David Silverman’s article, “Of Course the 9/11 Cross Is a Religious Symbol,” discusses American Atheists‘ case “for the removal of the cross as a religious symbol or for the WTC board to approve an atheist memorial alongside to remember the nonbelievers who died on 9/11.”

The 9/11 cross is one of the many steel crossbeams used in the construction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the crossbeams were found in the rubble. All of them would have remained rubble if Frank Silecchia, a rescue worker, hadn’t allowed his exhaustion to convince him that he was seeing crosses, not cross beams, in “a sort of grotto. Illuminated by the pale light of dawn.” Silecchia felt “a strange sense of peace and stillness” and “could almost hear God saying, ‘The terrible thing done at this site was meant for evil. But I will turn it to good. Have faith. I am here.’”  Silecchia “almost” heard God, but his friend Father Brian Jordan definitely saw a pefect opportunity to push Christianity by saving the cross from ending up in a scrap yard.

As Silverman points out, there were atheists among the 3,000 people killed on September 11, 2001. However. thanks to Silecchia and Jordan,

The cross was installed in the World Trade Center (WTC) Memorial in a religious ceremony in 2011 led by Father Jordan. . . . That same year, American Atheists sued for the removal of the cross as a religious symbol or for the WTC board to approve an atheist memorial alongside to remember the nonbelievers who died on 9/11.

On March 29, 2013, Judge Deborah Batts ruled that the cross is a secular “artifact,” not an unconstitutional religious symbol.

Siverman is right, Judge Batts’ decision “is an unconstitutional government endorsement of Christianity.” However, even if the cross were not unconstitutional, it is ridiculous that a product of Silecchia’s overheated imagination could become a symbol of the Christian God’s promise to turn evil into good.  Moreover, what is the the Christian God waiting for? It’s 2013 already; where’s the good he promised?

The cross is a symbol all right, a symbol of Father Jordan’s quick response to ensure that the 9/11 cross asserts the primacy of Catholic Christianity.  The Catholic Church and its representatives have no shame.

As Silverman says, “9/11 was an American tragedy, not an opportunity for preachers to capitalize on catastrophe,” However, the Sept. 11 attacks killed 26 Canadians; I strongly object to the cross as a Catholic/Christian symbol of a promise that an imaginary God being will make something good out of their death.

“Of course American Atheists has appealed.” Thank you, American Atheists.

h/t: Ophelia Benson

Twitter is a gold mine of information; unfortunately, some of the information is fool’s gold. Last night BC Humanist @BCHumanist tweeted “Is this for you? A new forum for exploration of the meaning of spirituality for atheists” and provided a link to Atheist Spirituality: A Forum for Exploration of the Meaning of Spirituality for Atheists.

According to the Welcome! tile,

The site aims to be inclusive and to develop shared understandings of human spirituality.

It’s a creative initiative in place of the worn, hostile debates between atheism and religion.

 

WTF is “human spirituality”?  Moreover, what is wrong with “debates between atheism and religion” and why include the emotive word hostile?

The next two tiles, Virtues and Vices, are reminiscent of the Christian concepts of the seven cardinal virtues and the seven deadly sins or vices. Yuck, it’s definitely time to stop clicking on the rest of the tiles, but in the interests of education and giving the site a fair reading, it is worth clicking on the Literature tile. If you were hoping to see an examination of novels by George Eliot and Virgina Woolf, or poems by T. S. Eliot before his conversion to Anglo-Catholicism, you will be disappointed. The literature list includes the same old claptrap, for example Christian Atheist, Belonging without Believing by Brian Mountford, which implies that atheists miss the “belonging” part of religion.

Those who refuse to turn atheism into a religion can stop clicking the tiles. For those who want to know more about “Spirituality for Atheists,” there are more tiles: Think Pieces, Zeitgeist, Religion and Hot Issues.

How did I answer BC Humanist’s tweet: “Is this for you?”

It definitely is not for me.

 

CFI is working to make sure Canada’s foreign policy protects atheists and skeptics around the world.

And you can help too!

I received an email from Lenin Ruiz, an atheist who lives in Quito, Ecuador, and studies anthropology at the Universidad Politécnica Salesiana, Quito. He is doing research on atheism for his thesis and would appreciate responses from Canadian Atheist readers to a questionnaire he created.  Lenin would like responses sent to him at giudesca@hotmail.com and would like you to include your name, age, and country.

LIST OF QUESTIONS

♦♦♦

1. How deep is religious influence on your family?
2. When did you begin to feel that religious ideas and actions did not satisfy you
3. Did you have militancy or read Marxist books as a teenager?
4. (Answer only if your answer to question 3 was “yes”) How influential was the left-wing thought in your formation as an atheist?
5. Have people made fun of you or rejected you due to being an atheist?
6. What do you think of “believers”?
7. Have you made fun of any believer or tried to be sarcastic to annoy a “believer”?
8. Has there been any strong emotionally happening that has made you doubt of your beliefs as an atheist?
9. How do socialize in your job, with your family, with “believers”?
10. How do you value that you belong to a minority of people in the world. Don’t you think that you are wrong and “believers” are right?
11. Have you had any contact with masonry or Satanism?
12. Which do you think is the fundamental difference between an atheist and a “believer”?
13. Tell me 3 values a human being must always have.
14. Tell me 3 anti-values a human being must avoid.
15.  Do you think an atheist is born or becomes?
16. What’s your opinion about people who stopped being atheists and became “believers” for any reason?
17. What’s your opinion about death?
18. Is there life beyond death?
19. Actually, what terrorizes us about the physical extinction…perhaps is the fact that agony can involve physical pain and suffering. What is your opinion?
20. Do we have a soul?

