May 2013 Newsletter

May, 2013 Newsletter of the Lake Superior Freethinkers

Facilitators: David Broman - 218-349-7455, Bill Guse - 834-4583, 343-4806

First Sunday - Holiday Inn this month – 9:00 AM Social – 9:30 Breakfast

 

George Erickson, editor, tundracub@mchsi.com

 

Program - Marie Castle, president of Atheists for Human rights, will speak about her new book - Culture Wars: the Threat to your Family and your Freedom - which analyzes the impact that religion has on our culture and daily life. She argues that many of our laws are based on religious belief, have harmful effects on individuals and society, and have no secular justification. Among the topics covered are sexuality issues, women’s rights, religious exemptions from child abuse and neglect laws, science instruction, and tax policy. Culture Wars is available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

All of our industrial and commercial enterprises are atheistic. Everything that works is atheistic. Neither the sciences nor any of our industrial processes has any room for supernatural intervention. A machine that depends on miracles will work no better than a vaccine that depends on prayer.  —Rod Sheffer

Religious Trauma Syndrome: How Religion Can Lead to Mental Health Problems
By Valerie Tarico, AlterNet | Interview (summary)

  Groups that demand obedience and conformity produce fear, not love and growth.

             At age sixteen I began a four year struggle with bulimia. When it started, I turned to adults who knew how to stop shameful behavior—my Bible study leader. “If you ask anything in faith, believing,” they said. “It will be done.” We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers. But my compulsions didn’t go away.

           By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was so depressed that I made a suicide attempt.  My counseling department offered to help. But to my mind, I was a failure in the eyes of God. It would be years before I understood that my inability to heal bulimia through  Christianity was not due to my spiritual deficiency but deficiencies in Evangelical religion itself.  

             Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant and the daughter of Pentecostal missionaries. For 20 years she has counseled people in recovery from fundamentalism, including the Assemblies of God in which she was raised. Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold - A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion.

      Two years ago, Winell labelled what she calls “Religious Trauma Syndrome” (RTS) and began to write and speak on the subject. When the British Assoc. of Behavioral and Cognitive Psychologists published  articles on the topic, a Christian counseling association protested what they called excessive attention to a “relatively niche topic.”
      Is toxic religion simply misinterpretation? What is religious trauma? Why does Winell believe religious trauma merits its own diagnostic label?

What  is religious trauma syndrome?  Winell: RTS is a set of symptoms that are related to harmful experiences with religion. They are the result of immersion in a controlling religion and the impact of leaving a religious group. The RTS label provides a name and description that affected people recognize. Others are surprised by the idea of RTS, because they assume that religion is good - like telling kids about Santa Claus.
       In reality, religious teachings sometimes cause mental health damage. The public is  familiar with sexual and physical abuse in a religious context. As Journalist Janet Heimlich documented in, Breaking Their Will, Bible-based groups that emphasize authority in family structure and use harsh parenting methods can be destructive.
        The problem isn’t just physical or sexual abuse. Emotional treatment in some  groups also can be damaging due to 1) toxic teachings like damnation or original sin 2) practices or mindset, such as punishment or sexual guilt, and 3) neglect that prevents a person from having the information or opportunities to develop normally.

Can you give me an example of RTS from your consulting practice? Winell:  People indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity as children are often terrified by images of hell before their brains could make sense of such ideas. Some, who I prefer to call “reclaimers,” have flashbacks, panic attacks, or nightmares in adulthood even when they no longer believe the theology. One client of mine said:

I was afraid I was going to hell. I sometimes would wake up in the night and start screaming, trying to rid myself of what I was feeling. I'd walk around the house trying to think and calm down in the middle of the night, trying to do some self-talk, but I felt like the fear and anxiety was taking over my life.

Consider this comment, which refers to a film used by evangelicals to warn about the horrors of the “end times” for nonbelievers.

I was taken to "A Thief In The Night".  I am in shock that many other people suffered the same traumas I lived with because of this film. A few days or weeks after the film viewing, I came into the house and mom wasn't there. I stood there screaming in terror. When I stopped screaming, I began making my plan: Who my Christian neighbors were, who's house to break into to get money and food.

   RTS includes depression, cognitive difficulties, and problems with social functioning. In fundamentalist Christianity, the individual is considered depraved and in need of salvation. A core message is “You are bad and wrong and deserve to die.” This gets taught to children through organizations like Child Evangelism Fellowship. I’ve had clients who were distraught when given a bloody image of Jesus paying the price for their sins. Decades later they sit telling me that they can’t manage to find any self-worth.

  Born-again Christianity and devout Catholicism tell people they are weak and dependent, calling on phrases like “lean not unto your own understanding” People who internalize these messages can suffer from helplessness. Here’s a client who had little decision-making ability after living his life devoted to following the “will of God.”

  If you dare to leave the religion, you risk losing your support system as well.

  I lost all my friends and family because of this malignant religion and I am angry and sad. . . I have tried hard to make friends, but I have failed. . . I am very lonely.

  Leaving a religion after immersion can cause an upheaval of a person’s reality, including the self, other people, life, and the future. People unfamiliar with this situation, including therapists, have trouble appreciating the sheer terror it can create.

  Religion informed and influenced my worldview. Leaving fundamentalism was very frightening and I had frequent thoughts of suicide.

  Many people seem to walk away from their religion easily. What is different about the clientele you work with?

  Winell: Groups that are controlling teach fear, and keep members ill-equipped to function in society are hard to leave. The difficulty is greater if the person was raised in the religion because they have no frame of reference – no other “self” or way of “being in the world.” They can be deeply emotional and thoughtful and tend to throw themselves wholeheartedly into their endeavors. “True believers” who then lose their faith feel more anger and depression and grief than those who simply went to church on Sunday.

