american atheist magazine aug 1986

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August 1986 A Journal of Atheist News and Thought

2.95

TH E

T H R E E

FA C ES F Y A H W EH



A M E R IC A N A T H E IS T S

is a non-profit, non-political, educational organization dedicated to the complete and absolute separation of state

and church. We accept the explanation ofThomas Jefferson that the First Amendment to the Constitution ofthe

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 inall lawfulways the complete and absolute separation of state and church;

to advocate, labor for, and promote in all lawfulways the establishment and maintenance of a thoroughly secular

system of education available to all;

to encourage the development and public acceptance of a human 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 man is the central figure who alone must 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; >

to engage in such social, educational, legal, and cultural activity as willbe useful and beneficial to members of

American Atheists and to society as a whole.

Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy ofreason 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.

Materialism 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 man -

findinghis resources within himself - can and must create his own destiny. Materialism restores to man his dignity

and his intellectual integrity. It teaches that we must prize our lifeon earth and strive always to improve it. It holds

that man is capable of creating a social system based on reason and justice. Materialism's faith is i n man and

man's ability to transform the world culture by his own efforts. This is a commitment which is in its very essence

life-asserting. It considers the struggle for progress as a moral obligation and impossible without noble ideas that

inspire man to bold creative works. Materialism holds that humankind's potential for good and for an outreach to

more fulfillingcultural development is, for all practical purposes, unlimited.

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American Atheists - P.O. Box 2117 - Austin, TX 78768-2117



August 1986

Vol

28, No.8

m e r i c n

t h e i s t

Journal of Atheist News and Thought

Editor's Desk

R. Murray-O'Hair

Director's Briefcase

Jon G. Murray

The Animal in All of Us addresses

some fundamental problems in religion

~ and in the Atheist movement.

Ask A.A.

What is evil will?And are Atheists shut

out of the courts?

News and Comments

The Three Faces of Jahweh - John

Paul II's latest encyclical gives the latest

scoop on the importance of the Holy

Ghost and what that spook's job is - 7

The Abortion Decision - The Su-

preme Court reaffirms Roe v. Wade

while debating which fundamental lib-

erties apply to women - 13

The Water Tower

Don McDermott

A young man's first sexual. experience

should be an occasion forjoy. But inthis

short story about a boy and his religion,

it is only an occasion for guilt.

The Religious Slaughter Debate

Inthis reprint from The Freethinker, the

cruelty of kosher slaughter isdebated

by Jews, Moslems, and freethinkers.

2

3

6

7

2

24

Karl Marx and Atheism

Yuri Pishchik

Did Marx wish to destroy religion? Or

did he look forward to something else?

The Probing Mind

Frank R. Zindler

Mr. Zindler describes arkeologists

Stalking the Elusive Mountain Boat:

The Quest for Noah's Ark.

Poetry

American Atheist Radio Series

Madalyn O'Hair

A look into The Godless World of

Joseph Lewis.

Historical Notes

Press Conference

Brian Lynch

On Independence Day, did we cele-

brate 210 years of progress?

Book Review

A new biography reveals a few rather

unattractive sides of Ayn Rand.

Me Too

Letters to the Editor

Crosswords

Cover Art by Gerald Tholen

26

28

32

33

35

36

4

4

42

43

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August 1986 Page 1



m e r i c n t h e i s t

Editor/R. Murray-O'Hair

Editor Emeritus/Dr, Madalyn O'Hair

Managing Editor/Jon G_ Murray

Assistant Editor/Gerald Tholen

Poetry/Angeline Bennett, Gerald Tholen

Non-Resident Staff/John M_Allegro, Burnham

P_Beckwith, Margaret Bhatty, Nawal El Saadawi,

Merrill Holste, Lowell Newby, Fred Woodworth,

Frank R. Zindler

Production Staff/Laura Lee Cole, Christina Dit-

ter' Shantha Elluru, Keith Hailey, Brian J_ Lynch,

Jim Mills, John Ragland, Jes Simmons

Officers of the Society of Separationists, Inc.

President/Jon G_ Murray

President Emeritus/Dr. Madalyn O'Hair

Vice-President/Gerald Tholen

Secretary/R. Murray-O'Hair

Treasurer/Brian J_ Lynch

Chairman of the Board/Dr. Madalyn O'Hair

Members of the Board/Jon G_ Murray (Vice

Chairman), August Berkshire, Herman Harris,

Ellen Johnson, Scott Kerns, Minerva Massen,

Robin Murray-O'Hair, Shirley Nelson, Richard C.

O'Hair, Henry Schmuck, Noel Scott, Gerald

Tholen, Lloyd Thoren, Frank Zindler,

Officers and Directors may be reached at P_O_

Box 2117, Austin, TX 78768_

Honorary Members of the Board/Merrill

Holste, John Marthaler

The American Atheist is published monthly by

American Atheist Press, an affiliate of Society of

Separationists , Inc., d/b/a American Atheists,

2210 Hancock Dr., Austin, TX 78756-2596, a non-

profit, non-political, educational organization ded-

icated to the complete and absolute separation of

state and church. (Non-profit under IRS Code

501(c)(3)_)

Copyright 1986 by Society of Separationists, Inc.

All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in

part without written permission is prohibited.

ISSN: 0332-4310. Mail ing address: P.O. Box 2117,

Austin, TX 78768-2117.

The American Atheist is indexed in IBZ (Interna-

tional Bibliography of

Periodical

Literature,

Os-

nabriick, Germany).

Manuscripts submitted must be typed, double-

spaced, and accompanied by a stamped, self-

addressed envelope. A copy of American Atheist

Writers' Guidelines is available upon request. The

editors assume no responsibility for unsolicited

manuscripts.

The American Atheist Press publishes a variety of

Atheist, agnostic, and freethought material. A

catalog is avai lable free upon request.

The American Atheist isgiven free of cost

to members of American Atheists as an

incident of their membership. For a sched-

ule of membership rates, please see the

inside front cover. Subscriptions for the

American Atheist alone are $25 a year for

one-year terms only. The library and

institutional discount is 50%_Sustain-

ing subscriptions ($50 a year) are tax-

deductible.

Page 2

E D ITO R S D E SK / R . Murray-O'Hair

BALANCED VIEWS

A

t The American Atheist Center, we are

often asked by liberal theists and

anti-organized religionists (as opposed to

Atheists) why we persist in attacking and in

criticizing religion. Why, they ask, do we not

just go in a corner and contemplate our

A-theism? Every activist Atheist knows the

answer to that; we can explain in simple

terms why we must respond to the constant

intrusions of religion into the public arena.

Why then, the liberal theists and anti-

organized religionists continue, do we not

stick to the freaks - the shamans, the Fal-

wells, the Swaggarts, the faith healers - and

leave alone the more respectable species of

religion? (They do not of course use the

word freaks; they speak of those who

abuse the trust ofwell-meaning Christians. )

It is that activity that many Atheists, and

anti-organized religionists, take up as a sort

of pastime. Itisso refreshing to knock down

the claims of the showmen and freaks - and

so difficult to look at one's friends and rela-

tives and tell them their chosen worldview is

fundamentally sick.

Ithas always been a challenge for Atheists

to balance the need to respond to immediate

assaults against reason with the necessity of

battling the dangerous fundamentals of

theism.

In this issue, we feature a critique of the

most recent papal encyclical, known to the

faithful as Dominum et Vivijicantem (The

Lord and Giver of Life),which achieves that

necessary balance. As excerpts from its text

and our commentary demonstrate, the

encyclical is the manifestation of a bizarre

theology and a life-negating weltanschau-

ung_But in the examination of this encycli-

cal, we do not lose sight of the danger of its

implementation and of its effect upon Ro-

man Catholics and their behavior.

One ofthe Roman Catholic church's chief

interests, a concern addressed inDominum

et Vivijicantem,

is abortion. It is only fitting

that inthis same issue ofthe American Athe-

ist we also feature an analysis of the U.S.

Supreme Court's decision in

Thornburgh v.

American College of Obstetricians and

Gynecologists. The question in Thornburgh

settled upon the state's regulation of abor-

tion, specifically, whether Pennsylvania

could establish various provisions which

would, or could be used to, discourage

women from undergoing that procedure.

The Roman Catholic church would, of

August 1986

course, prefer an outright prohibition of

abortions - but because anything willdo in

a pinch, its local representatives had sup-

ported this measure.

The Supreme Court has in many recent

cases shown a rather restricted view of indi-

vidual liberty promised bythe federal consti-

tution. Surprisingly, its conclusion in Thorn-

burgh upheld the principles outlined by the

original abortion decision,

Roe v. Wade.

Excerpts from the decision willsurprise the

idealists among us even further; one always

envisages the Supreme Court as a collection

of aged, wise, and dignifiedjudges. It is star-

tling indeed to see the justices sniping at one

another in print. Tsk, tsk.

A note just received from the Michigan

Chapter of American Atheists informs us

that the Chapter is sponsoring an Open

House and State Convention on Sunday,

September 28, 1986, from 12 to 6 P.M. The

Michigan Chapter's annual Open House is

always an interesting event, but this year it

will feature a very special speaker: Frank

Zindler, the American

Atheist

columnist. If

you find his articles informative and amus-

ing, you would especially enjoy him in per-

son. The Open House willbe at the Fairlane

Holiday Inn, 5801 Southfield Freeway Ser-

vice Drive, in Detroit, Michigan. An adver-

tisement for the event will be in the Sep-

tember issue of the American Atheist, and a

map will be provided in that ad. We hope

that many of you willattend.

One way for Atheists to spread the

word is to try to have Atheist material

shelved in public libraries. We strongly

encourage allAtheists to ask that the Amer-

ican

Atheist

or books on Atheism be added

to their local public library's collection. Most

librarians do not bite, and many willenthusi-

astically receive the American Atheist. Spe-

cial library discounts are available, and in

some cases the American Atheist Press will

send a library a subscription free of charge.

And ifyou have any questions or problems

about approaching your local library, The

American Atheist Center willbe gladto help.

So next time you check out a book, why

don't you check in a magazine?

American Atheist



D IR E C T O R S B R IE F C A SE / J o n G Murray

THE ANIMAL IN ALL OF US

A

merican Atheists has been urging its

constituency to come out of the

closet since its founding. The organization

has been needing to take a bit of its own

advice lately. Despite the urgings of the

national office, a good portion of the mem-

bership has wanted American Atheists to

maintain a lowprofile or to be less strident in

its outreach to the public. The rationale of

this segment of supporters is that a direct

confrontation with religion is to be avoided.

This is exactly the advice that the various

freethought and other preceding organi-

zations to American Atheists had adopted.

Their thrust was to disagree with the prevail-

ing religious doctrine only in so far as they

could while not offending the religionist. I

liken it to driving. Some drivers are so con-

cerned about what the other drivers will

think about their driving or how they will

react to it that they are afraid to be aggres-

sive enough, particularly incongested urban

areas. This type ofdriver actually becomes a

hazard by being too timid. I cannot under-

stand having my position on a given issue,

especially concerning religion, delimited by

those who have the opposing view.

American Atheists has been subject lately

to increased pressure to soft-pedal its out-

reach. This is (seemingly) only natural with

the current rise in fundamentalism. The

upsurge of political religiosity of the Reagan

years could have only two effects on Athe-

ists - either itwould drive them deeper into

their closets, or make them mad enough to

stick their heads out. The latter reaction

must prevail over the former if the Atheist

movement in this country is to have any

hope of delaying a fundamentalist takeover.

This point has recently been driven home to

me by two events.

I have just been involved in manning dis-

play tables for American Atheist Press at the

10Sth annual convention of the American

Library Association, which was held inNew

York City. I first organized such a display of

Atheist reading material last year at the ALA

convention in Chicago. The opinion of

almost allto whom Ispoke in both Chicago

and New York prior to these conventions

was that a display ofAtheist literature would

not be accepted by the librarians from

across the country who attend these large

annual meetings. Nothing could have been

further from the truth. During the entire

course of the displays, particularly in New

Austin, Texas

York, the American Atheist Press tables

were the most well attended among those

displays in the small press section of the

exhibit hall. One librarian after another was

both surprised and happy to see that a pub-

lisher of Atheist material existed. Most of

them expressed that they knew oflittle or no

material in their collection on the subject

matter of Atheism. Despite this fact, no

organization prior to American Atheists, of

which I know, had thought of attempting to

push such material alongside other vendors

at such conferences, many of which publish

exclusively religious works.

Where had the earlier groups been? Were

they ashamed of their position? They must

have been - or were they just so afraid of

angering the religious that they simply chose

to remain hidden? I think it was a combina-

tion of both.

Symptoms And Viruses

I also realized something else, looking

over the display of materials that American

Atheist Press had brought to New York. I

was suddenly aware that most of the titles

had little or nothing to do with the direct

promotion of an Atheistic life-style. The

majority of what we had on display could be

grouped in three areas: (1) biblical criticism,

(2) biblical inerrancy, or (3) anticlericalism.

Those are also the three subject areas that

had been the mainstay of freethought pub-

lishing for three hundred years. The empha-

sis ofthis material is to pick on specific por-

tions of specific theologies. The authors of

these works would focus on that particular

thought system that had caused them dis-

comfort, either emotional or physical, at

some stage oftheir life.Standing on the pub-

licside ofthe display looking ininstead ofmy

normal view of looking out, I thought how

petty and childish. A certain aspect of reli-

gion is the source of anxiety to a given indi-

vidual, and he or she feels a need to strike

back at the cause of that anxiety. I can

understand that part of the scenario, but

what Icannot understand isstriking back in

a petty and vindictive way directed at a nar-

row portion ofthe theology involved instead

of trying to determine the root cause or

principle of the theology as a whole and

attacking that. It would be likeputting drops

of iodine on individual measles instead of

introducing medication into the blood to

August 1986

fight the virus. It is quite useless, from the

standpoint ofa religionist, for anyone to pick

on a specific portion of a Bible or other so-

called holy book with the intention of dis-

crediting theology as a whole. One must

always keep in mind that religion is a matter

of faith, a very emotional thing, and not the

product of intelligence or rationalism. To the

believer, it is of little or no consequence that

whatever book reveals the thrust of their

belief system contains errors, contradic-

tions, or absurdities. This is evidenced by

the fact that after some three hundred years

ofthe publication ofbiblical criticism we still

have religions based on a host of inerrant

holy books. Additionally, the followers of

such doctrines are in a stronger position

than ever with respect to basing social con-

trols on that written word. If picking out

contradictions, absurdities, and inaccura-

cies in holy books was the answer to the

struggle against religious thought, theism's

Achille's heel, most of the major religious

systems should have fallen by now. It is

obvious that this approach has not worked,

and I cannot see that it is likely to start

working in the future.

Here we were, in the twentieth century,

displaying material based on the same

approach as organizations that existed in

the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

This has to stop. Even some of the librarians

saw what was wrong. They asked, Don't

you have any material on the positive

aspects ofAtheists or what Atheist positions

are on the events ofthe day? Iwas ashamed

to say that, except for this monthly journal,

the answer was no.

Iwould liketo see American Atheist Press

begin to develop material that looks at the

basis for religious thought and for the

answer to the question ofwhy such a mytho-

logical system of vast complexity evolved in

the minds of men at all. This is the crucial

question and in its answer lies the key to the

destruction ofreligion, as the discovery of its

causal virus leads to the elimination of a

disease.

The Ultimate Denial

When one gets down to basics it is imme-

diately obvious that the entire thrust of reli-

gious thinking has been the cultivation of a

thought system which advocates a mental

escape from the common stresses of exis-

Page 3



tence which we allshare into a fantasy world

where those problems are miraculously

solved for us by some mysterious outside

force. It is only predictable that all religious

systems must be based on the common

origin and day-to-day problems of life itself.

We are animals and part of a lifecycle that is

common to all of what we call life. How

strange indeed it is that we now find our-

selves involved in a thought system that has

developed to define humans as outsiders to

the life cycle of all the otherorganisms with

which we must cohabitate. Think about it.

This is the ultimate fantasy escape, is it not?

Defining yourself right out of reality, right

out of the life cycle of which that physical

reality dictates that you are a part. Even our

technology cannot overcome our place as

part of nature. Talk about a trip on PCP;

religion has that beat by a mile. People con-

vince themselves that they are not animals.

They pretend that the forces of nature do

not apply to them somehow, with the fan-

tasy even extending as far as to overcome

the ultimate reality of death.

It is the denial of the biological state of

being an animal, a primate, that isat the core

of all religious thought, and that is what

needs to be addressed. It does not matter in

the least to the person who subscribes to a

belief system that places him, in his mind,

outside of physical reality that you or I have

found a contradiction or absurdity in his

holy book. Instead, we must directly con-

front the notion of mental escapism being

somehow better or more comforting than

reality. That is the needed thrust of our fight

against religion.

The librarians who came by our tables and

commented that our display was lacking

something were correct. What was missing

was what should be the crux of our position

as Atheists, which isthat religion is unnatu-

ral and not related to reality. What we pre-

sented instead was a series of childish

attacks on the peripheral aspects of religion

- not examinations of the core of religious

thought. If the American Atheist movement

is to grow, we cannot continue in this

manner.

Animal To Animal

Following the ALA conference exhibit, I

took the opportunity to take a couple of

days offon an invitation from Arnold Via, the

VirginiaState Director ofAmerican Atheists

and the founder of the Prison Atheist

League of America. Mr. Via owns property

and has a country home at the foot of the

Blue Ridge Mountains in the Shenandoah

Valley area of Virginia. I began writing this

article at his home in Virginia while looking

out over the Blue Ridge Mountains. During

my stay, Mr. Via introduced me to various

members of the little community in which he

lives, and I experienced small town lifefirst-

hand, a big difference from The Big Apple

whence I had just come. Iwas struck imme-

diately by the commonality of the human

experience i n a rural atmosphere being in a

stark contrast to the so-called concrete jun-

gle ofManhattan. Walking in the woods and

hiking in the mountains with my host in Vir-

ginia and seeing life go on in a small town,

comparing that with the boredom of New

York, I suddenly realized how simple life is

for us animals. It is both simple and pleasur-

able. Just being alive isexhilarating. I cannot

imagine how the human community went

from enjoying its collective existence to

bemoaning it and looking forward to some-

thing better after death. I am also pro-

foundly impacted by the irrelevance of reli-

gious thought to it all. Nothing that religion

has to offer has anything whatsoever to do

with the day-to-day lives of the persons in

any environment, rural or urban. There is

not one thing that the people of this little

Virginia town or New York City do daily,

Some gU4 in the paper here soqs there's been too much mixing of religion and politics lotelu. dunno ... whodduo

think?

Page 4 August 1986 American Atheist



other than going to church, that they could

not do in the complete absence of religion.

So, why is it necessary? The irrelevance of

religion to all animal life is the reality that

leaps out at one every day, and is accentu-

ated by a radical change in environment

from urban to rural. Pointing this out to ev-

eryone, but particularly the younger upcom-

ing generations, is essential. As funny as it

may sound, we must all learn how to be

animals again psychologically. Society has

deluded itself for so long that we have lost

track of the niche in which we fit into the

biosphere.

We must think as animals and as cooper-

ating parts of a life cycle that continues de-

spite any of its individual constituent parts.

How do we return to being a part of nature

mentally? We have never escaped physi-

cally, nor should we. How can we, as Athe-

ists, turn the misdirected thinking of an

entire world population around? Our physi-

cal participation in the cycles of nature is

inescapable, but it cannot continue to be at

odds with our perceptions ofourselves. Iam

talking here about a basic, complete, and

systematic reeducation of generations of

persons and ofan urgency inthat redirecting

process since humankind now possesses

the technical capability to end life as we

know it on this planet. An ultimate escape

from animal desires (which the religionist

sees as perverse) through global genocide

seems to be crossing the minds of our theo-

cratic politicians more often these days.

In order to foster this basic redirection in

human perception we, as Atheists, need to

become active parts of our communities.

We cannot back offand look at the religious

majority as kooks and form our own little

societies, isolating ourselves from the rest of

the world. We can neither withdraw from

daily interaction with our fellowhumans, as

strange as wemay sometimes findthem, nor

can we allow ourselves to be pushed outside

of society by religious thinkers. The Blacks

and the homosexuals have by and large

retreated to their own communities for

years, as have the Hispanics who are now

immigrating in large numbers. The answer is

to become involved in our communities as

open and forthright Atheists. The Black and

homosexual populations have taken many

years to only partially realize this. They must

force others to accept them as they are.

These two communities are just now begin-

ning to go everywhere and do everything

that everyone else does and not allow skin

color or sexual orientation to separate or

isolate them.

A

Heritage Stolen

Sitting out on the deck of Mr. Via's home

with the mountains in view in the back-

ground, I watched on one of the television

networks a part of the national Fourth of

Austin, Texas

July celebration commemorating the one

hundredth anniversary of the gift of the

Statue of Liberty from France. I listened to

one speaker after another, particularly Pres-

ident Reagan, mix religion and patriotism.

Reagan reiterated his fantasy notion of the

North American continent being placed in

its present geographical location by divine

providence simply for the Puritans to find

and to establish thereon a theocratic colony.

I realized that what he and others who

shared the podium were doing was reinforc-

ing the notion of a theological separation

between the United States and the other

countries and peoples of the world and rob-

bing me and all other Atheists ofour Ameri-

can heritage because we choose not to par-

ticipate in religious ideas. Meanwhile, I am

sitting in rural Virginia, the state where my

ancestors on one side ofthe familyoriginally

came to America on the first boat to land in

Jamestown colony in 1607 some sixteen to

eighteen generations ago. On the other side

of the family, my great -grandparents immi-

grated from Germany and were part of the

wave of those who passed by the Statue of

Liberty . Yet, Iam excluded from any patriot-

ic feelings, of love of this land which my

ancestors came to and lived and worked in

for generations, by our national leaders

because Iam an Atheist. Ihave been robbed

of my heritage. How dare the religious

majority do such a thing But there is

method in their madness. If I, and others

such as myself, are allowed to be full, partic-

ipating members of society, we may be able

to change its predominate religious view. If

we can be labeled as outcasts, then our job

of redirecting a nation is made much more

difficult.

I love this land as does any other Ameri-

can. I cannot express that feeling publicly

because the only public vehicles for expres-

sion of patriotism have been purposely

mixed with religion. Every patriotic song, all

of our mottos, allof our symbols have been

saturated with religion as a continued rein-

forcement of one worldview being the only

acceptable one. Iam concerned withmaking

this land inwhich I livea better place to live

for all Americans. I am not only desirous of

upholding the Constitution, as most oaths

demand, but in strengthening it. Icannot do

that if I am told that I cannot participate

because of my lack of religion. The religious

community isso afraid that another mode of

thinking, another outlook on life,willgain a

foothold that it must isolate those inopposi-

tion to its worldview so that they can be

eliminated. This iswhat wecannot allow.It is

up to me and all other Atheists to live the

concept of life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness on a daily basis and not just

acknowledge itas something that might one

day be. This is demonstrated by action to

those around us that - based on a rational

cognition of our role as animals in the life

August 1986

cycle - we can be better and more produc-

tive citizens than those who dedicate a part

of their lives to escaping from it. We are

participants in the reality of life and not

escape artists from it.

In conclusion, I have been trying to say

that we findourselves ina twentieth century

society of advanced technology operating

on a philosophical basis that has not

changed since the Stone Age. The basis of

our thought systems and our view of our-

selves has to be modernized, but at the same

time we cannot lose track of our biological

imperatives. When generation upon genera-

tion have perceived themselves and viewed

lifein an erroneous manner, it is difficult to

envisage that changing anytime soon. Itmay

take generations more to accomplish, but

we can all take pride in being in on the start

of the change.

We must change the thrust of our writing

in this magazine and in the books we publish

to the end of weaning people away from old

thought patterns and into new ones. It does

no good simply to keep on pumping out the

same old line that earlier groups did. That

was not effective, so we can drop that

approach.

We must talk in terms of the irrelevance

and obsolescence of religion every chance

we get. No weakness can be shown in this

procedure, and no quarter can be given to

the obsolete ideas. They must go.

Finally, we must not allow ourselves to be

isolated. We must mingle and challenge and

foster change from every angle. Isolation is

the first step to eradication. Our presence as

Atheists must be felt in society openly at

every level. There are Atheists inevery walk

oflifein this country, as there are homosex-

uals' Blacks, Hispanics, and women. They

must all simply assert themselves. As with

the unfounded fears concerning the simple

act ofdisplaying Atheist material at a librar-

ians' convention, the only fear we have is of

fear itself. Ifsomeone can be proud of being

an idiot and expound irrational ideas in

every direction, why cannot we be proud of

expounding rational ideas?

While Iwas in New York City, Iwitnessed

the annual Gay Pride march. Over 10,000

gay men and women walked openly down

the street telling one and all that they must

be accepted for what they are. How many of

you would join a similar march for an Atheist

Pride day? If you would not - or cannot

imagine why you would need to do that -

then you had better rethink your position.

~

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A second generation Atheist,

Mr. Murray has been the Director

of The American Atheist Center

for ten years and is also the Managing

Editor of the American Atheist. He

advocates Aggressive Atheism.

Page 5



ASK A A

In

Letters

to

the

Editor,

readers give

their opinions, ideas, and information.

But

in

Ask A.A. American Atheists

answers questions regarding its poli-

cies, positions,

and

customs, as

well

as

queries of factual and historical sit-

uations.

In the absence of invincible ignorance

there can be only a guilt conscience or an

evilwill.I am not certain that Iread or heard

this, or whether it was conceived in my

mind, but I would like to know how you

interpret this and if you agree in part or in

total.

Loren A. Burnett

Connecticut

We presume

that by invincible igno-

rance, you must mean ignorance

(compre-

hension) which cannot be dissipated

or

overcome through the attainment of knowl-

edge. That is

an

unlikely shape for anyone

to be in. Just the passage of time brings

more knowledge in most every life. Since

you then lapse into religious terminology

such

as

guilt and will, our presumption

is that this is

a

theological tenet and proba-

bly means that someone has invincible

ignorance concerned with Jesus Christ. All

Atheists would need toplead guilty to this

since

we

are allconvinced that Jesus Christ,

being a fictitious character, hardly can

become a known to any of us, Atheist

or

theist alike.

Atheists

do

not carry around with them

the burdensome ideas of sin

or

guilt. We

make mistakes;

we

err injudgment. All peo-

ple do. What

an

Atheist must then

do

is to

assess the situation and see if it can be

restored to normal again. When Atheists

cannot intellectually align themselves with

an

insane idea such

as

believing

on

him

who saved

us

all, this is more likely to be

invincible reason refusing to be cuckold to

a

crazy concept such

as

most religious ideas

are.

In respect to

an

evil will, this is

an

apparent

reference to

a

bad seed born,

one dichotomous side of the good-evil syn-

drome which has plagued Christianity, lo

these many years. Atheists scoff at the idea

of demon possession of any human animal,

which is basically what

an

evil will would

be. All persons are amenable to reason, to

Page 6

an

increase of knowledge and to good will.

We are not lesser than others in the animal

kingdom allof which respond to all of these

stimuli.

