The American Humanist Association is launching a national advertising campaign this weekend. This year’s slogan, a variation on last year’s theme, is:

The Washington Post/Newsweek had their On Faith panelists answer the following question:

What do you think of the American Humanist Association’s new “Godless Holiday” campaign? The ads, displayed on transit systems in five major U.S. cities, will say: “No God? . . . No Problem! Be good for goodness’ sake. Humanism is the idea that you can be good without a belief in God.” Is this another front on the so-called secular “war on Christmas”? Or is this another example of the pluralistic strength of America? And would you agree with the premise “No God, no problem”?

Daniel Dennett (who, as one of the so-called New Atheists, needs no introduction), said this:

I am delighted with the American Humanist Association’s campaign. It articulates a simple truth that should not even be considered controversial. OF COURSE you can be good without a belief in God….

We can all be good for goodness’ sake, and not because an imaginary God ‘commands’ it (who believes, literally, in such an anthropomorphic commander anyway?) or because we fear eternal torture if we don’t (what a vicious idea!), or because we crave the goodies in an afterlife (what an ignoble, childish myth!). Once we set aside, as beneath respect, those traditional themes of obedience to a supernatural monarch, fear of punishment, and covetousness of reward, religion turns out to have nothing to offer to morality except some inspiring examples of good and courageous behavior that can be appreciated by believers and non-believers alike.

I don’t share Dennett’s “delight” at the campaign (I’m more fer it than agin it, but my attitude is akin to Susan Jacoby’s: “I actually think that proselytizing transit ads for goodness without God are, well, a bit undignified….”), but I agree that the ad’s premise, that people can be good without gods, shouldn’t be controversial. I’m troubled by Dennett’s reference, in his closing sentence, to “inspiring examples of good and courageous behavior” on the part of religious exemplars. As I think about those exemplars and their deeds, I’m struck by how often these people fail(ed) to live up to their moral ideals:

• Jacob cheated his brother
• Abraham lied about his relationship with Sarah
• Jesus cursed a fig tree that didn’t bear fruit out of season
• Inquisitors tortured people they deemed as heretics and infidels
• Protestants and Catholics bled Europe dry during religious wars
• The Catholic Church still refuses to take full responsibility for pedophilia
• Muslims stone women for being unchaperoned when in the presence of males to whom they are not related

The list goes on and on. One could argue more persuasively that religions have provided enduring moral teachings than that they have provided moral role models. Of course, many non-religious philosophies have also provided enduring moral precepts, so the realm of morality is not, and never has been, exclusive to religions. On that point, Dennett and I agree.

Susan K. Smith, a pastor in the United Church of Christ, had this to say:

I cannot for the life of me understand why humanists don’t just leave people who believe in God alone….

Just like atheists don’t want God pushed down their throats, neither do those of us who believe in God want atheism pushed down ours. People like me who believe in God find comfort in the thought of an Almighty. Belief in that Almighty has been a mainstay of my life and of the life of my ancestors. I choose to continue to believe and will do so, and so I resent people telling me that I should not….

I wish humanists would just go on and believe like they want … and leave those of us who prefer to believe in God alone.

I cannot for the life of me understand how Smith got the idea that this ad is directed at her. I don’t see anything in it that urges her to give up her beliefs. Here’s a newsflash for Smith and other Christians of her ilk: it’s not all about you. Really. It’s not. This ad is not about belittling believers, it’s about encouraging nonbelievers. If you and your peers want to believe in God, go right ahead. Worship him/her/it in your homes and churches. Find all the comfort you want from your faith communities, your hymns and your rituals. While you’re at it, turn your own words around, aim them at yourselves, and keep your religion out of my community’s science curriculum (i.e., intelligent design/creationism). And out of my country’s medical agenda (i.e., stem cell research). And out of my country’s laws (i.e., abortion). Most humanists would be glad to “live and let live,” if Smith and her cohorts would let us do so. But, as long as Smith and Co. insist on pushing their religion into our lives, we have no choice but to push it right back out at them.

Michael Otterson (Mormon) had this interesting take on the issue:

This is a nation that has long cherished the basic, founding freedom to be religious or nonreligious. Members of the American Humanist Association have every right to believe as they do and to communicate those beliefs.

The potential for trouble lies in whether a message like theirs is allowed to descend into ridicule or condemnation of those who do profess a belief in God. Just as those who consider themselves nonreligious expect their lack of belief to be respected, religious Americans should also be able to safely assume their profession of faith will be respected and not just tolerated.

Unfortunately, there is a growing tide of anti-religious sentiment in America….

The American Humanist Association’s appeal for us to “be good for goodness’ sake” is timely and reasonable. I hope they take their own message to heart when it comes to respecting the rights of the rest of us to celebrate a religious holiday with religious language, symbols and special acts of goodness.

I’ll touch on two points. First, the notion that “religious Americans should also be able to safely assume their profession of faith will be respected” is vague and troubling. What does the phrase “profession of faith” mean? I respect the rights of religious Americans to hold and profess their beliefs. I will not, however, respect the contents of their beliefs. That battle has already been fought and the religious have lost it – humanists, atheists, etc., will not respect beliefs that we deem to be either ridiculous, or, in more worrisome cases, dangerous. Second, given the role that the Mormon Church in the USA has played in squelching gay rights, Otterson’s final sentence is rich. Humanists do respect the rights of religious people to celebrate their holidays with their unique language, symbols and rituals; we are not trying to take those things away from them. Otterson and Smith are arguing against a position that is not held by most, if any, humanists. Otterson wants us to respect his rights to practice his religion, while he and his buddies campaign to deny basic human rights to others. Can you spell i-r-o-n-y? I guess it’s never occurred to him that the “rising tide of anti-theism” may be due, at least in part, to the roles that theists play in suppressing human rights.

I’ll quickly touch on two more articles and leave you to read the rest on your own (there are nineteen articles in all).

Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary left this brief, ostensibly cordial (but, actually, smug and self-righteous) message:

We evangelical types have paraded enough of our own in-your-face stuff in public places, so why should we complain when the unbelievers do the same? Nor should we get too worked up when those same folks insist that morality is possible without a belief in God. Actually, the Bible itself teaches that such is the case….

Ultimately, of course, the big question is what–or Whom–we are trusting in as we go about our efforts to “be good for goodness’ sake.” But, as for the Humanists wanting to run their anti-God ads: I say, “No problem”–at least in the short run.

Did you catch that? He ended with the trump card to trump all trump cards – the Threat of Hell! What a humble guy! His cup runneth over with Jesus’ love.

