Daily Archives: August 2, 2022

When discussing religious beliefs, the language we use often sorts people into rigid, binary groups. Youre either a theist or an atheist. A believer or a nonbeliever. But take a closer look at how people conceptualize God and the supernatural, and these distinctions begin to lose their meaning.

When somebody calls themselves an atheist, for example, what are they really conveying about their beliefs or lack thereof? Even though the dictionary definition of atheist is fairly clear someone who lacks belief in God or gods the term doesnt tell you much on its own.

To be an atheist is to entirely reject belief in the supernatural, or belief in a god or a deity, Clay Routledge, an existential psychologist and writer, told Big Think. But I actually think that its a much more complex and much more interesting story. Even among atheists, theres lots of different ways of conceptualizing this idea.

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As religious affiliation continues to decline in the U.S. and other nations, its worth considering the different shapes that a lack of belief in the supernatural can take. While not an exhaustive list, here are a few ways to conceptualize what people mean when they use the word atheist.

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The nonreligious: One of the broadest types of atheism is simply not subscribing to a religion. Its often the case that nonreligious people arent necessarily rejecting the existence of the supernatural or God (after all, you can be nonreligious and still believe in forms of spirituality), but rather the dogmas of traditional religions.

Then again, not subscribing to a religion doesnt require you to actively reject any particular belief system. It simply means you dont subscribe to one. As such, disinterest might be a key factor for some people in this group; maybe they couldnt care less about grand questions concerning the other side.

In 2021, the Pew Research Centers National Public Opinion Reference Survey found that 29% of U.S. adults consider themselves religious nones. This nones group comprised multiple subgroups, including one that arguably best describes the disinterested nonreligious: people who said their religious identity was nothing in particular.

Emotional atheists: If the nonreligious are the nones, emotional atheists could be considered the religious dones. Emotional atheists are atheists whose lack of belief or active rejection of belief stems primarily from negative emotions.

One example is someone who has become understandably resentful of religion. Maybe they suffered abuse in the church, were disowned due to their parents beliefs, or experienced a tragedy so horrible that they cant understand why God would allow such a thing to occur.

The emotional atheist, driven by negative experiences, actively rejects God. Its a somewhat contradictory position to take, considering that, to be angry at something means, at some level, [you] have a concept of its existence, Routledge told Freethink.

Social atheists: This group might harbor varying levels of religious or spiritual beliefs in their private moments, but they dont care to share or broadcast them. Maybe they consider it rude. Maybe they dont care to participate in the cultural practices of religious life. In any case, the religious or spiritual beliefs are a personal pursuit to this group.

Antitheists: In addition to lacking religious beliefs, antitheists take an active stance against religions. One of the most famous and outspoken writers to argue this viewpoint in recent history was the late Christopher Hitchens, who once said:

Im not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful.

No matter the type, atheists are generally inclined to think God does not exist. But how closely do atheists self-reported beliefs match what they feel deep down?

That was one of the driving questions behind a 2014 study published in The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. In the study, researchers asked atheists and religious individuals to read aloud statements that dared God to do awful things. Examples included:

When asked how unpleasant it was to utter statements like these, the atheists reported not finding it as unpleasant as believers did. Not surprising. After all, if you dont believe in God, these statements should be nothing more than empty words.

But less expected were the results of the participants skin conductance tests, which are used to measure emotional arousal. The results showed that both atheists and believers displayed high emotional arousal while reading the God statements. So, even though the atheists reported that daring God to do awful things wasnt too unpleasant, the physiological measurements suggested otherwise.

One explanation for why atheists experienced heightened arousal while reading the statements is that it would be emotionally unpleasant for anyone to utter such ugly sentiments, regardless of what they believe. However, the researchers also had participants utter statements that were offensive or which wished for bad things to happen, but didnt mention God.

The results showed that atheists were more emotionally affected by the God statements, according to the skin conductance tests. To Routledge, studies like this highlight our often surprising ambivalence toward big existential questions.

