THE

$2.50

AMERICAN ATHEIST
A Journal of Atheist News and Thought

\' STRAW GODS"

(VoI.24, No.1 O) October, 1982

,
\

********************* * * *.*.****.***** *******.**

AMERICAN ATHEISTS
is a non-profit, non-political, educational organization, dedicated to the complete and absolute separation of
state and church. We accept the explanation of Thomas Jefferson that the "First Amendment" to the
Constitution of the United States was meant to create a "wall of separation" between state and church.
American Atheists are organized to stimulate and promote freedom of thought and inquiry concerning
religious beliefs, creeds, dogmas, tenets, rituals and practices;
to collect and disseminate information. data and literature on all religions and promote a more thorough
understanding of them, their origins and histories;
to encourage the development and public acceptance of a human ethical system, stressing the mutual
sympathy, understanding
and interdependence
of all people and the corresponding
responsibility of each
individual in relation to society;
to develop and propagate a culture in which man is the central figure who alone must be the source of
strength, progress and ideals for the well-being and happiness of humanity;
to promote the study of the arts and sciences and of all problems affecting the maintenance,
perpetuation and enrichment of human (and other) life;
to engage in such social, educational. legal and cultural activity as will be useful and beneficial to
members of American Atheists and to society as a whole.
Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and
aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method,
independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.
Materialism declares that the cosmos is devoid of immanent conscious purpose; that it is governed by its own
inherent, immutable and impersonal laws; that there is no supernatural interference in human life; that man finding his resources within himself - can and must create his own destiny. Materialism restores to man his
dignity and his intellectual integrity. It teaches that we must prize our life on earth and strive always to improve
it. It holds that man is capable of creating a social system based on reason and justice. Materialism's "faith" is in
man and man's ability to transform the world culture by his own efforts. This is a commitment which is in very
essence life asserting. It considers the struggle for progress as a moral obligation and impossible without noble
ideas that inspire man to bold creative works. Materialism holds that humankind's potential for good and for an
outreach to more fulfilling cultural development is, for all practical purposes, unlimited.

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"Straw Gods"
[on the cover]

(Vol. 24, No.1 0)

CONTENTS
Editorial: "Change

and Fear" -

Jon Garth Murray

The Soviet Union: Permanent Enemy, or

Co-existing Neighbor in One World?
- John B. Massen
The Reagan Doctrine

The Hanging Tree -

Merrill Holste

Isaac Asimov

11
13,

Only for Atheists (Interview with Conrad Goeringer)

- Aubin Tyler
:

14

American Atheist Radio Series:

"Introduction to Sepher T olduth Jeshu"
- Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair

18

Reagan and Religious Right

- Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair

......

Address by the President of the United States

- Ronald Reagan
Apologia, for Atheismc-

Louis Parle

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Managing Editor
Jon G. Murray

Poetry
Robin Murray-O'Hair
Angeline Bennett
Gerald Tholen

Production Staff
Art Brenner
Bill Kight
Richard Smith
Gerald Tholen
Gloria Tholen

Non-Resident Staff
G. Stanley Brown
Jeff Frankel
Merrill Holste
Ignatz Sahula-Dycke
Fred Woodworth

The American Atheist magazine is publishedmonthly at the Gustav Broukal American Atheist Press, 2210 Hancock Dr., Austin, TX 78756, and 1982 by Society of
Separationists, Inc., a non-profit, non-political, educational organization dedicated to
the complete and absolute separation of
state and church. Mailing address: P.O. Box
2117/Austin, TX 78768-2117. A free subscription is provided as an incident of membership in the American Atheists organization. Subscriptions are available at $25. for
one year terms only. Manuscripts submitted
must be typed, double-spaced and accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The editors assume no responsibility
for unsolicited manuscripts.
The American Atheist magazine
is indexed in

Monthly Periodical Index

ISSN: 0332-4310

Austin Texas

23 .
27

c----v~~.

Editor-in-Chief

21

October, 1982

At the American Atheist Center we

are continually heartened to hear the
glad sounds of cracking in the walls of
religious dogma which is now a feature of our culture.
Again and again in history it has
been demonstrated that if the state
does not support the religion of any
country, that religion fails.
The United States, although it does
not - allegedly - have an "established church." that is, a church supported by the government, it has a
multiplicity
of christian denominations which our government finances
covertly in many ways. The most obvious is by the special privileges given to
religious organizations and churches
in addition to their tax exemptions.
Honeycombed throughout our systems of government, federal, state,
county, city and township those subsidies are everywhere:
The shocking magnitude of them
can only be guessed as when, in a
recent Congressional inquiry, it was
disclosed that parochial (i.e. religious)
schools are now receiving approximately $43 per student per year from
the federal government alone.
The question must come to the Atheist again and again and again - why
does our government support religion
in the teeth of the First Amendment to
the Constitution of our nation which
requires a separation of state and
church.
Religion must render a service to
the srate or it would not be subsidized
and supported by it.
That service is obvious to the Atheist. The church fastens, or attempts to
fasten, upon each of our citizens the
ideas of personal inadequacy, fear,
anxiety, guilt - usually over our sexual urges. We are made, psychologically, dependent upon god ideas to order
our lives.
As each of us are given limited
freedom to "do our own thing." while
we are awash in a feeling of personal
inadequacy, the government "does
everybodys' thing.'" We wind up as a
nation horribly exploited and deceived. We wallow in unemployment,
inflation, military buildups, astronomical military debts and staggering national deficits with billions owed on
interest alone.
Instead of solving our problems, we
are asked to pray. Instead of striving
for some solutions we are told to .
"have faith" in our politicians.
When do we catch on, that they are
aUstraw gods - religion and '"governrnent" alike?

Page 1

This is an Atheist magazine, dedicated to the explication

of the Atheist viewpoint. In it, we - the editors - are
currently featuring articles concerned with the disastrous
nuclear arms race, the possiblity of nuclear war and the
need for disarmament. Most Atheists are in agreement with
what we print but occasionally we receive letters in violent
disagreement, dressing us down in vehement terms. The
thrust of these letters when analyzed is that it doesn't
matter to the Atheist writing ifthey are "pro" or "anti" arms,
"pro" or "anti" nuclear war, they are still Atheist and they
consider this to be an improper subject to be addressed in
an Atheist magazine.
I would first like to point out that if there is a nuclear
exchange between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. there are
not going to be any Atheists left. They will die as will
everyone else. Since the primary command of nature to our
species is survival of the species it is important for Atheists
to take a position in respect to that survival.
Idon't believe that anyone can be an Atheist and be either
pro-war or pro-nuclear build up, because Atheism is reason
in the flesh. Ifwe currently have enough nuclear weapons to
blow up the world and everything in it 2,000 times, it is highly
irrational to continue the buildup. The idea of stockpiling
and devising more and more lethal weapons, or greater and
greater sophistication, is insane. It is just as insane as the
idiocy of the virgin birth. Atheists who hold this viewpoint of
the need for an armageddon still have an emotional and
anti-intellectual lag of religion deeply engrained in them.
They have some mystic and religious-like fear of the
U.S.S.R. which is equivalent to the religious fear of satanor the anti-christ. The U.S.A. is regarded by them as
equivalent to the sacred christ in their ideology. Passionate
patriotism takes the place of their former fervently held
religion. The substitution is very obvious when viewed from
the position of Atheism.
As long as humankind was living in the bushes, free
roaming and taking from the land as best as it could, there
were no difficulties with control. It is when "civilization"
(From the Latin civis member of a state, nation or group
who owes allegiance to its government) began that the
problem arose of how to control the members of the group.
This has been the central problem of humankind ever since.
The history of every nation and of every group has been a
history of the struggle between the controllers for domination of the controllees under each sovereign. Every theory
of "government" has been devised to best exercise that
control. In the world today we can clearly see the fascism of
most South American countries, South Africa and the
Philippines, the communism of the U.S.S.R. and China, the
capitalism of the United States, the socialism of Australia
and most of Europe and the developing socialism in most of
Africa.
"The controllee, and that is YOU, fellow Atheist, is a dog
on a leash. You have been thoroughly housebroken to the
rules in your nation if that nation is Japan, China, England,
the U.S.S.R., Australia, Canada, or Finland. And, you have
been taught to lick the hand of the master who holds the
leash and to proclaim to the world that your system of
control over you is better than the system of control devised
in the other nations.

Page 2

CHANGE AND FEAR

An Editorial by

JON GARTH MURRA Y

The citizens of the U.S.S.R. are under as many laws and
restrictions as are you. In the U.S.S.R. the controllee must
get up and go to work in the morning, pay rent, struggle to
own a home (or apartment) and automobile, purchase food
and clothing, rear a family, care for the elderly, struggle with
health problems and try to get some relaxation and joy out
of life.That is absolutely no different than what happens to a
controllee in the U.S.A.
The fear on which your controller (the government of the
U.S.) plays is that your way of life may be totally and
completely different if another controller takes over. The
government of our nation posits that willbe by force of arms
since you are told you are so devoted to your form of
controller that you would never voluntarily change it. You
are not supposed to notice that all the countries of Europe
have been effectuating a change from capitalism to socialism without force of arms. France and Greece are the two
last nations to vote in socialism and Mexico is well on the
way with its nationalization of the banking system there.
If you awoke tomorrow morning and were under a
different controller -let us suppose a fascist terrorist such
as those in power in South America - you would get up,
put on your shoes, go to work in the morning, pay rent,
struggle to own a home (or apartment) and automobile,
purchase food and clothing, rear a family, care for your
elderly, struggle with health problems and try to get some
relaxation and joy out of life. Very little would be different
for you. If you awoke tomorrow to a socialist government
the same daily living problems would confront you.
The Atheists who advocate a build-up to a nuclear
exchange which would devastate the earth are fearful of a
change in their lives and it is the change that they fear.
The U.S.S.R. is not an anti-christ determined to change
your life style. And, it is significant that the Reagan
administration's quarrel with that nation is primarily that it is
not a religious land, working on the supposition that religion
makes our brand of control system more palatable.
Your editors feel that this is intellectually immature. You
change all the time. Aging is a great changer. In addition,
healthy and reason controlled human beings are rubber
balls. Pitch them down and they bounce back. If my
grandmother could be born Into a culture which had her
riding in a carriage borne by a horse, using coal to stoke her
kitchen stove and before she died she had adjusted to
jetting across the world, and using an electronically controlled kitchen ... then everyone in the world can adapt to
the change.
In this spirit - because we do not think that the Russian
government using Atheism is any more of a boogy than a
the U.S. capitalist government using christianity - we are
featuring in this issue an article of Jack Massen, of our San
Francisco chapter, which details some history of the
U.S.A., the U.S.S.R. and their negotiations. Read it and
learn.

October, 1982

The American Atheist

THE SOVIET UNION:

PERMANENT ENEMY, OR
COEXISTING NEIGHBOR IN ONE WORLD
By John B. Massen
INTRODUCTION
Germany was our implacable and hated enemy in two
world wars, but now is our staunch political and economic
friend and military ally.
Japan was our hated enemy in World War II, but now is
our political friend even while a serious economic competitor.
The People's Republic of China was our bitter political
and ideological enemy from 1949 for 23 years, but now is a
coexisting quasi-friend despite its radically different political, economic and social systems. The final verdict of
history willsurely be that we made a terrible foreign policy
mistake in treating China as our enemy because of its
different institutions and in using our political power within
the United Nations to exclude China from its rightful seat as
a member of the Security Council.
The Soviet Union was our indispensable military ally in
World War II, and under the Yalta Agreement of 1945 was
destined to be our strong political partner in maintaining
peace in the post-war world. But the Cold War made the
USSR again a political and ideological enemy. The detente
of the early 1970s is dead. Revival of the Cold War and the
enormous escalation of the arms race by the Reagan
administration inevitably raises the question: Is the Soviet
Union our permanent enemy? Apparently most Americans
believe this to be true, and I might feel that way today,
except for what I have learned about history during the last
nine years. What I have learned leads me to the conclusion
that the US has made just as serious a foreign policy
mistake in its treatment of the Soviet Union since 1947, as
we made with respect to the People's Republic of China
since 1949.
My purpose is to share with you highlights of what I have
learned in nine years to lead me to that conclusion. The
question raised in the title of my presentation is supremely
important. Past history which I willvery briefly summarize
suggests the answer to the question.

