Congress Authorizes Another Unconstitutional Giveaway for Religious Worship in Latest Coronavirus Stimulus

American Atheists

Washington D.C.—Today, the religious equality watchdog organization American Atheists condemned Congress’s failure to include necessary constitutional protections in the $484 billion aid bill passed by the House of Representatives. As a result, the additional $310 billion injected into the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program can unconstitutionally fund religious worship.

“Congress must include these First Amendment protections in any future stimulus bills, particularly after the Small Business Administration weakened its own regulations, allowing the original $350 billion in stimulus money to fund religious worship,” said Alison Gill, Vice President for Legal and Policy at American Atheists.

Longstanding SBA regulations had prevented “businesses principally engaged in teaching, instructing, counselling or indoctrinating religion or religious beliefs, whether in a religious or secular setting” from receiving business or economic disaster loans. However, with its guidance on the Paycheck Protection Program from the CARES Act, SBA suddenly indicated in early April that it would “decline to enforce these subsections.”

“If the SBA won’t do its job and protect the Constitution, Congress must finally step in,” said Nick Fish, President of American Atheists. “Congress is rushing to replenish Paycheck Protection Program funds after countless businesses were unable to access these loans to preserve jobs. What we don’t know is how many well-heeled mega churches were able to secure government money to pay their pastors’ salary, while small businesses were left out in the cold.” 

“Thousands and thousands of our supporters have warned Congress that these stimulus bills fail to adequately protect the constitutional separation of religion and government,” said Gill. “Accountability, transparency, and adherence to the Constitution are critical, especially in the face of a crisis.”

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Atheists ‘have higher IQs’: Their Intelligence ‘makes them more likely to dismiss religion as irrational and unscientific’

Atheists ‘have higher IQs’: Their intelligence ‘makes them more likely to dismiss religion as irrational and unscientific’

• Research found those with higher IQs more likely to dismiss religion
• Another drawback to being religious, or at least Christian is losing out on top jobs

By Daniel Bates

Atheists tend to be more intelligent than religious people, according to a US study.

Researchers found that those with high IQs had greater self-control and were able to do more for themselves – so did not need the benefits that religion provides.

They also have better self esteem and built more supportive relationships, the study authors said.

New evidence: A study has concluded that religious people are less intelligent than non-believers

The conclusions were the result of a review of 63 scientific studies about religion and intelligence dating between 1928 and last year.

In 53 of these there was a ‘reliable negative relation between intelligence and religiosity’.

In just 10 was that relationship positive.

Even among children, the more intelligent a child was the more probable it was that they would shun the church.

In old age the same trend persisted as well, the research showed.

The University of Rochester psychologists behind the study defined religion as involvement in some or all parts of a belief.

They defined intelligence as the ‘ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience’.

In their conclusions, they said: ‘Most extant explanations (of a negative relation) share one central theme – the premise that religious beliefs are irrational, not anchored in science, not testable and, therefore, unappealing to intelligent people who ‘know better’.

‘Intelligent people typically spend more time in school – a form of self-regulation that may yield long-term benefits.

‘More intelligent people getting higher level jobs and better employment and higher salary may lead to higher self-esteem, and encourage personal control beliefs.’

Study co-author Jordan Silberman, a graduate student of neuroeconomics at the University of Rochester, said: ‘Intelligence may lead to greater self-control ability, self-esteem, perceived control over life events, and supportive relationships, obviating some of the benefits that religion sometimes provides.’

Detailed: The research analysed 63 surveys comparing intelligence levels and religious beliefs between 1928 and 2012

Research from the UK last week showed another drawback to being religious, or at least Christian – you lose out in the race for top jobs.

Official figures show nearly one in four people who have no religious belief now live in homes headed by someone with a senior executive job or a place in one of the professions.

But well under a fifth of Christians are employed in the best-paid and most influential jobs or are married to someone who is, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The last census, carried out in March 2011, showed a fall in the number of people that call themselves Christian in the UK.

Christian numbers in England and Wales, including children, fell by 4.1 million in a decade to 33.2 million.

However there was a 45 per cent rise over the same 10 years in numbers who say they have no religion, to 14.1 million.

New Law in Saudi Arabia Labels All Atheists as Terrorists

New Law in Saudi Arabia Labels All Atheists as Terrorists

By Elliot Hannon

President Obama walks with Prince Khaled Bin Bandar Bin Abdul Aziz (C-R), Emir of Riyadh, in Riyadh on March 29, 2014.

Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

No one has ever accused Saudi Arabia of being the Holland of the Middle East. You know, Holland, the country of unbridled liberalism where they encourage euthanization via legal pot brownie consumption. But, a recent report from Human Rights Watch shows new laws in Saudi Arabia have taken the country a step back and bulldozed what little public space there is for dissent in the country. The changes, predictably, come under the guise of “fighting terror.” And what’s the number one terrorist threat facing the country? Atheists, apparently.

