The White House Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
April 30, 2010

Presidential Proclamation–National Day of Prayer

A PROCLAMATION
Throughout our history, whether in times of great joy and thanksgiving, or in times of great challenge and uncertainty, Americans have turned to prayer. In prayer, we have expressed gratitude and humility, sought guidance and forgiveness, and received inspiration and assistance, both in good times and in bad.
On this day, let us give thanks for the many blessings God has bestowed upon our Nation. Let us rejoice for the blessing of freedom both to believe and to live our beliefs, and for the many other freedoms and opportunities that bring us together as one Nation. Let us ask for wisdom, compassion, and discernment of justice as we address the great challenges of our time.
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Basically my thoughts on this are summed up from a Twitlonger post that I sent out on Saturday.

@kaarbaak i undertand, but it does affect me. by its very nature, gov’t should be w/out religion, but pushing a proclamation about religion is not keeping the offices of church and state separate. while, unlike a lot of people, i do understand that it is not written in the consitiution about the separate of church and state (it was mentioned in a letter written by Jefferson) i also understand that the idea behind the second amendment is to keep a religious test out of trying to attain public office. unfortunately, this is no longer the case in the USA. how many openly atheist or agnostic politicians can you name? i can’t think of any. politicians are free to pray all they want, just like everyone else in the entire world. so long as what people do does not harm another individual, then it does not affect me, but the president does not have the authority to push belief of a higher power onto anyone but issuing a proclamation stating tha America believes in a higher power is wanton disregard for the office he holds and the freedom of people to choose to believe or not.

Things of this nature have often make me wonder if the USA truly is turning into an Oligarchy. Where is the room for the non-believer when the highest authority in the land claims that everyone has a belief in a higher power and that we all should offer lip service to non-existant deities that they will make the problems better? If prayer were actually effective, how many people would be winning the lottery? How many people would not need their treatments for cancer? Wy would anyone on the planet have need to suffer?

Certain elements of the religious variety claim that their deity is a benevolent person, so why would this omnipotent being punish less fortunate people? I know, all I am doing is asking questions, but aren’t these questions that anyone with faith in a higher power should be asking themselves?

I have a much better idea for the National day of Prayer, how about make it be the National Day of Help Your Fellow Man. I don’t necessarily mean giving large amounts of money to charity or flying to a country devastated by a natural disaster, but more along the lines of the people in your community that need help. Volunteer at your local food bank, help an old lady cross the street, whatever you can do. And do it not because you fear the all powerful being in the sky, how about you just do it because it is the right thing to do?

Also, National Day of Prayer is Unconstitutional

After seeing it, I felt so inclined to express my thoughts. What follows is the full conversation I had on this topic with one of my cousin’s (by marriage) and one of my sister’s coworkers. I have removed all of the names, except mine (because I’m all egotistical that way) since they did not consent to having their names put up here.

Michael Tice:

it is not so much a lack of belief in god, it is a lack of physical, quantifiable evidence to show the exist of a supreme being. if anyone were to ever find actually proof in the existence of a supreme being, and I mean something more than just “faith,” then I would have to change my belief system, that is how it works.

why don’t we switch it around, though?

Ganesha does not believe in christians, therefore christians do not exist.

What exactly makes your god better than any of the hindu gods?

or the norse gods?

you lack justifiable proof for the existence of them, therefore you do not believe in them.

what is the difference between that and going one god further?

Female Cousin:

Sister, I love this marque, I would think that after your mom almost dying and also myself, I truly believe in God and prayer, I hope Mike figures this out…..

Sister’s co-worker:

Better…worse…Just reading the sign doesn’t state any god is better than any other. In fact it doesn’t have a definition of which god it’s talking about.

As you stated I can find “proof” of atheists so I don’t have to believe in them. They are right in front of me. So while Ganesha may not believe in me he should at least go around my cart in the grocery store or he might bump himself on it by accident for not “believing” it’s there.

I’m not sure the sign was indicating that any god or panthon was “better” than another. As by definition Atheists by definition have no god or panthon.

