The following is a commentary in an ongoing series of “Reflections” by John Mill. John Mill is the radio persona of Ronald Bruce Meyer and can be heard on “American Heathen.” “The American Heathen” Internet radio broadcast is aired, live, on Saturday nights from 7:00pm-10:00pm Central Time (8-11pm Eastern Time) on ShockNetRadio.com.

There used to be usury laws in this country. Charging excessive interest could get you fined: you could forfeit all your ill-gotten gains. Then came deregulation and – poof! – the concept of usury disappeared and now everybody charges excessive interest! To quote a movie character, “That ain’t right.” In fact, that ain’t usury by its original definition – the definition the Muslim world still uses. Usury used to mean the charging of any interest. So we slid the slippery slope: from zero, to some, to surfeit.

There once was a nation that started out with a radical idea: what if we adhered to a rule of laws rather than a rule of men or gods? What if we adhered to these laws even in difficult times, times of crisis? Wouldn’t we then be a shining city on a hill? Wouldn’t we then be the envy of the world and a singularity in history?

I am reminded of all this by the anniversary last week of the assassination of the world’s pre-eminent terrorist, at least according to the United States. On May 2, 2011, Pakistan time, Osama bin Laden (أسامة بن لادن) was shot and killed inside a residential compound in Abbottabad by U.S. Navy SEALs and CIA operatives in a covert operation ordered by U.S. President Barack Obama. Osama bin Laden’s death occurred exactly eight years after George W. Bush’s declaration of “mission accomplished” in Iraq on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (5/1/2003).

A year ago last week there was dancing in U.S. streets – a mirror of the dancing in some Muslim streets after the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks that made Osama Public Enemy Number One. Both celebrations were kind of unseemly, but I thought the U.S. ought to be better than its enemies. Was this the America I was taught to love? And the “War on Terror,” subsequent to the terrorist attacks over 10 years ago – was America created to be in a state of endless war?

Certain facts started to nag at me: Osama denied involvement right after the murder of almost 3,000 innocent Americans, only claiming the jihadist mantle three years later. And yet not only did almost nobody question his guilt, but Osama was never charged with this particular crime by the U.S. – and the U.S. simultaneously claims that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (خالد شيخ محم; now residing in Guantánamo, Cuba) was the 9/11 “mastermind”!

I wonder…

Did we ever ask ourselves, “how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic”?

Did we ever ask ourselves, or our leaders, on what evidence we determined that Osama bin Laden planned and ordered the 9/11 terrorist attacks?

Did we ever ask ourselves, if Saddam Hussein, who killed many more people than Osama did, or Ratko Mladić, who killed many more people than Osama did – if these criminals could be captured and brought to trial, why not Osama bin Laden?

Are we a nation of laws or of men or gods? Sure, Osama was evil. But he was only a man. “[T]o have arrested the man would at least have allowed the world to know if it was Osama bin Laden who had been found,” wrote Dr. Sean Gabb the day after the assassination, “To have given him a trial would have let us know if he was guilty of the offences alleged against him, and that there was nothing embarrassing about the nature of his dealings with western governments.”

As Geoffrey Robertson, QC, pointed out the day after Gabb, “The order was given by a president who, as a former law professor, knows the absurdity of his statement that ‘justice was done.’ Amoral diplomats and triumphant politicians join in applauding bin Laden’s summary execution because they claim that real justice—arrest, trial, and sentence—would have been too difficult in the case of public enemy No. 1. But in the long-term interests of a better world, should it not at least have been attempted?”

Robertson goes on, “[Trial] would have been the best way of demystifying this man, debunking his cause and de-brainwashing his followers. In the dock he would have been reduced in stature—never more to be remembered as the tall, soulful figure on the mountain, but as a hateful and hate-filled old man, screaming from the dock or lying from the witness box. Since his videos exult in the killing of innocent civilians, any cross-examination would have emphasised his inhumanity. These benefits that flow from real justice have forever been foregone.”

That’s what Robertson says, to which I say, the unavoidable conclusion is that we did not want Osama demystified and debunked. Osama served U.S. government purposes better as a boogeyman than as a criminal. It’s as if we don’t trust the very justice system we’ve spent over 200 years developing and the most expensive (and intrusive) national security apparatus in the history of the world. Do we believe in our justice system only so long as it is never tested?

The al-Qaeda strategy seems to have been to lure the U.S. into a long war of attrition in Muslim countries, thereby escalating jihadi recruitment worldwide and causing economic collapse of the Great Satan – or, as Osama put it, “bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.” Good job. It was apparently just serendipity that the U.S. also opted out of international human rights agreements, and opted in on ethnic and religious profiling, illegal surveillance, indefinite detention of both citizens and non-citizens without trial, the militarization of our police forces and their use as a praetorian guard for the wealthy and powerful, infiltration and intimidation of activist groups, intrusive oversight of our financial transactions, support for brutal pro-U.S. dictators overseas, secret prisons, torture and extra-judicial unmanned aerial drone assassinations.

Furthermore, we debate the morality of torture in eliciting the intel used to locate Osama, but not the morality of the U.S. in carrying out an extra-judicial killing. As the Economist noted, “Mr. Obama didn’t submit his case for executing Mr. bin Laden to some global civil authority because there isn’t one and he didn’t have to – because America’s the biggest kid on the block and, ultimately, what America says goes.” Let me ask you, does an arrogant poke in the eye of justice make us look better than Osama?

We slid the slippery slope from rule of law to rule of our law to lawlessness.

There once was a nation that started out with a radical idea: what if we adhered to a rule of laws rather than a rule of men or gods? What if we adhered to these laws even in difficult times, times of crisis? Wouldn’t we then be a shining city on a hill? Wouldn’t we then be the envy of the world and a singularity in history?

Nevermind.

SOURCES AND METHODS—

I found some perspective on the debate about arresting and trying Osama at this link. The quote, “That ain’t right” was uttered by the character Mal (played by Danny Glover) in the 1985 Lawrence Kasdan western Silverado. The turnabout scenario of assassinating G.W. Bush was suggested by Noam Chomsky, which I quoted from Wikipedia at this link. The full 5/2/2011 article quoted here, by the Libertarian Dr. Sean Gabb, can be found at this link. The full 5/3/2011 article quoted here, by Geoffrey Robertson, QC, can be found at this link. The 5/4/2011 article excerpted here, by The Economist, was quoted from Wikipedia at this link.

Copyright © 2012 Ronald Bruce Meyer. To hear an audio version of this Reflection, click on this link: Debate We Never Had

Here’s your Week in Freethought History: This is more than just a calendar of events or mini-biographies – it’s an affirmation that we as freethinkers are neither unique nor alone in the world, no matter how isolated and alone we may feel at times.

Last Sunday was the 51st birthday of American actor and director George Clooney (1961). The nephew of the singer and actress Rosemary Clooney (1928-2002), he is also the cousin of actor Miguel Ferrer (b. 1955). Clooney was profiled in the Washington Post in 1997 and told writer Sharon Waxman, “I don’t believe in Heaven and Hell. I don’t know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won’t allow this life – the only thing I know to exist – to be wasted.”

Last Sunday May 6, but 156 years ago, the Viennese psychoanalyst – and much-caricatured icon of psychoanalysis – Sigmund Freud was born (1856). Freud founded modern psychoanalysis and guided the systematic study of neuroses out of the supernatural realm of demon-possession and into the science of physical causes of mental maladies. And Freud turned the old theory on its head, considering religion the disease rather than the cure of mental problems. In 1927, Freud wrote, “Religion … comprises a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find in an isolated form nowhere else but in amnesia, in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion.” In a letter to Charles Singer, Freud wrote, “Neither in my private life nor in my writings, have I ever made a secret of being an out-and-out unbeliever.”

Last Monday, May 7, brought us birthdays of four famous Freethinkers—

It was on May 7, 172 years ago, that composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский) was born (1840). Though he composed sacred as well as secular music, Tchaikovsky was a secret Freethinker. In a letter to his brother Modest, he wrote that he had been reading Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and remarked, “I think there is no more sympathetic personality in all the work of literature. A hero and martyr to his art. And so wise! I have found some astonishing answers to my questionings as to God and religion in his book.” Flaubert was an Atheist.

