
voting for a Marxist party is "incompatible
with
the profession of the Christian faith."

Communists
participate
in or control the
govcrruncnts
of :: I of Italy's 22 cities north ofand
including Naples (Rome is the single exception).
five of its ::0 regions and a third of its 94 provinces. On the national level, 179 Communists
sit in
Italy's 630 mem ber parliarnen t.
There is no legerdemain to the PCl's success
Where the Christian Democrats have offered the Italian people a bureaucratic
arrogance. internecine
squabbling and corruption.
the Communists in the
main have provided energetic. unified, honest govcrruuen t.
Can Italy's problems be solved without the
PCI') If the Communists
can be kept out. do the}
pose a greater risk in opposition than they would
in the government.
where they would have to accept a greater degree of responsibility
for their actions?
Kissinger and Pope Paul may be correct in
their belief that the accession to power of the PCI
would be a disaster. But when the average Italian
looks at what successive Christian Democratic governments have brought him-inadequate
schooling,
poor medical facilities, substandard housing, cronyism and corruption-he
may be forgiven if he does
not share that perception.
[source:

MOONIE

Austin American

BUILDINGS

Statesman,

1/18/76]

TAX-FREE?

Pope Paul VI, who on an international

level
has followed a Kissingerian policy of detente toward the Communist
world, was declared to be "in
profound
communion"
with the bishops' statement.

The City Tax Commission

is deciding whether the New Yorker Hotel and two valuable pieces
of New York City real estate which Sun Myung
Moon's Unification
Church has acquired over the
last 12 months qualify for tax exemptions.

What both Kissinger and the pontiff ignore

is that the PCI has for some months been the most
potent force in Italian politics-and
Italians seem
to like it that way.

The exemptions,
if granted, the self-ordained
South Korean reverend and his church will involve
waiver of more than $1_2 million in real estate
taxes for fiscal 1977, which starts July I.

Nor is this any new, aberrant development.

Since 1948, the Christian Democratic
Party that
has dominated each of Italy's 36 post-war governments has seen its popular vote dwindle from 48.5
per cent to 35 per cent. Over the same period, the
Communist vote has soared from 19 per cent to 33
per cent.

"Granting
tax exemptions
to any religious
group is a complicated,
tricky busines," said Philip
Click, deputy administrator
for real property assessment
of the City Finance
Administration.

The United States funded non-Communist

political groups in Italy beginning in 1948 for almost 20 years, ending after the covert activity was
disclosed
by Ramparts magazine
in 1967. A
Washington
source said the Ford Administration
recently ordered it resumed.
August

1976/ American

Atheist

12

To qualify, he said, a group must show that

it has tax exempt status as a religious group from
the Internal Revenue Service, as Moon does, and
that the property is being used exclusively for religious purposes. That is less clear.
The Jehovah's Witnesses two years ago had
their vast local real estate tax exemptions unsuccessfully challenged, The Moonies claim that their

printing and fund-raising operations, like the Witnesses'. are all to further their religion.
In 1954, when Moon founded his church in
South Korea, he was 33, penniless and excommunicated elder of the Presbyterian church. Today he
claims 3 million followers worldwide, 30,000 of
them in the U.S.
The 2000-room New Yorker hotel at 34th
St. and Eighth Av. was bought by the church in
early May.
The price was "somewhere between $6 million and $7 million," according to a real estate
broker, who helped negotiate' the deal for the New
Yorker Corp., part of Hilton Corp.
A church spokesman said the money for the
purchase-which called for 50 per cent cash-came
from an "overseas contribution."
This is all so fabulous. It's hard for me to
believe," said Eyssel, indicating that the New Yorker which had been closed for four years, was a "terrific drain" on the Hilton Corp. Hilton still owes,
and has agreed to pay, $1,110,318 in back taxes,
he said.
The Moon group had approached him "only
recently," Eyssel said.
The negotiations
and in secret.

had proceeded

quickly,

The Unification Church has also quietly purchased a large industrial building at 38-38 Ninth
St., Long Island City, it was learned. Renamed East
Sun Building, it is used as a printing plant. It was
bought in October, 1975, reportedly for $450,000.
The assessed value is $1,555,000.
The Unification Church's third major purchase here has been the eight-story Columbia University Club at 4 W. 43rd St., bought in May, 1975
for $1.2 million. Its assessed value is $1,025,000.
This was to be the church's U.S. headquarters, according to a spokesman, but the church was expanding so quickly that it needed the 42-story
New Yorker.
In Tarrytown, and other Westchester County
communities where Unification owns property, citizens have challenged the tax-exempt status on the
grounds that the group is using the property for
commercial purposes.
They charge that Moon is violating zoning
laws by crowding large numbers of his youthful

followers onto the church's estates and putting

them to work crating ginseng tea and other products that the Moonies sell door-to-door.
[source: New York Post, 5/13/76]

COLLEGE AID
The U.S. Department of Health, Education,
and Welfare, has announced the award of a number
of grants "designed to help developing two and
four year colleges achieve financial stability and
greater academic strength." Church-related colleges
profited
from the windfall to the tune of
$23,688,000 under the program authorized under
Title III of the amended Higher Education Act of
1965. Seventeen
Protestant
colleges received
$13, 958,000, while ten Roman Catholic colleges
received $9,730,000.
Kentucky's
Higher Education
Assistance
Authority reported in August that it had distributed $310,000
in grants to students attending
church-related colleges. Protestant colleges got 292
of the state scholarship grants, while Catholic colleges get 169. Another $129,574 remains to be distributed.
The public is purposefully kept uninformed
on government grants of money to religious and
private colleges and many millions of dollars have
been diverted to such schools. Perhaps with a better informed public these questionable gifts of our
money can be stopped. An example of what we
can do was recently illustrated in Colorado. The
Colorado legislature had before it a bill to provide
$2.2 million in loans and scholarships to churchrelated colleges. Opposition to the bill, led by the
Denver Chapter of Americans United, was so great
the bill was rejected. It, however, takes concerned
citizens to accomplish this.
[source: United Americans for Public Schools, Winter
75-76]

SINGING

NUN SKIPS TAXES

Sister Sourire, the "singing

corded the hit song "Dominique"
trouble with Belgian tax collectors.

nun" who rein 1964, is in

The tax people have initiated proceedings

against Sister Sourire's
superior, claiming that
the singing nun failed to pay her taxes. She is said
to
owe the government at least ten thousand
pounds.
The convent has thus far refused to open its
doors to the tax collectors.
[source: Moneyworth Magazine, 6/9/75]
August 1976/ American Atheist 13

Speaking

for
ANNE

The formerly forbidden subject of abortion

has been debated furiously in the media for a decade. Despite this fact and its legalization by the
U.S. Supreme Court over three and one-half years
ago, a woman's right to choose abortion remains an
emotionally volatile issue, inspiring regular lettersto-the-editor,
syndicate columns, TV fetus commercials, church pronouncements,
political party
platform debates, picketing of clinics, legislative
reaction, court challenges and some of the most intense lobbying in the history of Congress.
Since the subject remains viable, durable and
so controversial, I am going to present some talking points for those of you who still must argue the
subject. In my speaking before civic, school and
church groups and on radio and TV talk shows, I
find the same kinds of questions popping up in all
audiences. Here are some typical questions with
answers that seemed to work for me-a mini debaters' handbook. (The material that follows, reprinted with permission, is from the book Abortion
is a Blessing by Anne Nicol Gaylor, published by
Psychological Dimensions Inc., New York City,
and available in hardback from the Society of Separationists, P. O. Box 2117) Austin, TX, 78768, for
$5.50 including postage and handling. The book
was reviewed in theAmerican Atheist magazine
of May, 1976.)
Question: How can your group condone
abortion when it is murder?
Obviously we do not regard abortion as murder. We do not equate an embryo or fetus with a
human being. While we recognize that there is everything in a human embryo to produce a person,
we know that substantial growth and development
are necessary before any person exists. In reality
everyone does distinguish between potential and
actual existence. You do not insist, for example,
that an acorn is an oak tree. If someone drives over
an acorn in your yard, you do not rush out and exclaim, "Why did you destroy my oak tree?" Yet
there is everything in an acorn to produce an oak
tree except growth and development. You do not
insist that the egg you ate for breakfast was a
chicken, yet a fertilized egg has everything in it to
produce a chicken except growth and development. If you go to the store to buy apples and are
given a handful of seeds, you will not pay for apples, even though the storekeeper might argue correctly that indeed apple seeds do produce apples.
Just as blueprints are not a completed building, so
a human fertilized egg is not a person. A conceptus, an embryo or fetus is potential life. Birth makes
August

