Category Archives: Atheism

Ho Chi Minh City (Agenzia Fides) - On November 24, the universal Church celebrates in the liturgical calendar the feast of Andre Dung Lac and the Vietnamese martyrs: their example and heroic stories are vividly relived in the churches of the 26 dioceses of Vietnam which solemnly celebrated the liturgical feast yesterday with the Vietnamese parishes of the faithful of the diaspora in the world. On this important day, the faithful sang songs of praise to the martyrs and the churches rang the bells with pride and joy. Vietnamese Catholics love to dedicate noble sentiments and prayers to martyrs, recognized as faithful intimately united to the heart of the Son of God, who despised death and worldly interests and, faced with death, were not afraid to choose God. The 117 martyrs canonized by St. John Paul II in 1988 are only a very small number compared to the more than 100,000 people who were imprisoned and painfully died in Vietnam under the Nguyen dynasty during fierce persecutions between the 17th and 19th centuries. They were Vietnamese and foreign bishops, priests, religious and parishioners. They did not want to be commemorated by the world, nor to be honored by posterity: blessed with divine grace, they found happiness and victory in God himself. They died in the heat of genuine faith. "The mystery of martyrdom is a testimony of God, martyrdom does not mean the opposition between atheism and theism, nor a conflict between different religions. Martyrdom is understood simply as a testimony of the noble values of the Gospel, a testimony of the saving love of Jesus", said Archbishop Joseph Nguyen Nang, of the Archdiocese of Ho Chi Minh City, yesterday, November 24, during the liturgical celebration of the Vietnamese martyrs. "Martyrdom is not only a mystery, but also a grace. The martyrs presented themselves before the high officials as a firm witness to the faith and love of God, through the power of the Holy Spirit. The martyrs were ordinary people, even ignorant peasants but, in front of the king and the high imperial officials, they reacted in a very wise, judicious and confident manner. This was a grace of God, not the work of man. They too were human beings in flesh and blood, as weak as us. If they could endure all the lashes, the chains and the cruel tortures, it was truly the grace of God and his power, which dwelled in them, that made it possible". The Prelate concluded: "The spirit of martyrdom is still necessary in today's civilized world where there are forms of persecution: at times it is an external violence or an internal psychological pressure. That is why everyone must witness to God in today's society by always choosing the right values of the Gospel, by living according to the Word of God, by not letting bad events shake our faith and separate us from the love of Jesus. The attractions of worldly life are flattering, but we must say categorically "no", and not compromise with evil. The martyrs remind us to always be faithful to the law of God: today we are called to follow their example and the courageous witness of faith, for which they suffered pain, in order to obtain eternal life". Martyr Andre Dung Lac was a Vietnamese priest who was executed by beheading in 1839. On his way to the place of execution, he prayed in silence and sang aloud words of praise to God. Before the execution, the executioner approached him and told him: "We do not know what crime you committed, but we are only carrying out the order, please understand". With a big smile on his face, Father Lac replied: "The commander has ordered, so do it". And before giving his head to the executor's knife, he asked for the last few minutes of quiet to pray. "Your Majesty, I have served for over 30 years under three different kings and am always faithful to you as a citizen and patriot with all my heart; but today I will accept any punishment from you for not betraying my faith in Jesus Christ, as long as I am faithful to him", said Michael Ho Dinh Hy, one of the Vietnamese martyrs who held a high position in the imperial court. He did not give up his faith for worldly prestige, but preferred to remain faithful to God even if it cost him his life, as it did in 1857. Despite the king's temptations, he remained steadfast in his faith and tried to live like Jesus Christ, refusing all the material privileges and glories given by kings. Martyrs such as John Thophane Vnard of the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris (MEP), when arrested and tried in court, were invited to stand on the cross to be acquitted, but they categorically refused. John Theoane Venard answered unequivocally: "I adore the Cross and have preached for all of my life the Cross, the way of love, how could I irreverently trample on the Cross now? My life would not be worthy of my faith in God if I denied this belief". He was martyred in Tonkin in 1861. (AD-PA) (Agenzia Fides, 25/11/2021)

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ASIA/VIETNAM - The celebration of the Vietnamese martyrs and the example of martyrdom, alive and necessary today - Agenzia Fides

The idea that Christianity is simply wish-fulfillment is a common line of attack among skeptics. It just seems too good to be true, I could imagine someone saying. Sure, we all want purpose and meaning in this life and a reason why things happen. But its just wishful thinking. Were tricking ourselves. We need to face reality. A cold reality, but reality all the same. Not things we believe just to make us feel better.

When faced with such a challenge, we must not succumb to panic but first realize a crucial fact: This, and this type of wishful thinking argument in general, attempts to suggest Christianity is false by explaining why Christianity is false. In other words, it assumes Christianity is false from the very beginning. This is no argument at all; it fails before it gets started.

One should also note that the skeptic is being inconsistent. While affirming there is no such thing as meaning or purpose, the skeptic is only telling you Christianity is wish-fulfillment because he believes truth is important, and we should follow reason and logic. But if the whole show, ourselves and everything about us included, is utterly meaningless and without true purpose, why do we have any obligation to believe what is true, let alone try to convince others to believe the truth and suggest they have an objective moral obligation to follow the evidence? In arguing against meaning, they assume and affirm meaning. And thus their argument and atheism as a whole collapses. I have written about this before, so I will not belabor the point.

We have good grounds to dismiss the charge of wishful thinking already, but lets go deeper. The skeptic assumes Christianity is immensely preferable to atheism, the latter of which provides them little reason to be biased in its favor. This is wrong-headed. When someone begins to wonder whether God exists, they often think that if they just knew God existed then all would be well and they would immediately worship Him enthusiastically. But the nearer they get, the more that idea proves totally false. The intellectual doubts are done away with. They have no reason to deny Him now. But they will still not follow His commands.

Why not? Its simple: It runs up against their desires. This leads one to quite a shocking realization: Their opposition to Christianity was not so much about intellectual qualms as it is a desire to follow practically anything thats not the Creator. It is one thing to believe in a god that gives you some vague feeling of meaning but is very much like you. It is quite another to believe in One who is not like you, who is holy and just and good and therefore must punish your transgressions, rebellion and sin. All of them.

Thats why we find Jesus words so frightening: Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops (Luke 12:2-3). Its scary because we know we are not good. Even our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment (Isaiah 64:6). And so, we stand helplessly guilty before Him, having committed the most egregious crime imaginable: rebelling and spitting in the face of the Lord Almighty. Nothing we do, no great thing we could ever hope to accomplish, can pay for such an unspeakable crime. We are like Macbeth: All great Neptunes oceans [cannot] wash this blood clean from [our hands], for the punishment for sins is not x hours of community service or good works but death and condemnation. This reality seems anything but wishful thinking.

