Posted on

Show 200: Raymond Lotta – “Atheism & Politics”

Audio here!

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.
Continue reading “Show 200: Raymond Lotta – “Atheism & Politics””

Posted on

Show 199: Reverend Lennox Yearwood

Audio here!

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.

Posted on

Show 198: Victor Stenger

Audio here!

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.

Continue reading “Show 198: Victor Stenger”

Posted on

Show 197: Alfie Kohn

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

Audio here!

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.

Continue reading “Show 197: Alfie Kohn”

Posted on

Show 196: Annalee Newitz

Audio here!

In this kick-off to Equal Time’s periodic series on “Humanism’s Economics,” we will investigate the dehumanizing aspects of capitalism – our current non-humanistic economic system in America – via the way it plays out in American movies and novels. How do these arts tell the story about life under capitalism, and what are these artists trying to tell us about its cost?

In Pretend We’re Dead, Annalee Newitz argues that the slimy zombies and gore-soaked murderers who have stormed through American film and literature over the past century embody the violent contradictions of capitalism. Ravaged by overwork, alienated by corporate conformity, and mutilated by the unfettered lust for profit, fictional monsters act out the problems with an economic system that seems designed to eat people whole.

Newitz looks at representations of serial killers, mad doctors, the undead, cyborgs, and unfortunates mutated by their involvement with the mass media industry. Whether considering the serial killer who turns murder into a kind of labor by mass producing dead bodies, or the hack writers and bloodthirsty actresses trapped inside Hollywood’s profit-mad storytelling machine, she reveals that each creature has its own tale to tell about how a freewheeling market economy turns human beings into monstrosities.

Continue reading “Show 196: Annalee Newitz”

Posted on

Show 195: Heidi Ewing

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

Audio here!

From Wilipedia: “Jesus Camp is a documentary about the “Kids On Fire” summer camp, located just outside Devils Lake, North Dakota and run by Becky Fischer and her ministry, Kinds in Ministry International. The film focuses on three children who attended the camp in the summer of 2005 – Levi, Rachael, and Victoria (Tory). All three children, despite their youth, are very devout charismatic Christains.

At the camp, Fischer stresses the need for children to purify themselves in order to be used by God. She strongly believes that children need to be in the forefront of turning America toward conservative Christian values. In one scene shot at Christ Triumphant Church, Lou Engle, the chief “prophet” … preaches a message urging children to join the fight to end abortion. He prays for George W. Bush to have the strength to appoint “righteous judges” who will overturn Roe v. Wade.”

Posted on

Show 194: Frederick S. Lane

The Decency Wars: The Campaign to Cleanse American Culture

Audio here!

From the Publisher:

Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Superbowl precipitated a nationwide controversy. To judge by the hysterical reaction, one would think that nothing so shocking had ever been seen on television. Yet, remarkably, during the conservative 1950s, similar breast-baring accidents on television (by Faye Emerson and Jayne Mansfield) raised barely a stir. Is America on the verge of another puritanical era? Is this new Puritanism the result of something more than just concerns for public decency?

First Amendment and emerging technology specialist Frederick S. Lane examines America’s changing attitudes toward decency and the politics of decency in this timely book. He takes a strong and unequivocal position that it is inappropriate and dangerous for the government to try to regulate morality. He accuses religious conservatives of starting “decency wars” for motives no more noble than profit and political gain. As Lane astutely points out, such controversies generate a flood of books, speeches, and syndicated radio and television programs. More importantly, they fill the coffers of conservative politicians and “non-profits.”

Continue reading “Show 194: Frederick S. Lane”

Posted on

Show 193: Darwin Day Special: David Buller

Darwin Day Special: Adapting Minds:Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature

Audio here!

From the Publisher:

Was human nature designed by natural selection in the Pleistocene epoch? The dominant view in evolutionary psychology holds that it was — that our psychological adaptations were designed tens of thousands of years ago to solve problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. In this provocative and lively book, David Buller examines in detail the major claims of evolutionary psychology — the paradigm popularized by Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate and by David Buss in The Evolution of Desire — and rejects them all. This does not mean that we cannot apply evolutionary theory to human psychology, says Buller, but that the conventional wisdom in evolutionary psychology is misguided.

Continue reading “Show 193: Darwin Day Special: David Buller”

Posted on

Show 192: Fund Drive Show: “Our Children; Our Future”

Fund Drive Show: “Our Children; Our Future”

Audio 1 here!

Audio 2 here!

As the Culture Wars persist in America, what affect are they having on our children? How are parents steering their children in or around the battles between Right and Left and between Fundamentalist Religion and Secularization? And how are our notions of human nature and childrearing itself framing what and how our children learn – in school and in summer camp?

These are the questions we will be asking our very special guests on the next Equal Time for Freethought – our Fund Drive Special – Our Children, Our Future, as we look to understand where we may be going wrong, and how we might move in a more progressive way to secure our children’s futures, and indeed the future of humanity?

Our guests will be Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, directors of the Oscar Nominated documentary, Jesus Camp; noted education specialist and author of numerous books on human nature, education and parenting, Alfie Kohn; and High School Senior Matthew LaClair.

Continue reading “Show 192: Fund Drive Show: “Our Children; Our Future””

Posted on

Show 191: Stephanie Hendricks

This interview originally aired in part on October 5, 2006.

Audio here!

Stephanie Hendricks on her book; Divine Destruction: Wise Use, Dominion Theology And The Making Of American Environmental Policy

Book Description:

“It began as a simple investigation into environmental policy in the Sierra Nevadas. But what journalist Stephenie Hendricks uncovered turned out to be a far bigger story, the ramifications of which affect the entire globe. Hendricks discovered that the development of American environmental policy in the Bush administration is being driven by Dominion Theologists-far-right Christian ideologues who believe that by exhausting our natural resources they will hasten the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Known in policy circles as the “wise-use” doctrine, the theory is startling enough in implication, but even more chilling in practice-some officials say the Bush administration did not sign the Kyoto Accord on fighting global warming because it was “against God’s prophecies.” And as Hendricks investigates the Dominion Theologists’ power within the government and profiles some of its leading proponents, she reveals where their funding comes from and charts their regular intersection with the mining and logging industries, real estate developers, off-road vehicle manufacturers, and even The Walt Disney Company. She also tells the often frightening story of those people who dare to resist their policies-for example, the retiree who challenged the destruction of a national forest near her home only to have her life threatened.” – Melville House