Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (55 page)

Imagining a humanist world with Lamont

The American philosopher Corliss Lamont (1902–1995) was best known for suing the US government a few times over civil liberties — cases that set the stage for important gains in personal liberty and rights of association. But he was also an influential philosopher and teacher who wrote
The Philosophy of Humanism,
a book that’s been called “the definitive study of humanism.”

I have a warm place in my heart for this book. Back when I was first exploring organized freethought, I joined the American Humanist Association, and
The Philosophy of Humanism
was sent along with my welcome packet. Now I’d already figured out what I thought of religion, so I didn’t need another book debunking arguments I’d already rejected. I needed something that described the
implications
of the decision I’d already made, one that answered the main question on my mind: “Okay, so I’m a humanist. Now what?”

That, in a nutshell, is what Lamont’s book does.

Lamont started by defining and describing humanism, as I do for atheism in Part I of this book, then he traced the long tradition of humanist thought (as I do in Parts II and III), and finally finished by describing the values and perspectives of the humanist . . . as I do for atheism in Part IV. Great minds, and all that.

While I’m borrowing ideas from Corliss, I hope I’ve managed to borrow one of the things he was most famous for — a sense of fun and wonder and optimism. Search online for “Corliss Lamont” and the first image you’ll see is Corliss grinning like a jack-o-lantern. When I first picked up his book, I still had the image of atheists as a sour bunch of grumps back then, and I really had my doubts about joining them in any official way. Lamont showed me that I could be a nonbeliever who was full of joy, interested in knocking things down when necessary, as Lamont himself did, but also in building them up.

The last section of his book, “The Affirmation of Life,” is like the end of an Ingersoll speech — an inspiring tribute to what’s possible when people bring their best selves to the task of being human.

I’ll admit that the final chapter, “A Humanist Civilization,” tips into Pollyanna just a bit. Lamont drew a picture of a relentlessly shiny world that has moved beyond religion and healed of its injuries, a culture in which education gets more money than war, freedom of expression is absolute, and the collective good trumps the greed of individuals. Because humans would still be at the wheel in such a world, I’m not quite
that
optimistic. I also don’t spend a lot of time envisioning a world without religion. Neither the religious nor the secular are going away, in my humble opinion. We’re all in this together for the long haul.

But as I note in
Chapter 2
, humanist ideals don’t have to be limited to a secular worldview. It’s just about putting this world and this life first, no matter what else you believe. This attempt to describe a civilization built on those humanist ideals was the first one I’d seen, and it still inspires me and many others.

It’s also hard to disagree with the book’s final sentence: “Humanism assigns to us nothing less than the task of being our own savior and redeemer.” It’s all up to human beings.

Waxing miraculous with Dawkins

For people more familiar with his work challenging religion, British biologist Richard Dawkins (b. 1941) may seem a strange choice for a section about building a positive vision. But his contribution to building that vision has been as big a part of his work as clearing superstitions out of the way. His popular science writing has emphasized understanding and a sense of wonder in equal parts, and one essay in particular has become one of the most treasured examples of the wonder of a naturalistic view.

“To Live at All Is Miracle Enough” tackled a question atheists hear all too often:
How can you find meaning and purpose in life without God and the promise of eternal life?
Or, as it’s often put,
Without God, how can you get out of bed in the morning?

Dawkins began by putting human existence in perspective. That each person is born at all is a stroke of incalculable luck. Uncounted trillions of people could have been here instead of you if any one of a trillion tiny things had happened differently — if your mom and dad married other people, or married each other but conceived in a different month, or a different sperm won the race to the egg . . . And you’d have to do the same for your grandparents, all of them, and a hundred thousand generations before them. But things happened just as they did, says Dawkins, so the countless other possible combinations of DNA never came to pass. Instead, “in the teeth of these stupefying odds, it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”

Dawkins spun out this thread of improbability with great skill, making the reader feel the incredible good fortune of being alive, even for a short time. As I continue to read and reread this essay over the years, I begin to feel a bit piggy for ever complaining that my life won’t last forever, and plenty grateful that it happened at all.

Dawkins brought it home in a memorable passage that has made “To Live at All” one of the favorite readings for humanist funerals, like a 23rd Psalm for the nonbeliever:

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked — as I am surprisingly often — why I bother to get up in the mornings.

Chapter 12

Laughing in Disbelief: Challenging the Divine with Humor

In This Chapter

Satirizing sacred cows

Worshipping false gods . . . to make a point

Blaspheming in multimedia

D
evoting a chapter to humor may seem strange in this book, but in addition to just being one of the best things in life, humor plays a huge part in softening up the big, serious topic of religion. Humor cuts religion down to human size so you can think about it, play with it — and yes, laugh about it.

If you want to ask challenging questions about religion, having a sense of humor helps. Knowing that some people won’t find it funny — especially when it’s their own sacred cows being milked — is also helpful. Like Toto pulling back the curtain to reveal the sad little man behind the Wizard, laughter can pull back the cloak of sacredness around religion so people can see its humble human origin.

Sacred
has at least two definitions:

It can mark something as special, awe-inspiring, and deserving of respect. This definition is no problem. Even the nonreligious can hold things sacred by that definition.

