Satanists Did It!

As you can probably guess, I happen to think that the last thing we need in politics is more Christians. Or, more to the point, more Poor Oppressed Christians who believe that passing laws based on their religious beliefs is a good and noble goal. A group made up of Christian lawmakers (who obviously disagree with me) recently put up a Twitter poll asking if America would be better off if more Christians served in elected office. It did not turn out as expected, which maybe means that there's hope for our country yet.

After more than 16,000 replies, the answer was an overwhelming “no,” which received 95.8% of the vote. In response, the group accused “atheists and Satanists” of “religious persecution” for voting in the poll. Congress is overwhelmingly Christian, far out of proportion with the people they represent. According to a Pew survey last year, the Senate and House are nearly 90% Christian, compared with 65% of America as a whole.

First off, why should atheists and Satanists not get a vote? They're citizens of this country too. How is expressing an opionion "persecution?" And finally, why can't these folks accept that even a lot of mainstream Christians are sick of their nonsense? I'm willing to bet that a lot of Christians who don't consider themselves oppressed by the mere existence of dissenting opinions voted "No" in that poll.

One in four Americans now considers themselves atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” a position publicly held by just one member of the current Congress, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who lists her religion as “none.” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) describes himself as a humanist, while a handful of others haven’t acknowledged a faith or lack thereof.

The National Association of Christian Lawmakers was started last year by Arkansas State Sen. Jason Rapert (R), who warned about the rise of witches in a recruitment email. It’s not clear how many members the group has, but its board of advisers includes a number of current and former elected officials, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Exorcism Summit Open to Non-Catholics

Sadly, though, you still have to be Christian.

In a move that I imagine can only be positive for non-Catholic reverse-conjurers everywhere, the Roman Catholic Church has opened up its annual exorcism summit to exorcists belonging to other Christian denominations. By exploring techniques from other strands of their tradition, they hope to improve their methods and develop "best practices." You know, like a great big Agile team or something.

With a rise in reported demonic possessions and devil worship in the era of social media, the Roman Catholic Church opened its doors to non-Catholics for the first time during its annual exorcism training conference.

This article is from Fox News, so I want to interrogate some of its implied assumptions a bit. Is there really a "rise in reported demonic possessions and devil worship in the era of social media?" Members of groups like The Satanic Temple are atheists, and while there are theistic Satanists their numbers are much lower. "Lifestyle witchcraft" is not "devil worship" either - nor is it really even magick or witchcraft as I think of it, just a fashion trend.

I do realize that conservative Catholics think anybody who isn't a Catholic, and certainly anyone who isn't Christian, is basically a devil worshipper or might as well be one. But to be clear, I'm a Thelemite and I don't "worship the devil." I actually don't really "worship" anything. I work with deities and spirits as a peer, not a supplicant. And I have to say, in the occult community I don't think literal "devil worship" is much of a thing for the most part.

Also - has there actually been an increase in "reported demonic possessions?" I scour the Internet for anything that looks like a real case of possession so I can cover it here on the blog, and I can't say that I've seen any increase in reports over the course of at least the last decade and probably longer. It was rare before, and it remains rare now.

Those Meddling Atheists!

Creationist Ken Ham recently put up a blog posts blaming atheists for the failure of his Ark Encounter attraction. More specifically, his Noah's Ark replica theme park has attracted a lot of visitors, but they don't appear to be spending any money in the surrounding area. Instead, it's all going to Ham and his organization.

In a recent blog post to his Answers in Genesis website, leading creationist Ken Ham laments the supposed power of atheists and the “secularist media,” complaining that they are damaging the reputation of his Ark Encounter, and the economy of the surrounding local businesses, writing:

"Recently, a number of articles in the mainstream media, on blogs, and on well-known secularist group websites have attempted to spread propaganda to brainwash the public into thinking our Ark Encounter attraction is a dismal failure.

Sadly, they (atheists and the secular media) are influencing business investors and others in such a negative way that they may prevent Grant County, Kentucky, from achieving the economic recovery that its officials and residents have been seeking."

In other words, Ken Ham blames atheists for his trouble. Ham is refusing to take responsibility for his own failure, and refusing to take responsibility for his broken promises to the citizens and business community of Grant County, Kentucky.

Ham is desperate to counter the narrative that his Ark Encounter and Creation Museum are not delivering on the promises he made. He is particularly upset with a recent article from The Lexington Herald Leader that explores Ham’s failure to deliver on financial promises made to community members and local businesses.

