Several people have mentioned this tragic story from Wisconsin, in which an 11-year-old girl died of juvenile diabetes after her parents decided to pray for her recovery rather than seek medical help. Shockingly, the town police chief said that "there is no reason to remove" her remaining three siblings from the home. Haven't her parents already demonstrated that they are a clear and present danger to the well-being of their offspring? The district attorney is considering filing charges, but if past experience is any guide, not much is likely to result.

This kind of tragedy has happened many times before. Here's one example: Rita Swan was raised a Christian Scientist. In line with the beliefs of that sect, which believes only in healing through prayer and categorically rejects all evidence-based medicine, she never took her children to the doctor. This policy worked well until 1977, when her infant son Matthew became feverish shortly after his first birthday.

Some fevers clear up on their own, but Matthew's did not. Over the course of several days, he grew steadily worse, screaming in pain, suffering from racking sweats and convulsions. Rita Swan, in line with her sect's beliefs, brought fellow Christian Scientists to her home to pray for his recovery. When the prayers failed to have any effect, Rita's fellow practitioners told her that she and her husband Doug were obstructing Matthew's healing by failing to fully trust in God.

After twelve days of suffering, Rita and Doug finally took Matthew to a hospital, where he was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis. This disease is 95% curable with antibiotics if treated early, but they had waited too long. After a week in intensive care, Matthew died. One of the Swans' fellow Christian Scientists later said to them, "Life on earth is such a pinprick, what does it matter?"

Matthew isn't the only child of Christian Scientists to die from easily treatable medical conditions. Other children have died from diabetes, from appendicitis, from allergic reactions to insect stings, and from cancer. Most horrible of all was the 1986 case of Robyn Twitchell, who suffered a twisted bowel that worsened into peritonitis when his Christian Scientist parents refused to take him to the hospital. Robyn suffered horrifically for five days until he died; by the end, he was vomiting up blackened portions of his ruptured intestine.

It's not just the Christian Scientists who refuse medical treatment for their children on religious grounds. Jehovah's Witnesses are well-known for refusing blood transfusion, and children have died as a result. (The last link is to a May 1994 issue of Awake!, the JWs' magazine, which had a cover story celebrating children who died due to their or their parents' refusal to permit transfusions.) In a more recent case, the infant son of Maria and Jose Azevedo was born with transposition of the great arteries, an easily correctable birth defect that is certain death without treatment. The surgery requires blood transfusion, and the parents, though they clearly wanted to save their son's life, refused to grant permission. In the end, the hospital successfully sought a court order to perform the surgery without parental consent.

There are smaller sects that spurn medical care as well, including the "Followers of Christ", a breakaway Oregon sect. At least 21 children of parents in that sect have died of treatable illnesses since 1955, most recently a 16-month-old girl who died of bronchial pneumonia that developed into sepsis.

In 1944, in Prince v. Massachusetts, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a cogent ruling: "Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves. But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children". This is solid reasoning that strikes a just balance between religious freedom and the state's legitimate right to protect the health and safety of its citizens. Adults of sound mind may reject medical treatment for themselves, if they wish, but they may not make the same decision on behalf of their children before their children are mature enough to endorse it. This way, children have a chance to grow up to reject their parents' beliefs, if they so choose.

Sadly, this good reasoning has not been more widely adopted. In all but five states, parents who let their children die from treatable illness can invoke religious beliefs as a defense against charges of neglect or child abuse. This is a shameful and unconscionable state of affairs. Neglect is neglect, regardless of the motivations behind it. Not only is this an example of the special rights given to theists - there is no comparable exemption for non-believers, needless to say - it puts every child in those states at risk of suffering an agonizing death because of the superstitious ignorance of their parents.

There is one silver lining to Rita and Doug Swan's tragic story. After Matthew's death, the two of them left the Christian Science faith and founded a nonprofit group, CHILD - Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty - that lobbies for the end of these outrageous religious exemptions to child-abuse laws.

I recently finished reading Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness, and I wanted to offer some comments on her moral philosophy.

There are several good reasons why I ought to like Ayn Rand. She was an atheist, and proudly so, and argued for the supremacy of reason as the only valid way of knowing. I agree with this. She denounced communism and supported capitalism. I agree with this as well. Her works are still very popular in some circles and offer a vision of a rational, productive life which many people find powerful and inspiring.

Nevertheless, there are also reasons why I don't like Rand - neither her as a person, nor her philosophy - and these reasons, in my judgment, far outweigh whatever factors are in her favor. These include her blatant hypocrisy in her adulterous relationship with Nathaniel Branden, the cult-like attitude of absolute obedience and conformity that characterized her movement's founding, and her genocidal belief that the European settlers of the Americas were fully within their rights to slaughter, despoil and enslave the native people of those continents, all because the Native Americans did not share the European concept of property rights. (Yes, she actually said that.)

This post will detail three of my primary objections to Rand's Objectivist philosophy, as it's expressed in TVOS and her other works. Combined, I believe they demonstrate that Rand's system of thought either contains fatal self-contradictions, or else would be destructive to the welfare of any society that was to adopt it.

The Objectivist Firefighter: Sacrificing Your Life For Strangers

Central to Objectivism is the notion that the individual's life is the supreme moral value. "The Objectivist ethics holds man's life as the standard of value — and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man" (p.25). An Objectivist may rationally sacrifice his life, if the cause were so important to him that he would not want to live if it were to fail. Central to Objectivism, however, is the notion that no one can ever have a duty to sacrifice his own life for the sake of others. "[Objectivism] means one's rejection of the role of a sacrificial animal, the rejection of any doctrine that preaches self-immolation as a moral virtue or duty" (p.27). Even when others are in danger, we have no obligation to assist them. "If the person to be saved is a stranger, it is morally proper to save him only when the danger to one's own life is minimal; when the danger is great, it would be immoral to attempt it..." (p.45).

