The

$2.50

American Atheist
A Journal of Atheist News and Thought

Vol. 24, No.7, July, 1982

. AH YES ...
NEVER
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$UCKER
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AMERICAN ATHEISTS
is a non-profit, non-political, educational organization, dedicated to the complete and absolute separation of state and church.
We accept the explanation of Thomas Jefferson that the "First Amendment" to the Constitution of the United States was
meant to create a "wall of separation" between state and church.
American Atheists are organized to stimulate and promote freedom of thought and inquiry concerning religious beliefs,
creeds, dogmas, tenets, rituals and practices;
to collect and disseminate information, data and literature on all religions and promote a more thorough understanding
of them, their origins and histories;
to encourage the development and public acceptance of a human ethical system, stressing the mutual sympathy,
understanding
and interdependence
of all people and the corresponding
responsibility of each individual in relation to
society;
.
to develop and propagate a culture in which man is the central figure who alone must be the source of strength, progress
and ideals for the well-being and happiness of humanity;
to promote the study of the arts and sciences and of all problems affecting the maintenance,
perpetuation
and
enrichment of human (and other) life;
to engage in such social, educational. legal and cultural activity as will be useful and beneficial to members of American
Atheists and to society as a whole.
Atheism may be defined
as the mental attitude which
unreservedly
accepts
the
supremacy
of reason and
aims at establishing
a lifestyle and ethical outlook
verifiable by experience and
the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and
creeds.
Materialism declares that
the cosmos
is devoid of
immanent
conscious
purpose; that it is governed by
its own inherent, immutable
and impersonal laws; that
there is no supernatural
interference in human life;
that man - finding
his
resources within himself can and must create his own
destiny. Materialism restores
to man his dignity and his
intellectual integrity. It teaches
that we must prize our life
on earth and strive always to
improve it. It holds that man
is capable
of creating
a
social system based on reason
and justice. Materialism's
"faith" is in man and man's
ability to transform the world
culture by his own efforts.
This is a commitment which
is in every essence life asserting. It considers the struggle
for progress
as a moral
obligation
and impossible
without
noble ideas that
inspire man to bold creative
works. Materialism
holds
that humankind's
potential
for good and for an outreach
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(Vol. 24, No.5) May, 1982

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- Bill Talley
[F)]'ro@fIilil@rnl1fI)]'fIilil[F)],@D!Jcil- Freudian Excerpts
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- Gregory Fahy, PhD

Editor-in-Chief
Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Managing Editor
Jon G, Murray

Poetry
Robin Murray O'Hair
Angeline Bennett
Gerald Tholen

Production Staff
Art Brenner
Bill Kight
Richard Smith
Gerald Tholen
Gloria Tholen

Non-Resident Staff
G, Stanley Brown
Jeff Frankel
Ignatz Sahula-Dycke
Fred Woodworth

Austin, Texas

6
7
14

26
27

The American Atheist magazine is published monthly at the Gustav Broukal American Atheist Press, 2210 Hancock Dr., Austin, TX 78756, and
1982 by Society of
Separationists, Inc., a non-profit, non-political, educational organization dedicated to
the complete and absolute separation of
state and church, Mailing address: P.O. Box
2117/Austin, TX 78768-2117. A free subscription is provided as an incident of membership in the American Atheists organization. Subscriptions are available at $25. for
one year terms only, Manuscripts submitted
must be typed, double-spaced and accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The editors assume no responsibility
for unsolicited manuscripts.
The American Atheist magazine
is indexed in

Monthly Periodical Index

ISSN: 0332-4310

July, 1982

ON THE COVER
Ahh, yesl Shades of Claude William
Dukenfield - better known to us all as
"W.C. Fields". His masterful portrayal
of the "magnificent
fraud" will be
remembered and re-enacted for countless generations. Those who loved his
roguish mock pompousness remember him as a devout nonbeliever. We
therefore apologize for using this satirical characterization of Jerry Falwell in
the Fieldsian image. We know that
although Mr. Fields maintained his
"image" both on and off stage, he was
at least a hard working and accomplished artist. His "image" was an
earthy facade which reflected the
gross charlatanry of humankind with
all its "perfect rascalities". His ability
to maintain such an image and still
'command respect and admiration can
only identify him as a gentleman with
unique talents and deep humourous
honesty and poise.
Falwell, on the other hand, plays a
similar role - but in a realistic sense.
His Fieldsian image is not an actl - '
it's Falwell personified! It is his intention to sell Falwellian philosophy to
the world - in earnest. He "sells" it
daily to the tune of millions of dollars
per week. Too bad that Claude Dukenfield was basically too honest to become an evangelical preacher - he
could have made Falwell look like a
piker by comparison, Too bad also that
so many people take Falwell, the
second-rate Fieldsian impersonator,
seriously. It was only intended to be an
act, Jerryl
G Tholen

Page I

EDITORIAL

JON GARTH MURRA Y

The "Good" Book

In an interview early in his bid for the office of president,
Reagan was adamant: the only guide which the nation really
needed was the "good" book - the bible. He made it known
that he did not subscribe to the "theory" of evolution, that
Nancy's place was in the home, that parochial schools
should receive the largess of government and that abortion
was an evil upon the soul of the nation.
All of his utterances on these issues, heavily related to
religion and that peculiar activity thereof which is yclept
"fundamentalism," were either muted or ignored by the
media as they focused on his charisma, his innate charm
and the doctrine of economic chaos which they chose to
label Reaganomics, touting it to the heavens. There were
only two groups in the nation involved with his aside and
sotto voce religious utterances: (1) American Atheists who
were appalled and spoke loudly about that side of the
president, albeit being then the voice of the turtle abroad in
the land and (2) the fundamentalist, radical, religious right.
The former watched, evaluated and warned; the latter
schemed, conspired, aided and abetted. The former could
only scream aloud, "Don't you hear what he is saying?"
while the latter poured millions of dollars and man hours
into his campaign. The smug media was complaisant when
in the early weeks of his term in office he did not turn
immediately to embrace the radical religious right. Speaking
of "politics as usual," it was only in an aside that the media
deigned to notice or comment that the religious NCPAC
group had chastised Reagan for not amply rewarding its
activity. The phenomenon of six "liberal" Senatorial aspirants to re-election being ousted from office was analyzed
as being primarily a disgust with "liberalism" rather than the
machinations of a compact group of religious nuts working
in concert, using sophisticated but blackguard techniques
and money.
When Reagan's appointments to power emerged in the
next year or two James Watt, a fundamentalist madman
was esconced in the Department of Interior, roman catholic
Alexander Haig was firmly entrenched in the State Department and Bob Billings was decimating public education
from inside the federal Department of Education. That was
only the tip of the iceberg. But, the media (with the
exception of cartoonists) continued to ignore the religious
base from which flowed the political implications. The basic
primitivism of the president himself was not explored, but
for, again, the most casual asides concerned with his "deep
commitment" to "religious ideals." But, the radical religious
right knew him well. The leaders and groups of that stance
had taken time out to learn his positions and to explore in
depth the shallowness of the man. They found access to him
easy and they consorted there, in the White House, with the
most respectable religious representatives who understood
that the madmen were advancing old-line religion as well as
their fundamentalism as they intruded more blatantly into
the political process. It was almost like having the Jesuits in
power again. There was no more need for back-rooms, or
intrigue. Any take-over could be overt and proclamations
were broadcast that the religious had an equal right to
political power.
Page 2

July.

1982

The election process in our nation rolls around every two

years and Reagan began early this year to woo the religious
radical right again - this time with action, not promises. He
directed his staff to prepare a bill to be introduced into
Congress to give financial relief to parents who send their
children to parochial schools, another bill to outlaw abortions. He turned back an I.R.S. ruling which would require
religious schools NOT to be racist. And, he had a White
House bill presented to Congress to return prayers to the
public schools.
In this decade the attack has been directed against
science, education, women and peace - with the President
of the United States in the vanguard of the attack. His
witting lackeys in the United States Senate and the House
of Representatives, completely devoid of either courage or
intellectual acumen, rush to do his bidding.
But hardly anyone would have thought that they were
capable of the treachery which is documented in the article
on page 4 of this issue of the American Atheist, titled
"Danger - Theocracy Ahead."
Our founding fathers abhorred the bible and repudiated
it. The finest words of Thoma's Paine were the scathing
unmasking of this vile and abominable, unspeakably obscene and disgusting book. His Age of Reason was a
scathing attack on this anti-human, anti-life, anti-female
accumulation of printed offal produced by diseased minds.
Indeed, the first six presidents of the United States took
pride in being deists, which is to say: repudiators
of
christianity, the bible and the church systems of the
then new America. They were joined whole heartedly by
Benjamin Franklin, Co!. Ethan Allen, George Mason,
Lafayette, Stephen Girard and a host of others. Church
attendance was down to 3%and there was hope at the time
that religion would entirely disappear.
Now for the United States Congress to resurrect and
eulogize a book which has caused more misery to all of
mankind, in every age, since its hallowing, than any other
idea or document is a crime against humanity, against
education, against science. This abject subservience to fear
- for it is fear that motivated the vote - of reprisals from
the religious nuts of our nation can no longer be tolerated.
The bible is the worst of human thought, not the best. It is
the excrement of primitive man, now to be discarded, not
resurrected.
Our Congress sinks constantly lower. In the terrible fears
of McCarthyism it put the shameful and disgraceful motto
"In god we trust" onto our currency and coins, befouled the
national pledge of allegiance with the insert "under god,"
and embarrassed our nation in the world with an enforced
"day of prayer." McCarthyism is behind us, but now the
Brave New World of 1984, locked into religious hysteria and
non-think, threatens us ahead. It is the responsibility of
American Atheists to stop this erosion of our original
founding ideas: get to your senators and representatives,
and to your (ugh) president and tell them of your shock and
dismay. It's our country being befouled - it is our duty to
stop it.
The American

Atheist

On Our Way
Ignatz Sahula-Dycke

A TIME OF RECKONING
The current era is certainly a time for every American's
concern for his country. Whenever in any land as great a
number own up to being god-believers as ours have, it's a
testimonial to thoughtlessness
-- as well as to the people's
submissiveness
to an imaginary authority. Especially so
when their church-engendered
outlook prompts them to
see themselves
above reproach. It prompts them to lie
magnificently to one another about their bible's sanctity and
the necessity they assume exists for its survival. Most
Americans of this stamp have rarely, if ever, suffered from a
want of anything except more of the luxurious living they
enjoyed in full measure most of the time, and consequently
-- I suppose out of sheer ennui - appoint themselves as
mentors to their less fortunate lower middle class citizens.
In this category of less fortunate people I number those who
drove only one automobile, had a small powerboat, and
drank beer or domestic champagne. Class distinctions of
this kind are what in past years most of us strived for, of late
had to despondently
give up, and in today's "austere"
circumstances
are beginning to feel unjustly deprived of.
Most of those who rank as upper middle class, if judged
by their smug outlook, deem themselves god's elect and
presume that were all their inferiors further down the ladder
god- thankers, they'd find life a lot brighter and more secure.
These opinionated upper crust folk are confident that god
selected them in particular for the position they occupy in
our frothy American life. I feel compelled to include in their
number a good half of the members of our congressional
body in Washington. We Americans have come a long way
emotionally since 1776, but rationally and aspirationally
most of the way in reverse.
.
So, except for the dangers of the divisiveness of the
christianist ethic which has ever since the days of Rome's
earliest popes characterized
it, there's very little else for
anyone to worry about in our land of liberty where
evangelists, preachers,
and other "holy" mendicants are
able to extortively collect, through threats of some god's
displeasure, a cool tax-free billion or more each year from
their trembling biblical indoctrinees.
It seems to me that
anyone ought to readily perceive that christianist doctrinaires (who now for twenty centuries have boasted about
their religion's ability to expunge in every nook and cranny
of every land on earth the misery of the common people)
have roundly failed to deliver. The christian doctrine is
anachronistic
today; it has reached the end of the rope
given it by the eighty generations it benumbed with god-talk
and its promises of heaven and threats of hell. It no longer
draws the crowd - like a circus that left behind its calliope
and trained elephants.
This above-mentioned
contingent of "churchmen"
isn't
entirely to blame for their behavior, and shouldn't be.
They've been encouraged in their craft nearly everywhere
they've secured a foothold. The authorities have throughAustin. Texas

out Western history found them useful and largely indispensable. Wherever clerical god- talk wasn't supported openly it
was done tacitly, and the bamboozled mass accepted it as
its lot because the priests always touted it as god's ticket to
heavenly bliss: bliss promised but to date never dished up.
Thousands are nowadays realizing how true this is, and how
sad and critical was the era of religious tomfoolery out of
which they at long last managed to emerge. So, at least for
the time being, we have this bit to comfort us. When we shall
have corrected the mess now befoundering us, it will be far
more generally understood
than ever before that human
ingenuity and work accomplished it - not some god, no
matter how charming his thespian proxy or interpreter.
The recovery that all of us are striving for is still eluding
us, and in a large way impeded by people who continue
believing and saying that none are to be trusted who don't
believe in a god. Both our president and our secretary of
state have in recent days been reported to have said this for
publication. Opinions of this variety make reconcilement of
the various differences between nations only more difficult.
It's clearly apparent to me that during the past twelve or
fifteen years we've suffered from a rash of "born-again"
chiefs of state, everyone of whom sanctimoniously tried to
inveigle us into his Jordan for a taste of his kind of baptismal
"holy" water. Nixon constantly reminded us of his mother's
Quakerism;
Carter said he thought he'd like to be an
evangelist, Reagan is frequently and publicly appealing to
his particular godling to bless us. The proper place for
religious contemplation, and ardent outpouring of this kind
is within the mental complex of anyone so inclined - never
in the sphere of politics. Yet, nowadays it is irritatingly
commonplace
that almost without exception anyone who
enters public office waxes authoritarian once used to it, and
shows that he thinks himself specially chosen by his god to
be the religious prefect of his neighbor instead of his elected
servant.
This happens so prevalently it should rank as megalomania. Not only have kings, premiers, presidents and other
chiefs of state been victims of this malady, but it's presently
shown to be contagious by the goings-on in our Senate and
House, a veritable revival meeting where a fervently religious faction ignores rationale. Most of this is being
contrived there by wily preachers who, besides flaunting
creationism, are gaining through the voting potentiality of
their fundamentalist
cohorts the ear of the people in
congress who seek re-election. Besides this there exists in
our land an element confidently believing that a religious
revival will speed up our economic recovery, even though
religion has had two thousand years to prove itself beneficial
and has shamefully failed. Should it be given another two
thousand years?
But there's also another clique whom the plethora of
contributors
has emboldened and made arrogant. Begin-

July,

1982

Page 3

same time. They're churchgoing believers by force of habit,

ning as itinerant evangelists these individuals today exert
dictatorial power. We hear about Roberts, Graham, the
staying with it because they are lacking the backbone to
Armstrongs, Swaggart, and others because they command
outright reject it. Right or wrong, we can't evade that
it. It's eerie that preachers of this species aren't ignored in
Western humankind is progressing despite the bible in its
hand, inasmuch as the fable of genesis is day by day rattling
an era marked by science: by trips to the moon, satellites
less and less in its frontal lobe. As for us Americans, there's
that bring us close-ups of Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, and
very little in all this to make anyone a pessimist.
other planets; as well as earth-circling
machines that
The life of today's American - yours and mine - is
transmit information from all points of the globe_
unquestionably the most enviable of any on the globe. We
So here we are, benefitting from scientific research and
take it for granted, forgetting that in the Constitution
and
technology, but with a large segment of our population
Bill of Rights the deep wisdom of our nation's Founders
worshipping concepts that today reflect hardly more than
makes it so. Hence, as long as we will use our heads to
the crudity of the caveman's club and sling. Sooner or later,
of course, even these bamboozled citizens will arrive at the : preserve it inviolate, our worries about inflation, oil, employconclusion that life on our planet depends first of all on our
ment, human rights and other matters good and bad,
important or trifling, will pale in the light it sheds equally
sun and forces that exist within space in constant ferment,
upon the humblest no less than the proudest of us.
creating here and destroying there, both at one and the

DANGER: THEOCRA CY AHEAD!