1976/American

Atheist

14

Women

GAYLOR

babies and a great deal of growth and development

must go on before a fetus can sustain life, other
than parasitically.
At the end of the second month of development, and most abortions in the U.S. are performed before the second month, an embryo is approximately
an inch in length and weighs onethirteenth of an ounce. To say that this embryo in
its primitive development is a human being is an
affront to honesty. Think for a moment what you
would do with such an embryo if you had one.
You could not rock it, or feed it, or sing to it. All
that you could do would be to put it on the shelf
because it is an embryo; it is not a baby. It is pottentiallife; it is not a human being.
Question: How can you support abortion
when that unborn child that is murdered might
turn out to be another Beethoven or Shakespeare?
While it is possible that an aborted embryo
or fetus might have turned out to be another Beethoven or Shakespeare, it is equally possible it
might have turned out to be another Genghis
Khan, another Adolf Hitler. As one proponent of
abortion
has so aptly said, the overwhelming
chances are that it would have turned out to be
just another Joe Blow. It is possible to speculate
endlessly about what might have happened, about
the nonexistent.
In our world of almost four billion persons,
it is highly probable that a Beethoven or Shakespeare already exists who will never see a piano or
learn to read, because the child lives in a Chicago
ghetto or Manila slum or Rio de Janiero favela. The
potential of millions of children already born will
never be realized because of malnutrition, illness,
and poverty. Antiabortionists,
in their obsession
with the quality of life, ignore the quality of life.
Their consuming concern for embryos rarely is
paralleled by a concern for children already born.
Question: You say a woman should be able
to make this decision for herself. Why shouldn't the
father be able to say whether or not an abortion
can be done? After all, the child belongs to him,
too, doesn't it?
We believe no woman should have to bear a
child she does not want. Compulsory pregnancy
compounds problems; it does not solve them. We
are against enforced pregnancy no matter who is
doing the enforcing-whether
it is the state, the
church, or an individual man.

From a practical point of view, if a couple

does not agree on something as basic and important as having a child, what kind of parents are
they going to be? What kind of marriage must they
have? At best, they are going to produce a halfwanted child.
And why shouldn't pregnancy be a woman's
decision when she contributes so much more to
the pregnancy than does the man? An ejaculation,
which takes a few seconds, can not be equated fairly with nine months of gestation, and delivery.
You must remember that pregnancy is not much
fun. For many women, by the time they have quit
vomiting they have started to bulge, and the whole
process can be nine months of acute discomfort.
If a woman produced one or two eggs in her
lifetime then what happened to those eggs would
be of great concern, not only to her, but to society. But she doesn't produce one or two eggs, she
produces about 400 mature eggs. Obviously they
can't all become persons. Clearly society can afford
to let her determine for herself which eggs she sees
through to personhood.
Question: I can see abortion in cases of rape
or incest or if there is a strong possibility
that a
fetus is retarded or deformed, but if some sixteenyear-old tart goes out and gets herself pregnant,
why should she be able to have an abortion?
She should have an abortion because no sixteen-year-old girl should have to bear a child. No
woman, regardless of age or circumstances, should
be forced to have a baby. You are viewing pregnancy and the consequent birth of a baby as puni hment. What a wretched reason for a baby to be
born! A teen-aged girl who becomes pregnant has
a legitimate claim to anyone's sympathy, to any
doctor's help. She is physically immature, mentally
immature, insolvent, unhappy, her education incomplete. What sense does it make to compel her
to become a mother when the safe, simple alternative of abortion is available?
Question: Don't
legalizing of abortion?
Michigan prove this?

that the Catholic Church has a lot of money. A

comparison is useful heres. In one of the western
states a few years ago a modified ban on cans was
proposes and went out to referendum.
Polls
showed that an overwhelming percentage of the
state's voters would favor the referendum
and
wished to put an end to the waste of basic materials and the unsightliness of scattered cans. Then
those who objected to the can-ban got busy. They
launched an expensive public-relations
campaign
deliberately
designed to cause apprehension,
inferring a can-ban might mean a recession in the
state's economy and a consequent loss of jobs.
In the end the can-ban, whose backers had spent a
small sum, failed.
In Michigan, early polls showed 56 per cent
of the voters favored legalization of abortion. Opponents, who hired an advertising agency, staged a
three-week blitz before the referendum, saturating
television throughout
the state with antiabortion
commercials. As an example of their diligence,
they came over to Green Bay, Wisconsin, to place
commercials, since Green Bay serves some of the
upper peninsula of Michigan. Gory and inaccurate
brochures found their way to almost everyone's
door; one woman reported receiving thirteen pieces
of mail and personal delivery. The Catholic Church
used its tax-exempt machinery openly for the political purpose of helping defeat a referendum, and
of course it won. Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.
The lesson to be learned from the Michigan
referendum is that advertising campaigns that are
not countered, may sway voters.
It is of questionable
constitutionality,
of
course, to put individual rights out to referendum.
It's as undemocratic as letting Alabama and Mississippi decide whether blacks should vote. Basic human rights, including a woman's right to control
her own reproductive life, are guaranteed by the
Constitution. They are not to be decided by popular referenda or church edicts or male legislatures.

most people object to the

Doesn't the referendum in

Most of the polls done in 1974 show the

country about evenly divided on the issue, with
those persons favoring legal abortion a few percentage points ahead.

General opinion is no proof of

truth; for the generality of men
are ignorant.
-UNTO THEE I GRANT.

Antiabortionists , love to refer to the 1972

Michigan referendum, in which a proposition to
legalize abortion was defeated 61-39 per cent, but
that particular referendum probably only proves

August 1976/ American Atheist - 15

letters

to the

Dear Editor,
It is obviously IMPORTANT that you get
some additional office staff. ALSO: MAYBE YOU
CAN SOLICIT A "TRAVELLING
VICE-PRESIDENT" at the convention-or through the Newsletter. SOMEONE WHO IS RETIRED and WHO
CAN FINANCE THEIR OWN EXPENSES.
Such a person to ORGANIZE CHAPTE RS;
give lectures/speeches appear on radio, T.V., assist in publ ic relations, perhaps be groomed for
"higher S.O.S. office".
Victor Kay
Los Angeles, CA
Dear Mr. Kay,
The printing of your letter is an open invitation for someone to apply for the job of travelling vice president.

Editor

had to staff the telephones at the American Atheist

Centre as thousands of calls poured in. All of them
said, "Madalyn, you can't quit." Some of the reo
sponse was even in the form of money!
It is very hard to know the job that must be
done and to coax, wheedle, beg, cajole, shameand
badger American A theists to get money to evenapproach the task.
You do NOT support us financially as you
should. American Atheists have better educetions
and better jobs than any other ethnic group. Many
Atheists are owners of businesses. There is no reason for you-and
I am speaking to just you-who
are reading these words this moment-there is no
reason that you are not giving more financial support. I know you can afford it. If you were going
to church that institution would really shake you
down-as a matter of fact you give the churches
money year after year now since your taxes are
twice what they should be in order for the
churches to be absolutely tax free.

Someone out there won't you please contact

us?
The Editor

If you want me to "hang in there" as you so

often write-it
is going to be necessary for you to
back me with a little of the green-and even to
write a kind word now and then.

Madalyn,

Madalyn

It was widely publicized across the nation

that you had "quit". What is the story, since obbiously you have not?
Paul Marsa
Menlo Park, NJ

Dear Editor,
Why not come out in the open with the
Society too and change the name to something like
The American Atheist Society, Inc?

