I encourage young people to organize and promote freethought — it’s the way we’ll grow and become more influential. But there’s no denying that sometimes it is hard, with even friendly, innocuous groups receiving public opposition. People resent the fact that other people don’t need their god.
Here’s a great example: Rising Sun High School in Maryland has the standard default take-it-for-granted attitude that Christianity is just fine — there’s the usual well-funded and usually teacher-promoted evangelical groups, like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes — and when one student tried to form a club for non-religious students…well, you can guess what happened. All their signs were torn down and destroyed, and the students were threatened by their peers. There were also letters to the editor of the local paper.
My daughter comes home today and informs me they have started a new club in Rising Sun High School. The club is known as NRS, which stands for Non Religious Society.
The members of this club have proceeded to hang posters along the halls of the school. When a student tore the posters down, because they offended him, he got suspended from school. Apparently the students are not allowed to touch these posters.
To say I was shocked is putting it mildly. My daughter does not hang posters of her Catholic religion throughout the school, and I expect the same type of respect from others. We cannot control what others think or their beliefs, nor do we want to. But I will not have this type of atrocity taking place without having my voice heard.
My daughter has my permission, if she sees these posters around school, to put up her own. I challenge the principal to say one thing about this. I guarantee you do not want a religious war taking place, as I have God on my side and you’ll lose.
Schools usually have policies about what can be posted on the walls; random messages and commercial ads and that sort of thing are no-nos, but announcements of student events and groups are just fine. If his daughter wants to set up an organization for Catholic students, that shouldn’t be a problem. But that’s not what’s bother this jerk, obviously: he’s irate that a godless organization even exists.
It is now the end of the school year, and that means it is time for the yearbook, when students and student organizations are all acknowledged. Except, unfortunately, for the Non-Religious Solutions student group, which has been blackballed and is not mentioned anywhere. The Christian groups are proudly represented, however. Here are some excerpts from the yearbook:
“The FCA… is an outstanding embodiment of Christian spirit.”
“Students gather together… to reflect on their on (sic) God.”
“…lesson is presented in the form of Bible readings,”
“Before closing, everyone gathers in the center of the room to join hands in prayer.”
“…the opportunity to pray with their fellow students to revel in what God has done for them.”
“Every meeting is finished by joining hands in prayer to prepare for the oncoming day.”
Well, aren’t they a fine bunch of pious toadies. It’s fine for the book to recognize that there are large numbers of sanctimonious public exhibitors of their superstition in the school — they are there, and it’s right that they be represented — but it is simple exclusionist bigotry that the staff decided that NRS would not be mentioned at all.
Wanna bet that the reason is that cretinous parents like the Catholic daddy quoted above put pressure on them?
And yet the theists endlessly whine and cry about being some sort of persecuted minority, just about to be marched off to the ovens or tiger pits or whatever for their beliefs.
Funny how people say they have god on their side but never prove it by making him hit the school with lightning bolts or something
Man the FCA used to annoy the living shit out of me in High School. They were everywhere.
HELP! WE’RE BEING OPPRESSED!!
Jesusly Yours
~ The Christian Majority
She doesn’t need your permission, idiot.
If the parent were smarter they would be more concerned with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, since it’s an evangelical Protestant organization.
How weak does someone’s faith have to be to feel offended that others don’t share that belief?
Typical cowardly Christian.
I don’t remember the FCA being too bad in my high school, but there WAS an obnoxious prayer group that would meet at the flagpole each morning– they got kinda in everyone’s face during my last year, and helped push through some sort of large religious ceremony that was tacked onto graduation. Lovely to have to sit through that! Sure it wasn’t mandatory, but who wants to arrive late for their own graduation, right?
The same thing happens to the Atheist group at my university campus. Their flyers are torn down almost as soon as they go up, they are the last to be notified regarding changes to student association shared events, requested AV equipment doesn’t show up at events, etc. Non-religious HS students should be aware that they are members of an unwelcome minority in many places.
Guess that wasn’t too uplifting.
The bright side: No church on Sunday! And you can pretty much eat all animals, clean and unclean alike, without guilt*. And atheist sex is the best…no room for Jesus in the sheets, as I always say.
*Unless you feel guilty about the butchering and suffering of food-metazoans.
Lightning bolts? When put on the spot, JCG can REALLY perform. By making a rug damp the next morning, for instance. When left outside. Overnight. (Judges 6:11-17)
Does the NRS exist? Is it continuing as an organization? Or is this a one-time shot by someone to point out hypocrisy?
If the group is a going concern, then the group has the footing for future action and/or lawsuits.
