Tamil Nadu is perhaps the only land where there is no atheism! This divine land sports tens of thousands of ancient Temples (44,121 belonging to different time periods, according to government figures) and many other later-day ones. It encompasses eventful places of the Ramayana and the Mahabharatha. It is the historical hub of many a spiritual phenomenon. It is the birthplace of sixty-three Nayanmars and twelve Azhwars, who spearheaded what we now refer to as the Bakthi Movement, and carried Bhakthi to every nook and cranny. It is also the land of Ramana Maharishi, Shri Ramanujar, and Siddars. Likewise, there are innumerable forms of theistic insignia to glorify this land. Nevertheless, any presumption that the absence of atheism is attributable to any of those theistic highlights might be misleading because, on the basis of belief in God, the people here could be classified into two broad categories the the ists and the pseudo-atheists.

This pseudo-atheism lends itself smoothly to a variety of distortions; no matter how much, or how many times, or in how many ways it is bent, it never breaks! It is probably this trait that makes it all the easier to embrace. Formulated by E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker (EVR), and promptly embraced by prominent leaders like M. Karunanithi, K. Veeramani, and others, it censures all the sanctified ideals of the land, and celebrates the imported, or foisted ones, without so much as a question. In other words, all its repulsive pronouncements are directed squarely at Hinduism, while all other religions remain recipients of its adulatory affirmations. Interestingly, the ideals which the Dravidian intellectuals vilify are the selfsame ideals which their own ancestors have venerated for generations, right down to the immediately preceding one. This pseudo-atheism and discerning intellect, which purports to eradicate superstition, constitute the bedrock of the Dravidian ideology, built upon falsification and hatred.

To do justice to EVR, one must acknowledge his accomplishments as a multifaceted personality!

* As an atheist, he prided himself on blaspheming Hindu deities, rituals, scriptures, observances, and practices. He basked in breaking Lord Ganesh idols, and organizing Ravanleela.

* As a social reformer, he kept flirting with harlots, and while on his overseas tours, he attended the nudist club.

* As a liberator of women, he traumatized his wife from going to temples by having a group of philanderers accost her inside a Temple. Further, he coerced his wife into supplying food for his band of harlots and fellow philanderers whenever they were out on their lecherous expeditions. He unabashedly advocated adultery and debauchery. Not to stop with that, he passed a party resolution demanding that such acts be legitimized under the constitution. He reviled the Thali (Mangal Suthra) calling it a symbol of women enslavement, and demanded the repeal of this custom. Thali-snapping conventions are being organized even today (by Veeramani and others) from time to time. However, they snap the Thali of only the other women, never of their own women folk! To top it all, EVR married his foster daughter, Maniammai, younger by nearly 40 years, an outrage which raised hackles even along the party lines.

* As a caste-eradicator, he called for the eradication of Brahmins, and displayed uncovered apathy toward Dalits. When around 44 Dalits, including women and children, were burnt alive by feudal landlords, near Nagapattinam, in 1968, instead of condemning the act, or at least expressing condolence, he criticized the victims for demanding higher wages saying, They should learn to live within their means. If those landlords had been Brahmins, or if the victims had not been Dalits, he would have probably reversed his stand, and put the criticism and compassion in their right places. He is often compared with Dr. Ambedkar. But at the rudimentary level, his views and those of Ambedkars are like parallel lines that never meet. In one instance, he even alleged that Dr. Ambedkar had received a bribe from Brahmins during the negotiations for reservations one shot, two birds.

* As an economist, he observed, Cloth price has gone up because the Pariah-caste women have started wearing jackets. And as an educationist, he warned, If Dalits become literates, unemployment will rise.

* As a patriot, he owed allegiance to the British, and wanted the British rule to continue. When that was not to be, he implored the British Queen to rule India from England. Anyway, the last thing he would tolerate was a free India, with Tamil Nadu being a part of it. Therefore, as a freedom fighter, he fought for a sovereign Dravidanadu. To this end, he exhorted the British and sought the help of Mohammed Ali Jinnah only to be snubbed by both. Even to this day, the idea of a separate dominion lies entrenched in the Dravidian ranks, and keeps creating ruckus, now and then, in various forms.

* Finally, as a way to self-appeasement, in separate instances, he passed a party resolution demanding the abrogation of the Supreme Court and made a clarion call for declaring August 15 as a Day of Mourning!

However, in his living days, EVR had much stronger opposition than support. He was severely criticized by every single prominent leader of his day; Karunanithi until he became or was close to becoming the Chief Minister was far from prominence. Even among the masses, EVRs thin line of followers were only those who would flock to him in spite of his despicable views, in spite of his habitual tantrums, and in spite of his trademark announcement, I want only fools! Whatever fame he is credited with, is but a posthumous attribution, which he owes to his disciples, idolizers, and hagiographers mostly to Karunanithi, less to Veeramani, and still less to a bunch of attention seekers. Being highly insightful and equally insensitive, they spoke and wrote volumes of eulogy shot through with downright lies, unfounded claims, and contaminated truth (more dangerous) to popularize EVR, and his Dravidianism. Karunanithi ensured the preponderance of these written accounts in all the state libraries. In many libraries, hardly a material could be seen on Tamil Nadu bereft of Dravidianism. Further, all this was thrust into the mainstream education of the Tamil Nadu state syllabus. Every question paper prepared by the state would mandatorily contain questions on this section; from the students angle, focusing on this section would mean a sure shot at marks. Thus, the young, impressionable minds were indoctrinated with this Dravidian delusion. Even the TNPSC exams could not escape such questions. By this, they made it impossible for the students to get out of this delusion even after they come out of school or college. Besides all this, they made the most out of newspapers, magazines, banners, posters, stage plays, movies, and whatnot to drag into their fold, the young and the old, the literate and the illiterate people from all walks of life!

Further, they have the uncanny knack of lifting the credit for others sweat, blood, and toil. For instance, Avinashi Lingam, the former Education Minister, and Kamarajar, the former Chief Minister were instrumental in making education accessible to the under-privileged children. But later the DMK, with power in hand, promptly put the Dravidian label on it. To this day, there is a large group of people who are living under the grateful impression that it was because of the Dravidian movement that they were privileged to some decent education which gave them some decent standard of living, all of which would have otherwise been stymied by the Brahmins! If the educated ones could be conned into such thoughts, what kind of glowing thoughts would the rest be prone to? The one thing that the real benefactors failed to do was give themselves airs. In a public meeting, when a subordinate uttered a couple of words in praise of Kamarajar, he at once thundered, Enough, cut it out I said; come straight to the point! Those leaders and benefactors not only Kamarajar or Avinashi Lingam, but also the others like Kakkan or Rajaji, for instance belonged to the old school of taught that strictures even accepting praise, leave alone asking for it. Morally lofty but politically inane, this bent of mind of theirs came as a blessing in disguise to the Dravidian leaders. Thus, when it came to publicity, it was not a tussle at all, but a mutually complementary interplay between self-effacing humility and all-absorbing rapacity!

In the absence of, or in addition to the other things with which to make their presence felt, the Dravidians have always taken to pseudo-atheism like duck to water. They would spread scurrilous propaganda against Sacred Scriptures, and Brahmins. To give just an outline without any exaggeration, they would reject Lord Shri Ram as a fictitious character invented by Brahmins but would hail Ravan as a great Tamil king of the past, who was martyred by the Sanskrit-speaking, wicked Raman! On similar lines, Lord Shri Krishna was a fiction, or a promiscuous character while Khamsa and the others were real-life martyrs! Those are only some random samples of the intellectual propaganda, while the profanities are too egregious to describe. They would stage plays with indescribably profaned versions of the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata. Those playwrights would be felicitated, among themselves (not by any university), with coveted titles as poets and literary geniuses. And there would be a rat race for such titles the more profane the script, the quicker and the higher the recognition. The hypnotized audience would be tricked into taking their version as true over whatever it had learnt perchance through hearsay and would obviously become infuriated against the Brahmins who had twisted the tale! Further, as a novel way to slight Brahmins, they would convene a gathering, perform a mock ceremony, and confer the Sacred Thread upon a pig. However, such ceremonies fizzled out following the retort, Is it a proclamation of their own identities, since it is the father who performs the Sacred Thread ceremony for his son?

Karunanithi, the obedient disciple of EVR, and five-non-successive-term Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu reveled and abetted in all his Mentors convulsions. No sooner had he risen to power, than he started unleashing terror on Brahmins. Thuggery or hooliganism, to these Dravidian mercenaries, is not the last resort, but the first, and they do not know of a second! Tamil Nadu became a spectacle of lynching of Brahmins, and depredation of Brahmin homes and properties. In short, Karunanithi became the pioneer to promote state-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan would be better off learning from this great master! He introduced the liquor culture in Tamil Nadu, squashing the earnest pleas of Rajaji, with whose support the DMK first tasted power. Along with prohibition, he lifted the erstwhile stigma on drinking, and elevated it from a lowly, shameful status to one of pride and style. Since then, the prime attraction to the public meetings of the Dravidian outfits, attended by huge throngs, has been liquor, biriyani, and some cash. On special occasions, these will be supplemented with dance performances of skimpily clad beauties!

Subsequent to the demise of EVR, he raised statues of his mentor in front of Temples and Mutts, besides other places. While his mentor was always brash in his traducements of Hinduism, this disciple was both brash and subtle, yet always incisive. When the proposition of providing electric supply for temples came up under his chiefministership, he inquired, Why do you need electric lamps? Will the halo of your gods not provide illumination to the temples? In the Ram Sethu issue, he argued, Who is this Raman? Where is the proof that he built a bridge? Was he a civil engineer? Which university did he graduate from? He scandalized Sacred Scriptures. He kept calling Lord Shri Krishna a lecher and a womaniser. However, he would inveigle himself into the affections of Muslims and Christians. This atheist would take part in Ramadan celebrations, wear the Islamic cap, and drink the porridge. He would openly applaud Islamic and Christian theistic practices. He would lavish greetings during their festive occasions but would never move his lips except to lambast during Hindu festivals. Holiday Greetings has become a get-away catch phrase for his descendants and followers today, to say something perfunctorily, but not give greetings to Hindus. Speaking at an Islamic wedding, his son Stalin commented that unlike in Islamic weddings, in Hindu weddings, people shed tears (jibing at Homam). Karunanithis daughter Kanimozhi wondered why they need security guards around the Hundial (the receptacle for offerings) in the Thirumala Temple, Can the Lord not protect it?