  Aren’t these just people who would be depressed or obsessive anyway? Winell: Not at all. These people are involved and caring. They hang on to the religion longer than those who simply “walk away” because they try to make it work even when they have doubts. Sometime this is out of fear, but often it is out of devotion. These are people for whom ethics, and compassion matter a great deal.

  How is RTS different from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Winell: RTS is a specific set of symptoms and characteristics that are connected with harmful religious experience, not just any trauma.  One difference is the social context. When someone is recovering from domestic abuse, people support the need to leave and recover. They don’t send the person back. If a provider doesn’t understand the cause, he may send a client for pastoral counseling. One reclaimer expressed frustration this way:

Physically-abusive parents who quote "Spare the rod and spoil the child" create one fucked-up soul: an unloved, traumatized toddler in the body of an adult. I'm simply a broken spirit. There's also the expectation by everyone in society that we victims should celebrate this with our perpetrators every Christmas and Easter!!

  Just like autism, giving RTS a name has advantages. People who are suffering find that having a label for their experience helps them feel less alone:

There's a name for it! I was brainwashed from birth and wasted 25 years of my life I've been out of religion for several years, but I cannot shake the fear of hell. I'm socially inept, and the only way I can have sex is to pay for it.

What is the difference between religion that causes trauma and religion that doesn’t? Winell: Religion causes trauma when it prevents people from thinking for themselves and trusting their feelings. Groups that demand conformity produce fear, not love and growth. With constant judgment of self and others, people become alienated from themselves, each other, and the world. Religion in its worst forms causes separation.
        Groups that connect people and promote self-knowledge and personal growth can be healthy. The book, Healthy Religion, describes these traits. Such groups put high value on respecting differences, and members feel empowered as individuals. They provide social support, a place for events and rites of passage, exchange of ideas, inspiration, opportunities for service, and connection to social causes.

Some people say that terms like “recovery from religion” and “religious trauma syndrome” are atheist attempts to pathologize religious belief.

  Winell:  I never set out looking for a religious trauma syndrome. I wrote a paper for the American Psychological Association and thought that would be the end of it. Since then, I have tried to move on to other things several times, but this work has simply grown.
       We are simply becoming aware of religious trauma. More people are leaving religion. The “religiously unaffiliated” have increased in the last five years from just over 15% to 19% of U.S. adults. It’s no wonder the internet is exploding with websites for former believers, providing forums for people to support each other. For example, there are thousands of former Mormons, and I was asked to speak about RTS at an Ex-Mormon Foundation conference. An organization called Recovery from Religion, helps people start self-help meet-up groups.
          Saying that someone is trying to pathologize authoritarian religion is like saying someone pathologized eating disorders by naming them. Before that, they were healthy?        People were suffering, felt alone, and blamed themselves. This is RTS today.

Instead of enhancing self confidence and self esteem, religions foster dogmatism, dependency, authoritarianism, inadequacy and anxiety. How does this help in the growth, development and maturation of our children?  —Rod Sheffer

From Bill Van Druten
A BOOK REPORT FOR LAKE SUPERIOR FREETHINKERS AND CHRISTIANS TOO

I was sent, by Meghan Quinn of Prometheus Books, a fine book, 50 SIMPLE QUESTIONS FOR EVERY CHRISTIAN. The author, Guy P. Harrison, gives his fifty questions and plenty of commentary on them, ie, answers. He does it in a kindly way, hoping that reasonable Christians might read it and be informed.

Chapters include, WHY ISN’T EVERYONE A CHRISTIAN, WHAT ARE MIRACLES, IS AMERICA A CHRISTIAN NATION?, and my favorite, IS FAITH A GOOD THING. And there are plenty more.

Freethinkers will applaud this book, as we agree with the author. Alas, Christians will shrug it off as blasphemy. However, I have an excellent place for this book. My college age grandson raised fundy by my son’s divorced wife is now questioning his unquestionable faith. He does listen to me on the religion question and reads my essays. I will send him this book. And I recommend it for its clear responses to Christian nonsense. Buy it, read it and pass it on to those who will benefit of it.  

(Editor’s note: I also received a review copy – and I agree with Bill. I’ll be giving my copy to the LSF library.)

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM – by JEFF COHEN

I spent years as a political pundit on mainstream TV -- at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. I was outnumbered, outshouted, red-baited and finally terminated. Inside mainstream media, I saw that major issues were not only dodged, but sometimes not even acknowledged to exist. Today there's an elephant in the room: a huge, yet ignored, issue that largely explains why Social Security is now on the chopping block. And why other industrialized countries have free college education and universal healthcare, but we don't. It's arguably our country's biggest problem -- a problem that Martin Luther King Jr. focused on before he was assassinated 45 years ago, and has only worsened since then (which was the height of the Vietnam War). That problem is U.S. militarism and perpetual war.

April 2013 Newsletter

April, 2013 Newsletter of the Lake Superior Freethinkers

Facilitators: David Broman - 218-349-7455, Bill Guse - 834-4583, 343-4806

First Sunday - Holiday Inn this month only – 9:00 AM Social – 9:30 Breakfast

 

George Erickson, editor, tundracub@mchsi.com

 

Program - Buddy Robinson - “Lifting the veil: The Citizens Federation’s discoveries of financial mischief by insurance executives and regulators”.

Wanted – An LSFer with marketing/advertising skills. Why? Because almost 100% of our money is spent on advertising, Contact Bill Guse or Dave Broman

Ed Raymond tells it like it is - again!

What Happens When Ignorance Overwhelms Science And Religion

99.9 percent of our scientists believe the facts of Darwin’s “theory” of evolution because of carbon and isotope dating, fossil records, genetic sequencing, the measurements of geologic time, developmental biology, plate tectonics and a myriad of other related scientific methods. So far, we have had no one return “from the other side” to counter what scientists have discovered about the earth and its inhabitants. Oh, there is blind faith in what is contained in each of the 721 translations of the Bible. Some churches do understand that if science finally contradicts what is expressed in the Bible that will mean the end of those religions. That’s why 46 percent of the American people cling to the ideas expressed by the supporters of creationism and intelligent design.