And atheist sex is the best…no room for Jesus in the sheets, as I always say.
But I’ve always wanted to try a menage a trois other than the one the Trinity has going on!
” this type of atrocity ”
Jeez.
Someone’s scale needs to be recalibrated
Hahahahahahaha!
Ah the small atocities of student publications. It is ridiculous to leave the group out of the yearbook.
Almost a decade ago my high school debate club had its picture left out because several of us decided to wear terrible dresses for the occasion, but at least the club and its members were still listed.
Proof if ever more was needed that christians are spineless babies.
The parent’s letter is even more obnoxious when you follow the link and see how innocuous the poster is and how it is clearly just advertising the group’s existence. I guess they were just offended by the whole monkey->caveman->human illustration. Maybe they’d feel better if we explained that that’s just an amusing illustration and not an accurate depiction of human evolutions…
^ Damn it, evolution, not evolutions. ^
I wonder how this lady would have reacted if, before this incident, someone had gone around the school and torn down all posters for christian events and organizations.
Does anyone really believe that she would have been OK with that?
Situations like this are quite problematic to me because I have to conclude that she is simply living in a different reality than mine.
I don’t see how you would even begin to have a discussion with a person like that.
In other news, I’m an idiot. The letter-writer is a guy. My bad.
Having grown up across the state line in Delaware, the first thing that pops into my head when I hear Rising Sun, is KKK
Not if by “touch” you mean “rip off the wall”, and if by “posters” you mean “advertisements for school-approved group meetings”. Any other questions?
It’s kinda creepy just how quick it went from someone putting up posters to insighting a war…
If that’s what they want, then it’s time to go to Kinko’s and plaster the walls in signs about the NRS. Create a stink about it. Make it a school wide contraversy. Force them to talk about it.
Fortunately the ACLU is really strong in Maryland, but yeah, we have a lot of idiots here. I’m constantly asked if I’m a Christian by kids in my nature programs at a parks and rec facility 10 miles from DC, and we get requests for “no evolution YEC” nature programs all the time. I guess you can be an atheist in Montgomery County or parts of Baltimore, but everywhere else it’s “keep your head down.”
And yes, a lot of vocal Christians are cowards. Perhaps that’s because the brave were culled out of the gene pool by lions way back, leaving only the cowardly to breed. Or perhaps the brave are all off doing something semi-useful, like teaching school in southern Sudan, leaving the cowardly to yammer about atheist kids in their schools.
Good Heavens! Christians students aren’t allowed to tear down posters of atheist groups? Persecution!
@Mattir:
Fucking brilliant. Best thing I’ve read all day. Now I have to go back to reading this poorly edited academic paper.
An ineffectual threat if I ever heard one.
It’s kinda creepy just how quick it went from someone putting up posters to insighting a war…
If that’s what they want, then it’s time to go to Kinko’s and plaster the walls in signs about the NRS. Create a stink about it. Make it a school wide contraversy. Force them to talk about it.
But I’ve always wanted to try a menage a trois other than the one the Trinity has going on!
Said I am that I am that I am
For the Virgin I don’t give a damn.
But what I like most
Is to bugger the Ghost
And then get sucked off by the Lamb.
I’ll put my ACLU against your god any day.
If you have a problem with what happened, and you should, I can guarantee that the school won’t want to hear from a bunch of us angry, shrill, strident, shrill and deluded atheists… did I mention strident? Here is the contact info!
http://www.ccps.org/rshs/Administration.html
It’s not just the US. My niece competed in a spelling bee at her primary school (I think you’d call it an elementary school) and the first item on the printed program was “Welcome and Prayer”.
Hoo boy. This fucking dolt has a reason to be angry…at her own education for leaving her such an historically-illiterate moron.
I guarantee you do not want a religious war taking place, as I have God on my side and you’ll lose.
Ha! My imaginary friend (sauce be upon him) is bigger than your imaginary friend!
Both my kids graduated from this school and the religion is thick in Cecil County where Rising Sun is (sadly) the best high school in the county. My kids got out with out too much rubbing off on them.
In addition to the religious overtones, Rising Sun is/was home to one of the more active Klan organizations in the region. The idiot who ran it was jailed for punching a black man at an intersection because a white woman was in the car with him.
Rural, conservative, bigoted, religious, homophobic, intolerant. Cecil County has it all.
I’d like to note that Maryland is a pretty diverse state. Cecil County is essentially farmland Pennsylvania, so this doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Then again, I live just outside the southside of the baltimore beltway, and I can walk to 4 churches before I hit a single Pizza place or bar, so this wouldn’t surprise me in most locations.
