The Damned

​Two teachers at Blanche Ely High School in Pompano Beach are in danger of losing their jobs after a March incident in which they allegedly doused an atheist teacher with holy water, the South Florida Times reports. ...

Readers, you may have recently noticed on my sidebar a plea to help to Brooklyn-based filmmakers, Lana Wilson and Martha Shane, raise funds for their documentary "Trust Women," which takes a look at Dr. LeRoy Carhart and Dr. Warren Hern, two of the last physicians in the country who continue to perform late-term abortions. Whether they realize it or not, the directors are documenting the tale of two American doctors who stand up to terrorism everyday. I had the chance to interview them and I hope, if you feel as passionate about this movie getting made as I do, you'll pledge a few bucks right here.

I never ask you guys for money, I rarely advocate anything, so you know this cause has really captured my heart. I hope it captures yours too.

Hey, by the way, they only got until tomorrow, May 23rd, so jump on this now, Now, NOW! Please, please, use your money to put something good into the world, even if it's only $5 or $10, you'll be able to brag to all your friends about helping young, intelligent artists improve the world.

OK, without further begging, Lana Wilson and Martha Shane:

GRN: Tell us a little about the 'story arc' of your film, it's title, your goals and the doctors portrayed.

The working title for our film is TRUST WOMEN: THE STORY OF TWO AMERICAN ABORTION DOCTORS.


After the murder of Dr. George Tiller last June, there are only a few American doctors left who provide late abortions for women who need them. Two of these physicians—Dr. LeRoy Carhart and Dr. Warren Hern—have been threatened and harassed by the anti-choice movement for years, yet have bravely continued their work protecting a woman’s right to cho
ose. Our film will paint a vivid portrait of the lives of both of these men.

The sacrifices that these doctors, their families, and their staffs make on a day-to-day basis--whether it means installing metal detectors in their clinics, or avoiding restaurants and other public places--often go unnoticed. Similarly, the complicated medical and personal circumstances that lead many women to seek an abortion are frequently misunderstood or ignored. We hope that our film will not only make a powerful political statement about the importance of protecting abortion rights, but also function as a work of art, telling the deeply personal stories of its two main characters through their own eyes, in a lyrical and expressive style.

As for the doctors themselves, the first is Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who served in the United State Air Force for over twenty years, and has been providing abortion care since 1974. He founded the Abortion & Contraception Clinic of Nebraska (ACCON) in Bellevue, Nebraska, with his childhood sweetheart and wife of 48 years, Mary Lou Carhart, in 1992. ACCON’s mission is to provide pregnancy terminations, contraception, and routine medical care to the women of the Midwest in a compassionate, comfortable and personal environment. Dr. Carhart was a close friend of Dr. George Tiller, and after Dr. Tiller’s assassination in May 2009, decided to provide late-term abortions at his own clinic. Over the years Dr. Carhart has been subject to endless persecution from anti-choice protestors, including a suspected arson in 1991 that burned down his family’s farm, killing seventeen horses and two pets. Last month, as you may already know, restrictive new anti-choice laws were signed into law in Nebraska, set to go into effect in October.



The second doctor who will be featured in the film is Dr. Warren Hern, the Director of the Boulder Abortion Clinic in Boulder, Colorado, founded his own private practice in 1975, and since then has devoted his life to researching and developing the best and safest ways of terminating pregnancy. A trained anthropologist, he has also studied fertility and the use of contraceptives in Peru’s Shipibo Indian communities for the past forty years, and has written extensively about that research, as well as about abortion practice and women’s rights. Despite living and working in one of the most progressive communities in the country, Dr. Hern has suffered anti-choice harassment and threats for decades, including a shooting attack on his clinic. But nothing will stop Dr. Hern—at the age of 72, he still skis double-black-diamond runs, writes poetry, and takes National Geographic-published nature photographs in his spare time.


