FOR WIDEST POSSIBLE DISEMMINATION. POST TO ALL LISTS, BLOGS, CHAT ROOMS, WHATEVER.

The report below is forwarded from the Military Director for American Atheists, Kathleen Johnson who is currently serving on active duty in Iraq.

This report is about an issue in Iraq. I don’t think there will be any surprises in this report for most of you because this is the reason American Atheists exists. Just the same, it still has quite a bit of impact. This is the battle we are fighting and sometimes it can be tough. Not all of our battles are this hard, but they vary by degree only.

I’m including the article in Stars and Stripes that Kathleen mentions in her report below at the bottom of this email. As per Kathleen’s request, please send any emails of encouragement to the brave young soldier who is mentioned below by using Kathleen’s email which follows.

Kudos to this brave young soldier for having the courage to stand up for his beliefs and right to express them freely in the face of such drastic opposition. Kudos to the other brave soldiers who had the courage to participate. And Kudos to Kathleen Johnson for leading our cause in such a hostile environment. They all deserve medals for bravery. Not just for standing up for their beliefs, but also for being in Iraq in the first place. Whether you agree with this war or not, our troops deserve at least that much.

It’s my personal opinion that if all Atheists stood up for their beliefs and were as vocal as these soldiers we would not be facing the discrimination we are facing today. We would be perceived as a much larger majority that should not be trifled with. I’m proud to be a part of the national organization that fights for the civil rights of Atheists in the face of this discrimination.

Kathleen’s report follows.

Bart Meltzer,
Director of State and Regional Operations,
American Atheists, Inc.
[email protected]

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

Bart,

Thought you’d be interested in this report of the first-ever meeting of Atheist service-members in Iraq under the umbrella of the MAAF-Iraq chapter of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers. This meeting was put together by the same young MAAF member who recently had his second letter published in the Stars and Stripes.

One of our members, a young Atheist enlisted soldier, thought he would like to see if he could generate some interest in MAAF meetings at his Forward Operating Base (FOB) here in Iraq (not the base I’m at, by the way). He got things coordinated and started hanging flyers, and after weeks of having to re-hang his flyers almost daily because some vandal kept tearing them down, he finally succeeded in having a small MAAF meeting. I wasn’t there because the meeting wasn’t on my FOB, but I knew he was holding it and was expecting to hear from him after the meeting. Keep in mind that this young soldier did everything right – he went through the Chaplain’s office and jumped through all the hoops it takes to legally hold meetings that are religiously or philosophically based. Four soldiers attended this meeting – all of them very junior enlisted soldiers with the exception of one Major (an O-4), who claimed to be a “freethinker”.

Well, to make a very long story a little shorter, the Major turned out to be a fundamentalist Christian who verbally berated the other attendees, accused them of plotting against Christians and disrespecting soldiers who have died protecting the Constitution, and threatened them with punishment under the UCMJ for their activities (said they were “going down”) and said he would do whatever it took to shut the meetings down. Keep in mind that by this point, he had two of the attendees (one soldier fled when the shouting started) standing at the position of attention so that he could yell at them, berate them, and humiliate them. This apparently went on for several minutes at which time the Major shut down the meeting by saying he wasn’t some “push-over Chaplain” and that he would not tolerate the meetings to continue.

The young MAAF member who hosted the meeting is absolutely freaked out about what happened, but he said he’s going to continue with the meetings and isn’t going to be bullied by the prayer warriors. I’ve advised him to immediately notify the Chaplain sponsor of what happened to get guidance while I try to figure out what to do next. I should hear something back from him tonight sometime and there’s even a small possibility I might be able to score a mission to his FOB and attend one of his meetings in the next few weeks (if I do, I’ll meet with the Chaplain in person).

As for immediate action, he’s going to get me the names of his Chaplain sponsor and the name of the officer who disrupted the meeting. My intent right now is to make a formal report to the most senior Chaplain I can find along with possibly an Equal Opportunity complaint against the officer if we can get him fully identified. I may not be eligible to make that complaint because I wasn’t there, but I can at least smooth the way for this young troop to make one if he elects to. At the very least, I can make the EO office formally aware of what happened there.

More info will follow when I get it, but right now, feel free to disseminate this information since I’ve intentionally sanitized it for names and locations. I will be happy to forward any words of support to him if they get mailed to my [email protected] address – he could really use some encouragement right now, I think.

Kathleen

Kathleen Johnson,
Military Director,
American Atheists, Inc.
[email protected]

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for nonbelievers; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=47626

Read the Constitution

It seems to me the author of “Atheist revival bad …” (letter, July 13) needs to read the Constitution he swore to uphold and defend, and study some American history.

Our nation was not “founded under God, upon Christian principles.” The first settlers of the new world were seeking, among other things, escape from religious persecution, not to form a faith-based colony. As Americans, we are granted the freedom of religion, which includes not having one, not the freedom to choose which form of Christianity we follow.

The author seems to think Camp Quest is somehow dangerous to our country and our youth, when in fact it’s people exercising their right to free assembly. The number of religious-based summer camps far outweighs the atheist ones, and those based on a system of beliefs will prove to be more of a “training ground” than any that encourages free thought.

I highly doubt any of the children at Camp Quest would be chastised if they thought a higher power might exist. On the other hand, what would happen if a child at a Christian retreat voiced doubt that Jesus was the son of God?

Atheists come from every walk of life and many are educated about several faiths. As a child I was fortunate enough to be allowed to attend many churches. By the third grade I knew there was no God, and still educated myself by attending a variety of services. This is common with a lot of atheists. Many people force their children into the family religion and shun other beliefs, that’s the true “brainwashing.”

There is no atheist revival, we’ve always been here as a silent minority, most just choose to live their own lives and let you live yours.

Staff Sgt. Gene Horrigan
Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar

———————————————————-

Camp Quest is legal

After reading “Atheist revival bad for U.S.,” I couldn’t help but laugh. Does no one research anything for themselves anymore? Or do they just repeat what they heard from someone else?

The writer complains how atheist children have their own summer camp (Camp Quest). And that someone else is actually happy about it. Well, it’s 100 percent legal, because of the U.S. Constitution.

It’s just as legal as any other private organization, such as Bible camps and churches. The next thing that bothered me was the claim that the U.S. was founded “under God.” And that it was based on Christian principles and values. Well, that just sucks for a lot of people, doesn’t it?

Since America is a Christian nation, I guess everyone else is just second-rate! Sorry (insert religious minority here), you’re not good enough. Nowhere in the Constitution is there a mention of a God. Religion is referenced as exclusionary. Such as stating that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust.” (Article VI) That sounds secular to me.

The U.S. is a free nation. The First Amendment applies to every private citizen. And that includes us atheists. It is the individual freedoms that make our nation great.

Spc. Jeremy Hall
Camp Speicher, Iraq

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……..

Here is the letter referred to above. http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=55297&archive=true

As the author observes, “…a nation that forgets what made it great is destined to fail.”

Perhaps he, and the un-American Major discussed above, would be happier in the army of some other country.

Do you feel safer knowing that these persons are in the Army of the United States of America?

Why do they hate our freedom?

Edwin.

Atheist ‘revival’ bad for U.S.

I have to say that I was very disturbed to read the article “Atheists are happy campers at Ohio retreat” (July 8). From just looking at the picture next to the article with the children playing together, you would think that they were just at an outside function participating in a fun activity. But when I read the article, I found there is a lot more to it than that.

The author of the article seems to be overjoyed and ecstatic about young teenagers being at a summer camp where the existence of God is happily denied and refuted, speaking of a revival of atheism and Camp Quest (the name of the summer camp) being a training ground for the atheist movement. How sad to see yet another example of God being kicked out and pushed aside in our society, and young kids being taught — or, in my opinion, brainwashed — to do it.

I wonder how long it will be before America becomes a completely secular society when I see and read things like the Camp Quest article. We already have people fighting daily to remove God from our money, the Pledge of Allegiance and more. As one girl who was quoted in the article stated, “This year, I stopped getting up and saying the pledge,” because it includes the words “under God” in it.

Like it or not, our nation was founded under God, upon Christian principles and values, and yet it seems people, such as the ones who founded Camp Quest, continue to ignore and defy it and encourage others to do the same. It seems to me a nation that forgets what made it great is destined to fail.

Spc. Matthew B. Cravens
Hanau, Germany

http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/aamedia.htm#kagin

C-SPAN to Air Segments of American Atheists National Convention Saturday July 14

Portions of the 33rd annual National Convention of American Atheists held earlier this year in Seattle, Washington will be aired on the C-SPAN network program “American Perspectives” at 8:00 PM ET on Saturday, July 14.

You can watch via television or the Internet.

AACON XXXIII featured a blockbuster line-up of speakers including Julia Sweeney, Robert Price, Edwin Kagin, Frank Zindler, Dave Fitzgerald and many more.

WHAT: Portions of the 33rd National Convention of American Atheists on C-SPAN

WHEN: Tonight (Wednesday, July 11, 2007) and Saturday (July 14, 2007) at 8:00 PM ET. Check your local listings

WHERE: C-SPAN network or internet feed at c-span.org.

=======================================================================================================

Edwin Kagin Live on GAYBC Radio, Internet Thursday July 12, 2007 ~ 3:15 PT

Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists, will be the guest Thursday, July 12, 2007 on the GAYBC Radio Network out of Los Angeles.

Mr. Kagin, co-founder of Camp Quest will be interviewed on the John McMullen Show. Edwin will be talking about Atheism, separation of church and state in an era of rampant religious fundamentalism, the recent RALLY FOR REASON at the Creation Museum, and more. You can call in to the program via 818-746-3985, or instant message during the program through AOL via GAYBCstudio.

The John McMullen program is broadcast globally daily from 3-6 PM (PACIFIC), 6-9 PM (EASTERN), so check your time zone. Mr. Kagin’s interview segment will begin at 3:15 PM Pacific Time You can live stream the program by clicking on the appropriate icon at www.gaybc.com.

WHO & WHAT: Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists on the John McMullen Show

WHEN: Thursday, July 12, 2007, 3:15 Pacific (6:15 Eastern)

WHERE: Internet stream at www.gaybc.com

======================================================================================================

http://news.kypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070711/NEWS02/707110354/1014/NEWS02

The Kentucky Post

Bonds OK’d for church project

By Kevin Eigelbach
Post staff reporter

For the first time ever, Boone Fiscal Court voted Tuesday to give an industrial revenue bond tax break to a local church.

