Over the years, I’ve written pieces offending Catholics, Muslims, Hindus, Mormons, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, and Scientologists. Leaving no toe unstepped on, today I turn to the Amish. We just observed the 30^th anniversary of a major Supreme Court case involving preferential treatment for the Amish, and we now see them being cited as an example in the ongoing debate over preferential treatment for Catholics in the new healthcare law. So now is as good a time as there will ever be to talk about all the Amish legal privileges unavailable to the rest of us.

One of the few sensible points being made by the Catholic hierarchy in its effort to win special treatment under the new healthcare law is that the law gives other religious groups, like the Amish, special treatment. Therefore, it is discriminatory not to give special treatment to Catholics, who don’t want to provide contraception in their healthcare plans. As Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops put it:

The government allows other religions to live out their beliefs. The Amish and Christian Scientists have a conscientious objection to health insurance, and so the law exempts them from buying it. The government acknowledges the right of these religious groups to live out their religious convictions in US society. Why are beliefs of Catholics and others dismissed?

Read the rest of this entry &raquo

]The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has launched a campaign against what it calls a concerted attack on religious liberty. Not in Pakistan or Iraq, but right here in the United States.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan, USCCB’s president, complains about a “drive to neuter religion,” intended to “push religion back into the sacristy.” He’s not claiming any violent assaults on worshipers, seizure of church property, criminalization of preaching, or discrimination against believers in housing or employment. What makes him see red is the government starting to treat Catholic organizations the same way it treats everyone else. The horror!

The bishops have two main complaints: laws allowing marriages of which they disapprove, and laws requiring healthcare plans to offer specified coverage, including contraceptives.

Marriage

Catholic God experts teach that sex for purposes other than procreation is sinful, thus ruling out all forms of homosexual sex. The logical next step is to rule out marriage between members of the same sex. Fine – if the church wants to tell people what it thinks God is against and urge them not to do it, it has every right to make that case. Duly elected and appointed government officials, though, in a growing number of jurisdictions, are changing laws to allow same-sex marriage for people willing to take their chances on the afterlife. With the right to marry comes the right to be treated like you are married, and the right to the same legal status as any docile Catholic in daily life.

“Conscience violation!” shrieks the church. Why? Catholic florists and caterers, they insist, must have the right to refuse to serve weddings they disapprove of. Catholic hoteliers must have the right to refuse accommodation to same-sex couples, who might perform unspeakable acts on their Catholic sheets. Catholic adoption agencies must have the right to refuse service to same-sex couples, and Catholic schools must have the right to expel children who commit the sin of having been adopted by people whose sexual habits are disdained by the church.

Here’s a fact you didn’t know. When you think about the organization calling itself “Catholic Charities,” do you picture an outfit that receives donations from the church and individual Catholics, using them to do good in the community? I always did, until I learned that an astonishing 62% of its funding comes from various levels of government, and only 3% comes from Catholic diocese funds controlled by the bishops doing the complaining. Truth in advertising would call for a change in Catholic Charities’ name, to something like “Taxpayer Funded Program to Make the Catholic Church Look Good.” A mouthful, I’ll admit; I’m open to suggestions for an accurate name that would yield a clever acronym. In any case, when whatever-you-call-it decided to stop helping all orphans altogether in order to make its political point against adoption by gay parents, the bishops pleaded for public sympathy for their injured consciences.

The Catholic argument is identical to that used by white supremacists, religious and otherwise, who demanded the right to refuse to serve black people during the Jim Crow era. There are people who earnestly believe in the inferiority of the black race, and that it is God’s plan for the races to live separately. That’s why, they say, God put blacks on one continent and whites on another. Their belief is every bit as sincere as the Catholic belief that homosexual activity is immoral. Sincerity aside, when duly constituted governments accountable to the people take a contrary view, then the same laws need to apply to everybody the same way. That’s what my conscience says, and my conscience is as good as theirs is.

Contraceptives

The new healthcare law requires insurance plans to offer at least minimum levels of coverage of basic medical needs, thus allowing consumers to compare apples to apples when they shop for insurance. Included on the list of minimum requirements is coverage for contraceptives, used by an enormous proportion of women in their child-bearing years. This, according to the bishops, is an attack on religious liberty, because it forces people who don’t approve of the use of contraceptives to pay premiums for the benefit of those who do.

I help pay for a lot of things I don’t approve of. Ethanol subsidies. The war in Afghanistan. An embassy in the Vatican. Weapons for Israel. John Boehner’s salary. Your list is probably different, but I’m sure there a lot of things you help pay for that you don’t approve of, either. Neither of us like it, but we know we’re part of a bigger group, and it’s not possible to make everybody in the group happy all the time. So we don’t demand special treatment, or an individual reduction in our tax payments for programs we don’t like, because we know government couldn’t function if everyone paid only for the things they like.

No one is requiring any Catholic to use contraceptives. The church has every right to teach that contraceptive use is immoral and to urge people to forego it in their own personal lives. No one is trying to suppress its right to make its case. When the church demands special privileges to allow its members to avoid paying for things that affect only people other than themselves, just because God is on their side, that’s different.

The same contraceptive issue arises in HIV prevention and other international development programs. One of the simplest, cheapest ways to prevent the spread of HIV is to encourage the use of condoms – a far easier task than encouraging people not to have sex at all. So, the U.S. Agency for International Development requires distribution of condoms in HIV prevention programs run by contractors using government money, just like any other organization that promotes techniques that work over techniques that don’t. Those who don’t follow the rules don’t get contracts. The bishops cry foul, whimpering that since the Catholic aid programs are the only ones mulish enough to resist distribution of condoms, this is “anti-Catholic discrimination,” “an unprecedented intrusion by the federal government into the precincts of religion.” This is no more anti-Catholic than it is anti-Semitic for a cop to give a speeding ticket to a driver who turns out to be a Jew. There’s one set of rules, they’re based on empirical data and common sense, and they need to apply the same to everyone regardless of religion. If Catholics’ conscience forbids them from distributing condoms, then they shouldn’t do it. But they shouldn’t get the contract, either. Jesus managed nicely without ever getting any government contracts.