In reality, this should have all been obvious from the start, atheists or no atheists. The tax incentive deal that Ark Encounter got was basically the same thing as the deals sports stadiums get from cities - and those are almost always a bad deal for everybody else in the community. The supposed "economic activity" never shows up, or when it does it's far less than initially promised.

I can only think of a handful of times in the last century where one of these deals has actually produced wealth for the local community. My home city of Minneapolis got reamed on one of these a few years back for the new Minnesota Vikings stadium, which is costing taxpayers a fortune to subsidize. My point is that this is a much bigger problem than the media making fun of Ham's Ark, and it has nothing to do with religion.

So no, Ken, it's not the atheist meanies keeping the "economic activity" away. It was never going to show up regardless.

Demonic Occult Deception

That's the phrase used by one Christian movie reviewer to describe the new Doctor Strange movie, now in theaters. I have yet to see the film myself, but I have heard from a number of friends who liked it. For anybody who doesn't know, Doctor Strange is the Marvel superhero whose powers stem his mastery of the magical arts - as they exist in the fictional Marvel universe. So of course this reviewer hated the film, because in it the wizard is the good guy.

Marvel's Doctor Strange will finally be released in U.S. theaters this weekend, and so far, it has been well-received by both fans and the critics, and doing well at the box office overseas (You can read our full review here), but as the saying goes, "you can't please everyone." One critic decided to label the film "abhorrent" and cites Biblical passages in his review to prove his points.

Dr. Ted Baehr, the chair of the Christian Film & Television Commission, has given Doctor Strange a painful -4 or "Abhorrent" rating. “[Doctor Strange is] a dangerous introduction to demonic occult deception,” Behr wrote in his review. “The Bible clearly warns against the kind of occult practices and sorcery the hero in this movie learns to do, in Deuteronomy 18:9-12 and Galatians 5:20. Also in the movie, the hero’s New Age, occult guru teaches there may be no afterlife, that death is truly the end, and that this is a good thing.”

One of the odd commonalities between fundamentalist Christians and fundamentalist atheists is their shared hatred of imagination. Does anybody seriously think that comic book characters like Doctor Strange practice anything even remotely resembling real magick? He's a superhero; he's totally not real, and the comics in which he appears are works of fiction. Which is what we humans do to entertain ourselves - come up with imaginary situations that we know full well aren't real. Why watching a fictional movie would be dangerous to anyone is entirely beyond me.

Atheists Aren't That Weird

Towards the end of the Republican primary race, Ohio Governor John Kasich basically looked like the last normal person standing. Largely, this was because of the contrast between him and the other two remaining candidates - Donald Trump, who needs no explanation, and Ted Cruz, a flat-out Christian Reconstructionist theocrat. Kasich, though, is apparently not nearly as reasonable as that comparison made him seem.

Last week, while stumping for Chris Sununu, a New Hampshire Republican, Kasich couldn't help running his mouth when he noticed the Harry Potter series on the shelf at a bookstore. For some reason that was never explained, he wondered aloud about Daniel Radcliffe's religion, or more to the point the actor's lack thereof. Radcliffe identies as an atheist, which Kasich seemed to have difficulty comprehending.

John Kasich’s reputation as the “normal” Republican comes, in large part, from a lack of serious media scrutiny. But over the weekend, one intrepid reporter, Allie Morris of the Concord Monitor, captured a telling Kasich moment as the Ohio governor stumped for Chris Sununu, a Republican running for governor of New Hampshire.

“Inside a bookstore he didn’t much discuss Sununu’s candidacy,” Morris wrote. “Instead he looked at the latest Harry Potter book and pondered why British actor Daniel Radcliffe is an atheist.”

Morris continued:

“You know that Daniel Radcliffe has declared himself an atheist?” Kasich said to no one in particular. “I’m serious. What a weird thing. Why would a guy who has had all that success just, I mean, what the hell is wrong with him?”

It is true that Radcliffe gave an interview in 2009, at age 19, when he said, “I’m an atheist, but I’m very relaxed about it. I don’t preach my atheism, but I have a huge amount of respect for people like Richard Dawkins who do.” Further research revealed that Radcliffe was not kidding about the “relaxed” part, as he has hardly ever spoken publicly about his unbelief in a deity.

Jedis in Australia

Believe it or not, this appears to be an actual thing. Since 2001, people have written in "Jedi" as their religion in Australia's national census. In 2011, it claimed approximately 64,000 adherents, just behind Sikhs and just ahead of Seventh Day Adventists.

