Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1946

New Orleans Police Department Plans to Recruit Members at Church

After recent retirements and resignations on top of an already thinning force, New Orleans currently has room in their budget to hire 150 new police officers. It’s imperative they fill those positions, too, so they’ll be hard at work looking for new recruits this weekend… at church:

“We call it Super Sunday,” said Landrieu. “We’ll be in churches across the city. Either I’ll be there or somebody else from the department or a community leader will be there to talk about what you need to do to become a police officer. We eased the residency requirement and now we have a department on the upswing. We’re going to go out and really talk to people, hand to hand, and ask them to join our effort to make the city of New Orleans a safe place.”

“It’s an opportunity for our officers to go into our churches and synagogues and mosques,” said NOPD Interim Superintendent Michael Harrison. “We can touch people and they can touch us. They can actually sit by us and we worship with them and then asked them to join us in this fight.”

If you watch the news report and see the religious references, it easy to think they’re recruiting a specifically Christian police force. But there’s no reason to jump to that conclusion. They’re just going to where the people gather — including a few non-Christian worship houses. If lots of atheists got together in one location on a Sunday, there’s every reason to believe they’d go there, too. There’s no religious requirement to apply for the force. Anyone can do it.

It’s no different from politicians who visit churches during campaign season; it’s an easy way to spread your message to a large segment of the community. It’d be a missed opportunity if you didn’t do it.

Just wanted to get that out there before anyone begins spreading the article online as if there’s something illegal happening.

(Thanks to Dan for the link)

Arkansas Restaurant Owner Defends Church Bulletin Discount by Saying Atheists Can Just Download One Online

I don’t understand why business owners can’t grasp a simple concept: They have to treat their customers equally. Just as bakers can’t say they won’t make you a wedding cake because you’re gay, restaurant owners can’t say that Christians get to pay less than everyone else. But we’ve seen that sort of thing happen time and time again.

The latest brouhaha involves Bailey’s Pizza in Searcy, Arkansas, where owner Stephen Rose will take 10% off your meal if you bring in a church bulletin (see above sign). But since that discriminates against non-Christians, the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent him a warning letter (on behalf of a local resident).

Rose says he’s not discriminating at all… because even atheists can bring in a church bulletin:

“I didn’t say you had to go to church. I said come in with a church bulletin,” he said, noting that some churches publish their Sunday bulletins on their websites. “[Atheists] can download it and bring it in.”

You would think Christians like this would have acquired the skill by now to put themselves in the other person’s shoes… If they had to print out a brochure promoting, say, Satanism in order to get 10% off dinner, they wouldn’t just calmly nod their heads and say, “Yep. Totally fair!”

Rose went on to criticize FFRF for being FFRF:

“I really wonder if this is the best use of their resources. What are they doing about ISIS, what are they doing about joblessness?,” he said. “My 45-cent discount — that’s a battle they should [wage]?

Yeah, FFRF, why haven’t you solved the ISIS crisis yet? And why haven’t you built homes for everyone? How dare you do the very thing you were created to do?!

It’s not about a $0.45 discount. It’s about allowing a public business to give discounts to customers if they promote one particular religion. It also wouldn’t be okay, by the way, to give discounts to customers who said “God is dead” when they walked through the doors.

If Rose really wants to help out his customers, there are plenty of easy fixes: He could just give the discount to everybody. He could give the discount to anyone who brings in a bulletin from *any* religious or non-religious service. He could also just calm down and stop acting like he’s the victim of some atheist “attack” — that’s the actual word used in the New York Daily News headline.

In case you’re curious, what Rose is doing is very different from senior citizens discounts (which are legal because it’s not actually about age discrimination) and ladies’ nights (which are legal in most states for reasons that have nothing to do with gender discrimination). Rose says he also offers discounts to police officers, military personnel, etc. All of those things are fine. What he can’t do is charge atheist cops a higher price than Christian cops — and that’s effectively what he’s doing with his current discount.

His Christian lawyers are playing the victim card, too:

Jesse Randolph, Senior Legal Counsel to Advocates for Faith & Freedom, said, “This is another unfortunate example of the white-collar persecution faced by Christians in America in our day. People of faith increasingly are being marginalized in the business world, in the courts, in government, and in academia, and we are committed to doing our part to reverse this trend.”

White-collar persecution. Yeah, Christian business owners really have it rough in this country… (And can someone explain to me how you can be marginalized when you’re overwhelmingly in the majority?)