What has happened here

is

that you have

stumbled upon another idiotic truism of reli-

gion

which

is

supposed to set you thinking

toward the direction of acceptance of

dogma which will be less subtle than that

which you quote.

I received my calendar recently and was

so concerned by something I read I had to

write. You mentioned itisno longer possible

for the organization to seek correction of

state/church violations through legal action.

Does this mean the U.S. Supreme Court has

after all these years finally shut down the

American Atheist movement? Are you now

powerless to point out separation violations?

Ifthis isso, what's to prevent righteous Ron-

nie from combining church and state? It

looks like there is nothing to stop him now.

Especially since he put that creche on White

House land, violating the constitution and

no one seems to care

Angelo Sammarco

Illinois

We care We care

The situation

in

which the nation finds

itself

is

uery bad for not alone state/church

separation but for the Atheist

or

anyone

else not committed to Christian fundamen-

talism. We are

in

the

grips

of religious hyste-

ria

in

the nation. And, it

is

very obvious that

the fervor

is

being whipped

up so

that the

Christian capitalist good guys can fight the

Atheist communist bad guys. The red

herring has worked well before

in

the United

States particularly

in

the

era

that

is

now

known

as

the terror of McCarthyism when

anyone who was not

a

Rambo was

un-

American. ';

What Americans, and particularly Athe-

ists,

do

not understand

is

that it takes

money to fight. While the fundamentalists

casually rake in from $100 million to $200

million

a

year most other cause organiza-

tions in the United States

do

not even reach

that magic

$1

million

per

year with which

to

fight. The yearly income of religion

in

the

United States now is

$7 5 to

$100 billion

a

year. Yes, you read that correctly: billion-

not million. In

a

lopsided battle such

as

this,

August 1986

the religious fundamentalists willwin. That

is

an

easy prognostication.

The decisions of the US. Supreme Court

since Reagan took office, but particularly in

the last four years, can only be described

as

disastrous for state/church separation.

Since the elevation of Rehnquist to Chief

Justice and the addition of Scalia to the

court, one can only expect the decisions to

be more militantly pro-fundamentalist and

god-idea supportive. All cases must be

viewed

as

susceptible of ultimately ending in

this court, the final authority inthe land. For

so

long

as

it remains contaminated with

god-idea solutions, both Atheists and the

nation are in trouble.

It would be ideal if The American Atheist

Center could add

an

in-house attorney

to

its

staff

so

that it could challenge every viola-

tion everywhere, even knowing that the

courts are stacked against us. But, this is ,

wishful thinking. There would need to be

an

attorney (at probably $35,000 annually) and

a legal secretary (at at least $18,000 annu-

ally) added to the staff.

American Atheists has tried

on

at least

three occasions

to

secure such in-house

counsel. The membership simply willnot

or

cannot financially support such

an

effort.

Those who work

at

The Center know the

urgent need for this activity; those of you -

out there - simply

do

not respond

to

our

pleas. The result is that American Atheists

must sit and watch our nation being

reduced

to a

religious fundamentalist and

military fascist state.

CROSSWORDS

(From page 43)

SOLUTION

ACROSS: I-SEWER RAT S-

.ASLEEP 9-ALL SOULS 10-

METTLE 12-0CULAR 13-

WILL TELL IS-SEA ELE-

PHANTS 18-A MOUNTAIN

CAT 23-BALD PATE 24-COL-

ORS 26-EARWIG 27-HITS UP-

ON 28-SADDEN 29- TEA

DANCE

DOWN: I-SEA COW 2-WAL-

RUS 3-ROOTAGE 4-AWLS 6-

STEALTH 7-EAT BEANS 8-

PEERLESS ll-GIDEONS 14-

RECANTS 16-WARBLERS 17-

COLLARED 19-NAP TIME

20-AROUSED 21-COUPON

22-USANCE 2S-TIME

American Atheist



N E W S A N D C O M M E N T S

T H E T H R E E F A C E S

O F J A H W E H

Karol Wojtyla, alias Pope John Paul II,the

ultimate madman ofour century, on May 18,

1986, issued the fifth encyclical of his eight-

year pontificate. Titled Dominum et ViuiJi-

cantem (The Lord and Giver of Life), the

thrust ofthe psycho babbling that the media

reported was Damn the Atheists.

Anencyclical isa pastoral (from the sheep-

herder to the sheep) addressed by a pope to

the entire Roman Catholic church. This 140-

page missive was the finalpart ofthree papal

messages dedicated to the Son

(Redemptor

Hominis, 1979), the Father (Diues in Miseri-

cordia, 1980), and, now, the Holy Spirit.

Atheists know this trinity as J.e., Big

Daddy, and the Spook. The last of these

messages, conceived in 1982, started in

1985,written originally in Polish, then trans-

lated to Latin and from that to other lan-

guages, was generally published in the Unit-

ed States about May 30 when first media

reports on itwere given. The officialEnglish-

language version was available from Roman

Catholic church officialsinthe United States

on June 12.

The encyclical is a disaster. The thinking

is so convoluted and muddled, the themes

so out of touch with reality, the historical

references so fabricated, the style so labo-

rious, repetitive, and disjointed, that one can

onlyconclude that the man is not alone mad,

but so imprudent as to advertise his mental

disabilities to the world. This is psychobab-

bling par excellence, nothing more, nothing

less, and malice-filled psychobabbling at

that. The media apparently recognized this,

and the wire stories and other press cover-

age was short, but not kind. One journal

characterized itas a doomsday encyclical.

The New York Times emphasized that it

was a harsh critique of the modern world

brimming with references to Satan. To

excuse the obvious mental condition of the

pope, that same newspaper described the

encyclical as a highly personal revery. A

psychiatrist would be less kind.

Attempting to find some semblance of a

pertinent message, the media came down on

several paragraphs (near the close ofthe 140

pages) which can be construed as an attack

on Marxism or a condemnation of Athe-

ism. This, however, did not depict accu-

rately either the content or the principal

Austin, Texas

message of the encyclical.

To this date The American Atheist Center

has not received one media report which

picked up an extraordinarily important,

special aspect of the encyclical. Abortion

clinics throughout the United States are

under siege, with terrorist bombings, at-

tacks, and interference with ingress and

egress of women to those clinics. The

National Abortion Federation reports that

there have been thirty-four bombings and

twenty-seven arsons at abortion facilities

since 1977. In addition, there have been

literally thousands of incidents of picketing

and general harassment short of actual

damage-producing violence. NOW (Nation-

al Organization for Women) has finally felt

constrained to charge the leaders of two

antiabortion groups in an antitrust suit with

inciting their followers to harass and intimi-

date abortion clinics. The principal organi-

zations sued are Joe Scheidler's Chicago-

based Pro-Life Action League and John

Patrick Ryan's Saint Louis-based Pro-Life

Direct Action League. With these two

organizations claiming that they have shut

down as many as eighty abortion clinics,

NOW moved under the Sherman Trust Act,

the same lawwhich had been used to obtain

legal restraints against the activities of the

Ku Klux Klan. The courts of the United

States have numerous cases challenging

antiabortion laws, the last of which was a

review bythe United States Supreme Court

in June of one passed by the Pennsylvania

legislature, reported elsewhere in this issue.

In all of these antiabortion actions, the

Roman Catholic church figures large, and in

all of the suits, that particular religion is

never openly named as a source of the anti-

abortion violence. This is regrettable.

In reviewing the current situation, it is

extraordinary then that the media failed to

mention that a part of this pastoral again

attacked abortion. InPart 3, Section 3, Sub-

section 57, the Pope notes:

But on the horizon ofour era there are

gathering ever darker signs of

death : a custom has become widely

established - insome places itthreat-

ens to become almost an institution -

of taking the lives of human beings

August 1986

even before they are born ....

NOW and other organizations dare not

attack this Roman Catholic doctrine which

comes directly from the papacy because

there are in their ranks dues-paying Roman

Catholics who would not countenance such

an attack. This short excerpt was as long as

those segments which attacked Atheism.

Yet the entire media focus remained on the

latter.

The Holy Spirit

But, it isnecessary to return to the general

theme and the message of this Dominum et

ViuiJicantem. When the document was

released the Vatican press spokesman,

Joaquin Navarro-Valls, stated that it was a

theological condemnation of atheistic (i.e.,

Marxist) governments and ideological ma-

terialism, both of which are intrinsically

evil. This simply is not a true statement.

The encyclical is only the psychobabbling of

an aging madman. The Marquis de Sade

(1740-1814), writing from the asylum in

which he was housed, was more lucid.

What then does the encyclical state? Its

Introduction identifies the Roman Catholic

church as the heroic institution which rec-

ognized the Holy Spirit as the giver of life, a

part of the trinitarian mystery, which guar-

antees that the Word willnever pass away,

as will the material universe. Hence only

through the church can come the individual,

heart-recognized redemption through be-

lieving on him which will aid the true

believer in overcoming death.

In a boring, repetitive, wandering, almost

hallucinatory flow of words, the historical

and theological background for this idea is

given.

For purposes of analyzing what is said

only, it is necessary to accept the fictional

account of the mythological J.C. which is

given in the New Testament. In that story,

during the Last Supper J.e. tells his disci-

ples, who later become his apostles, What-

ever you ask in my name, Iwilldo it, that the

Father may be glorified in the Son .... I will

pray the Father, and

he will giue another

Counselor, to be with you forever, even the

Spirit ofT ruth. He called this Counselor -to-

Page 7



- the Holy Spirit, as it is designated in this

encyclical - Wojtyla continues with his

analysis. Although he does not spell it out,

the underlying theme is, of course, that the

Holy Spirit is also homoousious and con-

substantial with Big Daddy and J.e.

That Holy Spirit came to humankind at

the price of Christ's departure. Since this

was god's big plan, itwas necessary then for

the Jews to knock offJ.C. bycrucifying him.

His departure had to mean his death -

with god calling him home via his drifting

slowly upward. J.C., you see, had received

the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and the only

thing that could be done was to killhim. For

those of you who are thirsty after the Holy

Spirit, let this be a lesson to you. In this way,

the death on the cross is inextricably

involved in the plan for the return by the

Holy Spirit.

The pope then looks at J.C., and would

you believe that he lived for thirty years with

Mommy and Daddy in Nazareth? You

wouldn't dispute the pope, who himself is

infallible?[Part I, (4)(18)]And there the Holy

Spirit first evidenced himself, for that is who

knocked up Mary . To prove that all ofthis

is the divine plan, John the Baptist, the

precursor of Christ, who did not really know

he was such a precursor, declares about

J.e., Behold the Lamb of God, who takes

away the sin of the world. He, J. e., is as one

with this Holy Spirit. The skies part, a dove

descends, and a voice from heaven says,

This is my beloved Son, with whom I am

wellpleased (Matthew 3:17).The pope calls

this a trinitarian theophany, that is, a visible

manifestation of three deities in one. Now,

although the voice comes from on high,

inside J.e. there is another voice. The voice

within, of course, is always the Holy Spirit

manifesting itself.

J.C carries this inner voice with him,

always, even to the cross. And after J.C.

kicks the bucket - seven Sundays later -

who comes to visit the apostles and the

mother of Jesus in the Upper Room in Je-

rusalem but the Holy Ghost, a.k.a. the Holy

Spirit. He advises that he is the one through

whom the Father restores lifeto those who

are dead through sin, until one day he will

raise - in Christ - their mortal bodies.

When the Holy Spirit came to that Upper

Room, this time it was forever. And the

Roman Catholic church started when this

was announced. This is the justification that

every knee shall bow. Now, the apostles

who were there felt as if they were orphans,

their teacher having departed this life.But

the Holy Spirit was now on earth - unfortu-

nately as The Invisible Man - so that the

apostles and others could only feel him in

NEWS ND OMMENTS

This ultimate sin they do not believe is ex-

panded fromJerusalem at the time of J.C. to the

historic and total world. Therefore every sin

wherever and whenever committed has a refer-

ence to the cross of Christ.

come the Paraclete (Greek:

parakletos,

advocate or intercessor). He went on to say,

But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom

the Father will send in my name, he will

teach you allthings. Inorder to make every-

thing clear, he continued, When the Coun-

selor comes, whom Ishall send to you from

the Father, ... he willguide you into all the

truth (John 15:26f).

Before the Passover supper (remember

that J.C. was a Jew and he celebrated Jew-

ish religious rituals), while in the Upper

Room, he says to the same people, It is to

your advantage that I go away, for if Ido not

go away, the Counselor will not come to

you; but if I go, I willsend him to you. And

when he comes, he willconvince the world

concerning sin and righteousness and judg-

ment (John 16:7).

The final word is that all of this can only

occur through the Roman Catholic church

which J. C. was then and there building as he

said, Go therefore and make disciples ofall

nations. Throughout the encyclical, the

theme isrepeated that as faras this church is

concerned, every knee shall bow (Romans

14:11). The church's task is salvific, and

the pope repeats again and again that, like it

or not, its intention now is to save, or

redeem, the entire world.

Wojtyla is intent on identifying the Chris-

tian Trinity as the single allowable concept of

god, reaching back to the 1,400-year-old

fight of the Father, the Son, and the Holy

Ghost (which he now designates as the Holy

Spirit) being consubstantiaL The largest and

most lasting rifts inthe church were over this

concept. To prove the point he cites Gene-

sis and god saying, Let us make man in our

image, after our likeness (Genesis 1:26).

Little did the Old Testament scholars know

that this allusion was to the Big Three who

did not come into being until New Test a-

ment times - but as the pope illustrates, a

foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little

minds.

Wojtyla is reaffirming the orthodoxy of

the Roman Catholic church's position. The

Page 8

Southern Baptist Convention did the same

inAtlanta, Georgia, inmid-June ofthis year,

when the leaders of the 14.4millionmember

denomination met to reinforce their funda-

mentalist interpretation of Christianity.

Consubstantial

Arius (250-332), a Libyan who had studied

inAlexandria, started what was to become a

major rift in Christianity just as it was begin-

ning. He held that the Word - the Son

- coming from god must have been begot-

ten by god and hence had a beginning of

existence. Therefore, logically, it followed

that at one time the Son was not, i.e., he

did not exist. Ifthis was true, the Son could

not be eternaL Others argued that J.e. had

existed consubstantially withgod through all

eternity. The emperor ofthe Roman Empire,

Constantine, called the Council of Nicea in

325 in order to put an end to the quarreling.

It is from this date that Christianity has its

beginnings, and the Roman Catholic church,

as an institution, can claim its existence from

this time - a far cry from the year 33 and the

alleged death of the mythological J.C. The

dogma was put together in the Nicene

Creed that the Father and the Son were

consubstantial, of the same substance, and

had always existed. The quarrel brought

death to thousands. The clerics came down

on one side or the other ofthe homoousios

or the homoiusious interpretation. The

Greek word ousia meant substance, and

the argument was over the idea of the Son

being the same as the Father - that is,

homoousious - or the Son being like the

father - that is, homoiusious.

Since religion, and the Christian religion

particularly, being complete nonsense, go-

ing only to subjective and not realistic ideas,

this battle had significant consequences.

Here, we see iteven now being reaffirmed by

both Wojtyla and the Southern Baptist

Convention as if the idea really mattered to

humankind at all.

Moving on to the spook part of the Trinity

August 1986

American Atheist



NEWS ND OMMENTS

their hearts.

That heartfelt (not brain felt) inspiration

he gave, however, came to be transmitted in

episcopal ordination through the One True

Church, its hierarchy then, and its succes-

sors now. Therefore, the Holy Spirit or-

dained and sustains Karol Wojtyla himself.

Anyone who has read the history of early

Christianity knows that all ofthis is a crock

and that neither Christian pretensions nor

the era ofthe Roman Catholic church began

with the Pentecost.

The GREAT Councils

In order to tuck it all in nicely, this all had

to be tied to the First (in 1871) and the

Second (in 1962) GREAT Vatican Councils

ofthe Church. Sure enough, the teaching of

the Second Vatican Council, in retrospect,

is now seen by Wojtyla as essentially

pneumatological - that is, devoted to the

study of spiritual beings. Now who else

would qualify as spiritual beings but the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost - er,

excuse me - the Holy Spirit. The counciliar

constitutions Gaudium et Spes and Lumen

Gentium both held out to the world that the

HolySpirit was and isabroad inthe world to

lead in the journey to the kingdom of the

Father. Allone had to do to get there was die

- shades of J.e. - for The church truly

knows that only God, whom she serves,

meets the deepest longings of the human

heart, which is never fullysatisfied by what

the world has to offer. Well, it isnot possi-

ble to speak for the religious, but the Athe-

ists ofthe world sure as hellare satisfied with

what the world has to offer.

With all ends neatly tied together, with

salvation only available through the Ro-

man Catholic church and its J.e., Big

Daddy, and the Spook, it is now necessary

to look again at what J.C. said about the

Holy Spirit. Remember, it was his advice to

the apostles, It is to your advantage that I

go away, for ifIdo not go away the Counsel-

or will not come to you (John 16:7). And

Jesus gives the reason for his coming, He

willconvince the world concerning sin and

righteousness and judgment: concerning

sin, because

they

do

not believe

inme; con-

cerning righteousness, because I go to the

Father, and you will see me no more; con-

cerning judgment, because the ruler of this

world isjudged (John 16:8-11).Aha the fat

is in the fire. Damn the Atheists The ulti-

mate sin is that they do not believe in this

bizarre ideology that has been dreamed up

by diseased minds.

But Jesus did not come into the world

only to judge it and condemn it. He came to

Austin, Texas

save it. Well, that doesn't matter; the Roman

Catholic church and Wojtyla can both judge

and condemn, especially in regard to righ-

teousness. Righteousness is really defini-

tive salvation inGod, ... as itcenters on the

crucified and glorified Christ. Now you

know. And why was J.C. crucified and risen

again? Ah, you finally have learned your

catechism - to break the stranglehold of

personified evil, so that this world might be

fashioned anew according to God's design

and reach its fulfillment (Pastoral Constitu-

tion on the Church in the Modern World, 2).

This ultimate sin, they do not believe, is

expanded from Jerusalem at the time ofJ.C.

to the historic and total world. Therefore,

every sin, wherever and whenever commit-

ted, has a reference to the cross of Christ.

Wojtyla is going to reach out to everyone in

the world, allcountries, inallperiods oftime,

to lay sin on everyone, so that the Roman

Catholic church can then, through the Holy

Spirit, save them from it. This is the exact

position taken by the Inquisitors once before

in church history.

Glossolalia Is Born

When the Holy Spirit came at the time of

the Pentecost to the Upper Room inJerusa·

lem,with the mother ofJ.e. and the apostles

in attendance on him, everyone began to

speak in other tongues as confirmation of

the Holy Spirit's presence. This is the phe-

nomenon of glossolalia which, as everyone

knows, is evidence of mental illness, en-

gaged inonly by hysteric religious fanatics of

the radical right in the United States. For

example, Falwell, Swaggart, and their ilkare

too high-toned to stoop to this kind ofidiocy.

However, the pope now interprets the

speaking in other tongues to mean that

the Holy Spirit brought back to unity the

scattered races and offering to the Father

the first fruit of all the nations.

I n

fact,

Peter comes forward and speaks before a

multitude of people of different languages,

gathered for the feast. Of course, they all

understood him, and he they. But, what did

he speak to them about? Peter, the first

witness to the power of the Paraclete, the

Redeemer, the Holy Spirit, laid upon them

all concerning the sin which isthe rejection

ofChrist even to his condemnation to death,

to death on the cross of Golgotha. If the

Jews think that pope is ever really going to

forgive them for doing in J.e., they should

all read this encyclical. No way

The rejection ofChrist, by implication the

rejection of god himself, is therefore linked

with the paschal mystery - the crucifixion

and resurrection. And, there, by god, you

now have it all in one ball of wax. For Peter

goes on with his message to the world in

general and to the men of Jerusalem in par-

ticular: Repent and be baptized everyone

of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the

forgiveness of your sins; and you shall

receive the giftofthe HolySpirit. He had, of

course, drunk some of the holy spirit

himself.

Convert to Christ is the entire message.

But what does conversion entail? Con-

version requires convincing of sin - your

own interior judgment of your conscience

where the invisible Holy Spirit isworking on

August 1986

Page 9




you:

Receive the Holy Spirit

That, however, isthe stuff ofreligion. Itis

totally subjective, having no existence at all

in the real world. It is in the shadow of that

part of the mind that is still confused with

religious ideology drummed into it before

one has reached the age of consent.

The Greatest Sin

The greatest sin in the world was and is

the sin of those who have not believed.

They have, one and all, sent Jesus to an

ignominious death. The greatest sin that

man could commit occurred - the killingof

Jesus, the son of god, consubstantial with

the father Therefore every sin demon-

strates its relationship with the cross of

Christ.

Where is the sin of nonbelief? This

unspeakable, abominable sin, in its original

reality, takes place in man's will- and con-

science - first ofallas disobedience. The

disobedience consists of a rejection of (or at

least a turning away from) the truth con-

tained inthe word ofgod. And, at this point,

methinks the pope tries to slip in scientific

creationism, which is even now before the

United States Supreme Court to see ifitcan

gain entry to our nation's public schools. For

quite suddenly in this discussion he points

out that when the universe was created

The Spirit ofGod was moving over the face

of the water (Genesis

1:2)

in order to

create. To create means to call into exis-

tence from nothing. Man was thus created

in the image and likeness of god. And,

since the Holy Spirit did the creating, he

knows man in his heart - and that knowl-

edge tells the Holy Spirit that the sin of non-

Page 10

belief, which isreally disobedience, isthe sin

which is the root of all other sins. For man

has an obligation that has been revealed to

him with the cross of Christ, that there is

only obedience unto death. After all,J.C.

went to the cross just as he was told, and so

should all of us. What a harsh master is this

god

But what is disobedience, thus defined? It

is transgression of a prohibition laid down

by God. What was the prohibition - that

mankind could not eat of the fruit of the tree

of knowledge? For ifAdam and Eve did this,

in the Garden of Eden, they would become

as gods, knowing good and evil (Genesis

3:5). No one, however, has the right to know

what good and evil is. Man cannot decide

by himself what is good and what is evil -

cannot 'know good and evil, likegod.' Dis-

obedience then as the original dimension of

sin means man's claim to become an inde-

pendent and exclusive source for deciding

about good and evil. God, and the Holy

Spirit, alone can define what is sin. Good-

ness, truth, and love mean a lifeinunion with

god; sin, the breath ofevil, isnonbelief and

disobedience. Here we findourselves at the

very center ofwhat could be called the 'anti-

word,' that is to say, 'the anti-truth.''' What

malefactors would engage in such beastly

work, in such a spirit of darkness?

Well, now Wojtyla gets to the great beast

- Atheism [I]n the modern age, when the

atheistic ideologies seek to root out religion

on the grounds that religion causes the radi-

cal 'alienation' ofman, i thas come to such a

state, Wojtyla says, that there is a process

of thought and historico-sociological prac-.

tice in which the rejection of God has

reached the point ofdeclaring his 'death.' An

absurdity, both in concept and expression.

August 1986

Most Atheists would agree with the pope.

The concept of the death of god was put

forward by theologians - not Atheists. The

Atheist position isthat there never was a god

and therefore caterwauling about the death

of god is the height of absurdity.

But whence sin? After all, god created

man in his image. What went wrong? Sin

appeared on earth and in the human com-

munity as an act of the willof the creature-

man contrary to the willof god, to the salvific

willof god. It came through the father of

lies. Aha We have come to the first of the

references about which the New York

Times reported, that the encyclical was

brimming with references to Satan. But,

the encyclical never, indeed, mentions

Satan, and the references are no closer than

this. What did god do when he saw sinful

man? He said, I am sorry that 1have made

them (Genesis 6:5-7) and laid the flood on

the whole shebang. Rejecting the love ofgod

thusly brought suffering to man. Wojtyla,

however, does not point out that the suffer-

ing was laid on man by that loving sado-

masochistic god.

Sin, being abroad now in the land, can

only be overcome by god butchering his own

son, sacrificing the lamb, which seems a

somewhat eerie way ofsolving the problem.

But, there you are - that's the drama -

after killing everyone on earth in a flood in a

fit of pique, after causing his own son to be

killed on a cross, god returned to the love

which was betrayed by Adam through sin.

J.C., you see, when ordered to the cross

for no reason whatsoever, since he was

obedient and did believe on him, went like

a whipped dog to his death. Eve, when

ordered not to eat the apple, told god to go

buzz off and nothing happened to her.

American Atheist




Indeed, she became the mother of all

humankind - a not insignificant achieve-

ment to which allwomen can only say Vive

lafemme

. The sin of such disobedience cannot be

condoned under Wojtyla's theoretics. In-

stead ofpunishing Adam and Eve, however,

god waited for several score ofmillennia and

punished J.C. instead -:- by having him

killed.No wonder that, regarding J.C., the

quote Wojtyla uses is, And his delight shall

be the fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:1-3). At

this point Wojtyla becomes helplessly con-

fused and his efforts to extricate himself are

beyond his abilities. He takes, therefore, a

leap of faith and announces that the Holy

Spirit managed it all. Proceeding from the

Father, he directs toward the Father the

sacrifice ofthe Son, bringing itinto the divine

reality of the Trinitarian communion. You

figure that sentence out. But, to go on:

Thus there is a paradoxical mystery of

love. You can bet your sweet behind there

is In Christ there suffers a God who has

been rejected by his own creature: 'They do

not believe in me.' The pope, however,

does not add that it was god's own game

planto hang his own consubstantial son on a

cross and killhim.To goon: but at the same

time, from the depth of this suffering - and

indirectly from the depth of the very sin 'of

not having believed' - the (Holy) Spirit

draws a new measure of the gift made to

man and to creation from the beginning. As

we used to say back in Pittsburgh, Penn-

sylvania, Put that in your pipe and smoke

it. Ifit is marijuana, it may get you close to

some understanding of this crazy language.

Out ofthis mess, this convoluted reasoning,

Wojtyla divines:

(1)J.e. sacrifices himself on the cross for

no apparent reason.

(2) He must do so, in order that the

Redeemer (Holy Spirit) can come.

(3)Before he takes flightinto the wildblue

yonder, he tells his apostles they can forgive

sins.

(4) He kicks the bucket, and goes to his

father in heaven to ask him to send the

Redeemer (Holy Spirit).

(5) The Redeemer (Holy Spirit) comes.

(6) The Redeemer (Holy Spirit) now can

tell y'a11what sin is.

(7) The One True Church alone holds a

monopoly on theRedeemer (Holy Spirit) as

a transcendent principal agent of god.

(8) The Redeemer (Holy Spirit) has been

here - in the hearts ofmen - for a couple

of thousand years now, but for what pur-

pose appears to be vague.

(9) The One True Church has been pass-

ing on to the successor hierarchies of the

Austin, Texas

Wojtyla feels however that blasphemy does

not properly consist of offending against the Holy

Spirit in words; it consists rather in the refusal to

accept the salvation which god offers to man

through the Holy Spirit working through the

power of the cross.

church the power to forgive sins, which itgot

from J.e. (above), not from the Redeemer

(Holy Spirit).