The court voted unanimously to issue up to $2.8 million in bonds on behalf of the Vineyard Christian Church in Burlington in a transaction that renewed debate over the separation of church and state.

The bonds don’t obligate the county financially in any way – they merely allow the church to get a better interest rate on its financing from Fifth Third Bank. Because the county issues the bonds, the bank doesn’t have to report the interest on them as income to the IRS.

The church plans to use the bulk of the money to build a 5,000-square-foot addition for Sunday school classrooms, as well as for the use of community groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous. The rest of the bond issue will pay for preparing the church property for further expansions and for creating more parking spaces.

The congregation has already received $1.2 million in pledges for the project and hopes to pay off the bonds in three years, said Executive Pastor Cliff Wick.

The bond issue will help Vineyard accommodate its steadily expanding congregation. The church has averaged growth of 12 percent over the past seven years and now draws a total of about 1,200 worshippers for its four weekend services.

Attorney Ian Koffler, who represented the church for the bond issue, said it was only the second one his firm had done for a congregation. The other was for a church in Lexington.

County Judge-Executive Gary Moore told the audience for Tuesday’s meeting that he was happy the county could help out the church, and congratulated the congregation on its growth.

But he advised Koffler that some residents had asked him how the county could do it without violating the constitutional separation of church and state.

Koffler told Moore that federal courts have ruled that if governments offers such a service to other nonprofits, they must also offer it to churches.

A Kentucky attorney general’s opinion from 1993 also said bond issues like the Boone County one don’t violate constitutional principles, he said.

Roger Peterman, a specialist in bonds and financing, and a former director of the Kentucky Development Finance Authority, said the courts have recently broadened their view of the church/state issue.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati “had a decision about a year ago that if the government is providing a service that it would provide to a non-religious institution, it can provide the same service to a religious organization,” he said.

That decision came in a case involving a bond issue for a religiously affiliated university in Nashville, said Phillip Sparkes, who teaches state and local government at Northern Kentucky University’s Salmon P. Chase College of Law.

The court ruled that a bond issue is a benefit much like fire protection, he said, and no one would object to the county sending fire trucks to extinguish a fire at a church.

Although it may be a first for a church in Northern Kentucky, counties routinely issue such kinds of bonds, Sparkes said.

“This kind of financing has been around for 50 years or more,” he said. “A variety of projects get funded this way.”

The courts have also ruled that the government could bus children to a church-run school, for example, but not to religious services.

“The Kentucky statutes allow bonds for educational purposes. This is an educational wing of the facility,” Peterman said of the Vineyard project.

But Union attorney Edwin Kagin, national legal director for American Atheists, said that the Kentucky Constitution forbids the government from supporting religion – and that’s what the Boone County bond issue will do.

“If Camp Quest would apply for such a bond issue, do you suppose they would issue bonds for that?” he asked.

Camp Quest is a residential summer camp for the children of atheists. Kagin and his wife, Helen, have served as camp directors for 10 years.

Publication date: 07-11-2007

Chicago Tribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-campatheist_27jun27,1,4522407.story?page=2&coll=chi-news-hed

A camp they can believe in

Ohio’s Camp Quest lets young atheists enjoy summer fun with like-minded children

By Ron Grossman
Tribune staff reporter

June 27, 2007

CLARKSVILLE, Ohio — At the same time youngsters at Bible camps across the nation are reciting, “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep,” kids at Camp Quest are climbing into their bunks, confident there is no one out there to hear those prayers.

Proudly proclaiming the motto “Beyond Belief,” Camp Quest bills itself as the nation’s first sleep-away summer camp for atheists. Founded in 1996, it has inspired four similar camps across the nation for children whose parents are either opposed or indifferent to religion.

Much of what goes on here, amid the cornfields of southwestern Ohio, is little different from any other camp. Campers canoe on the Little Miami River, practice archery skills and go on nature hikes.

To be sure, they also engage in some unusual rainy-day discussions of philosophical issues. Children who barely come up to an adult’s waist toss around terms such as “circular logic.” And those nature hikes focus on the beauty of evolution, unaided by any unseen hand.

Atheism has been experiencing a revival, as it were. Some national surveys show the numbers of non-believers growing. Books hyper-critical of religion are best-sellers. The biologist Richard Dawkins argued in “The God Delusion” that religion is just that. Faith as the source of all evil was explored with burning passion by Christopher Hitchens in “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”

But more than a training ground for a movement, Camp Quest is a place to set down the burden of being different.

Children who grow up in Christian households have the emotional security of being in the nation’s majority. Members of religious minorities have similarly minded friends and relatives. But coming from a family that does not believe in God often sets a child on a lonely road.

Frieda Lindroth, a first-year camper, recognized that her first day at Camp Quest.

“‘Wow!’ I said to myself, ‘I’m not alone,'” said Frieda, 12. She recalls being an atheist since the 2nd grade.

For its inaugural season, Camp Quest drew 20 campers. This year, it enrolled 47 young people, ranging from 8 to 17 years old, for its weeklong session at a campground rented from a 4-H group. About 100 others will attend Quest’s daughter camps in Michigan, Minnesota, California and Ontario, Canada.

A Harris Interactive survey in 2003 found that 9 percent of Americans don’t believe in God, while another 12 percent are uncertain about the issue. Even if their numbers are lower, the Secular Coalition for America calculates that the ranks of non-believers are larger than the combined number of religious Jews, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Presbyterians, Hindus, Muslims and Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Camp Quest’s founder, Edwin Kagin, thinks non-believers have become more outspoken as a reaction to the religious right. School boards have inserted “intelligent design” into their curricula almost as fast as the courts can veto such measures.

Kagin and his wife, Helen, founded Camp Quest out of frustration with what they saw as a forced march to theocracy. His father was a minister in a family line of Presbyterian clergy tracing back to John Knox, the great Scottish reformer.

“But I went to college and started reading books my father had preached against,” said Kagin, 66.

Kagin has a full beard, a rolling gait and a sardonic delivery reminiscent of Mark Twain, as played by Hal Holbrook. He became active in atheist causes but was frustrated by lawyers hired to fight them. So he got a law degree and became the legal director of the activist group American Atheists.

In the 1990s, the Boy Scouts, a chief sponsor of camping in America, began excluding atheists and gays from its leadership. That prompted the Kagins to create an outdoorsy alternative for non-believers.

“We wanted a camp not to preach there is no God,” said Kagin, “but as a place where children could learn it’s OK not to believe in God.”

Many Camp Questers have wrestled with that issue on their own, among them Sophia Riehemann, a 9th-year camper. She long avoided the words “under God,” during recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance at school.

“This year, I stopped getting up and saying the Pledge,” said Riehemann, 16, who, like other campers, reports that it is taxing constantly negotiating with the world of believers. “Here at camp, that little barrier is finally down.”

Like many campers, Riehemann comes from a home that stresses a scientific explanation of reality in place of the biblical account. Similarly, the dining room walls at Camp Quest are hung with portraits of notable free-thinkers and scientists, ranging from Darwin and Einstein to Woody Allen, honored for giving comedic expression to religious skepticism.

Riehemann notes that a secular perspective takes away childhood joys other kids have, such as Christmas. But that doesn’t bother her. “They have Santa Claus,” she said, “and we have Isaac Newton.”

Like Riehemann, other campers report the painful experience of publicly declaring their lack of religious belief. Like gay people, they call it “coming out.”

Allison Page, 9, read a book of Bible stories and decided they “were just silly.” When her classmates found that out, they called her names and threatened her. That prompted her parents to home-school Allison. They sent her to camp so she would have summertime playmates.

Allison reports finding the Bible incompatible with her experience of life. An only child who’d like to have siblings, she was stumped by the story of Cain and Abel.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” Allison said. “A brother wouldn’t kill his brother.”

Sheridan Scott, 10, encountered hostility on the front lines of atheist activism. He and his mother are part of a group of Florida atheists that raises the banner for non-belief in public places.

“As a hobby,” he explained. “But some people are so hostile, yelling at us: ‘You will go to Hell.'”

Ed Golly, a camp counselor, belongs to the Florida atheist-activist group. When members saw Christian revivalists preaching on the streets of a Tampa night-club district, they mounted counterdemonstrations.

“We hold up banners saying, ‘Jesus is not Coming’ and ‘No Prayer in School,'” said Golly, 55, a volunteer like all the staff.

A small-craft pilot, Golly flies his airplane to camp and takes campers up in it. They gleefully report that, at least as high as a Cessna can go, there is no evidence for a God in the sky.

Much of the learning at Camp Quest is similarly non-directive. Atheism isn’t so much advocated as set alongside traditional belief systems. There are meal-time talks on various religions. Campers debate questions such as, “Would the world be better off without religion?”

Many of the young people come to more measured conclusions than Dawkins and Hitchens, acknowledging religion has some virtues, like providing some people a sense of community.

But at the final campfire, it was obvious how most Camp Questers come down on the question of belief. The young people giggled and laughed through skits and songs, savoring for one last moment being just one of the gang.

For the concluding act, Edwin Kagin stood in front of the crackling flames, pounding an oversized walking stick worthy of a biblical prophet. He broadly impersonated an evangelical preacher, exhorting his congregation to believe in the unseen.

“Who needs proof, if we have faith?” he asked.

All around the campfire, young hands went up.

———-

[email protected]

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

http://citybeat.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A139674

City Beat

Cincinnati, Ohio

The Big Story

Cover Story: Fantastic World

Creation Museum tells a whopper of a tale, with a literal interpretation of Genesis only the beginning

BY Lew Moores | Posted 06/13/2007

Gene Kritsky, evolutionary biologist, walked through the museum. With a camera strap around his neck, he listened to the sound of falling water and walked past a model of a child offering a carrot to a squirrel as two model juvenile dinosaurs played just feet away, past a glass display of live finches, past a dinosaur model perched on a ledge, looked down at another display and learned that poison dart frogs were once benign creatures, “very good,” just like every living creature until Adam went and sinned.

