Poland - a country of packed churches; a country where millions enthusiastically welcome the Pope; a country with a ban on virtually all abortions and with restrictions on prenatal tests; a country in which the Church claims the right to be involved in legislative processes about laws concerning neither the Church nor religion; a country in which the Church would like to tell scientists what should and what should not be a subject of their research; where the Church was prepared to set Poland at variance with the EU in order to get God's name into the European constitution.
In this country we are trying to promote rational thinking - RACJONALISTA.pl is currently the biggest center for publicizing free-thinkers and rationalists in Poland. More and more experts from different fields are contributing to our website. Since the website was established four years ago about 200 authors - both Polish and foreign - have published with us. Currently we hold about 2,700 articles and we have about 10 thousand visitors every day.
Adhering to the tradition of Enlightenment, we advocate scientific reliability and scientific methods of research and thinking. We hunt out prejudices, quackery, lies and phobias which are present in almost every walk of life and are often propagated in the mass media as well as in schools and in churches of all denominations.
RACJONALISTA. pl publishes articles and essays from all important fields of human knowledge. Our aim is to have on the Polish Internet a systematic compendium of knowledge devised by rationalists. At present we mostly stress the study of religions, church history, philosophy, civic education, science, history and ethics.
The teaching of the Catholic religion in all schools (and even in kindergartens) is paid for from the state budget. We, of course, do not get any subsidies from anybody; nevertheless, for young people we are a sort of antidote. The rising popularity of RACJONALISTA shows that there is a demand in Poland for rational thinking in spite of the expansion of the Church and of growing clericalism, intolerance and parochialism.
In January 2005 people connected with RACJONALISTA created the Polish Association of Rationalists based in Wroclaw. We are now trying to organise an association of people convinced of the need for joint action in order to promote the growth of individuals and society along rational lines.
New publications: 26-09-2008 Polish Rationalist Association The Polish Rationalist Association advocates separation of State and Church. Religious belief or non-belief should be the private matter of each citizen. Combining religion and politics leads inevitably to abuse and threatens to divide citizens against each other. In recent years the Catholic Church has been increasing its influence and public profile. What's worse, politicians seem to be seeking the favour of the Church, rather than considering themselves accountable only to the citizens who have elected them. Polish society however, is mature enough to conduct public discussions about the challenges and problems they face without uninvited "spiritual guidance". 03-08-2008 Zbigniew Jaworowski Get out the fur coats, because global cooling is coming! A world-renowned atmospheric
scientist and mountaineer, who has excavated ice out of 17 glaciers on 6 continents
in his 50-year career, tells how we know. 30-03-2008 Bernard Katz "Extreme liberals who look at this should be quaking in their boots," declares Pastor Becky Fischer with jovial satisfaction in the riveting documentary "Jesus Camp." Ms. Fischer, an evangelical Christian, helps run Kids on Fire, a summer camp in Devils Lake, N.D., that grooms children to be soldiers in "God's army." A mountainous woman of indefatigable good cheer, Ms. Fischer makes no bones about her expectation that the growing evangelical movement in the United States will one day end the constitutional ban separating church and state. And as the movie explores her highly effective methods of mobilizing God's army, that expectation seems reasonable. 05-03-2007 Andrzej Koraszewski The Jews knew that flight from their Polish, Ukrainian, Belorussian or Russian neighbors could be a leap from the frying pan into the fire. Some naively chose communism, believing in the promise of brotherhood without racism; others escaped to America; still others tried to assimilate, showing thousands of examples of their patriotism. The great majority simply tried to live side by side with their Polish neighbors, hoping that somehow things would work out. Only very few believed in the utopia of rebuilding an Israeli state in Palestine. 