Enforced praying

I heard a story from my stepdaughter last weekend. She lives with her dad in "the heartland" -- the center of Texas. She considers herself an atheist; her dad used to be an atheist but is now questionable. Dad's wife is a Christian.

At her junior high school, they had one of those "pray around the flagpole" events where students meet before school. This is generally not a problem since it is supposed to be organized by students and ignored by the school administration.

Only not in this case. Her first class is P.E., and her coach instructed everyone to be there at the earlier time in the morning. He said "If anyone has any religious objections then you have to come and tell me and I'll let you off." But if anyone doesn't show up and doesn't voice a religious objection, they have to undergo "attitude adjusters." According to stepdaughter, that means extra laps and push-ups.

So my stepdaughter dutifully told the coach that she's not coming because she's an atheist. Everyone heard her. One girl told her they can't be friends anymore. Many others picked arguments.

People think that school prayer is harmless, but I think this is a good example of what happens when the school gets involved with religion. That coach was way out of line. She shouldn't HAVE to tell him about her religious beliefs. She shouldn't be put in the situation of making her classmates hostile at her. It's frankly none of his damn business.

Seems to me that teachers taking it upon themselves to identify who belongs to what religion is the first step in something more sinister. I would expand on that, but I don't want to invoke Godwin's law.

September 11 Memorial speech

This speech was delievered for a secular September 11 memorial service hosted by the Atheist Community of Austin.

After September 11 a year ago, for a short period of time -- maybe a few days, maybe a couple of weeks -- the United States really seemed to be unified. We were a nation in mourning; we all had a grief that we shared, even though most of us didn't personally know anyone who died in the tragedy. Everyone seemed just a little more sympathetic towards each other. People went out of their way to call old acquaintances and make sure they were okay. My wife even said she noticed that drivers were a little less rude in traffic. They wouldn't cut each other off, they would slow down to let you change lanes, and they wouldn't honk and gesture so much.

Human nature being what it is, it's not really surprising that this camaraderie didn't last very long. The first crack I noticed came from an unsurprising source: Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Instead of offering moral support and positive suggestions, they began casting around for someone to blame. It was on September 13, just two days later, that Jerry and Pat appeared on "The 700 Club" to offer these words of support and comfort to our nation: "...what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."

Falwell then went on to explain why we deserved what we got. It would seem that it's all the fault of a laundry list of groups: the American Civil Liberties Union, pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, and lesbians. They all make his God angry.

At the same time, something else was happening in America. Reports of hate crimes against people of Arabic descent started coming in. We all heard the reports about assaults, death threats, and general harassment against people who looked middle-Eastern. They were directed against innocent people who weren't involved in the attacks, who would never dream of such an action. In many cases, the victims weren't even the RIGHT ethnicity -- they were Pakistani or Indian; they practiced Hinduism rather than Islam. Racial prejudice isn't known for its logic.

To Ann Coulter it's obvious what the solution is to Islamic terrorism. In a column on September 14, she wrote that "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." OBVIOUSLY the problem is that the assailants were Muslims; if they had been Christians, they would never have done such a thing, because there are no recorded instances of people killing each other in the name of Christianity, right?

The news about racial hate crimes has diminished in more recent times, but it has been replaced by a general undercurrent of anger against Muslims. As recently as last month, we've heard Billy Graham's son, Franklin, tell us that all Islamic people scare him, saying, "the silence of the (Islamic) clerics around the world is frightening to me." In reality, there are hundreds of Muslim leaders from around the world who have issued public statements denouncing the actions of the terrorists, and yet Graham ignores this fact and asks: "How come they haven't come to this country, how come they haven't apologized to the American people?"

Ashraf Sabrin, a medical technician who volunteered for the relief efforts at the twin towers and the Pentagon, said: "We've had so many different events -- open houses, candlelight vigils, national press releases. What's it going to take exactly?" Ironically, Franklin Graham's false sweeping generalization about Muslims came up shortly after the publication of a book he wrote which included the following claim: "Islam - unlike Christianity - has among its basic teachings a deep intolerance for those who follow other faiths."

Meanwhile, popular radio commentators and news editorialists can be heard daily making sarcastic mockeries of Arabs, saying "If they don't want to be frisked at every checkpoint and looked at with perpetual suspicion by all American citizens, then they shouldn't come here and blow up our buildings." That is, of course, absurd. Most of the people we are talking about are American citizens themselves, who watched in horror along with the rest of us as the twin towers collapsed; but unlike the rest of us, they received the additional insult of being harassed and targeted by angry people looking for revenge on someone, anyone. The reality is that the peaceful American citizens of Arab descent who walk among us in our cities are NOT the same ones who attacked us.