Civil disobedience?

Now it appears that some eminent Catholic God experts are upping the ante, suggesting that Catholic civil disobedience may be necessary. The Vatican’s Zenit news service recently published a piece by theologian E. Christian Brugger claiming that the issue really isn’t about conscience protection at all, but about the fact that the Catholic view on contraception happens to be “truth,” and the rest of the world needs to acquiesce for that reason alone. Brugger concludes that:

We need to stand up and say confidently and resolutely to Kathleen Sebelius, her thugs at HHS and her puppet-master in the White House: Your view is false and untrue; it radically violates human good and is destructive of communal integrity. Forcing persons wrongfully to cooperate in actions they judge to be evil is evil. And no president, king or emperor rightly demands others to do what is evil. We won’t do it.

I’m not quite sure what he means by “We won’t do it,” but it sounds like he’s saying that Catholic employers should refuse to offer the type of health insurance mandated by law, or perhaps that Catholics should refuse to pay the portion of their premiums calculated to fund services the hierarchy doesn’t like.

This is not the first time Catholics have made such a threat. In the mid-20^th century, the issue was schools. Catholic parents were required on pain of eternal damnation to send their children to a Catholic school, if one was available. In some dioceses, the sin of violating this rule was so grave that it could not be forgiven by an ordinary priest in the confessional, but required a special appeal to the bishop for absolution. The problem was that Catholic parents also had to pay taxes to support public schools, which they could not use because doing so would violate their religious obligation – just like they are now being asked to pay for contraceptives they are not supposed to use themselves.

A pamphlet issued by the Jesuit priest Paul L. Blakely, S.J., sounded a lot like Mr. Brugger:

Our first duty to the public school is not to pay taxes for its maintenance. … Justice cannot oblige the support of a system which we are forbidden in conscience to use, or a system which we conscientiously hold to be bad in principle and bad in its ultimate consequences.

Catholic civil disobedience sometimes turned into violence. New Brunswick, Canada, is normally thought of as a pretty sedate place. Prior to the 1870s, its school system was run entirely by Anglican and Catholic denominations, who were generally regarded as doing a terrible job. Canadians envied America’s secular public schools, and elected government officials pledged to copy them. As the conversion moved forward, the Catholic hierarchy responded with cold fury, and a grassroots effort to discourage payment of taxes to support the evil of secular education. As Brugger puts it today, “Forcing persons wrongfully to cooperate in actions they judge to be evil is evil. And no president, king or emperor rightly demands others to do what is evil. We won’t do it.” On January 15, 1875, Catholic rioters in the town of Caraquet began trashing stores belonging to the forces of evil. The government recruited a militia to restore order, and the resulting violence ended with two deaths, one on each side.

Will today’s overheated Catholic rhetoric end in violence? Of course not. It couldn’t happen here. Any more than it could happen in, say, 1875 New Brunswick.

Luis Granados

I once met Christopher Hitchens at the post office on Florida Ave. in Northwest DC. It was a rainy day in April. Turned out it was his 61st birthday, several months before he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. I saw him from behind—he was standing a few people ahead of me in line—but I recognized him instantly. I then spent the next few moments talking myself into approaching him and trying to think of something worthwhile to say. He turned around several times, looking toward the front windows of the post office. He looked terrible. Bloated, disheveled, a worn tote bag with all kinds of loose paper sticking out the top thrown over his shoulder.

As the line crept forward he turned around once more, and I said, “Mr. Hitchens?”

“Well,” he began with some restraint, “would you like me to be?”

People who knew Christopher Hitchens, or knew of him, were likely to have a strong opinion about the writer one way or the other, and I took his question as an attempt to confirm whether I was friend or foe. I introduced myself as the editor of the Humanist magazine and he instantly warmed. “Ah yes, yes. I believe I accepted an award from you,” he remarked matter-of-factly. I really don’t remember what happened to the one or two patrons between us, but suddenly we were together in line, inching closer to the counter.

It had been in the news just a few days before that he and Richard Dawkins were seeking advice from human rights lawyers to have Pope Benedict arrested during a planned visit to Britain, the charge being his cover-up of sex abuse by Catholic priests. I asked him whether he thought they could pull it off, and he wasted no time describing the legal rationale and the idiocy of the Catholic Church with his trademark candor and erudition. He no longer looked terrible. He was Christopher Hitchens on a tear—indignant and aglow. Being on the receiving end of this energy, I was very glad to be seen as a friend and not a foe. And then it was his turn to mail his letters. I managed to slip him my card and ask for an interview (“of course, of course,” he said, “I’m in the phone book.”). And that was it. I later sent him a letter and a copy of the magazine, but when the diagnosis came down I thought it best to hold off. Then his cancer became a big story, along with the requisite bets on whether his mind would convert spiritually before his body gave out physically, and any access I may have had was lost in the shuffle.

I regret that I never got to sit down with Christopher Hitchens and hear him out on all manner of issues of importance to humanists. We’re all familiar with his targets and his shifting foreign policy perspective. But we can’t ignore his contribution to the cause of reason. I personally wanted to ask him about his falling out with Gore Vidal, who I did have the opportunity to interview and who had some pretty scathing things to say about his one-time friend, Hitch. If nothing else, it would have felt fair to let him have his say. Then again, Christopher Hitchens was someone who got to have his say again and again because he did it so damned well. So with that, I think I’ll go and finish his memoir, Hitch- 22 and then start in on Arguably, his recently published collections of essays. Mr. Hitchens, you’ll be sorely missed!

(Guest post by Rick Heller)

I have been participating in the Occupy movement, and although I have held a sign outside Bank of America protesting policies that allow banks to be “too big to fail,” my main activity has been to lead meditations at Occupy Boston’s encampment across the street from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

These meditations are based on those conducted at the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy. The Humanist Mindfulness Group at Harvard has an orientation that can be described as “Secular Buddhist,” bearing a relationship to the Buddhist religion analogous to the relationship that Humanistic Judaism has with Orthodox Judaism.

