THE AFFIRMATIONS OF HUMANISM: A STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES*

We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems. We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation. We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life. We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities. We are committed to the principle of the separation of church and state. We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding. We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating discrimination and intolerance. We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves. We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity. We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species. We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to their fullest. We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence. We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity. We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences. We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion. We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences. We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos. We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to novel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking. We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal­ significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others. We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality. We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings. *by Paul Kurtz

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free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 2 Editorial Departments 5 New Directions: 7 Letters Centers for Inquiry and Human Enrichment 22 Frontlines/ Sidelines Paul Kurtz Andrea Szalanski August / September 2004 Vol. 24, No. 5 ISSN 0272-0701 Op-Ed 56 Church-State Update Tom Flynn 11 What Use Is Religion? Part 2 56 World Report Richard Dawkins Bill Cooke 13 Castro’s Gulag and American Librarians 57 Living Without Nat Hentoff Religion Why No One Ever Dies 15 True Church-State Don Lowry Separation Christopher Hitchens 58 God on Trial 17 A Humanist Failure? Betting on Pascal’s Wager Vern L. Bullough Arthur R. Miller

19 The Pope Moves 59 European Backward on Correspondent Terminal Care Same-sex Marriage Peter Singer Moves Ahead Jim Herrick 21 Mother (Nature) Dearest 60 Humanist Activism James Underdown Atheism and Civil Rights: This issue contains eight A Reply to Tabash Features additional pages through and Downey What Is the Optimum the generous support of DJ Grothe and Austin Dacey Population of the U.S.? the Court of Wisdom. The World? Reviews

23 Too Many People 62 Freethinkers: Tom Flynn 43 Europe’s Baby Bust A History of American 26 ‘34 Million Friends’ Rosamund McDougall Secularism Support Women’s By Susan Jacoby Health Initiatives 44 The Aging World Rob Boston

Jane Roberts Sylvain and Phyllis Ehrenfeld 64 What Is Good? The Search 28 The Silent Crisis 45 What Population for the Best Alan Kuper Stabilization Way to Live Requires By A. C. Grayling 30 Optimum Population Edward Tabash Bill Cooke Lindsey Grant 47 Georgia’s Granite Guidestones 65 Terror and Civilization: 34 Carrying Capacity Christianity, Politics, and Ed Buckner Mark Nathan Cohen the Western Psyche 37 From Sentience 48 My God Problem By Shadia B. Drury to Silence Natalie Angier Tom Flynn Alan Kuper 52 A Declaration of 66 The Works of 41 Overpopulation? Sexual Rights and Robert G. Ingersoll Fiddlesticks! Responsibilities Ed. by Emmett Fields Jan Narveson Vern L. Bullough Tom Flynn FI Editorial Staff Editor in Chief FREE INQUIRY (ISSN 0272-0701) is published bimonthly by the Editorial Board Paul Kurtz Council for Secular Humanism, a nonprofit educational corporation, Editor P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. Phone (716) 636-7571. Robert Alley Thomas W. Flynn Fax (716) 636-1733. Copyright ©2004 by the Council for Secular Professor of Humanities Emeritus, Managing Editor Deputy Editor Humanism. All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be University of Richmond, Virginia Andrea Szalanski Norm R. Allen Jr. reproduced without permission of the publisher. Periodicals postage Hector Avalos Columnists paid at Buffalo, N.Y., and at additional mailing offices. National Associate Professor of Vern Bullough, Richard Dawkins, distribution by International Periodicals Distributors, Solana Beach, Religious Studies, Shadia B. Drury, Ronnie Dugger, Nat California. FREE INQUIRY is indexed in Philosophers’ Index. Printed Hentoff, Iowa State University in the United States. Postmaster: Send address changes to FREE Christopher Hitchens, Wendy Kaminer, Joe E. Barnhart Tibor R. Machan, Massimo Pigliucci, INQUIRY, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. 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Austin Dacey ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS John Novak Professor of Education, Brock University Director, Campus and • Complete submission guidelines can be found on the Web at Community Programs (CFI) www.secularhumanism.org/fi/details.html. Jean Claude Pecker DJ Grothe Astronomer, Educator, Author, • Requests for mailed guidelines and article submissions should be Director, African Americans Professeur Honoraire, Collège de France for Humanism addressed to: Article Submissions, ATTN: Tom Flynn, Norm R. Allen Jr. FREE INQUIRY, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. Anthony Pinn Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Western Development Officer (CFI) LETTERS TO THE EDITOR James B. Kimberly Macalester College • Send submissions to Letters Editor, FREE INQUIRY, P.O. Box Development Officers (CFI) Richard T. Hull, Sherry Rook 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. Robert M. Price Professor of Biblical Criticism, Communications Director (CFI) • For letters intended for publication, please include name, Center for Inquiry Institute Kevin Christopher address (including city and state), and daytime phone number Director of Libraries (CFI) (for verification purposes only). Letters should be 300 words or Theodore Schick, Jr. Timothy Binga less and pertain to previous FREE INQUIRY articles. Professor of Philosophy, Fulfillment (CFI) Muhlenberg College Michael Cione, Darlene Banks Staff Victor J. Stenger Julie Beauchamp, Pat Beauchamp, Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Eric Chinchon, John Gaeddert, University of Hawaii Sandy Lesniak, Georgeia Locurcio, Jennifer Miller, Zachary Miner, Lisa Nolan, Edward Tabash Anthony Santa Lucia, Heidi Shively, Civil Liberties Attorney, John Sullivan, Vance Vigrass Chair, Center for Inquiry–West Executive Director Emeritus Jean Millholland Visit Free Inquiry’s Web site at http://www.secularhumanism.org

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 4 NEW DIRECTIONS:

EDITORIAL Centers for Inquiry and PAUL KURTZ Human Enrichment

he Center for Inquiry (CFI) is the newest star on the cultural horizon. Readers of this magazine should by now be familiar with its existence. The Center for Inquiry– TInternational in Amherst, New York, is headquar- ters of the Council for Secular Humanism, publisher of Free Inquiry. Since there are now over a dozen Centers for Inquiry worldwide, and many new CFI Communities now in the process of formation, it is part of a rapidly growing constellation of Centers. What is the purpose of each Center for Inquiry? Its first focus is on inquiry. We wish “to promote and defend reason, science, and freedom of inquiry in all areas of human endeavor”; and, in particular, to critically examine and, if need be, change the basic beliefs and values of society, its unexamined “sacred cows.” Our second focus is on human enrichment. We endeavor to cultivate values that enhance the realization of human happiness. Recently some of us participated at a grand-opening celebration of the Center for Inquiry–Community Long Island. We met in a restaurant in a place with the unlikely name of Hicksville, Long Island—which turns out to be centrally located and near a Long Island Railroad station! Gerry Dantone, the energetic coordinator of the new

“We wish ‘to promote and defend reason, science, and freedom of inquiry in all areas of human endeavor’; and, in particular, to critically examine and, if need be, change the basic beliefs and values of society, its unexamined ‘sacred cows.’ Our second focus is on human enrichment.”

CFI–Community, welcomed everyone by remarking that there were 4,004 churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques on Long Island, but until the CFI–Community was created there was no explicitly secular institution devoted to beliefs and values that did not depend upon religious faith! If, according to a City University of New York Graduate School poll, 14 percent of the American public are nonreligious, this would mean that some 385,000 of the 2,750,000 inhabitants of Long Island need to be served. The same thing is true in most communities in the United States. Granted that there are numerous secular institutions in American society—schools and colleges, museums and sports stadi- ums, factories and offices, cafés and restaurants, libraries and hospitals—nowhere are there institutions explicitly entrusted with espousing a naturalistic outlook and humanist values. Nor are there many communities where nonreligious folk can meet other like-minded individuals. In other words, we are surrounded by a culture that is steeped in religiosity and in which a nontheistic scientific, philosophical, and ethical life-stance is all too rarely appreciated, much less encouraged. Who champions the concerns of people who construct their values and make mor-al

Paul Kurtz is editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry, professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and chair of the Center for Inquiry.

5 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 choices without seeking guidance from Humankind today possesses powerful past. Although religious literature may some faith tradition? Who speaks for the secular methods of science, technology, provide inspiration to countless num- hundreds of millions of humans on the and education that can continue to con- bers of people, its message grew out of planet who are fed up with religious tribute to the progressive amelioration of premodern epochs of human history. intolerance? Who speaks for scientists the human condition. Medicine and the We submit that we need to deal with and skeptics, naturalists, and human- helping professions, schools and univer- the problems facing humankind in the ists, who are concerned with a real- sities, art and music, poetry and philos- twenty-first century such as: istic appraisal of world problems and ophy, and other cultural institutions are • population growth; wish to progress to a new level of under- all avenues for seeking human enrich- • the depletion of natural resources and standing and cooperation? Ever since the ment, independent of religion. Yet there environmental degradation; Renaissance, the democratic and scientif- are all too few openly secular leaders of • widening disparities in income and ic revolutions of the modern world, and the sufficient intellectual integrity and moral wealth; secularization of values, religion seems courage, willing to rise above the religious • free markets and principles of fairness; increasingly an obstacle to solving the morass and boldly chart a new future. Is • international cooperation and orderly problems of the world. Yet we are ever in it not time that we think about achievable adjudication of grievances; danger of slipping back to a premodern secular goals for humankind other than • the need for collective security; era dominated by religious conflicts, as is other-worldly fantasies spawned during • a reduction of poverty and disease; happening today in the Middle East. the infancy of the race? • improved nutrition and health care; Granted that religions have over the • the extension of life for everyone; long history of the human civilization per- e submit that the Center for • open access to the media of commu- formed many worthy deeds: they have Inquiry constellation—however W nication; provided consolation for those who grieve, modestly—has something relevant to • travel and leisure; charity for those in need, and hope for contribute. Our goal is to draw upon the • the advancement of free educational those who despair. Yet at the same time best scientific and philosophic minds opportunities for every child of the they have often censored truth, engen- to take the long-range perspective that planetary community; dered hatred not love, intensified violence will contribute to human knowledge and • expanding the opportunities for the not peace, and they differ profoundly on understanding and will nourish human welfare of humanity as a whole. which of them provides the legitimate road enrichment. to salvation. (“You believe in your religion, It is clear that it is possible to lead a To reiterate, the Center for Inquiry and I’ll believe in God’s!” says the militant moral life and achieve happiness with- is concerned with inquiry into the larger believer.) out depending on the religions of the questions of science and society, ethics and religion—the root questions that are not often raised. We are dissatisfied with the old-time remedies; we wish to draw Announcing CFI from the frontiers of research and their implications for the human condition. The Communities! Center for Inquiry takes the university as its model by being home to many colleges, The Center for Inquiry is pleased to announce that the first CFI Communities departments, and interdisciplinary pro- have been established in the locations shown below. Additional locations will follow grams. Among these are the Council for in the coming months. CFI Communities are local, grassroots groups for secular Secular Humanism, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation­ of Claims of humanists, skeptics, and others who care about science, reason, and freedom of the Paranormal, and the Commission for inquiry. They conduct a variety of educational and social programs. CFI Communities Scientific Medicine and Mental Health; will receive a level of administrative, promotional, and educational support from also it hosts such important programs the Center for Inquiry never before available to local secular humanist and skeptic as the Campus Free­thought Alliance, now CFI–On Campus; African Americans­ groups. If you would like to work with the Center for Inquiry and its organizations to for Humanism; Secular Organizations­ for found a CFI Community in your area, please contact DJ Grothe at djgrothe@centerfor Sobriety; the Center for Inquiry–Institute; inquiry.net and the Center for Inquiry Libraries. By all of these avenues the Center for Inquiry critically examines the claims of religion and the paranormal, but more, it seeks to provide constructive alterna- Tucson, Arizona Hicksville, Long Island tives. We believe in: Montclair, New Jersey Costa Mesa, California • furthering research and education; • developing reliable knowledge through Boston, Massachusetts Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania science; Daytona Beach, Florida Cleveland, Ohio • advancing affirmative moral concep- tions of the good life; Buffalo, New York • being nonreligious, sometimes engag-

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 6 ing in objective criticism of religious Similarly, we believe that the Center genuine planetary community beyond claims, without being reflexively anti- for Inquiry has a role in various regions the ancient rivalries, dogmas, and ani- religious; of the world. In spite of our limited mosities of the past, a world whose • defining ourselves by what we believe resources, we have been working with main focus is on the improvement of in, not by what we do not; people on six continents in order to the lives of all individuals on the planet, • freedom and autonomy of the indi- develop Centers in North and South beyond nation or race, creed or class. vidual; America, Asia, Africa, Europe, and We are optimistic about the possibilities • social justice and responsibility of the Aus­tralia. of achieving a better world in the future. community; We recognize that we are part of a new • the wonder and mystery of the uni- e emphasize our conviction that global civilization that is emerging, and verse; Wthe world needs a New Enlighten­ that science and humanism can play a • the open, inquiring mind, ever willing ment. This means that: vital role. We can do it now. to change beliefs in the light of new evidence; • we need to apply the methods of sci- Signed, • the party of humanity as a whole, not entific inquiry to all areas of human a sectarian political agenda; interest, including religion and the Paul Kurtz, chair, Council for Secular • the cultivation of the arts, music, poet- paranormal, ethics and education, Humanism ry, literature, and drama, an appreci- politics and economics; Norm Allen, deputy editor, Free ation of aesthetic beauty. • we seek to develop a naturalistic cosmic Inquiry, and director, African perspective based upon the sciences; Americans for Humanism In our view, every major city and • we wish to maximize human freedom, Jan Loeb Eisler, member of the board town in the United States should have creativity, excellence, happiness, and of directors, Council for Secular a Center for Inquiry where people can exuberance; Humanism meet and share ideas. Centers appeal • we wish to apply humanistic ethics to Tom Flynn, editor, Free Inquiry to all age groups, offering moral educa- the democratic secular society. DJ Grothe, director, Campus and tion and critical thinking for the young, Community Programs, Center for activities for teenagers, a program for e invite all people who share our Inquiry college and university students, and Wvision of a better world, and are Richard T. Hull, development director, enrichment programs for individuals passionately committed to nourishing Center for Inquiry and couples, gays and lesbians, families the art of intelligence to improve and David Koepsell, executive director, and retirees. enhance human life to join with us to Council for Secular Humanism We are prepared to help create do so. We are ready to work with our Andrea Szalanski, managing editor, nascent CFI communities or full- religious neighbors when they agree Free Inquiry fledged Centers for Inquiry in any area. with us about the need to create a

LETTERS

of fairness. All of these merit serious Religion and discussion, but phrasing them in terms Morality of fairness is misleading. There are aspects of each not encompassed by Though I agree with much of the edito- fairness, which is subject to different rial by Paul Kurtz (“The Principles of and subjective interpretations. Fairness contra ‘Gott Mit Uns!’” June/ Dr. Kurtz makes much of human July 2004), I disagree with enough of rights in the context of gay marriage and what he said to make me uncomfortable stem-cell research. In my view, human with his brand of humanism, that is, rights are whatever society decides they “secular humanism.” are. Kurtz views gay marriage as a Dr. Kurtz contrasts principles of fair- right and gives examples of economic, ness with traditional religious morality. political, and social benefits of marriage. The latter can be different things, but I I think society is justified in reserving think most proponents would not accept these benefits for heterosexual couples unfairness as one of their beliefs. Dr. in order to promote the welfare of chil- Kurtz lists five examples of actions and dren. Withholding those benefits from policies he says violate the principles homosexual unions is not discrimination.

7 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 LETTERS

Dr. Kurtz asserts that the right to privacy mean. In fact, Paul Kurtz summarizes one of the most despicable forms of is at stake; I don’t think it is. He says that their meanings in his lead editorial. His theft. Those interested in fairness will marriage by a public official is unfair opponents are classified as “extreme note that the government of the United to the nonreligious; I don’t think it is. religious moralists,” (pp. 6, 7); “author- States has exempted itself from its own Indeed, marriage by clergy seems to vio- itarian nationalists” (p. 8); “creedal fas- laws prohibiting theft. Are humanists at late the separation of church and state. cists” (p. 8); “Islamic terrorists” (p. 8); ease with this forceable method of gov- Allan D. Halderman and “fascist storm troopers” (p. 8). ernment redistribution of wealth (sup- Portland, Oregon And all this noise and jargon for posedly for the common welfare)? believing “in one nation under god” and Paul Kurtz informs us that the gov- Dr. Kurtz responds: “Jesus Christ died for my sins” (p. 9). ernment is responsible for educating Paul, I love you, but my definition of children and for providing food, insur- Fairness is an important moral con- love is a bit different than yours. ance, and health care to those who can- cept, particularly for secular morality. David A. Noebel not afford it. First of all, if such a society Violations of elementary principles of Summit Ministries existed, few would bother to work (why fair treatment have been denounced Manitou Springs, Colorado work if everything is free?). Second, by people from all walks of life, not with such expensive responsibilities, the only secular humanists. Slavery and government could hardly refrain from the mistreatment of women, for exam- Dr. Kurtz responds: resorting to theft (i.e., taxation) to meet ple, were roundly condemned as unfair its so-called obligations. Those facts and a violation of human rights—even I hope that Dr. Noebel can appreci- notwithstanding, it is not fair to steal though earlier fundamentalists defend- ate how frightened millions of patriotic from one person to provide for another, ed both. I would apply fairness to same- Americans are at the threats posed to regardless of the extent of the victim’s sex marriage (homogany)—if homosex- our civil liberties by the Patriot Act, wealth, or of the beneficiary’s plight. uals wish to work out a civil union (or particularly since patriotism is equated One may work or beg in order to acquire marriage), they should have the same with belief in “one nation under God.” subsistence, but theft is no more a justi- rights as heterosexuals. Similarly, the The evangelicals proclaim (in the fiable means to obtain subsistence than fact that nonreligious people such as Left Behind novels) that only a rela- rape is a justifiable means to acquire secular humanists are not allowed to tively small number of people on this progeny. perform marriage ceremonies, as do planet will be saved by the Rapture, and What a heretical idea it must be religious people, is in our view unfair. they have condemned to hell Hindus, to contemporary socialists that a gov- I agree that raising children is an Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, humanists, ernment should be limited in its scope important issue and that high standards unbelievers, and countless others. In and responsibilities could certainly be of adoption need to be maintained. Noebel’s co-authored book, Mind Siege, managed on a budget supplied entirely Adoptions should be evaluated on a he appeals to “evangelical­ foot soldiers” through voluntary contributions. case-by-case basis, always considering to root out all secular humanists from In any case, I am pleased that the the welfare of the child first. Similarly American life—this is reminiscent of socialist and totalitarian nature of the for the freedom of reproductive rights fascist storm troopers of another era. average humanist is now manifest. I for lesbian or homosexual couples who David, we extend love and toleration am also pleased that I have long been may wish to conceive children. Marriage to you as part of our open democratic reluctant to adopt the humanist moni- by clergy violates separation of church society. You claim to speak for God (“got ker. My socialist-detection meter must and state, but if religious officiates can mit uns”), but we have not condemned be functioning properly. marry, why not secularists? you to eternal damnation because you Steven Walk I enumerated some principles of fair- do not agree with us. Euclid, Ohio ness that evangelical fundamentalists today violate: (1) their criticisms of Dr. Kurtz responds: pornography but not of violence; (2) “Does humanism embrace—or even their defense of capital punishment seek to accomodate—socialism? The Mr. Walk surely cannot be serious, but and preventive war, but not of peaceful Affirmations of Humanism state, “We of course he is in defending an extreme negotiations; (3) their view that sex is are concerned with securing justice and libertarian perspective. If taxation is sinful but not an equal criticism of greed fairness in society. . . .” By my defini- impermissible, than how does one pay and avarice; (4) their double standard tion, “fairness” means that the rule of for the common defense, fire and police that gives a privileged position to the law should apply equally to all people. protection, the building of bridges and wealthy but very little moral concern for My dictionary also states that theft highways? Surely in a democratic soci- the poor and disadvantaged. is the act of taking, by fraud, force, ety, the people can vote to pay for these or the threat of force, the honestly services plus the education of children, acquired property of another person. By or the health care of citizens uncovered, I have finally figured out what secular-hu- this definition, taxation is no different or food and shelter for the destitute manist tolerance, love, and compassion than theft. Indeed, it is like extortion, without categorizing this as “socialism.”

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 8 LETTERS

These come under the principles of fair- the latter in his piece.) Mr. Bush is a ness and can be defended on both moral very good politician, schooled at Yale Oh, the Humanity and pragmatic grounds. and developed under the tutelage of Gregory Stock’s piece in your June/July his father, his staff and many foreign 2004 issue (“From Regenerative Medi­ policy experts. His interactions with Mr. cine to Human Design”) is the sort of Robinson reflect, as they would with In Search of the sane and thoughtful discussion that is any supporter of his policy, a focus on needed to cut through all the hysterical areas of common reference and agree- Real George Bush nonsense surrounding the issue of bio- ment. To portray a strategic action technology. I’d like to do him one better The devil is in the details. In the June/ as the devil dancing and the winds by arguing that biotechnology is not July 2004 issue of Free Inquiry maga- of Armageddon blowing is against the only a power we have the right to use zine, I read of Edmund Cohen’s fear that rational context of this esteemed forum. but also is one that we will be compelled George Bush’s intentions and actions Lt. Col. LeGrande Blount (ret.) U.S.A.F. to use. so closely parallel notions of Christian Granbury, Texas Existence as a sapient life-form is fundamentalist theological world con- something full of tradeoffs and respon- quest. I believe it is a stretch to put Edmund Cohen responds: sibilities. Take command of one aspect forward such an outlandish rationale of nature, and you must take respon- for Mr. Bush’s actions when a much If nothing were known about the inner sibility for the ripple of consequences more plausible “rational” explanation workings of the Bush administration, that follows. In the practice of land exists. As fundamentalist Islam is being Col. Blount’s rendition of the reasoning management, for instance, we put out embraced by portions of the populations it employed could be plausible. However, natural fires that disrupt our lives, cre- of many of the nations, most foreign-pol- much is known thanks to the revelations ating an overabundance of dry tinder icy experts note there are few demo- of Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke, and Bob on the ground that makes an eventual cratic examples in the region. Israel Woodward, among others. We know that super fire a certainty. Thus we must appears to serve as an example of instead of discussion about the ramifi- perform “controlled burns” to clear off imperialism in the region, and Turkey cations of nation building, invading Iraq the debris that nature would otherwise is under assault from fundamentalist was an initial presupposition for Pres­ dispose of in its way. In the matter forces and is pulling away from Western ident Bush. Instead of the usual policy of human evolution, we war against democratic ideas. Many of the countries development process, reasons for invad- the cruel process of natural selection are stifling the democratizing process, ing Iraq were cobbled together post hoc. that carries off the young and help- and that group of 18–25 year olds who Instead of listening to advisors, President less against our moral and sentimental would otherwise be protesting for better Bush tasked them to justify going to war. wishes. It is only right that we do so, but governance are swept into anti-West- Among the most interesting of the rev- then there is left the problem of how to ern martyrdom. To install a democracy elations is the apparent estrangement keep the gene pool healthy. The repu- in the region is a long-term strategic of the younger President Bush and his tation of eugenics has been so tainted ac­tion to tilt the direction of develop- father. The younger President Bush’s by the actions of Nazi brutes that we ment of the whole region. Iraq because Iraq war policy amounts to rebellion scarcely want to think about the prob- of post-Gulf War sanctions provided a against his father’s tutelage. Taken all lem. Yet think about it we must. If we better candidate than other possible together, what is known leaves no room wish to maintain a humane society then nations like Syria or Iran. September at all for Col. Blount’s version of events we must take over the responsibility of 11 provided the impetus, even though to be correct. maintaining the genetic health of the Iraq had nothing to do with it. Most Col. Blount goes far beyond even the species from the Grim Reaper called Americans are poorly educated on both severest responsible critics of President nature. Genetic engineering is just the history and political science and would Bush in portraying him as having waged ticket. Yes, it will have its risks, but find the long-term focus of this policy a war of sheer imperialist conquest on what choice do we have? less than persuasive, or so the focus a pretext. By supposing that President Julius Wroblewski, M.D. groups must have found. WMDs, provid- Bush uses focus groups to figure out Vancouver, British Columbia ed earlier by the U.S. and thought to still what pack of lies to tell the American Canada be there (as it turns out still there not) people, Col. Blount makes him out to be appealed to the focus groups as justifi- colossally insincere and condescending. cation that could support the U.S. mil- I believe­ President Bush to be intensely itary action. President Bush’s choices sincere. That is what worries me about A Perplexing in Iraq make more sense when viewed him. With defenders like Col. Blount, as those of an adept politician making President Bush scarcely needs critics Dilemma long-term strategic decisions than as such as me. those of a reactionary fundamental- While I appreciate the contribution that ist Christian in­tent on confronting the forces of Islam, (Mr. Cohen’s intimates (Continued on page 51)

9 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 Outpacing its origins as a dissenting publisher, today’s Center for Inquiry (CFI) movement has emerged as an educational resource, think tank, and advocacy organization. We have a bold plan to advance critical thinking, freedom of inquiry, and the scientific outlook through research, publishing, education, advocacy, and social services.

As before, CFI: Branch Centers Across • Supports the Council for Secular the United States and the World Humanism and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of Amherst, New York (HQ): We increased library the Paranormal (CSICOP). space 30 percent and are beginning plans for a major new addition. • Operates the world’s premier freethought and skeptical libraries. Hollywood, California: Renovation of our • Offers distinguished adult education 9,000-square-foot Center for Inquiry – West is Center for Inquiry-International, Amherst, NY programs through the Center for complete. There, a new National Media Center Inquiry Institute. will reach out to — and critically examine — the entertainment media. The 99-seat Steve Allen But, the Center needs to reach out in Theater will also serve as a television production new ways … tackling new facility. problems, exerting influence. New York, New York: Our Center for Inquiry – That’s why the Center for Inquiry’s Metro New York in Rockefeller Center reaches out New Future Fund seeks millions to the nation’s financial, intellectual, and news of new dollars for program needs, media centers, while facilitating local activities capital expansion, and endowment. throughout the metro area. Center for Inquiry-West, Los Angeles, CA Your New Future Fund Tampa Bay, Florida: Center for Inquiry – Florida Gift Can Support: offers a stimulating menu of Independent Publications. Besides aiding Free programs and activities while it searches Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer, CFI publishes the for permanent quarters. independent American Rationalist; two import- ant journals, The Scientific Review of Alternative International Centers: in a bold program expan- Medicine and The Scientific Review of Mental sion, new Centers for Inquiry now Health Practice; and skeptical magazines serv- operate in Russia, Mexico, Peru, Nigeria, ing the UK and the Spanish-speaking world. Germany, France, and Nepal, doing vital Center for Inquiry-Metro NY, at Rockefeller Center work in defense of the open society. We plan further expansion into countries with little or no exposure to humanism.

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RICHARD DAWKINS

“. . . we need to rewrite the question before we can What Use Is Religion? even attempt an intelligent answer.”

