Agnostic Universe

Alternet had an article called Huckabee’s Biblical Madness: Dispatches from the War on Stupidity. I’m really glad this guy does not appear to be a true contender for the presidency. I won’t comment too much on this one since the excerpts I will quote below speak well for themselves thankfully. (click on link above for full article) Sometimes I have to throw a little normal light on a story but the author of this article does that quite well.

Mike Huckabee has made a set of controversial statements about the Constitution (amendable), and the Word of God (not-amendable).

It aroused a fair amount of controversy. Which was good. But all of it missed the real point. The real point, or what should be the real point, is that almost every phrase in his statements was factually untrue.

Here’s what he said: I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do, to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

Huckabee says ” the Ten Commandments are still the Ten Commandments.” Let us leave aside the facts that there are three different versions of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament and the only one so labeled bears little resemblance to the one usually referred to by that name, and that Protestants, Jews, and Catholics each use a slightly different set of even that one.

The reality is that virtually all contemporary Christian and Jewish groups have amended them. And that any group that tried to enforce them, in the manner called for in the Bible, would be subject to arrest.

The Second Commandment begins: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth …:”

This clearly forbids all paintings and statues of Jesus (let alone of anything else). It is worth noting that the Catholics simply removed this Commandment from the list and split up the last one into two parts so that they still had ten. It is only taken seriously in Islam, which is why Islamic art contains only designs and calligraphy and why the Taliban (quite correctly, by Biblical injunction) destroyed the giant statues of the Buddha.

But for the most part, this has been simply, and quietly amended. By ignoring it.

The Bible calls for the death penalty for violations of the 4th (keeping the Sabbath), the 5th (honoring your Mother & Father, or more precisely for cursing them), and the 7th (committing adultery.) The Bible adds that “everyone who divorces his wife, except for the cause of fornication, makes her an adulteress, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

Obviously, enforcing those penalties would end Christianity as a cultural force in America, as there would be so few of them left. The Tenth Commandment, the one about “coveting,” criminalizes thought. Any attempt to enforce it (aside from violating the fundamentals of American law), would remove all the Christians and Jews who were left after the executions required by enforcement of #4, #5, and #7, except for those in a vegetative state.

Huckabee’s goal is two amendments to the Constitution. One would ban abortion. There is nothing in the Bible that directly forbids abortion. Not a word. Not a jot. So he does a shuffle and slide and he says:

Well, it’s really based on the idea that we’ve always had a historical understanding that life is precious.

We go all the way back to the Declaration of Independence, when the founders made it very clear that all of us are equal. And equality wasn’t based on the point of our viability. It wasn’t based on our net worth, our personal assets, or ancestry. At the heart of the pro-life movement is the idea of intrinsic worth in value.

In fact, voting was restricted to white males, and normally, only those white males with a certain amount of personal assets. The historical truth is exactly the opposite of what Huckabee claims.

This is not meant as an attack on Mr. Huckabee. Compared to the crowd he’s running against, and within the limits of Republican ideology, many of his foreign and domestic policy positions are sane and humane.

The point is that in our public debates the Right Wing postulates certain myths, the mainstream media repeats them, or nods along as if they’re not full of obvious untruths, and while the Left may howl in outrage, fails to point out the factual errors and then drive them home. Truly stupid policies can only stand on a foundation of falsehoods.

Stephen Cullen of Tuscon, AZ, I salute you, sir! His guest opinion article “Good Lord! Time for an agnostic president?” appearing in the Tuscon Citizen is an excellent read. He’s not just an ordinary person as he is listed as being “a certified legal assistant and received the Bronze Star for his U.S. Army service in the Vietnam War.” A portion of the article is quoted below for your enjoyment:

Where is the candidate who can charge into the political arena and forcefully proclaim that agnosticism embodies the real truth, when a candidate has to say “I don’t know”? Alas, nowhere in sight. If that candidate does show up, I suggest this speech:

My fellow Americans,

At some risk, I must inform you of my religious beliefs, because rightly or wrongly, a candidate’s faith has become a significant factor in your decision on whom to support.

