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The Humanist Association of Orange County ( HAOC) is a
chapter of the American Humanist Association.
Please visit our website at http://www.ochumanists.org
HAOC Board
President: Pete Anderson
Vice President: Dave Silva
Treasurer:.Harry Becker
Secretary: Jerry Parks
Member at large: Carl Mariz
Member at large: Benito Franqui
NEXT
HAOC MEETING
August
15, 1:30 P.M.
"Students For Science And Skepticism"
Ian Nieves, a student at the University of California ( Irvine ), will describe
the work of this group.
NEXT CFI-WEST MEETING
( Costa Mesa )
August 15, 4:30 p.m.
(
$6.00 or free for Friends of the Center ):
Siamac Sotoudeh will speak on:
Why are the Dead Walking?
Unknown
still on a worldwide scale is the fact that the Islamic movements which took
political power in Iran and Afghanistan were formed principally in opposition to
the women's rights and land forms.
In
Iran, Khomeini began his campaign against the Shah and his US backers after the
initiation of land and women's rights reforms in 1961. Fourteen years later, the
Mujahidin started their crusade when similar reforms were initiated in
Afghanistan by Russians. So while the Islamic movements in Iran and Afghanistan
appeared to be trends opposing American and Russian imperialists and their
puppet governments, in fact what they were really opposing was the reformist
aspect of these regimes. Is this not what Bin Laden and his so-called
anti-imperialistic crusade is all about?
This
is what Sotoudeh proves brilliantly in his book, Why Are The Dead Walking?,
through unheard information, facts and proofs. He writes, "In both
countries, as long as the dictatorship and imperialism were willing to depend on
the old type of repression, women's slavery and backwardness, the Islamic trend
supported them, but as soon as they started to renew themselves by reforms the
Islamic trend opposed them. So, what they were really opposed to was not
imperialism and dictatorship in itself, but the new and modern form of it."
QUOTES OF INTEREST
(
From the HUMANISTS OF HOUSTON , http://www.humanistsofhouston.org/quotes.html
)
Here
are snippets of words from a variety of sources: born-again Christians,
humanists, libertarians, objectivists, existentialists, and many others. They
are presented to provoke discussion, introduce new viewpoints, and just plain
MAKE YOU THINK...
Power and Influence:
"I
told the President last week in the Oval Office... I said, 'Sir, there are 80
million of us evangelicals in this country and we've come to look upon you not
only as our President, but as a man of God.' He said, 'Jerry, I'll do my best.
You put great pressure on me. I'll do my best not to disappoint you.'" Jerry
Falwell
"The
number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of
the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church
from the state." (James
Madison fourth President of the U.S., known as 'The Father of the
Constitution')
"The
philosophical collapse of the GOP came with the 2000 campaign....
Neoconservatives moved to fill the philosophical vacuum created by the
supply-siders. The neocons openly support big government and consider FDR to
have been a great president. They are the intellectuals who came up with the
'faith-based initiative' and like to frame the political debate as one between
people who want religion in the political square and the secularists who
don't.... And now the neocons are calling for American Empire." (Ed
Crane, president of The Cato Institute).
Law and Order:
Overextending
the Criminal Law (Erik
Luna)
The
actions that government has declared to be crimes continues to expand. This
article examines how this process is "to the point of erasing the line
between tolerable and unacceptable behavior. Where once the criminal law might
have stood as a well-understood and indisputable statement of shared norms in
American society, now there is only a bloated compendium..." Luna also
remarks that "Almost all vice crimes stem from religious-based conceptions
of good and evil. Drugs, alcohol, gambling, prostitution, adultery, fornication,
sodomy, pornography, and other obscenities are banned by the state on the basis
of notions of human wickedness and righteousness and, ultimately, the desire to
reform society...."
Secularism Overseas:
"Under
the version of history which all French schools teach, the rigorously secular
character of the state is a a hard-won victory against the dark forces of
obscurantism, anti-semistism and authoritarian Catholicism which perviously held
sway.... For those defending the existing model, the fear is ... France slideing
towards communautarisme, a dreaded state of affairs in which ethnic or religous
groups could freely segregate themselves and for 'states within a state' with
their own rules and values."