GRN: I've always felt like the mistake in the abortion debate is that the anti-abortion rights people have made it an issue of morality, of murder, of standing up for someone who can't stand up for themselves. And it has crossed my mind that those who think abortion involves killing a living thing are under the impression that some god drops a soul from heaven like an air traffic controller at the moment of conception. Have you found that most anti-abortion arguments are narrowed down to something like this? Do you feel there is any reasonable opposition to the rights to an abortion?

Some anti-abortion arguments definitely do go along the lines that you mention, and use an argument of "morality" to make their case. But the case for morality can also be made on the pro-choice side of the issue. As Dr. Carhart put it in an interview we did with him, "The only truly moral way to be is pro-choice. Women will never be forced to make a decision they don't want to if they are allowed to have a choice." As his wife, Mary Lou Carhart, pointed out in the same interview, when can it be moral to, for instance, force a 13-year-old girl to have a baby? Is that really the most morally righteous decision to make?

As you point out, anti-choicers certainly do harp on the idea that life, to them, begins before birth, in the womb. Many of them even suggest that life een begins when the sperm fertilizes the egg, even though this is not even something possible to medically detect. Dr. Hern wrote a very funny piece for THE COLORADO STATESMAN in 2007 called, "Would a fertilized egg need a passport?" Here's an excerpt from it that relates to what you're talking about (and you can read the full piece here: http://www.drhern.com/pdfs/fertilizedeggamendment.pdf):

"An egg is a person. No, an egg is a chicken. A fertilized human egg is a person. An acorn is a tree. A seed is an apple. A set
of plans is a house. A blastocyst is a “preborn baby.” An adult human being is a “pre-dead corpse.” Up is down. Black is white. War is peace. Facts are not important. Belief is what matters. And people who know the truth will tell you what to believe....The U.S. Constitution refers to “All persons born...,” not “all persons conceived...” or “all fertilized eggs…” No live birth, no person."

For us, the bottom line is that everyone is entitled to have their own opinion on abortion--whether it's right or wrong, or whether they would ever consider getting an abortion themselves. And people are welcome to have their own opinions about when life begins (even if those opinions are not backed up by medical facts). But people should not have the right to make this decision for others. No person--and certainly no state legislature or federal government--has the right to make deeply personal medical and life decisions for women. Only the woman herself can judge her situation and what will be the best decision for her.

GRN: I find that the most religious and sexually restricted areas of the United States are frequently the areas in which teen pregnancy is the highest. These are frequently also the places in which an abortion (particularly for young people) are especially hard to obtain. What do you think this says about America's variety of approaches to sexual education?

America's approach to sex education is clearly very problematic. Numerous studies have proven that countries with the most comprehensive sex education programs, and not the "abstinence-only" policy that so many American health teachers are forced to adhere to, have lower abortion and teenage pregnancy rates. There is no question about this, so it's unfortunate that American education policy is not currently doing everything it can to prevent teenagers from being in the situation where they need to get abortions. One great irony of the anti-choice movement is that ultimately, their policies actually lead to higher abortion rates.

In terms of the lack of abortion services in certain parts of the country, that is certainly a problem too. Martha actually had a letter to the editor published in THE NEW YORK TIMES last week about the unfortunate lack of access to abortion services in red states: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/opinion/l17douthat.html

GRN: Who needs to see your film? Do you think you can change minds? Do you think the anti-abortion rights people will give you a chance?

We want as many people as possible to see our film. We certainly do think that art changes minds, and that's why we're making this movie.

One of the major problems with the pro-choice movement is public perception, particularly public perception of the doctors who actually provide abortions. We think that by putting audiences directly inside of the lives of these two very inspiring doctors--letting them hear both men speak, in their own words, about why they do the work that they do, as well as sharing the stories of women who come to the clinic and why--they'll be able to better understand why protecting the right to choose is so important. It's also very important to us to really put a human face on these two doctors--to show that they're people with wonderful families and hobbies and passions just like everyone else--because we think that will help audiences sympathize and identify with them.

