"TIPS FOR TIM TEBOW"

[Revolution #258. February 5, 2012]


By Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA


Tim Tebow, quarterback for the Denver Broncos in the National Football League, is being widely, and seemingly endlessly, promoted—as an icon not only in the realm of sports but much more broadly. I have followed sports, including football, for many decades now, and I cannot recall ever witnessing anything like this. In a highly orchestrated and concentrated campaign, Tebow is being held up as a “worker of miracles” on the football field but, more than that, as a “role model” and moral standard-bearer.

Exodus 22:18

This hype around Tebow is completely and strikingly out of proportion to any demonstrated ability or actual accomplishments on Tebow’s part, in terms of performance as a professional football quarterback. If you have been paying attention not only to the arena of sports but to things more broadly in this society and the world, you should be able to quickly guess why this is: Tim Tebow is a religious fanatic—of the Christian fundamentalist variety—who aggressively promotes his medieval views and values in a way that is obviously considered useful by significant sections of the powers-that-be in the U.S. Among other things, during the Super Bowl (the American professional football championship) a couple of years ago, Tebow was the centerpiece of an ad whose purpose was to oppose the right of women to reproductive freedom, in particular abortion. The ad was sponsored by a right-wing Christian organization which aggressively opposes the right of women to abortion (it is also a fact, and highly revealing, that as a general rule the reactionary Christian fundamentalist forces that oppose a woman’s right to abortion also want to ban birth control).

 This promotion of what is in reality a fascist outlook and program, in the form of fundamentalist Christianity, is aided by the notion—aggressively championed by some, and far too often unchallenged by others—that there is a direct connection between how religious someone is and how “moral” he or she is. Which avoids the critical question: What is the content of this morality?

Read more »

I Hate Religion and Jesus is No Good Either! Read Your Damn Bible!

Using Bob Avakian's book Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World to challenge followers of Jesus to defend what Jesus actually said and what he actually did: uphold slavery, condemn divorce, blame sick people for their own illness, preach reconciliation between the oppressors and the oppressed and condemn people who don't believe in him to BURN IN HELL.  Using scriptures and Jesus's own words.

Listen to the podcast on Atheist Talk radio Now!

Why do all the world's major religions have patriarchy and the enslavement of women at their core? 

And why everyone who cares about equality and liberation for women should fight against the shackles of religion:

Religion, Patriarchy, and Sexual Repression

Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists.

ATHEIST TALK RADIO

Diversity (and Black people specifically) in the Atheist Movement

This second installment off the recent Texas Freethought Convention takes off from a panel called "Diversity in the Movement" which I was part of together with Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson, author of Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and Secular America, Jason Torpy of Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, and Rich Rodriguez, of Rational Response Squad. There are many dimensions to diversity, but this installment will focus on Black people.

The conference as a whole was kicked off by an excellent talk that PZ Myers gave on mutants. PZ, as he is prone to do, made an entertaining and invigorating sport of scientifically refuting creationist bullshit. Almost like a bonus track, he threw in several scientifically rigorous lines of refutation of Spiderman and other comic books.

At a certain point, PZ explained that neanderthals interbred with early humans in Europe (after these early humans left Africa). As part of discussing mutations and how we are all mutants (be very afraid!), he explained that everyone with European or Asian background had some neanderthal DNA woven into our make-up. On the other hand, Africans and African Americans don't (I am sure this is not totally true as most Black people in this country have some European DNA at this point, but the main point he was demonstrating was valid and fascinating).

However, when PZ asked Black people in the audience to raise their hands – part of his engaging speaking style – there was a very long pause as everyone looked around the auditorium... searching... searching... searching for anyone Black. Finally, a young woman way in the back stood up, waved her hand and took a bow.

Now, it turns out there was more than one Black person in the room. But not very many more. This was rather shocking, and in some ways a very important lead-in to the "diversity" panel.



Sikivu Hutchinson & me
at Texas Freethought Convention

While I appreciated everyone's comments and perspective on the panel, I was especially pleased to be sharing the stage with Sikivu Hutchinson. I very much enjoyed (and recommend) her book. I interviewed her for Equal Time for Freethought and you can listen to it here.  She brought alive the reality of the New Jim Crow that confronts Black people; mass incarceration, institutional racism, and a white supremacist power structure. She spoke as well to the degradation and oppression of women, the assault on women's right to abortion and the special demonization of Black and Latina women who get abortions.  

I highlighted a quote from Bob Avakian's Away With All Gods that, "Oppressed people who are unable or unwilling to confront reality as it actually is, are condemned to remain enslaved and oppressed."  Most oppressed people are still denied any real scientific education or exposure to atheism and this is something atheists must take much greater responsibility for changing.   It is a form of profound disrespect for people to think they are too stupid to come to understand the way the world actually is and to fail to struggle for them to take up science and unchain their minds from religious shackles. At the same time, there is tremendous oppression and crimes – from police brutality to mass incarceration to the assault on women's reproductive rights and beyond – that everyone needs to be coming together to fight and to build a movement for revolution to get rid of once and for all.   This fight should include both religious and atheist people.   I posed a different synthesis – of militant atheism but also of not making atheism a dividing line; instead making the fight against oppression and exploitation the dividing line (which actually divides both atheists and religious folks sharply, but in a much more favorable way in terms of bringing about a much better world in this world, the real world, the only world there is).

