Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (62 page)

A typical example from early in the book: When asked by a conservative radio host if Hitchens were alone in an unfamiliar city at night and a group of strangers began to approach him, would he feel safer or less safe knowing that they had just come from a prayer meeting? He replied with personal stories from Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem and Baghdad —“just to stay within the letter B,” he said — showing why in each case he would indeed feel threatened if he knew the group of men approaching him were coming from a religious observance.

His course through the topic is unpredictable, which is part of the fun of reading him. He discusses the
fatwa
against Salman Rushdie, weird religious fears of ham, why he thinks the New Testament is even worse than the Old, and whether religion tends to make people behave better. Yet by the end, even though the path has been winding, there’s a feeling that he left no stone unturned.

In the end, he answers one of the questions that every critic of religion must answer: Why do you care? Why can’t you just allow people to believe as they wish? His answer is that he would happily do so if religion didn’t intrude into every aspect of life, from public policy to private morality. If they would only leave me alone, he said, I would gladly return the favor. Because they are incapable of doing this, he said, the battle was joined.

If you’re a religious person, and the experience of having your heartfelt beliefs mercilessly challenged by a first-rate intelligence with no manners isn’t appealing — you may want to avoid this book. If on the other hand you’re looking for the very best from every side of the discussion, and you’re willing to absorb some very sharp arrows, then strap in, hold on, and open that cover.

Continuing the Conversation: Great Blogs

The 21st century has seen the rise of several entirely new media. And because so much atheist community takes place online, a discussion of “great works” of atheism in this century can’t just stop at books. It has to include a powerful and influential new way of getting thoughts into other heads: the blog.

Hundreds of high-profile blogs explore and express atheism today. This section introduces five blogs that represent the breadth and depth of these voices.

Reflecting intelligently: Greta Christina’s Blog

Greta Christina is a San Francisco-based writer whose blog — called simply “Greta Christina’s Blog” (
freethoughtsblogs.com/greta
) — is one of the best, most thoughtful expressions of atheist thought around. Instead of responding to the day’s news, Greta tends to write longer reflections on themes and issues in and around atheism. When I want to know what a smart and thoughtful atheist thinks about an issue that I care about, I turn first to Greta Christina.

Her blog is well-informed but not academic, drawing more on her own experiences and insights than anything else. I feel like I’m reading the thoughts of someone who
pays attention,
then reacts intelligently.

That doesn’t mean she’s always sober and calm. She can also be hilarious, emotional, and profane. One of the common themes in Greta’s work is why atheists are often angry about what goes on in culture, and why that anger is justified. She’s written a book about it (
Why Are You Atheists So Angry?,
Pitchstone Publishing)
and was the main reason I thought of writing the section in
Chapter 14
of this book about atheist anger.

If I could read only one atheist blog, it would be Greta Christina’s Blog. And for one of the best imaginable introductions to atheism, visit her home page and browse the sidebar titled “Favorite Posts: Atheism.” Every post is gold.

Commenting on the current: Friendly Atheist

Hemant Mehta isn’t a philosopher or a scientist. He’s a 30-ish high school math teacher in Chicago who started writing a popular blog called “Friendly Atheist” (
patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist
) in 2006 — right around the time he sold his soul.

In January 2006, Mehta, who’s been an atheist since he was 14, made an offer on the public auction site eBay to attend church one day for every $10 bid by the top bidder and write about the experience in an atheist newsletter he edited.

The winning bid of $504 came from Jim Henderson, a minister in Seattle, who asked Hemant to attend several different churches. Hemant’s experience of doing so resulted in national media coverage, the book
I Sold My Soul on eBay
(WaterBrook)
,
and “Friendly Atheist,” one of the most popular atheist blogs by every measure.

Friendly Atheist is like the pulse of the freethought community. If something is happening anywhere in the world that has some connection to atheism or humanism, it’s a good bet that Hemant will post about it the day it happens — often as many as four to six times a day. The posts tend to be short, smart, and clever, and the comment threads offer a place for atheists to gather and discuss news that impacts their community. A terrific resource and a great read.

