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 AMERICAN ATHEIST Wiki Commons

A Journal of Atheist News and Thought

3rd Quarter 2017
Vol. 55, No. 3
ISSN 0516-9623 (Print)
ISSN 1935-8369 (Online)

On the cover: We are living in a country much different from even one year ago. This
issues cover story is a statement from American Atheists President David Silverman, who
speaks for the entire organization when he says that bigoted atheists have no place in our
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF movement (see page 5).
Pamela Whissel
PWhissel@Atheists.org
LAYOUT and GRAPHICS EDITOR
Rick Wingrove
In This Issue
RWingrove@Atheists.org
4 Letter From The Editor
COPY EDITOR Free Speech Means No Taste Test | Pamela Whissel
Karen Rei lly

RESEARCH ASSISTANT 5 Cover Story

Anthony J. Crincoli Shrinking the Tent | David Silverman
PROOFREADERS
Gil Gaudia 6 Kitten, Cat, or Tiger? | Hank Fox
Shelley Gaudia
Den Jackson 10 Sweden: Atheist Altruism at Its Finest | Mark Kolsen
AMERICAN ATHEIST PRESS
MANAGING EDITOR
Frank R. Zindler
12 Dogma Watch
Editor@Atheists.org 16 Saviors, 16 Flavors | Michael B. Paulkovich
Published by 16 Why I Wont Take My Daughter to a Religious Pediatrician |
American Atheists, Inc. Ross Rosenfeld
Mailing Address:
225 Cristiani St.
Cranford, NJ 07016
18 A Little Bit O Soul | Gary Reed
Phone: 908.276.7300
FAX: 908.276.7402 20 Book Review
www.Atheists.org Ruth3:5 by Michael Fridgen | Sam Witt
2017 American Atheists Inc.
All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part
22 Book Excerpt
without written permission is prohibited. American Atheist Answers | David McAfee
Atheist is indexed in the Alternative Press Index.
American Atheist magazine is given free of cost to
members of American Atheists as an incident of their 26 Hillary, Women, and Patriarchalism | Brian Bolton
membership.
One-year print subscription to American Atheist
magazine: $20. Subscribe online at www.Atheists. 30 Helping Kids Experience Awe Without Religion | Maria Polonchek
org/subscribe. Annual Individual Membership
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Free Speech Means No Taste Test
T he current president of this country is no friend of the
First Amendment; it isnt even a vague acquaintance of his. Its
gratuitously beside the point to mention that hed be unable
to recite it on demand except that, at this writing, most of us
cant. So here it is in its entirety:
Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom
of speech, or of the press; or the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
Government for a redress of grievances.
I promise that by the time you read this, I will have it
memorized. I ask you to do the same because if we want to continue
to be taken seriously as guardians of the First Amendment, its
not a bad idea to know the entire thing by heart. (This isnt asking
too much, given the sharp memorization skills many of us havent
unpacked since the days of reciting prayers and Bible verses.)
"Everything" by Thomas Chung (courtesy of the artist)
4 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org
Sculpture in the Vatican Museum by Antonio Canova: Perseus
with the head of Medusa (photo by Yair Haklai - Wikicommons)
Of course, everyone who reads or contributes to this
magazine has a special interest in the first ten words, known as
the Establishment Clause, but were at a time in history when
anyone interested in the work of American Atheists needs to
give as much attention to free speech rights as religious rights.
When a First Amendment right is in harms way, the best line
of defense is to deliberately exercise the endangered freedom
ourselves as soon as possible. This act of protection is currently
being deployed by professional athletes who kneel or lock arms
during the national anthem as a way of condemning Donald
Trumps appallingly misguided slurs against Americans who, by
exercising free speech, are preserving the right for all of us.
On social media, talk radio, and everywhere else, the gesture
is getting mixed reviews. These conversations, no matter where
they take place, are an opportunity to help detractors understand
that the rights enshrined in the First Amendment are each, for
all intents and purposes, a deal. When they were struck back in
1791, they were something terrific. To this day, they are still some
of the greatest deals ever made. They were so great that their
mastermind, James Madison, became president a few years later
without even having to promise to make America great again.
The deal for free speech goes like this: you get to have your
say in exchange for tolerating everyone else having their say.
You dont have to approve of or agree with what theyre saying.
You dont have to like it. You dont have to listen to it or pay it
any attention at all. But you must allow it to exist, even if what
they say saddens, angers, insults, disrespects, or offends you.
Even if its in very, very poor tastethe poorest taste possible.
In this country, the right to free speech means that a court of
law cannot impose consequences if you speak out against your
government. Thats why no professional athletes have been fired
Continued on page 28
3RD QUARTER 2017
Shrinking the Tent
American Atheists does not tolerate intolerance
by President David Silverman
A s an organization, we embrace the broadest definition
of atheist, which is someone who a lacks a belief in a deity,
be it Thor, Zeus, Ganesh, Yahweh, Jesus, Mohammad, or any
of the other thousands of gods that have been imagined for
as long as people have been around. Atheists are the most
maligned and underrepresented demographic in the country,
so we must speak up in order to be counted. Our tent is a big
one because atheists come from everywhere, and we need
help from every kind of atheist: Democrats and Republicans,
Libertarians and Socialists, conservatives and liberals,
firebrands and diplomats. Reasonable people can have
reasonable disagreements about reasonable topics. Thats
what it means to be an American.
Today, we are living in a nation and world very different
from just a year ago.
Because of this, American Atheists is obliged to say, in no
uncertain terms, that we will not tolerate intolerancefrom
neither our neighbors nor our government.
The current tolerance for bigotry is what emboldened white
nationalists and neo-Nazis to rally in Charlottesville in August.
Their views are reprehensible, their actions are abhorrent, and
they have no place in our civil society. American Atheists stands
in complete solidarity with the targets of this hatred. atheists can be bad people. It takes more than the lack of a belief
The current tolerance for bigotry is what emboldened the
Trump Administration to suspend the Deferred Action of
Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy. There is no question that
DACA has improved the lives of more than 800,000 men and
women who were brought to this country as children. Our
nation is made stronger by immigrantsmany of whom came
to the U.S. because of our commitment to religious freedom
and government neutrality.
The current tolerance for bigotry is what spurred our
president to sign a memo directing the Pentagon to ban
transgender recruits and enlistments. By doing so, he is putting
into question the status of transgender members of the military
already serving openly and bravely. Expelling these dedicated
American troops, which number in the thousands, is nothing
We exist to eliminate bigotry against our community, so we
will never tolerate bigotry from our community.
3RD QUARTER 2017
more than a cruel and disgusting scheme to use them as a
political football.
The current tolerance for bigotry has exposed the fact that
although the largest roadblock to equality is religion, not all
bigots are religious. Some of them are atheists. If you are an
atheist who believes that it is possible to march with Nazis and
still be a good person, we dont want you. If you are an atheist
who believes that the white supremacist point of view may
sometimes be reasonable, then we dont want you. If you are
an atheist who believes that discrimination because of race,
gender, or sexual orientation is sometimes acceptable, then we
dont want you.
We dont want your membership, we dont want your
money, and we dont want your support. Your cause is not our
cause. American Atheists exists to eliminate bigotry against
our community, so we will never tolerate bigotry from our
community.
While our organization needs all the help it can get, we dont
want it from all atheists. Calling yourself an atheist doesnt
automatically make you a member of our community. It just
means we happen to share one thing in common. And that
one thing isnt good enough. We must own the fact that some
in God to be a reasonable person.
We have far more in common with Christians, Jews, Muslims,
and Hindus who strive for equality than we have with any atheist
who advocates hatred. An atheist who sides with religious bigots
against the cause of equality is no friend of ours. We must keep
our tent as large as possible, but we will not include anyone who
embraces bigotry or merely turns a blind eye to it.
This is a fight for the character of our nation, and while we
hope all reasonable people agree, simply hoping isnt enough.
As atheists, we know that the only way to conquer evil is by
human actionby speaking out forcefully and confronting
bigotry and inequality whenever we see it. And, most of all, by
standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the targets of this bigotry,
no matter the cost.
www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 5
Kitten, Cat, or Tiger?
by Hank Fox
I would like to propose three conceptual models for
religion in society.
The Kitten: Religion is a harmless, joy-giving plus in a
persons life. It is sweet and good and loving, a fluffy little
bundle that could not possibly hurt anyone. Everyone who has
it benefits from it, and everyone agrees that more people should
have it. Society itself benefits from having it.
The Cat: Religion gives pleasure to the people who have it.
However, it does have claws and teeth and occasionally harms
people when its in a bad mood. The majority of people who
have it seem to benefit from it, but it remains fully capable
of drawing blood. It is still a plus in most peoples lives, and
though society must keep a wary eye out for the teeth and claws,
it should continue to be a prominent part of the local culture.
The Tiger: Religion is incredibly dangerous, a streamlined
predator that menaces not only those who have it, but also
those around them. It is only safe when caged; it doesnt even
have to be in a bad mood; it only has to be itself, and someone
will get hurt. On the general principles of free will and self-
It is impossible to have a strongly held belief
in your head and not have it affect your
thoughts and actions in powerful ways.
6 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org
determination, people should probably have the right to have
it, but it should stay safely cagedin privateat all times. Free
will and self-determination are bedrock principles and good
for society, but society overall would definitely be better off
without having religion itself running around loose.
Of course, were all aware that large numbers of people
see religion as The Kitten. Religion is always positive, always
loving, and could not possibly hurt anybody. It seems to me
that the majority of agnostics, and even some atheists, see
religion as The Cat.
Yes, they would admit there have been unfortunate
incidents such as the Crusades and the Inquisition. And sure,
there are those idiot parents who, because of their faith, deny
life-saving medical care to their children. And, yes, okay, there
was that Jim Jones thing, and the Heavens Gate thing, and
sure, Scientology is a nutty, fringe, culty thing that victimizes
its hapless adherents.
But overall, religion gives people hope and solace and stuff
like that. If nothing else, it keeps the dangerous idiots from
3RD QUARTER 2017
 To believe the unprovable,
unsupportable, indefensible is
somehow the greatest of virtues.
rising up and killing us all. In the main, its just not all that
dangerous and has had little impact on history or the overall
shape of society today.
As for The Tiger, youd actually have to work to make that
a convincing case because, hey, wheres the danger in having
it around? I mean, seriously, here we are in a world of modern
wondersyou know, computers and jet planes, surgery and
antibiotics, schools and libraries and democracyand yet
ancient religion is still very much with us.
I see religion as The Tiger and nothing but The Tiger. Im
disturbed that more people dont see it as I do, but I guess Im
not all that surprised. Yet, Id like to make the following case for
The Tiger.
If you believe a thing, it has some real effect on you. I believe I
could win the lottery because, hey, somebody has to, so why not
me? That beliefa small-to-middling one as beliefs gowill
cost a lot of people somewhere between $300 to $1,800 in the
coming year. If your state or local taxes went up by $1,800 this
year, would that bother you? Well, yeah. But a five-dollar-a-day
lottery player pays that same amount and thinks nothing of it.
He believes hell win all of his money back plus a lot more. Its
not a tax, its more like an investment, right?
If you believe a thing, it affects you, but if you believe a thing
strongly, it affects you a lot. It could affect pretty much every
aspect of your life.
Im going to start a band and be rich and famous! Hey,
if youre going to be rich and famous, why do you need high
school? Or a college fund? Or the good will of your parents
or peers? Better to spend that time and money practicing and
buying better instruments and amps. And to hell with anybody
who stands in your way.
If you believe a thing, it affects you. If you believe a thing
strongly, it affects you a lot. But if everybody believes a thing
strongly, they create an entire culture wrapped around that
belief.
Something must be done about these treacherous, secretive,
manipulative Jews.
The Germans of the 1930s didnt just sit at home being
mildly, privately amused by this belief. No, they built an entire
society on the idea. One of the side effects was that eleven
million people were murdered, and another side effect was a
war that directly or indirectly killed another fifty million.
People with dark skin are inferior to those of us with lighter
skins.
The North Americans of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries didnt just chat about this quaint belief
over tea and biscuits. No, they built an entire society on the
3RD QUARTER 2017
idea, one side effect of which was that in the 1860 census alone,
almost four million of those people with dark skin were trapped
in slavery.
The interesting thing is that most people of those times,
both in Germany and the U.S., not only thought those beliefs
were normal, they thought they were right and even good.
Strong, widely-held beliefs affect everythingevery part of the
society in which they hold sway, and those beliefs even affect
people outside of the society.
Heres the U.S. Supreme Courtthe Supreme Court!
weighing in on slavery in the 1857 Dred Scott decision: Any
person descended from Africans, whether slave or free, is not
a citizen of the United States. Looking back on it, you have to
ask, What the hell was wrong with those people? What were
they thinking??
What was wrong with them was just this: By our standards
they were crazy as hell. But because just about everybody was
crazy the same way, very few people noticed. Which made a
horror of the lives of four million people.
The strongly-held and widespread belief about slaves in the
U.S. wasnt just a little bit bad, it was a nightmare. Likewise, the
strongly-held and widespread belief about Jews in Germany
wasnt just a little bit bad, it was a nightmare.
Lets talk about another belief. Say some people believe this:
This is not real life. You only get to have real life after you die.
And even then, its only good if you passed the big test in this
temporary, prototype life. Part of the test is that you have to
tell everybody about the real life, and if anybody disagrees with
you, considering theyre not really alive anyway, its perfectly
okay to torment or even kill them.
Real life, and the testing-phase life that precedes it, is ruled
by this big, powerful guy who is more important than anybody
or anything you know. Nothing is more important than he is.
He and the things he sayspassed on in this big, special book
and by the people who interpret it for usare more important
than your health, more important than the life and death of your
kids, more important than the love of your life, more important
than democracy and justice and freedom, more important than
the entire earth and all it contains.
In fact, in the very near future, the big powerful guy is going
to destroy the entire earth and all it containsevery last puppy
and baby and symphony and sunset. And thats a good thing
because it will allow us and everybody we know to get on with
our real lives, which are going to be perfect and last forever.
Oh, and by the way, because we believe all this, were the
Chosen Ones, and pretty much nothing we do to the bad,
Un-Chosen Ones is really all that wrong.
www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 7
 If everybody believes a thing
strongly, they create an entire culture
wrapped around that belief.
Imagine people believing this thing very, very strongly for
the past thousand years, right up to today. Now imagine what
sort of society theyd create. It would be a crazy one, dont you
think? Completely bonkers.
It would have to be. I mean, if you really believed that
nothing around you was real? And that being dead would be
a good thing? That you should go out and do anything and
everything you could to convince others? And that it was all
going to end soon, and hurrah for that?
And yet.
Here we are, living in wealth and luxury and contentment.
The sun shines, the birds sing, we go to work each day, and have
dinner each night. It all seems so normal. Is the world really all
that crazy? I have to be wrong about it, right?
Weve got TV, the internet, the power to fly across a
continent in a few hours. Weve got eyeglasses and cell phones
and a car in every driveway. Books and libraries. Barbie and
Buzz Lightyear and Happy Meals. Skiing and whitewater
rafting and skateboard parks. What could possibly be wrong
with our beautiful modern society?
But again, it is impossible to have a strongly held belief in
your head and not have it affect your thoughts and actions in
extremely powerful ways. Ways which, paradoxically, you
might not even notice.
What evidence do I have to support the claim? How about
this: Did you know theres a safe and easy way to prevent
teen pregnancy? A way to dramatically lower the number of
abortions? Its simplicity itself: Provide sex education. Make
condoms and other contraceptives available. Give teens the
facts and the tools to accomplish the early-life goal of not getting
pregnant. If you tell teens where babies come from, and let them
know that unexpected mommyhood and daddyhood will put
a serious crimp in all those wild, youthful plans for being a jet-
setting supermodel or a motorcycle-riding vagabond off to see
America, and if you then tell them how to prevent babies until
theyre consciously ready to be mommies and daddies, they will
tend, statistically, to make a greater percentage of informed, wise
In the very near future, the big powerful
guy is going to destroy the entire earth
and all it containsevery last puppy
and baby and symphony and sunset.
8 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org
decisions on potential pregnancy. Theyll have fewer abortions.
Is that a no-brainer? Well, heck yeah. But among the rankest
foes of abortion in the U.S., that faction of conservative
Christians who also drive around with bumper stickers that
read, Its a Child, Not a Choice! and You Cant Be Both
Pro-Abortion and Catholic, you will find virtually zero in
equally fervent favor of the two most effective techniques
contraception and sex educationfor achieving that goal.
How much misery do you suppose those millions of
unwanted pregnancies have causedto the unready parents, to
the unwanted children, to the cash-strapped society required to
support them? A lot. That misery is literally incalculable because
we cant even bring ourselves to think about the possibility of
misery in such cases. Our mainstream social pointer on the
question of pregnancy is set at Boundless, Swooning Joy, and
its difficult to even have a conversation about any other view.
Crazy.
More crazy: Harold Camping, leader of Christian broadcast
ministry Family Radio Worldwide, received nationwide media
coverage for predicting the world would end on May 21, 2011.
This guy is so looney tunes Warner Brothers should sue him for
copyright infringement. And yet his prediction was covered as
straight news. As I recall, not a single newscaster said anything
critical about the man or his prediction.
Lets take one more example of crazy, something with no
obvious connection to Christianity. Forty-seven U.S. companies
have been involved in the manufacture of landmines. From 1969
to 1992, we exported more than four million mines to at least
thirty-four countries. Even years after regional wars have been
concluded, all those unrecovered landmines continue to cripple
women and children and kill farmersto the tune of 26,000
people annuallyand also critically injure or kill wildlife.
In Vietnam, more than forty years after the end of the war,
landmines are still killing about one hundred people every
yearabout sixty of which, on average, are children. There are
estimated to be 800,000 active landmines still in the country,
enough to kill or critically injure the entire population of Austin
3RD QUARTER 2017