During the Q&A, one man posed that he wasn't sure that the right questions were being asked. Rather than ask, regarding Black people, "Why don't they come to our events?" and then having Black people always ask, "But why don't you take up our issues?" white atheists ought instead to support Black atheists in taking atheism to Black people.

I want to share my answer to this.


While there is importance to Black atheists fighting – and being supported in their efforts to fight – for atheism among Black people, it is profoundly wrong to equate "them" coming to "our" events (speaking of "them" as Black people and "our" as if all of us at an atheist convention primarily identify as "white atheists") with the notion of Black people insisting that "we" take up "their" issues.

The oppression of Black people is NOT "Black people's issue." The oppression of Black people is woven into the fabric of American society.  "There would be no United States as we know it today without slavery. That is a simple and basic truth." (1:1, BAsics, from the talks & writings of Bob Avakian).  After that, it was Jim Crow and generations of racist terror in which every Black person lived under an active death warrant. It may or may not have been carried out, but it was always there and every Black person knew that any white person could accuse them at any time and they could be lynched, or wrongly imprisoned and sent to a chain gang (an incredible and important book, Douglas A. Blackmon's  Slavery By Another Name), or for no reason at all. Today, it's the New Jim Crow. 1 in 9 young Black men is in prison. Prisons institute widespread torture – by standards of international law (things like years and decades of isolation! – something California prisoners are currently hunger striking against), rampant police brutality and murder, the worst education, the worst health care, and the largest transfer of wealth out of the Black community in history through the recent mortgage crisis.

The retrenchment, in new forms, of the longstanding oppression of Black people in the U.S. is one of the great moral questions of this era. If this is not "your issue" then you are not leading a moral life. There is NO EXCUSE for white people (or other people not of African descent) in this country to treat this like someone else's problem.


To underscore further the problem with the kind of thinking reflected in the question posed, a bit more...


Black people don't owe any atheist organization their participation. I believe it would be very good if more Black people were atheists and if more Black atheists were involved in atheist organizations and activism. It would be even better if more Black people and more atheists (and the two are not mutually exclusive) were getting into the movement for revolution and transforming themselves in the course of coming together to transform the world. But this would be good because it would benefit Black people as a whole and humanity as a whole. That's why it's important. Not because Black people have an obligation to atheists organizations.

On the other hand, everyone on U.S. soil has a responsibility and a moral obligation to fight against the not-merely-historic but present-day-reality of profound and systematic oppression of Black people in the U.S.A.

Troy Davis was just recently legally lynched:  Overwhelming evidence of his innocence. 7 out of 9 witnesses recanted. No physical evidence linking him to the crime. A million people worldwide petitioned for a new trial. Thousands protested. Former prison wardens called for the Georgia prison officials to refuse to participate in the execution.  Former FBI Chief William Sessions called for commuting Davis' death sentence.  But Troy Davis was murdered by the U.S. State. I feel like screaming as I type. This is everyone's responsibility.

Okay, fine – a lot of white people (and frankly, a lot of immigrants from every part of the world) are kept ignorant of this reality.   But, you who are reading this – and those of you who had enough heart and interest to attend the diversity panel over the weekend – it is not acceptable and there is no excuse for remaining ignorant.  Follow the links in this article. Read up. Learn. Here is an excellent place to start, a special issue of Revolution dealing specifically with, "The Oppression of Black People, The Crimes of this System and the Revolution We Need."  

“The young man was shot 41 times while reaching for his wallet”…“the 13-year-old was shot dead in mid-afternoon when police mistook his toy gun for a pistol”… “the unarmed young man, shot by police 50 times, died on the morning of his wedding day”… “the young woman, unconscious from having suffered a seizure, was shot 12 times by police standing around her locked car”… “the victim, arrested for disorderly conduct, was tortured and raped with a stick in the back of the station-house by the arresting officers.”

Does it surprise you to know that in each of the above cases the victim was Black?¹

If you live in the USA, it almost certainly doesn’t.

Think what that means:" read more...

* * *

Another point that I want to highlight was a comment from Naima Washington during Sikivu Hutchinson's presentation later that day. She said a number of things, building off much of what Sikivu spoke to about how Black people are viewed still in animalistic terms. Naima spoke to how Black people have been viewed as able to tolerate higher levels of pain, able to work harder without fatigue, and in other ways being physically predisposed to enslavement. She detailed how these myths continue in myths, including through myths of innate athletic super-prowess. (An important aside, Dorothy Roberts recently exposed how Black people are systematically prescribed significantly fewer pain-killers for the same medical procedures out of prejudices and assumptions about Black people.)  Then, at the tail end of her remarks, Naima commented that, while she is concerned about the number of people of color in the room, she is more concerned with the number of people of conscience.