Part 2 the only night lights were the moon and the stars. Being at optical Photo by Lalla Ward infinity, their rays are parallel, which makes them ideal compasses. Insects are known to use celestial objects to steer accurately in a straight line. The insect nervous system is adept at set- n my previous column (Free Inquiry, ting up a temporary rule of thumb such June/July 2004), I raised the question as, “Steer a course such that the light Iof the Darwinian survival value of rays hit your eye at an angle of 30°.” religion. Why, given that natural selec- Since insects have compound eyes, this tion abhors waste and extravagance, is will amount to favoring a particular religious behavior a human universal? I more or less unconvincing, and prom- ommatidium (individual optical tube discussed various suggestions of direct ised to return to something more plau- radiating out from the center of the advantages to religion, all sible. Darwinians who seek the survival compound eye). value of religion are asking the wrong But the light compass relies critically question. Instead, we should focus on on the celestial object being at optical something in our evolving ancestors that infinity. If it isn’t, the rays are not we would not then have recognized as parallel but diverge like the spokes of religion, but which is primed to become a wheel. A nervous system using a 30° recognizable as religion in the changed rule of thumb to a candle, as though it context of civilized society. were the moon, will steer its moth, in a I cited the pecking order in hens, and neat logarithmic spiral, into the flame. the point is so central to my thesis that It is still, on average, a good rule of I hope you will forgive another animal thumb. We don’t notice the hundreds of example to ram it home. Moths fly into moths who are silently and effectively the candle flame, and it doesn’t look like steering by the moon or a bright star or an accident. They go out of their way to even the lights of a distant city. We see make a burnt offering of themselves. We only moths hurling themselves at our could label it “self-immo- lights, and we ask the wrong question. lation behavior” and wonder Why are all these moths committing how Darwinian natural suicide? Instead, we should ask why selection­ could they have nervous systems that steer by possibly favor it. maintaining an automatic fixed angle to My point, again, light rays, a tactic that we only notice on is that we need the occasions when it goes wrong. When to rewrite the the question is rephrased, the mystery question before we evaporates. It never was right to call it can even attempt an intel- suicide. ligent answer. It isn’t suicide. Apparent Once again, apply the lesson to reli- suicide emerges as an inadvertent gious behavior in humans. We observe side-effect. large numbers of people—in many local Artificial light is a areas it amounts to 100 percent—who recent arrival on hold beliefs that flatly contradict demon- the night scene. strable scientific facts, as well as rival Until recently, religions. They not only hold these beliefs

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but devote time and resources to costly so well schooled to obey orders without with a solemn earnestness that com- activities that flow from holding them. question that they carried on marching, mands respect and demands obedience. They die for them, or kill for them. We right into the path of an oncoming train. The same goes for propositions marvel at all this, just as we marvelled Now, of course, I don’t believe the story about the world, the cosmos, morality, at the self-immolation be­havior of the now, but I did when I was nine. The point and human nature. And, of course, when moths. Baffled, we ask “Why?” Yet a­gain, is that the preacher wished us children the child grows up and has children of the point I am making is that we may be to regard as a virtue the soldiers’ slavish his or her own, she will naturally pass asking the wrong question. The religious and unquestioning obedience to an order, the whole lot on to her own children, behavior may be a misfiring, an unfor- however preposterous. And, speaking­ for using the same impressive gravitas of tunate manifestation of an underlying myself, I think we did regard it as a vir- manner. psychological propensity that in other tue. I wondered whether I would have had On this model, we should expect circumstances was once useful. the courage to do my duty by marching that, in different geographical regions, What might that psychological pro- into the train. different arbitrary beliefs having no pensity have been? What is the equiva- Like ideally drilled soldiers, comput- factual basis will be handed down, to lent of using the parallel rays from the ers do what they are told. They slavishly be believed with the same conviction obey whatever instructions are properly as useful pieces of traditional wisdom delivered in their own programming such as the belief that manure is good language. This is how they do useful for the crops. We should also expect “. . . religious behavior may things like word processing and spread- that these nonfactual beliefs will evolve be a misfiring, an unfortunate sheet calculations. But, as an inevitable over generations, either by random drift by-product, they are equally automatic or following some sort of analogue of manifestation of an underly- in obeying bad instructions. They have Darwinian selection, eventually show- ing psychological propensity no way of telling whether an instruction ing a pattern of significant divergence will have a good effect or a bad. They from common ancestry. Languages drift that in other circumstances simply obey, as soldiers are supposed apart from a common parent given suf- to. ficient time in geographical separation. was once useful.” It is their unquestioning obedience The same is true of traditional beliefs that makes computers vulnerable to and injunctions, handed down the gen- infection by viruses and worms. A mali- erations, initially because of the pro- moon as a useful compass? I shall offer ciously designed program that says grammability of the child brain. a suggestion, but I must stress that it is “Copy me to every name in any address Darwinian selection sets up child- only an example of the kind of thing I am list that you find on this hard disk” hood brains with a tendency to believe talking about. I am much more wedded will simply be obeyed and then obeyed their elders. It sets up brains with a to the general idea that the question again by the other computers to which tendency to imitate, hence indirectly to should be properly rephrased than I am it is sent, in exponential expansion. It is spread rumors, spread urban legends, to any particular answer. impossible to design a computer that is and believe religions. But given that My specific hypothesis is about chil- usefully obedient and at the same time genetic selection has set up brains of dren. More than any other species, we immune to infection. this kind, they then provide the equiva- survive by the accumulated experience If I have done my softening up work lent of a new kind of nongenetic heredi- of previous generations. Theoretically, well, you will already have completed ty, which might form the basis for a new children might learn from experience the argument about child brains and kind of epidemiology, and perhaps even not to swim in crocodile-infested waters. religion. Natural selection builds child a new kind of nongenetic Darwinian But, to say the least, there will be a brains with a tendency to believe what- selection. I believe that religion is one of selective advantage to child brains with ever their parents and tribal elders tell a group of phenomena explained by this the rule of thumb: Believe whatever them. And this very quality automatical- kind of nongenetic epidemiology, with your grown-ups tell you. Obey your par- ly makes them vulnerable to infection by the possible admixture of nongenetic ents, obey the tribal elders, especially mind viruses. For excellent survival rea- Darwinian selection. If I am right, reli- when they adopt a solemn, minatory sons, child brains need to trust parents gion has no survival value for individual tone. Obey without question. and trust elders whom their parents human beings, nor for the benefit of I have never forgotten a horrifying tell them to trust. An automatic conse- their genes. The benefit, if there is any, sermon, preached in my school chapel quence is that the “truster” has no way is to religion itself. when I was little. It was horrifying in of distinguishing good advice from bad. retrospect: at the time, my child brain The child cannot tell that “If you swim in Richard Dawkins’s most recent book accepted it as intended by the preach- the river you’ll be eaten by crocodiles” is A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on er. He told the story of a squad of sol- is good advice but “If you don’t sacrifice Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. He is diers, drilling beside a railway line. At a goat at the time of the full moon, the the Charles Simonyi Professor of Public a critical moment, the drill sergeant’s crops will fail” is bad advice. They both Under­stand­ing of Science at Oxford attention was distracted, and he failed to sound the same. Both are advice from a University. give the order to halt. The soldiers were trusted source, and both are delivered

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 12 OP-ED

NAT HENTOFF

Castro’s Gulag and “‘What does Mr. Hentoff know of the real Cuba?’ American Librarians My answer to him: ‘I know that if I were a Cuban, I’d be in prison.’”

n the rising resistance against John attorney general that the search is “rel- Ashcroft’s USA Patriot Act and evant” to an investigation of terrorism. Isubsequent executive orders revis- Nothing further—no probable cause or ing sections of the Bill of Rights, the even reasonable suspicion that any of attorney general has been particularly the readers caught in this dragnet have irritated by the attention the media are anything to do with terrorism. And once paying to the many librarians around the FBI comes, a gag order prevents librarians from telling anyone, including “A provision of the section allows rowed books as soon as they are the press, that the visit has taken place. returned—in protest against Section­ The attorney general has said— the Federal Bureau of Investigation 215 of the Patriot Act. attempting to quell the furor—that (FBI) to bring a list of suspect books A provision of the section allows the Section 215 has not yet been used Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) against libraries. But he was careful to libraries to find out who’s been to bring a list of suspect books to librar- not to say it would never be used, and reading them.” ies to find out who’s been reading there have been FBI visits to libraries, them. The FBI gets a court order but the gag rule prevents details being from the secret Foreign Intelligence made public. Surveillance Act (FISA) court, before These rebellious librarians are act- the country who which only a government attorney ing in accordance with the American are expunging appears. Library Association’s (ALA) credo that the re­cords All that the FISA court requires affirms its support of Article 19 of the of bor- is a declaration United Nation’s Universal Declaration from the of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expres- sion.” Moreover, ALA Policy 58.1 (2) supports “human rights and intellectual freedom worldwide.” Yet, at its January midwinter meeting in San Diego, the Governing Council of ALA overwhelmingly reject- ed an amendment by one of its mem- bers, Karen Schneider, calling for the immediate release of the ten librari- ans among the seventy-five prisoners of conscience—as designated by Amnesty International—who were imprisoned by Fidel Castro in the spring of 2003. Among the journalists, labor organiz- ers, medical doctors, and human rights

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workers locked away for sentences of were a Cuban, I’d be in prison.” Council or of the independent librarians twenty years or more were these inde- As for the pro-democracy Cubans in cells three feet wide and six feet long. pendent librarians. who have set up these libraries in their American librarians, vigorously Because Schneider’s resolution homes—including such publications protesting­ the Patriot Act, have not focused on the librarians among the forbidden in the official libraries as yet been imprisoned by John Ashcroft. free-speech dissidents, as she accurate- the International Declaration of Human ly calls them, all the majority of the Rights and works by George Orwell— Council could bring themselves to do the importance of the home libraries was to express “deep concern” for the was emphasized in an August 2001 prisoners, without even mentioning the report by the International Federation “I hope that believers in the librarians. There are members of the of Library Associations (IFLA) in the Council, admirers of Fidel, who charged Hague, an organization usually lauded freedom to read, when they go that these dissidents are part of the by the American Library Association. Bush administration plot to bring about Susanne Seidel, director of the to our libraries, will ask the “regime change” in Cuba. IFLA’s Free Access to Information and librarians which side Amnesty International calls all of Freedom of Expression Office, wrote the seventy-five in the gulag prisoners about “Free Access to Information in they are on. . . .” of conscience. Christine Chanet, a rep- Cuba,” after a visit there: resentative of the United Nations High There is no doubt that a wide range Commissioner for Human Rights, says of information or literature . . . is she “has received particularly alarm- un­available in the (official) libraries ing information about the conditions of of Cuba. Even when publications are And one free spirit among them, Karen detention of these people.” Twenty of held, their use may be restricted or Schneider—whose defeated amend- monitored to the extent that ordinary them are suffering from hypertension, people may be inhibited or even pre- ment to free the Cuban librarians has diabetes, heart disease, and other ail- vented from gaining access to them. become internationally known among ments. They have received little or no It can be argued that the fast grow- human rights workers—has started ing number of independent libraries a Web site: www.freadom.info. Along indicates the existence of an infor- mation gap and that they help by sup- with other free-expression librarians plying a need that otherwise cannot and supporters, she is asking anyone be filled by [official public libraries]. who clicks on to send e-mails to Castro, [Emphasis­ added.] Amnesty International, and Jimmy “. . . independent librarians Castro has the power, obviously, to Carter (who spoke for freedom to read . . . have been committed to continually expand that information gap and speak when he was in Cuba before by jailing more independent librarians. the crackdown). The message is “for making available to Cubans After Castro himself was imprisoned by the immediate release of the librari- the previous dictator of Cuba, however, ans . . . and until their release, for an the invincible fortress he wrote about that instructive expe- improvement in their prison conditions.” of ideas.” rience: Freadom.info will continue to focus on other crises or specific events related to In prison, there were no rifles for the freedom to read. training, no stone fortresses from which to shoot. Behind those walls, Letters and other messages to Castro our rifles were books. And through have resulted in the release of indepen- study, stone by stone we built our for- dent Cuban librarian Julio Antonio Val­ medical attention. (The International tress, the only one that is invincible: des, seriously ill with advanced­ kidney the fortress of ideas. Red Cross has been barred from disease. The source of that emergen- Castro’s prisons since 1989.) Nonviolently, the independent librar- cy appeal was another Web site, www. Because I have joined a growing num- ians also have been committed to mak- friendsofcubanlibraries.org. Valdes was ber of American librarians who strongly ing available to Cubans the invincible also declared a prisoner of conscience by disagree with the Governing Council’s fortress of ideas. One of them is the Amnesty International—though not by disinclination to offend the Cuban dic- widely respected journalist and poet ALA’s Governing Council. tator, I have been targeted by Eliades Raúl Rivero, who is in very poor health Acosta, director of Cuba’s National in his cell. His wife, Blanca Reyes, who Nat Hentoff is a regular columnist for Library (Biblioteca Nacional). Ex­press­ has refused to be silenced, says, “What the Village Voice and the Wash­ington ing his pleasure at the Council’s defeat of they found on him was a tape recorder, Times, a United Media syndicated col- Karen Schneider’s amendment, and bris- not a grenade.” umnist, and the author of Living the tling at my support of it, Acosta asked I hope that believers in the freedom Bill of Rights (University of California accusingly, “What does Mr. Hentoff know to read, when they go to our librar- Press) and The War on the Bill of Rights of the real Cuba?” ies, will ask the librarians which side and the Gathering Resis­tance (Seven My answer to him: “I know that if I they are on—that of the governing ALA Stories Press, 2003).

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 14 OP-ED

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

“A majority of Israeli and American Jews record True Church-State consistent support for a two-state solution, which is Separation also the official position of the Palestine Liberation Organization. . . . But the godly have other ideas.”

once heard the late Abba Eban, Land were awarded in perpetuity to the formerly foreign minister of Israel, ancient Hebrews. This faction has suc- Iaddress a dovish Jewish audience ceeded in implanting settlements as a in New York. In that rather plummy fait accompli and preaches that, once the British-English accent of his, he began Arab and Jewish, in Palestine, and it has redemption of the land is complete, the by saying that what struck the eye been implicitly agreed ever since the Temple will be miraculously rebuilt (on first, in any contemplation of the Israel- Balfour Declaration­ of 1917 that some the very spot, as it happens, now occu- Palestine dispute, was the simplicity kind of territorial share-out, between pied by the Al-Aqsa mosque). The fate and ease of its solution. approximately equivalent populations, of non-Jewish inhabitants is a matter of That was a good way of getting atten- would provide the basis for a solution. indifference to them. tion. This problem is usually coupled Partition is not ideal and doesn’t have a Many of those who guard that with the word intractable, if not an even very good track record elsewhere, but it mosque on the rock are persuaded that stronger term suggesting grave difficul- is obviously preferable to endless war, the Prophet Muhammad’s horse left a ty. But in outline, it is not as convolut- or to apartheid or colonial rule, or to hoofprint there on its journey, with its ed as all that. There are two compet- the extirpation of one side by the other. divinely inspired rider, to paradise. An ing nationalisms, Why is this obvious outcome appar- increasing number of Islamic spokes- ently beyond the reach of statecraft men refer to the whole territory as and diplomacy? A majority of sacred Muslim land, in which all Jews Israeli and American and indeed all non-Muslims are pro- Jews record consis- fane intruders. Their methods—suicide tent support for a murder and indiscriminate mayhem, two-state solution, spurred by toxic promises of a blissful which is also the offi- afterlife—perfectly express their ide- cial position of the ology. These tactics have the addition- Palestine Liberation al merit of making rational discussion Organization. The among Israelis almost impossible. international commu- And let us not forget the Christian nity is ready to furnish contribution. When Israeli extremists immense quantities of visit the United States these days, they aid and support the go straight to address large gatherings moment such a solution of “rapture”-minded Evangelicals, who begins to take shape. also believe that the entire Holy Land is But the godly have a divine gift to the Jews and who resist other ideas. On the any talk of negotiating even one inch of Jewish/Israeli­ side, it. By this means, they hope to advance a messianic minority the day of Armageddon and (as it hap- believes­ that there is noth- pens) the conversion of the Jews. There ing to negotiate, because is obviously some cynicism at work here the title deeds of the Holy on both sides, since Messianic Judaism

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and Messianic Christianity are radically incites some of its sufferers to go straight finances suicide-murder and pumps out incompatible. But presumably each fac- for martyrdom and self-immolation in the a filthy stream of anti-Semitic diatribes. tion believes that it is using the other, here and now. Disgusting old mullahs And “we” allow fundamentalist Chris­ and that God will sort out the difference push children into suicide-belts and bless tians to help set the tone of policy on the big day. This in turn inflames the their detonations. Crazed rabbis encour- at home and abroad. The least that Muslim belief that Islam faces a sinister age families to steal land in the name could be done here would be to ask the Zionist-Crusader alli­ance and thus that of God and to bring up Jewish children Supreme Court to hear constitutional jihad is an urgent necessity. to bear arms within sight of festering argument to the effect that no American And yet we continue to hear, on all Arab refugee-camps. (I am presuming aid can be used to sustain settlements sides, that people of “faith” are by defi- that no serious person believes that put- that are actually “an establishment of nition people of goodwill and that reli- ting Jewish settlements in the middle religion.” The most that could be done gion, even if not literally true, at least of Gaza is really intended to increase would be to insist that our foreign policy makes people behave in a more moral Jewish “security.”) And big-mouth was consistent on this point and that fashion. Right before our eyes, on a fund-raising Christian primitives in the Congress be barred from voting money daily basis, in the most closely studied Unit-ed­ States shout, in effect, “Bring it to any theocratic regime or theocratic political conflict in the world, we can see on!” Meanwhile, our pseudo-ecumenical project. But we may have passed the it demonstrated that these propositions president manages to believe simultane- point of degeneration: the point where are catastrophically untrue. I do not ously that he’s been saved by Christ, that the language of our own Bill of Rights select the word catastrophically just for Israel is the fulfillment of prophecy, and sounds absurd when set against the rhetorical purposes. In all three clerical that Islam is “a religion of peace.” lethal rantings of those who deeply movements, there is a very blatant and The general American responsibility desire our extinction. undisguised wish to see the whole world in this is very grave. “We” pay Israel and the entire human race destroyed and a subsidy that conceals the cost of the Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for the reign of an absolutist deity instituted. colonial settlements. “We” have a warm Vanity Fair. He is working on a study of The sick excitement of this fantasy even relationship with Saudi Arabia, which Thomas Jefferson.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 16 OP-ED

VERN L. BULLOUGH

A Humanist “We need to act as an organized movement to find housing and offer health and Failure? support to those who most need it.”

ne of the major problems of cities blue tarps that can be tied to fences to with mild winter climates is the keep the rain out or provide some pri- Onumber of homeless people on vacy. Another group offers waterproof the street. As social services are being drawstring bags that allow a person to curtailed, almost every large city in The missions run by various religious keep his or her meager possessions dry. the United States has a major problem groups are sometimes the last resort Grocery stores turn over their day-old of dealing with the poor, the mentally and often the best place to get a free bakery products and surplus produce. ill, the long-term unemployed, the drug meal. Food lines are long but, by moving The religious groups are ever pres- addicted, and others who are down from one to the next, a man (and there ent. At least one retired priest, Maurice and out for a variety of reasons. Where are far more men than women) can Chase, gives out money. Every Sunday should they go? We have closed our eat five or six meals a day. Emissaries for the past twenty or so years, Chase mental hospitals, cut back on welfare of the various religious groups motor has brought a bag of dollar bills to the programs, and generally have tried to through the streets or walk the side- Row, which he hands out. Towards the ignore their existence. Even the jails walks distributing fruit, hamburgers, end of each month, when welfare checks are overcrowded. Any good-sized city bottled water, T-shirts, jeans, sleeping have run out, it takes two hours waiting has a sizable number of such people, bags, and tents. One group hands out in line to receive the dollar. The late but winter takes its toll, and people who would freeze to death in Minneapolis, Boston, Chicago, New York, Buffalo, Denver, and elsewhere are like northern snowbirds everywhere: they head south if possible in order to survive. One result is that Los Angeles has per- haps the largest homeless district in the country. Skid Row, as it is now known, spans fifty square blocks in downtown Los Angeles with a population as large as a medium-sized city. Some eleven thou- sand people who manage to have some money bed down each night in cheap rooms in the sixty-five single-room-occu- pancy hotels that were established just to house them. Thousands of others climb into bunks or crowd together in suites of formerly grand old hotels now offering a bed for a night at a lower cost than a room. Most inhabit the sidewalks and the spaces beneath the bridges spanning the Los Angeles River.

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Harold Edelstein, a bachelor who was while it does to some extent, its actions one person’s efforts are not enough. We not identified with any religious group, are limited. Other than picking up their need to act as an organized movement left about twenty million dollars to sup- welfare checks, the only contact that to find housing and offer health and port minor projects such as community most of the homeless have with gov- support to those who most need it. I am coffee stands or assist the most desper- ernment is with the police, who are often disappointed at the hold organized ate people. His giving became institu- used to prevent them from sleeping on religion has on the public psyche, but tionalized in a foundation that is named the streets (they might get run over), until we as humanists can do more to after him, which is gradually giving urinating or having bowel movements resolve the problems associated with away the money without any attempt to in public areas, or encroaching beyond poverty and homelessness, we will have preserve the principal. Skid Row into other areas of the city. to take a backseat to those dedicated What strikes me as a humanist when I must admit that I would not like the religious who in their own narrow way I visit Skid Row is my feeling of helpless- homeless living in my neighborhood. I are trying. ness. I resent that many have to listen to also have had to admit to myself that a sermon before getting food, yet I am there is little I can do as an individual, Vern Bullough is a convinced that, if I found myself in the beyond passing out a few dollar bills or senior editor of Free Inquiry. He is a same condition, I could probably ratio- volunteering in a soup kitchen. But, as noted author and researcher in human nalize listening to one if it meant a good a humanist, I want to do more. I believe sexuality. Cur­rently, he is adjunct pro- meal. In an earlier period in my life, I a humanist has to deal with the reality fessor of nursing at the University of would have argued that the government of poverty, but I have also concluded Southern California. should take on more of the burden, and that to make any dent in the problem,

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17 14 ITHACA MUSEUM HOURS: Sat.–Sun. Noon–5 p.m., 86 CORNING Memorial Day Weekend through Halloween ELMIRA PENNSYLV ANIA DRESDEN, NEW YORK (off State Route 14 between Geneva and Watkins Glen) For directions, phone (315) 536-1074 or visit www.secularhumanism.org/ingersoll.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 18 OP-ED

PETER SINGER

The Pope Moves Backward on Terminal Care One ethicist put it bluntly: the pope’s “I should like particularly, to underline how the adminis- tration of water and food, even when provided by artificial statement was “a stunner, means, always represents a natural means of preserving to say the least.” life, not a medical act.”1

world. In the United States, there are about ten thousand patients in a per- sistent 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, hose are the words of Pope John these hospitals have regarded artificial Paul II, speaking in March 2004 feeding as an “extraordinary means of Tto an international congress held life-support” and therefore as some- in Rome. The conference was on “Life- thing that they are not obligated to sustaining Treatments and Vegetative provide. State: Scientific Advances and Ethical Dr. Charles Daschbach, academ- Dilemmas,” and it was organized by the ic director at St. Joseph’s Hospital in World Federation of Catholic Medical Phoenix, Arizona, told the Arizona Associations and the Pontifical Acad­ Republic that at St. Joseph’s decisions emy for Life. The pope was able to The pope supported his conclusion about whether to continue tube feeding cut through all the ethical dilemmas. by arguing that some patients with PVS were based on “balancing sufficient ben- Although he acknowledged that a patient make at least a partial recovery, and, in efits to the patients against any burdens in a persistent vegetative state, or PVS, the current state of medical science, we to patients and their families.” He added “shows no evident sign of self-aware- are still unable to predict with certainty that the pope’s speech “was not sent as ness or of awareness of the environ- which patients will recover and which a part of the official church teachings.”2 ment, and seems unable to interact with will not. But here he seems to have been Laurence O’Connell, direc­tor of the non- others or to react to specific stimuli,” poorly advised. While it is true that in sectarian Park Ridge Center for Health, he said that they should be kept alive most PVS cases, we cannot definitive- Faith, and Ethics in Chicago, put it more indefinitely. Such patients, he insisted, ly exclude the possibility of recovery, bluntly, describing the pope’s statement “retain their human dignity in all its modern brain-imaging techniques do as “a stunner, to say the least.”3 fullness” and “the loving gaze of God now enable us to know that in some A more puzzling statement came the Father continues to fall upon them.” PVS cases, the entire cortex has been from Richard Doerflinger, a spokesman For this reason, he said, it is obligatory destroyed. Then, no recovery is possi- for the United States Conference of to continue to provide them with food ble, for the cortex cannot reconstitute Catholic Bishops Secretariat for Pro- and water, even if this can only be done itself. Hence the argument for preserv- Life Activities. “To have the pope speak through a tube. The pope added that ing the lives of these patients cannot be on this and speak his mind is some- to withdraw the tube, knowing that it based on medical uncertainty. thing people on both sides of the ques- will lead to the death of the patient, is No dilemmas for the pope, then, but tion have been waiting for for years,” “euthanasia by omission.” plenty for Catholic hospitals around the he said. But then he added, “It does

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not remove practical judgements about required by their dignity as human “Patients have a right to life, whether a feeding tube in an individual beings, actually “shows a lack of respect case is doing more harm than good.” for them.” But that was before the but apparently that is not Doerflinger didn’t explain how a feed- pope spoke. Afterwards, Father Ford a right that gives them any ing tube could harm patients who are told The Tablet, the leading Catholic completely unaware of anything that is magazine in the United Kingdom: “I choice. They have to be fed, happening to them. accept the teaching given by the Pope whether they like it or not.” If Catholic hospitals do attempt to in his speech to congress participants.”4 implement the pope’s view, they will be That’s the trouble with being a bioethi- cist in an institution that doesn’t allow free speech with- www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2004-04- in its own ranks. 01-pope-usat_x.htm. “If Catholic hospitals do 4. Ivereigh, “US Hospitals in Dilemma Notes over PVS Patients.” attempt to implement the 1. The pope’s speech is available at http://www.vegetativestate.org/discorso_ Peter Singer is DeCamp Professor of pope’s view, they will be papa.htm. 2. Austen Ivereigh, “US Hospitals in Bioethics at the University Center for heading for a collision Dilemma over PVS Patients,” The Tablet, Human Values at Princeton University.­ April 10, 2004; available at http://www. He is the author of Animal Liberation, with the principle of thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/citw.cgi/past-00174# Practical Ethics, Rethinking Life and Americas. Death, Writings on an Ethical Life, and, patient autonomy. . . .” 3. Cathy Lynn Grossman, “Pope Declares Feeding Tubes a ‘Moral Obligation,’” USA most recently, The President of Good To­day, April 1, 2004; available at http:// and Evil: The Ethics of George W. Bush. 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 medi- cal treatment and may be with- drawn 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 Cath­ olic bioethicist, Father Nor­ man Ford, seems to have taken a more humane view than the head of his own church. At the Rome con- ference 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

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 20 OP-ED

JAMES UNDERDOWN

surprised if there was a more concen- trated cluster of logical, literal thought within five hundred miles. Mother (Nature) Religious people often look at hard- core secularists like us and pity us for not being able (or willing) to behold the inspired beauty of God’s creation. Dearest The tiny lizards that darted past us in the hot sun and the hearty burros are alike—all part of His plan to them. Ah,

“What cold-hearted atheist The earth does not argue, Is not pathetic, has no arrangements, could gaze upon such a sight Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise, and not be filled with marvel Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures, and reverence—not for some Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out. in logic and science. We trained our vague deity created to explain bodies for weeks before the trip. We —Walt Whitman, “Carol of Words” ancient mysteries, but for the weighed our gear and provisions and n September 19, 2003, I joined decided only the night before the descent barely imaginable grandeur Jeff Lowder and Jim Still—both what to pack based on current weather and power of nature?” Oboard members of Internet reports. We were ready for exertion, Infidels—on a trek into the largest hole exhaustion, and emergency. in the ground on the planet, the Grand But our rational modus operan- Canyon in northern Arizona. di didn’t end with our arrangements. but there are none so blind as folks like With thirty- to forty-pound packs on Anyone eavesdropping on our many con- us who will not see. How could we truly our backs, we hiked more than seven versations might have heard a 5 a.m. appreciate the Grand Canyon? How can miles down to the floor of the canyon discussion about objective morality on there even be beauty in lives like ours? that day, a Friday, camped two nights the shuttle bus to the trailhead; a midday And yet, overwhelmingly, there it under the stars, and returned via a nine- scoffing from a scenic perch at creation- was. That mighty, magnificent chasm, mile trail back to the South Rim, almost ist notions of floods cutting the canyon six million years in the making, is the five thousand feet above the Colorado within the past two thousand years; us physical embodiment of the word awe- River. Of the five million visitors to the trying to find an acceptable definition some. From the first glow of dawn until park every year, hundreds of people fol- of the word soul, much ado about the the long evening shadows engulf all but low an itinerary similar to ours. contradiction of a beneficent and omnip- the rim, this colossal labyrinth of carved While our group may have looked otent God, or the incompatibility of omni- rock changes personalities hour to hour, like many others on the surface, it science and free will. Whew. (Maybe a season to season, century to century. It struck me that we were different some- little less oxygen to the brains would never shows the same face twice. The how. First, all three of us see the world have made the hike easier.) relentless Colorado cuts and curves and (and universe) in natural terms. None We spied the mention of God on a excavates, ceaselessly hauling ton after of us believes in any god, practices any painting at the Phantom Ranch com- ton westward and southward, making religion, or sees evidence of supernatu- missary, caught each other’s eyes when the great hole ever deeper and wider. ral forces anywhere. “Mother Nature,” a ranger told of a miraculous rescue What cold-hearted atheist could gaze to us, is just a metaphor for what comes by cell phone in an area where no cell upon such a sight and not be filled with out in the wash when elements inter- service existed, and rolled our eyes at marvel and reverence—not for some act. This was probably as analytical a an account of bad karma causing some vague deity created to explain ancient troupe as any that had ever camped in scorpion stings. We even took the time mysteries, but for the barely imaginable the canyon. to snap a few fake UFO photos for an Even our preparations were steeped upcoming skeptics’ conference. I’d be (Continued on page 55)

21 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 FRONTLINES

SIDE LINES World Baptists on the Defensive as Americans Pull Out

Early last June at the Baptist World Alliance annual meeting, the U.S.-based Atheists: Fear Them — Researchers conduct- Southern Baptist Convention, made headlines with its announcement that it was ing the three-year American Mosaic Project pulling out of the BWA. The SBC was objecting to a perceived liberal leaning in the are surveying Americans’ attitudes toward race and religion. Among many other questions, BWA, manifesting itself as tolerance toward homosexuality and support for women participants were asked what religious group in the clergy. The SBC also objected to perceived “anti-American pronouncements.” was the most threatening or dangerous. Fifty- Some would say the BWA is on the right track. But not so fast, says the BWA: it four percent answered “Atheists.” Maybe white, claims have been misrepresented and has accused the SBC of slander. conservative Christians dominated the pool: In an official statement that was designed to clear up the confusion, the BWA that group revealed the most antipathy toward made the following points: “The BWA is not a liberal organization!”; “The BWA does diversity, in their responses to questions about not promote women as pastors of churches nor does it argue against the practice”; scenarios in which their children might marry out of their faith or race. and “The BWA does not support homosexuality as an acceptable life-style, believing it to be incompatible with the teachings of Scripture!” Thanks for the Clues — Those who have been The BWA also insisted that it was not anti-American and that “Baptists should keeping an eye out for the Antichrist will be always be good and patriotic citizens of their countries,” but that “patriotism must relieved to know that Cardinal Giacomo Biffi is on the job. The conservative cleric, consid- always be limited to and judged by the Bible’s call for ultimate loyalty to Christ who ered to be a leading candidate to succeed is above all!” Pope John Paul II, says that the seven-headed “How sad that the BWA has been defamed and our strongly Biblical and evangel- beast described in the Book of Revelations ical stance has been irreparably hurt by innuendos, false accusations, and guilt by was already among us and probably disguised association,” the statement read. as philanthropist advocating for vegetarianism, animal rights, or pacifism. He could also be working to dialogue with Orthodox or Anglican religious. But his true purpose, Biffi reminds us, is to undermine Catholicism. Better Late Than Never? — Latin Americans In Memoriam are worried about an invasion. Asians fear a resurgence of tradition. The English and North Mike Jordan, the irrepressible creator and director of the world’s only Americans are dismayed by “fads” that just won’t atheist/freethinker a cappella group, Voices of Reason, died June 10, go away. All together, Catholics representing twen- ty-five countries convened in Rome in June to dis- 2004. He was thirty-six. Originally from Minnesota, Mike founded and cuss how to protect their religion and keep from directed the Minneapolis Greed Theater. He moved to California in his losing followers to New Age spiritualities. Among twenties to pursue his dream of finding success in Hollywood. He was the examples listed in a report on the problem a proficient musician, actor, and singer, a theater critic, and a writer were the Jewish kabbalah, the Enneagram per- whose semi-autobiographical short story “Catch” was nominated for a sonality-reading cult, ancient Egyptian occult prac- prestigious journalistic award. tices, Sufism, Druid practices, Celtic Christianity, Within the gay community, Mike always pushed to have the atheist’s medieval alchemy, Renais­sance hermeticism, yoga, and Zen Buddhism. Some Catholics working voice heard. For his innovative creation of Voices of Reason, Mike was on the problems are advocating a dialogue with awarded the 2002 Spencer Blackwelder Freethought Pioneer Award New Agers similar to that being conducted with from Atheists United. He is survived by his partner, Peter Olson, in Los Muslims, while others, including the pope, view it Angeles, and by his parents and two sisters in Minnesota. as a matter of right or wrong. That’s a Relief — The death toll from the Spanish * * * * * * Inquisition is far less that has been speculated, according to a historian of Catholicism. Professor Long-time Council for Secular Humanism supporter Robert Lees Agostino Borromeo­ of Rome’s Sapienza University died at ninety-one years of age as a victim of a brutal murder in his says that his studies have shown that “only” 1 hometown of Los Angeles. Mr. Lees was involved with the CFI–West percent of the 125,000 people tried by church community and will be dearly missed by friends and CFI staff. Mr. Lees tribunals were executed, although deaths may also have occurred at the hands of nonchurch was one of the first Hollywood screenwriters to be blacklisted, and his tribunals. Previous­ estimates have put the figure writing career came to a halt for some time when he invoked the Fifth at anywhere from 30,000 to 300,000. He notes Amendment rather than naming names in the McCarthy hearings. His that the process was strictly regulated: each writing credits include Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and the victim was allowed to be tortured for only fifteen television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents. A long-time humanist, Mr. minutes and only in the presence of a doctor. Lees kept a plaque from his childhood that read: “The world is my home, all men are my brothers.” Our brother will be missed. The Council and Free Inquiry send their deepest condolences to Mr. Lees’s family.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 22 WILL ISLAM COME INTO THE 2st CENTURY?

