Our religious family members, friends, and neighbors are celebrating today by thanking their deity for things that either happened naturally or were done by human hands. As realistic, reasoning, committed non-theists and skeptics we owe thanks to lots of people who make our lives more comfortable. We should be grateful for the first-world problems we have – we could be having third-world problems.
I edit a newsletter for a historical society I belong to, and its most recent edition went out last week. Because it was a November edition, the president of the society asked me to reprint George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789.
Since Washington focused his gratitude on God, I felt his proclamation was totally inadequate for the job. Here’s the incomplete list I put together to address the things left out of the first official American Thanksgiving:
Volunteers, without whom so much good would be left undone
Activists, without whom social change might be impossible
Science and scientists: better living couldn’t happen without them
Mom and Dad, for creating us
The rest of the family, for putting up with us
Clients and colleagues
The end of the election season
Children who make us smile and burst our hearts with their innocence and joy
Teachers, because we like to know things
Writers – if they didn’t record things, we’d have to figure out everything from scratch
Engineers, who design things big and small
People from other cultures, who keep us humble and teach us that there are other ways to do things
Medical professionals who stitch us up, diagnose us, heal us, and do their best to keep us well
Police and firefighters who keep us safe
Al Gore for inventing the Internet (not really – but we are thankful for the Internet!)
Factory workers, because they make all our stuff
People who do things we can’t do
People who do things we don’t want to do
Friends, even those we don’t often see or haven’t seen in years
Freshly fallen southern pecans, which I will pick up from my mother’s yard today after feasting – to work off some of that incredibly good meal
Farmers who grow our food
Truckers who bring our food to the grocery store, and who bring us other stuff
Grocery stores, which provide us with the ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner
Cookbooks, without which Thanksgiving dinner would not be possible even with all of the above
For some reason, over the last few days I’ve gotten a number of irascible Facebook posts, nasty emails, and all around ugly comments aimed in my direction.
This one was more politely worded than most:
Would you be so kind as to show me where In the Constitution or the Bill of Rights you find this? The key to my question is very simple, it must be in the those two Founding Documents, not some other papers, such as in Personal Letters or what someone thinks those two Documents say. But word for word what you stated above.
And to help you, I will post the Amendment which you are speaking to:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Okay, I’ll bite.
This is actually a common complaint from the religious far right, especially those who think that since their particular brand of religion is dominant in this country, the rest of us should all bow our heads, shut up, and go along with it.
The questioner apparently knows that the phrase “separation of church and state” was used by Thomas Jefferson in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists. It has been used by many others to express the intent and function of the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It has been quoted by courts, and, to the dismay of the questioner and his ilk, is now the law when it comes to matters of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
These are vitally important words. I’ll explain why “separation of church and state” became the phrase used in the law.
Jefferson’s letter read, in toto:
To messers. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.
Gentlemen
The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.
Th Jefferson Jan. 1. 1802.
The phrase that Jefferson used, “a wall of separation between church and state,” has been repeatedly cited by the Supreme Court of the United States. In Reynolds v. United States, an 1879 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, the majority wrote that Jefferson’s comments “may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First] Amendment.” Reynolds was the case that conclusively decided that Mormons could not engage in polygamy because bigamy was illegal.
Mr. Reynolds claimed that his religion required him to engage in polygamy, and therefore he had a religious duty to violate the bigamy law. Citing Jefferson’s Danbury letter, the U.S. Supreme Court made a distinction between belief and action. Believing in polygamy was fine, and no law would ever stop anyone from believing whatever they believed. Faith, as Jefferson said, “lies solely between Man & his God,” and no person had to “account to any other for his faith or his worship.” However, acting on that belief contrary to the law and public policy was not permitted. Again, as Jefferson had said to the Danbury Baptists, “the legitimate powers of government reach actions only,” and actions taken contrary to law could be punished by the government.
In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), erudite U. S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black referred to the Danbury Baptists letter when he wrote: “In the words of Thomas Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state.” This supreme court case made it clear that the Constitution and all of its amendments, including the First Amendment, applied to the states as well as to the federal government.
The Everson case had to do with reimbursements to parents whose children took public transportation to school. The U.S. Supreme Court split in a 5-4 decision over whether the reimbursements to parents taking public transportation to private school were unconstitutional, with the majority deciding that the reimbursements did not establish religion. What everyone on that court agreed to, though, was that a wall of separation between church and state was critically necessary.
Justice Black’s language was the broadest and most clear:
The ‘establishment of religion’ clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between Church and State.
There have been lots of decisions since these two, lots prior to these two, and lots between these two. Separation of church and state is not just a catchphrase; it’s the law.
Some people, like the commenter who (more politely than most these last few days) wrote to me, object to the letters of the men who drafted the Amendment being used to interpret it. Courts often look to the intent of the people who wrote the laws in question to determine what was intended. The phrase found in legal opinions that do this is “looking to the legislative intent.” When applied to the Constitution, it is called the “looking to the intent of the framers.”
Because court decisions have historically interpreted the Establishment Clause to erect this wall of separation between church and state, and since Congress has never passed any law contravening it, “separation of church and state” is the law of the United States of America.
To demand that the constitution say exactly the verbiage we commonly use is absurd; the document was never intended to cover every possibility, but rather to broadly enumerate basic rights. If anyone wants a more thorough explanation of why the Constitution is worded the way it is, I suggest reading the Federalist Papers compiled by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay during the Constitutional Convention of 1789. The Federalist Papers are a collection of 85 essays written during the Constitutional Convention that describe the process or creating the foundational legal document on which the rest our laws rest. Often the essays of the Federalist Papers were being written in the same room as the debates raged among the attendees of the convention. The Federalist Papers are free in various formats from numerous sites. Get them in ebook format from Project Gutenberg and from the Library of Congress, download a free PDF from Penn State, or get the audio books from Project Gutenberg or Librivox.
For those who need a history refresher, James Madison was the Secretary of State who negotiated and supervised the Louisiana Purchase and later was president of the U.S. during the War of 1812; Alexander Hamilton was the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury until he was killed in an ill-advised duel with Jefferson’s former Vice President Aaron Burr; and John Jay was the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Very colorful characters were midwives to the birth of this nation’s laws – gentlemen, rogues, scoundrels, and philosophers all played a part.
