Americans who do not believe in any gods (we would call them atheists, although they may not) are a large part of the population.  Some polls would say that there are more atheists in America than Mormons and Jews combined, however, we are either underrepresented, or our politicians are lying about their religious beliefs. If nearly one in five of us are atheists, as some polls suggest, why are we treated as a much smaller minority?  Much of that has to do with numbers and organization.

By Vic Tanner

Believe every word it says, or dismiss it all as bunk, there is no question that the Judeo-Christian Bible is one of the most controversial and perplexing books ever compiled. Conservative Christians commonly claim that all events in it are factual, yet any attempt to study the true historicity of the text is met with suspicion and cries of persecution by the True Believer. Their position is a truly unfortunate one, because critical analysis of the Bible is when it becomes truly interesting. It allows us to unravel the mystery of who the Hebrews were and what goals they were attempting to achieve when writing their scriptures. 

When people think of activism, they can sometimes get overwhelmed.  A lot of work goes into volunteering for an organization and promoting a cause, but there are many things that you can do to help promote atheism!

First, be positive!  There's nothing worse than a negative atheist, mostly because that is exactly the atheist stereotype: doom and gloom, mean-spirited, angry with the world. So don't be! It is actually that easy. Being positive is a choice.  Now, I can already hear it; so if there's a medical cause for your orneriness, please go see a doctor.  (No hoo-doo vitamin therapy over here, unless it's used in conjunction with an MD.) But seriously, other than that, you just need to shake it off.  You will have a more enriched life if you are positive, and you will also help others have a better life just by giving them a smile every once in a while.  Being a positive person puts a nice perspective on exactly what an atheist is:  the world doesn't fall apart without any gods, so prove that to people!  (For those of you who haven't heard the story, my blood type is B+.  Awesome.)  If you fall into the negativity trap, be aware of it, and make a conscious effort to stop yourself and at least be neutral.  Watch how much better people respond to you.  A wise man once told me “You can't out-Hitchens Hitchens, so you might as well be nice.”  He also said that I sound like Mary Poppins, which I totally acknowledge.

In August 2008 I started working for a nonprofit agency that administers a federally funded early childhood education program serving low-income families with children 3 and 4 years old. I have the pleasure to work with families from all kinds of different cultural backgrounds including many Somali Muslims.

The early childhood education program I work under mandates that monthly family events and education classes need to be offered to families enrolled throughout the year (nutrition workshop, financial literacy, dinner, stories, etc.). The families look forward to these events because there is valuable information, activities for kids, and socializing opportunities. However, many of the Somali Muslim families I work with are conspicuously missing when these events are held in churches.

Our Day of Reason celebration in the Rotunda of the state Capitol has made the first Thursday in May a landmark on our annual calendar. While on the steps outside the National Day of Prayer rally proclaimed the nation to be the exclusive property of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity, we stood in opposition to that message, speaking for government that favors no religion over any other, for government that is strictly secular.

    During a recent press conference in Turkey, President Obama said that "we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values." The religious right political movement exists to oppose this vision of America, and will never abate its efforts to have government declare a privileged position for Christianity. So it comes as no surprise that in May two bills were introduced in Congress for this express purpose.

    H. Res. 397 is a resubmission of last year's bill that I wrote about in the February 2008 newsletter, to create ‘America's Spiritual Heritage Week.' Last year H. Con. Res. 888 died in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, as the committee spent most of the year taking testimony from baseball players who had been accused of taking steroids. This year it may receive more attention and favor from lawmakers, although the bill contains many outright misrepresentations of history.

    H. Con. Res. 121 calls for President Obama to declare 2010 as "The National Year of the Bible." Both bills have been referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,

    The question is, what should we advocates for secular government do about these bills? Last year my Representative, Betty McCollum, was on the committee. I wrote to her in opposition to H. Con. Res. 888, and in the February 2008 edition of this newsletter urged others to do so. I asked Rep. McCollum to keep this bill in committee, but I received only a noncommittal reply months later, stating that if the bill came to a vote on the floor she would keep my comments in mind. Clearly my carefully drafted letter had only been summarily skimmed by the staffer who responded, and never reached Representative McCollum's attention.

    This year there are no Minnesotans on the committee. The Secular Coalition for America provides an editable form email that it will send on request to your representative to oppose the ‘America's Spiritual Heritage Week' bill (http://action.secular.org/t/5367/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27204), but at this writing has posted no mention of the ‘The National Year of the Bible' bill. If a campaign to personally lobby members of Congress is to be effective, it must not only be large, it must be consistent and sustained.

    The secular movement is unquestionably gaining strength and momentum. The Freedom from Religion Foundation has surpassed 13,000 members, the Secular Coalition for America has been formed to lobby Congress, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, American Atheists, and the Atheist Alliance International have all been expanding their activities. A glance at Atheist Weekly E-mail, which is distributed every Friday, shows that our own activities have grown explosively, and that atheists are now a firmly established community.

    But we cannot match the numbers of the Christian opponents of the wall of separation, so we cannot rest secure in the loyalty of any legislator. Campaigns to inundate them with phone calls, letters and emails seem futile, because staffers insulate them from constituent correspondence, and because organizing atheists is as likely as herding cats. But our greatest obstacle to influencing such legislation as H. Con. Res. 121 and H. Res. 397 is that the Democratic Party considers us a completely secure constituency.

    In December of 2007, the House passed by 372 to 9 a resolution acknowledging "the religious and historical importance of... the Christian faith; and the role of Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization." Symbolic victories like this are enormously important to conservative Christians, and there are few Congressmen who are not eager to at least pay them lip service. But if we are ever to become an effective political force, even symbolic bills must be important to us, too. Atheists are often smug in the superiority of their ideas, as if the battle of public and political opinion were certain to fall in line with the conclusions of science and reason. It is more likely that this culture war will only be won when we want victory as much as the opponents of secularism.