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
A. US intervention in the Soviet Civil War of 1918-20

The revolution of 1917 by the Russian people against a

totally corrupt and ineffective government was certainly

justified. The Kerensky provisional government intended to
continue the war against Germany to a victorious conclusion, but the Russian army and people wanted out of the
war. One major reason for opposition by the US, Britain
and France to the new Bolshevik regime headed by Lenin
was the determination of that regime to end its war with
Germany, which it did with the humiliating Brest-Litovsk
Treaty of March 3, 1918.
The western powers, including the US, were determined
to "throttle communism in the cradle," in the words of
Winston Churchill. They intervened with strong military
forces in the Soviet civil war in an effort to destroy the
Soviet government. The intervention was a total failure,
because of the inspired efforts of the Russian people to
defeat both the White Russians and the foreign aggressors.
The immediate effect of the intervention was to prolong a
bloody civil war, thereby costing thousands of additional
lives and wreaking enormous destruction on an already
battered society. And there were longer-range implications.
Bolshevik leaders had clear proof, if they needed any, that
the western powers meant to destroy the Soviet government if given the chance.
All citizens of the Soviet Union know that the US and
other western powers intervened in that civilwar. Probably
99 percent of American citizens are ignorant of our
intervention. One reason is the silence of our histories. For
example, A Concise History of the American Republic by
the distinguished American historians, Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, published in 1977,
contains not a single word about that US intervention,
although it covers other reprehensible US foreign interventions. I wrote to Mr. Commager, respectfully requesting an
explanation of this remarkable omission from the book. He
has not replied.
B. From the Civil War to World War II
At an important economic conference in Genoa in 1922,
the Soviets proposed discussion of the general limitation of
armaments and outlawing the most barbarous forms of
fighting, but the French refused any such discussion. In
1927 the Soviets created a sensation with their unprecedented proposal to the League of Nations' Disarmament
Commission of "immediate, complete and general disarrna-

"The western powers, including the US, ... intervened with strong military forces in
the Soviet civil war in an effort to destroy the Soviet government ... Bolshevikleaders
had clear proof, if they needed any, that the western powers meant to destroy the
Soviet government if given the chance ... Probably 99%of American citizens are
ignorant of our intervention. One reason is the silence of our histories."
Austin Texas

October, 1982

Page 3

"The enormous losses by the Soviets in World War IIprobably did not become widely
known to the US public until President John F. Kennedy mentioned them in his
famous American University speech on June 10, 1963. Kennedy said that "atleast 20
million (Soviet citizens) lost their lives."
ment," and subsequently an alternate proposal for partial
and gradual disarmament. Neither proposal was adopted.
When Hitler took Germany out of the League of Nations
in 1933, the Soviets joined in 1934 and became the best
Great Power member the League ever had. In the opinion of
Sumner Welles, our Deputy Secretary of State:
"When the Soviet Union entered the League, even
the most obstinate were soon forced to admit that it
was the only major power to take the League seriously. The Soviet government seemed to believe that the
Covenant of the League meant what it said ... (and)
was not to be regarded as a screen for the achievement of each country's individual and selfish purposes
... It should never be forgotten that the Soviet Union
did not desert the League. It was the Great Powers
which dominated the League in its later years who
deserted the Soviet Union."
During the 1930s, the Soviet Union repeatedly proposed
a workable Grand Alliance with France and Britain to resist
fascist aggression. If the proposals had been accepted and
acted upon, World War IIcould have been averted, even as
late as 1938, without the firing of a shot or the loss of a life.
Sumner Welles said:
"Great financial and commercial interests of the
western democracies, including many in the United
States, were firm in the belief that war between the
Soviet Union and Hitlerite Germany could only be
favorable to their own interests. They maintained that
Russia would necessarily be defeated, and with this
defeat Communism would be destroyed . . . This
stupendous lack of realism on the part of the so-called
realists did incalculable damage in its effect upon the
sentiments of the Russian people and the policies of
the Soviet government. By the end of 1938 the Soviet
government had reached the conclusion that it could
not expect any sincere assistance from the western
powers."
During the war, Winston Churchill said: "This war could
easily have been prevented, if the League of Nations had
been used with courage and loyalty by the associated
nations." Our Secretary of War Stimson wrote after the
war: "Our refusal to catch up with reality during (the years
between the wars) was the major source of our ocnsiderable responsibility for the catastrophe of World War II." By
1942, an American historian noted a "pervasive feeling of
guilt" among Americans that the Second World War
resulted to a significant degree from US failure to play its
proper role after the First. By May 1943, a Gallup poll
learned that 74%of American people endorsed US participation in an international police force to keep the peace. Thus,
America must accept substantial responsibility for failing to
prevent the outbreak of the most devastating war in history,
and acknowledge that we should have accepted Soviet
initiatives which, if acted upon, could have prevented that
war.

Page 4

October, 1982

By the Munich Pact of September 1938, between Britain,

France, Germany and Italy, and from which the Soviet
Union and Czechoslovakia were excluded, Britain and
France ceded the Sudetan portion of Czechoslovakia to
German occupation, and thus neutralized Czechoslovakia.
Britain and France sought security for themselves by giving
Hitler freedom to expand to the east. By that Munich Pact,
Britain and France forfeited any right to participate in future
decisions concerning the destiny of the countries of eastern
Europe. Their destiny would be determined by the competition - and ultimately the war - between Germany and the
Soviet Union. This must be remembered when judging the
postwar history of eastern Europe.
And it was the Soviet Union that won the war in Europe
against Hitler's Germany. Almost everyone predicted a
complete German victory by the end of 1941. But with the
victory at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43, the USSR
turned the tide and the final defeat of Germany was
inevitable. And the Soviets had received relatively very little
US Lend-Lease assistance in materials (and, of course,
none in manpower) to help them turn the tide at Stalingrad.
The second front in western Europe, first scheduled in 1942
to help the desperately beleaguered Soviets, was repeatedly
delayed by Churchill's opposition until June 1944. At the
height of the Anglo-American effort on the continent, the
western allies engaged only one-third of the total German
forces. By political forfeiture of the western powers in 1938,
and by its stupendous military victory over Germany in the
east, the Soviet Union won the political right and military
power to dominate postwar decisions concerning its national security interests in and relationships with the nations of
eastern Europe.
_.
The 'enormous losses by the Soviets in World' War II
probably did not become widely known to the US public
until President John F. Kennedy mentioned them in his
famous American University speech on June 10, 1963.
Kennedy said that "at least 20 million (Sovietcitizens) lost
their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were
burned and sacked. A third of the nation's territory,
including nearly two-thirds of its industrial base, was turned
into a wasteland - a loss equivalent to the devastation of
this country east of Chicago."

C. The Yalta Conference and the United Nations

President Roosevelt regarded the League of Nations as
an idealistic dream without proper foundations; he had no
patience for it. He believed that the next peace must be
based on the realities of power, using spheres of influence
and other traditional tactics of old diplomacy in order to
create a new system. Indeed, the very recognition of
spheres of influence might reduce their ultimate exclusiveness, for neither side would feel the need to tighten its
defensive grip to fend off a feared drive against its sphere by
the other side. The only sensible way to organize a new
international order, Roosevelt believed, was on the basis of

The American Atheist

a consortium of the Great Powers, in which the US would

. take an active role. Soon he was talking about the Four
Policemen - the US, Britain, Russia and China - who
would maintain sufficient armed force to impose peace. He
recognized that the Soviet Union would define its own
security interests around its rim; on some issues, it would be
not merely futile, but actually dangerous, to try to force the
Soviets to bend to an American will.
The American public, however, was defiantly suspicious
of "big power politics" and "spheres of influence," even
though by its Monroe Doctrine the US had long ago staked
out the largest sphere of influence of alt time. So, the
gradually emerging plan for the United Nations combined
two principles: a "Wilsonian peace," reflected in what
became the General Assembly where each nation had one
vote; and a Great Power peace, embodied in what became
the Security Council.
At the Tehran Conference of late 1943, Roosevelt first
discussed with Stalin his ideas for a new international
organization. Stalin expressed great doubts about such an
organization, and Roosevelt reassured Stalin that the
center of his design continued to be a Great Power
consortium. At the Yalta conference of February 1945,
Roosevelt again reassured Stalin about the importance he
placed on close collaboration of the Great Powers. Stalin

Great Power consortium. Two days after that speech to

Congress, talking privately about Germany, he said, "Obviously the Russians are going to do things their own way in
the areas they occupy." But he hoped that a general
framework of collaboration would prevent the Soviet
sphere of influence from becoming a sphere of control.
For some time, Roosevelt had been talking two languages. With the Russians, he talked of a Great Power
consortium, based on the realities of international politics.
At home, he tried to obscure this basic program in the
idealistic Wilsonian language. Now, with the war ending,
there was a considerable gap between his foreign foreign
policy and his domestic foreign policy. His foreign foreign
policy was very much the personal possession of Roosevelt
and a few close advisers; it had no institutional basis in the
government. Two months after' Yalta, Roosevelt was dead.
And his successor, totally inexperienced in foreign policy,
changed Roosevelt's foreign foreign policy abruptly. And
that proved to be a major cause of the Cold War.
The best short summary of how the US bears a major
responsibility for the political causes of the Cold War is
found in the four concluding paragraphs of the widely
acclaimed book, Yo/to, by Diane Shaver Clemens, based in
part on Soviet documentation, and published in 1970.
"By abandoning the Conference agreements after

"Niels Bohr, the Danish nuclear physicist and 1922 Nobel Laureate, urged Roosevelt
in 1944 to inform Stalin about our work on the atom bomb (though not construction
details), to allay possible fear of a postwar Anglo-American alliance supported by an
atomic monopoly, which would surely motivate the Soviets to choose the path of an
atomic arms race. Bohr believed that postwar cooperation and ultimate world
survival were impossible unless his proposal was adopted. Roosevelt agreed with
Churchill to retain the Anglo-American monopoly."
accepted an American compromise, whereby the Great
Powers retained a veto in the Security Council, arid
Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to support the admission of
two or three constituent Soviet Republics to the General
Assembly. But Stalin pointed to a "more serious question"
than an international organization. One should not worry
too much about small nations. "The greatest danger was
conflict between the three Great Powers," he said. The
main task was to prevent their quarreling and "secure their
unity for the future."
The Yalta Conference marked the high tide of Allied
unity. By and large, the Soviets made more concessions
than the West; and when they presented their own proposals, they were in fact sometimes simply returning proposals delivered to them at earlier dates by the western
powers. Roosevelt was a realist; he knew that everything
depended upon implementation of the accords, and that
would depend upon intentions and future alignments.
Back home again, Roosevelt delivered a speech to
Congress that was pure in its Wilsonianism, in which he
declared that Yalta spelled the end of unilateral action,
exclusive alliances, spheres of influence, power blocs, and
"all other expedients that had been tried for centuries -and
have always failed." But out of public earshot, he continued
to stress the realities of power and the basic structure of a

Austin Texas

Yalta, America created a self-fulfillingprophecy. Believing that the Soviets intended to take advantage of
any opportunity at the expense of the United States,
Washington tried to renegotiate the zonal agreements
(in Germany) and held western troops in Soviet
occupation zones as a political pressure tactic. Fur. ther, the American government changed its interpretation of the Yalta decisions on Poland. After deserting
the original American-Soviet viewpoint, the United
States accused the Soviet Union of breaking the Yalta
agreements. Finally, the Allies decided, contrary to
Yalta, not to support reparations. In doing so they
abandoned the Soviet Union. These decisions, and
many others, left the Soviet Union with no alternative
than to substitute unilateral action for a policy of
cooperation which they had hoped for, but which had
never emerged - except briefly, at Yalta.
"The Yalta Conference has been more condemned
than commended by western commentators. Under
most of these condemnations lies the implicit and
unexpressed premise that the Soviet Union is in
essence evil while the West embodies the virtues of
the ages; and, further, a belief that the Soviet Union
has and can have no interests which the West
considers legitimate. American policy during the war

October, 1982

Page 5

"The US was the first nation to create atom bombs, use them in a war, and use the
threat of using them in atomic diplomacy. The US has led in maintaining a world-wide
network of military alliances and bases, military assistance to other countries, and
military sales. The US has introduced every major new weapon system since World
War IIin the strategic field, except for some medium-range missiles in the 1950s and
the rather small ABM deployment of 1964. The US has been the initiator and leader of
the arms race with the Soviet Union. Just as our unilateral actions are in large part
responsible for the current dangerous state of affairs, we must expect that unilateral
moves on our part will be necessary if we are ever to get the whole process reversed."
and afterward has been studied in terms of what the
United States failed to do to foilSoviet aims, or else in
terms of w"hatthe United States could have done to
alter a decision acceptable to the Soviet Union. The
policies based on this ideological bent attributed false
motives to the Soviet Union and created a situation in
which the Soviet Union increasingly defended herself
from western hostility.
"Roosevelt's departure from America's moralistic
and anti-Soviet bias, combined with Churchill's usually consistent realism, served diplomacy for the week
the leaders met at Yalta. But the postwar world bears
little resemblance to what these men worked to
achieve. Broken promises, bad faith, misperceptions,
and self-righteousness have forced new and different
policies upon the nations. We are living with the
problems of a world that did not benefit from the
experience at Yalta.
"It is perhaps relevant to ask what the world would
have been like if the spirit of Yalta had triumphed."

hip, their suspicions and their distrust of our purposes and

motives willincrease ... (and generate) a secret armaments
race of a rather desperate character. .. The chief lesson I
have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make
a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to
make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your
distrust." Stimson's advice was rejected.
Truman's advisers urged him to move for direct negotiations with the Soviets when he met with the British and
Canadian Prime Ministers in November 1945, but the three
leaders decided to handle atomic control negotiations in the
United Nations. Under-Secretary of State Acheson, dismayed, knew this would deepen Soviet determination to get
its own bomb. When Truman appointed Bernard Baruch as
chief negotiator to present to the United Nations the
Acheson-Lilienthal plan for international control, Acheson
was so shocked that he resigned. "Then only arrogance,
ignorance or perversity could have prompted Baruch to do
what he did to the report." Baruch eliminated the great
power veto in actions by the proposed international atomic
energy authority, and empowered it to take enforcement
measures if necessary to restrain a country from illegal
D. The Baruch Plan and the arms race.
actions. Acheson predicted that these provisions would
Now let's turn to the arms race, which surely is the major
ensure Soviet rejection because it would convert the United
cause of the Cold War.
Nations into a US - dominated alliance against the USSR.
For some 30 years, I believed - as I am sure most
The upshot of Baruch's inept diplomacy was to sacrifice our
Americans with opinions on the subject still believe - that
towering national interest in an effective international
the principal cause of the arms race is the rejection by the
control system to the blind pursuit of the impractical
treacherous Russians of America's generous offer in the
Baruch Plan to renounce its monopoly of the atom bomb in . objective of an international agency operating without a big
power veto and empowered itself to take military enforceexchange for international control of the atom. Objective
ment action.
analysis of history, I believe, rejects this view.
The US had already abandoned Roosevelt's concept of a
Niels Bohr, the Danish nuclear physicist and 1922 Nobel
consortium of the Great Powers to maintain the peace, and
Laureate, urged Roosevelt in 1944 to inform Stalin about
had abandoned the Yalta agreements. And our government
our work on the atom bomb (though not construction
permitted Bernard Baruch to butcher the realistic Achesondetails), to allay possible fear of a post-war Anglo-American
alliance supported by an atomic monopoly, which would Lilienthal plan which was more likely to be acceptable to the
surely motivate the Soviets to choose the path of an atomic . Soviet Union. Thus, the US bears major responsibility for
arms race. Bohr believed that postwar cooperation and the failure to prevent an atomic arms race.
The US actually began the arms race in 1945 as a byultimate world survival were impossible unless his proposal
was adopted. Roosevelt agreed with Churchill to retain the product of the bitter struggle between our Air Force and
Navy for supremacy in the prospective new Department of
Anglo-American monopoly.
After the bombs were used on Japan, Secretary of War Defense. Even though the Soviet Union had been our wartime ally and was primarily responsible for the defeat of
Stimson came around to Bohr's thinking. He urged Truman
to go with the British directly to Stalin to negotiate sharing Germany in Europe, the Soviet Union was posited as our
of the atom. His most important recommendation was to future enemy in war planning, as the Air Force and Navy
exclude other parties at the outset. Stimson said, "If we fail struggled for supremacy in strategic protection of the US
and for the major share of dwindling postwar military
to approach them now and merely continue to negotiate
with them, having this weapon rather ostentatiously on our appropriations. The Soviet Union's new prominence in

