Source: http://www.truth-out.org/war-loving-society-peace-activism-takes-lot-guts-and-bravery/1306771522
Monday 30 May 2011
by: Clancy Sigal, Alternet
War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. -- John F. Kennedy
I lost a friend recently with whom I'd grown up. As adolescents, we'd shared enthusiasms, and death-defying leaps into Lake Michigan off the Adler Planetarium, and chased the same girls. He had a puckish sense of humour, sometimes ghoulish, the kind of stuff you laugh at only when you're 15. He could crick his neck with a loud snap, as if being hanged from a gallows, a party trick that revolted grownups but we thought hilarious. He could pick out a tune on a banjo on first hearing and sing political parodies of pop songs. As we grew up, we shared a history, not only of our acne-scarred, ego-obsessed selves, but something broader and deeper I best call antifascism.
We ran wild in the streets of Chicago itching for showdowns with anyone who disagreed with us - we were young Communist fronters and couldn't wait to enlist or be drafted. In the middle of the second world war, it was patriotic to be a red - "communism is 20th-century Americanism", went the slogan. Passion, not cynicism or detachment, was our deal.
With his death, I've lost a big part of the thread, a connection to the original meaning of things. I'm not alone in this broken thread on Memorial Day.
If you're in the United States while reading this, try a little test: ask someone, anyone, what Memorial Day memorialises? I've queried several friends and none could tell me that Memorial Day, once called "Decoration Day", began in the aftermath of the civil war to honour the more than 600,000 dead Confederate and Union soldiers - the deadliest war in US history.
Once, Memorial Day was a fairly solemn occasion when local communities lowered the courthouse flag to half-mast in salute to the "fallen", with jamboree parades to follow. In the 1960s, Congress changed the date to the last Monday in May so that people might have an extra day off on the weekend. Hence the current barbecues and shopping mall mania - and national amnesia. Except for the boy and girl Scouts, who still place little American flags on grave sites in our veterans' cemeteries, like the one almost within sight of my house, and a few soldiers' and sailors' relatives who come to visit, the original meaning of it has fallen into dust.
Curious, this. Because the publishing industry continues to pump out torrents of civil war books to feed a niche audience with pop biographies of bearded generals and Pickett's charge-type battle studies. Historians continue to debate the core cause of the war, and movies get made like Glory, Gettysburg, Cold Mountain and Robert Redford's recent The Conspirator.
No matter, most of us like to go on a Memorial Day shopping spree, warm up the coals, pull out the cooler and slap shrimp tacos on the broiler.
I don't care how Memorial Day is spent, whether in a relaxed holiday mood or a visit to the dead. I've walked through the military graves at my nearest military graveyard, the 114-acre national cemetery near UCLA with its huge adjacent Veterans Administration hospital and old soldiers' home, full of sick and traumatised ex-combatants, and a homeless encampment of veteranos under the 405 freeway, a grenade's throw away from cemetery where some of their buddies lie under white crosses or stars of David.
Meaning no disrespect, but on this "war heroes' weekend", isn't it time to also honour those who have "fallen" in a different battle - against the slaughtering wars?
Over time, my attitude to conscientious objectors and deserters has shifted. Once, I held them in contempt. But the Vietnam war, when I came into contact with war resisters, changed me. I saw then, and see now, that often it takes a different kind of moral and, yes, even physical courage to resist a call to serve your country in a war you believe is a crime, when all your family, friends, teachers and the vast American majority support joining up. When I was called to my war, I went with shining eyes and revenge in my heart and couldn't wait to get my hands on a .30-calibre machine-gun to wipe out those Nazi bastards.
But what about those "cowards", "traitors" and "slackers" who don't want to kill other people? They're an odd breed who count among their number such as Muhammad Ali, Mahatma Gandhi, Sergeant York, David Hockney, three US weapon-refusing combat medics who won the medal of honour, and the 27 Israeli air force pilots who refused orders to "track and kill" civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.