If you do not wish to send your responses directly to Lenin Ruiz at giudesca@hotmail.com, you may send them to me at veronica@canadianatheist.com and I will forward them to him.

Note: Eric MacDonald at Choice in Dying received the same request; Lenin’s questions are posted on Eric’s blog as well.

The topic today on the CKNW Morning News with Philip Till was “Religion In Politics: An Atheist & Rabbi’s Perspective.”  Before Phil Till begins interviewing his guests: an atheist and a rabbi, he mentions that two characters in the The Good Wife January 27^th episode, “The Seven Day Rule,” Maddie Hayward and Alicia Florrick, make the statement, “I’m an atheist.”  There has been lots of talk on the Internet about these two characters outing themselves.  However, this isn’t real life; Maddie and Alicia are characters in a television series. The characters have nothing to gain or lose from saying three simple words: “I’m an atheist,” unless, of course, the show gains or loses viewers.

It it difficult to admit to being an atheist? I don’t think it is, and neither, it appears, does Ian Bushfield.  Bushfield, who is the executive director of the B C Humanist Association, was the atheist guest on today’s CKNW Morning News with Philip Till. Early in the interview, Till asks, “Are you an atheist?,” and Bushfield answers “I am, yes.”  Of course, that’s not all Bushfield talks about; he also talks about his perspective on religion in politics and on “Christy Clark’s upcoming event.”

Listen to Ian  Bushfield’s discussion with Philip Till online at Philip Till Audio.

As Hemant Mehta says, “How awesome is [this] image?”

http://unitedcor.org/chapter/san-diego/full-view/1075/headline

It’s pretty awesome!  David Silverman, president of American Atheists, explains the reason for the colourful design and the positive, focused message:

“With many of our previous billboards, we’ve made it a point to challenge traditional religion. But this time we want to show the other side of our coin, that atheism is a breath of fresh air.”

Atheism really is a “personal relationship with reality” and “a breath of fresh air.”  Thank you American Atheists, your vibrant billboard helps chase away the winter darkness.

Something, Atheism: The Black anti-gay Atheists of Atlanta, popped up in my newsfeed today on the social networks. It is not new, nor is this sort of thing new to me, but it reminded me of a conversation I had a while back with a friend of mine. We were talking about the various atheist meetups we have been to, and he reminded me of one in particular.

My friend is gay, and we’re both regulars at atheists meetups. He was actually sitting beside me on the occasion in question. Anyway, as meetups go, I was talking in one direction and he was talking in a another, so we were in separate conversations. Honestly, I can’t remember what I was talking about. In any case, he was talking to one of the ‘new people’. And as he tells it, all of a sudden the conversation took a strange turn.

New atheist guy was anti-gay and had no problem voicing his opinion to my friend. My gay friend was left a bit speechless, as you might imagine.

But how, but why?

In this case, like in many others, dude was ignorant and misinformed and too confident in his own self-righteousness to get past it. Atheism, doesn’t imply science, it doesn’t imply critical thinking, nor does it imply a superior morality. It means, hopefully, we have taken one step in the direction of critical thinking. But it is a long path, an ongoing struggle, and being right about one thing doesn’t make us superior.

And like the minister or the priest, its really hard for human beings to preach and think at the same time. We all need to remember that.

No, I’m not asking you to brush up on your German and listen to an old news reel or even read a book. But I’m curious. What does Hitler mean to you? To me, there is the obvious ‘mass murder’ connotation, but I also studied the Nazis in a class I took on rhetoric. They were… very good… at propaganda, not to mention war.

On the internet, Hitler is where arguments tend to end. And with the exception of a small band of racist groups in our society, the name is in almost every way (even supernaturally) demonic.

The name is an invocation to horror.

Should we as atheists be encouraging this sort of thinking? Adolf Hitler could arguably be accused of being one of the great criminals of the last century, even of history itself. But he wasn’t a supernatural force. He was a failed artist… a man.

I’m always a little uncomfortable when other secular types start talking about ‘evil’ like its an actual force of nature. It tends to imply magical, rather than critical, thinking.

Having said that, I’m certainly not a fan of Hitler.

Unlike in some parts of Europe such as Russia and Austria, where Mein Kampf has been embraced by the extreme right, Hitler’s popularity in India is not the result of anti-Semitism, says Navras Jaat Aafreedi, a professor of social sciences at Gautam Buddha University in New Delhi. He says it stems from a dearth of European history classes in schools. To the extent that German history is taught, he says, it’s in the context of “the view that had Hitler not weakened the British Empire by the Second World War, the British would have never voluntarily left India.”

Ok, I wasn’t expecting that.