Here’s the bottom line: Rose may be a Christian, but his restaurant can’t give discounts to customers just for promoting his faith. He says he won’t drop the discount unless a judge tells him to. That’s just delaying the inevitable. His intentions may be good, but he’d be better off serving all of his customers equally, not some of them better than others on the basis of what they believe.

(Image via Facebook)

Larry King Discusses the Decline of Faith in America

Larry King is still doing interviews (who knew?!) and he recently hosted a panel to discuss the future of faith in America and why more and more people are dropping their religious labels. The panel included atheists Lawrence Krauss and (The Unbelievers director) Gus Holwerda.

I haven’t had a chance to watch the whole thing, but if anything stands out, please leave the timestamp/summary in the comments!

Secular Group Showcase: Austin Atheists Helping the Homeless

We asked you to tell us about your local secular group in an attempt to encourage the start-up and growth of “good without god” communities. We’ve received a lot of responses already (Thanks!) and here’s a glimpse at our next group: The Austin Atheists Helping the Homeless in Texas.

If you’re looking to get your group involved in community service, this crew is one to take notes from! They do an amazing job of pulling resources and volunteers together to supply the homeless with the items that most people take for granted.

They even offer advice to others looking to do something similar:

“Find your niche and stay focused on your group’s mission. Be willing to tweak your process often. Take advantage of the strengths of your volunteers. Venture beyond your community’s secular resources and you just may find supporters in the most unexpected places.”

You can read more of our interview here.

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Want to be featured in this series? If you can fill out most of the questions below, your group is probably a good candidate to be showcased on our page. We hope to hear from you! E-mail submissions to SecularGroups@gmail.com!

Group name:

Location:

Mission Statement:

Links to group’s Facebook. website, Twitter, etc.:

When was your group established?

What does your group do for fun to connect with each other?

What community/volunteer activities does your group participate in, if any?

What political/social activism does your group do, if any?

Does your group have a favorite charity to fundraise for or promote?

Do you have any stories to share about your city having a positive reaction to your group?

What are some challenges your group has faced?

What advice would you like to share with other groups struggling to grow or are just starting up?

**Please attach some photos of your group as a whole, in action, and having fun**

A Year Later, Police Still Haven’t Captured Dr. Narendra Dabholkar’s Killers

Dr. Narendra Dabholkar was assassinated last August, presumably because his battle against superstition and irrationality upset a few too many religious extremists.

It’s been a year now, and police are still no closer to achieving justice:

With just one deputy superintendent of police and two constables at hand to sift through three cupboards full of voluminous documents, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has not even been able to begin its actual investigations in the Narendra Dabholkar murder case despite having taken over the probe two months back.

Exactly a year after the anti-superstition crusader was shot dead, the probe into his murder has effectively come to a standstill as the CBI is busy translating the documents that are largely in Marathi, an officer from the agency told [the Times of India].

The conspiracy-theory part of me wonders if the delay is due to the fact that Dabholkar was a controversial figure, tipping over sacred cows with glee. He was an important man, but he wasn’t necessarily a popular one. It’s easy to think the death of someone who didn’t criticize irrational beliefs (like religion) would be a higher priority for the cops.

(via The Morning Heresy. Portions of this article were posted earlier.)

How Spiritual Can You Be Without Religion?

Sam Harris‘ new book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion will be released in a couple of weeks:

The book is all about topics like meditation and spirituality, all without a religious basis, and Harris just published the first chapter on his website:

Authors who attempt to build a bridge between science and spirituality tend to make one of two mistakes: Scientists generally start with an impoverished view of spiritual experience, assuming that it must be a grandiose way of describing ordinary states of mind — parental love, artistic inspiration, awe at the beauty of the night sky. In this vein, one finds Einstein’s amazement at the intelligibility of Nature’s laws described as though it were a kind of mystical insight.

New Age thinkers usually enter the ditch on the other side of the road: They idealize altered states of consciousness and draw specious connections between subjective experience and the spookier theories at the frontiers of physics. Here we are told that the Buddha and other contemplatives anticipated modern cosmology or quantum mechanics and that by transcending the sense of self, a person can realize his identity with the One Mind that gave birth to the cosmos.

In the end, we are left to choose between pseudo-spirituality and pseudo-science.

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Spirituality must be distinguished from religion — because people of every faith, and of none, have had the same sorts of spiritual experiences. While these states of mind are usually interpreted through the lens of one or another religious doctrine, we know that this is a mistake. Nothing that a Christian, a Muslim, and a Hindu can experience — self-transcending love, ecstasy, bliss, inner light — constitutes evidence in support of their traditional beliefs, because their beliefs are logically incompatible with one another. A deeper principle must be at work.