It was on May 7, 179 years ago, that German composer Johannes Brahms was born (1833). Brahms also was equally adept at composing sacred and secular music. And he was an apostate from Christianity. His letters to his friend Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843-1900), who was likewise a Freethinker, show that Brahms was an agnostic. The lyrics of the first of his Four Serious Songs express his disbelief in personal immortality: “For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts, as the one dieth, so dieth the other. All go unto one place; all are of the dust and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?”

Last Monday was the 200th anniversary of the birth of English poet Robert Browning (1812). A well educated man from a wealthy family, Browning was able to emancipate himself from Christian belief by the time he was 18, although he remained a Theist. “Who knows most,” said Browning, “doubts most.” And, 34 years later, in a poem called “Gold Hair,” he wrote, “The candid incline to surmise of late / that the Christian faith may be false, I find.” His writings speak much of God, but Browning himself admitted, “I am no Christian.”

And born on May 7, 301 years ago, was the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume (1711). Hume professed a belief in God. However, when he applied the scientific method to determining how knowledge is acquired, and formulated the theory that all knowledge is subjective, he pretty much undercut the basis for even Deism. In his Natural History of Religion, he wrote, “Examine the religious principles which have, in fact, prevailed in the world, and you will scarcely be persuaded that they are anything but sick men’s dreams.” Hume was friends with Adam Smith and James Boswell. It was Boswell who attended him as Hume lay dying in 1776 and, hoping to convert him at last, was frustrated when Hume said flatly that “the morality of every religion was bad” and that “when he heard a man was religious, he concluded that he was a rascal.”

It was 275 years ago last Tuesday, May 8, that English historian and MP Edward Gibbon was born (1737). His father died in 1770, leaving Gibbon enough money to begin writing the first volume of his masterwork, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which appeared in 1776-1788. It was Gibbon’s aim to elevate history above “the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind,” and to wrest the study of the past from clerical confines. He outraged the clerics of his time by describing Christianity as a factor that hastened the decay of Ancient Rome. Gibbon wrote, “… the church and even the state were distracted by religious factions, whose conflicts were sometimes bloody and always implacable; the attention of the emperors was diverted from camps to synods; the Roman world was oppressed by a new species of tyranny, and the persecuted sects became the secret enemies of their country.” Although Gibbon is accused of Atheism and of bias against religion, in his master work he is more charitable toward Christianity than it deserves.

It was 52 years ago last Wednesday, May 9, that the US Food and Drug Administration approved the first oral contraceptive for women (1960). The effect on sexual freedom for women, a freedom until that time enjoyed only by men, was astonishing. The pill was envisioned by legendary birth control crusader Margaret Sanger. Sanger was in her 80s in 1953 when she met with Roman Catholic Dr. Gregory Pincus (1903-1967). She gave him $150,000 and tasked him to research and develop an oral contraceptive for women that was safe and effective. In defiance of his church, and amid much negative publicity for attempting to thwart God’s will – a will Sanger once described as “biological slavery” – Dr. Pincus succeeded. The reaction of the churches was predictably punitive. The reaction of the Catholic Church in particular was to cobble together reasons why “artificial” forms of birth control were bad and “natural” birth control – also known as death – was good. The result, an encyclical from Pope Paul VI in 1968, known as Humanae Vitae (Human Life), was a masterpiece of mendacity and slippery scholarship. In fact, the modern world, with its longer lives, survival of women through their childbearing years and material prosperity, is only possible through such “artificial” impositions on God’s plan: The contraceptive pill, and that other artificial stuff humans created are all that stand between a humane habitation of planet Earth and devastation by overpopulation.

Last Thursday, May 10, was the 79th anniversary in Berlin that about 20,000 anti-Nazi, Jewish-authored books were burned during a student rally as the Nazis rose to power in Germany (1933). This particular suppression of free speech and ideas was a tactic of Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda. But the burning of books, often culminating in the burning of people (as Heinrich Heine famously observed), is an old idea. Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇) – who created and then buried the famous Terra Cotta Warriors in Xi’an, China – before he died in 210 BCE, ordered the burning of most extant books. Just to be sure, he had the leading scholars executed, too. In Christendom, John Calvin was probably the most efficient when, in 1600, he burned Michael Servetus at the stake for heresy, and “around his waist were tied a large bundle of manuscripts and a thick octavo printed book.” In early March 2001, about 200 right-wing Hindus burned Korans in New Delhi. In May 1981 Sinhalese police officers burned the second largest library in Asia, in northern Sri Lanka, destroying 97,000 books. The largest single act of book burning in modern history took place in August 1992, when the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo was attacked by Serb nationalist forces, who immolated the National and University Library of Bosnia, destroying a priceless collection of over 1.5 million volumes. But it’s the same old story as when the Nazis burned books on this date 79 years ago: “We know better than you do what’s best for you to read.”

Last Friday, May 11 was the birthday of two famous Freethinkers—

It was on May 11, 94 years ago, that American Nobel-laureate physicist Richard P. Feynman was born (1918). In 1965, along with two other scientists, Feynman won the Nobel Prize in Physics for expanding the understanding of quantum electrodynamics. In his spare time he translated Mayan hieroglyphics – what were left after Bishop Diego de Landa destroyed most of them in 1562. After the Challenger disaster of January 28, 1986, Feynman reluctantly joined the Rogers Commission which led to the finding that faulty O-rings were the principle cause of the shuttle explosion that killed seven astronauts. It was Richard Feynman who once said, “God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now, when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you’re taking away from God; you don’t need him anymore. … God is always associated with those things that you do not understand.”

Also on May 11, but 124 years ago, the American songwriter who gave us “White Christmas” and “God Bless America,” Irving Berlin, was born (1888). He emigrated from Russia at the age of five and spent his next 95 years becoming one of the most celebrated film and stage songwriters in US history. In her biography of her father, daughter Mary Ellin Barrett refers to her father’s “agnosticism,” and describes him as a “nonbeliever.” Irving Berlin follows a long tradition of freethinkers who used the religious vocabulary familiar to the majority.

Today, May 12, brings us the birthdays of three more famous Freethinkers—

It was 75 years ago today that American stand-up comedy Hall of Famer George Carlin was born (1937). Carlin minced no words about his Atheism, as he said in 1999:

When it comes to bullshit, big-time, major league bullshit, you have to stand in awe of the all-time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion. No contest. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. And He needs money!”

Notable as a social critic, after his inspiration, Lenny Bruce, Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” routine brought about the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which the Court affirmed the government’s power to abridge free speech on the public airwaves when it includes “indecent” material. George Carlin summed up his feeling about Christianity by saying, “I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.”

It was also 105 years ago today that the First Lady of Cinema, Katharine Hepburn, was born (1907). She was the daughter of a doctor and a suffragette, both of whom always encouraged her to speak her mind and develop it fully. Hepburn distinguished herself in strong leading-lady roles. From Morning Glory in 1933, which won her her first Oscar – to On Golden Pond in 1981, which won her her fourth Oscar, Hepburn was considered a national treasure. “I’m an atheist, and that’s it,” Hepburn told the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1991. “I believe there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for each other.” And, as for religion in politics, said Katharine Hepburn, “Our Constitution was not intended to be used by … any group to foist its personal religious beliefs on the rest of us.”

And it was 192 years ago today that English nurse Florence Nightingale was born (1820). Her father believed women should get an education, so Nightingale learned Italian, Latin, Greek, history, and mathematics. During the Crimean War she used her mathematics training to invent a statistical model to plot the incidence of preventable deaths in the military, developing the “polar-area diagram” to dramatize the needless deaths caused by unsanitary conditions. “Were there none who were discontented with what they have,” said Nightingale, “the world would never reach anything better.” Few who know of her life realize that she despised the churches and was an advanced Freethinker. “I am so glad that my God is not the God of the High Church or of the Low,” said Nightingale, “that he is not a Romanist or an Anglican – or a Unitarian.” For most of her ninety years, Florence Nightingale pushed for reform of the British military health-care system and brought increased respect to the nursing profession.

We can look back, but the Golden Age of Freethought is now. You can find full versions of these pages in Freethought history at the links in the American Heathen blog, which take you to my blog, FreethoughtAlmanac.com.