I continue to be amazed at the stupendous bravery of any currently serving soldier or marine who goes out on foot patrol in Afghanistan knowing beforehand that his command - after spending $20bn on an "anti-IED" project - still has no clue how to protect him from a cheap roadside bomb that causes 80% of our casualties. (On Wednesday, seven Americans on a single patrol were blown up and killed by an IED in Kandahar province.)
But what kind of guts does it take for war objectors, whether they're Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mennonites or secular, who simply don't want to kill?
On this Memorial Day, it might be a time to think about the outcasts who refuse to take life.
Source: http://www.truth-out.org/war-loving-society-peace-activism-takes-lot-guts-and-bravery/1306771522
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
Memorial Day, 2011, and Obama’s Selling of War and Empire
By Matthew Rothschild, May 30, 2011
Prepared remarks of Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, for delivery at the Veterans for Peace rally at James Madison Park, Madison, Wisconsin,
I’d like to thank Veterans for Peace for inviting me to speak this Memorial Day, and I’d like to thank you all for coming.
On Memorial Day, it’s customary to honor soldiers who have lost their lives. And so we do so.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to ask what did they lose their lives for, and whom did they lose their lives for.
In almost every war, they did not die for their country. They died for their country’s rulers, the politicians who lie about the real reasons for war.
They died for the corporations that profit from war and for the top 1 percent of Americans who run this country.
They died for a concept, the concept of nationalism, which enables people to kill and to give up their own lives for an inflated sense of their own country’s mission.
Or they died for the concept of religion, which enables people to kill and to give up their own lives for a phantom god.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor the innocent people killed in our wars.
John Tirman’s new book, The Deaths of Others, tallies them up.
In the Korean War, about three million civilians died.
In the Vietnam War, about three million civilians died.
In Bush’s Iraq War, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor the duped or conscripted soldiers of our so-called enemies. The 100,000 Iraqi soldiers in the first Gulf War, for instance, many of whom the United States mowed down in the so-called Turkey Shoot.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor not just war veterans but peace veterans who have lost their lives.
Adam Hochschild’s new book, “To End All Wars,” points out what University of Wisconsin history professor Harvey Goldberg taught us, also: that the real heroes of World War I were not the soldiers but the peace activists, like Bertrand Russell and Eugene Victor Debs.
So today I honor the memory of peace veterans whom I’ve known and who’ve had an influence on me.
I honor Clarence Kailin, veteran of the Abraham Lincoln brigade and longtime Madison peace and justice activist, who is honored in this park.
And today I honor the memory of Sam Day, the great Madison anti-nuclear activist and practitioner of civil disobedience, and Erwin Knoll, my predecessor at The Progressive and a fierce opponent of all war.
And today I honor the memory of Midge Miller, who, by organizing Eugene McCarthy’s campaign, helped bring down LBJ.
And today I honor the memory of Nan Cheney, who helped put together the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.
And today, I honor the memory of Linda Farley, who stood for peace and for universal health care.
And today I honor the memory of Ben Masel, who stood for peace, and civil liberties, and the legalization of marijuana.
And in the national peace community, I honor Molly Ivins, who used all of her writing energy while fighting cancer to oppose Bush’s Iraq War.
I honor June Jordan, a warrior for peace.
I honor Andrea Lewis, a peaceful presence behind the mic at KPFA.
I honor, most dearly, Howard Zinn himself.
Please take a moment now to honor the peace activists you have known who are no longer with us. And feel free to shout their names out.
Thank you.
So where are we, this Memorial Day, as a nation?
We’re a nation that is creating more tombstones for next year’s Memorial Day.
We have a President much more adept in the rhetoric of war and more agile in the governing of empire than his gonzo predecessor.
More bombs, less bombast is Obama’s motto.
Obama has just this weekend violated the War Powers Act for the second time with his bombings in Libya.
