NINE DEMANDS ANOTHER HUNDRED YEARS?

On January I, 1874, Francis Ellingwood Abbot published on the front page of his weekly paper, The
Index, nine demands for separation of state and church. At the time, the National Reform Association
(founded by Presbyterians and Episcopalians) was attempting to amend the Constitution of the United
States to endorse Christianity officially. Abbot was a leader in a counter movement to propound "a religion
of humanity," guided by reason and offering an organizational "home" to non-theists ..
In a nation predicated upon the political idea of separation of state and church, we are - incredibly
_ nowhere near attaining such separation. Since 1874, in 106 years, only one part of one of these nine
demands has been wrested from government and that by a bitter and protracted legal struggle. In June 1963,
in the case of Murray vs. Curlett, reverential Bible reading was barred from the public schools of the nation
(see second part, point 4, of "Demands" below) by the Murray-O'Hair family, founders of the American
Atheist organization.
The nine demands are reprinted here to scream out to you, in a continuing way, that American
Atheists can not, dare not, permit another hundred years to pass without attaining them. These are
demands, now, for our times and for our accomplishing.
1.
We demand that churches and other ecclesiastical property shall no
longer be exempt from just taxation.
2.
We demand that the employment of chaplains in Congress, in state
legislatures, in the navy and militia, and in prisons, asylums, and all other
institutions supported by public money shall be discontinued.
3.
We demand that all public appropriations for sectarian educational and
charitable institutions shall cease.

4.
We demand that all religious services now sustained by the government shall be abolished; and especially that the use of the Bible in the
public schools, whether ostensibly as a textbook or avowedly as a book of
religious worship, shall be prohibited.
5.
We demand that the appointment by the President of the United States
or by the governors of the various states of all religious festivals and fasts
shall wholly cease.
6.
We demand that the judicial oath in the courts and in all other
departments of the government shall be abolished, and that simple affirmation under the pains and penalties of perjury shall be established in its stead.
7.
We demand that all laws directly or indirectly.enforcing the observance
of Sunday as the Sabbath shall be repealed.
8.
We demand that all laws looking to the enforcement of "Christian"
morality shall be abrogated, and that all laws shall be conformed to the
requirements of natural morality. equal rights, and impartial liberty.
9.
We demand that, not only in the constitutions ofthe United States and
of the several states but also in the practical administration of the same, no
privilege or advantage shall be conceded to Christianity or any other special
religion; that our entire political system shall be founded and administered on
a purely secular basis; and that whatever changes shall prove necessary to
this end shall be consistently, unflinchingly, and promptlySmade.

Volume 22, No.8 Thermidor, 188

NEWS
ON THE COVER
. Another Success

American Atheist Center TV News

Murray Sues Congress

Atheists Fair Well

10

The Not Funny Funnies

13

American Atheism, what it is and what

it is meant to be, is being put together in
your time by the dedicated women and
men associated with the American Atheist
Center.

ARTICLES
Museum of the History of Atheism and Religionin L.:eningrad
- Yokov Kozhurin

14

Oh, My Soul and Body! - Helen Waterman

17

Victorian Secular Society Folds - The Last Post - Nigel Sinnott

21

W. C. Fields; Atheist Comedian - Troy Soos

29

COLUMNS
Ignatz Sahula-Dvcke - You Pays Your Money and Takes Your Choice

31

Gerald Tholen - Negative Proofs and Other Nonsense

34

Madalyn Murray O'Hair - Educational Riots of Catholics and

Protestants

36

SPECIAL FEATURE
Roots of Atheism - Frances Wright - Part 2

22

The Woman's Bible - Part 8

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair
MANAGING EDITOR
Jon Garth Murray
ASSISTANT EDITOR
G. Richard Bozarth
ARTIST
Felix Santana
NON-RESIDENTIAL STAFF
Bill Baird
Angeline Bennett
Wells Culver
Conrad Goeringer
Ignatz Sahula-Dycke
Elaine Stansfield
Gerald Tholen

AUSTIN, TEXAS

Patricia Voswinkel is an example of the

best of them. Totally dedicated to bringing
of American Atheism to fruition as the underlying base for the American culture of
the future, she works tirelessly and with
devotion. Her latest contribution is repored on p. 4 as "Another Success. "

25

The American Atheist magazine is

published monthly by American Atheists, located at 2210 Hancock Drive,
Austin, Texas 78756, a non-profit,
non-political,
educational
organization. Mailing address: P.O. Box 2117,
Austin, Texas 78768. Copyright 1980
by Society of Separationists, Inc. Subscription rates: $20:00 per year. 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 is in
dexed in:
MONTHLY PERIODICAL INDEX
ISSN: 00324310

THERMIDOR 188 [8/80)

REGULAR FEATURES
Letters to the Editor

Editorial - Jon Garth Murray Respectability Be Damned

Poems

.-

6 & 32

Serious Smiles

28

Film Review - Tibet and The

Seduction of Joe Tynan

38

Book Review - An Atheist's Bertrand

Russell ed. by Jon Garth
Murray
39
Classifieds
40

PAGE 1

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Historical Truth

And in Galileo's time it was

known that the" earth revolved

Dear Mr. Bozarth,

,
In your article "The Holey Bible,"

around the sun. It had been

known for two or three thousand years, in fact, but it was

January, 1980, you make the following statement: "Pythagoras of Samos

(fl. 540-510
B.C.) learned on his
travels

in Egypt and the East. .. to

regard the earth as a sphere freely

poised in space." I thought you might
like to know the following:
During the first thousand years

Dear Wayne,
I certainly agree with your last paragraph, but I think that Laftont is a bit
too liberal in his application
word "known. "

of the"

concealed in obedience to orders, out of fear andcowardice,

That Columbus and a few of his

class knew that the earth was a

The Greek historian Musaeus,

who lived in about 1400 B.C.,

sphere means that less that 1% of the

14th century society knew it, thus it

wrote a treatise - which has

not come down to us - entitled
THE SPHERE. He was a high

cannot be honestly said that this

knowledge was "known" in the sense
that it is known today. Knowledge that

of the Christian era, scribes did

their best to make all authentic

priest of the Eleusinian Myster-

is not the common possession of the

ies and a great initiate; it is hard

historical works disappear.

It was during this same period

to imagine how he could have

written a treatise on that subject

majority of a society cannot be said to

be knowledge that is "known. "

that

without

the

benevolent

ancient

having known that the

For instance, 100 years after the

work of Ben Franklin, widely reported

gods. were depicted as diabolical, lewd and cruel.

earth was round.

Aratus of Soli, a Greek physi-

though it was in all of Europe, there

Historical works reflecting the

cian and poet of the third century B.C., wrote an astronomical

still nailed owls on their buildings to

protect them from lightning. Today,

treatise in which he described

the spheres so precisely that

many people who would qualify for the

adjective "cultured" nevertheless be-

decrees of conspiracies maintained that the earth was flat.

Even today, "historians"
say
that
Christopher
Columbus'

were 19th century English people who

there could be no doubt about

lieve in creationism despite the mas-

conviction that the earth was

round ran counter tothe belief of

the roundness of the earth and

universal gravitation. He was

sive accumulation of evidence for evolution. And plenty of the "cultured"

his time. And everyone feels

sorry for poor Galileo, who had

not an unknown; on the contrary, he was a famous man in

people in 1492 believed just as firmly

that the earth was flat.

to proclaim that the earth was

his time. He lived-with Ptolemy

Philadelphus,
King of Egypt,

The historical truth is when science

is subject to conforming to a "holy

who had the Hebrew Scriptures

translated
into
Greek
(the

book" whether by force of a theocracy

or,by a scientist's own personal faith,
the truth is hidden from discOvery -

motionless, as stated in the

Bible: in 1633 the Inquisition
forced him to abjure the Copernican view that the earth revolves
around the sun, which led him to
say his famous words, "Eppur si
muove (And yet it moves)."
The historical truth is quite different: in the fifteenth century,

Septuagint). Aratus was translated or commented on by Eratosthenes,

Hipparchus,
Cicero,
Caesar, Ovid and others,
MASTERS OF THE WORLD

dissemination because the authorities

forbid its teaching while plenty of

by Robert Laffont

"cultured" people challenge its veracity solely because they cannot believe
any discovery contrary to the "truth"
of their faith.

cultivated people' all over the

world,
including
not
only

It becomes evident from the foregoing that the "roundness"

of the

Columbus but also the Queen of

Spain and the whole Spanish
court, knew that the earth was

earth WAS known before the earliest

date given for the writing of the old

roundl

G. Richard Bozarth

books of the Bible. However, in an

effort mirrored in today's religious
,
leaders, scientific knowledge and discovery were hidden, suppressed, and

distorted by religious leaders of the

time. Religion just cannot stand in the
face of scientific scrutiny. Knowledge
is the mortal enemy of all religion.
Wayne Gurley
Texas

PAGE 2

and if someone not so faithful does

discover a truth, it is prevented from

THERMIDOR

188 [8/80]

TRUTH
Be informed "~
Truth needs NO changes

AMERICAN

ATHEIST

EDITORIAL

JON GARTH MURRA Y

.RESPECTABILITY BE DAMNED
In reading over the "Roots of Atheism" series for this
month, I was particularly taken by a statement of Frances
Wright to this effect:;
"Alas, my friends! we have tampered with imaginary demons through all the ages of human ignorance up to the
present hour - we have quailed the human heart with fear
- we have shaken reason from her throne with the agues of
superstition - we have broken down the self-respecting
spirit of man with nursery tales and priestly threats, and
we dare to assert, that in proportion as we have prostrated
our understanding and degraded our nature, we have exhibited virtue, wisdom, and happiness, in our words, our actions and our lives!"
And, this - of course - is the bane of the Atheist. (S)he
will sacrifice anything for respectability and unfortunately
that respectability goes with the prostration of understanding
and the degrading of human nature,
During the last two years I have been "on the road" attempting to encourage Atheists out of the closet and into an
organization which will restore human dignity and personal integrity to them: Yet, often I loathe to face the Atheist more
than I loathe to face the irrational religious fanatic. For, everywhere I am met with the arguments that "humanism"is a more
respectable "term of identification," that it would be more
respectable if we "assumed the Agnostic position," that more
respectability would redound to our position if we "coordinated our position with the Unitarian Church," that we must
"seek the cover of the Libertarian party," to be respectable.
Like hell we do. My position has always been to put a big
verbal check mark on the block which says "none of the
above."
.From the time of Frances Wright to the present day, the
Atheist has been ashamed of his position, except for the few
frontline stalwarts screaming "Damn the torpedoes, full steam
ahead." Why is this?
In part the answer is simple and I will speak to that. For
over eight millennia of human civilization only the religious
were permitted to speak. With the psychologically crippling
features of.religion assisting the political despots of all ages to
remain in power, subjugating mankind's mental i>0wers to
the harness of fear; every challenge to the combined power of
state and church was anathema. The "good" or the "respectable" mental attitude was one of compliance and acceptance.
It was "dishonorable" or "disrespectful" to question.
The only education permitted was indoctrination into accepted positions of faith within in each parameter of human
grouping. The scope of human understanding was contained in
"philosophy" which educational discipline came to be simply
an apology for religion, manifesting itself in different
"schools of thought, but vying to best support and sustain
the religion in power. The philosopher's quest was for the
"summum bonum" and that supreme good was always god.
The cultural lag which primarily speaks to this phantasmagoria
is the continuing granting of "Doctor of Philosophy" degrees
as those still the highest obtainable and the most prestigious in
the land.
Deriving the word philosophy from the Greek,philo -love,
and sophia - wisdom, the ancients corrupted the idea by using
the discipline for the abnegation of human intelligence.

AUSTIN, TEXAS

For countless ages, everyone who disagreed with those in

power were, simply, killed. As the dissidents fought on, they
won the right to be merely tortured and imprisoned. Soon,
they were merely imprisoned. At each stage, always, they were
stripped' of all their property, all possessions, even their children. Systematically, their names were defamed. Often, years
after they were dead, their bones were dug up and scattered or
burned.
But the dissidents always appeared. They were brave beyond our ability to understand. They were isolated. They were
overwhelmed, but they were always there.
I am stunned when there is no iridication in an assemblage
of Atheists that they understand that freedom of speech took
8,000 years to obtain - and that we really do not have it,
fully, yet. And, what is freedom of the press but an extrapolation into print of that freedom to say?
Yet, the Atheists are there at a meeting and the first question, the first discussion, is "How can we most effectively
hide?" I often stand aghast when I hear, "Why can't you send
the magazine in a plain brown wrapper?" The words flagellate
me in the oft repeated question, "Why can't we change the
name of the organization?" The organization's symbol is often
attacked by the anti-nuke proponents, when all of matter is
nothing but a collection of atomic nuclear whirls.
Implicit - behind it all - is fear. Inherent in each question
is the basic principle that there is a lack of respectability in the
Atheist position. But what is respectability? Would you please
consult your dictionary? The root of the word "respect" is the
Latin respectus +-Iiterally, the act of looking back. How aptly
that definition coincides with that of the word "religion" from
the Latin religio - to tie back.
The world of Atheism is not in the backward glance, or the
adherence to the old and discredited. Our view,
,... is to the now
and the future.
It is from this viewpoint that we, here at the American.
Atheist Center, formulate our fundamental principles. We have
decided that we will not buy into the "respectability" of an insane position. Nor, will we treat the proponents of those positions with any kind of respect. They deserve none. They will
get none from us.
Adherence to a religious faith is the manifestation, by one
person, or a group (or groups) of persons, of psychotic behavior. We intend to scoff at them, malign them and verbally abuse them at will. Under no' circumstances will we traffic with
them. We do not desire the "respectability" of the blood of
hundreds of millions of victims of state and church. We do not
desire to look back with approval.
- But more, we also cannot accept the yearning of our contemporaries for the acceptance of that "respectability"
be
they humanists, agnostics, unitarians - or even Atheists. We
eschew their company.
We are clean. No human blood has been spilt by American
.Atheists. We stand in dignity. No human mind has been bespoiled by American Atheism. We walk with pride. The humjln
community has not suffered at _the hands of American Atheism.
The irrationality of religion can only be met head-on, in
the open market place of ideas. There we must slug it out with no quarter given. I have no hesitation about the outcome

THERMIDOR

188 [7/80]

PAGE 3

 .. if only the Atheist can overcome the need for the security
blanket of a false respectability, which - as pointed out so
well by Frances Wright - has "prostrated our understanding
and degraded our nature." We are not alone; we are not isolated; ; we cannot be overwhelmed as were our cohorts in his-

tory who, at .such great price, bought for us those freedoms

which we now should hold dear. And, I demand that Atheists
stand with me, not against me, as we turn our backs on the
"respectablity" of mental subservience and opt instead for
sanity.

NEWS
The news is chosen to demonstrate, month after month, the dead reactionary hand of religion. It dictates your habits, sexual conduct, family
size. It censures cinema, theater, television, even education. It dictates life values and lifestyle. 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
States. we admit it.
.

On July 18th, the United States District Court for the

Western District of North Carolina aqreed with Patricia
Voswinkel, Director of the North Carolina Chapter of American Atheists, that the installation of a clerqvrnan as a "Police
Chaplain" for the city of Charlotte was unconstitutional.
In November, 1979, the city had had the qrand idea of
"qoinq halves" with a local Baptist church on salary so that aminister of that church could qive spiritual counselinq to the
police force in Charlotte. Pat immediately saw the unconstitutional aspects of the plan. After discussinq it with the
American Atheist Center, she appeared at the City Council
rneetinqs with her attorney protestinq the arranqernent.
Undaunted, the city went ahead with the plan, installinq a
baptist "reverend" at a salary of $20,000 a year (half of it paid
by his church). The chaplain assumed his duties in January,
1980.
About the same time, Patricia Voswinkel was in Austin,
Texas, attendinq a Board of Directors rneetinq for American
Atheists. The illeqalitv of the actions of the City of Charlotte
PAGE 4

THERMIDOR

were aqreed and encouraqed by the Board, Pat returned to

Charlotte to file suit aqainst both the city of Charlotte and the
-Chief of the Charlotte Police Department, on January 11 th,
when the chaplain had barely been in office over a week. In
addition to the $20,000 salary, (of which the city had aqreed to
pay $10,000) the chaplain was to have an office, uniforms,
transportation and amenities furnished to him, by the city - of
course. The suit souqht a declaratory iudqrnent that the
actions of the city of Charlotte and of its Police Department
were violative of the Constitution of the United States and in
deroqation of the riqhts of Patricia Voswinkel, as well as the
North Carolina Chapter of American Atheits, in that public
funds were beinq used for the support of reliqion by this
arranqernent.
Patricia's husband aqreed to pay the very hefty leqal
expenses involved and the suit asked for reimbursement of
them, as well as all costs ..
The Police Department settled the chaplain into office at the
same time that more public money was spent to fiqht the case.