By Crystal Dervetski

On May 17, 2009, Chuck Samuelson, the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of  Minnesota (ACLU MN) spoke at the Minnesota Atheists monthly meeting on the ACLU MN's current lawsuit against a charter school in Apple Valley known as TiZA.  Mr. Samuelson also engaged the audience with other cases of separation of state and church issues, and a discussion of the difference between these matters in an urban vs. rural setting. 

     Mr. Samuelson was extremely knowledgeable, articulate, and personable.  His speech was both informative and entertaining.  The presentation was an eye-opening event for atheists in regards to how even religious groups in the majority have also experienced discrimination in our state.

      Minnesota Atheists should be proud to have had a balanced speaker like Mr. Samuelson, and his presentation solidifies MNA's reputation of having wonderful guest speakers present on a wide variety of topics and interests.

When I first met my new friend from Sierra Leone, we quickly got on to the subject of religion.  To make a point, he asked me to touch to my nose.

     I looked at him without moving.  Insistently, he said again, "Point to your nose!"

     So, I put my index finger on my nose.

     Then he said, "Okay, now point to God."

     Well, I didn't know where to put my index finger, so I dropped it back onto my lap.  Later into the evening, he described what African animist religions were, but before that, we further explored where "God" was.

By James Zimmerman

The erstwhile Star Trek franchise beams back into theaters this spring with its eleventh feature film. But this isn't exactly a continuation of an on-going story-this time, the Enterprise goes where every action hero is going these days: back to the beginning.

Kicking off with Lucas' disappointing trilogy of box office smashes that explored the origins of Darth Vader, movie studios have dutifully followed suit by offering theater-goers the origins of Batman, Superman, James Bond, Wolverine, and others.  Captain James Tiberius Kirk can now be added to this on-going fad.

But don't hold movie studios' slavish following of the latest gimmicks against this deeply cool film.  Star Trek (annoyingly left without a subtitle, or even so much as a Roman numeral) tells a compelling, riveting tale and, this time, does so with all the state-of-the-art special effects wizardry the legendary epic has long deserved.

By August Berkshire

On April 8, 2009, I went to the College of St. Catherine, a Roman Catholic university in St. Paul, to attend a presentation by evolutionary biologist Kenneth R. Miller. The lecture was entitled "Finding Darwin's God," after his book by the same name, which came out about ten years ago.

I remember reading Finding Darwin's God awhile back. The first half of the book was an excellent defense of evolution and critique of creationism. The second half of the book was a poor defense of god belief. I remember thinking that if Miller had only applied the logic from the first half of his book to the second half, he would be an atheist.

Miller was one of the star witnesses on the side of science in the "intelligent design" case in Dover, Pennsylvania a couple years ago. He's now come out with a new book, Only a Theory.

"Darwin's God" that Miller refers to is evidently a supernatural creator that Darwin implies exists in the final sentence of Origin of Species: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Miller sees an overall god-intelligence in the universe, but not the day-to-day micromanaging of evolution that Intelligent Design advocates allege. This god is supposedly the First Cause and set nature's laws in motion - including genetic mutation, natural selection, and heredity; in other words, evolution - and then stepped back and let the universe run itself. So, this god works through unguided evolution to create new species.

What Miller didn't tell us during his talk was that by the end of his life Darwin had become an agnostic. In other words, Darwin himself had lost Darwin's God.

One of the reasons Darwin abandoned the all-powerful, all-loving Christian god was because of the cruelty he saw in nature.

After Miller's lecture I spoke with him and asked him how he, a Catholic, could reconcile the cruelty in nature with the idea of a loving god.

I first asked why God couldn't have made all creatures vegetarians, so that some animals wouldn't have to painfully and cruelly kill and eat others. Miller said that that would mean that God would be stepping in and interfering with the natural evolutionary processes that he had set in motion. (Evidently God avoids miracles these days.)

I then asked Miller about painful human birth defects where the child dies very young. Why couldn't God have arranged it so that all genetic mutations were neutral or beneficial mutations? His answer was the same: that that would mean that God would be stepping in and interfering with the natural evolutionary processes that he had set in motion.

It seems that Miller understands the theological problem with a god who has to constantly intervene in his creation. He once stated "[I]f God purposely designed 30 horse species that later disappeared, then God's primary attribute is incompetence. He can't make it right the first time." ("Educators debate ‘intelligent design' " by Richard N. Ostling, Star Tribune, March 23, 2002, p. B9.)

It seemed to me that this god wasn't of much use. "So in other words," I said, "this world operates exactly the way we would expect it to operate if there were no god." Miller agreed, citing retired Vatican astronomer George Coyne who said that the universe doesn't need God.

Again, I asked him how he was able to reconcile the problem of natural evil with a loving god. He said that he was able to do so, but he didn't provide details as to how. I told him I have never been able to do it.

Other people were waiting to talk with Kenneth Miller, so we parted company, agreeing to disagree.

As I walked back to my car, I thought: Miller has all but admitted that there is no actual evidence for a god, and that certainly a god wasn't involved in the daily process of evolution. And yet Miller believes in a god. This must mean that he believes on a basis other than evidence. In other words, on faith. Evidently the belief came first and the rationalizations second.

Miller was raised by Roman Catholic parents and is "coincidently" a Roman Catholic himself. Of all the varieties of god belief he could have chosen, he "just happened" to pick the one he was raised with. Indoctrination has trumped evidence. To me, this seems like a very unintelligent design.