Category Archives: Atheism

The article, "'The JAB, or Your JOB': Mandatory Vaccinations in the Private Workplace," details employers' rights to require employees to get the COVID-19 vaccination. As always, there are some caveats and Grant explains some of thosestipulations. From the article:

The Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") of 1990 prohibits covered employers from discriminating against applicants and employees based on "disability", some of whom may claim that they have a disability that prevents them from being able to submit safely to a COVID-19 vaccination. Such a claim requires an employer to consider whether it has a duty to provide the employee or applicant with a "reasonable accommodation" of the alleged disability.

Such an accommodation such as exemption from a vaccination requirement can be required unless providing it would inflict "undue hardship" (i.e., significant difficulty or expense) on the employer. Employers that insist on vaccinations should therefore expect some people to assert that they suffer from a "disability" that entitles them to an exemption.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ("Title VII") prohibits covered employers from discriminating against applicants and employees based (in part) on "religion." Religion in this context means sincerely held religious beliefs and practices, whether part of an "organized" religion (e.g., Hinduism, Islam, or Christianity) or some other sincere system of spiritual belief. It includes atheism too, butnotmere political or personal beliefs or preferences, such as objections to vaccinations unmoored to religious faith; or, for an odd but real example, a personal religious creed that Kozy Kitten People/Cat Food" contributes to an employee's "state of wellbeing."

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Media Mention: Grant Osborne Featured in Business North Carolina - Ward and Smith, PA

When people asked me why I chose to be a religion reporter, they usually got one of two answers. One was my official response; the other was the truth.

The official response ran something like this: Religion is a force that moves billions of people, for better or worse. You cant really understand our world without understanding religion.

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Thats true, but it is not why I became a religion reporter. The real answer was more personal. I was on a quest for the truth and saw journalism as the means to a free or at least modestly subsidized education. I think this idea was stolen from Pete Hamill, who advised young writers in New York to apprentice in one of two story-rich fields: driving a taxi or journalism.

My plan worked at first. During my nearly 16 years as a religion reporter, including the last eight at CNN, I learned more than I could have hoped. But over time, the stories other religion reporters and I tackled grew darker: religious violence, racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism; the lies, crimes and casual cruelties of the Trump administration; the rise of QAnon and demise of truth; the Catholic sexual abuse crisis; and, of course, the pandemic. Peoples pain and anger and confusion seemed fathomless, institutions hopelessly self-involved and religious leaders wilfully blind and enthralled by politics or fame. In any other era, such a beat would be challenging. For me, in our relentlessly online culture, it was deflating. By the end of my time at CNN, I was a beat reporter.

I thought about all of this while reading The God Beat: What Journalism Says About Faith and Why It Matters. The anthology of 26 essays is edited by Costica Bradatan, a religion editor for The Los Angeles Review of Books and a professor of humanities at Texas Tech University, and Ed Simon, a staff writer for the literary site The Millions and author of several books about religion and morality.

In their introduction, Bradatan and Simon say they are most interested in what Simon dubs New Religion Journalism, a literary movement that they argue was given life by Killing the Buddha, an online journal of religion writing for people made uncomfortable by church.

Like New Journalism, the movement heralded by wizard-suited Tom Wolfe in the 1970s (and before him, by Matthew Arnold in the 1880s), New Religion Journalism prioritizes the personal, including the reporters subjective experience in the story. More importantly, argues Simon, New ReligionJournalism questions the theism/atheism binary and displays the full ambiguity and ambivalence of belief.

That ambiguity is explored in Leigh Eric Schmidts deeply researched essay, Monuments to Unbelief, which guides readers on a short jaunt through 19th-century atheism and introduces characters like the miraculously named Octavius Frothingham.

In Ammas Cosmic Squeeze, Erik Davis muses on the title characters trademark gesturea hugas a quietly subversive transformation of traditional South Asian worship as he stands in a Disneyland-worthy line awaiting his sacred embrace. But Amma, who has hugged more than 26 million people, is not only about silent subversion, Davis reports: During her massive fiftieth birthday celebration in 2003, which was inaugurated by Indian president Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Amma cranked through a stadium full of devotees for twenty-one hours straight while a scoreboard racked up numbers well into the five figures.

Cool scene. But, as I said, these are dark times, and many writers in The God Beat address topics like death, hatred, abuse and decay.

