February - Mid Ohio Atheists Inc.

The Mid Ohio Atheist
A Newsletter for Atheists in the Mansfield Area
TWENTY FIRST ISSUE
FEBRUARY 2012
Vol. 2 No. 9
Time to make plans for the Reason Rally & AA Convention
The Reason Rally and the American Atheists annual convention are coming up very soon and it is time to book your transportation and accommodations if you haven’t done so already.
The Reason Rally is going to be the largest gathering of the
atheist/freethought community in history. From their website: “The Reason Rally is a movement-wide event sponsored
by the country’s major secular
organizations. The intent is to
unify, energize, and embolden
secular people nationwide, while
dispelling the negative opinions
held by so much of American society… and having a damn good time
doing it!”
It will be the largest secular event in world history. There will
be music, comedy, great speakers, and lots of fun… and it’s
free!”
Speakers and musicians scheduled to appear are: Dr. Richard
Dawkins, Tim Minchin, Dr. PZ Myers, Taslima Nasrin, Paul
Provenza, James Randi, Adam Savage, Jessica Ahlquist, Bad
Religion, Dan Barker, Jamila Bey, Greta Christina, Dr. R. Elisabeth Cornwell, Fred Edwords, Sean Faircloth, Annie Laurie
Gaylor, Dr. Greg Graffin, Victor Harris, Jamie Kilstein, Lawrence
Krauss, Ron Lindsay, Hemant Mehta, Cristina Rad, Shelley
Segal, David Silverman, Roy Speckhardt, Rep. Pete Stark, Todd
Stiefel, Rational Warrior, and Indra Zuno.
There is not room here to list all the accomplishments of these
stellar freethought/atheist leaders.
Mid Ohio Atheists Newsletter
The Reason Rally is sponsored by the leading secular organizations in America, including: American Atheists, American Humanist Association, Atheist Alliance of America, Camp Quest,
Center for Inquiry, Foundation Beyond Belief, Freedom From
Religion Foundation, Freethought Society, Military Association
of Atheists and Freethinkers, National Atheist Party, Secular
Coalition for America, Secular Student Alliance, The James Randi
Educational Foundation, The Richard Dawkins Foundation, United
COR, and Washington Area Secular
Humanists.
This event is something you won’t
want to miss. Never before has
organizations such as these had the
national stage all at once, putting differences aside and coming together in positive way to promote their common principles.
American Atheists has scheduled their annual convention for
the same weekend and many of the speakers that will be at
the Reason Rally will also be at the convention afterward. The
Marriot where the convention is held is already full but the
overflow is being directed to another Marriot close by.
Many members of Mid Ohio Atheists have indicated they will
be going to the rally and convention. For those on a tight
budget, American Atheists has a chartered bus leaving Columbus going to and from the rally and you can get a discount
code from the Secular Student Alliance for 50% off the bus
fare. Links are on our website.
February 2012
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Mid Ohio Atheists
Billboard Contest
By Ron Stephens
When we revealed our billboard campaign last fall, we received a lot of comments like the following“As a designer myself, I cringe at what I
keep seeing coming from these atheist
organizations.”
“Ugh, seriously. Billboards don’t have to
be graphically hideous to grab your attention “
several comments from people that it
was hard for them to decide which design to vote for. Voting will end on February 15th.
We also still intend to put up a billboard
in reply to the McElroy Church of
Christ’s billboards which said, “There is
no God. Don’t believe everything you
hear.”
That billboard has already been designed
for us by professional graphics designer
Brandon Adams. Brandon does great
work and he very quickly came up with
exactly what we wanted.
“All these examples look pretty low-rent
to me. “
“All of these are tacky.”
I received several comments
from people that it was hard
for them to decide which
design to vote for.
REPLY BILLBOARD
Atheist Quote
It is plain enough that
men and women care
for God. This is too apparent to be disputed,
unless men and women
are hypocrites. What is
not so plain is that God
cares for men and
women.
After Lind Outdoor cancelled our contract last November, we had an opportunity to go back and change the designs
that so many were complaining about.
Instead of re-designing them ourselves,
we decided to let the designers among
the atheist community show us how
much better they are at billboard design
than we are. To make it even more interesting, we decided to put it up to a
vote to determine the winning design.
-- Lemuel K Washburn,
"Is The Bible Worth
Reading?" and Other
Essays (1911)
We received a total of 29 submissions
from 15 different people. Some of them
are quite good in my opinion. I received
The Mid Ohio Atheist
Published by members of Mid Ohio Atheists
Editor - Ron Stephens
Contact us at - [email protected]
On the web at- midohioatheists.org
& www.facebook/midohioatheists
Mid Ohio Atheists Newsletter
MOA is a Proud Affiliate of
American Atheists
February 2012
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midohioatheists.org
Page 2
Mid Ohio Atheists
The Cherry Tree
By Drenn Workman
The Cherry Tree, established circa 90 to
300 C. E., where Christians come to pick
the finest cherries.
To make Christianity relevant in these
modern times, many ancient practices
and beliefs must be abandoned. T o
accomplish this, those parts of the Bible
that are barbaric must be ignored or
relegated as being no longer in force.