188 [7/80)

AMERICAN

ATHEIST

There is a larqe Question in all of these suits as to who has the

riqht to order public funds to be used to defend the riqhts of
elected or appointed officials to violate the laws of the land. On
the one hand is a watchdoq orqanization such as American
Atheists and on the other hand is all the wealth and the power
of the state apparatus in defense of the indefensible. The
watcndoq orqanization must obtain money from individual
members to pay - up front - the very costly fees of constitutiona I lawyers. The state can simply order a city attorney or a
county attorney to undertake the defense and has at its call
fine leqal libraries.unpublished
case records, as many stenoqraphers, paraleqal persons, researchers, clerks and typists
as needed, as well as unlimited access to telephones and
expense accounts. Yet, the state, city or county beinq sued
never takes a vote amonq the citizens to see if they want the
suit defended or if they desire to have taxpayer funds
squandered, especially on a case such as the one here
reported.
Both sides submitted lenqthv written leqal arqurnents (i.e.
Briefs). Later oral aruuments were also heard on April 10,
1980. Followinq this the United States District Court [udqe
took the matter under advisement and did not render his
decision until July 18th, over three months later.
Meanwhile, the police chaplain had, of course, the benefit
of his salary and his position since the city of Charlotte and the
Charlotte Police Department insisted that he continue in the
employment created even while a case was pendinq. For eiqht
hours of every week, he rode in a police car, he ran some
errands and in addition sat in his office at the station - an office
where the police officers rarely came, accordinq to reports of
the police station personnel. He had no traininq in psvcholoqv,
psychiatry or related work, had obtained a decree in journalism at University of North Carolina in 1965 and then in 1979
qraduated from a small evanqelical Baptist theoloqical school.
However, his uncle is the pastor of the church which had
aqreed to pay half of his salary and the uncle is also the
secretary of the International Conference of Police Chaalalns.
This orqanization has about 500 members across the United
States for, indeed; there are about 600 police chaplains in our
nation, one-third of whom are paid, with tax fundinq.
The decision was worth the wait. However, it was characterized with some very odd distinctions which set it apart
from other federal court decisions. At the end of it, the [udqe
appended a conclusion which spoke to his fear of the reliqious
community and what its reactions miqht be. The "conclusion's" beqinninq statement is, "The precedinq discussion
summarizes the court's reasons for holdinq the present
aqreernent unconstitutional.
Here, since the matter is one of
public interest,(editor's
emphasis) the court undertakes to
identify those aspects of the aqreernent which it does not find
objectionable and which were not relied on in the court's
determination of unconstitutionality."
The iudqe then lists
five "aspects" of the case and it was, of course, just those
aspects which the media chose to dwell on at lenqth and in
depth. They were (1) that the police department had a riqht to
provide secular services; (2) that a clerqvrnan could be
Qualified to qive them; (3) that such an employee could be
involved in "spiritual"
or "moral"
discussions; (4) that
ch urches ca n Q ive money to qovern ment if they desire to do so;
and (5)thatthe chaplain hired was not presumed to have acted
in bad faith, nor did the court presume he was disqualified
from a counselinq job. The media seized upon these to justify
the actions of the City of Charlotte. Indeed, the day followinq
the decision a shockinq article appeared in the Charlotte
Observer newspaper, in which the chaplain was interviewed
at lenqth about his activities at a time when a pol'iceman was

shot and at another time when a woman employee was

hospitalized for a broken leq, In both instances the brave
chaplain had "visited in the hospital" arid had "helped to relay
rnessaqes." hardly an activity worth $20,000 a year, but,
enouqh to write a sympathetic article about the poor chaplain
cauqht in the midst of a Ieqal case bequn by the horrible
Atheists of the community.
However, the leqal decision of five paqes actually swept
away these apoloqies to the community in its official lanouaqe. The decision is hearteninq in many of its ramifications.
The iudqe aqreed that in cases of possible state/church
violations the criteria aqainst which the facts of the case must
be measured are those of the famous "Nyquist test," qiven by
the United States Supreme Court.
"[Olur decisions ... dictate that to pass muster
under the Establishment Clause the law in Question, first, must reflect a clearly secular leqislative
purpose, ... second, must have a primary effect
that neither advances nor inhibits reliqion, ... and,
third, must avoid excessive qovernment entanqlement with reliqion .... "
Committee for Public Education v. Nvauist. 413 U.S. 756
(1973). The court applied this tripartite test to the chaplaincy
situation in Charlotte. On the first test, "havinq a clearly
secular purpose" the court felt that precedent cases did not
qive an adequate quideline and therefore did not use that test
in this case. On the second test, "havinq a primary effect that
neither advances or inhibits reliqicn" the court clarified the
rneaninq of the words. "Primary" the iudqe said, was (lot a
synonym for "oreater" or" predominant" but rather used in
the sense of beinq "direct" as distinquished from "remote" or
"secondary."The
aqreernent between the City of Charlotte
and the Baptist church the court said, "necesssritv has
several obvious, direct and constitutionallv
impermissible
effects:
1. It provides for a pubtictv funded position that must, under
the terms of the eareement. be filled bv a 'minister: (thus
imposinq a retiaious test for office.)
2. This is the onlv chaplain position the City has funded and
the onlv such eareement it has entered. The Church is
therefore in the unique position of orovidinq the nominee to a
position with unavoidable reliaious associations ... the Church
witlaerner whatever orestiae may result from its position as
the supplier of the Citv's onlv 'full-time police chaplain.' It is
also necessarilv the case that Baptists have the 'inside track'
in providinq reliaious auidence to those police officers who are
disposed to request it. This superior opportunity afforded
Baptists to disseminate their views to members of the police
department cannot be considered an insubstantial benefit to a
reliqious sect.'
.
And whatever the impact, the contract necessarilv creates
an appearance of reliaious favoritism. This appearance, bv
itsf!/f. offends the Establishment Clause.
3. Another necessary consequence of the contract is that
the City is tinencina the provision of exoresslv reliaious
benefits to some, but not all. of the police department's
emplovees. The eareement states that the chaplain is not to
enaeae in unsolicited retiaious instruction. The eareement
does. however. ellow the chaplain to aive 'reliaious auidence'
to those emplovees who request it. Obvioustv, the police
officers who will be most inclined to ask the chaplain for
retioious auidence are those who would consider a Baptist
cteravmen a useful source of such auidence. Those who are
so disposed may thus obtain reliaious counselinq from a
Quasi-public functionary with an office at police headquarters.
Those who are not must .QOelsewhere. This tevorina of the

THERMIDOR188 [7/80]

AUSTIN, TEXAS

PAGES

reliaious needs of some of the department's employees

offends the Establishment Cleuse. "
The third pronq of the tests which the court applied was the
need to "avoid excessive qovernment entanqlernent with
reliqion." and found this to be "admittedly an elusive" test.
However, in this case, the police chaplaincy created or
threatened
"excessive entanqlernent"
in at least three
respects:
1. In the last analysis, receivinq a salary from both the
church and the qovernment, it was impossible for the court to
determine to whom the chaplain had to answer "in the last
analysis" for the performance of his duties. Any view taken of
the relationship, the court found, offended the principle of
state/ church separation.
2. The city had attempted to secularize the position in order
to satisfy the First Amendment by statinq that the chaplain
should qive "reliqious quidance" only when requested. But,
who, asked the court, would enforce this? If it was to be left to
the qood intentions of the church and the minister, then the
arranqernent lacked the safequards needed to insure that
public funds are riot in fact beinq used to further reliqion, for
"mere words of qood intent" do not provide the necessary
safequard.
. 3. A broader base of entanqlernent was the divisive political
potential. Havinq a novel relationship with one particular
church, the City could hardly iqnore proposals from other local
churches for a similar arranqernent. it is enouqh for the
Establishment Clause violation that such competition is invited by the arranqrnent, there need not be the developed
arqument of other churches' actual requests.
Surnrnarizinq, the United States District Court iudqe opined,
"There is no way in this case to sever the constitutional from
the unconstitutional elements in the aqreernent (between the
City, the Police Department and the Baptist Church). It
therefore must fail in toto."
Patricia Voswinkel, the North Carolina Chapter of the
American Atheists, and the national American Atheist Center
were all jubilant with the decision and riqhtlv so since it
vindicated the concern which the city of Charlotte's action had
aroused.
The Police Department had other ideas and the immediate
reaction there was to see if the aqreernent now found
unconstitutional
could be saved if the City Council could
"modify or restructure the chaplain's position and arranqements with the church in order to comply with the iudqe's
rulinqs." The Police Department spokesman added, "There is
some leeway here within which we could operate." However,
the City Attorney's office answered that it was "sure the
arranqernent with the church will have to end. There's still a
qood possibility there will be a counselinq position at the
police department but not a chaplaincy." The "chaplain." still
on the job two days later, explained, "It's too early to know
what this means personally. But I'm a little numbed by it. It's a ,
time of confusion. But I'll hanq in there and do my job until I'm
told to do otherwise."
An in depth conversation with Patricia Voswinkel, as late as
the 21 st of July, revealed that the City Attorney's office was
planninq to make a recommendation to the City Council which
would need to reconsider the "chaplain" in liqht of the court
decision. Pat was prepared to be in attendance at that
meetinq. with her attorneys, to quard aqain the precious
heritaqe of state/church separation.
The total leqal costs of this one case, from January to July,
1980, were about $5,000. The Voswinkel family has carried
this entire financial burden. Pat is almost a one-woman band
in her attempts to cover all aspects of state/ church separation
PAGE 6

THERMIDOR

~/

violations in her city. It was she (with her husband financinq

her) who won the case in a federal district court in North
Carolina to force the library system of the County of Mecklenberq (site of Charlotte) to carry and display the American
Atheist maqazines. She also was the lltiqant. alonq with the
national American Atheist Center, in the suit which won a
consent decree from the federal district court of North
Carolina when both sued the qovernor and the attorney
qeneral of that state to remove the objectional North Carolina
constitutional restrictions aqainst Atheist holdinq public office in that state. Pat was the recipient of one Atheist of the
Year award already and with this suit is certain the leadinq
candidate for that honor aqain in 1980. '
In fact, it may be necessary to find some kind of "runninq
award" for this determined American Atheist. Pat, every
American Atheist knows you deserve our accolades. Now, we
simply need to find a way to express them to you. We honor
yOU'- and your husband - and salute you both.

t
t
t
t
t
t

t
t
t
tt

t
t,

188 [7/80]

THINKING
IS GOOD FOR THE MIND
To All Those Who Do It
(Think)
Angeline Bennett
HERE AND

t
t
t
t

NOW

My mind's freedom
Hurls itself
Into the business of living
Reveling in the here and now.
It has no need to skulk about
Inhibited by dogma
Invented to hamper
Lucid interpretation
Of the purely natural.

t
t

IN WHOSE L1KENESS,:-.
It does not bother me that perhaps
I evolved from minute water creatures
I am proud of all the HUMAN struggle
That has brought me HUMAN features.
WHEN BORNAGAINS

DIE

Here they lie rotting

(Li ke the rot they were taught)
Imagine! No heaven
.
They grovelled for naught.

t
t

UNBIASED
The sun is warm along a bronzed and naked body
Whose keeper knows nothing of any god
Nor has need of anything nature does not provide ...
Whose thoughts are clean, whose intent is moral.
This is the same sun that glistens on a church spire
That shines through stained glass windows
That makes possible the shadow of a cross
To blight a church yard .....
and men's minds.

AMERICAN

t,

ATHEIST

AMERICAN ATHEIST CENTER TV NEWS

The determination of Dr. Madalyn

Murray O'Hair to break throuqh to a
weekly American Atheist television
proqrarn came to fruition in earlv .Julv.
and on July 22nd, the first "American
Atheist News and Thouqht" proqrarn
went on the air, out of San Antonio,
Texas, on Channel 10.
In a sinqle-rninded drive for television outreach, Dr. O'Hair had literally
plaqued the staff of the American
Atheist Center for years atternptinq to
induce all to learn the mechanisms of
television broadcastinq (in their spare
time of coursel). At times she stooped
to out-and-out harassment to persuade
the already overworked staff to enroll
in classes for camera handline. audio
tapinq and synchronization,
liqhtinq
and photoqraphv techniques, editinq,
directinq, producinq, ad infinitum.
Certain of the heavily burdened staff
had actually, to stop her naqqinq, enrolled in some courses, did major readinq in F.C.C.requlations and rnanaqed
some open-ended video research. The
patient Jon Murrayhad - often - on

trips to the larqer metropolitan areas

priced production equipment, sat patiently throuqh demonstrations and
inquired diliqentlv after sources and
resources while at television stations.
Always, the price for traininq and for
equipment or for production at commercial studios was too hiqh. Undaunted, Dr. O'Hair had asked every
affluent member of the orqanization
for money. She telephoned, visited,
wrote letters. In 1976, after many
such efforts, studio time was purchased at an Austi n television station
but the breakinq down of a teleprompter, the hostile attitude of the camera
crews and the poor liqhtinq, brouqht
forth a half hour proqram of (relatively)
poor Quality shown at the Seventh
Annual National American Atheist
Convention
in Chicano. Illinois, in
April, 1977. Additionally no station
would permit the tape to be aired on
public service time and, aqain, the
Center was inadequately financed and
could not purchase commercial time ..
The studio had refused to furnish

AUSTIN, TEXAS

THERMIDOR

~I

188 [7/80l

props, stills, slides and-had no facilities to title or to qenerate an address

on the video tape. In an attempt to
have a University of Texas qraduate
student in the media school correct
the same, the tape was qiven to him.
He never returned it and has since
disappeared. The lesson repeatedly
learned was that proper financinq of
the Atheist cause is essential. The
American Atheist Center must always
be in the position that it can purchase
the best and not rely on either volunteers, students, or patchwork solutions. The venture was costly: $3,000,
was spent and not even one qood tape
was produced. The major part of the
financinq of this effort had been made
by one Atheist from Seattle, Washinqton - Bennie Walters.
Meanwhile, Lloyd Thoren, Director
of the American Atheist Museum in
Indiana, had attempted to place paid
Atheist advertisinq on channels in
Chicaqo and had been refused. CBS
network and affiliates refused to take
a one-minute commercial for the book
PAGE 7

Freedom Under Sieae, to be shown

durinq commercial break time while
Dr. O'Hair was beinq interviewed by
Tom Snyder on the "Tomorrow" show.
The F.C.C.-was deterrnininq that the
"Fairness Doctrine" did not apply to
Atheists and the National Association
of Broadcasters was advisinq television stations that it was appropriate to
deny access to qawdless Atheists.
Naturally, under the circumstances,
Dr. O'Hair was shortly back to writinq.
telephoninq,
visitinq,
askinq for
money, even demendina
enouqh
money, to fiqht but everywhere beinq
refused. One letter said, bluntly, "I will
NOT qive you any money for the foolishness of television. You can stop
asktnq." Another well-heeled Atheist
said, "As 10nQ as you spend more
money than you receive by qoinq into
credit buvinq (such as the rnortqaqe on
the Center) I will not help you." Another wrote, "Don't be qreedv, You are
in my will and you can wait until I die.
You don't need money now." Meanwhile, scripts were written, efforts
were -made to interest National Educational Television, Public Broadcastinq, and everyone of the commercial
networks, as well as independent stations and Community Access Television. Jon Murrayand Dr. O'Hair were
interviewed
on Warner
Brothers
QUBE station in Columbus, Ohio and
both came back fired up with a determination to obtain television channel
time for Atheism. Complaints were
filed with the F.C.C., the Fairness Doctrine was invoked on scores of occasions (to no avail) and even a law suit
was filed to try to force open television. The law suit failed and there was
no money for appeal. At one point Dr.
O'Hair and Jon Murray appeared at a
hearinq on the Fairness Doctrine before the en banc panel of the F.C.C.
WashinQton, D.C. was combed for an
attorney who would help - and none
was found.
Meanwhile, Jon Murray took some
private instructions where he could,
on the handline of the camera, on
audio tapinq, on mixinq, on liqhtinq.
Evervthinq that could be read, researched, investiqated, came under
scrutiny. A three-hundred paqe book
on "Media Access Problems" was {Jut
toqether in a bound volume at ihe
Center by Dr. O'Hair and anyone expressinq an interest in video access
was immediately handed the book
with uraent admonitions to read it
althouqh it was a hiqhlv technical,
leqal analysis of qovernrnental requlations, leqal opinions,administrative
PAGE 8

rules of the F.C.C. and masses of

"typical" correspondence and denials
from television stations .. At one point
early in Chapter history, Community
Access Cable Television kits were obtained from the national orqanization
of that name and shipped to all chapters exhortinq each to oet on the air by
any means possibte. It was at this
, point that some of the richer members
of the orqanization beqan to avoid Dr.
O'Hair, knowinq that she would aqaln
- and aqain - make an appeal for
money for television outreach any
time that she could qet to them. By
1979, the situation was ludicrous and
Dr. O'Hair on occasion could be heard
to hum the sonq, "There's a brown
rinq around my nose," as she tried
and tried over and over and over aqain
for money.
Actually, everyone
in the Center
was finally tired of hearinq the wellworn idea: "We must be able to control
the content of our presentations on
television. We cannot do that in the
adversary format of talk shows." At
staff meetinqs, anyone could finish
the statements she started when it
came to the media discussion.
Then, in early 1980, Keith Berka,
who had founded the South Carolina
Chapter, called from his new home in
Kansas to advise that he had been
explorinq cable television possibilities
there at a state university. He was able
to obtain arr'extensive analysis of equiprnent need and cost breakdown
and transmitted it to the Center. He
was enthusiastic
that sornethinq
could be accomplished. Aqain, everythinq stopped for lack of fundlnq and'
this time telephones were banqed in
the ear of Dr. O'Hair as she tried to
cajole anyone with money to help.
At the Tenth Annual National Convention of American Atheists, Georae
Kniss, a member of the Pittsburqh
Cable Television Panel, qave an address on the need and the "how to" of
breakinq into cable television. CoverinQ the history and mode of cable in
Pittsburqh, Pennsylvania,-he exhorted
the conventioneers to seize every opportunity for Atheist presentations
thereon. His speech met with an enthusiastic response. However, aqain,
there was no fundinq,
In mid-June, Keith Berka came to
the American
Atheist
Center. A
chance in his circumstances made it
possible for him to move toAustin. He
was barely in the door before Dr.
O'Hair propositioned him to spend his
time and enerqies with the local cable
company for "access,"for the AmeriTHERMIDOR 188 [7/80]

. can Atheist Center in Austin.

Keith - who turns out to be a hero in
this tale - has been a salesman for
most of his life and he set out to slay
the draqons. Capitol Cable, which services Austin, Texas, home city base of
the American
Atheist
Center,
is
owned by the Lvndon Baines Johnson
family. Local access is assisted by the
Austin Community
Colleqe, Within
days Keith had sold the ideas of a halfan-hour, weekly "American Atheist
News" proqram, with the use of the
equipment belonqinq to the colleqe
and the cable company. The total cost
of each one-half hour, full color, television proqrarn would be $21.00 for
the tape.
By July. 2nd tapinq
had
bequn. with Alan Bushon on the camera and Craiq Anderson as audio man.
Keith, of course, was the producer and
his "sales" ideas proved to be invaluable. By July 15th there were ten
"shows" in the can, enouqh to prove to
the cable company that there would be
a continuinq proqrarn issue each
week. Every requirement was met and
a formal proposal was issued to the
Board of Directors of Community Access Cable Television for a reqular slot
in the weekly proqrarnrninq, on Channel 10, KSAT-TV, which is an ABC
affiliate, out of San Antonio, Texas.
The aoproval came for Tuesdays, 8:30
P.M. and the "American
Atheist
News" proqrarn was in business.
Shootinq in the office of Dr. O'Hair, as
she sat behind her desk, the proqrarns
which were calculated to show "the
impact of orqanized reliqion on your
liberty and on your pocketbook" beqan, with the first show scheduled for
July 22nd.
The preview article in the Austin
American-Statesman
newspaper was
short and sweet:
"The
'American
Atheist
News
Forum: seen at 8:30 p.m. Tuesdays,
features news coveraqe of statel
church separation issues and problems. This forum is produced by the
Society of Separationists, Inc., a nonprofit, non-political,
educational orqanization dedicated to the complete
and absolute separation of state and
church. It has been perforrninq the
function of a 'watchdoq' orqanization
for the last 15 years, stationed in
Austin."
At the end of each proqram, Dr.
O'Hair offers a free sarnolecopv of the
American Atheist maqazine to all persons requestinq it. As this issue of the
rnaqazine qoes to press, the airinq of
the first proqrarn is a day away. Jon
Murray and Gerald Tholen have been
~MERICAN ATHEIST

on a chapter orqanizinq trip for the six

weeks of June 10th to July 25th. They
have not been able to assist. Very
damn little planninq has qone into the
first ten proqrarns, which were put
toqether in just twelve days. Those of
you who have been with the American
Atheist cause, however, can remember thisrnaqazine and what it looked
like when it started, for it spranq from
need and not from adequate financinQ. It is felt here that the television

proqrarn will improve each issue just

as has the maqazine.
If there ever has been a "crass
roots" orqanization in the history of
the United States, this is it. American
Atheists have nickeled and dimed it all
of the way, with the averaqe donation
from an American Atheist beinq about
$12 a year, as compared to the averaqe $274 a year of the averaqe Christian. More than anvthinq else, American Atheists operate simply on boldness - and then pick up the pieces how

and where they ca n be picked up to put

it all toqether.
The proqrarns have started. Let's all
take it from here. The proqrarns will
improve. They will be better every time
they QO on the air, especially when
there is some time to think about how
to do them and how to improve them.
Do you have cable in your city? Can
you start the proqrarns there?
Contact our hero, Keith Berka, [512:
458-1244] and let's all QOon this.