The first time was by sending bombers there when there was no imminent risk from Libya.
And this second time was by not getting Congressional approval from Congress within 60 days, as required by statute.
He said, on Friday, the 60th day, in a letter to Congress that “it is better” to get Congressional support, but he knew it was too late for that.
And note the phrase “it is better.”
Obama acts as though getting approval from Congress is a mere option, a mere preference, not the law or the Constitution that he’s obliged to follow.
This is the audacity of power.
So that’s Libya, the third war he is waging.
The second is Afghanistan, the war he has escalated by tripling the number of U.S. troops there to 100,000. Already, 1,571 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, and the entire reasons for them being there—to overthrow the Taliban, find bin Laden, and rout Al Qaeda—have been accomplished. But we’re still there because Obama and the Pentagon see the strategic value of a country sandwiched between Iran and China.
The first is still the war in Iraq, which has taken the lives of 4,442 of our soldiers and wounded more than 30,000. Today, we still have 50,000 U.S. troops there, and Obama had vowed to bring them home by now and then extended it until the end of this year, and now wants an extension on the extension. Can you say a permanent military presence, anyone?
So he’s started one war, against Libya. He’s escalated another, in Afghanistan. And he hasn’t ended the third in Iraq.
But his rhetoric has been less bellicose than Bush’s, his manner less cowboy.
Obama is a sophisticated warmonger, a smooth manager of the empire.
But like his predecessor, he feeds the American people the drivel that we are the greatest country on Earth with a “special burden” to carry the torch of freedom around the world. Unfortunately, the historical record does not bear that out and many of the graves being visited today are graves of soldiers who went not to fight for freedom but to fight for the U.S. empire.
When he won the Nobel Peace Prize Obama went to Oslo and gave one of the most inappropriate speeches ever delivered at that podium. He used the occasion to justify war. He said war is sometimes necessary “because of the imperfections of man.”
We are here today to say that war is unnecessary.
We are here today to say that wart comes about not because of the imperfections of man but because of the unequal distribution of power and the force of irrational ideas.
We can challenge that unequal distribution of power.
We can combat those irrational ideas.
So that a generation from now, or two generations from now, it won’t be necessary to salute our war dead, but it will be customary to salute our peace activists.
Source: http://www.progressive.org/wx053011.html
Prepared remarks of Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, for delivery at the Veterans for Peace rally at James Madison Park, Madison, Wisconsin,
I’d like to thank Veterans for Peace for inviting me to speak this Memorial Day, and I’d like to thank you all for coming.
On Memorial Day, it’s customary to honor soldiers who have lost their lives. And so we do so.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to ask what did they lose their lives for, and whom did they lose their lives for.
In almost every war, they did not die for their country. They died for their country’s rulers, the politicians who lie about the real reasons for war.
They died for the corporations that profit from war and for the top 1 percent of Americans who run this country.
They died for a concept, the concept of nationalism, which enables people to kill and to give up their own lives for an inflated sense of their own country’s mission.
Or they died for the concept of religion, which enables people to kill and to give up their own lives for a phantom god.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor the innocent people killed in our wars.
John Tirman’s new book, The Deaths of Others, tallies them up.
In the Korean War, about three million civilians died.
In the Vietnam War, about three million civilians died.
In Bush’s Iraq War, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor the duped or conscripted soldiers of our so-called enemies. The 100,000 Iraqi soldiers in the first Gulf War, for instance, many of whom the United States mowed down in the so-called Turkey Shoot.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor not just war veterans but peace veterans who have lost their lives.
Adam Hochschild’s new book, “To End All Wars,” points out what University of Wisconsin history professor Harvey Goldberg taught us, also: that the real heroes of World War I were not the soldiers but the peace activists, like Bertrand Russell and Eugene Victor Debs.
So today I honor the memory of peace veterans whom I’ve known and who’ve had an influence on me.