But how does a court get to decide what the Constitution means? The quick answer is that courts are the arbiters of disputes, and therefore must be able to interpret laws. The 1803 U.S. Supreme Court case of Marbury v. Madison, decided by the famous Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, established judicial review of administrative and legislative actions and cemented the separation of equal powers between our three branches of government – ensuring that each branch checked and balanced the other two.
The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution establishes the Constitution, treaties, and the laws of the United States as the supreme law of the land. The power of judicial review is implied when Article III, pertaining to the judiciary, and Article VI, containing the Supremacy Clause, are read together. The Supremacy Clause says:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.
Therefore, until the United States Supreme Court decides otherwise, “separation of church and state” is the law of the United States of America.
When I was in law school almost three decades ago (now I feel really old!) I clerked in the law office of my older cousin. He is a garrulous, opinionated fellow who regularly both pissed me off and taught me a lot. He once told me, standing in front of a case full of dense law books, that Constitutional Law was only good for cocktail party conversation. Of all that he ever said to me – and I disagreed with him a lot – this is the only thing I seriously take issue with.
At my state-funded college, we grudgingly welcome the Gideon Bible Gauntlet Run a couple of times a year, which I find beyond annoying. I mean to ask these guys next time if they’ve heard of the Establishment Clause/First Amendment/Whole Constitution thingy … and take pictures, too!
Professor Plum
Answer:
Some people love a captive audience. It’s the only way they get attention.
Did you know that the Gideons pass out their New Testaments in different colors depending on the audience? Colleges get green bindings. I had no idea until today that the Gideon Bible covers were the hanky code of evangelical Christians.
The Gideons and other religious groups may not pass out their literature and Bibles on public school campuses attended by minors. They get around this by standing just off campus, or by lobbing Bibles through the open windows of school buses. I kid you not. But college campuses are different.
Here’s what FFRF says about the Gideons on college campuses:
Generally, so long as the Gideons are on sidewalks and public walkways, they may hand out bibles on public college campuses. So if this happens on your campus, check with your Dean of Students’ office or the the college website on policies regulating nonstudent activity on campus. If such activity violates campus regulations or permits are required, report the incident promptly to the appropriate authorities.
I don’t see anything wrong with complaining about harassment from them, or complaining about them blocking a sidewalk, or complaining about feeling intimidated by them.
A creative, activist sort of thing to do when the Gideons visit is to get lots of copies of their Bibles. They’re handing them out for free, so greedily accept them. Go a step further: enthusiastically ask the Gideons if you can help. Then put warning stickers on every Bible you touch, and redistribute them to your classmates. Zazzlesellsseveral of thesestickers, and it’s always possible to print your own what with a pack of labels and the miracles of modern science and all. If the Gideons get wise to you, just stop the recipients of their largess after they’ve accepted their individual Bibles, and ask to see what they got. When the unsuspecting person hands you their new Gideon Bible, slap a sticker on it and hand it back.
I’m not sure whether an upvote or a downvote is due to the University of Louisville Hospital and University Medical Center for its new arrangement with the Catholic Health Initiatives. Financially it will be good. Whether reproductive health care will suffer for it is another issue entirely. There has been drama for about two years over the attempts by the university’s president to merge the public hospital and medical center with CHI. Kentucky’s governor ultimately rejected a year ago saying that “The risks to the public outweigh the potential benefits.” The merger also would have included a Jewish hospital in Louisville. The current arrangement, which is a joint operating agreement and not a merger, apparently preserves the women’s reproductive health care services that CHI would have restricted considerably. Other Catholic hospitals are moving to join operations with public hospitals, including one in Little Rock, Arkansas. It remains to be seen whether women’s reproductive health care will be affected.
Egypt is still busily prosecuting Alber Saber, the guy who was accused of spreading The Innocence of Muslims – that ridiculous movie that may have helped escalate the Benghazi attacks to the level of Major International Incident – and other irreligious stuff on his Facebook page. He faces up to five years in prison for his crime of blasphemy if he is found guilty. According to his defense team, a confession was tortured out of him, his laptop was seized without a warrant, and the police allowed him to be assaulted while in their custody after his arrest in September. The trial is over, and briefs have been submitted to the court. A decision is expected November 28.
In fairness, it’s hardly news that the Catholic bishops in the United States are resisting the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Or that they are dancing jigs over the defeat of Massachusetts’ Death with Dignity Act. After all, it’s not God’s plan that we control our own lives and bodies. In an interview with the National Catholic Register, Richard Doerflinger, who is the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, set out the Catholic strategy for imposing religion on people stuck with getting their health insurance through Catholic employers. Looks like we, in addition to people who don’t think employers should be allowed to impose their religion on employees, ought to take the same page from the Catholic playbook and do the same. Write your congressman, just like Doerflinger suggests.
Sikhs are so peaceful, it’s hard to think their brand of religion is bad, right? Well, not so much. At a Sikh shrine in California, violence erupted this week between two rival groups wanting control of the religious site. These Sikhs have been fighting in court as well as in the streets for control of the place of worship. Lovely.
Mike Huckabee thinks we’re idiots. His appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart Monday night had me seeing red – as in red-state Republican, bloody damn preacher in politics scaring the shit out of those gullible people who think they will burn in hell for not voting the way the Bible tells them to. I ranted about this already,so I won’t repeat myself here. (Shameless plug.)
Federal Courts. Free speech for one group equates free speech for all, they said when the Islamophobic American Freedom Defense Initiative sued to get pro-Christian, pro-Israel, Anti-Islam ads put on buses in D.C. and New York. The ads are now running on Chicago buses, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has noted the ad campaign in its Hatewatch Headlines. AFDI is headed by Pam Geller, who fervently believes Barack Obama is beholden to his Islamic overlords and is the love child of Malcolm X. Yes, it’s best we know who the hate groups are, no matter who they hate, than to have them work in secret where we can’t see them.