Indeed, atheism seems far more likely to be wishful thinking along this line of reasoning. Sure, we want a God that helps us when we want, but we dont want Him telling us what to do (who does He think He is?). We want to do what we want, when we want and how we want. But more than that, we know our sins. We cannot bear the thought of having our friends and family (let alone God) see our thoughts and our search history or what weve said and done behind others backs. How much, then, would we love if there was not a judgment, not a final reckoning, none to tell us what were doing is wrong and heinous and black? We want to define how we should live. We want to be our own god. So, when God says our hearts are evil and we love evil and we will face a judgment for it, we naturally desire to stifle this voice in our minds. The natural man loves sin, which God hates. Thats why he will not obey Him and desires to rid himself of any reminder of Him.

But what of salvation? Is that not wishful thinking? It would be if the Christian were merely [presuming] on the riches of [Gods] kindness (Romans 2:4), thinking God will simply sweep our sins under the rug. It would be, too, if we said our works could save us. All attempts to save ourselves crumble into dust before Gods Throne. But we see the God-Man, Jesus, who came into the world to save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). We see His wounds, His body through which he bore our sins on the tree (1 Peter 2:24) and once for all time (Hebrews 9:12) paid in full the sins of His people. His death, His resurrection and His ascension to the right hand of the Majesty on high (Hebrews 1:3) prove to all generations that the Christians salvation is not wishful thinking but reality. As one hymn puts it:

Here we have a firm foundation,

here the refuge of the lost;

Christs the Rock of our salvation,

his the name of which we boast.

Lamb of God, for sinners wounded,

sacrifice to cancel guilt!

None shall ever be confounded

who on him their hope have built.

Andrew Sveda is a junior at Notre Dame from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, majoring in political science with a supplementary major in theology. In his free time, he enjoys writing (obviously), reading and playing the piano. He can be reached at [emailprotected] or @SvedaAndrew on Twitter.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

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Wishful thinking and reality - Observer Online

Asylum seekers are getting tattoos of crucifixes and Jesus to prove they have converted to Christianity and cannot be returned to the Middle East, the Telegraph can reveal.

Analysis of immigration appeal judgments shows tattoos connected to Christianity, atheism and homosexuality have been cited more than 20 times in the last five years by those fighting to stay in the UK.

The body art has been used to argue they risk persecution if returned to Muslim countries, where relinquishing the Islamic faith or being gay can be a crime.

Last week, the Church was forced to defend its conversion processes after Emad al-Swealmeen, 32, blew himself up in Liverpool after converting to Christianity to bolster his asylum application.

After the bomb attack Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, criticised how the merry-go-round asylum process was being exploited by the legal services using legal aid.

While asylum seekers who get such tattoos repeatedly secure the right to remain, one judge sitting in Bradford in 2018 condemned a 25-year-old Iranian man who obtained religious tattoos.

The ruling found that his tattoo did not represent a genuine reflection of the appellants faith. It said he should be returned to Iran because the tattoo could be removed, covered up or that he could tell Iranian authorities the truth - namely that he had pretended converting to Christianity in order to bolster his claim for international protection.

In contrast, a Birmingham hearing in 2018 allowed an Iranian man with amateur tattoos of a crucifix, Jesus and the Virgin Mary to remain. This was despite an earlier hearing concluding that his conversion was false and images obtained for the sole purpose of enhancing his chances of securing his asylum.

He was allowed to stay on human rights grounds, because he cannot be expected to removeor cover upthe tattoo to avoid persecution.

In February this year, an appeal against deportation was allowed after a Kurdish Iranian abandoned his Islamic faith to become an atheist rapper.

The 30-year-old man showed the tribunal his American Atheist tattoo, an atomic swirl denoting a rejection of all religious beliefs and a reliance on scientific analysis.

After he arrived in the UK, Mrs Patel rejected his claims to be an atheist or rapper whose anti-Iranian songs had been posted on social media.

But the judge, sitting in London, concluded the appellants tattoo signposts his atheist leanings and he cannot be expected to lie about what it is, or why he has it. He was allowed to remain in the UK.

Last year, a 26-year-old Iranian man who said he converted to Christianity and fled to the UK was allowed to stay because the judge sitting in Manchester found he has a mark of faith, a large tattoo.

The case, in which a clergywoman told how she was satisfied his conversion was authentic, illustrates how some churches have enjoyed a boost to congregation numbers due to the numbers of asylum seekers looking to convert.

The tribunal heard how more than 130 people from 37 countries attended special services, with at least 70 of them being Iranian.

Link:
Migrants use tattoos of Jesus and crucifixes to aid asylum claims - Telegraph.co.uk

In the recent governors race in Virginia, Glenn Youngkin scored a huge upset win days after promising to ban critical race theory from Virginia schools. Youngkin is hardly the only Republican calling for school bans. In Texas, Representative Matt Krause sent a letter to school administrators about books in their district. Did they have Ta-Nehisi Coates on their shelves? Isabel Wilkersons Caste? How about LGBT Families, by Leanne K. Currie-McGhee? Or any of about 850 other books that might, in Krauses words, make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex?

Beyond Texas, beyond Virginia, the prospect of banning books and ideas from public schools has GOP strategists smelling electoral blood. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy vowed to turn school bans into a winning issue for Republicans in 2022, sketching a parental bill of rights to protect kids from troubling ideas about race and sex.

Zachary D. Carter: The Democratic unraveling began with schools

These efforts have a history. Back in the 1920s, the vague term that galvanized conservative angst was not critical race theory but evolution. Conservative pundits at the time seized on a cartoonish misrepresentation of evolutionary science and warned their fellow Americans that evolution was nothing less than a sinister plot to rob white American children of their religion, their morals, and their sense of innate superiority.

But although the school bans might have changed some school curricula in the short term, in the long run, they backfired. Telling parents you dont want their kids to have the best possible public schools is never good politics. A full century ago, the most effective school-ban campaign in American history set the pattern: noise, fury, rancor, and fear, but not much change in what schools actually teach.

In the 1920s, the idea of evolution wasnt new. Charles Darwins bombshell book about natural selection had been published 60 years earlier. The outlines of Darwins theory had become standard fare in school textbooks and curricula, even though the real scientific controversies about the mechanism of natural selection were by no means settled. But the furious campaign to ban evolution had nothing to do with those debates among scientists.

Read: The evolution of teaching creationism in public schools

In 1923, T. T. Martin, the Blue Mountain Evangelist, preached that evolution is being drilled into our boys and girls during the most susceptible, dangerous age of their lives. Evolution, Martin warned, was not good science but only a plot by sneering high-brows to inject mandatory atheism into public schools. Martin claimed to have abundant evidence that the teaching of these text-books is unsettling the faith of thousands of students.