I must admit though, I do enjoy the chiming church bells I can hear on my porch, but their insistence at playing them at 6 minutes past the hour is a bit odd.
Do you have any source for the factual claims you make here, other than someone else’s blog? I can’t find anything about it in the news.
Rev BigDumbChimp #3
Just what is the “FCA”? Sounds like “Fucking Christian Assholes” to me.
Tualha @ #37:
What claims are you doubting, exactly? The fact that the poster was vandalized? That hateful and bigoted letters like the one quoted above were sent to local paper? That the FCA was allowed in the yearbook while the NRS wasn’t?
Because those are the relevant facts here, and they’re all present and accounted for. Primary sources and all that. So what’s the issue?
Another vague threat of mass murder by a xian. They do that a lot
Someone puts up a poster for a No Religions group and all the kook can think of is going to war and killing a few million people.
Is this that “sophisticated theology” we keep hearing about?
If xianity was the basis of all morality as the crackpots claim, we would be in serious trouble by now. If we hadn’t already wiped each other out over the question of whether the invisible sky fairies think putting up posters is a good reason for a civil war.
@MikeMa (#35)
I remember that. It was none other than Chester Doles–a true lowlife. It does seem though (at least according to this source) that Klan activity in the area has subsided recently.
http://i603.photobucket.com/albums/tt112/ausador/whiningfundie.jpg
Seems fitting here…
I just sent this around to my colleagues at Americans United for Separation of Church and State — thanks for the heads up, PZ (and, as always, for your support!).
Rebecca Davis-Nord
davis@au.org
I must say that the students who dared to set up a non-religious club were very courageous. A labmate of mine, who grew up in Baltimore, warned me about the city of Rising Sun and the Cecil county as a whole, which he said is the home of the true-blue Maryland Rednecks who are filled with Jesus-y stuff and hatred for all things non-white and non-Rednecky. (Apologies to MikeMa)
“…the opportunity to pray with their fellow students to revel in what God has done for them.”
Am I the only one who had a totally not-work-safe image flash through their heads after reading this statement?
From the school’s website — the students are supposed to “believe in”:
the universal principles of respect, responsibility, caring, honesty, self-discipline, integrity, cooperation, justice, and fairness
I wonder which one of those characteristics covers tearing down someone’s club meeting posters?
When I was in public high school back in the early 00s, we started a club that was to talk about different religions and what they believed. Before we were allowed to hold meetings we had to agree not to ever talk about atheism or satanism and they only agreed to it in the first place because there was a Catholic in the group.
In my experience, when you hear the words “We cannot control what others think or their beliefs, nor do we want to” they immediately set out to control what you think and believe.
I oopsed on my last comment. It was too optimistic. I should have said “they’ve already set out to control what you think and believe.
Well, if you’re talking about religions, then there’s no need to talk about atheism as its not a religion! Besides… what’s there to say? “Atheists lack a belief in a deity. The End.”
I dunno about the Satanism thing though. That seems perfectly okay to talk about in a group that wants to talk about religious beliefs…
Nice double standard. “We can talk about all religions except yours.” What if there was a Satanist in the group, huh?
Not at all surprising. Not all religious people are slack-jawed suckle-draggers, but most slack-jawed suckle-draggers are religious people.
Was the first word in the contest by any chance “antidisestablishmentarian”?
@#50
We didn’t obey the rules very well. I think talking about religions and their histories sort of mandates talking about the history of people who rejected those philosophies and why. But we weren’t allowed to use the word “atheist”, which was considered evil.
I think we talked about Satanism off school ground, because none of us knew anything about it and they told us not to.
“Apparently the students are not allowed to touch these posters.”
Yyyyyes. That’s one aspect of Living With Other People. Do you need a remedial course on this? Should I talk very slowly?
“I guarantee you do not want a religious war taking place, as I have God on my side and you’ll lose.”
Apparently she hasn’t heard of our new god-seeking missiles.
Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
But your guess is a good description
Wow, I’m seeing an awful lot of commenting about a story that could be nothing but a big fat prank. Who says this happened, besides someone on Facebook and a few bloggers? Can anyone point to a single article published in a recognized news source?
P.Z., you’re a professor. Do you accept work from students that doesn’t cite references? Do you accept work from students that only cites blogs and Facebook pages?
Idiot. There are primary sources! Primary sources from the people who we are complaining about, no less. They have no incentive to falsify a story about anti-atheist sentiment. In any case, a blog/Facebook pages can quite easily be good sources… especially for the claim that “X said Y on Facebook page Z”.
Please pay more attention.
