For the Sake of Sanity

Frank R. Zindler

eligious behavior is a sign of reality-testing failure. This is one of the reasons religion is so dangerous and constitutes so great a threat to the survival of the human species. If we do not have an accurate perception of the problems facing us, how can we expect to solve them? I forget who it was that define theology as 'systematized insanity'; and insanity it certainly is when the pope, that guardian of what in religion passes for thought, declares that every sperm is sacred, that every zygote is a person (but yet that acorns are not oak trees), and that there is no over-population problem in the world.

Purveyors of illusion surround us and act untiringly to sever whatever lines we tie to the world of reality. How many more churches there are than public schools! How many more Sunday-school classes than science classes! Religiously disordered thinking clogs the air waves, and both radio and television are vast malarial swamps where dwell the greatest thinkers of the seventh century alive today. Our supposedly secular Ship of State is deeply riddled with the worms of religiosity and threatens to capsize -- even if the Evangelist-in-Chief who pilots it has enough lucid moments to allow him to sail it past the biggest rocks that threaten our passage. O every side, magic is preferred to science, and childish fantasies and the weeds of credulity threaten to pull up the roots of reason.

On every shore that marks the boundary between the sands of ignorance and the advancing sea of science, there we find the priests and prelates enthroned in solemn state -- a multitude of petty Canutes of the hour, each one commanding the advancing tide of truth to stay and advance no further. Not since the Christian Dark Ages has there been more desperate need for sane and sensible thinkers -- and doers.

However feeble our efforts may seem compared to the magnitude of the social psychosis that confronts us, American Atheist is dedicated to resist insanity and those who promote it. It is dedicated to the task of speaking out for sanity. It is not going to succumb to encephalitis religiosus without one helluva fight.

In this issue, Carole Gray will tell you about Lucy Coleman, a nineteenth-century Freethinker who fought against the "divine institution of slavery," for the liberation of women, and for the freedom of the human mind. She did what we must do today. You will catch an unflattering glimpse of the real Abraham Lincoln -- an abolitionist not by design but by necessity.

Conrad Goeringer will fill you in on the Promise Keepers -- a "paracultic" group that plans to stage its own version of the "Million-Man March" this October in Washington, D.C. at the bidding of its Dominionist and Christian Reconstructionist masters, "Joel's Army" will be bivouacking on the Mall -- and American Atheists will be on the scene to sound the alarm.

Dennis McKinsley's "Apologetic Defenses" will give you useful information on how the defenders of the faiths go about their argumentation, what their major strategies are, and what you can do to disarm them. Some may even be capable of rehabilitation when shown the errors in their thinking. Christopher Drew will give you some idea of how this enervating pestilence may have begun. My own research on the supposed relics of St. Peter in the Vatican basement will show you one more example of how religion deceives people as a means to legitimate itself and hold on to power.

Ron Larsen's exposé of Alcoholics Anonymous should be of great value not only to readers who have alcohol or drug problems, but to all Americans who wish to preserve the wall of separation between state and church. Kevin Courcey's demolition of a piece of research alleged to show the healing power of faith may serve as a model for persons wishing to fight back against the recent willingness to accept superstitions of all sorts into the healing professions.

Altogether, I think you will find much of value in the pages that lie before you. Enjoy. Then act.