Articles appearing in the Freethinkers of Colorado Springs Freethought Views advertorial column in the Colorado Springs Independent between 2012 and 2014.
Think how many times we heard the word "rape" in the last election, sometimes referred to as "legitimate"rape. That definition is not in the recognized categories, which list only anger rape, power rape, sadistic rape, and gang rape.
American Women's Burqa
By Jan Brazill
The Taliban has been notorious for its treatment of women in Afghanistan. Whenever they appear in public women are forced to wear a burqa, an all-enveloping garment that covers the wearer's entire body except for a small region about the eyes which is covered by a concealing mesh or grille. Women are not allowed to work or be educated after the age of eight. They cannot be treated by male doctors unless accompanied by a male chaperone, which means that many illnesses remain untreated. They face public flogging and even execution for violations of the Taliban's Islamic laws. The burqa effectively assigns Afghan women to a secondary status in society.
American women may soon be wearing a Burqa fashioned by religious forces in our country. This will not be the Taliban’s confining garment, but rather, restrictive laws that will accomplish the same objective of placing women under male control.
This garment has been in the making for a long time. And now its shape can be clearly seen with laws already passed in many states that require women seeking abortions to first undergo an ultrasound procedure that provides an image they must view, regardless of the circumstances of the pregnancy. The state of Virginia also tried to require vaginal probes of the woman’s body until protests derailed that horrendous idea.
Some Catholic congressmen are trying to stop the government from providing free contraceptives to low-income women, and many oppose requiring insurance companies to cover birth control.
This opposition to women's reproductive rights began shortly after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. In his 1980 ruling on the Hyde Amendment (which denied federal funding for abortions for poor women), Federal Judge John J. Dooling concluded that the Bishops’ Pastoral Plan had been implemented. This referenced the 1975 "Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities," a detailed blueprint created by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) for infiltrating and manipulating the American democratic process at the local, state, and national levels to favor Catholic policy on birth control and abortion. In 1980 this infrastructure helped elect a president: Ronald Reagan. His administration instituted the "Mexico City policy," reversing U.S. commitment to international family planning. He assigned an ambassador to the Vatican, William Wilson, who told Time magazine on February 24, 1992: "The Reagan Administration agreed to alter its foreign-aid program to comply with the church's teachings on birth control." Since that time, the NCCB has become a powerful lobbying group in Congress.
To reach the public, evangelical Protestant ministers were cultivated, none of whom had shown a previous interest in abortion. Catholic Bishops helped finance the Moral Majority (started by Paul Weyrich, a Catholic) after Jerry Falwell agreed to oppose abortion, a new topic for him. Now, with government well-infiltrated, these allies hope to pass more laws restricting reproductive rights.
Will America eventually join El Salvador in prohibiting abortion altogether, even to save a woman's life? There, women suspected of having abortions are examined by forensic vagina inspectors, and if guilty, can be imprisoned for up to fifty years, along with family members who help them.
This holy war on women's independence may be creating an American Burqa fully as terrible as the Taliban's.
Corporate Religion?
By Groff Schroeder
On July 27, 2012, United States District Court for the District of Colorado Judge John Kane granted an injunction to prevent the implementation of new provisions of the Affordable Care Act eliminating co-pays for eight types of preventative care including contraception, sterilization, and sexually transmitted disease testing. The issues in dispute included the Act's attempt to ensure that all non-church employers in the United States provide employees access to preventative and reproductive health care without a co-pay, and a Denver company's claim that failing to charge a co-pay to employees for such services - would cause “imminent, irreparable harm” to the company's “freedom of religion.” The judge only considered the case with respect to the defendants (the United States Government) and the Plaintiffs (the Newland Family, owners of Hercules Industries, a heating and air conditioning manufacturer).
The Background section of Judge Kane's ruling states that “for the past year and a half the Newlands have implemented within Hercules a program designed to build their corporate culture based on Catholic principles.” The Newlands altered the articles of incorporation of Hercules Industries to add a provision specifying that the company's “primary purposes” are to be achieved by “following appropriate religious, ethical or moral standards,” and “a provision allowing members of its board of directors to prioritize those 'religious, ethical or moral standards' at the expense of profitability.” Hercules' new articles also state that “Hercules maintains a self-insured group plan for its employees “[as] part of fulfilling their organizational mission and Catholic beliefs and commitments.”
The employees of Hercules Industries were not a party to the case, so the consequences experienced by the human beings most directly effected by its outcome were not considered by Judge Kane. Neither did the case consider the merit of corporations altering their articles of incorporation to establish (retroactively or otherwise) a corporate culture based upon the “religious, ethical or moral standards” of the corporation's owners or operators. Similarly, the effect upon actual human beings of operating corporate “self-insured group [employee health care] plan” to fulfill corporate family “Catholic beliefs and commitments” - rather than to meet the health care needs of the corporation's employees - was apparently also not considered by Judge Kane.
Although Hercules made national headlines when it won an injunction against the elimination of co-pays for preventative and reproductive care for its employees, it lost an award it was to receive from the Denver City Council on August 13 for, among other things, the company's “generous health care coverage.”
Why are corporations like Hercules Industries granted “religious freedom” when they are incapable of participating in religious services or rituals, and are denied the right to vote, the right to join the military, and numerous other rights and responsibilities of citizenship? How can the religious freedom of a corporation, its owners, or operators extend to denying religious freedom to other human beings by forcing them to comply with “Catholic” - or any other – religious 'beliefs and commitments?”
As long as churches, corporations, employers, families, individuals, organizations, and religious groups control the medical, religious, and or reproductive behavior of human beings, personal and religious freedom will remain little more than elusive ideals.
Published September 19-25, 2012 in the Colorado Springs Independent, with the following quotation.
"The United States should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy.” George Washington
Creation Science 101 - by Roy Zimmerman
I write satirical songs - funny songs about politics, social issues, etc. It's getting easier and easier, frankly. A lot of my shows are sponsored by Freethinkers, Secular Students, Centers for Inquiry, Coalitions for Reason, Humanists, Skeptics and other heathens. One reason for this is my song "Creation Science 101."
"Creation Science 101" is a song about Creationism, and teaching it as "science" in the public schools, a notion put forth by Evangelicals across the country. I say go ahead and teach "Creation Science" as long as you teach all the other creation myths - the Karmic Wheel, the armpit of Ymir, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and the Scientology version, which states the world was created on a bet between God and L. Ron Hubbard. I videotaped the song, and posted it on YouTube where it was picked up and featured on YouTube's front page. (I don't know how this happens - it's a mysterious process that has something to do with Intelligent Design.) Pretty soon, the video boasted a million views, and tens of thousand of comments, some of them coherent. It's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIwiPsgRrOs, and it starts like this:
God made the world in seven days
Well, that's one week, to be specific
Now, that's what I call scientific
Say halleluiah, sing His praise.