Kritsky raised his camera to his eye and captured the images, this record of life explained through another lens called the Book of Genesis. A film crew from the BBC approached, lifted camera to shoulder and asked Kritsky for an explanation: What is the Creation Museum all about?

“It’s bait-and-switch,” Kritsky would explain moments later, BBC interview concluded. Get them in with dinosaurs, then let the message morph. Adam sins, Noah’s ark arrives.

Then it’s on to more biblical history and on to a subterranean world that is wrought by sin and animated with a basement of lurid graffiti garishly lit that exposes and excoriates abortion, homosexuality, pornography.

Evolution and the culture wars. In this dank, subway-like atmosphere of headlines that scream of teen pregnancies and drugs among those other vices, AiG and the museum tries to connect the dots.

“Over the last four decades, historic Judeo-Christian values have been under attack, causing many Christians to become actively engaged in areas of politics, entertainment and culture,” according to a museum position paper. That includes abortions, consideration of same-sex marriage, religious displays “removed from the public square,” prayer and the Bible being removed from public schools.

Absolute moral truth is being replaced with secularism, says AiG. “Rising reports of violence, sexual deviance, and other social ills all stem from the fact that America has lost its moral footing,” the position paper says. America needs to return to a Christian worldview, a “return to the authority of the Bible … beginning in the book of Genesis.”

Reject Genesis, if you will — this is where it leads.

“The dinosaurs?” Kritsky continued. “They’re eye candy for kids. A lot of kids get into science because of dinosaurs. I did. For me it was Frito Corn Chips. Seven years old and little dinosaurs were in Frito’s. I asked my mom what was that, and she said, ‘A dinosaur.’ So they’re using dinosaurs as an eye candy.

“At the risk of sounding really mean, it’s almost like intellectual molestation.”

Scopes redux
Kritsky is a professor at the College of Mount St. Joseph in Delhi Township and an adjunct curator at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History. He was one of some 4,000 people who showed up May 28 to take a walk through biblical history at the Creation Museum, a 60,000-square-foot institution costing a whopping $27 million built on more than 40 acres of land in suburban Petersburg near the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. The Museum is dedicated to the belief that the Earth is but 6,000 years old, that a science that suggests life on this planet is millions of years old is wrong, that the first man looked like a hippie, the first woman looked like Grace Slick.

“The purpose of this museum is not science, the purpose is not to improve the intellectual understanding of the natural world,” Kritsky said after touring the museum, which opened Memorial Day weekend to much fanfare and media attention from around the world. “The purpose of this museum is sectarian, and it is a ministry designed to promote a very narrow view of and interpretation of Christianity.”

The Creation Museum is located among rolling hills of farmland, with metallic stegosaurs standing sentry at its gates, and its closest neighbors are soybeans and killdeer. The locale is deceptive; it is less than 10 miles by interstate from the airport — a 10-minute drive in a rental car — and, as the museum staff points out, within 650 miles of two-thirds of the country’s population.

It was some seven years in the making, groundbreaking to completion. When the making finally arrived, it turned out to be a dizzying weekend. A ribbon cutting was attended by close to 1,000 guests and media, including reporters for foreign publications and for Christian radio.

An opening held two days later attracted 4,000 visitors. A protest organized just outside the gates packed more than 100 — many of them academics, scientists and a smattering of agnostics and atheists — onto a corner of a field. They held aloft banners and signs just off the side of the country road and cheered when passing motorists honked car horns in approval.

Ken Ham, the museum’s media-savvy founder and president of Answers in Genesis (AiG), the ministry that built the museum, reached back 82 years to a day in Dayton, Tenn., when the Scopes trial began, an event immortalized by play and film and yet largely misunderstood today.

He said at the museum’s May 26 ribbon-cutting ceremony that back in 1925 the “world’s media” gathered to cover the Scopes trial, a case that challenged a state law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools.

It was, he said, a time in which “the world’s media gathered for an event in which the Bible was openly ridiculed. The first time the world’s media saw that … it was the turning point in Christendom in many ways. … I believe in 2007, as the world’s media is interested in this place, what they’re coming to is a place that doesn’t ridicule the Bible.”

Sin causes weeds
The Scopes trial, of course, didn’t end the debate about creationism; that would go on legally another 62 years. John Scopes and evolution lost in 1925. The trial, unlike later cases, wasn’t about teaching creationism; it was about outlawing the teaching of evolution. But his conviction was overturned on a technicality.

The trial was something of a staged affair; the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wanted a case it could take to a higher appellate court for a ruling more definitive, and Dayton wanted it to attract attention and commerce to the community. Scopes’ defense team of ACLU lawyers feared the inclusion of Clarence Darrow, an agnostic, whom they thought would detract from the issue of academic freedom — teaching evolution. They also feared the trial would be reduced to an argument of God’s existence.

Some of those same fears were manifested just weeks ago when the Rally for Reason was being planned to protest the museum. Rally organizers included atheists, while another group, Campaign to Defend the Constitution (Defcon), was wary of appearing to align criticism of the museum with atheism. As it turned out, both mostly avoided references to whether or not there is a deity.

Edward J. Larson is a professor of history and law at the University of Georgia and winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for history for his book, Summer for the Gods (Harvard University Press), which is about the Scopes trial. Larson said he toured the museum a year ago before completion.

He and others point out that Inherit the Wind, a play of the 1950s and film of the 1960s that shaped how many viewed the creationism debate was not so much about creationism as it was about McCarthyism and conformity of thought. William Jennings Bryan, the flamboyant former presidential candidate who helped with the prosecution, wasn’t nearly the anti-intellectual he appears in the play to be. He was actually something of a progressive in Larson’s book, a majoritarian — people speak through their legislature, and that is something sacrosanct — who railed almost as much against cut-throat capitalism, social Darwinism and eugenics as he did against evolution.

Larson isn’t as derisive of the museum as some of his academic peers.

“I think it is an important cultural edifice,” he said. “For me, as a scholar who doesn’t believe like they do, it’s interesting to see what they’re visualizing. It captures visually what many people see in their mind when they read Genesis or when they read Ken Ham’s materials. It recreates what they see and adds force to it. … I think Ken Ham and Genesis are sincere when they raise social concerns.”

Are you sympathetic to what they believe?

“I don’t think ‘sympathetic’ is the word,” Larson said. “People are people, and they should be able to believe what they want to believe. And what they want to say.”

Take that walk through the museum and you pass from science to Bible to biblical history to science again. You pass through a Garden of Eden and learn that, before Adam sinned, there was no death.

There was no venom, no disease. All creatures were vegetarians. There were no carnivores — T. Rex apparently used its sharp teeth to crack open coconuts — no scavengers, no aging. There was no burdensome work. Indeed, there weren’t even any weeds. There were apparently no metal fixtures.

Yet Kritsky noticed that, as Cain killed Abel in one museum display, Abel had metal fixtures on his sandals.

The new Rome
The response has been good, Ken Ham said at the press conference and ribbon-cutting two days before the museum opened. He had done 43 interviews with various media in that week alone, media from eight countries. The previous week Ham spent more than an hour with Chris Comer and Rob Ervin on the Chris & Rob Show on WAIF (88.3 FM).

The Australian native talked about how he arrived in this country 25 years ago.

“One of the things I recognized is, if you want to get a message out around the world,” he told Comer, “or you want to affect the Christian world, America is the place to do it from. It really is the center of the Christian world.”

Ham told Comer of his dream of building a museum, “something using cutting-edge technology, something as good as what the secular world could do, so Christians could have something first class and professional that helps people understand that science actually confirms the Bible’s history.”

Two weeks after the radio show, the museum was dedicated. A single-engine plane flew overhead trailing a banner that said, “Defcon says, ‘Thou shalt not lie.’ ”

“They say our science is bogus,” Ham was saying. “But it is exactly the same science that these people study. We all study the same genetics. … It’s the belief about origins — that’s what’s different.”

What’s been the response so far?

“One of the overwhelming responses has been, ‘Wow!’ ” Ham said. “This place is so professional, so first class. … We believe some of them will actually be converted to Christianity.”

Ham was asked about the banner overhead.

“They’re quoting the Bible, which is interesting,” he said. “They don’t believe in the Bible. They have a particular agenda. They defend abortion, they defend gay marriage, they defend embryonic stem cell research. They’re against the religious right, which they accuse us of being a part of, which we’re not. That’s their agenda. It’s a front for what I call a liberal agenda.”

The ribbon-cutting attracted a fair number of Northern Kentucky politicians: State Rep. Addia Wuchner, State Sen. Dick Roeding, State Sen. Jack Westwood, Boone County Commissioner Charles Kenner.

Boone County Judge-Executive Gary Moore thanked AiG for choosing Boone County, calling the museum a “fantastic facility.”

“What a momentous day, what an accomplishment,” he said. “What it will mean to our county in terms of tourism, in terms of economic impact and impact from a conservative-values point of view. We know the message you will promote here is a message the world needs to hear.”

‘Bad religion’
It was as Gene Kritsky entered the graffiti-laden subterranean area that he felt the museum gave up all pretense of being a science museum. He turned and said, “What does this have to do with science? This is a political statement made by the people who run this museum. This is an insult.”

But when he finished his visit, Kritsky was asked how he would characterize it.

“You could talk about the quality of the exhibits,” he began. “Construction is very good. They have the eye candy going real well. They have all the right bells and whistles going in there. As any museum, it’s overwhelming. It should tire you out, it should barrage your senses. But it also insults your thinking. I saw nothing new that I haven’t read in creationist literature before. To me, the science is bad. The religion is sectarian and parochial. People who come in with that as a foundation will love it. People coming for the sheer joy of laughing will have a good laugh.

“They’re promoting a very narrow, sectarian view of religion. We don’t teach this at Mount St. Joseph. We’re a mainstream Catholic institution. If evolution turns out to be wrong, it’s just another theory that’s bit the dust. But they are espousing political statements as opposed to any kind of science. Not only is it bad science, it is filled with bad religion, and it’s also bad sociology and bad history, too.”

Not even the museum’s fiercest detractors argue that the museum shouldn’t be allowed to exist. They say that upfront; it was, after all, built with private money. But they will also tell you they wish it hadn’t been built.