MURRAY SUES CONGRESS

Jon Garth Murray, Director, American Atheist Center, in
behalf of the American Atheist community in the United
States, filed a suit on June 14th, aimed at eliminating the
payment of chaplains in the United States Congress.
Joel Joseph, of Washington, D.C. is acting as the attorney
for the American Atheist Center and for Jon Murray, who was
also joined in the suit by Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair.
Murray called the Congress 'allocation of chaplains' salaries
and expenses, "absolute, clean-cut sponsorship of religion."
He especially noted, "Historically, even the founding fathers
are with us on this one," naming former presidents Thomas
Jefferson, James Madison and Andrew Jackson as those who
"tried to put the chaplains out of Congress."
. The suit named as defendants House Speaker Tip O'Neill,
Vice President Walter Mondale as presiding officer of the Senate, the Treasurer of the United States and the Secretary of
the Treasury.
The chaplain of the Senate is paid $34,393 and the chaplain
of the House is paid $26,691, with postage allowance.iexpense
accounts, offices, etc., which brings the total tax dollars paid
to well over $100,000 each year.
"At first glance, that may seem insignificant," Murray said.
"But multiply that by each state where chaplains are being
paid and almost each city council where chaplains are being
paid. The money is significant. But more important is that this
is a violation of the United States constitutional dictate that
the government may NOT establish religion. I can't think of a
more clear case of establishment than the government paying
for prayers."
The United States government has sixty (60) days to answer the suit. Following that answer, other legal procedures
may take as long as a year before a hearing is set on the complaint. The suit is a preliminary one for the main issue of
prayer itself, in the United States Congress. Once payment for
prayer is successfully eliminated, the next suit will be to reo
move prayer itself. A close news follow-up will be made in
this magazine.
The American Atheist Center has several other suits on
prayer pending. The case of Paul Marsa versus the Metuchen
Borough Council is pending in the Court of Appeals of New
Jersey. The case of Conrad 'Goeringer v. the .City of Tucson
City Council is pending in lower court. The case of O'Hair v.
Austin City Council is pending in the Fifth federal Circuit
Court of Appeal.
Recently, another facet was added. When the suit of Bruce
Hunter v. Dallas Independent School District was argued in the
Fifth' Federal Ciruit Court 'of Appeals in New Orleans, the
Murray-O'Hairs in attendance at the argument were shocked to
find that the court opened with the declaration that the court
AUSTIN, TEXAS

was open, then, with all of the justices standing and bowing
their heads, the Clerk of the Court said, "Oyez, Oyez, God
save our nation and this honorable court." It was obvious that
the remarks were intended to be, and were, a prayer.
Dr. O'Hair immediately prepared a letter of protest through
administrative channels of the court, only to have the presiding judge, Charles Clark, rule that the court would continue to
be opened by a prayer, as had been its usual history, and that
if Dr. O'Hair, or any Atheist, did not like it they could leave
the room. For those of you who want to address the judge on
this order, his address is: Fifth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, 600 Camp St., New Orleans, LA., 70130, or telephone
(504) 589-6514.
When in attendance at the Fifth Circuit to argue another
case which was heard on the 16th of July, the Murray-O'Hairs
interrupted the opening to walk out. In her presentation of
argument, Dr. O'Hair then filed a motion in open court to
have the required prayer discontinued. This will be fought up
t.~ tht United States Supreme Court.
The religious community knows how important it is that
prayer be held in government. After the prayer - and the acceptance that it should be there - taxpayer fuhds can go to
the churches. If this is "One Nation under God" then the
people of the nation are required to support their god with
public (taxpayer) funds. The battle line is drawn at prayer.
The Atheists of the United States must rise to a realization
that the symbolism of prayer is powerful enough to return the
nation to the theocratic type of government which was everywhere apparent in the original colonies. It can happen here unless it is prevented. Your check to the Legal Fund of American
Atheists is imperative: c/o P. O. Box 2117, Austin, TX 78768.

THERMIDOR

188 [8/80]

PAGE 9

As more and more American Atheists

come out of the closet, the Tucson,
Arizona, Chapter can teach all of them
the way, the truth and the liqht as that
chapter continues with its remarkable
boldness. Can you imaqine havinq a
second annual participation in a street
"fair" in your city? Tucson, under the
quidance of Conrad Goerinqer, has
done it aqain and with a second successful fair behind this chapter, preparation for an expanded effort is under way
for 1981.
All of the participants were eaqer to be
identified with the upcominq post -Christian era of America and cheerfully introduced themselves to all comers. Manninq the booth for three days, April 25,
26, 27, were Conrad Goerinqer, himself,
Kimberly Duncan, Stuart Seiler, Dr. Larry
McHolland, Kyrin Alves and Dr. William
Carton.
The booth was preceded by continuous planninq. The croup first asked for
and then received official recoqnition
from the Fourth Avenue Craft Fair
Committee as a leqitimate orqanization
Then, a coordination proqram was put
into effect by Peter Damasheck so that
the booth was properly
manned,
stocked, advertised and attractively
furbished. Arthur Vokes re-desiqned
and built the booth for Quick set-up and
take-down since the fair spanned a
three-day period.
Then, fortified with boxes of literature
from the American Atheist Center, the
croup tried its collective artistic hand to
the decoration and presentation. All of
the literature was distributed. Seventy_
(70) persons were siqned up for the'
mailinq list, and the operation was hiqhly
successful.
Conrad reported, "We were naturally
besieqed by the usual wave of Jesus
Freaks who set up a portable microphone near the booth and beqan
shoutinq biblical passaqes and incan-

ATHEISTS
FAIR WELL

CURIOSITY

CONRAD GOERINGER

A TTENTION
PAGE 10

AROUSED

AND DUNCAN SEILLER

A TTRACTING

ESPECIALL Y THE YOUNG WANT AN ANSWER

A THEISM
THERMIDOR

188 [8/80]

AMERICAN ATHEIST

Different Aspeets
Of the
E~"illition

DISPLA Y OF MAGAZINES AND PAMPHLETS

A THEIST PUBLICITY

KYRIN AL VES AND DR. LARRY McHOLLAND

MORE ATHEIST MATERIAL

KIMBERLEY DUNCAN AND DR. WILLIAM CARTON

AUSTIN, TEXAS

THERMIDOR

188 [8/80]

PAGE 11

tations. For the most part, the crowd

looked on them with amusement, and
then beqan strollinq over to our table; it
was quite a contrast, the level-headed
Atheists
and the berserk Jesus-ists,
frothinq at the mouth."
Of course, since June 9, 1980, the
riqht of Atheists to appear anywhere,
even in the sophisticated "malls" now
appearinq in every city, has been affirmed by the United States Supreme
Court.On that date, the decision written
by Justice William Rehnquist, the Court
ruled that states may require private
shopoinq center owners to provide access to people who want to circulate
petitions or otherwise peacefully exercise their riqhts of free speech. The Hare
Krishnas had already won that riqht in
airports and Atheists distributinq literature in the Denver, Colorado, airport had
confirmed it.
Go qet your sandwich sicn, your
picket siqn, call the national office for
-literature to distribute and - co qet
them!
American
Atheists only have the
riqhts which they take. Sittinqhome and
suckinq one's thumb is for Christians.
The closet is not a decent place for any
Atheist to be. Think affirmative action!
Call Conrad Goerinqer and ask him for
advice and qet your booth toqether.

THE BUSIEST BOOTH AT THE FAIR

A THEIST BOOTH A TTRACTS INTELLECTUALS

AND MORE, AND MORE .....

ONE A THEIST MORE?

PAGE 12

THERMIDOR

188 [8/80)

AMERICAN

ATHEIST

THE NOT FUNNY FUNNIES

NEWS ITEM:
HATICWAL~Y

1'''~S

ATW""""'",-

PAW-~A
.

M'

JA~T!JCHEN

/HIS 1t.IcE.vTLY
~1i?/E.c>

Paul Marsa, Director of the New

Jersey Chapter of American Atheists,
recently
married.
The
occasion
brought front page coverage for him
-and a vicious cartoon printed in the
New Jersey Sentinel
newspaper
which implied that his was a reliqious
marriage and that Atheists are violent
and physically abusive persons, rude

and crude. The cartoon has been directed to' an attorney to see if this
image must be accepted, or if we can
fight back for slander, libel.
Vitriolic
articles,
lies,
attacks,
calumny
are constantly
directed
against the leaders of American Atheists. Since the law says that famous
persons in the news are "fair game,"

usually there is no hope for a slander

or libel suit. However, in this case the
newspaper knew nothing about Nicole
Marsa and she is not a "public figure"
so that she has no resort tolhe law to
corrent misstatements. Perhaps this
. time, a suit rniqht be efficacious.
Go get 'em, Paul .....
and meantime, the best to you and the new Mrs.

F
R
E
E

O!)CAR@/80
FOl' 'flt: AM(IIICAN ATHE"'

AUSTIN, TEXAS

THERMIDOR

188 [8/80]

PAGE 13

MUSEUM OF THE HISTORY

OF ATHEISM AND RELIGION
IN LENINGRAD

.
by Yakov Kozhurin, M.A. (Philosophy)
\ ..
Assistant Professor, Director of The State Museum of The Historv of
Religion and Atheism of The Ministry of Culture of The RSFSR.
In the center of Leningrad stands
the majestic Kazan Cathedral built
early in the past century. It houses an
exposition on the history of religion
and Atheism, the largest one in the
eastern hemisphere and the oldest in
the USSR. It is, however, not only a
museum but also an important national center of atheistic propaganda.
During almost half a century of its
existence it has been visited by over
20 million people; members of its staff
deliver lectures in many cities of the
Soviet Union attracting a total audience of 100,000 annually.
The exhibits of the museum give an
idea of the history and peculiarities of
the religious worship of various peoples and of the world and national
religions. The museum also contains a
vast collection of exhibits on the history of Atheism in many countries, and
PAGE 14

the contest between science and religion from ancient times to our days.
Interesting exhibits are on display in
the sections devoted to the spread of
Christianity and its dogmas. Specialists are especially attracted by the
Christian tombs from the Greek colonists' settlements on the northern
Black Sea coast, of which a tomb from
Pontus dated 304 A.D.~ the oldest
Christian monument found on the
territory of the USSR, is particularly
notable.
In the section devoted to Judaism,
the most remarkable exhibit is a Judaic tomb from the 1st-2nd centuries
A.D., the period of the dispersion of
the Jewry (Diaspora). The section also
shows old objects of worship such as
the Torah, a seven-branched candlestick, etc.

THERMIDOR 188 [8/801

~I

In the section "The History of Islam

and Free-thinking in the East," of
greatest interest are authentic articles
pertaining to Shiite religious rites: zulfikar sword, the symbol of the invincibility of the first Shiite imam, Ali;
knife-chains for self-flagellation;
a
palm (pyanje) made of metal, the
symbol of Shiism; and much more.
The section also contains interesting
materials about Sufiism and dervishism.
There is a unique "Buddhist section
in the exposition, one of the largest in
the museum: it includes approximately one-tenth of all the museum's
exhibits. Of exceptional value are about a thousand Buddhist popular
prints collected in China in the early
20th century, a temple exposition
"The Buddhist Sukhavati Paradise," a
large collection of lamaist sacred imAMERICAN

ATHEIST

TIGUillNE OFAN EVENKSHAMAN

MITRA, SILVER, PEARL, VELVET, ENAMEL

19TH CENTURY

"

KAP ALA-HEV AJRA BRONZE, TIBET

19TH CENTURY
AUSTIN, TeXAS

(?)

THERMIDOR

~:~-.

...

ISIS WITH HORUS, 1ST MILLENNIUM B.C.

BRONZE
188 [8/80]

PAGE 15

ages, and a collection of Daos pantheon numbering over 200 drawings,

As to pagan beliefs, of great interest
to specialists is a collection of cult
articles characterizing shamanism,
which many centuries ago arose among the present small peoples of the
multinational Soviet state (including
such northern peoples as Chukchi and
Eskimos as well as the North-Caucasian Ossets and Adighes).
All these collections make possible,
to our mind, the scientific study of
problems of the origin and development of the main religions of the
world, the history of Atheism, the
struggle of Mattlrialism and idealism,
etc. We are assisted in this also by the
museum's collection of books on religion and Atheism, the largest in the
USSR, with stocks numbering around
150,000 units. Here the most diverse
books are preserved - from rare Slav
church manuscripts of the 15th-16th
centuries to present-day scholarly
works on Atheism. Special sections of
the library have photographs and
tape-recordings of religious songs and
prayers collected by members of the
museum's staff during expeditions or
received by the museum as gifts from
different countries.
One of the sections, attracting the
attention of the numerous visitors among them many foreign leaders and
churchmen (representatives of different confessions) - gives an idea of the
history of religious and atheistic views
in Russia before and after the October
Revolution.
On display in this section is a copy of
the Soviet Government's
Decree
signed in 1918 by Lenin "On Separation of the Church from the State, and
the School from the Church." That
document, legislated religious liberty
in post-revolutionary Russia, prohibiting any interference of government
bodies in the activities of the church
and of religious organizations in the
affairs of the state.
The Constitution of the USSR today
guarantees "freedom of conscience,
that is, the right to profess or not to
profess any religion, and to conduct
religious worship or atheistic propaganda." The Constitution also states
that "incitement of hostility or hatred
on religious grounds is prohibited."
Moreover, while under the tsarist regime the Orthodox Church was practically a department of the state, and
god'l' teaching was one ofthe required
subjects at all schools, today the
church, according to the Constitution,
"is separated from the state, and the
PAGE 16

school from the church."

Museum documents testify to the
study of relics of saints' bodies made
in the early years of Soviet power by
special commissions including both
Atheists and clergymen with believers. in many cases, instead of the
relics of saints' bodies, they found
bricks, lumps of coal, old shoes and
such things in burial-places. Naturally, this contributed to disillusionment
in the church dogmas and, accordingly, to believers breaking with the
church.
The museum also keeps materials
about public disputes between Atheists and religious leaders, in the
course of which there evolved atheistic arqurnentation.
One of the methods employed in
those years by Soviet Atheists was a
comparison of different readings in
the holy scripture, the demonstration
of contradictions in the biblical moral'
philosophy. This atheistic work, as
statistics show, has yielded its results:
the mass of believers in the USSR
have turned away from religion. No
small influence on the believers was
exerted, of course, by the cultural
revolution taking place in those years
throughout the country on a nationwide scale.
During the Second World War,
when Leningrad was long encircled by
Nazi troops and subjected to heavy
bombardment. the more valuable exhibits of the museum were evacuated
deep into the rear.
With the further consolidation of
socialism and socialist relations in the
post-war period, churchmen firmly
assumed loyal and patriotic positions, '
revising their attitudes to the state in
order not to lose support among believers. The Russian Orthodox Church
today supports, for instance, the Soviet government's foreign and domestic policies and actively participates in
the struggle for peace, detente and
friendship among nations. At the
same time, importance is attached in
the Soviet Union to atheistic work,
using, among other things, achievements in the natural sciences.
The Leningrad Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism carries
on scientific research and educational
activities in different fields. Every year
the museum publishes a book of scientific Atheism, and the policies of the
Communist Party and the Soviet state
towards religion. The books also inform specialists about the activities of
religious orqanizations in the USSR
and abroad and disseminate informaTHERMIDOR 188 [8/80]

tion on methods of atheistic propagandizing by museums.

These scientific activities are guided
by the museum's Scientific Council. It
is its function, among others, to coordinate the preparation of visual aids,
film strips and travelling exhibitions
and window displays of photographs.
As the leading institution of its kind,
the museum lends its exhibits for
temporary
use to more than 50
Houses of Atheism (scientific centers
in many republics of the Soviet Union)
and to the five museums of the history
of religion and Atheism that have
appeared in the USSR within the past
decade.
In recent years, the museum's personnel have been pavinq much attention to the arrangement of lectures
and excursions and have been taking
part in the preparation of atheistic
films and radio and TV programs.
In the past few months, the Kazan
Cathedral
has been temporarily
closed. This was due not only to the
reorganization of the museum but also
to simultaneous repairs. The building
has recently been requiring ever mor~
careful maintenance, for it will very
soon be 170 years old. The museum,
however, has no shortage of funds to
repair the building, the state providing
the needed money.
In our work wetake into accountthe
fact that the overwhelming majority of
Soviet people .hold atheistic views.
Thus, ,each successive age group of
the adult population with an interval of
ten years (from 80 to 21 yea,f.sof age)
is approximately one-third less religious than the previous. The number
of Atheists among the youth under
twenty is 97-98 per cent, and under
thirty, 92-94 per cent. The further
process of "atheisation,"
intensive
contraction and finally the disappearance of this "religious link" of
generations will lead, as Soviet philosophers and socioloqists believe, to a
society fully free from religion.
Novosti Press Agency

AMERICAN

ATHEIST

In 1949, a solitary miner prospector named James Kidd

turned up missing from Globe, Arizona. When his will finally
was probated in 1962, it left his worldly goods, including
stocks which were steadily increasing in value, "for research,
or some scientific proof" that a soul leaves the human body at
death. Kidd was not kidding when he suggested hopefu IIy that
the soul's departure.might even be photographed.
More than 130 would-be beneficiaries were sufficiently
confident that they stood as good a chance.as anybody else of
qualifying for them to gamble the $15 filing fee. The court
promised every soul-searcher a fair opportunity to show how
he would seek to comply with the intent of the testator and
nine hearing-filled years slogged past. At long last. on July 19,
1971, the American Society for Pyschic Research was awarded some $197.000. Even with that windfall it still has not
produced any demonstrable results.
The Society's reconnoiterings have been principally concerned with two types of phenomena: (1) poltergeists, the
"noisy ghosts" credited with table-tappings and accused of
harassments like knocking dishes off shelves (occurrences,
which, for some reason, frequently seem to be connected with
the presence nearby of an emotionally unstable teenager),
and (2) extrasensory perception, sometimes called thought
transference.
Some people will touch fingertips in a darkened circle and
call upon Uncle Harry to make his astral presence known,
really believing that his soul has raised the table off the floor,
or rattled the chandelier. Skeptics equate such beliefs with
seeing the boy disappear in the Indian rope trick or the
levitation felt by an ecstatic devotee "lifted aloft" in prayer.
Until recently, extrasensory perception shared a similar kind
of occult disrepute. Churchmen raised eyebrows, even ones
most insistent upon eternal life. Scientists scoffed, with
justification, of course, since for decades show business has
produced a succession of remarkably similar mindreading
acts, complete with messages chalked on slates tied together,
and a whole rigamarole of mystifying readings of what is in
someone's pocket - shown over and over to have been done
with mirrors, or a communication
system hidden under a
turban, or an accomplice willing to exclaim in admiring
wonder, "Rightl However could he have known!"
And yet, at the same time, a growing body of evidence has
validated instances in which, for example, a mother shrieked
that she "saw" her sailor son drowning only to learn, later,
that at that very hour his ship had been rammed. I personally
have followed with interest college-level inquiries into ESP,
because when my father was on his death-bed in Tennessee
he somehow knew it when his brother died in France.
In trying to explain how what cannot happen does happen,
widely varying theories, ranging from bullet-like "thought
molecules" to "psychic magnetic fields" have been suggested.
So far, no hypothesis has survived experimental investigation.
Brain specialists tell us that what we call consciousness
requires cholinesterase, the same chemical protein used in
making the firefly's spark, or the shock of an electric eel.
Trying to learn how information might travel "telepathically,"
Andrija Puharic, author of Beyond Telepathy, tried shutting
people claimed to have psychic powers inside a copper-walled
room. The "electrical current" theory flopped, but Puharic did,
however, notice something else -that successful "receivers"
always were passive. That led him to review his notes about
spontaneous cases. Time after time the person receiving the
information had been napping, or sick in bed, or bored by some
monotonous task, when an awareness flashed into his mind.
Contrariwise, the "sender" was screechingly alert due to
Intense fear or pain.

OR,
MY SOUL
AND BODY!
by Helen Waterman

AUSTIN, TEXAS

THERMIDOR

PAGE 17

188 [8/80]

..

