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Atheism makes headway in two surprising places

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/05/23/atheism-makes-headway-in-two-surprising-places/

“Atheism is making strides in some unlikely places–first, in the Arizona House of Representatives, and then, in a radio address by the Pope himself.”

Atheists Like What They See In Pope Francis’ New Openness

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/atheists-like-what-they-see-in-pope-francis-new-openness_n_3329548.html

“We are a community that is just trying to do good and live good lives, just like most communities are,” said Greg Epstein, Harvard University’s Humanist chaplain and author of “Good Without God.” “His statement is an acknowledgment of that. It is welcome and it is gratifying.”

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Is Catholic Church taking over health care in Washington?

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021029685_westneat22xml.html

“By the end of this year, half of [the state of Washington's] medical system will be Catholic-run, as measured by number of hospital beds. That’s the highest share in the nation, and rising fast — up from about 30 percent just last year. Somehow our godless state has become Ground Zero for faith-based medicine.”

Continue reading »]]> Congrats on the Boy Scouts accepting gay members.

http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2013/05/boy_scouts_vote_to_accept_gay.html

Nice to know that when the fire gets hot enough, they’ll finally budge.  A little.

Gay leaders, however, are still banned.  Because, everyone knows you can’t trust gays.

*SIGH*

Removing the ban on ATHEISTS, of course, isn’t even on the radar.  For either the Scouts, OR the media articles covering the news.

There’s three times more atheists than gays in this country.  But atheists are still OK to hate… so they do.

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More Christian proselytizing in the college classroom

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/the-ffrf-gains-another-victory-against-christian-prosyletizing-in-the-college-classroom/

“Why, in a country where the separation of Church and state is mandated, [do you believe] it’s not okay for high school teachers to inject religion into their classes but it’s okay for professors at state universities to do so. There is no relevant difference here: in both cases it’s government entanglement with religion. There is no Constitutional provision for ‘academic freedom,’ but there is for separating religion from government activities, which include teaching in public schools. Do remember that teachers and professors at public schools are government employees.”

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Change in the Force may allow Jedi marriages

http://www.globallegalpost.com/global-view/change-in-the-force-may-allow-jedi-marriages-37729924/

“Allowing Humanist weddings in [the rest of] Britain would ‘dilute’ the institution of marriage by allowing other ‘ridiculous’ sects to marry couples.”

Humanist weddings are already legal in Scotland, and the “institution” of marriage has not crumbled there. See:

http://www.humanism-scotland.org.uk/content/wedding_ceremonies/.

Humanist officiants

http://www.postbulletin.com/life/lifestyles/human-rites/article_38d43191-c1d5-5e22-b09d-1a4ab147781f.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanist_officiant

Continue reading »]]> May meeting tomorrow

The Corvallis Secular Society May 2013 meeting is tomorrow, Saturday the 18th. It will be from 2 to 4 pm at Corl House.

The articles linked to below may be of interest, and may provide topics for discussion.

–John

The proper focus of secularism

Handling those who mishandle Freedom From Religion Foundation challenges

http://goddoesnt.blogspot.com/2013/05/handling-those-who-mishandle-freedom.html

The full weight of the law and legal precedent falls on the side of secularism…. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the American Constitution has been clearly interpreted for decades to mean that it is unfairly exclusionary and thus illegal for public schools, county or city councils, school boards, etc., to open their meetings with a sectarian prayer of any sect or creed. The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has been consistently interpreted, with numerous examples of precedent, to be the legal backbone of this issue, and this is where we’ll find the correct argument to make.

Academic freedom versus keeping the focus of a science class on science

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/17/ball-state-agrees-investigate-science-course-some-say-pushing-religion

Ball State University has agreed to investigate complaints that a course taught by a physics and astronomy professor has crossed a line from being about science to being about Christianity.

Reason Is Better than Prayer (for Government)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roy-speckhardt/national-day-of-prayer_b_3201830.html

By Roy Speckhardt; Executive Director, American Humanist Association

Every year on the first Thursday of May a peculiar thing happens: the president and government officials across the nation ask us to pray. Not only do they ask us to pray, they inform us of the value of prayer and how, according to President Obama’s 2012 National Day of Prayer Proclamation, prayer has “always been a part of the American story, and today countless Americans rely on prayer for comfort, direction, and strength.” Of course, it’s not exactly “countless” since we can count millions of Americans that don’t believe in the efficacy of prayer.

