====================================================================== MITAAH News -- Volume #2 / Issue #4 -- October 9, 1997 (sent sporadically to mitaah@mit.edu mailing list) Pseudo-random samplings of information that may relate to atheism, agnosticism, humanism, freethought, or church-state separation issues. Please send any promising material to reagan@mit.edu. http://www.mit.edu/~mitaah/ ====================================================================== In this issue: * Recent Events * Upcoming events * AAH-GCF lunch forums * Retreat update * Mailing list update * News and views * Quotes from CFA * The Onion does Religion ====================================================================== MITAAH News ----------- * As everyone has heard by now, our drop poster was stolen from the infinite corrider by an unknown party. A big thanks to everyone who helped out in the late-night poster-replacement job (including Emily, Ken, Brad, Antonio, and a few anonymous helpers)! It seems that the whole affair got us the visibility we desired (see The Tech from Oct 3 and Oct 7). Next big publicity event: the I.C. Panel! * The second batch of t-shirts is in production, with a tenative arrival date of 10/17. If you haven't purchased a shirt and would like to, talk to Sarah (skepshai@mit). The shirts are $12 and can be seen at http://www.mit.edu/~reagan/shirts.html. * Thanks to everyone who came out for our last two meetings! We got some great feedback in our special discussion on the drop poster incident, and as a result we plan to adopt a more organized meeting structure and also target some of our publicity specifically towards agnostics and skeptics. Also, thanks to everyone who participated in our discussion with Tom Ferrick. I wonder if he'd be interested in joining our e-mail discussion lists... no, that would be cruel. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Upcoming Events --------------- xxxday, October xx: Publicity: Infinite Corridor Panel Planning Friday, October 17: Council for Secular Humanism/Campus Freethought Alliance conference: Email Sarah (skepshai@mit) ASAP if you are interested in attending! Wednesday, October 22: Publicity: Drop Poster Painting and Free Food (Parents' Weekend!) Thursday, October 23: AAH-GCF Forum II: Creation/Evolution W20-PDR #3 (Third floor), Noon-2 p.m. Veteran's Day Weekend November 8-9: MITAAH Retreat, Intervale, NH November 12-14: Lobby 10 Booth: help us connect with the MIT community (and sell a few t-shirts). http://www.mit.edu/~mitaah/mitaah_calendar.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------- AAH-GCF Lunch Forums -------------------- The AAH-GCF lunch forum series continues. Our next topic of discussion will be Creation vs. Evolution. The forum will run from noon until 2 p.m. on Thursday, October 23. Feel free to come and go as you please--there's always room in the discussion for a few more people! Bring a lunch, too. The forum will be held in private dining room #3, in the east wing of the third floor of the Student Center (W20). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Now taking reservations for the retreat! ---------------------------------------- We are organizing the big event. We've set a flat-rate of $25 for the weekend, which includes lodging, dinner, plus some subsidies for transportation. In case you haven't heard, here are the details once again: The First Annual MITAAH Fellowship Retreat November 8-9, 1997 -- Intervale, NH A weekend of god-free, human-centered outdoor entertainment to provide fellowship, friendship, and support to humanists, skeptics and non-believers at MIT. Location: MITOC Intervale Cabin (near North Conway/Jackson) Departure: 9-10am Saturday Return: 8-9pm Sunday (don't worry, Monday and Tuesday are MIT holidays!) Cost: $25 (includes lodging, dinner, breakfast, and gas money) Contact: reagan@mit.edu The cabin is located on top of a hill about 1/2 mi. from the nearest road. It's a real wilderness home, with gas heat, gas stove, gas lighting, and no electricity or running water. The grounds include several acres of woods, a spring, and a (recently rebuilt) outhouse. Activities: * Sightseeing in the White Mountains * Fun activities with the group * A big home-cooked dinner * Philosophizing around the campfire * A Sunday trip: either sightseeing, shopping, or backcountry hiking To reserve a place, bring your $25 to Matt Reagan in 66-038 (zwrite reagan to see if I'm in, usually 9-5 M-F). With your reservation you'll get an info packet with all the details about what to bring and what to wear. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mailing Lists ------------- We have the following lists for your reading pleasure: mitaah Official announcements mitaah-discussion Free-form discussion mitaah-gcf-forum AAH-Graduate Christian Fellowship discussion forum To add/remove yourself from any of the lists, use the following command from your athena% prompt: 'blanche $USER' Switches are '-a' to add, '-d' to remove. Your request will not be processed until 2am the next morning, so there may be up to a 26 hour wait for changes to take effect. *Please do not send requests to the list itself*, and remember that you are responsible for your own list maintenance. Other AAH lists include: mitaah-officers Feedback to the officers mitaah-planning Feedback to the planning board -------------------------------------------------------------------------- News