It is well known, at least in some circles, that a person's

emotion can cause him to hallucinate -to "hear god's voice"
or see an angel or a leprechaun or some deceased loved one.
What any visionary sees does not affect the diagnosis. To see
or hear or feel someone or something not perceivable by
others is an entirely normal abnormality which results from
well-demonstrated emotional or physical conditions.
Most psychiatrists would agree that my father's anxiety
about a brother at war might have expressed itself in a sense
of his being present. At the same time, not all would believe
that he could actually have cried out that his brother had been
shot, as I clearly remember that he did, to the astonishment of
the entire household, some two weeks before receipt of
official notice.
I know how Skeptics feel because I shake my own head and
find it difficult to believe even such vouched for claims asthat
Swedenborg left a dinner party of notables because he "saw"
his home in another city ablaze.
Swedenborg's clairvoyance did not involve any dead or
dying messenger. But unscientific people are apt to ascribe
such cases or transmitted information like my father's to
ghosts, and to claim such events prove the existence of souls.
There is a certain naive logic in assuming that if a mother, in
her own kitchen, envisions her drowning son, then some part
of him, released by the death, must have stopped by "as he
was leaving this world" to say farewell. But that particular
fallacy hadalready been disproved by Mrs. Louisa Rhine, wife
ojthe Duke University parapsychologist, and herself a researcher, in her book, Hidden Channels of the Mind.
Mrs. Rhine convincingly documented examples of apparitions of supposedly defunct individuals who turned up, later,
.as robust' as ever. She also showed that often when the
apparition was of someone who really was dead, the "ghosts"
brought along their dogs, horses, carriages, ships, books,
clothing and other paraphernalia hard to account for, even in a
vision in those cases where verisimilitude' is involved, but
certainly no easier-to fit into theories about a soul droppiog by
for a chat en route to the Great Beyond.

The Message Market

Plagues and wars notoriously spawn upsurges of hope that
somehow the recently dead can be contacted, The Civil War
was followed b Spiritualism. World War lied to an epidemic
of ouija boards and seances. Respected individuals in London
formed an association and agreed those who died first would
try 'to find a way to "communicate."
Unfortunately,
the
revelations obtained through mediums often proved to be'
deiiberate hoaxes. And books such as Raymond, reporting Sir
Oliver Lodge's conversations with his battle-casuattv son,
failed to produce so much as a cure for the common cold.
Literature-wise, the poems published as having been dictated
by Keats and Byron and Shakespeare turned out to be drivel.
A market for reassuring "messages" plus greed added up to
fraud. At the same time, few had even heard the phrase
"subconsious mind" and just as in earlier times when towns
were seized by involuntary dancing, many perfectly honest
people, made susceptible by grief, began experimenting with
automatic writing. And felt as certain it was someone outside
themselves who was causing the pencil to write as are those
ecstatics today who are awed to find themselves "speaking
wit.h tongues" (glossolalia),.
.
James Kidd, wanderinq throuqh desert towns, probably was
influenced less by seances than by Christian revival rneetinqs.
(Not then nor ever, of course, have Christian teachings beenin
agreement about anything, even souls.)
,
PAGE 18

THERMIDOR

~/

When PaIJI, whose letters form a fair chunk of the New

, Testament, wrote that "the wages of sin are death," he was
expecting Doomsday to strike at any moment. Bodily death
had, of course, been "a way of life" long before evolution
produced any human beings capable of sinning, but Paul's
point was about the end, not the origins, of death and sin. As it
happened, Doomsdayfailed to occur, and later generations set
about trying to decide what kind of sin Paul 'meant. To many
Christians sin implied refusing to subscribe to Paul's teachings about Jesus Christ. But some more ascetic Christians
equated sin largely with sex, even within the marriage bond -'.
and, accidently, came closer to realityl
Death has always been related to sex. The earliest life forms
multiplied simply by splitting in two. Neither half was any
older than the other. None died off (except, say, those which
happened to qet squashed) and amoebic life could be called
both sinless and immortal. Death, the finale of the aqinq
process, did not enter until a new type of sexual procreation
evolved totakethe place of splitting in two. Moreover, without
crossbreeding and without the dying off of extinct ancestors,
we humans could never have existed. The earth would be
overspread with replicas of the original type of cell, in
perpetual stagnation.
'
Whether James Kidd was concerned about dYing or merely
curious cannot be discerned from his brief will. But his idea
about photographing a soul is,basically akin to a very primitive
belief: that a semi-transparent duplicate inhabits each living
body, beast or human. Twenty-some thousand years ago, a
Cro-Magnon painted a picture that still remains on the ceiling
of a cave in Southern Europe. It depicts a small horse leapinq
up and away out of a larger horse dying from a spear wound.
Apparently that artist believed that horses had souls.
The belief was widespread, as is evidenced by tools and
foodstuffs buried in ancient graves. The Egyptians, for instance, obviously expected their pharoahs never to die, not,
permanently, that is. Gold-encased mummies of their kings
(like the carefully embalmed sacred bulls and crocodiles
which never returned, either, from touring a labyrinthian
underworld)
provide fascinating
exhibits in present-day
museums.
.,
Along with the rest of Western civilization, James Kidd
inevitably was influenced by Egyptians beliefs about the soul.
According to Exodus 12:40, forerunners of Judean-Christian
prophets were enslaved in Egypt for 430 years. Along with the
monotheism of Amenhotep IV, those Hebrew slaves seem to
have adopted certain Egyptian funeral customs, since Genesis
closes with the statement that both the father of Joseph and
Joseph himself were embalmed.
Just what the Israelites and others believed is not easy to
determine since words in the 'Bible which are translated into
English (as soul) had different meanings, sometimes contradictory ones. Around 800 B.C., the distinctions we make today
between disposition, personality, ego, brain, etc., had not yet
been made, just as the early Hebrew writers made no
distinction between cloud and smoke.
Usually, the Hebrew word ruach is translated as soul and
nephesh as spirit. Originally they had the same meaning - a
movement of air. Nobody dreamed that the human lungs
exchanged gases, or that windstorms resulted from temperature changes on a whirling planet. The blustering, Invisible
wind seemed obviously to be a mysterious, omnipresent
power. And an echo of that wind appeared as the breath
spanked into a newborn child. When that breath departed, it
leh a corpse. Genesis 2:7 says the first man was dust plus
nephesh, and the long-suffering title character of the Book of
Job, written about 500 B.C., says that the nephesh of god is in
188 [8/80]

A,MERICAN ATHEIST

his nostrils. So used, the term meant breath, the gift.of life,
vitality.
When the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek,
and, later, when the New Testament was written, two Greek
words were used in place of ruach and nephesh. Their roots
also had to do with wind. But under the influence of Persian
and Greek beliefs, the usage of both words changed. Psyche
came to connote mind or thought, although biblical translators
usually give it as soul. Yet any translator who prefers the
earlier meaning, life, that breathed-in physical animation, is
equally correct. To argue about whether Jesus said a man
would lose his life or his soul is meaningless, since no such
distinction was possible in the Greek of the original gospels
nor in the Hebrew or Aramaic of the time When Jesus is
claimed to have jived.

Dispossessed

Former Tenant

The Greek word which is usually translated as spirit, or as

angel or demon (according to the text), was pneuma. Its
relationship to breathing is stHI preserved in English words
like pneumonia. Of course, the English word spirit also
originally expressed that inhaling and exhaling of air which so
noticeably differentiates living beings from rocks and plantsand corpses.
My unabridged dictionary gives twenty-two definitions for
spirit, so let me, here, make a simple distinction of my own. It
seems to me that people use "a spirit" to mean a spectre, the
white-clad phantom seen 'on television, without actually
affirming that such "walking dead" do actually exist. To me, "a
spirit" suggests the dispossessed former tenant of a human
body, not unlike what sprang from the Cro-Maqnon's horse. It
peered out once through the body's eyes, but gets along just as
well without them.
Change "a" to "the" and we are reminded that Greek
philosophy divided the universal whole into two parts, the
visible world of matter, and its "spiritual" counterpart. That
the concept of a vase was not destroyed even when the vase
itself was shattered had been a valid insight, one stemming
from Pythagorean realization that trangularity had meaning
apart from any particular triangle. To Plato the abstract
became the ideal. Houses, trees. even men were only changeable reflections of a neverchanging Perfect Reality. Under
Plato's influence: Grecian mystery religions taught that the
soul was a sort of chip off that Real imprisoned within the
body. If a man were properly instructed, his soul could escape
at his death back to the "real" of the spirit beyond the moon.
Although Christianity was born among the Hebrews. its
major development took place in the milieu of such Greek
ideas and Western literature perpetuates both usages - a
soul, and the spiritual as opposed to materia,1. But we also use
spiritual in yet a third sense - that of being free from passions
like greed or lust. Heaven. so to speak. is not a matter of
altitude but of attitude I
'
Absoutely no way exists in which three disparate meanings
(a ghost, the non-material, and virtue) can possibly be.combined into any unity, certainly not one that might be photographed. We cannot even guess what any writer meant when
he used the words spirit and soul unless we know where he
lived and in what country. To Origen, for example, all souls
were essentially alike. But Thomas Aquinas thought each soul
was unique. Obviously, "aliveness" is shared even by plants,
so it could not be what churchmen meant, back in the eleventh
century, when they held serious conferences to discuss
whether women, being inferior creatures, actually had souls.
Dare we smile superciliously? I did recently when a dowager

was much upset because her bishop would not assure her that
her pet dog would go to heaven. Yet I admit her dog surpassed
some people in bravery and loyalty and atfection.People who
yearn to go to heaven find it hard to conceive of a paradise not
populated by their own favorites, which would usually cut out
that Cro-Magnon artist as well as 20th century pigmies and
jungle tribesmen. Yet what kind of deity would exclude those
who through accident, or through his intent. were born
unacceptable - even including that occasional monstrosity
preserved in alcohol, the aborted fetus that developed three
legs and two heads?
If we quit smirking at the ignorance of others and assume
(as most persons who use the word do) that there is a soul or
something which sets a human apart from his dog, must we
not then ask when souls originated? Was it only after our
ancestors developed thumbs, or learned to walk erect, to
speak in sentences? Or. did souls not appear until they built
altars?

Incompatible Elements
If instead, we brush such thinking aside and concern
ourselves only with "this world," restricting our interest to
"aliveness," the controversies still are far from ended. What
laws must govern abortions, or the transplantings of hearts
and other organs? Whatever name we give it. departing life
can no more be photographed than the arrival of death. Yet a
pressing legal problem is how to determine the moment when
life ends, especially when a patient's heart and lungs have
been kept operating mechanically after no brain wave could be
recognized.
With so many incompatible elements lumped together and
called soul. no wonder people get indigestion when asked to
swallow all of them at oncel But there are still two more
definitions added to the hash already discussed. like mismatched garnishes of chutney and marmalade:- two meanings of soul which came into Christian theology by way of
Aristotle.
What intrigued Aristotle's curiosity, back around 350 B.C.,
was a mystifying drive which seemed to per~it through all
stages of life forms' growth. Today we speak about DNA, and
about the genetic code. Aristotle observed that the infant who
became a boy, then a man, then perhaps a senile cripple, was
somehow the same individual. Just so an acorn became a
sapling, a massive oak and, in time, leaf mold. Inherent in
existence, he believed, was some changeless element which,
like a magnet, drew each living thing to its own perfection
- perfect in the sense of completion, not of flawlessness. He
called that mover-toward-a-planned-goal
by a simple descriptive teleos (perfecting).
Aristotle's second contribution resulted from his arguing
with his teacher Plato over Plato's doctrine about the changeless, good Reality being a Universal Mind, fragmented as the
awareness in all living things, even in plants. Plato stressed
similarities in "aliveness"; Aristotle pointed to reasoning
power. Plants can turn toward the sun and grow. Beasts can
express emotions, move and may bark a warning or mewto be
fed. But men outdo them all and in addition can write poetry
and add numbers. Poor, puzzled Aristotle, right so much of the
time, wound up believing in the existence of more than fifty
iesser qods. described later by his adrnirinq translators in the
monasteries as havinq obviously been references to anqels.
We know, at last, that writing poetry,like turning to the sun,
is not a being inside of us, but a function. Use of our brains
must develop much like the ability to focus the eyes or to move
arms or wings or flippers. Awareness begins with the recogni-

THERMIDOR

AUSTIN, TEXAS

188 [8/80)

PAGE 19

tion of "I': and "not-l" and that makes all choice possible,
including whether to fight, be friendly, or run (fly, swim) away.
Choices are limited. Few fishes can fly. Yet personhood
involves an "I" experiencing
a continuum
of options. That
I-who-choses
is never truly known to others, nor even to
itself. But it can be sensed as the subject of a progressing
present moment.
Few of us would care about the survival of ,any kind of
soul-vital
energy, teleos, spirituality,
perfect pattern, or
what-not - unless that "I" still could experience and care.
And here we come up against the problem James Kidd hoped
a photo would solve.
Whenever "what outlasts death, if anything," or soul, is
defined as that self-aware consciousness capable of choosing, we crash into the discombobulating
1act, often proved,
that choosing is simply one ability among many the energy
path of which has been imprinted (as a result of our past
experiences) on a cellular, destructible memory device.
Recent advances in brain research have made the oneness
of man's nerveoussystem
and that I-who-chooses (whether
we call it mind or person or soul or brain or prime mover)
disconcertingly
obvious. Electrical stimulation by probes can
change a monkey from bold to timid. The click of a switch has
stopped a bull in mid-charge and made it turn peaceably aside.
It even is possible to predict in advance, by watching as a
thought takes form on a graph, what a wired-up cat is going to
do.
When probes and pills can make us forget or remember,
, weep or giggle, thoughtful
people are wondering whether
their grandchildren
may become robots, "controlled for their
own good." And yet, we always have reacted to stimuli; we
just are learning how the triggering signals work.
We also know, now, that no "imprisoned soul" accounts for
a saintly or vicious disposition. Feeling happy or cranky varies
noticeably with the weather, the quality of a meal, even a
woman's menstrual cycle. If, then, love, courage and honesty
are only chemical fizzings - if a sedative can prevent me from
losing my temper, and a potion can erase my fear - whllt is
left of the idea of soul?
From ancient times the hunt has been on for proof that some
portion or other of a person - something more real than the
slant of the eyes or the shape ofthe nose- would neve'r die. In
the first century A.D., many Jews believed that, even though
all the rest of the body might be eaten by scavenger dogs, if
only the os sacrum, a tiny bone atthe base of the spine, should
remain, it would roll underground to Jerusalem and there be
resurrected, as a whole person again, on Judgment Day.
.
John 7:38 echoes another early belief, that the magic of life
was contained in the "living water" of procreation. Through
succeeding centuries physicians tried to isolate the soul in the
sperm, the bowels, the loins, the liver, the heart, the solar
plexus, the pineal gland and the pancreas. It was not until after
World War I that the motor and sensory pathways of the
nervous system were understood, so the .efforts were justified. But now decisions are no longer linked with the brain
alone, but are seen as a functioning
of the entire nervous
system - not exactly identical with the body, but not capable
of being separated from the body, either. Surely, had any
investigators been able to present evidence of that functioning
'outlasting that which functions, the award offered through
the will of Ja~es Kidd would not have gone to poltergeist
investigators.
Need that dismay us? Modern art expresses through a
jumble of jagged lines and disturbing colors the "despair" of
those who see as their best goal the acceptance of mankind's
predicament, including anxiety and rneaninqlessness,
withPAGE 20

THERMIDOR

out foolishly struggling any longer to find out why.

Yet, of all the paradises which dreamers have thought up
about souls and an after-world, heaven, nirvana, was any ever
more inviting than this in which we actually live? What might
,we do in heaven that we cannot do right now, the joy of
clasping hands companionably, of working, together or alone,
even while realizing that happiness is all the more precious for
also being brief and insecure?
What certainty could be more thrilling than the mystery of
tomorrow
and tomorrow? And when the final chapter is
, finished, why should we be other than contented simply to
close the pages and turn out the light?
But, you know, I do wonder - however
could my father
posslblvhave
known it, half a world away, when his brother
died?

DIAL AN ATHEIST
CHAPTERS

OF AMERICAN

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ATHEISTS

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(214) 388-7669

Galveston, Texas

(713) 935-4721

Salt Lake City, Utah

(801) 364-4939

Grottoes, Virginia

(703) 370-5255

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

(414) 442-9786

188 [8/80]

AMERICAN

ATHEIST

UNITED WORLD~ ATHEISTS

AUSTRALIA
VICTORIAN SECULAR. SOCIETY FOLDS THE LAST POST
by Nigel Sinnott
The undersigned member was given the responsibility of
winding up the Society's affairs and finally depositing its
minutes and records, in accordance with the constitution, in
the La Trobe Library (State Library of Victoria).
As the result of a parcel recently received from G. W. Foote
Well, we tried, but it was not good enough .....
and Company (London) the Society's last meeting realised
It is my melancholy duty to inform members of the Victorian
more than $17 from sales of literature. Remaining stocks
Secular Society and secretaries of kindred societies that at the
were given to Leslie Altarac to deliver to Harry Bench,
extraordinary general meeting held on 29 October last [1979
literature officer of the Humanist Society of Victoria (in
- Ed.] a resolutionwas passed that the Society be wound up
accordance with a resolution of the meeting.)
in view of the fact that no nominations were received for
It remains for me to thank those members who served on
secretarial positions or for the post of treasurer. The vote was
the Society's committee during its existence, and others who
unanimous.
Since its formation in 1978,'andduring the present year, the
provided documentation
and drafts for submissions and
letters to the press, and to the officers of the National Secular
Society achieved much in terms of lobbying and publicity for
Society (Londonl.and other kindred bodies in South Australia,
the freethought cause; but it was becoming increasingly
India and the United States who have' given us encouragedifficult to maintain this level of activity without more activist
ment and publicity. We must also extend the Society's
members coming forward to help with the "donkey work." It
gratitude to those members who joined or renewed subscripwas the general feeling of the last meeting that, as the V.S.S.
had been founded to act as an active, campaigning body, it . tions recently, as they knew that the Society's future was very
uncertain. (The renewal rate has been remarkably high.)
would be unethical to allow it just to linger in a state of relative
Joseph Skurrie, the brave champion of secularism in
inactivity. Although it might seem to be an admission of
Victoria three or four generations ago, had a favourite quotafailure, hauling down the flag was felt to be the only
tion from Robert Burns [To A Mouse] that might be a suitable
honourable course of action.
epitaph for the V.S.S.:
The last general meeting decided that, after payment of
"The best laid schemes 0' mice an' men
debts, the Society's remaining iunds (which should be in
"Gang aft a-gley."
excess of $150) should be divided equally among the Atheist
But in a period of growing irrationalism and nonsense,
Society of Australia, the New Zealand Rationalist Association
astrology and humbug, it seems a pity.
and the Rationalist Association of New South Wales. Each of
these organisations is administratively
stable, pubflshes a
regular journal, and has given the V.S.S. generous publicity in
the past.
The fol/owing article is a reprint from Rationalist News
(Jenuerv-Februerv,
1980), which is published in Chippendale,
N.S. W., Australia.

e-:

NOTICE
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include a subscription to the American
Atheist magazine. If you have not subscribed,
this issue is a sample copy. To receive the
American Atheist on a monthly basis, please
fill out and return the business reply envelope
form enclosed in this issue.
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organization. See inside back cover.
"Did you ever think what fun we could have,
if we didn't believe in God?"
AUSTIN, TEXAS

THERMIDOR

188 [8/80]

PAGE 21

HE saw slavery as the first evil. A revolutionary idea to

start a prototype plan for elimination of Negro slavery
came to her as she viewed the Owen communal effort. She
would buy a similar tract of land, build a practical farming
settlement, purchase slaves on the open market, let them earn
an amount equal to their purchase price and give them their
freedom. Meanwhile, they would be well housed, clothed, fed
and educated. This would serve as a model of the mode in
which the gradual abolition of Negro slavery could be
effectuated.
She chose one of the sites recommended by Genl. Jackson,
2,000 acres of Virgin woodland (at 0.0ge an acre) on the Wolf
River, in Shelby County, 13 miles above Chickasaw Bluffs
(now Memphis) from which the Chickasaws had been removed. She named it Nashoba, the Chickasaw name for
"wolf'. She purchased several Negro families, comprising 15
able hands, on the slave market in Nashville, Tennessee for
about $400 to $500 each and she received gifts of several
slaves from well wishers. George Flower, a Quaker.abolitionist, (and his wife) joined her and her sister Camilla to start the
colony, as did a Scots overseer and a second Quaker, Richesbn
Whitby.
Frances Wright worked right with the men. Strong and tall,
(5' 10") she had, in her visit to France advised General
Lafayette on her feeling of equality. "I dare say you marvel
sometimes at my independent way of walking through the
world just as if nature had made me of your sex, instead of
Poor Eve's. Trust me, my beloved friend, the mind has no sex
but what habit and education gave it." Now trees were felled,
logs rolled, cabins built, the compound fenced, clothes made,
food stocked and she suffered sunstroke, contracted
malaria and seriously impaired her health. To recuperate, she
left for New Harmony, again, with Nashoba being left in the
charge of her overseer.