Lawrence Krauss is a professor of physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University. His objections to the museum are two-fold, much like Kritsky’s: what it might foist on an unknowing public, especially children, and its suggestion that to reject its literal interpretation is tantamount to denying God. (In fairness, Ken Ham did say at the May 26 press conference that those who believe in God and reject a literal Genesis “does not mean they’re not Christian; it means they’re inconsistent.”)

“I think what the people who made this museum want to happen is for scientists to complain about the museum make it appear as if they’re complaining about religion,” Krauss said. “This is an institution designed to mis-educate children. That is precisely what is happening here. This is an example where a group is effectively misinforming and mis-educating children. This is nothing but an institutionalized lie and a scientific fraud. My concern is whenever people complain about science is that we already do a poor job of teaching science in this country. The last thing we can afford is to make it worse.

“In order to argue earth and life are 6,000 years old, you have to deny essentially what we know about chemistry, physics, geology, biology, astronomy, the basis of all modern technology.”

Krauss had been asked to rate the museum on a scale of one to five after his walk-through.

“I gave it a four for technology, five for propaganda and a minus-five for content,” he said.

Edwin Kagin is a Union, Ky., attorney who is legal director of American Atheists, although he tries in this controversy to avoid references to atheism. Instead, he gets in the face of scientists whom he believes for too long avoided confrontation with creationism and its derivative cousin, intelligent design (ID), a school of thought that believes some organisms are so irreducibly complex that their existence cannot be explained fully by science and must have been created by an intelligent designer.

For the past several years — until recently — scientists generally avoided confrontation and debate with creationists and those who believe in ID for fear it would legitimize those beliefs. Kagin thought it a dumb strategy.

“The scientists have this ludicrous idea that it’s (a debate) not worthy of any kind of consideration, we should just leave it alone,” he said. “Well, that’s not working. When no one disagrees, people think it must be true.”

To ignore the Creation Museum is to give silent consent or acquiescence. It is a strategy, Kagin suggested, that allows stealth candidates with those beliefs to get elected to school boards.

“They are teaching children to ignore the basis for Western civilization and thought, which is the scientific method,” he said. “If people reject the hard-won truths of science, we could in a generation be back in another Dark Ages.

“What they are doing is no less an attack on the very way that science and enlightened thought works to produce the modern world. They want to substitute mythology for knowledge. Ignorance is a form of terrorism.”

Rick Boyce, a professor in the department of biological sciences at Northern Kentucky University, attended the Rally for Reason protest outside the gates on opening day — not as a scientist, but as a Christian.

“I agree with Lawrence Krauss when he says it’s a fraud,” said Boyce, who carried a sign at the rally that said, “Bad science, worse religion.”

“I am a biologist, but I’ve also been concerned about this as a Christian,” Boyce said. “I am a Quaker. As a Christian, I kind of resent being tarred with the same brush and lumped with the creationists. As a scientist, I’m offended when they say the earth was created 6,000 years ago. The story we tell is based upon what nature is telling us.”

Boyce is also somewhat surprised by the success AiG had in raising $27 million to build the museum. Young-earth creationism, he thought, was so yesterday.

“It’s definitely been revived here, even though we thought that it was history,” Boyce said.

It could be worse
To whom will the museum appeal? Certainly Christian fundamentalists, perhaps Sunday school groups and classes. Perhaps some children who are home-schooled.

Almost no one, including museum officials, believes public school students will be making field trips to the museum because of legal and constitutional issues. Kritsky would also include Catholic parochial students among those not attending on field trips.

“I’d be very surprised if they did,” Kritsky said. “Pope John Paul II said the Bible shows us how to get to heaven, not how the heavens were made. Catholic scientists must teach what is scientifically true and be ready to stand back if the Vatican or the pope issues a statement about the soul.”

In its first 10 days since opening, the museum attracted more than 21,000 visitors, according to the museum’s public relations firm, A. Larry Ross Communications in Dallas. About 4,000 attended the first day, a number that didn’t impress Krauss.

“I’m on the boards of three different science museums,” he said. “For something that was widely advertised and promoted by many in the media, having 4,000 on opening day is not so great. When I heard that number, I thought ‘That’s not that impressive.’ ”

It’s also difficult to assess what this might mean to the debate or whether a new battleground will open. It’s all but clear that creationism and/or intelligent design cannot be taught in science classrooms in public schools. Court cases such as Epperson v. Arkansas in 1968 (overturning a state law that essentially outlawed teaching evolution), McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education and Edwards v. Aguillard (a U.S. Supreme Court case that originated in Louisiana) in the 1980s chased creationism from public school classrooms.

The Kitzmiller v. Dover case less than two years ago put the kibosh on promoting intelligent design in Dover, Pa., classrooms. U.S. District Court Judge John E. Jones III, appointed to the federal bench by President Bush, wrote a scathing opinion, suggesting intelligent design was a smokescreen for religion, thus violating the Constitution.

“The breathtaking inanity of the (school) board’s decision is evident,” Jones wrote.

“Dover really stopped ID,” Kritsky said. “(Jones’) decision was so thorough it’s going to be very difficult for school boards to overcome that.”

Krauss has a similar assessment.

“For the moment, I think you see intelligent design on the run,” he said.

But Edwin Kagin believes the battleground is “right here” and the “Scopes trial is not ancient history. You see the movie Inherit the Wind and you think that’s that, the issue is settled.”

Then the Creation Museum opens, and people like Kagin wonder — and worry — about its resonance.

What might an institution like the Creation Museum do to a region’s reputation?

The Cincinnati Post weighed in with an editorial two days before the museum opened.

“Frankly, we wish the Genesis museum had been built somewhere else,” the newspaper wrote. “We wish the 250,000 men, women and especially children expected to visit this year were getting a view of science that comports with what science really knows about the world. Why? Because Greater Cincinnati is trying so hard to market itself, nationally and internationally as a hospitable home for a knowledge economy.”

Kritsky had said essentially the same thing in an interview with CityBeat on May 24.

“It doesn’t help,” he’d said. “This is a museum coming into an area that says there is a significant number of people here that are anti-technology, that are anti-science. If you want to get into the high-tech business today, if you want to get into robotics, if you want to attract companies here that want an educated workforce, that’s not going to help us convey that.”

Krauss also said the museum doesn’t help, but it’s not as damaging to a region as, say, when a school board or state legislature introduces intelligent design or creationism into a public school curriculum.

“Then the business community gets really concerned,” Krauss said. “But it’s not going to help give the impression that (Greater Cincinnati) is a center of enlightenment. It’s not going to help.”

Kritsky shared his photos of the museum with colleagues. They were astonished, he said.

“You can’t prove faith,” Kritsky began. “If you’ve got a problem with your faith, if you’ve got to distort science in order to prop up your reasons for believing, you need to talk to your rabbi, your priest, your minister, and then talk to yourself and look at yourself on the inside. Because if that’s what you have to do, distort science, then your faith’s not there. And that’s what this museum ultimately says.” ©

Here is the latest on the Rally for Reason.

Also, please see: www.rallyforreason.com

Y’all come y’hear.

Edwin.

=====================================================================================================

From:

A M E R I C A N A T H E I S T S

A A N E W S

#1235 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 5/25/07

http://www.atheists.org

http://www.americanatheist.org

http://www.atheistviewpoint.tv

PRO-SCIENCE GROUPS TO RALLY THIS WEEKEND AT OPENING OF

ANSWERS IN GENESIS CREATIONIST MUSEUM

It’s “Yabba-dabba-doo!” versus empirical science, good teaching

Eighty-two years after the infamous “Scopes Monkey Trial,” the issue

of Darwinian evolution versus fundamentalist religious accounts of how

the universe and human life came to be is still being debated.

Contrary to the expectation of most scientists, museum officials and

cultural historians, creationism — the Christian doctrine that claims

Jehovah fashioned the Earth and human beings about 6,000 years ago as

vividly described in the book of Genesis — remains a belief embraced

in some form by a near-majority of Americans. A 2004 CBS News poll,

for instance, revealed “Americans do not believe that humans evolved,

and the vast majority says that even if they evolved, God guided the

process.” Worse yet, and reflecting widespread scientific illiteracy,

“Just 13 percent say that God was not involved.”

Once shunned as a form of fringe belief confined only to back-woods

evangelical Christians and cranks, acceptance of creationism has

become wide-spread and even mainstream. This weekend, for instance,

creationist advocates along with international media and protesters,

will be arriving in Boone County, Ky. for the opening of the “Answers

in Genesis Creation Museum.” The 69,000-square-foot facility, built

at the cost of over $27 million, boasts state-of-the-art exhibits, a

gift and book shop, and meeting space all designed to counter current

scientific findings about evolution. According to founder Ken Ham,

the museum is firmly based on “biblical supremacy,” and hopes to cater

to the growing number of Christian Americans who see evolution as the

root of all evil, a curse identified with Atheism, Humanism and a

potpourri of social and cultural problems.

For Ham, acceptance of evolution lurks as the cause of everything from

rampant feminism and gay rights to abortion, gangs, war and … well,

you name it.

Not so, says Edwin Kagin, a Boone County resident who lives within a

short drive of the new AIG museum, and is a long-time opponent of

creationism. Kagin serves as National Legal Director for American

Atheists, and is co-founder Camp Quest, an initiative to provide

Atheist and other non-believer youngsters with summer camp learning

and fun.

Along with a network of sympathetic Atheists, Freethinkers and

Humanists — and even local clergy and religious groups — Kagin has

put together a “Rally for Reason” (http://www.rallyforreason.com) that

will take place this Memorial Day, Monday, outside of the grand

opening of the AIG Creation Museum.

“We’re not challenging the right of Answers in Genesis to promote

their views,” said Kagin. “But we are saying that Creationism is a

doctrine not based on science and empirical evidence, and that people

should be cautious before they accept this religious belief as the

truth.”

For Kagin and others, much of the Creation Museum sounds like a trip

to the religious version of Oz. Mr. Ham and his associates, thanks to

plenty of funding, have skillfully blended the language of science

with high-tech, sophisticated exhibits to promote a theological

fantasy. Critics cite one claim made by the creationists, that

dinosaurs once co-existed on the Earth with human beings.

