Tuesday, June 19, 2007

The Atheist's Bible is Published


The Atheist's Bible, edited by Joan Konner (ed-Dean of Columbia University's Journalism Department), has been published and is reviewed in the Philadelphia Enquirer here. From the review: "The Atheist's Bible organizes hundreds of aphorisms and excerpts to sway an uncertain mind - that is, a mind uncertain about both God's existence and whether it wants to spend valuable summer time plowing through Dennett, Dawkins or Hitchens. So consider The Atheist's Bible your atheism beach book, your big-A graphic novel, your Atheism for Dummies, a slim book that permits you to feel like a high-achieving apostate every 20 seconds while you build up strength for serious blasphemy when cooler weather returns."


Amazon.com gives us some juicy sample quotes, with my rejoinders in parentheses:


"All thinking men are atheists," Ernest Hemingway famously wrote. [Which means Kant, Descartes, Alvin Plantinga, Francis Collins, Barack Obama, Marilyn McCord Adams, William Lane Craig, Peter Kreeft, Alasdair McIntyre, Flannery O.Connor, John Updike, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Richard Swinburne, William P. Alston, Miroslav Volf, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Kierkegaard, Alfred North Whitehead, John Polkinghorne, Robert Coles, Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Craig Keener, N.T. Wright, ... etc. etc. ad nauseum... were not "thinking men?" And, Hemingway was?]


"When I think of all the harm [the bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it." Oscar Wilde [Wilde himself "lived a life of deceit to his wife, family and friends." So how did his a-religion help him from not harming others? And, for me personally, the Bible has done much good.]

"SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited." Ambrose Bierce [Funny. But adds nothing of substance.]

"There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer." Gertrude Stein [Funny. But self-contradictory.]

"Do not let yourself be deceived: great intellects are skeptical." Friedrich Nietzsche [If true, so what? There are great intellects who are skeptical of atheism.]

"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." Susan Ertz [And atheists have no real purpose, no telos, in life. Their Sunday afternoons are spent in absurdities according to Sartrean existentialist atheism. "Existentialism describes a being who means nothing and is utterly alone in the world, save his other empty compatriots." Ever read Nausea, or "The Wall?" Antoine Roquentin would surely struggle to find something meaningful to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon.]

"God is love, but get it in writing." Gypsy Rose Lee [On Christian theism, we do have it in writing. See N.T. Wright's The Last Word.]

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind." Ralph Waldo Emerson [False. On atheism nothing is sacred, period.]

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." George Bernard Shaw [But of course. C.S. Lewis made this point. Lewis said he did not come to Christianity because it made him happier, but because he thought it was the truth. Lewis said if he wanted to be "happy" he would have picked up a bottle of wine.]