In Will Anyone Remember Eleven Dead Jews? Emma Green ponders the paradoxical satisfactions of an archivist in Pittsburgh charged with collecting artifacts from the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history. Likewise, Shira Telushkins essay, Their Bloods Cry Out from the Ground, is a powerful meditation on the murders in 2018 of those 11 people while they were worshiping and the task of those left behind. Telushkin explores the work of the chevra kadisha, the Jewish burial society charged with collecting different kinds of remains. They slipped quietly into the crime scene, scraping blood from walls and floors, burying their martyrs just as Jews have done for millennia.

The best essays in The God Beat are like thisquietly reflective, deeply informed, subjective but not solipsistic. They combine an insiders knowledge with an outsiders practiced observation, transcending the limitations of both third- and first-person writing.

As a one-time Catholic, Patrick Blanchfield brings an insider-outsider perspective to his essay on the Catholic Churchs sexual abuse scandal, written in 2018, a few weeks after a grand jury report in Pennsylvania described in detail decades of soul-crushing sexual abuse committed by priests against children. Blanchfield raises a question that perhaps only an ex-Catholic would voice. Namely, is there something inherently Catholic about the Catholic abuse scandal?

Whatever the problems of society more broadly, it is impossible not to see in these horrors a very particular Catholic feature: tropes, however twisted, of penance, mortification, and punishment, concepts and ritual items wielded as tools of abuse, Blanchfield writes. These priests, in other words, did not just rape children using their hands, mouths and genitals. They also raped them using their faith.

Behind this rhetoric lies the force of truth. I have heard many victims of sexual abuse by clergymen recount how their abuse and lost innocence amounted to soul murder, as Blanchfield titles his powerful piece.

The essay reminded me of another, coincidentally published on the same day in America. Kerry Weber, an executive editor at America, wrote of the questions she pondered as she read the Pennsylvania grand jury report while her children napped. I have found myself truly afraid of what it means to ask and to allow my children to be part of the church, Weber wrote.

Reporting for CNN, I had been chasing the hard newscounting the victims, tracking down perpetrator priests, trying (and mostly failing) to hold bishops accountable. Webers voicesingular, plaintive, coming from within the foldwhipped my head around. Behind all the hard news, this is what the scandal has wrought, I realized: a mother afraid to raise her children in the church she loves. And that is a story that needs to be told.

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Review: Reporting on religion can be dark. But we need people on the God Beat more than ever. - America Magazine

Last weekend, amid the sound of nearby fireworks, I talked to a friend in a Cape Girardeau coffee shop who began discussing Marie Curie, the renowned Polish-French scientist, who died on America's Independence Day, July 4, 1934.

I suppose Curie's death date is the reason the discoverer of two elements in the periodic table came to mind in our conversation.

My friend told me Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only person in history to win the Nobel twice and managed it in two scientific fields: physics in 1903 and chemistry in 1911.

Even the most knowledgeable people can't know everything -- and Madame Curie did not know it all.

She used to carry bottles of radium, atomic number 88, and polonium, atomic number 84, in the pocket of her lab coat, my friend told me -- a fact biographies of her life verify -- and continuous exposure to those radioactive elements shortened her life.

Curie passed at 66 of aplastic anemia after spurning the danger such materials posed.

Even today, most of Curie's papers and books remain radioactive and are stored in lead-lined boxes, which the curious may only view after donning a protective suit and signing a liability waiver.

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Even the brilliant among us have limits and do not possess all knowledge.

In an illuminating 2018 article in Forbes magazine -- "Did History's Most Famous Scientists Believe in God?" -- we read Curie's own theological perspective was akin to one of her scientific contemporaries, German-born Albert Einstein.

Curie, the daughter of an atheist father and a Catholic mother, did not reject belief in God but admitted to agnosticism -- a position mirrored somewhat by Einstein, who himself rejected the notion of a personal deity and thought intercessory prayer foolish. Yet the man best known for the equation, e=mc squared, did not claim the mantle of atheism. Einstein wrote that he embraced "Spinoza's God."

Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century Dutch philosopher, wrote that God is "a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence," adding, "whatever is, is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God," a notion usually interpreted to mean God is identical with the universe.