The following is a commentary in an ongoing series of “Reflections” by John Mill. John Mill is the radio persona of Ronald Bruce Meyer and can be heard on “American Heathen.” “The American Heathen” Internet radio broadcast is aired, live, on Saturday nights from 7:00pm-10:00pm Central Time (8-11pm Eastern Time) on ShockNetRadio.com.

I am a pirate. I have a neurological injury in my left foot, which makes me walk like I have a peg leg. And I have a bloody “floater” in the center of my right eye, so I might as well wear an eye patch. I haven’t literally started robbing ships at sea… or even stealing copyrighted material. Although, a case could be made that American Heathen is “pirate radio”!

What’s really bothering me is that I seem to have come face to face with my own mortality. I always knew in theory that I would have to do this some day. It has been a struggle reconciling my (admittedly minor) handicaps with my firm belief that I am immortal and indestructible.

My quality of life has been affected. I find I’m often swatting imaginary flies off of me… only to rediscover that they are floating inside my eyeball. I’m reminded of the clerics who took their first look through Galileo’s telescope – and were convinced that the planets that popped into view must be some artifact inside the device.

As for my foot, plantar fasciitis makes every step painful, and I love climbing the rocks at Cunningham Falls, and hiking the trails at Oregon Ridge. I’m reminded that Charles Dickens enjoyed the palliative effect of a stroll from London to the coast in 19th century England. Me? I limp more as I walk less.

If I were a different person, one more patient, I might be more accepting of the vicissitudes of bodily aging. But in my mind I am still that teenager who drives aggressively and lives recklessly. If I were a different person, one more vulnerable to the god delusion, I might believe that my atheism has rewarded me with divine disfavor – until I recollect that if God were truly angry with my heresy, he is being uncharacteristically subtle with his punishment!

I reflect that in my belief system, I get one shot to make a life worth my living it. If my life is to continue to be worthwhile, I might be persuaded to follow the unofficial Marine mantra: “Improvise, Adapt and Overcome.”* Or, to borrow a grape from Paul Masson, I will not die before my time.

The pain I can handle. But what about the vision thing? My background includes 14 years working with, and for, blind people. One thing blind people have taught me is to look for alternative methods for achieving the same end. Furthermore, you don’t expect the world to adapt to you: you must adapt to the world. Now it takes a lot more of my attention while driving to avoid hitting or getting hit by something my right eye would normally catch.

No, I’m not going to go all “politically correct” and avoid the word normal. It is normal to see clearly and walk without a painful limp. Before my afflictions, I did not consider myself the “temporarily able-bodied.” I am what I am: a partially blind gimp. Or a pirate.

But I do have some moments, moments in which I think this may be the best life is going to be for me from now on. My podiatrist will not tell me when my foot may get better. My retinal specialist has shot my torn retina twice (painfully) with a laser – but still will not tell me when or if unclouded vision will return. This is depressing. Occasionally I find myself in need of reassurance. And I don’t even have faith to sustain me!

What keeps me going? Family, friends, books and music help. So does work, which includes helping other people. But the strongest sustainer I’ve found is my rock-solid belief that, no matter what handicap life throws at me, there is only one direction to go: forward. I have no choice but to accept my limitations. I look for the positive. I do not let the memory of the perfect be anathema on the good. I laugh, mostly at myself. And I recall that life is always evolving, so why should I be different?

Aye, I’m a pirate. I’m already auditioning parrots to sit on my shoulder. I walk with a limp, but with a swig of rum and a swagger I adapt and overcome. As for my eye, I am improvising until it gets better. I’ll have to wait. And see.

*“Improvise, Adapt and Overcome” is the unofficial mantra of the Marine Corps, made popular by Clint Eastwood’s 1986 movie, Heartbreak Ridge, and based on the observation that the Corps generally received Army hand-me-downs and the troops were poorly equipped.

Copyright © 2012 Ronald Bruce Meyer. To hear an audio version of this Reflection, click on this link: I Am a Pirate

Here’s your Week in Freethought History: This is more than just a calendar of events or mini-biographies – it’s an affirmation that we as freethinkers are neither unique nor alone in the world, no matter how isolated and alone we may feel at times.

Last Sunday, April 29, is the feast-day of the Abbot of Cluny known to the Catholic Church as St. Hugh the Great. He was born into a noble French family in 1024 and died on the 28 of April 1109, when the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny was 200 years old. The period in which Abbot Hugh lived was the beginning point of the so-called Age of Chivalry! As Thomas Bulfinch describes it, “Chivalry … framed an ideal of the heroic character, combining invincible strength and valor, justice, modesty, loyalty to superiors, courtesy to equals, compassion to weakness, and devotedness to the Church.” In fact, the next 300 years of Christendom were characterized in the noble and knightly classes (and both sexes) as steeped in corruption, theft, violence, and every imaginable (and some unimaginable) sexual deviations, including rape, incest, pederasty, prostitution and general sexual license. This behavior was so generalized that, time and again, the contemporary chroniclers of not only France, but Spain, England and Germany complain of it. The only behavior that was not tolerated was infidelity to the Church!

Last Monday, April 30, but 223 years ago, George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States (1789). It is significant, in light of those who would argue that the U.S. was conceived as a Christian nation, that Washington made many euphemistic references to God in his inaugural address, but never – in this address, or in any of his writings – does he make direct reference to Jesus Christ. Every contemporary who knew of his church habits agrees that Washington was never seen to accept communion, and indeed, his wife wrote that he left the church on the occasions when communion was offered. As president, Washington addressed religion with the tolerance we would expect from the leader of a religiously diverse nation. In answer to a congregation that objected to the “godless” US Constitution, Washington wrote, “The path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction…. In the progress of morality and science, to which our government will give every furtherance, we may confidently expect the advancement of true religion and the completion of our happiness…” – without defining true piety and true religion!

It was last Tuesday, May 1, but 126 years ago, that the first “Labor Day” was celebrated in the US (1886). It is known now as May Day and no longer celebrated as a recognition of the workers who create the wealth that supports our capitalist economy. From the 13th century of the classical era, where worker protections were built into the Code of Hammurabi, to the ancient Greek and Roman colleges, which were unions for workers, the value of labor has been recognized by most advanced civilizations. When the Empire fell, the social protections built up for workers disintegrated. Only a quarter of the population in Ancient Rome were slaves, but the Christian Church saw no reason to interfere when four-fifths of workers then became agricultural serfs. This persisted from 600 to 1100. Then political and economic changes began to create a middle class between the lords and the peasants. In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions met and voted to designate May 1, 1886, as the day for a general strike to demand an 8-hour day in the U.S. The May Day strike itself was peaceful until, as the strikers over the next few days swelled to 65,000 in Chicago, and industry got nervous that workers might actually succeed, the police were called in. Someone threw a bomb among them. A riot followed and then the Haymarket Massacre ensued, in which police shot and killed several strikers and wounded 200. Without compelling evidence, eight labor leaders were arrested, and all but two were executed by hanging. The Haymarket Massacre forever tarnished May 1 as a day to celebrate labor in the US – although the day is still a holiday in at least 110 other countries!

It was last Wednesday, May 2 (N.S.), but 283 years ago, that the future Catherine the Great of Russia (Екатерина II Великая) was born (1729). She was crowned Catherine II in 1762 – after deposing her own husband, whom she married at age 15 by political arrangement. She was well-read and selected able advisors, so Catherine proved more than suited to the task of ruling the largest empire in Europe. Her goal was to complete the Westernization of the Russian Empire that had ceased 37 years earlier at the death of another Romanov Emperor, Peter the Great (Пётр Вели́кий, 1672-1725). Empress Catherine was initially sympathetic with the French Revolution and its intellectual leadership: she corresponded with Voltaire and d’Alembert and invited Diderot to settle in Russia. A skeptic with advanced humanitarian ideals, in her letters she professed Deism and scorned the “mummeries” of the Russian Church to which she was converted. But after the peasant rising under Pugachev (1773-74), and having heard of the excesses following the French Revolution, by 1790 she became fearful of popular revolt. Catherine imposed repressive measures to achieve stability, which in turn alienated the educated in Russian society.