As to faith…well it’s a little like being a being in love you know it when you got it. If you were looking for a concrect answer that’s not really what religion is about. Hence the term Atheist for people that aren’t interested.

Michael Tice:

a marquee at palm heights baptist church is definitely picking a specific religion.

as for faith, you compare it to being in love? when we are in love with someone, our bodies actually produce dopamine in response to being around and with that person, hence the euphoric feeling we receive from thinking about them and being in their presence. it is something based in science. this is also why love fades over time. we build up a resistance to the dopamine, and therefore our euphoric feeling leaves us over time.

now, let us look at the definition of the word faith: firm belief in something for which there is no proof

have you heard about the teapot? there is a teapot that orbits between the earth and mars, but we do not have instruments strong enough to detect the existence of the teapot. do you have faith in the teapot? what is the difference?

Female Cousin, as for your talk of prayer saving people, that belittles the medical professionals who save people’s lives every single day. if you are EVER going to thank anybody, you should always thank the person who does something for you, not a supreme being, and i don’t care if you are religious or not. thank god you are alive? no, you should start by thanking your parents and work your way up.

Sister’s co-worker:

Wups! I didn’t zoom in on the pic. I just saw the thumb-nail view that really shows off the back-lit part

Female Cousin:

Mike, I never said that prayer saves people, only God can do that, and I thank God for doctors but there are some things that doctors can’t even fix, as for myself, my doctors even said to me that “you should be dead” , we don’t know why you’re still alive. In this case Mike even my doctors acknowledged that something other than themselves “healed” me. In my prayers everyday I always do Thank God for everything he’s given me including my parents, doctors, life and mostly breath. Can you explain to me how you can breathe if you can’t see it, smell it, or feel it, you can maybe see, smell and feel the effects of it, then how does your body breathe in air that really doesn’t exist because if you don’t believe in something you can’t see (faith) then how in the world do we all exist.

Sister’s co-worker:

If one loves their god would it not have the same response?

I think your teapot argument may be flawed in that I COULD possibly go and find said teapot (if it exists in the first place). Most atheists would argue that you can’t ever “find” god as doesn’t exist. For the purposes of this discussion it does not matter as I don’t own a space ship (I wish).

Does this mean that you only believe in things you have seen and done yourself? With this in mind how did you learn anything in school. Almost by definition you would have to believe the things people taught you in the classroom. You would have had to believe someone about the existence of atoms. While I have never seen one I believe they exist. My understanding is that scientists can find evidence of atoms but can’t actually see one just yet. Lots of science is like this. It’s why they call them theories because they are subject to change as new evidence comes along. Different scientists have different theories and they get together and argue about them at conferences. Sounds a bit like religion to me.

Most preachers claim to have evidence of God. They haven’t actually seen him either (at least most claim they haven’t). At what point would you have to be convinced that HE exists. I could make an argument that perhaps preachers/religion shouldn’t be quite so certain that they have the whole God picture yet either.

The point to that long discussion is that one has to make those decisions about what to believe for themselves. I evaluate what I’ve seen, heard and learned from others and make a decision. You speak as if all people that believe in God only have what I would term “blind faith”. That is faith without critical though and adequate reflection.

In the past science and religion weren’t that far apart. It is only in modern times that they are seen as at odds with each other. Gregor Mendel, father of genetics, was an Augustinian priest. Sir Francis Bacon, inventor of the scientific method, Isaac Newton, uh…gravity are all reported to be people that have a believe in a god. Einstein expressed it as: “God who reveals himself in the harmony of what exists.” While I didn’t meet those people personally I have some faith in the reports that were recorded about their lives and beliefs.

Be nice to other and try not to shove something that you believe on others. Female Cousin can thank whomever she wishes (parents included). You were the person that started this discussion about faith. Try not to hurt others that aren’t hurting you. While you may not have their beliefs it seems like an adult thing to do to respect that others may not have your beliefs. Isn’t that what some of your first post was about?

