Atheist Suicides To Follow Consumption Of Drumsticks

P.Z. Myers of Pharyngula alerted his readers to this passage in an editorial written by Jim Griffith, a columnist for the Times-Herald, a newspaper in Georgia:

Thanksgiving must be a terrible time for atheists. They have no God to thank.

They do not have the privilege of gathering with family and friends to express gratitude by saying: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." An atheist on his deathbed faces serious uncertainties. Gazing upward, he pleads: "Oh God, if there is a God, please save my soul -- if I have one."

Poor me. The holidays at this time of year are meaningless to me, since I acknowledge no god. How awful is my existence during the 30-odd days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Woe is me! Depression and sadness and grief!

Personally, I have never lacked for things to be thankful for; indeed, one of the things I am most thankful for is my lack of god belief. I am also thankful for my family, my friends, and that I can wake up each day with the ability to appreciate the wonders of our universe. I can marvel at the snowflake-delicate form of a dandelion seed. I can look in awe at a Hubble photograph of a distant galaxy, its hundreds of billions of stars all clustered together like a swarm of brilliant bees. And all of it, from seed to galaxy, all of reality, all of Life, the Universe, and Everything, all forged by elements obeying the laws not of Zeus or Odin or Yahweh, but of nature itself.

What does an atheist have to be thankful for? Why, everything that someone who is religious is thankful for, with one exception. I feel no need to thank God or gods for anything. But don't think for one minute that I don't feel grateful for those people and things that make my life meaningful.

Lastly, I'd be thankful if Mr. Griffith, and others like him, would keep their myopic blather to themselves.

My Annual Veterans' Day Comment

Today is the 90th anniversary of the end of the Great War.

All those years ago, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the guns finally fell silent. Millions of soldiers, massed against each other in Belgium and north-east France, in the Trentino and Venetian plain of Italy, in the Levant and Mesopotamia, and in the Balkan Peninsula stopped slaughtering each other. Today some of the last surviving veterans of the World War I gathered in London to commemorate the deaths of so many friends and foes in a war that settled... nothing.

In the United States, Vietnam veterans have rightly questioned the wisdom of the war they were conscripted to wage against an enemy whose cause was probably, historically, right - that is, besides fighting for Communism, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese were fighting for the right to determine their own destiny, free from foreign interference. But it's not the case that the Vietnam veterans fought for nothing, it's just that they were fighting for a bad cause, and that the United States was defeated. Their sacrifice wasn't meaningless, it was, as was that of the Confederate soldiers, misguided.

In contrast, the man who fought in World War I has every reason to question the meaning of his sacrifice. To what purpose the hideous deaths of millions, the mental scarring of millions more, the mangling of western civilization for four long years? Was it all for a practical stalemate where all participants, save the United States (and possibly Japan) were losers, and where the groundwork was laid for a far more destructive rematch a mere twenty years later? All the horrific places of slaughter - the Somme, Verdun, the eleven battles of the Isonzo, the frozen fields of Galicia and Poland, Gallipoli, the storm-tossed Atlantic Ocean, the skies above Flanders - where men died in vast numbers, in ways in which Hieronymus Bosch himself could scarcely imagine in his worst nightmares - were they sown with blood and sweat and flesh to produce only the seeds of racist Fascism a scant generation later?

Did these brave and terrified men die in vain? Worse, did their deaths contribute to the wholesale slaughter of innocents in numbers too great to reckon during the Second such great war?

It's Veterans' Day again. Let us honor the courage of men who take up arms to fight for causes they deem noble. Let us also reflect upon the follow of the governments who use such honorable men to wage war for dishonorable causes.

Suicide in the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

--- Siegfried Sassoon, 1918

The Work Is Far From Done

Senator Barack Obama defeated Senator John McCain last night to win the 2008 Presidential race in the U.S.

I share the euphoria of all progressives and rejoice in the election of a person of color, with a truly pragmatic, world-encompassing world-view to the most powerful leadership position on the planet. But while I am inspired by, and proud of, my country today, any such good feelings are tempered by other, sadder, realities...

(1) Anti-gay marriage measures have passed (or are likely to pass) in California, Arkansas, Florida, and Arizona. If Barack Obama's election represents a step forward in race relations, the approval of these discriminatory laws show that we are still not mature enough as a society to condemn ALL forms of bigotry. Homosexuals, Muslims, and atheists remain acceptable targets for hatred codified into law.

