AMERICAN ATHEISTS

"Aims and Purposes"

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

religious

2. To collect and disseminate information, data and literature on all religions and
promote a more thorough understanding of them, their origins and histories.
3. To advocate, labor for, and promote in all lawful ways, the complete and absolute
separation of state and church; and the establishment and maintenance of a
thoroughly secular system of education available to all.
4. To encourage the development and public acceptance of a humane ethical system,
stressing the mutual sympathy, understanding and interdependence of all people
and the corresponding responsibility of each, individually, in relation to society.
5. To develop and propagate a social philosophy in which man is the central figure who
alone must be the source of strength, progress and ideals for the well-being and
happiness of humanity.
6. To promote the study of the arts and sciences and of all problems affecting the
maintenance, perpetuation and enrichment of human (and other) life.
7. To engage in such social, educational, legal and cultural activity as will be useful
and beneficial to members of American Atheists and to society as a whole.

"Definitions"
1. Atheism is the life philosophy (Weltanschauung) of persons who are free from
theism. It is predicated on the ancient Greek philosophy of Materialism.
2. American Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly
accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a system of philosophy
and ethics verifiable by experience, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of
authority or creeds.
3. The Materialist philosophy declares that the cosmos is devoid of immanent conscious purpose; that it is governed by its own inherent, immutable and impersonal
law; that there is no supernatural interference in human life; that malt-finding
his
resources within himself-can and must create his own destiny; and that his potential for good and higher development is for all practical purposes unlimited.

~J

Volume 20, No. 10

EDITORIAL
COMMENT CORNER
NEWS
Dallas Atheists Protest Religious Interrogation
A New Pope - Or Did They Dig Up The Old One?
FEATURE ARTICLES
Simple Questions For Muddled Times
Joe Kirby's "History Lesson"
What Can You Believe?
Action Atheist - Bruce Hunter
American Atheist Museum Debuts
"Armageddon In Indiana"
On ThQ Laps Of The Gods
Roots Of Atheism - D.M. Bennett
AMERICAN ATHEIST RADIO SERIES
ATHEIST BOOK REVIEW
When God WasA Woman

October, 1978

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Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair I Managing Editor: Jon Garth Murray
General Editor: Frank Duffy I Production: Ralph Shirley I Circulation: John Mays
Non-Residential Staff: Ignatz Sahula-Dycke, G. Richard Bozarth, James Erickson,
Wells Culver, J. Michael Straczynski, Joe Kirby, Elaine Stansfield, Bill Baird,
Gerald Tholen
The American Atheist magazine is published monthly by American Atheists, 2210 Hancock
Drive, Austin, Texas 78756, a non-profit, non-political, tax-exempt, educational organization.
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 2117, Austin, TX, 78768; copyright 1978 by Society of Separationists, Inc.; Subscription rates: $15.00 per year; $25.00 for two years. Manuscripts submitted
must be typed, double-spaced and accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The
editors assume no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts.

THE AMERICAN ATHEIST MAGAZINE

Post Office Box 2117
Austin, Texas 78768
Enter my subscription for one year at $15.00 (two years at $25.00).
NEW
Total Enclosed $,

RENEWAL

Name
Address
City, State, & Zip
Austin,

Texas

October,

1978

.....

ON THE COVER

We call it American Atheism because

it is indigenous
to our United States.
It's a home product,
the essence of
what America is. Atheists are individualists par excellence,
self-activated,
full of inner assurance, relying only on
reason, being their "own person," finding their own potential and reachinq it.
Naturally, the second major Atheist
institution
in the United States would
rise, then, in our heartland,
southern
Indiana. Rustic, reflecting earth colors,
the low rambling earthy structure
of
the American
Atheist Museum is "at
home" in the grain and corn countryside. From the old comfortable
swing
on the long open porch to the traditional perimeter
wooden farm fence,
it reflects the values of our land.
Where else would such a museum
rise? Built, lovingly, by a businessman
from the profits of his own capitalist
endeavor
(a small, independent
telephone company),
it is a contribution
from the head and the heart of Lloyd
Thoren. It is, because reason told him
it must be. It is, because his love for
his "homeland requires him to fight for
its best interests.
America belongs to the future more
than to the past and the future is Atheist. Rooted in the love of all freedoms
- freedom of the mind is the ultimate
to be sought. It is snuggled into the low
hills of Indiana, but accessible to the
world.
The pathway that will be beaten to
this museum as visitors come can only
broaden to symbol ically demonstrate
the increased vision it gives to mankind.
Pam Thoren, the museum's curator,
cordially invites every Atheist to visit
and take pride in this new establishment of Atheism, as open as the skies
of Indiana.
Page 1

BY JON GARTH MURRAY

RECOGNIZING
It was my distinct pleasure to attend the opening of the
American Atheist Museum in Indiana recently, and at that affair I was asked the same questions over and over again by persons in attendance:
"Why an Atheist museum?" and, "How is
this different from any other museum?"
This question is a very important
one and one which requires some understanding
of fundamental
Atheist thought
for an appreciation
of its answer.
Think for a moment
about the techniques
of human
problem-solving.
An essential part of mankind's existence and
growth is the requirement
laid on him to use this process. Two
views are extant. One is the theistic view which states that an
illusionary
"god" is the origin of all solutions
to human
problems; an imaginary solution after the fact. A god entity
is given the ultimate credit for the causation of the solution as
a benevolent influence over all things.
However, it must be observed that the process of asking
for a solution from a god for any problem involves the first
step of the other view to solving problems, the atheistic view.
That is, the identification,
delimitation
or proper definition of
the problem itself, the first step in any human problem-solving
method.
In solving problems without
the aid of a proxy (god)
which is the method utilized by Atheists - one must rely on
one or all of three factors to determine
a solution to the
problem.
The first is reason, or, as Ilike to call it, "common sense."
Reason can also be referred to as "the scientific method,"
but
all the scientific method really amounts to is category analysis,
or the process of breaking things down to their lowest common
denominators
so that their simplest parts may be categorized
and dealt with one at a time instead of all at once when they
are more confusing.
Any complex
issue is merely a combination
of subproblems,
each individually
solvable by data collection
and
examination.
A reassembly of the sub-problems
nets a solution
to the problem in totality.
To submit a problem to a deity requires a deliniation
of
that problem so that the deity (actually, the mind of the
individual)
can understand
what is being asked. The Atheist contends
that one should simply continue the problemsolving process oneself to its logical. end: a final solution to
the the enti re problem.
A second 'factor requiring due consideration
is human
history, which is actually the accumulation
of the results of
the application
of reason/scientific
methodology
(or lack
thereof)
by previous
generations
to their problems.
This
accumulation
enables the present generation
to compare our
contemporary
problems to those of our predecessors to determine if our particular situations have been confronted
before,
thus perhaps relieving us of the burden of endless attempts to
overcome difficulties which have previously been dealt with.
As a result, the accumulated
pool of solutions makes it
Page 2

October,

~J

1978

REALITY

possible for each generation to tackle more complex problems

which break down into sub-problems
now less complex than
they were for the generation
before. This can readily be seen
by the fact that our technology
has progressed in the past 20
years further than in the previous century. So, this second
tool, when combined with reason, can be used as a catalyst to
further advance humanity's
problem-solving
capabilities.
A third factor to be considered is natural history, which is
essentially the study of evolution, or the continuing process of
change within the boundaries established by natural processes.
These natural forces or physical laws define the limits within
which we must work during the application
of our problemsolving methods. These cycles, which are oblivious to humanity's wishes, set the stage upon which we must act to work out
life's needed solutions. We can only work with and within the
boundaries these demonstrable
realities provide in the natural
surroundings
in which we find ourselves.
We cannot reach into an illusionary world for problemsolving tools which do not exist. Thus, you cannot stir batter
with an imaginary spoon, nor forecast tomorrow's
weather
with no input regarding atmospheric
conditions,
emerging
patterns, etc. We must work with what we have, with what we
know to be real and actual.
If we are to maintain the standard thus far attained
in
humanity's
evolutionary
journey upward, much less attempt
to better that standard, then we are limited to our reason, our
knowledge of our own history and that of our natural envi ronment to work with.
The American
Atheist Museum differs then from other
museums
in that it demonstrates
not only our reliance on
these sources for problem-solving,
but also our recognition
of
the fact that they are all with which we have to work. The
"god idea" is simply not admissible as a fourth alternative.
The museum also seeks to demonstrate
that the god idea
itself has evolved from the concept that a god is an ultimate source of problem-solving
which overshadows
all others,
to a semi-modern
one which finds god as a partial problemsolving alternative
in combination
with one or more of the
other genuine, existing tools. The American Atheist Museum
demonstrates,
however, that we should go beyond that stage
and discard the god concept altogether and si mply accept the
limitations
of that with which we have to work. Those limitations
have, after all, brought
us to a position of mindboggling development
in a comparatively
short period of time.
Other museums merely acknowledge
the existence of the
limitations
with which man must work by displaying them.
The American Atheist Museum goes beyond that by insisting
that they must be honored as we have no other choice, or else
we must escape into the soothing fantasies of religion. That
alternative
is not acceptable to us. Our minds stand ready to
accept the task of playing by the only rules we have. We cannot make our own rules, which would require that we play
off the board of reality. We choose to stay on the board.
The American

Atheist

COc:Mc:MENT

R
'N
E
R

Gay Atheist Angered

SINCERE
CONDOLENCES
American Atheism lost a good friend
and staunch ally in August.
Dr. Christopher Parker, psychology
professor at San Diego State University
and co-founder of that campus' Atheist
Student Union, died on 27 August after
being involved in a motorcycle accident.
Dr. Parker's wife, Lore, was riding
with her husband at the time of the
accident and she remains (as of press
time) in serious condition at KaiserPermanente Medical Center.
Chris Parker was recently appointed
Assistant Dean in charge of undergraduate studies at SDSU. He founded the
Atheists Student Union along with
American Atheist columnist J. Michael
Straczynski and was known as a prime
promoter of Atheism in the San Diego
area, having appeared on numerous radio and television programs to that
effect.
Professor Parker taught a very popular course at SDSU entitled, "Gullibility Reduction Training" in which
his students were taught to recognize
and deal with the process of their own
psychological conditioning by religious
and other organizations which survive
off the credulity of their adherents.
As an Atheist, Chris Parker recognized and appreciated the value of humor in solving problems which might
otherwise be taken too seriously. He
founded the Clown Club on the SDSU
campus and as a registered clown he
would often go about his duties as adviser to undergrads dressed in complete
clown gear.
He was always willing to explain to
anyone who might ask about the meaning and purpose of the American Atheist symbol he wore about his neck.
Chris Parker was 45 at the time of
his death.
Condolences and words of encouragement from fellow Atheists can be
mailed to Mrs. Lore Parker, c/o KaiserPermanente Medical Center, 4647 Zion
Ave., San Diego, CA 92120.

Austin,

Texas

Madalyn Murray 0 'Hair,

I have gone along with your Atheist platform because I thought you were so
sincere - but your silence on another very important situation proves otherwise.
Maybe you hate gays - that is your privilege - but the state-church controversy
figures very importantly in this situation. Yet you are strangely silent on this topic.
So I must conclude that you are not sincere, but a mere rabble-rouser for your own
purposes.
You say nothing while Anita Bryant blithely uses the Bible to remove the constitutional rights of a group of citizens. Yet no word from MMO'H. Why? Doesn't it
serve your pet purpose? You are as hypocritical as the Bryant woman.
What if you had this Christian fanatic after you and she took your freedoms
away because you espouse Atheism. Boy! Wouldn't you holler. But it is against the
gays and you assent by your silence. People like you and Anita scare me - too
much power for the wrong things.
No one paid much attention to a fool of a paper-hanger in Austria until everyone's freedom was taken away under Nazi Germany. Anita would love to put you,
the gays and everyone else who disagrees with her Southern Baptist dogmas into
the ovens!
I am enclosing a newsletter of Bryant's "Protect America's Children" organization
in which you are now listed as one of her targets along with us homos. [The exact
quote from Bryant's newsletter reads: "There are many issues that ram concerned
abou t like abortion, massage parlors.pornography, returning God to schools, Madalyn
Murray O'Hair's movement to ban God from our national motto and pledge of allegiance ... " Editor 1
Yet the great O'Hair permits the church to once again manipulate the state.
This is the worst thing to happen in America since its inception, and by your silence you are a part of it. Call me an "ex"-follower of Madalyn Murray O'Hair.
You are a hypocrite.
Unsigned
Portland, OR
Dear Ex-Atheist,
I am unhappy to know that anyone dons or casts off the cloak of Atheism as
it pleases his/her emotional state.
You are gay. What has that to do either with your religious convictions or lack
thereof? It is a sexual preference of your individual choice. The gay community in
our nation is numbered and powerful with proliferating networks of groups, organizations, publications, famous and outspoken champions and considerable funding.
American Atheists is one single, underfinanced, understaffed, overloaded organization fighting for two goals ONLY: 1) state-church separation, and 2) the civil
rights of Atheists.
No gay organization has ever assisted any Atheist, or Atheist organization, anywhere at any time toward the former of those goals, the failure of which impinges
upon the civil rights of gays. However, insofar as the state, church organizations or
religious persons, groups or individuals have breached the wall of state-church separation to harass gays or to deprive them of civil liberties, I personally have been
there - as has the American Atheist organization - to fight on the side of state-church
separation to the benefit of the gay community.
We can do no more.
Our purpose is not to expend our resources on championing a cause independent
of ours, which can finance and effectively fight for itself. The gay community has
its voice. It mustered 250,000 persons to march in San Francisco on 25 June 1978.
By and large the gays in our nation are Christian, tenaciously clinging in a sadomasochistic relationship to their master/abuser. We do not plan to interfere with
that free selection either.
However, there is a monthly publication (GALA) for those who are both Atheist
and gay. If interested, write to the Gay Atheist League of America, P.O. Box 14142,
San Francisco, CA 94114.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair

October, 1978

Page 3

A Real Eye-Opener
Dear Editor,
I have been subscribing to The American Atheist magazine for nearly two years
now and I do enjoy it very much. Each month I come across the names of writers
and books I had never heard of before and as a result I have never spent so much
time in libraries and old book stores. I've been reading Thomas Paine, Bertrand Russell, Robert Ingersoll and many others. (I wonder why the nuns in school never mentioned these authors?)
I have even read the Bible for the first time in my life. In all my years in Catholic schools I never saw a Bible or heard it quoted. Now that I have read it I can
understand why they kept it hidden.
I have just received and read a copy of Dr. O'Hair's book, Freedom Under
Siege. Because I have read so much about Atheism and the history of religion the
first chapters angered but did not surprise me. The fact that churches have always
been guilty of the suppression of knowledge cannot be denied. Religious censorship, especially since those who would pontificate have been in the news so much
trying to control what we mayor may not see on television, is becoming obvious to
everyone as is Christians' repulsive and vicious attitudes toward women.
But it was the section of Dr. O'Hair's book concerning the church as a multimillion dollar business which prompted me to write this letter with the enclosed
check for membership. After receiving the magazine for so long I would finally
like to become a member of your organization, American Atheists.
Every day I read articles and editorials about what people like to call the "tax
revolt," but I have never once read about the billions of dollars worth of property,
stocks and bonds now going tax-free under the unconstitutional blanket of religious
exemption. The only time I have ever seen this subject mentioned in the Letters-tothe-Editor columns of the publications I read was when I wrote the letters myself.
How can a tax revolt be successful if the citizens don't know who their oppressors
really are? As the "revolution" is now, it seems to be at best just a lot of noise, and
at worst it is getting us into our tax problems even deeper because we take money
away from secular necessities but continue to pour it into the propagation of religious absurdities.
Anyway, I enjoyed Freedom Under Siege and it is going to be read by many of
my acquaintances. I don't know how my membership can help, but I do recognize
that education is the first step, and I intend to share all I learn with others.
Linda Massey
Audbon,PA
Ms. Massey,
Your letter exemplifies that which we would most have our subscribers do: read,
become aware, self-educate, then (importantly) reach out to enlighten your family
and friends who yet linger in the shadows. We feel that our journal is more than
adequate to open the eyes of any individuals whose innate common sense has managed to weather the religious indoctrination most of us are forced to undergo from
infancy onwards.
For American Atheists, however, self-fulfillment is but the first step in a lifelong process of "establishing a system of philosophy and ethics verifiable by experience, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority or creeds." We willingly
shoulder the obligation to preserve intellectual freedom for those who come after
us and we welcome you to our organization.
American Atheists

Zap Away!
Dear Editor,
Zap! Zap! Zap! You are the greatest,
Madalyn. As perhaps the one and only
Atheist in this town of 15 (99.999%
Catholic) I have a glimmer of the insidious if not overt discrimination you folk
on the front line face.
The chief postal official here is very
high in the local cult of hypocrisy and
I get the feeling - especially when l

Page 4

pick up mail from American Atheiststhat he longs for the return of the Inquisition to this ancient (451 years
under Roman Catholicism) pueblo so
that he, personally, might burn this
old foreign heretic at the stake!
So zap those Christians again and
again Madalyn Murray O'Hair.
John Allen
Etzatian, Jalisco, Mexico

October, 1978

~/

WANTED
Non-smoking Atheist woodworker to
run the woodworking component of a
non-profit, tax-exempt educational project in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Should
possess the tact and skill necessary to
pass his/her knowledge on to younger
people without turning them off. Write:

