"When we criticize others, we aren't challenging their right to hold their ideas; it is their ideas themselves that we put in the crucible of reason. For what idea is worth holding if it can't be examined on the dissecting table of reason?" …Babu Gogineni, executive director of the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

As I am writing this they are recounting the votes in Florida and it seems likely that we will have a Republican president and congress. In such an event the years ahead will be difficult for Humanists and others who value individual freedom and separation of church and state.

A voter in Missouri reported to the police that his precinct worker told him that God wanted Bush to win and handed him a "Christian Coalition Voter Guide" with his ballot before he was to vote. There are many theories about how the election could be so close, however the persistent drumbeat of the religious right has diverted attention away from issues and human need in nearly all the south and the plains states. For many voters in this country, who are working at minimum wages, school prayer or abortion are their hot button issues, not a raise in the minimum wage.

I am going to list a few reforms that could make our political process more democratic. Please let me know what you think.

We need campaign finance reform that limits mailings by incumbents, puts strict limits on spending, is publicly financed and provides mandatory TV debates for important offices.

We need to shorten the length of campaigns and expand all two year terms for congress and state assembly to four years. Privately politicians have told me that we need a constitutional amendment to do this so that they don't have to start raising money as soon as they are elected. More and more it is becoming government by and for the big money interests; with the average voter being a disenfranchised pawn. Even big corporations, are to some degree, captives of the bidding war for political influence.

Finally we need to institute the Australian ballot system. Some third party hopefuls are asking for proportional representation, but that simply isn't going to happen. Here is how it works: If you have five candidates, such as A, B, C, D and E, there would be four punch columns on the ballot to the right of their names. If one candidate gets a majority of the votes he is the winner. If not the candidate (perhaps "C") with the least number of votes is eliminated, however all those who voted for "C" have not wasted their vote because their votes are redistributed according to their 2^nd choice. Then of the remaining four candidates the one with the least votes in eliminated and their votes are redistributed according to their order of preference.

In practical terms, if this had been used in the last election, Gore would win the electoral vote and Nadar would have gotten his 5%. Bush would have eventually gotten most of the Browne and Buchanan votes, but no one argue that they wasted their vote by voting for any particular candidate. The Australian ballot is more democratic and also prevents the need for special run-off elections where there is no majority.

The two-page article by friend and fellow lunch partner, Bob Richert, deserves at least a few comments for it addresses a tender and sore point not only for freethinkers (Humanists, Atheists, Agnostics, et. al.) but also for theistic believers as well, for they are at a loss as to why it is so difficult to convince non-believers of the truth of the existence of the more or less traditional God. For the latter, the apologetic arguments to prove God’s existence seem eminently convincing. Bob raises some interesting questions such as Is theism still intellectually credible? Is philosophy the sole domain for questions regarding the existence of God? and What is the role of human emotion vs. reason in relationship to (this) belief? To the first I would reply "yes" and "no." To the second, I would reply "no" and to the third I would reply that emotion is irrelevant if one wants to be rational. There is a view called Fideism which posits a belief in God based purely on faith, on a hunch if you like, with no more reason than it seems to be true and is a comfortable belief. Paul Kurtz described this belief as a "transcendental temptation." Intelligent thinkers such as Martin Gardner and—I suspect— Steve Allen, seem to fall into this group but make no effort to justify their belief rationally, and there are others; a mode of belief made popular by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard in the 19th century.

Yes, such a belief in God—if based on reason and evidence-- is intellectually credible if the phrase means that a great deal of thought went into the arguments to justify the belief. Such a belief is not intellectually credible if one takes a poll of those who have examined such arguments and found none of them to be sound, at least for the traditional concept of God. However, since there are—in all probability—more theologians who believe in some type of God or another than there are philosophers who don’t believe, the point is moot.

