Freedom From Religion Foundation: Part 1 & Part 2

Freedom From Religion Foundation: Part 1“I’m Secular and I Vote” Campaign

Free thought and pride attract atheists, agnostics, and skeptics to the largest secular association in North America — the non-profit, educational Freedom from Religion Foundation. FFRF Co-President Dan Barker opines, “Much of the movement away from religion in America is being driven by Millennials, many of whom will be voting for the first time this year.” Hence, Parker adds, “We need secular voters to be vocal about their beliefs, or lack thereof, while rejecting efforts to push religious dogma on the nation.”

This, of course, is no small effort. The Foundation boasts 23,500 members, 20 chapters across America, not to mention secular student alliances. Nearly 8,000 secular voters are reaching out to educate the public about their beliefs. FFRF awards thousands of dollars in prizes for winning student essays; and they distribute “I’m Secular and I Vote” buttons, T-shirts, bumper stickers, and educational material.

What Exactly is Religion?

To be freed from something requires grasp of what is being discarded. So what exactly is the illusive concept of religion? Surprising to some, whether Judeo-Christian, Marxist-Leninist, secularist, or Islamic, all worldviews by nature are religious. Each defines an ultimate point of reference that dramatically influences every possible discipline from science to the arts, ethics to law, geo-politics to economics. All speak to an ideology, or movement, that offers some overarching approach to comprehend God (god), the world, and man’s relationship to both.

“Freedom from religion” is better understood as switching religion from one brand to another. Allow me to explain. Classical orthodoxy, Christian or Jewish, broadly typifies “religion,” as most perceive it, but so does secular humanism. By definition, religion sports its own distinctive vocabulary, sacred symbolism, grand metanarrative, exclusive truth exercised by faith, code of ethics/morality, creed, rituals, evangelism, and discipleship. Logically, to discard religion is to separate from the above; secularism instead exhibits all of them.

Judicial Acknowledgment

In The Church of the Holy Trinity v. U.S. (1892), the Supreme Court ruled that our civilization and institutions are emphatically Christian. In the early sixties, however, two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases made way for secular humanism by giving the proverbial boot to traditional faith (in the form of school prayer and Bible reading). It was then that secular humanism emerged as a non-theistic religion whose organized system of beliefs is upheld devotedly by some 7.3 million humanists, and counting. Both Christianity and secularism have received judicial acknowledgement.

Distinctive Vocabulary

Keep in mind humanism may or may not center on a supernatural being. Cosmic and secular humanism both are organized systems of beliefs and rituals upheld or pursued with zeal and devotion. Their relativistic values exalt human worth based on self-determination through reason.

By censoring God-speak and pilfering biblical phraseology, secularists craft their own lexicon. Take the word, “conversion,” meaning “a turning” — whether literally or figuratively, ethically or religiously. In the Bible, conversion is associated with repentance and faith. In the secular world, Harvard Professor Steven Pinker boldly testifies, “I never outgrew my conversion to atheist at thirteen.”

Honorary FFRF Board member Julia Sweeny argues, “How dare the religious use the term ‘born again’?” Sweeney reserves the phrase for fellow freethinkers who, like her, have ostensibly thrown off the shackles of religion. The Greek word for “born again,” used first by Jesus and plagiarized by Sweeny, means “to beget again into a new life.” More specifically, “to be born from above.”

In challenging the phrase “under God,” born-again convert to secularism Mike Newdow complained to the U.S. Supreme Court, “I am an atheist. I don’t believe in God. And every school morning my child is asked to stand up, face that flag, put her hand over her heart, and say that her father is wrong.” Apparently, in Newdow’s world, affirmations other than his own are personally demeaning and, thus, universally offensive. This freethinking father knows best when it comes to a god that, in his view, doesn’t even exist.

Grand Metanarrative (“Big Story”)

Defined by Huston Smith as “the clearest opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos can pour into human existence,” the religion of secularism merges symbolism with mythology and Jungian psychology espousing the “higher self.” By self-identifying as “Mother Earth’s consciousness,” cosmic humanists blur the line between physics and metaphysics. Theirs is a pseudo-Christian patchwork of spirit-ism and avant-garde, “fourth-force” psychology.

For these, all life is energy; composite energy is god; and the promised expectation is “life beyond the grave” by becoming god. Most often by means of meditation, achieving an altered state of consciousness enables the Imperial Self to give way to collectivist spirituality. Cosmic humanists attain to cosmic- or group- consciousness by aligning and then fusing with the universal life force. The spiritual climb upward (evolution from embryo-god to “Christhood” through multiple reincarnations) is one grand story!