Other songwriters wrote songs in answer to my song, like this one by Billy Bob Neck: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGBK5uktWWY. And it turns out, there's an actual class called "Creation
Science 101" taught by Dr. Kent Hovind in this video, posted by slaves4christ: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlem1R-lUF0. Amazing! Unbelievable, you might say.
I even visited the Creation Museum (http://creationmuseum.org/), a 27-million dollar facility in Petersburg, KY put together by the "Answers in Genesis" people (A.I.G., oddly enough) where you can see life-sized dioramas of Adam and Eve with their dinosaurs on leashes. I must admit, I learned a great deal. Eve was gorgeous, did you know that? She looked like Cher with well-placed hair. And I looked around at all the people, Baptist School busloads of people there at the Creation Museum on a Saturday morning, and I had an evolving revelation: I LIKE these people. They're smart and funny; they love each other, and they want good things for their world.
And that is why I write satirical songs. Not just for Liberals and heathens who might tend to agree with me, but also for smart, funny, good people who might disagree. And that's why, when I perform these songs at the Stargazers Theater on Wednesday, February 22, in a concert sponsored by the Freethinkers of Colorado Springs, I won't be making fun of people's true beliefs. I'll be making fun of hypocrisy, absurdity, pomposity, willful ignorance, lust, and greed.
Hope to see you there.
Have you thought about the validity of your religious beliefs lately? For many people, their beliefs dictate their actions in life.
More than 200 years ago, the founding fathers of the United States of America created a unique system of government Constitution based on Enlightenment principles and a series of Amendments called the “Bill of Rights.” Although designed to protect individual citizens from government overreach and dedicated to equality under the law, their original Constitution perpetuated slavery and guaranteed equality only to male land owners. However, they also created elected legislative bodies that write laws and courts that interpret laws, mechanisms through which the People might adapt to changing times or oppose authoritarianism through political or legal action. The final arbiter of equal justice under federal law is the Supreme Court.
In 1954, the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision ruled that segregated “separate but equal” schools were unconstitutional, leading to not only the eventual desegregation of the public schools, but also a wider civil rights movement, and the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act of 1964 and 1965. Sadly, the Supreme Court has also made decisions that appear not to serve human equality, including the infamous 1896 Plessey vs. Ferguson decision supporting “Jim Crow” laws validating the racial segregation the Brown decision dismantled.
In 2014, citing prayers in the Continental Congress (rather than the strong opposition to those prayers at the time), the court ruled in Greece vs. Galloway that elected representatives can introduce personalreligion into official taxpayer funded governmental events, even with prayers predominantly favoring the dominant religion. When Hobby Lobby vs. Sebelius is decided (any day now), corporations and business owners may win the “religious freedom” to deny employees and their families access to contraception and other forms of woman's reproductive health care under the Affordable Care Act, quashing the religious freedoms of the actual human beings they employ. The Schuette vs. BAMN decision appears to relegate previously enforced Constitutional protections of equality to a local vote.
Supreme Court rulings in the 21stcentury increasingly appear to reverse previous gains by allowing corporations, organizations, politicians, and voters the power to overrule the individual freedoms and personal equality of actual human beings. While these decisions may at first appear to be victories to some, these decisions also appear to be “two-edged swords.” Just because politicians and voters choose prayers of the dominant religion today does not mean they always will. Similarly, a government with the political power to ban abortion, also has the power to force citizens to have abortions.
Just as in the Continental Congress, research suggests that citizen interest in praying with politicians at taxpayer funded events depends upon shared belief; if you share the dominant belief system, you probably support religion in government. If you have a different belief system, it appears you probably oppose religion in government.
So the next time that religion in government makes you feel good, included, relaxed, safe, and validated – perhaps when viewing an “I am the Lord thy God” monument outside of a government building - please imagine how that situation would feel if you were held different religious beliefs. How equal would you feel if Justice Anthony Kennedy said to you, “If you don't like [my preferred form of prayer in government], just leave the room” - and how equal will you feel if your boss, a corporation, or voters overrule your most intimate medical, religious, and reproductive decisions?
Equal Justice Under Law? By Groff Schroeder was originally published May 21, 2014 with the accompanying quotation below.
Fact or Fiction - How Can You Know?
by Groff Schroeder
If a person repeats a falsehood in good faith, are they lying? Such a situation is a good example of why it is important to think critically about the information we receive.
Information can be either objective (verifiable) or subjective (unverifiable) and usually consists of facts, opinion, speculation, or fiction. Objective information includes things like professional documentation, scientific publications, and recordings and real time video of actual events. In contrast, subjective information stems from personal feelings or work rather than scientific research, statistics, or physical evidence.
A fact is a who, what, when, where, or how piece of objective information that can be either true or false. Although a fact can be proven true or false, pieces of information are usually only accepted as fact after they have been verified as correct through some repeatable means.
Opinion is subjective information based upon a person's point of view, and speculation is a subjective guess about a situation or the future. While the validity of opinion and speculation often depends upon the correctness and completeness of the facts upon which they are based, even 100% correct opinion and speculation are of limited value in the objective assessment of reality.
Fiction is film, speech, or writing that is not presented as being true. For example, novels such as The Hobbit are labeled as fiction because they are stories created by the author rather than accounts of actual events. However, fiction necessarily includes factual or at least believable descriptions of reality - such as small people with large hairy feet participating in amazing adventures – even though the story itself is a fabrication.
Just as the intentional falsehoods of fiction can create a very believable subjective impression of reality, it is possible to create a subjective reality through the use of propaganda, the practice of presenting falsehoods (or subjective information) as facts (or objective information). Propaganda creates a very believable, but ultimately false impression of reality, usually in order to manipulate public opinion, electoral processes, and societal behavior.
It appears increasingly difficult to find sources of information with high objective to subjective information ratios, perhaps because the expansion of corporate political power has created information providers with significant conflicts of interest in their own reporting. If it is hard trust the information we receive, how can we ensure that we do not incorrectly repeat falsehoods in good faith?
Consult multiple sources of information: do multiple sources support a fact's validity? When sources disagree, what information supports each point of view?
Evaluate the quality of the information: is the information objective or subjective? Is the source of the information verifiably identified, excerpted, quoted, and cited?
Assess how the information is presented: is the subject covered completely and objectively? Does there appear to be a dependable bias or prejudice? Do headers match content? Are inconvenient events, facts, or information omitted?