When leading a meditation at Occupy Boston, I make clear that I don’t think meditators send out “vibes” that magically effect our financial institutions. Rather, these meditations have two purposes. The first is reducing stress, because living and sleeping in close quarters with others can be trying (I’m not a camper, only a day visitor). But more interesting is the possibility that meditative practices can directly contribute to the primary goal of the Occupy movement, which is to oppose the greed that led to speculative bubble and subsequent economic crash in 2008.

Newsweek has a cover story out on the science of why people overspend (I wrote on the same subject in the Humanist’s July/August issue). We have two motivational networks in the brain, one that focuses on immediate gratification and one on long-term payoffs. Neuroeconomist Paul Zak of Claremont Graduate University has found that when people receive injections of oxytocin, a hormone associated with loving feelings, they are better able to make financial decisions that require the deferral of immediate gratification. To put it simply, when you feel good now, you don’t need “retail therapy.”

With this in mind, I led a loving-kindness meditation in which you successively summon loving feelings toward yourself, a friend, a neutral person and finally, a person you find irritating. In a separate meditation, we were mindful of sounds. As Occupy Boston is next to a busy road and diagonal from a fire station, it provides a rich environment to practice receptive, loving attention to sounds usually thought of as “noise.”

Meditation and allied practices like psychotherapy can help us overcome our own greed, but they won’t magically overcome the greed of the “1%.” My hope is that young people in the Occupy movement can serve as role models to others in their generation who pursue materialistic aims. The current crisis has knocked a lot of young people off the career path they expected to be pursuing. They are examining alternative ways to live “the good life.” If the Humanist community were to engage with Occupy right now, I think we’d find a lot of young people open to our message.

Rick Heller is the author of the new eBook, Occupy the Moment.

(Guest post by George Erickson)

Morning. The sun, shuttered by clouds that brush my Ely Lake treetops, is just a feeble glow. Were it not for the intervening Norway pines, I could see the Eveleth/Virginia airport, and a mile beyond that, my gaze would stop at a roadside memorial to a caring, progressive, Minnesota activist who ranked among the best.

On a day like this, when Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and his wife Sheila were en route to the funeral of a friend in a chartered Beechcraft King Air, their lives took a tragic turn. Descending too low, and more than a mile off course, the Beech struck the trees, and we suddenly had a vastly different funeral to consider—a service to honor Senator Wellstone, his wife, and child plus several coworkers and two instrument-rated pilots who died in that inexplicable crash.

I retrieve a book from the table beside my deck chair, and as the wind sighs I turn the first page of a book that every American should read: Wellstone’s The Consience of the Liberal: Reclaiming the Compassionate Agenda.

The title says it all, for Wellstone was a truly compassionate man: “How can we live in the richest, most privileged country in the world… and still hear from Republicans and too many Democrats that we cannot afford to provide a good education for every child, that we cannot afford to provide health security for all our citizens?”

He was always that way. As a fledgling Carleton college professor who was determined to organize the poor, Wellstone was warned by the college trustees that he’d be fired if he continued his activist ways. He persisted—and was fired.

Fortunately, 1600 of the college’s 1700 students rose to Wellstone’s defense. Reinstated, he became the Carlton’s youngest tenured professor, and soon turned to politics as a way to improve the lives of John and Jane Doe. “Politics is about the improvement of people’s lives,” he said, “lessening human suffering, advancing the cause of peace and justice in our country and in the world.” Thomas Paine, the first great American humanist comes to mind.

With his green bus, he traveled aroung Minnesota, won the Democratic nomination, and campaigned against wealthy Rudy Boschwitz, the incumbent senator who eventually sunk his faltering campaign with a desperate, bigoted charge that Wellstone was insufficiently Jewish because he’d married a Christian.

During his years in the U.S. Senate, Wellstone, who came to be known as “the conscience of the Senate,” championed women’s rights, promoted single-payer healthcare, and campaign finance reform. He was re-elected despite a vicious campaign that relied on a Newt Gingrich strategy to always use derogatory adjectives when speaking of your opponent. Thus, Paul faced ads that said “Wellstone is a lying, hypocritical whiner” but rarely addressed the issues. He was labeled “Senator Welfare,” and was charged with wanting to take everyone’s guns away, and with supporting abortion at nine months for the purpose of sex selection. In an attempt to make liberalism sound like a crime, he was called “embarrassingly liberal.” (Nevermind that liberalism is defined as “favorable to progress or reform, favorable to freedom of action and thought, free from prejudice, open to tolerance and generosity.”)

Despite frequent death threats, Wellstone persevered, serving the ordinary man and woman—not the corporations and not the rich and famous. He had been targeted by Republicans as the # 1 person to be removed from the Senate. Undeterred he soldiered on, and on October 25, 2002, just two weeks after he voted against George W. Bush’s fraudulent war in Iraq, his Beechcraft fell from the skies.

Though just five foot five inches tall, Paul Wellstone took on bigger, more powerful, and often unprincipled foes, winning some battles and losing others, but in eschewing power, fame, and profit, and in representing John and Jane Doe so faithfully, Paul Wellstone repeatedly proved that he was the a superb human being.

Palestine is in the news, asking the United Nations to be admitted as a full member despite the fact that it is occupied by a foreign army and that its government exists only at the sufferance of neighboring Israel. This move causes great consternation, because it threatens to disrupt a 40-year old status quo with which most people (other than Palestinians) have grown comfortable. I happen to think it’s a terrible idea, for reasons other than the ones usually given by pundits. I suggest a Plan B, though, that might actually improve the situation for everyone other than God experts.

In 1948, the institution to which Palestine seeks to be admitted adopted a profound statement called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UN’s founders had just concluded a bloody war, which the combatants had been promised was going to mean something – that victory would result not just in one gang of politicians replacing another, but a truly fairer, freer world. Two years of effort went into crafting the Declaration’s 1,800 words, and the final document was approved without a single dissenting vote.