I honor Clarence Kailin, veteran of the Abraham Lincoln brigade and longtime Madison peace and justice activist, who is honored in this park.
And today I honor the memory of Sam Day, the great Madison anti-nuclear activist and practitioner of civil disobedience, and Erwin Knoll, my predecessor at The Progressive and a fierce opponent of all war.
And today I honor the memory of Midge Miller, who, by organizing Eugene McCarthy’s campaign, helped bring down LBJ.
And today I honor the memory of Nan Cheney, who helped put together the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.
And today, I honor the memory of Linda Farley, who stood for peace and for universal health care.
And today I honor the memory of Ben Masel, who stood for peace, and civil liberties, and the legalization of marijuana.
And in the national peace community, I honor Molly Ivins, who used all of her writing energy while fighting cancer to oppose Bush’s Iraq War.
I honor June Jordan, a warrior for peace.
I honor Andrea Lewis, a peaceful presence behind the mic at KPFA.
I honor, most dearly, Howard Zinn himself.
Please take a moment now to honor the peace activists you have known who are no longer with us. And feel free to shout their names out.
Thank you.
So where are we, this Memorial Day, as a nation?
We’re a nation that is creating more tombstones for next year’s Memorial Day.
We have a President much more adept in the rhetoric of war and more agile in the governing of empire than his gonzo predecessor.
More bombs, less bombast is Obama’s motto.
Obama has just this weekend violated the War Powers Act for the second time with his bombings in Libya.
The first time was by sending bombers there when there was no imminent risk from Libya.
And this second time was by not getting Congressional approval from Congress within 60 days, as required by statute.
He said, on Friday, the 60th day, in a letter to Congress that “it is better” to get Congressional support, but he knew it was too late for that.
And note the phrase “it is better.”
Obama acts as though getting approval from Congress is a mere option, a mere preference, not the law or the Constitution that he’s obliged to follow.
This is the audacity of power.
So that’s Libya, the third war he is waging.
The second is Afghanistan, the war he has escalated by tripling the number of U.S. troops there to 100,000. Already, 1,571 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, and the entire reasons for them being there—to overthrow the Taliban, find bin Laden, and rout Al Qaeda—have been accomplished. But we’re still there because Obama and the Pentagon see the strategic value of a country sandwiched between Iran and China.
The first is still the war in Iraq, which has taken the lives of 4,442 of our soldiers and wounded more than 30,000. Today, we still have 50,000 U.S. troops there, and Obama had vowed to bring them home by now and then extended it until the end of this year, and now wants an extension on the extension. Can you say a permanent military presence, anyone?
So he’s started one war, against Libya. He’s escalated another, in Afghanistan. And he hasn’t ended the third in Iraq.
But his rhetoric has been less bellicose than Bush’s, his manner less cowboy.
Obama is a sophisticated warmonger, a smooth manager of the empire.
But like his predecessor, he feeds the American people the drivel that we are the greatest country on Earth with a “special burden” to carry the torch of freedom around the world. Unfortunately, the historical record does not bear that out and many of the graves being visited today are graves of soldiers who went not to fight for freedom but to fight for the U.S. empire.
When he won the Nobel Peace Prize Obama went to Oslo and gave one of the most inappropriate speeches ever delivered at that podium. He used the occasion to justify war. He said war is sometimes necessary “because of the imperfections of man.”
We are here today to say that war is unnecessary.
We are here today to say that wart comes about not because of the imperfections of man but because of the unequal distribution of power and the force of irrational ideas.
We can challenge that unequal distribution of power.
We can combat those irrational ideas.
So that a generation from now, or two generations from now, it won’t be necessary to salute our war dead, but it will be customary to salute our peace activists.
