When America's founders ratified the Constitution, they created something that arguably had never existed in the world before: a republic where freedom of religion was explicitly enshrined in the charter, where toleration wasn't just the whim of a benevolent ruler but the immutable law of the land. As George Washington wrote in his famous letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport:

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

This was a radical break with history. At the time America was founded, all the great powers of Europe had state-supported churches and monarchs who claimed to rule by divine right, and religious wars and persecution were the order of the day: Catholics persecuting Protestants, Protestants persecuting Catholics, and both Catholics and Protestants persecuting those within their own sects who strayed from established dogma. In fact, the Spanish Inquisition was still executing heretics at the time of Thomas Jefferson's presidency.

In Great Britain during the Elizabethan era, the houses of prominent Roman Catholic families were known for having secret rooms, called "priest holes" (see also), where Catholic priests could be hidden away at a moment's notice when inquisitors came calling. Can you imagine what living in that society must have been like? Can you imagine living in a country where your freedom of belief hung by a thread, where the whim of a king made the difference between being grudgingly tolerated and an enemy of the state, and where literally at any moment you might have to abandon everything and go into hiding for your life - and that this happened so often that people planned for it?

Although America has seen (and practiced) its share of religious persecution, we've never had horrors like these. Instead, our founding document offered all comers a wonderful bargain: the freedom to live in peace, practice your beliefs as you see fit, even preach them to others. And in return we asked only, as President Washington said, that believers of all kinds be good citizens and obey the law of the land. We modern Americans have gotten used to this freedom, but that shouldn't blind us to how truly unprecedented it was, nor how liberal and generous it is to theists of every denomination.

But for members of the modern Christian right, it isn't enough. It's not enough for them that they have the right to practice their beliefs as they see fit, free of government interference. It's not enough for them that they have the unlimited freedom to fundraise, pray and preach as much as they like, in whatever media outlets they choose to publish. It's not even enough for them that they can stud the landscape with churches and staff and maintain them tax-free.

No, these dominionist believers want more than freedom: they want a special, privileged place in the laws of our country. They want the government to obey them, to issue official proclamations reminding everyone of their superiority, and to underwrite their evangelism with tax money from nonbelievers. They want their dogmas and only their dogmas to be taught in public school science classes, enshrined on courthouse lawns, and used as the basis to decide who should be allowed to marry, divorce, be born and die. In short, they want to be what our founders specifically sought to prevent: a state-established church, an arm of the government, with special rights and privileges granted to members and nonbelievers relegated to second-class citizens.

What selfishness! What ingratitude! All American believers, Christian or not, were given a priceless gift by the founders, and these ones throw it on the ground and spit on it. They don't want to be one religion among many; they want special privileges and special recognition. They think that freedom is worthless if it's granted to people they dislike - like a spoiled child who wants a toy because no one in his class has it, and then throws a temper tantrum when other kids get them because he's not the only one anymore. It's telling that these fundamentalists apparently can't just practice their religion on their own - they need constant hand-holding and head-patting from the government to stroke their egos and reassure them that they're better and specialer than everyone else. It's a clear sign of insecurity.

Benjamin Franklin had their number over two hundred years ago:

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.

Think of this the next time some obnoxious theocrat is on the news, arguing that it's unfair to him if his sect doesn't get special rights. These people want us to think of them as proud, pious defenders of America's Christian heritage (a claim which is, needless to say, utterly false). Instead, we should think of them as spoiled and petulant children, ungratefully rejecting the pledges of liberty that our founding generation purchased in blood, all because they want to be treated as if they were better than everyone else. Keep that image in your head, and it may help you put the theocrats' demands in their proper context.

Guest post by Peter Nothnagle

On June 30, someone stole a piece of the True Cross (you know the one I mean) that was enshrined in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston. It had been kept in a small compartment in the base of a crucifix hanging on a wall in a chapel. Someone walked in, pried it open, and helped himself. That was a mean thing to do.

The faithful are very attached to their sacred relics. They see these bits of bone, cloth, vegetable matter, and globs of goo as links to the times, places and persons of their spiritual forebears. Many of these items are supposed to have had extraordinary powers in the past — raising the dead and so forth — although modern church leaders are much more modest in their claims.

The most famous relics have been the most studied — and study has cast serious doubt on their authenticity. Yet the faithful cling fiercely to the idea that they are authentic, as if the debunking of, say, the Shroud of Turin or the painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe would undermine their faith. As for the True Cross, according to tradition (which will have to suffice in place of history), it was discovered after torturing witnesses, some 300 years after the (alleged) Crucifixion, and then repeatedly captured by invaders, held for ransom, concealed, rediscovered, divided into tiny pieces to be distributed among visitors and dignitaries — none of which gives much confidence in the authenticity of any surviving fragments.

