-Caveat Lector-
from: AMERICAN ATHEISTS
subject: AANEWS for June 16, 1999
A M E R I C A N A T H E I S T S
AANEWS
#590 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 6/16/99
http://www.atheists.org
ftp.atheists.org/pub/atheists/
http://www.americanatheist.org
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A Service of AMERICAN ATHEISTS
"Leading The Way For Atheist Civil Rights
And The Separation Of State and Church"
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In This Issue...
* Spicer Halliwell is too hot for church bosses in Philippines
* Another try ... Roahn Wynar, the pope gets it right!
* Public aid to religious schools -- AA Magazine poll
* Resources
* About this list...
GINGER IS TOO SPICY FOR CATHOLIC LEADERS IN PHILIPPINES
Bishops Conference Compares Pop Star-Ambassador To Salman Rushdie
Former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell came under attack this past week
during a tour in the Philippines where she was promoting contraception
and safe sex. Following a visit to the Marie Stopes women's clinic in
a poor district of Manila, Halliwell said: "I believe that if you
can't control your fertility, you can't control your life, and you're
having sex, you've got to be protected against unwanted pregnancy and
infection."
The 27-year old pop artist was appointed Britain's ambassador for the
United Nations Population Fund last year after leaving the Spice Girls
group. Halliwell has also become active in promoting breast cancer
awareness and raising money for research into childhood cancers. She
donated glitzy items from her stage wardrobe which she wore while
performing as Ginger Spice for charitable auctions as well.
As part of her ambassadorial role, Halliwell travels the world on
behalf of Marie Stopes International, a worldwide private charity
group which promotes contraception and awareness of reproductive
health issues, along with a "Face to Face" campaign advocating
population restraint.
Reports in the world press, and even the Philippines news media,
suggested that Halliwell's visit would stir up the nation's powerful
Roman Catholic Church which has come out against government birth
control policies. Upon arriving in the island nation, she told the
Manilla Bulletin, "What's important about this trip is that it gives
me the chance to meet the people who really matter -- women who want
to control their fertility and young people who are on the brink of
making important decisions about their sexual health."
But while many of those served by the seven Marie Stopes clinics in
the capital city were pleased by Halliwell's visit, Roman Catholic
leaders were furious. Church officials declared that the former Spice
Girl "is setting a bad example for youngsters," and branded her visit
"immoral." Leading the charge was the powerful Cardinal Jaime Sin,
who according to the BBC "once described condoms as evil and only fit
for animals." That, and the fact that the country is three-fourths
Catholic, may account for why the Philippines has one of the most
explosive population growth rates in the world. Many of its 74.7
million people live in poverty.
Halliwell told women at one clinic near a crowded public market that
access to birth control technology "is everybody's fundamental right."
Asked if everyone should practice safe sex by using condoms, she
replied: "Absolutely."
Rev. James Reuter of the Office of Mass Media, Catholic Church of the
Philippines, blasted Halliwell, declaring "We do not need population
control, and any effort at safe sex is totally, utterly immoral from
top to bottom." Monsignor Pedro Quitorio of the Catholic Bishops
Conference added that Halliwell "will have an impact on our youth and
this is why her visit is alarming to us." Sending the pop diva to the
Philippines was comparable to "sending Salman Rushdie as an ambassador
of goodwill to a Muslim country," Quitorio opined.
Church officials also took aim at Halliwell latest solo video, which
comes on the heels of her new debut album, "Schizophonic." Many of
the cuts reported are autobiographical in their content, and draw
inspiration from her split with the Spices. In the "Look At Me"
video, Halliwell appears as a nun -- a replay of the melding of rock
technology and religious themes have made works by other female
artists including Madonna the focus of controversy and ecclesiastical
opprobrium.
A Changing Climate?
The Philippines have traditionally been a Roman Catholic bastion on
the edge of the Asian sphere, and the church has managed to survive
wars and even the political revolution that ousted a close friend and
patron, Ferdinand Marcos. Since the "peoples' revolution," though,
while the church scrambled to identify itself with democratic forces,
Cardinal Sin and other clerics have struggled to thwart a growing wave
of modernization and secularism. As in the United State, many
Catholics disagree with the church's position on birth control, and
there is growing opposition to the official ban on abortion. Last
year after assuming office, President Estrada declared that as the
eight child in a large family, he would not have been born had his
parents used contraception. The Philippine Star newspaper noted,
though, that Estrada "has since increased his commitment to birth
control," seeing it as a necessary step in combating soaring
population growth, ecological destruction and widespread poverty.
Evidence of this changing social climate emerged when Halliwell
arrived in Manilla, and was greeted by hundreds of cheering students
at Southeastern College. A nearby high school has established a
pioneering sex education program in conjunction with Marie Stopes
International; Halliwell praised the outreached, telling her audience,
"Wouldn't it be great if sex education was this well accepted all over
the world?"
From Spice Girl Diva To Social Activist
Gone are the skimpy stage costumes and frenetic behavior that
characterized Ginger Spice's on-stage persona. Halliwell has
seriously committed herself to charitable and social causes, and
revealed that she went through a breast cancer scare when she was 18.
Her activism began to emerge following changes within the Spice Girls
group, especially when two of her fellow performers suddenly and
unexpectedly became pregnant.
