Emergency...!

I had reason to run to the hospital emergency room for a little help yesterday evening.  Health-wise it worked out just fine, but...

The gosh darn hospital is virtually littered with Gideon Bibles.  They're everywhere.  And I'm not kidding.

I tossed four of them in the trash while I was there.  The one off the waiting room table where I sat; the one I found on a vacant chair in the triage nurse's office; the one from the treatment room where I was seen by the doctor and finally the extra one I picked up passing through the lobby on my way out all went straight into the nearest bin.  (You're welcome, everyone.)

Now I have to ask: If instead of Bibles these books had been Yellow Pages advertising books or copies of Darwin's Origin of the Species would the hospital and everyone else around be so numb to their presence?  If these were General Motors auto repair books, wouldn't someone complain that a car manufacturer had no place hawking its products in a public facility?  Why then are Bibles allowed?  Is the church paying everyone's medical bills these days and are they providing salaries for the staff?  Are they the ones who erected the building and maintain it?  What's up with this special privilege for religion at our hospitals?

I don't think the Koran would get as warm a welcome or be so blindly tolerated as the Bible seems to be.  And Gideon Bible or not, Koran or King James version or whatever, hasn't anyone got any sense of church/state separation left in them?  Bibles are instruments of private religions.  Hospitals are public places of science and medicine.  The two don't mix at all.

Visit your local hospital and see for yourself.  While you're there, toss a Bible in the trash.  And let's ask a few questions about what's going to be done to put an end to this practice of selling religion in public places. 

. Emergency...!

This is called organizing:

Reprinted from an SCA newsletter, March 31, 2010
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SCA Executive Director Unveils Bold Plan for "Our Secular Decade"

The next ten years will bring about major advances for the secular movement, according to a plan unveiled to members of the secular and nontheist communities on February 26, following the historic meeting with administration officials. Sean Faircloth, the Secular Coalition for America's Executive Director, revealed a comprehensive, long-term strategy for realizing the goals of the secular movement and outlining the milestones that will indicate the kind of progress that will be made. Steps to move forward on this plan in the Secular Coalition for America's 2010 budget were approved by its Board of Directors at its January meeting.

Faircloth outlined eight primary tactics that the Secular Coalition for America will execute to bring Secular Americans further into the forefront of American society and give it greater political influence:

1. Expanding the issue base of the Secular Coalition for America
2. Increasing already-strong lobbying efforts in Washington
3. Producing communications materials that connect emotionally with a broader community
4. Engaging in more robust networking of secular and nontheist Americans
5. Undertaking a "50-state strategy" in which the SCA sparks a grassroots effort leading to active volunteer advocacy networks in all fifty states before December 2019
6. Seeking out the "apatheistic" and the functionally secular, expanding outreach to women and younger people and bringing the Secular Coalition for America's message to other potentially sympathetic groups, such as scientists, libertarians and LGBT nontheists--all in service of increased membership for the SCA's ten member organizations, and strengthening the coalition--see a list of SCA member organizations here
7. Holding a secular policy summit that is tailored to policy and coalition leadership strategy
8. Instituting an internship program on Capitol Hill

Said Faircloth of the plan in an article for Humanist Network News, "We believe strongly in a rational worldview. Our compassion and decency mandated by that worldview leaves no one out--even those with whom we disagree. This plan will lead Secular Americans to our rightful national leadership role."

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Let's get on the ball everyone.  Organize your local on-the-ground groups and support the efforts of your national organizations.

. This is called organizing:

What makes good a meeting topic?

Have you heard enough debunking of the Bible?  Do you really need to be shown a second, third or fiftieth time that the nonsense of religion is actually nonsense?  Gosh, I don't.  But what is there to discuss at an atheist meeting if not this?

Are you interested in Darwin?  Are you ready to hear more about evolutionary changes over the eons of time since life emerged?  Really?   How much detail is enough?  The subject spans more than a hundred years. If you need more,  of it, then why not attend a university and take a class on the subject?

