Books

Memoir of a Non-Irish Non-Jew, 99 pages (paperback $999,999.99) by Richard May
What is our identity, if we awaken in the moment?
Memoir of a non-Irish non-Jew isn't about being Irish and Jewish or non-Irish and non-Jewish. It is about the chase of tracking down one's ancestral origins, whatever they may be, and the delightfully quirky unexpected discoveries that await you along the way, no matter what your family origins. "You are a link in the chain of your blood. Be proud of it, it is an honor to be this link," G. I. Gurdjieff. But it's also about learning not to identify with the achievements and failing of one's ancestors or even with one's own carefully crafted persona. "What do I have in common with the Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself, " Franz Kafka. Who are we? Remembering with awareness of various levels of irony the response of Bodhidharma, the Indian monk who brought Buddhism from India to China, to King Wu's question, "Who are you?" — "I don't know"! What is our identity, if we awaken in the moment from the stories of our lives and the dreams of our culture?
http://www.lulu.com/content/803771

Paradise Emporium -- a collection, 247 pages - $9.48
by CL Frost
This newly released collection by a versatile, highly skilled writer and artist includes short stories in the science fiction, fantasy, magical realism and speculative genres. Among these is the short story from which the collection derives its title as well as many fine poems and a huge assortment of visual artistry that also covers a wide variety of genres.
http://www.lulu.com/browse/book_view.php?fCID=561988

World of Villages: A Six-Year Journey Through Africa and Asia, 499 pages - out of print, but used copies are readily available at very reasonable prices.
by Brian Schwartz.
The author traveled with, and stayed among, the native villagers everywhere he traveled throughout Africa, Asia, and Indonesia getting to know the strange behaviors of strange peoples.
Published in 1986 by Random House ISBN: 0517558157
Also published as Travels Through the Third World by Macmillan ISBN: 0283992123
Brian Schwartz also wrote China Off the Beaten Track - How to do it on your own, published by St. Martin's Press ©1983 Library of Congress # 82-61428. Copies of this book are also readily available.

Aberrations of Relativity, 201 pages - $15.00
by Fred Vaughan
This is a collection of articles that emphasize one the most observable aspects of relative motion, i. e., aberration effects. There are many informative diagrams and illustrations with many new insights. What the author calls "observational relativity" is defined in this book as a possible alternative to Einstein's special theory.
The reader will gain valuable insights into all aspects of relativity including why Einstein considered it necessary to embrace time dilation and length contraction in his special theory, and why that might very well not have been necessary.
The book is written for the intelligent (maybe very intelligent) layman, with little in the way of advanced mathematics required to fully comprehend the discussions.
http://www.lulu.com/content/572819

In Proust's Footsteps, 99 pages (hardcover $22.40)
by Maria Claudia Faverio
"In Proust's Footsteps" is Maria's fifth poetry book after "Entropy", "Behind the Mask", "Metaphors instead of Formulas", and her "Selected Poems" collection. Maria is a committed, award-winning poet whose books are highly recommended by the Poetic Genius Society. Maria is also the current editor for poetry and prose of the International Society for Philosophical Enquiry.
http://www.lulu.com/content/430375

Learn about this talented Australian author, poet, and artist as well as her many creations of prose, poetry, classical music CDs, puzzle books, fairy tales, and artistic images at the following site: http://www.lulu.com/mycreations.

NATAN, 108 pages - $13.69
by Albert Frank and Muriel Hustin
Nath is a genius, Tanguy an idiot. Any such extremes disturb people. In recognition of this fact, a pharmaceutical corporation is undertaking experiment with a new drug, ?normality pills?, that would move them both toward the norm. It is decided to put them in contact using e-mail exchanges. Those responsible for the experiment will monitor the exchanges. So a deep friendship evolves between two individuals who normally would never have even met. Their dialogue is moving right up to the terrifying conclusion. One of the themes of the narrative is the loneliness of the extremes.
http://www.lulu.com/content/71060

Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher To Atheist, 342 pages - $25.00
by Dan Barker
After 19 years of evangelical preaching, missionizing, evangelism and Christian songwriting, Dan Barker "threw out the bathwater and discovered there is no baby there." Barker describes the intellectual and psychological struggle required to move from fundamentalism to freethought. Sections on biblical morality, the historicity of Jesus, bible contradictions, the unbelievable resurrection, and much more. This book is an arsenal for skeptics and a direct challenge to believers.
http://ffrf.org/shop/books/details.php?cat=fbooks&ID=FB5

The Magic of Ed Rehmus, 192 pages - $15.00
by Ed Rehmus (edited by Fred Vaughan)
This collection of creations by Edward Rehmus includes essays, artwork, poetry, linguistic studies, comics, and puzzles. The style of Ed Rehmus' prose is reminiscent of H. L. Mencken in his hay day. As a friend said of Ed in eulogy, "He went for the bones of what he was considering and the stormy winds could make off with the sails if that was a consequence!" On his own behalf Ed had said, "What indolence and what prodigality to trust to usage that which ought always to be spontaneous, creative and conscious: speech!"
http://www.lulu.com/content/476575 - regular price.