The Bible is the most popular relic of all. Most Christians cherish the Bible as the foundation of their faith, considering it divinely inspired, but the poor thing has been cobbled together from many traditions over the centuries, redacted, amended, translated from translations and copied from copies, and cannot be an accurate record of any one faith tradition. In the 21st century, we have powerful tools for the scientific examination of historical claims, and we know things that should shake the faith of anyone who ascribes any more than the vaguest, metaphorical "truth" to the stories in the Bible: there was no Creation, no Adam, no Eve, no Fall, no Flood, no Moses, no Exodus, and on and on. The fact that all those stories are flatly contradicted by science and history must lead any rational person to be suspicious of all the other tales of angels, miracles, prophetic utterances, and even unimportant details like genealogies and place names, unless independent evidence should corroborate them.

Eventually the penny will drop for the faithful. Everybody has experienced that the provenance of an object, or the veracity of a story, is subject to being falsified. Everybody understands that, to paraphrase biologist Jerry Coyne, you can't be confident that you're right about something unless you can tell if you're wrong. When the faithful bolster their immaterial faith with evidence, they're playing our game, and unbiased examination of the evidence has only gone one way — badly for the faithful.

There is only one true and honest way to have faith, and that is to ignore evidence — to abandon it, even to flee from it. To base one's religious faith on evidence, even something as subjective as "I just feel in my heart that it's true", is to invite rational rebuttal, which should lead a sensible person to doubt.

Editor's Note: Considering the date, I can't think of anything more appropriate to post today. I don't agree with the religious language added as window dressing, just as most people today would disavow the archaic sexist terminology or the unthinking racism against Native Americans. Still, it remains one of the finest pieces of political rhetoric ever written - a stirring defense of the right of free human beings to choose their own system of government, and the ends which that government must serve to retain its legitimacy.

It was also incredibly courageous, considering that the outcome of the revolution was far from assured. The signers were publicly declaring their opposition to the most powerful empire in the world, and if Great Britain had triumphed, Benjamin Franklin's famous saying about their fates would have been more than a clever quip. Bear that in mind as you read this; think of what they were risking, and what they were risking it for. That, even more so than the Declaration itself, is the truest expression of the American spirit.

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. —That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

(Editor's Note: This review was solicited and is written in accordance with this site's policy for such reviews.)

Summary: A scholarly survey of the atheism of dead white guys.

Much like Christopher Hitchens' The Portable Atheist, Dr. Michael Palmer's The Atheist's Creed is intended as an anthology of atheist thought from historical to modern times. Beginning with the ancient Greeks, Palmer traces the development of atheist thought to the European Enlightenment, then branches out into selections by historical and modern writers that explore atheist views on morality, theodicy, miracle claims, and assorted theological arguments for the existence of God. In each chapter, he provides a brief overview of the subject matter, then goes on to quote extended excerpts from the writing of various historical personages on that topic. Not all of the authors showcased here claimed to be atheists themselves; but the ones who didn't, like Thomas Paine and David Hume, made important arguments that laid the path for later freethinkers to follow.

I'll start with what I liked about the book, which is that Palmer is clearly in full command of his subject material. The earlier chapters, in my opinion, were the strongest. His chapter on the Greek philosophers, like Epicurus, Lucretius and Sextus Empiricus, was excellent: he shows where their views sprang from, how they defended them to contemporaries, and recounts some interesting historical facts I hadn't known. I can offer similar praise for his chapter on the Enlightenment philosophers, which shows how these freethinkers were surprisingly bold and daring in an era still dominated by medieval church hierarchies. (This book gave me a desire to read more about the Baron d'Holbach, who fearlessly claimed the title of "atheist" for himself and who nurtured many other renowned freethinkers at his famous salons. It may have been the only time in history that so many remarkable minds were under one roof!)

With all that said, I have two major criticisms to lodge against this book: one that's about what's not there, and one that's about what is. I'll start with the latter.

First: The later chapters of the book, which concern atheism in the 19th and early 20th centuries, give pride of place to the writings of Freud, Marx, and especially Nietzsche. While Palmer praises all three of them effusively, he fails to note clearly that subsequent science has thrown all their signature ideas into grave doubt: Freud's belief in suppressed sex drives as the cause of all psychological illness, Marx's belief in the inevitability and the desirability of communist triumph, and Nietzsche's ideas of eternal recurrence and opposition to evolution. None of these people command much respect among the modern atheist movement for that very reason - not to mention the near-universal modern rejection of Nietzsche's bizarre and disturbing nihilism. It's here that the book's uncertainty of purpose is most apparent: is it intended as an anthology of historical atheism or a compendium of things that modern atheists do believe or should believe? Its overall organization suggests the latter, not the former, which is why I think all three of these were poor choices.

Second: I really have to point out that, of the twenty-seven anthologized essays that fill out this book, every single one of them was written by a white male of European descent. I criticized The Portable Atheist for not including nearly enough women, but it's a parade of diversity compared to the selections here.

Now, I don't have a bright-line rule for this kind of thing. I don't insist that every anthology contain set percentages of women and minorities. But in a book like this one, one that's intended to contain a representative selection of atheist thought through the ages, how is it possible that not a single woman was included? Not a single person from outside Europe and the United States?

I don't think anyone would argue that there are no prominent atheists who fit that description. There are plenty of smart, eloquent female freethinkers, both then and now; there are nonbelievers from all cultures and continents. The only way to account for their otherwise inexplicable exclusion from this book is the sort of unconscious bias that the atheist movement still has to do a lot of work to overcome. Female freethinkers and atheists of color exist; their contributions are real and should be acknowledged, and their history deserves to be better known. Regrettably, this book doesn't advance either of those aims.