Evaluate the quality of the source: is opinion presented as fact? What is the ratio of factual information to opinion and speculation? Does the source agree with other sources? Is the presentation correct, complete, honorable, and logical? Is incorrect information corrected?
No matter what the source, quality, or completeness of the information you are consuming, it often appears that the most important piece of information is the one that you do not have.
Appeared in the Colorado Springs Independent, November 12-19, 2013 with the quotation below.
"The essence of an independent mind lies in how it thinks not what it thinks." Christopher Hitchens
Faithful to the Founders?
by Ken Burrows
The May 5th Supreme Court decision in Town of Greece v. Galloway concluded that the practice by the Greece, NY, town board of opening its meetings with predominantly Christian prayer does not violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. This ruling greenlights a certain religious imposition on those citizens attending the town board meetings who see themselves as excluded or at least marginalized by being subjected to official governmental prayer, sectarian in nature, that effectively endorses a faith they do not themselves subscribe to.
Justice Anthony Kennedy in writing the Greece opinion insisted it “faithfully reflects the understanding of the Founding Fathers.” But does it?
James Madison, chief draftsman of the Constitution, and Thomas Jefferson, author of a pioneering and much emulated religious freedom law in Virginia, would find Justice Kennedy’s assurance to be quite fanciful. Arguably the two most influential architects of church-state relations, these two key Founders were at best wary of governmental prayer and at times aggressively against it. Not because they were hostile to religion in general (both were deistic believers) but because it was precisely the mingling of government and religion that they were committed to avoid.
Madison said “a perfect separation” between ecclesiastical and civil matters is important, and “religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.” In a post-presidency Detached Memorandum, he was even more specific, saying members of government and other public officials cannot address the faith or consciences of the people because such actions “…imply and certainly nourish the erroneous idea of a national religion.”
For his part Jefferson said religion was a subject he considered to be “a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, has a right to intermingle.” In his 1786 Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom, he strongly criticized “the impious presumption of legislators and rulers” who endeavor to impose their faith on others, saying those who do so establish “false religions.” He flatly stated “our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions.”
Compare these stances by Founders against the Court’s Greece opinion, which tells citizens who see offense in being subjected to governmental prayer that they are free to leave the room, arrive late, or lodge a protest afterward. In short, the majority justices say if government wants to pray and even promote a specific faith, it can. This is the kind of mindset the Founders fomented a revolution against. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention underscored this desire to separate church and state by going so far as to reject suggestions to bring prayer into their deliberations. The Greece town board’s public prayer habit thus turns history on its head, no matter Kennedy’s protestation to the contrary.
In his famed Memorial and Remonstrance opposing government support for religion, Madison said religion is “not within the cognizance of the civil government,” and the only religious homage a person owes is “such only as he believes to be acceptable to him.”
That sort of resounding clarity about keeping government and religion separated is something Kennedy and his concurring justices apparently cannot understand, or are unwilling to accept. But they ought not rewrite history to say the Founders would agree with them.
Published September 24, 2014 with the quotation below.
"When the citizens of this country approach their government, they do so as citizens, not s members of one faith or another."
Elena Kagan, dissent to Greece vs. Galloway
Earn up to $225.00!
Potential topic arenas: agnosticism, atheism, Bill of Rights, civil rights, economics, equality, freethought, government prayer, history, human rights, law, logic, mathematics, medicine, peace, pastafarianism etc., pledge of allegiance, public education, reason, religion, reproductive rights, science, taxpayer funded religion, US Constitution, violence, war, zoroastrianism etc. and especially, the separation of church and state
The Bible has thousands of passages that may instruct and inspire. Not all are appropriate in all circumstances.
Dignity Denied?
By Ken Burrows
What does it mean to respect the inherent dignity of a person? In particular, what does it mean in the uniquely personal context of end-of-life health care decisions? Is a grant of full autonomy a prerequisite for respecting patient dignity?
This is no small matter because Catholic doctrines and policies govern end-of-life care decisions for the 15% of U.S. patients admitted to Catholic-affiliated hospitals each year as well as for individuals entering any of the 1,400 long-term care and assisted living facilities run under Catholic auspices. Unfortunately, those Catholic doctrines put individual autonomy in great peril.
The document titled “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services,” issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), defines the relevant rules and policies. Although it states that “the inherent dignity of the human person” and “the free and informed judgements” made by patients concerning use of life-sustaining procedures should always be respected, it also states, “A Catholic health care institution will . . . not honor an advance directive that is contrary to Catholic teaching.”
That’s conflicted at best and almost certainly means the promised respect for dignity and autonomy will be subordinated to Catholic teaching. Consider, for instance, that advance end-of-life instructions, DNR (do not resuscitate) orders, and directives in living wills can all be dismissed by a Catholic institution if their stipulations are contrary to church teaching, even if the patient is not a Catholic. It is difficult to imagine a point in one’s life when autonomy is more precious and where it can be so arbitrarily annulled. This does not respect dignity.
There is, additionally, a freedom of conscience issue at stake. Patients caught up in conflicts between Catholic dogma and their own conscientiously chosen health care decisions can find themselves bound by religious tenets they do not personally accept and be made to suffer for it. Depending on their health circumstances and availability of alternate resources, they may be powerless to do anything about it. This does not respect dignity.
If the denial of autonomy results in prolonged trauma or humiliation for the patient, the Directives say such patients “should be helped to appreciate the Christian understanding of redemptive suffering.” Never mind that it is suffering itself these patients have made conscientious choices to avoid in the first place and never mind that if these patients are themselves not Christian, such a solution adds the burden of unwanted proselytizing. This does not respect dignity.
Are the bishops themselves conflicted in their thinking on these rules? Their Directives at one point concede that a person can forgo extraordinary means of preserving life if those interventions, “in the patient’s judgement” [italics added], entail an “excessive burden.” Even medically assisted nutrition and hydration are deemed optional when they would cause “significant physical discomfort.” And yet at another point the Directives insist the same medically assisted nutrition and hydration are morally obligatory for patients who cannot take food or water orally, and the obligation “extends to patients . . . who can reasonably be expected to live indefinitely if given such care.” Here the exceptions based on “excessive burden” or “significant physical discomfort” for the patient are not mentioned.
This much seems clear: A guarantee of autonomy at the end of one’s life should not be this confused or equivocal. Respect for dignity that is this malleable is dignity denied.
In 1932, Supreme Court Justice Lewis Brandeis indirectly coined the phrase, “laboratory of democracy” to describe America's state legislatures by writing, “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” Since the 2010 midterms, it appears that these metaphorical laboratories have initiated numerous experiments with America's most basic ideals.