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Brahms the Freethinker

Music was his religion.

by Dan Barker

How many parents, soothing their children to sleep with Brahms's Lullaby, know they are singing a melody written by a freethinker?

Johannes Brahms, the great German composer known as the "3rd B" (after Bach and Beethoven), did not believe in a god.

Born in 1833 — the same year as American freethinker Robert G. Ingersoll — Brahms shed his Christian upbringing early, though not without being fully informed. Jan Swafford, in Johannes Brahms: A Biography, writes of the young composer: "Though he was to be a freethinker in religion, Johannes pored over the Bible beyond the requirements for his Protestant confirmation." From then on, "Music was Brahms's religion."

In his teens, Brahms would prop books of poetry on the piano to divert himself while playing for drunken sailors in a Hamburg bar. His favorite poet, from whom many of his lyrics sprang, was the anticlerical G. F. Daumer, described by the Catholic Encyclopedia as an "enemy of Christianity" who "strove to substitute a new religion 'of love and peace.'" (In later years, Daumer converted to Catholicism.) Brahms's works were also influenced by philosophy and literature, including Hoffman, Schiller, Robert Burns, Jean Paul, and Friedrich Hölderlin. He had a keen interest in science, and could hold his own debating politics, literature, religion and philosophy.

An avid hiker who loved the outdoors, Brahms often turned to nature for ideas. "A great deal of his music," writes Swafford, "in its inspiration and spirit, rose from mountains and forests and open sky." The melody for the finale of the C-minor Symphony actually traces the shape of the Alps, as Brahms viewed them during a hike.

Brahms occasionally used biblical texts, but only for artistic reasons. After the death of his mother, he wrote the popular Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem, 1867), but was careful to select only those biblical lyrics that relate to this life and to those who grieve. The Requiem starts with "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted," and avoids talk of eternal salvation. Noticing this secular spin, conductor Karl Reinthaler, who had studied theology and was working closely with Brahms on the Easter Week premiere, wrote to Brahms: "Forgive me, but I wondered if it might not be possible to extend the work in some way that would bring it closer to a Good Friday service . . . what is lacking, at least for a Christian consciousness, is the pivotal point: the salvation in the death of our Lord. . . ." In other words, what about Jesus?

"Brahms was not about to put up with that sort of thing," Swafford writes. "He was a humanist and an agnostic, and his requiem was going to express that, Reinthaler or no. . . . With the title A German Requiem he intended to convey that this is not the liturgical requiem mass in Latin, nor a German translation of it, but a personal testament, a requiem. Brahms avoided dogma in the piece for the same reason . . . even if the words come from the Bible, this was his response to death as a secular, skeptical, modern man."

Brahms responded politely but firmly to Reinthaler: "As far as the text is concerned, I confess that I would gladly omit even the word German and instead use Human; also with my best knowledge and will I would dispense with places like John 3:16. On the other hand, I have chosen one thing or another because I am a musician, because I needed it, and because with my venerable authors I can't delete or dispute anything. But I had better stop before I say too much."

He had already said enough! The verse Brahms explicitly discards is central to Christianity: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Swafford concludes:

"Brahms means that he could do without that verse and that dogma, in Ein deutsches Requiem and in his life. If he was a North German Protestant by tradition and temperament, he was not in his faith, which like all his convictions Brahms held close to his chest. For himself he would not call Christ a particular son of God. Meanwhile, to Reinthaler he downplays the theology of some verses he does use, saying, 'I can't delete or dispute anything' from Scripture. With that he obliquely confesses that even the hints of resurrection lingering in his texts are not his own sentiments. At the end of his Requiem, the dead are not reborn but released: 'they rest from their labors.' It is that rest from his own lonely labors that Brahms yearned for someday, as his mother rested from her life of poverty and toil."

When Brahms sometimes spoke of immortality, it was metaphorically, jokingly. To his publisher, he once wrote:

"Done! What is done? The violin concerto? No… One knows nothing definite; even the most credulous doesn't… And I am credulous. Indeed, I believe in immortality—; I believe that when an immortal dies, people will keep on for 50,000 years and more, talking idiotically and badly about him — thus I believe in immortality, without which beautiful and agreeable attribute I have the honor to be — Your J. Br."

To his friend Richard Heuberger, Brahms, who never married, said,

"Apart from Frau Schumann I'm not attached to anybody with my whole soul! And truly that is terrible and one should neither think such a thing nor say it. Is that not a lonely life! Yet we can't believe in immortality on the other side. The only true immortality lies in one's children."

Clara Schumann, by the way, the virtuoso pianist and composer who was a true life-long friend of Brahms, also had little use for the church. "Performing was her religion," Swafford observes. "The world saw Clara Schumann as a priestess, something like a saint. If there is such a thing as a secular saint, surely she was one."

Brahms also used non-biblical gods for his own purposes. The text for Gesang der Parzen (Song of the Fates, 1882) is from Goethe's Iphigenia: "Let the race of man, Fear the gods! They hold the power, In eternal hands, And they use it, As they please..." However, Swafford notes that Brahms's own "gods" were earthly, not supernatural: "When he said to George Henschel, 'As much as we men . . . are above the creeping things of the earth, so these gods are above us!' the gods he spoke of were his personal ones, his real religion: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and the others. Now he approached his age with the gods of the earth vanished, and the ones in the heavens silent and unapproachable."