The Jedi religion originally appeared in George Lucas' Star Wars films, but it also is true that Lucas came up with it by combining bits and pieces of other world religions. In the films, Jedis believe in a mystical energy called "the force" that binds all life in the universe together, and they are shown engaging in real spiritual practices such as meditation.

"Jedi" is also sometimes claimed as a joke religion like Pastafarianism, with atheists selecting it just to be funny. But Kylie Sturgess, president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, is trying to get atheists to stop doing that and mark "No Religion" instead for the 2016 census.

Jediism is inspired by The Star Wars series and patches together aspects of Taoism, Buddhism, Catholicism, and other faiths. While some see it as a serious religious affiliation, others see the rise of Jediism in Australia as a reflection of the fact that the country is becoming an increasingly secular.

Australia’s religious landscape has changed significantly over the past century. In the 1911 census, just .4 percent of Australians chose “no religion” when asked about their religious identity. In 2011, 22 percent of Australians answered “no religion” in response to the census. With a few more percentage points, this group could potentially knock Catholicism, which at 25 percent is currently Australia’s largest religious denomination, out of the top spot.

An accurate portrait of Australia’s religious groups matters because, according to AFA, exaggerations in the data may “lead to groups wielding disproportionate influence within government.”

“Answering the religion question thoughtfully and honestly matters because it benefits all Australians when decisions on how to spend taxpayer dollars are made on sound data that accurately reflects modern-day Australia,” Sturgess said.

As I see it, if you're really a Jedi you should go ahead and answer Jedi. On the other hand, if you're not religious and just checking the box as a joke, "No Religion" would be a more accurate answer.

The Star Wars films were inspired in part by the works of Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, and the Jedi religion as presented does resemble a simplified distillation of Daoism and Buddhism. I don't see why it's any sillier than the "lite-Buddhism" followed by a large percentage of New Agers just because it originally came from a film.

In the United States, because of the separation of church and state it would make no difference whatsoever. I don't know enough about Australian politics to comment on how the census relates to tax dollars being spent, but for those who consider the Jedi religion a legitimate spiritual path, I don't see why they should have to hide it.

Ark Encounter Finally Opens

So in the end, Ken Ham did it. He pushed junk bonds, got state tax incentives and then lost them, and delayed the project numerous times as the funding kept coming up short. But today Ark Encounter, Ham's full-size replica of Noah's Ark, finally opens next door to his Creation Museum in Kentucky, drawing both supporters and protesters.

The Young Earth Creationist and founder and president of Answers In Genesis has become one of the most powerful and polarising religious leaders in America’s Bible Belt. And his life-size Ark Encounter in Kentucky is a monolithic physical reminder of that. As Thursday’s opening day looms, a renewed wave of protest and support for Ham’s Ark Encounter project has built.

Atheist group Tri-State Freethinkers is planning to hold a protest against outside the Ark Encounter on opening day. It tried to place billboards on the highway approaching Ark Encounter, calling it the “Genocide and Incest Park”, but was rebuffed by billboard companies, Christian news website Christian Today reported.

Ham believes evolution is a fraud, the world is only 6000 years old and was created in six days, the Book of Genesis is historical fact, homosexuality is a sin, and, yes, Noah really did march animals onto an ark to save them from a great flood. Ham’s ark is built according to the dimensions given in the Bible.

I'm going to repeat this because I love harping on it. Ham's interpretation of the Book of Genesis does not match the literal text. It's based on a messy piece of scriptural interpretation called the Ussher Chronology that doesn't even line up with the Genesis narrative. So if Ham is a literalist Christian, he's just wrong, period. His assertion that to be a real Christian you have to believe everything that he does is ridiculous in that regard.

Maybe it's silly to keep bringing that up, since a world that's 6000 or 10,000 years old, or even in that ballpark, is pretty much impossible based on all available scientific evidence. But the fact that Ham can't even keep his theology straight continues to amuse me long after it probably should. The bottom line is that he's a hypocrite just like many fundamentalists, reading the Bible as literal when it supports what they want to believe and otherwise interpreting the text to match.

The United Church of Bacon

If you're the sort of person who loves bacon - and let's face it, a lot of us do - you can now make it official by joining the United Church of Bacon. While on its face this is another of the "parody religions" that promote religious freedom and are mostly made up of atheists and agnostics, the United Church of Bacon goes a step further than, say, the Pastafarians. Most people aren't really into wearing colanders on their heads or dressing up like pirates, but a whole lot of people like eating bacon.

