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In This Issue: "The Evolution of an American Myth: Alcohol
Abuse and the Diseasing of America" by Dr. Louis Regal At the August 20th Meeting: What the public "knows" about certain "facts" and "issues" is problematic. That is, people grow up believing the "facts of life" are what they have been told by their parents, friends, relatives, teachers, clergy, etc. As individuals leave adolescence and move into adulthood, they add to their sources of information by relying more on the media, the internet, discussions, etc. Opinions are formed and they are very resistant to change. Scholars have decried the high rate of scientific illiteracy that exists in the United States when compared to other industrialized nations. Perhaps our inordinately high percentage of people that believe in god(s), ghosts, witches, devils, UFO's, etc. make us very vulnerable to unsubstantiated beliefs and opinions. But even we who believe we are "well-informed" are sometimes duped. I will use Alcoholics Anonymous as one example of a widely held belief in an institution and its efficacy. I will bring in many other questionable beliefs in our society as well as substantiated information that is virtually ignored. The "politics" of this information and misinformation will also be touched on. The practical aspects of this ignorance is how misinformation can affect how Americans address and distribute resources to combat societal ills such as a lack of health care, pervasive poverty, the homeless, the disparity of the ownership of wealth, discrimination, gun ownership, etc. Is there anything we, as humanists, can do? Quote Of the Month "People who want to share their religious
views with you almost never want you to share yours with them." "In God We Trust" - Despite the
"Wall-of-Separation" between Church and State Take out a US coin or some US paper currency and you will find a government sponsored motto declaring "In God We Trust." Our Declaration of Independence invokes a deity "..all men are created equal, endowed by their creator..": likewise our Pledge of Allegiance with its phrase "..one nation under God..." One of our favorite patriotic songs is entitled "God Bless America." Obviously, our popular culture is a theistic one, insofar as belief in a deity is the expected outlook; and this theistic outlook is generally endorsed by our federal and state governments. On the other hand, our tradition is also one that looks with suspicion on governmental and religious entanglements. Thomas Jefferson observed in his "Notes on the State of Virginia" that I, "just as government cannot establish truth in physics, it cannot establish truth in religion, Truth can stand by itself" Jefferson's point is that governments should be silent regarding subjects, like religion, outside their purview. More importantly there is the observation that established religion can be a threat to civil liberties: James Madison wanted to protect society from religion. He believed that politically powerful forms of religion threatened civil freedom. Danger lay in "ecclesiastical establishment" because "in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Tyrants, in fact, "many times have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries." (Cushing Strout, The New Heavens and the New Earth, page 87) Because of such considerations, Jefferson and Madison insisted on a Constitutional prohibition of a State Church or State religion, sometimes referred to as the "Constitutional Separation of Church and State." But today this "separation of Church and State" remains an issue. What exactly is this Constitutional separation between Church and State? Is the principle of separation consistent with official endorsement of belief in a deity? Article I of the Amendments to the US Constitution states that: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof Obviously this calls for interpretation, but generally we take the "establishment" clause to mean that government cannot establish an official state religion and also cannot promote or favor any specific religion over other forms of worship. The strict "wall-of-separation" interpretation of the Establishment clause goes even further to declare that it is unconstitutional for government to support any form of religious activity or religious doctrine. Government should not be in the business of promoting religious doctrine in any form whatsoever. As Justice Black said in Everson v. Board of Education (1947): Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws that aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church.., or force him to profess a belief or a disbelief in any religion.. . . No tax in any amount.. can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a "wall of separation between Church and State." Some of us could justifiably conclude that government should not endorse nor promote any religious belief at all, including belief in a deity. But it is undeniable that our history and current tradition show that faith in a Supreme Being is a significant part of our culture. Our governments, both federal and state, have never shied away from promoting and encouraging belief in a deity. Many court decisions regarding the "Establishment" clause of the first Amendment have presumed that governmental neutrality on religious doctrine does not entail neutrality on the question of a deity, as Supreme Court Justice Douglas noted in a 1950's court decision: The First Amendment. . . does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State... We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. It easy to find evidence to support this claim. As Cushing Strout tells us in his study of Political Religion in America, The New Heavens and