The craziness is
almost completely
invisible to the
people being
crushed under it.
or San Francisco.
To some of us, this will come across as old news. Why am I
even writing about it? But the point is that the whole situation is
wacky as hell. American companies. American workers. Going
to work each day to make landmines that wouldhow can I
put this delicately?blow the freakin legs off children. And then
sleeping well that night. (Companies in the continental United
States supposedly stopped manufacturing landmines in 1997,
but the U.S. still has the largest stockpile of the clever little
things in the world.)
Someone sat down and invented these things, knowing they
would kill mostly civilian adults and children. And someone
else, a lot of someone elses, right here in America, thought it
was a dandy idea to make money off them. Following which, a
lot of other someone elses put them in fields all over the world
without bothering to note where they were. And three hundred
million someone elses just sort of sat back and yawned.
As it turns out, there is a connection to religion in the making
and placing of landmines. The landmine industry flourished
on U.S. soil for so many years because a majority of the people
involved, and a majority of the American public, didnt even
bother to think about it. It wasnt important because, according
to their beliefs, nobody was really dying. They were only
passing on.
Besides, even if people were injured or killed way off in those
distant places, that was all up to God, wasnt it? If their lives and
deaths were wholly the responsibility of God, no mere assembler
of landmines here in America was guilty of any moral crime.
Heck, maybe even God was using them as a tool of redemption
for those godless heathens.
The point of all this is that theres a level of crazy built into
our culture, and it appears to spring directly from the fact that
were trained to be crazy. To think in an irrational manner and
believe unbelievable things.
This isnt some cultural accident, or just a simple holdover
ignorance from the time when we were flea-scratching, upright
beasts. This is organized. Deliberate. There is, in our society,
an established, streamlined, all-pervasive and aggressive-as-
hell institutionactually a collection of institutionshell-
bent on spreading the crazy. We live in a society that features
a Crazy School.
Crazy School doesnt just teach its own curriculum, it
3RD QUARTER 2017
works to un-teach everything elseto squash all questions, all
doubts, all competitors for the public podium. To confuse every
discussion with lies and nonsense so its victims can no longer
think straight about any subject. This is precisely why the phrase
President Trump is now a part of our everyday language.
This one institutionand it has no rivals in this mission,
not anywhere in Earth cultureis religion.
Not religion the fluffy kitten. Not religion the friendly cat
that just occasionally scratches. But religion the tiger, with
its historically obvious teeth and claws: lies, intimidation,
subjugation, suppression, terror, torture, murder, and war.
A tiger that is still with us, and has, as its fierce main mission,
to get us to believe things that are unprovable, unsupportable,
undefendable ... but that somehow must be believed, supported
and defended.
To believe the unprovable, unsupportable, indefensible is
somehow the greatest of virtues. To doubt it is the vilest and
most terrible of sinsa threat to our own immortal souls.
Teach that to a whole people, for all of their history, and you
create not just craziness for the individual, but also profound
misery, vast pain, and ugliness for hapless future generations.
But the weird sort of reverse-miracle attendant on the whole
thing is that the craziness is almost completely invisible to
the people being crushed under it. As long as everybody stays
crazy, as long as you kill or discredit anyone who begins to edge
toward sanity, the crazy can stay clamped down for hundreds,
even thousands, of years.
And so it has. Occasional bright sparks of sanity have given
us science, technology, medicine, and reason itself. But those
sparks, like diamonds in mud, are used as tools to spread the
crazy because they still exist in a matrix of crazy that pervades,
opposes, or perverts just about every advance toward greater
sanity, such that we have technological wonders gifted to us by
the sanity-sparks of scienceradio, TV, computers, the web.
Such that we can build landmines to blow the legs off children
and sleep well at night. Such that the freedom to not have
children is opposed by powerful voices right now, today, at the
highest levels of American government.
Such that every major disaster in the world is followed by
televised religious voices blaming either the victims, marriage
equality, pornography, or all of the above and using the human
horror as a sales pitch to raise money to grow more craziness.
Such that there are large numbers of us who accept that the world
is ending soon, and that this is a good thing much to be desired.
Such that there are world-scale problemsglobal warming, for
instancethat cannot even be brought up in a public forum
without being shouted down by a ready chorus of crazies.
And such that the spreading and consuming of this deadly
craziness is seenby most of us stillas the most staunchly
and passionately defended human right.
And that, excuse me, is just plain nuts.
Hank Fox is the author of Red Neck, Blue Collar, Atheist: Simple Thoughts
About Reason, Gods & Faith. A former blogger on the Patheos network
(A Citizen of Earth) and Freethought Blogs (Blue Collar Atheist), he now
blogs independently as A Citizen of Earth.
www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 9
 SWEDEN:
Atheist Altruism at Its Finest
by Mark Kolsen
A re human beings innately moral? Is Steven Pinker
correct that humans have evolved five moral
senses which vary in importance depending
on culture?1 Or is all morality learned and, as new empirical
evidence suggests, relative to your personality, especially your
openness to new experiences and alternative explanations?
Many religions claim that morality emanates from their
doctrines. My brother, a Catholic deacon, believes that people,
especially youth and adolescents, would behave immorally
without religion. To him and many other believers, the lack of
evidence supporting his faith matters less than the good his
faith allegedly spreads throughout the world.
Of course, religious people can and do behave morally, but
they arent more likely than their non-religious counterparts to
do good.2 Sociologist and author Phil Zuckerman says that, in
some situations, atheists may have higher morals than theists:
Psychological studies show that secular grown-ups tend to be
less vengeful, less nationalistic, less militaristic, less authoritarian,
and more tolerant, on average, than religious humans.3 His
thorough empirical research has even swayed some religious
people to doubt their monopoly on morality. After reading
Zuckermans books, Albert Mohler, president of the Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote, It is [not] impossible for
[an] atheist to live according to some moral code . . .to live a life
that is ethically superior to at least some who would claim to be
If youd like to spread good throughout
the world, wouldnt you be better off
living in an atheist nation like Sweden?
10 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org
believers, even explicitly Christians.4
Zuckermans readers also know that most of the nations with
high morality ratings are secular nations. He has consistently
demonstrated the irony that the fundamental values and moral
imperatives contained within the worlds great religions, such
as caring for the sick...practicing mercy, charity, and goodwill
. . .and fostering generosity, humility, honesty, and communal
concern . . .are most successfully established, institutionalized,
and put into practice at the societal level in the most irreligious
nations in the world today.5
Among these irreligious nations, Sweden may be the
most irreligious and arguably the most moral. Statistically,
Sweden is always ranked among the five least religious nations
and usually falls second to China.6 Sweden offers strong
evidence that an atheistic, non-believing population may be a
key factor influencing its government to behave morally, both
domestically and internationally.
For example, consider Nicaragua in the early 1980s. A
revolution had overthrown the U.S.-backed government
of dictator Anastasio Somoza, and the new Sandinista-led
government was viewed by Washington as a threat to the
hemisphere. Although the Sandinistas enjoyed popular
support, the Reagan Administration secretly organized
and funded an army of mercenaries known as contras to
overthrow them. The contras killed 30,000 civilians and
3RD QUARTER 2017
 Most of the nations with high morality
ratings are secular nations.
gradually destroyed Nicaraguas infrastructure. In 1984, the
Reagan Administration thumbed its nose at the World Court
when it ruled that U.S. intervention had broken international
law and ordered the Administration to pay reparations. In 1986,
after the Reagan administration belittled the international
communitys declarations that the Nicaraguan elections were
fair and open, many of us wondered who, in the international
community, could stop Reagans illegal and immoral war.
The only nation in the world with the guts to stand up to the
U.S. was Sweden. While other countries softened their criticism
in response to U.S. pressure and bullying, Sweden remained
steadfast in its economic and political support of the Nicaraguan
government. Over the course of a decade, from 1979 to 1989,
Sweden gave one billion Swedish kronor (approximately $125
million U.S. dollars) in assistance to Nicaragua. The Swedes
also provided technical assistance to help Nicaragua develop its
agricultural, medical, and technology sectors and, also, to help
the country harness its natural resources with minimal impact
on the environment.
Sweden did this because the Social Democrats, especially
Prime Minister Olof Palme, were impressed by Nicaraguas
commitment to reducing economic inequality. But this altruism
also protected its own national interests. The government
understood that for small states to maintain their independence,
they had to stand in solidarity with one another. Throughout
the 1980s, Swedish policy on Nicaragua ... proved to be an
overall stable policy in unstable times. The policy survived
negative feedback, international tension, change of government
in Sweden, and the death of Olof Palme, who was a central actor
in the policy. 7
None of this history will surprise anyone who observes relations
between first- and third-world countries. Over the past fifty years,
Sweden has often been hailed as the most generous provider of aid
to needy countries. It has taken in more Syrian refugees per capita
(an astounding five per one thousand Swedes) than any other
western nation.8 With regard to its own people, Swedens total
public spending is among the highest in the world relative to the
size of the countrys economy.9 All Swedes, regardless of income,
Source: migrationsverket.se
3RD QUARTER 2017
Source: Sweden Migration Agency
receive health care, education, family and sick leave, three different
pension accounts, and a variety of other benefits Americans can
only dream of. Taxes on wealthy Swedes are higher than taxes
on wealthy Americans, but Sweden consistently sits near the top
of the World Happiness Report, highlighting the high level of
satisfaction in this region of the world.10
A variety of studies have confirmed Swedens international
moral stature. Using data from the UN and other international
organizations, the Good Country Index of 163 countries
measures what each country contributes to the common good
of humanity and what it takes away, relative to its size.11 Using
seven key categoriesscience, technology, and knowledge;
culture; international peace and security; world order; planet
and climate; prosperity and equality; and health and well-
beingthe index ranks Sweden number one.
More evidence comes from the Human Truth Foundation,
which gathers data from various sources (including the Institute
for Economics and Peace, the Global Charities Foundation, and
the United Nations) to create the Index of Morality Conscience
and the Good Life, based on twenty-three criteria. Sweden ranks
second among 196 nations.12 The Transparency Institute in Berlin
takes a different approach by using a corruption index to measure
morality. According to the Institute, Sweden ties with Finland as
the worlds second-least corrupt nation.13 The majority of nations
appearing in the top ten of these lists are also mostly secular:
Finland, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and The Netherlands.
With all of these statistics, atheists have a new question to
ask theists who believe morality requires religion: If youd like
to spread good throughout the world, wouldnt you be better off
living in an atheist nation like Sweden?
Endnotes on page 37
Mark Kolsen recently retired from teaching high school in Wheaton,
Illinois. He is an avid fan of the Four Horsemen, the late Victor Stenger,
and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. He strives to understand all facets of scientific
cosmology and evolutionary biology.
www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 11
DOGMA WATCH Religion has had an enormous impact on the world. In this series, Michael B.
Paulkovich examines dogmas, myths, and religious notions past and present.

16 Saviors, 16 Flavors
by Michael B. Paulkovich

H ow many humans have been worshiped as gods?

How many have declared themselves to be the
chosen one? From emperors to eighteenth-
century Shakers to modern-day mass murderers, many have
claimed divinity. Their status as gods and prophets is gained
by military might or public moralizing and sometimes nothing
more than charisma. They may have great nations of followers
who believe their every word, or they may be known only as
frauds and criminals, with those who once believed in them
memorialized as victims.
Roman emperors were considered gods in their day, so
lets start with Caesar Augustus, who figures into the story of
the most well-known savior of our time, Jesus of Nazareth.
According to Luke Chapter 2, Augustus ordered a census
throughout the Roman Empire which required all residents to
return to their cities of origin. Thats the tale wherein Mary and
Joseph went to Bethlehem and had to lodge in a stable among
sheep and cattle.
Unlike fictitious Jesus, Augustus is a genuine historical
figure. But he and Jesus do have one real thing in common:
they were deified by their followers. Augustus reign as
a supreme being started in 9 BCE, when the Provincial
Assembly of Asia Minor implemented a proposal by governor
Paullus Fabius Maximus. They composed a resolution, the
Letter of the Proconsul to the Cities of Asia, which declared
that Augustus was fathered by Zeus but took human form
when he came down to Earth. Upon his death, Augustus
returned to heaven:
Whereas the Providence... has brought our life to
the peak of perfection in giving to us Augustus Caesar,
whom it filled with virtue for the welfare of mankind,
and who, being sent to us and to our descendants as
a savior, has put an end to war and has set all things in
order; and whereas having become visible, Caesar has
fulfilled the hopes of all earlier times.