Check out the rest of the chapter on his site. Does it leave you wanting more?

Florida School Board Member Tells Pagan: If You Deliver an Invocation, I’ll Walk Out and Ask the Crowd to Join Me

Back in June, David Suhor (who calls himself an Agnostic Pagan Pantheist) spoke during an open forum for the Escambia County Board of County Commissioners (in Pensacola, Florida) and argued against the use of religious invocations. Eventually, he was invited to give an invocation of his own — which he accepted — but Suhor points out that the Board still screws up in other ways. They lead the prayers, they ask the crowd to stand, they make you jump through hoops to get on the invocation roster. (The Freedom From Religion Foundation sent the Board a letter on Suhor’s behalf.)

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On Tuesday night, Suhor spoke to a different audience, the Escambia County School Board, saying that they were not very welcoming of non-religious viewpoints at all. He acknowledged that one board member invited him to deliver an invocation (though he had a conflict on that date), but that was a rarity:

This board has a problem with diversity, religious discrimination, and following its own rules.

Since 2011, 100% of the invocation prayers offered at this meeting were of the majority religion. I’m not sure this board has ever had a prayer from a non-Biblical perspective. That’s probably because each of the school board members acts as gatekeeper, choosing and introducing their favored prayer givers. Of course, you all pray to the same, singular, paternal God.

So what? Well, when religious minorities (like myself) have asked to participate in the invocation (as is our right by law), we’ve mostly been thwarted for dubious reasons and in a way that discourages further participation. That’s illegal.

Under Galloway v Greece, a narrow 5-4 Supreme Court decision this year, invocations before legislative bodies were allowed to continue, but Galloway warns us that such prayers should not be coercive and must be practiced without endorsement, nor religious discrimination.

So, does the Escambia County School Board discriminate against minority religions? Let’s see — since I made my requests, I’ve had two answers of no, two no answers, and one yes. Thank you, Ms. Hightower, for accepting my offer without a religious test. Unfortunately, I have another commitment for November.

And now for the good news: there is a simple solution to ending discrimination here: ECSB’s own policy, from the Student Handbook. It says: “No person and no employee or agent of the District shall coerce, advocate, or encourage in any way whatsoever prayer or any other religious activity by students.”

We all know that students regularly attend these meetings. So, I’d like to challenge this board to follow its own rules; forget the “do as I say, not as I do” policy of leading prayer here alone. Just look to your own guidelines for an inclusive compromise — a moment of silence.

Again, from the Student Handbook: “The moment of silence is not intended to be, and shall not be conducted as a religious service or exercise, but shall be considered an opportunity for a moment of silent reflection on the anticipated events of the day.” That sounds perfect for this occasion and it respects everyone’s religious views without asking them to pray against their beliefs.

I would love to discuss Galloway more, but I’m running out of time. So in conclusion, I pray that this board will embrace this teaching opportunity and show our students that different faiths and none at all can coexist and thrive here. I pray our elected officials will refuse to favor one religious expression to the exclusion of others, and I pray you’ll follow the rules set forth for the rest of the school system so that everyone feels welcome at this meeting and so you may focus on the business of this board.

Thank you.

Not a bad speech at all. But the board isn’t about to switch to a moment of silence.

In fact, one of the board members, Jeff Bergosh, took to his personal website to write about how he has no intention of letting non-religious people deliver invocations:

I mean, should the majority of persons in attendance at one of our meetings really have to listen to a satanic verse? What if a “Witch Doctor” comes to the podium with a full-on costume, chicken-feet, a voodoo doll and other associated over-the-top regalia? It could easily get out of hand, so far as I can tell….(I wonder what our local media would say about this?)

And I won’t stay and listen if someone tries to be disrespectful like that. I’ll leave the room and come back after, or wear BOSE noise cancelling headphones. Or I’ll turn around and raise my fist in the air like the ’68 Olympians did(uh, I’m being sarcastic-I wouldn’t really do that…)…… I won’t be part of someone’s prank.

So we have to be careful about how this issue is managed.