To allow this to occur modern Christians
have declared that a “New Covenant”
was established upon the arrival of Jesus
on the scene, despite that Jesus said, in
Matthew 5:18-19:
“For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and
earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no
wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Unfortunately, for the believer, this was
not a dictation from Jesus, but was written by Paul. There is no reference in
literature, to this dictate, before Paul.
Why did Paul write this? His writings
were an effort to make Christianity
more presentable to the Roman audience, an audience that preferred not to
have to obey old Jewish laws.
How can they justify
ignoring Jesus’
mandate that the
ancient laws must
continue to be obeyed?
man must be punished for his sins.
This list is incomplete and more can be
found in your handy dandy Bible. I encourage all Christians to read their Bibles,
“Properly read, the
Bible is the most
potent force for
atheism ever
conceived.”
with their reasoning center turned on,
instead of off as is usually the case. Remember, as a wise individual once said:
Parts of the Bible that
are barbaric must be
ignored or relegated as
being no longer in force
“Whosoever therefore shall break one of
these least commandments, and shall
teach men so, he shall be called the least
in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever
shall do and teach them, the same shall
be called great in the kingdom of
heaven.”
How is this new Covenant established?
How can they justify ignoring Jesus’ mandate that the ancient laws must continue
to be obeyed? Their justification rests in
Romans 10:4:
“For Christ is the end of the law unto
righteousness to every one that believeth.”
Mid Ohio Atheists Newsletter
Today’s modern “Christians” aren’t
Christians at all. They are followers of
Paul, not Jesus. Since Paul advocated
the followers to ignore Christ’s teachings, Paul is a false prophet. Modern
Christians, by ignoring the old laws, and
adhering to a teaching by Paul, are following a false prophet.
“Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”
-Isaac Asimov
To be good Christians according to the
law Christians must:
1. Stone disobedient Children.
2. Believe women are lesser beings and
must submit to their husbands.
3. Believe gays must be stoned to
death.
4. Believe death must come to all who
work on the Sabbath.
5. Believe blasphemers must die.
6. Believe inheritance must go to the
first born son.
7. Believe that up to the third and
fourth generation, the children of a
February 2012
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Mid Ohio Atheists
Why I am an Atheist
By Michael Adams
Religion produced my Atheism. As a
child I had a biological father to whom
religion was very important.
not spread it to the other children. As
far as the Seventh Day Adventist church
was concerned my early skepticism was
a spiritual illness.
During my childhood, between the ages
of around 6 to 11 years old I attended
church more than most people. On
Wednesday nights my father would pick
a local church, often randomly and we
would attend it. Denomination didn’t
matter, as long as it was Christian, as my
father believed that they were all different paths to the same God. On Thursday
nights my father invited Jehovah’s Witnesses over to our house to preach to us
at home. On Saturday morning I was
sent to church with an elderly friend of
the family who was a Seventh Day Adventist. My early upbringing was
steeped in all walks of Christianity.
Even at a young age I quickly saw the
contradictions within the denominations,
and what often seemed to me to be a
lack of personal responsibility for one’s
own actions. I was 8 years old the first
Even if you’re the best
Christian in the world,
eventually you would still do
something another
Christian wouldn’t like
time I was made to stand in the hall during Bible study for asking a question.
That question was “How can heaven be
perfect if people on earth can’t even
agree what the best dessert is? To be
perfect, wouldn’t we all have to agree
what we liked the best?” I was eight
years old and told that my doubt was
unhealthy spiritually, and that I should
Mid Ohio Atheists Newsletter
pretty sure that Christianity had gotten it
all wrong.
During my early teenage years I was able
to mostly ignore religion, I had moved in
Mike Adams and his son
That question evolved into my first objection to organized religion and my
first real argument against Christian
dogma. “If heaven is perfect then is
their free will? Because it seems to me
that even if you’re the best Christian in
the world, eventually you would still do
something another Christian wouldn’t
like, in which case if you were in
Heaven together, it would then be less
than perfect. So you can either have
perfect heaven or free will, but I can’t
see how you could have both.” I was
around eleven or twelve when I figured
that out.
I still wasn’t an atheist, as I was raised
to believe God made everything and
that there was another possibility never
entered into it at that point in my life. I
had however come to one decision
pretty early, while I still believed there
was a God as I raised to believe, I was
February 2012
with my mother, was adopted by my
step-father and both never spoke about
religion. For the first time in my young
life it was a non-issue and I gladly ignored it until I was about seventeen
years old. Most of my friends attended
the same church, were members of the
same church youth group and had known
each other forever. I was one of the only
outsiders in that social circle and for
many years it was never an issue.
Then came the summer after our junior
year of high school. Several of my
friends had attended a church summer
camp that would be running throughout
the summer; it was a weeklong event for
each session. The idea was to be reborn
in Christ during this week, where you
went, got saved, and rededicated your
life to the church.