(10) Allyou need to do is to give ten per-

cent ofyour income (offthe top) to The One

True Church and the pope will be able to

continue to wear lace trimmed pantaloons

under his fine silk robes, flyfirst class, and

damn all the Atheists and Communists.

Repent Of The Sin

Now, Wojtyla comes to the conversion

of the human heart, where the Counselor

(formerly the Redeemer) isdoing his work to

influence allmen. The message to each man

from J.C. (not from the Counselor, who is

only working on seeing to it that the heart is

contrite) is, Repent and believe inthe Gos-

pel (Mark 1:15). Of what is one to repent?

The sin of unbelief, they did not believe on

him, which isan act ofdisobedience. (Ifyou

are not following this, try the entire 140

pages. I'm doing damn well at untangling it

all.)The conscience on which the Redeemer

is working was placed in man by the Crea-

tor, and there is profoundly imprinted

upon it a principle of obedience, for The

conscience is'the voice ofGod.' Ifone has

an upright conscience, one can call good

and bad by their proper names. (Earlier of

course, mankind's being able to tell the dif-

ference between good and evil had been

thoroughly damned in this very encyclical.)

But, when in doubt, read the constitution of

the Second Vatican Council. In that, it is

stated that Whatever is opposed to life

itself, such as any type ofmurder, genocide,

abortion, euthanasia, or willfulself-destruc-

tion, is sin. That ishalfof the social issues

in the next presidential election, right there.

Sin continues to exist. This is obvious

because of the hereditary sinfulness of

human nature. There are sins which are so

bad that they cannot be forgiven. The most

important of these is the sin which is called

blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Woj-

August 1986

tyla comes down on this sin with a ven- ,

geance, citing Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Whoever says a word against the

Son of Man will be forgiven; but

whoever speaks against the Holy

Spirit willnot be forgiven, either in this

age or in the age to come [Matthew

12:31f].

Allsins shall be forgiven the sons of

men, and whatever blasphemies they

utter; but whoever blasphemes

against the Holy Spirit never has for-

giveness, but is guilty of eternal sin

[Mark 3:28f].

Everyone who speaks a word

against the Son of Man will be for-

given; but he who blasphemes against

the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven

[Luke 12:10].

(In order to make c-ertain that your

author, here, is never forgiven, I hereby

revile, abuse, speak of, and address with

irreverence this idiotic, asinine, childishly

stupid Holy Spirit idea.)

»

Wojtyla feels, however-that blasphemy .

does not properly consist of offending

against the Holy Spirit in words; it consists

rather in the refusal to accept the salvation

which god offers to man through the Holy

Spirit, working through the power of the

cross. Whoever rejects the Spirit and the

drip, drip, drip of the blood remains in dead

works, which is to say, sin. Jesus Christ

says that such blasphemy against the Holy

Spirit cannot be forgiven, either inthis lifeor

in the next, since it is linked with non-

repentance, in other words, to the radical

refusal to be converted. This is what sacred

scripture calls hardness of heart (Psalms

81:13; Jeremiah 7:24; Mark 3:5). (Your

author, who has hardness of heart you

would never understand when it comes to

religion, rejects it all, finding the ideology

non-rational and conducive to a debasement

of the human intellect. She is totally non-

Page 11




repentive, absolutely refuses to be convert-

ed, and thinks this and all other associated

ideas are a big load of bull.)

Happy Millennia, J e & The World

Now, the reason that this isso important

isthat Wojtyla thinks that whoever believes

in him should not perish but have eternal

life. This is based on the church's doctrine

of incarnation, the key mystery of the

Roman Catholic faith. This is that there had

been an actual embodiment of a deity in an

earthly form - J.C. The great jubilee at the

close ofthe second millennium, Wojtyla puts

allon notice, willbe for the celebration ofthe

birth of J.C. Somehow or other, the Holy

Spirit is itself responsible for his conception

and birth (after all, he did knock up Mary),

which isthe greatest work accomplished by

the HolySpirit inthe history ofcreation, and

salvation: the supreme grace. This union of

the divine nature and the human nature, the

humanization of the Word-Son ( The

Word became flesh. John 1:14), signifies

that everything that is 'flesh'; the whole of

humanity, the entire visible and material

world is a unified godhood. Therefore, the

Roman Catholic church has the duty, the

power, the obligation to reach out to the

entire world. The Holy Spirit is the one who

overshadowed the virginal body of Mary

(as noted above; I knew someone was

guilty ),knowing that Mary was obedient in

the faith (Romans 1:5), which is to say, a

good Jewish girl. The word made incar-

nate thus becomes the head of humanity, of

the people ofevery nation, every race, every

country and culture, every language and

continent, all called to salvation. This is all

for the benefit of man's new life: divine,

supernatural life (emphasis added). The

HolySpirit, for god's sake, thus adopts allof

mankind so that they may all become par-

takers of the divine nature ; so that they

may all cry out, We have received ... the

Spirit which is from God (1 Corinthians

2:12).

But in this celebration of gathering in

the entire world, it is necessary to go back-

ward as well as forward. The whole of the

action ofthe Holy Spirit even before Christ

must needs be claimed by the church. For

this action has been exercised inevery place

and at every time, indeed, in every individ-

ual, according to the eternal plan of salva-

tion. And we are back to the homoousious.

Remember, however, that this is the Holy

Spirit. For the other side of the coin is the

flesh. For sin is the desires of the flesh. This

can be overcome. Although it is a tempta-

tion with which one must cope, it can be

Page 12

overcome.

Materialism

Unfortunately the resistance to the Holy

Spirit

reaches its clearest expression in

materialism, both in its theoretical

form as a system of thought, and in its

practical form as a method of inter-

preting and evaluating facts, and like-

wise as a program for corresponding

conduct. The system which has devel-

oped most and carried to extreme

practical consequences this form of

thought, ideology and praxis is dialec-

tical and historical materialism, which

is still recognized as the essential core

of Marxism.

In principle and in fact, materialism

radically excludes the presence and

action of God ... it does not accept

God's existence, being a system that

is essentially and systematically athe-

istic. This is the striking phenomenon

of our time: atheism .... The order of

values and the aims of action which it

describes are strictly bound to a read-

ing of the whole of reality as 'matter.'

... It follows ... that religion can only

be understood as a kind of 'idealist

illusion' to be fought with the most

suitable means and methods accord-

ing to circumstances of time and

place, in order to eliminate it from

society and from man's very heart

(emphasis added).

Hear Hear

Materialism is the systematic and logical

development of that resistance con-

demned by Paul as The desires of the flesh

... against the Spirit. Because of this, Woj-

tyla predicts that there willbe a collision as

the church strives to affirm that every man

willsee the salvation ofGod (Luke 3:6; d.,

Isaiah 40:5). That collision may in many

cases be of a tragic nature and may perhaps

lead to fresh defeats for humanity since

materialism, as a system ofthought, in all its

forms, means the acceptance ofdeath as the

definitive end of human existence ... the

human body ismortal ... death remains for

[man] an impassable frontier and limit. All

ofthis means that there isa picture of death

being composed in our age. In the entire

140-page encyclical, only these few para-

graphs speak to Atheism, materialism, and

Marxism. The three are viewed together as

one ball of wax.

The dark shades of materialistic civiliza-

August 1986

tion threaten the life-giving Spirit. But, the

clarion call is clear: Receive the Holy

Spirit, for the church has been the peren-

nial witness to the victory over death. The

church proclaims that life manifests itself

beyond the limitsofdeath and lifeisstronger

than death. For, although your bodies are

dead because of sin, your spirits are alive

because of righteousness (Romans 8:1O}.1t

hardly seems reasonable that Wojtyla ex-

pects to sell lifeafter death in the 1980s, but

the entire encyclical builds to this patent

absurdity. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit trans-

forms the human world from within, from

inside hearts and minds. Man must discover

that he belongs to Christ. When, under the

influence of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit,

people discover this divine dimension of

their being and life, all willbe right with the

world, especially in the great jubilee of the

year 2000.

There follow several pages dedicated to a

reaffirmation that the future can only be

adequately managed by the Roman Catholic

church. As the encyclical reaches its close,

Wojtyla notes that, finally, the Holy Spirit

expresses itself and makes itself felt in

prayer. Many times, through the influence

of the Spirit, prayer rises from the human

heart in spite of prohibitions and persecu-

tions and even officialproclamations regard-

ing the nonreligious or even atheistic char-

acter of public prayer. For those who hope

for a better lifehere and now, he has little or

nothing to say; certainly there is no encour-

agement that they should struggle for better

living conditions. Instead, Prayer always

remains the voice of all those who appar-

ently have no voice .... Prayer is also the

revelation of that abyss which is the heart of

man. Prayer can only indicate that man is

participating in the divine life. That is small

help when one isill-fed,ill-clothed, ill-housed,

sick, and needy. Such a person hardly needs

to save him from himself' with prayer.

An astonishing assertion is also given in

the statement, it is an historical fact that the

church came forth from the Upper Room on

the day of the Pentecost. This is a flat out

prevarication.

In order to retain the cult of Mary, he

drags in her intercessory role in the Catholic

institution, noting that the Roman Catholic

church perseveres in prayer with Mary since

the union of the praying church with the

mother of Christ and the power of the Holy

Spirit will lead ultimately to that eternal

kingdom that is brought about by participa-

tion in the lifeof the Trinity.

Wojtyla concludes then that the Holy

Spirit is the spring of water welling up to

eternal life as he acts as Counselor, Inter-

American Atheist



NEWS AND COMMENTS

cessor, Advocate, ... unceasingly entering

into the history of the world through the

heart ofman. He is, this Holy Spirit, inour

created world ... uncreated gift. He is the

Spirit of the Father and of the Son; Like the

Father, and the Son he isuncreated, without

limit, eternal, omnipotent, God, Lord who

fills the universe. Voila Another who is

homoousious

The Roman Catholic church turns to this

Holy Spirit for all of humankind. Wojtyla

implores him that happiness which only in

god has its complete realization be given

mankind. He ends the encyclical, Before

him I kneel at the end of these considera-

tions and implore him as the Spirit of the

Father and the Son to grant to all of us the

. blessing and grace which Idesire to pass on,

in the name of the most holy Trinity, to the

sons and daughters of the church and to the

whole human family.

And, In Summation

It is difficult to comprehend why Karol

Wojtyla spent over three years of his time

and energy investing it inthis brutish cabala,

a mishmash of nonsense. This man, unfor-

tunately, has the respect of the world.

Instead of using it for the benefit of human-

ity, to seek amelioration for the human con-

dition, to attempt to be a voice for truth,

justice, humanity, he wastes his consider-

able influence by psychobabbling. At the

time of his coronation to the office of the

papacy, from his past record, American

Atheists perceived that he was a medievalist

- one who would grab humanity by the

scruff of its neck and attempt to drag it back

to the Dark Ages. He demonstrates his fixa-

tion with the dead past constantly, and this

encyclical is not alone no exception, but

rather a positive reaffirmation of Wojtyla's

inability to relate to the reality of our times.

It is, therefore, really not surprising that

the media elected to not outline the real

rubbish given in the encyclical. Itwould have

been too shockingly insensible to the prob-

lems and needs of humankind and our times.

- Madalyn O'Hair

A copy of the Encyclical is available from

The American Atheist Center, P.O. Box

2117, Austin, TX 78768-2117, for $3.00.

THE ABORTION DECISION

Inthe November 1985issue ofthe Ameri-

can Atheist

(Vol. 27, No. 11,pp. 15-23),in an

article titled 'Regulated' Abortion, a

review was made of two cases which were

then pending before the United States

Supreme Court, the first coming in from

Pennsylvania and the second from Ohio.

Those cases have now been resolved with

much media attention. Unfortunately that

attention was superficial and consisted of

broad statements that there had been an

erosion of agreement among the justices on

the Supreme Court so that where the prior

abortion decision had been 7-2, the current

one was 5-4, indicating that there was every

possibility that another review ofabortion in

stillanother test case might bring a reversal

of the famous

Roe

case.

In

Roe v. Wade,

410 U.S. 113 (1973) the

Supreme Court had given constitutional

protection to a woman's choice whether to

terminate or to continue her pregnancy,

balanced against three identified competing

interests

of the state.

These were: (1) the

protection of maternal health, (2) the main-

tenance of medical standards, and (3) the

protection of fetal life.At some point in the

pregnancy each interest becomes compel-

ling and justifies the state regulation of the

factors that govern the abortion decision,

the Supreme Court claimed.

When the two new cases came up, the

Department of Justice of the United States

filed its own

amicus curiae

(friend of the

court) brief on the side of the right-to-lifers,

Austin, Texas

the Roman Catholic church, and eighty-two

members of the U.S. Congress. Taxpayers,

ofcourse, paid for the congressional brief as

well as that of the Department of Justice.

Both President Reagan and Attorney Gen-

eral Meese have openly emphasized, during

the course of the litigation, that this case

should be used to overturn

Roe.

The case

from Pennsylvania, which is titled

Thorn-

burgh v. American College of Obstetricians

and Gynecologists,

reached the U.S. Su-

preme Court last year, was orally argued on

November 5, 1985, and a decision was

handed down on June 11, 1986.

The facts ofthe case are brief. The Ameri-

can College of Obstetricians and Gynecolo-

gists filed suit in a Federal District Court in

Pennsylvania alleging that the Pennsylvania

Abortion Control Act of 1982 violated the

Federal Constitution and asked for an

injunction to restrain the state from enforc-

ing the statute. Specific sections of the act

were attacked, but the lower court only

found some of those provisions to be

unconstitutional.

Pennsylvania has had a long history of

struggle with the abortion issue, much of

which flows from the power of the Roman

Catholic church in that state. The last fig-

ures available on religious belief in Pennsyl-

vania are from 1980, but they are instructive.

At the time, there were 12,386 churches,

with 2,604,959 Protestant and Jewish com-

municants, confirmed fullchurch members

out of a total of 7,231,834 adherents to reli-

August 1986

gion. The population of that state in 1980

was approximately 11,626,620, which left

4,394,786 outside of those counted in the

religious ranks, presumably all of whom

simply eschewed a religious appellation for

reasons known only to themselves. Of the

churches reported,l,855 (twenty-three per-

cent) are Roman Catholic. Since this church

does not report actual communicants, only

the total number of3,881,444 adherents to

Catholicism is available to researchers. *

This is a Roman Catholic church claim to

fifty-three percent of the Pennsylvania reli-

gious populace.

The only way that the Roman Catholic

church can control the women in its church

is to control the entire socio-cultural milieu

inwhich they live.The percentage ofRoman

Catholic women using birth control meth-

ods not approved by the church has not

been acceptable to that church for many

decades. Consistently, a higher percentage

of abortions is performed on Roman Cath-

olic women than on Protestant, Jewish, or

a-religious women. It is presumed to be an

incident ofthe lack ofsex education given to

this group, and the inaccessibility of birth

control medications, devices, or education.

*The Roman Catholic church counts as an

adherent everyone born into a Roman

Catholic family. Its statistics are notoriously

unreliable.

Page 13



NEWS ND OMMENTS

Pennsylvania's Six Provisions

Six provisions of the Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1982 were

under review in the Supreme Court's discussion of Thornburgh v.Ameri-

can

College ofObstetricians.

What follows is a summary of each of the six

provisions.

#3205 - informed consent:

This provision required the woman to be informed ofthe name ofthe physician

who would perform the abortion, the particular medical risks ofthe abortion to

be used and of carrying her child to term, and the facts that there may be

detrimental physical and psychological effects, that medical assistance benefits

are available for prenatal care, childbirth, and neonatal care, that the father is

liable to assist in the child's support, and that printed materials were available

from the State that described the fetus and listed agencies offering alternatives to

abortion.

#3208 - printed information:

This provision required that the State provide printed materials to include a

statement that there were other agencies willingto help the mother carry her child

to term and to assist her after the child was born and a description ofthe probable

anatomical and physiological characteristics of an unborn child at two-week

gestation increm,ents.

#3214(a) and (h) - reporting requirements:

These provisions required the physician to report, among other things, identifi-

cation of the performing and referring physicians; woman's residence, age, race,

marital status, date of last menstruation; the number of prior pregnancies; the

basis for any judgment that a medical emergency existed or for any determination

of nonviability; and the method of payment for the abortion. It further provided

that such reports shall not be deemed public records but shall be available for

public inspection and copying in a form that willnot lead to the disclosure of the

identity of any person filinga report.

#3211(a) - determination of viability;

This provision required the physician, after the first trimester, to report the

basis for his determination that a child is not viable.

#3210(b) - degree of care required in postviability abortions:

This provision required a physician performing a postviability abortion to

exercise the degree of care required to preserve the lifeand health of any unborn

child intended to be born and to use the abortion technique that would provide

the best opportunity for the unborn child to be aborted alive unless it would

present a significantly greater medical risk to the pregnant woman's lifeor health.

#3210(c) - second-physician requirement:

This provision required that a second physician be present during an abortion

performed when viabilitywas possible, which physician was to take allreasonable

steps necessary to preserve the child's lifeand health.

Page 14 August 1986

Statistics are suppressed, or skewed, fre-

quently difficultto find, since there isa desire

on the part of the church to keep this infor-

mation unavailable. But by the simple expe-

dient of controlling the total culture, the

church isthen able to control its own subset

within that culture. It has, therefore, con-

sistently and aggressively attempted to con-

trollegislative bodies inorder to obtain legis-

lative enactments which willbe supportive of

Roman Catholic ideology. The church has

actively opposed sex education, the dissem-

ination of birth control information, and the

distribution of either medical or mechanical

prophylactics with which to prevent preg-

nancy. In a state in which the claim of the

church isto over halfof the religious popula-

tion, one would expect to findlegislative bat-

tles to support its positions. This, of course,

is true in Pennsylvania.

Roe v. Wade

was decided in 1973. The

reaction of Roman Catholic-dominated

Pennsylvania was to immediately structure

laws within the framework of the defined

objectives of the Roe decision in order to

restrict all allowable abortion activity as

much as possible. Therefore, Pennsylvania's

first Abortion Control Act was passed in

1974 over the governor's veto. After exten-

sive litigation, various provisions of the 1974

statute were ruled unconstitutional, espe-

cially those which required spousal or pa-

rental consent and those which proscribed

abortion advertisements and the choice of

procedure for a postviability abortion.

In 1978, the Pennsylvania legislature

attempted to restrict access to abortion by

limiting medical-assistance funding for the

procedure. This was also successfully chal-

lenged in a federal court.

In 1981,abortion legislation was proposed

again, this time modeled after a statute devel-

oped by a Chicago-based antiabortion or-

ganization. This bill was vetoed by the

govetnor.

In 1982, the statute under attack in

Thornburgh was formulated, enacted, and

approved by the governor of Pennsylvania

on June 11, 1982_By its own terms it was to

become effective 180 days thereafter, which

was to say, on December 8,1982_ After the

passage of the act but before its effective

date, the case decided by the u.S. Supreme

Court on June 11, 1986, was filedasking for

a preliminary injunction (to enjoin enforce-

ment} until the statute could be fullyconsid-

ered by judicial review. The lower District

Court held that injunctive relief was not

available. The Third Circuit took the appeal

and enjoined enforcement of the entire Act

pending the appeal litigation. But it withheld

its judgment until after the U.S. Supreme

American Atheist



constituting their system of government,

rights located (a) in the traditions and con-

sensus of the society as a whole or (b) in the

logical implications of a system that recog-

nizes both individual liberty and democratic

order-

The Court recognized in Roe that [t]he

pregnant woman cannot be isolated in her

privacy ; but the termination ofa pregnancy

typically involves the destruction of another

entity: the fetus. All metaphysical, theologi-

cal, or legal questions aside,first, the fetus is

an entity that bears in its cells all the genetic

information that characterizes a member of

the species Homo sapiens and distinguishes

an individual member of that species from all

others, and second, there is no nonarbitrary

line separating a fetus from a child or,

indeed, an adult human being. The life of

that entity is at stake in the woman's deci-

sion. The decision involves the destruction

of the fetus, Therefore, it follows that the

liberty to choose abortion isnot fundamen-

tal, another's rights being involved.

An extensive footnote isused by White to

emphasize the reasoning which he puts

behind his decision:

NEWS ND OMMENTS

Justice Stevens, in writing a supporting

concurring opinion, desired to note particu-

larly that the aspect ofliberty at stake inthis

case is the freedom from unwarranted

governmental intrusion into individual deci-

sions in matters ofchildbearing. The rest of

his decision is an attack upon White's dis-

senting opinion and willbe analyzed later in

this report. (See Reply to White, below.)

Burger's Dissent

Chief Justice Burger filed a separate dis-

senting opinion stating that he agreed with

much of the dissent of both White and

O'Connor.

White's Dissent

Justice White dissented, with Justice

Rehnquist joining. He began by noting that

the Constitution itselfisordained and estab-

lished by the people of the United States, *

and therefore constitutional adjudication

cannot frustrate the authority of the people

to govern themselves through institutions of

their own devising and in accordance with

principles of their own choosing. When the

people, through their legislative bodies,

make decisions through legislation, it is not

up to the courts to usurp the people's

authority and disavow the legislation. In the

opinion of White, the Court in Roe v. Wade

departs from a proper understanding of

*The Constitution of the United States was

not accepted by popular vote. It was ratified

by the legislative bodies ofthe thirteen origi-

nal colonies.

the Constitution and has overruled it.

As he sees it, Roe posits that a woman has

a fundamental right to terminate her preg-

nancy and that this right may be restricted

only in the service of two compelling state

interests: the interest inmaternal health and

the interest inprotecting the lifeof the fetus.

Such a right, created by the Court in a deci-

sion on a case before it, is not a constitu-

tional right. A reader of the Constitution

might be surprised ... for the text obviously

contains no references to abortion, nor,

indeed, to pregnancy or reproduction gen-

erally; and, of course, it is highly doubtful

that the authors of any of the provisions of

the Constitution believed that they were giv-

ing protection to abortion. The Due Pro-

cess Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,

however, forbids the deprivation of life, lib-

erty, or property without due process of

law and White agrees with the proposition

which I deem indisputable - that a wom-

an's ability to choose an abortion isa species

of 'liberty' that is subject to the general pro-

tections of the Due Process Clause. He

does not agree that this liberty is funda-

mental, since it is nowhere mentioned in

the Constitution in the specifically enumer-

ated rights. The Court has, therefore, done

nothing more than impose its own contro-

versial choices of value upon the people.

He goes on then to look at what a funda-

mental liberty might be:

(1) those interests that are implicit in the

concept of ordered liberty such that nei-

ther liberty nor justice would exist if [they]

were sacrificed ; and

(2) those that are deeply rooted in this

Nation's history and tradition.

Liberties must be that which is in the basic

choices made by the people themselves in

That the abortion decision con-

cerns childbearing in no sense neces-

sitates a holding that the liberty to

choose abortion is fundamental.

That the decision involves the de-

struction of the fetus renders it differ-

ent in kind from the decision not to

conceive in the first place. This differ-

ence does not go directly to the weight

of the state interest in regulating abor-

tion; it affects as wellthe characteriza-

tion of the liberty itself. For if the lib-

erty to make certain decisions with

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Page 16

August 1986

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American Atheist



NEWS ND OMMENTS

respect to contraception without gov-

ernmental constraint is fundamen-

tal, it is not only because those deci-

sions are serious and important to

the individual, but also because some

value of privacy or individual auton-

omy that is somehow implicit in the

scheme of ordered liberties estab-

lished by the Constitution supports a

judgment that such decisions are

none of government's business ....

Mypoint can be illustrated bydraw-

ing on a related area in which funda-

mental liberty interests have been

found: childbearing. The Court's de-

cisions ... can be read for the proposi-

tion that parents have a fundamental

liberty to make decisions with respect

to the upbringing oftheir children. But

no one would suggest that this fun-

damental liberty extends to assaults

committed upon children by their

parents. It is not the case that parents

have a fundamental liberty to engage

in such activities and that the State

may intrude to prevent them only

because ithas a compelling interest in

the well-beingof children; rather, such

activities, by their very nature, should

be viewed as outside the scope of the

fundamental liberty interest.

It seems to Justice White that protection

for this unique choice must be implicit in

the concept ofordered liberty, or, perhaps,

deeply rooted in this Nation's history and

tradition and that it is neither. In denomi-

nating that liberty in the instant case the

Court engages not in constitutional inter-

pretation, but in the unrestrained imposition

of its own, extraconstitutional value pref-

erences.

Continuing his attack onRoe, upon which

this decision had come to rest, White notes

further that there was a presupposition not

only that the woman's liberty to choose an

abortion was fundamental, but also that the

state's countervailing interest in protecting

fetal life (or as the Court put it in that deci-

sion, potential human life )becomes com-

pelling only at the point at which the fetus is

viable. The point at which the state's interest

becomes compelling is entirely arbitrary.

The explanation given is that at viability

the fetus then presumably has the capacity

of meaningful life outside the mother's

womb. The governmental interest at issue

is in protecting those who willbe citizens if

their lives are not ended in the womb. The

State's interest is in the fetus as an entity in

itself ... and if compelling after viability, is

equally compelling before viability.

Austin, Texas

Both the characterization of the abortion

liberty as fundamental and the denigra-

tion of the State's interest in preserving the

lives of nonviable fetuses are essential to the

constitutional rules devised by the Court

to limit the States' power to regulate abor-

tion. Ifeither or both were rejected, a broad

range of limitations on abortion, including

outright prohibition, now unavailable to the

States, would again become constitutional

possibilities.

To assert that a state interest in fetal life

before viability constitutes a religious

decision is specious. Because this opinion

coincides with the belief ofone or more reli-

gions does not make it religious or intru-

sive. The simple, and perhaps unfortunate,

fact of the matter is that in determining

whether to assert an interest in fetal life, a

State cannot avoid taking a position that will

correspond to some religious beliefs and

contradict others. Therefore, the most

appropriate course ofaction for the Court is

to defer to a legislative resolution of the

issue: in other words, if a state legislature

asserts an interest in protecting fetal life, I

can see no satisfactory basis for

denying

that

it is compelling.

He goes on:

Abortion is a hotly contested oral

and political issue. Such issues, inour

society, are to be resolved by the will

of the people, either as expressed

through legislation or through the

general principles they

have

already

incorporated into the Constitution

they have adopted.

White then goes over each section of the

Pennsylvania law which the majority has

handled and writes a rebuttal. His general

statements come first. As it has evolved in

the decisions ofthis Court, the freedom rec-

ognized by the Court in Roe is essentially a

negative one, based not on the notion that

abortion is a good in itself, but only that

legitimate goals served by state coercion of

private choices regarding abortion are out-

weighed by the damage to individual auton-

omy and privacy that such coercion entails.

In other words, the

evil

ofabortion does not

justify the evil of forbidding it. Since abor-

tion has not been found by the court to be

desirable, Roe does not command the

States to fund, encourage, or

even

to

approve of abortion. Rather, we recog-

nized that the States may legitimately adopt

a policy of encouraging normal childbirth

rather than abortion so long as the measures

through which that policyis implemented do

not amount to direct compulsion of the

August 1986

woman's choice. This is all, White says,

that Pennsylvania attempted to do. Yet, the

majority's decision makes it clear from the

outset that it simply disapproves of any

attempt by Pennsylvania to legislate in this

area.