We atheists have also received a bit more than our fair share of the blame for an event that didn't involve us at all. Kathleen Parker wrote an editorial for USA Today on October 1 that begins by saying, "One can't help notice the silence of atheists these days." The general idea of this article was that it would be a very good thing if atheists would all shut up about that irritating "separation of church and state" and go away so we could get back to the business of giving our children proper values. It concluded by saying, "If we're to win this war -- sure to last into our children's futures -- we have to reweave the rituals of God and country into our institutions."

Well, obviously atheists haven't been keeping silent -- here we are, after all -- but they've been marginalized as much as possible ever since last year. We've become convenient bogeymen representing everything that's wrong with American values, which led God to decide that we're not worthy of being protected anymore.

So, whose fault was September 11? On the one hand, we hear that the reason we're being targeted by terrorist attacks is because we deserve it, thanks to all the atheists and evolutionists and ACLU members and gay people and so on. On the other hand, we hear that it's all the fault of every single person who has a certain ethnic background, especially if they are presumably too foolish to recognize that one religion is inherently evil and violent while another religion is noble and good.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. When we see something that interests or scares us, we look for a way that we can generalize the experience. Sometimes this is simply good survival instinct; after all, if you recognize the circumstances when you make a mistake, then hopefully you won't make the same mistake again. But as a method of dealing with other people, sometimes it's just bad policy.

A common thread that we see in all this is Americans attacking other Americans, looking for easy rules of thumb to tell them who the bad guys are. No such rules exist, of course, especially in a pluralistic society where many different ways of life are represented. We're letting generalizations get in the way of thinking.

Unfortunately, atheists are sometimes guilty of this habit too. How many of you were listening to what I said about Robertson, Falwell, and Graham, and thinking to yourselves "See? That just goes to show that you can't trust those religious people"? It's very easy for non-Christians to take the worst examples of Christianity and use that as a substitute for the religion as a whole. But in fact, it's not that being a member of a particular religion makes you a bad person, any more than being a member of no religion. There are some fine and wonderful Christians out there, just as there are fine and wonderful Muslims and atheists.

The danger that any religion poses occurs only when its members become entrenched in the idea that "Our metaphysical truth is right, and theirs is SO WRONG that there is no possibility that we can even communicate." Jerry Falwell said it about large numbers of Americans. Franklin Graham said it about all Muslims. And Osama bin Laden said it about us. In that sense, when fundamentalism is practiced to extremes in this country, it mirrors the sort practiced in Afghanistan.

We shouldn't do that. We're supposed to be the country that values diversity, and we're proud of our freedom to choose to believe whatever religion we want, including none at all.

But we are, each one of us, about more than just our religion. We are not our set of beliefs. We are not the groups we join or the people we associate with. Each one of us is an individual, someone who is worthy of respect and appreciation for our unique qualities.

Let's not join together in groups as a way of shutting out the rest of the world. If we do join groups, it should be because we want to feel close to each other and have friends. Study the examples of the Taliban and al Qaeda, and understand that they're bad not because they practice Islam, and not because of their dark skin, but because they've come to a place where they can't accept anyone having different beliefs than their own. And then let's try not to follow their example.

Final correspondence

In response to my previous correspondence (see the first and second letters below) I got this:

Hey Russ!
(and who ever else reads this)

Thanks again for your resposnse to my response to your response. I'm not going to parse e-mails but I think you and yours have come dangerously close to validating my original points. I'm still not convinced that you are all a bunch of happy campers and I stand by what I have already said..
Anyway, thanks for trying and glad your listening. Say hi to Chris for me (who I will admit is one of the funniest athiests I've met) . Later!

Yours,
Richie L.
KIXL 970 AM

I know I shouldn't, but I found this reply incredibly disheartening.

I mean, I really went out of my way to be friendly to the guy; I didn't think I was baiting him and I certainly tried to describe a "happy atheist" life in as accessible a manner as possible. But of course, he starts with the assumption that all atheists are unhappy; so rather than be bothered to think about what I wrote, the best he could come up with was more or less "well you don't sound happy to me."

I guess I should have known better.

I can't decide whether to waste the time on another reply. As I was listening to the same station this morning (I'm serious, there's very little else to listen to) I couldn't help but be struck by what a wall-to-wall bitchfest their regular programming is. America's on the decline. Satan is everywhere. The world is going to end within a few years, isn't that exciting? I was a drunken slob but then I stopped being a drunken slob and now my life isn't quite as miserable as it used to be. Homosexuals will kill you in your sleep if you don't take a stand now.

Is this the kind of "happiness" we're supposed to be living up to?