Two states now prohibit state employee's unions from participating in collective bargaining, apparently denying American citizens in those states the right to enter into contracts if they choose to exercise their freedom of association and freedom of speech at the same time. America's challenging economic climate has led nineteen states to allow state government to forcibly intervene in local finances. Michigan even allows transferring the power and duties of municipal representatives elected by the People to an “emergency manager” appointed by the governor. Angry citizens soundly revoked this law at the ballot box by citizen initiative, but a “lame duck” session of the state legislature that originally passed the law reinstated it. When a US District Court failed to issue an injunction, Detroit's approximately 700,000 citizen's came to live under the “orders” of Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, rather than a democratic government of their own, duly elected representatives.
If state laws limiting American citizens' rights to vote, elect, contract, associate, and speak seem unconstitutional, consider the more than 300 laws passed by state houses (in 2013 alone) restricting American citizens' rights to control their own reproductive processes. Since attempts to regulate human reproduction usually stem from religious beliefs, these laws also appear to restrict many American's First Amendment right to religious freedom.
Eleven states have criminalized abortion after as little as six weeks. Eight states have passed “personhood” laws, granting a fused sperm and egg (even if the product of rape or incest ) the same rights as a fully developed human being. Personhood laws appear to criminalize all abortion, many forms of birth control, and mere “reasonable suspicion” triggers the investigation of miscarriages (about 50% of all pregnancies) as homicides. These laws prohibit abortion to save the life of the mother, forcing physicians to choose between letting the mother and her “person” die, or performing an abortion to save the mother's life and being prosecuted for the murder of her “person.”
No matter what the Constitutionality of these laws (if any), they may force us to ask, who is to control the reproductive and religious freedoms of the People of the United States: citizens and their physicians in the privacy of personal medical confidentiality, or politicians, religious leaders, and corporations in the harsh glare of the uniquely public modern American media?
States pass laws prohibiting collective action and granting governors the power to overrule municipal elections. Other states pass anti-abortion restrictions so sweeping that miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy could lead to prosecution for murder. Although they appear to be occurring in an “economic and social laboratory” “enabled by a happy incident of our federal system,” can these legislative “experiments” with democracy, human freedom, and the very lives of the American People occur “without risk” if the American People are not informed of them?
Laboratory of Democracy
by Groff Schroeder
Look within, not up
by Ken Burrows
Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas recently opined that European laws liberalizing elective euthanasia are evidence of a growing ethical crisis in the devaluing of life. He says this is what happens when people go godless and humanity does not accept “an Authority higher than itself, an Authority that holds all life . . . infinitely valuable.”
But is deferring to a “higher authority,” which typically means God, a prerequisite for having strong ethics about life? Is such deference the most reliable solution to an ethical crisis? Or is the problem that we simply do not consistently enough adhere to the higher ethical instincts already within ourselves?
There is an additional dilemma: If humanity were to accept a “higher authority,” whose definition of such authority would we accept? Every such concept is subject to the fallibility of its earthbound interpreters. Or as a theology professor of mine once put it, whose hotline to God are you going to make your call on?
After all, from the institutional murderers of the Inquisition to the political murderers of 9/11/2001, history’s destroyers of life have often justified their actions by claiming to obey their own higher authority. Even the biblical God, presumably Thomas’ higher Authority, directed or perpetrated significant amounts of senseless slaughter. Is this a model for holding “all life infinitely valuable”?
The fact is, although deference to God can be a motivating factor for some people in valuing lives, there is ample evidence to show that such deference does not inevitably generate this valuing. Nor is it a prerequisite, since nonbelievers are as capable of strong life values as are theists.
We should therefore seek a more universally reliable source and motive for life ethics. Fortunately, there is one. It is to practice goodness not for God’s sake but for the sake of each other. To ascribe value to the lives of fellow human beings for the simple reason that we all hold our life by the same tenure. By doing so we embrace what we all have in common and adopt values based on reason, justice, fairness, and compassion—all humanly accessible ethical principles. We do so not in deference to a nebulously defined higher authority but in concordance with the sensible rationale that a society is more whole, healthy and moral if its members value each other in these ways.
This is already part of our experience if we are sane and caring. Even theistic believers generally do not value the lives of fellow human beings only out of deference to God or to secure his rewards. They are not in the main that narrowly self-interested.
On the contrary, we all do what we do because shared responsibility for ethical behavior is a natural and noble human impulse with here-on-earth motivation. It emanates from our own higher instincts. Let’s recognize, appreciate, and cultivate this impulse. We are not, as Thomas despairingly says, morally impotent in the absence of a higher authority. We are ethically self-empowered. We honor this innate ethical impulse by accepting the moral obligations it imposes on us. When we do, we affirm that the most reliable “higher authority” we ought to accept for valuing lives will be found by looking inward, not upward.
Military Freedom of Religion Foundation Event at UCCS
by Gary Betchan
When Air Force Academy cadets first started sneaking into Freethinkers meetings some 20 years ago, we knew who they were. Their youth and very short hair gave them away. But they would not tell us where they were from, or anything else. They would sit quietly in the back of the room, talk with no one, and leave as soon as the presentation was over.
As the months passed they slowly started talking with other Freethinkers. They suggested that they had to claim to be going to a church service to get permission to leave the Academy. They would complain about religious harassment and threats to their career if they didn't embrace fundamentalist Christianity.
We gave them the standard advice for nonbelievers in those positions. Keep you religious understandings to yourself, don't push back against any insult or attempt to trick you into talking about religion, and start building a log
book. Record every offense, collect papers, emails, newspaper articles, any thing that illustrates what is being done to you. Several of the cadets did this, and years later one of them filed a complaint with Air Force officials.
The shock waves from that complaint has shaken the Academy to it's core and reached military bases around the world. They also reached into Mikey Weinstein's home in New Mexico. Mikey graduated from the United States Air Force Academy and then led a strong career as a lawyer in powerful government circles. When he found out that his own sons, Air Force Academy students at the time, were being harassed because of the their Jewish heritage, he exploded into action.
He formed the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and started a military style attack on religious extremism at the Air Force Academy and throughout the United States Military. He has succeeded beyond the dreams of the average Freethinker. Mr. Weinstein recently welcomed the introduction of Air Force Instruction 1-1, section 2.11 of which makes it mandatory for Air Force personnel to “avoid the actual or apparent use of their position to promote their personal religious beliefs to their subordinates or to extend preferential treatment for any religion” (http://www.e-publishing.af.mil/shared/media/epubs/AFI1-1.pdf ).