If any man come to me and hate not his

father, and mother, and wife, and children,
and brethren he cannot be my disciple.
(Luke 14:26)
12 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org 3RD QUARTER 2017
 With his twelve sidekicks, he took his
preacher show on the road, offering
counsel to peasants and nobility alike.
The proclamation also created a new calendar to further
immortalize his name: ...[A]nd whereas, finally, that the
birthday of the God has been for the whole world the beginning
of the gospel concerning him, therefore, let all reckon a new era
beginning from the date of his birth, and let his birthday mark
the beginning of [each] new year.
The influence of this proclamation continues to this day.
The month of August is named for him, just as July is for Julius
Caesar. We commemorate other gods from that time as well.
January is named for the god Janus, March for Mars, April for
Aphrodite, May for Maia, and June for Juno.
The idea of the messianic head of state has stuck around.
Emperor Hirohito of Japan was a deity in the eyes of his people
until he was demoted to demigod after the countrys defeat
in World War II. More recently, the paramilitary soldiers
of Saddam Hussein had the motto that those who swear
allegiance to Saddam are swearing allegiance to God.
The rulersand the dear departed rulersof North Korea
are also deities in their country. Kim Jong-il (dead) is the son of
Kim Il-sung (long dead) and is the father of Kim Jong-un, the
third and still-living unit of a Korean divine trinity.
More on Kim Jong-un later. For now, lets continue our
survey of ancient messiahs and work our way up through the
centuries to meet a whole smorgasbord of saviors, each with
their own distinctive flavor.
Apollonius of Tyana
The philosopher Apollonius enjoyed a large following of
admirers and apostles who considered him a prophet of divine
birth. He supposedly led a life of moral perfection traveling and
preaching throughout Syria, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, and
India during the first and second centuries. He offered wise
counsel to kings of many lands, all the while remaining humble
and rejecting the label of deity. His documented words include
the following advice:
On the Mount - In his sermon on a mount to the Ephesians,
he urged the study of truth, philosophy, and wisdom.
On Slavery - Apollonius said that you show yourself to be
a good man when defending the liberty of your own land...
[rather] than bringing slavery on a city.
On Reason - Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE) wrote
that he learned from Apollonius to be free with a certainty
beyond all chance, not to look to anything else but reason even
for a moment.
On Virtue - When the judges of the Olympic Games
requested his presence, Apollonius wrote, For myself, I
would come for the spectacle of the physical struggle, except
3RD QUARTER 2017
that I would be abandoning the greater struggle for virtue.
On Prayer - Apollonius recommended that you pray that
justice may be done, that laws be not broken.
On Family - He inherited wealth but gave much of it away
because it was at best but a transitory toy. I gave it up to my
brothers, my friends, and the poorer of my relatives.
Of course, he never performed miracles despite claims of
him healing the sick, but his life, as recorded by his biographer
Philostratus, was apparently exemplary and one of the kindest
and most self less ever lived. In his Vita Apollonii (Life of
Apollonius), Philostratus wrote that Apollonius did not die,
but was resurrected and physically elevated to heaven.
Jesus of Nazareth
This first-century religious zealot claimed to have the
power of God to show sinners (i.e. everyone) the way to
God because he was the son of God. The Bible claims that
Jesus was conceived by divine intervention, healed the
sick, and warned that the world was going to end very soon
(Matthew 16:27-28, Matthew 23:36, Mark 9:1, and Luke
21:32). With his twelve sidekicks, he took his preacher show
on the road, offering counsel to peasants and nobility alike
in a small area of Judea.
But if he truly wanted Gods word disseminated, why didnt
he visit Beijing, Alexandria, and/or Romethe metropolises of
his time? Details. Lets compare some words attributed to him
with the words of Appolonius:
On the Mount - In his sermon on a mount, Jesus advised to
pluck out your eyes if you find yourself attracted to a woman or
else you will be sent to hell (Matthew 5:28-29).
On Slavery - Jesus had no problem with it: Blessed is
that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so
doing... But if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth
his coming and shall begin to beat the menservants and
maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken ... And
that servant, which knew his lords will, and prepared not
himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten
with many stripes (Luke 12:43-48).
On Reason - Take no thought for your life, what ye shall
eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall
put on... Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither
do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father
feedeth them ... Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall
we eat? (Matthew 6:25-31).
On Virtue - Jesus reminded the Pharisees that they were
hypocrites if they didnt follow the uber-draconian rules of
the Old Testament: For instance, Moses gave you this law
from God: Honor your father and mother, and Anyone
www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 13
who speaks disrespectfully of father or mother must be put
to death (Mark 7:10).
Jesus praised genocide as well:
Then he began to denounce the cities where
most of his mighty works had been done, because
they did not repent. Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to
you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you
had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have
repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell
you, it will be more bearable on the Day of Judgment
for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum,
will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought
down to Hades (Matthew 11:20-23).
On Prayer - And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in
prayer, believing, ye shall receive (Matthew 21:22). So Gods a
celestial vending machine; in goes your prayer, out comes your
wish. That vendor is still in business today.
On Family - If any man come to me and hate not his father,
and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters,
yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple (Luke
14:26). This is what a return to good old Christian family
values would really look like.
The author of the Gospel of Luke wrote that Jesus did not
die, but was resurrected and physically elevated to heaven
(Luke 24:51).
Shabbetai Zevi of Smyrna
A seventeenth-century religious zealot, Zevi was a
Sephardic rabbi who claimed to be the long-awaited messiah.
He had a group of followers throughout southeast Europe and
believed the world was going to end very soon in tikkun, which
is the Hebrew concept of God ending and fixing the world.
The prime minister of Constantinople had him imprisoned
and gave him the choice of death or converting to Islam. He
chose the latter.
Ann Lee
Born a Quaker in England in 1736, Ann Lee believed that
one could attain perfect holiness through celibacy. Her frequent
public proclamations of Jesus imminent return garnered her
a group of loyal followers who emigrated to the U.S. in 1774.
They settled Niskayuna, New York, and became the United
Society of Believers in Christs Second Appearing. Outsiders
colloquially referred to them as Shakers, after their form of
worshipping through ecstatic dancing.
She healed the sick (they say), predicted the future (they
say), and proffered claims of miraculous events. Because
of their adherence to celibacy, the Shakers died off without
leaving successors.
They do get points for being pacifists and for making
They do get points for being pacifists
and for making great furniture.
14 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org
great furniture, and the church still exists with a couple of
childless members. Interested parties can go on their website
to inquire about becoming a Shaker.
Bernhard Mller
Born in 1788, Mller emigrated from Germany to
Pennsylvania in 1831. Claiming to be a prophet, he led his
followers to the promised land of Grand Ecore, Louisiana,
only to die shortly after their arrival. His widow continued his
mission and established Germantown Colony, a socialist utopia
eagerly awaiting the imminent second coming of Christ. They
were dispersed by the Civil War and eventually disbanded.
Today, Germantown Colony is on the National Register of
Historic Places, complete with a museum.
Hong Xiuquan
This Christian zealot, born in China in 1814, saw visions
and believed he was the brother of Jesus Christ. In his twenties,
he had a nervous breakdown after failing a civil service exam
for the third time. While recovering, he had a dream that he
went to heaven where he met his spiritual family (different
than his biological family on earth) and destroyed demons
that were plaguing heaven. Hong instigated a rebellion to
install himself as the heavenly king of the empire. As a result,
anywhere from twenty to fifty million people were killed in
China from 1850 to 1864 during the Taiping Rebellion.
Antnio Conselheiro
Conselheiro was a Brazilian who predicted that the end
of the world would be a four-year process. He wrote that in
1896, a multitude shall come up from the shore In 1898 there
shall be a great scarcity of heads In 1900 all light shall be
extinguished. He may be commended for one thing: Despite
the Bibles approvaland even legislationof slavery, he
fervently opposed it. Conselheiro lucked out and never had to
answer for his End Times math mistake. He died in 1897, three
years before the non-apocalypse.
Thirih
Fatimah Baraghani was a nineteenth-century theologian
and prophet of the Bb faith in Iran. As an exceptional
beauty who was highly educated for a woman of her time, she
elevated herself to a notorious position in her faith through
her zealous behavior and was given the moniker Thirih,
which means pure one.
For example, at one Bb assembly, and to the horror
of the men gathered, she exposed her face by removing
the traditional veil from her head (a serious no-no under
Islam) in symbolic rebellion against the restraint on women.
She was revered as a martyr and saint after the Iranian
government executed her by strangulation (using her own
veil) for breaking Sharia Law.
3RD QUARTER 2017
Joseph Smith
This inventor of the Mormon religion and founder of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) claimed an
angel named Moroni visited him in 1823 to alert him of some
golden plates buried in the woods near his house in Palmyra,
New York. Smith claimed that the plates, written in Reformed
Egyptian (there is no such thing), told the tale of a group of
people who were led by God from Jerusalem to the Americas
around 600 BC.
Today, the LDS Church claims a worldwide membership of
over fifteen million. Adherents believe that each of the trillions
of planets in the cosmos has its own god, each of whom was
previously human. A spirit child named Elohim, the offspring
of one of those post-human gods, is the father of Jesus who came
to earth to impregnate Mary.
One of Elohims other sons, Lucifer, convinced a third of
Elohims offspring (there were millions in total) to revolt. The
ones who passed on the offer and remained neutral were cursed
to have black skin. After his resurrection, Jesus came to the
Americas to preach to the Indians, who are actually Israelites.
Mormon couples in good standing with the church will
get their own planet for the husband to rule in the Celestial
Kingdom of the afterlifejust like Elohim! Good standing
requires a lot, not the least of which is to give ten percent of your
income to the church, no matter who you are. Billionaires and
slum-dwellers alike must cough it up or they forfeit their planet
and spend eternity in the Outer Darkness instead.
Charles Taze Russell
Born in 1852, this fanatic got his start as a minister in the
Christian primitivism movement, which strove to practice in
the pure fashion of the first Christians. His interpretations of
Christianity rejected the bits about the holy trinity and hell fire/
damnation, so he did a very good job of glossing over all those
times in the Bible where Jesus threatened people with said hell fire
(Matthew 5:22, 5:29, 5:30, 18:9, 23:33; Mark 9:47; and Luke 12:5).
When he founded the Jehovahs Witnesses in Pittsburgh in
1881, Russell claimed he was the Lords special servant, and,
like Jesus, he was positive the world was going to end very soon.
He first claimed the End Times would come in 1874. Then
1904, then 1914, then 1915. The Jehovahs Witnesses revised
his predictions every few decades until the most recent, which
was to be in 1994. We all know how that played out.
They believe this world is ruled by Satan, an angel whose
egotism went nuclear. They also believe Satan has backup
angels who are now demons, and they are positive that exactly
144,000 humansand not even one morewill make it to
heaven. This number comes from Revelation 7:4: And I heard
the number of them which were sealed: 144,000 from all the
tribes of the children of Israel.
Revelation is the same book that tells of a war in heaven, a
beast with two horns like a lamb, a seven-headed dragon, frog-like
This catastrophe is immortalized in the
expression
3RD QUARTER 2017
drink the Kool-Aid.
Billionaires and
slum-dwellers alike
must cough it up
or they forfeit their
planet and spend
eternity in the Outer
Darkness instead.
unclean spirits, and two hundred million soldiers riding on
fire-breathing lion-horses.
William M. Branham
Branham got an early start. In 1912, just three years after
his birth, he claimed that he heard voices. In his early twenties,
he aspired to be a Baptist minister after hearing more voices
around the time that his brother died. He was ordained in 1932.
When his wife and daughter perished in the 1937 flood of the
Ohio River, Branham figured it was God punishing him. In
1946, Branham received another message from God, this time
via an angel who charged him with the heavenly mission of
healing the sick and preparing everyone for the End Times.
Branham is considered one of the two founders (the other
was Oral Roberts) of the Healing Revival movement. They
used the same medical techniques as Jesus: laying of hands
on people or praying to God to remove the devils from the
unfortunate victim. Accordingly, Branhams followers believed
he was God incarnate. (It was actually the nonsense written
about Jesus healing methods that inspired the early Christians
to discard Hippocrates scientific method in favor of exorcisms
and burnings at the stake.)
On Christmas Eve 1965, Branham, unable to heal
himself, succumbed to injuries he suffered in a car accident
six days earlier.
Jim Jones
Born in 1931 and an ardent Marxist in young adulthood,
Jones founded the Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ
and claimed to be the Messiah. In 1977, with Mao Zedong as his
inspiration, he established Jonestown, a Christian-communist
mission cobbled together in an isolated patch of jungle in
Continued on page 36
www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 15
Why I Wont Take
My Daughter
to a Religious
Pediatrician
by Ross Rosenfeld
I would never be in favor of banning a religion in this
country, and I am in favor of allowing hundreds of
thousands of Muslim refugees into the U.S. So its
extremely important to me as a new father that my daughter
learn to love all people from all backgrounds.
I am an atheist and a liberal with liberal friends and relatives,
so any mention of religion in terms of life decisions is often a
toxic subject open to accusations of bigotry and xenophobia.
But religion, despite being a crucial part of the identities of
many people, is also a decision. And I believe that it is fair, under
some circumstances, to judge someone. I would never refuse to
be friends with someone because of their religion or refuse to
attend a restaurant because of the owners faith, but I do judge
presidential candidates in part based on their religious beliefs,
since those views may affect their policy decisions. I prefer that
science professors not be people of faith, but people who adhere
strictly to the scientific methodand I certainly dont want my
doctors to be religious.
Liberals often make the mistake of viewing religion in the
same vein as race: you are born with it, and it is unchangeable.
But this, of course, is not the case. If you are okay with accepting
things on faith, it says something about how you think, and it is
a reflection on your analytical abilities.
When my wife was pregnant, we started off with an
obstetrician who made us very uncomfortable when she talked
If you rely on the scientific method to make
life-or-death decisions, you should, at the
very least, cast a skeptical eye on religion.
16 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org
about Gods plan, so we found a new one. Then, after my
daughter was born, she started to lose weight, so we took her
to the pediatrician. On the day of the appointment, the doctor
came in wearing a yarmulke. Having come from a Jewish family
and having many Jewish friends, I certainly have nothing
against the Jewish people. But the yarmulke definitely made me
feel uncomfortable. How can I trust this man to make the best
decisions for my daughter when he believes that he has to keep
his head covered from a mythical man in the sky?
This is not to say that I think I know more than a doctor
simply because he wears a yarmulke. I respect his medical
opinions, and I am, of course, a strong advocate of education
and licensing standards. But I need a doctor to be, at the very
least, skeptical of faith.
At our request, we saw a different doctor on the follow-up
visit and immediately asked if she was religious. She was taken
aback and seemed somewhat offended by the question, but she
did admit that she was. We decided to look for a new practice,
and we found another group nearby that had no trouble stating
affirmatively that their doctors were not religious, and they
were fine with my askingas they should be.
Im not going down a slippery slope; Im not planning to ask
about their political views or get their credit scores. But religion
is fair game when it comes to the medical field because religion
and science are enemies.
3RD QUARTER 2017
 One of the pediatricians at the original practice claimed that

Religion
religion and science can coexist because they do not interfere
with each other. I dont buy it. If you rely on the scientific
method to make life-or-death decisions, you should, at the very
least, cast a skeptical eye on religion. Just as I wouldnt entrust

is fair game
my money to a banker who thinks that twenty bucks can buy
a Rolex, Im not going to trust my daughter to a doctor who
believes in superstitions.
Our new pediatrician does something I like a lot: he

when it comes questions things. His questioning led to the testing of our
daughters stool and the discovery of her milk allergy. He

to the medical
recommended that my wife abstain from eating dairy if she was
going to breastfeed, and that we incorporate formula into the
babys diet. We immediately saw a reversal: our daughter began

field because
gaining weight and started sleeping better. Today, she is an
overall happier baby who just had her first birthday.
History is full of lessons about why we have laws and

religion and institutions that protect religious freedom and the freedom of
expression. Yet those lessons do not require us to pretend that

science are
superstitions presented as religious beliefs are just as valid as
logic and reason.

enemies. Ross Rosenfeld is a historian, educator, and political pundit who

has written for numerous websites and publications, including The
Hill, the NY Daily News, Newsday, Newsweek, and The Dictionary of
American History. He is also vice president of Long Island Atheists. His
fantasy novel for middle-grade students, The Stolen Kingdom, is a free
download on Kindle.