While working on Nänie, his commemoration of the death of his friend, the painter Anselm Feuerbach, Brahms wrote another friend: "Won't you try to find me some words?... The ones in the Bible are not heathen enough for me. I've bought the Koran but can't find anything there either."

Brahms was not just a nominal unbeliever. He often had well-thought opinions on religion. Pastor and playwright Josef Widmann, who once expressed to Brahms his support of the Theological Reform movement in Switzerland, was surprised to find Brahms "not only cognizant of the issue but with forceful and contrary opinions about it." Brahms pronounced it "a half-measure that would satisfy neither the pious nor the freethinkers," Swafford writes.

Remarkable for that time and place, Brahms was never anti-Semitic. "Toward the end of his life," Swafford notes, "responding to the antisemitism that had become endemic in Austrian politics, Brahms was heard to growl, 'Next week I'm going to have myself circumcised!'... Brahms may have idolized Bismarck and the authoritarian Prussians, but he remained a liberal and a democrat at heart."

When the Christian Socialists finally elected Karl Lueger vice-mayor of Vienna in 1895, ending the long liberal rule, turning Austria formally anti-Semitic from then until Hitler, Brahms remarked to his friends: "Didn't I tell you years ago that it was going to happen? You laughed at me then and everybody else did too. Now it's here, and with it the priests' economic system. If there was an 'Anticlerical Party' — that would make sense! But antisemitism is madness!"

Brahms hated the music of Anton Bruckner, a devout believer whose works were later performed with gusto by the Nazis. "Everything is affectation with him, nothing is natural," Brahms said. "As to his piety — that's his business, it's nothing to me."

But Brahms admired the music of Dvorák, whom he had helped financially when the young Bohemian was a struggling writer. In later years, they had occasion to become well acquainted. "As the two of them talked," Swafford writes about one of their long conversations, "Brahms rambled on about his agnosticism, his growing interest in Schopenhauer, the philosopher of pessimism (Wagner's favorite). On the way back to his hotel with violinist Josef Suk, Dvorák was thoughtful and silent. Suddenly he exclaimed with real anguish, 'Such a man, such a fine soul — and he believes in nothing! He believes in nothing!'"

Dvorák's "fine soul" assessment was not hyperbole. Brahms the unbeliever was always generous and helpful, sharing his wealth liberally, living simply and humbly, giving of his time and energies to others. Swafford relates an exciting and illuminating event when Brahms was spending the summer of 1885 in Mürzzuschlag:

"One day a carpenter's shop in his house erupted in flames. Brahms ran from his workroom in shirtsleeves to join the bucket brigade to fight the fire, shouting at well-dressed passersby to lend a hand. In the confusion someone pulled him aside and told him his papers were threatened by the blaze. Brahms thought it over for a second, then returned to the buckets. Richard Fellinger finally extracted from him the key to his room and ran to save the score of the Fourth Symphony. When the fire was out—his rooms were not touched—Brahms shrugged off the threat to his manuscript with 'Oh, the poor people needed help more than I did.' He followed that up by slipping the carpenter money for rebuilding. (He could, after all, have rewritten the symphony from memory.)"

Not only was Brahms's Lullaby (Wiegenlied) written by a freethinker, but its story might be considered scandalous by some Christians. The song was written in honor of the birth of a child of Brahms's friends Bertha and Artur Faber in 1868. Years earlier, Brahms had briefly fallen in love with Bertha when she was a young visitor to his female choir in Hamburg, and during the playful courtship she used to sing him a lilting 3/4-time Viennese melody. The romance ended, but the friendship endured, and the melody that Brahms later composed for the private lullaby was a creative counterpoint to the earlier love song that the child's mother would remember singing to the composer. When he presented the gift to the Fabers, Brahms included this note to her husband: "Frau Bertha will realize that I wrote the 'Wiegenlied' for her little one. She will find it quite in order... that while she is singing Hans to sleep, a love song is being sung to her." Bertha was the first person to sing Brahms's Lullaby, both love melodies dancing flirtatiously in her head.

Brahms enjoyed near perfect health until the last few months, not even reporting as much as a headache, rarely visiting a doctor. On the morning Brahms's life ended in Vienna in 1897 — he was almost 64, felled by liver cancer long before he was ready to go — there was no death-bed conversion, no regret for living a godless life. Artur Faber (Bertha's husband), had come to the sick man's bed that morning to give him a glass of wine for his thirst. "Oh that tasted fine. You're a kind man," Brahms said, his last recorded words.

Johannes Brahms did not seek immortality, but he got it anyway: not in children, not in heaven, but in the beauty he bequeathed to the world.

Source:

Johannes Brahms: A Biography, by Jan Swafford (1997, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.)

Dan Barker is a part-time professional jazz pianist. This article first appeared in Freethought Today, May 2002.

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Atheism Defined

by Dan Barker

Some have raised again the question of the definition of atheism/agnosticism. (Actually, I might have prompted the discussion in a recent email about a talkshow I did on Christian radio.^* For about 20 years I have been one of the leading atheists in the US, and I am always asked to define precisely what those words mean.)