Dear Paul,
The period January, 1976 to April,
1976
was one of the blackest in my entire life. Personal
familial difficulties occurred, as all the "Insiders"
in our organization know. In addition, the American Atheist community was not supporting the organization financially to enable us to do the necessary job. The Chapters were in a "shake out" period where every nut, weirdo and half-ass in the
world was causing troubles.
At a news conference in Dallas I told that
city that anyone who wanted to lead the "Atheists" there could do so, that I quit.
The story was picked up and carried nationwide and the next four days every available person

August 1976/American Atheist 16

Roy Meadows
Columbia, MO
Dear Roy,
At the 6th Annual American Atheist Convention, held in New York City in April of this
year, the Board of Directors voted unanimously
to change the name of the organization to American Atheists, Inc. The change will become effective after we are finished with the litigation in
which the home office is now involved. The projected time is as of August 1, 1976.
The Editor

Editorial
A Guest Editorial by lloyd Thoren
[reading time: 3% minutes)

An editorial is an article in a newspaper or

other periodical presenting the opinion of the publisher.This is a guest editorial. The author and his
wife were treated with warm hospitality in Austin
at the American Atheist Centre. This made our
stay herea joy and pleasure during our week long
visit.
Concern with the cause of promoting Atheism is my, and hopefully your, first priority.
A long distance away is the achievement of
our goal of letting everyone in every Christian
country know through newspapers, radio, television, paperback, telephone and any other media
that: [1] There are lots of us; [2] We are good
peopleasking for equal treatment under the law;
and [3] Like any group, each of us is an individual,
with different ideasabout right and wrong.
Living in our great U.S.A, many of us have
becomecomplacent about an important freedom
and havepermitted our country to slip close to becoming a Christian theocracy. The sad fact is that
Christiansown and control vast amounts of every
news media, and as a result, we have lost our
voice. Imagine yourself in the condition of losing
your voice. You would be frantic. I have known a
few people who have lost their larynx, and most
of them have quietly dropped out of mind and
sight.
Let's look at an important difference betweenthosewho: (1) havea voice but refuse to use
it, (2) havea voice but are prevented from speaking, and (3) those who have had their larynxes
surgicallyremovedto prevent the spread of malignancies.
The last situation is rare, and unfortunate,
and we can easily understand the many reasons
why suchpersonsmay become recluses. The written word can be neither fortissimo nor pianissimo.
It sits simply on a piece of paper, with letters arrangedinto words, each following the other with
varietiesof punctuations.
Now then let's look at those unwilling to
speakout. What are the reasons which motivate
suchpersonsto be that way. There may be many,
but let's considerthe major reason, FEAR: fear of
embarrassment,fear of losing one's job by saying
the wrong thing, fear of not speaking well. Isn't
it sad that people can live thei r enti re lives suffering from fear, fear, and still more fear. Somehow,

I don't feel like writing any more about such cowardly, gutless, easily intimidated
automatons.
These non-entities, for all practical purposes, do
not exist.
Lastly we have ourselves, American Atheists, living in the land of the free, and the home of
the brave, now being denied radio and television
time by Christian owners of most media. Many stations do nothing all day and night but broadcast
religious drivel. These religious, repetitious incantations incessantly bombard our ear drums. The
Christians have a great tool for effectively brainwashing the country's young people.
Occasionally a young person will tell me,
"You're the first Atheist I've ever met". Sad, isn't
it.
One of the greatest discoveries I made about
the time I learned the truth of Atheism was, "Surely all of those babbling, pompous people can't be
wrong, but they are." Really a simple fact, but for
me an incredibly important piece of knowledge.
It took me a very long time to become an
Atheist because all I ever heard in my youth was
preacher-talk, and if I asked a question, I got louder talk. Are we going to permit today's youth to
struggle out of the abysmal hole of ignorance like
I had to do, or shall we give them a boost?
Now is the time for all of us to sacrifice.
Now is the time, we must sacrifice. Our voice must
get on the "air waves", or we are doomed to extinction. We must now use sharper wits, more of
our money, and a lot more of our energies.
We want a voice, and with your help, we're
going to get one somehow, someway.
Let's not suffer the little children any longer.
We can and will get this job done.
There is a way to get our voice across the entire country to hear the word.
THE ATHEIST WORD
What is the way?-do something now, right
now.
This is the end of this editiorial. Pleasetake
a minute, and do a little something in the next few
minutes of your life to help the little children.

J11~( ,.---;-' ~
1 . -1;;-;;- Thank

you,

August 1976/ American Atheist - 17

American

Atheist

The U.S. Congress

23 June 1970
Austin, Texas

Program 56
KTBC Radio
Hello there,

This is Madalyn Murray O'Hair,

Atheist, back to talk with you again.

American

There is no mention of god or of Jesus

Christ in the Constitution
of the United States. Often people feel that this was an oversight, and that
if the founding fathers had it to do over again,
there would be such a mention.
Don't kid yourself. There has been a strong
fight, in every generation to get god into the constitution,
and I want to acquaint you with those
efforts now.
On October 27th, 1789, the "First Presbytery Eastward in Massachusetts and New Hampshire" made a protest to George Washington because there was no "explicit
acknowledgement
of
the only true god and Jesus Christ whom he has
sent, somewhere in the Magna Charta of our country."
In 1793, the year Philadelphia was stricken
by the yellow fever, the Rev. John Mason preached
a sermon in which he declared the plague was sent
as a visitation from god -because he was not recognized in the supreme law of the land. At this time,
as you will recall, the capital of the United States
was situated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In 1803, the Reverend Samuel B. Wylie,
Doctor of Divinity,
of the University of Pennsylvania preached a sermon in which he said, "Did
not the framers of this instrument
in this ... resemble the fool mentioned in Psalms 14: 1-3, who
said in his heart, 'There is no god'?"
In 1811 Samuel Austin, Doctor of Divinity,
afterwards president of the University of Vermont,
preached a sermon in Worcester, Massachusetts,
in which he said that lack of recognition of god
was the "capital defect" in the Constitution,
which
"will issue inevitably in the destruction of the nation".

never

Of all the ministers of the time who could

reconcile themselves to the new order of
August 1976/American

Atheist - 18

Radio

Series

and the Religionists

things, the Rev. Thimothy
Dwight of Yale College
was foremost and most insistent. In 1812 he said,
"We commenced our national existence, under the
present system, without
god." In 1813 he said,
"The grossest nations and individuals, in their public acts and in their declarations, manifestos, proclamations, and so on always recognize the superintendency of a Supreme Being."
.
By 1844 with persistence they were able to
influence a candidate for president of the United
States, and on January 18, 1844, James Buchanan
introduced
into the United States Senate a memorial inspired by the religionists demanding that
god be recognized, Christ acknowledged as the Savior, and the Bible made the supreme authority in
law.
It is rather interesting to note that James
Buchanan was involved in the infamous Osten Manifesto which pressed for the annexation of Cuba to
America, as a slave state. He became president in
1856, although he did not win a majority of the
popular vote.
Finally a national organization was founded
to force the acceptance of the recognition of god
in the constitution.
This was called "The National
Reform Association",
organized in 1863, in Pittsburgh, Penna., and with a journal called "The
Christian
Statesman"
first
published
in 1867.
The first attempt of this organization to put
god in the Constitution
was in 1874 when a Bill
was reported by a committee
in Congress in that
year. Here it is:
"43rd Congress, 1st Session, House of Representatives, Report No. 143.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF GOD
AND
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
IN THE CONSTITUTION"
February

18, 1874-0rdered

to be printed.

Mr. Benjamin F. Butler from the Committee

on the Judiciary, submitted the following:
The Committee

on the Judiciary,

to whom

referred the petition of E. C. Goulet and

, askingCongressfor "an acknowledgment of
ighty god and the Christian religion" in the
itution of the United States, having considthe matter referredto them, respectfully pray
to report:
"That, upon examination even of the meagre
s by the fathers of the Republic in the conion which framed the Constitution, they find
the subject of this memorial was most fully
carefullyconsidered,and then, in that conven,decided,after gravedeliberation, to which the
ect was entitled, that, as this country, the
ndation of whose government they were then
lng, wasto be the home of the oppressed of all
ions of the earth, whether Christian or pagan,
in full realization of the dangers which the
n of church and state had imposed upon so
y nationsof the old world, with great unanimthat it wasinexpedientto put anything into the
stitution or frame of government which might
construedto be a reference to any religious
or doctrine.

ent

Freethinkers

in the United

States capital.