If you invited most church people to examine Spinoza's statements, they might not cause alarm, but orthodox theologians of the Judeo-Christian tradition would no doubt disagree. God, the theologians would probably argue, stands apart from the created universe -- which the book of Genesis attests.

England's Charles Darwin, writer of "Origin of the Species" in 1859, held more conventional religious views.

A believer in what he called the "Abrahamic God," Darwin, whose grave my wife and I once visited in London's Westminster Abbey, penned the following in 1879: "I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God."

Sir Isaac Newton, the Englishman who gave the world the three laws of motion, the bedrock principle of modern physics, was a firm believer in the idea of God who self-identified as a theist yet did not accept the concept of the Christian Trinity -- Father, Son, Holy Spirit -- as divine. Newton, who died in 1727, is buried near Darwin inside the Abbey.

Galileo, the 16th century Italian astronomer and physicist whose life predated all the men identified so far, was tried by the Inquisition, found guilty of heresy and forced to recant.

Despite a Church-enforced house arrest, which lasted the remainder of his life, Galileo's writing demonstrated his theist tendencies.

To wit: "I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

The insightful Forbes article, after examining the views of Curie, Einstein, Darwin, Newton and Galileo, includes a summary statement which makes sense to this writer and forms the conclusion of this essay.

"The most famous [scientific] figures all have nuanced religious views that tend toward a belief in a higher power. Some of those views faltered over time [e.g., Curie] and the others are unconventional but are theist beliefs nonetheless. So, yes, it is possible to be a religious individual and be a scientist. The two are not mutually exclusive."

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Column: Jeff Long: Marie Curie, her scientific fellows and God (7/10/21) - Southeast Missourian

Almost exactly 60 years ago, the newly appointed Chadian ambassador to the United States, Adam Malick Sow, was heading south on Marylands Route 40 toward Washington, D.C. He stopped at the Bonnie Brae diner and asked for a menu. The owner, Mrs. Leroy Merritt, sneered and threw him out because he was Black.

The same thing happened to other African diplomats at other Maryland establishments, and it became an international embarrassment. President John F. Kennedy worried that this treatment of diplomats from Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Congo and other newly independent African nations would harm U.S. efforts to limit Soviet influence in Africa.

The story, recounted in Ted Johnsons exploration of race and history, When the Stars Begin to Fall, illustrates something thats worth pondering: How much did Cold War competition spur us toward fulfilling our national ideals?

Johnson notes that the steps toward integration following the Route 40 Incident did not go entirely smoothly. Several restaurants demanded to see credentials before proffering meal service ... loudly apologizing to white customers who had to endure eating alongside black diplomats. And, of course, it would be several more years before African Americans could expect the same service as African ambassadors.

The Cold War was the reason that Americans could be embarrassed by what had been routine for centuries. We were engaged in a contest with the communist world that was about everything. It was a great power rivalry for influence and resources. It was a military competition for supremacy. It was a religious war about belief in God versus atheism. And it was an ideological conflict about how to organize society and how to live. As such, everything we did, everything we were, was viewed through the lens of how our enemies and allies would see it. The Cold War shaped our sense of national identity and purpose.

When arrayed against an ideological foe that rejected individual rights, trampled on religious liberty, murdered millions and enslaved even more all in the name of a supposedly morally superior system we had a clear sense of who we were. We were for freedom, both economic and political. We were for religious rights. We were for an independent judiciary and a nonpolitical military. We were for individuality, not coerced collectivism. And we were for strivers and dreamers who wanted to share the blessings of liberty.

The Soviets couldnt build a car that functioned or stock their markets with food, but, prodigious liars, they were skilled at propaganda. No, the CIA did not invent HIV as part of a biological warfare program. No, the U.S. did not start the Korean War. No, the CIA did not kill John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr.

Perhaps even more maddening than the lies they told about us were the truths they concealed about themselves: the Gulag, the terror famine in Ukraine, the mass deportations, the mass executions, the antisemitism, the censorship, the Hitler/Stalin pact, the war on peasants, the empty shelves, the psychiatric hospitals full of dissidents, the crushing of liberty in other nations and too many other crimes to list. Not to mention the luxuries enjoyed by the communist elite.

