Godless (57 page)
What do the following pieces of beloved music have in common?
Brahms’ “Lullaby”“Moonlight Sonata”“Somewhere, Over the Rainbow”“Pomp and Circumstances”“Do, Re, Mi”“Imagine”“Over the River and Through the Woods”“It’s Only a Paper Moon”“Rhapsody in Blue”“Lark Ascending”“Maple Leaf Rag”“My Old Kentucky Home”Ravel’s
Bolero“The Barber of Seville”Missa Solemnis“Blue Moon”“Scenes From Childhood”Verdi’s
RequiemSymphonie FantastiqueAppalachian Spring“God Bless America”“There’s No Business Like Show Business” Shostakovich’s
Eighth Symphony“Summertime”“Old Man River”“The Way You Look Tonight”“Peter and the Wolf”“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”“Send in the Clowns”“Night and Day”“Anything Goes”Also Sprach ZarathustraBizet’s
Carmen
These were all composed by (or had the lyrics written by) atheists and agnostics. Yes, Irving Berlin, the man who wrote “God Bless America” and “White Christmas,” did not believe in a god and actually hated Christmas. Some of these composers, such as Edward Elgar (“Pomp and Circumstances”) and Mozart, started out as believers and later became unbelievers or skeptics. The list above includes the work of Yip Harburg (lyricist of “Over the Rainbow” and “Paper Moon”), Ludwig Von Beethoven, Richard Rodgers, Maria Lydia Child (lyricist of “Over the River”), George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, Johannes Brahms, Ralph Vaughan Williams (who as an atheist composed hymns for the
English Hymnal
), Maurice Ravel, Giaochino Rossini, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Georges Bizet, Richard Strauss, Sergei Prokofiev, Giuseppe Verdi (an altar boy who grew up to say “Stay away from priests!”), Stephen Foster, Scott Joplin, Aaron Copland, Dmitry Shostakovich, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Jay Gorney (composer of “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime,”) and Stephen Sondheim. Other nonbelieving composers include Fritz Delius, Niccolo Paganini, James Taylor and Björk. Who would dare say these creative people had no meaning in life?
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English Hymnal
), Maurice Ravel, Giaochino Rossini, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Georges Bizet, Richard Strauss, Sergei Prokofiev, Giuseppe Verdi (an altar boy who grew up to say “Stay away from priests!”), Stephen Foster, Scott Joplin, Aaron Copland, Dmitry Shostakovich, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Jay Gorney (composer of “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime,”) and Stephen Sondheim. Other nonbelieving composers include Fritz Delius, Niccolo Paganini, James Taylor and Björk. Who would dare say these creative people had no meaning in life?
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The FFRF has compiled a list (constantly being updated) of hundreds of atheists, agnostics and doubters who have made significant contributions to the world, including abolitionists, actors, artists, athletes, attorneys, authors, civil libertarians, entertainers, composers, dancers, directors, economists, educators, environmentalists, explorers, feminists, historians, humanitarians, inventors, journalists, judges, mathematicians, philanthropists, philosophers, physicians, playwrights, poets, politicians, psychologists, reformers, revolutionaries, scholars and scientists.
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These are people with real purpose in life.
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These are people with real purpose in life.
In 2006, I was on the national Christian
Total Living Network
television program with philosopher and author William Lane Craig for a very informal “God in America” debate in talk-show format. He is a good debater, one of the best. After the show, he handed me a booklet he wrote called
God, Are You There? Five Reasons God Exists and Three Reasons It Makes a Difference
. (I address one of his “reasons” in Chapter 8).
Total Living Network
television program with philosopher and author William Lane Craig for a very informal “God in America” debate in talk-show format. He is a good debater, one of the best. After the show, he handed me a booklet he wrote called
God, Are You There? Five Reasons God Exists and Three Reasons It Makes a Difference
. (I address one of his “reasons” in Chapter 8).
