Last Month At The HOC

Transcription

1 Volume 23 Number 4 Last Month At The HOC We have had more multiple-speaker meetings than usual in the last year or so. Most recently, in November we hosted representatives from three of Denver's most popular atheist groups. Denver Atheists First up was Ferris, president of the Denver Atheists. He spoke in general terms about the group, for which he assumed responsibility a couple of years ago. Their popularity has held steady through a change in leadership, and they have recently started their own book discussion group. Their Breakfast With Atheists meetings seem to be especially well-attended. Ferris intimated that the group's main function, at least so far, has been to provide a regular occasion on which atheists can gather with others of like mind. He gave the impression that the group has a large percentage of science-minded individuals, himself included, and a glance at the events linked to their Meetup.com website bears this out: Cafe Scientifique, discussion of a Dawkins book, and several events at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science were featured recently. Metro State Atheists Next up was Joel Guttormson, president of a very active student group, the Metro State Atheists. Joel spoke about his group and its activities, especially an uproarious trip to the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Saddles on dinosaurs, if you can believe it. On this evening, though, Joel's enthusiasm was mostly directed at a concept that he champions: attract the Center For Inquiry (CFI) to establish a presence in Denver. CFI is perhaps the most prominent american think tank devoted to reason, science, freethinking, skeptical inquiry, secularism, or any combination of those and related topics. From their headquarters in Amherst, NY, they publish magazines and books, organize affilated group in cities worldwide, and generally fight the good fight. The Metro State Atheists are the only CFI presence in Denver, and Joel December 2009 would like to see that changed. So would we! DAFT The Denver Atheists and Freethinkers (DAFT) have the closest ties to the HOC of any other local group. In fact, DAFT is one of the founders (along with the HOC and a third, smaller group) of our very successful book discussion group. Jeanette Norman, who founded DAFT just a couple of years ago, spoke about the group, its activities, and its personality. As did Ferris for his Denver Atheists, she characterized her group as being a welcoming haven for non-believers. They typically meet twice per month, once at a restaurant for talk over food and drink, and once at a private home for movie night. Movie nights themselves involve eating and drinking as well, but they also include films or videos culled from the best of Blockbuster (Life of Brian) and the internet (Submission). Jeanette also mentioned the Rally for the Separation of Church and State that she organized last year, and that took place on the steps of the Capitol downtown, at the height of the political season. The event may have been lightly attended, but hey, it got her written up in the New York Times! Those of us who know Jeanette doubt that will be her only 15 minutes of fame. Newsletter Editor: Richard A. Berg Contributors: Trish Bangert Greg Reeder Thanks to: Barbara Sannwald Letters to the Editor: HOC Newsletter Editor P.O. Box Glendale, CO

2 December Events December is the busiest month the HOC has seen in years, with no fewer than four events taking place, double our usual number. Meet the AHA President Only rarely does the leader of our parent organization, the American Humanist Association, stop in Denver long enough to meet our members. Thursday, December 3, is one of those rare occasions! David Niose, a Massachusetts Humanist who took over the presidency of the AHA this year, will be in town for just a couple of days, but we managed to schedule a meet, greet, and eat with him. The event will take place at 8:00 P.M. on Thursday, December 3, at the restaurant "Brio" in Cherry Creek. We will meet in a side room of the restaurant, which is located at 2500 East 1st Avenue, next to Cherry Creek Mall. The regular menu for the restaurant, a national chain with very good mediterranean cuisine, will be available, although dining is not mandatory. After dinner, David will speak for a few minutes about his plans for the AHA. (The late hour for the meeting with David was chosen because of an earlier talk that day, which several of our members will likely attend. Well-known skeptic Joe Nickell is to appear at 4:30 P.M. at 900 Auraria Parkway. More information is available through the Facebook page of the Metro State Atheists.) Special Book Discussion We had intended to forego our monthly book discussion in December in favor of our Humanlight Celebration (see below). But when we realized that our December meeting would cover the latest book by local favorite Vic Stenger, we started to miss our monthly literary fix, and we scheduled a special-dateand-time discussion on that book. The discussion will take place at 2:00 in the afternoon on Saturday, December 12, at a private home in east-central Denver, near Colorado Blvd. and Alameda Ave. We plan to ride our discussion high right into Stenger's talk the next day. To improve the administration of our book discussions, they are now coordinated from a separate location within Meetup.com called the Denver Humanist Book Group. To join this discussion, send to barbara@frii.com, or seek out that Meetup.com site. December Meeting Boulder physicist and author Vic Stenger will talk at our December meeting in Colvin Commons on Sunday, December 13. As always, a potluck will take place at 6:00, with the talk at 7:00. Professor Stenger last spoke at an HOC meeting about two years ago. Increasingly prolific, he has published two books since that talk, and has promised to speak about both, and of course to take questions. Those HOC members who are not themselves physicists and that makes all of us, I think need not worry about getting lost in the intricacies of thermodynamics and double-slit experiments. Stenger's most recent book, The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason, is an extremely readable and wide-ranging volume in which the words Qur'an, meditation, and polygamy are all indexed more often than quantum mechanics. Humanlight Celebration The HOC's annual Humanlight celebration, our version of the ubiquitous winter-solstice celebration, will take place on Sunday, December 20, at 4:00 P.M. The location will be the same private home used for our book discussions. To RSVP (required for this event), or for more information, see our Meetup.com website, or call Richard at After some hanging around chatting, we will sit down to a potluck dinner. The HOC will provide a main course (involving meat). To allow everyone to organize other dishes, please list what you intend to bring in your Who's Coming reply on our Meetup.com website, or let us know at the above telephone number. After dinner, we will again hold an optional Humanist paperback book exchange, with the topics wide open. Bring more than one for exchange if you wish. Later, we will share Humanist quotes from... anyone you want, even yourself! 2