In the Republican nomination race, at least four candidates argued that creationism and intelligent design should be taught in schools. Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum sought the votes of evangelicals and Know-Nothings to gain the nomination - and preached against Charles Darwin. Federal judges have consistently rejected the two religious “curricula.”

In the 19th Century people would look at a clock and say: “Man is incapable of making such a complex instrument. The maker must have had God whisper in his ear.” Scientists and other creative individuals answered that long ago.

Creationists say that God has created everything within the past 10,000 years. I guess they have dropped Bishop Ussher’s idea that it only took 6,000. Their only evidence can be expressed in three words: “God did it.” It’s a short argument used to replace the 13 billion years of the universe’s existence and all of the evidence collected that makes evolution a fact.

Here’s an interesting website that features a monthly video on what religion “contributes” to the world : http://opednews.com/articles/Savage-Sunday-by-Rev-Dan-Vojir-130217-83.html
Supplied by new member Roy Hagen

From Bill Van Druten

The "Boy Scout Declaration of Religious Principle" maintains that no member can grow into the best kind of citizen without recognizing an obligation to God...as the ruler and leading power in the universe and grateful acknowledgement of His favors and blessings are (sic) necessary to the best type of citizenship and are wholesome percepts in the education of the growing members.

Well, that was a shock to me, as I am an Eagle Scout and had felt I was a very good citizen. Paid my taxes, served in the air force (American) and voted. Perhaps you too are a second class citizen now as am I. How did that happen to us? I want ever to do my civic best, but which god would Boy Scouts recommend for me. Most of the currently employed gods are far to silly to believe in. Couldn't stomach the moron god nor jovie the witless. They are the only ones whose salespersons have come to my door. I have always been partial to Poseidon and I am sure he is available or Athena would be good. Both of them are not used up and would love to be in business again. Popes are part god when they are indefensible, er, infallible; but there isn't one at present and the voting hasn't started. I am available to do popping, love the corn with butterz. I could be the first atheist pope and would fire the entire catholic god crew including the virgin and the ghost, angels and demons. I'd send them packing with no unemployment bennies. Anyway it is a curious muddle as the scouts will accept pretty much any of the gods even ones that deny and hurt each other. It so is hard on a honest and intelligent person these daze.

The Inquisition, the Crusades, the witch hunts, the jihads and fatwas, the Holocaust, and the 9-11attacks were faith-based initiatives - beliefs grounded in religious nonsense. The coupling of religious nonsense with fanatical zeal has been a recipe for bloodshed and death. --Rod Sheffer

George Erickson’s published letter to the Duluth News Tribune:

To the editor - So Rev. Kunst wants more coverage of the Pope and his pending retirement. One wonders if that coverage might include disclosure of the man's collusion in covering up reports of child abuse that were sent to his office when he wore a red hat - abuses like attacks on children in a Wisconsin school for the deaf who could not even speak.

Will the wanted coverage urge readers - including parishioners - to view the record of abuse and cover-ups portrayed in the recent documentary Mea Maxima Culpa that ends at the then Cardinal's office? And will it include the facts that Michael D'Antonio reveals in Mortal Sins, his powerful book about the whistleblowers who fought to uncover and expose the sex abuse crisis within the Catholic Church?

If yes, Rev. Kunst is truly a rare rose among thorns. If not ......

They say that confession is good for the soul, but does also that apply to the Church - or just to the Janes and Joes who support it?

--George Erickson - former VP of the American Humanist Assoc. and current newsletter editor of the Lake Superior Freethinkers

Vegas Churches accept gambling chips!

DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE ARE MORE CATHOLIC CHURCHES THAN CASINOS IN LAS VEGAS?

SOME WORSHIPERS AT SUNDAY SERVICES EVEN GIVE CASINO CHIPS RATHER THAN CASH WHEN THE BASKET IS PASSED.

BECAUSE THEY GET CHIPS FROM MANY DIFFERENT CASINOS, THE CHURCHES HAVE DEVISED A METHOD TO COLLECT THE OFFERINGS.

THEY SEND ALL THEIR CHIPS TO A NEARBY MONASTERY FOR SORTING, AND THEN THE CHIPS ARE TAKEN TO THE CASINOS OF ORIGIN AND CASHED IN.

THIS IS DONE BY THE CHIP MONKS.

Rod Sheffer - There is no more evidence to substantiate a belief in a Judeo-Christian god than there is for any other god…. Hence, either all of these gods exist, or none of them. Take your pick.

Adopting a religious creed segregates people into "us" and "them." Hence, religions that posit absolute truths have a history of being divisive, often bloody and frequently lethal. --Rodney Sheffer

Rev. Patty Robertson’s Message from the Dark Ages

TV evangelist Pat Robertson says that not every sweater at Goodwill is haunted by demons, but it’s a good idea to pray over secondhand clothes just in case.

On the 700 Club, Robertson responded to a viewer who wanted to know if she should bless purchases from Goodwill before bringing them home because her mother said that demons could “attach themselves to material items.”

Robertson recalled a story about a “witch who had prayed over a particular ring and asked for a spirit to come into it.” And then when a girl purchased the ring, “all hell broke loose.”

“Can demonic spirits attach themselves to inanimate objects? The answer is yes,” the preacher said, but I don’t think that every sweater you get from Goodwill has demons in it.”

He added that the viewer’s mother was being “super-cautious” but that “it isn’t going to hurt anything to rebuke any spirits that happen to have attached themselves to those clothes.”