Support American Atheists every

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3RD QUARTER 2017 www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 17

A Little Bit O Soul
by Gary Reed

T here were no telltale signs that something

memorable was about to happen. Just the opposite,
in fact. It was the last hour of a two-semester,
mandatory philosophy course. The professor, an ancient Jesuit
priest, was lecturing in a low monotone. He was not making
eye contact. He appeared to be focused on the point in the
back of classroom where the ceiling met the wall, but was
probably just staring into space. In short, if such a thing were
possible, he seemed even more bored than we were.
This was a long time ago at Xavier, the Catholic university
in Cincinnati. Back then, at least in that particular academic
waystation, exams did not include material not covered in
class. With that in mind, some enterprising fellow students
were blitzing the elderly priest with questions that had nothing
to do with the subject of the days lecture. It was an obvious
ploy to reduce the amount of material he could cover, and thus
the amount they would need to study for the final exam.
This priest had two Ph.D.s, one in philosophy and the other
in physics. Plus, he had been a college professor for a very long
time. There was zero chance he did not understand the game
afoot.
Even so, on another day, I might have joined in the effort,
if only to relieve the boredom. But that day, I was unusually
relaxed. It was spring, it was the last day of the academic
year, and life was good. I just sat there, somewhere between
philosophic and catatonic, waiting for the class to end.
But my classmates knew something that I didnt: This
ancient cleric was one of the earliest activists in what would

When not teaching, he gave talks and

busied himself sounding the alarm
about the evil inherent in allowing
women to control their own bodies.
18 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org 3RD QUARTER 2017
 At what point in human evolution did God
begin this business of infusing souls?
become the Pro-Life movement. When not teaching, he gave
talks and busied himself sounding the alarm about the evil
inherent in allowing women to control their own bodies. This
was in the late 1960s, a few years before Roe v. Wade.
Redoubling their efforts, my classmates began throwing
questions at the priest about abortion and birth controlnot
because they were interested in his views, but because those
topics interested him. They evidently hoped the priest would
not be able to resist the temptation of discussing something he
actually cared about.
With that, the game took an interesting turn. The priest
had a pained expression on his face. He knew full well
what they were up to, but apparently something about their
questions betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of the
Catholic Churchs position on abortion or contraceptiona
misconception he felt compelled to terminate.
How many of you have heard an
The Bible,
explanation, he asked the class, of the
Churchs position on abortion and birth
control?
Only about one in four raised their
hands. That in itself was remarkable, obviously,
didnt say
because most of us were completing our
fourteenth or fifteenth year of Catholic
anything
education. We knew what the Churchs
position was, of course, but curiously, no
one had bothered to explain it.
about
The old man acknowledged the show
of hands, gave up on the assigned material,
and launched into an abridged explanation
DNA.
of the Churchs view. He probably said a bit
more than I remember, but essentially, he
went to the blackboard and drew an x or
some other symbol to represent a sperm cell
and a different symbol to represent an egg.
He then drew arrows from each to a circle.
The circle represented the ovum that forms when the sperm
fertilizes the egg.
At the moment the sperm and egg unite and form a
new cell, he explained, God infuses an immortal soul and
transforms that cell into a human beinga person. Anyone
who intentionally destroys that cell, or the embryo it develops
into, kills that person. This wasnt about killing a cell or a
bundle of cells; it was about killing a living being with an
immortal soul.
I was probably nineteen years old then, and despite all the
3RD QUARTER 2017
jokes about teenagers knowing everything, I was up in air
about, well, pretty much everything. So, how, I wondered, did
this priest know, with such absolute certainty, that God infused a
soul into that cell, and did so at that exact moment?
Souls, so far as I knew, didnt weigh anything, didnt have
an electrial charge or cause a chemical change, and were not
otherwise detectable. The Bible, obviously, didnt say anything
about sperm DNA and egg DNA meeting and hooking up. So,
how did this frail old man know that God infused a soul
whatever a soul wasand did so at that precise moment with
such complete certainty?
Divine foresight
Of course, I could not very well ask the old priest that
question. I would have gotten a lecture about faith and the
need to trust God, or something else equally uninformative.
And quite possibly a lower grade due to a
bad attitude or poor class participation.
But it occurred to me that there was
something I could ask. Before my internal
editor had a chance to head things off, my
hand went up. I was sitting right in front of
the old priest, and he nodded at me.
If I understand the biology right,
I said, in the case of identical twins,
that first cell, the zygote, splits into
two new cells that separate and develop
independently. The old priest may or
may not have nodded to indicate that he
understood what I was saying. I dont
remember. But he didnt cut me off.
When that happens, then? I asked.
Does the soul that God just infused split
in two, in some sort of spiritual mitosis,
or does God recall it and issue two new
ones? I think my question caught the old
priest off guard, or maybe he was just distracted, because he
simply muttered something about divine foresight and then
lit into two guys sitting near the door. They had been having
a whispered conversation between themselves for several
minutes, and their conversation had become louder and more
annoying.
Before the priest had gotten very far with those
miscreants and could turn his attention back to me, the bell
rang. He surrendered and dismissed the class, and I made my
escape unscathed. The ancient professor had not eviscerated
Continued on page 34
www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 19
The Cautionary Tale of a
Dystopian Philadelphia
A Review of Michael
Fridgens Ruth3:5
by Sam Witt

A ll that thou sayest unto me I will do (Ruth 3:5).

This passage of obedience and submission is
not merely a reference to scripture. These words
represent a resident of Philadelphia, twelve-year-old Ruth3:5.
In Philadelphia, everyone is named after a Bible verse. In
Philadelphia, everyone obeys, no one questions the word of
God, and women submit completely to their husbands. No
one goes near the citys outer wall. There is no need because
there is nothing but Philadelphia, the last city on Earth.
Ruth3:5, by Michael Fridgen, is an exploration of how far a
disagreement can go among religious sects of the same faith.
It is an Orwellian look at what can happen when one sect has
complete control of the government and polices self-expression,
suppresses originality, and maintains its version of facts at all
costs. Its the story of how one girls desire to express herself and
know the truth upsets both her community and also the outside
communities she doesnt even know exist.
Enter the life of Ruth3:5, an inquisitive, intelligent girl
whose individuality is stifled at every turn by an extreme
fundamentalist Christian regime. Everything from the clothes
she wears to the amount of time spent with her father is strictly
controlled by the GovernChurch. What she learns in school
and what she can do in her spare time is encased in wall-to-wall
religious indoctrination. There is not a moment of her life that
is truly hers. For example, Ruth has a fascination with womens
fashion and creates her own colorful hats and secretly models
them for herself. Since the GovernChurch forbids women
from wearing hats or donning colorful attire, she risks severe
punishment for her hobby.
Her best friend, Two Samuel1:26, may be a male who, in
turn, has a few extra privileges, but he is no stranger to hardship
since he is named for the verse that says, I am distressed for
thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto
me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.
Harassed due to the nature of his name, Two Samuel1:26
finds solace in his own thoughts, which makes him an ideal
friend for someone like Ruth. His older sister broke too many
GovernChurch rules and, as punishment, found herself in the
infamous Magdalene Houses in MensTown, a place where
men go to escape their families and take out their frustrations
on young, captive girls. Two Sam wants nothing more than to
see his sister again.

It is an Orwellian look at what can happen

when one sect has complete control of the
government and polices self-expression.
20 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org 3RD QUARTER 2017
 Fridgen has done a noteworthy job of
building a world that will both fascinate
and raise the blood pressure of atheists.
Ezra2:41 is an old woman who spends her days as a
building custodian. Her verse says, The singers: the children
of Asaph, a hundred twenty and eight. She has secrets to keep
and motivation to blend in. She has agreed to help Two Sam
by providing him information about how his sister is faring, as
long as Two Sam repays her with updates about Ruth3:5. Two
Sam is uncertain why Ezra shows interest in Ruth, and Ezra
knows she cannot tell him that she is Ruths grandmother
because grandparents are a nearly nonexistent concept
in Philadelphia. Not only would Two Sam have difficulty
understanding this relationship, revealing as much could put
her own life in jeopardy.
Jeremiah48:10 is not a man to upset. His verse fittingly says,
Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord deceitfully, and
cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood. He is
the captain of the Inquisitors, the GovernChurchs enforcers.
Jeremiah has order to maintain and old scores to settle. He is
single-minded in his hunt for Ezra and knows of a way which
may draw her out of obscurity: he will anonymously bring a
contradictory Bible verse to Ruths attention. Her insistence
that its an error will bring trouble raining down and force Ezra
out of hiding to protect her granddaughter.
Ruth takes the bait, does the unthinkable, and questions
a Bible verse in school, which invites the wrath of the
GovernChurch. This sets off a chain of events in which Ruth,
Ezra, and Two Sam move underground while the whole city
goes on high alert. Following a series of instructions left on
an ancient iPraise device (even in dystopic Philadelphia, no
one escapes Apples influence), the trio tries to escape not
just Jeremiah and his inquisitors, but also the law-keepers of a
neighboring city no one knew existed. Out of the frying pan
and into the fire, they quickly come to understand that the new
city they have discovered, influenced by a different version of
Christianity, is just as terrifying as the one they left. were somewhat of a distraction, they didnt reduce my overall
Like real religious groups, the Christians in Fridgens
Philadelphia are convinced that they hold the correct
interpretation of scripture. This takes creative license, shall we
say, on some of the finer points of the religion. For example, there
is no concept of Santa Claus. Instead, Jesus himself delivers
presents to all the homes on ChristBirth. Jesus crucifixion
took place in Boathouse Row, a historic site in Philadelphia. As
is often the case, this brand of Christianity evolved to fit what is
convenient and ignore whatever is not.
By having the citizens of Philadelphia believe that theirs
is the only city on Earth, the author imagines a world where
differing religious viewpoints are sequestered from one another.
Perhaps this bleak Philadelphia of the future is not that far-
fetched. While not as extreme as the Philadelphia in the book,
Lebanon is a country full of religious boundaries, even among
sects of the same faith. Sunni and Shiite, Greek Orthodox
3RD QUARTER 2017
and Greek Catholiceach populates a different region of the
nation, thereby creating a country both religiously diverse and
segregated.
This aspect of the book is reminiscent of M. Night
Shyamalans The Village. By suppressing curiosity and making
citizens fearful of what lies beyond the confines of their
comfortable, daily existence, a government can foster an
ignorant, complacent community. Ruths freethinking reminds
us all to question everything, even if there are consequences.
Religious oppression of women is nothing new, especially
in the Abrahamic faiths, and Philadelphias Christianity is no
different. Women have very specific, unappreciated functions
in society, and they fare worse if they make trouble. For older
women, breaking a rule might mean hard labor or even death. If
shes young, she faces a short life of rape and abuse in MensTown.
Ruth is willing to speak her mind and express herself despite the
risks in doing so, and she embraces an uncertain life on the run
if it means a chance of true freedom.
By allowing us to walk in the shoes of each character in this
complex web, Fridgen adds depth to the narrative in a way that a
single point of view would not. Despite this dynamic mechanism
for storytelling, its unclear at times who the main character
should be. Ruth3:5s storyline is sometimes overshadowed by
the time given to Ezras perspective, and it can feel like this is
really Ezras story.
There are times when the dialogue from Two Sam and Ruth
feels like it belongs to people much older and more mature.
In such a repressed environment where religious instruction
takes precedence over other learning, the pair seem more
articulate and refined than one might expect. There are
other dialogue issues as well, such as certain characters who
externalize their thoughts frequently to the air around them
or speak in wordy, cumbersome ways. While these issues
enjoyment of the story.
Fridgen has done a noteworthy job of building a world that
will both fascinate and raise the blood pressure of atheists.
Anyone who has fallen out of the faith will sympathize
with Ruth, Two Sam, and Ezra as they fight back against
the oppressive leadership and begin to question everything
theyve been taught. The level of control exerted by the
GovernChurch over the populace is a nightmare scenario
that serves well as a cautionary tale.
The genre of dystopian adventure is a crowded one in
publishing, but Ruth3:5 stands out as a worthwhile read for
atheists and anyone else who recognizes that its not impossible
for religion to take over our government.
Sam Witt is a board member of the Greater Cincinnati Tri-State
Freethinkers, American Atheists Affiliate of the Year for 2016.
www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 21
Book Excerpt

Atheist Answers
by David McAfee

I have been an atheist as long as I can remember, and Ive been inundated with
questions about atheism for almost as long. After graduating from college with a
degree in religious studies, I began writing about secular issues for this magazine
and other outlets. Over the past seven years, Ive published five books, and, needless
to say, the questions keep coming. Atheist Answers is a collection of my responses to
some of the most relevant and interesting questions Ive been asked. This article is an
adaptation of two chapters: Evidence & Belief and Afterlife. I hope my ramblings
help you solidify your own ideas, and even create some new ones.
How do you know there is no God? Our knowledge is very limited, whose nonexistence I cant prove, and I dont believe in most
so isnt it possible for there to be something keeping the order? of them.
I dont claim absolute certainty on the non-existence of
god, but uncertainty is not enough to warrant belief. Nobody Can God and religion coexist with science?
knows exactly how we got here, but Im more comfortable with A lot of the conflict between religion and science stems
following the scientific evidence than I am in proclaiming the from the stagnancy of scripture. When the Bible is seen as the
existence of a deity out of my own ignorance of the facts. The divinely inspired word of God even though it makes ridiculous
distinct lack of evidence pointing to a god is exactly why I dont claims like man being made from dirt and the earth being
believe in one. created in six days, you get generations of people who fight
against our evolving understanding of our origins. If you look
What evidence do you have against the existence of God? at organizations that have consistently impeded the progress of
We have lots of evidence against certain types of gods, science, youll see that they are most often religious in nature.
including prayer-answering deities. Intercessory prayer, for
example, has been extensively debunked by the scientific method. Want proof of God? Look at the human eye. That design did
not happen on its own.
But can you prove that God does not exist? Should we conclude that God is an eagle then? An eagles
No, and Ive never said I could. There are a lot of things eyesight is up to eight times better than a humans.