The following is an important part of that

hearing. Rev. Dr. McAllister made the main argument for the amendment, and the chairman of the
Judiciary Committee asked him what he meant by
the phrase regarding Jesus Christ's will as being supreme authority in civil affairs.
"Chairman:
will?

What do you refer to as his revealed

"Dr. McAllister: The Bible.

"Chairman: Then you wish the Constitution to recognize the Bible as supreme authority in civil affairs, do you not?
"Or. McAllister: Yes, sir.
"Chairman: Then the supreme authority-that
is
the law-in civil affairs must be construed and
enforced by the courts, must it not?
"Dr. McAllister: Certainly.

And they further find that this decision was

ted by our Christian fathers with such great
imity that in the amendments which were
ards proposed in order to make the Constin more acceptable to the nation, none has
beenproposedto the states by which this wise
ination of the fathers has been attempted to
changed.
Whereforeyour committee report that it is
pedient to legislate upon the subject of the
memorial, and ask that they be discharged
the further consideration therof, and that this
rt, togetherwith the petition, be laid upon the

"
In 1896, again the plea was introduced in
ress.On March 11, 1896 the Committee on
Judiciarygaveit a hearing.
The proposed amendment to the Constin would havemade it read asfollows:
''We, the people of the United States (acledging Almighty god as the source of all
and authority in civil government, the Lord
Christasthe ruler of nations, and his revealed
assupremeauthority in civil affairs,) in order
rm a moreperfect union, etc."
The'freethinkers' of the nation rallied to the
and appearedat the hearings in Congress.
includedSamuelP.'Putnam, President of the
ught Federation of America, General WilBirney and Dr. W, A. Croffut, two promin-

"Chairman: Then the next step would be that the

construction of the Bible would be thrown into the
courts, and you would have conflicting decisions?"
Actually what the Reverend Doctor McAllister had in mind was that the church should interpret the Bible!! and that civil administration of law
would necessarily then become a function of the
church.
Both in the 60th, and the 61st Congress, this
amendment to drag god into the supreme law of
the land was again introduced, but at no time, except the first, in 1874, did a committee make a report on it.
Up to the year 1910 there were sixty-nine
religious measures of this nature introduced into
the Congress of the United States. All of them
failed. Let's look at a few of the others, at random.
In 1888 Senator Henry W. Blair of New
Hampshire introduced an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Section 2 of which
read: "Each state in this Union shall establish and
maintain a system of free public schools, adequate
for the education of all the children living therein,
between the ages of six and sisteen years inclusive,
in the common branches of knowledge, and in virtue, morality, and the principles of the Christian
religion."
The religious community was especially furious about the delivery of mails on Sundav=and
August 19761 American Atheist - 19

their battle against that was early in our republic's

history. On January 4, 1811, a petition was sent in
from the Synod of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, to
"Prohibit
mail stages and post-riders from traveling
and post offices from being kept open on Sunday."
This was referred to the Postmaster General. On
the 18th, 25th, and 31st of the same month, similar petitions were presented from other rei igious
bodies. The Postmaster General answered the petitioners that he could not comply with their demands. And four times, on January 3, 1812, on
June 15, 1812, on January 27,1815
and on February 10, 1815 more petitions were presented and
each time the Committee of the House of Representatives decided to take no action on them. The
religious persons were so angry that they placed
chains across streets, secured by padlocks to pre
vent the mail coaches from passing.
On May 21, 1888, another bill was introduced into Congress which would have prohibited
any
mail
matter
being
"collected,
assorted,
handled, or delivered during any part of the first
,cay of the week." i.e. Sunday.
What no one seems to realize, is that with
this kind of persistence, irrationality always wins.
Do you get any mail on Sunday?
The history of chaplains in Congress is an interesting one. When the first Continental Congress
came into session, it was proposed that proceedings
be opened with prayer. The proposal met at first
with opposition. Afterwards it was decided to have
prayer and the Rev. Dr. Jacob Duche', rector of
Christ Church, Philadelphia, was invited to officiate. However, Duche' later turned traitor to our
cause of independence,
tried to induce George
Washington to do likewise, was compelled to leave
the country, and had his property confiscated by
our infant republic.
When the Constitutional
convention met in
1787 the suggestion was made again that prayers
should start the deliberations, and at that time, the
idea was defeated.
However, when it came to the new government going into operation,
the religionists won.
And James Madison, in a letter to Edward Livingston, written on July 10, 1882 spoke of this: "It
was not with my approbation
that the deviation
from it took place in Congress, when they appointed chaplains, to be paid from the national treasury.
It would have been a much better proof to their
constitutions
of their pious feel ing if the members
had contributed
for the purpose a pittance from
their own pockets."

August 1976/American Atheist - 20

There has been continu ing opposition to

chaplains in Congress. On December 27, 1839,
a heated debate was held in the House upon the
subject, when a motion was made to reconsider the
vote on the resolution
which authorized the appointment
of chaplains.
On
December
7, 1840,
Representative
Cooper of Georgia asked permission to offer a bill
abolishing the salary of chaplains. Many times in
the 29th Congress, protests were made against the
illegal chaplain imposition and on the 22nd of December, 1845, when thirteen candidates for chaplain were before the House seeking appointment.
In the Senate in 1850 Senator Underwood
presented a petition
praying Congress to abolish
the office of chaplain. When a chaplain was to be
elected before the Civil War the fight was on again,
and on February 28th, 1860, blossomed into a verbal brawl.
As it stands there is no legal authority for
chaplains, their appointment
or their pay. It is
an arbitrary proceeding, without authority of law,
and contrary to the Constitution.
Funds are taken
which belong to you. A national chaplaincy, no
less than a national church, is an establishment of
religion.
Today, there is no more fighting. The chaplains have won hands' down, and yes, the pay is
$30,000 a year, and yes, you pay for that.
This is all we have time for now-but
later, believe me!

more

This informational
broadcast is brought to
you as a public service by the Society of Separationists,
Inc., a non-profit,
non-political,
taxexempt, educational organization dedicated to the
complete
and absolute separation of state and
church. This series of American Atheist Radio programs is continued
through
listener generosity.
The Society of Separationists,
(Inc.) predicates its
philosophy
on American Atheism.
For more in
formation,
or for a free copy of the script of this
program, write to P. O. Box 2117, Austin, Texas.
That zip is 78767. If you want the free copy of
this particular script ask for number 56. The ad
dres, again, for you is P. O. Box 2117, Austin,
Texas, and that zip, again, is 78767.
I wi II be with you next week, same day of
the week, same time, same station. Until then, I
do thank you for listening and 'goodbye' for now.
End.

The American

Atheist

HONOR

Centre

ROll

BUILDING FUND CONTRIBUTIONS

(alphabetically listed)
Emmy Anderson

$5.00

H. Curtis Broughton

$5.00

Patt Bush

$20.00

William J. Ford

$10.00

Robert C. Harder

$50.00

Ardo Kasbrian

$50.00

Jim W. Logan

$100.00

.John J. Lugert

$50.00

Kirk Mahonev

$10.00

Dorothy Mitchell
and four anonymous friends
($20.00 each)
Morris and Edith Perry

$100.00
$5.00

Noah L. Powell

$10.00

Rudolph Roshanka

$10.00

Robert Sims

$10.00

George Smith

$20.00

Bernhard J. Strand

$50.00

Robert and Helen Zecher

Total
$508.00
(Received up through July 1,
1976. Contributions received
'fter this date will be reported
in next month's issue.)

$3.00

We thank you, very much.