The religious know better than anyone else that if they win the symbols they win the country. The bottom line
is tax support for religions in the United States, especially judeo-christianity
and those sects within it that have
the most power. The name of the result is theocracy.
We are the only country in the world with religious slogans on our money and god in our pledge. We are the
laughing stock of the world with our religious media. Billy Graham is recognized as a clown worldwide. No other
governments open their proceedings with prayer. Yet, ours is the nation which paved the way for the concept of
state/ church separation.
Now the Congress of the United States wants to demonstrate to the world that it is populated by asses. Read
the Senate Joint Resolution here reproduced just as it was voted - and ask yourself why the media and your
representatives kept as quiet as they did about it.
The nation is slowly being delivered over to the religious nuts, by your legislative bodies, by your judiciary
power, by your executive branch at city, county, state and federal level. Either you do something about it NOW
or you will be in their hands tomorrow.
97TH
CONGRESS
2D SESSION

SJ RES 165

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

APRIL

Referred

to the Committee

5, 1982
on Post Office and Civil Service

JOINT RESOLUTION
Authorizing and requesting the President to proclaim 1983 as
the "Year of the Bible" .
.'Vhereas the Bible, the Word of God, has made a unique contribution in shaping the United States as a distinctive and
blessed nation and people;
Whereas deeply held religious convictions sprmgmg from the
Holy Scriptures led to the early settlement of our Nation;
Page 4

July, 1982

The American

Atheist

Whereas

Biblical teachings inspired concepts of civil government

that are contained

the Constitution
Whereas

many

Presidents
tribute

in our Declaration

of Independence

and

of the United States;

of our great
Washington,

to the

national

Jackson,

surpassing

leaders-among

Lincoln, and Wilson-paid

influence

country's

development,

son that

the Bible is "the

them

of the Bible

as in the words of President

rock on which

in our
J ack-

our Republic

rests";

2
Whereas

the history of our Nation clearly illustrates

voluntarily

applying

the teachings

the value of .

of the Scriptures

in the

lives of individuals, families, and societies;

Whereas

this Nation

now faces great

challenges

that will test

this Nation as it has never been tested before; and

Whereas

that

renewing

our knowledge

through Holy Scripture

can strengthen

people: Now, therefore,

be it

of and faith

III

God

us as a nation and a

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives

2 of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

3 That the President
4

is authorized

and requested

to designate

1983 as a national "Year of the Bible" in recognition

5 the formative

of both

influence the Bible has been for our Nation,

6 and our national need to study and apply the teachings of the
7 Holy Scriptures.
Passed the Senate March 31 (legislative day, February
22), 1982.
Attest:

WILLIAM

F. HILDENBRAND,

Secretary.

SJ 165 RFH
Austin, Texas

July.

1982

Page 5

TO PRESERVE WORLD PEACE IS THE URGENT TASK OF

TODAY
Yevgeni Mayat, Candidate of Science (Philosophy), Moscow House of Scientific Atheism
Over the past few years the threat to peace has grown
tremendously.
The activity of militarist circles and the
military potential accumulated in the world have confronted
the human race with the choice: to be or not to be? In light of
this uncompromising
option the joint efforts of everyone,
whether they are believers or Atheists, are bent on saving
humankind and world civilization from nuclear catastrophe.
One of the specific features of Soviet society is that most
of its members are confirmed Atheists. At the same time,
there are believers among Soviet people. Like all Soviet
people they are gainfully employed, enjoy all the rights of
Soviet citizens and take an active part in the country's
public life. The Soviet Constitution
guarantees each citizen's right to profess or not to profess any religion and to
conduct religious worship or spread atheistic education. All
Soviet citizens are equal under the law, irrespective of their
attitude to religion. However, Atheists deliver lectures and
publish articles in the press trying to show believers the
unscientific character of religious concepts and dogmas and
their illusory and harmful nature for society and the
personality. But they do avoid criticizing the religious
convictions of believers, no matter which religion it is.
A few years ago all sober-minded
people regarded
nuclear war as suicide, but today we hear statements about
its limited permissibility. The dangerous policy pursued by
certain Western circles aimed at attaining military superiority is giving rise to the creation of new types and systems of
mass destruction. The arms race is an increasingly heavy
load for the people to shoulder. In this situation only one
choice can be made - to intensify the struggle for a stop to
the arms race and for the policy of disarmament.
In this
struggle all Soviet citizens, believers and Atheists, form a
united front and welcome the peaceful foreign policy of the
Soviet government,
whose course is aimed averting the
threat of war and at strengthening
international security
and cooperation.
Soviet people are unanimous
that with the current
exacerbation
of the world situation it is of paramount
importance to maintain cooperation with all peace forces.
Although the ideals of marxist humanism radically differ
from religious ideals, they agree that man is a supreme
value. A basic principle of Soviet ethics is "Everything for
the sake of humankind, for the benefit of humankind." This
thesis proceeds
from the ethics of the Soviet people.
Showing respect and consideration for all people, irrespective of their profession, we cannot remain indifferent to
racial or religious prejudices and to outmoded reactionary
customs, to everything which prevents us from displaying
our social activity.
We do not believe that the concern for peace is the
monopoly of politicians and statesmen. We, Atheists, are
convinced that in the present alarming situation religious
people should not remain passive, and we do not think that
world peace and its preservation
are not the tasks of
churches and religious associations. That is why we welPage 6

July. 1982

come the appeal of the participants in the Moscow world

conference
of religious workers to the Twelfth Special
Session of the UN General Assembly on Disarmament.
This appeal calls for us to act resolutely to stop the arms
race, to cleanse our Earth from the blight of nuclear
weapons and to devote the enormous
resources
now
wasted on armaments to the building of a world without
wars.
No matter what our world outlook is, no matter whether
we are religious or Atheists, we should not shut our eyes to
reality. There is no justification for the fact that billions of
dollars are spent on armaments, while hundreds of millions
live in poverty, in slums, are jobless and fear the next day.
No man, whether he is a believer or an Atheist, can remain
indifferent to sorrowful children, the physical and moral
sufferings of the oppressed and poor and to the existence of
social evils.
While they call for joint action with believers, Atheists
have no intentions to ignore their differences with them on
other problems - religious world outlook, religious ideology, religious concepts and doctrines which, in our opinion,
hinder the progress of humankind.
Even now religious
conflicts bring about the expulsion of millions of people
from their native lands and mass massacres.
It is only
internationalism,
an inalienable principle of the scientific
materialist world outlook, which is a safeguard for the
harmonious development of national relations. This world
outlook strives for the unification of working people not on
the basis of illusory ideals, but on the basis of real objectives
and tasks.
Soviet Atheists proceed from the thesis that the active
participation of believers in the struggle against militarism,
against the threat of a new world war and for social justice is
of profound educational
importance.
Speaking frankly
about our differences with the religious ideology, we stress
another aspect - the community of vital interests of the
working people, irrespective of the fact whether they are
religious people or Atheists.

The American

Atheist

"WE BURY THE INTELLECTUALS"

by Bill Talley

Alcoholics Anonymous Saves the Religious, Discards the Majority, but There are Alternatives
By any dictionary definition, Alcoholics Anonymous is a
religion. The written and oral tenets of the program are shot
through with old-time godism, as well as such medieval
practices as confession, self-abnegation, ritual, prayer and
absolution. The exclusively christian lord's prayer, from the
new testament's "sermon on the mount," is used to close all
meetings in a hand-holding ritual of unanimous christian
worship. Jews, moslems, hindus - all non-christians either
go along or join the Atheists and other "unteachables"
back
on the streets.
This is in direct contradiction
to the official Alcoholics
Anonymous
preamble which is read at most of their
meetings, which says, " ... we are not allied with any sect,
denomination, organization or institution ... " To open their
meetings, all Alcoholics Anonymous groups use what they
call the serenity prayer: "God grant me the serenity to
accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change
the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."
Well indoctrinated members tell new people, "This is not
a religious program; it's a spiritual program." Whereupon
they usually lapse into a sermonette about the necessity of
having a "higher power" for unseen help with getting sober.
If the new person is not scared away (it's tough enough to
admit one needs help in the first place), then the talker has a
new "pigeon," as they are rightly called. Like most other
religionists, they haven't bothered to look up the word they
disavow, or if they have, they play fast and loose with
semantics, distorting meanings to their best advantage. If
they looked up the word cult, they would find that
Alcoholics Anonymous qualifies for that designation, too.
Even in the more instructive parts of the program, the
oral discussion of alcohol and how to kick it, what would be
taken as metaphors
by any thinking individual becomes
gospel and is taken by the devout as the literal word of the
almighty. "Let go and let gawd," is one of the oral dogmas
which is taken literally as divine canon. The true believers
are convinced that some heavenly parent is literally controlling their lives, down to job and family decisions. "And,"
they avow, "every time I take it back, I screw things up."
This refers to the third step of the 12-step program, which is
covered later. (12 apostles equals 12 steps, right? More
christianity. )
Also characteristic
of such religious self-help organizations is a cultish fanaticism that infects the mainstream of
Alcoholics Anonymous membership, leaving the moderate
and the atheistic to flounder or seek other sources of help
with addiction to alcohol. Other sources, unfortunately, are
not as available as Alcoholics Anonymous in the neighborhoods, on a daily basis.
The fanatics have one powerful argument that is difficult
even for professionals to contend with: nonconformity can
have tragic consequences
- prison, death or worse,
massive brain damage which can leave the addict a
vegetable, fit only for an institution. Alcoholics Anonymous
Austin, Texas

old timers can truthfully point to such cases and chronicle

them in ghastly detail as examples of what happens to those
who don't "get the program."
To get the program, one must "work" the 12 steps, which
are billed in the Alcoholics Anonymous book as "suggestions" for recovery, but in reality are preached as manda. tories to salvation. This includes the greatest stumbling
block for intelligent drunks, the infamous Third Step:
"Made decision to turn our will (sic) and our lives over to the
care of god as we understood him. "
The italicized " ... as we understood him," was an afterthought tacked on at the insistence of the only Atheist of the
original 100 alcoholics who, in 1939, huddled together for
mutual support and formed the embryonic nucleus of what
is now the international organization of Alcoholics Anonymous.
His story is recounted in the "Big Book" of Alcoholics
Anonymous as one who objected to the religious preoccupation of his fellows, only to prove himself wrong by getting
deathly drunk again and coming back full of contrition and
newfound faith in the Alcoholics Anonymous religion and its
gawd. The Atheist's story is used as a parable to teach that
alkies really have no choice but to get religion - "find a
higher power" - or perish. And that includes fully taking
the third step with deadpan belief in its literal meaning. This
is done with one's sponsor, a member of respectably longterm sobriety who volunteers to coach his/her pigeon
through the program.

SPIRITUAL BASIS - OR ELSE!

In Chapter 4, entitled "We Agnostics," the Big Book
admits, "About half our original fellowship were of exactly
that type (Atheist or Agnostic)." Thus, using second
person, past tense to soften its commandments,
the book
quickly adds, "But after awhile we had to face the fact that
we must find a spiritual basis of life - or else." This kind of
blatant threat is repeated through the rest of the book,
though it again admits, " ... something like half of us thought
we were Atheists or Agnostics." But only "thought" they
were. Truth is, they didn't know what an Atheist or an
Agnostic really was.
The tipoff to the root problem with Alcoholics Anonymous, and its greatest contradiction,
comes in the next
paragraph: "If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy
of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us
would have recovered long ago." By itself, that says that
alcohol addiction is not a moral or philosophical problem;
that immorality is not, as society erroneously believes, the
underlying reason for the dissipation and ruin of problem
drinkers.
The demographic
facts back up that proposition. The
membership of Alcoholics Anonymous and the rest of the
alcoholic fraternity includes clergy from virtually all religions, as well as moral and immoral representatives of every

July. 1982

Page 7

conceivable segment and strata of secular society. Recent

research
points to the inevitable conclusion
that the
problem is a biochemical one, and that it is definitely
hereditary. A research pharmacologist
in Houston has
isolated a substance known as THIQ (for short) which is
found in the hypothalamus
of all problem drinkers. And,
surprise, the same substance shows up in the brains of all
sedative addicts, including those hooked on heroin, valium,
librium, etc. No THIQ is found in the brains of nonalcoholics.
These findings have not been published in the popular
press, probably for fear that these discoveries will lead to a
cure (and they will) which might lead thousands of hopeful
alkies to jump off the wagon thinking salvation is just around
the corner. The scientists probably have a point, though I
hope to do a definitive article on the latest findings as soon
as the data can be located.
In the next breath after the morality disclaimer, the
founders reveal that they were still hooked on the erroneous beliefs of society, and they confess that alcoholism must
after all be a problem of morality, as the book says, " ... we
have written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well
as moral."
So. Though a mere code of morals was not sufficient to
overcome alcoholism, they say, and not even going to
church helped, they've written a moral and spiritual book
anyway, and everyone "knows" that morality is always
equated with religion, so the book has to brew up a special
new brand of religion - just to add alcohol to christianity,
throw in some drunk stories and serve without research,
giving almighty gawd all the credit and none of the blame.
The only way any alcoholic can find and keep sobriety
-any alcoholic, it says - is by believing in a "Power (their
caps) greater than ourselves," which wouldn't be so difficult
except that "greater" is translated to "higher" and it is most
often referred to as "God" (sic).
These contradictions
are in direct contradiction
to the
disease theory, which is also postulated in the book and in
oral dogma; that alcoholism is an incurable, progressive
disease which must be regarded as such, except that they
inject prayer instead of antibiotics, which has about as
much effect. On the surface the disease theory seems as
good as any. In practice, however, the idea becomes
another of Alcoholics Anonymous's
self-fulfilling prophecies, which leads many a sufferer to believe that once (s)he
has fallen off the wagon (s)he probably "won't make it
back," so one might as well go out and get bombed. I
personally know of more than a few such cases.
Again the book adds irony to the paradox by describing in
a graphic scenario the thorniest barrier to recovery via AA:
"And it means, of course, that we are going to talk
about god. Here difficulty arises with agnostics. Many
times we talk to a new man (the male gender
dominates the entire book) and watch his hopes rise
as we discuss his alcoholic problems and explain our
fellowship. But his face falls when we speak of spiritual
matters, especially when we mention god, for we have
re-opened a subject which our man thought he had
neatly evaded or entirely ignored."
His face falls, his hopes are dashed, but they're going to
stuff gawd up his nose anyway, because one dependency
must be replaced with another. Next the book cornmisePage 8

July. 1982

rates briefly with the non-believer (though present day

members are not so considerate in meetings) by saying:
"We know how he feels. We have shared his honest
doubts and prejudice. Some of us have been violently
anti-religious. to others, the word "god" brought up a
particular idea of him with which someone had tried to
impress them during childhood."
Oldest brain washing technique known to man - state
the opposing position before the opposition can, and then
discredit it, leaving the enemy no offense. Later the writers
brush against rationality:
"We looked upon this world of warring individuals,
warring theological systems, and inexplicable calamity with deep skepticism. We looked askance at many
individuals who claim to be godly. How could a
supreme being have anything to do with it all? And
who could comprehend a supreme being anyhow?"
Now they're getting somewhere, the reader thinks, until
- alas! - they blow it again:
"Yet, in other moments, we found ourselves thinking,
when enchanted by a starlit night, 'Who, then, made
all this?' "
As if it were possible that anyone could have "made all
this," and as if our high-school science hadn't proven with
overwhelming evidence that there has never been nothingness and never will be. The boom is fully lowered when, at
last, the book says:
"When, therefore, we speak to you of god, we mean
your own conception of god. This applies, too, to
other spiritual expressions
which you find in this
book. Do not let any prejudice you may have against
spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you."
In other words, drunk, your revulsion at spiritual terms is
merely prejudice, so don't question anything, just be good
and go along with the party line or you're going to die drunk.
As any religionist knows, a tiny opening is all that is needed
for the complete takeover of any irrational belief system,
and the authors state:
"At the start, this was all we needed to commence
spiritual growth, to effect our first conscious relation
with god as we understood him. Afterward, we found
ourselves accepting many things which then seemed
entirely out of reach."
Now, therefore, once the founders accepted society's
view that the problem is one of weakness and immorality, it
follows that morality can only come from a spiritual
program, and spiritual just naturally means worshipping a
gawd, though the new "man" is given permission at first to
conjure up his own conception of gawd, "however limited it
may be."
Orally it is often said in meetings that one may choose to
believe in a light bulb or a doorknob as a higher power, until
one can accept the invisible model later on. None of which
has the remotest relevance to not swallowing alcohol. In all
of the 12 steps, the word alcohol appears only once - in the
first step: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol
-and that our lives had become unmanageable."
The rest
is religion and penance, which is practiced by the fanatics in
a manner similar to that of the crazy Penitentes of New
Mexico, except the whipping is symbolic. If you think not,
consider the fourth step: "Made a searching and fearless
The American

Atheist

able and confident with sobriety. The best most county

programs offer is participation in a group that meets weekly
for a fee, or drop-around privileges wherein one might or
might not get to chat with a counsellor or with some still
shaky detoxees who are still obsessed with drink.

moral inventory of ourselves." Not a psychological inventory, mind you, a "moral inventory". It gets Worse.
The single most powerful idea to come from Alcoholics
Anonymous, "Not taking the first drink, only one day at a
time," appears nowhere in the 12 steps or in the big book. It
is oral tradition that persists because it works for almost
everyone.