Besides the religious tantrums they keep throwing, the mental makeup of the DK and the DMK can be seen to reflect in all the words and actions of both the leaders and the followers. On one occasion, Jawahar Lal Nehru, the then Prime Minister of India, made an official trip to Sri Lanka, to hold bilateral discussions with Sirimovo Bandaranaike, his Sri Lankan counterpart. This event attracted the comment, He (Nehru) is a widower, and she (Bandaranaike) is a widow. They both shut themselves in a room for two hours. Imagine what should have happened! Such a comment was shot not by just an anonymous, demented party fanatic, but by the intellectual Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Karunanithi himself. On another occasion, when Indira Gandhi was seen with blood stains due to some injury on her forehead, as a result of some mob violence during her visit to Tamil Nadu, the same Chief Minister blurted out that it must be menstrual blood. These are just a few glimpses of the kind of thought process, and the quality of expression that identify the Dravidian lot. If the leader of the party and the head of the state, or their publications are capable of making such statements, what will a follower at the street level not be capable of doing? That is the class of people they are. Their vitriolic tirades on Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, and the other national and Tamil Nadu leaders seem to outweigh the ones stated above in every respect. For all this, they claim to possess political refinement, and criticize their opponents for the lack of it! These Dravidians constitute a cult of moral turpitude and social degeneration gleefully oblivious to dignity, culture, civility, morality, and every single virtuous ideal? On the top of it, they criticize the Brahmins for vitiating the Tamil culture; they claim Tamil Nadu to be the land of EVR. Is this the Sacred Tamil culture? By what standards can this Dravidian model designed by EVR, and glorified and diversified by his disciples be called any culture at all? If this model were to be passed off as the Tamil culture, what impression would an outsider get of this venerable land? Is it not a crying shame? Leave alone what they do to Brahmins, are they not doing criminal injustice to the entire Tamil community? Are these Dravidian spearheads not burying alive, the true, timeless Tamil culture known for its rectitude, uprightness, morality, selflessness, sacrifice, self-restraint, spirituality, and suchlike ethereal virtues preserved and nurtured by generations after generations of the highly civilised Tamil societies? This Dravidianism is a curse which has held Tamil Nadu under its crushing spell for nearly 70 years. The real Tamil Nadu can manifest itself with all its pristine glory and splendour only when this curse is lifted from the memories of the land. Jai Hind!

Featured Image: The Hindu

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author. IndiaFacts does not assume any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information in this article.

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The Land Without Atheism | IndiaFactsIndiaFacts - IndiaFacts

On Wednesday, May 20, the American Humanist Associations Center for Education presents its May Speaker Series event via Zoom (6:30-8:00pm ET) with Sikivu Hutchinson. The author will discuss her new book, Humanists in the Hood: Unapologetically Black, Feminist, and Heretical. The Zoom link to join is: https://zoom.us/j/95825362663 (and if maximum capacity is reached for the live event please note video will be available at a later date). The following is an excerpt from Humanists in the Hood, reprinted with permission of the author.

Growing up in the seventies and eighties as a secular Black girl, I rarely saw myself represented in mainstream childrens literature. One of the most popular teen books of the era was Judy Blumes Are You There God? Its Me, Margaret, a coming-of-age novel whose protagonist is an eleven-year-old white girl from a middle-class Jewish-Christian family. Blumes novel was considered controversial for the early seventies because it dealt explicitly with adolescent sexuality, puberty, desire, and religious skepticism. It was widely banned by conservative religious groups for its alleged anti-Christian and immoral themes. Still, even though Blumes lead character Margaret questions organized religion, she affirms her personal relationship with god at the end of the book.

Critics and activists of color have long pushed back against the publishing industry for the dearth of culturally diverse childrens and young adult literature. In much of childrens literature, the default child protagonist has been middle class, Christian, white, and male. Indeed, 75 percent of the 3,700 books reviewed by the Cooperative Childrens Book Center (CCBC) which were published in 2017 featured white protagonists. This is especially problematic given the U.S. rapidly diversifying population, in which a growing majority of children are non-white. In 2020, less than half of all children are projected to be non-Hispanic whites, and by 2050 it is projected that this number will have declined to approximately 39 percent. The representation deficit spotlighted by the CCBC is also problematic when considering that many white children are not exposed to literature that feature protagonists or communities unlike their own. In addition, the CCBC found that the majority of books featuring African American, Indigenous, and Latinx protagonists were written by white authors. Similarly, LGBTQI childrens book characters were overwhelmingly written by straight, cisgender authors. In 2014, authors of color created the We Need Diverse Books campaign to redress the systemic problem of underrepresentation in childrens literature. The campaign was initially sparked on Twitter in response to an all-white male childrens author panel at the 2014 BookCon festival. This representation deficit is just as much a humanist concern as church-state separation. Why? Because multicultural childrens literature has the capacity to elicit critical consciousness, challenge the dominant culture, redress toxic, preconceived notions about the other, and, ultimately, save lives.

For generations (before the Internet and social media hijacked the custom of reading print literature), children received messages about what was human from books and iconic literary figures. Human characters, fantastical characters, and anthropomorphized animal characters taught us what was heroic, villainous, lovable, contemptuous, good, bad, and all points in between. As a form of cultural socialization, these portrayals provided guideposts for morality and ethicsbe they Pinocchios lesson on truth telling or working-class Charlie Buckets lesson on greed and selfishness in the 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Ironically enough, Charlie was originally intended to be a Black character. [Roald] Dahl was reportedly persuaded by his agent to change him to a more socially acceptable (and presumably more universal) white protagonist. The ethnicity of childrens literature protagonists notwithstanding, the fact that most of these so-called universal lessons come from a white, Eurocentric literary lens underscores the burning need for secular humanist art and literature by and for people of color. This is especially true given the robustness of the Christian entertainment market and the way in which Christian respectability (I will unpack this term and its cultural implications in greater detail later in this chapter) influences gender roles, family structures, and sexual identity when it comes to Black and Latinx portrayals in mainstream TV, film, and literature. As streaming services, online platforms, and social media marketing have exploded over the past decade, Christian entertainment has become an influential niche market with diverse appeal in both traditional white evangelical communities and communities of color.

For example, in popular culture and academia, Christian entrepreneurialism and the faith-based gaze are booming. Christian films, reality shows, and maudlin TV dramas abound. Christian dating websites, Christian book publishers, education courses, colleges, and universities do a brisk business in faith-based propaganda. Most of these media and institutions tell us how to be, think, and do as flawed, made-in-His-image humans. According to a 2018 Los Angeles Times article on the rise of the Christian film industry, Studios now have to go to greater lengths to attract devout audiences in an increasingly challenged faith-based film business, as the market for Christian movies becomes more crowded. Although grosses of big budget Christian films have fallen off, the sheer glut of faith-based content sends a strong global message that reinforces the GOPs fantasy about the United States reigning Christian nation status. This message of Christian dominionism, or Christian theocracy, is embodied by faith-based legislation and public policies that imperil the economic self-determination of communities of color. GOP efforts to privatize public education by giving vouchers to religious schools, criminalize and outlaw abortion, and prohibit LGBTQI people from obtaining health care are especially pernicious because people of color disproportionately rely on what little remains of the social welfare safety net.

As an educator, playwright, and filmmaker-producer who strives to make the lives of humanist, atheist women of color visible in my work, Ive long challenged the lack of explicitly Black humanist secular content in American media and the arts. Where is the humanist cultural production to buck the tide of the OWN networks Black evangelical family dynasty show Greenleaf or all of those ubiquitous Life of Jesus documentaries on cable? Where is the intersectional Black feminist scholarship that frames humanist, secular, and atheist of color ideology? In 2016, I submitted a course proposal entitled Going Godless: Challenging Faith and Religion in Communities of Color to the School of Religion at the University of Southern California. After many gatekeeping gyrations from college administrators, it was shot down due to lack of funding. The course focuses on the intersectional politics of secularism, atheism, and humanism, cultural representation, and the work of humanists of color. The uptick in Americans identifying as secular nones has led to the creation of more secular courses, many of which are housed in religious studies departments. Despite the much ballyhooed rise of the nones, however, there is currently only one bona fide secular studies department (based at Pitzer College and helmed by my friend and colleague, author-scholar Phil Zuckerman) in the United States. Even when secular, humanist, or atheist people of color appear in academic spaces, the range of lived experience that they are allowed to represent is limited and reductive. The standard caricature that bubbles up into mainstream consciousness is one of smug atheist Blacks and Latinos condemning God and Tyler Perryesque evangelicalism among folk of color. Rejecting religion becomes an end in and of itself, and not merely symbolic of a more politicized belief system based on social justice, ethics, Black liberation, Black feminism, and serving Black communities within the context of heightened anti-Black state violence, segregation, and misogynoir. Because Black bodies have always signified an irrational supernaturalism positioned as the antithesis of the Western universal subject, Black humanist atheist praxis can upend traditional constructions of racial authenticity and identity.

Similarly, humanist representations that highlight Black lived experience, faith, and secularism are largely MIA in the contemporary artsbe it narrative film, theatre, or fiction. Virtually all of the internet lists I found on atheist or humanist films are by white folks about white folks challenging religion, posing questions about the nature of the universe, and taking on religious dogma in the family, politics, or the judicial system. Exploring the subject in the Humanist magazine, Nick Farrantello asked, How does one clearly define a motion picture genre as humanist? Im thinking of those few films that reject religion and supernaturalism, even peripherally, and that uphold the ideals of reason, ethics, and justice while also celebrating what it is to be human. While questioning and criticizing faith is a familiar theme in Black literature in particular (for example, in August Wilsons Ma Raineys Black Bottom, Lorraine Hansberrys Raisin in the Sun, and James Baldwins Go Tell It on the Mountain and Blues for Mister Charlie), a complete rejection of supernaturalism and religion, as a sustained critical theme in fictional works by Black authors, is still rare. Indeed, only the works of Richard Wright (Black Boy and The Outsider) and Nella Larsen (Quicksand) occupy this space of radical aesthetic and ideological possibility. Larsens portrayal of Black female atheism in her 1928 novel is still seminal insofar as it frames her protagonists atheism as a direct rebuke of the stifling conventions of motherhood, gender respectability, and domesticity. However, far too often in Black cultural production, the presumption of faith-based, religious, or spiritual worldviews, and experiences preclude more complex portrayals of Black life, Black subjectivity, and epistemology.

Read more:

The Black Humanist Heathen Gaze - TheHumanist.com - The Humanist

Almost a month ago, the group Republican Atheists sent a message to members hoping to publish a list of atheist Republicans who are elected officials in Republican groups and/or their cities/counties.

They wanted names.

I laughed a lot because the GOP, as a whole, is clearly hostile to people who arent white evangelicals, and thats evident through the policies they promote, their platform, and their top-tier candidates. Its hard to imagine Republican voters supporting a candidate whos openly and proudly non-religious, because Republican values go against what most non-religious people support. A party that supports Mike Huckabee, Mike Pence, and Ted Cruz isnt about to throw money and support to an avowed atheist. (They had a hard enough time getting their people to support a Mormon candidate in 2012.)

Ill freely admit there are conservative atheists especially ones who feel very strongly about one or two issues and vote on those issues alone but thats different from supporting todays GOP. Being a Republican today means backing a party whose politicians are overwhelmingly anti-science, anti-LGBTQ rights, anti-choice, and anti-church/state separation. It means supporting a president who blindly accepts and promotes conspiracy theories, surrounds himself with a coterie of evangelical Christians, and condemns expertise and reason whenever they contradict his whims.

Maybe some voters can deal with that cognitive dissonance but actual politicians? Cmon now. Lets be serious.

That said, I would love to know if there are any openly atheist elected Republicans out there. That would be newsworthy! But theyre not out there! Ive looked!

Just to prove my point, here are some numbers for you. After the 2018 midterms, by my best estimate, there were 52 openly non-religious politicians in the country at the state level or higher. Were talking about state representatives and state senators, along with one congressman. Many of them use the word atheist to describe themselves. (I didnt keep track of atheists below that level because, frankly, there would be too many.)

Every single one of them is a Democrat.

In 2017, I stumbled across one guy who was both an elected Republican and, it turned out, openly atheist but he soon switched parties (becoming a Libertarian) and lost his bid for re-election.

There are currently no elected Republicans at the state level or higher who are openly atheist.