Locally, I’ve been bombarded by people offering their willingness to give invocations lately…. However, as a current practice each board member has the latitude to select whomever he/she wants to deliver the invocation before the meeting. In my eight years on the board, I’ve utilized a priest, two pastors, a youth pastor, the leader of my bible study group, several members of the district staff, a school community volunteer, and I’ve delivered the invocation on a number of occasions myself. I like having the flexibility of the board’s rotation system, and I’m not in favor of changing it…

Did you catch all that? He’s so into diversity, he invited a whole bunch of people… to pray to Jesus! And all those other weird traditions have no place in a community like Escambia. (I’m sure they say the same about Christianity.)

Then, at the end of his post, Bergosh writes that he *might* consider opening up his circle of invitees…

I’d even be willing to select someone other than a Christian to deliver the invocation. I’ve recently been contacted by someone of the Jewish faith, and I’m considering having that individual bring the invocation when it is next my turn, in January 2015.

Well, isn’t he Mr. Generous… expanding his base from Christians to Christians and one Jew.

It gets even worse. After Suhor emailed the board and requested a chance to give an invocation, Bergosh took the opportunity to reply and tell him what he would do if Suhor ever spoke at a future meeting:

[I] have an idea that I’ll be posting on my blog in the next few days that will allow everyone to win, a true win-win situation. When you come to bring your Wiccan, Atheist, or Klingon invocation — I’ll politely excuse myself from the room and simultaneously invite anyone in the audience who wants to join me in a Christian invocation out back. You can give your invocation to those that want to hear it and stay in the room. Nobody will prevent you from your free exercise of your religion, just as I would expect for you not to attempt to block me from exercising my constitutional right to my Christian belief via a Christian invocation outside the back door. A win-win, right Dave?

Wow… how much of an asshole can you be while still staying within the confines of the law?

I promise you Christians never have to deal with politicians like these, who openly tell you how they’re going to walk out as you speak while encouraging the audience to join them.

Obama Administration Bends Over Backwards (Again) to Accommodate Religious Opposition to Birth Control Coverage

Remember when we thought the Supreme Court had only allowed an exception to the contraception mandate to closely-held businesses?

They were just kidding about that.

Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian school in Illinois, already had the ability to avoid offering emergency contraception to employees and students. All they had to do was fill out a form for their insurance provider saying they didn’t want to cover it directly, and the insurance provider would have to cover it separately. Problem solved, right?

No. Wheaton administrators weren’t happy with that solution. They felt it was still too much of a burden on their religious conscience, because they were indirectly supporting abortion. (Which isn’t even true, but that doesn’t seem to matter.)

Last month, the Supreme Court said that Wheaton had a point. It was too much of a burden. Instead, all the school had to do was let the government know directly it didn’t want to provide emergency contraception and it would be up to the government to figure it out from there.

The female justices on the court were rightfully furious. Justice Sotomayor pointed out that the substantial “burden” that Wheaton wanted to get out of was essentially a tiny bit of paperwork. And if the Court let them get away with that, where did the slippery slope stop?

Today, the Obama administration announced another compromise to that compromise that would allow female employees at Wheaton College (and similar non-profits) to still obtain birth control coverage without their employers being complicit in the process:

For the non-profits that object to the form — arguing that signing it triggers the very birth control coverage they oppose — the new rule allows those employers to write to HHS directly, instead of filling out the form. The Supreme Court first suggested the letter-writing option, and so far the litigants have accepted it. But there was some dispute among legal scholars before about whether the letter would result in actual coverage for the women who worked at those companies. The new rule clarifies that it does.

It’s an unnecessary complication in what should really be a simple, common-sense matter, but religion and common sense don’t often go together and this is hopefully a bandage that works.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State applauded the fix:

“Americans rely on access to safe and affordable forms of birth control,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “It’s unfortunate that the administration has had to jump through so many hoops to meet the demands of ultra-conservative religious groups that refuse to accept cultural realities.”

Lynn said the latest accommodation, while well-intentioned, may not resolve the matter. Some fundamentalist Christian groups and the Roman Catholic bishops, he asserted, are determined to deny access to birth control to as many Americans as possible.

“At some point,” Lynn said, “we must face that fact that this debate is not about ‘religious liberty.’ It is about certain religious groups trying to impose their out-of-touch theology on unwilling American workers and students.”

That gets to the heart of the matter right there. If this was really about religious liberty, the problem would be fixed and the fights would be over. But they won’t be. Conservative groups will just find another way to play victim, as they always do.

(Image via Shutterstock. Large portions of this article were posted earlier)

Did You Know the Only People Capable of Being Compassionate Humanitarians are Christians?

