Wednesday 7 January 2009

ATHEISTS SEND A MESSAGE ON 800 BUSES IN LONDON


LONDON — The advertisement on the bus was fairly mild, just a passage from the Bible and the address of a Christian Web site. But when Ariane Sherine, a comedy writer, looked on the Web site in June, she was startled to learn that she and her nonbelieving friends were headed straight to hell, to “spend all eternity in torment.”
This message — except the “probably” — has been approved by Richard Dawkins, scientist and author of “The God Delusion.”
That’s a bit extreme, she thought, as well as hard to prove. “If I wanted to run a bus ad saying ‘Beware — there is a giant lion from London Zoo on the loose!’ or ‘The “bits” in orange juice aren’t orange but plastic — don’t drink them or you’ll die!’ I think I might be asked to show my working and back up my claims,” Ms. Sherine wrote in a commentary on the Web site of The Guardian.
And then she thought, how about putting some atheist messages on the bus, as a corrective to the religious ones?
And so were planted the seeds of the Atheist Bus Campaign, an effort to disseminate a godless message to the greater public. When the organizers announced the effort in October, they said they hoped to raise a modest $8,000 or so.
But something seized people’s imagination. Supported by the scientist and author Richard Dawkins, the philosopher A. C. Grayling and the British Humanist Association, among others, the campaign raised nearly $150,000 in four days. Now it has more than $200,000, and on Tuesday it unveiled its advertisements on 800 buses across Britain.
“There’s probably no God,” the advertisements say. “Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”
Spotting one of the buses on display at a news conference in Kensington, passers-by were struck by the unusual message.
Not always positively. “I think it’s dreadful,” said Sandra Lafaire, 76, a tourist from Los Angeles, who said she believed in God and still enjoyed her life, thank you very much. “Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don’t like it in my face.”
But Sarah Hall, 28, a visitor from Australia, said she was happy to see such a robust example of freedom of speech. “Whatever floats your boat,” she said.
Inspired by the London campaign, the American Humanist Association started running bus in Washington in November, with a more muted message. “Why believe in a god?” the ads read, over a picture of a man in a Santa suit. “Just be good for goodness’ sake.”
Although Australian atheists were refused permission to place advertisements on buses saying, “Atheism: Sleep in on Sunday mornings,” the British effort has been striking in the lack of outrage it has generated. The Methodist Church, for instance, said it welcomed the campaign as a way to get people to talk about God.
Although Queen Elizabeth is the head of the Church of England, Britain is a deeply secular country with a dwindling number of regular churchgoers, and with politicians who seem to go out of their way to play down their religious beliefs.
In 2003, when an interviewer asked Tony Blair, then the prime minister, about religion, his spokesman, Alastair Campbell, interjected, snapping, “We don’t do God.” After leaving office, Mr. Blair became a Roman Catholic.
More recently, Nick Clegg, a member of Parliament and the leader of the Liberal Democrats, announced that he was an atheist. (He later downgraded himself to agnostic.)
David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, alluded to a popular radio station when he joked that his religious belief was like “the reception for Magic FM in the Chilterns: it sort of comes and goes.”
Still, since Sept. 11, 2001, religion has played an ever more important role in public discussions, said Mr. Dawkins, the best-selling author of “The God Delusion,” with the government increasingly seeking religious viewpoints and Anglican bishops still having the automatic right to sit in the House of Lords.
“Across Britain, we are used to being bombarded by religious interests,” he said, “not just Christians, but other religions as well, who seem to think that they have got a God-given right to propagandize.”
Next week, the Atheist Bus Campaign plans to place 1,000 advertisements in the subway system, featuring enthusiastic quotations from Emily Dickinson, Albert Einstein, Douglas Adams and Katharine Hepburn.
An interesting element of the bus slogan is the word “probably,” which would seem to be more suited to an Agnostic Bus Campaign than to an atheist one. Mr. Dawkins, for one, argued that the word should not be there at all.
But the element of doubt was necessary to meet British advertising guidelines, said Tim Bleakley, managing director for sales and marketing at CBS Outdoor in London, which handles advertising for the bus system.
For religious people, advertisements saying there is no God “would have been misleading,” Mr. Bleakley said.
“So as not to fall foul of the code, you have to acknowledge that there is a gray area,” he said.
He said that potential ads were rejected all the time. “We wouldn’t, for example, run an ad for an action movie where the gun was pointing toward the commuter,” he said.
But Mr. Bleakley said he had no problem with the atheist bus ads. “We do have religious organizations that promote themselves,” he said. “If somebody doesn’t believe in religion, why wouldn’t we carry an ad that promotes the opposite view? To coin a phrase, it’s not for us to play God.”