I am an agnostic. I cannot believe in a Christian god, a deity personified as a kingly, old man, and so I cannot believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God. I cannot believe in any organized or unorganized religion that maintains it has “the answer.”

Over the thousands of years of human history, no indisputable, empirical evidence has ever been found to prove or disprove the existence of God or that Jesus was the son of God. So if you ask me if God exists, I don’t know. If you ask me if Jesus was the son of God, I don’t know. I don’t know whether God made man in his image. That’s implausible for me but makes sense for Christianity.

I also cannot believe the Bible is the word of God. In my opinion, man wrote the Bible as a much-needed authoritative source. How else can human beings make meaning out of their existence but to have faith in a benevolent god and glorious, everlasting afterlife?

I am just unable, with all my being, to make that “leap of faith.” I have often heard that Christianity “is the only true faith.” Does that mean the Christian faith makes more sense than others? Or do Christians really mean their God and his son have been proved to exist, so only Christianity is true? If this were so, I would be a Christian and so would all human beings.

I speak primarily of Christianity, for it is the dominant faith in our country. But we are not a “Christian nation.” We are a nation of mostly Christians. The former denotes theocracy, the latter recognizes the religion of prevalence. What I say of Christianity applies to all religions. None has proof of a god, and any religion that purports to do so is presumptuous and arrogant.

Should I become president, I will base my policies and decisions on reason, logic and truth, on what is right and wrong and just, no matter where these concepts emanated or originated. I will not base them on a consultation with a higher authority, but I will base them on reality and with the counsel of highly qualified, experienced, competent and reasonable persons of all faiths and political persuasions.

After all, my fellow Americans, we are all in this together, whether you believe in a god or not.

…so very true. What a novel idea: high qualified, experienced, competent and reasonable persons of all faiths and political persuasions. Instead of that, I’ve heard the term “loyal Bushie” way too many times in recent years.

I often Google the news for Agnostic and Atheist stories to comment on for this blog. I mean to just write original articles on the subject of Agnosticism and remain influenced by such articles, but a busy life leads me to fall back to the practice of responding to the articles directly. I usually find some fight the freethinkers are taking on where religion is crossing the line and violating the Establishment Clause of the First Admendment. However, this story rubs me the wrong way because I think it is a completely voluntary and acceptable way for students to practice their religion or remain free to practice their lack of beliefs as they see fit.

Teen Challenges Moment-Of-Silence Law

A 14-year-old girl and her outspoken atheist father filed a federal lawsuit Friday challenging a new Illinois law requiring a brief period of prayer or reflective silence at the start of every school day.

…

“We don’t believe requiring time for reflection is the role of government,” Ottenhoff said.

…

“What we object to is Christians passing a law that requires the public school teacher to stop teaching during instructional time, paid for by the taxpayers, so that Christians can pray,” Sherman told The Associated Press.

An Illinois law called the Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act already allowed schools to observe a moment of silence if they wanted. A new measure changed just a single word: “may” observe became “shall” observe.

Here is an Atheist viewpoint I actually disagree with and I’m not sure if it is because I’m an Agnostic. I firmly believe the religious have no idea what they’re talking about with their belief and are wrong to claim they know such things about creation. I don’t know and neither does anyone else. However, I don’t think we need to prevent anyone from individually practicing their belief when it doesn’t infringe on my own children’s rights. My children can take the moment of silence to reflect on their life and the universe as long as the teacher or other adults do not try to lead them in prayer. That is when it has gone to far. But a mandatory moment of silence or prayer for each student to do what they like; what’s wrong with that?

It has now been ONLY 50 years of In God We Trust on American paper money. Below are excerpts from: Motto Inspires and Irritates

The phrase first appeared on America’s paper money on Oct. 1, 1957, one year after becoming the country’s official motto. Now, a half century later, the motto is inspiring increased fervor and controversy, another skirmish in the battle over how America defines itself.

On one side are those who argue that, especially as America becomes increasingly diverse, people of all faiths and no faith should be free from any official endorsement of religion.

On the other side are those who argue that the nation is at risk of being redefined as godless. For these people, Haynes says, there is a “new frontier” of efforts to make the national motto more prominent.