The mockery religion was founded in Las Vegas by atheist John Whiteside in 2010. He started it as a protest to fight discrimination against atheists. Bacon prophet John said: "The hatred of atheists, atheophobia and secularphobia, has no stigma, unlike homophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and racism. That needs to change.”

A statement on their website calls for people to stand up for separation of church and state. It reads: "The skeptics’ church has a serious intent, to fight religious discrimination against non-believers, to promote church-state separation, and to demand equal rights for everyone, regardless of faith."

Fundamentalists of whatever stripe who also like eating bacon now need to make a decision. Should they give up their favorite breakfast meat, or should they go on eating food that is now contaminated by the reverence of unbelievers? Muslims and Orthodox Jews are already off the hook, since they don't eat pork, but most Christians follow no such prohibition.

The United Church of Bacon now has billboards up in Las Vegas offering bacon-themed wedding services. It seems to me that's more practical and tasty than getting married by an Elvis impersonator.

Secular Humanism Ruled a Religion

Atheists often refute the notion that unbelief constitutes a religion, any more than, say, a lack of interest in golf constitutes a sport. While this is true, many atheists also subscribe to Secular Humanism, a system of philosophy that among its tenets rejects supernatural forces. Last week a judge ruled on a case brought by a federal prisoner that, for legal purposes, this philosophy should be treated as a religion and entitled to the same rights and protections as faith groups and churches.

On Thursday, October 30, Senior District Judge Ancer Haggerty issued a ruling on American Humanist Association v. United States, a case that was brought by the American Humanist Association (AHA) and Jason Holden, a federal prisoner. Holden pushed for the lawsuit because he wanted Humanism — which the AHA defines as “an ethical and life-affirming philosophy free of belief in any gods and other supernatural forces” — recognized as a religion so that his prison would allow for the creation of a Humanist study group.

Haggerty sided with the plaintiffs in his decision, citing existing legal precedent and arguing that denying Humanists the same rights as groups such as Christianity would be highly suspect under the Establishment Clause in the U.S. Constitution, which declares that Congress “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

“The court finds that Secular Humanism is a religion for Establishment Clause purposes,” the ruling read. The decision highlights the unusual position of the Humanist community, which has tried for years to obtain the same legal rights as more traditional religious groups while simultaneously rebuking the existence of a god or gods. But while some Humanists may chafe at being called a “religion,” others feel that the larger pursuit of equal rights trumps legal classifications.

As I see it this ruling is a proper reading of the Establishment Clause, since my take is that it was created to ensure freedom of conscience. Secular Humanists have a clearly defined set of shared beliefs, even if one of them is the rejection of supernaturalism, and those beliefs should be respected just like those of everyone else. It should be noted, though, that this still does not imply that atheism as a whole is "religious" in any coherent or meaningful sense. Not all atheists are Secular Humanists, and anyway the law does not judge the content of the beliefs that it protects.

As I've written many times before, I would rather not see religion in general driven from the public square. I just think that representation should be given to minority religions and those unbelievers who seek it out. Hopefully this ruling will facilitate the latter.

"Ark Encounter" Jobs for Fundamentalists Only

The saga of Ken Ham's troubled Ark Encounter attraction continues. After failing to raise enough money to receive the large tax incentives for which they were originally approved by the state of Kentucky, Answers in Genesis has applied again for a smaller set of tax breaks. In their new application they once again claim that the attraction will generate revenue for the state and create jobs. But according to a job description on their help wanted web site, Ark Encounter's jobs are for fundamentalist Christians only.

The job description included this statement: "Our work at Ark Encounter is not just a job, it is also a ministry. Our employees work together as a team to serve each other to produce the best solutions for our design requirements. Our purpose through the Ark Encounter is to serve and glorify the Lord with our God-given talents with the goal of edifying believers and evangelizing the lost."

When Ark Encounter was originally approved for much larger tax incentives they were required not to discriminate in hiring. However, it is apparent that Ark Encounter is likely to discriminate against non-Christians. Moreover, Catholics, mainstream Protestant Christians and some conservative Christians who have different doctrinal beliefs are also unlikely to be hired.

The ad has specific religious requirements for employment. These include a salvation testimony, a "creation belief statement" and a requirement that applicants agree with the organization's "statement of faith." This required statement includes articles that imply that fundamentalist Christianity is the only acceptable religion and that denigrate non-Christians non-fundamentalist Christians, and homosexuals (regardless of their theological views).