"We should all wise up," Halliwell told Britain's Daily Telegraph
newspaper, referring to her bout with breast cancer. "This is a very
sensitive subject but it is not very glamorous. This is not just a
female issue, it is also a male one. This is someone's wife, daughter
or lover. This is everyone's issue." And a measure of her success as
the new U.N. Goodwill Ambassador may be not just the causes she is
backing -- rights for women, birth control, population restraint --
but those who now attack her as a threat.
**
POPE ADMITS EARTH REVOLVES AROUND THE SUN...
(Editor's Note: Earlier this week, we sent out a column by Roahn
Wynar, a physics graduate student and research assistant at the
University of Texas, and a columnist for the school paper, The Daily
Texan. We then began receiving feedback from AANEWS readers who
received only part of the column, or in some cases lines of garbled
text. The original article was pasted in to the AANEWS, then sent
through formatting and, finally, on to our list computer. Something
happened along the way. Wynar's article, though, deserves to be
presented in its entirety, and we have keyboarded it in hopes of
thwarting any "ghost in the machine," or silicon chips as the case may
be. Reprinted with permission.)
by Roahn Wynar
According to CNN reports on Tuesday, Pope John Paul II told university
officials at Copernicus University in Torun, Poland, "The discovery
made by Copernicus, and its importance for history and science, remind
us of the ever-present tension between reason and faith.' Of course,
the pope failed to mention that this so-called "tension" is due to the
fact that Faith has never once, in all of history, ever provided a
correct picture of how the world works.
John Paul II started the church down the road to reason in 1992 when
he apologized for the Vatican's error regarding Galileo's promotion of
a Copernican, i.e. heliocentric, universe. John Paul is on the right
track, and we urge him to continue his campaign of apologies to
intellectuals who were vilified and murdered with the blessings of
popes past.
Apologists approach the topic of Galileo cautiously. First they state
that Galileo was a self-absorbed egoist who attacked his enemies with
ridicule, bringing unnecessary attention to himself. Also, he ignored
the work of Kepler. This is the "Galileo Was Not So Great After All"
theory. Next, they claim that, in Galileo's time, there was
insufficient evidence to support his Copernican thinking. The Vatican
was actually defending science from crackpots. This is what we call
the "Academic Review Board Theory."
Strangely, Galileo did have Catholic allies, but unfortunately they
were prone to theological notions far more bizarre than even the
Vatican's. A friar named Foscarini attempted to support the
Copernican view with a twisted scriptural argument that centered on an
elaborate lamp stand called the "seven-branched candlestick." No help
there.
In 1616 Galileo was forced to recant his Copernican views and promise
never to teach them again.
Simultaneously, apologists explain, the Catholic church did not object
to heliocentrism being taught as a practical hypothesis to other
astronomers, as long as they never claimed it to be "true." What a
compromise.
Eventually, being the egoist pig-head that he was, Galileo broke his
promise and began teaching science once again. In 1633 he was forced,
this time on his hands and knees under the threat of torture and
murder, to recant, and -- surprise, surprise -- he did. Galileo was
sent into house arrest until his death.
Well, the Church has a couple thousand heretics left to apologize for,
but next in line should be philosopher Giordano Bruno. Bruno, a
devout Copernican, was the first person to speculate on the
implications of a heliocentric solar system. Without the Earth at the
center, Bruno suggested that man was a piece of a larger, mostly
unknown structure. Other worlds existed; they were possibly
inhabited, but there was no distinction between celestial and
terrestrial matter. For this he was burned at the stake on Feb. 17,
1600.
Make no mistake about it: The only reason American churches did not
burn Carl Sagan at the stake was because they lacked the power to do
so. God bless America, and keep your eye on Pat Robertson.
In all fairness to the Catholic church, they have done well for the
past 200 years with regard to science. However, the correction of
past mistakes runs head-on into the notion of papal infallibility --
the pope's exemption from the possibility of error. As far as errors
go, geocentric theory is pretty damn big, implying the popes are
fallible. Now for the obvious question: Does this mean that the
entire edifice of Catholicism is a sham?
Not so fast, claim the apologists. No pope ever officially supported
geocentrism ex cathedra. This means the Pope may had the wrong answer
in his head and spoke the wrong words every now and then, but he never
spoke the wrong words while in the "discharge of the office of pastor
and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic
authority..." and therefore no violation of papal infallibility ever
occurred. Go figure.
**
GOVERNMENT AID TO RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS -- WHAT'S
YOUR OPINION?
The U.S. Supreme Court has announced that it will review a
controversial Louisiana case which challenges government aid to
parochial schools. A decision is expected next year -- and it could
open the door for more taxpayer funding of religion. What's your
opinion on this important First Amendment topic?
The new American Atheists Magazine on-line poll wants to know. Pay us
a visit at http://www.americanatheist.org, get the background on this
subject, answer our polling questions and leave your opinion for
others to read. But hurry ... the voting ends next Wednesday, June
23.
**
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articles from the current or back issues, as well as special web-only
features. Visit us at http://www.americanatheist.org
* If you are a current member of American Atheists, sign up for our
e-mail discussion group, aachat. We have over 120 participants who
discuss topics such as Atheism, religion, First Amendment issues and
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