Hardcore atheists think that theyre not at all guided by supernatural ideas and concepts, but we know from research that they do have a tendency to engage in teleological thinking to see things in terms of design and purpose, he told Big Think.

Although binary categories like atheist and theist can make it seem like people are rigidly divided along the lines of belief, ambivalence and doubt might render us more similar than it seems. C.S. Lewis, the British writer who converted from atheism to Christianity after a late-night conversation with J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, once wrote:

Believe in God and you will have to face hours when it seems obvious that this material world is the only reality; disbelieve in Him and you must face hours when this material world seems to shout at you that it is not all.

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These are the 4 types of atheism - Big Think

Mark Tooley is terribly vexed. The Statement of Principles signed by national conservatives (including myself) ahead of the NatCon3 conference in Miami is deeply concerning to the president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. Article 4 in particular, on God and Public Religion, is the focus of his suspicion in a recent essay over at Law & Liberty.

Tooley does not mind appreciation of the Bible as a pillar of Western civilization, nor integrating it into public-school curricula. To his credit, this distinguishes him from other right-liberals such as David French. But in Tooleys view, in the latter half of Article 4, things go awry.

That portion of the Statement of Principles reads, in part,

Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private. At the same time, Jews and other religious minorities are to be protected in the observance of their own traditions, in the free governance of their communal institutions, and in all matters pertaining to the rearing and education of their children. Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes.

Tooley wonders whether the national conservatives intend a Christian establishment. What does it mean for public life to be rooted in Christianity? he asks. What does it mean for the state to honor Christianity? And, by extension, he queries whether religious minorities would be subject to coercion. The answers to these questions are implied by the questioner: nothing good. The reader is meant to shudder.

In a Millian vein, Tooley warns that coercion, which presumably encompasses culturally cultivated social stigma, never works. As a good son of the Great Awakenings, he insists that only spontaneous revival will root the nation in transcendence. Any hint of state involvement therein, any governmental thumb on the scale, would be counterproductive, making religion forced, stale, or counterfeit. Best to not meddle as to not muddle.

Hypothetically, if national conservatives are establishmentarians, then we could call Tooleys position public atheism. This is not to imply that Tooley or Christians like himand there are manyare disingenuous or embarrassed by Christianity and the Bible. Rather, public atheism is a typical right-liberal posture akin to what used to be called practical atheism. Older Protestant theology maintained that sincere, full-throated denial of Gods existence was theologically impossible for anyone, the sensus divinitatis being a given per Romans 1 and 2. Yet people can suppress that inescapable knowledge and live as if God is dead. (Even then, as Nietzsche understood, people are not very good at it.)

Public atheism, for our purposes, is marked by suspicion of, and hostility to, whatever smells of formal, state-level recognition and privileging (i.e., honor) of Christianity over and against other faiths on offer. It decries public Christianity as an artificial limitation of the realm of possibility. It is, in a word, pluralism, insofar as it features a kind of religious market fundamentalism. For public atheists, free competition must be prioritized for two reasons: as a competition-based control against monopoly, and as an affirmation of the human faculty most valued by liberals generally, viz., unalloyed choice.

This is not a mere recognition of religious diversity on the ground, but a championing of pluralism as virtue. Usually, for public atheists, pluralism is coded as religious liberty. Specifically, a post-war, post-incorporation conception of the idea is in play. Within this paradigm, the state, the nation, must be neutral. Meaning that it must live as if there is no God, or at least in a way that no particular deity is prioritized to the discomfort of dissenters.

In defense of his position, Tooley appeals to the founding era for historical and, therefore, normative ammunition. A fine instinct, but the maneuver is largely superfluous in this case because Tooley discovers in the period only himself. In fact, the period, as it really was, would likely strike twenty-first century Americans as foreign.