The Case for a Creator, Chapter 7

To start off his interview, Lee Strobel asks Gonzalez and Richards about humankind's great demotion: the medieval religious belief that we were at "the center of the universe, sort of the throne of the cosmos, the most important place that everything revolved around" [p.160] and the overturning of this belief by science, which proved that we are not at the center of the universe either physically or metaphysically. Richards claims, however, "that this historical description is simply false" [p.161].

To counter this argument, Richards cites Dante's Divine Comedy, in which "the surface of the Earth is an intermediate place" between the heavenly spheres and the circles of the underworld. In fact, he calls it a "cosmic sump". "[C]learly, this is not the stereotype that we've been given that the center of the universe prior to Copernicus was the preeminent spot." [p.162]

But what Richards has passed over is the role that Earth plays in this cosmology. It's not, as Richards' dismissive description implies, a place of no importance. On the contrary: according to this belief system, Earth is the axis of creation. It's the stage where God's plan of salvation plays out, the place where everyone's eternal destiny will be decided, the cosmic arena where everything that's ever going to happen happens. And let's not forget that the most important series of events in all of Christian history - the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus - took place on the Earth. Far from being unimportant, this belief system makes the Earth the place of supreme importance for God's plan and for humankind's ultimate destiny.

Without Strobel noticing, Richards then goes on to contradict the argument raised just several pages prior:

"It was the Enlightenment that made man the measure of all things. When you really think about it, Christian theology never actually put man literally in the center... it was never the case that everything was literally created solely for us." [p.162]

This flatly contradicts the passage from Michael Denton, quoted by Strobel and discussed in my last entry in this series, which describes the hypothesis that "every characteristic of reality exists [to create a livable habitat] for mankind" as "very far from a discredited prescientific myth" [p.158]. Strobel passes over this contradiction without noticing or remarking on it.

Strobel next raises the question of Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno, three famous figures who were persecuted for opposing the geocentric cosmology of their day. Unusually, Richards doesn't adopt the usual evangelical apologetic of blaming it all on the cruel, dogmatic Catholic church. (Note that he's affiliated with the Acton Institute, a libertarian Catholic think tank.) Instead, he tries to exonerate the church and even argues that some of the treatment they received was justified!

"First of all," Richards said, "some claim Copernicus was persecuted, but history shows he wasn't; in fact, he died of natural causes the same year his ideas were published." [p.163]

This is a rather odd apologetic. If Richards wants to prove that the Catholic church refrained from persecuting scientists, it certainly doesn't help his case. It could equally well be argued that the only reason Copernicus wasn't persecuted is because he died before the church had the opportunity.

Indeed, the way Copernicus and his associates handled his discovery strongly suggests that they feared the church's response. When Copernicus' masterpiece, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, was published by his friend Andreas Osiander, Osiander added a foreword emphasizing that the heliocentric theory could be treated only as a mathematical convenience, and didn't have to imply anything about the true nature of reality. Copernicus himself began the work by reprinting a letter from a friend, who was a Catholic cardinal, praising his observational skills. He follows this with a long, apologetic preface addressed to Pope Paul III in which he admits that his theory is new and shocking, that for a long time he wrestled with whether to publish it at all, but that he was finally persuaded to do so by the urging of his friends. (Read the text of De Revolutionibus online; see also). And despite all this effort toward placating the church, Copernicus' work was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books later, during the Galileo affair. It would not ultimately be removed until 1835 (!).

And about that famous Galileo affair:

"As for Galileo, his case can't be reduced to a simple conflict between scientific truth and religious superstition. He insisted the church immediately endorse his views rather than allow them to gradually gain acceptance..." [p.163]

Considering that the ID movement has insisted public schools immediately endorse their views rather than wait to gain scientific acceptance, this is a laughably hypocritical charge.

"...he mocked the Pope, and so forth. Yes, he was censured, but the church kept giving him his pension for the rest of his life." [p.163]

First off, please take notice that Richards appears to be arguing that mocking the Pope is a legitimate reason to punish someone.

Second, it's ludicrous how Richards tries to soft-pedal Galileo's fate. What actually happened is that Galileo was summoned to Rome to appear before the Inquisition, where he was imprisoned for the duration of his trial before a jury of ten cardinals. When he was finally judged to be suspect of heresy, his book was banned and he was forced to recant on his knees under threat of torture; and when he had humiliated himself by abjuring his own work, he was then sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life. (Here's an excellent reference on Galileo's trial.)

"[Giordano] Bruno's case was very sad," Richards continued. "He was executed in Rome in 1600. Certainly this is a stain on church history. But again, this was a complicated case. His Copernican views were incidental. He defended pantheism and was actually executed for his heretical views on the Trinity, the Incarnation, and other doctrines that had nothing to do with Copernicanism." [p.163]

Evidently, we're meant to take from this that burning someone for their religious ideas is somehow more acceptable than burning them for their scientific ideas.