St. Croix LEAP

Box 245 Frederiksted
St. Croix, V.1. 00840

The Proletariat & The Meek

Dear Editor,
I just want to express an opinion
about the recent spate of political letters which have appeared in The American A theist.
I have nothing against the people or
the causes which the writers represent.
Indeed, personally I lean toward their
viewpoints. Who can deny that the
ideal world would be one which is
Atheist and egalitarian (read: socialist"
communist, democratic, etc.). However, experience has shown to me that
one cannot expect to educate people
on two matters at once. Furthermore,
Atheists are so rare in this country that
I, for one, would 'Sure hate to alienate
even a conservative one from our movement just because the magazine advocated a particular line. Therefore, I
agree with the editor: at least while
we're still young and fragile let's not
be torn apart by a political schism.
It will be said in regard to Madalyn
O'Hair's experience with Gus Hall [Letters, August issue] that, "Well, he's a
communist and we're socialists. That's
different."
Maybe so. However, I
haven't seen any articles on Atheism in
the copies of The Militant which I have
read.
Furthermore, regarding Gus Hall, I
have to say he definitely was in error.
Members of my own family still reject
science precisely because they are religious. I can hardly see how science
will win them over to Atheism on that
basis. Scientists and Atheists will have
to work together to bring the religionists out of the dark ages. To the extent
that egalitarians work scientifically, to
that extent may Atheists be expected to
work with them. The reverse is also true.
Richard M. Smith
Boise,ID
S.O.S. is not a socialist organization.
Editor

The American Atheist

Illl(

NEWS ](ltlitlrllill'111'llri!f,ill'ltl,lllliltI1111
Dallas Atheists Protest
School Board Interrogation

The Dallas Chapter of American

Atheists has filed a formal complaint
with that city's district attorney against
four members of the Dallas school
board for questioning candidates for
school superintendent about their religious activities.
AA Dallas Chapter Director Winn
Pegelow, along with University of Texas
at Dallas professor William Hansen,
filed the complaint in August and
asked that the district attorney hold a
public hearing called a "court of
inquiry." Such a special court was
used several years ago to investigate
the bail bond situation at the Dallas
County Courthouse.
An official in the district attorney's
office described the special court as
"a tool to investigate whether a crime
has been committed." Such procedure
is used when a prolonged investigation
is called for as a way to avoid tying up
the grand jury.
In their screening of applicants for
the superintendent's job, school board
members have been pressing candidates
for demonstration of "obvious church
involvement."
Two members were
shocked to learn that one candidate,
Robert E. Wentz, St. Louis school superintendent, has not regularly attended church for 10 years.
Another candidate expressed concern about the questions he was asked.
James Adams, 42, superintendent of
the Winston-Salem, N.C., school district, was interviewed for the $47,500
job and said he "was concerned in
terms of their (the questions') authority
from a legal sense."
The obvious illegality of such religious testing for reasons of employment
was confirmed by two leading U.S.
constitutional lawyers, as well as local
educational and religious officials, who
all say such considerations are improper
and unconstitutional.
University of Chicago law professor
Phillip C. Kurland, considered one of

"Today, on this day of great hope and promise for the future, I can, at last,
speak to you as a Born-Again ATHEIST!"

the nation's leading authorities on constitutional law, said that questions

about personal religious beliefs were
"dangerous. "
"The Constitution forbids using religious beliefs as a condition for employment,"
Kurland
said. "They
shouldn't even be asking him what television programs he watches. It seems
to me dangerous even to ask him
whether he's a Democrat or Repu blican.
The question here may not be whether
they're using religious criteria, but whether they're looking into the life of a
superintendent. "
Candidates have been asked about
church membership,
frequency
of
church attendance, positions of leadership in their church and the churchgoing habits of family members.
Another of the country's top ex-

perts on constitutional law, Professor

Paul A. Freund of Harvard University,
said he felt it would be "improper" if
the answers to such questions were
taken into consideration by a public
body in making the final choice for
the job. Freund said that asking
prospective employees about religious
preferences raised both First and Fourteenth Amendment issues.
Mark Briskman, director of the regional Jewish Anti-Defamation League
of B'nai B'rith, termed the board's actions "clearly unconstitutional"
and
said the league board would consider
taking some official action on the matter.
Robert Chanin, general counsel for
the National Education Association in
Washington, D.C., said that personal
questions about religion were "total-

The news which fills one half of the magazine is chosen to demonstrate, month after month, the dead reactionary hand of religion. It dictates
good habits, sexual conduct, family size, it censures cinema, thea.ter, television; even education. It dictates life values and ~ifestyle. Religion is
politics and, always, the most authoritarian and reactionary politics. We editorialize our news to emphasize this thesis. Unlike any other magazine or newspaper in the United State-s, we are honest enough to admit it.

Austin, Texas

October, 1978

Page 5

ly inappropiate." Chanin said he felt

that if a candidate filed a class action
suit on behalf of all the candidates,
claiming the selection procedure was
unconstitutional, "he might win.
"I think he might get a very sympathetic ear from federal and state
judges. He might get an injunction telling the school board to desist from
asking such questions."
AA Dallas Chapter Director Pegelow is after exactly such an order as
he said his organization is not interested
in criminal penalties for trustees or in
halting the selection process.

Rather, Pegelow said, the board

should be made aware they violated
the law and an injunction should be issued preventing such questioning in
the future. He also said he hopes the
society's action would increase the district's awareness of potential statechurch conflicts.
In his complaint, Pegelow accuses
the board members of violating Section
4.07 of the Texas Education Code, the
Texas Constitution and the Civil Rights
Act of 1964. He has asked that videotapes of the interviews with six candidates for the superintendents's job be

shown as evidence. He also asked for

the release of the videotapes "before
they are altered or destroyed."
One constitutional lawyer who defended the board's clearly unconstitutional procedures was former Senator
(N.C.) Sam Ervin, who served as chairman of the Senate Watergate committee.
Ervin said he had no constitutional
objection to questions about religious
affiliation. "It's an important post. I
think they should find out everything
about him they can. I wouldn't hire an
Atheist for anything."

Is It
A

New Pope,
Or
Did They
Dig Up
The
Old One?
Page 6

"No way. Antonio will never get a single vote! Haven't you ever heard his,
'Love thine enemies: 'The meek shall inherit the earth: or 'The rich cannot enter
the kingdom of heaven?' No, there is no way, Eminence."
Every church expert was wrong in
his prediction. Every church analyzer
was embarrassingly inaccurate. The
time, the method, the outcome, carefully projected in every news media
outlet, was completely inaccurate.
The cardinals responded to the old
Curia, the central hierarchical church
fathers. Not even the facade is different. The grim, dogmatic, irrational
commitments of the Roman Catholic
Church remain. It changes its form to
survive since it is inherently a survival
institution, but it does not change its
substantive content.
There was need to install a new personality, a warm body, a smiling face,
a hand held up in benediction. But
Albino Luciano, Pope John Paul I,
need not be intelligent. He need not
have any administrative abilities, no
diplomatic skills, no theological acumen. The church hierarchy hires those
talents.
He need only exude an aura of cred-

October, 1978

ibility and present certain characteristics of personality and style. He has

walked through the factories of Milan.
He has kissed the children on the
streets. He has certified publicly that
he is prayerful. There is no sexual or
financial scandal attached to his past.
"The meek shall inherit the earth."
Hence, the lowliness of his origins is
important. He was born to a glassworker father and it is carefully muted
that this was before WW I (1913) and
that John Paul's position in the church
has been for the past 30 years one of
power, far removed from those humble
origins.
He is presented to us as the hand of
god on earth, but in reality he is the
titular head presiding over a team which
carries forward the medieval ideas of
Roman Catholicism.
His first official act to fill the administrative offices of the Nine Sacred
Congregations (which, actually, rule the
Roman Church) was an act of reapThe American Atheist

pointment of every old head. The body

of the church changes not at all.
John XXIII was a tragedy for mankind as he gave hope to the world
when there was no hope to give. He
"opened a window" which was, in reality, closely sealed with glass. The
world responded with a desire to embrace what was not.
Paul VI, an imperial aristocrat from
birth, carefully changed only format as
he husbanded the central core of the
church's irrational theological nonsense. The mass was said in the vernacular, but alas, the mass remained
the same.
TM form of a slightly democratic
sub-group (the national Synods of Bishops meeting every three years) was
brought into being, but these remained
so powerless as to be unable to even
choose their own agenda. There was
no trust in free and open discussion of
issues. The church remained authoritarian and hierarchical.
Ecumenism was invented, but the
close observer could see that the object was to swallow the other churches
in the Roman Church's embrace.
When a central root was touched,
Paul VI reaffirmed priestly celibacy
and damned birth control.
It was an artful act of juggling. The
theology must continue to be "conservative," i.e. medieval and authoritarian, while the outreach of concern'
for mankind appeared to be "liberal,"
i.e. humanistic. The new pope needed
to be expert in the act and the church
hierarchy, assured that he was, proudly
put the puppet on display in late August as John Paul I.
Free Ad Time
Literally thousands of hours of precious television "prime time" was milked out of the event. Miles of column
inches of newspaper and magazine
coverage was gained. The Curia could
well rub their hands in satisfaction.
Paul VI, a man who caused more
deaths for women (in both childbirth
and bad abortion procedures) than any
person in modem history, was eulogized as a prince of peace. He should
have been buried in a gunny sack
between the graves of women who had
died from the effects of his infamous
encyclical Humanae Vitae
The new pope's first announced
goals indicated that there would be no
change. It was business as usual, but
under a new facade.
It was clever. He pledged to continue the church's outreach for ecu-

Austin,

Texas

INFALLIBLY

DEAD

As the sun glared down upon the streets of Rome,

I walked past sweating throngs in long lines leading to a corpse
I saw women weeping and wondered why
They weep for the cold body of their dead pontiff
They pray for his soul which never was
For its deliverance to a place that never shall be
They will wait for hours to glare for a fleeting moment
at his pale remains
They will bow in reverence and nervously finger beads
on old rusty chains
They will spend many days in morose mourning
All as if men never died and religious never lied
As if clergy never stole and politics were never played
Priests never maimed, killed, and tortured
Popes never sinned, and Crusades were never fought
Like Bruno wasn't burned, and Galileo never imprisoned
Like god is good and the devil is bad
As if nobody ever died in the name of Christ
Like the Earth is flat with four corners and pillars
Heaven is a flat roof with reservoirs for rain
The sun moves back and forth, and stars are holes in the roof
As if god is angry when lightning strikes, floods drown,
and tornadoes twist human beings to pieces
Like money can buy a stairway to heaven
and the priest is the authorized salesman
As if the unholy, the scientists, the philosophers,
the wicked non-Cstholics, and the un-baptized beautiful
children will all scream and gnash their teeth in an eternal
agonizing tortuous inferno as the worms eat them from within
watched by merciful god for all time to come
And they'd swear it all was true
We people of sound mind now resume our walks content in
knowing that nothing extraordinary has happened
The fallible fools have elected another infallible inquisitor
The foolish weep for just another man who has passed away
to return as everything must. ..
To the endless flow of dust in the wind

PHILIP

menism and inter-faith unity, but as

for the Roman Church there would
be no "doctrinal ceding." He would
continue dialogue with non-Christians,
but with "patience and firmenss" as
the church reached out to win them to
the true faith.
The United States cardinals were in
all pre-accounts touted as powerless,

October, 1978

BARRY

but an overwhelming passion of those

cardinals in our country is to outlaw
abortion. John Paul in the initial study
authorized by Pope Paul VI had been
one of the votes in favor of artificial
means of birth control, specifically the
pill.
However, when Paul VI issued his
anti-human Humanae Vitae in July of
Page 7

1968, Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice was the first to speak out in favor
of the ban, in support of the then pope.
In his own district he had continued
always a stiff campaign against divorce
and against abortion. Now, as Pope
John Paul I, he gave immediate backing
to the U.S. cardinals and bishops as he
emphasized that abortion and related
birth control methods were "destruc-

u.s.

archy seemingly "gives," but actually

it only "adjusts" to survive in its
ordinary anti-human stance.
Where god is exalted mankind does
not have a chance. It is only when this
church is abolished that the small window of hope can actually open. Man
must learn that reason - not authority
- is his only chance.

Church Losing Credibility

One need not search for long to discover numerous reasons why the Catholic cardinals were so quick to "elect"
a new pope. As ex-Jesuit Malachi Martin
predicted on the day the conclave began, "They need a short conclave like I
need air to breathe."
That the Roman Church needed a
new pope to carry on old policies is
particularly apparent when reviewing
church figures on the deterioration in
American Catholic devotional practiices.
In 1963, some 72 percent of American Catholic adults went to mass every
week; in 1974, 11 years later, at the
time of the National Opinion Research
Center's
(NaRC)
second Catholic
school study, the percentage had declined to 50 percent - a decline of
two percentage points a year.
If one pools the responses to the
last two NaRC General Social Surveys, thereby obtaining almost 800
Catholic respondents (twice as many
as the typical Gallup survey), church
attendance for Catholics at the present
time is down to 42 percent - a continuing decline of two percentage points
a year and an overall decline of 30 percentage point since 1963.
It is from its many wealthy parishes
in the United States that the Roman
Church obtains the largest share of its
funds from abroad. Yet priest Andrew
Greeley reports that, "There is nothing
in the behavior of the leadership of the
American church which would give
you the slightest hint that they feel
any sense of urgency, much less an
awareness that they are in the middle
of one of the worst disasters in the history of Christendom - a 30 percent
decline in church attendance in a
mere 15 years."
The new pope, named John Paul I
in an odious vow to pursue the antihuman, anti-women policies of his two
predecessors, is a known supporter of
Paul VI's Humanae Vitae which outlaws
homosexuality, masturbation, premarital sex, safe abortions and access to
birth control for women. As such he

Page 8

tive ideologies of selfishness which

extinguish human life."
The "right-to-life" anti-abortion maniacs clearly have his blessing to firebomb and destroy even more abortion clinics in the United States now.
Bill Baird beware!
We can expect no help for human
kind from this pope. He is an extension
of the old order. That medieval hier-

was a favorite of the American cardinals and bishops in the conclave as an

overwhelming passion of those prelates
in the U.S. is to pursue their all-out
drive to have abortion outlawed for all
American women, be they Catholic or
non-Catholic.
This despite the fact that 66 percent of American Catholics said (in
the NaRC survey) they would have an
abortion if there was a chance of a defective child. Seventy-six percent said
they would favor an abortion if there
was a serious threat to the mother's
health. Depending on the circumstances, somewhere between two-thirds

and three-quarters of the Catholics in

the country would opt for an abortion.
To quote Greeley, "Having first
lost its credibility on sexuality, the
church now appears to be losing its
credibility with its own rank and file
on abortion."
Hence it is that the Catholic conservatives needed a short .conclave which
would produce a new pope with the
pastoral appeal of John XXIII while at
the same time one who was as psychotically anti-sexual and anti-women as
was the author of Humanae Vitae, Paul.

GOD APPEARS ON MIRACLE PIZZA

Recently, in a small town in New

Mexico, a Mexican-American woman
(suffering from a terminal case of Roman Catholicism) felt "chills in my
body" as she noticed that the skillet
burns on a tortilla she was preparing
miraculously resembled the mournful
face of Jesus Christ. Since then, 8,000
persons have visited the "Shrine of the
Miraculous Tortilla" after the local
priest blessed the hoax as an act of
god.
Not to be outdone by Catholics out
west,papists in New Jersey have cooked
up a miracle of their own in the form
of a Precious Pizza of Pious Origin. We
repeat the news brief for the enlightenment of those Atheists who think
they've heard everthing:

October, 1978

PENNSAUKEN, New Jersey - The

small pizza parlor of Mr. and Mrs.
Dominic Ca$hin has become the
"$acred $hrine of the Preciou$ Pizza"
as thousands of persons have visited
the pizzeria to get a gander of the face
of Christ while gobbling slices of Mr.
Ca$hin's pizza.
"All kinds of stuff turn up on my
pizza," Dominic Ca$hin confessed,
"but I never expected this.
"When Lsaw that face, right in the
middle of the pizza, the long hair, the
sad eyes, the crown of thorns, I
thought, "Christ! I've got it made!
"MyoId lady got the father over
here to bless it and later the bishop
came to look at it; but all he could
say was that he preferred pepperoni on
his slice and for us to stifle any talk of
miracles. But I know it's a sign that
Jesus is going to return to earth soon. "
Mr. Ca$hin has added another room
to his establishment in the center of
which the miracle pizza is displayed
surrounded by holy pictures, flowers
and burning candles. Business at the
pizzeria has more than doubled since
the Ca$hins included a bar, several
topless go-go dancers and a John Travolta look-alike contest every Saturday
night.

