Sean Faircloth was asked by Richard Dawkins to be his opening speaker for his latest book tour. Faircloth, author of the new “Attack of the Theocrats” used the opportunity to introduce his “Ten Point Vision of a Secular America”. Below is a transcription of this list as related by him to a gathering at Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia on October 5th, 2011. Following that is a video of him presenting that list to the audience. If you have the time please watch the video instead of just reading the list. Faircloth is an inspiring speaker and a text version of his plant doesn’t do it justice.
Sean Faircloth’s Ten Point Vision of a Secular America
1. Respect Our Troops – Our military shall serve and include all Americans, religious or nonreligious with no hint of bias and with no hint of fundamentalist extremism coloring our military decisions at home or abroad.
2. Reproductive Information Based on Science – Any federal or state funded program, whether offering services domestic or foreign, that relates to reproductive decisions shall be based on science and public health; not on religious bias or the denigration or women or secular minorities.
3. Healthcare Professionals Fulfill Professional Duties – Healthcare professionals shall fulfill their professional duties and they must do so without a hint of religious bias or they must find another job. That includes fundamentalist pharmacists that turn away rape victims from Plan-B (Morning After Pill Emergency Contraception).
4. No Religious Bias in Land Use or Employment – There shall be no bias in land use planning or environmental law or employment law based on religion or lack thereof.
5. No Bias in Marriage Law – Marriage can be defined by religious congregations howsoever they choose within their own services but marriage under American law shall have no bias whatsoever.
6. Autonomy for End-of-life Choices – When facing end-of-life decisions, all Americans shall be guaranteed control over their own bodies without being thwarted by religious bias.
7. No Religious Bias in School – America’s youth shall never be subjected to bias in education. If there is one penny of government funds there can’t be one iota of religious bias.
8. Congress Shall Include Secular Americans – The composition of Congress and legislature shall include secular Americans and there shall be no bias against secular candidates.
9. Children Protected from Religious Abuse - There should be one consistent standard pertaining to the health and welfare of children regardless of a child’s parents, school, or child care center. They are all human beings that deserve human rights and protection.
10. Medical & Scientific Innovation Shall be Dedicated to Health & Advancement – Medical, technical, and science innovations shall be dedicated to the health and advancement of our fellow citizens and must never be impeded by religious bias.
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Richard Dawkins, in his “militant atheisjm” wants the State suppression of religion ian public life and its banishment to silent prayer before a crucifix in one’s bedroom, or a silent Rosary before an image of the Madonna in one’s living room.
The human person, he believes, is merely a collection of genes, drives, biological functions, or genotic codes, created by Natural Selection and the Adaptable Behavior of ants, bees, turtles, and the puppy next door, and the “self” is merely the result of two billion years of evolution culminating in a faceless automaton with no personhood and no conscience. That is the evoltionary route he is describing – which describes certainly the evolutionary route of the great whale, but scarcely of Homo Sapiens as history has come to know him.
His Godless theory for the new humanity looked strikingly like replacing economic determinism with biological determinism – the determination certainly of the rat, the snake, the albatross, the bloodhound and the alley cat, in which replication is the only law of life and the only ethical standard is the law of the jungle. Let him preach it to the gorilla in his cage, because that is the only place that has any application.
If his “militant atheism” means anything, it is Atheism as the political philosophy of the State, with a capital S, in which Atheism dictates the form of government, the purposes of government, the organization of government and the laws and policies of government. His intolerance of any public expression of religion as an injustice to atheists will assure that religious freedom is an enemy of the State and an enemy of the human race as well.
His first step is the claim that “Science” must dictate and decide what is reasonable and what is unreasonble in human society and that “Science” should determine the rights, freedom and structure of human society and culture.
It is clear that this Dictatorship of Science is no different in its social and civic effects than the Dictatorship of the Proletariat mandated by Karl Marx and the suppression and denial of human rights and freedoms in the name of a distorted concept of “Science” and a hatred of religion in all its forms.
Father Clifford Stevens
Boys Town, Nebraska
Well Father, I don’t honestly know what Dawkins wants.
But, it’s obvious that YOU don’t want to answer any of my points, nor any of the 10 points, which was our initial discussion.
Thanks,
Ron
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