He never shared that evidence, but he did paint a terrifying picture of the evolutionary conspiracys results. Once the Evolutionists robbed children of their faith, Martin wrote, they laugh and jeer, as the rapist laughs and jeers at the bitter tears of the crushed father and mother over the blighted life of their child.

Martins pitch wasnt only about religion. He framed his fight against evolution as a fight against all manner of modern woes. Supporters of evolution, Martin preached, were not real men; they were sissy; they had given up their Christian manhood. They were not even real Americans; they were betraying the spirit of those who came over in the Mayflower, Martin said, adding, Where is the spirit of 1776?

What could anxious parents do if they wanted to keep their children safe from the schemes of atheists and sissies? How could they protect kids from a vision of America that wasnt focused on sturdy white Puritans and the heroic followers of George Washington? In language that could have come from 2021 and not 1923, Martin told parents to take over their local school boards, to put on the Board of Trustees only men and women who will not employ any teacher who believes in Evolution. After that, Martin predicted, seizing control of state legislatures and cramming through anti-evolution laws would be simple.

It was never quite that simple, but the movement to ban evolution from public schools seemed, for a few years, to be an unstoppable political juggernaut. School-board elections became furious affairs, pitting neighbors against one another with accusations of treason and atheism. To give just one example, in Atlanta, William Mahoney, the local leader of the Supreme Kingdom, a Ku Klux Klan offshoot, attacked school-board members and the citys teachers. He promised to force the reluctant school board to eliminate five teachers on suspicion of teaching ideas that were paganistic atheistic beastialistic and anarchistic.

State legislatures werent far behind. From 1922 to 1929, legislators proposed at least 53 bills or resolutions in 21 states, plus two bills in Congress. Five of them succeeded. Oklahomas 1923 law provided free textbooks for the states public-school students, as long as none of those textbooks taught the Darwin theory of creation. Floridas legislature passed a nonbinding resolution in 1923 declaring that teaching evolution was improper and subversive. Tennessee was the first to actually ban the teaching of evolution. It shall be unlawful, the 1925 law said, to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible. Mississippi followed suit, banning in 1926 the teaching that man descended, or ascended, from a lower order of animals. Finally, in 1928, anti-evolutionists in Arkansas managed to pass a similar law by forcing a popular vote.

Liberals quaked. In the words of one science educator in 1927, the U.S. had entered its first modern culture war, a pitched battle between two opposing cultures. On one side was science, progress, and liberalism. On the other were the forces of reaction and armies of ignorance with their sights set on dominat[ing] our public institutions.

In the furor of these political battles, few paused to examine the actual goals of the anti-evolution movement too closely. Oklahomas law, for instance, was at least as much about providing free textbooks as it was about evolution. And Floridas resolution was purposefully vague, purposefully symbolic. In 1923 Florida, what politician would vote in favor of subversive teaching?

Read: I was never taught where humans came from

The bills that did not pass, meanwhile, veered ever further from the actual science of evolution. One early bill in Kentucky in 1922 proposed to ban not only evolution but Darwinism, Atheism, Agnosticism, or evolution. As the bill wended its way through the process, lawmakers added provisos: The law would empower citizens to sniff out and report such teaching. School boards would be forced to interrogate any educator charged with teaching evolution within five days. And the ban became broader and more impractical with every new iteration. One Senate amendment, for instance, would have banned the teaching of anything that will weaken or undermine the religious faith of the pupils in any public school or college.

Kentuckys lawmakers werent the only ones hoping to ban anything they didnt like. Across the country, in state legislatures from Delaware to California, conservative lawmakers tried to score political points by banning modern ideas from their public schools. Congress considered a bill in 1926 that was supposedly anti-evolution but in fact imposed sweeping restrictions on the content of public schools. At the time, Congress controlled the budget for schools in Washington, D.C. The 1926 bill would have cut the salary of any D.C. instructor caught teaching disrespect of the Holy Bible, or that ours is an inferior form of government.

These bills were more about political theater than pedagogical policy. Their claims were so broad and so vague that they would have led only to chaos and confusion in public schools. In West Virginia, for instance, one 1927 bill simply banned any nefarious matter from the states public schools.

These bills never answered the obvious questions: Who would decide what counted as nefarious? What would a teacher have to say to be considered disrespectful of the Holy Bible? What did it mean to teach that other governments might have better ideas than ours? To be sure, many of these state bills never had much chance of ever becoming law. But Kentuckys wide-ranging bill failed by only one vote. If it had passed, it would have radically challenged the very idea of a liberal-arts education. What could getting rid of any ideas that could weaken a students religious faith have possibly meant?

Back then, just like today, no one knew. The anti-evolution movement wasnt really about banning one specific scientific idea; it was instead a confused and confusing effort to make America great again by purging its schools of science, history, and critical thinking. Movements to ban ideas from public schools were always less about realistic educational policy and more about planting a political flag for a vaguely defined vision of America.

How did the fight over evolution end? Every town and city was different, but Atlanta can offer one example of how frightening the anti-evolution surge could be and how fast it could fall apart. In March 1926, William Mahoney, the anti-evolution leader of the Supreme Kingdom, seemed to have brought the city school board to its political knees.

As the school board prepared to discuss a citywide ban on teaching evolution, Mahoney gathered 2,000 citizens in an open-air rally. A visiting preacher warned the crowd that if the school board failed to ban evolution, 20 years from now there will be no respect for law in Atlanta and Georgia will be a sea of debauchery. Yet the school board voted down a proposed ban, 93. As one member announced, good science was what every intelligent, educated, and open-minded citizen really wanted in Atlantas public schools. After its humiliating defeat, the Supreme Kingdom fell apart. Its national leader, Edward Young Clarke, became embroiled in a series of sexual and financial scandals, and Mahoney became a local laughingstock.

Nationwide, the anti-evolution movement suffered a less dramatic denouement. Instead of headline-grabbing showdowns and momentous defeats, the movement simply petered out. It became just another distraction that teachers had to deal with. About a decade after the last anti-evolution law was passed in 1928, one survey of thousands of high-school teachers showed that most had simply gone on with their teaching without fuss or bother. Several of them reported that they did not in fact teach evolution, but not because they were concerned about Christian manhood or upholding the Spirit of 1776. Instead, they were more worried about much more prosaic problemsmany reported that they could not teach evolution simply because they did not have enough time in the day.

Certainly, some teachers had been cowed by the fury of the anti-evolution movement. In a 1942 survey of high-school science teachers, one California teacher reported avoiding teaching evolution because controversial subjects are dynamite to teachers. Others, however, said they could never be scared away from teaching good science. One respondent from upstate New York, for example, insisted he would carry on teaching evolution. Ive had fights, he said, but havent lost yet.

Textbook publishers were less willing to fight. The vague outburst of hostility against evolution stymied the publication of textbooks that boldly and freely taught the best modern science. But wary publishers didnt cower before the anti-evolution mob as much as they pretended they did. They couldnt afford to.