Balance still owing: $46,660.40

The Myth
HENRY
A common plot of science fiction stories is
that of an alien force invading earth and, by some
mysterious process, taking over the minds and bodies of normal human beings. The suspense of
these stories usually comes from not knowing who
is an alien and who is normal, the climax revealing
that even the hero, though normal in appearance,
is really an alien. Such stories evoke a horror associated with the discovery of danger within normality.
Something similiar to this feeling has accompanied reports that a growing number of everyday substances in the environment are associated
with cancer. From the plastic vinyl choride to the
pesticide dieldrin to the chlorination of the drinking water, it is increasingly being recognized that
carcinogens (cancer-causing substances) are a 'normal' part of the environment, present in the air,
water, food, even the tissues of our bodies. The
pervasiveness of such substances, and the impossibility of escaping their reach, gives cancer, like the
internal threat of alien invaders, the image of a
masked and uncontrollable danger.
Such an image of cancer offers one source
of hope for its solution; medical science. Though
cancer is widely regarded as 'incurable', modem
medicine is commensurately invested with expectations of doing the impossible. Thus, ever since passage of the 1971 National Cancer Act, which awarded 1.7 billion dollars to cancer research and
made cancer the major focus of biomedical research today) politicians, the media, and even some
scientists have continually referred to the cancer
program as a 'crusade', a 'war', a 'campaign against
a dread enemy'. The enemy here, as Senator Matthew M. Neely (W. Va.) once said, is a "monster",
more "terrifying than any other scourge that has
ever threatened the existence of the human race."
[I] The hero is technological science which, given the money and the brains, can accomplish any
feat it attempts, including curing cancer. Thus,
Congressman Daniel Flood, shortly after the Cancer Act was passed, asked Carl Baker, former director of the National Cancer Institute; What day
are you going to tell me, what month and year,
'Here, Hallelujah' ... that we have broken through
in cancer virus (research)?"
[2] More recently,
Rep. Jack Brinkley introduced
a bill (H.R.
107046) which would impose a "cancer eradication tax surcharge" on all individual and corporate
income for five years, and devote such income, an
estimated 15 billion dollars, to cancer research. [3]
These sentiments are not lost on the public at
large. The announcement of any new development
August 1976/American Atheist 22

of

Cancer

McDONALD
in cancer research, no matter how trivial, brings a
flood of phone calls and letters, sometimes car caravans and mercy flights, by desperate families.
Banners with the battle cry 'fight cancer' now fly
from public buses in some cities Elizabeth Kubler Ross, in her book On Death and Dying, reports
that terminal cancer patients, until their last day,
maintain hope that a miraculous breakthrough will
save them. In a recent story in Modern Romance
magazine, Ev, a young man suffering from cancer
of the leg, is deceived in to believing that his illness
can be cured by a faith healer, and shuns medical
treatment. Enlightened at the last moment by his
Atheistic father, he has his leg amputated and
rushes off to save his dying girlfriend, April, who,
suffering from diabetes, has been convinced by her
fanatically religious parents not to take insulin.
The story ends in a paeon to love and medical technology, with April declaring.t'Love is a miracle...
and so was insulin and the medical techniques
that saved Ev's life."
Such popular myth reflects not only the
deep and very real fear which our culture has reserved for the phenomenon of cancer, but the usefulness of such fears in supporting our technological medical system. In past times, belief in god and
life after death served to relieve anxiety toward
death. Nowadays, with the breakdown of such religious beliefs and the increasingly greater role of
biomedicine in the affairs of society, channels for
the expression of fear of death have largely become
the province of institutionalized
medicine. Thus,
not only does the cancer campaign invest in cancer
the mythology of an ugly and 'unnatural' deathone which is masked and hidden-but it makes the
condition for redemption
from this death total
dependence on and belief in technological medicine.

CANCER, A MODERN

DEATH

Some insight into medicine's powers is provided by the phenomenon of 'death-denial', or the
tendency of modem people to shut out from their
lives the fact of death and repress grief around the
event. Death-denial is commonly associated with
the dominance
of sophisticated
technology in
structuring
the health care systems of western
countries. A watershed in this dominance appears
to have been the displacement in site of death from
home to hospital which began around 1930.
[5] This displacement not only allowed the medical profession to have primary authority over
death, but made its experience distant and unfamil-

to most people. Geoffrey Gorer has even comd death-denial to repressive attitudes toward
noting that the experience of death in modern
ty is like a masturbation, solitary and shamel. Death, in the words of Phillippe Aries, has bem "forbidden", too terrible to be named.
Such attitudes toward death contrast sharply
th those of former times, an example of which is
rovided by a passage in Cancer Ward, by Alexanr Solzhenitsyn. Yefrem, who is dying of cancer,
call how the 'old folks' in the country used to
I : "They didn't puff themselves up or fight am t it or brag that they weren't going to dieh y took death calmly. They didn't stall squarJOg things away, they prepared themselves quietly
d in good time, deciding who should have the
are, who the foal, who the coat and who the
boot . And they departed easily, as if they were
t moving into a new house. None of them would
cared by cancer." [6]
In past times, religious belief allowed for the
ceptance of death with minimal anxiety by holdg out positive social images of death associated
th the afterlife. Today, such images, dictated by
e Church, have deteriorated and been replaced
tit negative ones in the form of diseases, dieted by modern medicine. Cancer, in which this
ciation between disease and death has become
ost complete, exemplifies the modern view of
ath as it has been shaped by the rise of modern
edicine. To understand its origin, a little backund about medicine's religious heritage is neery.
DEATH IN THE MIDDLE

AGES

The association between disease and death

ay seem natural to us, but such was not always
e case. Throughout the Middle Ages (in the western world), diseases were seen less as enemies to be
ought than as signs from the heavens that someing was wrong. Despite the terrible ferocity of
idemics, they were regarded as agents of some
largerdestructive power, punishment for sin, rather
than destructive in themselves. Medicine's relation'p to the dying person was dominated by the
urch, with physicians functioning mainly to
am of impending death so that the proper rites
uld be administered. Medicine served either to
belp Nature or help people die. [7] Death itself
during the early Middle Ages) was less a biological
nt than a ceremony organized by the Church
d the dying person to assure his salvation.
ough there existed eraborate rites of mourning,
ere was little room for the expression of spontaneous emotions; death was a public event at-

tended by the family, friends, children, even

chance passers-by on the street. There was little
horror or revulsion for the body after death; corpses were buried in unmarked mass graves located in
churchyards in the center of the city and the remains, which sometimes rose to the surface of the
earth, blended casually with the day-to-day life of
the inhabitants.
What actually happened to the
body seemed to be of less concern than that it be
placed in the care of the Church, in whose wisdom
complete trust was placed. [8]
Then, around the 11th to the 13th centuries,
attitudes and practices toward death began changing. [9] Of prime importance here was the influence of the Platonic notion of the immortality of
the soul, which postulated a mind-body duality in
which the features of one's personality were retained upon the death of the body in the form of
an incorporeal essence or 'soul'. The introduction
and gradual acceptance of this notion, which was
alien to early Christianity, [10] had a profound
effect on concepts of life after death. Until early
medieval times, death was conceived to be followed
by a long, expectant sleep after which the righteous would rise in their original bodies at the 2nd
coming and be granted a glorious after-life while
the wicked, those who were not members of the
Church, would be abandoned to a state of non-existence. [I I] Little significance was attached to
the acts and deeds of individuals in this scheme;
mem bership in the social community was the main
factor in determining one's fate. [12]
With the rise ofthe concept of the immortal
soul, however, a complex theology of the afterlife, with the individual holding center stage, emerged. [13] For example, the Second Coming
became less of a collective return to paradise than
a weighing of all the good and bad deeds of an individual's life, a Judgement of fate which took
place not after a long sleep but at the moment of
death, with devils and angels commonly pictured as
struggling for the individual's soul above the deathbed. More concretely, the separation of church and
graveyards, urged by public health authorities, and
the appearance of individual markers on tombstones, the first since the 5th century, testify to
the diminishing role of the Church and the heightened importance of the individual in burial practices and rituals accompanying
death. [14] The
concept of an immortal soul permitted individuality to be viewed not merely in relation to the social
and religious community but as a kind of autonomous, immortal 'essence', standing in opposition
to the body, which was mortal.
While the capacity to elevate the individual
above the limitations of mortality was heightened
August 1976/American Atheist - 23

