Terry Firma, though born and Journalism-school-educated in Europe, has lived in the U.S. for the past 20-odd years. Stateside, his feature articles have been published in the New York Times, Reason, Rolling Stone, Playboy, and Wired. Terry was the founder and Main Mischief Maker of Moral Compass, a now-dormant site that pokes fun at the delusional claim by people of faith that a belief in God equips them with superior moral standards. He was the Editor-in-Chief of two Manhattan-based magazines until he decided to give up commercial publishing for professional photography... with a lot of blogging on the side. These days, he lives in an old seaside farmhouse in Maine with his wife, three kids, and two big dogs.
As we’ve seen, David Silverman of American Atheists recently took umbrage to the term “secular Jew.” Silverman wants Jews who don’t believe in God to assert their atheism and stop identifying as Jews. He believes that nonbelievers should “come out” to their families and friends and in some instances their work colleagues, identifying themselves as atheists. He argues that when religionless Americans avoid the word “atheist” to describe themselves for fear of sounding exclusionary, they are being dishonest. “Atheist is the correct word that has simply been made into a bad word by bigots,” he said, arguing that only the word “atheist” accurately conveys the proper meaning to people who are believers, “and telling the truth benefits everyone.” Friendly Atheist guest contributor Kate Bigam raised her voice in protest, arguing that “secular Jew” is most assuredly a perfectly fine descriptor of many people whose culture and heritage is Jewish, even if they never open the Torah or go to a synagogue. Now, at the Huffington Post, Roy Speckhardt of the American Humanist Association weighs in. Speckhardt would like all nontheists to present a more or less united front, without petty squabbling about labels. Read more
Imagine a Christian law professor who doesn’t really like the First Amendment. That is, he wants to “rethink” it so that people who say harsh things about others can be fined or sent to jail. He believes that it’s about time to cut America’s 222-year-old free-speech law down to size, creating new exceptions that go far beyond accepted ones such as slander, libel, and incitement. In placing limits on speech we privilege physical over emotional harm. Indeed, we have an entire legal system, and an attitude toward speech, that takes its cue from a nursery rhyme: “Stick and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me.” The professor says that words can in fact wound deeply. He wants to alleviate the quiet suffering that people of faith, and others, must endure at the hands of columnists and cartoonists and bloggers and internet commenters. Pain has a shared circuitry in the human brain, and it makes no distinction between being hit in the face and losing face (or having a broken heart) as a result of bereavement, betrayal, social exclusion and grave insult. Emotional distress can, in fact, make the body sick. So… are you guilty of using language that promoted someone’s “social exclusion”? See you in court. Did you make someone lose face in a public argument? Pay up, bud, or else. After all: We impose speed limits on driving and regulate food and drugs because we know that the costs of not doing so can lead to accidents and harm. Why should speech be exempt from public welfare concerns when its social costs can be even more injurious? In the marketplace of ideas, there is a difference between trying to persuade and trying to injure. If the professor’s proposal to curtail the First Amendment became reality, anyone could now get sued who says or writes words that even one other person finds offensive to the point of causing “injury.” This blog, and a million others, on all sides of all kinds of issues, would have to start over, under a de facto government directive that none of us may write sharply or mockingly if readers anywhere in the United States’ jurisdiction could take offense. Everything I wrote and quoted above is accurate. The law professor in question is Thane Rosenbaum (pictured), who teaches at Fordham University. He’s been working on a book called The High Price of Free Speech: Rethinking the First Amendment, and his let’s-gut-free-speech piece was just published by the Daily Beast. Read more
If you’ve often wondered how I retain my high level of sanity as well as my lovely complexion, puzzle no more: I live in the third least religious state in the country. Plus, I’d have to drive a day or two to get to an area where a majority of people consider themselves “very religious.” (Admittedly, this cheers me like beer cheers a barfly.) How do I know? By looking at the latest Gallup numbers, released yesterday. Read more
When Jim Mulholland was a still a pastor, long before he drifted towards atheism, he relished the chance to teach young children morality. Now that he’s no longer a believer, but still very much a dad, this is what Christians sometimes ask him: “But what about your daughter, Ella?” Mulholland has the always-interesting perspective of someone who was on the inside, but whose analytical powers are in fact greater on the outside. He wrote a great article about being a non-believer father: Read more