In regard to #3205 ( informed consent ),

he sees the law as providing a woman seek-

ing an abortion an enhanced, or maximized,

freedom ofchoice byensuring that her deci-

sion isan informed one. State-promulgated

disinformation cannot be justified and a rec-

itation of a parade of horribles before the

woman is a particularly dangerous proce-

dure. However, the Pennsylvania statute

does not require any false or unverifiable

information. Why then does the majority say

that this is unconstitutional? It has three

replies:

(1)The information provided will, in some

cases, be irrelevant to the woman's decision.

White fails to see how providing informa-

tion, relevant or irrelevant, could impair any

constitutionally protected interest. The ma-

jority hypothesizes that the information may

upset the woman, but this has no pertinence

to the question of the statute's constitu-

tionality.

(2 ) The information required may increase

the woman's anxiety about the procedure

and even influence her choice.

Both observations are undoubtedly true,

but this does not cast the statute's constitu-

tionality into question. If the information

required is accurate and not misleading, it

will have a salutary effect; the greater the

likelihood that particular information will

influence the woman's decision, the more

essential the information arguably becomes

for securing her informed consent. If as a

result of receiving the information some

women forgo abortions, this does not sug-

gest that providing the information isuncon-

stitutional. Since prior U.S. Supreme Court

decisions* all indicate that the State may

encourage women to make their choice in

favor of childbirth rather than abortion, the

provision of accurate information regarding

abortion and its alternatives is a reasonable

and fair means of achieving that objective.

(3 )

The provisions are invalid because

they intrude upon the discretion of the

pregnant woman's physician, violate the

privacy of the informed-consent dialogue

between the woman and her physician, and

officially structure that dialogue.

*Maher v. Roe, 432 U.S. 464 (1977); Beal v.

Doe, 432 U.S. 438 (1977); and Harris v.

McRae, 448 U.S. 297 (1980).

Page 17




Abortion is a hotly contested oral and political

issue. Such issues in our society are to be

resolved by the will of the people either as

expressed through legislation or through the

general principles they have already incorporated

into the Constitution they have adopted.

- Justice White

White's reply isthat This isnonsensical.

The government is entitled not to trust

members of a profession to police them-

selves and accordingly, for the protection of

the public, the state does impose restric-

tions on the practice of a profession or busi-

ness. Respect for the patient's right of self-

determination on particular therapy de-

mands a standard set by law for physicians

rather than one which physicians mayor

may not impose upon themselves.

In regard to #3214(a)(h) (reporting re-

quirements):

The majority's decision to strike down the

reporting requirements is extraordinary

since the requirements obviously serve legit-

imate purposes. The information desired is

highly relevant to the State's efforts to

enforce the statute, which forbids abortion

of viable fetuses except when necessary to

the mother's health. Since the subject of

abortion is a matter of considerable public

interest and debate, the collection and dis-

semination of demographic information is

clearly a legitimate goal of public policy.

There is no undue burden since the physi-

cian would need the information in order to

perform the abortion and in prior decisions

the Court has held that reporting require-

ments are constitutional. *

The reports are to be made available only

with the explicit statutory command that the

manner of so doing would ensure anonym-

ity. For the majority to say that the informa-

tion is so detailed that the woman's identifi-

cation is likely and that identification is the

obvious purpose of these extreme report-

ing requirements indicates that the major-

*Planned Parenthood Assn. ofKansas City,

Mo., Inc. li. Ashcroft, 462 U.S. 476 (1983)

and Planned Parenthood of Central Mis-

souri u, Danforth, 428 U.S. 52 (1976).

Page 18

ity view is indefensible. The provisions pose

little or no threat to the woman's privacy.

In regard to #321O(b) (degree of care

required in postviable abortions):

White characterizes the majority decision

as nit-picking. The statute provides that

the physician use the method of abortion

most likely to result in fetal survival unless

that method would pose (I significantly

greater medical risk to the life or health of

the pregnant woman than would other

available methods. The majority, White

states, uses the word significantly to pre-

sume that the statute represents a trade-

off' between the woman's health and the

chance of fetal survival. The majority's

statement is that the word significantly

renders the statute not susceptible to a

construction that does not require the

mother to bear an increased medical risk in

order to save her viable fetus. Since the

State's interest in preserving the life of a

viable fetus is a compelling one according to

Roe, the State is at the very least entitled to

demand that that interest not be subordi-

nated to a purported maternal health risk

that isinfact wholly insubstantial. The Court

has often held that a compelling state inter-

est may justify the imposition ofsome physi-

cal danger upon an individual (draftees may

even be killed in a war in addition to being

wounded or placed in physical danger**),

but in this case that the majority shows its

unwillingness to tolerate the imposition of

any nonnegligible risk ofinjury to a pregnant

woman in order to protect the life of her

viable fetus in the course of an abortion is

baffling. The ruling of the majority directly

contradicts one of the essential holdings of

Roe - that is, that the State may forbid all

postviable abortions except when neces-

**Allgeyer

u,

Louisiana, 165 U.S. 578.

August 1986

sary to protect the lifeor health of the preg-

nant woman.

Pennsylvania has simply required that

when an abortion of some kind is medically

necessary, it shall be conducted so as to

spare the (postviable) fetus (to the greatest

degree possible) unless a method less pro-

tective of the fetus is itself to some degree

medically necessary for the woman. This

may impose some risk on the woman under-

going the abortion, but the law does not

require any significant health risk.

In respect to #321O(c) (second-physician

requirement):

The majority feltthat an emergency situa-

tion was not covered and that a physician

could find himself penalized for not finding a

second physician in such circumstances.

White states, ''This reasoning eludes me,

since the statute states that

[i]t

shall be a

complete defense to

any

charge brought

against a physician for violating the require-

ment of this section that he had concluded,

in good faith, in his best medical judgment,

... that the abortion

Wd5

necessary to pre-

serve maternal life or health (emphasis

added).

White's conclusion is:

The decision today appears symp-

tomatic of the Court's own insecurity

over its handiwork in Roe

li.

Wade,

and the cases following that decision.

Aware that in Roe it essentially creat-

ed something out of nothing and that

there are many in this country who

hold that decision to be basically ille-

gitimate, the Court responds defen-

sively. Perceiving, in a statute imple-

menting the State's legitimate policy

of preferring childbirth to abortion, a

threat to or criticisms of the decision

in Roe li. Wade, the majority indis-

criminately strikes down statutory

provisions that in no way contravene

the right recognized in Roe. I do not

share the warped point of view of the

majority, nor can I follow the tortuous

path the majority treads inproceeding

to strike down the statute before us. I

dissent.

O'Connor's Dissent

Justice Rehnquist joined in the O'Connor

dissent also. O'Connor was primarily con-

cerned with the fact that there had been no

trial on the merits and that there had been

no opportunity to develop facts that might

have had a bearing on the constitutionality

of the statute. There had been a request for

preliminary injunction only, and this had

American Atheist



NEWS ND OMMENTS

reached the U.S. Supreme Court. She felt

that no preliminary injunction should have

been issued and that the U.S. Supreme

Court should not have taken the substantive

issue of constitutionality of several of the

provisions of the statute into consideration

without a lower court trial to develop the

facts so that there was a full record.

The State has compelling interests in

ensuring maternal health and in protecting

potential human life, and these interests

exist throughout pregnancy. Ifa state law

does interfere with the abortion decision to

an extent that is unduly burdensome, there

is then, i.e., at that time, a need to review the

law. The majority has now gone beyond this

criterion of unduly burdensome standards

to say that no conceivable facts which might

be offered could alter the result since itsees

the challenged provisions ofthe law as being

faciallyunconstitutional as a matter of law.

O'Connor concludes, Idispute not only the

wisdom but the legitimacy of the Court's

attempt to discredit and preempt state abor-

tion regulation regardless of the interests it

serves and the impact it has.

She concludes, In my view, today's deci-

sion makes bad constitutional law and bad

procedural law. The Court has tailored for

the fiftyStates an undesired and uncomfort-

able straitjacket.

Reply To White

Justice Stevens, concurring with the

majority, spent much of his opinion in an

attack upon White's dissent, using his opin-

ions in other cases to refute him in this, so

that the clarity ofcertain fundamental prop-

ositions not be obscured by his forceful rhet-

oric. Stevens then cites White's concurring

opinion in the Griswold v. Connecticut 381

U.S. 479 (1965) case, which had to do with a

State forbidding the use of birth control

devices, as an answer to his queries con-

cerned with liberty.

It would be unduly repetitious, and

belaboring the obvious, to expound

on the impact of this statute on the

liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth

Amendment against arbitrary or ca-

pricious denials or on the nature of

this liberty. Suffice itto say that this is

not the first time this Court has had

occasion to articulate that the liberty

entitled to protection under the Four-

teenth Amendment includes the right

to marry, establish a home and bring

up children . . . and liberty . . . to

direct the upbringing and education of

Austin, Texas

children, and that these are among

the basic civil rights of man. ...

These decisions affirm that there is a

realm of family life which the state

cannot enter without substantial jus-

tification.... Surely the right invoked

in this case, to be free ofregulation of

the intimacies of the marriage rela-

tionship, come[ s] to thisCourt with a

momentum for respect lacking when

appeal is made to liberties which

derive merely from shifting economic

arrangements.

White concluded that the statute could

not be constitutionally applied to married

persons, explaining:

I find nothing in this record justify-

ingthe sweeping scope ofthis statute,

with its telling effect on the freedoms

of married persons, and therefore

conclude that it deprives such per-

sons of liberty without due process of

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August 1986 Page 19




law.

Inanother case *Justice White concluded

that a similar Massachusetts statute was

invalid as applied to a person whom the

record did not identify as either married or

unmarried.

In still another case he enlarged on what

he had written in both of the above:

The fatal fallacy in the ... argument

is that it overlooks the underlying

premise of those decisions that the

Constitution protects the right of the

individual ... to be free from unwar-

ranted governmental intrusion into ...

the decision whether to bear or beget

a child.... The Constitution protects

individual decisions in matters of

childbearing from unjustified intrusion

by the State.

Therefore, continues Stevens, the lib-

erty that is at stake is the freedom from

unwarranted governmental intrusion into

individual decisions in matters of child-

bearing.

For reasons that are not exactly

clear, however, Justice White abrupt-

lyannounces that the interest in lib-

erty that is implicated by a decision

not to bear a child that is made a few

days after conception is less funda-

mental than a comparable decision

made before conception. There may,

ofcourse, be a significant difference in

the strength of the countervailing

state interest, but I fail to see how a

decision on childbearing becomes less

important the day after conception

than the day before. . . . Thus, it is

difficult for me to understand how

Justice White reaches the conclusion

that restraints upon this aspect of a

woman's liberty do not call into play

anything more than the most minimal

judicial scrutiny.

In a footnote, Stevens carries the fight

further:

At times Justice White's rhetoric

conflicts with his own analysis. . . .

[H]is statement that an abortion deci-

sion should be subject to the will of

the people, does not take us very far

in determining which people - the

*Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972).

Page 20

majorities in state legislatures or the

individuals confronted with unwanted

pregnancies .... In view of his agree-

ment that the decision about abortion

is a species of liberty protected by

the Constitution ... and in viewof the

fact that liberty plays a rather prom-

inent role in our Constitution, his sug-

gestion that the Court's evaluation of

that interest represents the imposi-

tion of extraconstitutional value pref-

erences, seems to me inexplicable.

The footnote is not enough; his criticism

continues in the text of his concurring

opinion:

If Justice White were correct in

regarding the post-conception deci-

sion of the question whether to bear a

child as a relatively unimportant,

second-class sort of interest, I might

agree with his view that the individual

should be required to conform her

decision to the willof the majority. But

ifthat decision commands the respect

that istraditionally associated with the

sensitive areas of liberty protected

by the Constitution, as Justice White

[has] characterized reproductive de-

cisions . . . no individual should be

compelled to surrender the freedom

to make that decision for herself

simply because her value prefer-

ences are not shared by the majority.

In a sense, the basic question is

whether the abortion decision

should be made by the individual or by

the majority in the unrestrained

imposition of its own, extraconstitu-

tional value preferences.

Then it is back to the footnotes again for

another attack, this one directly aimed at the

religious arguments.

Justice White's characterization of

the governmental interest as protect-

ing those who will be citizens if their

lives are not ended in the womb,

reveals that his opinion may be influ-

enced as much by his value prefer-

ences as by his view about the proper

allocation of decisionmaking respon-

sibilities between the individual and

the State. For iffederal judges must

allow the State to make the abortion

decision, presumably the State isfree

to decide that a woman may never

abort, may sometimes abort, or, as in

the People's Republic of China, must

always abort if her family is already

August 1986

too large. In contrast, our cases

represent a consistent view that the

individual is primarily responsible for

reproductive decisions, whether the

State seeks to prohibit reproduction,

... or to require it.

Then, back to the concurring decision

itself, again, punctuated by short footnotes.

Justice White is also surely wrong

in suggesting that the governmental

interest in protecting fetal life is

equally compelling during the entire

period from the moment of concep-

tion until the moment of birth. Again, I

recognize that a powerful theological

argument can be made for that posi-

tion, but I believe our jurisdiction is

limited to the evaluation of secular

state interests .... **

For, unless the religious view that a

fetus is a person is adopted*** - a

view Justice White refuses to em-

brace - there is a fundamental and

well-recognized difference between a

fetus and a human being; indeed, if

there is not such a difference, the

permissibility of terminating the lifeof

a fetus could ... scarcely be left to the

willof the state legislatures ....

Acceptance of the fundamental

premises that underlie the decision in

Roe, as well as the application of those

premises in that case, places the

primary responsibility for decision in

matters ofchildbearing squarely inthe

private sector of our society. The

majority remains free to preach the

evils of birth control and abortion and

to persuade others to make correct

decisions while the individual faced

with the reality of a difficult choice

having serious and personal conse-

quences of major importance to her

own future - perhaps to the salva-

tion of her own immortal soul -

remains free to seek and to obtain

**Stevens' footnote states: The responsi-

bility for nurturing the soul of the newly

born, as well as the unborn, rests with indi-

vidual parents, not with the State. No matter

how important a sacrament such as baptism

may be, a State surely could not punish a

mother for refusing to baptize her child.

***Stevens' next footnote is: No member

of this Court has ever suggested that a fetus

is a 'person' within the meaning of the Four-

teenth Amendment.

(Continued on page 44)

American Atheist



D o n M cD e rm ott

THE W TER TOWER

his room there was a bookcase inwhich

hekept every book that he had ever read.

One of them he had received from his par-

ents several years before on his thirteenth

birthday. Obviously, he had thought, they

hadn't looked closely at it, and he had never

shown it to them. It was named L o st C iv ili

zations, and he never felt quite right in slip-

ping it in among the others - there were

pictures of naked statues in it. Sharyn had

reminded him of one of these, and as he

drove home, he tried to remember which

one. It had been one of those little clay or

terra-cotta statues - an idol, he corrected

himself - that had been dug up in the Indus

Valley or somewhere around Babylon and

Ninevah. She was modeled of yellow brick,

and the lady's arms reached out as if to

entice him. There were large flowers in her

hair, and around her neck was a heavy

necklace.

Thousands and thousands ofyears ago-

it was a long time ago ifyou thought about it

that way. But he had thought about it differ-

ently, as though the lunchroom of his small

high school filledwith 120 people or so, all

standing in a line, each being a parent to the

one in front, a child to the one behind. And

somewhere toward the front there would

have been a girl with a body shaped like

Sharyn, someone with lean and straight legs,

small breasts, shoulder-length hair with

short bangs. He slowed the large LTD down

almost to a stop and pulled off the two-lane

highway and onto the straight, but rutted,

dirt road that led home. He switched to

brights as he approached the narrow gate-

posts and watched for stray steers, but the

high beam was swallowed up inscrub brush

and yellow dust and reflected only the set·

tling water tower which leaned toward the

farmhouse like a headless giant.

Suddenly the front wheel kicked up a rock

that struck the car frame, startling him as

though he had been hit - in fact he had felt

it. He sat up and scanned even more care-

fullythe barren path for the unforeseen. Just

last month he had been tearing around on

some back roads with some buddies and

high-centered the car. He had finally gotten

off center by driving off the jack, but in the

process he had punched a hole the size of a

nickel inthe oilpan. Even now he could hear

his father's voice. So this evening, though he

was already late, he drove more cautiously

and slowly.

Austin, Texas

You know, I think you're the kind of guy

who could talk a girlright out of her pants,

Sharyn had said before the first feature had

even started. He could remember now every

word she had said to him that evening, and

how she had leaned toward him, supported

by one hand planted on the car bench seat

between them. That is, she laughed, if a

sillygirl gave you even half the chance.

This hadn't been the first time she had

given him the come-on, he realized now, but

before the situation had always been so

ambiguous. When he had first talked to her

.alone, she had asked ifhe had an inner or

an outer.

What?

Belly button, chucklehead. Then she

liftedher T-shirt to show him hers. You see,

I have an 'outer.' What a cocktease, his

friends had said. Maybe this explained the

business earlier that eve-

ning about the under-

pants. He felt a cool

sweat forming on his

forehead just below his

hairline, and he turned

the car heater off.

Now where do you

suppose my panties

are? she had asked,

reaching about in the

dark spaces on the floor

of the car, cracking her

straight face at last with a

grin.

Whatcha mean -

can't you find them? He

didn't know how to take

anything she said now,

and it disturbed him.

She accused him of

taking them. Come on,

giv'em back - I know

you've got them. But he

hadn't. It hadn't occurred

to him to take them as

some sort of momento,

though he knew guys

who did. Well, if I hear

you've shown them

around ...

She tugged on her

white knee socks and

then pulled over a V neck

sweater that did little to

disguise the outline of her

naked breasts. She

turned around inher seat

and, hugging the head-

rest to steady herself,

reached into the back

seat where she retrieved

her lace bra. How natu-

rally she moved, but so

foreign it was for him to

see her move about, stuff-

August 1986 Page 21



inga bra ina purse, buttoning a skirt, teasing

her hair. He felt a thickening, a seeping of

hot blood to the surface of his skin. It was

like holding his breath until he pulled her

over with a strength that surprised them

both. She squealed like one of his sister's

baby dolls and rolled right into his lap. He

marveled as his hands reached under her

pleated skirt and stroked her thighs.

Listen, Tarzan, she said, twirling a little

knot of hair on his chest, I'd love to go

another round, but I thought you were the

one who had curfew - I thought you were

the one who had to go to Sunday school

tomorrow.

Yeah, he said and cleared his throat,

feeling suddenly weak, anxious. She found

her gold-plated safety pin on the dashboard

and pinned the flap of her scotch plaid skirt

while he glanced around for her panties. He

slipped his hands inbetween the sticky vinyl

seats, finding a few grimy coins, candy

wrappers, and peanut shells; he groped

under the bench seat where he found some

dried fruit in a cellophane sack; she even

checked the glove compartment. I don't

know where they are - sure you didn't put

'em in your purse, too?

I'll bet I know, she said suddenly, smil-

ing. When we were at the drive-in - when

you got out to get popcorn. I'llbet they fell

out on your side - I'll bet they're at the

drive-in.

Yeah, I'll bet that's where, he said

relieved, and smiled a little at the idea that

any of his buddies who had come over to

them after the first feature may have

noticed. Maybe that's what the smirks on

their faces had really meant when they

asked ifhe had needed any help?

Sure, that was it, he said to himself as he

turned the last corner and saw the farm-

house, dark now except for the bright light

on the porch - motionless and quiet except

for the swirling and faint buzzing of hun-

dreds of small gnats and moths about the

yellow porch lamp.

He pulled the family car up in front of the

house and remembered to put on the emer-

gency brakes as his father had always

instructed him. Although he was tired, he

hesitated to get out of the car just yet. Itwas

almost as if she were still beside him in the

car. He took a deep breath, smelt her per-

fume; he held itin tillhe almost burst inside.

She had been so beautiful; he couldn't think

ofany other words to decribe it - Mesopo-

tamian. But he had gotten out again - he

remembered just then - to replace the car

speaker, and he hadn't seen the panties

then.

Wouldn't he have noticed a thing likethat

at the foot of the car door? He tied his shoe-

laces and dragged his fur-lined sheepskin

jacket from the backseat. As he got out, he

looked down at the ground beside the car,

halfexpecting to see them there. He closed

Page 22

the door again. Where did his eyes naturally

go? Didn't he always look down just before

he got in? He slammed the car door, and as

he approached the porch steps, started

unconsciously to hum a song until he saw his

mother's shadow move across the screen

door. It had never bothered him before -

nor had he even noticed until just recently

how she hovered around the place. He knew

he wouldn't see her in the hall as he went in,

and no doubt she would think that she had

not been seen - but she had. He had caught

her a lot lately, and it made him a little

uneasy now as he considered what she

would think - what she might say - what

both of his parents would say if they knew

what he had done. But they wouldn't know,

he told himself. Why should they? He knew

lots of guys who did it and were never

caught. .

In his room, he combed his fingers

through his pubic hair and smelled the

unusual odor on the tips ofhis fingers. It was

like nothing he had ever smelt. He had

stripped down to his shorts and was pulling

his pajamas out of his bottom drawer when

his mother came in.

Please, Mom he said, covering himself

with his pajama shirt.

Oh, don't be silly, I won't look at you,

she said, coming into the center ofthe room.

Ijust wanted to know how your date went.

Fine - good. We had a very pleasant

evening, he said, backing up

against

the

chest of drawers. She saw his coat lying on

the floor and picked it up and hung it in the

closet. He had thought he was so smart in

cleaning out the car at the drive-in, throwing

the bottle caps out with the beer bottles, the

Trojan packages out with the prophylactics.

But it had been meant for him to get caught.

His other friends could get away with it; they

weren't religious. But God knew who he

was, and he was going to see to it that he got

caught.

She smiled lovinglyand walked right up to

him. He could plainly smell his and Sharyn's

scent, and he was sure she could smell it,

too.

Goodness, don't be silly, she said, kiss-

ing him on the cheek. When you were a

tyke you used to love running around here

with not a stitch on you. He had heard that

before. You seem to forget, Idiapered and

gave you baths tillyou were ... well,anyway

... She finished with a pride that made him

feel false. Sleep tight. She patted his cheek

and ran her hand along the top of the chest

of drawers checking for dust as she left. He

listened motionlessly as she walked down

the hall and heard her checking the lock on

the front door on her way to bed.

He sat down in relief. He could only think

of ~ing. He had decided then that ifhe

had been caught, he would just have to leave

home. He wouldn't listen to his parents'

sermons - as true as they might be, and he

August 1986

wouldn't pray with them for forgiveness -

not that he didn't intend to. But he couldn't

face them like that. This was a sin he could

never livedown, at least not under their roof.

He couldn't imagine now what he had

been thinking ofwhen he had asked Sharyn

out. Everyone had told him what kind of girl

she was. I'd rather see my daughter lying

dead at my feet, his father had once said in

church, than to see her come home without

her virtue He showered quickly and went

to the phone in the kitchen.

Hello, Mark, this is Joel ...

Hey,

01'

man, what's up?

I need to ask you some 'em. He paused

and listened to the house before he con-

tinued. When you guys came by the car

tonight, you looked like you had found

something pretty funny, huh?

What? his friend asked. Mark swore up

and down that he had seen nothing. By the

way? Is she good as they say?

Joel decided to go out and check the car

seats once more. His mother hardly ever

came into his bedroom like that. It had been

a warning. God didn't intend to embarrass

him, because he knew how that would de-

stroy him. No, God would forgive him this

time because he could read into his heart

and he knew that this was the first time, but

obviously he had wanted to put a little fear

into him. That was all. He would never do it

again because sooner or later people who

commit fornication get caught. He expected

to find them in the car when he went back

out.

He had not wanted to turn on the porch

light, and the sky was fullof clouds blocking

out whatever moonlight there might have

been. On top ofthat, the interior cab lights in

the car were once again on the fritz. All of

this seemed a portent as he blindlysearched

through the car again and again. They must

be there, but he wouldn't find them. He

could just see his mother getting in the car

tomorrow to go to church and finding Shar-

yn's smelly panties, dangling down from

some obvious place like the visor or some-

place he would be unable to think ofbecause

he was meant to be caught. He couldn't be

sure that he wasn't looking right at them.

What in the hell could have happened to

her panties? he asked again in frustration.

He realized he was shivering, and he wished

he had thought to wear his coat. He finally

gave up and went back to his room where he

said a sinner's prayer and tried to get to

sleep.

He dreamed he was sitting at the dinner

table with his family. It was Thanksgiving

and all of the relatives were there. Then,

while they were eating, somebody said the

water tasted funny -like there was a skunk

or something in the water tower. His father

agreed. We'd better check this out, his

father said, getting up from the table and

taking him along. Together they climbed the

American Atheist



ladder, his father trailing a few rungs behind.

At the top he had expected to see the furry

carcass ofa skunk or possum floatingon the

surface of the water. What he saw were her

black panties. He felt his father climbing up

beside him. Frantically, he stretched out for

them, lost his balance, and fellin.As he tread

the water, he sensed her, moving just below

the surface of the water, now pulling on his

legs, now trying to drag him under. Her eyes

were clear glass, her face alabaster, her

black hair spread like a fantail through the

water.

He awoke to the sound of his family get-

ting ready for church. But where is the

car? he asked his mother at breakfast.

Your father took it, of course - had a

deacon's meeting. He'll be back in time to

pick us up - so be ready when he comes.

Two hours passed, but he didn't come back.

Now what could be keeping him? she

asked later, sitting on the couch in her Sun-

day best, paging through the last issue of

R e ad e r s D i ge s t. She couldn't understand it,

but he could. His father had found the

panties. He was late because he had been

talking to the minister about it. That was it.

Perhaps he would bring the pastor home.

The phone rang and his mother had to

answer it.

Cad, we are expecting you - did you

forget you have a family? There was a long

pause. You don't say, she said and pursed

her lips together tightly. Yes, he's standing

right here. She broke off and held out the

phone to him. There was disgust on her face.

He took the phone in both hands and

slowly put it to his ear. Once again, I am

disappointed with you, his father said.

Obviously, we can't trust you to take the

car and go out on dates.

I know, Dad. Tears were welling up in

his eyes, and he had to turn his face away

from his mother.

I don't know how to get this point across

- without taking your car privileges away. If

you are going to borrow the car, you must

see to it that you return it as you found it -

with gas in it

Joel had never feltsuch dread and elation,

elation and then anxiety as he had going out

to start the tractor to take a can ofgas out to

his father on the highway. It had been such a

beautiful day yesterday, before he had been

with her . Today seemed another season.