It was last Thursday, May 3, but 543 years ago, that Niccolò Machiavelli was born in what is now Italy (1469). Although it was not published until after his death, what may have helped his career in Florence was a little work Niccolò wrote in 1513: The Prince (Il Principe). Based on his own experiences under two monarchies, The Prince was a survival guide for despots. It advised against virtues that could be harmful and in favor of vices that could helpful. Although it is not necessary to actually have all the virtues, argued Niccolò, it is most important to “appear merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright…” and that, “in order to maintain the state,” it is necessary “to act contrary to faith, friendship, humanity, and religion.” Though no stranger to such hypocrisy, the Catholic Encyclopedia pronounces The Prince an “immoral work.” Making the nickname of the Devil “Old Nick,” based on Niccolò Machiavelli’s name, somehow brings to mind pots and kettles!

Friday was the birthday of two famous Freethinkers—

It was last Friday, May 4, but 216 years ago, that the father of American education, Horace Mann was born (1796). He abandoned his rigid Calvinist upbringing for Unitarianism at age 23 and contrived to get his own education before becoming an educator himself. He created the first Board of Education in Massachusetts and recommended a comprehensive public school system, along secular lines, as a great cultural and national equalizer. Many thought this approach anti-Christian. Mann was called to be the first president of Antioch College. He accepted in 1854 because of Antioch’s non-sectarian, coeducational status – the college accepted women and black people on an equal footing with white males, something unique in the nation. But the founding Christian Church thought Mann a little too secular and withdrew its funding. This deficit Mann replaced by persuading the Unitarian Church to help. The Dictionary of American Biography describes Horace Mann as, “a Puritan without a theology.”

It was also last Friday, May 4, but 187 years ago, that Thomas Henry Huxley was born (1825). Largely self-educated, as a medical apprentice, Huxley signed on as assistant surgeon with the H.M.S. Rattlesnake, to chart the seas around Australia and New Guinea. It was an opportunity much like the one Darwin had aboard The Beagle, and, as with Darwin, the experience changed his life. In 1859, when Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published, Huxley read it and at once remarked, “How stupid of me not to have thought of that.” He wrote to the author, “I finished your book yesterday… As for your doctrines I am prepared to go to the Stake if requisite… And as to the curs which will bark and yelp – you must recollect that some of your friends at any rate are endowed with an amount of combativeness which … may stand you in good stead – …I am sharpening up my claws and beak in readiness.” His defense of Darwin’s theories, and especially to their application to the evolution of the human species, earned him the nickname, “Darwin’s Bulldog.” Huxley invented the term “agnostic” to describe his view that the mind cannot reach realities beyond the senses. He disdained Christian doctrines.

Today brings us the birthdays of two more famous Freethinkers—

It was on May 5, but 194 years ago, that the theorist of modern Socialism, Karl Marx, was born (1818). Marx’s politics continually got him into trouble with the police, so he was compelled to flee from country to country. He and Friedrich Engels settled in London, with Engels supporting Marx, while the two of them collaborated on the Communist Manifesto – published in 1848, in time to be read in the aftermath of the French Revolution. As for religion, Marx’s ideas were more nuanced than the popular brief quotation. Marx wrote, “Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.” Even with the triumph of capitalism over communism, every civilized nation today – except the United States – provides relief to workers from the capitalist excesses about which Marx warned the world 150 years ago.

It was also on May 5, but 201 years ago, that American chemist and scholar John William Draper was born (1811). It was his 1874 History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, preceding the two-volume work of Andrew Dickson White’s by 11 years, that stirred the notion that religion and science are irreconcilable. In his introduction, he writes, “The antagonism we … witness between Religion and Science is the continuation of a struggle that commenced when Christianity began to attain political power. … [F]aith is in its nature unchangeable, stationary; Science is in its nature progressive; and eventually a divergence between them … must take place. … As to Science, … she has never subjected any one to mental torment, physical torture, least of all to death, for the purpose of upholding or promoting her ideas.” Although Draper believed in God and life after death, his skepticism toward organized religion made him a Freethinker until the day he died.

We can look back, but the Golden Age of Freethought is now. You can find full versions of these pages in Freethought history at the links in the American Heathen blog, which take you to my blog, FreethoughtAlmanac.com.

(The following is a transcript of a LIVE broadcast by John Mill. “This Week In Freethought” airs on the American Heathen® internet radio show. Air date of this particular segment: 04/28/12)

Here’s your Week in Freethought History: This is more than just a calendar of events or mini-biographies – it’s an affirmation that we as freethinkers are neither unique nor alone in the world, no matter how isolated and alone we may feel at times.

Last Sunday, April 22, marked a birthday and an anniversary—

It’s American actor Jack Nicholson’s 75th birthday (1937). Nicholson has been nominated 12 times for Academy Awards, winning for Best Actor in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and in As Good as It Gets (2003). For Terms of Endearment, Nicholson won Best Supporting Actor (1983). In an 1992 interview in Vanity Fair magazine, Nicholson said, “I don’t believe in God now,” but he added, “I can still work up an envy for someone who has a faith. I can see how that could be a deeply soothing experience.” This quote might have informed the screenwriter of Nicholson’s 2007 film, The Bucket List, in which Nicholson’s character says, “I envy people who have faith, I just can’t get my head around it.”

And 148 years ago last Sunday the US Congress passed an act requiring coins, for the first time since the nation was founded, to include a recognition of God (1864). Replacing the Latin motto, E Pluribus Unum – “Out of many, one” – was one that everyone could read, if not subscribe to: “In God We Trust.” How did this happen? A Rev Watkinson urged replacing the Goddess of Liberty with a religious slogan on US coinage, writing to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, “You are probably a Christian” … “Would not the antiquaries of succeeding centuries rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation?” A religious slogan, wrote the cleric, “would relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism. This would place us openly under the Divine protection we have personally claimed.” And even though the motto was conceived by a cleric, recommended for its religious purpose, and adopted precisely to acknowledge the Judeo-Christian God, several federal courts have since ruled that “In God We Trust” on our coins – and, since 1954, our currency, is not a religious phrase! What’s troubling is that Nazi Germany had a very similar motto: Gott mit uns (“God with us”). We can suppose the Nazis, too, have been spared the “ignominy of heathenism”!

It was last Monday, April 23, that German physicist Max Planck was born (1858). Planck invented quantum theory and developed a formula to predict how the radiation an object emits is related to its temperature, known today as Planck’s Constant. Planck received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918. Though publicly he wrote (1932), “Religion belongs to that realm that is inviolable before the law of causation and therefore is closed to science,” one biographer observed that Planck was “far removed from all dogmatic, mystery-mongering beings.” Planck’s God, it seemed, was nothing more than an “ideal Sprit.” His beliefs could be described as pantheist, but certainly not Christian. Planck did not believe in a future life.

It was last Monday, April 23, 448 years ago, that the greatest poet and playwright in the English language, William Shakespeare, was baptized, so this is taken as his birthday (1564). Shakespeare is known to be the author of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. Because few records of Shakespeare’s private life survive, scholars have freely speculated about his religious beliefs. Whereas some scholars suggest The Bard may have been an atheist, and even the Catholic Encyclopedia wonders if “Shakespeare was not infected with the atheism, which was rampant in the more cultured society of the Elizabethan age,” all we can say with certainty is that, in a time when it was a serious offense to be an unfaithful Christian and to skip church services, William Shakespeare said some things no Christian should have said and failed to do some things that a Christian should have done.

Last Tuesday, April 24, was the 212th anniversary of the founding of the world’s largest library, the Library of Congress (1800). The Library’s current collection of 147 million items includes materials in 460 languages, including books, maps, monographs, dissertations, periodicals, voice and music recordings, and 14 million images. The Library of Congress is the largest library ever to exist. The collection and recording of the sum of human knowledge for the betterment of humankind was not a high priority in the Ages of Faith in Christian Europe, or for most of the history of the Muslim East. The idea of human progress was a secular humanist achievement. It is therefore dishonest to crow about the great libraries of the Middle Ages, and the romantic fiction of the monks preserving the classics, without telling us just how many volumes these great Christian libraries comprised. In the solidly Christian period of 500 to 1300, not a library can be found in all of Europe with more that 2,000 volumes, many of them copies of the same title. In the greatest abbey of the 13th century, the Abbey of St. Gall, not a single monk could read!