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All of the philosophical wisdom of the Greeks was denounced by St. Paul as “superstition.” Martin Luther declared, “Reason is the Devil’s harlot who can do naught but slander and harm whatever God says, and does.” Today, millions of people still identify themselves as “Lutherans.” It is a puzzlement. --Rod Sheffer

March 2013 Newsletter

March, 2013 Newsletter of the Lake Superior Freethinkers

Facilitators: David Broman - 218-349-7455, Bill Guse - 834-4583, 343-4806

First Sunday - Radisson Hotel – 9:00 AM Social – 9:30 Breakfast

 

George Erickson, editor, tundracub@mchsi.com

 

Program - Jeanine Williams presents
NAVIGATING THE TRANSGENDER SPECTRUM:
Who’s Who and An Introduction to the Geometry of Gender!

Who are the “transgendered"? How do you relate to people who don’t conform to societal gender norms? Everyone knows a transgendered person, but they just don’t know it! Jeanine Williams is the past outreach coordinator for the Rocky Mtn. chapter of TRI-ESS and an occasional mentor and activist for the transgender community.

The three monkeys of faith-belief

People have been killing each other in wars, inquisitions, and political actions for centuries. These belief-systems, when stated as propositions, appear genuine to the naive, but when confronted by reason, they fail. Faith-belief creates more social problems than it solves and the dangers from it threaten the future of humankind.

Religion has played the largest role in the propagation of faith-based beliefs, which has caused uncritical acceptance of mystical beliefs. Religious support of supernatural events gives credence to other superstitions and the support of belief without evidence and miracles…. Indeed, once a proposition turns to belief, it automatically undermines opposition to itself. Most of the bloodletting has occurred as a result of religions or other faith-belief-systems, NOT from those who reject them. (Author not known.)

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In March, I’ll be adding these four books to our library.
Pick ‘em up. Read ‘em and bring ‘em back.
The War Payer – by Mark Twain
Water Wars – by the World Policy Journal
The Trouble with Tom [Paine] – by Paul Collins
In Wisdom We Trust: An Atheist Guide to Religious Liberty by Edward and Michael Buckner

Christopher Hitchens

The following is from Hitchens’ ARGUABLY – a collection of his essays on a wide range of topics.

“…it is quite astonishing how irreligious the Founders actually were. You might not easily guess, for example, who was the author of the following words:

‘Do you think that a Protestant Popedom is annihilated in America? Do you recollect, or have you ever attended to the eccle¬siastical Strife in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and every part of New England? What a mercy it is that these People cannot whip and crop, and pillory and roast, as yet in the U.S.! If they could they would— There is a germ of religion in human nature so strong that whenever an order of men can persuade the people by flattery or terror that they have salvation at their disposal, there can be no end to fraud, violence, or usurpation’.”

“That was President John Adams, in relatively mild form. He was also to point out that the secret weapon that secularists had at their disposal—namely the profusion of different religious factions:

‘The multitude and diversity of them, you will say, is our Security against them all. God grant it. But if We consider that the Presbyte¬rians and Methodists are far the most numerous and the most likely to unite; let a George Whitefield arise, with a military cast, like Mahomet, or Loyola, and what will become of all the other Sects who can never unite?”

“George Whitefield was the charismatic preacher who is so superbly mocked in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. Of Franklin it seems almost certainly right to say that he was an atheist, … but the master tacticians of church-state separation, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, were more opaque about their beliefs. In passing the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom—the basis of the later First Amendment—they brilliantly exploited the fear that each Christian sect had of persecution by the others. It was easier to get the squabbling factions to agree on no tithes than it would have been to get them to agree on tithes that might also benefit their doctrinal rivals. In his famous "wall of separation" letter, assuring the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, of their freedom from persecution, Jefferson was responding to the expressed fear of this little community that they would be oppressed by—the Congregationalists of Connecticut.

“This same divide-and-rule tactic may have won him the election of 1800 that made him president. In the face of a hysterical Federalist campaign to blacken Jefferson as an infidel, the Voltaire of Monticello appealed to those who feared the arrogance of the Presbyterians. Adams himself thought that this had done the trick.

‘With the Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, and Moravians," he wrote, "as well as the Dutch and German Lutherans and Calvinists, it had an immense effect, and turned them in such numbers as decided the election. They said, let us have an Atheist or Deist or anything rather than an establishment of Presbyterianism."
The essential point—that a religiously neutral state is the chief guarantee a: religious pluralism—is the one that some of today's would-be theocrats are determined to miss. Brooke Allen misses no chance to rub it in, sometimes heavily stressing contemporary "faith-based" analogies. She is especially interesting on the extent to which the Founders felt obliged to keep their doubts on religion to themselves. Madison, for example, did not find himself able, during the War of 1812, to refuse demands for a national day of prayer and fasting. But he confided his own reservations to his private papers, published as s "Detached Memoranda" only in 1946. In those pages, - he expressed the view that to have chaplains opening Congress, or in the armed forces, was unconstitutional.’”

“While Washington was president, he attended James Abercrombie's church, but on “sacramental Sundays" left before the taking of communion. When reproached for this by the good Reverend, he acknowledged reproof—and ceased attending church at all on those Sundays that featured the “Lord’s Supper.”

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Hypocrisy

Bitching that paying for someone’s birth control “goes against your religious beliefs” while asking non-religious taxpayers to pay taxes that go to the Catholic Church.

Can’t Prove a Negative – Yes? No? Who cares?

From Paul Keller - “There’s a myth going around that "you can't prove a negative" or "negatives cannot be proven." I prove many negatives every day, as does everyone. For example, the light is NOT on, the door is NOT open, there is NOT enough water to drink, the sun is NOT up yet, there are NO whales at the center of the sun, two plus two does NOT equal five, ad infinitum.

