Dissent done right 2
- September 01, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In action, Atlanta, diversity, fear, Kerfuffles, My kids, Parenting
7
I knew my kids would feel violated, angry, and afraid. Their own attitudes toward dissent are being tested and formed. So we did what we do. We talked it through.
I told them our sign had been taken from the yard. (At this point we hadn’t found it again.) Erin’s reaction was utter disbelief.
“Really?” she said. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Really? Cause sometimes you joke. Really?”
“Erin, jeez, yes, somebody took our sign!” Connor said. “It totally stinks!”
She looked at the floor. “Omigosh. I feel like I want to cry.” She looked up at me with a worried forehead. “So people in our neighborhood are mad at us?” I could see the scared siege mentality forming on her face.
“Now wait a minute. How many people took that sign? It was probably one person walking by last night. That’s not everybody.” I really wanted to nip the generalizing assumption in the bud and had an idea how I could. “You know who would really be mad about this? Mr. Ryan.” Ryan is a neighbor of ours, a wonderful, soft-spoken guy. “And he wants McCain to win. But he doesn’t want it by cheating.”
They agreed, and Erin’s face relaxed a bit.
“So what do you think we should do?” I asked. “Maybe we should just…you know…not have a sign?”
All three erupted in indignation at the thought of being silenced. Exxx-cellent. I checked the box for moral courage on my mental list.
“But if we put another one out, it might be taken again by this doofus. What should we do?”
They started brainstorming. Connor wanted to put a sign out again and stake it out all night from his window. Erin wanted to put a sign at the top of our 30-foot tree. Laney suggested putting Obama and McCain signs in our yard so everyone would be happy. Erin suggested getting 100 signs, “And every time he takes it, boop! We put another one out. Like The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins!”
They all laughed. Finally we decided to put it out every morning and take it in at dinnertime.
By the end we had achieved everything I was hoping for. They refused to be silenced; they were referring to one perp, not a silent army; they were using their own creativity to get around the problem; and they’d relaxed and moved on to other things. I’ll let you know how it goes.
_________________________________
Side note…
Becca continues to simmer about it. Last night she said, “I hate to say this, but can you picture Obama supporters doing something like that?” I resist this idea too. My knee jerks, and I say, “Oh, I’m sure Democrats do it, too.”
Then I Googled these four phrases and got these hit counts:
Obama sign vandalized“: 309 hits
“Obama sign stolen“: 105 hits
“McCain sign vandalized“: 6 hits
“McCain sign stolen“: 4 hits
…and two of the McCain hits are from my own blogs. Also interesting: nearly all of the other McCain hits were during primary season.
Discuss.
Dissent done right 1
- August 31, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In action, Atlanta, diversity, fear, Kerfuffles, morality, My kids, Parenting, values
- 12
More than just about any other single value, I want my kids to get the importance of dissent. I want them to be willing to voice a reasoned minority opinion and to encourage the same in others.
When we moved to the red-state South, I knew (blue to the core as we are) that at some point we’d end up taking our lumps from one majority or another. No big brous-haha so far, just some minor fish-out-of-water moments: Laney having the occasional Huxley-Wilberforce in the school cafeteria; Erin coming to terms with her evangelical cousins; Connor’s outrage when his (beloved) seventh grade Life Sciences teacher assured the class that evolution is “just one guy’s idea”; Becca, in her first week as a full-time Georgia teacher, having one of her first graders say, “Mrs. McGowan, are you a Christian? ’Cause I’m a Christian. Are you a Christian?”; and my early palpitations over imagined church-state issues. Peanuts, really.
Now we’ve had our first somewhat chilling incident—not over religion, but politics.
Becca and I support Barack Obama. Thursday night, after his convention speech, we put an Obama yard sign under the tree in our Atlanta front yard. By Saturday morning it was gone. An hour after noticing it missing, we found it chucked in the street several houses down.
I’ve spent enough time dissenting from majorities to know what it gets you, so it didn’t ruffle me. But Becca, bless her Anne Frankness, is always thrown when people aren’t good at heart, or fair, or tolerant. I love her for being repeatedly surprised by that.
I also know that the occasional kook is rarely representative of the majority. I used to think pointing this out was about being nice, but eventually came to realize that recognizing that fact changes my world.
