"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution."- Benjamin FranklinLast night on CNN's Paula Zahn Now, they presented a story about a family that was forced to move because they were atheists: ZAHN: Imagine being chased out of your home, your neighborhood, even your community because of your beliefs. You're about to meet a family who says it happened to them and we're bringing their story out into the open tonight because there are at least three million people in this country like them, people who may also face this kind of discrimination and persecution. Here's faith and values correspondent Delia Gallagher.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was scared. I was beyond upset. I have never experienced such anger and hatred.
DELIA GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This couple, we're calling them John and Jane Smith, are so afraid they asked us not to identify them. Two years ago they say the small Mississippi town where they lived turned against them after they complained to the principal of their son's public elementary school about class time devoted to bible study and prayer.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We were pariahs. Nobody would speak to us. It was, nobody would let their children play with my son.
GALLAGHER: The Smith's story made local headlines when it was revealed that they were atheists and soon after, tensions at the school escalated. John says members of the community even called his boss at work.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think they called him to complain about the fact that he had brought an atheist to town.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We were absolutely isolated. People would drive the house, park in front of our house and stare like we were in a zoo.
GALLAGHER: Eventually they left town altogether.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... nice place to live.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: ... nice place to raise them.
GALLAGHER: While some atheists try to hide their secular views, Jean and Mike Rice are atheists who have spoken out.
MIKE RICE, ATHEIST: As an atheist, I'm the last minority that it's OK to really bash or put down.
GALLAGHER: The Rice's say they frequently encountered intolerance.
JEAN RICE: We're regularly told that we're going to hell, that we're sending our children to hell.
GALLAGHER: In the last town they lived, Jean Rice says soon after confiding her atheism to a friend, her landlord told the Rices they would have to move.
JEAN RICE, ATHEIST: Within a few days of my telling her that we are atheist, she -- I started hearing from other people, oh, are you atheist? And it was quite shocking and within a few weeks, my landlord, our landlord gave us notice.
GALLAGHER: The Rices say they can't prove that religious discrimination was the reason they were asked to leave, but they found the timing suspicious.
MIKE RICE: It's hard on the kids, because our daughter had no one to play with for a long time.
GALLAGHER: In the U.S., the number of atheists is estimated between 1 and 3 percent of the overall population. That's at least three million people. A recent study by the University of Minnesota found that atheists are the least trusted minority group in the United States and are less accepted than other marginalized groups, including Muslims and homosexuals.
LORI LIPMAN BROWN, SECULAR COALITION FOR AMERICA: I get calls from all over the United States from people who have been harassed, ostracized, sometimes lost their job because of discrimination against non-theistic Americans.
RYAN ANDERSON, JUNIOR FELLOW, FIRST THINGS: We feel, to a certain extent, that atheists are very much on the attack.
GALLAGHER: Ryan Anderson with the religious journal "First Things" says atheists themselves contribute to the mistrust.
ANDERSON: Part of the public persona and the public image of atheism is what's presented by people suing to remove "In God We Trust" from the coins or God phrase in the pledge of allegiance. And when that militant atheism becomes kind of like the public image of atheism, I think that gives rise to a lot of discontent with atheism.
JEAN RICE: When they can talk about religion and preach on the street corner but if we try to do the equal time, if we try to go out there and say as much about there is no God.
MIKE RICE: I'm the one being oppressed at that point.
GALLAGHER: Delia Gallagher, CNN, Colorado.
(END VIDEOTAPE) The transcript is HERE, scroll way down almost to the bottom. This brings up a related story from last month... LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The note on Blair Scott's windshield wasn't a nice one.
The anonymous writer had to have seen Scott's atheist-themed bumper sticker, an uncommon sight in the small south Alabama town where he lived at the time.
"It just amazed me that people would take time out of their day to return to their car, grab a pen and paper and write a 'You're going to hell and you're going to burn in a lake of fire,' and stick it under my windshield," said Scott, a 36-year-old veteran who installs computer systems in prisons.
Outspoken atheists like Scott remain a minority, but there are dozens of atheist chapters sprouting up around the country, and even many in Southern states dominated by conservative Christians.
Many who consider themselves atheists said they're afraid to mention their views on religion or that they don't believe in deities. It's an especially unpopular opinion in the South, they said.
