Atheism May 19, 2013 Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota Rev. Roger Fritts

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1 Atheism May 19, 2013 Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota Rev. Roger Fritts Two weeks ago, the first Sunday in May, I delivered a sermon on Theism. I concluded with a confession that I am a mystical theist. I defined the mystical as a feeling of unity that exists before we divide our perception into the forms of emotion and reason, before we divide our world into the forms of space and time. This is my personal theology. I choose to define God as a unity that underlies all existence. I should explain that in Unitarian Universalist congregations, the minister is not the final authority. I speak only for myself. During the sermon, you may agree with me, or disagree with me, or just take a nap. I encourage each of you to develop your personal theology, based on your own experience and reason. A belief in God is not a requirement of membership in this congregation. However, it often feels like a belief in God is a requirement for membership in the United States of America. The constitutions of seven states ban atheists from holding public office: In Arkansas: "No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court." In Maryland: "That no religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God; In Mississippi: "No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state." In North Carolina: "The following persons shall be disqualified for office: First, any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God." In South Carolina: "No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution." In Tennessee: "No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state." And in Texas: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall anyone be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being." Atheists live in a society filled with God. The word is in the Pledge of Allegiance and on all of our money. A member of a small minority, one survey found that only 1.4 million adults positively claimed to be atheists, about 2 percent of the United States population. These atheists live in a nation where 80 percent of the people believe the Bible is the inspired word of God. Ironically, only 59 percent of Americans say they have read the Bible. Atheists live in a country where the Boy Scouts do not allow atheists as members. Few politicians have been willing to identify as atheists. Several polls have shown that about 50 percent of Americans would not vote for a qualified atheist for president. In one survey, 48

2 percent of Americans said they would not want their child to marry an atheist. Atheists are said to be un-american, and blamed for wars, crimes, immorality, extreme materialism, and elitism. In child custody court rulings, atheist parents have been discriminated against, either directly or indirectly. In 1980, in a custody case in Kentucky, I received a subpoena to testify that a divorced mother, a member of my congregation, did in fact believe in God. However, in spite of such attacks on atheism over the centuries, there have always been a few people who have used reason, logic, and experience in evaluating claims about God. In ancient religious texts, negative references to those who don t believe give us evidence that there have always been skeptics. In the Old Testament, Psalm 14 says, The fool says in his heart, There is no God. About three thousand years old, this passage is one of the first written records, evidence of the existence of atheists. Two thousand five hundred years ago, atheist views begin appearing in China, India, and Greece. In China Confucius taught what was essentially an atheistic philosophy. In India Buddha taught a philosophy that omitted any belief in God. In Greece, the philosophy of materialism taught that everything in the universe was composed of tiny units of matter called atoms. In this view, all the movements of life and nature are accounted for in the movements of atoms. However, the word atheist had not yet been invented. The word atheist first appeared in the 1570s, taken from the Greek word atheos meaning disbelief in or denial of the existence of a Supreme Being. At first, it was used as a term of abuse, a nasty slur to describe others as rejecting the God worshipped by the larger society. But in 1729 a French country priest died and left a memoir in which he confessed that he was unable to believe in God. By the end of the 18 th century, a few philosophers were willing to call themselves atheists, though they remained a tiny minority. In the 19 th century advances in science led to an increase in atheism: In 1841, Ludwig Feuerbach argued that god was simply a human projection, an external perfect idol created by human imagination. In 1843, Karl Marx read Feuerbach and compared belief in god to the drug opium. Belief in God helped oppressed people feel better about their lives while doing nothing about the root causes of oppression. Religion was the opium of the people. 1n 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that god was dead, the suggestion that the growth of human knowledge was making it increasingly difficult to believe in the phenomenon most people describe as god. In 1927, Sigmund Freud published his book on religion, which he called The Future of an Illusion. Freud wrote that belief in God is the result of our helplessness against the forces of nature. God is a manifestation of our childlike longing for a father. Humans cope with threatening forces in the same way that as a child we learned to cope with our insecurity by