The weekend promises to be “interesting,” said Mr. Kagin. Media

organizations from around the world including the BBC are dispatching

crews to cover to the protest and opening of the AIG museum.

Hundreds, maybe even thousands of demonstrators are expected to show

up for a peaceful protest, including a program of speakers, and

entertainment by the Smalkowski family Blue Rocket Band.

On Sunday night, May 27, the Free Inquiry Group of Cincinnati and

Northern Kentuc
ky will host a “Rally for Reason Speak-Out” with

lectures and an open microphone.

Kagin suggests that people on all sides of this issue come to the

Speak-Out and protest, and even visit the Creation Museum to see the

evidence (or lack of evidence) for themselves.

**

WORTH NOTING — THE LATEST PRESS COVERAGE, CREATIONSIM v. SCIENCE

AND THE OPENING OF THE “ANSWERS IN GENESIS CREATION MUSEUM”

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/22/opinion/polls/main657083.sht

ml

POLL: CREATIONISM TRUMPS EVOLUTION

http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070525/NEWS02/7

05250343

CREATING DEBATE

A glimpse inside the new Answers in Genesis Creation Museum along with

coverage of this weekend’s RALLY FOR REASON.

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=10e52ca0-e251-44f

4-8205-224c55703178

PROTESTORS EXPECTED AT CREATION MUSEUM OPENING

“The opening of Boone County’s Creation Museum later this month won’t

come without protests…”

http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=new_creation_museum_mostly_illus

trates_t&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

NEW CREATION MUSEUM MOSTLY ILLUSTRATES THAT CREATIONISTS HAVE LOTS OF

CASH

“The guy who developed the Jaws and King Kong rides at Universal

Studios is behind the new Creation Museum…”

http://news.kypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070525/NEWS02/7052

50344/1014/NEWS02

PREACHING CHAPTER ONE AS LITERALLY TRUE

“Where did it all come from? For the answers, the folks at Answers in

Genesis look no further than the Bible’s first book, Genesis…” An

excellent article with great pics on the opening of the AIG Creation

Museum.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/argus/oped/ci_5985119

YABBA-DABBA SCIENCE

Fred Flintstone meets Genesis?

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.creationist20may20

,0,7993512.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines KY.

CREATION MUSEUM GOES HIGH TECH

“Flat-screen TVs, special effects used to tell Bible’s history…”

http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/576084.html

MUSEUM PUTS DINOSAURS IN EDEN

“Tyrannosaurus rex was a strict vegetarian, and lived with Adam and

Eve in the Garden of Eden… Exhibits showing all this and more will

be at the Creation Museum, a $27 million religious museum set to open

next week in northern Kentucky…”

**

SILVERMAN TO HOST SPEAKER

LINE-UP AT MONDAY

RALLY FOR REASON

Smalkowski Family Rock Band, Zindler, Kritsky & More

http://www.rallyforreason.com

FREETHOUGHT activist Herb Silverman will MC Monday’s giant “Rally for Reason” events as we gather outside the gates of the new Answers in Genesis Creation Museum (see the op-ed piece below from the Los Angeles Times for background.)

Herb is a long-time rabble-rouser and articulate spokesperson on behalf of Atheism, good science, and the separation of church and state.

Others tapped for the speaker roster at the Memorial Day event include:

* DR. LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS, Professor of Astronomy and Physics, Case Western Reserve University, author of numerous article and books including “The Physics of Star Trek,” columnist; member of the advisory boards of the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, an organization dedicated to opposing the religious right, and Scientists and Engineers for America which focuses on promoting sound science in public policy.

* FRANK ZINDLER, Editor of American Atheist Press, biologist and science writer, and a nationally-prominent figure in the debate over evolution v. Christian creationist pseudo-science.

* CHUCK SMALKOWSKI AND FAMILY. Daughter Nicole Smalkowski was expelled from her high school in Hardesty, Oklahoma for refusing to join in a recitation of the “Lord’s Prayer” after a basketball game. Her father, Chuck Smalkowski, was dragged into court on trumped-up charges. Defended by Edwin Kagin and American Atheists, Chuck was found “not guilty.”. The Smalkowskis have a lawsuit pending in Federal Court in Oklahoma City. Their BLUE ROSE ROCKET BAND will be performing at the Rally for Reason demo!

* DR. GRETCHEN MANN, physician, outspoken opponent of creationism.

* CARLY NICHOLS, a housewife and mother from Northern Kentucky, Carly is one of the organizers for the Rally for Reason.

* DR. GENE KRITSKY is an evolutionary biologist from Cincinnati, author, and expert on the life of Charles Darwin.

* DR. HELEN KAGIN is a retired physician, and Co-director/Co-Founder of Camp Quest, a nationwide summer camp for non-believing youngsters.

* REV. MENDLE ADAMS, ordained Christian Minister, and Pastor of the United Church of Christ in Cincinnati. Rev. Adams is a supporter of sound science and has spoken out against creationism for years.

* HEMANT MEHTA, freethought activist representing the Secular Student Alliance.

* ARLENE-MARIE, Michigan State Director for American Atheists and President of Michigan Atheists.

* BLAIR SCOTT, Alabama State Director for American Atheists.

* MELISSA HARTMAN, Rally for Reason

* FRANK BICKNELL, member of the Free Inquiry Group of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky

* EDWIN KAGIN, Rally for Reason, National Legal Director for AMERICAN ATHEISTS, Co-founder of Camp Quest.

**

From the L.A. Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-round24may24,0,7881591.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail

Yabba-dabba science

Note to would-be Creation Museum visitors: the Earth is round.

May 24, 2007

THE CREATION MUSEUM, a $27-million tourist attraction promoting earth science theories that were popular when Columbus set sail, opens near Cinc
innati on Memorial Day. So before the first visitor risks succumbing to the museum’s animatronic balderdash — dinosaurs and humans actually coexisted! the Grand Canyon was carved by the great flood described in Genesis! — we’d like to clear up a few things: “The Flintstones” is a cartoon, not a documentary. Fred and Wilma? Those woolly mammoth vacuum cleaners? All make-believe.

Science is under assault, and that calls for bold truths. Here’s another: The Earth is round.

The museum, a 60,000-square-foot menace to 21st century scientific advancement, is the handiwork of Answers in Genesis, a leader in the “young Earth” movement. Young Earthers believe the world is about 6,000 years old, as opposed to the 4.5 billion years estimated by the world’s credible scientific community. This would be risible if anti-evolution forces were confined to a lunatic fringe, but they are not. Witness the recent revelation that three of the Republican candidates for president do not believe in evolution. Three men seeking to lead the last superpower on Earth reject the scientific consensus on cosmology, thermonuclear dynamics, geology and biology, believing instead that Bamm-Bamm and Dino played together.

Religion and science can coexist. That the Earth is billions of years old is a fact. How the universe came into being and whether it operates by design are matters of faith. The problem is that people who deny science in one realm are unlikely to embrace it in another. Those who cannot accept that climate change may have caused the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago probably don’t put much stock in the fact that today it poses grave peril to the Earth as we know it.

Last year, the White House attempted to muzzle NASA’s top climatologist after he called for urgent action on global warming, and a presidential appointee in the agency’s press office chastised a contractor for mentioning the Big Bang without including the word “theory.” The press liaison reportedly wrote in an e-mail: “This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA.”

With the opening of the Creation Museum, young people will be getting another side of the story. Too bad it starts with “Yabba-dabba-doo!”

**

FREE INQUIRY GROUP OF CINCINNATI TO HOST

RALLY FOR REASON “SPEAK OUT”

Sunday, May 27, 2007 ~ 7:00 PM EDT

http://www.gofigger.org

The Free Inquiry Group of Cincinnati will host a special “Speak Out”
event the evening before the Rally for Reason demo.

Rally for Reason will take place the following day (Memorial Day,
Monday 5/28) at the opening of the “Answers in Genesis” Creation
Museum in neighboring Boone County, KY.

The Speak-Out will feature talks by Arlene-Marie (Michigan Atheists);
Frank Zindler (American Atheists); Rev. Mendle Adams (Minister and
critic of creationism); evolutionary biologist Gene Kritsky; former
physician and Camp Quest co-founder Helen Kagin and others. There
will be an open mike after the formal presentations, and the news
media has been invited.

WHAT: RfR “Speak Out” hosted by the Free Inquiry Group, Cincinnati

WHEN: Sunday, May 27, 2007, 7:00 PM EDT

WHERE: Hilton Hotel, Cincinnati Airport, 7373 Turfway Rd., Florence,
KY. Phone 859-371-4400

MORE INFO: http://www.gofigger.org and Rally for Reason.
http://www.rallyforreason.com .

**

The RALLY FOR REASON

http://www.rallyforreason.com

Media: Edwin Kagin

859-384-7000 or

[email protected]

COALITION SUPPORTING GOOD SCIENCE, SOUND TEACHING

TO SPEAK OUT AT OPENING OF CREATIONIST MUSEUM

Sun-Mon. May 27-28, 2007

A broad coalition of secularist, religious, and educational groups and other advocates of “good science” will be protesting this Memorial Day weekend at the opening of a Creationist Museum in Kentucky.

The Answer in Genesis Creationist Museum is a 60,000-square-foot facility that will feature state of the art exhibits and other presentations arguing on behalf of an Old Testament view of how human beings and the universe came into existence. It is meant as a statement against Darwinian evolution, and scientific findings that the cosmos is billions of years old, and that human beings evolved, along with other present-day creatures, from earlier life forms. Instead, “young Earth” creationist groups like AIG preach that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old. The museum will reportedly have exhibits reflecting the dubious claim that dinosaurs and human beings co-existed, contrary to scientific evidence.

The RALLY FOR REASON includes groups and individuals who support objective science and high standards for science instruction in public schools. It includes religious and non-religious groups ranging from the Clergy Letter Project to the Institute for Humanist Studies and American Atheists.

Edwin Kagin, organizer of the Rally stated that the protest does not challenge the right of AIG to present its views. “They can teach that things fall up if they wish,” said Mr. Kagin. “We’re simply trying to show that their views are based on a particular and narrow religious doctrine, not on good scientific evidence.”

The RALLY FOR REASON will take place on Monday, May 28 2007 beginning at 9:00 AM in front of the Creation Museum, Petersburg Rd., Boone County, KY. More information can be found at http://www.rallyforreason.com.