Too Many What is the optimum population of the U.S.? The world? People Tom Flynn

verpopulation long mattered to me. A high schooler when the Club of Rome issued The Limits­ Oto Growth, I had already embraced its agenda.1 If too many people burdened the planet, I would add no more. I resolved not to father children, and remain child-free to this day. In 1981, even my decision to move to Buffalo, New York—which eventually led me to Free Inquiry—reflected my concern about what we then called “popullution.” Human numbers had been too high for decades; I dreamed that in my lifetime society might set out to roll them back. A massive controlled demographic contraction would be required to retreat from however many fearsome billions we would then have become. A hard-hit Rust Belt city, Buffalo faced decades of real shrinkage; it was undergoing involuntarily the dwindling I hoped the world would one day purposely embrace. I wondered how Buffalo’s political and social institutions would cope with demographic decline. (The answer: really badly.) I was a little out of step, still worrying about overpopulation in 1981; it was already a fad- than ing cause. Several simplistic Malthusian “crash half a billion points” predicted by The Limits to Growth or inhabitants.4 This is Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb2 had frightening, given that even the been exceeded, and we hadn’t run out of present human population consumes 40 percent of Earth’s food, water, oil, copper, or whatever com- biological productivity.5 Moreover, indications suggest that modity one cared to name. After decades, Ehrlich and the Club of Rome had merely centered their some activists burned out. Overpopulation lost its doomsday predictions on the wrong Malthusian crash points. grip on the zeitgeist.3 Their logic was sound; today new, unanticipated crash points Yet the crisis continued. Human numbers are still rising in loom before us: many countries. California’s population is growing faster than • In parts of the American West and elsewhere, specialists India’s; Americans born today will retire in a nation with more predict the possible complete exhaustion of water resources.6

• As third world economies grow, millions—soon enough,

billions—will start doing their level best to consume like

Americans. Beijing, with about a thousand cars in 1985, now Tom Flynn is editor of Free Inquiry. He is child-free by choice. has more than two million.7 China uses 8 percent of world

23 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 As the authors in our special section demonstrate, it’s difficult to establish an optimum population for the world, or even the United States. But expert opinion began to warn about over- population circa 1950, when Earth held 2.55 billion humans. “Overpopulation never Authorities generally if not unanimously agree that we’ve gone on overpopulating ever since. Should it be our long-term goal went away, it’s just that too to shrink back to the population of the 1950s? Surely 2.5 billion many of us stopped people would be enough to support broad economic, cultural, and artistic diversity. Given current and likely future technol- paying attention.” ogies, a human community that size might sustain itself and the biosphere indefinitely. We may choose some other target. Some argue for simply slowing the rate of population growth, aiming for a less rapid increase or for eventual stabilization at near-current levels. oil but drove 37 percent of world oil consumption growth Either goal spares us the economic and political impacts of since 2000.8 The situation is similar in India. Worldwide, 1.7 real shrinkage. Yet if we opt for slower growth, someday we billion people now belong to the consumer class, with all that will have ten billion humans, then fifteen, and so on. We’ll just this implies from energy use to the health toll of sedentary reach those benchmarks later. Advancing technology may lifestyles.9 expand the planet’s carrying capacity, but still no truly realis- • The exploited and underemployed swell third-world megac- tic solution can accept endless population growth. As Lindsey ities. More people live in cities today than lived on Earth in Grant cautions, “The principle of prudence suggests that we 1960. Sometime in the coming year “the urban population . . . not press our present systems to the limit, if only in order to will outnumber the rural” for the first time in history. With have space to maneuver should unexpected changes reduce dismal economic prospects but nowhere else to go, megacity the productive capacity of our support systems.” slum dwellers struggle to subsist, “the fastest growing, and The mid-range objective of stabilizing at near-current most unprecedented, social class on earth . . . rushing back- levels is more attractive, but even it assumes that a human ward to the age of Dickens.”10 population of six to eight billion is sustainable indefinitely. • Economic stagnation looms at home, too. America’s “jobless Current ecological dislocations suggest otherwise. In her recovery” has meant underemployment or less remunerative article, Rosamund McDougall cautions that “at current levels employment for millions. Intergenerational upward mobili- of consumption and technology . . . the planet may be able ty—children doing better economically than their parents— to sustain only about half its current numbers in the next plunged by two-thirds over the last thirty years. Writing in century.” How much are we willing to gamble on the hope The Nation, Paul Krugman blamed business and political that advancing technology will bail us out? Consider that the elites scheming to perpetuate social class boundaries.11 But “windfall technology” of hydrogen fusion has been a couple of I think media artist and social critic Julia Dzwonkoski hit breakthroughs away for better than fifty years. closer to home when she complained that “there just aren’t In my opinion, just slowing the pace of population growth enough jobs to go around.”12 Not enough jobs is the flip side is not enough. If we don’t reduce our numbers purposely, of too many people. Are there simply more Americans than catastrophe may do it for us. If we don’t learn how to shrink our economy needs at work? our polities elegantly, it will occur inelegantly—and what hor- • I need add little here about global warming, whose conse- rors are veiled in that euphemism? quences are unclear but could include catastrophic changes Yet political leaders worldwide champion the suicidal in climate. notion that human numbers should go on growing as they • More speculatively, we can ponder the prospect of thermal did during the second half of the twentieth century. It is pollution. As billions of humans embrace higher living stan- commonly supposed that, if we fail to maintain that pace, the dards and consume more energy per capita—and especially world’s economies will collapse. In part this is because first- as future technologies (think hydrogen fusion) increase the world social welfare architectures resemble Ponzi schemes: amount of energy each of us can consume beyond what is they work best when each generation outnumbers the last. imaginable today—how will Earth dispose of the excess heat Arguably, human beings have never figured out how to operate that all this activity will liberate? a thriving society whose economy and population don’t grow by a percent or so each year. But we’re going to have to learn. Overpopulation never went away, it’s just that too many of us That’s why political responses to the so-called baby bust stopped paying attention. have been so frustrating. In many countries, initiatives set into What Is the Optimum? motion in the 1960s and 1970s are finally bearing fruit. Japan’s

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WHAT IS THE OPTIMUM POPULATION OF THE U.S.? THE WORLD?

Don’t we want population to decline? Tragically, the opportunity presented by falling birthrates is being misperceived as a crisis. Frantic leaders call for a return to the geometrical birthrates of old. “. . . human beings have never It’s no surprise that the pope hectored Italians to “reverse ‘the crisis of their birthrate’ by having more babies.”18 It is more figured out how to operate remarkable that Sweden and Italy offer new tax breaks for a thriving society whose parents.19 Towns from Europe to French Canada subsidize large families.20 Convinced that citizens aren’t having enough economy and population don’t sex, Singapore’s government runs matchmaking services. grow by a percent or so State-controlled media urge, “Let’s Get on the Love Wagon.”21 But the record for bluntness goes to Australia’s treasurer, each year. But we’re going Peter Costello. Stumping for a budget that would pay a bounty to have to learn.” of A$2,000 for each baby born, he called for three-child fam- ilies and exhorted his countrymen (and women) to “go home and do your patriotic duty tonight.”22 The challenges posed by a graying population, a lower ratio of workers to retirees, and eventual shrinkage are genuine. fertility rate fell to 1.33 children per woman (2.1, “replacement Human history offers few examples of polities undergoing 13 level,” would keep the population static). Scotland’s fertil- planned, orderly reduction. Still, that’s what we’ve got to shoot 14 15 ity rate is 1.49. Canada’s is 1.52. Nor is this phenomenon for. Unless human extinction is our goal, we can’t keep over- confined to the first world: twenty-nine of the United Nation’s burdening the planet just because no one knows how to run Less Developed Countries (LDCs) have below-replacement societies that don’t display perpetual growth. The low-birth- fertility. Putatively Catholic Italy has tied Estonia for the rate countries in Europe, Asia, and Oceania offer laboratories world’s lowest fertility rate: just 1.2. If maintained for about in which to seek solutions, but first we must accept that it’s three decades, those countries’ populations would decline by okay to have fewer of us. 16,17 a third. One dubious remedy for population decline is massive Pardon my posing a radical question . . . but isn’t that good? immigration. Low-birthrate countries are considering it; it is also the de facto policy of the United States. Immigration has Total Midyear Population for the World: 1950–2003 great benefits. The admixture of viewpoints and traditions it brings heightens cultural, artistic, and intellectual vigor and propels us toward the hoped-for “universal culture” of the Average future. But these benefits do not depend on any particular annual level of immigration, and high immigration has dire population Average annual population consequences. Native-born Americans reproduce at less than Year Population growth rate (%) change replacement level; U.S. population growth is driven by post- 1950 2,555,360,972 1.47 37,785,986 1965 immigrants and their children. In this section, Edward 1955 2,779,968,031 1.89 52,959,308 Tabash argues for capping U.S. immigration to hold U.S. pop- ulation constant. That stance attracts passionate opposition 1960 3,039,669,330 1.33 40,792,172 but sadly more heat than light. If America is overpopulating 1965 3,346,224,081 2.08 70,238,858 and immigration is the cause, immigration proponents will 1970 3,708,067,105 2.07 77,587,001 need powerful arguments for keeping borders open, not just 1975 4,087,351,095 1.74 71,804,569 the reflexive accusations of racism that have too often passed 1980 4,454,389,519 1.68 75,430,353 for rhetoric from their side. 1985 4,853,252,663 1.71 83,561,368 Restricting immigration may be necessary to reverse U.S. population growth, but saying so is political dynamite. 1990 5,284,679,123 1.58 84,130,498 Consider an astonishing essay in The Nation by Earl Shorris, 1995 5,696,263,461 1.38 79,253,622 a holder of the National Humanities Medal: “As any actuary 2000 6,085,478,778 1.21 74,220,528 can tell the nativists, America is about to run out of the one 2003 6,305,144,680 1.14 72,496,962 thing neither xenophobia nor racism can provide: youth. There is no imaginable solution to the problem now other than immigration.” (Apparently for Shorris, solutions that envisage Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, International Data Base, online at fewer Americans are unimaginable.) If immigration opponents http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldpop.html succeed, he warns, “the United States will wither, becoming a

25 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 that’s a frightening prospect. But the alternatives are worse. What is the optimum population? Can the planet survive infinite population growth, if we only slow it down? Can today’s population be sustained indefinitely? If not, then “Tragically, the opportunity demographic shrinkage is no nightmare scenario, but an eco- nomic and political puzzle whose solution could be humanity’s presented by falling only hope. With Lindsey Grant and others, I suspect that the 1950s-era population of 2.5 billion is close to optimum. Barring birthrates is being that, any decline is preferable to stasis, and stasis is prefera- misperceived as a crisis.” ble to continued growth. Then there are the quirky, enigmatic Georgia Guidestones (on which Ed Buckner offers a tongue-in-cheek report). Erected by mysterious persons for shadowy purposes, these New Age monoliths propose a target human population of just five crone among nations.”23 A crone? Liberal opinion has come to a sorry pass when it can only underscore its disdain for per- ceived xenophobia and racism by indulging in sexism instead. Ideologues wielding crude accusations have largely forced overpopulation outside of polite discussion. It’s no surprise when, as Alan Kuper chronicles, groups like the Sierra Club duck the issue. But we can’t duck overpopulation any longer. ‘34 Million Friends’ Supports Unlimited growth is no longer conceivable, worldwide or in the United States.24 The planet cannot endure it. Women’s Health Initiatives It’s time to bring not only population control but population Two years ago, the Bush administration reduction back into public discussion. To that end, we present this expanded special issue with its Court of Wisdom section. announced that it would not release $34 million The Court of Wisdom was developed by Mr. S. Morgan Barber Congress had approved for the United Nations of California to examine significant social issues and help Population Fund (140 countries contributed to well-informed citizens to “evaluate alternatives and reach the UNFPA last year). In a letter to my local considered judgments about basic moral concerns.”25 paper, I urged individuals to donate one dollar. This issue’s Court of Wisdom focuses on a limited question: Another woman had the same idea, and our What is the optimum population of the United States? Of the efforts resulted in the “34 Million Friends” world? How can we know? Ancillary articles tackle broader grassroots campaign (visit www.34million issues: How can we return overpopulation to the head of the friends.org), which raises money for the UNFPA contemporary agenda? How can we rebut attempts to char- and works to educate the American public acterize population activism as racist? How can we manage about how supporting women’s education, dwindling polities so that our societies can shrink gently but equality, and reproductive rights and choices not crash—particularly during the perilous decades when is the best way to achieve population stabili- retirees from bloated earlier generations will significantly zation, environmental improvement, and peace outnumber those of working age? and stability. The funds raised have been used I’d like to call particular attention to the article by Jan for a variety of purposes, including to purchase Narveson, who alone among our contributors maintains that motorcycles so that midwives can reach remote rapid population growth poses no problem. In the tradition areas in East Timor, to support education in of Julian Simon—who did, after all, win public wagers with modern contraception in Mon­golia, and for Paul Ehrlich over whether population growth would cause the UNFPA’s Fistula Initiative, which seeks to commodity shortages26—Narveson reminds us that population remedy the misery of women who have suffered growth means not only more mouths, but more hands and unrepaired tears in the birth canal due to long, brains. Advancing technology, he suggests, can forestall those Malthusian crash points indefinitely. unassisted labors. Narveson needs to be heard in a balanced debate. But with — Jane Roberts, co-founder of due respect, I cannot agree with him that overpopulation is 34 Million Friends of UNFPA nothing to worry about. I’m scared stiff of it. On my view, human numbers must begin to decline, and soon. Given how little we know about managing demographic contraction,

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hundred million, a truly radical decline. That this prescription appears directly above a plug for Esperanto does nothing to help us take it seriously. Yet when we try to imagine a human society that could live sustainably on this planet for countless generations even as its members harness ever more powerful “Restricting immigration technologies, maybe five hundred million people is enough. may be necessary to reverse Wherever the optimum lies, to my mind there is little ques- tion that there are too many people right now. The human U.S. population growth, community seems disinclined to acknowledge this. Of late the but saying so is humanist community has done little better. I’ve learned not to cringe when humanists I know rush to marry, buy homes political dynamite.” in the suburbs, fill them up with children, and then grumble about how something ought to be done about sprawl. Yet secular humanists have important contributions to make to the population debate, not only in resisting opposition rooted In this issue of Free Inquiry, we hope to make the unspeak- in religious dogmatism but—dare I hope?—leading by exam- able speakable again, and return the population debate to the ple in our willingness to consider unconventional solutions. prominence it deserves. Clunky as this may sound, our planet needs us.

Notes 11. Paul Krugman, “The Death of Horatio Alger.” The Nation, 1. Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jurgen Randers, January 5, 2004, pp. 16–17. and William W. Behrens III, The Limits to Growth: A Report for 12. Julia Dzwonkoski, “Technology Delivers People.” The the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New Squealer (Buffalo, N.Y.: Squeaky Wheel, Winter-Spring 2004), p. 16. York: Universe Books, 1972) predicted the collapse of civilization 13. Staff, “The Baby Bust: What Can Be Done?” Asahi by 2000 unless population and industrial development were fro- Shimbun, August 5, 2002. zen at 1975 levels. Deeply defective, it was flawed by hubristic 14. Lizette Alvarez, “Scotland Takes Action to Halt Drop in overinterpretation of primitive computer models. But the furor it Population.” New York Times, November 30, 2003. created upon its release gave enormous impetus to an already-vi- 15. Staff, “The Baby Bust: What Can Be Done?” tal population control movement. In a 2004 update, authors 16. http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/grand_special.html, down- Meadows, Meadows, and Randers argue that the record since loaded December 25, 2003. 1972 shows that humanity overwhelmed the planet’s carrying 17. Estonia data from “Political Economy: Global Baby Bust,” capacity two decades ago in a process whose broad outlines—if http://www.loper.org/~george/trends/2003/Jan/46.html, down- not its details—indeed were predicted in the 1972 volume. See loaded December­ 30, 2003. Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Donella Meadows, Limits 18. Michael McGuire, “Have More Babies, Pope Tells Italians.” to Growth, the 30-Year Global Update (S. Burlington, Vermont: Chicago Tribune, November 15, 2002, sec. 1 p. 3. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004). 19. Alvarez, “Scotland Takes Action to Halt Drop in 2. Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Population.” Ballantine, 1976). 20. Clifford Krauss, “In Aging Quebec, Town Pays to Keep the 3. The silence wasn’t total; my predecessors Tim Madigan Babies Coming.” New York Times, March 2, 2004. 21. Peter Edidin, “Singapore Swingers: Romance, the Patriotic and Lewis Vaughn focused two disturbing special issues of Free Duty of Procreation and the Fate of Nations.” New York Times, Inquiry on overpopulation (Spring 1994 and Spring 1999). 4. Froma Harrop, “People, People Everywhere.” Denver Post, February 8, 2004. November 1, 2001. 22. Staff, “World Briefings: What You Can Do for Your 5. Richard Manning, “The Oil We Eat.” Harper’s, February Country.” New York Times, May 13, 2004. 2004, p. 37. 23. Earl Shorris, “A Nation of WASPs?” The Nation, May 31, 6. Kirk Johnson and Dean E. Murphy, “Drought Settles In, 2004, pp. 21–22. Lake Shrinks, and West’s Worries Grow,” New York Times, May 24. Though U.S. population density is lower than that of many 2, 2004. countries, the environmental impact of each American is dispro- 7. David Lynch, “China Finds Western Ways Bring New portionate because we consume so lavishly. For this reason, even Woes.” USA Today, May 19, 2004, p. 13A. though it is not overpopulated by some world standards, U.S. 8. Paul Krugman, “The Oil Crunch.” New York Times, May 7, population reduction may be nonetheless essential for long-term 2004. human sustainability. 9. “Report: Consumer Appetite Erodes Quality of Life for Rich 25. Paul Kurtz, “The Court of Wisdom Convenes.” Free Inquiry and Poor.” Greenbiz.com, January 9, 2004. Spring 2003, p. 28. 10. Mike Davis, “Planet of Slums.” Harper’s, June 2004, pp. 26. See Julian L. Simon, The Ultimate Resource (Princeton, 17–22. N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981).

27 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 The Silent Overview Crisis Alan Kuper

he great majority of people around the world never ask, “ Is the world overpopulated?” They “Infinite growth is an impossibility don’t know what it might mean to them, any in a world of finite resources.” Tmore than members of an endangered species rapidly losing habitat to human encroachment can comprehend the cause of their predicament. geologic force, manifesting themselves through global warm- That the human population of the world is over six bil- ing, which is already having harmful effects. High mountain lion, that it might double in this century, means little to most glaciers and snowfields are no longer reliable sources of Americans. Few know the population of the world, of their spring river flows, so that water for agriculture does not nation, or of the state where they reside. They don’t know why arrive at the time and in the quantities most needed. In Arctic they should. No authority has ever told them it was important regions, structures built atop permafrost are collapsing. Polar to know those numbers, except to say that, in general, the ice is melting, releasing freshwater flows that may alter the more people the better. No one has ever told them that, unless great ocean circulations, changing climates, temperatures, people only replace themselves, unless couples on average and agricultural production over vast areas. Environmental have no more than two children, population will grow ever problems are always of our own making, but never before on faster, compounding like money in the bank to unimaginably such a scale. large numbers. If the U.S. population grows due to immigra- Once this is recognized, many thoughtful observers will tion, however rapidly, that has—until very recently—been conclude that humans have a responsibility to reduce their regarded as beneficial as well. impact on the environment as described by the Holdren- Ehrlich Formula: I=PAT “. . . today’s human numbers are a The formula (also known as “eye-pat”) states that human very recent phenomenon.” impact (I) on environments can be understood as the product of population (P) times the affluence (A) of the society, or aver- age consumption per capita, times the level of environmental Most Americans don’t know that today’s human numbers harm done by the technologies employed (T).1 are a very recent phenomenon—that as recently as 1930, in eye-pat has been called “the E=mc2 of the modern environ- their grandparents’ youth, world population was barely two mental movement,” as both formulas describe processes that billion, and U.S. population was less than half of what it is can end in cataclysmic explosions.2 today. People and institutions have not adjusted to the sweep- To reduce human impact on the environment, the short- ing new challenge of accelerating growth in human numbers. term remedy is to reduce consumption, particularly forms of Infinite growth is an impossibility in a world of finite consumption that have especially harmful effects. To reduce resources. As economist Kenneth Boulding declared, “Anyone impact in the long term, to achieve an environment that can who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite be sustainable far into the future, reducing consumption is world is either a madman or an economist.” not enough. It is also necessary to reduce population to sus- Human numbers and activity have become quite literally a tainable levels. A sustainable economy is defined as one that Alan Kuper is the founder and president of CUSP provides for present needs without jeopardizing its ability to (Comprehensive U.S. Sustainable Population) and a former supply generations far into the future in much the same way.3 professor and physicist. He was active in the Sierra Club for Science and technology enthusiasts, particularly if they are thirty years and was the recipient of two club awards. long on blind faith and short on understanding of fundamen- tal limits, tend to be complacent—to shrug and say, “They’ll

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think of something” to fix overpopulation. But overpopulation With populations gradually shrinking is already doing irreparable harm, in particular by driving in Japan and in countries in Europe, the continuing extinction of other species. The largest die-off notably Germany and Italy, perhaps by mid-century we’ll know since the extinction of the dinosaurs is now in progress, all of how population reduction plays out. To let human numbers it human-caused. Population growth and extinctions go hand become—or remain—a geologic force constitutes a great in hand: it is estimated that more than five hundred species wrong. have gone extinct in the United States alone in the last two centuries. More than one thousand are currently listed as threatened or endangered.4 The principal cause is “loss of habitat,” a euphemism for human encroachment. Sadly, all of us living in the “real world,” including lead- Notes ers in politics, business, and industry are inclined to ignore, 1. P.R. Ehrlich and J.P. Holdren, “Impact of Population rationalize, deny, or simply postpone action as long as possi- Growth,” Science 171, pp. 1212–17 (1974). ble—this despite widespread knowledge that changes wrought 2. James Surowiecki, “The Financial Page—Waste Away,” The New Yorker, May 6, 2002. 3. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Our Common Future: Report of “. . . reducing population and the 1987 World Commission on Environment & Development­ (New York: United Nations, 1987). consumption to sustainable levels 4. Mark W. Nowak, Immigration and U.S. Population Growth—An Environmental Perspective (Washington D.C.: will require massive economic and Negative Population Growth, Inc., 1997), p.7. 5. Interestingly, the less developed the society, the greater social restructuring. . . .” its potential to live sustainably, albeit not richly. In fact the best examples are the few Stone Age peoples who may still exist. Primarily hunter-gatherers, they live generation after gener- by overpopulation will likely have an irreversible negative ation without significantly altering the habitat on which they depend. They accomplish this principally by living in small iso- impact. But they realize that reducing population and con- lated groups and deliberately maintaining constant numbers. sumption to sustainable levels will require massive economic But any outside contact threatens their existence. and social restructuring throughout society.5 6. For a discussion of benefits, see Lindsey Grant, Too Many The American public is not demanding government action People: The Case for Reversing Growth (Santa Ana, Calif.: Seven Locks Press, 2000). See especially his Chapter 13, “The to achieve reduced consumption, greater efficiency in energy European Example.” use, or reductions in population. The media sometimes pres- 7. See Herman E. Daly, Beyond Growth: The Economics of ent conservation in a favorable light, but the idea of gradually Sustainable Development” (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996). reducing the U.S. population seldom receives attention, unless it is presented as a threat to the economy. Almost never do the media portray reduction in human numbers as a benefi- cial step away from the impossibility of endless population growth.6 Recognizing Our Limits As population and consumption grow, stocks of nonrenew- At the conclusion of his book The Living Planet David able resources dwindle. Obviously this cannot continue. Since Attenborough writes: change is inevitable, the public should be informed of the possible benefits of a gradual transition to long-term sustain- We have to recognize that the old vision of a world in ability.7 The benefits of achieving a significantly smaller U.S. which human beings played a relatively minor part is done and finished. The notion that an ever-bountiful population might include: nature, lying beyond man’s habitations and influence, • Reduced demand for scarce resources. will always supply his wants, no matter how much he takes from it or how he maltreats it, is false. We can • Full employment. no longer rely on providence to maintain the delicate • More direct democracy. interconnected communities of animals and plants on • A cleaner, healthier environment with fewer costly environ- which we depend. Our success in controlling our envi- mental problems. ronment, that we first achieved 10.000 years ago in the Middle East, has now reached its culmination. We now, • Less congestion, crowding, and sprawl. whether we want to or not, materially influence every • More stable communities and institutions. part of the globe.”8 • More set-asides of natural areas for wildlife habitat and recreation. —from David Attenborough, Our Living Planet (Boston, • Fewer costly military interventions overseas to secure Toronto: Little, Brown, and Company, 1984), p. 308. access to foreign resources.

29 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 Optimum Overcoming ‘Growthmania’ Population Lindsey Grant

he very idea of defining an “optimum popu- lation” challenges centuries of economic and political assumptions that growth is by defini- Ttion a good thing. So be it. The challenge of overcoming that assumption is at least as important as any optimum popula- “The world has run through tion number we may calculate. the windfalls provided successively How ‘Growthmania’ Began by the Black Death and the Before the 1300s, unlimited growth scarcely figured in human thinking. Then came the Renaissance, the age of exploration, opening of the New World. the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and a worldwide Much smaller populations scientific enterprise that is still accelerating—a period of enrichment and growth without parallel in human history. Its with more land per capita success led to a widespread conviction that growth is natural, would provide a cushion against desirable, and forever benign. In important ways, the West is still caught in that Age of Exuberance—in a state of “growth- the threats to food production.” mania”—and we are busily communicating it to the Eastern and Southern hemispheres. Growthmania is a formidable belief system. Curiously, it originated in a sudden, brutal population reduction: the four- Modern agriculture fed the rising numbers. But too little was teenth-century Black Death, the sharpest population collapse done too late to lower fertility. That created a fundamental in human history. The Black Death readjusted the ratio of demographic imbalance. The resulting population growth people to land, leaving peasants who survived with more farm- dwarfed all previous human experience. World population land and wealth. New wealth flowed into depopulated cities. quadrupled in one century, a change so astonishing that it has The institutional constraints of feudalism were swept away, altered—or should have altered—our assumptions regarding replaced by the first stirrings of what we now know as capital- humanity’s connection with the rest of the planet. ism.1 The subsequent age of exploration further improved the Capitalism favors the entrepreneur, the business adven- ratio of land to people by opening the New World, more than turer. It serves the successful, and so do its theoreticians. quadrupling the arable land available to Europeans.2 Today, conventional economics is grounded in the expectation In the twentieth century, modern medicine and public of endless growth: economic growth for greater profits and health programs lowered mortality in the poorer countries. population growth for more markets and cheap labor. Sadly, thinking in terms of economic growth per capita would be Lindsey Grant is a former National Security Council staff mem- more reasonable. ber and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment and Population Affairs. He has written extensively on popu- Mighty Engine, No Brakes lation issues, much of it for or with the support of Negative Are we plunging toward collapse because of our very success? Population Growth, Inc. His books include Elephants in the Philosophers since John Stuart Mill have warned against the Volkswagen, a multidisciplinary effort to describe what U.S. illusion of perpetual growth. Endlessly expanding numbers can- population size would be desirable; How Many Americans?; not enjoy endlessly expanding consumption. Post-Keynesian and Too Many People: The Case for Reversing Growth. economists ignore the fact that material growth must at some point become a logical impossibility on a finite planet. When?

