Islam’S War Against the West

Home , Austin Dacey, Bud Paxson, Free Inquiry, Radio Maryja, Why I Am Not a Muslim

RICHARD DAWKINS spills the Elixir of Holiness

Celebratingf Reason and Humanity SPRING 2002 • VOL. 22 No. 2

Pervez HOODBHOY •• IbnWARRAQ •• IbnAL-RAWANDI AntonyFLEW: Islam’s War Against the West

PauPaull AnAn AtheistAtheist KURKURTTZZ oonn atat WarWar FairFair Play,Play, ImprisonmenImprisonmentt,, NatNat && IIsraelsrael HENTOFFHENTOFF •• PeterPeter WendWendyy SINGERSINGER KAMINERKAMINER onon •• SSuurveillancerveillance TiborTibor R.R. && LibeLiberrttyy MACHANMACHAN • RoyRoy • ToTomm BROWNBROWN FLYNN:FLYNN: JohnJohn A.A. •• WhatWhat FRANTZFRANTZ Victory in Victory in ChristopherChristopher •• Afghanistan?Afghanistan? HITCHENSHITCHENS JoanJoan KennedyKennedy •• Introductory Price $5.95 U.S. / $6.95 Can. TAYLOR 21> TAYLOR KatherineKatherine •• BOURDONNAYBOURDONNAY 7725274 74957 Published by The Council for Secular Humanism •• 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.

For a parchment copy of this page, suitable for framing, please send $4.95 to FREE INQUIRY, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, New York 14226-0664

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 2 EDITORIAL FEATURES

5 Farewell Fair Play ISLAM: VOICES Paul Kurtz OF DISSENT

OP-ED 31 INTRODUCTION Tom Flynn 9 Homsap: Elixir of 32 Muslims and the Holiness West After Stem cell cloning and September 11 religious absolutism SPRING 2002 VOL. 22, NO. 2 Pervez Hoodbhoy Richard Dawkins ISSN 0272-0701 13 Trading Liberty 36 Islam and for Illusions Armageddon Wendy Kaminer Ibn al-Rawandi 14 Are Faith and Safety 39 The Islamic Concept Inversely Related? of Peace Christopher Hitchens Abdul Maseeh 16 Freedom and the 40 Islam’s War Against Right to Die the West Peter Singer Antony Flew 17 Ending the War 45 Why Critical Scrutiny on Drugs of Islam Is an Utmost Joan Kennedy Taylor Necessity 19 A Baptist Case for Syed Kamran Mirza Separation Nat Hentoff 47 Lessons for a Small Planet 20 Set a Place for Islam Roy Brown Vern L. Bullough 22 What About the 49 Back to the Past: Children? Poland’s Experiment in Theocracy Tibor R. Machan 23 Stem Cells, Cloning, Kaz Dziamka and Explornography 51 Zod’s Version John A. Frantz Gary Sloan 24 Reason Against Religious Terrorism DEPARTMENTS A Statement by the Russian Humanist Society 25 We Also Grieve; 7 Letters We Also Serve 28 Frontlines Katherine Bourdonnay 53 Church-State Update 26 Hammers, Nails, and Scouting Policy Suffers Afghanistan First Setback Tom Flynn Tom Flynn 54 Great Minds REVIEWS Theodor Nöldeke: Father of Qur’anic Criticism Ibn Warraq 64 The Vanquished Gods: 66 Tales of the Rational: The Koran Science, Religion, and Skeptical Essays About Theodor Nöldeke the Nature of Belief Nature and Science 57 Faith and Reason by Richard H. Schlagel by Massimo Pigliucci Humanism and Suffering Adel Daher Shawn Dawson Shawn Dawson 65 Religion Explained? The 59 Science and Religion 67 The Astrological The Religionizing of Evolutionary Origins of Diary of God Supernaturalism Religious Thought Jacob Pandian by Bo Fowler by Pascal Boyer Tom Flynn 61 Applied Ethics Tom Flynn Science and Freedom Thomas W. Clark 65 Dearest Pet: On Bestiality 67 My Cosmic Pessimism 62 God on Trial by Midas Dekkers by Luis A. Santander Reverse Logic in the Vern L. Bullough Norm Allen, Jr. Philosophy of God Mohammad Akram Gill FI Editorial Staff FREE INQUIRY (ISSN 0272-0701) is published quarterly by the Editor-in Chief Council for Secular Humanism, a nonprofit educational corporation, Editorial Board Paul Kurtz P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226. Phone (716) 636-7571. Fax Editor (716) 636-1733. Copyright ©2002 by the Council for Secular Robert Alley Thomas W. Flynn Humanism. All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be Professor of Humanities Emeritus, Univ. of Richmond, Virginia Managing Editor Deputy Editor reproduced without permission of the publisher. Periodicals postage Andrea Szalanski Norm R. Allen, Jr. paid at Buffalo, N.Y., and at additional mailing offices. National Hector Avalos distribution by International Periodicals Distributors, Solana Beach, Columnists Associate Professor of Vern Bullough, Richard Dawkins, California. FREE INQUIRY is available from University Microfilms Religious Studies, Nat Hentoff, Christopher Hitchens, and is indexed in Philosophers’ Index. Printed in the United States. Iowa State University Wendy Kaminer, Tibor R. Machan, Postmaster: Send address changes to FREE INQUIRY, P.O. Box 664, Peter Singer, Joan Kennedy Taylor Joe E. Barnhart Amherst, NY 14226-0664. Opinions expressed do not necessarily Professor of Philosophy, Senior Editors reflect the views of the editors or publisher. No one speaks on North Texas State University Vern L. Bullough, Richard Dawkins, behalf of the Council for Secular Humanism unless expressly stated. Martin Gardner, James A. Haught, H. James Birx Gerald A. Larue, Taslima Nasrin Professor of Anthropology, Associate Editor TO SUBSCRIBE OR RENEW Canisius College Wendy McElroy • CALL TOLL FREE 1-800-458-1366 (have credit card handy). George Bishop Contributing Editors • Fax credit-card order to 1-716-636-1733. Professor of Political Science, Jo Ann Boydston, Paul Edwards, Albert Ellis, Roy P. Fairfield, • Internet: www.secularhumanism.org University of Cincinnati Charles Faulkner, Antony Flew, • Mail: FREE INQUIRY, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664 Rob Boston Levi Fragell, Adolf Grünbaum, Author, Americans United for Marvin Kohl, Thelma Lavine, Lee Nisbet, J. J. C. Smart, • Subscription rates: $31.50 for one year, $53.50 for two years, Separation of Church and State $72.50 for three years. Foreign orders add $7 per year for surface Svetozar Stojanovic, Barbara Forrest Thomas Szasz, Richard Taylor mail. Foreign orders send U.S. funds drawn on a U.S. bank; Visa Associate Professor of Philosophy, and MasterCard are preferred. Editorial Associate Southeastern Louisiana Univ. Austin Dacey • Single issues: $6.95 each. Shipping (included) is by surface mail Stewart Guthrie Art Director in U.S. Canadian and foreign orders include $1.56 for 1–3 Professor of Anthropology, Lisa A. Hutter issues and $3.00 for 4–6 issues. By air mail, $3.00 for 1–3 issues Fordham University Production and $7.20 for 4–6 issues. Paul E. Loynes, Sr., Jason Mussachio William Harwood CHANGE OF ADDRESS Cartoonist Webmaster Author, Mythology’s Last Gods Don Addis Terese Rozelle • Mail changes to FREE INQUIRY, ATTN: Change of Address, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664 Stuart Jordan Contributing Illustrator Senior Staff Scientist, Brad Marshall • Call Customer Service: 716-636-7571. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Cover Illustration • E-mail: [email protected] Lisa A. Hutter Alfred Kisubi BACK ISSUES Philosopher, Poet, • $6.95 each; 20% discount on orders of 10 or more. Call 800- University of Wisconsin Council for Secular Humanism 458-1366 to order or to ask for a complete listing of back issues. Lena Ksarjian Committee on the History of Culture, Chair REPRINTS/PERMISSIONS University of Chicago Paul Kurtz • To order reprints of articles or to request permission to use any Board of Directors part of FREE INQUIRY, write to FREE INQUIRY, ATTN: Ronald A. Lindsay Vern Bullough, Jan Loeb Eisler, Permissions Editor, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. Lawyer, Philosopher Jonathan Kurtz, Joseph Levee, (Chair) Kenneth Marsalek, Jean Millholland, WHERE TO BUY FREE INQUIRY Timothy J. Madigan Edward Tabash • FREE INQUIRY is available from selected book and magazine University of Rochester Press Executive Director sellers nationwide. Michael Martin Edward M. Buckner ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS Professor of Philosophy, Communications Director • Complete submission guidelines can be found on the Web at Boston University Katherine Bourdonnay www.secularhumanism.org/fi/details.html. John Novak Field Director • Requests for mailed guidelines and article submissions should be Professor of Education, Brock University DJ Grothe addressed to: Article Submissions, ATTN: Tom Flynn, Jean Claude Pecker Coordinator, Campus Freethought Alliance FREE INQUIRY, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. Astronomer, Educator, Author, Austin Dacey Professeur Honoraire, Collège de France LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Director, African Americans • Send submissions to Letters Editor, FREE INQUIRY, P.O. Box Anthony Pinn for Humanism Norm R. Allen, Jr. 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Macalester College Director of Development • For letters intended for publication, please include name, Arthur Urrows address (including city and state), and daytime phone number Robert M. Price (for verification purposes only). Letters should be 300 words or Professor of Biblical Criticism, Western Development Officer Center for Inquiry Institute James B. Kimberly less and pertain to previous FREE INQUIRY articles. Director of Libraries Theodore Schick, Jr. Timothy Binga Professor of Philosophy, Muhlenberg College Fulfillment Michael Cione, Darlene Banks Victor J. Stenger Staff Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Pat Beauchamp, Sandy Lesniak, University of Hawaii Georgeia Locurcio, Jennifer Miller, Edward Tabash Lisa Nolan, Anthony Santa Lucia, Heidi Shively, Ranjit Sandhu, Civil Liberties Attorney, Honorary Chair, John Sullivan, Vance Vigrass 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 FAREWELL FAIR PLAY

EDITORIAL PAUL KURTZ

omething awful seems to be happening to the traditional American sense of fair play and goodwill. The public response in sup- Sport of the victims of September 11 notwithstanding, in general there seems to be a decline of empathy and altruism. Perhaps I am overreacting, but this deficiency seems to assume many forms. What immediately comes to mind is our treatment of prisoners. I refer first to the great flap that emerged worldwide over the Bush administration’s refusal to place the prisoners of war captured in Afghanistan under the rules of the Geneva Convention. They are “unlawful combatants,” we were told; or they are “dangerous and our guards need to be protected”; or, in still another statement, “They do not deserve any better.” I’ve always thought that the Geneva Convention provided commendable rules governing the treatment of prisoners of war, rules that all civilized nations should follow. The prisoners are being treated “humanely,” we were told. Surely, we would want our own soldiers, if captured anywhere in the world, to be treated in accord with the Geneva Convention. How can we demand this in the future if we violate these rules today? President Bush relented after much criticism at home and abroad and grudgingly declared that Taliban prisoners would come under the Geneva Convention, but not members of the Al Qaeda. Many critics believe that this concession does not go far enough.

“The Quality of American Mercy Is Not Strained” This cavalier dismissal of the Geneva Convention has disturbed civil libertarians in the United States and our allies throughout the world. So has the treatment of thousands of Arabs and Muslims in the United States, recently apprehended by the Justice Department and held incommunicado and without bail. They are “terrorists,” says the administration; but how do we know unless they are indicted and put on trial and processed through the American system of justice? Will the infamous deed of September 11—which we all abhor—and the fear of future terrorist acts so erode our sense of justice that we will abandon our traditional adherence to democratic due process? Perhaps there is something deeply amiss, for a similar vindictiveness is often displayed as well in our treatment of American prisoners, incarcerated for a wide range of infractions. The War on Drugs in particular has taken a vast toll on the American sense of balance, and its result seems close to the development of a police- state mentality. Bursting into homes at all hours to jail alleged drug offenders—even for possession or use of marijuana, for example—seems like an extraordinary overreaction. Drug offenders are considered “wicked.” Not that I wish to encourage drug use, but shall we abandon our free society to rout out drug use while we permit cigarette smoking and the abuse of alcohol, the two most noxious drugs available? From all reports, brutality in American prisons seems to be intensifying. Has vindictive justice gotten the best of us? I was interested to see William Bennett, the paragon of Christian virtue, railing against sin recently at a convention of American conservatives, defending the harsh tactics of the drug police. Whatever happened to the quality of mercy among those who express the Christian faith?

Paul Kurtz is editor-in-chief of Free Inquiry and founder of the Council for Secular Humanism.

5 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 Another painful sign of the retrib- tary build-up would exceed that of the defensible. Apparently the only thing utive mentality is seen in the fact that Reagan years. The administration pro- that stands between it and destruction is we still exact the death penalty; indeed, poses to increase defense spending by Israel’s strong defense forces, including the United States is the only democra- $120 billion over the next five years—at nuclear weapons and the United States. cy that does. Our European allies are a time, incidentally, when it proposes In my view a creative solution of the offended by capital punishment, and that taxes be reduced and the defi- impasse between Israel and Palestine many countries now are refusing to cit increased. It is interesting that the that should be explored is to have honor extradition to the United States United States now spends an estimated Palestine merge with Jordan and cre- if the accused would risk suffering the 50 percent of all arms expenditures in ate a greater Palestinian/Jordanian fed- death penalty. It is highly questionable the world. The Religious Right seems eration, which could provide a viable that capital punishment serves as a to need demons, real or imaginary, to homeland for the Palestinian people and deterrent. Surely we need to deal with guard against—formerly they were enable them to achieve the statehood that those who commit heinous crimes. I Bolsheviks, socialists, left-wingers, lib- they so passionately desire. This state would myself recommend life impris- erals, secular humanists, child abusers, would include the 94 percent of the West onment for such offenders without the drug fiends; there are now terrorists in Bank and the one-third of Jerusalem right of parole. But should not one of place of the anarchists of earlier epochs. already offered by former Prime Minister the aims of incarceration be rehabilita- H. L. Mencken wryly observed: “The Ehud Barak and rejected by President tion, and should not a civilized society whole aim of practical politics is to keep Yasser Arafat. Since the Gaza Strip is not exert efforts to educate and reform the populace alarmed (and hence clam- viable and is filled with a great number of offenders so that they may be returned orous to be led to safety) by menacing it refugees, there could be an exchange of to society? Instead we seem to have an with an endless series of hobgoblins, all populations and territories. (The Israelis exaggerated sense that punishment is of them imaginary.” How true this is of might vacate the settlements on the West good for its own sake and that those the American political scene today. Bank, ceding them to the new Palestinian/ who commit crimes deserve retribution. The America that we love has in the Jordanian state, and the Arabs would in It seems to me that what is hap- past defended democracy and human turn cede the Gaza Strip to Israel.) The pening in the United States is that rights and offered aid to those suffering condition would be that Israel’s right we have been overtaken by a religious disasters worldwide. Has this America to exist be recognized by Palestine and sense of retributive justice and that this become a swashbuckling military pow other Islamic states. has taken on exaggerated proportions. er, pursuing a unilateral foreign policy I should say right off that I am here Surely one of the purposes of punish- insensitive to the views of the world— speaking personally and not on behalf of ment and incarceration is to protect such as the abrogation of international this magazine, which represents a wide society from criminals. Granted, but treaties? Are we no longer the hope range of differing political viewpoints. beyond that do we need to provide cruel of the world, but a nationalistic state May I wax autobiographical: I was in and unusual punishment? Whatever pursuing our own self-interests? Today Germany as a GI with the American happened to compassion? Afghanistan is defeated. Will we follow Army of Liberation during and immedi- the president tomorrow by putting out ately after World War II and witnessed The Bloated Defense of commission Iran, Iraq, and North the freeing of the survivors of Dachau, Korea? I fear that America will lose its Buchenwald, and other concentration Budget cherished friends and allies throughout camps. When many of these displaced I am also dismayed that the end of the the world, and her self-respect, and persons told me that they intended to Cold War has not reduced our military pursue imperialist policies that may be go to Israel to establish a Jewish state, budget. We seem so frightened by ene- turned against us in the future by new I said that I thought that this was a mies, domestic or foreign, that we are coalitions of adversaries. mistake. I was particularly skeptical of willing to spend vast sums on armaments the Old Testament story that God had and reduce our expenditure on domestic promised Israel to the Jews. How could programs, such as medical insurance fewer than one million Jews, I asked, for those who lack it. The United States Why Not a stand against hundreds of millions of has also reduced foreign-aid assistance Arabs? Thus, I had serious misgivings throughout the world. The ministers of Palestinian/ about Zionism, and I recommended that the wealthy Group of Seven nations have survivors stay in Europe or immigrate recommended that these nations donate Jordanian State? to other countries of the world. These 0.7 percent of gross national product hapless individuals told me that they for international-aid programs for the A New Holocaust? had nowhere to go and that most coun- poorest nations of the world. The United tries would not welcome them. ix million Jews were lost in the States currently provides the lowest per- A Jewish state was established by Nazi holocaust of World War II. centage, only 0.1 percent. Secretary of the United Nations in 1948. Arab armies Will the nearly six million Jews the Treasury Paul H. O’Neill is a strong S immediately tried to crush it, but with- now living in Israel suffer a similar fate? opponent of this aid, one reason why the out success. Hundreds of thousands This stark reality may very well confront United States is now known as “Uncle of Palestinians who lived in Israel at Scrooge.” the world one day unless this festering conflict is resolved. Israel has borders President Bush’s proposed mili- (Continued on page 60) that are barely definable and hardly

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 6 LETTERS

daily monitoring of the sexual activity Those people are looking for quick of all women of child-bearing age, and and easy comfort. They are surrounded some might consider this intrusive. The by trees so close that they have no vision more promising solution, then, will be of the forest. It seems our task is to help to find some way of rescuing these them find a way outside it so they can children before they end up in the toilet. finally look at it. Putting these editorials The fact that these little people are only in their hands can surely help. the size of the period at the end of this I had been trying to see a way to sentence will make this difficult, but make people aware of how we must certainly a nation that can put a man on not deny that religion was behind the the moon can do this. As for the millions terrible attacks, and that retreating into of embryonic children thus rescued, more of it would just make it worse. This surely there are couples who will be issue can help me do that, and I want to glad to adopt them and, through artifi- share it with as many as I can. cial implantation, ensure their ongoing Again, congratulations, thanks, and development and birth. The sanctity of please keep up the good work. human life requires nothing less. Tom Noe Richard Taylor Wylie, Texas Emeritus Professor of Philosophy Interlaken, New York Winter 2001/02 was my second issue of Save the (Toilet) Free Inquiry, the first long ago passed on to friends with a like mind. There Children Another Great Issue was not a single author with which I had any major, much less minor disagree- Peter Singer, in his piece on stem Midway through the Winter 2001/02 ment. That said, I was bothered by the cell research (“Where the President’s issue of Free Inquiry, I had to stop and defensive and angry tone in some of the Ethics Lecture Went Wrong,” FI, Winter write to express my congratulations articles. There is no need to be angry 2001/02) draws the correct conclusion, and appreciation for it. After watching in order to defend what we believe. but then walks away from it. the continued improvement of our pub- Rather, let those who fear our capacity He notes, correctly, that at least lication for several years, I believe this to think for ourselves in freedom defend half of all fertilized human eggs never issue represents a major step up. their assumption that they think only become implanted. The result is that It seems the press timing that delayed with divine guidance. every year in the United States at least our response to 9/11 may have been for- My life and patriotism were not three million human embryos, and prob- tuitous. We could not have made this defined by 9/11. Since then, if one dares ably more like four or five million, never kind of response without some time to believe the polling, many U.S. citizens develop and end up being flushed down reflect and assess what has happened share what appears to be much like a the toilet, their mothers not even aware since then. presidential white paper: (1) God choos- of this tragic loss. The destruction of Now Free Inquiry has made a es us, like he, once upon a time, chose human life by the September 11 attacks response that is both comprehensive the Hebrews. (2) Allah cannot hold a is dwarfed by the magnitude of this. and appropriate. The Op-Ed pieces deal- candle to God. (3) The United States of Now if, as our great president has ing with the terrorist attacks have a America invented Liberty and Family noted, a human embryo is “something breadth and depth that makes me proud Values. I will need more thought on (4) precious to be protected,” then it does to be part of the Council for Secular Apple Pie. surely follow that these millions of Humanism. Don Zook-Slagel embryonic children are entitled to that Deserving of special praise are Waldoboro, Maine protection. Our nation must, therefore, the articles by Richard Dawkins, Roy find some way to ensure their implan- Brown, James Haught, and Tibor tation in the womb, or, failing that, to Machan. And “Irving Berlin’s Hat Trick” I cannot thank you enough for bringing salvage them from the toilet before it is by Tom Flynn is a standout even in such your publication to my attention. I had too late, so they can be frozen and pre- company. no idea you were out there. I thought served. It must become the first order Flynn said that in not criticizing I received enjoyment from Foreign of business for the National Institutes the “God Bless America” response of Affairs, The Economist, and the Wash of Health to try to find some procedure, Congress and so many citizens, we were ington Report on Middle East Affairs. perhaps a hormonal injection, that will wrong. I could not agree more, and But yours is the most intellectually sat- ensure implantation, and then we must have found it terribly frustrating to see isfying magazine I have ever read. No make sure every sexually active woman all those signs. Clearly, they signify a issue will ever be thrown away! submits to this procedure at every ovu- plunge further into the problem, not a Virginia Prunier lation. Of course this would require way out of it. Norfolk, Virginia

7 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 the wealth. I find this theme unrelated gious preference.” Selective to FI’s primary pursuit, his arguments Like O’Neal’s, my initial dog tags Prosecution ridiculous, and his morals atrocious. I were stamped “no preference” when, believe FI can do better. as a junior officer, my answer to the Richard Kostelanetz is convinced that Rob Russell question “What is your religion?” was “pump and dump” practices should Atlanta, Georgia not on the list of approved religions. I be legal and that the prosecution of wore those dog tags for many years but Jonathan Lebed is “selective prosecu- Richard Kostelanetz replies: never liked them. tion” that reflects the government’s ulte- About mid-career my unit sent forms rior and nefarious purposes in defense Contrary to Evan Kaiser’s summary, around to order new dog tags and, of the moneyed classes (“Selective I don’t think that “‘pump and dump’ for some unknown reason, mine were Prosecution of the Young,” FI, Winter practices should be legal.” Rather, produced exactly as I ordered them. I 2001/02). they shouldn’t be prosecuted—a dis- proudly wore my atheist dog tags until Mr. Kostelanetz should know that the tinction hopefully clear to morally the day I retired. American and world economy depend sensitive readers. I have a similar John G. Kovash upon the stock market, which in turn opinion of, say, marijuana use. I Colonel, USA (Ret.) depends upon strict rules of behavior. don’t recommend or even condone it, West Linn, Oregon In particular, the honest presentation but it’s not something for the police. of information regarding securities For both common stock market decep- I had almost identical experiences and businesses must be zealously pre- tions and marijuana, nothing can during my own military career. I also served. Also, I know nothing of Mr. replace customer intelligence. finally ended up with a misspelled “athi- Lebed’s specific financial situation, but I agree that “the honest presen- est” tag, but through a slightly different I would not assume as Mr. Kostelanetz tation of information regarding process. does that the financial prospects of the securities and businesses must be I was told as well that Atheist was son of suburban parents in New Jersey zealously preserved,” especially for not on the “approved list” and had to are dwarfed by those of the majority of officers of corporations, who should settle for “no preference.” I even stated working Americans with stock market be prosecuted and personally sued for the same argument, that I did not wish investments (direct or indirect). deception. For the Enron deceivers, someone to conduct a service over me And what is it about being “impris- no punishment will be severe enough. which would never have been on my oned” in public school from 9:30 a.m. to But don’t the police have better things personal “approved list.” One day while 4:00 p.m. (as very generously estimated to do than prosecuting unaffiliated relating this story to someone, I began by Kostelanetz) that unfairly disadvan- liars? to grow irritated about this issue; after tages Mr. Lebed’s trading as compared I’m sixty-two by the time this all I did take an oath to defend the to someone working 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. appears. If Mr. Kaiser doesn’t recall Constitution from enemies foreign and (or to be more representative, 8:00 a.m. compulsory high-school education as domestic. If some bureaucrat deciding to 6:00 p.m. or more)? the worst imprisonment he ever suf- what religious belief or lack thereof, By the way, grouping the Rosen fered, he must be older than I am, a isn’t against the spirit and intent of the bergs, who actually spied for the Soviet veteran, or a recidivist. Sixth Amendment, I don’t know what Union and delivered atom bomb secrets I won’t debate Mr. Russell over is. Therefore, I decided to take on this to that enemy nation, with Wen Ho Lee, morals, since he comes into the ring “domestic enemy” of our Constitution. who as far as I know is innocent of all with more weapons (or armor) than I did what we all should do under charges of espionage, is a smear which I can muster. I will note, however, these circumstances, I asked the per- I am sure Dr. Lee would not appreciate. that he misreads, as I think McVeigh sonnel office to show me line and verse Evan Kaiser was persecuted not for being young, where it states that only those religions Seekonk, Massachusetts as he says, but for epitomizing inde- on the list were acceptable. They could pendent militias, which are always a not. I was prepared to go to the office As a contributor to the Center for threat to any government. responsible for the regulation to either Inquiry and a subscriber to Free Inquiry get the issue clarified or the regulation I have to write to ask about “Selective amended. Prosecution of the Young” in your A few days later I received my new Winter edition. Namely, what was the More Doggone Dog dog tags by inter-office mail, and guess point? Why is it in FI? It seems unre- what? Atheist was misspelled “Athiest.” lated to the topics usually presented. Tag Stories The reason I figured was that a bureau- Second, it is poorly argued. crat who can only follow rules tends to Does the author really believe I thoroughly enjoyed Daniel O’Neal’s follow them even when they don’t apply: Timothy McVeigh to have been selec- story of his unique, misspelled “athiest” “I before E except after C.” tively prosecuted because he was young, military dog tags that he obtained from Roger W. MacDonald-Evoy for example? And lastly, he seems to a nonmilitary source (“No Dog Tags for Cheyenne, Wyoming arguing for an amoral position with Atheists,” FI, Winter 2001/02). He is not, regard to lying and stealing, except as I am happy to say, alone in having dog meets his criteria of redistribution of tags with Atheist in the slot for “reli- (Continued on page 68)

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 8 OP-ED

RICHARD DAWKINS

sounded pretty amateurish to me (though I can’t help wondering what a “professional” theology could conceivably look Homsap: like). What if one of Smith’s opponents had offered a different reading of the symbolism of Genesis? Symbols are so nebulous and adjustable, how do you Elixir of Holiness decide between them? What if yet another senator had riposted with a quote Stem cell cloning and religious absolutism from the Qur’an, or the Bhagavad-Gita? Would they have been self-evidently less mbryonic stem cell research was valid than the Bible? Who says? Whose once billed as the defining issue holy book trumps? You can see why the Eof the second Bush’s presidency. Founding Fathers insisted on the separa- Things have moved on with a vengeance, tion of church and state.

but the issue, though no longer defining, Photo by Lalla Ward Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) has not gone away. If anything, Bush the was not to be outdone in theological victorious warlord seems likely to get close reasoning: “We all agree that the an easier ride for his domestic policies embryo is alive. The question is, is it a than Bush the unelected Supreme Court life?” Bush asked almost the identical appointee could ever have hoped for. Our question in his speech. It is a question vigilance must not waver. that these people honestly think means Bush’s weak compromise on stem cell something. Brownback took the view research is still government policy, and it that stem cell research would deny “the remains as confused as it was when he dignity of the young human, effectively announced it on August 9, 2001.1 Surplus dust of the ground, and breathed into making the human embryo equal to mere embryos are routinely flushed down the his nostrils the breath of life.” What we plant or animal life or property.” On the drain in the majority of in vitro fertil- have here, explained the resourceful other side some theologians, including ization cycles. So, if stem cells are to be senator, is a “two-step process” for cre- even some Catholic ones, have suggested taken only from existing lines for fear ating humans (Los Angeles Times, July that an embryo less than fourteen days of killing new embryos, IVF should be 19, 2001). The dust, in Step 1, clearly old cannot be “a person” because before banned too. Of course it isn’t, and it won’t means cells. Step 2, in which God went that age it is still capable of dividing and be. Nor should we expect funeral services for the nostril “and man became a living becoming two people. I can just hear an and miniature gravestones for surplus soul,” obviously corresponds to implan- ambitious young theologian advance the conceptuses. That’s all that needs to be tation in the womb. So it’s O.K. to do opposite view: an early embryo is twice said about that. I want to concentrate on stem cell research, so long as the cells as valuable precisely because it is capa- another aspect, the capacity of religion to are taken before implantation. ble of becoming not one soul but two! muddy the waters in such ethical disputes. Richard Doerflinger, spokesman for the National Conference of Catholic In the run-up to Bush’s odd decision, (Continued on p. 12) both sides in the debate could be heard Bishops, criticized Senator Smith’s eloquently trading quotations from “amateur theology.” Well, it the Bible—as though that were any way to settle an argument.2 Notwithstanding the vaunt- ed constitutional separation of church and state, Congress resounded with “chapter and verse” like an old-style revival tent. Senator Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) is an opponent of abortion but a supporter of embryonic stem cell re search, and he invoked Genesis 2:7: “And the Lord God formed man of the

9 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 National MediaCenter and theCenterforInquiry 7 THE PROJECT IS LAUNCHED. No longer a dream, reality has begun for our permanent Center for Inquiry – West. After a five-year search we have purchased and partially occupied a building at 4773 Hollywood Boulevard, in the heart of Hollywood. This ultimate Rallying Point for humanists and skeptics will house CFI-West’s regional programs as well as Center for Inquiry’s™ new national Media Center. This development has enormous importance for supporters of critical thinking everywhere, especially readers of Free Inquiry.

And now it’s up to our readers and friends. Only you can help us fulfill this bold potential. Purchasing the building took $1.6 million, which we must pay back over three years. Renovation will require another $500,000 – creating a 99-seat auditorium, library, exhibit area, media production center, and offices. An additional $495,000 will equip the Media Center and fund its first three years of operation. Finally we must add millions more to endowment, so the new Center will always be fiscally stable.

All told, we need $5.85 million, of which less than $2.4 million has already been raised. It’s the greatest challenge secular humanists and skeptics have faced since our community gave more than $5 million to build and endow the Center for Inquiry – International in Amherst, N.Y., from 1991–1995. MAJOR GIVING OPPORTUNITIES STILL AVAILABLE! A major goal demands major gifts. While gifts in any amount are welcome, we urgently need five-, six-, and even seven-figure gifts now, when construction is underway, when they can slash interest costs and spur additional contributions. Fortunately, larger gifts can be made as pledges payable over three years. Attractive opportunities exist to name various parts of the new building for oneself or a loved one:

MEMORIAL ITEM: COMMITMENT: MONTHLY*: Name CFI-W: your choice $1,000,000 $27,778 Entrance Hall Atrium 500,000 13,889 Meeting Room 275,000[Already taken!] Bookstore 150,000 4,167 Display Area 150,000 4,167 Library 75,000[Already taken!] Reception area and lobby 100,000 2,778 Café 50,000 1,389 StageEach donor is guaranteed two identical plaques: one for the50,000 donor’s home or workplace1,389 and Readingthe other room for permanent display at CFI-West.25,000[Already taken!] *Pledge payments are billed quarterly in the interest of economy.

The new CFI-West and its National Media Center will make secular humanism, skepticism, and critical thinking more central than ever to national and worldwide debates. Make your commitment today! Send your most generous gift to the address below. For more information, especially for confidential assistance in structuring a major gift, return the postcard in this magazine or contact us directly.

All gifts to the Center for Inquiry™ are tax-deductible as provided by law. Free brochure available. Southern California residents and visitors: Building tours available. Call (323)666-9797.

