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The Moral Atheist
September-October 2010
The September-October issue of The Moral Atheist is now being distributed by postal mail and email. To get the entire magazine mailed to you, just email your postal address. You will get 3 issues free so you get a good idea of what we are all about. We want you to join us! Meanwhile, below is our AFHR Report so you know what is going on, plus the cover story so you can plan to attend our conference if you are in the area. (Some photos omitted for this TMA excerpt.) Atheists For Human Rights is hosting this event and we're giving it the red carpet treatment with great speakers. We'll even treat you to coffee and cookies! * Table of contents for this issue. AFHR REPORT HOW IT WENT WITH OUR INTERFAITH DIALOGUE |
Atheists For Human Rights has a geodesic dome as its headquarters. This unique architecture was developed by Buckminster ("Bucky") Fuller (1895-1983), an atheist, architect, environmentalist and inventor. His ambition was to use science to help solve human problems and to find ways to do more with less. The tragic death of his young daughter inspired him to find "what a single individual can contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity." The epitaph on his tombstone says, "Call me trimtab," referring to a small but critical aircraft part that holds a stabilizing component in position. Much of Fuller's philosophy is expressed in the goals and strivings of Atheists For Human Rights. Our PhilosophyAtheism accepts the natural world as all there is. To live without god beliefs is intellectually stimulating. To find one's own purpose and be responsible for one's own life is exciting. To be free of the imagined surveillance of good and evil spirits is liberating. To seek a peaceful world through work and friendship and civic action is life-affirming. -- Marie Alena Castle, March, 1994
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Join Us!Atheists For Human Rights welcomes you to join us! Membership is open to all who reject supernatural beliefs and support the principles and policies of this organization. We thrive on new ideas and welcome everyone who shares our goals. We have a long history of atheist activism, both as founders and charter members of freethought groups. We are a member society of American Atheists. We publish a regular newsletter, The Moral Atheist, with informative articles and information about our meetings and activities. To give you a good idea of what we are all about, get the current printed version or PDF file and three introductory printed issues free. Call or email today, or fill out the APPLICATION FORM, where, for $50 or more, you may choose up to FOUR gifts from our booklets and videos. Our dues are minimal to enable as many as possible to become involved; however, they cover only basic operating expenses. Because our outreach projects are sometimes quite expensive, but extremely important, we must rely on additional donations from those who can afford it. We have no paid staff, so all income goes to office expenses and visibility projects. It's a pay-as-you-go system. We can do only what our supporters enable us to do. Please be generous. You may donate with PayPal. THANK YOU!
Jerry Metz, M.D., Like most people, I have worked hard to understand and control my life; unlike most people my work with Final Exit Network made me try to imagine being in control of my own death. I failed. I read "On Death and Dying" years ago and a stack of books since then but nothing clicked until I picked up Annie Chase's booklet and couldn't put it down! This slender memoir is a jewel - a treasure! - and I hope it becomes a classic. The smiling photograph on the cover introduces a blithe spirit whose bright light makes clear for us the thoughts and fears of a brave soul circling the sun for the last time, fully aware and willing to share. Highly recommended reading. NOTE: Non-members can get Annie Chase's booklet with a donation of $10 or more to support Final Exit Network and our Moral High Ground project. Send an e-mail or letter to the AFHR address below, pay with PayPal or a check, and specify where to mail the booklet. Contact UsAFHR Email: Communications Director Phone: Letters and articles are welcome! | |||||||||||||
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EVERY MONDAY 5-6:30 PM Richard Dick Memorial Happy Hour A gathering of positively happy atheists. Discounted drinks & appetizers. Location: Ol' Mexico Restaurant in Roseville, on Lexington, at end of strip mall, two blocks north of Larpenteur. Terrace level right behind the reservation desk. Contact: Paul Craven: 763-788-8918 1ST & 3RD MONDAYS 6:30 PM Freethought Toastmasters Club Location: Larpenteur Estates Party Room, 1276 Larpenteur Ave W, St. Paul Contact: George Kane: 651-488-8225 1ST TUESDAYS 11:30 AM Lunch Social Location: Old Country Buffet, County Rd B2 (east of Fairview), Roseville Contact: Bob/Marilyn Nienkerk: 612-866-6200 |
17 SEP: Food served. FREE BOOKS! Watch & discuss film, "The Invention of Lying," on 60-in. HDTV. Rolling Stone says: "Set in a parallel universe where everything looks the same but no one ever lies,this wonderfully subversive farce makes comic mincemeat of the Judeo-Christian ethic." 15 OCT: Check back here for details.