The American Atheist

.,

ON OUR WAY
Ignatz sahula-dyeke
Simple Questions For Muddled Times
Quite often when falling victim to a reflective mood there
come to mind the words of Thomas Jefferson uttered in his
first inaugural address in 1801: "Equal and exact justice to all
men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political."
Now, I, an Atheist, therefore assume that Jefferson's words include me no less than they do the religiously blunted gentry
whom I hear praying for my soul's salvation in tones so loud
they drown out any possibility of hearing those 15 Jeffersonian
words - words conveying a vision of a people who today need
to take those words to heart even more than on that day 152
years ago. So I'm asking three pertinent questions.
1.) Is the Chrisitanist a better American than an Atheist?
2.) Are members of Congress superior to ordinary citizens?
3.) Is the president our president, or a Baptist missionary?
Today, questions such as the above three are being asked by
no few of our fellow citizens, and deftly evaded by the elected
authorities at whom directed. The questions are being asked
because those who vote want their vote to mean what the vote
was originally intended to deliver - and what today it falls far
short of supplying by way of decent, honest and wise government of the kind Jefferson's words indicated that this nation's
founders wanted all its people to enjoy. Also, questions like
these wouldn't be surfacing were they not partly rooted in the
Christianism organized in A.D. 325, and since that time largely
directed from its front office in Rome.
One of the strangest interludes in the Western world's more
or less recent political history happened in Europe in the last
quarter of the 18th century, at the time when the common
people of the various monarchies and kingdoms of Europe
were discussing, thinking about, and revolting against the old
traditional order of governmental rule that in Europe then
existed largely unchanged for almost a thousand years.
At that time already writings of thinkers such as Saint-Simon,
Rousseau, Fichte, Hegel, Hobbes, Desmoulins, Hume, Montesquieu, and others as noteworthy, were being examined for
their content of reasoning that held out to the people bright
hope that before too long they could enjoy a life governed
from constitutionally guaranteed foundations, and that their
submissiom to monarchs, emperors, and popes who - as was
said - derived their authority from "god" and his will, was
approaching its long-abeyant and now impatiently anticipated
termination.
Consequently, the strange part in all this turbulent manifestation of the people's hunger for greater freedom - for relief
from their centuries of oppression - was the singularly antagonistic attitude toward their desires expressed by Britain's
Edmund Burke in his various speeches, printed tracts, and
books, all of them thus out of tune with the clamor of the
times. And because Burke was so badly out of tune, his voice
was heard and his thoughts discussed both in England and over
all of Europe's mainland.
Also because Burke so strongly believed in the rights of
kings, and defended the essentially ecclesiastically inspired
political configuration of monarchistic systems, many of his
observations constitute a brilliant and at the same time futile

Austin,

Texas

defense of everything that opposes any people's political selfdetermination; broadly, anything that we of today designate
as democratic, or, less broadly, republicanistic: if fact everything that could be described as originating with or reflecting
the desires of the majority of freedom-seeking peoples.
Now although Burke's words were to a minor extent sounding a sour note complicating the furor on the mainland of
Europe, and encouraging the partisans of the old royalist regimes to hope for a new lease on life, he was mainly interested
in preserving the conservative Englishman's faith in his governmental institutions which, during the period, the conduct
of King George III was jeopardizing to an extent so great that
he lost for the Crown its 13 North American colonies.
My reason for embarking here on this short commentary
about Edmund Burke is the similarity of his activities to events
that are presently taking place here in our U.S. of A. History
seems to repeat itself, for now - at a period in the world's history notable for Europe's active departure from imperialistic
colonization - is heard the voice of our own chief executive
telling the world's newly risen and reorganized free and independent nations that "we trust in god": the very "god" that
never batted an eyelash while the people of those lands he
speaks to were being yoked, lashed, exploited, cheated, and
murdered by the European governments that spread sanctimonious homilies about their "god's" impartial sense of justice.
What's our chief got in mind? Is he, in using the pronoun

October, 1978

Page 9

"we," actually thinking that he's talking for all of us? The
phrase "we trust in god" excludes those who trust more than
one god or none, and thus socially restrictive it expresses the
sentiments of a limited number of people, not of the USA as
a whole. The phrase doesn't speak for me nor for a good many
others whom I know. I must suppose it merely expresses the
sentiments of the chief and of those others who ,like himself,
profess belief in a religion whose dogmas many people take for
nothing but theological drivel extraneous to matters of state.
Even if our chief's religious beliefs were to be of some public import, this would have meaning only during the time he
stands at center-stage as our chief, and certainly not after he
will have departed from it.
It seems to me that any remarks today emanating from our
nation's capital which suggest that some "god" is a governing
power superior to the will of the American people, are destructive to the principles of our Constitution. Are we to believe
that this nation is no longer governed by its people but by
some "god?" Are we now no longer a constitutional republic
but a theocracy?
If the latter is so, this for the time being is sad news, indeed
a momentous tragedy into which we've been shunted by religious fanaticism of the kind that characterized the Dark Ages.
Burke made the consequences of transition from a monarchistic government to a republican one clearly imaginable as
ominous when he postulated that republics thwart the intentions of "god" when they permit the people to shape their
governments to their desires. He spoke eloquently, but at some
length also derogatively, of democratic states, mentioning that
they were structures permitting glib rascals to gain authority
which, once the electorate grants it, the rascals employ for the
furtherance of their private ambitions and plans.
Burke failed to mention what difference, if any, existed between a rascal elected by a careless electorate and one appointed by a monarch. Nor that the elected one can be voted out
of office, and the one appointed by the king more than likely
stays put, the power of the people's vote thus representing the
margin of superiority innate in democratic systems.
At this time Thomas Paine, who aided our revolutionary aspirations, was in England as one of Burke's outstanding critics,
denying that political self-determination was atheistic and
anarchistic - two words which then, just as today, were cannily
ascribed by tyrants to anything they opposed - trying to
make any movement for political freedom appear promiseful
of misery. Monarchists voiced such claims in hopes of turning
the tide rising against them, depending on the expiring but still
haunting belief of the commonality that its duty was meekly
to submit as always to "the will of god" which was transmitted
to all in earshot by their ruling prince. In this way a mere spectre wielded tyrannic power over the people and their lives.
Independence

From God

While all this was brewing in Europe, across the Atlantic the
citizens of the 13 colonies gave up vainly "trusting in god,"
took matters in their own hands, and declared their independence from Britain. Were they to have continued trusting King
George and the power he supposedly wielded "by the grace of
god," today you and I might well not be American citizens.
This should make plainly evident to everyone that any mixture of religionism and statism results in nothing but the agony
of dashed hopes. How dare anyone to call himself an American
who forgets that it was this nation's founders' faith and trust
in their own judgment and not in clerical balderdash that in
1776 electrified the world and started this nation of ours on
its way to the grandeur of today? Can anyone believe that our
nation can be adequately protected by the tramontane and

Page 10

October, 1978

~/

1
"The hair, makeup, costuming, lighting - we've got no
problems ... but you've got to hype-up the believability
quotient! "
sniveling motto "we trust in god," and forget all about whatever other means for self-defense?
You can, however, put your trust in this: that were in any
crisis all 200 million of us to become "reborn Christians" it
would result in nothing more than make us easier to enslave.
Any and all theorists of the Burke variety who urge the people
to place their governments into "god's" hands, are actually inviting them to participate in idle daydreaming; in fantasizing
that can have only one result: evisceration of the Constitution.
There exists in history no instance wherein an admixture of religion corrected what without religion went awry.
Many of the preceding paragraphs limelight Edmund Burke
because he so eruditely exemplified the minority that in his
era defended the ecclesiastic element that then as always strives
to retain its constrictive grip on Western mentality. The times
during which he lived were nothing short of extravagant, for in
no comparably brief period of history has there ever been such
an awakening; never so intense a flood of desire for political
freedom.
It was as though the dam built by Nicene Christianity as a
protection against all interference with its tyranny over the
West had suddenly burst, releasing an irresistible torrent of
rational thought that until" then rested quiescent, awaiting its
appointed hour.
Burke wasn't the only one who wanted to see the combination of religion and monarchism rule on as before. Others
besides him theorized for it even more intensely than he. They
all served the moment, their thoughts enlivening the discussions, quarrels and confrontations then seething on both sides
of the Atlantic, enabling the revolutionary spirit to prevail.
Within 50 years of Burke's death in 1797 came the rise to
power of Napoleon and his crestfallen departure for St. Helena;
ended in Europe the supremacy of the Hapsburg dynasty;
appeared the Confederation of German States with newly written constitutions. And all these events were followed by the
continent-wide uprisings of 1848. In the meanwhile the experiment in self-determination by the united 13 colonies was proceeding apace in North America, effectively minimizing
everything that Burke in Europe had been saying no people's

The American Atheist

government could accomplish.

People, not theology, were on the march, and the monarchial system of government limped on to its expiring gasp that
came with the end of the World War in 1918. Ever since that
year European states have been if not wholly democratic, then
certainly in step with democratic principles: permitting the
citizens to vote or have a voice in governmental affairs, policies,
and other matters of state.
After 1917, when the Russians and Yugoslavs in revolt
adopted Marxian collectivism as a political principle, this radically changed the political fabric and outlook of the Western
world on both sides of the Atlantic. Until then, the fabric was
of a simple transverse weave made up of constitutional monarchies and republics.
The Marxian principle now complicated everything political
and diplomatic by introducing a concept that ran on a bias
through the more or less familiar other two. But, within a
score of years after 1917 the monarchies one by one lost critical significance or entirely disappeared. Thus, after V-Day
1945, the political makeup of the West once again represented
a fabric woven of but two threads of major importance: ours,
made up of the politically free and independent peoples of the
Atlantic West, and the other one of the peoples of communistdominated Soviet Russia and her satellites.
This new fabric presented us with a knotty problem: keeping
the strength of our American concepts equal to those of Soviet
Russia, in which task we should remember that it was Jefferson
who provided a country for Washington to father, in much the
way communists, 150 years later, gave one to Lenin. And thus
the political fabric of the Western world is today ideologically
part Jeffersonian and part Leninian - both parts born of revolutionary aversion to "god"-subserviant governments.
Hence when I see, either here in our U.S. of A. or elsewhere,
any activity encouraging the people to let religion into their
political processes, it makes me apprehensive about our nation's
future. Were our thinking and actions dominated by religious
precepts, it would spell our finish.
History warns us that the clerical contingent never lets up
trying to establish its suzerainty over as much of the world's
populace and territory as possible. The clerics of all denom-

inations know, and can't forget, that for some 12 centuries

they virtually ruled, as they pleased, the entire continent of
Europe. Now who but a fool could believe that during the few
centuries since those days ended, clerical lust for power has
abated?
Any person who delves into the annals of organized Christianism will wax indignant when confronted by the lurid
crimes of the clergy against helpless humanity - activities in
which every vestige of the morality religion boasts it promotes
were totally ignored. And the people's fear, in those centuries,
of worse to come, hung over their heads like a heavy and
choking but invisible miasma. Outrageous conduct of this kind
went on only becuase the clergy was allowed to govern.
We cannot be on too strict a guard if we would prevent religion's command of our political arena. The clerics won't
swoop into it en masse; they know it can be done little by
little, and by stealth as often before.
Were the American citizen freely and properly educated;
advised that our national eminence was gained by dint of the
importance our forebears ascribed to self-confidence, hard
work, and minimal attention to religious matters, then, hopefully, we could easily dismiss the spectre that threatens our
freedom. We should be especially alert at election time when
so many of the candidates for office for obvious reasons prate
about their loyalty to religion's fading "god." Don't vote for
them.
Now, although these paragraphs are slanted politically, they
are written in the sole hope of taking our unique nation of
Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Lincoln, as far as possible from re-ernbracing a habit which, had it commanded our
founders, would have foresworn the concept of independence,
and nipped in the bud the aspirations of the men who, at the
behest of Richard Henry Lee, met in 1776 and signed the
Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia: a document of
principles to which they pledged their lives, their fortunes and
personal honor they deemed sacred.
Every American will in these muddled times be braced by
looking back to that august assemblage, fully assured by it
that the dogmas of organized Christianism threaten our
national independence.

You may not strike oil in Dallas at the Ninth National Annual Convention of American Atheists, but
it rich with new Atheist friends and fellows. For comraderie, for bon vivant with hundreds of fellow
interesting events, inspiring speeches and elbow-rubbing with your ilk: plan on attending this three-day
occur during the weekend of April 13-14-15. For advance registration information and other details, write

you will find

Atheists, for
gala event to
to:

John Mays, Convention Coordinator

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

October, 1978

Austin, Texas

Page 11

History Lesson

TH EV SAY THER'E
WON'T BE. ANY

VIOLENCE IN THE
WORLD-WHEN
THERE'S MORE
RELIGION.

Page 12

October, 1978

~J

The American Atheist

could not actually talk at all; it was all a put-on, yet we are
told that we must believe the story of the talking serpent, and
the talking ass, because it is in the Bible.
We found out that Cinderella's fairy godmother could not
change mice into horses, yet we are told that we must believe
that Jesus changed water into wine.
We concluded that the story of Mercury, the Roman god
who could fly, was only a myth, yet we are told that we must
believe that a person who had been dead three days revived
and floated up into the sky.
We discovered that trickery is involved in acts by magicians, yet we are told that we must believe that .Moses changed
a rod into a serpent.
We learned that the story about the genie in Arabian Nights
who granted wishes was only a myth, yet we are told that we
must believe "god" will do the same thing if we pray to him.
"It's just a fairy tale," they said about Sleeping Beauty being brought back to life, yet we are told that we must believe
Lazarus was raised from the dead.
We found that the tale about the marvelous feats done by
King Arthur and his sword, Excalibur, is only a legend; yet we
are told that we must believe that Samson slew a thousand
men with the jawbone of an ass.
We are told that these also are only myths:

What

Can
You
Believe?
By Dr. loyal Kirkeby
What can you believe?
When we were children, we were taught to believe. in Santa
Claus, the Easter Bunny, tooth fairies, and in the Great Pumpkin.
We were told that storks brought babies.
We were fed fairy tales, myths and legends, and taught to
believe in impossible things. Some of us were plied with superstitions. We were scared with tales about ghosts, witches, demons and a bogeyman.
We found out these were lies.

Huitzilopochtli, the war god of the Aztecs, was not born of

a virgin who conceived after she picked up a bunch of feathers
which fell from the sky and clutched them to her bosom.
"
The virgin mother of Quetzalcoatl did not conceive him
after swallowing a rare, green stone.
Athena, the Greek goddess, did not spring full-grown from
the forehead of Zeus.
Yet we are told that we must believe Mary was a virgin and
that a "holy ghost" was the father of her baby!
What can you believe?
Nothing! - unless it is sane, rational and provable.

If your father told you that he had stopped the sun and
moon, you would decide he should be in an insane asylum.
If your best friend told you he had parted the Red Sea, you
would call him a lying SOB.
If the most respected person you know said he had walked
on water, you would spread the word that he had suffered a
severe blow to the head, or been out in the sun too long.
In other words, you do not believe in things which are impossible, even if the persons you know, love and trust most
claim that they are true.
Yet, many believe impossible things when they read them
in a book - a poorly written book which not only contains
accounts of such "miracles," but is heavily loaded with obscenities, immoralities, indecencies, atrocities and absurdities, to say nothing of contradictions.

\\, TOLD YOV

A(UPUNCTURE

WOULDNtr

WORK/'/

We learned that "Mr. Ed," the talking horse-on television,

Austin, Texas

October, 1978

Page 13

Action
Atheist
--Bruce Hunter-EXORCISING TEXTBOOK GODS
The struggle for the child is and always has been a primary
part of the fight for the future of civilization. All religions recognize the importance of gaining the child early and keeping
the child late, so as to instill into the young mind those submissive patterns of behavior which will preserve the authority
of the churches.
Peddlers of religion base their "right" to have free access to
all children upon biblical claims to their (the churches and their
operators) being the sole repositories of divine wisdom as it is
revealed to them only by a god of their own creation. At best
the state is considered to be a bothersome, materialistic creation of infidels which, in its idolatrous worship of "humanistic" ideals, poses a threat to the rigid theological environment
most favored by the religious "shepherds."
The religious or parochial school represents an attempt to
create such a theological environment in which the child's
mind will respond in a manner favorable to the claims and
teachings of a particular sect. Once established, the parochial
school will then seek increased state funding of its operations
to the detriment of the nation's public school system whose
funds for imparting a: non-sectarian education to all citizens
are being bled off for distinctly and unconstitutionally sectarian purposes.
Not content with seeking the gradual financial destruction
of our public schools, the churches' need to dominate the
minds of the rising generation requires their gaining influence
over the selection of textbooks public school students will be
exposed to. Most often it is only long after blatantly theologytainted textbooks have been introduced into public schools
that unwary parents discover the violation. Even then, few if
any are willing to contest the intrusion of religion into an area
where reason should reign.
Not so with American Atheist Bruce Hunter of Dallas, Texas.
In July, he filed a Bill of Particulars with the Texas Education
Agency in protest of one or more titles offered by publishers
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., for adoption in 1978 to be
later implemented throughout Texas' public school system.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich was given two weeks to file answers to Hunter's objections. The Texas Commissioner of Education held hearings on the protested textbooks beginning on
16 August 78 in the state capital of Austin and the commission
was to announce its decision on the disputed material in late
September.
Hunter's complaints were in detail as he was quick to recognize the insidious manner characteristic of the peddlers of
religion as they seek to condition the young mind into deemphasizing life and freedom of the mind in the name of
pious subjugation before a god (in these textbooks it's the
monolithic Christian "God") created to enslave them.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich's point-by-point replies were so
blatantly supportive to the argument for permitting the de-

Page 14

October, 1978

secularization of the public school system that we present

them immediately following Hunter's protestations so that
others might recognize the importance of ostensibly innocuous
details such as capitalization of certain words favored by religionists and omission of other words/phrases deemed threatening
to religion's mind-stultifying hold over the nation's children.
The title being contested is Rise of the American Nation, Heritage Edition, Volumes 1 and 2, by Lewis Paul Todd and Merle
Curti (1977).
OBJECTION (to Vol. 1) by Bruce Hunter: The publisher
has taken the extreme liberty of changing to lower-case type
several dozen words originally capitalized in the original
Declaration of Independence, as rendered on pages 108-109.
The result is that these religious terms are given an emphasis
certainly not evident in the original document.
In the preamble capital letters were dropped from: Course,
Laws, Nature, and Nature's, while "God" alone is capitalized.
In the second text section, 18 capitals were dropped, including
those of: Life, Liberty and Happiness, while "Creator" alone
is allowed to remain capitalized. And in the final paragraph
capital letters were dropped from 26 words, but allowed to remain on "Supreme Judge" and on "Divine Providence!"
That this objection is neither frivolous nor unimportant
should be clear upon observing that "Laws of Nature and of
Nature's God" in the original version definitely establishes a
secondary position for the religious term as emphasized by the
double reference to "Nature('s) preceding it.
.
In light of the cruel and often deadly forms which religious
persecution took in the early colonies, we believe this downplaying of religious elements to have been a very deliberative
and wise decision. The only way to fairly represent such a historic document as this is with the original capitalization left
intact. It is improper and unacceptable for the publisher to attempt to instill a sense of the sacred more for "God" than for
"Nature," or for "Divine Providence" more than for "Liberty"
by arbitrarily changing certain capital letters to lower-case.
REPL Y by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: Eighteenth-century
usuage was to capitalize nouns. The prevelant usuage nowadays
is to capitalize the word "God" and to lower-case such words
as "laws" and "nature." Terms such as "Supreme Judge" and
"Divine Providence" are synonymous with "God" and are
therefore capitalized. The sole intent of the authors was to

"Today, children, I really have a

festival of fantasy for you!"

