I've written previously about the Confederate States of America and how that short-lived country was a Christian theocracy which invoked religion to justify slavery. But even today, there are still religious conservatives who try to whitewash these historical facts and erase the memory of what really led the South to try to break away from the Union. This post is for them.

South Carolina was the first state to secede, and in December 1860, its government issued a document explaining why. This document, which had the unwieldy title "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union", was meant as a Confederate parallel to the Declaration of Independence. Yale's Avalon Project has the text of this document, so you can read it and see for yourself what the Confederates' thinking was.

We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.

In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made....

But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.

...We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

As you can see, there's nothing in this document about "states' rights" or any such modern right-wing fiction. Or rather, there's only one right at issue: the right to own slaves. South Carolina asserted that the northern states had an obligation under the Constitution to return fugitive slaves to their masters, and that they weren't doing this. They further asserted that the northern states were infringing their "rights of property" by seeking to free human beings from bondage. Because of this, South Carolina claimed that the Constitution was null and void and it had the right to strike out on its own. (And, yes, they did believe that God was on their side: "We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions...")

Other Confederate states, like Mississippi, issued similar declarations making the same points: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery" - and railing against the abolitionist movement which "advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst". Texas, also, in its secession, took aim at those who were "proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color - a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law".

The next time some right-winger tries to romanticize his favorite political cause by hinting that it's just like the ones that inspired the South to secede once before, show him this evidence. It may at least give him pause to consider whether his pet issue is quite as glorious as it's made out to be.

If blogging was my full-time job, I'd probably have written a post about each of these stories! As it is, I leave you with some food for thought - and there's a virtual banquet this week:

• In the U.K., more and more decaying churches are being converted into homes - a fitting use for these still-beautiful buildings, in my opinion.

• According to a study in the journal Pediatrics, gay teens are more likely to be punished by schools and courts than their straight peers. One wonders if something similar holds true for young atheists; there are plenty of places in the country where I wouldn't doubt it in the slightest.

• And on that note, a mind-boggling story about former Confederate states celebrating secession - in one city, there will be a parade featuring "a mock swearing-in of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy" - that's being cast as a celebration of "self-government" and "states' rights". In reality, what the Confederates were mainly fighting for was their right, often justified by religion, to buy and sell human beings as property. A hundred and fifty years later, it's astonishing that so many people still refuse to admit their ancestors were in the wrong.

• Divorce rates are skyrocketing in Iran as Iranian women, increasingly assertive and educated despite living in a brutally patriarchal society, fight back against unwanted marriages and cruel husbands.

• Diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks show how Ireland's government caved in to Vatican pressure to grant immunity to church officials suspected of complicity in child rape.

• A council of rabbis in a Lubavitcher Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn have issued a decree forbidding believers to speak to the police, even to report a crime, without the permission of the rabbis.

• In San Francisco, a DMV employee was suspended after he sent a letter threatening hellfire to a transgender woman who applied to have her sex changed on her driver's license. It appears that he shared her name and address with his church without asking permission. It also appears that this is not the first time this employee has done this. Stories like this need to be better publicized - when bigots cry for "freedom of conscience" clauses that would permit them to refuse to do their job on religious grounds, this is what they're really demanding the right to do.

Over the past several months, I've been writing a lengthy new essay for Ebon Musings. I've finally put the finishing touches on it, and I'm quite proud of the result: go check out "The Origins of Orthodoxy".

This essay covers a topic I've been interested in for a long time: the origins of the Christian New Testament canon. It's the story of which books made it into the Bible - and which ones didn't - and why, and all the historical twists and turns over the first three centuries that resulted in the canon as Christians have it today. I did this research because this is something that I personally wanted to know more about, but of course, I'm happy to share the end result for the use and benefit of other freethinkers.

This is an open thread. Any comments or criticisms?

Last year, I wrote about whether Christianity deserves the credit for abolishing slavery. I have some additional evidence on that topic I'd like to mention.

I just finished reading Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the autobiography of the great American abolitionist. Born a slave in antebellum Maryland, Douglass taught himself to read at a young age, in secret, and later escaped to the North and freedom. His account of his own life is an eloquent first-hand retelling of the cruelty, suffering and bigotry he saw and experienced in the world of slavery.

Douglass wasn't an atheist. If anything, he was a Christian (though arguably only in the same sense that Thomas Jefferson was a Christian, i.e., praising a purely theoretical form of Christianity, while denouncing Christianity as it was actually practiced as corrupt and laden with hypocrisy and immorality). This makes his own personal testimony on the close connection between religion and slavery all the more compelling:

In August, 1832, my master attended a Methodist camp-meeting held in the Bay-side, Talbot county, and there experienced religion. I indulged a faint hope that his conversion would lead him to emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not do this, it would, at any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was disappointed in both these respects. It neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty. He made the greatest pretensions to piety. His house was the house of prayer. He prayed morning, noon, and night.