Right at the start there is a problem — though it is not a problem created by atheists. Different dictionaries often give different definitions. Dictionaries usually include one or more of these definitions of "atheism":

1. The denial of the existence of a god. (Or, as [a list participant] puts it, "the belief that there is no god." Or the dogma that god does not exist.)
2. The disbelief in the existence of a god. (Or some other way to say this, such as "the absence of a belief in god.")
3. Wickedness. This is usually last, and it is sometimes presented as informal usage. ("Wickedness" or "lack of moral standards" is more often a description of the word "godless" or "godlessness," which is the same as "atheism." And quite an insult.)

Some dictionaries only give one of those definitions, and some give both. Except for #3, both primary definitions are correct, as understood by atheists themselves.

Looking up a word in the dictionary is not the best way to study a topic. How many Christians, for example, would trust the dictionary to explain their religion? (According to some dictionaries, a "Christian" is reasonably defined as a "follower of Christ," and by that definition Adolf Hitler, who was a member of the Catholic Church in good standing and claimed to be doing the will of Christ, was a Christian.)

My understanding and usage of the words "atheism" and "agnosticism" conforms to most atheistic literature, historical and contemporary , such as:

• Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, by Michael Martin (1992, Temple University Press)
• Atheism: The Case Against God, by George Smith (1980, Prometheus Books)
• The Encyclopedia of Unbelief, edited by Gordon Stein (1985, Prometheus Books)
• Atheism, and other addresses, by Joseph Lewis (1941, Freethought Press)
• What is Atheism? A Short Introduction, by Doug Krueger (1998, Prometheus Books)
• A Defence of Atheism, by Ernestine Rose (1810 - 1892)

… and others.

I admit that there is some disagreement among atheists, especially among philosophers (surprise, surprise). A few atheists think only Definition 1 is valid (because who would call herself or himself an "atheist" unless they are denying something?). Others think only Definition 2 is valid. And (I think) most of us think both definitions are valid. But those disagreements are not important to the actual question of whether a god exists.

Here's how I see it:

"Atheism" is a lack of belief in a god or gods. General atheism is not a belief — it is the absence of belief. (Corresponding to Definition #2.)
"Theism" is a belief, not a fact. Whether a god exists or not is indeed a question of fact, but "theism" is a belief system. Some theists do claim to know that a god exists, but they are a subset of theists. They all have a belief, whether they claim to know or not.

The prefix "a-" is the privative Greek prefix meaning "without" or "lacking" or "not" in the privative (not negative) sense. The prefix "a-" is not the same as the prefix "anti-".

For example, amoral does not equal immoral. Someone who is apolitical is not opposed to politics. Music that is atonal is not music that is anti-tonal (whatever that would mean).

And an atheist is not (necessarily) an anti-theist.

An a-theist is simply someone who is not a theist. Someone who lacks a belief, for whatever reason. Under this definition, every baby is an atheist. (See Stein, especially, on this point, as well as Rose. Stein goes to great historical lengths to show that this is precisely how atheist writers and activists have defined themselves, despite the general public's insistence that atheism is a belief.)

When it comes to the general question of whether a god exists or not, I am an a-theist in this privative sense. There are so many (perhaps an infinite number) definitions of the word "god" that there is no way anyone could say with confidence that they "know" that none of these gods exist.

However, there is a subset of atheists who do claim to know that a god (or a certain god) does not exist. These correspond to Definition #1, the denial of the existence of a god.

Atheist writers and philosophers have distinguished between these two types of atheism. Michael Martin calls it Negative Atheism (lack of belief) vs. Positive Atheism (denial). George Smith calls it Hard vs. Soft atheism. I call it capital-A "Atheism" vs. lower-case "atheism."

In any event, every positive-hard Atheist is also a negative-soft atheist — those who call ourselves "Atheists" who deny a particular god also lack a belief in any god.

You can be a soft atheist for any number of reasons. Your reasons don't even have to be defensible because you are defending nothing. Some people simply do not believe, and don't care. Some of them give philosophical reasons for their lack of belief. Some give emotional reasons, or political reasons (like the Soviet atheists). Some give social reasons, such as the church's opposition to gay rights or women's rights. Some of these people prefer to call themselves "agnostics" (more below), though they can be defined as lowercase "atheists" because they do not have a belief in a god.

But few of these soft atheists would be comfortable with the label "Atheist" as a description of who they are, like many religious people wear the label of their "Christian" or "Muslim" or "Jewish" faith as a personal identification.

Here's a simple way to test if you are an atheist (lowercase, at least). Ask yourself:

"Is there any 'god,' by any definition of the word 'god,' that I believe exists?"

If you can't answer that question with "Yes," then you are without a belief in a god. You are an atheist. You might prefer the label "agnostic," but I can call you an "atheist." (Calling such a person an "atheist" is not attaching a label — it is simply a description, like if I called you a female, not a "Female" signifying a member of a formal named religious or philosophical group.)