And, no, it’s not law-related, but did you guys see the Washington post article about The Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta and teenage atheist hero Jessica Ahlquist at Skepticon? The more coverage atheists and atheism get in the mainstream popular media for good stuff, the better!
I’m just going to use this graphic for them from now on. They’ve earned it.
If I could adorn it with sparkly glitter and blinky neon lights without risking an epileptic seizure or a migraine, I’d probably do it.
Yesterday, FFRF sued the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. No shit. And yes, they sued because the IRS won’t friggin’ enforce the rule about churches electioneering. Basically, this is a claim of a sort of nonfeasance or dereliction of duty, something that isn’t very common. By not doing his job – by not enforcing the law – FFRF says that the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service has violated the Equal Protection Clauses of the Constitution.
FFRF wants a declaratory judgment against the Commissioner – in other words, a judgment that says that the Commissioner has done wrong. It has asked for an injunction against the Commissioner’s refusal to enforce the law, which is a convoluted way of saying that it wants the court to issue an order requiring the Commissioner to enforce the law. (I know – why couldn’t they just say that?) FFRF also wants the court to order the Commissioner of the IRS to designate someone as a high-level official who can take the complaints from IRS Form 13909 and investigate them.
The lawsuit asserts that under the administration of Commissioner Shulman, the Internal Revenue Service, under the direction of the IRS “has followed and continues to follow a policy of non-enforcement of the electioneering restrictions of §501(c)(3) against churches and other religious organizations.” You tell ’em, FFRF!
And the complaint continues: “As a result, in recent years, churches and religious organizations have been blatantly and deliberately flaunting the electioneering restrictions of §501(c)(3), including during the presidential election year of 2012.” Ya think? Just to be certain that the court is aware of the kinds of things that are going on, FFRF lists a few of them:
Illinois Bishop Daniel Jenky required that a partisan letter be read by every celebrating priest in the diocese to congregants the weekend before the recent Presidential election;
On October 7, 2012, more than 1500 clergy, in a deliberate and coordinated display of noncompliance with the electioneering restrictions of §501(c)(3), including prominent megachurches, flagrantly violated the law against churches electioneering;
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, one of the most prominent and respected religious ministries in the country, ran blatantly partisan full-page ads in October of 2012 in the Wisconsin State Journal;
Just prior to the November 6, 2012 election, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association also ran blatantly partisan ads in the the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and more than a dozen national and battle ground state newspapers
The Association also published expressly partisanship on its website just prior to the election;
Open and notorious violations of the electioneering restrictions of §501(c)(3) by churches and other religious organizations have been occurring since at least 2008, with churches recording their own partisan activities and sending the evidence to the IRS.
Did you catch that last bit? In case you hadn’t heard, the churches are violating the law and taunting the IRS by sending proof of their blatant disregard for the law to the IRS themselves! And the IRS sits there with its thumb up its ass and does nothing but admire the wallpaper.
Understandably, FFRF, which itself is a 501(c)(3) organization, is somewhat miffed by this, and in the lawsuit it said so. Why does FFRF have to obey the law but these religious organizations do not? This is religious discrimination. Selective non-enforcement of the law based on religious criteria violates the Establishment Clause and the Equal Protection Clause, and, to add insult to injury,
The preferential tax-exemption that churches and other religious organizations obtain, despite noncompliance with electioneering restrictions, amounts to more than $100,000,000,000 annually in tax-free contributions made to churches and religious organizations in the United States.
I don’t know how or where FFRF came up with that number, but if it’s true, that’s about thirty-five billion – with a B – dollars in lost tax revenue. Money that we owe China. Money that would sure help with deficit reduction.
FFRF wants a level playing field and an end to the preferential treatment. It demands that the law is enforced. By not enforcing the law with respect to religious institutions, the government is effectively giving religion a $35,000,000,000 tax subsidy. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is establishment of religion.
A private attorney, Richard Bolton, is representing FFRF on this one. Bolton is a respected civil rights lawyer in Madison, Wisconsin, where FFRF is located. I would imagine he’s going to be getting a lot of hate mail in the near future, so let’s give him some love, shall we? Thanksgiving is coming next week, and he’s someone we might just want to thank.
You can read FFRF’s own press release and the complaint against the IRS on the FFRF website. If you aren’t a member of FFRF already, it’s time to join. Even if you don’t join, please donate. FFRF isn’t electioneering, so contributions to it will remain tax-deductible. The Freedom From Religion Foundation works tirelessly to protect our rights. They deserve some love, too.
Mike Huckabee was on the Daily Show again last night. He’s hawking his new book, but naturally he didn’t much talk about his book.
“Why does anybody have to be automatically anything other than what they truly believe?” Huckabee asked Stewart in the first part of the interview (6:14). At that point, he was talking about letting black conservatives be conservative without calling them “pawns,” or worse. A good question, which begs the question put to him in the second segment of the interview: why do Christians who don’t believe what their fundamentalist preachers tell them to believe have to be consigned to the fires of hell?
Yes, the second segment of the interview is what’s really important.
Stewart started the second segment by asking, “When [conservatives] keep demonizing these groups, whether it be single women, black people, illegal immigrants, it makes it impossible to work with them as a collaboration. Why would you collaborate with evil people? And when you convince them that they’re evil, why work with them?”
Unfortunately, this question never got answered. Huckabee denied demonizing these people, and truthfully, he probably has not demonized most of them himself. His network and his party certainly have, though he won’t speak for either of those entities. Now, Huckabee has demonized the natures of gay people, but Stewart did not take him to task for that.
Instead, Stewart segued into an abbreviated version of the despicable two-minute commercial Huckabee narrated for the Christian Right just before the election. You know the one.
In it, Huckabee quotes Psalm 127:1 and says that “unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” He then calls certain things “not negotiable:”
The right to life from conception to natural death
Marriage should be reinforced, not be defined
It is an egregious violation of our cherished principle of religious liberty for the government to force the church to buy the kind of insurance that leads to the taking of innocent human life
Against a backdrop of flames, Rev. Huckabee goes on to say that “Your vote will be recorded for eternity.” He asks, “Will you vote the values that will stand the test of fire?”
