Here’s your Week in Freethought History: This is more than just a calendar of events or mini-biographies – it’s an affirmation that we as freethinkers are neither unique nor alone in the world, no matter how isolated and alone we may feel at times.

Last Sunday, January 29, 275 years ago (1737) American patriot and pamphleteer Thomas Paine was born into an English Quaker family. As a soldier in George Washington’s army, Paine penned Common Sense, which made him so popular that the title became his nickname. The first number of The Crisis, which begins, “These are the times that try men’s souls,” was so powerful, Washington had it read to his troops for motivation. Narrowly escaping the guillotine, after helping in the French Revolution, Paine returned to a nation that had forgotten all his service to American independence and instead reviled him for his honest criticisms in The Age of Reason. Paine was an early opponent of slavery and proponent of social security and general public education. He was a Deist, never an atheist. Paine’s writings influenced Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, and generations of others.

Last Monday, January 30, 237 years ago (1775), English satirist and writer Walter Savage Landor was born. Landor supported the socialist ideals of George Holyoake (1817-1906) and was a firm fighter for freedom with his popular pen. In a series of letters to William Lamb (2nd Viscount, Lord Melbourne; 1779-1848), Landor wrote, “Divorce the Church and State: divorce them; and the one will neither be shrew nor strumpet; the other neither bulley [sic] nor cutpurse.”

Last Tuesday, January 31, 131 years ago (1881) American chemist Irving Langmuir was born in Brooklyn, NY. Langmuir is chiefly remembered for coining the physics term “plasma” to describe a fourth state of matter. He was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A true scientist, Langmuir was deeply skeptical of shortcuts to knowledge, formulating “Irving Langmuir’s Symptoms of Pathological Science” – a list of six characteristics common to pseudoscience. When asked about his inattention to religion, Langmuir responded, “Never believe anything that can’t be proved.”

Also last Tuesday, but 215 years ago (1881) Austrian composer Franz Schubert was born in Vienna. Probably Schubert’s most popular work is his “Unfinished” Symphony in B-Minor (No. 8, D.759). The Catholic Encyclopedia, always eager to claim religious inspiration for art, makes much of Schubert’s church music and waxes rhapsodic about the faith that must have inspired the composer. In truth, like Beethoven and Mozart, Schubert was a skeptic. Sir George Grove, in his standard Dictionary of Music and Musicians, says, “of formal or dogmatic religion we can find no trace,” in Schubert’s short life. Of creeds and churches Grove quotes Schubert saying, “Not a word of it is true.”

Last Wednesday, February 1, 110 years ago (1902) American poet Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. “I grew up in a not very religious family,” Hughes noted, “but I had a foster aunt who saw that I went to church and Sunday school.” Consequently, the influences evident in his work include the Bible as much as W.E.B. Du Bois. As a leading light of the “Harlem Renaissance” in the 1920s, the author of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” depicted the ordinary lives of black people with a realism that crossed racial and cultural boundaries. He believed in God, but did not accept Christianity. Langston Hughes criticized those who used their piety for personal gain, or as a shield behind which oppression could flourish.

Last Thursday, 107 years ago (1905) Objectivist philosopher and author Ayn Rand was born to Jewish parents in Russia. As a young girl, she witnessed the brutality of the Soviet regime in the Bolshevik Revolution. At age 21 she got permission to travel to the US and settled in Los Angeles to become a screenwriter. She published The Fountainhead in 1943, and her most memorable if unreadable work, Atlas Shrugged, in 1957. In a time when most capitalists identified “godless” with “Communist,” Rand “was identifying religion and communism as brothers under the skin.” “Religion,” Rand noted, “is the first enemy of the ability to think. … Faith is the worst curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought.”

Last Friday, February 3, 69 years ago (1943) four chaplains aboard the US Army Transport Dorchester, sinking from a German U-Boat attack in the icy North Atlantic, helped other soldiers board lifeboats and gave up their own life jackets when the supply ran out, thereby sacrificing their lives to save the lives of sailors and soldiers abandoning a sinking ship. Yet, the story of the Four Chaplains, if it proves anything, proves that nothing fails like faith. That 674 US soldiers had to drown in icy water to give us this heart-warming story, proves not the love of God, but his malevolence.