Source: http://www.progressive.org/wx053011.html
Monday, May 23, 2011
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Book -The Moral Combat: Black Atheist, Gender Politics and the Value Wars - by Sikivu Hutchinson
"In the book I examine the implications of black Christian religiosity, skepticism, humanism, and atheism from an African American feminist perspective, taking on Christian fundamentalist fascism and the hijacking of public morality....despite longstanding traditions of secular humanism, skepticism, and Freethought espoused by such thinkers as Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen and Richard Wright, atheism remains a taboo belief system in black communities."
Here is an excerpt: http://www.thenewhumanism.org/authors/sikivu-hutchinson/articles/moral-combat
Here is an excerpt: http://www.thenewhumanism.org/authors/sikivu-hutchinson/articles/moral-combat
Thursday, May 19, 2011
One More Reason Religion Is So Messed Up: Respected Theologian Defends Genocide and Infanticide
A respected, mainstream theologian is seriously arguing that as long as God gives the thumbs-up, it's okay to kill pretty much anybody.
In a recent post on his Reasonable Faith site, famed Christian apologist and debater William Lane Craig published an explanation for why the genocide and infanticide ordered by God against the Canaanites in the Old Testament was morally defensible. For God, at any rate -- and for people following God's orders. Short version: When guilty people got killed, they deserved it because they were guilty and bad... and when innocent people got killed, even when innocent babies were killed, they went to Heaven, and it was all hunky dory in the end.
To read more, click here.
In a recent post on his Reasonable Faith site, famed Christian apologist and debater William Lane Craig published an explanation for why the genocide and infanticide ordered by God against the Canaanites in the Old Testament was morally defensible. For God, at any rate -- and for people following God's orders. Short version: When guilty people got killed, they deserved it because they were guilty and bad... and when innocent people got killed, even when innocent babies were killed, they went to Heaven, and it was all hunky dory in the end.
To read more, click here.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Stephen Hawking: Heaven, God are Fairy Stories
Revered Physicist Stephen Hawking, who has lived a life that has been quite personally and professionally spectacular, weighed in definitively on the potential existence of an afterlife in the Guardian:
"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first," he said.
"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark," he added.
Hawking's latest comments go beyond those laid out in his 2010 book, The Grand Design, in which he asserted that there is no need for a creator to explain the existence of the universe. The book provoked a backlash from some religious leaders, including the chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, who accused Hawking of committing an "elementary fallacy" of logic.
Hawking's comments, in repsonse to a series of questions from Guardian editors and readers, come on the eve of his talk at the Google Zeitgeist meeting in London. When asked what humans should do with our lives, he said "We should seek the greatest value of our action."
Source: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/588881/stephen_hawking%3A_heaven%2C_god_are_fairy_stories/#paragraph4
"I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first," he said.
"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark," he added.
Hawking's latest comments go beyond those laid out in his 2010 book, The Grand Design, in which he asserted that there is no need for a creator to explain the existence of the universe. The book provoked a backlash from some religious leaders, including the chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, who accused Hawking of committing an "elementary fallacy" of logic.
Hawking's comments, in repsonse to a series of questions from Guardian editors and readers, come on the eve of his talk at the Google Zeitgeist meeting in London. When asked what humans should do with our lives, he said "We should seek the greatest value of our action."
Source: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/588881/stephen_hawking%3A_heaven%2C_god_are_fairy_stories/#paragraph4
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Trust Me, I'm a Scientist
Why so many people choose not to believe what scientists say
"We want our beliefs to be accurate—to align with what is really true about the world—and we know that science is a reliable guide to accuracy. But this desire to be accurate conflicts with other motives, some of them unconscious."
To read more click here.
(May 2011 issue of Scientific American)
"We want our beliefs to be accurate—to align with what is really true about the world—and we know that science is a reliable guide to accuracy. But this desire to be accurate conflicts with other motives, some of them unconscious."
To read more click here.
