Nonbelievers excluded from interfaith service, despite humanist community victims in Boston bombing

Secular News Daily

April 18, 2013 

Washington, DC— The Secular Coalition for America is disappointed and saddened that the nontheist community was excluded from the Interfaith Service taking place in the wake of Monday's marathon bombing—despite that at least two of the victims of the bombing were part of the nontheist community.

ARMY OF GOD: America’s Armed Forces vs. Their Nontheists

Why Chaplains Should Be Contracted, Not Commissioned

Carlos Bertha

I have always questioned the presence of, say, a dharma wheel or Jewish tablets adorning a chaplain’s military uniform. How can these displays not be seen as government endorsement of religion?

The Freethinkers of Colorado Springs
are proud to congratulate Rebecca Hale
on her election as president
of the American Humanist Association.  

Will the world end on December 21st 2012? Here's what one very well-known astrophysicist thinks:

"The 2012 end-of-the-world scenario is a hoax perpetrated by the scientifically illiterate on the scientifically under-informed. Earth is going to be here till the end of the solar system. The sun will die in five billion years."

-- Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, author, and director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY

Mayan Calendar Survivors' Party

December 22, 2012     6:00 PM to ?

Jack Quinn's Pub 

21 South Tejon Street (upstairs)

Colorado Springs, Colorado

EVERYBODY WELCOME!

Please join the Freethinkers of Colorado Springs as we celebrate the "end of the Mayan Calendar" - and the latest scientifically dubious prediction of total apocalypse with comraderie, drink, food - and DOOR PRIZES.  

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).

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.

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.

Slow Operations

By Groff Schroeder

Late in the age of enlightenment, brave and brilliant citizens of the “new world” created a constitutional democratic republic called the United States of America. While waging a difficult “Revolutionary War” between 1775 and 1783, America's founders adopted three documents, a “Declaration of Independence” (July 4, 1776), a Constitution (September 17, 1787), and a Bill of Rights (August 21, 1789). Together with a series of elegant symbols such as E Pluribus Unum (the motto “from many one”), these documents founded a “federalist” nation, a democratic republic whose government is the functional aspect – the working reality – of the United States of America.

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?

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.

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.

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."

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:

TWO SPIRITS interweaves the tragic story of a mother’s loss of her son with a revealing look at a time when the world wasn't simply divided into male and female and many Native American cultures held places of honor for people of integrated genders.