Today, February 4, 170 years ago (1842) Danish critic and scholar Georg Brandes was born in Copenhagen into a Jewish family. Although born and educated in Denmark, he lived in many countries: Brandes changed address so often because of his outspoken agnosticism. Brandes once wrote, “It would be as impossible for me to attack Christianity as it would be impossible for me to attack werewolves.” And, perhaps anticipating the Arab Spring in the East, and Occupy Wall Street in the West, Georg Brandes noted, “It is useless to send armies against ideas.”

We can look back, but the Golden Age of Freethought is now. You can find full versions of these pages in Freethought history at the links in the American Heathen blog, which take you to my blog, FreethoughtAlmanac.com.

Don’t do this.  Don’t do that.  Do as I say, not as I do.  But reality speaks in whispers, behind closed doors, and in the shadows of the human mind.  Secrets held near and dear for fear of discovery, entombed in the words of demands, warnings, and manufactured fear, crushes downward in an avalanche of personal denial upon anyone within reach of the left fork of the tongue.  It’s called hypocrisy, and it always reveals the lies.  It also denies freedom and liberty for all.

No matter how well we lie, our lies eventually become a window into truth, the truth of what we hide from others and even from ourselves.  The very fact that we can so effectively convince others of our lies, and that we feel we are qualified to instruct others in personal matters of morality, to direct them, to admonish them for their lies, is really a way to sink our lies as deep as possible in the swamp of our fears.  We claim that we instruct, direct and admonish others so they can be better than us.  But, in point of fact, we don’t really care about them.  We simply don’t want them to discover our lies, our inability to reconcile being human with our impossible personal moral compass.  We cloak our self-created, self-imposed guilt, and our perceived failings, under a robe of self-righteousness and importance, pretending that we are immune to our core nature.  Then we must try to control everyone and everything around us because we’re afraid we cannot control ourselves.  We are afraid of our human animal.

Please, stand in judgment all of you who seek to hide your humanness!  Go ahead!  Sit in judgment with the myth of perfection as your standard for prosecution!  But, to whose laws do you really subscribe?  Laws based on fables?  Tales of woe and torment of fictional characters from a time when laws were the simple whim of ignorant, fearful men, who could not control themselves, could not face their humanness in a mirror?  Or, are the laws of your own creation, knee jerk responses to your own fear?  Go ahead… Measure me!  Measure everyone!  Measure us by impossible standards because the fear of yourselves is far too great that others must be sacrificed to pay for your self-imposed inadequacies, for your fear of being human!  Declare being human evil!  Ah, but you already have, haven’t you?  You have made it a crime to be human.  And now you demand we redeem ourselves?  For what?  Being human?  And, to whom?  A myth and a kangaroo court manufactured to protect your denial?  Why must anyone be redeemed, saved, from being human?  Why must anyone pay for the fear of yourself, to exonerate you from you, in the dark, cold shadow, of your false piety, purity and chastity?  Who are you to judge?  Who are you to instruct anyone in your impossibly inhuman morality, one that not even you can live by, and that is truly immoral by standards of humanity?  Yes, you!  You are afraid aren’t you…  Afraid you cannot control your mind, your sexual desires, your loves, your lusts, your humanness.  All that is truly good in life scares you because you know so little about who and what you really are!  You are so frightened by the image you see in the mirror!  You coward!

I can’t tell you the number of times I instructed and destroyed before I finally acknowledged the truth of my existence, the reality of the human animal in me and around me.  Denial was far too easy for far too long.  I was so afraid… just like you.  But, I did not run away from myself when the challenge came, when personal responsibility spoke to me.  I removed the robe of self-righteousness.  I stood naked before the mirror.  I saw my humanness and shouted at myself for my ignorance.  It was then that the truth was revealed through the window of my hypocrisy.  I saw the destruction that lay in its wake.  I had been terribly wrong.