Let's see how this principle would play out in a real-world situation. Cast your mind back to the morning of September 11, 2001, and ponder the situation from the point of view of a rescue worker, like a paramedic or a firefighter. The hijacked planes have crashed into the Twin Towers, which are in flames and badly damaged; it's plain to see they may collapse soon. Yet there are still thousands of people inside who could be saved. Let's say you're one of the first responders, as well as an Objectivist, and your superior orders you into the towers to rescue as many people as you can. How should you respond?

Here's how one real firefighter actually did respond:

I will always remember one panting reporter talking to a fireman who was shrugging into his respirator. "What are you doing?" "I'm going to that other tower," he said. "I think that other tower is going to collapse," said the reporter, seeming to forget that he was on the air. "You would do the same for me," the fireman said, and ran up the street.

And yet, from the principles just stated, it seems the Objectivist course of action is clear. Unlike the firefighter quoted above, the Objectivist rescue worker has to refuse - because he's being asked to risk his life for strangers, which can never be a moral duty according to Rand. In fact, since the preservation of one's individual life is the highest virtue, the consistent Objectivist not only ought to refuse to enter the towers, he ought to get himself out of the area and to safety as soon as possible, and never mind what happens to anyone else. As long as no one you personally know is in danger, your duty is to protect yourself and only yourself. This is what Ayn Rand calls morality; I think most people would more accurately describe it as contemptible cowardice.

Perhaps the objection could be raised that, having committed himself to the job already, the Objectivist is bound to follow through. But that just moves the problem back, because then the conclusion would seem to be that an Objectivist should always turn down any job - firefighter, policeman, infectious-disease specialist - that might potentially put his life in danger. These all entail putting yourself at risk for the sake of strangers, a thought intolerable to any consistent Objectivist. Yet, just as clearly, society needs people to do these jobs if it is to survive.

Ayn Pangloss: Conflicts of Interest Among Rational Men

Central to the Objectivist morality is the idea that "there are no conflicts of interests among rational men" (p.50). This is crucial to Rand's position because she argues that all people should make all their decisions on the basis of reason. If reason led people to want mutually exclusive things, then either some people would have to surrender the goals dictated by reason and seek something else (a thought Rand finds intolerable), or else no one would surrender their goals and the result would be an attempt to achieve a contradiction, which "can lead only to disaster and destruction" (p.51).

It's hard to see at first how this principle could apply in a capitalist economy. What if two people apply for the same job? Isn't there a genuine conflict of interest between them as to who will be hired?

Rand's answer to this question is that, just because two people want the same thing, it does not follow that they both rationally want it. "The mere fact that a man desires something does not constitute a proof... that its achievement is actually to his interest" (p.50). Rand argues that reason leads to the conclusion that capitalism is the best economic system possible, because it maximizes human productiveness and freedom, both of which are to everyone's interest. Thus a rational person accepts that, in the context of his entire life, competition on the basis of merit is a good thing, even if it may cause him to lose out occasionally. "He knows that the struggle to achieve his values includes the possibility of defeat" (p.53). An Objectivist also believes he is only entitled to what he has earned by his own effort, and in a rational, merit-based system, if he loses out to a superior applicant, that is the only outcome he had any right to expect. He has no rational interest in the job unless he earns and deserves it by his own effort. "Whoever gets the job, has earned it... The failure to give a man what has never belonged to him can hardly be described as 'sacrificing his interests'" (p.56).

So far, so good. But now, consider a case Rand never discusses: What if two equally qualified people apply for the same job? This certainly seems to be possible. Let's assume that there are two applicants who are equally intelligent, equally skilled, and would perform equally well if given the job. In that case, is it not in both their interests to get that job, and since only one of them can have it, is this not a contradiction? Rand fiercely disparages "whim", and yet in this situation it seems there could be no other way to resolve the deadlock.

But we need not even go this far. There's something else that Rand has overlooked: her doctrine requires that the market be not just free, but infallible. For if the market ever selects wrongly - that is, if it ever chooses the less qualified applicant for a given job - then I, as the more qualified but unsuccessful applicant, am faced with an irreconcilable contradiction: I want to live in a free-market society, which is in my rational interest, but I also wanted that job, the obtaining of which was also in my rational interest.

In that case, the act of obeying reason leads to a contradiction. Rand would hold that this is, by definition, impossible. That being so, she and her followers are committed to believing that the market always knows best, that its choices are always the correct ones. Otherwise, they're faced with the fatal self-contradiction of rationally wanting to live in a capitalist society, yet also rationally wanting something that it has denied them. Obviously, on this point the Objectivist philosophy clashes with reality: there undoubtedly are many situations where capitalist economies make erroneous decisions. A less rigid philosophy would recognize that, although a free society is in everyone's interest in the long term, that does not mean it will not make mistakes or block our interests on occasion; it's just that the alternatives are even worse.

"You Will Not Be Stopped": The Heartless Core of Objectivism

Since Objectivists reject all notions of a social safety net, it's natural to ask what would happen to the poor and needy in an Objectivist society. This is Ayn Rand's answer: "If you want to help them, you will not be stopped" (p.80).

This chilling response, which carries with it the unmistakable implication that she will not be participating in any such effort, illustrates Objectivist philosophy's cruel, heartless ethic of social Darwinism. Its guiding principle is not "we're all in this together", but rather "every man for himself" - and whatever misery strikes the worthless and the inferior as a result ought not to trouble the brave, heroic, superior souls whom Rand imagines are mankind's salvation. The parallels between this doctrine and the beliefs of tyrants throughout history should be too obvious to need pointing out.

Am I too harsh? Rand's defenders might point to passages like the following one, which condemns the Soviet Union, as proof that she does care about the suffering of others and wants to see it alleviated:

"Two generations of Russians have lived, toiled and died in misery, waiting for the abundance promised by their rulers, who pleaded for patience and commanded austerity, while building public 'industrialization' and killing public hope in five-year installments. At first, the people starved while waiting for electric generators and tractors; they are still starving, while waiting for atomic energy and interplanetary travel" (p.84).