The second question is more interesting. Since the 17th century, the sole, neutral, evaluators of arguments for and against the existence of God were philosophers. In the past half-century or so, the situation has changed; at least since the credibility of the "Big Bang" theory of cosmologists. It now has come to the point that any effort to evaluate the First Cause (or Cosmological) argument along with the old Teleological (or Design) argument requires more than just an elementary knowledge of physics and astronomy. Just recently, I came upon a paper by Victor Stenger (Prof. Emeritus, Univ. of Hawaii) who was evaluating a book by mathematician, philosopher and theologian, William Dembski, who tries to prove with "modern information theory that the kind of information inherent in the universe cannot be generated by natural causes." Dembski discusses the principle of the conservation of information (related to entropy) and comes to the conclusion that only a supernatural being could have provided the current information we now have regarding the universe. That’s only a few steps away from God, of course. So, philosophers now need to know physics and physicists need to know philosophy in order to discuss these arguments such as those of Dembski, Hugh Ross, and a host of others. These theologians/philosophers/scientists seem to come out of the woodwork, especially in our country. Philosophers interested in discussing these arguments —such as Michael Martin-- are constantly on the defensive and need to be knowledgeable about more than philosophy, including probability theory as well as physics and astronomy.

I think I know at least one reason why we freethinkers are losing the battle against the fundamentalists (I don’t worry much about liberal Christians); they have an army of clever theologians and philosophers to whom the army of believers can defer. People such as Lane Craig who baffles the non-believers in debates and writes books to convince the fundies they were right after all. They are indoctrinated in their churches to defend against those who try to point out how absurd are their beliefs relating to God and morality. And they are overwhelming us. One rarely, if ever, hears any criticisms of their belief system (unless it happens to be a cult) in the public media or in movies. Criticisms of religious belief systems is not thought to be in "good taste" though it’s o.k. to criticize political beliefs. (One critic of my critical thinking text claimed the examples used in my text were "too controversial" since they referred more to religious arguments and examples than those in politics which are usually used.)

Yes, modern theistic philosophers are using the older arguments but in a much more sophisticated form than those criticized by the Scotch skeptic David Hume back in the 18th century; they have much more scientific information to use and confuse their followers. Also, there is a certain hubris reflected by these theists who ignore all other forms of divine belief except the Judaeo/Christian/ Muslim view, some of which are more naturalistic and reasonable views of divinity such as the concept of Brahman or the Buddha-Nature, but this is another matter.

The solution to so many followers convinced of the rationality of belief in God is to require more philosophy courses, critical thinking courses in particular, but with numerous examples from religions. Such courses should be taught in high school and not just in college. The argument against this has always been that in such controversial areas you need the pros and cons and there would not be the time for that in H.S. Well, too bad, we don’t have the time to teach the details of political beliefs or physics or any other subject in H.S. but that doesn’t prevent them from teaching these core subjects! One point that should be taught in such classes on CT. is the need to have consistent, coherent reasons for ones beliefs whether it be in religion, politics or in ethics; an emphasis lacking in our culture today.

There is nothing wrong with the "emotional anchor that belief provides," we all have and need that. But before we attach our emotions (and spiritual attitudes) to our belief system, we do need to be sure there are no gaping holes in this system, and we need to be aware of the arguments against our own beliefs.

Web Sites of Interest

HAOC member Benito Franqui has a really nice web site at "http://home.social.n.

com./benfranq/index.htm/" Subtitled "Dedicated to bettering the world through education" It has some features I'm sure you will find interesting.

In the AHA's "Grassroots News" is listed "National Coalition Against Censorship" at

www.ncac.org and the political search engine

www.firstgov.gov for any information the government publishes.

Another site of interest is the Rationalist International site at "http://secular.ws/

rationalistinternational"

If you have a web site you would like to share with us email dav77@earthlink.net

HAOC donated $50 to the Secular Student Alliance. The SSA is supported by the AHA and other freethought groups. We are looking forward to working with the SSA in the future, since we consider rational though in our schools of vital importance.

The Secular Student Alliance web site is

"www.secularstudents.org"

If English was good enough for

Jesus Christ, then it’s good enough for me. ——

• I don’t know anyone here that’s been

killed by a handgun.

There are still places where people think the function of the media is to provide information.