Female Cousin:

Thanks Sister’s co-worker

Sister:

Well put, I’ve used the things you learn in school with my kid, she turned around and used this against my brother one day, sorry bro. I think the discussion of why do apes still exist “if” we evolved from them came up too…

I have to interject for a moment here, I had a brief conversation with my sister on google talk about this part, she told me she was just stirring up shit, Thanks.

Michael Tice:

learn evolution before you start saying we evolved from apes. we did not evolve from them, we share a common ancestor.

lets look at evolution this way. you have a sibling, your sibling has children and you have children. when your siblings child has kids of their own, they are not going to produce a child like the one that your children will. but, despite all of this, you and your siblings, and all of your children share a common ancestor in your parents. that is how we are related to apes, not because we evolved from them but because we share a common ancestor. now, this common ancestor may have looked more ape like, it may have looked more human like, but more than likely it did not look anything like either modern day humans or apes.

you want proof of evolution in an extremely short period of time? read about this experiment:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

how did i learn anything in school? well, when you take a science class in school you do experiments. through this you learn about the scientific method. from the scientific method we show how our hypothesis become a theory and is therefore proven as true.

i am using the proper scientific definition of a theory, not the one that most christians like to bandy about. that is actually a hypothesis.

as for what we learned in school but did not experiment on, you can still get the research that other scientists have performed, and if you feel so inclined repeat their experiments for yourself.

the concept of the teapot is a thought experiment to show that you cannot say something exists just because you have faith in it.

now, you are probably going to start throwing history out, right? if we didnt experience any of the parts of history, how do we know they are true? Well, it is very true that history is a lie agreed upon by fools. We cannot say for certain that a lot of the specifics of what we call history are true, simply because we have to go by what others have written, BUT, we do know that the world as we know it today would not exist if certain things in history had not happend. if gaius julius had not crossed the rubicon and crowned himself caesar. if william the conqueror had not crossed the english channel and started the norman conquest of england. these had to happen.

jesus, on the other hand, is not a historical necessity. there is no need for a person like that to have existed for the world as we know it to exist.

in fact, lets look at where this whole jesus concpet comes from. the story of jesus was first told by saul of tarsus, who later became the apostle paul. the thing about the stories saul told, they did not include the virgin birth, asking questions of the teachers in the temple during passover as a boy, riding into bethelem on an ass, the betrayal, and most of what christians believe to be the story of jesus. in fact, saul’s stories were about a man who said he was the son of god, died, and was resurrected in 3 days, but was NEVER alive and in the “earthly” realm. saul’s stories all took place in the realm of the gods! why don’t they teach that in church?

what it all boils down to is this: i do not believe in any supreme being because there is no evidence to support the existence of one. you are free to believe all you want, but you have no right to try and push your beliefs on me, in much the same way i have no right to push my lack of belief on you. the above, posted by me, is not my attempt to push my lack of beliefs on you, but my attempt to show you why i do not believe, and nothing more. i do not consider the people who follow religion to be idiots, i consider the existence of religion itself to be utter idiocy.

The Lenski experiment I linked to up there? That thing is awesome. I just learned about it while reading The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. Go get it and read it, it is worth every penny.

Sister’s co-worker:

Why didn’t you just post you last paragraph first and save us a lot of time (and space)?

Michael Tice:

Female Cousin, i missed your post, i never said that i dont believe in anything that i cannot see. i said that i need quantifiable proof that something exists. i can use that air that i cannot see to blow up a balloon, therefore that shows that air has mass and takes up space.

if you try to go by the “what you can see” analogy, then i technically shouldn’t believe in my feet right now. oh, i can feel that they are there, but i can’t see them because of my shoes and desk! science doesn’t work that way, and nor do i.

Michael Tice:

Sister’s co-worker, where is the fun in that?

Sister’s co-worker:

I just had lunch with your sister and she said that you always had to have the last word. Is that true?

Female Cousin:

Mike, If you fill a balloon with air then you see the effects the air produces by filling the balloon, not the air but whatever, feel free to believe or not believe whatever you’d like.

I just don’t understand, and I don’t think I ever will. Maybe I just need to stop trying to make heads or tails (tales?) out of what the christians say and just got on with my life.