The
Economist, Feb. 7-13, 2004 issue.
Humanism:
"I
am a Humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently
without expectations of rewards or punishment after I am dead." (Kurt
Vonnegut, author and honorary AHA president)
"Humanists
recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using
reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that
succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests (the late Isaac
Asimov, writer and past AHA president)
"I
contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.
When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will
understand why I dismiss yours." --- Stephen
Roberts
Whose God?:
"The
Christian God encourages freedom, love, forgiveness, prosperity and health. The
Muslim god appears to value the opposit. The personalities of each god are
evident in the cultures, civilization and dispositions of the peoples that serve
them. Muhammad's central message was submission; Jesus' central message was
love." ( Rev.
Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals )
[EDITOR'S
NOTE: Haggard does not explain how his statement squares with the historical
fact that German Lutherans and Catholics went along with Hitler's Holocaust or
with the massacres conducted the Crusaders during their efforts to 'liberate'
the Holy Land.]
Existentialism:
"Existentialism
is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the
sanction and support of religion or society." -- Anita
Brookner (b. 1938), British novelist, art historian.
"If
there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of
life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of
this life." --- Albert
Camus (1913-1960)
"The
aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and
responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any
circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great
work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a
single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of
each person who has known and loved it." -- Albert
Camus
After
years of trying to ban the Harry Potter books, the Religious Right is now
pushing their own "Christian" alternative to the best-selling series.
TV
preachers and the Religious Right have tried to undermine Harry Potter since the
books first appeared on American shelves in 1998. In addition to being national
best-sellers, the Harry Potter books hold the dubious distinction of being the
most censored books in America, according to the American Library Association.
Public schools and libraries have been under siege as the far-right demands that
the books be struck from shelves.
As
reported in Church & State magazine years ago, the fuss over the Potter books
centers on the perception that the books teach witchcraft to children. In late
2001, Pat Robertson launched a full-scale assault on the books. After
broadcasting an interview with a far-right "expert on the occult,"
Robertson warned that God will turn his back on nations that tolerate
witchcraft.
Other
Religious Right leaders joined on the anti-Potter bandwagon. Everyone from Lou
Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition to D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge
Ministries had something to say about J.K. Rowling's best-selling heresy.
Some
groups went so far as to organize book burnings. In Alamogordo, N.M., Pastor
Jack Brock of the Christ Community Church organized a mass burning of Harry
Potter books. For good measure, he also tossed a ouija board and a copy of The Collected Works of William Shakespeare into the flames.
Censorship
efforts escalated with the release of the Harry Potter films. In Cedarville,
Ark., one parent complained that the Potter series is a "starting place to
learn sorcery, witchcraft and other satanic ideas." When her local school
board voted to require students to have parents' permission to read the books,
church-state separationists intervened.
A federal
court ruled that the school district had to treat the books the same as other
works of fiction, and censorship efforts appear to have waned since then.
It now
appears that the Religious Right has found a new legal way to fight the Harry
Potter books: promote their own “Christian” alternative. Just as the Left
Behind books gave Tim LaHaye's far-right apocalyptic fantasies a mainstream
audience, the new Shadowmancer book has been dubbed the "Christian Harry
Potter" for its religious references.
First
published in England, G.P Taylor's book climbed the American best-seller charts
since it was released this May. Taylor, an Anglican vicar, has promoted his book
largely through the media channels of the Religious Right. TV preacher Pat
Robertson interviewed him on his 700 Club program. The online magazine of the
far-right Focus on the Family declared, "It could be just the thing to
counter Harry Potter's magic."
Film
rights for the book have been optioned by the controversial Lisa Marie
Butkiewicz of Fortitude Films. She garnered publicity last year as a leader of
Women Influencing the Nation which formed to support Mel Gibson's The Passion of
the Christ.
Taylor
has said that he hopes Gibson will direct the movie version of his book.