CENTER FOR INQUIRY – WEST Regional Headquarters and National Media Center A joint project of the Center for Inquiry™, the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, each a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt educational corporation P.O. Box 741 • Amherst NY 14226-0741 • (716)636-4869 ext. 311 • fax (716)636-1733 OP-ED

(Homsap cont’d. from p. 9) comparison a more rational, as well claim to suffer than a human gastrula. as a more conversable animal, than But of course the “pro-life” argument an infant of a day, or a week or even a Again, by what objectively defensible month old. But suppose the case were is not really about suffering at all. Pro- standards are theological arguments to otherwise, what would it avail? The life, as I have already noted, has a hidden be judged? question is not, can they reason? Nor meaning: pro-human life. The embryos Perhaps seeking to beat the senators can they talk? But, can they suffer? that pro-lifers seek to protect do not suf- at their own biblical game, a spokesman You don’t have to follow Bentham all the fer, but they are infinitely precious sim- for a Massachusetts company doing stem way to giving a horse or a dog human ply and solely because they belong to the cell research quoted Matthew 25, the rights. But he should make you think species Homo sapiens. Humanness is a parable of the talents and the servants. hard about why you favor, by compari- mystical quality, something absolute and Two of the servants, you will remem- son, a microscopic ball of cells contain- indivisible, something God-given . . . for ber, put their gold talents to work and ing no nerves at all. of course this faulty reasoning all comes doubled their worth. The third one fear- The same absolutism rang through from religion, and only from religion. fully buried his, and was duly chided: Bush’s statement of August 9. He was It is here that the religious mind most “Thou wicked and slothful servant.” The preoccupied with the sacredness of life, starkly exposes its lamentable short- spokesman might have added that stem and he only occasionally bothered to comings. This kind of religious mind just cell research will certainly go on apace make it explicit that by “life” he meant knows, without question and without with private funds—also, of course, in “human life”: “. . . human life is a sacred reason, that there is something self-ev- other well-equipped countries, and there gift from our Creator. I worry about idently special about Homo sapiens, are indications that some leading Amer a culture that devalues life.”5 Cynics an essence of such infinite apartness ican researchers are already on the might like to note that the number that it overrides Benthamite questions move. The prospect of a reverse brain of Texans Bush executed as governor like “Can they suffer?” or “Can they drain delights Dr. Harry Griffin, deputy exceeds the margin of votes by which he think?” It is as though we had a unique director of the Roslin Institute in Scot can claim to have won Florida. and magical substance called Homsap, land, where Dolly was cloned.3 Let’s pick the confusion of the human an enchanted juice, a divine elixir that “Do No Harm,” an influential lobby absolutists apart. They start with the bathes every cell of Homo sapiens and of “pro-life” (read pro-human life) doc- admirable principle that suffering is a bad of no other species. tors and other medical professionals, thing, from which the vulnerable should Well, that may be appealing, but evo- has condemned all embryonic stem cell be protected. Undeniably, slaves and vic- lutionary biology tells us it is rubbish. No research.4 Let’s hope, for their patients’ tims of Nazi experiments suffered, and doubt Homo sapiens does have remark- sake, that these well-meaning doctors nothing like that should ever be allowed able and even unique features, but these are better practitioners than they are to happen again. Equally undeniably, emerge from the organization of our thinkers. They are big on the dignity those vulnerable victims were human. So trillions of cells, especially our brain cells, and status of the human embryo which, far so good. The fallacy creeps in at the and from our shared cultural experienc- they are in no doubt, counts as a fully next stage. It does not follow that all vul- es. Infinite moral value is not baptized paid-up human individual. It “is human; nerable victims capable of suffering are upon us by simple virtue of the species it will not articulate itself into some human. Nor does it follow that all human to which we belong. The essentialist view other kind of animal. Any being that entities are capable of suffering. To apply that humans are deeply special, down is human is a human being.” And they Bentham to a fertilized egg, the question to their very substance, is profoundly at unashamedly play the emotive cards of is not, “Is it a member of a particular spe- odds with the fact of evolution. But that race, slavery, and Nazi atrocity: cies, other members of which can suffer?” must wait for another column. The last century and a half has been Nor “Is it potentially capable of turning marred by numerous atrocities against into an individual (or even two individu- Richard Dawkins is the Charles vulnerable human beings in the name als) which could suffer?” No, the relevant Simonyi Professor of Public Under of progress and medical benefit. In the question is “Does this embryo, here and 19th century, vulnerable human beings standing of Science at Oxford Uni were bought and sold in the town now as a cluster of cells, suffer?” versity. An evolutionary biologist and square as slaves and bred as though Most reasonable thinkers would agree prolific author and lecturer, his most they were animals. In this century, the that an early human embryo suffers less recent book is Unweaving the Rainbow. vulnerable were executed mercilessly than an adult cow or pig with its fully and subjected to demeaning experi- mentation at Dachau and Auschwitz. functioning nervous system. If you hap- Notes pen to be a vegan and an opponent of 1. Http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releas What is the connection with embryos? embryonic stem cell research, I salute es/2001/08/20010809-2.html. You may well ask. The chief confusion your high principles and consistency. 2. Http://www.worthynews.com/news-fea in the minds of these unrepresentative You really don’t like things to suffer. But tures/scripture-stem-cell-debate.html. doctors is human absolutism, pinned 3. Http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2001/ if you eat cows, as Bush surely does, yet aug/prof_010820.html. down with famous clarity by Jeremy still call yourself a pro-lifer because you 4. Http://www.stemcellresearch.org/. Bentham (1748–1832), founding father oppose abortion and stem cell research, 5. Http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/ of utilitarian moral philosophy. where is your consistency? Where is releases/2001/08/20010809-2.html. . . . a full-grown horse or dog is beyond your logic? A Colorado beetle has a better

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

WENDY KAMINER

national security grounds. People

felt safer last fall when the Bush admin- Trading Liberty for istration swept up and detained over one thousand immigrants in the wake of the September 11 attack, even though the Illusions vast majority of them had no apparent connection to terrorism. History shows that frightened people tend to assume nly a fool with no sense of history that restrictions on liberty make them would have been sanguine about safe. They support repressive measures Othe prospects for civil liberties instinctively in the expectation that after the September 11 attack. When other people will be targeted by them, ever Americans have felt frightened or and ask questions only decades later. under siege they have responded by per- Consider the false promise of many secuting immigrants, members of sus- electronic surveillance measures, like pect ethnic groups, or others guilty only facial recognition systems. A recent of real or apparent sympathy for unpop- report by the American Civil Liberties ular ideologies. Our most revered, or at Union reveals that the widely publi- least respected, presidents have been cized facial recognition system used on shamefully interned Japanese-Amer among the worst offenders: John Adams the streets by police in Tampa, Florida, icans during World War II. Liberty was supported the Alien and Sedition Acts, “never identified even a single individual trampled by all of these measures, while which criminalized opposition to the contained in the department’s database security was enhanced by none of them. of photographs.” Instead, “the system But the cruelty and folly of impris- made many false positives, including oning people for their political views or such errors as confusing what were to their ethnicity is usually acknowledged “Facial recognition . . . a human easily identifiable male and only in hindsight. During World War II female images.” The ACLU report was some people no doubt felt safer knowing camera based on a review of police logs obtained that their Japanese-American neighbors through Florida’s open-records law. operators are were interned. The Supreme Court ruled Technological inaccuracies like these at the time that the internment was apt to focus were coupled with human errors and justified on disproportionately abuses of discretion. A facial recognition sys- on racial minorities tem can only or while away the be as hours peering up wom- good as en’s skirts.”

government (and was used to impris- on his political foes); Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and presided over the arrests of thousands of people for crimes like “disloyalty” (which sometimes consisted of criticizing the president); Woodrow Wilson imprisoned Eugene Debs for speaking out against America’s entry into the First World War; Franklin Roosevelt famously and

13 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 OP-ED

its database in identifying terrorists or database to stalk women and intimidate we’re simply too frightened and unin- other violent criminals, and in Tampa other citizens. formed to challenge them. People who the photographic database was not lim- Considering the ways facial recogni- want or need to continue flying, for ited to known criminals: it included tion systems have been used and abused example, can’t bear to devote much people the police were interested in so far, it’s fair to say that they consti- thought to the continuing inadequa- questioning in the belief that they might tute a threat—to privacy, liberty, and cies of airport security; instead they have “valuable intelligence.” Under even physical safety—not a promise of take comfort in whatever false prom- guidelines like this ordinary law-abid- security. But we are beginning to use ise of security they’re offered. So, the ing citizens who venture out in public them more, not less. Several cities have problem for civil libertarians isn’t the might find themselves setting off alarms decided to deploy the kind of system tendency of people to trade liberty for in facial recognition systems (should that failed so miserably in Tampa, and security. It’s their tendency to trade they ever work properly). of course, facial recognition is being liberty for mere illusions of security. Whether or not your photograph is in touted as an important airport secu- Liberty would benefit greatly from a the database, your privacy is likely to be rity tool. Airports in cities including logical, pragmatic approach to safety. invaded by a facial recognition system. Boston, Providence, and Palm Beach In our frightened, irrational world, free- Cameras scan crowds and, as the ACLU are installing facial recognition systems. dom may be threatened most by wishful observes, in Britain, where electronic Meanwhile precautions that might actu- thinking. surveillance is becoming routine, cam- ally enhance security, like screening all era operators are apt to focus dispropor- checked bags and carry-ons, are as far Wendy Kaminer is a lawyer and tionately on racial minorities or while from implementation as ever. social critic. Her latest book is Sleeping away the hours peering up women’s Why do a majority of American tol- with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of skirts. In Michigan, according to a report erate and support invasive or repres- Irrationalism and the Perils of Piety. by the Detroit Free Press, police used a sive faux security measures? I suspect

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

it wasn’t a “yes-no” question. It was an “either-or” question.) Further, while Mr. Prager clearly regarded it as a trick Are Faith and Safety question, I have—unlike him—been in exactly that hypothetical position several times. Without leaving the letter B in the alphabet, I can say that in Belfast, Inversely Related? Beirut, and Belgrade I have been on the streets at odd hours and been compelled few days before the assault on to wonder about exactly who is coming American civil society by faith- toward me. In each case, if I were the Abased death squads, I was a mem- praying type, I would have been fer- ber of a panel discussion at a conserva- vently beseeching that the men had not tive weekend conference. I gave it as my just wound up a session at the Martyr’s opinion that there was no means of deriv- Memorial Church, or the Party of God ing ethics from religion, and that a moral local, or the Serbian Orthodox hangout. life was not only possible without super- But who, in the context, could I have natural support, but in fact more feasible. been beseeching? I was challenged by Dennis Prager, the The absurdity of this dilemma is well right-wing media performer. He insisted known to anyone who has ever been, that he could accept my view only on even for an intellectual instant, an athe- condition that I gave a “yes or no” answer ist in a foxhole. It is precisely at such to the following question: “Suppose you moments that the emptiness of revealed are lost in a strange town and it is late I like to think that I can “do” fast-ser- religion becomes much more, rather at night. You see a group of men coming vice panel or chat-show questions with- than less, evident. Which is why it is so toward you. Do you feel more safe, or less out rehearsal, but I have to admit that I depressing to see even the most vivid safe, on learning that they have just come was momentarily unhorsed by the sheer such moments conscripted by the unscru - from a prayer meeting?” fatuity of this. (For one thing, as phrased, pulous peddlers of revelation. After

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

dened himself of the view that the attacks cancel my appearance. The reason given were a divine judgment on America, and was an interview I had conducted with “After all, easily the a group of Christians and Jews convened Free Inquiry, in which I repeated my by Rabbi Daniel Lapine vented the same atheist views. Mr. Krasny read the e-mail most devout people on thought in a prominent advertisement on the air and also replied to it in person, on the op-ed page of the New York saying that his show did not discrimi- the four civilian aircraft Times. So in a bizarre form of reverse nate against unbelievers. I later wrote of September 11 were ecumenism, prominent spokesmen for to Healy, asking if he spoke for himself all branches of religion have in one way or for his bishop. He responded in hurt the men who murdered or another endorsed Usama bin Laden’s tones, saying that he did not want to statement that the United States is “the censor anyone, let alone discriminate, but their passengers and world leader of atheism.” If only this were that some views, such as those in Free many others.” true. Instead, even in a country that is in Inquiry, were just too much to take. many ways the world capital of materi- I find this instructive, as well as alism, people voluntarily disarm them- amusing, for three reasons. First, it selves by the belief that, if a group is com- shows that the term infidel means to all, easily the most devout people on ing toward them with religious intent, some Catholics exactly what it means the four civilian aircraft of September that intent must somehow be benign. to some extremist Muslims. Second, it 11 were the men who murdered their shows that some people (this man iden- passengers and many others and killed * * * tified himself as “director of Communi themselves in the process. But not even You often hear that the Catholic Church cations and Outreach”!) cannot make this random encounter with the devout, has become more tolerant and “inclu- the elementary distinction between which took place in broad daylight, has sive.” You also often hear that, at any abhorring a view and seeking to censor been enough to put a dent in the fallacy. rate, it instructs its members in logic (if it. Third, it shows that Free Inquiry is Everybody remembers the frightful not in reason). I had personal experience read in all the right places. remarks made by Jerry Falwell and Pat to the contrary on a recent book-tour Robertson in the immediate aftermath stop in San Francisco. Michael Krasny, Christopher Hitchens is a columnist of the September aggression. They said the popular and literate host of Forum on for Vanity Fair and the Nation and the openly that the attacks were a punish- KQED, had invited me to be his guest. He author most recently of Unacknowl ment for a society wedded to materialism received an e-mail from Maurice Healy of edged Legislation: Writers in the Public and sexual pluralism, and were duly the Catholic Archdiocese, asking him to Sphere. ridiculed for it. But only a few days later, at a solemn memorial service at the National Cathedral, Billy Graham told the assembled American establishment that the murder victims were all safe and happy in paradise. He added that they would not wish to return even if they could. This insult to the grieving relatives, delivered while the ruins were still smoldering, was also an insult to the intelligence of a whole society. Yet nobody saw fit to point out that this view had received, so to speak, official endorse ment. (Always an honored guest at the White House, Graham soon afterwards received a knighthood from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.) His son and successor got into some mild hot water for saying that Islam was essentially a wicked religion, but again nobody was on hand to point out that, in the matter of knowing all about the sumptuous character of Paradise and how to get there, the Grahams and the Al Qaeda forces were reading from the same page. In succeeding weeks, the Greek Orthodox patriarch in Athens unbur-

15 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 OP-ED

PETER SINGER

tunity to dominate a society, they prove themselves no friend of freedom. Starting from the position that God Freedom and the has put us here on earth for a purpose, they see suicide as something like desertion from the military, except that the suicide is disobeying orders Right to Die from the Supreme Commander. They regard voluntary euthanasia as even he Netherlands’ isolation as the worse than suicide, since it involves the only country in which voluntary intentional killing of an innocent human Teuthanasia is legal is about to being. Because the rule against such end. In October 2001 the Belgian senate killing is not to be questioned, the fact voted by almost 2–1 to allow doctors to that the person killed is suffering from a act on a patient’s request for assistance terminal or incurable illness and wants in dying. The legislation is expected to to die is, in the eyes of the religious, pass the lower house shortly. That the irrelevant. Netherlands’ closest neighbor is likely It is more surprising when those to be the next country to take this step who are not religious, and who profess should provide food for thought among to support individual freedom, attack those who have denounced voluntary proposals to legalize physician-assisted euthanasia in the Netherlands as rife suicide and voluntary euthanasia. Nat with abuses. If that were really the Hentoff’s column in the Winter 2001/02 case, why would the country that is bet- Free Inquiry, “Challenging Singer,” is ter placed than all others to know what Netherlands—not only because of its an example of such attacks and serves geographical proximity, but because to show how full of holes they are. most of its people speak Dutch—be Hentoff objected to my views regarding ready to copy the Dutch model? both voluntary and nonvoluntary eutha The main source of opposi- nasia, but here I am concerned only tion to legalizing voluntary with his opposition to voluntary eutha- euthanasia in Belgium is nasia. How can a secular defender of the Christian Democrats, human rights argue against the idea and if they fail to stop it that when and how we die is primarily that will be evidence of our own concern, and that, especially traditional Christianity’s (though I would say, not only) when we declining influence in are terminally or incurably ill, we have that country. (Perhaps the right to choose the time and manner France, which also of our death? shares a common language with part Hentoff’s first objection is that many goes on of Belgium’s population, and where physicians “are unable to recognize in the church attendance has fallen pre- clinical depression, which, when treat cipitously, will be the next to fol- ed successfully, removes the wish for low suit.) That Roman Catholics, death.” Let’s assume that this is true. It Protestant conservatives, and doesn’t require much thought to see that others from traditional reli- it is not an argument against legalizing gious backgrounds should be voluntary euthanasia, but an argument against physician-assisted for including in any voluntary eutha- suicide and voluntary euthanasia legislation a requirement that a nasia is predictable. Such reli- psychiatrist or someone else trained in gions tend to be authoritarian recognizing clinical depression should and to discourage critical examine any patient requesting volun- thinking in their followers. tary euthanasia, and certify that the When they have the oppor- patient is not suffering from a treat-

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

able form of clinical depression. Such the Australian Federal Parliament in What I find most odd, in someone a proposal is perfectly practical. In fact a movement led by a Roman Catholic who has written a book called Living when voluntary euthanasia was legal- politician.) the Bill of Rights, is that, instead of ized in Australia’s Northern Territory Hentoff also thinks that many phy- advocating that we add strict safeguards sicians are not good at treating pain to any law legalizing voluntary euthana- and that sometimes good pain relief sia, he instead takes the heavy-handed, can remove the desire for euthanasia. illiberal route of saying that it must not Religious That is also true, but most pain spe- be legalized. He thus aligns himself with cialists admit that in a small number Attorney General John Ashcroft, who, in conservatives of cases pain can never be adequately November 2001, while the Bush adminis- relieved short of making the patient tration was calling for political unity to think suicide unconscious. Although some doctors do fight terrorism, nevertheless found time resembles desertion practice “terminal sedation,” I find it to issue an executive order designed to hard to see why any dying patient would deny people in Oregon the right to phy- from the military, prefer to be unconscious for a few days sician-assisted suicide, although that and then die rather than die straight state has twice voted in support of this except that the suicide away. But in any case, if poor pain relief right. Hentoff and Ashcroft agree, it is disobeying orders is the problem, there is again an obvious seems, in wishing to deny the citizens fix: ensure that candidates for euthana- of this country an important right now from the Supreme sia see a palliative care specialist. In exercised by citizens of the Netherlands, Commander. addition, some patients who are not in and which citizens of Belgium will, in all pain at all still want euthanasia because probability, shortly be free to exercise. they are weak, constantly tired, nau- seous, breathless, or perhaps they just Peter Singer is the Ira W. DeCamp a few years ago, that law did require find the whole process of slowly wasting Professor of Bioethics at Princeton that someone with a psychiatric qual- away undignified. University and author of Writings on ification must certify that the patient Does Mr. Hentoff think that a dying an Ethical Life. was mentally competent to make the person shouldn’t be able to make such a decision. (That law was overruled by judgment, and act on it?

JOAN KENNEDY TAYLOR

that this “war” should end. If these informed people are against this war, why is anybody for it? Basic Ending the War ally, because the government tells them to be. Most people don’t have time to evaluate risk for themselves; we trust the government to evaluate the safety of on Drugs the meat we buy, the medicines that can be prescribed, even the materials from growing chorus of people in a posi- which children’s clothing can be made. tion to know—judges, retired law But government experts are fallible, like Aenforcement people, politicians, everyone else—only when the govern- journalists—say the War on Drugs is ment makes a mistake in banning some- unwinnable; that despite all the money thing, it’s almost impossible to change. and the incarcerations and the foreign Remember the drug thalidomide? It policy maneuverings we haven’t succeed- produced terrible deformities in babies ed in materially lessening either supply or when taken by pregnant women. Clearly, demand since President Nixon declared no pregnant woman should take it. At the a federal war on drugs in 1969. On the same time, it was the only known drug one hand, avowed conservatives including and on the other hand, the national that could treat leprosy—not a wide- William F. Buckley, George Schultz, and American Civil Liberties Union—people spread scourge in the United States, but the Republican governor of New Mexico, who rarely agree with each other—agree hardly unknown either. After the scan-

17 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 OP-ED

dal, any use of thalidomide was forbid- Now, as of last October, the Drug began calling for the legalization of den in the United States for decades— Enforcement Administration (DEA) has drugs (especially cocaine), first at the until very recently, in fact, when officials prohibited as “controlled substances” Tenth Latin American Summit of Heads decided to reevaluate thalidomide in all products made from hemp (the mar- of State and then at the inauguration light of its other beneficial properties ijuana plant) that contain any trace of of President Vincente Fox in Mexico, and perhaps allow it to be prescribed the active ingredient thc. Not that the saying that “while this substance has again—just not to pregnant women. It’s DEA thinks that cloth and rope and this fantastic market value” no mecha- quite apt that this has been called “The hand creme and dietary supplements nism “can impede its trafficking,” When War on Some Drugs.” will make anyone high, but edible prod- drugs are legalized in the United States, Are the forbidden drugs more dan- ucts made from hemp can sometimes he says, they will lose their value, and gerous to health than those that are give false positives in drug testing. So Latin American leaders should call legally allowed? Not at all. Experts seem they are all banned. Well, not quite all. for that day to protect their countries. to agree that the legal drugs alcohol and Cloth and rope and, provisionally, toilet- Meanwhile, here at home in December, tobacco are much more destructive to ries are exempt from the ban, courtesy Judge Richard A. Posner suggested in health than heroin, cocaine, or, of course, of your government. the Atlantic Monthly that, while ter- marijuana. Inconsistency is the least of the prob- rorism may lead to some curtailment of Opiates and marijuana have been in lems the War on Drugs has brought us, civil liberties, if we take the opportunity use through history, but pharmaceutical- of course. The statistics are ubiquitous to challenge the War on Drugs (which ly created drugs arrive on the scene and he calls a “big flop” that targets a con- are encouraged or banned by the govern- sensual activity with consequently few ment for seemingly arbitrary reasons. At “When the complaining witnesses and therefore least two drugs that are now controlled requires intrusive police surveillance substances, LSD and MDMA (Ecstasy), government and action), we could minimize any net began life as psychotherapeutic drugs makes a decrease in civil liberties. before they were banned because of rec- The answer as to why we haven’t reational usage. Several other psychoac- mistake in insisted on doing this is not just that we tive drugs—Prozac, Paxil, and Ritalin, don’t know what the experts know. It’s to name a few—are not only allowed banning that we find it hard to imagine changing by the government but often promoted the status quo. In the nineteenth century, by official institutions. So, of course, is something, it’s when John Stuart Mill was protesting the methadone. almost impossible subjection of women, he said that you Battle now rages around marijuana can’t expect people to “give up practical because of its medicinal value. Mari to change.” principles in which they have been born juana is apparently highly effective and bred and which are the basis of much against the persistent nausea many can- and disturbing: civil liberties violations; of the existing order of the world, at the cer and AIDS patients experience. For random searches on highways and in pub- first argumentative attack which they are many years some doctors have unoffi- lic places; warrantless searches; ques- not capable of logically resisting.” cially urged these patients to use medi- tionable killings; asset forfeiture (seizing The argument cannot be resisted—it cal marijuana. Now, with the success of property on suspicion of its being involved can be shown to be true. The practical some political campaigns to legalize such in a crime and requiring owners to sue to principle we have accepted without ques- use, the battle is being joined. get it back); domestic government expen- tion is that practices that are bad should The widely publicized fate of the ditures that escalated from millions per be illegal. The practical principle we over- best-selling author Peter McWilliams is year in the seventies to billions today; look is that when pleasurable consensual a horrific case in point. McWilliams, a and the racist effect—57 percent of those practices are made illegal some people terminal AIDS patient, was brought into serving time in federal and state prison may indeed be deterred, but others will federal court in 2000 for growing and for drug offenses are Black. I won’t even try to get around the legal barriers—and using marijuana, a practice that has mention the foreign policy repercussions. there is then money to be made. Those been legal in his state of California since The effect on respect for the law, of who are for the war hope to end drug 1996. He was forbidden to tell the jury course, has been bad—exacerbated by use, as evil. Those who are for ending it that what he did was legal in the state, the mandatory minimum sentences that realize that we are fighting a war against that he had AIDS, or that marijuana have overcrowded our prisons even while our own society. We can make our society was all that could prevent his vomiting the judges compelled to impose them have more and more unbearable, but we can- up his medication. In order to get bail denounced them from the bench. not win this war. during his trial, he was forbidden to use Why has this war been so horren- the drug, and was tested periodically to dous? The very prohibiting of some- Joan Kennedy Taylor is the author make sure he complied. He was convict- thing that people find pleasurable cre- of Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individ ed, and while awaiting sentencing, he ates a market by making it harder to ualist Feminism Rediscovered and the choked at home on his own vomit and get. Experts know that, too. In 2000, vice president of Feminists for Free died. the president of Uruguay, Jorge Batlle, Expression.

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

NAT HENTOFF

“When an agency of A Baptist Case the state organizes

student prayer—by, for example, holding for Separation a vote for or against hen the Supreme Court ruled last term that public-school– t o prayer by all stu- W sponsored prayer before foot- dents—then the state is ball games was a violation of the separation of church and state, Chief Justice engaged in forcing William Rehnquist wrote in dissent and students in the minority disgust that the majority opinion “bris- tles with hostility to all things religious to receive an unwant- in public life.” ed exhortation that The cry of outrage was taken up by many in the Religious Right, and, may go against their since the Supreme Court has no troops core beliefs.” to enforce its orders, that decision— Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe—is being defied in a number of ing students in the minority to receive towns and cities. an unwanted exhortation that may go But one of the strongest, clearest against their core beliefs. voices in support of the decision came As Melissa Rogers puts it for the from a religious group. This is worth Baptist Committee: “Using the voting noting both because of its compelling process to advance the religious views logic and also because some separation- of the majority of the students against ists tend to stereotype all church orga- the consciences of the minority violates nizations as being on the wrong side of a primary purpose of the First Amend this constitutional debate. ment’s Establishment Clause.” This illumination of the First Amend She goes on to highlight a fundamen- ment’s Establishment Clause came from tal tenet of the religious liberty in this the Baptist Joint Committee in Washing country that should be on the office walls ton. Included in the committee are U.S.A. of school boards, principals, and superin- Baptist churches, the Religious Liberty tendents of public schools throughout the Council, and the Southern Baptist state nation. Says Rogers: conventions. The General Counsel of the Baptist We should and must continue to keep Committee was Melissa Rogers. She government out of the prayer business. Using government coercion to points out, to begin with, that “the encourage participation in religious school in this case was heavily involved exercises strikes at the heart of our in establishing and overseeing the poli- Constitution’s guarantee of religious cy and encouraging prayer.” liberty, and trivializes a sacred act. Any student can pray any place at As a child in the William Lloyd any time—before a test or while await- Garrison public school in Bos ing a disciplinary procedure. But when ton, I and other Jewish children an agency of the state organizes stu- were forced by the principal dent prayer—by, for example, holding a vote for or against prayer by all students—then the state is engaged in forc-

19 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 OP-ED

sing carols for weeks before Christmas, freedom of conscience, and separation ocally by some law school deans and testifying that Jesus was our Lord. of church and state, there could be no professors that this act of state cen- Instead of those phrases, I muttered freedom of speech, or of the press, or the sorship is constitutional because the some Yiddish expletives to myself, but right of assembly.” valedictorian would be speaking before I felt a decided outsider, and more The Supreme Court’s Santa Fe deci- a captive audience. than somewhat humiliated. This was sion should also extend constitutional But the valedictorian is neither pros- long before the Supreme Court took up protections concerning the free exer- elytizing nor exhorting. The student Establishment Clauses cases in public cise of religion to those public school is speaking personally, and only per- schools, but my memory of those invol- valedictorians who have to get the sonally—not in the name or under the untary choruses remains vivid. principal’s approval of their graduation instruction of the state. Melissa Rogers Contrary to the chief justice’s misun- speeches. tells me she agrees. A case of a cen- derstanding of the history of our nation’s If the valedictorian wants to thank sored valedictorian may soon appear battles for religious liberty—both before his or her parents, a favorite history before the Supreme Court. I hope the and long after the Revolution—Melissa teacher, and Jesus Christ, the latter Court, too, agrees. Rogers emphasizes that the Santa Fe reference is often censored out of the decision “helped rather than harmed the speech because—the principal says— cause of religious liberty.” it’s a violation of the Establishment Nat Hentoff is a regular columnist In The Bill of Rights (Bobbs-Merrill, Clause. but the content of the speech for the Village Voice, the Legal Times, 1965)—which should be reissued and has been entirely created by the stu- the Washington Times, and Editor made available to every schoolchild—Irv dent. There is no coercion by any & Publisher, a United Media syndi- ing Brant wrote that the Framers “knew agency of the state—the school board, cated columnist, and the author of what they were doing. English history the superintendent of schools, or the Living the Bill of Rights (University of had demonstrated to them that with- principal. California Press). out complete religious freedom, without However, I have been told unequiv-

VERN L. BULLOUGH

necessary to combat terrorism, the word crusade disappeared from his lexicon. He realized that the United Set a Place for Islam States could not afford to antagonize the whole Islamic world, because he erhaps inadvertently, certainly needed Muslim support (or at least tol- unwisely, President George W. eration) for his war. During the Afghan PBush initially called his campaign campaign the United States government against Usama bin Laden and terrorism and most of the American press contin- a “crusade.” Given its history, that term ually emphasized that this was not a was certain to antagonize Muslims and war with Islam per se, and that we had many others. In addition, it played into many Muslim allies. On the domestic the hands of the Christian Right. Jerry front, ever since September 11 the U.S. Falwell and Pat Robertson had already government has issued continual pleas intoned that the terrorist attacks were a for tolerance of non-Christian believers punishment from God because America in the United States, especially Muslims. had strayed from the path of true Chris The American people responded with tianity and fallen under the sway of sec- an unprecedented interest in Islam. ular humanists, homosexuals, civil lib- Newspapers devoted special articles to ertarians, and secularists in general. In Ramadan. Newspapers and magazines this view they were simply echoing the response to September 11 was a verita- featured Ramadan recipes along with attack of Tim LaHaye and David Noebel, ble Christian crusade—not only against special reports on Islamic leaders (local who in their book Mind Siege: The bin Laden, but against non-Christians in or national), mosques, or believers. Battle for Truth in the New Millen general, within and outside the United President Bush invited Muslim children nium, issued a call to arms against sec- States. to the White House to mark the end of ular humanism and secular society in Fortunately, Bush quickly back- Ramadan. As a humanist I was pleased general. What these men visualized as a tracked from his initial rhetoric. As by all of this, because I believe it will he focused more clearly on what was have long-term effects on America’s

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

religious self-image, in the end further Others strongly opposed this grow- underscoring the importance of the ing smorgasbord because they feared United States being a secular country. it would lead to secularism. Christian Fundamentalist Christians have many groups coalesced around Robertson, Fal attitudes in common with fundamental- well, LaHaye, and similar leaders, often ist Muslims and fundamentalist Jews, under such labels as “evangelical fun- including the importance they attach to damentalist.” Clearly not all evangelical religion in their lives. But they also have fundamentalists belonged to this group- significant differences, and it is these ing, and some members of the coalition differences that will ultimately outweigh were neither evangelical nor fundamen- the similarities, lending momentum to talist Protestant; but they sounded the help maintain a secular United States. same refrain: a plea to make the United Consider that for much of its early States a Christian nation. Recently some history, the United States was domi- have defected from the hard-line mis- Preserve the nated by Protestant Christians. Though sion of these groups or at least tried to future of there were just enough enlightened sec- speak more cautiously. Billy Graham, for ularists and freethinkers to ensure that example, said he had dropped the term humanism. church-state separation would be writ- “Crusade for Christ” because he believes, ten into the Constitution, constitutional as Bush came to do, that crusade was too Provide for separation was not always observed. antagonistic a term. Countless civil liberties battles were One major change brought about by Free Inquiry in required to more firmly establish, main- the terrorist attacks of September 11, tain, and extend it. has been to inject a new group into the your will. During much of the nineteenth centu- religious equation—the Muslims; this ry, the majority of Americans regarded will strengthen multiculturalism and fur- the United States as a Christian nation. ther weaken the influence of groups that In the schools, the Protestant Bible was hold that the United States is or must Please remember FREE often the textbook, and so dominant was become a Christian nation. In order not INQUIRY (the Council for this Protestant-centered ideology that the to alienate our potential Islamic allies Secular Humanism) when Catholic Church established its parochial the president, most of the press, and the planning your estate. Your school system to counter it. As Catholic U.S. political establishment have encour- bequest will help to main- immigration swelled, U.S. Protestantism aged mass education about Islam. Large tain the vitality and financial came gradually (if not entirely) to terms numbers of American Muslims who had security of humanism in a with Catholicism, though the animosities more or less deliberately kept a low society often hostile toward between the two traditions took many profile have emerged to claim their place it. Depending on your circum- years to wither. But it was not only in the religious pantheon. We are quite Catholic immigrants who came in great clearly no longer a Christian or even a stances, a charitable bequest numbers. Jewish immigrants did too, and Judeo-Christian country, but a multire- to FREE INQUIRY may have for a time anti-Semitism seemed to be ligious one in which Muslims have an little impact on the net size the only thing Protestant and Catholic important place. In the process, other of your estate—or may even Americans had in common. groups—Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, Par result in a greater amount The years just after World War II sees, Orthodox Christians, and others being available to your ben- saw increasing integration of Jews who have also long been silent—have eficiaries. and Catholics into the American power also emerged to national prominence structure, driven in part by the harrow- and are insisting on their rights. Quite We would be happy to ing example of the Holocaust. In subse- clearly, most U.S. citizens still belong to work with you and your quent decades the civil rights struggle one religion or another, but the only way attorney in the development cemented this inclusive trend, breaking disparate groups can be held together of a will or estate plan that down many of the barriers facing people is in a tolerant secular state, something meets your wishes. of color. By the 1980s, educators began humanists very much want. It is also the to emphasize multiculturalism and its only way the United States can defeat For more information, vision of an America defined by diver- terrorism. contact: Development Director, sity of creeds, races, and cultural back- Free Inquiry, P.O. Box 664, grounds. The United States was now Vern Bullough is a visiting profes- Amherst, NY 14226-0664. seen as having been strongly influenced sor in the Department of Nursing at by Judeo-Christian (no longer solely the University of Southern California All inquiries are held in the “Christian”) culture, and even this was and an FI senior editor. tempered by the recognition and cele- strictest confidence. bration of differences.

21 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 OP-ED

TIBOR R. MACHAN

that tobacco farmers, failing car compa- nies, airlines without passengers, and thousands of other clients march to the What About the centers of government and demand that they, too, be provided with funds taken from taxpayers who haven’t been guilty of producing their losses? It is because Children? once any segment of society—even just helpless kids—gets government aid, hose who prize a free society— everyone starts thinking, “Hey, there’s one wherein government con- stuff there for us, too.” Tcerns itself solely with protecting My reason for raising this problem individual rights, keeping the peace, isn’t to side with those eager to give and fending off attacks from enemies— up on the ideal of a truly free society have one very tough problem to over- because some problem seems intract come. This is the fact that millions of able. Anyway, I doubt seriously that the people who have no business doing so welfare state really solves the problem, keep having children. given how many kids go unattended or In a truly free society, persons may are cared for in perfunctory ways. not be prevented from acting freely Rather, I want to point out that unless they have committed crimes cannot guarantee that every child will there will always be something that against others. Prospective parents who be taken care of. (Indeed, not every child a good theory does not fully address. fit this description are, therefore, quite is taken care of when children become There will always be something we free to engage in sexual unions, and wards of the government.) Government will need new thinking to solve. The these unions often bring children into alone has at its disposal the use of force task of interpreting essentially sound the world. But many such prospective to transfer resources to those who need principles to cover new problems never parents cannot afford having children, them; where helpless children are con- ends. Even in the case of children and and rely on the government to pro- cerned, asking government to refrain other incompetents, there are possible vide the children with basic necessities from such transfers amounts to cruelty. solutions we should consider seriously including day care, education, and med- Of course, it is also cruel to demand before we abandon the ideal of freedom. ical services. In such circumstances, by the force of law that responsible tax- Adoptions, for example, could be made withdrawing the government-provided payers—who have kids only when they easier, holding out hope for helpless services deprives not parents but chil- are willing to care for them—additionally kids now barred because of the red tape dren of what they need to flourish in life. provide for kids they did not produce. and other tedious obstacles. And there And children have nothing to do with But most folks believe that helpless chil- are probably options not yet thought getting themselves into this kind of fix. dren and other incompetents should not of that would emerge were we to insist Accordingly, when champions of be left on their own. And many of them that liberty never be breached, even in individual liberty advocate cutting are willing to enlist the force of govern- heart-wrenching circumstances. government’s size and scope, they are ment to do for the children what they Still, defenders of liberty need to faced with a very serious obstacle. This might be doing out of their own pockets if craft a solution to the problem of chil- is the understandable concern we all they were truly sincere in their concern. dren and other dependents that can fly have for innocent children brought into In light of this, some libertarians with the general public. Otherwise we this world by irresponsible parents. It would just abandon the ideals of a are left with a powerful excuse—and a is difficult to accept policies that would truly free society. They would accept as source of great pressure—to give up our lead to children having to suffer. How inevitable the least level of government fight for true liberty. can this problem be faced in a way that expansion and expense above that of does not put innocent children at grave the “minimal state” in order to save risk? the kids. But with this concession to Tibor R. Machan teaches at the Of course, in a free society many insti- expanded government, the floodgates Argyros School of Business and tutions would be ready to take up the open for sure. No end of people will then Economics at Chapman University. task of caring for kids and other helpless use that precedent to lobby for gov- He is the author of Initiative—Human persons. Even in a welfare state, hun- ernment transfers to achieve whatever Agency and Society (Hoover Institu dreds of such institutions exist. But they they deem vital. How else do we explain tion Press, 2000).

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 22 OP-ED

“When I read of tens Stem Cells, Cloning, of thousands of dollars being spent per and Explornography successful in vitro fertilization, this sounds John A. Frantz like terrible vanity tem cells are undifferentiated cells technical problems of IVF. Now I touch on capable of becoming all cell types. some public policy problems relating to it. compared to the SSeparate one from its fellows and Explornography is a word coined simpler alternative identical twins may result. When it hap- in honor of the Mt. Everest disasters pens spontaneously in the womb you of 1996. Explornography occurs when of adopting get identical twins (or triplets, quads, people with obscene amounts of money an otherwise or quints). These siblings are “natural hire somebody to take them someplace clones” in every sense of the word: where they have no business going. IVF unwanted child.” genetically identical, able to accept is a little like explornography: both are grafted organs from one another with so expensive that they border on poor no threat of graft-versus-host disease public policy because of the opportunity been cured through pancreatic trans- or rejection. cost (what you could have had of greater plants, albeit at the cost of surgery and The great increase in multiple births value, if you hadn’t already spent the immunosuppression. today results from in vitro fertilization money). In addition, they both smack of In the case of childhood-onset dia- (IVF). Current practice is to implant ego-tripping. When I read of tens of thou- betics, who seldom live more than forty many embryos at one time to increase sands of dollars being spent per success- years after diagnosis, early treatment the success rate; once in a while there ful in vitro fertilization, this sounds like with injected islet cells (in place of a is too much success. Proposals now terrible vanity compared to the simpler transplant) could greatly improve their afloat would prohibit implanting more alternative of adopting an otherwise prospects, especially if it could be done than two or three embryos at one time unwanted child. If present-day IVF is without the need for immunosuppres- to reduce such complications of mul- questionable on these grounds, cloning sion or the threat of rejection of trans- tiple pregnancy as prematurity and as an elective reproductive technique planted islet cells. Therapeutic cloning threats to the mother’s health. The would be even worse. could make this possible by producing children resulting from these multiple And yet IVF has brought us embry- injectable cells genetically identical to births are not natural clones; they are onic stem cell research, a beneficial side the patient. Embryonic stem cells would only as closely related as siblings of effect of the large number of unneeded have their nuclei removed and replaced different ages would be. embryos IVF leaves behind. It has also by cell nuclei from the recipient. The Harvesting ova for IVF is elaborate and brought us to the point where we need resulting cells would then be treated by expensive. One drug-induced super-ovu- two words for cloning, one for the “ego- a method yet to be devised to transform lation can produce enough embryos for trip” or reproductive cloning just dis- them into islet cells. These cells could several years of implantation attempts. cussed, another for “therapeutic cloning” survive in the recipient without immu- If early attempts succeed, many embry- based on stem cell research. The latter nosuppression and cure the diabetes. os may be left over in the freezer. The is—or should be—exempt from many of This transfer of nuclei is what was done implantation success rate is unlikely to the moral and practical questions sur- in Scotland to produce Dolly the cloned improve. Serious defects are common in rounding ego-trip cloning. sheep, but with entirely different moti- all embryonic development, usually re A likely early triumph of therapeutic vation and consequences: another illus- sulting in miscarriage. Most miscarriages stem cell research may be implant- tration of the need for different words for are best looked at as nature culling fac- able, stem-cell–derived islet cells, the the two kinds of cloning. tory defects. A defective embryo may be pancreatic cells that produce insulin. Therapeutic cloning has great poten- expelled so quickly that the woman does Persuading a stem cell to become an tial for good. Maybe we should find not even miss a menstrual period. When islet cell should be orders of magnitude another name for it, and so reduce this occurs in ordinary life, the woman easier than persuading it to multiply the risk that it will get caught in some may not even know she was pregnant. into diverse cell types and organize general backlash against cloning of the With IVF and implantation, the woman is into a kidney or some other organ. Islet ego-trip variety. aware of every attempt, but the natural cells have already taken as grafts in the failure rate remains high. livers of experimental animals. Mean John A. Frantz is chairman of the This puts some perspective on the while, diabetic patients have already Monroe (Wisconsin) Board of Health.