Last night I went to my father’s church for their “Easter Cantata”. I am by no means a religious person; I merely went in support of my father for his portrayal of Marcus in their musical drama. Once upon a time, I used to be a church goer. I did not go because I wanted to, but because my parents went and I had to go where they went on Sundays. I never had a flash of revelation while in church, nor did I ever have any of the blind faith necessary to be a true member. The historical side was always something of great interest and I thourghly enjoyed hereing the stories. I was even forced into going to church camp one year when I was a child. Now that was a hoot. Every morning we had a period for silent prayer where we would go off by ourselves for a half-hour every morning and contemplate. I spent most of my time popping the heads off dandelions by making “guns” out of them. I used to always stylize myself as an agnostic, but I now feel that I am truly an atheist. There is not a higher power of any kind. If your views disagree with mine, well, then that is your opinion and you are entitled to it. I believe that this is still a free country as far as religion is concerned.

Why have I decided that I am an atheist? Well, I have always been a follower of the Scientific Method and am in posession of, what I hope is, a fairly analytical mind. It is kind of funny, but one thing that helped jumpstart this was an episode of Moral Orel (Omnipresence) I saw recently. While in school Orel makes the comment that with god, there is no place for facts. How true this statement is. Coupled with some of the reading I have been doing lately, most notably The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams (a self described radical atheist), have led me to rethink my stance on religion and a higher power. When one tries to apply the scientific method to the so called facts out of the bible it just does not work. In many ways it goes back to “the chicken or the egg”. At least from a creationist standpoint. Supposedly god is was and always will be. How can that be? Everything comes from something and therefore if there were a god he must have come from something as well. So, what created god? And then what created the being that created god? Where does it all end? How is something like this possible? Currently, one of the most generally accepted theories about the creation of the universe is The Big Bang. In my own personal opinion String Theory might be better able to define what caused our universe to come into existence, but currently we do not have the technology to test this. I find it extremely humrous that Pope John Paul II somehow melded The Bing Bang Theory as being mutual inclusive with creationism. How can a god have existed before there was anything? Where exactly was this so called supreme being? Here we go back to the chicken or the egg, and we already covered that. So, where exactly did this idea of a supreme being(s) come from? Well, as a matter of pure conjecture, early man probably took a look around the world he was living in and began to wonder what caused things to happen. Why do the rains come? Why does lightning stike a tree? Having recently learned how to better adapt to his environment and change somethings to how he wanted them, he must have figured that there was another being providing these other items for him. Someone not a lot unlike himself, but obviously more powerful than him. The supreme being(s) were born. Sort of. Early man obviously would not possess a mind keen enough to actually define this in an extremely abstract cocept, therefore he built idols. Images to define what his view of the supreme being(s) looked like. This grew over the years into the polytheistic religions we know best. Greek, Roman, Norse, Hindu. And then along comes christianity with its monotheistic view. If you would like an interesting look at how we got from the Sumerian religion to christianity I highly suggest reading Neal Stephenson’s book Snow Crash. While a work of fiction the research regarding Sumerians and the birth of Judaism and eventually christianity are all factual, thought it does contain a good bit of specualtion on his part.

So, here we are now back to christianity once again. Since we do live in the western hemisphere and it is the predominate religion, one does have to wonder how it is that so many people became christian? Such a simple answer. Roman Emperor Constantine I decided that the Roman empire was christian after he had a revelation in 312AD. In 325AD he attempted to put a stop to persecution of christians to allow the religion to spread more freely. In essence, Constantine declared that the Roman empire would be henceforth christian. Then, they voted on what would go into the bible. Picked the best books and put them into as orderly of a format as they possibly could. Let us take a look at the bible for a minute here. Originally written in Aramic. Translated into Greek. Translated from Greek into Latin. Translated from Latin into the vulgar language of the Angles. Now, with all these translations what is the possiblity that something might have gotten lost in the translation? Never mind the fact that the first occurence of the new testament in print wasn’t even until 1516AD. How about that? The first recorded formalization of the bible was only about 500 years ago. Kind of makes it hard to believe that what is in it is true, doesn’t it? I will admit that the bible does contain very good moral lessons. Some good words to live by if you will. But being the basis of this massive religious movement? Well, if you ask me, christianity itself didn’t become extremely big until the Dark Ages, after the fall of the Roman Empire. Seems like a good way to placate the ignorant masses doesn’t it? Do what your told. Slave your life away. Don’t get out of line. Enjoy everlasting joy when you die from your weak pathetic life. Sure, gives you something to look forward to after only 25 or so years of life.

