The Humanist Advocate

BOOK REVIEW: A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

BOOK REVIEW: A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Review by Dean Bedekar, September 2023   This is a unique book.  It will turn upside down everything you learned in your high school history class.  It’s about people who are never mentioned in traditional history books – workers, women, Blacks, Native Americans, immigrants, LGBTQ, the lower classes and residents of third-world nations.  By 2015, the book sold over 2 million copies and was translated into 20 languages.  In the Oscar-winning movie Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon says the book…

Another Sign of the Times

Another Sign of the Times

This week, NOSHA received a media inquiry from Louisiana Record, which describes itself as a legal journal covering Louisiana’s legal system. Its goal is to provide an objective view of the legal landscape in Louisiana, as well as an active forum for both sides of the argument. They asked if we see House Bill 8 as problematic or as an illegal injection of religion into the state’s classrooms, since the law requires all classrooms in public elementary, secondary, and postsecondary schools post signage…

Here’s to Your Health

There are vastly different interpretations and styles of expressing foundational principles of Christianity and other religions. One such message is that the value of human life on earth takes a back seat to the reunification of the soul with the creator, or gods —be it in Heaven, Valhalla, the Garden of Eden,  or some other divine destination. Critics have claimed that this idea is ultimately a death wish—if the Promised Land was so great, what is the point of sticking…

Geeking Out on the Good Ol’ Days

Geeking Out on the Good Ol’ Days

I am 22 years older than Ethernet. At 22, I worked for Xerox Canada and was getting training in El Segundo and a bit of on-the-job troubleshooting experience between courses at Xerox PARC labs in Palo Alto, not on Ethernet, but on Xerox Sigma 9 (used to be Scientific Data Systems) mainframes and various peripherals. Three years later, I was working for Digital Equipment of Canada and was getting training on the PDP11 series and later back to Boston for…

The Law of the Land….or the Lord?

This is the time of year the U.S. Supreme Court releases its decisions on cases reviewed and adjudicated during the session; and here at home in Louisiana the state legislative session ends and we have a list of bills it has passed, and, if any, those subsequently vetoed by the governor. High Court cases and proposed new laws at the state level have some interest for humanists and all others that have an ideological stake in the primacy of individual…

BOOK REVIEW: Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot by Seth Andrews

BOOK REVIEW: Christianity Made Me Talk Like an Idiot by Seth Andrews

  Review by Dean Bedekar, June 2023 Seth Andrews is a podcaster and sits on the board of American Atheists. The book is available as a premium with a 1-year subscription to American Atheist magazine. He was a devout Christian from Oklahoma for many years before turning to reason. He doesn’t claim that all Christians are idiots, merely that Christians sound like idiots as they try to defend a hopelessly contorted religion. The Big Con The Christian Con rests on…

Trust Your Librarians

The national book purge fever came late to the self-appointed Protectorate of Their and Your Children in St. Tammany Parish, but they have been making up for lost time. The American Library Association (ALA) reports that the first indication of a surge of complaints about books dealing with race theory, honest interpretations of history, and especially, books and graphic novels addressing LGBTQ+ issues began in 2021 when the number of unique titles challenged increased to 1858 from the 223 challenged…

NOSHA Notes

……and         Louisiana’s electorate and their elected representatives have a thing for state constitutions: they love making new ones, and then almost immediately begin willy-nilly tacking on amendments, as if they had forgotten a few things in their rush to put the seal of approval on the new document—adding amendments designed to address all issues— large, small, and sometimes even non-existent.  We are currently ruled by our eleventh constitution, adopted in 1974, which itself has been amended…

Why would an atheist write a play about Torah?

Why would an atheist write a play about Torah?

By NOSHA member Marion Freistadt (aka Penny Bright) That’s the enigma you’ll see revealed on April 26 at the Marigny Opera House. My co-writer, Helen Stone, and I have written a play, called The Enigma of the Torah based on our decades of participation in Torah Study. (Torah is also called “the Hebrew Bible” and is the same as the first 5 books of the “Old Testament.”) I am a lifelong atheist. I am also Jewish. Atheism, skepticism, and questioning is…

Who Even Gets This?

        Chances are you have seen at least one of the “HeGetsUs” campaign ads on television or YouTube, or even on a billboard, since reportedly 120 Americans  have been reached by the campaign since it kicked off in March last year. According to its website, “There are billboards, a 13-stop college football tailgate tour, and a remarkable internet presence that spans far beyond YouTube, branching into the modern public squares of Meta, Snapchat, Reddit, and Instagram with…

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