This sounds very compassionate of her - until you remember that Ayn Rand believes that the free market is, by definition, infallible (see last point). In Objectivist philosophy, if you succeed it's because you deserve to succeed, and if you're poor it's because you deserve to be poor. Combined with Rand's repeated expressions of fierce disdain for "parasites" and "looters" and "moochers", it seems hard to escape the conclusion that a consistent Objectivist would never give any money or other assistance to others. After all, if they were deserving of your help, they wouldn't need it; they'd have already achieved success and security on their own through hard work and persistence. To an Objectivist, the way you prove you're worthy of help is by proving you don't need help. And the reason Rand was so upset about the starving citizens of the USSR wasn't because they were starving; it was because they were starving under the wrong ideology. In an Objectivist society, people might still starve, but we can at least comfort ourselves with the knowledge that they must have deserved it.

Not in the general population, alas. But a poll in a recent front-page post at Daily Kos, Hobbits 2.0?, had some stunning numbers:

The poll was about which viewpoint best fits the site contributors' positions on human evolution, with four options corresponding to young-earth creationism, old-earth creationism, theistic evolution, and non-theistic evolution (i.e., no god involved). Not surprisingly for a progressive political site, the two creationist options received negligible support. But what I found stunning was that the no-god-involved response enormously outweighed the theistic evolution response, by a margin of better than 3-to-1!

This is a very significant result when one considers where it appeared. Daily Kos is the largest progressive political blog on the internet, averaging around 1 million hits per day, and represents a vast community of involved, motivated writers, donors, voters and activists. The fact that nonbelievers apparently predominate by such an overwhelming margin is an extremely encouraging indicator that atheists and freethinkers are becoming more and more politically involved and active, and cements our status as an important bloc of swing voters. Some would-be atheist leaders may think we should sit out elections, but this result, thankfully, is a fairly good sign that atheists in general firmly reject that defeatist strategy.

This result also, I think, conclusively refutes the all-too-common cynicism which holds that there is no meaningful difference between the two American political parties. I can personally guarantee that no major Republican or conservative site is going to show poll results anything at all like this. (Exhibit A.) I grant that there is often not enough of a difference between the two parties on several important issues. But for any American voter who cares about freedom of conscience, the choice is clear: in their present incarnation, Republicans are unapologetically the party of dominionism and theocracy. Democrats, even if they spend far too much time pandering to religious sentiment, are much more reliable when it comes to obeying the separation of church and state.

Granted, some caveats are in order: we shouldn't put too much stock in this poll. This result is hardly scientific - its respondents are self-selected. Since the poll appeared only on the web, the respondents are likely to be disproportionately drawn from younger voters, whom we already know are increasingly secular. And since it appeared at the end of a science-related post, it's likely to gather respondents interested in science and technology, whom we can expect to be even more secular than young voters in general. As a reflection of the general electorate, it's not likely to be at all accurate. But it does show that there is a substantial number of freethinkers who are politically informed and active. In an America where religious voters' loyalties are already well established, this should be a bright, blinking message for political candidates. The next one who spends some time addressing our concerns just might end up getting into office.

Earlier this month, I chastised the theologian John Haught for falsely claiming that atheism leads to nihilism. Now the journalist Chris Hedges has launched his own attack on modern atheists, and the bizarre part is that he attacks us for possessing precisely the opposite failing: because, in his eyes, atheism does not lead to nihilism, and he considers this far more dangerous.

Hedges is one of the last people I'd expect to feel this way. He's written books with titles like American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America. So far, so good - but now he's veered off in a totally unexpected direction by publishing a new book, I Don't Believe in Atheists. If his introductory essay is any guide, the entire thing is one mad, fuming geyser of accusations and insults. I haven't the slightest idea what could have given him the motivation for this spitting, furious rant.

Despite numerous sweeping condemnations, Hedges' essay fails to offer any quote, citation, or any other evidence that atheists actually hold the views he accuses us of holding. In his distorted portrayal, today's atheists have "a naïve belief... in [humanity's] innate goodness and decency", "fail to grasp the dark reality of human nature [and] our own capacity for evil", and "support the imperialist projects and preemptive wars of the United States". Worst of all, we believe in "moral and material progress" - the holding of which belief is "an act of faith", "a form of the occult", and causes its holders to "inevitably turn to force to make their impossible dreams and their noble ideals a reality", "inflict[ing] suffering and death in the name of virtue and truth".

As I said, I don't know what provoked this torrent of blind fury. (Did Richard Dawkins run over his dog or something?) Still, let's deal with Hedges' criticisms one at a time.

First: atheists possess a distorted view of human nature. Here's how he phrases it:

These atheists share a naïve belief with these fundamentalists in our innate goodness and decency. They, like all religious fundamentalists, fail to grasp the dark reality of human nature, our own capacity for evil, and the morally neutral universe we inhabit...

The New Atheists misuse Darwin and evolutionary biology as egregiously as the Christian fundamentalists misuse the Bible. Darwinism, which pays homage to the final and complete mastery of our animal natures, never posits that human beings can transcend their natures and create a human paradise. It argues the opposite.

Hedges' tactic, used throughout this essay, is to invent a severely distorted or outright fictitious viewpoint, assert that all atheists hold it exactly as he describes it, and then attack them savagely for supposedly doing so. This is a good example. I would very much like to know which atheists "fail to grasp" humanity's capacity for evil; predictably, Hedges gives not a scrap of confirmatory evidence. To anyone with even a passing familiarity with modern atheist arguments, our acknowledgement of humanity's dark side is all too obvious. All the authors he excoriates spend ample time describing the horrors that humans have committed, often in the name of faith. Who does he fantasize is denying this? The lethal danger that unchecked faith can wreak, and has wrought, is very much the centerpiece of our arguments. (Sam Harris, if I recall, writes that The End of Faith was conceived in the first days after 9/11.) It is the primary reason we believe decisions must be made on the basis of reason and compassion, rather than on dogma or tribal instinct.