Excuse my religious language, but A-Fucking-Men.

The participation of Black people (and other oppressed people) matters. It matters a lot. But even more – and frankly as a foundation to whether there will be an increasing basis for attracting and involving Black atheists – is whether there is a foundation of conscience. Once again, and as a conclusion to this entry, there is no foundation of conscience that does not include a firm stand against the oppression of Black people as "everybody's" issue.

Atheist Alliance America & Texas Freethought Convention – Shout Outs!

This past weekend has been the joint convention of the Texas Freethought Convention and the Atheist Alliance America in Houston, Texas. Somewhere around 700 people attended this conference – a very impressive and positive development in any place at this time of dangerous Christian fascism within the U.S. and rising fundamentalism throughout the world. But come on now: Everyone knows it is even more impressive, and positive, if this many people turn out for atheism and secularism in Texas! Rick Perry, get the fuck out of the way!

Over several years of traveling and speaking nation-wide, I have always been struck that progressive people, radical people, revolutionary people, and atheist people in Texas really have to be bold and courageous. Certainly, one of the very best parts of attending the convention was getting to know and learn from the impressive number of atheists and freethinkers who came from all over Texas. This included many who came on their own, who had never been to a gathering of atheists before, and who might not even be open with their families and friends about being atheists.

So, before anything further: a heartfelt shout out to all the atheists and reality-based people who took this step for the first time!

Also a shout out to those who spent many hours of many weeks of many months organizing this conference. Special appreciation to Staise Gonzalez (President of Houston Atheists), Paul Mitchell (President of Texas Freethought Convention), and Nick Lee (President of Atheist Alliance America). Also, Angelo who moderated all three panels I was on and to the volunteers who got my powerpoint running (sorry, I didn't get your name but THANK YOU). Obviously, to everyone else who made this thing come together – I know there were a LOT of you. Thanks.

As at any conference, I wasn't able to catch every panel or plenary. Nor do I feel that the most interesting post from me would be an attempt at a round-up of the whole weekend.

Instead, over the course of several installments: a few highlights... some reflections mainly on questions that came up in the panels I was part of... as well as in my conversations with participants... and an invitation to continue the dialogue.

Tomorrow: "Diversity (and Black people specifically) in the Movement"

Speaking in Houston - October 7 and 8!

Hey everyone!

This Friday and Saturday I’ll be speaking at

Atheist Alliance International – Texas Freethought Convention

I’m on panels on both Friday & Saturday, including a talk called

The Emancipation of Humanity

and a World Without Gods;

A Revolutionary Perspective

if you're in Houston area...hope to see you there!

Challenging People to Think: Activism for Atheism

[Originally published in On The Issues Magazine - fall issue on activism]

by Sunsara Taylor

People generally think of activism as something you do. But activism aimed at changing how people think is equally important. There is, after all, a profound connection between what people think, as well as how people think, and what they are willing – or not willing – to do.


In particular, the belief in god and the specific content of the world's major religions constitute huge shackles on people's minds and, as a result, on their behavior. Every major religion is highly oppressive, especially toward women. Religion has led people to take actions that are harmful to humanity; religious faith interferes with rational thought, and, religion frequently stands in the way of people's willingness to throw themselves into the struggle for liberation in the actually existing material world.

This, then, is the story of how, in the course of my revolutionary struggles – I am a communist revolutionary -- I came to activism on behalf of atheism.

Seeing Holes in the Cloth

I didn't come from an atheist background. Actually, I grew up a deeply believing Christian. As a little girl, I even read my Bible at night to my stuffed animals (so concerned was I for their eternal souls).
Religion interferes with rational thought

My Christian convictions initially dampened my own activism. I can remember the feeling of profound disorientation that arose when I first defended an abortion clinic in North Dakota back in 1995. I had longed to stand up in support of abortion doctors since the assassination of Dr. David Gunn in Pensacola in 1993. But at my first clinic event, I was confronted by Father Frank Pavone, head of Priests for Life, on the other side of the barricades. I didn't know of all the ways he had whipped up an environment that led to doctors being killed; all I saw was his white collar, a symbol, which, to me, conveyed absolute moral authority. His presence on the other side and his direct challenge to me -- including through the use of the scripture -- shook me deeply.

Afterward, I struggled for months to sort this out. This process eventually led me to cast off belief in Christianity and in god altogether. I found no material evidence for the existence of god, although most people are indoctrinated with and surrounded by religious belief. Believers say that they accept the idea of god on faith, but there is tremendous historical evidence that every myth about god is man-made.

I became more outspoken about atheism as I saw how believing in things that one doesn't understand is not harmless: it interferes with rational thought, keeps people ignorant and causes real suffering.

For example, while organizing resistance to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush years, I frequently encountered Christian fundamentalists who were convinced that George W. Bush had been chosen as president by god. The fact that Bush had lied about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was irrelevant to these fundamentalists because, they insisted, he was acting on higher truths than those of mere men.