We hosted an Obama house party last month and put flyers in 200 neighborhood mailboxes. Fourteen people came. Six other neighbors mentioned it approvingly at the pool or the bus stop, including some who differ politically. And we received two scrawled notes in our mailbox informing us that Obama is a Muslim, that “the terrorists want him to win,” and that “you are helping to destroy the foundation of this country.”
It’s easy to generalize the nastiness in your mind, until every silent house on your street seems to harbor a family that wants you strung up. But then we remembered that the tally I just described was ten thumbs up for every thumb down. And as Louise Gendron (senior writer for L’Actualité) reminded me last year, angry people are at least three times more likely to make their POV known than happy or indifferent people. If she gets three angry letters for every one happy letter after an article runs, she assumes the reader response was about even.
By that logic, perhaps 3-4 percent of the folks in our neighborhood are likely suspects for the angry notes. But our limbic response pictures the reverse, and two pissy letters become the tip of a 96 percent iceberg of hate.
I found myself falling into the same dark assumptions during my dissenting year at the Catholic college where I taught. I naturally began to assume that every silent person I passed on campus was wishing me hives. I found out later that the opposite was true: the majority were either indifferent or were silently cheering me on. (Note to self: DON’T SILENTLY CHEER PEOPLE ON. DO IT OUT LOUD. Knowing how much support I had would have changed everything.)
I was also extremely depressed at the time by the angry criticism I had received for my activism (which, btw, I will write about soon). It took (philosophy professor and later PBB contributor) Amy Hilden to point out the obvious to me–that the goal is not to avoid making people angry, but to make the right people angry for the right reasons. If everybody loves you, you probably aren’t doing anything of real significance.
So I had expected the minority opinion in our front yard to provoke somebody into doing something stupid and rude. And I knew that the silent majority, even those who disagree with us politically, would not condone that stupidity. But I also knew my kids would feel violated, angry, and afraid. Their own attitudes toward dissent are being tested and formed.
So we did what we do. We talked it through.
not just another day
A few months ago I caught sight of a forehead-thumpingly dumb initiative called “Just Another Day,” an attempt by some atheist activists (including the usually level-headed Ellen Johnson) to encourage nonbelievers to treat the presidential election of November 4 as “just another day” by refusing to vote. The candidates are climbing over each other to pander to the faithful, went the reasoning, and until they begin to represent my interests as well as those of the religious majority, I’m taking my cool Pee-Wee Herman action figure home where no one else can play with it.
Solid proof that the religious have no monopoly on delusion and self-satire.
The initiative now seems to have been scrubbed from the Internet — no small feat. I can find no trace. And that’s good, because although both major candidates are indeed playing up their supercalinaturalistic bona fides, one of them has distinguished himself with comments like this:
If you have not heard this unprecedented, jaw-droppingly, hair-blow-backingly brilliant speech, here’s a longer clip. (I’ll paste it at the end as well.)
And then we have business as usual. (Is it true that we blink more rapidly when we know we are not being truthful?):
So one candidate appears to have read and understood the Constitution and (better yet) to have internalized its implications and its spirit, while the other has apparently read Chuck Colson.
Regardless of Obama’s personal religious beliefs, I find his grasp of this issue incredibly encouraging. I don’t need a president who shares my every view. I would like one with a solid handle on the principles on which the nation is predicated. And if I’m not mistaken, I’ve found one. So I’ll be in the sandbox with the rest of you on November 4.
And yes, you can play with my Pee-Wee.
__________________________________
A five-minute clip of Mr. Obama’s speech. Do not pass go until you hear it.
is nothing sacred? epilogue
I recently offered my thoughts on the difference between pointless and pointful challenges to sacredness:
Why does the David Mills video I’ve denounced strike me instantly as a profoundly stupid gesture, while [Webster Cook’s removal of a communion wafer from a mass] strikes me just as instantly as an interesting and thought-provoking transgression?
The reason, I think, is that the act of crossing the church threshold with that wafer (whether he intended this or not) is a kind of Gandhian gesture. Doing something so seemingly innocuous and eliciting an explosive, violent, even homicidal response is precisely the way Gandhi drew attention to cruel policies and actions of the British Raj, the way black patrons in the deep South asserted their right to sit on a bar stool, while whites (enforcing a kind of sacred tradition) went ballistic….