The American Atheist

provide a version of the Declaration of Independence with a

more up-to-date style of capitalization that would be familiar
to high school students. This is far from being an extreme
liberty on the part of the publisher. In fact, it is a common
practice in textbook publishing to provide modernized versions
of historical materials whose original versions contain archaic
spellings or sentence structure. The sole purpose of the changes
in capitalization in the Declaration of Independence was to
make this document as meaningful as possible to young
people.
OBJECTION:
On page 124, the first sentence of Par. 3
should end, " ... and to worship or not worship as they pleased
- has remained a cornerstone of American democracy."
[Emphasis mine.] This is a key aspect of this nation's unique
guarantees of religious liberty!
REPLY: The meaning of the phrase "worship as they
pleased" is commonly understood to include the freedom to
practice a religion. We do not feel itis necessary in the text to
belabor the point any further.
OBJECTION: In discussing ratification of the Constitution
on pages 142-143, the date on which our present system of
government became law, June 21, 1788, is ignored! Inasmuch
as this date is truly the nation's birthdate, it should merit mention. The publisher hints at the fact that the foundling nation
realized that it was a historic occasion by the remark " ... during the summer and fall of 1788 the country celebrated it."
REPL Y: On June 21, 1788, the Constitution technically
went into effect, for on that date New Hampshire became the
ninth state to ratify it. The petitioner is thus correct in saying
that on that date "our present system of government became
law." However, Virginia and New York, two of the most important states at the time, had not yet ratified the Constitution. Virginia did so on June 25 and New York on July 26. It
is extremely unlikely that the new government could have
functioned successfully without the participation of these two
states. This consideration, plus the fact that news traveled
slowly in those days, makes the text statement a reasonable
one.
OBJECTION: The uniqueness and social/historical importance of the secularity of the Constitution is not even mentioned! Young people cannot be expected to fully understand
their heritage of religious freedom without its historic foundations.
R EPL Y: The concept of "secularity" in the Constitution is
an abstract one, difficult for students to comprehend. Rather
than discussing the concept of "secularity" and limiting it to
the Constitution, the authors of Rise of the American Nation
treat the theme of religious freedom in a secular society by
tracing its origins and development throughout American history. Up through the period of the Constitution this coverage
is as follows:
pages 24-25: religious conflicts in Europe and specifically in
England influence developments in America
page 29: the drama of Roger Williams
pages 35-36: religious toleration in Pennsylvania and Maryland
pages 71-74: the growth of religious toleration in colonial
America
.
page 124: separation of church and state during the Revolutionary period
pages 148-149: constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion
OBJECTION: On page 149, the first paragraph should also
mention that exercise of religion also is not nor should be entirely free, for example in a public school representing a broad
spectrum of religious beliefs it is not proper - nor legal - for

DO you THINK T~ERE

REALLY l? A DEVIL?

~==~:::=9

II

NAW... ITS

JUST LIKE
SANTA CLAUS
'" HE.'S YOUR
FATHER.

the school staff to instigate or permit class time to be used for

partisan religious observances or activities.
The final remark of the paragraph is simply false; many citizens understand and observe First Amendment rights without
having to have a judge tell them how, why or when!
R EPL Y: Many examples could be given concerning the
complexities of applying the Bill of Rights. The authors of
Rise of the American Nation chose to illustrate their point
with examples dealing with freedom of speech and press. With
unlimited space, other examples concerning, for instance, religion, search and seizure, and bail, could have been mentioned.
We must respectfully disagree with the petitioner that "the
final remark of the paragraph is simply false." While the principles of the Bill of Rights are easy to understand, their precise application is a difficult legal matter. The petitioner himself gives evidence of this in his remarks on the free exercise
of religion in the public schools.

General comment by petitioner: This text completely

ignores the rather noteworthy fact that the U.S. Congress has
seen fit on several occasions to act in deliberate and complete
violation of the first 10 words of the Bill of Rights, culminating
in three infamous statutes establishing faith in "God" as a
national religious tenet:

1) PUb. Law 396, Ch. 297, 14 June 54:(Adding "under

God" to the national pledge.)
2) Pub. Law 140, Ch. 303, 11 July 55: (Making "In God
We Trust" mandatory on all U.S. currency.); and
3) Pub. Law 851, Ch. 795, 30 July 56: (Making "In God
We Trust" our national motto.)
Our students might better understand how this nation lost
its secular form of government to become a theocracy if the
text could trace certain steps in the process, as for example the
act of Congress over 100 years ago permitting "In God We
Trust" to be printed on one coin, the two cent piece.
The fact that state theists worked hard to have some acknowledgement of religious fealty placed in the Constitution
is improperly ignored. A history text which whitewashes the
damage done to our constitutional form of government, and
the principle of religious freedom, should not be approved for
use by our public schools.

October, 1978

Austin, Texas

Page 15

A JOYOUS ATHEIST
g. riehard bozarth
Sex Crimes
The Bible is a wealth of ideas, and it is the curse of Western
Civilization that most of them are pernicious, immoral, and
anti-human. Of all these ugly ideas that have been sunk into
the root systems of our cultural psyche, the worst are the ones
that have corrupted human sexual enjoyment. Religion has so
sadly screwed up human sexuality in the name of morality
that for this crime alone religion would be beyond forgiveness.
In Matthew 5:28, JC Superstar is recorded as saying, "If
a man looks at a woman lustfully, he has already committed
adultery with her in his heart." This degenerate statement has
been one of the most influential in determining the sexual psychology of Western Civilization. What has been done is to redefine adultery to include all modes of heterosexual activity
rather than just the extramarital exploits of a spouse. All of
heterosexuality except that between a husband and wife becomes the crime of adultery, the only sexual offense thought
horrible enough to condemn in the basic ten laws of Judaism
and Christianity.
What a corruption made worse by making thoughts as criminal as deeds! I can't think of anything surer to make a mental
mess of a person than to convince him or her that his or her
thoughts and desires are the equivalents of the actual deeds.
Just imagine yourself arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced
to life imprisonment for desiring to kill someone in a moment
of rage, and you can understand how mind-perverting this
dogma is.
Paul must have felt the edict of Matthew 5:28 as not forceful enough, for in 1 Corinthians 7:1 he removed any possible
goodness from sexual acts by declaring, "It is a good thing for
a man not to touch a woman." Imagine that! Not even the
love-making of a husband and wife is good. To resort to marriage is to surrender to lustful weaknesses. Marriage becomes
a sorry union of people who can't live in the pure nobility of
holy celibacy, but who must have what is not good. They
should grovel on their knees that god is so merciful he provided a means to let them sate their filthy lusts without suffering hopeless damnation.
The biblical message is clear - sex in any form is evil, evil,
evil. No wonder that heaven is a sexless "paradise" where
"men and women do not marry; no, they are like angels in
heaven" (Matt. 22:30). More like eunuchs in heaven, for only

joekirby's

-----bOiiomlTneonthedTvIne
Page 16

October, 1978

psychological eunuchs could call such an existence heaven.

Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century read the evil message
clearly, and elaborated on the repellent doctrine to write that
"if a man or woman is so beset by lust that adultery is imminent, the other spouse should 'render the marriage debt'
(without pleasure, of course) to protect the tempted one from
the greater sin of adultery.
"To demand the debt is a venial sin, but to pay it anesthetically a moral obligation." (Sexuality and Homosexuality by
Arno Karlan, p. 76). This is nauseous. The idea is that the
married couple are living in holy abstinence, but one finally
gets so horny the other has to put out or another partner will
be sought. It becomes a "sin" for a husband and wife to copulate! The only way the submitting partner can avoid the sin is
to not have any pleasure.
Unless this warped doctrine ruins a man's sexuality to the
point of impotence, it is practically impossible for a man to
copulate and avoid pleasure. How lucky are women - they
can be reduced to pleasureless frigidity without impairing their
physical capacity to copulate. How well has Aquinas succeeded
in perverting female sexuality? Just count the number of
books written in the past 10 years on the problems women
have with orgasm for the answer.

"Most Dangerous Impulse"

Three hundred years later in 1563 the Catholic Church
added a few more vile nails to the coffin of human sexual enjoyment when the Council of Trent decreed that "sex, even in
marriage, shows a degree of moral abasement; -the ideal state
is freedom from impulse; the deepest and most dangerous impulse is sex." (Karlan, p.77) Total physical and mental impotence ideal? It's enough to ruin one's appetite.
Is it morally abasing for a husband and wife to make love?
Imagine centuries of illiterate men and women at mass receiving such depraved brainwashing - imagine the guilt, the
shame, the fear of hell that haunted their sex lives if it didn't
destroy their capacity for sex altogether! This ghoulish spectre
haunts us still. Discussing the Kinsey Report in their Fundamentals Of Human Sexuality, Herant A. Katchadourian and
Donald T. Lunde noted it was found that "men who were less
devout were almost one-third more active in marital coitus."
(p. 257).
In the 18th century the great botanist Linnaeus (Carl Linne)
made his monumental classification of plants into a shining
example of human achievement. But, vile degenerate, "as the
basis of his classification he took the presence and character,
or the absence of distinctively reproductive organs." (The Age
of Voltaire by Will and Ariel Durant, p. 563). This brought
him criticism from Christians objecting "that this emphasis on
sex would dangerously influence the imagination of youth."
(Ibid, p. 564).
When I first read this, I laughed. After thinking about it,
I found nothing funny at all. How well the disgusting idea
launched by JC Superstar and Paul had infected Western Civilization! Just how perverted must one be psychosexually to

The American Atheist

believe that a young person could be morally corrupted by

reading about plant sex organs? If such mental perversion was
II physical cancer, such a miserable person would be a terminal
basket case. Is this really the road to morality? According to
Christianity, it is.
In 1818 one Thomas Bowdler, his mind fully twisted with
Christian sexual dogma, committed a crime against all that is
noble in humanity. He published the Family Shakespeare,
which was an obscenity of expurgation and paraphrase to provide a book of the plays "suitable for a father to read aloud to
his family without fear of offending their susceptibilities or
corrupting their minds." (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, Vol. 2, p. 204).
Yes, Shakespeare might corrupt Christian minds - by exposing them to playful, honest, bawdy, mentally healthy human sexuality. Religion had not warped Shakespeare's psychosexual health. This is what is offensive to good Christians.
I defy them to find in Shakespeare anything as obscene,
revolting, and sickening as the gang-bang murder described in
Judges 19:11-30. It won't be found in Shakespeare, but the
Bible is full of a variety of sex crimes. Those old Jews who
wrote the thing seem to have been fascinated by rape and incest.
Should that be unusual? Perverted psychosexuality produces perverted sexual interests. "Today, after 30 years of
investigation, the Kensey Institute for Sex Research reports
in their volume on sex offenders that in every type of sex
offense except one the offender had a very strict religious

Austin,

background. The only exception was the simple rapist. But

even this type reported that he would not have resorted to
rape if Christian lawmakers had not so restricted all other
sexual outlets." (Lucifer's Handbook, by Lee Carter, p. 56)
For 2,000 years Christianity has been brainwashing Western
Civilization to believe sex is evil - all sex is evil - a sin and a
sure route to hell. This has been done supposedly to make humans moral. We can see the morality that has been produced!
Warped religionists expressing their perverted psychosexual
natures the only way they can - through perverted sex crimes.
This sickness originating with the "son of god" and Christianity's first major theologian pervades throughout our society. There used to be a TV series originally called "James
At 15". When it was changed to "James At 16", the producers
thought they would let him get laid as a birthday present. The
author presented a script where the boy and the girl have a
good time free from worry thanks to her practicing birth control. That script got trash-canned right away. "The network
censors refused to let James have sexual intercourse at all, but
relented if 'he suffers and is punished for it.' " (San Francisco
Chronicle, 12 Jan. 78). In other words, sex is not good, it is an
evil sin one will suffer punishment for.
Yes, right now, in 1978!, at this very moment, there are
minds rotted and being rotted by the sick Christian sexual indoctrination.
What would I, as an Atheist, teach if it could all be undone
and a fresh start made? I would teach that sex is a pleasure the greatest of all physical pleasures. It can be diverted by all
sorts of devious psychological subtleties, but it still remains a
pleasure that is good simply because it is a pleasure.
To enjoy sex in its many forms is not by the act alone bad,
excepting when used sadistically or masochistically, or used
forcibly in rape, or used with a child, for children are unable to
understand or properly evaluate the experience. To completely
condemn sex, and sexual desires, is absurd, and totally irrational if one hopes to inspire humans to be moral. It is a
merry pleasure that is available to all with or without partners.
Let us enjoy the pleasure, let the pleasure add to our enjoyment of life, and let life be uncontaminated by religious pollution of our sex lives.
Unfortunately, we can't start fresh. We can't even start
even. Those sex criminals, JC Superstar and Paul, got a 2,000year jump on us; and have the aid of an army of brainwashed
perverts to labor to corrupt the minds of each new generation.
Restoring Western Civilization to psychosexual health and
happiness can only come about when Atheism triumphs over
religionism. Only an Atheist civilization with ethics and morals
"verifiable by experience, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority or creeds," can truly know the joy of sex.

October, 1978

Texas

Page 17

Atheist Museum Delluts

It was the event to top all
events, the brazen accomplishment, the greatest blow of all
blows to religion for Indiana is
the heart of "middle America."
This is where the corn grows
and the preachers blow. It is
the flag, apple pie and Mom all
rolled into one. These are the
"country people" whom Nixon
and Ford invoke as the Americans, the backbone, the solid
folk, rural America, farmers,
"all white, all male, all religious. "
And perched on a small hill,
on a country road, on a beautiful sultry summer day, the
American Atheist Museum was
opened officially. But it isn't a
lean-to, attended by longhairs, smoking grass; it is a solid, expansive, expensive, prestigious institution built by a convinced
capitalist and headed by his educated, business-accomplished
wife. Both are "Hoosiers," born and bred in central Indiana, of
long generational lines in that area. Both of them, attractive,
intelligent, clean, well-dressed, nicely coiffed, courteous, products of Indiana schools and colleges, represent everything
that middle America stands for - everything, that is, but god.
For there it stood that day, that building that even looked
like Indiana but, bright and large and attention-provoking, a
sign and a slogan stood out on the roof:

Rustic, reflecting the colors and tones of the land in

which it stands, the American Atheist Museum opens in Indiana.

AMERICAN ATHEIST MUSEUM

Under it, hugging a wall, was: "If you cannot speak your mind,
you are a slave."
Every radio and television station for miles around came to
the opening. Lloyd Thoren, Madalyn O'Hair and Jon Murray
were on radio, television, before excited cameramen. The newspaper persons swarmedovei them and Pam Thoren, museum
curator. The telephone rang incessantly. Cars came and went in
unending relays. Between times dashes were made to appear on
camera in television studios.
And, the Atheists came, one by one, staying to glow in
satisfaction, and then, abeam with happiness, returned to their
cars.
It went on for days, as media commitment after media
commitment was met. By then the headlines were everywhere:
"Clergymen See Atheist Museum
As End Of World" (Denver, CO)

Photos by J. Allen Studios, Petersburg, IN

"Atheist Museum Creates

Dissension In Community" (Cinn., OH)
"Town Fears Satan" (Long Island, NY)
"A Museum Like This
Is Just Ungodly" (Chicago, IL)

Page 18

October, 1978

The American Atheist

"Atheist Museum Seen As

Next Step Toward Fall" (Evansville, IN)

at work as he described the project, the ideal behind it, the satisfaction of accomplishment.
Lloyd and Pam Thoren had done themselves and Atheism
proud. Along one 40-feet-Iong wall was a glass encasement lined
with shelves - the nonsense of religion and its artifacts contrasted to the sense and accomplishments of Atheism and
science. Lining a second 40-feet wall were modern art murals
depicting the beginning of life, the primal indoctrination of
the child. And, there to sit on, were solid oak church pews
bought, at a good price, from another Indiana church now out
of business.

"Atheist Plies Belief

In 'Bible Belt'" (Mexico City, Mexico)

"Atheist Museum
Has Town Buzzing" (Albany, NY)
"Armageddon In Indiana" (Mexico City, Mexico)
"Atheist Museum Feared As
Sign Of Last Days" (Honolulu, HI)
And this time, their families were solidly behind the Atheists. Lloyd Thoren's sons called out their greetings and Pam's
brother and parents were a constant help, everywhere, doing
everything necessary.
All day long, that day of the Summer Solstice, Lloyd
"directed them through," explaining the cultural, anthropological and evolutionary themes. His voice could be heard trailing
along as he walked. "But you see, your religion is an accident
of place and time. For instance, if you're born here, now,
you're probably a Christian. In Egypt or Saudia Arabia, you
would be a Moslem. You see you were taught to be just the
way you are, just as you learned to speak English, instead of
French."
Then Pam was on the telephone with another uncouth, insuiting religious fanatic, with polite, clipped language, containing and rebuffing them.
Everything was appropiate. Two of the national officers of
American Atheists were there for the grand opening and the
exact time for the ribbon cutting was 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time, just at the moment of the Summer Solstice.
Lloyd and Pam asked Madalyn O'Hair to do the honors and
the ribbon broke as the shutters clicked, with photographs to
be distributed all over America.

~:
:.

.. -

',t>:"~'
.. .:

'.:.~:~
.. '

.i~~i{;~:i.!:
.....
.., ."_'~';."'_, ,h:.~::::"

It:

":;,

",H'."