23 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 OP-ED

structively the cultural and economic gap between rich and poor, to promote peace and cooperation between peoples, Reason Against and to be a platform for solving the global problems of modern times. We as humanists call upon all people to condemn not only terrorism in all its Religious Terrorism forms, but also the religious ideologies, religious fanaticism, and totalitarian ideas that feed such extremism. A Statement by the In memory of the victims of Sept ember 11, 2001, and in memory of count- Russian Humanist Society less other victims of religious intolerance, we the Russian humanists invite he American tragedy of Sep concepts of religion, nationalism, and all peoples, governments, political par- tember 11, 2001, has revealed the ideology deny this truth and raise the ties, and international organizations not Troots of deep planetary contra- specter of new explosions of extremism, only to proclaim an uncompromising war dictions that threaten the world com- fanaticism, terror, and war. The imag- against terrorism, but also to consider munity, and indeed life itself on planet es of symbols of the United States of the weltanschauung of modern human- Earth. This act of unprecedented terror America—the Pentagon and the World ism as a real counterforce against the against thousands of innocent people Trade Center—in ruins demonstrates global disease of human reason and con- ought, at last, to start humanity think- the fact with inhuman cruelty. Nothing science that terrorism represents. ing about the stark incompatibility of less than a planetary turn toward com- We call for recognition of the human- modern achievements in the areas of mon sense—toward a worldwide unifi- ist weltanschauung as the most com- scientific knowledge, human rights, and cation of moral, juridical, and ecological plete embodiment of human dignity and the establishment of human moral stan- norms for all humanity—can reconcile reason: a reliable intellectual and moral dards with ideological, nationalistic, or humanity with itself and with nature to support for the peaceful and fulfilling religious fanaticism in any form. forestall an apocalypse of this world. lives of persons, of peoples, and of the By mobilizing all of their resources, We, the members of the Russian world community. the civilized countries might do away Humanist Society, are convinced that We call on the world community to with present-day terrorists, but new ter- humanism—which acknowledges the consider humanism not as a political rorists would arise, more inhuman and equality of all the people according to ideology or doctrine, excluding all oth- inventive than their predecessors. The their elementary aspirations to life and ers, but rather as a moral force, a free time has come to recognize a bitter happiness, to freedom and dignity, to way of thinking for the free and respon- truth: religions can neither stop nor rights and duties—can become the base sible personality living in a free and even condemn religious terrorism from of a universal weltanschauung, capa- law-based society. the position of their dogmas, which have ble of meeting the diverse needs of all long obstructed moral and cultural prog- the world’s cultures, capable of guiding The above statement was adopted as a res- ress. In the same way, religious dogmas individuals and peoples toward a future olution at the Russian Humanist Society meeting September 19, 2001. This trans- have obstructed—and still obstruct— of peaceful coexistence, cooperation, lation is by Dr. Pyotr Trevogin and was the way to peace and mutual under- mutu al respect, care, and love. edited by Valerii Kuvakin of the Center for standing between peoples. It is evident Humanism has the capability to tem- Inquiry–Moscow. that, beyond the private lives of believ- per moral conflicts, to address con- ers, outside the church, synagogue, or mosque, all religions give rise to alien- ation, separation, and ultimately, hatred and violence. See the World of CFI. The time has come to recognize that only by the complete and thoroughgoing Centers for Inquiry are now located in Los Angeles, California, the elimination of religious ideas, rites, New York City area, Nigeria, Peru, and Russia—in and symbols from public life can states and the international community hope addition to CFI International in Amherst, New York. to establish tenable peace between reli- Visit them all on our new Web site at gious groups and among peoples. Of www.centerforinquiry.net course, this must be done in a way that Plus: CFI Libraries’ holdings are now on view at protects every person’s liberty of con- www.cfilibraries.org. science. The world long ago became a unique and indivisible organism. The outmoded

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 24 OP-ED

“To suggest that We Also Grieve; mortal danger causes atheists We Also Serve to abandon their heartfelt Katherine Bourdonnay beliefs is insulting beyond This commentary aired on National ed a Civilian Service Medal for eighteen Public Radio’s Morning Edition on months in Vietnam. I drove over bridg- measure.” December 27, 2001, as “A Grieving es where explosives were rumored to Atheist.”—Eds. have been placed . . . sat in a plane that tion who are atheists, agnostics, or sec- came under enemy fire . . . looked out ular humanists scapegoats just because am an American, a native New Yorker, the window of my vehicle to see the we approach life differently than the cousin of a firefighter and—an athe- ground being pockmarked by bullets majority. Our philosophy is, after all, Iist. The first three pull me intimately . . . and woke in the middle of the night relatively benign. We believe life is full into the circle of grief and horror that to the sounds of incoming mortar fire. of random chance events—some good, still surrounds September 11. The fourth As debris struck the tin roof above my some bad. We believe that human beings seems to exclude me from most, if not all, head, I could only wonder if it was harm- ought to take full responsibility for their forums of public expression of sympathy less dirt or penetrating shrapnel. actions. We have humanitarian impuls- and patriotism that have followed. Never once did I seek the protection es because we believe people should The president declares not just a Day of some god figure. To suggest that not suffer in this life. To quote from the of Remembrance but a Day of Prayer mortal danger causes atheists to aban- ancient Greeks, we believe that “Man is and Remembrance. Memorial services don their heartfelt beliefs is insulting the measure of all things,” whether that include religious worship of every ilk: beyond measure. be for good or ill. Catholic, Muslim, Protestant, Jewish, I would never think of belittling peo- Buddhist . . . but not one word of loving ple of religious belief if they find solace Katherine Bourdonnay is sympathy for those who died who had in their religion, especially at this sen- communica tions director for the no religious belief. The only acknowledg- sitive time. So why, I wonder, do these Council for Secular Humanism. ment came from British Prime Minister same righteous people feel they have Tony Blair, who said, “This atrocity is the right to attack me for my nonbelief? an attack on us all, on people of all faiths This is not the time to make the and on people of none.” approximately 10 percent of the popula- So I grieve in private. But I won’t be private about the shocking verbal attacks on atheists, as if we somehow were the ones who flew the planes into those buildings. It was not the nonreligious, but rather people of the most dedicated religious beliefs who did that. In an amazing example of displaced hostility, a national newspaper ran a vit- riolic piece stating, “One can’t help notice the silence of atheists these days. . . . There are no atheists in foxholes, we’ve always known.” Remarks like those insult not only my belief system, they directly impugn my personal courage. I doubt that I have the extraordinary courage exhibited by the firefighters and police officers in New York. But I have served my country and was award-

25 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 OP-ED

“This administra- Hammers, Nails, and tion has exploited September 11 in ways that place the American dream at greater risk than foreign terrorists could confess. I’m one of the eleven Amer ever manage on icans who think warfare was not the Ibest response to the September 11 their own.” attacks. (Actually, there are probably a few million of us.) If you think it’s lone- Afghanistan, but as Central Intelligence ly being an atheist, just try opposing Agency Director George Tenet admitted this “war”! I believe the September 11 to Congress on February 6, the terror attacks, hideous as they were, should network remains active in many other countries. All we accomplished fully have been treated as monstrous crimes Let’s inventory those unintended rather than as acts of war. Acknowl was to topple the Afghan government. consequences. By some standards— To reduce it to a box score, we didn’t edging that mine is a minority viewpoint certainly, by those the commercial even within our own minority community, apprehend our principal target (police media emphasize—American military work). We didn’t neutralize Al Qaeda I’d like to set forth why I think the war action in Afghanistan was astounding- was a bad idea—and why I think events (counterterrorism). We did manage to ly successful. We toppled the Taliban knock down the sovereign government have largely vindicated my misgivings. government, a likely boon to millions First, take the Bush administration. that happened to be standing closest to of Afghans. But that was never our pri- our real quarries. This should surprise Before combat adrenaline blurred our mary objective. Surely few considered vision, many Americans saw George W. no one; we chose to wage (undeclared) Taliban perfidy sufficient cause for war war, and toppling governments is what Bush (accurately, I think) as an under- before September 11. No, our core mis- achiever who never quite amounted to warfare does best. That old saying, sions were to capture or kill bin Laden “When all you have is a hammer, every- the sum of his handlers. Some of those and to neutralize his Al Qaeda network. handlers were open “fascist wannabes” thing looks like a nail,” seems terrify- America signally failed in those mis- ingly germane here. whose social and ideological visions sec- sions. As I write, bin Laden remains ular humanists justifiably found chilling. Why should we worry? Because a war unaccounted for and presumably at that doesn’t—indeed, probably can’t— Moreover, the administration came to large. Al Qaeda took a body blow in power under a cloud of electoral illegit- achieve its stated goals can nonetheless imacy.1 Before September 11, I hoped nothing much would happen in the world until 2004, when a proper presidential election might pluck the national foot from the banana peel. Such was not to be. Second, take the nature of war. By most definitions, war is a conflict between sovereign states. The September 11 attacks were not the work of a sovereign state. That is no pedantic distinction; throughout history warfare has proven an effective tool by which one sovereign state can unseat another’s government. Its utility for other tasks—say, neutraliz- ing a multinational private paramilitary network or apprehending a six-foot-five- inch former Saudi playboy—is less well established. Catching Usama bin Laden is a police function, so we shouldn’t be surprised by unintended consequences when we send soldiers to do a cop’s job.2 RALL ©2001 Ted Rall. Reprinted with permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 26 OP-ED

be rich in unintended consequences. American Right may finally get its chance administration’s legitimacy is dubious. • It remains to be seen whether the to shoot up every country on Earth that The world is a complicated place. future Afghan government will mark a it disapproves of. There’s no reason to To strain a metaphor, it’s as rich with genuine improvement over the Taliban. think that many of these escapades will screws and lag bolts and swage-lock In any event, since the welfare of the result in a better world. fasteners as it ever was with nails. Afghan people was not America’s prin- • Domestic dangers, too, abound. Yet America strides the globe proudly cipal objective, we should not judge our War licenses government to expand its swinging its military hammer, seemingly success by whether we achieve it. power. Each American war left its scars unable to imagine why it might need any • Speaking of the welfare of the on civil liberties. Given Bush’s popu- other tool. As secular humanists and Afghan people, University of New Hamp larity, today “the government” largely Americans, we need to exercise extraor- shire economics professor Marc Herold means Bush’s handlers, many of whom dinary vigilance. has been tabulating civilian casualties, a lusted to curtail personal liberties long pursuit that has unsurprisingly attracted before September 11. To me, the most Notes more attention in European than domes- frightening part of life after September 1. No, I’m not a frustrated Gore supporter. tic media.3 Despite allegedly precise 11 is not the threat of terrorism, but For the record, in 2000 I voted Libertarian, believing with Jefferson that “that govern- U.S. air strikes, Herold pegs the toll at rather the prospect of John Ashcroft ment is best which governs least.” more than four thousand innocent dead, et al. arrogating more power because 2. Admittedly, collaring Usama bin Laden exceeding the roughly 3,100 Americans of war fever. From its push for mili- is no job for Barney Fife. Had it been attempt- now believed killed in the September 11 tary tribunals—fortunately blunted by ed, doubtless it would have been a police action with a substantial military component. attacks. You don’t do ethics by counting concerted opposition—to cavalier dis- The Israelis have shown great skill in equip- bodies, but surely this does nothing to regard for Geneva protocols in its han- ping and training elite military units to con- buttress American claims to the moral dling of Taliban (later only Al Qaeda) duct paramilitary “police work” of this sort. high ground. prisoners, this administration has It’s a much different undertaking from war. • Since war bore spectacular fruit in exploited September 11 in ways that 3. Herold’s work is available online (http:// pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold). For an even- Afghanistan despite failing in its main place the American dream at greater handed analysis, see Michael Massing, “Grief objectives—and since new fighting might risk than foreign terrorists could ever Without Portraits,” The Nation, February 4, distract public attention from the Enron manage on their own. I can’t help won- 2002, pp. 6–8. fiasco—further military adventuring dering whether Bush’s handlers feel seems inevitable. If we continue chasing more desperate—perhaps, desperate Tom Flynn is the editor of Free a fugitive with armies, bin Laden will enough to cashier big chunks of the Inquiry. probably continue escaping—and the Constitution—precisely because the

We invite you to become an ASSOCIATE MEMBER

As an ASSOCIATE MEMBER of the Council for Secular • registration fees for conferences and seminars • registration fees for Humanism you will receive four issues a year of the Secular Center for Inquiry Institute courses • audiotapes and videotapes • a select Humanist Bulletin. The entertaining and provocative Bulletin range of humanist and freethought books • secular humanist T-shirts and keeps you up-to-date on humanist news, issues, and activities, and other merchandise provides a forum for members to share ideas and plans. Other benefits you will receive as an ASSOCIATE MEMBER I wish to support the work of the Council for Secular include: Free copies of the quarterly Family Matters. Humanism by becoming an ASSOCIATE MEMBER! ALSO 10% DISCOUNT ON: l Annual individual ...... $20 l Two-year family membership . . . . $54 Two-year individual ...... $36 l l Three-year family membership . . . . $78 Three-year individual ...... $49 l l Lifetime Associate Membership l Annual family membership . . . . $34 (Life members also receive Free Inquiry for life). . . $1,000

Charge my l Visa l MasterCard l Check or money order enclosed #______Exp.______

Sig.______

Name ______

_____Daytime Phone # ______

Please make checks payable to Council for Secular Humanism and return to: Council Associate Memberships, Box 664, Amherst, NY 14226-0664. Or call toll-free 800-458-1366. Fax charges to: (716) 636-1733.

27 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 FRONTLINES

SIDE LINES TV Spectrum Sale Will VALENTINE VIOLENCE—”L” is for the way lovers look at one another, as the song goes. But the Hindu nationalist party Shiv Be Windfall for Christian Shena of India doesn’t approve of public displays of affection, and blames the Western tradition of Valentine’s Day for encouraging it. In New Delhi this year, Shiv Broadcasters Shena members surrounded a Western couple holding hands, preventing them coalition heavy on Christian them. The Spectrum Clearing Alliance, from continuing their walk and pressing anti- Valentine pamphlets on them. And broadcasters stands to earn founded by family friendly TV mogul in the city of Rajkot, nearly forty party A billions selling rights to Lowell “Bud” Paxson, is a syndicate members damaged a shop and burned its broadcast frequencies that Congress of TV stations broadcasting on chan- Valentine cards, resulting in injuries to two loaned them for free. The Telecom nels 60 to 69. Most stations at that far young patrons. Threats to merchants and munications Act of 1996—the same law end of the dial are devoted to squeaky- customers and bonfires of cards occurred in other cities as well. Shiv Shena wants that lifted most restrictions on how clean reruns, home shopping, or tel- India to become a Hindu-governed nation. many radio or television stations one evangelism. Paxson and FCC Chairman This is not the first year it has protested firm could own—also granted every Michael Powell inked a deal under which Indians’ observances of Valentine’s Day. existing TV station an additional chan- the 140-odd stations on channels 60 to 69 Police in Bombay arrested six hundred nel of broadcast “spectrum.” Advocates will return their unused digital channels people the night before the holiday in an thought it would help smooth broad- to the FCC, which will auction them off effort to curb expected vandalism. casters’ costly transition to digital TV; in June for an expected $30 billion. The OLYMPIC IMAGE TARNISHED—Mormons critics called it a scam. government keeps just over a third; the who were worried about putting a good This gets complicated: the origi- balance goes to stations according to a face on their religious beliefs and practices for their Olympic visitors got no help nal plan was for every TV station in formula based on population. from Utah’s liquor and ski industry. Shortly America to go digital over a nine-year Consider WLXI-61 TV in Greens before the games, advertising campaigns period, transmitting digital signals on boro, North Carolina, flagship of evan- promoting new beers and a ski resort its new channel while continuing to gelist Garth W. Coonce’s money-losing debuted that left devout Mormons sinking broadcast regular TV on its original Radiant Life Ministries. Coonce bought in their seats. Ads for Wasatch Beers’ channel. On December 31, 2006, regular WLXI for $1.9 million; writing in The new Polygamy Porter asked drinkers “Why Have Just One?” and urged them to “Take broadcasts would cease; broadcasters American Prospect, journalist Bren Some Home for the Wives.” Other ads for would transmit digital TV on the new dan I. Koerner estimates that the June St. Provo Girl advised that “If you just said channels only and the Federal Com auction will net WLXI around $70 mil- ‘Oh, my heck’ it’s probably not for you” munications Commission (FCC) would lion.1 The take for larger members of (highlighting a local expression). And the auction off all the old TV channels, a the Spectrum Clearing Alliance—say, Brighton Ski Resort took out billboard ads to promote its new four-person lifts: “Wife. rare federal windfall. Paul and Jan Crouch’s glitzy Trinity Wife. Wife. Husband. High-Speed Quads.” But that 2006 deadline only applies Broadcasting Network, with several if 85 percent of American households stations in the 60-to-69 band—will be HELP THE ECONOMY, FORGO MECCA— then receive digital TV. Digital or far greater. Although the September 11 terrorist attacks occurred in the United States, the high-definition TV has staggered in the In return for this payoff, Alliance economic fallout has been felt worldwide, marketplace, and now seems about as stations promise to convert to digital on including Egypt. As a result, President likely to penetrate 85 percent of house- their original channels if HDTV catch- Hosni Mubarak has urged Muslims to stay holds as quadraphonic sound or twelve- es on. Don’t hold your breath—though home and spend money if they have already inch video discs (remember those?). after June’s windfall, the maximum $6 been to Mecca. He says the trip to the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and At this rate TV stations will have their million cost of going digital will be some- the site of Islam’s holiest shrine, which all original channels plus their new, free, thing the stations can well afford. Stay able-bodied Muslims are required to make unused digital channels . . . well, forev- tuned for further outrages. at least once in their lifetime, costs Egypt er. Meanwhile, wireless telecom compa- more than $700 million in foreign currency nies would pay as much as $367 billion —Tom Flynn each year. Egypt is an impoverished country of sixty-seven million people. Tourism, oil for those frequencies—more than triple exports, Suez Canal tolls, and remittances the value of all other assets held by U.S. Note from Egyptians employed abroad have all TV stations. declined since September 11. Now the FCC has entered into an 1. Brendan I. Koerner, “Onward, Christian Moguls,” The American agreement with a coalition including Prospect vol. 1 no. 1, January 1, many Christian broadcasters to sell the 2002—January 14, 2002. unused channels the government loaned

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 28 FRONTLINES

Post 9/11 Survey young people have been denied simple pleasures like taking a date to SIDE LINES Shows Religion Trend the movies or going out for drink. But Tipping Other Way increasingly, they can see what they are missing: more and more Iranians have After the terrorist attacks of Sep Internet access through private home POTTY PROTEST!—According to some, tember 11, the media reported a computers and at some Internet cafés in best-selling author J.K. Rowling‘s books surge of interest of religion. But as large cities. And though they are illegal, featuring a young wizard named Harry the months pass and people digest the there has been a proliferation of illegal Potter are more than well written flights shock of the events and move on, those satellite television dishes. of the imagination. The books are, it is charged, encouragements to dabbling who measure public opinion are seeing Very public resistance occurred last in witchcraft. In England, evangelical anti-religious trends resurface. fall at World Cup soccer games, where spectators defied their religious leaders’ Christians have objected to the use of In November 2001, the Barna Gloucester Cathedral as the setting for Research Group found that “After the counsel that showing goodwill toward the United States was an affront to God the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and attack, millions of nominally churched Wizardry in the first movie to be made by shouting “We love you, America!” or generally irreligious Americans were of the three books. In the United States, Young women also removed their head desperately seeking something that fundamentalist church groups have pick- would restore stability and a sense of scarves. eted the film and burned the books. meaning to life. Fortunately, many of A MUSEUM FOR THE AGES—Or not. The them turned to the church. Unfortu France Takes Stand Creation Museum & Family Discovery nately, few of them experienced any- Against Cults Center is the $14 million brainchild of thing that was sufficiently life-changing Answers in Genesis minister Ken Ham. to capture their attention and their When does a cult become a religion? He is building it in northern Kentucky, allegiance.” Amen. They are about to find out in France, and sees it as an answer to the evolution where last spring the French National “brainwashing” that goes on in modern science museums. The Creation Museum R.I.P. Christian Assembly passed the “Prevention and plans to offer classic exhibits, but they Repression of Cultic Movements” law. It Coalition? will be presented as proof of the Bible’s allows the French judiciary to dissolve Genesis, which calls God the creator and Pat Robertson has resigned as presi a religious organization when one of said creation occurred in six days and dent of the Christian Coalition, saying its leaders or the movement itself is six thousand years ago. “This is a cul- that he plans to focus his energy on convicted of crimes. It also designates ture war,” declares Ham, who has hired his religious broadcasting network. as one of those crimes psychological the designer of Universal Studio’s King Although his successor, Roberta Combs, manipulation—”the deceptive abuse of Kong attraction to work on the exhib- has vowed to redouble efforts to rebuild the state of ignorance or weakness.” its. The result is expected to be bigger the grass-roots political organization, Adoption of the law is the culmination of than San Diego’s Institute for Creation Research museum. The Kentucky facility many observers say that Robertson’s years of increasing hostility to religious is planned to have 50,000 square feet departure sounds the death knell for movements in France. of exhibit space and forty-seven outdoor the group. Indeed, the French actions have attracted the attention of religious free- trails and displays and should be open in dom champions around the world. the summer of 2003. Is Youthful Rebellion Time will tell if France’s govern- SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW—The Brewing in Iran? ment-endorsed reaction to cults is a Star Wars epics combine science fiction pro-active step against sometimes dan- with classic conflicts between good and evil. But they also may have spawned a Observers say a repressive society gerous nonsense or a rejection of its new religion. In the last British census, the and a poor economy may combine democratic traditions that harasses followers of minority religions. results of which will be published next fall, to inspire young Iranians to rebel so many people put down “Jedi Knight” as against their Islamic-controlled their religious affiliation that the Office nation. Iran has sixty-five million peo- Tit for Tat for National Statistics was obliged to give ple, two-thirds of whom are under thirty the category its own code. Census takers years old. One-third is under sixteen In January, Pope John Paul II protested that the action did not mean years old. But by government estimates, appealed to Italian lawyers and judg that they were bestowing official recog- Iran has 18 percent unemployment and es to reject involvement in divorce nition to the fictional chief protectors of more than half of its workers have cases, whether they involved Roman right. Media reports said an anonymous incomes of about $300 a month, below Catholics or not. Declaring permanent e-mail campaign may have been behind the poverty line. About four in ten col- marriage part of the divine, natural the phenomenon. lege graduates are looking for work. order that applies to everyone, he called Since fundamentalist Muslims took divorce a “festering wound” that has power in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, devastated society.

29 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 presents its longest, most intensive summer session ever! Summer Session Join us at the Center for Inquiry Institute’s first two-week Summer Session in Amherst, New York! Join our world-class faculty for the whole intensive session, or choose either of two Weekend Seminars with historical presentations and cultural tours.

a UNDERGRADUATE COLLEGE A Entire Session (July 14-28) CREDIT AVAILABLE 2 courses: Faculty: Introduction to Critical Inquiry PAUL KURTZ History and Philosophy of Naturalism JOE NICKELL (Center for Inquiry) $750 for both • Includes 14 days room and board NICHOLAS CAPALDI (University of Tulsa) at SUNY Buffalo residence halls, course materials, RICHARD HULL (SUNY Buffalo) evening cultural/arts events, and both Weekend MARVIN KOHL (City University of NewYork) Seminars. SALLY ROESCH WAGNER (Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation) All participants will receive credit toward Center for MARGARET DOWNEY (Anti-Discrimination Inquiry Institute’s Certificate Support Network) of Proficiency. Full-session participants can receive GLENN C. ALTSCHULER (Cornell University) undergraduate credit through the State University of New York for an additional fee. Weekend Seminars (July 19-20, 26-27) Scholarships available. Religious Dissent and Progressive Politics in 19th For info, registration forms, or scholarship applica- Century Upstate New York tions, contact Seminars include guest lec- tures and guided CENTER FOR INQUIRY INSTITUTE cultural tours to area land- PO Box 741 marks including Amherst NY 14226 Lily Dale spiritualist (716) 636-4869 ext. 223 FAX (716) 636-1733 Ingersoll Birthplace Museum assembly, Women’s Rights email: [email protected] National Historic Park, and Robert G. Ingersoll Birthplace Museum. Or apply online at: $75 each • Includes all admissions, http://www.centerforinquiry.net Saturday luncheon

Scholarship deadline May 15, 2002 • Registration deadline June 15, 2002 INTRODUCTION Islam:Islam: VoicesVoices ofof DissentDissent

Enlightenment complete the Prometheus series. Tom Flynn Meanwhile, the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), to which the Council belongs, emerged as a leader n my spare time I write science fiction novels—black com- in focusing international pressure on Pakistan in the matter I edies set in a consistent future. An advanced civilization of Dr. Younus Shaikh, who faces death under that nation’s discovers “primitive” Earth (circa 2181 c.e.) and almost turns repressive blasphemy laws. it into an anthropological preserve. Then Earth religions catch Several of the articles in our special section were drawn the visitors’ eyes. Roman Catholicism becomes our planet’s from the community that utilizes the ISIS web site. Other leading export; a quirky Mormon fundamentalism takes sec- contributors include prominent Pakistani physicist/dissident ond place. Obviously this is “soft” science fiction, meant as Pervez Hoodbhoy, whose electrifying speech at November’s contemporary social comment rather than serious specula- Center for Inquiry conference in Atlanta formed the basis of tion. Serious speculation about the future of religion would his present article. (Hoodbhoy’s article attracted so much focus heavily on Islam, and in my novels Islam is nowhere to attention that the Washington Post published it without be seen. Instead I offer lame excuses for its absence, even an proper credit several weeks before this issue went to press!) offhanded mention of its “burning itself out” and disappearing Ibn al-Rawandi is a Westerner who converted to—and later a century or two from now. from—Sufi Islam, and wrote the Prometheus book Islamic I decided to exclude Islam about eight years ago while I was Mysticism: A Secular Perspective. Antony Flew, philoso- plotting my first novel. I reasoned that, if I populated my tales pher and Laureate of the Academy of Humanism, is a leading with the futuristic mullahs and imams scrupulous specula- critic of “Islamically correct” social policies in Britain, where tion would demand, American readers wouldn’t know enough large sectors of society responded to Muslim calls for Salman about Islam to get the jokes. Supplying enough Mormon back- Rushdie’s death with craven silence. Roy Brown is a vice pres- ground as I went along for non-Mormon readers to get those ident of the International Humanist and Ethical Union and an jokes seemed to impose as much work on readers as a begin- ISIS member with a longtime interest in the Islamic world. An ning author could fairly demand. excerpt from Ibn Warraq’s The Origins of the Koran appears Then came September 11. Today believers and secularists in this issue’s Great Minds department. alike are scrambling to acquire Islamic literacy. Works by As this section will show, despite the manifest dangers of Edward Said, Bernard Lewis, Ibn Warraq, and the Qur’an opposition, dissent exists—and even, if cautiously, thrives—in itself have flown off bookstore shelves. That’s healthy; political the Islamic world. Activists dare to demand basic human free- or military considerations aside, the fastest-growing major doms, especially free inquiry and equitable treatment for women. faith tradition is something about which every citizen of the Historians claim the warrant to scrutinize Islam’s history and world needs at least elementary knowledge. sources as they might those of any other human movement. Long before September 11, the Council for Secular Humanism Secular humanists are uniquely qualified to extend the hand was forging contacts in the Islamic world. In 1994 Free Inquiry of fellowship to Muslim apostates as fellow refugees from faith. helped to organize a historic debate between Muslim and sec- Equally important, we need to understand the doctrines, origins, ularist scholars in Cairo, Egypt. Contacts established there led and defects of Islam as thoroughly as so many of us do those of to formation of the independent Institute for Secularization of Christianity and Judaism. Countless humanists can discourse on Islamic Society (ISIS), whose Internet site is one of the leading contradictions in the Bible; we need as many knowledgeable pre- arenas for dissent by Muslim critics, doubters, and apostates.1 senters—locally, nationally, and in academe—who can deliver The Council has since hosted several Islamic dialogues at the responsible secularist critiques of Islam with the same authority. Center for Inquiry and elsewhere. If I were designing my science fiction satires today, I’d in For its part, Prometheus Books brought forth powerful clude some Muslim clerics, and my readers would get the jokes. critiques of Islam. First to publish poet/rebel Taslima Nasrin Challenging Islam carries genuine risks. But the world has in English, Prometheus issued Paul Fregosi’s Jihad in the seen that the risks of letting Islam’s fastest-growing and least West after a major U.K. imprint judged it too hot to handle. tolerant strands continue unchallenged are flatly unacceptable. Ibn Warraq, several times a research fellow at the Center for We’re proud to present Free Inquiry’s contribution to the new Inquiry, has written or edited Why I Am Not a Muslim, The Islamic literacy: deeply serious reflections on Islam and the chal- Quest for the Historical Muhammad, The Origins of the lenges it poses—for the West and for its own believers. Koran, and, most recently, What the Koran Really Says. Important works on women and Islam, Sufi mysticism, and the Note 1. www.secularislam.org. Tom Flynn is the editor of Free Inquiry.

31 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 MuslimsMuslims andand thethe WestWest BBothoth sidessides mustmust faceface grimgrim truthstruths AfterAfter SeptemberSeptember 1111 PervezPervez HoodbhoyHoodbhoy

merica has exacted blood revenge for the died?” It took two hours of sustained, impassioned, argumen- twin towers. A million Afghans have fled tation for me to convince my students that the brutal killing U.S. bombs into the cold wastelands and of ordinary people who had nothing to do with the policies of faceA starvation. B-52s have blown the Taliban to bits and the United States was an atrocity. I suppose that millions of changed Mullah Omar’s roar of defiance into a pitiful squeak Muslim students the world over felt as mine did, but heard no for surrender. Usama bin Laden is on the run (he may be dead counter arguments. by the time this article reaches the reader). But even as the champagne pops in the White House, America remains fearful—for good reason. Subsequent to September 11 we have all begun to live in a “The decline of Islamic greatness different, more dangerous world. Now is the time to ask why. Like clinical pathologists, we need to scientifically examine took place long before the age of the sickness of human behavior that impelled terrorists to mercantile imperialism. The causes fly airliners filled with passengers into skyscrapers. We also need to understand why millions celebrated as others died. In were essentially internal.” the absence of such an understanding there remains only the medieval therapy of exorcism: for the strong to literally beat the devil out of the weak. Indeed, the Grand Exorcist, disdain- If the world is to be spared what future historians may ful of international law and the growing nervousness of even call the “Century of Terror,” we must chart a perilous course its close allies, prepares a new hit list of other Muslim coun- between the Scylla of American imperial arrogance and the tries in need of therapy: Iraq, Somalia, and Libya. We shall kill Charybdis of Islamic religious fanaticism. Through these at will is the message. waters we must steer by a distant star towards a careful, This will not work. Terrorism does not have a military reasoned, democratic, humanistic, and secular future. Else, solution. Soon—I fear perhaps very soon—there will be still shipwreck is certain. stronger, more dramatic proof. In the modern age, technological possibilities to wreak enormous destruction are limitless. Injured Innocence Anger, when intense enough, makes small stateless groups “Why do they hate us?” asked George W. Bush. This rhetorical and even individuals extremely dangerous. question betrays the pathetic ignorance of most Americans Anger is ubiquitous in the Islamic world today. Allow me to about the world around them. Moreover, its claim to injured share a small personal experience. On September 12, 2001, I innocence cannot withstand even the most cursory examina- had a seminar scheduled at the department of physics in my tion of U.S. history. For almost forty years, this “naiveté and university in Islamabad, part of a weekly seminar for physics self-righteousness” has been challenged most determinedly by students on topics outside of physics. Though traumatized by Noam Chomsky. As early as 1967, he pointed that the idea that events, I could not cancel the seminar because sixty people “our” motives are pure and “our” actions benign is “nothing had already arrived, so I said, “We will have our seminar new in American intellectual history—or, for that matter, in today on a new subject: on yesterday’s terrorist attacks.” The the general history of imperialist apologia.” response was negative. Some students mindlessly rejoiced in Muslim leaders have mirrored America’s claim and have the attacks. One said, “You can’t call this terrorism.” Another asked the same question of the West. They have had little to said, “Are you only worried because it is Americans who have say about September 11 that makes sense to people outside their communities. Although they speak endlessly on rules of Pervez Hoodbhoy is professor of nuclear and high-energy personal hygiene and halal or haram, they cannot even tell physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Paki us whether or not the suicide bombers violated Islamic laws. stan. This article is based on a speech delivered at the According to Dr. Taha Jabir Alalwani, chair of the Virginia- Center for Inquiry International conference in Atlanta, based (and largely Saudi-funded) Fiqh Council, “This kind of Georgia, 2001. While awaiting publication in Free Inquiry question needs a lot of research and we don’t have that in our it was also published in the Washington Post. budget.”

