General
The question “Do you believe in God?” is absurd, because it presupposes an existence. The correct question is “Do you believe there is a god?”
In addition, ask these “pro-life” women with children how many admissions they paid, when pregnant, every time they went to a movie, concert, sporting event, or museum. Only one? “Wait a second!” I would reply. “If a fetus is a human being, as you believe, why aren’t you paying at least two admissions? You’re hypocrites and fools.”
Stephen M. Goldberg
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
Four Horsemen
I think Robyn E. Blumner goes too far in her editorial “Give the Four Horsemen (and Ayaan) Their Due. They Changed America” (FI, December 2020/January 2021). She claims that the main reason for the decline in United States’s religiosity between 2007 and now is due to the five authors’ (Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris, and Ali) books in support of atheism. I agree they have played some role but probably a very small one. I have no idea what caused the religiosity decline. One could just as easily argue it was the 2008 U.S. presidential election of Barack Obama or possibly the creation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, a.k.a. Obamacare) in 2010. Why would I suggest the PPACA? Two reasons: First, religious persons often pray for divine intervention when they get sick, and the PPACA provided a non-divine solution against costly, sometimes-bankrupting health care. Second, a large portion of the U.S. uninsured population (17 percent before PPACA) took advantage and signed up or were added to Medicaid, so now there is only 10 percent uninsured in the United States. Or perhaps the internet and social media has played a role, giving people a group to socialize with outside of religious entities. To measure why people moved from religion to nonreligion, one should do a detailed survey (with questions about what caused their change: the books, the PPACA, President Obama, church scandals, coming to their senses, not growing up in a religious home, or give own reason[s]). I’ve read many of the Free Inquiry “What was your Pivot Point” and Why-I-Left-Religion type articles as well as Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind by Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola, and I don’t recall any people leaving religion behind because they read one of those five authors’ books.
Kevin Wolf
Chicago, Illinois
Regarding Robyn E. Blumner’s editorial in the December 2020/January 2021 issue of Free Inquiry: I posit that, along with the works that she cited, the scholarly works of author Bart D. Ehrman (at least the New-York-Times-Best-Sellers among them, and possibly much more of his literary output) probably had a significant impact on the increasing numbers of more-thoughtful believers who have, since 2006 or so, jumped ship.
I first heard a radio interview with him on NPR, circa 2005 or 2006, and I recall that his works came, in succession, to be best-sellers soon after that.
But regardless of the timing and its possible relevance (or lack thereof) to Ms. Blumner’s assertion(s), I want to make sure that other readers are aware of Dr. Ehrman’s work, as I “believe” that his books/publications may be even more effective than the cited authors’ works, owing to the former’s matter-of-fact and congenial tone.
Peter M. Lambert
Cameron Park, California
Tom Flynn responds:
I have good news for Kevin Wolf and Peter M. Lambert. While one seldom sees the works of the Horsemen and Bart D. Ehrman cited as reasons for leaving religion by Free Inquiry readers, they are quite frequently so cited by younger atheists and humanists, much of whose writing is to be found online. Part of it, I think, is simply generational: many FI readers had made their decisions to reject religion before these books appeared. (See the “Pivot Point” submissions that appear in this issue under the subheading “One Book Did It”: the author most often cited is Bertrand Russell!) I’ve read literally dozens of personal accounts by younger writers who cite Dawkins’s The God Delusion, Hitchens’s god Is Not Great, or The End of Faith and later books by Sam Harris as the specific trigger for their loss of faith. (Dan Dennett’s excellent Breaking the Spell is not cited so much; perhaps it was too theoretical in comparison with its more polemic counterparts.) Hirsi Ali’s Infidel is similarly often cited by ex-Muslims online. Ehrman’s numerous works tend to be cited among online writers who recently left mainstream Christianity, whether for liberal religious organizations like the Unitarian Universalist Association or for various strands of humanism. From personal experience, I well recall the culture shift that begin with Harris’s End of Faith in 2004. The impact of several years when the Horsemen’s books enjoyed feature positioning in bookstores (and were even conspicuously shelved in airport bookstores, for crying in the sink!) should not be underestimated.
Moving Past Roe
Tom Flynn’s excellent op-ed (“Moving Past Roe,” FI, December 2020/January 2021) concerning the imminent end of Roe after almost a half century contains much valuable information. His brief summaries of four recent statements on the subject are especially useful.