The person who most closely captures my attitude about the whole War on Christmas issue is Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, formerly of Chicago Theological Seminary and now a fellow at the Center for American Progress:

American public holidays are about consumption, not God. Even worse, the Christian faith has internalized this message of cultural Christmas. Christians themselves often forget what Christmas is really about. The humanists really can’t do any more harm to Christians about Christmas than we’ve already done to ourselves.

American holidays, particularly Christmas, are all about the economy. Economists track the health or weakness of the economy based on the purchasing habits of American consumers between now and Christmas….

We’ve set up our entire economy to depend on the sales generated by the hype of “holidays,” particularly Christmas. What could this possibly have to do with God?

The secularization of Christmas isn’t anything new and it can’t be pinned solely or even primarily on atheists, old or new (well, I’ll skip the part about the atheist songwriters who wrote all those great Christmas songs ). The secularization of Christmas has occurred, and often continues to occur, with the full cooperation of Christians. Here’s an example of how a Christian organization does its part to secularize Christmas: the American Family Association opposes the secularization of Christmas by rating “naughty” and “nice” retailers according to how vociferously their sales catalogs promote Christmas rather than a generic holiday season. Moreover, the association urges people to boycott the naughty merchants and do all of their Christmas shopping at the nice stores. See above for the word i-r-o-n-y. For an example of how individuals participate in the secularization of the season, consider this: last year, a friend of mine who bemoans people taking Christ out of Christmas didn’t just take her children to see Santa Claus and get their picture taken with the jolly old fella. Oh no, she went one better: she took her dog to see Santa and got his picture taken too. My suspicion is that Jesus only plays a marginally greater role in her Christmas than he plays in mine. Just don’t try telling her that.

I’ll leave it to others to fight faux religious wars, max out credit cards and do almost everything to excess in this season in which many seem to celebrate excess above all else. As for me, I’ll take consolation in this thought: No God? No problem.

– the chaplain

from Reuters:

Britain has built the world’s biggest DNA database without proper political debate and police routinely arrest people just to get their DNA profiles onto the system, the genetics watchdog said in a report on Tuesday.

The Human Genetics Commission, which advises the government on the social, legal and ethical aspects of genetics, called for a review of the database and said new laws must be passed to govern its use.

In a damning report, the commission said “function creep” had transformed the system from a DNA store for offenders into a database of suspects.

More than three-quarters of young black men aged between 18 and 35 are on the system, the report said.

Set up in 1995, the database contains the DNA profiles of five million citizens, eight percent of the population, making it the world’s biggest in proportion to population size.

“Parliament has never formally debated the establishment of the National DNA Database and safeguards around it,” commission chairman Professor Jonathan Montgomery said in a statement.

“It has developed through amendments to laws designed to regulate the taking of fingerprints and physical evidence before DNA profiling was developed.

“It is not clear how far holding DNA profiles on a central database improves police investigations.”

The report quoted an unidentified retired senior police officer as saying that “it is now the norm to arrest offenders for everything” in order to obtain a DNA sample.

‘VITAL TOOL’

A Home Office spokesman said the database was a “vital crime-fighting tool” that had linked more than 410,000 crime scenes with a DNA match and a possible lead to an offender between 1998 and March 2009.

“Research shows no clear link between the level of offence for which an individual is arrested and the seriousness of any subsequent offence with which they may be associated,” the spokesman said. No one from the Association of Chief Police Officers could immediately be reached for comment.

Opposition politicians and human rights groups said the report provided further evidence that Britain is becoming a “surveillance society,” where people’s personal details are stored and their movements constantly monitored.

Conservative Home Office spokesman James Brokenshire said Gordon Brown’s government had allowed the DNA database to grow “for the sake of it, regardless of guilt or innocence.”

“Under Labor’s surveillance state, everyone is treated as a potential suspect,” he said.

The report recommended that parliament pass new laws that clearly outline the powers of the police and the DNA database.

An independent panel should be set up to review the evidence on who has given DNA samples and why. The type of offences which require suspects to give a sample must also be reviewed.

Police in England and Wales can take and store the DNA of anyone arrested for a recordable offence, a category that includes all but minor crimes.

Is religious education a form of brainwashing? Should children be free to make their own decisions about fundamental matters of faith? These questions are provoked by the new poster sponsored by the British Humanist Association. [See it here.] Two gloriously happy children hold their hands in the air as if they are about to do a cartwheel. The main text reads: “Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself.” And floating in the background are the various labels under attack: “Buddhist child. Agnostic child. Protestant child. Humanist child. Catholic child. Atheist child…”

Religious education in Candelaria

First: The exercise of freedom requires some prior foundation. Children have to learn how to make choices: how to weigh things up, how to judge what is best, how to take responsibility. Any child psychologist knows this. Freedom doesn’t just happen. And an essential part of learning to choose is having some sense of the meaning of the world we inhabit, of the value of our actions, and of the significance of their consequences. In other words, freedom can’t be learnt outside a context of meaning and values.

Religious faith can help establish this context; so can a robust humanism. But to think that freedom can be learnt in a vacuum, without the sharing of any moral or philosophical convictions, is simply naïve. Children who are brought up without inherited values of any kind are actually less able to exercise their freedom and choose for themselves. Just as children who are brought up without boundaries will never be able to learn the significance of crossing them.

Second: If you believe something important to be true, then you shouldn’t pretend it is an open question. This goes for secular humanists as much as for religious believers. If, for example, you are a convinced atheist, and you think that belief in God is false at an intellectual level and damaging through its distorting effects on morality, then of course you would want to share this conviction with your children. It would be unjust to keep it from them. Similarly, if you believe in God, and you believe that this faith is not just a lifestyle choice or a cultural imperative but an objective truth with profound implications for human existence, how could you not share this conviction with your children? Yes, you want to nurture their freedom and you hope they will discover things for themselves. But if it is a question of truth – whether scientific or moral or spiritual – then you will inevitably want to guide your children along a certain path, knowing full well that they may one day choose to veer off in another direction.

Third: It’s a fantasy to imagine that children can be raised in a philosophically neutral environment without some dominant world-view. Theism – as much as atheism, materialism, or secular humanism (these terms are not synonymous) – provides a particular understanding of the meaning of the world and of human life, which will help structure a child’s understanding and values. But if you try to bring your children up in an environment which is indifferent to questions of ultimate meaning, then your purported neutrality will already have been lost. If, in effect, you say to your children, “I don’t care enough about these values or convictions to share them with you”, or “they are important to me but not important in themselves”, then you are presenting them with a very particular world-view. In this view, religious questions and all questions of ultimate meaning are relativised, and indifference is taken to be the predominant value.

