In today’s commentary I look at George Weigel’s book, The Cube and the Cathedral, that laments and analyzes Europe’s descent into secularism. America is different, of course, at least for now. At present, some of our more colorful rejectionists are affiliated with atheist organizations or similar protest groups. Consider these examples.
ITEM ONE: The “All Atheists Weekend.” Several San Francisco-area atheist groups got together in May for an event they called the “All Atheists Weekend.” If press reports are to be believed, it must have been a fascinating affair. The Associated Press reported that organizers had hoped for “more than 250 people” to attend the event. Final attendance figures were not released, but the group known as “East Bay Atheists” claimed about 100 attendees for each day of the event. Other participating groups included the “Godless Geeks” of Silicon Valley and a group of aging atheists from a local retirement community.
Participants were exhorted to oppose the rise of “fundamentalism” in the nation. “It’s time for us to push back,” said psychologist Jaime Arcila. He called for the nation to embrace “peace, justice, tolerance, and love.” Other were more concerned that atheists are so hard to organize. “Atheists are not joiners,” said Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists, who spoke at the event. The American Atheists group was founded by the late Madalyn Murray O’Hair in 1963. Now, Johnson expresses some frustration at the group’s failure to mobilize a massive army of unbelievers. “You hear people complain, ‘Look at what they (religious people) are trying to do now,’” she told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Well, yeah, sure. They’re better funded. Better organized. That’s why atheists get pushed around. I say if you don’t like it, get involved and do something about it.”
Her group does get donations, but largely from the deceased. Johnson said that American Atheists depends on wills and bequests for financial support. “People donate to us in their wills, but with all due respect, we don’t need dead atheists.” Dead atheists are presumably even harder to mobilize than live ones.
David Fitzgerald, who presented his multimedia work, “The 10,000 Christs and the Evaporating Jesus,” at the event, afirmned Johnson’s point: “Our thing is that we’re just not that organized. It’s our strength and our weakness.” Fitzgerald is ready to look on the bright side, however. “Still, it’s a great time to be an atheist. Five hundred years ago, we’d be burned for what we were thinking. Fifty years ago, we’d lose our jobs. But today, we’re free to be atheists.”
CHECK OUT THE PRESS:  The San Francisco Chronicle, The Bakersfield Californian.
ITEM TWO: Alabama Medical Student Starts a New Religion. Ford Vox, a medical student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, decided America needed a new religion–so he started it. “Universism” is an anti-supernatural “religion” that teaches that there are no universal religious truths, and that all religious truth must be determined by each individual.
“Religious faith is very powerful,” he told the Birmingham News. “It is so powerful that it is dangerous. It’s very hard to find an alternative to that.” As for beliefs, “We absolutely reject absolute truth,” he emphasized. He seemed absolutely sure of his absolute denial of absolute truth.
Vox thinks that secular people need to have the kind of fellowship Christians experience in congregations, so he plans to create something like Universist churches. Speaking of Christian churches, he said: “They have such a great social infrastructure. Secular people are missing out on that. We’d kind of like to take part.”
The medical student and religion founder shows little respect for liberal churches. “Unitarian Universalism is belief in anything for the sake of belief. There are many people in liberal Protestant churches who share this attitude. They continue to prop up the legitimacy of religion, making it seem an OK precept because you have rational people who continue to call themselves Christian,” he asserted.  When it comes to atheists, it takes one to know one.
Ford Vox may be having some fun, but he also claims to have 7,500 “members” registered through his Web site. Christianity has nothing to fear from Mr. Vox and the Universists. Their version of warmed-over atheism is not likely to gain much ground, though they are certain to attract media attention.
My guess is that the Universists are located in just about the worst place imaginable for institutionalized unbelief. San Francisco is a prime venue for the “All Atheists Weekend” — but Birmingham, Alabama? Perhaps Mr. Vox should venture down to Lloyd’s Restaurant on US 280 South. There, where the iced tea runs thick as pancake syrup, he will discover the limitations to signing up unbelievers in Birmingham.
FOR THE TRULY INTERESTED: The Birmingham News, Atheist World News.

Richard Dawkins wants to be the devil’s chaplain. As the world’s most visible and articulate atheist, Dawkins declared war on religious belief many years ago. In his latest salvo, he leaves no doubt about his antipathy towards all forms of theistic belief.

Today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal features a debate over the so-called “Religious Right.” James Taranto, editor of the paper’s excellent Web site, OpinionJournal.com, defends the involvement of conservative Christiansin national debate. Taranto, who identifies himself as a social moderate who is “not a Christian, or even a religious believer,” makes a strong case: “One can disagree with religious conservatives on abortion, gay rights, school prayer, creationism and any number of other issues, and still recognize that they have good reason to feel disfranchised. This isn’t the same as the oft-heard complaint of “anti-Christian bigotry,” which is at best imprecise, since American Christians are all over the map politically. But those who hold traditionalist views have been shut out of the democratic process by a series of court decisions that, based on constitutional reasoning ranging from plausible to ludicrous, declared the preferred policies of the secular left the law of the land.” Journalist Christopher Hitchens–always ready with sarcasm–cites the late Sen. Barry Goldwater as his model of a secular conservative. As his opposing article makes abundantly clear, Hitchens wants nothing to do with the followers of “the possibly mythical Nazarene.” The Right should disavow Christians and Christianity, he urges, and return to the atheistic views of Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss. And as for Christians, “I have never understood why conservative entrepreneurs are so all-fired pious and Bible-thumping, let alone why so many of them claim Jesus as their best friend and personal savior. The Old Testament is bad enough: The commandments forbid us even to envy or covet our neighbor’s goods, and thus condemn the very spirit of emulation and ambition that makes enterprise possible. But the New Testament is worse: It tells us to forget thrift and saving, to take no thought for the morrow, and to throw away our hard-earned wealth on the shiftless and the losers.” Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair magazine. John Bunyan would understand the irony.

Those who believe that “fundamentalist atheists” is an oxymoron should take a quick look at the December 2004/January 2005 edition of Free Inquiry magazine. The official publication of the Council for Secular Humanism, Free Inquiry is a meeting place for atheists with an attitude. The magazine represents old-line secular humanism, and it brings together a cast of characters you are unlikely to find anywhere else.

“It takes one to know one,” quipped historian Eugene Genovese, then an atheist and Marxist. He was referring to liberal Protestant theologians, whom he believed to be closet atheists. As Genovese observed, “When I read much Protestant theology and religious history today, I have the warm feeling that I am in the company of fellow nonbelievers.”

The greatest moral question hanging over America’s increasingly secular culture is this: Can we be good without God? That vital question–though almost always unasked–is the backdrop for most of the issues aflame in the media, the schools, and the courts.

Richard Dawkins wants to be the devil’s chaplain. As the world’s most visible and articulate atheist, Dawkins declared war on religious belief many years ago. In his latest salvo, he leaves no doubt about his antipathy towards all forms of theistic belief.

The greatest moral question hanging over America’s increasingly secular culture is this: Can we be good without God? That vital question–though almost always unasked–is the backdrop for most of the issues aflame in the media, the schools, and the courts.

Daniel Dennett claims that atheism is getting a bad press. The world is filled with religious believers, he acknowledges, but a growing number of atheists lack the respect they deserve. It’s time for a new public relations strategy for the godless, Dennett argues, and he has just the plan.

Absolutely convinced of the inevitable triumph of communism, V. I. Lenin once predicted, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” In a similar vein, atheists must be wondering if some pastors have switched sides and are now ready to join unbelievers in putting an end to biblical Christianity.