Winds were gusting about the little house,

and his mother had asked him to quickly

check the latches on a few of the shutters

before he went to the barn to start the trac-

tor. He took offhis suit coat and put on his

jacket before leaving. He circled quickly

around the house. There was one slapping

shutter by his bedroom window that had a

broken hook. He tied it back with some wire

he found blown into the bushes. Then on his

way to the barn, he passed the water tower

not far from the house. Some day, it would

Austin, Texas

fallon the house, he used to worry. I've been

warned twice, he suddenly realized, staring

up at it now as if i twere some altar atop a

mountain or a ziggurat. His dream was still

fresh, and it didn't seem so crazy. He went

on to start the tractor, but halfway through

the yard he decided that he must look in the

tower.

Leaving the engine to idle, he jumped

down and ran back to the tower. He hit the

ladder at the fourth rung with his first step,

and took them two at a time until he was at

last at the top and staring down. Fifteen feet

across, the face of the water rippled in the

strong wind. He peered as deeply as he

could into the clear, green-tinted water.

Then he thought he saw it. At the bottom, a

black spot. Certainly this was too much of a

coincidence. He could see them plainlynow

that he knew what he was looking at. Sooner

or later they would move over, slide over

and block the drain. His father would check

it out and find them - then they'd know

what had happened.

white, her hair dressed in golden flowers.

Suddenly, he panicked and came up chok-

ing. He believed inghosts and devils and sin

and God. He had read about the Whore of

Babylon, and he knew about the Leviathan

who lived in the deep. But his dread over-

came him, and he dived again. Eight feet

down and this time he did not come up until

he had searched the bottom of the tank. He

kicked and paddled to keep himself head

down. His lungs ached, but then he had his

hands on it and he brought it up - a piece o(

tar paper. A tar paper shingle had come off

the roof of the barn and gotten somehow

into the water tank. This had never hap-

pened before. Was God playing a prank on

him? he thought as he quickly bottoned his

shirt which stuck to him like flesh, threw on

his coat, and slipped into his shoes.

His father was sitting in the LTO as he

drove up. The hood of the car was up, the.

chillywind howling up the highway, throwing

dust and sand into the air.

Here's the gas can, he said cheerfully,

He took offhis coat and slung it over the

side. Then his shirt and shoes. On seeing the

tractor idling in the yard, his mother had

come out onto the porch and was looking for

him. She shouted out hisname into a gust of

wind. He couldn't explain. He said nothing

as she scanned the yard for him. Miracu-

lously, she hadn't looked up. He thanked

God that she hadn't looked up. He slipped

feet first into the cold water. Finally, he let go

of the side and dived for the bottom. He had

forgotten how deep it was and dark, and

then he remembered how he had seen

Sharyn down there - naked, her face pale

August 1986

running up and tapping on the car window.

What kept ya? he asked, taking the can

from his son. Get in the car and start it up

when I tell you.

Yes, sir, he said, getting in. Here, Dad,

you take my coat, he said, slipping out of his

fur-lined jacket. Go ahead, put this on. His

father noticed his wet shirt and wrinkled his

brow as though he was about to say some-

thing - but then he didn't, as though he

wanted to save it up for later.

While his father put the gas in the tank and

primed the carburetor, Joel looked again in

the seats and on the floor. Finally his father

(Continued on page 44)

Page 23



T H E R E LIGIOUS S LA UGH T E R DE BA T E

The following

is

reprinted from the

April 1986

issue

of

The Freethinker a

monthly publication ro England.

S

Pokesmen for the Jewish and Islamic

faiths and the Royal Society for the

Prevention of Cruelty to Animals addressed

a public meeting in London last month on

the question of religious slaughter of animals

for food. The meeting was organised by the

National Secular Society whose representa-

tive, G. N.Deodhekar, was the first speaker.

Mr. Deodhekar said it was agreed on all

sides that as far as possible suffering by the

slaughtered animal must be avoided.

The secularist contention is that old

methods of slaughter must be replaced by

new ones based on scientific observation,

new techniques, reason, and compassion.

Though Jewish and Muslimspokesmen usu-

allyargue that their method isless cruel than

the modern methods, the crux ofthe matter

is that even ifit was proved beyond all rea-

sonable doubt that their method was more

painful, Jews and Muslims would insist on

adhering to their own method as being

based on a command of a divinity in their

respective religious books.

The speaker quoted verses from a chap-

ter of the Koran entitled The Bee. He said

the essential spirit of the Koranic verses on

this issue was one of flexibility and this

should enable the Muslims to adjust their

practice to modern conditions.

He added that resistance to pre-slaughter

stunning was based on the fear that the

stopping of the heart would result in failure

to drain the blood from the carcase.

Observations now suggest that loss of

blood is not affected by stunning. The only

point at issue, therefore, iswhich method is

less painful.

Through lack of knowledge or sheer

inertia, many Muslims would prefer the tra-

ditional method. But there are indications

. that some Muslim slaughter houses are will-

ing to accept pre-slaughter stunning. Itmay

well be that patient explanation and un-

heated discussion may produce wider ac-

ceptance by Muslims of modern methods.

It is essential, the speaker warned, that

society should be on guard against the

exploitation of this issue by fanatical and

extremist organisations in order to foment

prejudice against Jews and immigrants.

On the other hand, he said, minorities

must realise that their claim to exemptions

from general practice on religious grounds

Page 24

has limitations based on the welfare ofother

people and ofanimals. The lack oftolerance

of religious minorities in certain Islamic

countries, though not an excuse for democ-

racies to display similar intolerance, does

not strengthen the case ofthe Muslimminor-

ity in the minds of the general public here.

Rabbi Berkovits declared that the Jewish

method of slaughter is as humane as any

other. He added: I am not ashamed of say-

ing that the basis of our beliefs is religious.

The origin ofour method ofslaughter we

believe to be from the Bible and religious

law, and we believe that the Bible isof divine

origin, and therefore that it is binding upon

us, imperative, and eternal for alltimes. This

isour belief. Itmay go back for thousands of

years. I do not accept that anything which is

old is ipso facto primitive. We are not a

primitive, barbarian people. The Pyramids

are old, yet no modern engineer can explain

the engineering of the Pyramids. Just be-

cause something is old does not mean that it

is not necessarily good ....

I believe that the Bible is divine, I believe

in God. I am quite sure that the National

Secular Society does not accept this. But my

contention is that you cannot prove your

point ofview, and we cannot prove ours. We

cannot prove the existence of God, but you

cannot prove that He does not exist ....

You are entitled to your beliefs and we

are entitled to our beliefs. Neither of us

should impose our beliefs upon the other.

We do not attempt to impose our practices

and beliefs on slaughter upon the wider

community; but then do not impose your

practices and beliefs upon us. Let us show

mutual respect for each other.

While agreeing that tolerance was allright

as a general principle, Rabbi Berkovits took

up the specific question of religious slaugh-

ter. It is true that Jewish law is very strict

about the method of slaughter, he said.

The knife must be perfectly and abso-

lutely sharp, and it must not contain the

slightest, tiniest blemish. And there is a very

great skill in testing it - the slightest blem-

ish, which no normal person would detect,

would disqualify it. There must be no pres-

sure whatsoever during the incision, there

must be no pause whatsoever, no lacera-

tion, no tear. The person who performs this

is highlytrained and highlyqualified. And the

purpose, incidentally, of religious slaughter

inJewish law isnot to extract the blood, and

the reason why we oppose pre-stunning is

not because itimpedes the extraction ofthe

August 1986

blood, but because itcauses certain injuries

to the animal which are forbidden to Jews

under Biblical law. Not all injuries, by the

way, willrender the slaughter invalid.

Rabbi Berkovits said critics may claim

science tends to show that Jewish methods

of slaughter are not quite as humane as oth-

ers. He was sure that the N.S.S. is not

opposed to the Jewish method simply

because it is religious, but bases it argu-

ments on science.

But let us not be blinded by science. To

have faith in science as the answer to every-

thing isjust as credulous as faith inGod ....

We shouldn't have absolute faith in

science. We must be careful how we evalu-

ate. And here Iwould also say that because

science requires evaluation, it is constantly

changing. What value can we place on

science ifyesterday's scientific facts, yester-

day's empirical evidence, is tomorrow's fal-

lacy, or today's fallacy? I will give you one

example. The R.S.P.C.A. has been telling us

for 30 years to stun animals electrically. In

their very latest report, however, they now

concede what we have said all along - that

electric stunning does not work. They call

for a ban on electric stunning.

Rabbi Berkovits said it was' the primary

duty of opponents of religious slaughter to

produce incontrovertible evidence to sup-

port their case. They had failed to do so.

He concluded: I think that it isnot merely

because we believe in God, and that our

practice of slaughter is of divine origin, that

we believe that itisnot inhumane. Imaintain

that secular humanism cannot possibly talk

about the ethics and morality ofcausing pain

to animals. Because if we are merely crea-

tures who evolved out of the protozoic

slime, who are not created by God, who are

merely animals of a superior kind - our

genes are better than those ofother animals,

perhaps - what use is i t to talk of ethics and

morality? There is no such thing. Ethics and

morality cannot exist without a religious

underpinning. Secular humanism talking

about ethics issimply playing with words .. _.

Ifyou don't believe in religious underpin-

nings of society, then any system which you

choose to followhappens to be moral. There

is no point in talking about ethics and moral-

ity if one does not believe in religion. And

therefore I contend that our method of

slaughter is not inhumane; that we are not

the ones who are superstitious, obscurant-

ist, or illiberal, but rather, perhaps, our

opponents.

American Atheist



Dr. H. El Essawy, a representative of the

Islamic Society for the Promotion of Reli-

gious Tolerance in the U.K., declared that

Muslims and Jews had recently come under

an orchestrated attack for alleged cruelty

to animals in slaughter houses. He accused

the Royal Society for the Prevention of

Cruelty to Animals and the Animal Rights

Group, and said they were encouraged by

the National Front.

He invited careful scientific and physio-

logicalassessment ofthe questions raised by

the campaigners, as we consider this issue

to be a serious potential threat to religious

tolerance inthis country, especially when we

take into account the rather reckless accu-

sations of'barbarism' and 'cruelty' thrown at

Muslims and Jews.

The way taught by God to the children of

Abraham and followed for thousands of

years by the Jews, Christians, and Muslims,

is to carefully and quickly cut the arteries

and veins of the animal's neck using a very

sharp knife.

The general Islamic guidelines for the

production of Halal [allowed; like Kosher]

meat are first, to reduce the animal's suffer-

ing to a minimum; secondly, to let the blood

flowout, as it is harmful to humans; thirdly,

to mention God's name inrecognition ofhim

having given us this meat and a stomach to

digest it.

On the question of pre-slaughter stun-

ning, the speaker said that in the absence of

a common language between man and

animal, we have to look for a comparable

and available human model that can show

us which method is painful and which is not.

The human model isdemonstrated every

day by the man shaving, or the accidental

cut by a sharp kitchen knife which shows us

that a cut isnot initself painful. Many people

cut themselves without even realising that

they have done so until the wound comes

into contact with a pain-producing sub-

stance ....

What happens to an animal that is being

slaughtered according to the age-old reli-

gious method is that the big carotid arteries

and the big jugular veins are cut, leading to

an interruption of the cerebral circulation

with an immediate loss of consciousness.

The effect is comparable, though on a

smaller scale, to the effect of a stroke; the

victim never really knows what happened to

him.

There can be no quicker or more pain-

less way ofslaughtering the animal than that

taught byGod and his messengers. The only

reason why some people think it is cruel is

their ignorance of the physiological pro-

cesses involved.

Dr. ElEssawy said itis a different question

whether mari should eat the meat ofanother

animal. This is the wider basis of vegetarian-

ism, which isalso promoted by animal rights

campaigners.

Austin, Texas

He asserted that it is necessary for

humans to eat meat, though arguably not at

the present excessive levels.

The biological distinction between an

animal, say, a rabbit, and a vegetable, say a

carrot, isa thin one. Animals and vegetables

share much of the same physiology. Both

feed, feel, breathe, communicate, and re-

produce. Both are very much alive.

It follows that a campaign to ban eating

meat on the basis of cruelty is obviously a

shallow one, prompted by sentimental and

good-hearted attachments to some animals

though not to others.

Dr. El Essawy claimed that although

examples of cruelty to animals are numer-

ous, Muslim and Jewish methods of slaugh-

ter were not among them. To describe these

methods as barbaric is nothing less than

cruelty to Muslims and Jews, as it stirs up

racial hatred and religious intolerance.

John Douglas, manager of the

R.S.P.C.A's Farm Animals Department,

strongly denied that their criticism of reli-

gious slaughter without pre-stunning is

racially motivated. Nor iseverything perfect

regarding conventional methods of killing

animals for food, he declared.

Mr. Douglas said that his and the

R.S.P.C.A's criticism of religious slaughter

is based on three main criteria.

First, there isthe question ofpre-slaughter

stress. While not dwelling on the method

used for casting animals prior to religious

slaughter, Mr. Douglas added: Suffice to

say that turning any animal on its back is

distressing for the animal, and inthe case of

ruminants, particularly sheep, it causes

death within a relatively short space of time

due to pressure on the diaphragm and

thorax.

The Weinberg crate or pen, whilst an

improvement on the methods used for cast-

ingor hoisting by a back leg prior to slaugh-

ter 50 years or so ago, is now totally out-

dated and the cause of considerable stress.

A far better pen used for some years in

the United States is the Cincinnati or

AS.P.C.A pen, in which the animal is held

upright and the cut made from below. It has

not been sanctioned by the Jewish authori-

ties for use in this country. Its introduction

for Shechita and Halal slaughter would be a

major step in reducing the terror prior to

slaughter.

Secondly, there is the pain associated

with cutting the throat of an animal. Mr.

Douglas referred to the claim made by some

defenders ofreligious slaughter that the pain

involved could be likened to nicking oneself

with a razor.

To suggest that severing skin, muscle,

nerves, oesophagus, and trachea, in addi-

tion to the major blood vessels, causes no

pain seems to me to be stretching credulity

too far, he said. In addition to the likely

pain involved, the animal cannot vocalise its

August 1986

terror as both the windpipe and the nerves

supplying the vocal cords have also been

cut.

The speaker's third point concerned the

time taken for an animal to lose conscious-

ness.

He said that it is not possible to measure

consciousness directly in the laboratory, let

alone under commercial conditions in the

abattoir. .. _

The problems involved indelayed loss of

consciousness are compounded by the not

infrequent failure, particularly in Shechita,

to cut one or both of the carotid arteries,

which lie close to the spinal column. This is

because the Shochetim is not supposed to

put any pressure on the knife, and because

he must make sure that the knife is not

nicked. Not only would such an event

render the animal unfit for Jewish consump-

tion but he would have to spend a long time

resharpening the knife. Studies at the Food

Research Institute show that in such cases

time to loss of evoked response is delayed by

up to fiveminutes.

Mr. Douglas concluded by suggesting that

fear of change is perhaps the biggest fear

that reformers have to overcome.

A ll of us have a tendency to resist new

ideas. Change is often considered a threat to

a way of life,or to undermine rich traditions

of culture ....

No one would deny that both Jews and

Muslims have the interest of the animal at

heart. Both the Talmud and the Koran carry

many instructions on the care and welfare of

the animal kingdom. But the point is that

many of these instructions which were wise

and valid a thousand years or more ago,

simply do not apply now.

Times have changed, knowledge has

increased. Science has made new inroads

and cannot be ignored. There are those in

both the Jewish and Muslim faiths who are

deeply concerned about their traditional

methods of slaughter and see no objection

to pre-slaughter stunning.

The fact that a new Halalslaughter house

has just been opened in North Wales is tes-

timony to this. Animals from there are

exported to Muslim countries all over the

world. All are stunned before being Halal

slaughtered.

Herbert W. Armstrong

a nd H is W or ldw ide C h urch o f God

Curious about Armstrong? Then read

this expose of him by John Bowden, an

Australian author (64 pp., paper).

To obtain this fascinating booklet, write

to AA.P. and ask for product #5028. Just

$3.50 including postage.

American Atheist Press

P.O.

Box

2117

Austin, TX 78768-2117

Page 25



Yuri

Pishchik

KA R L M A R X A ND A T H E IS M

O

n January 5, 1879,

The Chicago Trib-

une published a lengthy interview of its

London correspondent with Karl Marx, in

which the former, after mentioning that all

manner of instigatory speeches against reli-

gion were being ascribed to Marx and his

followers, said that the latter must certainly

wish to see all this system destroyed and

completely wiped out. Marx replied that,

though he knew that violent measures

against religion were senseless, he thought

that religion would disappear to the extent

that socialism developed. Its disappearance

must occur as a result ofsocial development

inwhich education would have an important

role, he said.

More than a hundred years have passed

since the sixty-year-old leader of commu-

nism formulated this credo of the Marxists,

but throughout this time his critics from the

clerical camp have been trying to vilifythe

meaning of Marx's attitude to religion, the

content of scientific Atheism.

Marx's path to a scientific viewof religion

and Atheism began not from a painful break

with fathers' faith, not from criticism of

biblicaldogma. Since early childhood he was

surrounded with freethinking in the spirit of

the French Enlightenment, English Deism

and materialism, and an elevated perception

about antiquity as the time of genuine

human emotions and passions. The problem

of religion, its social and gnoseological func-

tion, its place in the social consciousness,

and its relation with scientific knowledge

confronted him later, during his university .

studies. Having made friends with the

Young Hegelians, he actively joined in the

polemics that went on among them on reli-

gionas the root cause ofallevil,the abolition

and overcoming of which was to open a

kingdom of freedom and reason. Unlike the

Young Hegelians, however, Marx, who had

early developed a highlyskeptical attitude to

religion, very soon understood that the

sources of inequality, the plight of the peo-

ple, and the various forms of national and

spiritual oppression lay not inreligion, but in

political and social realities.

The height of pre-Marxian Atheism was a

recognition of the fact that man has created

god, and not the other way round. But the

mystery of the origin, and so the essence,

of religion remained undisclosed. The ra-

tionalistic, enlightener's criticism of religion

and its anthropologization by Feuerbach,

Page 26

while carrying a huge Atheistic potential,

made it absolute as a natural and indispens-

able form ofhuman existence. That was why

Marx, seeing the limitations ofsuch forms of

Atheism, originally raised the task ofdisclos-

ing the essence of religion as a social phe-

nomenon, as a way of gnoseological delu-

sion ofman's reason, as an historical form of

ideology, law, and morality, and as a source

of ethical maxims.

Karl Marx

Studying the history of religious forms,

Marx arrived at a conclusion that the mys-

tery of religion lay not inan individual, not in

his specific nature, not inhis self-conscious-

ness, but in the character of social produc-

tion. People create religion, though not

subjectively but objectively as a product of

definite relations that inevitably push them

toward deification of alien forces that they

cannot comprehend. The existence ofreli-

gion, wrote Marx, is the existence of a

defect. Religion, thus, is a reflection of

those stages of mankind's historical devel-

opment when its social relations are imper-

fect and, as a result, have religious relations

as their supplement and addition. Human

powerlessness, helplessness, and weakness

August 1986

found expression in religion.

In the autumn of 1843, in his article On

the Jewish Question, Marx said:

We do not assert that they [citi-

zens] must overcome their religious

narrowness in order to get rid of their

secular restrictions, we assert that

they willovercome their religious nar-

rowness once they get ridof their sec-

ular restrictions. We do not turn secu-

lar questions into theological ques-

tions. We turn theological questions

into secular ones. History has long

enough been merged in superstition,

we now merge superstition in history.

This thesis sums up the period of his

interpretation of the essence of religion, its

origin, and its historical function, and of his

fundamentally new perception of Atheism.

On one hand, religion has lost its former a

priori substantiation, and on the other, Athe-

ism has come to be seen not just as the

negation of religion, but as the affirmation of

positive social and moral values.

Both religion and Atheism have their his-

torical content, determined by material pre-

requisites. Because of that, as Marx noted,

the overcoming ofreligion isachieved not by

an equivalent Atheistic sermon, but by a

change of conditions. It follows that Athe-

ism, too, becomes deprived of its decisive

role in the abolition of religion. But this does

not mean its unsubstantiveness. Being the

product of a definite stage of historical

development, it is called upon to theoreti-

cally expose religion and make out a case for

social development without religion on the

basis of a scientific materialist world out-

look.

Acting as the flesh ofAtheism is its his-

torically specific and consistent linkwith the

social forces that expose religion as a spiri-

tual sanction of obsolete socioeconomic

relations. So Atheistic ideas, as a rule,

became an effective weapon in the hands of

advanced social forces. Marx constantly

stressed the thought about the revolution-

ary character of freethinking, heresies, and

anti-clericalism.

At the same time, having revealed the true

nature ofreligion and its social origin, Marx

strongly came out against attempts to push

Atheism to the fore and insisted that there

should be less trifling with the label of 'athe-

American Atheist



ism' . . . and that instead the content of

philosophy should be brought to the peo-

ple. It is not accidental that Marxist-ide-

ology countries have been the ones where

the principle of cooperation between believ-

ers and nonbelievers ina social struggle was

first theoretically established and practically

implemented during the socialist revolution.

Now, too, inface ofthe danger ofthermonu-

clear war, the socialist countries appeal for

unity ofallprogressive forces, irrespective of

their attitude to religionor Atheism, for their

doing everything for war prevention.

The pertinency of Marxist Atheism is

most manifest in countries where clerical

forces in league with the rightwingers are

trying to reverse historical progress: staging

monkey trials, preaching religious strife

and chauvinism, maintaining and implanting

mysticism, and covering up social and eco-

nomic oppression with religion.

Religion willdisappear to the extent that

socialism develops - these words ofMarx

have been confirmed by the entire course of

the development of Atheism in the socialist

states.

Bourgeois and clerical propaganda, dis-

torting the process of Atheistic education in

the USSR, spreads rumors about persecu-

tions and discrimination taking place here

against the believers and about the forcible

character of Atheization. On the other

hand, in view of the existence of numerous

religious organizations in the Soviet Union

and a still high percentage of believers, they

have recently started talking about the fail-

ure of the practice of Atheistic education,

about the ineradicability of religion, and so

forth.

Both stands have nothing in common with

reality. Their proponents betray an absolute

lack of understanding of the essence of the

Marxist view of the process of overcoming

religion. The statement Marx made to the

American correspondent, having found its

embodiment in the practice of the USSR and

other socialist states, convincingly shows

the historical correctness ofMarxism, based

on a deep scientific anaylsis of the nature of

religion and Atheism. ~

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Pishchik is a senior research

fellowat the Institute of

Atheism in Moscow.

D I A L - A N - A T H E I S T

The telephone listings beloware the various services where you may listen to short comments on state/church separation

issues and viewpoints originated by the Atheist community.

Tucson, Arizona (602)623-3861

San Francisco, California (415)668-8085

South Bay (San Jose), California (408) 377-8485

God Speaks (408)257-1486

Denver, Colorado (303)692-9395

Greater DC (703)280-4321

South Florida (305)474-6728

Atlanta, Georgia (404)662-6606

Northern Illinois (312)506-9200

Lexington, Kentucky (606)278-8333

Boston, Massachusetts (617)969-2682

Detroit, Michigan (313)721-6630

Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota (612)566-3653

Northern New Jersey (201)777-0766

Austin, Texas

Albuquerque, New Mexico (505) 884-7360

Mid-Hudson, NewYork (914)338-0162

New York City, New York (718)392-0556

Schenectady, NewYork (518)346-1479

Reno, Nevada (702)972-8203

Columbus, Ohio (614)294-0300

Portland, Oregon (503) 771-6208

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (215)533-1620

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (412) 734-0509

Austin, Texas DIAL-THE-ATHEIST__ (512)458-5731

Houston, Texas (713)664-7678

Outspoken Voice of Freedom (713)527-9255

Salt Lake City, Utah (801)364-4939

August 1986 Page 27



T H E P R O B IN G M IN D / F rank R . Zindler

STALKING THE ELUSIVE MOUNTAIN

BOAT: THE QUEST FOR NOAH'S ARK

And the ark rested in the seventh

month, on the seventeenth day of the

month, upon the mountains of Ararat.

Genesis

8:4

Forget The Boat

Where's The Mountain?

M

t. Ararat never existed; a fortiori,

neither did the boat which legend

alleges came to rest upon it. The term Mt.

Ararat is the result of linguistic confusions

spawned and spun out thousands of years

ago. It is amusing, however, to retrace the

path taken by the sacred cow of tradition as

it wandered from the ziggurat-studded low-

lands of southern Mesopotamia into the

volcano-covered highlands of what is now

the Armenian part of Turkey.

The biblical verse on which the Ararat

quest is based is weird: It speaks of Noah's

craft landing upon the mountains of Ara-

rat. Although The New English Biblecleans

this up to read on a mountain in Ararat,

the King James Version is more faithful to

the Hebrew text, which clearly has the big

boat

(greater

in tonnage than the U.S.S.

United States ) resting

upon

(not among)

more than one mountain Such odd lan-

guage is not altogether surprising, when one

considers the fact that the compilers of

Genesis were drawing from earlier legends

and traditions which had been passed from

one culture and language to another. It

appears that the compilers themselves did

not fullyunderstand all the material handed

down to them. But, because of the great

antiquity of the material - and the pre-

sumed sanctity thereof - little if any of the

unintelligiblematerial could be thrown away.

It allhad to be stitched together into a single

narrative.

Almost certainly, the biblical legend of the

flood was derived from the much earlier

Mesopotamian flood legend - the story of

Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim (the archetype

ofNoah) told by the Babylonians and the still

earlier Sumerians. Livingon the floodplains

of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, quite nat-

urally these people told stories of great

floods in the past. Flood stories, like fish

stories, improve with the retelling. So we

should not be surprised to learn that the

Mesopotamians came to believe that their

Page 28

whole world had once been covered by

water - right up to the distant mountain

ranges that surrounded that world. The

Babylonian Noah was said to have parked

his ark on Mt. Nisir, undoubtedly one of

the peaks of the Iranian Zagros range -

perhaps inthe north ofMesopotamia, where

the northwest-trending Zagros mountains

run into the east-west-trending Taurus

range of Turkey, in the ancient country of

Gordyene/Qardu (Kurdistan). Jews in Bab-

ylonia, however, located Mt. Nisir in the

Zagros farther south, at a point northeast of

present-day Baghdad.

By the time the flood legend had been

passed down to the Jews, Mt. Nisir had

been forgotten, and only the general region

inwhich it was thought to have been located

was remembered. According to Lloyd R.

Bailey, author of the lamentably out-of-print

book Where is Noah's Ark? (Abingdon,

1978, pp. 20-21):

During the period when the tradi-

tions inGenesis took their finalshape,

the term Ararat meant a rather

extensive area with slightlyfluctuating

boundaries. This area can be equated

with the Kingdom of Urartu, known

from Assyrian records. Ingeneral, the

Kingdom of Urartu was concentrated

in the extensive Qardu/Gordyene

Mountains around Lakes Van and

Urmia ...

By the beginning of the Christian

Era, the boundaries of Armenia were

roughly those of ancient Ararat

Urartu, so that some translations of

Genesis justifiably read that the ark

came to rest in the mountains of

Armenia. But the phrase mountains

of Ararat, found in the Hebrew origi-

nal ... might lead to a misunderstand-

ing. By then Ararat was only a small,

northern district of Armenia. Undue

emphasis might then be placed on the

possibility that the ark landed in the

north, in the vicinity ofAgri Dagi [the

mountain in northeastern-most Tur-

key identified as Mt. Ararat by Ameri-

can fundamentalists].