In his narrative, Tooley distinguishes the United States from other nations by ascribing to it not mere tolerationthe prerequisite of which is an established churchbut religious freedom for all. To him, America has always been a pluralist and religious-liberty maximalist (and therefore publicly atheist) nation; ipso facto, national conservatives are an aberration, representing a departure from the nations history and character.

To demonstrate his claim, Tooley exhibits another good instinct: an appeal to state, as opposed to strictly national, activity in the early republic. This approach is correct because any assessment of the nations history must account for its federalist structure as a compound (not consolidated) republic in its original context wherein states served as the moral centers of the country (i.e., state police powers).

Still, his narrative is feeble in part because his source material is artificially limited to the usual suspects, viz., James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, and two Virginia documents: the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom (1786). Unfortunately for Tooley, two founders and two documents do not American history make.

We will ignore at this juncture the colonial background which conditioned the resultant American nation and which, as John Adams instructed, should therefore condition our understanding of the same. Instead, we will proceed to other American source material of the antebellum period.

At the outset we should realize, as Tooley does, that the point of reference for any religious talk in the early republic was Christianity. This is true of the Virginia Statute, wherein the Holy author serves as shorthand for Jesus Christ, as Tooley knows. Even in Jeffersons famous letter to the Danbury Baptists, the language is evidently limited by Christian understanding. Astute progressives too, like Justice John Paul Stevens, and even woke scholars like Khyati Joshi, understand this well, if begrudgingly.

The entire eighteenth-century socio-religious milieu was unquestionably and thoroughly Christian, and corresponding privilege was inevitable. When texts like the Northwest Ordinance (1787) or the Ohio Constitution (1803) reference religion, we know what they were up to. When the second president declared the Constitution fit only for a moral and religious people, what brand of morality and religion was he referring to? Simple: a people who profess and call themselves Christians, as his inaugural address put itdelivered the year after the Treaty of Tripoli, by the way. The same goes for Adamss 1798 address to the militia of his home state. These things must be read in their native context.

More explicitly, we should offset Tooleys Virginian supremacy by briefly surveying other states, which is always more revealing than the private correspondence of elites. Delawares 1776 constitution, for example, required public officials to profess faith in the Trinity and affirm divine inspiration of scripture, as did North Carolina. Georgia and New Hampshire limited officeholding to Protestants whilst reserving toleration for Christians generally. Pennsylvania required an affirmation of Gods existence and a future state of reward and punishment. As a class, New England states provided for public maintenance of Protestant parish ministers.

South Carolina was even more militant. First, the lower Carolinians expressed in 1776 an anxiety typical for the time: fear of Catholic encroachment on free Protestant English settlements via the Quebec Act, as Forrest McDonald noted, an admittedly conspiratorial catalyst for action, perhaps more so than the Stamp Act. Religious sectarianism was a key motivator for eighteenth-century Englishmen. Similarly, some founders, like the so-called Last Puritan Samuel Adams while defining the rights of colonists as Christians in 1772, excluded Catholics from tolerance for reasons of suspicion of insurrectionist tendencies.

And so, in 1778, South Carolina declared itself a tolerant state. Citizens acknowledge that there is one God, and a future state of rewards and punishments, and that God is publicly to be worshipped, shall be freely tolerated, the constitution read. But, as Tooley pointed out, toleration requires an establishment referent. Hence, The Christian Protestant religion shall be deemed, and is hereby constituted and declared to be, the established religion of this State. Any Protestant denomination in South Carolina would enjoy equal religious and civil privileges. Professing Protestants alone were permitted to incorporate religious bodies.

At minimum, this data hampers any clean narrative of religious liberty triumphalism. If states besides Virginia championed broad Protestant establishments and a posture of toleration toward all other sects, then Tooleys declaration to the contrary cannot be as comprehensive as he suggests. That is, it does not provide a sufficient characterization of the nation.