Last Wednesday, April 25, was the 59th anniversary of the article published in Nature magazine describing the structure of DNA in terms of the now-familiar double helix – by James D. Watson and Francis Crick (1953). True scientists both, they characterized their discovery as a scientific theory, meaning that their assertion is not only subject to independent verification, but also innately falsifiable. Both won the Nobel Prize in 1962. Francis Crick published a book, The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994), in which he states, “The Astonishing Hypothesis is that You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.” In 1996, Richard Dawkins interviewed James Watson for a film broadcast by the BBC and asked if Watson knew many scientists with strong religious convictions. “Virtually none,” said Watson. “Occasionally, I meet them and I’m a bit embarrassed because I can’t believe that anyone accepts truth by revelation.”

Last Thursday, April 26, was the 1,891st birthday of the 16th Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121). Marcus had the bad fortune to inherit the Empire during a dangerous age. And it was to Marcus that the Christian apologists Justin Martyr (103-165) and Athenagoras of Athens (133-190) defended Christianity (Apology, 176/177). But Marcus had no patience with any kind of superstition, saying, “I learned from Diognetus not to give credit to what was said by miracle-workers, and about the driving away of demons and such things.” It is instructive to note that the Christians had to defend themselves against the charge of atheism, not because they believed in no god, but because they believed in the wrong god! Marcus Aurelius didn’t believe in immortality and, in his Meditations, written in Greek, he conspicuously neglects the idea of a supreme being. The Meditations are still read today, but the apologetics of Justin and Athenagoras are not.

Yesterday, April 27, was the birthday of two famous Freethinkers—

It was on April 27, 253 years ago, that English feminist and radical Mary Wollstonecraft was born (1759). She was largely self-educated and an unusual student, with the radical idea that women should be educated on a par with men. Wollstonecraft found she had a talent for writing, and publishers to promote her, so she published her theories in Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1786). She continued to argue that the rights of men and the rights of women were the same rights. This culminated in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, the seminal document in the history of modern feminism. Wollstonecraft associated with a radical intellectual group including Thomas Paine and William Godwin. She married Godwin and, in 1797, died of complications associated with childbirth – ten days after she gave birth to the future author of the classic novel Frankenstein.

It was also on April 27, but 190 years ago, that the 18th President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, was born (1822). At the close of the American Civil War, the commanding general of the U.S. armies was the most popular man in the country. He was elected president and served two terms, from 1869-1877. However, his administration was marred by a tolerance of corruption, so that he left office as unpopular as he was popular when first elected. Grant was not a member of any church. He was, however, a staunch defender of church-state separation. In a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1875, he unequivocally supported public schools over religious schools, saying, “Encourage free schools, and resolve that not one dollar of money be appropriated to the support of any sectarian school… Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the Church, and the private schools, supported entirely by private contributions. KEEP CHURCH AND STATE FOREVER SEPARATE.”

Today, April 28, marks two theological anniversaries—

It was on April 28, 274 years ago, that Pope Clement XII issued the first papal decree against the Freemasons (1738), an organization of obscure origins, possibly a survival of the Ancient Roman guilds or unions that supported the craft and its members. Modern Freemasonry dates only from 1717, with the formation of the Grand Lodge of England. Clement’s condemnatory Constitution insisted on the objectionable character of societies that commit men of all or no religion to a system of mere natural righteousness, without reference to Mary or Jesus or even the Pope. It wasn’t until 1877 that the French variety of Freemasonry cut out references to the “Grand Architect” and, consequently, declined to require a belief in God or immortality. This caused a split between the English-speaking and the French-speaking lodges.

It was on April 28, but 1150 years ago, that the bishops of Lorraine, in the 3rd Synod of Aachen, approved a divorce between King Lothair II and his wife Teutberga, so that he could marry Waldrada and get an heir (862). This pretty much puts the lie to the Roman Catholic Church’s claim of taking a hard line on the “indissolubility of marriage.” There is no evidence from pre-Christian times that allowing divorce led to evil or even immorality, and plenty of evidence from the Christian era that the reverse is true. The Church really only began to impede divorce in the 9th century, and it wasn’t until the 11th century and the time of Pope Gregory VII (Hildebrand) that marriage and divorce were really regulated, along with the celibacy of the clergy. Nobody took to well to either innovation. Divorce was finally, after a long struggle, officially forbidden by the Council of Trent, 1545-1563. But there were always ways around that, if not by legalisms making the marriage null and void in the first place, which became a vast profit center for the Church; then by lack of “internal consent”; or by threat of force, as King Henry VIII learned. This affected the morals of Europe by ushering in about two centuries of adultery, natural and unnatural vice, and flagrant prostitution – until the Age of Reason arrived and shamed the heads of church and state into curtailing these excesses.

Other Freethinkers born this week—
April 22 Immanuel Kant (1724)
April 23 Stephen A. Douglas (1813)
April 23 Joseph Turner (1775)
April 26 Eugene Delacroix (1798)

We can look back, but the Golden Age of Freethought is now. You can find full versions of these pages in Freethought history at the links in the American Heathen blog, which take you to my blog, FreethoughtAlmanac.com.

The following is a commentary in an ongoing series of “Reflections” by John Mill. John Mill is the radio persona of Ronald Bruce Meyer and can be heard on “American Heathen.” “The American Heathen” Internet radio broadcast is aired, live, on Saturday nights from 7:00pm-10:00pm Central Time (8-11pm Eastern Time) on ShockNetRadio.com.

As an atheist and materialist, I sometimes wonder why I don’t feel the love from gay people. Perhaps I should rephrase that: it seems that atheists are perfectly willing to stand up for freedom and liberty for the LGBT community, but the favor is rarely returned. Likewise with the African-American community: we welcome black atheists, but the black civil rights community is not conspicuously supportive of us.

It may be because we are all immoral, hell-bound, baby-eaters… or it may be for another reason – a reason for which they are blameless.

I was listening recently to one of my favorite podcasts, “The Best of the Left,” hosted by Jay Tomlinson. I was pleased to hear a rare voice call in: an atheist who was hoping nonbelievers “are the next group to fight for their rights and come out of the closet and not be afraid to say who they are.” Hear, hear, I said to myself. But the host killed my momentary buzz, saying that “equating the civil rights movements of the LGBT community and racial minorities to the struggle for acceptance by atheists” is “an inappropriate comparison.”

And Jay is an atheist! Maybe he’s not as angry or aggressive as we are, those of us who listen to and comment through “American Heathen” – or maybe it’s because his podcast is called “Best of the Left” and not “Voice of the Godless” – but Jay admits that he shares our disbelief in sky-gods. He just thinks the law is already on our side.

I began to think Jay got it all wrong: there are so many examples of anti-atheist discrimination: an atheist can’t get elected to public office; believers are preferred in child custody; atheists can get fired from at-will employment for any reason or no reason; schools can stifle free association if they don’t approve of an atheist group; atheists are under-represented and misrepresented in the media; atheists are repudiated by their families; many famous people were actually nonbelievers, but history classes never teach this; and have you ever noticed that atheists are not one of the protected groups covered by Hate Crimes laws?*

Given a second look, this list conflates public discrimination, which is discrimination as official policy of state or federal government, with private discrimination, or just not being liked. Sure, atheists, are liked a lot less than almost any other group. But does that raise the cause of anti-atheist discrimination to the level of a civil rights issue?

It is true that there seems to be a kind of institutionalized discrimination against atheists in the military. The Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program spends millions of tax dollars to assert, without scientific evidence, that soldiers must be not just physically fit but spiritually fit. And the spiritual fitness program is biased toward a certain fundamentalist religiosity that critics, myself included, find troubling.

It is also true that in the United States, seven state constitutions (Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and, surprisingly, my own state of Maryland) officially include religious tests that could forbid atheists from holding public office or being a juror or witness at trial. But it is also true that the 1961 Torcaso decision specifically overturned the Maryland religious test, and presumably invalidated all the others.

Yes, it is tougher in life being an atheist. I think we can all agree that discrimination against atheists does exist. But at what point does anti-atheist discrimination become a civil rights violation? And is it on par with discrimination against the LGBT community, women and racial minorities? It is clear that, unlike other rights groups, atheists are not denied equal access to housing, they are not kept from seeing their partners in hospitals, they don’t earn sixty-five cents for every dollar earned by believers, and they are not prevented from voting. And atheists don’t make up 39% of the prison population but only 14% of the general population.