People's religious beliefs also keep them from taking effective political action, even in the face of screaming outrages. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I made several trips to New Orleans. Residents of the Ninth Ward shared stories with me of being trapped in the floodwaters, discovering deceased loved ones upon return and wondering what had become of their still-missing neighbors. However, more than a few of these residents disregarded my suggestions of resistance against the government's criminal response because, they insisted, the real cause of the hurricane was their own sinfulness.

Of course, there are many people whose religious beliefs motivate them to struggle against injustice. I have worked with and learned from many of them over the years. I certainly don't think belief in god should be a dividing line in the fight for a better world.

At the same time, the content of the major world religions -- Christianity no less than any other -- is horrifically oppressive. The Bible was written by human beings who lived in patriarchal, slave-owning, agrarian societies before the development of science. Consequently, the Bible is saturated with the ignorance and prejudices of their times. For example, the Bible insists that women obey their husbands as the lord (Ephesians 5:22); that homosexuals be executed (Leviticus 20:13); that disobedient children be stoned to death (Matthew 15:4), and that slaves obey their masters (Ephesians 6:5). Upholding these Bible myths is upholding enslavement and oppression, and is very harmful to real people in the world today.

Beyond the harmful content, taking things on faith stands in the way of seeking to understand the real world causes for why things happen and the real world possibilities for radical change.

Exposing People to A Different Way

My activism for atheism involves explaining what atheism is -- many people around the country have never been exposed to atheist thinking at all. I engage in panels and debates at university campuses, in community forums or on the radio. In 2009, I appeared on a Black talk radio station in Atlanta. Some callers debated me fiercely over scripture, others felt they had the space to announce their own atheism for the first time, but almost everyone thanked the host for bringing them a perspective they'd never heard on Black radio before. At times, my advocacy on atheism taken me right into the thick of religious zealots. In 2006, I attended a stadium rally of tens of thousands of Christian youth who were preached to by Navy SEALs, Franklin Graham and George W. Bush himself (via a letter). I went with a group of revolutionaries to learn more, to write about it and to directly challenge the youth to get out. Much to my surprise, in the middle of the event, my face was projected onto the huge JumboTron screen that showed a television debate I'd done with the group's leader, Ron Luce. Suddenly, my anonymity disappeared and I felt the "battle cry" crowd look at me as the personification of the devil. Still, just in the last month -- all these years later -- I received a copy of a letter from someone who met us at that rally, had since broken with fundamentalism and now wanted to do something better in life.

In championing atheism, I am not merely giving people new information (as important as that is). I am challenging people to think with a different method. I prod them not to follow someone just because of the person's claimed religious authority and not to accept things on faith. Instead, I want people to evaluate things based on evidence, to ask questions (including about what I am saying), to seek answers in the material world and to put their energies to transforming this world. "Oppressed people who are unable or unwilling to confront reality as it actually is, are condemned to remain enslaved and oppressed," wrote Bob Avakian, author of Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World. I seek not merely to "balance" my commitment to "unchaining the mind" with my commitment to "radically changing the world," but to working for the best possible dynamism and mutual reinforcement between those two interrelated missions.

I came to the fight for atheism as part of my larger commitment to the liberation of humanity through communist revolution. My approach of engaging people around atheism differs from that of other activists who are building political resistance but insist that any debate over religion just "gets in the way." It also differs from those who are single-minded about atheism and look down on those with religious faith as if they are stupid or have no insights.

Fighting the attacks on women driven by Christian fundamentalism

Taking up the fight for atheism has especially strengthened my ability to fight for the liberation of women. When I stand in defense of abortion clinics, whether in Mississippi or Colorado or elsewhere, I see pro-choice people, particularly young women, go through the same kind of disorientation that I felt when I first heard "my" bible used against me. I am able to help them see that they are up against human authorities -- both the patriarchal humans who wrote the Bible and the patriarchal humans who are wielding it to terrorize doctors and shame women -- not up against the "word of god." Not everyone casts off her belief in religion, but a seed is planted, and the young women feel a weight lifted to have this question addressed head on.

On the flip side, I struggle for the atheist community to put more energy into fighting the attacks on women driven by Christian fundamentalism. After giving a talk on this subject at an international atheist conference, women thanked me and shared their stories of abortion. One young woman burst into tears as she explained that even though she grew up pro-choice and been active in the atheist movements, she'd never heard anyone say that abortion was okay. She had begun to feel like there must be something wrong with her for never having felt remorse about her abortion.

People who are atheists can do more to open people's minds. For one thing, they can come "out" about it. Many people have never met an atheist and are denied the opportunity to consider it for themselves.

Atheists can challenge people to confront the passages in the Bible or other religious texts that command injustices. Ask, "Would the world be better, or worse, if those commandments were followed?" It is not an insult to challenge people to cast off beliefs that are not founded in reality; it is an insult to think that anyone is incapable of coming to understand the material world without the lens of religion.

Abortion, Let's NOT Leave Religion Out of It!