There will be a RALLY FOR REASON SPEAK-OUT hosted by the Free Inquiry Group of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky on Sunday, May 27, 200 at the Hilton Cincinnati Airport Hotel, 7373 Turfway Rd., Florence, KY beginning at 7:00 PM. Speakers will include Rev. Mendle Adams; Frank Zindler (biologist, geologist); Dr. Gene Kritsky (evolutionary biologist); Helen Kagin, physician and others. For info on that event, visit http://www.gofigger.org .

Media: For commentary and further information on the RALLY FOR REASON, contact Edwin Kagin ([email protected]) — phone: 859-384-7000 or visit http://www.rallyforreason.com

**

AMERICAN ATHEISTS

http://www.atheists.org

RALLY FOR REASON update

DR. LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS JOINS SPEAKER

ROSTER — RALLY FOR REASON — SLATED FOR

MEMORIAL DAY (THIS MONDAY) May 28, 2007

http://www.rallyforreason.com

The RALLY FOR REASON announced today that Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss, Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Case Western Reserve University, has joined the speaker roster for Monday’s demonstration outside the gates of the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum in Boone County, KY.

RALLY FOR REASON is a coalition of secular, religious, educational and other groups defending “good science and the teaching of good science in public schools” against religion-based attacks on evolution and other areas of the scientific enterprise. The Rally will begin at 9:00 AM on Memorial Day (this Monday) May 28, 2007.

Dr. Krauss is the author of several best-selling books including “The physics of Star Trek,” “Fear of Physics,” and “Quintessence.” He was born in New York City, and received undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Physics from Carleton University. In 1982, he received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has appeared regularly in national media as a staunch advocate for science, and spoken out against so-called “intelligent design” and Old Testament-based “creationist” accounts.

Dr. Krauss joins an already-impressive line-up of scientists, civic activists, educators and others who will be speaking at Monday’s rally.

THOUSANDS OF Atheists, Freethinkers, and Humanists will be joining other advocates of secular education and good science to protest at the opening of the “Answers in Genesis” Creationist Museum in Boone County, KY. on Memorial Day — Monday, May 28, 2006. We do not oppose the right of AIG or other religious groups to express their opinions, no matter how inaccurate or fanciful. We do support the scientific enterprise, and the teaching of good science.

THE EVENING BEFORE this historic event, the Free Inquiry Group of Cincinnati will host a “Rally for Reason Speak-Out”at the nearby Hilton Cincinnati Airport Hotel. Speakers will include Arlene-Marie (Michigan Atheists); Rev. Mendle Adams, opponent of Creationist fantasy and misinformation; Frank Zindler (American Atheists Science Policy Advisor); Dr. Gene Kritsky, evolutionary biologist; Dr. Helen Kagin, physician and many others. There will be an open microphone for comments and Q&A. The FIG web site is at http://www.gofigger.org .

UPDATES…

* The Rally for Reason will take place beginning at 9:00 AM, Monday (Memorial Day) May 28, 2007 outsides the gates of the “Answers in Genesis Creation Museum,” set to open that very day. The venue is Bullittsburg Church Road, Exit 11, off of 275 West from I-75, Petersburg Road in Boone County, KY.

* Lodging and other services are within a few minutes drive, so check the RfR web site at http://www.rallyforreason.com . We suggest, though, that you bring water, some food, and dress appropriately for the event.

* Bring signs and banners. We urge you to keep the message polite and simple. Visit http://www.rallyforreason.com web site for more.

* Endorse the Rally for Reason! Local, regional and national groups are supporting this important protest on behalf of good science and sane public policy. Give your endorsement, and send your logo, to the RfR web master at [email protected] .

* If you need directions or other information, visit http://www.rallyforreason.com . You may also contact Mr. Edwin Kagin, Kentucky State Director for American Atheists at [email protected]

* The RALLY FOR REASON Speak-Out will be held the night before the rally and is hosted by the Free Inquiry Group of Cincinnati. Get more information at http://www.gofigger.org.

WHAT: The RALLY FOR REASON Speak-Out

WHEN: Sunday, May 27, 2007 (the night before the Rally), 7:00 PM EDT

WHERE: The Hilton Cincinnati Airport Hotel, 7373 Turfway Road, Florence, KY. (Yes, the Cincinnati Airport is actually located in Kent
ucky, but is right across the Ohio state line and near Cincinnati. The Speak-Out and Rally are all taking place within a proximate area.).

MORE INFO: http://www.gofigger.org and http://www.rallyforreason.com

PLEASE make plans now to attend these historic events… We’ll see you at the Rally for Reason demo and speak-out!

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The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 25, 2007.

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070525/NEWS0103/705250385/1077/COL02

Museum’s unveiling days away

Believers and opponents expect to attend Monday’s opening

BY RYAN CLARK | [email protected]

When the gates of the new Creation Museum in Petersburg open Memorial Day, several groups will be inside – and outside – waiting to see what all the fuss is about.

Many of those people will be followers of the creationist faith, believing in the literal Bible. They think the world is about 6,000 years old, that dinosaurs and man co-existed and Noah built an ark to save God’s creatures from a massive flood.

Others will be there to protest the museum and its ministry, Answers in Genesis. Some will have religious and political agendas, while others do not believe in God at all. Some are concerned the museum’s teachings will warp children, while others say the ministry uses bad science.

All protesters will remain outside the gates, according to museum officials.

Mark Looy, vice president of outreach for Answers in Genesis, said this week there is no way to determine how many visitors will turn out on opening day. But 2,000 people came to a “behind the scenes” tour given to charter members a few months ago. Looy said they could expect at least that many for the opening.

No one knows how many protesters will show up.

Because of the media attention the museum already has received – from CNN, “NBC Nightly News,” PBS, the BBC and Thursday’s New York Times – a spirited plethora of protest is expected.

Some, like Martha Heil, editor and strategic planner of the 140,000-member American Institute of Physics based in College Park, Md., hope to talk to the media about science.

“We don’t want to be there screaming that it’s wrong,” said Heil, who plans to attend the opening with area physicists. “We are not against religion or houses of faith. We are against the misuse of science in religion, and you don’t have to go through the museum to see it. You can see it on (the Answers in Genesis) Web site.”

Her group wants to teach – not preach – to the crowd. Though there’s also nothing wrong with preaching, they say.

“Others may be anti-religious, but we are not,” she said. “We’re very modest, and we want to be unified and talk to reporters about how (Answers in Genesis) are using deliberate scientific untruths.”

Inevitably, Heil will be surrounded by others who will be more vocal.

The Campaign to Defend the Constitution, a national group that opposes the religious right, drafted petitions against the museum. They claim Answers in Genesis markets its unscientific ideas to children, much in the same way R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. used its “Joe Camel” cartoon character to promote Camel cigarettes. The group says so far 3,000 people have signed its petitions.

“We agree they can build this museum and believe what they wish,” said Clark Stevens, co-director of the Washington-based group, which claims 125,000 members nationwide and 7,000 members in the region. “But we feel they can’t try to convince children that this is true.”

Atheists and those Christians who are not creationists could be standing side-by-side Monday, and for once they will believe the same thing: that the Creation Museum is bad for the area.

Edwin Kagin, a Union lawyer and the national legal director of American Atheists, is urging members of his group to walk through the museum.

“We want to let the world know that most rational people do not share the primitive world view of creationists that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, and that humans and dinosaurs existed at the same time,” he said. “Various groups, representing both religious and secular orientations, will join together to protest this destructive world view.”

Others will stay home – and protest in their own ways.

“We don’t get into protests,” said Frank Traina, of Wilder, who is vice president of the nonprofit Society for Evolution Education, or SEE. “But we were rather inspired by the Creation Museum’s presence.”

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The following letter was received by Rally for Reason. It is representative of a criticism we have heard of our effort.

My answer follows.

The name of the sender has been redacted.

Edwin.

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Hello,

I have been following the planning and building of this “museum” since

the beginning. I am equally dismayed that visitors will be mis-informed

by the exhibits, but what are you going to do? People will believe

what they want to believe, what they are taught to believe. And they

have already been taught these un-truths in their churches and in their

homes. At least the children will hear the other side of the story at

school and will have the opportunity to choose for themselves.

I firmly believe that this too will pass. Many fine, respected museums

are struggling financially to stay open. The Freedom Center in

Cincinnati for one. The Creation Museum will not be around for long.

Too few people will take it seriously. As long as government money is

not involved in keeping it open, I plan to ignore it. I’ll laugh when

people bring it up, but I will save my anger and passion for greater threats to the Constitution.

Thank you for your good work.

(Senders Name Redacted)

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(Redacted),

You are quite correct when you say that people will believe as they will.

And we do not in any way contest their right to do so. They can believe that things fall up when dropped with no complaint from me.

The “Rally for Reason” is to let people know we will not permit this mythical world view to take us back to another Dark Ages.

It is to let legislators, who may be toying with the idea of teaching religious fundamentalism as science, that there are educated adults who intend to prevent them from doing so.

Government money is already being spent to advertise the museum of nonsense that Ken Ham built.

Consider just why, as you say, “Many fine, respected museums are struggling financially to stay open,” while the “Creation Museum” has raised 27 Million dollars and will open debt free.

At this moment, bills are pending in both Ohio and Kentucky to teach Bronze Age mythology in science classes.

That is a substantial threat to our Constitution.

Come and join us in saying that we do not want to have to retake the same ground that knowledge has previously so painfully won.

Come and help us say NO to the idea that science is bad.

Come and help us hold back the darkness.

Edwin.

Edwin Kagin

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http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2007/KY/563_reactions_to_creation_museum_5_25_2007.asp

National Center for Science Education

Reactions to creation “museum”

With the young-earth creation ministry Answers in Genesis scheduled to open its lavish creation museum in northern Kentucky over the Memorial Day weekend, there is a great deal of concern among the scientific and educational communities in the adjacent states about its impact on the public understanding of evolution. NCSE executive director Eugenie C. Scott told ABC’s Good Morning America (May 25, 2007) that her fear is that students will “show up in classrooms and say, ‘Gee, Mrs. Brown, I went to this spiffy museum last summer and they say that everything you’re teaching me is a lie.'”