This commercial is so incredibly offensive on so many levels my stomach still churns with anger to watch it, and the election is over and done with.
Huckabee actually claimed that this commercial did not attempt to send the message that if Christians voted for the Democrats they would go to hell – unless they were biblically illiterate. I really cannot imagine how that wasn’t the message, since I don’t even believe in hell and that’s the clear message I got from it – and I’ve read and studied the Bible extensively. “Oh, no!” exclaims Huckabee. “If they know 1 Corinthians 10, they will know!” Then he claimed that 1 Corinthians 10 was about being tested in the fires of a forge, and coming out stronger or some such.
For the biblically illiterate, let me explain 1 Corinthians 10. There is not one word about forges or fire. It’s all about not worshipping false gods and not participating in idolatry. We all know that since there is only one true god, so there can’t be any other gods, no matter how true their own believers believe them to be, and no matter how false those idolaters believe the one true god to be. Frankly, the arrogance of the “one true god” thing just staggers me, especially when one considers that the adherents of the Abrahamic religions have no better proof of their god than the adherents of any other religion.
But let’s look at 1 Corinthians 10:29, which asks, “Why should my liberty be judged by someone else’s conscience?”
Why, indeed, Reverend Huckabee? Why should my freedom be judged by your conscience? You arrogant twit, I can cherry-pick Bible verses just as well as you can.
I think the Good Reverend Huckabee was actually referring to 1 Corinthians 3:13, which more or less says what Huckabee claimed this commercial meant to say, just without the forge part. Because that’s totally not in there. And the part about judgement day, and therefore hell, definitely is in that particular passage.
Again, this is what pisses me off about Christians. They want to spew their Bible at me, but then I have to correct them – even the supposedly learned ones – because they don’t get it right. If they want to beat me up with their scripture, they should at least know their stupid scripture.
Of course, maybe he really meant 1 Peter 1:7, or 2 Peter 3:7, or some other passage that refers to fire but not hell, even though most of the passages I find pretty much equate testing by fire with the Judgment Day and hell. So Huckabee’s protests that the reference to fire doesn’t also refer to Hell or Judgment hold about as much water as that colander I used to strain my spaghetti last night.
Let’s examine the the three points of that disgusting commercial.
The right to life from conception to natural death
Nowhere in the Bible does any religious authority, real or imagined, claim that life begins at the moment of conception. I’d cite verses where it says so, but there aren’t any.
Let’s face it: The Biblical God is not pro-life. He advocates and permits child murder, infanticide, child abuse, and, yes, abortion. Fundamentalist Christians rely on such passages as “thou shall not kill” Exodus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 5:17 (one of the commandments), and “If men strive and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no misfortune follow, he shall be surely punished according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.And if any misfortune follow, then thou shalt give life for life,eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” Exodus 21:22-24. Although the Exodus passage seems to be a favorite among the anti-choice crowd, I would point out that the harm mentioned in it is harm to the woman, not to the aborted or miscarried fetus.
God’s favored prophets prayed for abortions. Don’t believe me? Read Hosea 9:11-16. This same favored prophet also advocated ripping the fetuses out of the wombs of pregnant women in Hosea 13:16, something the God-favored King Menahem of the Israelites proudly did in 2 Kings 15:16, too. There’s even a ritual to induce an abortion in a faithless wife in Numbers 5:21 (presumably done instead of stoning her, although when stoning and when abortion is the proper course of action, the Bible doesn’t say).
So God is definitely not pro-life, at least for fetuses. But what about hastening death? Apparently the fundamentalist Christians also don’t like euthanasia, mercy-killing, or assisted suicide, either. They want people to suffer. This is where compassion gets thrown to the wind by these Christians. Suicide is tantamount to murder, in their eyes.
The Bible reports several suicides (Ahithophel; Saul and his armor-bearer; Samson; Zimri, who was king of Israel for only seven days; and Judas Iscariot) and men who want to be stricken dead (Moses, the prophet Elijah, and Jonah – twice) but nowhere in the Bible does it condemn them for that. The Bible also reports mercy killings, without reference to judgment, except in the case of the Amalekite who lied to David about killing Saul. Saul himself was not condemned for asking to die. Abimelech begged his armor-carrying servant to kill him in Judges 9:52-54, because he lost a battle and could not bear the indignity of his inevitable murder at the hands of (gasp!) women. There was no judgment attached to Abimelech’s death.
So, there does not seem to be a problem with euthanasia, either. Huckabee’s first point fails, on both counts.
Marriage should be reinforced, not be defined
This one is so easy it’s almost a no-brainer. I cannot grasp why these wackjob Christians think that the Bible defines marriage as between one man and one woman. Jon Stewart jumped on this pretty fast, pointing out that the biblical definition of marriage is polygamy. Although Huckabee tried to say it isn’t, he cited no biblical authority for his position other than the Adam and Eve story. Lots of biblical marriages came after that one. Furthermore, it’s not real clear that Adam and Eve ever actually tied the knot. They sort of hooked up because of the dearth of others of their same species to choose from, and apparently shacked up, never going that extra step of committing to each other monogamously. They had no other options but bestiality.
So it stands to reason that yes, marriage could stand to be defined. But to say it’s biblical marriage really leaves the door wide open.
Because if you let your servant get married, and he leaves your employment, his wife and children are yours unless the servant agrees to stay and have his ear bored through with an awl. (Exodus 21:6) I’m not clear whether this means the servant’s earlobe gets pierced, or if his eardrum gets pierced. Either way, it’s pretty barbaric. But, that’s one definition of Biblical marriage.
Exodus 21:10 reminds men who take second wives that they can’t neglect the first one. Oops, Mr. Huckabee. Guess there’s a new definition of biblical marriage implied here.
Deuteronomy 22 is a great place to look for definitions of marriage. I like the one where the guy marries the woman and decides he doesn’t like her. If her father can’t then produce bloody sheets proving that she was a virgin at the time of the wedding, well, she gets stoned to death. What a sweet marriage that makes.