To say to a child, “I don’t mind – you choose!” is to give the child the strongest possible impression that the available options are all equally significant, which is to say that none is uniquely significant. So this apparently ‘soft’ form of neutrality suggested in the poster is actually a ‘hard’ form of relativism which relegates religious and philosophical questions to the periphery of human interest.

Fourth: A strong notion of autonomy, which is essential to an individual’s freedom, requires an appreciation of one’s human dignity. Children need to know not just that they are loved but that their life has meaning and is valuable in itself. If this is not communicated in some way, then the love of the parents, however profound, will become distorted, because the children will see themselves as valuable to their parents but not valuable as persons in their own right. It doesn’t matter how this innate value is framed (‘human dignity’, ‘the sanctity of life’, etc.) as long as it is articulated somehow.

Human autonomy, rightly cherished by secular humanists, needs some notion of intrinsic human dignity to support it – otherwise it has no foundation and no meaning. So, paradoxically, in order to liberate children from the limited vision of their parents and culture, you have to imbue them with a strong sense of their own worth, of their dignity, of their significance in a framework of meaning. The humanism of the early Enlightenment held on to a strong notion of human dignity and human uniqueness, even as it became more secular. But as secular humanists have become more and more materialist in their outlook, and as materialism has failed to offer any satisfying accounts of human dignity, it has become almost impossible to avoid describing human nature in reductivist terms.

Contemporary secular humanists are largely unable to explain to children why their freedom and autonomy have any significance, why their life has any meaning – and this is why the exaltation of freedom proposed in this poster feels a bit hollow. If you really want your children to be free, you need to tell them why their freedom matters, and help them appreciate some of the values they might pursue. And to do that, you need to use at least a few labels

(Edit: Just thought of something — has anyone interviewed these kids to see what they think of the ad and its message?)

I like the new ads, myself.

A couple kids jump around looking happy and the sign says “Please don’t label me” so how does a newspaper report on the new ad?

Children who front Richard Dawkins’ atheist ads are evangelicals

No they are not. They are children who happen to have evangelical parents. Parents who are likely telling their children they are evangelical and aren’t going let those kids decide for themselves who or what they will be. Those kids will become evangelical because it’s the only word that’s ever been applied to them and they may never get a chance to look at themselves as something else and become something else.

Their father, Brad Mason, is something of a celebrity within evangelical circles as the drummer for the popular Christian musician Noel Richards. Now a web designer and photographer, Mr Mason has been supplementing his income for years by providing photographs to agencies who sell them on to newspapers and advertising campaigns.

He said: “It is quite funny, because obviously they were searching for images of children that looked happy and free. They happened to choose children who are Christian. It is ironic. The humanists obviously did not know the background of these children.”

I think it’s ironic how the point is getting missed. Don’t label the kids. Raise them as you see fit, but don’t label them. Teach them everything you value about manners and kindness and generosity and Jesus and God if you feel you must, but don’t label them Christian before they can even understand exactly what that means. It’s more than “Jesus loves me, this I know.”

He said that the children’s Christianity had shone through. “Obviously there is something in their faces which is different. So they judged that they were happy and free without knowing that they are Christians. That is quite a compliment. I reckon it shows we have brought up our children in a good way and that they are happy”

That’s so dumb. Obviously they look at the pictures and think some holiness shines through that even atheists subconsciously pick up on and mistake as natural childhood joy. The sign is suggesting we raise kids without stamping a label on their brains while we do it. When we look at kids are we really supposed to be able to see at a glance what religion those kids have been brought up in like it’s some kind of badge of honour to know God and Jesus personally? I just want to see kids having fun, making friends, and getting ahead in school regardless of what faith has been shoved down their throats in the meantime.

Gerald Coates, the leader of the Pioneer network of churches, which Mr Mason and his family used to attend before they moved to Dorset, said: “I think it is hilarious that the happy and liberated children on the atheist poster are in fact Christian.”

And I think it’s hilarious to see the point getting missed again. Stop calling the kids Christians. They are kids first and foremost. Make sure they’re happy, healthy, fit, and eager to be in school. They shouldn’t need to be branded like cattle before they get there.

The British Humanist Association said that it did not matter whether the children were Christians. “That’s one of the points of our campaign,” said Andrew Copson, the association’s education director. “People who criticise us for saying that children raised in religious families won’t be happy, or that no child should have any contact with religion, should take the time to read the adverts.

“The message is that the labelling of children by their parents’ religion fails to respect the rights of the child and their autonomy. We are saying that religions and philosophies — and ‘humanist’ is one of the labels we use on our poster — should not be foisted on or assumed of young children.”

Read more about this at Atheist Bus – the official website.

Frisco’s vision…sees his cities as tools for fostering humanistic values.

Humanisism is a religious belief. It is one without God.

I am so glad I have lived most of my life already. Who wants to be around for this devilish stuff?!

We’ve been having a rather intriguing series of back-and-forths on the issue of grace or blessings said at a meal such as Thanksgiving; exactly how should an Atheist/freethinker respond to such a situation?

Lisa started us out by describing a situation many of us go through; “At my family’s house, which is a tradition every year, we say the “Our Daily Bread” prayer. I have been biting my tongue for years now, giving in to my family’s belief and tradition.” I didn’t feel that this was fair unless the non-religious at the table were given the opportunity to offer their own blessing, and James suggested this:

“Michael gives me an idea you could try, if you are game. After you wait patiently for them to conclude their blessing or prayer, you can ask for their attention. You could then give a brief secular statement about what you are grateful for (i.e. the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the scientific method, tolerant society, etc…). If you are patient and tolerant enough to accommodate their beliefs, they should do the same for you. If they are so discourteous as to ignore your statement and not allow you to be heard, then make it clear that you feel you have been disrespected. I would let it stand there, for this year at least. Next year I would stand up and walk out until the prayer is done.

Of course this all depends on how confrontational you are willing to be.”

That last bit references the main issue that I have with grace; I don’t think that it is unreasonable to conclude that asking to give a secular humanist grace would be met with antipathy at best, hostility at worst, by the very people who expect to be allowed to give their religious blessing. I wasn’t alone in this thinking, and several other members chimed in that the best solution would be to grin and bear it; sometimes, picking a fight over religion just isn’t worth it, especially not on a day when we are supposed to be celebrating something.