Having said all that, I personally take it a step further. Not only am I a soft atheist in general, I am also a hard Atheist in particular, depending on which god you are talking about. For example, regarding the "God of the revelation" (the Judeo/Christian/Islamic "God"), I am a positive capital-A Atheist. Not only do I lack a belief in such a god, I claim to know with certainty that such a god not only does not exist — it cannot exist. I deny the existence of that particular God. (I won't explain here, but I have good reasons for saying such a thing.) As far as most Christians in America are concerned, since they believe there is only one God, I might as well be labeled a hard "Atheist." The other gods don't matter to them.

So I am both an "atheist" and an "Atheist" depending on the god being discussed.

This means that there are some definitions of the word "god" that are either not clearly enough defined or about which I am insufficiently informed to make a decision. I do not necessarily deny their existence, but I certainly do not claim a belief in their existence. I am without belief, "atheistic," regarding those gods.

Some people confuse soft atheism with agnosticism, and it is easy to see the confusion. In fact, most atheists will claim that they are also agnostic, with no contradiction.

The mistake many make is to treat agnosticism as if it were a kind of halfway house between atheism and theism. But there can be no such thing. You either do, or you do not, have a belief in a god. There is no middle ground.

The distinction between atheism and agnosticism is simple, and once acknowledged, it erases the apparent conflict.

Atheism/theism addresses BELIEF.

Agnosticism addresses KNOWLEDGE.

You can be both an atheist and an agnostic. They address two different things. They are not mutually exclusive.

Every person who identifies himself or herself as an "agnostic" still has to answer the question: "Do you have a belief in a god?"

If they can't answer "Yes," they are atheistic agnostics.

If they answer "Yes," they are theistic agnostics.

For example, philosopher/mathematician Blaise Pascal was a theistic agnostic. Pascal said that you cannot know for certain if god exists, but it is safer to believe than not to believe, so he chose to believe in the Catholic God. (I know that is an oversimplification of Pascal's position, but you get the point.) I think Pascal's position is honest, at least. I think there are many Christians in the world who take that position, especially liberal believers: they don't claim certainty, but they value faith.

Agnosticism is not really much of a philosophy. It is a relatively new word, coined by Huxley more for PR purposes than to start a new school of thought. We already had the words "rationalism" and "skepticism." An agnostic is just a rationalist about religion.

An agnostic is a person who chooses not to make a Yes/No judgment about the truth of a proposition when there is insufficient data or reason to make a decision.

You can be an agnostic about UFOs, about the fidelity of your spouse, and about the character of your representative to Congress. But most often agnosticism is applied to the question of the truth of the proposition "God exists."

So … I am an atheistic agnostic about the existence of many defined (and undefined) gods. I don't claim either KNOWLEDGE or BELIEF.

If you think about it, the very notion of "faith" or "belief" requires agnosticism. If you KNOW something is true, you don't need faith. It is only when you lack certainty that you invoke faith.

The word "belief" is often used to signify doubt or uncertainty:

"It is 2 o'clock, I believe." "Let's have faith that Mom will survive the operation."

So in general, a "theist" (a believer in god) is a doubter, an agnostic. I suppose we could say that "Theists" (capital-A godders) are theists who claim to KNOW that a god exists. We could use the word "Gnostic" for this kind of god-worshiper, but that word has a certain historical usage limited to the pre-Constantine Christian mystery cults.

Did you know that the early Christians were called atheists by the Romans? They did not believe in the right gods.

In fact, every believer is an atheist regarding everyone else's god. No Christians believe in the existence of the Norse god Wodin, though they acknowledge that god when they use the word "Wednesday." There are HUNDREDS of gods about which Christians not only lack belief, but about which they positively DENY their existence. (I think they are actually stronger Atheists than I am in that regard.)

The only difference between me and them is that I believe in one less god than they do.

---

* Indeed this article itself was originally message on an e-mail list.

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Salvation

If salvation is the cure, then atheism is the prevention.

by Dan Barker

This article was included in the Carnival Of The Godless.

This is the abstract of a speech presented at the World Religions Conference "Silver Jubilee," October 1, 2005, in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Dan was invited to represent atheism at this 25th annual event, along with representatives of Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism, Christianity, and Aboriginal spirituality. The topic for all was "salvation." His participation was kindly sponsored by local Humanists, who joined Dan in singing "Die Gedanken Sind Frei" at the end of his talk.

Atheism is a philosophical position, a world view that disbelieves or denies the existence of god(s). It is not a religion. Atheism has no creeds, rituals, holy book, moral code, origin myth, sacred spaces or shrines. It has no sin, divine judgment, forbidden words, prayer, worship, prophecy, group privileges, or anointed "holy" leaders. Atheists don't believe in a transcendent world or supernatural afterlife.

Most important, there is no orthodoxy in atheism. We atheists do not expect conformity of thought or action. To freethinkers, allowing for differences of opinion is a sign of health.

Terry Mosher of the Montreal Gazette drew an editorial cartoon on March 5, 2002, saying:

"Here's a headline we never see: Agnostics slaughter Atheists!"

Atheists are simply people without theism.

However, many atheists have opinions about much of the above. We champion reason as the only tool of verifiable knowledge. For morality, most atheists follow humanism, a set of natural principles (not rules), that help us think about how to live.