...I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty. As an example, I will state one of many facts going to prove the charge. I have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy cowskin upon her naked shoulders, causing the warm red blood to drip; and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this passage of Scripture — "He that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes."

When Douglass' owner grew frustrated with his disobedience, he resolved to break his spirit by lending him out to another slaveholder renowned for his ability to terrify and torture slaves into obedience:

Master Thomas at length said he would stand it no longer. I had lived with him nine months, during which time he had given me a number of severe whippings, all to no good purpose. He resolved to put me out, as he said, to be broken; and, for this purpose, he let me for one year to a man named Edward Covey... Mr. Covey had acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves, and this reputation was of immense value to him. It enabled him to get his farm tilled with much less expense to himself than he could have had it done without such a reputation... Added to the natural good qualities of Mr. Covey, he was a professor of religion — a pious soul — a member and a class-leader in the Methodist church. All of this added weight to his reputation as a "nigger-breaker."

Later in his autobiography, Douglass tells of yet another slaveholder, known for his cruelty, who was an actual Christian minister:

Mr. Hopkins could always find some excuse for whipping a slave. It would astonish one, unaccustomed to a slaveholding life, to see with what wonderful ease a slaveholder can find things, of which to make occasion to whip a slave. A mere look, word, or motion — a mistake, accident, or want of power — are all matters for which a slave may be whipped at any time. Does a slave look dissatisfied? It is said, he has the devil in him, and it must be whipped out. Does he speak loudly when spoken to by his master? Then he is getting high-minded, and should be taken down a button-hole lower. Does he forget to pull off his hat at the approach of a white person? Then he is wanting in reverence, and should be whipped for it.... Mr. Hopkins could always find something of this sort to justify the use of the lash, and he seldom failed to embrace such opportunities. There was not a man in the whole county, with whom the slaves who had the getting their own home, would not prefer to live, rather than with this Rev. Mr. Hopkins. And yet there was not a man any where round, who made higher professions of religion, or was more active in revivals — more attentive to the class, love-feast, prayer and preaching meetings, or more devotional in his family — that prayed earlier, later, louder, and longer — than this same reverend slave-driver, Rigby Hopkins.

Douglass sums up his experience as a slave as follows:

I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.

It's not that all the religious people he met while enslaved were evil. He speaks of one preacher in particular who urged slaveholders to set their slaves free. The point is that, far from making everyone better, religion made the slaveholders worse. As Frederick Douglass put it, it gave them "religious sanction and support" for their cruelty: it convinced them that they had the right to buy and sell human beings, that God approved of their conduct and granted them license to oppress, abuse, and even murder their slaves.

And biblically speaking, they were correct. The Bible explicitly does permit slavery, and even commands slaves to be meek and obedient. To overthrow this foul institution, we had to ignore the immoral commands of the Bible - and for the sake of Frederick Douglass and millions of others, it's a good thing that we did.

I didn't notice until recently that Narabelad, the apologist for Judaism whose claims I addressed in "The Jewish Prophecy of Exile", has written a further reply to me. In this post, I'll address it briefly.

First, let me note that my correspondent has evidently conceded that his list of things that would make him an atheist was impossible to satisfy and was offered in bad faith, because in his latest response, there's not a word about it. Clearly, he'd rather avoid the difficult question of how to falsify his own beliefs and instead focus on apologetic claims for the historical accuracy of the Torah. Most of this simply reiterates his previous letter without adding anything new, so I won't repeat myself responding to it - but there's a few points worth marveling at just for their sheer audacity, and for the level of historical distortion he's willing to resort to.

So Mr. Atheist contents that someone wrote predictions about an exile of the Israelite people based on the experience they had in the Babylonian Captivity. If that be the case then how do those same verses explain the Roman Exile, which started more than 400 years after the Babylonian Exile?

The obvious answer to this question is that history runs in patterns. Living at a crossroads of the ancient world, the Israelites were constantly under threat from powerful empires. And exiling a defeated enemy was a common tactic of war in that era, as is shown by the fact that it happened to them no fewer than three times. Most of the verses which my correspondent thinks are specific predictions of the Roman exile are really just generic prophecies of disaster which could apply to any major defeat. They say nothing specific about the identity of the enemy; they just predict that the Israelites' life would be arduous and painful living in exile under a conqueror. Obviously, this isn't a great leap of imagination.