We don't have high expectations for the anti-choice movement giving our film a chance, but who knows--it could happen! The film is really targeted more at people who are uncertain or conflicted about the issue--which is probably most of the country--as well as people who are mostly pro-choice, but may not support late abortion rights. This is surprisingly common, thanks to widespread misinformation about why women need late abortions. So another goal of the film is simply to educate the general public about why late abortions are sometimes needed, and the importance of protecting this right as well.

GRN: The anti-abortion rights people are often portrayed as rough customers. In the process of making this film did you find any of that to be true? Did you ever feel threatened?

We are still in the process of making this film, so it's really too early to say. What we've seen so far is a wide range of anti-choice protestors--from very quiet people who pray silently outside clinics, to loud protestors who aggressively harass the women trying to get inside. We really don't feel threatened ourselves--the safety of the doctors and the clinic staffs is what's really at risk here.

GRN: Can you offer any insight on the recent law passed in Oklahoma forcing women seeking an abortion (and doctors) to undergo a vaginal ultrasound against their will (among other provisions)?s

The new Oklahoma law is a terrible blow to the rights of women in that state. It has two provisions--one in which the doctor has to show an ultrasound of the fetus to the pregnant woman, and describe its physical characteristics to her, even if she is the victim of rape or incest, and another in which doctors cannot be sued by their patients if they decide not to tell a patient that their fetus has a severe birth defect. Obviously, if a woman does not know about a birth defect in her fetus, this can have disastrous consequences for both herself and her family. And as for the other provision, we think Rachel Maddow said it best: the new plan of the anti-choice movement seems to be that "If you can't stop women from having abortions, at least make the experience as vile, invasive, and humiliating as possible." It's a shame that this law passed, but hopefully it will incite the women in that state to action.

Thanks, Lana, Martha, Dr. Hern, Dr. Carhart and all my readers especially those who are now going to click here and use a few bucks to help change the world.

Robert Seyfarth talks about how children develop a ‘theory of mind’.

To each their own, but when it comes to attributing natural phenomena to a God or gods, it seems that as science progresses there are less and less places for God to hide. I stumbled across this preface, and the book looks pretty promising ;-D.

In the beginning, we humans lived in the wild and ate whatever was slower or stupider than we were. At this time, we invented a thing called a “god.” The god was made from the mightiest elements mankind could see: fire, thunder, lightning… all the big, scary stuff. We understood little about these gods, except for the simple fact that in their Infinite Wisdom they had decided they didn’t need to eat us. As we found this good, we honored and worshiped them.

As time passed and humans prospered on Earth, we learned much about the way the planet actually worked. Over and over again, we humans were put in the awkward position of looking at things like storm clouds and saying “Wait a minute…that’s not a god. That’s a high ridge of barometric pressure coming in from the cooler coastal region.”

But there were still a lot of things we didn’t understand. So, rather than waste more time and effort deifying every new enigma we ran across, we decided to simplify the whole mess by creating a single, omnipresent ‘God’ on whom we could throw all the mysteries of the universe until such time as our descendants could look at them and say, “Wait a minute…that’s not God. That’s…”

These days we’ve solved so many of life’s mysteries that we’re running out of things to call ‘God.’ Between mapping the human genome and cloning animals, we almost lack the ability to perceive anything as being more powerful than we are. This new mindset has opened the door to a broader theological search that requires a lot of time and dedicated effort on the part of religious leaders worldwide.

As this tends to keep them the hell out of our way, the rest of us now have the chance to think for ourselves.

And so the era of the Heathen begins…

Glad to be done with grad school and possibly back in action!

Oz

The theists of the world say that death is usually and end of this body in preparation of the soul for taking a new body. Firstly, there are no evidences of past and future births of a person, secondly, there is no evidence that a living body has something eternal in it called the soul. Had there been a soul for every body taking births again and again, there won't be new creations of life and hence the overall population wold remain stable. Although, there is no census on total number of species of life on earth and their respective numbers at any time, apparently, the number of live bodies is increasing regularly, which means that the life is being created without an assumed transfer of soul.

Theists and Pundits in the business of Godly terror, and beggary and cheating in this name keep on fabricating and publicizing new stories of rebirths to keep them in business. And whatever such stories have been investigated, all have been found to be false.  

