Atheists Estranged by Pastor Bush

Article describing the exclusion many atheists felt when pastor Bush decided to react to the attack on America with his personal god beliefs rather than a caring and pro-human concern for all Americans:

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On the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, as the president spoke from a pulpit and a heartsick country united under patriotism and God, Lydia Rice felt estranged.

Rice ached as much as anyone, but as President Bush spoke to Americans from the National Cathedral, surrounded by leaders of the country's major faiths, she felt she was on the fringes of the conversation.

And in a way, she was: Rice, a 40-year-old Silicon Valley engineer, is an atheist. "I felt a tremendous need for a sense of community and even ceremony," she said, but without the religious overtones that colored the national response to the tragedy.

So on Sunday, Rice organized the Secular Memorial in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Dozens of atheists and other nonreligious people gathered to remember those lost during the terrorist attacks. They recited the original Pledge of Allegiance, which was modified by Congress in 1954 to include the phrase "under God."

For Rice, a highlight was the playing of John Lennon's "Imagine," famed for this nonreligious sentiment:

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Many atheists, no matter how patriotic or saddened, have been disturbed at the tenor of the past three weeks. From the frequent playing of "God Bless America" at sporting events to the president's assertion that "God is not neutral," religion has taken center stage. Interfaith services have been the most common of communal responses.

To atheists, the response crosses a great divide. They cringe when the government rallies the country by formalizing days of prayer.

They ask whether the country doesn't risk being a bit more like its extremist enemies when God is used to claim the moral high ground. They worry that their cause of separating church and state has become a little bit tougher.

And they wonder how people could continue to believe in God after Sept. 11.

"If that wasn't a wake-up call to a religious nation, I don't know what is," said Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheist, the country's oldest organization for nonbelievers. "That said to me, 'There is no God.' Where was he, on a coffee break?"

Johnson said she posed that question while being interviewed on a Louisiana radio station and was struck at the different answers. "One caller said God was weeping.

Another said I needed to understand God allowed this terrorist attack to happen for a reason. Another caller said [Jesus] was where he's always been, where he was when God put him on the cross. They all seemed to know where God was."

Johnson said she drew inspiration from the heroism of firefighters, police officers and rescue workers because they symbolized to her what atheism is about--humans acting to help humans.

Rice makes that argument by paraphrasing the 19th century American philosopher Robert Ingersoll: "Hands that help are better far than lips that pray."

Rice said that, for a time after the events of Sept. 11, she wished she could believe differently. "I told my sweetheart, 'I wish I were religious.' [Religion] makes no sense to me, but I need something, and I can understand why people are religious. But I can't."

Henda Lea, 56, president of the Secular Humanists of the East Bay, based in Berkeley, expressed a similar wistfulness, recalling that her own mother's death years earlier was made more difficult by the fact that Lea did not believe in God. "In my mind, she's gone forever," she said. "I'll never see her again. The things that gave me comfort are the things she did in life."

Atheist Randi Mendelsohn of Staten Island was one of those people who scattered as the twin towers collapsed. Getting home and hearing the president reciting the 23rd Psalm angered her.

"During the national day of prayer, what was I supposed to do?" she asked. "Is praying the answer? To what? Has it helped yet? Are we better now?"

Molleen Matsumura, 53, of Berkeley, said going to Sunday's Secular Memorial fulfilled the need of any human being: to hug, shake hands, share a smile and compassion at a trying time.

She said she knows of atheists who go to church simply because they like the music or singing in the choir, and the companionship.

"The human thing is to reach out to other people," she said.

On its Web site, American Atheist has criticized the government and religious leaders for using God as a rallying tool. The sites knocks Bush for having the government organize prayer vigils and other sectarian events.

Johnson said such efforts not only flout the separation of church and state, but leave out millions of Americans who do not believe in God. (An exit poll during the 2000 election by the Los Angeles Times Poll found that 9% of voters described themselves as atheists or nonreligious.)

"We're not going to be quiet," Johnson said. "If they keep rallying people by using God, we're going to speak out."

In the 1960s, America's most famous atheist was the late Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who founded American Atheists. She fought a landmark court battle that led to the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling banning compulsory prayer and Bible reading in public schools. She was widely despised, and today Johnson is feeling some of those same vibes.

"So far, I've been told that I'm on the wrong side of patriotism, history and morality," she said. "No more in any other time have I felt as lonely."