The point I am trying and apparently failing to make is that the only sources I’ve seen so far are what you might call “irresponsible internet sources”. I don’t see any newspapers putting their reputation on the line to report on this. I see some person on Facebook, for whose identity no one vouches, displaying a photo that looks like a newspaper clipping (but may not be), and another photo of a damaged poster (damaged by whom?).
All of which could be completely fake, a prank, and what happens to the prankster if this is revealed? Nothing at all. Could be anyone. Who knows who it is? That is why I prefer sources that someone can be held accountable for.
However, searching the local newspaper (the Cecil Whig) for “NRS” finds a few letters to the editor. You can’t read them unless you pay for a subscription, but the author and title of one matches the clipping. So that much is somewhat verified, at least.
Can anyone point me to a *reliable* source that I’ve overlooked in the discussion so far? Something not based on a Facebook page that could belong to anyone?
@Tualha You’re mostly right. It’s a blog post completely lacking in confirmed sources. A blogger saying that someone told them that something happened is not a good source in general. Even a Facebook page existing about something doesn’t mean that the something exists. In the age of the internet you are rightly suspicious. However, the letter to the editor of the local paper scanned into the blog post appears genuine, and a search at the paper’s website confirms that a letter with that title appeared in the paper, even if the contents are only available to subscribers, it’s pretty good confirmation that the letter in the blog post is genuine. And given what we have all experienced or seen in other new sources about the treatment of atheists by Christians, that letter from an apparent opponent of the atheist group is more than enough evidence to support most of the claims in the blog post, if not the statements about the yearbook. Someone could have written a fake letter to the editor of the local paper and it could have gotten published, but it seems a strange thing to do to get a letter like that published in a small local paper for no apparent reason. Good for you for being suspicious of a blog, but you might have noted the strength of the piece of evidence that does exist, which is what I think Kyorosuke is talking about.
^Oops, shouldn’t have said “completely lacking”. Make that “mostly lacking”.^
You have God? God’s a chump. I have Satan, Lucifer, Arahabaki, and Shiva. Who the hell do you think you are anyway?
Heh. So it is possible to argue that only verification by a traditional media outlet can prove that the alleged event occurred?
You really believe that it only happened if TM cover it? Let me guess, you also accept that what they do report is complete and accurate.
Delusions, delusions, how they do seem to cluster together in some individuals.
I am saying that coverage by a known, recognized news outlet, with a reputation to maintain, is more reliable than coverage by some unknown person on Facebook, or a blogger whose only source is an unknown person on Facebook. Especially when the person on Facebook is personally involved with the story, and hence must be assumed to be biased.
@JohnnieCanuck:
Who’s arguing that? Other things can prove it, there just aren’t any other things there besides the letter and a link to a facebook page similarly lacking in evidence.
Of course not, but I don’t automatically believe what some guy with a blog says that some other guy told him. I don’t automatically believe what my next door neighbor tells me some guy told him either.
Of course not, any media has to be looked to with a grain of salt, and I’ve criticized sources that PZ has linked to that were “traditional media” that similarly have only what one source told them as a basis for their story. In general though, traditional media are a better source than a blog by somebody you know nothing about.
@Tualha,
The paper of record for the county is the Cecil Whig. A search for NRS shows up three references which I cannot read without registering. Link. The local rag is usually interested in the wreck of the day as opposed to real news so to even have 3 references is pretty good.
@The Science Pundit
Chester Doles – I’d forgotten the moron’s name. Yup, the average IQ of both states rose when he moved to GA. The Klan has been quiet but the legacy still lives. There are a lot of locals that are proud of it too… if you ask in the right bar anyway.
@Tualha– Let’s examine this from another angle: what would be the motive for making all this up? I suppose PZ and some high school kid in Maryland could have dreamed it all up, spending late nights in a private chat room, chortling in glee at their dastardly plan to convince ScienceBlog readers that some flyers had been defaced. And to back themselves up, and to keep Smart Readers like You from catching on, they’d fabricate a series of small-town newspaper letters to the editor CONVENIENTLY locked behind a paywall (genius!), a yearbook, and of course, the Facebook page itself. Incredible! I think you’re on to something, there, Encycopedia Brown!
And yet the religious don’t see what assholes they are – because they’re always Right you know, even though they’re always wrong.
Oh, Cecil County! That figures! I’ve lived in Maryland for going on seven years now, and have always heard that Cecil was the most backwards county in the state. Cecil is worse even than Carroll (Westminster) and Calvert (Huntingtown, Prince Frederick). I recently moved from Anne Arundel to Howard County, which is Yuppie Central, ergo pretty liberal. The DC and Baltimore areas have a bunch of atheist & secular humanist groups, so there’s hope for the “Free State.”