A true civil rights movement is characterized not just by discrimination, but by the politics of some identifiable characteristic. Gays and lesbians have their sexual orientation. African-Americans have their skin color. Women have… well, you get the idea. But the only characteristic atheists have in common is their disbelief.

Atheism is a minority viewpoint and all minority viewpoints are unpopular, if not downright suspicious, among the general public. We atheists can claim to be misunderstood and misrepresented, caricatured and shunned, even painted with the same brush as Hitler – a Roman Catholic who was never excommunicated, by the way. But are we actually oppressed? Now I think that’s going too far.

Like me, everybody is born an atheist. Some of us return to our roots and find out that you can’t go home again. That’s not oppression: that’s inconvenience. The law is on our side, right?

That is, until the law is changed. And, with more of us coming out of the closet, with government increasingly in the hands of unelected sectarian officials, do I detect a little pushback? Is public vs. private discrimination becoming a distinction without a difference? We are excluded by “In God we Trust” on our coins and currency, by “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Hmm. Maybe I’m agnostic, after all.

* Austin Cline, http://atheism.about.com/od/attacksonatheism/p/AtheistBigotry.htm. Retrieved 4/18/12.

Copyright © 2012 Ronald Bruce Meyer. To hear an audio version of this Reflection, click on this link: We’re Born This Way

(The following is a transcript of a LIVE broadcast by John Mill, the radio persona of Ronald Bruce Meyer. “This Week In Freethought” airs on the American Heathen® internet radio show. Air date of this particular segment: 04/21/12)

Here’s your Week in Freethought History: This is more than just a calendar of events or mini-biographies – it’s an affirmation that we as freethinkers are neither unique nor alone in the world, no matter how isolated and alone we may feel at times.

Last Monday, April 16, was the 168th birthday of French writer, critic and Nobel Laureate Anatole France (1844). The writer began as a journalist and married a mentor wealthy enough to get him noticed by 1881. All of France’s novels were unabashedly pagan, in addition to lampooning clerics and Christianity. In the 1920s his writings were put on the Index of Prohibited Books. It was Anatole France who said, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” And also (perhaps thinking of religious belief), “If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”

It was 155 years ago last Wednesday, April 18, that American trial lawyer Clarence Darrow was born (1857). Darrow was 67 years old when he came in direct contact with the conflict between religion and reason in defending Tennessee science teacher John T. Scopes for teaching the theory of evolution rather than fables of gods, snakes and apples. Scopes was convicted, but the world read of and listened (on a scientific novelty called radio) to the famous 1925 “Monkey T rial,” A tireless fighter for the rights of the powerless against the powerful, Darrow once said, “I don’t believe in God because I don’t believe in Mother Goose.”

Coincidentally, or not, it was on April 18, 2008, that the documentary film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was released in the United States. You can read more about this in my “Reflection” on that film.

Two more anniversaries were marked last Thursday, April 19—

It was on April 19, 1993, that federal government forces with tanks, gas and guns invaded the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. During the 51-day Waco Siege, “Ranch Apocalypse” was burned to the ground and 76 Davidians, twenty of them children, along with their 33-year-old leader, David Koresh, died. The confrontation between the male-dominated, gun-toting government officials and the male-dominated, gun-toting Davidians began on Sunday, February 28. Waco stands today as a massive breach of civil rights and an abuse of government power against a relatively harmless Christian sect. If it can happen to minority Christians, in this nation of churchgoers, are atheists safe?

The Waco Siege inspired Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, two years later to the day, to perpetrate the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks – the Oklahoma City Bombing (1995).

Last Friday, April 20, brings us two more connected anniversaries—

Last Friday was the 123rd birthday of German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (1889). While in jail for treason in Germany – he had been plotting to overthrow the Weimar Republic by force – Hitler began dictating Mein Kampf (My Struggle). Hitler’s Catholic upbringing, coupled with a disbelief that a Jew could really be a German (much like George H.W. Bush’s disbelief that an atheist could really be an American), informed his writing. “I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator,” wrote Hitler. He was clearly no atheist. The only major complaints from Rome regarded Hitler’s interference in Church matters, which were largely silenced by a 1933 Concordat with the Vatican. And Hitler could not have been successful without the support of German Catholics.

It was also last Friday, April 20, 13 years ago, that two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, brought guns and explosives instead of textbooks to school (1999). The bullied and belittled students had planned their massacre for over a month and timed it for Adolph Hitler’s birthday. Perhaps like Hitler, after their rampage, which left 12 students and a teacher dead, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris took their own lives.

We keep returning to this theme, but it was 56 years ago today that Inherit the Wind, a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee dramatizing the famous Scopes “Monkey Trial” of the summer of 1925, opened at the National Theatre on Broadway (1955). Inherit the Wind was not about a clash between two 1920s pop stars, Clarence Darrow vs. William Jennings Bryan, or a clash of cultures, intellectual vs. religious. The playwrights are really focused on defending freedom of thought in a time of anti-communist hysteria: The 1950s were a time of cultural anxiety and anti-intellectualism in the U.S., inspired by the crusade of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his colleagues on the House Un-American Activities Committee. So Drummond (the Darrow character) says to the jury, “Yes there is something holy to me! The power of the individual human mind. An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man’s knowledge is more of a miracle than any sticks turned to snakes, or the parting of waters. … Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain. You’ve got to pay for it. … Darwin moved us forward to a hilltop, where we could look back and see the way from which we came. But for this view, this insight, this knowledge, we must abandon our faith in the pleasant poetry of Genesis.”

We can look back, but the Golden Age of Freethought is now. You can find full versions of these pages in Freethought history at the links in this blog posting.

(The following is a transcript of a LIVE broadcast by John Mill, the radio persona of Ronald Bruce Meyer. “This Week In Freethought” airs on the American Heathen® internet radio show. Air date of this particular segment: 04/14/12)

Here’s your Week in Freethought History: This is more than just a calendar of events or mini-biographies – it’s an affirmation that we as freethinkers are neither unique nor alone in the world, no matter how isolated and alone we may feel at times.

It was 2,572 last Sunday, April 8, according to tradition, that Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, was born in what is now modern Nepal (560 BCE). Through introspection and observation, at the age of thirty-five he earned the title Buddha, or “Enlightened One” (Sanskrit सिद्धार्थ गौतम). For the rest of his life, which by some accounts was eighty years, Buddha helped others reach enlightenment. Buddha lived at a time of great spiritual revolution in Asia and Asia Minor: the same centuries saw the arrival of the great Greek-Ionian thinkers, Lao-Tse and Confucius in China, and Mahavira, the founder of modern Jainism, in India. It is dishonest to presume that so “spiritual” a thinker must have believed in a God. In fact, Buddha never mentioned God or gods or souls and it was later generations of Buddhists that morphed his ascetic ethic into a religion.

Last Monday, April 9, was the 84th birthday of the University of California professor of math who made a name for himself in the 1960s as a composer and performer of parody songs: Tom Lehrer (1928). His first public performance was in 1952 at a nightclub near Harvard, but he hit the big time – taking time off from teaching mathematics – between 1953 and 1965 with club performances and LPs featuring his witty, rapid-fire lampoons of social and political issues, including such classics as “The Vatican Rag.” Not generally known about Lehrer is that he is a Freethinker on religion. “I firmly believe all religion is bullshit,” Lehrer said in a 1984 interview. “To say that I am not a ‘fan’ of organized religion is putting it mildly… As for being ‘spiritual,’ … I find enough mystery in mathematics to satisfy my spiritual needs.”

It 146 years ago last Tuesday, April 10, that the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was chartered under the leadership of Henry Bergh (1866). Bergh (1813-1888) was horrified by the extensive cruelty he observed towards working horses, as well as stray cats and dogs, in New York City. Curiously, despite the depictions of St. Francis of Assisi surrounded by his loving birds, it was Europe under Christianity that was the worst offender against the principle of humane treatment of animals. Since it was Christian doctrine that animals have no souls, there was no Church prohibition against ill-treatment. Cockfights and dog fights, bear-baiting, and other inhumane treatment of animals for sport throughout the Middle Ages, thrived. And this was the period when organized religion was in the strongest position to object with some credibility. So the chartering of the ASPCA came about in amid a long silence from the representatives of God.