-~'

The Thorens beam as Dr. O'Hair snips the opening ribbon.

By night fall, tired, happy, and very conscious that no violence had been done, the entire group welcomed the last straggling Atheists (about 40) to the official Indiana Chapter meeting. Even there, the radio taping continued and interruptions'
were made to watch Lloyd or Madalyn on late TV news.
Jon Murray gave a speech eulogizing the work of Lloyd.
Madalyn O'Hair's commencing speech was general. Pam was
able to contain herself until the last sentence when her voice
broke in a catch of happiness, pride, fulfillment and love.
Lloyd was "turned on," aglow, the natural "instructor" in him

Austin, Texas

Part of the extensive glass encasements which line the walls.

The lower floor display was convincing - from the sea
slime to the primate and side by side with that evolutionary
and anthropological display was the record of the evolving god
idea, from the most primitive conjectures of old thunder gods
to the modern concept of the ephemerel, transient, insubstantive god of the mind.
Pam and Lloyd Thoren had agonized for months over
"what an Atheist Museum" should be. On their own, cultivating their own ideas, bringing those ideas to fruition, they had
first envisaged and then actuated the theme of evolution: in
our physical world, in the study of all living things, of man.
But more, they charted the evolution of the idea of religion.
From the first Model-T god to the Cadillac of "god - all pervasive," the idea was pinned down.
And, always over it all, was Lloyd explaining, "We American Atheists question the validity of all of the claims of all the
world's religions, and," pulling himself up with the dignity of
it, "we have no religion at all. We are non-theists, A-theists, in
the strongest sense of the word.
"The painting at the end begins with the Indoctrinators.
They are your mother, father, teachers, and other adult peers
and you are, therefore, in the character of the mimic. Each
generation passes on to the next generation whatever it considers knowledge and culture. Change comes about very slowly
and with a great deal of resistance."
... And then it was night. Atheists sat there on the porch
watching the thousands of fireflies flickering in the tall grass,
the brush, the bushes, the low trees. They were all waiting to
see if night would bring trouble, the threatened candlelight
protest parade, the attack from cover of darkness. That small
county road was as busy as Fifth Avenue, New York, as the
stream of cars very slowly passed by. The night grew into
morning without incident and so did the next and the next as
the American Atheist Museum settled down to become, forever, a part of middle America.

Just several years ago - back in the early 1970s - American Atheists operating on less than the proverbial shoestring,
held out in a little white frame house in Austin, Texas, barely

October, 1978

Page 19

visible to the world. Today there is a million-dollar

Atheist
Center in one of the most prestigious buildings in Austin. Yet
it was alone.
On 21 June 1978, that, too, passed into history for now
there are two prestigious establishments:
the American Atheist
Museum in Petersburg, Indiana, and the American Atheist Center in Austin, Texas.
Our Florida director, Steve Ruddell, now advises that he
will provide an office (and a telephone)
in the office building
he owns in Miami, and so next year there will be three. Meanwhile, we now have thirty (30) functioning (that's a change!)

chapters and we have a feeling American Atheism is well on

its way.
Yet, we can still hear Lloyd's voice in our ears, "As you
wend your way through life you will find that if you need
some help the person who can do it best and most easily for
you, and in fact the only person that is significantly
important
to you in your improving your lot in life, is you."
Okay Lloyd.
We'll do it. One is good; two is better; three (coming up) is
a reach outward.
We will populate
the United States with
American Atheist institutions.
We have the future to do it in.

How To Slant The News:

"Armageddon In Indiana"
What happens at an Atheist event is usually not reported
accurately
in the newspapers.
For fun and games, therefore,
the thick pile of news items appearing all over the U.S., but especially in Indiana, is used below for a composite story of how
the media reports on American Atheists.
"PETERSBURG,
Indiana - Clergymen in this small town
on the northern edge of the Bible Belt talk darkly about devil
worship and the impending
end of the world when asked
about Lloyd Thoren and his American Atheist Museum.
"Thoren,
who owned the Petersburg Telephone Company
until a month ago, has Madalyn Murray O'Hair in for the
special opening.
" 'I think this is one of the signs of the last days: said a pastor of a Bible Covenant Church, one of the 17 churches in this
community
of 5,000 residents.
" 'We believe after Jesus comes, we will have a one-world
government
under the anti-Christ,
and this is all working together toward that end. Thoren is certainly working against
God.'
" 'Almost everybody
said it was a place of devil worship:
one minister stated. 'We really didn't know what the museum
was for sure.' (before today)
" 'There were some stories about cattle slayings that have
been circulating around Petersburg, that maybe they were sacrifices. Whoever killed the cows took the blood and sex organs
and left the rest. The people seem to link all these things together. There is something
that looks like a furnace (on the
property).
I wonder if he uses it for sacrifices.'
"The minister of the First Christian Church opined 'It
would be better if Thoren could be converted.'
"The First Baptist Church minister said Thoren was once a
Presbyterian and even taught Sunday school.
" 'But about 10 years ago, a transition took place: the pastor said. 'Thoren grew long hair, his (first) wife left him and he
claimed to be an Atheist. Everybody in town says he's the complete reverse of what he used to be.'
"Most of the 17 churches in Petersburg are evangelical, and
almost all of the ministers wish Thoren didn't live there.
" 'I wish we could get rid of him but I don't know what we
could do: one preacher sighed.
"The minister of the Main Street Presbyterian
Church at-

Page 20

October,

~/

1978

Lloyd Thoren, Director of the Indiana Chapter of American

Atheists, relating the hows and the whys of the American Atheist Museum to the attending newspersons.
firmed that many Petersburg residents have fired guns at Thoren's house or plagued him with nasty telephone calls. He concluded, When we're (Christians) nasty, it gives a reason to be
Atheist.'
"Another
minister revealed plans had been made for picketing, but an all-day praver-viqll on the day of the opening was
held instead."
The Evansville Courier newspaper
(15 July 1978 edition)
permitted
an especially vicious article to be written by the pastor of the Stewartsville
Apostolic
Bible Church who characterized the museum as "This disgusting institution
dedicated
by the "infamous
Madalyn Murray O'Hair.'
Calling Atheism
"moral rot:' the article went on:
"There you have it! The lines are clearly drawn. Evil has
made its challenge in the Tri-State.
"Atheism is built on lies. History reveals the sad fate of any
people who turn away from God and depart from the instructions He has given to mankind through the Bible. The hope of
America is to return to God, not merely in 'lip service' but in
obedience to his word."

The American

Atheist

The How
&
The Why
By Pam Thoren
Museum Curator
&
Lloyd Thoren
Director, Indiana Chapter
Of American Atheists

In the beginning, the need was felt to reach out to the

young people of our great nation. The target group were those
of parochial school age, so that they might be shown the
methods used to indoctrinate the youth of America. They are
that very group which is in the process of learning how to
conform in the established American culture. As such they
have virtually no opportunity to see or visit any other area of
the world to study cultural anthropology. Most older citizens
have developed a rather fixed lifestyle and are not easily
motivated in a new direction. Change comes about through the
death of the older generation and the growth of the new, but
even then with great resistance.
Through more brains than luck, four acres of land at the entrance to Pride's Creek Park had been acquired several years
ago. We had mulled over how best to use this land, at the same
time that we thought to enlarge our personal contribution to
the Atheist cause. Whatever was decided, a building would be
useful. The land had a gentle rise with an elevation top which
overlooked the surrounding countryside. There was a natural
slope to the front road.
We decided to construct as large a building as was possible,
at the lowest possible cost. We do have some money and are
well acquainted with skilled builders. Using innovative techniques, coupled with many power tools, a main building was
rapidly erected on this gentle summit.
It was large, rectangular, and two-storied. The lower floor
built into the slope measured 40 x 60 feet - a total area of
2,560 square feet. The second floor which was level with the
top of the slope was larger with long porches and measures
50 x 60 feet, with a floor area of 3,000 square feet. The total
building area totals approximately 5,600 square feet.
A major feeling of pride in accomplishment satisfied us for
some months after its completion.
During this phase, the intent was to make the acreage into
a camp for Atheist girls. Girls are often treated like secondclass citizens, often without realizing it themselves. More importantly, at a summer camp they are in most cases not the
physical equal of men. This would make it easier for a mere
male to keep peace between the campers, if need be.
Two cabins, complete with bunkbeds, eating and living
facilities were built nearby. Each could accomodate four
persons (300 sq. ft.).
As time wore on, the awesome prospect of feeding, sheltering and entertaining - even with Pride's Creek Park next
door - a quantity of active young girls took on some profound problem aspects. It was more than we could cope with
and we needed a new game plan.
Meanwhile, as Atheist friends visited, our cabin accomodations were open to them and we talked.
We were building a considerable Atheist library and a repu-

Austin,

Director of the American Atheist Center (Austin, Texas) Jon

Murray, American Atheist Museum Curator Pam Thoren, and
Indiana Chapter Director Lloyd Thoren shown witnessing Dr.
O'Hair's signing a copy of Freedom Under Siege for presentation the the Thorens.

tation in the community for our outspoken Atheism, The original Dial-An-Atheist program we had instituted had brought
considerable fame.
Indiana had been the first chapter of American Atheists
chartered through the national office. Traditionally we held
our home open every Sunday from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon
for tea and conversation for any Atheists in our area.
We supported the national office, attended yearly conventions, often met with Madalyn O'Hair when she was on television in Indiana and adjacent states and pondered as to how
we could make a significant contribution to the land we loved.
When it was apparent that an Atheists' girls camp was impractical, the building, cabins and grounds still challenged us.
So began the long period of walking and thinking about how
to reach those important future citizens of our great country.
During this time, work continued. A small kitchen, a bath,
men's and women's restrooms, and an office were installed.
At last, perhaps because museums have always been a source
of inspiration (as a college student of anthropology Lloyd had
toured and been impressed by the Hall of Man at the Field Museum in Chicago), it was decided: "Why not, an American
Atheist Museum?"
A museum! At first the idea was almost overwhelming. It
seemed a Walter Middy type dream. But as we talked it over,
it became less awesome, more auspicious.
After many months of serious thinking, it was clear. The
buildings needed to be finished as the site of an American
Atheist Museum.

October,

Texas

1978

Page 21

A Display

ENJOY FREEDOM FROM RELIGION,

PUT AMERICA FIRST

Of Courage
By Pam & Lloyd Thoren
From the time we decided to build an American Atheist
Museum until the ribbon-cutting ceremony on the day of the
Summer Solstice in June, we found ourselves faced with three
major problems to be solved. They were as follows, in chronological order:
1) What was to be displayed in an Atheist museum?
2) How would this action affect us economically?
3) What must be done to protect the museum, its real and
personal properties, and its personnel in order to survive in
a relatively hostile religious environment?
The first problem faced was one of trying to decide what to
put into an Atheist museum. This proved to be a very difficult
task. Finally" the realization came that religion and the sciences
have never mixed. This needed to be demonstrated in a review
of the evolution of each. With zeal we began to work first on
projects depicting Darwin's Theory of Evolution.
We soon found this needed to be developed slowly, as we
searched for and acquired various presentations on the subjects
of cultural anthropology, behavioral psychology, astronomy
and the life sciences.
Here and there we found an old piece of Americana, something from the "Hoosier" state, and at one point, to give a lesson of "objective reality" settled into one corner, a real pioneer's cabin, sans water, sans light, dirt floored and very real.
We wanted, always, to have some things with which-the impressionable young could relate.
We wrote a small brocheure, a little statement of purpose
which we proposed to give to the visiting youth, those who
had most often used the Dial-An-Atheist program.
"Welcome to our museum. It contains some unusual
exhibits, a simulated history of planet Earth, its living and
extinct creatures. The museum will require updating as we,
the dominant species in the animal kingdom, increase our
knowledge.
"We great upright primates had dreams and fantasies.
They created many problems in the last few thousand years.
Beliefs in the supernatural have a negating, debilitating effect.
"Our purpose is to lead the young out of darkness into
light. Trust only your own sensory perceptors, and one day
things will open up for you. It's a promise from me."
Mister'T"
There are two signs inside the museum. The one below the
comparative religion exhibit reads Quia Credo Absurdum Est
("What is absurd is that which is believed.") The one above the
Atheist book section reads Damnant Quod Non Intelligent
("They condemn that which they do not understand.")
The building of natural wood, indigenous to our area, is a
deep rich brown. We decided to put a stand-out quotation on
the outside wall, but that was to come later. Today we are determined that in the future our entrance arch shall read:

Page 22

October, 1978

~/

As time elapsed we were faced with a second major problem,

In mid-May, word was received that two officers of the American Atheist Center were coming to Indiana during the month
of June to do a media blitz to acquire new members. The
Indiana Chapter of American Atheists was requested to set up
as many TV, radio and newspaper appearances as possible. We
were very happy to have this visit to Indiana, but it posed a
serious problem: how would this action affect the museum
plans?
We decided that a display of courage was necessary and that
national's visit to Indiana would be an excellent time to put
the American Atheist Museum sign on the building and open
officially to the public. Setting this deadline meant that extra
hard work was necessary during the interim month to ready
the museum.
Putting the sign on the building, however, posed a serious
problem. Even though Lloyd had been an outspoken Atheist
for quite some time, he still was a businessman in our small,
religious community. As is often the case with Atheists, his
personal and social life greatly affected his business affairs. We
realized that the controversial step of having Madalyn O'Hair
come to open a new American Atheist Museum in this highly
religious area of the Midwest would have very serious negative
consequences for Lloyd as a businessman.
A decision had to be made, and at this point, after many
weeks of sleepless nights, we knew that the only solution to
this dilemma was that he must give up his business in order to
completely separate his personl and social life from any business affairs he might have. This was one of the most difficult
decisions Lloyd has ever had to make. His resignation as president of his firm became effective exactly two weeks before
the day chosen to officially open the museum.
The final problem then became clear. Living in this small,
religious community in the Bible Belt of the Midwest, it was
painfully apparent that it was necessary to develop a security
system to protect the museum, its real and personal properties,
ourselves and any visitors. Various devices and techniques were
implemented to give overall security.
.
During early construction a perimeter fence had been built
around the property. A single road entry and exit from the
museum property had been decided upon to facilitate easy
blockage if necessary in an emergency.
Numerous detection devices were installed, including a
capacitance bridge to alert us at the presence of vehicles entering the premises. Electromechanical
and electronic devices for detecting the presence of intruders on the premises
were the last addition.
At this point we put up" our outside quotation affixed in
large bright letters to the front side of the museum reading:
If you cannot speak your mind, you are a slave.
The large roof sign went up with just two words on it,
"American
Museum" We thought we would await
opening day on the Summer Solstice (21 June) to add the
middle word which would make it read proudly, "American
Atheist Museum."
Finally, after two and a half years, the dream became a
reality. On the eve of the Summer Solstice, Madalyn O'Hair,
president of American Atheists, with all of us standing by, officially opened the American Atheist Museum to the public.
It was a momentous, as well as a most joyous occasion for all
gathered for that historic moment on a summer evening in
Petersburg, Indiana, U.S.A.

The American Atheist

Old Jaroslav regained consciousness

and immediately regretted it. His thigh
still throbbed painfully, his head burned, and his bones shivered with the
November chill. The ground beneath
him shook with cannon fire, and the
air was thick with the smell of death
and the hoarse cries of men in battle.
Slowly he opened his eyes and licked
his parched lips.
"Ernst?"
"Here, Uncle Jaro." A young man
with a rusty matchlock ran back from
the breastworks which they had so
hastily erected in the misty hours before dawn.
"Have you your canteen?"
"Here." Ernst held the old man's
head up and poured some of the precious liquid down his throat.
"Ah-h," Jaro sighed and eased his
head back. "How is it going?"
"Not well. King Frederick's banner
went down some while ago ... most
of the mutinous pigs fled as soon as
those idol-worshipping demons attacked! Young Armin has been wounded, but still fights valiantly to our left,
God save him! And Tilly's men have
... " he broke off as his eyes chanced
upon his uncle's gashed thigh, " ... but
I ramble on, and you are no doubt in
pain. Your leg has stopped bleeding,
though, Uncle, and I think it is not so
dread a wound as to -well,"he glanced
with embarassment at his uncle's
weather-beaten face, "as to cause you
concern for your life."
"Ah, it's not the wound, my boy,
it's not the wound. Wounds, I've had
plen ty. It's this damned fever, this
spotted curse, I've had near on two
weeks. "
"Oh, aye," his nephew sighed. "The
Camp Fever. The men are more plagued
with dysentery and this military fever
than with the enemy. Some call it the
Palatine Fever - it came with the rest
of our troubles!"
"Now, Ernst," muttered Jaro disapprovingly, "the King has done as well
by us as he could. He's only trying to
defend our religion from the Papists it's a holy thing to fight for."
"I fight for nothing holy - I fight
because I was forcibly conscripted!
They have no pay to give us and no
food either! It's an unholy thing to
make old men and young boys go out
and die by the cartload."
"You must be unwell yourself,"
said his uncle uncomfortably.
"The
Emperor has tried to deny us the religious freedom promised to us barely
11 years ago. We must defend it, or
die trying!"
"Mostly the latter, I think," replied

Austin,

ON THE LAPS
OF THE GODS
By Denise Thompson
Ernst wearily. The sounds of clashing
steel and whinneying horses drew closer. "Damn, here come the southern
scum now," sighed Ernst, rising to his
feet. "Farewell, uncle, rest easy until I
return. "
"Be careful, Ernst - at least for
your mother's sake," Jaro murmured.
But Ernst was gone.
Loping to the fray, he had to circumvent the dead, the mutilated, and
a number of still groaning bodies. He
passed one slumped and already stiffening corpse whose face was blue, the
unseeing eyes bulging: an ivory rosary
twined tightly around its neck. Scrambling onward, Ernst came at last to
an outcropping of rock behind which
he could crouch for cover. He loaded

the priming pan of his heavy musket

and tried to identify the imperialist
infantry in the skirmish ahead. At the
sound of hooves behind him he turned
quickly; yet not quickly enough, for a
fountain of blood went spurting skyward as the mounted cavalryman, crying "Sancta Maria!" severed Ernst's
head neatly from his shoulders. The
handsome head plopped to the ground
and rolled several feet down the slope,
coming to rest against a bush.
"Ha!" the horseman laughed heartily . "Your head shall race your body
to hell, heathen! Sancia Maria!" he
yelled, storming into the thick of the
battle.