MOST DON'T MAKE IT

According to statistical projections developed by the
National Council on Alcoholism, there are 10 to 13 million
alcoholics in the U.S. After 45 years (since the first two
clung to each other in 1935), Alcoholics Anonymous claims
a sober membership of slightly more than one million. The
best guess of the council is that 8.5 million go untreated by
any program, religious or otherwise.
It is safe to say that the majority of that 8.5 million have
heard of and had some contact with Alcoholics Anonymous, but for one reason or another have chosen to go on
drinking. A large number have had experience with professional treatment methods also, yet continue to think they
can somehow control their drinking. All of which is perfectly
natural. Any addict will prefer the known agony and
ignominy of the addiction to the unknown horrors of
withdrawal and abstinence,
until the victim becomes so
vitiated (s)he simply can't go on anymore. At that point the
addict will either choose death or any straw that is within
reach. And the religion of Alcoholics Anonymous makes it
easy to reject help, deny there is anything wrong and laugh
at anyone who says there is. Alcoholics Anonymous is a
perfect excuse to keep on drinking.

HOW DOES ALCOHOUCS

WORK? .

In favor of Alcoholics Anonymous it can be said that daily

meetings and/or contact with other alkies at coffee clubs
are easily available and free of charge until the newly sober
addict can afford to donate to the collection basket and the
coffee fund. (We shan't go into the folly of the use of caffein
by people who are addicted to a sedative.) In small towns,
'however, weekly is the best the local alkies can manage,
except for the use of the telephone,
which is a weak
substitute for the big city clubs that offer camaraderie and
sober role models virtually any time of the day, seven days a
week, christmas and new year's included.
In short, it is the fellowship and the hands-on experience
of other alkies that makes the Alcoholics Anonymous
program work, as well as the willingness of old timers to help
newcomers. You can't con them (about alcohol), and you
can't scare them. They've been there. It's almost that
simple.

PROFESSIONALS SHUNT PATIENTS TO

ALCOHOUCSANONYMOUS
If there were such a thing as a wise alcohol addict, we
could say that the wise addict, Atheist or not, should avail
him/herself of professional counselling, which is now available in most populous counties of the U.S. at a reasonable
cost through in/out patient programs funded by a mix of
federal, state and county monies (depending now upon
what rev. Ronnie does).
There are also some private hospital programs that cost
between $4,000 to $6,000 for a 30-day intensive therapy
program. As reasonably priced as the county programs are,
based on a sliding scale which determines "ability to pay,"
they are still a drain on the finances of people who, more
often than not, are in deep financial trouble as a by-product
of their drinking. But even ifone does manage to afford such
a program, the professionals and para-professionals
in such
institutions nearly always push their clients directly into
Alcoholics Anonymous
as a means of maintaining the
tentative sobriety they have begun through methods supposedly based on the latest state-of-the-art-methods.
Thus
they dump their clients into a church whose tenets are 1800
opposite to their own. The private hospital programs
charge $4000 to $6000 for this spiritual favor. The reason
most often given is Alcoholics Anonymous's track record,
which, though statistically poor, is "better than anything
else around at this time."
Alcohol addicts normally require at least daily contact
with some kind of support mechanism for an extended
period of time, often years, before they become comfortAustin. Texas

ANONYMOUS

July.

CATCH 23: ATHEISM AS AN EXCUSE

TO DRINK
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Atheists who
are members
of Alcoholics Anonymous,
though it is
impossible to count them due to their reticence about
coming out of the closet. For that matter, it is all but
impossible to accurately
count Alcoholics Anonymous
members at all, because of the anonymity factor - there
are no records, no figures on how many stay sober and the
tradition against record keeping is as strong as any idea in
the program. This is one advantage, really, that Alcoholics
Anonymous has over the institutional programs.
The known Atheists in the various Alcoholics Anonymous groups, such as myself, are grudgingly tolerated by
the moderate religionists, largely because there is nothing
they can do about it; the third tradition (there are 12 written
traditions, also) states flatly, "The only requirement
for
Alcoholics Anonymous membership
is a desire to stop
drinking." That's a stiff requirement, since virtually all alkies
have only the desire to stop suffering when they first walk in.
However, there is no tradition that says the gawd-fearing
members have to make it easy for those who are different.
There is, as in most American institutions, a vast amount of
prejudice, the most vocal of which is the bigotry displayed
toward both Atheists and professionals in the alcohol field.
In general, Alcoholics Anonymous
regards professional
counsellors with the same intolerance that held science
back 1700 years in the dark ages.
There is also the usual amount of racial hatred, plus a
generally pervasive prejudice against those who are addicted to drugs other than alcohol. There is virtually no
tolerance for the Alcoholics Anonymous
member who
"sells out" and becomes a paid counsellor, though the
program acknowledges that the most effective help comes
from one who can say, "I've been there."
The nonbeliever who chooses to ignore the spiritual
1982

Page 9

terms spoken of in the book is left with a fractional fragment

of a program, and is usually made to feel embarrassedly
uncomfortable. (S)he becomes the object of non-humorous
jokes and jibes before, during and after meetings. More than
one religionist has told me, "This is a spiritual program, and
you have no right to bring up any objections to it in
meetings." The best answer I've heard to that is, "There
might be someone here who needs to hear what I have to
say." We Atheists often leave meetings feeling worse than
when we went in.
The most prevalent taunt is the accusation
that the
heretics really want to go back to booze. Everyone knows
there is a kernel of truth in such a charge, because all
alcoholics "want" to go back to their old friend booze,
though they know that if they do the consequences
will
probably be more ghastly than before.
Hardliners are also fond of self-fulfilling prophecies, such
as, "You're going to get drunk," or "You'll never make it in
this program - you're headed for the marble orchard if you
don't find gawd." Alcoholics Anonymous members acquire
a complete repertoire of stock sayings and pat answers
after only a few months in the program. Like all cultists, they
use buzz phrases impugningly to bring the unwashed into
line.
These banalities can spread like viruses through the
amazingly efficient grapevine that extends throughout the
U.S. and the world. A "Klever" new buzz phrase will travel
across a continent faster than a bad Polish joke. There are
many such sayings for use on people who happen to have
acquired educations and reasoning skills some time before
they acquired their addictions. "We bury the intellectuals,"
is one of the most pernicious of the lot. "You can smell the
original thinkers," they say. "You can tell the educated ones
- they're the ones with puke on their tweeds," is another
charmer. "Nobody's too dumb for this program; but there
are many who are too smart, and they're dead." "Utilize,
don't analyze," is a stock answer to any intelligent question.
"If it ain't in the big book, I don't want to hear about it."
About any group that permits intelligent input, they call it
"Analysts Anonymous." Of course, analysis is anathema to
any religion. On humility, a highly prized attribute in any
noneducational
system, they say, "If you think you've got
humility, you ain't got it."
There are thousands more, but two of the classics are:
"Things get better when you don't have an idiot (yourself)
running your life." and the ever popular "There are no
coincidences - gawd puts the right people in our way at the
right time."
And on they go, until the literate members disguise their
training with bad grammar and parroted phrases from the
latest batch of cutesies.
Gawd and conformity are given credit for recovery, but
none of the blame for disaster.
Obviously the cultists regard the big book as having been
divinely inspired and they revere the two co-founders, Bill
W. and Doctor Bob, as the chosen messengers of gawd.
Paradoxically, recidivism - return to drink - is laid at
the feet of religion by the old timers and the book, as they
cite the lack of " ... a fit spiritual condition" as the cause of
anyone getting drunk again, even when the victim happens
to be an old timer who has had 10 to 20 years of religious
sobriety. As the faith healers say, "The reason you aren't
cured is you don't have enough faith."
Page 10

July,

1982

ATHEISTS CANNOT BE "SEEN AND NOT

HEARD"
It is virtually impossible - and very unhealthy - for the
atheistic addict to keep his/her views to him/herself in
meetings where everyone else gets to speak in turn of
feelings and ideas about living without alcohol. Professionals have been of little help to the sincere, thinking Atheists,
so they are left to find each other and talk among
themselves.
Historically, shrinks and para-shrinks
have adamantly
avoided the subject of religion on their therapy procedures,
following their own superstitious beliefs that the subject is
too touchy for open discussion and that ignoring it is a
strong enough hint that it has no place in healthy thinking;
or that facing and dealing with such irrational belief systems
is not, somehow, important to the treatment of sick thinking
and feeling. They seem to conclude that treatment
of
mental disorders must take place apart from religious
problems, and it is counter-productive
to even mention it.

DR ELLIS KICKED THE SILENCE HABIT

One psychotherapist
finally shucked those taboos and
faced up to the evils of religion in mental health. Dr. Albert
Ellis of New York, NY developed a new treatment system
which he calls "Rational Emotive Therapy." His system,
which is used at his Institute for Rational Living in New
York, aggressively attacks the "masochistic"
and "selfabnegating" religious beliefs and all other manifestations of
irrationality based on the supernatural,
the fatalistic and the
superstitious.
In a much praised/maligned
paper entitled, "The Case
Against Religion,"* published in the September, '70 Mensa
Journal Ellis advocated that all psychotherapists
who are
not similarly sick should "aggressively attack" such nonthinking in the minds of their disturbed patients and work to
eradicate all such pernicious beliefs wherever they are
found.
In that paper Ellis exposes the several layers of guilt and
fear which are spooned over to the religious by the clergy,
their "divine" writings, and fellow religionists who "eagleeyedly watch him to make sure that he doesn't deviate one
iota from their prescribed standards of behavior."
To those layers of guilt and fear the Alcoholics Anonymous religionists add the everpresent
threat of getting
drunk and the consequences
of disgrace in the eyes of the
group and/or imminent death-"the
only cure for alcoholism."
"To summarize:" Ellis says in his paper, "Conventional
religion is, on many counts, directly opposed to the main
goals of mental health - since it basically consists of
masochism,
other directedness,
intolerance,
refusal to
accept ambiguity and uncertainty,
unscientific thinking,
needless inhibition, and self-abasement."
The latter is the
chief technique of Alcoholics Anonymous prophets, who
constantly repeat such inanities as, "My life is still unmanageable; I have to turn it over to gawd and keep my will out
of it." You're damn right they say that!
Descendant
from the Ellis system is one developed
especially for alcoholics by a colleague, Maxie C. Maultsby,
*available from American Atheist
Austin, TX 78768 @$3.00 each.

Press/P.O.

Box 2117

The American

Atheist

Jr., M.D. Called "Rational Self Counselling" the program

was developed and tested at the University of Kentucky
Medical College in Lexington, thanks to a grant from the
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Dept.
of Health, Education and Welfare.
The program is a self-help treatment method, which is
thoroughly explained in Maultsby's book, A Million Dollars
for your Hangover. The title is an unfortunate reference to
the million dollars awarded for the formulation of the
program by the HEW grant. In his introduction to the book
Maultsby states:
"Almost twice as many alcoholics get treatment
from Alcoholics Anonymous than from medical and
other health professionals. Yet, most research studies
show that Alcoholics Anonymous does not give any
more effective treatment to alcoholics than health
professionals give. That fact indicates that alcoholics
prefer self-help treatment methods to those of traditional health professionals.
"BUT, less than 10% of America's 10 million alcoholics accept Alcoholics Anonymous's self-help treatment. Consequently, over 85% of America's alcoholics are not receiving any treatment. Obviously, therefore, we need other types of self-help treatment
methods that are as effective as Alcoholics Anonymous. That's why I recommend the New Self-Help
Alcohol

Treatment

Method. "

Maultsby describes his scientific research methods,

which used four control groups, including an Alcoholics
Anonymous group run by their counselors. He concludes,
"Our research indicates that Rational Self-Counselling
(taught either by professionally trained counselors and
therapists or by our lay-counselors) was as effective as
treatment by Alcoholics Anonymous." In a footnote, Maultsby adds, "Treatment by professional Insight Therapists was
similarly effective." Maultsby does not, as Ellisdoes, attack
the religious nature of Alcoholics Anonymous, but the
underlying meaning is clear.
To date, however, public awareness of this self-help
method is virtually nonexistent. Therefore, the only two
really effective portions of the Alcoholics Anonymous
program - the mutual support system of group fellowship
and easy availability - are still the exclusive property of
Alcoholics Anonymous, Maultsby's book does not recommend or even mention the formulation of such groups,
choosing to base his system on private, individual self-help.
While the method is easily learned and proven effective, the
lack of a built-in long-term support mechanism and the lack
of publicity leave its future as an alternative to Alcoholics
Anonymous in doubt.
The first difference one notices between Rational Self
Counselling and Alcoholics Anonymous is a big one. It is a
life and death difference, to which Alcoholics Anonymous
party liners would be actively opposed ifthey knew about it:
It is Maultsby's recommendation that problem drinkers
-especially advanced ones - receive help for withdrawal
from alcohol. He states:
"Without medical care, up to 25% of advanced
alcoholics will die if they suddenly stop drinking. For
them the hospital is the safest place to take step one
(Stop Alcoholic Drinking)." Step two, simply, is:
"Medically Treat Alcohol Withdrawal."
Austin, Texas

Step two involves the professional administering of

medications to prevent seizures, D.T.'s, suicides, internal
bleeding, heart attacks, etc. The popular Alcoholics Anonymous line is opposed to medical help with withdrawal, citing
the poor track record of physicians and believing that the
newly dry alky should have to suffer so (s)he willremember
the ordeal, and should have to take his/her chances with the
consequences of previous sinful behavior, "Jes' like I done,
by gawd."
Unfortunately, most detoxification centers operate on
the same assumptions, providing no medication for withdrawal symptoms unless the patient indicates (s)he has had
seizures before - or until AFTER they have one in detox.
Most detoxes have a policy of cold turkey (You're supposed
to suffer, they say.)
The overwhelming evidence shows that Maultsby is right.
There are thousands of deaths and near deaths as a result of
detox treatment, where there should be none. Even the
diets are generally dead wrong for withdrawing drunks,
most of whom are hypoglycemic. They get sugars and
starches that produce waves of glucose in the blood, which
triggers overdoses of insulin which leave the victims devoid
of the proper levels of glucose for brain and nervous system
functioning.
The rest of the differences between Maultsby and
Alcoholics Anonymous/Detox are too numerous to mention here. The two outstanding characteristics of Rational
Self Counselling are learning to recognize the differences
between rational and irrational thinking, and practicing not
drinking in the presence of booze.

"SO FORM YOUR OWN GROUP," PEOPLE

SAY
The obvious answer to the dilemma of atheist alcohol
addicts is to form an entirely new group that is based in
accepted science and founded by professionals in the field,
to be taken over and operated by lay addicts.
The first step in that procedure, in my opinion, might be
to stop calling it alcoholism and start calling it alcohol
addiction or simply drug addiction. It's a more precise
definition which avoids the disease idea, the morality
malarkey and the inherent put-down.
A few such programs have been started, but most have
failed - and in the most predictable and worst of all possible
ways. The members, including some of the leaders, have
fallen off that infernal wagon. Some of those died in the
rutted mire of the drinker's road. Other groups simply fell
apart due to a lack of structure, plus feelings of insecurity
and guilt stemming from the loss of the established order of
Alcoholics Anonymous. Besides, the Alcoholics Anonymous religion, like all religions, offers something for nothing
- magical solutions that appeal to the mooches.
Whatever we critics say about the Alcoholics Anonymous church, it does have a structure of sorts and a kind of
institutional stability that will be difficult for any new
program to duplicate for some time to come. And any other
way requires work.
Even so, another new group has been started in the
Denver area. A handful of Atheists and other doubters,
myself included, who had taken to attending Alcoholics
Anonymous meetings together in the same kind of mutual
support fellowship that has worked these 45 years for