- Sam Felder
THE POPE MOVES
BACKWARD ON TERMINAL CARE
by
Peter Singer
(
From Free Inquiry magazine, http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/singer_24_5.htm
)
"I
should like particularly, to underline how the administration of water and food,
even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of
preserving life, not a medical act."1
Those
are the words of Pope John Paul II, speaking in March 2004 to an international
congress held in Rome. The conference was on "Life-sustaining Treatments
and Vegetative State: Scientific Advances and Ethical Dilemmas," and it was
organized by the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations and the
Pontifical Academy for Life. The pope was able to cut through all the ethical
dilemmas. Although he acknowledged that a patient in a persistent vegetative
state, or PVS, "shows no evident sign of self-awareness or of awareness of
the environment, and seems unable to interact with others or to react to
specific stimuli," he said that they should be kept alive indefinitely.
Such patients, he insisted, "retain their human dignity in all its
fullness" and "the loving gaze of God the Father continues to fall
upon them." For this reason, he said, it is obligatory to continue to
provide them with food and water, even if this can only be done through a tube.
The pope added that to withdraw the tube, knowing that it will lead to the death
of the patient, is "euthanasia by omission."
The
pope supported his conclusion by arguing that some patients with PVS make at
least a partial recovery, and, in the current state of medical science, we are
still unable to predict with certainty which patients will recover and which
will not. But here he seems to have been poorly advised. While it is true that
in most PVS cases, we cannot definitively exclude the possibility of recovery,
modern brain-imaging techniques do now enable us to know that in some PVS cases,
the entire cortex has been destroyed. Then, no recovery is possible, for the
cortex cannot reconstitute itself. Hence the argument for preserving the lives
of these patients cannot be based on medical uncertainty.
No
dilemmas for the pope, then, but plenty for Catholic hospitals around the world.
In the United States, there are about ten thousand patients in a persistent
vegetative state. Many of them are in one of the approximately six hundred
hospitals run by the Catholic Health Association. Consistently with the views of
some Catholic bioethicists, these hospitals have regarded artificial feeding as
an "extraordinary means of life-support" and therefore as something
that they are not obligated to provide.
Dr.
Charles Daschbach, academic director at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix,
Arizona, told the Arizona Republic that at St. Joseph's decisions about whether
to continue tube feeding were based on "balancing sufficient benefits to
the patients against any burdens to patients and their families." He added
that the pope's speech "was not sent as a part of the official church
teachings."2 Laurence O'Connell, director of the nonsectarian Park Ridge
Center for Health, Faith, and Ethics in Chicago, put it more bluntly, describing
the pope's statement as "a stunner, to say the least."3
A
more puzzling statement came from Richard Doerflinger, a spokesman for the
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Secretariat for Pro-Life
Activities. "To have the pope speak on this and speak his mind is something
people on both sides of the question have been waiting for for years," he
said. But then he added, "It does not remove practical judgements about
whether a feeding tube in an individual case is doing more harm than good."
Doerflinger didn't explain how a feeding tube could harm patients who are
completely unaware of anything that is happening to them.
If
Catholic hospitals do attempt to implement the pope's view, they will be heading
for a collision with the principle of patient autonomy, long recognized as
central to health-care ethics. Some patients sign statements indicating that
they do not wish to be kept alive should they ever be in a persistent vegetative
state. In the case of Nancy Cruzan, a young woman who had been in PVS for seven
years, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that feeding tubes are medical treatment and
may be withdrawn if there is evidence that that is what the patient would have
wanted. The pope has now taken the opposite view. In his view, feeding tubes are
"natural" and not medical treatment. Patients have a right to life,
but apparently that is not a right that gives them any choice. They have to be
fed, whether they like it or not.
Australia's
leading Catholic bioethicist, Father Norman Ford, seems to have taken a more
humane view than the head of his own church. At the Rome conference at which the
pope spoke, he argued that since PVS patients lacked the instinct to eat or
drink and experienced loss of appetite, to give them food and
water, far from being required by their dignity as human beings, actually
"shows a lack of respect for them." But that was before the pope
spoke. Afterwards, Father Ford told The Tablet, the leading Catholic magazine in
the United Kingdom: "I accept the teaching given by the Pope in his speech
to congress participants."4 That's the trouble with being a bioethicist in
an institution that doesn't allow free speech within its own ranks.
Notes
1.
The pope's speech is available at http://www.vegetativestate.org/discorso_papa.htm
.
2.