Not everyone agreed, though, and Gary suggested that “I like the secular prayer idea, but don’t do it after theirs. That makes it so…I don’t know…contrived, unnecessary…. (“Oh, look, now our little girl wants to say something. How cute.”)

Instead, ask (ahead of time or as you sit down) if you could give the prayer. Be polite, be sincere, just don’t mention god. They may not even notice. (“Today, we are thankful to be surrounded by a loving, understanding family, and for all this food, etc, etc….”) Don’t even go into the tolerant society thing. Show them that you’re thankful for all the same things that they are, but, matter-of-factly-by-omission, that god has nothing to do with it.”

Roni offered her own version of a secular grace:
Today we are thankful for the joy and gladness in our lives,
For mirth and exultation, for pleasure and delight,
For love and friendship, peace and peoplehood.
May we all witness the day when the sounds throughout the world
Will be these sounds of happiness:
the voices of lovers, the sounds of feasting and singing
and the song of peace.

And then Jim R gave us my favorite secular blessing:

Given the opportunity I will share this prayer with my (very religious) family this year.

Today we give thanks not only for this wonderful feast but for the abundant life we enjoy. We are thankful for all that we have, for the love and support of family and friends and for the freedom to follow the courage of our convictions. On this Thanksgiving Day may we begin to show our gratitude by committing ourselves to the opportunity we have to use our compassion and our intelligence, our wealth and technology to provide an abundant life for every inhabitant of this planet.

(The last line comes from the late Carl Sagan in the last chapter of Cosmos)

I’m going to try this one out tonight.

Some may be wondering, why exactly is this such an issue? Why are Atheists fretting over grace? Why can’t we just bow our heads and take it?

Because we don’t want to offend our friends, family, colleagues and neighbors over something as small as grace; we don’t want to put an end to a tradition we have a disagreement with when we can find a suitable compromise that excludes no one; we do not want to compromise our own beliefs to accommodate those of someone else, but we do wish to retain the spirit that often accompanies the blessing. Most of all, and I say this as an observer only, I think most of us like the traditions whose origins lie in religion, and if we can preserve the positive elements of something as innocuous as grace, while updating and secularizing the actual language a bit, we will. Or at least I will.

MichaelV

The origin of this little essay is a conversation I had a few nights ago when I was asked, quite unexpectedly, what books I might recommend to students seeking a deeper understanding of the world. Without much thinking, I pointed to Heidegger. Reflecting afterward, I realized that for most people Heidegger is merely “difficult” and that for many analytical philosophers (Ayer comes to mind) his writing is “rubbish.” In the right hands however, Heidegger can change minds and change lives.

Martin Heidegger is never an easy read, but he becomes more difficult with every new claim to offer a proprietary interpretation of his thought. In 1947 Heidegger published his Brief ueber den Humanismus (“Letter on Humanism”) in which he sorts through some of the tangles left behind in his 1927 opus, Being and Time and a treatise usually translated as What is Metaphysics? To come at this essay without some notion of Heidegger’s technical vocabulary, especially his complex views on metaphysics, is quickly to sink into linguistic mud. It’s equally difficult to sort through the later work without approaching it problematically. By that I mean that for all its emulsion, Heidegger was working through a very specific set of problems and a level of despair that has occasionally occupied philosophers to such an extent that paradox, aphorism and obscurity have seemed the only way to express the intractability of the problems themselves. Nietzsche comes immediately to mind, but there are tempting if imperfect analogies between Heidegger’s views and those of the negative theologians Gregory of Nyssa, Catherine of Sienna and Meister Eckhart.

The style he preferred in responding to his admirers—like Sartre–as well as his critics, such as Hannah Arendt—was never unconditionally generous, leaving the impression that Heidegger saw his particular mode of expression as appropriate to the subjects he tackled and most interpretation as being either reductionist, or erroneous.

He was not unaware of the power of double-speak as a tool in both political and philosophical discourse. In a 1966 Der Spiegel interview concerning his alleged Nazi sympathies (which finally cost him his teaching career and diminished his reputation in Germany), Heidegger said that in 1935 he had counted on the power of words to convey different meanings to two constituencies (his cleverest students and determined Nazi informants) when he praised the “inner truth and greatness of our movement.”

Hannah Arendt

His sense of how words shape reality and can thus misshape perception and meaning is a constant prickle for anyone who wants to “interpret” Heidegger. It makes equally difficult the task of determining his influence on other thinkers, especially the French philosophers in whose eyes he found grace after 1967.

What makes the “Letter on Humanism” worth discussing is that he pulls no punches about his agenda: to locate in history the source of modernity’s ills. In the politically charged climate of postwar Europe, the easy answers focused on economic, religious, technological and social evils. The cure, it was often proposed, was to restore meaning to the term “humanism” as a category that rises above the particular expressions of modern culture.

In an important article, Gail Soffer notes that “What is peculiar to Heidegger and really questionable in his critique is his diagnosis of the cause of modernity’s ills: not capitalism and its greed; not Protestant religious beliefs; not even runaway technology or the Gestalt of the worker; but rather the humanism of the Western philosophical tradition. For Heidegger, “humanism lies at the root of the reification, technologization, and secularization characteristic of the modern world” (“Heidegger, Humanism and the Destruction of History,” Review of Metaphysics (49) 1996).

Heidegger was not, of course, unaware of the history of the term humanism in early Renaissance thought or even earlier glimmerings in Christian thinkers such as Abelard and Pico della Mirandola. But he was not especially interested in this history of discussion, or at least such discussion could only be useful in deconstruction (Destruktion).

In a strictly connative sense, humanism is that philosophy which either assigns a defined universal essence to man as “a rational animal,” characterized primarily by voluntary action, or it is the denial of essence—a position leading ultimately to Sartre’s conclusion that existentialism is a pure form of humanism. Man is what he is through choice and action. The political appeal of the latter position is that a non-essentialist view of humanism leaves open the possibility for human beings to create worthy social institutions, human rights, Bildung in the humanities and “true” sciences (as opposed to mere technological expertise), and also to reject unworthy ones—such as Nazism.

In none of his writings, however, does Heidegger suggest that “man has no essence.” His message in the “Letter” is that this essence has been misconstrued: that to say “Man is a rational animal” is to predetermine what the nature of man is at a metaphysical level, and that to do so shuts off discussion of the relationship between Being and being human.