July, 1982

Page II

~~~---===~==================~-----------Alcoholics Anonymous, decided to try meeting separately,

informally, to study what really works for alkies. We
scrounged our own coffee pot and took up collections for
supplies.
In seeking some kind of structure, we learned what Dr.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair learned in the early days of
American Atheists: that Atheists have a natural dislike for
structure of any kind, and everyone has ideas and feelings
proudly held and forcefully advanced. But we were able to
agree on one thing - "NO DOGMA!" Not even the proven
methods of Rational Self Counselling were accepted on
faith. We could borrow from and learn from any and all
sources, but we would not subscribe to or promulgate any
particular way as the only way. We also agreed that sobriety
- freedom from addiction - should be the great, overriding purpose of the group, lest we should forget what
brought us together and lest the prophecies of our Alcoholics Anonymous clergy should come true.
Word spread. The best publicity was the calumny that
immediately rang out in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings
around the city and suburbs of Denver. The clangor still
continues, and we're doing everything in our power to see
that it doesn't stop.
We wrote what we jokingly called a "Malcontent's
Manifesto," or a preamble to our meetings to be read in the
manner of Alcoholics Anonymous
meetings, to let new
people know what they have walked into, and to reassure
ourselves with the longed-for familiarity of well worn words

that ostensibly start the meetings off on course and help

keep it there.
From what must be a Freudian need for alliteration in the
name, like Alcoholics Anonymous, we tentatively chose the
name Alternatives to Addiction. Another AA. Now, however, it is called Turning Points in Sobriety.
Form is beginning to gel. These are serious minded men
and women who know well the real task at hand, though
there will never be the kind of hard-line, one-way party line
that characterizes
the original Alcoholics Anonymous.
Because of the proclivity of the members for reading,
searching, learning and thinking, the resultant structure will
be rich in ideas and scientific psychotherapeutic
methods.
At the moment we have a mixture of transcendental
. meditation, neurolinguistic programming, gestalt, transactional analysis, eastern and western philosophy, including
existentialism and - would you believe - some of Alcoholics Anonymous's
greatest hits: living one day at a time; if
you don't drink, you can't get drunk; nothing can get you
drunk but drinking.
We do not interpret one-day-at-a-time
to mean literally
that we refuse to think about the future, as Alcoholics
Anonymous does. We use the idea to develop the habit of
setting realistic expectations, rather than the gigantic, longterm and seemingly unattainable goals we were pledged to
in schools, churches and Dale Carnegie courses. We have
anticipation, rather than anxiety about the future. So far
today it's working.

Nature's Way
GERALD THOLEN

OVERKILL
It seems that the name of the game for society has always
been either over-reaction
or no-action-at-all.
People are
seldom moved to make logical deliberate decisions in any
area other than those which enhance petty personal
comforts. Let's take the seemingly very impersonal computer industry, for instance. Herein lies a product of almost
pure technological wizardry - an electronic masterpiece of
our times. Its capabilities are well known by us all - as are
its limitations. Somehow, however, some of us developed a
mid-development-stage
paranoia concerning
the rapid
growth of dependency on our newly-found data processing
machines. References were made to the fact that we were
becoming "only numbers on a punch card" instead of
human beings. A resentment developed - not because of
what our machines were doing - but because of what we
were doing with our machines! The tremendous
influx of
computerized equipment added insult to injury and suddenly the public had seemed to develop a bitter animosity
toward machines in general. There developed a totally
illogical and simplistic campaign determined to return us to
the "good ole days" - a "get back to nature" idealism.
Luckily, faced with the reality of outdoor toilets and
scrubboards,
we apparently regained our computerized
senses. Our reflex didn't stop there, however - it snapped
Page 12

July. 1982

all the way past center and on into the opposite court. Now
we see people of all ages and orientations converging upon
electronic stupefiers like PAC-MAN or SPACE INVADERS.
Similar things have long been happening with our motorized means of transportation.
The "horseless carriage" was
at first feared and hated. The early motor driven bicycles
were considered degenerate "devices of the devil." Now we
seem to see ourselves as a stereotyped
race of robotized
A.J. Foyts and Evil Knievils.
Do you sometimes wonder about our directions and
priorities? Did you wonder enough about them when voting
"to remove" the inadequacies of Jimmy Carter from the
office of President?? Perhaps not. It would seem that, in
general, as a nation of intelligent (?) people, we rarely
display the ability to think our way out of unpleasant
situations. We invariably supply ourselves with something
either worse or more nonsensical than we had before. It's
simply emotionally accelerated overkill.
The Reagan, Haig, Helms & god (R.H.H.&g) Corporation, sponsored by overreaction to Carter, has once again
tried to conjure up the old McCarthy "godless AtheistCommunist" specter. What they are really succeeding in
doing is to disgust the public and cause people to look more
The American

Atheist

closely at the charges. People's curiosity, once aroused, is a

"dangerous thing"; it requires satisfaction in the form of
observation and thought. We have been made to sample
the alternate "Fascist-Christian-Conservative"
discipline
spooned to us for the past year or so. It has not been an
enjoyable experience! Now, it's occurring to many to look
at the "dreadful" alternative - "godless Atheist Communism". Here lies a real danger; there is no such thing as
"Atheist Communism"!! There are Atheists, and there are
Communists - two distinct and very different positions.
Will the proven naivety of the public be able to grasp this
truth? According to our intellectual track record, I doubt it.
The average person, having little true understanding of
Atheism or Communism, may inadvertently think that
there really is some mysterious connection between the
two. It is almost a sure bet - (knowing again our national
tendencies to overreact) - that many people willlook right
past Atheism and on into Communism! The overall results
of the R.H.H.&g. Corp. will therefore be to establish an
examination of Communism by politically provoked American citizens who might never have had an interest in
Communism otherwise.
Meanwhile, American Atheists will have been on record
for years as the only organization capably attempting to
define Atheism as a singularly unique position without
regard to political persuasion. The irony of it all is that the
ongoing bumblings of the likes of Falwell, Roberts, R.H.H.
&g. Corp., etc., etc., will have attracted the public's
attention to our efforts. In this instance overkill may have
beneficial aspects. But! What about those nerds who shot
past Atheism and entangled themselves in the web of
Communism. Will they be able to make rational intelligent
political judgments and decisions??? Remember our national track record!
I have to take many things into consideration before
attempting articles for the American Atheist magazine. So
many considerations enter into the words that need to be
uttered but seldom are. For instance, let's take the Britain/
Argentina affair. Here we have a "world power" stalwart
being wristslapped by a "third world" nation. How inconsiderate! Does "lowly" Argentina think it has any right to the
Falklands simply because they were the one-time rightful
owners of the property? I mean, after all, what about the

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Tucson, Arizona
Sacramento, California
San Francisco, California
Denver, Colorado
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
Tampa-'St. Petersburg, Fla.
Atlanta, Georgia
Chicago, Illinois
Indianapolis, Indiana
Lexi
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Boston, Massachusetts
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Houston, Texas
Salt Lake City', Utah
Northern Virginia
Austin, Texas

rights of "sovereignty" of our offended allies in England?

Aren't we the ones who dedicated tons and tons of
newsprint and days of TV time to the "very important"
reporting of the Charles/Diana pairing? And - isn't England the "shill" we need in United Nations controversial
voting? Who gives a damn about the "sovereignty" of the
American states implied by the Monroe Doctrine anyway?
It wouldn't be "tactful" of us to side with a third world
"banana republic" would it? Especially when that country
has been less than "worshipful" of us! I feel that we may be
laying a foundation of mistrust by our Western Hemisphere
neighbors that willlive with us for years like a recurring bad
dream. The trouble is, mistrust is not a dream - it's a reality
- the same reality that we must face in the instances of the
Arab states.
We, as a nation, have wantonly accused other states of
being "barbaric" and inhumane. At some future point we
may regret these words for they are not conducive to
freindship and trust. We are, or have been, as guilty as any
others in the area of "barbaric" and tyrannical aggressive- .
ness. We politically refuse, even today, to agree that women
are equal under the law.
"Science" has been another area of reactionary overkill.
The last "science" film you saw was probably not a
documentary on astrophysics or astronomy. It was "Star
Trek" or some other "black hole" nonsense. "We" saw
these pseudoscience epics by the record breaking millions.
Yet, very few people - including many who refer to
themselves as "scientists" - understand some of the basic
truths of science.
We tend to fillour minds with trivia and the continuing
search for non-essential pleasantries and distractions. The
boredom of not knowing leads us to a path of least
resistance when we attempt to gain knowledge. We accept
that which is the most novel and care little iftrue quality is a
part of our intellectual attainment. We are intrigued by the
bizarre and the spectacular because we have been taught to
accept the unreal, the fantastic. The unrealized acceptance
of spectacular and bizarre ideas is the concept of god itself.
That is the perfect example of "overkill" in the daily
humdrum lives of people too "busy" with trivia to take the
time to truly enlighten themselves.
(512) 458-5731

CHAPTERS OF AMERICAN

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ATHEISTS

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July, 1982

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Page 13

FRAGMENT
FROM
FREUD
(excerpts from
The Future of An Illusion)

" ... observe the difference between your attitude to

illusions and mine. You have to defend the religious
illusion with all your might. If it becomes discreditedand indeed the threat to it is great enough-then your
world collapes. There is nothing left for you but to
despair of everything, of civlization and the future of
mankind. From that bondage I am, we are, free. Since
we are prepared to renounce a good part of our infantile
wishes, we can bear it if a few of our expectations turn
out to be illusions.
Education freed from the burden of religious doctrines will not. it may be, effect much change in men's
psychological nature. Our god Aoyoc is perhaps not a
very almighty one, and he may only be able to fulfill a
small part of what his predecessors have promised. If
we have to acknowledge this we shall accept it with
resignation. We shall not on that account lose our
interest in the world and in life, for we have one sure
support which you lack. We believe that it is possible for
scientific work to gain some knowledge about the reality
of the-world, by means of which we can increase our
power and in accordance with which we can arrange
our life. If this belief is an illusion, then we are in the
same position as you. But science has given us evidence
by its numerous and important successes that it is no
illusion. Science has many open enemies, and many
more secret ones, among those who cannot forgive her,
for having weakened religious faith and for threatening
to overthrow it. She is reproached for the smallness of
the amount she has taught us and for the incomparably
greater field she has left in obsurity. But, in this, people
forget how young she is, how difficult her beginnings
were and how infinitesimally small is the period of time
since the human intellect has been strong enough for
the tasks she sets. Are we not all at fault, in basing our
judgments on periods of time that are too short? We
should make the geologists our pattern. People complain of the unreliability of science-how she announces as a law to-day what the next generation recognizes
'as'an error and replaces by a new law whose accepted
Page 14

July, 19t!2

validity lasts no longer. But this is unjust and in part

untrue. The transformations of scientific opinion are
developments, advances, not revolutions. A law which
was held at first to be universally valid proves to be a
special case of a more comprehensive uniformity, or is
limited by another law, not discovered till later; a rough
approximation to the truth is replaced by a more
carefully adapted one, which in turn awaits further
perfectioning. There are various fields where we have
not yet surmounted a phase of research in which we
make trial with hypotheses that soon have to be rejected
as inadequate; but in other fields we already possess an
assured and almost unalterable core of knowledge.
Finally, an attempt has been made to discredit scientific
endeavour in a radical way, on the ground that. being
bound to the conditions of our own organization, it can
yield nothing else than subjective results, whilst the
real nature of things outside ourselves remains inaccessible. But this is to disregard several factors which
are of decisive importance for the understanding of
scientific work. In the first place, our organization-that
is, our mental apparatus-has been developed precisely
in the attemmpt to explore the external world, and it
must therefore have realized in its structure some
degree of expediency; in the second place, it is itself a
constituent part of the world which we set out to
investigate, and it readily admits of such investigation;
thirdly, the task of science is fully covered if we limit it to
showing how the world must appear to us in consequence of the particular character of our organization;
fourthly the ultimate findings of science, precisely
because of the way in which they are acquired, are
determined not only by our organization but by the
things which have affected that organization; finally,
the problem of the nature of the world without regard to
our percipient mental apparatus is an empty abstraction, devoid of practical interest.
No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would
be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can
get elsewhere.
The American

Atheist

American Atheist Radio Series

Madalyn O'Hair

GEORGE E. MACDONALD - AMERICAN ATHEIST

Good evening; this is Madalyn Murray O'Hair, American

Atheist, back to talk with you again.
American Atheism has a very long and a very proud
history. It has many personalities who labored intensively
for separation
of state and church and for freedoms of
individuals. One of these persons was George E. MacDonald. He was born in New England on April 11, 1857. His
father had been killed in the Civil War in the Second Battle
of Bull's Run. My great grandfather was killed in that same
battle and I wonder if those two did not know each other.
George MacDonald, as most children of that age, spent
his youth on a farm and it was on one such farm in New
Hampshire that he first questioned the existence of god.
How it came about I read in his own words:
"I went to sunday school in Keene, Surry, and
Westmoreland.
Having thus heard a great deal about
god's being everywhere present, I at the age of sixteen
called on him for a showdown. The calling took place
on top of Surry Hill, from which, as I have said, all the
rest of the universe was visible on a clear day. And this
day was clear; the stillness so profound it could be
heard. Having found a comfortable place to repose,
on a mossy knoll, I bent my mind to the problems of
the cosmos, to discover if peradventure
J might think
them out to a solution. Nothing having come of my
mulling and pondering, I said aloud, addressing the
welkin (sky, air); 'Here is the place and the moment for
god to produce himself and to tell me about things. He
might speak or he might appear.' And I was almost
afraid he would. But my mind was made up and I
persevered in the thought, keeping my eyes lifted and
ears alert for about the space of half an hour. Still
nothing happened. The sun continued to shine, and
the wind to blow, and the heavens to remain empty.
There was no such presence as favored moses on
Sinai. Not even the devil came along, as I had heard he
did to jesus on an exceeding high mountain. I had said
to god: 'This is your chance to get me.' Now I added:
'You have missed the chance. Good-bye.' And I arose
from the mossy knoll and went my way, convinced
that one of two things must be so: either I had been
misinformed about the watchfulness of god over all
my acts and his close attention to any prayers I might
make, or else god had merely been imagined by the
ministers; and I was a skeptic, a doubter, a disbeliever
from that time on."
Meantime, his brother had gone on to New York City to
become a printer, and he called for young George to join
him there, which he did when he was about eighteen years
old. When he arrived there it was to find that his brother was
Austin, Texas

printing the Atheist magazine, the Truth Seeker. The

magazine was being put out from the Moffat building at 335
Broadway (corner of Worth Street). The printing office was
located at No.8 William Street - and the approach to the
Brooklyn Bridge now occupies the site of that building.
By this time, D.M. Bennett, who had started the Truth
Seeker, and about whom there has been discussion on
these programs, was fifty seven years old. The Truth
Seeker magazine was then only two years old. George
MacDonald became a printer's devil. At that time when our
entire nation had a fondness for words, the sub-title of the
Truth Seeker magazine ran as follows:
"Devoted
to: Science, Morals, Free Thought, Free
Discussion, Liberalism, Sexual Equality, Labor Reform, Progression,
Free Education, and Whatever
T ends to Elevate and Emancipate the Human Race.
Opposed
to: Priestcraft,
Ecclesiasticism,
Dogmas,
Creeds, False Theology, Superstition, Bigotry, Ignorance, Monopolies, Aristocracies, Privileged Classes,
Tyranny, Oppression, and Everything that Degrades
or Burdens Mankind Mentally or Physically."
George soon began freely to both typeset and edit,
improving by correction and by insertion when necessary.
The New York Liberal Association was soon formed and
persons from the Truth Seeker were often lecturers. This
group also provided a forum for Charles Bradlaugh when he
visited this country. Charles Bradlaugh, of England, was the
beginning of Western Atheism as we know it today in
America. Thomas Huxley spoke here, as did Robert Green
Ingersoll.
In 1876 George L Henderson,
a brother of the Iowa
Representative
to the United States Congress, D.B. Henderson (speaker of the House in the 56th Congress) leased
a building at 141 Eighth Street, named the premises,
SCIENCE HALL, and the Truth Seeker, printing office and
all, moved there, where a meeting room 40' X 60' offered
them accommodations
for lecturing and meeting.
The magazine exchanged with other organizations, and,
would you believe, there was a paper called Common Sense
put out by a Colonel R. Peterson in Paris, Texas. The
current national headquarters
of Atheism, our organization, is in Texas and we were pleased to discover that a state
magazine had existed here ninety five years ago.
Stephen Pearl Andrews, about this time, procured an
appointment
with the President, Ulysses S. Grant, prepared a statement on taxation of the church and discussed
this with the President. Grant later included this statement
in his message to Congress:
"I would call your attention to the importance of
correcting an evil that, if permitted to continue, will

July, 1982

Page 15

probably lead to great trouble in our land before the

close of the nineteenth century. It is the acquisition of
vast amounts of untaxed church property. In 1850, I