This month Mr. Weinstien is coming to fire up a Colorado Springs crowd at the Student Secular Alliance's meeting at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs at 6:30 PM on Wednesday, October 24, 2012 in Centennial Hall, Room 203. The event is free, open to the public, and coincides with the Freethinkers of Colorado Springs October meeting. You can find more details about the event at www.FreethinkersCS.com. Please visit http://mrffssauccs-efbevent.eventbrite.com/ to get a free ticket and make a donation in support of the MRFF or the UCCS Secular Student Alliance.
If you are in the military, are former military, love someone who is in the military, or if you pay taxes in the United States of America, you should hear Mikey's story.
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You can begin at mrff.org.
Published October 17, 2012 with the quotation below.
“There is a time and place to talk about religion, and I don't think that time and place is while you are on the job.”
Mikey Weinstein
Mired in the Middle Ages
by Janet Brazill
Humans are exploring our Solar System! Not physically, but with spacecraft which can provide many answers to our questions. The recent landing of “Curiosity” on the surface of Mars is giving us pictures in 3D of the Martian surface and performing various tests to determine if life ever existed there. This is only the latest remote-controlled spacecraft to land there.
We are also using an innovative ion-engine propulsion system to explore in the Asteroid Belt beyond Mars. “Dawn” completed the 1.7 billion miles to Vesta in 2011, circled, compiled data, then left to reach Ceres, another asteroid, by February 2015.
Now if humans can explore by using such instruments, who’s to say that reported sightings of UFO’s couldn’t be remote-controlled vehicles from other worlds? Accounts seem to indicate impossible aerial maneuvers – at least for any human occupants. Reports increased during wartime. And numerous paintings from the Middle Ages include image elements that appear to match modern classic UFOs.
So has “something” been watching us earthlings? If so, they can see that we, too, are becoming space travelers. But they must also notice that we are over-populating the earth. I wonder if they can tell that the number of hungry and malnourished people in our 17-billion is roughly equivalent to what they saw as the Earth’s entire human population not long ago in the 1930s. They must worry that we are destroying our polluted, overcrowded home planet.
I’m sure they would be aware of our technological progress – our capabilities for space travel, our knowledge of science, and our medical advances – definite developments since their observations in the Middle Ages.
But wait! What is happening to the women? Just when females are becoming equally educated with the males of the species, they are being tied down by pregnancy! Hasn’t this species discovered the science of pregnancy prevention?
Ah, yes. We have the knowledge, but someone should explain to them that such prevention offends the Catholic religion because allowing it now after previously banning it would threaten the Church’s authority on other subjects. Since statistics show that Catholic women use contraceptives as much as non-Catholics, the Church must attempt to make birth control unavailable for ALL women. It has had fair success at the Population Conferences held through the years, and now Catholics comprise one-quarter of our U.S. Congress. House Speaker John Boehner is a Catholic, as is Rep. Paul Ryan, both committed to budget cuts for contraceptives. They aim to reduce badly needed international family planning assistance and eliminate all funding for Title X which provides family planning services to low-income women in the United States. (5.2 million in 2010.)
Of course, if these space-visitors have been observing over the centuries, they are well aware of the Church’s history of warfare with Science -- the denial of Copernicus' and Galileo’s discoveries, Bruno being burned at the stake. They would have noted that from the time of St. Augustine to Galileo, theology claimed authority over scientific thought, and that in 1615, the Catholic Inquisition put Galileo under house arrest for his discoveries, a wrong not acknowledged officially by the Church until 1992.
Our space-visitors must be amused. Here is a scientifically accomplished space-faring society still promoting religious ideas the visitors witnessed back in the Middle Ages!
Published August 15-22 in the Colorado Springs Independent with the following quotation.
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use."
Galileo Galilei
Religion, Environment, and the Cost to Human Freedom
Marc Pratarelli, Ph.D.
A cognitive neuroscientist might see freedom as the integrity of the individual brain to exist. Consciousness evolved in the natural order of the universe because it was adaptive. Any organism that possesses it—more or less—exercises a degree of free choice to negotiate a complex environment. Similarly, morality is one of many cognitive tools organisms use to survive. It’s not uniquely human.
Both religious practice and individual freedom are byproducts of natural selection because believing in them is statistically adaptive over geologic time. Measuring their impacts over a few lifetimes is a distraction from our understanding of these universal social constructions motivated by common biological drives.
Research shows us the last seven commandments exist in the scriptures of all religions. Is it just a perverse coincidence? Hardly. These and many other moral codes were stumbled upon and culturally enshrined because they favored survivability in the short term. Belief in any of the 425+ gods worked as well, but again, only in the short term. That’s not to say they eliminated conflict or aggression because those too are biological in origin.
The freedoms perceived by individuals are necessary because of the type of nervous system they possess. Social insects have a diffuse nervous system and only a modicum of freedom because the narrowly defined genetic script dictates their role within the colony and its ecological niche. Not all vertebrates produce religious-like behavior, but all exhibit what we call evolutionary ethics, or an ethics of survival and reproduction from which particular moral codes arise. The larger the brain the more sophistication an organism can exercise toward survival. Thus, having moral codes like the Ten Commandments enhances the short-term prospects of surviving in complex social and shifting environmental settings. In fact, they have very little intrinsic value to the individual other than to reduce stress and anxiety, and increase perceived happiness, all of which enhance the likelihood of succeeding in the future. But these too are predicated on another behavioral instinct called denial or self-deception.
The more you delude yourself into believing something is true when it isn’t (like the supremacy of your particular god)—and the reverse is also true—(you’re nothing but the product of evolved adaptations over geologic time and therefore you’re no more divine than any other believer or organism), the happier you are. “Freedom” is thus little more than the self-imposed illusion in all organisms that one’s existence has purpose. Without it, the exceptionalism of our species or of the self simply crumbles.
So what do freedom and religion have to do with environment? It boils down to a biophysical reality. Organisms that believe they have freedom will be successful in the short term, but compromise their existence over geologic time. That is, if your beliefs lead to continuous success on a finite planet, overpopulation, overconsumption of limited resources, and collapse soon follow. Garrett Hardin once wrote “ultimate freedom in the Commons, brings ruin to all.” Such is the present case globally. Too much of a good thing can have negative consequences. Without the intelligence to recognize the illusions and our institutionalized forms of denial, we simply continue toward the ultimate consequence nature has in store for organisms who take too much for themselves and give too little back.
Fairness for Palestine?
By Bill Durland, J.D., Ph.D.
How may we determine whether Palestine should be a free, independent and sovereign nation? When critical thinking employs justice, logic and humane treatment, we may be able to answer that. So what is in the way? There are myths Americans believe that have clouded their thinking.