Second: atheists support war and imperialism. Yes, he actually says this:

Most of these atheists, like the Christian fundamentalists, support the imperialist projects and preemptive wars of the United States as a necessity. They see the war in Iraq and the greater conflict in the Middle East as an attack on irrational religion and a fight for the civilizing values of western culture.

...They urge us forward into a non-reality-based world, one where force and violence, where self-exaltation and blind nationalism go unquestioned and are considered good.

Who on earth is saying these things? Is Hedges attacking the imaginary atheists that live inside his head? These are some of the most blatant lies I've ever heard about the atheist political position (insofar as there is any such thing). Yes, I grant that Christopher Hitchens has voiced his support for the Iraq war; these views are not shared by any other prominent atheist I know, and they are very much in the minority among atheists as a whole. And even Hitchens' views bear little resemblance to the cartoonishly evil fantasies indulged in by Hedges. If anything, the vast majority of atheists recognize that the Iraq war is an ill-conceived misadventure that has only strengthened the hand of belligerent fanatics around the world, and that the battle against fanaticism and fundamentalism can only be won by reason, not by meeting violence with violence. Hedges' accusation is a contemptible and pathetic slander with no relation to reality.

Third: atheists are intolerant and want to take over the world and kill everyone else.

They argue... that some human beings, maybe many human beings, have to be eradicated to achieve this better world. They see only one truth — their truth. Human beings must become like them, think like them, and adopt their values, which they insist are universal, or be banished from civilized society. All other values, which they never investigate or examine, are dismissed as inferior.

Given Hedges' own blinding ignorance of what atheists actually believe, he's in an extremely poor position to say that we dismiss other views without examination. On the contrary, we have extensively examined these views and explained at length why we reject them. As for "eradicating" others who believe differently, this is another delusion on Hedges' part. Again, as far as there is a battle, we expect it to be fought on the battleground of ideas - with force used only where self-defense necessitates it for protection. We expect that religion will dwindle gradually as our ideas take hold, not that it will be wiped out in some sudden, overwhelming surge. Hedges' views are like those of a reporter who listens to a government official or charity worker talking about eradicating poverty, and then panics because he's leaped to the conclusion that this must mean killing off poor people. His determination to distort our views as far as he possibly can only makes him look uninformed and ridiculous.

Finally, Hedges' central criticism is that we atheists believe in moral progress. This is a dangerous fantasy, he says, because the dream of utopia inevitably leads to the slaughter of those who do not share it. Instead, he argues that the only safe route is to accept that humans are incurably evil, that human nature cannot be changed, and that there neither is nor has there ever been any moral progress of any kind, and the sooner we accept this the better off we'll be. I am not making this up. Here it is in his own words:

The utopian dream of a perfect society and a perfect human being, the idea that we are moving toward collective salvation, is one of the most dangerous legacies of the Christian faith and of the Enlightenment.

... They peddle the alluring and enticing fantasy of inevitable moral and material progress. This vision is not based on science, history or reason. It is an act of faith. It is a form of the occult.

...There is nothing in human nature or human history to support the idea that we are morally advancing as a species or that we will overcome the flaws of human nature. We progress technologically and scientifically, but not morally. We use the newest instruments of technological and scientific progress to create more efficient forms of killing, repression, and economic exploitation and to accelerate environmental degradation as well as to nurture and sustain life. There is a good and a bad side to human progress. We are not moving toward a glorious utopia. We are not moving anywhere.

Now this is true moral nihilism: the belief that moral progress is impossible, and that all our ingenuity has only invented new forms of evil for us to inflict on each other. I consider it a compliment, coming from a genuine nihilist, to say that he views atheists as dangerously optimistic. But as for the substance of his remarks:

First, moral progress, though it may be slower than we would like, is real and it is undeniable. A glance over human history would offer as examples the abolition of slavery, the granting of equal rights to women and minorities, the emancipation of state from church, the flowering of democracy worldwide, the increasingly greater efforts at avoiding war through diplomacy, and many more. This is not to say that there aren't many evils remaining, nor that no new ones have arisen. But Hedges' bleak and embittered views about the futility of moral progress are totally contradicted by the available facts. Missteps are possible, and no one is preaching the inevitability of a glorious future, despite Hedges' straw-man assertions on that point. But we as a species have overcome great challenges before and have improved the world by our successes. There is every reason to believe that further advancement is at least possible. We are not guaranteed success, but that is only a reason to work harder - not a reason to give up, as Hedges calls on us to do.

In our history, there have been evil tyrants who slaughtered millions in the name of their own twisted visions of utopia. But this does not mean, as Hedges thinks, that anyone calling for any moral progress whatsoever must have the same ends in mind. Believe it or not, it is possible to want things to get better without being a mass murderer! The "new atheists" are calling for the eradication not of people, but of beliefs - the beliefs that hold us apart and cause us to inflict inhumanities on each other. None of them that I know of think this will immediately lead to a perfect world, but it will eliminate at least one common cause of inhumanity, and in that respect would be an improvement.

It's not ultimately clear what Hedges is demanding, unless it's that we should all be as bleak and nihilistic as him, and abandon any hope of moral improvement or otherwise changing our situation for the better. Whatever the reason for Hedges' irrational fury, the fact remains that today's atheists are offering people reasons to hope and to work for the better, while he is only offering reasons to despair and surrender. This view has proven to be false every time it has come up in the past. If he wishes to cling to it, he's welcome to fall by the wayside. The rest of us will be working to loosen the grip of dogma on the human mind and, by bringing about a viewpoint of reason in its place, to gradually change our world for the better.

Late last year on Freethought Radio, Dan and Annie Laurie played a remarkable clip from James Dobson, talking on his own radio show about their program:

The problem is that the Christian ethic is literally hanging by a thread. I heard just a few weeks ago that Air America, the very leftist radio entity... have come up with a program that will be aired across the country that is atheistic - admittedly atheistic in nature.