To be a knowing subject in relation to known objects is, for Heidegger, to determine the essence of man “downward.” Out of a range of possible definitions, we have chosen the ones that equate science and reason with the sufficient definition—the essence—of humanity. In historical context, we have taken the historical determinants of humanism, which Heidegger sees as a set of familiar phenomena, as being the same as the underlying essence of these phenomena. Heidegger rejects the idea that humanism as we understand the term can provide an understanding of what it means to be thrown into a world of possibilities and others. It does not provide an “analytic” that can help us to understand authenticity, mortality, responsibility. Humanism can provide no escape from the “vulgarity of calculation” or a sense of the temporality of existence.

This leads to the question of God and the matter of Heidegger’s atheism. To an extent, we are playing with language in a way Heidegger would, approvingly, have found amusing. The a-theism he subscribes to is a rejection of God–literally being without the God of history and tradition–and a quest for a non-metaphysical God. It is this aspect of Heidegger’s thought and the subject of die Kehre or “turning” (biographical or procedural?) in his thinking about Dasein that frustrates interrogation—in spite of a small embarrassment of new sources published since his death.

Bultmann

In the world of poetry and technology, God remains the subliminal (literally, beneath the limit) problem. Theologians since Ebeling and Bultmann have exploited this aspect of Heidegger’s almost mystical argot on the topic, and Stuart Elden has analyzed the subject in a useful article (“To Say Nothing of God”, Heythrop Journal, 45/3, 2004, 344-48.). It has been frustrating to students of Heidegger that this “refusal of a theological voice” (Laurence Paul Hemming, 2002) tweaks the nose of theology rather than encourages theological speculation. But, as with humanism, any unconcealed definition of God would be trivialization, and it has been the role of historical theology to offer familiar formulas and definitions in place of concealment.

Thus Heidegger has theology precisely where he wants it: trying to figure him out. His challenge to humanism: that we cannot employ it to address questions of meaning, value and authenticity. His challenge to theology, that the discovery of God cannot be something as simple as forming objective images from subjective data, mainly historical. The possibility of a God without being must be considered. Aquinas considered it. But the axiom “There is no God” cannot be derived from the possibility.

Through The Infidel Guy I found a song called, “Fuck the Creationists” by M.C. Hawking. It is a hip-hop song performed by the Stephen Hawking computer voice. It has a pro-science (not atheist) message but contains all the in-your-face elements you’d expect from gangsta rap:

“Fuck the damn creationists, those bunch of dumb-ass bitches,
every time I think of them my trigger finger itches.
They want to have their bullshit, taught in public class,
Stephen J. Gould should put his foot right up their ass.”

You can hear the song by watching a video someone created for it. NSFW!!

It turns out there are entire albums of these songs, all just as funny. For example, “Entropy” is set to the tune of “O.P.P”, and there is an official video for the song, “What we need more of is science:”

“New age motherfuckers? Don’t get me started,
I made more sense than them, last time I farted.”

Another song talks about how he gang-bangs a bunch of MITers.

Be sure to listen to the available mp3s and read all the lyrics to the songs here. These songs make me laugh until I hurt.

Recenlty I stumbled upon rational thought musician, Greydon Square. Square is a hip-hop artist who almost became a minister, but instead deconverted and is getting a college degree in physics. You can buy his album, “The Compton Effect” at his site. He makes many allusions to religious philosophy and science; it will take many listens to get it all.

He describes his interesting life story in this video . I really like this one of a performance he did at an atheist convention. Ever hear a rap about Pascal’s Wager before? More songs at his myspace page.

While looking up info on Greydon, I was surprised to find even more rationalist themed music. Proclaim grew up in the East L.A./Montebello area and got bachelor’s degrees in psychology and philosophy. He wanted to combine his love of hip hop culture with his intellectual interests. His album is called, “Question Everything,” and you can hear his songs at his site.

In my last post, I linked to George Hrab, a very hot freethinking guy who creates great music as well as as the Geologic podcast. I found George through “brainsbodyboth” which cleverly describes his love of women who can “make (his) Oscar Wilde.” I am still trying to digest all the lyrics, including:

“She’s the queen of conversation, a panel member on Face the Nation, but she can (listen to the song to hear bawdy lyric!) without hesitation.”

Freethought is a common thread in George’s music with titles like, “Heaven Must be Boring” and “Think For Yourself,” which can apply to anything from dogmatic veganism, to religion, to the sucker-funded monstrosity called “The Secret.” His music is available for sale at emusic.com as well as the usual hard copy sources.

I hope you all enjoy discovering some new Freethought music, and please leave in your comments links to any other suggestions you might have.

Big bang

Humanistic indoctrination of our lives
feels like a big bang in my brain.
By science injected to make me
doubt what life really content.

‘From then I realized
that humanism was born out of religion’

Thank you Pastor Bjorge for holding to Biblical Truth!

from The “Christian” Post”

Little Falls, Minn., pastor recently spoke out about his decision to resign after his congregation rejected a motion to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

The Rev. Nate Bjorge told the Brainerd Dispatch that First Lutheran Church’s vote last month to stay in the ELCA called into question his effectiveness as a pastor.

“I was extremely disheartened,” Bjorge told the local newspaper as he recalled the Oct. 11 vote. “I haven’t been angry by this whole process. Sad might be a better word.”

The congregational vote was prompted by a controversial decision by the ELCA’s chief legislative body in August to allow noncelibate gays and lesbians to be ordained. Since then more than a dozen congregations in Minnesota have vowed or already voted to sever ties with the denomination.

First Lutheran wasn’t one of them.

The Little Falls church defeated a motion to withdraw from the ELCA by a vote of 160-96. It also voted 95-73 not to affiliate with Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, which allows gay clergy as long as they are celibate.

Bjorge told the local Dispatch that he has friends who are homosexual and his congregation has always been welcoming to homosexuals. But he said he can’t condone homosexual behavior, calling it a destructive lifestyle.

“For me, there was no question,” he said. “This issue directly violates the word of God.”

With such strongly held beliefs, Bjorge felt he could no longer lead a church that was going to continue as an ELCA congregation.

“It’s important for them to move on and become a healthy congregation again,” he told the Brainerd Dispatch. “My presence wasn’t going to help that.”

Bjorge is currently leading a group of people who left First Lutheran to start their own church, Faith Lutheran. He was called by the group to serve as their pastor.

Meanwhile, disaffected Lutherans are working on a new church body to accommodate those who want to leave the ELCA. Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Renewal) announced last week that a proposal for the separate denomination will likely be released in February.

“The alarming conclusion is that more than 40 percent of PVS patients are incorrectly diagnosed as hopeless.”