Mills’ feces-and-obscenity-strewn video, on the other hand, had offense not as a byproduct but as its intentional essence. Of Cook, one can say, “he just walked out the door with a wafer,” and the contrast with the fireworks that followed is clear. But saying, with sing-song innocence, that Mills was “just smearing dogshit on a book while swearing, gah,” doesn’t achieve quite the same clarity. Even though it shares the act of questioning the sacred, it’s much less interesting and much less defensible.
When PZ Myers of the science blog Pharyngula made known his intention to desecrate a communion wafer, I held my breath a tad, wondering which way it would go. Would he do something stupid or something thought-provoking? Pointless or pointful?
Now Myers has made his gesture — and I couldn’t be more thrilled:
This fascinates me even more than Wafergate because it is so achingly close to the Mills’ video on the surface, yet light years away in substance.
Had Myers theatrically smashed a pile of communion wafers with a hammer while laughing hysterically, he’d have undercut his own point that it is just a “frackin’ cracker.” Instead, he made use of that old and brilliant insight that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference.
So he quite simply threw it out, along with the coffee grounds.
Granted, he put a nail through it, a subtle and ironic comic touch that I’m doomed to love. But the real brilliance is in the background. Myers has also thrown out pages of the Koran and The God Delusion. He isn’t allowing anything to be held sacred. ALL ideas must be exposed to disrespect, disconfirmation, and disinterest. The good ones can take the abuse, and the bad ones, to quote Twain, will be “[blown] to rags and atoms at a blast.” If instead we shield a set of beliefs or ideas from scrutiny or attack, the bad bits survive along with the good.
Myers is also making the important point that these are NOT ideas in the garbage — they are paper and wheat, which must not be confused with the things they represent any more than a flag should be revered in lieu of the principles for which it stands.
Toss in a wink at Ray Comfort’s banana argument against atheism and the whole tableau simply rocks with meaning, power, humor and intelligence. And pointfulness.
Myers’ post is long, but please take a few minutes to read it. I can’t recommend it highly enough for its provision of context and just plain smarts. The final paragraph drives it all home:
Nothing must be held sacred. Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet. You are all human beings who must make your way through your life by thinking and learning, and you have the job of advancing humanities’ knowledge by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality. You will not find wisdom in rituals and sacraments and dogma, which build only self-satisfied ignorance, but you can find truth by looking at your world with fresh eyes and a questioning mind.
When it comes to challenging sacredness, if I can get my kids to grasp the difference between Mills and Myers, I’ll count myself proud.
Reaching out to Harry AND Sally (1 of 3)
by Dale McGowan
[An essay in three parts on current atheist outreach. Appears in the current issue of Secular Nation.]
The scene was the ballroom of the Kansas City Airport Marriott at the 2006 convention of the Atheist Alliance. On stage was the smart and articulate Hemant “Friendly Atheist” Mehta.
Hemant was talking about his book I Sold My Soul on Ebay. He was also, unsurprisingly, talking about friendly atheism, suggesting that atheists show a friendlier face to the religious world than we often do.
Intentional ridicule and insult directed at religious folks, he said, are especially counterproductive. Included among his examples was the “Smut for Smut” campaign at the University of Texas San Antonio, in which atheist students offered to trade pornography for Bibles.
“BULLSHIT!” screamed an audience member near me. “THAT’S BULLSHIT! Those people have courage, they’re out there fighting for your rights, and you ought to be honoring their courage!! For you to stand up there and…”
You get the idea. A kind of atheist “Support Our Troops” thing.
It was a seminal moment, a genuine clash between two different heartfelt visions of atheist activism. Both seek to move atheism out of the margins, but only one of them sees force as the way to get there.
Mr. Bullshit isn’t alone in thinking that a two-by-four between the eyes of religious folks is the best tool for advancing freethought. But neither is Hemant alone in thinking otherwise.
Each of the two approaches can be effective, just for very different receivers. I have met a few formerly religious people who said they needed a little cranio-lumber contact to rattle the fillings of their faith. They couldn’t hear Corliss Lamont or John Stuart Mill with an ear trumpet, but a good wedgie from Hitchens got them kicking the tires of their belief system at long last. There are also the silent, anonymous atheists among us who finally found their voice once someone like George Carlin or Pat Condell assured them that yes, it’s okay to call breathtakingly stupid things breathtakingly stupid.