Ro ts
of theism
FRANCES WRIGHT
"Who speaks 0/ liberty when the human mind
is in chains?"
This is the second part of a three part article on Frances
Wright, who - apparentlywas the first person inthe United
States to openly identify herselt as an Atheist. Part One
described her childhood and young adult life in Scotland,
England and France, and her first visit to the United States
where she encountered religious communes, "revivals," and
slavery.

PAGE 22

THERMIDOR

188 [8/80)

AMERICAN

ATHEIST

In New Harmony, Robert Dale Owen was attempting to keep

a periodical going. For two years it had had different editors.
Originally called the New Harmony Gazette, the name was
changed to the Nashoba Gazette or Free Inquirer. Frances
Wright wrote the lead editorials and she serialized her
materialistic A Few Days in Athens in it. She soon assumed
proprietorship of the journal although she was still feeling the
effects of the Nashoba endeavour.
Hoping to regain her health, Miss Wright decided to return
to Europe, with Owen accompanying her, stopping at Nashoba
before leaving the port of New Orleans, taking a ship to
France. She was still not well, weak. At Nashoba she found
that about 100 acres were cleared. There were four squared
log houses and cabins for the Negroes. Although the work was
proceeding slowly, the goals were still there:
Everything woufti be shared. Women would have equal status
with men: There would be free education for all children.
Religion would have no influence as the colony would be free
of it. Robert Dale Owen was impressed and during this short
stay Frances Wright converted the property into a "perpetual
trust for the benefit of the Negro race" and appointed Robert
Dale Owen as one of the trustees.
Leaving the. United States, the two of them reached France
in July, where Miss Wright contacted an old friend, Mary
Shelley (the wife of Percy Bythe Shelley, the poet author of
The Necessity of Atheism, published in 1811.) Describing
Nashoba she stated, "I have devoted my time and fortune to
laying the foundations of an establishment where affection
shall form the only marriage, kind feeling and kind action the
only religion, respect for the feelings of liberties of others the
only restraint, and union of interest the bond of peace and
security. "
Her basic principles underlying the establishment of the
colony were slowly to be evolved and effectuated but fragmentally revealed to others. Nashoba was dedicated theoretically to the abolition of slavery, free love, the teaching of
Hall of Science, New York

t'ht

AUSTIN, TeXAS

The Nashoba Settlement

birth control, the undermining of religion and the abolition of

the death penalty. Her aims were outrageous to her contemporaries. Hardly less than ideas of extreme radicalism in the
current age, they were anathema in the 1820's.
Although her developing message was clear especially to
persons such as Mary Shelley, others were not aware of her
total intent or the depth of her commitment. Thus, Mrs. Harriet
Trollope agreed to return to Nashoba with her and to bring
along her son, Henry, to teach there. She was, however ~upon
her arrival - so disillusioned with Nashoba's primitive conditions that she left there within ten days. In her book Domestic
Manners of the Americans, she only briefly remarked on
Nashoba, perhaps out of deference to her qood friend, Miss
Wri!lht.
After a continuing struggle with the community, Frances
Wright found it necessary to discontinue the experiment;.
Seeing the failure of her overseers and the inabilities of the
unlearned, primitive Negroes, she finally chartered a ship and
took the Negroes from Nashoba to the Black republic of
"Hayti" (now, Haiti) West Indies. There, the Pr~.sident of that
country, Jean Pierre Boyer, settled them as free citizens on his
own estate.
Writing about the experiment, she concluded that "to
effectuate the emancipation of the Negro ... he must be made
to go through a real moral, intellectual, and industrial apprenticeship. This apprenticeship would evidently have to
embrace the improvement of negro labor, and the gradual
preparation of the Negro himself to direct it, to estimate its
value, and, in general, to administer his own affairs."
At this time, she repaired again to 'New Harmony. She
placed the printing establishment in the hands of an experimental educator, one Phiquepal d'Arusmont. She left editorial
matters to Robert Dale Owen. Then, on July4, 1828, the 52nd
anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the two of
them, and the colony of New Harmony (Indiana), observed a
"Declaration of Mental Independence."
This new declaration inveighed against "the awful Trinity of
man's oppressors, - the most monstrous evils that could be
combined to inflict mental and phvsical evils on the whole
race." The first was private property. The second was the
"absurd and irrational systems of religion," and the third was
marriage. Frances Wright was the principal speaker, the first
time in the history of the United States that a woman was
afforded such honor.
Following this, Miss Wright, studying as usual, keeping
current with contemeorarv events, decided to challenge "the

THERMIDOR

188 (8/80)

PAGE 23

Phiquepal D'Arusmont

Christian Party in Politics" which was then being heard

throughout the United States. She noted that it had long been
secretly at work and that it had become public in its activity
only as late as 1818. She called her effort a fight against an
"evident attempt to effect a union of church and state, and
with it, a lasting union of bank and state: and thus effectually
to prostrate the independence of the people and the institutions of the country." She determined to arouse the American
people - at whatever cost to herself.
Tnerefore, she took leave to Cincinnati, there to give a series
of public lectures on the "nature of true knowledge." This
series came to include a primary lecture on "The Nature of
Knowledqe," followed by lectures on "Divisions of Knowledqe." "Heliqion," ~'Morals," "Opinions," "Existinq Evils,"
and "A Reply to The Traducers of The French Revolution."
Finally, the series was expanded to become a course on
"American Political Institutions" and later, "Historical and
Political Lectures."
The Cincinnati appearance shocked the United States. No
woman had ever dared to speak openly, to the public, before. It
was bad enough that she had addressed the commune at New
Harmony, but now she carried her audacity to a major city of
the United States. It was then 1828 and she "socked it to
them" in her first "Sunday lecture." The first sentence she
uttered was a warning to the world.
"Who among us, that hath cast even an occasional and
slight observant glance on the face of society, but must have
remarked the differing opinions, which distract the human
mind; the opposing creeds and systems, each asserting its
claim to infallibility, and rallying around its standard pertinacious disciples, enthusiastic proselytes, ardent apologists,
fiery combatants, obsequious worshippers, conscientious
followers, and devoted martyrs?"
She went on to define "the nature and object of just
knowledge," as opposed to such specious knowledge. Distinguishing man from other animals only in the one matter of
man's ability to gain knowledge "for self improvement," she
exhorted her audience to acquire "just knowledge. ': This she'
PAGE 24

THERMIDOR

defined: " ... the accurage and patient investigation of matter,

in all its subdivisions, together with all its qualities and
changes, constitutes a just education ...
In other words,
knowledge is an accumulation of facts and signifies things
known." The message was the pure materialism of Epicurus,
her first philosophical love. She hammered at the message. " .
. . all real knowledge is derived from positive sensations."
"The object of these [her - ed.] observations is to show that as
we can only know a thing by its immediate contact with our
senses, so is all knowledge compounded of the accurately
observed, accumulated, and agreeing sensations of mankind." It was bold language.
.
After carefully laying this groundwork, over and over again,
she moved on to .her argument that women needed this
education and knowledge as well as men. Demanding exact
equality for women, it was the first time in the United States
that anyone had ventured to denounce the existing legal and
educational status of women.
There was more to come, for then, when should this
education and knowledge be acquired? On Sunday. Why?
Because that day was then being usely used by ministers to
mislead the people. "But, I am here to speak what I believe the
truth. I am here to speak that for which some have not the
courage and others not the independence."
The attack upon religion was direct. It was not a science. It
was not "just knowledge."lt
dealt with no facts, no observed
phenomena. It was outside the field of knowledge. She
beseeched the people to turn from religion. "Let us leave
things unseen and causes unknown, to those who vend them
in this land for twenty millions of dollars; and, in other lands
less free and more benighted than ours, for that sum twenty
times told. Let us turn from that which is not knowledge, to all
which is knowledge. Let us leave theory for fact; the world of
the imagination for that of the eye ... "
She suggested that churches be closed and turned into
"halls of science." "Religion ... may be defined thus: a belief
in, and homage rendered to, existences unseen and causes
unknown." She desired to convince the world that it had no
need of such mysticism.
"Alas, my friendsl we have tampered with ;imaginary
demons through all the ages of human ignorance up to the
present hour - we have quailed the human heart with fear - we
have shaken reason from her throne with the agues of
superstition - we have broken down the self-respecting spirit
of man with nursery tales and priestly threats, and we dare to
assert, that in proportion as we have prostrated our understanding and degraded our nature, we hve exhibited virtue,
wisdom. and happiness, in our words, our actions, and our
livesl"
She called the churches and their schools, a " ... cumbrous,
expensive, useless, or rather pernicious, system of partial,
opinionative, and dogmatic instruction ... " She charged reliqion as a chimera and "the clerical hierarchy and clerical craft
which have been elevated upon this chimera, are the two
deadliest evils which ever cursed society; ... " Religion was
hiding "under the false colours of truth, where there is only
error; humility, where there is only pride; and peace, where
there is deadliest war [with priestcraft striving] with poisoned
arrow and dagger aimed in darkness."
Her unchallenged question still rings down the halls of
historv, "Who speaks of liberty while the human mind is in
chains?"
.

188 (8/80)

to be continued in next issue

AMERICAN

ATHEIST

THE WOMAN'S

BIBLE
by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, et al
Chapters Nine and Ten of the First
Part
This is the eighth part in the serialization of The Woman's
Bible, published in 1898, edited and mostly written by that great
American Atheist and champion feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
This work was the product of a vigorous feminist movement that
was led by Atheists who realized that the liberation of women .was
not compatible with organized religion's goals for making the
United States ultimately a theocracy. Stanton stands out for
realizing the need to educate women away from religion, and it
was to this end that The Woman's Bible was written as trie
means of achieving the same. It s purpose was to remove all
divine awe from the bible and expose the Christian "holy" boo as
just the contradictory, often silly, frequently offensive and usually
unrealistic production of a primitive people who were culturally
inferior, for all their arrogance about being the Chosen People, to
the then contemporary civilizations of Persia, Egypt, Greecs; and
Rome. Though today it might seem less than radical, in the 19th
century it was a roar against Christianity such as few dared to
make. Had the feminist movement continued the atheistic
development begun with The Woman's Bible, would have
achieved the end of the ERA. in the time of these first militants.
Instead the women's movement sold out to religion and is in its
current miserable situation. Had their Atheist predecessors
endured, Women's Lib would not be everywhere defeated by.
fundamentalist religionists for Whom the concept of the liberated
women enjoying first ctess citizenship is contrary to the warped
idea of the "will of gad. "
Genesis xxix
1 Then Jacob went on his journey, and came into the land of the
people of the east.
2 And he looked, and behold a
well in the field, and 10, there were
three flocks of sheep lying by it; for
out of that well they watered the
flocks; and a great stone was upon
the well's mouth.
3 And thither were all the flocks
gathered, and they rolled the stone
from the well's mouth, and watered
the sheep, and put the stone again
upon the well's mouth in his place.
4 And Jacob said unto them, My
brethern, whence be ye? And they
said, Of Haran are we.

AUSTIN. TEXAS

5 And he said unto them, Know

ye Laban the son of Nahor? And
they said, we know him.
6 And he said unto them, Is he
well? And they said, He is well: and'
behold
Rachel
his
daughter
cometh with the sheep.
9 And while he yet spake with
them, Rachel came with her
father's sheep: for she kept them.
10 And it came to pass, when
Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of
Laban his mother's brother, and
the sheep of Laban, his mother's
brother, and Jacob went near, and
rolled the stone from the well's
mouth, and watered the flock of
Laban his mother's brother.

11 And Jacob kissed Rachel,

and lifted his voice and wept.
12 And Jacobtold Rachel that he
was her father's brother, and that
he was Rebekah's son: and she
ran and told her. father.
13 And it came to pass, when
Laban heard the tidings of Jacob
his sister's son, that he ran to meet
him, and embraced
him, and
kissed him, and brought him to his
house. And he told Laban all these
things.
14 And Laban said to him, Surely
thou ett my bone and my flesh. And
he abode with him the space of a
month.
15 And Laban said unto Jacob,
Because thou art my brother,

THERMIDOR 188 [8/80]

~J

shouldst thou therefore serve me

for nought? tell me, what shall thy
wages be?
18 And Jacob loved Rachel: and
said, I will serve thee seven years
for Rachel thy younger daughter.
19 And Laban said, II is better
that I give her to thee, than that I
should give her to another man:
abide with me.
20 And Jacob
served seven
years for Rachel, and they seemed
unto him but a few days, for the
love he had to her.
21 And Jacob said unto Laban,
Give me my wife, for' my days are
fulfilled.

PAGE 25

ACOB'S journey to the land of Canaan in searchof

a
Uwife,
and the details of his courtship, have a passing
interest with the ordinary reader, interested in his happiness
and success. The classic ground for the cultivation of the
tender emotions in these early days, seems to have been near
a well, where the daughter of those who were rich in flocks
and herds found opportunities to exhibit their fine points in
drawing for men and cattle. From the records of these
interesting events, the girls seemed ready to accept the
slightest advances from passing strangers, and to give their
hands and hearts as readily as they gave a drink of water to the
thirsty. Marriage was as simple a contract as the purchase of a
lamb, the lamb and the woman having about an equal voice in
the purchase, though the lamb was not quite as ready to leave
his accustomed grazing ground. Jocob loved Rachel at first
sight, 'and agreed to serve Laban seven years, but when the
iime expired Laban did not keep his agreement, but insisted on
Jacob taking the other sister, and serving seven years more for
Rachel. Jacob submitted, but by the knowledge of a physiological law of which Laban was ignorant, he revenged himself,
and obtained all the strongest and best of the flocks and herds.
Thus in their business relations as well as in family matters,
the Patriarchs seem to have played as sharp games in
overreaching each other as the sons of our Pilgrim Fathers
to day. In getting all they could out of Laban, Jacob and Rachel
seem to have been of one mind.
A critical study of the Pentateuch is just now agitating the
learned classes in Germany. Bonn is an ancient stronghold of
theological learning, and two of the professors of its famous
university have recently exhibited a courage in biblical criticism and interpretation
which has further extended the
celebrity of the school, if it has not added to its repute for
orthodoxy. In a course of lectures held durinq the university
holidays, addressed to and largely attended by pastors, they
declared the. Old Testament history to "be a series of legends,
and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob mythical persons." Israel, they
declared, was an idolatrous people, Jehovah" being nothing
more than a "god of the Jewish nation." This radical outbreak
of criticism and interpretation
has aroused considerable
attention throughout Germany, and a declaration against it
and other teachings of the kind has been signed by some
hundreds of pastors and some thousands of laymen, but so far
it has produced no effect whatever on the professors of Bonn,
and there is no prospect of its doing so. It is fortunate for the
faith thus assailed that the critical and rhetorical style of the
ordinary German professor is too heavy for export or general
circulation. So that the theories of Messrs. Graef and Meinhold are not likely to do the faith of the Fatherland any
particular harm. That country has always been divided into
two classes, one of which believes nothing and the other
everything, the latter numerically preponderant, but the
former exceeding in erudition and dialectic - a condition of
things quite certain to continue and on which a few essays
more or less in destructive criticism can produce Iittle effect.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Mrs. Stanton's statements concerning the underdeveloped

religious sentiment of the early Hebrews cannot be criticized
from the orthodox standpoint as in this account, where the god
of Abraham is represented as taking an active personal
interest in the affairs of the chosen people, they did not trust
wholly to him, but kept images of the gods of the neighboring
tribes in their houses, Laban feeling sorry enough over their

PAGE26

THERMIDOR

~/

188 [8/80]

loss to go seven days' journey to recover them while his daughter felt she
could not leave her father's house
without taking the images with her as
a protection.
The faults of Laban, of .Jacob and of
most of his sons are brought out without any reserve by the historian who
follows the custom of early writers in
statinq thinqs exactly as they were.
There can be no secrecy and little
cacy in connection with sexual matters. It may, however, be noticed that
while this people had the same crude
notions about these things that were
common to other nations, yet every
infraction of the divine law of monogamy, symbolized in the account of
the creation of woman in the second
chapter of Genesis, brings its own
punishment whether in or out of the
marriage relation. When one or another people sinned against a Jewish
woman the men of the family were the
avengers, as when the sons of .Jacob
slew a whole city to avenge an outrage
committed against their sister. Polygamy and concubinage wove a thread
of
disaster
and
complications
throughout the whole lives of families
and its dire effects are directly traceable in the feuds and degeneration of
their descendants. The chief lesson
taught by history is danger of violating,
physically, mentally, or spiritually the
personal integrity of woman. Customs
of the country and the cupidity of
Laban, forced polvqarnv on Jacob. All
the shadows in his life - and he had
no end of trbuble in after years - are-":
due to this. Perhaps nothing but telling
their stories in this brutally frank way
would make the lesson so plain.
If we search this narrative ever so
closely it gives us to hint of divinely
intended subordination of woman. Jacob had to buy his wives with service
which indicates that a high value was
placed upon them .. Nowadays in high
life men demand instead ofqive. The
degradation of woman involved in being sold to a husband, to put it in the
most humiliating way, is not comparable to the degradation of having to
buy a husband.
Euripides
made
Medea say: "We women are the most
unfortunate of all creatures since we
have to buy our masters at so dear a
price," and the degradation of Grecian
women is repeated - all flower-garlanded and disguised by show - in the
marriage sentiments of our own civilization. Jacob was dominated by his
wives as Abraham and Isaac had been
and there is no hint of their subjection.

A~ERICAN ATHEIST

Rachel's refusal to move when the gods were being searched

for, showed that her will was supreme, nobody tried to force
her to rise against her own desire.
The love which Jacob bore for Rachel has been through all
time the symbol of constancy. Seven years he served for her,
and so great was his love, so pure his delight in her presence
that the time seemed but as a day. Had this simple, absorbing
affection not been interfered with by Laban, how different
would have been the tranquil life of Jacob and Rachel,

developing undisturbed by the inevitable jealousies and vexations connected with the double marriage. Still this love was
the solace of Jacob's troubled life and remained unabated
until Rachel died and then found expression in tenderness for
Benjamin, "the son of my right hand." It was no accident, but
has a great significance, that this most ardent and faithful of
Jewish lovers should have deeper spiritual experiences than
any of his predecessors.
Clara Bewick Colby

Chapter Ten
Genesis xxix, xxxi
21 And Jacob said unto Laban,
Give me my wife, for my days are
fulfilled.
22 And Laban gathered together
all the men of the place and made
a feast.
23 And it came to pass in the
evening that he took Leah his
daughter, and brought her to him.
26 And Laban said, It must not be
so done in our country, to give the
younger before the firstborn.