But the Soviets didnt always have to invent lies to discredit us. The case of the Scottsboro boys became a fixture in Soviet textbooks, and Communist Party members in the U.S. did play a prominent role in campaigning for civil rights (if only in this country). When American cities went up in flames after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Soviet outlets made sure the world saw this as proving our hypocrisy on human rights. That they were insincere in their concern for Blacks (as some African Americans who emigrated to the USSR discovered) did not invalidate their criticism of us. We were hypocrites, and many Americans were ashamed of it.

Concern about how our treatment of African Americans made us look abroad was one rationale for the Truman administrations decision to file an amicus brief in Brown v. Board of Education. The argument was explicit:

The United States is trying to prove to the people of the world of every nationality, race and color, that a free democracy is the most civilized and most secure form of government yet devised by man. ... The existence of discrimination against minority groups in the United States has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills.

In that sense, our enemies did us a favor by pointing to our flaws, because it played a role in spurring us to be better.

Today, we still have enemies, but we no longer have the morally organizing idea of liberty versus tyranny that shaped our self-concept during the Cold War. We no longer see the need to sell our way of life to others around the globe. Many Americans shrug at the prospect of the Chinese government crushing freedom in Hong Kong, or Eastern European countries closing universities and independent media. We dont see ourselves as leading Team Liberty. And even though in most respects we won the Cold War, that is a real loss.

Mona Charens column is syndicated by Creators.

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Charen: What we lost when we won the Cold War - The Winchester Star

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the number of Americans who identify with Christianity is declining steadily, while the number of Nones those who refuse identification with any denomination or faith is growing sharply. Probably within five years or so, the nations largest religious group will be the Nones, as they move steadily ahead of evangelicals and Catholics. Assuming we care about the fate of religion, how worried should we be? Some argue that the churches are just undertaking a shakeout of their nominal adherents, to leave a solid and more active core, so maybe there is nothing to be all that worried about. Maybe. But we should at least consider the possibility that we really are seeing a precipitous decline in religion as such in religious practice and faith however broadly we define it. Things really might be as bad as they seem.

There are plenty of reasons why people would abandon their formal identification with churches. They might be appalled by religious activism in politics, or shocked by scandals involving clergy. However, those former adherents dont necessarily reject religion as such. As repeated surveys show, many of those Nones in fact seem to be quite religious-oriented, in terms of belief in God, and even of religious practice in some cases, a surprising amount. (Ryan Burge has a thoughtful survey of the whole issue in his notable recent book The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going). So perhaps what we are looking at just a restructuring, a reboot, not an actual decline. And we have to be very careful indeed about how we frame the survey questions that produce such high numbers of Nones.

But here is the problem. If a person rejects that church affiliation, and abandons the religious community, how long can they maintain that solitary or non-affiliated religious practice before it dies altogether? Ten years? Thirty? And can that attenuated practice be passed on to the next generation? When does no religious affiliation transform into a simple No religion at all, seriously, and I mean it?

European evidence suggest that countries do indeed reach this point. A striking 2016 study showed only a third of Dutch people claiming any faith at all, with Christianity still the largest component, at 25 percent. That number was exactly paralleled by the quarter of the population who were outright atheists. Even the number who reported belief in any higher power, rather than a specific concept of God, is falling steadily. By 2017, 52 percent of British people reported having no religion, and the rate for people under 24 was 70 percent. The most significant growth was among those who accepted the label of confident atheists.

Those figures were rather worse than the larger European norm, but the picture of European detachment from religion is common. Across the region the proportion of the religiously unaffiliated is an impressive 24 percent, outnumbering churchgoing Christians. Besides the Netherlands, the unaffiliated figure is highest in Belgium, Norway, and Sweden, at over 35 percent. The lowest figures were for Ireland, Portugal, and Austria, at 15 percent. Throughout the region the great majority of these unaffiliatedthe Noneshad been baptized and raised Christian. Overwhelmingly those unaffiliated agreed with the statement that science made religion unnecessary for them.

Straightforward atheism has become a common creed, markedly so in some societies. In a recent survey, the proportion flatly asserting no belief in God was at its height in the Czech Republic (66 percent) and Sweden (60 percent), with high levels of disbelief in Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Estonia. This trend is particularly pronounced in large cities. Berlin vaunts its role as the atheist capital of Europe, and 60 percent of residents claim no religion. In France, 11 percent of respondents accept Gods existence absolutely while 45 percent are less certain and 37 percent are atheists.

