Everything You Know About God Is Wrong

Dan Barker is co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation [ffrf.org] and author of Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (FFRF, Inc., 1992). He is also a professional jazz musician and songwriter living in Madison, Wisconsin. He has produced two freethought musical CDs for FFRF: Friendly, Neighborhood Atheist and Beware of Dogma.

Born in 1937 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and educated at the University of North Carolina and at the University California, Berkeley, Coleman Barks has for the last thirty-one years collaborated with various scholars of the Persian language (most notably, John Moyne) to bring over into American free verse the poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi. This work has resulted in nineteen volumes, culminating with the bestselling Essential Rumi in 1995, two appearances on Bill Moyers’ Public Television specials, and inclusion in the prestigious Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. The Rumi translations have sold over three-quarters of a million copies. It is claimed that over the last ten years Rumi has been the most-read poet in the United States. Dr. Barks taught American Literature and Creative Writing at various universities for thirty-four years, and he has published five volumes of poetry. In 2004 he received the Juliet Hollister Award for his work in the interfaith area. In March 2005 the US State Department sent him to Afghanistan as the first visiting speaker there in twenty-five years. In May 2006 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Tehran. He is now a retired Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia in Athens. He has two grown sons and four grandchildren, all of whom live near him in Athens, Georgia.

David V. Barrett has been a schoolteacher, a programmer and intelligence analyst, and a journalist. He is now a freelance writer. His many books include The New Believers (2001), a 544-page study of new religious movements and their problems in society, and Secret Societies (1997), an investigation into the history, aims, and ideals of Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and other esoteric movements throughout history. His critical work has appeared in mainstream and alternative newspapers, magazines, and websites in the UK and the US. He has contributed to numerous encyclopedias on alternative beliefs, new religions, and science fiction and fantasy. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of books and magazines in several countries. He is currently researching for a Ph.D. in sociology of religion at the London School of Economics. When not researching and writing, he plays fretless bass in a rock-jazz-blues band. He lives in London.

John G. Bourke (1846-1896) was a distinguished military man and a gentleman scholar who taught himself several languages, including Latin, Gaelic, and Apache. He received the Medal of Honor for his performance during the Civil War (he had joined the Fifteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry when he was sixteen). After graduating from West Point, he served in the Third United States Cavalry for the rest of his life, eventually achieving the rank of colonel. Beginning in the 1880s, Bourke penned several books and numerous papers and articles on his military engagements and on Native American beliefs, rituals, and language.

In addition to be an avid, addicted bowler, and a collector and chronicler of the sport, Bill Brent founded Black Sheets magazine and edited all seventeen issues between 1993 and 2000. He's the author of The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Men (Cleis Press, 2002). His fiction appears in The Best American Erotica 1997, Tough Guys, Best Gay Erotica 2002 and 2004, Best S/M Erotica, and Rough Stuff, plus its sequel, Roughed Up. He coedited the Best Bisexual Erotica series with Dr. Carol Queen, the second volume being a finalist in the fourteenth Lambda Literary Awards. His articles have appeared in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the San Francisco Bay Times, other magazines, P.O.V., and at [goodvibes.com]. He has authored several chapbooks of poems and short prose, and published a number of books, including Hot Off the Net, edited by Russ Kick (see [www.blackbooks.com/catalog]). Want his email newsletter? Drop him a line at <verbose@comcast.net>, or check out [www.authorsden.com/billbrent] for more of his prose and other writing.

Ed Buckner, son of a low-church Episcopal clergyman, was born in Fitzgerald, Georgia, in 1946. In 1968, he married Lois Diane Bright Buckner, and they have a son, Michael E. Buckner. Buckner received his B.A. from Rice University, 1967; his M.Ed. from Georgia State University, 1975; and his Ph.D. at Georgia State University, 1983. For the Freethought Press, he has edited books by Massimo Pigliucci, Keith Parsons, Carol Faulkenberry, and Edwin Kagin. With his wife Diane, he co-edited and published freethinker and retired FBI agent Oliver G. Halle's Taking the Harder Right (2006). With his son, Michael, he co-edited Quotations That Support the Separation of State and Church (1995). Also, he wrote the concluding chapter, “Winning the ‘Battle Royal,’” for Kimberly Blaker's Fundamentals of Extremism: The Christian Right in America (2003). He is the author or co-author of chapters or entries in two other books (besides Everything... ) published in 2007: “Secular Schooling” in Parenting Beyond Belief, edited by Dale McGowan, and several entries in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, edited by Tom Flynn. From 2001 to 2003, he was Executive Director of the Council for Secular Humanism. In addition to writing hundreds of letters to the editor, Buckner has debated and spoken around the United States about freethought and secular humanism, often about the Treaty of Tripoli and “This Is a Free Country, Not a Christian Nation.” Buckner is a member of the Advisory Board for the Secular Coalition for America and is on the Advisory Board of the Godless Americans Political Action Committee. Some of his writings and talks can be found at stephenjaygould.org, secularhumanism.org, nobeliefs.com, and infidels.org.