Here is a short history of the flirtation our nation has had with endorsing religion, which is prohibited by the First Amendment:

“The first use was at a time of our greatest national crisis, the Civil War,” he says, “because, for many people, the Civil War was God’s judgment on America. And it revived the old anxiety that, because the Constitution didn’t formally acknowledge God, we would suffer.” This angst resulted, at first, in an effort to add God and Christ to the preamble, and when that didn’t work, supporters persuaded the Secretary of the Treasury in 1864 to put “In God We Trust” on the 2-cent coin.

Nearly a century later, in the early years of the Cold War, Congress voted to make “In God We Trust” the national motto (replacing the original motto, “E pluribus unum” — “Out of many, one”) and voted, in 1957, to engrave it on all U.S. currency. It was a way to symbolically say that Americans, unlike Communists, aren’t godless, Haynes says, and “that we will triumph not because of us but because of our dependence on almighty God.”

The ceremonial deism of God in our nation is a false defense that skirts the issue. How can God not mean God?

Although the constitutionality of the country’s motto has been challenged in court, it has never been found to violate the “establishment” clause of the First Amendment. Courts have viewed the motto, as well as the Pledge of Allegiance’s “one nation under God,” as a form of “ceremonial deism” and therefore protected.

Ceremonial deism basically postulates that there are seemingly religious statements and practices that have been around for so long and have become such an ordinary part of American life, that they’ve lost their religious meaning.

“There’s a strange dance conservatives do when they litigate these things,” says BYU law professor Frederick Gedicks, explaining the arguments that lawyers have used in court to keep God in the pledge and in the motto, on the grounds that, well, God doesn’t exactly mean God in any kind of “religious” way. “Outside of court, though, they infuse it with pretty thick religious meaning.”

Hopefully the Christians of the country push the motto and the issue to the point that it finally becomes obvious that it does actually mean their God that they trust in. This view is not shared by all which breaks down the We they supposedly support. Maybe then we can go back to E Pluribus Unum and bring back “Out of Many, One” and once again give us all something to unite under as a national motto.

Monday is Constitution Day and it reminds me of an interesting take on the Constitution and the Christian Nation idea that is posted on James Huber’s site. I’m reposting it here because it explains what the start of the Constitution would look like in a real Christian nation.

Christian Nation?

I frequently hear Christians claim that the United States is a Christian nation, or that the Founding Fathers intended us to be a Christian nation. When they bother to offer evidence it’s usually some McCarthy-era addition to our pledge or our money, or some quote (often bogus) from a speech or a letter by one of the Founding Fathers.

Think about this for a second: If you were starting a Christian nation, how would you go about it? Would you make oblique references to “Great Powers” and “Guiding Hands” in obscure speeches and letters, or would you fill your foundational documents with references to Jesus Christ and the Bible?

The Founding Fathers were brilliant men. They spent months and months working on the Constitution. They were very, very careful about what they wrote, discussing and debating every passage at great length. It seems to me that if they had intended this to be a Christian nation they would have said so somewhere in the Constitution. The Founding Fathers had no reason to be vague. There was no ACLU, no “Activist judges.” If they had wanted a Christian Nation they could have written:

God Almighty, in Order to form a true Christian Nation, establish Divine Justice, insure adherence to His Laws, provide for the defense of His Church, promote His Word, and secure His Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, has led us to ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Instead they wrote:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The words “Jesus” “Christ” “Bible” “God” and even “Creator” appear nowhere in the Constitution (“Endowed by their Creator” is in the Declaration of Independence.) Just how stupid would someone have to be to create a Christian nation then forget to mention Christ in the Constitution?

Also notice that nobody ever asks what the Founding Mothers might have said. There were no Founding Mothers. The Founders were all men; White men, many of them slave owners. White male slave owners who may or may not have been Christians, but explicitly forbade any kind of religious test for office. In other words, you have a far stronger case if you’d like to argue that the Founding Fathers intended us to be a racist and sexist nation.

I think you can make a good case that some or even most of the Founding Fathers were Christians, but it’s absurd to think that they wanted to impose that belief on the nation, and even more absurd to imagine we should be bound by their prejudices.