Proving once again man’s arrogance and God’s Wisdom.

from der spiegel:

For over 20 years, doctors thought Rom Houben was brain dead. But then, neurologist Steven Laureys discovered that the Belgian was very much awake. Experts say that up to 40 percent of those thought to be in a persistent vegetative state are, in fact, quite conscious.

For half of his life Rom Houben, 46, had to listen to people say that he was as good as dead. At first, doctors would occasionally bend over him and wave their hands in front of his eyes, but because his gaze remained unresponsive, they eventually gave up. Caregivers would plead for some indication that he knew they were there — a wink or a squeeze of the hand. But they too gave up after a while. Diagnosis: addressing him was pointless. There was no one home.

A former martial artist and engineering student, conversant in four languages, Houben was now wheelchair-bound, his body crooked and helpless. After his car accident, he became a creature that could just barely breathe, swallow and digest food, but was otherwise believed to be an empty shell of a human. 

But the whole time, Houben was conscious — and no one knew. . . .

The plot in all religions is to indoctrinate kids.. get customers for life… now why do parents do this to their kids.. because it was done to them also, they are brainwashed.
Break the spell..

This story that just broke out a couple of days ago is AMAZING!!! God bless the hacker that got us that information! (I know hacking is against the law, and I’m not saying that God approves of breaking the law, but how else would we have acquired such invaluable proof?)

Remember: Climate change panic is designed to bring about One World Government, and massive wealth redistribution!

If you have not heard this story before, you have got to see these videos NOW!

Hur mycket hänger inte på vår egen vilja; att våga, att förändras, att fatta beslut. Mycket av det kommer utifrån vår egen vilja. Och då pratar jag inte om den fria viljan utifrån något filosofiskt eller religöst perspektiv. Utan enbart där du vinner en kamp med dig själv, att vilja mer än du tex. orkar.

Jag var på handboll igår och såg min egen dotter spela. Hon fick mycket stryk. Men det roligaste att se är när hon reser sig efter femte, sjätte gången hon åkt i golvet och ler. Jag ser en liten djävul som växer i hennes vilja, att hon ska fan inte ge sig.

Det är vilja.

Jag såg en gammal man häromdagen, säkert över åttio år, komma på rullskidor. Det gick inte fort, rörelserna var långsamma. Men det fanns någonting fantastiskt att iaktta honom under en halv minut. Just den där sköna känslan att han på ett vis övervinner en kamp mot sitt eget åldrande, att han ska göra det han själv vill. Och det kan bara komma inifrån en egen vilja. Människor behöver inte ha handikapp eller sjukdomar bara för att finna den viljan. Ibland känns det som om det är lätt att fokusera på människor med större livsöden än andra.

Men DU och JAG har vårt öde, och därmed vår vilja.

Det är bara frågan, var vi gör av den. Det är ibland lätt att bara lägga sig ner och skita i allt – det gör jag ibland. Men det är hur snabbt vi reser oss och bestämmer oss för att styra vår egen vilja, som visar vilken väg vi tar.

Med MIN vilja, blir det MIN väg.

What does man’s ability to conceive of and venerate art have to do with evolution? Why should we be motivated by something so otherwise irrelevant to our ability to reproduce? Certainly if there was a tribe of hominids, one who were Greek in culture, including such impressive but needless tangents in art, namely poetry, sculpture, song, and ceramics, and the other Vulcan, then we should expect the Vulcan tribe to win out, because they would acknowledge that art is more or less a waste of time, and they would be more productive and efficient if they dedicated their time to ridding of the social problems that detracted from their evolutionary imperative to reproduce. However, culture is universally Greek, rather than Vulcan; the Hebrews had the deuteronomists, to be sure, but they were weighed out by the psalmists and mythists; the Native Americans had their Great Spirit and creation stories; the Aborigines have their vague gods and divine beings and heroes; if there had been a Vulcan race, then it should have been able to easily assimilate these other cultures into it based on its ability to conquer through birth (much like Muslims, but with a technotheocratic, and much more productive, bent, rather than an ancient Arabian theocratic bent).

A culture of mathematicians, scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and humanist philosophers would certainly be able to establish themselves not only as a minority élite, but in time to take over their culture. But, surprisingly enough, those who dedicate themselves to the liberal and humanist worldview are impotent, maintaining a birthrate well below what is required for sustenance (and that’s even if they do manage to actually reproduce). It seems that the most culturally “in-tune” are the weakest speaking in evolutionary terms; the religious may be fundamentalists and ignorant zealots as an accurate stereotype, but in their naivety they cling to those few important matters, and subsequently win out in the culture, for the simple reason that they don’t contracept and abort their own kind into oblivion. I warrant that these types of liberals have such a fascination with exercising power over their world that they would rather have the world end in themselves than extend it beyond themselves; hence the Democrats’ mysterious drive to make sure that federal dollars (my money and your money) goes towards abortions, such that they would rather have a healthcare bill that is bent on the destruction of life to assert the liberalist absolutism over the nation than concede to their own supposed status quo of “choice” on the matter of abortion.

I have wondered why evolution should deliver up a species that both could destroy itself, and would destroy itself, if only to spite God, unless there was a God, for only God would care to create the universe along this axiological evolutionary principle. Nature doesn’t care whether man destroys himself or not; and, in fact, the evolutionary imperative should find that a programmed race of zombies who have the singular intent of manifest destiny (not for God, but for the sake of the imperative) across the universe. Shouldn’t this be what we expect to see in a universe where the evolutionary imperative is the only thing that drives life to continue if not God?

I imagine that a hundred trillion years from now I may be a prophet; perhaps from somewhere in the universe there will arise a Vulcan-zombie race that conquers the universe (without ever realizing it), maybe even from a future evolution from among ourselves. Or maybe by then God will have intervened with the eschaton to save man from himself (for this is the only reason I can imagine that would need to act in the eschaton at all).

We shall see, I suppose.

However you spell it and whatever you call it, seems to me some people still get it all mixed around or even backwards.  In any case, even though the Thanksgiving turkey is yet to be carved, Merry Christmas!

So what’s tickled my mind today?  An article online (hardly a “news” story) about Humanists and their campaign for a Godless holiday.  But before I continue, I need one person in particular (yes, you) to accept that while this disclaimer is about you, the point of the article has nothing whatsoever to do with you or anything we’ve discussed.  That’s all.  I’d have written this even if we had never talked about altruism.  And thanks for clarifying the definition.  Now, let’s move on.