Here are some relevant excerpts from the Universal Declaration:

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people …

Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status …

Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination …

Article 13: Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

Either these words mean something, or they don’t. If they mean something, then isn’t there a problem with admitting to the club a new member state that has already announced that its first act, once it has the power to achieve it, will be the expulsion of all of the people within its borders who’ve committed the crime of being Jews?

That is precisely what the would-be Palestinian government promises to do. “After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated,” said Maen Areikat, the PLO ambassador to the United States, at a press conference on September 13. “We are trying to preserve the concept of a two-state solution,” he added, “and to make the Israelis understand there will be consequences for their actions.”

Consequences indeed. When a firestorm erupted over the ambassador’s words, he issued a “clarification,” which only digs the hole deeper. Jews would still be allowed to visit independent Palestine, he insisted; all he meant was that Jews wouldn’t be allowed to live there. And, as is typical of both sides of this conflict, he defended himself by arguing that the other side was even worse:

Jerusalem right now is restricted – Palestinian Muslims and Christians cannot visit it. Christians, Muslims and Jews must be able to visit their respective sites in both countries. This wasn’t even on my mind when we [sic] asked the question – I thought he was talking about settlers staying in Palestine.

So the bad news is, half a million Jews would have to pick up and move once the Areikat team is in charge, including thousands who were born there. The good news is, they can come back and visit the folks who stole their homes.

This is hardly a novel idea. The first expulsion of Jews was effected by the Roman Empire, back in the 2^nd century. After the second major rebellion in Palestine, which cost thousands of Roman lives and massive sums of Roman money to subdue, the frustrated Emperor Hadrian ordered the permanent removal of all Jews from Jerusalem, and even renamed the city.

A few centuries later, the early Muslim Caliph Umar expelled the Jews from western Arabia, quoting Muhammad as saying “Two religions shall not remain together in the peninsula of the Arabs.” Looking at a map, I don’t think one would say that Palestine is on the “peninsula,” but maybe Areikat flunked geography.

In the 13^th century, it was England’s turn. King Edward I, perpetually short of funds, extracted cash from his Jewish subjects by every means he could imagine, until they had very little left. They still owned property, though; Edward solved that problem by his 1290 “Edict of Expulsion,” removing every Jew from the country. This Edict was not repealed until 1656.

King Philip the Fair of France was only mildly impressed, because Edward’s inefficiency let a lot of money slip from his grasp. Philip thought that secrecy of preparation and suddenness of action were the keys. On July 22, 1306, every Jew in France was arrested. Within weeks, they were escorted to the borders and expelled – without any of their property, which Philip retained for himself. Just as importantly, all debts owing from the king to the removed Jews were cancelled.

There weren’t that many Jews in England and France to expel, but there were lots of them in Spain. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella ordered them all either to convert to Christianity or leave. Many of them wound up in Ottoman Turkey, whose Sultan could not believe his good fortune: “Allah has struck the king of Spain with blindness, that he should impoverish his realm to enrich mine.”

In Germany, Jews were removed from Vienna and Linz in 1421, from Cologne in 1424, Augsburg in 1439, Bavaria in 1442 and again in 1450, and from cities in Moravia in 1454. Hitler spent his first eight years in power trying to expel Jews from Germany (after relieving them of their money), before getting frustrated and deciding to murder them instead.

It doesn’t take brilliant legal analysis to figure out that the Areikat plan is as contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as you can get. So the UN either ought to tear up the Declaration and say “Just kidding,” or it ought to refuse admission to Palestine.

The drawback to leaving things at that is that the Israeli government has routinely violated the same Declaration since the day it was founded, so acting against only one of the wrongdoers would be unfair. To pick only the most recent example from hundreds over the past 60 years, just last week, the Israeli government approved a plan to kick out 30,000 non-Jewish Bedouins living in “unrecognized villages” in the Negev, to make room for 10 new Jews-only towns. “Unrecognized villages?” Orwell must be smiling somewhere. How does this square with “entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law”? Not very well. Nor does the unrelenting Israeli campaign to evict non-Jews and not allow them back in that’s been going on since 1948, in both wartime and peacetime (if you can call it peace). Nor does the vast array of Israeli government benefits provided to Jews alone.

So here’s my Plan B. If you’re going to keep Palestine out of the UN, then kick Israel out at the same time. Tell both of them to call back when they’ve squeezed all the religion out of their governments, and started treating all humans the same regardless of what they do or don’t believe about the spirit world. Absolute freedom of worship for everyone; absolute exclusion of religious advantage or disadvantage for anyone, backed by meaningful international guarantees. When that happens, what will they have to argue about?

“Well,” you might be thinking, “if the UN kicked out every member nation that violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it could meet in a much smaller building – maybe a phone booth.” And you’d be right. What makes this case special is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most dangerous flashpoint in the world, that it has cost the rest of humanity trillions of dollars, and that it is by far the likeliest location for the next nuclear weapon detonation. If ever there were an occasion for an audacious experiment of actually sticking to principles by refusal to countenance “disregard and contempt for human rights,” as it says in the Declaration’s preamble, this is it.

Luis Granados

New York’s Mayor Bloomberg resisted intense pressure last week, refusing demands to include professional God experts on the official city program commemorating the attacks of September 11. The mayor’s explanation for this conscious omission was straightforward:

It’s a civil ceremony. There are plenty of opportunities for people to have their religious ceremonies. Some people don’t want to go to a religious ceremony with another religion. And the number of different religions in this city are really quite amazing. … It isn’t that you can’t pick and choose, you shouldn’t pick and choose. If you want to have a service for your religion, you can have it in your church or in a field, or whatever.

Simple enough. The point of the ceremony was to remind the families of the victims that America still cares about them and mourns their loss, not to provide a government-sponsored platform for experts to inform us about God’s will. Nothing on the agenda was anti-religion; the program was designed in coordination with victims’ families and included readings that were “spiritual and personal in nature,” along with six different moments of silence to allow personal reflection and prayer. The only thing that was missing was the showcasing of a publicity-hungry preacher. From the reaction Bloomberg generated, though, you’d think he was Caligula, feeding Christians to the lions.

