Today I attended a bar-mitzvah for my wife’s cousin. This service was held in a Reform synagogue, which very liberal and mellow yet theistic. It was the first theistic event I’d attended in abut 5 years.

These are the kind of services I attended as a child. This was the ceremony I performed when I was 13 years old. Those were more-or-less the words I said, under duress.

As I sat there today, watching the people who showed up avoid paying attention, it struck me how empty the place was — perhaps 10% full. Given that most of those who showed up were there for the Bar Mitzvah, I guessed that no-one at all was there for the service itself. No surprise there I guess.

We all know that the principle reason for Bar Mitzvahs and weddings to be held in church is to present the church (synagogue) to potential new members. It’s advertising; “if you don’t come to see our beautiful facility your family will be pissed.” I get it. Nice place.

So I sat there in the back row with my daughter, and we looked at the prayer book and listened to the sermon together. I pointed out each time the Rabbi begged, the idolatry associated with kissing the Torah, and the sales pitch behind the assertion that religious services were necessary for us. My atheist daughter picked up on it all, right away.

They call the service ancient. They call it time-tested. “Passed down from generation to generation”, claimed the rabbi. All true, to some extent (you can say the same for any mythology), but the word that went through my mind wasn’t ancient, it was primitive.

Intelligent people wearing prayer shawls and yamulkes, begging an invisible man in the sky to bless them and their dead relatives. I wanted to scream “Come ON! It’s 2009! we don’t need this kind of bunk anymore.”

I’m glad the pews were nearly empty. I’m glad those who attended were clearly more interested in the party that followed (which ROCKED) than in the content of the service. Finally, I’m glad I am going to live to see the decline of ridiculous theism. Good riddance to yesterday’s silliness.

Back to work.

Today marks the launch of the new film 2012, which looks like a promising action flick that capitalizes on the newest doomsday fad. It also marks the official launch of our web page dedicated to fools who think this time’s for realzies.

How many other doomsday fads can you remember? Post them here, and I’ll move them onto our December Fool’s Day page!

Happy Friday the 13th! Today, as we all know, is the unluniest day of the year, because someone somewhere said something he made up, and other people took him serously and spread the word as if it were the truth.

Sound familiar?

The truth is that mythology, religion, and superstition are synonyms. They all start by someone making stuff up, and the lies are spread and believed without thought or contemplation.

Tonight, I will be heading to the Jolly 13 event in NY to celebrate my own freedom from idiocy. I invite you all to do the same. Spill some salt, step on a crack, or pray to a god (any one will do). Trust me. Nothing will change.

From COR…

(Cincinnati, November 12, 2009) In the wake of “multiple, significant threats,” the downtown billboard that says, “Don’t Believe In God? You are not alone,” came down early this morning. It had been up only since Tuesday afternoon at Reading Road and 12th Street, one block south of Liberty Street. It is being moved to a new site today at the Sixth Street Viaduct.

Around 2:00 PM yesterday, the United Coalition of Reason, which paid $3,875.00 for a one-month run of the billboard, was contacted by Lamar Advertising of Cincinnati. Lamar reported that the landowner of the site had been threatened over the billboard’s message and wanted it taken down. Lamar only leases the land the billboard stands on.

“We weren’t given the landowner’s name or precise details,” reported Fred Edwords, national director of the United Coalition of Reason. “Nor did we pursue them. It was sufficient to learn that this person had received multiple, significant threats and that Lamar would act quickly to alleviate the problem.”

Edwords added: “Lamar was most apologetic to us regarding the situation. It was a development they hadn’t expected. Nor had we. Nothing like this has ever happened to us before.”

The new location on the 6th Street Expressway, U.S. Highway 50, is owned by Lamar Advertising of Cincinnati and therefore isn’t subject to landowner restrictions. The billboard will face east, visible on the left to traffic traveling west out of the city across the viaduct toward the suburbs of Delhi and Price Hill.

Shawn Jeffers, co-coordinator for Cin CoR, the Cincinnati Coalition of Reason, which is the local organization the billboard advertises, sees this controversy as evidence of the billboard’s importance.

“Everything that has happened shows just how vital our message is,” Jeffers said. “It proves our point, that bigotry against people who don’t believe in a god is still very real in America. Only when we atheists, agnostics and humanists come together and go public about our views will people have a chance to learn that we too are part of the community and deserve respect.”

On its website at CinCoR.org, the Cincinnati Coalition of Reason describes itself as “a collection of nontheistic groups in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky working together to increase awareness of secular-minded principles and organizations.” The coalition was launched on November 10 when the billboard first went up.

“We are now more committed than ever to the goal of making our presence known,” Jeffers added. “Hopefully this turn of events will cause more and more nontheistic people in Cincinnati to realize how necessary it is to get organized. Only by working together can we end prejudice against philosophical and religious minorities.”

The United Coalition of Reason has now funded fourteen campaigns this year.
Each has involved a billboard or public transit ads. They have appeared in places as far flung as Boston, Massachusetts; Charleston, South Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas; Des Moines, Iowa; Morgantown, West Virginia; Newark, New Jersey; New Orleans, Louisiana; New York, New York; Phoenix, Arizona, and San Diego, California. On November 10, three were launched in Ohio: in Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus.

# # #

The Cincinnati Coalition of Reason ( www.CinCoR.org ) is a group of like-minded member organizations from the greater Cincinnati area that advocate science and reason as the most reliable sources of knowledge and truth.

The United Coalition of Reason ( www.unitedcor.org ) exists to raise the visibility and sense of unity among local groups in the community of reason by providing funding and expertise to help them cooperate toward the goal of raising their public profiles.

American Atheists extends its gratitude to the men and women of all theological positions who are serving or have served this country in the armed forces. Of course, a special salute to my two favorite veterans, my Dad and my friend Kathleen, two atheist veterans who served in very different but very real foxholes.

Can we hear from the vets out there?