believe the church property of the United States
which paid no tax, municipal or state, amounted to
$83,000,000. In 1860, the amount had doubled. In
1875, it is about $1,000,000,000. By 1900, without a
check, it is safe to say this property will reach a sum
exceeding $3,000,000,000. So vast a sum, receiving all
the protection of government without its proportion
of the burdens and expenses of the same, will not be
looked upon acquiescently by those who have to pay
the taxes. In a growing country, where real estate
enhances so rapidly with time as in the United States,
there is scarcely a limit to the wealth that may be
acquired by corporations,
religious or otherwise, if
allowed to retain real estate without taxation. The
contemplation of so vast a property as here alluded to,
without taxation, may lead to sequestraton
without
constitutional authority, and through blood. I would
suggest the taxation of all property equally, whether
church or corporation."
But, all was not bright in the Atheist-freethought
movement. One event of 1877 was that a party of Ku Klux
Klan lured a freethinker physician, Dr. J.A. Russell of Bell
County, Texas, from his house and, binding him to a tree,
gave him one hundred lashes. Dr. Russell had given "infidel"
lectures. The whipping party left a placard threatening to
burn out or hang any "infidel" lecturer who should appear in
that neighborhood.
.
Yet, the First Annual Congress of the National Liberal
League could and did convene in Rochester, New York in
October of the same year and Henry Ward Beecher
delivered his famous sermon on December 14th, repudiating the doctrine of hell. And, Walt Whitman made the
principal address at the Thomas Paine celebration
in
Philadelphia.
Anthony Comstock was in his full campaign for purity in
America and it was in this time that Atheists were arrested
for sending materials through the mails. Anything which
could be called obscene, and even those items which could
not be so designated,
were - to be prohibited from
dissemination.
Despite this, the Freethought
community
managed to survive and even called an international
meeting. This was the Congress of the Universal Federation
of Freethinkers
and it assembled in Brussels, Belgium, in
August, 1880. This was followed by an International Freethought Congress in London, England, with Charles Bradlaugh as chairman. By 1881 one G.H. Walser even founded
the town of Liberal, in Missouri. It was to be the home,
exclusively, of Freethinkers. If I can find further information
on it I will include that in a later program.
George MacDonald
became a historian of the freethought movement, principally from his own work on the
Truth Seeker. Much of what we know of personalities of the
period is expressed in his memories. Let me give this one
example. President Garfield was assassinated in 1881, but
he lingered for eighty days before death. Let's hear George
MacDonald on this:
"Meanwhile the churches prayed intensively. It was
an orgy, a regular prayer drive. The splurge continued
for two months, when the powers of the ministers
were augmented by the state governors appointing
Page 16

July,

1982

September
8 for a day of prayer with a gesture of
fasting added - all but one: Governor Roberts of
Texas pleaded that his was a civil, not an ecclesiastical
office, and he would attempt no control over the
religious acts of the citizens of his state. The prayer
promoters condemned him to perdition, but went on
and perfected
their organization.
On the 8th of
September they mobilized more praying people than
had ever got together before on one day. The prayers
placed end to end would have reached anywhere in or
out of the universe except, as the event proved, the
throne to which they were addressed."
Garfield died eleven days later, on September 19th.
His assassin, Charles J. Guiteau, offered the defense at
his trial that god had chosen him as an instrument to carry
out the inscrutable purpose of the divine will. It was god's
act, he said, and god would see him through.
Another memory of George MacDonald has to do with
Abraham Lincoln. William H. Herndon, for twenty-two
years the law partner and intimate associate of Abraham
Lincoln, contacted the Truth Seeker and asked the magazine to publish with "a good little editorial" his refutation to
the lies about Lincoln's religious beliefs. In his "card of
correction", Mr. Herndon wrote this to the Truth Seeker
offices, dated Nov.ember 25, 1882:
"I wish to say a few words to the public and private
ear. About the year 1870 I wrote a letter to F .E. Abbot,
then of Ohio, touching Mr. Lincoln's religion. In that
letter I stated that Mr. Lincoln was an Infidel, sometimes bordering on Atheism, and I now repeat the
same. In the year 1873 the right rev. James A. Reed,
pastor and liar of that city (Springfield, Illinois), gave a
lecture on Mr. Lincoln's religion in which he tried to
answer some things which I never asserted, except as
to Lincoln's infidelity, which I did assert, and now and
here affirm. Mr. Lincoln was an Infidel of the radical
type; he never mentioned the name of jesus, except to
scorn and detest the idea of a miraculous conception."
By 1883 George MacDonald became the assistant editor
of the Truth Seeker, with his brother now the editor. In the
same year religion was injected into the political campaign in
Ohio by the nomination of judge George H. Hoadley for
governor. Mr. Hoadley was a freethinker and the Cleveland
Leader newspaper
declared his nomination to be "the
deepest and most outrageous
insult ever offered to the
god-fearing people of the state." Judge Hoadley was
elected!
Freethinkers
were everywhere and by 1884 there were
two hundred and twenty five Liberal Leagues organized.
Robert Ingersoll was speaking as often as sixty times each
three month period. Henry Ward Beecher, as the years
rolled on, after first having given up hell, abandoned
in
succession the doctrines of the fall of man, the atonement,
the trinity and finally the resurrection
story. As I review it
now it sounds much like the mental progression
of our
bishop Pike in our own age.
In 1888 the Truth Seeker was doing so well that George
MacDonald
was sent to San Francisco
to open up a
freethought office there, with an address of 838 Howard
Street. Freethinker conventions were being held in Ohio, in
Oregon, in New York, in California, in Massachusetts.
In 1891 George was invited to go to the state of
The American

Atheist

would have suffered. He relied only on his own reason and

his own initiative. Scarcely anybody ever gave him anything
except an opportunity to work ... and he took that. From
his earliest life there had always been something for him to
do. How well he has done is shown in the survival of the
paper/magazine,
the Truth Seeker, which is still published
today. It is 98 years old now.
I will be back again another time to talk more about
George MacDonald and to draw upon his memories of the
history of freethought and Atheism in America.

Washington to be a co- partner in a publication there. He

went. But, he kept an eye on freethought everywhere. He
could report that Mrs. Ernestine L Rose was the author of a
Defense of Atheism and that she had, with Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, inaugurated the Women's Rights Movement in the
US And, the Truth Seeker acquired proprietorship of the
book written by another feminist: Woman, Church, and
State written by Matilda Joslyn Gage.
George MacDonald was almost an invisible part of the
history of Atheism, but without him and his vigorous
services over a fifty year period the Atheist movement

FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT - PART I

This Madalyn Murray O'Hair, American Atheist, back to
talk with you again.
Last week I introduced you to George MacDonald, editor
of the atheist magazine, The Truth Seeker, and I would like
to acquaint you with some more of the history of Atheism of
which he was a part, and which he recorded in two very
large volumes titled, Fifty Years of Freethought.
As I have gone through these volumes I have found case
after case after case of the editors of the Truth Seeker being
arrested for blasphemy, or persons connected with the
concepts of Freethought
being arrested for blasphemy. It
continues through 1925 when this record ends. We have
had several arrests for this same offense in the US. in the
last several years. Yet, back in 1894 one judge in Kentucky
named Parker understood clearly what was at issue when
he freed a man for stating, "I say jesus christ was a man
exactly like I am and had a human father and mother exactly
like I had." The statement of the judge was:
"Blasphemy is a crime grown from the same parent
stem as apostasy and heresy. It is one of the class of
offenses designed for the same general purpose, the
fostering and protecting of a religion accepted by the
state as the true religion, whose precepts and tenets it
was thought all good subjects should observe. In the
code of laws of a country enjoying absolute religious
freedom there is no place for the common law crime of
blasphemy.
Unsuited to the spirit of the age, its
enforcement would be in contravention to the constitution of this state, and this crime must be considered
as a stranger to the laws of Kentucky."
In Kansas meanwhile, a Mr. J.B. Wise, engaged in
correspondence
with a minister over the inspiration of the
bible. They shot texts at each other by post until Mr. Wise
copied Isaiah XXXVI, 12 on a postal card and mailed it to
the clergyman. The latter then abandoned argument and
appealed to the law causing the arrest of Mr. Wise on a
charge of misusing the Post Office!! For weeks the old man
lay in jail in Leavenworth
as a United States prisoner in
default of $300 bail. He was even held there for some weeks
after bail had been furnished. His case dragged on for two
years until a court declared his postcard to be "obscene"
and fined him $50.00.
During this same year the "christian Amendment"
was
started on its introduction into the United States Congress.
Each time the Truth Seeker fought it. The christians were
still bringing the Amendment to Congress in 1925, introducing it and reintroducing it at every opportunity. At this first
introduction
the Amendment,
to be inserted into the
Austin, Texas

Preamble of the Constitution, read as follows:

"Acknowledging the supreme authority and just government of almighty god in all the affairs of men and
nations; grateful to him for our civil and religious
liberty, and encouraged by the assurance of his word
to invoke his guidance, as a christian nation, according to his appointed way, through jesus christ."
It was the same group which presented
petitions to
Congress to abolish Sunday-carryinq distribution of mails, a
battle which they won, for no one gets mail on Sundays.
In 1895 George MacDonald noted with some awe that a
meeting of roman catholic priests, bishops, archbishops,
and cardinals in New York excommunicated
all members of
Masonic lodges, together with the Odd Fellows. The
organizations thus banned from the roman catholic church
had a membership then of over two million persons.
Later, the magazine had additional difficulties as the
Postmaster General of Canada refused to accept delivery of
magazines to be distributed to subscribers in Canada. At
that time Charles A Dana of the Baltimore Sun newspaper
gave an editorial to that case: "We hold to liberty," said Mr.
Dana, "and we revolt at the arbitrary act of the Canadian
Postmaster-General."
He further stated that the Truth
Seeker was "undoubtedly an honest and candid paper ...
not adapted to suit a pious catholic like M. Caron (the
Postmaster-General)
or a pious protestant either" but that
it was not given to "scurrility and blackguardianism."
I am always fascinated with the many references to Texas
in all of these early freethought historical references, and
find a very famous old Texan chronicled. Editor Brann of
The Iconoclast, Waco, Texas, began in 1895 an assault on
Baylor Baptist University. A young girl, Antonia Teixeira,
had been brought from Brazil to be educated
in the
university and then returned to her people as a missionary
for their conversion and baptism. The girl became a mother.
President Burleson of the University laid the paternity to "a
Negro servant", but the scoffer Brann asked how then it
could be possible for the child to have blue eyes "and the
wooden face" of the president! The matter came to a head
in a street fight in April, 1898. Tom E. Davis, a businessman
of Waco, said that Brann should be driven from town for his
attack on the baptist university. The two engaged in a street
fight and both were shot and mortally wounded.
One day, I must look up the history of the woman and the
child. There must be a sequel to that story!
Women's
lib should look into the inception of the
Feminist movement for Elizabeth Cady Stanton was leading
a committee of women back in 1895 which brought out The

July, 1982

Page 17

Women's Bible showing that the holy bible was not a

woman's book. The Feminist movement indeed split over
the issue. One part, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
demanded suffrage (the right to vote) in the name of right
and justice, regardless of the consequences. The other
division demanded suffrage in the name of christ in order
that god might be voted into the Constitution, the bible into
the schools, and christian doctrine generally into the civil
law.
In 1895 Thomas Henry Huxley died in England. Huxley
was an agnostic. He once "stood" for a professorship in
Natural History at the University of Toronto, Canada, and
was rejected for want of a reputation for sanctity. He and
John Tyndall, who had also applied for a professorship,
were "charged with no religious convictions", and the chairs
were denied them. Despite his life's reputation for agnosticism and even having coined that word, the ceremonies at
the funeral were according to the ritual of the church of
england. Many persons in both countries resented this as a
mockery and an insult to the memory of Huxley.
But no man knows what will happen to his bones, for it
was in the 1960's that Nehru, an Atheist, died in India. His
daughter buried hiin with full Hindu rights. His daughter is
Mrs. Indira Ghandi, now the prime minister of that country.
The some-times fears of Mr. MacDonald, as the editor of
the Truth Seeker, were not born out. President McKinley in
1897 called a certain judge McKenna from California to a
place in his cabinet as attorney-general. Immediately the
Truth Seeker printed remarks pointed to the protestants in
McKinley's party who protested this appointment. McKinley had been supported in his campaign by the roman
catholic church and MacDonald pointed out that the critics
were oblivious to the weighty principle that "when an
archbishop of the roman catholic church consents to throw
his influence to the side of a candidate, he does not do it
. without some assurance that the claims of his church willbe
recognized in the event of the candidate's election.
But then judge McKenna did a remarkable thing. Daniel
Lamont, secretary of war in Cleveland's cabinet, had given
the roman catholic church permission to erect a cathedral
on the West Point military reservation. His successor,
general Alger, confirmed the gift, and then to the surprise
and consternation of everyone, judge McKenna nipped the
scheme at that stage by pronouncing the grant unconstitutional, although it had been extended to provide building
sites for churches of all denominations. McKenna was later
nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States, and
confirmed by the Senate in 1898.
While the public was in a debate about the proposed
cathedral at West Point, Senator Gallinger of New Hampshire introduced a measure described as an "amendment"
as follows:
Article XVI. Neither Congress nor any state shall pass
any law respecting the establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or use the
property or credit of the United States, or of any state,
or any money raised by taxation, or authorize either
to be used, for the purpose of founding, maintaining,
or aiding, by appropriation, payment of services,
expense, or otherwise, any church, religious denomination or religious society, or any institution, society, or
undertaking which is wholly or in part under sectarian
or ecclesiastical control.
Page 18

July, 1982

The substance of the amendment was enacted as a United

States statute on March 3, 1897 - and it is still on the
books, while neither the United States Congress or any of
the state legislatures pay any attention to it. It may well be
food for a suit by our organization one day.
MacDonald calls another incident a scandal also. The
methodist Book Concern of Nashville, Tennessee, in 1898,
presented a claim of $288,000 for damage to its property
through occupation by Union troops during the Civil War.
The Book Concern was Southern in sympathy. It did not
deny its disloyalty to the union. Despite this, Congress
allowed its fictitious claim for damages and voted to pay the
methodist church south the whole of the sum demanded.
The steal, says Mr. MacDonald, met with opposition in the
Senate, which had once referred it to the Court of Claims,
and the Court of Claims turned it down also. The Senate
passed the bill; President McKinley signed it and then a
rehearing of the matter was had. The public learned then
that the revival of the measure was the work of a Tennessee
claims agent, an attorney, who had undertaken to see it
through for a commission of $100,800. This attorney, E.B.
Stahlman, received his commission as soon as the claim
was paid by the government. The college of bishops of the
methodist episcopal church issued a statement that "the
methodist Book Concern should refund the whole amount
appropriated by Congress." Instead of returning the money
a committee of ministers 'vindicated' the good name of the
Book Concern and its agent. The Truth Seeker was alone in
attempting to stop this. The magazine relied on the
argument that the claim to indemnity of the church was no
stronger than that of any private citizen of the South who
was in sympathy with the Confederacy, and that ifone such
claim was to be paid, all should be paid. Mr. MacDonald lost
his argument.
In 1898 a rather unknown young man addressed the
Atheists in New York on March 18. He was Mahatma
Virchand Raghavji Ghandi of Bombay, India. Mahatma
Ghandi, later, as revealed in the writings of GORA, did
become an Atheist.
We only realize the inroads which religion has made in
our civilgovernment when we read the horror expressed at
the first breech in MacDonald's writings. In the 1890's the
legislature of the state of New York passed a billentitled the
"Freedom of Worship" providing that at their own expense
the priests of the roman catholic church might enter and
conduct religious services in certain public and penal
institutions for the benefit of catholic convicts. The bill
provided that "nothing herein contained shall be construed
to authorize any additional expenditure on the part of the
state. But, in October, 1899, the state comptroller, W.J.
Morgan, made public the fact that a roman catholic chaplain
of the state Industrial School, while holding that position
under the provisions of the Freedom of Worship act, was
collecting $1,200 a year for his services, and that Sisters of
Charity were drawing $5.00 a month each for carfare when
visiting the same institution. Mr. MacDonald was aghast
calling this "graft" and deploring it. I wonder what he would
think of chaplains everywhere now on the public payroll
with the church's great pretence that it had always been so.
In reviewing Mr. MacDonald's works I also find the
authentication for the words of Thomas Edison much
quoted by the Atheist community. Pearl Geer of Silverton,
Oregon, was in New York in 1899 to raise funds for a
The American

Atheist

university. He was visiting with a cousin in East Orange,

New Jersey, and Thomas Edison of the same town sent
word for Geer to visit him. Geer found Edison seated before
a long table with many jars of chemicals before him. When
the wizard had shaken hands with the young man, he
remarked,
with reference to his chemicals, "Well, I'm
reading my bible." Geer replied, "The bible of nature is a
splendid book if one understands how to read it."

"The best damn bible in the world," said Edison with

enthusiasm. "Its laws are perfect, and grand, and all the
prayers in the world can't change them. There is intelligence
and law in this world, and there may be supreme intelligence
and law; but so far as the religion of the day is concerned, it
is all a damned fake."
Next week I will present still other of George MacDonaid's vignettes of history of freethought.

FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT - PART II

Good evening; this is Madalyn Murray O'Hair, American
Atheist, back to talk with you again.
As I review George MacDonald's History of Freethought