52 Democrats. 0 Republicans.

If Im incorrect, though, Im all ears. I would love to know if there are elected officials in the Republican Party who openly reject God. That would be fascinating! (It would be weird, too, but thats a different issue.) If nothing else, having prominent atheists in the GOP might mean having some voices in the party pushing for science and church/state separation and countering the weight of the Religious Right.

Thats a long way to say I really looked forward to seeingthis list from Republican Atheists.

But the weeks came and went and there was no update. I was only told the list was coming and that it was not impressive. (Shocker. But thanks for the honesty.)

Yesterday, the group finally released the list.

Are you ready for it?

There are three names.

Thats it.

Poulson is a leader within his local GOP affiliate but not elected to anything outside of that. Same with Anderson, who ran for office in 2016 as a write-in candidate but got 0.00% of the votes.

As for Umphrey, she is indeed a Republican atheist but it should be noted that the city council elections are non-partisan and the body doesnt usually debate the more polarizing issues we see at the state level. There arent any examples of her publicly calling herself an atheist or a Republican, at least as it relates to her office or examples of her promoting atheism or the GOP during the campaign.

Thats not a criticism of her, by the way! Those kinds of issues just dont often come up at many city council meetings outside of invocations and the like. My point is that if I just looked at her record or public statements, I dont think I would be able to pin down that she was a Republican or an atheist. But shes the only person the group could find after nearly a month of searching and they already knew about her in 2018.

This whole search just proves my point: There are no openly atheist elected Republicans at the state level or higher. (Apparently they barely exist at lower levels, too.) That shouldnt surprise anyone.

Its been said that the only thing atheists have in common is one answer to one question. But many people who call themselves atheists support secular schools, oppose faith-based discrimination, want accessto birth control and contraception, etc. Its hard to imagine someone who cares enough about the topic of religion that she uses the label atheist finding a home in the GOP.

(I should also say the Democratic Party has a long way to go on these issues, too, but theres just no comparison.)

I would love for the Republican Atheists group to simply admit the current GOP is no place for open atheists but theyre working to change that and then I want to see what theyre doing to make that happen.

Instead, as far as Ive seen, all they ever do is promote MAGA memes and push conservative propaganda to their followers. Theyre like the Log Cabin Republicans a group that claims to represent LGBTQ people, but is widely considered a laughingstock because Republican politicians and judges routinely oppose LGBTQ rights. Theres no way to spin that. Every time the group tries to do it, its just pathetic.

But good luck getting Republican Atheists to admit all that.

Read this article:

This Is a Very, Very Tiny List of Elected Atheist Republicans - Friendly Atheist - Patheos

Atheists are treated with suspicion in a religious society, but they represent an opportunityTimo Duile

Indonesia has always been portrayed as a religious nation. The state itself says religion is one of its main foundations. Ketuhanan yang maha esa (or monotheism) is its fundamental norm. Social scientists have reinforced this perception by persistently looking at Indonesia in terms of religion, religiosity and the supernatural. This is for good reason. Indonesians frequently stress how important religion is to them. According to Pew Research Center surveys conducted between 2008 and 2017, 93 per cent of Indonesians say that religion is very important in their lives.

However, in my opinion we have neglected the possibility of secular and even atheist ways of life in Indonesia. The term way of life here does not refer only to belief, but puts an emphasis on social practice. It is a form of engaging with people and the world in general, as the cultural anthropologist Tim Ingold wrote. Being atheist in a religious society always affects ones way of life. Indonesian atheists have found numerous ways of dealing with that problem, as I will outline later. However, I first want to give a short overview of what atheism means for the state and society in Indonesia.

More than fifty years after the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of communists in 1965-1966, very little effort has been made to come to terms with that bloody past. Discourses depicting the outlawed PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia) as a latent threat remain potent. Politicians and the military invoke them all the time. They always portray the PKI as hostile to religion and therefore as atheist, even though PKI leaders in reality went to great lengths to avoid appearing anti-religious, not wanting to scare away ordinary people who were affiliated with religion. Portraying the PKI as an anti-religious force, however, was one of the Suharto regimes most powerful tools to make people afraid of communism.

In 1965, just before the crackdown on the PKI, the government adopted a blasphemy law that prohibited efforts to promote atheism in public. When in 2010 the Constitutional Court dismissed an appeal issued by human rights groups against the blasphemy law, the court explicitly declared that the Indonesian people are a religious, not atheist, people. It argued that the blasphemy law was necessary to prevent social unrest. The law is still part of the KUHP (Indonesian Criminal Code). August 2019 brought news of a proposed revision of the KUHP that would also outlaw agnosticism expressed in public.

Furthermore, there are other laws not specifically formulated against atheism that can be applied to atheists who announce their unbelief in public. Alexander Aan, a civil servant in West Sumatra, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison and a fine of Rp.100 million (A$10,350) after he posted comments to the Facebook group Ateis Minang and these comments became public. He had written that he did not believe in God, and suggested that the Prophet Muhammad had sex with his wifes maid. The court found him guilty of spreading information that could incite hostility and hatred based on religion. It applied Law No.11/2008 on Electronic Information and Transactions. The presence of an angry mob, which first beat up Aan and then protested outside the courtroom during the proceedings, probably contributed to the courts decision.

Politicians and clerics regularly warn their audiences about the dangers of secularism and atheism even when the discussion does not concern communism. In November 2019, for instance, Vice President Maruf Amin weighed in on the current debate about violent religious radicalism. He said secularism was also a form of radical thought that must be rejected in Indonesia. That is to say, atheism has no place in Indonesia.

Given this context, atheists in Indonesia realise they cannot express their convictions publicly. Some of my informants choose to be individual atheists, declaring their atheism to nobody or only to very close friends. Other atheists actively search for like-minded people. Atheist groups on social media like WhatsApp or Facebook are a means to find them. In major cities there are also off-line gatherings of atheists. Atheism is a form of life for all of them. It always influences the way an individual feels, interacts with and perceives their (social) environment. Yet there is no one set way of life among these various communities. There are many ways to be an atheist in Indonesia for example in politics, relationships and ethics.

Most atheists I talked to are interested in political issues. But as Indonesian politics usually relies on having religious links (as the state does), they find concrete political representation something of a lost cause. Many of my atheist friends did not vote in the 2019 election. Only a few atheists I know voted for Jokowi not because they thought he could represent their political conviction but as the lesser of two evils. This general detachment from the state and politics can be expressed in different ways of life. Some are quite apolitical, some are leftist, and yet others describe themselves as liberal (or libertarian). Some of the latter will quote anti-Islamic discourses from the global north as a way to criticise political Islam in their own country a strategy at odds with views of leftist atheists. All, however, feel estranged from state and society by their atheism but, perhaps because of their differing social class origins, they find different ways of expressing it ideologically.

Atheism also has consequences for private relationships, and for sexuality. Without the normative framework of religion, atheists have to find their own understandings of what relationships, love, and sexuality mean to them. Monogamous female-male relationships are the norm for many atheists, but they do not base these relationships on religious ideas such as kodrat wanita (the essential female nature). Often, they demand from, and allow, their partners more freedom. Models of relationships not accepted in mainstream society such as polyamory or same-sex relationships are usually accepted. Atheists often indeed define their sexual morals precisely in opposition to Islamic teaching. They mercilessly mock, for example, the conservative network Indonesia without premarital relationships.

Yet finding their own ethics presents many Indonesian atheists with a major challenge. Most were raised as religious people. They now have to conceptualise entirely new approaches towards what is good and bad, and how one should behave towards others. Many Indonesians indeed many societies around the world view atheists as having no ethics. To them, all ethics come from religion. There are some atheists who subscribe to a rather Nietzschean way of looking at morals. That is, rather than taking the genealogy of morals for granted as something given and natural, they want to rethink them for themselves.

Some others respond more out of their disaffection with society, as a way of rebelling silently against it. They withdraw from common morals and, in their own social spaces, follow rather hedonistic ways of life. Other atheists engage with society precisely because of their atheism. Since they feel that society, under the influence of (reactionary) religion, is at odds with what they value as good and right, they take on the struggle for their values. These values are, of course, based on atheist convictions. They focus on different goals, such as environmental protection, social justice and civil liberties. But they know they cannot make their atheism explicit when arguing for their causes in public.

Many Indonesian atheists left religion because of bad personal experiences. Others left because they believe in science, which they see as being in conflict with religion. The decision to become an atheist is a personal one in the first place, but it heavily influences the way someone engages in a religious society. Having taken that step, one has to find out what it means for everyday relationships. Atheism, in return, can be an expression of uneasiness with the religious foundations of society. It allows people to look differently at things mainstream society takes for granted. What appears normal to most Indonesians begins to look like an absurd and arbitrary convention.

Atheists are an invisible minority most of the time in Indonesia, but that is no reason to leave them out of our picture of what we think Indonesia is. On the contrary, they can teach us to look at politics and social phenomena in Indonesia from a new, yet still Indonesian, viewpoint. Atheist perspectives arise both from within Indonesian society (that is, they are emic), as well as from outside, as they transcend norms of, and divisions between, societies. Their way of seeing the absurd and the cruel in things everyone else assumes are normal should help the rest of us to sit up and rethink what we think we know about this country.

Timo Duile (tduile@uni-bonn.de) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department for Southeast Asia Studies, Bonn University.

The rest is here:

An imagined threat - Inside Indonesia

Are the nonreligious a marginalized group in America? When I brought this question up to a friend who lives in New York the other day, he was skeptical. Practically everyone he knows is an atheist, he says, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. As someone who grew up in central Indiana and Colorado Springs, where I was sent to evangelical schools, his attitude both bemused and concerned me. The disconnect just serves to illustrate that how one answers this question may vary wildly depending on where one sitsin some cases quite literally.

According to a new report from American Atheists* called Reality Check: Being Nonreligious in America, those living in very religious communities reported substantially more discrimination in employment, education, and other services than those living in not at all religious communities.

Visual from Reality Check: Being Nonreligious in America, courtesy of American Atheists.

The Secular Survey, from which the report was drawn, includes data from 33,897 nonreligious Americansthose who self-identify as atheists, agnostics, humanists, skeptics, freethinkers, secular, and/or simply nonreligious. The surveys designers consider a lack of data on nonreligious Americans an obstacle to effective advocacy for the needs of this group, which the report describes as an invisible minority.

In a webinar for journalists and advocates, American Atheists vice president for legal and policy, Allison M. Gill, stressed that most data we currently have fail to distinguish between the various stripes of the religiously unaffiliated (i.e. nones). Nones may retain some religious beliefs or consider themselves religious without belonging to a formal institution, but this is not true of the nonreligious proper, as the report defines them. As Gill observes, this can sometimes obfuscate the needs of our community.

According to Reality Check, Participants analysis of community religiosity aligned well with geographic expectations. In other words, regions youd expect to be highly religious were reported by participants to be so. In addition, While nonreligious beliefs may be casually accepted in states like California and Vermont, nonreligious people living in states like Mississippi and Utah have markedly different experiences.

Stigma and Community Religiosity by State chart is from Reality Check: Being Nonreligious in America, courtesy of American Atheists.

Indeed, the 554 survey respondents from Utah rated their state more religious than respondents from any other state, although Mississippians reported a slightly higher degree of stigmatization of nonreligious people. The study measured stigma using a scale based on nine microaggressions targeting nonreligious people, and respondents were asked to note whether and how often they had experienced each one over the year prior to taking the survey. Per the report:

Nearly two thirds of all survey participants were sometimes, frequently, or almost always asked to join in thanking God for a fortunate event (65.6%). Nearly half (47.5%) of survey participants recalled sometimes, frequently, or almost always being asked to or feeling pressure to pretend that they are religious. Nearly half of participants were sometimes, frequently, or almost always asked to go along with religious traditions to avoid stirring up trouble (45.3%), and nearly two in five (37.9%) were treated like they dont understand the difference between right and wrong.