These things can certainly go a bridge too far. David Mills’ response to the Blasphemy Challenge (in which Mills uses a bible to pick up dog feces, smearing the feces on a picture of Jesus while swearing a blue streak in front of his laughing 10-year-old daughter) leaps to mind. But it’s much more often the case that atheists are accused of playing too rough—Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens—when in fact they have merely refused to pull punches in a fight that genuinely matters, and the entrails on the ground are evidence not of excessive force but of the opponent’s refusal to go sensibly to the mat for anything less.
But there’s another audience out there, one that dwarfs the fans of the two-by-four by a good many multiples. This includes believers cautiously open to disconfirmation and closeted nonbelievers cautiously open to coming out. Numbering in the millions, they are predisposed to our message but unwilling to gird for culture war.
Though both approaches have long been available, only the two-by-four has generally been audible. Lamont’s joyful Humanism was there at the same time as Madeleine Murray O’Hair’s “Religion is induced insanity,” but only O’Hair’s efforts made it to the general radar. She achieved great and noble things, Madeleine did, but her approach, even as it emboldened the True Unbelievers among us, also made the cautious, silent majority of the nonreligious slump ever-further down into the “no comment” pew.
There is an audience that is well-served by the no-prisoners approach, and I count myself among them. But I’m thrilled to see that the “friendlier” frequency is gaining bandwidth of late, beginning at last to tap that huge reservoir of potential self-identified freethinkers who are reached more effectively on that wavelength than the other.
All three of the outreach efforts featured in this issue [of Secular Nation] — the Tree of Knowledge (Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia), the turnpike billboards (FreeThoughtAction and now PhillyCOR), and the highway cleanup (Atheists United and dozens of other groups nationwide) are operating on this less abrasive frequency. I believe that in doing so, they are moving us into the second of three phases in our courtship with the population at large.
The Courtship Challenge
Though we need to make ourselves visible to the public, visibility is not enough. A four-car pileup is also visible, but that doesn’t mean you want to be a part of it. We need to engage in something beyond exhibitionism—something closer to courtship.
Courtship is a three-step process: (1) be noticed; (2) be attractive; and (3) deliver the goods. In the all-too-recent past, freethought was stuck in step one, trying desperately to convince the public—and each other, for that matter—that we exist. As recently as 2003, when I began floating the proposal for a book on nonreligious parenting, agents and publishers shrugged it off, saying “there’s no audience for such a book.” Then the Four Horsemen took care of visibility once and for all.
Now for step two.
To make yourself attractive to the beloved, you’ve got to see yourself through that person’s eyes—an effort organized freethought has too seldom made. Too often we spend our time ranting in frustration at the general public’s inability to see how darn good-looking we are instead of finding out what really turns them on.
All three of the featured outreach efforts are giving consideration to attractiveness. Each is positively focused and speaks to one or more of the specific human hungers that church has traditionally satisfied.
The highway cleanup by Atheists United and others sends a message of civic responsibility and a desire to work for the greater good.1 FSGP’s Tree of Knowledge (a holiday tree decorated with freethought bookcovers) makes use of a familiar, attractive holiday symbol with happy and loving associations, underlining what is shared between worldviews rather than what differs. Finally, the billboard by FreeThoughtAction speaks to the desire for the embrace of community while at the same time cleverly addressing the existential fear of human aloneness in the absence of the divine—i.e., “you are not alone” in your disbelief and “you are not alone” despite the absence of God.
All three also invite the public into the third step in the courtship—assessing the substance of organized freethought. The FreeThoughtAction billboard provides a prominent and memorable web address, leading to a brilliantly-designed site with well-organized links for additional exploration of the world of freethought.2 The book covers on the Tree of Knowledge represent invitations to explore freethought. And the Atheists United name on the freeway adoption sign provides an easy-to-remember, Googleable point of contact.