Location & contact:
Hub of Atheism UPCOMING SPECIAL EVENTS
Sunday, 19 Sep, 12:45 - 5 PM Free and open to the public. Location: Southdale Regional Library 7001 York Ave. S. in Edina. An impressive lineup of FIVE speakers! |
3RD WEDNESDAYS 11:30 AM to 2 PM Charley French Memorial Lunch Atheists and Humanists get together to socialize and exchange opinions. Private Room Location: Dragon House restaurant 3970 Central Ave NE Columbia Heights Private room Contact: Bill Volna: 612-781-1420 or -1322 VARIOUS TIMES & PLACES All-Atheist Meetups Connect on Internet at: http://atheists.meetup.com/492/ to socialize at various times and places. Contact: Scott Muir: Video Manager or 612-236-0609 AFHR Members & Supporters Meetings: Local: Ad hoc discussions at social events. National Announcements and discussions on AFHRbod Yahoo Groups, first 10 days of the month. To get on the list, just give your email address. If on the list, and you want to get off, click "unsubscribe" at the bottom of the email. Significant issues discussed are covered in The Moral Atheist for member feedback. It's all open, with decisions, if needed, formed by consensus if possible. |
| SECULAR SANITY Religion in the news, as viewed from the moral high ground of atheism | |||
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Needing to mind one's own business By Marie Alena Castle Tom Brock wouldn't have needed to complain about John Townsend outing him if he had been minding his own business. ("Same-sex urges needn't be acted upon" Aug. 4.) But no, he has been on a campaign to make his religious views about homosexual behavior the law of the land, and that is why his outing was justified. Brock needs to understand that whatever he believes the Bible tells him to do is irrelevant to lawmaking under a secular government. This is not Iran. If he wants to fight his homosexual urges, fine, but if someone else doesn't, fine also. As long as it involves consenting adults, who cares? Brock and his ilk have been doing nothing but causing trouble with their theocratic political agenda. They have forced political parties into a religious war over whether we should be governed by the Constitution or the Bible and the Vatican. Enough already! Believe what you please, Brock, but leave the rest of us alone. Why Catholics excommunicate for abortionBy Marie Alena Castle [I sent the following to the Strib. Of course it won't be printed.] Reports of the excommunication of Sister Margaret McBride for allowing an abortion to save a woman's life need to be understood in the context of Catholic theology. Excommunication essentially consigns a person to hell and is the Church's harshest punishment. Abortion earns this for one reason only -- it prevents the fetus from being baptized and therefore closes it off forever from the ultimate heavenly bliss of seeing God face to face. By Marie Alena Castle [I sent this to the Strib. Don't hold your breath waiting to see it in print.] When I read Katherine Kersten's April 11 defense of the pope in the pedophilia scandal I was struck by how little value was placed on real people. It's all about protecting religious institutions and saving imaginary souls. Pedophilia has been rampant, and ignored, in the Church for centuries. For example, the historical record shows that an 11th century priest, Father Damian, complained bitterly to the pope about the church ignoring the "unbridled wickedness" of priestly pedophilia, to no avail. |
By Marie Alena Castle [I sent this to the Strib, which will, of course, not print it.] Your Jan. 30 Letter of the Day wondered why prochoice groups would complain about a Super Bowl ad featuring a woman who chose not to have an abortion. As long as abortion is a legal medical procedure, women will always make whatever decision is best in their circumstances. They don't need an ad to tell them what to do and that is not the ad's purpose. The purpose is to persuade citizens that abortions are never justified and so should be made illegal. Just to balance things, perhaps the prochoice groups could run an ad featuring some of the tragic outcomes of a pregnancy misguidedly brought to term. By Marie Alena Castle Ken Herman's Dec. 30 article questions why women aren't treated the same as men regarding Selective Service. It's because women are not free citizens; they are essentially social property because of their role as childbearers. Keeping them from full participation in military service preserves the availability of that property to society by reducing their exposure to combat injuries and death. Even so, for women in the military, their role as childbearing property is protected to the extent that they have no effective legal protection from rape and are denied the right to abortions. One special interest that should not be involved in the debate on health care reform is religion. Yet provisions are proposed that exclude abortion to accommodate religious belief in such things as single-celled persons, and others that disadvantage equitable coverage for same-sex partners out of ignorance of sexuality and its variations. By Marie Alena Castle If Gov. Pawlenty had stated in his Sept. 18 Washington speech that his conservative values included marginalizing racial minorities, the uproar would be worse than what we have over health care reform. Yet, he shamelessly marginalized the majority of Americans who are non-Christian, liberal Christian or nonreligious by advocating that our laws and public policies be based on his fundamentalist version of Christianity. |