Of participants, 26.3% reported that sometimes, frequently or almost always others have rejected, isolated, ignored or avoided me and 17.3% reported sometimes, frequently, or almost always being excluded from social gatherings and events because of their nonreligious identity. When RD recently spoke with American Atheists Gill over the phone, she also noted that her organization and others like it hear from constituents every day who have complaints about their children facing discrimination and bullying in school, how theyre at risk at work for talking about their beliefs, how theyre not able to access government services.

Stigmatized minority or bullies without a pulpit?

The representation of nonreligious Americans as a stigmatized minority is bound to be contentious, particularly when the Secular Surveys respondentsa convenience sample recruited through secular organizations rather than a representative sampleskew so disproportionately white (92.4% vs. a U.S. Census Bureau estimate of 76.5%, including white Hispanic/Latinx) and male (57.8% vs. 49.2%), a profile that inevitably recalls elevatorgate and the racism, misogyny, and alt-right views that have come to characterize far too much of visible movement atheism in recent years.

If ones primary associations with being nonreligious are people like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, and their vocal and all too often abusive fans, its only natural to find it absurd and even offensive that such privileged and powerful men could be considered in any sense marginalized. But before we jump to too many conclusions, in addition to recalling the disparate geographic experiences noted above, we should also note that Secular Survey respondents skew disproportionately LGBTQ (23% vs. an estimated 4.5% of American adults as noted in Reality Check). In addition, Reality Check takes care to note disparate outcomes among African-American, Latinx, ex-Muslim, and LGBTQ respondents, the intersections of whose racial, ethnic, sexuality, and gender identities can affect their experiences as nonreligious Americans.

After reading Reality Check, I recently decided to test the waters on how the politically engaged, broadly progressive public might relate to the representation of nonreligious Americans as a stigmatized minority. I did so, as a queer nonreligious American myself, by posting a 24-hour Twitter poll in which I asked respondents, Can the language of coming out properly be used by anyone forced to conceal an aspect of identity, or does it belong only to the LGBTQ community?

I noted that the question was inspired by the new report on the Secular Survey, which found that many respondentsparticularly those in very religious communitiesare forced to conceal their nonreligious identity. The Twitter poll results are, of course, unscientific, but the replies were passionate and deeply divided in ways that matter for the kind of public discussion the Secular Survey is intended to spark:

While some respondents insisted that being nonreligious is a choice in a way that ones experience of ones gender and sexuality is notand even some self-identified atheists replied to the effect that they dont consider their atheism an identitythe fact remains that in many parts of the United States, being recognized as an unbeliever can come with severe social consequences. In addition, although ones beliefs about the nature of reality should ideally be a matter of conscience, children have no control over the beliefs theyre raised with or the communal norms that surround them.

If we recognize that forced religious conversion is an act of violence, then we should recognize that living in a community where its unsafe to disagree with the prevailing religious consensus and to refuse to participate in religious activities is also to experience violence. As a transgender woman and ex-evangelical, these issues are very relatable to me, as they are to many who have left high-control religious groups, and its my fervent conviction that they need to be part of our public discourse.

According to Reality Check:

Nearly one third (31.4%) of participants mostly or always concealed their nonreligious identity from members of their immediate family. Nearly half of participants mostly or always concealed their nonreligious identity among people at work (44.3%) and people at school (42.8%).

Family rejection can come into play as well, with the Secular Survey finding that 29.2% of respondents under 25 whose parents were aware of their nonreligious identity had somewhat or very unsupportive parents. By including questions about loneliness and isolation, the survey was able to suggest that such situations result in higher likelihood of depression, and it also showed that lack of family support for nonreligious Americans resulted in lower educational achievement. The reports prediction of likely depression corresponds well to recent social scientific findings on the psychological harm that comes to people who consider leaving their high-control religious communities but choose to remain.

In addition, some atheists are at risk of physical violence over their lack of religion. Only .8% of survey respondents reported being physically assaulted over their unbelief, although for African-American respondents the number is 2.5%. Meanwhile, 12% of respondents experienced threats of violence, and 2.5% experienced vandalism (14.2% and 3.2%, respectively, for Latinx respondents).

None of these facts make the experience of coming out as nonreligious the same as coming out as LGBTQ, but they do nonetheless show that disclosing ones nonreligious identity can be fraught and risky depending on ones social environment. While the report itself did not use the language of coming out, its framing is recognizable as that associated with social justice advocacy. The reports inclusion of intersectional analysis is also particularly noteworthy for an atheist organization, but is unsurprising given the diversity of American Atheists national staff and the organizations willingness to partner with religious organizations to work toward the common good, as the pluralism inherent in democracy demands.

With respect to the terminology of coming out, one of the qualitative responses included in Reality Check, identified as coming from a female respondent in Kentucky, reads in part, Joining an atheist/humanist meetup group helped me have the courage to come out with my secular beliefs. Prior to having a social group, I felt alone without a way to overcome judgement from religious family members. American Atheists Utah Director Dan Ellis also recently commented, When I came out as an atheist, I experienced discrimination from family members, adding that he lost friendseven ones who werent particularly religious.

Gill, herself a transgender lesbian, noted in our phone conversation that the Secular Surveys questions about identity concealment were indeed meant to get at a coming out experience, though the survey deliberately did not use that language in order to avoid possible confusion.

Asked whether she thinks the phrase coming out belongs only to the LGBTQ community, Gill remarked, I would vehemently disagree with that; I think it belongs to everybody. And I see a lot of similarities between being nonreligious and being LGBT. She stressed that this does not mean that the stigma and discrimination faced by nonreligious people and members of the LGBTQ community are the same, but observed that the process of coming to awareness of ones identity and beliefs and revealing it to other people and facing possible rejection is similar.

The use of the terminology of coming out outside of LGBTQ experience will likely remain contentious. But the hardships that many nonreligious Americans face for being nonreligious, while distinct from those faced by LGBTQ Americans, are still very real. Christian privilege and supremacism are pervasive in the United States, and much work remains to be done to render them more visible so that, along with white supremacism and patriarchy, we can work more effectively to dismantle them.

*Full disclosure: I am in regular contact with the leadership of American Atheists, and I was slated to speak at the organizations 2020 convention before it had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

More here:

Yes, It Can Be Hard to Be an Atheist in America; Now We Have the Data - Religion Dispatches

Despite the rise of the religiously non-affiliated (aka The Nones), being a non-believer is still a social taboo. This was recently confirmed by the American AtheistsReality Check: Being Nonreligious in Americareport, which compiles results from the organizations Secular Survey conducted last year. Out of the 34,000 respondents, almost half said they hid their non-belief from co-workers and people at school due to negative experiences. The survey also found that LGBTQ non-believers are more likely to hide their beliefs from family than straight/cis non-believers, and the 43 percent who were out said their parents werent supportive.

Im thankful to have understanding parents because my time in atheist spaces has taught me other queer/trans atheists arent so lucky. At best, relationships with their religious parents are awkward, but sometimes their parents disown them simply for who they are, which is whyhomelessness ratesin LGBTQ youth are so high. Even when theres no trouble at home, the constant bombardment of messages about how being queer and trans is a sin is detrimental to LGBTQ peoples mental health. A 2018 paper by theAmerican Journal of Preventive Medicinefound that queer people who regularly attend religious services are more likely to be suicidal than straight people.

Yet I rarely see room in LGBTQ spaces for non-believers. As several religious institutions became more LGBTQ-affirming and more LGBTQ people of faith made peace with God, theres been an increase of religiosity within the LGBTQ community. Many LGBTQ people do find solace in religious traditions, as well as motivation to fight for liberation, but the overemphasis on queer spirituality comes off to me asrespectability politics. Focusing the spotlight almost exclusively on LGBTQ people of faith is another way of appealing to the cis/straight gaze, and the result is less visibility for LGBTQ non-believers.

Back in January, before the pandemic lockdown, I flew to Dallas for the annual Creating Change conference to co-present a workshop on humanism with my friends Diane and Ashton. The event was fun, but there were only three spaces there for non-believers: our workshop, a caucus for non-believers, and a caucus Diane and Ashton led centering LGBTQ non-believers of color.

Even the Many Paths interfaith spacedespite advertising with various religious symbols, including theHappy Humanwas very Christian-centered. Because religion causes so much trauma for many LGBTQ people, there should be more spaces for LGBTQ non-believers as well.

The atheist community has gotten better about providing a safe space for LGBTQ non-believers over the past few years, although theres room for improvement. Thanks to trans atheists like Callie Wright and Marissa McCool, there have been a lot more conversations about trans issues that have made the atheist community more trans-inclusive. However, transphobic atheists still exist; they may be a small minority, but theyre vocal. All it takes is one Twitter dogpile from transphobic atheists to make a trans non-believer feel like theyre not welcome in the community. This leaves the trans atheist in a tough spot: not feeling welcomed in atheist spaces for being trans, and not welcomed in LGBTQ spaces for being a non-believer.

The spaces that do exist for LGBTQ non-believers are overwhelmingly white. Thats why last year Diane and I created Centering the Margins; a one-day conference held in DC for LGBTQ non-believers of color. Only about 50 people attended, but they all thanked us. It may seem like identity politics to some to have a space only for secular LGBTQ people of color, but given the intersection of racism, anti-LGBTQ bigotry, and anti-atheist bias many LGBTQ non-believers of color experience, there are certain conversations that cant happen if the space is majorly white.

According to the Secular Survey, non-believers involved with secular communities are less likely to battle with depression than those with no community. This is why there needs to be more attention for LGBTQ non-believers. Not safe spaces as in stereotypical recovery rooms for college students offended by different opinions, but places where LGBTQ non-believers can be authentic. Countless studies show theres power in having a chosen familya group of friends and loved ones someone can turn to for the support their biological family and peers never gave themand this chosen family can be the reason another LGBTQ person chooses to stay alive.

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Safe Spaces in Trans Atheism - Splice Today

May 11 (UPI) -- A new report says atheists in the United States face such widespread stigma and discrimination that many of them conceal their nonreligious identity from relatives, co-workers and people at school.

Atheist residents of "very religious" communities are especially likely to experience discrimination in education, employment and public services such as jury duty, according to Reality Check: Being Nonreligious in America, a survey released this month by American Atheists, a Cranford, N.J.-based nonprofit that advocates civil rights for nonreligious people.

The report says that although the percentage of Americans who consider themselves religious has been declining for decades and the diversity of religious beliefs has increased, nonreligious people "continue to live in a culture dominated by Christianity."

"Like religious minorities, nonreligious people too often face discrimination in various areas of life, as well as stigmatization, because of their beliefs," the report says.

Survey results

The report was based on the U.S. Secular Survey, which was created and managed by Strength in Numbers Consulting Group in New York. Nearly 34,000 participants age 18 or older who self-identified as atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, skeptics or secular people responded to the survey between Oct. 15 and Nov. 2.

"The Reality Check report reveals how widespread discrimination and stigma against nonreligious Americans is," American Atheists said in a news release. "Due to their nonreligious identity, more than half of survey participants had negative experiences with family members, nearly one-third in education and more than 1 in 5 in the workplace."