These three efforts share another crucial feature: simple clarity. In five seconds, I get it. And I know I’m not alone in finding wit—especially nuanced wit—to be an intellectual aphrodisiac. The Tree of Knowledge names and celebrates precisely the thing that Yahweh forbade in Genesis 2:17, while the FTA billboard is a gentle (and cheerier) counterpoint to the white-on-black messages signed by God.3
[continue to part 2]
__________________________
1Though I winced hard when one spokesman for the group was quoted as saying they made the efforts “so we get to keep the sign.” A nice benefit, but if exposure is all it’s about, that’s more than a tad duplicitous.
2And, through the use of the capitals, turns the potentially unfamiliar concept of “freethought action” into three positive and lively words: FreeThoughtAction. Brilliant!
3Which I must admit to adoring. It’s fairly rare to see religious folks making effective use of humor.
Humanists weigh in on corporal punishment
Shortly after I put together the ONE SAFE GENERATION initiative for the Institute for Humanist Studies, I got a note from Institute director Matt Cherry.
The London-based International Humanist and Ethical Union (or IHEU, the worldwide union of humanist organizations) convenes a World Humanist Congress every three years. One of the tasks of the Congress is to consider resolutions and statements submitted by member organizations. Passed resolutions then serve as a kind of evolving statement of generally accepted humanist positions on issues of the day. If you want to know what the consensus is among humanists on abortion, euthanasia, contraception, reproductive rights, the environment, armed conflict, women’s rights, and a host of other issues, the IHEU resolutions offer the best available summary.
Matt had noticed that the organization had not yet taken a position on corporal punishment and asked that I draft a resolution. Here’s the text:
The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) supports worldwide efforts to abolish the use of corporal punishment for the discipline of children.
Corporal punishment is defined as “the use of physical force with the intention of causing bodily pain or discomfort so as to change the subject’s behaviour or to punish them.”
Corporal punishment teaches children that violence is an acceptable means to make others do something, thereby perpetuating violent behaviour from generation to generation.
A growing body of research strongly indicates that corporal punishment is ineffective as a disciplinary measure and has strong associations with multiple undesirable outcomes, including an increased risk of depression, aggression, antisocial behaviour, and the continued use of violence in subsequent generations.
Nonviolent disciplinary techniques have been shown to be as effective as, or more effective than, corporal punishment. As humanism teaches the preference for nonviolent means whenever possible, IHEU supports efforts to educate parents and teachers regarding these disciplinary alternatives.
In response to growing evidence against corporal punishment, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNESCO, American Academy of Pediatrics (USA), Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (UK), and many other national and international organisations have condemned the practice. Twenty-five countries to date have declared corporal punishment illegal, and bans are under consideration by several others. Most national statutes already prohibit violence against adults, including family members. A corporal punishment ban seeks to extend the same protection to children.
The IHEU calls on all Member Organisations and Individual Members to promote opposition to corporal punishment at the national and international level by means of publicity, discussions, and education, with the aim to secure the abolition of the practice.
On June 8, the resolution was passed unanimously by the General Assembly of the 2008 World Humanist Congress in Washington DC.
The next phase of ONE SAFE GENERATION — an orchestrated campaign to focus attention and action in the humanist blogosphere on a series of child protection charities — is scheduled to launch on September 1. Watch for it.
_____________________
Related posts:
- Encourage South Africa’s spanking ban
Spare the rod — and spare me the rest
Responses to “spare the rod”
Interview with corporal punishment researcher Elizabeth Gershoff, Ph.D.
Article: Most Parents Condone Spanking — Child Development Research Doesn’t (from Civitas)
Alternatives to corporal punishment
One Safe Generation
I’m thrilled to announce that ONE SAFE GENERATION has now gone live at the Institute for Humanist Studies. Many thanks to Matt Cherry and the rest of the folks at IHS for providing a home for this project.
ONE SAFE GENERATION is a humanist initiative to create a more humane, ethical, and reasonable world by breaking the chain of inherited violence and fear. Our goal is to make it possible for one generation to grow up free of violence. In support of this goal of “one safe generation,” we are advancing initiatives to combat violence against children in the home, in the community, and on the fields of war. Below is the introduction to the site. Throughout the summer I will post periodic focus pieces highlighting the elements of this project.
One Safe Generation
Introduction
Our reason, our judgment, and our ethics are all severely impaired when we are afraid. Examples of individuals, groups, and nations thinking poorly and acting immorally under the influence of fear are innumerable.