3 relying on and admiring and fearing an imaginary father. Influenced by the tradition of Kant and Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre described himself as an Existentialist atheist in the 1940s. He declared that: There is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is.... Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of Existentialism.... God is a useless and costly hypothesis, so we will do without it.... Sartre s atheism constructed a humanist ethics emphasizing freedom and individuality. In the last ten years, several new books on atheism have become best sellers. In 2004 The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris, became a bestseller. Harris was motivated by the events of September 11, 2001, which he laid directly at the feet of Islam, while also directly criticizing Christianity and Judaism. In 2006 The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins was published, and stayed on the bestseller list for 51 weeks. Dawkins argues that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. In 2007 God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens appeared and became No. 1 on the bestseller list. Hitchens argued that organized religion is "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children." These books and others are called the New Atheism. The writers argue that religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized, and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises. Perhaps because of these arguments, atheism appears to be growing. For example, Twenty-five percent of people living in Germany say that they do not believe in God. Twenty seven percent of people in Belgium and the Netherlands are Atheists. In France, the number is 33 percent. It turns out that people who do not believe in God can be happy. One California atheist wrote, You hold the mistaken idea that atheists and agnostics live miserable or selfcentered lives of unremitting emptiness and despair. But all the atheists I know think life is a magnificent wonder. They too love sunsets, the Grand Canyon, the promontories of Big Sur, all the more miraculous for having been created solely from the laws of nature, no Supreme Being required.

4 Still, it is not easy to be an atheist. A high school student in Michigan wrote: As an atheist, I feel I have endured persecution for my beliefs. I believe that the only outcome of any increase of religion in the schools would be an increase in anger directed against those students who are either not of the dominant religion or lack religion at all. Last fall, [wrote this student] I tried to form an atheist club in my high school as an alternative to a Bible study group that already existed. The school made it difficult for me to do so, saying I didn t have a teacher-sponsor. I threatened to sue the school with legal help from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Only then did the school say I could not be prevented from forming the club. The reaction of some of my fellow students to the club was even worse. Immediately after I formed the group, a few of them seemed to take it upon themselves to intimidate me. Signs promoting the club were torn down, and people scribbled insults like Burn in Hell on them. Students would come to our meetings and yell, simply to be disruptive. And after the shootings at Columbine, a friend told me that a teacher had told his class that my club was the same thing as the trench coat mafia. Writing in the New York Times, the newspaper s science writer, Natalie Angier, herself a selfproclaim atheist, said: In an age when flamboyantly gay characters are sitcom staples, a Jew was but a few flutters of a butterfly wing away from being in line for the presidency and women account for a record 13 percent of the Senate, nothing seems as despised, illicit and un-american as atheism. Again and again the polls proclaim the United States to be a profoundly and persistently religious nation, one in which faith remains a powerful force.... Every year, surveyors like Gallup and the National Opinion Research Center ask Americans whether they believe in God, and every year the same overwhelming majority, anywhere from 92 to 97 percent, says yes. Why are people condemned for their atheism? Is it not because the condemners are weak and uncertain in their own faith? Is it not a fearful insecurity? The discrimination, the hostility, the taboo, against atheists in our country is a crime. Some of my best friends are atheists. They do not believe in God. They never pray. Yet they are good, caring, honest people, sensitive to the needs of others, generous with their time, their love, their wealth. I have known the kindness, the sincerity, and the thoughtfulness of many atheists. Their friendships have enriched my life and their insights have added to my understanding. So to all the atheists within the sound of my voice, I say, belief in God is not a requirement of membership in this religious community. Theists and agnostics are no more noble nor more

5 honest than atheists, and I have never met a person who could be judged solely on the basis of a theological position. To all atheists, I say that you are welcome and that your presence enriches the life of our religious community. In proclaiming their views, atheists help free us from the chains of illusion. They say to us: Use your mind! Question everything! Make reasonable judgments! Dig for more insights! Examine the evidence! Think for yourself! A belief in God is not required in order to be religious. It is moral striving. It is goodness of heart. It is living for others. It is a genuine commitment to human community. For the theist and the atheist, this is the crucial test of true religion.

Neo-Atheism on the University Campus. Edwin Chong. UniverSanity January 25, 2008

Neo-Atheism on the University Campus Edwin Chong UniverSanity January 25, 2008 UniverSanity, Jan. 25 2008 Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him