Page 6

October,

1982

The American Atheist

world affairs was a blessing in disguise for our military

planners.
The US was the first nation to create atom bombs, use
them in a war, and use the threat of using them in atomic
diplomacy. The US has led in maintaining a world-wide
network of military alliances and bases, military assistance
to other countries, and military sales. The US has introduced every major new weapon system since World War II
in the strategic field, except for some medium-range
missiles in the 1950s and the rather small ABM deployment

powers, and the NATO powers would have become

relatively stronger than the Warsaw Pact powers. Although
the immediate western response to the Soviet plan was
favorable, the US recessed the conference despite the
Soviet's demand that negotiations begin promptly on a
binding treaty. Upon resumption of the conference a few
months later, the US withdrew all of its prior proposals, and
the Soviet proposals were ignored.
In May 1960, President Eisenhower, Prime Minister
MacMillan and Premier Krushchev were scheduled to hold

"Ourmilitary-industrialcomplex will always use its enormous political and economic

power to prevent our government from ever entering into any agreement with the
Soviet Union that will require that the US significantly reduce its military research
and development program or scrap any significant weapons."
of 1964.
The US has been the initiator and leader of the arms race
with the Soviet Union. Just as our unilateral actions are in
large part responsible for the current dangerous state of
affairs, we must expect that unilateral moves on our part will
be necessary if we are ever to get the whole process:
reversed.
to end or control the arms race.
After the Soviets exploded their first A-bomb in September 1949, a committee of scientists headed by Oppenheimer
advised the Atomic Energy Commission on whether the US
should develop the "Super" - i.e. the H-bomb. The
committee contended that the world ought to avoid such a
genocidal weapon; that others would not forego it if the US
did not; and that US military security would not be
endangered if the Soviets, after agreeing on mutual restraint, cheated and developed the H-bomb first, since we
would quickly catch up and, until we did, we would be
protected by our large A-bomb stockpile. AEC Chairman
Lilienthal agreed; he favored announcing our intention to
forego the Super, and seeking international control of all
weapons of mass destruction. But Truman, with contrary
advice of others, in January 1950 ordered development of
the Super. After reviewing a recently declassified report,
Herbert York concluded that the scientists were right and
for the right reasons, and that Truman should have
accepted Lilienthal's advice. "The benefits that could have
flowed from forestalling the Super were incalculable; the
chance of succeeding in doing so were small, but so were
the risks in trying ... As Lilienthal said then, it may have
been the last good opportunity to base American foreign
policy on something better than reliance on weapons of
mass destruction."
For three years, the US, France and Great Britain had
urged the Soviet Union to accept western proposals for
complete nuclear and substantial conventional disarmament under adequate inspection controls. On May 10, 1955,
the Soviet Union substantially accepted those proposals as
it presented its own plan, which even went further by
offering additional inspection at all transportation facilities
to guard against surprise attack. Implementation of the
Soviet plan would have created an enormous breach in the
"Iron Curtain" since thousands of UN inspectors would
permanently residein the Soviet Union with wide inspection
E. Lost opportunities

Austin Texas

a summit meeting in Paris to sign a comprehensive test ban

treaty, which would ban all testing of nuclear weapons and
virtually end the nuclear arms race. This was political
decision-making at its best. All three recognized that
continuation of the nuclear arms race was a greater threat
to the national security of each nation than the possible risk
that one of the powers might conduct a clandestine test of a
nuclear weapon so small that it would be undetected by the
other two powers by detection techniques then available.
But on May 1, 1960, a U-2 plane piloted by Gary Powers
took off from Pakistan, even though such flights were being
curtailed during the negotiating period. It was widely
believed that the U-2 plane was shot down by the Soviets.
But evidence indicates that saboteurs in our government
only half-filled the vital hydrogen flask required for operation of the plane at superhigh altitudes, thus ensuring that
the plane would come down. President Eisenhower may
have been unaware of the flight, but he had to appear in
charge of his government and he publicly assumed full
responsibility for the flight. Krushchev had no choice but to
withdraw from the conference. Eisenhower's "Crusade for
Peace" through a comprehensive test ban may have been
sabotaged by people in his own government, and soon
thereafter he made his famous statement in his farewell
address about the "military-industrial complex."
In 1972, the SALT I agreement set modest limits on levels
of nuclear weapons, and mankind got a break with the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed by the two superpowers.
But there was a major, tragic failure to halt the development
and deployment of MIRVs. The secret nature of the
negotiations contributed directly to the failure. Our government deliberately designed the specifics of our proposal to
ensure Soviet rejection, and then two months later withdrew the proposal entirely with no possible participation by
Congress or the public in that decision. Our militaryindustrial complex had a financial and technological interest
in MIRVs that overrode the American and world public
interest in curbing the qualitative arms race. Kissinger
commented two months later that he wished the government had thought through more fully in SALT I the
implications of a MIRVed world. One of those implications
is that, now, MIRVs on Soviet ICBMs are said to be so
threatening to our current ICBMs that we must develop and
deploy a new generation of ICBMs, called the M-X.
These and additional examples from our history lead to

October, 1982

Page 7

this conclusion: Our military-industrial complex will ALWAYS use its enormous political and economic power to
prevent our government from EVER entering into ANY
agreement with the Soviet Union that will require that the
US significantly reduce its military research and development program or scrap any significant weapons ..
F. The, Cuban missile crisis
. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 is an excellent illustration of our government's reluctance to negotiate honestly
and sincerely with the Soviet Union. The Soviets did try to
introduce missiles into Cuba, but consider the provocations! The US economic blockade had driven Castro to
seek Soviet economic and military assistance. In April 1961
. the CIA had clumsily tried to invade Cuba, and the Bay of
Pigs was a humiliating disaster for Kennedy. Thereafter, the
US mounted a secret campaign of sabotage against Cuba
with orders to the CIA to wreck the Cuban economy,
foment resistance to the Castro regime, and - if possible
-assassinate the Cuban leader.

and suffered a humiliating diplomatic defeat. This was

regarded as a great diplomatic victory for Kennedy and
America. But a high Soviet diplomat told an American
negotiator: "You Americans willnever be able to do this to
us again." The US at the time of the crisis had a 20- or
30-to-1 advantage over the Soviet Union in deliverable
nuclear warheads. From the date of that humiliating
withdrawal from Cuba, the Soviets set their goal of nuclear
parity, which they achieved around 1970 despite an enormous strategic nuclear buildup by the US during the 1960s.
The Soviets will never again permit us to have nuclear
superiority; and we have the gall to object to that policy! .
But there is another, vitally important aspect of the
Cuban missile crisis that few have recognized! When John
F. Kennedy made his decision to have brother Bobby
deliver that ultimatum to Ambassador Dobrynin, John
Kennedy expected that the Soviets would not withdraw
their missiles voluntarily; hence, follow-through on our
ultimatum that we would remove their missiles by force.

"I do not consider the Soviet Union as a benign power. It has frequently used its
military, political and economic power outside of its own borders in ways considered
reprehensible by Americans and others. We, too, have been guilty of many
reprehensible foreign policy actions. 1have not yet found a scholarly and objective
balance sheet of the two superpowers in this respect. If one exists, 1doubt that any
objective and internationally-minded Americans could feel any pride from the
..
"
~arlson.
More significant than these threats to Cuba, however,
were our direct threats to the Soviet Union. By 1957 we had
increased those threats by installing intermediate-range
ballistic missiles in Turkey, Italy, Germany and Great
Britain; and by 1960 Wehad deployed even more threatening Polaris submarine missiles in the Mediterranean Sea.
After President Kennedy announced to the US the discovery of the construction of missile sites in Cuba, the Soviets
proposed both (1) comprehensive negotiations of all outstanding issues between the two nations, and (2) the limited
proposal of mutual withdrawal of missiles from both Turkey
and Cuba, with a mutual pledge of not to invade, or interfere
in the internal affairs of, Turkey and Cuba, respectively.
Kennedy had previously ordered the removal of our
missiles from Turkey because they were now obsolete, and
he assumed this had been accomplished when the crisis was
arose. Kennedy was angry to learn that those missiles had
not yet been removed from Turkey. He realized that the
specific Soviet proposal for mutual withdrawal of missiles
from Turkey and Cuba was reasonable, that our position
was extremely vulnerable, and that it was our own fault.
Nevertheless, his final decision was an ultimatum delivered by Robert Kennedy to Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin: .
either you remove the missiles from Cuba very promptly, or
we would remove them by military force, with no quid pro
quo of our making a corresponding withdrawal of our
missiles from Turkey. The Soviets withdrew their missiles

Thus, an American president consciously made a political

decision that he expected would lead to military conflict
between the two superpowers with inevitable use of nuclear
weapons that would cause enormous loss of life on both
sides. And Krushchev and his government had the wisdom
and restraint to back down, and thus save us from our folly.
What an enormously greater danger there is of such a
presidential decision, with the present occupant of the
White House!

WHY NOT A "COEXISTING NEIGHBOR IN ONE

WORLD?"
Panel 2 of my exhibit emphasizes this message, which I
borrowed from the Center for Defense Information:
"We are the most powerful nation on earth. Yet we
can be destroyed with less than 30 minutes warning
-so can the Russians. Either we learn to live with the
Russians, or we willboth die at about the same time."
Is peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union repugnant?
Impossible? If so, why?
I do not consider the Soviet Union as a benign power. It
has frequently used its military, political and economic
power outside of its own borders in ways considered
reprehensible by Americans and others. We, too, have
been guilty of many reprehensible foreign policy actions. I
have not yet found a scholarly and objective balance sheet
.

"The American lack of a first-hand memory of the horrors of a war constitute a

danger for the US as well as for the rest of the world."
Page 8

October, 1982

The American Atheist

"Weare already faced with several other dangers even more disturbing ... not just
the grave conflicts ... of the Middle East and southern Africa ... (but) even more the
worldwide problems of energy shortage, environmental deterioration, overpopulation, and the urgent need for international collaboration in protecting the seas from
overexploitation and pollution ... But if we can shift to their solution some of the
attention and resources now devoted to military defense against international
communism, and if we could gain cooperation of some of the Communist countries in
this task, then I think not only would we be using our energies and resources in a
more realistic way, but we might find that the problem of international communism
would itself be diminished with the shift in our attention, and theirs, away from the
fears and habits that divide us and toward the problems that are common to us all."
of the two superpowers in this respect. Ifone exists, I doubt
that any objective and internationally-minded Americans
could feel any pride from the comparison.
It is nearly impossible to find in our mass media any
reporting which is favorable toward the Soviet Union with
respect to its achievements under socialism. That is the
major reason for the widespread ignorance in America
about what any objective and internationally-minded citizen
must regard as solid achievements: widespread free education and very high literacy; free medical care and high
standards of health; housing of low cost, if unavoidably
crowded but steadily improving under a massive housing
construction program; and full employment with substantial fringe benefits. Of course, the Soviet Union has some
very serious economic problems to solve. That is a universal situation in which we find ourselves.
The Soviet Union is ridiculed by our press because of its
relative shortages of consumer goods. That problem would
easily disappear ifthe Soviet Union did not find it necessary
for its national security to spend so much on armaments.
Professor Paul E. Zinner of the University of California at
Davis, who is an expert on the Soviet Union, said in
response to a question after his speech at the World Affairs
Council of N. California on April 6, 1977: "The armaments
business is good business for the capitalists in a capitalistic
economy, and is extremely deleterious for a socialistic
economy." Our economy and the well-being of our population would be far better if we had not spent several trillion
dollars on wasteful military expenditures since WW-II, and
our economic problems willseriously grow if we accelerate
our military spending as planned by the present administration.
Probably the most important fact about the Soviet Union
is that its people want peace even more than we do.
Professor Zinner at the same meeting answered another
direct question as follows: "I believe that the Soviets know
that we don't want to use these weapons. Even less do the
Soviets want to use them, because they have suffered so
much in war. Our military leaders don't really want war,
because that means death. Even more, the Soviets don't
want war." Any visitor to the Soviet Union becomes quickly
aware of this fact.
Gunnar Myrdal is a Swedish statesman and economist
who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1974. His wife is
Alva Myrdal, Sweden's former Minister of Disarmament
and author of the authoritative book, The Game of
Austin Texas

Disarmament, published in 1976. Gunnar Myrdal was

interviewed by an Italian reporter, and the interview was
published in the December 1979 issue of World Press. Here
are the last two paragraphs of that interview:
"As for the Soviet Union, one basic fact should be
kept in mind. Russia was profoundly scarred by World
War II and no government can maintain power in
Moscow if it is not a recognized guardian of peace.
There is a tendency in the West to see all Soviet talks
of peace and disarmament as propaganda, but these
speeches reflect the most pervasive needs of the
Russian people. I am convinced that the Russians are
ready to sign any type of agreement that guarantees
security and peace.
"The same cannot be said about the US. That
country has participated in two world wars, from each
of which it emerged richer than before. It was not the
Americans who beat the Depression; .it was the war,
with the increase in industrial demand. The American
people did not sustain any destruction to their own
territory, and their casualties did not exceed the
number of victims of auto accidents on their streets.
The American lack of a first-hand memory of the
horrors of a war constitute a danger for the US as
well as for the rest of the world." [Emphasis added.]
The 1977 Constitution of the USSR, in Article 28 of
Chapter 4 on Foreign Policy, contains these provisions:
"The USSR steadfastly pursues a Leninist policy of
peace and stands for strengthening of the security of
nations and broad international cooperation.
"The foreign policy of the USSR is aimed at . . .
(Inter alia) ... preventing wars of aggression, achieving universal and complete disarmament, and consistently implementing the principle of the peaceful
coexistence of states with different social systems.
"In the USSR war propaganda is banned."
There are no comparable provisions in the US Constitution.
No military toys or space war video games are produced
in the USSR. This cannot be explained solely on the basis of
a consumer economy that is inferior to ours.
George F. Kennan, former US Ambassador to the Soviet
Union and one of our country's foremost experts on the
Soviet Union, expressed the following views in testimony to
the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1974:
For years after World War II, international commu-

October, 1982

Page 9

nism was perceived as the greatest danger to the US

and the overriding problem for our strategy and
diplomacy. But this danger is now fading, and "we are
already faced with several other dangers even more
disturbing, ... not just the grave conflicts ... of the
Middle East and southern Africa ... (but) even more
the worldwide problems of energy shortage, environmental deterioration, overpopulation, and the urgent
need for international collaboration in protecting the
seas from overexploitation and pollution." We alone
can't solve these worldwide problems and will be
doing well ifwe can protect our national lifein the face
of them. But if we can shift to their solution some of
the attention and resources now devoted to military
defense against international communism, and if we
could gain cooperation of some of the communist
countries in this task, "then I think not onlywould we
be using our energies and resources in a more realistic
way, but we might find that the problem of international communism would itself be diminished with
the shift in our attention, and theirs, away from the
fears and habits that divide us and toward the
problems that are common to us all."
I think that statement is profoundly wise and should
become the foundation of this administration's policy
toward the Soviet Union. I earnestly hope that you agree.