in America as seen by the magazine he edited, the Truth
Seeker, I am constantly struck with the thought, "Why! I
didn't know that! How could that have happened!" and
again it comes to my mind as I read about Brigham H.
Roberts and the United States Congress. Mr. Roberts was
duly elected in Utah to serve in the United States Congress.
He had had three wives until Utah was admitted to the
Union at which time he 'abjured' two of his wives. But the
law which enjoined the putting away of plural wives
provided that the man who had herded them to the altar
must continue taking care of them and the question was
publicly debated in the nation as to whether "caring for" the
women meant" sleeping with them". Finally a vote of 268 to
50 on January 25th, 1900 ejected Mr. Roberts from his seat
in congress and deprived Utah of a duly elected representative.
And many other things went on all over the nation that
year. A school committee of Holyoke, Massachusetts,
at
the demand of a roman catholic priest, dismissed from the
high school faculty Miss Anna B. Hasbrouck,
a history
teacher, for informing her pupils that jesus christ was one of
a numerous family of children. If you check matthew XIII, 56
you will find that his brothers were james and joses, simon,
and judah, and that he had an undetermined
number of
sisters. In mark VI, 3 you will discover that this is restated.
Miss Hasbrouck made the mistake of being familiar with her
bible.
In Piermont, near Nyack, New York, a school board
expelled roman catholic children for refusing to participate
in protestant religious services conducted in the schools.
And, in Nebraska, Daniel Freeman of Beatrice instituted a
mandamus suit to compel the school board to stop the
holding of religious services in the schools.
Mr. MacDonald was elated with the little book put out by
Herbert Spencer in 1901 at the age of 82. It was titled Facts
and Comments and laced christianity without mercy. Mr.
MacDonald notes, "The aged philosopher could grant no
more to the christian religion as a moral force than the
Truth Seeker does," and he quoted Mr. Spencer as saying,
"It needs but to glance over the world and to contemplate
the doings of christians everywhere to be amazed at the
ineffectiveness of current theology. Or it needs only to look
back over past centuries and the iniquities alike of populace, nobles, kings, and popes to perceive an almost
incomprehensible
futility of the beliefs everywhere held and
perpetually insisted upon."
It was in this year also that the freethinkers of America
Austin, Texas

first began the fight to stop what they called the "Valley
,Forgery". This is the depiction of general George Washington withdrawing from his troops - being out in the woods
away from his staff at Valley Forge - on his knees praying
to god. That fight ended in defeat, too, for in 1928 the U.S.
Post Office brought out a stamp with Washington depicted
as reverently thus in prayer.
In 1902 the issue of religious services in schools was in the
news again. A son of Mr. J.B. Billiard of North Topeka,
Kansas, was expelled for refusing to participate, but a court
decision then was to the effect that the observance in the
public schools of Kansas of customs and usages of sectarian
churches or religious organizations was not forbidden by
the constitution of the state.
In that same year Mr. MacDonald was giving president
T eddy Roosevelt some praise for having appointed an
agnostic to office. The man appointed was Mr. Pat Garrett
of Texas who held the post of collector of customs at El
Paso.
It was, of course, a notorious
secret that Andrew
Carnegie was an Infidel, but he did delight in "perverse"
practical jokes. "I don't believe in god" was his usual answer
to any man who went to see him seeking financial aid for
"god's work". But, in 1904 he did do something for a
religious college. Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania lost one of its building by fire and its president, Dr.
George E. Reed turned to Carnegie as a possible source of a
contribution to erect a new one.
Now Carnegie had a friend by the name of Moncure D.
Conway. Conway had become a "reverend" by attending
Dickinson College, but later in his life he had dropped the
ministerial title, turned infidel, and was, at the time of the
college's request for money, in Rome as a delegate to the
International Freethought Congress. Knowing all this Carnegie told the man who solicited his money that he would
give $50,000 for a new building if it would be called Conway
Hall. The trustees consented, the hall was built, and was
named accordingly. Mr. MacDonald and the Truth Seeker
staff "chortled with unholy joy to see an institution founded
in calvinism in 1783 by John Dickinson, taken over by the
methodists one hundred and twenty years later, pay this
distinguished honor to a living infidel freethinker."
Fury exhuded constantly from MacDonald at the doings
of government. Senator Bard of California disclosed before
the Senate committee on Indian affairs, on January 31,
1905, that by direction of the president, Theodore Roosevelt, funds appropriated by congress for Indian schools had
been diverted to roman catholic and other sectarian
institutions. The sum involved was "upwards of 100,000
dollars". Senator Bard stated that a roman catholic church

July, 1982

Page 19

agent or lobbyist named Dr. E.L. Scharf had approached

him with the proposal that if the republicans would agree to
bring about the legislation permitting the diversion of Indian
trust funds to the roman catholic church schools on
reservations, the catholics would see that twenty congressional districts in which the republicans were weak were
carried for the party. Senator Bard refused to assent to the
deal. Roosevelt did, and it "was passed to his credit as a
politician". Despite the expose, nothing happened. The law
against the misappropriation
was unmistakeable,
but the
church kept the money and nothing was done.
In 1906 the public library of Brooklyn, New York placed
Mark Twain's books Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn on
the restricted list of books accessible only to "patrons who
have attained a certain degree of maturity". With Mark
Twain as our Atheist "patron saint", this was almost too
much for the Atheist community to bear.
In 1907 Augustus St. Gaudens was commissioned
to
design new coins. He left off the words - "In God We
Trust". When a specimen appeared from the mint the
ministers made a loud clamor, accusing the president of" an
unchristian act". He made a long defense on religious
grounds,
"Everybody must remember the innumerable cartoons and articles based on phrases like 'In god we
trust - for the other eight cents', 'In god we trustfor the short weight', 'In god we trust - for the 37
cents we do not pay', and so forth and so on. Surely I
am well within the bounds when I say that a use of this
phrase which invites constant levity of this type is
most undesirable."
This was Teddy Roosevelt again, and he invited congress to
direct him to replace the motto, which congress immediately did. The freethinkers lost another fight on this one, and
Mr. MacDonald notes, "Roosevelt's reason for removing
the motto was whimsical and could not stand against the
opposed whim of the clamant ministers."
In 1908 Mr. Arthur Watts of River Edge, New Jersey
protested that his children were held under compulsion
while religious exercises were conducted in the schools.
After a three month fight, the Department of Education of
New Jersey, at Trenton, made a ruling that "the attendance
of pupils at religious exercises in public schools must be
entirely voluntary." Mr. MacDonald chalked up a win for
the freethinkers.
In 1910 the issue was back in court in Illinois where the
Supreme Court of Illinois in an opinion written by judge
Dunn decided that the reading of the bible, the singing of
religious hymns, and the repetition of the verses of scripture
known as the 'lord's prayer' in the public schools was in
violation of the constitution of the state. Justice Dunn said:
"The free enjoyment of religious worship includes the
freedom not to worship."
In 1911 Upton Sinclair spent eighteen hours in the New
Castle County, Delaware workhouse, seven hours of the
time breaking rocks on the stone pile for the crime of
playing tennis on Sunday. In Little Rock, Arkansas a court
declared Mr. E.W. Perrin incompetent
as a witness for
refusing to affirm his belief in the existence of a god.
In April, 1912 the White Star passenger steamer, the
Titanic, newest and largest of the ocean liners, struck an
iceberg and sunk. Fifteen hundred persons lost their lives.
Immediately the story was told that as the ship went down
Page 20

July. 1982

its heroic band played, "Nearer My God To Thee" until the

musicians were swept from her deck by the angry waves.
The Truth Seeker was happy to be able to explode this
myth with the testimony of CoL Archibald Gracie who felt
he had survived by the favor of angels. CoL Gracie at a
speech before the University Club in Washington,
D.C.
denied that the band showed such bad taste. He pointed out
that the musicians were not quite crazy enough to sit there
blowing out psalms till the water flooded their instruments.
They played "ragtime" and laid aside their instruments half
an hour before the ship went under.
I was completely stunned to read some of Mr. MacDonald's ideas of the causes of the first world war - the
precipitant causes, and I intend to do some research on this,
but let me read to you exactly what he has to say in this
matter:
"The burden of the year 1914 was naturally the
opening of the World War ... The delayed blast, for
which material long had been accumulating, seems to
have been touched off by an act of the papal authorities at Rome, backed by officially catholic Austria, in
coercing the kingdom of Serbia, a greek catholic
country, into the signing of the concordat June 24,
whereby roman catholicism acquired an official standing in the Balkan state. Serbians resented the imposition, and four days later Archduke Francis Ferdinand
of Austria was assassinated
in Sarajevo, Bosnia by a
Serbian youth while making a tour of the Balkans. So,
after sending to Serbia an unacceptable
ultimatum,
Austria, which was allied triply with Germany and
italy, declared war on Serbia."
This is one of the most shocking things I have read in my life.
I studied the history of these Balkan countries in Graduate
School of History at Western Reserve University in Ohio
when I was a young woman. The religious factor was
carefully suppressed,
as is now the religious factor of the
war in Vietnam.
In the first year of our broadcasting
I received a letter
from a listener who wrote, "Do you know that Charles
Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, was an Atheist?" At that
time I did not know it, but the writings of George MacDonald provides the answer now for he writes that the activity of
the Red Cross in the first world war brought out a bit of
history, published in the censored Freidenker of Munich,
Germany.
"T 0 the beneficent deeds in the direction of love for
an enemy belongs the work of the Freethinker Henri
Dunant, a Swiss, who felt most deeply on the battlefield of Solferino how pitilessly the wounded were at .
that time still abandoned to suffering and death. By his
appeal to mankind, Dunant founded the Red Cross. It
is a humanitarian
institution,
not a clerical one.
Dunant was a Freethinker, and chose the cross as an
emblem because it is an emblem of Switzerland." The
Swiss flag is a white cross on a red field. Dunant
reversed it.
Meantime, the police were busy arresting freethought
speakers and those who attempted to sell the magazine, the
Truth Seeker. The Chicago police arrested D.F. Sweetland
for selling the Truth Seeker. The courts had to discharge
him. Paterson, New Jersey closed the town to freethinkers.
Two New York men speaking in Madison Square, Mr. A.
Stone and Mr. Thomas Wright, both of the Secular Society,
The American

Atheist

freethinkers, that is, were repeatedly arrested, but always

were dismissed by the courts. Scott Nearing was fired from
the University of Pennsylvania for expressing his mind on
Billy Sunday. Thomas E. Watson of Georgia was before the
federal court for printing quotations from books on the
roman catholic religion. Henry Tichenor and his partner
were fined $200 and costs for printing a Billy Sunday
cartoon. And, in the midst of all this the attorney general of
the state of Minnesota
rendered an opinion that bible
reading in schools was unlawful, and the year was 1915.
The next year started out with Emma Goldman being
arrested to prevent her giving a lecture on Atheism. In
Boston V.K. Allison was sentenced to three years in the

penitentiary for handling birth control literature. Thomas E.

Watson and four others were arrested in Aurora, Missouri
for reprinting some pentralia of catholic moral theology.
Irving Meirowitz was arrested in New York for speaking of
Atheism, and the state of Connecticut went into a genuine
blasphemy trial against Michael X. Mockus. The latter
person was found guilty and given a sentence of ten days in
jail.
The words of George MacDonald flow on and on reciting
the names of persons who laid it on the line to tell it like it
was in those days. The list is unending and I would like to
find out a little about the lives of each one of these people
who were so dedicated to our cause.

FIFTY YEARS OF FREETHOUGHT

Good evening; this is Madalyn Murray OHair, American
Atheist, back to talk with you again.
I am reviewing still George MacDonald's survey of fifty
years as an Atheist, working as an Editor of an Atheist
magazine, the Truth Seeker. He recorded events in this
wise: Ten thousand rioters at Haverhill, Massachusetts
attempted to lynch Thomas F. Leyden, who advertised an
anti-catholic lecture in the Haverhill town hall. They attacked the houses and smashed the windows of protestant
ministers in sympathy with the speaker. That was a historic
incident. The Boston Transcript of April 4th (this is the year
1916) pronounced
the affair's disgrace to Massachusetts,
though suppressing the fact that the riot was a religious one
and that the assailants of Leyden were roman catholics.
And, in 1917 when Congress passed a bill creating twenty
new army chaplains to represent the jews, the christian
scientists, unitarians, and other as yet unrecognized denominations, the Atheists were quite overlooked. "Does not
Congress see," he inquired as he proposed a few Infidel
appointments,
"that it would be an intellectual stimulus to
the soldiers if secular chaplains were provided and posts
and camps enlivened with debate?"
And, he was everywhere on the alert. When an American
soldier belonging to the Coast Defense Command wrote
that his company had been paraded and sent to church on
Sunday by order of Colonel Skerrett, Mr. MacDonald got to
the Secretary
of War who passed the matter to the
Adjutant-General,
R.K. Kravans. Mr. Kravans replied at
length quoting a letter from the War Department signed by
Adjutant W.A. Simpson:
"Returned. The Department Commander does not
approve of the action of the Coast Defense Commander in requiring compulsory
attendance
at divine
service of persons under his command. Necessary
action will be taken accordingly."
Compare this to the concept in 1971 when the United
States Army has god in its camp - in every camp
everywhere and when the Secretary of Defense talks about
reliance of our fighting men on god. We could not get this
kind of letter today. Indeed the cadets of West Point have
gone into court with an action attempting to stop their
coercive attendance at church each Sunday.
Mr. MacDonald
noted in August, 1919 that Andrew
Carnegie who died that month, at age 84, had a standing
offer of one million dollars for convincing proofs of a future
Austin, Texas

- PART III

life. No one had earned the million.

And then in 1922, Miss Lovisa Brunzell of San Francisco
had a fantastic idea. She sent a questionnaire to the eleven
thousand
men and women who were members of the
American Association for the Advancement
of Science.
Luther Burbank answered in length and I give his replies
here:
Q. Do you believe in the divinity and miraculous
conception of christ?
Burbank: I do not; there is no proof of it, either
natural or otherwise.
Q. Is it your opinion that prayer is answered by an
intelligent being from without?
Burbank: I do not believe that prayer has been or
ever will be answered by an intelligent being from
without. There is absolutely no proof whatever of this,
though it may be very comforting to some to believe
this myth.
Q. Do you think that the sole value of prayer
consists in its effect on the person praying?
Burbank: Mostly; sometimes it might prove of value
to others.
Q. Has science taught you that heaven and hell do
not exist?
.
Burbank: The common orthodox heaven and hell
do not exist. They could not exist if there were an
all-powerful and just ruler. No criminal could be as
cruel as the god who would consign human beings to a
hell.
Q. What is your opinion of the bible? Is it the work of
god or of man?
Burbank: Without the shadow of a doubt the work
of man, being a history of the lives of ancient tribes
reaching up toward civilization, and constructed
mostly unconsciously by men both good and bad.
Q. Do you assume that the soul of man ceased to
functionate at death?
Burbank: In other spheres, I do. Its influence will live
in humanity - will live for good or bad for all time. We
actually live in the lives of others.
Q. Do you agree with Buchner that "the brain is the
seat of the soul"?
Burbank: A very difficult question to answer in a few
words. The brain, if we include the whole nervous
system, is the soul. Millions of souls functionate,

July, 1982

Page 21

through heredity, through our own personal ones.

Q. Would you say that matter and force govern the
universe rather than a supreme being?
Burbank: Matter, which in its last analysis is force,
governs what we know of the universe.
Q. Can you harmonize the christian faith with the
laws of nature?
Burbank: In part, though this requires more than a
'Yes' or 'No'. It is a faith grown up in our heredity, and
has been an important factor, even though it does not
harmonize with the laws of nature.
Q. Can you say with Darwin that "agnostic would
be the more correct description of my state of mind?"
Burbank: Yes, with reservations.
Q. Have your labors in the field of science and
research caused you to alter your earlier opinions on
religion?
Burbank: All my work in the field of science and
research has come through a change in my earlier
opinions on religion. Growth is the law of life. Orthodoxy is the death of scientific effort.
Q. What facts of nature substantiate your views?
Burbank: The evolution and development of man
and his civilization through his own efforts, and only
these.
Q. Is life after death proved or disproved by
science?
Burbank: It has never been proved or disproved,
but it is rapidly, in my opinion, being disproved and
so accepted by intelligent people.
Q. What, in your opinion, has given rise to
religious beliefs?
Burbank: Probably two things; first, the desire to
extend our present life;and second, the desire of its
teachers to be supported by those who labor.
Q. Is religion of any value in the conduct of
human affairs?
Burbank: There is no possible doubt that it has
been, and, like a police force, willbe in the future to
those who are not able to govern themselves,
especially in their relations toward others.
Further remarks: The thousands of religions
which exist and have existed are stepping-stones to
a better adaptation to environment, and are one by
one being replaced by the clear light of science and
knowledge - in other words, as the fables of
childhood are being supplanted by a better understanding of the facts of life.
Faithfully yours, Luther Burbank.
Unfortunately, Mr. MacDonald does not give the
results of the entire survey. If I can find it extant
somewhere, I will bring this to you also at a later date.
By 1923 Texas was again in the news. At that time
representative Stroder introduced a bill into the Texas
House of Representatives seeking to prohibit the teaching of Darwinian or theistic evolution in the Texas public
schools. The Committee on State Affairs reported
unfavorably on the bill.
On April 7, 1923 Mr. MacDonald accepted the first
article of Charles Smith, who was later destined to
become the editor of the magazine. In reporting on
Charlie he stated, "Assisted by Mr. John Kewish, who
lectured at Columbus Circle, and Mr. Walter Merchant,
Page 22

July. 1982

who sold on the street, he ran the weekly street sales up

to above 800. He noted, however, that Charlie had been
arrested three times for these street sales, and fined
once.
In 1924 the American Rationalist Association came
into existence, and it is still going, holding conventions
each year. In 1970 the last convention of this freethought
group was in Orange, Texas.