Freedom and Liberty is for all.  That is the truth I found out of the rubble of my past.  It is a truth that is not bestowed upon humanity by some benevolent myth.  It is a truth that cannot be expunged from humanity.  It is an inherent truth, one that is born into each and every one of us as we depart the womb.  It is ours to own as individuals!  It is a truth that cannot be hidden under faux piety, prudishness, denial, or suppressed by manufactured oppressive law.  It is the result of being alive, self-aware, and human.  Freedom and Liberty for all isn’t negotiable.  It is not a commodity that can be bought and sold.  It cannot be bartered for under the wages of death for simply living it.  Freedom and liberty exists for its own sake, as a matter of natural course.

Go ahead and try to imprison freedom and liberty for all.  It cannot be jailed.  But for you, you are welcome to cage yourself.  Simply deny yourself.  Go ahead and deny your yearnings, your desires, your lust, your love, your passions.  Deny yourself your compassion, your empathy, your altruism.  Deny your wandering thoughts, dreams, fantasies.  They are at your prerogative, but they are for you to deny yourself.  Not to deny for others.  Freedom and liberty for all will live on in everyone else despite your personal denials.  And, as you suffer in the prison you have created, you will quickly learn that being human cannot be human without freedom and liberty.

How many of you have imprisoned your freedom and liberty?  How many of you have suppressed the very nature of your humanness?  How many of you live in hypocrisy?  You don’t have to be afraid.  You are free.  You own liberty.  It is yours.  Now share the news.  Freedom and liberty for all.  Live it.  Love it.  Now is the time to fight for it.

Here’s your Week in Freethought History: This is more than just a calendar of events or mini-biographies – it’s an affirmation that we as freethinkers are neither unique nor alone in the world, no matter how isolated and alone we may feel at times.

Last Sunday, January 22, 451 years ago (1561), English science essayist Francis Bacon, a contemporary of William Shakespeare, was born in Elizabethan London. Bacon professed religious orthodoxy in public, and from the line clerics love to quote – “A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.” (Essays, “Of Atheism”) – he would seem so. But in the very next essay, Bacon shows that atheism is socially superior to superstition: “Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; … but superstition dismounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy, in the minds of men. Therefore atheism did never perturb states; …” (Essays, “Of Superstition”)

It was also on January 22, but 224 years ago (1788), that English poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born. He became skeptical of religion during his student years at Trinity College, Cambridge, but moderated into a Deistic belief, remaining skeptical toward life after death. Byron was friends with Percy Bysshe Shelley, an Atheist. As Byron wrote in his 1819 epic poem, Don Juan—

Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded

That all the Apostles would have done as they did.

Last Monday, January 23, 229 years ago (1783), the French novelist known as Stendhal was born. His most famous works are The Red and the Black (1830), about political and social conditions in France, and The Charterhouse of Parma (1839). Having seen its influence in Paris, and as French consul in the Papal States, Stendhal was able to say, “All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.” Prosper Merimée quotes the novelist saying, “The only excuse for God is that there is no such person” (“Ce qui excuse Dieu c’est qu’il n’existe pas”).

Last Tuesday, January 24, 300 years ago (1712), Frederick the Great was born. As King of Prussia, Frederick created a stable legal code, established a superior school system, allowed a free press and religious toleration. He was a patron of art, literature and music. To his intimates, Frederick admitted his Atheism, but outwardly even a monarch could not profess such a thing. In a letter to his friend, Voltaire, Frederick wrote: “Theologians are all alike, of whatever religion or country they may be. Their aim is always to wield despotic authority over men’s consciences. They therefore persecute all of us who have the temerity to unveil the truth.”