God sentiments at U.S. Capitol Visitors' Center By Marie Alena Castle The plan to etch "In God We Trust" and the "under God" version of the Pledge of Allegiance on the Capitol Visitors Center in Washington D.C. is not harmless civic piety. Yes, it is an unconstitutional establishment of religion, as the Freedom From Religion Foundation's lawsuit charges, but in some ways it is far worse. It is as much an establishment of bigotry as Jim Crow laws, differing certainly in degree, but not in kind. By Marie Alena Castle Gov. Pawlenty's budget cuts affecting local government are certain to require property tax increases to maintain essential services. If this burden is to be shared equitably, perhaps religious institutions, which are exempt from taxes, should be asked to contribute by paying a fee for the city services they receive at no cost. By Marie Alena Castle On April 28, 1998, at a Minneapolis symposium on religion in public life that I attended, Lutheran theologian Martin Marty said in his keynote speech, "It is the role of unbelievers to force religions to be benign." That's what we atheists try to do. The liberal Marty would probably be at odds with Katherine Kersten's uninformed opinion of atheists in her June 7 op-ed column. Traditional religious morality, which Kersten, at least for the most part, supports, is notorious for the astounding number of ways it hurts people. By Marie Alena Castle Regarding the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the anti-abortion zealots would like everyone to think late-term abortions are performed in the last couple of months of pregnancy, and never for a good reason. By Marie Alena Castle David Lebedoff's April 5 Opinion Exchange piece was strikingly uninformed in its assumption that those who do not believe in a heaven and hell necessarily have no moral constraints and live only for pleasure and to accumulate material things. | |
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The Godless rise as a political force
Secularist, humanist, freethinking nontheists, and atheists are coalescing into a movement with a real agenda. The god idea has no foundation in reality. Reality is the stuff that doesn't go away when you stop believing in it. All gods, without exception, go away when you stop believing in them. Humans have believed in thousands of gods over the centuries. Whenever belief in them went away, so did the gods. Surveys consistently show nonbelievers to be the least popular demographic group (with the possible exception of neoNazis and the Ku Klux Klan). About 49% of Americans would not vote for an atheist for President even if the candidate was of their own party. |
No legal protection for kids in faith-healing families: why most states sanction religion-based child sacrifice Respect for religious beliefs is such that protecting the "deeply held beliefs" of parents takes precedence over protecting their children from injury, illness and death as a result of those beliefs. Amicus curiae brief submitted by Michael Newdow to the US Supreme Court, arguing that it should strike the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. [PDF file] "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy." -- Judge John E. Jones In late June [2003] a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the phrase "under God" was "an impermissible government endorsement of religion." |
Your money and/or your life: mugged by the mythmakers -- the price we pay for religion This pamphlet summarizes what religion costs YOU in terms of your money, your personal freedom, your health, and sometimes even your very life. You may escape some of these costs, but no one escapes them all. Is This the Face of Jesus? Of course not, and the Pope knows it, and so do the media. But every year as Easter approaches, the "Shroud of Turin" is trotted out in news stories speculating about whether the Shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus. Religion is a powerful force. When human consciousness arose into awareness of the grim realities of life, it brought solace. It produced a magical world of created realities full of powerful gods that could protect, avenge, reward and comfort. It was a unifying force against outsiders, a rallying point for collective action ... and vulnerable to only one thing -- doubt. |
| The Hub of Atheism | ||
Location of the Hub of Atheism: Take I-94 to the 53rd Ave exit on the north edge of Minneapolis and go west through the alphabet streets to Newton Ave, then go left (south) 1 & 1/2 blocks to the dome home on the dead-end street. (The 53rd exit is more direct than 49th.) Call 612-588-1597 if you need directions. |
Atheists For Human Rights has a geodesic dome as its headquarters. This unique architecture was developed by Buckminster ("Bucky") Fuller (1895-1983), an atheist, architect, environmentalist and inventor. His ambition was to use science to help solve human problems and to find ways to do more with less. The tragic death of his young daughter inspired him to find "what a single individual can contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity." The epitaph on his tombstone says, "Call me trimtab," referring to a small but critical aircraft part that holds a stabilizing component in position. Much of Fuller's philosophy is expressed in the goals and strivings of Atheists For Human Rights. |
New/occasional visitors: Contact: |
| Links to other sites | ||
| American Freethought Americans United for Separation of Church and State Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc Campus Atheists & Secular Humanists (CASH) Euthanasia World Directory (ERGO) |
Final Exit Network
Freedom From Religion Foundation
Friends Free of Theism
IBKA Political Guide Marie Alena Castle: "I read the English translation of the IBKA policies. Really impressive! I have seen nothing in this country that is so thorough and well thought out." | The Infidel Guy Show Minnesota Atheists Pharyngula |
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