This email exchange got me thinking. The implicit message Richie was sending me was, "You're really not happy, and the reason why is because you don't have God in your life."

Now, this angle doesn't work on me, because I happen to be a person who considers myself happy. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that it doesn't really matter to him at all. He's dismissed me now as an irrelevant data point.

But not all atheists are happy. There are certainly unhappy people of all varieties out there. I'd guess a roughly equal proportion of atheists and theists are unhappy. And if he makes the same argument to a genuinely unhappy person, that person is probably going to get ticked off, but then secretly sit around and reflect to himself. "Hey, I'm really NOT happy. I wonder if there's something to this God thing after all?"

Say an evangelist makes a pronouncement to a room filled with a random sample of atheists. "None of you atheists are happy! You all need God!" Maybe six out of ten of them are really happy, and they brush him off. Of course I'm happy, schmuck. Go away. Two out of ten think, Well, my life could be better, but this God stuff is still nonsense. The other two people are really bothered by this pronouncement because they've just been thinking about how unhappy they are. Maybe I should try this out. Bingo, the congregation grows. And that happens even though the evangelist's confident pronouncement was wrong for 80% of the people in the room.

Like any sales pitch, it's a numbers game. You don't need anything like a 100% success rate, you just need to go out there and make more pitches. It doesn't even matter if it's TRUE or not that Christianity, in general will make an unhappy person happier. It doesn't matter if the jump from "I'm unhappy" to "I need to find God" is totally spurious. If you give your pitch to enough people, you randomly hit enough targets that your numbers grow, and that's all that matters, isn't it?

Worse than that, even a happy person has off days. Well, yes I'm happy... but I did have a bad day at work last week. I did have a fight with my wife. If you catch any person at a bad time, he can think of himself as unhappy.

And finally, telling someone that they're unhappy is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whether or not it's true, anyone can be influenced to start dwelling on all the things in their lives that aren't perfect. Gosh, I think I'm happy but that fight with my wife sure bothered me. I wonder if my marriage is on the rocks? Once you start thinking that way, a bad attitude can compound itself and cause real problems.

Does this approach intentionally thrive on causing misery? Do they actually try to depress people, in order to bring them into the club? It does make me wonder.

Follow-up email to Holy Henry call

Yesterday I mentioned that I had sent mail to the host at a Christian station. Here's what I got back:

Hey Russ!

Thanks for your e-mail to Ed that he forwarded to me. You know, you can always e-mail me directly or talk to me directly on the air anytime. Don't be afraid, I don't bite. And even if I do, I'm up on my shots!
I have met many atheists in my life and one of my best friends is a former atheist. Every atheist that I have ever spent any amount of time with was ultimately, deepdown an angry, unhappy, empty person. I had contact with the late Madeline O'hare and I also saw her vitriolic missives posted at ACTV back when I was a producer there. All I can go on is my direct experiences. I have had no proof presented to me to convice me
otherwise.
One of my dearest friends was an atheist. He has shared with me how
apathetic he was and how full his heart was of sadness and anger.
In 1973, he gave his life to Christ after he was challenged that he could not go one day without sinning. He has been a radical, longhaired, tattoo covered Christian for many years now.
I appreciate your phone call to the show but, it still doesn't offer me proof that you truly are happy ie. have true inner peace and serenity. I know you say that Ed and I will just have to take your word for that but I need and want to see the hard evidence. Simply because you say that you and your atheist friends are happy is not definitive. Prove it. The available evidence that I have encountered just doesn't support it.
For the record, I never said that atheists are rude and hate everybody. I said that many hate God, Christians, Jews, the Bible and I wish that they would just come out and publicly say so. Many Communist nations are atheistic and we've seen the evidence of human rights violations as well as religious persecutions. Again, I'd love to see the concrete evidence to prove to me otherwise.......does my arguement sound familiar?
I'm glad that your are listening to the show and hope that you continue in spite of all of us and our sometimes poor example of Christ's love. I suspect that there is still a God hunger deep down inside you somewhere though. Have a good one!

Your "smart-ass" Christian Friend.
Richie L.

Frankly, I'm utterly disappointed in this response. I was trying to open up friendly communications and not put him on the defensive. Instead of responding in kind, I get this standard "Oh, you're not TRULY happy" and "Joseph Stalin is all atheists' fault."

I forwarded it to some friends and a couple of them sent replies of their own. If my response seems a bit incomplete in any way, it's because I avoided repeating things that they already said.

> Hey Russ!
>
> Thanks for your e-mail to Ed that he forwarded to me. You know, you
> can always e-mail me directly or talk to me directly on the air anytime.
> Don't be afraid, I don't bite. And even if I do, I'm up on my shots!

