It seems as if every day there’s some new scandal or story of stupidity involving members of the holier-than-thou set. Except on Sundays, of course, which are their days of rest. You’d think they’d be lying low for a while after the recent national embarrassment of PZ Myers’ expulsion from Expelled! Let’s Show Pictures of Hitler (while Richard Dawkins walked right in), the subsequent attempts to make excuses for their ineptness, and most of all, the recent tragic news of the 11 year old girl who died because her fundamentalist parents thought prayer would be an effective cure for her diabetes. But no, they soldier on, almost as if they don’t understand that these stories reflect negatively on them…
As the latest of my occasional attempts to coerce myself into posting more often, I’ve titled this post “This Week In Fundamentalism, Volume 1”. The “Volume 1” part implies there will be more, and the “Week” part implies that it might appear something close to weekly. Maybe I’ll take the hint I’m dropping myself, but it’s hard to tell; sometimes I can be pretty thick-headed.
Anyway, on to the subject at hand:
I remember a story from while back about an outspoken atheist named Rob Sherman, who fought a court battle against a mandatory Moment of Silence at his daughter’s school. I was less than thrilled by this action, because there was never a mandatory prayer involved (though the word “prayer” was in the name of the act that created the MoS) and there was no indication that it would be anything other than a quiet moment when those who wanted to pray or gather their thoughts could do so. Railing against an optional, voluntary, quiet, unguided religious rite seemed to me to play right into the stereotypes religious folks have about militant atheists who want to take their rights away.
Mr. Sherman’s recent actions, however, I heartily approve of. He’s involved in the investigation of some shady dealings involving the Illinois governor’s alleged funneling of $1 million to a religious school, and it was during his testimony before a House committee on April 2nd that he was verbally assaulted by a legislator:
Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy — it’s tragic — when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school.
I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?
I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous–
Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?
Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!
Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court—
Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.
Eric Zorn, the Chicago Tribune reporter who covered the story, made an excellent point:
“Consider what the outcry would have been if a lawmaker had launched a similar attack on the beliefs of a religious person.”
I also wonder if Rep. Davis – a black woman – sees any irony in standing in front of a legislative body attempting deny a person’s rights based on his beliefs, when it wasn’t so very long ago in this country when she would very likely have been similarly shouted down when fighting for her rights in front of earlier generations of righteous bigots who would see her as an uppity negro or a woman who didn’t know her place.
I was intrigued by her repeated “Land of Lincoln” reference. Intrigued enough to see if I could find some information on Honest Abe’s thoughts on religion. The results of a quick Google search are quite interesting; there exist a large body of quotes attributed to him that seem to indicate a belief in the Christian god, but also a number of quotes that seem strong indicators that his view of the world might have been a little closer to Mr. Sherman’s than to those of the representative who invoked his name. Perhaps he presented one face publicly, knowing he needed the support of the religious community, while presenting another in private? Maybe he was simply a deist like most of the founding fathers, believing in some sort of creator but rejecting dogmatic attempts to understand that being.
My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.
What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.
The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession.
The United States government must not undertake to run the Churches. When an individual, in the Church or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest he must be checked.
There was the strangest combination of church influence against me. Baker is a Campbellite; and therefore, as I suppose with few exceptions, got all of that Church. My wife had some relations in the Presbyterian churches, and some in the Episcopal churches; and therefore, wherever it would tell, I was set down as either one or the other, while it was everywhere contended that no Christian ought to vote for me because I belonged to no Church, and was suspected of being a Deist and had talked of fighting a duel.
(All of the above, along with some testimonials written by people who knew Lincoln personally, are collected at PositiveAtheism.org)
And there’s this one, which seems almost prophetic these days:
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Land of Lincoln, indeed.
On the international front, the leader of the Russian doomsday cult who had his followers holed up in a cave since November awaiting the end of the world, was understandably upset when it didn’t happen. So upset, in fact, that he tried to commit suicide by beating himself on the head with a log.
In the spirit of modern American foreign policy, I suggest embarking on a policy of preemptive log-beatings to guard against this sort of behavior in the future.