Violence and other social pathologies are perpetuated from one generation to the next, as victims of violence in childhood are likely to become the perpetrators of violence in the next generation. From corporal punishment and neglect on the individual level to the forced conscription of child soldiers and the disproportionate victimization of children in war, each generation of adults has a choice to pass on traditions of violence and fear—or refuse to do so.
ONE SAFE GENERATION is a humanist initiative to create a more humane, ethical, and reasonable world by making choices to break the chain of inherited violence and fear. Our goal is to make it possible for one generation to grow up free of violence at all levels, from the family home to the urban streets to the field of war.
By recognizing that all manner of social pathologies—from violent conflict to religious fundamentalism to the suppression of free expression—are ultimately rooted in fear, humanists can focus our energies on that root cause even as we work to lessen the damage done by its various expressions.
One generation liberated from violence and fear would be more rational, more compassionate, more confident, and far less likely to perpetrate violence on its own children. By allowing a single generation to grow up safely, the tradition of inherited violence can be broken and the future remade.
ONE SAFE GENERATION will gather valid research and resources in a single, accessible location; counter the advocates of violence in public forums; advocate progressive public policies on related issues through op-eds and legislation; and encourage support for existing organizations and advocates in three areas:
1. Nonviolent parenting
2. Advocacy of progressive child social policies
3. Protecting children from the effects of war
In identifying fear itself as the enemy, Franklin Roosevelt made a statement of greater lasting import than he may have intended. In these pages, you will find resources for information and action in the service of raising a generation of children less fearful, and more hopeful, than any of their ancestors dared dream.
References:
- Bloom, Sandra. Ph.D. Neither liberty nor safety: the impact of fear on individuals, institutions, and societies, part I. Psychotherapy and Politics International, Vol. 2, Issue 2 (2004)
- Gershoff, Elizabeth Thompson. ‘Corporal Punishment by Parents and Associated Child Behaviors and Experiences: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review, Psychological Bulletin 128 (2002)
the interfaith alliance
I don’t usually wax too political in this space, but there’s an activist organization I’m getting all hot and sweaty for lately. It’s The Interfaith Alliance (TIA), a coalition of 185,000 members from over 75 different religious and nonreligious perspectives founded in 1994 “to challenge the radical religious right” by protecting religious pluralism and the separation of church and state. They’ve had it with the use of religion as a tool of political manipulation and division. They think it’s bad for the church AND the state.
I have a collective crush on these people.
The president of TIA is Rev. Dr. Welton Gaddy, Pastor for Preaching and Worship at Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, Louisiana and host of the program State of Belief on Air America Radio.
Gaddy is a Baptist who remembers that church-state separation was woven into the founding of his denomination and remembers why. He is awesome. He is a force of nature. (And I’m not only saying that because he declared himself “so impressed” with my “important work” when he interviewed me on December 22. Goodness, I’ve forgotten about that completely.)
It was TIA that pointed out last week, in a way both brilliant and hard to refute, that “if a potential employer asked you questions about your religious beliefs in a job interview, it wouldn’t only be offensive, it would be illegal.” Yet one interviewer after another in the presidential campaign asks questions about personal religious convictions. And what is a campaign if not an extended job interview?
Asking how a candidate thinks religion and government should intersect — well, that’s a terrific question, and one that’s rarely asked. Instead, we get a litany of questions that violate the Constitutional guarantee that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States” (Article VI, section 3), in spirit if nothing else.
This week had TIA drawing attention to an effort by Focus on the Family to put the “National Day of Prayer” (seven days away) squarely in the hands of evangelicals:
The National Day of Prayer Task Force requires volunteer coordinators to sign a pledge stating: “I commit that NDP activities I serve with will be conducted solely by Christians while those with differing beliefs are welcome to attend.” The coordinators must also sign a statement of faith that includes the following language: “I believe that the Holy Bible is the inerrant Word of The Living God. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the only One by which I can obtain salvation and have an ongoing relationship with God.” This clearly aligns a government-sponsored event with a particular Christian denomination, in violation of the basic provisions of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
And so it always goes. When religion and politics mix, “religion” will inevitably become a single narrow expression of religion. In the case of the U.S., that’s evangelical Protestantism.
Anyway, I could go on all day about the great work of The Interfaith Alliance, but I’ll let you chase links on your own if you wish.