Continued Next Page
Page 4
Mid Ohio Atheists
Why I am an Atheist
(continued from previous page)
When the first few of my friends returned from the camp they were different. The few of us that didn’t go joked
that those who did go acted almost brain
washed. They began only hanging out
with others who had gone to the camp,
carried around bibles with them at all
times, started a before school prayer
meeting in the library, and would pray
each morning in a group out front of the
school. It just seemed weird, not that
they believe in God, but that now all of a
sudden religion dominated their thinking
24/7.
Several of my other friends who had felt
the same as me originally were talked
into attending the camp also and many
came back as glassy eyed Christians, botlike, as the first group. A few escaped
and after a few months were essentially
back to normal, but several including the
I care if what I believe is
true. That’s what it ultimately comes down to.
person I would have called my best
friend in school never was himself again.
He along with another member of our
high school social circle that attended
that camp now works for Campus Crusade for Christ. It was that experience
that restarted my adversarial relationship with religion. Religion had changed
my friends. It didn’t make them better
people, they had been good people before all of that. What it did was make
them a insular group of holier than
though douches who felt it was their job
to testify to the other students and gave
them this mindset of spiritual superiority.
Mid Ohio Atheists Newsletter
So began my first arguments with Christians. Still not an atheist at this point, I
would preface my arguments with “I’m
not saying there is not a God, I’m just
saying if there is, this can’t be what he
wants.” While I realized I no longer
believed in a God shortly after high
school, it would be several years after
that before I could fully admit it to myself and several years after that before I
could admit it to other people.
So why don’t I believe in a God? Well
aside from the contradictory messages
from the various churches I attended
growing up and the piss poor experiences with the followers of Christianity
as a teenager, it really comes down to
the odds are against them that they
could possibly be correct. There are 21
major religions in the world including
Christianity. In Christianity itself there
are 38,000 different denominations and
growing worldwide. Many who cannot
agree on what the basic tenants of
what it means to be Christian, what
God wants, or what it takes to get into
Heaven. During those years following
high school it became very important to
me that what I believe be true. If I was
going to subscribe to a religion, I
wanted to make sure it was the right
one because I didn’t want to pick the
wrong one and end up in Hell because I
didn’t take communion, or I wasn’t baptized properly. Who wants to end up in
hell on a technicality? As I began evaluating the claims of Christianity closely
and the other religions in the world I
found they could not all possibly be
correct, and that even all the claims of
the different denominations of Christianity could not possible be correct because many are in direct opposition to
each other. So I began to wonder that if
there was a God how could so many
people have so many different opinions
February 2012
on what he wants. The old idea of my
biological father that all religions were
praying to the same God seemed even
more improbable as I learned what each
religion believed and how different the
beliefs of different denominations truly
were, just within Christianity.
I know some atheists will go as far as to
say there is no god, but I think that’s an
incorrect position to take. As an atheist I
do not say there is no God, I say I have
evaluated the evidence for each God
presented me to the best of my ability
and have found the evidence inadequate. This does not mean I am not
open to new evidence, however in 35
years of my life, I’ve yet to have anyone
provide me with anything that could be
considered evidence. I care if what I believe is true. That’s what it ultimately
comes down to. Regardless of any personal feeling about religion, any good or
evil it does or if it’s better or worse for
society, while I’m happy to debate those
aspects of it, none of that really matters.
What matters ultimately to me is the
truth of the claims. That is why I’m an
Atheist.
Page 5
Mid Ohio Atheists
PLACE
31 Railroad St.
Plymouth, OH 44865
STAMP
HERE
Skepticamp in May
Skepticamps are small conventions
where the attendees are also the speakers. It is a novel idea that has been
around for just a few years. Skepitcamps
are based on the BarCamp model, which
is an international network of usergenerated conferences Attendees can
sign up for a TED type talk that lasts for
20 minutes with an additional 5 minutes
for Q&A.
There will be a Skepticamp this coming
May 26 in Columbus, coordinated by
Ashley Paramore, who is a student at
OSU and also works for the Secular Student Alliance. The convention will be
held on the OSU campus and the only
cost is your transportation there and
parking fees in one of the campus parking garages.
It is expected that many atheist and
skeptical groups from across Ohio will be
Mid Ohio Atheists Newsletter
there. This is a great opportunity to
learn something new and to mingle
with like minded people. You also have
the opportunity to give your own talk if
you desire, actually you are encouraged
to do so but it is not required. Hemant
Mehta, of the Friendly Atheist blog, will
be there too.
great chance they will try to do it again.
To register for the skepticamp, go to
their website at- skepticampohio.com
Although the event is free, a donation to
help offset the cost of hosting the skepticamp is recommended.
Mid Ohio Atheists has agreed to be a
sponsor of this skepticamp as we want
to foster and promote the skeptic community in Ohio. Most atheists consider
themselves skeptics at heart since we
are skeptical of religions and religious
claims and our skepticism usually extends to all parts of our lives. Another
reason to support this effort is in raising
up a grass roots community in Ohio to
support atheists and skeptics at the
state level. The religious right has tried
to put their religious beliefs into Ohio’s
public schools before and there’s a
February 2012
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