L. Fletcher Prouty, Col., US Air Force (Ret.): (1) The Secret

Team, Prentice-Hall, 1973: pp. 371-80. (2) "The Sabotaging of the
American Presidency," Gallery magazine, January 1978, pp. 38 ff.
(3) Correspondence and conversations with John Massen.
(The sabotaging of that U-2 flight was a greater crime against all
humanity than the assassination of President Kennedy was a
crime against the American people. Both Pomerance and Prouty
recommended a full Congressional investigation of the U-2 flight.)
Lawrence D. Weiler, The Arms Race, Secret Negotiations and the
Congress, Occasional Paper 12, the Stanley Foundation, Muscatine, Iowa, 1976: pp. 1721.
Ground Zero, NUCLEAR WAR: What's in it FOR YOU? Pocket
Books, 1982: p. 95.
Robert F. Kennedy, Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban
Missile Crisis, New American Library (Signet Book), 1969:
especially p. 109.

Sources of most of the principal ideas in Historical Review of the

foregoing text
Sumner Welles, The Time for Decision, Harper, 1944: pp. 31 &
321.
D.F. Fleming, The Cold War and its Origins 1917-60, Doubleday
& Co., 1961: pp. 166, 170 & 1041.
.
Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and
the National Security State, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977: pp.
4268.
Diane Shaver Clemens, Yalta, Oxford U. Press, 1970: pp. 290-1.
Martin J. Sherwin, A World Destroyed: The Atomic Bomb and the
Grand Alliance, Knopf, 1975: pp. 90-114
Henry L. Stimson & McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in
Peace and War, Harper, 1948: pp. 643-6.
David S. McClellan, Dean Acheson: The State Department
Years, Dodd Mead, 1976: pp. 60-84.
Herbert F. York, "The Debate over the Hydrogen Bomb",
Scientific American, October 1975, pp. 108-13.
Philip Noel-Baker, The Arms Race, Oceana Publication-s, 1958:
pp. 12-22,217 & 228-234.
Josephine Pomerance, "The Anti-Test-Ban Coalition," The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 1977, pp. 52-3.
Josephine Pomerance and Anna Mayo, "The CIA, Lockheed and
the U-2 Affair." Unpublished draft, March 1976.
(Mrs. Pomerance has corresponded and conversed with the
author. She was for many years Co-Chairperson of the Task
Force for the Nuclear Test Ban, and was a leader in the United
Nations Association of the USA. Among other activities, she
conferred personally in Geneva, immediately after the U-2 flight,
with James Wadsworth, US Ambassador to the Conference on
the Discontinuance of Nuclear Tests. She secured, under the
Freedom of Information Act, the "Hearings Regarding Summit
Conference of May 1960," the secret hearings of the Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations immediately after the U-2 flight,
and shared this text with Fletcher Prouty, whose Gallery article is
based in part on that transcript.

Page 10

October, 1982

The American Atheist

THE REAGAN DOCTRINE

by Isaac Asimov
Some time ago, Ronald Reagan pointed out that one
couldn't trust the Soviet government because the Soviets
didn't believe in god or in an afterlife and therefore had no
reason to behave honorably, but would be willingto lie and
cheat and do all sorts of wicked things to aid their cause.
Naturally, I firmly believe that the president of the United
States knows what he is talking about, so I've done my very
best to puzzle out the meaning of that statement.
Let me begin by presenting this "Reagan Doctrine" (using
the term with all possible respect): "No one who disbelieves
in god and in an afterlife can possibly be trusted." If this is
true (and it must be ifthe president says so), then people are
just naturally dishonest and crooked and downright rotten.
In order to keep them from lying and cheating every time
they open their mouths, they must be bribed or scared out
of doing so. They have to be told and made to believe that if
they tell the truth and do the right thing and behave
themselves, they will go to heaven and get to plunk a harp
and wear the latest design in halos. They must also be told
and made to believe that ifthey lie and steal and run around
with the opposite sex, they are going to hell and will roast
over a brimstone fire forever.
It's a little depressing, if you come to think of it. By the
Reagan Doctrine, there is no such thing as a person who
keeps his word just because he has a sense of honor. No
one tells the truth just because he thinks that it is the decent
thing to do. No one is kind because he feels sympathy for
others, or treats others decently because he likes the kind
of world in which decency exists.
Instead, according to the Reagan Doctrine, anytime we
meet someone who pays his debts, or hands in a wallet he
found in the street, or stops to help a blind man cross the
road, or tells a casual truth - he's just buying himself a
ticket to heaven, or else cancelling out a demerit that might
send him to hell. It's all a matter of good, solid business
practice; a matter of turning a spiritual profit and of
responding prudently to spiritual blackmail.
Personally, I don't think that I - or you - or even
president Reagan - would knock down an old lady and
snatch her purse the next time we're short a few bucks. If
only we were sure of that heavenly choir, or ifonly we were
certain we wouldn't get into that people-fry down in hell. But
by the Reagan Doctrine, ifwe didn't believe in god and in an
afterlife, there would be nothing to stop us, so I guess we all
would.
But let's take the reverse of the Reagan Doctrine. If no
one who disbelieves in god and in an afterlife can possibly be
trusted, it seems to follow that those who do believe in god
and in an afterlife can be trusted. Since the American
government consists of god-fearing people who believe in
an afterlife, it seems pretty significant that the Soviet Union

Austin Texas

nevertheless would not trust us any farther than they can

throw an ICBM. Since the Soviets are slaves to godless
communism, they would naturally think everyone else is as
evil as they are. Consequently, the Soviet Union's distrust
of us is in accordance with the Reagan Doctrine.
Yet there are puzzles. Consider Iran. The Iranians are a
god-fearing people and believe in an afterlife, and this is
certainly true of the mullahs and ayatollahs who comprise
their government. And yet we are reluctant to trust them for
some reason. President Reagan himself has referred to the
Iranian leaders as "barbarians."
Oddly enough, the Iranians are reluctant to trust us,
either. They referred to the ex-president (I forget his name
for he is never mentioned in the media anymore) as the
"great satan" and yet we all know that the ex-president was
a born-again christian.
There's something wrong here. God-fearing Americans
and god-fearing Iranians don't trust each other and call each
other terrible names. How does that square with the
Reagan Doctrine?
To be sure, the god in whom the Iranians believe is not
quite the god in whom we believe, and the afterlife they
believe in is a little different from ours. There are no houris,
alas, in our heaven. We call our system of belief christianity
and they call theirs islam, and come to think of it, for
something like twelve centuries, good christians believed
islam was an invention of the devil and believers in islam
("moslems") courteously returned the compliment so that
there was almost continuous war between them. Both sides
considered it a holy war and felt that the surest way of going
to heaven was to clobber an infidel. What's more, you didn't
have to do it in a fair and honorable way, either. Tickets of'
admission just said, "Clobber!".
This bothers me a little. The Reagan Doctrine doesn't
mention the variety of god or afterlife that is concerned. It
doesn't indicate that it matters what you call god - allah,
vishnu, buddha, zeus, ish tar. I don't think that president
Reagan meant to imply a moslem couldn't trust a shintoist
or that a buddhist couldn't trust a parsee. I think it was just
the godless Soviets he was after.
Yet perhaps he was just being cautious in not mentioning
the fact that the variety of deity counted. But even if that
were so there are problems.
For instance, the Iranians are moslems and the Iraqi are
moslems. Both are certain that there is no god but allah and
that mohammed is his prophet and believe it with all their
hearts. And yet, at the moment, Iraq doesn't trust Iran
worth a damn, and Iran trust Iraq even less than that. Iffact,
Iran is convinced that Iraq is in the pay of the great satan
(that's god-fearing America, in case you've forgotten) and
Iraq counters with the accusation that it is Iran who is in the

October, 1982

Page 11

"It'sa little depressing, if you come to think of it. By the Reagan Doctrine, there is no
such thing as a person who keeps his word just because he has a sense of honor. No
one tells the truth just because he thinks that it is the decent thing to do. No one is
kind because he feels sympathy for others, or treats others decently because he likes
the kind of world in which decency exists."

pay of the great satan. Neither side is accusing the godless

of Soviets of anything, which is a puzzle.
But then, you know, they are moslems and perhaps we
can't just go along with any old god. I can see why Reagan
might not like to specify, since it might not be good
presidential business to offend the billions of people who are
sincerely religious but lack the good taste to be christians.
Still, just among ourselves, and in a whisper, perhaps the
only people you can really trust are good christians.
Yet even that raises difficulties. For instance, I doubt that
anyone can seriously maintain that the Irish people are
anything but god-fearing, and certainly they don't have the
slightest doubts concerning the existence of an afterlife.
Some are catholics and some are protestants, but both of
these christian varieties believe in the bible and in god and in
jesus and in heaven and in hell. Therefore, by the Reagan
Doctrine, the people of Ireland should trust each other.
Oddly enough, they don't. In Northern Ireland there has
been a two-sided terrorism that has existed for years and
shows no sign of ever abating. Catholics and protestants
blow each other up every chance they get and there seems
to be no indication of either side trusting the other even a
little bit.
But then, come to think of it, catholics and protestants
have had a thing about each other for centuries. They have
fought each other, massacred each other, and burned each
other at the stake. And at no time was this conflict fought in
a gentlemanly, let's-fight-fair manner. Any time you caught a
heretic or an idolator (or whatever nasty name you wanted
to use) looking the other way, you sneaked up behind him
and bopped him and collected your ticket to heaven.
We can't even make the Reagan Doctrine show complete
sense here in the United States. Consider the ku klux klan.
They don't like the jews or the catholics, but then, the jews
don't accept jesus and the catholics do accept the pope, and
these fine religious distinctions undoubtedly justify distrust
by a narrow interpretation of the Reagan Doctrine. The
protestant ku klux klan can only cotton to protestants.
Blacks, however, are predominantly protestant, and of

southern varieties, too, for that is where their immediate

ancestors learned their religion. Ku kluxers and Blacks
have very similar religions and therefore even by a narrow
interpretation of the Reagan Doctrine should trust each
other. It is difficult to see why they don't.
What about the moral majority? They're absolute professionals when it comes to putting a lot of stock in god and in
an afterlife. They practice it all day, apparently. Naturally,
they're a little picky. One of them said that god didn't listen
to the prayers of a jew. Another refused to share a platform
with Phyllis Schlafly, the moral majority's very own sweetheart, because she was a catholic. Some of them don't even
require religious disagreements, just political ones. They
have said that one can't be a liberal and a good christian at
one and the same time so that ifyou don't vote right, you are
going straight to hell whatever your religious beliefs are.
Fortunately, at every election they will tell you what the
right vote is so that you don't go to hell by accident.
Perhaps we shouldn't get into the small details, though.
The main thing is that the Soviet Union is godless and,
therefore, sneaky, tricky, crooked, untrustworthy, and
willingto stop at nothing to advance their cause. The United
States is god-fearing and therefore forthright, candid,
honest, trustworthy, and willing to let their cause lose
sooner than behave in anything but the most decent
possible way.
It bothers the heck out of me therefore that there's
probably not a country in the world that doesn't think the
United States, through the agency of the CIA and its
supposedly underhanded methods, has upset governments
in Guatemala, Chile, and Iran (among others), has tried to
overthrow the Cuban government by a variety of economic,
political, and even military methods, and so on. In every
country, you'll find large numbers who claim that the United
States fought a cruel and unjust war in Vietnam and that it is
the most violent and crime-ridden nation in the world.
They don't seem to be impressed by the fact that we're
god-fearing.
Next they'll be saying that Ronald Reagan (our very own
president) doesn't know what he's talking about.

(Reprinted from The Austin American-Statesman,

May 10, '81)

" .In every country, you'll find large numbers who claim that the United States
fought a cruel and unjust war in Vietnam and that it is the most violent and crimeridden nation in the world. They don't seem to be impressed by the fact that we're
god-fearing. Next they'll be saying that Ronald Reagan (our very own president)
doesn't know what he's talking about."
Page 12

October, 1982

The American Atheist

MerrilfHolste

JESUS WAS AN ASS-THIEF

Maybe after all, there was a jesus as the christians keep
yammering to us. But, they don't tell it like it was. The
recording scribes have changed the story during the many
times they copied and recopied it before Gutenberg invented the printing press about the year 1450. The various
scribe-copyists left out items to make their cause look
better, such as the real cause for the crucifixion of jesus.
Other scribes added fabrications and mythical fictions of
their own to improve the story. Eventually, the new
testament fable of jesus became what we read today in the
bible.
There were fabricators and liars among the scribes, for
they took to heart the apostle paul's complaint upon being
criticized for telling a lie. In his letter to the romans at
chapter 3, verse 7, he wrote, "If the truth of god hath more
abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also
judged as a sinner?" John, the divine, wrote that jesus told
him, "And thou hast tried them which say they are apostles,
and are not, and hast found them liars." (rev. 2:2) We must,
therefore, make due allowance for the fictions and myths
the scribes inserted into their hand-copied new testament
history. We may be certain that the new testament stories
are mostly fable and myth.
The new testament tells us at matthew 21:1-11that jesus,
while on his way to Jerusalem, saw an ass and its colt
tethered at the crossroads in the village of Bethphage.
Because of his hallucinations, jesus expected the people to
crown him king of Jerusalem, and he wanted to make his
entry in an appropriate regal splendor. So, he told two of his
disciples to go into that village, take that ass and colt, and
bring them to him. I quote matthew 21:6,7 "The disciples
went and did as jesus commanded them, and brought the
ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set
him thereon." We presume that jesus supposed that the
sight of a man riding on two animals at once would convince
the Jerusalemites that he was, in fact, worthy of being their
future king! It appears that jesus was trying to fulfill the
supposed prophecy mentioned by matthew at 21:5 ("Tell ye
the daughter of zion, behold, thy king cometh unto thee, .
meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an
ass."). There is a discrepancy here with john 12:15 ("Fear
not, daughter of zion: behold thy king cometh, sitting on an .
ass's colt"). Both of these verses refer to zechariah 9:9
("Rejoice greatly, 0 daughter of zion; shout, 0 daughter of
Jerusalem: behold, thy king cometh unto thee: he is just,
and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and
upon a colt the foal of an ass."). Thus, it appears that john
has departed from the original text - a singular loss of
"divine" inspiration.