As the careful work of the historian Adam Shapiro has shown, prominent publishers claimed to have edited out evolutionary content, but many times, they simply didnt. The best example might be the case of George Hunters Civic Biology. This textbook was at the center of the famous Scopes Trial in 1925. After the furious wave of anti-evolution bans had passed, the publisher offered a new edition, supposedly free of objectionable evolutionary content. In fact, however, the evolution-free edition was almost exactly the same as the old edition. The publisher merely removed the word evolution and replaced it with similar words such as development.

And no one objected. As Shapiro found, most of the conservative watchdogs appointed by anti-evolution lawmakers gave new textbooks the most cursory of glances. If publishers edited their indexes and tables of contents, if they removed the word evolutionthe word itself, not the ideathey could avoid expensive revisions to the text. As a result, many textbooks kept their scientific treatment of evolution the same.

Over time, even successful legal bans revealed their own inherent weaknesses. In Arkansas, for example, by 1965, science teachers were required to use state-approved textbooks that taught evolution, even though the states 1928 ban was still officially in effect. It was an absurd situation, and one brave teacher finally took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court ruled in 1968 that the states ban on evolution violated the Constitution.

Years before that, however, even in states like Arkansas that had legally banned evolution in the 1920s, people had quietly agreed that the ban violated a more fundamental requirement of public schools. Bans on modern ideas only hurt schools and students, they concluded. In the long runand, as in Atlanta, even in the short runthe call to ban evolution could not overcome parents insistence on the very best modern public schools for their children, schools free from the dictates of what one Atlanta school-board member called error enshrined in popular belief.

Back in the 1920s, the effort to ban evolution was not really about the science of evolution. It was instead an attempt to bolster political careers with sweeping but ultimately meaningless gestures. The confusion and vagaries of the 1920s bills were not accidental. Voters might not have known what scientists meant by terms like natural selection, but they knew what politicians meant when they took a stance against nefarious matter and against radical teachers who supposedly taught children that ours is an inferior government.

But the bans failed to change many textbooks, failed to change many classrooms, and failed even to change the course of many political careers. Politicians willing to stand in the schoolhouse door to keep out troubling ideas will not be willing to stand there forever. Sooner or later, the cameras will leave, and parents will demand that schools give their children the best available education.

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The Greatest (Failed) School Ban of All Time - The Atlantic

November 15, 2021 The Freedom From Religion Foundation is decrying conservative rallies for scapegoating atheists and calling for one religion under God in America.

Speaking at a recent three-day ReAwaken America conference, held at Cornerstone Church in San Antonio as part of a national tour, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, the keynoter, opined: If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God, and one religion under God. Flynn reportedly spoke about his Christian faith to refute QAnon claims that he worships Satan. Flynn has been comparing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Pontius Pilate in promoting his theory of the insurrection crucifixion.

Flynns remarks are distasteful, ignorant, threatening and truly un-American.

An outright attack on atheists took place in the opening prayer at a Take Back Virginia rally in mid-October, called by supporters of then-gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, which focused on a call to arms in a battle against communist atheists, according to the New York Times.

The Times, in an article citing many examples around the nation of what it terms is the menace created by the increasingly violent tone of GOP speech, published a photograph of the prayer. The Times reported that the urgency of a call to arms was conveyed right from the opening prayer, when conservative Joshua Pratt warned of the looming threat of communist atheists and said: Your children are in a battle, and we need your help.

Those at the rally pledged allegiance to a flag that the participants were told had flown over Trumps rally prior to the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Although Youngkin declined to attend the rally, former President Trump phoned in. During his call to the Virginia rally, Trump repeated his lie that mass voter fraud stole the 2020 presidential election from him. Other speakers included indicted former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon. Even though Youngkin did not attend, his campaign associate, Virginia state Sen. Amanda Chase, did. Chase has been censured by the state Senate for promoting election fraud conspiracy theories, including urging Trump to invoke martial law in December to seize voting machines.

The targeting of atheism at this rally and Flynns over-the-top attacks on secular government and true religious liberty are part of the increasingly troubling and often violent rhetoric of Christian nationalists, exemplified by U.S. Rep. Paul Gosars notorious tweet last week repurposing an anime video showing him brutally killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and threatening President Biden with two swords. Gosart was one of many Christian nationalist members of Congress who voted not to certify Bidens election.

The red-baiting bugaboo linking atheists with communism has been exploited to entangle Christianity and the U.S. government. Historically, it was invoked to insert religion into U.S. symbols and money in the mid-1950s. The congressional actions to adopt In God We Trust as a belated motto, to require its usage on all currency and to insert under God in the previously secular Pledge of Allegiance have had disastrous consequences for Americas reverence and respect for the secular nature of our government.

It is unfortunate that whole generations have grown up reciting a pledge that ironically divides what was once one nation, indivisible, and viewing a theocratic motto which turns believers into insiders and nonbelievers into outsiders. As Anne Gaylor, FFRFs principal founder, always liked to say, In God We Trust isnt even accurate. To be accurate it would have to say In God Some of Us Trust, which would be a very silly motto. Thats why FFRF embraces the original motto, E Pluribus Unum (From many, [come] one), chosen by a committee of founders.

E Pluribus Unum doesnt mean United we stand, says Dan Barker, FFRF co-president. It means Divided we stand. Americas strength is really the nature of its plurality: different states and different citizens, working together to form a more perfect union.

That union is indeed being menaced by Christian nationalists like Flynn and other theocrats who despise what helps make America great: Our godless Constitution, and a Bill of Rights that protects true religious liberty by barring government from taking sides over religion.

http://www.ffrf.org

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FFRF deplores Flynn and Christian nationalism's threat to atheists and nation - YubaNet

Dialogue is imperative to improving relations between people of various faiths and none. Too often, religion has been an enabler and sanctifier of intolerance and conflict. The relationship amongst persons of religious and nonreligious affiliations leaves much to be desired. Interfaith-belief communications have mainly been a master-slave, king-subject, lord-servant, conqueror-conquered affair. The relationship has been characterized by hate, hostility, mistrust, persecution, oppression, impunity, and conflict. Established religions treat nonbelievers with indignity and contempt. Mainstream faiths are often rallied against no faith traditions and non-believing communities.

Religion is codified not to tolerate or include the other, the nonreligious or unbelieving other. This unfortunate situation applies because people of faith wrongly assume that they have a monopoly of truth, knowledge, and morals. Believers are socialized to dislike or loath non-believers. They are conditioned to regard nonbelief in god as a serious crime, a capital offense, and, yes, a forbidden habit. Interestingly, a believer in one religion is regarded as an unbeliever by other religions. Dialogue within the universe of belief has been framed in faith, theistic or religious terms. Belief in a God has been made a criterion to participate in a dialogue. Interfaith or inter-religious, not interfaith-belief, dialogue has been the norm. An interfaith-belief dialogue that includes atheists and other non-believers is an exception. But this should not be the case. The dialogue project should be inclusive.