"Do I think that any of these people are really afraid if someone knows they're an atheist that they're going to get shot down on the street tomorrow? No. But the thought is always there in the back of your mind," said Joe Mays, Louisville computer technician who helped organize an atheist group that meets monthly. The AP story is here: Atheists Say They've Been Threatened Over Their Views. Yes, atheists seem to be the last group that is still openly persecuted. In fact, discrimination is still on the books in many states, see; State Constitutions that Discriminate Against Atheists. Even though we are a small percentage of the US population, poorly organized, and hold almost no power, we are regularly portrayed as some kind of major threat to the social order and are blamed for everything from 9-11 to the so-called "War on Christmas." We are tired of just being along for the ride while religionists on all sides drive us toward their various End Times fantasies. We are tired of being persecuted while being accused of persecution. Some of us have had enough and are standing up and speaking out. Despite attacks from both sides of the political spectrum for their recent books, people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are stepping up to the plate, and groups like the Secular Coalition for America (SCA) and the Rational Response Squad (RRS) are forming to change the current dynamic. More about this new movement in America can be found here: Atheists Challenge The Religious Right. FreeThought Action is working toward becoming a part of this movement and we welcome nontheists of all stripes to join us in this effort.
TAMPA - A 21-year-old woman told police Saturday that a man grabbed her off Howard Avenue and raped her behind a building during the Gasparilla festivities. But officers investigating the case arrested her after learning she had an outstanding warrant from her teenage years for failure to pay restitution. She spent the next two nights in jail. ...snip... Adding to the mother's ire is her claim that a jail nurse prevented her daughter from taking a second dose of emergency contraception prescribed by a nurse at a clinic as part of a rape examination. The jail nurse, said the mother and the victim's attorney, denied the medication for religious reasons. More...
Who's an evangelical? Until last year the answer seemed clear: Evangelical was the label of choice of Christians with conservative views on politics, economics and Biblical morality. Now the word may be losing its moorings, sliding toward the same linguistic demise that "fundamentalist" met decades ago because it has been misunderstood, misappropriated and maligned. "Save the E-Word," was the headline on a fall editorial in Christianity Today, the 50-year-old magazine founded by Billy Graham. It quoted opinion polls in England and the USA showing "the tide has gone out" on the term, increasingly seen as negative and extremist. "When I travel, I call myself a 'creedal Christian' now," says Francis Beckwith, president of the Evangelical Theological Society and a professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. More...
Police in Papua New Guinea say four women, believed by fellow villagers to have used sorcery to cause a fatal road crash, have been tortured with hot metal rods to confess, then murdered and buried standing up in a pit. More...
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- A clutch of modern pagans honored Zeus at a 1,800-year-old temple in the heart of Athens on Sunday -- the first known ceremony of its kind held there since the ancient Greek religion was outlawed by the Roman Empire in the fourth century. More...
OTTAWA, CANADA - Canada's first sextuplets, born more than a week ago, are facing an additional complication to the usual premature baby's struggle for survival: Their parents' religion forbids blood transfusions, a typical part of a preemie's treatment. More...
DUBLIN, Ireland (CNN) -- At a recent debate over the battle for Islamic ideals in England, a British-born Muslim stood before the crowd and said Prophet Mohammed's message to nonbelievers is: "I come to slaughter all of you." More...
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A mother who claimed she was sacrificing her young sons for God by tossing them to their deaths in San Francisco Bay was convicted Tuesday of second-degree murder. More...
A televangelist with a large following across the United States is being sued by relatives over her claim that prayer cured her brother's throat cancer. Darlene Bishop's claims appear in her book, Your Life Follows Your Words, which fails to mention that her brother, the songwriter Darrell "Wayne" Perry, died of the disease 18 months ago. Mr Perry's four children have filed a lawsuit against their aunt for wrongful death, claiming that she persuaded him to stop chemotherapy and to depend instead upon God's healing. More...
In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson predicted Tuesday that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in "mass killing" late in 2007. More...
Would someone please send Dennis Prager -- and his Townhall compatriots -- a copy of the Constitution? More...
The whole thing lasts about an hour. Watch it all HERE.
Due to pressure from Bush Administration officials, the National Park Service is not permitted to give an official age for the Grand Canyon. Additionally, a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood is for sale at the National Park's bookstore. More...
More people in Britain think religion causes harm than believe it does good, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. It shows that an overwhelming majority see religion as a cause of division and tension - greatly outnumbering the smaller majority who also believe that it can be a force for good. More...