Included under the terrorism provisions is the ban on “calling for atheist thought in any form.” That’s Article 1, in fact. It’s a rather strange headliner to the whole who-is-a-terrorist question considering atheism doesn’t historically raise many red flags in the pantheon of global terrorism. The provisions, which are almost imperceptibly broad, “create a legal framework that appears to criminalize virtually all dissident thought or expression as terrorism,” according to HRW.

And dissent is of rising concern in the country. Here’s why from the Independent: “The new laws have largely been brought in to combat the growing number of Saudis travelling to take part in the civil war in Syria, who have previously returned with newfound training and ideas about overthrowing the monarchy.”

Atheists can’t be Republicans | The secular have no place in today’s GOP — and libertarian atheists should realize that now

Atheists can’t be Republicans

The secular have no place in today’s GOP — and libertarian atheists should realize that now

By CJ Werleman

Enlarge (Credit: AP/Reuters/J. Scott Applewhite/Manuel Balce Ceneta/Jonathan Ernst/Stacy Bengs/WDG Photo via Shutterstock/Salon)

We atheists like to chastise the religious for their child-like belief in an imaginary friend, but, equally, the time has come for the atheist movement to grow up. It’s understood that the so-called new atheist movement began at the start of the new millennium with the mainstream emergence of luminaries Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others.

For much of the first decade of the new century, the atheist movement behaved like a curious child in search of meaning to its own existence. Now that the child is a teenager on its way to adulthood, it needs to start acting like a grown up. The atheist movement comprises more than 2,000 groups and organizations in the U.S. today, but the movement, in composition and purpose, has failed to establish a coherent cause outside of validating non-belief and offering platitudes towards protecting the separation of church and state. Another thing one notices with the atheist movement is the fact it is predominantly upwardly middle-class, white and male. Sikivu Hutchinson writes, in her essay “Prayer Warriors and Freethinkers”: “If mainstream freethought and humanism continue to reflect the narrow cultural interests of white elites who have disposable income to go to conferences then the secular movement is destined to remain marginal and insular.”

The movement has an image problem. An image that isn’t helped by the ceaseless and over-simplified fear-mongering over Islamic terrorism from the likes of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins — rhetoric that not only ignores our long history of foreign policy blunders in the Middle East, but also echoes the neo-conservatives, the Israel lobby and the entire right-wing echo chamber. Nathan Lean, author of “The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims,” writes, “The New Atheists became the new Islamophobes, their invectives against Muslims resembling the rowdy, uneducated ramblings of backwoods racists rather than appraisals based on intellect, rationality and reason.”

It’s time for the movement to address bigger and real issues, and the biggest issue of our time is income inequality. Of all the developed nations, the U.S. has the most unequal distribution of income. In the past decade, 95 percent of all economic gains have gone to the top 1 percent. A mere 400 individuals own one-half of the entire nation’s wealth. Meanwhile, median household income keeps falling, and our poverty levels resemble that of the Great Depression era. In other words, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is being decimated. Atheists like to talk about building a better world, one that is absent of religiosity in the public square, but where are the atheist groups on helping tackle the single biggest tear in the fabric of our society — wealth disparity?

They are nowhere. Its absence on the most pressing moral issue of our time makes it difficult for the movement to establish meaningful partnerships with other moral communities. To remain white, middle class, intellectually smug and mostly apolitical will not only serve to alienate atheism from minorities and the poor, but will also ensure it remains a politically impotent movement that is incapable of building a better America. Growing up means less time and money spent on self-righteous billboard campaigns, and, instead, more resources allocated to fighting the political conditions that have caused this nation’s middle class and infrastructure to resemble that of a hyper-religious Third World nation.

Christopher Hitchens wrote that the intellectual advantage of atheism is its ability to reject unprovable assertions on face value. It’s why we don’t believe in the supernatural. Equally, it’s why we shouldn’t believe in a myth that is causing greater harm than creationism — the myth of trickle-down economics, which remains the economic blueprint for today’s Republican Party, despite the world’s leading economists lampooning it as an abject failure. In the four decades that followed FDR’s New Deal, our middle class became the envy of the world. In an op-ed titled “Abject Failure of Reaganomics,” Robert Parry writes, “It was the federal government that essentially created the Great American Middle Class — from the New Deal policies of the 1930s through other reforms of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, from Social Security to Wall Street regulation to labor rights to the GI Bill to the Interstate Highway System to the space program’s technological advances to Medicare and Medicaid to the minimum wage to civil rights.” But then came the period of Reagan’s holy trinity — privatization, deregulation, and free trade. Now here we are today — facing the largest economic crisis since the 1930s. Atheists are secularists, and a secularist cannot be a member of today’s Republican Party. You’re either one or the other.