Over and over and over again people tell me to leave religion out of the debate over abortion. "Many Christians believe in the right to abortion, at least in cases of rape or incest," I am often told, "So, why alienate them by bringing up religion?"

It is true that a huge number of people who identify as Christian also support the right of women to abortion. It is also true that an even greater number of Christians will get an abortion in a desperate situation even if they believe it is "wrong." However, we do ourselves NO FAVORS by leaving religion out of the debate over abortion.

The reason for this is that the movement in this country to restrict, criminalize, and shame women out of their right to abortion is entirely driven by religion. The Christian Bible in particular.

Here is how it works: According to the Bible, Eve (woman!) caused the fall of man when she tempted Adam into eating the forbidden fruit, gettiing them kicked out of the "Garden of Eden." This story is at the core of Christianity; there would be no need for Jesus to allegedly have died on the cross except to make up for this "original sin." But, that is not all. The human beings who wrote the Bible, their thinking shaped by the patriarchal society they lived in, weren't content with merely one myth that blamed everything on women.

In 1 Timothy 2:11-15, Paul insists: “Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.”

It is this biblical mandate that has animated the anti-abortion movement from its inception and which drives it today. This is why there is not a single anti-abortion organization that is fighting for birth control. Their motivation has NEVER been about "protecting fetal life." It has always been about insisting that women stay in their place; that wives "submit to their husband as their husband to the lord" (Ephesians 5:22, a commandment Michelle Bachman has upheld publically!) and make babies.

Of course, there are many people who oppose abortion who don't believe in this scripture. But that doesn't change the nature of the movement they are supporting or the retrograde, theocratic horror show it is fighting to impose on women. Every day is punctuated with new examples – Rick Santorum's opposition to abortion even in instances of rape, the arrest of women who have miscarriages, the assassination of the doctors who provide abortions, etc. -- demonstrating where the logic of restricting abortion is leading.

Confronting people with the theocratic core of the movement to end abortion is necessary to begin to win people away from the movement they are lending their support to. Either you should uphold that Biblical scripture and the world it would impose, or you should fight against it, including through defending women's right to abortion.

Aside from openly genocidal rationals (for example, the Nazis criminalized abortions for "Aryan" women), this Biblical mandate (or similar patriarchal mandates of other religions) is the only reason there is to oppose abortion. (Worth noting: there has been significant overlap between the genocidal and religious opposition to abortion, for example the Christian Ku Klux Klan was among the first to march against abortion in this country and there remain many Christian fundamentalists who invoke the spector of “auto-genocide” among white women.)

Once scriptural commandments and genocide are stripped away, there is no reason left to oppose abortion. Scientifically, fetuses are NOT children. Therefore there is absolutely no reason for anyone to have any moral qualm about a woman choosing to terminate a fetus. A fetus is a subordinate part of a woman's body. It has the potential to become human, but it is doesn't become a human until it is born and becomes an independent social and biologial being. That is why we mark our time as living human beings from the day of our birth.

Any society that does not wish to enslave women to their biological ability to give birth, that doesn't want to reduce women to human incubators, needs to uphold and defend and destigmatize women's right to abortion. If women cannot decide for themselves when and whether to have a child, they cannot be free. If women are not free, then no one is truly free.

Sure, bringing up religion may offend some people who support the right to abortion (or, who at least oppose criminalizing all abortions for all women). But, the truth is there has been a pro-choice majority throughout the whole period where abortion rights have been eroded, doctors have been killed, and women have been shamed. Any attempt to keep religion out of the debate over abortion, in order to hold together an alliance has passively allowed abortion to become increasingly more difficult, dangerous and stigmatized to access over the past two decades, is a losing strategy.

It's time to set different terms and to fight for a different dynamic.

Christians, like everyone else, need to be confronted with the horror of taking the Bible literally. They should be forced to decide where they stand in relation to this and where it leads, not in relation to some romanticized notions of fetuses as just smaller versions of infants (which is both untrue, and has nothing to do with the true motiviations of the movement against abortion). They should also be confronted with the science of reproduction. They should be challenged – and given the opportunity – to reject this scripture. If they do, whether they choose to continue to believe in Christianity (or another religion) in some non-literal way or whether they forsake religion altogether, they have a responsibility – like all the rest of us – to speak out against the horror of the Bible being enforced on society, including as it pertains to denying women the right to abortion and birth control.

For those Christians who still cling to their literal scripture, even as it is revealed for the Dark Ages nightmare it is, they should have to own up to what they are really promoting. Let's make them defend 1 Timothy 2:11-15 and all the other crimes mandated by their Bible (stoning non-virgin brides, killing disobedient children, killing homosexuals, blaming people's “sin” for falling ill, and more!). The more they are forced to own up to what they actually are fighting for, the more clarity others will have about who they want to stand with. Even if it ruffles some feathers at first, wouldn't this only work to the advantage of those who believe women are full human beings, deserving of the right to decide for themselves when – and whether – they will bring a child into the world?