“Offensive to the families of victims.” That’s how a petition circulated by the Family Research Council described the family-designed ceremony. FRC’s president Tony Perkins also called it “A deliberate defiance and insult to people of faith across America.”

Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention said the omission was “a shameful example of anti-religious bigotry,” reflecting the “mindless secularist prejudice of the political establishment on our nation’s Eastern Seaboard.” (Should California’s secularists be offended at the slight?)

Pastor Joel C. Hunter, an Obama favorite who spoke at the 2008 Democratic convention and serves on the official White House religion advisory board, whined that “The bottom line is, this is not how we were founded. This is not who we are.” The American Family Association called it an insult to “God himself.” If God himself complained, that wasn’t reported in the press.

So what did we miss? As the mayor noted, it was perfectly ok for churches to put on their own programs, and plenty of them did. Pastor Bill Hybels of Chicago’s Willow Creek megachurch laid the blame for September 11 squarely on Satan:

Some of us … are naïve to the reality of evil. We have never come to terms with what the Bible teaches about Satan and his power and how he organizes his accomplices to wreak havoc in this world and to wreak havoc in your life.

So the reality wasn’t humans deciding to use despicable means of making a political point; it was Satan, organizing his accomplices. Since the problem is in the supernatural sphere, the solution lies there as well. “I would think of our God who the Scripture says loves people even if they’re missing from His family and I would think of God kind of wandering around again figuratively with pictures of people who are still missing and just going ‘I wish this person would come home,’ ‘I wish this person would repent,’ ‘I wish this person were in the fellowship.’” So if more people would just “come home,” join the megachurch, and put money in the basket, Satan and his accomplices would be thwarted.

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan was in full agreement on the Satan angle. “It’s a war where evil is against good, where death is versus life, lies versus truth, pride against humility, selfishness against selflessness, revenge versus mercy, hate versus love, Satan versus Almighty God.” Dolan claimed, though, that “The side of the angels, not of the demons, conquered. Good Friday became Easter Sunday. And once again God has the last word.” As evidence, he noted that a child of one of September 11 victims had gone on to become a priest. I admit to being a selfish Godless pig, but if I had lost a family member on September 11, I would not appreciate an archbishop telling me that it was ok, because my tragedy had inspired someone else to join his ranks.

Anne Graham Lotz, the unordained evangelist daughter of Rev. Billy Graham, decided to cash in by writing and promoting a whole book about God and September 11. “I’ve been convinced that 9/11 was our wakeup call. If that wouldn’t wake up the church, what would it take?” Lotz isn’t buying the Satan theory. She lays the blame squarely on humanists. “Foundations of godliness have crumbled; things sacred have come unraveled. We have also embraced pagan teachings while rejecting the Bible in our schools, courthouses, and government institutions.”

An interesting theory, but hardly new. Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, famously characterized September 11 as “chickens coming home to roost” because of America’s lack of his brand of godliness. More to the point, just two days after the attack, Rev. Pat Robertson invited Rev. Jerry Falwell onto his television show, to announce that:

I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say “You helped this happen.”

“Well,” Robertson replied, “I totally concur.”

I have a two-word response to that, but I’ll let it slide. I think Robertson may have been miffed because the attacks detracted attention from the 10^th anniversary of the publication of his best-seller, The New World Order, which hit the stores in September, 1991. There he made the same point as Lotz and Falwell: “There will never be world peace until God’s house and God’s people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world. How can there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshipers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy moneychangers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals are on top?” The main thrust of The New World Order was that a centuries-old secret cabal called the “Illuminati,” backed by Jewish Rothschild money, was behind a Satan/secular humanist plot to dominate the world.

The New World Order was written in opposition to the international coalition against the Iraqi conquest of Kuwait in 1990 – Robertson saw the coalition as a scheme hatched by the Illuminati. He emphasized the story of the Tower of Babel, conveniently located in Iraq, which God viewed with animosity: “Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” Indeed, humans working together, using acquired scientific knowledge, can accomplish tremendous things. According to Robertson, “The danger of such a plan to future generations and the threat of this man-made order to the people of faith was so great that God determined to stop it at its inception.” So down the Tower came.

Robertson, of course, was in the front ranks of last week’s offended. “I am frankly shocked that Mayor Bloomberg thinks that he is doing the city of New York a favor by eliminating the spiritual element at an event commemorating tragedy, grief, and heroic sacrifice.”

The truth of the matter is that it was religion that brought down the Twin Towers, as surely as the Bible tells us it brought down the Tower of Babel. It was the God expert Osama bin Laden who brainwashed 19 young men into sacrificing themselves and thousands of others for the sake of his own supernatural musings, guaranteeing them a place in heaven for their efforts. Who was it who called on Americans in 2002 to “reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling, and usury” – Robertson, or bin Laden? It was bin Laden; but it wouldn’t be hard to find a Christian preacher making the same point at the same time, in nearly the same words.

It would have been grotesquely inappropriate for any speaker to use the 9/11 memorial as a platform for denouncing religion in general. Or for promoting it. Mayor Bloomberg got this one right.

Luis Granados

Last week the Vatican published an extraordinary letter, of the man-bites-dog genre. The letter was from Cardinal Tauran, head of the Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and addressed simply to his “Dear Muslim friends.” Putting aside 1300 years of bitter rivalry, Cardinal Tauran called on his Muslim friends to unite with the Church to combat a common foe: you, me, and everyone else who objects to God expert domination of society.

Cardinal Tauran warned Muslims to face up to “ a reality which Christians and Muslims consider to be of prime importance … the challenges of materialism and secularisation.” Then he got down to brass tacks:

[T]he transmission of such human and moral values to the younger generations constitutes a common concern. It is our duty to help them discover that there is both good and evil, that conscience is a sanctuary to be respected, and that cultivating the spiritual dimension makes us more responsible, more supportive, more available for the common good.

Christians and Muslims are too often witnesses to the violation of the sacred, of the mistrust of which those who call themselves believers are the target. We cannot but denounce all forms of fanaticism and intimidation, the prejudices and the polemics, as well as the discrimination of which, at times, believers are the object both in the social and political life as well as in the mass media.