Richie,

I would probably have written to you also, if I had known your email address. And as for talking to you directly on the air -- I did. Remember? :)

I have met many atheists in my life and one of my best friends is a former atheist. Every atheist that I have ever spent any amount of time with was ultimately, deepdown an angry, unhappy, empty person.

Now I could make a wisecrack about what a coincidence it is that all those people who spent a substantial amount of time with you turned out to be angry, unhappy and empty. But that wouldn't be very nice. All I can say is that you and I apparently spend time with very different sorts of people.

I had contact with the late Madeline O'hare and I also saw her vitriolic missives posted at ACTV back when I was a producer there. All I can go on is my direct experiences. I have had no proof presented to me to convice me otherwise.

I have no connection to Madeleine O'Hair. From what I know of her, I wouldn't have liked her much. I'd agree with you that she was a grouch. On the other hand, I've also heard that her life was nearly a nonstop barrage of death threats and hatred coming from the fine godly folks out there. I can understand why someone might develop a chip on their shoulder under the circumstances.

One of my dearest friends was an atheist. He has shared with me how apathetic he was and how full his heart was of sadness and anger. In 1973, he gave his life to Christ after he was challenged that he could not go one day without sinning. He has been a radical, longhaired, tattoo covered Christian for many years now.

If that makes him happy, then more power to him. Personally I have no desire to be radical, longhaired, tattoo-covered, or Christian, but thanks for sharing.

I appreciate your phone call to the show but, it still doesn't offer me proof that you truly are happy ie. have true inner peace and serenity. I know you say that Ed and I will just have to take your word for that but I need and want to see the hard evidence. Simply because you say that you and your atheist friends are happy is not definitive. Prove it. The available evidence that I have encountered just doesn't support it.

What an odd request. How would I go about answering such a question about my own mental state? I suppose I could send you pictures of me smiling. I could tell you that I enjoy a job that brings in a comfortable salary, I have a wonderful wife and stepdaughter whom I love with all my heart, a newborn son who is the cutest little baby I've ever seen, I enjoy the companionship of a lot of quality people, I have a very good relationship with my parents and extended family, and I live in the greatest country in the world (in my humble opinion). I could invite you to join me at my house for our game nights, come to dinner with my friends and listen to us joke around, or just watch me hold my baby for a few minutes. I could ask people who know me personally to provide support for my claim. (Actually, I think my rather enthusiastic friend Martin Wagner already wrote to you.) If I had that sort of detail for most people, I would personally see that as relatively persuasive evidence.

Of course, I expect you'd probably dismiss all this as the "outward physical trappings" of happiness or some such thing. But we're talking about my own state of mind, so again, eventually we get back to "you just have to take my word for it."

For the record, I never said that atheists are rude and hate everybody. I said that many hate God, Christians, Jews, the Bible and I wish that they would just come out and publicly say so.

Yes, I heard you say that on the show as well. We could say that, but it wouldn't be true. First off, we don't hate God because we don't believe in him. Second, we don't hate the Bible; we disagree with the ideas in it, and there's an important difference in those two things. And we don't hate Christians and Jews. We try not to hate people in general; life's too short for that. We disagree with some of their ideas, and sometimes we argue with them, but what you may not realize is that often we argue because arguing is fun.

You say you've watched The Atheist Experience on cable. If this is so then you may know that we close every show with a particular statement, intended in good fun: "We don't hate you: we just think you're wrong."

Many Communist nations are atheistic and we've seen the evidence of human rights violations as well as religious persecutions. Again, I'd love to see the concrete evidence to prove to me otherwise.......does my arguement sound familiar?

Since I am not a communist, that has little effect on me. Surely you realize that one doesn't have to be an atheist to persecute and destroy things. The folks who decided to attack us last September had a particular cause that they were trying to advance, and it certainly wasn't atheism, wouldn't you agree?

I'm glad that your are listening to the show and hope that you continue in spite of all of us and our sometimes poor example of Christ's love.

Well, it varies. I happen to think that yours is usually one of the kinder, gentler shows out there. When I listen to D. James Kennedy go off on a pet subject... ugh.

I suspect that there is still a God hunger deep down inside you somewhere though.

Usually I just have a cookie and the hunger goes away.
(Kidding!)
In all seriousness, I don't feel a hunger, but I also don't expect you to believe me, so that's the way it goes.

Have a good one!

Your "smart-ass" Christian Friend.
Richie L.

Likewise. Thanks for taking the time to write back, I do appreciate it. I guess you could tell from Martin's letter that I shared our correspondence a bit, although I didn't really intend to turn it into a free-for-all.

