By DOLPH HONICKER
Thank God we live in an era where atheism can be discussed in public, even on Fox News, although the network gave short shrift to nonbelievers.
The appearance on the best-selling nonfiction list of three books by atheists has pushed reason to the forefront.
First was Sam Harris' The End of Faith.
Then came Richard Dawkins The God Delusion.
Lastly, my favorite by a splinter off the True Cross is Christopher Hitchens' god (cq) is Not Great.
Though I once proposed, as Hitchens does in his book that all religions are man-made, I won't sue him for plagiarism for others have long offered this reasonable supposition.
Right off, let's dispose of the canard that morality rests in belief of a supreme being, whether it be Jesus, Allah or any one of a thousand and one other gods. Ask your preacher, priest or rabbi if he would abandon himself to adultery, rape, robbery and murder if it were not for his faith in the hereafter. Given that he's an honest man he'll tell you that no, his conscience won't let him, but ...
Following that "but" will come a string of arguments trying to convince you that his brand is the one true faith.
I use the masculine gender because the church of Rome, Islam and most mainstream Protestant denominations forbid women to assume the authority to pass on nostrums from the past.
Pope Benedict XVI makes no bones about it: the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church. All others are false.
When I read of the pope's elevation of 23 new cardinals, I was taken by his haberdashery. I wondered which Bible verses inspired his ornate vestments. Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield says Benedict "donned a long, golden silk cape, embroidered with scenes from the life (sic)of the saints that was held up by two altar servers as he processed down the main aisle."
Was one of them St. Francis Xavier? It was he, says Hitchens, "who brought the Inquisition to Asia and whose bones are still revered by those who choose to revere bones."
Religions sell the fear of hell the way George W. Bush sells the fear of terrorism -- good or evil -- my way or the highway.
Hindus set a time limit on hell. "A sinner, for example," says Hitchens, "might be sentenced to a given number of years in hell, where every day counted as 6,400 human hairs. If he slew a priest, the sentence thus adjusted would be 149,504,000,000 years. At this point, he was allowed nirvana, which seems to mean annihilation." But Christians found a hell from which there is no possible appeal.
Fundamentalists cling firmly to Old Testament myths. The National Park Service, pressured by Bush appointees, forbid rangers from giving an official estimate of the Grand Canyon's age to avoid offending the author of a Creationist book on sale in the park's bookstore claiming the canyon was formed by Noah's flood. Touchy, touchy.
As Sam Harris notes in his book: "Most of the people of this world believe that the Creator has written a book. We have the misfortune of having many such books, each making an exclusive claim to its infallibility."
Told in Sunday School as a kid that God created the heavens and the earth and then breathed into a cloud of dust to create Adam, thereafter performing a ribectomy to create Eve, I asked what seemed a logical question: "Who created God?"
"God has been with us always," said the flustered Sunday School teacher.
Lot's of things we can't prove "exist," says James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author of A Jesuit Off-Broadway: Center Stage With Jesus, Judas and Life's Big Questions.
"Love, for instance," he says. "Many believers would say that they've experienced God's presence in ways that go beyond the bounds of reason. They stand on the seashore and feel profound longing. They hold their newborn baby and feel profound joy."
Is Martin saying atheists have no such feelings?
As Hitchens notes, "It may have been a Jesuit who was first actually quoted as saying, 'Give me a child until he is ten, and I will give you the man.'"
Since the Catholic church, having paid out billions for cases of sex abuse against children by its priests and bishops, "one can only shudder to think what was happening in the centuries where the church was above all criticism," says Hitchens.
The astronomer Carl Sagan said he could look into the sky and admire its vastness without seeking divine origins.
Albert Einstein, addressing a writer troubled by a misrepresentation attributed to him, replied:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Years later, to another query, he said:
"I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it."
A few quickies from god is Not Great:
- Jehovah's Witnesses have refused blood transfusions for their children.
- Followers believed an illiterate scoundrel, Joseph Smith, was led to buried golden tablets by an agel named Moroni which, with help, he "translated" into the Mormon bible.
- Shia fundamentalists in Iran lowered the age of "consent" to nine, perhaps in admiring emulation of the age of the youngest "wife" of the "Prophet" Mohammad.
I submit that if all Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews and others of faith held a massive prayer day it would have no more effect on the cosmos than this proposal by Robert G. Ingersoll:
"Would Calvin have been more bloodthirsty if he had believed in the religion of the South Sea Islanders? ... Would the Dutch have been more idiotic if they had denied the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and worshiped the blessed trinity of sausage, beer and cheese?"
Dolph Honicker is a retired newspaperman and a freelance writer.
Copyright 2007, Pythian Press
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