In the booklet, Craig writes that belief in God makes a difference because “If God does not exist, then life is ultimately meaningless.” Well, yes, Bill, life
is
ultimately meaningless, and we should not want it any other way if we value life. If you have to resort to the rhetorical device of appealing to the reader’s dissatisfaction with reality, fear of mortality and a desire for something “ultimate,” simply assuming that such wishful thinking confers automatic credibility or dignity to the larger question, then you are admitting that your basic evidences for a God are not strong enough to stand on their own. You don’t need any reasons at all, with that logic. You can simply say, “Being a mere mortal mammal makes me feel unimportant, so I’m going to believe in God.”
is
ultimately meaningless, and we should not want it any other way if we value life. If you have to resort to the rhetorical device of appealing to the reader’s dissatisfaction with reality, fear of mortality and a desire for something “ultimate,” simply assuming that such wishful thinking confers automatic credibility or dignity to the larger question, then you are admitting that your basic evidences for a God are not strong enough to stand on their own. You don’t need any reasons at all, with that logic. You can simply say, “Being a mere mortal mammal makes me feel unimportant, so I’m going to believe in God.”
Truth is truth. It shouldn’t matter what any of us wants to believe. The fact that life is
ultimately
meaningless does not mean it is not
immediately
meaningful.
ultimately
meaningless does not mean it is not
immediately
meaningful.
“But my personal religious experience of knowing and loving God is so special,” believers will often say, “that I feel sorry for you atheists who have nothing like that.” Oh, really? I play jazz piano. When I am performing with the right musicians at the right place, there is a kind of “magic” that often happens when we players are hearing the beauty and looking at each other with big smiles, knowing we are creating something special and unique. It gives an illusion of transcendence, as if “The Song” were out there, above and around us, wrapping us in the moment. This ecstasy doesn’t happen on every gig, but when it does we know it is just an illusion. And we don’t care. It is an illusion to live for. Suppose I were to say, “Oh, you poor non-jazz-musicians; you don’t know what you are missing. I can’t describe it to you, and even if you listen to us you are not going to understand what is happening in our minds. It’s very real and you’ll just have to take our word for it.” You would understand that I am talking about something that is happening to
me
, not to you, and the fact that you lack my inner experience is no threat to your own self-worth or worldview. What if I were to say that the only way you can have true meaning in
your
life is if
you
practice piano for four hours a day for 20 years and learn to play jazz, like
I
did? You would think I was joking, or seriously deluded.
me
, not to you, and the fact that you lack my inner experience is no threat to your own self-worth or worldview. What if I were to say that the only way you can have true meaning in
your
life is if
you
practice piano for four hours a day for 20 years and learn to play jazz, like
I
did? You would think I was joking, or seriously deluded.
I do not deny that spiritual experiences are real. They happen all over the world, in most religions. I deny that they point to anything outside of the mind. I had many religious experiences, and I can still have them if I want. As an atheist, I can still speak in tongues and “feel the presence of God.” It is peaceful and integrative and “meaningful” in some strange way. I’m sure Buddhists and followers of Hare Krishna have similar experiences when they chant. As a Christian, of course, I interpreted the feelings from meditating on Christ or speaking in tongues as a direct proof of the Holy Spirit. Even without speaking in tongues, I used to feel the presence of Jesus, my imaginary friend. It seems rather silly now, since there is no God—and I only speak in tongues once every few years just to see if I still have the touch—but this does tell me something about the human mind. We are very creative, imaginative and “mystical.” Well, most of us. There are many atheists as well as believers who have never felt a thing. I think across the bell curve of susceptibility to “mysticism,” most of us fall somewhere in the middle and I fall way over to the right side. (Pun intended.)
I know some atheists who pooh-pooh religious experiences, thinking they are all made up, purely psychological tricks of an unsophisticated mind. But they are wrong. Religious experiences are very real. I had them as a believer, and I can duplicate them as a nonbeliever. Most of us have had convincing dreams. Suppose you had a horrible nightmare that a bogeyman was crawling in your bedroom window. You sit up screaming, waking up the rest of the house. Your hands are sweating and your heart is pounding and your breath is shallow. No one would deny that you just had a very real experience. That nightmare was a powerful moment, with physical consequences. Based on your behavior alone, we would conclude that
something
happened to you.
something
happened to you.
But there is no bogeyman crawling through the window. Once you realize it is a dream, you can relax and go back to sleep. That’s how it is with me. I have realized that those religious experiences that I had, and can still duplicate if I should desire, are all in the mind. Of course, why would I want a phony religious experience—especially the nightmare of hell?—when I can have something more beautiful playing the piano?