Just to take two examples, if you go back to 1960, then both Belgium and the Netherlands were high on the list of the worlds very religious societies, and Belgium was very Catholic indeed. Now look where they stand in the atheism stakes. They are also among the worlds most systematically liberal societies in terms of legislation and policies that have been passed in the teeth of bitter opposition form the respective churches.

The drift away from religion is so advanced, and progressing so swiftly, that some scientific surveys project the extinction of faith of all kinds from several nations by the end of the present century. A study presented to the American Physical Society in 2011 predicted that by the end of the present century, nine nations would be entirely free of religion. Six of these were European, namely Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Very striking here was the inclusion of nations like Austria and Ireland, where levels of faith are presently holding up relatively well. Actually the study suggested that other nations might well be following a like trajectory, but their official statistics did not permit the kind of analysis that would permit such conclusions. Not included in the list, therefore, was Great Britain, which commonly appears alongside the Netherlands in listings of the worlds most secular societies. (The other three nations on the APS listing were all Anglophone members of the former British Empire, namely Australia, New Zealand, and Canada). Of course, any such long-term projections are tenuous, but the listing of countries is suggestive.

The decline of supernatural belief undoubtedly has occurred in much of the West, and faith continues to recede. As a character in one of Tom Stoppards plays aptly remarked, There is presumably a calendar datea momentwhen the onus of proof passed from the atheist to the believer, when, quite suddenly, secretly, the noes had it. We are now well past that point. But how much further will the process continue? Some very credible social scientists believe that recent trends herald the destruction of religion in any form we have known, if not the actual abolition of religious faith as such. In the short term, such analyses are chiefly based on European experience, but the long-term implications have global relevance.

One of the leading scholars on the religious implications of demographic change is David Voas, who declares unequivocally that

Religion is in decline across the Western world. Whether measured by belonging, believing, participation in services, or how important it is felt to be, religion is losing ground. Older generations die out and are replaced by less religious younger generations. Modernization has predictable and permanent effects, one of which I call the secular transition. . . . Certain major transformationssuch as the industrial revolution or the demographic transition (the decline first in mortality and then in fertility)occur exactly once in each society. These transitions are very difficult to undo. Back-tracking is exceptional and temporary: slavery isnt restored after its been abolished, nor do women lose the vote once granted. A transition is permanent, not cyclical or recurring; once out, the toothpaste wont go back into the tube. Secularization is such a transition.

Voas is speaking broadly of a decline in actual belief, rather than just institutional structures. Callum Brown is still more explicit. As he writes, The Western World is becoming atheist. In the space of three generations churchgoing and religious belief have become alien to millions. We are in the midst of one of humankinds great cultural changes.

Although these scholars are discussing the West, there is no intrinsic reason why the changes that have overtaken Western religion should not have their impact on a global scale and, ultimately, even in Africa. If such views are correct, then Christianity has a specific expiration date, to be followed after some delay by the other great faiths. At some not-too-distant point, perhaps in the mid-twenty-second century, God would become an extinct species.

In my recent book Fertility and Faith; The Demographic Revolution and the Transformation of World Religions, I suggested why we should take such views very seriously indeed, although my own conclusions were nothing like so pessimistic. But to return to a core question. At least for right now, we absolutely must not take Nones as synonymous with atheists, fine. But once they abandon religious affiliation, how long can those Nones retain any religious identity whatever? European examples suggest that it might not be more than a generation.

Id worry.

Just to end with a quote I have always liked. In seventeenth century England, there was a then-famous playwright called Sir William Davenant (1605/6-1668), who was suspected of being an illegitimate son to Shakespeare. Davenant strongly encouraged the tale, and the possible connection, however badly that reflected on his mother. Looking at the desperate religious wars around him in that era, all the fanaticism and violence, one of his friends tells us that His private opinion was that Religion at last, e.g. a hundred years hence, would come to settlement, and that in a kind of ingeniose Quakerisme. No more Catholics or Protestants (or Jews or Muslims), just a kind of peaceful ethical creed, devoid of sacraments or hierarchies, just waiting on the Inner Spirit. Love it or hate it, it was a fascinating prediction. And maybe an ideal creed for Nones.

My new Church of Ingenious Quakerism will go live shortly.

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What if the Nones Really Do Herald the Decline of Religion? - Patheos

Over the weekend, Hobby Lobby ran this full-page ad in newspapers across the country promoting Christian Nationalism.

