Lest you think Christopher Hitchens is among the first to ruffle feathers, take a look at this video (from 1959!) of Bertrand Russell. You might recognize him as the author of History of Western Philosophy, Why I Am not a Christian, In Praise of Idleness, and What I Believe (one of 25 books I actually read last year).
ps…thanks Pharyngula!
It’s already promising to be a very interesting year from many perspectives. I want to offer an article by Greta Christina (via Whyevolutionistrue) called 10 Myths and Truths About Atheism. I realize many people out there believe that atheism is a dogmatic stand-in religion for those who have problems believing in god. This is not really the case, and Greta explains why. Conveniently, she links to Sam Harris’s article on the same subject, so you’re only two clicks away from two great articles that will explain something you were probably in the dark about.
Greta writes:
Atheists aren’t killing, stealing, raping, cheating, at any greater rate than believers. Look at countries in Europe, like France and England and Scandinavian countries, where nonbelievers make up half, or more, of the population. They’re not disintegrating into crime and chaos. They’re doing pretty well, and they treat each other pretty well, with a strong sense of social responsibility.
Happy 2010!
There is a spanking new book out called 5o Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists. If ever you found yourself straddling the fence, wondering on which side to jump off, this book is for you. I don’t have a copy yet, but so far it looks promising, and definitely better than whatever the latest fatheist scribbler has to say about the moral necessity of faith. It feels like we’re at a watershed. Homosexuals came out in the ’70s, after the taboos had been destroyed. The last six years have seen a great destruction of the taboos against being openly atheist. Perhaps the ’10s will see an even bolder stance (oh, please stop using the word militant to describe those of us who simply voice opinions about faith) than that of the New Atheists, or an integration of this stance into public life and political activity. Wouldn’t that be a nice goal for the next decade: to create a climate in which most Americans would potentially vote for a nonbeliever (alias atheist) for president? Perhaps a black Jewish lesbian atheist or something will pop up out of nowhere in time for the 2016 elections, and people will be cured enough of all their phobias to vote for her (provided she is qualified, naturally). But now I’m fabricating reality. I know this will never happen – not in America.
Italy’s getting scary again.
Ignazio La Russa, who has no degree in science and is therefore unworthy of having views on religion, went off his nut on Italian tv the other evening. The debate over the EU court’s judgement that crucifixes in public classrooms are a bad idea is off and running. Berlusconi has said that Italy will defy the court and the EU, and that no crosses are coming off the walls of any classrooms.
His position was backed up by the homophobic, conservative Catholic politician Rocco Buttiglione. Buttiglione’s brilliant solution to the problem of religious symbols contaminating public spaces is apparently to multiply them. The more, the merrier, he said. Just don’t take down them crosses! Perhaps my mezuzah proposal wasn’t too radical, after all.
Even if you don’t understand a word of Italian, you can grasp the meaning of what La Russa is getting at here. He calls Piergiorgio Odifreddi, a well-known mathematician and one of Italy’s only public atheists, a man without a degree (!) who “puts up and takes down crucifixes as if they were bath towels.” He then castigates the show’s host for not standing up for the dignity of the cross, telling him he is beyond absolution for his sin of silence.
Of course, he’s no Christian integralist, an afterthought he throws in as a final consolation. In case you thought maybe he got off on the wrong foot. “They (the EU?) can go to hell! Well never take down our crosses!!”
Lately I’ve been fascinated by the debaptism phenomenon in Italy, called “sbattezzo.” The numbers of debaptisms aren’t high yet (a few thousand are presumed), and it’s difficult to gauge exactly how many people debaptise themselves (I prefer the reflexive form) because the only records are kept by the Catholic church itself. Being a strictly individual act, there is no association of debaptized persons. The option is, however, promoted by the Italian Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics (UAAR) as coherent with religious freedom and freedom from religion.
Below are three videos about debaptism. They’re in Italian, so get a dictionary out if you have trouble understanding. This is one of the most interesting new developments in Italy in recent years, challenging the widely held belief that “all Italians are Catholics” and, far more importantly, the self-granted authority of the Catholic church over the lives of unwilling subjects.
It’s important, in my view, that people know that debaptism is an option. I’ve never been baptised, so this is not my personal war against the Catholic church (in case you were worried). But it is consonant with human rights and individual freedom to be able to undo a symbolic gesture like baptism. There are also legal aspects related to Canon Law, but that’s Adele Orioli’s job (the woman in the videos) to explain. I’d bet most people don’t even know they have this right, which is why they’ve launched this campaign.
Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
It has been observed in the comments of this blog that William Blake was perhaps not an atheist. That’s fine by me. I love Blake, and I’m not trying to convert anyone to atheism, agnosticism or indifferentism. But what did Blake mean by “Nobodaddy” if not a compromise between nobody and daddy. Perhaps he was a deist, like Karen Armstrong, ready to pull the plug on organized religious cults but not on the supernatural itself. Paul Celan, who survived the Nazi slaughter, took Blake’s innovation to it’s conclusion. “Nobodaddy” has become “No one.”
Psalm by Paul Celan
No one kneads us again out of earth and clay,
no one incants our dust. No one.
Blessèd art thou, No One.
In thy sight would
we bloom.
In thy
spite.
A Nothing
we were, are now, and ever
shall be, blooming:
the Nothing-, the
No-One’s-Rose.
With
our pistil soul-bright,
our stamen heaven-waste,
our corona red
from the purpleword we sang
over, O over
the thorn.