How about cosmology?  Are you deep into physics enough so that you're ready to listen from the edge of your seat to a lengthy survey on that subject?  Are you that hooked on particles?

History then...? The same sort of dried complaints could be applied, couldn't they?

It's my guess that many of you are as warn out on some of this stuff as I am.  There are just so many hours I'm willing and able to commit to participating in the atheist/secular movement and I'm hardly prepared to invest that time attending a meeting that fails to address the kind of things that need voice.  What are we doing to promote social change? How are we planning to overcome discrimination?  Are we making progress at getting better assemblies and action groups established to lead our nation and our world into the next new age of enlightenment?

While some highlights of science subjects are appropriate to mention in passing and ought to be meted out in small doses they hardly make good meeting subjects when served up as the main course.  The same is true for mocking and debunking tired out religions crap.... Let's leave didactics and academia for the classroom.  Been there; done that.  Let's move on to the real world for a change.

My idea of good meeting subjects (or of format, really) for atheists has evolved to become more that of desiring discourse on open questions rather than listening to a prepared lecture.   I like the structure of an open forum and the bantering of ideas set to problem solving.  Debate is healthy.  This kind of thing is far, far more my style than submitting just to listen, and I'll bet that's true for most of us.  I really don't enjoy hearing anything delivered from a top-down lecture point of view regardless of how well the assembled information may be stacked.  Lets face it, classrooms and lecturers can be as boring as church meetings and preachers.

To have a good meeting, I say... kick ideas around the room.  Ask for answers to practical questions; ask for solutions and see if your meetings start to become much livelier, better attended and more productive at effectively resulting in the kind of changes your community really needs.  Start holding town meetings... forums... and debates at your meetings.  You'll be glad you did.   

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What makes good a meeting topic?

Have you read...?

Have you read "The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster"?  No...?  Hmmm.  That's odd.

The purpose of this blog post is to point out the need of the freethough movement to begin opening its eyes to snuggling-up to an ally it didn't know it had.  The Library.

Like atheists and agnostics and all the rest of our numbers by name, libraries are ubiquitous.  There isn't a town anywhere that doesn't have one and it's high time we non-religionists take note of that.  Libraries are like churches for atheists... or they ought to be.  Our goals are quite similar, after all.  Both the library and the non-religious community want to share knowledge on a broad basis.  We want people to read widely and learn.  We're both interested in building the best and most informed community we can have.  We're a natural marriage couple, no doubt.

I don't intend to spoon feed how important this notion is to advancing secular society.  You can all think that out on your own, but I do hope to encourage that you lend additional thought to using your local school and state library systems as partners - as churches of real knowledge - and that you ought to tailor the activities of you grassroots group-building efforts to take full advantage of this built-in ally by employing and exploiting everything it has to offer - meeting space, internet, A/V, books  (the ones you want can be ordered) and an attitude to spread the knowledge of the world's real scholars.

I wonder... does the library shelve "The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster"?   Hmmm... good question.  I'll ask.

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Have you read...?

Get off your duff and do your stuff:

I've been active at organizing for atheism for some time now and I've arrived, again and again, at moments to take my breath, to pause just a moment or two, and then, to resume pressing forward.  I'm doing what I know is right for myself, what's right for the sake of reason and what's right for America and the world. Yup... all of those!

Reluctance of leaders to organize, group to group across each state and state to state across the nation ought to be seen as a crime by atheists, yet it exists and its shameful!  The problem is perhaps fear.  "What will the community think?"  "What will my friends and family say?"  "What if I try and I fail?"  Reluctance toward activism stinks.

A reluctant leader is no leader at all.  Each of us must recognize a responsibility to take the lead when others won't.  Lead yourself and others will follow.  That's how grassroots movements work.

