American Heathen®

(The following is a transcript of a LIVE broadcast by John Mill. John is a noted free thought advocate and broadcaster. “This Week In Freethought” airs on my American Heathen® internet radio show. Air date of this particular segment: 04/21/12)

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 Monday, April 16, was the 168th birthday of French writer, critic and Nobel Laureate Anatole France (1844). The writer began as a journalist and married a mentor wealthy enough to get him noticed by 1881. All of France’s novels were unabashedly pagan, in addition to lampooning clerics and Christianity. In the 1920s his writings were put on the Index of Prohibited Books. It was Anatole France who said, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” And also (perhaps thinking of religious belief), “If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”

It was 155 years ago last Wednesday, April 18, that American trial lawyer Clarence Darrow was born (1857). Darrow was 67 years old when he came in direct contact with the conflict between religion and reason in defending Tennessee science teacher John T. Scopes for teaching the theory of evolution rather than fables of gods, snakes and apples. Scopes was convicted, but the world read of and listened (on a scientific novelty called radio) to the famous 1925 “Monkey T rial,” A tireless fighter for the rights of the powerless against the powerful, Darrow once said, “I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.”

Coincidentally, or not, it was on April 18, 2008, that the documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was released in the United States. You can read more about this in my “Reflection” on that film.

Two more anniversaries were marked last Thursday, April 19—

It was on April 19, 1993, that federal government forces with tanks, gas and guns invaded the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. During the 51-day Waco Siege, “Ranch Apocalypse” was burned to the ground and 76 Davidians, twenty of them children, along with their 33-year-old leader, David Koresh, died. The confrontation between the male-dominated, gun-toting government officials and the male-dominated, gun-toting Davidians began on Sunday, February 28. Waco stands today as a massive breach of civil rights and an abuse of government power against a relatively harmless Christian sect. If it can happen to minority Christians, in this nation of churchgoers, are atheists safe?

The Waco Siege inspired Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, two years later to the day, to perpetrate the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks – the Oklahoma City Bombing (1995).

Last Friday, April 20, brings us two more connected anniversaries—

Last Friday was the 123rd birthday of German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (1889). While in jail for treason in Germany – he had been plotting to overthrow the Weimar Republic by force – Hitler began dictating Mein Kampf (My Struggle). Hitler’s Catholic upbringing, coupled with a disbelief that a Jew could really be a German (much like George H.W. Bush’s disbelief that an atheist could really be an American), informed his writing. “I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator,” wrote Hitler. He was clearly no atheist. The only major complaints from Rome regarded Hitler’s interference in Church matters, which were largely silenced by a 1933 Concordat with the Vatican. And Hitler could not have been successful without the support of German Catholics.

It was also last Friday, April 20, 13 years ago, that two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, brought guns and explosives instead of textbooks to school (1999). The bullied and belittled students had planned their massacre for over a month and timed it for Adolph Hitler’s birthday. Perhaps like Hitler, after their rampage, which left 12 students and a teacher dead, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris took their own lives.

We keep returning to this theme, but it was 56 years ago today that Inherit the Wind, a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee dramatizing the famous Scopes “Monkey Trial” of the summer of 1925, opened at the National Theatre on Broadway (1955). Inherit the Wind was not about a clash between two 1920s pop stars, Clarence Darrow vs. William Jennings Bryan, or a clash of cultures, intellectual vs. religious. The playwrights are really focused on defending freedom of thought in a time of anti-communist hysteria: The 1950s were a time of cultural anxiety and anti-intellectualism in the U.S., inspired by the crusade of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his colleagues on the House Un-American Activities Committee. So Drummond (the Darrow character) says to the jury, “Yes there is something holy to me! The power of the individual human mind. An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man’s knowledge is more of a miracle than any sticks turned to snakes, or the parting of waters. … Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain. You’ve got to pay for it. … Darwin moved us forward to a hilltop, where we could look back and see the way from which we came. But for this view, this insight, this knowledge, we must abandon our faith in the pleasant poetry of Genesis.”

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.

(The following is a transcript of a LIVE broadcast by John Mill. John is a noted free thought advocate and broadcaster. “This Week In Freethought” airs on my American Heathen® internet radio show. Air date of this particular segment: 04/14/12)

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.