One of the benefits to writing on an all-inclusive site about religion like Patheos is that I’m surrounded by several really incredible bloggers. The downside is that some of them say things that are craaaaaaaazy.

Speaking about the Christian missionaries who contracted Ebola, Gene Veith (also a professor at Patrick Henry College) says that they’re doing incredible work. He’s not wrong there — I agree that they delivered much-needed medical care, putting their own lives in jeopardy, even if I have a problem with missionaries who proselytize.

An awesome human being

But then he goes on to claim that Christians are the only people who make that sort of sacrifice:

In many places in the world, the only modern medical care available is provided by Christian missionaries. Thus, the main people fighting the Ebola epidemic in Africa are missionaries and the hospitals they operate. Some of these missionaries are themselves getting Ebola. And yet they don’t stop serving.

Of course, we shouldn’t forget the service of other religions that present themselves as being compassionate — Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism — as well as atheists, with their benevolence and humanism. Oh, wait. They don’t do any of this. It’s just the Christians.

Wow. That’s Joe Klein-level bullshittery.

Someone should introduce Veith to handy little tool called “The Google.”

Commenter Brian Westley did the work for him and found plenty of examples to disprove his point.

There’s Islamic Relief USA, which provides “emergency disaster relief when it is needed, and spearheads development projects in multiple sectors, including education, income generation, orphan support, health and nutrition, and water and sanitation.”

There’s Buddhist Global Relief, which sponsors “projects that promote hunger relief for poor communities around the world.”

There’s Sewa International USA, a “Hindu faith-based humanitarian non-profit service organization.”

And there’s Foundation Beyond Belief, the group I work with, which financially supports organizations around the world that do humanitarian work and, yes, even sends “missionaries” around the world to do service projects.

Obviously, these groups don’t have anywhere near the level of resources as Christian organizations do. But it doesn’t mean they’re not there. We’re all doing whatever we can to help those less fortunate. To suggest that only Christians have the capacity to help others, to care about people they’ve never met, and to travel to remote locations to provide important services is a slap in the face to every decent non-Christian out there.

(Image via Shutterstock)

Convert or Die: In Group Ceremony, Yazidis Swear Off Their Religion and Pledge to Worship Allah

Forced conversions to Islam are as old as the religion itself.

I’ve never understood why it works. Wouldn’t you quietly seethe with anger or stew in resentment over having been made to give up the sacred beliefs that you and your forefathers swore by?

I’m not puzzled by what brings about acute forced conversions. The threat of imprisonment, beatings, torture, rape, outcast status, and/or burdensome religious taxes ought to do it. But I don’t follow why the imposed religion ultimately takes hold, often within a generation. Virtually none of the African people who were captured and brought to North America as slaves were originally Christians. But they soon internalized forced Christianity to such an extent that, in the United States, they became regarded as exemplars of piety. Later, in our time, it emerged that

African-Americans are markedly more religious [that is, Christian] on a variety of measures than the U.S. population as a whole, including level of affiliation with a religion, attendance at religious services, frequency of prayer, and religion’s importance in life.

It would be wonderful if forced conversions were futile because people’s deeply-held religious beliefs (or the absence of any god belief at all) are impervious to brutal coercion. But chances are good that the Yazidis in this ISIS video, who are filmed as they are forced to swear loyalty to Islam (skip to 5:56), will be faithful Muslims in a dozen years or fewer. Their children almost certainly will be, if ISIS isn’t beaten back.

According to the Washington Post,

The video shows a group of about 60 men gathered in a hall listening intently to an Islamic State imam as he extols the virtues of Islam. Another scene shows the men praying in a mosque. Then the slickly produced video switches back to the hall, and two of the men are seen accepting the embrace of the imam, and holding up their index fingers, a gesture of solidarity adopted by the Islamic State.

Raising their middle fingers would be a better gesture. But that would bring certain death.

In an interview, the imam says the conversions are genuine. “I give you the glad tidings that there are many families who converted to Islam, and I met them. They are women, children, and elderly, and they are happy for converting to Islam.”

Yeah, just look at all those faces. Joy written all over them, right?

[T]hree of the converts also say they willingly changed their religion, and they urged other Yazidis who have fled the militant advance also to embrace Islam and return home. “You can say that we were in darkness and now we became almost, as it can be said, in the light. We see the Islamic religion as the true religion,” says one of the converts.

I wonder if that tireless chronicler of religious persecution, Todd “Woe is Us” Starnes, will spend even one word on the fate of these cowed and violated people.