It was 237 years ago last Wednesday, April 11, that the last execution for witchcraft took place in Germany (1775). History records that Anna Maria Schwiigel was legally executed in Bavaria for the crime of believing in a competing religion. The craft was so attractive to its medieval adherents that perhaps 300,000 were tortured and executed by Christians for their contrary opinion. The worst persecution of witches occurred in Germany and surrounding countries comprising the Holy Roman Empire. Here and there a voice expressed doubts that there really were witches with supernatural powers. But by the 1700s, coincidentally with the rise and influence of rationalism in Europe, the anti-witch fervor was dying out. Even Joan of Arc, who very possibly was a witch, was declared a saint in 1920. And just 190 years after the last witch was executed in Germany, the comedy “Bewitched” – about a middle-class witch who tried not to cast spells – began an eight-year run (1964-1972) on American television!

It was 2,572 years ago last Thursday, April 12, that by tradition, the most famous leader of Jainism, Mahavira (Sanskrit महावीर) was born (560 BCE). Like his contemporary, Buddha, Mahavira was born a prince. At age 30 Mahavira left his family and royal household, gave away everything he owned, and became a monk. Althought not the founder of Jainism, Mahavira is the only saint of the religion that is historically verifiable. In his travels, Mahavira organized a brotherhood of monks, who took vows of celibacy, nudity, self-mortification, and fasting. Jainism was not, in the beginning, meant to be a religion and the existence of God is irrelevant to Jain doctrine. Mahavira believed that the universe was self-sustaining and did not have a beginning. Instead, he believed the universe endless and that it operates according to natural law. Mahavira was, in fact, an atheist. His philosophical descendants, as often happens, turned this atheistic ethic into the supernaturalist religion we find mostly in India today.

It was 269 years yesterday, April 13, that the author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson, was born (1743). Jefferson served as third US President, from 1801 to 1809, after serving as Vice President under John Adams. Jefferson and Adams were poles apart politically, but both were advanced skeptics regarding religion. While he was president, Jefferson wrote his most famous statement in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, a religious minority in Connecticut opposed to taxation to support the majority Congregationalist Church: “Believing with you as I do that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

Jefferson’s “Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia” put an end there to the compulsory funding of so-called “established” churches. In this Act he urged, “no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”

It was 63 years ago yesterday that British-born American journalist Christopher Hitchens was born (1949). Hitchens has admitted admiration for and influence from such notables as Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. His bona fides as not only an atheist, but an “antitheist” were solid: “I’m an atheist. I’m not neutral about religion, I’m hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself.” He described organized religion as “violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children.” Hitchens died on 15 December 2011 at age 62.

Asked if his serious illness has affected his view of the afterlife, in a panel discussion including atheist writer Sam Harris, Hitchens replied, “I would say it fractionally increases my contempt for the false consolation of religion and my dislike for the dictatorial and totalitarian part of it. I presume what I say by the first is self-evident. What I mean by the second is, it’s considered perfectly normal in this society to approach dying people who you don’t know, but who are unbelievers, and say, ‘Now are you going to change your mind?’ In fact, it’s considered almost a polite question.

As you know, there’s a long history of fraud about this. People claim that Darwin had a deathbed recantation, they’ve made up lies about Thomas Paine. It goes on all the time. It’s a very nasty little history. But there’s also a horrible undertone of blackmail to it. People write and say, ‘Look, you’ve got about one chance left now. Aren’t you going to take it? I’m writing to you as a friend.’ They’ve even tried it on me when I’ve been very ill, and didn’t have quite the vinegar I’d like to have had, in a hospital bed. I don’t mind. I can take it. But I think there are a lot of people older than myself, iller than myself and, perhaps, at the risk of seeming conceited, less educated than myself, to whom that’s a horrible experience. It’s very depressing and alarming to be spoken to in that way.

I mean, if Sam [Harris] and I were to form a corps of people to go around religious hospitals, which is what happens in reverse, and say to people who are lying in pain, ‘Did you say you were Catholic?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, look, you may only have a few days left, but you don’t have to live them as a serf, you know. Just recognize that that was all bullshit, that the priests have been cheating you, and I guarantee you you’ll feel better.’ I don’t think that would be very ethical. I think it would be something of a breach of taste. But if it’s in the name of God, it has a social license. Well ‘fuck that,’ is what I say. And will say if it’s my last breath.

It was also yesterday, but 93 years ago on April 13, that American atheist activist, and founder of the organization American Atheists, Madalyn Murray O’Hair was born (1919). Murray never passed the bar exam and never practiced law, but that did not prevent her from bringing one case all the way to the Supreme Court. While living in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1960, Murray filed a lawsuit against the Baltimore City Public School System because her son Bill was required to participate in Bible readings in his public school. When her son refused, he was subjected to bullying, and Murray charged that school policy violated the separation clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. In 1963, the Court voted 8-1 for Murray’s argument, effectively banning school-sponsored, coerced prayer and Bible verse recitation in public schools. This court victory rewarded Murray with the epithet, “The Most Hated Woman in America,” a title she relished – and possibly invented.

Said Murray, “But people … don’t even know what atheism is. It’s not a negation of anything. You don’t have to negate what no one can prove exists. No, atheism is a very positive affirmation of man’s ability to think for himself, to do for himself, to find answers to his own problems. I’m thrilled to feel that I can rely on myself totally and absolutely; that my children are being brought up so that when they meet a problem they can’t cop out by foisting it off on God. Madalyn Murray’s going to solve her own problems, and nobody’s going to intervene. It’s about time the world got up off its knees and looked at itself in the mirror and said: ‘Well, we are men. Let’s start acting like it.’”

It was 237 years ago today, April 14, that the world’s first abolitionist society was established (1775). The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage came to life in Philadelphia with the assistance of the Quakers and the philosophical backing of Benjamin Franklin and his fellow Deist, Thomas Paine. It was Paine who had published in the same year a pamphlet opposing slavery entitled, African Slavery in America. The idea of ending slavery was slowly taking hold among the pagans of Rome when the Empire collapsed in the West. In fact, the transformation of slavery to serfdom, which was slavery without the more humane aspects it had acquired under the pagans, was a Christian innovation. What about Islam? Arab-Muslim dealers sold slaves to eager Spanish and Portuguese (Christian) buyers. The American Baptist, Methodist and Anglican churches owned a total of 600,000 slaves. Nowhere in the Bible is slavery even remotely condemned as a profound evil. When civilization turned against slavery at last – in Britain in 1833; in the US in 1865 – it was with the guidance of thinkers like Paine and Franklin and John Locke. It took the rise of Rationalism and Freethought, and the gradual realization that without a social policy the churches would become irrelevant, to elicit action from people on their knees.

We can look back, but the Golden Age of Freethought is now. You can find full versions of these pages in Freethought history at the links in this blog posting.

The following is a commentary in an ongoing series of “Reflections” by John Mill. John Mill is the radio persona of Ronald Bruce Meyer and can be heard on “American Heathen.” “The American Heathen” Internet radio broadcast is aired, live, on Saturday nights from 7:00pm-10:00pm Central Time (8-11pm Eastern Time) on ShockNetRadio.com.

A bill to make it a federal crime to protest at any event where Secret Service are present was signed into law by President Obama on March 8, 2012. The innocuously titled “Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011,” according to the liberal and progressive media – what’s left of it in the US – would theoretically make it a crime to participate in any protest where the President orders Secret Service presence: such as at a G-8 Summit (which, fortunately for the participants, has moved their undemocratic policy-making to Camp David on May 18-19 from their original venue in Chicago).

The law, H.R. 347, also includes major public events, such as the Inauguration and Presidential campaign gatherings, but the insidious part is that it is within the President’s power to delegate Secret Service protection to anyone – the president of Bank of America, for instance – thereby squelching First Amendment rights of free speech and the lawful right of assembly, such as at an Occupy protest.

But is that what the law really says? H.R. 347 was introduced on January 19, 2011, by Florida Republican Representative Tom Rooney, whose spokesman denies any such dire results. Rooney’s communication director says the law, “doesn’t affect anyone’s right to protest anywhere at any time. Ever. ” “… right now it’s not a federal violation to jump the fence and run across the White House lawn, this bill makes it a federal violation.” And the mainstream media didn’t think it dangerous enough to liberty even to cover the signing of the law. The whole debate over the law remained under the radar of the even progressive media for over a year before becoming an issue. So what are we to think?