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John Maynard Keynes is something of a demigod to con- tion is not maximum population. It is not ventional economists. Yet he was never as wedded to growth- simply sustainable population, which mania as many of his followers. He raised serious questions: does not address the question “Sustainable at what consump- Can growth go on indefinitely? Would it be desirable?3 Is tion level?” In theory, an optimum population level should be market capitalism motivated by greed a sound moral basis one at which all could live a comfortable life without degrading for society? Two hundred years ago, Thomas Malthus wor- the capacity of the environment to support that style of life in ried (perhaps prematurely) about how many people the earth the future. It is the antithesis of current economic goals, but could support, but he did not ask the next question: What will it should be congenial with the economic aspirations of all but increasing human numbers do to the planet? George Perkins the greedy. And it is a vision of a future without the threat of Marsh in 1864 was the first to address that question system- collapse. atically.4 Science has been describing the impacts ever since. Putting numbers on optimum population is more hunch In 1992, the presidents of the premier scientific bodies of the than science. What yardsticks can show whether further pop- United States and Great Britain adopted a joint statement, ulation growth is bad—whether smaller numbers would serve later adopted by the world’s major national scientific soci- humanity better? I will identify a few examples.8 eties, that read: “If current predictions of population growth Food. The world has run through the windfalls provided prove accurate and patterns of human activity on the planet successively by the Black Death and the opening of the New remain unchanged, science and technology may not be able to World. Much smaller populations with more land per capita prevent either irreversible degradation of the environment or could provide a cushion against the threats to food production. continued poverty for much of the world.”5 A nonconformist Instead, population growth outstrips growth in food produc- macroeconomist, Herman Daly, makes a point his colleagues tion. Arable land per capita in the United States and in the ignore: The economy is not independent; it is a subset of the less developed countries has declined by one-third since 1970, environment. The biosphere is not just a sink for the waste and in Europe by one-fifth, in just thirty years. Fertilizers products of economic activity. It is the matrix that sustains and pesticides offer diminishing returns; the world now uses life, including human life, and we must ask whether human about six times as much commercial fertilizer as it did in 1950 economic activity is degrading it. and twenty-five times as much chemical pesticide. Each new Population growth is not necessary for well-being. The pesticide is matched by evolving pesticide resistance in pests; examples of Japan and Western Europe make that case, as did we run in a squirrel cage. Human activities inject nitrogen a Brookings Institution study of U.S. metropolitan areas that compounds, potassium, phosphates, and sulfates into the envi- soundly rejected “the idea that achieving income growth in a ronment far faster than natural processes, with consequences metropolitan area requires population growth.”6 Other studies we are barely beginning to understand. Much of the world is have shown that residents of stable cities are likely to be bet- well into a water crisis, but monocultures and high-yielding ter off than those in rapidly growing ones, both economically “green revolution” crops demand more water and also more and in terms of quality of life. Pittsburgh, long the epitome of pesticides. Modern agriculture depends on fossil-fuel products the “rust belt,” ranks at or near the top on both scales, despite to run machines and to provide feedstock for fertilizer, but two generations of population decline—and despite its wretch- fossil fuel shortages loom (see below). Finally, climate change ed weather. threatens crop yields, especially in poorer countries. A growing literature challenges the fixation on growth. It Yet world food production could be sustained at roughly charges that the benefits of growth have gone to the entrepre- half its present level with a judicious combination of organ- neurs rather than to the mass of working people and that this ic manures and chemical fertilizers. (U.S. corn yields were growth has run down the natural capital of the earth in ways about 40 percent of current yields before modern reliance that do not appear in GNP statistics.7 Mainstream economics on commercial fertilizer and pesticides.) This would demand has ignored that literature. In the pursuit of growth, it has widespread changes in how we manage livestock and indeed brushed aside every doubt raised by others. The enthusiasm human manures, but that in itself would solve some serious for population growth is a particularly American phenome- pollution problems. Very roughly, half of current agricultural non, but it is hardly universal. Elsewhere in this issue of Free production would support half the present population, and it Inquiry, Alan Kuper and Edward Tabash describe questions would be a much more beneficent system. about U.S. population growth raised by President Nixon and Health. The American Chemical Society’s worldwide regis- the Rockefeller Commission and further explore the ongoing try of chemicals lists four times as many chemicals as it did in debate as to the wisdom of growth. 1980. Some are known to cause health problems including can- Growth must stop. The question is, when and where will cer, endocrine disruption, immune-system suppression, infer- it stop? tility, and learning disabilities in children. Few have been test- ed for their impact on health or the environment. Meanwhile, The Measurement of Optimum Population urban populations in the less-developed world shot up from What do we mean by “optimum population?” Optimum popula- three hundred million in 1950 to two billion in 2000, propelled

31 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 largely by desperate peasants moving to cities to stay alive. surplus, we may have little to exchange for others’ crude oil Water supplies, sewage services, and electric supplies have and gas. Coal is more abundant, but it is a dirty fuel and a lagged behind. Growing urban populations reuse raw sewage prolific source of carbon dioxide, which drives climate warm- with disastrous health effects. It is remarkable that crowded ing. Growth apologists look to oil sands or ocean clathrates or third-world slums have not generated more epidemics. With biomass, but all of them have severe limits. the public-health measures that kicked off the population The world, in other words, is headed for an energy transi- tion, probably toward a mix of coal, nuclear, and more benign renewable power. Rising costs and resource dislocations will threaten the world’s economies. Smaller populations would “The principle of prudence make this transition, too, easier, but demographics move slowly. suggests that we not Climate. Energy production generates climate change, which is beginning to have a huge impact on human welfare. press our present systems The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1995 estimated that it would take an immediate reduction in to the limit. . . .” carbon emissions to 30 to 50 percent of present levels to hold the human impact on climate at its present levels. In the face of that calculation, the modest reductions of the Kyoto proto- explosion now in disarray, rising mortality may forestall the cols are largely symbolic. urban population’s projected growth to four billion by 2030. We must address population size to come close to the 30 The Microbial World. The proliferation of chemicals may to 50 percent goal. With populations at 1950 levels, we would soon endanger micro-organisms we depend on. For example, be close to or within the IPCC’s 30 to 50 percent target, even soil microbes have so far converted nitrogen fertilizers back into without reducing per-capita emissions.9 inert molecular nitrogen fast enough to keep us from swamping Technology, the Headstrong Servant. Modern Americans the earth in nitrogen compounds. But we don’t know how much regard technology as a deus ex machina to solve our problems, of a chemical load the microbes can tolerate. A much smaller but it has its limits. Consider two examples: First, when the human population would greatly reduce the introduction of Clean Air Act took effect in 1972, technical fixes caused imme- chemicals into an environment that humans are changing but do diate reductions in some principal pollutants. Eventually the not fully understand. most viable fixes had all been applied; in recent years overall Fisheries. Worldwide marine fish production rose from air pollution has started rising again. Not just technology, but twenty to over seventy million tons between 1950 and the lower numbers and lower demand are central to reducing pol- late 1980s then stalled. Aquaculture (fish farming) enjoyed lution. Second, consider the link between technology and job soaring growth. But aquaculture pollutes water, competes creation. Conventional economists expect economic growth to with livestock for feed, and concentrates harmful chemicals create jobs for growing populations. But technology has driv- that humans put into the environment. (The Environmental en productivity up—more work can be done by fewer people, Protection Agency recommends eating one serving or less of especially as employers add automation—and so economic farmed salmon per month.) Humans and fish would be better growth need not necessarily spark job growth. As the current off if our demand for fish were closer to the 1950 level. “jobless recovery” demonstrates, the solution for unemploy- The Energy Transition. Fossil energy is a profound distur- ment is fewer workers competing for jobs. Proponents of rising bance to the ecosystem. It moves carbon and lesser amounts immigration, take note. of other elements from the lithosphere into the biosphere and Social and Economic Equity. China and India explicitly seek atmosphere at rates greater than all natural processes. We to raise their per-capita incomes to levels typical of the indus- worry about terrorists constricting our petroleum supplies, trial world. Most poor nations seek to follow them. To support but the supplies will decline soon anyway—an environmental all humans at first-world consumption levels without increasing boon but an economic disaster, unless we have prepared for gross world-economic activity and without putting new strains it. U.S. crude oil and natural gas production peaked more than on the world’s environment, world population would have to be thirty years ago. Domestic crude oil production has fallen 40 little more than one billion, a most unlikely figure. percent and gas production 13 percent from their historic Nonlinearities. My analysis so far has been linear, assum- highs. World petroleum production will begin a similar decline, ing that so much more of a given input produces a comparable probably in twenty years or less. Competition for gas and oil change in output. But nature is seldom linear. Climate studies will intensify; prices will rise sharply. There is no assurance reveal numerous nonlinearities—feedback loops that may that the United States, by far the largest gas and oil importer, disproportionately intensify prospective changes. Examples will find willing exporters. As trade deficits mount—and given include alterations in ocean currents that could make Europe’s the prospect that in a generation or two, Americans may be climate resemble Labrador’s, the multiple effects from dimin- eating all their grain rather than enjoying an exportable grain ishing ice and snow fields, the release of stored methane from

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the ocean, and the release of carbon dioxide from Arctic tun- Why Such Round dra. The principle of prudence suggests that we not press our Numbers? present systems to the limit, if only in order to have space to maneuver should unexpected changes reduce the productive Those are hardly rigorous calculations. They are full of horse- capacity of our support systems. back arithmetic and value judgments—what living standard is The Intangibles. I once heard of a boy from a New York “comfortable”? There will be unpredictable technological and City ghetto who attended a city-owned summer camp in the environmental changes, some of which will further diminish hills. The bus arrived after dark, and when the boy stepped the Earth’s support capability. But then, when do we know out, he looked up and said, “What are the little white things up the exact consequences of any important national decision? there?” He had never seen stars. That, I submit, is deprivation. All such choices must be made on the basis of partial infor- It worsens as cities grow and the sky gets murkier. mation, subject to refinement as we proceed and learn more. The Bottom Line. I think most writers on optimum population For that reason, precision is not required here, nor is it rea- would agree that the optimum may be something like the num- sonable to expect. If the weight of evidence suggests that the bers we passed around 1950: a world population of about 2.5 bil- national population should be smaller than it is now, the policy lion (40 percent of the present 6.4 billion) and a U.S. population implications are similar whether the gap is 100 million or 200 of 150 million (half the present 293 million)—though any one of million. The key issue is to ask the question, in one context them might add the qualification “give or take a half” to those after another: “Would this problem be more easily solved with figures. Barring a catastrophe, even a determined worldwide a smaller population or a larger one?” I think the examples effort would not reach the optimum in much less than a century. above provide the answer. The world is tending to divide into two different demograph- Despite its inescapable imprecision, the effort to determine ic regions. In the United States, the developing world, and an optimum population is worthwhile. We need to show that particularly in Africa and the Middle East, population growth is human numbers matter in order to demonstrate the errors of on a path that will lead to catastrophe, hunger, and rising mor- growthmania. Contemporary debates about immigration, wel- tality. In Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, fare, and tax policies too often ignore the population question— women have chosen to have far fewer children than would be and thus dismiss the future. Defining a desirable population necessary to replace themselves, and those countries are mov- level is one step toward a more stable and less uncertain future. ing toward lower population levels. In fact, they face the ques- It sets the stage for the next necessary step: putting policies in tion, how few is too few? But that is a topic for another paper. place that will move human numbers in the right direction. ©2004 Lindsey Grant

Notes and Briggs, 1973; New York: Harper & Row, 1975–1989, p. 24). Evidence that the working classes have enjoyed little or, in some 1. David Herlihy, The Black Death and the Transformation of periods, none of the benefits of growth has been assembled by the West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). Richard Douthwaite in The Growth Illusion (Tulsa, Okla.: Council 2. Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, World Oak Books, 1993; originally published in Great Britain by Green Agriculture, Statistical Bulletin 861, November 1993. In the “New Books, 1992.) World,” I include the Western Hemisphere, Australia, and New 8. For citations and a much fuller exploration of these limits, Zealand. “Europe” excludes Russia. see Lindsey Grant et. al., Elephants in the Volkswagen (New York: 3. “A great transition in human history will have begun when W.H. Freeman, 1992); Lindsey Grant, Juggernaut (Santa Ana, civilized man endeavors to assume conscious control (of popula- Calif.: Seven Locks Press, 1996); Too Many People: The Case for tion growth) in his own hands, away from the blind instinct of mere Reversing Growth (Santa Ana, Calif.: Seven Locks Press, 2000); predominant survival.” J.M. Keynes, preface to Harold Wright, and “Diverging Demography, Converging Destinies” (Alexandria, Population (London: Harcourt Brace, 1923.) Va.: Negative Population Growth, Inc., Forum Series, January 3. George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature, or, Physical 2003; also at www.npg.org.) Geography as Modified by Human Action (originally published 9. With the lower populations of 1950, total U.S. emissions 1864. Reprinted Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965.) would be 54 percent of the present 1.57 billion metric tons. 5. Joint statement by the presidents of the U.S. National Emissions by the rest of the industrial world would be 73 percent Academy of Sciences and the British Royal Society, released of 2.34 billion tons. Developing country emissions would be 35 February 26, 1992, by the National Research Council, Washington. percent of 2.53 billion tons. Totaled, world emissions from fossil 6. Paul D. Gottlieb, “Growth Without Growth: An Alternative energy would be 53 percent of the present 6.44 billion tons. (Data Economic Development Goal for Metropolitan Areas” (Washington, from U.N. Population Division and U.S. Department of Energy, D.C.: Brookings Institution Discussion Paper, February 2002, p. Energy Information Agency, International Energy Annual, 2000.) 25). Moreover, lower populations would mean less destruction of 7. See E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful (London: Blond tropical forests, which presently add roughly 20 percent to world

33 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 Carrying How many are too many? Capacity Mark Nathan Cohen

he earth’s ability to support human life is necessary because past overhunting had exceeded the car- usually described as the potential productiv- rying capacity of large game animals, essentially destroying ity of the world’s food supply enhanced by this resource and making the exploitation of other resources Thuman technological invention. The term most often applied necessary.2 is carrying capacity, which refers to the maximum size of Perhaps fifteen to twenty thousand years ago, the potential any population (including people) that available resources for territorial expansion was largely exhausted. Thereafter, can support without themselves being overconsumed to the population growth took place in tightly bounded territories. point of extinction. The prevailing human model comes from There is clear evidence, both in the organic remains and in Thomas Malthus, who argued that the ability of new technol- the range of tools found, that human groups began in this ogy stimulated by fortuitous invention to increase the human period to exploit a wider range of resources. Small projectile carrying capacity must eventually fall behind the geometrical points, mortars and pestles, and grindstones demonstrate an expansion of the human population, resulting in misery, mass increasing focus on smaller fauna, coarse vegetation needing hunger, and starvation.1 This is essentially an application of to be pounded, and tiny seeds needing to be ground. That this supply-side economics. is a function of demand, not “progress,” is apparent from con- But the Malthusian argument ignores many other issues, temporary observations of living populations. Their sequence including the importance of economic demand, the human his- of exploitation of resources, from big game and preferred tory of population growth and technological change, and mod- vegetable resources through small animals to small seeds, is a ern politics and culture. It also ignores the possibility that the sequence of diminishing returns for labor. human population may ultimately be limited by some resource The new food resources were not adopted simply because other than food: perhaps water, epidemic disease organisms, they had been “discovered,” but because the population had no or even limits on personal space with consequent dangerous choice but to exploit them. In fact, the food-resource changes psychological and biological results. associated with agriculture probably brought about a decline A reading of the archeological record suggests that during in nutritional quality; grains like cereals, which can be found approximately the first 90 percent of human history (approx- (and later farmed) in high density to feed dense populations, imately ninety thousand years), human populations and their are not particularly nutritious. Human stature and tooth size food needs played a major role in expanding the human food vary primarily in response to individual nutrition and growth niche. Increasing economic demand forced increased labor, more than to genetic heritage. In many parts of the world, stat- broadening of diets, exploitation of new environments, and the ure and tooth size declined as the range of resources exploited adoption of new “inventions.” expanded and then as farming was adopted. Other markers of biological stress increased through the same sequence of Agriculture: Invention or Response? transitions, further evidence that the quality of human diets Through most of our history, human population grew very probably declined over the period.3 slowly. Groups could respond to population growth by broad- What was once considered the “invention” of farming ening their geographic range and exploiting a wider range of (occurring in various regions beginning ten to twelve thou- foods. This enlargement of the resource base may have been sand years ago) is now more often interpreted as a result of increased demand for resources. This increase results Mark Nathan Cohen is University Distinguished Professor of from either denser human populations, social structures that Anthropology at the State University of New York. He is author imposed demands for extra output, or climate changes that of The Food Crisis in Prehistory (Yale University Press, 1977) may have reduced the supply of preferred resources. This new and other books and senior editor of Paleopathology­ at the technology was presumably forced, not invented. Origins of Agriculture (Academic Press, 1984). Several lines of evidence support the hypothesis that the

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Carrying capacity: the maximum resources (“haves”) from those who do size of any population (including not (“have nots”). It is at this point in people) that available resources history that a Malthusian model of economic “advance” clearly becomes the rule—because demand is rendered ineffective as can support without themselves an impetus to economic and technological change. Demand involves not only need but also the ability to pay or earn, which being overconsumed to the point of can be and often is denied to the poor. When society stratifies, extinction. then, the poor no longer exert economic demand for food. They adoption of agriculture was driven by demand. First, most of thus provide little incentive for technology to improve, so that the techniques that, in combination, make up “farming” (man- technological innovation becomes a variable independent of aging food supplies, planting seeds, fertilizing, soil prepara- population size. The well-to-do can provide new technologies tion, fire clearance, even irrigation) were and are in fact used to help the poor and increase food supplies overall, as with the individually by various foraging cultures that did not practice Green Revolution of the 1970s or the development of genetical- agriculture. Second, agriculture actually seems to have been ly altered crops today. But the wealthy can also control or even harder work than hunting or even gathering small resources. withhold new technologies. Or they can manipulate outcomes Agriculture involves a good deal of work in advance; seasonal so that new technologies do the poor little good, as when the agriculture additionally involves storage and preparation for poor are forced to grow cash crops rather than to farm for storage, as well as intensive processing of cereals to convert subsistence. them to food.4 Third, farming may have increased the risk Today, as long ago, the problem of food is one of demand, of food shortage. Agricultural populations could not easily not supply. It is obvious that the world has adequate potential move in the face of crop failure, while stored grain is subject to grow food. Despite world hunger, American farmers are to destruction by rot and pests. Stored food and people who going out of business or being paid not to grow food. Grain cannot move are vulnerable to conquest and expropriation rots in storage, often literally within sight of the hungry. The of crops by other groups. Domesticated crops reshaped for problem is the lack of demand: If the poor had money to buy human preference are often less hardy in the face of environ- food, markets would respond, and technology would change or mental stresses than their wild counterparts.5 The adoption of be applied more fully. Today’s problem is not about ecology or 9 sedentary agriculture also seems to have resulted in increased technology as much as it is about political economics. levels of infection. Taken together, these would probably have opulation rowth and arrying furnished a perceptible disincentive to sedentary farming.6 P G C Traditional theories view later improvements in farming (the Capacity plow, the hoe, fertilization, and irrigation) as inventions that How fast will human populations continue to grow? For the further expanded carrying capacity. An alternative theory holds last two or three hundred years, world population has been that we really are witnessing the effects of increasing demand growing at an extraordinary rate—many times the growth forcing each plot of land to be used more often (i.e., increasing rates of previous eras. It is important to note that contem- the crop-to-fallow ratio). This in turn creates the need for more porary population growth accelerated in an era of unprece- intensive labor and importation of fertilizer; it also necessi- dented, worldwide epidemics and often well before Western tates new tools and techniques (the hoe, the plow) to cope with medicine had any power to improve survivorship.10 Much of it increasingly intractable and nutrient-depleted soil.7 seems to be related to political and economic conditions set by the modern world system relating to relaxed fertility controls Emergence of the Political and the (partly new) preference for large families as sources Relatively small agricultural societies commonly are led by of wage labor. These factors must be addressed, if we really chiefs who have authority but no power. Under such circum- want to limit population growth. stances, all individuals have the right to get their own food Knowing the planet’s ultimate carrying capacity for human because they share communal ownership and each individual populations would be very helpful in deciding how much is a unit of labor and demand. One effect of sedentary farm- importance to attach to such work. Estimates of the earth’s ing is that populations require increasingly complex political ultimate human carrying capacity range from ten to seventy organization in order to manage larger communities. Such billion people. It is noteworthy, however, that these estimates communities are also very susceptible to conquest. For these have historically increased faster than the population is or other reasons, beginning three to five thousand years ago, actually growing.11 That is, the estimated gap between con- sedentary farming was followed by the emergence of “civiliza- temporary demand and the earth’s ultimate carrying capacity tion” and “the state,” which anthropologists define in political is actually increasing. In any case, the actual maximum sup- terms as the power of kings and elites to rule societies and portable human population depends on more than biological maintain social stratification by the use of physical force.8 carrying capacity and new technology. It also depends on a States divide society into the class of those who own series of human decisions:

35 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 • How much more to work. urbanized world is ripe for new epidemics, perhaps more so • What to eat. than ever before in human history. Germs are evolving faster • Whether the poor will be allowed to provide economic than we can invent techniques to stop them.12 Or the limiting demand stimulating new technology. • Whether regions of the world will combine to produce and “. . . our increasingly urbanized disseminate needed resources. world is ripe for new epidemics, • How much decline in our own standard of living those in power are prepared to tolerate. perhaps more so than ever before These factors can interact in complex ways: For exam- in human history.” ple, enhanced economic demand by the poor would probably increase real demand for grain as food. Food grain production factor may be water. Freshwater supplies are already limited might eventually outcompete the less spatially efficient growth and their distribution contentious; they are also far less sus- of cattle—but the wealthy like beef. Enhanced economic ceptible to technological augmentation than the food supply. demand by the poor might also displace production of some Or the limit may be imposed simply by the limited ability of luxury cash crops. human brings to tolerate limited personal space and increas- A very new problem, of course, is the widely recognized ing environmental and personal “noise.” Inability to tolerate potential for shifting and loss of farmland resulting from glob- such conditions can result in a series of biological problems ranging from increased mortality, decreased fertility, and “. . . the food-resource changes reduced immunity to the infectious diseases that we know in associated with agriculture proba- any case are coming. Leibig’s Law of the Minimum says that whichever of these bly brought about a decline in resources or conditions is most limited, or “kicks in” at the smallest population size, will determine the ultimate limit to nutritional quality. . . .” the size of the human population. al warming. There is a final consideration: the limiting resource may not be food at all. At this time epidemic diseases—which thrive on high population density and rapid intercity trans- portation of people and goods—may pose the greatest dan- ger. Epidemiologists generally agree that our increasingly

Notes M. Cohen and G. Crane Kramer, eds., Ancient Health (Gainesville: 1. Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population University Press of Florida, [in press] 2006); Larsen, “Biological (New York: Norton, 1798 [1976]). Changes in Human Populations with Agriculture.” 2. Mark N. Cohen, The Food Crisis in Prehistory (New Haven: 7. Ester Boserup, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth Yale University Press, 1977). (Chicago: Aldine, 1966). 3. See Mark N. Cohen, Health and the Rise of Civilization (New 8. Morton Fried, The Evolution of Political Society (New York: Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Mark N. Cohen and George Random House, 1967); Richard H. Robbins, Cultural Anthropology: J. Armelagos, eds. Paleopathology at the Origins of Agriculture A Problem Based Approach, 3rd Edition (Itaska, Ill.: Peacock (Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press: 1984); Clark S. Larsen, “Biological Publishers, in press [2006]). Changes in Human Populations with Agriculture,” Ann. Rev. 9. Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism Anthropology 24 (1995): 185–213. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001); Robins, Cultural Anthropology. 4. Kenneth W. Russell, After Eden (Oxford: U.K.: BAR Inter­ 10. Cohen, Health and the Rise of Civilization; Robbins, Global national Series 391, 1988). Problems and the Culture of Capitalism; Robbins, Cultural 5. Cohen, The Food Crisis in Prehistory. Anthropology. 6. This pattern can be reconstructed in theory by knowing 11. For a summary see Joel E. Cohen, How Many People Can the natural distribution of nutrients and the life cycles of human the Earth Support? (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995). parasites as they are affected by human behavior, and also from 12. See Michael Shnayerson and Mark J. Plotkin, The Killers knowledge of the foods exploited. It can be observed in contrasts Within (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002) and Laurie Garrett, The between historic and modern mobile foragers and their sedentary Coming Plague (New York: Penguin, 1995). neighbors, and can also be seen in comparisons of prehistoric skel- etons from before and after the transition. See Cohen, Health and the Rise of Civilization; Cohen, “Introduction to the Symposium,” In

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WHAT IS THE OPTIMUM POPULATION OF THE U.S.? THE WORLD? From Sentience How the environmental establishment changed its tune on U.S. overpopulation to Silence Alan Kuper

The Era of Concern for, and have not found, any convincing economic argument for continued population growth. The health of our country does not depend on it, nor does the vitality of business nor the welfare of the average person.”4 The Era of Unconcern n the heady days of the new environmental awareness, at the first big Earth Day celebration in April 1970, the Why isn’t the threat of U.S. population growth taken as seriously ecological threat posed by U.S. population growth was today? In a stunning reversal, the idea that the United States part of every discussion. David Brower, executive director of might be overpopulated is extremely controversial today, even I within the environmental movement. The subject has essentially the Sierra Club, had encouraged Paul Ehrlich to write The Population Bomb, which became a runaway best-seller. The been declared taboo by the environmental establishment and educational work of the new organization Zero Population the leaders of the major environmental organizations, an assem- Growth, or ZPG, became familiar to American school children. blage I’ll call “the Enviros.” In 1972 the Sierra Club, the nation’s premier conservation organization, adopted a ZPG platform, declaring as one of its objectives to “. . . bring about the stabilization of the population 20th Century U.S. and World Population first of the United States and then of the world.” Other groups Growth made similar commitments. U.S. Population This stance was nothing new for the Sierra Club. As early as 1959, at the Sierra Club biennial Wilderness Conference, 1900 76 million Resolution Seven said, according to one historian, “that there 1950 151 million was no point in talking about wilderness, which would only be 1970 203 million an incidental victim of the coming malignant population explo- 1980 226 million sion.”1 Loss of wilderness, a cornerstone issue for American 2000 281 million environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, was now seen TODAY 293 million as a symptom of population growth. World Population, 20th Century During the 1970s, U.S. overpopulation attracted concern. Because of the impact of the post-World War II “Baby Boom,” 1900 1.6 billion the threat of population growth was serious. Between 1950 and 1930 2 billion 1970, U.S. population had grown by fifty-two million people, 1987 5 billion almost double the increase during the prior twenty-year period. 1999 6 billion In 1970, U.S. population stood at 203 million.2 Popular books TODAY 6,373,044,317* addressed the problem in urgent tones. Corporate leaders U.S. Population Growth, 1950–1970 and 1980–2000 sounded the alarm with banner advertisements in leading news- papers.3 Even the federal government took note: at the request 1950–1970, “The Baby Boom” 52 million of President Richard M. Nixon, Congress empanelled a commis- 1980–2000, “The Immigration Boom” 55 million sion headed by John D. Rockefeller III to conduct a two-year *According to the U.S. Census Bureau population clock on June 7, study of population and the American future. The commission’s 2004, 2:58 p.m. Sources for other figures are the U.S. Census Bureau 1972 report generated such interest that it was republished as and the United Nations. a mass-market paperback. Famously it stated, “We have looked

37 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 Whatever lies behind this change, it certainly isn’t the num- changed its name to Population Connection—though its lead- bers. In 2000, U.S. population was more than 281 million, having ership may not appreciate the irony that “PC” also stands for grown by fifty-five million between 1980 and 2000, a larger Politically Correct. increase than the Baby Boom growth of 1950–1970. Yet today’s The major difference between the old Baby Boom and today’s environmental establishment is silent on the subject, routinely rapid growth? The old Baby Boom was driven by an upsurge in quashing attempts by its own activists to alert the public to the births. Today’s growth is an Immigration Boom. Business and link between rapid U.S. population growth and environmental industry favor it, because it keeps wages low. Government per- degradation. Corporate America, too, is silent—in fact it is petuates it in response to the wishes of industry, and because promoting rapid population growth. Meanwhile, the federal gov- of the growing political power of the foreign-born vote. And the ernment is responsible for this growth through its immigration Enviros keep silent about it for several reasons: policies and continues to encourage it. As for Zero Population • They wish to protect their organizations from being labeled Growth, the organization has changed its name and now teaches as anti-immigrant. Population-environment activists make easy schoolchildren more about conservation than population. It’s targets for “guilt by association” accusations because of the hate rhetoric of some anti-immigrant and immigration reform One Activist’s Response organizations. • Most of the public doesn’t appreciate the connection between I have been active in Sierra Club population work, a population and environmental degradation. This—and the leader since 1990. And I have been and continue to be fact that environmentalists tend disproportionately to be of involved in much of what I have described in this article, European extraction, “white,” and well off—leads many Ameri­ including playing a leading role in Club campaigns to cans, especially the foreign born and people of color, to impugn increase foreign aid for family planning as well as in campaigns to focus on U.S. population. I’m a longtime their motives. Club activist and loyalist with two national honors • Staff members and supporters of environmental organizations awarded to me by Club boards over my thirty years of are often uncomfortable discussing reproduction and immigra- Club work. And I maintain a cordial relationship with tion issues. They may believe that these are subjects for other nearly all the players. organizations to deal with, though U.S. population growth has In 2000, I embarked on an effort to offer the envi- been a subject of concern in the environmental movement since ronmental movement an acceptable way to strive for at least the 1960s. Unfortunately, while the Enviros stand aloof U.S. population reduction and a sustainable future. The and silent, other organizations do not possess the needed cred- effort is called CUSP—Comprehensive U.S. Sustainable ibility, environmental credentials, and political clout to force Population—to emphasize that U.S. population and con- examination of the links between population growth and envi- sumption must be considered comprehensively in order ronmental degradation. to achieve an economy that can persist sustainably far • America is now more theocratic, with religious fundamental- into the future within the limits of what Nature provides. ists and other antichoice activists in the ascendancy. As a result, CUSP now has nearly one thousand partners in for- efforts to end U.S. population growth or reduce population ty-eight states. Its acronym also refers to the “cusp” or do not enjoy nearly as much acceptance as they did in 1970. peak in a population-time growth curve, beyond which ecosystems and the economy that depends on them col- Additionally, some women’s groups are suspicious of programs lapse, a fate we must avoid. that in their eyes put environmental protection ahead of wom- 5 The cornerstone of CUSP’s approach is to forge a en’s freedom. coalition of U.S. environmental organizations, providing • Members of environmental organizations do not differ much safety in numbers while advocating U.S. population from the general public on the issue of U.S. immigration. They reduction. No one organization can then be singled out tend to be more human-centered than eco-centered in their for attack because it involves itself in natural-increase views on the issue. They turn away from, rather than confront, reproduction issues, nor for being concerned about the fact that Nature imposes limits.6 immigration. Further, this “Sustainability Coalition” can work at arm’s length on the issues through its political Situation: Dire and Deteriorating arm, the well-respected League of Conservation Voters In truth, as of Earth Day 2004, the U.S. population-environment (LCV), to score congressional votes comprehensively in situation is significantly more dire than it was in 1970. Since accordance with the fundamental environmental prin- then, some ninety million inhabitants have been added—a 44 ciple that numbers matter as embodied in eye-pat (see percent increase. This is roughly equivalent to the current my “The Silent Crisis: Overview,” p. 30). See www.us populations of Germany and Austria. The United States now congress-enviroscore.org. ranks third in population after India and China, and is growing —Alan Kuper at a science-fiction-like pace, due mainly to immigration and children born to immigrants. If present rates continue, U.S. pop-

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ulation will double in less than seventy years, creating the same and sought “a cap on total immigration population density China had in 1950, when it first considered levels consistent with domestic [popula- instituting a one-child policy. tion] stabilization.” The proposal noted that “Immigration is a And yet the Enviros are largely silent. new issue for the Club to be dealing with explicitly, although Scattered attempts to restore U.S. population as a priority long-standing Club policy implies support for immigration no issue have been undertaken by individuals within the National greater than that consistent with zero population growth.”13 Audubon Society and the Wilderness Society. The most visible— Influential leaders within the Sierra Club opposed the 1989 if as yet unsuccessful—such efforts within the American environ- immigration initiative, and it was not adopted. If it had been, the mental movement have occurred within the Sierra Club. This is Club’s position on U.S. immigration and population might well because, unlike the other Enviros whose boards are appointed, be the opposite of today’s policy of no position on immigration. the Sierra Club is democratic. Members elect their officers and The Sierra Club was not alone in declining to focus on domes- have the right to petition to place issues on the annual ballot.7 tic population. Throughout the environmental movement, atten- tion shifted to Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia—where What Changed? some 95 percent of world population growth was occurring. In 1965, Congress relaxed long-standing restrictions on immi- (It’s more like 98 percent today.) Domestic agendas tended to gration to the U.S. The Immigration Act of 1965 had been focus on reducing consumption, not population. Still, individual intended primarily to widen the criteria for legal entry. Its unan- ticipated consequence was a marked increase in the scale of “The United States now ranks third immigration as the law went into full effect.8 By 1987, U. S. pop- ulation was beginning to show runaway growth, driven mainly in population after India and China, by post-1970 immigrants and their descendants. Sierra Club spokespersons insisted then, as they do today, and is growing at a science-fic- that the way to reduce U.S. immigration was to reduce the tion-like pace due mainly to immi- “push” factors that cause emigration from other lands, rath- er than by lobbying Congress to reduce immigration levels.9 gration and This peculiar proposal is akin to saying that the way to end children born to immigrants.” clear-cutting in America’s northwestern forests is to convince the Japanese to stop buying our logs, rather than to seek relief in Congress. activists whose consciousness had been raised about population, Opponents of immigration restriction also argue that it doesn’t reproductive, and immigration issues continued to speak out. matter what country people reside in; their adverse effect on the Arguments within Sierra Club grassroots population committees environment is about the same. But this is not true for persons became so heated that in February 1996, the Club’s Board of who immigrate to the United States. According to one estimate, Directors resolved to put an end to them, voting early in the year a baby born in the United States will, on average, have thirty that the Club would “take no position on immigration levels or on times the lifetime environmental impact of a baby born in India policies governing immigration into the United States.” or Bangladesh.10 So it is to a greater or lesser extent for every Grassroots reaction to this decree of silence came swiftly. By sending country. Immigrants rapidly adopt levels of consumption the fall of 1996, activists were gathering signatures on a petition similar to those of native-born Americans. to reverse the policy. If adopted, Club activism against growth from net immigration (immigration minus emigration) would Refocus on Immigration? No, Thanks be placed on par with its activism against growth from natural By 1987, concern about domestic population within the envi- increase (births minus deaths). The petition statement appeared ronmental movement, industry, and government had ebbed as on the 1998 ballot; Club management launched a fierce campaign the Baby Boom had ended. On July 11 of that year, the United to defeat it, going so far as to recruit allies from the social justice Nations declared World Population Day, marking the presence and pro-immigration movements. Their principal strategy was of five billion humans. This spurred some environmental orga- to equate opposition to immigration with racism. Most notably nizations to solicit grants to increase their population activities. among these was the Political Ecology Group (PEG), a handful In 1989, the Sierra Club issued a report stating: “Immigration of activists who vilified environmentally motivated immigration to the U.S. should be no greater than that which will permit opposition with the phrase, “The Greening of Hate.” (Another, achievement of population stabilization in the U.S. . . .”11 more embarrassing management ally was the Home Builders In the same year, the Club leadership proposed to undertake Association of Northern California, normally a Club adversary immigration reform advocacy in cooperation with the newly on development and urban sprawl issues.14) formed Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).12 In spite of the broad front that Sierra Club management Among other things, the proposal sought increased funding for had mobilized against the petition, although it failed it won a the Agency for International Development’s­ population program remarkably high 40 percent of members’ votes. Nonetheless, the

39 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 petition failed. of a stature rarely seen in Sierra Club elections: Richard Lamm, Population activists within the Sierra Club have continued to former three-term governor of Colorado and a long-standing fight and have gained modest victories. On September 24, 1999, humanist activist; Frank Morris Jr., former executive director under threat of another petition campaign, the Sierra Club’s of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and a one-time Board of Directors altered Sierra Club policy from seeking to academic dean; and David Pimentel, professor of ecology at stabilize U.S. population to seeking its reduction. That remains Cornell University. the Club’s official policy. But it has been quietly filed away, a Though they held estimable environmental credentials, gesture never implemented, unknown to most members. they were “outsiders” who had not come up through the leadership ranks in the Club. They were easily attacked Battling for the Board because of a statement made by an Insurgent Director in As a last resort, population-immigration activists attempted advance of the election that “we will take over the club.” Their to alter the make-up of the Sierra Club’s board, most recently years of advocating immigration reduction provided a trove in the Club’s 2004 election. Amid substantial media attention, of guilt-by-association opportunities, which the Old Guard Management’s “Old Guard” overwhelmed the “Insurgents” with exploited by recruiting Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty an unprecedented display of money, publicity, and aggressive Law Center to paint the Insurgents as racists. The Insurgent tactics. Critics questioned whether management had broken candidates were never able to remove their metaphorically Club election rules by their heavy campaign spending, their imposed white sheets and hoods (never mind that one of them use of Club lists and newsletters, and by recruiting manage- was a prominent African-American) long enough to make the ment-friendly outside groups to repeat dire Old Guard warnings argument that corporate boards need some independent out- in their own communications.15 side directors.16 Americans who depended on the news coverage might be for- Opposing the Insurgents were the candidates of the Old given for viewing management’s victory as a triumph of plural- Guard, an impressive array of former Club presidents and Club istic Sierra Club veterans against a cabal of nativist and racist leaders who emphasized the importance of their long experi- outside agitators. Management’s investment in media relations ence in Club affairs. They won overwhelmingly. had repaid itself handsomely. But who really were the good guys Inevitably, the American environmental establishment will and bad guys in the 2004 election? one day break its silence on the issue of U.S. overpopulation On one side were the Insurgents, three candidates who prom- and the immigration that drives it. Tragically for the American ised to join three like-minded sitting directors to vote for Club environment, the Sierra Club’s 2004 election postponed that day action toward curbing high U.S. immigration. They were people yet again.