after the Middle Ages, so too were the terrors

which he might face. Not only did the horrors of
Hell multiply, but there is a "strange preoccupation with putrefaction"
and a "morbid indulgence
in disgust" [15] which was alien to earlier times.
In a detail from the fresco in the Campo Santo at
Pisa, three young men out hunting come across
their own decaying corpses [16]. In a Book of
Hours made for Mary of Burgundy who died in a
hunting accident, Mary is shown, elegantly dressed
and riding a white stallion, with ghostly skeletons,
brandishing spears and carrying coffins, everywhere
about her [17]. In the Dance of Death, which
gained wide popularity in painting in the 14th century, the dying person is shown locked in the suffocating grip of a cold, impersonal force. [18].
Thus did death, once dictated by soothing rituals
that treated the decay of the body as a casual event, become an unnatural force, irrational and unfamiliar, which tore the ind ivid ual from his place
in life and society.
MEDICINE AND THE IDEAL
OF NATURAL DEATH
From this image of death as an unnatural
force, a force which was associated not only with
the bodily processes, but with external events as
well, there became juxtaposed an ideal of dying
which was quite different from that of the early
Middle Ages. This ideal, which Ivan Illich has
termed "natural death", or "natural extinction
from peaceful exhaustion"
[19], expressed the
Christian view of death as both consummatory,
crystallizing the 'meaning' of one's life, and sacrificial, embodying an element of necessary and inevitable surrender to god or nature. "His work was
done", expresses the idea most simply. The crucial
feature of this ideal was that it viewed death not
in the context of a collective passage to another
world, a passage which only the Church could
guide, but as an event whose significance was increasingly defined by the secular existence of the
individual. Fear of death was thus expressed not
as fear of eternal damnation,
from which the
Church could protect, but as fear of untimely
death through unnatural forces, from which the
social and political institutions of the state could
protect.
It was this ideal of natural death, juxtaposed
against the 'unnatural' death of disease, to which
medicine was heir. In the same cen tury that the
Dance of Death gained wide popularity, European
medicine became firmly established as a science
and profession (though still dominated by the
Church). In a book called Witches, Midwives and
Nurses [20], Barbara Ehrenreich and Diedre En-

August 1976/ American Atheist - 24

glish have shown that the 'witchcraze ' which lasted

from the 14th century to the 17th century, was in
part a struggle between an elite medical profession
and a body of largely female peasant healers who
had been practicing all forms of empirical and preventive care for centuries. Medical professionalism,
which was without scientific basis at the time,
served to legitimize the campaigns of terror against
these female healers, from whose ranks the
'witchs' were mainly drawn. As Ehrenreich and
English quote from the 15th century Malleus Maleficorum, the official authority
on witch-hunts:
"And if it is asked how it is possible to distinguish
whether an illness is caused by withcraft or by
some natural defect, we answer that the first (way)
is by means of the judgment of doctors." Disease
and sickness were increasingly seen as the product
of 'unnatural'
forces; only professional medical
treatment could make them 'natural'.
Another example of the preoccupation with
death as an unnatural event is the fascination during the I 8th and early 19th centuries, in both the
medical literature and the public generally, with
the phenomenon of "apparent death", sometimes
resulting in the accidental burials of persons while
they were still alive. [2 I] Edgar Allan Poe, in a
story entitled
The Premature Burial, imagines
whole graveyards of persons who had been buried
alive: "I looked; and the unseen figure ... had
caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind ... But alas! the real sleepers were fewer, by
many millions, than those who slumbered not at
all; and there was a feeble struggling; and there was
a general sad unrest ... And, of those who seemed
tranquilly to repose, I saw that a vast number had
changed, in a greater or less degree, the rigid and
uneasy position in which they had originally been
entombed."
[22] What was considered so horrible
here, and what made such burials gain so much
notority despite what must have been their rare incidence, was the idea of one's mind-that
which
constituted one's true essence and individualitybeing trapped inside one's decaying body. The role
of the physician in determining the precise moment of death thus took on a heightened importance.
Until the middle of the 19th century, medicine's credibility in protecting the individual from
'unnatural' death was low. Though Descartes' model of the body as a 'machine' had already provided, in the 17th century, a means by which the
processes of the body, including their degeneration in sickness or death, could be abstracted from
the person and therefore analyzed and manipulated; and though Francis Bacon had already proclaimed, in the 18th century, that medicine's "no-

goal was the "prolongation of life" [23],

by severing connection with the traditional
tion of medicine of helping people to die, it
not until the rise of the germ theory of disease
d the application of such techniques as chemorapy (treatment with drugs) and immunizations
at medicine could command absolute authority
It role of protecting the 'gift' of life. Not only
d medicine's goal of prolonging life assume credility, but the ideal of natural death could take
ci form as the consumption of medical techu to ward off the 'evil' deaths of disease and
kne . The association between death and discould become complete; disease was now an
n my'. to be fought on the battleground of the
boratory.
.
MEDICINE AND DISEASE
What emerges from all this is that modern
itude toward disease have been shaped by non of death handed down by the Church. In
icular, the view of disease as a sinister force
tached from the environment in which it arises
descended directly from the notion of death as
tanic, unnatural force. What is perhaps unclear,
ever, is how crucial a role our view of disease,
ted with fear of death, has played in structurthe modern health care system. While it may be
adily admitted that disease campaigns ultimately
peal to fear of death, the relevance of this fact to
work of medical science, whose practical conm are seen to lie exclusively with the cure of
ase, seem more questionable. To understand
deeply our health care policy is linked to our
tudes toward death, a little background about
ase , and the way modern medicine confronts
m, is necessary.
Until 50 years ago, the leading causes of
th and illness throughout most of recorded hisry were 'social' or infectious diseases such as tulosis, smallpox, syphilis, and many others.
d as microbial, modern science has detered that these diseases are 'caused' by bacteria,
s, etc. Their incidence and prevalence, howr are not determined simply by the presence of
causative' bacteria or viruses in the human
but by conditions in the environment which
or their proliferation and virulence.
The most common of such conditions are
and famine. The 30 Years War of the 17th cenfor example, was dominated by ravaging epiics which in some cases wiped out much of the
ies before they had begun to fight, [24] while
late as 1917 in the Soviet Republic, an epidemic
typhus, aided by war, famine, and medievalliv-

ing conditions, struck 25 million people. [25] Epidemics have been associated with peacetime activities as well. Plague epidemics during ancient
Rome are often attributed
to increased international trade, while the prevalence of tuberculosis
in the late 19th century is associated with unsanitary conditions in factories and elswhere. [26]
Generally speaking, large variations in the incidence and prevalence of disease throughout history
have occurred independently of medical efforts to
control them.
Thus, for example, the decline in the incidence of most infectious disease which began
around the middle of the 19th century in industrialized countries was due mainly to changes in environment, widely thought to be improved sanitation, diet, etc., as well as other factors, [27] and
only secondarily
to medical techniques.
[28]
Though modern medical techniques did of course
hasten the process once it had started, the decline
actually began long before such techniques had a
chance to take effect, in some cases, before they
had even been introduced.
That medicine succeeded in taking the lion's share of the credit for
what was in fact the more general result of improved living conditions in industrialized countries
can be explained by its ability, already well-developed by the late 19th century, to propagate an image of disease removed from the environment and
invested with fear of death.
Until this century, such an image was at least
useful in that it gave priority to medical techniques
which, applied within the conditions of a rapidly
growing ind ustrial society, proved useful in the
control of infectious disease. Today, however, the
leading causes of death and illness are not 'social'
diseases, spread by infectious organisms, but degenerative diseases like cancer, heart disease, arthritis, etc., whose high incidence is a product of
conditions within industrial society. They demand
a concept of disease which takes into account their
environmental origins, as well as solutions oriented
more toward prevention than cure.

