5.31.2010

Mikey Weinstein: A Champion of Religious Freedom in the Military

Mikey-Weinstein.jpgToday is Memorial Day in the U.S., a day to honor the men and women who have given their lives in our military. I want to do something a bit different for Memorial Day this year and honor an Air Force veteran who is still with us: Mikey Weinstein, a true hero.

Weinstein founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) four years ago and has been the most influential defender of church-state separation in the U.S. military since that time. His organization has often worked alongside groups such as the Freedom From Religion Foundation and Americans United for Separation of Church and State on cases involving military personnel.

Stephen Glain wrote an excellent piece on Weinstein for Foreign Policy last week, and I cannot recommend it enough for those who may have missed it. Not only does it describe how Weinstein became interested in this form of activism and highlight some of his recent accomplishments, but it serves as a wake-up call to those who are still reluctant to acknowledge the well organized efforts to Christianize the U.S. armed forces.
For the past four years, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has been doing battle with a Christian subculture that, he believes, is trying to Christianize the U.S. armed forces with the help of a complicit Pentagon brass. He calls it the "fundamentalist Christian parachurch-military-corporate-proselytizing complex," a mouthful by which he means holy warriors in contempt of the constitutional barrier between church and state.
I have praised Weinstein and the MRFF here many times, as he often seems to be the only thing standing in the way of a Christian extremist military. Glain quotes Weinstein as saying that the scariest part of the efforts to remake the U.S. military as a Christian extremist force is that it "is it's going on not with the blind eye of the Pentagon but with its full and totally enthusiastic support." From what I've read in The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, this certainly seems to be the case.

Weinstein and his organization helped in Spc. Dustin Chalker's suit over being forced to participate in public prayer sessions, were key in getting Trijicon to stop engraving bible references on the rifle scopes they were selling to the U.S. military, and persuaded the Pentagon to rescind an invitation to have Christian extremist Franklin Graham speak at a National Day of Prayer Task Force service. He will likely next take up the case of Zachari Klawonn, a Muslim at Fort Hood, TX, who says that he has been harassed and subjected to anti-Islamic bigotry since the on-base shooting.

One of the things I found most interesting about Glain's profile was the revelation that most of Weinstein's clients are Christian soldiers, Catholics and mainline Protestants, who are being harassed by evangelical superiors.
The root of the problem, Weinstein believes, is a cluster of well-funded groups dedicated to Christianizing the military and proselytizing abroad.
From Sharlet's The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, I can see the fingerprints of "The Family" all over this. In fact, the names of the organizations Weinstein provides in the article are the same Family-affiliated groups Sharlet describes. This is more than a little distressing, and it makes me appreciate Weinstein's efforts all the more.

Note: By using the "atheist heroes" label for this post, I am not claiming that Mikey Weinstein is an atheist. He has worked on behalf of atheists as well as others in the military who are not evangelical Christians, and I applaud his efforts.

5.27.2010

Atheists Who Believe in Ghosts

ghost

As strange as it may initially seem, there are atheists who believe in ghosts. Once we understand that atheism refers to one's lack of belief in gods, we can see that there is nothing about the definition of atheism that makes belief in ghosts problematic. While most atheists do seem to be materialists in the sense that they do not believe in anything outside of nature (i.e., anything supernatural), atheism does not require this sort of materialism. So yes, someone can be an atheist and still believe in ghosts, spirits, and the like. But for those of us who arrived at atheism via skepticism, critical thinking, and empiricism, the presence of ghost-believing atheists often strikes us as a bit odd.

While playing with the now defunct StumbleUpon in an effort to discover some new secular blogs, I happened across an atheist blog written by someone who was trying to reconcile atheism with "spirituality." Moments later I found myself at Atheist Nexus, shaking my head in disbelief over a thread in which an atheist was asking other atheists about their experiences with "hauntings." This seemed to be a popular topic.

5.20.2010

Sexy Atheist Women are Good for the Atheist Community

megan-atheist-small.jpgWe all know that Christianity has a long history of subjugating women. Even today, feminism and female reproductive freedom are among the favorite targets of Christian extremists in the U.S. Many would like to strip women of their rights, rolling back the gains women have made in the last century. Simply put, they want women to be seen but not heard.

And yet, the atheist community is not exactly perfect when it comes to the role of women either. Why is it that when a member of the atheist community who happens to be a physically attractive woman uses her appearance to help spread the atheist meme, so many "haters" come out of the woodwork? Is it jealously, an unusual application of feminism, or is there something else behind the negative reactions? We know that sex sells, and if we are interested in exposing more people to atheism, it would seem that we might welcome those who were able to bring some sex appeal to their message. After all, it is the message that matters here, right?