So, in conclusion, why would some supreme being create this entire universe for one sect of one species on this tiny little insignificant planet in the spiral arm of a medium sized galaxy in the middle of nowhere? Seems pretty far fetched, doesn’t it?

Will Hell Freeze Over if Satanist Inmate Wins Suit?

The heightened protections under a federal law for the religious exercise of prisoners may not extend to the case of a Montana inmate who has sued Yellowstone County jail officials for restricting his practice of Satanism.

Jason Indreland

Jason Indreland’s case is very similar to McCorkle v. Johnson, 881 F.2d 993 (1989), in which the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Alabama state prison system did not violate the free exercise rights of an inmate by denying his requests for items including The Satanic Bible, The Satanic Book of Rituals, and a Satanic medallion.
“The restrictions challenged by the plaintiff are reasonably related to valid penological interests,” the court said, applying the rational basis standard of Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987).
Indreland, 35, is now serving five years in a Montana state prison, with two years suspended, for felony drug possession. In a pro se complaint, he says he “has been a practicing Satanist for the past 10 years” but was unable to freely exercise his rights while he resided at the Yellowstone County Detention Facility between March 2007 and July 2008.
When he was booked into the jail, he alleges, guards stripped him of his medallion — “a protective symbol in his religion and belief system” — and on “numerous occasions” during his confinement denied his requests for “a Satanic Bible or Book of Satanic Rituals to practice his chosen religion.”

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Let me get started with my thoughts on this by saying that I am an atheist who hates religion with an extreme passion. 

The only thing I agree with Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto is that religion is the opiate of the people.  It makes otherwise good people do horrible things, all because they have faith in an imaginary being.

With that being said, though, I still agree that people should have freedom of religion.  Freedom to practice whatever this wish, just as long as they do not try to foist their own personal beliefs on me.  It really aggravates me when those crazy christians go around handing out tracts and hanging stuff on my door trying to get me to come to their church.  If I wanted to go, I would be there already, right?

This, though, is just plain wrong.  It violates the concept of religious freedom in so many ways.  If a practicing satanist is not allowed to practice his religion while incarcerated, then no one should be permitted to practice their religion while incarcerated.  Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, Druz, Hindus, Taoists, Shintos, if these people are still allowed to practice and are provided with the appropriate vestments to perform their religious ceremonies, then Jason Indreland should be permitted to have what he requires as well.

The $10 million lawsuit is a might bit outrageous, of course.  While he should receive some sort of recompense for having his rights stolen from him, it should definitely not be anything to that extreme.

Not to get off on a tangent, but I do want to say that I do not feel that this man should even be in prison in the first place.  Felony drug charges?  While not a user at all, I all for the complete decriminalization of all drugs because of what it would do to society, but that is for a different day.

So, just to summarize, if a person chooses Satan as the imaginary being he wants to pay homage to, then he should not be stopped from doing so, otherwise everyone should have to stop worshipping god or allah or krishna or vishnu or whomever they believe in.

My wife finished watching John and Kate plus 8 this evening, which is bad enough, but it then transformed into a new show. This show is apparently called 17 Kids and Counting. For starters, who in their right mind would actually want to have 18 kids? The mother has spent 12 years of her life pregnant. 12 years! That is positively insane. But, what I think I have found even worse is the insanity involved in the religious ideas of this family. Everything that they ever possibly want to do, they have to pray about. The quote above? That was directly from the mother after a commercial break. The daughter even said the same thing. And the praying. I just don’t even know what all to say. I am, at the moment, completely and utterly speechless. Maybe I will have more to say tomorrow after I have ruminated on it for a little bit.