Freethought Radio was on the air for some time before it was picked up nationally by Air America, but never mind that. What I find most amusing is Dobson's claim that Freethought Radio's debut has left Christianity "hanging by a thread". When last I checked, there were more than 2,000 religious radio stations in America, many of which play Christian programming twenty-four hours a day - not to mention the Christian TV channels, magazines, book publishers, megachurches, private colleges, evangelism programs, political lobbying organizations, and so on. Who'd have thought that this multibillion-dollar infrastructure was so fragile that one hour a week of radio pitched explicitly to freethinkers could bring it all to the edge of ruin? Shades of David and Goliath!

Dobson isn't the only one making noise like this. Last year, Ed Brayton reported on a hysterical column written by Janet Folger of the right-wing site WorldNetDaily, in which she imagines a future where Hillary Clinton has become President and has outlawed Christianity. No, I'm not making that up. In a similar story, the creationist Discovery Institute complains about the "unprecedented wave of persecution" it has suffered from nasty, mean scientists - as if academia's refusal to take them seriously was the worst thing that had ever happened to anyone. And again, Greg Laurie of WorldNetDaily wrings his hands over "the ugly results of banning God from the culture".

Another right-wing site, Hal Lindsay's Oracle Cartoons, has comics with titles like "Jail For Jesus", in which the cartoonist fantasizes about Christianity being outlawed worldwide and himself and other Christians being jailed, persecuted and tortured. In fact, judging by his strips with titles like "Another Illegal Cartoon", he seems to have persuaded himself that this is already in progress.

This is not to say that fears about the restriction of speech are entirely meritless. There are some legitimate threats to free speech in the world, and these need to be treated with the seriousness and gravity they deserve. What we do not need is the shrieking hysteria of Christians who treat the situation all out of proportion to its seriousness, as if their entire religion was on the very edge of being stamped out. A rational person would take the view that, while persecution of individuals is still atrocious where it exists, Christianity constitutes one-third of the population of this planet and commands a substantial portion of its wealth and power; it is not in danger of dying out any time soon. Even worse is the odious, conceited belief held by many Christians that everyone is against them and that their religion is the only one whose free speech is under threat. (Most tyrants suppress differing views indiscriminately.)

There is no global tide of persecution poised to sweep down on Christians, as these people ridiculously imagine. They should recognize that protections on free speech have always been a patchwork at best. Some nations are strong bulwarks of free speech; others allow it in some cases but restrict it in others; and in a handful of totalitarian states, there is no free speech at all. Every infringement on free speech is serious, but to assume that Christianity as a whole is in dire peril or is prevented from communicating its message is a delusion in stark conflict with reality.

This is an image of the Muslim prophet Mohammed:

So's this:

And also this:

I bring this up because, as you might have guessed, free speech and Islam are again in the news. Last month, over a dozen Danish newspapers reprinted one of the twelve drawings of Mohammed that caused such a furor after they were first published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005. The artist of this particular cartoon, Kurt Westergaard, has been under police protection, and recently the Danish police arrested three Muslims whom they alleged were plotting to murder him. The republication of the cartoons was to show solidarity with Westergaard and to demonstrate the newspapers' commitment to free speech in the face of threats from violent fanatics.

The response from the Muslim world was predictable:

The militant Palestinian group Hamas attracted thousands of protesters to a rally in the Gaza Strip last night, when a speaker urged them to bomb Danish embassies and kill the country's ambassadors, Danish broadcaster TV2 said on its Web site today.

The threats from these deranged, bloodthirsty lunatics were to be expected by now. However, I'm disappointed with the response of the Danish prime minister:

"The Danish government respects all faiths and their religious feelings," Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said today in his weekly press meeting at his Copenhagen offices, broadcast live by TV2. "When a long line of independent media decide to reprint the pictures, it's not with the intention to insult religious feelings, but to document the background for the murder plans that police have unfolded."

Who cares if the intention was to "insult religious feelings"? That is one of the rights of the press in a free society. It's ludicrous to ban the publication of anything that hurts people's feelings, religious or otherwise. To do that would eradicate free speech altogether by creating a heckler's veto for the most thin-skinned members of society to censor anything that offends them. Is Prime Minister Rasmussen saying that we shouldn't criticize any group that will react violently? Isn't the violent response itself an indication that the group in question needs to be criticized?

It's not just the Danes who've been targeted by religious aggressors who think that their dogma should be binding on everyone else. Wikipedia has been targeted by a flood of petitions demanding that it remove medieval Islamic depictions of Mohammed from its article on him. To their great credit, the Wikipedia administrators have refused, explaining their position clearly and concisely and reaffirming that they will not censor their encyclopedia for the benefit of any particular group.

Others have not been so lucky. The Turkish publishing house that translated Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion is under investigation on a charge of "insulting religious values". This even though Turkey is relatively secular, as Muslim-majority nations go. Fortunately, Turkey is also attempting to join the European Union, whose laws protecting free speech are much better (if not perfect). Hopefully, this will serve as a wedge that will persuade the Turkish government to lay aside the more regressive of their laws.

Another writer who's clashed with fanatics is the French philosopher and atheist Michel Houellebecq, who was charged with inciting racism in 2002 for calling Islam a "stupid" religion. (He quite reasonably pointed out that you can't be racist against a religion, only against a race.) Thankfully, he was acquitted, but the threat is far from over. As the more recent case of Ezra Levant shows, there are still plenty of Muslims who'll seize every opportunity to use well-intentioned but horribly misguided "hate speech" laws as a weapon to shut down any criticism of their beliefs.

And, as Hamas' anti-cartoon rally shows, there are many more Muslims who will gleefully call for violence at the slightest provocation. Western society needs to recognize - it should already be abundantly clear - that Muslim groups and individuals are not calling for the censorship of anti-Islamic speech because their delicate, fragile feelings have been wounded. No, they're calling for censorship because it is their undisguised ambition to conquer the world and turn it into a brutal theocracy under their heel, where all dissenters and nonbelievers would be silenced or put to death. These measures are, in their eyes, just the first step in that plan. (I take pains to emphasize that I'm not including every Muslim in this condemnation, only those who seek to stifle criticism whether through law or through bloodshed.)

