ALBANY, N.Y. — A cadet quitting West Point less than six months before graduation says he could no longer be part of a culture that promotes prayers and religious activities and disrespects nonreligious cadets.

Blake Page announced his decision to quit the U.S. Military Academy this week in a much-discussed online post that echoed the sentiments of soldiers and airmen at other military installations. The 24-year-old told The Associated Press that a determination this semester that he could not become an officer because of clinical depression played a role in his public protest against what he calls the unconstitutional prevalence of religion in the military.

“I’ve been trying since I found that out: What can I do? What can I possibly do to initiate the change that I want to see and so many other people want to see?” Page said. “I realized that this is one way I can make that change happen.”

Page criticized a culture where cadets stand silently for prayers, where nonreligious cadets were jokingly called “heathens” by instructors at basic training and where one officer told him he’d never be a leader until he filled the hole in his heart. In announcing his resignation this week on The Huffington Post, he denounced “criminals” in the military who violate the oaths they swore to defend the Constitution.

“I don’t want to be a part of West Point knowing that the leadership here is OK with just shrugging off and shirking off respect and good order and discipline and obeying the law and defending the Constitution and doing their job,” he told the AP.

West Point officials on Wednesday disputed those assertions. Spokeswoman Theresa Brinkerhoff said prayer is voluntary at events where invocations and benedictions are conducted and noted the academy has a Secular Student Alliance club, where Page served as president.

Maj. Nicholas Utzig, the faculty adviser to the secular club, said he doesn’t doubt some of the moments Page described, but he doesn’t believe there is systematic discrimination against nonreligious cadets.

“I think it represents his own personal experience and perhaps it might not be as universal as he suggests,” said Utzig, who teaches English literature.

One of Page’s secularist classmates went further, calling his characterization of West Point unfair.

“I think it’s true that the majority of West Point cadets are of a very conservative, Christian orientation,” said senior cadet Andrew Houchin. “I don’t think that’s unique to West Point. But more broadly, I’ve never had that even be a problem with those of us who are secular.”

There have been complaints over the years that the wall between church and state is not always observed in the military. The Air Force Academy in Colorado in particular has been scrutinized for years over allegations from non-Christian students that they faced intolerance. A retired four-star general was asked last year to conduct an independent review of the overall religious climate at the academy.

There also has been a growing willingness in recent years by some service members to publicly identify themselves as atheists, agnostics or humanists and to seek the same recognition granted to Christians, Jews and other believers. Earlier this year, there was an event at Fort Bragg that was the first known event in U.S. military history to cater to nonbelievers.

Page said he hears about the plight of other nonreligious cadets in part through his involvement with the West Point affiliate of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The founder and president of that advocacy group said Page’s action is a milestone in the fight against “fanatical religiosity” in the military.

“This is an extraordinary act of courage that I do compare directly to what Rosa Parks did,” said Mikey Weinstein.

Page, who is from Stockbridge, Ga., and who was accepted into West Point after serving in the Army, said he was notified Tuesday of his honorable discharge. He faces no military commitment and will not have to reimburse the cost of his education.

West Point confirmed that it approved his resignation and that Page had been meeting the academic standards and was not undergoing any disciplinary actions. Page said he had been medically disqualified this semester from receiving a commission in the Army as a second lieutenant – like his classmates will receive in May – because of clinical depression and anxiety. He said his condition has gotten worse since his father killed himself last year.

It’s not unusual for cadets to drop out of West Point, an institution known for its rigorous academic and physical demands. But the window for dropping out without the potential for a penalty is in the first two years. Dropouts are rare after that point.

Page expects to leave for his grandparents’ home in Wright County, Minn., in the coming days. He plans to remain an activist on the role of religion in the military.

“I’d really love to be able to do this for the rest of my life,” he said.

Noted televangelist Pat Robertson firmly rejected young-earth creationism on “The 700 Club.” As CNN reports, when asked by a viewer how to respond to those who believe “the Bible could not explain the existence of dinosaurs,” Robertson suggested his viewers should not “fight science.”

“You go back in time, you’ve got radiocarbon dating. You got all these things, and you’ve got the carcasses of dinosaurs frozen in time out in the Dakotas,” Robertson said. “They’re out there. So, there was a time when these giant reptiles were on the Earth, and it was before the time of the Bible. So, don’t try and cover it up and make like everything was 6,000 years. That’s not the Bible.”

If Robertson truly doesn’t want his viewers to “fight science,” he should also dissuade them from pushing “intelligent design.” The bills attacking evolution and pushing ID pseudo-science keep coming. As HuffPo notes, a newly elected Montana state representative announced plans to require the teaching of “intelligent design” alongside evolution under the guise of “teaching the controversy.” The one federal court to consider the question rightly concluded that “intelligent design” is creationism in pseudo-scientific drag.

Neither young earth creationism nor the rejection of evolution is required by the Bible. As Dr. Joshua Swamidass, “a Christian and career scientist,” noted in the WSJ last week:

the age of the Earth and the rejection of evolution aren’t core Christian beliefs. Neither appears in the Nicene or Apostle’s Creed. Nor did Jesus teach them. Historical Christianity has not focused on how God created the universe, but on how God saves humanity through Jesus’ death and resurrection. . . .

there is simply no controversy in the scientific world about the age of the Earth or evolution. Evidence points to a billion-year-old planet.

