Cover art: Reductio ad absurdum. Tom Sullivan conjures up the nightmare world of a 21st-century public schoolroom in which creationist antiscience and religious superstition have displaced science and reason once and for all -- the culmination of the present wave of evolution-bashing in Kansas, Ohio, Kentucky, and elsewhere. Tom thanks Ann Zindler, Pat Reese, and Michael Shermer for creative suggestions.

Editor’s Desk
    Frank R. Zindler
    Why not call it Treason?

American Atheists Planning
for the future
    Ellen Johnson
    A speech given by the president of
    American Atheists at the Southern
    Regional Atheist Meet this September
    in Chattanooga.

Fighting the Religious Reich
    Pamela L. Sumners
    The Dark Ages are contem-
    porary, not past, as this witty
    Alabama lawyer clearly shows.

An Epistle of Bro. Josiah
    Josh Karpf
    humor

Eyes Wide Shut: The Religious
Agenda to Exploit Littleton
    and
The Martyrdom of Cassie Bernal:
Made or Manufactured?
    Conrad F. Goeringer
    How a testimony that may never have
    been spoken has enabled the forces of
    fundamentalism to manufacture block-
    buster-grade ammunition with which
    to demolish the wall of separation
    between state and church.

Soul-Saving
    Arthur Warner
    Acting on the religious obligation to
    save souls can have deadly but prof-
    itable consequences.

Loud Arguments From Silence
    Frank R. Zindler
    An analysis of the religionist
    witicism “Absence of evidence is
    not evidence of absence.”

Murder by Consensus
   Margaret Bhatty
    Our Indian correspondent tells of the
    persecution by Islamic fundamentalists
    of Bangladesh rationalist writers
    Taslima Nasreen and Shamsur
    Rahman.

Charles Darwin on Slavery
    Is human cruelty more likely to be the
    consequence of evolutionary thought or
    religious ideation?

Science and the Chimera
   James Randi
    A famous magician reveals how people
    are easily fooled and how they fool
    themselves.

H.L. Mencken on
Creationists and William
Jennings Bryan
    The great wit and literary critic who
    covered the Scopes trial in 1925 reveals
    the hatred of knowledge characteristic
    of creationists in general and the lust
    for revenge of their mouthpiece Bryan
    in particular.

The Imprint of Tyranny
   Kenneth G. Ramey
    Tyranny, the Inquisition, and other
    Christian legacies and lunacies.

Books
    Martin Luther: Hitler’s
     Spiritual Ancestor
     Peter F. Wiener
    Psychoanalysis of Religion
     Fritz Eric Hoevels

Poetry

My Turn!
What is Creationism
    Spike Tyson

Weird Tales From the Annals
of A Bible-Belt Atheist
    Gary Sloan

Letters to the Editor
    Why is there something
     instead of nothing?
    Criticism of Rober Englehart
    Dumbing-down of biology
    texts.

• James Randi's Talk at the 25th American Atheist Convention
• Martin Luther: Hitler’s Spiritual Ancestor can be purchased online.