Notes members are elected to three-year terms. Because of this continual 1. Sierra Club Bulletin 44 (April 1959): 10–14. Reported in turnover, directors tend to defer to an established executive director. Michael P. Cohen, The History of the Sierra Club 1892–1970 (San Because voters expect their candidates to have come up through the Francisco: Sierra Books, 1988), p.232. ranks, outside directors are rare, making for a conservative board. 2. U.S. Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov. 8. Stated by Paul R. Ehrlich in “Who’s Overpopulated?,” CNN 3. Lawrence Lader, Breeding Ourselves to Death (New York: Special Report, 1987. Ballantine Books, 1971). 9. Carl Pope, “Think Globally, Act Sensibly—Immigration Is Not 4. John D. Rockefeller III, “Transmittal Letter to the President the Problem,” Asian Week (San Francisco, April 2, 1998). and the Congress from the Commission Chairman,” in Population 10. Ibid. The 30:1 ratio is likely to have changed, but it is still a and the American Future: The Report of the Commission on large number. Population Growth and the American Future (New York: New 11. Dr. Judy Kunofsky, Sierra Club Population Report, Spring American Library/Signet, 1972), p. vii. Also published by the Gov­ 1989, p. 1. ernment Printing Office. 12. Proposed Sierra Club Population Program, December 5. See e.g., Committee on Women, Population and the 1989. Drafters: Michael L. Fischer, executive director; Judith Environment of Hampshire College (www.cwpe.org). [For more Kunofsky, chair of the Population Committee; and Carl Pope, on this remarkable historical episode see Stephen D. Mumford: Deputy Conservation Director. “Overcoming Population: The Rise and Fall of American Political 13. Vernon M. Briggs Jr., Mass Immigration and the National Will,” Free Inquiry Spring 1994, pp. 23–28.—Eds.] Interest, 3rd ed. (Armonk, N.Y.: Sharpe, 2003), p.133. 6. For a more complete analysis, see Roy Beck and Leon 14. “Behind the Sierra Club Vote on Curbing Immigration: Do Kolankiewicz, “The Environmental Movement’s Retreat from Environmentalists Risk Alienating the Fastest-Growing Ethnic Advocating U.S. Population Stabilization (1970–1988): A First Draft Group in California?” HBA News 21, no. 1 (February 1998). of History,” Journal of Policy History 12, no. 1 (State College: The 15. Among these were e-mail alerts sent by E–The Environmental Pennsylvania State Press, 2000). Magazine and MoveOn.org, a letter accompanying a billing mailing 7. Sierra Club management, which adopts policy, consists of the from Working Assets Long Distance, and an op-ed by Robert executive director, Carl Pope, who has been a Club administrator Redford that ran in many newspapers. since 1973 and executive director since 1992; and a fifteen-member 16. James Surowiecki, “The Financial Page—Board Stiffs,” The board of directors whose composition changes annually, as five new New Yorker, March 8, 2004.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 40 WILL ISLAM COME INTO THE 2st CENTURY?

WHAT IS THE OPTIMUM POPULATION OF THE U.S.? THE WORLD? Overpopulation? There are no inherent limits to growth Fiddlesticks! Jan Narveson

n the late twentieth century, it once emergencies. Then the rest of us rush them again became popular to claim supplies. If the local governments are any that the world is “overpop- good, the supplies actually get to those Iulated” and that we were headed who need them and lives are saved. for demographic disaster. Paul If the local governments are cor- Ehrlich’s The Pop­ulation Bomb rupt, incompetent, or inhuman, the predicted massive starvation supplies are pilfered, and those in well before the end of the cen- need don’t receive them. In the big tury. It didn’t happen. World cases, governments actually cause population did indeed rough- the starvation. In the twentieth ly double in the second half of century, government-made star- the twentieth century—but the vations were the only kind there per capita output of food (and were. For example, Maoist China everything else) increased. Not starved more than thirty million just in the rich countries either: people. When communal agriculture all the world not under communist was disassembled and Chinese farmers control did better. People were—and could work the way they wanted to, China are—eating better than ever despite increased its food output by 50 percent in a phenomenal population growth. Malthus single decade and even began exporting food held that the earth is incapable of increas- to the USSR in the 1980s. Bad politics is what you ing agricultural output at more than an “arith- need for starvation. For adequate food production, metical” rate, while population expands at a “geo- you need free farmers and markets. The earth isn’t metrical” rate. He was wrong. Food output not only the problem. Its political leaders are. increased at a geometric rate, it actually increased How could the population pessimists have faster than population. been so wrong? To begin with, there never was The Malthusians didn’t know what hit them. any real basis for Malthus’s conjecture about the Actually, some of them still don’t—we still hear them relationship of food supply to population. That muttering that we have “too many people.” But there he should have thought that there was reflected comes a time when the facts clobber you in the face what we might call the “materialist fallacy.” It with such force that it’s impossible not to notice. consists in thinking that wealth is somehow Despite all the claims, when starvation occurs, a pile of stuff or “material” rather than what it is due not to agriculture and the limited it really is, the effective human utilization of “carrying capacity” of the planet but to our resources. The materialist idea is that politics. To be more precise, there are we are taking from this pile, diminishing it; two sorts of starvations: little and big. as we “consume” more, there is less left. In the little ones, natural disasters Eventually the pile must shrink to zero— beset a few thousand unfortu- yikes! nate people, creating short-term But the idea is totally wrong. Consider the most basic Jan Narveson is professor of “stuff” of all—food. How much food philosophy at the University of can a given piece of land produce? Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and author of Respecting Persons Malthus thought the amount was fairly small and could only be in Theory and Practice and other books. improved a little bit. In fact, it is very large; moreover, there is

41 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 no real way to say how much food you “can” grow on it using much matter goes into a great oil painting by Van Gogh, now advanced technologies. Farmers all over the world are becom- worth fifty million dollars? Or your computer? Or the down-filled ing more efficient. American Midwestern farmers grow several parka that keeps us northerners comfy on the coldest winter times as much corn from one acre as they did a hundred years days? Or the compact discs that store thousands of hours of ago. Improved varieties of grain, better fertilizers, and many beautiful listening on my shelves? Thinking about this will lead other things go into the equation. The idea that eating is a you to see that the whole idea that modern civilization is based matter of slowly “using up” something that we must eventually on huge “consumption” of “natural resources” is way off base. run out of is a sheer misconception. What it “consumes” is ingenuity, talent, skill—and the neat Most people’s vision of burgeoning population in the twentieth thing about their “consumption” is that they don’t get consumed. century is distorted. Far from being a problem of people having Writing the complete works of Shakespeare left Shakespeare more and more children, as most supposed, twentieth-century quite intact, though it enriched the rest of us immeasurably. population growth was driven primarily by a steady increase in A favorite sport of pessimists is to worry about energy sup- longevity. In the United States, life expectancy almost doubled. plies. The pessimists haven’t noticed that the total amount of Birth rates are on the decline almost everywhere and have been energy reaching Earth from the sun is about ten thousand times for decades. Indeed, there is now talk about not only a leveling what humans use, even in our energy-hungry modern age. They off in the rate of increase but an actual decline in population haven’t noticed that humans are quite capable of using energy as the new century goes along—hey, if you want something to more efficiently, if need be. The story of ultimate collapse due to wring your hands about, try the eventual demise of the human exhaustion is, again, utterly without foundation. race from nonreproduction! Repro­duction rates rise and fall, Then there is “global warming,” a propagandist’s paradise. and there is no point in trying to predict them for the long term. The gap between confirmed relevant information on the one Pessimists now tell us that all these new people won’t ever hand and proposed political responses to it on the other is be able to enjoy Western standards of living. Said a United mind-boggling—and you aren’t going to find the facts on page Nations committee in 1996: “Continued growth in per capita one. But you will find them in abundance with just a bit of consumption to levels currently enjoyed by the developed coun- looking. I’ll mention just one point. The Kyoto Accords call for tries for a future global population of 10–12 billion is clearly measures that, depending how thoroughly they are implement- not sustainable.” But they’re dead wrong. There is simply no ed, will carry price tags running to trillions. Yet fifty years of reason why all of us, including people in the poorest countries, Kyoto-mandated Spartanism will yield an expected reduction shouldn’t be able to drive a Mercedes eventually. In the future, in global temperatures of only about 0.1 degree Celsius. What’s most Chinese will likely have cars, nicer houses, and all the the point, especially when such global warming as has been familiar goodies to go with them. It isn’t just that the amount of confirmed so far has been good for humanity, for example by iron ore in the earth’s crust is vastly greater than what would be extending northern growing seasons? needed to make the three billion or so motor cars for equipping All told, the “overpopulation” scare may be the biggest the world: it’s that quantities of this or that have very little to do single mistake in the history of social science. Theory and with it. We make cars out of whatever works best, and what that common sense conspired to fail in the grandest possible way, might be in the farther future is impossible to predict. and the only question is how it managed to take so many peo- Those who doubt this have two problems. First, they simply ple in for so long. Meanwhile humanists, of all people, should don’t realize how much in the way of natural resources, strictly recognize that people are inherently a good thing. Having defined, the earth contains. Second, they don’t understand how lots of people enables human society to diversify ever more little that has to do with anything. Regarding the first: the story elaborately, creating more interesting goods and services for of every material resource is that as time goes by, estimates all tastes and types. There’s room (and air, and food, and so of available quantities increase. In 1950, annual world oil con- on) for a lot more of us than there is any reason to expect sumption ran to four billion barrels, and “proven reserves” were there ever to be. People claiming to be humanists should, so approximately ninety billion barrels—enough for twenty-two to speak, count their blessings and stop deploring the fact of years. In the subsequent forty-four years consumption rose demographic opulence. to more than 640 billion barrels, yet proven reserves were ten times greater than in 1950! (The current figure is eight hundred Further Reading years.) The same is true of every material resource. The earth’s Ronald Bailey, ed., The True State of the Planet (New York: The Free supply of x is good for millennia or even millions of years. Press, 1996). What’s a poor prophet of doom to do? Ronald Bailey, Earth Report 2000 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999). The other point is more basic. How many of the really nice Wilfrid Beckerman, Poverty of Reason (Oakland, Calif.: Independent Institute, 2002). Short, readable, and packed with helpful informa- things in your life are hugely consumptive of matter? Buildings, tion, particularly on global warming. bridges, roads, ships, cars? They are all constructed of plentiful Patrick J. Michaels and Robert C. Balling, The Satanic Gases materials—no problem there, even if we covered the planet with (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2000). them—which, of course, we will not. What about the rest? How

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 42 WILL ISLAM COME INTO THE 2st CENTURY?

WHAT IS THE OPTIMUM POPULATION OF THE U.S.? THE WORLD? Europe’s What problem? Baby Bust Rosamund McDougall

year or so ago, economic analysts were fran- growth is accepted, the only questions that remain are when to tic about Europe’s “baby bust,” an idea that stabilize populations and how to tackle the challenges that will appears to have travelled across the Atlantic arise from shrinking demographic support ratios. fromA the United States. They advised that we must “breed for The Optimum Population Trust (OPT), a small U.K. environ- Europe” or import millions of immigrants to forestall econom- mental organization, has made rough estimates of the popula- ic collapse due to rising pension obligations and a shrinking tions that our planet can consistently sustain at various levels workforce. of consumption and technology. For example, at current levels These proposals are now recognized as politically unaccept- able. Moreover, they provide no solutions. Falling birth rates and aging populations are nothing new to Europe: life expect- ancies have doubled in less than two hundred years, and birth “The problems caused by continu- rates have been falling for more than a century. ous population growth are far more Necessary adjustments are being made. Early in 2004, actuaries advised United Kingdom corporate pension funds to serious than the challenge of raise their specified retirement and pension ages in line with adapting to aging populations.” life expectancy. A Pensions Bill was considered by Parliament, under which people would receive a cash reward if they defer retirement and claim their state pension five years later than scheduled. In the meantime, the government is looking at more of consumption and technology, our world may be able to sus- ways to improve the health and skills of people of working tain only about half its current numbers in the next century, age, of whom seven million are economically inactive. What of the limiting factors being greenhouse-gas-emission damage the Continent? In France and Germany, radical pension and and fossil-fuel depletion. Europe faces both looming energy employment reforms need to be speeded up. But a Europe- shortages and the deferred risks of destabilizing global warm- wide anti-age discrimination law will take effect in 2006. ing, whose reality was brought home last year when 20,000 Surely, action to stabilize and gradually reduce the U.K.’s people died in record summer heat. population is long overdue. The whole of our small country North Sea oil production, which underpinned healthy U.K. would fit into the state of Oregon with room to spare, yet more trade balances in the 1990s, is now peaking. By 2020, the than fifty-nine million are already packed inside our borders; U.K. will depend on imports for 80 to 90 percent of its gas. population density is twelve times higher than in the United Neither nuclear power nor renewable energy can fill much of States. Even if the U.K. population stabilized tomorrow, there this widening energy gap. With the exception of Norway, all would be no change in the demographic support ratio (the ratio European countries face the same energy crunch—and here of working age population to young and old dependents) until in Old Europe, voters are deeply uneasy about going to war to 2012. Yet our population is growing faster than ever before, with secure supplies of oil. more than half the annual increase due to inward migration. Europe is facing up to the demographic adjustment that all The problems caused by continuous population growth are populations will have to make in due course. It cannot solve far more serious than the challenge of adapting to aging popu- the dilemma of its aging population by increasing inward lations. This situation is not unique to the U.K. or Europe but migration from beyond its borders. Mass immigration is no is being faced worldwide. Once the need to address population solution for two simple reasons: first, young newcomers who Rosamund McDougall is co-chair of the Optimum Population settle will in time also grow old; second, very large influxes Trust (www.optimumpopulation.org) based in Manchester, would be needed to maintain demographic support ratios. U.K., and has one child. More potently, the political backlash against the asylum seek-

43 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 ers and economic migrants who surged across Europe’s bor- ders during the last ten years has reached the boiling point. In “Continuous population growth is February, the normally tolerant Netherlands (the most dense- mathematically and environmen- ly populated E.U. member state) threw in the towel and began mass deportations of illegals. By April, the U.K. government tally impossible, and, therefore, we also had an immigration crisis on its hands, with an angry must accept declining birth rates electorate demanding tougher controls. Is it time for European mothers to start breeding for and aging populations and work Europe? At OPT, we think not. The same demographic prob- out how to make the best of these lems obtain, although it takes a baby seventy years to reach the age of seventy, while a migrant might reach it in fifty years trends.” or less. History gives a useful perspective: the Europe whose young men were slaughtered by the millions in two world wars Worldwide, we have little choice. At the current rate of did not see its population go into terminal decline as a result. fertility, Earth’s population would reach 134 trillion in 2300, In Western Europe, population is actually falling only in Italy. according to the United Nations. Continuous population There, the government has introduced financial incentives for growth is mathematically and environmentally impossible, mothers to have more babies and may implement practical and, therefore, we must accept declining birth rates and measures to make it easier for working women to raise the aging populations and work out how to make the best of these small families that most European mothers like to have—and trends. Unless, of course, you know how to move several bil- which would allow our numbers to reduce gradually to more lion people to Mars. sustainable levels. The Aging World Sylvain and Phyllis Ehrenfeld

e are living in the midst has recognized this trend and has sive birth rate of the past, some of an unprecedented tran- explored the many issues it raises. societies are going through a mas- Wsition, sometimes called the Every October, the UN celebrates the sive youth bulge, with more than half “agequake.” By 2050, the number of Day of Older Persons. Two major the population under twenty-five—in older persons in the world will exceed world conferences on aging have Saudi Arabia 62 percent, Yemen 68 the number of young for the first time been held, one in 1982 and one more percent, and Iran 60 percent. Many in history. As the twenty-first century recently in 2002. The 1982 conference young people are becoming restless began, the world’s population includ­ - mostly concerned the richer countries without productive work. They pres- ed approximately 600 million older where the aging had begun. There, ent a major and growing political people, triple the number recorded the issues were discussed in terms problem. fifty years earlier. By mid-century, of caring for the welfare of older At the annual celebration of the there will be some two billion elder- persons. At the 2002 conference, the International Day of Older Persons, ly—once again a tripling of the age emphasis was on mainstreaming the the emphasis was on healthy, active group in a span of fifty years. older people, using their skills as aging, education for all ages, human Will societies have the resources a treasured resource. The approach rights, and dignity. We have added to pay for the increased needs of was intergenerational, avoiding age years to our lives. What kind of life older people, particularly when the stratification into youth groups and will we add to these years? number of working young is dimin- elder enclaves. By building bridges ishing? In the developed countries, between generations, the model is a Sylvain and Phyllis Ehrenfeld have national wealth has increased along society for all ages. represented humanist organizations with the increase in aging. The under- The facts are simple. In most before the United Nations. This arti- developed countries will reach their countries, people are having fewer cle is adapted from one that appeared agequake before their wealth increas­ - children, and people are living lon- in the February 2004 International es. Over the years, the United Nations ger. However, because of the explo- Humanist News.

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WHAT IS THE OPTIMUM POPULATION OF THE U.S.? THE WORLD? What Population Restrict annual immigration to the U.S. Stabilization Requires Edward Tabash

he godless, naturalistic worldview of secular now lives in the state.145 Its population is thirty-six million humanism does not logically compel us to people and grows by about six hundred thousand per year. adopt a left-of-center viewpoint on every polit- Immigration, both legal and illegal, is the single most signifi- Tical issue. Aside from the nonnegotiables—church-state sepa- cant factor in California’s annual population growth. ration and protecting the freedoms that many religious people Between July 2002 and July 2003, the U.S. Census Bureau do not want us to enjoy—nonbelievers may differ on many estimated that there was a net migration to the United States social and political questions. Notwithstanding the arguments from other countries of 1,286,118 people, of which 288,051 I shall present in this article, I need to stress that ethical and came to California.452 thoughtful people who reject the supernatural can disagree The 2000 census estimated that between eight million and with one another in good faith as to whether or not restricting eleven million people then lived in the United States illegally; immigration is a proper approach to reducing U.S. domestic the number can only have increased since. The Border Patrol population growth. reported that between September 30, 2003, and March 31, After a lifetime of fighting the religious Right, I now find 2004, its agents detained 535,000 people who had entered the myself struggling against a faction on the Left that seems no United States illegally from Mexico.453 (This of course does not less impervious to reason. Many on the Left insist that no one include those who managed to enter the United States illegally can maintain a principled commitment to reducing immigra- without being apprehended.) California has a larger number of tion as a means of stabilizing runaway U.S. population growth persons unlawfully present in the country than any other state. without being a racist. To make this claim is to commit the Since 1972, the fertility rate of native-born Americans has same error that religionists do when they assert that no athe- averaged 10 percent below replacement level. But that of immi- ist can have a basis for living an ethical life. grants has averaged 30 percent above replacement level over I argue that a nation has a right to control the number of the same period.454 Between 1990 and 2000, the United States people who immigrate to it. If a nation faces massive overpopu- endured the greatest census-to-census population increase in lation, or if certain regions of that nation face massive overpop- the nation’s history. Our population grew by 32.7 million peo- ulation, national sovereignty allows a government to restrict the ple, an increase of 13.2 percent.455 Almost all of this increase number of people who can cross the border. One nation is not resulted from immigration and the fertility of immigrants. If required to pay for another’s lack of family planning, corrup- current levels of immigration continue, the United States could tion, or failure to achieve an equitable distribution of wealth by have a population of a billion people by the end of this century.6 absorbing millions of citizens from that other country. A sufficient reduction in birthrate would stabilize population Mathematically, the current large-scale immigration—both growth. But it is legally impermissible to impose mandatory lim- legal and illegal—to the United States and to California in its on the number of children someone can bear. Thus, the only particular, where I reside, is the factor most responsible for remaining option for stabilizing population growth is to restrict America’s unprecedented population increase. the number of persons from other countries who enter the California continues to experience massive population United States each year. Accordingly, I believe that the law can growth. One out of every eight people in the United States and must seek to stabilize population by restricting immigration. This position is controversial and frequently misun- Edward Tabash, a constitutional lawyer in Beverly Hills, derstood. There is no question that numerous racists and California, is a member of the Board of Directors of the Council right-wing nuts favor limiting immigration, for all the wrong for Secular Humanism, chairs the Council’s First Amendment reasons. But that does nothing to diminish the legitimacy of Task Force, and is honorary chair of the Center for Inquiry– favoring restricting the annual number of immigrants because West. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the of valid concerns about overpopulation. Santa Barbara-based Californians for Population Stabilization Citizens from other nations do not have a constitutional (CAPS), http://capsweb.org.

45 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 right to immigrate to the United States, however desperate Rational thought and commonsense problem-solving can- their circumstances. The heart-wrenching spectacle of teeming not occur in a climate in which at the moment a logical argu- masses hazarding fearsome hardships in order to leave Mexico ment is put forward, opponents characterize it as too evil speaks in condemnation of the policies of Mexico’s government, even to be the subject of debate. This is true whether those not ours. Mexico’s wealth remains concentrated among very, opponents are religionists demonizing nonbelievers or leftists very few. Its government has consistently refused to under- mischaracterizing the motives of those who, on environmental take massive efforts to achieve a more equitable distribution grounds, would limit the number of immigrants who come to of that nation’s wealth. Given these facts, and given further the United States. Mexico’s richness in natural resources, it is Mexico’s president, Vincente Fox, and his predecessors who are clearly the true villains in the lives of desperate Mexicans who understandably seek to escape to California or elsewhere in the United States. President Fox is cynical and irresponsible when he chastises the United States for not accepting an ever-increasing number Notes of his own nationals, for whom his government has so miserably 1. Ralph Z. Hallow, “GOP Strategists Wary of California,” failed to provide. To point this out is not racist; it is rational. Washington Times, January 25, 2004. As a moderate liberal Democrat who believes that govern- 2. U.S. Census Bureau: http://eire.census.gov/popest/data/ ment should provide a safety net and social services for the states/tables/NSTEST2003 05.php. needy, I recognize that there must be a limit to the number 3. CBS News, “Illegal Aliens Rush U.S. Border.” April 27, 2004. of people who can receive these services. If an indigent per- 464. Numbers USA: http://www.numbersusa.com/overpopu- son lawfully present in California needed expensive medical lation/ treatment, it would be understandable to provide that person threecauses.html. with that needed care, rather than sending the money to cover 5. U.S. Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/prod/2001 pubs/c2kbr012.pdf. the treatment of someone in Norway. This shouldn’t change 6. Carrying Capacity Network, U.S. Population and because the person in Norway somehow manages to sneak into Resources Facts, May 2003, www.carryingcapacity.org/facts the United States. It also shouldn’t change if the person who 2003.html. enters the United States illegally happens to come from Mexico.

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WHAT IS THE OPTIMUM POPULATION OF THE U.S.? THE WORLD? Georgia’s Granite What are they and why? Guidestones Ed Buckner

ear Elberton, Georgia, the self-described ists, and even astrology and astronomy buffs. Professional “Granite Capital of the World,” stands a weird astronomers like John Burgess of North Carolina (retired arrangement of granite that has to be seen from Georgia’s Fernbank Observatory) are impressed with Nto be believed. Five giant stone slabs—four tablets and a the astronomical alignments and the markings atop the cap- central “gnomon stone,” each nineteen feet high—support a stone, though Burgess says that, even with all our modern huge capstone. The tablets are inscribed front and back in computer-assisted calculations, the Guidestones are not quite English, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Spanish, as accurate and impressive as Stonehenge. and Swahili. In each language, they present a sort of New The big rocks were quarried, engraved, and installed over Age Ten Commandments. Or maybe it’s a graven image a period of weeks in 1979 and 1980 (not snuck in during the that gravely insults religion. Perhaps it’s night like Chief Justice Roy Moore’s Ten an enduring reflection of the ideals of Com­mandments rock in neighboring Ala­ Thomas Paine. Then again, it may be an bama). They were officially unveiled on effort by the Rosicrucians, or perhaps March 22, 1980. A local historical commit- the successful dissemination of Satan’s tee later added an explanatory tablet that Ten Commandments, or maybe just an promises a time capsule, though as I write elaborate ad for Elberton’s granite indus- the committee has not gotten around to try. On the four sides of the capstone, in burying it. four “dead” languages (archaic San­skrit, Claimed to weigh 238,000 pounds (one Babylonian cuneiform, Egyptian hiero- pound of polished granite for every mile glyphics, and classical Greek) is inscribed­ between Earth and Moon?), the Guide­ “Let These Be Guidestones to an Age of stones were apparently intended by their Reason.” mysterious sponsors to tell us great What in the name of reason is this all truths like “Avoid petty laws and useless about? officials.” (Maybe we should add Liber­ In 1979, so the mysterious story goes, a tarians to the possible list of conspirators.) guy calling himself only Mr. R. C. Christian Other wise nostrums include “Rule pas- wandered into an Elberton bank and sion—faith—tradition and all things with ordered up on behalf of an anonymous tempered reason,” and, twice at the end, group “a monument to conservation”—a “Leave room for nature.” All ten guide- complicated granite construction now lines can easily be seen online (just type known as the Georgia Guidestones, or “Georgia Guidestones”­ into your favorite America’s answer to Stonehenge. The search engine). The first, and perhaps most mystery remains as to who Mr. Christian surprising directive, is “Maintain humanity really is or was—not Ted Turner, not under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance Satan himself (probably), not the head of Photos by Ed Buckner with nature.” It is one of the most strin- Elberton’s Chamber of Commerce (well, gent—to say nothing of permanent—rec- probably not)—not even Georgia’s current governor, Sonny ommendations for an optimum human population. Of course, Perdue. as some angry Christians point out on anti-Guidestone Web The Guidestones attract all sorts of visitors—Wiccans, sites, getting there would require the slaughter or attrition of Druids, dowsers, UFO buffs, New Agers of all stripes, tour- 92.3 percent of the world’s population. But hey, you gotta start Ed Buckner is southern director for the Council for Secular somewhere to solve the world’s problems, right? Humanism.