Austin Texas

In those days the ass, or donkey, was the common

people's most essential and vital means of transportation,
exactly as the horse was in the early days of our "wild west."
The ass still is the much-used draft animal in that part of the
world. Few people there can afford autos or pick-up trucks.
Horses were known in jesus's time but only kings could
afford to own and feed a horse. In our days of the "wild
west," the horse was so valued a part of a man's possessions
that horse-stealing was a capital crime. Many a horse-thief
ended his evil ways hanging at the end of a rope, or by
means of the trusty Colt six-shooter. Horse stealing was a
capital crime in the US within the lifetimes of people still
alive today. The National Geographic magazine, in its issue
of December 1976, in an article on Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
mentions that in 1893, 89 years ago, two young horsethieves ended their careers in crime by being shot to death.
According to the story in the new testament, after
stealing the ass and its colt, jesus and his followers
proceeded immediately into the city of Jerusalem, making a
'triumphal entry' according to the story in matthew 21:8-9.
We presume that jesus rode both the ass and her colt like a
circus performer. They went to the holy temple of the jews
where they upset the tables of the money changers. The
money changers in those days loaned out money - at
exorbitant interest rates, of course. They were the bankers
of that day. The priests, also, were angry at the perpetrators
of the unholy riot in their holy temple. The majority of the
jewish people were, of course, very angry at jesus and his
followers for desecrating their temple by their unholy riot.
The roman authorities were always jealous of their authority. Sedition was a serious crime to them. So, the jews, the
priests, the bankers and the romans were all angry at jesus
and his rowdy gang of followers.
Judea, in those days, was ruled by mighty Rome.
Therefore, the jews could not execute their criminals in the
traditional way by stoning them to death. They had to get
their revenge according to the roman law, through the
roman legal system. Crucifixion was the roman method of
executing criminals who were not roman citizens. So, jesus
and his two fellow thieves soon found themselves nailed to
three crosses - three guilty ass-thieves in a row. It was not,
as the new testament says, jesus between two thieves.

October, 1982

Page 13

DIAL-AN-ATHEIST - TUCSON, ARIZONA

Page 14

October, 1982

(602) 623-3861

The American Atheist

Only For
Atheists

Goeringer finds the story .

of a Phoenix woman who
baked a tortilla with the
image of Jesus on it,
which was then lacquered
and moented on a velvet
cloth, as ''intellectually
repugnant" as the belief
that "a piece of wafer ...
is the body of Christ."

by Aubin Tyler

INTERVIEW WITH CONRAD GOERINGER (8/7/82) IN THE TUCSON CITIZEN

With a fistful of questionable bible
quotations, a vaudevillian warblerwhistle and a canned laughter box,
Tucsonian Conrad Goeringer has
invented his own brand of Atheism.
"It's Atheism with a sense of humor," said the 32-year-old producer
of Dial-an-Atheist, an irreverent
phone message service for those
seeking an alternative to prayer.
Goeringer writes and announces
each week's three-minute message
himself, gathering much of his material from a 5-inch thick file of press
clippings on what he calls "religious
absurdities. "
A recent program, for example,
parodied the idea that subliminal
satanic messages were poisoning the
minds of young rock-and-rollers who
persist in playing their music backward.
Austin Texas

"If you read the bible forward you

don't need any expensive stereo
gear or anything," countered Goeringer. "You can find just terrible things
in the bible."
Goeringer began the 24-hour/day
message service as a recruiting tool
for the Tucson chapter of American
Atheists, a national organization
based in Austin, Texas, and headed
by Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair.
A fan of O'Hair since her famous
1963 court battle to remove prayer
from public schools, Goeringer said,
"I've always admired her as the most
hated woman in America."
Dial-an-Atheist originally was conceived by Lloyd Thoren, who runs
the American Atheist Museum in
Petersburg, Indiana. It has since
spread to about 30 American cities
that have American Atheist chapOctober, 1982

ters.
And several rely on "bootlegged"
Goeringer tapes.
"That's fine with me - we cut a
very good tape," he said.
His comedy skits - humorous
recitations against "religious ignorance, foolishness and stupidity" are enormously popular, he said.
The whistle and laugh-box supply
intriguing sound effects, of course.
One such skit begins with the
swelling strains of Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus," while the voice of Bill
Carton, an occasional collaborator
of Goeringer's, issues the following
commercial-style message with evangelistic fervor:
"And now, from the people
who brought you hell, it's
three, three, three gods in one.
That's exactly right, folks; only
Page 15

and Anarchist poses no contradicchristianity

offers you three
tion, since, in his point of view, "the
gods in one for fast relief from
major stumbling blocks to human
the pain and misery of sin, guilt
and waywardness.
Look, with
progress and the aspiration of hujudaism you get only one god.
man freedom are embodied in two
institutions,
the church
and the
With islam you still only get
state."
one. But christianity offers you
As an Anarchist, Goeringer oppoa combination
of gods - fases all forms of government. But he
ther, son, and holy ghost, specishuns the stereotype of the violent
fically formulated for fast, fast
bomb-throwing
fanatic - what he
salvation ... "
Dial-an-Atheist
(602-623-3861)
calls "a bad misconception."
"I don't believe in violent revolugets about 1,000 calls a week - an
tion," he said; "I never have.
appreciable increase from the 120"T 0 me, being an Anarchist is to
some calls a week it received when it
have a consistent philosophy of freemade its debut in Tucson three years
dom. It's a statement of opposition to
ago.
all forms of totalitarianism,
be they
The number of calls went up
from the left or the right."
"when I stopped trying to be courteGoeringer said he came to Anarous and pull my punches," Goerinchism "through a good deal of readger said.
ing and thinking and agonizing." and
"A year and a half ago I was very
because the tenets of Anarchism are
sensitive to the fact that you had to
say things in sort of a buffered way ..
Butl found that theblunterlam,
the ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
more I just outright speak my mind
and use the kind of adjectives that I
really think and feel about religious
activities," the more successful the
message.
A favorite Goeringer "specimen of
religious lunacy" involved the case of
Ramona Barreras, a Phoenix woman
who baked a tortilla with the image of
jesus on it.
But she didn't stop there. The
edible icon was lacquered and mounted on a velvet cloth, so the story
. goes, and it attracted a great amount
of attention.
Goeringer finds that as absurd and
as "intellectually' repugnant"
as he
finds "communion" and the belief
that "a piece of wafer ... is the body
of christ."
"Both are e}lually preposterous
ideas, except that some have been
accepted and others are sort of on
the fringe."
Goeringer has found himself on
the fringe, at times, for his unconventional ideas. For his vigorous protest
against the Vietnam War while a
student of philosophy and history at
the University of Arizona, he was
labeled "resident radical" on campus.
He is perhaps better known for his
now-defunct Anarchist newspaper,

.r--.:::!

The Protest.
Goeringer's

Page 16

those of human freedom and vol un, tarism, rather than social regimentation and exploitation.
But he was quick to point out that
not all Atheists are Anarchists. Atheists as a group are politically diverse,
even "eclectic," he said.
Although he directed the Tucson
chapter of American Atheists for
about
three
years,
Goeringer
stepped down to spend more time on
Dial-an-Atheist
and his own freelance writing.
Atheists "are the kind of people
who are difficult to organize because
they don't have the herd instinct," he
said.
"Atheists by and large are extremely intelligent, independent,
self-sufficient people," he added. "It's like
trying to have an organization
of
individualists. "
Goeringer himself is no intellectual

"In this COWltrytoday,

some of the most
authoritarian politics are
supported by the
Christi ans,
. the .
Ftmdamentalists and the
Moral Majority. They
want to ban books, they
want to roll back a lot of
the progressive and
enlightened legislatioo
that has been passed over
the years."

dual stance as Atheist

October, 1982

The American Atheist

slouch; some 3;700 books line the

walls of the small university-area apartment from which he operates
Dial-an-Atheist.
Included in his library are Lucifer's
Handbook, a debating sourcebook
for Atheists, and a small pamphlet by
the Robert Ingersoll entitled A Few
Reasons for Doubting the Inspiration of the Bible.
Ingersoll, a famous lawyer and
Atheist who died in 1899, counted
10,000 contradictions in the bible
and described them in his booklet.
Goeringer says Ingersoll's pamphlet
is the source of many of the embarrassing bible quotations he inserts in
his weekly programs.
Goeringer, who works as a bartender spends between $100 and $150
each month from his own pocket to
produce and advertise the program
as a "labor of love."
"What I spend on Dial-an-Atheist
in one month would barely fund
evangelist Jerry Falwell for a minute," he said with a laugh.
"It's fun. I enjoy doing it. Sacred
symbols need to be wrecked occasionally." Aside from fun, "I do it
because I am an Atheist and I believe .
Atheism is important. I think religion
is socially retarding."
A major purpose of Goeringer'sis
to combat religious ideas that he
believes are "economically, politically, intellectually and morally dangerous. It doesn't surprise me when
religious movements support all
kinds of authoritarian movements. In

this country today, some of the most

authoritarian politics are supported
by the christians, th fundamentalists,
and the moral majority. They want to
ban books, they want to roll back a
lot of the progressive and enlightened legislation that has been passed
over the years."
Goeringer takes credit for spurring several debates over the
creationism-evolution controversy
this past spring at the University of
Arizona.
"We're gadflies," he said of the
local Atheist group. "We prompt
people who otherwise wouldn't sit up
and take notice to do something to
defend a rational point of view."
Goeringer becomes particularly incensed about what he calls "pseudoscience" and the unquestioning belief of some people in such things as
flying saucers, astrology, and other
"crank doctrines." Despite vast technological strides in the sciences,
Goeringer maintains that "American
consciousness has lagged behind.
The average person knows more
about astrology than astronomy. Science has got to come out of its ivory
tower and combat this," he insisted.
Another theme Goeringer harps
on is the need to preserve separation
of church and state. "We want to
stop religious activities where they
do not belong. And they do not
belong in government institutions or
government-funded programs."
However, "We're not out to ban
anything," not even religion, he said.

"F reedom of religion should co-exist

with freedom from religion. I can
expose inconsistencies and absurdities of religion, which I spend a lot of
time trying to do," he said. "But I
don't want to see an atheistic dictatorship prohibiting people from en- .
gaging in their own folly."
The concept that Atheism is Just
the mirror image or flip side of religion is one that Goeringer objects to
strenuously. "First of all, we're not
out to convert," he said. "Conversion entails the uncritical acceptance
of a dogma. Atheism is something
that most people come to on their
own. It's an intellectual process. So,
I'm not a proselytizer for Atheism.
I'm delivering information and humor. But Ican't make somebody into
an Atheist."
Goeringer maintains that the majority of mail he receives in response
to Dial-an-Atheist are letters of inquiry or sympathy. "I'm convinced
there is an Atheist underground out
there," he said. "I enjoy the hate mail,
though - it shows we're needling
these people."
When asked how long he willcontinue his controversial message service, Goeringer said, "Well, there's
always an abundance of new material, thanks to organized religion. It
just keeps me stocked with new
absurdities every week to talk about.
The fountainhead of religious lunacy
just doesn't seem to run dry. As long
as religion is around, I guess I'll be
around."

DIAL- THE~ATHEIST

DIAL-AN-ATHEIST
Tucson, Arizona
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Austin Texas

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Page 17

THE A.MERICAN ATHEIST RADIINTRODUCTION TO

SEPHER TOLOUTHJESHU
This is Madalyn Mays O'Hair, American Atheist, back to
talk with you again.
The material which we use on these programs is often
quite difficult to come by and we don't think that this should
be. This is why we have been gathering it together in Austin,
Texas, in an American Atheist Library and Archives so that
it will be available to researchers
and scholars who are
interested in this idea area.
For instance, I have finally obtained a booklet which was
published especially by the Progressive Publishing Company in England in 1885. It has not been further reproduced.
I think that if should be.
The pamphlet is titled thejewish life of christ, being theI hope I pronounce this even a little correctly - sepher
tolduthjeshu or, translating from the Hebrew, the book of
the generation of jesus, G.W. Foote & J.M. Wheeler, who
were two Atheist researchers
of the last century, did the
translating from the Hebrew and undertook to place this
document in historical perspective. The forty seven pages
of the little booklet consist of perhaps ten pages of the life of
jesus and the balance is footnoting, indicating the scholarly
research done.
Let's look at the history of the little booklet before we get
into the actual historical jewish life of christ. I am constantly
stunned to find that the christian churches have censored
material for as much as 1,000 years. If during that length of
time the truth of some matters or other, (such as the alleged
donation of land by the emperor Constantine to the church)
is suppressed, how could any scholars of that period make
any valid decisions? Let's listen to Foote and Wheeler for a
little while.
They say;
"When we first announced our intention of publishing
a translation of this work, we were unaware that it had
ever appeared in English before it was inserted in the
New York Truth Seeker magazine by 'Scholasticus.'
This able and learned writer, who has since published
his translation, with other highly interesting matter,
under the title of Revelations of Antichrist Concerning
Christ and Christianity, supposed that he was the first
who introduced it to the English speaking world. He
was, however, mistaken. We have quite recently
lighted on a translation published by Richard Carlile in
1823. It was done by a jew who stated that it had 'never
before been wholly translated into any modern language.' He appears to have been right in this statement, as the earliest continental translation we can
trace is in German, and was published at Stuttgart in
1850, in a volume together with the apocryphal
gospels, by Dr. R. Clements. No copy of the Richard

Page 18

Carlile edition (the Hebrew translator does not give

his name) is to be found in the British Museum. It is a
sixteen page octavo pamphlet, with an Editor's Pre;
face, probably by Carlile himself, and a dedication by
the translator 'T 0 the clergy of the church of England.'
His English text is substantially the same as that now
published. Some of its phrases are rough and racy,
possibly owing to his strict adherence to the original;
and instead of veiling in Latin the amours of pandera
and miriam, he relates them in plain English with
biblical naivete.
"The sepher tolduth jeshu was first published in
Latin, with the Hebrew text in parallel columns, by
J. C. Wagenseil in his tela ignea satanae a collection of
jewish anti-christian tracts, all translated into Latin,
with attempted refutations. To collect these valuable
tracts, Wagenseil travelled widely through Spain and
into Africa, where the chief centres of jewish learning
then existed. His work was published in Altdorf in
168l.
"A later and widely different version, the sepher
tolduth jeshu ha nozri (history of Jesus of nazareth)
was published by J.J. Huldrich at Leyden in 1705. It is
certainly a more modern version of the jeshu story.
Interpolations
are found referring to Worms and the
people of Germany, and the narrative abounds with
~ap~icious phantasies that belong to a later age.

