You Believe Everyone
Agrees With You
 Rev. Tim Mason

Graphic Rule

From: "Positive Atheism Magazine" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "tim mason"
Subject: Re: bible classes in VA schools
Date: Tuesday, April 10, 2001 4:31 AM

Anybody who reads any further than the word atheism on our front page knows this to be a lie. If everybody agreed with me, as you insist that I think, then why do I bother trying to change people's minds on certain issues, and trying to spur people to think?

This is as far as I need to read.
 

Is this why you came on my forum and lied about me?
 

There's the argument against allowing teachers to conduct religious rituals (prayer) in the public school. The kids can pray or chant or meditate all they want -- they just cannot inflict this experience upon other students in the form of an organized ceremony.

You have just refuted your own position.
 

First, although some things are worse since 1963, other things are much better. We have eradicated many diseases, and non-whites now have bona fide equal rights. Women and homosexuals are next, though both groups have learned to work around the system quite well: 13 percent of our United States Senators are now women.

Secondly, there were shootings back then, they were just not reported. My former schoolmate [suppressed] was involved in a shooting and he and his thugs routinely brought guns and weapons to school -- in 1972. But the shooting was not covered on the front page because the cops fired the shots (as I remember -- like I said, I only heard about it from people, not from the papers). Brenda Spencer shot several kids and killed two adults in San Diego in 1979 (but this was ignored during the recent coverage of the Santee shooting).

Also, date rape has been alive and well for a long time. I was adopted in 1956, need I say more? In fact, now that young women are made aware of this prospect in sex education classes, they know better how to defend themselves than did their mothers and grandmothers.

My close friend tells me she first had sex at age 9 -- that was 67 years ago. Many of my septuagenarian friends tell me that they had sex at a very young age -- or had sex with farm animals. Now that we have sex education in the schools, this does not happen nearly as much, because the kids who are going to have sex anyway at least know how to prevent pregnancy and the spread of crippling and deadly disease.

Thanks to sex education, I'm probably not a father. I know I was not a teenage father, the only two or three questions are from after I reached drinking age.

The only difference back then was that the pregnant teen was sent to a home and her kid put up for adoption. In the olden days, they let the babies be born in a nunnery and then killed the babies. This still happens in places where pregnancy and abortion are stigmatized (such as nunneries). Today, we have RU486 and abortion. This at least brings the termination much closer to conception, bringing it further away from murder.

Speaking of Abortion, read Exodus 21:22; it's right after the so-called Ten Commandments:

[22] If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
[23] And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,
[24] Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
[25] Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

This passages suggests that the "life" of a fetus, according to biblical law, is not worth the same as the life of a grown woman. If all they kill is the fetus, it's a monetary fine, but if they kill the woman, it's a capital crime. I wonder why no anti-choice zealots ever address this one: I've been pointing this one out to anti-choice activists since I discovered it in 1978, and nobody has been willing to even consider the implications behind this passage. They choose, rather, to point out that God foreordained the prophet Jeremiah from the womb, etc., in their attempts to make abortion and RU486 a crime for themselves and for us non-Christians alike.

Why don't they just quietly obey the dictates of their own religion, and leave us out of it, and allow us to be accountable for our own behavior? Why? Because they know that their religion is powerless to inspire people to lead moral lives, so they feel they must bring the strong arm of the law into play in forcing their own people and everyone else to obey the dictates of their religion. The religion itself does not and cannot change lives under its own power.

Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine
Five years of service to
     people with no reason to believe

Graphic Rule
Added: April 19, 2001

This letter is formatted the exact same way we received it.

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This response was altered from the original, with new material having been added to what was sent.

From: "Positive Atheism Magazine" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "tim mason"
Subject: Re: bible classes in VA schools
Date: Wednesday, April 18, 2001 11:14 PM

You launch many serious accusations against me, but you don't even describe what it is that I'm supposed to have done -- much less do you make any kind of a case for yourself.

How did I twist your words? How am I being dogmatic? How am I being closed-minded? How am I being shallow? You say nothing; you simply pontificate, and leave it at that.

You even lied in saying that I told you that you believe in something that does not exist. No such language appears in my letter to you, and this thinking does not reflect the editorial policy of our magazine, which is to fall short of asserting that gods do not exist. You are reflecting onto me your own misunderstanding of the word atheism -- as I suggested you were doing when I first responded to you.

Thus, I write you off as simply jumping up and down, pounding your chest, and making a little noise -- but saying absolutely nothing. I need not call you dogmatic (as you accuse me of doing); I need not call you closed-minded (as you accuse me of doing); I need not call you shallow (as you accuse me of doing): I need only point out that you are a liar. This is as far as I need to go with it.

Have a nice life: as far as we can tell, it's probably the only life we'll get to live. Those who assert otherwise have not only failed to show that we ought to believe what they tell us, but they also have a habit of getting fast and loose with the truth on matters pertaining to this world -- matters that we can check out, such as what someone wrote in a letter.

Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine
Five years of service to
     people with no reason to believe

Graphic Rule

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