The really amazing thing to me here is talking about "design requirements." That is, these are the jobs for people who will be building the attraction. How can somebody's religious beliefs possibly effect how they do engineering or construction work? Rail against asshole atheists all you want - and yes, they are out there, and they are annoying - but I've never heard of an atheist company refusing to hire Christians or making them sign some sort of statement denouncing God.

Garbage like this is the reason atheists wind up pressing court cases. It's not just that they're "offended" in some nebulous way, but rather that discrimination against them and members of minority religions is very real and has real consequences. If Ark Encounter gets away with this, you can bet that other fundamentalist organizations will follow.

Poor Oppressed Christians Don't Get Atheists

I suppose you might expect an actor who played a demigod to be down on atheists, but God is Not Dead star Kevin Sorbo demonstrated in a recent interview that he completely fails to understand them. Just as his film suggests, Sorbo seems convinced that the main motivation for atheism is anger with God. He gets as far as realizing that it's illogical to be angry with something you don't believe in, but totally misses the point that this is a strawman constructed by religous folks intentionally designed to make atheists look silly and has little to do with unbelievers in the real world.

“I’m a Christian myself and had to play an atheist. I see the anger of these (atheist) guys on TV and it’s like ‘wow, how do you get so angry at something you don’t believe in?” Sorbo said.

Earlier this year, Sorbo discussed self-professed atheist Bill Maher, calling him “angry and lonely,” before adding, “I did Politically Incorrect a couple of times, and all I can do is feel sad for the guy, because I think he is a very angry and lonely man. Comedy comes from anger anyway. You know, what are you going to say when a guy talks like this?”

In his most recent comments, Sorbo also expressed frustration with atheists who protest localities displaying nativity scenes on public property during the Christmas holidays. “It’s funny how they can get nativity scenes pulled down because they say it offends them but they’re offended by something they don’t believe in,” Sorbo said.

“What offends 90 percent of the country is that they take down nativity scenes but apparently the majority doesn’t have a voice in the country anymore so what are you going to do?”

As I posted awhile back, atheists are as diverse a group as any other. There is a small, vocal minority of "fundamentalists" who do seem to be angry at religion in general and think any form of spirituality is stupid. But most are just regular people who want to be left alone and have their rights respected. This is true of Christians as well. The majority of believers don't spend all their free time whining about how oppressed they are, which means that Sorbo's numbers are way off. Christians make up about 85% of the US population, not 90%. And it's really only the Poor Oppressed bunch who care very much about whether nativity scenes are put up, which reduces the percentage further.

See, I would agree with Sorbo here on the nativity scene issue if what he was proposing was that Christians could put up nativity scenes on public property and members of every other religion could do the same, including atheists who want to erect secular displays. The thing is, though, that's not what the Poor Oppressed Christians want. They want to be able to put up their displays while banning everyone else's. That's what atheists and members of minority religions find offensive. When the Poor Oppressed crowd won't play nice, the only other legal option is to keep anyone from playing at all.

So to the Poor Oppressed Christians who still don't get it, I'll be clear. Most atheists aren't angry to begin with, and the rest of them aren't angry with God. They're angry with you.

Atheist Televangelism?

Christian evangelists have employed television for decades to broadcast their beliefs to a wider audience than a single congregation. Not to be outdone, atheists are now getting in on the act with their own television channel, AtheistTV. Salon has an article up today reviewing this recent venture, and so far, the news is not good. Even though the reviewer is himself an atheist and therefore theoretically part of the channel's target audience, he found the programming excessively smug and "close to unwatchable."

AtheistTV frames atheism as a perpetual reaction against a conquering force. And that reaction isn’t reasoned debate. It’s unattractive nihilism. After the second broadcast of a single “Atheist Experience” episode, the channel showed a 2012 rally in Washington, D.C.; speakers consistently described a future in which all Americans would join the movement, a future that they’d get to by mocking and hassling the beliefs of others. One hardly needs to be religious to see the rhetorical flaws in Andy Shernoff, the frontman of punk band The Dictators, describing himself as “a little like Martin Luther King” before asking the audience “Ready for some sarcasm? Ridiculous ideas need to be mocked.” That Shernoff’s performance indulges straight-up homophobia and misogyny in a frankly mean-spirited song about giving Jesus oral sex is just a fringe benefit of being a radical truth-teller who doesn’t care whom one offends. Beyond the catharsis of mockery, what can AtheistTV offer? What alternative does it provide? Leaving aside even the question of winning over believers, how can it even keep atheists watching if it’s just a perpetual drumbeat of calling Jesus “the zombie Jew”?