It wasnt a surprise. Theyve done this for years. At this point, its almost embarrassing to see the out-of-context and even made-up quotations, but this ad got a lot of attention on Twitter because people realized just how extreme the Green family (which owns Hobby Lobby) is:

As theyve also done for several years now, the Freedom From Religion Foundation countered the ad campaign with one of its own:

While that ad ran in a handful of local newspapers, FFRF also promoted a web page they created a few years back that offers context and corrections for all the quotations used by Hobby Lobby.

Their annual rebuttal, however, prompted an angry response this morning from evangelist Franklin Graham:

Hobby Lobby is being attacked for running some beautiful full-page newspaper ads on July 4. The ad was titled One Nation Under God and included the Bible verse, Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord (Psalm 33:12). These positive advertisements have outraged enemies of Gods Word such as the Freedom from Religion Foundation. I hope this exposure for their ads, even though it was intended for harm, will actually allow even more people to read the message and appreciate what Hobby Lobbys owners, the Green family stand for. I thank God for the Green family, their Christian-run business, and their strong public stand for the Word of God and biblical values. Let them know you stand with them in the comments below.

There was no attack; there was only a response.

There was no outrage; there were only corrections.

But Graham is just proving the point of the critics online: Hes treating the people who believe in a secular nation as enemies. The only thing that Christian Nationalists hate more than the truth is when the truth is used to prove (over and over) that all they do is lie. Its worth pointing out that the low blow against FFRF is still untrue; theyre advocating for a secular government, like the Founders wanted, not one promoting atheism. FFRF believes Graham should have the freedom to practice his religion, too.

Meanwhile, Graham wants people to take a strong public stand for the Word of God and biblical values, which is a not-so-thinly-veiled way of calling for a theocracy or at least a nation where Christians and Christianity get better treatment than those who dont share their beliefs.

Its telling that even Michael Brown, the conservative writer who routinely promotes his own brand of Christian Nationalism, admitted that Hobby Lobbys ad sent the wrong message:

I do understand how others would read the ad as advocating for a theocracy (which I wholeheartedly oppose) and as for claiming that only Christians should run for office (which is ridiculous).

That is unfortunate, and thats why its important for us to make clear that we are not seeking to take over America and impose the Christian faith on the nation.

Will Franklin Graham admit thats not what he wants? Dont hold your breath.

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Franklin Graham Defends Hobby Lobby Ad: Its Critics are Enemies of God's Word - Friendly Atheist - Patheos

Editors note: Kristina Lee, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University, wrote this for The Conversation in June 2021. Colorado State is a contributing institution to The Conversation, an independent collaboration between editors and academics that provides informed news analysis and commentary to the general public. See theentire list of contributing faculty and their articles here.

Tennessees Constitution includes a provision that bars three groups from holding office: atheists, ministers and those engaging in duels. Efforts are under way in the state legislature to remove this exclusion for ministers, but not for duelists or atheists.

In January 2021, Republican Tennessee State Senator Mark Pody proposed Senate Joint Resolution 55 to amend Article IX of the Constitution of Tennessee to rid it of a clause that states no minister of the Gospel, or priest of any denomination whatever, shall be eligible to a seat in either House of the Legislature. No mention is made in Podys resolution about Section 2 of the same article: No person who denies the being of God shall hold any office in the civil department of this state. Nor for that matter does the current bill mention Section 3s objection to those who participate, aid or abet a duel.

When Pody was asked why his resolution removes only the ban on ministers, his response was that it is best to clean up the constitution one simple step at a time.

Tennessee is one of seven states that has an unconstitutional ban on atheists holding public office. Although superseded by Supreme Court rulings, such bans are important. As a scholar of religious and political rhetoric who focuses on the marginalization of U.S. atheists, I believe they reflect the normalization of anti-atheism that has yet to be truly dealt with, or rarely acknowledged, in the United States.

Numerous state constitutions established laws banning both ministers and atheists when they were ratified.

The bans on ministers were framed as necessary to protect their sacred calling. The prohibitions on atheists were installed for a different reason. Atheists, it was claimed, could not be trusted to be good citizens in a democracy.

This sentiment was expressed by early enlightenment thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke both of whom influenced early American politicians. Locke argued in his 1689 Letter Concerning Toleration that those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist.