Last Wednesday, January 25, 253 years ago (1759), the national poet of Scotland, Robert Burns, was born. He is remembered chiefly for “Auld Lang Syne.” Bobbie Burns was contemptuous of the narrow Calvinism of his day. A friend of Burns’s addressed him once as “Christless Bobbie.” In 1788 he wrote, “it becomes a man of sense to think for himself.” And in the “Epistle to Rev. John McMath” Burns denounces religious hypocrisy, claiming,

But twenty times I rather would be
An atheist clean,
Than under gospel colours hid be
Just for a screen

Last Thursday, January 26, 448 years ago (1564), Pope Pius IV created the Index of Prohibited Books. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum, as it is called in Latin, was finally suppressed in 1966 under Pope Paul VI. The result of the Index, at least until the Age of Enlightenment, was not only a stifling of debate about religion, but the suppression of literature generally: except for the writers the Church ruined, between 1564 and the appearance of Deist writers, Italian literature was a blank page.

Yesterday, Friday, January 27, 256 years ago (1756), Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born. For his 35 years of life, Mozart’s body of work was prodigious: some 40 symphonies, numerous concertos, much sacred choral music and the unfinished Requiem (K.626, 1791). Although Mozart composed memorable church music, even the Catholic Encyclopedia, while claiming him as one of the faithful, laments that these compositions “do not reflect the spirit of the universal Church, but rather the subjective conception and mood of the composer.” In fact, Mozart, like Beethoven, was a Catholic apostate. And you can listen in vain for any more religious inspiration in Mozart’s Requiem than can be found in his Little Night Music, Magic Flute or Jupiter Symphony.

Today, Saturday, January 28, 125 years ago (1887), American pianist Artur Rubinstein was born in Łódź, Poland. By age five he was already performing classical works at the piano. When he was 13, Rubinstein gave his first formal concert in Potsdam. Six years later, he made his Carnegie Hall debut. His biographer (Harvey Sachs) says, “Arthur was given virtually no religious education…. As an adult he referred with pride to his Jewish origins, but he called himself an agnostic.” His younger daughter, Dr. Alina Rubinstein, a psychiatrist, says he was reluctant to call himself an Atheist “because it was so hard to accommodate the idea that a musical ‘gift’ like his could have come ‘out of nowhere.’”

Also born this week—
On January 22: August Strindberg (1849)
On January 24: Emperor Hadrian (76 CE)
On January 25: Virginia Woolf (1882)
On January 25: W. Somerset Maugham (1874)
On January 28: Sarah MacLachlan (1968)

We can look back, but the Golden Age of Freethought is now. You can find full versions of these pages in Freethought history at the links in the American Heathen blog, which take you to my blog, FreethoughtAlmanac.com.

Ancient Greeks began the way of thinking originally known as natural philosophy but which we now call science. Science emerged as we know it during the Renaissance, in an age dominated by fear, superstition, injustice, and brutality. In other words, pretty much like the present. These musings are aimed at explaining how science works, and how science can serve even nonscientists in their efforts to make sense of the world. I can try to explain things but it’s up to you to decide whether or not you wish to drink from these waters.

Arguments about religion and politics are notoriously pointless and very different from scientific arguments. Religious and political arguments arise because many people have strongly-held opinions, and often are motivated to defend their views vigorously. Based on my experience, I’ve learned that I enjoy these arguments up to a point, but beyond that point I rapidly lose interest.

I particularly enjoy arguing with my colleagues about scientific topics precisely because it’s a way of testing my understanding. A clash of ideas with another scientist often leads to new insights for me, and this can be very satisfying, even when the notions with which I entered the discussion prove to be wrong.

When it comes to politics and religion, however, the arguments have some annoying tendencies. Perhaps first and foremost is that, unlike arguments between scientific colleagues, both sides of the debate are unlikely ever to be persuaded by the arguments of their opponent. Since religious beliefs are an article of faith – using “faith” to mean belief without evidence – the position of a religious believer is unshakeable because it’s essentially irrational. No rational argument based on evidence (or its absence) can be convincing if your beliefs are rooted in faith.

I have no problem with believers believing whatever they want, insofar as it doesn’t harm others. It’s a Constitutional right all Americans have. I find it mostly annoying (but also mildly amusing) when they try to rationalize their faith, however. If you have such faith, you’ve explicitly denied the relevance of evidence and reason in any debate about your faith. How can a rational argument be used to defend an irrational faith? Any attempts to put religion on any sort of rational footing is an implicit admission that faith simply isn’t enough. But of course believers never want to admit this.