According to Bailey, Aghri Dagh (see Fig.

1) - the mountain now called Mt. Ararat

August 1986

- was not identified as such even by the

Armenians until the eleventh/twelfth centu-

ries A.D. Before that time, many other

mountains were thought to be Noah's

mountain.

The Koran, for example, places Noah's

landing on Jabal Judi, a mountain in the Aja

range in the Arabian desert. The name

Jabal Judi has also been applied to a

mountain in southern Kurdistan (Qardu)

just north of the Tigris, a mountain the

Turks call Cudi Dag. This seems to be the

mountain referred to by Berosus, a Babylo-

nian writer of the third century B.C. who

retold the story of Ziusudra, the Sumerian

Noah. At any rate, the Nestorian Christians

built several monasteries on this 6,800-foot

mountain. One of these, called the Cloister

of the Ark, was destroyed by lightning in the

year A.D. 766.

As might be expected, considering the

non-historical nature of the Noah story,

complete chaos has reigned in pinning the

tail of myth onto the donkey of geography.

Mt. Ararat has been located in west-central

Turkey (Phrygia) near Celaenae, in the

Caucasus range in the Soviet Union, in Adi-

abene near the Iraq/Iran border, and inquite

a few other places. According to Samaritan

tradition, Noah debarked from the ark in

Ceylon, and another tradition has him go

aground in Afghanistan, in the Hindu Cush.

Despite the fact that there is no Mt. Ara-

rat, and never was, enterprising Turks and

Armenians have sold gullible fundamental-

ists on the idea that Turkish Armenia has a

mountain with an ocean-liner-sized ship on

its top. In all fairness to the Turks and

Armenians, if they didn't take money to

guide the faithful to the top of their moun-

tain, the true believers would be giving their

money to other guides, say in Ceylon or

Iran, to be shown

their

boat docks inthe sky.

Although one occasionally hears of self-

designated arkeologists looking for boats

on other mountains, the mountain boat hunt-

ers almost always stalk their prey upon the

summit ofthe mountain the Turks callAghri

Dagh and the Armenians callMasis. Indeed,

so widely is this 17,000-foot volcano asso-

ciated with the biblical Mt. Ararat, it is rare

to find anyone aware of the fact that its name

is not Ararat. We shall limit our discussion,

therefore, to claims that Noah's Ark has

American Atheist



been found on Aghri Dagh.

Don't Move That Glacier

Before we examine the few specific cases

that space allows, a general idiosyncracy of

arkeologists must be noted. Regardless of

their nationality or the century inwhich they

have climbed Mt. Ararat, they have sought

the ship ofNoah on

the top

ofMt.Ararat. To

be sure, most who have claimed to have

actually seen the wreck have said they saw it

thousands of feet below the summit. Never-

theless, since Genesis implies that the boat

beached itself on the top of a mountain, and

since arkeologists typically are quite inno-

cent of any knowledge of geological pro-

cesses, nearly all mountain-boat-hunting

expeditions try to reach Ararat's glaciered

peak.

Why is this amusing? It is amusing

because many of the alleged ark sightings

have been of objects frozen inside a glacier,

and because glaciers move. If Noah's Ark

had indeed been frozen into Ararat's gla-

ciers, itlong ago would have been moved far

down the slopes of the mountain. The frag-

mented remains of Noah's navy would be

found below the snow line,in the mounds of

eroded debris (moraines) deposited by the

glaciers when they were bigger than at pres-

ent and extended farther down the moun-

tainside. Any object at the top of the moun-

tain in the year 2348-47 B.c. (the year in

which the Egyptians perversely failed to

notice that Jahweh had ended the world)

would long ago have been transported

below the present snow line.

But glacial movements are not the only

reason one would not expect to find a boat

on this mountaintop. Apart from the ob-

vious reasons, which willcome to the mind

of any non-creationist reader, there is the

fact that Ararat is a volcano, and there is

evidence (at least some creationists think

so) that it has been active since 2348

B.c.

In

their book The Ark On Ararat (Thomas

Nelson, Inc. and Creation-Life Pubs., 1976),

evangelist Tim LaHaye and creation scien-

tist John D. Morris cite fellow creationist

Clifford L. Burdick in support of this idea:

Very likelysome time after the flood

waters had subsided [whither, if the

earth be round?], almost the whole

northeast side of the mountain blew

up. A long deep gash was opened in

the mountain, now known as the

Ahora Gulch. This ismany miles long

and thousands of feet deep and wide,

and a conservative estimate would be

that from one to two cubic miles of

rock debris and volcanic ash were

blown from the mountain (LaHaye, p.

13).

LaHaye and Morris ask, on the next page of

their book:

Could the remains of Noah's Ark

have survived the turmoil that fol-

lowed its landing on Mt. Ararat?

Could it possibly have withstood the

anger of an erupting volcano or the

onslaught of an unstable glacier? All

Figure 1. Great (right) and Little (left) Ararat, seen from the northeast, from the Tatar village of Syrbaghan.l..ittle Ararat

(12,840 feet), the younger volcanic cone, is hardly eroded, whereas Great Ararat (16,916 feet) is greatly eroded by both glacial

processes and explosive volcanic and tectonic events which have created the deep cleft (the Ahora Gorge) in the northeastern

slope seen here directly beneath the snowy peak. The village of Ahora (Arghuri), before the earthquake of 1840, used to be

located near the mouth of the gorge. The monastery of St. Jacob, for eight centuries, was located farther up the gorge. Still

farther up was a small shrine. Just to the right of Little Ararat, on its foreslope, is Takjaltu (7,091 feet), a parasitic volcanic cone

the far side of which is cultivated and periodically inhabited (as is the saddle between Great and Little Ararat). [Reproduced

from Transcaucasia and Ararat Fourth Edition, by James Bryce, Macmillan Co., Ltd., 1896.]

Austin, Texas

August 1986

Page 29



logic dictates that it should not have.

Of course, Iagree with LaHaye and Mor-

ris that it is illogical to think that a wooden

ark could have survived all this. But do

LaHaye and Morris trust their own logic?

Apparently not, although I can't be sure.

After telling of the disastrous earthquake of

1840, which greatly enlarged the Ahora

Gorge and blew away the mountainside

monastery ofSt. Jacob, and after describing

the earthquake of 1883which precipitated

catastrophic avalanches and rockfalls -

what do they conclude?

We believe Noah's Ark exists today

encased in snow and ice somewhere up in

the mountains of Ararat (p. 261). Fellow

cynics willnote the use of the plural.

The Atheists And The Ark

Creationists have not been very success-

fulin their quest for the deluge dreadnought,

despite the immense size of :their slow-

moving quarry. Although local shepherd

boys pasture their flocks on the 8,OOO-foot

saddle between the peaks of Greater Ara-

rat and Little Ararat ; despite the fact that

LaHaye and Morris mention the growing of

wheat between the saddles and the onetime

existence of a narrow-gauge railway up

there (p. 86); and despite the enormous

numbers ofpeople who have swarmed over

the slopes of both Ararats, no fundamental-

ist museum as yet sells tickets for guided

tours ofNoah's Ark. Whereas ordinary hea-

thens manage to

live

on the mountain, fun-

damentalists have been thwarted by it at

every turn. Out offrustration, perhaps, have

the chosen of god developed the fantasy

which I call The Tale of the Three Wicked

Atheists.

The tale was first published in 1952,when

a Seventh-Day Adventist minister named

Harold H. Williamstried to reconstruct from

memory a story told to him in 1915 by one

HajiYearam, an Armenian convert. Accord-

ing to Williams, in 1915Yearam was seventy-

five years old and had only recently recov-

ered from an extremely debilitating illness.

Readers willhave to judge for themselves if

that illness might have affected Yearam's

brain. As Williams tells it (reprinted by

LaHaye and Morris, pp. 45-49), The Tale of

the Three Wicked Atheists goes as follows:

Itwas the middle ofthe 1850s (1856,accord-

ing to arkeologist Violet Cummings), and

three Londoners came to the foot of Mt.

Ararat, to the Armenian village in which

Yearam lived with his parents.

When Haji was a large boy, but not

yet a man fully grown, there came to

his home some strangers. IfI remem-

ber correctly there were three vile

men who did not believe the Bible and

did not believe in the existence of a

Page 30

personal God. They were scientists

and evolutionists [three years before

Darwin published On the Origin of

Species ]. They were on this expedi-

tion specifically to prove the legend of

Noah's Ark to be a fraud and a fake.

They hired the father of young Haji

Yearam as their official guide. . . .

They hired the boy to assist his father

as guide.

The pious father and son decided to prove

to the Atheists that the biblical flood story

was true, so they took the wicked men right

up the mountain to the Ark:

As they reached this spot, there

they found the prow of a mighty ship

protruding out of the ice. They went

inside the Ark and did considerable

exploring. Itwas divided up into many

floors and stages and compartments

and had bars like animal cages of

today .... The scientists were ap-

palled and dumbfounded and went

into a Satanic rage at finding what

they hoped to prove nonexistent.

They were so angry and mad that they

said they would destroy the ship, but

the wood was more like stone than

any wood we have now....

Unable to destroy Noah's Ark, the frus-

trated Atheists,

held a council, and then took a solemn

and fearful death oath. Any man pres-

ent who would ever breathe a word

about what they had found would be

tortured and murdered. They told

their guide and his son that they would

keep tabs on them and that if they

ever told anyone ... they would surely

be tortured and murdered.

It is not recorded whether the Armenian

peasants took the oath in the Queen's En-

glish, or whether the cultured Britishers

condescended to administer the oath in

Armenian.

This so frightened Haji Yearam, that he

never broke his oath until the age ofseventy-

five He died on May 3, 1920, at the age of

eighty-three (according to Violet Cum-

mings). At about the same time as Haji's

death, Williams claims, a short article

appeared in a Massachusetts newspaper

(from Brockton or Boston, he's not sure

which). The story told how an anonymous

( ), elderly English scientist had made a

deathbed confession of the identical story

told by Yearam.

Although Williams claims he wrote Yea-

ram's story down in 1915 and saved the

newspaper clipping of the Atheist's confes-

sion in 1920(1918, according to Williams, in

contradiction to the date on Yearam' s death

August 1986

certificate), he never published his astonish-

ing story until 1952. By then, of course, he

had neither his original manuscript nor the

clipping. Itseems that both had been burned

up in a butane explosion in 1940.

Besides the many ways inwhich Yearam's

description of the Ark and its wood contra-

dict the true accounts related by other

ark-seekers, and the fact that no one has

ever been able to find the newspaper which

carried the article, there is one serious flaw

in this tale. According to Yearam, the evil

evolutionists were much older than he at

the time of the climb. Since Yearam would

have been seventeen or eighteen years old

(sixteen or seventeen, according to Wil-

liams' reckoning), and the most modest

estimate would put the much older scien-

tists in their late thirties, the sinful scientist

would have been at least 103years old if he

died at the same time Yearam did Unfortu-

nately, finding the 1920death record ofany

centenarian Atheist pre-Darwinian evolu-

tionist Ararat-climbing London scientist has

proven as elusive as the wild mountain boat

itself.

The

Case

Of The Russian Aviators

In 1940, long after the First World War,

The New Eden, a Los Angeles religious

magazine, carried an article titled Noah's

Ark Found, allegedly written by a World

War I Russian aviator named Vladimir Ros-

kovitsky. Written as a first person, eyewit-

ness account, the article (reprinted in

LaHaye and Morris, pp. 76-79) told how in

the days just before the Russian revolution,

the author and his buddy had flown a Rus-

sian military plane (equipped with a super-

charger ) around the peak of Mt. Ararat at

the 14,000-foot level. The supposedly Rus-

sian author seems unaware that there were

two Russian revolutions in 1917.

We suddenly came upon a perfect

gem of a lake, blue as an emerald, but

stillfrozen over on the shady side ....

Suddenly my companion ... pointed

down at the overflow end ofthe lake. I

looked and nearly fainted A subma-

rine No, it wasn't, for it had stubby

masts [not mentioned in the Bible],

but the top was rounded over with

only a flat catwalk about five feet

across down the length of it.... We

were surprised when we got close to it

at the immense size of the thing, for it

was as long as a city block, and would

compare very favorably to the mod-

ern battleships oftoday. Itwas ground-

ed on the shore of the lake with about

one-fourth of the rear end still running

out into the water, and its extreme

rear was three-fourths under water.

Roskovitsky told his captain what he had

American Atheist



seen, and the captain notified the Czar's

government. The Czar dispatched two large

companies of men to climb the mountain

and inspect the Ark. Inside the Ark the

ground forces found hundreds of rooms,

some with cages possessing wrought iron

bars. (What a pity Noah didn't show his

descendants how to work iron; the Iron Age

could have begun a thousand years earlier )

Elaborate plans were drawn of the wreck,

and many photographs were taken. But -

A few days after this expedition

sent its report to the Czar, the

government was overthrown and

Godless Bolshevism took over, so

that the records were never made

publicand probably were destroyed in

the zeal of the Bolshevics [s ic] to dis-

credit allreligion and beliefin the truth

ofthe Bible.

Violet Cummings, in her book Has Any-

body Really Seen Noah's Ark? (Creation-

LifePublishers, 1982)cites as corroboration

of this story the testimony of Gunner A.

Smars, Jr. to the effect that an old Turk had

toldhim about the Russian expedition that

came by Aralik in 1918 on its way up Aghri

Dagh. She also cites an article by Alex-

ander A. Koor claiming that the two re-

search divisions of one hundred fifty infan-

trymen, army engineers, and specialists sent

by the Czar reached the Ark at the end of

December 1917 and tried to send their

report back to the Czar an unspecified

length oftime later. Considering the fact that

Czar Nicholas Ilhad abdicated on March 15,

1917 (New Style), and had soon been

replaced by the Kerenski government, and

considering that the Bolshevik Revolution

took place on November 6-7, 1917, it is

unlikelythat any expedition reaching Ararat

as late as December of 1917could have been

sent by the Czar. As for the expedition

(supposedly the same expedition) that

allegedly reached Ararat in 1918, we need

only to note that the Czar and his family

were executed on July 16,1918, after having

been out of power for well over a year.

Fortunately, we do not need to worry

about such details. LaHaye and Morris

found out that Roskovitsky is a fictional

character, invented by Floyd Gurley, the

editor of The New Eden In their book The

Ark

on

Ararat

(pp. 80-82), they publish let-

ters from Benjamin F. Allen - the source of

the information used in the story - and

from Mr. Gurley.

According to, a letter written by Allen to

creationist Henry Morris:

The story you enclose on Noah's

Ark . . . was originally put out by an

off-center man here whom I know

very well. It is about 95% fiction, the

one real part being some vague

Austin, Texas

reports by two Russian soldiers in the

World War I, which reports are being

circulated by some oftheir relatives ...

. I have letters from them. . .. As for

my neighbor with the exaggerated

imagination, Itold him about the let-

ters Ihave .... The character Rosko-

vitsky sprang full blown from the

brow of this eccentric mind of my

neighbor, along with about 99%of the

rest of it.

The letter from Gurley is addressed To

Whom It May Concern and states that All

of the basic material used in that article

came from the researches of Mr. Benjamin

Franklin Allen, and the article was written up

in story form with the intent of making it

more interesting to read.

Ordinarily, such letters as these would lay

a matter to rest. But not with arkeologists or

creationists. Even LaHaye and Morris assert

that more data has [s ic] appeared ... which

substantiates the original research of Ben

Allen. As evidence that Czarist expeditions

did go to Ararat, they cite information

obtained from Eryl and Violet Cummings

about Koor's testimony - even quoting

Koor's statement that the scouting parties

had to wait until the summer of 1917. It

appears that LaHaye and Morris know as

little Russian history as do Koor and the

Cummings.

Curiously, LaHaye and Morris make no

mention ofthe most astonishing evidence

of all which Violet Cummings adduces to

save the Roskovitsky story: the testimony of

Eva Ebling.

Eva Ebling, according to Cummings (pp.

89-94), was the daughter of a high-ranking

medical officer in the Czar's White Russian

Cossack Army. Having escaped from Rus-

sia after the Bolshevik Revolution, Eva

brought with her inside information about a

second expedition sent (by the deposed

Czar?) to Mt. Ararat shortly after it was

learned that the report of the Czar's first

ill-fatedexpedition to the ship had been con-

fiscated and the courier reportedly shot.

While readers may wish to think about this

for an hour or so before continuing, I must

add that Ebling claimed that the Czarina

herself went along with Eva's father on the

climb.

After mentioning the dangers involved in

the climb and in successfully eluding the

revolutionary Bolsheviks who were over-

running the land, Cummings admits that

There issome confusion inthe story, since

history informs us that the Empress was a

partial invalid, sometimes confined to a

wheelchair because ofthe heart condition [a

bullet hole?] which later caused her death.

Instead of rejecting the testimony of

Ebling as being too absurd to consider,

Cummings makes an excuse to save Eb-

ling's story - and the Roskovitsky story

August 1986

supposedly corroborated by it - by sug-

gesting that itwas really Princess Anastasia

who climbed the mountain Just how credu-

lous an arkeologist can be may be judged

from the fact that Cummings passes on

without criticism Ebling's claim that she

escaped from Russia into Germany, met

Kaiser Wilhelm himself, was invited to a fam-

ilydinner at his residence, met the ex-Czar

and Czarina (who were also dinner guests,

even though they had been fighting a war

against the Kaiser ), and had a perfectly

lovely evening. Cummings takes as gospel

the assertion of Richard Cotten and others

that the entire Romanoff family escaped to

Poland (not Germany, as Ebling alleges) in

July of 1918, that the Czarina died of a heart

attack in 1924, the Czar died in 1952, and

that the Tsarevich Alexei was still alive in

America in 1966. For all we know, Alexei

may still be alive - unless His Hemophiliac

Majesty has died of AIDS.

It is a pity that space does not permit us to

examine such cases as that of Fernand

Navarra, who brought back wood from Mt.

Ararat which supposedly carne from the Ark

- even though radiocarbon dating showed

the wood to date from the eighth century

A.D. - and who guided many creationist

expeditions to Ararat until it became ru-

mored that he was buying pieces of wood

from villagers at the foot of the mountain and

planting them where mountain boat hunters

would find them

More is the pity that we cannot tell about

Georgie Hagopian, who was carried up the

mountain (along with a donkey pack of sup-

plies) by his uncle, discovered an ark twice

as big as the Bible boat (did Noah have a

whole marina up there?), and explored its

insides after his uncle - still not tired from

the climb or affected by the altitude - piled

up stones (about 8,000 one-foot boulders

would have done nicely) so the child could

get to the top of the four-story-high boat

Greatest ofpities, however, is the fact that

we cannot detail the Satanic conspiracy of

the Smithsonian Museum to cover up the

fact that it is hiding not only substantial por-

tions of Noah's Ark right there in Washing-

ton, but also Noah himself, last seen resting

peacefully in an alabaster sarcophagus. ~

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Formerly a professor of biology and

geology, Frank R. Zincller is now a

science writer. A member of the

American Association for the

Advancement of Science, the

American Chemical Society, and the

American Schools of Oriental

Research, he is also co-chairperson of

the Committee of Correspondence on

Evolution Education, and Director of

the Central Ohio Chapter of

American Atheists.

Page 31



IN T H E NA ME OF T H E LOR D?

T H E W IS E M A N A ND T H E F OOL

(And the road to nowhere)

P O E T R Y

Clyde Childress

DOW N T OW N F IR E

Concerning

The downtown fire

It was remarked

that the church burned

A bit more brightly

Than the bank

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways, ...

(Isaiah 55:8)

On a road that leads to nowhere

Near a sea that has no shore

Where events that never happen

Happen never - even more

Came the crafty ancient traveler

Who in reverential prose

Lectured with intrusive manner

Every listener he chose

I n the name of the Lord, our saviour, we say,

Every child in a public school must pray

Or, at least, keep a moment of silence

Ifwe cannot have everything our way.

Abortion is murder, God is our guide.

The law of God, not man, is on our side.

Picket clinics, vandalize, even bomb,

The Lord God does not sanction homicide;

Except in the case of capital crime

Or communistic, atheistic slime

Who seek to subvert some paternal rule

That would put everything right given time.

Out with Darwin, we demand compliance

With the teaching of creation science.

Purge sex from the schools and library books.

I n the word of God is our reliance.

No Bill Rights can restrict the right

Of God's anointed to defend the Right.

Now the lean and ruddy beggar

That he chanced to meet this day

Seemed to be the perfect buttress

For derisive things he'd say

And the beggar reeled in silence

At the chronicles of scold

Then in noble consternation

Countered all that he'd been told

Robert R. Hentz

But you see I do have treasures

Said the beggar in reply

While the values that you favor

Have the substance of a lie

You seek esoteric trifles

So forever you must roam

I find peace within my valley

And the place that I call home

Simple truth and classic beauty

Stem from consciousness within

And the zenith of my pleasure

Is the quiet lotus glen

Then the calm demurring beggar

Disengaging from the fray

Eyed the shimmering pool beside him

And the fool went on his way

Gerald Tholen

Page 32

August 1986

American Atheist



Sabbath or things like that. I livedin a

time of probably the worst economic

conditions which ever existed in the

United States of America. The Civil

War was over. The South was paying

an enormous debt. Cotton was at its

lowest prices. There was a yellow

fever epidemic and no one knew what

caused it. We lived from hand to

mouth.

The family moved to Selma, Ala-

bama, where Joseph began school.

His father opened a general store. I

went to school a couple of terms and

quit. Ihad to, Lewis said. I helped in

the store. A friend of the family

became interested in Joseph's older

brother and ordered some books for

him. One of these contained the let-

ters of Robert G. Ingersoll, and it

changed Joseph's life. I used to read

them to my mother when the rest of

the family was out. Ingersoll wrote a

magnificent pamphlet on Paine. (The

worldis better forhis having

l ived.

For

the sake of truth he accepted hatred

and reproach ... His life is what the

world calls failure and what history

calls success.') Ibecame interested in

him.

The Lewis family, with young

Joseph impressed by Ingersoll and

absorbed in Paine, moved to New

York in

1912.

My brother went to

work and I went to night school. I

alwayswanted to be a lawyer, but they

kept changing the counts (require-

ments). They kept going up so rapidly.

Icouldn't make it. Icouldn't afford it. I

had to bring home some money.

Ingersoll's lectures included advo-

cacy of birth control: Science,the

only possible saviour of mankind,

must put it in the power of woman to

decide for herself whether she willor

willnot become a mother.

Enchanted bysuch passages, Lewis

became attracted to another birth

control advocate, the feminist Mar-

garet Sanger. He was still seeking a

vocation.

His introduction to Margaret San-

ger served to combine interest and

ambition. She was selling a book on

birth control. Iwrote an ad for it. She

had another one I wanted to publish,

but she gave it to Brentano's. I sold

books for her. They were making all

the money and I was doing all the

work.

To remedy this, Lewis established

the Eugenics Publishing Company. I

discovered many publishers had valu-

able books and did not know how to

advertise them. Iasked for mail order

privileges. I did well.

Page 34

Among those he sold were hisown,

published under the name ofthe Free-

thought Association, part of his Free-

thinkers Movement. In 1926 he wrote

The Bible Unmasked, an attack on

the Bible as obscene. He dedicated it

to rabbis, priests, and ministers, in

the hope it may bring them to realize

the fraud they are perpetrating ... It

has gone through twenty-nine edi-

tions.

But his first influence remained

Paine. In addition to his Freethinkers

(definition: anybody who does not

accept the Bible as divine revelation

and thinks independently ), he estab-

lished the Thomas Paine Foundation.

He had fought for Paine like a black

knight, and there have been substan-

tial reflections of those battles - a

statue of Paine erected at his birth-

place inThetford, England; a statue of

Paine inParis; a statue at Morristown,

New Jersey, Washington's headquar-

ters; a plaque on the site of the Paine

burial ground in New Rochelle; elec-

tion ofPaine to the Hallof Fame. My

aim is a statue in Washington, he

said. Ifit were established on a basis

of comparing services to the country,

itwould be more imposing than either

the Lincoln Memorial or the Washing-

ton Monument.

While promoting Paine, Lewis often

ran into religious controversy. In 1968

he stormed out of a ceremony mark-

ing the issuance of the Thomas Paine

4O-centpostage stamp, after objecting

to the reading of an invocation and

benediction.

Lewis shocked about 125 persons

gathered in the old U.S. Supreme

Court building at Independence Hall

in Philadelphia when he asked that

prayers be eliminated because

Thomas Paine certainly would have

opposed the injection ofreligion in his

behalf. After his request was refused,

Lewis took a walk.

In pursuit of his beliefs, Lewis

attacked on allfronts. A favorite target

had been any link that showed be-

tween church and state. He had gone

into the courts to keep a cross off the

courthouse; to keep the Bible out of

the schools; to prevent faith healer

Jack Coe (now deceased) from prac-

ticing medicine. He wrote regularly

to editors on everything from barring

invocations at official gatherings to

criticizing circumcision as inhumane

to infants. He once took out an ad in

the New York Times in which he

called Bishop Sheen a Top Banana

because of the bishop's television

show.

August 1986

Some people give to the church. I

devote time and money to things I

believe in. Mygreatest pleasure comes

from intellectual activity, he said.

Lewisand his wifespent the winters

inMiami Beach; most ofthe rest ofthe

year at their other home in Purdys,

New York. They had a daughter in

New York and two grandsons in col-

lege.

Lewis was aware of the reality of

death. He stated that it changes noth-

ing. I faced death twice before. I had

two heart attacks. During my second

convalescence, I wrote An Atheist

Manifesto.

Lewis answered critics by contend-

ing that if God wrote the Ten Com-

mandments, He must have hands; if

He hears prayers, He must have ears.

Therefore, he insisted you should be

able to see Him sitting up there in

heaven. And besides, he added, as

though for a punchline, If religious

people are so happy, why do they pray

so much?

Lewis' crusade for recognition of a

godless world dwelled on the coattails

of science, in a sort of why-light zone,

and issued mottoes of such simplicity

that it leaves you blinking. He used

history ( When Columbus sailed, peo-

ple got to their knees and prayed he

wouldn't fall off. ), offered peculiar

combinations of logic, humor, and

opinion ( Even the [Roman] Catholic

church now permits its priests to pray

in the English language. Why? He

apparently didn't understand the lan-

guage. ).

The slings and arrows of many bat-

tles in many places left him less con-

templative than eager for a new joust.

He was healthy, wealthy, and either

wise beyond the ken of his peers or

practicing the supreme folly.

The religious questioned him, and

questioned him, and questioned him.

He heightened it all with flipanswers

and a smile at their frustrations. You

know how it is, he said. What the

hell do they know? ~

Sympathy

Iguess Ireally should show more toler-

ance toward allthose evangelical colleges

springing up like stinkweed throughout

the country since they are unique in the

educational field. Where else could one

receive a doctorate in bigotry, ignorance,

and prejudice, plus a postdoctorate in

theological miscegenation?