02-01-2007 Kaz Dziamka Without music I would probably not be able to live sanely. Like Vonnegut, I think there is something magical, something supra-rational, something ultimately mysterious about music. If I ever believed in a god, it would have to be a god of music, music being the only evidence that there might be somewhere a being, who although indifferent to our fate, is benevolent enough to give us the consolation of a heavenly melody. For years now, over three decades in fact, I have been collecting gems of music. I have collected hundreds, and I listen to them obsessively, compulsively. My music collection has given me endless hours of pleasure. I hope these gems will also give you pleasure. 20-11-2006 Adam Cioch In Poland we have about five percent of non-believers, which is about two million people. Moreover, we have a handful of humanist and freethinker organizations as well as some magazines. The biggest of them appears in about two thousand copies every second month. The magazines are: a periodical "Bez Dogmatu" (Without a dogma) (one of the editors, Andrzej Dominiczak, is present at this conference), the biggest periodical "Res Humana" and "Forum Myśli Wolnej" (Forum of free thought). Polish humanists do not have any access to public radio and TV and no private radio or TV stations see any interest in broadcasting humanist programmmes. Humanist activists have also created websites. The most successful is racjonalista.pl (The Rationalist), visited by about fifteen thousand people daily. This makes the website racjonalista.pl the biggest humanist medium in Poland. 13-11-2006 Andrzej Heyduk Philosophers have been tackling the question of God's existence or non-existence for centuries, invariably to no avail. It became painfully obvious to many great thinkers that it was virtually impossible to construct a strict proof of God's existence while maintaining the rigors of standard epistemology. Frequent attempts to disprove divine presence have been equally frustrating. Given this history, it is nothing short of amazing that in very many instances of public discourse in the United States God's existence is simply assumed as confirmed knowledge. In a country strongly controlled by Christian fundamentalists atheism is not only a bad word, but also "non-scientific" or "naďve" while agnostics are often viewed as weird, confused, hesitant people who do not know what they believe. 29-10-2006 Kaz Dziamka Radzików, a village just west of Warsaw, hosted recently (Oct. 6-8) the First Polish National Conference of Rationalists and Freethinkers organized by the Association of Polish Rationalists (PSR). As Mariusz Agnosiewicz, President of PSR says, it was the first conference of this type in many years, its goal being to integrate Poland's secular movements and to rebuild their organizational structure by attracting unaffiliated freethinkers. "Isolated in a Catholic Country": this is how, in its Oct. 7-8 edition, Trybuna, one of only a few leftist publications in Poland, titled its short article about the Rationalist conference 25-01-2006 The "NEUTRUM" Association and the Polish Association of Rationalists (PSR) invite all European non-governmental organizations that support the ideas of separation ofChurch and State and of the secular character of public life on our continent to form an agreement to work together to this end.
We append below a proposal for the wording of such a Pact which can form the basis for discussion about the final text. The final Pact would then be presented to a Congress of NGOs for acceptance.
It would have a symbolic significance if the place to meet and sign the pact was Poland, as it is an EU country where standards of separation of Church and State and of the openness of society are most often violated. Strategically Brussels - the center of EU - would be the best place for the administrative office.
We are prepared to organize such a meeting in Warsaw in 2006, given enough interest. 14-10-2005 Andrzej Koraszewski Consumerism does not enjoy a favourable press, never mind a pulpit. Scholars, journalists, and priests are feverishly engrossed in their laptops looking for words of condemnation for people who instead of bowing humbly before "values" and giving sacrifices to gods are rushing to a "temple of Satan" and buying material things. Priests are thundering the loudest. But scholars do not let the grass grow under their feet either. "What contemporary thinkers describe as consumerism seems to be something more than merely a modern modification of hedonism and utilitarianism. The consumer model is based on an anthropocentric, secular vision of the human being, a conqueror and master of nature," writes Antonina Sebasta, an associate professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Papal Academy in Krakow. 14-08-2005 Andrzej Koraszewski In the native country of late Pope John Paul II the cult of his person has acquired forms which stretch far beyond respect for a religious authority. If we were to look for an idea or a symbol which unite most Poles, I am convinced that it would be the image of John Paul II. Poland is not a happy country... 
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