The New Earth, the secular leaders of our revolution and national founding, although" participants in the Enlightenment's' culture of liberal political philosophy, Newtonian science and classical humanism, still preserved residual connections to Christianity, even when they attacked specific Christian dogmas and practices.. During the revolution the friends of liberty did not expect the state to be wholly neutral to religion, and they usually took for granted a consensus in support either of Protestantism or some form of Christianity. The Revolutionary armies had chaplaincies for a variety of faiths and Congress itself had Anglican and Presbyterian chaplains." (ibid., page 77). Strout also tells us that "the Jeffersonian-Madisonian view was not secularist in the sense of considering all religions as superstitions or socially harmful." (p. 87) And adds that, "despite their rhetoric of absolute separation between church and state, not even Jefferson or Madison had practiced it. Ministers led services in the Rotunda of the University of Virginia in Jefferson's day. Virginia passed a Sunday law in 1792, and Madison himself voted to pay army chaplains out of public funds. All these matters of history challenge any effort to turn Jefferson's metaphor about "a wall of separation" into a legal rule or a description of institutional realities." (p. 293) I have already cited the inclusion of "God" in the Declaration of Independence, the unavoidable motto on US currency. We can add the reality of chaplains at Congress and in the military, national prayer days; the opening of Congressional session with a prayer, the general tax exemption for all religious property, the protection of religious expression clause in the First Amendment and so on. It is difficult to deny that our culture is a religious one in a limited sense, which includes the assumption of a general belief in a deity. So we have a historical tension between our "religious" tradition and our enlightened, secular outlook which continues today. Legislative policies and Supreme Court decisions dealing with the relationship between Church and State reflect this tension. Sometimes those policies and decisions express the traditional theistic beliefs and sometimes they reflect the historical goal of keeping government neutral on questions of religious doctrine and faith. We can see this in a recent Supreme Court decision that student led prayer at school events is unconstitutional (See LA Times article, 6/20/00); here we have a Supreme Court ruling that upholds the separation principle. On the other hand, another ruling by the same court upholds a law allowing the use of public funds to provide computers for religious schools. (L. A. Times, 6/29,2000) We shall wait to see how the Court rules on the school voucher issue. In this context, then, let's ask the question: Should non-believers actively oppose the affirmation of a deity by our governments and our culture in general? As an example of a typical negative response, consider a recent story in the newspapers regarding a lawsuit brought against the state of Ohio because of the state's motto "In God, All Things Are Possible." A federal appeals court ruled that Ohio's motto represents an endorsement of Christianity (it is taken from a passage in the Gospel of Matthew) and therefore is a violation of the Constitutional separation principle. As the LA Times editorial states it, "if the decision stands and Ohio's motto has to go, the state will have to reprint its official stationary and tax forms and excavate the bronze placard embedded in the sidewalk outside the capitol in Columbus." The Times editorial sees this as "nonsense-making" over religion and going to ridiculous extremes: "..the Ohio motto case goes to a ridiculous extreme. What's next? Should we reprint US currency because the bills say, "In God We Trust"? Redraft the Pledge of Allegiance to excise the line, "One Nation under God, indivisible.. .?" The editorial goes on to state: "The Ohio decision is just the latest legal nonsense-making over religion." The editorial writer ridicules the decision by saying: "Watch out South Dakota and Arizona, whose mottoes also invoke the name of God. You may be next. And here in the City of Angels - that's angels, as in those winged messengers of God - maybe we'll have to consider some changes too." (April 28, 2000 - LA Times) What, then, are we to make of all this? We certainly hold that the Constitutional Separation of Church and State is an important principle which must be upheld; but some of us may share the objections raised by the Times editorial. Doesn't it seem that some of this verges on the nonsensical? Avoid the patriotic song God Bless America"; and never let anyone say "God Bless you" when you sneeze? What are we to do when called as witnesses in a court of law and asked to swear to tell the truth - so help me God? Do cases, in which the government seems to affirm belief in a deity, amount to official endorsement of such belief, and thus a violation of the 'separation principle'? Some writers downplay the idea that governmental and cultural affirmation of a deity is an issue for constitutional or philosophical challenge. Edward 0. Wilson, for example, urges accommodation to the prevailing religious culture. He sees religious practices and ceremony as expressing the "soul of the tribe" and "poetry": It would be a sorry day if we abandoned our venerated sacral traditions. It would be a tragic misreading of history to expunge under God from the American Pledge of Allegiance. Whether atheists or true believers, let oaths be taken with hand on the Bible, and may we continue to hear So help me God. Call upon priests and ministers and rabbis to bless civil ceremony with prayer, and by all