For the next couple of weeks I’ll be busy doing Important Cat Stuff, mostly related to the book, so posting may be a bit thin. However, like Maru, I do my best.
Jeffrey Tayler, mirabile dictu, continues his series of antitheist articles in the Sunday Salon, and, if anything, his language has gotten more “strident,” asymptotically approaching that of H. L. Mencken. His latest piece, about Obama’s proclamation of the National Day of Prayer (a yearly travesty in a secular country) is called “Obama, Bush and Carson believe this nonsense? Our faith-addled, God-fearing leaders need to put superstition aside.” (Subtitle: “We expect dimwits like Huckabee to buy into the fire and brimstone. Must President Obama overindulge the faithful?”).
You may recall that the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) successfully challenged the legality of the Day of Prayer in 2008, when a Wisconsin federal judge ruled it unconstitutional. I was elated! However, the judge stayed enforcement pending an appeal, and, sadly, her ruling was overturned by a three-judge appeals court. As Wikipedia notes:
The panel ruled that FFRF did not have standing to sue because the National Day of Prayer had not caused them harm and stated that “a feeling of alienation cannot suffice as injury.” The court further stated that “the President is free to make appeals to the public based on many kinds of grounds, including political and religious, and that such requests do not obligate citizens to comply and do not encroach on citizens’ rights. The federal appeals court also cited Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, which referenced God seven times and prayer three times.
The issue of standing is one that judges always use to uphold theocratic laws and pronouncements; I wonder what does count as “injury” in such a case? Perhaps some lawyer can weigh in. At any rate, Tayler’s long piece takes apart the sham of an American President appealing to the almighty. Here are two quotes:
“The United States,” Obama then tells us, “will . . . work to . . . protect religious freedom throughout the world,” and also “take every action within [its] power to secure” the release of “prisoners of conscience — who are held unjustly because of their faiths or beliefs.”
Well and good. So what action will the Obama administration take to free the brave, ailing blogger Raif Badawi, imprisoned by its longtime U.S. ally Saudi Arabia on charges of apostasy since 2012 and subject to public lashings? It should be noted that Badawi would hardly benefit if the brutal theocracy destroying his life became even more devout.
And one more:
Then comes the jarring prelude to the peroration:
“I, Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 7, 2015, as a National Day of Prayer. I invite the citizens of our nation to give thanks, in accordance with their own faiths and consciences, for our many freedoms and blessings, and I join all people of faith in asking for God’s continued guidance, mercy, and protection as we seek a more just world.”
There we have it: the president of our secular republic citing the Constitution as legal sanction for his promotion of religious activity. In case it’s unclear, “giving thanks” requires an addressee, which a reasonable individual would have to conclude is none other than the Lord Himself. “Blessings,” too, invokes God.
What especially bothers me about Obama’s proclamation (you can read some of its offensive religious pandering in Tayler’s piece) is that in his first inaugural addressObama emphasized the comity of believers and nonbelievers:
“We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers.”
I guess the nonbelievers got left out in the Day of Prayer proclamation. But of course there was no injury! Every day could be proclaimed as a day of prayer (hell, why not have a Year of Prayer?), and there would still be no injury. The head of a secular country has no business dedicating days to worshipping and propitiating a nonexistent being.
The Court of Appeals obviously did not understand the matter. The issue is not whether the president is allowed to make such statements or not, the issue is whether or not Congress can make a law mandating the president of the United States to promote religious activity: in this particular case the activity of praying.
Or I missed something and I don’t understand it, which is also a very real possibility. 😛
“The issue of standing is one that judges always use to uphold theocratic laws and pronouncements; I wonder what does count as ‘injury’ in such a case? Perhaps some lawyer can weigh in.”
Speaking as a lawyer…I don’t have a Constitutional analysis to offer, but I would like to point out that the ruling in the 2008 case seems at best inconsistent with other rulings. For if “a feeling of alienation cannot suffice as injury,” then what, pray tell (sorry…) is the rationale for forbidding teacher-led student prayers in school? After all, the student can simply not participate in the prayer, yes? What is the injury in the school cases beyond “a feeling of alienation”? It seems to me that that “feeling of alienation” is PRECISELY what confers standing.
So strident!
“We expect dimwits like Huckabee to buy into the fire and brimstone.”
While normally I wouldn’t blanch at Huckabee being called a “dimwit” for his various anti-science pronouncements, his recent maneuver was at least politically brilliant. In signing his own “pledge,” and announcing that it was the only one he would sign, he cut off the usual GOP litmus-test parasites, avoiding the baggage that they usually carry…and even Grover Norquist can’t criticize him for it. https://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2015/05/mike-huckabee-pledges-to-not-sign-any-pledge-except-his-own/
To me, that makes his candidacy, as unlikely as victory may be, just a bit scarier.
Why must Tayler approach Mencken asymptotically? Perhaps he’ll get there.
IANAL, which may be made obvious by the remainder of this comment, but why must one personally have been “injured” in order to argue that something is unconstitutional, ie, violates the establishment clause? Further, shouldn’t every US citizen have standing in matters regarding constitutionality? I am a US citizen, and the US constitution mandates how things are run where I live. Why wouldn’t I have standing to say “hey, hey, hey! These people over here aren’t following our democratically affirmed rules!” I participate in the affirmation of those rules every time I vote.