But what Richards says here is a half-truth at best. Bruno was not a scientist like Copernicus or Galileo; his cosmological views flowed from his mystical, pantheistic religious beliefs, not from direct observation. Nevertheless, it's striking how his ideas resemble the modern, scientific conception of the cosmos. He believed that the Sun was a star just like all the others, that the Earth and the other planets revolved around it, and that there were an infinite number of other stars each with their own planetary systems and living beings. And whether or not this was the charge that resulted in his execution, the record clearly shows that it was one of the charges laid against him at trial.

In sum, far from supporting his thesis, Richards has only undermined it: The church did insist on a cosmology that put Earth at the metaphysical center of creation, and it did persecute scientists and other freethinkers who dared to offer an alternative view. This embarrassing historical record doesn't fit well with the story he wants to tell, so it's no surprise that he tries to cover it up. Unfortunately for him, the facts are not so malleable nor so accommodating.

Other posts in this series:

• Rebutting The Case for a Creator

If you've got an ugly or uncomfortable historical record that you'd like to have whitewashed, then Christian fundamentalists are the ideologues for you. Here's their latest bit of doggerel: Christians deserve the credit for abolishing African slavery!

Slavery is one of the best examples — far from being a Western Christian invention, it was ubiquitous, and it was only the Christian west that abolished it.

Jonathan Sarfati, the author of this article, points out that slavery was ubiquitous in ancient cultures (true) and that it was usually not explicitly race-based (also true). However, where he starts diverging from reality is this section, which clearly implies that Christianity deserves all the credit for abolishing slavery and fighting against racism in the Western world:

However, America had a huge number of Christians who wrote and campaigned extensively against slavery... There was also the heavily Christian-based novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896), widely recognized as a major cause of people in the North turning so strongly against slavery.

I'll gladly grant that Christians played a major role in the abolitionist movement (as did freethinkers, a point I'll come to shortly). However, there's a gigantic, inconvenient fact that Sarfati strives to ignore: Who were the people who instituted slavery in the Western world in the first place?

On this point, the answer should be obvious: The slave trade was created by Christians. Specifically, it was created by European imperialists - the colonial powers such as France, Spain, Great Britain and Portugal - whose explorers were colonizing the New World and needed a steady stream of labor to work their mines and their plantations. Papal bulls such as Nicholas V's Dum Diversas granted Catholic rulers the explicit right to enslave non-Christians; it's safe to assume that the Protestant nations came up with their own theological justifications for the practice. But Catholic or Protestant, all these nations at the time were theocracies, ruled by popes and kings who claimed divine right. It was Christians, not atheists, who began the slave trade!

This inconvenient fact makes Sarfati's arguments ring hollow. I'm not denying that William Wilberforce and other Christians played a role in the abolitionist movement - but if Christianity gets the credit for abolishing slavery, shouldn't it also get the blame for instituting it in the first place? It's no excuse to claim that slavery was "ubiquitous" in the past, as if saying "everybody else was doing it too" could excuse people of responsibility. At best, one could say that these cultures belatedly realized the evil of slavery only after they themselves had instituted it and caused it to flourish for hundreds of years, and finally corrected their own mistake.

Sarfati goes on:

[Rodney] Stark documented that even back in the 7th century, Christians publicly opposed slavery. The bishop and apologist Anselm (c. 1033–1109) forbade enslavement of Christians, and since just about everyone was considered a nominal Christian, this practically ended slavery.

But this begs the question: if slavery was "practically ended" in the 7th century, then how was it the case that, several centuries later, the Christian nations of the West were back at it and enslaving Africans and Native Americans by the millions? Try as he might, he can't sidestep the fact that the colonial powers were emphatically Christian and used Christianity in their moral justifications for slavery (such as the Hamitic hypothesis - an ugly bit of racist pseudohistory that Sarfati is right to reject, but there's no denying the fact that this was the accepted view throughout the Christian world for several centuries).

Descending deeper into the absurd, Sarfati claims that the Bible is anti-slavery. This claim I've already debunked at length, so I won't repeat that here - other than to point out that he dishonestly uses a verse which condemns "menstealers" to imply that the Bible was against slavery in general. As an examination of the context makes clear, this was only a condemnation of those who kidnapped and sold people into slavery in ways other than those that the law permitted. Slavery through approved methods is a pervasive and inescapable feature of the Bible in general, in both New and Old Testaments. Sarfati also ignores verses which state that Christian slaves are doing God's will by obeying their masters, and that for a slave to disobey or rebel is blasphemous to God (1 Timothy 6:1).

Sarfati closes with the utterly ludicrous claim that the "enemies of racial equality also saw its Christian underpinning". He states that the 1963 KKK bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham shows the "virulently anti-Christian attitudes held by fanatical racists". Yes, this is a claim that the Ku Klux Klan is anti-Christian - which is a willful and flagrant denial of reality. The KKK was and still is an explicitly Christian organization.