My biggest problem with this is not atheism itself, but rather that there are all sorts of issues that an "Atheist Channel" could tackle besides simply making fun of the low-hanging fruit that is literalist Christianity. I cover some of those stories myself here on Augoeides, like the ongong Oklahoma monument debate, the fight for Pastafarian recognition, and the silly antics of creationists. Instead, though, it sounds like all anyone who tunes in sees is a never-ending discussion of whether religious people are stupid, or really stupid.

In fact, if I were to create a parody channel that lampoons atheists the way Stephen Colbert lampoons conservatives, I imagine that it would turn out exactly the same as what this channel is currently doing. That suggests to me that they probably need a better format if they want to make atheism seem smart and appealing, rather than annoying and ridiculous.

Convicted Christian Singer Outed as Atheist

So there's this joke I like to tell: "What do you call Christian music that's good? Music." It's all too true because it's not like there are no Christian themes in American popular music, as it's by far the majority religion in this country. Rather, if a band has to brand itself as "Christian" that's pretty much proof that its music is terrible. There are a few exceptions here and there, but in fact bands that start out as Christian for other reasons generally transition into the mainstream if they're decent.

There's also the South Park episode where Cartman decides to start a Christian band. He comments, "Writing Christian music is easy! You just take old songs and cross out words like 'honey' and 'baby' and write in 'Jesus'!" Now you might think that a real Christian musician would be doing it because they want to share and promote their faith rather than sell inferior tunes to what is essentially a captive audience, but as this story shows, plenty of them are just in it for the money.

A so-called Christian heavy metal band whose frontman was convicted of attempting to hire a hitman to murder his estranged wife has admitted that it duped fans into believing that they were Christian in order to sell their music.

“Truthfully, I was an atheist,” Tim Lambesis, the lead singer and founder of As I Lay Dying told the Alternative Press in a recent interview. “I actually wasn’t the first guy in As I Lay Dying to stop being a Christian. In fact, I think I was the third. The two who remained kind of stopped talking about it, and then I’m pretty sure they dropped it, too.”

The publication noted that his wife, Meggan, had likewise divulged in divorce papers that Lambesis had become an atheist. Lambesis, in admitting his atheism, outlined that he turned away from Christianity as he majored in religious studies while attending college through a long distance program.

“In the process of trying to defend my faith, I started thinking the other point of view was the stronger one,” he said.

The Scourge of Imagination

Last summer I commented on a study showing that atheists are just like everyone else. That is, most are reasonable people who simply want to be left alone, while a small minority can be just as dogmatic and obnoxious as fundamentalist believers. Many of the so-called "New Atheists" fall into this latter camp, and here's a perfect example.

Richard Dawkins, one of the most prominent public atheists, has stated in an interview that fairy tales are harmful to children - because they're not scientific and include events that are "too improbable." Seriously? I know that atheism is getting out of hand when atheists start arguing that imagination is the enemy.

“Is it a good thing to go along with the fantasies of childhood, magical as they are? Or should we be fostering a spirit of scepticism?” he said, according to The Daily Telegraph.

“I think it's rather pernicious to inculcate into a child a view of the world which includes supernaturalism – we get enough of that anyway.

“Even fairy tales, the ones we all love, with wizards or princesses turning into frogs or whatever it was. There’s a very interesting reason why a prince could not turn into a frog – it's statistically too improbable.”

I suppose, then, following this logic there should be no fantasy or paranormal stories in literature, and no science fiction that contains any scientific errors - which, statistically speaking, is just about all of it, because the odds that you're going to get your projections of future technological advances precisely correct are pretty low.

Roman Catholic Church Seeks Exorcists

It sounds like the Roman Catholic Church wants to get in on more of the exorcism action. At a recent conference in Rome, 250 more priests were trained in the ancient art of casting out the devil. It only makes sense that the denomination that preserved the Rite of Exorcism from antiquity would never leave it to the likes of the Teen Exorcist Squad, who make doing battle with the forces of evil look a little too much like a day at the mall. But the reasoning of the conference organizers leaves something to be desired. Apparently, they believe that some substantial portion of non-religious people practice magick.

The conference, “Exorcism and Prayers of Liberation”, has also attracted psychiatrists, sociologists, doctors and criminologists in what the Church called a “multi-disciplinary” approach to exorcisms.