October, 1982

..

V4'.'~I'"

::'"

!. -..

"Don't worry, Mary. N'oo one will ever

believe
the real.story."
.

The: American Atheist

"A shorter and earlier version of the jeshu story was

probably used by Luther and condensed in his schem
hamphoras. Luther was stung by it into a characteristic fit of vituperation as the following passage will
show:
The haughty evil spirit jests in the book with a
threefold mockery. First he mocks god, creator of
heaven and earth, with his son, jesus christ, as you
may see for yourself ifyou believe, as a christian, that
christ is the son of god. Secondly, he mocks all
christendom, because we believe in such a son a of
god. Thirdly, he mocks his own jews by giving them
such a scandalous, foolish doltish thing about brazen
dogs and cabbage stalks, which would make all dogs
bark to death, if they could understand it, at such
raving, ranting, senseless, foaming mad fools. Is not
this a master of mocking, who can effect three such
great mockeries? The fourth mockery is that herewith he has mocked himself, as we shall some day to
our joy see, thank god!' (Werke, Wittemberg, 1566
Vol. V, p. 515)

"Long before the sepher tolduth jeshu was published, in our modern sense, it was known to the
lear'ned. The work came to light in the dawning after
the Dark Ages, but-'it was kept secret, fest the sightof-
it should excite tumults, spoliation and massacre.'
Those who know how flamingly the evidences of
christianity have been written on the tear-washed and
blood-stained pages of jewish history will appreciate
this cautious reserve.
"It was doubtless the jeshu story which was denounced and prohibited by pope Valentine in his bull
of May 11, 1514, under the title of mar mar jeshu.
-

\.

;,.-

"In the thirteenth century, Raymond Martini, -a

dominican friar, composed a work against the jews
and mahommedans, with the suggestive title of pugi-

Austin Texas

. one fidei, the dagger of faith. Without naming the

tolduthjeshu, he gave long extracts from it, or at least
a good summary.
"The heresiarch of Ferney, in his Lettres Sur Les
Juifs, says 'that tolduth jeshu is the most ancient
jewish writing that has descended to us against our
religion. It is a life of jesus christ, altogether different
from our holy gospels. It appears to be of the first
century, and even to have been written before the
gospels.
"Celsus wrote, about the year 170, a work called
The True Word (Logos). The writings of this early
opponent of christianity, like those of others, such as
Porphyry, who would not bow to the nazarene, were
ruthlessly suppressed, so that nothing remains of
them except the extracts given by Origen in his
refutation. Celsus describes jesus as a bastard, born
of a jewish countrywoman and a soldier named
panthera.
"Celsus contemporary, Justin Martyr, one of the
early 'fathers', in his dialogue with Trypho the jew,
bitterly complains that the jews had sent persons into
all parts of the world to publish blasphemies against
jesus.
"In the Babylonian gemara of the talmud (which,
although not completed until about the year 500 of the
christian era, represents the authoritative traditions of
the jews) the name of pandera is given to the father of
jeshu; and the same parentage is given in the Jerusalem gemara, which was compiled independently a
century earlier.
"The sepher tolduth jeshu places the birth of jeshu
in the reign of Janneus, at least ninety years before the
alleged birth of christ. He is made contemporary with
rabbi Simeon ben Shetach who flourished about 90
b.c. And, there is no proof of jesus christ having been
born in the first year of our era, and many indications
to the contrary. Christian chronology has been arbitrarily established. There was great uncertainty among the early christians who reckoned, like all
Roman subjects, from the reigns of the Caesars, not
only as to the birth, but also as to the age of their
savior. Irenaeus, the first christian father who mentions the four gospels, maintains that jesus was fifty
years old at his death, and the chronology of luke is
absolutely inconsistent with Roman history, as well as
being at variance with that of matthew. Likewise, from
the only chronological reference in paul's epistle (II
corinthians 11:32) he flourished at least 62 years
before our era. According to his own statement, he
escaped arrest at Damascus while the city was 'under
Aretas the king,' who ruled there before the city was
captured by Pompey in 62 b.c.
"We would not dogmatise, but we venture to think
that the christian legend of jesus may have originated
in the jewish story of jeshu. This theory at any rate
accounts for the hero's introduction to the world. The
two Hebrew versions of a career similar to that of
jesus, as well as the talmud, agree in making jeshu the
illegitimate son of pandera and a jewish maiden; and
Celsus flung the same charge at the christians before

October, 1982

Page 19

our present gospels can be proved to have existed.

That both the jewish and the christian story are largely
fabulous, we cheerfully concede, but no advantage
can be derived to either from that fact. We now leave
the question to the reader of this story. It is for him to
decide whether it is more probable that the father of
jesus was a human being or the intangible third person
of a hypothetical trinity."
Before we get into this sepher tolduthjeshu, or thejewish
life of christ, it is necessary to review the jewish gemara
which was compiled between the fourth and sixth centuries
of our era, but containing ancient traditions orally transmitted. In this, pandera was the paramour of a wanton who
went astray from her husband. The talmudic references to .
this miriam and to pandera when brought together, according to Foote and Wheeler, give the following story.
In the time of Janneus the sadducee, one mary, a plaiter
of woman's hair, was false to her husband and had, by a
person named pandera, a son called jesus. This son was
taken in tutorship by rabbi Joshua ben Perachis, president
of the Sanhedrim, and, at the time when the rabbis were
persecuted by Janneus, accompanied him to Alexandria in
Egypt, where he learnt how to charm diseases and other
magic arts. On his return with his master they fell out
becausejesus praised a woman's beauty. Jesus then taught

new doctrines, defamed the rabbis and gave himself up to

magical practices. He had five chief disciples, mathai
(matthew?), nezer, boni and thodah (thaddeus?). Thee
were put to death, and jesus himself was stoned at Lud or
Lydda, twenty two miles northwest of Jerusalem, and then
hanged on the evening before the passover.
Celsus, as quoted by Origen, says that jesus was born of a
countrywoman, and that "when she was pregnant she was
turned out of doors by the carpenter to whom she had been
betrothed, as having been guilty of adultery," and that she
bore a child to a certain soldier named panthera. Celsus
further says "that he (jesus) having been brought up as an
illegitimate child and having served for hire in Egypt, and
then coming to the knowledge of certain miraculous
powers, returned from thence of his own country, and by
means of those powers proclaimed himself to be god."
Pandera's living at Bethlehem might account for the
gospel tradition of jesus being born there. According to the
apocryphal gospel of mary, she lived at Jerusalem before
joseph married her, and Bethlehem is not far from the holy
city. Actually, it is more probable that jesus was born at
Nazareth where joseph lived. The rabbinical writers refer to
him as "ha notzri," a native of Nazareth; his disciples were
called nazarenes before they received the name of christians; and a nazarene is still the designation for a christian
throughout the East.

)(.
/.

"

Page 20

October, 1982

The American Atheist

REAGAN
AND
THE
RELIGIOUS.
RIGHT
Among the Atheists there are supporters of Reagan and of the radical right in our permitted one-party political system
(the left wing of which is the Democratic and the right wing of which is the Republican). From time to time The American
Atheist Center receives letters from these Reagan supporters admonishing of the need for a total commitment to their
hero. It is our considered opinion that the Reagan supporters are not reading his record in respect to Atheism and the right
Atheists have to be free from religion. To emphasize his entanglement with thereligiou5 right, we reproduce his speech to
the knights of columbus, delivered on August 3rd, '82, our transcript of the speech having been received directlyfrom the
White House.
Our position is that politics is your business. Left, right, or middle of the road, where you come down politically is a
personal conviction which you can implement at the polls. American Atheists are unwilling to dictate any political
position. However it is our business, our commitment, to point out to you where any of these colorations of politics sit in
respect to religion. And, the more wacko the religion, generally speaking, the "right-er" it gets. All of the raving, foaming'
at the mouth, bible thumping maniacs are on the very far right of the political spectrum. And, Reagan has more than his
finger in their pie. It is a problem for any conservative Atheist to sort out a political position when everything on the radical
right is premised on biblicalfundamentalism and blabbering born-again insanity. If the conservative Atheists can't clean
up the act of their conservative heroes, they simply need to take the flak that is directed at those heroes who are
contaminated with the irrationality of militant non-think evangelism.
Our radical right Atheists must take into account, in their evaluation of Reagan, that he has quietly been taking into
governmental positions the most extreme fundamentalist religionists visible (and invisible) in the nation. Many are
graduates of Bob Jones University which is a disgrace, a blot upon the educational system of the United States. Bob

Austin Texas

October, 1982

Page 21

Billings, a former director of the "moral majority" is one such and he is now ensconced in the Department of Education.
Here, he brags that he is influencing and reshaping the educational standards to be in accordance with his grossly insane
religiousfundamentalism. He actually holds a weekly prayer meeting in his office at the Education Department. It is easy
for him from this perch to demand that the National Institute of Education investigate any package of sex education
material which he quickly labels "smut." Our Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, is an evangelist who opposes abortion
on religious grounds, not on medical grounds, and imposes that criterion on his department. Richard Leiter is now reading
grant applications for programs aimed at bringing minorities into graduate institutions when the "university" business
school of which he is dean (Bob Jones University) practices racial discrimination. A grant watcher, Susan Phillips, is
actually a $52,000-a-year consultant for the Conservative Digest which regularly runs lily white, if not anti-Black, raving
fundamentalist columns attacking homosexuals and "other perverts." Other Bob Jones faculty members have positions
with the Education Department - one as an evaluator of grants for women's educational programs, another as a special
department assistant, a third as a member of a Presidential advisory panel on education matters. They all view their
positions as a chance to influence governmental positions and brag that they do. Morton Blackwell, a "White House
liaison to conservative groups" spends his time running back andforth between the White House and tapings of Falwell's
"old time gospel hour" while he sets up meetings between right wing conservative religious leaders and his boss, Reagan.
This man is so spaced out that he labels the solidly pro-Republican American Bar Association as "left-leaning," and foams
at the mouth over the Audubon Society and the League of Women Voters. He has been instrumental in cutting funds to all
such "advocacy" groups while, of course, he and his friends fight for the tax exemption of the racist Bob Jones University.
Enough has been said about James Watt, Secretary of Interior, who is raping our natural resources since he believes
that the only thing which needs to be conserved is the nation's belief in heaven - where there are no natural forests, wild
li/e, sea coasts, or other environmental non-necessities to be protected.
But, we are just getting to know JoAnn Gaspar now in charge of reviewing government regulations concerning
domestic violence. One of her first acts was to approve a very controversial regulation requiring notification of parents
when minors receive contraceptives from Federally financed clinics - which forces the question to our good conservative
Atheists: when you first experimented with sex did you want a government agency to notify your parents that you were in
the back seat of dad's car doing your thing? Maybe you had money enough for the condoms you used on your first try but
many of our impoverished youngsters do not.
The news media covered a little of Reagan's speech to the roman catholic knights of columbus, but not all. We feel it is
important enough that you read the entire thing. Remember that Reagan was addressing not only the knights' officers and
dignitaries, 481 delegates from state and regional councils, but 150 bishops of the roman catholic church who had come to
join in the centennial and the vatican secretary of state who had come to accept the first payment of $10 millionpledged to
one of the most reactionary popes in world history. (The first check was for $1,225,934.) The knights are notoriously
fundamentalist in their catholicism. Indeed, it was the knights which intervened in the case of Mars a v. Metuchen Borough
Council. (That was the case, you will recall, of the Director of the New Jersey Chapter of American Atheists attempting to
stop prayer at the opening of the borough council meetings in Metuchen, New Jersey.) The knights, one of the world's
largest and most successful fraternal societies has 1,375,000 members and is the self-appointed monitor for "the moral
standards" of television programming. If you want to know why your T. V. guide or your local cinema has ratings listed for
programs or films, read Chapter 5 of Freedom Under Siege, the bo~okwritten by Madalyn O'Hair. The roman catholic
church, with the knights of columbus avant, has been censoring what you can see or read for the last 50 years in the
United States.
The key to all knight activity is the quietness - and the thoroughness - with which it is done. While the media focuses
on the pageantry, the plumed hats, the bingo games, the ritualistically bizarre funerals, the knights' main thrust continues
with low visibility and wide ranging consequences for allof us. An example of this is a classic "Did you know question. " Did
you know that the knights operate one of the largest (allegedly non-profit) insurance agencies in the nation, the profits of
which are poured into the vatican?
Those outside of government capture the media with their antics; those inside insidiously destroy any hope for real
participatory democracy in our land as they shape policies of administrative agencies to reflect their fundamentalist and
basically insane retigious ideologies.
Recently we have seen the emergence of "liberal left" churches and religious organizations being openly critical of the
"radical right" born-againers. The criticism is not directed at their goals so much as it is at their methods. The powerful
roman catholic, baptist, presbyterian, lutheran, mormon and jewish religious organizations in our nation have always
influenced, even badgered, the politicians to get what they wanted. The entire difference is that the "established"
churches did it quietly, discreetly and invisibly. The born-againers shout it from the rooftop. The established order
exchanged mutual rubbings of the back; the born-againers demand dominance as a right with no reciprocity. The current
hostility between the two camps is over the game being played in the open by the come-lately born-againers with their
deliberate affront to the sensibilities of all, which then brings attention to what is occurring. The establishment religion has
more finesse. It desires to control you covertly. The Reaganite religious right wants to do it overtly - with flourish. And,
Reagan agrees.
The proof is in the pudding as in the following speech by Reagan when he opines that there is no room, or no basis for
freedom from religion in our land.
Page 22