In many religious traditions, "salvation" is a deliverance from one of the three "D"s: danger, disease, and death. Most believers see these in both natural and supernatural ways. Danger can arise from an occupying conqueror, or from the threat to morality and order by evil spirits or devils. Disease and death can be feared both physically and spiritually.

(photo by Brent Nicastro) Dan Barker, is co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation with Annie Laurie Gaylor, is the author of Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist, three books for children on freethought and humanism, and more than 200 recorded songs for children. Before "losing faith in faith," he majored in religion at Azusa Pacific College and was an ordained minister specializing in a musical ministry. He has produced three tapes of freethought music, the "Friendly Neighborhood Atheist" CD, and the "Beware of Dogma" CD.

Atheists, with the same human desires and fears, also care about deliverance, but only as natural concerns. We see deliverance coming - if it is to come at all - in the real world, from our own human efforts.

Sometimes no deliverance is needed at all. The New Testament Jesus reportedly said, "They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick." (Matthew 9:12) We atheists consider ourselves whole. We are not sick. We don't need the doctor.

Suppose you were convicted of a horrible crime and sentenced to life in prison, but after a few years behind bars you are surprised to hear you are being released. This "salvation" would be a wonderful experience, but which would make you feel better: learning you were released because you were pardoned by the good graces of the governor, or because you were found to be innocent of the crime?

Which would give you more dignity?

We atheists possess "salvation" not because we are released from a sentence, but because we don't deserve the punishment in the first place. We have committed no "sin."

Sin is a religious concept, and in some religions, salvation is the deliverance from the "wages of sin" - death, or eternal punishment. Sin has been defined as "missing the mark" of God's expectations or holiness, or "offending God," so it follows that since there is no god, there is no sin, therefore no need for salvation. Only those who consider themselves "sinners" need this kind of "salvation." It is a religious solution to a religious problem.

We atheists might ask: how much respect should we have for a doctor who cuts you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage?

If salvation is the cure, then atheism is the prevention.

People who believe in "sin" and "salvation" have nothing to fear from us atheists. We are not barging into mosques, synagogues and churches dragging people from worship. If believers do not have freedom of conscience, then neither do we.

Most humanists define ethics as the intention to act in ways that minimize harm. Actions have consequences, so morality is a real-world exercise. A moral person is accountable. If my actions cause unnecessary harm, intentionally or unintentionally, then my "salvation" comes in trying to correct that harm, or to repair the damage as much as possible.

Canadian physician Dr. Marian Sherman, a prominent atheist from Victoria, B.C., in the Toronto Star Weekly (Sept. 11, 1965) article, "What Makes an Atheist Tick?" is quoted saying:

"Humanism seeks the fullest development of the human being. . . . Humanists acknowledge no Supreme Being and we approach all life from the point of view of science and reason. Ours is not a coldly clinical view, for we believe that if human beings will but practice love of one another and use their wonderful faculty of speech, we can make a better world, happy for all. But there must be no dogma."

When asked about death, Dr. Sherman replied: "It is the end of the organism. All we can hope is that we have found some sort of happiness in this life and that we have left the world as a little better place."

Those with a negative view of human nature might seek help in solving problems from outside humanity. But those with a positive view of human nature - a true hope - will work for "salvation" from within the human race, using the tools of reason and kindness.

For atheists, "salvation" is active problem solving.

We do not think there is a purpose of life. If there were, that would cheapen life, making us tools or slaves of a master. We think there is purpose in life. As long as there are problems to solve, hunger to feed, illness to cure, pain to lessen, inequality to eradicate, oppression to resist, knowledge to gain, and beauty to create, there will be meaning in life.

A college student once asked Carl Sagan: "What meaning is left, if everything I've been taught since I was a child turns out to be untrue?" Carl looked at him and said, "Do something meaningful."

If you want to be a good, kind person, then . . . be a good, kind person.

If salvation is the freedom from sin, then we atheists already have it. If salvation is deliverance from oppression and disease in the real world, then there is real work to do. In this ongoing effort, we atheists and humanists are happy to work shoulder-to-shoulder with the truly good religious people who also strive for a future with less violence and more understanding.

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Other Dan Barker related Reason and Rhyme content:

• Patriotism Was His Religion: Irving Berlin ("God Bless America" songwriter) the Agnostic.
• "It's Only Natural", godless love song.
• Books by Reason and Rhyme authors including Dan Barker's "Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher To Atheist".

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"It's Only Natural"

(lyrics and music to a new song)

©2006 by Dan Barker

Song lyrics are not meant to be read like a poem . . . they tend not to read as well on paper as they sound in a song . . . but these lyrics are interesting, I think, as a "popular" song, in that they incorporate evolution as the most natural idea. I was inspired by Dawkins's book Unweaving the Rainbow, where he makes a plea for more science in the arts.

Also, I wanted to write lyrics like Cole Porter, that can be sung by male or female, gay or non-gay.

IT'S ONLY NATURAL

It's only natural that I would want you;
It's only natural that you want me.
A million years of evolution had its way,
So we can blame it on our parents' DNA.

I move instinctively in your direction -
Somehow you signal me to turn and see.
You will always be my natural selection,
As a voluntary choice, naturally.

Download a pdf version of the score.