And, in 1924 George Santayana, a man of science and
a professor of philosophy in reply to the questionnaire of
Miss Brunzell observed that religion, so far as it professed to be an account of matter of fact, was "entirely
fabulous".
Of allthe short -sighted public officialsthat Mr. MacDonald reported on, those of Ohio seemed to take a prize.
Three governors of Ohio vetoed a legislative measure
that accepted from the freethinker, John Bryan, deceased, $50,000 worth of land near Yellow Springs for a
Natural History Reserve with the stipulation that no
public religious service should ever be held on it. Judge
Scarlett of Franklin county validated the will.The last of
the vetoing governors, Donahey, argued that the state
was a "community temple" that would be desecrated by
a spot where god could not be worshipped publicly. "Let
us see," he exhorted, "that it reaches our children
unprofaned."
Mr. MacDonald also wanted to make certain that
everyone knew about Helen H. Gardener who he
described as a young woman of enviable person and
talent. In 1884 she had already won public notice as an
advocate of freethought and she continued in the cause
until she died on July 26th, 1925. There was something
special about her death, too. She willed her brain to
Cornell University for the purpose of a physical demonstration of her theory that the brain is immune from sex
- that is, that a woman's brain is the same as man's. Mr.
MacDonald noted, "The test seemed to substantiate that
thought." Which all proves that women Atheists are not
only way out ahead of their times, but also that they are
peculiar critters.
Atheism and freethought have a peculiar battle to fight
always. These are the continuing tales circulated about
their deaths. And Mr. MacDonald had to deal with this
over and over in his magazine, refuting again and again
the claims that on their death beds Atheists cry for god or
jesus and ask to be saved. He had to refute "recantation"
stories about Herbert Spencer, Thomas Paine, and
finally Bob Ingersoll.
A book came out in 1909, written by one Henry
Murray of England, containing the recantation of Herbert Spencer. It followed, Mr. MacDonald noted, "the
usual form of such fabrication" and he quoted:
"Walking up and down the lawn of Buchanan's
house in Mansfield Gardens, I told him, in a
momentary absence of our host, what a load of
personal obligation I felt under to First Principles
(Spencer's book), and added that I intended to
devote the reading hours of the next two or three
years to a thorough study of his entire output.
'What have you read of mine?' he asked. ltold him.
.. 'Then,' said Spencer - and it was the only time I
have heard such counsel from the lips of any writer
regarding his own work - 'I should say that you
The American

Atheist

"Mrs. Ingersoll," Berry swore, "was a strict baptist and a

sister to my father."
Actually Mrs. Eva Ingersoll's maiden name was Parker. She was a descendant of the old Massachusetts
Parker family and came from a line of freethinkers. None
the less the lies had to be met. Their story is as follows:
"During the night of July 20, 1899 he had an
attack of acute indigestion and slept very little ...
At about 11:45A.M. (the next day) he arose and sat
in his chair to put on his shoes. Miss Sue Sharkey
came into the room, followed by Mrs. Sue M.
Farrell. Mrs. Ingersoll said: 'Do not dress, Papa,
until after luncheon; I willeat upstairs with you.' He
replied, 'Oh no, Ido not want to trouble you' ... He
looked up laughingly at Mrs. Farrell as she turned
to leave the room, and then Mrs. Ingersoll said,
'Why, Papa, your tongue is coated; I must give you
some medicine.' He looked at her with a smile, and
as he did so he closed his eyes and passed away
without a struggle, a pang, or even a sigh. No one
else was present."
MacDonald noted that at one time in one of the
speeches which Ingersoll had made he had said that he
knew of nothing that had the same prospect of longevity
as a good healthy religious lie.
And, our business is to stop them. That is the business
of separation of state and church, which is the main aim
of my sponsor, The Society of Separationists, Inc., a
non-profit, non-political, educational organization dedicated to separation of state and church and the separating
out of the true and the false about lives and incidents of
Atheists.

have read quite enough.' He fell silent for a

moment, and then added, 'I have passed my life in
beating the air.'"
Bitterly Mr. MacDonald comments that for hundreds of
years nothing original enough to be copyrighted has
been added to the standard version of Infidel recantations. Persons 'witnessing' to the retraction never
change the testimony.
Paine died near the beginning of the nineteenth
century. Associated with the recantation afterwards
prepared for him was a woman who is purported to have
had with the dying man the following conversation.:
"Paine asked her if she had ever read any of his
writings, and on being told that she had read very
little of them, he inquired what she thought of them.
She told him that she was very young when his Age
of Reason was put in her hands, but that the more
she read it the more dark and distressed she felt,
and she threw the book into the fire. 'l wish I had
done as you,' he replied, 'for if the devil ever had
any agency in any work, he had it in my writing that
book.' "
Bob Ingersoll died in 1899 and by the 1920's many
stories were out about him. Indeed on this one there was
an affidavit attributed by an Evangelist to one Archie E.
Berry, who affirmed: "I do hereby declare that Robert
Ingersoll confessed to my father, Joehiel S. Berry, on his
dying bed, that he did not believe the doctrine he
preached." The Colonel said, the affidavit claimed, "I do
not believe what I have preached, and only did it for the
money there was in it." His daughter was then to have
asked, "Whose life shall I live after, yours or mother's?!"

Toward More Intelligence

Richard Smith

AYNRAND
Earlier this year a fairly well-known novelist-philosopher
died. I say "fairly" well-known because the media does not
publicize such people like it does Burt Reynolds or Dolly
Parton. Nevertheless, among those who read her writings
there seems to be a large number who have an extremely
strong attachment to her. She was an Atheist, and because
of this I have been surprised by the number of her diehard
fans whom I have encountered in American Atheists. I am
speaking, of course, of Ayn Rand whose philosophy was
known as Objectivism.
I remember the first time I read her back when I was in
high school. It was a book called Virtue of Selfishness. Its
message was very simple. Don't sacrifice yourself for what
somebody else (usually in power) defines as the "common
good". It seemed reasonable enough. I hadn't planned on
that, especially since I was just escaping the religious guilttraps of my childhood, and I proceeded my nonchalant way
through college. At the time it seemed to me that the power
of superstitious religion was fast on the wane, and that it
wouldn't be any kind of a problem after another 10 years or
so. I was rudely shocked after I graduated from college - a
Austin, Texas

college where virtually nobody was religious or pretended

to be even in the "liberal" fashion - to find a society that
would elect Jimmy Carter to be president not because he
had any definite program, but because he could convince
people he was "trustworthy" based on the fact that he was a
"plain old simple country born-again christian". It seemed
that the effect of Watergate had not been to effect any
change in the way government operated, but to impel
millions of gullible people to fall once again for religion as a
source of "morality". It was at that point, especially when
younger members of my own family became religious
rhinoceri (Read the play, or see the movie of that name by
Ionesco) that I became concerned and joined American
Atheists, the only organization that was and still is trying to
make a significant educational impact on the general public
in America with r.espect to religion and with respect, in
particular, to belief in a mythical supernatural god.
Since then, I have run into more Objectivists than I ever
dreamed existed and have been impressed that these
people and Ayn Rand were and are really serious about
their anti-mysticism and Atheism. Although I think Objecti-

July,

1982

Page 23

vists tend to subordinate this to their politics (about which I

will not comment here) to an inordinate degree, because I
don't think that politics is more important than Atheism, it is
refreshing to meet so many people who make no bones
about saying what a fraud all religion is (unlike so many
"respectable"
people I am familiar with who like to hedge).
Particularly good is Nathaniel Brandon's piece - What is
the Objectivist View of Agnosticism?
(which American
Atheists has contained into a flyer available @50/$1.50).
The gist of it is that agnostics (Kant's "intellectual" descendants) treat as equally valid an Atheist's demand for logic and
reason and a religious nut's assertion of only his/her
feelings, when there is no validity in the latter position at all
in the face of the evidence.
This has prompted me to take a closer look at Ayn Rand's
works and to make an analysis of it in terms of Atheism.
Frankly, I don't understand how her fans can be so strongly
opposed to religion, as her references
to religion are
relatively rare, but I guess her fans are real sticklers for
detail. Anyway, here are some of the remarks I have found.
My comments will follow:
" ... as, in earlier generations, the weakest among the
young conformed to the fundamentalist
view of the
bible."
- Apollo and Dionysius
"If one keeps clearly in mind the moral-legal context
(and hierarchical derivation) of any given political
principle, one will not find any difficulty or contradiction in applying it to specific cases. For instance,
american citizens possess the right to freedom of
religion; but if some sect adopted primitive beliefs and
began to practice human sacrifices, it would be
prosecuted for murder. Clearly, this is not an infringement of the sect's religious freedom; it is the proper
application of the principle that all rights are derived
from the right to life and that those who violate it
cannot claim its protection."
- Political Crimes
"It is not a question of whether man chooses to be
guided by a comprehensive view: he is not equipped to
survive without it. The nature of his consciousness
does not permit him an animal's percept-guided,
range-of-the-moment
form of existence. No matter
how primitive his actions, he needs to project them
into the future and to weigh their consequences ...
Man's choice is not whether he needs a comprehensive view of life, but only whether his view is true or
false. If it is false, it leads him to act as his own
destroyer.
" In the early stages of mankind's development, that
view was provided by religion, i.e., by mystic fantasy.
Man's psycho-epistemological
need is the reason why
even the most primitively savage tribes always clung
to some form of religious belief; the mystic (i.e. antirational) nature of their view was the cause of
mankind's incalculably long stagnation .._
"Philosophy is the goal toward which religion was
only a helplessly blind groping. The grandeur, the
reverence, the exalted purity, the austere dedication
to the pursuit of truth, which are commonly associated with religion, should properly belong to the field
of philosophy. Aristotle lived up to it and, in part, so
did Plato, Aquinas, Spinoza - but how many others?
Page 24

July, 1982

It is earlier than we think.

" If you observe that ever since Hume and Kant ...
philosophy has been striving to prove that man's mind
is impotent, that there's no such thing as reality and
we wouldn't be able to perceive it if there were - you
will realize the magnitude of the treason involved."
- The Chicken's Homecoming
", .. When man had to 'leave well enough alone' - in
prehistoric times - his life expectancy was 15 to 20
years.
"This phrase, 'to leave well enough alone', captures
the essence of the deaf, blind, lethargic, fear-ridden,
hatred-eaten human ballast that the men of the mind
- the prime movers of human survival and progress
- have had to drag along, to feed and to be martyred
by, through all the millenia of mankind's history.
"The Industrial Revolution was the great breakthrough that liberated man's mind from the weight of
that ballast. ..
"The enemies of reason - the mystics, the manhaters, the life-haters, the seekers of the unearned
and the unreal - have been gathering their forces for
a counterattack
ever since. It was the corruption of
philosophy that gave them the power to corrupt the
rest.
"The enemies of the Industrial Revolution - its
displaced persons - were of the kind that had fought
human progress for centuries, by every means available. In the Middle Ages, their weapon was the fear of
god. In the nineteenth century, they still invoked the
fear of god - for instance, they opposed the use of
anesthesia on the grounds that it defies god's will,
since god intended men to suffer."
- The Anti-Industrial Revolution
"The anti-rational philosophic trend of the past two
hundred years has run its course, and reached its
climax. To oppose it will require a philosophical
revolution, or, rather, a rebirth of philosophy. Appeals
to 'home, church, mother, and tradition' will not do;
they never did."
- The Comprachicos
Then there are these sections from John Galt's speech in
her principle work, Atlas Shrugged:
"You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding
punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards.
Threats will not make us function; fear is not our
incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life
that we wish to live.
"You, who have lost the concept of the difference,
you who claim that fear and joy are incentives of equal
power - and secretly add that fear is the more
'practical' - you do not wish to live, and only fear of
death still holds you to the existence
you have
damned. You dart in panic through the trap of your
days, looking for the exit you have closed, running
from a pursuer you dare not name to a terror you dare
not acknowledge,
and the greater your terror the
greater your dread of the only act that could save you:
thinking. The purpose of your struggle is not to know,
not to grasp or name or hear the thing I shall now state
to your hearing: that yours is the Morality of Death.
the American

Atheist

.Death is the standard of your values, death is your

chosen goal, and you have to keep running, since
there is no escape from the pursuer who is out to
destroy you or from the knowledge that that pursuer
is yourself. Stop running, for once - there is no place
to run - stand naked, as you dread to stand, but as I
see you, and take a look at what you dared to call a
moral code.
"Damnation is the start of your morality, destruction
is its purpose, means and end. Your code begins by
damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a
good which it defines as impossible for him to practice.
It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept
his own depravity without proof. It demands that he
start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard
of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then
to define the good: the good is that which he is not.
"It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer
on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic
god with some incomprehensible design or any passerby whose rotting sores are held as some inexplicable
claim upon him - it does not matter, the good is not
for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through
years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence
to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only
concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is
non-man.
"The name of this monstrous absurdity is original
sin.
"A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an
insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside
the possibility of choice is outside the province of
morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no
power to change it; if he has no will,he can be neither
good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin,
a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality.
Ta hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature.
Ta punish him for a crime he committed before he was
born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a
matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of
reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and
reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil
hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your
code.
" Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man
is born with free will, but with a 'tendency' to evil. A
free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with
loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the
effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the
game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a
tendency that he had no power to escape. If the
tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth;
if it is hot of his choice, his will is not free ...
"(The mystics) claim that they perceive a mode of
being superior to your existence on this earth. The
mystics of spirit call it 'another dimension', which
consists of denying dimensions. . . To exist is to
possess identity. What identity are they able to give to
their superior realm? They keep telling you what it is
not, but never tell you what it is. All their identifications consist of negating: God is that which no human
mind can know, they say - and proceed to demand
that you consider it knowledge - god is non-man,
Austin, Texas

heaven, is non-earth, soul is non-body, virtue is nonprofit, A is non-A, perception is non-sensory, knowledge is non-reason. Their definitions are not acts of
defining, but of wiping out.
" It is only the metaphysics of a leech that would cling
to the idea of a universe where a zero is a standard of
identification ...
"A mystic is a man who surrendered his mind at its
first encounter with the minds of others. Somewhere
in the distant reaches of his childhood, when his own
understanding of reality clashed with the assertions of
others, with their arbitrary orders and contradictory
demands, he gave in to so craven a fear of independence that he renounced his rational faculty. At the
crossroads of the choice between 'I know' and 'They
say', he chose the authority of others, he chose to
submit rather than to understand, to believe rather
than to think. Faith in the supernatural begins as faith
in the superiority of others. His surrender took the
form of the feeling that he must hide his lack of
understanding, that others possess some mysterious
knowledge of which he alone is deprived, that reality is
whatever they want it to be, through some means
forever denied to them ...
"From then on, afraid to think, he is left at the mercy
of unidentified feelings. His feelings become his only
guide, his only remnant of personal identity, he clings
to them with ferocious possessiveness - and whatever thinking he does is devoted to the struggle of
hiding from himself that the nature of his feelings is
terror.
"There is only one state that fulfills the mystic's
longing for infinity, non-causality, non-identity: death.
No matter what unintelligible causes he ascribes to his
incommunicable feelings, whoever rejects reality rejects existence - and the feelings that move him from
then on are hatred for all the values of man's life, and
lust for all the evils that destroy it. A mystic relishes
the spectacle of suffering, of poverty, subservience
and terror; these give him a feeling of triumph, a proof
of the the defeat of rational reality. But no other reality
exists.
" No matter whose welfare he professes to serve, be
it the welfare of god or of that disembodied gargoyle
he describes as 'The People', no matter what ideal he
proclaims in terms of some supernatural dimension
-in fact, in reality, on earth, his ideal is death, his
craving is to kill, his only satisfaction is to torture."
Well, these are powerful words indeed. They deserve a
healthy "right-on", if you will pardon my use of such
tribalistic vocabulary. I would only make a few amendments.
In several of these passages Rand indicates a belief
(prevalent among many Atheists) that primitive fundamentalist christianity is dead or, at least, so weakened as not to
be a serious concern. This is mistaken wishful thinking
which I, too, once held until a few years ago, as I have
already noted. It is far from dead, as we have seen with the
emergence of Jerry Farback and his ilk, even among young
people. In fact, it still controls the culture as anyone who
reads the newspapers and tries to find some honest
reporting on religion can see. It willonly die when it has been