"A negative can NOT be proven" is itself a negative. Therefore, according to its own meaning, "a negative can NOT be proven" cannot be proven. When a statement cannot be proven, that means there can never be any accurate or reliable reason to believe it is true. That means "a negative can NOT be proven" can never have any accurate or reliable reason for believing that it is true. What do we do with claims that cannot be proven? We do not believe them.…

"You can't prove a negative" is just a myth - perhaps created by theologians to try to stop atheists from proving that there is NO god. A "perfectly loving infinite torturer" is a contradiction. There is NO Christian god, and it is known with logical certainty that there is NO Christian god.”

Bill Sierichs Jr. responds – “But perhaps the light really is on and leprechauns are preventing you from seeing it. Perhaps the door opened for a brief instant because of a momentary instability in reality, which is why you passed through it without banging your nose.

“Perhaps there is enough water to drink and the sun god Apollo merely increased your thirst to make it seem inadequate. Perhaps the sun is up and a temporal instability is sending its light over your head. Perhaps the sun whales simply have not blown yet….

See, I can think like a theologian. Now, bring on Aquinas and Plantinga! I'll beat them at mind-wrestling as easily as Zeus beats Jesus in arm-wrestling. (The Prophet Homer says Zeus himself proclaimed that he was the strongest of all gods. Homer says it. I believe it. That settles it!)

Editor George Erickson opines – As others have noted, when you allow supernatural critters into an argument, all bets are off.

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From David Broman -

A good time was had by all at the Darwin Day celebration at Beaner’s coffee shop in West Duluth. Vicki Sanville played some “Chopin” on the piano, accompanied by Bill VanDruten on the euphonium. Melvyn Magree sang some historical songs from abroad, an enlightening experience. David Broman and Eric Norland each played a few songs on guitar and sang for us. Jeanine Williams surprised us with a stellar comedy routine. Between, before, and after performances, people chatted, drank coffee & beer, and practiced their freethinking skills in celebration of one of the greatest scientists in history – Charles Darwin.

February 2013 Newsletter

February, 2013 Newsletter of the Lake Superior Freethinkers

Facilitators: David Broman - 218-349-7455, Bill Guse - 834-4583, 343-4806

First Sunday - Radisson Hotel – 9:00 AM Social – 9:30 Breakfast

 

George Erickson, editor, tundracub@mchsi.com

 

Program - Steve Hagen - Why I am Not a Buddhist
Steve is a Zen priest, head teacher at Dharma Field Zen Center in Minneapolis, and the brother of long time LSFer Dale Hagen, now deceased.

Christian ecclesiastics are reluctant to tell their congregants that there were at least 15 man/god savior figures in Middle East history who were born of a virgin, persecuted, crucified, died for the sins of man, were resurrected and rose to heaven after being dead for three days. -Rod Sheffer

Another victim of the northern missionaries - by George Erickson

In 1975, during one on my 38 yearly flights across northern Canada, I stopped at Coppermine, a tiny settlement on the edge of the Arctic Ocean. There, I encountered a woman walking the beach with her 2-3 year old son. See the photo below, followed by the text from my pro-science best seller True North: Exploring the Great Wilderness by Bush Plane, in which I described the encounter.

Last month – 37 years later – and thanks to the internet - I was able to locate him through a Canadian friend so that he and his parents could enjoy the photograph. As you will see, his closing comments reveal the corruption that occurs when a sweet young kid is polluted by missionaries.

1975 - From True North: Exploring the Great Wilderness by Bush Plane.

A forty-foot power-sailer has been hauled up onto the beach. Looking it over while I wait for Coppermine to come to life, I picture myself standing at the helm, dodging bergy bits along the Arctic coast. As I'm about to wend my imaginary way into Cambridge Bay, someone says "hello."

Turning, I discover an Inuit woman with a child at her side.
"Oh, hi," I answer. "I'd begun to wonder if the town was deserted. Where is everyone?"
"Oh, they're around." she says, with of casual wave that takes in land and sea….
As we stroll along the beach, I turn our conversation to her child.
"And how old is this little guy?
"He's almost three."
"May I take his picture?" When she says, "That's OK," the child beams with delight.

With the easy confidence of a professional model, he sets his baby-bottle upright in the hub of a large, bronze boat propeller lying on the beach, then pulls back his rabbit fur hood and smiles a benevolent smile. Neither forward nor self-conscious, he stands at ease in rubber boots, plaid pants and a dark-green parka. As the shutter captures his serene smile and oriental ancestry, I think of the next Dali Llama - someone destined to fame.

Two husky pups crawl out from beneath a nearby overturned boat. Cuddly and roly-poly, they're dying for attention. One is pure white, the other a mixture of white, tan and grey. I squat down to rub their bellies and scratch their ears as they try to climb my legs. "My wife would love one of these," I say, then discover that the woman and child have moved on down the beach.

2013- from the former child on the beach
George
Thank you for the photo. schooling was hard because my parents lived off the land, so school was not taken seriously till i realized that i should take it more seriously in the eighth grade.

when i put all i found that i could excel and i did for a bit but did not complete high school due to alcohol abuse which robbed me of my deploma but i find myself more advanced then some people who did graduate ,not to say or bost but science was always of intrest.

i have worked all over the place but i am working now at housing association (repairman) , i enjoy my job as it allows me to work on boilers, plumbing, carpentry and other types of work. i would prefer to be retired and hunt or tour the lands of the north. you are blessed to have toured my land.

yes i heard of the rise in co2 levels, ozone depletion, polar shif,t tide change, tectonic plates moving, and warming of the oceans, glacier melts, near misses of astroids and so on all is of concern, but i have seen jesus. when i was a year old me and my 2 aunties they were 7and8 we were alone in the house and he appeared to us i remember it like yesterday… these past few years i have been plaged with injurys, my body is so broken( broken bones , torn muscles, busted ligaments) and yea i work my body past the limits, but i shall prevail because i must not give up. i am fourty but at times i feel like i am eighty.
-K.

