Eddie Tabash
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Edward Tabash is an American lawyer and political and social activist. He is an atheist, a proponent of the
Establishment Clause In United States law, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, together with that Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, form the constitutional right of freedom of religion. The ''Establishment Clause'' an ...
. He chairs the Board of Directors for the
Center for Inquiry The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a U.S. nonprofit organization that works to mitigate belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal and to fight the influence of religion in government. History The Center for Inquiry was established in 1991 by ...
. Tabash has represented the atheist position in debates against several world-renowned religious philosophers and apologists, including
William Lane Craig William Lane Craig (; born August 23, 1949) is an American Analytic philosophy, analytic philosopher, Christian apologetics, Christian apologist, author, and theologian. He is a professor of philosophy at Houston Christian University and at the T ...
,
Peter van Inwagen Peter van Inwagen ( ; born September 21, 1942) is an American philosopher. He is the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and a research professor of philosophy at Duke University each spring. He previousl ...
, J.P. Moreland, Greg Bahnsen, Mohammad Hijab, and
Richard Swinburne Richard Granville Swinburne (; born 26 December 1934) is an English philosopher. He is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the last 50 years, Swinburne has been a proponent of philosophical arguments for the e ...
.


Early life

Tabash graduated
magna cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...
from
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
in 1973 and obtained a J.D. degree from
Loyola Law School Loyola Law School is the law school of Loyola Marymount University, a private Jesuit university in Los Angeles, California. Loyola was established in 1920. Academics Degrees offered include the Juris Doctor (JD); Master of Science in Legal ...
of Los Angeles in 1976. His father was an Orthodox rabbi from
Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...
and his mother was an
Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...
survivor from
Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...
. Tabash told D.J. Grothe in a 2007 interview when asked if he could sympathize with people's search for God, Tabash states, "I was a new age spiritual seeker for 25 years... I'm sympathetic with the yearning for some kind of immortality... But that does not mean it's true, and it doesn't mean that God beliefs are harmless." He remembers the stories his rabbi father used to tell at
Passover Passover, also called Pesach (; ), is a major Jewish holidays, Jewish holiday and one of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals. It celebrates the Exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Biblical Egypt, Egypt. According to the Book of Exodus, God in ...
about the miracles God performed in order to get Pharaoh to allow the Jews their freedom. In turn, his mother told him Auschwitz stories, and Tabash even as a boy could not understand why God would perform astounding miracles to rescue His people from a lesser tyrant, but be unwilling to perform miracles to rescue them from a far more murderous tyrant.


Career

Tabash is a member of the California State Bar, the
American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary association, voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students in the United States; national in scope, it is not specific to any single jurisdiction. Founded in 1878, the ABA's stated acti ...
, the
Los Angeles County Bar Association The Los Angeles County Bar Association (LACBA) is a voluntary bar association with more than 16,000 members throughout Los Angeles County, California, and the world. Founded in 1878, LACBA has strived to meet the professional needs of lawyers, ...
, and the Beverly Hills Bar Association. He also chairs the First Amendment Task Force for the Council for Secular Humanism. Tabash has written ''amicus'' briefs urging the separation of church and state, in cases before the
Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all Federal tribunals in the United States, U.S. federal court cases, and over Stat ...
and the California State Supreme Court and the California Court of Appeal. Tabash works in the Los Angeles area. Tabash believes in personal freedom. His views include advocacy of the decriminalization of prostitution, free speech, "Blasphemy is a human right", abortion rights, and the separation of church and state. He also supports the International Sex Worker Foundation for Art, Culture and Education (ISWFACE), and the
Internet Infidels Internet Infidels, Inc. is an American nonprofit educational organization founded in 1995 by Jeffery Jay Lowder and Brett Lemoine. Its mission is to use the Internet to promote a view that supernatural forces or entities do not exist (metaphysical ...
. He currently chairs the Legal Committee of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. In November 2012 he was chosen as chair of the boards of directors of the Center for Inquiry, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and the Council for Secular Humanism. From 1981 through 1998, Tabash actively debated numerous professional anti abortion opponents in the abortion rights movement in California. He was, during that time, the primary public speaker and debater for the Southern California branch of the California Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. In 1994, Tabash finished second out of six in the Democratic primary for the California State Assembly in the 41st Assembly District. In 2000, Tabash finished second out of four in the Democratic Primary for the California State Assembly in the 55th Assembly District. Tabash is a firm supporter of equal rights for all people, religious or non religious, "No American can officially be valued more or less than anyone else because of either adhering to or rejecting a tenet of religion belief or nonbelief... The separation of church and state is one of those magnificent issues that can help to unify a very severe breach in our country because its aim is to protect both believers and nonbelievers equally... "My ultimate aim is to persuade overwhelming majorities of people to abandon any prejudices they harbor against atheists and to view nonbelief as just one more respectable alternative among existing viewpoints on matters of religion." He has been concerned about how religious fundamentalist beliefs of all kinds have been used, throughout human history, to deny women their rightful equality, "No person should lose her or his freedom because of someone else's religious beliefs. Only those actions that can be demonstrated by empirical evidence to warrant sanctions, independently of religious dogma, should be punished." He also believes that this same mode of religious fundamentalism has been used to deny equal rights to members of the LGBT community. "There is not one proposed piece of legislation that would deny gays and lesbians equal rights that is not grounded in religious dogma". "The most precious freedom of conscience, the most precious and valued... right to determine one's own ideas about how the universe was formed should not be touched at all by the heavy oppressive hand of government, but should be left to the realm of individual freedom. All of these are in jeopardy because of the religious right wing." "Americans have to understand that there is a difference between one's personal view as to whether there is a supreme being--and what such a being requires of us--and what the law of the land should be."


References


External links


''The True Meaning of the Separation of Church and State''
article by Edward Tabash
Edward Tabash: The True Meaning of the Separation of Church and State - American Humanist Association
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tabash, Eddie Jewish American atheism activists 21st-century American Jews American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent Freethought University of California, Los Angeles alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Living people