People who don’t believe in a god always have a hard time labeling themselves. Atheist doesn’t cut it for everyone. There’s also Humanist and Freethinker and Secularist and Non-theist and on and on…
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Baylor University released the “American Piety in the 21st Century” study results.

Among the findings are:

– Only 4% of people believe that God favors one political party.
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A school in St. Louis was giving away Bibles… to 5th graders. Now, they have to stop. Liberty Counsel (from the Jerry Falwell camp) defends the school and says it’s unconsitutional to stop the giveaway program.
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Now, normally I’m against dead atheists. But Dane Cook’s version of what could happen to the atheist who tried to start a theological debate with him amused me greatly. (I know what you’re thinking: An atheist starting a theological debate? Never!)
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Philip Paulson is the Vietnam War veteran who sued to remove the Mt. Soledad National War Memorial Cross which is on public property on San Diego. This suit has been ongoing for nearly 20 years, and recently, President Bush signed legislation transferring the cross to the Department of Defense. (Good to know they’re not too busy with the War that they have time to get involved in something like this…) Paulson recently announced that he has been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer.
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A couple nice articles to share with you:
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In New Orleans, on the anniversary for Hurriance Katrina, a prayer service was planned in the city. An atheist objected to this. At this point, you’re thinking “Big surprise. An atheist tried to ruin everyone else’s celebration.”

But that wasn’t the case at all. The atheist in question, Harry Greenberger, wanted to be included in the ceremony. It’s not like atheists were spared by the disaster. Plus, he is a local leader, as he’s the president of the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association.

He sent an email to the event contact person… and got no response. The contact forwarded the email to the event planner, but Greenberger still got no response. He finally sent an email to Mayor Ray Nagin. Nothing happened.

Finally, Larry Bagneris, director of New Orleans’ Human Relations Commission responded to him: He wasn’t welcome.

Obviously, there are state-church issues here. The city should not be sponsoring a prayer event. And if it wants to have a remembrance ceremony based on belief systems, then all those who want to participate should be allowed to, including the non-religious. Since that wasn’t happening, Greenberger contacted the ACLU.

Take a guess at what the headlines said. They mostly referred to the atheist and the ACLU “prompting prayer service changes“… nothing about discrimination or intolerance.

Of course, Greenberger was in the right and before the lawsuit went to court, the city allowed him to be a part of the service– he was allowed to “do Secular Humanist Reflections.”

Good for Harry. And good for New Orleans. I’d like to say they came to their senses, but even if they just accepted him out of fear of the lawsuit, they at least did the right thing.

I don’t understand why remembering the victims of Katrina has to be such a polarizing issue, though….

[tags]Harry Greenberger, New Orleans, Katrina, New Orleans Secular Humanist Association, Ray Nagin, Larry Bagneris, ACLU[/tags]