Furthermore, Flynn appropriately places some of the blame for the demise of Roe on us seculars, as well as moderate pro-choice leaders and abortion-rights activists who failed to mobilize support from sympathetic religionists and committed secularists.
He even names the Center for Inquiry and the Secular Coalition for America as guilty parties. However, he should have included the American Humanist Association, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the National Organization for Women in the category of those who should have done much more in supporting the abortion-rights cause.
But the major omissions from Flynn’s roster of culprits are the prominent women’s reproductive rights organizations, including Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Emily’s List, and Trust Women, among others.
I can speak from experience about the monumental failure by all the organizations listed above. Over the past five years, I have published a half dozen articles in periodicals and sponsored advertisements in four major newspapers that have thoroughly documented the fundamentalist Christian zealots’ dishonesty concerning the biblical god’s sanction of abortion.
For example, my cover article in the American Atheist (2016) titled “God Is Pro-Abortion” contains all Bible verses and passages that support the conclusion in the title. And a feature article in Free Inquiry (2019), “Why Do Fundamentalists Lie about the Bible?,” includes a section on abortion rights that summarizes the information in the more detailed preceding article.
Three years ago, in collaboration with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, I sponsored a full-page advertisement titled “What Does the Bible Really Say about Abortion?” that was printed in four large-circulation newspapers. The statement was dedicated to Anne Nicol Gaylor (1926–2015), who was a leading advocate for abortion rights early in the Roe era. She was also the principal founder of the largest democratically structured humanist/freethought organization in the United States.
Not only did I publish articles and sponsor advertisements that exposed antiabortion fundamentalists’ biblical hypocrisy, I repeatedly attempted to encourage and motivate the various women’s rights organizations to disseminate my statements. Only one activist ever accepted my proposal, but she didn’t carry out our agreed-upon project, after taking my money (which she didn’t return).
Despite my numerous proposals and requests, the women’s groups absolutely refused to confront the Christian antiabortion extremists over their well-documented biblical deceit. It is a fact that God’s perfect word, the Holy Bible, does not prohibit, condemn, or even disapprove of abortion. Rather, the biblical god is pro-abortion and history’s greatest abortionist.
It is also relevant to point out that almost all the leadership positions in the organizations named above are held by White females, several of whom are openly religious. This may help explain their reluctance to publicly assert the undeniable truth—that the Christian antiabortion agenda is premised on a biblical lie.
Unfortunately, the population that will suffer most from the failure of these various secular and women’s rights organizations to expose the egregious biblical dishonesty of the antiabortion zealots is that of non-White women.
Brian Bolton
Georgetown, Texas
Tom Flynn responds:
I thank Brian Bolton for his remarks. Though space did not permit including them in my editorial, I have called out NOW, NARAL (as it was then known), and Planned Parenthood in previous writings for their embrace of the “choice” strategy in preference to defending the moral licitness of abortion. William Saletan’s book Bearing Right, which I did cite on my op-ed, depicts these actions at a procedural level of detail.
Supreme Error
In his otherwise fine piece, Gordon Gamm (FI, “Gorsuch’s Right Decision for the Wrong Reasons,” December 2020/January 2021) confused a symptom—originalism—with the cause of our anti-democratic Supreme Court: the Constitution.
Consider:
- As Gamm notes, during Heller, SCOTUS completely ignored fourteen historians, whose brief demonstrated that the Founding Fathers gave the national militia—not “all people”—the right to bear arms. The militia had to “suppress Insurrections,” such as Shay’s Rebellion. The historians wrote: “It beggars the historical imagination to think that the same Federalist congressmen who wrote the Second Amendment were intent on protecting a popular right to insurrection,” especially slave insurrections. Their words acknowledge the anti-democratic nature of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution itself, illustrated not only in the Second Amendment but (as the historians noted) Madison’s Federalist X and numerous anti-democratic Constitutional provisions.
Gamm thus errs in saying originalism “ended” the “wisdom of the words ‘We the People’” in the Constitution as a reflection of “the Conscience of all the people, rich or poor Black or white, gay or straight.” Originalism has destructive effects, but abrogating the Constitution is not one of them. The Founding Fathers were not humanists concerned “with the welfare of those who are disadvantaged; to the Founding Fathers, “the disadvantaged” threatened property rights! More than opposing originalism, progressives must oppose the remaining anti-democratic features of the Constitution, such as the Electoral College.