There are more code words here than you can shake a stick at. “Conscience is a sanctuary to be respected” is a code word for placing God experts above the law, so they can ignore rules that apply to the rest of us because God’s commandments (as communicated by them) are superior to the common sense solutions devised by mere mortals. Thus, for example, religious organizations must be free to discriminate against Jews and same-sex married couples, whether or not the law allows anyone else to do so. “Transmission of such human and moral values to the younger generations” is a code word for taxpayer financial support for the religious brainwashing of children, teaching them that people like you and me deserve to be tortured in hell forever. “Discrimination in the mass media” is a code word for the free expression of views like those you are reading now, views which I would have a hard time publishing in, say, Iran – a state of affairs leaving Cardinal Tauran green with envy.

This is not the first time Christians have reached out to Islam for cooperation against a common foe. To appreciate the magnitude of the irony, it is necessary to remember that Islam burst out of Arabia in the 7^th century largely as a rebellion against a decrepit Roman empire of the east. The Arab barbarians who swept north as far as Hungary and west as far as Spain destroyed the institutions of Christian civilization as they went, replacing them with a desert offshoot of Jewish monotheism. Not until the end of the 11^th century did Christendom strike back, with its ultimately unsuccessful Crusades to recapture Palestine. By the time the Protestant Reformation broke out, a neutral observer might have predicted that Islam, not Christianity, would ultimately dominate Europe. Indeed, one of the principal reasons why the Habsburg emperor Charles V failed to crush the upstart Martin Luther like a bug was that he was too busy defending Vienna itself from an Ottoman Muslim siege.

The Reformation itself was in many ways a rebellion of those motivated by Godliness against a Catholic Church that had grown rich, decadent, and (worst of all) secularized. Protestant reformers sought to purify Christianity against the influence of the “Whore of Babylon.” There was low-level violence between Protestants and Catholics throughout the 16^th century, but the carnage commenced in earnest in 1618, with a dispute over whether a Catholic or a Protestant would rule Bohemia.

The resulting Thirty Years War, as it became known, was the greatest man-made disaster ever visited upon Europe, far worse than World War II. Things went poorly for the Protestant side from the outset. Not only was their man displaced from Bohemia, but the Jesuit-dominated Habsburg emperor Ferdinand II decided that this would be a great opportunity to wipe out Protestantism once and for all. Ferdinand’s generals piled up victory after victory, and it looked like he was going to succeed.

Then Protestant diplomacy kicked into gear. The 17^th century version of Cardinal Tauran persuaded the Ottoman Muslim Sultan, Murad IV, that if Ferdinand prevailed against the Protestants, the balance of power might be disrupted, and perhaps he might then turn to the east. The ploy worked, at least initially. Next thing you know, Muslim armies were drawn up alongside Protestant armies to face down a common enemy, just like the coalition the Vatican is trying to array against humanism today. In fact, the Protestant-Muslim alliance was not as farfetched as one might think; theologically, both believed in predestination of the elect, as opposed to the Catholic doctrine of free will.

People who speculate on the “what-ifs” of history have a hard time with what would have happened if the Muslim-Protestant coalition had destroyed the Habsburgs. My guess is that we’d all be praying to Allah today, since the Habsburgs were the only force that ever prevented the Muslims from overrunning the rest of Europe. What actually happened back in 1626, though, was that over on the other side of his empire Murad suffered an embarrassing defeat against the Persians, and thus hastily withdrew his armies from the Protestant camp. The abandoned Protestants then surrendered without a fight, signing a treaty at Bratislava giving Ferdinand nearly everything he wanted.

Ferdinand proceeded to squander his success, largely because the Jesuits persuaded him that his brilliant military commander wasn’t religious enough, but that’s another story. Today’s story is the travesty of Christians once again trying to ally with Muslims against a common enemy. When Cardinal Tauran gushes about the common “human and moral values” of Islam and Christianity, is he talking about polygamy? The Church prattles on until it’s blue in the face about marriage being between one man and one woman, yet is now delighted to ally with those who say no, it’s between one man and four women. Is he talking about genital mutilation? Al-Azhar, the Muslim equivalent of the Vatican, says it’s a critical part of Islam; when the Cardinal urges the rights of conscience to defy laws of the state, does he mean the anti-mutilation laws as well?

Is he talking about evolution? The Catholic Church, unlike many Protestants, today acknowledges the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution. Islam most emphatically does not. Since this is all about cynical politics rather than moral principles, would the Church be willing to throw evolution over the side in order to cement a more perfect union against humanism with its Muslim allies?

For your sake and mine, let’s hope this latest Christian-Muslim joint venture turns out as poorly as the one back in 1626.

Luis Granados

The following is a guest post by Jason Torpy, President of the Military Association of Atheists & Freethinkers. He delivered the following remarks to the Pennsylvania Nonbelievers on September 11, 2011, at the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg, PA.

I want to open by talking about why I’m here today. 9/11 is a tragedy, not a holiday or a political platform or a reason to justify or condemn ideologies. Proper activities to mark the anniversary of a tragedy do not include media blitzes, profiteering, or recruiting. Proper activities include respect and consolation for the families of the victims, first and foremost. Also included, I think, is a solemn effort to learn from the tragedy, both the causes and our reactions. It is this latter activity that I hope to focus on today – how did we react to 9/11, how can we prevent the next 9/11, and when tragedy strikes again, how can we better react.