K’s story demonstrates why priests say “Give me a child until he is 10 and I will have him for life.” In Back to the Barrens, the sequel to True North, I give many detailed descriptions of the damage – sometimes deadly – done to natives by zealous missionaries who were ignorant of the deep-seated troubles they were causing. See http://www.hancockhouse.com/products/bacbar.htm or www.tundracub.com for ordering information.

New book for the LSF library:
In Freedom We Trust: An Atheist Guide to Religious Liberty
by Edward and Michael Buckner - (Prometheus Books)

Looking for a concise, well written, readable book on why we need Church/State separation and how to respond to those who claim that ours is a Christian nation - or that there can be no morality without religion? Well, look no more, because In Freedom We Trust provides those responses and more.

Although all 19 chapters bear useful fruit, I was especially impressed with Chapter 3, titled Religion and Politics Now because of its currency, and with Chapter 5 – History Is Not on The Side of The Angels because of its historic overview of religious excesses. I was especially pleased with Chapter 17 – Questions - which gives specific answers to questions and assertions frequently raised by “Christian nation” proponents.

In Freedom We Trust is an A+ book, and every freethinker will do well to read it.

George Erickson – past pres, MN Humanists and past V P of the American Humanist Assoc.

A note from Bill van Druten - I am proud to have founded LSF and more proud of what our leaders and council have done. As I get older, my voice will thin from its minor advisory value to insignificance. Yet, while I am still more or less with it, I want to say to all of you,

BRAVO, MULTI BRAVO!

Can I be remembered as one with YOU who brought the renaissance and enlightenment to the American North? Let us all be proud and never forget that.

A partial list of books in our circulating LSF Library

If you have others at home, please email tundracub@mchsi.com so I can update the list.

• A Tour of the Calculus
• About Time
• American Grace
• American Infidel
• American Jihad
• American Places - Stegner
• An Alchemy of Mind - Ackerman
• Atheism Explained – Steele
• Attack of the Theocrats
• Basin and Range - McPhee
• Candidate Without a Prayer - Silverman
• Chomsky - Chomsky
• Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem
• Conservative Assault on the Constitution - Chemerinski
• Contact - Sagan
• Daughter of the Universe
• Dictionary of Scientists
• Essential Judaism
• Evolution for Everyone - Wilson
• Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven - Heinemann
• Farewell to God – Templeton
• Finding Darwin's God – Miller
• For Your Own Good - Miller
• Heart of the Land: Essays on the Last Great Places
• Hell in a Hand Basket – Tomorrow
• How to Teach Physics to Your Dog
• Infidel
• In Freedom We Trust – Buckner
• Let Them Eat Prozac – Healy
• Losing Faith in Faith – Barker
• Losing Our Religion
• Meditations - Thomas Moore
• Mosquito: A Natural History of Our Most … Deadly Foe
• My View of Reality - Sheffer
• Rapture Ready - Radosh.
• Science Matters - Hazen & Trefil
• Sisters of the Dream
• The Age of Insight
• The Archimedes Codex
• The Body in Question – Miller
• The Discoverers - Boorstyn
• The Creation: An Appeal To Save Life On Earth - Wilson
• The Faith Club - Warner
• The Gift of Rest
• The Language of God
• The Last Testament: A Memoir by God
• The Party of Fear - Bennett
• The Pleasure Police
• The Power of Silence
• The Secret History of American Empire: The Truth About Economic Hit Men…
• The Story of Philosophy – Durant
• Thinking Like a Mountain - Bateman
• Treasury of Women's Quotations – Warner
• 2,548 Best Things Anyone Ever Said
• Under the Banner of Heaven
• Unrepentant – Annett
• Unsettled
• Uranium – Zoellner
• Why I Am Not A Christian - Russell

January 2013 Newsletter

January, 2013 Newsletter of the Lake Superior Freethinkers

Facilitators: David Broman - 218-349-7455, Bill Guse - 834-4583, 343-4806

First Sunday - Radisson Hotel – 9:00 AM Social – 9:30 Breakfast

 

George Erickson, editor, tundracub@mchsi.com

 

Program - Holly Henry, Communications Manager for The Wildcat Sanctuary provides a safe home in NE MN to felids including cougar, tiger, lynx and other wild cats. The Sanctuary houses more than 120 animals and educates the public about the captive wildlife crisis across the United States. For more Information see http://www.wildcatsanctuary.org.

It Pays to Advertise
Nine new members signed up at our Laughing at Death program.

Notice - Watch the Duluth New Tribune after January 1 for George Erickson’s op-ed on Climate Change

The Freedom to Coerce Religion - By Amanda Marcotte

[The religious interpret Freedom of Religion to mean that they are free to preach their religion, and dissenters are free to shut up and listen. George Erickson]

One of the most disturbing developments in wingnut propaganda is the attempt to define “religious freedom” as expanding the powers of the powerful, specifically with an eye to coercing others to live by your religious rules. Even though the courts usually see religious freedom being best protected by eliminating coercive prayer in schools, for instance, your average wingnut believes these rulings attack their freedom. After all, what’s the point of religion if you can’t impose it on others? Thus, one way they see to protect religious freedom is to give schoolteachers the right to lead their class in prayer (the correct Christian prayer).

Same story with hollering “religious freedom” to justify giving a boss the right to impose his religious beliefs on your medical decision-making. Your insurance benefits are yours! Giving your boss a right to veto contraception coverage because he thinks vaginas are only for baby-making is an imposition on your religious freedom. (And since costs exert a great deal of influence on how someone making $10 an hour working the counter at Hobby Lobby—choose contraception, this boss’s veto of coverage will change her choices.)

The American Humanist Association started a website for kids and teens called Kids Without God. The site could definitely be helpful for young people who have cottoned onto how this “god” thing is just a myth made up by others who want to control you, but feel very alone. (It’s also helpful for kids who aren’t raised with a religion, but I think those kids are less likely to need to find help online.)