Bans on atheists and ministers are now unconstitutional due to Supreme Court rulings in 1961 and 1978. Tennessee is the last state to maintain an unenforceable ban on ministers in their Constitutions, while seven states still have their unconstitutional bans on atheists.

Although unenforceable, the bans periodically impede atheists wanting to hold public office. In 1992, Herb Silverman, an atheist activist and math professor, was denied a position as a notary public because of a ban in South Carolina. He had to sue the state before he could hold the position.

Meanwhile in 2009, Cecil Bothwell, a local Democratic candidate, won his city counsel race in Asheville, North Carolina but had to fight critics who claimed he was ineligible on account of his atheism.

These attacks continued for years after Bothwell was elected. H.K. Edgerton, a Black Confederate activist and one of Bothwells staunchest critics, complained in 2014 that the council had placed itself above the law for two terms with Cecil Bothwell sitting there passing rules and regulations and dictating law unlawfully.

David Morgan, editor of the Asheville Tribune, claimed his criticism of Bothwell was about upholding the state constitution, arguing If you dont like it, amend it and take out that clause.

Atheists have tried to do just that. But politicians show little interest in removing the bans on atheists that exist in state constitutions. As Todd Stiefel, an atheist activist, notes: If it was on the books that Jews couldnt hold public office, or that African Americans or women couldnt vote, that would be a no-brainer. Youd have politicians falling all over themselves to try to get it repealed. Even if it was still unenforceable, it would still be disgraceful and be removed. So why are we different?

These anti-atheist clauses and the failure to remove them reflect a phenomenon I call theistnormativity, which is the normalization of the belief in God as being tied to good and moral citizenship.

To many Americans, beliefs in God and Americanism has become synonymous. A 2015 survey found that 69% of respondents thought it was important to believe in God to be truly American. And Americans are expected to embrace national slogans such as In God We Trust and one nation, under God. Politicians are regularly asked to participate in public prayers to God before official meetings. And while they can request otherwise, the default assumption is that Americans will make an oath to God when taking public office or testifying in court.

While there is no ban on being an atheist in the United States, atheists have long been framed as un-American. When Democratic Representative Louis Rabaut proposed adding under God to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, he argued that an atheistic American is a contradiction in terms.

Even President Barack Obama simply acknowledging the existence of nonbelievers in his 2009 inaugural address led critics to question whether the acknowledgment was offensive and could lead to dangerous misunderstandings about our true nature as a nation.

And it isnt just the political right. When Bernie Sanders was running for president in 2016, leaked emails from Democratic National Committee leadership revealed a plot to try to out him as an atheist to negatively influence perceptions of him.

This political environment makes it difficult for open atheists to gain much political power. In a 2021 survey of Congress religious identity, only one person, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, identified as religiously unaffiliated. Eighteen members replied dont know or refused to answer the question.

Polling shows 4% of Americans identify as atheists, and about 23% identify more broadly as nonreligious. While identifying as nonreligious does not necessarily mean not believing in God, research suggests that as many as 1 in 4 Americans is atheist, but that most are unwilling to reveal this, even in anonymous polls.

As such, there are likely more atheists in Congress theyre just not open about their beliefs. In fact, in 2014, the American Humanist Association claimed that 24 members of Congress privately stated they did not believe in God but would deny it if outed.

Political analysts have long wondered if an atheist could become president. It would take a brave one to try, given that polls indicate that only 60% of Americans would be willing to contemplate voting for one.

Even theist presidents get criticized if they fail to show proper homage to religion. Biden, a Catholic, was the first president to not include God in his National Day of Prayer proclamation, a move Evangelical leader Franklin Graham called dangerous.

This anti-atheism extends beyond politics. Atheists face discrimination in the workplace and hiring practices. Parents who are religious often have an advantage in custody cases. Even though atheists are no more likely to commit crimes than theists, stereotypes surrounding atheist criminality and untrustworthiness persist. In court, atheist rape victims are less likely to be believed than Christian or religiously ambiguous victims.

It is in this context that the bans on atheists although unenforceable under Supreme Court ruling must, I believe, be examined.