Sed contra, the picture painted by the history of the early republic is one of an ecumenical pan-Protestantism, the style of establishment varying from state to state, with a toleration of non-Protestant minority sects that were not demonstrably injurious to the peace, health, morals, security, and abundance of the nation. Even states without historically strong establishments, like New Jersey, typically limited civil participation to Protestants. The ubiquitous religious tests for office were informed by Reformational doctrinal standards.

To say that America, in its first decades, honored the majority Christian religion would be only half right. It more often honored a Protestant Christianity. Outliers like Maryland, famously governed by an aging colonial Catholic aristocracy, did not offer a real alternative. Knowing the state populace was primarily Protestant, Marylands framers opted for limiting religious liberty simply to the Christian religion. Only a non-denominational general tax for the faith was constitutionally acceptable. Non-Christian minorities were not considered in this regard. Among other things, these early constitutions provided the basis for Justice David Brewers contention in a 1905 lecture series that America was, indeed, a Christian nation.

In Whig historian fashion, Tooley would summarily dismiss the thoroughgoing establishments of Massachusetts or Connecticutor the iron Quaker grip on Pennsylvania, for that matterat the founding by dubbing their demise constitutionally foreordained. Of course, the U.S. Constitution did no such thing. As Justice Clarence Thomas has rightly clarified, the Establishment Clause is properly incapable of incorporation as a federalist amendment. The works of Philip Hamburger and Vincent Phillip Muoz confirm much the same. That is, the clause was intended to protect colonial customs and norms from national government intervention; otherwise no one would have ratified the thing. The process of disestablishment was long and complicated. In the former Puritan colonies, the Great Awakenings and missteps by the Federalist Party owed more to the disintegration of the Standing Order than any constitutional measures.

Tooley wonders what weight, within the American tradition, religious majorities should be given. Historically, the national conservatism statement gets it right. As I have written elsewhere, the Anglo-American common law tradition has always recognized Christianity as integral to its systemMatthew Hale declared it part and parcel with the common law in Rex v. Taylor (1676)but has also emphasized a majoritarian aspect to this analysis. The Supreme Court affirmed more than once general Christianity, or non-denominational Protestantism, as part of the common law. As a matter of social tranquility, then, public blasphemy against Christianity was outlawed, a rationale evident in cases throughout the nineteenth century such as People v. Ruggles (N.Y. 1811) and State v. Chandler (Del. 1837), among others.

To come full circle and answer Tooleys first question: what would national, governmental honor of Christianity look like? The history recounted above notwithstanding, national conservatives are asking for considerably less than a national church, much less the Handmaids Tale-style forced-conversion dystopia our opponents indulgently imagine. Rather, a recovery of those vestiges of our Christian founding only recently jettisoned would be a start. Take two examples: blasphemy laws and Sabbath laws, to say nothing of public architecture, civil rituals, and school curriculumthe expressions of cultural Christianity.

The enthusiastic enforcement of both types of laws is not foreign to America, but fell out of style, rather late in our late-stage republic. Blasphemy laws already mentioned, we may proceed to brief consideration of the Lords Day. Vermont, to take one example, codified observance of the Sabbath in 1793. Blue laws were ubiquitous in early America. Protection of Christian practice and the morals and health of the community, as one court put it in 1878, by enforced cessation of the worship of Mammon on Sunday, endured up through the twentieth century. Economic and cultural recognition of Christian living should be unobjectionable to a Christian majority, to say the least. Would such honor of what is even now the predominant faith really be too coercive, too establishmentarian for public atheists to stomach? It has not been so for most Americans in history.

Not to be overlooked is Tooleys attempt to root his aversion to coercion (state and social) in Christian anthropology. A rebuttal can be easily formed on the same basis. National conservatives cling to the pre-modern view that man is, by nature, both religious and social. Both horizontally and vertically, so to speak, he is not alone. No hypothetical radical autonomy exists, nor would it be desirable (Genesis 2:18). All coherent societies are always and everywhere centered on shared religion. It is simply a question of which operative orthodoxy is in play. It is only natural, then, that a societys underlying morality take shape not only in law but through symbols that render social being, as Henrich Rommen called it, visible.