I hate bringing up the religious right and their repeated claims that this is a Christian nation instead of a free nation with many Christians in it. But I keep coming across stories like this that scare me because I can imagine what a truly Christian nation would mean. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” could actually become a law in a Christian nation.

Can the Alabama ‘Ten Commandments’ Judge Rise Again?

Some excerpts from the article:

Moore has not retreated from his advocacy of a society ordered by his version of biblical law. Instead, he is using his forced retirement from public office — and his infamy — to fuel a crusade aimed at spreading misinformation about church-state separation.

Just before the Fourth of July, he wound up as the main attraction at a Religious Right gathering in Severn, Md., where he and a string of far-right activists peddled “Christian nation” rhetoric, bashed Islam, belittled American culture and the federal government and displayed an alarming affinity for the neo-Confederate states’ rights cause.

There is so much misunderstanding about church-state separation that I can’t get into it here. Just suffice it to say it doesn’t mean Christians can’t be Christians, they just can’t use their God and the Bible as the basis for laws and judicial judgements.

On the event’s opening day, Peroutka said it was his mission to introduce attendees “to the enormity of the problem before us. We love our country, but when my country is inebriated or acting so, it’s my job, it’s my duty, to set it right.”

Setting the nation right, in Peroutka’s view, apparently means a radical dismantling of secular democracy and the creation of a fundamentalist theocracy. Peroutka and his attorney brother, Stephen, operate a Maryland group called the Institute on the Constitution (IOTC), which claims America was founded “as a Constitutional Republic of Sovereign States with a central government of purposely limited powers based on Biblical principles.” The group, which lists U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) on its board of advisors, disseminates reams of material by David Barton, a “Christian nation” activist.

Peroutka decried public schools for teaching evolution and wondered how youth could be taught self-respect if they are instructed that “we are just descended from primordial ooze.” He also blasted law schools, higher education in general and the media for perpetuating a false picture about the form of American government.

“We have a republic, and the source of authority in that republic is God,” said Peroutka. “A revolution has happened in America. It has happened over the past 150 years. Evolution is at the bottom of it, and some very un-American people have been and are behind it.

“The purpose of the revolution,” he continued, “is to stop you from being able to think and believe like an American any more …. It’s been a calculated and evil anti-God, anti-Christian revolution.”

Peroutka assailed the “tyrannical consolidation of power” within Washington, D.C., and charged that the revolution could not have been successful without convincing Americans that the Constitution requires a separation of church and state.

Peroutka called church-state separation a myth and a lie and claimed the Constitution, in reality, mandates just the opposite. He said he hoped the conference would provide attendees with the necessary tools to help set America right. Those tools, Peroutka said, include “an accurate knowledge of unrevised American history” and a “biblical worldview that acknowledges Christ’s authority over all things.”

Christ’s authority over all things? Well, he has no authority over me and many others so that is definitely at odds with what America is really about.

Transitioning, somewhat jarringly, from the Crusades to modern times, Eidsmoe, a professor emeritus at the Jones School of Law at Faulkner University, bemoaned America as losing its way and morphing from a republic into an “empire.” He added that, regardless of America’s alleged failings, it should be recognized that “God can use the empire” for worthy causes, primarily wars.

“In the 20th century, I believe God used the American empire to defeat Nazism and then to defeat Communism,” Eidsmoe claimed. “And in the 21st century, maybe He will use the American empire to defeat Islam.”

That is exactly my fear, that the War on Terrorism is viewed by some Americans as a war between religions to defend Christianity and defeat Islam.

On the Maryland conference’s final day, July 3, attendees at the Severn church were treated to a defiant rant from a Maryland state legislator. Del. Don Dwyer Jr. (R-Anne Arundel) kicked off his speech by alerting the gathering that he would not “speak in politically correct terms.”

He wasn’t kidding. The state lawmaker seemed to relish trashing secularists and progressive politicians, and he depicted an America awash in sin, while promoting his religious beliefs as superior to all others. Dwyer seemed to be really, really angry and, indeed, toward the end of his over-the-top lecture, he acknowledged that anger.