Some of believers assert that a position in favor of rational, evidence-based arguments is a kind of faith, as well. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. My belief in logic and evidence is based not on faith, but rather solidly on my personal experience (that is, evidence), which has shown me ways of understanding that actually work in the real world. Logic and evidence have given us a deep understanding of the universe that has enabled us to go far beyond the late Bronze Age myths contained within the sacred documents upon which abrahamic religions are based. Rational thinking is demonstrably effective, whereas religious mythology is at best a comfort in troubled times, but at worst a dangerous delusion.

In science, the correct path is to modify hypotheses to improve the match to any evidence. It’s profoundly unscientific to try to fit any evidence to the hypothesis. Believers either consciously or unconsciously cherry-pick and distort the evidence to match their belief system. By far the majority of believers are simply unable to remove the blinders they’ve chosen to wear; to admit that their beliefs aren’t rational. Hence, most attempts to show believers the logical problems with their faith are doomed to pointlessness. It’s like arguing with an air conditioner vent, standing in a relentless blast of hot air.

Politics is quite comparable to religion in many ways. Many political party members are like religious believers – and there’s a disturbing trend for politics and religion to merge these days. What frightens me is when a particular partisan affiliation is so strongly engrained in political “believers” that they actually hope that rival politicians elected to office fail in their leadership of the country. It’s irrational to hope that our national leaders fail at their jobs. But many Americans now get their predigested, scripted talking points from political pseudo-pundits – spokespersons for the religious right often masquerading as journalists. They don’t want to think beyond stereotypes and what amounts to political dogma. Our politicians traffic in fear and ignorance, hoping to gain and keep political power, apparently to impose their beliefs on the whole nation.

If a US President were to declare that plates of spaghetti are a danger to national security, requiring an immediate ban on pasta, I think impeachment proceedings would begin right away. It clearly would be unacceptable for our nation to be led by someone inflicted with paranoid delusions. Yet we find ourselves in a position where many people in the USA see it as mandatory that every political officeholder embrace an inherently irrational religious belief – no openly atheist candidate could be elected President at this time. Does anyone besides me see the contradiction and danger in this? We need freethinking rationality more than ever, but we live in a time when most Americans embrace irrational myths!

Science is not a religion but rather a tool for those who wish to think for themselves about the natural world. Its primary characteristic is its willingness to entertain questions from those who wish to obtain believable answers.

After John King got his ass handed to him by Newt Gingrich at the opening of the January 19 debate, ahead of the South Carolina Republican primary, I started thinking about George Bernard Shaw. This is John Mill and I think the Irish playwright and social critic told a relevant story of the utility of middle-class morality, and who is obligated to abide by that code of conduct, in his 1916 play Pygmalion.

Much like the weather, everybody talks about middle-class morality, but nobody does anything about it. Certainly not Mr. Gingrich, who led the impeachment of President Bill Clinton simply for having an exchange of bodily fluids with a White House intern while himself violating his marriage vows.

Do those who propose to be our leaders simply – excuse me for the double entende – have only to pay it lip service? We didn’t see that in Mr. Gingrich in debate. His response was an arrogant deflection of the marital infidelity issue and an attack on the mainstream media generally, for even raising the question.

Why wasn’t Mr. Gingrich standing up for middle-class morality?

The response from Gingrich reminded me of a character in Shaw’s play Pygmalion: a dustman (in America we would call him a “sanitation engineer”) named Alfred P. Doolittle. Doolitle finds out that his daughter Eliza has been taken under the wing of Professor Henry Higgins, who has bet his friend Pickering he can pass off Eliza as a duchess simply by changing the way she speaks. And that leads to this exchange between Doolittle and Higgins:

DOOLITTLE Well, what’s a five pound note to you? And what’s Eliza to me?
PICKERING. I think you ought to know, Doolittle, that Mr. Higgins’s intentions are entirely honorable.
DOOLITTLE. Course they are, Governor. If I thought they wasn’t, I’d ask fifty.
HIGGINS [revolted] Do you mean to say, you callous rascal, that you would sell your daughter for £50?
PICKERING. Have you no morals, man?
DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Can’t afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me. Not that I mean any harm, you know. But if Liza is going to have a bit out of this, why not me too? … What am I, I ask you? I’m one of the undeserving poor: that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up agen middle class morality all the time… What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.