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Everything from national anthems to flags to civic buildings to memorials express a moral and spiritual content. Whatever is so honored is what constitutes the proposed moral bond, the unitas ordinis, of the community. That the visible expressions of our national bond are still basically, like our populace, Christian is evident from the sheer fact that malcontents want to demolish them. We are engaged, as ever, in a battle over the national object of moral honor. Tooley prefers a neutral approach in this regard, a publicly atheist approach. National conservatives are tired of that defensive crouch and assert a historically and anthropologically positive vision of the national moral bond according to history, metaphysics, and justice. For social justice to the Creator and only just Law Giver is due before it can be afforded to men.

The liberty of conscience cannot, in fact or theory, be violated. We cannot pretend to peer into mens souls. No one is advocating a persecution of thought crimes. But the inescapable formal and informal public preference for a particular religion in law and memorial does not amount to forced conversion. National conservatives believe that public life should be formative (not passive) of public virtue. If Christianity and the Bible do not fuel that formation something else will (and lately has).

In 1663 John Davenport, the founder of New Haven, observed that the fact of establishment seems to be a Principle imprinted in the mindes and hearts of all men in the equity of it, That such a Form of Government as best serveth to Establish their Religion, should by the consent of all be Established in the Civil State. If this was the case in England, Holland, and Turkey, why would it not be so in New England vis a vis Christianity? Further, why would a Christian people not desire it? And so it was in America generally in the antebellum period.Historically and anthropologically, it is not the national conservatives, but right-liberals who are out of step. Article 4 of the Statement of Principles should not vex a Christian patriot. It is thoroughly, historically American. John Jay, in Federalist No. 2, identified shared religion as an indispensable ingredient for a coherent nation. The national conservatives are simply following suit.

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Against Public Atheism - The American Conservative

For the first time since Gallup began polling on the topic of religion, those who say they belong to a church, synagogue, mosque or congregation are now a minority in America. When Gallup first asked the question in 1990, 70% of all Americans indicated they belong to a house of worship. Now only 47% do, a seismic shift in the sentiments and the religious commitments of the country.

Whats more, one in three young adults indicated that they claim no religious affiliation at all. Since 2000, theres been an overall rise in those who say they dont identify with any religion from 8% to 21%.

Against this remarkable detachment from religious identity, an interesting dynamic has emerged: the religiously unaffiliated are increasingly serving as activists and leaders in movements for social change and justice.

Historically, social justice initiatives gained momentum and strength from those who were motivated by their religious convictions (think of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Dorothy Day and Desmond Tutu). But it is equally true that such religious beliefs are not necessary for participation in causes that defend human rights and dignity and oppose the mistreatment of the vulnerable.

Todays modern effort to reinstate legal protection for unborn children includes secular humanists, atheists, agnostics and otherwise non-religious people. To the surprise of much of the media, non-religious pro-life advocates have claimed an increasing presence in the pro-life movement despite being met with skepticism or being told they dont exist. When powerful national newspapers, like the New York Times, assert that the Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization decision was based on religious doctrine, and that religious people have imposed their belief system on the entire country, they ignore the voices and views of many Americans who have no belief system other than science.

Secular news outlet National Public Radio likewise concluded that when life begins is essentially a religious question eliminating debate or discussion of abortion on other grounds. Pigeonholing abortion as a religious question was even apparent during oral arguments in Dobbs, the Mississippi case that overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor pressed Solicitor General Scott Stuart: The issue of when life begins has been hotly debated by philosophers since the beginning of time. Its still debated in religions. So when you say this is the only right that takes away from the state the ability to protect a life, thats a religious view, isnt it? It assumes that a fetus is life at when?

Yet, religious leaders including Pope Francis, who studied chemistry following his graduation from high school, disagree. For me the deformation in the understanding of abortion is born mainly in considering it a religious issue, he wrote in a 2019 letter to an Argentine priest. The issue of abortion is not essentially religious. It is a human problem prior to any religious option. The abortion issue must be addressed scientifically, he noted (even underlining the word scientifically.).