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Patriotism Was His Religion

Irving Berlin the Agnostic

by Dan Barker

Originally published by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc.

This article was included in the 52nd issue of the Carnival of the Godless.

How many patriotic Americans, proudly singing "God Bless America," realize that the song they are intoning was written by a man who did not believe in God?

Or that it was intended as an anti-war anthem?

Irving Berlin is by any measure the greatest composer of popular American music, with hundreds of enduring hits, such as "Alexander's Ragtime Band," "I Love A Piano," "Always," "Blue Skies," "Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee," "Cheek to Cheek," "Marie," "Play a Simple Melody," "There's No Business Like Show Business," "Anything You Can Do," "Easter Parade," and "White Christmas."

Born in 1888 into a Russian Jewish family who came to New York City to escape religious persecution when Irving was five years old, he quickly shed his religious roots and fell in love with America. He became an American citizen when he was 29. "Patriotism was Irving Berlin's true religion," writes biographer Laurence Bergreen in As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin (1990).

Irving Berlin was "not a religious person," according to his daughter Mary Ellin. Relating the story of Irving's marriage to Ellin Mackay in 1926, whose devout father had a deep reluctance to welcome a "lower-class" Jew into the wealthy Catholic family, she writes:

"About religion -- Jew and Catholic. My mother has broached the subject of being married by a priest. She herself, though she goes to mass, keeps up appearances, doesn't believe in all that anymore, she assures him. She has had such a strange religious upbringing: a Protestant like her mother till the divorce, a Catholic since. But a priest might help soften her father. Irving, however, the cantor's son, doesn't see himself being married by a priest. Though he is not a religious person, doesn't even keep up appearances of being an observant Jew, he does not forget who his people are." (Irving Berlin: A Daughter's Memoir, by Mary Ellin Barrett, 1994.) They got married in an unannounced secular, civil ceremony at the Municipal Building, not a church or synagogue.

Once they had children, Mrs. Berlin did try to keep up a minimal appearance of religious tradition. Mary Ellin writes that her unbelieving parents "had their first bad fight when my mother suggested raising me as a Catholic . . . ."

The Berlins had three daughters. "Both our parents," Mary Ellin recalls, "would pass down to their children the moral and ethical values common to all great religions; give us a sense of what was right and what was wrong; raise us not to be good Jews or good Catholics or good whatever else you might care to cite, but to be good (or try to be) human beings. . . . When we grew up, she said, we would be free to choose--if we knew what was best for us, the religion of our husband. . . . It wouldn't quite work out, when we 'grew up,' as my mother hoped. All three of us would share our father's agnosticism and sidestep our husband's faiths."

The man who wrote "White Christmas" actually hated Christmas. "Many years later," Mary Ellin writes, "when Christmas was celebrated irregularly in my parents' house, if at all, my mother said, almost casually, 'Oh, you know, I hated Christmas, we both hated Christmas. We only did it for you children.'"

So why did an agnostic humanist who hated Christmas write the song "White Christmas?"

Undoubtedly, it had something to do with the businessman in him. When his friend Cole Porter confessed that he hated his own "Don't Fence Me In," a surprise international hit, Berlin advised him, "Never hate a song that has sold a half million copies." (Cole Porter, by William McBrien, 1998.)

Christmas, for Irving Berlin, was not a religious holiday: it was an American holiday. He simply needed a melody in 1940 for a show called Holiday Inn, an escapist "American way of life" musical (when all hell was breaking loose in Europe) which called for a song for each holiday. The words to "White Christmas" are not about the birth of a savior-god: they are about winter, the real reason for the season.

Biographer Bergreen writes about the Christmas of 1942:

"Accustomed to traditional holiday celebrations, Ellin arranged for a Christmas tree to be delivered to Berlin's hotel suite in Detroit, where he was performing in This is the Army, and with the girls' assistance she proceeded to decorate the tree while a photographer memorialized the occasion. The photograph of the songwriter, his wife, and family decorating the Christmas tree, when reproduced in the newspapers, served as another plug for 'White Christmas.' Berlin, the cantor's son, rationalized his participation in the Christmas rite on the basis that it had become an American holiday, and as a professional patriot, he made a habit of appropriating all things American to himself."

This U.S. postage stamp (above left) was issued in a ceremony in New York City in September 2002, one year after the 9/11 WTC attacks. Out of agnostic Irving Berlin's 1,500+ songs, "God Bless America" was chosen to represent his life's work.

"God Bless America" was originally written in 1918 for a patriotic WWI show. Irving Berlin had joined the army, and (according to Harry Ruby, his pianist colleague at Camp Upton) to avoid getting up early each morning, Irving convinced his superiors to allow him to serve his country by producing a musical for military PR. It was a light-hearted life-in-the-army show called Yip, Yip Yaphank, including the comic bugle call "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up In The Morning."