These are:
1) A select group of people is preferred by their tribal god. God chose the Israelites as his “chosen people in a promised land.” They incorporated this self-serving myth into their religious structures, and current political claims. If there is a god, for the creator to prefer one of his/her creations over others is untenable. If there is no god, there is no such people .
2) The State of Israel deserves preferential treatment because Jews suffered a holocaust. There have been many holocausts. All create victims. Palestinians do not deserve to be victimized by a previously victimized Israel.
3) The media describes Israel and Hamas as militarily equal.Both are described as if they have an organized military, nuclear weapons and missiles of mass destruction This device is called “leveling.” But in fact, there is no state of Hamas. Gaza has been invaded, surrounded and blockaded by the 4th strongest military in the world, and resists with short-range, outdated rocketry only.
4) Israel invokes its right to self-defense with the use of aggressive invasions, military occupation and blockade. Under International Law an aggressor nation waives its right to claim self-defense while it invades, occupies, and blockades another.
5) Hamas has no right to resist Israeli invasion, occupation, and blockade. The media persists in describing the two parties as equals when one is a political party and para-military group and the other a nation state. To be logically consistent and fair, it is Palestine or its parts – Gaza and the West Bank – versus Israel. Gaza, has been invaded, occupied, and blockaded from receiving life-supporting resources. The West Bank is separated into numerous, non-contiguous parts including illegal Israeli settlements and harassed by Israeli-imposed checkpoints and curfews. Palestine has a right under international law to defend itself by forceful resistance.
6) Israel is a democracy and Palestine is not. Israel calls itself a Jewish State making it similar to Iran and ISIL – Islamic states. It treats non-Jews within its borders as second-class citizens and has created Apartheid in the West Bank.
7) Israel has a right to exist and Palestine does not. Palestine (the P.L.O. and P.A.) recognized Israel’s right to exist in 1988. Israeli government spokesperson, Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1969 said: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. They don’t exist.” In 2014 Israeli Cabinet Minister Naftali Bennet said: “The Israeli Peace Plan is the annexation of the West Bank.”
Israel was recognized in 1948 as a free, independent and sovereign nation by the U.S. and U.N. over 78 percent of the former British mandate territory it invaded. Palestine deserves the same recognition over the remaining 22 percent that Israel illegally occupied in 1967. Its actions have been condemned by the U.N. but many protected by U.S. vetoes. The Palestinian people ask only to be judged objectively and fairly with all the myths put aside. This is how freethinking people practice fairness in building a human world.
Originally published in the Freethought Views advertorial column in the Colorado Springs Independent on October 22, 2014 with the following quotation.
"You can't have occupation and human rights." Christopher Hitchens
Driven by the righteousness of their cause and a sense of cultural besiegement, Christian conservative elites have mobilized countless foot soldiers for social and political causes over the last three decades into a movement known as the New Christian Right. The Evangelical Right provides much of the political force of this movement, motivating evangelicals at the pew level to engage in battle against their pet issues: same-sex marriage, abortion rights, science education in public schools, the separation of church and state, secular humanism, and atheists. Recent examples of the Evangelical Right’s influence abound: from public school groups like the Good News Club proselytizing elementary school children across the nation – to fast-food chicken moguls crusading on issues of same-sex relationships – to major conservative male political candidates pontificating about the reproductive processes of women who are victims of sexual violence.
The Embattled World of the Evangelical Right
by Jeff Satterwhite
Freethought Views March 2013
Jeff Satterwhite is a former minister, current member of the Clergy Project, and is a doctoral candidate in religious studies at the University of Denver
The Pope & The Internet
By Janet Brazill
Pope Francis has astounded many with his humble acceptance of his role as the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Now he has made a stunning announcement, calling the Internet a "gift from God." This shows that he values knowledge. If his followers would just accept that statement and study this wonderful storehouse of information, it could drastically change our government for the better.
Catholic lawmakers would cease believing the old wives' tale that a woman's body can reject pregnancy from a rapist. They would learn that a pregnancy gone wrong can be a threat to a woman's health or even her life, and that some women must avoid pregnancy at all costs, but still deserve a happy marriage.
Being truly informed, they would cease using the legend of Eve's "sin" as justification for the "Comstockery" climate of modern-day politics in our country. (If readers don't understand that reference, look it up on the Internet.)
Medical methods of preventing pregnancy are part of the knowledge on the Internet, as are other medical facts which these same legislators all use to better their lives: eye surgery to correct vision, dental implants, artificial limbs. None of these is "natural," but the Church doesn't protest their use, calling only contraception "unnatural." Of course, these modern techniques weren't known back in 1930 when the Church condemned "artificial" methods of contraception .
Well, maybe this is the reason God finally gave us the Internet!
With over 7 billion people on this Earth and the environmental damage such numbers cause, it's obviously time to start taking care of this fragile planet. Birth control is an important and necessary part of any remedial action.
If Catholic Congressmen didn't persistently block funds for International Family Planning, we could help families around tyhe world control their size. This would help end environmental degradation such as desertification, deforestation, and climate change. It would also reduce warfare in the world because fewer people would be contending for scarce resources.
Well-informed legislators would stop creating forced-ultrasound and clinic- closing laws; they would drop the law that could lead to the IRS auditing rape victims. They would stop the picketing to close women's health clinics that provide abortions, acknowledging that women need this option as well as the medical checkups these clinics provide to prevent cancer or venereal diseases.
As for the years of violence, chaos and threats that occur at these clinics, they would call it what it is: TERRORISM. And they would take the necessary measures to prevent it and judge those acts the same way they do the violence from religious or political terrorists who attack our country.
Responsible legislators would stop the open aid to these domestic terrorists such as passing laws to close down clinics (ex. TX with its excessive regulations of clinics) or proposing unreasonable limitations on the legal abortion period.
Pope Francis is declaring that knowledge, as shown on the Internet, is no threat to his faith, but is, in his opinion, a "gift from God." Now if he can find a way for his Church to drop its prohibition against birth control and abortion -- perhaps by reinterpreting the Biblical story of Onan spilling his seed -- then this persecution of women could stop and women would be one step closer to becoming full citizens in our country at last.
Triumph of Reason: The Scientific Method
By Groff Schroeder
All modern technology stems from the scientific method. Misrepresented by detractors as everything from fraud to religion, the scientific method defines a group of repeatable, verifiable, and predictive practices that have led humans to the pinnacle of technology upon which we now stand.
From its first inception in the work of Archimedes, the use of measurement and experiment to unlock the secrets of nature has resulted in some of the most important advancements in history. The works of Roger Bacon in the 13th century and later Sir Francis Bacon in the 17th century employed experimentalism but found limited acceptance in a world focused upon religion and art.