An observer on a nearby intergalactic mercenary vessel grinned. "Ah-h-h!

I think you'll lose this wager, my
friend ... the Papal forces will surely
win the war if it goes on like this."
Hermes Christi grimaced. "Don't be
too sure, AI-Jove, remember the Crusaders' surprise victory in the Battle of
the Lance!"
"Oh that! I still say you cheated."
"Oh, don't be .. ." .
"You did. If you'd never popped
down there as 'St. Andrew' and
inspired that madman to look
for the 'Holy Lance' ... "
"It wasn't even a real lance,
you know that," Hermes replied, grinning.
"But they did not

October, 1978

Texas

~J

Page 23

know it. That ragged, starving band of

pernicious
vermin got absolutely
delerious and went into a homicidal
frenzy ... "
"And wiped your precious boys
out. You're just jealous you didn't
think of conjuring up some inspiration
yourself. I tell you, Ali, if you're going to win, you've got to understand
how these people think! You've got to
learn a little primitive psychology."
Just then Keridwen-maya walked
by, glared at the huge monitoring
screen, then at the men. "Primitive indeed! That's about your level - don't
you ever get tired of this decadent interference?"
"Hey! Who's interfering, woman?"
"Hells above, Keri, we haven't interfered with these folks in a long time.
Honest!"
"Well, it's degradingly vicarious,
nevertheless. It breaks my heart to
think how our illustrious ancestors
would feel if they could see us now especially you two!" She shuddered.

Page 24

"lllustrious!" Hermes said with a

snort as she turned away. "Some of
our fore bearers were the worst voyeurs
that ever lived! And as for interference
- hell, who do you think pitted all
those tribes against one another in the
first place!" But after Keridwen left
the room both men were gloomy and
fidgeted silently. Although their profession was considered an honorable
one in their society and frequent travel
at faster-than-light speeds slowed their
aging processes to an enviable crawl,
intergalactic travel had its drawbacks.
Neither man had been prepared, at the
time he had signed up, for the feelings
of loneliness and boredom engendered
by leaving their culture and their contemporaries behind.
"Interference
indeed,"
Hermes
grumbled finally. "What does she
think old Zeus and his crew of pirates
were remembered for? Why, there are
still cultures down there that talk
about him and his exploits, and that
was many generations ago for them!"

October, 1978

~/

He snorted. "Not to mention some of

our more philosophical
latter-day
'saints.' "
AI-Jove sighed. "I know, I know,"
he replied pensively. "All those old
politicoes are still remembered with
reverence. They had some style, too,
you have to admit - although maybe
not as much as Zeus ... " They lapsed
into thoughtful silence once more.
The screen flickered soundlessly,
now showing mostly carnage and
smoke.
"Oh, well. Looks like the battle's
over."
"Yeah, guess so - it appears you
won this one."
"Don't worry; we're going to be in
the neighborhood for a while, and I
have a feeling it's going to be a long
war."
"Let's hope so. There isn't another
interesting culture within a hundred
light years of here, and I'm bored to
death!"

The American Atheist

The American Atheist Radio

Illill'l:
i.:~:!:::::I~.~!i:
::: ~~~~~l1l1=1=:'

Series

Reminiscences Of Ingersoll
Program 451. ....

3 April 76 ....

KLBJ ....

Austin, Texas

******************************************
Hello there,
This is Madalyn Murray O'Hair, American Atheist, back to
talk with you again.
Robert G. Ingersoll, whom I love to quote, also wrote some
reminiscences of his own life, of incidents which had influenced him, little tidbits of this and that. I thought you might
like to hear a few of them. I quote:
"I heard one sermon that touched my heart, that left its
mark, like a scar, on my brain.
"One Sunday I went with my brother to hear a Free Will
Baptist preacher. He was a large man, dressed like a farmer,
but he was an orator. He could paint a picture with words.
"He took for his text the parable of 'The Rich Man and
Lazarus.' He described Dives, the rich man - his manner of
life, the excesses .in which he indulged, his extravagance, his
riotous nights, his purple and fine linen, his feasts, his wines,
and his beautiful women."Then he described Lazarus, his poverty, his rags and
wretchedness, his poor body eaten by disease, the crusts
and crumbs he devoured, the dogs that pitied him. He pictured
his lonely life, his friendless death.
"Then, changing his tone of pity to one of triumph -leap
ing from tears to the heights of exultation - from defeat to
victory - he described the glorious company of angels, who
with white and outspread wings carried the soul of the despised
pauper to paradise - to the bosom of Abraham.
"Then changing his voice to one of scorn and loathing, he
told of the rich man's death. He was in his palace, on his costly
couch, the air heavy with perfume, the room filled with servants and physicians. His gold was worthless then. He could
not buy another breath. He died, and in hell he lifted up his
eyes, being in torment.
"Then, assuming a dramatic attitude, putting his right hand
to his ear, he whispered, 'Hark, I hear the rich man's voice.
What does he say? Hark! Father Abraham! Father Abrahan! I
pray thee send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in
water and cool my parched tongue, for I am tormented in this
flame.
''Oh, my hearers, he has been making that request for more
than 1,800 years. And millions of ages hence that wail will
cross the gulf that lies between the saved and lost and still will
be heard the cry: Father Abraham! Father Abraham! I pray
thee send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water
and cool my parched tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.
"For the first time I understood the dogma of eternal pain
- appreciated 'the glad tidings of great joy.' For the first time
my imagination grasped the height and depth of the Christian

horror. Then I said: 'It is a lie, and I hate your religion. If it is

true, I hate your god.'
"From that day I have had no fear, no doubt. For me, on
that day, the flames of hell were quenched. From that day I
have passionately hated every orthodox creed. That sermon
did some good."
And, here is another:
"I think it was Heinrich Heine who said, 'It is not true, it is
not true that the damned in hell are compelled to hear all the
sermons preached on earth.' "
And another:
"I have said nothing, in any of my lectures, about my
father, or about my mother, or about any of my relatives. I
have not the egotism to bring them forward. They have
nothing to do with the subject in hand. That my father was
mistaken upon the subject of religion, I have no doubt. He was
a good, a brave and honest man. I loved him living, and I love
him dead. I never said to him an unkind word, and in my heart
there never was of him an unkind thought. He was grand
enough to say to me that I had the same right to my opinion
that he had to his. He was great enought to tell me to read the
Bible for myself, to be honest with myself, andif after reading
it I concluded it was not the word of god, that it was my duty
to say so.
"Nearly 48 years ago, under the snow, in the little town of
Cazenovia (New York) my poor mother was buried ....
"I know that my parents - if they are conscious now - do
not wish me to honor them at the expense of my manhood. I
know that neither my father nor my mother would have me
sacrifice upon their graves my honest thought. I know that I
can only- please them by being true to myself, by defending
what I believe is good, by" attacking what I believe is bad. Yet
this minister of Christ (who attacks me) is cruel enough and
malicious enough to attack the reputation of the dead.
"My father and my mother were good, in spite of the Old
Testament. They were merciful, in spite of the New. They did
not need the religion of Presbyterianism. Presbyterianism
never made a human being better. If there is anything that will
freeze the generous current of the soul, it is Calvinism. If there
is any creed that will destroy charity, that will keep the tears
of pity from the cheeks of men and women, it is Presbyterianism. If there is any doctrine calculated to make man bigoted,
unsympathetic and cruel, it is the doctrine of predestination.
"If I wish to shed luster upon my father and mother, I can
only do so by being absolutely true to myself. Never will I lay
the wreath of hypocrisy upon the tombs of those I love.
"It may be that I am lacking in filial affection, but I would
much rather be in hell, with my parents in heaven, than be in
heaven with my parents in hell. I think a thousand times more

October, 1978

Austin, Texas

Page 25

of my parents than I do of Christ. They knew me, they worked

for me, they loved me, and I can imagine no heaven, no state
of perfect bliss for me, in which they have no share. If god
hates me, because I love them, I cannot love him.
"You cannot show real respect to your parents by perpetuating their errors.
"Do you consider that the inventor of a steel plow cast a
slur upon his father who scratched the ground with a wooden
one? I do not consider that an invention by the son is a slander upon the father; I regard every invention simply as an improvement; and every father should be exceedingly proud of
an ingenious son.
"In the world of thought, each man is an absolute monarch,
each brain is a kingdom that cannot be invaded even by the
tyranny of majorities.
"No man can avoid the intellectual responsibility of deciding
for himself.
"I have said, and still say, that you have no right to endeavor
by force to compel another to think your way - that man has
no right to compel his fellow man to adopt his creed, by torture or social ostracism. I have said, and I still say, that even an
infinite god has and can have no right to compel by force or
threats even the meanest of mankind to accept a dogma abhorrent to his mind. As a matter of fact such a power is incapable
of being exercised. You may compel a man to say that he has
changed his mind. You may force him to say that he agrees
with you. In this way, however, you make hypocrites, not converts. Is it possible that god wishes the worship of a slave?
Does a god desire the homage of a coward? Does he really long
for the adoration of a hypocrite? Is it possible that he requires
the worship of one who dare not think? If I were a god it
seems to me that I had rather have the esteem and love of one
grand, brave man, with plenty of heart and plenty of brain,
than the blind worship, the ignorant adoration, the trembling
homage of a universe of men afraid to reason.
"You can make a man say that he has changed his mind;
but he reamins of the same opinion still. Put fetters all over
him, crush his feet in iron boots; stretch him to theiast gasp
upon the holy rack; burn him, if you please, but his ashes will
be of the same opinion still.
"I am told that I am in danger of hell; that for me to express my honest convictions is to excite the wrath of god.
They inform me that unless I believe in a certain way, meaning
their way, I am in danger of everlasting fire.
"There was a time when these threats whitened the faces of

men with fear. That time has substantially

passed away."

Please remember that Ingersoll was writing and saying these

things 100 years ago, but that we still have with us today the
idea of hellfire and damnation. But, to go on with Ingersoll:
"They say that the eternal future of man depends upon his
belief. I deny it. A conclusion honeslty arrived at by the brain
cannot possibly be a crime; and the man who says it is, does
not think so. The god who punishes it as a crime is simply an
infamous tyrant. As for me, I would a thousand times rather
go to perdition and suffer its torments with the brave, grand
thinkers of the world, than go to heaven and keep the company of a god who would damn his children for an honest
belief.
"There is upon man, so far as thought is concerned, the obligation to think the best he can, and to honestly express his
best thought. Whenever he finds what is right, or what he
honestly believes to be right, he is less than a man if he
fears to express his conviction before an assembled world.
"It is only when we discard the idea of a deity, the idea of
cruelty or goodness in nature, that we are able ever to bear
with patience the ills of life. I feel that lam neither a favorite nor a victim. Nature neither loves nor hates me. I do not
believe in the existence of any personal god. I regard the universe as the one fact, as the one existence - that is, as the
absolute thing. I am part of this.
"A man may call me a devil, or the devil, or he may say
that I am incapable of telling the truth, or that I tell lies, and
yet all this proves nothing. My arguments remain unanswered.
Ingersoll received hate mail even as do we today here at the
American Atheist Center. And, he had as tart a tongue in his
mouth as do I. Listen to this one:
"Buffalo, New York
24 February 1878
Mrs. Van Cott,
My dear Madam: Were you constrained by the love of Christ
to call a man who has never injured you 'a poor barking dog'?
Did you make this remark as a Christian, or as a lady? Did you
say these words to illustrate in some faint degree the refining
influence upon woman of the religion you preach?
What would you think of me if I should retort, using your
language, changing only the sex of the last word?
I have the honor to remain,
Yours truly,
R. G. Ingersoll"
And more ...

"I certainly hope the Legion of Decency

is catching this!"

Page 26

October, 1978

"Sometimes I almost despair of the race. When I see thousands of people, some of them educated, kissing a supposed
bone of St. Anne, now, at the close of the nineteenth century, here, in the United States, I feel that the minds of millions are still in the dens' and caves of savagery. Is it not wonderful that all people do not see that the Catholic Church is
the fortress of ignorance, superstition and hypocrisy - an organization that seeks to govern by exciting the fears of the
ignorant and the hopes of the foolish? How that church that impudent beggar -lives
and thrives: It, has murdered
many millions, it has committed all crimes, and yet millions
bow at its altars. From this we can see how little one man can
do - and how little millions can do. The Catholic Church with

The American Atheist

its celibacy - an insult to the world - with its confessional

that destroys manhood and womanhood, with all its absurdities and crime, lives and flourishes here, in the Great Rebublic
(of the United States).
"Still, I have confidence in the final victory of reason, of
education and civilization. I shall do what I can to hasten the
day of deliverance.
"But I am depressed by the weakness of the individual one man can do so little and the harvest is so far away."
"The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat
without losing heart."
"It is a grand thing to be the owner of yourself. It is a grand
thing to protect the rights of others. It is a sublime thing to be
free and just."
"I believe in doing things above board, in the light, in the
wide air ....
Take your position in the sunlight; tell your
neighbors and your friends what you are for, and give your
reasons for your position; and if that is a mistake, I expect
to live only making mistakes."
"It is a great thing to preach philosophy - far greater to
live it. The highest philosophy accepts the inevitable with a

smile, and greets it as though it were desired.

"The real philosopher knows that everything has happened
that could have happened - consequently he accepts. He is
glad that he has lived - glad that he has had his moments on
the stage.
"Of the future, I have no fear. My fate is the fate of the
world - of all that live. My anxieties are. about this life, this
world. About the phantoms called gods and their impossible
hells, I have no care, no fear."
In the last year of his life, Ingersoll wrote something else just a line or two - and he said, "I now in the presence of
death affirm and reaffirm the truth of all that I have said
against the superstitions of the world. I would say at least that
much on the subject with my last breath."
This informational broadcast is brought to you as a public
service by the Society of Separationists, Inc., a non-profit,
non-political, tax-exempt, educational organization dedicated
to the complete separation of state and church. This series of
American A theist Radio programs is continued through listener
generosity. The Society of Separationists, Inc. predicates its
philosophy on American Atheism. For more information, or
for a free copy of the script of this program, write to P.O. Box
2117, Austin, Texas. That zip is 78768.

.......................... -~:::::::--.

~~

No God , No Master
Women have considerably more to gain and less to lose than
men with the ascendency of Atheism. In Western civilization,
females of any pigmentation have been defined and used by
men as "niggers" ever since the biblical Yahweh designated Eve
as Adam's handy sperm recepticle. Woman has been impaled
on the fragile male ego ever since.
You'd think that America's women would have long since
taken the lead in dumping the religious yoke most of us are
shouldered with from birth by parents whose birthday gift to
their children consists of barbaric religious inhibitions the main
thrust of which is to prepare the newborn for death. The intervening years of life for most women are spent solidifying the
Genesis myth which defines the female of the species as a mere
appendage to the god-imaged male.
Certainly there is solid historical evidence that the very
founders of the women's rights movements in the United States
were Atheists. Women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda
Joslyn Gage and Margaret Sanger recognized that the genesis
of female subjugation lies in odious biblical slanderings of ALL
WOMEN as carnal-minded temptresses who collude with the
serpent-devil to alienate the god-child male from his creatorfather.
Yet how many of America's hip, slinky-clothed Virginia
Slims who talk the liberated jargon while playing the same old
Adam-and-Eve games even know who Stanton, Gage, or Sanger
were - much less that they were Atheists who feared neither
man nor his "creator?" Do these svelte sisters who are currently

Austin,

Texas

WOMEN M()Sr

,F()RWARD,

lobbying to have Susan B. Anthony's likeness on the new $1

coin realize that Anthony likewise was an Atheist who would
have had them burn their bibles along with their bras?

October, 1978

Page 27

Late in the last century Anthony signed a statement along

with Gage and Stanton which finally, after 6,000 years of maleauthored history and sermonizing, identified Judeo-Christianity
and its perverted clergy as Pubic Enemy No.1:
"Throughout this protracted and disgraceful assault on
American womanhood the clergy baptized each new insult
and act of injustice in the name of the Christian religion
and uniformly asked God's blessings on proceedings that
would have put to shame an assembly of Hottentots. "
Yet when last did you hear the "modern" proponents of
women's liberation - i.e. Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem,
Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, et aI-mouth such words which
get to the crotch of the matter so articulately?
Can it be that they seriously hope to reform the male chauvinist piggies without first separating them from their biblical
rationalizations for subjugating women in the first place? Such
is comparable to Mary Magdalene washing J.C.'s feet with
Wash & Dri towelettes rather than with her hair - either way
she is still on her knees before a male god created in the image
and likeness of those very males who feed off the delusion.
Obviously there was a long dry spell for both Atheists and
Feminists alike as the Ingersolls and the Stan tons of the last
century were not easily replaced. It took a war in Southeast
Asia and a national uprising by American blacks to reawaken
the feminist movement to the ripeness of the moment for
seizing one's destiny.
But the surge through the 60s has fizzled in the 70s to
the extent that the at first overwhelming support for the minimally acceptable Equal Rights Amendment has deteriorated
and itself been overwhelmed by a religiously motivated and
church-financed campaign to keep women on their knees before the Christian male deity and - of course - his male representatives here on earth.
Women need only discover the main financiers of the antiabortion movement [see "Women, Know thine Enemies" in
September issue] to identify their subjugators. Unfortunately for
the contemporary successors of Stanton, Gage, Sanger and Anthony, their appeals for equality are spiked and shrivel when
threatened males retreat behind the ultimate ideological rationalization for the subjugation of women: god's will (as interpreted by the males who most benefit from that interpretation).
Birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger hit the male right on
the head with a couplet containing more candor than the Bible
or any issue of MS. magazine could hope to achieve:

"NO GOD, NO MASTER."