Giuseppe Ferrari, from GRIS, a Catholic research group that organised the conference, said there was an ever growing need for priests to be trained to perform exorcisms because of the increasing number of lay people tempted to dabble in black magic, paganism and the occult.

“We live in a disenchanted society, a secularised world that thought it was being emancipated, but where religion is being thrown out, the window is being opened to superstition and irrationality,” said Mr Ferrari.

The abandonment of religion “inevitably leads people to ask questions about the existence of evil and its origins”, he told Adnkronos, an Italian news agency. About 250 priests were trained as exorcists in Italy, but many more were needed, the conference organisers claimed.

All this shows me is that Ferrari doesn't know any actual secular atheists. What's so silly about his statements is that hardly any of the atheists I know even believe in the paranormal, let alone practice occultism, and most occultists I know are religious in some fashion. Often they're Thelemites or Pagans of some sort (and to be fair, Paganism does get a mention up there), but a few of them are even Christian. It's hard to see how Ferrari could have missed that if he spends any time on the Internet. The most vocal atheists are so smug about how rational and free of superstition they are that they would never cast a spell to save their lives - or for that matter have anything to do with an exorcist.

Wisconsin Does This Right

While Oklahoma struggles with non-Christian religious groups wanting to erect their own holiday displays on state grounds, the state of Wisconsin shows how to do it right. Wisconsin doesn't restrict anyone from putting up their own holiday displays, and the current crop includes a Festivus pole, a nativity-like scene featuring Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin, and a Flying Spaghetti Monster display set up by a college atheist group. This is in fact exactly how religion should be dealt with in the public square, by allowing all voices to be heard, whatever their beliefs (or lack thereof). There are essentially two ways to do secularism - either allow everything, or ban everything. And my contention is that the former is by far the best option.

The secular displays join traditional Christmas items such as a 30-foot balsam fir tree encircled by a toy train set, and they have been part of the capitol holiday displays since a 1984 lawsuit failed to remove the Capitol Christmas tree, halt a menorah lighting and end an annual nativity pageant.

“We would prefer to keep our capitol secular,” said Sam Erickson, AHA president. “But if the state decides to turn it into an open forum, they have opened the floodgates. We hope everyone takes advantage of this opportunity to advertise their own viewpoints, no matter how silly.”

The group’s display features movie poster-style artwork depicting the Flying Spaghetti Monster, saying “he boiled for your sins,” and urging onlookers to “be touched by his noodly appendage, before it is too late!”

The Poor Oppressed Christians who are offended by the very existence of other religions will never get it, and their demands for appeasement know no bounds. Telling them to go stuff it is really all any government can do, short of declaring Poor Oppressed Christianity the official state religion and driving all others, even reasonable Christians, underground. And fortunately for the rest of us such a thing would be a blatant constitutional violation.

Church for Atheists

One of the most common complaints I see from atheists online is that religious people often fail to understand that a lack of belief is not a religion. As I covered awhile back, nonbelievers exhibit the same range of personality traits found among the religious, and as such cannot be considered to constitute a monolithic group. Still, a new organization called "The Sunday Assembly" is now essentially billing itself as a "church" for atheists. The group started in London back in January and has been attracting members ever since.

Yesterday, The Sunday Assembly—the London-based “Atheist Church” that has, since its January launch, been stealing headlines the world over—announced a new “global missionary tour.” In October and November, affiliated Sunday Assemblies will open in 22 cities: in England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, the United States and Australia. “I think this is the moment,” Assembly founder Sanderson Jones told me in an email last week, “when the Sunday Assembly goes from being an interesting phenomenon to becoming a truly global movement.” Structured godlessness is ready for export.

The Assembly has come a long way in eight months: from scrappy East London community venture (motto: “Live Better, Help Often and Wonder More;” method: “part atheist church, part foot-stomping good time”) to the kind of organization that sends out embargoed press releases about global expansion projects. “The 3,000 percent growth rate might make this non-religious Assembly the fastest growing church in the world,” organizers boast.

All churches boast a high growth rate when they're just starting out, so it remains to be seen if the group can keep up its momentum. To me, frankly, it seems a little silly - not going to church is one of the advantages of not being Christian. Furthermore, for people who actually want a church experience without any theistic dogma, Unitarian Universalism has been providing that for a long time. So it's hard to see where this new group expects to fit. What seems clear, though, is that they've gone a long way towards muddling the distinction between religion and nonbelief. It will be up to the larger atheist community to decide whether this is a good thing.