Now... Get off your duff and do your stuff.  We have a movement to fuel.  Get out there! Get going! Get organized!  Have your ideas of what needs doing and do them.  Share your goals with neighboring groups.  Improve communication.  Seek like minds and fellow activists.  Work for change where change is needed but stand up to vigorously defend that which already works.  We are the people.
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Get off your duff and do your stuff:

So far to the right they've fallen off the edge of the world...

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The latest Harris poll shows just how far to the far-right the right wing has gone - way, way, way to far.  Holy cows.

I suspect this poll marks the point where Republican party leadership has lost its grip on its' own party name.  To a Republican "Republican" can no longer feel or mean what "Republican" meant just two years ago.  The party name, it seems, has been stolen away from the greatest number of conservatives, moderate conservatives, and traditional right-wing voters, i.e., the name "Republican" has been jerked out from under the feet of most of the people who would have once called themselves Republican.  And who's to blame?  Can you say Sarah?  Can you say Glen Beck or Fox News?  Can you say hawk radio?

Honestly...!  Who in the world would still be wacko enough to call themselves "Republican" after reviewing the wacko ideas and beliefs of what this, the latest poll, exposes about conservative America... See these current poll results (current ... as in 'right now'). The Harris Poll. Now, ask yourself: Is this for real..?  Well, guess what, it is!!!

Extremism, far right radicalism, is being exposed for all of us to see.  It's coming out in the open  self-righteously, all on its own and it is ugly.
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About the poles...?

I find it perplexing, even amusingly so, that two groups of people of reasonably equal intelligence can both live in and observe the same world, review the same data, digest it, and then arrive at entirely opposing points of conclusion on the question of gods, prayer, miracles, after-death life and such.  Like North and South poles, that's the way things are on the topic of religion. And how strange all of that is.

But its a mirage, and an obvious one in fact, whenever one takes the time to look more closely.  One of the polarized groups does more speaking from its pole than it does believing in it.  Which group?  Do you really have to ask... honestly?  The religionists, of course.

How often do we here terms like cherry picker, hypocrite, and apologist preceding or following the name of anyone who would claim belief in gods?  Not often enough, I'm disappointed to say  since the facts of the matter, if anyone would bother to gather those facts, might tell us just how prevalent falsifying ones claim of belief truly is among believers.  My impression is that they are all liars... none of them come close to believing what they say they do.  And aren't they all so willing to admit their occasional struggle with doubt... Good gosh.  When in the world will they ever think wisely enough upon that doubt to change their habits?

Ask a believer to tell how much he believes in a particular tenant of his religion, such as intercessory prayer or after-life or original sin, and then listen.  The gyrations and mental gymnastics displayed while answering are amazing... and often very amusing.  It's my habit to remind them of such whenever I get the chance.  It's a conviction of mine that I have a moral obligation to feed the doubt of believers until they finally act upon it rationally.

In a world where atheists would occupy the North pole and believers would gravitate in precisely the opposite direction, I'd say the South pole would never see a first foot set upon it.  The faithful don't believe even half of what they claim to believe.... They lie.  And that's the truth.     

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About the poles...?

This is fun... and useful all in one.

It wasn't my idea, I'm sorry to say, but its a darn good idea and I hope you'll all have some fun with it.  FREE WANT ADS.

Apparently it began with a few student-types down in Little Rock Arkansas who were tired of reading one after another of 'prayer items' and 'Bible quotes' in the daily want ad section of the newspaper.  And taking an attitude of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," they decided to send in a few of their own opinions... but theirs were freethought and atheist opinions.  The aim was to give the personal and announcement classified columns some better balance.  The result was that it caught on... Atheist "Mystery" posts started popping up and nobody knew who or where they were coming from. 

It reminded me of something I've discovered... you can't go into any community anywhere no matter how churchy it looks and expect it to be devoid of atheists.  We are!  And, we are everywhere. Now, even the personal ads and classifieds of the newspaper bares it out.