Death in reality is failure of all functions of life in a live body after which the body becomes non-functional and all matters related to life in the body end then and there, with nothing to move forward temporally or spatially. This is the scientific definition of life supported by logical reasoning also.

As a natural principle, no matter in nature remains stable but keep on converting to other forms. Birth, growth and death are also such conversion processes about the body. It takes birth, grows, decays and ultimately becomes lifeless on failure of functioning. Thus, body is the matter and life is its functioning. both live together, work together and perish together. 

Why atheism grows faster than religion By Nigel Barber, Ph.D....

Readers: I don't usually answer people's comments in a new post, but Google seems to be having some problem and I'm unable to post comments. If you're having problems, I'm sorry, feel free to email me your questions. There's a button on the left.

Anyway, this is in response to Kate who, having read my piece on the stark differences between Ann Coulter and Saudi poet Hissa Hilal, asked me for my take on the cancellation of Coulter's speech at the University of Ottawa.


Here's the article she linked me to.

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Kate, I'm glad you asked me that because I think I have an interesting take on this.

As I understand it, Coulter was asked to speak at a college, then, after a series of protests, that invite was either revoked or Coulter's people advised her to back out. I'm not clear, but I'm sure it was either one or the other and not some third reason, like, for instance, that the government deported Coulter or something like that.

OK, so, let's put aside this regrettable nonsense from Susan Cole (who said Canada isn't interested in free speech) and Ezra Levant (who shamed Ottawa students for 'silencing her (Coulter) through intimidation.'

What happened here was that a woman was scheduled to speak, nobody wanted to hear her speak or give her a platform, so they railed against it till the speech was cancelled. Think of it as a sort of 'free-market' of speech. Coulter was free to speak, despite what Cole will have you believe. The government didn't crack down on her. No SWAT team was sent in to silence her. Nowhere was her FREEDOM to speak assaulted. However, like in a free market, if people don't want it, they react. If we found out tomorrow Wonder Bread caused cancer, there'd be a lot of protests. No one would say that those who boycotted Wonder Bread were trying to take away Wonder Bread's freedom to sell a product. Cigarette companies don't say that oncologists are anti-freedom (although, I wouldn't be surprised if those bastards did resort to that.) Coulter and her right-wing buddies are telling us her freedom has been assaulted because it's easy for people to rally behind that. You want to be on the side of freedom, but the trick she's played on you is convincing you that this is an issue of freedom at all.

Look, when we say 'free' we're talking about laws. The government. Police. Freedom isn't giving everyone equal time. That's the opposite of freedom. That's force-feeding. I don't have to listen to Ann Coulter anymore than I have to listen to the leader of the KKK. I can walk out. I can turn the radio off. What's more, if she's coming to my university, I have the right as an American (and I presume Canadians do, too) to shout and scream in the halls until the thing I want stopped is stopped. If I do it alone, I'll be taken away. Not because my 'freedom' is being taken away, but because no one is buying my speech. The 'free speech market' has shut me up. However, if I'm there with 2,000 friends saying 'we don't want this in our school,' suddenly there's demand for what I'm saying and against what Coulter's saying.

I'm not forced to host Coulter at my university politely anymore than I am forced buy Coulter's hateful books. This is why schools don't host KKK leaders or al-Qaida supporters, not to limit their free speech, but because that's speech no one's buying. There's no support for Coulter in Ottawa and whoever booked her made a mistake.

I'm not interested in the spin that suggests there were physical threats to her. I don't know what they consider a physical threat, but I know plenty of controversial speakers, at least the brave ones, don't back down in the face of threats. I know Barack Obama wouldn't. Before he was president he spoke a few blocks from my house the morning after a shooting took place on that same block. Sure, he had protection, but he was still outside, without a kevlar vest, in a dangerous Philadelphia neighborhood with hundreds of potential sharpshooter nests surrounding him. That's bravery. Coulter making an issue out of a protest that got her more headlines than if she had actually spoke, that's worse than cowardice.