Since these groups haven't gotten the message, we need to inform them more clearly that, whatever rules they choose to follow for themselves, we non-Muslims are not bound by those rules. The best way to do this would be for many papers and media outlets to rerun the above images and others. This would send a clear and uniform message of defiance, communicating a commitment to free speech that cannot be silenced by a few belligerent fanatics, and would leave them with no single target even if they did lash out.

I was away last weekend and came back to an astonishing story: Ellen Johnson, Madalyn Murray O'Hair's successor as president of American Atheists, has proudly announced that she didn't vote in the recent presidential primaries. Even more jaw-dropping, she's urged atheists not to vote in the general election either. Here's the video, which is still linked from American Atheists' homepage at the time of this writing.

Friendly Atheist, Atheist Revolution, and others have discussed this story, and I had to chime in. Below is my letter to Ellen Johnson.

UPDATE: Ellen Johnson responds. See below.

Dear Ms. Johnson,

As an atheist and an American, I watched with incredulity your recent video in which you urged atheists to sit out the 2008 presidential election and not vote. With all due respect, I have just one thing to say: Have you lost your mind?

I consider it a moral obligation for every citizen of a democratic nation to vote, but more than that, I consider it essential for atheists, for sound reasons of political self-interest. Ms. Johnson, I know I don't need to tell you that the threat posed by the religious right is grave. They are working their hardest to darken the founding principles of our secular democracy and turn America into a theocratic state where their repressive and dogmatic faith holds sway. If we are to defend against this threat, if we are to triumph over it, we must vote! How else are we possibly supposed to exert our political will? You say, "We should flex our muscle and stay home in the general election in November" - but what you are proposing is not flexing our political muscles. What you're proposing is that we sit on the couch and not use those muscles at all!

I share your frustration with candidates who pander to religious interests and ignore secularists, but not voting is not the answer. Things are this way because, for the longest time, religious groups held unchallenged power in our society, and politicians had to appease them to have any hope of winning. With the strong, assertive atheist movement that has risen to prominence in recent years, this situation is starting to change. But politicians, conservative creatures by nature, are used to the old order; and in any case, we haven't developed our infrastructure to the point where we can change the course of elections all by ourselves.

I understand why an atheist would be upset, seeing the burgeoning freethought movement and yet still seeing a slew of candidates whose speeches and positions are saturated with god-talk. But this doesn't mean that our efforts have failed and we should turn away from politics. What it means is that we've only just begun to fight! We do have the power to change the political landscape, but it will take time and effort. And it will only happen if atheists get more involved in politics - not if we stay home on election day. We need to vote, we need to form interest groups, we need to court and lobby politicians. When we lose, we need to take that as our cue to work harder. We're not guaranteed success, of course, but one thing that is guaranteed is that we will never change anything by giving up.

You assert that our not voting will persuade candidates that we cannot be taken for granted and will encourage them to pay greater attention to our desires in the future. In all probability, its actual effect would be to persuade candidates that we are irrelevant, and will encourage them to write us off and further concentrate their attention on those groups who do vote - the extremists of the religious right. Far from strengthening atheists' political hand, our abstention from politics would only strengthen our most dangerous enemies and cause politicians to spend even more time and energy flattering, courting, and appeasing them. Democracy is like temperature, and elections the thermometer - we sample the mood of the electorate by averaging out the motions of individual voters. Remove all the voters on one end of the scale, and you only shift the average in the other direction, much as removing all the coldest or hottest atoms causes a liquid's temperature to shift toward the opposite extreme.

Democracy is by its nature a process of compromise. Do you not like any of the candidates? Vote for the one you dislike the least. In this way, we exert a "selective pressure" in the desired direction. If that candidate wins, then others will be drawn to those positions in the next election, and again, you can exert selective pressure in the right direction by voting for the best of those candidates. Anyone who understands evolution should understand that we steer the course of democracy in this way. Not voting, by contrast, only allows our political opponents free rein to shift the landscape in the directions they desire. It makes us irrelevant in the truest sense.

I was not a member of American Atheists before, but I can say with great confidence that your message has persuaded me never to join or support your organization as long as you are its president. I don't understand what American Atheists' purpose in existing even is, if it wants nonbelievers to abdicate their place in politics. As for me, I am a member, and will continue to be a member, of atheist and freethought organizations that encourage their supporters to vote, to lobby, and to make our voices heard.

Sincerely,
Adam Lee
http://www.daylightatheism.org

Back in November, U.S. senator John Kerry made some probably accurate, if rather unfortunate, remarks about the probability of an atheist being elected to national office:

"The vast majority of Americans say they believe in God," Kerry said, responding to a question about the likelihood of an atheist or agnostic winning the presidency. "The vast majority of America, at some time, goes to church, and I think it matters to people. When you are choosing the president of the United States, people vote on the things that matter to them."

The U.S. Constitution forbids the creation of a de jure religious test for public office. Nevertheless, it seems clear that such a test does exist de facto. The percentage of voters who say they would refuse to consider an atheist for office is higher than the percentage of those who admit to the same prejudice against any other group. Most atheists justly feel snubbed and excluded by the obligatory Christianity that permeates American politics. Historically, our choices have been to hold our noses and vote for candidates who drench their campaigns in religion, or to stand by and do nothing, potentially assisting an even worse theocrat to get elected. Even the announcement of the first openly nontheist office holder, California Representative Pete Stark, although it's a hopeful sign, has done little to change this state of affairs.

The prejudice and hostility against atheists exists in spite of the U.S. Constitution, one of the world's most progressive legal frameworks. In fact, Thomas Jefferson explicitly defended the fitness of atheists to hold office (as did other founders):

"If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such being exists... Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God."