In 1600, Dominican philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake during the Catholic Inquisition after supporting the Copernican heliocentric theory. A contemporary of Bruno, Galileo Galilei brought the use of measurement and experiment into wide acceptance through his experiments with falling bodies, laying the groundwork for modern science. Like Bruno, Galileo also defied church dictates by suggesting that the earth could revolve around the sun. Galileo managed to avoid being burned at the stake by an infallible Pope, instead spending years of his life under house arrest.
While the Age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and especially the advancements of the 20th century brought science to the forefront of human achievement, science once again faces rejection, misunderstanding and fear, even as it provides treasured technologies of SUVs, computers, telecommunications, "smart" bombs, and the medical "miracles" of antibiotics and surgery.
The scientific method is a series of not necessarily sequential steps, often beginning with research of previous publications by past scientists in scholarly journals. This step alone can lead to advancements in science as was discovered by three independent scientists who, in 1900, unearthed Gregor Mendel's brilliant but long forgotten 1865 work on plant genetics.
The scientific method is a series of not necessarily sequential steps, often beginning with research of previous publications by past scientists in scholarly journals. This step alone can lead to advancements in science as was discovered by three independent scientists who, in 1900, unearthed Gregor Mendel's brilliant but long forgotten 1865 work on plant genetics.
Another step of the scientific method involves the formation of an educated guess called a hypothesis. One example of the hypothesis in science is Einstein's work on gravitation and his accompanying prediction that strong gravitational fields would bend light.
After observation and experiment, publication places often extremely detailed information about the hypothesis, the experiment, the experimental method and the statistical representations of the results into the public domain. Typically, these publications appear in "peer reviewed" journals that utilize experts from the field to carefully review the work prior to publication. Most recently, 20th century philosopher Carl Popper argued for the possibility of empirical falsification as a test of scientific validity.
Competing scientists use published journal articles to recreate, repeat and test the experiment and the conclusions of its authors. If the observations can be repeated, they support the hypothesis which is validated to a degree. If a hypothesis is validated repeatedly, often over 100 years or more, the hypothesis becomes a scientific theory such as the Theory of Evolution. After even more extensive validation over time, a hypothesis can become a scientific law such as the Law of Conservation of Energy.
The scientific method provides a repeatable, verifiable, and especially predictive mechanism through which humans can accurately and precisely discover and model the behavior of nature, and without it, none of the technology we take for granted would be possible.
First published 2003
War on..., US?
By Groff Schroeder
The United States Congress has not declared war since 1941, yet we hear of "war" on Christmas, drugs, guns, poverty, science, terror - you name it. The war on drugs and the (oxymoronic) war on terror clearly are wars, whereas wars on poverty and science appear as mere hyperbole. So in today's overpopulated "war on [insert target here]" environment, what actually constitutes war?
In reality, “black and white” issues are extremely rare. Virtually everything is associated with a range correctly described by different words or phrases. There might be: opposition to [insert target here], action against [insert target here], protests against [insert target here], or even (non-violent) attacks upon [insert target here], none of which qualify as war.
War can be defined as politically motivated, violent conflict between groups of people employing deadly weapons in which the autonomy, rights, or survival of at least one group is threatened, human and civil rights are revoked, and both combatants and civilians are wounded and killed. Wars are expensive, painful, ugly, and wasteful, and almost always require a vigorous propaganda (engineered political deception) campaign to incite supporters and conceal tactics, targets, and strategy.
Serious threats to societal groups, discharge of weapons, revocations of existing rights, and violent deaths suggest existing wars upon: abortion, gender equality, regulations, reproductive medicine, and taxation.
Wars usually also include shrewd politics and tactical “flanking” maneuvers. In many states, external “lobbying" organizations like the "American Legislative Exchange Council," super-rich individuals, and multi-national corporations appear to have quietly swayed state representatives with bri... , uh, “campaign donations," passing numerous laws restricting abortion, civil, medical, reproductive, human, and most recently, voting rights. Recently, the Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives killed 37 important bills with a filibuster, “shut[ing] down the entire legislative process” to prevent passage of a civil unions bill. The Wisconsin Legislature has prohibited “collective bargaining” by state employees, ostensibly protecting Wisconsinite's individual Constitutional assembly, petition, security, speech, and pursuit of happiness rights – but not their ability to exercise these rights simultaneously. The Michigan Legislature has even passed “financial martial law” legislation allowing the governor to appoint “emergency managers” and grant them near dictatorial power, including the ability to dissolve incorporated cities and remove from office the representatives elected by their People.
Common targets, tactics, and strategies employed in wars on abortion, gender equality, religious freedom, and access to reproductive medical care (including contraception) suggest a wider war on women. The wider war on gender equality effects both women and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community. The wars on abortion, gender equality, and access to reproductive medical services suggest a wider war on religious freedom. Law enforcement has clearly experienced a shooting war waged by those opposing regulations, taxation - even government itself.
Regulations (laws) and taxation (revenue) are the legal and financial foundations of the United States, and equality under civil, human, and religious rights its bedrock. Our nation rests upon the idea that we can solve our problems together through access to facts, compromise, elections, and shared ideals of freedom. If elections are to mean anything and if our nation is to advance, the damaging politics of brinkmanship, corruption, disinformation, dishonesty, filibuster, rigid ideological partisanship, misinformation, “wedge” issues, stealth policy making, and war must end.
This election season, having just witnessed the end of the war in Iraq, we would do well to remember a memorial sermon given by Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn, the first Jewish chaplain the Marine Corps ever appointed.
Of 70,000 American Marines on Iwo Jima, 1,500 were Jewish. Rabbi Gittelsohn was in the thick of the fray, ministering to Marines of all faiths in the combat zone. When the fighting was over, he was asked to deliver the memorial sermon at a combined religious service dedicating the Marine Cemetery.
Unfortunately, racial and religious prejudice led to problems with the ceremony. Division Chaplain Warren Cuthriell, a Protestant minister, originally asked Rabbi Gittelsohn to deliver the memorial sermon, wanting all the fallen Marines (black and white, Protestant, Catholic and Jewish) honored in a single, nondenominational ceremony. However, the majority of Christian chaplains objected to having a rabbi preach over predominantly Christian graves.
Cuthriell refused to alter his plans, but Gittelsohn, wanting to avoid further embarrassment, decided to comply, so three separate religious services were held. At the Jewish service, Rabbi Gittelsohn delivered the powerful eulogy he originally wrote for the combined service:
Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors, generations ago, helped in her founding. And other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves, or their own fathers, escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and Whites, rich men and poor, together. Here are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed.