The entrenched religious antagonism towards the non-religious should not be a surprise. Religious intolerance is rooted in teachings, indoctrinations, and traditions. The Christian scripture explicitly describes non-believers as fools (Psalms 14:1), that is, those without knowledge and wisdom. Non-believers are designated as blind and ignorant (Ephesians 4:18). Belief in the existence of a God constitutes an automatic investor of wisdom and understanding. The scripture enjoins believers not to relate or yoke equally with nonbelievers (2 Corinthians 6:14-18).

Sacred texts sanction oppression and unequal treatment of nonbelievers. They make a virtue out of persecuting and discriminating against non-believers. The Islamic holy book contains verses that incite hatred and violence against non-Muslims. The Quran enjoins Muslims to attack and kill non-believers (Surah 3:151) and treat them without mercy. Other verses contain chilling statements of violence and intolerance. For instance, Surah 2:191 says: And kill them (non-Muslims) wherever you find them kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers (non-Muslims). Surah 9:5 states: Then kill the disbelievers (non-Muslims) wherever you find them, capture them and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in every ambush.

Among the Islamic traditions, conversion to Islam is celebrated, but renunciation of the islamic faith is an offense and a dishonor to the family. Deconversion from Islam is punishable by death or long imprisonment. Views that are critical of Islam are regarded as blasphemies and serious infractions.

But it is pertinent to note that religion is a mixed bag of doctrines. There are religious teachings and scriptural verses that emphasize love, tolerance, and compassion. But the antagonism towards people from no faith traditions is rooted in the hateful and immoral teachings and indoctrinations of religions. The time has come to take a critical look at these teachings that undermine interfaith-belief dialogue. Dialogue will transform communication between faith and no faith constituencies. It will turn the imparting or exchange of information between people of faith and no faith into a two-way process. What obtains at the moment is a one-way- an unyielding one-way religious communication.

What applies is a monologue, an intense religious monologue. The non-religious are constantly informed about religion and belief in God. There is no room to inform the religious about nonbelief or irreligion. Due to this one-way communication, the religious continue to languish in prejudice and ignorance of nonreligious canons including humanism, atheism, and freethought. The religious find it difficult to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the non religious.

In addition, a dialogue will change interfaith-belief relations into a business of equals, not unequals. It will transform interfaith-belief relations into an interaction marked by mutual respect. Dialogue will emphasize shared values and translate interfaith-belief relationship into an asset, and a mechanism to foster peace and development in the country.

Leo Igwe, nskepticleo@yahoo.com

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DIALOGUE AND INTERFAITH-BELIEF COMMUNICATIONSTHISDAYLIVE - THISDAY Newspapers

We may live in a postmodern age that has abandoned absolute truth as a relic of the past, but there are still many truths that the citizens of the west know in their heart are as obvious as they are non-negotiable. First and foremost is that wonderfully optimistic, if brazenly taken-out-of context maxim from Hamlet: The most important thing of all is that we be true to ourselves. The second maxim follows, that we must always trust our feelings and do what we know will make us happy, mentally stable, and self-actualized.

Then there is that fiercely-held democratic truism that the majority is always right and the governments job is to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number. Well, they might not put it in those words, but they do expect their leaders to be practical and pragmatic, to get results. In any case, citizens expect, if not demand, constant progress that will make their lives happier, healthier, and blissfully worry-free.

They may or may not believe in God, but they know that nature runs by certain laws that cannot be altered and that scientists and doctors and researchers, precisely because they understand those laws, are to be trusted implicitly. They may or may not believe in a divine moral code, but they know nothing in that code could possibly prevent them from maximizing their pleasure and minimizing their pain. They may or may not believe in heaven, but they know it wouldnt dare impede upon the way things work on earth.

These are the verities of twenty-first-century America, both inside and outside the church, and they are rarely stated or questioned. They are simply accepted, along with the ground we walk on, the food we consume, and the air we breathe. They are part and parcel of the modernist-postmodernist worldview that is so deeply woven into our psyche that it is all but invisibleas invisible as the water is to the fish that live and move and have their being within its perpetually wet embrace.

Thankfully, Fr. Dwight Longenecker has unwoven and exposed that invisible cloak, allowing academic and lay readers alike to see not only its individual strands but how they function together to, quite literally, pull the wool over our eyes. To do so, however, Longenecker employs a more dynamic and memorable metaphor: the multi-headed mythological hydra that grew two new heads each time one of its heads was lopped off.

In Beheading Hydra: A Radical Plan for Christians in an Atheistic Age, Longenecker, a former evangelical and Anglican priest who was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 2006 and currently pastors Our Lady of the Rosary parish in Greenville, S.C., links the swirling, interconnected heads of the modernist hydra to 16 isms that define the functionally atheistic worldview that so thoroughly pervades secular society that it has come to deceive even the elect.

The first ism out of which all the others spring is materialism: Not Madonnas material girl living in a material world, but the philosophical school that says matter is all there is, there is no separate spiritual realm, either in the universe or in ourselves. Now, many today embrace materialism while claiming to believe in God, but their claims to theism ring hollow.

If there is no heaven or hell, no angels or demons, no human soul that transcends the physical body, then there can be no God. There could be gods like those in Homer, Hesiod, and Ovid, who were born out of the same chaos (undifferentiated matter) as nature; but there cannot be a divine I Am who created the world out of nothing and dwells outside of time and space. The materialist rejects anything that is super-natural or meta-physical, and that must include the God of the Bible.

Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, Diderot, and Benjamin Franklin tried to find a way out of this impasseto preserve theistic respectability while adopting fully a materialistic worldviewby calling themselves Deists. But Longenecker will have none of it: Is there really any difference between a Deist and an atheist except a set of manners and the wish to assume a safe position that does not rock the Christian boat too much?

There is not, and the thinker who saw that most clearly was Friedrich Nietzsche, who saved his sharpest criticism for liberal theologians and Bible scholars who tried to have their cake and eat it too. For Nietzsche, writes Longenecker, Deists like David Strauss were hypocrites of the first degreekeeping their pulpits and paychecks, their scholarships and their chairs of theology when all along, the end point of their polite materialism had to be atheism. There was no way around it. God was dead, and they had killed Him.

Philosophical materialism can only lead, in the end, to theological atheism, but the swirling and dividing heads of the hydra do not stop there. If matter is all there is and there is no divine, transcendent Creator, then science and history will eventually morph into scientism and historicism.

Whereas medieval and renaissance scientists saw no contradiction in studying the physical world in the light of a supernatural Creator and a metaphysical realm of reality, Enlightenment scientists divided the visible from the invisible and reduced God to an unnecessary hypothesis. For them, the natural order just was, and nature changed and evolved on its own at random through a mysterious dynamism called life.