Of course, for conservatives, this is seen as an unholy attack on their supposed right to exert complete control over their children’s bodies and minds. (Only Christians have this right, by the way. They’re fully allowed to try to convert other people’s kids! Religious freedom seems super complex, but really, it’s just a matter of privileged people trumping those who aren’t as privileged.) Which is why The Blaze is all up in arms about this website, which they describe as “shocking”. The commenters make it clear what is so shocking about it: They define “religious freedom” as the right to take away their child’s religious freedom…

If we declare a bunch of non-religions religion, we can stifle them in the same way we think we’re stifled! This is about is trying to exert control over your child through censoring any information that would cause them to ask questions. They know in their hearts that their myths aren’t competitive with science so censorship is all they have.

Women have been exposed to dogma about our bodies and we reject it. Thus, the turn to force. Unfortunately, the repetition of the phrase “religious freedom” to mean “the right to restrict the freedom of conscience of those you have power over” has confused the issue. Liberals need to take the phrase back to what it really means, which is freedom of individuals to decide for themselves without being coerced by schools, parents, bosses, or government.

EXCERTS from New Birth of Reason by Susan Jacoby

…Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), known as the Great Agnostic, once possessed real fame as one of the two important champions of reason and secular government in American history—the other being Thomas Paine. Indeed, one of Ingersoll’s lasting accomplishments as the preeminent American orator of his era was the revival of Paine, the preeminent publicist of the American Revolution, in the historical memory and imagination of the nation.

Ingersoll emerged as the leading figure in the golden age of freethought—an era when immigration, industrialization, and science, especially Darwin’s theory of evolution were challenging religious orthodoxy… Ingersoll spoke before more of his countrymen than even presidents did at a time when lectures were a form of mass entertainment and information….

Known as Robert Injuresoul to his enemies, he asked what role religion ought to play in the public life for the first time since the writing of the Constitution, when the Founders deliberately left out any reference to a deity as the source of governmental power. In one of his most popular lectures, “Individuality,” Ingersoll said of Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin:

They knew that to put God in the Constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God, the sacred rights of man. They intended to found and frame a government for man, and for man alone. They wished to preserve the individuality and liberty of all; to prevent the few from governing the many, and the many from persecuting and destroying the few.

The marvel of the Framers, he argued, was that they established “the first secular government that was ever founded in this world” when every government in Europe was based on union of church and state. “Our fathers were the first men who had the sense to know that no church should have a sword.” A government that had “retired the gods from politics,” Ingersoll declared on America’s 100th birthday, was a necessary condition of progress.

To 19th-century freethinkers, intellectual and material progress went hand in hand with abandonment of superstition, and ties between government and religion amounted to state-endorsed superstition. … Ingersoll was the most influential voice in a movement that was to forge a secular intellectual bridge into the 20th century for many of his countrymen.

The golden age of freethought, which stretched from 1875 until WW I, divided Americans over many of the same issues as have the recent culture wars. The argument over religion in civil government was part of the larger question of whether the claims of revealed religion deserve deference. The other issues that divided Americans were evolution, race, immigration, women’s rights, sexual behavior, freedom of artistic expression, and vast disparities in wealth...

Asked if these issues should be resolved by appeals to divine authority, Ingersoll said no, and devoted his life to freethought, a term meant to convey devotion to a way of looking at the world based on observation, rather than on “sacred” writings….

Ingersoll was a self-made, self-educated man who, by pursuit of knowledge, rose to fame. The son of an unsuccessful minister, Ingersoll grew up poor. Like Lincoln, he was admitted to the bar not after studying at one of the nation’s law schools but by reading the law in an attorney’s office. Ingersoll spoke out of a past in which self-education was the only route to learning for those without money, on behalf of a future in which education would be available to all.

In his lecture “The Gods,” he proclaimed, “We are not trying to chain the future, but to free the present. We are not forging fetters for our children, we are breaking those our fathers made for us. We advocate inquiry, investigation and thought. This of itself, is an admission that we are not perfectly satisfied with all our conclusions. Philosophy has not the egotism of faith.”

Asked if he enjoyed lecturing, Ingersoll replied, “Of course. It is a great pleasure to drive fear out of the hearts of men women and children. It is a positive joy to put out the fires of hell.”

Look at a partial list of Americans who were influenced by his arguments by contributing to American politics, science, business and law - becoming leaders on behalf of civil liberties and international human rights. These include Clarence Darrow, Luther Burbank, Eugene V. Debs, Frederick Douglass, Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken, Andrew Carnegie, Margaret Sanger, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Walt Whitman, and Thomas Edison....

Ingersoll gave up a promising career in politics to campaign against religious orthodoxy and for the separation of church and state. He elucidated Darwin’s theory of evolution for millions who might otherwise have heard about it only through the attacks of biblical literalists.

When he appeared for the first time in medium-sized cities where religious influence was strong, his reputation as a heretic held down the size of the audience – but not the second time. In Iowa, the Mason City Republican reported that most of those attending an 1885 Ingersoll lecture were orthodox believers who nevertheless appreciated Ingersoll’s wit at the expense of their own faith.

In “Some Mistakes of Moses,”... Ingersoll mocked the theories of a Protestant theologian who, having half-digested Darwin, suggested that the serpent that deceived Eve into eating the forbidden fruit was probably a humanoid ape with the gift of speech....

A man who combined reason with humor and enlightenment was much more dangerous than someone disposed to harangue audiences with the conviction that they were simply wrong about what they had been taught since birth. Everyone who paid to hear Ingersoll speak knew that he or she would go away with the memory of good laughs to accompany unsettling new thoughts.

He told audiences that when he first read On the Origin of Species, his reaction was “how terrible this will be upon the nobility of the Old World. Think of their being forced to trace their ancestry back to the duke Orang Outang…” This demonstrates what a brilliant orator he was, here taking advantage of American hostility to Old World and especially British aristocracy—hostility that was still very much alive in the 19th century. He used the American disdain for hereditary privilege to make the idea of descent from lower animals more accessible and less threatening....

