Madison Arnold

Arnold is a regular contributor to Freethought Today.

FT ran a story about him in the March 1989 issue. Here are a few excerpts:

"As a kid I looked up and saw no god and I wondered where 'he' got such a large notebook to write down X's when I am bad as I was told he did."

"One of the first unanswerable questions I asked was when I was eight years old. Some cousins of mine always said a prayer before eating:

    God is kind,
    God is good,
    And we thank him [sic]
    For our food.

"At that time we always heard the children in Europe were starving, therefore we should not waste any food. Two questions arose in my mind. First, what I knew about poetry was that it had to rhyme, and 'food' and 'good' didn't rhyme, so I always said 'Fud' with a silent sneer, and made it rhyme.

"Second: I once asked my aunt if god is good and we thank him for our Fud, why are the kids in Europe starving? I asked her if the kids in Europe were all bad. I remember her saying, 'Be thankful that you have food,' but, of course, she couldn't deal with the rest of it.

"I never accepted religion so I had nothing to reject as such. The history of 'Christiansanity' (my own coinage of which I am proud!) is so brutal of mind, emotions, freedom, progress, science, and all that I hold precious, that by any standards of justice its leaders in almost any given period would be incarcerated for life, or worse!"