Pope Criticizes Atheism in Encyclical

Save us all?

Pope Benedict XVI strongly criticized atheism in a major document released Friday, saying it had led to some of the “greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice” ever known. In his second encyclical, Benedict also critically questioned modern Christianity, saying its focus on individual salvation had ignored Jesus’ message that true Christian hope involves salvation for all.

On the last hour of his Sunday show David Goldstein asked: Do Atheists Need Sunday School? I heard the first hour on pandemic flu, but missed the rest. Did anyone catch this?

1 December, 7:00 PM

Lori Lipman Brown, of the Secular Coalition of America, will be reporting on the current issues in our nation’s capitol and what we need to do to maintain our first amendment rights. This event will take place in the Knatvold Room of the University Unitarian Church on Saturday, December 1, 2007 at 7:00 PM.

PBS has posted for online viewing the documentary “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial,” an excellent film that covers the federal case of Kitzmiller v. Dover School District.

“In 2004, the Dover school board ordered science teachers to read a statement to high school biology students suggesting that there is an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution called intelligent design—the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and therefore must have been designed by an intelligent agent. The teachers refused to comply. …Later, parents opposed to intelligent design filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the school board of violating the constitutional separation of church and state.”

It originally aired on November 13th. It’s a total runtime of about 2 hours, but it’s split up into 12 chapters online.

The New York Times today features an op-ed by Paul Davies argueing that there is no physical support for fundamental descriptions of the universe:
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Meeting minutes and updated constitution and bylaws are available online.

Members of Seattle Atheists will be wrapping gifts at local book stores over the next month. All proceeds will benefit Seattle Children’s Hospital.
Contact a board member for more information.

9 December, 5:00 PM

This annual solstice event is open to all groups in the Northwest Freethought Coalition and anyone else who is interested. It will be hosted at the University Unitarian Church on Sunday, December 9, 2007 from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM. Join us for a festive evening and get acquainted with other freethinkers!

Title: Atheism: Genetics to Geology
Author: Maurice De Bona, Jr.
Reviewed by: Marcus Dunavan

I’ll come right out and say it. This book was pretty much incoherent. The author, Mr. De Bona, Jr., often confuses laws of the physical universe with tenets of philosophy or psychology that simply cannot be applied in that way. Here’s a sample:

The law of inertia ranks high in importance when used to justify the beliefs of the atheist. The law of inertia is the prime factor governing the continuance of all functions of life. It explains in a natural way why matter tends to continue doing in the future what it is doing at present. It explains why man wants to continue his life in another everlasting world.

Granted, this is quite funny when you read it because it is so obvious that the reasoning is (generously) faulty.

The book contains an entire chapter focusing on how the brain works without commenting on atheism and another chapter on bible contradictions that looks like it was copied from a website. In fact, I was baffled by the book’s subtitle as the only mention of “Geology” that I could find was a reference to carbon dating in one sentence of the first chapter of the book.

The final paragraph of the chapter called “Conclusions” ends with:

Most religious people believe that there is a soul separate from the material body that transcends the body after death. Atheistic belief is that the body functions only with the matter it contains. There is no separate soul. There is no life after death. The purpose of life is to achieve happiness through accomplishment here on Earth.

It might seem like just a poorly edited paragraph, but it is even worse because the subject of this paragraph neither follows from the rest of the chapter, nor is it ever mentioned in the entirety of the book.

When it comes right down to it, this was the worst book I have read about atheism. Ever. At least when a religious author writes to denigrate atheism they are usually coherent (even if the logic is often flawed). Mr. De Bona should give up this kind of writing immediately.

I rate this book as a half star for two reasons.

1. It was mildly entertaining because it was so bad (Think Army of Darkness).
2. If I gave it zero stars it could have been confused with five stars and I couldn’t stand the thought of that.

Rating:

Title: The Black Humanist Experience
Edited by: Norm R. Allen Jr., 167 pages
Reviewed by: Marcus Dunavan

If you were to sit down in a bar filled with more than 20 different Black humanist men and women and ask each one of them to tell you their life story, this book might be the result. The authors candidly relate their experiences with religion and how they have come to the humanist perspective.
For many around the globe, religion is a backdrop that influences every part life. This is even truer for many people of African descent who have had to struggle with being atheists and freethinkers in a world of theists.
Although they are a diverse crowd, each author has their own piece of wisdom to share. Some are just starting down the path of humanism, while others have been free from religion their entire lives. Some have come to be humanists by embracing reason and becoming convinced that there can be no gods while others have become disenchanted with religious institutions and discouraged by the ineffectiveness of prayer.

Rating:
The essays in the book range from confused to enlightening with the majority being on the confused side of the scale. I was hoping for a book that focused more on the interaction between the both the Humanist and the Black side of the picture, but many of the essays feel more like they have been written by Humanists who just happen to be Black.
That said, the few authors that really shine (Seattle Atheists’ own Pat Inniss among them) make this book worthwhile.