27 We will give thee Rachel also

thou shalt serve with me yet seven
other years.
28 And Jacob did so, and he
gave him Rachel, his daughter to
wife also.
25 And it came to pass, when
Rachel had borne Joseph, that Jacob said unto Laban, Send me
away, that I may go unto my own
place, and to my country.
26 Give me .my wives and my
children, for whom I have served

While Laban played his petty deceptions on Jacob, the latter

proved himself in fraud and overreaching fully his match. In
being compelled to labor fourteen years for Rachel instead of
seven, as agreed upon, he amply revenged himself in getting
possession of all Laban's best cattle, availing himself of a
physiological law in breeding of which Laban was profoundly
ignorant.
The parting of Jacob and Laban was not amicable, although
they did not come to an open rupture. Rachel's character for
theft and deception is still further illustrated. Having stolen
her father's images and hidden them under tfie camel's
saddles and furniture, and sat thereon, when her father came
to search for the images, which he valued highly, she said she
was too ill to rise, so she calmly kept her seat, while the tent
was searched and nothing found, thus by act as well as word,
deceiving her father.
Jacob and his wives alike seemed to think Laban fair game
for fraud and deception. As Laban knew his images were
gone, he was left to suspect that Jacob knew where they were,
so little regard had Rachel for the reputation of her husband. In
making a god after their own image, who approved of
whatever they did, the Jews did not differ much from
ourselves; the men of our day talk too as if they reflected the
opinions of Jehovah on the vital questions of the hour. In our
late civil war both armies carried the Bible in their knapsacks,
and both alike prayed to the same god for victory, as if he could
be in favor of slavery and against it at the same time.
Like the women, too, who are working and praying for
woman suffrage, both in the state legislature and in their
closets, and others against it, to the same god and legislative
assembly. One must accept the conclusion that their acquaintance with the lord was quite as limited as our own in this
century, and that they were governed by their own desires and
judgment, whether for good or evil, just as we are; their plans
by day and their dreams by night having no deeper significance than our own. Some writers say that the constant
interposition of god in their behalf was because they needed
his special care and attention. But the irregularity and
ignorance of their lives show clearly that their guiding' hand
AUSTIN, TEXAS

thee, and let me go; for thou know'est my service which I have done
thee.
17 Then Jacob rose up, and set
his sons and his wives upon camels;
18 And he carried away all his
cattle, and all his goods which he
had gotten, the cattle of his getting,
which he had gotten in Padanaram, forto go to Isaac his father in
the land of Canaan.
19 And Laban went to shear his
sheep; and Rachel had stolen the

was of human origin. If the Jewish account is true, then the

God of the Hebrews falls far short of the Christian ideal of a
good, true manhood, and the Christian ideal as set forth in the
New Testament falls short of our ideal of the heavenly father
to-day. We have no fault to find with the Bible as a mere
history of an ignorant, undeveloped people, but when special
inspiration is claimed for the historian, we must judge of its
merits by the moral standard of to day, and the refinement of
the writer by the questionable language in which he clothes
his descriptions.
We have often wondered that the revising committees that
have gone over these documents so often, should have
adhered so closely to such gross translation?" Surely a fact
related to us in coarse language, is not less a fact when
repeated in choice words. We need an expurgated edition of
most of the books called holy before they are fit to place in the
hands of the rising generation.
Some members of the Revising Committee write me that
the tone of some of my comments should be more reverent in
criticising the "word of god." Does anyone at this stage of
civilization think the Bible was written by the finger of god,
that the Old and New Testaments emanated from the highest
divine thought in the universe? Do they think that all the men
who wrote the different books were specially inspired, and
that all the various revising committees that have translated,
interpolated, rejected some books and accepted others, who
!lave dug round the roots of the Greek and Hebrew to find out
the true meaning, have one and all been watched and guided
in their literary labors by the great spirit of the universe, who
by immutable law holds the solar system in its place, every
planet steadily moving in its own elliptic, worlds upon worlds
revolving in order and harmony?
These great object-lessons in nature and the efforts of the
soul to fathom the incomprehensible, are more inspiring than
any written page. To this "word of god" I bow with reverence,
and I can find no language too exalted to express my love, my
faith, my admiration.
To criticise the piccadilloes of Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel
does not shadow the virtues of Deborah, Huldah and Vashti; to

THERMIDOR 188 [8/801

images that were her father's.'

20 And
Jacob
stole
away
unawares to Laban the Syrian, in
that he told him not that he fled;
22 And it was told Laban on the
third day, that Jacob was fled.

PAGE 27

condemn the laws and customs of the Jews as recorded in the

book of Genesis, does not destroy the force of the golden rule
and the ten commandments. Parts of the Bible are so true, so
grand, so beautiful, that it is a pity it should have been bound in

Serious
Smiles

the same volume with sentiments

and immoral.

and descriptions

so gross

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The liberation of the human mfnd has heen Lest

furthered hy merry fellows who heaved dead cats
Into sa~ctuarfes and then went' roistering down
the highw.,.,s of the world. proving to all men that
douht.after

all. was safe - - that the god In the

sanctuary was a fraud. One horse-laugh Is worth

ten thousand syllogisms. -Henry louis Mencken
""

'-

'fiRST NATIONAL

CHURCH]

00

Then there was the Old Testament prostitute

who was arrested for trying to make a prophet.

,~

PAGE 28

THERMIDOR 188 [8/80)

~/

AMERICAN

ATHEIST

w. C.FIELDS
,ATHEIST COMEDIAN
by Troy Soos
In 1910 Atheist and humorist Mark Twain died in Bridgeport, Conneticut. That same year, a tramp juggler named W. C.
Fields was touring Europe with a vaudeville troupe five years
prior to his motion picture debut in Pool Sharks.
Unlike Twain, whose comic vehicle was the written word,
Fields' strictly visual and, later, audiovisual brand of humor did
not serve as a viable method for preserving one's personal
views on religion. While Mark Twain was able to write his
anti-religious satires and leave them to be published posthumously, Fields could not express himself on this subject in
the medium of film. Fortunately, two recent biographies' on
this unique comedian clearly reveal W. C. Fields' atheistic
views on prayer, religion and the Bible.
W. C. Fields by Himself is a collection of letters, notes and
scripts which Fields intended to publish as his autobiography.
The book was delayed until 1973, however, when his grandson, Ronald J. Fields, finished accumulating and organizing
the material. Included in this work is a 1922 letter to Fields'
estranged wife Hattie, concerning their son Claude:

Dear Hattie:
While I appreciate the spirit in which Claude offers prayers for
my success, I wish he would not bother further. Prayers never bring
anything. You should know better than anyone. Theymay bring
solace to the sap, the bigot, the ignorant, the aboriginal, and the
lazy - but to the enlightened it is the same as asking Santa Clause
,sic) to bring you somethingfor XMas. So please tell him to utilize
his time to better advantage.
Claude ,Fields'family name)
After the Christian Science Monitor panned his movie
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break and decried the "atmosphere of befuddled alcoholism" in the film, Fields responded
with a letter to the editor of the CSM. In it. Fields gave his
review of that publication:

The Christian Science Monitor: Day in and day out the same old
bromides. They no longer lookfor love and beauty but see so many
sordid things that Mary Baker Eddy did not see in this beautiful
world she discovered after trying her hand at mesmerism, hypnotism, and spiritualism before landing on the lucrative Christian
Science racket.
Tongue in cheek, Fields continued:

.When I play in a picture in which I take afew nips to get a laugh

(I have never played a drunkard in my life), I hope that it might
bring to mind the anecdote of Jesus turning water into wine.
He concluded by stating:

And wouldn't it be terrible if I quoted some reliable statistics

which prove that more people are driven insane through religious
hysteria than by drinking alcohol.
Carlotta Monti, Fields' live-in mistress for the last fourteen
years of his life, recorded (with co-author Cy Rice) an account
, of their life together in W. C. Fields & Me. Though largely an
attempt to glorify Monti, the book does provide many in~ights
on W. C. Fields' personal life.
AUSTIN, TEXAS

Monti wrote an entire chapter on Fields' lack of religion,

including the following passage:

I was a Catholic then and afairly religious one, and every time he
[Fields] took the lord's name in vain I'd raise my eyes towards the
heavens and plead, "Forgive him, oh lord, for he knows not what
he's saying."
"Goddamn, it," he'd snap back, HIdo so."
Woody [W. C.] had no religion, claiming that his only appearance in a church was in some little Pennsylvania town when he
broke a stained glass window in order to sleep warmly in one of the
pews.
"I think of the church often," he said. "Not because religion was
closing in on me, but because for a long time my ass was sorefrom
that hard, unupholstered pew. "

Additional Absurdity
Monti was pleased to discover a Gideon Bible in
Fields' possession, but she was taken aback to find that
he read it for amusement and potential comedy plots.
Monti secretly tape-recorded a W. C. Fields discourse on
the Bible from which the following excerts are taken:

The Gospel According to Woody:

To me, these biblical stories are just so many fish stories,
and I'm not specifically referring to Jonah.und the whale. I
need indisputable proof of anything I'm asked to believe.
Someone has to come up with the whys and wherefores.
Take Noah's ark. Noah and hisfamily walked and talked
with god - or so they claimed. They were his favorites. But
not so the other people, who were wicked and continually
quarreling with one another. The lord spoke to Noah and
said, "I shall bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to
destroy all living things from under heaven, and everything
that is on the earth shall die," or words to that effect. Just
why the beasts, the creeping things, and the birds were to be
punished for the misdeeds of humans remains unexplained.
He advised Noah to be ensconced in the ark with his entire
family before the rains came and guaranteed him safety.
With him should be two of every living thing - the birds and
beasts and everything that crept - except afew doctors I
know - and he was to take food for all who were aboard.
Onepoint I'd like clarified is, where did Noah and sons get
tools enough for this momumental task? Think of all the
food necessary and the storage space required. Not all the
animals were herbivorous. How was meat kept fresh before
the days of refrigeration? Why, a crew of dozens would have
been essential to shovel away the offal and dump it
overboard.

THERMIDOR

188 [8/80]

PAGE 29

Now, Chinaman [Carlotta], if you want to believe this

nonsense, that. is your privilege.
I think the Jews are a wonderfully clever people who from
season to season might offer prayers that the sun shine over
Miami Beach in the winter so they can return north withfine
suntans. But to be able, as Joshua did on request, to keep
Old Sol suspended in the sky and eliminate night falling, is
something I can't buy.
An additional absurdity is the story of Jonah and the
whale. To me this tall tale is a lot of blubber. Or a lot of
whale oil. Take your choice.
Should it be true, then Jonah - one of the minor
prophets - did such a whale of ajob by managing to live in a
sea monster's belly for three days before being regurgitated
upon the land, that he deserved promotion in the ranks of
the prophets. Maybe that's what he was really bucking for.
I

Having been a spectator at the famous Dempsey-Firpo

fight and seen with my own eyes a man called a giant killer, I
might be able to go along with the feat of David who, the
Bible tells us, slew Goliath with the jawbone of an ass - if I
didn't read how big this giant was supposed to be. Somehow
I have the feeling that the giant would have knocked David
on his ass. [This, of.course, is a confusion of David with
another mythological biblical superhero, Sampson.
Though David's weapon was the sling, the outcome
predicted by W. C. would no doubt have been the same.]
In all these biblical stories the angelsfly around more than
the planes at a busy airport terminal. They must have been
pretty smart pilots for I never heard of a single collision.
Why, they never even get their wings snarled. A man like me
needs proof, and no one has come forward with proof that
there are or were angels. I've seen plenty of pictures of them,
though - always white angels. Where were the Black ones?
Maybe a deserving dead Negro became a white angel. If so,
this was really Heaven beyond his greatest expectation.

Angels hardly ever seems too energetic. All they ever did
was sit on a soft cloud and strum away on a harp. I thought
that would be kind of a monotonous
life for a man who
frequently likes some action, such as I do - although the
cushiony
cloud would have been beneficial
to my
hemorrhoids.
After hearing Fields' opinion of the Bible stories,
Carlotta asked him if he believed in following the Ten
Commandments. "1 have my own commandments,"
Fields responded. He rattled them' off:
Thou shalt have no other gods before me like C. B.
DeMille.
Thou shalt not take the name of the lord thy god in vain
unless you've used up all the other four-letter words.
Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy by blessing
yourself while the other hand is in the collection box.
Honor thy father and thy mother, that their days may be
long upon the land which the lord thy god giveth thee, and
the tax collector taketh from thee.
Thou shalt not kill anything less than a fifth.
Thou shalt not commit adultery unless in the mood.
Thou shalt not steal - only from other comedians.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife unless she's a
beauty.
Thou shalt not take unto thee any graven image, since I
was born one.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house unless they
have a well-stocked bar.
Monti's final question was, "00 you believe in life
after death, Woody?" Fields replied, "1 believe only in
life."
W. C. Fields' life functions ceased on December 25,
1946. His will, which was not followed, stipulated that
his fortune be used to establish a college for orphans
"Where No Religion of Any Sort Is to be Preached."

...~

"We Are Atheists Because"

is a 3'12" x 5" card printed on both sides. One side
lists the reasoning' behind Atheist philosophy. The
reverse side lists what Atheism teaches. These cards
are excellent pass-outs and are available at 50 for
$1.00; includes postage and handling.

Order from:
AMERICAN

ATHEIST

PRESS

P. O. Box 2117, Austin, Texas 78768

=-=.

o ~~

, IT WAS ALONG TRIP BUT AT LAST WE ARE HERE..'!

"The first clerqvman was the first slvroque that encountered the first fool."
- Voltaire
PAGE 30

THERMIDOR 188 [8/80]

AMERICAN

ATHEIST

ON OUR WAY

Ignatz Sahula- Dycke

YOU PAYS YOUR MONEY AND

TAKES YOUR CHOICE

The letter below came to me the

other day from an old friend with
whom I correspond:
"Dear S-D:
"Thought vou'd be interested in
something I ran across in perusing
Tocqueviffe's The Old Regime end the
French Revolution.
He says that Americans he meets in their own country and abroad - when asked if religion contributes to stability of the
State and preservation of law and
order, unhesitatingly answer it does,
and that, in their opinion no civilized
land can exist without religion; that
they see in this the basis of the State's
stability and the safety of its individual
citizens. He also observes that nowhere but in the U.S. havethe boldest
theories of 18th century thinkers been
put into practice effectively - all, that
is, except theories of an anti-religious
character, and this despite the freedom enjoyed there by the press. [My
correspondent friend then needles me
a bit, saying that religion has very deep
roots in America, and, as a result,
tolerance is the best I should expect
from people of a community that has
always been religious.]
"Yours, H.S."
I replied to H.S. as follows:
Thanks for the de Tocqueville comment. In trying to show how the past
affects today, I had to mind that deT
was writing in the beginning of the
19th century, and that he was more a
commentator
than a philosopher,
though usually keenly observant.
The boldest political theorists of the
18th century rarely ignored the dysphoric temper of the masses. Even
philosophers like Rousseau, Voltaire
and Hume had to remember that the
rulers of that day's nations faced the
necessity of manipulating people who
comforted themselves that god was
really running their nations.
Our religious outlook of today isn't

AUSTIN, TEXAS

one we borrowed from French, Continental pre-Napoleonic. or post-Napoleonic Forty-eighter philosophers,

as deT seems to imply or trust.
Our ideation - religiously flavored
though it be - perceptibly reflects the
Oxford Movement favored by the
Royalists of del's time (1805-59)
which Burke, Newman, and Coleridge,
all three staunch Christian supporters
of
traditional
political
formats,
launched in England years before
del's day. The Movement survived
there in spite of Darwin and the Mills
(father and son) as a solidly Utilitarian
social conservatism and liberalism
until the start of the 20th century.
Right or wrong, that as I see it is what
affects our thinking today, fifty or sixty
years behind the times. I'm wary of
written history - in which a lot is
often left gaping between lines. Had
King George /If not attempted to depart
from English charterism our colonists
would more than probably have failed
in 1776. We, too, are constantly
tempted to override our Constitution's
provisions.
Remember the Nixon
years.
So, old England's churchian fund- .
amentalism
continues
to haunt.
annoy and impede our normal comportment because it naturally secured
without difficulty a foothold in a young
English-speaking nation, traditionally
Christian. Too, we, in the 18oos, were
a nation feverishly consolidating a
vast region, under- the Stars and
Stripes - and far too busy at it to pay
overmuch attention to the cataclysmic
changes taking place in the old world:
in its peoples' attitude toward politics
and religion. By the time we noted
what was going on(andwhat, in 1848,
Europe's peoples were aiming at) we
realized we already had it. and therefore stayed faithy and so to speak were
stuck with it - more or less - until
today. This, I submit, is the reason why

THERMfDOR

188 [8/80]

the Americans of Tocqueville's time

equated religion with freedom and
stability when he questioned them
about it. (Perhaps they didn't care to
admit what a failure it actually was.)
Apropos of this matter and similar
others, it's extremely difficult to separate facts from fiction in historical
accounts. And philosophy poses questions not a whit less thorny. The value
of anything appears in what we bring
to it, in judging justly its virtue. There's
a perceptible
difference
between
accounts of a given event rendered by,
say, a sceptic like H. G. Wells and a
believer like Arnold Toynbee. Jocobus
Faber (1455-1536)
wrote that the
Bible is the only valid intellectual aid;
in 1541-1603 Michel de Montaigne's
disciple Pierre Charron counters that
we know nothing until freed from
dogmatic bias. Confusing? Is all that's
known true} Way back in 1581, Francisco Sanchez, a physician, wrote a
monograph titled: The Very Noble First
Science Thet Nothing is Known.

Penetrating Facts
After I mailed the above I speculated
that-respect for the traditional beliefs
of their forebears possibly steeled our
Western pioneers and adventurers to
face and overcome the obstacles and
hardships that won us the entire
region between the Mississippi and
the Pacific. I couldn't very well deny,
and don't overlook or wish to minimize, the English and Scotch religioninspired, nervy, self-righteous behavior (land-grabbing and Indian-cheating) that characterized our "winning"
of the West.
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote shortly
after our Revolution, probably around
1840, the words my friend recently
called to my attention. Atheism was
far from prevalent in Europe than, and
much less so here in America where,

PAGE 31

even today, superstition is almost as

rife as it was in the days of Cotton
Mather's witch-hangings.
Countless statements,
questions,
and facts about the nonsensicality of
theistic beliefs are at long last beginning to penetrate the hard crust of
bigotry perpetuated by fanatical religionism and thus making an even
better place to live for everyone (of
whatsoever frame of mind) out of
these fifty United States - our home.
Those who've troubled themselves to
look into the economic and political
history of this almost unbelievably
forward and bounteous republic of
well over two hundred million, don't
need to be told how important a part in
this country's
continuing
development has from its beginnings been
played
by Atheists
and
other.
freethinking
Americans who today
deem any belief in traditional forms of
organized theism pointless.
To folk Iike me (who real ize how very
little we of mankind really know) Atheism is an aspirational guide, the
superior of a haggadah, impelling us
to respect everything, teaching us to
enjoy our American life: a judgment
uncluttered by sterile dogmas, and

freedom to speculate about and discuss any subject under the sun.
Doesn't the Constitution and Bill of
Rights commend this? Doesn't the
Constitution grant even the freedom
of religion to those who haven't
learned better than to worship gods of
whose existence there is nowhere a
trace of evidence except in their lame
imaginations? Do these latter, befuddled people love their country more, or
love it less, than we sceptical unbelievers love it? Haven't Atheists, AQnestles, Deists and other freethinkers
defended the Stars and Stripes as
loyally and bravely as the theists have?
In proportion to their number haven't.
as many Atheists given up their Jives
for our flag as the believers have?
In his letter, my correspondent
friend noted that tolerance is all that
any Amertcan Atheist can expect
nowadays. Well, simple toleration
without any religious impositions on
free speech and rights of any citizen is
all that the freethinker is asking for,
but to this day has been denied by
discriminatory. consent of two-faced
officials who this way pander to the
least thoughtful stratum of our society. This element says it is Christian
and tolerant, yet turns out in force to
insult,threaten,
and maul patriots like

Madalyn O'Hair black and blue. Are

such gardes Ie paradis American,
thinking that pie on her face requites
for their incogitance, she having come
to plead for constitutional
equity for
all? [See the Ventose 188 (3/80) issue
of the American Atheist, p. 20 - Ed.]
T6cqueville would quickly change his
mind, seeing how religion here now
stabilizes individual safety.
Atheism doesn't lend itself to fanaticism; doesn't care if organized
religion keeps going or not. And me? I
hope that my writing will help out in
keeping Christianism's
dysgenically
doctrinaire absurdities out of our governmental procedures, deliberations
and decisions. Being an Atheist, I'm
outraged that I, along with Humanists,
Agnostics, Freethinkers, and other rational
citizens,
am discriminated
against; in some states disenfranchised; and as unjustly calumniated
as was the Black man here only
twenty or thirty years ago. American
Atheism and allied forms of freethinking have over many years contributed
freely and unsetttshlv, at no little cost,
to the welfare of our country. They
consequently deserve reciprocal and
.equitable consideration from the citizen of whatsoever class and race in
any walk of America's mainstream of
life.