Our physical matter is recycled into

the atmosphere in order to start the
process of being all over again.
22 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org 3RD QUARTER 2017
 Believers often forget that most
atheists used to be religious.
How can you look at something like a flower and say its construction
is by complete chance?
If you understand how evolution by natural selection works,
you know that a flowers appearance is anything but complete
chance.
You people have to at least believe in something. How do you get
through the day?
With facts.
Both skeptics and religious people sincerely think their beliefs are
true. What if its our skepticism, and not religion, thats really
holding back society and causing harm?
Skeptics dont consider their beliefs to be true, they merely
require that claims be the result of empirical research. What if
were wrong? is a useless question for someone who has a truly
evidence-based worldview. If Im proven wrong, Ill change my
position.
Dont you ever feel connected to something bigger than yourself,
that the universe is trying to tell you something, or is it all just a
bunch of coincidences?
I do feel connected to something bigger than myself: the
earth, my fellow animals, the universe, and the cosmos. That
last one is bigger than you or me and any man-made god or
vague spiritual idea you can come up with. It encompasses
everything you have ever seen or ever will see and it created us
humans out of the same materials that make up the stars, trees,
rocks, and planets, as well as the chemicals that produce love,
anger, and happiness.
I just cant fathom everything exploding into existence from nothing
with no outside force helping. How can you say there definitely is
no God in any shape or form?
There are a lot of theories, but no solid proof of anything
yet. I would urge you to fight the desire to fill that unknown
with God. Saying I dont know is perfectly acceptable,
and in many cases its the only honest answer. While we
have a number of ideas about how the Big Bang could have
come about without an omnipotent deity, I can assure you
that there are zero scientific theories that explain the origin
of an omnipotent CreatorGod. Its possible that some
detached deistic god started it all, but without evidence
pointing to that notion, it doesnt make sense to believe
I would consider my beliefs quite
malleable, because they are shaped
by the evidence put forth.
3RD QUARTER 2017
in it. I would agree that its counter-productive to say
anything with certainty. An atheist doesnt say definitively
that there is no God in any shape or form; an atheist merely
disbelieves.
Isnt the theory of evolution just the same as the theory behind
religion?
A scientific theory, like evolution by natural selection,
requires a substantive explanation acquired through the
scientific method which is then repeatedly confirmed by
outside experts. If you could present this kind of evidence for
any religion, Id be a follower.
Love is real, and we cant measure that.
Yes, using brain scans, we can measure exactly which parts
of the brain react when we experience the chemical reaction
known as love.
How would you explain the happenings that people call miracles?
What most people call miracles are merely placeholders
for anything unexplainable. Throughout the history of
humanity, there have been millions of unexplained phenomena
that were later determined to be of natural origin. Not once,
however, has the opposite occurred. We have never had a
scientific understanding that was replaced with a supernatural
or miraculous explanation.
What would it take to change your mind?
If there were substantial, testable, peer-reviewed evidence
that showed the presence of a deity to be highly probable, Id re-
evaluate my position. But that will never happen because of the
very nature of deities. At the end of the day, a believer has to rely
on faith. If the Abrahamic God somehow proved his existence
to the world, I would believe in that deity. But I still wouldnt
worship it.
How can atheism be logical?
If I showed you a picture of a forest and told you there was
someone in the picture and you couldnt find him, youd declare
he doesnt exist, but he could be under a pile of leaves.
If you show me a picture of a forest and told me there is
someone in the picture, Ill search and examine and put your
claim under scrutiny. If I dont find something, I wont take a
www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 23
Life is special because it is finite.
leap of faith and simply believe the person is there. I wont know
for sure whether youre right or wrong, but thats exactly why it
follows that I wouldnt believe in the existence of that person. If
you tell me theres a person in the forest who died for my sins,
resurrected others, flew on a winged horse, or otherwise defies
natural laws, Im unlikely to believe you, especially when you
cant prove someone is there in the first place.
How do you stay skeptical all the time?
Understanding the processes of thinking and forming
ideas is the best way to make yourself better at it. Our mind is
If the
constantly making connections that arent there,
but we can train ourselves to recognize this and
adjust our thoughts accordingly, instead of simply
believing.
How are you so firm in your beliefs?
Abrahamic
God
Where do you get the idea that I am firm in
my beliefs? I would consider my beliefs quite
malleable, because they are shaped by the evidence
put forth. I am on a lifelong journey to rid myself of
false beliefs and sacred cows, so its necessary for
me to be willing drop long-held beliefs if scientific
somehow
data proves them to be false. I also am open to
adopting new ideas based on fresh empirical
evidence. Firmness in beliefs is what causes people
to shy away from looking at those ideas with a
skeptical or critical eye. proved his
Ive been having doubts about my non-belief. Its existence
to the world,
hard to imagine sometimes that we are alone without
a guiding force. What are your thoughts?
I would
My advice is to simply follow the evidence.
If youve found some action or force that must
be attributed to a deity, then you are sitting on
an enormous discovery. Most likely, however,
you perceive a guiding force because you are
a pattern-seeking animal who sees coincidental believe in
that deity.
beneficial outcomes in your own personal life as
a sign that someone is on your side.
Do you ever wish you were wrong?
There are a lot of things I hope Im wrong But I still
wouldnt
about. I think it would be great, not to mention
scientifically groundbreaking, if we were to prove
worship it.
the existence of psychic ability, gods, or any form
of afterlife. But my hopes cant be used in place of
evidence, so I separate my desires from my beliefs.
Do you think religion in general has had a positive or negative
influence on the advancement of technology, or has it not had any
effect on it at all?
Religious people brought about the scientific method
24 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org
as a way to learn more about what they believed to be Gods
creation. Today, when scientific discoveries contradict with
established religious dogma, many adherents to religion fight
to preserve the status quo. Regardless of how things began,
this backlash has caused religion to be a major impediment to
contemporary science.
What do you have to say about well-known authors like Lee Strobel,
Peter Hitchens, or C.S. Lewis? They were all atheists who realized
they were wrong.
Naming a few people who found religion later in life doesnt
prove their religious beliefs to be true. If
it did, the opposite would also be logical,
and I would point to famous non-believers
who used to be religious as evidence for
atheism.
I often hear from believers that gods
cannot be proven because it first takes a
leap of faith before letting go to see the
proof within yourself. What would you
say to that?
Believers often forget that most
atheists used to be religious, that many
non-believers used to think they had a
personal relationship with their God,
and that they used to feel the power of
prayer. Theyve since learned that their
feelings were internal emotions and not
some external force.
I think that without a belief in a loving and
just God, most people would become very sad,
bitter, and angry about the world. Do you
think some people need religion?
If you were right, then countries with
high rates of atheism, like Japan, France,
The Netherlands, Denmark, and Iceland
would be filled with hate groups, crime,
suicide, and more. We do not see that. We
can also look at highly religious nations
like Afghanistan (the country with one
of the highest rates of depresssion) or the
U.S. (where only one in three Americans
say theyre very happy) for comparison.
Im not saying atheism necessarily leads
to happiness, but its statistically clear
that the opposite is not true.
If you dont believe in God or Heaven, what is the meaning of life?
Shouldnt it be a persons own responsibility to give life
meaning, instead of having to rely on heavily flawed religious
traditions to provide the framework? It is my sincere opinion
3RD QUARTER 2017
Uncertainty is not enough to warrant belief.
that our precious time on earth should not be spent attempting
to justify unbelievable acts of cruelty, death, and disease as a
part of Gods plan. Instead, we should find ways to make this
life happy and satisfying without regard to the unknowable
nature of an afterlife.
If you have no belief in life after death or any sort of afterlife,
dont you feel a sense of pointlessness? You live a long life as a good
person, but for what?
The fact that we dont have any evidence for an afterlife
doesnt depress me or make me sad. We, like all other
animals, get one amazing life to live, and it is special because
it is finite. This inspires me to make the most out of the one
life I know I have.
I like the thought of reincarnation and the light at the end of the
tunnel in a near-death experience being the light you see when
youre being born.
We know why people tend to see a white light (among other
visions) near death, so, no, its not possible that it is a light you
see when you are born. There are also more humans being
born now than at any time in the past, making a 1:1 ratio for
reincarnation physically impossible. I think our knowledge of
our own impending death makes us prone to making up these
more comfortable afterlife stories.
Reincarnation still makes the most sense. Dont be bad, or
youll come back as a cockroach. Who decided a cockroach is
inferior to us?
If theres no afterlife or judgement day, it means a man
who is kind and gentle, who helps the poor, and a man who
is rude and selfish, and believes in destruction, are just the
same, does it not?
They arent the same. One does good in the world and the other
does bad. But in death, yes, the same result as a dog or goldfish.
So what do you think happens when we die?
When we die, the same thing happens to us that happens
to any animal when it dies. Our brains no longer function and
our physical matter is recycled into the atmosphere in order
to start the process of being all over again. To me that is a
beautiful idea at which I marvel every single day. This is my
version of spirituality.
Saying I dont know is perfectly
acceptable, and in many cases
its the only honest answer.
3RD QUARTER 2017
Im an atheist and have been happy this way up until six months
ago when I started to develop a fear of dying. Do you know anyone
else with this problem?
Mark Twain said, I do not fear death, in view of the
fact that I had been dead for billions and billions of years
before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest
inconvenience from it. I see death in a similar light.
Ive never feared it, only accepted it as an inevitability, a
motivator for accomplishing as much as I can in this life
without dreaming of the next. Fear is a common tool in the
religious treatment of death. By threatening believers with
torture for behaving badly and promising to reward them
with paradise for doing good, religions are capitalizing
on what is already known about humans: we recognize our
impending death and therefore fear it.
Ive been an atheist for a year and recently had a close Christian
relative die. I ended up praying to God in the hope that if there is an
afterlife, she is happy there. Do other people do this?
Im sorry to hear about your relative. While I personally
have never prayed, I think that people who leave religion
(especially those who have done it recently) might identify
with your situation. Whether they pray out of grief, a sense of
familiarity, or as a last-ditch effort to solve a problem, I think
a number of non-believers do this as they transition out of
religion. In any case, if it makes you feel better and doesnt
harm anyone else, I say go for it!
I like believing that Ill be with my parents and grandparents when
I die, so why cant you just leave well enough alone?
Seeing your family again after death can be a nice thought,
but not when you inject other religious concepts into the
mix, namely Hell. If someone doesnt worship properly, or
was simply born into a different denomination or religion,
Christianity says that theyll be tortured for eternity. Its
comforting to me to know that isnt a possibility for myself or
any of my loved ones.
When you die, youll finally realize that you were wrong!
Just waitI bet my life on it.
I bet I wont know anything when I die. My brain wont be
working, so I dont know how I could know anything. I find
evidence more convincing than confidence.
www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 25
Hillary, Women, and Patriarchalism
H illary Rodham Clinton was the first
woman to become a major party candidate for the office
of President of the United States. She was defeated by an
unqualified, foulmouthed, ignoramus who has regularly
expressed his contempt for women, even though he claims
that he loves them. W hile it is not surprising that a
majority of men voted for Donald Trump, it was stunning
that fifty-three percent of white women actually refused
to support the first female presidential candidate who had
a good chance of winning.
The outcome of any election is determined by many
interacting factors, but there is some evidence that patriarchal
religious indoctrination assumed a primary role in the
2016 presidential race. A slight majority of Catholic voters
(60%) favored Trump, while an overwhelming majority of
fundamentalist Protestants (81%) preferred the bellicose
billionaire. From the latter figure, it can be concluded that
Donald Trump is the exemplar of the Christ-centered life
because this term is central to fundamentalist ideology.
The justification for patriarchal domination as a God-
given mandate is, of course, Holy Scripture. Because so many
Americans accept the myth of Judeo-Christian nationalism,
it is entirely appropriate to look to the Bible as the source for
this severely oppressive, anti-woman theme in fundamentalist
Christianity.
The content of the Bible was recorded, transmitted,
and compiled over a span of almost two millennia in male-
The treatment of women in the Bible
reflects the cultural context in which these
chauvinistic rules and beliefs developed.
26 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org
by Brian Bolton
dominated, agrarian, Middle-Eastern societies. Therefore, the
treatment of women in the Bible reflects the cultural context in
which these chauvinistic rules and beliefs developed. Because
these misogynistic edicts, decrees, and mandates were codified
in the Judeo-Christian scriptures, they became part of a vast
compendium of commandments that devotees today believe to
be Gods perfect word.
Origins of Patriarchalism
It was only after God created animals and birds, which Adam
then named, that God fashioned woman as Adams helper from
his spare rib (Genesis 2:22). The woman, Eve, caused the fall
of humankind, at which time death entered the world. She ate
the forbidden fruit and gave some to her husband, and he ate it
as well (Genesis 3:6, 12). Eves punishment was painful labor
in childbearing and total submission to her husband (Genesis
3:16). In 1 Timothy 2:13-14, Paul provided the Christian
rendition of this fictitious event when he said that because Eve
was the one who was deceived, it was she, and not Adam, who
became the sinner.
Obedience and subjugation of women are dominant themes
throughout the Bible. For example, God approved of multiple
wives and concubines for men (Genesis 4:19, 16:1-4; Judges
8:30; 2 Samuel 5:13; and 1 Kings 11:3), but he did not endorse
multiple husbands for women. Moreover, a womans pledges,
vows, or obligations could be subject to patriarchal nullification
(Numbers 30).
3RD QUARTER 2017
 God ordered the rape of Davids
wives to punish his disobedience.
Unjust Punishments
God generally considers women to be less valuable than men
(Leviticus 27:1-7), an attitude reflected in several degrading
Biblical regulations and judgements, such as the classification
of a mans wife as one of his possessions along with his slaves
and livestock (Exodus 20:17). In a frightening illustration of
cruel injustice, God ordered the rape of Davids wives to punish
his disobedience (2 Samuel 12:11-12). In another instance of
grisly punishment that should mortify pro-life zealots, God
caused a woman to abort her fetus because she committed
adultery (Numbers 5:21, 27).
Equally horrible is the command that an unbetrothed
virgin must marry her rapist (Deuteronomy 2: 28-29).
Interestingly, some Muslim countries like Jordan and
Morocco have similar laws on their books and are currently
changing or revoking them.
Some Capital Crimes
In additional heinous decrees and actions, God requires
that women be killed for violations that are not viewed as
crimes in contemporary Western societies. For example,
an evil enchantress must be executed (Exodus 22:18), and
unchaste brides must be stoned to death (Deuteronomy
22:21). Lots wife was instantly destroyed for disobeying the
Lords command to not look back when her family was f leeing
Sodom (Genesis 19:26). Arguably the most abhorrent event
in the Bible is Jephthahs sacrifice of his daughter, whom he
unknowingly promised to God as a burnt offering (Judges
11:29-39). Why did God not spare Jephthahs innocent
daughter as he had done previously with Abrahams innocent
son, Isaac (Genesis 22:1-18)?
Disgusting Attitude
Several gruesome episodes with a common theme illustrate
another feature of Gods disgusting disregard for the lives
of women. In one of them, Lot offered the men of Sodom his
betrothed daughters in lieu of his male guests because handing
over the guests would have violated the accepted standards
of hospitality. But the men of Sodom rejected the young girls
(Genesis 19: 4-10). In another episode, a Levite offered his
concubine to a group of men in a similar circumstance; she
died as a result of the ensuing gang rape (Judges 19:20-30). He
cut the deceased concubine into twelve pieces and distributed
them to the tribes of Israel, precipitating a murderous war with
the Benjamites (Judges 20, 21).
There are an additional four ghastly events in which the
bellies of pregnant women were ripped open with swords,
killing them and their fetuses (2 Kings 8:12, 15:16; Hosea
13:16; Amos 1:13).
Treacherous Women
There are many Bible stories about treacherous, dangerous,
dishonest, manipulative, untrustworthy women. Three are
notable for their savage behavior. Jael was clever, fierce, and
3RD QUARTER 2017
violent. She killed General Sisera by hammering a tent peg
through his skull into the ground while he was asleep (Judges
4:17-22). Delilah betrayed Samson to the Philistines for a
monetary reward. The Philistines subsequently gouged out his
eyes and imprisoned him (Judges 16:4-21).
Evil Jezebel was most certainly the worst of all scriptural
shrews. She arranged for Naboth to be falsely accused of
blasphemy and then stoned to death so that her husband could
take possession of Naboths vineyard (1 Kings 21:7-16). She was
so diabolical that the prophet Elijah fled because he was afraid
of her (1 Kings 19: 1-9). She suffered a brutal death herself
(2 Kings 9: 30-37). Many centuries later, Jesus criticized the
church in Thyatira for tolerating a false prophetess, also named
Jezebel (Revelation 2:18-23).
The depiction of women as untrustworthy even extends to
political symbolism, as when Israels lack of fidelity to God is
represented as the adultery of a faithless wife in Hosea 1-3. In
fairness, it should be noted that there were heroines among the
Hebrew women, including Ruth, Rahab, and Rachel.
Christian Womanhood
Along with slaves and children, wives are commanded to be
under the jurisdiction of their husbands. Paul is the preeminent
New Testament spokesman concerning Christian marital
relationships. He said repeatedly that wives should submit to
their husbands in everything because the husband is the head
of the wife, just as Christ is head of the church (Ephesians 5: 21-
23, Colossians 3:18-25). He did, however, stress that husbands
should love their wives and not be harsh with them.
Peter reiterated this advice concerning spousal submission
and declared that wives should exhibit purity and reverence
in their lives. He referred to wives as the weaker partner (1
Peter 3:1-7).
In addition to marriage, Paul provided specific admonitions
for women in the church. They should dress modestly, with
decency and propriety, adorning themselves only with good
deeds. Women should learn in quietness and full submission,
and they cannot teach or have authority over men (1 Timothy 2:
8-15). Moreover, it is disgraceful for women to speak in church
(1 Corinthians 14: 34-35). Although Jesus did not specifically
address womens status in his ministry, it is clear that men were
preferred. All twelve apostles were men, and the Last Supper
was a stag affair, while women were typically portrayed as
committed helpers or servants.
The Christian Testaments description of womens roles is
consistent with the definition in Proverbs 31 of the wife of noble
character as capable, dutiful, dedicated to family, and fearing the
Lord. The restrictions, limitations, and standards detailed above
are enforced in many fundamentalist Christian churches today,
even after two thousand years have elapsed. Does this testify to
the enduring truth of traditional scriptural views of women or to
the obstinacy of the dominant ecclesiastical patriarchy?
Brian Bolton is a retired psychologist living in Georgetown, Texas.
www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 27
Free Speech - continued from page 4
despite our presidents call for team owners to do just that. Its
also why none have been arrested, so the president has invoked
the court of public opinion to impose the consequences instead.
Poor taste is one of the most prosecuted crimes in the court
of public opinion, where mob rule wins the day and anyone
who shows up can be judge, jury, and executioner. American
Atheists frequently finds itself a defendant in this court, usually
on the grounds that weve erected a billboard with a message
about taking Christ out of Christmas.
Comedian Kathy Griffin is another atheist whos been hauled
into the court of public opinion by the poor-taste police. Ten
years ago, when she won her first Emmy Award, she had this to
say:
A lot of people come up here and they thank Jesus
for this award. I want you to know that no one had less
to do with this award than Jesus. He didnt help me a
bit. If it was up to him, Caesar Milan would be up here
with that damn dog. So all I can say is: Suck it, Jesus! This
award is my god now!
Just like the outrage over American Atheists billboards, this
outrage was predictable and failed to have a negative effect on
her popularity.
This year, however, things got weird when she made a
statement on social media that arguably amounted to nothing
more than garden-variety political commentary. On May
30, she posted an image on Twitter and Instagram of herself
holding a plastic Donald Trump head dripping with fake blood.
The caption read, There was blood coming out of his eyes,
blood coming out of his...wherever. Other than changing her
to his, this was a direct quote from Trumps own description
of another female television personality, Megyn Kelly, when
she moderated one of the Republican primary debates.
Griffin was in the midst of a national tour at the time, and
28 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org
within hours of her post, every venue where she was still to perform
cancelled her appearance. CNN fired her from the New Years Eve
gig shed co-hosted with Anderson Cooper for the past ten years.
The double-standard machine was on full blast when she
decided it was in her best interest to plead guilty in the court of
public opinion to the non-existent crime of making a political
statement through art. The machine went into overdrive when
it came out that she was under an FBI investigation into whether
she intended to assassinate the president, which was opened
and closed in a matter of days.
Fortunately, her remorse was short-lived. At the end
of August, she retracted her apology and announced new
performance dates in Europe, Asia, and Australia on what was
now called the Laugh Your Head Off World Tour, complete
with a poster that reproduces the infamous photo with a globe
substituted for Trumps head.
But the jokes really on us as a nation because now the rest
of the world is laughing its head off at the Land of the Free
because its actually the land of Viva free speechunless its
offensive to me.
A little over a month before this all hit the fan, an art exhibit at
the University of Alaska was coming to a close after a six-week run.
The show featured work by Department of Art faculty members
including Thomas Chung, an assistant professor whose painting
Everything depicts a young Hillary Clinton in a white pantsuit
embracing the leg of a naked Chris Evans (the actor who stars in
the Captain America film franchise) who is holding the severed
head of Donald Trump that drips blood onto Hillarys outfit.
The exhibit was thirty-seven days into its forty-day run
before a gallery visitor posted Chungs painting on Facebook
to question its appropriateness on a campus funded by tax
dollars. The post went viral enough to catch the attention of
the local news stations, which prompted hundreds of calls and
emails to the university that were threatening enough that
Chung had a police escort on campus for a while.
The gallery visitor who started it all was just that: a visitor
not a student, faculty member, or other employee of the university.
For what its worth, Trump carried Alaska with 51% of the vote
compared to Clintons 39%, and as of this writing, his approval
rating in that state is still higher than the national average. So why
3RD QUARTER 2017
 Axiom of the New Man
Slavery was so cherished by the Greeks,
And their fantastic gods created poetry;
The Romans renamed them in the colosseums.
The first Jews made god a jealous thing,
Then Christians made a Jew their king.
Moslems and Hindus swear by holy scrolls
That in some perfect heaven clings
Eternal grace where cartoon angels sing;