As it was in science, so was it in history. Just as life was now believed to have evolved through random processes without any kind of intelligent design or oversight, so history now moved forward with no providential plan or purpose. After all, if there is no storyteller, there can be no story.

In such a world, there can be no fixed moral code against which to measure our actions and our policies. Enter utilitarianism and pragmatism, which carry the philosophy of materialism into the social sciences. Apart from a universal code of right and wrong, decisions can only be made in accordance with secular standards of utility; apart from a Creator who has endowed each individual with essential worth and value, those standards will have no qualms about sacrificing the few for the sake of the many. In other words, the greatest good for the greatest number.

But how is one to determine what does or does not constitute utility? By appealing to the entrenched mantra of newer is better. According to the hydra heads of progressivism and utopianism, whatever brings progress and development is good, no matter the human cost. That is simply the way nature works, and it is up to us to do whatever is necessary to propel history forward, even if that calls for violent clashes between competing groups.

That is why, Longenecker explains, leftist progressives turn a blind eye to the riots, arson, threats, and violent protests of left-wing activists but clamp down on peaceful right-wing protests. The leftists see themselves as pioneers pushing for progress. The right wing are negative reactionaries who want to turn back the clock.

So much for the society that emerges, step by step, out of materialism. What of the citizens who will live in that brave new society where the dogma of relativism has done away with any dogma that might provide them the limits and boundaries they need?

The answer, of course, is that they will refuse to abide by any limits or boundaries that might prevent them from asserting their Nietzschean will to power. The goal of life is not to conform ones soul to divine and transcendent standards of virtue, but to express in unfettered fashion ones autonomous individualism. By individualism, Longenecker does not mean the pioneer and entrepreneurial spirit that helped shape America, but the proud spirit that stands alone, independent of any authority, any truth, any reality outside its own self-referencing bubble.

Since the sexual revolution, that proud spirit has manifested itself in ever-increasing demands for complete, unfettered freedom (eroticism) in the sexual realm. But it has also surfaced in the more subtle, and thus more deceptive, form of sentimentalism, which Longenecker defines as the system of decision-making or taking an action based only on ones emotions.

This system, which privileges feeling over reason and heart over head, is just as prevalent within the church as outside it. It ultimately denies original sin, celebrating the feelings of the heart as holy and sacred and placing the blame for evil (or at least criminal) behavior on society rather than on the individual.

This Rousseau-inspired sentimentalism paved the way, in turn, for romanticism, which displaced both theology and philosophy as the arbiter of truth. Instead, the surge of inner emotions was the criteria for truth, and it was the artist, not the theologian or the philosopher, who became the high priest and guardian of truth, and this reliance on the inner light spread through every aspect of society.

Such is Longeneckers diagnosis of a dying world infected to the core by the venom of the multi-headed hydra. But does he offer a cure?

Interestingly, rather than propose a right-leaning program of direct confrontation with the heads of the hydra or a left-leaning policy of accommodating their subtle poison, he offers something approximating Rod Drehers Benedict Option. We must change ourselves, he argues, and live out that change in such a way that we will simultaneously expose the lies of the hydra and incarnate an alternative way of living.

Longenecker refers to this inner change as creative subversion. Here is how it works. Rather than fight materialism in the academy or embrace Christian consumerism, we must demonstrate to the world our refusal to absorb and imitate its cupidity by tithing generously to our church and other charities. Likewise, rather than debate atheists on television or construct our own modern versions of Deism, we must show forth our belief in an active Creator God by living lives of continuous praise and intercessory prayer.

Furthermore, we must study the Bible and Christian history, not as an end in itself but as a way of training ourselves to perceive in the seemingly random flow of events the providential hand of God. If we do that diligently and prayerfully, we will learn to see, and to teach others to see, that God was there working through historys triumphs and tragediesnever forsaking His peopleHis Holy Spirit never being spent, and that the world is always charged with Gods grandeur.

While continuing to provide food, medicine, and education to the poor and dispossessed, we must devote ourselves to evangelizing the lost. Only thus can we assert the existence and eternal significance of the human soul and its final destination.

Likewise, if we are to champion tradition over progressivism, chastity over eroticism, and community over individualism, then we must strengthen our own schools, families, and churches. Instead of complaining that we live in a world that offers freedom without restraint, let us use our radical freedom to freely choose a path of radical obedience.

[T]he poison of progressivism and the false dream of utopianism, Longenecker assures us, can be defeated, not with argument, debate, or discussion but through real action by real people who are simply rolling up their sleeves and doing what they can where they are and with what they have.

If we will commit ourselves to doing just that, we can, I believe, lay claim to a currently unfashionable -ism that is stronger than all the swirling heads of the hydra: optimism.

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How To Preserve A Moral Culture Through 'Creative Subversion' - The Federalist

(RNS) Byron Wratee recalls the silence among white Catholic priests after the killing of Trayvon Martin. Since then, he said, hes made a conscious decision to attend only Catholic parishes that are majority Black.

Hes remained critical of the churchs response to racism and racial justice in the aftermath of numerous police killings of Black men, but for Wratee, who grew up largely Pentecostal and converted to Catholicism 20 years ago, leaving the church is not an option.

I have a right to be in this church, he said.

While Wratee, 38, has chosen to stay in the church, he is among a generation that is broadly becoming less religious and less affiliated with the institutional church. A recent study from Pew Research Center found young Black Americans are less religious than their elders. Specifically, Black millennial (49%) and Generation Z (46%) individuals are about twice as likely as Black members of the Silent Generation (26%) to say they seldom or never attend religious services at any congregation.

The study, Faith Among Black Americans, reveals the particular difficulty the Catholic Church is having in retaining Black adults who were raised Catholic.

RELATED: Can I get an amen? Black Americans faith, religious practice detailed in Pew study

An estimated 3 million Black Americans are Catholic, but according to the study, nearly half of those raised Catholic no longer identify as Catholic (46%, compared to 39% of all Americans raised Catholic). About 1 in 5 Black adults who were raised Catholic have become unaffiliated (19%), and a quarter have become Protestant (24%).

While the Catholic Church grapples with a range of issues from patriarchal structures to a lack of LGBTQ inclusivity Wratee, who is working toward his doctorate degree in systematic theology at Boston College, said that for younger Black Americans, racism is the root cause of why theyre leaving the church.

An overwhelming 77% of Black Catholics said opposing racism is essential to their faith, according to the Pew study, which surveyed more than 8,600 Black adults.

For many Black Catholics, Wratee said, theres a fundamental belief that you cannot be a Christian and a racist. And so, he said, We have a duty to preach the gospel to our white brothers and sisters.

This is why Wratee is participating in a four-part webinar series titled, Black Catholics and the Millennial Gap. The first episode launched Nov. 8 to commemorate Black Catholic History Month and focused on racism, trauma and the Catholic Church.