The percentage of survey respondents who mostly or always conceal their nonreligious identity from members of their immediate family was 31.4. The percent for co-workers was 44.3 and 42.8 for people at school, according to the report.

Among respondents under age 25, 21.9 percent reported their parents are not aware of their nonreligious beliefs. In that age group, 29.2 percent of those with parents who know about their nonreligious identity said they were somewhat or very unsupportive of their beliefs.

"We found that family rejection had a significant negative impact on participants' educational and psychological outcomes," the report says. "For example, participants with unsupportive parents had a 71.2 percent higher rate of likely depression than those with very supportive parents."

Geographic differences

The experiences of nonreligious people vary dramatically in different parts of the nation, Reality Check says. Nonreligious beliefs might be causally accepted in some states, including California and Vermont, but the stigmatization and concealment were higher on average in states survey participants reported as "very religious."

To reach those conclusions, survey participants were asked to assess how religious the people are in the community where they live and to rank the frequency -- never, seldom, sometimes, frequently or almost always -- that they had encountered nine types of "microaggressions" in the past year. Those experiences included being asked to go along with religious traditions to avoid stirring up trouble; being bothered by religious symbols or text in public places; being told they are not a "good person" because they are secular or nonreligious; and being asked by people to join them in thanking God for a fortunate event.

"As might be expected, participants from rural locations (49.6 percent) and small towns (42.7 percent) were more likely to say their current setting was 'very religious' than those from other settings (23.7 percent)," the report says. "Stigmatization and concealment were higher on average in states that participants reported are 'very religious.'"

The survey ranks Utah as the most religious state based on 80 percent of survey participants who live there calling their community "very religious." Mississippi is second with 78.7 percent.

Mississippi ranks as the worst state for stigma against nonreligious people and as the state where they are most often forced to conceal their beliefs. Utah is ranked as the second worst.

Sarah Worrel said she had friends of many faiths while growing up in Long Island, N.Y., and "you didn't presume someone was religious or of a particular religion until they told you." It's different in Mississippi, where she's lived since age 12.

"There's so little cultural diversity that it's assumed that you are some form of Christian unless you state otherwise," Worrel, the American Atheists assistant state director for Gulfport, wrote in an email. "I've met many atheists, pagans and other non-Christians here, but I usually don't find that out until I've gotten to know them well."

Worrel said she's had encounters with strangers trying to push religion on her and is always honest about her lack of belief but has not faced any serious discrimination. However, a friend lost a job for being an atheist, she said.

Questioning religion

Dan Ellis, the Utah state director for American Atheists, also is open about being an atheist.

Ellis said that as a child, he couldn't square what he learned in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with stories of a Biblical flood that destroys everything. His teacher couldn't explain why a loving God would kill babies in such a cruel way, he said.

Ellis, who was never a firm believer, also was unable to get satisfactory answers to his questions from church leaders and as an adult, he eventually became a "Jack Mormon," a term for an inactive member of the LDS Church.

For a long time, he thought it was wrong to be a non-believer. He wasn't sure how to refer to himself until he was in his mid-20s and a co-worker revealed that he was an atheist. Ellis began using that label for himself with close friends and family.

At the time, people he knew linked atheism with satanism, he said. Ellis lost friends and angered some relatives, who cut him out of their lives.

"There's a lot of discrimination and recrimination in Utah against atheists," Ellis said, adding that many atheists can't be open about being nonreligious for fear of losing their job.

Overlooked viewpoint

Other survey findings include:

Nick Fish, president of American Atheists, said in a news release that the struggles of nonreligious people are often overlooked.

"Thankfully, the U.S. Secular Survey has revealed the discrimination our community regularly faces," Fish said. "With that well-established, we need to find solutions and work toward ending the stigma faced by our community."

See the original post:

Survey: Atheists face discrimination, rejection in many areas of life - UPI News

These two exchanges occurred underneath existing blog articles of mine. Therabidly anti-Catholic traxxion(words in blue below) was replying under an article of mine about how many anti-Catholic Protestant polemicists are young earth creationists.Linguagroover(words in green) replied underneath my purely theological / biblical piece,Soul Sleep: A Thorough Biblical Refutation.

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The hypocrisy of this article is absolutely mind numbing.

Catholic criticises Protestant YECs . are you serious?Are you promoting the same Catholic church that placed Galileo under house arrest for supporting the Copernican model? and banned both of their books?

The same church that taught (inerrantly uh huh) and held to deeply flawed Aristotelian philosophy and integrated it into its religious worldview, including a static geo-centric universe? as believed and taught by Catholic apologist Robert Sungenis?

Since your premise is education of Catholics vs Protestants more than slightly disingenuous assertion that your condition in matters now considered science is supportive of your ability to interpret historical theology.

If youd like to have a serious, intelligent, informed discussion about the Galileo incident, Ive written several times about it (pick one of these and come back and dialogue):

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Nor was Galileo some irrefutable font of wisdom. He and the other scientists of the time made plenty of errors, too:

Lastly, the Galileo trial(s) had nothing directly to do with Catholic claims of infallibility, as St. John Henry Cardinal Newman explains:

So again Galileo, supposing he began (I have no reason for implying or thinking he did, but supposing he began) with doubting the received doctrine about the centrality of the earth, I think he would have been defective in religiousness; but not defective in faith, (unless indeed by chance he erroneously thoughtthat the centrality had been defined). On the other hand, when he saw good reasons for doubting it, it was very fair to ask, and implied no irreligiousness,After all, is it defined? and then, on inquiry, he would have found liberty of thought in possession, and would both by right and with piety doubt of the earths centrality.(Letter to Edward B. Pusey, 23 March 1867; cited in Wilfred Ward, The Life of John Henry Cardinal Newman [two volumes: London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912], vol. 2, 221; my italics and bolding)

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Consciousness after death is clearly taught in Scripture. Indeed it is which is why any religion asserting this (by faith it has no other methodology) is utterly incompatible with evidence-based science.

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Whatever brings you comfort: circular arguments; appeals to evidence-free assertion; . . . and trying to make out that atheism is a religion. I was a Christian. I know what a religion is. Atheism aint.

As you must know, many if not most of the important philosophers throughout history have been dualists and theists, rather than materialists. So its not simply blind faith. The existence of a soul, the afterlife, and God can be argued for strictly on a philosophical / non-religious basis, and has been defended by many brilliant, dazzling minds.

Secondly, I would contend that when you say utterly incompatible you overstep your own epistemological boundaries: the limits of your own chosen worldview. You can say that consciousness after death has nothing to do with science, and I would enthusiastically agree. Itcannot, by definition, because science (essentially applied empirical philosophy) deals with matter. Therefore, it has nothing to tell us about things like souls and spirit, which are irrelevant or nonexistent categories within its purview.

By the same token, however, because it cannot speak to those things, it also follows logically that it cannotrule them outfrom its own perspective. You can no more say, science has disproven the existence of souls than we can say, religion has disproven the theory of evolution. Both are impermissible, because they are serious category mistakes at the presuppositional level.

You also go way too far in insinuating that any religion that believes in consciousness after death (i.e., immortality of souls), must do so only by faith (false: we can also enlist dualist philosophy), and must be utterly incompatible with evidence-based science. The latter is also a false statement, based on what I have already stated: its like comparing apples and oranges or a fish to a bicycle.

Christianity is not only not intrinsically opposed to science; it was crucial and virtually necessary to thebeginningof modern science. See also: Christians or Theists Founded 115 Scientific Fields.

And we can bring much reason to the defense of our views, not just faith. Thats what the theistic proofs are about. You may disagree with them, but theyarespecimens of philosophical reasoning; not just faith.

Lastly, you flatly deny that atheism is a religion. Typically, as an atheist, you seem to think that science is the be-all and end-all of all knowledge (clearly and unarguably false), that it is based only on evidence (false: it necessarily entails mathematics and logic: both of which include unprovable and non-empirical starting axioms), and that atheism entails no acceptance of unprovable axioms. The latter is also spectacularly false, as I think I demonstrated rather conclusively in my paper:Atheism: the Faith of Atomism.

Id be happy to discuss any of these things at length. As it is, I will now make a new blog paper of this exchange. Ill post it here when Im done.

*****

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Replies to Atheists on Souls and the Galileo Fiasco - Patheos

BY NATHAN G. ALEXANDERNYU PRESS, 2019

Nathan G. Alexanders Race in a Godless World: Atheism, Race, and Civilization, 18501914 is a better book than its title, however accurate, might indicate. Well written and informative, the book rises far above the level of the academic thesis that lies at its heart. Perhaps more importantly, Race in a Godless World provides a solid building block in the still largely untold history of freethought and atheism.

The book begins by setting the stage for three intersecting strands of thought in the 1850s: freethought (atheism), rational science (soon to be dominated by Darwinism), and slavery. As Alexander frames it in his introduction,

Secular Enlightenment thought opened new avenues for thinking about race. It offered powerful arguments against inequality and slavery through the rhetoric of the equality of man, but it also served to emphasize the divisions between human races through the guise of rational science.

Indeed, throughout the 1850s freethinkers were generally anti-slavery. Freethinkers likewise found common cause with emerging science that suggested the world was much older than the biblical 6,000 years and therefore cast doubt upon the biblical account of creation starting with Adam and Eveand, by extension, all of Christianity.

But following the course of science to oppose racism wasnt as straightforward as atheists today would like to believe. While slavery was something most freethinkers, immersed in the ideas of humanism, found abhorrent, after slavery itself was eliminated and replaced by the Jim Crow racism of the late 1800s, the lines of moral suasion blurred. Evolution, in its early stages, would be used to make the argument that there was in fact a racial hierarchy of sorts, based on a rudimentary understanding of the science. (The author notes that Darwin himself didnt hold to any such hierarchy but felt evolution suggested the common humanity of all. Other scientists were not so certain, however.)

While this did create some tension within freethinking circles, Alexander does a good job of illustrating how freethinkers finessed this problem through a combination of emphasizing that science was still unsettled on the point or, more unfortunately, by acquiescing to a certain level of racist thought that they put aside in favor of what they felt was the more pressing matter of fighting Christianity in general. Its not always a flattering portrayal, but Alexander does a good job of examining the arguments around this issue, and generally finds that freethinkers, while far from being free of racial bias, at least tended to be more tolerant than the general public.

Freethinkers W.E.B. Du Bois (left) and Robert Ingersoll (right)

Alexander spends one interesting chapter examining the racism prevalent in the late 1800s against Asian people. Here, Western scholars in the freethought community generally came forward in a positive way, as they found much value in the history of a people that created a system of ethics and morality not based on Christianity or God. They viewed Confucius as a forerunner to secularization, calling him our great reasoner.

The late nineteenth century was one of conflicting attitudes towards segregationist racism within the freethought community. Most, following the impulse towards liberal humanism that had brought them to freethought, gave general support to the rights of black people, if still rooted in what we now see as some cringeworthy paternalism. The ideas and attitudes of such liberal thinkers as Robert Owen and John Stuart Mills both heavily emphasized that the character of a particular person was influenced most by circumstances, rather than by race.

But others, including Darwins own cousin Francis Galton, misused the ideas of evolution to support a tiered structure of what they regarded as scientific racism, or eugenics, as it came to be known. For instance, Galtons close follower Karl Pearson argued that the near elimination of native tribes in North America was unfortunate but on the whole necessary, and, on balance, that it brought more good results than bad.