Source: "Stephen Miller Will Go

On Any Show. Seriously, Any Let the past rest in the grave and be appeased
Show." YouTube.com That we were but the infants of stupidity,
Lost to the hysterical madness of instincts
didnt the uproar there ignite much sooner than it did?
A gallery understandably carries more gravitas as a venue That instruct the beasts in the jungle,
for visual arts than Instagram. Maybe its Chungs nod to
Greek mythology that makes the difference. He modeled And ruled our history like a disease.
Chris Allen/Captain America after a piece of art in the Vatican
Museum: Antonio Canovas Perseus Trimphant, a sculpture
of Perseus holding the head of Medusa (talk about gravitas). O fathers that dwelleth in the heavens,
Well probably never know why one severed Trump head is
less offensive than another, but its clear that any depiction of Would you not just remain where you lay,
a severed Trump head is going too far in the opinions of quite And leave us to our own devices?
a few Americans.
We do know that a severed head from farther down the The rival tribes have been your sorry theme
chain of command isnt offensive. Back in February, White
House policy advisor Stephen Miller was pilloried in a video
In this and every other century;
on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The video included a We have had enough of jihads and crusades,
few seconds of Millers decapitated head superimposed into a
scene from Game of Thrones. The head is still talking, so could How each breed hates the other breed;
it be that decapitation is okay as long as the victim doesnt die? I stand here and I do not redeem.
Or maybe the Game of Thrones angle provides a protective layer
between the joke and the viewers sensibilities because Colberts I say to prophets of bully gods and greed,
ratings didnt plummet after the video was aired.
Every issue of this magazine contains at least one article or Let our voices be a choir of understanding!
image that crosses the line into someones idea of poor taste. From Let our song be the praise of our singing!
the letters I receive, I know that even atheists can find the content
offensive. I get a lot of suggestions to tone down some of the rhetoric Let us make the first commandment Peace!
in order to attract a readership beyond the hardcore, in-your-
face atheists. But the articles that get the most complaints about
crossing the line are also the articles that get the most comments O fathers now trapped in your heavens,
thanking us for not shying away from controversial subjects.
This is exactly why free speech is one of the greatest deals of Keep your silence if you please;
all time. Protected speech is, by definition, speech that may be
in poor taste according to someone. If that werent the case, it We are on our way to reinvent you,
wouldnt need protection. As we go to the distant planets in fleets
Of flying spheres that stare into the galaxies.

Pamela Whissel Mark Fishbein

Editor-in-Chief markfishbein@comcast.net
PWhissel@Atheists.org

3RD QUARTER 2017 www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 29

Helping Kids Experience Awe
Without Religion
by Maria Polonchek

30 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org 3RD QUARTER 2017

O ne of my earliest childhood memories flashes to
a brief but powerful scene on a quiet hilltop in southern
Texas at sunrise. The spring air
was chilly, but I felt warm and safe
holding hands with the people next
to me as our group formed a circle
and sang hymns. I would have been
six or seven, wearing an Easter dress
that matched my little sisters and
a Sunday hat with pastel ribbons.
That morning, my mother had
woken us while it was still dark so
we could join the churchs sunrise
service. I cant see the specific
colors of the sky anymore in my
minds eyethey blend in with
the others that have followed
but I remember how it made me
feel: small but important, part of
something bigger than I realized
was possible.
I didnt know it at the time,
but what I experienced during
this moment was awe, an emotion
that scientists and psychologists
have only begun to research and
understand in the last two decades.
A foundational leader in the study
of awe, Dacher Keltner of the
University of California Berkeley,
explains that awe is that sense of
wonder we feel in the presence of
something vast that transcends our
understanding of the world (Awe,
the Small Self, and Social Behavior,
Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 2015, vol. 108, no. 6).
I find this definition helpful, as it
names both the cause and effect of
experiencing awe. Like the sunrise
service at Easter, most moments
of awe from my childhood are
intertwined with religion: the glow
of candles in a darkened sanctuary,
Human beings have an innate, fundamental
need to experience awe.
3RD QUARTER 2017
powerful music from the choir, stale
cracker nibbles with shots of sweet
I
grape juice tasting one and the same
on my tongue.
remember
I was taught that experiencing
awe is only possible through God,
how it
so when I started to have doubts
about the religion of my childhood,
one of my greatest concerns was
made
that I would no longer have the
ability to experience those feelings
that were inherent to some of the
best moments of my life.
Since then, Ive learned
me feel:
that religion doesnt have a
monopoly on awe. Its a common
misconception thats easy to
small but
debunk once you understand how
awe works. Anyone, religious or
not, is capable of experiencing
important, awe. Keltners research suggests
that human beings have an innate,
part of
fundamental need to experience
awe. He describes the need as an
emotion that has evolved in us to
ensure that we cooperate within
something social collectives. His research,
published in peer-reviewed
bigger
psychology journals, has found
that the experience of awe nurtures
feelings of altruism and empathy,
than I
boosts creativity and academic
performance, and discourages
both narcissism and the sense of
entitlement.
realized
As a mother, I naturally began
to wonder how to foster these
was
connections in my children.
Growing up in the church had
shaped my experiences of awe
throughout my childhood, so my
possible.
own children, who are being raised
outside of religion, will have some
very different references.
www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 31
The experience of awe nurtures feelings of
altruism and empathy.
When I asked Keltner to name the number-one trigger
of awe, his answer surprised me. I assumed he would
point to naturethe sunrise, the mountains, the ocean,
etc., but I was wrong. Its other people, he said. Their
One of my
magnanimity. Keltner gathered
data from twenty-five countries
greatest
encompassing a diverse pool of
cultures including Americans
as well as the indigenous Himba
in Namibia. He has found the
number-one triggerwhether
its in the U.S. or among the
concerns
was that
indigenous Himba in Namibia
to always be the same: the
profound generosity of others.
I would
This is good news for families
whose resources may be limited
whether its temporal, financial, or
no longer
environmental.
Nature as a trigger of awe
comes in second place, but the
have the
scene doesnt have to be as big
or dramatic as we might think.
Simply looking up at the sky;
ability to
being around water, trees, or
animals; or studying insects or
the stars can be awe-inspiring. An
important point Keltner makes is
that because of our fundamental,
innate need to experience awe, experience
those
the triggers are as varied as
human beings themselves. Art,
music, and science can score big
points in different people. Let
feelings.
your child take the lead: turn
up the volume to their favorite
songs, encourage their passion for
photography, or their interest in
dinosaurs and space.
Children will identify their own versions of awe, but
Keltner reminded me that its their job to be different
Anyone, religious or not, is capable of experiencing awe.
32 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org
from their parents. Our job as parents, I feel, is to make
sure our children have opportunities to experience awe
and to help them understand that there is value in the
feeling itself. Its okay if our kids arent as impressed as
we are by the Golden Gate Bridge
and if were not as impressed as they
are by the taste of five different sodas
mixed together. Whats important is
that we encourage and respect how
and where they do find awe. Then,
if were lucky, well learn from their
experiences as well.
This feeling is difficult to arrange
or plan because awe pushes the
limits of understanding and can
therefore come close to crossing
the boundary into feelings of fear.
People who are unwilling or unable
to restructure their thinking in order
to accommodate awe may find the
experience terrifying. We can help
children make the leap from fear to
enjoyment by encouraging them to
wonder, ask questions, and, most
importantly, let them know theyre
not alone in their search.
It can be hard for parents to admit
we dont always have an answer, but
if we can embrace and admit to our
children that we dont know exactly
how big the sky is, how the universe
was formed, or what happens when
we die, we let them know its okay to
wonder, to explore, to ask questions,
and keep searching for answers that
may never be found. This alone can
be awe-inspiring.
Maria Polonchek is the author of In Good Faith: Secular Parenting in a
Religious World has written parenting essays for Brain, Child magazine,
The Friendly Atheist blog, and the book Have Milk, Will Travel.
3RD QUARTER 2017
 Old and new ideas
clash as a young
science professor
in the post-Civil
War South faces off
against traditional
valueswith
surprising results.
Only $2.99 on Amazon to download on any computer.

The patriarch Bishop Irenaues

of Lugdunum lived in the
second century. He collected
and evaluated the scrolls that
eventually became the New
Testament. This fictionalized
account of his adventures include
fascinating details about the
nascent Catholic Church and life
in the Roman Empire.

www.MiltonTimmons.com
www.ScrollSeekers.com

3RD QUARTER 2017 www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 33

A Little Bit - continued from page 19
Given divine foresight and all that,
does God infuse an immortal soul into
that poor, doomed cell anyway?
me, and God hadnt struck me with a thunderbolt.
But I left with lots of unanswered questions. By divine
foresight, the priest meant that God knew what would
happen in the future. God would, therefore, know in advance
that my hypothetical zygote would split, and that the new
cells would go their separate ways. So, God would wait
until after they separated before going about the business of
infusing a soul or, in this case, two souls.
In the late 1960s, a rock band called The Music Explosion
had a hit song called A Little Bit O Soul. It was a catchy
tune. Once you heard it, you had trouble getting the damn
thing out of your head. One couplet claimed, when you're
broke in two, you need a little bit o soul to see you through.
Is that how it is with zygotes?
The obvious next question wasnt, Well, what if the new
cell splits again, as in the case of triplets or quads? The
answer to that was obvious: more divine foresight. God is
all powerful and does not have a problem with premature
infusion.
No, my next question would have been, Sometimes the
zygote simply doesnt attach to the uterine wall. It quickly
dies, and the body discards it. Given divine foresight
and all that, does God infuse an immortal soul into that
poor, doomed cell anyway? Wouldnt that be a waste of a
perfectly good soul?
More to the point, wouldnt it be a cruel joke to tell that
poor doomed cell it has an immortal soul and free will; to tell it
to choose wisely or end up in hell; and then, in the next second,
say, Sorry, times up. Off to the afterlife!
If the answer to that question is, No soul for you! then
is that what happens if you stretch the timeframe just a little?
What happens when God knows that the embryo, or whatever
the correct biological term is, will not spontaneously come
undone immediately, but will do so a few seconds or minutes
after forming? Does he inject a soul into the zygote anyway?
Or, given divine foresight, does God once again elect not to do
such a cruel and useless thing?
If not, then what if the terminating eventspontaneous or
notdoesnt occur for a couple weeks or months? Does divine
foresight still come into play? And whatever the answer, how
do you know that with such certaintly?
Father, forgive me, but at what point in human evolution
34 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org
did God begin this business of infusing souls? Scientists
think that one of our forebears, a Homo ergaster, first stared
into a campfire about 1.5 million years ago. Did that clever
chap have a soul? Was it a regulation human soul or a
different, less evolved model?
What about the Neanderthal who, more than 30,000
years ago, made the etchings in Gorhams Cave, near
Gibraltar? Did he have a soul? And what about the Cro-
Magnon men (or women) responsible for those later cave
paintings? Did they have souls?
There are billions of galaxies, each with a billion or more
stars, and vast numbers of those stars have planets. Many of
those planets are, or were, or someday will be similar to our
own. It is likely, scientiests tell us, that there are, or were, or
someday will be, sentienent beings on at least someand,
quite possibly, manyof those planets.
Does God infuse souls into little green men?
If youre raised Catholic, you learn early on that God
is all knowing and all wiseway better at knowing
everything about you than even Santa Claus. But back
when I was a young child studying my Catechism, there
were already over two billion humans on the planet. Today,
there are more than three times as many. Thats a lot of
sperm and eggs and zygotes for God to keep track of. Does
God ever get distracted, or peeved, and not infuse a soul
in some zygote? Is that what happened to Hitler? And
while were on the topic of Hitler, what happened to divine
foresight when that bastard was conceived? Why didnt the
almighty give that malevolent little zygote a gentle nudge
off the uterine wall before things got out of hand?
My ultimate questions today are still the same initial
questions that popped into my head back in that classroom in
Alter Hall at Xavier University: First, How, kind Sir, do you
know that God chooses to spend his time infusing souls into
zygotes, so that he can have the pleasure of rewarding some
and torturing the rest for all eternity? And second, Will this
be on the final exam?
Gary Reed recently retired from practicing law and now writes full
time. His legal thriller, A Fatal Cell Phone Video, turns on an ambiguous
cell phone video, but plays out against the background of the current
anti-Muslim and anti-immigration rhetoric.
3RD QUARTER 2017
 Support American Atheists by purchasing an autographed copy for $50
($25 is tax-deductible where allowed by law), and receive a free one-year
membership. Order online at Atheists.org/FightingGod or send payment
to American Atheists, P.O. Box 158, Cranford, NJ 07016.

David Silverman
President of American Atheists

A sometimes funny, always informative look into the mind behind

Americas frontline of Atheism. Dave reminds us that religion is
everyones enemy.
~ Taslima Nasrin, human rights activist and author of Shame and Revenge

Author
Cliff Somers

Pastor Rice Broocks says he has "evidence" to prove that

"God's Not Dead."

Cliff Somers begs to differ.

Is He or Isn't He? provides a new take on much of the old

theological evidencewith a bit of humor thrown in.