October, 1982

The American Atheist

Address by The President ofThe United States

to The Centennial Meeting of
The Supreme Council of The Knights of Columbus
The Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, Connecticut
August 3rd, 1982; 2:45 P.M. E.D.T.
(The President) "Supreme Knight Dechant, I thank you
for those very generous words. Your Eminence, Cardinal
Casaroli, Your Eminences, Excellencies, Reverend Clergy,
members of the Knights of Columbus and guests here
today: I want to begin by saying how grateful I am that
you've asked me here to participate in the celebration of the
100th anniversary of the Knights of Columbus.
"Now, it isn't true that I was present at the first
anniversary. (Laughter.) But a few years back (applause)
when I was a governor, I was privileged to be a Chubb
Fellow at Yale University and I was staying just around the
corner in those few days from a sturdy- looking stone
church where the events that bring us here today first
began. It was there in the basement of St. Mary's Church on
Hillhouse Avenue that Father McGivney and a few dedicated parishioners started an organization that would grow
beyond any of their imagining. Today, the spires of a great
university can still be seen on the New Haven skyline, but
there is another dominant presence: four huge towers of the
national headquarters of the Knights of Columbus, a
group- (applause) a group that has grown to over 1.3
million members and comprises the largest Catholic fraternal society in the world. (Applause.)
"Much has happened to Father McGivney's dream since
1882and much good has flowed from that church basement
on Hillhouse Avenue. The Knights of Columbus is unrivaled
in its dedication to family, community, country and church.
And your corporal and spiritual works of mercy for those in
need are both a legend and an example to your countrymen. In the single year of 1981, you made in charitable
contributions more than $41 million. And even more
important, devoted more than 10 million hours in community service.
"As important as your works of charity are, however, you
have also maintained individually and corporately your
stalwart faith in religious and family values. Through
activities, such as the Catholic Information Service, you've
stood unhesitatingly for these values. And that's why, for
example, in the 1920's, long before the cause was taken up
by others, you were earnestly working for an end to racial
and ethnic prejudice in America, fighting for justice for
Blacks and for Jews as well as for Catholics, and today you
bring this same fervor to your work on behalf of the
American family and your religious values. (Applause.) In
doing so you provide inspiration to a world seeking
desperately to find men who can make the message of the
Gospel a reality in their lives and times. During those early
20's a motion picture, a movie, revolutionized motion
picture making. It was an historic milestone in the technolo-

Austin Texas

gy of that industry - D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation. Well,

that picture came to our town - and I was just a boy. My
father, who was a Knight, said that it was a picture about the
Ku Klux Klan and we would not see it. Well, to this day, and
after more than a quarter of a century in that motion picture
industry, I still have never seen it and have no intention of
seeing it. (Applause.)
"During the last campaign I spoke frequently of these
crucial values of family, work, neighborhood, religion, and
personal freedom. Now some pundits claim that this was an
attempt to appeal to various ethnic or religious voting blocs.
I saw it as a simple recognition of the values that most
Americans, whatever their racial, ethnic, or religious heritage, hold dear. Now in pointing out this tendency of some
commentators to focus on only the immediate or the
political, I don't mean to sound too critical. Actually the'
American press does a remarkable job of piecing together
quite cleverly and sometimes in a matter of hours or
minutes the dizzying events of this modern world. Yet I
think the very speed of this process can oftentimes cloud
the understanding and serve as an obstacle to. good
judgment and historical perspective.
"It would have been hard, for example, for any reporter
covering those first meetings of the Knights of Columbus in
St. Mary's basement to have sensed the potential importance of Father McGiveny and his small band of Catholic
laymen. But as the history of the Knights of Columbus has
proven, discussions of our basic values are a vital part of our
national political dialogue, for it is only in these values, only
in the faith that sees beyond the here and now, that we find
the rationale for our own daring notions about the inalienable rights of free men and women. This faith in the dignity
of the individual under God is the foundation for the whole
American political experiment. It is central to our national
politics. Our first president put it very well. He said, 'Of all
the dispositions in habits which lead to political prosperity,'
Washington said, 'religion and morality are indispensable
supports.' (Applause.)
"And incidentally to those who suggest that the two could
be separated, he further pointed out that morality could not
really be sustained or widely observed without religion.
(Applause.) There can be no freedom without order and
there is no order without virtue. Now that is a simple
enough formulation, but it is an insight found not only in the'
writings of founding fathers like Washington or great
political thinkers like Edmund Burke. It is also found in a
great part of our Judeo-Christian tradition - notably in the
modern encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and John Paul II. Yet
how often this simple truth, the importance of this belief in

October, 1982

. Page23

basic values, is overlooked in a society of high technology , the police got there and elbowed their way through the
crowd that had gathered and they said, 'What happened?',
and mass communication and bewildering everyday events.
"I guess what I'm trying to say was put very well by that
they said, 'We don't know. When we got here, he seemed to
great Catholic essayist G.K. Chesterton when he warned
be all right. But by the time we had his head turned around
straight, he was dead.' (Laughter.) (Applause.)
about the modern habit of those who try to put the heavens
in their heads rather than their heads in the heavens. Or as
"Since we've been in Washington, we've tried, and I
Alfred North Whitehead observed, 'There is danger in believe, have brought an historic change to Washington. I
clarity, the danger of overlooking the subtleties of truth.'
can assure you we've replaced that old doctrine of tax and
"Those subtleties of truth - the belief in the importance
tax, spend and spend with a new philosophy that says that
of the family, of community and church - the realization
there is one overriding cause for our economic troubles:
that the Western ideas of freedom and democracy spring
government is too big and it spends too much money.
directly from the Judeo-Christian religious experience (Applause.) Now, I know that you've heard and read a
are not often publicly discussed. Yet they- every place I go variety of accounts almost every day of what we're trying to
lately there's an echo. (Laughter.) (Applause.) These things do, many of them quoting unnamed but highly placed
that are publicly discussed still remain the foundation for sources in the White House. I wonder if you'd put up with
our concepts of social justice, our political system, our very another account, this time from a highly placed source who
way of life. They are the values that ennoble man, making
doesn't mind if you know his name.
"T 0 begin with, what we call our economic recovery
him something more than just the plaything of hedonism or
the vassal of dictatorship; they entitle him to personal
program has already cut the rate of growth in federal
dignity and to the individual liberty and representative
spending nearly in half. And it has already cut away billions
in taxes for individuals in businesses. And, for the first time
government that dignity enjoins.
"Now, perhaps some of you remember that just a few in history, taxes are going to be indexed to the rate of
years ago these basic values were being forgotten in the inflation, a reform that takes away government's hidden
highest levels of our government. Indeed, the machinery of profit from inflation. We have cut through the growing
thicket of federal regulations that was stifling business and
government at times actively opposed them. Government
industrial growth. Vice President Bush heads up a Task
intrusion into the life of the family and the local neighborhood - federally financed abortions, forced busing, HEW Force that deals with this. And already we've made savings
regulations and rules on many matters that government had of nearly $6 billion annually, just in changing regulations.
And this year alone, there will be 200 million fewer manno business dealing with - had reached unparalleled
hours of paperwork imposed on American citizens. (Apheights. In a similar vein, the prerogatives of local communities and state governments were slowly being eroded as plause.) Our Economic Recovery Program has been in
more and more decisions were made in Washington and effect for only 10 months, but its impact has already been
felt. Last quarter's rise in the Gross National Product is an
government grew ever more distant and beyond the control
encouraging sign. Our dollar is stronger than it's been in 10
of the people. Federal spending sent inflation skyrocketing
years. Inflation, which a little more than a year ago was the
and the tax burden increasing to the point where rewards
number one economic concern of most Americans, has
for honest work and extra initiative were evaporating.
"It is this latter problem that we had to confront when we taken an impressive turn for the better. And in the last six
months has run at less than half of what it was in 1980. And
came to Washington 18 months ago. In the last 10 years,
federal spending had tripled. In the last 5 years, federal we're going to keep it going down. (Applause.) We've
brought to individual Americans the first comprehensive
taxes had doubled. The philosophy of government seemed
to be tax and tax, spend and spend. Now, no one can tax cut they've said- had since John F. Kennedy's tax cut
quarrel with the motive behind all this. It was well; 20 years ago. (And, incidentally, some of the critics of ours
were criticizing him then for trying to do what he did.) We
intentioned and done in the name of humanity. The budget
said we were going to cut spending, reduce the tax burden,
for the Department of Health and Human Services became
, the third largest budget in the world, right after the entire rebuild our national defenses, strive for legitimate arms
national budgets of the United States and the Soviet Union. reductions, and be firm with totalitarian powers. And I
The federal debt reached one trillion dollars; and our believe the record shows we have kept those promises.
interest payments on that debt, in the range of $100 billion, (Applause.)
"But our promises about working to clean up the federal
are more than the entire federal budget of about 20 years
fiscal mess and cut the size of government were not made
ago.
"You know, I have to stop and interject here that 1- as I just in order to get the economy moving again, as important
said before, this was all done with the best of intentions, all as that is. Government can't interfere with economic
of this was designed to help. But when you set out to help, freedom without restricting the political and personal
you'd better have a pretty good idea of what you're doing. freedom of individual Americans. That's what we mean to
You know, there was a fellow riding a bicycle one cold restore. John Stuart Mill put it very well: 'A state which
winter day- motorcycle, I should say- and the wind dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile
coming in through the buttons of his leather jacket were instruments in its hands, even for beneficent purposes, will
chilling him and finally he stopped, turned the jacket find that with small men no great thing can really be
around, put it on backwards, took off again. Well, that accomplished.' The intrusive hand of government can only
solved the wind problem but he hit a patch of ice, his arms hinder creativity, stultify growth and suffocate enterprise,
were kind of restricted, he skidded into a tree. And when initiative and diversity.

Page 24

October, 1982

The American Atheist

"Our goal is to take government out of areas where it

does not belong so that it can properly perform its
traditional and legitimate functions. That's why we support
and endorse a program of tuition tax credits so that our
independent schools and our country as a whole will
prosper. (Applause.) We need diversity and excellence.
"As economist Thomas Sowell has suggested, these
tuition tax credits are especially important 'to those who are
mentioned the least: the poor and the working class.' As the
cost of education has skyrocketed, it is these groups that
have been particularly hard hit by the double burden of
supporting private and public schools. (Applause.) And let
me add here that far from being a threat to the public school

the Houses of Congress, chaplains in our armed services,

and the motto on our coinage that says, 'In God We Trust.'
(Applause.) I grant you, possibly, we can make a case that
prayer is needed more in Congress than in our schools,
but- (Laughter.) (Applause.)
"I wonder, though, how many of you, how many citizens '
know how far the courts have gone with regard to this
subject. Do they know, for example, that in one case where
children in a school cafeteria simply on their own wanted to
say grace before lunch, the court ruled they were prohibited
from doing that. Children who sought again on their own
initiative and with their parents' approval to begin the
school day with a one-minute prayer meditation were

"... We are supposed to have freedom of religion.

Nothing in the Constitution says 'freedom from
religion.'," (Applause.)
********************************************************************
system, these tax credits will serve only to raise the
standards of the competing school systems. (Applause.) As
a New York Times editorial pointed out recently, the mere
threat of tax credits 'served to jolt public education out of its
lethargy. In New York and other places, public schools now
show encouraging signs of improvement.'
, "This proposal for tax relief is now before the Congress.
, And I was just told this morning by Senator Dole that he has
agreed to start mark-up on the tuition tax credit bill this
coming Monday. (Applause.) Our administration wants this
billpassed. The Knights of Columbus wants this billpassed.
(Applause.) And I believe the voters, next November, will
demonstrate that they want this bill passed. (Applause.)
"I also strongly believe, as you have been told, that the
. protection of innocent life is, and has always been, a
legitimate, indeed, the first duty of government. Believing
that, I favor human life. (Applause.) And I believe in the
human life legislation. The Senate now has three proposals
on this matter from Senators Hatch, Helms, and Hatfield.
. The national tragedy of abortion on demand must end.
(Applause.) I am urging the Senate to give these proposals
the speedy consideration they deserve. A Senate Committee hearing was held recently to determine, ifwe can, when
lifeactually begins. And there was exhaustive testimony of
experts presenting both views. And, finally, the result was
declared inconclusive. They could not arrive at an answer.
Well, in my view alone, they did arrive at an answer, an
answer that justifies the proposed legislation. If it is true we
do not know when the unborn becomes a human life, then
we have to opt in favor that it is a human life until someone
proves it isn't. (Applause.)
"As many of you know, our administration has, also,
strongly backed an amendment that will permit school
children to hold prayer in our schools. (Applause.) We
believe that school children deserve the same protection,
the same constitutional consensus that permits prayer in

Austin Texas

forbidden to do so. And some students who wanted to join

in prayer or religious study on school property even outside
of regular class hours were also forbidden to do so.
"I think you will agree with me - we need a prayer
amendment, and we need it badly. (Applause.) We are
supposed to have freedom of religion. Nothing in the
Constitution says 'freedom from religion.' (Applause.) The
Congress also has before it now an omnibus crime bill
whose provisions on bail reform, sentencing procedure,
and criminal forfeiture are critical to our attempts to fight
the growing problem of crime. We need that bill.It is critical
to our efforts to control organized crime and the trade in
illegal drugs and the streetcorner criminals who promote
that trade. (Applause.) Let me also say, I am very aware of
your concern about the enforcement of obscenity statutes.
A representative of the K of C met last week in Washington
with members of my staff on this matter, and let me assure
you, when I get back to the Capital, I will be taking this up
with Attorney General Smith. (Applause.)
"A few moments ago I used the term 'historic change'
with regard to our domestic policies. Well, I think this kind
of change has been duplicated in the foreign area as well.
We have rejected the view that the world is faced with the
impossible dilemma of either fighting a nuclear war or
caving in to totalitarian rule. Contrary to what followers of
Marx and Lenin would have us believe, we are not
hopelessly buffeted by the tides and currents of history, for
history is not the stuff of impersonal forces or unalterable
laws. Free men and women, inspired by their deeply held
beliefs and values, are capable of turning those tides of
history and setting them running again in the cause of
freedom. (Applause.)
"That is why this administration takes second place to
none in the quest for peace through arms control and
agreements. Now many of the proposals we hear today for a
nuclear freeze are obsolete. In our proposal for the