Austen Ivereigh, "US Hospitals in Dilemma over PVS Patients," The
Tablet, April 10, 2004; available at http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/citw.cgi/past-00174#Americas
.
3.
Cathy Lynn Grossman, "Pope Declares Feeding Tubes a 'Moral
Obligation,'" USA Today, April 1, 2004; available at http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2004-04-01-pope-usat_x.htm
.
4.
Ivereigh, "US Hospitals in Dilemma over PVS Patients."
Peter
Singer is DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at the University Center for Human
Values at Princeton University. He is the author of Animal Liberation, Practical
Ethics, Rethinking Life and Death, Writings on an Ethical Life, and, most
recently, The President of Good and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush.
MY LUNCH WITH SPARKY
By David Templeton
( From http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/12.30.99/schulz2-9952.html
)
CHARLES SCHULZ has been on my mind a lot lately. Since he
announced that he'd be ending his comic strip in January--a surprising
resolution that sparked a worldwide maelstrom of commentary and condolence--I've
been thinking of the afternoon, over four and a half years ago, that I had lunch
with the Peanuts creator.
I met him in the restaurant at his Redwood Empire Ice Arena.
Though I can't recall much about the food, I remember Schulz vividly. Though I
was there to interview the man behind Charlie Brown and Snoopy, I soon found
myself drawn into an unexpected conversation about religion and Christian
fundamentalism with a somewhat pessimistic craftsman--he often referred to
himself as a "lowly cartoonist"--who was nevertheless warm,
open-hearted, and sharp as a tack.
Just the week before, Schulz--whom his friends call
Sparky--had been attacked in print by a fundamentalist media pundit who disliked
his creative use of Scripture in a recent Peanuts strip.
"They're so narrow-minded on things," he said with
a laugh, clearly taken aback at the criticism. "They're either offended
that you've quoted Scripture, or delighted."
Schulz revealed that in the years following World War II he'd
been quite involved in the Church of God in Minneapolis, occasionally dabbling
in what he called "some very lousy preaching."
Though his philosophical views evolved over the
years--"The term that best describes me now is 'secular humanist,'" he
explained--his characters continued to quote biblical passages, occasionally
musing about the darker inconsistencies of religion. These thoughtful
reflections were never heavy-handed; rather, Schulz had become the reigning
master of the lighter-than-air, spiritually resonant comic-strip koan.
"I'm the only one who's done it," he shrugged,
smiling his somewhat baffled smile.
He was right. While some critics occasionally dismissed
Peanuts as being old-fashioned or irrelevant, Schulz had, in fact, crafted a
determinedly philosophical comic strip that, if not exactly edgy (read: angry),
was nothing if not intellectually daring.
"I despise those shallow religious comics," he
said. "Dennis the Menace, for instance, is the most shallow. When they show
him praying--I just can't stand that sort of thing, talking to God about some
cutesy thing that he'd done during the day. I don't think Hank Ketcham [Dennis'
creator] has any deep knowledge of things like that."
He cringed when I mentioned Family Circus, the strip by
Bill Keane that is strewn with cutesy references to Jesus (who wants to protect
children on school buses, but can't because of laws about separation of church
and state!) and those sickly-sweet images of invisible deceased grandparents
looming protectively over the kids.
"Oh, I can't stand that," Schulz laughed.
"You could get diabetes reading them, couldn't you?"
Kindly, he added, "Bill's a nice fellow, though. A very
decent person.
"I don't like to offend people," he finally
admitted. "I could never be a political cartoonist, because I refuse to
blast people I don't know. I suppose that's why they say Peanuts is no longer on
the cutting edge."
With a chuckle, he added, "I think that's absurd. What's
cutting edge, anyway? Insulting the president? Delighting in meanness? If that's
cutting edge, then I don't want it."
Bravo Mr. Schulz. And thanks for the memories.