Available at barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com,

itunes.com, and googleplay.com.

Published by Page Publishing Co., New York, N.Y.

3RD QUARTER 2017 www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 35

16 Saviors - continued from page 15
Guyana. Jones believed that he and his followers would make it
to heaven and live forever in mutual joy if they all died together.
On November 18, 1978, the cult members910 men, women,
and childrendied in a mass suicide, most of them by drinking
a punch laced with cyanide and sedatives. This catastrophe is
immortalized in the expression drink the Kool-Aid, which refers
to someone who blindly follows an idea, no matter how absurd.
David Koresh
Born Vernon Wayne Howell in 1959, he legally changed his
name in 1990 to David Koresh after the biblical Persian king
who freed the Jews in Babylon. Koresh was a member of the
Davidian Seventh-day Adventist Church, a reform movement
within the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He co-founded the
Branch Davidians, a faction in the reform group that broke
away. Koresh fought his way to the top of the cult after claiming
to have received visions and instructions directly from God.
In 1993, Koresh and seventy-five of his followers died in
a fire on their Waco, Texas, compound after they refused to
surrender to a raid by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and
Firearms. Federal authorities had been investigating Koresh on
several accusations of child abuse and sexual abuse, but the fire
killed him before they were able to bring him to trial.
Jeffrey Don Lundgren
Lundgren was born in 1950 in Independence, Missouri, the
home of a Mormon splinter group, the Reorganized Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Believing God gave him
signs to build his own ministry, he used his photographic
memory to master scripture quotes, which impressed some
folks enough to follow him as a cult leader.
In 1988, he predicted the End Times and Second Coming
as May 3 (his birthday), but as it would turn out, the end of
the world did not occur. In 1989, Lundgren murdered five
members of the cult for being disloyal (they refused to live in
his house with other cult members). The victims were a family
that included three girls, ages fifteen, thirteen, and six. He was
executed in Ohio in October 2006.
Kim Jong-il
Taking place in Russia on a bleak February day in 1941 to
a Korean woman and the commander of a Soviet Brigade, the
birth of Kim Jong-il supposedly included a double rainbow and
the appearance of a glowing new star that caused winter to turn
immediately into spring. If this did happen, it went unnoticed
by every meteorologist in the world. North Korean propaganda
makes many extraordinary claims for their leader. He never
defecates, for example. Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag. Basic
Kim Jong-il was the Supreme Poopless Leader and deity
until his 2011 death. He remains the Eternal Party General
Secretary, and his son Kim Jong-un has taken his place as
Supreme Leader of North Korea.
After his 2001 visit, Christopher Hitchens described
North Korea as a surreal nightmare of famine, isolation,
repression, and nuclear peril. Its no wonder that, as one of the
most articulate anti-theists of the twentieth century, Hitchens
equated North Korea with the Judeo-Christian concept of
the afterlife: Just consider for a moment what their heaven
36 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org
looks like: endless praise and adoration, limitless abnegation
and abjection of self, a celestial North Korea.
Edgar C. Whisenant
In 1987, Whisenant published a book, 88 Reasons Why the
Rapture Will be in 1988. On Borrowed Time is the online
version, complete with audio and available to all at MYKEC.
net/whisenant. Many Christians (mostly in the Bible Belt) sold
their homes in preparation for the glorious end of the world.
This self-proclaimed messiah proffered an argument based
on Jesus parable of the fig tree (Matthew 24:32-36 and Mark
13:28-32): This generation shall not pass, prognosticated
Jesus, till all these things be fulfilled. The year 1988, as it
would turn out, was followed by a year that historians would
come to call 1989, and thus Wisenant was in error.
The end did come for Whisenant, in May 2001.
Michael B. Paulkovich is an aerospace engineer and freelance writer
who also contributes to Free Inquiry and Humanist Perspectives. He
is a contributing editor for The American Rationalist and author of
Beyond the Crusades, published by American Atheist Press with a
foreword by Robert M. Price.
References
Cartlidge, David R., and David L. Dungan, Documents for the
Study of the Gospels. Cartlidge and Dungan, 1994.
Chidester, David, Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the Peoples
Temple, and Jonestown. Indiana University Press, 2003.
Chin, Shunshin, and Joshua A. Fogel, The Taiping Rebellion.
M. E. Sharpe, 1982.
Chryssides, George D., Historical Dictionary of Jehovahs
Witnesses. Scarecrow Press, 2008.
Fredrich, Carl Johann, and Friedrich Hiller, Inschriften von
Priene. Gruyter, 1906.
Graham, Robert Bontine Cunninghame, A Brazilian Mystic:
Being the Life and Miracles of Antonio Conselheiro. Dodd,
Mead and Co., 1920.
Hitchens, Christopher, Letters to a Young Contrarian. Basic
Books, 2001.
Hitchens, Christopher, Visit to a Small Planet. Vanity Fair,
June 2001.
Jones, Christopher P., Letters of Apollonius. Loeb Classical
Library, 2006.
Flavius Philostratus, The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, translated
by Christopher B. Jones. Loeb Classical Library, 2005.
Perriman, Andrew, Otherways. Open Source Theology, 2007.
Kang, Chol-hwan, and Pierre Rigoulot, The Aquariums of
Books, 2005.
Reilly, Thomas H., The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: Rebellion
and the Blasphemy of Empire. University of Washington
Press, 2010.
Milhorn, H. Thomas, Crime: Computer Viruses to Twin Towers.
Universal Publishers, 2004.
Sassoon, Joseph, Saddam Husseins Baath Party: Inside an
Authoritarian Regime. Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Tosches, Nick, King of the Jews: The Greatest Mob Story Never
Told. New York: Harper, 2006.
3RD QUARTER 2017
Why I Am - continued from page 46 Sweden - continued from page 11
for myself was an option and that my questions really were Endnotes
worth asking. 1. Steven Pinker, The Moral Instinct, January 8, 2013
Next, I read Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. NewYorkTimes.com
When I revealedwith much trepidationmy doubts to 2. Elizabeth Palermo, Religion Doesnt Make People More
Chuck, I learned that he was even further along the skeptics Moral, Study Finds, Sept. 11, 2014, LiveScience.com
path than I was! But neither the books nor Chuck were the 3. Phil Zuckerman, How Secular Family Values Stack Up,
reason for my shift. This journey was mine and no one elses. May 6, 2017, LATimes.com
The practice of letting others make my decisions was finally 4. Albert Mohler, A Comprehensively Secular Life? A
losing steam. Conversation with Phil Zuckerman, Dec. 7, 2015,
During this time, I kept trying to fit into the religious world, AlbertMohler.com.
but doing so became increasingly unproductive. I lost some 5. PSYWWW.com/psyrelig/zuckerman.htm
of my status in Campus Crusade when I didnt participate as 6. Rick Noack, Map: These Are the Worlds Least Religious
frequently. Under the harsh light of reason, I saw their message Nations, April 14, 2015, WashingtonPost.com
for what it really was: conditional love. Once I was officially 7. Anders Djurfeldt and Klara Jamison Gromark, Sweden,
on the fringe, I understood that I was going to have to give Nicaragua and the Sandinistas, Lund University
everything some serious thought because my doubts were Department of Political Science (TinyURL.com/
making too much sense to ignore. I knew what I had to do, even SwedenNicaragua)
if it meant renouncing much of who I thought I was. 8. Deidre McPhillips, The Tragic Numbers Behind Syrias
Fast forward. I dropped out of school (it was too much), Refugees, Dec. 19, 2016, USNews.com
married Chuck in the church (still clinging), started living as 9. Joe Meyers, Foreign Aid: These Countries Are the Most
a real adult (scary stuff at first), and eventually finished my Generous, Aug. 19, 2016, WEForum.org
college education. As Chuck and I happily continued to build a 10. WorldHappiness.report
life that didnt need religion, I was no longer able to reconcile my 11. GoodCountry.org/index/results
beliefs with facts and evidence. Instead, I appreciated that there 12. Vexen.co.uk/countries/best.html
are scientific explanations for a great many things I attributed 13. Corruption Perceptions Index 2016, Jan. 25, 2017,
to God, and part of the wonder of this world is that we dont Transparency.org
need a pat answer for everything.
By the time I discovered Robert Ingersoll (in many ways
still my favorite) and Sam Harris, I was able to think critically
about what they said, rather than swallowing it whole as I had
done with religious texts. At its core, my atheism has led me to
continue to question and to rely on facts and rational thinking
even when its tempting to fall back on my feelings or someone
elses opinion.
The journey continued this way until ten years ago
because Chuck, our son Charlie, and I had no idea there were
other atheists around. Enter the North Alabama Freethought
Association. Chuck and I love to tell the story of when he
overheard a conversation in a Huntsville coffee shop one
Saturday morning. He inserted himself into the discussion to
comment on one of their questions and then asked, Are you
guys a bunch of atheists?
Weve been a part of that community ever since. Today, Im
on the board as secretary. This group has given me the chance
to speak openly and to have intellectual discussions in a part of
the country that, while not as oppressive as my college days, has
a church on every corner and a preacher at every water fountain.
My journey is far from over. I am acutely aware that I dont
have enough time to learn everything I want to know, and
its still a challenge to reject irrational habits after years of
indoctrination. Nonetheless, I revel in being responsible for my
own life in a world that I am eager to make more equitable and
compassionate.

Cathy Puett Miller the community impact director at the United Way
of Madison County, Alabama. She is an also an educational consultant,
author, and researcher. Her husband, Chuck, is American Atheists
Alabama State Director.

3RD QUARTER 2017 www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 37

WELCOME, LIFE MEMBERS!
S ince the last issue of this magazine, 25 members of American Atheists increased their commitment by becoming
Life Members or by upgrading their Life Memberships to Silver or Gold. Thanks to the following for their continued
support to further promote our shared goals and values:

LIFE SILVER GOLD

William Ameen, Jr. Glen Loev Douglas Barnes Phil Ferguson
Hany Aziz Pascale Luse Robert Boomsliter Jim Wheeler
Gbolagade Babalola Cliff Nielsen Timothy Gibbs This level includes two free
admissions for life to our annual
Michael Boone Joel Rosenfeld Robert Kresek convention.

Jay Campbell Susan Schindler Cherie Ohlsson

Roy Crawford Aaron Schrab This level includes free
admission for life to our annual
Reuben Fournier Herb Silverman convention.

Jonathan Friedel Steven Solomon

Alan Gold Mario Stanton
Stand with us by making an investment in the future of American Atheists by becoming a Life Member today.
Call 908-276-7300 x102, email Pamela Whissel at PWhissel@Atheists.org, or visit Atheists.org/Life-Membership.

REGIONAL DIRECTORS
For detailed information, visit Atheists.org/State-Directors or contact Greg Lammers at GLammers@Atheists.org.

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MILITARY DIRECTOR Bolton, CT 06043 NEW MEXICO UTAH
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ALABAMA John Porgal OHIO VIRGINIA/D.C.
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RGotovich@Atheists.org Boston, MA 02215
ZBos@Atheists.org

38 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org 3RD QUARTER 2017

This book exposes the pre-Judaism roots
of Christendom and the fabricated Jesus
tales. It provides exhaustive evidence for
the oppression, forgeries, and horrors
committed in the name of Jesus.

Paulkovich presents all this evidence in a style

suffused with a lively dose of humor
The American Rationalist

Available in paperback and e-book at

BeyondTheCrusades.com

Advertise in American Atheist magazine

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AFFILIATES AND LOCAL PARTNERS
For the most up-to-date list, visit Atheists.org/Affiliates or contact Greg Lammers at GLammers@Atheists.org.

State Group Name City Site

LOCAL PARTNERS
FL FLASH - Florida Atheists and Secular Humanists Orlando http://www.godlessflorida.com
GA Atlanta Freethought Society Atlanta http://atlantafreethought.org
IA Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers Des Moines http://www.meetup.com/Iowa-Atheists-and-Freethinkers
MN Minnesota Atheists Minneapolis http://mnatheists.org
NE Lincoln Atheists Lincoln http://www.lincolnatheists.org
NY Long Island Atheists Lynbrook LIAtheists.org
OK Atheist Community of Tulsa Tulsa http://www.ACTOK.org
PA PA Non-Believers York http://www.panonbelievers.org
TX Metroplex Atheists Arlington http://www.metroplexatheists.org
UT Atheists of Utah Salt Lake City atheistsofutah.org
AFFILIATES
AK Alaskan Atheists Anchorage http://www.meetup.com/AlaskanAtheists/

AL Auburn Atheists & Agnostics Auburn http://www.facebook.com/groups/auburnatheistsandagnostics/

AL Birmingham Atheists Meetup Birmingham http://www.meetup.com/atheists-132

AL Marshall County Atheists & Agnostics Marshall http://www.themcaa.org

AL Montgomery Area Freethought Association Montgomery http://www.montgomeryfreethought.org

AL North Alabama Freethought Association Huntsville http://www.meetup.com/thenafa

AL UA Alabama Atheists and Agnostics Tuscaloosa http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2234029305

AL UAH Non-Theists Huntsville http://www.facebook.com/uahnontheists

AL West Alabama Freethought Association Tuscaloosa http://www.meetup.com/westalabamafreethought

AR Arkansas Society of Freethinkers Little Rock http://www.ARFreethinkers.org

AR ArkLaTex Freethinkers, Atheists, Agnostics & Humanists Texarkana http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=128265161357

AR Southwest Arkansas Atheist Community Nashville http://goo.gl/K2koj

AZ Reason Riders Glendale Reasonriders.com

AZ Tucson Atheists Tucson http://www.meetup.com/Tucson-Atheists/

CA-N Atheist Advocates of San Francisco San Francisco http://atheistadvocatesofsanfrancisco.com/

CA-N Atheist Community of San Jose San Jose Sanjoseatheists.org

CA-N Humanist Community in Silicon Valley San Jose www.humanists.org

CA-N Atheists and Other Freethinkers Sacramento http://aofonline.org

CA-N Central Valley Alliance of Atheists and Skeptics Fresno http://www.cvaas.org

CA-N Contra Costa Atheists & Freethinkers Pleasant Hill http://www.meetup.com/Contra-Costa-Atheists-and-Freethinkers/

CA-N East Bay Atheists Oakland http://www.eastbayatheists.org

CA-N San Francisco Atheists San Francisco http://www.sfatheists.com

CA-N Santa Cruz Atheists Santa Cruz http://santacruzatheists.org

CA-N Rosmoor Atheists Walnut Creek http://goo.gl/K2koj

CA-S Atheist Coalition of San Diego San Diego http://www.atheistcoalition.org

CA-S Humanist Fellowship of San Diego San Diego http://goo.gl/K2koj

CA-S Atheist Society of Kern Bakersfield http://goo.gl/K2koj

CA-S Backyard Skeptics Villa Park http://www.backyardskeptics.com

CA-S Humanist Society of Santa Barbara Santa Barbara http://www.santabarbarahumanists.org

CA-S New Atheists of East County Jamul http://www.meetup.com/New-Atheists-of-East-County/

CA-S Orange County Atheists Orange http://www.ocatheists.com

CA-S Riverside Atheists and Free Thinkers (RAFT) Riverside http://RiversideAtheists.org

40 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org 3RD QUARTER 2017

CO Atheists and Freethinkers of Denver Denver http://athofden.tripod.com

CO Boulder Atheists Boulder http://www.boulderatheists.org

CO Metro State Atheists Denver http://metrostateatheists.wordpress.com

CO Pikes Peak Atheists Colorado Springs http://goo.gl/K2koj

CO Western Colorado Atheists & Freethinkers Grand Junction http://westerncoloradoatheists.org

CT Atheist Humanist Society of CT and RI Norwich http://atheisthumanist.org

CT Connecticut Valley Atheists South Windsor http://www.cvatheists.org

DC American University Rationalists and Atheists Washington http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=34367344446

DC Washington Area Secular Humanists Washington http://www.wash.org

FL Atheists of Florida Tampa http://goo.gl/K2koj

FL Central Florida Secular Alliance Dunnellon http://cfsecularalliance.weebly.com