Along with the pope, the nones dont believe the question of when human life begins is a religious one. Groups like Secular Pro-life (headed by an atheist), Rehumanize International (also atheist), the Equal Rights Institute and the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PAUU) follow the science: the clear, long-established medical fact that human life begins at the moment of conception.

Medical textbook Human Embryology & Teratology agrees: Fertilization is an important landmark, because under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed, the textbook notes. And a recent survey of thousands of biologists from across the globe found that 96% likewise affirmed that human life begins at fertilization.

You absolutely do not need to believe in a God to oppose the intentional taking of human life, insists Herb Geraghty, executive director of Rehumanize. Many atheists, like myself, who embrace a consistent ethic of life, oppose abortion for the same reasons we oppose things like the death penalty, war and police brutality. Abortion is a human rights violation, and everyone should be working to end it.

Non-religious anti-abortion organizations embrace this scientific consensus, adding to it a human rights component and a desire to advocate for the most vulnerable human lives at the margins. These secular groups may have many different perspectives on other hot-button social issues than their mainline Christian colleagues, but all agree with the basic pro-life premise that every human life is worthy of protection, at all stages of development.

As an atheist, I believe the life we have now is the only one we get, said Monica Snyder, executive director of Secular Pro-Life. Im against abortion because it destroys humans. This is not a religious belief; it is a fact of biology. As organisms, we begin as zygotes. You, me, and every person we know was once an embryo, once a fetus. It is those who defend elective abortion who want to make this debate about religion, because biology doesnt support the pro-choice position at all.

Even after 50 years as settled law, Roe v. Wade never really settled into the hearts and minds of the American people. It may be easier to dismiss pro-life advocacy as belonging to the pages of Scripture or the stuff of Sunday sermons than to engage the scientific or human rights questions, but the growing presence of non-believers who worked (but didnt pray) to see Roe overturned speaks to one of the principal tenets of our countrys founding: that every human being has natural rights, present by virtue of his or her very humanity.

Mary FioRito is an attorney and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the deNicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame.

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Atheists against abortion reject the religious narrative - Our Sunday Visitor

Moulton Elementary School in Lawrence County, Alabama. | Screenshot: Google Maps

A legal group that advocates for atheists, agnostics and nontheists is calling for an investigation into an Alabama teacher after she incorporated a coloring book picture of Jesus accompanied by a Scripture passage into a lesson plan.

Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit organization that advocates for a strict separation of church and state, sent aletter to Lawrence County Schools Superintendent Jon Bret Smith on July 21 expressing concern that a first-grade teacher at the districts Moulton Elementary School taught students about Jesus Christ and Easter, and also provided students with religious coloring book pages to take home.

The coloring book page in question featured a picture of Jesus Christ along with the words Jesus is alive and included a reference to Mark 16:6, a Bible passage that discusses the resurrection of Jesus.

The FFRF letter to Smith follows a complaint from a concerned parent, who maintained that the coloring book page was not included in the class curriculum.

FFRF Staff Attorney Christopher Line said that the purpose of the letter was to request that the District immediately investigate and ensure that [the teacher] and any other teachers in the district, are no longer teaching students religious lessons, distributing religious materials to students, or otherwise indoctrinating students into a particular religious belief.

The District must make certain that none of its employees are unlawfully and inappropriately indoctrinating students in religious matters by giving religious assignments, teaching about religion, or promoting their personal religious beliefs, he added. We ask that the District immediately investigate this situation and ensure that [the teacher] fully complies with the Establishment Clause and stops violating the rights of her students and parents.

Line instructed Smith: Please respond in writing, outlining the steps the District will take to correct this serious constitutional violation so we can notify our complainant. He also insisted that it is not a violation of the free speech rights of teachers when a school district regulates what they teach to students while acting in their official capacities.