- Gamm states that because “our judges make their decisions based on partisan agendas,” public confidence in SCOTUS has eroded. But he again errors in stating “Court decisions of the past were respected … because they resonated with our collective sense of justice.” As Ian Millhiser has shown (Injustices), Americans have long disdained SCOTUS’s inhumane decisions grounded in their class interests. For example, union activists criticized decisions such as Lochner (1905) and Hammer (1918) as reflecting the capitalist ideology that workers—children included!—“freely contracted ” for unlivable wages, inhumane working conditions, and long hours. During the Depression, popular songs ridiculed SCOTUS’s “four horsemen,” who refused to sanction FDR’s New Deal.
Gamm thinks that a conference of “legal scholars and distinguished teachers of Constitutional law” can somehow restore the “democratic enterprise” and public confidence in SCOTUS. But scholars cannot remedy an anti-democratic Constitution that gives the power of lifetime appointment to a president and the Senate with no input or checks from the American people. Once confirmed, justices can make nakedly partisan political decisions, such as Bush v. Gore, and insolently state—as Scalia once did regarding that awful decision—“Get over it.”
What can remedy our unrepresentative, Catholic-laden Supreme Court? A Constitutional amendment giving independent commissions the power to select well qualified justices representative of the American people. By design, amendments aren’t easy to effect. But they’re the only solution.
Mark Kolsen
Chicago, Illinois
Gordon Gamm responds:
Mark Kolsen in his letter asserts that Americans have long disdained SCOTUS’s decisions grounded in their class interests. He cites the cases of Hammer and Lochner to prove his point. However, the rulings of the Court in Hammer was overturned and repudiated in a series of decisions handed down in the late 1930s. Specifically, Hammer v. Dagenhart was overruled in 1941 in the case of United States v. Darby Lumber Co., 312 U.S. 100 (1941).
In 1934, the Supreme Court decided in Nebbia v. New York that there is no constitutional fundamental right to freedom of contract. In 1937, the Supreme Court decided West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, which signaled the end of the Lochner era by repudiating the idea that freedom of contract should be unrestricted.
In my article, I specifically made reference to Lochner as a case recognized by legal scholars as one of the ten worst decisions by the court. Consequently, the repudiation of Lochner by the Court’s later decision reflects a decision that is respected, because it resonates with our collective sense of justice. Furthermore, the overruling of Lochner recognized that freedom of contract could not be used to prevent congress from passing laws that restrained the rich and powerful from abusing people without contractual bargaining power.
One of the most respected judicial decisions in the court’s history was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s dissent in Lochner. He wrote that the case had been “decided upon an economic theory” of unfettered free market capitalism [libertarianism]. He did not agree that the Fourteenth Amendment enshrined liberty of contract and cited laws against Sunday trading and usury as examples to the contrary: Holmes emphasized that “a constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory.”
As someone who finds the proposition that the Bible, Qur’an, or various sacred texts could be the revealed word of some omnipotent deity absurd, I find Gordon Gamm’s work “A Challenge to Originalism as a Theory of Constitutional Interpretation” enormously disturbing. Textualists/originalists, even while not being trained historians, seek to understand the intent of the founders when they wrote the constitution. Originalists see their role as discovering the motivation of these now revered figures to interpret their words and reveal their intent rather than to understand how the words of the constitution most appropriately apply to current circumstances.
This obsession to look back to the founding reminds me powerfully of what motivates Sunni religious scholars or Imams who spend their lives seeking to interpret the Qur’an and the Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet). Their preoccupation with establishing Islamic law or shari’ah on the words of the Prophet and the time of the Companions delayed the evolution of a modern economy, restricted the freedom of women, and, of course, caused violent upheaval in response to the growth of fundamentalism.
That five of these Supreme Court judges are trained Roman Catholics, a tradition that has been equally reticent to “modernize,” is hardly surprising. Will progressive innovations and equal rights for all Americans be hampered by this urge to look backward to interpret the constitution?
Frederick Robinson
Oxford, Maryland
I learned a great deal about constitutional and legal interpretation from Gordon Gamm’s article in the winter issue of Free Inquiry, and I thank him for that. But I have two specific criticisms.