Sadly, the beneficial laws of this document, although they've more or less safeguarded atheists' rights, have never persuaded the population in general to follow their good example. However, this situation may be changing.

This blog has previously discussed the evidence that the non-religious tend to be independents and may in fact constitute a crucial bloc of swing voters. And not only that, the non-religious constitute an extremely involved and motivated voting bloc, according to a recent article from Reuters:

But those who say they are "unaffiliated" or atheist are very keen to cast their ballots. Pew data shows that 82 percent of them are very or somewhat likely to vote. At 90 percent, evangelicals are the only group more likely to vote.

82 percent of nonbelievers are motivated to vote. This stunning number, coupled with the other facts mentioned above, should be enough for politicians to sit up and take notice. We are eager and informed voters, we are more than numerous enough to change the course of an election, and we are not a group whose loyalties can be taken for granted. Why are candidates still spending all their time pandering to Christians? Why aren't they devoting more effort to winning us over and addressing the issues that we care about?

The American electorate is saturated with god-talk, and most religious voters already have well-established loyalties. Politicians competing to see who loves Jesus more is not a tactic that is likely to turn the tide of an election. If a candidate was willing to pay some attention to nonbelievers and freethinkers, on the other hand, the effort might well pay surprising dividends.

I don't think we're asking for much. I don't expect a candidate for national office to be a fire-breathing atheist - that day is far in the future, unfortunately. (We could stand to emulate the example of the Dutch, whom polls show would be perfectly happy with an atheist prime minister.) But I don't think it's too much to ask for a candidate to show some sensitivity to nonbelievers: to recognize that we exist and acknowledge that we deserve the same right to freedom of conscience that all other Americans have. It would be even better to see a candidate who defended - and more importantly, upheld by their actions - the principle that America is a secular nation with a separation of church and state, and that it is the job of an elected official to represent all citizens equally without regard to creed. These are basic elements of American democracy! It's astonishing that supporting them has become so controversial, which is itself an indicator of how far the religious right has skewed the national debate.

But this state of affairs is not unchangeable. The problem is that, despite our numbers and our readiness to vote, nonbelievers are considerably less organized and more heterogeneous than conservative Christians, who for the most part have been turned into a lockstep political machine voting in favor of a specific, identifiable agenda. That degree of organization is what politicians see and respond to. If we've been ignored by candidates, it's probably because we still don't have the kind of political organization that would make them take us seriously and realize that they can't cast aspersions on us without paying a price. Organizations like the Secular Coalition for America are a good start, and if we can build on them, then we may in time be able to shatter that stained-glass ceiling and turn secularism into a political force to be reckoned with.

The Roman Catholic church is the oldest and largest Christian denomination on the planet. Although its influence in the Western world is declining, it still exercises great power over the lives of millions of people every day. All too often, that power is used in the service of superstition, of perpetuating irrational and dogmatic beliefs about how human liberty should be restricted in order to please God. Whatever charitable and humanitarian work the Catholic church performs must be balanced against the vast harm it has done and continues to do because of its obsession with controlling the sex lives and reproductive systems of all human beings. This post will detail some of the more notable harms.

Denying equal rights to gays and lesbians. The Catholic church's support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is well-known, and shows by itself how this church has placed itself on the wrong side of history by supporting irrational and superstitious prejudice against people who don't conform to its narrow and restrictive model of human sexual relations.

But a slightly lesser-known fact is that the Catholic church's adoption agencies flatly refuse to place children with gay parents - even if this means they will have no parents and will grow up in an orphanage. Evidently, the Catholic church considers this option preferable to a child growing up in a stable home with loving, caring parents who happen to be of the same gender. For example, in 2006, Catholic Charities announced its adoption services were shutting down in Massachusetts, rather than place children with gay families. This is but another example of how the church considers adherence to its own dogma more important than the lives and welfare of human beings.

Opposing vaccination for sexually transmitted diseases. Since the development of Gardasil, a highly effective vaccine against the common sexually transmitted disease HPV - which can cause lethal cervical cancer - numerous branches of the Catholic church have announced their opposition to giving this vaccine to children before they reach sexual maturity. The Catholic school board in Halton, Ontario has announced plans to ban school health units from giving the vaccine to students or even discussing it with them. The church in Scotland has also announced opposition to the vaccine, as did the California Catholic Conference (which said the vaccine "takes away the parental perogative for children to be chaste").

Regardless of a person's religious beliefs, there is no rational reason for them not to receive this vaccine. The only purpose a person could have for opposing it for their children would be to make them afraid of getting cervical cancer if they have unprotected sex - which has the logical inference that cervical cancer would be an appropriate punishment for such sex.

Opposing emergency contraceptive use, even for rape victims. If taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex, emergency contraception (the "morning-after pill") is highly effective at preventing fertilization. This is a tremendous boon to rape victims, who've already suffered enough without being forced to go through the further trauma of bearing their rapist's child. Yet many church ethicists, as well as the Pontifical Academy for Life, argue that Catholic physicians and Catholic hospitals should not administer EC to rape victims under any circumstance. This is a cruel and evil position that would inflict severe emotional and physical trauma on women and deny them the right to control their own bodies in the name of obedience to unprovable religious dogma. Dr. Marty Klein has more information in the appropriately titled Catholic Hospitals Should Stop Playing God.

Opposing abortion even when it is necessary to prevent death or grave harm to the woman. The most prominent example of this deadly dogma is in El Salvador, an officially Catholic country that bans abortion under all circumstances and jails women who obtain them illegally. The church intensely lobbied the government into passing this law, bussing in Catholic schoolchildren to stage demonstrations and using churches as political organizing centers. Pope John Paul II also issued statements in support of the law.

The result is a theocratic nation where the state exerts dictatorial control over women's bodies. Women who suffer miscarriages are forced to submit to invasive vaginal exams to ensure they did not obtain illegal abortions. Even in ectopic pregnancies, which have no possibility of producing a living child, abortion is forbidden until the mother's Fallopian tube has ruptured and the fetus is dead - a critical, life-threatening medical emergency for the woman.