3 Humanist Discussions The Family by Jeff Sharlet Our regular Humanist Discussion correspondent, Joan Chase, is taking the month off. To fill in, we welcome the first piece by Trish Bangert, even giving it a two-page treatment. by Trish Bangert The Family, in its most innocuous reading, explores the influence of fundamentalism on the U.S. government. In its most sinister reading, The Family exposes a campaign by religious fundamentalists to take over the government of the United States and put in its place a theocracy governed by the chosen few, who will rule in accordance with their own understandings of first-century Christian religion. The author of The Family, Jeff Sharlet, researched fundamentalism for years. His most intimate experience with the Family was a stay in a Family house called Ivanwald in Arlington, Virginia. That building was classified by the Family as a church, but recently ordered by the IRS to start paying taxes. Sharlet exposes and criticizes the Family, but seems to do so with a strange mixture of admiration and terror that makes this book fascinating to read and also as a subject for discussion. The Family, sometimes called the Fellowship, is an association of men who believe, not in the compassionate and kind Jesus of our naive childhood movies, but rather in an aggressive and vengeful Christ who will establish through the Family a literal kingdom on earth. The members of the Family see themselves as blindly obedient soldiers of Christ. These soldiers, however, are bound by no Geneva convention or other earthly rules. They consider themselves above the law. They openly admire the tactics of Hitler, Stalin and Ghengis Khan. Our discussion group agreed that not a single one of us would be able to gain entry into the Family, one pre- requisite for entry being an unquestioning loyalty. In some simplistic ways, the Family is just another gang of fascist thugs. The problem for the rest of us is that these fascist thugs have, and are gaining more, real power. In order to help the readers understand the existence and present beliefs of the Family, Sharlet travels back to the beginnings of the United States to explore our uniquely religious underpinnings. The United States was founded by Puritans, who were followers of John Calvin. The central tenet in a Calvinist belief system is the concept of divine destiny. Under this theory of predestination, certain individuals are chosen and destined to succeed, and will be admitted to an exclusive heaven. There is nothing that anyone can do to alter that scheme. The play is written the actors need only act out their parts. There was discussion within our group as to whether the unchosen players have ever had any evil intent. The view was expressed that many of the foot soldiers in the crusade for Christ were good-hearted people who did not share the desire of their leaders for a theocracy. The foot soldiers in any movement generally work for little or nothing, while the chosen ones like the tips of a pyramid scheme get the power and the wealth. According to Sharlet, the founder of the fundamentalist movement of today was Jonathan Edwards, an Eighteenth Century preacher who shaped fundamentalism out of traditional Calvinist beliefs and American radicalism in the Great Awakening, an evangelistic revivalist movement. An egalitarian movement, the Great Awakening emphasized personal relationships with Christ and an aggressive certainty that imposed the chosen ones beliefs on all others. These tenets were picked up a hundred years later in another revivalist movement led by a man named Charles Grandison Finney. Formerly a lawyer, Finney preached a religion in which acceptance of Jesus meant acceptance of the authority of Christ without question, and an instantaneous knowledge of right and wrong that was not subject to questioning by others. -- continued -- 3