ATHEIST GROUP LAUNCHES $25,000 SALVO IN WAR ON CHRISTMAS
"The Blasphemy Challenge" Rewards Participants For Demonstrating Non-Belief On YouTube
Los Angeles -- December 18, 2006. As part of its ongoing War on Christmas, the Rational Response Squad has launched a $25,000 campaign to entice young people to publicly renounce any belief in the sky God of Christianity.
Called "The Blasphemy Challenge," this campaign encourages participants to commit what Christian doctrine calls the only unforgivable sin -- blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. (The "Holy Spirit" is an invisible ghost who Christians believe dwells on Earth as God's representative.)
Participants who videotape their blasphemy and upload it to YouTube will receive a free DVD of the hit documentary THE GOD WHO WASN'T THERE (http://www.thegodmovie.com/), which normally sells for $24.98. Beyond Belief Media, the distributor of THE GOD WHO WASN'T THERE, has donated 1001 DVDs to the Rational Response Squad for The Blasphemy Challenge.
More than 160 participants have already blasphemed the Holy Spirit and earned free DVDs during the pre-launch phase of the Blasphemy Challenge. Their videos can be viewed at:
http://www.blasphemychallenge.com
While anyone can participate in The Blasphemy Challenge, the Rational Response Squad is focused on reaching a young demographic. To publicize The Blasphemy Challenge to young people, today the Rational Response Squad begins an online advertising campaign focused on 25 sites popular with teens such as Xanga, Friendster, Boy Scout Trail, Tiger Beat, Teen Magazine, YM, CosmoGirl! and Seventeen.
Find out more at:
http://www.blasphemychallenge.com
ABOUT THE RATIONAL RESPONSE SQUAD
The Rational Response Squad addresses irrational emergencies of all kinds, especially the ongoing emergency created by religious faith. What started in February 2005 as a popular internet radio show has since blossomed into an activist group with 21,000 members, seven regional chapters and a fast-growing youth division organized at FreeThinkingTeens.com.
The Squad focuses on debunking false claims, publicizing the work of atheists and skeptics, and directly engaging the faithful with the goal of converting them to reason. The Squad's War on Christmas also includes initiatives to give free THE GOD WHO WASN'T THERE DVDs to Christians who request them as well as covert operations that plant DVDs in Christian churches. See:
http://www.rationalresponders.com
ABOUT "THE GOD WHO WASN'T THERE"
BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE did it to the gun culture.
SUPER SIZE ME did it to fast food. THE GOD WHO WASN'T THERE does it to religion.
A #1 bestselling independent documentary at Amazon.com, THE GOD WHO WASN'T THERE holds Christianity up to a bright spotlight and asks the questions few dare to ask. Starting off by exploring the case that Jesus never actually existed, the movie goes on to examine other aspects of the Christian religion through interviews with Richard Dawkins, author Sam Harris, historian Richard Carrier and many others. Los Angeles Times: "Provocative -- to put it mildly." See:
http://www.thegodmovie.com
MORE DETAILS:
http://www.blasphemychallenge.com/ UPDATE: NBC News story on The Blasphemy Challenge
The Harper's Review of Dawkins: HEREThe rebuttal of the Harper's Review: HEREAnother attack on Dawkins: HEREA middle-of-the-road semi-defense of Dawkins: HEREA favorable review of Dawkins and Harris: HERE
We know from a multi-year series of findings that the administration of President George W. Bush has systematically manipulated science to comply with ideology - and satisfy the political agenda of his right-wing base. More...
Maybe the pivotal moment came when Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in physics, warned that "the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief," or when a Nobelist in chemistry, Sir Harold Kroto, called for the John Templeton Foundation to give its next $1.5 million prize for "progress in spiritual discoveries" to an atheist - Richard Dawkins, the Oxford evolutionary biologist whose book "The God Delusion" is a national best-seller. Or perhaps the turning point occurred at a more solemn moment, when Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and an adviser to the Bush administration on space exploration, hushed the audience with heartbreaking photographs of newborns misshapen by birth defects - testimony, he suggested, that blind nature, not an intelligent overseer, is in control. Somewhere along the way, a forum this month at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., which might have been one more polite dialogue between science and religion, began to resemble the founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told. More...Online videos from the Beyond Belief forum can be found HERE. I loved this quote: "Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization." - Dr. Steven Weinberg
Gov. Rick Perry, after a God and country sermon attended by dozens of political candidates Sunday, said that he agreed with the minister that non-Christians will be condemned to hell. More...
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