Instead of the “undeserving poor,” in Mr. Gingrich we have an example of the “entitled rich.” People like Mr. Gingrich don’t need to abide by middle class morality – and not because he can’t afford it, but because he is above it.

Religion plays a part in this. Every one of the Republican candidates for President uses religion as a club to keep the rest of the populace following the rules that they break with impunity. The serial infidelities of Mr. Gingrich unaccountably cost him nothing in terms of credibility among the vastly Christian fundamentalist populace who ordinarily would shun him as a sinner. How can a sinner become a winner? Only religion can do that!

That’s why the Republican candidates must convince the people that they believe in God. But somehow professing a belief in God gives them a free pass to violate God’s laws – as most Christians, Jews and Muslims would see them.

Why do I think it is important for our leaders to lead by example? Because the morality of Mr. Gingrich leads to chaos. Because the middle class is all that provides stability to American society. In fact, I say the middle class is America. And not just Mr. Gingrich in particular and politicians in general, but business leaders, Wall Street, capitalists and corporations – everybody who benefits from the system paid for by the middle class – all should support and defend not just middle class morality but the very existence of a middle class.

Why? Because that’s where America lives. People like Mr. Gingrich have complained that the middle class are like Alfie Doolittle – that they benefit from undeserved “entitlements,” such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, that we cannot afford. Yet somehow we can afford generous tax breaks for the wealthy, subsidies and tax breaks for corporations, corporate welfare in the form of defense contracts for the politically well-connected and a military more expensive than all the armies in the rest of the world combined.

If there is an “undeserving poor,” it is more than counterbalanced by the undeserving rich. Those capitalists and their professional political puppies, like Mr. Gingrich, are actively trying to destroy the middle class by destroying the benefits the middle class pay for and rely on.

Destroy the middle class and you destroy America.

I know many Americans who voted for Mr. Obama are disappointed in his performance as President. And this may be for the same unrealistic reason that some Americans want him replaced by a man chosen by God to lead this nation: what they really want is a king. Somebody like the imaginary king in the sky, to whom they pray for deliverance with all their might.

But those who are looking for a king to lead this nation should not be surprised if he turns out to be as vain, despotic and cruel as the sky king they imagine. A president is a man, not a king, and certainly not a god. Be careful what you pray for.

Season Premier – Saturday, January 28th, 8ET, 7CT  LIVE!

The “Thorn” is at the center of the flag… a letter in the Old English, Old Norse alphabets. Also called thurs (“giant”) in Scandinavian rune poems. For us at American Heathen®, the letter is symbolic of being a thorn in the side of the establishment. A “giant” for Freedom and Liberty for All.

FREEDOM AND LIBERTY FOR ALL!  LIVE IT!  LOVE IT!  NOW FIGHT FOR IT!

Don’t Call Me Your Friend

I really don’t like being called your friend if you use this phrase (“I have a lot of Atheist friends, but…”) when I’m not around.  Quite frankly, you cheapen and denigrate me.  You’re putting me down while trying to make yourself appear inclusive, caring, compassionate, empathetic, genuine.  But, the reality of calling me a friend in this way is far from complimentary.  Come on.  Admit it.  You’re just trying to make yourself seem more “christian” in the New Testament, Jesus loves everybody, sort of way.   In reality, you’re just taking a big christian piss all over me, as I’m assigned to being the out house for your religious disdain.

Don’t call me your friend if you qualify it with but.  I’m not really your “friend… but”.  I’m just a placeholder,  a license for religious bigotry poorly hidden behind a useless platitude and a faux smile.  So, don’t use me as a scapegoat for your ignorance.  You don’t know what a  friend really is.