-- Your "Friendly Neighborhood Atheist" Friend,
Russell Glasser

Called my local Holy Henry station

Last week I was listening to "The Ed Sossen Show" on Christian station KIXL in Austin. The temporary host (Sossen was absent for the day) was speculating with his callers about the underhanded motives of Michael Newdow in the pledge of allegiance case. The host rather flippantly said, "Well, I've never met an atheist who is really happy. They're all so full of vitriol and hate that..." etc.

I really wanted to call, but I had to be somewhere at the time.

Luckily, I got a second chance today. The regular host was back and the co-host was repeating his earlier comments. In the last few minutes of the show I called. I told the call screener, "Hi, I'm a happy atheist!" and got on the air in less than a minute.

The conversation was short but it went pretty well. I was nervous as hell, and I hope it didn't come through in my voice too much. I said I am happy as an atheist, and I have a lot of happy atheist friends. He asked "Did you have a bad experience when you were young?" I said "No, I had a great childhood. My father was an atheist physicist. I'm a fourth generation atheist, in fact, and I have a newborn son who may be fifth generation."

I also said that I enjoy the show (which is mostly true; Ed Sossen is a rare Baptist with a sense of humor). And I invited him to watch our cable access show. He said "Well I'd say God Bless You but I don't want to offend you..." and I said "Don't worry about me, you have to have pretty thick skin to be an atheist in Texas."

After I hung up there was about five seconds of dead air. I think my call really took them by surprise. Ed finally said "Well, I hope God DOES bless him, and I'll pray for him."

Later, I sent this letter.

Hi Ed,

This is Russell, the "happy atheist" who called at the tail end of the show today. I got home from work right after I called, and I don't have a radio that receives AM in the house, so I didn't hear if you said anything else. But I thought you wouldn't mind if I send you a quick follow-up.

You may have a hard time believing that somebody could be an atheist and still be happy and satisfied about their life, but it is true not only of me but of a fairly large percentage of my family and friends. You'll just have to take my word for that. Christians tend to incorrectly assume that all atheists had some kind of horrible, traumatic experience that caused them to rebel against God. The reality tends to be much less dramatic. Many of us are former Christians; a few (such as myself) come from atheist families; but nearly all the atheists I know are very thoughtful people, who became solid in their atheism only after long periods of thought and inner reflection. Ultimately, we just decided that the available evidence just doesn't seem to point to the existence of any deity. We aren't "fighting God"; we just don't believe in him.

I'm not writing to argue about that with you. I'm sure you've already formed an opinion about all such arguments that you've heard in the past, and so have I. The reason I called you today is that it's the second time I heard Richie claiming that all atheists are hateful and unhappy, and I decided I couldn't let that go unchallenged a second time. I can't tell what Richie's experience has been, but he might want to consider the fact that atheists seem hostile to him because of his own approach. After all, it can be difficult for an atheist to be friendly to someone who has the preconception that all atheists are rude people who hate everybody, even before they've opened their mouth.

Ed, you seem like a reasonable guy to me. I meant it when I said that I enjoy your show regularly. As such, I believe that you wouldn't want to intentionally say untrue things about a group of people just because they don't usually call in to defend themselves. You probably don't know very many atheists and don't realize that they can be nice people who love their families, volunteer for worthy causes, and make good neighbors.

I'll even try to offer you a Christian perspective on why you shouldn't jump to the conclusion that atheists are bad people. According to Christianity, all humans are born into sin and continue to struggle with sin even after they get saved. Becoming a Christian doesn't magically make you perfect, right? It just means that your sins have been forgiven by the grace of God. You get to know enough non-Christians and you may realize that these are decent people who struggle with the same issues in their lives that you do. They happen not to share your belief system. There are some complete scoundrels who are Christians and equally many who are atheists, but there are plenty of good people in both camps who are willing to talk to each other.

The Atheist Community of Austin exists for two reasons: first, because it provides a social outlet for atheists. We're not in the habit of doing weekly organized activities like church, so it gives us an opportunity to meet each other. Second, we want to defend ourselves against the constant cry of religious leaders who insist on painting horns on atheists and trying to make an image of them as scary people who are trying to corrupt your children and shouldn't be allowed to exist in peace.

Feel free to respond or not, by email or on the air. You don't need to, but I'll be pleased to chat with you if you like. I'm not asking you to agree with my opinions or stop believing in Jesus. I'm not even asking you to become "politically correct" or champion the atheist cause. I'm just letting you know that most atheists aren't misanthropes, aren't chronically depressed, and aren't really all that interested in taking over the world.