(May 2011 issue of Scientific American)
Friday, May 6, 2011
Book: The Luck of the Draw - The Role of Lotteries in Decision Making - By Peter Stone
About the Book:
From the earliest times, people have used lotteries to make decisions— by drawing straws, tossing coins, picking names out of hats, and so on. We use lotteries to place citizens on juries, draft men into armies, assign students to schools, and even on very rare occasions, select lifeboat survivors to be eaten. Lotteries make a great deal of sense in all of these cases, and yet there is something absurd about them. Largely, this is because lottery-based decisions are not based upon reasons. In fact, lotteries actively prevent reason from playing a role in decision making at all.
Over the years, people have devoted considerable effort to solving this paradox and thinking about the legitimacy of lotteries as a whole. However, these scholars have mainly focused on lotteries on a case-by-case basis, not as a part of a comprehensive political theory of lotteries. In The Luck of the Draw, Peter Stone surveys the variety of arguments proffered for and against lotteries and argues that they only have one true effect relevant to decision making: the “sanitizing effect” of preventing decisions from being made on the basis of reasons. While this rationale might sound strange to us, Stone contends that in many instances, it is vital that decisions be made without the use of reasons. By developing innovative principles for the use of lottery-based decision making, Stone lays a foundation for understanding when it is—and when it is not—appropriate to draw lots when making political decisions both large and small.
About the Author:
Peter Stone is Faculty Fellow in the Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at Tulane University. He has been researching the theory and practice of random selection for over a decade, and his work on the subject has been published in such journals as the Journal of Political Philosophy, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Political Theory, and Social Theory and Practice. He also works on broader issues relating to justice, democracy, and rationality.
Peter Stone
April 2011
208 pp.
HB: 978-0-19-975610-0 $49.95
From the earliest times, people have used lotteries to make decisions— by drawing straws, tossing coins, picking names out of hats, and so on. We use lotteries to place citizens on juries, draft men into armies, assign students to schools, and even on very rare occasions, select lifeboat survivors to be eaten. Lotteries make a great deal of sense in all of these cases, and yet there is something absurd about them. Largely, this is because lottery-based decisions are not based upon reasons. In fact, lotteries actively prevent reason from playing a role in decision making at all.
Over the years, people have devoted considerable effort to solving this paradox and thinking about the legitimacy of lotteries as a whole. However, these scholars have mainly focused on lotteries on a case-by-case basis, not as a part of a comprehensive political theory of lotteries. In The Luck of the Draw, Peter Stone surveys the variety of arguments proffered for and against lotteries and argues that they only have one true effect relevant to decision making: the “sanitizing effect” of preventing decisions from being made on the basis of reasons. While this rationale might sound strange to us, Stone contends that in many instances, it is vital that decisions be made without the use of reasons. By developing innovative principles for the use of lottery-based decision making, Stone lays a foundation for understanding when it is—and when it is not—appropriate to draw lots when making political decisions both large and small.
About the Author:
Peter Stone is Faculty Fellow in the Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at Tulane University. He has been researching the theory and practice of random selection for over a decade, and his work on the subject has been published in such journals as the Journal of Political Philosophy, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Political Theory, and Social Theory and Practice. He also works on broader issues relating to justice, democracy, and rationality.
Peter Stone
April 2011
208 pp.
HB: 978-0-19-975610-0 $49.95
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
May discussion topic: Humanism and Politics
Dear friends,
You are invited to join us for a fun discussion and food. See details below.
(NOTE: venue and eating arrangements have been changed from previous discussion meetings)
Date and time: May 14, 2011 at 5:30 PM.
Food: This is a potluck, so bring something to share.
Place: Armineh and John’s place. Email me at armineh.noravian@gmail.com for address.
Moderator: Armineh Noravian – Please bring a question that you would like to discuss on the readings.
Readings:
a) Faith on the Hill (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1846/religious-composition-112th-congress)
b) Humanism and Politics (http://san-francisco-bay-area-humanists.blogspot.com/2010/11/humanism-and-politics.html)
Rules: Listen and contribute to a diversity of views respectfully, especially ones you don't agree with.