It was 2,572 last Sunday, April 8, according to tradition, that Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, was born in what is now modern Nepal (560 BCE). Through introspection and observation, at the age of thirty-five he earned the title Buddha, or “Enlightened One” (Sanskrit सिद्धार्थ गौतम). For the rest of his life, which by some accounts was eighty years, Buddha helped others reach enlightenment. Buddha lived at a time of great spiritual revolution in Asia and Asia Minor: the same centuries saw the arrival of the great Greek-Ionian thinkers, Lao-Tse and Confucius in China, and Mahavira, the founder of modern Jainism, in India. It is dishonest to presume that so “spiritual” a thinker must have believed in a God. In fact, Buddha never mentioned God or gods or souls and it was later generations of Buddhists that morphed his ascetic ethic into a religion.

Last Monday, April 9, was the 84th birthday of the University of California professor of math who made a name for himself in the 1960s as a composer and performer of parody songs: Tom Lehrer (1928). His first public performance was in 1952 at a nightclub near Harvard, but he hit the big time – taking time off from teaching mathematics – between 1953 and 1965 with club performances and LPs featuring his witty, rapid-fire lampoons of social and political issues, including such classics as “The Vatican Rag.” Not generally known about Lehrer is that he is a Freethinker on religion. “I firmly believe all religion is bullshit,” Lehrer said in a 1984 interview. “To say that I am not a ‘fan’ of organized religion is putting it mildly… As for being ‘spiritual,’ … I find enough mystery in mathematics to satisfy my spiritual needs.”

It 146 years ago last Tuesday, April 10, that the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was chartered under the leadership of Henry Bergh (1866). Bergh (1813-1888) was horrified by the extensive cruelty he observed towards working horses, as well as stray cats and dogs, in New York City. Curiously, despite the depictions of St. Francis of Assisi surrounded by his loving birds, it was Europe under Christianity that was the worst offender against the principle of humane treatment of animals. Since it was Christian doctrine that animals have no souls, there was no Church prohibition against ill-treatment. Cockfights and dog fights, bear-baiting, and other inhumane treatment of animals for sport throughout the Middle Ages, thrived. And this was the period when organized religion was in the strongest position to object with some credibility. So the chartering of the ASPCA came about in amid a long silence from the representatives of God.

It was 237 years ago last Wednesday, April 11, that the last execution for witchcraft took place in Germany (1775). History records that Anna Maria Schwiigel was legally executed in Bavaria for the crime of believing in a competing religion. The craft was so attractive to its medieval adherents that perhaps 300,000 were tortured and executed by Christians for their contrary opinion. The worst persecution of witches occurred in Germany and surrounding countries comprising the Holy Roman Empire. Here and there a voice expressed doubts that there really were witches with supernatural powers. But by the 1700s, coincidentally with the rise and influence of rationalism in Europe, the anti-witch fervor was dying out. Even Joan of Arc, who very possibly was a witch, was declared a saint in 1920. And just 190 years after the last witch was executed in Germany, the comedy “Bewitched” – about a middle-class witch who tried not to cast spells – began an eight-year run (1964-1972) on American television!

It was 2,572 years ago last Thursday, April 12, that by tradition, the most famous leader of Jainism, Mahavira (Sanskrit महावीर) was born (560 BCE). Like his contemporary, Buddha, Mahavira was born a prince. At age 30 Mahavira left his family and royal household, gave away everything he owned, and became a monk. Althought not the founder of Jainism, Mahavira is the only saint of the religion that is historically verifiable. In his travels, Mahavira organized a brotherhood of monks, who took vows of celibacy, nudity, self-mortification, and fasting. Jainism was not, in the beginning, meant to be a religion and the existence of God is irrelevant to Jain doctrine. Mahavira believed that the universe was self-sustaining and did not have a beginning. Instead, he believed the universe endless and that it operates according to natural law. Mahavira was, in fact, an atheist. His philosophical descendants, as often happens, turned this atheistic ethic into the supernaturalist religion we find mostly in India today.

It was 269 years yesterday, April 13, that the author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson, was born (1743). Jefferson served as third US President, from 1801 to 1809, after serving as Vice President under John Adams. Jefferson and Adams were poles apart politically, but both were advanced skeptics regarding religion. While he was president, Jefferson wrote his most famous statement in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, a religious minority in Connecticut opposed to taxation to support the majority Congregationalist Church: “Believing with you as I do that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Jefferson’s “Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia” put an end there to the compulsory funding of so-called “established” churches. In this Act he urged, “no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”

It was 63 years ago yesterday that British-born American journalist Christopher Hitchens was born (1949). Hitchens has admitted admiration for and influence from such notables as Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. His bona fides as not only an atheist, but an “antitheist” were solid: “I’m an atheist. I’m not neutral about religion, I’m hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself.” He described organized religion as “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.” Hitchens died on 15 December 2011 at age 62.