Atheists Just Like Everyone Else

A study from a Tennessee university has reached the completely obvious conclusion that atheists exhibit the same distribution of personality types that believers do. In other words, people are people. Funny how that works. The study found that non-believers can be broken down into six basic groups spanning a range of personality types that are also found among religious adherents.

“Previous research and studies focusing on the diverse landscape of belief in America have continually placed those who profess no belief in a God or gods into one unified category infamously known as the ‘religious nones,’” reads the report’s overview. “This catch-all category presented anyone who identified as having “no religion” as a homogenous group in America today, lumping people who may believe in God with the many who don’t.”

The University of Tennessee researchers found that, on the contrary, religious non-believers actually break down into groups. The study identified six types of non-believers: Intellectual Atheist/Agnostics (IAA), Activist Atheist/Agnostics (AAA), Seeker Agnostics (SA), Antitheists, Non-theists and Ritual Atheist/Agnostics (RAA).

Among believers, the Intellectual type would seem to correspond to individuals who are is drawn to theology and philosophy, seeking to understand the divine through intellectual means, and the Activist type to those who are primarily motivated by social justice concerns. Likewise, the Seeker type corresponds to those who are drawn to contemplative religious practice, and the Ritual type to those who are attracted to complex and involved liturgies.

Do The Practice, Get The Results

A subject that gets discussed a lot among magicians is the role of belief in spiritual and magical practice. The chaos magick paradigm emphasizes belief as the engine that makes magick work, but many adherents of other schools take a more nuanced approach. In my experience you can't treat belief like a quantity that you can have "more" of, but rather the key is that during the time in which you are performing a practice you will get the best results if you remove all doubt in it's effectiveness. It seems to me that the better hypothesis here is not that you need to cultivate "more belief" but rather "less doubt" to get the best magical results. This is a self-reinforcing process, since nothing removes doubt like success.

In Liber O vel Manus et Sagittae, Aleister Crowley writes the following:

In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist.

It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.

A number of atheists have in fact taken up practices such as meditation and prayer, having discovered the value of working with their minds in terms of how they function in their daily lives. Practices such as meditation do in fact work whether or not you believe in any sort of supernatural or even paranormal level of reality, as they focus on the powers and properties of the mind itself.

Atheist Heretics?

Most organized religions consider atheism heretical. That's nothing new, but this is. The burgeoning atheist movement has apparently now developed its first schism. Given all the arguments by atheists over the years to the effect that their lack of belief in no way constitutes a religion, the irony is almost comical. The idea that one could somehow not believe in God the wrong way? Absolutely priceless. It just goes to show that while atheism is not a religion in the typical sense, it does constitute a metaphysical belief structure - its metaphysics are just based on the formal interpretation of the scientific method. Also, religious beliefs or not, humans are fundamentally tribal creatures. Our concept of "tribe" can include more individuals than that of our great ape cousins because our brains are more complex, but the essential impulse has millions of years of evolution behind it.

The cause of this freethinking furore? A new movement called Atheism+. According to its website, “Atheism+ is a safe space for people to discuss how religion affects everyone and to apply skepticism and critical thinking to everything, including social issues like sexism, racism, GLBT issues, politics, poverty, and crime.”

A+ was born when Freethought blogger Jen McCreight (the mind behind Boobquake) made a passionate call for a “third wave” of atheism, one that extends atheist activism into progressive politics and calls for a part of the movement to be one where women can exist free from the harassment that has plagued women publicly involved in the atheist movement.

The founders of Atheism+ say clearly that “divisiveness” is not their aim, but looking through the blogs and voluminous comments in the two weeks since A+ was mooted, trenches have been dug, beliefs stated, positions staked out and abuse thrown. A dissenting tweeter is “full of shit”, while, according to one supporter, daring to disagree with Atheism+’s definition of progressive issues and not picking their side makes you an “asshole and a douchebag”.

Remember Jen McCreight? She's mighty. Her "boobquake" nearly devastated Taiwan, even though she insisted she had nothing to do with the earthquake that struck just off the coast on the appointed day. And despite my snarking above, Atheism+ is at least in part a response to a number of situations that have arisen over the last two years or so in the atheist community highlighting a profoundly problematic attitude toward women who are involved in the movement. While a politically conservative atheist might disagree on some politically progressive issues, it seems to me that "douchebag" is a pretty good description of anyone looking to entrench that particular attitude rather than address it. But then, I'm a sorcerer. It's not like the atheists on either side are about to take me or my opinions very seriously.