On 9/11 2001, 3000 people died, with thousands more injured. This was a coordinated series of 4 hijackings by 19 Al Qaeda operatives. In the dismay of such a large attack on US soil, the institution of patriotic, xenophobic, religious, and militaristic fervor instilled in the population by our leaders has resulted in a decade of wars and the degeneration of a century of American goodwill around the world. Everyone knows these basic, terrible facts. I fought in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. For over a year, I served with the Army’s 1st Armored Division first holding Baghdad and then moving south to quell a political Shi’i uprising. Even then, I had questions about deploying. My motives were simple: To help the Iraqi people rebuild from our invasion and the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Many other people — soldiers, leaders, voters — had many other purposes in mind: a Christian crusade to convert Muslims, a corporate push to seize Middle East oil, a breakup of a terrorist stronghold, a defensive action to stop a nuclear attack, an imperialistic expansion of western dominance, simple vengeance, and even blind, stupid politics. On Big Think, David Ropeik, a Harvard instructor specializing in risk and fear recently wrote, “The war in Iraq was possible only because the American public was afraid.” All those reasons, in some combination, were held by all the soldiers in Iraq and the leaders that sent soldiers to Iraq. All those reasons were in the minds of American allies, American enemies, and of the people we were supposedly trying to liberate.

But were any of those reasons valid? I don’t have the answers, but as we continue these wars and consider the next war, in Libya, or Somalia, or Egypt, or Iran, or Russia, or China, I hope we reject corporate interests, imperial interests, and most of all fear and vengeance. Some people say proudly that they are already against the next war. Can we rest comfortably in a cocoon of pacifism, ignoring cries for help from the oppressed, calls for support from our allies, and threats of violence from those who would do us harm? When we have humanitarian and purely defensive goals, military action is sometimes the only recourse in a violent world. Silent protests, airlifts of food, diplomatic action, and NGOs are part of the toolset, but, war is also an option.

Invasion of Afghanistan was the immediate response to 9/11, barely a month after the attacks. The Afghanistan war has always been on a smaller scale, always been more closely related to the 9/11 attacks, and always been easier to label as a purely defensive action intended to root the terrorists out of their home in Taliban territory. In fact, my original order to Iraq was not for Operation Iraqi Freedom, but rather as an extension of Operation Enduring Freedom, the Afghanistan War operation. The character of that war and its continuance provided the military and political foundations for expansion of military action into Iraq. The expansion into Iraq also carried an expansion from national defense to more questionable goals and outcomes.

As we reflect on 9/11, we pause to remember the thousands who died. As atheists and humanists, we know that they are gone in the literal sense, but we can focus on their legacy and what we, the living, can learn from their lives and deaths. We the living will shape the legacy of those lost in the 9/11 attacks. We the living may grow from tragedy or perpetuate tragedy. Our reactions as a nation have resulted in over 6000 US dead in continuing wars, as well as those dead from coalition forces. The smallest estimates put civilian casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars at well over 100,000. The near term economic cost of the 9/11 attacks were about one hundred billion dollars in lost GDP and rebuilding costs. The cost of war is impossible to pin down but is certainly well over a trillion dollars. Add to that cost the eradication of American goodwill around the world, the expansion of Executive war authority, and loss of freedoms due to the Patriot Act. Everyone should think very hard about whether they would trade those costs for another 9/11.

Last month, the International Humanist & Ethical Union held their triennial World Congress with a focus on Peace. As representative from the US Military Association of Atheists & Freethinkers, I presented on humanists in military service. One key argument I made was the influence that we, as rationalists, skeptics, humanists, and ethical atheists, can bring to both Jus in Bello and Jus Ad Bellum, that is the entry into Just War and the execution of war in a just manner. As humanists, we have the opportunity to promote humanitarian rather than vengeful reaction to terrorism and tragedy. I can’t say what the right response was to 9/11. I can’t say whether invasion of Afghanistan, invasion of Iraq, or the continuance of either of those wars for so long was necessary to defend the United States. I can’t help but wonder if the forces of terrorism could withstand a trillion dollars of roads, schools, and hospitals.

It is easy to fall into the animosity of “us and them,” but humanity is not so diverse. In viewing a picture of the Earth taken by a space probe as it left the solar system, Sagan saw a pale blue dot. About this pale blue dot that was Earth, Sagan said,

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

This means that even in the face of tragedy, when the world swells from a pale blue dot to a monstrous and frightening eye of pain and misery, we must remember that we are all in this together. With all of our differences and fears and hurts and desires, we must see people as people, equal in worth and dignity. Even when we take up arms in order to free the oppressed from tyrants, it must be to bring us closer together and not merely to punish and destroy our brothers and sisters who may look different and live far away.

We humanists have no monopoly on morality. It is absolutely essential that we join hands with those Christians, Muslims, Jews, and other spiritual persons who identify more with a supernatural element to the world. This is important not least because we are brothers and sisters on this planet. For some humanists, our ideological commitment to naturalism and reason puts us at odds with adherents of various religions. It becomes easy and even comfortable to hold up those events of 9/11 as proof of the universal evils of religion. We cannot look at radical, violent religious extremism and call it mainstream religion. We have friends, family, co-workers, and even fellow townspeople who show the positive face of religion. Why exploit this tragedy to build bigger walls between us?
We should see this as an opportunity to reach out to those who have felt the deep despair of fellow humans doing evil, especially fellow humans who claim the same ideology. Whether by taking solace in a higher power or through a naturalistic and humanistic perspective, we all mourn in our own way. We can reach out and hold hands in order to understand the tragedy of 9/11 and to eliminate its causes. We can join hands to rise up against intolerance, religious division, and violent extremism. We can stand as allies in our goal of peace and unity, even if we draw our inspiration from different sources. We can console the victims and those closest to victims even better if we do so as partners without rancor and divisiveness.

But there are still those with a different agenda who will promote violence, condone the attacks as justified, look for conspiracies under every rock, or try to place blame on all those who carry labels like “Muslim” or “believer” or who have faces or skin colors similar to those of the hijackers. Will we join together against those who are different, or will we join together with those who seek peace? Will we seek out allies who seek peace, or will we seek out enemies to blame and to ostracize and to kill?

I hope that we can all keep in perspective that we are brothers and sisters on what Sagan called this pale blue dot. In the face of tragedy, I hope that our differences become smaller, not larger. As we consider military options, we should do so in order to free people from suffering, not to seek vengeance or to destroy enemies. We must ask ourselves hard questions about how we have reacted to the one great tragedy of 9/11. Have the wars, legislation, foreign policy, and cultural shifts in the United States been for the better or for the worse? If for the worse, then we can start today to change for the better. Solutions and salvation will only come from us, and can only be better when we respect our diversity and work together. We say that we will never forget 9/11. My hope is that we will continue to learn from 9/11.

