DESTROYING SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE BEGINS AT HOME Recent news articles have reported that Mayor de Blasio, attempting to expand his pre-Kindergarten school program for four-year-olds, has invited the participation of New York’s Hasidic Jewish community. Mayor de Blasio with pre-kindergarten students As a condition of their participation, the community’s Yeshivas (schools for Orthodox…
Somewhere in my 10-year tenure as president of NYC Atheists, it occurred to me that I am basically an Atheist “activist.” And that NYCA is a group composed mainly of Atheist activists. Oh, not that reading Atheist books or listening to Atheist lectures isn’t worthy in itself; in fact, we do plenty of that. Lectures…
The claims are often made by some that we humans are inherently religious, that deep belief in the supernatural is our default state and that it is somehow wrong to struggle against our most innate tendencies in a futile effort to reject our nature. It is easy to see why religious types would advance this…
Recently we Americans have been forced to confront real questions arising from our use of torture. Do we rationalize its use in certain circumstances but not others? Even ignoring the question of whether it actually works, does the end ever really justify the means? Is torture acceptable when our government is responsible but unacceptable when…
Most of us who are reading this article pride ourselves in our fact-based understanding of objective reality. When it comes to most things that we experience in the external world, we hold fast to soundly scientific explanations. But when it comes to our inner world, to our consciousness and perception of self, we often exceed…
The encouraging trend is that Americans are increasingly tolerant toward atheists and the expression of atheist perspectives in public discourse. But the bigger picture must include a recognition that this greater tolerance does not translate into proportionately greater respect for atheist arguments or for atheists themselves. Atheists still lag far behind all comparable groups in…
When I wrote my book, “Belief in Science and the Science of Belief,” I intentionally treated belief as just – belief. I tried to soften any characterizations that might be excessively inflammatory and personal. But one must ask whether the word belief is far too weak and benign, even inaccurate, to describe many of the…
We Atheists take great pride in pointing out that we are not monolithic in our politics. In fact we heatedly insist that Atheism transcends political ideologies and includes people from every political outlook. And yes, we are indeed a very diverse community and in theory, anyone of any political and social viewpoint can be an…
Of all the questions that we Atheists get asked, of all the unintentional criticisms, perhaps the most common and the most confounding is, “Why bother with Atheism?” It often gets posed with utmost sincerity by our most like-minded friends and associates. Implicit in the question is their bewilderment as to why we would focus so…
In April of 1963, Martin Luther King found himself enduring harsh treatment in the Birmingham jail. He had been incarcerated, along with some fellow non-violent protestors, for disobeying a blanket injunction against “parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing” in response to a long history of brutal racism and segregation in Alabama and broken promises negotiated…