BOOK REVIEW
Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston
To have a functioning government we need to have taxes. We have income taxes
(including alternative minimum taxes), estate taxes, gift taxes, Social Security
taxes, Medicare taxes, state and local taxes, excise taxes, and probably others
that don¹t immediately come to mind. When the government decides which taxes to
stress, and what the tax rates should be, they are making decisions about who
will prosper and who will struggle or fail. A government that taxes the poor on
their first dollar of income, as the US does with Social Security taxes, is
deciding to limit or eliminate the ability of those at the bottom of the income
ladder to save money and improve their lot in life. A government that takes up
to 90% of income above a high threshold, as was done during the Eisenhower era,
clearly believes that such a tax is advisable for the common good, since it
would make it possible for those with low incomes to pay a bit less in taxes and
save a little for their future, while not significantly hurting the wealthy.
As everyone knows, our income tax system has become extremely complex, and open
to all kinds of special loop-holes for the wealthy. Every once in a while
someone suggests abandoning the current system and going to a ³flat tax²,
which could save the billions of dollars that regularly go to the tax lawyers
and accountants that are necessary to simply get the forms properly filled out,
or to see if there is any way to reduce our individual taxes. In actuality,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we currently come close to having a
flat tax if we consider all the other taxes we pay as well as the income tax. At
least they claim that the top fifth of income workers pay 19% on average, while
the bottom fifth pay about 18%, when all taxes are included! Of course, if the
current Bush administration continues with its plans to further reduce taxes on
the rich, and eliminate the estate tax, then the tax rate on the wealthy will be
significantly reduced from the current low rate. The quid pro quo is that the
wealthy provide huge political donations for the administration.
As Greg Palast (author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy) says about this book ³Even if you suspected all along that the
system favors the rich, you¹re going to be shocked to learn just how badly you¹re
being screwed². It is full of revelations about how the super rich are getting
all kinds of special benefits at the expense of the average tax payer. In fact
reading about all the dirty little tricks available to the wealthy that
frequently allows them to pay no taxes at all, can make it a rather depressing
read. But the final part of the book, ³Conclusions², should not be skipped
over since it is a good summary and points out things that need to be done to
correct the system.
ON THE LIGHT SIDE
Great Answers to SATs
The following questions and answers were collated from SAT tests
given in Springdale, Arkansas in
2000 to 16 year old students! (Don't laugh too hard - one of these may be the
president someday.)
Q: Name the four seasons.
A: Salt, pepper, mustard and
vinegar.
Q: Explain one of the processes by
which water can be made safe to drink.
A: Flirtation makes water safe to
drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep and
canoeists.
Q: How is dew formed?
A: The sun shines down on the leaves
and makes them perspire.
Q: What is a planet?
A: A body of earth surrounded by
sky.
Q: What causes the tides in the
oceans?
A: The tides are a fight between the
Earth and the Moon. All water tends to
flow towards the moon, because there is no water on the moon, and
nature abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.
Q: In a democratic society, how
important are elections?
A: Very important. Sex can only
happen when a male gets an election.
Q: What are steroids?
A: Things for keeping carpets still
on the stairs.
Q: What happens to your body as you
age?
A: When you get old, so do your
bowels and you get intercontinental.
Q: What happens to a boy when he
reaches puberty?
A: He says good-bye to his boyhood
and looks forward to his adultery.
Q: Name a major disease associated
with cigarettes.
A: Premature death.
Q: How can you delay milk turning
sour?
A: Keep it in the cow.
Q: How are the main parts of the
body categorized? (E.g., abdomen.)
A: The body is consisted into three
parts - the brainium, the borax and the abdominal cavity. The branium contains
the brain, the borax contains the heart
and lungs, and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels, A,E,I,O and U.
Q: What is the Fibula?
A: A small lie.
Q: What does "varicose"
mean?
A: Nearby.
Q: What is the most common form of
birth control?
A: Most people prevent contraception
by wearing a condominium.
Q: Give the meaning of the term
"Caesarian Section."
A: The caesarian section is a
district in Rome.
Q: What is a seizure?
A: A Roman emperor.
Q: What is a terminal illness?
A: When you are sick at the airport
Q: Give an example of a fungus. What
is a characteristic feature?
A: Mushrooms. They always grow in
damp places and so they look like umbrellas.
Q: What does the word
"benign" mean?
A: Benign is what you will be after
you be eight.
Q: What is a turbine?
A: Something an Arab wears on his
head.
Q: What is a Hindu?
A: It lays eggs.
CARTOON OF THE MONTH
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NEXT MEETING:
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