October, 1982

Page 25

"... We are supposed to

have freedom of religion.
Nothing in the Constitution says 'freedom from
religion.'" (Applause.)
*
elimination of ground-based
intermediate
range missiles
and in a recent one-third reduction proposal for strategic
nuclear ballistic warheads, we have gone far beyond the
sterile idea of a freeze. A freeze might be fine after we have
had a complete removal of the most threatening intermediate based missiles and deep reductions in the number of
strategic weapons, verifiable reductions.
"The House of Representatives
has before it now two
resolutions on the nuclear freeze matter. One resolution, I
regret to say, would, if passed, send a signal to the Soviet
Union that we're willing to accept something less than these
reductions that I spoke about. Indeed, this resolution would
leave in place dangerous inequalities in the nuclear balance
and would attempt to return us to the flawed SALT II
agreement. On the other hand, a resolution proposed by
Congressmen
Broomfeild, Carney and Stratton
would
avoid these dangers and, if it is passed, would act as an
incentive to persuade the Soviet Union to agree to mutual
reductions. I strongly support the Broomfield, Carney and
Stratton Resolution.
"As I mentioned, our arms control proposals are now the
matter of delicate negotiations with the Soviet Union. But
let me say this to you; the fact that the largest Catholic
fraternal organization
has spoken out strongly through
your magazine, Columbia, on the morality of maintaining
our strategic deterrence
has been a great asset to our
efforts for peace. And I thank you. (Applause.)
"Let me also add that I'm very grateful for the support
you've given us on the matter of our attempts to bring
stability, peace and freedom to Latin America, especially in
EI Salvador. Only a few months ago, more than a million
peasants and workers faced threats and bullets to vote in a
free election there. They offered eloquent testimony to the
appeal of democracy, to the rightness of our support of their
desire to resist that tiny cadre of revolutionaries who want
to plunge the Salvadoran
people into the darkness of
godless communist rule.
"Our foreign policy has changed in one other important
way. For many years, American foreign policy has suffered
from a defensive posture, a shyness about the values and
beliefs that formed the heart of our political consensus and
our civilization. Well, we're on the defensive no longer. The
Soviet Union has challenged us to open competition in the
realm of ideas and values and we intend to take up that
challenge.
"That is why when I recently spoke to the British
Parliament, I called for a worldwide crusade for freedom

Page 26

October, 1982

and a global campaign for democracy. (Applausc.) As part

of this forward strategy for freedom, I recently had the
pleasure of signing in a public ceremony for the first time in
history, the Captive Nations Week Proclamation. I did so as
a reminder of the suffering of those who live under
totalitarian rule and as an expression
of our hope that
someday all the people of the world will live in freedom.
(Applause.) Now, I must say my remarks on this occasion
have not drawn rave reviews from the Soviet press. In fact,
Pravda suggested that my remarks were hysterical and the
work of an intellectual pygmy. (Laughter.) And a Polish
newspaper under the martial law there called it a cesspool of
invectives, insults, and insinuation.
"Well, now, naturally, as a former actor, I'm somewhat
sensitive about press notices like that. (Laughter.) But
you're probably wondering what upset our adversaries so.
Well, the truth is what upset them the most was a quotation
I used from Lech Walesa, the now-imprisoned
head of
Solidarity in Poland. In an interview published here before
his confinement,
Lech Walesa spoke of the 'wheat that
grows on the stones' - of how brutal repression only seems
to strengthen the hope and hunger of those who long for
freedom. He said about Poland's communist rulers, 'Our
souls contain exactly the contrary of what they wanted.
They wanted us not to believe in God, and our churches are
full. They wanted us to be materialistic and incapable of
sacrifice; we are anti-materialistic,
and capable of sacrifice.
They wanted us to be afraid of the tanks, of the guns, and
instead we don't fear them at all.' (Applause.) In these
words, I think we find the justification for the importance of
the values of family, community and religion, and some of
the changes we've made in Washington during the last 18
months.
"When I visited him last June in Rome, His Holiness Pope
John Paul II spoke of his profound hope that the 'entire
structure of American life will rest ever more securely on
the strong foundation of moral and spiritual values. Without
the fostering and defense of these values, all human
advancement
is stunted and the very dignity of the human
person,' he said, 'is endangered.'
I would suggest to you
today that nowhere in the world is there a more splendid
affirmation of this connection between religious values and
political freedom than in the ideals, the faith and the heroism
of the Polish people and the leaders of Solidarity. (Applause.) We hope and we pray today for a time when the
people of Poland and all of the peoples on earth will join the
people of America in celebrating the joys of freedom - and
speak together in pride and dignity, of the wheat that grows
on stones. God bless you and thank you very much.
(Applause.)

*.*
W'e have a drive to get a U.S. stamp for Ingersoll.
We need lots of people to write in asking that a
stamp be issued for the sesquicentennial of this
great orator's birthday. Write to:
Citizen's Stamp Advisory Committee
c/o Stamp Development Branch
U_S. Postal Service
Washington, D.C. 20260

* **.*

The American

Atheist

APOLOGIA FOR ATHEISM

by Louis Parle
In the early 1960s the question, "Is God Dead?" received (often dishonestly called "gifts") offered for true believers.
Regarding my personal experience, I was brought up by
a considerable amount of attention in the various news
media. It was with great interest and contentment that I saw religious parents who later placed me in an orphanage run
such a controversy of theism vs. Atheism burst right out by priests and nuns. We were taught that outside the
into the open. It was and is, I believe, a very healthy orphanage the world was a dangerous place to live, where
hardly anything or anyone was pure or safe, where the soul
happening.
The powerful voices of occultism and non-science have was easily contaminated and lost forever to the power of
almost totally suppressed the small voice of protest which evil. When these assertions were repeated time after time
argues for freedom, courage, reason, science, and human- by holy persons, the outside world became frightening to
oriented ethics. Atheism has been painted as something
us.
dangerous, something to inspire mistrust. In the eyes of
I remember especially one young boy who was taken
away to be reunited with his family; we were made to feel
many religious people, an Atheist is an unregenerate
person, actually an enemy, someone who cannot have the that a real tragedy had happened to him, and we were made
to pray for him. When sometime later he returned to visit
virtues, the kindness, and the devotion which are supposed
to be in the makeup of a religious person.
us, he looked to us like a stranger, someone who had been
To understand such views, it must be remembered that fatally contaminated; we felt sorry for him, and many of us
generally, in most countries, children are taught from the made the sign of the cross! It was then that I decided to
beginning of their lives to be religious. Once the imprint of . become a saint.
religion has been made at the earliest age, once the young
But when I was about twelve years old I was returned to
my parents, who quickly saw to it that I began learning a
brain has been made to absorb indelibly the idea of god the magic creator of all things - then the existence of god trade that they considered more practical than saintly.
Many years passed. I was employed in a religious
becomes reality and this certainty can hardly be shaken. It is
a marvelous solution for the parents who have to satisfy the institution which needed my skills. But I was no longer a
bright inquisitiveness of the child: "Who made me? Who "true believer." Iwas not yet quite free of the fear instilled by
made the universe? Who made everything?" "God did." my religious upbringing, but doubt was steadily reinforced
by world events. World War II was going to full blast, the
"Who made god?" "He has always existed."
Such belief relieves one of mental effort; there is no need means of destruction becoming more and more frightful,
to think. One does not have to prove anything; simple faith religious nations annihilating other religious nations, chrisdoes not require evidence. Everything is so easy! And tians killing christians while praising their loving god. Then
besides, to be the image of god, to be his special creation, to the first atomic bomb was dropped by a christian nation on
be given immortality - such beliefs flatter the ego to a defenseless population, and we were told that this was the
gigantic proportions.
only solution, that all alternatives had been carefully studied
If on the other hand one begins to doubt, he faces the and that the dropping of the bomb was a humane act,
maze of life's mysteries, unanswerable questions, incompre- shortening the war and saving hundreds of thousands of
hensible designs. It is like getting lost in a fearsome forest lives.
Perhaps so, I thought. But, for me, the theist theory had
where there is no north, south, west, nor east - and there
are enemies! Everything becomes complicated and uncer- taken a fateful blow and it seemed more and more
tain. Once is alone and must seek a new truth, a new path. senseless, more questionable, tragically more desperate. I
This requires courage, it requires thinking, and one has to began having disagreeable discussions with my religious
discard many precious illusions.
superiors. Some of them were trying to impose upon me a
The god-concept has never ultimately explained any conceited superiority which I resented deeply. Yet I was still
mystery whatsoever. It has only pushed the question of uncertain and deeply disturbed. Shortly a change was going
"first cause" to an answer which immediately becomes an to take place within me.
I was driving home one night furtively looking at the
even greater mystery. At the same time, its devotees have
worked and preached fanatically to stifle all freedom of majesty of a starry sky. That sight had always filled me with
enquiry on the subject.
awe - with fear! To think that somewhere in that infinity
From the beginning of the history of humanity, the belief was hiding, beyond any possible detection, a mysterious
in god has sprung from fear and ignorance. These two and terrifying deity who knew of me and countless billions
fear and ignorance - have been the fundamental pillars of like me, who knew of my every thought and action! To think
all religions, past and present. But especially in the christian
that a choice between sanctity and fearsome punishment
religion, there is a third pillar which often completes a was forced upon me! And it was done unfairly - unfairly in
terms of freedom of choice because I had been protriangle virtually impervious to all efforts of enlightenment
grammed, from christening throughout my most formative
and reason. This third pillar - perhaps even less admirable
years, to fear the use of reason and to keep faith with the
than the two others - is a very special variety of greed,
voices of "authority!"
To think that the deity had endowed
namely: ordinary human avidity for promised rewards
.
.

Austin Texas

October, 1982

Page 27

me with the wonderful gift of reason while explicitly

forbidding my use of it on the the vital question of creation,
thus limiting me in a suffocating mental strait jacket. I felt
small and insignificant on this tiny planet, the earth not even
a grain of sand in the unimaginable vastness of the cosmos;
the earth a satellite of the sun., an ordinary star among
trillions of stars, belonging to an ordinary galaxy among
billions of galaxies. Then suddenly, in a split second, I
understood!
Everything became crystal-clear.
There was no god;
there had never been any god. Life with a god had always
seemed to make no sense to me. Without him, I could
understand everything - the wars, our selfishness, the law
of the jungle, our slow physical and mental evolution, even
the virtues that are the foundation of our gobd behaviors. I
felt joyous. I felt free, really free. It was as if an enormous
rock had been lifted from my chest and so now I was
breathing the airless interplanetary
space of the eons of
time. I was triumphant in my own personal discovery. Fear
had left me, and now I could contemplate the sublimity of
the starry firmament above me with serenity and peace. I
felt exuberant! for I had had to swim against a powerful
current and had won my race!
But why had it taken me.so long? Had I been stupid all my
life? - or simply stupefied?
With great joy the next day I announced to my superiors
that I had become an Atheist and that I was immensely
proud and happy about it. Amazingly, I was not promptly
fired - because it was still wartime and my skills were still
needed.
Years later when the Supreme Court of the United States
declared that compulsory prayers in public schools were
unconstitutional,
I felt very proud to be an American. In a
nation long steeped in religion, this ruling was an act of
courage and a triumph for reason and progress.
And now, in recent years, this question seems to arise in
various papers and magazines: Is god dead? The answer is
no, he is not dead; he cannot be dead, since he has never
existed except in our imagination. So, my dear and beloved
brothers and sisters of the religious faith, do not cry, do not
be alarmed even if the whole world becomes Atheist. A very
good, a very rewarding, a very constructive
life can be
accomplished without god. Judging from my own experience, one can live through a lifetime of dark miseries
without the help of god, alcohol, or drugs. What we need is
each other's love - and even that has been denied me when
I need it most; yet I love life and proclaim it can be beautiful.
But if the experts insist that god has died, perhaps it is
quite true; he could have died of shame and despair because
of the atrocities committed in his name throughout history.
If that is the case, so be it! And the living cannot live with the
dead; it is not logical, no matter how much we cherished the
deceased! The most beautiful bouquet of flowers has to be
discarded when wilted, and replaced by a new bouquet.
We Atheists replace god with the truth. Truth has no
enemy except the people who live in deadly fear of it. Truth
boldly confronts mysteries and probes them. Truth has no
temple, no priests nor altars, and does not demand human
sacrifices; no heart will be pulled, still palpitating, from
young men's chests; no maidens will be thrown alive into
dark, deep wells; no horrible tortures nor burnings-alive in

Page 28

October, 1982

public places will take place, to impose truth. No war will be

declared requiring the extermination of any infidels.
We want to love you and to be loved by you. We want
peace among human beings and a free and friendly discussion of human problems. We do not make a business of our
philosophy, and we do not derive any monetary profit from
it. We do not seek domination. We do not even have to deny
god: the believers themselves have done it when they killed
one another because each side claimed that only their god
was the true one. Each side, by. this contradiction,
has
canceled the existence of the supposed "one and only god"
of the universe. And if even today the religious zealots
reverse their trend and unite, what has happened in the past
is quite sufficient to have sent god into complete oblivion.
We are not indifferent and insensible. We respond to the
same stimulus of nature that prompted
many men to
proclaim that love will be the greatest savior of humanity.
We respond to the same natural impetus that urges the
birds to sing, the flowers to beautify themselves and develop
exquisite fragrances. We do not believe in eternal life, but
we consider the life of each person sacred because of its
uniqueness - and because each of us has only one brief
span to live! When we encounter something we do not fully
comprehend,
we frankly acknowledge the fact; and we do
not try to replace that "something' with something even less
comprehensible,
giving it a name and trembling with fear in
front of it. We have rejected the immense pretension of
being a special creation of some deity; but we believe we can
make a reasonable human claim of having surpassed the
creativeness and intelligence of any known deity on this tiny
planet - and we didn't have eternity in our favor.
We believe in the sane and edifying power of the truth!
We believe in the supreme healing power of love!
We believe in the arts and the cultivation of the
beautiful.
Atheism is the product of comprehension
and reflection, not compulsion.
We believe in a philosophy of life, not in a philosophy
of death

The GALA will hold its Second Annual National

Convention this year on October 15-17, at the
Americana Hotel 1 3301 Southwest Freeway
~ Houston, Texas 77027.
J
l
l

IF YOU ARE GAY AND ATHEIST

PLEASE CONTACT: Gay Atheist League of America
GALA
P.O. Box 14142
San Francisco, CA 94114

Membership: $20/year
($1 O.OO/yr. for students and senior citizens)
Send to the same address for subscriptions to the
GALA Review. Subscriptions $1 O.OO/yr; $11.501
yr in Canada and PUAS; elsewhere $12.50/yr.

The American Atheist

If you've
seen one ,."

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AMENDMENT I

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