The evidence for evolution is just as strong. In the past, evolution rested on ambiguous fossil evidence, but now it rests on much clearer DNA evidence that increases exponentially every month. Fully appreciating this evidence takes a lot of time, reading and patience. And it is not appropriate to “teach the controversy” in science class because there is no ongoing debate in the scientific community comparable to the theological debate.

The evolution debate is not a scientific controversy, but a theological controversy about a non-central Christian doctrine.

Religious leaders should no more try to deny evolution or the age of the earth than scientists should preach about Biblical commandments. Politicians, too, should stop pandering to scientific ignorance, even when grounded in religious belief — though this may be difficult. Polling suggests nearly 50 percent of Americans (58 percent of Republicans and 41 percent of Democrats) believe the Earth was created by God less than 10,000 years ago. As Beth Reinhard notes, “It’s not easy to reconcile matters of faith with matters of science, but smart public policy demands it.”

by Charles Haynes, director of Religious Freedom Education Project

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The American Humanist Association has launched a new website for non-religious kids and teens…check it out at kidswithoutgod.com.

Welcome to Kids Without God, a site for the millions of young people around the world who have embraced science, rejected superstition, and are dedicated to being Good Without A God!

From the Pew Research Center…One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation

POLL October 9, 2012

The number of Americans who do not identify with any religion continues to grow at a rapid pace. One-fifth of the U.S. public – and a third of adults under 30 – are religiously unaffiliated today, the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling.

In the last five years alone, the unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%).

This large and growing group of Americans is less religious than the public at large on many conventional measures, including frequency of attendance at religious services and the degree of importance they attach to religion in their lives.

However, a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, conducted jointly with the PBS television program Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, finds that many of the country’s 46 million unaffiliated adults are religious or spiritual in some way. Two-thirds of them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say they often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious” (37%), and one-in-five (21%) say they pray every day. In addition, most religiously unaffiliated Americans think that churches and other religious institutions benefit society by strengthening community bonds and aiding the poor.

With few exceptions, though, the unaffiliated say they are not looking for a religion that would be right for them. Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics.

Read the rest of the article and see graphs at http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx

Charles Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, makes the point in this September 24 article:

Extremists of all stripes are having a field day.

Loony rabble-rousers at home — the people behind “Innocence of Muslims,” the film insulting Muhammad — have succeeded in giving loony rabble-rousers abroad a golden opportunity to promote violence in the name of their own sick, twisted vision of Islam and the world.

The filmmakers join the ranks of Terry Jones, Fred Phelps and other American extremists who will say and do anything to make headlines and provoke outrage.

But however vile the filmmakers’ motives and however odious their speech, we must defend the indefensible by upholding their right to freedom of expression.

Needless to say, much of the world doesn’t agree.

Even in the land of the free, protecting the right to offend is a tough sell. According to a 2009 survey by the First Amendment Center, 43 percent of Americans do not think people should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to religious groups.

The U.S. Supreme Court does allow some restrictions on speech under the First Amendment, including speech intended to incite imminent violence. This film doesn’t meet that test.

Although the filmmakers surely knew that their film would provoke angry protests, they aren’t responsible for radical groups halfway around the world using the film as an excuse to kill.

If the United States were to react by attempting to censor speech that offends religions (as in some European countries), or speech that is blasphemous (as in some Muslim countries), Americans would forfeit the right to freedom of speech and religion.

Once government has the power to punish speech deemed “offensive” or “hateful,” the First Amendment is effectively repealed and no one’s speech is safe from prosecution and no one’s religion is safe from government interference.

Some religious and political leaders counter the American defense of the right to offend by claiming that “Innocence of Muslims” and other expression insulting religion violates what they call “religious freedom.”

In this alternate universe, freedom of religion is defined as freedom from offense. Interpreted this way, religious freedom gives religious leaders the right to determine when speech is sufficiently offensive to warrant government action.

Religious liberty as freedom from offense would be the death knell of authentic religious liberty, as the Supreme Court made clear in Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940), a landmark case defining free exercise of religion.

In that case, Jesse Cantwell, a Jehovah’s Witness, played a record with a strongly anti-Catholic message in a heavily Catholic neighborhood. Two men who heard the record called the police.

A unanimous Court upheld Cantwell’s right to proclaim his message, noting that “the tenets of one man may seem the rankest error to his neighbor.” But, the Court reasoned, “in spite of the probability of excesses and abuses, these liberties are, in the long view, essential to enlightened opinion and right conduct on the part of citizens of a democracy.”

In other words, a free marketplace of ideas — including ideas many find wrong or repulsive — is a necessary condition for ensuring that people are free to pursue the truth.

Charles C. Haynes is senior scholar at the First Amendment Center. His email is chaynes@freedomforum.org.

Reason Rally a Roaring Success!
Tens of thousands of rational people rallied in Washington, D.C. Saturday, March 24, for the largest gathering of secular people in world history! The message was clear: we’re here, we’re secular, get used to it! (to borrow the turn of a phrase). Through a very soggy day, we stood resolute…nay, enthusiastic!…committed to science, reason, critical thinking, and the absolute separation of church and state. Singers, scientists, philosophers, and comedians flowed in a seamless procession on and off the stage with a message of support for secular ideals, encouragement to “come out of the closet,” and excitement for our growing momentum. For more on the rally, see the article below in “Humanism in the News.”