47 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 My God And theirs Problem Natalie Angier

n the course of reporting a book on the scientific canon and pestering hundreds of researchers at the nation’s great universities about what they see as the Iessential vitamins and minerals of literacy in their particular disciplines, I have been hammered into a kind of twinkle-eyed “Nobody is going to ask people cartoon coma by one recurring message. Whether they are biologists, geologists, physicists, chemists, astronomers, or to give up their faith, their belief engineers, virtually all my sources topped their list of what in an everlasting soul accompanied they wish people understood about science with a plug for Darwin’s dandy idea. Would you please tell the public, they by an immortal memory of every implored, that evolution is for real? Would you please explain soccer game their kids won. . . .” that the evidence for it is overwhelming and that an appreci- ation of evolution serves as the bedrock of our understanding of all life on this planet? In other words, the scientists wanted me to do my bit to help fix the terrible little statistic they keep hearing about, the the bulk of the magic acts that have won the imprimatur of one indicating that many more Americans believe in angels, inclusion in the Bible, they are tolerant, respectful, big of tent. devils, and poltergeists than in evolution. According to recent Indeed, many are quick to point out that the Catholic Church polls, about 82 percent are convinced of the reality of heaven has endorsed the theory of evolution and that it sees no con- (and 63 percent think they’re headed there after death); 51 flict between a belief in God and the divinity of Jesus and the percent believe in ghosts; but only 28 percent are swayed by notion of evolution by natural selection. If the pope is buying the theory of evolution. it, the reason for most Americans’ resistance to evolution must Scientists think this is terrible—the public’s bizarre under- have less to do with religion than with a lousy advertising appreciation of one of science’s great and unshakable discov- campaign. eries, how we and all we see came to be—and they’re right. Yet So, on the issue of mainstream monotheistic religions and I can’t help feeling tetchy about the limits most of them put on the irrationality behind many of religion’s core tenets, scien- their complaints. You see, they want to augment this particu- tists often set aside their skewers, their snark, and their impa- lar figure—the number of people who believe in evolution— tient demand for proof, and instead don the calming cardigan without bothering to confront a few other salient statistics that of a kiddie-show host on public television. They reassure the pollsters have revealed about America’s religious cosmogony. public that religion and science are not at odds with one anoth- Few scientists, for example, worry about the 77 percent of er, but rather that they represent separate “magisteria,” in Americans who insist that Jesus was born to a virgin, an act the words of the formerly alive and even more formerly scrap- of parthenogenesis that defies everything we know about py Stephen Jay Gould. Nobody is going to ask people to give mammalian genetics and reproduction. Nor do the research- up their faith, their belief in an everlasting soul accompanied ers wring their hands over the 80 percent who believe in the by an immortal memory of every soccer game their kids won, resurrection of Jesus, the laws of thermodynamics be damned. every moment they spent playing fetch with the dog. Nobody No, most scientists are not interested in taking on any of is going to mock you for your religious beliefs. Well, we might the mighty cornerstones of Christianity. They complain about if you base your life decisions on the advice of a Ouija board; irrational thinking, they despise creationist “science,” they but if you want to believe that someday you’ll be seated at a roll their eyes over America’s infatuation with astrology, tele- celestial banquet with your long-dead father to your right and kinesis, spoon bending, reincarnation, and UFOs, but toward Jane Austen to your left—and that she’ll want to talk to you for another hundred million years or more—that’s your pri- Natalie Angier is a science reporter for the New York Times vate reliquary, and we’re not here to jimmy the lock. and author of Woman: An Intimate Geography, Natural Consider the very different treatments accorded two ques- Obsessions, and The Beauty of the Beastly. In 1991 she won a tions presented to Cornell University’s “Ask an Astronomer” Pulitzer Prize for her science reporting. Web site. To the query, “Do most astronomers believe in

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 48 God, based on the available evidence?” the astronomer Dave heaven option, with its helium balloons and Breck hair for Rothstein replies that, in his opinion, “modern science leaves all. Science in no way wants to be associated with terrifying plenty of room for the existence of God . . . places where peo- thoughts, like the possibility that the pericentury of conscious- ple who do believe in God can fit their beliefs in the scientific ness granted you by the convoluted, gelatinous, and transient framework without creating any contradictions.” He cites the organ in your skull just may be the whole story of you-dom. Big Bang as offering solace to those who want to believe in a Science isn’t arrogant. Science trades in the observable uni- Genesis equivalent and the probabilistic realms of quantum verse and testable hypotheses. Religion gets the midnight mechanics as raising the possibility of “God intervening every panic fêtes. But you’ve heard about evolution, right? time a measurement occurs” before concluding that, ultimate- So why is it that most scientists avoid criticizing religion ly, science can never prove or disprove the existence of a god, even as they decry the supernatural mind-set? For starters, and religious belief doesn’t—and shouldn’t—“have anything some researchers are themselves traditionally devout, keep- to do with scientific reasoning.” ing a kosher kitchen or taking Communion each Sunday. I How much less velveteen is the response to the reader admit I’m surprised whenever I encounter a religious scien- asking whether astronomers believe in astrology. “No, astron­ tist. How can a bench-hazed Ph.D., who might in an after- omers do not believe in astrology,” snarls Dave Kornreich. “It noon deftly purée a colleague’s PowerPoint presentation on the is considered to be a ludicrous scam. There is no evidence nematode genome into so much fish chow, then go home, read that it works, and plenty of evidence to the contrary.” Dr. in a two-thousand-year-old chronicle, riddled with internal Kornreich ends his dismissal with the assertion that in sci- contradictions, of a meta-Nobel discovery like “Resurrection ence “one does not need a reason not to believe in something.” from the Dead,” and say, gee, that sounds convincing? Doesn’t Skepticism is “the default position” and “one requires proof if the good doctor wonder what the control group looked like? one is to be convinced of something’s existence.” Scientists, however, are a far less religious lot than In other words, for horoscope fans, the burden of proof is the American population, and, the higher you go on the entirely on them, the poor gullible gits; while for the multitudes cerebro-magisterium, the greater the proportion of atheists, who believe that, in one way or another, a divine intelligence agnostics, and assorted other paganites. According to a 1998 guides the path of every leaping lepton, there is no demand for survey published in Nature, only 7 percent of members of the evidence, no skepticism to surmount, no need to worry. You, prestigious National Academy of Sciences professed a belief in the religious believer, may well find subtle support for your a “personal God.” (Interestingly, a slightly higher number, 7.9 faith in recent discoveries—that is, if you’re willing to upgrade percent, claimed to believe in “personal immortality,” which your metaphors and definitions as the latest data demand, may say as much about the robustness of the scientific ego as seek out new niches of ignorance or ambiguity to fill with the about anything else.) In other words, more than 90 percent of goose down of faith, and accept that, certain passages of the our elite scientists are unlikely to pray for divine favoritism, Old Testament notwithstanding, the world is very old, not no matter how badly they want to beat a competitor to publica- everything in nature was made in a week, and (can you turn tion. Yet only a flaskful of the faithless have put their nonbelief up the mike here, please?) Evolution Happens. on record or publicly criticized religion, the notable and voluble And if you don’t find substantiation for your preferred exceptions being Richard Dawkins of Oxford University and divinity or your most cherished rendering of the afterlife Daniel Dennett of Tufts University. Nor have Dawkins and somewhere in the sprawling emporium of science, that’s Dennett earned much good will among their colleagues for fine, too. No need to lose faith when you were looking their anticlerical views; one astronomer I spoke with said of in the wrong place to begin with. Science can’t tell you Dawkins, “He’s a really fine parish preacher of the fire-and- whether God exists or where you go when you die. Science brimstone school, isn’t he?”

cannot defini- tively rule out the

So, what keeps most scientists quiet about religion? It’s probably

49 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 gee, the Native American community has been underserved “. . . why is it that most scientists and is having a real problem with AIDS these days. Thus far, the projects have escaped being nullified, but the raw display of avoid criticizing religion even as pious dentition must surely give fright to even the most rakishly they decry the supernatural mind- freethinking and comfortably tenured professor. It’s one thing to monkey with descriptions of Darwinism in a high-school text- set?” book. But to threaten to take away a peer-reviewed grant! That something close to that trusty old limbic reflex called “an Dan Dennett; he is something of a pompous leafblower, isn’t he? instinct for self-preservation.” For centuries, science has Yet the result of wincing and capitulating is a fresh round survived quite nicely by cultivating an image of reserve and of whacks. Now it’s not enough for presidential aspirants to objectivity, of being above religion, politics, business, table make passing reference to their “faith.” Now a reporter from manners. Scientists want to be left alone to do their work, daz- Newsweek sees it as his privilege, if not his duty, to demand of zle their peers, and hire grad students to wash the glassware. Howard Dean, “Do you see Jesus Christ as the son of God and When it comes to extramural combat, scientists choose their believe in him as the route to salvation and eternal life?” In crusades cautiously. Going after Uri Geller or the Raëlians is my personal fairy tale, Dean, who as a doctor fits somewhere risk-free entertainment, easier than making fun of the sociolo- in the phylum Scientificus, might have boomed, “Well, with gy department. Battling the creationist camp has been a much his views on camels and rich people, he sure wouldn’t vote harder and nastier fight, but those scientists who have taken it Republican!” or maybe, “No, but I hear he has a Mel Gibson on feel they have a direct stake in the debate and are entitled complex.” Dr. Dean might have talked about patients of his to wage it, since the creationists, and more recently the pro- who suffered strokes and lost the very fabric of themselves moters of “intelligent design” theory, claim to be as scientific and how he has seen the centrality of the brain to the sense of in their methodology as are the scientists. being an individual. He might have expressed doubts that the But when a teenager named Darrell Lambert was chucked self survives the brain, but, oh yes, life goes on, life is bigger, out of the Boy Scouts for being an atheist, scientists sud- stronger, and better endowed than any Bush in a jumpsuit, denly remembered all those gels they had to run and dark and we are part of the wild, tumbling river of life, our mole- matter they had to chase, and they kept quiet. Lambert had cules were the molecules of dinosaurs and before that of stars, explained the reason why, despite a childhood spent in Bible and this is not Bulfinch mythology, this is corroborated reality. classes and church youth groups, he had become an atheist. Alas for my phantasm of fact, Howard Dean, M.D., had no He took biology in ninth grade, and, rather than devoting choice but to chime, oh yes, he certainly sees Jesus as the son himself to studying the bra outline of the girl sitting in front of God, though he at least dodged the eternal life clause with a of him, he actually learned some biology. And what he learned humble mumble about his salvation not being up to him. in biology persuaded him that the Bible was full of . . . short I may be an atheist, and I may be impressed that, through stories. Some good, some inspiring, some even racy, but fiction the stepwise rigor of science, its Spockian eyebrow of doubt nonetheless. For his incisive, reasoned, scientific look at life, always cocked, we have learned so much about the universe. and for refusing to cook the data and simply lie to the Boy Yet I recognize that, from there to here, and here to there, Scouts about his thoughts on God—as some advised him to funny things are everywhere. Why is there so much dark mat- do—Darrell Lambert should have earned a standing ovation ter and dark energy in the great Out There, and why couldn’t from the entire scientific community. Instead, he had to settle cosmologists have given them different enough names so I for an interview with Connie Chung, right after a report on the could keep them straight? Why is there something rather than Gambino family. nothing, and why is so much of it on my desk? Not to mention Scientists have ample cause to feel they must avoid being the abiding mysteries of e-mail, like why I get exponentially viewed as irreligious, a prionic life-form bent on destroying the more spam every day, nine-tenths of it invitations to enlarge most sacred heifer in America. After all, academic researchers an appendage I don’t have. graze on taxpayer pastures. If they pay the slightest attention I recognize that science doesn’t have all the answers and to the news, they’ve surely noticed the escalating readiness doesn’t pretend to, and that’s one of the things I love about it. of conservative politicians and an array of highly motivated But it has a pretty good notion of what’s probable or possible, religious organizations to interfere with the nation’s scientific and virgin births and carpenter rebirths just aren’t on the list. enterprise—altering the consumer information Web site at the Is there a divine intelligence, separate from the universe but National Cancer Institute to make abortion look like a cause somehow in charge of the universe, either in its inception or of breast cancer, which it is not, or stuffing scientific advisory in twiddling its parameters? No evidence. Is the universe itself panels with anti-abortion “faith healers.” God? Is the universe aware of itself? We’re here. We’re aware. Recently, an obscure little club called the Traditional Values Does that make us God? Will my daughter have to attend a Coalition began combing through descriptions of projects sup- Quaker Friends school now? ported by the National Institutes of Health and complaining to I don’t believe in life after death, but I’d like to believe in sympathetic congressmen about those they deemed morally life before death. I’d like to think that one of these days we’ll “rotten,” most of them studies of sexual behavior and AIDS leave superstition and delusional thinking and Jerry Falwell prevention. The congressmen in turn launched a series of hear- behind. Scientists would like that, too. But for now, they like ings, calling in institute officials to inquire who in the Cotton- their grants even more. pickin’ name of Mather cares about the perversions of Native Reprinted from The American Scholar 72, no. 2, Spring 2004. ©Natalie American homosexuals, to which the researchers replied, um, Angier. By permission of the publishers. the studies were approved by a panel of scientific experts, and,

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 50 (Letters cont’d. from page 9) (good) is good because God approves of good things, then the concept of “good” it and not have this claim reduce moral- must exist independently of the gods Free Inquiry makes to the cultural dia- ity to a matter of whim in any important themselves. He thinks, however, that the logue, I am disappointed, at times, by sense. If God is the author of the world, other choice available to Euthyphro isn’t the quality of some of your articles and He is clearly the author of that subset quite as bad: if gods created morality, op-ed pieces. of creation called morality. Calling the together with the rest of the universe, in Massimo Pigliucci’s op-ed, “Socrates act of creation a matter of whim seems no way can this act of creation be consid- and Religious Morality,” (June/July to have little argumentative power. The ered arbitrary. I fail to see why not. Since 2004) is a case in point. Pigliucci obvi- world and morality would still exist, and the gods created a particular universe ously enjoys the opportunity to jar naïve they would still be wholly dependent on out of all the (infinite) possible ones, and intro to philosophy students by con- God for their existence. To use the word they chose (for the sake of argument, of structing Plato’s duly famous Euthy­ whim seems to steal the concept of a course) one code of morality out of an phro dilemma—an academic setting created person making decisions inside infinite number of available ones, then for “shock and awe.” Yet his confi- a set of existing facts and misapplying it that choice was arbitrary, exactly as dence in that dilemma is questionable. to the very source of all creation (facts). Plato has Socrates claim. One can, of Philosophers­ have demonstrated that As a long time atheist, I’ve concluded course, make the argument that it may this dilemma can be overcome. See, for that by the time one is debating the be wise to follow the arbitrary morality instance, atheist John Mackie’s anal- nature of God (including His relation- invented by an omnipotent being, but ysis in his Ethics: Inventing Right and ship to morality), the rational horse is that doesn’t make it any less arbitrary Wrong, pp. 229 ff., or Paul Helm’s essay already out of the barn. The only real (the “He made me do it” defense wasn’t in the Encyclopedia of Ethics, pp. 1082– argument against God (and his rele- allowed at Nuremberg). As for Occam’s 83. Furthermore, the last century of phi- vance to anything!) is Ockham’s razor. razor being a better argument for the losophy reflects a good deal of confusion If you don’t stand your ground there, nonexistence of god, Carlson is missing about matters moral once the religious you’ll soon find that real swords can’t the point: Euthy­phro’s dilemma is not foundations were removed. And secu- slay imaginary dragons. meant as an argument for the nonexis- larists such as Stalin and Hitler were Brion Carlson tence of god, but as one for his irrele- hardly paragons of virtue. Religious Birmingham, Alabama vance to moral questions (of course, once traditions do not have sole possession gods become irrelevant to morality, why of the dark side. bother with them at all?). Granted, both Mackie and Helm Massimo Pigliucci responds: show that certain assumptions must be introduced to overcome the dilem-­ Professor Wayne G. Johnson makes two ma and religion-based morality has points: first, he accuses me of poor scholar- a cluster of problems. But Plato’s ship for not citing the alleged overcoming dilemma, as such, does not succeed in of Euthyphro’s­ dilemma by philosophers impaling theological ethics on its horns. such as Mackie and Helm. The problem I do hope that Pigliucci’s colleague trac- is that, not only Johnson doesn’t tell us es the rebuttals after his visit. I gather what arguments Mackie and Helm have that Pigliucci himself has not. used, but admits that they were forced Wayne G. Johnson to introduce “certain assumptions” in Professor Emeritus of Philosophy order to bypass the conundrum posed by University of Wisconsin–Parkside Socrates in Plato’s famous dialogue. I’m Racine, Wisconsin sure Professor Johnson appreciates that arguments from authority (“You are wrong WRITE TO FI because so-and-so said this”) are actually a I was surprised by Massimo Pigliucci’s form of logical fallacy. Furthermore, surely enthusiasm for the (literally) Socratic in an op-ed column I am entitled to present Send submissions to Norm Allen, Jr., Letters Editor, question, “Is what is holy holy because a simplified version of the dilemma, which the gods approve it, or do they approve FREE INQUIRY, P.O. Box 664, wouldn’t be appropriate for a technical Amherst, NY 14226-0664. it because it is holy?” He claims this philosophical publication. Second, Johnson Fax: (716) 636-1733 simple challenge is “the most powerful invokes the usual, and highly questionable, E-mail: [email protected] argument ever produced to show that claim that secular morality isn’t any better For letters intended morality and religion are independent.” than religious one, just look at what Hitler for publication, If one answers that the gods approve (who was not a secularist) and Stalin did! please include name, of things already holy, it obviously This is another well-known philosophical ad­dress, city, state, and daytime phone number means that morality has a standard fallacy, known as a non sequitur. Just independent of the gods. In modern (for verification purposes only). because some secularists engage in mor- Letters should be terms, God really is “one of us” in that ally wrong conduct, it doesn’t follow that 300 words or less He is a fellow detective of the good— secular morality is itself wrong. and pertain to previous though a perfect one. But I think it is Brion Carlson agrees with one-half FREE INQUIRY articles. an easy move to claim that what is holy of the dilemma: if gods approve only of

51 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 A Declaration of Sexual Evolving principles for a new century Rights and Responsibilities Vern L. Bullough

In 1976, Lester Kirkendall drew up what he called “A New Bill of Sex is more than procreation, and, though procreation will Sexual Rights and Responsibilities.” It was signed by many dis- always be important, it is only one aspect of human sexual tinguished sexologists as well as other scholars and therapists. expression today. Alternative sexual activity has often been The original document was commissioned by Paul Kurtz, then condemned in the past, but, in today’s world, the widespread editor of The Humanist and later published as a pamphlet by use of effective contraceptives as well as other developments Prometheus Books. Times have changed, and it is important to in reproductive technology have made effective family planning issue a new statement. Some of those still alive who signed the possible for larger and larger numbers of people in the world. original declaration have also signed this new one. As a result, it is time that sexuality should be viewed as an expression of intimacy, a source of enjoyment and enrichment, and even a means for releasing tension. Sex should be integrat- ed with other aspects of experience that are part of a balanced life. exuality has long been denied its proper place 2. Developing a sense of equity between the sexes is an essen- among other human activities. It has often been tial feature of a sensible morality. shrouded in mystery and surrounded by taboos, or heralded far beyond its capacity to, by itself, contribute to the All legal, occupational, economic, and political discrimination S against women should be removed and all traces of historical fullness of life. Clearly, human sexuality grows increasingly sat- isfying as life itself becomes more meaningful. This importance sexism erased. Until women have equal opportunities, they will of sexuality can be illustrated by looking at its contributions to be vulnerable to continued exploitation by men. This means enhancing the quality of today’s lifestyle. that men must recognize the right of women to control their For the first time in history, if proper precautions are taken, own bodies and to determine the nature of their own sexual there need be very little fear of unwanted pregnancy or illness expression. All individuals—female or male—are entitled to from a sexually transmitted disease. It is important that we equal consideration as persons. recognize the changing role of sexuality which this change has 3. Repressive taboos should be replaced by a more balanced brought about. and objective view of sexuality based upon a sensitive aware- In the past, the legal limitations to conjugal unions or monog- ness of human behavior and needs. amous marriage were part of a social system in which repro- duction was largely a matter of chance—and women were sub- Archaic taboos have limited our thinking in many ways. The ject to men. Though a viable marriage has long been a cherished human person, especially the female, has often been held in human relationship and will, we believe, continue to be, other bondage by restrictions that prescribed when, where, with types of sexual relationships have also been significant and whom, and with what parts of the body the sexual impulse need to be recognized. We believe that human beings should could be satisfied. As these taboos are discarded, an objective have the right to express their sexual desires and enter into reappraisal is required, although even without any formal relationships as they see fit, as long as they do not harm others authorization, changes have been taking place. Premarital or interfere with those others’ right to sexual expression. This sexual intercourse is being seen in a different light, and forced growing sense of sexual freedom, however, should be accompa- marriages are disappearing. Some individuals have multiple nied by a sense of ethical responsibility. That is the purpose of sexual relations, and organizations have appeared advocating this “Bill of Sexual Rights and Responsibilities.” polyamorous relationships. Homosexual relationships have finally been recognized as legal. Different lifestyles should also 1. We believe the boundaries of human sexuality need to be be permissible, including those engaged in by transvestites, expanded. transsexuals, and other transgendered or bisexual individuals. The guiding principles should be age and consent and how the Vern L. Bullough is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the activity affects others. On the whole, the use of genital associ- State University of New York and is currently an adjunct ations to express feelings of genuine intimacy, rather than as professor of nursing at the University of Southern California. simply connections for physical pleasure or procreation alone, is an important step forward.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 52 Past taboos have prevented adequate examination of certain abuse is a major problem that must be given a high priority for topics, thus blocking the discovery of answers to important serious research. But, beyond laws emphasizing the importance questions associated with sexual activities. Abortion is a case of age and consent, most forms of sexual expression should not in point. By focusing only on the destruction of the fetus, many be matters of legal regulation. Mature individuals should be have avoided facing the other issues that are fundamental, such able to choose their partners and the kinds of sexual expression as a woman’s right to choose to be pregnant and the need to suited to them. medically protect the mother. Certain forms of sexual expression, such as being a prosti- There must be open discussion of ways of providing a com- tute or utilizing one, are regarded as demeaning or confining by prehensive sex education for both children and adults. Adequate many, but any changes in such practices should come through and accurate information about contraceptive procedures should education and counseling and not by legal prohibition, although be available to those who wish to use them or as something they the conditions and locations of soliciting can be subject to might use in a special situation. Likewise, taboos that cause peo- regulation if they appear to endanger children or seriously ple to feel that viewing the genitals or seeing sexual intercourse violate the rights of others. The overriding objective should is obscene and pornographic should be challenged. Sex must be be to help individuals to live balanced and self-actualized treated as part of the natural experience of being human. And lives. The punishment and ostracism of those who voluntarily masturbation is one of the joys of sex and should be regarded as engage in socially disapproved forms of sexual conduct only part of the natural experience of being human. exacerbate the problem. Sexual morality should be viewed as an inseparable part of general morality—not as a special set of 4. Each person has both an obligation and a right to be informed rules. Sexual values and sex acts, like other human values and about the various civic and community aspects of human acts, should be evaluated by whether they frustrate or enhance sexuality. human fulfillment and avoid force and exploitation. A necessary first step is to affirm and support the statement Individuals should not knowingly pass on a sexually transmit- of the United Nations World Health Organization’s­ committee ted disease. Such an action is harmful to another. Those who are on human sexuality that every “person has the right to receive diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease should not be ostra- sexual information and to consider accepting sexuality for plea- cized but should be treated as any other ill or diseased person. sure as well as for procreation.” Even children have a right to sex education that is adjusted to their levels of understanding. 7. Physical pleasure has worth as a moral value. It is important to recognize that sexual attitudes are often Traditional religious and social views have often condemned intimately related to many problems of public importance, pleasures of the body as “sinful,” “wicked,” or as major caus- although taboos too often inhibit free discussion. For example, es of illness. These attitudes are highly judgmental and very to deal effectively with extremely rapid population growth in destructive of human relationships. Deprivation of physical different areas of the world we must accept that individual atti- pleasure, particularly during the formative periods of devel- tudes influence sexual expression and contraception choices. opment, can and often does result in family breakdown, child This requires research and experimentation. So does satisfying abuse, adolescent runaways, alcoholism, and various forms of the sexual needs of individuals who are incarcerated or insti- dehumanizing behavior. Physical pleasure within the context tutionalized for one reason or another and who still need to of meaningful human relationships is essential—both as a establish meaningful ties with others, whether they be in homes moral value and as a contribution to wholesome social rela- for senior citizens, for the developmentally disabled or men- tionships. tally compromised, or in prison. In sum, sexual attitudes and 8. The ability of individuals to respond positively and affirma- lifestyles continually need to be adjusted to meet changing con- tively to sexuality throughout the life cycle must be acknowl- ditions brought on by technological and medical developments edged and accepted. as well as changing cultural patterns. We often do not know the answers to these new problems, but we must recognize the need These responses differ with the ages of individuals. Childhood and deal with the reality. sexuality is expressed through genital awareness and explo- ration, which involves self-touching or caressing parts of the 5. Potential parents have both the right and responsibility to plan body, behavior for which children should not be punished. It is the number and the time of the birth of their children, taking into a natural part of childhood and such learning experiences help account both social needs and their own desires. the individual understand his or her body feelings and incor- Family size and the decision to give birth is up to the individuals porate sexuality as an integral part of his or her personality. involved. This means that birth control and abortion informa- Masturbation is a viable mode of satisfaction for many individ- tion as well as that about voluntary sterilization must be freely uals, both young and old, and should be fully accepted as part available to both married couples and unmarried individuals. of being human. Just as repressive attitudes have prevented us Males as well as females should be involved in family planning from recognizing the importance of childhood sexual explora- decisions. Contraception should not be the sole responsibility of tion, they can also prevent us from seeing the value of sexuality females. There is a need to urge more intensive research on an in the middle and later years of life. We need to appreciate the effective male contraceptive. fact that older persons have sexual needs just as those much younger do. The joy of touching, of giving and receiving affec- 6. Sexual morality should come from a sense of caring and tion and the satisfaction of intimate body responsiveness is the respect for others. Much of it cannot be legislated. right of everyone throughout life. Laws can and do protect the young from exploitation and people 9. In all sexual encounters, commitment to human and human- of any age from sexual abuse such as rape. And child sexual

53 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 istic values should always be present. Freeing our sexual selves is vital if we are to reach the No person’s sexual desires should hurt or disadvantage another heights of our full humanity. But at the same time, we believe without their willing consent. This principle should apply to all that we need to activate and nourish a sense of our responsi- sexual encounters—both to the brief and casual experience bilities to others. and to those that are deeper and more prolonged. In any sexual Lester Kirkendall, 1976. Revised by Vern Bullough and others, 2003. encounter or relationship, freely given consent is fundamen- tal—even in the marital relationship. SIGNERS (Those with asterisks signed the first declaration and are still These concepts raise troublesome and perplexing questions active). since those directly engaged in the encounter may hold widely Elizabeth Rice Allgeier, Ph.D. Bowling Green State University, Ohio differing points of view toward sexual conduct. This makes it Rick Allgeier, Ph.D. private practice, Bowling Green, Ohio essential that open, candid, and honest communication about Linda Alperstein, M.S.W., School of Medicine, University of California, San current and future expectations takes place. Even then, deci- Francisco Marianna Beck, Ph.D., Chicago, Illinois sions are subject to judgment and projection, and their out- Joani Blank, M.P.H., Oakland, California comes are only slowly revealed. Walter Bochting, Ph.D., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis No relationship, sexual or otherwise, occurs in a vacuum. In Gwen Brewer, Ph.D., California State University, Northridge addition to the persons directly involved in the sexual relation- Vern L. Bullough, Ph.D.*, D. Sci. R.N., State University of New York at Buffalo, and D. Sci, California State University, Northridge ship, there are important others—parents, children, siblings, Carol Cassell, Ph.D., University of New Mexico, Albuquerque friends, and other lovers or mates. The interest of these per- Eli Coleman, Ph.D., University of Minnesota sons are usually complex and diverse, and no course of action Helen Colton*, Family Counselor, Los Angeles, California will satisfy everyone. Even willing consent, however, is not Clive Davis, Ph.D., Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York enough to justify maiming or killing a person for the purpose Sandra L. Davis, Syracuse, New York Sol Gordon, Ph.D.*, Professor Emeritus, Syracuse University of sexual satisfaction. The key is to have empathy for others. John DeLamater, University of Wisconsin, Madison It is important to ask oneself, “How would I want others to Milton Diamond, Ph.D, University of Hawaii conduct themselves sexually toward me and others that I care Albert Ellis, Ph.D.*, private practice, founder of the Society for the Scientific about?” Equally important to consider: “Am I concerned for the Study of Sex, New York, New York Robert Francoeur, Ph.D. , Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, New happiness and well-being of my partner or others involved or Jersey just for my own?” Each person contributes to creating a social Robert C. Friar, Ph.D., Ferris State University atmosphere in which a full acceptance of responsible sexual Suzanne G. Frayser, Ph.D. researcher, Conifer, Colorado expression should exist. Edward Gregersen, Ph.D. Queens College, New York Jack Hafferkamp, Ph.D. Chicago, Illinois Conclusion David Hall, Ph.D., American College of Sexologists, Stockton, California Janet Shibley Hyde, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison The realization and acceptance of the points in this statement Paul Kurtz, Ph.D., State University of New York at Buffalo depend upon each individual recognizing that one has autono- Elizabeth Larson, D.H.S., Seattle Institute for Sex Therapy, Education, and my and control over one’s own sexual function. Each individual Research Ann A. Lawrence, M.D., Ph.D., private practice, Seattle, Washington needs to realize that it is reasonable to accept and enjoy plea- Jean Levitan, Ph.D., William Paterson University of New Jersey sures of the body (and mind) and to respect the rights of others Harold Lief, M.D., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia who also accept them. Andrew Mattison, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego At this point in our history, we human beings are embarking Konstance McCaffree, Ph.D. Widener University on a wondrous adventure. For the first time, we realize that Naomi B. McCormick, Ph.D., Clinical Health Psychologist, Cedar Falls, Iowa Sharon McNeely, Ph.D., Chicago, Illinois we own our own bodies. Until now, our bodies have been in David P. McWhirter, M.D., University of California at San Diego bondage to church or state, which have dictated how we could Michael E. Metz, Ph.D., St. Paul, Minnesota express our sexuality. Most people in the past have not been Ronald Moglia, Ed.D., New York University permitted to experience the pleasures and joys of the human John Money, Ph.D.*, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland Charlene Muehlenhard, Ph.D., University of Kansas, Lawrence body and their sensory nature to their fullest capacity. To do so, Raymond J. Noonan, Ph.D., Fashion Institute of Technology, New York City we need to accept the belief that actualizing pleasure is among Ira L. Reiss, Ph.D.*, University of Minnesota (Emeritus), Minneapolis the highest moral goods—so long as it is experienced with Stella Resnick, Ph.D.,Clinical Psychologist, Los Angeles, California responsibility and mutuality and does not involve unwanted Paul A. Rimassa, Ph.D., Hamilton Square, New Jersey force or exploitation. Ben Robinson, Ph.D., University of Minnesota Michael Ross, Ph.D., University of Texas A reciprocal and creative attitude toward sexuality can have Howard Rupple, Ph.D., Institute for Advanced Study of Sexuality, San a deep meaning both for the individual and for society. Each of Francisco, California us will know its personal meaning, but we also need to experi- Herbert Samuels, Ph.D., LaGuardia College, City University of New York, ence it with others. In effect, our behavior can say to another, New York City, New York Stephanie A. Saunders, Ph.D., Indiana University “I am enriched for having had this experience and for having Julian Slowinski, Psy.D., Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania contributed to your having had it also.” The social meaning can William Stayton, Th.D.,Therapist, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Widener derive from the loving feelings engendered in a person who is University experiencing guilt-free, reciprocal pleasure. The loving feelings Mark Schoen, Ph.D.*, Sinclair Institute, Chapel Hill, North Carolina of mental and physical well-being, the sense of completion of Louis H. Swartz, Ph.D., L.L.M., R.N., State University of New York at Buffalo the self that we can experience from freely expressed sexuality Beverly Whipple, Ph.D., Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey may well reach out to all humanity. It is quite impossible to have a meaningful, ecstatic sexual and sensual life and to be indiffer- ent to or uncaring about other human beings.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 54 ( Mother [Nature] Dearest canyon walls and the large cottonwood help thinking that the canyon, in its own cont’d. from page 21) we chose for its daytime shade. We way, is indifferent to what happens with- almost hated to close our eyes. in its walls. It just does what it does, met- grandeur and power of nature? We Three less religious hikers could ing out neither punishment nor reward could practically hear Darwin whisper- hardly be conceived, yet we reveled in to whatever happens to be alive inside. ing in our ears to take note of condors our newfound intimacy with this world Death awaits us all, I thought. Then soaring effortlessly while we plodded, landmark. We paid homage to great again, where better to die than here? of scorpions scurrying about while we boulders, soaring walls, and dazzling When we reached the South Rim on slept, and of healthy plants that thrive colors. We paused dumbstruck a dozen Sunday afternoon, we shook each other’s on less than ten inches of rain per year. times at vast overlooks, trying to digest hands. We had made it down and up more We felt God could only be superfluous the scope of what our senses drank in. than just intact. We’d added not only a to such a scene and would unnecessar- The enormous scale of time and dis- great experience to our lives, but also ily complicate the story of this massive tance that surrounded us—so removed refilled our respect—no, reverence—for mechanism at work. from our daily lives—sent shivers up dear, old Mother Nature. For three days, At night, we slept tentless under a our spines. We respected the great we were no longer spectators at her salt-and-pepper canopy of stars, gazing gorge. It humbled us. game. We were players in it, and appre- skyward at satellites casually passing, During our second day on the floor ciative ones at that. meteors flaring before dying, and a sliv- of the Grand Canyon, a tour helicopter er of a moon that felt like a flashlight in crashed miles downriver from us, killing James Underdown is executive director our eyes. This lid of ancient light was all seven aboard. We heard about this of Center for Inquiry–West. framed by the black silhouette of the Sunday while climbing out. I could not AUDIOTAPES NOW AVAILABLE Audiotapes of the Center for Inquiry’s 2004 Conference Science and Ethics: How Scientific Inquiry Helps Value Judgments Featuring Paul Kurtz, Mario Bunge, Irving Louis Horowitz, James Alcock, Barry Beyerstein, and many others! Entire conference proceedings on sixteen 90-minute audiocassettes.