Know that the Babylonian Captivity did not involve this kind of merciless cruelty against the cities that involved slaughter of the inhabitants, not to the extent that Rome inflicted. The Babylonians held Jerusalem in siege for 2 years but after the Israelites surrendered they were handled fairly amicably after that as the conquerors wanted them for their benefit.

Yes, those Babylonians were forgiving, merciful folk, all right. They were so merciful that they besieged Jerusalem until the food ran out and the inhabitants were starving to death [2 Kings 25:3; compare Deuteronomy 28:52-53]. Then, after they conquered Jerusalem and took King Zedekiah captive, they killed his sons in front of him, gouged his eyes out, sacked the temple, and burned the city to the ground [2 Kings 25:7-9]. The Bible specifically says that when Nebuchadnezzar conquered the city, he "slew their young men with the sword... and had no compassion upon young man or maiden, old man or him that stooped for age" [2 Chronicles 36:17]. The Israelites hated the Babylonians so much that they wrote revengeful psalms fantasizing about smashing the Babylonians' children against rocks, claiming that this would be a just retribution for the way they had treated them [Psalms 137:8-9]. This is what my correspondent labels "amicable" treatment.

Obviously, this gross absurdity is serving apologetic ends. Because my correspondent wants us to believe that the biblical prophecies of slavery and disaster applied only to the Roman conquest and not the earlier Babylonian conquest, he tries to rewrite history to make the Babylonians into kind and merciful rulers. That sort of tactic isn't new; but what is new, and incredible to boot, is that a religious Jew would try to vindicate his holy book by praising the most despised historical enemy of his people.

He next has some things to say about the Sinai event, when the Israelites supposedly saw and heard God manifest himself while they were camped at Mt. Sinai on the way out of Egypt. As I pointed out in my previous reply, there's no archaeological evidence for the Egyptian captivity, the Exodus, the wandering in the desert, or Joshua's conquest of Palestine. These events are pious mythology, most likely invented by the Israelite elite to give their people an origin story that would fill them with national pride and justify their plans for military expansionism. My correspondent apparently doesn't dispute the absence of archaeological evidence, but tries to argue for the myth in another way:

Are any of you going to disbelieve the American Civil War? Oh, there are a few books about it that were written at the time but it's possible that could have been mere campfire stories, folklore.... The thing that makes the US Civil War credible was not simply because of the books and surviving documents. Those documents are credible to us 140 years later because people that experienced it also passed down personal stories and vignettes of the Civil War event to their descendants....

If there were only documents and books about the Civil War, without family stories passed down the Civil War could be easily doubted as "folklore" or "myth".

You know, I wasn't even going to bother writing a further reply to this fellow - but then I saw this, something so magnificently ridiculous that I just had to get it down so I could marvel at the sheer idiocy of it. Yes, you read right: the reason we know that the Civil War happened isn't because of the vast amounts of archaeological evidence, soldiers' graves, letters written by soldiers, photographs, contemporary books and newspapers, Confederate legal documents, telegrams, presidential speeches and proclamations, and congressional laws and resolutions... but because some living people heard about it from oral folklore passed down through the generations.

This black-is-white, up-is-down inversion of reasoning is typical of religious apologists tying themselves in knots trying to defend the indefensible. No evidence? No problem! Just say that the actual physical remnants of history aren't as trustworthy as supernatural folktales invented by anonymous authors for patriotic purposes thousands of years ago. It just goes to show that when you start with an absurd conclusion and reason backwards to support it, you inevitably have to invent new absurdities to prop up the original absurd premise.

For example, you can go to Bullfinch’s Mythology and look through it and see if there’s even one myth that had an entire nation was said to have eye- or ear- witnessed a god or goddess perform some act and lived to tell about it. But I’ll save you the trouble, because I know someone who has already done that – gone through all 700+ pages – and found nothing done en masse with any god.

Oh, really? Nothing besides the Exodus account fits that description? Well, I don't claim to have read 700+ pages of Bulfinch, but I think I can offer a counterexample: the 1917 miracle of Fatima, where tens of thousands of Catholic faithful allegedly saw the sun change color and dance across the sky. It was even reported in newspapers. If en masse revelations are my correspondent's criterion for belief, then he should be Roman Catholic, not Jewish. It wouldn't even require him to give up belief in the Exodus miracle!

This reply, short as it is, more than adequately showcases the fallacious tactics that this person relies on and that are common to all apologetic traditions: vague, general statements passed off as amazing prophecies; apologetic rewriting of history; elevation of myths and tall tales over physical evidence; and the misplaced certainty that our miracles are unique among all religious traditions. There's nothing in it that should give even a moment's pause to an atheist who's familiar with mthods of critical thinking or comparative religion.

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