Opposing condom use, even for married couples where one member has HIV. This particularly horrible example of the church's irrational opposition to condom use is most often seen in Africa, where the culture often does not permit women to turn down their husband's demands for sex. Yet even if they remain monogamous, that does not protect them if the husband cheats and acquires a deadly disease such as HIV. Since the Catholic church teaches that condom use is forbidden under all circumstances, this rules out the last remaining option and results in devastating tragedies like this one:

The typical patient is a young woman between eighteen and thirty years of age. She is wheeled into the examining room in a hospital chair or dragged in, supported by her sister, aunt, or brother. She is frequently delirious; her face is gaunt; her limbs look like desiccated twigs. Surprisingly, the young woman is already a mother many times over, yet she will not live to see her children grow up. More shocking still, she is married; her husband infected her with the deadly virus.

...To preach fidelity and abstinence assumes that a woman can determine with whom she sleeps and when — a grave misunderstanding of the relations between the sexes in places where women are sometimes betrothed at birth or sold for cattle. How can the Vatican continue to prohibit the use of a life-saving intervention amid a pandemic of unprecedented proportions?

Attempting to stifle stem cell research. The most notable example of this came in June 2006, when an influential Catholic cardinal, Alfonso López Trujillo, said that stem-cell researchers should be excommunicated. Although this threat is meaningless to non-Catholics, the important point is that it is a threat - as well as a symptom of the church's obvious desire to block this life-saving research by coercion and spiritual blackmail.

This story, like the others discussed here, shows why we should be glad that this irrational and medieval institution has lost the power it once had to force all people to obey its will. Now we need to diminish its influence still further, so that it can no longer stand in the way of wise and rational policies that improve people's well-being and happiness.

Ask any observer of American politics today to name the most influential figures of the religious right, and some familiar names are likely to come up - Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, James Dobson, John Hagee, Tony Perkins, Roy Moore, and others. But one name that's not as likely to appear is Francis Schaeffer. That is a regrettable oversight, because even though Schaeffer died in 1982, he is possibly the one person most responsible for the existence of the religious right as we know it today.

Schaeffer was an evangelical Presbyterian theologian who lived in the 20th century. He wrote many books on apologetics, including The God Who Is There, Genesis in Space and Time (arguing for a creationist viewpoint), Escape from Reason, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, and many more. However, probably his three most influential books were A Christian Manifesto, How Should We Then Live? and Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (the latter two of which were also made into films by his son Frank). These highly influential works addressed political issues such as abortion, homosexuality and euthanasia, which up until that point had been largely ignored by Protestantism. They laid out what we would now recognize as the religious right positions on these issues, and urged Christian believers to get more involved in politics. Religious right leaders such as Tim LaHaye, Randall Terry of Operation Rescue, and others have publicly credited Schaeffer with laying the foundation for their movement.

As I said, Schaeffer died in 1982. But his son Frank is still around... and lately seems to have had a change of heart. He's recently published a book, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back (HT: The Wall of Separation). Although he's still a Christian, he's become bitterly disillusioned with the way religious conservatives have used their faith as a blunt instrument - and, if this memoir is to be believed, his late father held many of the same views.

Although I haven't read the book yet, AU's blog links to an interview with Frank Schaeffer discussing its content. Judging by these quotes, I'm going to have to get a copy:

The public image of the leaders of the religious right I met with so many times also contrasted with who they really were. In public, they maintained an image that was usually quite smooth. In private, they ranged from unreconstructed bigot reactionaries like Jerry Falwell, to Dr. Dobson, the most power-hungry and ambitious person I have ever met, to Billy Graham, a very weird man indeed who lived an oddly sheltered life in a celebrity/ministry cocoon, to Pat Robertson, who would have had a hard time finding work in any job where hearing voices is not a requirement.

I personally came to believe that a lot of the issues that were being latched onto by the Christian Right, whether it was the gay issue or abortion or other things, were actually being used for negative political purposes. They were used to structure a power base for people who then threw their weight around.

I begin to get the feeling that they don't want things to get better. This is their shtick. This is the way they raise their money. This is how they maintain their central power base... The anti-Americanism was very clear to me in that there is a group of people whose best interests are served by failure, not by success, when it comes to what is happening in this country.

There are also some choice quotes for anyone who views Schaeffer himself as an idol:

Dad had a very strong temper. He and mother had a good marriage, in the sense that it lasted. They had a lot of affection for one another, and they were very dynamic. But there was also, as there are in a lot of human relationships, a very dark side. One of those dark sides came out when they were fighting. My father would yell and scream and throw things. Sometimes, it went beyond that.

as well as tidbits about other religious leaders whom he was acquainted with:

I talked about Billy Graham in the book. Growing up, I remember Dad talking to Billy Graham on a regular basis. Dad told me that Billy was always telling him that he was afraid to die.

I haven't seen any prominent religious right figures respond to this book yet, which is hardly surprising. However, the Internet Monk's comment thread on the book offers a glimpse of what's probably the dominant reaction in the evangelical community: a wish that, true or not, the book had never been written because reading it is depressing to them:

And yes, this can be very damaging.

I spent two years reading books and testimonies of former evangelicals who became Catholic or Orthodox. The effect was that I began to focus on all the bad things in the evangelical church. It got so bad that I went into a serious spiritual depression for more than a year.

...I will not be reading this book and I would warn others to tread very carefully when it comes to embracing this type of "honesty."

This is a lovely example of the willful blindness that's brought the religious right to grief in recent years. Even as the public rejects their agenda and their movement crumbles around them, they continue to pursue their pet political causes with relentless single-mindedness, uninterested in reading anything except whatever reinforces their existing prejudices. But as more and more people like Frank Schaeffer peel away, the religious right's zealous devotion may well prove to be their undoing in the end.