But as the twentieth century began, Alexander describes how freethinkers and atheists, such as the Scottish-born J.M. Robertson, started to confront more directly the problems of these racist views and began to instead present the strongest arguments against racism that were rooted in an atheist perspective. They were instrumental in organizing the 1911 Universal Races Congress in London that came out definitively against scientific racism. But as the history of this Congress was retold, Alexander notes, the role of atheists and freethinkers has been minimized.

In a conclusory chapter, Alexander explores whats next for racism in a godless world. While generally positive, he raises a disturbing warning sign of atheism increasingly being part of one segment of the alt-right movement, again using a shallow understanding of evolution to underpin their racial beliefs.

Throughout the book, Alexander tells his story not only by exploring the ideas themselves, but also by highlighting those ideas through the lives and words of such freethinkers as Robert Ingersoll, Robert Owen, and W.E.B. Du Bois, as well as others, like Frederick Douglass, whose freethought sympathies were apparent if not firmly established. He also draws attention to a whole host of lesser-known characters whose stories deserve to be told and remembered, and he does so with verve and style. For instance, he highlights a satirical cartoon by Englishman W.P. Ball called Noahs Family, in which each member is portrayed as being of a different race (thereby explaining why there are different races). Another minor player brought to life is James Morton, an American atheist born in 1870 who became a regular columnist for the Truth Seeker, where he called upon Darwinian evolution to explain that the human race is one in all essential characteristics and that therefore it was impossible to talk about a race being superior or inferior to any other. Alexanders research is wide, and his selections are illustrative.

As the history of freethought continues to be explored, books such as this are integral to understanding the importance and strength of atheistic thought in history. They also serve to show that its not a story that is all virtuous or without internal conflicts and controversy. But that comes with the territory. Alexander provides a needed and readable account of a particularly important transitional time in freethought, and how it dealt with the most important issue of the last two hundred years. If the title of the book piques your curiosity at all, it is a book well worth reading.

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Race in a Godless World: Atheism, Race, and Civilization, 18501914 - The Humanist

It was striking, then, after the Revolutionary War, when the men who gathered for the Constitutional Convention banned religious tests for office holders, in Article VI. There would be no government church, no state religion, and, except for being signed in the Year of our Lord 1787, no mention of God in Americas founding text. Religious freedom was formally established in the Constitutions First Amendment. The Godless Constitution, as Moore and Kramnick called it in a previous book, was mostly the product of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who fought to keep God out of the document. But, while neither was a creedal Christian, both men were monotheists, and, like John Locke, their ideas about tolerance generally extended only to those who believed in a higher power.

It was another one of the revolutionaries who became a hero for the nonreligious. Thomas Paine, whose Common Sense had sold half a million copies the year that the United States declared its independence, died an outcast because of a later pamphlet he wrote on religion. Attacking the King of England was fine, but when Paine, in The Age of Reason, set his sights on the King of Kings, he was derided as a loathsome reptile and a filthy little atheist. It didnt matter that Paine, like Jefferson, actually identified as a Deist, or that his text opens with the blunt declaration I believe in one God; his criticisms of Christianity were so scandalous that he was written into history as a nonbeliever.

Such is the slippery label of atheist in the American context: slapped on those who explicitly reject it, eschewed by unbelievers who wish to avoid its stigma. Both atheists and their critics often make a hopeless muddle of the category, sometimes because it is genuinely complicated to assess belief, but often for other reasons. Some atheists try to claim as one of their own everyone, dead or alive, who has ever thought twice about religionand theres a bit of this slippage in Moore and Kramnick, where the religiously unaffiliated (the so-called nones) are all equated with the unbelieving. Some believers, meanwhile, use atheism to discredit anyone with whom they do not agree.

For atheists, at least, this definitional elasticity provided a kind of safety in numbers, however inflated: as their ranks grew, so did their willingness to make their controversial beliefs public. In the nineteenth century, Robert Ingersoll, the Great Agnostic, charged a dollar a head to the thousands who gathered to hear him critique Christianity; believers and skeptics had months-long exchanges in the pages of newspapers; and debates between the likes of the secularist J.Spencer Ellis and the theist Miles Grant packed venues the way that Sam Harris vs. William Lane Craig and Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham do today.

With nonbelievers starting to assert themselves, believers began more aggressively protecting their faith from offense or scrutiny. Blasphemy laws were enforced against those who insulted God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, or the Bible. A former Baptist minister turned freethinker named Abner Kneeland was arrested in Massachusetts for an article that he wrote explaining why he no longer believed in a monotheistic God; not even the prominent Unitarian preacher William Ellery Channing or the former Unitarian pastor Ralph Waldo Emerson, both of whom rose to Kneelands defense, could spare him jail time. In New York, a man named John Ruggles was sentenced to three months for insulting Jesus; in Pennsylvania, another man, Abner Updegraph, was fined for calling the Bible a mere fable that contained a great many lies. (Laws against blasphemy, though rarely enforced, still exist in Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Wyoming.) All but three states passed Sabbatarian laws, which were imposed on everyone, including religious observers whose Sabbath did not fall on Sunday. (Such prohibitions linger in blue laws, which now mostly restrict the sale of alcohol on Sunday.) One Jewish merchant took his case all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, only to be denied an exemption because, in the words of the court, Whatever strikes at the root of Christianity tends manifestly to the dissolution of civil government.

Few, if any, of those prosecuted for violating Sabbatarian or blasphemy laws actually identified as atheists, but that didnt stop their critics from denouncing them as such. Indeed, the charge of atheism became a convenient means of discrediting nontheological beliefs, including anarchism, radicalism, socialism, and feminism. Elizabeth Cady Stantons agnosticism and Ernestine Roses atheism were held against the early suffragists, and after eight allegedly godless anarchists were convicted of killing eleven people during Chicagos Haymarket affair and President William McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist who had rejected Catholic teachings, atheism became linked, in the popular imagination, with domestic terrorism. Public attacks on religion, Moore and Kramnick write in their account of how atheism became un-American, were presumed to lead to the advocacy of other dangerous ideas.

That presumption became both more popular and more potent during the Cold War. It wasnt politics or economics, some said, that distinguished America from its enemiesit was religiosity. From the root of atheism stems the evil weed of communism, the Catholic congressman Louis Rabaut declared, on the floor of the House of Representatives. Two centuries after the Founders wrote a godless constitution, the federal government got religion: between 1953 and 1957, a prayer breakfast appeared on the White House calendar, a prayer room opened in the Capitol, In God We Trust was added to all currency, and under God was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance. The Founders had already chosen a motto, of course, but E pluribus unum proved too secular for the times. Even as courts were striking down blasphemy laws and recognizing the rights of nontheists to conscientious-objector status, legislators around the country were trying to promote Christianity in a way that did not violate the establishment clause. They succeeded, albeit at a price: the courts upheld references to God in pledges, oaths, prayers, and anthems on the ground that they were not actually religious. The phrase ceremonial deism was coined by a Yale Law School dean in 1962, and in the decades since it has been used by court after court to explain exceptions to the First Amendment. Like saying God bless you when someone sneezes, the courts concluded, these under Gods and In God We Trusts are innocuous; they belong to the realm of patriotism, not prayer.

Not surprisingly, neither believers nor nonbelievers believe this. Every such ruling is a Pyrrhic victory for the devout, for whom invocations of God are sacred, and no victory at all for atheists, for whom invocations of God, when sponsored by the state, are obvious attempts to promote religion. Legal challenges to the Pledge of Allegiance, in particular, persist, because nonbelievers are concerned about its prominence in the daily lives of schoolchildren. Lawsuits to end the recitation of the Pledge in public schools began almost as soon as the words under God were added, and while ceremonial deism long thwarted those challenges, nonbelievers have lately begun to pursue a different strategy. Instead of arguing that the Pledge violates the First Amendments establishment clause, they have started arguing that it violates the Fourteenth Amendments equal-protection clause, because it presents an occasion for nonbelieving children to be ostracized. David Niose, the legal director of the American Humanist Association, is one of many who have suggested that atheists might even be a suspect class, the sort of minority who deserve special protections from the courts.

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Why Are Americans Still Uncomfortable with Atheism? | The ...

On Saturday, the blog Examining Atheism roused itself from a two-month slumber to claimin a nose-thumbing headline that

Churches see growth during economic downturns and times of crises. Atheism declines.

According to aCommonwealsummary of Beckworths findings,

During each recession cycle between 1968 and 2004, the rate of growth in evangelical churches jumped by 50 percent. By comparison, mainline Protestant churches continued their decline during recessions, though a bit more slowly. The little-noticed study began receiving attention from some preachers in September [2008], when the stock market began its free fall. With the swelling attendance they were seeing, and a sense that worldwide calamities come along only once in an evangelists lifetime, the study has encouraged some to think big.

You and I mournfully see a pandemic that has already taken more than12,000 lives in the U.S. alone. All manner of evangelicals see something else besides: an opportunity to grow their tribe. The very title Praying For Recession is, I surmise, Beckworths wry little jab at the churches who cheer no, welcome misery because its good for their business.

As for EAW, its a little odd that anyone would paint these pastors salivating optimism as a good thing.

Much the same is true for the next source EAW cites, a paper I couldnt find online thats called The Changing Face of Global Christianity, by Todd Johnson andSandra S. Kim. Im quoting a central passage from it via EAWs post:

Much of the global South deals with serious issues of poverty and a lack of access to proper health care. Countries that have been hardest hit by AIDS, such as Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland, are also countries where Christianity is flourishing. Without access to the necessary medical care, accounts of healing and exorcism found in the Bible are taken more seriously.

But seriously: It takes a morally stunted person to not see this vulturous awfulness as an indictment of the evangelical faith, rather than a feature.

To his or her credit, EAW has at least produced sources to buttress the claim that Christianity stands to gain should the economy spiral into depression. But what about the assertion that atheism will decline? EAW writes this in support, and nothing else:

The atheist/agnostic website RationalWiki has seen a slide in its global market share and web traffic amidst the coronavirus crises [sic] as can be seen by this graph:RationalWiki Alexa ranking.

Its astonishingly unmethodical to pick just one site. I just looked at theAlexa numbers for some other atheist hangouts. Most are actually up from three weeks ago: joemygod.com, freethoughtblogs.com, atheistrepublic.com, and logicallyfallacious.com, for instance. I also noticed that over the same period, christianitytoday.com has been on a slide, as have focusonthefamily.com, christianbook.com, and christianpost.com.

But so what?RationalWiki isnt a yardstick of how many atheists there are just as Christianity Todays lower ranking doesnt show whether the number of Christians is declining. As Hemant noted when we discussed this,

Its just absurd to point to the supposed popularity of a random website as an indication of whether religion is more or less popular. Thats what surveys are for, and we dont have that data yet.

It is assured that the coronavirus calamity will inflict much, much more misery, including deeper financial pain for millions. Is it possible that this will drive more people to try religion? Of course. As EAW notes with hand-rubbing glee, it wouldnt be the first time.

But what about all theselfish, even murderous behavior weve seen from a variety of Christians in recent weeks? Doesnt the Bible say that ye shall know them by their fruits (and, were finding, maybe even more so by their fruitcakes)? Its entirely plausible that scores of disgusted, fed-up people will turn their backs on organized faith. Well see.