Do you pay too much in taxes? Sure you do. Here’s a terrific way you can save a bundle, that’s perfectly legal.

First, figure out how much you pay in total expenses for housing – rent, mortgage, etc. Say it’s $20,000 a year, to pick a round number. Then, go to your employer and say “Instead of giving me $20,000 in something you call ‘salary,’ give me the same $20,000 in something you call a ‘housing allowance.’ That way, I won’t have to pay any taxes on that $20,000, which will save me many thousands of dollars a year!”

I know what you’re thinking: that’s too easy. The government would never let you get away with a scam like that, because it would say that being paid $20,000 of “housing allowance” is exactly the same as being paid $20,000 of “salary” – which it is. But the law is right there, in Section 107 of the Internal Revenue Code. There’s only one catch: you have to be a “minister of the gospel”:

Internal Revenue Code Section 107. Rental value of parsonages

In the case of a minister of the gospel, gross income does not include –

(1) the rental value of a home furnished to him as part of his compensation; or

(2) the rental allowance paid to him as part of his compensation, to the extent used by him to rent or provide a home.

Here’s my first question: Why can’t rabbis get this? Or imams? Or Buddhist monks? Last time I checked, none of these guys had anything to do with the “gospel,” which is universally defined as the first four books of the New Testament. I guess this is what the fundamentalists are talking about when say America is a “Christian nation.”

Here’s my next question: Once I get ordained, can I get this boondoggle for more than one home? That’s an important issue, because these days with government promoting religion at every turn lots of God experts are making lots of money, and have homes all over the place. Recently the Tax Court came down with a definitive ruling: the sky’s the limit, and “ministers of the gospel” can get tax-free housing allowances for as many mansions as they can con their flocks into paying for. After all, reasoned the learned judges, when the tax code talks about exemptions for a “child” it allows the same exemption for multiple children; so when it allows an exemption for a “home,” it must mean multiple “homes.” The millions of Americans whose one and only home was lost through foreclosure in the past few years are free to go to church and be comforted by a God expert who has lots of homes, all provided tax-free.

The case is fascinating because of the taxpayer who was its subject. Phil Driscoll is a gifted trumpeter, who played with artists like Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, and Blood, Sweat & Tears in the 1970s and won a Grammy in 1984. Government taxes the hell out of entertainers, though, as the Beatles so eloquently described. [Do yourself a favor and clink on the link.] So Driscoll gravitated toward God, using his “Mighty Horn Ministries” not only to rake in bucks from believers but to do it in a way that supported a lavish lifestyle, all tax free. When he wasn’t flying his church airplane, he was driving his church Porsche, to and from his church homes at lake resorts. Unfortunately, he got a little carried away with the idea of following God’s law rather than man’s, and wound up getting convicted of conspiracy and tax evasion in 2006, and sentenced to a year in federal prison. (I’m not certain whether he tried to exclude the fair rental value of his cell from his income tax for that year.) When he got out, he still had all those homes, and our divinely inspired Tax Court now says he doesn’t have to pay tax on the “allowance” he receives for any of them.

Here’s my next question: Isn’t there a lot more than rental value involved in maintaining a home? “Minister of the gospel” Rick Warren, President Obama’s favorite pastor, knows there are lots of other costs, too. So a few years back he started excluding from his tax return items like insurance, repairs, utilities, new furniture, even his gardeners – gotta have gardeners, right? Not because he needed the money, mind you, but on behalf of all those other poorer pastors out there who couldn’t keep their heads above water if they had to pay taxes on the value of their own church-provided gardeners.

Rev. Warren won his case in Tax Court, jut like trumpeter Driscoll did. Then the IRS appealed to the Ninth Circuit, where a funny thing happened. IRS had no intention of questioning the constitutionality of Section 107, because that would step on way too many toes, and bring down the wrath of organized religion on the administration (at that time, headed by Bill Clinton). But the bad sports at the Ninth Circuit raised the constitutionality question on their own, as they have the power to do, and ordered both parties to write briefs on the issue. What’s more, since they (correctly) expected both parties to write briefs saying there was nothing at all wrong with Section 107, they appointed their own independent expert, a Southern Cal law professor, to prepare his own report on the issue. His conclusion: of course it’s unconstitutional! Slam dunk.

“Aaaack!” This was the official response of the IRS, by this point under control of the Bush administration. It was too late to withdraw the appeal, and they couldn’t stand by and let all those God experts start paying taxes the same way you and I do. So they went to Congress, where there is always tremendous bipartisan support for every penny doled out to politically influential clergy. With lightning speed, a law was enacted in 2002 letting Rev. Warren keep every penny of his prior tax-exempt income while clarifying that in the future only the “fair rental value” of the home (now “homes”) is tax-free. This took the case out of the hands of the court, and everyone (other than the rest of America’s taxpayers) breathed a sigh of relief.

The general counsel of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention tells us that for his 46,000 churches, “the housing allowance is critically important for making ends meet – it is not a luxury.” Besides, God experts provide an important service to their communities, so they deserve preferential treatment. That is a terrific argument. Let’s see: who else provides important services to their communities? Doctors? Yep. Nurses? Check. Teachers? Firefighters? Farmers? My personal vote would be for preferential tax treatment for plumbers, who solve more critical real-world problems every day than any black-robed charlatans ever have.

Rev. Warren still isn’t satisfied, though. Just a month ago he was in high dudgeon again, whining that “HALF of America pays NO taxes. Zero. So they’re happy for tax rates to be raised on the other half that DOES pay taxes.” I’m guessing he counts himself among the half that does pay taxes. I’m also guessing that his accuracy on the facts of what is happening in America today is about the same as his accuracy on the facts of what happened in Palestine 2000 years ago. Half of Americans don’t pay Social Security tax, Medicare tax, telephone tax, or tax on their beer? How can I get into that half?