So have some fun... Post a free want ad or two.  Here's my latest: a Chapman Cohen quote, "Gods are Fragile things; they can be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense."  Truer words have seldom been spoken, and now, perhaps gods can also be killed by a FREE WANT AD.
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 .............................................................................

UPDATE:  Since posting this, I've elected to run a couple of ads in the paper and (funny thing) I received an email from a newspaper employee, the classified supervisor, about my ads.  Hmmm... I wonder if they do that for every FREE classified requested?  Here's the email:

Randall,  if we run your opinion ads they must state your name and city you are in.  

Do you wish to go ahead and place the ad?   Also we will only run one at a time.  

Thank the gods that you have reason and then realize by reason there

are no gods. 

Thank you,

Cathy Wiles

Classified Supervisor

479-571-6421

Was the purpose of this communication meant to dissuade me to fearfully change my opinion or to cower and keep my opinion tucked away in the dark of a closet?  I wonder... 

 

Donate... SCA works.

 Donate... SCA works.

Non-religious community service: here's a tip...

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Many of our skeptic and freethought groups have gotten into taking community service seriously.  Roadside clean-up is just one of the activities groups have opted to perform.  Atheists have pitched in to pick-up and that's good.

And, thanks to the law, roadside cleanup can result in more than just a tidied-up ditch.  It can also reach out to result in assisting to tidy-up messy thinking.  Unauthorized roadside crosses erected by well meaning friends and meant to commemorate the tragedy of a lost life to auto accidents are... "unauthorized."  It's that simple.  These little religious reminders - knee jerk triggers to think god and pray - aren't officially allowed.  

To the person who erected the cross, its an act of healing and a way to overcome temporary grief.  Okay... good enough.  And, I can understand and sympathize with those who feel the need to erect "memorial" crosses.  But is this allowed on public land?  No.  Absolutely not.  In fact, it's tantamount to an act of littering and/or vandalism.

People suffering the loss of family or friend to a roadside auto wreck (I'm so sorry to say) must find some other method to satisfy their grief.  The law doesn't allow special privileges upon its public lands - crosses or no crosses - for erecting monuments, signs or whatnot when friends and relatives die.  That's the way it is and that's the way it's got to be.     

So... has your group decided to take on the duty to pick-up and clean-up a public way?  Well... don't feel limited to collecting just tin cans from a single stretch of roadside.  If you see a roadside cross, you have every legal permission you'd like (and perhaps some moral obligation as well) to jerk that stick of wood out of the ground and pitch it in the trash...

Help keep America beautiful.  Dig up and toss out every unauthorized roadside cross you see!         

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Non-religious community service: here's a tip...
  

The assumed welcome: Christian Prayer

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It's been a hot issue all over the country - Christian prayer offerings - but who really asks for it?

There's an assumed welcome mat for prayer laying at the door of just about every public assembly of people everywhere.  Town meetings, political gatherings, commencement exercises, sporting events and the like seem to all have become "fair game" to begin by prayer or to somehow otherwise include some sort of god recognition.  It's an understood done-deal tradition... or at least it use to be.

Who asks for these prayer moments?  Not me, that's for sure, and I really don't think that most of the people who attend these functions, Christian or not, actually give any honest thought to wanting a prayer said wherever they intend to gather in mass.  So who's to blame?

Meeting and event organizers all seem stuck in the same gear.  They have an agenda to fill and it's part of the job of organizing to fill it; but, why fill it with religious bias?  Is it a knee-jerk on the part of meeting hosts?  Is it failed creativity, failed empathy for minorities, failed understanding and respect for first amendment rights to liberty and justice for all?  Just where does this assumed need for prayer come from?

In my mind its a mixed bag.  Meeting planners and hosts, at least in the past few years, have become far more aware of the possibility for negative reactions to any inclusion of any planned group prayer they may offer at an event; (or at least they should have become more aware) yet, there has hardly been any sharp decrease of the habit to include such invocations and the like - more and more, it seems, at every turn.  In fact, it sometimes appears that organized public prayer moments have popped up with greater frequency rather than not.  Is it stubborn backlash?  Personally, I think that could be it.