The questions about religion that TIA thinks candidates should answer
The campaign for a more inclusive Nat’l Day of Prayer (if we must have one at all, *sigh*), led by a Jewish group of First Amendment defenders called…wait for it…Jews on First! Oh, how I love it!
IMAGINE: a science-literate president
Official U.S. policy on global warming
My 12-year-old son Connor asked a heartbreaking question last week: “Is our next president going to be a good one?”
His tone was pleading, and I knew what he meant. From the time he was five, Connor has known only one president. Please don’t make me type the name. During that time, Connor has developed a love of science, a deep concern for others and a passion for preserving the Earth. Connor is an optimist and works hard to be part of the solution. He has donated money to save several acres of rainforest and used a Barnes & Noble giftcard received at Krismas to buy An Inconvenient Truth. His long-term goal is to start an engineering company that creates a device that eats greenhouse gases. He recently resumed a long-delayed project to design a website to encourage donations to charity. In the meantime, he spends untold hours on the website Free Rice earning rice for the hungry, twenty grains at a time.
I love and admire him for all of this. He’s my hero and my conscience in many, many ways.
Because people like me did too little to prevent it, Connor has grown up under a presidency of surpassing, mind-numbing ignorance and deeply screwed-up values. Assuming two terms for the next president, next November’s election may well decide who sits in the White House throughout his high school and college years, making policies that affect global warming, stem cell research, educational policies, and countless other things that he cares about very deeply. There are so many things I hope for in our next executive. But at minimum, I would like my boy to experience life under a president who is scientifically literate.
Science is at or near the heart of nearly every major issue facing the world community. We cannot afford to have another U.S. president as thunderously and willfully ignorant of science as the current one. The planet can’t afford it. Nor can my son’s fragile optimism.
EMBRYONIC STEM CELL
Scientific literacy should be a central issue in the upcoming election. We need to know whether these candidates have a working knowledge of the basics. To that end, a group of concerned scientists and activists has begun a call for the inclusion in the current election cycle of a debate on science and technology:
A Call for a Presidential Debate on Science and Technology
Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.
Add your name to the petition here.
Read the article “Let’s Have a Presidential Debate on Science” at Salon.com.
Urgent Appeal: Please Help Protect Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- November 25, 2007
- By Dale McGowan
- In action
- 0
AYAAN HIRSI ALI
One November morning in 2004, Theo van Gogh got up to go to work at his film production company in Amsterdam. He took out his old black bicycle and headed down a main road. Waiting in a doorway was a Moroccan man with a handgun and two butcher knives.
As Theo cycled down the Linnaeusstraat, Muhammad Bouyeri approached. He pulled out his gun and shot Theo several times. Theo fell off his bike and lurched across the road, then collapsed. Bouyeri followed. Theo begged, “Can’t we talk about this?” but Bouyeri shot him four more times. Then he took out one of his butcher knives and sawed into Theo’s throat. With the other knife, he stabbed a five-page letter onto Theo’s chest.
The letter was addressed to me.
from Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the most prominent advocate of free speech and women’s rights in the Muslim world, and for this she must live under perpetual armed guard, even in the West. Unfortunately, on October 1st of this year, the Dutch government officially rescinded its promise to protect her. Now, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s friends, colleagues and admirers must come to her aid.
I have created a page on my website that links directly to the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Security Trust. The money raised by this trust will pay Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s security expenses. In the event that money remains after these costs have been met, it will be used to encourage and protect other dissidents in the Muslim world.
The ongoing protection of Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a moral obligation. It is also a strategic one: for here is a woman doing work that most of us cannot do–indeed, would be terrified to do if given the chance–and yet this work is essential for preserving the freedoms we take for granted in the West.
If every reader of this email simply pledged ten dollars a month to protect Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the costs of her security would be covered for as long as the threat to her life remains.
Thanks in advance for your support.
Sincerely,
Sam Harris
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
In 2005, TIME included Ayaan Hirsi Ali in its list of the World’s 100 Most Influential People. If you would like to know more about her, please read Christopher Caldwell’s fine profile in the New York Times Magazine. You can also read the essay that Salman Rushdie and Sam Harris recently published in the Los Angeles Times, or the one that Christopher Hitchens wrote for Slate.