Well, it’s not my job, or anyone’s job, except maybe that of your religious leader, to tell you what to think. But I may be able to help you on how to think. I’ve read a measured response in the online magazine Salon and got an un-alarming take on the law from the ACLU. Salon says the only real changes are (1) making some instances of criminal trespass a federal crime rather than just a local crime and (2) where the law used to say that the person must have entered a restricted area “knowingly” and “willfully,” H.R. 347 willfully omits the word “willfully.” This means, even if you do not know that it’s illegal for you to be in a place, you can be arrested for remaining there.

The ACLU notes that the original bill passed in 1971 and the current version is a slight rewrite. The omission of “willfully” may make it easier for the Secret Service to overuse or misuse the statute to arrest lawful protesters, because now it is unnecessary to prove intent, but H.R. 347 doesn’t directly apply to Occupy protests.

I keep a small copy of the US Constitution on my desk, just where some people would keep a Bible, and I keep checking the First Amendment when I read about laws like H.R. 347. That Amendment says in part, “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech … or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” And the real reason the ACLU promises to keep an eye on this law – and we should, too – pertains to the bigger mosaic of which H.R. 347 is only a tile.

Back when I was first able to read, the ink of the First Amendment looked pretty dark and strong. Today it’s looking faded and weak. H.R. 347 is not an out and out abridgment of our First Amendment rights. Like many other laws – from abortion restrictions to hate crimes laws to voting rights restrictions to gun control laws and so on – the tree of liberty is never torn out at its roots. Only its branches are trimmed. And I think it’s the same excuse those in power in this country have always used, as far back as the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: national security.

It’s as if liberty is too precious to be trusted in the hands of the people. Like an antique car behind glass, we can look at it and take pictures of it. But the keys are locked up and each year it gets a little more difficult to persuade the keepers to let us take it out for a spin. What’s needed is not a test drive on a closed course by a professional driver: what’s needed is for the rest of us to take freedom and liberty out on the open road. We paid for the roads, after all.

I keep telling my brothers and sisters in the Freethought world the same thing I’m urging in the liberal-progressive world: try to remain calm. Yes, we need to push back against encroachments on our religious liberties, just as we need to push back against encroachments on our civil liberties. But this is not the end of days. We need to challenge laws only when they actually collide with our enumerated rights and nothing – not the threat of terror or the threat of theocracy – should abridge those rights.

I know the Constitution is not a suicide pact*, but neither is it a list of suggestions or guidelines, to be ignored for some illusion of liberty or security. Yet it seems that before you can get people to care that the house has a mouse, you have to blow it up to the size of an elephant!

The moral of the story is restraint, not overkill. We all need to pause for a little reflection.

*Wikipedia says the precise phrase “suicide pact” was first used by Justice Robert H. Jackson in his dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago, a 1949 free speech case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, although the concept predates Jackson.

UPDATE (4/28/12): I seem to have been vindicated in my moderate approach to this civil liberties “crisis” by none other than Snopes, the Urban Legends debunking website!

Copyright © 2012 Ronald Bruce Meyer. To hear an audio version of this Reflection, click on this link: A Little Reflection

(The following is a transcript of a broadcast by John Mill, the radio persona of Ronald Bruce Meyer. “This Week In Freethought” airs on the American Heathen® internet radio show, Saturdays 8:00pm-11:00pm ET on ShocknetRadio.com. Air date of this particular segment: 04/07/12)

Here’s your Week in Freethought History: This is more than just a calendar of events or mini-biographies – it’s an affirmation that we as freethinkers are neither unique nor alone in the world, no matter how isolated and alone we may feel at times.

It was 104 years ago on Sunday, April 1, that American psychologist Abraham Maslow was born (1908). Maslow is chiefly known for founding humanistic psychology and proposing the “hierarchy of needs” to be met so an individual can achieve “self-actualization.” Maslow warns against the mystical pursuit of personal salvation as basically selfish, frequently turning evil. “We need not take refuge in supernatural gods,” said Maslow, “to explain our saints and sages and heroes and statesmen, as if to explain our disbelief that mere unaided human beings could be that good or wise.”

It was 172 years ago last Monday, April 2, that the French novelist Émile Zola was born (1840). Baptized a Catholic, but an atheist all his adult life, Zola is chiefly remembered for J’accuse, the 1898 open letter to the President of France, in which he accused the military of injustice in the 1894 conviction of the Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfus, on charges of giving military secrets to the Germans. Though the charges were false, they were supported by the Catholic Church. Winning the Dreyfus Case precipitated a drastic separation between Church and State in France, and permanently embittered Zola against the Church. “Civilization will not attain to its perfection,” wrote Zola, “until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.”

It was 175 years ago last Tuesday, April 3, that American naturalist John Burroughs was born (1837). Burroughs developed friendships with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Edison, John Muir, Walt Whitman, President Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Ford. In his writings he expressed a conception of the universe that one biographer described as “scientific pantheism.” Burroughs once reflected, “When I look up at the starry heavens at night and reflect upon what it is that I really see up there, I am constrained to say, `There is no God.’” Elsewhere, Burroughs wrote, “Of the hereafter I have no conception. This life is enough for me.”

Also last Tuesday, but 88 years ago, the American actor some consider one of the greatest of the 20th century, Marlon Brando was born (1924). Brando is best remembered for his film roles as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), as Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (1953), and his Academy Award-winning performance as Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972). In 1990, Brando’s son, Christian, was indicted for murdering his sister’s boyfriend, though he claimed it was a drunken accident. As a witness at his trial in 1991, Brando refused to take an oath to tell the truth before God, claiming he is an atheist.

It was 472 years ago last Wednesday, April 4, that 50-year-old Spanish ecclesiastic and mystic Ignatius of Loyola was elected the first General of the Jesuits (1540). A true believer, Ignatius traveled on spiritual missions of such eccentricity that the Inquisition imprisoned him briefly in Spain in 1526. Because he was actually trying to imitate Christ – going so far as to demand the nuns give up their lovers! – that he gathered only a handful of followers at first. The Society he had Pope Paul III authorize meddled in world politics so incessantly and despicably, inciting the 30 Years’ War and the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre, that they were expelled from country after country. Before Clement XIV suppressed the Society in 1773, other popes condemned their practices (1710, 1715, 1742, and 1744). The Society was restored following the fall of Napoleon. It is true that, “no Jesuit theologian ever explicitly wrote that the end justifies the means” (McCabe), but the modus operandi of the Society of Jesus was such that it is immaterial whether the Society or Ignatius ever publicly expressed the thought.

It was 182 years ago yesterday, April 6, that 24-year-old Joseph Smith organized the first Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at Fayette, Seneca County, New York (1830). Coming from two previous generations of superstitious and neurotic seers of visions, Joseph Smith acquired the reputation as a con-man and a finder of buried treasures before his First Vision of the angel Moroni, came in 1827. However, he didn’t publish anything about it until 15 years later. Also known as the Mormon Church, the Latter-Day Saints had many confrontations with US law, particularly over polygamy, which was established by Smith’s own revelation in 1843. In a miraculous occurrence, the revelation was rescinded in 1890, although some church members still practice polygamy. Church discrimination against black people ended only in 1978. Retroactive missionary work – or posthumously baptizing non-Mormons (especially Jews) – is still practiced and is still controversial.

It was 506 years ago today, April 7, that the co-founder of the “Society of Jesus,” Francis Xavier, was born (1506). Xavier was discovered by Ignatius (1491-1556), who was 15 years his elder, while Xavier was a student in Paris. Ignatius admired the younger man’s learning, physical beauty and athletic ability as a runner. Xavier was soon seduced into the Company. His first commission was significant: he was sent in 1541 to the Portuguese colony in India to re-convert the Christians there! From 1549-1551 he spent 2½ years failing to convert the Japanese. Xavier set out for China in 1552, but died before setting foot on the Chinese mainland. His only success, it seems, was initiating the Goa Inquisition to kill apostates with the love of Christ. Like the Taliban in the dynamiting of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan (2001), Xavier rejoiced in the destruction of elements of indigenous cultures, saying, “I order everywhere the temples pulled down and all idols broken. I know not how to describe in words the joy I feel before the spectacle of pulling down and destroying the idols.”

We can look back, but the Golden Age of Freethought is now. You can find full versions of these pages in Freethought history at the links in this blog posting.