WORLD ATHEIST MEETING II

FRIMAIRE 25-28,188

INDIA

12/25-28/80

World Atheist Meet Two will be held at The Atheist Centre, Vijayawada, Andre Pradesh, India in December 1980, sponsored jointly by the American Atheist Cemer (Director - Jon Murray) and the Atheist Centre of India (Director - Lavanam)
in the tradition of international cooperation begun by Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair and Gora, through United World Atheists.

\
PAGE 32

MADRAS.(

VIJAYAWADA,
THERMIDOR

188 [8/80]

AMERICAN

ATHEIST

ALMIGHTY

GADFLY?

STEPPENWOLF

Mighty Intelligence courted Hope fair.

Soon after did she a boy bear.
He kept the qualities of both in his head noble,
And to accomplish mighty feats he was able.
Spring nursed him with the lovely milk of joy,
Yet did dread Winter entrance the boy.
He showed the dear child of Hope
All the pitious things at the end of the year's rope.
The joyous boy turned aside so sad
Till of all the goodness to come of bad
His loving nurse taught him more.
So he became alone, knowing all lore.
For his former companions knew not
And at his knowledge became hot.
So he paced the world alone
And for the future toiled alone.

Known to the world as a lion

He stalks his home like a cage.
Unhappy in his bliss,
He acts older than his age.
He prowls the beach,
Growling at his dearest loves.
His smile comes with pain.
One bird comes from a flock of doves.
It perches on the lion's shoulder.
It coos to delight him,
And yet he snarls.tries to shoo it, and
Then tries to draw it to his lair.
For a moment he loves it;
For a moment he hates it.
But it brings a little peace,
Helping as it can ..

Robin Murray-O'Hair

One day he willsee all its beauty,

Appreciate all its love.
It will bring him order,
And he'll no longer pace his cage.
Robin Murray-O'Hair

THE WISEMAN

CRIES

Do you hear that cry?

What, how can you not?'
It rings, it rings,
Throughout the lonely town.
That lonely haunting cry,
Which surely demands comfort.
A wiseman must be in great need,
In need of love and friends.
What, you do not hear?
How can you not?
Leave me to that man,
To share his pain,
To quiet him so lonely.
Leave me go, leave me go,
To that lonely, haunting crier.
Robin Murray-O'Hair

THERMIDOR 188 [8/801

AUSTIN, TEXAS

PAGE 33.

NATURE'S WAY
GERALD THOLEN

NEGATIVE PROOFS
AND OTHER NONSENSE
I know that there are times when
every other Atheist shares my feeling
that life is entirely too exasperating.
Many Atheist writers have prematurely grayed while suffering penmanship
cramps trying to explain simply that
nonexisting things can NOT be intelligently identified, explained; disproved, or discussed. Yet, some people still
insist, with blank staring faces, that
Atheists should "prove" there is no
"god:"
Now think about it for a minute. In
effect. what they're asking for you to
demonstrate graphically or physically
or otherwise tangibly, is some "thing"
that has no graphic, physical or tangible evidence. That's dumbl Such ignorant requests would suggest that
this "thing" that does not exist still
somehow bears existing evidence.
Obviously, if something doesn't exist,
it bears NO evidence at all - pro or
coni
.
Let's take a little run back through
time for a moment. Up until about the
year "of our lord" 1500, people "believed" that the Earth was flat. AIthouqh the word "flat" is not a very
adamantly descriptive expression, you
may recall that the populace at that
time thought that if you were to go too
far in any direction you were a goner;
you'd simply fall off the "edge." Now,
I'm not talking about just a few savages or vassals or illiterate peasants,
I'm talking about the vast majority of
ALL of the people of that day and time,
including kings, noblemen, "scientists," clergymen (especially) - the
whole of society. Yet, when a sailboat
left the shore and sailed off into the
distance, it was easily observed, as the
ship approached the horlzon, that the
observer on shore would first lose
sight of the vessel's hull. As the craft
continued away from the shore, all
that was visible was the mast. How
could anyone then accept that the sh ip

PAGE 34

was sailing in a perfectly straight (flat)

line? Nevertheless, they "believed"
the Earth was flat.

"Evidence" Galore!!!!
Eventually' an Italian "eccentric"
named Columbus managed to change
many of their opinions. 'To this day
some unthinking people will tell you
. that Columbus "proved" thatthe Earth
was not flatl He did notl What he
proved was that the Earth WAS round.
One can not prove something is "not."
You can only prove that something
"is." By obvious intelligent deduction,
then, one would only be compelled to
ACCEPT that the Earth was not "flat,"
simply because it could not be both flat
and round at the same time. Surely
that could not have been too difficult
for even a religionist to understand.
But, let's go back to "god."" What
evidences do we have for "god?" Let's
see now, we have "I believe," we have
tons and tom' of mythological writings
(original aut.iors unknown), we have
"god's work" (such as planets, stars,
living things that creepeth upon the
, Earth, etc.. etc.), we have "personal
witness," "visions," ..... in short: you
want "evidence" - we got itlln face of
all this mountain of "irrefutable evidence," what "evidence" does the
lowly Atheist
have to elucidate
"qod's" nonexistence? Simple - he
doesn't have any' more evidence of
"god's" nonexiste'nce than Columbus
had to show that the Earth wasn't flat.
Vojlal The reliqionists win .....
DO THEY NOW?
Let's go back to Columbus' situation. As you recall, he proved what
WAS and let human intellect,ACCEPT
what it was capable of accepting.
Suppose we follow Columbus' logic
and gather positive evidence to show
the "roundness" ot scientific explanations that have led to "god's" undoing.

THERMIDOR

188 [8/80)

First, we'll have to look at the expression "exist" in order to completely

understand what it is that people
mean when they say "god" exists.
Definition 1: To have actual being; to
be. (I suppose we can go along with
that explanation with little or no trouble - to exist is to be, to have some
type of composition or identity that is
recognizable by measurement ....
Liken this to the old saying "everything's gotta be something.") Definition 2: To have life or animation. (Now
this must only be in reference to organic things because there are many
things around that are "dead as a
hammer" - things like sand, gases,
water, etc. exist and are measurable.
Occasionally religionists try to confuse
things
by
throwing
in
"existences" like thoughts or ideas.
What they seem to forget is that those
"existences" are also measurable by
scanning brain activity.)
,"".

The Oldest Assumption

The final analysis of all definitions
of the word exist is that to qualify as
existing, something has to be either of
substance (occupy space) or of energy
(dynamic). If there is no possible way
to measure a "thinq." that "thing"
does not existl Soit is that the errant
existence that religionists call "god" is
simply a misconception
of form.
Rather than being a physically substantive "thing," "god" is .only a dynamically manifested image projected
on the mental video screen by the
animated processes od complex human gray matter computers.
On
reaching an understanding
of the
rules of "existing," it becomes quite
simple for one to conclude that to
"exist" is a NATURAL quality because
all existences are unavoidable components of the natural physical system: i.e., WITHIN NATURE. Therefore,

AMERICAN

ATHIEST

as in the case of Columbus' proofs,

"supernaturalism" is without support,
unless it "consists" of things that DO
NOT exist.
Having thus established that all existences are of tangible nature, one
may
then
wonder
how
such
existences "originated" or why they
"originate." This brings us face to face
with mankind's oldest assumption:
Origins. The fact of the matter is that
nothing truly "originates";
things
only EVOLVE. Physical Law: Matter
and/or energy are constant - changeable only in form (i.e., energy at rest is
matter; matter multiplied by the
square of the speed of light - Einstein's E= mc-). This law was experimentally demonstrated by Cockcroft and Walton in 1932. ALL basic
elemental substances have perpetual
existence.
Biological science has established
that certain inorganic substances,
when combined in unique configurations and under certain environmental
conditions, become animated organic
substance (life forms). We may also

note that chemical law explains that

identical materials responds indentically when subjected to identical circumstances. Life forms are inevitable
in an environmental
configuration
such as that of Earth's. One can therefore determine that all things that
exist do so with total irrelevance to any
alleged "god."

"Proofs" For The Imbecile

Admittedly, these findings are a bit
more involved than watching a boat
sail over the horizon but, nevertheless, are just as convincing. The problem is that people just don't pay attention when problems are being solved.
Sometimes it's years before people
realize the implications of scientific
discovery. As you may recall, for vears
after Columbus's voyage, there were
still remaining "flat Earth societies"
and ignorant people who could not
accept geographic reality.
In conclusion, one must realize that

OF COURSE, WE

negative "proofs" are for the imbecile

who does not know the meaning ofthe
word proof. Positive proofs are established only through observations of
evidence; i.e., no existence, no evidence - and visa versa.
I had an old favorite argument that I
used to demonstrate the "negative
'proof" bit. It went something like this:
Statement of fact, "The hole in a
doughnut does not exist." Now, there
is no "proof" to support that Claim
other than eating the doughnutl With
the "positive proof" (the doughnut)
removed, we can easily see that the
"hole" was just an illusion created by
the doughnut around it. The same
claim can be made concerning "god."
Remove all facts of religion and then
show me any verifying evidences for
any god. Any way you slice it, "god" is
simply not there when logical evaluations are made. Only "flat Earth"
mentalities can say with conviction, "I
believe." Your dictionary will tell you
that to "believe" is to accept without
proof. That's
certainly
necessary
when talking about "godl"

Ijl

"FLCOME TO

ARE GOING II

nn

THE
AMEHICAN
~ ~1;; ATHEIST COHVGNllON
% ,~~
SALT LAKE CITY
L'L.~.~

~ -GERMINAL 189(4/81)

AUSTIN, TEXAS

THERMIDOR

~/

188 [8/80]

PAGE 35

THE AMERICAN ATHEIST RADI~SERIES

EDUCA TIONAL RIOTS
OF CA THOLICS AND
PROTESTANTS
******* Program 397 *******
This is Madalyn Murray O'Hair, American Atheist. back to
talk with you again.
Religious riots in the United States from 1844-1865, the
beginning of the Civil War, centered over the school question.
Philadelphia became a dangerous place, then, because part
of the school children's daily dose of instruction was a reading
from the King James version of the "holy" bible and the
Roman Catholic bishop in that city took it into his head to
petition the Board of Controllers of the Public Schools to grant
Roman Catholic children the right to have the Douay Roman
Catholic version of the bible read to them in lieu of the King
James Protestant version. Instantly the shriek went up that
the bishop wished to have the bible excluded from the schools.
Meetings of the Protestant natives were held In hall and
sandlot. A flock of orators descended on the city.
The bishop had made his request in March. On the 6th of
May, an election month, the Protestants held a great mass
meeting. The fury of the orators was directed towards the
Irish. Rain, however, began to fall and the crowd withdrew to
the market-house. During this retreat the noses of several of
the Irish were poked. A gun or two was fired into the air. Inside
the market-house the proceedings went on until about ten in
the evening. Then, suddenly the crowd flowed out and down to
Second and Franklin streets. The Micks - the Irish Catholics
- lived there in wretched shanties lining the streets. Seeing
themselves outnumbered, they hastily departed - leaving
their poor, miserable homes to be wrecked and fired by the

m.

'

During the evening a few Irish had collected rifles and when
the cry "To the nunneryl" went up, some volleys from the rifles
scattered the mob.
The next night there was a meeting in the Statehouse yard,
which moved from there to Kensington where the good
Protestants destroyed the Hibernia fire station as a precaution
preliminary to firing twenty-nine more Irish houses and the
public market of the district. Several companies of militia
appeared and halted the mob's fun for the day, thus enabling
the fire department to put out the flames, if it so desired.
However, the department was mainly Protestant and declined
to fight the flames.
On the third day of the riots (May 8, 1844), the Protestants
turned up in force at St. Michael's church. Here, a Captain
Fairlamp, at the head of a detachment of militia, demanded the
keys of the church from the priest. The militia then stood by
while three members-of the Protestant faction set fire to the
church and the priest's residence.
St. Augustine's church next went up in smoke. The Mayor of
Philadelphia needs to be given some credit here, for he
attempted to save the-church. He had heard of the planned
attack on this edifice and stationed the city watch in front of it,
taking up the rear himself with a posse of citizens. The'

PAGE 36

THERMIDOR

Protestants arrived, took in the situation at a glance, and came

on with bricks and clubs. The mayor was knocked senseless,
the watchmen and the citizen guards were shooed away and
the First City Troop rode by at a gallop with a loud cheer for the
attackers.
.Everybody roared in glee when the steeple of St. Augustine's caved in, taking the cross with it. The firemen present
busied themselves with quenching any sparks that chanced to
fall on churches of other sects - Protestant sects - nearby.
The Roman Catholic Church's ancient practice of burning
forbidden books was not forgotten: five thousand volumes in
the Augustinian Fathers'library, attached to the church, were
set fire and watched until they burned themselves out.

Grand Jury Whitewash

To finish off the afternoon of pleasure, the Protestants
returned to the Roman Catholic nunnery at Second and
Phoenix Streets, from which they had been driven away two
nights before, and burnt that down.
About this time the city authorities awoke to the fact that
there was a disorder in town. Belatedly troops were stationed
to guard other Roman Catholic churches. The priests and
parishioners. smuggled vestments and sacred vessels to
private residences and the bishop suspended all worsliip in all
Roman Catholic churches in the city on May 10,1844. A grand
jury, convened specially to inquire into the riots, returned a bill
whitewashing
all parties concerned, without me'iitioning a
name.
Two months later, warflared again for a day, on July 5,
1844. On this day, the Protestants wheeled a brace of cannon
to St. Phillip Neri's church. This time, for unknown reasons,
the militia actually defended the church. Several people were
killed, and several Irish Catholics were indicted for murder and
rioting. But, for a moment, the blood and fire were stopped in
Philadelphia.
Meanwhile, in New York City there was an election for the
office of the mayor in April, 1844. The night before it was to
occur, 1,200 Protestants carrying clubs, brickbats, an assortment of anti-Roman-Catholic
and anti-Pope banners
, stormed through the Irish wards, the 6th and 14th. They
wanted a fight, and said so with howls and catcalls. The rumor
was flying around town that they meant to burn down St.
Patrick's cathedral on Mulberry Street. The New York bishop,
Irish and ready, assembled between 3,000 and 4,000 Catholic
men armed with swords and derringer guns atthe church, and
instructed them to let no one lift a finger against the cathedral.
When the word reached New York of the battles in Philadelphia, the New York Roman Catholic bishop issued a
statement to reporters that " ... if a single Catholic church is
burned in New York, the city will become a second Moscow."
He was referring to Napoleon's mishaps in that flaming city.
By way of establisi"Yng a firm front. the bishop stationed in

188 [8/80]

AMERICAN

ATHEIST

every Catholic church in the city a garrison of not less than a

thousand men, heavily armed and grimly "resolved, after
taking as many lives as they could in defense of their property,
to give up, if necessary, their own lives for the same cause."
It was a standoff:When the bishop and the mayor met in his
office, the mayor asked, "Are you afraid that some of your
churches will be burned?" The bishop replied, "No, sir, but I
am afraid some of yours will be burned. We can protect our
own." The mayor saw to it that no mass meeting was held and
the fight returned to a simmer.

The Know-Nothing Party

The Irish famine of 1845 shovelled thousands of Irishmen
into their graves, but it sent tens of thousands of them into the
United States, along with their wives and children. The men
made good Democrats as fast as they became citizens, while
the women devoted themselves to the production of little
Irish-American Roman Catholics, with true Genesis 9:1 zeal.
In order to combat the influx of these good Roman Catholics,
a political party was formed. It came to be called the "KnowNothing" Party because it was secretive and when anyone
asked questions of its adherents they would say they knew
nothing about that which was asked. One of the oaths of this
party was to solemnly promise and swear in the presence of
almighty god never to vote for any man for any office if he be a
Roman Catholic. The party participated in the presidential
election of 1852 and in numerous local elections. At its height
it had 1.5 million qualified voters in its ranks. The most notable
victories for the party were in the municipal elections in
Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia. At least forty Congressmen from half a dozen states had at one time been
associated with it.
In 1854, the party swung the state of Massachusetts, with
both houses of the legislature almost one hundred percent
Know-Nothing in composition when the ballots had all been
counted. In Delaware various of their candidates were elected
to state offices. In Protestant New York they totalled"122,000
out of a total of 435,000 votes polled.
In Louisville, Kentucky,a celebration was held in observance
of election day on August 5, 1855. When the smoke cleared
the Louisville Roman Catholic cathedral was found to have
been entered by a roaring Know-Nothing mob and 25 IrishAmericans were killed in a running street war. The Roman
Catholic Church charged that "city authorities, all. KnowNothings, looked calmly on, and they are now endeavoring to
lay the blame on the Catholics."
But this was precluded by the presence of Archbishop
Bedini in the United States for seven months during 1853.
There was a question of legal title to some church property in
Philadelphia and Buffalo and the Vatican had sent the
archbishop to the United States to solve the problem. Bedini
was the highest Catholic dignitary exhibited in person in the
United States. Naturally a plot to assassinate him was hatched
in New York. In Cincinnati a howling mob collected outside the
Roman Catholic cathedral desirous of making him a guest of
honor at a lynching party. The police wounded several of the
would-be lynchers. He finally left New York, in secret, to
escape another Protestant mob there.
But from the Know-Nothing/Catholic
engagements, we
find that the following occurred on a year by year basis:
1853 - Bedini riots in Boston, Baltimore, Wheeling, St.
Louis and Cincinnati.
1854 - A gang of Know-Nothings and Ulstermen from New
York City raided St. Mary's Church in Newark, one lrishAmerican shot and killed, some statuary destroyed; St. Anne's
AUSTIN, TEXAS

church in Manchester, New Hampshire raided on the 4th of

July; a Society of Jesuit priest(John Baptist) tarred, feathered,
and ridden around Ellsworth, Maine, on a rail; a Roman
Catholic church burned at Bath, Maine; Catholic churches at
Dorchester, Massachusetts, and Sidney, Ohio, blown up with
gunpowder; a Roman Catholic church at Massillon, Ohio,
burned; an attempt made to burn the Ursuline convent in
Galveston, Texas; fires~ere started in the Roman Catholic
churches of St. Peter and St. Paul in Brooklyn, New York;
numerous fights in New York City between Irish gangs and the
"Wide-Awakes,"
a young Protestant gang. wearing widebrimmed felt hats as insignia; the convent of the Sisters of
Mercy in Providence, Rhode Island, threatened by a KnowNothing mob, but saved by Roman Catholics, who rallied and
threatened to shoot anyone setting foot on the convent
grounds; ten killed in a riot in St. Louis; a "ducking party" for
Roman Catholics in WaShington.
1855 - "The Bloody Monday Riot" ravaged Louisville,
Kentucky.
1856 - There were election riots between Know-Nothings
and Irish Catholic Democrats in Baltimore.
The Know-Nothing Party later died, in part over the slavery
issue.
.
But this did not stop the small wars. On July 12, 1870,2,500
Orangemen, with their wives and families, were picnicking in
Elm Park in New York City. Six hundred Roman Catholic Irish
rushed them to revenge the death of a Roman Catholic
alderman some months before. Several on both sides were
killed and many others were wounded.
The bloodiest massacre of Irish Roman Catholics came one
year later on July 12, 1871, when New York militiamen killed
fifty-one. One hundred Orangemen had determined to conduct a parade in New York City in honor of the anniversary of
the Battle of the Boyne, a great day in Protestant Irish history.
Several thousand Roman Catholic Irishmen determined that
no such dirty thing should take place. Yet, the Orangemen
paraded. They were chaperoned by five companies of militia.
At 24th Street and 8th Avenue the parade was rushed by the
Roman Catholics. The militia fired one volley to kill 51 of the
attackers.
,_
I don't know about you - but I majored in American History
in college, at graduate level for my M.A. degree, and I never
learned at any level that these activities went on. I was told
that all was sweetness and light from the beginning of religion
in the U.S. to the end. Looking at it now, I have to say the
Roman Catholic Irish had a hard time. I wonder how they stuck
it out here in America. I understand now my father's family
pride in being Orangemen and Protestant. But, I would never
have found out about it from reading history in American
schools.
Well, we learn. Our history would be more interesting and
more informative and instructional if only the entire tale was
told. I try to do that in these American Atheist Radio programs
...:.and it leads me to feel quite sorry for the poor Roman Irish
Catholics of those times - so indoctrinated into their mindsets that they could not change - and that coming from a good
Irish Orangeman's descendantl
This informational broadcast is brought to you as a public
service by the Society of Separationists. Inc . a non-profit.
non-political. educational organization dedicated to the complete and absolute separation of state and church. This series
of American Atheist Radio programs is continued through
listener generosity. please? The Society of Seperstionists,
Inc . predicates it philosophy on American Atheism. For more
information write to P. O. Box 2117, Austin, Texas 78768.

