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Nothing: Something to Believe In
Thank you so much for inviting me to speak. It is a real pleasure to be here and be so welcomed by your community. I am an atheist. But I don't much like that word. It does not describe who I am or what I hold dear, it merely states that I do not believe in God. Technically, if I must find a word that tells people what I am, religiously, I use the word nothing. I say I am nothing. But do not be deceived by my tongue-in-cheek description of myself. I do not believe in nothing, I do not think I am nothing, as in "worthless." I am simply not part of any belief system, since atheism itself does not constitute a given set of beliefs. I wrote the book Nothing: Something to Believe In to address the problem of what I do believe in. In order to figure it out, I decided to start with my earliest memories of contact with religion, and I traced those contacts up through my life. Many of the memories are funny, like when I gave my phone number to some evangelists who came to the door one day when I was home alone or when I accidentally went on a Christian Youth ski trip where the saving of my soul was the main event of the week (it didn't happen, but the skiing was good). Or this one:
I believe that I asked my parents the big religion question because I wanted to have a first Communion. I secretly hoped that they would, upon my reminding them, suddenly remember that I needed a big white dress, white gloves, shoes, and a veil. Especially the veil; I wanted that the most. I often put towels on my head to pretend I had long hair, and the veil would be an even better hair extender for my in-front-of-the-mirror fantasies. For Communion, everything was going to be white. Like the wedding dresses-big, billowy white dresses-that my friends had in their dress-up bins, dresses that had belonged to their moms. I had seen my mother's wedding picture, and, even though the picture was black and white I could tell that the dress she had worn was brown: two-tone brown and not a puff on it. It looked like something Laura Petrie would have worn to dust on the Dick Van Dyke Show, not at all a proper wedding dress. At the end of all the stories I realized that I had never been comfortable with the notions of god, church, temple, worship, sin, or retribution. I realized that I feel strongest about the life I lead, the people in it, and the community around me. I am not concerned with what comes next, I am not interested in spending this life preparing for the next. And I prefer to pass my days with people rather than gods. So what do I believe in? Before I speak about that I want to address the nature of belief. I got an e-mail from a Christian in response to my USA Today Op-Ed piece that appeared last Monday. He was not at all happy with my non-belief status and opened the note with: You only get one shot at life, everything you have is a gift from God (even though you don't think He exists, I KNOW He does and you can too). Okay, so my biggest problem with this statement is that I only "think" god doesn't exist while this dude KNOWS he does. Is belief the same as knowing? Do I believe in gravity or do I know it exists? Is belief provable, should it be? I always assumed that the things people believed in were things that did not have to do with scientific method; I always thought that the beauty in believing in irrational, un-provable things was that they were poetic, metaphoric, and helped to keep one's mind expansive and opened. As a painter, I hold beliefs in things that are somewhat analogous to this. The picture plane is an abstract idea. Color is subjective and can be hard to understand. Space is really confusing, especially when you are trying to translate the 3-D world around us into the flat world of a piece of paper. I am not much of a scientist, but I have been reading some books about science and I must say that the "belief" in science or in the idea that the scientific approach to the world is the right way is appealing to me. If something is true then it should be provable. Have a hypothesis, make an experiment, record the results, come up with a theory. But I do not want to run around asking people to prove everything. And I am not about to set up a laboratory to prove that one artist is better than another, for instance, or that there is such a thing as human "spirit" - that which makes me, me, and each of you, you. But it is very hard to talk to people about belief when they do not acknowledge the difference between knowledge and wondering, musing or pondering the unknowable. I always thought that was what people called faith. And even as an atheist, I have lots of faith. Last spring I was invited by Fox News to go face to face with the director of Answers in Genesis, Ken Hamm. He had just recently opened the new Creation Museum in Kentucky. I was arguing that whatever it was that the building down there housed, with all the exhibits and wall text and assertions of scientific truth, it was NOT a museum. To my mind, a museum is an institution engaged in open-ended inquiry, not a place to fit so-called evidence into an already formed and ironclad answer. In any case, the two-minute interview was dreadful. As is the whole idea of the bible as a science textbook. I have no idea how these Creationists can seriously think that they KNOW these things that they call facts. They claim to use science, and they claim to have all the evidence that they need to go beyond having a Theory (which is the lowly word they use to describe the idea of evolution) to instead having TRUTH. This is the same problem I had with the e-mail: believing vs. knowing. This is not faith, this is arrogance. I prefer to live my life believing some things and knowing others. I like the balance between facts and ideas that may or may not be true. I like the grey areas and I love saying I am not sure, or I don't know, to questions… especially from my kids. I recently told my daughter that I thought all there is in the face of the big questions is more questions. Sometimes, I said, we really can't know things. I get slammed from both sides when I say that. The hard-core atheists shake their heads and say I am an agnostic. Some of them have no patience for questioning. Some of them are hardened and angry. The righteous Christians say that I am wrong, that we can KNOW, and that the answers are to be found in God, with Jesus, and through studying the Bible. They do not open themselves up to possibilities, but rather they limit themselves by being so dogmatic and literal. Sometimes I feel that the discussion of whether or not there is a god is a dull and pointless one. I think that we need to move off it and onto other, more useful topics. The faithful are not going to abandon belief, not even when Christopher Hitchens tells them to. And he can be quite persuasive (although his support for the war brings his convictions about everything else into question, I suppose). Nor are those who have decided not to follow a religion or worship a god going to do so simply because they are prayed for or proselytized