In the era of slavery, the true enemies of racial equality cited a Christian underpinning for their actions every bit as strongly as some abolitionists did. The best example is the fervently religious Confederate States of America, which repeatedly claimed that slavery was the will of God, which repeatedly cited the Bible, which put a Christian slogan on their official seal, and whose army chaplains boasted of the massive religious revivals that routinely occurred in the ranks:

Hundreds and thousands respond to their call and the woods resound for miles around with the unscientific but earnest music of the rough veterans of Lee's army... for conversions among the non-religious members of the army of Lee are of daily occurrence, and when they establish themselves upon the 'Mourners Bench', it is evident to all how deep and loud is their repentance. There is something very solemn in these immense choruses of earnest voices, and there are, I am sure, hundreds of these honest soldiers truly sincere in believing that they are offering their most acceptable service to God.

Let the record show that none of these revivals produced corresponding surges in abolitionist sentiment.

And it wasn't only Christians who led the fight against slavery. On the contrary, freethinkers played a role as well. In my post on the freethinker Abner Kneeland, I pointed out how his lecture hall was the only place in Boston that would give the fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison a place to speak after the churches turned him away. As Garrison later said:

It was left for a society of avowed infidels to save the city from the shame of sealing all its doors against the slave's advocate.

Garrison himself was a freethinker who said, "The human mind is greater than any book... All reforms are anti-Bible" (source)

And Robert Ingersoll, the great agnostic orator, fought for the Union in the Civil War and was likewise an unflinching foe of slavery:

"We must be for freedom everywhere. Freedom is progress -- slavery is desolation, cruelty and want.

...I am astonished when I think how long it took to abolish the slave, how long it took to abolish slavery in this country. I am also astonished to think that a few years ago magnificent steamers went down the Mississippi freighted with your fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters, and may be some of you, bound like criminals, separated from wives, from husbands, every human feeling laughed at and outraged, sold like beasts, carried away from homes to work for another, receiving for pay only the marks of the lash upon the naked bark. I am astonished at these things. I hate to think that all this was done under the Constitution of the United States, under the flag of my country, under the wings of the eagle." (source)

In that same address, Ingersoll said to a crowd of black listeners: "Today I am in favor of giving you every right that I claim for myself." Would that the Christian world as a whole had come to that realization far earlier than it finally did.

(Editor's Note: This review was solicited and is written in accordance with this site's policy for such reviews.)

If you've been around the atheist blogosphere, you probably know the name Christopher Hallquist, author of the blog The Uncredible Hallq (I've always wondered, does he get more skeptical when he gets angry?).

Well, it seems he's come into his own, because last month in the mail I got a copy of his new book, UFOs, Ghosts, and a Rising God: Debunking the Resurrection of Jesus, which was published earlier this year by Reasonable Press. Here follows a short summary of the book and my review.

The book begins with a brief history of skepticism, from the Roman con-artist Alexander and his nemesis the satirist Lucian, to Franz Mesmer and the spiritualism craze of the 18th century, complete with mediums who could levitate, summon ghosts on command, or communicate using psychic powers. Since most of us rightly consider these claims to be dubious, Hallquist argues, we should apply David Hume's criteria for judging miracle tales and conclude that the Christian resurrection story, which is much longer ago and even less well documented, is even less likely to be true.

There are some great nuggets of information in here, particularly Hallquist's account of an e-mail conversation with Craig Blomberg, one of the experts interviewed in Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ. Blomberg complains that Strobel's book "heavily paraphrased" [p.50] and oversimplified their actual conversation, and that he ultimately gave up on trying to correct all the inaccuracies that Strobel introduced. There follow discussions of textual evolution in the New Testament, of the way legends tend to grow and mutate in the retelling, and the general lack of skepticism or a tradition of critical inquiry in the ancient world. Another bit I particularly liked: to drive the point home, Hallquist quotes a Christian magician, Andre Kole, who defends the historicity of Jesus' miracles even while complaining that people tend to misremember his shows and believe he performed far more impressive tricks than he actually did! [p.75]

Building on this argument, Hallquist argues that Jesus may have been similar to a modern faith healer, performing "miracles" that relied mainly on the placebo effect and his devotees' faith in him. These stories then grew in the telling, becoming far more impressive than they originally were.

As for the alleged resurrection and post-death experiences, Hallquist notes that even the Gospels portray the risen Jesus as a strangely ethereal phenomenon, appearing and disappearing without warning depending on who seems to be looking, and often describes his glorified body in mystical, visionary terms. He discusses the modern parallel of UFO abductions, pointing out their similar dreamlike and hallucinatory qualities, and brings up the nice point that stress - such as at the death of a loved one - can make such visions more likely to occur. The closing chapters ably dismantle some common apologist arguments relating to biblical prophecy, the Shroud of Turin, and religious attitudes toward skepticism and doubt.

Having finished the book, I have just two complaints, one small, one large. First, the minor: There were a lot of typos in this book - grammatical missteps, missing letters, missing words or incorrect punctuation. On average, I counted one such every few pages at least. It obviously doesn't detract from the soundness of the arguments, but it was distracting. I imagine Reasonable Press, a fairly small printing house by the look of it, doesn't have a great deal of money to invest in proofreading, but still.