Michael E. Buckner, the son of Ed and Diane Buckner, was born at the Great Lakes Naval Hospital in Shields Township, Illinois, and currently lives in Decatur, Georgia. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1992. With his father, Michael edited and compiled Quotations That Support the Separation of State and Church (1995), a work which has six sections: U.S. Constitution, Treaties, State Constitutions; Founding Fathers (and others of that era); Presidents and similar leaders; Supreme Court rulings; other famous Americans; and foreign sources. Also, he is the author of a widely circulated and reprinted essay about Independence Day called “The Unchristian Roots of the Fourth of July.”

Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989. She is currently editing the new annual anthology series, Best Erotic Comics, scheduled to debut in November 2007. Her writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Ms., Penthouse, and the Skeptical Inquirer, and in numerous anthologies, including two volumes of the Best American Erotica series. She is editor of the anthology Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients, and author of the erotic novella “Bending,” which appeared in the three-novella collection Three Kinds of Asking For It, edited by Susie Bright. She is blogging obsessively about atheism, sex, politics, science, and celebrity crushes at [gretachristina.typepad.com].

Erik Davis is an award-winning writer, teacher, and performance lecturer based in San Francisco. He is the author, most recently, of The Visionary State: A Journey through California's Spiritual Landscape (Chronicle Books), with photographs by Michael Rauner. He also wrote Led Zeppelin IV, an entry in Continuum's 33 1/3 series, and TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information (Harmony), a cult classic of visionary media studies that has been translated into five languages. His essays on music, media, technoculture, and spirituality have appeared in over a dozen books, including AfterBurn: Reflections on Burning Man (University of New Mexico Press), Zig Zag Zen (Chronicle Books), The Disinformation Book of Lies (The Disinformation Company), 010101: Art in Technological Times (SFMOMA), and Prefiguring Cyberculture (MIT Press). Davis has contributed to scores of publications, including Bookforum, ArtForum, Wired, Salon, Strange Attractor, Blender, Yeti, LA Weekly, and the Village Voice. He has taught at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, the California Institute of Integral Studies, and Esalen. He regularly posts to www.techgnosis.com, where many of his articles and essays can be found.

Richard Dawkins FRS is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. His most recent book is The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin, 2006).

Peter Eckstein is a retired economics professor and labor economist who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He has a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Michigan and a master's degree in sociology and doctorate in economics from Harvard University.

FOUND Magazine. “We collect found stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids’ homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, doodles—anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life. Anything goes. We certainly didn't invent the idea of found stuff being cool. Every time we visit our friends in other towns, someone's always got some kind of unbelievable discovered note or photo on their fridge. We decided to make a bunch of projects so that everyone can check out all the strange, hilarious and heartbreaking things people have picked up and passed our way.”

After many years in retail, Tasha Fox is a homemaker in British Columbia.

Bestselling author Neil Gaiman has long been one of the top writers in modern comics, as well as writing books for readers of all ages. He is listed in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the top ten living postmodern writers, and is a prolific creator of works of prose, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics, and drama. His New York Times-bestselling 2001 novel for adults, American Gods, was awarded the Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, SFX, and Locus awards, was nominated for many other awards, including the World Fantasy Award and the Minnesota Book Award, and appeared on many best-of-year lists. Gaiman was the creator/writer of monthly cult DC Comics horrorweird series, Sandman, which won nine Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, including the award for best writer four times, and three Harvey Awards. Sandman #19 took the 1991 World Fantasy Award for best short story, making it the first comic ever to be awarded a literary award. Norman Mailer said of Sandman: “Along with all else, Sandman is a comic strip for intellectuals, and I say it's about time.” Gaiman's other works include Anansi Boys, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), Neverwhere, Stardust, and the scripts for Mirrormask and the upcoming Beowulf.