YES! Please send me ____ set(s) of tapes, as follows: PRICE EA. Entire set(s) 16 tapes $159.00 L Session I Introductory Keynote (Paul Kurtz, Mario Bunge) 2 tapes $18.90 L Session II The Role of Science in Ethical Inquiry 2 tapes $18.90 L Session III The Assault on Scientific Medicine 1 tape $9.95 L Session IV Medicine and Ethics 2 tapes $18.90 L Session V Scientific Freedom and Responsibility 2 tapes $18.90 L Session VI Human Behavior and Ethics 2 tapes $18.90 L Session VII Awards Banquet (James Underdown, Paul Kurtz, Irving Louis Horowitz) 1 tape $9.95 L Session VIII Naturalism, Science, and Ethics 2 tapes $18.90 L Session IX Policy and Ethical Judgments 2 tapes $18.90 L SHIPPING AND HANDLING: If subtotal is $35 or less, add $5.00; if subtotal is $75 or less, add $7.50; above $75, add $10.00. TOTAL AMOUNT

55 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 CHURCH-STATE UPDATE Says Judge. In a surprising ruling, U.S. refused Strayhorn’s final in-state appeal. Tom Flynn District Judge Bruce S. Jenkins dismissed She pledged to appeal to the U.S. Supreme an atheist group’s suit to force remov- Court. After she refused an exemption for ¸Newdow Loses on Technicality. The al of a Ten Command­ ments­ monument a Denison, Texas, Unitarian-Universalist U.S. Supreme Court voted 8–0 to reject from a Pleasant Grove City, Utah, park. church because its doctrines are insuffi- California atheist Michael Newdow’s Jenkins said the Decalogue monument ciently specific, Fort Worth’s daily paper challenge to “under God” in the Pledge posed no church-state problem, and is slammed the decision. Displaying her pre- of Allegiance, on grounds that Newdow better thought of as an “acknowledgment decessor’s sensitivity to media pressure lacked custodial rights over his school- of one historic source of guidance and (maybe it’s a requirement of the office), age child and hence standing to sue. direction.” Oh, I can’t wait for the appeal Strayhorn reversed herself on May 24 No decision was made on the legality of of this one. and said the Unitarians could have their “under God,” and it is interesting that exemption after all. only three of the five Justices (Justice ˘Texas Church Tax Exemptions Secure. Scalia having recused himself) joined Back in 1997, the Texas Comptroller’s ˘ L.A. County Seal to Drop Cross. in a minority opinion that defended its office granted a routine tax-exemption Sparking huge public outcry, Los legality. Look for this issue to be raised to the Ethical Society of Austin, a reli- Angeles County supervisors voted to again by plaintiffs whose domestic situa- gious humanist group. “Godless Group strip a cross from the county seal rather tion does not invite legal evasion. Gets Religious Exemption,” screamed than face an American Civil Liberties a headline in the state capital’s daily Union lawsuit that the county’s lawyers ˘Bible Class Ban Upheld. The U.S. Sixth paper. Then-Comptroller John Sharp predicted it could not win. District Court of Appeals upheld a 2002 revoked the exemption, declaring that a ruling striking down public grade- nonprofit must demand belief in “God, ˘ Judge “Just Says No” to Scouting . . . school Bible classes in Rhea County, Gods, or a Higher Power” to be con- Again! For the second time, U.S. District Tennessee. As this is written it is sidered religious. Current Comptroller Judge Napoleon Jones Jr. has forbidden unclear whether the school board will Carole Keeton Strayhorn inherited the San Diego to lease a public facility to the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. policy—and an Ethical Society lawsuit Boy Scouts because Scouting is “an admit- that the Comptroller’s office just keeps on tedly religious … and discriminatory oper- ¸Ten Commandments Merely Hist­oric, losing. In April, the Texas Supreme Court ation.”

WORLD REPORT (LCC) saw no reason to extend to the boycotted in protest. The unrest in Iran Bill Cooke Abbotts the same travel subsidies given in 2003 was sparked by the detention of to religious families. After five years of Dr. Aghajari. legal struggle, and with help from the Congress Win in India National Secular Society, the LCC has Dr. Shaikh Stands Up for Freedom finally acknowledged that Abbott has a In what must be the most unexpect- At a meeting in Geneva of the United case under the Human Rights Act. This ed election victory of the decade, the Nations Commission on Human Rights decision establishes an important prin- Congress Party in India, led by Sonia in April, Dr. Younis Shaikh described the Gandhi, fifty-seven, swept to power in ciple, and it is to be hoped that it will blasphemy laws in his home country of May. And then, to circumvent the ongo- influence the School Transport Act, now Pakistan as a source of national shame. ing criticism of her foreign birth, Gandhi proceeding through Parliament. As reported in the previous issue, Dr. very magnanimously withdrew from Shaikh was imprisoned for three years on contention as prime minister. With the Academics at the Frontlines of charges of blasphemy, which in Pakistan return of Congress to power, it is to be Freedom carry the death penalty. He was quietly hoped that the secular principle, which is released last November and promptly The prolific Bangladeshi scholar and so essential to the peace and prosperity left the country. Dr. Shaikh told the com- poet Dr. Humayun Azad has been fight- of India, will be strengthened after a long mission that the real victims of militant ing for his life since he was attacked run of encroachments against it by the Islamism are Muslims themselves, whose with butchers’ knives by Islamic fanat- outgoing Hindu nationalist government. lives and faith are impoverished under ics in February. Dr. Azad, professor of the pressure of the archaic Sharia law. Victory in Lancashire Bengali at Dhaka University, has long been a critic of the lack of democracy Peter Singer Honored A potentially significant legal victory in Muslim societies and is a strong for nonreligious citizens has been won supporter of the separation of mosque Peter Singer, a regular columnist for Free in Great Britain. Ian Abbott’s daughter, and state. And in Iran, the reform- Inquiry magazine, has been honored in an atheist, wanted to move to a school ist academic Dr. Hashem Aghajari has Australia, his home country. Singer is the that did not impose religious educa- been rearrested and the death penalty 2004 Australian Humanist of the Year, the tion, but the Lancashire County Council reimposed following the election “vic- choice of the State Humanist Societies. Bill Cooke is international director of the tory” of the religious conservatives in This award began in 1983 and has been bestowed on a proud succession of influ- Center for Inquiry–International. a contest hobbled by the banning of opposition politicians and which was ential Australians.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 56 HEADINGLIVING WITHOUT SUBHEAD RELIGION

candle? The flame—the person’s true essence—doesn’t go to heaven, hell, nirvana, Valhalla, or any other fabled Why No One never-never land. It vanishes forever into nothingness. No one ever really dies. They just cease to exist. But our aunts could not under- Ever Dies stand this and we knew an explication would be futile. They were shocked Don Lowry “. . .the corpse was not our Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of “Don’t you want to pay your last Paradise! respects to your father?” one of them dad. He was not his physi- One thing is certain—This Life flies; asked accusingly, using a simplistic One thing is certain and the rest is cal body. He was his mind, Lies; phrase I’ve never been able to under- The Flower that once has blown for stand. his character, his personal- ever dies. “That would be impossible,” I said, ity. He was the sum of the —The Rubáiyát of Omar “because our father no longer exists. Khayam of Naishapur We will respect his memory by always knowledge and wisdom he trying to adhere to the values he taught My father and mother had been married us, but to venerate his corpse would be had accumulated over sev- for over fifty years, and when her life to demean his entire life.” force was defeated by cancer, my father, enty-nine years.” “But he’s lying in state at the funeral whose health was failing, apparently home!” made a conscious decision not to go on “Not our father, but only the body he without her. He had a very strong mind, once occupied,” Jean said. and appalled by our attitude. To make and it is very likely he willed his heart We tried to explain to them that the them happy, we could have gone to the to stop beating. corpse was not our dad. He was not services. We could have tried to close It was then my sister Jean and I his physical body. He was his mind, our minds to the fact that we were tak- were faced with an ethical dilemma. He his character, his personality. He was ing part in a ritual that was more than and my mother had wanted their bodies the sum of the knowledge and wisdom just senseless and irrational—it was to be cremated because they did not he had accumulated over seventy-nine primitive and barbaric. What real harm believe in unnecessarily taking up space years. He was his experiences and would have resulted from our shelving in the earth. However, Dad’s two surviv- memories, his joys and sorrows, his vic- our convictions for just one day? ing sisters insisted we ship the corpse tories and defeats, his dreams, his sense We vacillated briefly, and then one to Illinois so they could have “proper of humor, and his love for our mother of the aunts made up our minds for us services” and an open-casket funeral. and for us, his children. But all of these by saying, “But if you don’t go, what will They sent train tickets for Jean, myself, qualities are abstract and nonphysical. the neighbors say?” and the shipping casket. They are simply labels for various func- I started to say, “Frankly, my dear, I We foolishly acquiesced. tions of the brain, and when the brain don’t give . . .” but Jean cut me off with Since Jean and I wanted no part of a dies, these qualities must necessarily as diplomatic a response as she could macabre ceremony or of looking at the cease to be. Our father was nonexistent, muster. corpse, we refused to attend the services. and what was left was nothing but an Our relationship with our aunts was Aunts Dora and Doris were horrified.­ I old and shriveled carcass. never quite the same after that. But it naively thought I could get through to We neither loved nor respected our was all right. The way we felt about our- them by saying, “The Bible says, ‘Let father’s body. We loved and respected selves was more important to us than the dead bury the dead.’ Dad would him—the person that he’d been. The the way our aunts and their neighbors not have wanted us to ritualize death quintessential man. The man who was felt about us. with eulogies, dirges, incantations, and no more. In 1997, the final curtain of my wife’s people who weep only because they are “But what about his immortal soul?” life fell when her flame was extinguished. reminded of their own mortality.” But We resisted the impulse to explain My two sons and I had no services of their minds had already slammed shut. that from a logical and scientific stand- any kind for the corpse. There were no Don Lowry became a nonbeliever at point, the soul is nothing but a theolog- flowers, casket, tombstone, or urn. Just the age of sixteen. He is the author of ical abstraction, and its “existence” is cremation. And tears. The money we stories, books, and plays and is the entirely dependent on the tangibility of would have spent on a funeral, casket, creator of Lodestar, a drug and alcohol a living brain. and burial was sent to her favorite char- prevention program for elementary and What happens to the vibrant flame ity: the United Nations Children’s Fund. secondary-school students. of a person when death blows out the She most assuredly would have approved

57 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 of helping needy children rather than a Early in our thirty-seven-year mar- accurately reflects his outlook on life, I rapacious undertaker. riage, I asked my wife if she believed am certain he may have written it. My Her father, a minister, thought we in an afterlife. She laughed and said wife treasured it so much she had it were unforgivably cruel and ungodly not that no one was so remarkably import- made into a plaque. to have shipped the corpse to Texas for ant that the universe could not get What delightful hosts they are—Love funeral services. I didn’t try to explain along very nicely without them, and and Laughter! to him how we felt. I told him only that a she thought belief in an afterlife is the Lingeringly I turn away at this late once beautiful body had been mutilated, absolute height of egomania. She and hour, yet glad and we certainly did not want anyone my father were happy people who made They have not withheld from me their high hospitality. paying homage to cancer’s atrocity. a lot of people’s lives a little better, and So at the door I pause to press their No member of her family has had once around was quite enough for them. hands just once more anything to do with us from that day Their joy was the only reward they ever And say, “So fine a time! Thank you to this. It was a trade-off—the loss of wanted. both . . . and goodbye.” in-laws for the preservation of the sanc- Shortly before he was no more, my tity of her wishes and her memory. The Dad gave me a small piece of paper. In boys and I came out ahead. a way, it was his epitaph. Because it so

GOD ON TRIAL

God: Did you believe in me? K-J A: No, but I was wrong. God: Why didn’t you believe? Betting on Pascal’s K-J A: I was rebellious, a free spirit. I just wanted to piss people off, especially my parents. God: Didn’t you ever think much Wager about your self-styled atheism? K-J A: No. God: See that gentleman in front? Arthur R. Miller Follow him. * * * ost believers and nonbeliev- reflective agnostic. What might be the Finally, our reflective agnostic: ers are familiar with Pascal’s destinies of the three? Would God pre- God: Did you believe in me? Wager, the argument designed fer the knee-jerk theist to the reflective RAG: No. M God: Why not? to persuade us that the only rational agnostic? Most traditional theists would thing to do is believe that God exists. say, “Absolutely!” I’m not sure. RAG: Even in adolescence, I couldn’t If you do believe, you have everything In the ensuing discussions, let K-J T quit questioning whether you existed. I to gain and nothing to lose. If you don’t stand for “knee-jerk theist,” K-J A for thought about it a lot, considered all the believe, you’ve got nothing to gain and “knee-jerk atheist” and RAG for “reflec- arguments pro and con. I couldn’t sat- everything to lose. This is the “safe bet” tive agnostic.” isfy myself one way or the other. I see I strategy. was wrong but . . . I gave it my best shot. Although a devotee of rationality, irst, our knee-jerk theist: Should I follow those two gentlemen? God: No, you’re coming with me. You I have imagination. When I think of F God: Did you always believe in Pascal’s­ Wager, I like to indulge in a me? know, I gave you rationality for a pur- flight of fancy. Let the reader come K-J T: My faith never wavered. pose. a-long:­ Assume that God exists and that God: Why? His existence cannot be demonstrated K-J T: My parents said so, and later n fairness, there remain two hypo- through reason or sense experience, that all my teachers too; and all my life, my Ithetical figures in the wings, patiently is, neither rationally nor empirically. friends, family, coworkers agreed. waiting their turns—and their fates: the rational theist (RT) and the rational Now, consider the appearance of three God: Didn’t you ever question your fictitious characters at the final bar of beliefs? atheist (RA). Let’s see how they fare. justice: (1) the knee-jerk theist, (2) the K-J T: Not really. I was told that First, the rational theist: knee-jerk atheist, and (3) the thoughtful, questioning might get me in trouble. God: You believed in me, right? God: Sorry, kid, you’re headed that Arthur Miller is professor of philo­ RT: Yes. way! sophy at the University of Texas at San God: Why? * * * Antonio. RT: Well, I was never completely con- Next, our knee-jerk atheist: vinced. The problem of evil alone kept

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 58 me awake many a night. I examined all God: No, I want to join your broth­- One of the most brilliant, flamboyant of the standard arguments closely, but ers [the rational theist and the reflective and provocative figures of that same found none definitive, although some had agnostic]. Take my hand and follow me. century, Bertrand Russell, stands in merit. I thought belief and action could I’m going to show you the most delicious nicely for our rational atheist: be beneficial, so I put all of my eggs in and exciting experience of your life—I How do you know that there isn’t a your basket, and tried to follow your mean, lives—a life grounded and guided God who respects sincerity and the moral dictates. That’s all I have to say. by reason and science, a world where all weighing of evidence so much that God: I’m impressed by what you said will flourish! How’s that for Paradise? He will punish forever anyone who at the very end, your reference to moral RAG, RT, and RA (in unison): Lead joins a certain party just to be on the winning side? behavior. Sit over there while I speak the way! with this last fellow. Finally, when choosing someone to * * * eturning to Pascal’s Wager, it is speak for the rational agnostics, there Now, the rational atheist: Rinstructive to hear what three his- are many illustrious figures to choose God: So, you didn’t believe in me? torical figures have to say about this from. Let’s take Charles Darwin, who RA: I’m sorry, I didn’t. Now I see “betting strategy”—the three R’s, that wrote in his Autobiography: I was wrong. But I still don’t regret is: the rational theist, rational atheist, I have steadily endeavored to keep my what I did. I examined all the argu- and rational agnostic. mind free, so as to give up any hypoth- ments and evidence provided by my John Hick is the greatest philoso- esis, however much beloved, as soon theistic contemporaries, but, in the end, pher of religion in the twentieth century as facts are shown to be opposed to it. I found them all wanting. However, I in the English-speaking world and an Far-fetched? Who cares? An exercise tried to conform my life and actions excellent representative of rational the- in idle speculation? This is sometimes to your moral teachings which, I dis- ism. He writes: called food for thought. At any rate, covered, mostly squared with those of . . . Pascal’s Wager amounts to a rational whereas Pascal’s Wager seemed to be other sacred traditions. And these, I felt, form of self-insurance. It assumes that the best (read: safest) bet at the outset, stood on their own; they did not require God will be pleased by such a calcu- it now appears to be perhaps the worst. any transcendental support. Do you lat-ing and self-regarding attitude. This Don’t bet on it! want me to get in line with those first as­sumption has seemed profoundly irre- ligious to many religious believers. . . . two, the K-J T and K-J A?

EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT

formed by a local mayor, who is threat- ened with fines for breaking the law. A French gay wedding should somehow, I Same-sex Marriage feel, have great style. In Britain, as has happened in about a dozen other European countries, a law to permit civil unions for same-sex rela- Moves Ahead tionships is going through the legislative process. It is expected to become law by November of this year, and the first legal Jim Herrick gay registrations are likely to take place a year or so later. It seems an occa- sion for joy—although civil unions are pring has sprung, summer is All over Europe, politicians and cam- one degree less than full marriage. beginning to sing—and weddings paigners are discussing gay weddings Pre­sumably the couple can follow their S are bursting out all over. But what with the less controversial alternative formal registration with a wedding cer- happens if Joseph falls for Jack and of “civil unions” being given great- emony that has no legal status, as has Janet dotes on Joan? Is there a wedding er precedence. Only the Netherlands been happening with humanist affir- on the horizon for them? Do they have and Belgium offer full marriage, the mation or commitment ceremonies for a means of celebrating their love and real thing, to same-sex couples, but in many years. commitment with friends and family? Germany at present the justice minister What benefits will the British Civil is promising to introduce legislation to Jim Herrick is editor of the U.K.’s Partnership Registration scheme bring permit same-sex marriages, despite the Rationalist Press Association, the jour- when it becomes law? There will be immi- opposition of conservatives in the Upper nal New Humanist, and the International gration rights, pension rights, the right to House. In France, the first French gay Humanist News. be treated as next of kin, joint responsi- marriage ceremony is about to be per- bility for children, inheritance rights. In

59 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 short, the same rights and benefits that cally or metaphorically already­ married? nents of same-sex relationships, and the heterosexual couples have. Inheritance When we held a large twenty-fifth anni- divided Christians (the Muslims seem to rights are particularly important (as I am versary party with our families, many have no doubt about their opposition) personally aware): if one member of a gay friends, and neighbors, we were a little are getting their knickers in such a twist or lesbian couple dies there will be tax to coy about calling it our “silver wedding over the issue that we can wonder wheth- be paid on part of the bequest from the anniversary,” but the attendees were not er they’ll ever have any more fun. The deceased to the survivor (there is no such at all coy about giving us silver roses and problem for the Anglicans is that a high tax for heterosexual couples). In a fit of so on. I suppose that was the real public number of clergy are gay or lesbian, a parsimony, the government is not allow- statement of our love. barely kept secret that could be of great ing full pension rights until 2010. Unions When I was young and involved in embarrassment if publicly discussed. are fighting this delay. A case is also gay liberation groups and homosexual I was recently in Uganda, where the being made for civil partnership rights for equality organizations, people used to attitudes of religion and the state have heterosexual unmarried couples. challenge the notion of gay marriage led to such policies as life-imprisonment Apart from the desire for equal rights, and ask, who wants to ape the bourgeois for homosexuals. I made a statement does the expression of love and passion dead end of marriage? Why not have a to the press in favor of gay rights. Of and the hope for enduring care really variety of relationships? I used to sym- course, I knew I’d be leaving quite soon require marriage rather than a legalistic pathize with that sentiment. But now I for countries where same-sex couples civil union? I have been in a gay rela- can understand the value of having the who want equality and marriage are tionship for thirty-one years and have opportunity to celebrate a same-sex finding it increasingly possible. But we asked myself if my partner and I would marriage, which is a public demonstra- cannot be happy until that has been want to marry at this stage. After all this tion of the integrity, commitment, and achieved in all the countries around time—very happy time—is not a mar- honesty of the relationship. the world where homosexuals are per- riage redundant? Aren’t we metaphysi- Churches have been the historic oppo- secuted.

HUMANIST ACTIVISM

sonable prejudice or a desire to deny full legal rights to minority members. By this standard, atheists’ efforts to achieve legal and social equal- Atheism and Civil Rights ity indeed constitute a civil rights movement . . . a larger percentage of American citizens, 49 percent, would vote against an atheist on grounds of atheism alone than would vote against A Reply to Tabash and Downey someone for any other reason.2 We grant this (rather disheartening) DJ Grothe and Austin Dacey demographic fact. What can one rea- sonably conclude from it? Consider the following questions: e would like to thank Edward We reply to these objections in turn Would you vote against an atheist Tabash and Margaret Downey and then develop our suggestion that on grounds of atheism alone? Wfor their thoughtful comments the social standing of nontheists is best on our article “Atheism Is Not a Civil addressed through public awareness Should atheists be prohibited Rights Issue.”1 We are gratified that our and education. In place of the gay rights, from running for public office? article has stimulated such interest. feminist, and civil-rights models, we Tabash objects to our characterization of suggest an alternative model, drawing If 49 percent of Americans answered Yes atheism as a matter of public awareness on the experience of a quite different to question two, then Tabash might have and education rather than of civil rights, group that has achieved remarkable a case that atheists’ civil rights are at and he defends his proposal to support recognition in the last four decades. risk. But by answering yes to question candidates for public office based on their one, Americans are not expressing a unbelief. Downey attacks our claim that in Tabash desire to deny full legal rights to atheists. America today there is no “atheist-bash- Tabash begins with the claim that athe- Every natural born citizen over thir- ing” comparable to gay-bashing. She cites ists are unelectable to public office: ty-five has a right to run for president, the findings of the Anti-Discrimination but no one has a right to the presidency. One test of whether a minority group’s Support Net­work, a nonprofit organiza- struggle for equality is a civil rights Tabash claims that “[s]ince the tion she founded to collect accounts of issue is whether majority attitudes majority in our nation regards nonbe- discrimination against the nonreligious. toward that minority reflect unrea- lievers with disdain and craves an end

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 60 to government neutrality between reli- Michael Newdow has a civil right to send communities across the nation. What gion and nonbelief, the struggle of athe- his daughter to a school in which she we meant to deny is that these incidents ists in the United States is indeed a civil never hears his worldview contradict-­ rise to a level of severity, frequency, and rights issue.” He is mistaken for two ed. Or consider the public funding of scope that is comparable to gay-bash- reasons. First, in recent years the U.S. private religious schools. Nonbelievers ing, to say nothing of racially motivated Supreme Court has consistently ruled may object to their money being used at­tacks. Gay rights groups documented in favor of the government’s stance in this way. But that’s not discrimi- over 2,445 incidents resulting in bodily of strict neutrality towards religion. na-tion; its taxation. Nonbelievers injury or death in 1997 alone.5 Victims Tabash acknowledges this. His claim is oppose the encroachment of church on were severely beaten, pushed down that neutrality would be (does he mean state because they (like many liberal flights of stairs, or shot. A gay night- “might be”?) eroded if the composition religionists) want a secular government. club in Atlanta was bombed, wound- of the Supreme Court changed and it That explains why secularism is an athe- ing several with shrapnel. By contrast, started to rule differently. This is like ist issue; it does not show that atheism is the only physical incidents highlighted observing that people with disabilities a civil rights issue. by Downey involved children bullying would be vulnerable to employment dis- Since finishing second in a race for children. Further, because homophobic, crimination if the legislation protecting the California legislature in 2000, Tabash racist, and misogynist violence are rela­ - them were not in place—it is, so they has been, in his own words, “clamoring tively frequent and widespread, they aren’t. Similarly, Tabash points out that for the election of Atheists to political create climates of fear and intimidation in 1964 the Congress could have exclud- office.”3 One interpretation of his position that the rationalist community simply ed atheists from the Civil Rights Act is that when assessing the consider- has never experienced. If you doubt but didn’t. Given all this counterfactual ations in favor of or against a candi- this, just show up at any meeting of discrimination, it was no surprise to date for political office, atheism ought atheists, thousands of which are held see a million atheists not marching on to trump all other considerations.4 In the peacefully in public libraries, on college Washington recently. present article, Tabash characterizes campuses, and in restaurants each year Tabash seems to be saying that athe- his view as follows: “When one of our from Boston to Baton Rogue. ists should mobilize a preemptive move- colleagues in freethought makes a bid As Downey points out, mistreatment ment to protect the rights they now do for office and has a significant chance often goes unreported. But surely an have. Granted, in some cases it makes of winning, we should try to give that epidemic of hundreds or thousands of sense to rouse a constituency to counter candidate our support even if we do not aggravated assaults and murders of or even preempt attacks on rights that agree with him or her on every issue.” atheists would not escape law enforce- they still enjoy: consider the pro-choice This way of putting the view is far more ment and media attention, no matter movement. Perhaps Tabash could hold plausible, but precisely because it is far how believer-biased they may be. After up this movement, rather than the gay more indeterminate. How much weight all, Downey reports that she made the rights and civil-rights movements, as the are we to place on unbelief? Should news after being merely threatened with model for atheists. The trouble with this it outweigh a candidate’s position on harm over the phone. suggestion is that there just is no threat health care reform, international aid, We do not wish to minimize the to atheists’ rights that is as imminent the war on drugs? What if the atheist awfulness of the abuse, harassment, and and serious as the threats to women’s candidate, for political reasons, eschews ostracizing that Downey and many oth- rights regarding their fetuses. Without strict church-state separation? It is one ers face because of their atheism. Such question, there are serious threats to thing to claim that when all other consid- mistreatment is wrong and inexcusable. government neutrality towards religion. erations leave one indifferent between It’s just not on a par with “bashing.”­ In However, in most cases, these do not two candidates, atheism should serve as America, people just do not get killed for constitute threats to nontheists’ rights. a tie-breaker. To say more than this is to being atheists. Herein lies Tabash’s second mistake. presuppose that there is some ranking As for the Boy Scouts of America Tabash—like many nonbelievers who of political values that is appropriate for (BSA), the question is not whether they consider this issue—seems to regard all unbelievers. Clearly, Tabash has not discriminate against atheists; that’s every breach of the church-state wall as said anything convincing about what that their explicit policy. Downey concedes an infringement on nonbelievers’ civil ranking might be. our point that most legal observers con- rights. Yet there are plenty of ways that sider BSA a private organization that is the state can violate the Religion Clauses Downey under no legal obligation to admit just of the U.S. Consti­tution without violating We are familiar with Margaret Downey’s anyone to membership. But she goes on any individual’s civil rights. Consider the Anti-Discrimination Support Network to point out that BSA receives various Pledge of Allegiance. The legal issue is (ADSN) and its case file of reported public benefits, saying “[p]rivate reli- whether the “under God” clause lacks incidents of wrongdoing against athe- gious organizations should not be per- a secular purpose, not whether plaintiff ists. When we said we know of no com- mitted to recruit in public schools, enjoy pelling example of “atheist-bashing,” public financial support, or receive free we did not mean to deny the existence use of public lands.” We couldn’t agree DJ Grothe is director of Campus and of such incidents. Indeed, in our work more. But notice that this objection Community Programs and Aus­tin Dacey with the Center for Inquiry over the is distinct from and incompatible with is director of educational programs, years both of us have heard countless Downey’s original objection, for if BSA both for the Center for Inquiry. firsthand accounts from rationalists in is a private group that illegally takes