CANCER
A look at cancer, which now strikes one of
every four persons and kills one of every five in the
U.S. [29], supports this assertion. On the one
hand, links between cancer and the man-made environmen t are well-established.
Ever since 1775,
when Percival Pott diagnosed scrotal cancer in
chimney sweeps as an occupational disease, a host
of environmental factors, such as tobacco, air pollution, food additives, X-rays, industrial wastes and
products, etc., have been associated with cancer.
August 1976/ American Atheist - 25

II
Countless studies, called epidemiological studies,
have correlated high incidences of specific kinds of
cancer with specific factors in the environment.
Contrary to assertions that such factors in the technological environment may not be a significant
cause of the present high rates of cancer, the accompanying graph shows that there has been an
"excessive increase", over and above other factors
such as increased population and increased proportion of old people in society, in the incidence of
cancer since 1900. [30] Even more convincing are
estimates by the World Health Organization, the
director of the National Cancer Institute, and other
authorities that anywhere from 75-90% of all cancers are linked to environmental factors.
On the other hand, medical efforts to solve
the cancer problem have met with little success.
There has been 'progress' -against several, mostly
rare types of cancer-but
it has not been sufficient
to turn back the increase in death rates that has
steadily occurred since 1900. According to End
Results in Cancer, Report No.4, put out by the
National Cancer Institute, the death rates of only
two major forms of cancer, stomach and uterine,
have declined in the last 40 years. [31] The cause
for the decline in stomach cancer is unknown, but
is most often attributed to environmental factors
such as diet since survival rates due to medical
treatment have not improved since 1950. [32] The
decline in uterine cancer is attributed to a diagnostic, screening technique called the Pap Test which
increases early detection and thus the effectiveness
of surgery. The development of techniques similar
to the Pap Test for other types of cancer is considered unlikely.
What is even more striking than the present
inadequacy of cancer treatment is the absence of
any comprehensive understanding of the malignant
process which might give hope for a 'cure' in the
near future. Cancer researchers, pressed with demands by the public for a cancer cure, have often
tried to make this point by contrasting their efforts with those of the Apollo Project which landed a man on the moon. The moonshot was a technological feat, achieved on the basis of scientific
principals discovered long ago, and as such, required only a capacity to apply existing knowledge. Cancer, on the other hand, researchers argue,
is a problem of tremendous complexity, involving
issues in biology which have no quick or easy solution now or in the near future.
THE DESTRUCTIVENESS

OF MEDICINE

What the example of cancer shows is that

medicine's technological concept of health, its view
August 1976/American Atheist - 26

of disease as an enemy which can only be conq uered in the laboratory, is no longer useful as a
means of reducing the incidence and mortality of
disease. Rather, with degenerative diseases the leading causes of death and illness, and with the main
threats to health lying not in the impersonal processes of Nature, but in the technological environment which we have constructed, such a concept
of health is self-defeating and contradictory, functioning to preserve the unhealthy lifestyles of people in a sick environment. It serves today not only
to redound unjustified power and authority upon
medicine, but to promote a view of disease which
masks, and therefore paralyzes the initiative to
change, the social conditions responsible for chronic disease. The fear of cancer which medicine promotes through its admonitions to be constantly on
guard against the disease, its promises of a cure
while disregarding environmental factors, only perpetuates the conditions which created the high incidence of the disease. Just as the threat of a nuclear holocaust which could destroy the human
race justifies the continued buildup of an arsenal
of atomic weapons, and perpetuates the very conditions of international tensions and cold war politics which created the threat originally, so too the
fear of cancer justifies the building up of a medical
arsenal which is in many respects irrelevant to the
. real health needs of people and which, by focusing
on technological solutions to the exclusion of social ones, perpetuates the conditions of environmental deterioration which created the high incidence of disease in the first place.
The point here is not that scientific research
in cancer should be curtailed, or that medical techniques have no useful role to play in the control of
disease, but that this role should be secondary to
environmental
and social measures, then clearly
medicine may serve an invaluable role in ministering to the health needs of society. If, however, by
cure is meant the capacity of medicine to act as a
self-contained,
isolated method for solving the
problems of disease, even a method of compensating for an unhealthy environment, then medicine
is not only ineffectual, but demonstrates a potential for destructiveness.
Thus, in an age when 'progress' in the treatmen t of disease is more and more identified with
the results of chemical and biological research performed in the laboratory, iatrogenic (physicianinduced) damage continues to mount, as shown by
estimates that: 6 million people suffer adverse drug
reactions
from approved
drugs [33]; 60,000140,000 of these die [34] ; and 100,000 people die
every year from 'treatment-resistant'
bacteria
caused in part by over-prescription
of antibiotics
[35] . The treatment of cancer itself causes cancer;

I have shown that patients treated with radn and drugs, which suppress the defense mechof the body and are therefore potentially
inogenic, have a high incidence of cancers not
iated with their original disease.
While medicine has shown an increasing potial for destructivenes., however, expectations
It powers have by no means diminished. With
growing mechanization of medicine in recent
has occurred a simultaneous mystification of
81m and functions. From the cancer program to
arch for 'drug addiction molecules' to psycorg ry and genetic engineering, medicine is iningly called upon to. alleviate the ills of modociety, whether these emanate from environntal degradation or social injustice. The effect
the e efforts, however, sharply contrast with the
peetations which they engender. Such programs
only distract from solutions by more approprimeans, as with the cancer program, but perpette the very problems they attempt to solve, as
th psychosurgery. Medicine shows here an awepower; to wed the health needs of people to
ructive techniques which they cannot live
thout.
THE MYTH

OF CANCER

This paradox can only be understood by

icine's ability to generate fear of death. Only
mystifying the causes of disease, by investing
with the specter of a terrible and unnatural
th, can medicine service the social conditions
onsible for disease while ritualistically affirmthe individual's victory over them. Medicine's
city to wed people to destructive lifestyles
goes hand-in-hand with its 'positive' psychoeal functions. In order to inspire belief that the
ruetiveness of the technological environment
be compensated for, medicine first nourishes
nse of this destructiveness; in order to review
th in its ability to conquer diseases, first heighfear of them; in order to further hope of a
eer cure, first creates the myth of cancer as a
nge, death-like force.
Medicine's capacity to inspire fear of death
ust be seen in the context of the larger culture.
e substitution of disease for death which medie accomplished in the minds of its patients was
of a more general trend which included the deoration of positive social images of death proted by religion and their replacement with a
of deaths by 'unnatural' causes such as atomic
mbs, auto accidents, cancer, etc. Evidence of
preoccupation with death as a violent and catphic event is everywhere present today in the

newspapers, TV, movies, etc.; if people tend to evade or 'deny' death when personally confronted
with the event, they stand enthralled before it
throughout the rest of their lives. The real significance of modern day death-denial is thus not a
purging or absence of death from modern society,
but, on the contrary, its more pervasive entrance,
in repressed form, into all aspects of life. Since the
Middle Ages, anxiety toward death has progressively intruded into the domain of society: from the
idea of the Second Coming with its placement of
the crucial event long after the time of physical
death; to the Last Judgment with its determination of the fate of the soul at a moment of death,
literally now an image since its reality has been forbidden, as a shadowy threat hanging just beneath
the surface of reality, inseparably linked to the
technology we have wedded our lives to. Underlying the desperation and futility of death-denial is
thus a more fateful obsession with death structured
by the man-made environment,
a dominion of
'death-in-life'.
Cancer, more than any other form of death
today,
expresses this obsession.
Frank Lloyd
Wright once said, "To look at the plan of a great
City is to look at something like the cross-section
of fibrous tumor", and it is striking that our civilization's most terrifying image of death is also a
metaphor of its growth. Whether the malignant
process be recognized in the rapid multiplication of
fast-food chains, the metastatic spread of networks
of multi-lane highways, or the invasive growth of
high speed digital computers, there is a pervasive
threat of death in the very social institutions designed to protect us.
Such a projection of death-like forces into
the technological world acts similarly to the image
of the Devil, in past times, as a presence within the
naturalistic world; both reconcile us to the destructiveness away from society and into the individual,
where it becomes an unconscious burden or guilt.
During the rise of industrial society, the ideal of
natural death and the mystique of individuality
which accompanied it served as both an identity
sense and a coordinating force in an age of decline
in religious belief. [26] Today, the technological
process is still seen as the only hope for the survival
of society but accompanying
this option is an
awareness of the destructive effects of our agression toward Nature, a resignation to a price accompanying the freedom of self-expression accorded
modern society; a debt of suffering, anxiety, and
death. Cancer, its image as a savage, uncontrollable
force, expresses our culture's sense of this debt.
We accept it to the degree we depend on medicine
to pay for it.