means let us bow our heads in communal respect. Recognize that when introits and invocations prickle the skin we are in the presence of poetry, and the soul of the tribe, something that will outlive the particularities of sectarian belief, and perhaps belief in God itself"(E.O. Wilson, Consilience pp. 247-8) Wilson recommends we avoid foolish confrontation with our "religious culture." Certainly we would be unrealistic to think that overnight we can convince the majority of people to stop invoking God in all their civic ceremony. However, we might note that one person's poetry is another person's dogmatic theistic affirmation that he would impose on all if the circumstances were different. Another argument for accommodation is to point out that a lot of "God-talk" is embedded in our language and often does not imply all that it seems to imply. Many commonly used phrases become conventional and do not have the literal meaning that they appear to have. For example, the conventional greeting "How are you?" in most contexts simply is a greeting, not a request for a description of one's physical and mental condition. As with the greeting Good morning" which is simply our conventional greeting in the morning and not ordinarily meant as an evaluation of the morning ("It is a good morning.") In Spanish we have the conventional leave taking "A Dios" which literally means "to God", which is likely short for "Go with God"; but conventionally it simply means "good-bye" or "so long". A conventional courtesy when someone sneezes is to say "God bless you. I suppose many non-believers avoid this phrase and feel discomfort when someone directs it at them, however, the phase can be taken a mere conventional courtesy to a fellow human being's sneeze, no different from phrases like "good health" or the Spanish "Salud" or the German "Gesundheit." References to the deity or mention of God' in many of our civic mottoes, invocations and ceremonies might be understood as mere convention and ceremony, having no serious theistic implications at all. Hence, "In God We Trust," "..So help me God," "...one nation under God...," and so on may be used (and understood) much like our use of conventional phrases like "God Speed,' "Good Morning," the Spanish "Adios," "God bless," (at a companion's sneeze). They are simply common courtesies and linguistic conventions we share with our fellow beings. There is no need to interpret them as carrying theological baggage, which assumes that we all believe in and reach out to the nation's deity. But many non-believers may see all this as mere rationalization, and not be convinced either by Wilson's view of references to deity and religious-civic ceremony as bringing us to a "poetic presence nor by the attempt show that it is all linguistic convention signifying nothing. Should our government endorse belief in a deity? Let's not totally reject Wilson's interpretation of the 'poetic presence' nor the view that much reference to the deity is mere linguistic convention. Nevertheless, there still remains an official, governmental endorsement of belief in a deity, and undeniably this reflects the belief that most Americans hold. In a rational and enlightened society Government and other civic, public agencies would be strictly neutral on all religious issues, including the question of a deity. For a truly rational society would recognize that governmental promotion of any religious belief brings with it discrimination against all citizens who do not share that belief, and our society is a pluralistic society with a great variety of religious belief and non-belief. In addition, a rational society would recognize that no institution can demonstrate that a deity in fact exists. As Jefferson stated: just as government cannot establish truth in physics, it cannot establish truth in religion. " Unable to establish truth in religion, governments should remain absolutely silent on the question of the existence of a deity. However, ours is not a truly rational and enlightened society. It is more a work-in-progress society, and we must work with what we have. What we have is a society or culture that is comfortable with governmental endorsement of the theistic position; but along with this comes the Constitutional protection of individual's right not to believe in a deity. There is a constitutional protection and legal right for the minority who prefer to live without religion and without belief in a deity. Socially, however, there are no guarantees that non-believers will enjoy rights and privileges equal to those enjoyed by believers. The Constitution gives some protection, but it does not apply to many cultural practices. Education might help, and eventually the thinking of the general public might evolve toward a more enlightened view; but this will not happen overnight. Meanwhile, there's need for some compromise and a pragmatic approach on part of secular humanists and rational non-believers. The motto "In God We T dust" on our currency likely does not represent a threat to our constitutional protection against religious coercion. In short, we do not need a national effort by secular minded persons to remove such mottoes from our currency or excavate bronze placards embedded in the sidewalk (much to the relief of the Los Angeles Times!). Officially sanctioned prayer in the public classroom, on the other hand, does represent a threat and is rightfully opposed by many progressive individuals and by organizations such as the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. In conclusion, our cultural history and governmental practices indicate that the constitutional separation of Church and State does not require governmental neutrality on the question of a deity. Our governments, both State and