But what's to be done...?  How about shouting out in protest?  How about filing suit?  How about getting a spot on the event planning committee and then changing the way things go? Try this on for size: Fiendly Atheist, Hemant Mehta, posted this about invocational prayer.

Its high time to do away with the old notions that prayer at public meeting are universally welcomed.  Especially since THEY'RE NOT!  

Get involved in a freethought or skeptic group.  There's plenty to do that needs your help.  

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The assumed welcome: Christian Prayer

We've got the right formula.

We've got the right formula.

Community building doesn't have to revolve around nonsense beliefs... Our atheists groups are managing to mix high ethical standards, intellectual integrity and community building successfully into our organizations and all for betterment of society tomorrow.

Unlike church-sponsored misinformation, offering its notions of superior absolutes in top down fashion to mere mortals, atheist communities celebrate the facts of reality, all of the facts - the nice ones and the not so nice ones included.  We include everything which is brought to us from all levels of human participation and nature.    

We've got the right formula.  Knowing and accepting reality as it is is a far, far better way to find happiness than cowering under the ideas and words of false protection.  The gods aren't there and we non-believers are able to live with it just as we we're able to let go of our Santa Clause fantasies as children.

Our communities are growing up healthy and strong and I suspect they will continue to do so.

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Stop Texas...!

Stop Texas...!

Whether to allow bias Christian brainwashing of our nation's children is a question that will be on the Texas board of education bargaining table this spring.  Of course, the question won't be posed in quite those words, but that's the bottom line.

Text book companies are annually persuaded to write the pages of their school books according to the whims of the Texas school board.  Why?  Because Texas is the largest book buying state in the nation.  It's that simple.  The board of education in Texas wields so much power over the schoolbook business that if it should would one day decide that 2+2 does not equal 4 our nations kids might all have to re-learn the answer to this basic addition problem.

A key battle line is drawn in the sand and the sides are currently gathering troops.  The question: Will the establishment clause of the first amendment be included as an important subject for study?  Texas State Board Rejects Teaching About Establishment Clause  Moreover, the agenda written by far-right evangelical fundamentalists goes farhter.  It desires nothing less than to carry on with its dishonest program of spreading misinformation at every opportunity. From the Dallas Morning News: Board member Don McLeroy, R-College Station, said he would seek board approval today for several amendments to the U.S. history standards, including one that would highlight Judeo-Christian values in American history.  "Highlighting Judeo-Christian values" means, in other words, that Mr McLeroy intends to overly emphasize the remarkably few Christian heritage references which can are found among actual history... and he intends to skew the import of those documents to forward his bis notions.

Omission of teaching the intent and meaning of the establishment clause, the very first item of our human rights as protected under the first amendment, and failing to teach history as history actually was will leave the door wide open for Christian aggressors to continue their agenda of spreading false notions about America's history and its heritage - a heritage they wish to falsely paint as one which is brightly colored in glittery Christian richness.  

Reason minded people, we the atheist community and all of our non-religious allies must not overlook the far reaching importance of winning or losing this heavy-hitting controversial fight. Get with it atheists... stand up and demand that our country must be lead by common sense reason and intellectual honesty.   Stop Texas.  Nothing less will do.

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Duck and cover - The Blitz is on.

Duck and cover - The Blitz is on.

I was there as a school kid in the fifties, hiding under my desk just like everyone else for every practice air-raid drill.  It was an integrated part of growing up to learn that the US had a nasty enemy - the Soviet Union.

Today, kids ought to be practicing something similar to "duck and cover."  They need to learn to shield their eyes and minds from a barrage of misinformation - a real barrage and not just a practice drill.  Attacks on the actual  events of history are increasing annually and, if evangelical Christianity gets their way, it is about to come from the pages of classroom textbooks.  So you see, lessons to "duck and cover" are still needed in the US.  We still have a nasty enemy and kids need to learn how to protect themselves from it.