That's calculated deception.

She sells a product nobody wants and then sells the outrage when the 'free-speech market' boycotts her.

Thanks for reading, Kate, I appreciate the input and thanks for the correction. I know the plural is churches, but I slip up every now and then.

Thanks again,
Billy Deaton.

A Philly film student recently sent a video collage he put together last semester and asked if I would share it with all of you. So here it is. It's disturbing, poignant, and powerful.

I, like many, can get very angry watching things like this. It reminds me that religion is everywhere and it's a major contributing factor in blinding people while a few powerful elites wield it to tear our world apart. It's our world, folks, it's not their world. The rich, the powerful, the famous, they're the few. The people who use this sort of destruction, cruelty and hate based in fairy tales, they thrive on your dependence upon them and their myths. Don't give it to them. I know, I'm starting to sound like Marx, but this isn't about Marxism, I'm not a Marxist, but it's true. Religion is the opiate of the masses. "They keep you doped with religion," said John Lennon.

But what I've got to remember and what everybody's got to remember, before our anger gets the best of us, is that the same folks we're so angry at for stirring up this nonsense are often the victims that we're trying to lift out of the dark pit that is religious belief. It's so hard for a Christian or a Muslim or whatever you got to understand that they can let go of gods. That it's easy, that it's not about turning evil, that it is, in fact, liberation.

I'm not saying all wars and violence and hate would end the day the last man puts down his religious text, but at least without religion we're forced to think about the things we're killing each other over. We're forced, once we see there's no god, to weigh decisions about what's best for humanity, how to create the world we want and whether some things are worth dying for. When the impact of what's really known about death is realized, people, I would hope, would treat life a little more preciously.

Thanks for reading everyone. I know I've been slow with the posts, but keep an eye out, I've got some important features in the works here.

In the meantime, be sure to check out www.goodreasonnews.tumblr.com where I update almost daily.

Hey, did you create something you want to share with GRN readers? There's an email button on the side, I'm happy to take a look.

If you haven’t already done so, it might be a good idea to read part I of this series before reading this article. There, I set out some important ideas that will help you understand the frame of reference I have for describing an awesomely godless existence.
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God Has Far Too Much Time On His Hands

From a very young age, I remember reading and being told that God knows everything. He knows what you’ve done, and what you will do. He even knows your thoughts. Hell, he even knows what you will think before you do.

I’ve heard Christopher Hitchens call this the “celestial surveillance camera”. How perfect. God, with all his responsibilities for creating universes and making sure everything works tickety-boo has the time and interest to spy on each and every thought we will ever have.

The evilness of this mental torture has no equal… except perhaps for the concept of eternal punishment. Children are brought up thinking that even a fleeting bad thought is being recorded, tallied and judged. As an adult, you cannot even look at the spouse of another person without the thought that God knows that you have coveted, and are therefore guilty of breaking one of his commandments. Punishing natural, human desire is a despicable concept in my books.

Spirits Among Us?

Even ‘spiritual’ people who don’t think much about God are susceptible to the idea that their most private thoughts may not solely be their own. Because so many of them badly want there to be an afterlife, they gravitate toward mind/body dualism and, from there, invoke the supernatural idea of souls.

Unfortunately, where there is one disembodied soul, there are probably going to be others (e.g. ghosts/spirits) with otherworldly abilities who carry with them a cornucopia of surveillance possibilities.

Atheism is Peace of Mind

There is no feeling of mental intrusion in a skeptical, naturalistic, atheist view of reality. In our world, consciousness is merely what trillions of brain cells do and, since a mind reading machine will not likely exist in the near future, our thoughts are purely our own so we feel safe thinking whatever we want. After all, to us, thoughts are just thoughts.

This godless gift is truly, truly awesome, and I can say without reservation that this one thing alone was worth the price of admission. Being godless brings a freedom and peace of mind I never even came close to having when I was a believer.

Highly recommended.
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Did You Like This Article? Then stay tuned for part III and please consider sharing it on one of the social bookmarking sites shown below. Thanks!