Federal, routinely affirm such belief However, it would be a violation of the Constitution for government make such belief mandatory for all citizens. Generally our courts have been vigilant in guarding against any official imposition of sectarian beliefs or practices, as witnessed by the recent Supreme Court decision on student led prayer at school events. Thankfully our culture, although "religious" in many ways, is still one which recognizes the rights of those who choose to do without belief in any deity. "Noah's Flood" A recent addition to the HAOC library book collection: Noah's Flood - New Scientific Discoveries about the Event that Changed History by William Ryan and Walter Pitman (1998). Here is a fascinating book that combines geology, oceanography, archaeology, and some speculation to come up with the theory that the inundation and transformation of a low fresh water lake to what we now know as the Black Sea was the original inspiration of early flood myths. The authors, scientists connected to Columbia University, combine the story of their research at the Black Sea with the history of early civilizations as disclosed in ancient clay tablets and ancient myths to show, among other things, that the story of Noah's flood in Genesis is simply a re-telling of much earlier myth stories about other people, other Gods, and other religions. They believe that some very early tribes lived around the low fresh water lake that was flooded when the land across the Bosporus was breached by a huge flood of waters from the Mediterranean Sea which had risen as a result of the melting of the ice cap. (The bible says, in addition to the rain, "all the springs of the great abyss broke through") And that could have been the origin of the flood myths. Be that as it may, there is little doubt that the flood myths (Gilgamesh, Atrahasis, Ziusudra) were as alike as peas in a pod except for the languages, the people, the religions, the Gods. The Genesis flood story was written no earlier than the ninth century BCE while these other stories were from a much earlier date. The (Noah type) figures were all warned by (the God or Gods) of (Some religion of some country) to build an ark (most say "cover it with reeds" as in the bible) and take his family and a collection of animals aboard, etc. and they all end up with the dove story at the end just like in Genesis. So much for the "Bible" being the "word of God" (as told to Moses or whoever)! Incidentally, there is another book entitled "Noah's Flood" by Norman Cohn (1996) which also goes over the similarities of the earlier myths with the en is version, but does not propose any specific source or location for the start of the myths. Both books are good reads for anyone interested in scientific approaches to religious myths, but the Ryan and Pitman story of their purely scientific research in the Black Sea is a great bonus. Some Observations on the July Discussion. There was a range of feeling at the meeting about how militant we should be in standing up to the sort of discrimination that people who don't believe in an all-powerful supernatural being (commonly referred to as god) routinely endure. Despite the fact that there are millions of us in this country we are treated as if we don't exist and our views are rarely aired in the mass media. Name me one cast character on any television show who is openly a Humanist or atheist? I have a friend who is very liberal and a long time social activist. When she says the pledge she always says "with liberty and justice for some", because it is the truth. When we say the pledge it generally goes unnoticed that we don't say "under God". Many of us feel that is just as well, because we don't want to draw hostile attention toward ourselves, or to be considered confrontational. Often we just go along to get along. We could protest by scratching out "In God we Trust" on our bills, or by refusing to swear "so help me God" when we testify in court, but in a free country we shouldn't have to be treated like we don't matter, or even exist. With the selection of Joe Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, as Al Gore's running mate we are reminded that religion in this open and progressive country should only matter as long as a candidate professes a belief in some sort of god. George W. Bush, and his father, have been open in saying that people who don't believe in god shouldn't be elected to public office. Open expressions of bigotry against non-believers comes as no surprise and lends support to Kurtz's call to come out of the closet and actively oppose the lies and misrepresentations about us that go unchallenged in the media. Juan's point that the "god" concept seems to be much more accepted, at least in the U.S., than any other supernatural belief is right on target. There seems to be compact between all groups that believe in gods that they will give each other a certain level of respect on the idea that there is a supernatural force(s) that is in some obscure way running the world. You might recall that back when the Reverend Moon got into tax trouble other religious leaders rallied to his side, despite the fact that they thought he was a dangerous nut case. Despite their profound differences they see that putting up a solid front on the "god" issue is essential to their survival. On the other hand, Scientologists are fair game because they don't really believe in a god. A practical reason for challenging god myths is that humanistic values are more likely to insure the continued survival of humanity than pursuing policies based on what some god might want, or on apocalyptic prophecies. Benefits of Growing Older In a hostage situation, you are likely to be
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