'If that wasn't a wake-up call to a religious nation, I don't know what is. That said to me, "There is no God." Where was he, on a coffee break?'

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Source:

• L.A. Times [link inactive]

Article describing aspects of faith known as fundamentalism and what can happen when fundamentalists use their fervent faith in god as the primary reason for being, to the detriment of humankind in the real world we all know and share:

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Q: A few readers have asked whether it would be proper to call the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks 'fundamentalists,' and, if so, are they similar in kind to Christian and Jewish fundamentalists?

A: Scholars say fundamentalism is an appropriate label to describe the belief system of the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But they make clear that there are two kinds of
fundamentalism: one that is active, and one that is inactive.

Both groups share a passionate revulsion with the modern, secular world, which they see as seductive but also corrosive and corrupt. To them it is a world in which God and tradition have been expunged.

"The typical fundamentalist view is a wish to rescue the world from its own self," said Nancy Ammerman, a sociologist of religion at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Conn.

Quiescent fundamentalists respond by fortifying their communities against the outside world and building walls that separate them from secular culture. Their co-religionists argue that the only appropriate response
to the evils of modernity is a counterattack. This group of fundamentalists believes the best defense against secularism is an offense.

There are several examples of this kind of activist fundamentalism. Christians have killed doctors who perform abortions. Jews in Israel have thrown stones at cars driving on the Sabbath or have pushed for the expulsion
of Arabs living in the Palestinian-controlled territories.

The extremist Muslims who undertook the Sept. 11 attacks were among the most sophisticated and savvy of fundamentalists, but scholars say their behavior fits a pattern. While extremists reject modern culture, they
are often enamored with technological innovation and are willing to use it to the best effect -- whether that means building bombs, learning how to fly or, as is rumored, developing chemical and biological warfare.

"They're not peasants or astrophysicists," said R. Scott Appleby, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame and an expert on fundamentalism. "Sociologists have found that the rank and file are drawn from technological and scientific fields, especially engineering."

Appleby said the activist fundamentalist approach to scriptures reflects their professional training. They read sacred texts as though they were blueprints or operational manuals and interpret passages in a highly calculated, literal way.

Finally, in their war against secular culture, activist fundamentalists tend to insist that the past offers the only true picture of proper religious devotion. Muslim fundamentalists have a vision of a past in which nations
were ruled by a religious elite -- preferably Muslim.

"There's a strong emphasis on a kind of golden age and a pure text undefiled by any human interpretation," Ammerman said. Sociologists say that in reality there never was a golden age when everyone was devout.
History shows that religion is not fixed in stone like a monument. Its more like a river with many rivulets, changing over time.

Still, the impulse to glorify the past is strong.

"It's a myth, but it's a powerful myth," Ammerman said. "It's the way fundamentalists tell the story of the world."

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Source:

• News Observer [link inactive]

Sharon Speaks of U.S. Appeasement of Arabs

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American relations with Israel plunged to their lowest point in a decade yesterday when the White House denounced as "unacceptable" statements by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon comparing the US coalition-building in the Arab world to British appeasement of the Nazis in the 1930s.

The Bush Administration was reported to be infuriated by Mr Sharon's comments and White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told journalists that President George Bush felt personally affronted by the comparison to British prime minister Neville Chamberlain and the discredited policies of appeasement in the run-up to World War II.

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Mr Sharon said: "Don't repeat the terrible mistake of 1938 when the enlightened democracies of Europe decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for a temporary solution. Do not try to placate the Arabs at our expense ... Israel will not be Czechoslovakia."

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Source:

• Sydney Morning Herald [link inactive]

Reference:

• U.S./Bush Hypocrisy

U.S. Launches 'Anti-Terror' Satellite

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The rocket is believed to have been carrying a top secret KH-11 spy satellite - that could monitor Afghanistan ahead of an expected military strike.

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Pin-point accuracy

Experts from Aviation Week and Space Technology Magazine said the satellite was likely to be equipped with a digital camera able to pick out objects as small as 10 cm (4 inches) across on the ground.

Orbiting hundreds of miles above the earth the 15 tonne KH-11 is capable of tracking small groups of people walking on the ground as well as vehicle and weapons movements.

It can monitor conversations and even spot campfires at night using infrared technology.

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Source:

• BBC