Second: The one hypothesis that this book doesn't consider, and that I found conspicuous by its absence, was that Jesus was an entirely mythical figure who was gradually "historicized" into a real human being. All the arguments Hallquist presents about legendary development, exaggeration of rumors and the like would apply equally well, maybe even better, to this hypothesis. This is an alternative that I think deserves serious consideration, and if there's a future edition, perhaps it will address it.

With those caveats, this is a short, smart book, one that's worth your while to pick up and read. Most of the skeptical material on Jesus' resurrection was not new to me, but if you haven't read extensively on the topic, it's a useful and fairly comprehensive primer on how an atheist can best respond to these apologetic claims. What I personally found most illuminating was actually the background material - the mediums and spiritualists of past eras who claimed supernatural powers, and the skeptics, like Harry Houdini, who took them on. This is material that I think will be new to most readers, and there are some powerful lessons to draw on here. Hallquist cleverly points out that plenty of spiritualist "miracles", like the alleged levitation of one D.D. Home (which was supported by three signed eyewitness testimonies) are backed by evidence as good as or better than the evidence for anything in the Bible.

Inspired by the always-inspiring Greta Christina and her two recent posts on the subject, I want to offer some thoughts on a topic I've rarely discussed on this blog: the intersection of atheism with issues of race and gender.

I haven't discussed this subject much because I don't feel I have any real qualifications to do so. As a white male, I haven't often had to confront issues of racism or sexism, and I'm reluctant to speak about things which I don't have much experience with. But it's also true that silence can be taken as support for the current state of affairs, and that's not necessarily an impression I want to give, so I'll take the chance of speaking up. If I make any serious mistakes, I'm sure that my readership will correct me.

The first thing I'll say is that, from my perspective at least, I've seen very little explicit racism or sexism in the atheist community, and when it does appear, it's usually swiftly slapped down. Consider Larry Darby, the anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying atheist who ran in a primary for attorney general of Alabama a few years back - he complained that atheists, whom he had hoped would support his campaign, instead almost unanimously rejected him when he made his racist beliefs clear. Darby lost the race by a large margin, and subsequently announced his conversion to Christianity.

But while the atheist community doesn't tolerate explicit bigotry, there are more subtle kinds of prejudice that are more difficult to notice and correct. It does give me a faint feeling of disquiet to realize that the four most visible and prominent atheists - Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett - are all white men. And this trend tends to be repeated at skeptical conferences and gatherings: white males are overrepresented in the atheist community in general (at least in America), relative to their share of the population at large. As Greta Christina says, when a situation like this arises, it's rarely an accident.

This isn't to say that the atheist community is all white men; much the contrary. We have brilliant historians like Susan Jacoby and Jennifer Michael Hecht, who've written superb books (Freethinkers and Doubt: A History, respectively) highlighting the contributions of nonbelievers from all cultures throughout history. There are journalists and authors like Ann Druyan, Michelle Goldberg and Nica Lalli. There's Julia Sweeney, whose "beautiful loss of faith" story is told movingly and poignantly. There's the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which was created by atheist and feminist advocate Anne Nicol Gaylor and is still co-presidented by her daughter, Annie Laurie Gaylor, along with Dan Barker. There are people of color like Neil de Grasse Tyson, Reginald Finley (the Infidel Guy), Hemant Mehta, Taslima Nasrin, Irshad Manji, Salman Rushdie, and Ibn Warraq. And especially, there's Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is both a woman and a person of color, and whose book Infidel I still consider to be the single most powerful, eloquent, and inspiring book on atheism that I've ever read.

Nor do we lack for diversity historically. Many pioneering feminists were uncompromising atheists, and freethought was a strong and lively element of cultural movements like the Harlem Renaissance. In my series on the contributions of freethinkers, I've done my best to feature women and people of color to show that atheism and religious skepticism have a far broader and deeper history than most people are aware of.

So, clearly, the problem isn't that atheism is exclusively for whites or for men. Our message has the potential to appeal to people of all kinds. And why should that be a surprise? The positive values that atheism has to offer aren't specific to any race or gender; they are human values that all people can share in and rejoice in. We offer liberation and freedom - freedom from the clinging cobwebs of religious dogma, freedom from the suffocating fear of hellfire, freedom from the locks and bars of archaic edicts and irrational laws, and in place of all this, an ethic of equality, a philosophy of happiness, and a morality based on empathy and human rights. This is a message that women and minorities, who know all too well how easily religion can be used to oppress, should be eager to embrace.

I'm not saying that white male atheists are doing anything wrong by speaking up. We need them too! Everyone who's willing to come out as an atheist has a part to play in our movement, whatever your gender or race. Nor do I think that anyone, white or black, male or female, should be raised to a prominence that they haven't merited by their own efforts. But I do think that white male atheists should be making more of an effort to learn about the specific concerns of women and minorities, to speak in language that addresses those concerns, and to extend a hand of welcome to members of these groups and invite them to join in our movement. It's an effort that's not only worthwhile for its own sake, but that will pay dividends down the line.