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 32 ISLAM: VOICES OF DISSENT

Fearful of backlash, most leaders of Muslim communities supply. A former chairman of my department has calculated in the United States, Canada, and Europe have responded in the speed of heaven: it is receding from the earth at one cen- predictable ways to the twin towers atrocity. They have pro- timeter per second less than the speed of light. His ingenious claimed first that Islam is a religion of peace and second that Islam was hijacked by fanatics on the September 11. They are wrong on both counts. First, Islam—like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, or any “Our collective survival lies in other religion—is not about peace. Nor is it about war. Every recognizing that religion is not the religion is about absolute belief in its own superiority and its divine right to impose itself upon others. In medieval times, solution; neither is nationalism.” both the Crusades and the jihads were soaked in blood. Today, Christian fundamentalists attack abortion clinics in the United States and kill doctors; Muslim fundamentalists wage their method relies upon a verse in the Qur’an that says that wor- sectarian wars against each other; Jewish settlers holding the ship on the night on which the Qur’an was revealed is worth a Old Testament in one hand and Uzis in the other burn olive 1,000 nights of ordinary worship. He states that this amounts orchards and drive Palestinians off their ancestral land; Hindus to a time-dilation factor of 1,000, which he plugs into a formula in India demolish ancient mosques and burn down churches; Sri belonging to Einstein’s theory of special relativity. Lankan Buddhists slaughter Tamil separatists. A more public example: one of two Pakistani nuclear The second assertion is even further off the mark: even engineers recently arrested on suspicion of passing nuclear if Islam had in some metaphorical sense been hijacked, that secrets to the Taliban had earlier proposed to solve Pakistan’s event did not occur on September 11, 2001. It happened energy problems by harnessing the power of genies. The around the thirteenth century. Indeed, Islam has yet to recover Qur’an says that God created man from clay, and angels and from the trauma of those times. genies from fire; so this highly placed engineer proposed to capture the genies and extract their energy. (The reader may A Dismal Present wish to read the rather acrimonious public correspondence Where do Muslims stand today? Note that I do not ask about between Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood and myself in 1988 Islam; Islam is an abstraction. Moulana Abdus Sattar Edhi on this subject, reproduced in my book Islam and Science— and Mullah Omar are both followers of Islam, but the former is Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, pub- overdue for a Nobel Peace Prize while the other is a medieval, lished in 1991.) ignorant, cruel fiend. Edward Said, among others, has insis- tently pointed out that Islam carries very different meanings A Brilliant Past That Vanished to different people. It is as heterogeneous as those who believe Today’s sorry situation contrasts starkly with the Islam of yes- and practice it. There is no “true Islam.” Therefore it only teryear. Between the ninth and the thirteenth centuries—the makes sense to speak of people who claim that faith. Golden Age of Islam—the only people doing decent science, phi- Today Muslims number one billion, spread over forty-eight losophy, or medicine were Muslims. For five straight centuries Muslim countries. None of these nations has yet evolved a sta- they alone kept the light of learning ablaze. Muslims not only ble democratic political system. In fact, all Muslim countries preserved ancient learning, they also made substantial innova- are dominated by self-serving corrupt elites who cynically tions and extensions. The loss of this tradition has proved tragic advance their personal interests and steal resources from for Muslim peoples. their people. No Muslim country has a viable educational sys- Science flourished in the Golden Age of Islam because tem or a university of international stature. there was within Islam a strong rationalist tradition, carried Reason too has been waylaid. To take some examples from on by a group of Muslim thinkers known as the Mutazilites. my own experience: You will seldom encounter a Muslim name This tradition stressed human free will, strongly opposing the as you flip through scientific journals, and, if you do, chances predestinarians who taught that everything was foreordained are that this person lives in the West. There are a few excep- and that humans have no option but to surrender everything tions: Abdus Salam, together with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon to Allah. While the Mutazilites held political power, Glashow, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979 for the uni- fication of the weak and electromagnetic forces. I got to know Salam reasonably well—we even wrote a book preface together. “If anyone desires a religion other than He was a remarkable man, terribly in love with his country Islam (submission to Allah), never will it be and his religion. And yet he died deeply unhappy, scorned by accepted of him; and in the Hereafter He will his country and excommunicated from Islam by an act of the be in the ranks of those who have lost [all Pakistani parliament in 1974. Today the Ahmadi sect, to which spiritual value].” (Qur’an sura 3, verse 85) Salam belonged, is considered heretical and harshly persecuted. (My next-door neighbor, also an Ahmadi, was shot in the neck and heart and died in my car as I drove him to the hospital. His knowledge grew. only fault was to have been born in the wrong sect.) But in the twelfth century Muslim orthodoxy reawakened, Though genuine scientific achievement is rare in the spearheaded by the cleric Imam al-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali cham- contemporary Muslim world, pseudoscience is in generous pioned revelation over reason, predestination over free will.

33 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 He refuted the possibility of relating cause to effect, teaching Pressed from without, corrupt and incompetent from with- that man cannot know or predict what will happen; God alone in, secular governments proved unable to defend national can. He damned mathematics as against Islam, an intoxicant interests or to deliver social justice. As they failed they left a of the mind that weakened faith. vacuum which Islamic religious movements grew to fill. After Islam choked in the vicelike grip of orthodoxy. No longer, the fall of the Shah, Iran underwent a bloody revolution under as during the reign of the dynamic caliph al-Mamum and the Ayatollah Khomeini. General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq ruled great Haroon al-Rashid, would Muslim, Christian, Pakistan for eleven hideous years and strove to Islamize both state and society. In Sudan, an Islamic state arose under Jaafar al-Nimeiry; amputation of hands and limbs became “Wherever ye are, death will find you out, common. Decades ago the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was the most powerful Palestinian organization, and even if ye are in towers built up largely secular; after its defeat in 1982 in Beirut, it was largely strong and high!” (4:78) eclipsed by Hamas, a fundamentalist Muslim movement. The lack of scruple and the pursuit of power by the United States combined fatally with this tide in the Muslim world and Jewish scholars gather and work together in the royal in 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. With courts. It was the end of tolerance, intellect, and science in the Pakistan’s Zia-ul-Haq as America’s foremost ally, the CIA Muslim world. The last great Muslim thinker, Abd-al Rahman openly recruited Islamic holy warriors from Egypt, Saudi ibn Khaldun, belonged to the fourteenth century. Arabia, Sudan, and Algeria. Radical Islam went into overdrive as its superpower ally and mentor funneled support to the Islam Under Imperialism mujahideen, whom Ronald Reagan feted on the lawn of White Meanwhile, the rest of the world moved on. The Renaissance House, lavishly praising them as “brave freedom fighters chal- brought an explosion of scientific inquiry in the West. This lenging the Evil Empire.” owed much to Arab translations and other Muslim contribu- After the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States walked tions, but that fact would matter little. Mercantile capitalism away from an Afghanistan in shambles, its own mission accomp and technological progress drove Western countries rapidly to lished. The Taliban emerged; Usama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda colonize the Muslim world from Indonesia to Morocco. Always made Afghanistan their base. Other groups of holy warriors brutal, at times genocidal, it made clear, at least to a part learned from the Afghan example and took up arms in their own of the Muslim elites, that they were paying a heavy price for countries. not possessing the analytical tools of modern science and the At least until September 11, U.S. policymakers were unre- social and political values of modern culture—their coloniz- pentant. A few years ago Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s U.S. ers’ real source of power. national security adviser, was asked by the Paris weekly Despite widespread resistance from the orthodox, the logic of Nouvel Observateur whether in retrospect, given that “Islamic modernity found nineteenth-century Muslim adherents. Modern fundamentalism represents a world menace today,” U.S. pol- izers such as Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida of Egypt, icy might have been mistaken. Brzezinski retorted: “What is Sayyed Ahmad Khan of India, and Jamaluddin Afghani (who most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the belonged everywhere) wished to adapt Islam to the times, to collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the interpret the Qur’an in ways consistent with modern science, liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” and to discard the Hadith (the traditions, or ways of the But Brzezinski’s “stirred up Muslims” wanted to change Prophet) in favor of the Qur’an. Others seized on the modern the world; and in this they were destined to succeed. With this idea of the nation-state. It is crucial to note that not a single we conclude our history primer for the seven hundred years twentieth-century Muslim nationalist leader was a fundamen- until September 11, 2001. talist. Turkey’s Kemal Ataturk, Algeria’s Ahmed Ben Bella, Indonesia’s Sukarno, Pakistan’s Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Egypt’s Facing the Future Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Iran’s Muhammad Mosaddeq all What should thoughtful people infer from this whole narra- sought to organize their societies on the basis of secular values. tive? I think the inferences are several—and different for However, like other anti-colonial nationalist currents different protagonists. across the third world, Muslim and Arab nationalism included For Muslims, it is time to stop wallowing in self-pity: the desire to control and use national resources for domestic Muslims are not helpless victims of conspiracies hatched by benefit. Conflict with Western greed was inevitable. Imperial an all-powerful, malicious West. The fact is that the decline of interests in Britain and later the United States feared indepen- Islamic greatness took place long before the age of mercantile dent nationalism. Anyone willing to collaborate was preferred, imperialism. The causes were essentially internal. Therefore, even ultraconservative Islamic regimes like that of Saudi Muslims must introspect and ask what went wrong. Arabia. In time, as Cold War pressures rose, nationalism Muslims must recognize that their societies are far larger, became intolerable. In 1953, Mosaddeq of Iran was overthrown more diverse and complex than the small homogenous tribal in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) coup and replaced culture that existed in Arabia 1,400 years ago. It is therefore by Reza Shah Pahlavi. Britain targeted Nasser. Indonesia’s time to renounce the idea that Islam can survive and prosper Sukarno was replaced by Suharto after a bloody coup that left only in an Islamic state run according to Islamic Sharia law. a million dead. Muslims need a secular and democratic state that respects

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 34 ISLAM: VOICES OF DISSENT

religious freedom and human dignity, founded on the principle recession. India, too, is coming up very rapidly. In military that power belongs to the people. This means confronting and terms, superiority in the air or in space is no longer enough rejecting the claim by orthodox Islamic scholars that in an to ensure security; in how many countries can U.S. citizens Islamic state sovereignty does not belong to the people but, in safely walk the streets today? stead, to the vice-regents of Allah (Khilafat-al-Arz) or Islamic Our collective survival lies in recognizing that religion is jurists (Vilayat-e-Faqih). not the solution; neither is nationalism. Both are divisive, Muslims must not look towards the likes of bin Laden; such embedding within us false notions of superiority and arrogant people have no real answer and can offer no real positive pride that are difficult to erase. We have but one choice: the alternative. To glorify their terrorism is a hideous mistake— path of secular humanism, based upon the principles of logic the unremitting slaughter of Shias, Christians, and Ahmadis in and reason. This alone offers the hope of providing everybody their places of worship in Pakistan, and of other minorities in on this globe with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of other Muslim countries, is proof that all terrorism is not about happiness. the revolt of the dispossessed. The United States, too, must confront bitter truths. It is a fact that the messages of George W. Bush and his ally Tony Blair fall flat, while those of Usama bin Laden, whether he lives or dies, resonate strongly across the Muslim world. Bin Laden’s religious extremism turns off many Muslims, but they find his political message easy to relate to—stop the dispossession of The Qur’an on non-Muslims: the Palestinians, stop propping up corrupt and despotic regimes “not to make friendship with Jews and across the world just because they serve U.S. interests. Christians” (5:51), “kill the disbelievers Americans will also have to accept that the United States wherever we find them” (2:191), “fight and is past the peak of its imperial power; the 1950s and ’60s are slay the Pagans, seize them, beleaguer them, gone for good. U.S. triumphalism and disdain for international and lie in wait for them in every stratagem” law is creating enemies everywhere, not just among Muslims. Therefore, Americans must become less arrogant and more (9:5), “murder them and treat them harshly” like other peoples of this world. While the United States will (9:123), and “fight them on until there is remain a superpower for some time to come, inevitably it will no more persecution, and religion become less and less “super.” There are compelling economic becomes Allah’s in its entirety.” (8:39) and military reasons for this. For example, China’s economy is growing at 7 percent per year while the U.S. economy is in

COMING IN SPRING 2003

The Council for Secular Humanism INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE One Nation, Without God: Secularism, Society, and Justice

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Plan to hear world-class speakers and activists on topics that may include: • Discrimination Against Nonbelievers • Cloning and Stem Cell Research • Religious–Political Extremism in America • Doctor-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia • Secularization of Islamic Societies • Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Rights • Faith-Based Initiatives • Family Planning and Ecclesiastical • New Threats to Secular Education Power Worldwide

See the inaugural announcement in the Summer issue or watch our Web site, www.secularhumanism.org.

Exact dates and location will be announced in our next issue!

35 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 IslamIslam andand LLookingooking bbehindehind thethe mythsmyths ArmageddonArmageddon IbnIbn al-Rawandial-Rawandi

uddenly, everyone, or so it seems, is an expert on ward questions that might expose this ludicrous charade Islam. From presidents and prime ministers to the for the expedient nonsense it is? Certainly not the television humblest hack, all are ready to lecture the public interviewers and ambitious journalists with careers to think Son what real Islam is. If this knowledge is so readily available to about, who in any case know no more about the subject than such unlikely mentors it seems odd that so much wrong opinion the people they are interviewing and are every bit as keen to is abroad on the subject. Tony Blair apparently knows so much appear “tolerant” and “understanding” for fear of something about it that he can confidently announce from a public platform nasty happening on their own doorsteps. that any “Muslim” who has a different view of Islam from his own Here are a few questions that might be put to any apologist is not a proper Muslim. According to this view, real Muslims are for Islam in the media: just like members of the Church of England, all sweetness and 1. If real Islam is all about peace and love, how did it light, interested only in being good neighbors, engaging in “inter- acquire an empire that stretched from Spain to India? By faith dialogue” and, presumably, voting for New Labour. sweet reason? Islam, we are told over and over again by the self-appointed 2. When is Islam going to apologize for overrunning the guardians of right thinking, is not a religion of violence and Hellenic-Christian civilization of the Middle East, conquering aggression but of peace and love. Does not the Qur’an have at Constantinople in 1453, and laying siege to Vienna in 1529? the head of every chapter: “In the name of God, the Merciful, 3. If the Qur’an is all about peace and love, how are such verses as the following to be explained?

Those involved in events like those of Let those fight in the cause of God who sell the life of this world for the hereafter. To him who fights in the cause of God, September 11, wearing red whether he is slain or victorious, soon we shall give him a great headbands emblazoned with reward. (Qur’an, sura 4, verse 74) Those who believe fight in the cause of God, and those who bloodthirsty texts, have every right reject faith fight in the cause of evil. (4:76) O believers, take not Jews and Christians as friends, they are to consider themselves real Muslims friends of each other. Those of you who make them his friends going about God’s work and is one of them. God does not guide an unjust people. (5:54) Fight those who believe neither in God nor the Last Day, deserving reward in the hereafter. nor what has been forbidden by God and his messenger [Muhammad], nor acknowledge the religion of Truth [Islam], even if they are People of the Book [Jews and Christians], until the Compassionate?” Who could disagree with that? Isn’t that they pay the tribute and have been humbled. (9:29) the sentiment of all decent people everywhere? The Qur’an is When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks, then when already the prime minister’s favorite bedtime reading, which you have made wide slaughter among them, tie fast the bonds, then set them free, either by grace or ransom, until the war lays he ostentatiously flourished on a recent plane trip to America. down its burdens. (47:4) How can people in high office be so naïve and stupid? Very easily, it seems—almost a mandatory qualification, since it It is not difficult to see how those who regard the Qur’an as makes it easier to spout sanctimonious drivel with a straight God’s own speech can find in verses such as these the justi- face. But where are the doubting voices, the posers of awk- fication for practically any act of terrorism imaginable. When Ibn al-Rawandi is the allonym of an English student of esotericism and world religions. For several years he lived as a Muslim and murid (student, follower) of a Sufi sheikh. He is the author of Islamic Mysticism: A Secular “It would be naïve to ignore Perspective (Prometheus Books, 2000), as well as numerous in Islam a deep thread of intolerance articles and book reviews in New Humanist, Philosophy toward unbelievers.” — Andrew Sullivan Now, and elsewhere. He lives near London, England.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 36 ISLAM: VOICES OF DISSENT

such texts are put to apologists, their usual response is to tion of themselves by wearing head scarves is of no more signifi- say that these are bad translations; it is quite different in the cance or importance than any other affectation or fashion state- Arabic; and in any case such verses are balanced or cancelled ment. With others it is simply a result of the ignorance and poor by other meliorating texts elsewhere in the Qur’an. Unfor education that is endemic among Muslims; they have been told tunately, according to the traditional Muslim chronology of by their communities that this is the proper Muslim thing to do, revelation, early texts are abrogated by apparently contradic- and they have no means of knowing anything to the contrary. tory later texts, and all the bloodthirsty texts above are late, This is especially chilling when it is applied to girls as young as four or five, when the rule does not apply until the onset of puberty. But can we imagine any television journalist putting “Either that Islam is true, in which these points to a female “victim” of prejudice and misunder- case we all ought to be Muslims, standing? If Islam is all about peace and love and good behavior, as we are constantly told, such things do not require a peculiar or it is not true, in which case it is mode of dress, an attention-attracting uniform, to make them pernicious nonsense and it cannot be manifest. Indeed, such a thing is redolent of a peculiar vanity: “Look at me, how modest I am, so virtuous, so beautiful, a ver- criminal to say so.” itable living reproach to your wanton ways, I must make a play of hiding myself for your good as well as mine.” or “Medinan,” while most of the “compassionate” texts are We are constantly told that we are not engaged in a war early, or “Meccan.” It has been said that the text at Qur’an 9:5, against Islam, but why not a war against Islam? Why not a reading, “Slay the idolaters wherever you find them,” cancels war against that billion of the world’s population bound in 124 verses advocating mercy and toleration. benighted ignorance and superstition? Why not a war against Islam has no pope, no ultimate authority able to say what a worldview diametrically opposed to all those secular, liberal, real Islam is or what is the right interpretation of texts; there humanist, democratic values that we are supposed to hold so is just an endless spectrum of opinion. Those involved in dear? Why not? Because the West is led by a pair of evangelical events like those of September 11, wearing red headbands nincompoops, one with messianic delusions, more than half in emblazoned with texts such as those above, have every right to love with what in their muddled minds they like to think real consider themselves real Muslims going about God’s work and Islam is, and what in their dreams they would like the West to deserving reward in the hereafter. Indeed, such people proba- be—God-fearing, Bible-reading, churchgoing, a land of inanely bly have more right to consider themselves good Muslims than those Western-educated, Western-suited representatives of Muslim institutions who express sympathy and regret, or any benignly smiling Sufi talking about “the heart”; the latter are “Nowhere in the Qur’an and the especially nauseating in that they share many of the aims of Hadith is it laid down that Muslim the militants, such as the restoration of the caliphate, without the courage to do anything about it.1 women must go around wearing head It is important that such things are said loudly and said scarves and long shapeless garments.” now, since it is likely that before long, at least in England, both the writer and the publisher of these words could be deemed guilty of the crime of inciting religious hatred.2 So widespread grinning communitarians whose highest value is that their are such sentiments among Britain’s liberal intelligentsia that pathetic little egos strut about the world stage for as long as it is surprising that there have not yet been mass conversions possible. Compared with such people the hijackers are heroes. to Islam. In contrast, outside such circles it appears either that We are also told that the events of September 11 were not a Islam is true, in which case we all ought to be Muslims, or it is clash of civilizations or worldviews, but that is exactly what they not true, in which case it is pernicious nonsense and it cannot were. It was not by chance that the twin towers of the World be criminal to say so. The fear here, of course, is of blood on the streets. That there have been physical attacks on Muslims arises largely from the fact that they choose to make themselves obvious “The only good religion is a moribund by their mode of dress, and of course, as we all know, this is religion: only when the faithful are prescribed by their religion, especially in the case of women— weak are they tolerant but then, no, actually we don’t and it isn’t. Nowhere in the and peaceful.” — Polly Toynbee Qur’an or the Hadith is it laid down that Muslim women must go around wearing head scarves and long shapeless garments; all that is required is modest dress, and there are literally thousands of ways of dressing modestly, many of them Trade Center were the first to go. In the minds of many Muslims indistinguishable from Western dress. The fuss about Muslim tall buildings are the ultimate symbol of infidel pride, arrogance, women wearing head scarves is quite literally a fuss about and defiance of Allah, especially evident in the end times before nothing—they don’t have to wear them. the final reckoning. The fact that they were also temples of The fact that some Muslim women choose to make an exhibi- usury and symbols of the economic power with which Jews and

37 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 for a decent jihad. Like most Westerners, their main motiva- tions are money and sex and a comfortable life, with a little religion on top for identity, consolation, companionship, and “Paranoid Islam, which blames at least the possibility of a continuation of the same in an outsider ‘infidels’ for all the ills of Muslims afterlife. Religion survives, and will probably always survive, societies and whose proposed remedy is the not because it is true but because human beings are pathetic. closing of those societies to the rival project Yet we still need war, if only to satisfy the barely subcon- scious, barely acknowledged recognition of how mind-numbing- of modernity is presently the fastest growing ly dull a perpetually peaceful world would be. Since God refuses version of Islam in the world. . . . If terrorism is to supply us with an apocalypse it seems we must supply our to be defeated, the world of Islam must take own: “I am become Shiva the destroyer of worlds,” as Robert on board the secularist-humanist principles on Oppenheimer said. Who was not fascinated, amazed, entranced, which the modern is based, and by those planes going into those towers? Was it not the most without which Muslim countries’ astonishing and exciting thing you have ever seen in your life? Perhaps Usama and his followers, like many others, are freedom will remain a distant dream.” the true children of Turgenev’s Basarov, whose day may have — Salman Rushdie finally dawned.3 Any cause will do, or no cause at all; we shall have terrorism for the hell of it. In the immortal words of the Christians are held to undermine and exploit the Muslim world Russian nihilist Dmitri Pisarev: “Here is the ultimatum of our can only have added to the satisfaction of bringing them down, camp: what can be smashed should be smashed; what will especially when it was achieved by just ten men wielding pen- stand the blow is good; what will fly into smithereens is rub- knives. That there were Muslims in the building at the time is of bish; at any rate, hit out right and left—there will and can be no consequence, since their fate was already sealed by sura 5, no harm from it.” Allahu Akbar. verse 54 and sura 9, verse 29 quoted above. The purpose of the attack on Afghanistan, we are told, is to bring about “justice,” as if there were some crosscultural consensus on what any such word means, a Platonic arche- typal heaven from which its form could be plucked by Western lawyers for the recognition and satisfaction of all “decent” people. The only relevant question to be asked about justice is: Notes “Whose justice, mine or yours, ours or theirs, man’s or God’s?” 1. The caliphate: the office of caliph, or supreme spiritual leader of all Muslims, who was held to be the successor How much Sharia is there in “international law?” Where did of Muhammad. No holder of this office has been recognized that law originate, who invented it, and with what purpose since it was abolished in 1924 as one of the secularizing in mind? What kind of world did it come from? What kind of reforms of the Turkish Republic. world was it intended to bring about? Certainly not that of the 2. A bill to criminalize the giving of offense to any reli- ecumenical imperium of the caliphate, where Muslim justice gious group was being promoted by the Blair government as this was written. The bill was subsequently defeated in the held sway for almost 1,400 years. House of Lords, but will probably be reintroduced shortly. The enormity of the crime—the paired attacks on America 3. Basarov was the lead character in Ivan Turgenev’s and Afghanistan—is, we are told, the slaughter of the inno- 1862 Russian novel Fathers and Sons. Basarov was the cent; but who is not willing to sacrifice the innocent when first significant literary character to express sentiments of the then-rising Russian nihilism, which advocated the it suits them? Certainly “Western Civilization” was when, overthrow of social structures without concern for what between 1914 and 1945 in Europe alone, it managed to wipe would replace them. out over one hundred million civilians in the name of one cause or another. Such figures are the result of the employment of technology in the furtherance of a cause, but before the technological age the causes were no less virulent and murderous in intent; it was merely more difficult to kill large numbers. But who believes in causes any more? Not even the majority “[T]here is one major dimension of the of modern Muslims can be gotten off their backsides September 11 story the press has consistently botched: Islam. In the early “. . . for most Americans it must weeks after the attacks, commentators be said that Islam remains one vast seemed to go out of their way to provide terra incognita — and one, like all such a sanitized, anodyne version of the faith. More blank areas on medieval maps, inhabited recently . . . the press seems to be harping very largely by dragons.” on Islam’s extremist tendencies. Both versions are, — Michael Howard I think, caricatures.” — Michael Massing

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 38 ISLAM: VOICES OF DISSENT TheThe IslamicIslamic ConceptConcept CCanan thethe WWestest acceptaccept itit?? ofof PeacePeace AbdulAbdul MaseehMaseeh

fter much research and reflection, I have come to understand the Islamic concept of peace as something like this: Peace “There will be war in the world comesA through submission, which is the meaning of the word Islam. This submission, of course, is submission to as long as people believe in Muhammad and his concept of Allah in the Qur’an, in other words, Islam once again. Muhammad, his example, Theoretically peace exists inside Dar-al-Islam, the House and his teaching.” of Submission. I say “theoretically” because we all know that Muslims, even though they are not supposed to, do fight fellow Muslims. Consider the Afghan civil war between the Pashtuns To say that Islam is a religion of peace is not true. Islam on one side and the then-Northern Alliance (Uzbeks, Tajiks, is committed to war, both by the example of Muhammad, who etc.) on the other; Iraq’s attack on Kuwait and its earlier war fought on until he subdued Mecca and then other tribes, and with Iran; or the West Pakistani attack on East Pakistan, by the Qur’an’s teaching supported by numerous passages which subsequently became Bangladesh. in the Hadith. According to Amir Tahiri, editor of Politique Peace with pagans, that is, people not “of the Book,” is International in Paris, of the thirty wars going on as of impossible; they are all to be given a chance to accept Islam October 2001, twenty-eight involve Muslims fighting either or be killed. This is illustrated by the killing of pagans in the non-Muslims or even other Muslims! The Qur’an does south of Sudan, the north of Nigeria, and the south of Chad, in teach that Muslims are never to initiate war. But Islam has a strange way of putting this into practice. For example, Muslims are supposed to offer non-Muslims an opportunity “Of thirty wars going on as of to embrace Islam. If the non-Muslims refuse, this is viewed as aggression against Allah and Islam. Therefore Muslims are October 2001, twenty-eight involve allowed to fight these “aggressors” until they are converted Muslims fighting either non-Muslims or or killed. Perhaps the greatest proof that Islam is not a religion of even other Muslims!” peace is sura 4, verse 89, which proclaims that any who want to leave Islam (turn renegade) shall be put to death: “But if each case by Muslims eager to impose Islamic law. they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye With regard to Christians and Jews, they too are to be find them.” This makes Islam the religion of fear, not of peace. fought against until they are subdued and feel themselves There will be war in the world as long as people believe subdued—that is found in Qur’an sura 9, verse 29 (“Fight in Muhammad, his example, and his teaching. The Islamic those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold concept of peace, meaning making the whole world Muslim, is that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His actually a mandate for war. Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, from among the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued”). Examples of this are also found in Sudan, Nigeria, and Chad, and also in Indonesia—along with smaller atrocities against Christians in Egypt and the heinous repression of all Christian activity in “The future has yielded, for now, Saudi Arabia by the Wahhabis. to medieval expedience, to the Abdul Maseeh is a longtime resident in the Muslim world. old slow furies of cutthroat religion.” This article is based on a contribution to the Institute for — Don DeLillo the Secularization of Islamic Society’s on-line discussion forum.

39 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 Islam’sIslam’s WarWar AgainstAgainst CCanan itit aabbideide aa secusecullarar statestate?? thethe WestWest AntonyAntony FlewFlew

n his letter inviting me to contribute to this issue of with the actual teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Free Inquiry, the editor referred to “the thesis ex But Free Inquiry is not a political journal. Our concern here pressed by Paul Kurtz, Ibn Warraq, and others “that is, therefore, solely with the truth. And the truth is that where- Ithe terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., as Christianity, for the first three centuries of its remarkable ‘were profoundly religious acts’”; it went on to say that I had expansion in the face of successive persecutions, made all ‘made predictions about the likelihood of religious terrorism its converts by peaceful individual persuasion, Islam already that have proven horribly correct.’” Indeed I had.1 But why does during the later years of the prophet’s own lifetime— from the anyone pretend that these were not profoundly religious acts time of the move from Mecca to Medina—was gaining most of when Usama bin Laden himself insists that they were?2 its converts in consequence of military victories.3 And after his death Islam soon showed itself to be—in post-Marxist terms— the uniting and justifying ideology of Arab imperialism. This To rate as truly a Christian it is by no beginning has had, as we shall see, lasting consequences for the relations between Islam and all other religions. means necessary to be a fundamen- When in 1920 Bertrand Russell visited the USSR—decades before the Politburo found it convenient to present itself as talist. To be properly accounted a the protector of the Arabs—he discerned similarities between Muslim it is essential to be a funda- Bolshevism and Islam: “Bolshevism combines the characteris- tics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam”4; mentalist with regard to the Qur’an. and “Marx has taught that Communism is fatally predestined to come about; this produces a state of mind not unlike that of the early successors of Mahommet.”5 So Russell himself With the general public the main reason for this pretense concluded: “Mahommedanism and Bolshevism are practical, is presumably a nearly if not quite total ignorance of Islamic social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of this world. teachings. But any responsible politician in any of those . . . What Mahommedanism did for the Arabs, Bolshevism may Christian or post-Christian countries that since World War II do for the Russians.”6 have been subjected to substantial immigrations from Muslim As a clear, commendably honest, and altogether authorita- countries must, whatever the extent of their knowledge of the tive epitome of the totalitarian character of Islam, consider this teachings of Islam, feel a heavy duty to do all they can to spread manifesto issued in Leicester, England, on behalf of the Islamic the conviction—at least among the members and descendants Council of Europe: of those immigrants—that Usama bin Laden’s terrorist war The religion of Islam embodies the final and most complete against the United States and its allies is radically incompatible word of God . . . Departmentalisation of life into different water- tight compartments, religious and secular, sacred and profane, spiritual and material is ruled out . . . Islam is not a religion in the Western understanding of the word. It is a faith and a way of life, a religion and a social order, a doctrine and a Want to check a Qur’anic quote? code of conduct, a set of values and principles, and a social The Muslim Students Association movement to realise them in history [emphasis supplied]. of Oregon State University maintains In this we have a statement that satisfactorily transcends the entire text of the Qur’an on their Web site, all differences within and between various Muslim commu- http://www.orst.edu/groups/msa/quran/. nities, such as those between Sunni and Shi’a, or between the so-called fundamentalists and their opponents. The term fundamentalist is anyway in the present case peculiarly inap- Philosopher Antony Flew is a Laureate of the Academy of propriate. It is derived from the title of a series of tracts —The Humanism. His forthcoming book is Crime, Punishment, Fundamentals—published in the United States in 1909; and it is and Disease in a Relativistic Universe (Transaction, 2002). defined as the belief that the Bible, as the Word of God, is wholly, literally, and infallibly true—a belief that, notoriously, commits

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 40 ISLAM: VOICES OF DISSENT

fundamentalist Christians to defending the historicity of the virtue of the positive protection given to Islamic observance by accounts of Creation given in the first two chapters of Genesis. the laws of the (British) Indian Empire. To rate as truly a Christian it is by no means necessary to be in When in 1906 the newly elected (classically) Liberal admin- this understanding fundamentalist. It is instead fully sufficient istration in London took some very small and tentative initial to accept the Apostles’ and/or the Nicene Creed wholeheartedly. But in order to be properly accounted a Muslim it is essential to be a fundamentalist with regard to (not the Bible but) the Qur’an. In a secular, pluralist democracy all It was his recognition of the truth of those last two heavily emphasized sentences of that statement made on behalf of religious beliefs are tolerated as long the Islamic Council of Europe that provoked the conservative as they remain, within reason, prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, in the last week of September 2001, boldly to insist that “We must be aware of the personal beliefs. superiority of our civilization, a system that has guaranteed the well-being, respect for human rights and—in contrast with steps towards the ultimate establishment of an independent, Islamic countries—respect for religious and political rights.” democratically self-governing nation state in India, it began to Just as soon as they learned that Berlusconi had uttered discover what it was extremely reluctant to learn, that a sec- these words, a bevy of European politicians rushed forward to ular, pluralist state grounded in universal adult suffrage was denounce him. The Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, unacceptable to Muslims. said, “I can hardly believe that the Italian prime minister It was and is unacceptable because it is, apparently, made such statements.” The spokesman for the European contrary to the Islamic dhimma.9 This excluded all non-Mus- Commission, Jean-Christophe Filori, added: “We certainly do lims other than “People of the Book” from any political not share the views expressed by Signor Berlusconi.” Italy’s rights whatever. “People of the Book”—mainly if not solely center-left opposition spokesman Giovanni Berlinguer called Christians and Jews—are tolerated as tribute-paying citi- the words of Berlusconi “eccentric and dangerous.” Within zens of an Islamic state, though without any form of fran- days he was effectively forced to withdraw those politically chise beyond their own religious community. most incorrect words. In the Indian case, the subsequent course of events is fairly well known. Muslims, having rejected the all-Indian national- Islam and the State ism espoused by Ansari, were unable to reconcile themselves One especially good way of revealing the practical conse- to the prospect of citizenship in a secular, pluralist state. quences of Islam’s not being “a religion in the Western under- In 1940 the Muslim League, unwilling to tolerate the conse- standing of the word” but being instead “a religion and a social quences of the wider franchise that this required, demanded order, a doctrine and . . . a set of values and principles and a and was given what amounted to a constitutional veto. The social movement to realise them in history” is by consider- eventual independence agreement in 1947 resulted, after a ing the history of the creation of Pakistan.7 huge amount of inter-communal slaughter,10 in the separation When in India during the 1920s M. A. Ansari was promoting from India of the principal overwhelmingly Muslim areas the Nationalist Muslim Party, he did this in the belief that a other than Kashmir, and the consequent emergence of East future whole-continent state of independent India could be reli- and West Pakistan. Kashmir was retained by India because giously neutral, to the extent of accommodating both Hindus its hereditary ruler was a Hindu and Nehru himself was a and Muslims as equal citizens. But his party failed to win Kashmiri Brahmin. As for East Pakistan, it eventually became substantial Muslim support. Instead there was among Muslims Bangladesh. in India throughout that decade a general retreat from the Since then, whereas India has achieved an unblemished original ideal of all-Indian nationalism towards the eventually record of democratic self-government, becoming by far the realized ideal of the two separate communities of Hindus and most populous democracy in the world,11 Pakistan and the two Muslims forming two separate independent states. other provinces of the former British Empire in which Muslims The Muslims in fact opted decisively for an exclusively reli- formed a very substantial majority have not. About Pakistan gious rather than a secular pluralist identity. It proved impossible no more need be said here than that, at the time of writing, for Ansari or anyone else to overcome this Islamic predisposition a Pakistani academic was under prosecution for the capital and to persuade the majority of Indian Muslims to be willing to offense of defection from Islam. coexist with Indian Hindus in the secular nation state envisaged by Nehru, the leader of the Indian National Congress. Nehru had declared: “There shall be no state religion . . . nor shall the state either directly or indirectly endow any religion. . . .” “I decry the evil that has been done in the As early as April 1929 the Muslim League leader Muhhamad name of Islam, or any other faith—including Ali Jinnah8 had opposed that ideal with his Fourteen Points. In Christianity.” — Reverend Franklin Graham, son these he had insisted that state neutrality was not enough and of über-evangelist Billy Graham, after being crit- that it was state support that Muslims demanded. This Muslim icized for earlier comments that Islam “is a very position had already been foreshadowed as early as 1870, when various imans in Northern India issued a famous fatwa to the evil and wicked religion.” effect that India was Dar-al-Islam—”Islamic Territory”—in

41 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 The first communal catastrophe in Nigeria after its inde- exclusive theocracy of traditional Islam—have been forming pendence was a civil war in which the Muslim and animist the attitudes of the Muslim immigrant population of Western majority suppressed an independence revolt by the Christian Europe, especially Britain, in much the same measure as they Ibo. In the suppression of this revolt at least a million Ibo lost have those of Muslims elsewhere, confronted with democratic their lives. When later, in 1973, a military coup overthrew an pluralism. A general statement of the Muslim position will be administration that was said to have been outstandingly cor- found in Sheikh Shabbir Akhtar’s Be Careful with Muham rupt even by Nigerian standards, but which had been elected mad: the Salman Rushdie Affair.13 This is far more than on an adult franchise that included Christian and animists as just a defense of the Muslim stand in that affair. Despite the well as Muslims, students at Beyero, Kano, and other universi- author’s protestations to the contrary, it is difficult to see it as ties in the overwhelmingly Muslim part of the country paraded other than an implicit justification of the Muslims’ right to set carrying banners which proclaimed in Hausa, Arabic, and up an Islamic theocracy in Britain as being what he considers English: “Democracy is unbelief: We do not want a constitu- to be the only solution to the problem of the Muslim theocrat’s tion, We want government by the Qur’an alone.” irreconcilable confrontation with secularism. He says: The second of those “two other provinces of the former Yet one needs to rise above one’s ethnocentricity to see what cultural memories the democracy evokes in the Muslim mind. For theocracy is as precious to Muslims as democracy is to Westerners. . . . “Jews, Muslims, and Christians accept I myself have no difficulty at all in understanding “what Abraham as their common ancestor. It is only cultural memories theocracy evokes in the Muslim mind.” But, the civilized who would be ashamed to have as usual refusing to heed calls for political correctness, I insist on saying that I have myself no sympathy whatsoever for the him in their family.” — Nick Cohen egregious arrogance of this demand from recent immigrants and the descendants of recent immigrants into my native land. If they truly find life in a secular state intolerable, why do they not now return to the Islamic states from which they came British Empire in which Muslims formed a very substantial rather than demanding that the host country make radical majority” was what in the days of that Empire was called the constitutional changes to accommodate them? Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. This has become by far the worst case It is characteristic of a secular, pluralist democracy that all of all. For, over many years, forces of different kinds from the religious beliefs are tolerated as long as they remain, within overwhelmingly Muslim north have been striving by different reason, within the limits of personal belief and do not impinge methods and with different degrees of intensity to subjugate unduly upon those who do not share those beliefs. Or, to put the equally overwhelmingly Christian and animist south. Most it another way, while religious beliefs are tolerated, religious recently and most scandalously, the northern authorities have practices and institutions may not necessarily be accorded the been permitting if not positively encouraging brown-skinned same freedom if they conflict with the law or constitution of the Muslims from the north to enslave Blacks, and particularly wider state. But this “live and let live” approach is apparently 12 Christian Blacks in the south. unacceptable to many Muslim spokesmen, of whose attitudes Transforming Societies—and the following quotation is typical: “The implementation of Islam as a complete code of life cannot be limited to the home the World and to personal relationships. It is to be sought and achieved It has long been obvious that the same Islamic predisposi- in society as a whole.” tions—an inability to come to terms with state secularism, Those words were preached from the minbar of Bradford, religious pluralism, and universal adult suffrage, of which England’s, mosque. A well-known imam in France is reported the mirror image is a visceral longing for the hermetic and as preaching to the effect that, “There can be no government contrary to what God has revealed” (in the Qur’an). He concludes that it is the duty of every Muslim to overthrow every power “which governs in contravention of that which “[W]e have tried too hard to put a God enjoins and (to bring about) the erection of the Islamic positive face on religion, when the state.” In more moderate terms, but to the same effect, Sheikh truth is we know that all religions have their Shabbir Akhtar says: demonic underside. We quote Isaiah, Our inherited (Islamic) understanding of religious freedom, of the not Joel. We talk about Rabbi Joshua Heschel, nature and role of religion in society, is in the last analysis being fundamentally challenged by the new religious pluralism in Britain. not Rabbi Meir Kahane. We favor St. Francis and his birds, not Torquemada and his racks. Behind this, too, surely lies the plea articulated by Jinnah, that Islam must be protected from the consequences of dem- Alas, however, they are all part of the ocratic pluralism. story. Telling just the children’s version Perhaps the most direct expression of Muslim defiance of will no longer do.” — Harvey Cox Western-style democracy is the following, uncompromising statement issued jointly by the two most representative Islamic