(2) Vile hate-merchants, patriotic poseurs, and outright criminals (Saxby Chambliss, Michele Bachmann, Ted Stevens, and Norm Coleman) have either won re-election or are likely to. In some cases, voter suppression may win out (Chambliss); in others, the stupidity of some non-repentant conservatives may cause the rest of America to suffer the consequences of a filibustering Republican minority (Coleman, Stevens). Such is the pitfall of democracy: sometimes, the "great unwashed" really are.

I could barely force myself to watch Obama make his acceptance speech, for fear that some nutjob with a sniper's rifle would assassinate him. Because while I am filled with hope, I am a student of history; and transformative figures have always been the targets of madmen.

So I shall raise my glass in a toast to a great victory for progressives. But I shall not drink too deeply: I need all of my wits, and you do, too, to continue the fight for liberalism, freedom, and equality.

The Reign Of Error Is Nearing Its End

Election Day is upon us.

I am cautiously optimistic that eight years of hell is going to come to an end tomorrow.

Hyperbole? Hardly. The regime of Bush Jr. has been a disaster, from the moment the Supreme Court pulled the rug out from under the American people in 2000, to the criminal negligence that allowed the 9/11/2001 attacks to occur, to the illegal war of choice waged against Iraq in 2003, to the "swift boating" of an honorable but hapless John Kerry in 2004, to the homicidal neglect of New Orleans during Hurrican Katrina in 2005... and on and on it goes, a laundry list of malfeasance that has finally allowed the ghost of Nixon to rest, secure in the knowledge that his administration will not go down as the most corrupt in American history.

By all accounts, Barack Obama should win tomorrow's vote. I'm not going to start celebrating yet, however; the Republican machine has been incredibly efficient at stealing elections, reversing the tactics of Tammany Hall. In the modern era it is far easier to hide voter suppression than it is to explain 10,000 votes cast in a district with only 3,000 people. And the Republicans have gotten to be quite expert at a multitude of ways to deny citizens their right to vote. I feel certain they'll pull out every trick they can tomorrow.

I understand why Obama has been constantly harping on his supporters to show up at the polls, in large numbers. If the turnout is so great, if the vote for Obama is so massive, there is no way that the Republican machine can deny what is, according to every single poll you can find, an almost certain Democratic victory.

And so I remain optimistic. Guardedly so... but we'll see.

Libby Dole Is A Hateful Bigot

It's just a little more than a day before the 2008 Presidential election. Here in North Carolina, the Kay Hagan-Elizabeth Dole race for Dole's senate seat has been continuously ugly, but only recently has Libby Dole played a card that has enraged my friends in the atheist blogosphere: she has accused her opponent of (gasp!) consorting with atheists.

I won't even get into Hagan's reply, which was almost as infuriating. But Dole's smear wasn't really against Kay Hagan; rather, it was against atheist Americans. Her ad strongly implied that the godless community is somehow un-American; that only believers in God are patriotic citizens of the United States, and that the rest of us - perhaps 15% of the population, making us the second- or third-largest "faith" group in the country - are shady, immoral betrayers of all that is good and decent and (gulp!) Christian.

It's hard enough being an atheist in the South. I have often commented on the fact that I have driven for miles without spotting a single book store, but can easily count three dozen churches, lined up one after the other like God's little white-shingled dominoes. The school I used to teach at was filled with people who had no problem with teachers conducting fund-raising for their Christian churches, or with the principal leading the faculty in prayer before staff lunches. My status there already threatened by a personality conflict I had with the principal, I couldn't voice my opinion, for fear of further tipping the balance against me (as it turned out, I may as well have opened my mouth and told them exactly what I thought of their damned un-Constitutional mixing of private faith with public money).

But this is too much. Dole has taken out the Jesse Helms playbook and tarred her opponent with one of the last acceptable appeals to fear-mongering in relation to an entire social group. As a nation, we have thankfully marched forward in how we deal with minority populations - outright bigotry against most ethnic groups has been mostly eliminated, and we are making progress in how we address our gay, lesbian, and transgendered brothers and sisters. But I will feel a hell of a lot more comfortable about our acceptance of minorities when my group - the community of the godless - is no longer characterized as the root of all immorality and treason in America.