Among these men there is no discrimination. No prejudices. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy! Whosoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother, or who thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority, makes of this ceremony and the bloody sacrifice it commemorates, an empty, hollow mockery. To this then, as our solemn sacred duty, do we, the living, now dedicate ourselves: To the right of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, of White men and Negroes alike, to enjoy the democracy for which all of them have here paid the price.
We here solemnly swear this shall not be in vain. Out of this, and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come, we promise, the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere.
Rabbi Gittelsohn understood the promise of our country -- its goals of liberty and happiness for all, regardless of differences such as race or faith. Contrast that with the testimonials of Christian Evangelicalism evident in several of the current campaigns for the Presidential nomination. If one of these candidates wins, will their America have room for those of another faith? Or those with no faith at all? Could America become a Christian Theocracy, intent on establishing religious dominion, rather than a haven for religious freedom?
In that scenario, America would no longer be the democracy for which those soldiers at Iwo Jima - and all the soldiers in other wars - have died.
What are We Voting For? By Jan Brazil appeared in Freethought Views between January 19, 2012 and January 26, 2012 with the quotation below.
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian Religion.”
United States Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11, ratified by Congress and signed into law by John Adams, June 1797
Those considering running for public office, from the local school board to high federal office, must ask themselves many questions before they “throw their hat in the ring.” Can I take the heat when a reporter asks tough questions on live TV? Do I have the diplomatic skills to change the mind of entrenched opponents, or misinformed constituents? Can I afford to live on the (often-laughable) stipend provided for a job that is, in essence, a twenty-four hour a day, seven day a week commitment to the People I represent?
Perhaps the most important question you must ask yourself is am I willing to take “donations?”
If you answer yes, you hurdle a key moral obstacle to electoral success and you are off to the races, an upturned palm preceding you into the rarefied world of politics, power, money, prestige, and intrigue. If you answer no, the probability that you will win an election immediately plummets into the realm of the ridiculous, and continued pursuit of any elected position in “public service” increasingly appears to border on the insane.
Perhaps this sad reality is what makes Will Rogers’ statement about elections funny even today, “We always want the best man to win in an election. Unfortunately he never runs.”
Virtually anyone you ask will agree that America’s system of campaign finance is little more than a thinly veiled system of institutionalized bribery, and that without making a substantial “donation,” citizens have precious little hope of influencing their own “representative,” even en mass. Almost ten years ago, a Los Angeles Times poll of 816 adults found that 72%[1] favored campaign finance reform providing free or discounted airtime, setting voluntary limits on fundraising and spending, and prohibiting candidates from accepting contributions from political action committees or raising most of their money from outside of their state.
There have been many attempts to stop government corruption. The 1907 Tillman Act prohibited campaign “contributions” from banks. The first House finance disclosure law passed in 1910 and an amendment in 1911 included the Senate. In 1925, the Federal Corrupt Practices Act strengthened disclosure rules - but increased spending limits. The 1939 Hatch Act and its 1940 amendments regulated primary elections and limited contributions and expenditures. In 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act barred unions and corporations from contributing to campaigns. The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 required broad disclosure of federal campaign financing. The Watergate Scandal led to numerous amendments to the act in 1974, creating a mechanism for public financing of campaigns, regulating campaigns, and creating an enforcement agency, the Federal Election Commission. Even though, the US Congress repeatedly passed laws purporting to regulate contributions to elections campaigns between 1907 and 1974[2], even today, “donations” continue to pour into the pockets of our “representatives."
Hypothetically, any gift received by a representative of the People of the United States should belong to the People, not their representative, especially in the context of a real or perceived conflict of interest. Without fully transparent means for the public financing of elections and meaningful penalties for violations, America's system of "campaign donations" will continue to create the appearance, if not the reality of blatant bribery, and the votes of our "representatives" will continue to favor those making "campaign donations" (including foreign governments), rather than the People of the United States.
Originally published May 2009, updated April 2013
[1] http://1stam.umn.edu/main/pubop/campaign.htm, accessed May 18, 2009.
[2] Federal Election Commission, Federal Election Campaign Laws, a Short History, Appendix 4, http://www.fec.gov/info/appfour.htm, accessed May 18, 2009.
Why Rationality Matters by Adrian Niemetz
In ancient times, virtually all humans assumed that the sun revolved around the earth, because, after all, that is
what appeared to happen when viewed. This of course, is not believed by people today because factual information showed it to be false. Yet, many millions still believe in supernatural forces deciding their fate and build large and impressive buildings to these supernatural beings which have not been proven to exist. They focus on death instead of living their lives which is the only one anyone gets.
The rational thought process is based on physical evidence which can be physically observed; the rational thought process will eliminate the need for irrational thoughts and beliefs from which no physical evidence has yet to be found.
There are numerous examples of this. Possibly the most predominate unproved belief is that of an afterlife. All religions which have existed in the consciousness of humanity have some answer as to what happens after death, yet there is no hard evidence that anyone has ever delved beyond this life into the next and returned to tell of it; yet, those educated theologians in all religions claim their version of the afterlife as fact, without needing to supply any evidence; it is simply so because it is believed. This is irrational in that a religious theologian is making claims that he cannot substantiate, and is pretending to know more about something than you do; even though he or she cannot provide any evidence to back up what he or she is claiming. The only comparison anyone has with any certainty is one’s experience of life before birth. If one thought rationally about the afterlife, one would assume that it may be similar to life before birth.
Now perhaps it may be analyzed as to why there is no evidence of supernatural beings. Or more precisely, how the idea of supernatural beings goes against all that has been discovered since the advent of science. The first question may very well be “what makes them supernatural?” And perhaps judging from a biological perspective, how can they exist?
Do the gods have more chromosomes that we mere mortals? From what species did they evolve? These are questions
which must be addressed in order to examine the field of theology with biology. Obviously, this cannot be achieved as there is no evidence which could be explored, leaving the whole pantheon of the gods impossible to substantiate. Since no evidence to exists, it would be rational to assume that none of the gods exist, and leave it at that until it can be proven otherwise. This is radical thinking for those who believe in a literal interpretation of religious writings, and most would find it difficult to abandon a lifetime of faith, yet abandonment of faith would benefit humanity by freeing us of the shackle of the belief that this life will be rewarded in some sort of paradise after death.
One sees the implications of irrational thoughts in some parts of the world. The rational thought process will eliminate the need for irrational thoughts and beliefs for which no physical evidence has yet been found. Hopefully one day homo sapiens will no longer need irrationality.
Adrian Niemetz is the second winner in the Freethinkers of Colorado Springs Freethought Views Essay Contest.