First, I was disappointed that he did not explain the logic that Justice Neil Gorsuch used in reaching his decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. Gorsuch wrote: “An employer who fired an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964] forbids.” A man would not be fired for marrying a woman, so a woman who does the same thing should not be; a woman who wore women’s clothes would not be fired, so a man who did the same thing should not be. Gorsuch was not trying to change the meaning of the word sex; he was using the word in the way it was commonly understood in both 1964 and 2020.
Second, I disagree with Gamm’s assumption that, “Judges can both read and give deference to the clear meaning of the words of the Constitution, as well as interpret its ambiguous meanings in terms of contemporary understandings of ‘fairness,’ without imposing their personal preferences. There are objective standards for understanding contemporary fairness that are as easy to understand as the meaning intended by people living at the time that the Constitution was written. These are objective standards, based on rational discourse.” In a society so riven as ours by a culture war between secular progressives and religious conservatives who rarely have any rational discourse with each other, it is impossible to have a consensus on the meaning of “fairness” or any other such value-laden term. Judges’ personal preferences are going to be imposed in decisions in all but the most clear-cut cases.
Homer E. Price
Sylva, North Carolina
I am writing in regards to Gordon Gamm’s article, “Gorsuch’s Right Decision for the Wrong Reasons,” and I wish to compliment your editors for running a law-review quality article in your journal.
Although the legal analysis is law journal quality, it is written in such a way that the ordinary layperson can understand and appreciate the points made therein.
Often the U.S. Supreme Court issues opinions so illogical—and inconsistent with its own prior decisions—it is little wonder that the lay public becomes confused and distraught and, consequently, loses confidence in the judicial system.
Mr. Gamm’s article deals with these issues head-on. I only wish more of the general public could appreciate the sorry state of the U.S. Supreme Court’s record in this regard, particularly in regard to certain so-called judicial philosophies, which in the very idea itself is an admission of inconsistencies in the interpretation and application of law.
The particular philosophies that Mr. Gamm exposes, so-called “originalism” and “textualism,” are based upon the inane idea that we can today know precisely what was in the minds of the drafters of the U.S. Constitution and, more absurdly, that the words they used in those days could possibly apply with exactitude to our world today. Even worse, such nonsensical “judicial philosophies” are often used as a pretext for the courts to insert their own peculiar religious points of view to please their conservative supporters.
Bravo to Free Inquiry magazine for running articles of this level of analysis and insight.
Robert Brown
Louisville, Colorado
Pivot Points
I enjoy your pieces on turning points. Mine wasn’t exciting. One advantage to being mildly autistic is that you tend more toward logic than emotion. I started questioning religion fairly young and had decided by about fifteen that there were too many contradictions and things that just didn’t make sense. As Judge Judy often says, “If it doesn’t make sense, it probably isn’t true.”
In the piece “Words of Wisdom,” the statement is made that an agnostic is someone who is afraid to be an atheist. I have to take issue with that view. I am an agnostic. That doesn’t mean I’m not sure about the existence of God; I’m quite sure he doesn’t, but I can’t prove it logically. What I learned in logic class in college is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to prove a negative. To prove God exists, you only need to prove it in one case, whereas to prove he doesn’t, you would have to prove it in all possible cases. A somewhat skewed analogy is the statement that no two snowflakes are alike. To disprove it you only have to find one pair that is alike. To prove it, you would have to compare every snowflake that has ever fallen or ever will without finding a match. Therefore, a nonbelieving agnostic is the only place I’m comfortable.
John Worsley
Lenoir, North Carolina
Euclid, Part I
The December 2020/January 2021 issue of Free Inquiry has an article about Euclid (“Euclid: The Man Who Showed Us How to Think, Part I” by D. Asoka Mendis [FI, December 2020/January 2021]). In the article, the following statement is made: “Another monumental contribution to human thought by the Greek thinkers of this period was that they were the first in history to ask the question ‘Why?’ rather than ‘How?’”
I am wondering if the author may have mixed up his hows and whys. It has been my experience that “why” questions are not good questions, because the answers to such questions imply purpose, and purpose has no place in scientific explanations. I cannot tell you why you are here, but I can tell you how you got here. I cannot tell you why a bird can fly, but I can explain the aerodynamics of the wing and tell you how birds fly. I might also say that religion is replete with answers to “why” questions. Finally, when someone asks me why my dog licks its genitals, the best answer I’ve heard is “because he can.”
William Lindsay
Bend, Oregon