to. If all we do is become locked in disagreement, then we will be endlessly stuck. But if the Religious Right continues to encroach and threaten true religious freedom (which includes freedom FROM religion) we will never be able to get on with the other part of the conversation. The other part of the conversation is the really interesting part. So, where are you from? What do you do? How do you live your life? What is important to you? Did you read that book or see that article? What should we do as friends, neighbors, members of the same larger society about this problem facing us or that problem? What do you think about the new parking rules, how can we keep our streets cleaner, safer, and better for the kids? How can we get beyond differences and labels and work together, live together… get along and maybe do something good? This is productive dialogue. This is where we need to go. That is why I do not want to be the kind of atheist who tells other people what to believe in. That is why I prefer to try to remain open-minded. That is why I am willing to say I don't know if there is a god, but I don't believe there is and I don't have a relationship with the idea of a Him or an entity or a being. I have been told what to believe. I have been scorned for not accepting what other people tell me is the one truth. I have been ridiculed for saying that I think there are many truths - maybe as many truths are there are people in the world. I have rarely found anyone who agrees on what it all really means, and by agrees I mean 100% down the line agrees with another person totally. There are always places where people diverge. Even people who sit in the same church may not be in line all the time, nor do I think they should be. I do not like being told what to believe and I hate being told I am wrong. I mean I hate being told I am wrong about anything, but it really irks me when it is about who I am. And our beliefs are part of who we are. My in-laws are Christian and they wanted me to be Christian, too. So that we could be Christian together. I wrote my book partly as an answer to that request. I had hoped it would spurn dialogue, and not the kind that begins with the statement, "You need to come to our way of thinking." This does not feel good. I do not want to do that to anyone else. But it is hard to be follow the I-am-not-telling-others-what-to-believe rule when people are mean, when they tell you repeatedly that you will go to hell, or when they push their beliefs on others in a public school or public forum. Not to mention when they become violent - either on a large scale, like global terrorism, or a smaller scale, like murdering abortion doctors. Then it is hard to remain silent or respectful. That is the real trick: respecting those who cannot return the favor. Respecting people who cross the line and want to put their beliefs before anyone else's. That is when we all must stand and say, "Enough." That is why we must have the wall between church and state remain strong. That is why we must speak out against the dangers of fundamentalism and fanaticism. My book is not a political statement. I did not write about atheism as much as I wrote about being an atheist. I feel that on the whole, atheists are greatly disliked. Or should I say hated. I base that assertion not only on my experience, but also on the study from the University of Minnesota which said that atheists are the most hated group of "others" in the U.S. And then there is the recent USA Today Gallup poll which said that an atheist candidate has the lowest chance of getting votes - lower than any of the usually reviled members of our society like Muslims or gays. And I am not trying to say we're more hated than you, so there… it isn't a contest. It is just strange because we are hated not for being something, like gay or Mormon, but rather for NOT being something. The basis for the dislike of atheists is their non-belief in god, which is but one aspect of their lives. I for one do not want to be judged for what I do not do. That is entirely unfair. I may not believe in god, but I believe in good. That is why I wrote the book and that is why I called it "Nothing": to avoid the term atheist and talk about who I am outside of that trigger of a word. So now, what is it that I do believe?
I was driving in Manhattan one day. I signaled to make a right turn onto Broadway. There were many people all around the car, including pedestrians, other drivers, and a bus at the intersection full of riders. There were huge advertisements on the side of the bus, blown-up pictures of celebrities-people-staring down at me. I had to wait to make the turn, since the crosswalk was still crowded. I looked all around me and felt the strong presence of the people. My car windows were rolled up. I didn't hear, touch, or smell anyone; it was a different kind of sense at work. The strong presence was that each person-right there on the street at that very moment in time-was thinking of something, was remembering, feeling, forming an idea. It was as if I could feel all those brains at work. I could feel the energy that made all those people individuals. Each person in the world has his own story, thoughts, and internal life. It seemed overwhelming, and I had to remind myself to breathe. I took in a deep breath, and the crosswalk cleared. I put my foot to the gas pedal and took the turn down Broadway. The moment passed, I turned on the radio, and drove home.2 I believe in human nature, in all its glory and even at its lowest, basest moments. I believe in rebuilding, reemerging, and redemption. I believe that we can come back, make changes, make better choices, and live good lives. And I think that there is a core in all of us that connects us. We are all members of the same enormous family. We have many differences; we have more similarities. Let's celebrate that which connects us and stop dwelling on the things which divide us. To quote my old friend John Buenz, "People are my religion." To quote William Trevor, author of one of my favorite books, The Story of Lucy Galt, "Instead of nothing there is what there is."
Nothing: Something to Believe In is available from Barnes and Noble or on Amazon
1 Nothing: Something to Believe In, (New York: Prometheus Books), 23-24 Books on Atheism and Secularism: How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now, by James Kugel Religion and the Human Prospect, by Alexander Saxton God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hutchens Breaking the Spell, by Daniel Dennett The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins The End of Faith, by Sam Harris Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris A Secular Age, by Charles Taylor Secularism Confronts Islam, by Olivier Roy The Atheist's Bible, by Joan Konner The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously, by Jacques Berlinerblau Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, by Karel van der Toorn The Voice, the Word, the Books: The Sacred Scripture of the Jews, Christians and Muslims, by F.E. Peters
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