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 42 ISLAM: VOICES OF DISSENT

organizations in Britain, the Islamic Academy of Cambridge, The achievement of Siddiqui’s aims certainly does not exclude and the Islamic Cultural Centre of London. This statement armed force: “Lightly-armed muttawi [faithful to Allah] sol- insists that the Muslim community: “cannot commit itself to diers who go out to fight and die for Islam are more powerful follow all ‘current laws’ however anti-religious these laws may than the heavily-armed professional soldiers who fear death.” become through democratic means” (emphasis supplied). Moreover, the odds are in Islam’s favor: “With a popula- Quotations are given to illustrate Muslim attitudes of dis- tion of almost one billion and with infinite sources of wealth, content with state neutrality towards Islam; a visceral objection you can defeat all the powers.” It is therefore possible for the to living under pluralist dispensation; an inability to accept the Muslims to bring about “the total transformation of the world.” authority of democratic decision-making when this conflicts with Dr. Siddiqui is particularly scornful of the compromisers revelation; and a refusal to contemplate the possibility of Islam who have been trying to prove Islam compatible with their sec- existing simply as a personal belief system, shorn of its political ular ambitions and Western preferences, and contemptuous and social institutions. Such quotations could be multiplied of those who seek to set up “a liberal and democratic nation- indefinitely. They are clearly constants of the Muslim world out- State with a few cosmetic ‘Islamic’ features.” look whether in the context of post-imperial India, Nigeria, the Sudan, or Muslim settlement in Western Europe. Resistance to Reform The nature of this world outlook can be further elucidated The moral from all that British material is absolutely clear. If we by expounding the views of Dr. Kalim Siddiqui, director of the are to understand the nature of Islam, and to meet and overcome London Muslim Institute. He became locally notorious by pub- the threat that it presents to the entire Western world, we have licly calling for Muslims to murder Salman Rushdie, author of now to abandon assumptions that were sufficiently realistic The Satanic Verses, an indisputably criminal offense for which, when we were dealing with earlier threats to that world. Before since he was an Arab Muslim, he was of course neither arrested World War II, for instance, it was common to speak of the United nor prosecuted. Siddiqui is the moving spirit of an international Islamic tendency inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iranian Revolution. The aims of this tendency are set out as follows to eliminate all authority other than Allah and His Prophet; to “Western scholars need to eliminate nationalism in all its shapes and forms, in particular defend unflinchingly our right to the nation-State; to unite all Islamic movements into a single global Islamic movement to establish the Islamic State; to re-es- examine Islam, to explain its rise and fall tablish a dominant and global Islamic civilisation based on the by the normal mechanisms of human history, concept of Tawheed [the unity of Allah]. according to the objective standards of Nationalism, the nation-state, and democracy for Siddiqui historical methodology.” — Ibn Warraq represent Kufr, literally infidelity but equivalent in a modern context to atheism. Thus the greatest political Kufr in the modern world is nationalism, followed closely be democracy (“sovereignty of the people”), socialism (“dictatorship of the States as a tri-faith country. During that war a popular song proletariat), capitalism, and free elections. And “modern insisted that the “Smiths and the Jones, the Kellys and Cohns” kufr has disguised itself as science, philosophy, technology, were all equally committed to the war effort of the U.S.A. That democracy and ‘progress.’” On the contrary, the “political was their country as Americans, regardless of their present reli- party framework as found in Western ‘democracies’ is divi- gious beliefs or the countries from which their parents or grand- sive of the society and therefore does not suit the Ummah” parents had originated. After that war, President Eisenhower (the worldwide Islamic community). He concludes that “one made a remark that my theologian father thought could only Ummah must mean one Islamic movement, leading to one have been made by an American president: “Everyone must global Islamic State under one Imam/Khalifa [Caliph].” have a religion, and I don’t care what it is.” Such indifference For Siddiqui, “there is no compatibility whatsoever between was all very well, indeed properly presidential, at a time when Islam and the west” and the Islamic Movement “regards the the United States had no significant number of Muslim citizens. west as totally incompatible with Islam.” The notion that a Certainly it is possible for people professedly committed to Muslim may live under the government of non-Islamic nation- aggressively incompatible religious beliefs to live together in state and still practice his Islam as a personal belief system friendly toleration. But this is achieved only by the more or less is apparently unacceptable to Siddiqui, for “A Muslim can conscious and explicit abandonment of those of their pretended neither live the ‘good life’ on his own nor pursue ‘personal beliefs that would make such friendly and tolerant cohabitation taqwa’ [faithfulness to Allah] in isolation.” Dr. Siddiqui con- impossible. So the possibility of such cohabitation is irrelevant cluded one of his published essays with the following rallying to the question of what the relevant teachings of the Qur’an cry, addressed to his fellow Muslims among whom, one must actually are. But because of these possibilities of friendly cohab- assume, are those in Britain: itation it was not preposterous for President Bill Clinton to say Just as the power and influence of kufr in the modern world in 1994, in an address to the Jordanian Parliament: is global, so are the bonds of faith and destiny of the Muslim After all, the chance to live in harmony with our neighbors and Immah. History has come full circle. The global power of kufr to build a better life for our children is the hope that binds us waits to be challenged and defeated by the global power of all together. Whether we worship in a mosque in Irbid, a Baptist Islam. This is the unfinished business of history, so let us go church like my own in Little Rock, Arkansas, or a synagogue in ahead and finish it.

43 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 Haifa, we are bound together by that hope. judgement was: “The sword of Mahomet and the Coran [the Qur’an] are the most stubborn enemies of Civilization, Liberty It was not preposterous for President Clinton to say this in and Truth which the world has yet known.”16 an address to the parliament of a country of which almost the entire population is Muslim. For Jordan—unlike, for instance, Iraq and Saudi Arabia—does have an effective parliament, and its king at that time was a man who had made peace with Israel and succeeded in defeating a terrorist offensive against his own country.14 But for an account of the actual teachings of the Qur’an and of their great and growing threat to Western civilization it will be instructive to attend to a warning from an earlier century. Sir William Muir’s Life of Mahomet, based on original Muslim sources, appeared in Edinburgh in four volumes between 1856 and 1861. Muir’s judgement on the life, which was to be repeated over and over again by subsequent scholars, was based upon a distinction between its earlier “Democracy can be worse than Meccan and later Medinan period. In Mecca, Muhammad was dictatorship. Fareed Zakaria, Arabic-born a sincere, religiously motivated seeker after truth. In Medina, international editor of Newsweek, addresses Muhammad the man showed his feet of clay, and was corrupt- this predicament. . . . He points out that ed by power and by worldly ambitions. democracy is growing in most of the world, Muir went on to say that so long as the Qur’an remained the standard of Islamic belief certain evils would continue to flour- but it’s a dangerous prospect in Muslim lands ish: “Polygamy, divorce and slavery strike at the root of public where fundamentalist parties ‘would happily morals, poison domestic life, and disorganize society; while the come to power through an election but then Veil removes the female sex from its just position and influence set up their own dictatorship. It would be in the world. . . .15 Freedom of thought and private judgement are one man, one vote, one time.’” crushed and annihilated. Toleration is unknown, and the possibility of free and liberal institutions is foreclosed.” Muir’s final — Charleston (W.V.) Gazette

Notes by members of the Hindu “community” and vice versa. 1. They can be found in Paul Kurtz, ed., Skeptical Odysseys 11. It is a matter of fact, and I believe significant, that the only (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2001), p. 377. My earlier paper on provinces of the former British Empire where the population was “The Terrors of Islam” is included in Paul Kurtz, ed. Challenges and is not White that have matched this achievement are those to the Enlightenment (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1994). of the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent, which had both 2. See, for instance, his 1998 interview with al-Jazeera Arab been under British rule for over a hundred years and had become TV Channel, published in the U.K., in The Sunday Telegraph on enthusiasts for the game of cricket. As a former prime minister October 7, 2001. of Barbados said, after his party had been defeated in a general 3. See Ibn Warraq, Why I Am Not a Muslim (Amherst, NY: election: “The religion of my people is cricket and in cricket the Prometheus, 1995), p. 115, pp. 122–23, and pp. 163–64. umpire’s decision is final.” 4. The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (London: Allen 12. Reliable evidence about this extremely remote and inac- and Unwin, 2nd ed., 1962), p.7. cessible area is hard to come by. But there can be no reasonable 5. Ibid., p. 27. doubt about the fact of the enslaving of several Christian Blacks 6. Ibid., p. 74. in that region. For my friend the Baroness Cox has undertak- 7. In doing this I am exploiting a comparative advantage. For en several missions to purchase and thus to free such slaves, and I am not only British myself, but my also-British wife was born in has been reproached for so doing on the grounds that such eman- Burma, the daughter of a father serving in the Indian Civil Service, cipatings, in that nightmare region, actually encourage further an institution of which several of my own father’s Oxford friends enslavings. served. My father-in-law was the first of the senior British officials 13. London: Belew, 1989. to say that Britain must, as it soon did, do a deal with the Burmese 14. His successor shows every sign of following in his father’s Nationalist leader U Aung San, despite his period of collaboration admirable footsteps. On his visit to London in November 2001 he with the Japanese, because he was so clearly an honorable man. was reported as saying: “The events of September 11 were plainly The entire surviving family were both proud and delighted that the and simply an affront to all humanity. That is the view of the too memorial celebratum for my father-in-law’s life was attended by rarely heard Arab majority.” the husband of U Aung San’s daughter, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. 15. I should very much like to know how many of those She might well have attended herself had she not then been, as she Departments of Women’s Studies, which it seems are now to be is still is, under house arrest for the offense of winning an election. found on almost if not quite all the university campuses in the 8. Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948), founder of the state of U.S.A., students are required to study the impact upon the lives of Pakistan. women of the imposition of the Sharia. If, as I suspect, the answer 9. See Mervyn Hiskett, Some to Mecca Turn to Pray (London: is very few, then the publication of the findings of research show- Claridge, 1993). Hiskett was a lecturer in Islamic studies in the ing this to be the case would surely have a salutary effect. London School of Oriental and African Studies. 16. Vol. 1, pp. 503–06. 10. There was slaughter of members of the Muslim community

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 44 ISLAM: VOICES OF DISSENT WhyWhy CriticalCritical ScrutinyScrutiny ofof CCanan reasonreason blbluntunt fanaticismfanaticism?? IslamIslam IsIs anan UtmostUtmost NecessityNecessity SyedSyed KamranKamran MirzaMirza

slam faces unprecedented scrutiny worldwide. This is such as these remain “mainstream”: appropriate—indeed, an utmost necessity. Westerners • Islam is the only purely God-given religion. demand to know the source of Muslim hatred towards • Every word of the Qur’an is God’s word. Ithem. After September 11, Qur’ans sold vigorously across the • The Qur’an contains all knowledge, including scientific West to readers wondering what it contained that could incite knowledge, that humankind will ever need. such murderous zealotry. • The Qur’an has authoritative answers to all human problems. Muslims could benefit even more from critical scrutiny Orthodox Muslims go one step further, claiming that, of Islam. Yet many react violently when Islam is criticized, after God gave humanity the Qur’an, he declared all previous whether by Muslim or non-Muslim critics. Defenders claim religions null and void. From this it follows that every human that Islam is the most tolerant and peaceful of religions, per- should eventually embrace Islam. Reflecting that agenda, haps quoting the only unequivocally tolerant Qur’anic verse Islam divides the world into two parts: Dar-al-Harb (the land they can recall: “There is no compulsion in religion” (Qur’an, of war) and Dar-al-Islam (the land of Islam). Dar-al-Harb is sura 2, verse 256). Others try to rationalize: “Every religion the land of the infidels. On the orthodox Islamic view, Muslims is equally culpable, so let’s not criticize any of them.” Some are obliged to infiltrate that land, proselytize, and procreate vehemently cite the fallacies of Hinduism, Christianity, and until their numbers increase, and finally engage in warfare to other religions, then denounce the critic of Islam for failing to conquer the original inhabitants and impose Islam upon them. censure those religions equally. In angry tones they demand to Thus shall they convert Dar-al-Harb into Dar-al-Islam. know why the critic targets Islam alone. Taliban fanatics told Western reporters that they dreamed of I cannot accept this notion. To me, all diseases are bad— converting the whole world into Dar-al-Islam after establishing yet some are more acute, more lethal than others. Likewise all their now-fallen model regime in Afghanistan. Indeed, the belief religions may be bad, but in my view Islam is the most harmful is widespread among both educated and illiterate Muslims that, as regards its negative effects on the individual and on society one day, all inhabitants of the world will convert to Islam. in general. In all these things Islam differs little from other world reli- Consider that most religions other than Islam are at least gions at the periods in their own histories when most adherents partly dysfunctional today. Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, believed their teachings literally and considered them the only and Buddhism are nearly dormant as political and social truth. The problem for—and with—Islam is that one of its peri- forces, though they still function at the personal level. Most ods of literalism, exclusivism, and violent zeal is occurring now. historically Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist countries have relatively democratic and secular governments. We can say Religious Zeal and Societal Blight that the world religions other than Islam are like diseases that History shows clearly that culture and the individual suffer have run their course, leaving behind old scars and little else. whenever any religion acquires overwhelming social power. From the fourth to the thirteenth centuries c.e., Europe was The Fever of Islam dominated by strict Christianity—first under the Holy Roman Far from being an old scar, Islam is a raging fever in its most Empire, then under contending feudal kings, each of whom acute phase. It currently enjoys worldwide rejuvenation as an claimed to represent God on Earth. Over them all loomed all-encompassing religious, political, and social system. In every the authority of the church. Not surprisingly, dogmatism, Muslim country, fundamentalists grasp for power, if they do not intolerance, inhumanity, and backwardness blighted Europe. already possess it. No Muslim country has a secular govern- Because the Bible was thought to answer all human questions, ment; almost a dozen strictly enforce the 1,400-year-old Sharia theological autocrats held that freethinking, scientific inquiry, law. In all the rest governments are more or less strongly influ- and technical innovation were not only unnecessary but dan- enced by Sharia. In consequence of Islam’s resurgence, Muslim gerous. Europe’s condition remained desperate until religious societies are going backward all over the world. control began to weaken in the thirteenth century. Islam is the only major world religion today in which claims Religious absolutism holds similar sway in many Islam- Syed Kamran Mirza is active with the Institute for the ic countries today, with equivalent results. Certainly in Bangla Secularization of Islamic Society (ISIS). desh, from which I emigrated, social conditions are no better than those during Europe’s Dark Ages. Belying claims that

45 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 by the practice of continuous historical inquiry, analysis, and criticism. In much of the world this process brought forth an ideal of secularism under which most believers embrace their religion for emotional support but no longer grant it the power “Vicious terrorists who concoct to inspire acts of hatred and exclusion. It took several centuries to subdue the power of fanaticism weapons out of religion are superficial literalists in Christianity and Hinduism in this way. Islam needs the clinging to simplistic ideas.” same treatment—and needs it very badly, if today’s third- religious zeal makes human beings pure and honest, the most world Muslim countries are ever to prosper. zealously religious Muslim nations are almost invariably the We don’t need to abolish Islam, as if that could be done. most corrupt. What we need is to educate Muslims about the real Islam, If the reader finds my position harsh, please answer this about its historical sources and the limits of its wisdom—just question: Which world religion or religions proclaim strict as adherents of other world religions have been educated in dress codes for men as well as women; command crimes such the last few centuries. as thievery to be punished by the whip or by chopping off Unfortunately the prospect for such a Muslim reformation appendages; ordain adulterous women to be stoned and blas- is currently remote, for several reasons. For thirteen centuries phemers to be put to death; encourage believers to look upon the Qur’an has remained untranslated into the languages many adherents of all other religions as worthy of subjugation or Muslims speak. Common Muslims revere and recite it, but not death; and inspire fanatics to seek to overthrow secular gov- knowing Arabic, they have no idea what it says. Compare this ernments in hopes of establishing religious states in numerous to the historical experience of Christianity, whose Reformation countries worldwide? If I want to write a declaration that Jesus depended on the wide availability of Bibles in vernacular trans- Christ was the son of a Roman soldier, or even call him “a son lations. Many Muslim intellectuals can read the Qur’an in its of a bitch,” I can do so in the West without fear of the death original Arabic, but, unlike in Christianity or Hinduism, whose penalty. Could I say the same in any Muslim nation about the intellectuals have tended to be skeptical inquirers, most Muslim prophet Muhammad? intellectuals remain blindfolded by dogma. Only in Islam is the I have studied most religions thoroughly and entirely. I have intellectual class generally more religiously zealous than the yet to find another world religion that gives so many scriptural common people and still actively involved in preaching to the instructions of hate and subjugation towards other creeds. As masses. For this reason, fundamentalist Islam may succeed in far as I know, Islam is the only religion that forbids its adherents deflecting the impact of science, which exerted such powerful to offer so much as a funeral prayer for non-Muslims. Let the demythologizing and secularizing influence upon Christianity Qur’an speak for itself: “Nor do thou ever pray for any of them and Hinduism. Indeed, today Muslim intellectuals popularize that dies, Nor stand at his grave, for they rejected Allah and His a disingenuous Qur’anic interpretation of science that helps Apostle, and died in a state of perverse rebellion” (9:54). promote the rejuvenation of fanaticism, and is far more main- Again, Islam’s potential for harm is magnified by the fact stream than is so-called scientific creationism in contemporary that we live in a secular age in which, over most of the world, Christianity. God and religion exert dwindling power over public life. Only In sum, we Muslim expatriates who yearn to bring about in the Islamic world are God and religion still standing so an Islamic reformation face a vast and dangerous challenge. tall—not only among a largely illiterate general public but also But it is a challenge that secularists must meet if we ever hope among far too many Muslim intellectuals. to bring Muslim world once more to the fore of civilization and prosperity. In order to achieve a true secularism, we must help A Call for Reformation the common people of the Muslim world to learn that everything I am not anti-religious, nor I am an atheist. I am an agnostic, in the Qur’an and the Hadith is not necessarily God’s word. and my belief in supernatural power is not that of conventional And we must help them learn so much more. Only a reformation religions. I do not believe, as many Muslims do, that anyone in thought and belief driven by unwavering critical scrutiny can who does not accept the Qur’an as God’s word is necessarily hope to establish secularism and drive back the darkness in an atheist. To question the proof or authenticity of what is put third-world Muslim countries like Bangladesh. forth as God’s word is not to question the existence of God. Even so, my reason prompts me not to believe in any personal God who rewards for good deeds and punishes for bad deeds. Nor do I hope to see any religion destroyed or abolished. What I can and do demand is reformation. Notes To my knowledge, no major historical religion ever has been 1. The Holy Qur’an, trans. by A. Yousuf Ali (Brentwood, abolished. But most of them underwent reformation as a result Md.: Amana Corporation, 1983). of sustained critical scrutiny. Their myths have been exposed, 2. Buchari Sharif, Bengali translation by Maulana their claims to divine sanction and sole possession of truth Muhammad Mustafizur Rahman, 2nd ed. (Dhaka: Sulemani Printers and Publishers, 2nd ed., 1999). sharply undercut. These reformations took place through the 3. The World Book Encyclopedia (Chicago, London, continuous education of believers, achieved by making better Toronto: World Book Inc.—a Scott Fetzer Company, 1991). translations of scriptures readily available to the public, and

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 46 ISLAM: VOICES OF DISSENT LessonsLessons forfor aa IIssllamam,, tootoo,, mustmust changechange SmallSmall PlanetPlanet RoyRoy BrownBrown

s America and the world community continue to confront terrorism, the idea that Islam “Islam may have power, wealth, itself is not to blame is a comforting mantra. numbers, and conviction, but [many InA a letter to the Times of London, nine Muslim leaders wrote, “Islam condemns such abhorrent behaviour [as the Septemb of its beliefs] no longer have any er 11 attacks] and the Holy Qur’an equates the murder of one place in the modern world.” innocent person with the murder of the whole of humanity.” Strangely, just a few years ago one of those same writers was flict between their country and foreign Muslims the Muslims calling for the death of Salman Rushdie. We must not condemn are automatically in the right—regardless of any crimes they all Muslims for the actions of a few of their co-religionists. may have committed. It need not be so. But before this can But we can and must condemn Islam to the extent that that it change Islam itself must change. preaches terror. In the heat of war anyone is capable of inhuman acts. But To pretend that Islam is a religion of peace and love is to murder innocent people in cold blood and to sacrifice one’s to delude ourselves. Islam (the word means submission: own life, that takes absolute conviction: that takes religious submission to the will of God) has always been a religion of fervor. The madrasas of northern Pakistan that trained the conquest. To argue that only a few Islamic extremists are Taliban have been instilling that conviction, that fervor, in the guilty rather than Islam itself is like arguing that only a few minds of thousands of young Muslims for the past ten years. German extremists were responsible for the Holocaust, not They believe utterly that the Qur’an is the absolute and final Nazi philosophy itself. word of God. In it God enjoins every Muslim to wage holy war Though many Muslims young and old were horrified by against the infidels. September 11, quite a few were delighted that America—the Where can this lead? The West for all its military might Great Satan — had been attacked. Some young Muslims in could not win a world war against a billion Muslims. Nor will Bradford, northern England, told reporters why they lacked the West ever accept domination by such an alien culture. An all-out “clash of civilizations” would be a long and bloody conflict with no winners. Is there any way out? Yes, there is. “The rich have a duty to the poor, But to avoid devastation will require change on both sides— and polluters a duty to the planet.” from the West and from Islam. (Continued on page 52) sympathy for the Americans: “Because we are Muslims first.” Schoolboys in Paris told their teacher with pride: “Now you see what we Arabs can do!” As early as September 15, Jorgen Neilsen, professor of “It seems plain that Islam is confronted Islamic studies at the University of Birmingham, wrote in the by the problem of religious violence Times of London: “Islam does not teach revenge. It does not in ways that other religions are not. . . . encourage the killing or oppression of non-Muslims; jihad is not In Islam, it is not the religious message holy war.” But holy war is precisely how jihad is interpreted that promotes the faith into the halls of by the fundamentalists. The West will never understand what it faces if such misrepresentation is allowed to go unchallenged. political power as in Judaism and In Islamic immigrant communities across the West, young- Christianity, it is an original state of sters are taught from an early age that they are Muslims first political and military strength that and British, French, German, or American second; in any con- promotes the religious message.” Roy Brown is a vice president of the International — Richard Connerney Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU).

47 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 Nasrin; A Humanist Education, J. Nickell; Is Faith Good for You?, H. Avalos; Interview with Wole Soyinka. Summer 1997, Vol. 17, no. 3—Cloning CATCH UP ON WHAT Humans, T.J. Madigan, R. Dawkins, R. A. Lindsay, R.T. Hull; Exposing the Religious Right’s ‘Secret’ YOU’VE MISSED IN Weapon, G. Alexander-Moegerle; Can Science Prove that Prayer Works? H. Avalos; Morality Requires God . . . Or Does It? T. Schick, Jr.; Interview with Albert Ellis; When Humanists Embrace the Arts, J. Herrick; What’s Wrong with BACK Relativism, L. Vaughn; Secularists, Rise Up and Celebrate! R. Greeley. Spring 1997, Vol. 17, no. 2—Tampa Bay’s ISSUES ‘Virgin Mary Apparition,’ G. Posner; Those Tearful Icons, J. Nickell; The Honest Agnostic, J.A. Haught; • 20% discount on orders of 10 or more • $6.95 each The Freedom to Inquire, G.D. Smith, D. Berman, L. Hickman, S. Porteous, R. Riehemann, M. Bunge; W.K. Clifford’s Continuing Relevance, T.J. Winter 2001/2002. Vol. 22, no. 1— Reason, R.B.Tapp. Madigan; The Goldhagen Controversy, E.D. Religious Correctness and the Qur’an, P. Kurtz; Fall 1999, Vol. 19, no. 4—Humanist Manifesto Cohen; On Witchcraft, H. Sebald, P. Stevens, Jr., Jihad Op–Eds, R. Dawkins, R. Brown, J.A. Haught, 2000: A Call for a New Planetary Humanism; The Incredible Flimflams of Margaret Rowen, T.R. Machan, L.I. Bonchek, F. Girsch, T. Flynn; The Medical Ethics, T.J. Madigan, C. Clements, Part 3, M. Gardner. Search for Meaning, T. Flynn, J.A. Haught, S.M. Interview with Arthur Caplan, L. Purdy; Reason, Winter 1996/97, Vol. 17, no. 1—Eutha D’Agostino, K. Livingston, D.J. Allan, S. Haack; Sex, and Science, W. Kaminer; Planet Vatican, nasia Policy at the Crossroads, R.A. Lindsay, P.A. Report from Nigeria, N.A. Allen, Jr. T. Flynn; Can You Go to Heaven? T. Schick, Jr. Admiraal; Catholic Primate Clings to Evolution, Fall 2001. Vol. 21, no. 4—Freethought on Summer 1999, Vol. 19, no. 3—The Science H.J. Birx; The Pope, Evolution, and the Soul,M. Campus, A. Dacey, J. Huang, N. Shanks, M. of Religion, T. Flynn, P. Kurtz, L. Tiger, M. Hunt, Bunge; Humanist World Meets in Mexico City, White, D. Ficek, K. Kubilius, V. Gora, R.J. Schofield; B. Hunsburger, G. Bishop; Interview with George M. Cherry; Humanism in Eastern Europe, T.J. Three Arguments for Nonbelief, M. Martin; Touring Carlin; The Night I Saw Jesus, R. Taylor; Father’s Madigan, A. Flis; Student Freethought Group, D. Orlando’s ‘Holy Land,’ B. Birnbaum. Day, P. Zeppetello. Araujo; Universal Declaration of Humanist Values, Summer 2001, Vol. 21, no. 3—Humanism Spring 1999, Vol. 19, no. 2—World Popu A. Solomon; Camp Quest 96, V. Uchtman; The and the Death Penalty, T. Flynn, R. Taylor, S. lation, P. Kurtz, R.W. Brown, L.R. Brown, D. Brown, Infomedia Revolution, P. Kurtz; Dr. Persinger’s Dicks, N.A. Allen, Jr., B.M. Leiser, E. Partridge; C. Wahren, C. Lasher, F. Kissling; a Chat with God Machine, I. Cotton. Point/Counterpoint: Public Relations for a ‘Public Arthur C. Clarke; Science and Sensibility, Part 2, Fall 1996, Vol. 16, no. 4—Defining Enemy,’ S. F. Goldberg, The Powerless Minority, L. R. Dawkins; Why Postmodernism Is Not Pro Humanism: The Battle Continues, P. Kurtz, D.A. Jencks; No, Science Cannot Prove that God Exists, gressive, B. Epstein. Noebel, M. Matsumura, S. Porteous, M. Olds, B. Treat; Response to Bobby Treat, T. Schick. Winter 1998/99, Vol. 19, no. 1—The T.W. Flynn, J.E. Smith, T.J. Madigan, R. Firth, H.A. Spring 2001, Vol. 21, no. 2—Is Philosophy McCarthyites of Virtue, P. Kurtz; Family Values, Tonne, L. Mondale; The Enlightened Cynicism Obsolete? T. Flynn, A Dacey, M. Bunge, D. C. M. Cherry, V.L. Bullough, R. Boston, M. Matsumura; of Ambrose Bierce, G. Odden; The Incredible Noelle, S. P. Stich, V. J. Stenger and Interview Profile in Courage: Taslima Nasrin, M. Cherry, Flimflams of Margaret Rowen, Part 2, M. with George Lakoff and Mark Johnson; Members of the Academy of Humanism, S. Rushdie, Gardner; Gordon Stein—In Memoriam, J. Nickell, Postmodern Anti-Science, N. Levitt. FI Interview; Science and Sensibility, Part 1, R. P. Kurtz; India, M. Cherry, L. Fragell, C. Hitchens. Winter 2000/01, Vol. 21, no. 1—The Dawkins; God and the Philosophers, Part 3, P. Summer 1996, Vol. 16, no. 3—The Unlimited Catholic Church’s Bid for Control over Edwards; Trying to Prove the Bible Is Pro-Woman, Cosmos—A Personal Odyssey, A. Hale; New American Health Care, T. Flynn, S.D. Mumford, L. Ksarjian. Age Physics, V.J. Stenger; In Honor of Bonnie S. Oestreich, V.L. Bullough; Faith in the Truth, D.C. Fall 1998, Vol. 18, no. 4— Postmodernism, Bullough, G.A. Larue, P. Kurtz; Abortion, V.L. Dennett; Don’t Listen to Dr. Laura, S. Presley; M. Cherry, E.O. Wilson, J. Bricmont, V.L. Bullough, Bullough, H. Morgentaler, S. Porteous, F. Digby, Religion as Fandom, R. Price; Against the X. Li, T. Schick, Jr., H. Siegel; Interview with John N. Hentoff, N.W. Smith, J.K. Taylor, T. W. Flynn; Grain, A.B. Pinn; Will Evolutionary Psychology Searle on Artificial Intelligence; God and the Religious Belief in America, H. Tonne, G.R. Grow Up? H.R. Holcomb, III. Philosophers, Part 2, P. Edwards; Bill of Rights Bergman, L. Conyers, P.D. Harvey; Post-Marxism Fall 2000, Vol. 20, no. 4—Without the Wall for Unbelievers. and Humanism, S. Stojanovic´, L. Yong-Sheng. of Separation between Church and State, Summer 1998, Vol. 18, no. 3—Re-Discover Spring 1996, Vol. 16, no. 2—Do We Need T. Flynn, A.M. Dershowitz, M. French, R. Boston, ing Happiness, M. Matsumura, P. Kurtz, M. God to Be Moral? J. M. Frame, P. Kurtz; Religion V.L. Bullough, N.R. Allen, Jr., R.L. Webster, L. Igwe; Csikszentmihalyi, J.F. Schumaker, T.J. Madigan, in the Public Schools, A. Szalanski, V.L. Bullough, Interview with Peter Singer; Humanity’s Worst D.B. Ardell; God and the Philosophers, Part 1, E. Tabash, J.B. Massen, J. Barnhart, M.J. Rockler; Nightmare, A. Cranston; Are Atheists More P. Edwards; Clergy and the Sin of Silence, G.A. The Incredible Flimflams of Margaret Rowen, Depressed?, F. Buggle. Larue; Notorious Notary, H. Silverman. Part 1, M. Gardner; Strange Bedfellows: Summer 2000, Vol. 20, no. 3—Minds Spring 1998, Vol. 18, no. 2—Science Mormon Polygamy and Baptist History, G.D. Beyond, L. Vaughn, A.A. Harrison, J. Tarter, T.S. vs. Religion, M. Cherry, P. Kurtz, R. Dawkins, Smith; The Lost Encyclical against Penicillin, Schick, Jr., D.E. Tarter, T. Bisson; Do Memes E.C. Scott, R. P. Feynman, B. Ehrenreich and J. C. Durang; Beat the Odds, D. Olincy; Paul Make Sense? Yes—M. Blackmore, No—M. McIntosh, P. Atkins, M. Ruse, H. Bondi, Q. Smith, Edwards on Nietzsche, Freud, and Reich, W.A. Bradie; Interview with Ursula Goodenough; M. Matsumura; Interview with Conor Cruise Smith; Humanism and Human Malleability, T.J. Queen Silver, W. McElroy; God Bless You, Dr. O’Brien on Thomas Jefferson; Free Will, L. Vaughn Madigan. Kevorkian, K. Vonnegut. and T. Schick, Jr.; The Shroud of Turin, J. Nickell. Winter 1995/96, Vol. 16, no. 1—Humanism Spring 2000, Vol. 20, no. 2—20th Winter 1997/98, Vol. 18, no. 1—The and Tolerance, T.J. Madigan, R. Muller, J. Pecker, P. Anniversary Issue: The Best of Humanism, Humanist Hope, T.J. Madigan, P. Kurtz, M. Cherry, Kurtz, M. Roan, M. Downey, M. Cherry, P. Stevens, L. Vaughn, P. Kurtz, Greetings from the Best and M. Matsumura, M. Gorbachev, Members of the Jr.; The Challenge from the Religious Right, N.R. the Brightest, 100 Humanist Events that Changed Academy of Humanism; Mother Teresa’s House Allen, Jr., R. Bellant, A.E. Lyngzeidetson, S. Porteous, the World, An FI Retrospective; Interview with of Illusions, S. Shields; A Scientist and a ‘Saint,’ J.A. Haught; American Naturalism, P.H. Hare, Steven Pinker; Anatomy of a Hoax, M. Harris; J. Hayes; Farewell to God, C. Templeton; Can a R. Rorty, P. Romanell; Secularization in Turkey, Op-Eds by C. Hitchens, W. Kaminer, K. Pollitt, Robot Have Moral Rights? T. Schick, Jr.; Dumping I. Kuçuradi; Marking Life’s Milestones: New P. Singer, N. Hentoff, M.C. Miller, and more. Limbo, “Voltaire”; An Interview with Barbara To order, or for a complete listing Winter 1999/2000, Vol. 20, no. 1—Myth Ehrenreich. & Men, L. Vaughn, R.M. Price, M.D. Thomas; Why Fall 1997, Vol. 17, no. 4—Sexual Freedom, of our back issues call Getting It Right Matters, D.C. Dennett; Are the T. J. Madigan, W. McElroy, L. Sloan, R.A. Tielman, Media Killing Democracy?, R.W. McChesney; V.L. Bullough, J.A. Haught; Islam and Women’s Interview with Cynthia Tucker; Beyond All Rights, N.R. Allen, Jr., I. Warraq, S.J. al-Azm, T. 800-458-1366