One of my favorite definitions of marriage is the rapist and his virgin victim. Yeah, Deuteronomy 22:28-30 is all about that.
Now, Paul is not real keen on marriage at all. Despite the fact that the species will disappear without it, sex is gross, and women are … well, Paul’s misogyny is another issue altogether. Paul thought everyone ought to have a spouse, though, if they really want sex, whether or not he could fathom why they’d want it. My guess is that Paul was so undesirable he never got laid, and therefore had no idea what he was missing.
And that doesn’t count all the various marriages in the Bible that involved multiple wives, concubines, and slaves. Heck, Abraham had a wife (Sarah), his wife’s slave (Hagar), another wife (Keturah), and an unknown number of secondary wives.
Solomon had 700 wives and 300 secondary wives, in addition to the Queen of Sheba. That’s 1001, for those of you who aren’t good with math.
And the list goes on.
It is an egregious violation of our cherished principle of religious liberty for the government to force the church to buy the kind of insurance that leads to the taking of innocent human life.
Right. Do I really have to explain this?
Most people in the United States who are lucky enough to have health insurance coverage have it because their employer provides it. If their employer did not provide it, health insurance would be prohibitively expensive. Therefore, people are generally forced to accept whatever health insurance is offered through work, unless they are wealthy enough to afford it on their own – which most people are not.
Limiting your employee’s health insurance options based on your own religious beliefs, whether or not your employee shares your religious beliefs, is totally not forcing your religion on them. (/Sarcasm)
Until there is a single-payer system, or until health insurance is decoupled from employment and made affordable, employers are in a position to unfairly force their religious beliefs on their employees.
It is an egregious violation of our cherished principle of religious liberty for anyone to limit our access to health care based on religious beliefs we do not hold. If the government permits this, the government is complicit in the establishment of religion.
Therefore…
Stewart nailed him on the thinly disguised guilt trip the Huckster attempted to foist on good believing Christians. The commercial was pro-life and homophobic, and it essentially told Christian voters, with the appropriate imagery of their religion of intimidation and threat, that if they were not also pro-life and homophobic, they would burn for all eternity. Sweet message, that.
Among the most disturbing things about these Christians who want to impose their Bible on the rest of us are:
For a number of reasons, foremost among them its bizarre contradictions, we don’t believe their Bible to be reliable, and therefore object to basing our laws on it;
Their Bible contravenes proven science;
We do not agree that some of the crazy shit they think is good is actually, well, good;
As a foundational document, their Bible is inconsistent, violent, bigoted, misogynistic, and homicidal, and none of those things are acceptable in modern society;
If they cherry-pick only the “good parts” of the Bible to apply to modern life, we have to question why, if so much of it is dispensable, they consider it to be a legitimate authority;
Why they think it is acceptable to force their dogma on people who do not accept their dogma.
Dissenting minorities and minorities representing different demographics will always need protection from the will of the majority. And right now the majority seem to be batshit Christians, who want to impose their will on the rest of us.
Here’s my roundup of legal machinations over the past week. No, I haven’t listed everything, and yes, I may have missed something important. Please leave comments on other events involving the law and secularism that you consider noteworthy.
Freedom From Religion Foundation
Despite the IRS suspension of the egregious political activity by 501(c)(3) tax-exempt religious organizations, FFRF decided this past week to take on the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association for its political ad that essentially endorsed Mitt Romney for President. Billy Graham reportedly told Romney that he would support the Republican candidate for President because he would support the “biblical definition of marriage.” Read FFRF’s letter to the Director of Exempt Organizations Examinations (DEOE), in which Annie Laurie Gaylor reminds us, once again, that she rocks.
As I mentioned in my earlier post today, the Director of Exempt Organizations Examinations is a high-ranking official, one level removed from the Secretary of the Treasury, and thus under the current Treasury Department organizational structure, is the correct person to determine whether an investigation is necessary. There were several people of that rank and authority before the 1998 bureaucratic restructuring.
Voters in Maine, Maryland, Washington, and Minnesota
Tuesday was a great day for same-sex marriage ballot measures. State by state, it’s slowly happening. I’ve never seen any objection other than those based on religion, so despite the “why do I care” attitude of some atheists, I feel strongly that as secular humanists we should co-own this issue with our LGBTQ friends. We’ve shared their closets all these years, after all. Ballot measures addressing the issue were voted on by citizens of four states Tuesday, and all of them passed handily. Nine states and D.C. now have no-holds-barred same-sex marriage, which confers all rights to homosexual couples that heterosexual couples enjoy. Another dozen states are almost there, giving same-sex couples almost all the rights of heterosexual couples through domestic partnerships and civil unions.
Kansas Board of Education
They’re at it again, that quirky group of deep thinkers. Global climate change is the current target of the anti-scientists on the Kansas Board of Education.
Adherents of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster may recall that it was an intelligent design curriculum proposed by the Kansas Board of Education that prompted FSM Prophet Bobby Henderson’s letter, the erudite lyricism and persuasive argument of which caused the noodly goodness of Pastafarianism to explode across the globe. I can’t wait to see what creatively crafted new religion comes out of this train wreck.
Followers of the Friendly Atheist may remember that a month ago Hemant Mehta interviewed Jack Wu and concluded, “If there’s anything we ought to take away from this, it’s that Wu shows how anyone can run for office.” This statement proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Hemant can find something nice to say about absolutely anyone.
Fortunately, <a href=”https://www.cjonline.com/article/20121106/NEWS/311069915>Jack Wu was overwhelmingly defeated.
Wu’s politics are completely focused on Biblical teachings. Kansas Governor Sam Brownback is too liberal for Jack Wu – Wu has said that Brownback, famous for uber-conservatism, just isn’t anti-abortion enough. Since Brownback has promised to sign any anti-abortion measure to cross his desk whether he’s actually read it or not, one must wonder exactly what Wu expects of Guv’nor Sam.
Florida Man
During my misspent youth, which even at my advanced age is still not over and done with, I spent way too much time on Fark.com. The “Florida” tag was always a warning that a stupid people/stupid government story was about to happen, and I’d click on it with glee, glad that there was one place in the country that might, occasionally, top the stupidity I saw on a daily basis right here at home.