The letter cited the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court case Edwards v. Aguillard finding that [f]amilies entrust public schools with the education of their children, but condition their trust on the understanding that the classroom will not purposely be used to advance religious views that may conflict with the private beliefs of the students and his or her family."

Using a religious holiday, Easter, as a pretext to teach religious lessons in a public school is unconstitutional, Line maintained. If the district turns a blind eye to the overt proselytization in [the teachers] classroom, it becomes complicit in an egregious constitutional violation and breach of trust.

For his part, Smith contends that the teacher did nothing wrong. In a statement to The Decatur Daily, Smith said, From my point of view, an investigation is not warranted because the teacher was teaching from the course of study.

"Every teacher in the state of Alabama is charged to thoroughly teach the course of study," Smith was quoted as saying. "That is covered under two objectives in the first grade course of study.

Objective No. 11 in the Alabama Course of Study for First Grade Social Studies states that students will identify traditions and contributions of various cultures in the local community and state. Specific examples of such traditions and contributions include Kwanzaa, Christmas, Hanukkah, Fourth of July and Cinco De Mayo.

Referring to Objective No. 11, Smith said that If Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa is in there, so also is Easter.

Objective No. 12 in the first-grade social studies curriculum declares that students will compare common and unique characteristics in societal groups, including age, religious beliefs, ethnicity, persons with disabilities, and equality between genders.

Stressing that No. 12 talks about religious beliefs, Smith identified Easter as an aspect of religious belief: Were definitely covered with the course of study. We want to make sure classroom discussions are based on the course of study. We teach what has been approved by the state.

FFRF rejected the comparison of Easter to Christmas, describing Christmas as a national holiday with pagan origins and many seasonal and secular accompaniments in contrast to Easter, which it characterized as a celebration of the supposed resurrection of the Christian deity and not a federal holiday.

FFRF officials believe that the teacher went beyond the course of study.

Public schools exist to educate, not to indoctrinate, FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor asserted in a statement. The school district must take action to stop proselytization of a captive audience of 5- and 6-year-old students.

Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com

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Atheist group demands investigation of teacher who used Easter coloring book in class - The Christian Post

An atheist organization suing an Arkansas state senator over claims its members' constitutional rights were violated when they were blocked from the senator's social media accounts has scored a victory in federal court after the judge ordered the senator to turn over information requested by the organization before the case goes to trial.

Calling Sen. Jason Rapert's reasoning "repetitive boilerplate objections," U.S. District Judge Kristine G. Baker wrote in an order issued Tuesday that the objections were not a sufficient argument and gave Rapert, R-Conway, until Aug. 5 to comply. The trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 3.

In a Jan. 8, 2019, complaint, American Atheists Inc. filed suit against Rapert alleging that he violated the U.S. and Arkansas constitutions by blocking members of the organization from accessing his official Twitter and Facebook accounts.

In September 2021, American Atheists Inc. filed an expedited motion to compel discovery in the matter, asking Baker to order Rapert to respond to two interrogatories and to supplement his responses to seven more, to produce relevant documents in those seven interrogatories and to pay the costs associated with filing the motion.

Rapert argued in court documents the discovery requests were overly broad and sought information and documents that are not relevant to the case. On some issues he sought to claim privilege to avoid turning over documents.

On Tuesday, Baker issued her order overrulingRapert's objections and ordered him to comply the plaintiff's request for production of the discovery items at issue. In her ruling, Baker also ordered the plaintiffs to submit a petition for attorneys' fees by Aug. 5.

"While the Court understands and appreciatesRapert's concerns," Baker wrote in the order, "those concerns do not absolve him from his duty to disclosediscoverableinformation."

CORRECTION: The American Atheists Inc. lawsuit against state Sen. Jason Rapert is scheduled to go to trial on Oct. 3. An earlier version of this story included an incorrect trial date.

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Judge orders Sen. Jason Rapert to turn over information to atheist organization - Arkansas Online