Asked if his serious illness has affected his view of the afterlife, in a panel discussion including atheist writer Sam Harris, Hitchens replied, “I would say it fractionally increases my contempt for the false consolation of religion and my dislike for the dictatorial and totalitarian part of it. I presume what I say by the first is self-evident. What I mean by the second is, it’s considered perfectly normal in this society to approach dying people who you don’t know, but who are unbelievers, and say, ‘Now are you going to change your mind?’ In fact, it’s considered almost a polite question. As you know, there’s a long history of fraud about this. People claim that Darwin had a deathbed recantation, they’ve made up lies about Thomas Paine. It goes on all the time. It’s a very nasty little history. But there’s also a horrible undertone of blackmail to it. People write and say, ‘Look, you’ve got about one chance left now. Aren’t you going to take it? I’m writing to you as a friend.’ They’ve even tried it on me when I’ve been very ill, and didn’t have quite the vinegar I’d like to have had, in a hospital bed. I don’t mind. I can take it. But I think there are a lot of people older than myself, iller than myself and, perhaps, at the risk of seeming conceited, less educated than myself, to whom that’s a horrible experience. It’s very depressing and alarming to be spoken to in that way. I mean, if Sam [Harris] and I were to form a corps of people to go around religious hospitals, which is what happens in reverse, and say to people who are lying in pain, ‘Did you say you were Catholic?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, look, you may only have a few days left, but you don’t have to live them as a serf, you know. Just recognize that that was all bullshit, that the priests have been cheating you, and I guarantee you you’ll feel better.’ I don’t think that would be very ethical. I think it would be something of a breach of taste. But if it’s in the name of God, it has a social license. Well ‘fuck that,’ is what I say. And will say if it’s my last breath.

It was also yesterday, but 93 years ago on April 13, that American atheist activist, and founder of the organization American Atheists, Madalyn Murray O’Hair was born (1919). Murray never passed the bar exam and never practiced law, but that did not prevent her from bringing one case all the way to the Supreme Court. While living in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1960, Murray filed a lawsuit against the Baltimore City Public School System because her son Bill was required to participate in Bible readings in his public school. When her son refused, he was subjected to bullying, and Murray charged that school policy violated the separation clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. In 1963, the Court voted 8-1 for Murray’s argument, effectively banning school-sponsored, coerced prayer and Bible verse recitation in public schools. This court victory rewarded Murray with the epithet, “The Most Hated Woman in America,” a title she relished – and possibly invented.

Said Murray, “But people … don’t even know what atheism is. It’s not a negation of anything. You don’t have to negate what no one can prove exists. No, atheism is a very positive affirmation of man’s ability to think for himself, to do for himself, to find answers to his own problems. I’m thrilled to feel that I can rely on myself totally and absolutely; that my children are being brought up so that when they meet a problem they can’t cop out by foisting it off on God. Madalyn Murray’s going to solve her own problems, and nobody’s going to intervene. It’s about time the world got up off its knees and looked at itself in the mirror and said: ‘Well, we are men. Let’s start acting like it.’”

It was 237 years ago today, April 14, that the world’s first abolitionist society was established (1775). The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage came to life in Philadelphia with the assistance of the Quakers and the philosophical backing of Benjamin Franklin and his fellow Deist, Thomas Paine. It was Paine who had published in the same year a pamphlet opposing slavery entitled, African Slavery in America. The idea of ending slavery was slowly taking hold among the pagans of Rome when the Empire collapsed in the West. In fact, the transformation of slavery to serfdom, which was slavery without the more humane aspects it had acquired under the pagans, was a Christian innovation. What about Islam? Arab-Muslim dealers sold slaves to eager Spanish and Portuguese (Christian) buyers. The American Baptist, Methodist and Anglican churches owned a total of 600,000 slaves. Nowhere in the Bible is slavery even remotely condemned as a profound evil. When civilization turned against slavery at last – in Britain in 1833; in the US in 1865 – it was with the guidance of thinkers like Paine and Franklin and John Locke. It took the rise of Rationalism and Freethought, and the gradual realization that without a social policy the churches would become irrelevant, to elicit action from people on their knees.

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.

(The following is a transcript of a LIVE broadcast by John Mill. John is a noted free thought advocate and broadcaster. “This Week In Freethought” airs on my American Heathen® internet radio show. Air date of this particular segment: 04/07/12)

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.