I see you’ve been told about Rising Sun and the KKK, PZ. I used to live in Maryland and a friend of mine lived in Chesapeake City, in Cecil County. Rising Sun is well known for its KKK connection. Plus one of the main newspapers in Cecil County is the Cecil Whig, so that should tell you something.
This friend was under suspicion of murder not long after he moved to Chesapeake City because all the locals had lived there for generations and he was an outsider. The town had its first murder in aeons and he was initially a suspect because no one knew him. Luckily that nonsense was nipped in the bud fast enough.
The other important tidbit is that MD is south of the original Mason-Dixon line and the good folk of places like Cecil County would have made sure to secede.
As many of you may know, two of the main reasons that MD did not secede was Baltimore city and that it would have trapped Washington, D.C. outside of Union lines.
I’d love to see that clown bring his god to a gun fight.
Tualha you make some good points but there are two problems with your approach.
1. Most newspapers or TV or radio stations would not bother covering a story this small.
2. There aren’t a whole lot of newspapers with reputations to maintain left in this country. They sold their reputations away years ago. Now they mostly just reprint press releases.
I graduated from RSHS in 1997… not at all surprised to see absolutely nothing has changed in the past 13 years.
As others have already stated, it is pretty backwards. People are distrustful of outsiders, and even more distrustful of those of us who decided that 18 years was enough, thanks, and that we wanted to go elsewhere. It’s sad, but there you have it.
(For the record, Cecil is very pretty this time of year. Just lock your doors, put up the windows, and don’t talk to anyone).
Talk about a gutsy mob of kids. From where I sit, it seems that athiests really do face discrimination in the US. Isn’t it funny how the xians fein persecution, when in reality it’s the deluded unwashed that are the persecuters. They can justify it all quoting random bits of their babble and that’s the real problem with religious belief. It’s hard to communicate with someone who really believes “gawd did it”.
PZ, Rising Sun is a tiny, ignorant backwater in the northeast corner of the state, not reflective of the state as a whole. Please.
Not to mention, what I believe is the only Pharyngula Fan group in the country, the creatively named Baltimore Pharyngula Fan Group, AKA The Squid Group (that’s how the local bar where we’ve been meeting knows us), AKA the Baltimore Blaspheming Bastards.
Lying for Jesus, vandalism for Jesus, theft for Jesus. What’s not honest, decent, and comendable about that?
A fun way to illustrate student hypocrisy might be to place their posters next to FCA or other religiously-oriented club ads, photograph them, and then rephoto after theirs have been yanked down. It’s what the GSA at my VA school did when a vice principal kept removing their ads claiming they were posting in unstated, ever-shifting, totally imaginary poster-free zones (or something like that. I don’t recall his specific justification, it’s been…. a terribly long time. same VP tried to end a 2004 election open mike when the topic turned to gay marriage).
Man, I don’t know how I missed this one! In good old Maryland…wait, this doesn’t seem like a positive story…meh, still, it’s home, anyway.
Like others have said, when anyone from the Baltimore/Delaware area hears “Rising Sun,” they think “KKK.” I drove through there once, and I had an Pakistani friend in the car…we got some serious looks, and I’m glad we didn’t stop or talk to anyone. Black people simply do not go to Rising Sun, that’s just how it is. The town is known as backwards, racist, homophobic, and generally intolerant. And it does not disappoint.
Maryland is a blue state in general, but we have more than a few pockets of Rebel-flag-wavin’ redneck bigots. Once you get about an hour away from Baltimore or DC, it’s like a whole different state.
And, I forget who, but someone did point out that Maryland is South of the Mason-Dixon Line, and it was a Southern state – that’s true, the MD/PA border is the Mason-Dixon Line. And we would have been a Southern state if it weren’t for pretty much one thing, which was not the liberal-ness of Baltimore: it was because Union troops set up on a hill overlooking the Baltimore harbor, aimed cannons at downtown, and announced their intent to fire into the business district if Maryland joined up with the Confederates. If that hadn’t happened, MD may well have seceded. And we still have our share of backwards-ass redneck morons, to this day…unfortunately.
Been toying with the idea of starting a “nonreligious” group at my high school, where I teach science. I wonder if it is a better idea to find students who would want such a group first, or provide a forum for kids to feel comfortable “coming out”…There is a Bible club and if I ever see them link hands in prayer I will flip. So I firmly believe there should be something available to the reasonable rational kids. It would help bolster understanding of science, at least. I understand I can’t promote atheism per se, but a humanism or secular club would be ideal…
Your thoughts?
EJ