Atheists: Let your conscience be your god

By Herb Silverman, Published: May 7, 2013 at 11:55 am

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/05/07/atheists-let-your-conscience-be-your-god/

Recently I was invited to participate in a Religion and Law Conference at Florida State University. Almost all the other speakers and attendees were legal or religion scholars, from disciplines in which I’ve had no formal training.

Almost all attendees were religious liberals, whose conference papers I’d roughly place in three categories: (1) objection to favoring mainstream religions over minority religions; (2) approval of selected government support for religion; (3) disputes over what legally constitutes a religion. I agreed with all the cases presented in (1) and disagreed with all the cases presented in (2). My position was that government should never favor one religion over another or religion over non-religion.

The most interesting discussion for me was about (3), disputes over what legally constitutes religion, because I found all the attempts to define religion problematic. One speaker defined religion as “a sincerely held non-rational (i.e., faith based) belief concerning the nature of the universe.” Why, I asked, should our government privilege irrational beliefs over rational beliefs?

Continue reading »]]> As you may have noticed (or, more likely, didn’t), for the past month or so, the TIME associated with each blog post has not been displaying correctly.  (The DATE was fine, but the TIME being displayed for each post, was the time for the topmost post on the page.)

This appears to have been a bug introduced by an update to my favorite plugin; the one that lets me stick blobs of text and code any old place I want.  The plugin USED to do the right thing, but as of the last update, it apparently doesn’t anymore.

I’ve submitted the bug to the plugin author, and for the time being, I’ve installed a different (more primitive) plugin that accomplished the same thing.  I moved my “display post time” code to the new plugin, and post times seem to be appearing correctly again.

Hopefully, they’ll fix the bug in the other plugin, and I’ll be able to switch back to that before too long.

And if I’ve just bored everybody except John to tears, well, sorry, and I’ll shut up now. 

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The promise

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

The Declaration of Independence justified the independence of the United States by listing colonial grievances against King George III, and by asserting certain natural and legal rights, including a right of revolution…. It has come to be considered a major statement on human rights, particularly its second sentence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This has been called “one of the best-known sentences in the English language”, containing “the most potent and consequential words in American history.” The passage came to represent a moral standard to which the United States should strive.

The reality

http://democratherald.com/lifestyles/voting-on-inalienable-rights/article_39d88a1a-b9fb-11e2-a74f-0019bb2963f4.html

By Dianne Roth

Never mind that the “certain inalienable Rights” were only given to landowners who happened to be white and male. It took 94 years to give the “right” to vote to black Americans, and 50 more years to do the same for women.

“The very basic right to vote in our democracy was thwarted by the vote itself. In my mind, it is distinctly un-American to put human rights to a majority rules vote. When those citizens are our children, that vote it is beyond comprehension. Boy Scouts of America, you are better than this. All our children and their parents were granted their ‘inalienable Rights’ 237 years ago. It should not take a vote to apply them.”

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Climate warming greenhouse gas reaches 400 parts per million for the first time in human history

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/10/carbon-dioxide-highest-level-greenhouse-gas?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-3%20Main%20trailblock:Network%20front%20-%20main%20trailblock:Position1

“The last time so much greenhouse gas was in the air was several million years ago, when the Arctic was ice-free, savannah spread across the Sahara desert and sea level was up to 40 metres higher than today.”

“Passing 400ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is indeed a landmark and the rate of increase is faster than ever and shows no sign of abating due to a lack of political commitment to address the urgent issue of climate change.”

All Humanists and others of goodwill should take alarm at this situation and work to stop and then reverse the rise of atmospheric greenhouse gas. Sadly, in my view, the article failed to even mention one of the key, and controllable, causes of global warming: the relentless increase in human population.

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Carnegie Mellon University obeys Roman Catholic Bishop

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-pope-blasphemy-pittsburgh-20130510,0,5743023.story

In the post-9/11 culture wars over Islamic fundamentalism, American conservatives — properly — have condemned attempts in Muslim countries to punish blasphemy or insults to the prophet Muhammad. It will be interesting to see if they are similarly outraged over what has happened to an art student at Carnegie Mellon University who insulted the pope.

“…freedom of speech and freedom of expression do not constitute a freedom to dismiss or disrespect the … sacredness of anyone’s religious belief….” [Roman Catholic Bishop David A. Zubik]