A New York City criminal defense attorney and President of the Biblical Archaeology Society of New York (BASNY), Gary Greenberg has long been interested in the intersection between ancient myth and ancient history, especially as it applies to Egyptian influences on the writing of the bible. The problem, he says, is figuring out how to separate the myth from the history. In 2006, he served as a consultant to National Geographic Television's Science of the Bible series. He has also lectured frequently on ancient history, mythology, and biblical studies and has also presented papers at several academic conferences concerned with Egyptian and/or biblical affairs. He has also written for several Egyptological journals. In 1978 he ran for Governor of New York on the Libertarian Party ticket. Greenberg is the author of The Moses Mystery: The African Origins of the Jewish People (Birch Lane Press, 1997); reprinted in paperback as The Bible Myth: The African Origins of the Jewish People (Citadel Press, 1998), 101 Myths of the Bible: How Ancient Scribes Invented Biblical History (Sourcebooks, 2000, paperback edition 2002), The Sins of King David: A New History (Sourcebooks 2002), Manetho: A Study in Egyptian Chronology (Shangri-La Publications, 2002), and The Judas Brief: Who Really Killed Jesus? (Continuum, 2007). You can read excerpts from his books along with some of his other writings on the ancient Near East and some of his academic papers at [biblemyth.com]. His blog is at [bibleandhistory.com].

James A. Haught. “I’m an old newspaper editor who has spent half a century chronicling social struggles and cultural tides. Personally, I’ve waged a long crusade for rational, scientific thinking as an antidote for harmful supernatural-ism. I’ve written five books and many magazine articles against religion, astrology, mysticism, psychic claims, cults, ‘New Agery,’ fundamentalism, and other magical beliefs.”

Sam Jordison is a writer and freelance journalist. He is the author of The Joy of Sects, Crap Towns, Bad Dates, and his next book will be called Annus Horribilis. He has written for a number of papers in the UK, most often the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, and the Scotsman. He also sometimes works as a goatherd in the South of France.

Earl Kemp, a national nuisance, has been known by many (dis)guises: adventurer, explorer, lover, beloved, literary rebel, First Amendment convict savant, and numerous others, mostly all bad. He is best known as the notorious producer, during the Golden Age of Sleaze Paperbacks, of more than 5,000 novels and half again that many Naked people magazines. In his dotage, he dribbles memoirs at [efanzines.com/EK/index.html] and has become The (uppercase) Chronicler of the entire genre.

Bobbie Kirkhart is a former Sunday school teacher whose first national publication, an article titled “I Protest: A Santa Claus God,” was in Christianity Today. Since discovering the bright light of reason, she has been active in many freethought groups. She is currently vice president of the Secular Coalition for America and has served as co-president of Atheists United, and as president of the Atheist Alliance International. In addition to her regular President's Messages in the Rational Alternative and in Secular Nation, her work has been printed in Free Inquiry and American Atheist magazines. She is a contributing author of The Fundamentals of Extremism: The Christian Right in America, published by New Boston Books. In her personal life, she is a retired teacher in Los Angeles Unified School District's Adult Division. She is married to a fellow atheist and has one adult daughter, also an atheist.

Paul Krassner is the author of One Hand Jerking: Reports From an Investigative Satirist. He publishes The Disneyland Memorial Orgy at [paulkrassner.com].

Kristan Lawson is the author or co-author of several books, including Weird Europe, California Babylon, and Darwin and Evolution for Kids.

Peter Manseau, the author of Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son (Free Press, 2005), is currently writing a novel about Yiddish in America.

Jack Murnighan has a B.A. in semiotics and a Ph.D. in medieval literature but long ago took off his mortarboard and now teaches freelance writing at the University of the Arts. For quite a few years he was editor of the online literary magazine Nerve and has written for many websites and for Esquire, Glamour, Interiors, and Jockey magazines. His fiction has appeared in seven anthologies and might even make up a book of its own one day. He edited a short-story anthology, Full Frontal Fiction, and has published two books on the history of sex in great books: The Naughty Bits and Classic Nasty. He lives in New York City.

