To:         SHS
    From:       Fredric Rice frice@stbbs.com
    Re:         "SHB: A Threat to Humanism?"


    Ken Marsalek and Don Evans would like to believe that the SHB
    publications articles and writers are a potential threat to the
    humanist movement due to what they percieve to be unwarranted
    negative commentary on religion and outright irresponsible
    rhetoric.

    Nonsense!  Perhaps no one ever took either aside and explained
    the reasons why so-called "monotheistic" religions have the
    bloody history and the huge body counts they do.  If SHB can be
    faulted for anything, it is for not describing world history,
    religion's place in it, and why humanism is a superior
    philosophy to deity-oriented cultism.

    I see nothing at all wrong with SHB's articles or writers nor
    do I find any fault with the rhetoric employed nor the tone
    which is set.  Were the religious among us capable of keeping
    their cultism away from the unaffected and managed to keep us
    out of their fantasies, _then_ I would consider much of SHB's
    articles unwarranted.  We see willful ignorance attempting to
    be taught as science in _our_ public schools because so many
    people _are_ stupid and incapable of understanding that their
    mythologies _are_ mythologies.  Tim Farrell's trips to the
    Christian mythology's "Twilight Zone" serves a very real and
    positive service by enumerating the elements of lunacy that
    are so easilly and obviously realized by _everyone_ but the
    truely deluded.

    No, when there are so many religious zealots attempting to
    install their own brand of theocracy lunacy around the world
    and seek to dehumanize us all in ever growing numbers, the
    time to "play nice" and blandly state facts just isn't here
    yet.  Eventually, I hope, religious ignorance will fade from
    humanity as just a horrid side note to the species' evolution
    and when that happens, the SHB can either water itself down
    or close up shop, resting easy with the satisfaction that the
    danger of religion is past.  Until then, keep up the
    pressure and don't let religious lunatics re-enact history --
    at least not while I, my children, or my grandchildren are
    alive.