The series, sponsored by the National Black Catholic Conference, will touch on Black freedom movements and Black Catholic worship, music and liturgy. It will culminate in February during Black History Month.

LaRyssa Herrington, 26, who launched the webinar series, said the critiques come from a place of love, but also from a place of desiring to be seen and recognized.

Herrington, a doctoral student in systematic theology at the University of Notre Dame, believes its too simplistic to say people arent religious because of atheism or secularism. You have to factor in the experiences of sexual and racial trauma prevalent in the church, she said.

According to the Pew report, nearly all Black adults whether religiously affiliated or not believe in God or a higher power (97%).

People arent less religious than they used to be, said Herrington, who converted to Catholicism about two years ago while pursuing her masters of divinity.I think people are tired of being mistreated.

RELATED: Study: Most Black nones believe in God or higher power, fewer pray regularly

While Herrington didnt grow up religious, she joined a Protestant evangelical Baptist church in high school, but she later sought more, wanting to be connected to something that was bigger and outside of myself. Herrington was drawn to Catholicisms sacramental life.

Praying the rosary, beginning to ask Mary for intercession was new for me and having her almost speak back in a way, said Herrington, who attends St. Augustine Parish, a historically Black Catholic church in South Bend, Indiana. Going to eucharistic adoration has meant so much to me. Its something I still do now.

She hopes the online webinars and discussions can inspire young lay Catholics, particularly Black Catholics, to consider vocations in and outside the church and realize that we are empowered.

We are leading even if we arent priests, even if we arent cardinals or bishops, she said.

The first webinar episode, which explored racism and the church, launched just days after Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, denounced new social justice movements during a speech for the meeting of the Congress of Catholics and Public Life in Madrid. He condemned the movements as pseudo-religions that are dangerous substitutes for true religion.

RELATED: Top US Catholic bishop calls social justice movements pseudo-religion

While Gomez said the killing of George Floyd was a stark reminder that racial and economic inequality are still deeply embedded in our society, he suggested the movements that inspired demonstrations in 2020 serve as replacements for traditional Christian beliefs.

Whatever we call these movements social justice, wokeness, identity politics, intersectionality, successor ideology they claim to offer what religion provides, Gomez said.

An online petition, sponsored by Faithful America and Faith in Public Life, has called on Gomez to apologize and listen to Black Catholics. The petition garnered more than 12,000 signatures and was delivered to Gomez before U.S. Catholic bishops meet for their annual fall meeting beginning Nov. 15.

In this image taken from video, Archbishop Jos Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, addresses the bodys virtual assembly on June 16, 2021. (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops via AP)

Catholic bishops and other religious leaders ought to be in the streets with racial-justice movement organizers not demeaning them, the petition reads.

The Gomez speech and the divided reactions to it underscore the complicated space Black Catholics occupy, many of whom attend predominantly white or multiracial churches.

To John Barnes, who will be leading an upcoming webinar episode, says, Black people always exist in liminal spaces. Barnes, a doctoral student in systematic theology at Fordham University, converted to Catholicism in his 30s and said he was drawn by the religions sacraments and rituals.

Theres nowhere you can go in America, really, where you can be fully affirmed unless youre going to be around a majority of Black and brown people, said Barnes, 36. The church is no different, he said.

RELATED: Play about first African American priest in the US highlights current issues

But, he said, its important to be a part of the future of the church and to honor and recognize the ancestors who paved the way for us.

If you believe the gospel is true and you are, in your heart, Catholic, youre not going to let whiteness put us out, Barnes said.

Meanwhile, for Wratee, its crucial to place a distinction between the church and Mass attendance. Black Catholics are still in the church, in that theyre still faithful and pray, Wratee said. We are the church.

Were just not going to Mass to have to listen to racist sermons from priests, Wratee said.

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Amid Black exodus, young Catholics are pushing the church to address racism - Religion News Service

Some people find God in nature. Bobbie Kirkhart found atheism.

The free-thought activists anti-epiphany occurred on a lonely beach in Mazatlan, Mexico, in 1973 when she was pregnant with her first child.

She wanted to know exactly where she stood on God before she became a mom, and vowed she wouldnt stray from the sand until her beliefs were clear.

It took six hours, but eventually she concluded that the God shed grown up believing in would not allow so much suffering to flourish in the world, and therefore couldnt exist.

I came off the beach an atheist, she told the Los Angeles Times in 2009.

Over the next 40 years, Kirkhart would become the matriarch of L.A.s atheist community, serving as president of the Atheist Alliance International a nonprofit advocacy organization committed to educating the public about atheism, and Atheists United, which promotes the separation of government and religion and is dedicated to creating an atheist community in Southern California.

She lectured internationally on free thought, supported student atheist groups and an atheist summer camp for children, and mentored dozens of leaders in the movement before her death Sunday at 78 at her home in Echo Park.

She was one of the few national female leaders for the past 40 years and a trailblazer, not just as an institutional leader, but also for building connections, said Evan Clark, executive director of Atheists United. She was an international figure for free thought.

Among Kirkharts proudest achievements was providing atheists the sense of community and belonging that is more often found in religious settings.

Bobbie Kirkhart, center, wanted people without faith to have the community she remembers growing up with as a Methodist, her daughter said.

(Monica Waggoner)

She wanted people without faith to have the community she remembers growing up with as a Methodist, said her daughter, Monica Waggoner. Her legacy is the community.

Kirkhart regularly opened her six-bedroom Victorian home, known as Heretic House, free of charge for fundraisers, board retreats, holiday parties, recovery meetings and choir practices. It also served as a de facto bed and breakfast for anyone from the movement in need of a place to stay.

Even during the worst of the pandemic, Heretic House hosted as many as 10 events a month, Clark said.

Atheism was something she was serious about, but what she felt was really missing was the heart, said Waggoner, who also identifies as an atheist. Just because we dont believe in a soul doesnt mean we dont have an emotional life that needs to be nourished.

Kirkhart was born April 16, 1943, in Enid, Okla., and raised in a religious family. She grew up loving church the community, the music and even worked as a Sunday school teacher.

Her belief in God began to falter after she graduated college and started a career as a social worker for the Department of Children and Family Services in South Los Angeles in 1965. She was dismayed to learn that some of the families she served were giving money to their church, even as they struggled to feed their children.

My clients were Black and Latino women who were Gods most fervent servants, and my God was at best leaving them to very cruel elements, she said in a 2009 interview.

She considered other religions, but found they didnt make sense to her either.

Atheist organizations were harder to find before the dawn of the internet, and it wasnt until after she divorced her first husband, L.A. historian William Mason, in 1982 that Kirkhart started attending Sunday morning meetings of the newly formed Atheists United.

In those early days she kept her atheist activities away from her daughter.