Secular humanists embrace perhaps an even bigger story by reasoning there once existed absolutely nothing. Nothing happened to that nothing until it magically exploded (for no known reason) and thereby created everything and everywhere. A bunch of the exploded everything unpredictably rearranged itself (again, for no known reason) into self-replicating bits, which (to make a long story short) turned into dinosaurs. This constitutes yet another tall tale, or “big story.”

In comparison, the grand metanarrative of Jews and Christian is this: “In the beginning, God.”

Vision for a Utopian Ideal

Simply put, the overarching vision for a Christian is humanity united with (and conformed into the likeness of) God’s Son, coupled with full restoration of the universe to its rightful order under God the Father. In contrast, evolutionary theory at the epicenter of secularism self-characterizes as an expression of “merciless hate.” By specifically excluding “useless eaters,” “miserable, degraded savages,” and those deemed “unfit and defective,” the progressive utopian ideal sidesteps the Golden Rule and Great Commission.

In the words of the Trilateral Commission’s founding director Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Marxism represents a further vital and creative stage in the maturing of man’s universal vision.” American writer and editor Whittaker Chambers once fingered communism as the “second oldest religion.” Understand that “non-sustainable non-producers” relegated to the low end of humanity’s totem pole include the elderly, stay-at-home moms, and those incapacitated physically or mentally. In the Marxist paradigm, all human rights are granted, controlled, and/or withdrawn by government consisting of elitists deemed more highly evolved and enlightened than the masses.

Conclusion

Toward developing our thesis (Freedom from religion is better understood as switching religion from one brand to another.), we’ve established that secularism and religion are accompanied by judicial acknowledgement, a distinctive vocabulary, grand metanarrative (“big story”), and vision for an ideal — all of which inform voters and influence the course of a nation.

More to follow in Part 2.

Freedom From Religion Foundation: Part II“I’m Secular and I Vote” Campaign

Any religion, by definition, sports its own distinctive vocabulary, sacred symbolism, grand metanarrative, exclusive truth exercised by faith, code of ethics/morality, creed, rituals, evangelism, and discipleship. As is true with any worldview, secularism by nature is a religion. Logically, to discard religion is to separate from the above, but secularism instead exhibits them all. Hence, “freedom from religion” is better understood as switching religion from one brand to another.

In Part 1, we established that judicial acknowledgement, a distinctive vocabulary, grand metanarrative, and vision for the ideal accompany secularism and religion. All inform voters and influence the course of a nation.

The late journalist Christopher Hitchens reasoned, “Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.” Of course, one could counter, “Since it is obviously inconceivable that all secularists (or progressives) can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.” But I digress.

Belief Claiming Exclusive Truth

Naturalists reproach biblical apologists for fortifying dogma by inserting “the God of the gaps”; however, in a letter to Dr. Asa Gray, their hero Charles Darwin admitted, “Imagination must fill up very wide blanks.” Despite these blanks, naturalists embrace “settled science” as exclusive truth.

Having studied under the famous scholar, Gamaliel, the Apostle Paul had legitimate claim to knowledge of truth.

Because experience shows God’s unfailing strength as perfected in weakness, Paul deemed God’s grace to be sufficient and chose wisely to “boast” in his own weaknesses so that “the power of Christ might rest upon him.” In Darwin’s world, to the contrary, the weakest links are expunged as “maladjusted morons and misfits.” In shunning lesser human specimens, secular elitists worship at their own makeshift altar of exclusivity.

Exclusive Truth: Settled Science
Mind you, Darwin hated his time at school and applied himself minimally. He left Edinburgh without a degree; and, at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he studied theology, he earned what was regarded as an “ordinary” degree. Darwin’s body of work was not wholly original, as one might expect. Instead, its borrowed tenets were lifted from a poem written by Charles' grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin. The latter practiced an 18th-century pseudo-science (Galvanism) that involved running electrical currents through corpses of dead animals to bring them back to life.

Both wellborn-and-bred British elitists of their day, forward-thinking cousins Darwin and Galton identified with the dark side of the Enlightenment. Both rejected democratic elements, but some semblance of science suited their common cause. Darwin’s legendary treatise, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, filled the bill nicely. In 1993, a number of intellectually dissatisfied scientists representing a variety of disciplines took a fresh look at Darwinism in light of ever exploding scientific knowledge. Unlike Darwin, well-studied, degreed, and highly decorated scientists found irrefutable evidence for Intelligent Design.