and Views Excerpts from mailing lists and news sources -------------------------------------------- ----- Promise Keepers and Christian Reconstructionists Anyone who wants a good scare should pick up some of the materials put out by the Reconstructionists. You think the $300 fine for blasphemy is bad? How about the death penalty? From AANews: IS THE PROMISE KEEPERS MOVEMENT A THREAT TO STATE-CHURCH SEPARATION? Answering that question requires a cogent analysis of the objective social and cultural role played by the Promise Keepers and other religious right groups. Promise Keepers ideology overlaps with that of other religious groups; again, the analogy to the PK being a sort of ideological boot camp for future religious social activists may be useful. Atheists and other secularists should know that Promise Keepers is a Dominionist movement. Dominion theology attempts to integrate religious doctrines into a form of political conservatism. It should be noted, though, that Dominionists -- often found in groups like the Christian Coalition or the Coalition on Revival -- quickly part company with the more secular, laissez-faire teachings of secular conservatives and even libertarians found in groups like Cato Institute. Simply put, Dominionist Theology teaches that Christians are commanded by god to occupy and govern all institutions in anticipation of the "final days" and the Second Coming. It holds that Biblical principles must be applied to every aspect of individual, social and political life. "Bible Law" must govern the person, families, neighborhoods, communities and governmental institutions. In a pure Dominionist culture, there is no separating of state and church; the police powers of the government are harnessed to ensure that Bible law is enforced. You won't find the more hard line excrescences of Dominionist teaching in most of the Promise Keepers literature. That discourse is reserved for other doctrinal publications like the Reconstructionist journal Chalcedon. But Promise Keepers materials have referred to and promoted standard religious right works such as books by David Barton, author of the controversial and misleading 1989 book "The Myth of Separation." Many Promise Keepers leaders have expressed agreement with Barton's claim that the "wall of separation" between church and state is myth, or "one-directional" and prevents only interference by government into the affairs of religious groups. This same refrain echoes from other religious activists like Ralph Reed, James Dobson and even Pat Buchanan. ----- The Religious Freedom Amendment: "God" gets into the Constitution? from AANews: RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AMENDMENT ON CONGRESSIONAL AGENDA The House Constitution Subcommittee will again be taking up the controversial Religious Freedom Amendment, (H.J. Res78), proposed by Rep. Ernest Istook, on Thursday, October 23, 1997. Legislative alerts note that no other business is before the Subcommittee which means that the measure could be "fast tracked" for a quick vote in the House of Representatives. The proposed amendment is brief, well-crafted, and has serious consequences for the First Amendment separation of state and church in America. This version reads: "To secure the people's right to acknowledge God according to the dictates of conscience: The people's right to pray and to recognize their religious beliefs, heritage or traditions on public property, including schools, shall not be infringed. The government shall not require any person to join in prayer or other religious activity, proscribe school prayers, discriminate against religion, or deny equal access to a benefit on account of religion." ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Notable Quotes -------------- Here are some quotes from the CFA mailing list that relate to a few of the issues we've been discussing on on our our discussion lists. "Prayer won't cure AIDS. Research will." - Public service advertisement of the American Foundation for AIDS Research dropped because of complaints by religionists. (Source: Freethought Today, March 1997) "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." - Albert Einstein "It's a vacuous answer . . . To say that 'God made the world' is simply a more or less sophisticated way of saying that we don't understand how the universe originated. A god, in so far as it is anything, is an admission of ignorance." - Peter Atkins, British Association for the Advancement of Science "I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure-that is all that agnosticism means." - Clarence Darrow (1857-1938), U.S. lawyer, writer. Speech, 13 July 1925, Dayton, Tennessee, defending John T. Scopes on trial for teaching Darwinism. "The fact that a believer may be happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunk is happier than a sober man." - George Bernard Shaw -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Onion does Religion ----------------------- http://www.theonion.com/onion3210/christdemandsmoney.html "I guess I could live without a college education," said Owensboro, KY, Christian and mother of four Brenda Williams, 34, who recently dropped out of community college after donating to her church over $1,500 she had saved for tuition. "Some of my science courses contradicted the word of God, anyway." --------------------------------------------------------------------------