61 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 public support, then it cannot be a pub- and to bring it to bear on public policy. magazines and a sponsor of educational lic group that illegally excludes atheists. In a similar way, the Center for and campus programs, The Center for That said, the BSA’s “morally Inquiry has succeeded by positioning Inquiry reaches hundreds of thousands straight” criterion is surely morally itself to be the authoritative voice and of people each year. By focusing on objectionable, not to mention imprudent advocate for the secular, scientific out- educating the public about scientific for an organization that does business look in our society. As a think tank naturalism, rather than on emanci- in an increasingly pluralistic culture. rather than as a civil-rights pressure pating atheists, CFI hopes to improve Individuals and corporate citizens are group, CFI is sought by national news the social standing and influence of all right to pressure Scouting to relax its media and opinion makers for expert those who dissent from the orthodoxies narrowly Judeo-Christian character commentary. As a publisher of popular of the day. and become more tolerant. We share Tabash’s and Downey’s sense of affront at the average Amer­ Notes says “bigotry against someone because of icans’ hostility to nonbelievers. The 1. Margaret Downey, “Discrimination that person’s atheism is as pernicious as bigotry against someone because of that mainstream attitude is born of igno- Against Atheists: The Facts,” Free person’s race. It follows, then, that if mem- rance and xenophobia and should be Inquiry, June/July 2004; Edward Tabash, “Atheism Is Indeed a Civil Rights Issue: bers of racial minorities are morally justi- morally repugnant to every fair-minded Struggling for Equality Before the Law,” fied in giving top priority to electing their own to public office, so are we atheists.” person. We salute all those who strive Free Inquiry, June/July 2004. Grothe and Dacey’s article appeared in the February/ See “Electing Atheists to Political Office,” to reverse this shameful public atti- The Secular Web Kiosk, August 2001. tude. We simply maintain that this can March 2004 Free Inquiry. 2. Tabash, “Atheism Is Indeed a Civil http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?Asset- best be done without strained (or even Rights Issue,” p. 44. ID=122. insulting) analogies to America’s histor- 3. “Thoughts on December 31, 2001, 5. Data was gathered by The Southern ically repressed minorities. http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/ Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, www/tabash_01_02.htm). the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), and the Human A Better Model 4. In an earlier writing, Tabash flirts with this suggestion. For example, he Rights Campaign. Beginning in the 1950s and increasing in the 1960s and 1970s, cultural conser- vatives founded think tanks and educa- tional organizations such as the Heri­ tage Foundation, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Concerned Women for Amer­ ica, and Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, REVIEWS among many others. At that time, in the heyday of the sexual revolution and civil rights movements, their point of view had virtually no visibility or respectabil- ity in public discourse. A Freethought Classic To the utter astonishment of the liberal political establishment, these A look back at American secularism lets us organizations have come to exert over- look ahead whelming influence in American public policy, media, and in education. A gen- eration of their cultural warriors has Rob Boston successfully entered and transformed the establishment. Consider that alumni Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, by Susan Jacoby (New York: of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Metropolitan Books, 2004, ISBN 0805074422) 417 pp. Cloth $27.50. (a young William F. Buckley was ISI’s first president) filled several key posi- tions in the Reagan administration, including Nation­ al­ Security Adviser. Its fiftieth anniversary gala featured usan Jacoby’s Freethinkers: A to top this achievement within the next addresses by George Bush, Anto­ History of American Secular­ism is ninety-six years. In Freethinkers, Jacoby nin Scalia, Rick Santorum, and Mitch Sthe freethought book of the year. succeeds in reclaiming a lost freethought McConnell, who credited ISI in part for Make that the decade. OK, the century. heritage while boldly and without apology the Reagan revolution. The twenty-first century may be young, defending the secular state. The strategists behind these organi- but it’s hard to believe anyone is going Jacoby takes aim at what she calls zations did not set out to win the civil the “religiously correct” version of Rob Boston is the assistant editor of rights of cultural conservatives. They American history. Often promoted by Church & State, published by Americans­ already had them, just as atheists do. TV preachers and their fundamental- United for Separation of Church and Rather, the goal was to popularize the ist allies in politics, this skewed tale State. culturally conservative point of view of America emphasizes the views of

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 62 religious believers while downplaying or in the Constitution would lead to the more repellent ironies of modern reli- ignoring the considerable accomplish- destruction of the new nation. “We will gious correctness has been the attempt ments of Enlightenment-era thinkers have every reason to tremble, lest the by fundamentalists to wrap themselves who dared to challenge the regressive Governor of the universe, who will not in the mantle of those men and women political spawn of ultra-conservative be treated with indignity by a people of faith who risked their lives to fight Christianity. more than individuals, overturn from racism,” Jacoby writes. “In the sixties, And what were those achievements? its foundations the fabric we have been right-wing fundamentalists were, almost For starters, little things called the rearing and crush us to atoms in the without exception, hard-core segregation- Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the wreck,” Mason groused in one sermon. ists. They attacked the twentieth-century very idea of religious freedom. Jacoby Ministers of the founding period knew civil rights movement as their spiritual rightly notes that Enlightenment cham- that the country had been given a “god- actual ancestors had attacked the nine- pions like James Madison and Thomas less Constitution.” They believed the teenth-century abolitionists’ and femi- Jefferson cannot take all the credit governing charter was defective because nists’ movements. What they saw was for religious liberty in America and its of the omission. Their spiritual descen- what their predecessors had seen—not attendant wall of separation between dants, today’s religious Right and the a struggle for justice but a conspiracy of church and state—but they certainly TV preachers, have turned history on its atheism, political radicalism, and sexual played a major role. In a marriage that head by insisting, against all available libertinism.” seems unimaginable today, religious evidence, that the Constitution­ somehow Jacoby reminds readers that the sep- skeptics like Jefferson joined forces perpetuates a Christian order. aration of church and state was essential with dissenting evangelical leaders to Jacoby outlines a rich legacy of free- to the success of the civil-rights move- secure religious freedom. Once their thought that can point with pride to ment. Would black churches, she asks, rights were secure, many evangelicals important achievements in U.S. history. have been able to challenge govern- became less passionate about defending In the nineteenth century, secularists ment-enforced segregation if they had religious liberty. As their numbers grew, demanded an end to slavery, champi- been dependent on government funding they gradually switched sides. oned women’s rights, fought religiously “doled out for ‘faith-based initiatives’— Not so the freethinkers. Freethought based censorship of literature, and advo- either by federal officials, who were at support for complete intellectual and cated for the right of adults to use birth best lukewarm supporters of civil rights, religious liberty was based on principle, control, despite fierce clerical opposi- or by southern satraps, who were usually not pragmatism. The divide was to make tion. In short, religious skeptics laid the the deadly adversaries of their black freethinkers and evangelicals, once part- groundwork for the modern era—but citizens?” ners, bitter foes in the years to come. how many people know that today? After a while, the reader begins to see REVIEWS In telling this history, Jacoby discuss- A good example of how the “reli- a pattern emerge: Freethinkers and sec- es well-known religious skeptics like giously correct” have rewritten history ularists begin advocating for an idea that Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll. But is found in the long-running battle over seems absurd to the larger conservative what makes Freethinkers so engaging is slavery. It’s well known that many min- and religious society—emancipation of that she resurrects a long-forgotten pan- isters in the South used the Bible to slaves, women’s suffrage, a repeal of theon of heroes who by all rights should buttress slavery. Northern churches, Sunday-closing laws, an end to censor- be equally celebrated today. we are told, vociferously opposed slav- ship, and so on. They are ignored and Does the name William Bentley ring ery. Actually, Jacoby points out, many vilified but keep agitating. Eventu­ally, a bell? What about Ernestine L. Rose? churches in the North avoided the issue liberal-minded religious believers and Philo D. Beckwith, anyone? Why have for fear of offending their coreligionists non-Christians come aboard. More time even so many freethinkers forgotten in the South. passes, and more agitation occurs. The these pioneers? Jacoby has a theory: The same pattern emerged in the day arrives when the offensive laws are their religious skepticism made them modern era. Jacoby notes that during changed and the objective is reached. At unpalatable to the nineteenth-century the civil-rights movement, many of the that point, the fundamentalists either mind, so their accomplishments were freedom riders, including some who claim they agreed all along (as in the simply ignored. gave their lives, were freethinkers. case of abolishing slavery) or dig in and Freethought’s great legacy was bur- While opposition to Jim Crow laws in the stubbornly rail against the modern world ied under an avalanche of post-Civil South was anchored in black churches, (as in the case of the theory of evolution War revisionism that sought to portray many northern religious leaders had to being taught in public schools). America as a “Christian nation.” The be persuaded to speak out and did so What Jacoby points out, without ever irony is rich. As Jacoby points out, many with great reluctance. Some never did. actually being so blunt, is that all his- conservative Protestant ministers at When those who condemned Jim Crow tory is a struggle between forces of the time the Constitution was ratified did speak out, they added a powerful progress and reaction. Few examples were furious that the document con- moral voice—but they were echoing, not illustrate this better than the battle tained no references to God. That omis- leading, freethinkers. over censorship in the late nineteenth sion, by the way, was deliberate—and The situation in many Southern and early twentieth centuries. Jacoby the religious Right of Jefferson’s day churches was much worse. Many con- notes that censorship in this era was knew it. In fact, it drove them batty. servative, White religious leaders in the not limited to works deemed indecent or One minister, John M. Mason, charged South, Jacoby writes, were simply on obscene; it often included freethought that the failure to appease the Almighty the wrong side of the issue. “One of the literature as well. Religious groups had

63 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 the power to compel government to woods rubes with unscientific ideas. eration or even the one after that. Some censor “dangerous” ideas, and they used In fact, Jacoby notes, the funda- secularist feminists, after all, began it. mentalists emerged from the Scopes pushing for women’s suffrage as early Jacoby writes of the havoc wrought trial stronger than ever. They succeed- as the first half of the nineteenth centu- by the “nineteenth century thought ed in getting textbook publishers to ry, yet women did not gain access to the police,” with their sheer determination water down instruction about evolution ballot nationwide until 1920. to keep certain books and magazines and pressured educators to downplay By showing where secularists have out of the hands of the people. Backed the subject. (Sound familiar?) Jacoby been, Jacoby points the way to the future. by the Comstock laws, religious censors writes, “In the decade after the trial, Her summation is especially valuable. enjoyed great success until secularists secularist civil libertarians were largely Jacoby shows how freethinkers, embold- put an end to their reign of prudery asleep at the switch while fundamental- ened by their rich history of valuable and made it possible for people to read ists were extending their influence over service to America, can frame new argu- Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. public education.” ments for the twenty-first century. But as anyone who reads newspapers Secularists often make the mistake Freethinkers is a work of solid scholar- knows, that battle is far from over. Today’s of assuming that progress will ultimate- ship, thoroughly researched with endnotes religious Right lusts for the type of power ly triumph over reactionary anti-intel- and an excellent bibliography, but it utterly the Comstock-era clergy had. They’d like lectualism. Jacoby points out that pro­ lacks a dry or turgid style. Indeed, Jacoby, to get back to the nineteenth century and gress wins only when viewed through a former reporter for The Washington actively work toward that goal. Progress the long arc of history. The forces of Post who now runs the Center for Inquiry– fights reaction over and over. reaction are quite capable of winning Metro New York, writes in an engaging Fundamentalists, Jacoby notes, learn victories and dragging the nation back- and entertaining manner. The book is a from their setbacks—while freethinkers ward. Yes, those periods of regression pleasure to read. sometimes become complacent by vic- can probably be reversed—but it can Buy Freethinkers. Read it. Celebrate­ tory. Her analysis of the Scopes “mon- take years. In the meantime, people it. But best of all, remain true to the key trial” of 1925 is especially useful. have to live through periods of ascen- spirit of the book by letting it inspire The conventional wisdom is that, while dant reactionary fundamentalism. you to stand up against the forces of teacher John Scopes did lose the case In the end, Jacoby understands the reactionary political fundamentalism. at the trial court, the fundamentalists need for a long-term strategy, a strategy After all, that’s what your nonspiritual really lost in the court of public opinion that lays the groundwork for benefits forebears did. because they were exposed as back- that may not arrive until the next gen-

more relevant, Grayling is an Honorary Positive Humanism Associate of the Rationalist Press Asso­ ciation and an outspoken rationalist and humanist. Bill Cooke What Grayling does here is to pro- vide a general overview of the history of humanist ethics in the Western tra- What Is Good? The Search for the Best Way to Live, by A.C. Grayling (London: dition, from ancient Greece through the Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003, ISBN 0-297--84132-7) 241 pp. Cloth $34. rise of Christianity to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and on to the twen- ty-first century. Each era is discussed in general terms, and the best of humanist t is a good rule to try and read had such a strong feeling of “I wish I’d thought of the times is summarized for stuff you disagree with as often as written this.” the reader. If this isn’t good enough, Iyou read stuff you agree with. It’s A.C. Grayling is a British philoso- Grayling is also prepared to go where a good discipline. There are few better pher of long standing. He has written others fear to tread when he itemiz- incentives toward tolerance and some on skepticism, Berkeley, values, logic, es clearly the differences between the sort of intellectual modesty than to Russell, and Wittgenstein and has edited humanist and the religious worldview. surround oneself with opponents. The the important overview Philosophy: A No vacuous talk of essential harmony other by-product of this policy is that it Guide to the Subject, which has run to for Grayling. The two accounts of the increases the joy you experience when two volumes. More interestingly, Gray­ world are different and have different you come across a book that you really ling has always kept the nonspecial- implications and muddying the waters agree with. What Is Good? The Search ist in mind. Without condescension, he leads only to confusion. for the Best Way to Live was such a has written for the general public in It is worth repeating that this book book for me. With no other book have I his capacity as philosopher-at-large is approachable for the nonspecialist. Bill Cooke is international director of for the Guardian newspaper in Lon- Indeed, Grayling has some very harsh the Center for Inquiry–International­ don. His Guardian pieces have recent- words for the dreary specialization in ly been published as The Meaning of the universities today. After complain- and a senior editor of Free Inquiry. Things and The Reason of Things. Even ing of the “unreadable, unread, and

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 64 soon-forgotten papers” in the academic Bertrand Russell, Grayling has mar- suggestion is that this wonderful book journals, Grayling adds: “If there is a shalled his scholarship and written a highlights our need for someone to do justification for this, it is that flowers much-needed summary of the depth and the same for the Eastern tradition. After require compost to grow, and indeed range of humanist thought over two and all, the humanist tradition in China and real advances occasionally happen as a a half thousand years in Europe. At the India is just as long and just as rich result. But much of it—probably most of end of the book, the reader has a clear, as the Western tradition. Grayling has it—has little value, either instrumental general grasp of the nobility, the pas- been involved with Chinese issues in or intrinsic” (p. 89). This is not anti-in- sion, the depth, and the integrity of the the past. Maybe he should look at that tellectualism. Grayling acknowledges humanist experience. project as the necessary complement the value of the academic process, but I have tried to work up some com- to his excellent study of the European laments how few people even see the plaints about this book in the interests tradition. Either way, What Is Good? is need to do what Grayling has done of appearing balanced, but was unable a wonderful addition to the humanist so well here. In the best tradition of to come up with any. The only possible library. Excellent, excellent, excellent.

believe that truth and justice “belong The Psyche of Terror to God. Fallen humanity cannot live according to the precepts of truth and justice. Threats of terror are necessary Tom Flynn to bridle evil in this world” (p. 54–55). In Jesus’ demand that followers accept Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics, and the Western Psyche, by Shadia his teachings with their whole souls, Drury finds the seeds of tyranny: “The B. Drury (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, ISBN 1-4039-6404-1) 211 pp. incl. Christian conception of virtue as inner notes, references, index. Cloth $55.00. disposition of soul cannot infiltrate poli- tics without making the latter totalitari- an. . . . What the Inquisition and the sec- ular dystopias of the twentieth century magine a religious zealot who triggers nexus between faith, politics, and ter- have in common is the primacy of belief the collapse of a monumental public ror, and launches an attack on small-b and the desire to control not only action, Istructure, snuffing out roughly three biblical religion whose frankness is but thought” (p. 71–72). thousand innocent lives. Were you think- bracing in a contemporary academic In deft, compelling prose, Drury bal- ing of Mohammed Atta and the World work. ances sound analysis, moral outrage, and Trade Center? Think . . . older. The impulse toward terror—to seek confident wit: “Christians come to power Think of Samson. control over others through tyranny by claiming to represent the Son, but once Samson’s fabled destruction of the and threatened violence—is a human in power, they act like the Father” (p. Philistine temple is detailed in Judges universal. A surprising range of think- 41). Sometimes there is waggish humor: 16:26–31, right down to the number of ers, Strauss among them, seem also “Luther acknowledges the truth about victims. If Mohammed Atta was a ter- to consider terror indispensable: “[T] the God of the New Testament—namely, rorist, wonders Shadia L. Drury, wasn’t he function of politics is not to uphold that He is much more wrathful than the Samson too? And if Samson was a justice but to bridle evil. This can be God of the Old Testament—and he was hero. . . . accomplished only with even greater no picnic” (p. 88). [I]f we accept the view that Samson evil. Social order is founded on ter- If Drury ever disappoints, it is in was an instrument of God, then we ror of sufficient magnitude to subdue treating the figure of Jesus naïvely. must accept the view that Atta was all others” (p. 55). Drury rejects this She seems to accept chosen Gospel also an instrument of God. We must antihumanistic ethos. On her view, far remember that the God of the Jews, stories and teachings at face value Christians, and Muslims is the same from being a precondition of civiliza- without regard for scholars’ doubts biblical God. To skeptics, this God tion, terror is one of its most profound about their historicity. Perhaps she is appears wrathful and cruel, but to malfunctions. Its source is scriptural treating Jesus as a religio-literary con- believers, He is just. That may be. But religion. If fundamentalist Islam nur- struct rather than a historical figure; what is disturbing is the nature of His tures the embrace of terror, so too do justice and its heroes. (p. 150) her interest, after all, lies in how the fundamentalist Christianity,­ Judaism, ideas associated with Jesus influenced Welcome to Shadia Drury’s world and Hinduism. Western culture. If that is the case, of discomfiting ideas, elegantly devel- Western readers know Christianity one wishes she had said so. That small oped. A professor of political science best, so Drury subjects it to devastat- objection aside, Drury’s critique of and philosophy at Canada’s University ing criticism. She reproaches the faith’s Christianity is masterful: of Regina, she may be best known for Augustinian characteristics: “the ex­ probing philosopher Leo Strauss’s influ- treme deprecation of the world, the [M]ost of the political crimes commit- ence on American conservatism. With ted in the name of Christianity are the excessive otherworldliness, the radical logical consequences of its doctrines. . her slim but forceful new book Terror transcendence, the profound dualism, . . Christianity encourages resignation and Civilization, Drury reconsiders the the emphasis on original sin.” Followers to evil—either as the deserved pun-

65 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004 ishment for sin or because this world morality without challenging its struc- informed by the same biblical morality is a matter of indifference. . . . [T]he ture, a Promethean revolt that only and the same biblical self-understand- ing—and that is what accounts for the Christian preoccupation with sin and “makes evil heroic” (p. 99). the need for expiation has the effect deadly nature of the conflict (p. 146). of reconciling us to the suffering of the But the dangers Christianity poses innocent. . . . Christianity has a pro- are not unique. Quite the contrary, they Drury calls on society to transcend foundly singular conception of the good are “echoed in the dramatic resurgence the biblical horizon, rejecting both the that encourages a militant and crusad- of religious fundamentalism in our us-and-them naïveté that demonizes ing spirit, while discouraging tolerance, all opponents and the world-weary real- plurality, and diversity (p. 69–70). time—Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East, Jewish fundamentalism in politik that acquiesces in every evil, par- Drury’s final charge against Chris­ Israel, Hindu fundamentalism in India, ticularly one’s own. “The first step,” she tianity is that it leads believers to inter- and Christian fundamentalism in the writes—a step fundamentalist thought nalize terror, locking them in combat United States.” Though often engag- cannot encompass—“is to acknowledge against their own desires. No wonder ed in violent conflict, fundamentalist the plurality of the good” (p. 152). they come to believe “that terror—spir- Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and Christians Terror and Civilization is a welcome itual, political, and psychological—is share a craving “to use political power addition to the humanist literature from at the heart of the civilizing process” to establish the state of God” (p. 54). As a wing of the academy that has lately (p. 75). So influential is Christianity for today’s so-called clash of cultures: tended to produce mostly postmodern that not even its best-known opponents, voices. Shadia Drury’s plainspoken Freud and Nietzsche, can escape its [T]he conflict between Islam and the polemic is welcome. Sadly, the book’s West has its source in the sameness shadow. Freud “reinvented the austere and not the difference between these high price will limit its reach. Highly Christian morality in a scientific guise,” two worlds. It is not a conflict between recommended, but many readers will and for his part, Nietzsche and his a secular liberal society and a reli- prefer to borrow it at the library or wait postmodern acolytes inverted Christian gious, biblically inspired culture. Far for the paperback. from being opposites, both parties are

Intimate View of Robert G. Ingersoll by Ingersoll—Searchable his longtime secretary, Newton I. Baker. All contents are selectable from a busy but serviceable main menu screen. Tom Flynn The new edition runs far faster than its predecessor. Page turns are instanta- The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Second Edition, Emmett Fields, ed. neous in all-text works and satisfactorily rapid in graphics-heavy works like the (Louisville, Kentucky: Bank of Wisdom, 2004, ISBN 1-929--4708-13-0) “Vision of War.” Best of all, the entire CD-ROM $24.95 + $3.00 S/H. Available at www.bank-of-wisdom.com. disk can be searched for any word or

n its wholly revamped second edi- scans of the entire “Dresden Edition” of tion, Emmett Fields’s CD-ROM The Ingersoll’s­ collected works. Research­ers “Ingersoll largely carries IWorks of Robert G. Ingersoll fulfills could be confident that the classic pas- its potential as a powerful research sages they examined would be paginated the nineteenth century’s tool and a digital compendium of faithfully to the original work because Golden Age of Freethought Ingersoll’s works for readers who are they were dealing with scans of the not deep-pocketed antiquarian book col- original work. On the minus side, page on his shoulders.” lectors. Ingersoll, the “Great Agnostic,” turns were slow; searches were glacial. was the most popular orator of Gilded Unable to search the Ingersoll corpus phrase. The search function is almost Age America. Between the Civil War for a target word or phrase, users could instantaneous, so long as one has set and his death in 1899, he was seen and only search the Dresden Edition’s twelve up Adobe Acrobat 3.0 or higher (reader heard by more Americans than any volumes one at a time. This seriously or full version) to recognize the index other human being—yet he was out- eroded the disk’s usefulness. file on the CD. Acrobat’s help file tells spokenly critical of Christianity. Never The second edition remedies all these you how to do it, but basic instructions were freethought tenets more respect- problems, and I heartily recommend it. accompanying the CD-ROM would have fully listened to, if still seldom accepted, The disk includes the entire Dresden been welcome. I understand Fields plans by so many Americans. Ingersoll largely edition, as well as the rare five-volume to correct this in future pressings of the carries the nineteenth century’s Golden Burdick Edition of Ingersoll’s works and disk. Age of Freethought on his shoulders. almost a dozen other book-length bonus Anyone doing Ingersoll scholarship Several years ago, Bank of Wisdom features, plus a good selection of pam- or simply eager to avoid the increasing- issued the first Ingersoll CD-ROM. On phlets—more than 10,000 pages in all. ly high prices of Dresden Editions on the plus side, it contained actual page Some are obscure gems all but unavail- the antiquarian market should leap to Tom Flynn is the editor of Free Inquiry able on the used market, like the full-col- acquire this excellent CD-ROM. and the director of the Robert Green or, illustrated version of Ingersoll’s clas- Ingersoll Birthplace Museum. sic speech “A Vision of War” and An

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 66 of “Lucy”) (USA) Sergeí Kapitza, chair, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology; vice president, Academy of Sciences Transnational (Russia) George Klein, cancer researcher, Karolinska Institute, Affiliates of the INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF HUMANISM Stockholm (Sweden) ACADÉMIE INTERNATIONALE D’HUMANISME György Konrád, novelist, sociologist; cofounder, The Academy is composed of nontheists who are: (1) Hungarian Humanist Association (Hungary) devoted to the principle of free inquiry in all fields of Sir Harold W. Kroto, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (UK) human endeavor; (2) committed to the scientific out- Ioanna Kuçuradi, secretary general, Fédération look and the use of reason and the scientific method in Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie (Turkey) The Center for Inquiry–International­ acquiring knowledge about nature; and (3) upholders of Paul Kurtz, professor emeritus of philosophy, State is affiliated with the following humanist ethical values and principles. University of New York at Buffalo (USA) organizations around the world: Gerald A. Larue, professor emeritus of archaeology and HUMANIST LAUREATES biblical studies, University of Southern California at Asia Pieter Admiraal, medical doctor (Netherlands) Los Angeles (USA) Shulamit Aloni, former education minister (Israel) Thelma Lavine, Clarence J. Robinson professor of philos- Indian Rationalist Association, Ruben Ardila, psychologist, National University of ophy, George Mason University (USA) New Delhi, India Colombia (Colombia) Richard Leakey, author and paleo-anthropologist (Kenya) Atheist Centre, Vijayawada, India Kurt Baier, professor of philosophy, University of Jean-Marie Lehn, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (France) Pittsburgh (USA) Jolé Lombardi, organizer of the New University for the Europe Etienne-Emile Baulieu, Lasker Award for Clinical Third Age (Italy) Instytut Wydawniczy “Ksiazka i Prasa” ul, Medicine winner (France) José Leite Lopes, director, Centro Brasileiro de Warsaw, Poland Baruj Bonacerraf, Nobel Prize Laureate in Physiology or Pesquisas Fisicas (Brazil) Russian Humanist Society, Medicine (USA) Paul MacCready, Kremer prize-winner for aeronautical Sir Hermann Bondi, professor of applied mathematics, achievements; president, AeroViroment, Inc. (USA) Moscow, Russia. King’s College, University of London; Fellow of the Adam Michnik, historian, political writer, cofounder of KOR South and Central America Royal Society; Past Master of Churchill College, (Workers’ Defense Committee) (Poland) London (UK) Jonathan Miller, OBE, theater and film director, physi- Asociación Mexicana Etica Racionalista Elena Bonner, author, human rights activist (Russia) cian (UK) AC, Jacques Bouveresse, professor of philosophy, Collège de Taslima Nasrin, author, physician, social critic México City, México France (France) (Bangladesh) Asociación Ediciones de la Revista Paul D. Boyer, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (USA) Conor Cruise O’Brien, author, diplomat, University of Vern L. Bullough, distinguished professor, University of Dublin (Ireland) Peruana de Filosofía Aplicada, Lima, Southern California (USA) Indumati Parikh, M.D., president, Radical Humanist Perú Mario Bunge, Frothingham Professor of Foundations and Association of India (India) Middle East Philosophy of Science, McGill University (Canada) John Passmore, professor of philosophy, Australian Jean-Pierre Changeux, Collège de France, Institute National University (Australia) The Institute for the Secularization of Pasteur, Académie des Sciences (France) Jean-Claude Pecker, professor emeritus of astrophysics, Islamic Society (ISIS) Patricia Smith Churchland, professor of philosophy, Collège de France, Académie des Sciences (France) www.secularislam.org University of California at San Diego; adjunct pro- Steven Pinker, professor of brain and cognitive science, Averroes and Enlightenment fessor, Salk Institute for Biological Studies (USA/ MIT (USA) International Association, Canada) Dennis Razis, medical oncologist, “Hygeia” Diagnostic­ & Sir Arthur C. Clarke, author, Commander of the British Therapeutic Center of Athens S.A. (Greece) Cairo, Egypt Empire (Sri Lanka) Marcel Roche, permanent delegate to UNESCO from Africa (in cooperation with African- Bernard Crick, professor of politics, Birkbeck College, Venezuela (Venezuela) University of London (UK) Max Rood, professor of law; and former Minister of Americans for Humanism) Francis Crick, Nobel Prize Laureate in Physiology, Salk Justice (Netherlands) Action for Humanism, Ogun State, Nigeria Institute (USA) Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Rational Centre, Accra, Ghana Richard Dawkins, Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Virginia, Stanford University (USA) The Uganda Humanist Association, Understanding of Science, Oxford University (UK) Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., professor of history, City José M. R. Delgado, professor and chair, Department of University of New York (USA) Kampala, Uganda Neuropsychology, University of Madrid (Spain) Léopold Sédar Senghor, former president of Senegal; mem- Oceania director of the Center for Cognitive Daniel Dennett, ber of the Académie Française (Senegal) New Zealand Association of Rationalists Studies, Tufts University (USA) Jens C. Skou, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (Denmark) Jean Dommanget, Belgian Royal Observatory (Belgium) J. J. C. Smart, professor emeritus of philosophy, & Humanists, Auckland, New Zealand Umberto Eco, novelist, semiotician, University of Australian National University (Australia) International Bologna Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate, playwright (Nigeria) Paul Edwards, professor of philosophy, Brooklyn College, Barbara Stanosz, professor of philosophy, Instytut International Humanist & Ethical Union, City University of New York (USA) Wydawniczy “KsiÅÛka i Prasa” (Poland) London, Great Britain Luc Ferry, professor of philosophy, Sorbonne University Jack Steinberger, Nobel Laureate in Physics (USA) Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS), and University of Caen (France) Svetozar Stojanovi´c, director, Institute for Philosophy Los Angeles, United States Antony Flew, professor emeritus of philosophy, Reading and Social Theory, University of Belgrade University (UK) (Yugoslavia) Betty Friedan, author, founder, National Organization for Thomas S. Szasz, professor of psychiatry, State University­ of Women (NOW) (USA) New York Medical School, Syracuse (USA) Yves Galifret, professor emeritus of neurophysiology at V. M. Tarkunde, senior advocate, Supreme Court; chairman,­ the University P. and M. Curie; general secretary of Indian Radical Humanist Association (India) l’Union Rationaliste (France) Sir Keith Thomas, historian, president, Corpus Christi Philosophical Association (Egypt) Johan Galtung, professor of sociology, University of Oslo College, Oxford University (UK) (Norway) Rob Tielman, professor of sociology, Universiteit voor Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize winner; professor of phys- Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel Laureate; professor of physics, Humanistiek, Utrecht; former copresident, International­ California Institute of Technology (USA) Humanist and Ethical Union (Netherlands) ics, University of Texas at Austin (USA) Adolf Grünbaum, professor of philosophy, University of Lionel Tiger, professor of anthropology, Rutgers—the Pittsburgh (USA) State University of New Jersey (USA) Jürgen Habermas, professor of philosophy, University of George A. Wells, professor of German, Birkbeck College, Frankfurt (Germany) Mario Vargas Llosa, author (Perú) Herbert Hauptman, Nobel Laureate; professor of bio- Simone Veil, former Minister of Social Affairs, Health, University of London (UK) physical science, State University of New York at and Urban Affairs (France) Buffalo (USA) Gore Vidal, author, social commentator (USA) Alberto Hidalgo Tuñón, professor of philosophy, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., novelist (USA) Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor, the Universidad de Oviedo (Spain) Mourad Wahba, professor of philosophy, University Donald Johanson, Institute of Human Origins (discoverer of Ain Shams, Cairo; president of the Afro-Asian Agassiz Museum, Harvard University (USA)

67 http://www.secularhumanism.org Aug. / Sept. 2004