On election night, Florida experienced at least a partial redemption.
In an outstanding FU to those who would merge church and state, Florida voters squelched Amendment 8, one of 11 proposed constitutional amendments on Florida’s ballot this election season. Amendment 8, humorously titled the “Florida Religious Freedom Amendment,” would have repealed a provision in the Florida Constitution that prohibits using state revenue “directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.” That’s right: it would have directed taxpayers’ dollars to support religious institutions.
Brave Atheists in Egypt
As bad as we might think we have it in the Bible Belt and other red states, there are places where religion is even more suffocating. Take Egypt, where 95% of the population is Muslim. There are still very quiet pockets of non-believers who dare to meet to discuss religion, despite the arrest last month of Alber Saber, a 27-year old who was physically attacked in the street because of irreligious statements appearing on his Facebook page. Egypt does not have freedom of belief, and no matter how ludicrous it seems, the Egyptian courts can prosecute and punish someone who is incapable of believing in a god.
The bravery of the small groups who continue to manage to meet and discuss their philosophy, beliefs, and iconoclastic understanding of the world cannot be adequately described. I don’t know that I would be brave enough to defy courts and criminal punishment to talk about my lack of belief.
Alber Saber’s blasphemy trial resumes next week.
Spain’s Constitutional Court
In 2005 Spain’s Socialist-dominated Cortes Generales (parliament) passed a same-sex marriage bill over the strenuous objections of the conservative Popular Party. Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero signed it into law, making Spain the third country in the world – the Netherlands and Belgium had been first and second – to legalize same-sex marriage. When he left office last year amid Spain’s economic woes, Zapatero forthrightly stated that the same-sex marriage law was his proudest achievement in office.
The Popular Party appealed to the Constitutional Court, the highest court in Spain, which agreed to hear the case. The Catholic Church, led by the scions of that compassionate humanist Torquemada, unsurprisingly sided with the conservative challengers.
This is excellent news for tens of thousands of same-sex couples who have tied the knot in the intervening years. While the court challenge wended its way to a decision, same-sex couples married, adopted children, and created families. Imagine the chaotic limbo those families might have endured with a different decision.
A bit of background: I practiced in juvenile court for fifteen years before I burned out completely on the daily dose of unthinkable child abuse and neglect. Fuqua’s stupidity staggered me. This man was running for re-election, and he actually thought it was a good idea 1) to pass a law that “wouldn’t be enforced” and 2) give parents who murder their children a defense of justifiable infanticide. I can hear it now: “Your Honor, I know he was only six months old, but he wouldn’t stop crying so beating him to death just made sense,” and “Your Honor, she was dating that boy I didn’t like, and she climbed out of her bedroom window to go see him. It was the second time this month, so I had no choice but to kill her.” Those scenarios happen already with despicable regularity. Can you imagine how much more prevalent child abuse would be if it were legally acceptable?
These are the same people who have to have a vindictive God to give them morals. All three of these assclowns lost their races Tuesday.
Right out of the gate, my first post ever on WWJTD, and the next thing I know I’m seeing my chosen topic everyfreakingwhere on the Interwebz, and my information was … not as good as I thought it was. Shit. I’m embarrassed. This had better not be a harbinger of things to come, I mutter darkly to anyone in earshot.
So, here’s the down-low. In 2007, the pastor of the Living Word Christian Center in Minnesota had announced – from the pulpit – his endorsement of Republican Michele Bachmann for her reelection to the US House of Representatives. This was a clear violation of 26 U.S.C. §501(c)(3), the Internal Revenue Code that allows exemptions from tax on certain non-profit corporations, trusts, and certain other entities.
Some gung-ho atheist activist (or maybe it was just somebody who detested Michele Bachmann on general principles; I hear such folks are common in certain circles) complained to the IRS. The Director of Exempt Organizations, Examination (DEOE) sent a notice to the church that it was initiating an investigation. According to the church, that office was not high-ranking enough to initiate the investigation, so when the inevitable administrative summons came, it refused to comply. Naturally, the IRS took the church to court to force compliance with the summons.
Special requirements must be met to investigate a church for tax noncompliance. The Church Audit Procedures Act, found at §7611 of the Internal Revenue Code, is intended to keep the government out of church affairs as much as possible. The Act allows a church inquiry when “an appropriate high-level Treasury official reasonably believes” that the church is no longer in compliance with the requirements of 501(c)(3). It defines “appropriate high-level Treasury official” as “the Secretary of the Treasury or any delegate of the Secretary of the Treasury whose rank is no lower than that of a principal Internal Revenue officer for an internal revenue region.” The regional commissioner, who this definition referred to, was one level removed from the Commissioner of the IRS.
The catch was this: in 1998 the IRS eliminated the position of the Regional Commissioner, which was the “principal Internal Revenue Officer for an internal revenue region.” In fact, the IRS did away with regions altogether, and restructured its chain of command by subject rather than by geographic area. Since the position of “principal Revenue Officer for an internal revenue region” no longer existed, and Congress did not amend the definition of “appropriate high-level treasury official” in the Church Audit Procedures Act, there was no one authorized by the statute besides the Secretary of the Treasury who could make the “reasonable belief” determination and launch an investigation of a church for not adhering to 501(c)(3) requirements. The DEOE, which had made the “reasonable belief” finding and launched the investigation into the Living Word Christian Center, was four levels below the IRS Commissioner, and therefore not ranked equivalent to the former position of Regional Commissioner.
With this opinion in one single federal District Court in one single state, IRS investigations of churches came to an inglorious screeching halt. The purpose of the Church Audit Procedures Act was more than fulfilled: government basically could no longer touch churches, even when they were blatantly violating the tax code. Churches are free to meddle in government, without repercussion, at least until the definition of “appropriate high-level Treasury official” is amended, or until the position of Regional Commissioner is reinstated.