You cannot be both. Now, I am acutely aware that a great number of atheists identify with the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, but this is comical. A lack of evidence is why atheists don’t believe in God. But to believe in libertarianism is in itself an act of faith, because libertarianism has not only never been tried anywhere, but an overwhelming number of economists reject the philosophy as little more than “capitalism with the gloves off” — a condition that would only exacerbate the winner-takes-all society we have today. If an atheist is looking for political evidence, the evidence we have is that not only is today’s Republican Party a theocratic sponsor, it’s also a party that has been proven wrong on just about everything in the past three decades or more: from evolution to climate change, trickle-down economics, that the Iraqis would greet us as liberators, that the Bush tax cuts would lead to jobs. It didn’t. It added $3 trillion to the debt.

They were wrong that the stimulus would trigger inflation, that austerity stimulates an economy and that universal healthcare is worse than slavery. It’s time for the atheist movement to get off the political sidelines. It’s time to truly help this country become a better place to live for all its citizens. The recent Values Voter Summit demonstrated that the likely 2016 GOP frontrunners and its base wish to transform America’s secular state into a tyrannical theocracy — a nirvana absent gays, liberals, immigrants, Muslims and science books. If the atheist movement doesn’t evolve into a politically agitated, unified and mobilized Secular Left, then the Christian Right might just get its way. In fighting for truly meaningful social justice, such as income equality and the rights of minorities, the movement can form partnerships with communities that share common causes. For instance, building a bridge with certain religious communities that are equally concerned with fighting against class inequality and social injustice.

This would broaden the appeal of the atheism movement, and might just get people to like us a little more. Walter Bristol, an atheist interfaith activist, wrote, “Economic inequality is one of the most imminent issues facing Western society today. Any progressive movement that chooses to dismiss it is and will be rightfully dismissed themselves.” Atheists are the fastest growing minority in the country. We now have the critical mass to shape elections and policy. Either we seize our potential political power, thus acting like the grown up in the room, or we can continue to focus on the ‘pettier’ or issues, thus continuing to act like a petulant child.
CJ Werleman is the author of Crucifying America, and God Hates You. Hate Him Back. You can follow him on Twitter:  @cjwerleman

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• Atheists can’t be Republicans (salon.com)
• Is Obama a secret atheist? Richard Dawkins thinks so (examiner.com)
• Richard Dawkins Discusses Science, Religion, and Pope Francis on Real Time with Bill Maher (patheos.com)
• Richard Dawkins Talks Religion, Science, and Why He Thinks Obama’s an Atheist with Bill Maher (mediaite.com)
• atheism in Egypt (angryarab.net)
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CHRISTIAN HYPOCRISY: “This is what hypocrites look like!”

CHRISTIAN HYPOCRISY: “This is what hypocrites look like!”

by AlwaysQuestionAuthority

 

h/t: The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (Official)

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Vatican Islam Alliance – The Crusade Against Atheism and Secularism

Vatican Islam Alliance – The Crusade Against Atheism and Secularism

Secular News Daily reports:-

The enemy of my enemy

Last week the Vatican published an extraordinary letter, of the man-bites-dog genre. The letter was from Cardinal Tauran, head of the Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and addressed simply to his “Dear Muslim friends.” Putting aside 1300 years of bitter rivalry, Cardinal Tauran called on his Muslim friends to unite with the Church to combat a common foe: you, me, and everyone else who objects to Godexpert domination of society.Cardinal Tauran warned Muslims to face up to “ a reality which Christians and Muslims consider to be of prime importance … the challenges of materialism and secularisation.” Then he got down to brass tacks:

[T]he transmission of such human and moral values to the younger generations constitutes a common concern. It is our duty to help them discover that there is both good and evil, that conscience is a sanctuary to be respected, and that cultivating the spiritual dimension makes us more responsible, more supportive, more available for the common good.

Christians and Muslims are too often witnesses to the violation of the sacred, of the mistrust of which those who call themselves believers are the target. We cannot but denounce all forms of fanaticism and intimidation, the prejudices and the polemics, as well as the discrimination of which, at times, believers are the object both in the social and political life as well as in the mass media.

There are more code words here than you can shake a stick at. “Conscience is a sanctuary to be respected” is a code word for placing God experts above the law, so they can ignore rules that apply to the rest of us because God’s commandments (as communicated by them) are superior to the common sense solutions devised by mere mortals. Thus, for example, religious organizations must be free to discriminate against Jews and same-sex married couples, whether or not the law allows anyone else to do so. “Transmission of such human and moral values to the younger generations” is a code word for taxpayer financial support for the religious brainwashing of children, teaching them that people like you and me deserve to be tortured in hell forever. “Discrimination in the mass media” is a code word for the free expression of views like those you are reading now, views which I would have a hard time publishing in, say, Iran – a state of affairs leaving Cardinal Tauran green with envy.