I look forward to seeing you, your friends, and family.
Armineh
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Colbert Report an interview with A C Grayling, author of "The Good Book: A Humanist Bible"
The interview begins about 16 minutes from the beginning.
http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/tue-april-26-2011-a-c--grayling
http://www.colbertnation.com/full-episodes/tue-april-26-2011-a-c--grayling
Why do Americans still dislike atheists?
By Gregory Pauland Phil Zuckerman, Friday, April 29
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-do-americans-still-dislike-atheists/2011/02/18/AFqgnwGF_story.html
Long after blacks and Jews have made great strides, and even as homosexuals gain respect, acceptance and new rights, there is still a group that lots of Americans just don’t like much: atheists. Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry. They can’t join the Boy Scouts. Atheist soldiers are rated potentially deficient when they do not score as sufficiently “spiritual” in military psychological evaluations. Surveys find that most Americans refuse or are reluctant to marry or vote for nontheists; in other words, nonbelievers are one minority still commonly denied in practical terms the right to assume office despite the constitutional ban on religious tests.
Rarely denounced by the mainstream, this stunning anti-atheist discrimination is egged on by Christian conservatives who stridently — and uncivilly — declare that the lack of godly faith is detrimental to society, rendering nonbelievers intrinsically suspect and second-class citizens.
Is this knee-jerk dislike of atheists warranted? Not even close.
A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists, and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency — issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.
Consider that at the societal level, murder rates are far lower in secularized nations such as Japan or Sweden than they are in the much more religious United States, which also has a much greater portion of its population in prison. Even within this country, those states with the highest levels of church attendance, such as Louisiana and Mississippi, have significantly higher murder rates than far less religious states such as Vermont and Oregon.
As individuals, atheists tend to score high on measures of intelligence, especially verbal ability and scientific literacy. They tend to raise their children to solve problems rationally, to make up their own minds when it comes to existential questions and to obey the golden rule. They are more likely to practice safe sex than the strongly religious are, and are less likely to be nationalistic or ethnocentric. They value freedom of thought.
While many studies show that secular Americans don’t fare as well as the religious when it comes to certain indicators of mental health or subjective well-being, new scholarship is showing that the relationships among atheism, theism, and mental health and well-being are complex. After all, Denmark, which is among the least religious countries in the history of the world, consistently rates as the happiest of nations. And studies of apostates — people who were religious but later rejected their religion — report feeling happier, better and liberated in their post-religious lives.
Nontheism isn’t all balloons and ice cream. Some studies suggest that suicide rates are higher among the non-religious. But surveys indicating that religious Americans are better off can be misleading because they include among the non-religious fence-sitters who are as likely to believe in God, whereas atheists who are more convinced are doing about as well as devout believers. On numerous respected measures of societal success — rates of poverty, teenage pregnancy, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, obesity, drug use and crime, as well as economics — high levels of secularity are consistently correlated with positive outcomes in first-world nations. None of the secular advanced democracies suffers from the combined social ills seen here in Christian America.
More than 2,000 years ago, whoever wrote Psalm 14 claimed that atheists were foolish and corrupt, incapable of doing any good. These put-downs have had sticking power. Negative stereotypes of atheists are alive and well. Yet like all stereotypes, they aren’t true — and perhaps they tell us more about those who harbor them than those who are maligned by them. So when the likes of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly and Newt Gingrich engage in the politics of division and destruction by maligning atheists, they do so in disregard of reality.
As with other national minority groups, atheism is enjoying rapid growth. Despite the bigotry, the number of American nontheists has tripled as a proportion of the general population since the 1960s. Younger generations’ tolerance for the endless disputes of religion is waning fast. Surveys designed to overcome the understandable reluctance to admit atheism have found that as many as 60 million Americans — a fifth of the population — are not believers. Our nonreligious compatriots should be accorded the same respect as other minorities.