4 Humanist Discussions (continued) In the Twentieth Century, the cudgel of fundamentalism was taken up by Abraham Vereide. Vereide converted fundamentalism into an elitist movement in which first century Christianity was married to capitalism. Only certain (successful) men were called as soldiers of Christ to establish Christ s dominance on earth. Vereide s followers included prominent antisemitics such as Henry Ford, while his associates included Nazis and their followers, now converted to Christian Cold Warriors. Together with Billy Graham and Frank Carlton (R-Ka), Vereide arranged the first Presidential Prayer Breakfast, subsequently attended by every President from Eisenhower through Obama. Vereide's heyday was also the time when God was added to the Pledge of Allegiance and the nation s currency, a fact which most of us found surprising. Following fundamentalism into the latter half of the Twentieth Century, Sharlet describes the Family s intervention into the politics of other countries, including Vietnam, Haiti and Costa Rico, to name just a few. Vereide and especially his successor Doug Coe worked to spread the influence of the family around the globe. Our group discussed whether China might be fertile ground for fundamentalism, with its emphasis on military and economic power. It was also pointed out that the foreign policy advocated by the Family promoted values that were basically at odds with real American values. Most frightening to the Group perhaps because it is so current and not relegated to the forgotten bin of history is Sharlet s description of the Family today. Led by Doug Coe, the Family has created prayer cells across the country and the World. Our group found it fascinating that the Family adopted the organizational strategies of its purported enemies, the Communists. In a similar vein, it was noted in our group that the KKK had used the trappings and organization of the Catholic Church. Somebody also pointed out that cells of this sort thrive on personal relationships and camaraderie. We discussed the secret nature of the Family as it exists now and Coe s decision to go underground. It was noted that the book did name names, but relatively few out of the 350 key people reported by Sharlet to be associated with the Family. It was also noted by one of us that the secretive nature of the Family Sharlet describes it as invisibility is even more frightening because it is difficult to discern the true extent and legality of their activities. We mentioned the difficulty of distinguishing between members of the Family and politicians who simply did not want to be described as anti-christian. One of us pointed out that the Family, and the desire to join the family values bandwagon, is pushing together politicians from both ends of the political spectrum. The central belief of the Family, Sharlet's book maintains, is unquestioning devotion to Jesus Christ. This devotion manifests itself as a strident struggle to establish a world-wide theocracy that imposes belief of Jesus and his tenets as interpreted by the chosen elite within the Family on everyone. This is summed up in Sharlet s formula Jesus + 0 = X, where 0 is anything and X is power with a purpose, a sort of Christian jihad. In the end, Sharlet says, fundamentalism is a simple but flawed answer to the age-old question of suffering and uncertainty. Obedience to Jesus, married to military and economic power, provides salvation to the true believers it fixes the status quo in a certainty that promises to ease pain and banish fear, loneliness and desire. Our group agreed that the book was important and is playing a role in starting discussions. One member mentioned that there is an effort to use existing software to link together information about fundamentalist groups, such as the Family. Another member pointed out that journalists have read the book and it is spurring them to ask questions. The concern was expressed that the book confirms Muslim fears that the United States is conducting another Christian crusade against them. In the end, it was agreed that transparency and investigative reporting such as are exemplified in The Family make up the best way to fight back against fundamentalism. 4

5 Around the HOC The last few months have seen stirrings in the energy underlying the, and we hope this energy morphs into momentum going into the new decade. Out with the Naughts, in with the Teens! HOC Board We have a new board member, and this one is a ringer: Ken Roberts was once the HOC president, as well as its newsletter editor, and spoke at one of our monthly meetings earlier this year. It's great to have Ken back on board again, and I hope that some of the other dozens of individuals who have contributed to the running of the HOC over the last 30 years will follow his example. We have now met our usual complement of 9 Board members. But, truth be told, two of these have expressed their desire to leave the board as soon as we find their replacements. So, any reader who is interested in helping steer this organization in the coming years is encouraged to stop by one of our Board meet- ings, which take place at 4:00 P.M. on the day of our regular monthly meeting, in a nearby conference room, to check us out. Media Announcements After struggling for years to develop a strategy and process for disseminating the announcements of our events to the local media, we have fallen back on the usual technique: toss the responsibility onto a single energetic volunteer. In this case, one of our newer board members, Margherita DeTogni, has become our Media Coordinator, and has already gotten us writeups in the Denver Post Hub section and elsewhere. Thanks Margherita! Anyone reading this who would like to help out with her efforts is requested to speak up at our next event. Humanitarian Events Well, we have none scheduled yet. We would like to get involved in charity, and we hope that somebody in our group with experience in these matters will get in touch with us. Call Richard at

6 Volume 23 Number 4 *** SHORT NOTICE *** Editor: Richard Berg December 2009 Thursday, December 3: Meet the AHA President David Niose took over the presidency of our parent group, the American Humanist Association, earlier this year. He will only be in town for a couple of days, but we managed to arrange a meet, greet, and eat at a restaurant, Brio Tuscan Grill (in Cherry Creek) on Thursday at 8:00. See inside for more information. Saturday, December 12: Humanist Book Discussion This special edition of our monthly book discussion group will meet at 2:00 on a Saturday, instead of our usual time. We will discuss Vic Stenger's latest book, The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason, in preparation for his talk the following day. See inside for more information. Sunday, December 13: General Meeting, Vic Stenger Vic Stenger is a physicist and popular author, living in Boulder, and a favorite of the HOC, where he last spoke about two years ago. He will discuss his most recent two books. See inside for more information. As always, we will meet in Colvin Commons, behind the First Universalist Church at Colorado and Hampden. Potluck Supper at 6:00 PM, followed by the program at 7:00 PM. Sunday, December 20: Humanlight Celebration! Our annual solstice-time celebration is nearing. See inside for more information. Join the! Annual Dues Single Member Sustaining Member From: P.O. Box Glendale, CO To join or renew, please write a check made out to and send to the address at right. To: 6