(Image via Shutterstock)

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Christians Claim the COVID Crisis Will Make Converts and that Atheism Will Slide - Friendly Atheist - Patheos

Gotta love the COVID comedy contained in the April Fools letter, Light is delusional, deranged or an atheist. Does the delusional letter-writer recognize that an unquantifiably higher number of crimes and deaths have occurred in the name of God than atheism? The Spanish Inquisition unleashed God only knows torture on non-believers or people who just didnt believe in the right god. 9/11s destructive barbarity was inflicted in the name of God with the 9/11 monsters volunteering their life to defend their god. Or is this letter-writer arrogantly stating that she has a monopoly on god that others lack?

Some children make up imaginary friends, and my theory is some adults carry on this illusory practice and call their imaginary friend God. Everyone has their own god, with the mode being no god at all that Pew & Gallup polling estimates the low end to be 10% while recognizing: 1. Peoples reluctance to claim to pollsters atheist status (which most definitely does not include me); and 2. Atheism slowly creeping up in recent decades (church membership has certainly dropped ... Gallup: 1999 church membership 70% vs. 2019 down to 50% with 20% decline attributable to the increase in no religion).

Might this god phenomena stem from people taking themselves too seriously, filled with self-importance, unable to accept their own personal insignificance in the scheme of it all? Logic demands that societal living in a community makes us interdependent with a necessary tolerance of views differing from ones own. Honesty, respect and mutual consideration support a do unto others as youd have done unto yourself internal dictum that makes any external god or Jesus figure unnecessary. Please apply this universal standard to everyday living and voting come Nov. 3, Election Day.

Jay Lustgarten

Westerly

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Letter: Honesty, respect needed in society, but not God - The Westerly Sun

Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayotallah Syed Ali Khamenai, has hit out at the western culture amidst the outbreak of deadly pandemic. He said that the western culture is based on materialism and atheism, or, in some western countries they have said that the corona[virus] patients who are elderly, disabled and have major problems are not a priority to receive medical care.

Taking to Twitter, he added, All of this is a result & product of the dominance of #WesternCulture, which is based on materialism & atheism.

Khamenai was speaking on the birth anniversary of Imam Mehdi the twelfth Shiite Imam. He further added that the western civilization had a savage spirit, a few days ago, a western official said that with the corona[virus] outreak we are witnessing rule by the #WildWest.

Some were surprised when we said that western civilization has a savage spirit that comes together with a perfumed and smart appearance. Now theyre confessing to this, he wrote.

He also pointed out that the hoarding of toilet papers and other items in the western countries, Confiscating other nations masks, emptying shops, fighting over toilet paper and long lines for buying guns during the #Corona[virus]Outbreak are the logical and natural outcome of the philosophy that governs #western civilization, said Khamenai.

He further credited Islamic culture for fight against cororonavirus. All of this participation in the fight against #Corona[virus] are signs of the roots of #IslamicCulture in ppl [people].

In contrast, #WesternCivilization showed its outcome too, one of the most appalling of which is the US & some European countries confiscation of other nations masks and gloves, he explained.

He also applauded peoples participation in the fight against the virus, mentioning incidents of:

1) people feeding the needy; 2) turning houses into workshops to sew free masks; 3) disinfecting public areas; 4) talking to landlords and shop owners to exempt ppl from their rents; & tens of other measures.

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COVID-19: Khamenai hits out at "materialism and atheism based" western culture - The Kashmir Walla

The question that never goes away for Christians is Why does God allow evil and suffering? The latest version of this question is Where is God in a coronavirus world?

This question in its various forms is asked in different ways by different people. Some ask with a philosophers edge, as if calamities like the coronavirus are defeaters of Christianity, proving that the idea of a loving God watching out for us is obviously not believable. For others, the question is asked through tears, by those deeply wounded by personal experiences of loss, abandonment, or hurt.

Almost as soon as this question became relevant againin the face of the coronavirus pandemicDr. John Lennox turned around a book with answers. If you know anything about the publishing world, the speed of this is stunning. And, if you know anything about Dr. Lennox, its probably not because of his work in group theory as the building block of abstract algebra.Lennox is an Oxford mathematician and also a Christian apologist who has debated the top atheists and religious skeptics of our time, including Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer, and the late Christopher Hitchens.

In these debates, hes faced the skeptics claims about how the existence of evil and the existence of God are incompatible. His outstanding little book, published in what must be record time, is calledWhere is God in a Coronavirus World? In it, Lennox gives answers to the skeptics arguments, but thats not really what this book is finally about.

Lennox wrote this book in order toconvey some comfort, support and hope,to people who feel disoriented, concerned, even fearful because of the coronavirus pandemic and all of its consequences and disruption in our lives.

And to this end, Lennox succeeds.

Like C.S. Lewis, whose essay On Living in an Atomic Age he quotes, Lennox notes that ours is not the first generationto facesome kind ofsevere threat to our lives and well-being. But, unlike many previous generations,we tend to think of these kinds of threatsas things of the past, and of personal safety as our God-given right.

Like Lewis, Dr. Lennox also uses our collective shock when bad things happento point out problems with atheism. For Richard Dawkins,the kind of suffering caused by pandemics is to be expected since, in his view, there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

In the universe according to Dawkins, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you wont find any rhyme or reason in it.Thus, as Lennox says, for thecommitted and thoughtful atheist,moral outrage is absurd. The so-calledproblemof evil moral or naturaldissolves into the pitiless indifference of uncaring matter.

Of course, most people, even committed or thoughtful atheists, cannot live this way, much less say it out loud.Still, its impossible to derivecomfort or hope from atheism without contradicting the worldview it implies.

Incontrast, while moral evil, natural disasters anddiseaseslike COVID-19 do pose a real challenge to theChristian belief that this universe was created and is governed by a good God, within the Christian story itself is ananswer to that challenge.

The universe is not the way its supposed to be. Humans were not the only part of creation affected by the Fall. Nature itself was fractured by that same event, Lennox says. As Romans 8 describes, creation was subjected [by God] to futility. The Greek word for futility, or ineffectiveness means something ... [that] has not achieved the goal for which it was designed.

But our current state is not, praise God, the end of the story.Through thesuffering death and resurrection of Christ, a process has been inaugurated by which not onlyhumans,but the rest ofcreationalso, will be rescued from the effects of the Fall.

As Dr. Lennox says, a Christian is not a person who has solved the problem of suffering, but one who has come to love and trust the God who has suffered forthem.

If you are dealing with doubts and questions about Gods goodness because of the coronavirus, or you know someone who is, Dr. Lennoxs book, Where is God in a Coronavirus World? will help. This month, Id love to send you a copy as a thank you for any gift of any amount to BreakPoint and the Colson Center.

Next Wednesday, Dr. Lennox will be my guest on the BreakPoint Podcast. You wont want to miss it.

Publication date: April 9, 2020

Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Motortion

BreakPointis a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.

John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN),and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.

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Where Is God in a Coronavirus World? - Christianheadlines.com

SARTAJ AHMAD SOFI

The times we live in are called post-modern. It is undoubtedly the age of science and ultra-rationality, the end result of which is estrangement from religion. Religion considers faith and science considers rationality as the sole means for explaining all events in the world. The manifestation of this shift from religion to science is the rapid expansion of atheism. Within the religions, too, classifications of traditional, conservative and liberal attest to the growing sense of detachment among the adherents. During this age of ultra-rationality, it is believed that whatever happens is due to anthropomorphic and ecological causes and has hardly anything to do with morality and religious disobedience. The conservatives always blame peoples religious disobedience and moral degeneration as the sole cause of catastrophes on the earth while the liberals blame peoples ignorance and the mismanagement of resources. The demarcation line between conservatives and liberals is deeply etched in the minds of the educated classes of society.The ongoing pandemic, i.e., Covid-19, has manifested many mysteries which otherwise were considered as prodigal and irrational. This pandemic is reshaping human thinking. The sense of super power has been transformed reduced to dust. Both developed and developing countries are sailing in the same boat and both believe that the rescue lies in natural powers rather than human endeavors. Indeed, the occurrences of epidemics are being considered as a result of moral degeneration and religious disobedience. Prior to that, religion in any way was not taken into consideration. One of the positives of Covid-19 is that necessity of religion is being accepted worldwide. Generally, now the world is looking to God to save it from the pandemic. The followers of every religion are truning more and more to prayers.The concern of religions with rituals is being discussed extensively now. The question of suspension of religious rituals during the pandemic is being hotly debated. It has divided the world into three categories: one group believes that religious rituals cannot be suspended in any situation, while another group considers total suspension of rituals as valid, and a third group adopts the middle path and talks of changing circumstances and modifications to be made accordingly. Thanks to Islam, Muslims have a tool called ijtihad, under which a learned qualified scholar (Mujtahid) exercises the power of intellect and deducts regulations and guidelines within the shariah. Throughout the course of history, Muslims have done ijtihad in two ways; individual opinion called Qiyas and collective opinion called Ijma. Regarding the current issue of suspending Friday congregations and other religious gatherings, Muslim scholars have almost agreed that during such circumstances, these practices can be suspended in view of the dignity and life of people. To save life is superior to anything else, even superior to religious rituals. Some scholars, of course, hold another view as well.The pandemic has brought even atheists close to religion, evident in their curiosity regarding issues and concerns of religion. These young and estranged people can be now observed everywhere on the globe. Therefore, it can be argued that the pandemic has brought much devastation but it has also brought some positive changes. It has created a sense of morality and social well-being which is a good foundation for universal brotherhood based purely on humanitarian grounds.

The writer is a research scholar at Shah-i-Hamadani Institute of Islamic Studies, University of Kashmir

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Covid-19: A Journey from Atheism to Theism - Kashmir Reader

Stephen Meyer has finished his next book, The Return of the God Hypothesis, and (here is a bit of insider information) is currently awaiting copyedits from his publisher. The wheels of book publishing do not grind hastily. Ive read the book, and its fantastic. If you are impatient to get your hands on it, you can get a bit of a preview in a presentation Dr. Meyer gave at the 2020 Dallas Conference on Science and Faith. You can watch that right now:

Its poignant to think that the conference, on January 25, was held just a few days after the first COVID-19 case in the United States was confirmed, in a man who had visited Wuhan. That was here in Washington State. In our present surreal, locked-down virus world, such an event of course could not be planned. God willing, well return to something like normalcy before too long.

In the meantime, youll find meaning and inspiration in Meyers words. He opens by discussing the emotional response of one young woman who was present for his interview with Eric Metaxas at the 2019 Dallas Conference. She wept at realizing that there was a rational, objective, scientific response to the scientific atheism she had been fed by her professors in college.

Steves presentation reminds me of an admission by atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell that Paul Nelson referred to in a note at the end of his tribute here to his teacher Adolf Grnbaum, on Monday. Writing in 1945, Russell dismantled the classical arguments for Gods existence. But he granted a fascinating exception to the argument from intelligent design:

This argument has no formal logical defect; its premises are empirical, and its conclusion professes to be reached in accordance with the usual canons of empirical inference. The question whether it is to be accepted or not turns, therefore, not on general metaphysical questions, but on comparatively detailed considerations.

Those comparatively detailed considerations, to be judged on empirical grounds, are the subject of Steve Meyers next book and of his comments at the Dallas Conference. Dont miss either.

We are presenting, each Wednesday, videos of the main speeches from the Dallas event. Next week, check back here at Evolution News and watch Michael Behe on Darwin Devolves.

Link:

Watch: Preview Stephen Meyer's New Book The Return of the God Hypothesis - Discovery Institute

In these scarring last months of Hindutvas blood-blazed march in a notional constitutional democracy, Indians are finding there is tiny space in their public consciousness for one of the most marginal of their minorities if we view them as an ideology, an intellectual persuasion, a way of being: I am speaking of Indias multifarious non-believers, atheists and agnostics.