Dwyer groused about not being permitted to open House sessions with prayers in the name of Jesus Christ. He vowed that if he were ever allowed to give an invocation, he would do so his way, which means acknowledging Jesus.

Sure, we need representatives in government that promote their religious beliefs as superior to all others. That’s exactly what government should be about, right?

“The law is what God says it is, first and foremost,” continued Dwyer, “The foundation of law. No law created by man that is not in concert with God’s law can be any law at all.”

Dwyer said he had learned “what the truth is” from Peroutka, Moore and other “godly men that served in the public realm.”

That truth, however, has alternately made Dwyer both offensive and offended.

“I’ve learned what the truth is, and I’ve learned how to go and offend people,” he continued. “I am very offensive, and I make no apology for it. Because don’t you think that God is offended? Aren’t you offended as people of faith?

“You can’t post the Ten Commandments, you can’t post the Nativity scene at Christmas and they refer to the Easter holiday in public school calendars as the spring break,” Dwyer said, with his voice on the rise. “Give me a break. You want to talk about offended. I’m offended. And you ought to be offended, because He is offended.”

You can post the Ten Commandments, the Nativity scene, and have an Easter holiday… on religious lands and your private property. You can practice your religion how you want and for the most part where you want. It’s just that in that shared public space of government we all need to get along and the rules there will be a little different and a little restrictive.

No one wants to attack or restrict Christianity for the citizens of this country. We just want to preserve true religious freedom by not allowing it to be brought into the government and forced on everyone else. The more Christian our government appears, the more likely we will become a Christian nation and Christianity becomes a mandatory part of citizenship. Unfortunately, some people do like that idea and that is apparently their goal to make their version of Christianity mandatory for all.

A plan to require public schools to teach classes with the Bible as a textbook was changed by a Texas legislative panel to make such classes optional instead.

The House Public Education Committee approved the modified bill Thursday, drawing praise from critics who feared mandatory Bible courses would be more religious than academic.

“I think the committee got the message that families and churches don’t want the government to tell our children what to believe about the Bible,” said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network.

The original bill by Republican state Rep. Warren Chisum would have required schools to offer Bible courses as an elective. He argued the Bible would be used for its historical value.

Texas lawmakers won’t require Bible classes

Wow, I didn’t realize my old home state was that close to being completely nuts. Believe it or not, I have no problem with a Bible elective in public schools. You might actually get a class that critically exams the contents of the book from a historical perspective. Of course you’ll also get highly religious teachers that just teach their flavor of Christianity instead of following a standard unbiased curriculum. The second type of teacher is exactly why it is good they did not make a mandatory Bible study for everyone; even for its historical value if it could be enforced.

My question is why aren’t they making it a class in world religions and truly inform our youth about religions around the world? Oh yes, maybe they’re afraid us Americans might actually realize that only 1/3 of the world believes in Christianity and the other 2/3 believes in different mythologies. That kind of knowledge could make people actually question their particular beliefs.

?For more than 50 years the Pledge has included two words that sum up the most basic element of our nation?s political philosophy: we are a free people because our rights come from a source that is higher than the State, and to which the State is ultimately accountable. In short, we are one nation ?under God,?? said Kevin (Seamus) Hasson, president and founder of The Becket Fund.

“Saying under God in the pledge is like Jefferson saying ?endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,? in the Declaration of Independence. And reciting the Declaration of Independence cannot violate the constitution,” Hasson said.

The Knights of Columbus first added the words to the Pledge in 1951 and petitioned Congress and President Dwight Eisenhower to add ?under God? to the official version of the Pledge. The new version was formally adopted in 1954 and schoolchildren and civic-minded citizens have been reciting it that way ever since.

Battle Over ‘Under God’ Continues – Christian Newswire

That’s a few more words on the “Under God” debate that I just have to answer. First, the statement that our rights come from a source higher than the State. That is completely false. This is a government of “we the people” that provides rights “to ourselves” and “do ordain and establish this Constitution”. To contend the State is ultimately accountable to God is to say that I am, which is a violation of my freedom of religion. We are by no means, one nation under God.