killed by a determined educational thrust such as American
July, 1982

Page 25

Atheists is providing with l/lOOOth the financial backing

that it needs. Until then religion is a constant threat to our
mental sanity.
In the section on political crimes Rand rightly notes the
justified restrictions on "freedom of religion". However, I
would go one step further. Religion (unless you take the
whimsical definition of religion as anything anyone takes
seriously) is itself death. It teaches death by teaching an
inordinate fear of death. It is the death of all real human
values and reason for living. It is the death of oneself in
submission to a mythical god. It is the death of one's mind
and the death, through self-humiliation, of real happiness.
Religion as such does not have the right to even exist,
certainly not in my environment
(and my environment
covers a lot of ground). It must be ended before one can
even conceive of an end to other forms of authoritarian
tyranny.
The last comment I have to make is that, while I am no
expert on the details of every philosopher, I suspect Ayn
Rand may have unconsciously
suffered from the same
"comprachico"
(straitjacket) education that she complains
of in her section entitled "Comprachicos".
I suffered from it,
too. I didn't even hear about Demokritos,
probably the
foremost scientist of the ancient world, until I was 27 years
old, and I think that is a damning indictment on our
educational system. She mentions Plato and Aquinas as
being, in part, in the same league with Aristotle, and makes
no mention of Demokritos to whom Aristotle owed much of
his scientific knowledge. Nothing I have read in Plato and
Aquinas could redeem them from their exaltation
of
mysticism and their excuses for another alleged "ideaworld" apart from and above material reality. At least Kant,
whom Rand rightly condemns, came up with an original and
accurate nebular theory of the origin of the solar system and
of "island universes" (which we now call galaxies). I can
think of no such tangible contribution by either Plato or
Aquinas.
With Aristotle himself I find it difficult to come to terms.
Granted that he displayed a depth and breadth of knowledge surpassing almost everybody (excepting Demokritos)
for 2000 years and that that knowledge was based on a
natural curiosity and flexibility of intellect that was not
matched by most of his later readers who regarded his
every word as dogma (and who also lacked his resources
after christianity took over the western world). Nevertheless, much of his thought is as convoluted as Kant's. For
example, what are we to make of this passage from
Metaphysics, Book XII?:
" ... For what is capable of receiving the objects of
thought and the essences of things is mind, and when '
it possesses them, it is engaged in activity; so, it is this
activity rather than the potency for it that seems to be
the divine element possessed by the mind, and its
contemplation
is of all things the most pleasant and

the best. If, then, god is always in the good state which
we are sometimes in, that is something to wonder at;
and if he is in a better state than we are ever in, that is
to be wondered at even more. This is, in fact, the case,
however. Life belongs to him, too; for life is the
actuality of the mind, and god is that actuality; and his
independent actuality is the best life and an eternal life.
We assert, then, that god is an eternal and most
excellent living being, so that continuous and eternal
life and duration belong to him. For that is what god
is."

Even though Aristotle would have rejected the supernatural gods of his and our time (except that he still had a
curious tendency to refer to zeus matter-of-factly),
this is
not an example of clear thinking and needs to be recognized
as such. It may be significant that this part of Aristotle was
due to his being influenced by Plato, who was responsible
for asserting that ideas (the big one being god) exist apart
from material reality, and that possibly Aristotle should not
be judged so harshly on work that laier was supplanted by
more real and scientific writing. Still, I don't think Aristotle
should be put on a pedestal without some qualification.
A big lesson we can draw from the above passage of
Aristotle's is that no thinker should allow even an inch of the
door for religious salesmen to stick their foot into. We have
since seen it occur time and time again. The whole idea of
god belongs originally to the supernatural religionists. The
slightest appeasement
or reference to the word, god, in a
positive manner by Aristotle was seized upon by the
supernatural
religionists and was used to bolster their
inhuman institutions. Thus, Aristotle became used by the
catholic church, especially through Aquinas, to bolster their
religion so that as much if not more than as a source of
progress, Aristotle became a source of retardation.
The
same has occurred with Thomas Jefferson and Albert
Einstein. For that reason scientists today should make it
publicly clear that they do not believe in any supernatural
god, and not make any statements supporting the god idea
at all. If they must get emotional about reality, they should at
least use discretion and use some other word besides god or
religion to describe their feelings. I suspect that Ayn Rand
and Objectivists would agree on this point.
That is all that I have to say here concerning Ayn Rand. I
would only make a final note that it was refreshing to not
hear her demise being accompanied
by stories of lastminute repentances
and religious funeral scenes. In large
part I think that was because she didn't attack religion as
openly, clearly, and persistently as have other well-known
Atheists and as American Atheists is doing, and so such
religious lies about her were not as apt to be spread. But, I
think she was an Atheist all the way, and was too intelligent
to lose her senses. Her life, like all public Atheists, will be
remembered
long after jesus christ, like zeus, has been
forgotten:

Re: Pope Wojtyla in Fatima, Portugal, Part III by Jean Yves Riviere
We must apologize for the absence of the final installment of this series in this month's issue of the American Atheist.
Due to an unforeseen wealth of detail the writer has had to delay his submission. Based on his previous work and the
amount of material expected, however, we can guarantee that you will be amply rewarded for your patience in the next
month's issue of the magazine.
- Editor
Page 26

July. 1982

The American

Atheist

COMMENTARY

by Gregory Fahy, PhD.

Iwould like to add some additional points to those already

expressed by Barbara Sowder in her excellent article, "Life
After Death" (American Atheist, Vol. 24 No.5, pp. 5-7), on
the subject of the so-called "near death experience", or
NOE. In the NOE, people who have become severely
emotionally upset or who have apparently undergone
clinical death and subsequently been resuscitated claim to
have left their physical bodies while "dead", had various
experiences while in this disembodied state, and subsequently returned to their bodies with glorious memories of
the "afterlife". This phenomenon has enjoyed massive
public exposure and is likely one of the most formidable
challenges to Atheism so far encountered in that it is
assumed to be an objective, verifiable event which can
clearly and perhaps even scientificaly establish the existence of spirits and an afterlife. Ifbelief in the objective reality
of these alleged "experiences" continues to snowball, we
will be in for rocky times indeed.
I as a scientist cannot yet completely explain in concrete,
psychobiological detail the true nature of the NOE and, of
course, we are at a disadvantage due to our incomplete
understanding of the functions of the brain. However, the
following points seem significant.
First, it seems striking to me that these "experiences"
happen to people who never have died and, in fact, who
have not even been injured in any way with the same
intensity as they happen to those who have apparently been
clinically dead (Moody, R., Life after Life, Bantam Books,
20th printing, 1977). This strongly suggests that the NOE is
a psychological phenomenon, dependent upon normal
brain mechanisms operating under stressful conditions,
and in no way indicative of anything that happens after
death. Corroborated stories about what the disembodied
patient saw during his or her clinical death are, in fact, quite
rare and may be unreliable. It is possible that most NOEs
happen not while the patient is truly clinically dead, but
rather in the period just before or just after this period.
Second, one would expect that, if the NOE is a genuine
description of the afterlife, that the reports would become
more and more vivid as the evidence for cessation of brain
function became stronger and stronger, or at least the
experiences should not become dimmer as the length of
clinical death increases. After all, if brain function has not
ceased, then the experience can be attributed to normal
brain mechanisms rather than to the recollections of a
supernatural soul, while a "soul" should be in no way
dependent upon continuing brain activity. However, it
seems that just the opposite is true! In fact, there is reason
to believe that the NOE is impossible in the absence of some
residual brain activity. Moody reported no examples of
NOEs for people who were a) deeply anesthetized before
their clinical deaths (in fact, one woman who died twice
reported an NOE only for the instance in which she had not
been previously anesthetized); b) deeply hypothermic (low
body temperature) before their clinical deaths (including
deliberate circulatory arrest on the operating table, as has
often been done to allow for delicate vascular surgery); c)
rendered clinically dead by means of an electric shock,
which would neutralize brain activity without warning; d)
Austin, Texas

verified to have had an isoelectric EEG ("flat" brain wave

trace) due to any cause at the time of events they later
remembered witnessing; e) under the influence of psychoactive agents capable of distorting consciousness and
blunting NOE type hallucinations (such agents should
hardly have any effect on a disembodied soul.) In fact,
according to a woman who was interviewed on local TV
recently after recovering from 5 hours of clinical death (of
which she remembered nothing at all), the longer clinical
death lasts, the less can be remembered about it. This
woman was maintained on CPR during her clinical death.
. I think that perhaps the most telling evidence concerning
the incompatibility of NOEs with brain inactivity is now just
beginning to emerge. Very recently some spectacular
advances have been made in reviving people from prolonged and unequivocal clinical death. For example, there is
one report of a man who was revived after approximately an
hour of death caused by knife wounds which caused most of
the blood to drain out of his body. In none of these cases
was there any indication that NOEs had occurred. (For the
full details, see Annals of Emergency Medicine, February
and March issues, 1982, available in your local university
library.) Yet these are just the cases in which lengthy
descriptions of what happened during an hour of death
could be the most convincing. (But, having said this, one
should expect the faithful who have been so resuscitated to
occasionally try to fabricate such accounts to keep the
mythos alive.)
Such resuscitation technology opens marvelous possibilities for the controlled scientific study of NOEs! Perhaps it
could be arranged to have people put to death in various
safe, reversible ways under clinical laboratory conditions.
Patterns of brain electrical activity could be measured to
determine any correlations between NOEs and brain inactivity; the effect of duration of death, mode of death, drugs
administered before death, etc. could be systematically
examined. It could even be seen if there is any burst of
electrical activity in the hippocampus (the brain region
associated with memory) upon resuscitation, which would
be a necessity ifmemories found only in the spirit mind (due
to the fact that an inactive brain cannot record new
memories) are to be transferred to the brain upon revival
and thus retained. Various tests could be done to see if
disembodied spirits can travel through walls to see what is
on the other side, as has been claimed. One assumes that
after a few hundred absolutely negative trials of this kind,
that the issue of the NOE can be laid to rest once and for all.
In fact, what would likely emerge from such studies is a
better understanding of the electrical patterns of brain
activity that correspond to the hallucination of the NOE,
permitting us, at last, a relatively good neurophysiological
explanation for the NOE.
NOEs do not happen to everyone, nor does everyone
report the same events or even the same sequence of
events. Sometimes the reports are in fact quite contradictory. This plus the presence of NOEs in clearly livingpeople
and the absence of NOEs in clearly dead people all suggests
that the NOE can best be thought of not as spiritual
revelation, but as mental aberration.

July, 1982

Page 27

~=======================----------------------------Congressional Record

CONCERNING REAGAN'S SCHOOL PRA YERBILL

Senate

Proceedings and Debates of the 97th Congress, Second-Session

May 6, 1982

A CONSTITUTIONAL
AMENDMENT
ON PRAYER IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Mr. MATHIAS.
Mr. President, the press reports that
when Independence was declared and independence
was
President Reagan today planned to announce his support
won in the War of the Revolution, they resolved that the new
for a constitutional
amendment
that would specifically
Republic should be governed without Government regulaauthorize some form of prayer in public schools. The White
tion of religion, without Government
interference with
House has said he will send us a draft soon.
'
religion, and without Government a uthorization of religion.
Not having seen the draft of the specific language thatthe
So in the first amendment
to the Constitution
it is
President advocates, I am not in a position to comment on
provided that "Congress shall make no law respecting an
his proposal.
establishment
of religion or prohibiting the free exercise
But I can claim to know something about the subject. I thereof."
was a Member of the other body, serving on the Judiciary
James Madison is especially eloquent in explaining in the
Committee at the time the Becker amendment was debated
Journal of the Constitutional
Convention what was in the
there. That was an amendment to the Constitution proposed
minds of the framers, and he is a boundless source of
on the subject of prayer in school. Many hours of hearings,
information to guide us as we consider this proposal.
many evenings studying American history and American
I would urge every Member of Congress to review the
constitutional
law, and many volumes of reports were all
extensive record made in the House Judiciary Committee in
required by the Judiciary Committee's close and careful
considering
the Becker amendment.
The conclusion
is
scrutiny of this important subject.
inescapable that we should not repudiate the historic policy
My conclusion, after participating in those very arduous
offreedom that has served us so well for two centuries. It is a
studies, was that we should not adopt an amendment with
policy of separation of church and state, and I believe that
respect to prayer in the school.
any constitutional
amendment to authorize school prayer
If we wish to conserve the traditional and historic values
will irreparably breach that rule.
of American society, we should not adopt such an amendIn the interest of liberty, in the interest of freedom of
ment. The founders of the Republic did not, of course, face
religion, and in the interest of all Americans, our generation
the particular question because there was then no public
and the generations to come, I urge Senators to look hard
school system as we know it. But they knew what happened
and deep at this proposal. When they have done so I am
when government meddles with religion.
confident they will conclude that a constitutional
amendIn the colony of Maryland there had been official prayers,
ment with respect to prayer in schools is a radical turn on the
in our case Anglican prayers, and, of course, our ancestors
road of American history and a detour that most of us will
were not unique in living under established religions. So
not judge it is wise to take.

American Atheist Commentary

The United States Constitution
was drawn for the
purpose of guaranteeing "certain inalienable rights" to its
citizens. It was then equipped with a Bill of Rights which
outlined those rights. It did not specify whether these
"rights" were the exclusive property
of minorities or.
majorities - because it was concerned only with the rights
of each individual. This concept has been thoroughly
recognized by the highest court of the land and every
person who is a knowledgeable student of U.S. history.
In order to assure that this concept would be lasting, the
Continental Congress also devised a system of governmen
tal "checks and balances". The government was divided
into three separate and equally authoritative branches, and
the Bill of Rights was held to be inviolate - beyond the
reach of any who would attempt to change it.
'
The purpose of the three branches in government is also
dearly spelled out by the Constitution.
The task of the
legislative branch - the Congress
- was to design
additional laws and regulations as needed. These new or
additional laws would be administered
by agencies of
government. Business administration and the enforcement
of all laws were incorporated in the executive branch - the
Presidency. However, the purpose of the third branch the Judiciary - was to "interpret"
the purpose
and
meanings of all laws so that just and equal treatment was
finally guaranteed to "each individual". No nation has ever
devised a more nearly perfect system aimed at protecting
human beings from mistreatment by government agencies
Page 28

July. 1982

or agents.
What is now being considered by Ronald Reagan (the
executive officer) and the Congress (the legislative branch)
is to dilute or deny the powers of the judiciary, that branch
which was designed as the "interpreter"
of the laws
fashioned to protect the rights of the individual. The "school
prayer" issue is the vehicle offered as a subversive means of
blinding an emotional segment of the citizenry to the real
purpose sought after by the Congress and the President.
That purpose is to nullify the powers of the "governmental
referee" - the courts. If this trick is allowed to work in this
instance, no individual right will ever again be secure. A
precedent will have been established whereby the court
system can eventually be rendered
powerless
in any
context which the Congress deems "necessary". This idea
is purely and simply fascist. It was used by Adolf Hitler in his
rise to power in pre- war Germany. It was applauded by an
equally emotionally driven German populace. It established
a sickness, a nation of people without individual rights.
Such insane tactics are always "sold" to the public on
emotionally based ideologies whereby the "public" is duped
into thinking that they will ultimately benefit by the practice.
How dare the Congress
and the President
"forbid
interpretation"
of our laws by that particular branch of
government that was specifically designed to do the legal
interpretation of our laws. It is now time for the "minorities"
to demand that our government not be tampered with by
fascist-minded bigots.
The American

Atheist

Righteous Ronnie's Ministry

SCHEDULE OF SERMONS AND DAILY MISSALS:

(1) "Prayer - As a Public School Control Device"
(2) "Parochiaid and Religious Subsidies for a Stronger Christian Economy"
(3) "Child Abuse and Teenage Draft as Alternatives to
Unwanted Pregnancy"
(4) "Let Them Eat Catsup: A Solution for Public
School Lunch Problems"
(5) "Death of an Equal Rights Amendment"
(6) "180,000,000,000
- Now That' What I Call a
Military Budget!"
(7) "Divine Creation: The Science of a Biblical Tomorrow"
(8) "National Bankruptcy as a Tool to Curb Inflation"
(9) "War and International Intrigue as Mediums of
Evangelism"

(10) "My Day of National Prayer - May 6, '82"

(11) "1983: Year of the Bible, the Only Book We Need"
(12) "Helms, Falwell, Watt, and Other Clever Conservatives I Have Known"
(13) "How to Start Fires with Sex Handbooks and the
Works of Mark Twain"
(14) "Bob Jones University - A Purified Pattern for
Christian Teaching in America"
(15) "The U.S. Supreme Court - A Secular Humanist
Danger"
(16) "Necessity of Minority Control in our Theocracy"
(17) "Is the Bill of Rights Really Necessary"
(18) "Unlimited Masculinity in a Stepford Wife Relationship"
(19) "Censorship as an Aid to Thought Control"

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