PASTOR GETS 90 YEARS PRISON FOR MOLESTATION


SANTA ANA – An Anaheim pastor, who had videotaped himself molesting a 13-year-old parishioner in a church office, cried and clutched a Bible behind his back Monday as he was led from a courtroom in handcuffs after pleading guilty to 34 felony sex counts.
Raul Rosas Hernandez, 44, was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Francisco Briseno to 90 years in prison after he admitted molesting four girls and one boy over a 10-year span beginning in 1996.
Briseno said the sentence is tantamount to a life term because Hernandez must serve 85 percent of the 90 years before he becomes eligible for parole.
Deputy District Attorney Heather Brown said Hernandez, who was the pastor of Faith in Action Church, could have faced a life term plus 214 years in prison had he been convicted at trial.
She said she agreed to the 90-year sentence in part to save victims the psychological trauma of testifying at Hernandez's trial and – in one case – watching the graphic videotape.
The tape shows a naked Hernandez engaging in various sex acts in his church's office with the 13-year-old girl, Brown said.
At one point in the video, Hernandez answers a ringing telephone with the salutation "God bless you," in Spanish, Brown said. The tape closes with Hernandez in the pulpit delivering a sermon on blasphemy, Brown added.
That victim was in court to watch Hernandez plead guilty, but she did not comment.
A second victim, who had been molested by Hernandez over a period of seven years, told Briseno "I am thankful that this is over and that he didn't get away with it." She said she felt that he had violated his position of trust, adding, "I am not going to let him ruin my life."
Senior Deputy Public Defender Lisa Eyanson said Hernandez decided to plead guilty because he, too, did not want to put the victims through the ordeal of a trial.
He pleaded guilty to multiple counts of lewd and lascivious acts upon children, other sexual acts, and distributing pornography to a minor, plus sentencing enhancements for substantial sexual conduct with children.
He also admitted to failing to appear in court after he was released on $100,000 bail when he was first arrested in the case in February 2006. Prosecutors said at the time that they believed Hernandez was trying to collect money so he could flee to Mexico and avoid prosecution.
Several members of his congregation showed up in court to support him during his earlier court appearances. But on Monday, the only spectators were his victims and their friends.
After the sentencing, Brown said "it was the epitome of hypocrisy for him to be crying and clutching his Bible in court today. He wasn't crying and clutching his Bible when he was violating his position of trust as a pastor and molesting his victims."

HENRY BRANDT, 92, TROTTED THE GLOBE AND USED BIBLE TO GUIDE OTHERS



ORLANDO - For more than 50 years, Henry Brandt traveled the world using the Bible to counsel others.

No destination was too far to go for Brandt. He made six visits to Africa in one year and even went as far as the Brazilian rain forest to provide marriage counseling to a missionary couple."He got to the source of why a person was angry and helped that person be free from that anger," said Chris Anderson, Brandt's stepdaughter.Brandt died of complications from Parkinson's disease at his home in Singer Island near West Palm Beach on Nov. 24. He was 92. His family, friends and the many people he counseled will gather this week in Orlando to honor his life.


Brandt was born in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1916, the youngest of 10 children. He grew up in Detroit and received his bachelor's degree from Houghton College in New York, his master's in clinical psychology from Wayne State University and his doctorate degree in marriage and family relations from Cornell University.

Brandt moved to Florida in 1987 with his wife, Jo, who became smitten with him after seeing him speak at a Campus Crusade for Christ event in California 35 years ago.Brandt converted to Christianity as a young man and sought to combine his educational background with his faith to solve people's everyday problems, his wife said. He hosted several radio programs for Moody Bible Institute and taught at various universities, including his alma mater, Houghton College, North American Baptist Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.He also wrote several books on counseling and biblical teachings, including The Heart of the Problem and Soul Prescription. In 2006, he founded the Henry Brandt Foundation in Montana to make his teachings available to a wider audience."There were thousands of people who have said he changed my life," Jo Brandt said.Brandt, who reveled in public speaking, was rendered almost speechless by Parkinson's disease in the days leading up to his death, but he managed to tell his wife how much he loved her, Chris Anderson said.The day before Brandt's death, Anderson and her mother sang old gospel hymns by his bed. As they sang the last verse of "Jesus Loves Me," Brandt began moving his lips, mouthing the words "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so," Anderson said."He didn't have the strength to make the sounds, but his lips were moving," she said.He died at home the next day, looking out over the ocean, Anderson said.In addition to Anderson and his wife, Brandt is survived by his children and stepchildren, Richard Brandt of Chicago; Beth Blanchard of Richmond, Ky.; Suzanne Redhed of Cleveland; Juliette Anderson of Moscow, Idaho; and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.Brandt's memorial service will be held at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at First Baptist Church in Orlando. Quattlebaum-Holleman-Burse Funeral Home handled the arrangements.