I checked the Code of Federal Regulations. Nope, the masses blogging and reporting about this matter over the last week are right: the regulation intended to help the IRS enjoin flagrant political activity by 501(c)(3) organizations has not been updated since December 1995. Although some religious news sources advise caution, other religious news outlets celebrate, since that means church can invade the state, but the state cannot invade the church. An attempt to update it was made in 2009, after a decision by the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. noted the problem, too, but despite a public hearing having been held on the matter, nothing has yet been done. That may be because Congress will have to act, and by the time of the public hearing on the matter in January 2010, the Republicans had retaken the U.S. House of Representatives, the Tea Party held sway over all political decisions, and progressive government essentially ground to a halt.
But the ruling in the Minnesota case only applies to proceedings to enforce a summons issued by the IRS, not to actual enforcement of the law, so presumably there’s some other way to address the issue. Presumably. Maybe. If there is, I can’t find it. Shit.
What gets me is the IRS guy I spoke with while writing my piece last week told me that the IRS is still taking complaints about political over-reaching by churches. He directed me to the appropriate form, and he said that it definitely should be filed. When I started stumbling across article after blog post after news item about this, I had to wonder about the disconnect. Now, after actually researching the history of the problem, it seems ludicrous to me that Tim Geithner or any Treasury official ranked one level below him is going to bother themselves with hundreds of complaints about churches. In fact, it seems ludicrous that any Treasury official ranked that high would. Maybe that’s why only one church has ever had its tax-exempt status yanked, ever. Ever.
Now I’m mad.
Their own hero said it.
How the hell is it that we’re supposed to have a separation of church and state, but that separation can only go one way? Government has to keep out of church business – and I agree that it should, unless the church is violating the law. But when the church gets all up the the government’s business, and I find out that the government has essentially hamstrung itself so that it can’t take remedial action, my blood boils.
I live in one of the most Christian-dominated states in the U.S. If we are to trust the numbers collected by the Huffington Post, though, probably only half of Americans are strong Christians. That leaves the other half of us, who aren’t riding the Jesus Train and think we ought not to have a theocracy, wondering why churches are allowed to have such strong voices, and why they are allowed to drown out the other half of us.
Then I consider when this happened. The decision by the Minnesota District Courtwas issued January 30, 2008, just 15 days after Barack Obama was sworn in as President. And something started to be done by the summer of 2008, but federal rule-making takes a long time. And by the time it came down to it, Congress was cram-packed full of tea-partying wackjobs and I guess the Treasury Department was a bit sidetracked, what with the biggest economic crisis in a century enjoying prominent headlines and the Treasury Department embroiled in a little problem having to do with things like debt ceilings and such.
Capital punishment will show the little buggers how to act. And remember, boys and girls: we don’t hit.
Why do we have laws that aren’t enforced? Before you think this is a rhetorical question, consider the likes of Charlie Fuqua, an incumbent Republican candidate for the state legislature from my own home state, who thinks we ought to pass a law permitting parents to kill their disobedient children. After all, the Bible says it’s fine. And we won’t really enforce it, just hang it over the little darlings’ heads until they stop behaving like mini-monsters.
Then there’s the notorious Billy Graham ad. Fortunately, FFRF is all over that one. OF course, the letter Annie Laurie Gaylor sent to the IRS demanding an investigation was sent to the DEOE – yes, the same official the Minnesota District Court said wasn’t high-ranking enough – so it may not go anywhere unless it gets kicked up the chain of command.
But the media is reporting on it, supplying the quotes from church leaders, photos of church marquees, and reports or violations that the IRS will need if it ever gets its administrative ass in gear and decides to institute Regional Commissioners or persuade Congress to correct the structural issues based on the Treasury Department’s structural reorganization.
As for those of us who feel strongly that churches do not speak for us and should stay out of politics, we can still form brigades waving stacks of Form 13909, filling them out and submitting them to the IRS in hopes that the government will actually get around to enforcing the law.
Sure, the First Amendment stands for free speech, but it also stands for separation of church and state.
Frankly, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if all churches paid taxes. Render unto Caesar and all that, you know.
Reader questions are edited to eliminate references to specific people and places, unless there’s a need to call out the cavalry. If you see something here that almost resembles your question, but your main concern isn’t addressed, go ahead and ask again in the comments. I’ll do my best to respond.
Reader Question:
I teach at a large, publicly-funded community college. Here’s an item I thought you might have an opinion on:
Since we’re state-supported, is this sort of thing even legal?
Professor Plum
Answer:
Students are allowed to form their own groups on campus, and do. It’s how they find like-minded people, and attract like-minded new friends. Fraternities, Chess Clubs, Latin clubs, political clubs, Secular Student Alliances, student religious clubs.
This group is a little different in that it apparently is an alliance that stretches across several campuses in the area. But just like the Secular Student Alliance, there is nothing that prevents a group of interested students from forming a chapter on every campus within reach.
At the high school level, the Equal Access Act allows student-led groups to form for political, religious, philosophical, or other reasons. This act was spearheaded by religious organizations that wanted to insert prayer in school, and the happy result is that secular students, gay students, and other social minorities benefit from it. The Equal Access Act says:
It shall be unlawful for any public secondary school which receives Federal financial assistance and which has a limited open forum to deny equal access or a fair opportunity to, or discriminate against, any students who wish to conduct a meeting within that limited open forum on the basis of the religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at such meetings.
Of course, the act says a whole lot more, but you get the gist.
The Equal Access Act does not apply to colleges. Unlike tax-supported high schools, there are no free colleges, and college attendance is not compulsory. Most, if not all, colleges collect an “activities fee” from every enrolled student that helps to support student-run organizations like the college-level Secular Student Alliance, Gay-Straight Alliance, Jewish Student Union, Japanese Club, Chess Club, Baptist Student Union, etc. Normally, these resources – including funds, meeting rooms, and photocopying costs – are made available to student organizations based on very general criteria.
There’s a U.S. Supreme Court case that says it’s okay for religious students to organize on campus and use campus resources. It came about when a religious student club at the University of Virginia (UVA) wanted to print its magazine with university resources. UVA said that it couldn’t permit the religious publication because government money, as well as student activities fees, would pay for the printing, and to print the religious publication would violate the Establishment Clause. Other, non-religious groups used those resources regularly. The religious student organization sued. The Supreme Court said that to deny the religious student group access to funds available to other student publications violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech. The university could not select which organization could or could not use the resources based on the content of the publication.