Interestingly enough, I learned that Humanists consider themselves nontheists as opposed to atheists.  Subtle differences and worth noting.  Atheism allows for religious beliefs or practices but excludes the belief in God or gods.  Nontheists disallow any religious belief or practice.  That’s my spin on the definitions so if I’ve missed something or it needs correcting, please feel free.

So according to this campaign, one should be good for goodness sake and can do so without having any focus on the religious significance of the holiday.  To their point, they accept that individuals can be good without having a belief-based moral code to guide that goodness.  I can agree with that in part and would even offer in support that there are many who hold to a belief system—even Christianity—who fail to pass the “good” test from time to time.  I’m no exception.  It could be hard to argue to a Humanist that they need my religious values in order to be good when I fail to be good by that same standard.  Ah, am I crazy?

No, it’s a valid point that one can easily argue and support.  But being “good” is not the point of Christianity and if anyone believes it is, then they’ve missed the point and do not really understand the faith.  But that’s a point for another day.

What gets me on this campaign is that I expect “Christmas Christians” to take offense and to argue the “Reason for the Season” point.  The debate will continue as Christmas lights are put up, trees trimmed, stockings hung—and even through the nightmarish shopping experiences on Black Friday.  Wait, what’s the reason for the season?

Christmas as observed by a vast majority here in the West is so commercial and secular that it has already become something of a God-less event.  Take away the pagan trappings and you have…

What do we have?

Nothing anyone would recognize as Christmas, that’s for sure.

So to the humanists, a doff of the Santa cap to you for making the American Christmas event what it really has become anyway.  You have created a campaign that allows for a holiday celebration focusing on merriment, goodness, cheer, etc., without the hypocritical “reason for the season” focus that brings people into churches for the second time that year besides Easter (unless there was a funeral or wedding).  For even with the Christian focus, do we spend more than an hour and a half on average in recognition of the birth of Christ?  And even if we do, how does it compare with the time invested in decorating, shopping, food preparation, TV or movies, eating, partying, and other secular holiday activities?

Am I anti-Christmas?  No.

But I do believe that it’s possible for Christians to get too wrapped around the axle about a holiday that:

• Is unapologetically commercial in nature
• Is not Biblical (as in never mentioned as a day to be celebrated like some days are)
• Is arbitrary as to the date (and is celebrated on different days around the world)
• Is tied heavily to the Winter Solstice
• Is tied to tree worship
• Is tied to veneration of Saint Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra known for gift giving
• Is tied to the mythical Santa Claus and magical elves

Perhaps it’s time for Christians to divorce their religious beliefs from the day as well.  Other than the name, there is nothing Christ-like about the day or the celebrations that cannot be honored or observed any other day of the year.  For that matter, as radical as it may sound (as if nothing else presented here is radical), don’t Christians observe Christmas and Easter every time they gather in worship?  Where would the faith be if Jesus had not been born (Christmas) or died on the cross (Easter)?  Christians proclaim their belief in both events simply by being a Christian.  There should be no need for a specific day to proclaim it—just as we really shouldn’t need a single day a year to stop and give thanks.

MORE:

http://news.aol.com/article/humanists-launch-first-ever-national/780222

According to the Sydney Morning Herald ethics classes will be introduced in New South Wales, Australia schools, offering an alternative to religious studies, the Premier, Nathan Rees, will announce today.  Ten primary schools will begin a trial next year of the classes as an alternative to religious education.  The programme will teach students about ”fairness”, the importance of telling the truth and about how to deal with bullying.  ”Parents have said they want their children to be fully engaged when they are at school,” Mr Rees said. “The current system, however, does not allow for educational classes for children who do not participate in scripture (Religious Studies).  Read the full article.

Jag brukar ibland säga att jag är en hundraprocentsmänniska. Att när jag bestämmer mig för någonting, så genomför jag det, även om jag inte alltid talar om det.
Det är att ha en inre mental målbild.
Vissa målbilder talar du om, andra behåller du för dig själv.
Och just det, målbilder är någonting som kommer upp i idrottssammanhang men kanske inte lika ofta i skolan. Att faktiskt se sig själv lyckas med någonting, att tala om för dig själv att just så är känslan för att lyckas.
Jag tror det handlar som mycket annat om drömmar.
Tidigare har jag nämnt Einstein, att fantasi är viktigare än kunskap.
Och igår började jag läsa en bok om Gandhi. För de som inte vet, var Gandhi en man som förändrade ett helt samhälle utifrån sina drömmar – om hur han ville att Indien skulle vara utan att ha kolonialmakten Storbritannien som styrde och ställde.
Och då kom jag över en dikt som Rabindranath Tagore, nobelpristagare i litteratur skrivit:

Om ingen lystrar när du kallar, vandra ensam.
Vandra ensam, du min vän, vandra ensam.
Om alla hukar rädda, om ingen vågar tala,
Tappa inte modet fast deras blickar viker undan -
Säg öppet med ensam röst vadhelst du tänker.

Om alla vänder sig ifrån dig och flyr,
Och inte kastar ens en blick tillbaka,
Och inte ser hur dina bara fötter sargas
Av törnen där du banar dig en väg igenom djungeln,
Låt ändå inget rubba ditt beslut, min vän.

Om ingen tänder några lyktor för dig
Där du vandrar på din väg i stormig natt,
Om alla dörrar stängs igen framför dig
Låt hellre åskan slå ner och antända ditt bröst
Och brinn i mörkret, du min vän, brinn ensam.

Så är det lite att skapa sig inre målbilder ibland. Du kan inte alltid förklara dessa, eller få med dig andra människor. Inte till en början. Men du måste tro på det du vill, det du önskar, du måste brinna.
Gandhi hade den här dikten som en favorit.
Jag kan förstå varför. För vill du nå någonstans kan inte alltid göra det alla andra gör, du måste hitta dina egna mentala målbilder och ibland gå dina egna vägar. Jag tror att den dag du accepterar alla andras sanningar, då kommer du sluta brinna.
Visst, du ska lyssna, känna igen, ta till dig det du känner passar dig men du måste samtidigt skapa din egen inre bild av den väg du vill gå. Man brukar säga att varje människa är unik. Och det är säkert sant, för det är lättare att acceptera att du är dig själv än någon annan.
Men för att skapa ditt avtryck – för dig själv – tror jag du måste vara sann mot dig själv. Och i det kommer min hundraprocentsmänniska in. Om jag inte får vara sann mot mig själv som person – t.ex. i mitt skrivande – då känner jag mig inte fullt ut levande. Det är precis som med dikten – Låt ändå inget rubba ditt beslut, min vän – och brinn som fan för det du vill.