- Hillary Bartholomew

American Atheist



HISTORI L NOTES

70 Years Ago ...

The Melting Pot

was published in St.

Louis, Missouri - a Roman Catholic strong-

hold if ever there was one. But this free-

thought paper was never afraid to speak out

against the Roman Catholic Church or any

other religion - as this article from its

August 1916 issue shows. Its original title

was Ashamed of Its Own Mother.

''The capitalist papers and politicians of

St. Louis - and it's the same wayallover the

country - are all 'het up' over a political

organization known as the 'Independent

Voters' League,' said League being com-

posed of Protestants who, through igno-

rance or bigotry, or both, charge all the mis-

eries that afflict us to the Roman Catholic

Church, and propose to save America by

voting no one but Protestants into office.

No intelligent and truthful person would

attempt to paint the picture of the Roman

Catholic Church in anything but the black-

est ofthe black.

It has a history that nothing but a fiend

incarnate would be proud of.

It has but one competitor in cussedness

and crime, and that is the Protestant faith.

Don't forget that.

In the record ofcrimes against humanity

honors are fairlyeven between the two since

the days of Martin Luther, persecutor of

German peasants, John Calvin, madman

and murderer, and other likesaints, down to

the hour of the Baptist butcher of Ludlow.

You can charge the Roman Catholic

Church with the outraging and ravishing,

the torturing and slaughtering ofthe French

helots before the voice ofVoltaire shook all

France, but remember as you do it that it

was pious Protestants that drenched this

country in blood in an infamous attempt to

perpetuate the crime of chattle slavery -

aye to make merchandise. of their own

offspring born of their own raping of their

female slaves.

Disclose the horrors ofthe Holy Inquisi-

tion ifyou will- and they ought to be blazed

inthe text books ofour public schools - but

do not overlook the livinghorrors, the coin-

ing of the blood and flesh of little children

into dollars, done in the Protestant-owned

cotton mills.

Look upon the one-time rack and stake

of Rome; and then turn your eyes to the

pinched and wan faces of the victims of the

sweatshops and factories ofAmerica today,

lashed by Protestant plunderers into un-

timely graves ....

It's actually disgraceful to see the child

ashamed ofits own mother, especially when

the child glories in all the filth and pollution

Austin, Texas

that the old lady ever possessed.

The two follow the same faith.

They both believe in the exploitation of

the workers, they both believe in bloody

war.

They both believe in the God that bored

holes in the ears of slaves, that massacred

and raped the Midianites, and who runs a

flaming hell to dump you into forever ifyou

do not also believe these horrors.

Again I say, it's disgraceful to see the

child ashamed of its own mother.

They ought to kiss and make up.

30 Years Ago ...

Last month, Historical Notes included

an article about an attempt by the Friend-

ship Liberal League of Philadelphia to buy a

permanent office. The information from the

July 1956Liberal noted that nearly enough

funds had been raised to go ahead with the

purchase of a building. The next issue con-

tained the followingnews under the headline

Signed, Sealed, &Delivered :

Last Monday (July 16, 1956) was a

dreary, rainy day to Philadelphians ingener-

al, but not to the officers and members of

Friendship Liberal League. On that memora-

ble day we withdrew $10,000 from our Build-

ing Fund account and laid it on the line for a

partial payment on our new Thomas Paine

Memorial Center. This leaves a balance of

an equal amount which wehope to be able to

clear off in the not too distant future.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the

first time a Rationalist and Freethought

society has been able to acquire its own

home. Of course the Milwaukee Jefferson

Freethought Society has the use of the

splendid home of its affiliate, the Freie

Gemeinde, and the St. Louis Rationalists

have the use of the St. Louis Freie Gem-

einde's building but the organizations which

originally built these halls were Nationalist

rather than Rationalist, Social rather than

Secularist. Of the many nation-wide soci-

eties that have come and gone, such as the

American Secular Union and others, none

so far as we know ever had its own building.

This isnot said inany spirit ofbragging or

implying that we are more capable than

they. Our own group here in Philadelphia

could not have accomplished this action.

The credit must go to the hundreds of our

supporters all over the country who gave

what they were able to this undertaking ....

August 1986

We have no intentions of resting on our

oars now. This is only the first big step. A

long road lies ahead. It is not our intention

merely to build a strong Secular movement

in Philadelphia but to help build a nation-

wide organization.

5 Years Ago ...

After Paul Tirmenstein's recent death, it

might be difficult to remember the time

when he filed a suit in Mississippi which

expressed the hopes of all American Athe-

ists for civil rights. But that was just five

years ago. And news of it was published in

the October 1981

American Atheist.

In mid-August American Atheists filed

suits in both Arkansas and Mississippi chal-

lenging state constitutions which exclude

Atheists from holding office or public trust.

In Mississippi, Paul Tirmenstein turned

out to be one of our bravest Atheists. He

met your national officers and our attorney

in Jackson and it was he who hassled with

the federal court for hours to put the suit on

the docket.

After a hard day of searching for one

attorney with any guts (to be the attorney of

record) in the whole state of Mississippi,

Paul retired to his motel room and wrote out

the following statement which he read at the

news conference the next day - where he

also took on the entire press of that state.

I am bringing this suit on behalf of

every citizen of this state who has the

kind of patriotism that calls for obey-

ing and supporting the Constitution of

the United States.

Section 265 specifically bars Athe-

ists from holding office in Mississippi.

This mandates belief in a mythical

supernatural god, which an Atheist

refuses. This religiously motivated

attempt to bar men of the mental

capacity and calibre of Thomas Jef-

ferson, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin

Franklin, Thomas Edison, Albert Ein-

stein, and Luther. Burbank, Atheists

all, from holding office, is unequivo-

cally unconstitutional, and should be

so declared by the court. A mere dec-

laration of its unconstitutionality is

insufficient to correct this insult to and

discrimination against those Ameri-

cans who have the mental capacity to

recognize a fraud and refuse to

believe in fairytales and Santa Claus.

Page 35



P R E SS C O N F E R E N C E / B rian L ynch

INDEPENDENCE DAY

O

ne of the persons most revered by

Atheists, elevated to nearly the status

of a saint, isThomas Paine. Many persons

say that the Age

ofReason

was the one book

which turned them away from religion, or

made them Atheists. All of these testa-

ments and witnesses to Paine's persuasive

writing led me to purchase a copy ofthe Age

of Reason,

only to find out that the book

opens witha vehement denunciation ofAthe-

ists and an attack on Atheism. Paine makes

itclear in the introduction that he wrote the

Age

of Reason

to prove the Atheists wrong

and make a case for deism. Why such a

work should be held in such high esteem by

today's Atheists is beyond comprehension.

The book is partially redeemed, however,

since the bulk of its content points out the

inconsistencies and absurdities inthe Judeo-

Christian Bible.

Another book written by Paine, which is

said to have lit the fuse of the American

Revolution - at least among those who

could read - is

Common Sense.

This book,

if written today, would probably not be

touched by a major publisher and would

almost certainly be assailed as subversive,

Communist literature by the radical right.

Any teacher who introduced it into a class-

room would be attacked by church groups

and the gawd & kuntree crowd for pro-

moting anti-authoritarianism or secular hu-

manism, or something even more perni-

cious. They would be right, of course.

Paine's intent was to stir up rebellion against

the economic and political stranglehold

which the British corporations, working in

concert with the British church and gov-

ernment, had over the colonists. As subver-

sive, anti-corporate literature, it was very

successful, selling over 120,000copies inthe

first three months of 1776. Its success was

not limited to the fact that its prose struck

resonant dissatisfaction and anger felt by

most of the American population toward

England. The real factor in the book's suc-

cess was the desire ofthe landed aristocracy

of America to establish their own plutoc-

racy, one divorced from the plutocracy of

England. The British plutocracy had the

power to extract taxes, the military might to

enforce law and order, and a powerful

church which controlled the lives of persons

when they were away from its direct control.

But that regime showed no inclination to

grant the colonists any representation in

from, before you can say there is freedom.

Slaves and prisoners, for example, are often

told that they are free and independent; they

are free from having to make decisions and

independent of uncertainty in life. I n the mil-

itary, soldiers are marched through rigorous

drills and told that they are protecting free-

dom and independence - despite their own

conspicuous lack of both. So freedom and

independence can simply be a matter of

definition (a word game) or empty slogans

(words with no real-life meaning). Do Amer-

icans today enjoy any freedoms or inde-

pendence from the sort of economic exploi-

tation and oppression that characterized

colonial America?

government.

It's possible that the American Revolution

would have happened anyway, without pub-

lication of

Common

Sense, simply because

of the economic interests of the wealthy

owner-class inlate eighteenth century Amer-

ica. Perhaps it would have been a year later,

perhaps ten years later, but it would have

happened. The publication of

Common

Sense

coincided with the desire to break

away from England and a perceived oppor-

tunity for profit without giving a cut to En-

gland, so the book was aggressively pro-

moted and distributed. Since we celebrate

this revolt every July 4, it might be worth-

whileto see just how far we've come in 210

years.

First, religion isas wellentrenched now as

itever was. Most freethinkers still giveequal

credence to both religious superstition and

scientifically verifiable facts - so they attack

Atheists for taking the extreme position

that no gods exist and that religion is there-

fore either a farce or a lie.They pretend to be

too rational and sophisticated to accept reli-

gion, but willdo anything and everything to

preserve and protect it from Atheists.

Hence (Isuspect), the popularity of the Age

of Reason.

Second, America is still controlled by a

small economic elite which owns most of the

resources, capital, and property. The per-

sons and corporations are American instead

of British.

I n

210 years, Americans have

gained independence from nothing. For

Atheists this is especially true: None of the

535 people elected to national legislative

offices are Atheists, and hardly any of the

state and local officials in the U.S. are,

either. Yet Atheists pay taxes to all levels of

government. This means that Atheists are

taxed without representation (That was the

single issue over which the Revolutionary

War was fought.) To add insult to insult, in

three states Atheists are barred by lawfrom

holding office, meaning that Atheists are

forbidden representation. Thus, religion is

established, in contravention to the First

Amendment.

Independence and freedom are two slo-

gans which are always used to promote

adherence to or support of the U.S. political

and economic system. These words have no

meaning unless they are in a context which

makes them measurable. You have to spec-

ifywhat people are independent of, or free

Economics: Who Owns What

Forty corporations own half of all crop-

land in the U.S., eighty-five percent of all

citrus groves, eighty-nine percent of the

dairy industry; control ninety-five percent of

the raising and distribution of chicken, and

over half of all pork raising and distribution.

All packaged and processed food distribu-

tion is controlled by one to three regional

chains in every section of the United States.

This iswhy small farmers are going under

while the food conglomerates make record

profits: Farmers lack economic clout. Agri-

business concerns are buying up large tracts

of former small farms and will use the land

for producing profits - not food. It is more

profitable today to grow plants and make

alcohol for fuel than to grow food on all of

America's arable land. To drive food prices

up to a more profitable level, it willbe neces-

sary to restrict the supply of food. This can

only be done if an oligarchy has control of

most of the potential food-producing land

and isvertically integrated inthe food indus-

try to control processing, distribution, and

financing of operations, in addition to sup-

ply control.

The largest 200 corporations own over

seventy-two percent of the manufacturing

assets in the United States. And over two-

thirds of these are fifty-one to one hundred

percent owned by one family. Of those

which are owned by more than one family,

ownership is mostly the same people. For

example, the Mellons own thirty percent of

ALCOA, forty-one percent of Mellon Na-

tional Bank, twenty-seven percent of Gulf

Oil, and twenty percent of Carborundum

Page 36 August 1986

American Atheist



Co., First Boston Corp., and Koppers Cor-

poration. But they are small change com-

pared with the Rockefellers and the Du-

ponts - the latter are estimated to be worth

$240 billion.

These corporations and familiesaccumu-

late and increase wealth the same way

ancient kings and feudal lords did - they

extract a part of the productive effort of

others for themselves. This means that our

current economic system concentrates

wealth in the hands of those who finance,

not those who work. It extracts from those

who produce and gives to others. Under the

feudal system, this extraction was obvious

to the serfs; the lord simply demanded part

ofthe grain, cloth, and other products which

the serfs produced. Inthe modern corporate

state, this profit from the work of others is

obscured. Workers are paid a salary which

isless than the economic value oftheir labor.

This excess value is retained by the owners

ofthe corporation; the workers see none of

it.

How much value is siphoned off from

workers to corporate owners? Since 1979

businesses have nearly doubled their profits

in constant dollars. Wages have not kept

pace. Profits rose from $180billionin 1979to

$410 billion in 1985. Of that $230 billion

increase, $65 billion is due to tax cuts, and

$70 billion comes from increases in military

spending. The wages of Americans have

risen, on average, very slowly; from a 1979

median of $11,600 to a 1985 median of

$14,000.The increase ingovernment deficits

from $80billionin 1979to over $220billionin

1985is almost entirely due to corporate tax

breaks and military contracts. Median

wages have risen slowlybecause most ofthe

jobs which have been created recently are

very low wage service jobs. Taxes on wages

have risen faster than wages for people earn-

ing less than $35,000 per year, meaning that

through the tax system, income has been

taken from working people and redistrib-

uted to major corporations - to the tune of

$125billion per year. This is why there is no

serious effort to reduce the deficit (except

by cutting programs which benefit middle-

income people) and why there is corporate

opposition to cuts in military spending.

It is not only working people who are

being cheated and robbed bypoliticians and

bigbusiness; retired people and people with

health or other needs have been cut offfrom

benefits or entitlements in recent years.

People over sixty-five years old, now fifteen

percent of the population and twenty-five

percent of the voting population, have had

their Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security,

and other benefits reduced or eliminated

since 1980. In order to pay for rising costs of

medical care, they have been forced to buy

expensive policies from private insurance

companies - which leaves many of them

unable to afford decent food or housing. As

Austin, Texas

a large voting bloc with common interests,

they have the numbers to influence all elec-

tions and place demands on politicians for

reforms. The fact that politicians have been

able to remain inofficewhilenot meeting or

servicing the needs of one-fourth of their

electorate who have a common set of inter-

ests indicates that something other than

the people or the interests of the people

determines policies in government. That

something is money, which purchases in-

fluence.

Why is there such passiveness in spite of

such massive exploitation? Why isn't there

revolt and a movement for change? I think

religion is to blame (or.credit).

Politics: Who Gets What?

Over and over Americans are told that

they live in a democracy. They are told how

fortunate they are to livein a country where

they have freedom of expression, freedom

of thought, freedom ofbelief, and so on. The

only problem with these freedoms is that

most Americans have no place to exercise

them. Anyone who tries ina major corpora-

tion will probably be· fired or isolated for

being a troublemaker. Criticism of the sys-

tem isignored by everyone ifit's innocuous,

treated as a freak show ifit's loud, and stifled

by military or police force ifit persists (par-

ticularly if the dissenters are minorities). If

people try to increase their share ofbenefits,

institutions are set up to prevent them -

unless they can influence the persons

responsible for administration.

In the United States the economic inter-

ests of an elite determine the economic con-

ditions for everyone else. Every facet of

government is set up in such a manner that

only persons or institutions with wealth can

obtain desired results through established

channels. Ifyou want to exercise your right

to free speech, your audience is limited to

those you can afford to reach. Your right to

freedom of assembly is limited in direct

proportion to how much your ideas threaten

the economic status quo. Unions, for exam-

ple, are constantly denigrated by corporate

management, the media (owned by the

same corporate interests), and politicians,

who must depend on funds from the same

corporate elites to remain in office. And, of

course, anyone who advocates an economic

alternative to capitalism ispunished and iso-

lated by the political system. Rights cease to

mean anything if economic resources de-

termine which rights a person can exercise

and the degree to which these rights may be

exercised.

Nowhere is this more clearly illustrated

than in the legal system. Alan Dershowitz, a

prominent civil attorney and professor of

law, has stated that in cases which he has

handled, wealth was the determining factor

in their final judgement. Klaus Von Bulow,

August 1986

for example, could afford an expensive

defense and was able to obtain a not guilty

verdict in a murder trial. Dershowitz freely

admitted that a person ofaverage economic

means would not have been able to afford

such a defense and would possibly have

been found guilty.

For religion, this has been true also. Every

time religious groups sense a new opportuni-

ty to establish themselves in government,

with actual presence or through the use of

symbols, enormous sums of money are fun-

nelled into the efforts. Churches have

enough financial clout to define the law

today and thereby define what crime is and

who is a criminal. When religious imposi-

tions are challenged, they are also able to

frame the conflict in their own terms. The

churches have managed to convince nearly

allAmericans (including many Atheists) that

the phrase under god in our Pledge of

Allegiance, the slogan In god we trust on

money and as a national motto, religionists

paid with tax money, religious messages on

government seals, are trivial matters, of

no importance. Therefore, Atheists and

others should not be concerned about them.

This isfalse. Ifthey were truly trivial matters,

then the religious groups would not all fight

so tenaciously to preserve them.

Access: Who Has It?

Few people have direct access to their

elected officials, and fewer still will be lis-

tened to when they ask for changes. The

basis for power is money. Enough money

gives the power to determine who will be

elected, what agencies willbe implemented,

and thereby determine who willget what. He

who has the gold makes the rules. This sys-

tem is inherently inequitable, but most peo-

ple do nothing to change it. Here again, I

think religion is to blame.

Our government in the United States

today is beholden to a small elite group of

corporate interests and controlled by them

in the same manner as the British govern-

ment was during the 1770s. Nothing that

benefits the majority of people in this nation

has come through the House or Senate (and

certainly not the White House) in years.

Gramm-Rudman-Hollings was a bipartisan

maneuver to justify further cuts in educa-

tion, housing, and other programs which

help most people. The exportation ofcapital

(and jobs) to low-wage nations has been

made easier by the massive military buildup

(also financed byworking people who willbe

paying for current weapons on the install-

ment plan for the next thirty years). Future

weapons purchases promise to be even

more extravagant. The typical person is

barely able to keep up with mortgage pay-

ments (another massive transfer of wealth

from workers to major corporations) and is

vulnerable to an economic downturn. The

Page 37



typical American is barely more than a feu-

dal serf; he or she works hard but never gets

ahead. The $410 billion in corporate profits

went to less than one percent of the people

in the U.S. Remember that, next time you

wonder why your increased productivity

doesn't translate into a higher standard of

livingfor you.

The Role Of Religion

Religionisthe source ofallirrational think-

ing. Certainly, nothing could be more irra-

tional than the thinking of someone who

worships capitalism while they have to

struggle to make ends meet - getting

ripped off by capitalists everywhere they

turn: at the supermarket, in housing, in

credit, insurance, etc. But it is no different

from the irrationality of a person suffering

with a terminal illness or severe handicap

tellingyou about a god that loves everyone,

is all good and merciful -.Religious beliefs,

such as the sanctity of certain actions,

words, places, days, or combinations of the

above, lead to disintegrated, compartmen-

talized thinking, where nearly identical situa-

tions are perceived and acted on inradically

different fashions, depending on how they

are defined. The result is a society ofpeople

with no coherent worldview, or weltan-

schauung, and a warping of human adapta-

tions to life. Belief in the efficacy of intrinsi-

cally worthless actions, like praying, leads

people to believe in the efficacy of other

worthless actions, like holding rock con-

certs to eliminate hunger or holding more

committee meetings inCongress to improve

public education.

A recent cartoon in the

Austin

American-

Statesman

showed a poor family and was

captioned, We're not poor, just stupid. It

was an editorial reaction to President Rea-

gan's oblique response to a report citing

hunger and homelessness as serious prob-

lems in the U.S. Perhaps there's some truth

to this; ifpeople were smart, they'd wonder

why, ina nation where thousands of pounds

of food are destroyed every day, and where

building space is unoccupied, people are

hungry and homeless. They would demand

that the political system remedy the defi-

ciencies inthe economic system. The prob-

lem is that the profit system in a capitalist

society is predicated on scarcity, actual or

contrived,

I n

order for a profit to be made on

anything, the supply has to be restricted.

Probably the first contrived scarcity which

could be used to exploit people was sexual,

and here's where religion came into play.

It's possible that regulation of sex was the

most significant cultural development in his-

tory, since it gave the one who made the

rules tremendous control over those who

had to followthem. Most likely, it began with

the imposition of restrictions on one group

by another: women by men, conquered by

Page 38

conquerors, or slaves by masters. The fun-

damental means for creating sex-scarcity is

to attach sexual interest or desire to inac-

cessible, nonexistent, or irrelevant objects,

often by attaching symbols to these things.

A secondary means is the attachment of

special rites and or symbolic meaning to the

sex act, and imposing punishments for devi-

ations - up to castration or death.

Once the sex drive of a person is re-

stricted and controlled, it can be channeled

into actions which those in control deem

useful and desirable. I can think of no other

reason why all religions have made exten-

sive efforts to place taboos and restrictions

on sexual activity. If people can be condi-

tioned to accept controls and restrictions on

the use of their own bodies, it is relatively

simple to impose controls on other aspects

of their lives. Religion exists to prop up the

ruling classes in a society, and controlling

sex drives is the most efficient, effective

means ofkeeping the lower classes in line -

like dogs eager to please their masters.

From the restrictions individuals accept

on their sexual activity come the restrictions

they accept in other realms of their lives. If

persons can be mystified in their under-

standing and enjoyment of sex, they can be

similarly thwarted in seeking material plea-

sures or benefits elsewhere. The misunder-

standing of sex as a mystical union of souls

or something spiritual rather than a physi-

cal act which is normal and healthy can be

transduced or transferred, likethe sex drive

itself, to a misperception of the political and

economic system as something too complex

for human understanding, rather than a

human invention that humans can modify to

accommodate their own needs.

Mystification is an essential tool for main-

taining control over others. It is essential to

restrict access to useful information and to

constantly define life in terms of baffling or

insoluble problems. Today, in modern in-

dustrialized nations, this is done with televi-

sion. The airwaves are fullof experts who

claim to have found the answer to every-

thing from sex enjoyment to raising children

to making it in business. Additionally,

there are endless presentations of crises

or critical problems, which either have no

solution (because it's easier not to solve the

problem) or are being solved by experts

(the best of persons). Much of what is pre-

sented as important in the major media is

trivial - entertainment and sports - or

indoctrinates and does not inform (staged

events with Soviet Jews in Congress: for

example). Mystification is something at

which all religions are expert. They have

always sought to promote fear and depen-

dency by instilling in followers the idea that

you cannot make it through lifeon your own.

There are two other religious teachings

which relate directly to the acceptance of

economic exploitation by Americans and

August 1986

that have been part of the culture for centu-

ries. Most of our population is made up of

European immigrants who came from back-

grounds fullof poverty, privation, and brutal-

ization by state and church. To maintain

passivity when there was widespread, con-

spicuous inequity, the churches invented

dogma about the virtue of suffering and the

evil of selfishness (being concerned with

oneself). The divine-right monarchies,

where blood relatives were allowed to

assume the duties of rulers whether or not

they were qualified, led to the myths of birth;

people who were royalty were assumed to

be deserving - it was a gift from a god. The

rest of the people were poor because the

god wanted it that way.

With the rise of capitalism and mercantil-

ism, myths of wealth replaced myths of

birth. But the suffering/selfishness dogmas

were useful still. In the United States, indi-

vidualism was used to sellthese. This served

the interests of the plutocracy since it kept

the rabble (common people) isolated and

vulnerable while they were collectively

exploiting them. Today, this isstill done; the

owners and directors of all major corpora-

tions are interlocked, and big business in the

U.S. is a collectivist enterprise for the

owners. But collective effort in the form of

unions is intensely discouraged for workers.

The American fascination with individual-

ism has led to isolation and powerlessness

for most people, but myths die hard.

Today's heroes are Rambo and Rocky, who

give people a vicarious sense ofthe strength

they know they lack.

Through mystification and a restriction of

the opportunities which people have open to

them, religions and the political leadership of

the U.S. have convinced a majority of citi-

zens to accept encroachments on their

rights and freedoms, under a political and

economic system which does not meet their

needs, although it demands much from

them. Because economic resources are the

basis for power in the U.S., the power of

churches to set the nation's political agenda

has been enormously enhanced by the

government's giveaways of land, by gov-

ernment granting of tax exemptions, by

freedom from government scrutiny in oper-

ations, and by lack of government action to

stop religions from acquiring control of

communications media. Government con-

cessions to religion in the past are having

devastating consequences today: Religion is

now the nation's largest industry, with

assets of over $400 billion and a gross

income of nearly $150 billion (all tax-free).

When you consider that a mere $25 or $30

million can corrupt a presidential election, it

is frightening to consider what five thousand

times as much money can do each year.

And religion is making its economic clout

felt in politics. Religious pressure is being

brought to bear on local school boards to get

American Atheist



non-religious subjects out of schools, espe-

ciallyifthey foster independence and impart

useful information (courses which examine

history - warts and all - sex education,

science, and so on). In the place of educa-

tional courses, they seek to install religious

exercises and courses which indoctrinate.

These efforts are not always

overt;

in most

cases, there is an attempt to

remove

course

material which is held to be inappropriate

for children. This is particularly true for

science courses (which teach children that

religion is both false and useless), history

courses (which teach children unpleasant

truths about religion, politics, and other

facets ofculture and may lead to radicalism),

and social studies, especially if they

include values clarification as part of the

curriculum. (Values are something religions

try to force on people - it is important that

people never learn to

derive

their own values

from experience and learning to cope with

lifeifreligion is to

survive

in a culture.) This

dumbing-down of education willhave

dev-

astating consequences for the U.S. in the

near future, as American graduates findthey

are far behind those in Europe, Japan, and

the developed Communist nations.

Religious PACs are pouring money into

campaigns of candidates who favor weaken-

ing of the Billof Rights, are pro-arms race,

pro-segregation, anti-equality, pro-church,

anti-education, and antiabortion. The

churches see the stuffing of the federal judi-

ciary with religious judges under Reagan as

an opportunity to ram cases which promote

and secure the establishment ofreligion inall

areas ofAmerican life.They need to do this

for several reasons, but the most important

one is that their attendance is falling(espe-

cially among the educated, affluent seg-

ments of society) and intime this willcause

political support for them to wane. Ina time

of record government budget deficits, they

fear middle-class Americans will demand

that government go after the enormous

wealth and income of churches to balance

budgets. This is what should happen, of

course. There is no reason why billions

should go untaxed while the middle class is

burdened with more taxes.

Religionists, savvy survivalists that they

are, have allied themselves with the ruling

class in the U.S. They are playing on the

traditional American paradigms of freedom

and independence, twisting them so that

they lead to an abhorrence of

collective

effort and to anti-intellectualism. This has

left most Americans isolated, distrustful of

others, and powerless.

Religionhas encouraged this isolation and

channelled peoples' yearning to prove indi-

vidual achievement to its own ends inrecent

years. In addition to encouraging followers

to serve the interests ofpolitical.and military

leaders, religious leaders have turned the

frustration of people against useful institu-

Austin, Texas

tions in society. Religion is responsible for

the irrational beliefthat anyone's position on

any subject is just as valid as anyone else's,

regardless of prior study or investigation.