It was 104 years ago on Sunday, April 1, that American psychologist Abraham Maslow was born (1908). Maslow is chiefly known for founding humanistic psychology and proposing the “hierarchy of needs” to be met so an individual can achieve “self-actualization.” Maslow warns against the mystical pursuit of personal salvation as basically selfish, frequently turning evil. “We need not take refuge in supernatural gods,” said Maslow, “to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise.”

It was 172 years ago last Monday, April 2, that the French novelist Émile Zola was born (1840). Baptized a Catholic, but an atheist all his adult life, Zola is chiefly remembered for J’accuse, the 1898 open letter to the President of France, in which he accused the military of injustice in the 1894 conviction of the Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus, on charges of giving military secrets to the Germans. Though the charges were false, they were supported by the Catholic Church. Winning the Dreyfus Case precipitated a drastic separation between Church and State in France, and permanently embittered Zola against the Church. “Civilization will not attain to its perfection,” wrote Zola, “until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.”

It was 175 years ago last Tuesday, April 3, that American naturalist John Burroughs was born (1837). Burroughs developed friendships with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Edison, John Muir, Walt Whitman, President Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Ford. In his writings he expressed a conception of the universe that one biographer described as “scientific pantheism.” Burroughs once reflected, “When I look up at the starry heavens at night and reflect upon what it is that I really see up there, I am constrained to say, `There is no God.’” Elsewhere, Burroughs wrote, “Of the hereafter I have no conception. This life is enough for me.”

Also last Tuesday, but 88 years ago, the American actor some consider one of the greatest of the 20th century, Marlon Brando was born (1924). Brando is best remembered for his film roles as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), as Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1953), and his Academy Award-winning performance as Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972). In 1990, Brando’s son, Christian, was indicted for murdering his sister’s boyfriend, though he claimed it was a drunken accident. As a witness at his trial in 1991, Brando refused to take an oath to tell the truth before God, claiming he is an atheist.

It was 472 years ago last Wednesday, April 4, that 50-year-old Spanish ecclesiastic and mystic Ignatius of Loyola was elected the first General of the Jesuits (1540). A true believer, Ignatius traveled on spiritual missions of such eccentricity that the Inquisition imprisoned him briefly in Spain in 1526. Because he was actually trying to imitate Christ – going so far as to demand the nuns give up their lovers! – that he gathered only a handful of followers at first. The Society he had Pope Paul III authorize meddled in world politics so incessantly and despicably, inciting the 30 Years’ War and the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre, that they were expelled from country after country. Before Clement XIV suppressed the Society in 1773, other popes condemned their practices (1710, 1715, 1742, and 1744). The Society was restored following the fall of Napoleon. It is true that, “no Jesuit theologian ever explicitly wrote that the end justifies the means” (McCabe), but the modus operandi of the Society of Jesus was such that it is immaterial whether the Society or Ignatius ever publicly expressed the thought.

It was 182 years ago yesterday, April 6, that 24-year-old Joseph Smith organized the first Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at Fayette, Seneca County, New York (1830). Coming from two previous generations of superstitious and neurotic seers of visions, Joseph Smith acquired the reputation as a con-man and a finder of buried treasures before his First Vision of the angel Moroni, came in 1827. However, he didn’t publish anything about it until 15 years later. Also known as the Mormon Church, the Latter-Day Saints had many confrontations with US law, particularly over polygamy, which was established by Smith’s own revelation in 1843. In a miraculous occurrence, the revelation was rescinded in 1890, although some church members still practice polygamy. Church discrimination against black people ended only in 1978. Retroactive missionary work – or posthumously baptizing non-Mormons (especially Jews) – is still practiced and is still controversial.

It was 506 years ago today, April 7, that the co-founder of the “Society of Jesus,” Francis Xavier, was born (1506). Xavier was discovered by Ignatius (1491-1556), who was 15 years his elder, while Xavier was a student in Paris. Ignatius admired the younger man’s learning, physical beauty and athletic ability as a runner. Xavier was soon seduced into the Company. His first commission was significant: he was sent in 1541 to the Portuguese colony in India to re-convert the Christians there! From 1549-1551 he spent 2½ years failing to convert the Japanese. Xavier set out for China in 1552, but died before setting foot on the Chinese mainland. His only success, it seems, was initiating the Goa Inquisition to kill apostates with the love of Christ. Like the Taliban in the dynamiting of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan (2001), Xavier rejoiced in the destruction of elements of indigenous cultures, saying, “I order everywhere the temples pulled down and all idols broken. I know not how to describe in words the joy I feel before the spectacle of pulling down and destroying the idols.”

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.