It can also mean
hands off
—
this idea can’t be questioned.
This definition is a big problem. So how can you question the unquestionable? By rejecting the very idea of unquestionable ideas.

One of the sacred principles of freethought — that’s “sacred” by the first definition — is that no question is unaskable, no authority unquestionable. One of the greatest, time-tested ways of busting through the wall of immunity that surrounds religion is laughter.

The agnostic Mark Twain knew this better than anyone. “Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution — these can lift at a colossal humbug,” says the character of Little Satan in
The Mysterious Stranger
, “push it a little, weaken it a little, century by century — but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast.”

It’s true. A timeless connection exists between comedy and truth. Comedy theorists note that a joke is often funniest when it reveals something that’s true but hidden by a fig leaf. The laugh comes as the fig leaf is yanked away, and the strength of the laugh is what comedian Lenny Bruce called a Geiger counter for the truthfulness of the joke. If no truth is revealed, then it isn’t as funny. The laugh’s strength often depends on how obvious the revealed truth is after that fig leaf is gone.

Institutions, ideas, nations, and people who stand on firm foundations can endure a joke or two at their expense. But if the foundation is built on sand — well, to quote Twain again, “No God and no religion can survive ridicule.”

This chapter offers a small, selective taste of the long and glorious history of humor used to challenge religious ideas.

Getting Satirical

Religion is a favorite target of humorists, and satire is one of their sharpest tools. Almost every example in this chapter falls under the category of satire. Nearly all were also greeted in its time with cries that they was really just a cheap shot — that it was “mere ridicule.”

So what does ridicule really mean?
Ridicule
is the claim that something is worthy of contempt — that it’s literally “ridiculous.” Some things are, of course. It can be a potent weapon against tyrants and frauds of all kinds. The brutal dictator Slobodan Milošević started losing his grip on power when he became the subject of ridicule and was no longer taken seriously. Ridicule is a powerful tool for breaking down walls of immunity.

But satire is a different animal.
Satire
uses wit to shine a bright light on human vices and follies. Ridicule is sometimes just an attack for its own sake, but satire always has a point to make, a critique to offer. Ridicule can be rude, even crude. Satire intends more and better. Ridicule points and laughs at the naked emperor. Satire wants to change the world.

The following are three brilliant examples of satire lampooning religion in order to draw attention to its shortcomings.

Mark Twain

For most of his life, Mark Twain (1835–1910) stayed away from religious targets, which is why most people don’t even know he was an agnostic.

But toward the end of his life, the gloves were off. “The Bible . . . has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies,” he said in
Following the Equator.
“Faith is believing something you know ain’t true . . . If Christ were here now, there is one thing he would not be — a Christian . . . If there is a God, he is a malign thug.”

Huckleberry Finn
it ain’t. You probably notice some bitterness there and not much humor. Twain was writing through a lot of personal pain at this point. But in some of his last contributions, he managed to make a heartfelt case that religion is both false and ridiculous. And he did it by using the beautiful, devastating weapon of satire.

Several of Twain’s best humorous assaults on religion weren’t published until after his death — in fact, in 1972, a few years after the first moon landing. The delay was his idea. “I expose to the world only my trimmed and perfumed and carefully barbered public opinions,” he wrote near the end of his life, “and conceal carefully, cautiously, wisely, my private ones” — including his true thoughts about religion. He instructed his editors to only gradually release some of his less “perfumed” thoughts over the course of a century after his death. Here I discuss two examples.

“Thoughts of God”

In the essay “Thoughts of God,” Twain skewered what is now called “intelligent design theory” by wondering what kind of being would ever create the fly on purpose.

Not one of us could have planned the fly, not one of us could have constructed him,” he said, “and no one would have considered it wise to try, except under an assumed name.” He imagines the moment the fly is created and sent into the world — to persecute sick children, settle on the open wounds of soldiers, spreading disease and death. “Go forth,” says the fly’s Creator, “to please Me and increase My glory, Who made the fly.”

It’s a wicked, dark humor, but it’s still humor. It strips away the protection of sacredness and calls the perfection of the world into question in a few sentences. It makes me think. If Twain succeeded, I’m not just entertained but more convinced that he has a point. That’s good satire.

“Little Bessie Would Assist Providence”

In his essay “Little Bessie Would Assist Providence,” Twain put innocent and unanswerable questions in the mouth of a four-year-old girl:

Bessie:
Mama, why did the neighbor boy die of typhus?

Mama:
It was God’s judgment for his sins.

Bessie:
Why did the roof fall on that kind man who was trying to save the old woman from the fire?

Mama:
Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. I only know it was to discipline some one, or be a judgment upon somebody, or to show His power.

Bessie:
You know the lightning came last week, mama, and struck the new church, and burnt it down. Was it to discipline the church?

The questions keep coming in rapid fire. Mom does the best she can to give the party line, and Bessie comes to the only conclusions she can: that God sends all the troubles and pains and diseases and horrors in mercy and kindness to discipline us. So it’s the duty of every parent to help God by killing and starving their children and giving them diseases, she says — “and brother Eddie needs disciplining, right away! I know where you can get the smallpox for him, and the itch, and the diphtheria, and bone-rot, and heart disease, and consumption, and . . .”