(Translated by John Felsteiner)
Well, Woody Allen had some fun with this meme in his latest film, Whatever Works. I’m not going to give it away, but I’ll just say that everything dissolves in the universal solvent of New York City. It’s fashionable, whenever a new Allen film comes out, to say things like, “Not his best screenplay” and then something derogatory about his latest starlet and the fact that all his movies are really the same movie, and all his male leads are really himself (all true, by the way). Of course, we’ve known this for a long time. What we never hear is that Allen’s track record for enjoyability is unmatched. So if you get nothing else from the movie than ninety minutes of unwholesome fun, shouldn’t that be worth something?
Next week a campaign will begin in NYC to promote the possibility that people can be moral without God.
Predictably, not all New Yorkers are enthusiastic about such a campaign. But, President Obama noted in his inaugural speech, America is a country in which non-believers are citizens, too.
A small step for humanism, a huge leap for humankind.
Here’s my thought for the day, which is a useful substitute for writing a new post. It comes from the book Living Without God, published last year by Counterpoint.
“Our daily survival and functioning depends on dozens, hundreds, thousands of links. We belong to family and to all the obvious structures, networks, and processes–of work, friends, neighborhood, city and nation (as well as natural environment)–and to a social universe of which we usually remain unconscious. If we train our awareness on how structures and networks and processes are actualized around the world, we will eventually notice those whose work daily makes our lives possible, just as our work in some small way contributes to making them and their lives possible–our interdependence.”
You can watch Aronson speak about his book here:
A few thoughts from a thoughtful reader (I’ve regularized some of the punctuation and uncapitalized the “A” in Atheist for obvious reasons):
Halacha, Jewish religious law, is the only thing that determines Jewish identity. And the issue is very clear indeed, and always has been. The Tanakh tells us that a Jew who adopts any other faith, is an ex-Jew. An Apostate. Now this does not – as in Islam – necessitate nor involve negativity towards this ex Jew. Not at all. But it’s just a statement of fact: a Jew who becomes a Christian = a Christian, just as a Jew who becomes a Muslim = a Muslim.
As for atheism:
Rabbis and Halacha are very clear on this too. Atheism doesn’t involve embracing another, conflicting faith. An atheist Jew, is simply a non practising Jew. Simple as that. Or, if the person prefers not to identity as Jewish, then the atheist is, well, an atheist, who was born into Judaism but has now left. But according to halacha, the atheist is still part of the Jewish family whereas the ex Jew turned Christian, or ex-Jew turned Muslim, is not.
Historically, Jews that converted to other faiths, and then later wished to return to Judaism, had to formally “convert” back to Judaism. I’m slightly concerned that your poll gives the impression that popular opinion can determine who is and is not Jewish. It can’t.
Also, as I’m sure you know, there is a specific Christian Evangelical movement, whose members were never Jews to start with, yet who pose fraudulently as ‘messianic Jews’ and who knowingly lie and misrepresent Judaism and Jews. This group provokes a lot of conflict between Jews and Christians.
For my part, I tend to be skeptical when any debate over Jewish identity is resolved by invoking the overriding authority of halakha. That’s part of what got us into this mess in the first place, and since non-Orthodox Jews are the majority these days (and the source of all that Jewish pride we feel when we talk about Spinoza, Freud, Einstein and Mel Brooks) I think we should have some say in the matter.
There are no easy answers. Nothing is “simple as that” about Jewish identity. Invoking the Tanakh–a collection of ancient Jewish literature otherwise known as the Hebrew Bible–as the fount of all wisdom on matters of personal or collective cultural identity is a push in the wrong direction. We all seem to agree that non-observant Jews are nonetheless Jews, and this fact alone proves the weakness of this argument.
I’m tempted to say that all of this is a matter of opinion. That we celebrate Spinoza (who was given a hearty herem, or rabbinic excommunication, for heresy from Europe’s most liberal and enlightened Jewish community) as one of our greatest sons only points to the fallability of halakhic law. It is malleable, elastic even, and all it takes is a shift in the way we think about ourselves to tame the once mighty voice of the the Law. God, in the end, is as subject to shifting cultural sands as the marketplace.
From a non-theistic point of view, this all borders on silliness. We know that the Bible was written by men (and likely even women) and believe that there is no supernatural authority whose word is eternal and unchanging. If there were, where is such a word to be found? The Talmud itself would be heretical as it meddles with the Torah on almost every page, adding and subtracting according to the wisdom and convention of the day. Wouldn’t the Torah itself have been enough without the addenda of the prophetic and hagoigraphic books that round out the Tanakh? I hope this brief gloss will suffice to convince the reader that there is nothing simple or clear-cut about Jewish identity.
The poll I posted (Are Jews Who Believe in Jesus Still Jews?) seeks opinions to what is one of the taboos of mainstream Jewish discourse. It does not seek irrefutable answers. Why can a Jew be a Buddhist and not a Christian? Perhaps there is something “conflicting” is the idea of a Jewish-Christian, though the earliest Christians were without exception Jews. So, clearly, this is another cultural-historical construct with no guidelines grounded in religious absolutism. Such is the nature of cultural identity.
We know there are Jews who have embraced Christianity throughout history for various reasons, ranging from personal belief to the threat of death. We also live in a society in which religious and cultural identities are a smorgasbord. There may indeed be excellent reasons why a modern Jew cannot believe in Jesus Christ and still be considered a Jew by fellow Jews (and I believe there are) but let’s not defer our reasoning to the divine think tank to understand why this is so.
Marc Alan Di Martino has been added to The Atheist Blogroll. You will soon be able to see the blogroll in my sidebar (as soon as I figure out how to fidget with the widget). The Atheist Blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information.
Don’t act like you’re surprised, bubbeleh.
Marc Di Martino 