THERMIDOR

188 [8/80)

PAGE 37

FILMREVIEW

0000000000000000000

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~'I

TTIBETrn-rllTfTno
SEDUCTION 'OFI1II~
II1I

'11

0lc-U.J I JOE TYNANWllLo

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elaine stansfield

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0'0 0 0 0 0 000.

Tibet
It was my pleasure to attend a conference sponsored by the U.S.-China
Peoples' Friendship Association. The
first evening we were shown Tibet, an
excellent film produced in England by
Felix, Elena and Ann Greene. I bring
it to your attention because, although
it is not a commercial "story movie," it
is a documentary of such compelling
overall condemnation
of the way
things were in this religiously dominated country, it would almost be worth
your joining the USCPFA in order to
see it. Admittedly propagandistic, it
nevertheless tells a rather straightforward, realistic story of how the
Buddhists controlled the people, lived
in opulence, but kept the masses in
incredible poverty. It doggedly pursues
these people, with an interpreter, and
the evidence seems overwhelming. It
also presents us with a happy ending.
Did you know, for example, that it
was almost a routine matter for the
people to present their boy-children to
the monks as a gift - children they
could not care for - at the age of
seven, in hopes that the Dalai Lama
would give them a better life than they
could hope to give themn? But that in
the religious hierarchy, they were
actually called "serf monks" who were
simply kept to do the hard work, the
dirty work, barefoot?
In searching my mernorv back tothe
days when Tibet was in the news
because it was being invaded by
China, I mostly recall the newspapers
telling us that it was a lovely, quiet,
religious country, minding its own
business, its people taking care of
each other, but being forced by the
Chinese to climb ever higher on their
precarious mountains where it was
increasingly difficult to go on about
the business of living.
This film tells a far different story.
Piecing the two stories together might
bring about the truth, but there is
overwhelming evidence here that the
serf monks, despite their terrible servitude, were just an edge better off

PAGE 38

than the masses, who lived in bitter

cold poverty, and the ruling Buddhists
did nothing to help them beyond taking their money and requiring them to
climb the temple stairs on their knees.
The Chinese say they scarcely fired
a shot in their quick takeover since the
Buddhists surrendered as soon as
they saw they were outnumbered. The
Chinese soldiers returned to China,
and the occupying Chinese set about
. teaching the people how to grow better crops, hpw to keep from having so
many babies, and put their children in
school for the first time. They continued this "gentling"
for approximately seven years,' at which time
they proclaimed the people of Tibet
able to continue on their own.
From what we saw in the film, there
is every evidence that the country is
finally entering the 20th century. The
temples no longer serve as mandate to
attend church, but are rather relics or
museums, reminders of a former dictatcrship. The monks have been given
their freedom, but for the older ones,
who found that too difficult, provisions
were made for them to continue their
lives there. The truth? M-ost of it looks
that way.

The Seduction of Joe Tynan

This movie was an unqualified hit
and has made Alan Aide) the latest hot
star in Hollywood. So, it deserves to be
considered in perspective. Although
Alan Aida, star of the durable
M*A*S*H is a charming man, and a'
sensitive actor, .this picture somehow'
THERMIDOR

188 [8/80)

missed fire, despite it having reaped

big box-office earnings. Perhaps it
seems to fail partly because the subject was better covered in Robert Redford's The Candidate, and partly because the issues involved are neither
new nor exciting. The idea that Aida's
senator is fighting for equal rights for
Blacks against a venerable Southern
senator, played to the hilt by Melvyn
Douglas, somehow does not exactly
stimulate the controversy it once did.
Nor does the fact that he gets involved with an interesting
activist
woman in Washington, while his wife
and family are still back in his home
state. Both women love him, because
he is a good man trying to do right.
Perhaps, ironically, in a situation 'explosive with conflict, he is so reasonable and fair a man that it never
explodes. It is logical that he would be
attracted to the aide, played very nicely by newcomer Meryl Streep (who is
not, however, the electrifying beauty
some critics seem to think - though
she is establishing a beautiful reputation in terms of talent), because we
know that's the way it is 1,~WaShington. We know many marriages have
foundered on this split in a legislator's
life. But it is also logical that he would
honorably end up with his wife (if she
still wants him back) because Barbara
Harris makes her intriguing whilewe
sympathize with her frustrations.
The one thing we are spared is
hearing him spout god and the American flag. We are spared even the
implication that he is a religious super-patriot. We are given to understand that he is a good man because
he is a good man, not because he is
religious. In these "born again" days
on the political scene, perhaps that is
almost enough to recommend it. It
may be that, as the author, Aida
should not have starred in his own
script, but the setting is interesting,
and the people valid, real people.

AMERICAN

ATHEIST

BOOK REVIEW

AN ATHEIST'S BERTRAND RUSSELL

Edited by Jon Garth Murray
With this important addition to the catalogue of
American Atheist Press publications, Jon Garth Murray
joins his famous mother, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who
edited the Arno Press collection of Atheist essays by
Russell, in preserving and bringing tothe reading public
the Atheist works of the supreme philosopher of the
20th century. Some of the essays in this work appeared
in the earlier Arno Press collection edited by Dr. O'Hair,
but others have not seen print in too many years.
Characteristically, the source of all these essays was
Haldeman-Julius Publication's, booklets published in
the late 40s.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)was not only born an
Atheist, as every human is, but born to be an Atheist.
Both his parents, Viscount Amberly and Katherine
Amberly, were Atheists and had determined to raise
their two children as such. Unfortunately, by the time
Russell was four, both parents were dead. In their will,
the children were to be raised by Atheist friends of the
Amberlys, but their Christian grandparents ha9 little
trouble getting custody of them with the willing aid of a
court glad to throw out the Amberly will in order to
"win" two more minds for Christianity.
In Russell's case, it did no good. By age eleven the
brilliant boy had figured out the Bible was nothing but
myth and nonsense. He went on from there to become
one of the greatest Materialist philosophers of all time.
Ever since 1903, when his Principia Mathematica (coauthored with Alfred North Whitehead) was published,
Russell has been a major influence in the 20th century.
His Atheism was the foundation upon which he erected
his intellectual monument.
As in the case of every other major and minor
Atheist thinker of the first half of the 20th century,
Russell's Atheist essays were offered inexpensively to
the common person by Haldeman-Julius Publications,
founded by E. Haldeman-Julius, who was an Atheist
himself, as well as the father of the paperback book
industry. The essays gathered here are taken from
various Haldeman-Julius Publications booklets, each
bearing the title ofthe Russell essay that "starred" in it.
IS MATERIALISM BANKRUPT? is a lucid
explanation of why Materialism remains valid even
though advances in physics in the 20th century have
proven that the "solidness" of matter is only an illusion.
This is an important essay, since Atheism is predicated
on the ancient Greek philosophy of Materialism. It is
also an understandable description of what "matter" is
AUSTIN, TEXAS

in the eyes of the modern physicist.

IDEAS THAT HAVE HARMED

IDEAS THAT HAVE HELPED MANKIND

returns to the subject of what influences human behavior. Russell divides these beneficial ideas into technological (i.e., the ideas of "language,"
"writing,"
"modern scientific method," and "evolution") and
ethical (i.e., the ideas of "brotherhood of man," "freedom of religion," "free speech and press," and "democracy"). His argument is that our ethical ideas must
match, the advance of our technological ideas, for we
can-not hope to benefit from science if the technology
capable of the atom bomb is guided by ethics founded on
medieval superstition.
THE FAITH OF A RATIONALIST is best
summed by Russell himself:
"No supernatural
reasons are needed to make men kind."
This collection of Bertrand Russell'sAtheist essays
will prove 'to even a dedicated sceptic that his great
reputation is no exaggeration. It is available from the
American Atheist Press for $3,29, plus $0.51 for
shipping and handling. Texas state residents must add
5% sales tax, Do .not pass up this opportunity to
experience the wisdom of this great Atheist.

THERMIDOR 188 [8/80]

~I

MANKIND

treats the problem of human behavior in context of

societies and how the ideas that dominate the collective
mind of a society have caused human behavior to be
cruel and even savage. Religious ideas naturally head
the list, followed by racist, sexist, nationalist, and
"classist" ideas. The last is really a demonstration of
how Atheism enables one to triumph over nonsense, for
Russell was a British earl - a member of one of the
most "class" conscious groups ever to have lived.
WHAT IS THE SOUL? analyzes the obsolete
concept in context of the findings of modern physics,
pointing out the basic tenet of Materialism.that there is
no soul in nature (either individual or the supersoul
called god) is backed up by the failure of science to find
any soul lurking amongst the atoms, or in them.
ON THE VALUE OF SCEPTICISM is about
scepticism as a practical intellectual tool rather than a
closet term for Atheism. Russell argues that earth might
become a paradise if only all humans practiced the
cardinal rule of scepticism: "It is undesirable to believe a
proposition when there is no ground wh-atever for
supposing it true." This practice would, as Russell
points out, preclude religionism and make everyone
more realistic in dealing with each other. Small wonder
politicians and priests' both condemn scepticism.

PAGE 39

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A ddress your reply to No. (whatever that number may be). Place
your sealed. stamped envelope in a
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ATHEIST.
PLEASE CONTACT:
COMMITTED ATHEIST WHU IS WILLING TO CARRY A
FAIR SHARE OF THE BURDEN OF FREEING THE
UNITED
STATES FROM RELIGION'S
BONDAGE!!

I AUTHORIZE A CHARGE OF $

PER MONTH FOR ONE YEAR FROM DATE BELOW [or unti(expiration of card] ON THIS CREDIT CARD BECAUSE I WANT TO
BE COUNTED AS ONE OF THE HELPING ATHEISTS, ONE WHO
CARES ENOUGH TO SEND THE VERY BEST: ....
MONEY.
(VISA or MASTERCHARGE

Only)

Charge Card No.

ITTIIillIIJ

ITIIIIJ
Beginning Date:

Signature

-'- __

Name

A::tdrMs

_
.,--

State

ZiPCIJII]

To Buv or Sell Real Estate

in the Foothills of the
Los Anqeles Area
Contact an All-American

Atheist

Spencer D. Blackwelder.

Realtor

Blackwelder
22722

AMERICAN ATHEISTS

Realtv

Foothili Boulevard

Los Anneles. CA

POST OFFICE BOX 2117 AUSTIN. TEXAS 78768

PAGE 40

Send to the same address for

subscriptions to the GALA Rff;
view: subscriptions $10.00/year;
$11.50/year
in Canada and
PUAS; elsewhere $12.50.

Expiration Date of Card

Bank No. or Code Letters

City

Gay Atheists Leaque of America

P.O. Box 14142
San Francisco. CA 94114
Membership: $15.00/year
($10.00/year
for students
and senior citizens)

THERMIDOR 188 [8/80]

91 214

AMERICAN

ATHEIST

flJrJ: [JW'UIlU'l: ~
TO 1I0lN
AMERICAN ATHEISTS
P.o. BOX 2117 AUSTIN, TX 78768
Send $ I5.00 for one year's membership and you will
receive the first newsletter, a membership card and a certificate.

/.

,4

I:r'lIf",- '~~~~~~~~~~~iiii~;.i~~~I;;;77
~I/
I

' J-l

~,'

1. (,; "TO':~~i~ulate

and promote freedom of t:~~'~ht

::n':;~~~'~'i~f:';'

concerning religious beliefs, creeds, dogmas, tenets, rituals and 'k,,;:

I
practices,
.":'
2.
To collect and disseminate information, data and literature on all
\J~"l\\.\religiOnS andpromote a more thorough understandinq of them, their ,:;7
.\: origins and histories.
,',
3.
To advocate, labor for, and promote in all lawful ways, the.~:;
'r..:j.:',complete and absolute separation of state and church; and the ,,'
establishment and maintenance of a thoroughly secular system of
\ ~~\ .' education available to all.
" .
if
4.
To encourage the development and public acceptance of a ::\
:::::;"'1;~ . l'I:r.~
.: humane ethical system, stressing the mutual sympathy, understand- '-:(,
i~fJi~:~1
ing and interdependence of all people and the corresponding re- ,
'~1i~:.qsponsibility of each, individually, in relation to society,
't' 5.
To develop and propagate a social philosophy in which man is the r.
'I';, central figure who alone must be the source of strength, progress and ::,:':
,'I
ideals for the well-being and happiness of humanity.
'
6.
Topromotethestudyoftheartsandsciencesandofallproblems:"
W."'II' 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':.

a,~~.

ft:\'r;

,:~t~w'?
--:=:~~~~~'
~ l' r
-

~r
i:

~[Jl

'i~\

, ~~~ilsocietyas a whole,

:"

t"

;;

':.

DeflnltIonS~,:

-,

1.

Atheism is the life philosophy (Weltanschauung) of persons who' 'j

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 ai ms at establishing ,~:
a system of philosophy and ethics verifiable by experience, indepen-dent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority or creeds,
.'
'3.
Materialism declares that the cosmos is devoid of immanent
I
'conscious purpose; that it is governed by its own inherent, immutable,',
and impersonal law; that there is no supernatural interference in ;
human life; that man - finding his resources within himself - can and, .
I must create his own destiny; and that his potential for good and higher:
:, development is for all practical purposes unlimited,
.:.: .....
,

,1

:.~;:~:~~.~:
::..:
....

"

THE UNTQ.LD HISTORY-1IJ '

OR HOW ORGANIZED

RELIGION

p~ YES ITS ROAD !O _P~:)'WJ~_R

~

,-;TH15 cONsJ'JrVTlON
: q1J.E~{;1iIE'~1JJ YOUR
.

"

f(

CONSTITUTION OF THE (J/yI7iED MEXICAN STATES

~Rr5 --AN'r'

THE STATE CANNOT PERMIT

isATTACKING
FREE:f)GM.!
.

))

THE EXECUTION 0':

CON"FRACr; COVENANT ORAGREEMENT

"'~.~IN(ii

r:OR,ITS 08JECT THEiREStRrCTlON,.LOS5 0/tIlRI6.()('JJ;;1

'8LE SACRIFIce OPTHE UBERTY OF MAN, WHeTJlER .

FORIWORK"EDVCATIONORRELlGIB.(JS vows. THe-LAW

. THEREfORE DOcS NOTPERMITfiTHESTA8J./5HMENT,1
(~'t:)OF /rfONASTlC'ORDER5
WHATeVER BE -THEIR

DENOMINA.TI(;)N ORrPVRP'@"$.E. . ..
.
.... EVERV RELlGIOI1S IACl/,I:)RPUSl1tle:w.OR5HIP:
Musr 8E PERFORMED STRICTLY INSIDE PLACES
OF f!>()BLlC WOR5HIP.
_
Fff 27 - RELIGIO(}S INSTIT(JTlONS:J(NOWN AS CHURCHES,
-REGARDLESS
OF CREED MAY IMNO CASE:4CQflIRE;
HOLD ORiADMINISJiERJRIiA'lJPROPEflliV
ORROW

M~lili(i'AGES'TJ.leREONi'
ONDeR NO CIRcuM~
STANCES, MA'IWSTJTUTlqI1lS BF THIS'f(/Nf).{5cHoii.~
H(J$1?JTALS, etc:)8EQlYDFR7HE'PArRO"'1f6~ DI..,
RECbIO", ADMINISTRATION,
CHARGE OR S!1PER'
V4510NOF REL1(jIOtJS(()RP5BS>()RtlN5lf1iTJJf~()NS.,~
.
ARTI3Q'- TOlFfRAcr/CE .7JflE5MtNIST.1ilrlrPPM:Yl)BR@M ...'
--INATIONIN
THE V,M,S. J1FIS7VECES5ARY "'I'O,BE
A:MEXICAN 8'1 BIRTH.
MiNISTERS OFDENOM!NATlOf(5""AY.NeVErL~; IHAcTS
.(JF W(JRSBI21)1FRE"LIGitffls..Pf{OPA6AN/)J/
CRIT-,
1(1Z. THE FUNDAMENTAL ZAW50FTHeCOUNTRy. .

ON J(JL '11'126. AMBR06/0iRATTI,

'lIJ5~".1HE
CHURCH,
DEMAN/)
i

THEABOLITION
OF..THE

MEXICAN .
CONSTITUTION!

, 1IL/AS. PI(JS'X/, CALLS THEPEOPlE

.OP Mt!xlco TO REBELLION' A~

,GAIN5T
T,HE GOVRNMeN~
EXCOMMI/NICATING AN'r'ONE
1.,..----.. WHO OoESN'T OBEY SUCH
- OADER.
"GOAHD FI6HTFOR GOD, <?4
'AND KILL HERt=TI,CS;" 60iAND
: -/JESmOY(THt IMPI()IJS PROTES. TANTS ARD MASONS7N:IBC

.GOVERNMENr.",
c.:
OF CALLES . ,

-fllfRADE5 A6AINST THE CONSTfT(J[J(JN

! ,

rEAGUE .FOR THE DEFE.NSE ~

,._.OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN IN THE UNITED STATES,

:1