Among the writers who oppose the New Atheists, one common theme in their criticism is that we're too optimistic about the possibility of human progress. For example, take this essay by Terry Eagleton attacking Richard Dawkins, in which the sneering condescension drips from every word:

It thus comes as no surprise that Dawkins turns out to be an old-fashioned Hegelian when it comes to global politics, believing in a zeitgeist (his own term) involving ever increasing progress, with just the occasional 'reversal'. 'The whole wave,' he rhapsodises in the finest Whiggish manner, 'keeps moving.' There are, he generously concedes, 'local and temporary setbacks' like the present US government – as though that regime were an electoral aberration, rather than the harbinger of a drastic transformation of the world order that we will probably have to live with for as long as we can foresee [ed.note: this was written during the Bush administration]. Dawkins, by contrast, believes, in his Herbert Spencerish way, that 'the progressive trend is unmistakable and it will continue.' So there we are, then: we have it from the mouth of Mr Public Science himself that aside from a few local, temporary hiccups like ecological disasters, famine, ethnic wars and nuclear wastelands, History is perpetually on the up.

The venom is even more apparent in another essay by Chris Hedges, which fulminates against atheists for not all being nihilists like himself:

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.

...the New Atheists, like all believers in myth, refuse to listen. 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. It is no more scientifically legitimate than alchemy.

Despite the flippancy and the anger of those who issue it, this is a challenge worth meeting on its own ground. Are we New Atheists unjustifiably optimistic? Do we too readily discount the potential for evil in mankind? Have we, as some of these critics would surely charge, replaced the unfounded faith in Heaven with an equally unfounded faith in human progress?

These are legitimate questions. To answer them, I'll begin by citing a few statistics.

If you lived in a hunter-gatherer society prior to the advent of modern civilization, what were your chances of dying by violence? The anthropologist Steven LeBlanc, in his book Constant Battles, estimates that in some primitive societies it was as high as fifty percent. And that's solely from deliberately waged warfare between competing tribes, without counting additional deaths from disease, accident, or starvation. As Steven Pinker puts it in What Are You Optimistic About?:

Most people, sickened by the headlines and the bloody history of the 20th century, find this claim incredible. Yet as far as I know, every systematic attempt to document the prevalence of violence over centuries... has shown that the overall trend is downward [p.4].

The wars of the 20th century caused untold devastation and suffering, but part of the reason for the great loss of life was simply that, due to industrialization and population growth, there were more people around to kill. Yet as a percentage of the total population, the number of people who lose their lives to violence has been declining for centuries. The 17th century's Thirty Years' War, for instance, may have killed as many as two-thirds of the population in some areas, whereas in World War II, even the countries that suffered the most generally lost no more than about 5% of their population.

John Horgan, in another chapter from the same book, puts the comparison vividly:

In War Before Civilization, the anthropologist Lawrence Keeley estimates that in the blood-soaked 20th century 100 million men, women and children died from war-related causes... The total would have been 2 billion, Keeley notes, if our rates of violence had been as high as in the average primitive society. [p.7]

By Keeley's numbers, violence in primitive societies was twenty times as high as in ours. And the trend of decreasing violence is on a path to continue. It's widely agreed that the wars of the future, rather than conventional conflicts between great powers, will be what Charles Kurzman and Neil Englehart call "the remnants of war", asymmetric conflicts between states and non-state actors like terrorist and guerrilla groups. For all their power to grab the headlines with lurid acts of violence, these types of conflicts will incur still lower death tolls than the wars of eras past.

In areas aside from warfare, the statistics still paint an optimistic picture. Over the last few decades, global poverty rates, infant mortality and other negative indicators have steadily fallen, while literacy, life expectancy, per capita income, and other positive indicators continue to rise. One of the more underappreciated factors contributing to this trend may be the ongoing urbanization of the world's population. As Stewart Brand puts it, "cities cure poverty" - consistently producing a drop in birthrate and a rise in economic prosperity among those who migrate to urban centers.

We have completely cured smallpox, and stand on the brink of wiping out several other contagious diseases, like polio, through worldwide campaigns of vaccination. "Soft" indicators of progress, like democracy, transparency in government and protection for human rights, are harder to measure, but in these areas as well, there are significant signs of progress globally (with, of course, many exceptions and local reversals).

None of this, of course, is to say that the world is on a smooth and inevitable trajectory towards utopia. A terrible, genocidal war might begin tomorrow, or next year, or in the next decade. There will still be natural disasters, crime and terrorism for the foreseeable future. Human rights, in all places and times, must be vigilantly defended against those who try to take them away. The looming crisis of global climate change still demands swift and decisive action if we are to avert the worst of its effects. And there will most likely be new challenges we must face in the future that we have not yet thought of or foreseen.

But these events, terrible as they are for those who experience them, should still be viewed against the appropriate background: as frustratingly slow as it is, as halting and zigzag as it is, progress is happening. The world is becoming a better place. The world we live in today is a far better place than the world a hundred years ago, and the world a hundred years from now will in all likelihood be better still. If your eyes are always riveted on the latest sensationalistic news report, moral progress is easy to miss - but it's happening regardless. On the grand scale of history, the human species is rising. (And as an atheist, I might add one more hopeful sign: the ongoing rise in the numbers of nonbelievers throughout the industrialized world!)