I was with my dad Sunday mornings, and she didnt want to burden me with that, Waggoner said.

Eventually, Waggoner caught on. After overhearing her mom use the word atheist, she asked if thats what they were.

She said, Oh, honey, Im so tired of being nothing. Im glad were something, Waggoner said.

Kirkhart met her second husband, Harvey Tippit, through Atheists United and the two married in 1997. After her second marriage, Kirkhart had more financial resources than shed ever had before. Shed grown up poor and struggled financially as a single mom.

Top of mind was that now she could help people in a different way, Waggoner said.

Kirkhart and Tippit traveled the world, including trips to Borneo and the Galapagos. Kirkhart also spoke to atheist and humanist groups in Canada, Germany, France, Nigeria, India and Cameroon. She was a platform speaker at the first Godless Americans March in Washington, D.C., in 2002, and sat on the advisory board of the Humanist Assn. of Nepal and on the board of Camp Quest, an atheist summer camp.

Tippit died in 2006, and Kirkhart bought Heretic House three years later in Angelino Heights. Immediately she offered it up as a community space, hosting musical performances, book clubs, Atheists United meetings and allowing people in the movement to stay with her for weeks and months at a time if necessary.

She grew up with a lot of religious influence around her, and shes always been someone who sees the success of the religious model as something the atheist doesnt do enough, said Yari Schutzer, a leader of the Voices of Reason choir, which rehearsed at Heretic House. She got that house with the full intention of creating a community. It gave her a physical platform to say, This is what I mean.

As her health declined in the last decade, Kirkhart stepped back from her work on the international atheist scene and instead focused on the local community through her work with Atheists United.

The organization she joined in 1982 now has 200 dues-paying members and hosts drug and alcohol recovery groups, a hiking club, the Voices of Reason choir, and is involved in community service like food distribution and vaccine drives.

Were hosting almost 30 events a month, Clark said.

Although she was an outspoken atheist, Waggoner doesnt remember her mother having any particular enemies.

She was nonconfrontational, Waggoner said.

From Kirkharts perspective, what an individual believes is not important. Her issue was with the influence religious institutions wield and her belief that has hurt people.

In a speech to the Secular Student Alliance in 2013, Kirkhart said that an atheists devotion to free thought should be equal to or greater than a religious persons devotion to God.

She believed that as long as the majority of the nation believes in magic, there will be an assault on science that shortens lives and creates environmental disaster.

The work of atheists, she believed, was no less than to save humanity.

Our job is to provide an alternative to show that a life of unbelief can be, and usually is, fulfilling and productive, she told the students. Our job is no less than to save the world from superstitious self-destruction.

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Bobbie Kirkhart, the matriarch of atheism in L.A., dies at 78 - Los Angeles Times

Distrust of atheists is strong in the United States. The General Social Survey consistently demonstrates that as a group, Americans dislike atheists more than any other religious group. According to various studies, nearly half of the country would disapprove of their child marrying an atheist, some 40% of the public does not believe atheists share their view of American society, and only 60% of Americans would be willing to vote for an atheist in a presidential election.

There is one field, however, where atheism is often assumed: science.

People often view scientists as Godless. Some of these views may be a result of people hearing more from vocal atheist scientists such as evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, neuroscientist Sam Harris and others who are at the vanguard of a movement known as new atheism. New atheists are not simply scientists who are convinced there is no God or gods. They couple their irreligion with an aggressive critique of religious belief as a threat to societal well-being.

These scientists espouse a frequently derisive rhetoric on religion and the religious public. Dawkins, for example, has argued that religion is a form of mental illness and one of the worlds great evils comparable to smallpox.

But such strident attitudes may not be representative of scientists in general.

A recent research study we conducted reveals that most atheist scientists in the U.S. and U.K. are not anti-religious.

Drawing on quantitative surveys with 1,293 scientists who identified as atheists, 81 in-depth qualitative interviews conducted from 2013 through 2016 and context material collected since then, we found that scientists views of religion are much more diverse than the image conveyed by new atheists.

Each of the scientists in our study selected the statement I do not believe in God when asked about their views of God and selected this choice over options including agnosticism, the view that the existence of God or the divine is unknowable.

As sociologists, we view religion as multidimensional consisting of beliefs, practices, traditions and identities and seek to understand such dimensions in the lives of atheist scientists and their views of religion.

One of our main findings is that most atheist scientists do not want to be aligned with rhetoric that condemns religious people. Although we did not specifically ask about Dawkins in interviews, scientists often brought him up.

As one biologist that we interviewed in the U.K. said of him, Well, he has gone on a crusade, basically I think that [religion] is an easy target, and I think that hes rather insensitive and hectoring.

Even atheist scientists who harbored occasional negative views of religion expressed concerns that such rhetoric is bad for science.

Not only are many atheist scientists not hostile to religion, but some think religion can also be beneficial to society; in the words of one of our respondents, you can see the benefits of going to church. Many, for example, discussed the sense of community one finds in churches. Others emphasized religious attendance as a force of good, encouraging people to act more charitably.

Indeed in the U.S., 29% of atheist scientists also say they are culturally religious. That is, despite their lack of belief in God, they routinely interact with religious individuals or organizations, such as having a religious spouse, sending their children to a religious school, or attending services themselves.

As one atheist biologist told us: I enjoy going to church for the suspension of disbelief, for the theatrical experience, for reading, for the liturgy, for the magnificent stories and the mythic quality of those stories, which is intensely spiritual. Thats a real experience.

We also found that atheist scientists and persons of faith have more in common than most people may think, such as the experience of awe and wonder. Whereas many religious individuals experience spirituality through their faith, some atheist scientists speak of their work with similar notions of awe and wonder.

These scientists talk about intangible realities that imbue wonder, motivate their work and are beyond observation realities that they call spirituality.

[This Week in Religion, a global roundup each Thursday. Sign up.]

As sociologists Penny Edgell, Joseph Gerteis and Douglas Hartmann explain, when asked about atheists on surveys, Americans are most likely imagining a theoretical person who rejects the idea of God, rather than thinking about an actual atheist they may have encountered.

Indeed, in an ideologically segregated society such as the U.S, religious and nonreligious individuals may not interact in ways that would actually inform their perspectives of one another. As a result, religious and nonreligious individuals views of one another are heavily reliant on stereotypes of each group.

Consequently, when people think about atheist scientists, it is all too easy to imagine the picture painted based on those presented in the public sphere, such as Dawkins and others, in the absence of one who inhabits their community.

What is more, it is difficult to know an atheist when you see one, especially if they are sitting down the pew from you in church, as our research indicates they might.

In an era where our lives literally depend on trust in the scientific community, telling the truth about who atheist scientists are through research on them, rather than allowing them to be represented by the loudest atheist scientist voices, is consequential.

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Many scientists are atheists, but that doesn't mean they are anti-religious - The Conversation US