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Show 205: Fund Drive Show – “African-American Naturalism: A Forgotten Tradition” – Neil deGrasse Tyson, Anthony Pinn & Muntu Matsimela

Fund Drive Show – “African-American Naturalism: A Forgotten Tradition” – Neil deGrasse Tyson, Anthony Pinn & Muntu Matsimela

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It’s widely accepted that faith and religious belief have been the most important elements sustaining the African-American community throughout their long history of subjection to oppression and adversity, but even in the Black Church, other worldly concerns were far less important than is generally believed.

The secular and humanistic traditions are long standing threads in African-American life that are hardly ever mentioned – yet it’s out of these traditions that the real world strategies and real world solutions which have yielded the greatest strides toward Black liberation and empowerment were developed and deployed.

What might happen if African-Americans today more fully embrace their rich history of naturalistic traditions; how might it make a difference for the future?

Dr. Anthony Pinn, author of “African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking like the Children of Nimrod” will help us trace the long and rich history of secular and humanistic traditions in African American life.

We will also be joined by Astrophysicist and Director of New York City’s Rose Planetarium and host of PBS’s “NOVA Now” series, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, and African Studies Professor, Community Activist and former Black Panther, Muntu Matsimela.

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Show 204: Jeff Sharlet – “BattleCry”

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This Sunday, join co-host Sunsara Taylor for an exciting talk with Jeff Sharlet about BattleCry, the Christian fundamentalist movement that is training an army of youth to conquer the country and the world for their hateful, intolerant god.

In a recent issue of Rolling Stone, Jeff Sharlet, religious scholar and widely published author, took this exposure further in his piece, “Teenage Holy War: Behind-the-scenes with the most militant Christian youth crusade in America”

Excerpt: “Luce ends his rallies with an illustration from the Book of Judges: the story of a man who, after he gives over his concubine to be gang-raped, kills the disgraced woman and cuts her into twelve pieces, then sends one to each of the tribes of Israel as a reminder of what happens to the ungodly. For a finale, Luce or one of his junior pastors dissects a mannequin labeled with the sins of secularism and then – to the cheer ‘Cut up the concubine!’ — sends his assistants into the crowd to distribute the pieces.” (for the full piece, see here )

In March of 2006, Sunsara Taylor reported from inside BattleCry’s stadium, writing the first national exposure of this growing Christian fascist youth movement that has connections all the way up to George Bush himself. Her three part series appeared in TruthDig.com (here) and CounterPunch.org.

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Show 203: Robert M. Price – The Reason Driven Life

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Pastor Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life has been both a commercially successful best seller and a widely influential book in the Christian community. As a rejoinder to the fundamentalist assumptions of Warren’s book, Robert M. Price, a biblical scholar, a member of the Jesus Seminar, and a former liberal Baptist pastor, offers this witty, thoughtful, and detailed critique.

Following the concise forty-chapter structure of Warren’s book, Price’s point-counterpoint approach emphasizes the importance of reason in understanding life’s realities as opposed to Warren’s devotional perspective.

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Show 202a: Earth Day Special: Joel Kovel – The Enemy of Nature

Earth Day Special: Joel Kovel

The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World

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As the world’s scientists converge on the all too real crisis of “global warming,” even while Right-wingers and the Bush Administration continue to spin the crises into a Left-wing Conspiracy – probably headed up by Al Gore – too few discussions are taking place concerning the root causes of our ecological dilemma.

Conservatives who are willing to acknowledge what science is telling us, and even those whom exhibit a real sense of urgency, are afraid of what might happen to the economy if we go at environmentalism full force. Mainstream liberals like Al Gore have been working hard to dispel this fear by assuring us that the economy will get even stronger, not weaker, if we take care of our planet.

But what if the economy is at the very heart of the crisis?

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Show 201: Easter Special: “Questioning Judeo-Christian Morality”

One-Hour Easter Special: “Questioning Judeo-Christian Morality”

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Are Easter and Passover the basis for morality or for violence?

This week most people commemorate the foundational narratives of the Jewish and Christian religions, both widely regarded as the main source of ethical inspiration and social stability for the Western world, yet there are sound reasons to believe that it’s our Judeo-Christian tradition that might actually be responsible for a great deal of violence.

At this moment in our nation’s history when we continue to have the largest prison population in the Western world – when we’re being told that the only solution to a disastrous unwinnable military adventure is to send more troops – and when our leaders have seen fit to pass the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which denies detainees the right of Habeas Corpus and the protections against torture afforded by the Geneva Convention – Equal Time for Freethought will take a critical look at how our Judeo-Christian traditions not only fail to curb such institutionalized brutality, but actually make such policies appear as if they are morally acceptable.

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Show 200: Raymond Lotta – “Atheism & Politics”

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In 1843, Karl Marx captured the way that religion is both an escape for millions whose lives consist of daily exploitation and oppression and is a mental shackle that keeps masses from understanding and making revolution to overcome those conditions of oppression, in his now famous statement, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.”

This week on Equal Time for Freethought, Sunsara Taylor will talk with Raymond Lotta about the past experience and future prospects of Marxist revolutions. They will explore both how these revolutions have popularized a scientific understanding of the world and made strides in overcoming the conditions that drive people to seek comfort in religion and some of the shortcomings of this experience, in part through engaging some of the work of Bob Avakian on questions of religion, morality, the role of myth, and the importance of bringing millions into an unfettered search for the truth as part of emancipating all of humanity.
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Show 199: Reverend Lennox Yearwood

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This week, Sunsara Taylor returned with Reverend Lennox Yearwood, President of the Hip Hop Caucus, about the appropriation of the Civil Rights Movement’s legacy by the very same Right Wing Christian Fundamentalists who once upheld segregation.

They will discuss this and the role of black religious leaders who have aligned themselves with President Bush, including in the wake of Hurricane Katrina which Yearwood organized many protests around, and the ultimate need for a radically different, socially conscious morality.

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Show 198: Victor Stenger

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Atheism has taken a turn toward the right, some have said, as writers like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and others have penned best-selling books on religion and faith which tend to see religion as the major problem in today’s society while leaving out politics and the economy. And while the Left ought to recognize the inherent dangers in religious fundamentalism, they also should understand the many complex reasons religion exists in the first place, and how fundamentalisms arise.

While on this program we have featured what some critics have dubbed the evangelical atheists in the past, we have also had folks like DS Wilson, Scott Atran, Robert Dreyfuss and Robert Pape on to take us deeper into the many facets of religion, its causes, and how we could begin to reign in the more dangerous verities.

Still, it is always useful to listen to anthropologists like Hector Avalos who cut to the roots of certain sorts of religious violence, and today’s guest, physicist Victor Stenger who takes a purely scientific view on the supernatural. Can science prove God does not, can not, exist? Many scientists, atheistic scientists in fact, disagree on the answer to this question.

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Show 197: Alfie Kohn

This interview was originally aired in part on February 2, 2007

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From Wikipedia: “Alfie Kohn is an American lecturer and author in the fields of education, psychology and parenting, residing in Belmont, Massachusetts. He is an outspoken critic of American work place management, public education and parenting techniques. Kohn having been an educator himself has written many books on education. Probably the most comprehensive being The Schools our Children Deserve. However he has reserved the most attention from his stance on the trend toward pervasive standardized testing and excessive homework. He has written several books attacking “common sense” notions about competition, rewards, and parenting.

“On the home front, Kohn has challenged parents in Beyond Discipline: from Compliance to Community and Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason to give up the “because I’m the Mom” mode of parenting and switch to a cooperative, loving, guiding form of parenting which places children on more equal footing with parents.”

His latest book is called The Homework Myth.

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