Accepted by Faith
FFRF professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, Jerry Coyne, Ph.D., authored, Why Evolution is True. For Darwin’s theory to fly, faith in random genetic changes, at every turn, must provide advantage in an organism’s struggle to survive. This is not only highly improbable; it’s impossible. Even the evolutionary apologist British zoologist Julian Huxley ceded that a mutation signifies abnormality, not evolutionary advancement. Students of Darwinian thought are expected to overlook the fact that distinctive human attributes (i.e., language, posture/gait, moral/religious sensibilities, art/music appreciation) are not explicable by variations — i.e., multiple mutations or genetic shuffling. If it isn’t observable, repeatable, and measurable, and as long as scientists ask questions and apply the scientific method, science is not settled. My point? Evolutionary theory is just that: a theory.

Given the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Irreducible Complexity, and Law of Mutation, chance takes even more faith to believe than creation by an Intelligent Designer of an astonishingly ordered universe! Professor Hoyle compared the Darwinian process to the unlikelihood of a tornado’s sweeping through a junkyard and thereby producing a Boeing 747 from materials therein! Odds of this ever happening are astronomical.

Positive Impact on Society

Wrongly so, freethinkers credit persons unconstrained by religion with most social and moral progress throughout the history of Western civilization. Marketed to appeal to man’s best intentions (the common good, survival, advanced societies), evolutionary thought instead perpetuates a host of societal ills. Whether by abortion, infanticide, forced sterilization, euthanasia, or assisted suicide, “useless eaters” are targeted for extinction; and “the unfit” remain subject to human experimentalism and pharmacological abuse.

Darwin’s theory validated his “good old boys” network of British elitists; and, arguably, it spawned socio-political atrocities of monumental proportion. His flawed line of secularist, elitist thinking is precisely what spawned slavery, segregation, racist immigration laws (to turn away post-war Jewish refugees), the infamous Tuskegee Project, and application of the “one-drop rule” to ensure racial purity/ hygiene. Progress? Positive impact on society? I think not.

On the other hand, Dr. James Allan Francis eloquently explained, “Today Jesus is the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind’s progress. All the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that have ever sailed, all the parliaments that have ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned — put together — have not affected the life of mankind on earth as powerfully as that one solitary life.”

Sacred Symbolism

FFRF lawyers defend distribution of tracts (called “non-tracts” in the secularist’s lexicon) and activity books on display tables in public schools. Purported advocates of separation between church and state, secularists in Orlando and Denver nonetheless display pamphlets that address sex in the Bible and problems with the Ten Commandments (you know, religion). Foundation co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor assures authorities that the activity book for middle and high school students teaches “kindness” and, if only by limiting the satanic theme to symbols in drawings, “the basic morals that we all agree on.”

Occult symbolism gets a pass, but not prayer emojis. Recently, FFRF called on Apple CEO Tim Cook to remove all prayer emojis (symbols of cruel and unusual proselytizing) from iPhones and other devices. The Foundation’s Co-President Dan Barker warns, “Apple may not be afraid of the FBI, but they should be afraid of the millions of secular consumers who can’t stand these emojis.”

Code of Ethics/Morality

Although Paul Kurtz insists that the Humanist Manifesto is committed to reason, science, and democracy, secular humanism is really secular de-humanism. After all, Kurtz’s worldview recognizes no mandate to celebrate, facilitate, or protect life. Instead, it advances an individual’s right to “die with dignity” — whether by euthanasia or suicide. Because secularists perceive humans as mere products of time and chance, it stands to reason that life is devoid of elevated meaning. Darwinian theory defers to the paramount principle that “ends justify means.”

Freethinking poet-historian Jennifer Michael Hecht reasons, “If there is no god — and there isn’t — then we [humans] made up morality. And I’m very impressed.” Claim to have created from nothing something that all can agree upon is indeed impressive — but only as a feat of fancy (a miracle, if you will). In reality, despite secular claims, basic morals that “we all agree on” don’t exist.

Creed (Dogma) and Catechism

Columnist for The Nation, Katha Pollitt, regularly and energetically proclaims the atheist’s creed, “There is no God.” In accordance with this creed, secularists must transcend “inflexible moral and religious ideologies.” True to the secular catechism, believers celebrate, practice, and reward “plain speaking” on the shortcomings of religion. Accordingly, at the FFRF 39th annual convention in Pittsburgh (October 2016), theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss will be awarded the Emperor Has No Clothes Award.

The Humanist Manifesto urges “people of good will” to work together toward “human ends,” but notable secularist, Oxford professor emeritus Richard Dawkins, characterizes the God of the Old Testament as “the most unpleasant character in all fiction.” While Dawkins claims for himself the right to freedom from offense, he denies Christians and Jews the same courtesy.

Conclusion

Both worldviews, secularism and religion, hold claim to exclusive truth accepted by faith, a creed (dogma), and sacred symbolism. Exercising an identified code of ethics and morality, each claims to impact society positively. To insist that secularism frees one from religion is incredulous; nonetheless, the Freedom From Religion Foundation accepts the one as truth, the other as fancy.