In the movement against the CAA-NRC-NPR, the agitations against the violence at Jamia Milia Islamia, Jawaharlal Nehru University and north-east Delhi, there has been a spectrum-crossing conjoining of Muslims, Sikhs, the Bhim Army, Christians, people of many and no genders and some non-believers under one ark. Herein, the ragtag of non-believers has made a quiet re-entry into public life on a livewire issue. But, some unpacking first.

As Hindutva advanced in this era, the atheists became lightning rods for fanatics. They were organized opponents of religious extremism but weak on wherewithal. In societies like ours, such folk dont get sustained mass support (lest the whatabouters rise out of the swamp and flog this essayist with the whip of partisanship, let me add the customary caveat: India isnt alone in embattling religious extremism. Pakistani and Bangladeshi dissenters have been slayed for blasphemy. Sri Lankans, including monks, who rebuked Buddhist extremists have been attacked).

In the 2010s, under Congress state governments, individuals like Narendra Dabholkar, MM Kalburgi, Govind Pansare and Gauri Lankesh were threatened and then assassinated. Collectively, its been long since these murders took place. There are updates in the press. But if we seek out tangible justice, theres been little headway in the investigations yet. The information trickles and the case transfers from one agency to another. One wonders if the Establishment has left these in a vacuum.

In a way, their killings signpost the social acceptance of religious violence in this era. These people were at the frontline of the fight in the hinterland against obscurantism, superstition, fanaticism, false history. In the 2010s, the attacks on the rationalists paralleled those against Muslims and caste minorities: These processes have been ongoing for long. In this setting, and as we have seen till now, all our fault-lines have dreadfully relapsed. Delhi and Uttar Pradesh look like war zones. But theres an unarticulated upshot.

This essayist finds it numbing that the many gurus, pontiffs, mahants and leaders of the major temples, sects and denominations within Hinduism havent said much over the bloodshed or the militarisation of their faith (only Narendra Modis hosts at Belur Math were irate when he turned a non-political aegis into one about citizenship). Does their collective silence show their political bent? In contrast, some non-Hindu leaders of other faiths have stepped in to engage, converse, argue with the government and its votaries.

Lynch mobs, cow vigilantes, outsider rioters in Delhi: Have we ever seen such an extrajudicial panoply? Chants of greeting as war cries; an amiable god, remobilized on car trunks, as a bellicose warrior. If one is a true imbiber of religious values, how can such violations be vindicated? Finger-pointing at the weaponizing of other religions cant be their justification. Is mimicry the only pushback?

Hinduism is rich in irreligion. Sramana, Charvaka and Nastika are schools of thought that venerate atheism, reason. For long, these have been muted, kept away from the public eye. They beg to be recalled, remade, re-presented. The atheists have a great chance to steer a set of Indians (not just Hindus) who may be born into a religion but are put off by religiosity or its extremists.

For this to happen, they will need to face up to their past. If they are to pitch their world view, they will be probed on how the Age of Reason led to imperial colonialism; how agrarian collectivisation led to the mass killings under Stalin; or Maos Cultural Revolution; or the sins of the Left in West Bengal or Kerala. They will have to be honest; and still hold their own.

Societies like ours, overdosed on religions, nary become irreligious overnight. Some sections, parts, regions might, but not en masse. Organized religion is revered, since the subcontinents nation-states fail to provide the basics of human life for the masses so often. Thus, a middle path to non-belief is salutary. The onus for this is on the atheists. They ought to fight off their alienation from the body politic of India and reinstate it as a legitimate way of being.

Communist Cuba, now sending aid to hyper-religious Italy to fight Covid-19, made that switch. The Castros, reared in an orthodox society, fought against Catholicism while in power, but made peace with the Vatican. Contemporary subcontinental society craves for this balance, where it may keep its faiths but on many public matters accord primacy to irreligious reason.

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Rousing the Atheists - Deccan Herald

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

A professor at Texas Tech University suggested in an email to Physics Department colleagues that he considering renouncing his atheism if get this President Donald Trump were to die from the coronavirus.

So a horrible untimely death of the president would bring this man to faith? Thats despicable.

Thats also a solid reason to take the estimated $27,000 in-state or $39,000 out-of-state costs per year to attend this school and spend the money elsewhere.

Who needs to be taught by idiots like this?

I am personally an atheist, wrote Richard Wigmans, the J.F. Bucy chair professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at TTU, in an emailed memo to his colleagues about the presidents handling of the coronavirus crisis, Campus Reform reported, but if #45 would die as a result of this virus, I might reconsider.

When confronted by Campus Reform about the quip, Wigmans said he hadnt expressed such a wish for Trump to die from the coronavirus.

He said hes being misinterpreted.

Wigmans said his statement is being blown out of proportion and taken out of context and wrongly interpreted as a death wish to the president and that this [was] a statement about myself, not about someone else.

Spoken like a true liberal: When caught red-handed, spin, spin, spin. Feign innocence, and the innocence will come.

But one has to wonder: What if Trump had said the same about, say, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi? Or a member of the media? Thered be mass hyperventilating, widespread hysteria.

The takeaway is this: The mass closing of schools and colleges due to the coronavirus may actually be a blessing in disguise. Itll keep the kids away from the overeducated fools of so-called places of higher learning, if only for a few months longer.

Cheryl Chumley can be reached at[emailprotected]or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast Bold and Blunt byclicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter byclicking HERE.

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Atheist professor says he'll believe in God -- if the coronavirus kills Donald Trump - Washington Times

WASHINGTON: AtheistTexas Tech University Professor Richard Wigmans said that he will start believing in God if the United States president Donald Trump dies of, with a horrible untimely death.

In an emailed memo to his colleagues last week, Wigmans, according to areportby Campus Reform, suggestedthat he consider renouncing his atheism if Trump died after contracting the coronavirus.

I am personally an atheist but if #45 would die as a result of this virus, I might reconsider,wrote Wigmans.

Whenconfronted by Campus Reformabout the claimed, the J.F. Bucy chair professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at TTU said that his email is being misinterpreted.

This is a statement about myself, not about someone elseI have distributed some emails to my colleagues in which I provide a scientists perspective on the available COVID-19 data, and use the observed trends to make some predictions.

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If Trump dies of Corona, will believe in god: Atheist Texas prof - The Siasat Daily

The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) was founded in 1976 by a prominent American atheist and abortion advocate. As the foundations website explains: The history of Western civilization shows us that most social and moral progress has been brought about by persons free from religion.

The website also features a quote from Charles Darwins unabridged autobiography: I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true this is a damnable doctrine. Appropriately, FFRF has in the past honored prominent Darwinists Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Lawrence Krauss (among others) with its prestigious Emperor Has No Clothes award.

Although FFRF devotes most of its energy to stamping out public displays of Christianity, it has also opposed the teaching of intelligent design (ID). According to ID, it is possible to infer from evidence in nature that some features of the world, including some features of living things, result from intelligence rather than unguided natural processes. Since ID contradicts Darwins core (and atheism-friendly) belief that evolution was unguided, FFRF has long regarded ID as a form of religious creationism. As such, FFRF argues that ID cannot legally be taught in publicly funded institutions.

The crowning achievement in FFRFs crusade against ID was its 2013 takedown of Professor Eric Hedin (pronounced he-DEEN) at Ball State University (BSU) in Indiana. Evolutionary biologist and FFRF Honorary Board member Jerry Coyne led the charge. Up until 2013, BSU physics professor Eric Hedin had taught an interdisciplinary honors elective that emphasized the relationships of the sciences to human concerns and society. It explored differing viewpoints on a number of issues, including intelligent design, and the assigned readings included critics as well as defenders of ID. Hedin had prepared the class in accordance with university regulations through the usual processes.

FFRF wrote a letter to BSU complaining that Hedin was engaged in religious proselytizing. BSU ended up cancelling Hedins course.

The following September, University of Washington evolutionary biologist David Barash published a piece in the New York Times titled God, Darwin, and My College Biology Class. Barash wrote:

Every year around this time, with the college year starting, I give my students The Talk. It isnt, as you might expect, about sex, but about evolution and religion, and how they get along. More to the point, how they dont.

He continued:

The more we know of evolution, the more unavoidable is the conclusion that living things, including human beings, are produced by a natural, totally amoral process, with no indication of a benevolent, controlling creator.

According to one student, Barash then had his class of 200 undergraduates sing his version of a Hank Williams classic:

Ive wandered so aimless, life filled with doubt.I didnt know what truth was about.Then Darwin came like a stranger in the night.Praise evolution, I saw the light!

I saw the light, I saw the light.No more darkness, no more night.No higher power, but Im oh so bright.Praise evolution, I saw the light!

Inspired by Barash, FFRF added the following logo to their stationery, Praise Darwin: Evolve Beyond Belief. Two members of FFRFs Executive Board of Directors had misgivings about adopting the logo. It looks too much like religion to me, one of them said privately. But the logo remained.

Two years later, Darwinian philosopher Michael Ruse published Darwinism as Religion, which pointed out that Darwinian evolution has always functioned as much as a secular form of religion as anything purely scientific. Two more Executive Board members became uneasy at FFRFs position on evolution. But the four dissenters were in the minority, and FFRFs position remained unchanged.

Then, early in 2020, FFRF received word that a high school student had secretly taped a biology teacher making disparaging comments about the theory of evolution. Outraged, an attorney for FFRF wrote to the school district that no controversy exists in the scientific community regarding the fact of evolution, and the teaching of alternative theories or a controversy is not only inappropriate and dishonest, it is unconstitutional. The tiny rural school district lacked the resources to challenge the FFRF, which has a legal staff of ten attorneys and two legal assistants. So the superintendent merely replied that the teacher in question would comply with the New York State Education Law and the U.S. Constitution.

On February 28, 2020, the FFRF issued a press release announcing: N.Y. public school reins in proselytizing teacher, per FFRF advice. According to the press release, the teachers anti-scientific rant was both unconstitutional and pedagogically deplorable.

The incident was subsequently reviewed by an FFRF Executive Board member (not one of the four original dissenters) who had training in both biological science and constitutional law. She knew that controversy over evolution does exist in the scientific community. Furthermore, she noted that FFRFs letter to the school district cited several court decisions but left out the most relevant one: Edwards v. Aguillard (1987). In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that teaching creation science in public schools is unconstitutional, but questioning the scientific validity of evolution is not unconstitutional and may in fact be encouraged. FFRFs criticism of the teacher had been dead wrong. The board member agreed with the four dissenters who had already concluded that Darwinism was functioning as a religion.

At an emergency meeting a week ago, a majority of the members on FFRFs Executive Board of Directors voted that Darwinian evolution is, in fact, a religion. The board resolved that FFRF would henceforth oppose public funding for it and work to prohibit its teaching in public schools and universities.

Yesterday, FFRF issued a brief press release confirming the boards decision:

After long and careful deliberation The Freedom from Religion Foundation has recognized that Darwinism, like Christianity, is a religion. So the foundation now opposes the teaching or even the mention of Darwinian evolution in publicly funded institutions. Let freedom ring!

In other news: Today is April Fools Day.

Photo: A (genuine) sign in Harrisburg, PA, from the Freedom from Religion Foundation, by Jason / CC BY-SA.

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Breaking: Freedom From Religion Foundation Opposes Teaching Evolution in Public Schools - Discovery Institute