Leading the Marines: Pharyngula

Paul Zachary “PZ” Myers is the undisputed heavyweight of the atheist blogosphere. He’s a pretty unlikely candidate for the job — in his own words, a “third-rate liberal intellectual at a third-rate university” — but since Myers began holding forth on science and atheism in a big way in 2005, his Pharyngula blog (
freethoughts.com/pharyngula
) has built a massive and devoted following.

Named for a stage of embryonic development, Pharyngula started out with a focus on biology, with special attention to cephalopods — octopuses, squids, and such, Myers’s research interest — and became the journal
Nature
’s top-ranked blog by a scientist in 2006. Myers gradually began to address religion more often, especially “intelligent design” theory, and to advocate for atheism and naturalism. Within a couple of years, those topics had become the main focus of the blog.

Pharyngula isn’t friendly atheism. If there’s one voice in atheism less filtered and less concerned with niceties than Christopher Hitchens, it’s Myers. He’s known for a brutal willingness to eviscerate those he sees as fools, cutting them off at the knees with stinging contempt and sarcastic wit that takes no prisoners — and that includes fellow atheists, especially those he sees as too soft toward religion.

One famous episode in the blog’s history, nicknamed “Crackergate,” occurred after a student at the University of Central Florida removed a consecrated communion wafer from a Catholic Mass. The local Catholic community erupted in outrage, including claims that (because Catholics believe the wafer turns into the actual body of Christ when consecrated) he had essentially kidnapped God.

After the student received media attention and multiple death threats, Myers commented on his blog that the wafer the student had removed was after all “just a cracker” and that the reactions were “petty and stupid.” Myers then asked his readers to send consecrated wafers to him, promising to “show you sacrilege, gladly” by treating the items with “profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web.”

The Catholic League demanded that the university fire him. The university acted like a university and did nothing of the kind. Myers and his family received countless death threats and hate mail, and the atheist community erupted into its own internal debates about whether Myers had gone too far.

Later than month, Myers posted a photo of his kitchen garbage can. In it was a banana peel, coffee grounds, pages from both the Qur’an and
The God Delusion —
and a consecrated wafer, pierced with a rusty nail. He wrote that nothing must be held sacred, that it’s essential to question everything. Though the outrage continued unabated, many others felt that an important point had been made, and that the inclusion of
The God Delusion —
which Myers pointed out was “only paper” —
was an inspired decision.

Pharyngula has also been a forceful supporter of women’s rights within the freethought movement, speaking in defense of several prominent women who came under attack for their views in 2011 and 2012.

So if you’re looking for the most unfiltered possible version of the New Atheism, a voice that makes Christopher Hitchens sound like Shirley Temple watching kittens at play, Pharyngula is it.

Building bridges: Non-Prophet Status

If you want to have all of your preconceptions about atheists and atheism shattered, look no farther than Non-Prophet Status (
nonprophetstatus.com
), a blog founded by interfaith activist and atheist Chris Stedman and featuring eight outstanding contributors. The blog is described as “a forum for stories promoting atheist-interfaith cooperation that hopes to catalyze a movement in which religious and secular folks not only coexist peacefully but collaborate around shared values.”

For a soft-spoken 20-something from the upper Midwest, Stedman has done a lot of world-shaking. He’s the Interfaith and Community Service Fellow for the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University, Emeritus Managing Director of State of Formation at the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, and holds an MA in religion from Meadville Lombard Theological School at the University of Chicago.

Chris grew up Christian, and then began to question the church when he came out as gay and felt the sting of judgment from those around him. He eventually decided he didn’t believe in God, but he continued to see the benefits religious people got from their involvement in religious communities. His work now is focused on achieving those same benefits for the nonreligious and encouraging bridge-building between worldviews along the way.

The middle isn’t an easy place to stand. Stedman takes a lot of grief and abuse from both sides — from the religious for being an atheist, and from atheists for consorting with the religious and for criticizing the New Atheist approach. But Chris also has a lot of supporters on both sides who see tremendous courage, integrity, and restraint in the work he does to build those bridges.