Part of the interview an atheist survey I recently completed asked why I think living as an atheist is better than living a life under God.

In retrospect, my response wasn’t nearly as good as it might have been. For starters,  I wrote it right before bed time. And that led me to only partially answer the question – I left a lot of awesomeness out!

At any rate, the question is excellent blog fodder which I hope to fully consume in a series of posts starting with this one. Here in this post, I’ll set the stage by clarifying some things about my atheism, and how things besides my atheism factor into the awesomeness of being godless.

First, Some Basics…

• What is atheism? Atheism is disbelief in the existence of deities including the Abrahamaic gods and the thousands of other gods contemplated throughout history. Atheism is nothing more than this disbelief.

• What is not Atheism? Atheism is not a world view. It does not come all packaged up with a set of beliefs.

The bullets are a reminder that we should never assume atheism means anything more than it does. Not all atheists share similar beliefs and world views. We are not all humanists, anarchists, liberals, or materialists, and not all of us disbelieve in supernatural concepts such as souls, ghosts, karma, past lives and E.S.P. In other words, we are a diverse group of people who tend to share only one thing – our disbelief in the existence of deities.

I imagine that’s one of the reasons it’s often said that atheists are harder to herd than cats.

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Can We Narrow the Field Down a Bit?

At the risk of riling up the herd, I’m going to suggest that one sub-set of atheists tend to have commonalities. The sub-set I’m speaking of (the one I am a part of) is best understood by how they arrive at atheism:

• Some atheists haven’t given belief/non-belief much thought. They haven’t really pinned down the reasons they do not believe. In this group you may find atheists believing in things that fall under the category of the supernatural – even though they do not believe in god(s). This is not the sub-set I want to talk about.
• Some atheists are not really atheists. These are the folks who call themselves atheists, but who misunderstand the meaning of the concept. These are the atheists who are rebelling against a god they still believe exists. Although I haven’t met one of these, they are the straw man atheists that apologists like James Spiegal like to mislead people into thinking are the only type of atheists. This is not the sub-set of “atheist” I want to pin my discussion on.
• Some atheists arrive at their atheism after having listened to the arguments for and against gods, having gathered and weighed evidence and having used their powers of reason. These atheists rely on the tools of skepticism (not to be confused with cynicism) and the scientific method to attain an understanding of the universe they live in.
  

  Master of Skepticism Carl Sagan

That last group of ‘skeptical atheists’ is the one I will try to represent (I’m sure they’ll tell me if I do a poor job!). But, hold onto your horses because I’m not done defining them.

It’s Natural

Reason, skepticism and the scientific method tend to lead my group of atheists in consistent directions. Most notably, it leads us to reject the existence of not just deities, but anything supernatural. That is to say that we tend to be naturalists. That is, we hold the view that the world can be understood in scientific terms, without relying on spiritual or supernatural explanations.

Wrapping it all up…

Context helps us understand and appreciate the things an atheist would consider to be awesome about godlessness. The context for myself (and I presume other atheists like me) is that I am not just an atheist – I am also a skeptic, a rationalist and a naturalist. And with all of that priming the pump, I can finally talk about the awesomeness of godlessness. Stay tuned for part II!
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Did You Like This Article? Please consider sharing it on one of these social bookmarking sites. Thanks for reading!

You’ve decided to comment on everything I post. Normally, I welcome anyone who adds to the discussion. However, in your case, all I am seeing in incoherant babble. Let me make this clear; You have never said a word that makes any sense. Please seek some medical help.

Your comments are now banned – everything you post will be deleted as soon as I see it. To make things even more clear, I am GOD here and I have chosen to wipe your existence from my universe. Bye bye now.

As many atheists will attest, fierce anger is one of the emotions we experience (sometimes for extended time periods) when we break free from belief.

Godless Girl recently wrote about how she gets past the anger, which inspired vjack from Atheist Revolution to begin a series of posts on getting past anger.

I enjoyed Godless Girl’s post and am looking forward to reading vjack’s thoughts. Check them both out!