"Good Without God; Ethics for Freethinkers": Important Dialogue, But Something Essential Missing

Immediately before attending this past Saturday evening's panel discussion "Good Without God; Ethics for Freethinkers" sponsored by the New York Ethical Culture Society, I caught a clip of Rick Perry on a tv screen as I walked through the city. The rise of Perry as a "legitimate" candidate for the presidency only underscores my appreciation that such a panel was being held. There is a tremendous need for people to be exploring, taking up, and projecting a morality that is not rooted in the Christian Bible (or any other religious text) with its "stone them to death" approach to gays, non-virgin brides, disobedient children, and its massive promotion of ignorance.

Indeed, there was much to appreciate and learn from in the arguments that were made throughout the evening and the morality that was projected. Coming from different angles, Michael De Dora of the Center for Inquiry, Dr. Anne Klaeysen of the NY Society, Massimo Pigliucci, Chair of the Philosophy Dept. at Lehman College, and Roy Speckardt, Executive Director, American Humanist Association, spoke compellingly of the possibility of being "good without god." They also conveyed a basic feeling that that one has a responsibility to other humans. Several times the speakers took important moral stands on some of the most critical issues confronting people today; they upheld women's right to abortion, opposed the U.S.'s wars of aggression, defended the importance of science and education, and demonstrated a real spirit of intellectual curiosity and engagement which is all too often lacking in popular discourse these days.

At the same time, throughout the evening -- as in the afternoon, when I interviewed two of the panelists on WBAI's Equal Time for Freethought -- I felt the discussion fell significantly short of meeting the needs of this intensely fraught historical moment or even of the immediate audience. What was missing, and what is absolutely essential for humanity to advance and truly be "good without gods," was the epistemology and morality that has been brought forward by Bob Avakian as part of his new synthesis of revolution and communism. Avakian's is a morality rooted in a scientific understanding of how the world got to be the way it is and how it can be radically transformed to emancipate all humanity, and it encompasses the partisan choice to act to realize that liberated world and to live in accordance with it now.

Read more »

Tune in Sat, Aug 6th 3-4pm EST, for my interviews with Sikivu Hutchinson and Mara Hvistendahl

August 6th

3:00 to 4:00 pm, EST

WBAI radio, Pacifica in New York

99.5 FM

streaming live at wbai.org

This week on Equal Time for Freethought, I talk with two guests:

Mara Hvistendahl and Sikivu Hutchinson

Sikivu Hutchinson is the author of Moral Combat; Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars. She has published fiction, essays and critical theory in Social Text, Black Agenda Report, Secular Nation and the American Atheist Magazine. She is also the editor of blackfemlens.org, a founder of the L.A. Black Skeptics, and a senior fellow for the Institute for Humanist Studies.

I will speak with her about how U.S. white-supremacist slavery and continued white American identity has influenced and shaped the prevalence of Black religiosity as well as explore some of the particular harms of religion among Black people. We will also discuss the vicious and misleading campaign to portray abortion as “Black genocide” and the links between pornography and sexual degradation of the mainstream secular culture and the puritanism and sexual repression of the Christian fascists.

Mara Hvistendahl is a correspondent with Science magazine and a contributor to publications ranging from Foreign Policy to Popular Science. She is also the author of Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men. Thanks mainly to sex selective abortion, there are over 160 million fewer females than would be naturally occurring in Asia’s population and an unknown number missing from other continents. We will discuss how this gap is transforming communities, leading to everything from a spike in bride-buying to an increase in crime — and how the West played a role in sparking this global problem.

Islamic Clerics and Atheist "Boobquake" -- Lets Not Pick Our Poision, Lets Fight For Liberation

I have now had several people send me links to the “Boobquake” being planned for Monday, April 26^th.  http://www.blaghag.com/2010/04/in-name-of-science-i-offer-my-boobs.html

The idea is that, since an Iranian cleric blamed earthquakes on women who dress immodestly, that a bunch of women would show their cleavage and dress as provocatively as possible on Monday as part of “testing” this theory and proving it wrong.  Some people seem to think – since I am an atheist and someone who rejects the view that women’s bodies are shameful and dirty – that I am going to be thrilled with this so-called act of defiance against Islamic fundamentalist ignorance and misogyny. 

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader.

Um… but isn’t this “theory” already being tested every day?  Isn’t this the fucked up world we already live in?  Did the earth rumble – and I somehow missed it – during Spring Break?  Do volcanoes go off every year as hundreds of thousands women are sold or bartered or tricked into the sex industry each year?  Does the sky break open every time the Girls Gone Wild videos are promoted on late-night television or porn is downloaded millions of times a day on the internet?  What about when the soldiers in the Congo strip the clothes off women before shoving rifles up their vaginas and pulling the trigger?  Is the sea rising up every time a woman on a college campus in this country is drugged and raped and the guy, getting away with it, understands he can go ahead and do this again… and again… and again… and again… and again… and again?  (That’s right, folks, the latest study reveals that the men who rape on college campuses do so on an average of six times during their “college career.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/12/AR2010031201792.html)

Look, the Islamic Republic of Iran is totally fucked.  They count the testimony of women as half that of a man.  They arrest and torture young women if a wisp of their hair falls out from behind their chador.  They have their “virtue police” grope women on their way into school.  I’ve heard stories from Iranians about women being caught with lipstick where the police wiped it off with napkins filled with broken glass.  Of the calculation being made that the entire female body is worth the only one testicle of a man.