5.18.2010

Atheist Anger and Using it Effectively

Angry Penguin
Angry Penguin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
My last post on this topic, Atheist Anger and Getting Past It, was misinterpreted by some as suggesting that I was telling atheists they should get over their anger. That would be awfully hypocritical of me since that is not remotely close to what I have done or what I have been advocating since I started writing this blog. No, the prior post was designed to open the discussion and encourage readers to check out Godless Girl's post that inspired it in the first place. In this post, I'll pick up where I left off and explain how my experience and my conclusions differ somewhat from that of Godless Girl.

5.14.2010

Atheist Anger and Getting Past It

Anger Controlls Him
Anger Controlls Him (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When I started this post, my plan was to produce a brief reaction to a recent post by Godless Girl about getting past the anger toward religion and religious believers some of us feel (update: Godless Girl's blog is no longer active). I know I've been referencing a lot of her posts lately, but it is her fault for writing such good ones! Before I realized what had happened, I had already written way too much for a single post and realized I was still barely scratching the surface of what I wanted to say. I see now that this will have to be a multi-post series.

The sort of anger that some atheists feel toward religion and even religious believers is a subject I have been meaning to address for a long time. I've had a fairly different experience from that described by Godless Girl and, not surprisingly, it has led me to a somewhat different set of conclusions about this sort of anger and what to do about it. In this post, I'd like to start with an overview of Godless Girl's recommendations. Later posts will address how my experience compares and some of the different conclusions I have reached.

5.10.2010

Religion: What's the Harm?

ImagineNoReligion.jpg

Religion provides emotional comfort, hope, and an important social network to countless people, so if they want to believe superstitious nonsense, what's the harm? Why can't we atheists simply leave them to their delusion and shut up about it?

How many times have you heard this or a similar plea? Sometimes it masquerades as a request for "tolerance" (even though there are many beliefs and behaviors of which no moral human should be tolerant), and other times it serves as an effort to silence criticism of beliefs that one holds dear. But criticism is sometimes vital. There are times when we must speak out, even if it means offending the religious.

5.09.2010

Reshaping the Catholic Church

Virgin Mary in a church
Philip Jenkins had an interesting article in The New Republic last week addressing the Catholic child rape crises and their likely impact on the church. His conclusion was that while the church will survive these widespread scandals, it will probably end up being reshaped by them. For many of us, the idea of the church surviving is unpleasant. Unfortunately, how it might be reshaped is problematic as well.

Jenkins suggests that the abuse scandals will hasten a shift in the church's power from Europe to Africa and Latin America. The power will endure, but its base will shift. It is a fascinating theory and a well-written article that is worth your attention.

Jenkins writes:
Previous abuse scandals, such as those in the United States in the early 2000s, had no obvious effect on Catholic adherence in Europe. Yet the recent allegations, which hit Germany, Ireland, Belgium and other European countries, will resonate deeply on the continent, especially since charges of official negligence seem to reach to the pope himself. The impact will be particularly strong in Western Europe, with its powerful media that are increasingly antagonistic toward the Catholic hierarchy and even the Church itself.

5.08.2010

Wisdom of the Christian Bible

Bible.jpg

It amazes me that anyone living today could possibly think that this ancient book, full of contradictions and inaccuracies, offers all the answers to life's questions. Did the Christian god really create humans to be that stupid?

Of course, the answer lies not in stupidity but with indoctrination. People believe in this "holy" book, for the most part, because they were trained from an early age to believe in it. Indoctrination is powerful stuff! But that's not all. In addition to indoctrination, religious believers leverage an elaborate system of social disapproval and even shunning to make it far less likely that anyone will express doubt in their assorted teachings. We've all heard about teenage atheists being disowned by their families and kicked out of their home merely for coming out at atheists.

5.05.2010

An Open Letter to American Catholics

Arakuzha Syro-Malabar Catholic Church...
Arakuzha Syro-Malabar Catholic Church near Muvattupuzha. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dear Catholics,

Those who pigeonhole you do you a disservice. Surveys show that many of you do not agree with the Pope on many important issues (e.g., contraception, reproductive freedom). You probably don't consider him divine or infallible. That is good; it shows you are willing to think for yourselves and ask difficult questions.

Much like we non-Catholics, I suspect that you are concerned about the epidemic of child sexual abuse happening in the Catholic Church. When the abuse itself is combined with overwhelming evidence that the Church has concealed it, lied about it, and enabled it to continue through practices such as transferring known offenders to other locations, we all have cause for concern.

I don't blame you personally for any of this. You aren't abusing anyone, and you aren't covering anything up. If it was up to you, I suspect the clergy who rape children would get exactly what they deserve, right? And the priest you respect at your local church probably isn't abusing children either.