Protestants rebelled against a Church grown decadent and secularized

This is not the first time Christians have reached out to Islam for cooperation against a common foe. To appreciate the magnitude of the irony, it is necessary to remember that Islam burst out of Arabia in the 7^th century largely as a rebellion against a decrepit Roman empire of the east. The Arab barbarians who swept north as far as Hungary and west as far as Spain destroyed the institutions of Christian civilization as they went, replacing them with a desert offshoot of Jewish monotheism. Not until the end of the 11^thcentury did Christendom strike back, with its ultimately unsuccessful Crusades to recapture Palestine. By the time the Protestant Reformationbroke out, a neutral observer might have predicted that Islam, not Christianity, would ultimately dominate Europe. Indeed, one of the principal reasons why the Habsburg emperor Charles V failed to crush the upstart Martin Luther like a bug was that he was too busy defending Vienna itself from an Ottoman Muslim siege.The Reformation itself was in many ways a rebellion of those motivated by Godliness against a Catholic Church that had grown rich, decadent, and (worst of all) secularized. Protestant reformers sought to purify Christianity against the influence of the “Whore of Babylon.” There was low-level violence between Protestants and Catholics throughout the 16^th century, but the carnage commenced in earnest in 1618, with a dispute over whether a Catholic or a Protestant would rule Bohemia.

The resulting Thirty Years War, as it became known, was the greatest man-made disaster ever visited upon Europe, far worse than World War II. Things went poorly for the Protestant side from the outset. Not only was their man displaced from Bohemia, but the Jesuit-dominated Habsburg emperor Ferdinand II decided that this would be a great opportunity to wipe out Protestantism once and for all. Ferdinand’s generals piled up victory after victory, and it looked like he was going to succeed.

Then Protestant diplomacy kicked into gear. The 17^th century version of Cardinal Tauran persuaded the Ottoman Muslim Sultan, Murad IV, that if Ferdinand prevailed against the Protestants, the balance of power might be disrupted, and perhaps he might then turn to the east. The ploy worked, at least initially. Next thing you know, Muslim armies were drawn up alongside Protestant armies to face down a common enemy, just like the coalition the Vatican is trying to array against humanism today. In fact, the Protestant-Muslim alliance was not as farfetched as one might think; theologically, both believed in predestination of the elect, as opposed to the Catholic doctrine of free will.

People who speculate on the “what-ifs” of history have a hard time with what would have happened if the Muslim-Protestant coalition had destroyed the Habsburgs. My guess is that we’d all be praying to Allah today, since the Habsburgs were the only force that ever prevented the Muslims from overrunning the rest of Europe. What actually happened back in 1626, though, was that over on the other side of his empire Murad suffered an embarrassing defeat against the Persians, and thus hastily withdrew his armies from the Protestant camp. The abandoned Protestants then surrendered without a fight, signing a treaty at Bratislava giving Ferdinand nearly everything he wanted.

Are Catholics getting ready to say ‘Yes’?

Ferdinand proceeded to squander his success, largely because the Jesuits persuaded him that his brilliant military commander wasn’t religious enough, but that’s another story. Today’s story is the travesty of Christians once again trying to ally with Muslims against a common enemy. When Cardinal Tauran gushes about the common “human and moral values” of Islam and Christianity, is he talking about polygamy? The Church prattles on until it’s blue in the face about marriage being between one man and one woman, yet is now delighted to ally with those who say no, it’s between one man and four women. Is he talking about genital mutilation? Al-Azhar, the Muslim equivalent of the Vatican, says it’s a critical part of Islam; when the Cardinal urges the rights of conscience to defy laws of the state, does he mean the anti-mutilation laws as well?Is he talking about evolution? The Catholic Church, unlike many Protestants, today acknowledges the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution. Islam most emphatically does not. Since this is all about cynical politics rather than moral principles, would the Church be willing to throw evolution over the side in order to cement a more perfect union against humanism with its Muslim allies?

For your sake and mine, let’s hope this latest Christian-Muslim joint venture turns out as poorly as the one back in 1626.

Related articles:

1. Fischer: Only Difference Between Liberals and Terrorists Is That “So Far [Liberals] Haven’t Taken to Killing People”
2. At Ralph Reed Confab, Obama Portrayed as Enemy of Faith and Freedom
3. Confused critics: Are you ‘an enemy of what is good about America’?
4. Religious Right Makes Michael Bloomberg Enemy Number One For His “Insult To God”
5. Boykin: There Can Be No Interfaith Dialogue Between Muslims and Christians

Luis Granados is a Washington, DC attorney and a student of the scandals of religious history. His weekly God Experts blog relates a current headline or anniversary to a curious episode from the past. Someday, he will publish a book called Damned Good Company, a collection of stories of humanist heroes through the ages who bucked the prevailing God experts.

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