Yet rarely does one hear any of the media-designated queens
of the feminist movement dare criticize religion or its salesMEN.
Nor do they even care to quote the anti-church, anti-religious
statements of the founders of the very movement which they
represent. It is only in Atheist journals that you can read Elizabeth Cady Stanton's challenge:

"Godammit! Take him down, I can't stand the whining."

ence as "Atheist, Agnostic."
Current religious
preference

Childhood
religion

Atheist, agnostic
36%
5%
Protestant
26%
55%
Other
17%
3%
Catholic
11%
25%
Jewish
10%
12%
(Source: MS. magazine)

As I said earlier, women have less to lose and more to gain

with Atheism. The trick is in getting Feminists to raise the
sights of their weapons a bit higher.
"No god, no masters" sums it up nicely. Dumping the masters while yet worshipping the gods merely leaves the door open
for other piggies to replace the deposed ones.
Likewise, trading in the old theology for a newer, more
exotic model merely treats the symptoms but neglects the root
problem: all religions are anti-life, anti-sexuality, and antiwoman.
Whether they realize it or not, Feminists and Atheists share
a common foxhole while fighting the same enemy.

"Every form of religion which has breathed upon this

earth has degraded women. Man himself could not do this;
but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord, , of course he
can do it. "
Perhaps there is yet hope. In its May '78 issue, MS. magazine
published the results of a survey it had conducted on "Money:
The Subject Harder To Talk About Than Sex." The survey
elicited 20,000 replies and in a profile of respondents to the
survey a MAJORITY 36% listed their current religious prefer-

Page 28

October, 1978

~I

The American

Atheist

AN AGNOSTIC'S

PRAYER

Oh Great Illusive Christian god

Are you real, or gigantic fraud?
Why hide behind the skirts of priests,
Putting man on par with the beast?
The beast has no way to compare,
No known way to become aware.
No beast became a pulpiteer,
Mumbling prayers in a puppet's ear.
Are you a puppet kept unseen,
As if unsightly and unclean?
Figment of imagination,
For those with mental castration?
Man can reason. You made him so.
So we've been told. Ages ago.
Are you responsible for all
Evil, disease, pain, and priests' gall?
With one fell swoop, you can wipe out
Agnostic and Atheist doubt.
Are you ashamed to show your face
For creating the human race?
Show your face without clowning glow
From priestly make-up, just for show.
Without threats to a living "soul,"And without strings, to priests' control.
If factual evidence is shown
When we can see, "you're on your own."
Reasoned science will prompt us then
To quite contritely say "Amen."
KARL E. PAULI

IF DEATH
So much
So much
So much
That life

time
time
time
goes

~P~EMSI.
SHEEPISH

DEBATE

When you argue with the flock of Christ,

You'll feel like giving them a push.
All they do is call you "baaad"
And bleat around the bush.
S.H. CRANE

RELATIVITY
(or)
The First Atheist
Long ago
(or maybe it was only yesterday)
Moses saw the burning bush
And from far within its fiery frame
Heard it proclaim with pride
"I AM THAT I AM!"
So enamoured was Moses of this wise revelation
this profound benediction
this sudden education
That he turned again to his patient people
And scampered down the mountain with the
very first installment
Of the six o'clock news.

IS YOUR GOAL

is wasted on dreary thoughts of dying

spent contemplating Hell
preparing for the Heavenly Hereafter
by unused .... alive and well.
ANGELINE BENNETT

But if he would have stayed a moment more,

after the fire had died, the smoke blown away,
And naught but roots remained,
He would have seen an even greater sight,
As a solitary growth of crabgrass
Softly turned and said
"So what?"

J. MICHAEL

Austin, Texas

October, 1978

STRACZYNSKI

Page 29

Roots of Atheism
D.M. Bennett / American Atheist

****

ROOTS OF ATHEISM

With this issue the editors of The American Atheist magazine continue
the "Roots of Atheism"
series by which we
hope to familiarize American Atheists with the lives, struggles
and writings of their intellectual "ancestors."
In this October edition we begin acquainting
20th century
Atheists with the life and times of D.M. Bennett (1818-1882).
During the period from 1873 to 1882, D.M. Bennett as
editor of The Truthseeker publication
exerted a greater influence in popularizing
Atheism than any other person of
his day. Persons of greater personality
have enjoyed a wider
circle of admirers; their writings have had a larger scale, and
they have been better known to the world; but none ever accomplished so much in so short a time.
Bennett founded
The Truthseeker in 1873 because, after
getting into an argument over the efficacy of prayer with two
clergymen
in Paris, Illinois, the local newspaper
printed the
clergy's articles, but not Bennett's.
Bennett was infuriated and decided to found his own. paper
in which the truth concerning religion could be presented for
all to read without
interference
from religious editors who
would rewrite the history of their own bloody religions so as
to make it more easily digestible for the gullible.
Bennett's publication,
The Truthseeker, and the associated
Truthseeker
Publishing Company,
lived on after him. It ran
through a series of editors, but continued publishing
a weekly freethought
periodical of good quality until 1930. At that
time it became a monthly ... and, in 1960, the editor of The
Truthseeker then, Charles A. Smith, assisted in financing the
first part of the Murray v. Curlett law suit which eventually
removed Bible-reading
and prayer recitation
from the public
schools of America.
There is a straight line to be drawn from D.M. Bennett,
through
the American Association
for the Advancement
of
Atheism to this very issue of The American Atheist which you
are now reading. What we demand today is an old demand of
yesterday, made by Atheists such as D.M. Bennett before our
time. The only difference is that we must have those demands
met this time around.
D.M. Bennett secured a monumental
victory against powerful individuals who were seeking to establish a religious censorship of the mails and press in the United States for purposes
of silencing arguments which they could not otherwise answer,
as well as to limit the liberties of some Americans who would
not bend their knees before the Christian god.
Those seeking to subvert the Constitution
were led by
Anthony
Comstock
of New York who brought Bennett to
trial for distributing
a. "blasphemous"
book through
the
mails. Comstock's
actual intentions were to see that Bennett's
business of publishing scientific and Atheist literature
might
be broken up.
Such attempts
to harass and deter the efforts of impartial
investigators seeking to offset the further propagation
of mind-

****

D.M. Bennett/American

Atheist

as

Page 30

October,

1978

D.M. Bennett

in 1873.

stultifying
religions continue down to the present day. Despite'
our many and varied technological
advances since Bennett's
time, Americans'
freedom
to question,
investigate
and disbelieve the unbelievable
remains
limited,
and those who
dare are often disinclined to reveal their skepticism publicly.
D.M. Bennett displayed
no such hesitation
more than a
century ago and he, as did his English contemporary,
Charles
Bradlaugh, "hit the idol as hard as he could, and very often
knocked it down."

DeRobigne
Mortimer
Bennett, who always called himself
D.M., was born on a farm on the east shore of Otsego Lake,
in Springfield, New York, on 23 December 1818. In his autobiography he remarks, with a touch of humor, that his term in
this troubled world began two months sooner than it should,
owing to his mother's indiscretion
in lifting a Dutch oven. At

The American

Atheist

O.M. Bennett / American Atheist

-l(.

D.M. Bennett / American Atheist

**

ROOTS OF ATHEISM

-l(.

***

.x,* ROOTS OF ATHEISM

-l(.

the age of 12 years he weighed but 50 pounds, and he reo

mained small of stature during his entire life.
D.M. obtained a public education in district schools until he
was about 12 years old when he, as most everyone did in those
days, abandoned school for employment. At that ripe old age,
12, he found a job as a printer's "devil" in a Cooperstown,
New York, press. A printer's devil applies ink to the type and
washes the stereotype plates plus any other menial tasks at
hand. When he was 14, however, his parents separated and he
was sent to live with a physician uncle in Massachusetts with
the express purpose of becoming a doctor. However, when he
arrived at the uncle's house and it was seen how small young
Bennett was the uncle turned him out with the admonition to
come back when he was fully grown.
D.M. Bennett attempted to get back home again but on the
way he fell in with and was befriended by a family of Shakers.
He thought at this time that he would like to "spend his days
among such kind and happy people." He persuaded his mother
and sister to join him there the next year, which they did.
Bennett attended the Shaker school and eventually was given a
job in the seed garden because the Shaker colony at that time
derived part of its income from the sale of packets of seeds.
The Shakers were officially known as "the United Society
of Believers in Christ's Second Coming." They believed that
their founder, Mother Ann Lee (17361784), was the second
appearance of Jesus Christ. The sect originated among English
Quakers.
In obedience to a vision of Mother Ann, the first group arrived in New York in 1774 and two years later established
their first settlement in Niskayuna, which is now Watervleit,
New York. From there they conducted evangelistic tours
through New England until the death of Mother Ann. They
totaled eleven communities in New York and at the height of
their strength (about 1840) had about 6,000 adherents. D.M.
was with them when they were attaining their greatest strength.
Celibate Commune
These were colonies in which all people shared everything.
There was no discrimination in respect to race or sex and the
communities freely admitted Negroes and Jews and the
women bore an equal share in the ministry with the men. The
religion had one very queer tenet which doomed it. The ascetic communal life was fine but everyone in the colony had
to be celibate. The community refrained from both marriage
and sexual intercourse and with no children ever born into the
community the religion could not be carried forward too long.
The various Shaker colonies sold seed. D.M. learned quickly
and was soon reassigned to the raising of medical herbs and
roots. He remained in the colony at New Lebanon, New York,
for 13 years. But in the summer of 1846 many of the younger
members of the colony became dissatisfied with the non-sexual
lifestyle.
Four who chose to leave were D.M. Bennett, his sister and
the young man she was to marry, and Mary Wicks. The four
proceeded to Cooperstown where D.M. and Mary were married.
They soon left for Kentucky where D.M. had a proposition
to join a nursery business. Unfortunately, in that day and age
Northeners were not wanted in small Kentucky towns so

Austin,

Texas

D.M. Bennett/American

Atheist

xxD.M. Bennett/American

Atheist

D.M. and his wife had to go to Louisville where he obtained a

job as clerk in a drugstore.
In a year's time Bennett opened his own drug store and
conducted business successfully in it for eight years. He then
joined his brother-in-law in a tree and shrubbery business and
finally he became a seller of medicines made of herbs and
roots. This business was quite successful and he sold out in
about six years' time at a large profit.
He was 54 years old when he finally started another seed
business in Paris, Illinois, and there the trouble began. In the
summer of 1873 he got into a discussion on the futility of
prayer with two clergymen. This was the controversy which
resulted in his founding his own publication because the local
newspaper would not carry his side of the issue. He printed
12,000 copies of this first publication and his wife, Mary,
dubbed it The Truthseeker. These first 12,000 copies were
sent across the country and Bennett finally had his arguments
against prayers in print.
A Promising

Beginning

This first issue purported to contain articles written by a

great number of persons, but they had actually all been written by Bennett and signed with pseudonyms. He sent out
three more issues, the returns from which were at least promising as Bennett closed out his partnership in the seed business
in 1874 and moved to New York City.
In New York the little monthly met with growing success.
The next year, 1875, it became a bi-weekly and in 1876, it became a weekly publication of eight pages. In two years' time it
was up to 16 pages a week.
Bennett, like all convinced Atheists, put-in an 18-20 hour
work day to keep the paper solvent, pay printing bills, and to
doggedly see to it that the paper survived. By the 1880s, The
Truthseeker had become the world's largest and best known
freethought journal. Robert G. Ingersoll was popular about
this time and his lectures usually made their first appearance in
print in D.M. Bennett's The Truthseeher.
It was now some 30 years since Bennett had first been exposed to an "infidel" book. Around 1848, while he was still in
Kentucky, Bennett gained access to a work which so shook his
confidence in the Bible-and Christianity that he made a special
trip to New York in 1850 in order to visit the publication office of Gilbert Vale, an early publisher of such infidel books.
The young Bennett bought 20 books from Vale and became a
convinced Atheist from reading and rereading them.
A quarter of a century later, on publishing an 1,100-page
work entitled, World's Sages, Thinkers and Reformers, Bennett
prefaced this work with an Atheist's understanding of the infamous word, "infidel";

October,

"This work was first issued under the title The World's
Sages, Infidels and Thinkers, but the word infidel, being objectionable
to some, has been dropped.
All prominent
characters
have been infidel to the creeds they did not
accept. The Brahmin regards as infidels all who do not embrace his particular creed. The Buddhist takes a similar circumscribed
view. The Chinese worshiper of Foh thinks all

1978

Page 31

are infidels or barbarians who do not acknowledge

his stupid god, and are not residents of the "Flowery Kingdom;"
the descendant
of Abraham regards all those as infidels or
gentiles who do not accept Moses and the prophets; the Mohammedan boldly pronounces
all to be infidels who do not
shout for Allah, bow their heads towards Mecca, and acknowledge
Mohammed
to be the prophet of god; the Romish Catholic Christian
pronounces
all to be infidels or
heretics who do not bow down before the virgin, acknowledge the immaculate
conception,
the infallibility
of the
pope, and yield obedience to bishops and priests; the Protestant Christian thinks all infidels or benighted who do not
agree with him in opposing the pope, and in acknowledging
faith in a personal god, a personal devil, the equality of the
son with the father in age and power; the Mormon regards
all as infidels or heathens who do not accept the Book of
Mormon, and the prophets Joseph and Brigham. Thus it has
been allover the world and in all time, the devotees of nearly every system of religion the world has known have looked
upon all others as infidels who do not embrace the faith
they embrace; who do not see the truth as they see it, and
who do not worship the same god they worship.
"It cannot be denied there has been too much intolerance
and illiberality entertained
by the adherents of all systems
of religion towards all opposing systems, and this spirit, carried to excess, has led to the most cruel tortures and deaths,
the most bloody and devastating wars the world has known.
The truth is, there have been elements of goodness in every
system of religion mankind have devised. There is no system but what, to a certain extent, has possessed truth and
has had a beneficial influence upon the human race. On the
other hand, all systems of religion that have yet prevailed
among men have contained
superstitions,
fallacies and errors. The world has not yet found a perfect religion, one
wholly free from mysticism,
fables, and wrongs. This position will, however, be disputed
by every religionist
in
the world. Everyone
will insist that his system is all right,
all excellent,
all true - sufficient to save the world if it
will only adopt it.
"Religions are subject to the same great law of evolution
that everything else is. Change and progress are the universal law. We can stand still in nothing. The ideas, the philosophy, the science, the arts, the religions of 5,000 years
ago, of 2,000 years ago, of 1,000 years ago, are not all that
we should search for, not all that we need at the present
hour. It is our privilege and duty to discard all that proves
to be unreliable; all unworthy of our confidence, and to accept in its place that which proves true and better adapted
to our needs. When a system of religion is presented to us
for acceptance
that admits of no change, no advance, no
improvement,
we may safely conclude it is wrong, that it is
not the religion the world needs. All ideas, all systems of

NEXT
ISSUE
Page 32

An Open Letter
to Jesus Christ
BY D. M. BENNETT

To His Excellency, IMMANUEL

J. CHRIST. otherwise called Prince of Peace, Sun of Righteousness, Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Wonderful.
Counsellor. The Messiah. The Redeemer,
The Savior. The Bridegroom,
The
Lamb of God, Captain of Our
Salvation, Son of God, Son
of Man. etc., etc.

NEW

YORK

THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY

The "infidel" book for which author

brought to trial for blasphemy.

D.M_ Bennett was

belief must be free to change and to improve. The law of

evolution must operate in religion as in everything else.
" ...
There have been but few original systems of religion in the world; the later have borrowed from the earlier, and appropriated
pre-existing
dogmas, legends, rites,
and superstitions.
This has been the rule in all ages, and the
system which now prevails in our own country
is no exception to it. It has not a dogma, a rite, a sacrament that
did not exist in other systems before its own origin. Its
best moral lessons were also taught at a date earl ier than
its own advent. Moral precepts and maxi ms have been common with nearly all religions. Our duty today is to select all
the really good and to reject all that is fallacious - all that
does not meet the necessities of the present hour."

"Roots Of Atheism" will continue with the life and times of American
Atheist D.M. Bennett, who was the target of agent (for the "Society of Suppression and Vice") Anthony Comstock's vendetta to impose a religious
censorship of the U.S. mails and press in 1877. Bennett's An Open Letter to Jesus Christ is designated by Comstock as
being "obscene" as he attempts to suppress an offensive heretical publisher.

October,

1978

The American

Atheist

INSIDE-OUT
j. IDiehael straezynski
The Other Side Of The Coin
As we are each painfully well aware,
the marketplace isvirtually glutted with
books on just about every fringe topic
and esoteric theology imaginable.
Usually, each of these are quite topicspecific, dealing with one singular aspect of a particular phenomenon. This
month's column, however, is concerned
with a new publication, entitled With
A Finger In My I, by Jedediah F.
Quagmire. Despite any drawbacks that
may become apparent, it has the inherent benefit of being a truly comprehensive text on almost every level of spiritualism and cosmic buffoonery that, if
nothing else, demonstrates clearly and
precisely how a rational person should
NOT approach these subjects.
Presented, therefore, for your examination and patient scrutiny are a
series of excerpts from Quagmire's
book, each of the three dealing with
and exploiting a current trend or fad
with the general and generally superstitious public: the search for cosmic
Truth, the dubious practice of meditation, and the latest fad, flying saucers.