Second, the Declaration of Independence has no bearing on our government and current rights. We weren’t founded as a nation on that document so its mention of “their Creator” has nothing to do with the legality of claiming this is one nation under God. “Their Creator” is also more individualistic instead of the more definite and definitive “God”.

Yes, the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization, was behind adding the words in 1951. Does that sound like there was a nonreligious, inclusive motive for this? Does it sound like such a long tradition that we invoke the founding fathers to defend its use? Finally, I object to the notion that “civic-minded” citizens recite it that way. That implies that since I object to saying the country I love is “under God” that I am not a good citizen. It is this kind of exclusionary language and thought that should not be a part of a pledge to a country that stands for inclusion and freedom.

E Pluribus Unum

“Federal lawmakers authorized a reference to God on a 2-cent piece in 1864, according to the Associated Press. Congress passed a law that required all U.S. currency to bear the words ?In God We Trust? in 1955.?

Michael Newdow, Sacramento doctor atheist, wants a totally secularized America. Therefore ?In God We Trust? must go.
…
?Newdow?s ?In God We Trust? case claimed that the government was ?excluding people who don?t believe in God,? and violating the constitutional principle of a separation between church and state.?

Once again, the atheists and secularists don?t get the freedom of religion as guaranteed in the First Amendment. How many times does that basic lesson need to be repeated throughout the country before so-called intelligent persons get the drift?

There is a God. He is watching and taking.

God is God; therefore, when God has been pushed over His patience line, He will act according to His eternal wisdom. In the meantime, those who are wise will stand alongside the God who has the last word in all matters planetary.

Atheist Attacks ‘In God We Trust’ by Grant Swank

It sure does take a long time to fight the legality of something. Yes, Mr. Swank, freedom of religion is guaranteed. Does In God We Trust speak for the Buddhist, or truly to the Muslim? It definitely does not speak for me. What drift am I supposed to get from this? I see. Your next sentence says “there is a God.” No sir; there is not.

This is the people’s government and our motto should reflect it. It did reflect that very well before Eisenhower and his religiousness in 1955 made it law that “In God We Trust.” But we do not all trust in “God” and the specific judeo-christian God that that implies.

The motto should be restored to E Pluribus Unum – Out of Many, One. That is the true American spirit and should be restored as the motto of this country if it is to survive as the embodiment of freedom and true freedom of religious thought and expression. In God you may trust, but WE do not.

Many who value the separation of religion and government have sought an appropriate response to the federally-supported National Day of Prayer, an annual abuse of the constitution. Nontheistic Americans (including freethinkers, humanists, atheists, agnostics, and deists), along with many traditionally religious allies, view such government-sanctioned sectarianism as unduly exclusionary.

A consortium of leaders from within the community of reason endorsed the idea of a National Day of Reason. This observance is held in parallel with the National Day of Prayer, on the first Thursday in May (4 May 2006). The goal of this effort is to celebrate reason – a concept all Americans can support – and to raise public awareness about the persistent threat to religious liberty posed by government intrusion into the private sphere of worship.

Why a “National Day of Reason?”

Once again, I support a National Day of Reason to counter the National Day of Prayer on Thursday, 4 May 2006. Once again, here are a few fine points as to why a National Day of Prayer is not needed and is indeed a bad thing for all citizens:

Religious Americans who wish to pray don?t need to be reminded by government to do so, so there?s no reason to limit prayer to a single day for those who chose to practice their chosen faith in that way. Government has no business saying when or what Americans should do when and if they engage in religious practice.

Government also violates the First Amendment with the National Day of Prayer by acting to promote a certain manifestation of religion. It emphasizes only one form of religious practice, and therefore discriminates against the many others, including alms giving, social justice, fasting, peace activism and meditation.

Over recent years the National Day of Prayer has become an exclusive day within religious traditions and last year the Senate Chaplain even offered an official prayer that fit closely to the Christian tradition. As the Washington Post said in a January 31, 2003 editorial, “The problem?is official prayer, and the implausible notion that it can ever be truly ecumenical.”