Early reports from the museum suggest that its exhibits are just as scientifically misleading as expected. Edward Rothstein of The New York Times (May 24, 2007) offered a bemused review of the museum, which impressed him with its “sheer weirdness and daring.” In a report in the eSkeptic newsletter (May 23, 2007), Stephen T. Asma, the author of a book on the history of natural history museums, said that skeptics will find the museum quirky and amusing, but added, “When I think, however, of the young children who are unprepared to critically assess the museum, my sense of humor fades.”

Over 800 scientists in the three states surrounding the museum — Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio — have signed a statement sponsored by NCSE reading, “We, the undersigned scientists at universities and colleges in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, are concerned about scientifically inaccurate materials at the Answers in Genesis museum. Students who accept this material as scientifically valid are unlikely to succeed in science courses at the college level. These students will need remedial instruction in the nature of science, as well as in the specific areas of science misrepresented by Answers in Genesis.”

Additionally, the Campaign to Defend the Constitution (or DefCon) is sponsoring two petitions denouncing the creationist pseudoscience on display at the museum: one for educators, signed by over 3500 teachers, and one for the general public, signed by over 15,000 signatories. “The main problem,” Lawrence Krauss, a professor of physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University and a member of DefCon’s advisory board, told the Lexington Herald-Leader (May 25, 2007), “is that this is a museum of misinformation.” In his opinion column in the Louisville Courier-Journal (May 22, 2007), Krauss was similarly outspoken, describing the museum as “an educational travesty.”

And a protest called Rally for Reason is scheduled to take place outside the museum on Memorial Day, with a press event to be held on the preceding Sunday. Rally for Reason’s organizer Edwin Kagin told the Cincinnati Enquirer (May 25, 2007), “We want to let the world know that most rational people do not share the primitive world view of creationists that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, and that humans and dinosaurs existed at the same time.” “Various groups, representing both religious and secular orientations, will join together to protest this destructive world view” at the rally, he added.

The editorialist for the Los Angeles Times (May 24, 2007) cut to the heart of the matter, lamenting, “Young Earthers believe the world is about 6,000 years old, as opposed to the 4.5 billion years estimated by the world’s credible scientific community. This would be risible if anti-evolution forces were confined to a lunatic fringe, but they are not,” citing the political influence of creationism. The editorial concluded, “With the opening of the Creation Museum, young people will be getting another side of the story. Too bad it starts with ‘Yabba-dabba-doo!'”

May 25, 2007

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TOP SECRET INFORMATION ON PARKING AT RALLY FOR REASON

Warning: If you are a religious fundamentalist who believes the earth is only some 6,000 years old and that humans were made from dirt, please do not read further in this message!

Through scientific methods that would be baffling and inexplicable to you, and by using an ancient Babalassian Methodological Interface, we have spotted you and programmed your computer to do bad things if you proceed further, like wiping out all of your data and sending all of those things you don’t want anyone to know you have in your computer to everyone in your church.

So, for your own good, do not proceed. You have been warned!

For those remaining, here is how you park at the Rally for Reason.

1) Under Kentucky law, there is no off road parking on any of the roads leading to Answers in Genesis. This will be enforced by the Boone County Sheriff’s Office. They will cooperate with us in every way possible, but who will also uphold the law.

2) It is strongly suggested that you car pool as much as you can. Get as many people as lawfully possible into one car and leave the other cars at your motel or wherever.

3) The driver of your car should let everyone off as near to the entrance to Answers in Genesis as possible. See directions and map here: http://rallyforreason.com/Rally_4_Reason_files/R4R.htm

4) As a practical matter, the closest you may be able to reasonable get is the intersection of Highway 8 and Bullittsburg Church Road. Once they are let off, the persons in your car can walk the fairly short distance to the Iron Age gates that hold the Bronze Age fantasies of the “Creation Museum.” It is important that they walk on the edge of the road and not in the road.

5) The Rally for Reason will take place in the area to the left of Bullittsburg Church Road just across Deck Lane, which runs parallel to the gates of AiG. Stay within the area that should be marked with yellow caution tape.

6) After letting off passengers, the driver of the car should continue along Hwy 8 to Stevens Road. Stevens Road is one mile on the right after you get off at Exit 11 (Petersburg) off of 275. So, if you are going West from 1-71 / I-75, take Exit 11, turn right, stop at Bullittsburg Church Road (which will be on the left), and then proceed without passengers to Stevens Road.

7) At Stevens Road, turn right and go about one mile to First Farm Inn. That is where we will be parking. The address is: 2510 Stevens Road, Petersburg, KY 41080. It can be identified by white fences on the right side of the road.

8) Turn right in the parking area indicated. There should be signs and volunteers to help if needed.

9) A car driven by a Rally for Reason volunteer will then take you back to the Rally for Reason.

10) When your party is ready to leave, you can get a ride back to the parking area with a Rally for Reason driver, get your car, and then pick up your passengers.

11) There will be volunteers for the Rally for Reason wearing brightly colored safety vests with Rally for Reason on the back (see photo on www.rallyforreason.com) to help you out and to answer your questions after you fail to carefully read these instructions.

12) This should work. Can’t think of any reason why it should not.

13) However, it has been said that if you want to make god laugh, tell him your plans.

Oh, and please do not forget to bring water, snacks, something to sit on, a hat, and rain gear.

May random chance operate in your favor.

Edwin.

AMERICAN ATHEISTS

http://www.atheists.org

RALLY FOR REASON update

DR. LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS JOINS SPEAKER

ROSTER — RALLY FOR REASON — SLATED FOR

MEMORIAL DAY (THIS MONDAY) May 28, 2007

http://www.rallyforreason.com

The RALLY FOR REASON announced today that Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss, Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Case Western Reserve University, has joined the speaker roster for Monday’s demonstration outside the gates of the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum in Boone County, KY.

RALLY FOR REASON is a coalition of secular, religious, educational and other groups defending “good science and the teaching of good science in public schools” against religion-based attacks on evolution and other areas of the scientific enterprise. The Rally will begin at 9:00 AM on Memorial Day (this Monday) May 28, 2007.

Dr. Krauss is the author of several best-selling books including “The physics of Star Trek,” “Fear of Physics,” and “Quintessence.” He was born in New York City, and received undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Physics from Carleton University. In 1982, he received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has appeared regularly in national media as a staunch advocate for science, and spoken out against so-called “intelligent design” and Old Testament-based “creationist” accounts.

Dr. Krauss joins an already-impressive line-up of scientists, civic activists, educators and others who will be speaking at Monday’s rally.

THOUSANDS OF Atheists, Freethinkers, and Humanists will be joining other advocates of secular education and good science to protest at the opening of the “Answers in Genesis” Creationist Museum in Boone County, KY. on Memorial Day — Monday, May 28, 2006. We do not oppose the right of AIG or other religious groups to express their opinions, no matter how inaccurate or fanciful. We do support the scientific enterprise, and the teaching of good science.

THE EVENING BEFORE this historic event, the Free Inquiry Group of Cincinnati will host a “Rally for Reason Speak-Out”at the nearby Hilton Cincinnati Airport Hotel. Speakers will include Arlene-Marie (Michigan Atheists); Rev. Mendle Adams, opponent of Creationist fantasy and misinformation; Frank Zindler (American Atheists Science Policy Advisor); Dr. Gene Kritsky, evolutionary biologist; Dr. Helen Kagin, physician and many others. There will be an open microphone for comments and Q&A. The FIG web site is at http://www.gofigger.org .

UPDATES…

* The Rally for Reason will take place beginning at 9:00 AM, Monday (Memorial Day) May 28, 2007 outsides the gates of the “Answers in Genesis Creation Museum,” set to open that very day. The venue is Bullittsburg Church Road, Exit 11, off of 275 West from I-75, Petersburg Road in Boone County, KY.

* Lodging and other services are within a few minutes drive, so check the RfR web site at http://www.rallyforreason.com . We suggest, though, that you bring water, some food, and dress appropriately for the event.

* Bring signs and banners. We urge you to keep the message polite and simple. Visit http://www.rallyforreason.com
web site for more.

* Endorse the Rally for Reason! Local, regional and national groups are supporting this important protest on behalf of good science and sane public policy. Give your endorsement, and send your logo, to the RfR web master at [email protected] .

* If you need directions or other information, visit http://www.rallyforreason.com . You may also contact Mr. Edwin Kagin, Kentucky State Director for American Atheists at [email protected]

* The RALLY FOR REASON Speak-Out will be held the night before the rally and is hosted by the Free Inquiry Group of Cincinnati. Get more information at http://www.gofigger.org.

WHAT: The RALLY FOR REASON Speak-Out

WHEN: Sunday, May 27, 2007 (the night before the Rally), 7:00 PM EDT

WHERE: The Hilton Cincinnati Airport Hotel, 7373 Turfway Road, Florence, KY. (Yes, the Cincinnati Airport is actually located in Kentucky, but is right across the Ohio state line and near Cincinnati. The Speak-Out and Rally are all taking place within a proximate area.).

MORE INFO: http://www.gofigger.org and http://www.rallyforreason.com

PLEASE make plans now to attend these historic events… We’ll see you at the Rally for Reason demo and speak-out!

The RALLY FOR REASON

http://www.rallyforreason.com

Media: Edwin Kagin

859-384-7000 or

[email protected]

COALITION SUPPORTING GOOD SCIENCE, SOUND TEACHING

TO SPEAK OUT AT OPENING OF CREATIONIST MUSEUM

Sun-Mon. May 27-28, 2007

A broad coalition of secularist, religious, and educational groups and other advocates of “good science” will be protesting this Memorial Day weekend at the opening of a Creationist Museum in Kentucky.

The Answer in Genesis Creationist Museum is a 60,000-square-foot facility that will feature state of the art exhibits and other presentations arguing on behalf of an Old Testament view of how human beings and the universe came into existence. It is meant as a statement against Darwinian evolution, and scientific findings that the cosmos is billions of years old, and that human beings evolved, along with other present-day creatures, from earlier life forms. Instead, “young Earth” creationist groups like AIG preach that the Earth is only about 6,000 years old. The museum will reportedly have exhibits reflecting the dubious claim that dinosaurs and human beings co-existed, contrary to scientific evidence.

