Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (97 page)

He doesn’t believe there is an afterlife.

He doesn’t believe that Jesus was God or that he was resurrected.

He doesn’t believe in God as a supernatural being, period.

Despite that last one, he insists he’s not an atheist but a nontheist. Even after reading much of his work, I’m not sure what he means. You can safely say that he isn’t a believer in any conventional idea of God. Some have suggested he’s best described as a believer in religion.

Spong has written several books including
Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism
and
Why Christianity Must Change or Die,
all devoted to keeping Christianity but freeing it from the idea of a supernatural god. In its place, Spong proposes the idea of God as the impulse that calls us to love one another.

“Theism, as a way of conceiving God, has become demonstrably inadequate,” he said in that last book, “and the God of theism not only is dying but is probably not revivable. If the religion of the future depends on keeping alive the definitions of theism, then the human phenomenon that we call religion will have come to an end. If Christianity depends on a theistic definition of God, then we must face the fact that we are watching this noble religious system enter the rigor mortis of its own death throes.”

Like Chris Stedman and Greg Epstein and Unitarian Universalism (check out
Chapter 9
and 13 for more information), Spong is standing in the middle, which is a very difficult place to be. I have tremendous admiration for people who can manage it, even when I disagree with them or (in the case of Spong) when I can’t figure out quite what they’re trying to say.

The World’s Coolest Astronomer

One of the most popular and influential communicators of science today is astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (b. 1958). Considered by many to be the heir to the mantle of the great science popularizer Carl Sagan, Tyson walks that tricky tightrope between academic science and popular science, and does so beautifully.

Tyson has been careful not to allow his religious skepticism to define him or to dominate his message about the wonder and importance of science. But when religious ideas step on scientific ones, as with “intelligent design theory,” he’s quick to respond.

When an interviewer asked Tyson if he believed in a higher power, he answered with typical thoughtfulness: “Every account of a higher power that I’ve seen described, of all religions that I’ve seen, include many statements with regard to the benevolence of that power. When I look at the universe and all the ways the universe wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile that with statements of beneficence.”

Asked about early accounts of astronomy, he said, “A careful reading of older texts, particularly those concerned with the universe itself, shows that the authors invoke divinity only when they reach the boundaries of their understanding. They appeal to a higher power only when staring into the ocean of their own ignorance. They call on God only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their explanations, however, God gets hardly a mention.”

In an interview on the
Point of Inquiry
podcast, Tyson described himself as an agnostic.

One of the World’s Richest (and Most Generous) People

Billionaire investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett (b. 1930) is the first, second, or third richest person on Earth, depending on what day it is. He’s also one of the most generous, having pledged to give at least 85 percent of his wealth away to charity, mostly through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Buffett’s attitude toward religion was revealed in the 1995 biography
Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist:
“He did not subscribe to his family’s religion. Even at a young age he was too mathematical, too logical, to make the leap of faith. He adopted his father’s ethical underpinnings, but not his belief in an unseen divinity.”

Several years later, the humanist activist Warren Allen Smith wrote to Buffett, asking him to confirm his beliefs. Buffett returned a postcard with a single word on it: “Agnostic.”

An Actress, Activist of the First Rank, and another Harry Potter Alum

Academy Award-winning British actress and screenwriter Emma Thompson (b. 1959) is well-known for acting in or writing screenplays for such notable films as
Howard’s End, Sense and Sensibility, Love Actually, Nanny McPhee,
and the
Harry Potter
series.

Less commonly known is her political and environmental activism, including her service as a patron of the Refugee Council and her ambassadorship with ActionAid, for whom she travels internationally to draw attention to poverty in the developing world.

Thompson has made her religious disbelief refreshingly clear. In a 2008 interview with
The Australian,
she said, “I’m an atheist; I suppose you can call me a sort of libertarian anarchist. I regard religion with fear and suspicion. It’s not enough to say that I don’t believe in God. I actually regard the system as distressing: I am offended by some of the things said in the Bible and the Koran, and I refute them.”

Chapter 21

Ten Fun and Easy Ways to Explore Atheism

In This Chapter

Following the blogs, vlogs, and podcasts

Reading books and listening to music

Thinking about thinking

Meeting real live atheists and humanists

W
ant to explore the world of religious doubt and disbelief even further? This chapter is a short guide to doing just that.

Read the Books

Atheists may not believe in God, but they certainly believe in books — and they spend a ridiculous amount of time between their covers. In fact, it’s one of the two places most of them learned to be atheists. (The other place is church.)

I introduce many great works related to religious disbelief in Part III of this book and elsewhere, and you can search online for countless more. Here are a few more of my personal favorites:

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
(Random House/Ballantine):
Carl Sagan wrote this passionate cry against superstition and in favor of reason.

Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion, and an Essay on Kindness
(Oberon):
A.C. Grayling drafted these 64 pages of solid gold.

The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
(Da Capo):
Christopher Hitchens authored this collection of short, brilliant writings by nonbelievers.

Infidel
(Free Press):
It’s a gripping retelling of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s escape from an arranged marriage, leaving Islam, and becoming one of the world’s most prominent atheists.

Religion Explained
(Basic Books):
Anthropologist Pascal Boyer explains just what religion is and why we have it.

Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore
(Rowman & Littlefield):
My favorite folklorist, Alan Dundes, shows how the Bible evolved from oral to written tradition.

Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt):
Not Richard Dawkins’s most-often-read book, but it’s one of my very favorites. It challenges the wrongheaded idea that understanding something diminishes the wonder of it.

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True
(Free Press):
Also by Richard Dawkins, he wrote it for young adults, but it’s entirely worthwhile for old adults as well.