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 48 Back to the Past: Polish Prelates turn back the clock Poland’s Experiment in Theocracy Kaz Dziamka

he recent ill-conceived initiative by President responsibility before God.” The Polish Preamble also talks, George W. Bush to offer financial help to “faith- erroneously, about Polish culture being rooted “in the based” organizations has renewed debate in Christian heritage,” even though the real roots of Polish cul- Tthe United States about the true meaning of that honored ture are Slavonic (which is to say, non-Christian); historically, Jeffersonian principle, the separation of church and state. In Christianity was forced upon the Slavic tribes by political fiat Poland, on the other hand, it seems that nobody can prevent in 996, when Poland’s Slavic Piast ruler, Mieszko I, “adopted” that nation’s medievalist, anti-democratic Roman Catholic Christianity. church from violating church-state separation. Like Constantine the Great, however, Mieszko never Since the collapse of the Communist government in Poland became fully Christianized and used Christianity for political, in 1989, the Catholic church—in tandem with the Polish pope, not personal, goals. The original Slavic Polish (“Polan”) State John Paul II—has imposed its political will on Polish society united under the Piast dynasty had two options in the face of and created a de facto Catholic neo-theocracy. Disturbingly, the growing threat of subjugation by Christian military pow- this Polish neo-theocracy parades under the names of “democ- ers: either accept Christianity direct from Rome (via the Latin racy” and “religious freedom.” Traditional theocracies like rite) or risk German missionary drives on the bloody swords Saudi Arabia or Iran openly admit that religion and state are of Christian German emperors. The hapless Mieszko chose the bonded. In a neo-theocracy like Poland, the bondage may be former, marrying a Christian Czech princess, but it would take less intense, yet there’s enough of it to question whether Polish more than an administrative decree and a Christian marriage people genuinely enjoy democracy and religious freedom. to eradicate Poland’s Slavonic heritage. Indeed, it would take Consider, for example, the following passages from a relentless, millennium-long policy of forced Christianization the Polish Constitution, adopted by the Polish National in tears and blood. Even today, Polish Slavonic culture has not Assembly in 1997, and from the Polish Concordat, rat- been entirely destroyed. One can still find colorful Slavonic ified in 1998. Unlike the American Constitution—a traditions thinly covered by a Christian veneer. This should strictly secular document, in which there is no mention not be surprising, though it is rarely reported. Polish Slavonic of Christianity, God, Jesus, or any supreme being—the heritage stretches over at least three millennia; Poland’s Preamble to the Polish Constitution alone mentions “God” “Christian heritage” began only a millennium ago. How, then, twice: “[…] those who believe in God as the source of can Poland be “rooted in the Christian tradition”? truth, justice, good and beauty” and Needless to say, conversion to Christianity in no way “recognizing our prevented Poland from becoming embroiled in endless, suicidal Christian wars. It also resulted in tragic destruction of Slavic culture and religion; fanatical opposition to science (particularly astronomy); persecution of pagans and other here- tics, as well as anti-Semitism fed by the popular Christian misconception that the Jews were “the murder- ers of Jesus.” These are all facts con- veniently ignored today by Polish Catholics, who pontificate about the supposed benefits of their “Christian heritage.” Christianity brought some benefits, admittedly. But the political machinations and ambitions of the Vatican in general, and the Polish Catholic establishment in particular, have caused endless religious, political, econom-

49 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 ic, and social problems throughout Polish Christian history. In Poland, a crucifix hangs in both houses of the parlia- Among other things, these problems resulted in the erasure of ment, and Catholic Mass on Sunday is broadcast on state-run Poland from the map of Europe in the eighteenth century. radio. (Article 20 of the Concordat grants the Catholic Church In Polish Philosophy: Zadruga, Antoni Wacyk, a leading a right to “transmit programs on state-operated television Polish spokesman for the Slavonic roots of Polish culture and radio” in addition to its own “Radio Maryja,” an unprece and national identity, decries the self-destructive Catholic dented, unabashed, stunningly embarrassing extravaganza ization of Polish society and state. He notes that, during of Mariolatry. It is virtually impossible to watch daily news the nadir of Saxon decadence in the eighteenth century, on Polish television without a segment or two on Catholic Poland’s army could only muster a pitiful 18,425 troops, activities, and without listening to Polish Catholic “experts” on while its army of Catholic priests and clerics numbered everything from religion to morality, politics, sports, econom- 31,137! Is it any wonder that Poland was partitioned three ics, or entertainment. times and lost its independence in 1795? As Wacyk argues, When a baby is born, a couple marries, or a person dies, “[The Polish State] collapsed because during the two [pre- there is invariably a Polish Catholic priest at hand to quote the vious] centuries of its unrelenting educational campaign in Bible and to collect a fee. In Poland it is becoming increasingly Poland, the Catholic Church managed to completely destroy rare not to have a monument dedicated, a new school opened, Polish national identity.” or even a car purchased without its being consecrated by a cas- If you read the first chapter of the Polish constitution, you sock-clad personage wielding an aspergillum (also for a fee, will learn that it offers the easy verbal promise of “a demo- of course). On Polish television, one can see Poland’s platitu- cratic state” and the principles of “social justice” (Article 2); dinous Primate Józef Glemp as often as the urbane, articulate the typical separation of political powers into the legislative, Polish President Aleksander Kwa´sniewski. executive, and judiciary (Article 10); and the grandiose asser- Never has a modern European country been so Cathol tion that “Churches and other religious organizations shall icized as Poland. No other country in Europe is more neo- have equal rights” (Article 25). Then you will come upon this theocratic than Poland. very suspicious-sounding passage: “The relations between the When America’s young democracy was threatened by Republic of Poland and the Roman Catholic Church shall be Patrick Henry’s bill to establish a provision for the teach- determined by international treaty concluded with the Holy ers of Christianity, it was James Madison, the father of the See, and by statute.” American Constitution, who averted the danger by arguing Indeed, these relations were officially determined a year eloquently against legal support for the Christian religion. later, when the Polish Concordat was ratified. Concordats— In “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assess agreements whose form makes them throwbacks to the Middle ments,” Madison argued that such a bill would be “a danger- Ages—always compromise the sovereignty of the states sign- ous abuse of power” and that “the support of the Christian ing them with the Holy See. Here are a few examples selected religion” through a legal system “is a contradiction to the from the twenty-nine articles of the Polish Concordat: Christian religion itself; for every page of it disavows a • Article 9 requires that many Christian or Catholic holi- dependence on the powers of this world.” All in all, Madison days be recognized as public holidays: January 1 (in celebra- offered fifteen reasons why the legal support of the teachers tion of Mary, “Holy Mother of God” and “Queen of Poland”); of Christian religion should be rejected. August 15 (the Day of the Ascension of the “Most Holy Virgin Sadly there are no Madisons or Jeffersons in the Warsaw Mary”); and so on. Belweder (the traditional residence of the Polish president) • Article 10 legitimizes Catholic weddings. (They acquire or the Polish Seym (Parliament) to save Poland’s budding civil status if registered within five days.) democracy from a Roman Catholic takeover. For now, Polish • Article 12 introduces Catholic (“religious”) indoctrination Catholic neo-theocracy is in command while a genuine Polish at public expense in public schools, including nurseries and democracy seems at best a distant future prospect. colleges, as well as in the military (Article 16). Perhaps when Poland joins the European Union, closer • Article 15 binds the Polish government to subsidize the intellectual and cultural ties with Western Europe—where Lublin Catholic University and the Papal Theological Academy Christianity is dying out—will help Slavonic Poles to rele- of Cracow. (Article 22 also obligates the Polish government to gate the Polish Roman-Catholic Church to its true role: an support the renovation and conservation of “valuable” Cath entrenched and imported belief system that seeks to keep olic churches and other buildings, as well as “works of art,” modern Poles in bondage to the alien gods of ancient Near described as part of “the cultural heritage.”) Eastern peasants, shepherds, and fishermen. For such a belief system to enjoy government support is exactly how not Kaz Dziamka, born and educated in Poland, came to the to build a modern democratic government—a lesson learned United States with his family in 1981. In 1995, he designed by the American Founding Fathers, but not yet apparently by and taught at Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute modern-day Polish politicians. “The American Humanist Tradition,” the first course in Of course, democracy, even American democracy, is not a secular humanism ever taught at a vocational institution. finished product or a fool-proof formula. Rather it is an on-go- He continues to teach at Albuquerque TVI. Since 1997 he ing process. The starting point, however, must be separation has been editor of the American Rationalist. He has been of political government from the crippling influence of institu- Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the University of tionalized religions. Tromsø in Norway and recently became U.S. correspondent for Fakty i Mity (Facts and Myths), an independent anti-cler- ical Polish weekly.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 50 Zod’s Version Gary Sloan

od was distraught. On his ter, pain, injustice, labor, even death would burnished throne he be vanquished. Eventually, these drooped, raiment creatures would learn to seed Zdisheveled and crown askew, as their own universes.” With faint winged ministers fluttered about. irony, he added: “In short, they No one had ever seen him like would be like us.” this. For an eon he had radi- Suddenly, his voice quivered: ated empyreal serenity, “Oh, what a falling off was there! unalloyed by sublunary These earthlings. . . . Let me be brief.” emotions. While the ministers Shifting his gaze toward the min- dispatched the affairs of the isters, he quickened his pace: “They kingdom, he sat erect, silent, are obsessed with a deity many call and still—musing, with imper- God. They think he created the laws turbable mien, on infinity. No of nature, then contravenes those one dared disturb him. laws. They think he watches them He had last spoken some 15 and listens to them, rewards them billion years ago. Informed that and punishes them. They try to get space-time was ready to under- on his good side by obeying his go a phase transition to trigger orders and observing primi- rapid expansion of the universe, he tive rites. Though no prayer said: “Close the pearly gates and activate the has ever been answered, kaonic shield. Then switch to automatic pilot.” they doggedly beseech him. Now, with a formal cluck, Zod summoned his prime Rain or shine, they bow their minister, Yod, who alit by the throne. After a sotto voce heads or drop to their knees exchange with the distressed monarch and a bustling round like abject serfs. Even their of whispers with technicians, Yod addressed his cohorts— now, wings folded, perched on golden bars: “Apparently, our flux capacitor malfunctioned. It discharged a pristine batch “Regrettably,” said Zod’s prime minis- of brain waves from planet #3182551728—in the local vernacular, Earth. When the waves struck the king, he instanta- ter, “His Majesty now knows earthlings neously decoded them. Regrettably, His Majesty now knows believe in deities.” earthlings believe in deities.” A crescendo of susurrations swished through the vaulted chamber fretted with incandescent quasars. Silence fell when Zod stood up and hopped forward. Fixing his pink eyes on a leaders pray! All their lives, these wretched creatures attend quasar, he spoke with pensive restraint: “When I set the initial meetings where speakers expatiate on the imaginary deity. conditions for the universe, I included a parameter designed to They study ancient books laced with barbarous fancies which prevent brains from conceiving of supernatural beings. Since they call his Word.” all phenomena have natural causes, the conception seemed a Zod took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “They have pernicious superfluity. The late evidence from Earth corrobo- specialists—they call them theologians—who pontificate on rates the assumption. God’s attributes. They say he is an omnipotent, omniscient, “As you may recall, my intent was to maximize autonomy, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, immutable, eternal, incorporeal lucidity, courage, knowledge, wonder, and joy. Instead of frit- spirit.” tering away their lives on bootless illusions, intelligent beings When Zod paused, the prime minister ventured, “Why, would unravel the subtle intricacies of nature. The quest that’s absurd.” for understanding would be inexhaustibly gratifying. New “At best. A fetid stew of non sequiturs and rank antino- discoveries would perpetually delight. Disease, famine, disas- mies. Some compound the offense by asserting they believe God exists because the belief is absurd. They prostitute their Gary Sloan is a retired English professor in Ruston, minds to the most untenable propositions. To us, that is insan- Louisiana. He can be contacted at [email protected]. ity. They call it wisdom.”

51 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 The minister of revels, Kod, piped: “Take heed, your majes- Zod hopped sideways. “Of course! He could invert the ty. These Godmongers may try to deify you.” no-deity parameter and specify appellations for the imaginary Zod nodded. “No doubt—a mere astrophysicist, with a deity along with other particulars.” penchant for antiquated polity and contemplative silence. “God was ever vainglorious, vindictive, and resentful of I do have at present one omni-attribute: omni-confused. your authority,” said Wod, “yet, to give him his due, an accom- Fifteen billion years ago, I carefully rechecked my figures plished mathematician.” The ministers all flapped to signify before the head technician fed them into the Universe agreement. Seeding Accelerator, USA. Every particle, virtual and real, “Ah,” said Zod, “I now understand why the earthlings’ was plotted, every wiggle of every superstring—in all twen- heaven has winged messengers, streets of gold, and pearly ty-three dimensions—calibrated, every neural configuration gates. God’s way of twitting us.” mapped. Everything was go. Each galaxy would evolve a spe- “His cockiness may be premature,” said the prime minister. cies of rational beings, scornful of superstition, hocus-pocus, “The technicians have examined a new tide of earthling brain and humbuggery of every ilk.” He sighed. “My equations were waves. They reveal a statistically significant spike on the axis flawless.” for atheism. Our good God, it seems, should have rechecked On his perch, the minister of internal security, Wod, his figures.” flapped. When Zod looked, the minister said: “Your highness, Zod brightened. “In any case, we shall seed other universes.” can it be coincidence our former head technician was named God? After he programmed your equations into the USA computers, he vanished. He could have fiddled with your figures.”

(Lessons for a Small Planet cont’d. from p. 47) been raped and as a result is facing prison for indecency—or any young woman from an immigrant community in the West sent to Pakistan to be married against her will. For its part, America will have to recognize that globaliza- The gulf in understanding between Islam and the modern tion demands engagement. The United States can no longer world must be bridged. We in the West must never compro- treat the rest of the world as just so many potential consum- mise our commitment to human rights, but we must be pre- ers of American goods and services. The rich have a duty to pared to apply those rights more fairly. And Muslims need to the poor, and polluters have a duty to the planet. But, even if learn that, first and above all, we are all human beings—that America accepts its global responsibilities, this will not end we share our common humanity with all others on this planet regardless of race, religion, color, or sex. All religions, even Islam, must be interpreted in the light of that understanding. Muslims must not allow themselves to be used by the fun- As Christians have over the last four damentalists. They know that what happened on September 11 was evil and brings shame on the perpetrators. To side hundred years, Muslims must critically with the fundamentalists is to share their guilt. Muslims must evaluate and reject some of the more stand up and be counted on the side of civilized values. Just as Christians have had to do over the last four hundred years, violent and primitive facets of their Muslims must be prepared to critically evaluate and reject religion. some of the more violent and primitive facets of their religion. Christianity only became civilized after the church was forced to accept that it did not hold all knowledge of the cosmos nor have the complete prescription for everyone’s life. Many Muslims still believe that Islam has such a prescription, the problem. Islamic fundamentalism will still exist, and the but it is a pre-scientific, pre-Enlightenment prescription based mullahs will still be calling for jihad against the infidels. on the medieval values of a desert people. Islam may have Islam itself must change. power, wealth, numbers, and conviction, but belief that diseas- The concepts of human rights and democracy are alien to es and famine are manifestations of the wrath of Allah or that Islam. Though most Islamic countries signed the Universal He enjoins the faithful to murder the infidel no longer have any Declaration of Human Rights when first promulgated in place in the modern world. 1948, many have since qualified their support by signing the Contemporary Muslims are prisoners of their belief that so-called Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. Islam has all the answers. Muslims, together with fundamen- This later document accepts human rights “insofar as they talists of other faiths, need now to make a stand against the conform to Islamic law”—in other words, not very far. There violence of their holy texts. They must shake off their chains is no concept of freedom of speech in Islam; ask our friend and join with people of goodwill of every faith and of none, in Dr. Younus Shaikh, languishing on death row in Rawalpindi, the vision of a world where human rights and human values Pakistan, for explaining what life was probably like at the time are universally respected. of Muhammad. There is no equality of treatment for men and women under Islamic law; ask any young woman who has just

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 52 HEADINGCHURCH-STATE SUBHEAD UPDATE

ment funding of religious groups or religious job discrimination by state-funded Scouting Policy groups. ¸ House Bill Would Mix Pulpit, Politics. A House bill with 112 mostly Republican cosponsors would revise Suffers First Setback federal tax law to let churches endorse political candidates. Pat Robertson interrupted his month-long “retire- Tom Flynn ment” after resigning from the Christian Coalition to praise the bill, H.R. 2357. hurch-State Update tracks con- have consistently refused to grant. Look tinuing developments in import- for pitched battles in more progressive Around the Country: Cant federal, state, and local states over whether to gnaw this partic- ˘ Milwaukee, Wisconsin: A federal church-state issues. Each item is pre- ular federal carrot. district court struck down government ceded by an up arrow (˘) or a down funding of a Christian addiction-recov- arrow (¸), based on the story’s implica- ¸ Istook’s Ba-a-a-a-ack! Representa ery organization that had been a “post- tions for separation of church and state tive Ernest Istook (R.-Okla.) has er agency” for George W. Bush’s faith- and the rights of the nonreligious. launched another effort to amend the based initiative. Judge Barbara Crabb U.S. Constitution to legalize school ruled that religion was so integral to the ˘ Boy Scouts Lose First Major Case. prayer. His School Prayer Amendment, agency’s program that for government An Oregon judge ruled that Portland a toned-down version of his unsuccess- to support it violated the Constitution. city schools discriminated against ful 1999 Religious Freedom Amendment The suit was brought by the Madison, atheist students by permitting the Boy (RFA), defends “the people’s right to Wisconsin-based Freedom from Reli Scouts to recruit during class time. The acknowledge God according to the dic- gion Foundation. judge ordered state school superinten- tates of conscience” and the “right to dent Stan Bunn to rewrite an earlier pray and recognize . . . religious beliefs, ˘ New Orleans: A federal appeals court decision requiring public schools to let heritage, and traditions on public prop- upheld a 1999 ruling striking down Scouting recruit during the school day. erty, including schools.” Louisiana’s school prayer law. The law had undergone a string of amendments ¸ Supreme Court Lets Florida Gradu ? Mission Unclear, Mandate Drooping, converting it from a mandate for “silent ation Prayer Stand. Without comment Faith-Based Office Gets New Head. meditation” to one for “silent prayer” to the U.S. Supreme Court declined to Jim Towey, a political insider and Roman just plain “prayer.” review a lower court ruling uphold- Catholic who once served as counsel ing a Duval County, Florida, gradua- to Mother Teresa, has been named by ¸ Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsyl tion prayer scheme. Graduating pub- President Bush to head the White House vania’s lower house voted 200–1 to cre- lic-school seniors choose a classmate Office of Faith-Based and Community ate a moment of silence and require to give a commencement message that Initiatives. The post lay vacant since recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. may include prayer. Fortunately, the August when founding director John J. Students could be exempted only with a ruling applies only in the Eleventh DiIulio resigned. Now for the good news: note from parents. Circuit: Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. the controversial “faith-based initiative” keeps shrinking. First designed to report ¸ Marysville, Washington: The town ¸ Thompson Declares Fetuses directly to the president and to steer council voted 5–2 to open its meetings “Unborn Children.” Secretary of Health more than a billion federal dollars into with a prayer. and Human Services and longtime abor- church coffers, after a year of opposition tion foe Tommy Thompson has permit- the Faith-Based Office has a fuzzier ¸ Woonsocket, Rhode Island: Citing ted states to classify each developing mission and has been subordinated to the September 11 attacks, the town fetus as an “unborn child.” That way a new White House office promoting council’s school committee voted 3–2 to a federally funded, state-administered volunteerism among Americans. Mean open meetings with prayer. program that funds poor childrens’ while, a blue-ribbon panel chaired by for- health care can be extended to pay for mer Senator Harris Wofford and packed ¸ Penryn, Pennsylvania: Organizers of prenatal care and the care of pregnant with clergy members handed faith-based a September YMCA triathlon will have women as well. Abortion rights defend- plans a mixed verdict. Though the to look farther afield for police protec- ers fear the decision will create a prece- panel supported administration plans tion. Penryn’s eight police officers voted dent for treating fetuses as citizens with to spur charitable giving by individuals to boycott the triathlon because Harry a legal “right to life,” something courts and grantmakers, it could not reach Potter books were read to children in a Y consensus on more controversial faith- after-school program. Officers object to Tom Flynn is editor of Free Inquiry. based concepts such as direct govern- the books’ treatment of witchcraft.

53 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 GREAT MINDS

suras into three periods.” The German scholar used changes in literary style to establish his Qur’anic chronology—thus Theodor Nöldeke: we find exalted poetical passages in the early Meccan years and long prosaic deliverances in later Medinan ones. Nöldeke made further contributions Father of Qur’anic in his “Zur Sprache des Qur’ans” (1910), where he critically examined the style and syntax of the Qur’an, and found it greatly deficient in its mode of expression. Criticism Nöldeke’s other works include a History of the Persians and Arabs to Ibn Warraq the Sasanid Period (1879), a version of the Islamic historian al-Tabari ‘s heodor Nöldeke, generally rec- Qorâns. It became the foundation of all chronicle, and Sketches from Eastern ognized as the father of Western later Qur’anic studies. History (1892). TQur’anic criticism, was born on Though several scholars had already Though he has been criticized in March 2, 1836, in Harburg, Hanover, made useful contributions to the study recent years for his negative remarks Germany. He died on December 25, of the chronology of the Qur’an, the about “Semitic cultures,” and for using 1930, in Karlsruhe, Germany. One of the greatest leap forward in this field was his eminence in the field of Islamic greatest Semiticists of the nineteenth Nöldeke’s history of the Qur’an. Nöldeke studies to impose his views in a rather and early twentieth centuries, Nöldeke accepted the Islamic tradition “in rec- dictatorial way, Nöldeke’s Geschichte was elected to become the first German ognizing a division into suras mainly des Qorâns must still be considered an professor in the chair of Semitics at revealed at Mecca [early in Muhammad’s indispensable tool for furtherresearch. the University of Strasbourg in 1872, career] and those mainly revealed at The text excerpted here is Nöldeke’s after Alsace-Lorraine was retaken from Medina, but further divided the Meccan article “The Koran,” which appeared in France. He retained that post for more than thirty years. Using manuscripts found in U.S.missions in the Near East, Nöldeke wrote one of the earliest scholarly gram- mars of Syriac, an Aramaic dialect— the language of Eastern Christianity— thereby inaugurating modern Syriac studies. edited by Quentin Smith Nöldeke’s other great contributions were in the field of Islamic studies, par- Philo is the only professional philosophy journal devoted exclusively to criticisms of theism and defenses or developments of naturalism. To facilitate discussion and debate, Philo also publishes ticularly his history of the Qur’an. By defenses of theism and criticisms of naturalism. The interest in naturalism extends to the relevant the middle of the nineteenth century branches of naturalist philosophy, such as naturalist metaphysics, and especially naturalist ethics. there was a growing European interest in “Naturalism” is broadly construed since there are varying definitions in the philosophical literature. Islam, which was reflected when in 1857 Philo’s goal is to publish original, conceptually precise, and argumentatively rigorous articles on the Parisian Academie des Inscriptions these topics. et Belles Lettres decided to offer a prize Philo is the official journal of the Society of Humanist Philosophers and is published biannually at for the best “critical history of the text the Center for Inquiry with assistance from Western Michigan University. of the Qur’an.” At the age of twenty, To subscribe, write to Philo, Box 741, Amherst, NY 14226-0741. Call 1-800-458-1366 (please Nöldeke had already written a Latin dis- have your credit card ready) or visit www.PhiloOnline.org. quisition on the origin and composition of the Qur’an. He was naturally attract- q One Year (for individuals in the U.S. and Canada)...... $35 ed to the subject, applied, and won the q One Year (for institutions and overseas, postage paid) ...... $60 prize. An enlarged German version of the prize-winning work was published q Two Years (for individuals in the U.S. and Canada)...... $56 in Göttingen in 1860 as Geschichte des q Two Years (for institutions and overseas, postage paid) ...... $96

Ibn Warraq is the author of Why I Am q Three Years (for individuals in the U.S. and Canada) ...... $78 Not a Muslim and the editor of The q Three Years (For institutions and overseas, postage paid) ...... $135 Origins of the Koran, The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, and the forthcoming What the Koran Really Says. Sample articles and secure subscriptions available at www.PhiloOnline.org.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 54 ever heard but himself, as he repeated it to himself in the silence of the night (lxxiii. 4). Indeed the Koran itself The Koran admits that he forgot some revelations (lxxxvii. 7). But by far the greatest part of the book is undoubtedly the Theodor Nöldeke result of deliberation, touched more or less with emotion, and animated by a certain rhetorical rather than poetical he Koran (Qur’a-n) is the foun- became, in the lifetime of Muhammad, glow. Many passages are based upon dation of Islam. It is the sacred the regular designation of the individual purely intellectual reflection. It is said Tbook of more than a hundred sections as distinguished from the whole that Muhammad occasionally uttered millions of men, some of them nations collection; and accordingly it is the name such a passage immediately after one of immemorial civilization, by all whom given to the separate chapters of the of those epileptic fits which not only it is regarded as the immediate word existing Koran. These chapters are of his followers, but (for a time at least) of God. And since the use of the Koran very unequal length. Since many of the he himself also regarded as tokens of in public worship, in schools, and oth- shorter ones are undoubtedly complete intercourse with the higher powers. If erwise is much more extensive than, in themselves, it is natural to assume that is the case, it is impossible to say for example, the reading of the Bible in that the longer, which are sometimes whether the trick was in the utterance most Christian countries, it has been very comprehensive, have arisen from of the revelation or in the fit itself. truly described as the most widely read the amalgamation of various originally How the various pieces of the Koran book in existence. This circumstance distinct revelations. . . . took literary form is uncertain. Muham alone is sufficient to give it an urgent How these revelations actually arose mad himself, so far as we can discover, claim on our attention, whether it suit in Muhammad’s mind is a question never wrote down anything. The question our taste and fall in with our religious and philosophical views or not. . . . The rationale of revelation is explained in the Koran itself as fol- “That even long portions of the Koran existed in written lows:—In heaven is the original text (“the mother of the book,” xliii. 3 [sura form from an early date may be pretty safely inferred 43, verse 3]; “a concealed book,” lv. 77; from various indications; especially from the fact that in “a well-guarded tablet,” lxxxv. 22). By a process of “sending down” (tanzil), one Mecca the Prophet had caused insertions to be made, piece after another was communicated to the Prophet. The mediator was an angel, and pieces to be erased, in his previous revelations.” who is called sometimes the “Spirit” (xxvi. 193), sometimes the “holy Spirit” (xvi. 104), and at a later time “Gabriel” whether he could read and write has been (ii. 91). This angel dictates the revelation which it is almost as idle to discuss as much debated among Muslims, unfortu- to the Prophet, who repeats it after him, it would be to analyze the workings of nately more with dogmatic arguments and and afterward proclaims it to the world the mind of a poet. In his early career, spurious traditions than authentic proofs. (lxxxvii. 6, etc.). It is plain that we have sometimes perhaps in its later stages At present, one is inclined to say that he here a somewhat crude attempt of the also, many revelations must have burst was not altogether ignorant of these arts, Prophet to represent to himself the more from him in uncontrollable excitement, but that from want of practice he found it or less unconscious process by which his so that he could not possibly regard convenient to employ someone else when- ideas arose and gradually took shape in them otherwise than as divine inspi- ever he had anything to write. . . . That his mind. . . . rations. We must bear in mind that he even long portions of the Koran existed It is an explicit statement of the Koran was no cold systematic thinker, but an in written form from an early date may be that the sacred book was revealed (“sent Oriental visionary, brought up in crass pretty safely inferred from various indi- down”) by God, not all at once, but piece- superstition, and without intellectual cations; especially from the fact that in meal and gradually (xxv. 34). This is evi- discipline; a man whose nervous tem- Mecca the Prophet had caused insertions dent from the actual composition of the perament had been powerfully worked to be made, and pieces to be erased, in his book, and is confirmed by Muslim tradi- on by ascetic austerities, and who was previous revelations. . . . tion. That is to say, Muhammad issued all the more irritated by the opposition Sometimes [Muhammad] did sup- his revelations in flyleaves of greater or he encountered, because he had little press whole sections or verses, enjoin- less extent. A single piece of this kind of the heroic in his nature. Filled with ing his followers to efface or forget was called either, like the entire collec- his religious ideas and visions, he them, and declaring them to be “abro- tion, qur’a-n, i.e., “reading,” or rath- might well fancy he heard the angel gated.” A very remarkable case is that er “recitation”; or kita-b, “writing”; or bidding him recite what was said to of the two verses in liii., when he had su-ra, which is the late-Hebrew shu-ra-, him. There may have been many a recognized three heathen goddesses and means literally “series.” The last revelation of this kind which no one as exalted beings, possessing influence

55 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 with God. This he had done in a moment to receive at the hands of believers. But that period. The pieces were according- of weakness, to win his countrymen by a Muhammad showed no anxiety to have ly arranged in indiscriminate order, the compromise which still left Allah in the these superseded enactments destroyed. only rule observed being to place the highest rank. He attained his purpose Believers could be in no uncertainty as long suras first and the shorter toward indeed, but was soon visited by remorse, to which of two contradictory passag- the end, and even that was far from and declared the words in question to es remained in force; and they might strictly adhered to. The short opening have been inspirations of the Evil One.1 still find edification in that which had sura is so placed on account of its supe- So much for abrogated readings; the become obsolete. That later genera- riority to the rest, and two magical for- case is somewhat different when we tions might not so easily distinguish the mulae are kept for a sort of protection come to the abrogation of laws and “abrogated” from the “abrogating” did at the end; these are the only special directions to the Muslims, which often not occur to Muhammad, whose vision, traces of design. . . . occurs in the Koran. There is nothing in naturally enough, seldom extended to On the whole, while many parts of the this at variance with Muhammad’s idea the future of his religious community. . . . Koran undoubtedly have considerable of God. God is to him an absolute despot, In the arrangement of the separate rhetorical power, even over an unbeliev- who declares a thing right or wrong sections, a clarification according to ing reader, the book, aesthetically con- from no inherent necessity, but by His contents was impracticable because of sidered, is by no means a first-rate per- arbitrary fiat. This God varies His com- the variety of subjects often dealt with formance. . . . Muhammad . . . is not in mands at pleasure, prescribes one law in one sura. A chronological arrange- any sense a master of style. This opinion for the Christians, another for the Jews, ment was out of the question, because will be endorsed by any European who and a third for the Muslims; nay, He even the chronology of the older pieces must reads through the book with an impartial changes His instructions to the Muslims have been imperfectly known, and be spirit and some knowledge of the lan- when it pleases Him. Thus, for example, cause in some cases passages of dif- guage, without taking into account the the Koran contains very different direc- ferent dates had been joined together. tiresome effect of its endless iterations. tions, suited to varying circumstances, Indeed, systematic principles of this But in the ears of every pious Muslim as to the treatment which idolaters are kind were altogether disregarded at such a judgment will sound almost as shocking as downright atheism or poly- theism. Among the Muslims, the Koran has always been looked on as the most perfect model of style and language. This feature of it is in their dogmatic PATRICK the greatest of all miracles, the incon- testable proof of its divine origin. Such a ROMANELL view on the part of men who knew Arabic infinitely better than the most accom- (1912–2002) plished European Arabist will ever do, may well startle us. . . . The truth is, it The humanist world is saddened to note the death of Patrick Romanell, an important would have been a miracle indeed if the writer on naturalism and a true humanist in all meanings of the term. Romanell style of the Koran had been perfect. For published in English, Spanish, and Italian on topics ranging from the philosophies of although there was at that time a recog- Giovanni Gentile and Benedetto Croce to the influence of medical training on John nized poetical style, already degenerat- Locke’s empiricism, to naturalism, medical ethics, and Mexican culture. ing to mannerism, a prose style did not Born Patrick Romanelli on October 2, 1912, in Bari, Italy, he became a natu- exist. All beginnings are difficult; and it ralized U.S. citizen as a teenager. He earned his B.A. degree from Brooklyn College can never be esteemed a serious charge in 1934 and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1936 and 1937. He taught at various universities in the United States and abroad, retiring as H. Y. against Muhammad that his book, the Benedict Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso. He wrote or first prose work of a high order in the co-authored fourteen books, including Can We Agree? (1950), Toward a Critical language, testifies to the awkwardness Naturalism (1958), Religion in Philosophical and Cultural Perspective (1967), of the beginner. And further, we must and Humanistic Perspectives in Medical Ethics (1972). always remember that entertainment Romanell was a pioneer in medical ethics. In 1952 he introduced medical philos- and aesthetic effect were at most subsid- ophy into the curriculum at the University of Texas School of Medicine at Galveston, iary objects. The great aim was persua- and taught similar courses throughout his career. He authored several articles on sion and conversion; and, say what we this theme. will, that aim has been realized on the Author of the Free Inquiry article “The Significance of American Philosophic most imposing scale. Naturalism” (Winter 1995/96), Romanell proudly displayed a plaque on his desk announcing “I’m a Damn Naturalist.” He died of cancer on February 3, 2002, in Tucson, Arizona, and is survived by his wife, née Edna Pellegrino. The Patrick Romanell Papers have been gifted to the Center for Inquiry Libraries. Note — Timothy J. Madigan 1. These are the verses referenced in the title of Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses.—Ed.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 56 HEADINGFAITH AND SUBHEAD REASON

life has the meaning that humans, as individuals and in communities, give it, not what someone thinks a deity has Humanism and decreed from on high. It follows that many typical religious responses to suffering are unavailable to the humanist. The humanist cannot say Suffering that the universe is governed by God’s providence, and thus all suffering eventually will be redeemed or outweighed Shawn Dawson by some future good. The humanist cannot appeal to karma and say that those who suffer deserve to suffer because n one of his more melancholy moods, hy umanism eeds a W H N they acted wrongly in a past life. The the great philosopher Bertrand Russell Rational Perspective wrote: humanist cannot say that suffering is I Why does humanism even need to not real, that it is in some sense a The life of Man is a long march address the question of suffering? human illusion. To the humanist all through the night, surrounded by Isn’t it perfectly obvious that human- invisible foes, tortured by weariness these responses are just so much igno- and pain, towards a goal that few can ism ought to be against suffering, that rance and insensitivity. If humanism is hope to reach, and where none may humanists ought to seek to minimize it? to have an adequate response to suffer- tarry long. . . .Very brief is the time What more is there to say? ing, it will have to be along other lines. which we can help them, in which Humanism needs an adequate per- Here we must touch upon human- their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their spective on suffering for a number of ist ethics. A critic might argue that path, to lighten their sorrows by the reasons. First, the humanist response to humanism has no adequate response to balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to install “Suffering is so widespread and so prominent a feature faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits of our world that humanists cannot afford not to have a and demerits, but let us think only of their need.1 rational perspective on it.” It is not my intention here to discuss whether Russell was correct in suffering is almost bound to be signifi- suffering because of the poverty of sec- his somewhat pessimistic worldview, cantly different from religious respons- ular ethical philosophies—for example, but rather to consider suffering from es. Second, critics of humanism might that secular ethics can give no reason a humanist perspective. What should argue (and in fact have argued) that why people ought to do good rather the humanist response to suffering humanism has no adequate response than evil, that is, why people ought to be? Does humanism have a credible to suffering. This might be because of be moral. Thus, humanism can give no and adequate response to suffering? I the alleged poverty of the humanist reason why people ought to care about hope to show that humanism has the worldview, or perhaps because human- the suffering of others (at least when it resources for an adequate approach ism has no adequate ethics. Suffering is not in one’s self-interest to do so). A to suffering that is very much along is unfortunately so widespread and so Christian theist who takes this line is the lines suggested by the above quote prominent a feature of our world that William Lane Craig, arguing that only from Russell. humanists simply cannot afford not to a theistic morality with God as the ulti- First, I should make clear what I have a rational perspective on it. mate enforcer, meting out rewards for virtue and punishments for sin—heaven mean by the word suffering. When I Differences Between speak of suffering, I mean the state or and hell—is capable of answering the Humanism and Religion 2 experience of pain, grief, despair, dis- question, “Why be moral?” tress, and so on. I shall also take it that The humanist worldview differs from Humanists can rebut this criticism by prima facie suffering is a bad thing, religious worldviews in important ways. pointing out that Craig’s theistic morality something to be avoided, prevented, and Humanism is this-worldly rather than does not succeed in giving a non–self-in- alleviated if possible, although some- otherworldly. Humanism does not terested reason for being moral. For if times overriding reasons may make it believe in God or supernatural beings of avoiding hell and trying to get into heaven necessary. any kind. Humanism regards the notion is a person’s motivation for doing what is of an afterlife as at best a comforting right, then that person is simply acting Humanist and skeptic Shawn Dawson illusion, at worst a harmful falsehood. out of self-interest. So, if secular ethics is employed in the information tech- Finite lives can be productive, fulfilling, has a problem here, theistic ethics is nology field and occasionally teaches happy, even exuberant—but the mean- in the same boat. Craig might respond philosophy classes at the University ing of life is found here and now, not in that ultimately a mature Christian cares of Regina. some elusive hereafter. Furthermore, about the suffering of others because of