The RALLY FOR REASON includes groups and individuals who support objective science and high standards for science instruction in public schools. It includes religious and non-religious groups ranging from the Clergy Letter Project to the Institute for Humanist Studies and American Atheists.

Edwin Kagin, organizer of the Rally stated that the protest does not challenge the right of AIG to present its views. “They can teach that things fall up if they wish,” said Mr. Kagin. “We’re simply trying to show that their views are based on a particular and narrow religious doctrine, not on good scientific evidence.”

The RALLY FOR REASON will take place on Monday, May 28 2007 beginning at 9:00 AM in front of the Creation Museum, Petersburg Rd., Boone County, KY. More information can be found at http://www.rallyforreason.com.

There will be a RALLY FOR REASON SPEAK-OUT hosted by the Free Inquiry Group of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky on Sunday, May 27, 200 at the Hilton Cincinnati Airport Hotel, 7373 Turfway Rd., Florence, KY beginning at 7:00 PM. Speakers will include Rev. Mendle Adams; Frank Zindler (biologist, geologist); Dr. Gene Kritsky (evolutionary biologist); Helen Kagin, physician and others. For info on that event, visit http://www.gofigger.org .

Media: For commentary and further information on the RALLY FOR REASON, contact Edwin Kagin ([email protected]) — phone: 859-384-7000 or visit http://www.rallyforreason.com

American Atheists Media Alert

http://www.atheists.org

“OKLAHOMA OUTRAGE,” DISCRIMINATION

AGAINST ATHEISTS TOPIC OF ABC PROGRAM

This Friday, May 11, 2007 ~ Kagin, Smalkowski Family

WHAT: A special two-hour ABC Network program scheduled to air this Friday, May 11 will discuss prejudice against Atheists in America, particularly in the city of Hardesty, Oklahoma, where Nicole Smalkowski was expelled from public school on false charges when she refused to stand in a circle on the auditorium floor with the girls’ basketball team and recite the “Lord’s Prayer.”

Her father Chuck Smalkowski was falsely indicted on criminal charges, all because of prejudice against their assertion of their rights as Atheists. American Atheists participated in Chuck’s criminal trial that resulted in three “Not Guilty” verdicts by a jury. Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists, persuaded the jury to swear to believe an Atheist under oath over a Christian if the facts so warranted. Following the verdict, American Atheists and the Smalkowski family filed a lawsuit for civil rights violations by state actors, under color of state law, in the Federal Court of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The Smalkowskis, Edwin Kagin, and Richard Dawkins share a nine minute segment of this program that was recorded in ABC’s studios in New York City, and on location in Hardesty and Guymon, Oklahoma. Richard Rice, a Christian, who has agreed to serve as Oklahoma local counsel in the lawsuit, was interviewed on camera in Oklahoma. The four days of filming, condensed to nine minutes, will of necessity omit many things and one or more of the persons filmed may be cut.

WHO: American Atheists members Nicole Smalkowski and Chuck Smalkowski and Edwin Kagin, National Legal Director for American Atheists.

WHEN: Friday, May 11, 2007 for two hours, starting at 9:00 pm (EDT).

WHERE: 20-20 show on ABC television, thought to be titled “Religion in America.”

MORE INFO:

www.atheists.org/flash.line/smalko1.htm

www.atheists.org/flash.line/smalko3.htm

(AMERICAN ATHEISTS is a nationwide movement that defends civil rights for Atheists; works for the total separation of church and state; and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.)

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The following two op-ed pieces appeared in the Boone County (Kentucky) Recorder on May 10, 2007:

http://news.communitypress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070508/EDIT/705080303/1076/Local

God and natural law

JASON LISLE, PH.D. | COMMUNITY RECORDER GUEST COLUMNIST

It is common today for people to attemp
t to use science to disprove the Bible, especially its creation account of origins. Many have claimed, for example, that science supports evolution. Some have suggested that science requires a belief in naturalism – the notion that nature is “all that there is.”

In reality, however, and as we will proclaim in our new Creation Museum, science comes out of a biblical worldview. It is because the biblical God created an orderly, logical universe, and made our minds able to reason, that science is possible. Science works because the Bible is true. If the universe were merely the accidental by-product of a big bang, then why should it obey orderly principles – or any principles at all for that matter?

The Law of Life (Biogenesis): The law of biogenesis states simply that life always comes from life. This is what observational science tells us: organisms reproduce other organisms after their own kind. Historically, Louis Pasteur disproved one alleged case of spontaneous generation; he showed that life comes from previous life. Since then, we have seen that this law is universal – with no known exceptions.

This is, of course, exactly what we would expect from the Bible. According to Genesis 1, God supernaturally created the first diverse kinds of life on earth and made them to reproduce after their kind. Notice that molecules-to-man evolution violates the law of biogenesis. Evolutionists believe that life (at least once) spontaneously formed from nonliving chemicals. But this is inconsistent with the law of biogenesis.

Indeed, real science confirms the Bible.

The Laws of Physics: Life depends on chemistry, which is based on physics. The science of physics describes the behavior of the universe at its most fundamental level. Laws of physics describe the way the universe operates today. Some laws describe how light propagates, how energy is transported, how gravity operates, how mass moves through space, and many other phenomena. The laws of physics are usually mathematical in nature; some laws of physics can be described with a concise formula, such as E=mc2. The simple formula F=ma shows how an object with mass (m) will accelerate (a) when a net force (F) is applied to it.

It is amazing that every object in the universe consistently obeys these rules. If the laws of quantum physics were just slightly different, atoms might not even be possible. God designed the laws of physics just right so that the laws of chemistry would be correct so that life would be possible.

Laws of nature do not make sense in a big bang/evolution-driven worldview. However, the consistent Christian would expect the universe to be organized in a logical, orderly fashion and to obey uniform laws because the universe was created and is upheld by the power of God. Furthermore, whether the field is astronomy, geology, or biology (see www.CreationMuseum.org), the creation account in Genesis – as we will show in our museum – explains the facts better than evolution.

Dr. Jason Lisle is director of the planetarium at the Creation Museum set to open May 28 in Petersburg. He received his Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Colorado.

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http://news.communitypress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070508/EDIT/705080302/1076/Local

Dumbing down of society

EDWIN KAGIN | COMMUNITY RECORDER GUEST COLUMNIST

Throughout human history, people have queued up into one of two great lines. The first is composed of those who understand that science, reason, and critical thinking lead to meaningful lives and healthy communities. In the other line are those who hold that their religious views should be made law universal. If their particular revealed dogma and ancient sacred text conflicts with the discoveries of reason and science, then the dogma should win and the facts should lose.

Those in the first line have brought us civilization and progress, while those in the second line have attempted to hold us back, insisting we accept their mythologies. If those in the second line had won in the past, people would be taught that the earth is flat, they would write on rocks, huddle by fires at night, and tell stories of how people were magically made from dirt. Great courage and sacrifice has been required of those who dare defy those in the second line.

Charles Darwin was studying to be a cleric when he discovered the fact that all living things had evolved from simpler forms of life. This had occurred by a process known as “natural selection,” over billions of years of very slow change. Those creatures that were better adapted to their environment lived and reproduced, while those life forms not so well adapted did not.

This process is seen in the fact that some bacteria that make us sick – that were once cured by a shot of penicillin – are now immune to penicillin. This is because when penicillin was effective against most infections, a few bacteria, which were slightly different from the bacteria penicillin could kill, survived and reproduced to the degree that a whole new life form evolved that could eat penicillin for breakfast. There are many such examples.

The theory of evolution is the foundation of all modern medicine, and it is confirmed by all sciences. Without the knowledge evolution has provided, people would die while some religious medicine man chanted over them. A “theory” in science is not a wild guess. It is a complex body of knowledge. Gravity is a “theory.” Most people do understand that things will not fall up, no matter what their religion might say. Evolution is not so obvious. But it is just as true. Some details regarding evolution are still open to debate. The fact that evolution occurred is not.

Yet some still want everyone to believe that science is wrong and that Bronze Age myths are true. They have built a multimillion dollar sideshow called “Creation Museum.”

We who object to this dumbing down of our society do not contest creationists’ rights to believe what they will. We find it offensive that nonsense is taught as truth, supported by stupid arguments like, “Were you there?”

However, those who fear that they would rob, rape, and kill if they accepted evolution should go right on believing humans were magically made out of dirt.

Which line are you in?

Edwin Kagin of Union is a local attorney.

Blame for these happenings was imputed to the Atheists. The Blissful Judgement was upon the faithful, because they had been meek and gentle with those who had sought to control nature and deny god’s plan.

Darkness and death covered the land. The dead were left to bury the dead. No invisible electron could be controlled. Faith was swallowed up in viruses. The unseen world had triumphed over the seen.

Some time passed before the first of the Atheists emerged. He was an ancient, gaunt man; his hand held the hand of a beautiful young woman. They had received inoculations, from their people, before their own computers had fallen silent in their secret places. All electronic information in the world was now forever lost. The destruction was as complete as that of the righteous fires that once consumed the collected knowledge of the Maya. This time, religion had destroyed itself in its own temple, using its own rules.

“Hypatia,” the old man said, “I want to show you something.” They walked in silence, until they reached an outdoor Altar of Bliss. He swept away the salt shaker, and shells and salt splattered as the icon smashed on the marble. He withdrew a package from his bag, and placed it on the altar. When the tattered, watertight wrappings were removed, he stood back and let the child gaze in wonder at the treasure. After some moments she said, “Grandfather, it’s beautiful. What is it?”

He looked deeply into the health, and strength, and creativity, and intelligence, and curiosity of her human eyes, unglazed by grace, and said, “It’s a book.”

Edwin Kagin (from Baubles of Blasphemy)

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Rally for Reason

www.rallyforreason.com

If you think being outdoors in response to a threat to the foundations of knowledge is too much trouble, do not worry. Those who would establish a theocracy over us have promised to attack only when it is convenient for you, when it is not raining, when you can be warm, dry, safe, well fed, and have had plenty of time to engage in Liberal Angst over just what to do. Meanwhile, others will fight the American Religious Civil War and protect your freedoms for you.

Do you have something more important to do this Memorial Day?

Edwin