So, let there be no mistake.  The Islamic Republic of Iran is deserving of fierce opposition and ought to be resisted and overturned.

But the whole point is, the Islamic Republic does these things because they view women fundamentally as objects, as things, as possessions of men.

Getting women to show off their breasts is really just the mirror opposite – reinforcing another form of reducing women to things, to objects, to something that exists for the sexual gratification of men.

How bout we do something really radical?  Declare that women are fully human.  Combat ignorance with science, combat misogyny with women’s liberation, combat all the outmoded systems of oppression (be they semi-feudal and dominated by imperialism or be they imperialism itself) with revolution for a whole different world?

Great Fun With a Scientist and a Priest at U of Chicago

Last night I was part of a fantastic evening with Bob Bossie (a rather radical priest), and PZ Myers (a wonderful atheist & scientist), at University of Chicago titled, “A Communist, a Scientist, and a Priest Sat Down to Discuss… Morality to Change the World.”

A couple hundred students and others packed in and most of them stayed riveted until finally our moderator, Ted Jennings (Professor of Biblical and Constructive Theology at Chicago Theological Seminary) called it an evening.

PZ posted a short blog entry about the evening, along with the notes of his opening remarks, here: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/04/a_priest_a_scientist_and_a_com.php#comments

Once the conversation began, things moved quickly over a wide range of subjects and we never fully made it back to PZ’s statements about the relationship between science and morality – but I’ll say here that I strongly agree that science cannot answer questions of ought, that bringing science to bear in arguing what ought to be done in no way guarantees the interests of humanity will be pursued, but that attempting to answer questions of ought without science is a sure-fire recipe for disaster. Check out his comments, in particular those he writes about what is wrong with both secular and religious arguments against homosexuality.

Bob Bossie is extremely committed to the struggles of the oppressed both in this country and around the world. He began his presentation with a quote that I am paraphrasing, but which essentially posed that, “If they come for the innocent and do not step over your body, cursed be your religion and cursed be your life.” I am proud to say that he and I both recently added our names to this statement organized by The World Can’t Wait calling on people to resist the unjust wars, torture, and repression that continue under Obama entitled, “Crimes Are Crimes - No Matter Who Does Them.” [http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/features-mainmenu-220/the-war-of-terror/6280-crimes-are-crimes-no-matter-who-does-them]

Usually, if a moderator does a good job it means that their role is not particularly notable. Ted was a bit different than this. His comments and questions, although brief, stimulated me (and I suspect others) to think quite a bit harder – in very good ways. At one point, after I spoke about how people’s sense of what is natural and of right and wrong changes as the way that society is organized changes (for instance, many used to argue that slavery was just “natural” but very few think this anymore, and many today argue that being focused on “me first” is “natural” but after a revolution when people are no longer forced to compete to survive that will no longer seem so), Jennings replied, “So, we are talking about morality to change the world, but also changing the world to change morality.” You get the idea – he’s a deep guy.

The audience asked about many things, including quite a few questions about communism and revolution. They asked about the history of communism, whether the Revolutionary Communist Party has the right to claim it is the vanguard party, whether vanguard party’s are even necessary or desirable, and (among other questions about revolution and communism) about the policies in the Soviet Union post-WWII when the early advances around women’s liberation were largely reversed with a revival of patriarchy. One guy asked a very profound question which, frankly, more people ought to be asking; whether the kind of upheaval and destruction that accompanies revolutions can be morally justified… but at the same time can refusing to make revolution, or to take bold actions to urgently address the suffering humanity is facing on a grand scale, morally justifiable? I spoke about the learning curve of communist experience and challenged people to get into the new synthesis of communism and revolution that Bob Avakian has developed – with some particular emphasis on some of his most recent work re-examining the centrality of the fight for women’s full liberation as a central and driving force for revolution starting now and all the way through till two radical ruptures: with all traditional property relations and all traditional ideas.

There were MANY other questions as well (I told you, folks stayed late and kept their hands up!) – about science, about religion, about the environmental catastrophes closing in on the planet, how to overcome distrust between different cultures, the role of the internet and new technologies in changing the world, the Tea Party movements, the rising global human population and its implications, humanism, and more.

The students who organized it should be proud of what they did.

At several points the question of gradual change versus a total revolution came up. I argued not only that things are too intolerable for humanity to take the gradual approach, but even more fundamentally that the depth of change that is needed is structural and not change within this system. That a revolution is much more finite, that is, the seizing of the power and the establishment of a new state power – but that that is only the beginning. A revolution really only clear the ground, uproots the economic structures and repressive capitalist state that requires and enforces relations of exploitation and oppression. But, transforming all the social relations, attitudes, ways of thinking and even of feeling takes much more time. But if you don’t make a revolution you can’t even really begin that process and that our responsibility now is to fight to hasten and prepare for a revolutionary situation.