But should kids be on their own to escape the BS that's tossed at them?  Look at this Google list of articles found by a simple search: "Rewrite history, Christian nation, textbooks."  The Christian propaganda machine is running at full speed ahead.  Something has to be done to right the wrong.

Wake up America... Lets get cracking atheists... We've got serious work to do if we want to preserve liberty and justice for all here in our United States.  History is history, after all, and it's on us to demand that the whole truth must be told as it actually was and not as it might be pleasing to the agendas of the god-believing crowd.  A few cherry-picked "God" statements must not be allowed to become the painted representation of our nation's founding.  Kids deserve better than to be brainwashed and we have a responsibility to protect them. 

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Stuff we've been waiting for

This is the stuff we've been waiting for since Obama's election...

From the Executive Director [of the Council for Secular Humanism]
by Tom Flynn  

On Taking a Seat at the Table
Getting into the White House (okay, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, just next door) is only slightly easier than getting onto an airplane. You get to keep your shoes on.

The scene was somewhat surreal on Friday, February 26. The bulletproof glass enclosures. The metal detectors. The taut-backed security agents whose ribbed sweaters couldn’t quite hide the telltale bulges of their body armor.

And milling through the checkpoints with me? Damn near everyone I know among the leaders of America’s “nonbeliever” organizations: Ed Buckner, president of American Atheists and some years ago executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism; Roy Speckhardt of the American Humanist Association; and Secular Coalition for America (SCA) founder Herb Silverman. (A few friends I’d looked forward to seeing weren’t there because a snowstorm had stranded them in New York City.) With me were the other members of the Council for Secular Humanism’s delegation: CFI/Office of Public Policy director Toni van Pelt, CFI/D.C. director Melody Hensley, and CFI/D.C. science adviser Stuart Jordan.

We were all there to spend an hour and a half exchanging views with the Obama administration in a White House briefing arranged by SCA (of which the Council is a member).

Perhaps sixty secular humanists, religious humanists, atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers, and more than half a dozen officials of the administration, gathered in a spacious auditorium in the Executive Office Building.

The Council Delegation: Melody Hensley, Tom Flynn, Stuart Jordan, and Toni van Pelt

White House rules preclude me from identifying the officials or what they said; suffice it to say that assistant secretaries of three departments were among them. Only a handful of us got to speak, and appropriately so, as time was tight. (As we knew we would, the rest of us had to content ourselves with sitting there and looking very, very secular.)

Into that hour and half were compressed inevitable platitudes but also incisive discussion (on the part of our community’s representatives) on three issues: religion-based child abuse and neglect, discrimination against nonbelievers in the armed forces, and constitutional issues involving the faith-based initiatives. SCA legislative director Sasha Bartolf and executive director Sean Faircloth kept the pace and the quality satisfyingly high.

And I don’t think I’m breaking the rules to say that the administration officials present appeared to listen intently and responded meaningfully to our concerns.

Was it all lip service? I honestly don’t know; future events will tell us whether our discussions will lead to any noticeable change. But the specific results of this briefing are less important than the simple fact that it occurred.

For the first time in the history of the United States, representatives of the nonbelieving community were invited to take part in national policy dialogue at the White House level. We have taken our seat at the table alongside every other properly recognized interest group. On one view, it’s easy to carp that this was far too late in coming; by one common measure there are nearly fifty million American men, women, and children who live without religious belief—more people than belong to any single American religious denomination except Roman Catholicism. By any common-sense standard we should have enjoyed this recognition decades ago.