While these bans may seem harmless, they represent anti-atheist prejudices that are ingrained in America. They remind atheists that, despite their beliefs being protected by the first amendment, being open about not believing in God has consequences.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Why it matters that 7 states still have bans on atheists holding office - Source

Seth Mahigas resignation as Secretary of Atheists in Kenya was announced on the weekend because he believes in the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Seths reason for resigning is that he has found Jesus Christ and is no longer interested in promoting atheism in Kenya, wrote president Harrison Mumia in an official statement published on Twitter.

For the past 18 months, Mahiga had been secretary for AIK. According to its site, AIK is the first officially registered non-religious organisation of its kind in the nation.

According to Statistadata from 2019, more than 85 per cent of Kenyas population identify as Christian.

Among AIKs objectives are the promotion and practice of open, rational, and scientific examination of the universe and our place in it, and to advocate that ethics and morality be meaningfully based on rational and humanistic ideals and values.

According to AIK, atheism is in the broadest sense an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.

In light of such stated aims and beliefs, Mahiga evidently found his role untenable. But Mumias statement about Mahigas resignation is gracious and warm, thanking Mahiga for his service and wishing Seth all the best in his new-found relationship with Jesus Christ.

As Mahiga himself says at a church meeting filmed by Elevate TV Kenya, and shared on Facebook by AIK he had been experiencing difficulties in life before he decided to resign as secretary. The brief video also includes the pastor with Mahiga asking the congregation to give the Lord some praise in this house, hallelujah before stating that the Bible says: Every knee shall bow '

Comments on the video include: He cracked, what a waste of good brain . all it needs is brainwashing with lie that he will believe to be true. He could not handle the truth and how much was he paid for this PR stunt?; as well as more supportive notes such as a wise decision and Jesus is the way, truth and life.

Atheists in Kenya is seeking a new secretary.

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God Bless the USA Bible gets cancelled - Eternity News

Photo: Michael Shermer, by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

This is not your fathers creationism, says skeptic and atheist Michael Shermer in anew podcast with Stephen Meyer aboutReturn of the God Hypothesis. This is far more serious. And Shermer shows it by going two hours with Meyer, placing every objection before him that he can think of. The case in Meyers book is not creationism at all, of course, but Ill accept the compliment on Steves behalf. Shermer has my admiration in return. This is not your fathers village atheism, either. That a conversation like this is possible represents a hopeful sign for our culture. Its not a debate its a discussion between respectful, eminently thoughtful people, neither of whom is trying to win. We could all trying practicing that more with people who disagree with us.

I dont see any evidence by the end that Shermer has changed his mind (which, again, was not the intent). But when biology, physics, and cosmology are weighed together, I dont know what objection to Steve Meyers case he would hold onto. Every cosmology either has theistic implications, or ends up wrecking the basis for rational scientific investigation of nature. This may be the most interesting dialogue thatReturn of the God Hypothesishas sparked so far, and that is no small measure of praise. As a friend commented who heard it before I did, Whoa! Must listen. Whoa, indeed. Now I would like to hear a follow-up with some of the other sophisticated advocates for atheism Sam Harris, perhaps, above all.

By the way, at one point Shermer quotes extensively from the review of the book by biologist Darrel Falk (who doesnt touch the cosmological arguments at all). Meyer addresses Falks points concisely, but you can read a full response from geologist Casey Luskin and physicist Brian Miller here, here, and here. More to come on that front shortly. Miller has asked for a partial retraction from the entity, BioLogos, that published the review. No word as yet on that.

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This Is Not Your Father's Creationism: Atheist Michael Shermer Meets Stephen Meyer - Discovery Institute

A man who served as secretary for Atheists in Kenya (AIK)resigned after finding faith in Jesus Christ.

Seth Mahiga worked for AIK for less than two years when he resigned. Mahiga could no longer work for a place that he didn't believe the message they promoted.

"Seth's reason for resigning is that he has found Jesus Christ and is no longer interested in promoting atheism in Kenya. We wish Seth all the best in his newfound relationship with Jesus Christ," AIK President Harrison Mumia wrote on Twitter.

The AIK shareda video of Mahigaat a church sharing his testimony of newfound faith.

The video garnered much excitement from the Kenyan Christian community.

"I've been going through some difficulties in life and then I decided to resign as the secretary so I'm so happy to be here," Mahiga says in the online video.

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Former Atheist leader in Kenya gives his life to Jesus - CHVN Radio