Today, a friend of mine recalled a passage from Wallace Shawn’s extraordinary play, “The Fever,” which is entirely relevant to this question of “gradual change.” It was so good when I went back and re-read it that I am going to excerpt a lengthy passage from it here. Take your time and really take it in.

FROM THE FEVER BY WALLACE SHAWN:

So we have everything, but there's one difficulty we just can't overcome, a curse: we can't escape our connection to the poor.

We need the poor. Without the poor to get the fruit off the trees, to tend the excrement under the ground, to bathe our babies on the day they're born, we couldn't exist. With out the poor to do awful work, we would spend our lives doing awful work. If the poor were not poor, if the poor were paid the way we're paid, we couldn't afford to buy an apple, a shirt, we couldn't afford to take a trip, to spend a night at an inn in a nearby town. But the horror is that the poor grow everywhere, like moss, grass. And we can never forget the time when they owned the land. We can never forget the death of their families, those vows of revenge screamed out in those rooms that were running with gore. And the poor don't forget. They live on their rage. They eat rage. They want to rise up and finish us, wipe us off the earth as soon as they can.

And so in our frozen world, our silent world, we have to talk to the poor. Talk, listen, clarify, explain. They want things to be different. They want change. And so we say, Yes. Change. But not violent change. Not theft, not revolt, no revenge. Instead, listen to the idea of gradual change. Change that will help you, but that won't hurt us. Morality. Law. Gradual change. We explain it all: a two-sided contract: we'll give you things, many things, but in exchange you must accept that you don't have the right just to take what you want. We're going to give you wonderful things. Sit down, wait, don't try to grab— the most important thing is patience, waiting. We're going to give you much much more than you're getting now, but there are certain things that must happen first—these are the things for which we must wait. First, we have to make more and we gave to grow more, so more will be available for us to give. Otherwise, if we give you more, we'll have less. When we make more and we grow more, we can all have more—some of the increase can go to you. But the other thing is, once there is more, we have to make sure that morality prevails. Morality is the key. Last year, we made more and we grew more, but we didn't give you more. All of the increase was kept for ourselves. That was wrong. The same thing happened the year before, and the year be-fore that. We have to convince everyone to accept morality and next year give some of the increase to you.

So we all have to wait. And while we're waiting, we have to be careful. Be-cause we know you. We know there are some who are the violent ones, the ones who won't wait. These are the destroyers. Their children are dying, sick—no medicine, no food, nothing on their feet, no place to live, vomiting on the streets. These are the ones who are drunk with rage, with their lust for revenge. We know what they've planned. We've imagined it all a thousand times. We imagine it every single day. The sound at the door—that odd "crack"—the splintering sound—then they break through the lock and run in yelling, pull us up from where we're gathered at the family table, having our meal, pull our old parents out from the bathroom, pull the little ones up from their beds, then they line us all up together in the hall, slap us, kick us, curse us, scream at us, our parents bleeding our children bleeding, pulling the children's clothes from the closets, the toys from the shelves, ripping the pictures off the walls. What will they do to us? we ask each other. What?—are they giving all the homes to people who now are living in the streets?

Then terrible stories—shops torn apart, random killing, the old professor given a new job: cleaning toilets at the railroad station.

It seems impossible—can that possibly have happened? A mob of criminals—or unemployed louts—people who a year ago were starving in slums? Are they going to be running the factories now, the schools, everything, the whole country, the whole world?

We have to prevent it, although the violent ones are everywhere already, teaching the poor that the way things are is not God-given, the world could be run for their benefit. And so we have to set up a special classroom for the poor, to teach the poor some bloody lessons from the past—all the crimes committed by the violent rebels, the followers of Marx. Shove the lessons of history down their throats. History, history. The crimes. The oppression. The famines. The disasters. Teach the poor that they must never try to seize power for themselves, because the rule of the poor will always be incompetent, and it will always be cruel. The poor are bloodthirsty. Uneducated. They don't have the skills. For their own sake, it must never happen. And they must understand that the dreamers, the idealists, the ones who say that they love the poor, will all become vicious killers in the end, and the ones who claim they can create something better will always end up by creating something worse. The poor must understand these essential lessons, chapters from history. And if they don't understand them, they must all be taken out and shot. Inattention or lack of comprehension cannot be allowed.

And in places where we find that the classroom is avoided, we must warn the poor that even the innocent are going to get hurt. We can't accept violence against the symbols of law, the soldiers, the police. We have to kill the ones who commit those crimes. But if the violence goes on for a long time, then the ones whose older sisters and brothers we've already killed may be so full of rage that they don't fear death. And to control those people, we may have to go farther—cut out their tongues, cut up their faces, force them to watch us torture their parents, watch the soldiers rape their children. It's the only way to control people who don't fear death.