I often play piano in big bands composed of musicians representing a diversity of political, philosophical and religious opinions. Most of the players are creative and open-minded, but there are sometimes ultra-religious and reactionary musicians in the group with whom I would not want to live in the same neighborhood. Yet when the music starts, we forget all that and form a band, looking at each other with mutual enjoyment and respect, exulting in the harmony we are creating. In a sense, the inner experience of music is truly transcendent and can bring us all together in the especially human “universal language.” Religion divides; art unites. If only the countries of the world would come together to make music, think of the harmony that would result. Pastor and Christian author Greg Boyd told me he plays drums and that he would love to jam with me on the piano sometime. If we could find a Jewish bassist, a Hindu flautist, a Muslim percussionist, a Native American Spiritualist guitarist and a Buddhist singer—imagine!
“If there is no God, why do so many people believe in God?” That is a question I am often asked. “If there is a god-shaped hole in us, doesn’t that mean there is something to fill that hole?” There are many scientific hypotheses about the origin of religious belief. Some think the fear of death, the desire for meaning, the need for moral structure or community, the ambition to control the masses and other conscious feelings all contribute to our “nature” to be religious. But I think this is backwards. Why religion as opposed to something else?
Scientists are now approaching the brain as the result of selectionist adaptations that happened as our species evolved. Obviously, in the trivial, reductionist sense, everything comes down to genetics, although this may not tell us much at the level of the individual, tribe or culture. Some think there may be a “God gene” (or collection of genes) that conferred a survival advantage to our ancestors but is no longer necessary, although we are stuck with it by inheritance, like goosebumps. (Our ancestors were very hairy apes who would fluff up their fur to keep warm or to appear larger to an attacker. Whenever you see your apparently useless goosebumps you are looking at a proof of evolution, at something you inherited from earlier primates.) If this is true, we still have to ask why we have that gene or instinct rather than something else.
I can’t answer the question definitively here, since the science of the origin of religion and the susceptibility to belief is still being explored, but I will offer my two favorite hypotheses, either of which is plausible and either (or both) of which may be part of a fuller understanding in the future. Perhaps there will be better answers, but these are presented as examples of how we can think about the question in a naturalistic, evolutionary way.
I was walking in the woods some years ago when I saw a snake on the trail. I stopped and stared at it. Then as I moved carefully closer, I saw that it was just part of a tree root, not a snake. Even then, I cautiously stepped over it. Why did I do that? Why would I make such a mistake? I think it is because my ancestors who made
that
mistake were more likely to survive than their contemporaries who made the opposite mistake. Obviously, being bitten by a snake lowers your chances of having offspring, so the “snake as stick” tendency would not be passed on to future generations as frequently as the “stick as snake” tendency.
that
mistake were more likely to survive than their contemporaries who made the opposite mistake. Obviously, being bitten by a snake lowers your chances of having offspring, so the “snake as stick” tendency would not be passed on to future generations as frequently as the “stick as snake” tendency.
Some scientists and philosophers, including Pascal Boyer, call this the “agency detector.” An agency is a person, animal, creature, intelligence or something else with a mind and internal purposes. The agency can act: it may want to eat you, compete with you, mate with you or otherwise gain an advantage over you. You are better off knowing an agency is there than not knowing it. It is an advantageous survival tactic to approach such agencies carefully, or to avoid them altogether. Little children wake up in the middle of the night screaming because they think there is a monster crawling out from under the bed. Often it is a false alarm, but on average it was better for a family to have such sensitive children because the danger of predation was (is) real. Even today, in the safety of our modern homes, if you are awakened at night by a scratching sound on the window, is your first thought to rationally conclude it is just a tree branch, or does your mind automatically think the worst? The fear is real, buried in the instincts formed by the genes inherited from our ancestors. If you are walking down a dark alley and see a looming shape in front of you, don’t you automatically assume it is a threat or potential danger? Like the goosebumps that rise unbidden, you have no choice. We are naturally self-protective. It is in our nature to see “agency” out there, even when it is not there. It happened to me last winter when I was shoveling snow off the driveway one night and was startled to see a person standing next to me. The “person” turned out to be the large trash bin on the curb. Those things happen to all of us, and we can’t help it.
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