57 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 love for God and other human beings. Yet gions is . . . that between those who feel do I have to give advice to others on how humanism also affirms the value of love and those who do not feel their brothers’ to deal with suffering? Also, in a uni- and insists that belief in God is neither torments.”4 I certainly agree, though I verse without God where people commit necessary nor sufficient for loving others. would amend his claim and say that it is atrocities against one another, must Perhaps more important, humanists one of the deepest differences between all we not conclude that human beings are can point out that humanistic ethics in human beings, whether religious or not. fundamentally evil? fact shares many of the same values Certainly, as humanists and as human I have reflected long and hard, and and principles as theistic ethics. In his beings, we must strive to feel the suffer- perhaps the most honest answer to book Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of ings of others and respond to them.5 the first question is simply that I wrote Humanism, Paul Kurtz discusses the what I did because I think it is the truth, “common moral decencies” and the “eth- Suffering in Our Own Lives and because I think it is important. I ical excellences.” The former are shared One of the most difficult challenges a make no appeal to authority, only to the values basic to the survival of any human person can face is suffering in his or her reason, values, and principles of fellow community: they include telling the truth own life. All suffer, but the choice of what humanists. and being trustworthy, benevolent, and to make of our suffering is our own. The second question asks us to give fair, to name a few. The latter are values Nietzsche noted that it is not suffering in to a kind of despair and pessimism. we should aspire to in our personal lives, per se that is impossible to bear, but Despite the manifest evil and suffering and they include autonomy, intelligence, rather meaningless suffering.6 It seems in the world, I believe humanism can self-discipline, and creativity.3 These val- to me that a challenge for us is to find offer a reasonable optimism. Human ues are, or should be, shared by mature a positive meaning in our suffering, to beings are neither basically evil nor humanists and religious people alike; redeem it, so to speak. From a human- basically good, but rather present great they provide good reason and sufficient ist perspective, this can only mean that potentialities for both. Without deny- motivation to care about the suffering of we give suffering a positive meaning. ing individual responsibility, we should others. Although there are certainly experiences remember the great influence education, of which it may never be possible to look culture, and socialization have upon The Suffering of Others back upon and say, “If I could live my people’s character and actions. Perhaps There are obviously two main types of life over, I’d choose to go through that above all, we should remember that peo- suffering: the suffering of others and again,” yet still some glimmer of positive ple and societies can change for the bet- the suffering we experience in our own value usually can be found. Given that ter. This should give us cause for action, lives. I believe that the proper approach we have only one life to live, and that the and it should give us hope. to suffering is very similar for both alternative to finding something redeem- kinds. Suffering is prima facie a bad ing in our suffering is often to become thing, and humanists are obligated to resentful and bitter, or to become defeat- alleviate and prevent it where possible ed and disengaged, what choice do we and within reason. We cannot offer the have? Notes illusory comfort that religion so often I end with these words, again from 1. Bertrand Russell, “A Free peddles. But we can and should meet Walter Kaufmann, that express an Man’s Worship,” from Mysticism suffering with the best of humanity: attitude towards life (his “faith of a and Logic (London: Allen and Unwin, 1917). love, compassion, intelligence, courage, heretic”) that profoundly captures the 2. William Lane Craig, “The and hope. What does it mean to meet humanist spirit: Indispensability of Theological Meta-ethical Foundations for suffering with these qualities and not In the form of an anthropomorphic others? While I think I know what it is Morality,” Foundations 5 (1997): faith, these words express one of the 9–12. Available online at Leader to love and to be loved, to show com- most admirable attitudes possible for shipU Web site, URL=http://www. passion and to have compassion shown man: to be able to give up what life leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/ unto me, and so on, I doubt that I could takes away, without being unable to meta-eth.html. enjoy what life gives us in the first 3. Paul Kurtz, Forbidden adequately express the nature of these place; to remember that we came qualities in words. Yet it is undeniable Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism naked from the womb and shall return (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, that those who are suffering need love naked; to accept what life gives us as 1988). and compassion, that we must use our if it were God’s own gift, full of won- 4. Walter Kaufmann, The Faith ders beyond price; and to be able to of a Heretic (Garden City, N.Y.: intelligence to determine how best to part with everything. To try to fashion help them, that rational hope can over- Doubleday, 1961), p. 168. something from suffering, to relish our 5. It occurs to me that my lan- come intense suffering, and that courage triumphs, and to endure defeats with- guage might be taken to mean that is sometimes the last stronghold against out resentment: all that is compatible 7 I am considering only the suffering despair. As for other qualities that could with the faith of a heretic. of other human beings. That is not be appealed to, I claim only that the ones my intention and I certainly do I have mentioned are consistent with Postscript include the suffering of animals. 6. Friedrich Nietzsche, The humanist ethics and seem to be particu- This essay was substantially completed Genealogy of Morals, trans. larly needed in the face of suffering. before the terrible events of September Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Holl Walter Kaufmann, the late Princeton 11, 2001. In the wake of that tragedy, ingdale (New York: Random House, philosopher and humanist, once wrote: two questions related to my position 1967). 7. The Faith of a Heretic, p. 169. “The deepest difference between reli- seem to cry out for answers. What right

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 58 HEADINGSCIENCE ANDSUBHEAD RELIGION

centuries, anthropological scholarship continued its earlier habit of distin- guishing religious and magical practic- The Religionizing es, identifying the latter as primitive superstitions. Religion was viewed as group-oriented and as linked with morality and the values of the society. Magic of Supernaturalism was viewed as individual-oriented and as anti-social and amoral. Religion, in such a scholarly view, was an expression of Jacob Pandian civilization, and magic or supernaturalism an aspect of primitive mentality. In the twentieth century, anthropolo- lthough Christianity is one vari- group, and was used to contrast the truth gists tried to provide a valid definition of ety of supernaturalism, it is dif- or falsity of a faith in association with religion without realizing that “religion” A ficult for Christians to compre- a group’s moral and intellectual life. was a Latin-Christian conceptual cate- hend Christianity as such—that is, as Saint Augustine represented religio as a gory. A few anthropologists defined reli- a variety of supernaturalism—because bond or relationship, uniting humans and gion as supernaturalism and advocated Christianity has acquired an epistemo- God, and elaborated upon the idea of the use of the binomial term magi- logical significance as a religion, where- Christianity as the true religion. Treat co-religion. But those anthropologists as supernaturalism is viewed as denot- ises on religion became important seldom examined the origin of the con- ing pagan rituals and primitive supersti- after the fourteenth century, and since cept of religion, and they failed to show tions. As eminent anthropologist Edward then the discourse on Christianity as that the distinction between religion Norbeck points out, “. . . when we speak the true religion has been a central or and magic (or supernaturalism) was a of the primitive world it is permissible in any civilized company to refer to supernaturalism. With reference to our own society, however, it is often regarded as “The use of the Latin concept of religio by the church a mark of militant atheism to refer to our religious faiths as supernaturalism.”1 fathers to characterize Christian supernaturalism resulted In the following paragraphs I explore in the emergence of a conceptually false disjunction or briefly how Christian supernaturalism became Christian religion and discuss dichotomy between religion and supernaturalism.” the historical consequences of our society’s conceptual separation of religion from supernaturalism. core intellectual pursuit in Western civ- distinction promoted by Christianity. Prior to the emergence of Chris ilization. As Smith notes, “By the end of In other words, anthropologists did not tianity, the Latin term religio (from the eighteenth century the term Chris question the legitimacy of the continued which the concept of religion developed) tianity had come to be used primarily use of the term religion for the study of was used primarily to connote ritual and almost without question as the name supernaturalism. 4 observances and prohibitions and the of a systematized ‘religion.’” Supernaturalism, or the belief in rituals associated with particular dei- Modern anthropology found its full the existence of supernatural power or ties. The concept of religio was devel- expression in the eighteenth century. beings that control natural phenomena, oped in the discourses of the Roman However most scholars failed to recog- is a cultural universal. Religion, on the writers Lucretius and Cicero (first cen- nize their Christian ethnocentric biases other hand, is a category that arose in the tury b.c.e.). Cicero dealt mostly with the and, as a result, extended their Christian Roman/Latin tradition and acquired cul- ideas and meanings associated with theological assumptions into anthropo tural-epistemological significance in rela- religio, but, as Wilfred Cantwell Smith logical discourse. Anthropo logical trea- tion to the development of Christianity. points out, he introduced a distinction tises assumed that religious beliefs and The concept of religion stood for Chris between “religious” and “superstitious” practices were superior to and more tian faith and represented knowledge of 2 persons. advanced than primitive magical super- God, nature, and humankind. The church Once the Christian church fathers stitions. Although many Enlightenment fathers succeeded in subordinating scien- adopted the term religio, it “quickly scholars hoped that religion would be tific knowledge to scriptures, and made became more multifaceted than ever, and ultimately replaced by scientific knowl- of scientific knowledge an intellectu- 3 took on quite new depths.” Gradually, edge and rational institutions, Chris al enterprise for supporting Christian the term came to signify the identity of a tianity and the other Western customs faith. As David C. Lindberg noted, Saint were viewed by them as having reached Jacob Pandian is professor of anthro- Augustine “acknowledged that the tem- the pinnacle or apex of cultural evolution. pology at California State University. In the nineteenth and early twentieth (Continued on page 63)

59 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 (Kurtz Editorial cont’d. from p. 6) Gaza Strip. federation could provide the Palestinians The key point is that Israel now exists with a viable nation and that forging de facto. To give America and Canada such an agreement would enable Israel that time fled, or in some cases were back to the Indians or Australia back to to live peacefully behind secure borders. driven out. Hundreds of thousands of the Aborigines would be impracticable. As part of this solution I would recom- other Jews (estimated at up to 850,000) Likewise to insist that Israel allow the mend that the United Nations guarantee were forced to leave other countries in right of return of all Palestinians would peace by monitoring the borders during North Africa and the Middle East, from not be feasible. Israel fears that the a period of, say, fifty years. Morocco to Egypt and Syria, where they Muslims might eventually overwhelm But this would require an end to reli- had lived in many cases for two millen- the Israelis and convert the state into an gious terror and intolerance. Religions, nia or more. Israel managed to survive Islamic theocracy. when taken literally, degenerate into in spite of repeated invasions by Arab No doubt there is some basis for jus- fanaticism. When ancient texts—either armies. And it was able to reach accords tice on all sides of this tragic situation. the Koran or the Bible—are used to jus- with both Egypt and Jordan, returning tify present political realities, the result large sections of the occupied land. Any is bloodshed and conflict. A necessary effort to sign a peace treaty with Syria condition of peace is almost certain- or with Arafat and the Palestinians, as ly that both the Palestinian/Jordanian we are well aware, has been to no avail. state and Israel be secular and demo- To my mind the Oslo Peace Process cratic. I would suggest that the world and the Mitchell Plan seem most promis- community work with the Israelis, ing, and the proposals of Prime Minister Palestinians, and Jordanians to come up Barak a reasonable compromise. Israel with a new creative proposal—to create would return most of the West Bank and a new Palestinian/Jordanian state and part of Jerusalem, which could be the an Israeli state that can live in peace capital of both the State of Israel and with its neighbors. a new Palestinian/Jordanian state. But A brief historical note is perhaps this plan failed because of the Pales useful: In ancient days “Palestine” re tinian demand for the right of return ferred to the present state of Israel, to Israel proper. Given the emergence the West Bank, and large sections of of suicide bombers, this would have Jordan. The entire region was occu- made Israel untenable and its destruc- An end must be put to the bloodshed of pied by the Turks for centuries. After tion inevitable. This is apparently what senseless attack and retaliation. The their defeat in the First World War in Hamas and Hezbollah fervently wish. Palestinians want statehood. Israelis 1920, Britain was awarded a mandate The carved-up and emasculated state want a state with defensible borders. over the entire region of Palestine and that Arafat insisted upon would make In my view the Palestinians deserve Jordan (then known as Transjordan). Israel unsustainable, always open to a state, but there are underdeveloped In the Balfour Declaration of 1917, attack; nor would it be sufficient for a lands to the east. Therefore I would sug- Britain declared its intention to estab- viable Palestinian state, divided from the gest that a new Palestinian/Jordanian lish a Jewish National Home, and it designated the Arab State as Jordan in 1927. Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1950, but this was occupied by Israel after being invaded by Arab armies in the 1967 Six-Day War. Subsequently there were bloody conflicts between the Palestinian refugees and Jordanians. The Palestine Liberation Organization and Arafat were expelled from Jordan, though 60 percent of present Jordanian citizens were originally Palestinian refugees. There have been intermit- -tent efforts to incorporate the West Bank and Jordan. I suggest that this option be explored anew. If this is to be achieved it is important that Chairman Arafat work out a mo- dus viendi with King Abdullah of Jordan. To integrate Jordan and the West Bank could make for a genuinely sustainable and durable society co- existing peacefully with Israel.

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 60 APPLIED ETHICS

there exists no freely willing agent that inhabits the person, they must find alternative grounds for moral judgments and Science and ascriptions of responsibility. Fortunately, there is a long-standing philosophical view of human freedom, known as compatibilism, which does Freedom precisely that. Although not yet widely disseminated in lay culture, this view n 1998, the Ethics and Public Policy ior arise in terms of physically instantiat- holds that we are free to the extent our Center, a conservative think tank ed operations, functions, and processes. actions flow from our character-based Iheaded by Elliot Abrams, hosted a These processes operate quite nicely on motives and desires, not from coercion two-day conference in Washington, D.C., their own, without benefit of anything or duress. Such freedom is compatible on “Neuroscience and the Human Spirit.”1 “in charge” directing or witnessing the with our being fully caused creatures, As psychologist Dr. Frederick Goodwin, show. in that it is a freedom from external an organizer of the conference, put it, The problem, of course, is that the or internal constraints (e.g., from the core question was “Do . . . scientific existence of the freely willing agent chains and psychoses), not the patently advances challenge the first principles is widely thought necessary to ground implausible ultimate freedom to choose that the majority of our citizens believe judgments of morality and responsibil- our selves or actions ex nihilo. Suppose provide the very foundation upon which ity. If human behavior turns out to be we had such freedom: on what basis our civilization rests —free will and the ex-plicable without appealing to free would we choose? capacity to make moral choices? . . . Does will, then on what basis do we hold peo- On a compatibilist view, what justifies [the] growing understanding of genetic ple accountable? moral judgments is that those acting and environmental influences on human This concern perhaps explains the freely as described above are potentially behavior leave any room for free will?” undercurrent of urgency at the confer- sensitive to such judgments: as rational Underlying these momentous con- ence, the manifest desire to find a safe agents they can be cognizant of, and have cerns is the libertarian view of human haven for the traditional, metaphysically the capacity to conform to, our moral freedom, the notion that persons are autonomous self. But since many of the codes as expressed in law and social exceptions to the natural order by virtue conference attendees were neuroscien- expectations. This view of morality— of a unique capacity for self-creation. On tists and behavioral scientists themselves, the instrumental shaping of behav- this essentially supernaturalistic concep- there was no escaping this looming threat ior—needs no freely willing, intrinsically tion of the self, we are all first causes— to free will. After all, how can we pursue deserving agent that could have done effectively miniature gods. Some crucial science aggressively yet save the liber- otherwise in the exact situation in which part of us is ultimately not the effect of tarian agent from the very knowledge we a given behavior arose. Moral agents, anything else: human beings are causal- amass? Answer: with great difficulty. instead, are simply that rather broad ly privileged over the rest of creation. Those secularists committed to scien- class of persons who can anticipate the Since science inevitably tends to illu- tific empiricism, not folk metaphysics, to rewards and sanctions carried by moral minate the causal antecedents of phe- decide what’s ultimately the case must evaluation (e.g., praise, credit, blame, nomena, including human behavior, it is concede the truth of our complete inclu- no surprise that this notion of free will sion in the natural causal order. Since (Continued on page 63) is threatened by advances in neuroscience, biology, and other fields that place behavior in a genetic and environmental context. Just as science has naturalized our understanding of cosmic evolution, the origin of species, and the mechanisms of life, the project of naturalization now focuses on ourselves. Instead of supposing that there is within us some spiritual or mental essence separate from the body that miraculously makes decisions and controls action—something in effect supernatural—science is showing how consciousness and behav- Thomas W. Clark is a freelance philosopher and writer. He can be contacted at his Web site, www. naturalism.org.

61 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 GOD ON TRIAL

tory if omnipotence is understood in any ordinary sense. The trait of omniscience and concept of free will also lead to a sim- Reverse Logic in the ilar contradiction. No argument developed from such a self-contradictory premise can be logically consistent. Philosophy of God Can We Make God Logical? Unless one can define God with the same Mohammad Akram Gill kind of precision found in definitions of many physical quantities used in the logical problem is usually for- phenomenon under consideration. The mathematical sciences, it will be difficult, mulated by specifying a prem- second, or middle, term—the relation- if not impossible, to prove anything about Aise statement and a relational al algorithm—defines the relationship God by means of deductive logic. And so statement, then deriving a solution from that exists between the premise and the we find that when atheists debate theists them. In arguments used to prove or solution. The third term is the solution, to prove that God does not exist, they disprove the existence of God this order an inference that follows logically from too fall prey to reverse logic. They may is often reversed. The arguer assumes the first two terms. In a complex problem have better reasons to believe that a God the existence or non-existence of God, there may be several premise statements does not exist than theists have reason then formulates the premise and rela- and several intermediate solutions that to believe that such a God exists, but all tional statements in conformity with that ultimately lead to the final solution. If a these reasons are subjective in nature. assumption. This invalid logic, which given premise and relational algorithm The best that opposing advocates can do begins with the solution statement and are true, the solution must then also be is to poke logical holes in one another’s works its way backwards, can be called true. arguments. “reverse logic.” Reverse logic is most It is seldom that the solution is known Can one define God rigorously enough often seen among religious believers, beforehand. If it were, there would be no to make possible the valid application of though atheists also commit this fallacy need for using the syllogism method; in deductive logic? Apparently not, for when- because of the inherent logical difficul- other words, in such a case the application ever one attempts to use, say, the math- ties in conventional notions of God. of this method would be trivial in itself. ematical analysis of a physical phenomenon to define an entity that seems to have Essentials of Logic Reverse Logic and God attributes similar to those of God of reli- The word logic is derived from logos, In the arguments generally used to gion, that entity necessarily will not have which means reason. Deductive logic prove or disprove the existence of God, all the attributes of the God of religion. An is used to seek a rational solution from syllogisms are usually formulated in example can be given of the Omega Point the known premise (initial and boundary reverse order: the desired solution is Boundary Condition described by Tipler, conditions) of a given problem through a presumed. Consider Aquinas, who went a hypothesized future state in which intel- relational algorithm that forms a linking back to Augustine for his most basic ligence will evolve to the point of subsum- bridge between premise and the solution interpretative principle: The truth of ing the whole universe.3 Such an Omega 2 of the problem. Deductive logic is not Scripture is inviolable. Point may be called God, but several of so much concerned with the truth of its Theists who develop arguments for the whose attributes differ from those of the inference (solution) as it is with the valid- existence of God believe unequivocally Christian God. ity of argument.1 It differs from induc- that God exists. Their faith tells them that Of course, there is a convenient tool tive logic, which extrapolates informa- God exists; for them this is irrefutable available to save the day. By allegorical tion beyond the premises at hand using fact. Thus they begin with the third term, interpretation, the God of religion can previous history or the empirical data- whose import is already “known” to them, be brought into harmony with the God of base of a given phenomenon. and concoct the first and the middle terms. science, regardless of what common logic Deductive logic employs syllogism, a That is the primary reason why, as a class, has to say. method originally developed by Aristotle. deductive arguments for the existence of God do not “hang together” logically A syllogism consists of three statements Notes or sets of statements. The first state- speaking. Being presumed rather than proven, 1. Steven M. Cahn, P. Kitcher, ment, or premise, may be a single state- and G. Sher, “The Elements of Argu ment or a set of statements describing the entity “God” is not well defined; in ment,” in Reason At Work (San what is known about the problem or other words, the statements used to define Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, God are not valid. They are usually incon- 1984), pp. 1–19. Mohammad Akram Gill is assistant sistent and internally contradictory. For 2. Anthony M. Alioto, A History general superintendent of Engineer of Western Science (Englewood example, God is described as omnipotent Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1993), ing in the Detroit (Michigan) Water and at the same time absolutely moral. p.132. and Sewerage Department and has That is, though He is omnipotent there are 3. Frank J. Tipler, The Physics taught at the University of Iowa and certain things—evil things—that He can- of Immortality (New York: Wayne State University. not do. This statement is self-contradic- Doubleday, 1994).

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 62 (Religionizing cont’d. from p. 59) implications beyond what happened to over how to define “religion.” Perhaps Christianity or Western civilization. The the time has come for us to discard the concept of religion has been globalized, use of the term altogether, and identify poral world could serve the eternal by and anthropologists continue to argue the various “reli- supporting knowledge about nature that would contribute to the proper interpretation of Scripture and the development Notes of Christian doctrine.”5 And, said William Cecil Dampier, “. . . in the early Christian 1. Edward Norbeck, Religion in Primitive Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), pp. 12–13. atmosphere natural knowledge was val- 2. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis: ued only as a means of edification, or as Fortress Press, 1991), p. 23. an illustration of doctrines of the church 3. Ibid., p. 25. or passages of scripture. Critical power 4. Ibid., p. 76. soon ceased to exist, and anything was 5. David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 151. believed if it accorded with Scripture as 6. William Cecil Dampier, A History of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University interpreted by the Fathers.”6 Press, 1971), p. 66. It is obvious that the religioniza- tion of Christian supernaturalism had

(Science and Freedom cont’d. from p. 61) of ourselves reveals that good and evil will unify our self-understanding. Since stem from the myriad conditions, environ- moral mechanisms have a clear social mental and genetic, within which persons function that science can help us to punishment); it makes pragmatic sense are formed. To the extent that retribu- understand and improve, no longer will to hold moral agents responsible to such tive and punitive attitudes are based on morality have to seek shelter from sci- standards, since doing so helps modify the notion of a supernatural chooser, ence. We may not be free in the excep- their behavior. On the other hand, those they will be moderated by naturalism, tional, ultimate sense we once supposed, with serious mental illness or those forced and emphasis will shift from after-the- but we are more than compensated by at gunpoint (or similarly threatened) to fact punishment to ameliorative policies the pragmatic benefits that flow from act contrary to their characters are not that attack the scientifically documented recognizing our complete inclusion in held responsible. causes of criminality and evil. Naturalism the causal order. The “human spirit”— Even though the project of naturaliz- also undermines the “abuse excuse”: our dignity, freedom, and power—is not ing ourselves and morality can success- true, persons are caused in every respect, threatened by science, only fully ground moral judgments, it obvious- but there are still adequate justifications shown its true home in the nat- ly challenges the basis for Western radi- (deterrence, incapacitation, and personal cal individualism. Under naturalism, we reform) for incarcerating wrongdoers, can’t any longer suppose that individuals, if not for capital punishment and “hard Note by means of metaphysical bootstraps, are time” in prison. 1. For more information see http:// the ultimate authors of their virtues and Finally, accepting a compatibilist, nat- worldstd.com/~twc/neurosci.htm. faults. Rather, a scientific understanding uralistic view of freedom and morality

Listen to fields of philosophy, science, politics, and journalism, including a weekly radio talk show Sissela Bok, Richard Dawkins, hosted by the distinguished Tom Beauchamp, Stanley Fish, ethicist Hugh LaFollette Nat Hentoff, Barry Lynn, Martha and co-sponsored by the Nussbaum, James Randi, and Center for Inquiry and East Matt Ridley. Tennessee State University. Topics of past programs include: The Role of the Online at www.etsu.edu/philos/wets.htm University in Civic Education, The Public (Mis)Under- standing of Evolution, Privacy and the Media, Business LaFollette, a professor of philosophy at ETSU, is author and the Environment, Animal Intelligence and Animal of Personal Relationships, co-author of Brute Science, Emotion, The Birth of Modern Science, Prophecy, and editor of the Oxford Handbook of Practical Ethics Folk Medicine, Spiritual Communication, Why I Am and the Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory. His thought- a Secular Humanist, and What Role, If Any, Should ful approach has attracted top interviewees from the Religion Play in Public Schools?

63 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 REVIEWS

tral claim, namely that religious experi- A Historical Study of Religion ence is more like experiences of epileptics, schizophrenics, and psychotics and can be A new approach sheds new light explained in terms of the same neuro-phys- iological considerations. Though this claim is not peculiar to him, the fact remains Adel Daher that nobody before him, to my knowledge, has put on such a forceful and persua- The Vanquished Gods: Science, Religion, and the Nature of Belief, by Richard sive defense of it. He is certainly on solid H. Schlagel (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2001, ISBN 1-67392--898-4) 360 pp. ground here when he claims that the Cloth $36.00. empirical evidence, clinical or otherwise, vindicates his claim. One striking feature of this book is that it teaches more about science and the n The Vanquished Gods, author ence, such as the big bang theory or Judeo-Christian tradition than it teaches Richard Schlagel takes a fresh revisions in the theory of evolution, as about mainstream philosophy of religion. Iapproach to philosophy of religion, supporting certain scriptural passages. Indeed, the author’s purpose is to show departing from the way the latter is There are similar attempts to recon- that the Judeo-Christian outlook cannot practiced in Anglo-American philosophy. cile the Qur’an with modern science, of complement the scientific outlook, nor can In contrast to the analytically oriented which he singles out for his critique that it be its match. He appears, however, to approach favored by critics and defend- of the Frenchman Maurice Bucaille. In be presupposing here that theistic beliefs ers of theism alike, his is, in the main, a his lengthy critical treatment of such function as hypotheses on a logical par historical one. He is not concerned with attempts, Schlagel admirably succeeds with scientific hypotheses. This, however, the logical status of theistic claims and in showing how they stretch beyond all for some, brings forth certain questions, whether they have a truth-value or can acceptable limits in their misguided zeal and needs to be argued. For it seems to be construed as coherent. Rather, he to uncover a supposed secret meaning in require that these beliefs be construed is concerned with how developments in certain scriptural passages. as having factual significance, i.e., as the both biblical studies and scientific disci- sort of beliefs that can be supported or plines, such as physics, astronomy, and “Schlagel takes a fresh refuted by empirical evidence. But this, paleontology, have gradually eroded the in turn, requires that they be construed influence of Judeo-Christian tradition approach to philosophy of as being, at least, coherent, as well as exercised on the West for centuries. In religion, departing from the involving an anthropomorphic concep- the process of tracing these develop- way the latter is practiced in tion of God. Some neo-Wittgensteinian ments, he brings into sharp focus the defenders of theism, however, would not contrast between the religious outlook Anglo-American philosophy.” construe them as hypotheses of any kind and the scientific outlook, with their and would consider it incoherent to sub- respective methodologies, showing why ject them, as Schlagel does, to criteria not the latter is bound to triumph over the In the final chapter he addresses the embedded in religious discourse itself. former, undermining its claims about claim that religious experience provides Moreover, other defenders of theism, such the divine origin of the universe. He a self-authenticating ground of religious as Alvin Plantinga, would not view them skillfully avails himself here of the vast belief. His main concern here is not epis- as involving an anthropomorphic concep- resources pertaining to both the history temological. For example, he is not mainly tion of God, nor as hypotheses in need of of religion and the history of science, concerned with what it is for an experi- confirmation, insisting that believers are utilizing novel scientific ideas, such as ence to be self-authenticating and cog- well within their rights in taking them emergence, complexity, chaos bifurca- nitive, and whether such an experience as foundational, the way Plantinga tion, and self-organization, to show how could take as an object something inde- takes them within his reformed founda- they make obsolete a teleological expla- pendent of it, i.e., not a feature of it. Still, tionalist epistemology. Furthermore, for nation of the universe. he takes a brief excursion into epistemol- some critics of theism, they are pseudo-hy- Schlagel does not content himself ogy when he critiques William Ashton’s potheses at best and lack the necessary with merely showing that theistic ideas comparison of religious experience with coherence to qualify as candidates for the are outdated when taken on their face ordinary perceptual experiences, and his kind of consideration Schlagel gives them. value. He goes further, claiming that concluding that religious experience, like In spite of Schlagel’s disinclination they cannot be reinterpreted so as to be any ordinary perceptual experience, pro- to address the epistemological issues reconciled with science. Here he takes on vides a prima facie ground for believ- raised by such defenders and critics of attempts such as that of G.L. Schroeder, ing that its object exists. This chapter, theism, there is a great deal in his book which view certain developments in sci- however, is less important for the episte that makes it an excellent companion to mological considerations he marshaled Adel Daher is emeritus professor of an epistemological critique of theism. against Alston than for the overwhelming philosophy at Pace University. scientific backing he provides for his cen-

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 64 REVIEWS

so that only particular kinds of reli- eligion xplained aybe o gious notions can be acquired. Not all R E ? M S possible concepts are equally good. The ones we acquire easily are the ones we find widespread the world Tom Flynn over; indeed, that is why we find them widespread the world over. (p. 4)

Religion Explained? The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, by Pascal Anyone designing a religion from Boyer (New York: Basic Books, 2001, ISBN 0-465--00695-7) 375 pp. includes scratch with an eye to snagging a for- notes, references, index. Cloth $27.50. tune should inhale this book before pro- ceeding. Having written a novel whose main character did just that, I wish I’d had this book at hand alongside Stewart Guthrie’s Faces in the Clouds and John ay what you will about the dove- away enriched with ideas for further Schumaker’s The Corruption of Real tailed fields of evolutionary psy- exploration. ity while writing. Religion Explained chology and cognitive science, they Boyer is confident that cognitive sci- S is no less provocative for readers who surely summon up hubris. In 1991 Daniel ence provides at least the scaffolding for hunger to understand religion. Boyer’s C. Dennett offered a tome titled Con a comprehensive account of religion: theories about which religious ideas sciousness Explained that stunningly [T]he activation of a panoply of sys- work best (and why) seem convinc- lived up to its moniker. Now cognitive tems in the mind explains the very ing, as do his speculations as to why scientist Pascal Boyer (Washington existence of religious concepts and religions usually coopt morality, why University in St. Louis) tackles a no less their cultural success and the fact they almost invariably obsess over the ambitious challenge: explaining religion that people find them plausible and the fact that not everyone finds them handling of human corpses, why ritual outright. If he isn’t altogether success- so and the way religion appeared in seems inescapable, and more. ful (who could be?) he magnificently human history and its persistence in I didn’t come away from Religion summarizes what cognitive science the context of modern science. (p. 298) Explained convinced that Boyer had has learned about the reasons humans He credibly speculates how human evo- spoken the last word. But I closed the believe as they do. Freethinkers will lution may have laid the foundation for book feeling profoundly stimulated— find their traditional assumptions about religion’s power and persistence: and certain that Boyer has changed faith engagingly challenged and come [E]volution by natural selection gave the terms in which future attempts to Tom Flynn is the editor of Free Inquiry. us [humans] a particular kind of mind explain religion must be couched.

the females in his sample had had sex Humans and Animals with an animal, although sex again was broadly defined and did not necessarily mean penetration. Since Kinsey, data Vern L. Bullough gathering on such practices has been ignored. Dearest Pet: On Bestiality, by Midas Dekkers, translated from the Dutch by Paul The study claims to be the only recent study of the subject, and while Vincent (New York: Verso, 2000, ISBN 1859843107) 208 pp. Cloth $18.00. this might have been true when the book was originally published in Dutch in 1994, other studies have been published since its recent translation into earest Pet is a fascinating, fascination with horses to the human use English, including the autobiographical light-hearted but serious romp of “animal” fluids, i.e. milk. It includes study The Horseman by the pseud- Dthrough history and mythology. discussion of centaurs, mermaids, the onymous Mark Matthews (Prometheus Though the subtitle indicates the book sexual activities of the Greek gods, and Books, 1995). Still, what Dekkers does is about bestiality, for author Midas the fictional recreations of the Marquis is force one to rethink the whole topic Dekkers bestiality becomes almost any de Sade. It does deal occasionally with of human interaction with animals. It is affectionate or intimate relation between actual penetrative or receptive sexual a subject with a long tradition. Stories animals and humans, from teenage girls’ relations with animals, but by broad- of the Greek gods include Leda and the ening the scope the book becomes a swan, in which Zeus turned himself Vern L. Bullough is a senior editor at lot more than a series of case studies. into a swan in order to get access to Free Inquiry and a noted sex research Alfred Kinsey in his studies found that 8 her. After hiding under her skirt, he er and author. percent of the males and 3.5 percent of impregnated her, and the human Leda

65 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 REVIEWS

laid two eggs, from which came Helen others, and argues that the most intimate a pouch to keep it warm (although she of Troy and the twins Castor and Pollux thing that can take place between two also bottle-fed it). It is worthy of com- (although there are other legends sur- organisms is the exchange of juices: a ment that the British enacted protective rounding their birth as well). In Rome, drop of sperm, a gulp of blood, or a drink animal legislation (in 1832) before they Romulus and Remus were suckled by of milk straight from the warm breast. passed any dealing with children. This is a she-wolf, as were numerous other Though I milked cows in my youth, I do only to emphasize that a large number of individuals in history. A sacred dove not think I conceptualized it as a breast people have intense affections for their communicated the message to Mary fondling incident until I read Dekkers. animals. In fact one of things that profes- that she was to bear an extraordinary But Dekkers also points out that, when sionals dealing with elderly people living son and, in Dekkers’s retelling of the artificial insemination for animals first alone encourage is for them to have a story, passed on the “mystical breath developed, the semen from the male was pet. Dekkers gives stories of individuals of the spirit” that impregnated Mary. gathered by masturbating the male and fearful of traveling on a vacation because The Danish royal family traced their the female was made receptive for the they cannot bring their pets with them, ancestry to a bear and a beautiful girl sperm insertion in turn by massage. This and they refuse to leave them alone. The who gave birth to Ursus, who fathered interrelationship is being extended fur- relationship, however, is not one-sided. several sons, one of whom was Suens, ther by the use of animal parts in surgical Many animals, both individually and as a king of the Danes. Siward, the Duke transplants, although this now mostly species, are attracted to humans, some of of Northumberland under Edward the occurs on an experimental basis. them in incidents recounted by Dekkers Confessor, claimed that his grand- Hollywood contributes to Dekkers’s in quite sexual ways. mother had been assaulted by a bear. listing of animal-human contacts through The book is illustrated by pictures and Hindu belief holds that certain animals movies such as King Kong—an ape who photos, many of which might be called are really gods and that mating with is taken with a beautiful woman—and erotic, but they are not pornographic. such animals is really mating with the Tarzan, who is raised by the great apes. Though the book has both humor and gods. The list could go on, and Dekkers But humans also raise infant animals in wit, most important, it forces one to think does in considerable detail. zoos and elsewhere. I actually witnessed seriously about animal-human relation- Dekkers includes a long chapter on a woman who had rescued a young joey ships in a way differently that we might the human use of animals’ vital juices, i.e. from the pouch of a dying female kanga- have done before. milk from cows, goats, sheep, horses, rein- roo, and who kept the animal under her deer, donkeys, yaks, and camels, among blouse using an oversize brassiere as

on Pigliucci’s debate in September 1998 A Rational Tale with arch-creationist Dwayne Gish were, for me, by themselves worth the price of the book. To paraphrase Pigliucci, he Shawn Dawson adeptly exposes the misunderstandings, ideologies, and egos of these critics of evolution (p. 114). Tales of the Rational: Skeptical Essays About Nature and Science, by Massimo On the nature of science, Pigliucci Pigliucci (Atlanta, Ga.: Freethought Press, 2000, ISBN 1-887392-11-4) 278 pp. clearly explains the hypothetico-deduc- Paper $17.00. tive method and makes the important point that “science is an enterprise based on (reasonable) philosophical assump- rrational beliefs never die. They skepticism, pseudoscience, humanism, tions, not just a collection of facts”(p. 22). just take new forms. Tales of the and religion. Its unifying theme is its He also presents a strong case for philo- I Rational: Skeptical Essays About determination to base belief on rational sophical naturalism, as opposed to mere- Nature and Science, the first book in the grounds, which entails sharp criticisms of ly methodological naturalism. Moreover, skeptical genre for Massimo Pigliucci, popular sacred cows such as creationism his idea that science and philosophy are associate professor of ecology and evo- and religion. Pigliucci also insightfully mutually beneficial disciplines could be lution at the University of Tennessee examines largely unanswered scientific quite fruitful if more widely accepted in Knoxville, is a well-written, welcome questions such as the origin of life on (pp. 6–7). addition in the never-ending struggle Earth, and issues on the periphery of Worthy of note is the strong case against irrationality in all its forms. science such as extraterrestrial life and Pigliucci makes, and the good example Tales ranges broadly over science, chaos and complexity theories. he sets, for prepared scientists and Pigliucci is at his best concerning philosophers engaging in public debate Shawn Dawson is an occasion- the evolution-creationism controversy with representatives of pseudoscience al instructor in philosophy at the and the nature of science. The chapters and unreason (pp. 134–35). He con- University of Regina and also works refuting the recent criticisms of William ceives of such debates primarily as in the information technology field. Dembski and Fred Hoyle, and comments educational activities, but also as an important way for the academe to come

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 66 REVIEWS

down from its ivory tower and engage criticism, since we must also consider 1. God is an omnipotent, omniscient, more fully and fruitfully with the public. the utilities and expected values of the and omnibenevolent being. I couldn’t agree more. various possibilities. Pascal’s argument 2. If God exists, evil cannot exist. Tales does have some shortcomings on is quite unconvincing for other reasons, 3. Evil exists. nonscientific topics. Humanism is one of but Pigliucci does not bring them out. 4. Therefore, God does not exist. the “isms” Pigliucci promises to explain in Chapter Ten recounts a debate held In response, Craig claims that God the first chapter, but he provides no more in March 1998 between Christian philos- has a morally sufficient reason for than the barest sketch (pp. 10–11). Chapter opher William Lane Craig and Pigliucci allowing evil, even if we don’t know Three, “In Defense of Straw Men,” is puz- on the existence of God. In that debate, what that reason is, a claim Pigliucci zling. Even after reading it several times, I Craig gave a moral argument for God’s regards as a “cop-out” (p. 149). It is could not see exactly how it’s supposed to existence. Unfortu nately, neither Craig worth noting an important distinction fit into Tales or what Pigliucci is trying to in the debate nor Pigliucci in Tales Pigliucci fails to consider. Critical dis- say. At times he seems to suggest that a make clear the issues involved. For cussion of the argument above centers scientific theory ought to be characteriz- Pigliucci this is not a serious failing, on premise 2. A theodicy is an attempt able by a straw man (p. 42), which is odd since he is not a professional philoso- to show that premise 2 is false. A since a straw man has traditionally and pher and Tales is not intended for such defense is more modest, an attempt rightly been regarded as a logical fallacy. an audience, but it is only fair to direct to show that we cannot know that At other times, he appears to be simply the interested reader to some of Craig’s premise 2 is true. The crucial question arguing for the educational or heuristic other writings (cf. “The Indispensability is whether a theist must produce a the- value of clear but simplified statements. of Theological Meta-ethical Foundations odicy to defeat this argument, or merely If the latter is the case, the point could be for Morality,” http://www.leaderu.com/ a defense. Only in the former case is made more clearly without bringing up offices/billcraig/docs/meta-eth.html), and Craig’s answer a cop-out. (There are straw men at all. the classic secular writings on morality, still inductive versions of the Argu Turning to philosophical matters, such as Kai Nielsen’s Ethics Without ment from Evil to consider, but that is a Chapter Four is a critical account of God, for a fuller understanding. different can of worms.) Blaise Pascal’s wager argument for the At another point in his debate with Overall, Tales of the Rational is a existence of God, but Pigliucci’s presen- Craig, Pigliucci argues that the exis- stimulating book that is recommended tation of it is misleading. He criticizes tence of evil is incompatible with the particularly for its treatment of science Pascal for allegedly assuming that “the existence of God. Following Elliott Sober and pseudoscience. Humanists and a priori probabilities of God’s existence (Core Questions in Philosophy, third freethinkers of all stripes should look or inexistence are the same,” whereas in edition), we can call this the Argument forward to more rational tales from fact the probability of God’s existence is from Evil, and it is the most important Pigliucci in the future. much lower (pp. 46–47). Pigliucci seems argument for atheism, though not the unaware of the standard interpretation only one. Pigliucci appears to accept of Pascal’s Wager as an argument in the deductive version of it, informally decision theory, which invalidates his represented as follows.