Of course common sense has little influence on the long-standing American aversion to nonbelief. The usual suspects on the right were outraged. Some right-wing bloggers suggested that we’d sat down with Obama himself (sadly not)—not for a briefing but rather to plot together the final ejection of Christianity from the public square. Fat chance! Fox News bloviator Sean Hannity didn’t go quite that far, but he did treat his viewers to the dumbfounding claim that in meeting with nonbelievers, the Obama administration had done something for us that had never been offered to religious groups! (The White House spurns religious groups and leaders, right. And who was that with the Dalai Lama the other week—one of Obama’s body doubles?)

Never mind, for now, that our community’s recognition was overdue. Now is when that overdue recognition occurred. Now is when the first U.S. president to acknowledge our community in an inaugural address occupies the White House. And from this moment forward, our movement will be on the inside, not the outside looking in. One thing we absolutely know after this briefing: it will not be the only one. Secular humanists and all their allies will be full participants in policy dialogues from now on.

In three words, this is huge.

I’m proud that the Council for Secular Humanism could be a part of it. I’m gratified that nonbelieving Americans have taken their seats at the table. And I didn’t even have to take my shoes off.

Tom Flynn is executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism and editor of its magazine Free Inquiry

It's a good first step.  Let's see where it goes from here.

Hurray for us... Secular Coalition for America

Hurray for us...

Secular Coalition for America, headed by Sean Faircloth, has hit a home run for all reason-minded Americans by meeting with President Obama and seeking actions that reflect a true patriotism and support for our US Bill of Rights as consistently shown in our non-religious community.  SCFA... hats off to you!

Here's a reprint of the news:

Dear Randall,
We made history last week. On February 26, the Secular Coalition for America, along with a unified delegation of members of the secular movement from across the country, sat down with White House representatives for an official policy briefing-the first of its kind for American nontheists.

Never before has a U.S. presidential administration held such an event with the secular movement, and it's the latest indication that we are gaining significant momentum, and that secular Americans, numbering in the tens of millions, are a constituency that must be included in national policy decisions.

Since our meeting, rightwing groups have been telling the media that ours is a "hate-filled" coalition, but the truth is that our message could not have been more compassionate and constructive. We used this historic opportunity to call for protecting children from religiously-based medical neglect, ending military proselytizing, and ending tax-funded faith-based initiatives which discriminate and proselytize. 

The Secular Coalition for America has big goals for the coming months and years. We're executing a strategy that will see us expanding our base of issues, increasing our lobbying efforts, and generating new and innovative ways for secular Americans to connect, network, and get active throughout America--but we need your help.  
None of our plans can be realized without your support. Please donate now. Any amount you provide helps get us closer to becoming an undeniable political force which must be taken into account by those in power.  Donate, and help Secular Americans claim our seat at the political table today.

Sean Faircloth
Executive Director
Secular Coalition for America

P.S. - Our official statements presented to the administration are available here. And we're still interested in your perspective on what additional issues you'd like to see emphasized as we go forward. If you were in the room with White House officials, what issues would you bring up? Vote now in our poll to let us know!
Questions? Comments? Contact us (Please DO NOT HIT REPLY -- no one will see your message.)

.

 

I wonder. I wonder...

I wonder. I wonder...

Since a few weeks ago when Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute paid his visit to the University of Arkansas campus to sell (Hmmm... How shall I say it?) ...his load of crap, I've been curious about where and when the next creationist will surface - Luskin's Arkansas visit nearly took us by surprise.  So far I've been surprised (and pleased).  The ID folks have kept to themselves by staying close to home.  (And ain't life just grand sometimes?) 

But while perusing their site this caught my eye: a lecture title; The Role of Christianity in the Founding of Modern Science - Speaker: Jack Collins. 

Um?  Come on now guys and gals, is this a joke?

Honestly... if during this lecture only the facts are given, could 30 minutes of absolute silence even be considered a lecture?  What could possibly amount to a "founding role" played by fundie-style Christianity for the spawning modern science?

But wait... Perhaps I'm assuming to much here.  Perhaps the "role" played by primative fundies wasn't one giving support but rather that it was a role of tossing water on the original Bunsun burner.  I wonder?

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