As he was finishing the writing, "Berlin composed one unashamedly patriotic anthem," Bergreen writes, "which spoke of prairies and mountains and oceans white with foam. He called it 'God Bless America,' but even as he dictated it to Ruby, Berlin became insecure about its originality. 'There were so many patriotic songs coming out everywhere at the time,' Ruby recalled. 'Every song-writer was pouring them out.' As he wrote down the melody, Ruby said to Berlin, 'Geez, another one?' Deciding that Ruby was right, that the song was too solemn to ring true for the acerbic doughboys, Berlin cut it from the score and placed it in his trunk. 'Just a little sticky' was the way he described the song. 'I couldn't visualize soldiers marching to it. So I laid it aside and tried other things.'"

The song was forgotten for two decades. During those years, Irving Berlin's attitude toward war evolved.

In 1938, while the United States was resisting joining the new European conflict, the singer Kate Smith was looking for a song to perform during her Armistice Day broadcast--a "song of peace," she said. It happened that Irving Berlin was also casting about for an idea for a pacifist anthem. Almost no one in America wanted to go to war. "I'd like to write a great peace song," he told an interviewer, "but it's hard to do, because you have trouble dramatizing peace. Easy to dramatize war. . . . Yet music is so important. It changes thinking, it influences everybody, whether they know it or not."

He tried writing a couple of peace songs, but they were "too much like making a speech to music," he said. It then occurred to him to dig up that discarded composition from 1918.

"I had to make one or two changes in the lyrics," Berlin continued in the interview, "and they in turn led me to a slight change and, I think, an improvement in the melody. . . . One line in particular; the original line ran: 'Stand beside her and guide her to the right with a light from above.' In 1918 the phrase 'to the right' had no political significance, as it has now. So for obvious reasons I changed the phrase to 'Through the night with a light from above,' and I think that's better.

"One of the original lines read: 'Make her victorious on land and foam, God bless America, my home sweet home.' Well, I didn't want this to be a war song, so I changed that line to 'From the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam, God Bless America, my home, sweet home.' This longer line altered the meter and led to a change in the melody."

Kate Smith sang Berlin's peace anthem on national radio on November 11, and it became an immediate hit.

"The reason 'God Bless America' caught on," Berlin tried to explain to The New York Times in 1940, "is that it happens to have a universal appeal. Any song that had that is bound to be a success. . . ."

Discussing the mystery of what makes a hit song, he continued: "The mob is always right. It seems to be able to sense instinctively what is good, and I believe that there are darned few good songs which have not been whistled or sung by the crowd."

This was "a populist credo, as well as a merchant's," Bergreen observes. Irving Berlin may have been right about the business of the mob's taste in music, but he never envisioned "God Bless America" becoming a pro-war anthem, as it is often sung by "the right" today.

Some of us freethinkers might wonder why an agnostic would write a song about "God" at all, especially a Jewish agnostic who must have known that the capital-G "God" is perceived by most to be the Christian deity. But just as "White Christmas" is not about Christ, "God Bless America" is not about God; it is about America. Irving Berlin was not an atheist evangelist; he was a songwriter and businessman who wrote and sold music that reflected the popular mood.

"'God Bless America' revealed that patriotism was Irving Berlin's true religion," Bergreen writes. "It evoked the same emotional response in him that conventional religious belief summoned in others; it was his rock."

Even though Irving Berlin occasionally used the word "God" in a poetic sense, never once in his more than 1,500 songs did he ever promote religion.

"I don't write church lyrics on the side," he once told a journalist, "have no passion for flowers, and never read Shakespeare in the original Greek."

In fact, he sometimes poked fun at faith.

Four years after the original "God Bless America," Irving Berlin wrote "Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil in Hades," a song for his 1922 Music Box Review performed at the new Music Box Theater in New York, which he had built especially for his productions. The song was about the recent "jazz" craze that was sweeping the country, which was being condemned by the Church.

"In the press and from pulpits, self-appointed guardians of public morality decried this dancing bestiary," Bergreen writes. "Matters became so serious that a New York grand jury investigated, and after due deliberation arrived at a 'presentment condemning the turkey trot and kindred dances and laying particular stress on the fact that the hotels and cafes allow such dances.' " People were arrested for dancing! Some lost their jobs for dancing during lunch breaks.

During Berlin's 1922 rebellious revue, an attractive comedienne named Charlotte Greenwood, dressed in a red devil suit, dispatched popular jazz musicians to hell singing, "They've got a couple of old reformers in heaven, making them go to bed at eleven. Pack up your sins and go to the devil, and you'll never have to go to bed at all." (See sidebar.) The song is the perfect antidote to "God Bless America."

Irving Berlin died quietly at home in 1989 at the age of 101. A patriotic agnostic who devoted himself to enriching America, he lived a productive life full of family values, hard work, determination, and joy. He did not believe in an afterlife; but maybe he did jokingly wish for a hell, because "all the nice people are there."

As Mark Twain said, "Heaven for climate; hell for society." If there is a hell, we unbelievers will be in great company.

Dan Barker, a former minister, is a staff member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Dan's father Norman Barker can be seen playing the trombone alongside Judy Garland as she sings "I Want to Go Back to Michigan" in the 1948 musical movie of Irving Berlin's "Easter Parade."

"Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil in Hades" is recorded on Dan's new "Beware of Dogma" CD produced by the Foundation. Also on that CD is a parody of "God Bless America," and the new freethinking "God-Less America," re-written by Dan Barker and Steve Benson.

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