Gregory Paul is an independent researcher in sociology and evolution. Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology at Pitzer College, is the author of “Society Without God.”
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-do-americans-still-dislike-atheists/2011/02/18/AFqgnwGF_story.html
Long after blacks and Jews have made great strides, and even as homosexuals gain respect, acceptance and new rights, there is still a group that lots of Americans just don’t like much: atheists. Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry. They can’t join the Boy Scouts. Atheist soldiers are rated potentially deficient when they do not score as sufficiently “spiritual” in military psychological evaluations. Surveys find that most Americans refuse or are reluctant to marry or vote for nontheists; in other words, nonbelievers are one minority still commonly denied in practical terms the right to assume office despite the constitutional ban on religious tests.
Rarely denounced by the mainstream, this stunning anti-atheist discrimination is egged on by Christian conservatives who stridently — and uncivilly — declare that the lack of godly faith is detrimental to society, rendering nonbelievers intrinsically suspect and second-class citizens.
Is this knee-jerk dislike of atheists warranted? Not even close.
A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists, and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be. On basic questions of morality and human decency — issues such as governmental use of torture, the death penalty, punitive hitting of children, racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, environmental degradation or human rights — the irreligious tend to be more ethical than their religious peers, particularly compared with those who describe themselves as very religious.
Consider that at the societal level, murder rates are far lower in secularized nations such as Japan or Sweden than they are in the much more religious United States, which also has a much greater portion of its population in prison. Even within this country, those states with the highest levels of church attendance, such as Louisiana and Mississippi, have significantly higher murder rates than far less religious states such as Vermont and Oregon.
As individuals, atheists tend to score high on measures of intelligence, especially verbal ability and scientific literacy. They tend to raise their children to solve problems rationally, to make up their own minds when it comes to existential questions and to obey the golden rule. They are more likely to practice safe sex than the strongly religious are, and are less likely to be nationalistic or ethnocentric. They value freedom of thought.
While many studies show that secular Americans don’t fare as well as the religious when it comes to certain indicators of mental health or subjective well-being, new scholarship is showing that the relationships among atheism, theism, and mental health and well-being are complex. After all, Denmark, which is among the least religious countries in the history of the world, consistently rates as the happiest of nations. And studies of apostates — people who were religious but later rejected their religion — report feeling happier, better and liberated in their post-religious lives.
Nontheism isn’t all balloons and ice cream. Some studies suggest that suicide rates are higher among the non-religious. But surveys indicating that religious Americans are better off can be misleading because they include among the non-religious fence-sitters who are as likely to believe in God, whereas atheists who are more convinced are doing about as well as devout believers. On numerous respected measures of societal success — rates of poverty, teenage pregnancy, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases, obesity, drug use and crime, as well as economics — high levels of secularity are consistently correlated with positive outcomes in first-world nations. None of the secular advanced democracies suffers from the combined social ills seen here in Christian America.
More than 2,000 years ago, whoever wrote Psalm 14 claimed that atheists were foolish and corrupt, incapable of doing any good. These put-downs have had sticking power. Negative stereotypes of atheists are alive and well. Yet like all stereotypes, they aren’t true — and perhaps they tell us more about those who harbor them than those who are maligned by them. So when the likes of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly and Newt Gingrich engage in the politics of division and destruction by maligning atheists, they do so in disregard of reality.
As with other national minority groups, atheism is enjoying rapid growth. Despite the bigotry, the number of American nontheists has tripled as a proportion of the general population since the 1960s. Younger generations’ tolerance for the endless disputes of religion is waning fast. Surveys designed to overcome the understandable reluctance to admit atheism have found that as many as 60 million Americans — a fifth of the population — are not believers. Our nonreligious compatriots should be accorded the same respect as other minorities.
Gregory Paul is an independent researcher in sociology and evolution. Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology at Pitzer College, is the author of “Society Without God.”
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