SO MUCH FOR ANY ONE DAY

A beautiful, sunny warmish day in old Spokane. Excellent for a mid-February day in a supposedly cold climate region of America. But how can I explain the ravages of fate, always nearby to lift up the downtrodden and humble the mighty? Just a few days ago as I rose complacently up the escalator at River Park Square on another wonderful day just like this one, I placed the palm of my right hand on a cold, fresh slimy booger some wonderfully modern human had placed on the rubber handrail of the conveyance which at that moment was levitating me into the upper regions?


ANOTHER TRY
AT GETTING AN ATHEISTIC GUEST COLUMN IN
OUR LOCAL NEWSPAPER

An Atheist’s Testament

Please understand I speak only for myself although I believe many atheists will agree with much that I say here. In the first place, I’m a modern American atheist, not a sadistic, idealistic seminarian like Joe Stalin. Modern American atheists are fully committed to democracy and the Constitution. We especially support the freedoms outlined in America’s Bill of Rights. Being a minority, our well-being depends on those protections.

Central to our beliefs is an acceptance of responsibility for what we do as human beings. We believe in no controlling power outside ourselves to credit for our constructive or blame for our destructive human traits. The buck stops with us. Other than that, atheists are much like any American.

I’m always amazed when religious Americans blanche when they meet an atheist. Two young baristas recently clung together and literally stepped away from the counter when I said I was an atheist, as if standing near me could harm them. That was amusing and troubling at the same time. I asked myself, “Given absolute power unchecked by Constitutional law, what would the fear those young women demonstrate drive them to do?” Would they gas atheists, burn our books or banish us as Hitler’s Christians and Stalin’s atheists did to those they feared? Though not generally paranoid, atheists must consider these possibilities. Individual freedoms are not guaranteed to any minority unless they remain vigilant.

Atheists are not, on the average, any worse or better than any American group. They enjoy the same sorts of American activities as any U.S. citizen. The marriages I know of are just as successful or unsuccessful as the average American marriage. My atheist friends are as educated and personable as anyone I know. They tend to read widely and a lot, a disappearing American activity. They are selfish and accomplish good deeds proportionately as often as any other group though, being a smaller group, atheistic activities are less likely to be publicized than those of more visible groups, unless they threaten national Christian hegemony.

If atheists had a state to themselves, it would probably be Missouri, the “show me” state. Because of our core materialistic bent, atheists are sensitive, sensible and common sense people, that is, we defer to our senses in our quest for truth. I tend to believe the evidence of my senses and quantifiable scientific research into matter rather than flights of imagination, and I tend to dwell in concrete reality rather than imagine forces outside the realm of concrete experience. In discussion among ourselves, an atheist motto is “Bring me the evidence”. We frequently ask questions like “Can you prove that? Isn’t that hearsay evidence? Where’s the research that supports your claim? What corroborates that statement?” and we make statements like “I can’t merely take your word for it!”

When atheists discuss solutions for cultural perturbations, we stick with how things actually are as research reveals them to be rather than moralize about how we’d like them to be. For that reason alone, atheists are less likely to be disappointed in life for they accept life on life’s terms rather than wish for how life ought to be or moralize endlessly about the imaginary or real wrongs of others. Our solutions begin with an objective, unflinching and scientific look at how things are and, given that reality, we then ask what can be done to improve the situation. Far too many suggestions for improving America begin with people sadly or smugly moralizing about how things ought to be rather than with observing the facts of the situation and referring to the accumulating evidence of how our common evolutionary inheritance influences human consciousness and behavior.

Given a modern atheist’s rational optimism about life, I am less likely to see bad everywhere or to awfulize the human condition. Atheists recognize how far science has brought us from the Dark Ages when religious superstitions of all kinds distorted human thinking. In fact, whenever I catch myself thinking or saying how bad life is or others are, I immediately ask myself if America’s unconscious, pessimistic religious moralizing is once again poisoning my thinking, and I attempt to clarify my sensibilities.

Finally, because of our core beliefs, modern atheists never want to escape from life into some imaginary, wished-for afterlife. After all, for atheists, this life is the only life we have. There is no other reality to compare it to, favorably or unfavorably. How could we, then, be disappointed with the only life there is?
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“How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter.” —Woody Allen