Hence we have lunatics likethe followers of

Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, and Jerry

Falwell bombing medical facilities, attacking

public schools, terrorizinq stores which sell

erotica, and trying to saturate the culture

with their idiotic religious fetishism. Roman

Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, and other

mainline religions are just as sick as the

extremists. They have supported all of the

censorship efforts, all of the attempts to

intrude religion into schools, and done

nothing but urge insane or useless actions,

like prayer, as a response to national prob-

lems (like poverty, pollution, or economic

inequity). The most dangerous manifesta-

tion of this is the religious campaign for

local option. Terry Dolan of NCPAC let it

all hang out when talking to a group of high

school students on a recent C-SPAN pro-

gram. He said that it was necessary (in the

interest offreedom and democracy) to allow

individual towns to decide whether or not to

have religion in public schools. No one he

addressed, including the moderator, under-

stood that this implies that the entire Consti-

tution can be selectively applied according

to the wishes of a small, powerful elite in

each town, in the minds of NCPAC leader-

ship. This is not democracy at all: It's a pro-

gram for the dismantling of democracy.

To blunt criticism ofreligion and to obfus-

cate the true agenda of churches, religious

leaders often talk about the concern and

good work of churches. Churches are

always using the poor as a foil to raise

money. If the churches were really inter-

ested in helping the poor, they would take

their billionsand help them. Instead, religion-

ists go on television and ask the non-poor to

give more money to religion.

The churches are playing the same old

game they have played for centuries. Do

nothing, keep the money rolling in, and

make sure that the people are kept passive.

As I mentioned previously, Atheists are

taxed without representation. Conversely,

religion has tremendous representation in

government, but pays no taxes. Clearly,

something is rotten in the United States.

With thirty-five percent representation in

the federal legislature, and

over

ninety per-

cent ofthe Reagan cabinet inits pocket, the

Roman Catholic church has been able to

slowlyworm its way into everyone's pockets

- taking billions of dollars each year to run

its schools, hospitals, nursing homes, child-

care centers, and a host of other social

service organizations. Ifthe government is

incompetent and incapable of running such

agencies, then it should not

levy

taxes for

such purposes. But it is obscene for

gov-

ernments (federal, state, and local) to take

tax money and

give

it to a church - espe-

August 1986

cially when the government does provide

the same services at lower cost. Remember

this when you hear about all of the hospitals

and charities churches claim to run:

Churches don't pay for them, taxpayers do.

Atheists should demand that their tax

money not be used to support churches.

Atheists comprise at least six percent of

the population, according to the most con-

servative religious polls. This means that

Atheists outnumber Jews at least two to one

and Mormons at least three to one. The

power which the Jews have

over

our

government is enormous - witness the

money we send to Israel each year to sup-

port that religious establishment.

Today, about $150 billion per year goes

into religion - from believers, govern-

ment, and from income on the considerable

financial holdings of religion in the U.S.

That's about three billion dollars per state.

The fact that government gives money to

religion means that Atheists are

forced

to

support religion, and they are forced to do it

without any representation in government.

What could states do each year with three

billion dollars? Clean up pollution, improve

education, reeducate all laid-off workers,

institute programs to get people off of wel-

fare and into jobs, eliminate substandard

housing, provide care for the elderly ... the

list is endless. The point is, you and

ev-

eryone else are paying too high a price to

satisfy someone's fantasies about getting

into heaven. But nothing willhappen as long

as Atheists don't care each time the religious

gaina new foothold, or obtain a new favor-

either monetary or symbolic - from

gov-

ernment. Atheists should stop deifying the

works of Paine, Ingersoll, and others who

did nothing to stop the onward march of

religion. Instead, they should think and act

on their own behalf, and work together for

freedom from religion and an end to taxation

without representation. ~

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian

J.

Lynch is the former Director

. ofthe Massachusetts Chapter of

American Atheists and the current

MediaCoordinator for the

national office.With a BS/BAfrom

Babson College, he has often debated

on such topics as religion,Atheism,

politics, the arms race, history,

and science.

Page 39



BO O K R EVIEW

The Passion of Ayn Rand

A Biography

by Barbara Branden

Garden City, NY

Doubleday & Company, Inc.

442 pages, $19.95, Hardback

T

his is a biography ofAlice Rosenbaum,

(popularly known as Ayn Rand) written

by Barbara Weidman (now known as Bar-

bara Branden), the wife who was the cuck-

old of her husband, Nathan Blumenthal

(now known as Nathaniel Branden), during

a fourteen year sexual affair which he had

with Rand, to which the wife gave full con-

sent. With that as a basis, the book is billed

by the publisher as an objective, truly

exceptional, and unforgettable lifehistory.

I t

is at least unforgettable - but borders on

the unforgivable for allinvolved. Perhaps the

sweetest revenge is that Barbara gets to

make a profit by spilling the beans con-

cerned with what was, basically, a very sick

agreement, arrangement, and life-style ex-

change among the four people involved.

. Your American Atheist spokespersons

have never addressed a university or college

audience without someone asking, What

do you think of Ayn Rand? Always taking

this to mean that the questioner is asking

about the objectivist philosophy which

Rand postulated, the stock answer given has

been that her discussions of Atheism were

correct, her solutions for the socio-cultural-

economic illsof any nation were not Ameri-

can Atheists' concern.

Ifher lifewas an indication ofwhat she felt

Atheism represented, your reviewer wants

to retract - openly - every approval ever

given. Alice Rosenbaum, alias Ayn Rand,

was a user. She used other people in a

continuing way, and this comes through

loud and clear in this biography.

I n

return,

the biographer is using Ayn Rand's lifestory

to turn a buck, get her revenge through

publication of the facts, and denigrate the

fountainhead of the objectivist philosophy.

The biography is told from fifty hours of

taped interviews with Rand, transcripts of

unpublished writings, extensive discussions

with those closest to her , and above all it

is based on the author's own unique rela-

tionship with the subject.

You can bet your lifeit was unique

Barbara Branden isa Russophobe. Begin-

ning with the first page of the book she be-

gins her attack against the nation which,

after all,did produce the beloved Ayn. The

actual childhood and early lifeis difficult to

Page 40

ferret out from the adulation which is

heaped upon the subject's later post hoc

analysis from a mature perspective of what

she thought she might have felt as a child.

The author notes that Rand spoke of her

entire childhood and young adulthood only

with a loathing for the country in which she

was born. The alacrity with which she aban-

doned her familyand her name once she left

Russia indicates that the loathing may have

been deeper and more personal, certainly

directed to her family.Whereas Nero fiddled

while Rome burned; Rand read Hugo while

the Bolshevik revolution raged on the

streets of Petrograd. Facts contradict one

another in such an amazing way that one

can only conclude that the recollection is

through a glass darkly seen. (One example

willsuffice: A familywithout money for food

is able freely to bribe one official after

another with large sums.)

I n

1921 she en-

tered the University of Petrograd. While

people were collapsing on the streets from

malnutrition and disease, she studied Plato

under a distinguished international authority

and was moved to emotion by her reading of

Aristotle. After graduating in 1924, she

began work as a tour guide whileshe studied

further ina school for those interested in the

developing Russian movie industry.

I n

1925,

a relative who had been aided financially by

her mother's family to emigrate to the Unit-

ed States agreed to sponsor Rand for a visit

to this country. Her impoverished family

provided the money for the six-month visit

- from which, of course, Rand never re-

turned. Her object was to make her way to

California to become a writer for the cinema

industry there.

She abandoned her Chicago relatives

quicker than she had abandoned her family

and her native land which was in the stran-

glehold of a blood-soaked dictatorship, the

soul-shriveling terror of a life without hope

or a future. Conning the relatives of$100 in

cash and a railroad ticket she made her way

to the promised land: Hollywood. There she

worked as an extra and there she married

another extra, Frank O'Connor, in 1929.

For some reason important to the author, it

is noted that Sex was always important to

her life, and

central

in

her relationship with

Frank.

This certainly did not appear to be

the case when later, for fourteen years,

Frank had to leave his home one night a

week to wander the streets while Rand

bedded down with Branden - twenty-five

years her junior - in his own boudoir for an

all-night romp.

The squalid, narrow lifeis followed in a

narrative as barren as what it relates. Rand

moved to New York in the hope of writing

August 1986

plays, while plugging away at her book

We

The Living.

I n New York she began

The

Fountainhead,

whileshe dabbled in far right

politics, meeting many prominent conserva-

tives. After the extraordinary trials and trib-

ulations of a dozen rejects,

The Fountain-

head

was finally published in May 1943. The

sales ofthe book mounted, it was purchased

by Warner Bros., turned into a movie, and

the Rand-O'Connor pair finally had the

financial security it needed.

Once at the pinnacle, of course, the thing

to do is to attack those who dissent against

the system which elevated one. The House

UnAmerican Activities Committee invited

her to testify and she obliged. She was proud

ofher contribution: that Communist propa-

ganda on the screen vanished and her work

did that.

Now on an estate in California, enter the

youthful Brandens, and about 150-pages of

description of an arrangement with them

whereby Nathaniel serviced Rand sexu-

ally in return for her publically advancing

him as her intellectual heir.

Atlas

Shrugged

was written during the intoxication of this

highly improbable and irregular affair.

But Ayn missed New York and it was to

that city that they all returned to play the

drama to the bitter end. There objectivism

was born and some of the basic theoretics

for the Libertarian political persuasion. As

one reads the scenarios of personal psycho-

logical destruction of anyone in her admiring

group not atune to the premises which Rand

proposed as fundamental to her Roark-like

theories, one is aghast.

I n

1966, the thirty-six year old Branden

had finallyhad enough of the sixty-one year

old Rand. The relationship came to an end

with Rand's determination (his now ex-wife

feels) to destroy him.

The Nathaniel Branden Institute was

closed; the

Objectivist

soon ceased to be

published; but ironically Nathaniel Branden

(who apparently had none for nineteen

years) issued his own book on

The Psychol-

ogy

of Self-Esteem

in 1969.

The Brandens finally went their separate

ways, each to a new marriage - the ends of

which are not important to this narrative.

Cancer caught up with Ayn Rand in 1974,

primarily from her two packs of cigarettes a

day habit. Surgical removal of one lobe of

the left lung was necessary. Frank O'Con-

nor died in November 1979, and Rand's car-

diopulmonary problems brought her end in

January 1982.

This is a sick book.

I t

is almost as sick as

the lifeof the person it chronicles. Although

it only obliquely speaks of Atheism - Rand

was a known Atheist - it should be read.

~

American Atheist



ME TOO

Me

Too is a

feature

designed to

showcase short essays written by read-

ers in response to topics recently cov-

ered

by

the

American Atheist or

of

general interest to the Atheist com-

munity.

Essays

submitted to

Me

Too

(P.O.

Box

2117, Austin, TX 78768-2117)

should be 700 to 900words long.

T

he symbol of the universe must surely

be the circle. Every part of nature

seems to travel along circles, ellipses, and

other cyclical paths. From the cosmologists'

great cycle of the universe's birth, death,

and rebirth, to the daily rhythm on earth,

everything returns to its starting point. The

passage of time itself is marked by the

apparent turning of the BigDipper's han-

dle about the Pole Star, echoed in the

twenty-four-hour circle of the medieval

clocks.

Nature's continuity ismeasured in returns

to the same point of the circle - dawn,

winter solstice, the periodic extinctions after

cometary bombardments, even the 250-

million-year galactic orbit of the sun. We are

all a part of nature. The cycles affect us as

surely as they do the migrating birds, the

reawakening ofperennial plants, and the ice-

cracked rock washed from the eroding

mountain by the spring flood. When nature

bursts forth in spring's exuberance, fruits in

the summer heat, turns gold and scarlet

after autumn's first frost, lies dormant and

still under winter's cold blanket, we, as all

other life, must be affected. We evolved in

these cycles, matured as a species in the

frigid freezer of the ice ages, and lived and

died by the cycles bringing us animals and

plants to eat.

Humans first started organizing their

lives. We left the senseless animal world of

our origins. We used our one species

marker, intelligence, as we developed agri-

culture and animal husbandry. We all know

the false promise of the January thaw, the

first flush of heat in early spring, the early

frost - the vagaries of the weather. But the

great astronomical clock keeps faithful time,

telling us when to plant, when to reap, to

hunt, to cull our flocks. These cycles meant

lifeand death. We evolved into a sympathy

with them just as we evolved our other

senses.

Over the last two hundred years we have

gained insight into the reasons for these

cycles. We have given up the gods ofthe last

20,000 years, as science has showed us the

why and how, more accurately and as-

suredly than the sun, moon, rain, or river

that we so eagerly animated in our species'

Austin, Texas

childhood. But we are the most intelligent

animal species on earth - and our reptilian

and pre-sentient mammalian underpinnings

stillcry out at these cyclic changes.

Our intelligence explains the dying chloro-

phyll unmasking the yellows, reds, and

browns hidden throughout the spring and

summer. Yet how can one not be affected by

those brilliant colors cast up to the clear blue

of a perfect Indian summer afternoon? The

odor of leaf mold, burning wood, the crisp-

ness ofthe evening held back bya warm fire?

To acknowledge this conflict, to celebrate it,

is to be completely human - an intelligent

animal. To welcome the solstices and the

equinoxes as stopping points in our busy

lives, ever further from our upbringing in

nature, is to bring into perspective our

beginnings, our present state, and our future

as a species.

Don't celebrate? We have computers and

robots that operate by cold, clear logic only.

Not to celebrate is to deny that other part of

humanity - the bringer of art, music, litera-

ture, friendship, love. Rather revel in these

emotions, tempered with our understanding

ofwhyand how_Throw out the gods, but not

the feasts - they're as old as life itself, and

our link to it

A. Thomas Kashuba

Pennsylvania

Tome, religion is a state of mind ... kind of like mental mness.

August 1986 Page 41



L E T T E R S T O T H E E D IT O R

I suggest that whenever religionists hold

up anti-smut signs outside convenience

stores, Atheists

move

in beside them with

signs demanding the removal of incest, lust,

sodomy, and other sexual no-nos from the

Bible. I think this would be an effective way

of giving Jerry Falwell and his followers a

taste of their own medicine.

Robert M. LaFrana

Michigan

In Director's Briefcase (May

1986),

Jon

G. Murray asserts that no one has

ever

talked with god. I must disagree, since I

myself have talked with god. The contem-

plation of lifeand the universe, coupled with

a drastically reduced blood sugar level, can

produce a

vivid

anthropomorphic hallucina-

tion, which would, of course, make any reli-

gious person agog with the conviction that

he/she was in the presence of the holy spirit

This kind of hallucination is a well-known

effect of lowered blood sugar. Atheists who

wish to talk with god may lower their blood

sugar with LSD, with self-flagellation to pro-

duce festering sores, with prolonged kneel-

ing, or just wait until they have a high fever. I

have also communed with Mozart, and

Shakespeare has made clear his sonnets to

me.

A strenuous session on the toilet can also

produce divine rapture; Martin Luther

reports, with disarming honesty, that it was

in such circumstances that Protestantism

was revealed to him.

Jeff Wilson

California

~

The May

1986

issue of the

American Athe-

ist was one of the best yet. I thoroughly

enjoyed ninety-nine percent of the articles in

it, and especially Brian Lynch's Press Con-

ference on the arms race.

I personally feel that this should be the

primary topic of our efforts, to be given

much more coverage than anything else. A

growing number of Americans - not all of

them Atheists - are getting

very

worried

about the fundamentalist attempts to bring

Page 42

on Armageddon. I have been listening to

fundamentalist television broadcasts; these

people are dangerous madmen. They are

power-hungry, greedy, and in my estima-

tion, many of them are certifiably insane. I

have seen the likes of Paul Crouch (that may

not be the correct spelling) ranting and rav-

ing about building devil-bustin' satellites all

over

the world - and receiving hundreds

upon thousands of dollars in pledges, al-

though one might be led to ask if these

pledges are actually honored - and various

other television evangelists screaming, rant-

ing and raving, and acting as though they

were rabid - Oral Roberts rolling his eyes

back into his head while screaming about

tithing ... the list is enormous. All of these

madmen have one thing in common: They

are saying nothing about controlling nuclear

weaponry, conserving peace; in short, they

are encouraging the masses to push the

button.

Does this frighten you? It scares me silly It

scares me because, apparently, our efforts

are puny in comparison. We need a radio

station, too

I would like to make a suggestion at this

time. The American Atheists must gather

together a delegation ofeducated persons to

go to the U.S.S.R. and make some attempt

to contact the Prime Minister; to let them

know there are some people in the United

States who are still sane, some who haven't

become religious fanatics ready to start a

global holocaust. Ifwe cannot form a delega-

tion, then we must start writing letters -

lots of letters - indicating our wish for

peace, arms control, and our deep desire to

maintain sanity in the world.

I am currently reading Barbara Tuch-

man's book

The March of Folly,

and it has

become clear to me that throughout history

there have been more wars and human mis-

ery caused by religion than any other cause.

Religion has a miserable track record. Con-

sider the Renaissance popes.

We must take a stronger stand on the

arms race. The fate of the world is at stake.

Morgan Allspach

Ohio

~

I notice that many Atheists take great

pains to always pay lip service to religious

freedom or to reassure others, in letters or

conversation, that they subscribe to a belief

in freedom of choice.

If religious freedom includes the right to'

reduce a fairly normal human to the state

where he flops on his back, limbs shaking

out ofcontrol whilehe babbles incoherently,

August

1986

then we need to redefine either

religion

or

freedom.

W. D. Robinson

Oregon

~

In response to Rena L. Thompson's letter

in the May 1986 issue asking whether

televangelists use subliminal messages in

their programs, the answer may well be yes.

During a segment of the 700 Club which

our local ABC-affiliated station carried on

the night of May

21-22, 1986,

I heard what I

think was such a message. While Pat

Robertson was leading his audience in

prayer asking Jesus Christ to come into my

life, I distinctly heard a female voice inton-

ing softly, Lord Jesus. At first I thought it

was background noise from the studio

audience, but as the camera panned the

audience and the same voice returned as

clearly as before, I realized it didn't seem to

be coming from anywhere in particular.

During Robertson's prayer, I distinctly

heard Lord Jesus three times and a possi-

ble fourth, which I couldn't make out

because it got blended with the prayer, and

finally an orgasmic-sounding moan of Oh

God

Apparently someone had left the

volume ofthe subliminal sound track turned

up too high so that it was easily audible. I

don't know whether or not subliminal mes-

sages have been proven to be effective, but

the idea that TV preachers would even try

something likethis suggests they would stop

at nothing to enslave us all. Are there legal

grounds for American Atheists to filea com-

plaint with the FCC or take CBN to court

over

this issue if my claim was substan-

tiated?

Royce J. Bitzer

Iowa

I have finished reading a sizable stack of

material I received in the mail after becoming

a member of A.A. Iwish to express my deep

appreciation for the sheer existence of your

organization. I am quite impressed with

A.A.'s uncompromising position on main-

taining publicly the label Atheist inspite ofits

unpleasant connotations rather than hiding

behind such safer labels as agnostic or

freethinker. I read Mrs. O'Hair's speech

Atheists and found myself falling easily

into several categories of Atheists she de-

scribed. Publicly I have described myself as

either an Atheist or an agnostic, depending

on the people Iam talking to and how truth-

ful or inflammatory I wish to be. However, I

American Atheist



L E T T E RS T O T H E E D IT O R

NOT ICE

am an a-theist - as A.A. defines it; it isclear

that religion has been one of the most de-

structive elements in civilization and has no

place in affairs of the state. I am impressed

that you openly use the label Atheist inspite

of the abuse from the ignorant it lends itself

to. I suppose I could be called a closet Athe-

ist by my reluctance to use the word. I am

greatly encouraged by your excellent exam-

ple. Telling relations or friends that one is an

Atheist carries with it the same shock value

as confiding that one is gay or a communist

(although the three are not even casually

related). You have given me the encour-

agement to take a stand at the risk of disap-

proval (at the very least) of others.

Aaron W. Adams

Louisiana

Letters to the Editor must be

either questions or comments of

general concern to Atheists or

Atheism. Submissions should be brief

and to the point. Space limitations

allow that each letter should be two

hundred words, or preferably, less.

Please confine your letters to a single

issue only. Mail them to:

American Atheist

P O Box 2117

Austin, TX 78768-2117

Cryptic crossword puzzles are not like the puzzles seen

in most American publications; they are much more

devious. The clues are almost never what they seem to be.

Some of the clues are anagrams of the word sought; these

are indicated by clues such as sort of or crazy. Some

clues are puns giving an association of sound or meaning.

Charade clues are built up by definitions of parts of the

answer word. In some cases the answer is actually hidden

among the letters of the clue. Punctuation ca~ be used to

obscure clues and change the apparent meamng.

In general, the cryptic clue consists of two parts ',One

part is a definition of the word sought, and the other IS t~e

cryptically constructed part. The fun and challenge of this

sort of puzzle is to figure out which part is which. Often the

relationship between clue and answer isa humorous one or

one that presents a peculiar view of the world of words .

The numbers inparentheses are the numbers ofletters In

each word of the answer.

If you would like a sample puzzle with answers and

explanations ofclues, send a self-addressed, stamped enve-

lope to Steve Bratteng, Division of Biological Sciences,

University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712.

ACROSS

1. Is such a deserter beneath us? (5, 3)

5. Out, in a sense; disturb, please. (6)

9. Everyone has a day - maybe it's Nov. 2. (3,5)

10. Sounds like something hard to be tested. (6)

12.ACLU or a different organization - one that deals with

eyes. (6)

13. See 250.

15. Sounds like you might do it at the circus (but not these

carnivores ... ). (3, 9.)

18.... or one associated with more lofty habits. (1,8,3)

23. A bad pelt (actually, worse than bad) created from such

a smooth leader. (4,4)

24. Change protocol or search for flags stowed away. (6)

26. Insect whose usefulness to 23 would appear greater if

found a little higher up. (6)

27. Eureka, may be appropriate comment if one finds

something so. (4, 4)

28. Does it make you unhappy to be sanded and refinished?

(6)

29. Need a cat, perhaps, for a late afternoon affair? (3, 5)

DOWN

1. Not really related to 15, but I hear bovine critter is

observed .... (3, 3)

2.... with tusks and fabled appetite for oysters. (6)

3. System suitable for determining longevity of plant part

... ? (7 )

4.... or tools used to make slaw? (4)

6. Means by which Pope said to do good? (and blush to find

it fame). (7)

7. Use beet as an alternative, if one would consume

legumes? (3, 5)

8. Not look so often when unrivaled. (8)

11. Sort of digs found to contain long-time occupant of

many motel rooms. (7)

14. Abjures when one soaks can in it. (7)

16. Brews most of ale with birds scattered about. (8)

17. Real mixed up in cold. (Some are said to be when

arrested.) (8)

19. Give out cookware in return for period of rest. (3, 4)

20. Taro use denied when found excited. (7)

21. Radical change on certificate. (6)

22. Nuisance reveals that in's out, but some interest

remains. (6)

25. With 13A. Magazine reveals it in the long run. (4,4,4)

(Solution on page 6)

Austin, Texas August 1986 Page 43



NEWS AND COMMENTS

D o n M cD e rm o tt

(Continued from page 20)

T H E WATER TOWER

(Continued from page 23 )

sympathetic guidance from those who

share her own value preferences.

In the final analysis, the holding of

Roe presumes that it is far better to

permit some individuals to make

incorrect decisions than to deny all

individuals the right to make decisions

that have a profound effect upon their

destiny. Arguably a very primitive

society would have been protected

from evil by a rule against eating

apples; a majority familiarwith Adam's

experience might favor such a rule.

But the lawmakers who placed a spe-

cial premium on the protection of

individual liberty have recognized that

certain values are more important

than the willof a transient majority.

signaled him to turn the engine over. It

started lip immediately, and his father got

into the passenger's side with the gas can.

Here, take this back with you, he said and

slipped out ofthe coat. And put the rigback

in the barn. Idon't want it rustin' in the rain.

I'll take the car on to a gas station.

His father was stillannoyed, and Joel tried

to say something that would budge him from

his sour mood. Listen, Dad, I'm sorry about

this - really.

Yeah, I've heard that before, he mur-

mured without looking at him and put the

car in gear.

Joel sneezed and was beginning to shake

as he rode the old tractor home along the

deserted highway. The wind gusted tum-

bleweeds across the road, and he could feel

his blood cold and motionless in his thighs

and laced up in his shoes. He put up the

collar on his jacket and slipped a numb hand

into the pocket of his coat, and at the tip of

his aching fingers, he felt them. He knew

instantly what he then crushed in his

chapped palm - it was her nylon panties.

But now, unlike the other times, he felt no

relief and there was no thanksgiving.

His father had overtaken him after a few

minutes, but he had neither waved nor

honked. He imagined now that he would get

pneumonia and die. That was it; that was

how itwould allfit together - the dream, the

water tower, even the sudden and dramatic

change in the weather. It had all been con-

trived to bring about his destruction. It

would suit him right, he thought, for thinking

he could get away with things like other

people. ~

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Don McDermott completed his

B.S. and M.A. at Brigham Young

University and is currently a

doctoral candidate at Oklahoma State

University. Despite his stint at

Brigham Young, he is an agnostic.

This summary of Justice Stevens in his

reply to Justice White is so cogent that no

comments need to be added by American

Atheists.

1 p 1

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American Atheist

ugust 1986

age

44



As you read The Bible Handbook you will be

amazed at all the absurdities, indecencies, con-

tradictions, unfulfilled prophecies, obscenities,

impossibilities, ugliness, inaccurate history,

and outright nonsense there is in that so-

called book of poetry and ethics: the Christian

Bible. Never again will you be unable to refute

Christians.

This clearly referenced book will put the very

words of the Bible at your fingertips and enable

you to defend yourself from theists' simple

arguments. Quotes straight from the King

James Bible will rock the faith of the religious.

Every Atheist who ever suffered the intru-

sion of a professional or amateur missionary

Do you wonder how to refute the

television preachers? Do you not

know what to say to that Christian

friend who keeps telling you about

the certainties of the Bible? Do

you wonder how to explain to your

children how religion is harmful?

Help has arrived

needs The Bible Handbook

This all new (and improved) edition includes

not just the classic text of The Bible Handbook

compiled by G. W. Foote and W. P. Ball in 1900,

but also:

Self Contradictions of The Bible 144

Propositions

(author anonymous),

The Bible

Contradicts Itself

by Australian John Bowden,

and

American Atheist Addenda

created by

former American A theist columnist Richard M.

Smith.

The Bible Handbook is only $8.00 including

postage. You can't let yourself miss the oppor-

tunity to obtain this seemingly endless source

of rebuttals

(372 pp., paperback)

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I suggest that the anthropomorphic god-

idea is not a harmless infirmity of human

thought, but a very noxious fallacy, which is

largely responsible for the calamities the

world is at present enduring.

AMENDMENTI

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CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAWRESPECTING

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William Archer

Theology and War

american atheist magazine aug 1986

Documents