One wonders at the motivation of those who insist that moral progress is impossible. There's one causal factor that can't be overlooked. Namely, the evidence is unequivocal that happy, contented, economically secure people see less need for religion. Religion always flourishes among the poor, the downtrodden, the underclass - people who console themselves over their lack of power and prosperity in this world by believing that they'll get their just desserts in the next - and understandably so.

But the corollary is that the evangelists of religion have something to lose from moral progress. In a very real sense, they need the world to contain its measure of pain and misery, because the promise of relief from same is one of their selling points. The more peaceful, the more prosperous human society becomes, the less receptive people will be to their message. Small wonder, then, that they insist progress is a fool's dream. Their worldview depends on people believing this to be true!

Granted, it would be too harsh to attribute these sinister motives to every religious apologist. Some of them may just be irrefragable pessimists. But whether their pessimism is a personality trait or whether it's strategic, in either case, there are good reasons to think it's unfounded.

The history of anti-Semitism in the Christian church is a long, sad story. Ironically, this faith which began as a sect within Judaism has been responsible for many more atrocities against the Jewish people than any of their other enemies.

For centuries, Christian Europe reviled Jewish believers as Christ-killers, and Jews were accused of ludicrous crimes like "host nailing" (stealing consecrated communion wafers and driving nails through them, to crucify Jesus anew) or draining the blood of Christian children to bake in matzoh. Throughout the Middle Ages, thousands of Jews were tried and executed, or simply murdered by mobs, after wild accusations such as these incited Christian communities to frenzy. One of the most notable Christian anti-Semites was Martin Luther, who wrote a book titled On the Jews and Their Lies which argued that Judaism should be outlawed, synagogues should be burned down and Jews should be enslaved for forced labor.

At the root of all this anti-Semitic hatred and bloodshed lies a matter of first-century politics. At the time of Christianity's origin, there was a necessity to blame someone for Jesus' death. But blaming the Romans would not have been wise - Christians existed at Rome's sufferance in any case, and depicting their founder as a criminal executed by the Romans for treason would have been inviting far worse persecution. The natural alternative was to cast blame on the Jews, whom the gospels depict as conspiring to murder Jesus with, at worst, the reluctant cooperation of the Roman authorities.

As Christianity cast off its Jewish origins, this story was found useful to serve other purposes. Finding few converts among the Jews, Christianity's evangelists began targeting Gentiles for conversion. The depiction of the Jews as a stubborn, hardhearted people, cursed by God with blindness and unbelief as punishment for their sins, was readily integrated with the Gospel story and used to explain why these people had so widely rejected the faith that was born among them.

Consider some specific examples of biblical anti-Semitism. While all the gospels record Jesus as engaging in debate with the scribes and Pharisees, only the Gospel of John elevates these disputes to an accusation of corporate guilt against "the Jews" in general: "And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him" (5:16). The fourth gospel also says of Jesus: "He would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him" (7:1) and adds darkly that "no man spake openly of him for fear of the Jews" (7:13). In the crowning accusation, John depicts Jesus as accusing "the Jews" as follows:

"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."

—John 8:44

When Jesus is tried before Pilate, John writes: "The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die" (19:7), and adds: "Pilate sought to release him: but the Jews cried out, saying, If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend" (19:12).

Ironically, the single most anti-Semitic verse of the gospels comes in the book that otherwise shows the most understanding and sympathy for the Jewish viewpoint, the Gospel of Matthew. In this bloodcurdling verse, the Jewish spectators demand that responsibility for Jesus' death be placed on themselves and on all their descendants:

"When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children."

—Matthew 27:24-25

The anti-Semitism continues in the Book of Acts, where the apostle Stephen is made to say what would become a common Christian refrain against the Jews - that they had always been a sinful and stubborn people with a history of killing prophets, culminating in the supreme atrocity of their killing God's only son:

"Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers."

—Acts 7:51-52

The epistle of Titus adds another pervasive element of anti-Semitic lore, the Jews' supposed obsession with money, and adds threateningly that "[their] mouths must be stopped".

"For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake."

—Titus 1:10-11

The first epistle of Thessalonians, in what may be a later interpolation, alludes to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem as a deserved punishment from God:

"For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost."

—1 Thessalonians 2:14-16

And the Book of Revelation repeats John's accusation that the Jews were secret demon-worshippers:

"Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee."

—Revelation 3:9

Rivers of innocent Jewish blood have been spilled through the ages because of verses like these. Today, to their credit, the mainstream Protestant churches have gone a long way toward banishing anti-Semitism to the shadows - but it is far from dead. It still has some prominent backers, such as John Hagee (as well as Mr. "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world" himself), and the Catholic church is intently moving backward.

However, Christian anti-Semitism has taken on a more subtle form: the so-called "Christian Zionist" movement, which encourages militant Jewish settlers to further expand their settlements in the occupied territory of the West Bank. What few of these people mention explicitly is that they encourage the settlers because they believe it will more swiftly bring on the End Times, in which one-third of Jews will be converted to Christianity and the rest will be slaughtered and then eternally condemned to Hell. This veiled wish for a new Holocaust, one condoned and directed by God, must be the most virulent manifestation of anti-Semitism to be found in all the dark history of Christianity.