Dianna Narciso is the author of Like Rolling Uphill: Realizing the Honesty of Atheism. She maintains the websites at atheistview.com and diannanarciso.com. She is founder and president of Space Coast Freethought Association in Florida at spacecoastfreethought.org.

Michael Parenti is an internationally known award-winning author and lecturer whose books include The Culture Struggle, Superpatriotism, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome, The Terrorism Trap, Democracy for the Few, Against Empire, and Make-Believe Media. He is one of the nation's leading progressive political analysts. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University and has taught at a number of colleges and universities, in the United States and abroad. His website is michaelparenti.org.

Robert W. Pelton is the author of The Persecuted Prophets: The Story of the Frenzied Serpent Handlers (with Karen W. Carden), Civil War Period Cookery, Historical Thanksgiving Cookery, Traitors and Treason, and many other books.

Benjamin Radford is managing editor of two science magazines, the Skeptical Inquirer and the Spanish-language Pensar. He has written over 300 articles on various topics, including urban legends, mass hysteria, mysterious creatures, and media criticism. Radford is author of three books: Hoaxes, Myths, and Manias: Why We Need Critical Thinking (co-authored with Robert Bartholomew), Media Mythmakers: How Journalists, Activists, and Advertisers Mislead Us, and Lake Monster Mysteries (co-authored with Joe Nickell). The website for his books is radfordbooks.com.

Douglas Rushkoff is the author of a dozen books on media and society. His controversial text on Judaism, Nothing Sacred, poses that the religion was originally intended as an antidote to racism, nationalism, and superstition—even though it is being used to support them today. The Forward chose him as one of America's Fifty Most Influential Jews, and the Transcendental Judaism movement ordained him as a rabbi.

Robert Damon Schneck, America's Historian of the Strange, is the author of The President's Vampire: Strange-but-True Tales of the United States of America, as well as books for young readers, including Detective Notebook: Are You Psychic? He is a freelance writer who contributes to Fate and Fortean Times.

Jeff Sharlet, a contributing editor to Harper's and Rolling Stone, is the author of the forthcoming Jesus Plus Nothing (HarperCollins), a history of theocratic politics in America.

Michael Standaert’s book examining the Left Behind series and Tim LaHaye's political activism, Skipping Towards Armageddon: The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire, was published by Soft Skull Press in 2006. His satirical novel, The Adventures of the Pisco Kid, was released by Arriviste Press in 2007.

Thérèse Taylor is the author of a scholarly biography of a French saint, Bernadette of Lourdes: Her Life, Visions and Death. She has published articles on religion, folklore, and studies of life writing. She teaches history at Charles Sturt University, Australia.

H.G. Wells (1866-1946) is best-remembered as a late-Victorian pioneer of science fiction, mainly due to his 1890s novels The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds. These are just a sliver of the approximately 180 books he wrote, covering topics such as politics, science, history, and the future.

Besides the books below, Russ has written articles and a column for the Village Voice and several independent magazines. The Memory Hole [www.thememoryhole.org], a website devoted to rescuing knowledge and freeing information, is his labor of love. His personal website is [www.mindpollen.com]. Russ made world headlines in April 2004 when his Freedom of Information Act request/appeal resulted in the release of 288 photos of the US war dead coming home in flag-draped coffins. The previous Halloween, Russ had made the front page of the New York Times when he digitally uncensored a heavily redacted Justice Department report. He also runs Kick Books, whose first title was a math geek's dream: Pi to Five Million Places.

Books as Author

• Outposts: A Catalogue of Rare and Disturbing Alternative Information

• Psychotropedia: Publications from the Periphery

• 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know

• The Disinformation Book of Lists: Subversive Facts and Hidden Information in Rapid-Fire Format

• 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know, Volume 2

Books as Editor

• Hot Off the Net: Erotica and Other Sex Writings From the Internet

• You Are Still Being Lied To: The Disinformation Guide to Media Distortion, Historical Whitewashes and Cultural Myths

• Everything You Know Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies

• Abuse Your Illusions: The Disinformation Guide to Media Mirages and Establishment Lies

• Everything You Know About Sex Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to the Extremes of Human Sexuality (and Everything in Between)

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ARTICLE HISTORIES

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ABOUT THE EDITOR