Adding that I also participate by paying taxes, as Simon points out at #10 below.
I agree. It is ludicrous that any citizen should be judged to not have standing regarding an issue of constitutionality, whatever actual precedent may be. It is also ludicrous that a federal law mandates a NDOP.
Presumably the get-out-of-jail free card is that the NDOP is supposed to be an invitation to all religions to pray, and therefore it is not a case of the federal government privileging one religion over another. Except, in reality it really is. Look at the speech. Almost all religious references are clearly Christian. Direct from the POTUS in his official capacity. Not to mention, what about those of no religion? This obviously is privileging others with respect to us in precisely the way our constitution is supposed to prohibit, and in most all other contexts does.
And what about other religions that don’t include God? What about those that include gods? What about those that don’t do prayer? It is complete bullshit to claim that the NDOP is constitutional. Court rulings supporting it are due to politics and ideology persevering over intellectual integrity.
A rare comment from a devoted reader. 🙂 I’ve never seen a more succinct yet hilarious takedown of the whole god thing as this several years old clip of Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell on the Daily Show in a “debate” on whose god is the one true god. (Sorry for the poor quality; this was the only online copy I could find). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkGhv58OhrE&list=RDIkGhv58OhrE&index=1
That is hilarious.
Sub
“…understanding the chemical mechanisms of parasite-mediated behavioral control had it not been for our initial correspondence.”
Fascinating subject.
Dan, is there any research showing that parasite-mediated behavior occurs in us humans? Any connection with my reaching for the cookie tin again and again when I don’t really want one?
Obama’s action is just further proof that politics and religion should never be mixed and total separation is the only clear answer to this nonsense. Even the so-called moderate religious people cannot help but drag others into their infatuation with religion. The Islamic section should be offended that Obama did not call for 5 daily prayers on this particular day.
Have I suffered injury if I’m being forced to pay politicians to do something demonstrably useless, or indeed invoking others to waste their time?
I realize, obviously, that if politicians did something useful they might have a different job title. And that in fact restricting them to the useless is better than the outright harmful on which many of them seem intent.
But I can’t help feeling that there may be some potential angle in there.
How about if we changed it to a “National Day of Prayer…or Not”?
How about “National Day of Muttering Pointlessly to Oneself”?
…or Not.
I need some help with the logic here. The appeals court says “a feeling of alienation cannot suffice as injury.” And alienation is: “the state or experience of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or in which one should be involved.”
Yet, as we saw in an earlier post on WEIT, alienation as defined above seems to be one result of “triggering” in the university classroom. Of course other unpleasant feelings may surface first, but they would ultimately result in alienation.
Does that mean that a student can’t sue the school if he or she feels alienated by the assigned material, or the instructor?
I had the same thought. On this basis, this ruling is an outstanding precedent for fighting many of the current blanket PC-speech rules, at least at schools that get public funding (nearly all, public and private, when you consider what qualifies as public funding)
Of course, there are a good number of direct-harm arguments against the NDOP. Many of them could also apply in free speech arguments at schools, as well, showing that there is no sword with only one edge… Even if the back is not sharp, it is still a quite useful bludgeon.
What a bizarre ass-backwards ruling from the court. Apparently the judges don’t understand that any US citizen has standing to question the constitutional validity of laws and actions promulgated by state and federal governments. I guess there are too many false patriots in the courts.
“any US citizen has standing to question the constitutional validity of laws and actions promulgated by state and federal governments” – Agree, most emphatically. I wonder if that point was made in the court filings, or in a motion for reconsideration of the decision.
Shocking. I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with Professor Ceiling Cat. Thank you.
How were non-believers harmed?
Exactly the same way a fundamentalist Christian baker was harmed when told the cake his customer wanted was to celebrate their same-sex wedding.
Another great article from Tayler. I learned two new words: apotropaic and soterial (the latter I once knew, but had forgotten). Also, it is written (intentionally or not, I don’t know) much in the style of Hitchens. When I got to the line, “There we have it.” I swear I could hear Hitch’s voice in my head, and I saw him standing behind a podium, removing his glasses (which had been on his face for only an instant), and proudly ripping into a debating foe. “And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen…”
The Albatross has landed…on my Kindle!
(After Neil Armstrong)
I might advocate that one a day a week an atheist lead that prayer.
I prefer not to lead a prayer, from any perspective, which seems to me to legitimize the act of prayer itself. When town councils let atheists lead prayers, I understand the compulsion to take them up on it but I also wish they’d just get rid of the practice all together.
I feel the same way when I go to a ball game and they play god bless america in the seventh inning but at least that is commercial speech and not government sponsored.
Perhaps we could use the time honored tactic believers so often employ and redefine what “prayer” means. For example, we could pretend it means “Lets have a toast! Everyone raise their beer / wine / cocktail / liquer and have a drink with me! Cheers!”
I understand that you do not want to lead a prayer. But the very act of advocating for an atheist led prayer, I think would reinforce the concept of a secular society.
I can’t imagine anybody wanting to have an alien point of view preached to there children.
Sneaky. I like it.