From the section titled "On Truth:"

"What is Truth?" This is a question
that has haunted civilization since the
early days of pre-history, along with
such questions as, "Where can I get
change for a twenty after ten o'clock?"
"Where is the men's room?" and "Can
you please get your foot off my face?"
The definition of Truth can be arrived at in any number of ways. One of
these is the asking of questions. This
particular practice is usually accomplished by two or more persons working together and is known by the term
"dialectic." Having a dialectic by yourself is usually considered grounds for
an intensive psychiatric examination
and has been known to cause hair to
grow on the palm of the hand.
Another means of ascertaining Truth
is the use of drugs. The benefits of such
a route are twofold, both good and
bad. Mostly bad. People tend to punch
you, for one thing, and it is next to
impossible to get a pair of matched
socks out of the drawer.
St. Thomas of the Bleeding Hangnail
once accidentally took a large dose of
opium and for three days had a halluci-

Austin,

Texas

nation that caused him to believe himself to be an avocado. Finally, glimpsing the Truth through his delusion, he
cried out, "Buy Dow Jones at 5 and
sell at 20!"
Since Dow Jones had yet to be invented at the time of this occurrence,
he was largely ignored by his superiors
and spent the remainder of his life knitting nose-warmers for armadillos. Said
Pope Churlish III, "He maketh an ass
of himself."
The other problem that arises with
the use of drugs in the search for Truth
is that it becomes easy to become distracted. Often, one may set aside the
goal of finding the Truth in deference
to undertaking the more mundane task
of finding one's face.
Another popular form of Truth
realization is called the Revelation.
This occurs when the Supreme Being
personally informs one of the nature
of Truth. There have been a number of
documented revelations in the past,
and in each case it was observed that
shortly after the revelation, all the
silverware was found to be missing.
With such dramatic evidence, it is difficult to refute the validity of a revelation.
One of the most famous cases of revelation took place in the 14th century,
when a Benedictine monk fasted for
40 days in the desert. On the fortieth
day, deep in despair, he cried out,
"Advise me, 0 Lord!" At once, he was
rewarded by the sound of a Voice that
boomed forth from the heavens with
"Brown pants with green socks is a definite mistake."
The response of the monk was not
recorded.

From the section titled "On Meditation:"

There are several different schools
of thought on meditative practices, although none choose to advertise in the
Yellow Pages and no one knows quite
what the enrollment is. According to
most meditators, meditation can generally be defined as the ability to totally
block out the outside world, which is
generally a great excuse to use when
you are ticketed for jaywalking.
Although it is theoretically possible

October, 1978

to meditate anywhere, at any time, as

a rule of thumb the individual new to
the practice of meditation is advised
never to meditate while driving a car,
talking to friends, or flying an airplane.
Additionally, there have been numerous studies supporting the assertion
that meditating during sex may result
in divorce or excessive physical injury.
From its simple and rudimentary
beginnings in China, India and other
portions of the Far East, meditation as
a common practice has grown and persisted steadily, despite numerous attempts to corrupt it, usually by attempting to offer it candy in order to
lure it into the rear seat of a Packard.
Along this trail of development, a
diversity of different manners of medItating arose, including:
Sitting and chanting. Standing and
chanting.
Squatting and chanting.
Standing on one foot and chanting.
Blowing one's nose and chanting. Farting and chanting.
As is easily apparent, chanting is
generally considered vital to the process
of reaching a meditative state, or at
least helping make it through North
Dakota when the radio is on the fritz.
Almost anything will suffice as a chant,
although chanting "Your wife goes out
to meet the fleet" in public can often
result in less than desirable consequences; pain, for instance, accompanied by considerable bleeding about
the nose and face.
In order to overcome some of the
problems associated with chanting,
several more modern techniques have
been developed, among which are such
practices as:
Assuming the lotus position in a
burning house and filling one's lap with
marshmallows; sucking on an old person's garter belt; standing in whipped
cream and giggling; going through a carwash on a tricycle; jumping up and
down until your fillings fall out; eating
a whoopee cushion; pretending to be a
kazoo; and finally, sleeping.

From the section titled "On Proof

of Flying Saucers:"
In June of 1972, Ms. Sharon
F. Leemeister of Fallbrook, Indiana,
reported seeing a cigar-shaped vehicle

Page 33

drop out of the sky in front of her

home and steal her copy of the
Fallbrook Daily Review. Moving away
in an easterly direction, the craft
entered and stayed in Ms. Leemeister's
barn for a total of 15 minutes. (Upon
entering
the
structure
later,
Ms. Leemeister stated that she found
"dirty drawings" on the walls of the
barn, and a tremendous hickey on the
neck of her milk cow.)
Upon exiting the barn, the craft rose
straight up into the sky, smoked a cigarette, and made a sharp-angled turn
into the general direction of Salt Lake,
Utah, heading away at full speed.
The craft was not picked up by any of
the local radar installations, although
one airport controller did report picking up old installments of "I Love
Lucy" on his radar screen.
The vehicle is reputed to have returned a total of five times, each time
taking along something else from the
home: a color television set, a stereo, a
can of Pringles, a set of contraceptives,
and so forth. At no time did they touch
the cookies and milk left on the porch
by a considerate Leemeister, thereby
clearly indicating their hostile nature.
No further visitations were reported
after the fifth appearance, although
Leemeister did begin receiving a series
of obscene telephone calls.
Another irrefutable example of extraterrestrial contact concerns itself
with Chicagoan Hans Blubman, who
was returning home from a Halloween
party with his wife, Sheila, at a little
after 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning.
Driving down a rutted road in Kankakee, Illinois, they suddenly encountered a large, disc-shaped object hovering above the road in front of them.
Before Hans had sufficient time to
react, the car engine died mysteriously,
leaving no will. Simultaneously, all the
power went out of the Blubman's old
Chevy, with the exception of the radio, which for reasons unknown would
only play the "Anniversary Waltz."
By this time, Hans began to suspect
that something unusual was afoot.
These general suspicions were confirmed when a bright white light shot
out of the saucer and caused them to
float out of the car and into the ship

Page 34

"Here's how it works: One of them says there is a big, mysterious force that
only he can see - and this force won't hurt any of them if they all send in their
money. Cute?"
through the servant's entrance. Although the process was described later as painless, Sheila did report a
sudden craving for Chiclets.
Once inside the ship, they were
subjected to and forced to participate
in a number of experiments, such as
trying to rub one's tummy while patting one's head and jumping up and
down on one foot. They were directed
in these experiments by a dozen small,
semi-luminous creatures. The aliens
were described as wrinkled and noseless, and when standing together they
formed a road map of Nebraska.
The testing went on for close to an
hour. At one point, the two were simultaneously tatooed with the word
"Mom," and Sheila was constantly being offered what appeared to be nylon
stockings and chocolate bars. No explanation for these actions was given,
and each time Hans would attempt to
ask a question, the aliens would only
respond by squatting in rhythm with
the "Anniversary Waltz."
Finally, Hans was released - alone onto the road. Running for help, he
succeeded in flagging down a police
car which returned with him to the
scene of the encounter. By that time,
however, all trace of the saucer had
vanished, leaving behind a burned circle of grass 20 feet in diameter, some
old clippings from The National Enquirer, and Sheila Blubman.
Upon being questioned by Hans

October, 1978

and the policemen, it was discovered

that Sheila had no knowledge of what
had transpired between the time Hans
had been released and the moment
that they had found her by the roadside. She insisted, though, that it must
not have been very serious, dispite the
fact that she was unable to stop smiling
for several hours afterwards.
Six months later, Sheila Blubman
gave birth to a light bulb:
Other accounts which serve to further verify the existence of extraterrestrial visitations include:
.. a New Jersey man named James
Harris, who claims a visitor from
another planet attempted to sell him
some real estate in Florida.
.. a renowned French scientist
who has stated publicly that he has irrefutable proof that the World Trade
Tower was not built, but rather landed.
.. a Detroit policeman who once
ticketed an illegally parked UFO outside a downtown massage parlor.
.. the Citizen's Vigilance Band of
Cleveland, who reportedly pursued an
alien from another planet into a Catholic church, where he eluded them by
pretending to be Jesus Christ.
And finally, a case study of an Israeli who claims to be the first rabbi
ever to circumcise an alien from a
flying saucer ... seven times ... with
a blowtorch.
What more need we say?

The American Atheist

A-BOMB -n- A political persuader well known for its thoroughness and efficiency.
A.C. - An abbreviation for Alternating Current, which in
New York is the tendency for the current to be off when it is
needed, and on just as you are stepping out of the bathtub.
ACAPELLA -n- Singing without accompaniment, such as a
cat in heat.
ACADEMICIAN -n- An educated corpus that has not yet
been informed of its demise.
ACCUSATION -n- Person "A" pointing his finger at Person
"B" before Person "C" can point at Person "A."
ACHE -vt- The currency of a physician, who replaces a natural one with an unnatural one, and then charges for his services.
ACTOR -n- One who is paid to be something he is not, for
the benefit of those who never will be.
AFTERLIFE -n- The condition directly following death, in
which there is a place for the dead to go, not unlike a Holiday
Inn. Although every living being has an idea of the nature of

J. Michael Straczynski
the Afterlife, none has yet to visit and return, or even send a
postcard. Because the United States has never issued a passport for it, many assume it to be mythical. The Christian divides
the Afterlife into Heaven and Hell, with the former in the
clouds and the latter somewhere in France.
AGENDA -n- A list of things you never get around to doing.

Film
Review

Heaven
Can
Wait

elaine stansfield

The promotion for "Heaven Can Wait" has been astounding.

One wonders how it was decided that so many millions would be
spent on advertising it, and can only assume the reasons:
Stars: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Dyari Cannon
Screenplay: Elaine May and Warren Beatty
Tie-In: "Read the Ballantine paperback."
History: A movie hit of the past
If you will remember, this was "Mr. Jordan" who sat at the
right hand of god, and who interfered - in a kind of instant
replay - in the lives of men who either had not been treated
quite right by his flunkies or when errors had to be rectified.
In this case the flunky is a fussy, tight-lipped, accountanttype angel who prematurely rescued ace quarterback Joe from
a painful motorcycle death. When it is later determined that
Joe was not slated to die in this accident, Mr. Jordan has to
find him another body because his has already been cremated.
The rather funny argument over this occurs at a cloud'enshrouded heavenly "way-station" where the dead are being
escorted into a gleaming white super-jet. The fact that this
plot is utterly loony doesn't seem to bother anyone, for after
all, it's "only" a fantasy, isn't it?
But what stunned me at this point was a rapid-fire, "throwaway" reading by the cantankerous angel, as Joe, standing by
the plane, waving his arms that this is all a mistake, suddenly stares at the vehicle with all those compliant people boarding, does a double-take, and says, "What is this anyway?"
The angel testily explains, in a double shot so you can't even
catch all his words, that this is a way-station for people going
to heaven, that it is constructed according to the perceived expectations of people on earth because that's how our particular
little planet envisions what is likely to happen en route to
heaven.
Joe will have none of it, hence Mr. Jordan (James Mason)

Austin,

Texas

must materialize and handle the case himself. Joe is especially

incensed because he was about to play in the Super Bowl, and
he must have a body in top shape.
The rest of the plot is equally silly, but suffice to say that
Joe, who still looks like Warren Beatty to himself and to us,
is supposed to look like whatever body he is in to everybody
else, and the girl will later recognize him by "something special
in his eyes" even though Mr. J. inexplicably, like all good hypnotists, removes his memory of all that happened when he
finally gets the body of his choice. (Theoretically, Mr. J. is
powerful enough so he could arrange that the body won't
die until Joe's slated time, but for the purposes of the plot
that only happens in the second case and not in the first.)
Foolish though it all sounds, there is that sly little edge of
cynicism and poking fun at our concepts of heaven; there is
Elaine May's marvelously witty way with words; and it is
nearly impossible to resist falling under the spell of Beatty's
charm, in Joe's innocent determination to play life like the
Super Bowl. Beatty has a constantly honed his comedic
talents which first seemed to come to life in "Shampoo."
Yes, the satire and social comment is subtle, and we hold
no brief for disguising it with the billowy clouds of a preheaven, but at least that was the only gupping up it did.
There was no ectoplasm, no gimmicky special effects, and its
main message was that true love, with Joe fighting for it
every step of the way, would certainly triumph over the
illusion of death in their own little heaven on earth. With
those Atheist hints going for it, despite my entering the
theater ready to blast the whole enterprise, I find it hard
to be too critical of this amusing bit of fluff.
It's just too bad that the average semi-religious person may
only find reinforcement in his fuzzy hopes of heaven (complete with familiar-looking airplanes).
But do judge for yourselves - go see it, and let us know if
the fun outweighed the fanciful child's concept of heaven.

October, 1978

Page 35

SPECIAL

will be reported
in the "Roots
Of Atheism"
series in next
month's issue of this magazine.
Meanwhile, we have bought out the final copies of this
tract which was issued by the Truth Seeker Company and we
have about 1,000 left. After these are sold there will be none
further available until the booklet is again typeset and printed.
An Open Letter to Jesus Christ is comical, tragic, quaint,
farcial, cynical, naively open and resolutely written. Remembering as one reads it that it was written 101 years ago, we can
only gasp at the audacity of D.M. Bennett that in the hostile
existing world of Christian America of that era, he would be so
indiscreet, or so bold as to issue this blast.
Bennett starts, tongue in cheek, to remind Jesus Christ
that he had been in the habit of addressing him regularly four
or five times a day, from one year's end to another when in
his youth. He therefore
does not feel it untoward to write a
letter to his old friend and to pose some queries to him.
The letter then turns to a forensic presentation
of one presumptuous
question after another, all calculated to make J.C.
blush for shame, or run for cover. A few will suffice to intice
you to read the whole:

OFFER
An Open Letter
to Jesus Christ
BY D. M. BENNETT

"May I ask, do you still require your followers to hate

father, mother, brother, sister, wife and children, on your account?
"Does it afford you any pleasure for a man to hate his
own blood relatives?
"If a man should have a boil or a felon on his right hand,
would you still advise him to cut it (the hand) off?
"Let me ask you, can you be happy in heaven, seated on
the throne at the right hand of your Father, the four beasts
near, with the hundred and forty fo- thousand saints dressed
in white robes, bowing continually
, 'fore your throne, and
singing the song of Moses and the'
.ib, that song which no
man can learn; I ask, can you be ha, .:Ythus, while you know
the poor, wretched,
unfortunate
damned are. writhing and
screaming in the torments of hell?"

To His Excellency, IMMANUEL J. CHRIST, otherwise called Prince of Peace, Sun of Righteousness, Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Wonderful,
Counsellor, The Messiah, The Redeemer,
The Savior, The Bridegroom, The
Lamb of God, Captain of Our
Salvation, Son of God, Son
of Man, etc., etc.

NEW

YORK

THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY

An Open Letter to Jesus Christ, a 27-page booklet 6" x 9,"

was identified as "a theological polemic" and was the basis for
the arrest of its author, D.M. Bennett, on 12 November 1877.
The infamous Anthony Comstock himself served the warrant,
arrested Bennett and "seized and bore away" all of the tracts
of this infamous utterance.
Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, the grand man of Atheism of
that period, brought to the notice of the Postmaster-General
in
Washington that Bennett had been arrested and demanded to
know if it was the purpose of the Postmaster-General
to prosecute the publishers and mailers of "theological
polemics." The
result was that in less than two months, on 1 January 1878, instructions
were sent from Washington
to New York that the
case against Bennett was to be dismissed.
Comstock swore to get Bennett and indeed moved against
him on another tract in August of 1878. The tale of that arrest

Page 36

October,

1978

The questions were not rhetorical in 1877 when the entire

nation accepted
a belief in a literal hell. To most born-again
Christians
in our own times, the "objective
reality" of hell
exists.
This is a one-of-a-kind
item. We feel that you will want
to have one for yourself and a handful to send to others. The
"Letter"
is an eye-opener .and you can use it as such. Each
one costs $2.00 plus 25 cents postage, or drop a quarter on
every extra one you purchase:
1 for $2.00
2 for $3.75

plus postage,
plus postage,

$.25
$.40

3 for $5.25
4 for $6.00

plus postage,
plus postage,

$,50
$.50

5 for $7.00
6 for $7.75

plus postage,
plus postage,

$.50
$.50

7 for $8.25
8 for $8.50

plus postage,
plus postage,

$.50
$.50

Limit - eight (8) to a customer.

NOTICE:

only 1,000 of these gems left in stock.

The American

Atheist

AMERICAN ATHEIST
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ATHEIST CASSETTE TAPES

Why I Am An Atheist ,
$14.95
The subject matter deals with the total effort to remove prayer from public schools
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Lee Carter, Ph D
$5.00
Professor Carter, after 20 years of
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$3.00
The complete unexpurgated story
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$10.00
1 Hour
Joseph Lewis on Robert G. Ingersoll
. Ingersoll on The Holy Bible, Part I
Ingersoll on The Holy Bible, Part II
Ingersoll on The Holy Bible, Part III
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. Ingersoll on The Holy Bible, Part V
Ingersoll on The Holy Bible, Part VI
Robert G. Ingersoll on Superstition

A Few Reasons for Doubting

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Robert G. Ingersoll
$2.00
Robert Ingersoll is the single best
known Atheist writer and orator, of
all time. In this he presents 61 cornpelling arguments as to the absurdity
of the Bible having come from god.

AMERICAN ATHEISTS,INC.
You have another freedom - freedom from religion. American Atheists,
Inc. is a non-political, non-profit, educational, tax-exempt organization
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You don't want to miss this road into tomorrow. You will want to be a
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Madalyn Murray O'Hair
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One of a series of lectures delivered
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For the first time in print, the complete texts of fifty two radio programs
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Madalyn Murray O'Hair
$8.95

Bible Handbook for Atheists

G.W. Foote & W.P. Ball, Editors
$3.95
This extraordinary book is a clear,
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A beautiful 4" x5y:''' picture post

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Mrs. O'Hair deals with politics, not religion; with separation of state and
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