August 1976/American Atheist - 27

Book

Review
Lloyd

Our New Religion, An Examination

of
Christian Science, by the Right Honorable
H. A. L.
Fisher, a Warden of Oxford College. England, is a
hard back book 5[" x 81/2", 201 pages in length.
It was published
by Jonathan
Cape and
Harrison
Smith, Inc., out of New York in 1930.
That publisher is now defunct and the book is no
longer available.
It was a one time printing because
of the hostility
of its reception
in the religious
dominated
United States so that all volumes are
"First Edition".
The book was distributed
by the
old Truth Seeker Company until Society of Separationists Inc. bought out the entire stock. We have
fifty (50) copies left, and then this book will be
no longer available.
The books are dusty,
but
otherwiSe
in excellent
condition
and sturdily
bound.
It is a must book
wondered
about Christian
short summation
of it.

for those
who have
Science and desired a

Happily the book is direct and to the point.

More importantly,
it is also brief, requiring a very
minimal reading time, but none the less covering
the most important
facets of the life, career and
the theology of its inventor.
The book is naturally
divided
into three
areas of concern. The first deals with the prophetress of the faith.Mary
Baker Glover Patterson
Eddy; the second wi ih the creed she first stole and
then later developed
and the third with the church
which she erected on that purloined creed.
Especially noteworthy
is the
ing of H. A. L. Fisher in the first
which undertakes
to explain the
training which Mary Baker Eddy
formative years.

manner of writpart of the book

early behavioral
received in her

Her continuous
development
through
intense stages of severe imagined
illnesses,
from
which she seemingly continued
to suffer, eventually led her to a "faith healer". So began Christian
Science. Mary expanded,
with intense melodramatic flair, the idea of faith healing.
Regrettably,
she gave her teacher, Phineas P. Quirnbly , a little
credit for getting her off to a flying start in the exorcism of the Devil Disease, through
prayer and
faith in Christ. Mary learned well that illness, pain,
and sin would yield to the medicaments
of [the
Christian]
faith, and a little later in life, with the
help of husband
Eddy build wealth for her, and
support her weak ego. I quote: " ... Few business
August 197?/American

Atheist - 30

Thoren
propositions
in the book-selling
world could be
more attractive
than a new Bible. coequal with,
and supplementary
to the old. and possessed of talismanic virtues. so that by the faithful study of
its contents
the possessor could preserve his health
and be delivered
from physical
aches and pains
without the knife of the surgeon or the phial of the
doctor. For such a Bible it was wisely judged that
the great American
republic would pay three dollars." Please bear in mind this was three dollars
several decades ago. which was at the then time a
iot of money.
In the light of modern medical science. the
whole idea of the efficacy of faith healing should
have been exposed
as a hoax in the 1930's at the
time this knowledgeable
author wrote this expose.
In terms of modern
day money,
Mrs. Eddy was
every bit as successful as Oral Roberts.
The last part of the book is the most interesting because
knowing
the book was written in
1930, one can learn that the leaders, coaxing her
followers
of today to donate
money,
are going
to continue
to work to protect their incomes, tax
exemptions,
and status.
This hard cover collector's
item will not be
found in any Christian Science Reading Room, but
you have the chance to buy one now. It is a con ..
densed version of the true history of another one
of those varieties of at least 260 Christian religions.
Reading
this book
and Mary's
theories,
which this critic guesses still are practiced today, is
like a trip almost back to the time when some
thought
the world was flat, maggots came spontaneously from putrid
meat, and the smallest bugs
were those we could see with our naked eyes.
As a book reviewer, let me test you with one
final quote
from the book:
"Yet this obscure
woman overcame all her rivals, formulated
her religion, patented
it, surrounded
it with a spiritual and
legal palisade, and, after making it a paying concern, died in extreme
old age, opulent, honoured
and victorious.
Why was this? Why, of all the many
modes of mind-cure
which had a vogue in the
United States, did Christian
Science alone achieve
the dignity of an established
and popular religion?"
Sorry, that's all you get in this review, but
while these books last, you could own one, and
learn the meaning of the Latin phrase, "Credo Quia
Absurdum
Est."

THE SOCIETY OF SEPARATIONISTS, Inc.

Aims and Purposes
late and promote feedom of thought and inquiry concerning
, rituals and practices.

religious beliefs, creeds,

and disseminate information, data and literature on all religions and promote a more
understanding of them, their origins and histories.

lllllvoc:ate, labor for, and promote in all lawful ways, the complete and absolute separation
and church; and the establishment and maintenance
available to all.
w,_,

of a thoroughly

secular system of

rage the development and public acceptance of a humane ehtical system, stressing
I sympathy, understanding and interdependence of all people and the corresponding
. ility of each, individually, in relation to society.
p and propagate a social philosophy in which man is the central figure who alone
source of strength, progress and ideals for the well-being and happiness of human-

IftNnlIte the study of arts and sciences and of all problems affecting the maintenance,
ion and enrichment of human (and other) life.
in such social, educational, legal and cultural activity as will be useful and beneficial
nmbers of this Society (of Separationists, Inc.) and to society as a whole.

Definitions
. the life philosophy (Weltanschauung) of persons who are free from theism. It is
on the ancient Greek philosophy of Materialism.
Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the
of reason and aims at establishing a system of philosophy and ethics verifiable
lIIII.ee, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority or creeds.
~1Iri'alist philosophy declares that the cosmos is devoid of immanent conscious pur. is governed by its own inherent, immutable and impersonal law; that there is no
raI interference in human life; that man -- finding his resources within himself -- can
cnate his own destiny; and that his potential for good and higher development is for
pruposes unlimited.

of Separationists, Inc., is a non-political, non-profit, educational, tax-exempt organization. ContribuSociety are tax deductible for you. Our primary function is as an educational "watch-dog" organizathe precious and viable principle of separation of state and church. Membership is open to those
rd with our "Aims and Purposes" as above indicated. Membership dues is $12.00, per person, per
of membership is receipt of a monthly copy of the "American Atheist Insider Newsletter". We
forming local chapters and membership in the National organization automatically
gives you enlocal chapter.

The Truth,
at last, Revealed

about

Shocking? Perhaps. But it is only a small

part of the fascinating mountain of evidence gathered in FREEDOM UNDER SIEGE by attorney
Dr. Madalyn Murray O.Hair and her researchers as
part of their ongoing fight to preserve the First Amendment guaranty of the separation of state and
church - a guaranty of not just freedom of religion but freedom from religion.

FREEDOM
UNDER SIEGE
by Madalyn

Organiz ed Religion

Murray O'Hair

Organized religion is working to destroy your

freedom. It .strives to influence your elected representatives and to write the laws under which
you live, to regulate your children's schools and
dictate what is taught there, to censor your entertainment and choose what you and your neighbor can see and read, and to determine for all
women the right to control their lives and their
bodies. And it is your money that makes this
tyranny possible. The churches have their billions
invested in profit-making
enterprises; and their
wealth grows daily from gifts, grants, rents, interest, capital gains and government subsidies. They
are now financial giants, no longer dependent upon
their parishioners for support. What they count on
is their freedom from taxes. The churches' billions
are accumulated at your expense.

Official
government
and church
figures
prove that churches have as their membership only
a minority of our citizens. This books shows the
continuing pressures that this minority exerts on
the Iives of the majority of Americans.
Dr. O'Hair deals with politics, not religion;
with separation of state and church, not Atheism.
This report shows how your treasured liberties are
slowly being eroded as the churches increase their
power over every aspect of American life, limiting
your freedom of choice and even your access to information regarding those choices.
FREEDOM UNDER SIEGE dares to focus
on the facts about this growing threat - a threat
that our politicians and the press, radio and television have been unwilling to confront.
HARDCOVER

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