The Astrological Diary of God, by Bo Fowler (New time he masturbates. He finds himself on priceless, too. This brash book delivers York: Bloomsbury, 2001, ISBN 1-58234-118-4) trial before the United Nations for having blasphemous, superficially nonsensical 296 pp. Paper $14.95. littered the universe with enough much fun—highly recommended. If Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and the late Douglas excess mass to kill Time itself, but who Adams had a crack baby together, Bo cares? In manic prose, Fowler skewers —Tom Flynn Fowler might have been the result. Fowler religion, astrology, and the conventions burst on the scene in Britain in 1998 with of science fiction—in all, not a bad day’s the astonishing Scepticism Inc., in which work. My Cosmic Pessimism, by Luis A. Santander (Raleigh, a con man bankrupted the world’s church- As he did in Scepticism Inc., the philo- N.C.: Pentland Press, 2000, ISBN 1-57197--211-0) es by collecting their unprovable bets on sophically trained Fowler persists in mis- 100 pp. Paper $12.95. the existence of God while an intelligent taking CSICOP (slightly disguised as the shopping cart chugged up Mount Everest Committee for the Scientific Investigation Luis A. Santander is a native of Argen considering the problem of evil. This book into the Claims of the Paranormal) for tina and a physicist. My Cosmic Pessi delights in poking blasphemous fun at the an atheist organization. But the notion of mism is his attempt to deal with his notion of God, astrology, genuine cosmol- skeptics worldwide inflating their bright existential angst. At first, one might ogy, and the cast-offs of Japanese culture orange life jackets each time public credu- easily get the idea that the author meant after World War II. lity offends them is priceless all the same. to use the term “skepticism” rather The plot concerns a morbidly obese The lists of historical events that are than “pessimism.” (English is not the delusional failed kamikaze pilot who mystically “parallel” from an astrological author’s first language, and the publisher thinks he is God, creating galaxies each point of view are apparently assigned no editor to correct

67 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 REVIEWS

Santander’s grammar, syntax, malaprop- nally demonstrates that the other “proofs” cosmological errors. He goes so far as isms, and so forth.) But like some non- for the existence of God ultimately fail. He to conclude the book with a depressing theistic writers, Santander has a very does a good job of discussing the problem poem. Because some nontheistic writers negative view of humanity and believes of evil and disorder in nature. espouse such views, it is no wonder that that the search for happiness on Earth is Optimistic humanists, however, will some theists express pity upon learning mostly futile. find this book to be very depressing. The that one is an atheist. The author draws upon the works of author equates a positive worldview with It is becoming increasingly clear Spinoza and other big-name philosophers ignorance and irrationality rooted in the- that positive humanists must strug- and theologians. But it seems as though he ism, deism, and pantheism. He asserts gle against the existential angst of is not very familiar with the works of free- that those that have an optimistic outlook non-theists as much as the pie-in-the- thinkers such as Robert Ingersoll—with on life are living on an “island of fantasy.” sky mentality of religious fanatics. It the exception of Voltaire—or humanist He claims, however, that he experiences is not enough to simply declare the death philosophers such as Paul Kurtz. He is “an inexplicable Epicurean happiness” of God. Humanists must decide how primarily concerned with discussing the that sustains him. What seems to inspire human beings ought to live and how best God of classical theism, and does not give him most of all is the belief that humanity to pursue and maintain happiness. To say much attention to deism, fideism, panthe- will die, but that perhaps a few human the least, Santander’s book fails miserably ism, or other vague or problematic ideas beings will survive to produce a “better in this regard. about supreme beings. civilization.” On pages 36 to 38, Santander gives a The author is uncompromisingly pes- —Norm Allen, Jr. clear, concise, and logical treatment of the simistic. He believes that the initiation ontological argument. Moreover, he ratio- of life and the existence of Earth are

(Letters cont’d. from p. 8) spires to plant the idea that the uni- A Challenge for verse did not just happen, but that Daniel O’Neal reports that he was D’Agostino there must be a purpose behind it.” But offered a tag indicating “no preference.” then a famous evolutionist admitted, When I was drafted into the army in S. Matthew D’Agostino’s article “A “The more I study science the more I 1945, my answer to the religion ques- Challenge for Naturalism” (FI, Winter am impressed with the thought that tion was that I had none. My dog tag 2001/02) surely requires a response. this world and universe have a definite was imprinted with the letter “P” for Blaming Christianity for his death, design—and a design suggests a de Protestant. In a way, I guess I was a his parents’ death, and his grandpar- signer.” Oh, yes, the physicist was John protester. ents’ death is a serious charge. Stating Polkinghorne and the evolutionist was Harry Greenberger that twenty centuries of Christianity’s Paul Amos Moody. New Orleans, Louisiana anti-science hysteria made his death Does D’Agostino really believe that if necessary is unhistorical. the Greeks ruled the West there would I went through a similar struggle for Alfred North Whitehead argued that be no death? years, but with a very different result. apart from the Christian worldview there David A. Noebel After almost twenty years of the “no would be no science as the West has known Summit Ministries religious preference” designation on my it. Looking at the major scientific figures of Manitou Springs, Colorado tags, I became a bit more assertive. I history I find Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, had the staff who order the dog tags Francis Bacon, William of Occam, Buridan, David A. Noebel was profiled in Jende check out the rules in greater depth. The Nicolas of Oresme, Copernicus, da Vinci, Huang, “Two Weeks as a Christian” result was two sets issued to me in the Paracelsus, Pare, Vesalius, Brahe, Kepler, (FI, Fall 2001). With Tim LaHaye, he is late 1980s or early 1990s, both declaring Galileo, Harvey, Pascal, Boyle, Newton, coauthor of the anti-humanist polemic me an atheist. The Air Force, unlike the Leibnitz, Priestley, Lavoisier, Volta, Dalton, Mind Siege, reviewed in Free Inquiry, private contractor, even spelled the word Ampere, Ohm, Faraday, Simpson, Pasteur, Summer 2001.—Eds. correctly. I was told that there had been Mendel, Kelvin, Lister, etc. As far as I can a recent change in the regulations that tell there is not a secular humanist among What but an atavistic yearning for immor- now authorized “atheist” on dog tags. them. Indeed, all were theists and most tality could lead S. Matthew D’Agostino I assume this option is still available to Christian. to hope death can be “solvable”? At one military members who insist that the I don’t know how D’Agostino will point, D’Agostino states matter of factly reluctant staff check the current regula- respond to a rather famous Cambridge that “We are an episode in the long, tions rather than rely on old institutional University physicist who said, “When difficult struggle of living creatures to memory. you realize that the laws of nature survive. . . . We, you and I, are individual Sid Wurzburg must be incredibly fine-tuned to pro- segments or discrete moments in the Spirit Lake, Idaho duce the universe we see, that con- ongoing process. We are nothing more

free inquiry http://www.secularhumanism.org 68 than that—and certainly, nothing less.” It’s odd that the Reverend Noebel all of it the day it arrived. I always enjoy The entire article is consistent with that didn’t discuss contemporary scien- it tremendously. I think, though that an analysis—until his “Clear, Positive, and tists. There are more scientists alive error was made concerning the survey Consoling Doctrine.” and working today than were active you cited about Americans’ religious Having arrived at my ninth decade, I in all previous generations combin beliefs (Frontlines, Winter 2001/02). The find nothing positive or consoling in the ed. Polls indicate that between 70 and journalism school you cited is housed notion that I might continue to use up 80 percent of those men and women at Ohio University, not Ohio State Earth’s resources and contribute to its are atheist or agnostics—i.e., secu- University. Ohio U is well known as one detritus. Unless defeating death were lar humanists. That’s what happens of the best schools of journalism in the to include defeating the forces of repro- in free countries, when and where U.S.A. It is situated in Athens. Ohio, duction, the planet would eventually be Christians have lost their long-cher- and has an enrollment of about 20,000. covered by a fungus-like proliferation of ished right to barbecue. It was founded in 1804, just one year organisms writhing to survive. Besides, 2. As to Ms. Adelaide Winston’s after Ohio became a state. It is about I’ve had my turn, and it’s been a great weary claims about being quite con- seventy years older than OSU and was adventure, but I’m not looking for any tent in her ninth decade, the future the first college west of the Allegheny more excitement, thank you. world I intended to project in my Mountains. It is fondly known as the Overpopulation is already a real article would suggest to her that she “Harvard of Hocking,” and I know all threat to our species. Starvation and simply stop off at Wal-Mart and pur- Bobcats and their friends would appre- countless other degrading conditions chase the body of a lithe twenty- ciate it if you correct this error in your must be addressed if evolution is to pro- year-old. She could then infuse her next publication. ceed. So let’s “. . . develop our inherent experience and memories into it, and Gary Kern capabilities . . . make the most of our tal- then decide if there’s something excit- Lancaster, Ohio ents and . . . help our fellow humans— ing, something more, for her to do on our partners—in their own struggles.” Earth or elsewhere in the cosmos. The When we’ve done what we can, it’s time, option would be hers. Errata? individually, to step aside. Of course, she is quite correct about Adelaide Winston the current overpopulation mess, but In Richard Dawkins’s article “Design San Antonio, Texas I don’t think death is the preferred for a Faith-Based Missile (FI, Winter solution. 2001/02) he referred to the seventy-two S. Matthew D’Agostino replies: virgins promised in paradise in Islam. Please be advised that it’s actually one 1. Reverend Nobel’s claim that seventy-two-year-old virgin. Christianity is historically responsible Hoff Sommers on Burt Schoen for the growth of modern science and Thousand Oaks, California technology is quite literally laughable. Hiatus If I were Little Red Riding Hood, I should have to say to him, “My, Grand I noticed there are no longer any arti- mother, what big teeth you have.” cles by Christina Hoff Sommers in Free As to the scientific contributors he Inquiry. I feel she has been a valu- lists having been devout Christians, able asset to your magazine. With her WRITE well . . . possibly some were, but anti-feminist views, has Free Inquiry that’s really not so clear. We would relented under feminist pressure to no TO FI have to know precisely what was longer include her in its publications? in their hearts, and that’s difficult How can Free Inquiry state that it is from a distance. Remember, as they a freethinking magazine when it has Send submissions to surely had to, one slip of the pen or the one-sided feminist viewpoints? Norm Allen, Jr., Letters Editor, tongue might mean horrendous tor- Joseph Delvaux FREE INQUIRY, P.O. Box 664, ture and going to the stake. The histo- Covina, California Amherst, NY 14226-0664. rian W.T. Jones (A History of Western For letters intended The Editors reply: Philosophy, [New York: Harcourt, for publication, Brace & World, 1952] pp. 616 ff.) please include name, mentions that Copernicus held back Christina Hoff Sommers, once a reg- address, city, and state, publication of the heliocentric theory ular Op-Ed columnist in Free Inquiry, and daytime phone number out of fear of church reaction until asked to be relieved of her commit- (for verification purposes he was virtually on his deathbed. ment to pursue other projects. Galileo was repeatedly hauled before only). Letters should be the Holy Inquisition and threatened 300 words or less with torture for his work. He was Errata and pertain to previous forced to recant and spent the re FREE INQUIRY articles. mainder of his life under Vatican- I just received the new Free Inquiry ordered house arrest. yesterday. I, as usual, read practically

69 http://www.secularhumanism.org spring 2002 Southern California (USA) Taslima Nasrin, author, physician, social critic Mario Bunge, Frothingham Professor of Foundations (Bangladesh) and Philosophy of Science, McGill University (Canada) Conor Cruise O’Brien, author, diplomat, University of Jean-Pierre Changeux, Collège de France, Institute Dublin (Ireland) Pasteur, Académie des Sciences (France) Indumati Parikh, M.D., president, Radical Humanist Patricia Smith Churchland, professor of philosophy, Association of India (India) Commission for International Development University of California at San Diego; adjunct professor, Salk Institute for Biological Studies (USA/ John Passmore, professor of philosophy, Australian Canada) National University (Australia) The Center for Inquiry maintains bilateral cooperative Sir Arthur C. Clarke, author, Commander of the British Jean-Claude Pecker, professor emeritus of astrophysics, Empire (Sri Lanka) relations with a great number of humanist and ratio- Collège de France, Académie des Sciences (France) nalist organizations and centers worldwide, several of Bernard Crick, professor of politics, Birkbeck College, which we helped to establish and support with funding. University of London (UK) Wardell Baxter Pomeroy, psychotherapist, author (USA) We provide a partial listing. Francis Crick, Nobel Prize Laureate in Physiology, Salk Dennis Razis, medical oncologist, “Hygeia” Diagnostic Institute (USA) —Asociación Mexicana Etica & Therapeutic Center of Athens S.A. (Greece) CENTRAL AMERICA Richard Dawkins, Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Racionalista A.C., Apartado Postal 19-546, 03900 Understanding of Science, Oxford University (UK) Marcel Roche, permanent delegate to UNESCO from México D.F., México José M. R. Delgado, professor and chair, Department of Venezuela (Venezuela) SOUTH AMERICA—Asociación Ediciones de la Revista Neuropsychology, University of Madrid (Spain) Max Rood, professor of law; and former Minister of Peruana de Filosofía Aplicada, El Corregidor 318, Rímac Belgian Royal Observatory (Belgium) Jean Dommanget, Justice (Netherlands) 25, Lima, Perú Umberto Eco, novelist, semiotician, University of AFRICA (African-Americans for Humanism)—Action for Bologna Richard Rorty, professor of philosophy, University of Humanism, PO Box 91, Ilishan Remo, Ogun State, Paul Edwards, professor of philosophy, Brooklyn Virginia, Stanford University (USA) Nigeria; Rational Centre, PO Box 01132, Osu-Accra, College, City University of New York (USA) Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., professor of history, City Ghana; The Uganda Humanist Association (UHASSO), Luc Ferry, professor of philosophy, Sorbonne University P.O. Box 4427 Kampala, Uganda and University of Caen (France) University of New York (USA) EASTERN EUROPE—Russian Humanist Society, Center Sir Raymond Firth, professor emeritus of anthropology, Léopold Sédar Senghor, former president of Senegal; for Inquiry—Moscow, filosofskií fakultet, MGU, University of London (UK) member of the Académie Française (Senegal) Vorobyevy gory, 118899 Moskva (Moscow), Russia; Antony Flew, professor emeritus of philosophy, Reading J. J. C. Smart, professor emeritus of philosophy, Instytut Wydawniczy “Ksiazka i Prasa” ul. Twardo 60 University (UK) PL-00-818 Warsaw, Poland Betty Friedan, author, founder, National Organization Australian National University (Australia) NEW ZEALAND—The New Zealand Rationalist & for Women (NOW) (USA) Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate, playwright (Nigeria) Humanist, 64 Symonds Street, Auckland 1001 Yves Galifret, professor emeritus of neurophysiology at Barbara Stanosz, professor of philosophy, Instytut INDIA—Indian Rationalist Association, 779, Pocket-5, the University P. and M. Curie; general secretary of Wydawniczy “KsiÅÛka i Prasa” (Poland) Mayr Vihar-1, New Delhi 110 091; Atheist Centre, l’Union Rationaliste (France) Vijayawada 520 010 Johan Galtung, professor of sociology, University of Oslo Svetozar Stojanovi´c, director, Institute for Philosophy NEPAL—Humanist Association of Nepal, P.O. Box 5284, (Norway) and Social Theory, University of Belgrade Kathmandu, Nepal Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel Laureate; professor of phys- (Yugoslavia) Islamic Secularism—The Council maintains a web site ics, California Institute of Technology (USA) for secularism in the Islamic world at www.secularis- Stephen Jay Gould, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Thomas S. Szasz, professor of psychiatry, State lam.org. Harvard University (USA) University of New York Medical School, Syracuse International Humanist and Ethical Union, 47 Theobald’s Adolf Grünbaum, professor of philosophy, University of (USA) Road, London WC1X 8SP, United Kingdom Pittsburgh (USA) V. M. Tarkunde, senior advocate, Supreme Court; chair- Secular Organizations for Sobriety—SOS, headquartered Jürgen Habermas, professor of philosophy, University of at the Center for Inquiry–West, has helped establish Frankfurt (Germany) man, Indian Radical Humanist Association (India) similar groups in various parts of the world: SOS Herbert Hauptman, Nobel Laureate; professor of bio- Richard Taylor, professor emeritus of philosophy, Clearing House, http://www.cfiwest.org/sos/. physical science, State University of New York at University of Rochester (USA) Buffalo (USA) INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF HUMANISM Alberto Hidalgo Tuñón, professor of philosophy, Sir Keith Thomas, historian, president, Corpus Christi ACADÉMIE INTERNATIONALE D’HUMANISME Universidad de Oviedo (Spain) College, Oxford University (UK) Donald Johanson, Institute of Human Origins (discoverer Rob Tielman, professor of sociology, Universiteit of “Lucy”) (USA) voor Humanistiek, Utrecht; former copresi- Sergeí Kapitza, chair, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology; vice president, Academy of Sciences dent, International Humanist and Ethical Union (Russia) (Netherlands) George Klein, cancer researcher, Karolinska Institute, Lionel Tiger, professor of anthropology, Rutgers—the The Academy is composed of nontheists who are: (1) Stockholm (Sweden) State University of New Jersey (USA) devoted to the principle of free inquiry in all fields of Ioanna Kuçuradi, secretary general, Fédération human endeavor; (2) committed to the scientific out- Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie (Turkey) Sir Peter Ustinov, actor, director, writer, Commander of look and the use of reason and the scientific method in György Konrád, novelist, sociologist; cofounder, the British Empire, 1975 (UK) acquiring knowledge about nature; and (3) upholders of Hungarian Humanist Association (Hungary) Mario Vargas Llosa, author (Perú) humanist ethical values and principles. Paul Kurtz, professor emeritus of philosophy, State University of New York at Buffalo (USA) Simone Veil, former Minister of Social Affairs, Health, HUMANIST LAUREATES Gerald A. Larue, professor emeritus of archaeology and and Urban Affairs (France) Pieter Admiraal, medical doctor (Netherlands) biblical studies, University of Southern California at Gore Vidal, author, social commentator (USA) Shulamit Aloni, former education minister (Israel) Los Angeles (USA) Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., novelist (USA) Ruben Ardila, psychologist, National University of Thelma Lavine, Clarence J. Robinson professor of phi- Colombia (Colombia) losophy, George Mason University (USA) Mourad Wahba, professor of philosophy, University Kurt Baier, professor of philosophy, University of Jolé Lombardi, organizer of the New University for the of Ain Shams, Cairo; president of the Afro-Asian Pittsburgh (USA) Third Age (Italy) Philosophical Association (Egypt) Sir Hermann Bondi, professor of applied mathematics, José Leite Lopes, director, Centro Brasileiro de King’s College, University of London; Fellow of the Pesquisas Fisicas (Brazil) Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize winner; professor of phys- Royal Society; Past Master of Churchill College, Paul MacCready, Kremer prize-winner for aeronautical ics, University of Texas at Austin (USA) London (UK) achievements; president, AeroViroment, Inc. (USA) George A. Wells, professor of German, Birkbeck Elena Bonner, author, human rights activist (Russia) Adam Michnik, historian, political writer, cofounder of College, University of London (UK) Jacques Bouveresse, professor of philosophy, Collège de KOR (Workers’ Defense Committee) (Poland) France (France) Jonathan Miller, OBE, theater and film director, physi- Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor, the Vern L. Bullough, distinguished professor, University of cian (UK) Agassiz Museum, Harvard University (USA) The following is a listing of our network of independent Georgia — Atlanta Freethought Society, 1170 Grimes Bridge North Dakota — Red River Freethinkers secular humanist and freethought societies have aims Rd,. Suite 500, Roswell, GA 30075-3965 (770) 641-2903 P.O. Box 405, Fargo, ND 58107 (701) 232-5528 similar to the Council for Secular Humanism. DJ Grothe, Hawaii — Humanists Hawaii, 1515 Nuuanu Queen Tower Ohio — Free Inquirers of Northeastern Ohio the Field Director, coordinates the network. The Council #48, Honolulu, HI 96817 (808) 524-3872 P.O. Box 2379, Akron, OH 44309 (330) 869-2025 formed it to provide mutual support among local and Idaho — Humanists of Idaho, P.O. Box 44913, Boixe, ID Free Inquiry Group, Inc., P.O. Box 8128, regional secularists, humanists, freethinkers, atheists, 83711-0913 (208) 429-1866 Cincinnati, OH 45208 (513) 557-3836 agnostics and other nonbelievers. If you are interested Illinois — Ethical Humanist Society of Greater Chicago, 7574 Humanist Association of Ohio, 2637 Home Acre Dr., in becoming involved with the group, or in working N. Lincoln Avenue, Skokie, IL 60077-3335 (847) 677-3334; Columbus, OH 43231-1602 (614) 890-0653 with the Council to start one, contact DJ at (716) 636- Fax (847) 677-3335 Oklahoma — Oklahoma Atheists, P.O. Box 23022, 7571 ext. 314, [email protected]. Free Inquiry Discussion Group, 55 South Greely #520, Oklahoma City, OK 73123 Palatine, IL 60067 (847) 991-0469 Oregon — Corvallis Secular Society, 126 NW 21st Street, Arizona — Humanist Society of Greater Phoenix, P.O. Box Free Inquiry Network, P.O. Box 2668, Glen Ellyn, IL 60138- Corvallis, OR 97330-5531(541) 754-2557 14712, Phoenix, AZ 85267-4712 (602) 454-2633 2668 (630) 469-1111 Humanists of Greater Portland, P.O. Box 3936 Portland, OR Humanists of Prescott, HC 30 Box 933D, Prescott, AZ 86305 Peoria Secular Humanists, P.O. Box 994, Normal, IL 61761 97208-3936 (928) 445-6772 Secular Humanist Society of Chicago, P.O. Box 7951 Humanist Association of Salem Secular Humanists of Western Arizona, 2000 E. Raymar Rd. Chicago, IL 60680-7951 (312) 226-0420 P.O. Box 4153, Salem, OR 97302 (503) 371-1255 #18, Bullhead City, AZ 86442 (520) 758-0026 Indiana — Humanist Friendship Group of Central Indiana, Lane County Secular Society, Wayne Eastman (541) 782-4574 Arkansas — Arkansas Society of Freethinkers, 13912 Willow P.O. Box 254, Greenwood, IN 46142-0254 (317) 885-1612 Pennsylvania — Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Secular Pond Road, Little Rock, AR 72206 (501) 888-9333 — Heartland Humanists Humanists, P.O. Box 2141, Philadelphia, PA 19103 Fayetteville Freethinkers, 2367-1 Greenacres Road PMB 127, Kansas , P.O. Box 24022, Shawnee (215) 893-0376 Fayetteville, AR 72703 (479) 442-6738 Mission, KS 66283-0022 (913) 432-8660 Kentucky — Louisville Association of Secular Humanists Non-believers of York, 45 Gravel Hill Road, Mt. Wolf, PA California — Center for Inquiry West, 5519 Grosvenor P.O. Box 91453, Louisville, KY 40291 (502) 491-6693 17347 (717) 266-1357 Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90066 (310) 306-2847; Pittsburgh Secular Humanists, 5003 Impala Drive, Murrysville, Louisiana — New Orleans Secular Humanist Association, Fax (310) 821-2610 Web site: www.cfiwest.org PA 15668 (412) 476-5694 5331 Bancroft Dr., New Orleans, LA 70122 (504) 282-5459 Atheists and Other Freethinkers, P.O. Box 15182, Sacramento, Secular Humanists of the Lehigh Valley, Fogelsville, PA 18051 — Baltimore Secular Humanists, P.O. Box 24115, CA 95851-0182 (916) 920-7834 Maryland (610) 285-2682 Baltimore, MD 21227-0615 (410) 744-5739 Atheists of San Francisco Region, P.O. Box 31523, San Tri-State Secular Humanists, 132 Wickham Ave., Middletown, Frederick Secular Humanists (FRESH), 123 W 2nd Street, Francisco, CA 94131-1523 (415) 648-1201 NY 10940 (845) 800-2722 Freethinkers of Ventura County, P.O. Box 346, Somis, CA Frederick, MD 21701 (301) 631-5982 South Carolina — Secular Humanists of the Low Country, 93066 (805) 386-4232 Maryland - DC Chapter (MDC) Of WASH, P.O. Box 15319, P.O. Box 32256, Charleston, SC 29417 (843) 577-0637 Humanist Association of San Diego, P.O. Box 86446, San Washington, DC 20003 (301) 474-2896 Secular Humanists of the South Carolina Midlands Diego, CA 92138-6646 (619) 280-8595 Massachusetts — Secular Humanists of Massachusetts, 279 P.O. Box 5123, Columbia, SC 29250 (803) 731-9378 Humanist Community of San Francisco, P.O. Box 31172, San East Central St. #140, Franklin, MA 02038 (508) 384-4166 Skeptical Humanists at the Grand Strand, P.O. Box 1931, Francisco, CA 94131 (650) 342-0910 Michigan — Freethought Association of West Michigan, P.O. Pawleys Island, SC 29585 (843) 237-7262 Humanist Society of Santa Barbara, P.O. Box 30232, Santa Box 9873, Wyoming, MI 49509-0873 Upstate South Carolina Secular Humanists, 2123 Old Spartan Barbara, CA 93130 (805) 962-6316 Great Lakes Humanist Society burg Rd., PMB 168, Greer, SC 29650 (864) 233-0905 Rational Inquirers of Orange County, 1931 E. Meats #115, P.O. Box 1183, Mt. Pleasant, MI 48804 — Rationalists of East Tennessee Orange, CA 92865 (714) 279-0768 Tennessee , 2123 Stonybrook Secular Humanists of Detroit, 220 Bagley, Room 908, Detroit, Rd., Louisville, TN 37777 (865) 982-8687 Secular Humanists of the East Bay, P.O. Box 830, Berkeley, CA MI 48226 (313) 962-1777 Texas — Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex Secular Humanists 94701 (510) 486-0553 — Humanists of Minnesota, P.O. Box 582997, Minnesota 3616 Bryce Ave. 26B, Fort Worth, TX 76107 (817) 737- Colorado — Atheists and Freethinkers of Denver, P.O. Box Minneapolis, MN 55458-2997 (651) 335-3800 8190 22174, Denver, CO 80222 (303) 285-3482 ext. 7118 Minnesota Atheists, P.O. Box 6261, Minneapolis, MN 55406- Freethinkers Association of Central Texas, P.O. Box 160881, Atheists of Northern Colorado 0261 (612) 588-1597 San Antonio, TX 78280 (210) 491-6829 P.O. Box 2555, Loveland, CO 80539-2555 — Family Freethought Alliance, P.O. Box 260067 Missouri Houston Secular Humanists, P.O. Box 925872, Houston, TX Freethinkers of Colorado Springs, P.O. Box 62946, Colorado St. Louis, MO 63126 (314) 825-6422 77292-5872 (281) 332-5491 Springs, CO 80962-2946 (719) 535-0320 Rationalist Society of St. Louis Secular Humanists of Southwest Colorado, 425 East 6th Ave. Humanists of Ft. Worth, P.O. Box 291301, Ft. Worth, TX P.O. Box 2931St. Louis, MO 63130 (314) 664-4424 76129 (817) 370-2171 #7, Durango, CO 81301 (970) 382-9077 The Eupraxophy Group, 6301 Rockhill Road, Suite 412, Utah — Secular Humanists of the Great Basin, 10271 S. 1300 Connecticut — Humanist Association of Central Connecticut, Kansas City, MO 64131 (816) 822-9840 27 Thornton St., Hamden, CT 06517-1321 (203) 281-6232 E. PMB 190, Sandy, UT 84094 Nebraska — REASON, P.O. Box 24358, Omaha, NE Northeast Atheist Association Virginia — Central Virginia Secular Humanists (CVSH), P.O. 68124 (402) 553-5607 P.O. Box 63, Simsbury, CT 06070 (203) 596-0545 Box 184, Ivy, VA 22945 (804) 979-2508 Nevada — Humanists of Las Vegas, Nevada, P.O. Box Northern Virginia Secular Humanists, 6400 Lyric Lane, Falls Florida — First Coast Freethought Society, P.O. Box 558, 34801, Las Vegas, NV 89133 (603) 655-2413 Ponte Vedra Beach, FL 32004 (904) 285-1205 Church, VA 22044 (703) 256-4192 New Hampshire — Secular Humanist Friendship Group of Free Inquiry Society of Central Florida, P.O. Box 4365, Winter Richmond Area Free Thinkers, P.O. Box 3916, Richmond, VA Merrimack Valley, P.O. Box 368, Londonderry, NH 03053 Park, FL 32793-4365 (407) 262-1915 23235 (804) 560-6903 (603) 434-4195 Freethinker Society of Sarasota Bay, 5230 Lake Village Dr., Washington, D.C. — Washington Area Secular Humanists — New Jersey Humanist Network Sarasota, FL 34235 (941) 379-5137 New Jersey (WASH), P.O. Box 15319, Washington, DC 20003 P.O. Box 51, Washington, NJ 07882 (908) 979-9004 Freethinkers of Volusia/Flagler, 356 Seminole Dr., Ormond (202) 298-0921 Tri-State Secular Humanists, 132 Wickham Ave., Middletown, Beach, FL 32174 (904) 676-2954 Washington — Humanists of North Puget Sound, P.O. Box NY 10940 (845) 800-2722 Humanist Society of Gainesville, 2712 SW 5 Pl., Gainesville, FL 405, La Conner, WA 98257 (360) 293-8128 New York — Capital District Humanist Society 32605 (352) 373-5377 Wisconsin — Atheists and Agnostics of Wisconsin, P.O. Box P.O. Box 2148, Scotia, NY 12302 (518) 381-6239 Humanist Association of West Central Florida, P.O. Box 6675, 259257, Madison, WI 53725-9257 (608) 244-1948 Center for Inquiry–Metro New York, 89 Walnut Street, Lakeland, FL 33807 (863) 644-0560 Humanist Quest of Milwaukee, 1312 16th Ave., Grafton, WI Montclair, NJ 07042 (973) 655-9556 Humanists of Florida, P.O. Box 1227, Bradenton, FL 34206- 53024 (262) 376-8905 Hudson Valley Humanists, P.O. Box 961, Saugerties, NY 1227 (941) 745-7181 Northeast Wisconsin Humanists, P.O. Box 13565, Green Bay, 12477 (845) 247-0098 Humanists of the Nature Coast, 6134 W. Pinedale Circle, WI 54307-3565 (920) 866-9707 Crystal River, FL 34429 (352) 563-2857 Long Island Secular Humanists, P.O. Box 119, Greenlawn, NY Secular Humanists of Madison, WI, 5322 Fairway Drive, Humanists of The Palm Beaches 11740 (516) 742-1662 Madison, WI 53711 (608) 274-2152 860 Lakeside Drive, North Palm Beach, FL 33408 Secular Humanist Society of New York, P.O. Box 7661, New Secular Humanists of Milwaukee, P.O. Box 14501, Milwaukee, SPLASH—St. Petersburg/Largo Area Secular Humanists, P.O. York, NY 10150 (212) 861-6003 WI 53214-0501 (414) 727-2106 Box 8099, Madeira Beach, FL 33738-8099 (727) 391-7571 Secular Humanists of the Rochester Area, P.O. Box 26576, Secular Humanists of South Florida, 4341 NW 16 St. Apt Rochester, NY 14626 Canada — British Columbia Humanist Association, P.O. Box #208, Lauderhill, FL 33313 (954) 717-0477 Tri-State Secular Humanists, 132 Wickham Ave., Middletown, 47046, Denman Place, Vancouver, B.C. V6G3E1 (604) Southwest Florida Alliance of Secular Humanists SWFLASH NY 10940 (845) 800-2722 739-9822 (Southwest FLASH), P.O. Box 61374, Fort Myers, FL 33906- Western New York Secular Humanists, P.O. Box 664, Amherst, Humanist Asociation of Canada, P.O. Box 8752, Station T, 1374 (941) 849-3613 NY 14226 (716) 636-7571 ext. 218 Ottawa, ON K1G 3J1 (613) 739-9569; fax (613) 739-4801 TBASH (Tampa Bay Area Secular Humanists), P.O. Box 8099, North Carolina — Secular Humanists of Winston-Salem, Humanist Asociation of Ottawa, P.O. Box 8733, Station T, Madeira Beach, FL 33738-8099 (727) 391-7571 3501 Berchfield Drive, Winston-Salem, NC 27127 Ottawa, ON K1G 3J1 (613) 738-7720