FL Florida Atheists, Critical Thinkers & Skeptics Longwood/Orlando http://www.meetup.com/Critical

FL Gator Freethought (UF) Gainesville http://www.gatorfreethought.com/

FL Ocala Atheists Ocala http://www.meetup.com/Ocala-Atheists/

FL Sarasota-Manatee Atheists & Secular Humanists (SMASH) Nokomis http://goo.gl/K2koj

FL Secular Student Association at Univ. of Central FL Orlando http://ssaucf.com

FL Humanist Community of the Space Coast Satellite Beach http://goo.gl/K2koj

FL St. Petersburg Atheists St. Petersburg http://www.meetup.com/atheists-209

FL Tallahassee Atheists Tallahassee http://www.tallahasseeatheists.com/

FL Treasure Coast Atheists Stuart http://www.meetup.com/atheists-600

FL Williston Atheists Morriston http://goo.gl/K2koj

GA Albany Georgia Atheists Albany http://www.albanygeorgiaatheists.com/

GA Gainesville Atheists Gainesville http://goo.gl/K2koj

GA Atlanta Freethought Society Atlanta http://www.atlantafreethought.org

GA Black Nonbelievers of Atlanta Atlanta http://www.blacknonbelievers.org

GA Fayette Freethought Society Peachtree City http://www.meetup.com/Fayette-Freethought-Society

GA Atheists United, Kennesaw State Univ Kennesaw http://goo.gl/K2koj

GA Kennesaw State U. Student Coalition for Inquiry Kennesaw http://www.facebook.com/ksusci

GA Macon Atheists & Secular Humanists Macon http://www.meetup.com/georgiamash/

IA Atheists United for a Rational America Iowa City http://rationalamerica.com

IA Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers Des Moines http://www.meetup.com/Iowa-Atheists-and-Freethinkers

IL Chicagoland Freethinkers Chicago http://www.meetup.com/chicago-freethought/

IL The Chicago Freethought Project Chicago http://www.facebook.com/thechicagofreethoughtproject

IL IL/WI Stateline Atheists Society Rockford http://www.meetup.com/statelineatheists

IL IWU Atheist, Agnostics, and Non-Religious Bloomington http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5558627959

IL The Secular Segment Mt. Vernon http://www.secularsegment.com

KS Secular Latino Alliance Kansas City Secularlatinos.weebly.com

KS U of K Society of Open-Minded Atheists & Agnostics Lawrence http://www.kusoma.org

KY Humanist Forum of Central Kentucky Lexington http://www.facebook.com/groups/kyhumanists/

KY Lexington Atheists Lexington http://www.meetup.com/The-Lexington-Atheists-Meetup-Group

KY Louisville Atheists and Freethinkers Louisville http://www.louisvilleatheists.com/

KY Secular Student Alliance, Moorehad State University Moorehead Facebook.com/msussa

KY Tri-State Freethinkers (KY, IN, OH) Union http://www.meetup.com/Tri-State-Freethinkers/

LA New Orleans Secular Humanist Association New Orleans http://nosha.org

MA Atheists of Greater Lowell Lowell http://www.meetup.com/lowellatheists

3RD QUARTER 2017 www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 41

AFFILIATES AND LOCAL PARTNERS

MA Boston Atheists Boston http://bostonatheists.org

MD Freethinkers Union at McDaniel College Westminster <none>

MD Secular Student Alliance, Frostburg State University Frostburg Secularstudents.org/frostburg

MD Maryland Freethinkers Annapolis http://www.mdfreethinkers.com

ME Maine Atheists and Humanists Waterville http://goo.gl/K2koj

MI Atheists @ Oakland University Rochester http://www.facebook.com/AtheistsAtOU

MI Atheists, Skeptics, & Humanists Assn, N. Michigan U. Marquette http://goo.gl/K2koj

MI Michigan Atheists Detroit http://michiganatheists.org

MI Mid-Michigan Atheists & Humanists Lansing http://www.mmah.org

MN Atheists for Human Rights Minneapolis http://atheistsforhumanrights.org

MN Campus Atheists Skeptics & Humanists Minneapolis http://cashumn.org

MO Black Freethinkers of Kansas City Kansas City http://www.meetup.com/Black-FreeThinkers-of-KC/

MO Columbia Atheists Columbia http://www.meetup.com/The-Columbia-Atheists-Meetup-Group

MO Joplin Freethinkers Joplin http://www.joplinfreethinkers.org

MO Kansas City Atheist Coalition Kansas City http://www.kcatheists.org

MO MU Skeptics, Atheists, Secular Humanists & Agnostics Columbia http://muSASHA.org

MO OFallon Freethinkers OFallon http://www.meetup.com/OFallon-Freethinkers

MO Rationalist Society of St. Louis St. Louis http://www.rssl.org

MO Secular Student Alliance @ UCMO Warrensburg http://www.centralskeptics.org

MO Springfield Freethinkers Springfield http://www.meetup.com/SpringfieldFreethinkers

MO Springfield Skeptics Springfield http://goo.gl/K2koj

MO St. Joseph Skeptics St. Joseph http://stjosephskeptics.org

MO We Are Atheism Grandview http://goo.gl/K2koj

MS Humanist Ethical Atheist Rational Thought Society Biloxi http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/HeartsOfTheSouth

MS Great Southern Humanist Society Biloxi http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/southernatheist

MS Mississippi Humanist Association Jackson Mshumanists.org

NC A-News Raleigh http://www.apartmentJ.com

NC Charlotte Atheists & Agnostics Charlotte http://www.charlotteatheists.com

NC Hickory Humanist Alliance Claremont http://goo.gl/K2koj

NC MASH Ft. Bragg Fayetteville http://www.mashfortbragg.org

NC Sandhills Secular Society Hope Mills http://goo.gl/K2koj

NC WNC Humanists Fairview http://www.wnchumanists.org

ND Red River Freethinkers Fargo http://redriverfreethinkers.org

NE Omaha Atheists Omaha http://omahaatheists.org/

NJ Camden County Humanists Blackwood http://goo.gl/K2koj

NJ New Jersey Humanist Network Somerville http://njhn.org/

NJ Secular Student Alliance @ Montclair State Univ. Montclair http://secularstudents.org/montclair

NJ South Jersey Humanists Oceanville http://goo.gl/K2koj

NJ William Paterson Univ. Secular Student Alliance Pompton Lakes https://www.facebook.com/SSA.WPUNJ

NM Roswatheists Roswell http://www.meetup.com/Roswatheists

NM Atheist Community of Santa Fe Santa Fe http://goo.gl/K2koj

NV Reno Freethinkers Reno http://www.RenoFreethinkers.org

NY Freethinkers of Upstate New York Syracuse http://www.funygroup.org

NY Gotham Atheists New York https://www.meetup.com/GothamAtheists/

NY Hudson Valley Humanists Saugerties http://hudsonvalley.humanists.net

NY Long Island Atheists East Setauket Meetup.com/li-atheists

42 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org 3RD QUARTER 2017

NY New York City Atheists New York http://nyc-atheists.org

NY Ward Melville High School Secular Student Alliance East Setauket http://goo.gl/K2koj

NY Westchester Atheists Chappaqua http://www.meetup.com/atheists-504

OH Free Inquiry Group Cincinnati http://www.gofigger.org

OH Freethought Dayton Dayton http://www.meetup.com/freethoughtdayton

OH Humanist Community of Central Ohio Columbus http://www.hcco.org

OH Mid-Ohio Atheists Mansfield http://midohioatheists.org

OK Atheist Community of Tulsa Tulsa http://www.ACTOK.org

OK Oklahoma Atheists Oklahoma City http://www.oklahomaatheists.com

PA NEPA Freethought Society Wilkes-Barre http://www.nepafreethought.org

SC Piedmont Humanists Greenville http://www.PiedmontHumanists.org

SC Secular Humanists of the Lowcountry Charleston http://www.lowcountryhumanists.org

SC Upstate Atheists Boiling Springs http://goo.gl/K2koj

TN Memphis Atheists Memphis http://goo.gl/K2koj

TN Memphis Freethought Alliance Memphis http://memphisfreethought.com

TN Nashville Secular Life Nashville http://www.meetup.com/secularlife

TN Rationalists of East Tennessee Knoxville http://www.rationalists.org

TX Atheist Community of Austin Austin http://atheist-community.org

TX Corpus Christi Atheists Corpus Christi http://www.meetup.com/CCAtheists

TX Denton Atheists Denton http://www.meetup.com/The-Denton-Atheists-Meetup-Group

TX El Paso Atheists El Paso http://www.elpasoatheists.com

TX Freethinkers Association of Central Texas San Antonio http://FreethinkersACT.org

TX Golden Triangle Freethinkers Beaumont http://goldentrianglefreethinkers.org

TX Houston Atheists Houston Meetup.com/Houston-atheists

TX Kingwood Humble Atascocita Atheists Atascocita http://www.kha-atheists.org/

TX Lubbock Atheists Lubbock http://www.meetup.com/atheists-496

TX Secular Humanist Society of East Texas Nacagdoches http://goo.gl/K2koj

TX UNT Freethought Alliance Denton http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7647566521

TX Wise Free Thinkers and Skeptics Wise http://www.meetup.com/Wise-Free-Thinkers-and-Skeptics

UT Salt Lake Valley Atheists Salt Lake City http://nowscape.com/a

VA Beltway Atheists Leesburg http://www.meetup.com/Beltway-Atheists-Inc

VA NOVA Atheists Leesburg http://www.meetup.com/NOVA-Atheists

VT Atheists of Rutland Vermont Rutland http://www.atheistsofrutlandvt.com/

WA Seattle Atheists Seattle http://www.seattleatheists.org

WA Tri-City Freethinkers Pasco http://www.tricityfreethinkers.org

WI Southeast Wisconsin FreeThinkers Milwaukee http://swiftnow.org

WV Kanawha Valley Atheists and Agnostics Charleston http://goo.gl/K2koj

WV Mountain State Freethinkers Martinsville http://www.meetup.com/Mountain-State-Freethinkers

WV Morgantown Atheists Morgantown http://www.morgantownatheists.com

WY Wyoming Atheists Facebook.com/groups/wyomingatheists

US Atheist Nexus http://www.atheistnexus.org

US Black Atheists of America http://www.blackatheistsofamerica.org

US Military Association of Atheists & Freethinkers http://www.militaryatheistsorg

Intl Southeast Asia Freethought Association

Intl Atestas de Puerto Rico San Juan http://goo.gl/K2koj

Intl Philippine Atheists and Agnostics Society http://www.patas.co

3RD QUARTER 2017 www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 43

AIMS AND PURPOSES
A merican Atheists, Inc. is a nonprofit, nonpolitical, educational organization dedicated to the complete and absolute
separation of state and church, accepting the explanation of Thomas Jefferson that the First Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States was meant to create a wall of separation between state and church.

American Atheists is organized:

To stimulate and promote freedom of thought and inquiry concerning religious beliefs, creeds, dogmas, tenets,
rituals, and practices;

To collect and disseminate information, data, and literature on all religions and promote a more thorough
understanding of them, their origins, and their histories;

To advocate, labor for, and promote in all lawful ways the complete and absolute separation of state and church;

To act as a watchdog to challenge any attempted breach of the wall of separation between state and church;

To advocate, labor for, and promote in all lawful ways the establishment and maintenance of a thoroughly secular
system of education available to all;

To encourage the development and public acceptance of a humane ethical system stressing the mutual sympathy,
understanding, and interdependence of all people and the corresponding responsibility of each individual in relation
to society;

To develop and propagate a social philosophy in which humankind is central and must itself be the source of
strength, progress, and ideals for the well-being and happiness of humanity;

To promote the study of the arts and sciences and of all problems affecting the maintenance, perpetuation, and
enrichment of human (and other) life; and

To engage in such social, educational, legal, and cultural activity as will be useful and beneficial to the members of
American Atheists and to society as a whole.

Definitions:

A theism is the comprehensive world view of persons who are free from theism and have freed themselves of supernatural
beliefs altogether. It is predicated on ancient Greek Materialism.

A theism involves the mental attitude that unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a life-
style and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of
authority and creeds.

M aterialism declares that the cosmos is devoid of immanent conscious purpose; that it is governed by its own inherent,
immutable, and impersonal laws; that there is no supernatural interference in human life; that humankind, finding
the resources within themselves, can and must create their own destiny. It teaches that we must prize our life on earth
and strive always to improve it. It holds that human beings are capable of creating a social system based on reason and
justice. Materialisms faith is in humankind and their ability to transform the world culture by their own efforts. This is
a commitment that is, in its very essence, life-asserting. It considers the struggle for progress as a moral obligation that is
impossible without noble ideas that inspire us to bold, creative works.

M aterialism holds that our potential for good and more fulfilling cultural development is, for all practical purposes,
unlimited.

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3RD QUARTER 2017 www.atheists.org | AMERICAN ATHEIST | 45

Why I Am an Atheist
by Cathy Puett Miller
I am an atheist because I finally woke up after spending
the first twenty-five years of my life not thinking for
myself. Its as simple as that.
During my Methodist upbringing, I was a good southern
girl. I did what Momma and Daddy told me to do and hid my
doubts and other sinful thoughts from everyone. I relied on
what my loving parents taught me about faith, which allowed
me to push responsibility for my life off on a supernatural being.
I was blind to why any such idea would be flawed because
everyone I had ever met believed in God. were all smiles as they authoritatively hand-picked those who
I had no exposure to any world view other than the one I
grew up with when I left small-town America at eighteen to
attend Florida State University. There, I quickly found myself
spending most of my time with the first first two girls I met on
campus (a junior and a senior) who embraced me when I didnt
know anyone else. They invited me to dinner and introduced me
to lots of other nice people who made me feel just as welcome.
Within a day, I learned that they belonged to Campus
Crusade for Christ and they worshipped on Sunday at the
Church of Christ adjacent to the campus. They helped me
navigate campus and college life in general. They shared their
lives and lots of hugs with me. Because I had no filter other than
my feelings, I equated their friendliness with integrity because
I assumed they knew what they were talking about. And I was
prime for the picking. Because no one from the Methodist faith
reached out to me on campus, switching to the Church of Christ
(with their frequent Bible studies and even more frequent prayer
groups) seemed easy and harmless.
It would take too many words and too many tears to explain
everything that happened from that freshman year until my
senior year. Suffice it to say that I deeply regret how I spent that
time. My grades suffered in the name of Jesus because Campus
Crusade was more important than studying. I was groomed
46 | AMERICAN ATHEIST | www.atheists.org
to lead Bible studies in the dorms, and I was assigned several
prayer partners through a pyramid scheme. I even met my
boyfriend, Chuck, through this group. I read the Bible front to
back as a way to prepare for teaching the Bible study, and also
to be able to prove whatever point I was making. It wasnt too
long before I was openly condemning people who had known
me all my life by telling them they were going to hell.
As I moved higher up in the organization, I started noticing
inconsistencies and manipulation by the leadership. They
would advance and discarded the unfit members who werent
spiritual enough. I attended an even more conservative
Church of Christ at home during breaks and found their dogma
to be even more inconsistent.
Questions crept in, a few at a time, then faster: Why was
my faith weak if I was simply asking a question? How could a
loving God condemn people to hell for using the brain he gave
them? Why does God choose to save only some people from
natural disasters while others perish by no fault of their own?
Why arent my earnest prayers answered? And perhaps the
biggest: Why does almost all of humanitys progress, like the
improvements in education and social structure that advance
equality for each human being, conflict with the Bible? If this
book is so holy, then why are there so many stories of God being
an asshole?
That was when I realized that I was letting other people
think for me. Cracks in my faith started to form. Then, one day,
when exploring the philosophy and religion section of Barnes &
Noble (doing research in my zeal for God), I came across Why
I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell. Afraid that Id run
into someone from church, I slipped the small book behind a
notebook, hid in a corner, and read the entire thing right then
and there. When I was done, I had my first inkling that thinking
Continued on page 37
3RD QUARTER 2017
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