Although Ingersoll opposed organized religion, his specific targets were believers and clerics who wanted to impose their convictions on their fellow citizens and stifle inquiry. If he could not convince his audiences that religion was superstition, he did convince many to seek out a form of religion that admitted the insights of science or real history. Ingersoll preferred to build a bridge between the world of secular freethought and religions….

In 1885, he was asked, “Don’t you think the belief of the Agnostic is more satisfactory to the believer that that of the Atheist?” He replied, “The Agnostic is an Atheist. The Atheist is an Agnostic. The Agnostic says: “I do not know, but I do not believe there is any god.” The Atheist says the same. The orthodox Christian says he knows there is a God, but we know that he does not know. The Atheist [too] cannot know that God does not exist.”

Ingersoll pointed out that the labels “atheist” and “infidel” had generally been applied as epithets to those who refused to accept biblical stories that were scientifically impossible. Among those included were the devout Quaker, suffragist, and abolitionist Lucretia Mott and Thomas Paine.

Ingersoll’s long effort to restore Thomas Paine’s reputation should have earned him a permanent place in American intellectual history. In Theodore Roosevelt’s biography of the Federalist politician Governor Morris, Paine was dismissed as a “filthy little atheist ….” (Morris was Washington’s minister to France when Paine was arrested for opposing the execution of Louis XVI. A fierce critic of Paine, Morris asserted that the U S did not recognize British-born Paine’s American citizenship while telling Washington that he was trying to obtain Paine’s release. Only when James Monroe, a freethinker, succeeded Morris in Paris did our government obtain Paine’s freedom. He had spent nine months in solitary confinement and nearly died.)

Ingersoll subtitled his lecture about Paine, “With His Name Left Out, the History of Liberty Cannot Be Written.” He made it a mission to remind Americans of Paine’s indispensable contributions to the revolutionary cause, but also to link those ideals to Paine’s defense of liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state.

Ingersoll achieved partial success in his attempt to return Paine to the American canon. Paine’s name is better known than Ingersoll’s in the U S because his role as the chief polemicist for the Revolution can be described for the consumption of schoolchildren without mentioning his becoming a scourge of organized religion and a radical economic thinker. The Paine who wrote “These are the times that try men’s souls” in the darkest hour for General Washington’s army is a recognizable name to a considerable number of Americans in the 21st century. But the Paine who wrote The Age of Reason (1794)—which put forth the heretical idea that the sacred books of all religions were written by human beings, not by any deity—is nearly as obscure as Ingersoll to Americans with little knowledge about the secular side of their history.

Some argue that the ephemeral nature of oratory was the reason for Ingersoll’s eclipse—a supposition comparable to the idea that there is no statue of Paine in the U.S. Capitol because Paine never held public office. It seems likelier that both men have been underappreciated because of their outspoken opposition to organized religion. Paine—who was a deist, with views resembling those of Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, never recovered from the damage to his reputation inflicted by the Age of Reason.

Paine was destitute when he died in 1809, and even the Quakers refused to allow him to be buried in one of their cemeteries. Unlike Paine, Ingersoll did not die unmourned.... He also did much better financially because he commanded high fees for his legal services and speeches. That Ingersoll made a good living out of questioning religion enraged his opponents...

Ingersoll had a happy marriage and family life, which did not sit well with believers who thought that questioning the existence of God should be punished in both this life and the next.

The memory of Ingersoll faded swiftly after the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, which pitted William Jennings Bryan, against Clarence Darrow, the famous criminal lawyer and agnostic who had been influenced by Ingersoll. Bryan obtained the conviction of biology teacher John T. Scopes on grounds of having violated a Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution (although the verdict was reversed on appeal). But Darrow was the real winner after Bryan was forced to admit that even he did not take every word in the Bible literally….

Ingersoll’s belief in the potential of those at every level of society added considerable weight to the message he delivered in towns, where farmers and ball players were likelier to show up than university professors. Herbert Spencer’s [social Darwinism] presentations would not have gone over as well in frontier towns as they did in New York, given that audiences in less sophisticated areas might have suspected that they would not have survived the social fitness test.

As religious literalism declined around the turn of the 19th century, it is easy to see why fundamentalism was declared dead by many intellectuals in the 20s. In 1931, the editor of Harper’s summed up the Scopes trial. “Legislators might go on passing anti-evolution laws, and in the hinterlands the pious might still keep their religion locked in a science-proof compartment of their minds; but civilized opinion everywhere had regarded the Dayton trial with amazement and amusement, and the slow drift away from Fundamentalist certainty continued.”

That is how things would continue to look to secular intellectuals well into the 1980s. The mistaken idea that “science-proof” thinking would disappear in the enlightened 20th century was the main factor in Ingersoll’s disappearance from the consciousness of American intellectuals. Ingersoll’s arguments would come to seem not provocative or dangerous but irrelevant to most in the generation of historians who came of age during the Depression and WW II, and who considered fundamentalism no more than an interesting relic of ages past.

Edgar W. Howe, publisher of The Atchison Daily Globe, assessed Ingersoll’s legacy more positively in a memorial editorial that spoke for freethinkers in the American heartland:

“The death of Robert G. Ingersoll removed one of America’s greatest citizens. His brilliancy, his integrity and patriotism cannot be doubted. Had not Ingersoll been frank enough to express his opinion on religion he would have been President of the United States. Hypocrisy in religion pays. There will come a time when public men may speak their honest convictions in religion without being maligned by the ignorant and superstitious, but not yet.”

Creative and critical thinking, experimentation, exploration and innovation have been anathema to the rigid, inflexible dogma and doctrines of organized religions. Both Martin Luther and St. Paul declared that reason was their enemy… -Rod Sheffer