Catholic historian and author, Fr. Malachi Martin, offers interesting observations concerning the nature of political movements and leaders.  In his book, The Jesuits – The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church, Fr. Martin compares and defines two well-known historical figures.

“[They shared] a clear perception of the only means by which history can be deliberately made, and human destinies can be materially altered.  Gold or pleasure won’t do the trick; not for long, at any rate.., it is not blind economic forces or weight of numbers or even access to power that enables men to make history.  Only an ideal does that.  An ideal by which the wills of individuals can be won.  An ideal for which people are convinced it is worth fighting and sacrificing everything – even life itself.  It is men under the complete control and all-abiding influence of such an ideal accepted without reserve.  Men, in other words, whose ordinary self-interest is transformed by an ideology into an all-absorbing devotion shot through with a high romanticism.“

The two individuals refered to above are V. I. Lenin and Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits.

Regardless of how we feel about their respective accomplishments, Fr. Martin gives us an important insight.  Diametrically opposed in goals, both men, nevertheless, keenly understood human motivation and how to exploit it.  Whether motivated by secular humanism or ‘other-worldy’ idealism, the mechanics of political agitation and organization remained the same.  Both employed similar techniques to create and command large numbers of dedicated cadre.

Although separated by approximately 350 years, both Lenin and Loyola understood that it was an organization with military style discipline, supported and guided by a unifying ideology, that would prove succesful in effecting sociopolitical change.  

As we move forward in our struggle for freedom, however, the organizational challenge to bring down tyranny will be different.  An acknowledgement of past organizing strategies, balanced with thinking embracing a new paradigm of freedom will be called for.   It will call for creativity and originality.  Indeed, the voyage into the new era will be into uncharted waters.  Unity, singleness of purpose, and maintaining an integral ideology, must be reviewed and reinterpreted within a context that excludes group mind-control methods of past political leaders and movements.  Less hype, idealism, and romanticism, and more independent analytical thinking will be the key.

The strategy of a leaderless resistance will be become more practical and effective.  The advanced communications ability of this era will favor independent and spontaneous action.  Regimented orchestration from a central leadership will become less necessary.  The Internet has provided a means for open discussion and non-local coordination of activity.  A unifying ideology will still be available, but with the enhancement of more democratic input with less time to ossify – the gap between theory and practice can lessen with virtual realtime empirical testing.  The roles of leader and cadre can become more fluid to meet the challenge of the multi-tentacled and multidimensional New World Order.

from the Guardian:

from The Interim:

It is time to say “enough is enough” with respect to “the worst type of cannibalism you can imagine” – the use of aborted fetal cell lines in vaccines.

That was the message brought by one of the world’s leading activists on the issue, who appeared at the annual meeting of the Dunnville Right to Life organization in Dunnville, Ont. on Sept. 18. Speaking on the topic of, “Vaccines From Abortion: The Hidden Truth,” Debra Vinnedge, executive director of the Children of God for Life organization, said humanity has become complacent with regard to these crimes over the past 30 years.

“The pharmaceutical industry has imported, exported, exploited and profited using hundreds of innocent aborted babies. And they continue to do so in the present … The pharmaceutical industry believes you accept it and don’t care, so why bother doing anything about it or changing? They don’t admit the fact that nobody really knows about this.”

From the pro-life point of view, the situation may look grim, but giving up is not an option, even though she considered doing so herself at times.

Despite the bleak picture, Vinnedge offered a catalogue of heartening successes that have been achieved since the issue of aborted fetal cell use in vaccines was taken up by Children of God for Life and others in the 1990s.

A Campaign for Ethical Vaccines, for example, has garnered some 630,000 signatures and has shaken up the Merck pharmaceutical company to the point that it has had to address the issue at its shareholder meetings. Children of God for Life has worked closely with Human Life International in this effort.

Hundreds of thousands of brochures advising people of which vaccines use aborted fetal cell lines have been distributed throughout the world and close monitoring continues as new vaccines come onto the market.

A pro-life physicians database has been established, so that patients working with certain physicians can be assured that products they are administering carry no aborted fetal cells. However, Vinnedge pointed out that the database needs a vast expansion in Canada.

A victory was achieved, following a concerted letter-writing campaign, in ensuring that the U.S. smallpox vaccine would be moral in nature and not use aborted fetal cells.

Merck has agreed to begin reoffering a moral measles and mumps vaccine beginning in 2011.

Canada saw a victory when Canadian Physicians for Life and Children of God for Life worked together to see a moral polio vaccine begin to be offered in this country.

Companies such as AVM Biotechnology and the Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute are poised to offer exclusively moral products, including a chicken pox vaccine for the world.

And efforts continue on a number of other fronts, including the seeking of protection for religious rights, a Fair Labelling and Informed Consent Act for those products that use aborted fetal cells, labelling for pro-life certified products and investigation into the possible link between the use of aborted fetal cells in vaccines and the striking rise in incidents of autism.

Vinnedge said the rise in autism rates exactly parallels the increase in the use of aborted fetal cells in vaccines. Although links between vaccines and autism have focused more on ingredients such as thimesoral/mercury and formaldehyde, she offered the anecdotal account of one doctor who has used no aborted fetal cells in vaccines he has administered and consequently has found no incidents of autism in any of his young patients.

The challenge is that the number of aborted fetal products continues to increase. More vaccines are in development than ever. There are more abortions for such purposes and more trafficking in fetal parts.

It all started with the earliest “vaccine martyrs,” those preborn babies carrying names such as WI-38, WI-26, MRC-5, IMR-90, IMR-91, ATK-293 and PERC-6, who were sacrificed on the altar of vaccine development in times when abortion was even illegal. Vinnedge noted more than 80 abortions were committed to produce the rubella vaccine alone.

“Such an abortion has to be prearranged. There must be someone there immediately to take the baby and preserve the cells, tissues and organs,” she said.

The evil sometimes carries its own backlash. The ATK-293 cell line, for example, has been found to produce cancer, while PERC-6, derived from the retinal tissue of an 18-week gestation baby, has produced cancer in mice given the vaccine produced from it.

Children of God for Life counsels concerned citizens to ask their doctors to supply ethical vaccines, support fair labelling and informed choice legislation on medical products and let pharmaceutical companies know how they feel. More information is available at Children of God for Life’s website: www.cogforlife.org.

“Sometimes it seems there’s nothing any of us can do to make a difference,” said Vinnedge. “But you can never have that final victory, that crown, without the cross.”