So, Professor Plum, as long as the college where you work allows all student-organized groups to use the same resources, there’s not a problem.
The website for the group in the photo indicates that this group is a student-run organization that reaches across several local campuses. There is nothing to prevent similar student groups on multiple campuses from joining together. Fraternities have always done this – that’s how there’s a Sigma Chi or a Tri-Delt at so many different colleges. They can even have a national organization that sets out guidelines and provides some funding – just like the Secular Student Alliance does.
What they cannot do is harass people, preach to captive audiences, or offer free cheese dip without decent chips. This group apparently wants people to pour cheese dip on its Bible Study handouts since it fails to offer tortilla chips in its ad. If the cheese dip is any good, this may be the highest and best use of said handouts.
It’s no secret that The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, is one of my favorite books. I’m leading the discussion in my book club this month, and The Alchemist is the book we’re discussing. I feel fortunate, but overwhelmed at the same time.
I’ve re-read the book during the past week to get ready for the book club discussion. Reader’s Guides are readily available for The Alchemist. The tenth anniversary edition, which I have, contains one after the epilogue. Its discussion topics seem so obvious to me. There is so much more to this book than those canned study guide questions point out.
For instance, there are two different types of alchemy: scientific alchemy and spiritual alchemy. While the gold that scientific alchemy yields is tempting, Coelho’s beautiful fable teaches us that the spiritual aspect of alchemy is the important one. The tale of Santiago the shepherd boy underscores that without achieving the Master Work of spiritual alchemy, no one can attain the Magnum Opus of scientific alchemy. The discussion of both types of alchemy is a discussion of the book itself, as well as a philosophical discussion that may never end.
Santiago’s quest for his Personal Legend is full of lessons. Santiago’s wisdom, and the wisdom of the people he meets in his travels, must have been sound bites that Coelho collected for years then wove seamlessly into this tale. All of Coelho’s books seem that way, though. But the wisdom and joy of The Alchemist makes it the only one of Coelho’s books that literally makes me cry.
Each time I’ve read this book I’ve cried, and each time I’ve cried at the same point. For me, the climax of the book comes twice. The first is not when Santiago finds the physical treasure of his dream, but when he first lays eyes on what fabulous wonders men can achieve. Yes, this is when I cry, and I’m crying with the profound joy the book has given me.
At the moment when Santiago thinks he should find his treasure, he is attacked by several refugees from the tribal wars he has dodged all across the Sahara. One attacker announces that it is stupid to cross a desert to look for buried treasure just because of a recurring dream. The attacker doesn’t know it, but Santiago has done exactly that, and is at the point of realizing that dream when he is beaten bloody and left nearly dead by these attackers. As outside observers we readers laugh, knowing that whether or not Santiago finds his material wealth in the desert, his journeys have resulted in a spiritual wealth beyond most people’s imagining. He has learned that if he wants to, he can become the wind.
Coelho uses phrases and terms of his own making, but they are philosophical terms necessary to understanding the spiritual alchemy he presents in his book. The Soul of the World, the hand that wrote all, the Language of the World, and one’s Personal Legend are concepts Coelho deftly teaches us with this story of a shepherd’s quest, undertaken because of a recurring dream. Without initially understanding those terms, though, we struggle along with Santiago to grasp the concepts of spiritual alchemy.
Fear hampers our quests for our Personal Legends. The fear presents itself in different ways. First, it is a fear of leaving the familiar comforts of what we know to go in pursuit of a dream. But when we take those first few tentative steps toward our dream, beginner’s luck encourages us to keep pursuing the dream. Eventually, though, our initial success creates another fear within us. We have achieved so much. No, it’s not what we set out to achieve, but it is enough. We can die happy because we got this far and we are comfortable. But, if we listen to our hearts, we know that this temptation to settle for less than our Personal Legend is really a fear: a fear that we have had so much success that we are bound to fail soon.
The fear of failure prevents many people from realizing their Personal Legends. Settling for “good enough,” these people stop listening to their hearts and listen instead to the comforts of having come this far and achieved this much. They feel blessed to have done so much; to try to do more tempts fate, does it not?
Yes, it does.
That’s part of the pursuit of the Personal Legend, though. We aren’t rewarded with the realization of that legend unless we show that we have truly learned the lessons along the way to achieving it. Proving that we’ve learned the lessons means we have to be challenged, and the challenges aren’t supposed to be easy. If we want something enough, if our goal is our dream, and our dream is our Personal Legend, the path gets harder, not easier, the closer we get. Nevertheless, if we step carefully and read the omens sent to us, we will achieve success. We will recognize and live our Personal Legends.
I’m making four presentations to make on this book this month. In each, I want to examine a portion of the story, and a portion of the philosophy of spiritual alchemy. I don’t know if I can limit myself to just four!
I’ve come up with a list of omens Santiago notices in his adventures. Some of them have layers of meaning. I want to talk about them.
Throughout the book, Coelho sprinkled concepts from the three Abrahamic religions. I want to talk about each, yet I know that those in my audience who know me not to be a follower of this religious tradition will want time to challenge me on my interpretation, and will want to offer their own. There must be time for that.
There are mystical elements that defy being categorized with something else, so must be treated separately.
Each major character, plus a couple of minor ones, have wisdom to share. I want to examine their profound observations – ALL of them!
Then there are the literary aspects of the book. Coelho’s writing style, the format of the story, foreshadowing and other literary devices, character development . . . I’m babbling already and I haven’t even begun my presentation.
And then there is alchemy, both scientific and spiritual, to tackle. To be fair to each, they should be dealt with separately, then addressed together so as to underscore the similarities. There are specific alchemists mentioned in the book whose biographies might be interesting to my audience, yet I fear boring the masses with my enthusiasm.
But wait: Santiago’s strengths were his courage to do what he wanted, and his enthusiasm in the process.
His strengths were what enabled him to become the wind.
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