Proselytizing Godlessness
by Shubha Bala, associate producer
According to The New York Times and CNN, national atheist and humanist groups are investing in major ad campaigns for the non-believers.
“The godless groups say they are mounting this surge because they are aware that they have a large, untapped army of potential troops. The percentage of American adults who say they have no religion has doubled in the last two decades.”
The billboards and posters, which haven’t been without controversy, aren’t completely new. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, for example, has been putting together marketing campaigns since 2007. However, this year four national groups are competing for believers, and the American Humanist Association is putting forth $200,000 into its “godless” campaign — thought to be the highest amount ever spent.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation designed a sign campaign for the sides of buses and highway billboards: 
The organization American Atheist created this billboard campaign to target the Christmas season: 
Watch for more of these ads coming to a cable television station, billboard, or bus near you.
In the top photo, the Greater St. Louis Coalition of Reason ran this billboard on roads in St. Louis, Missouri in September and October of this year. (courtesy of United Coalition of Reason)
To Hold Contradiction in Our Hands Is What Makes Us Unique as Humans
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
“The less it is possible that something can be,
the more it must be.”
I’ve been sitting on this unbelievably gripping, humorous, and intellectually stimulating lecture by Robert Sapolsky for months now. I’m not sure why. My work life whisked me away, but, in watching this video again, it’s too good not to share.
Sapolsky is one of the world’s leading neuroscientists who explores “the biology of neurons” and how stress factors in to our social lives. He’s an incredible storyteller who makes sense of the human species by studying primates, particularly baboons. Using many examples from the wild, he debunks a series of commonly held assumptions that most people believe define human beings as being distinct, as being unique to our species: theory of mind, the Golden Rule, empathy, tit-for-tat, etc.
Despite all the universal behaviors we humans hold in common with other animals, Sapolsky says that humans have one trait that best defines and distinguishes us from other species: the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in our head, and yet continue on in the face of it.
During a staff meeting several months ago, I recommended that one of our associate producers do some research on Dr. Sapolsky as a potential interview with Krista. The feedback: Dr. Sapolsky was a good storyteller with great depth of experience, but there was concern that his atheism might be too strident and might not work for our program.
To me, it’s these types of voices that we want to include in our repertoire of shows. He’s a non-believer who embraces the paradox himself. He’s not just against religion or worshiping a deity. He lives an intellectual life that listens to these religious and philosophical voices and internalizes them. He takes them seriously and doesn’t dismiss them.
So, when I’m evaluating future guests, I’m looking for clues, for indicators that strike me as openness to ideas without personally accepting them as doctrine. So, even though Dr. Sapolsky declares himself strident in the lecture above, he makes a Niebuhrian statement like the one that heads the top of this page. And, shortly thereafter, posts a slide with a quotation from Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard:
“Christian faith requires that faith persists in the face of the impossible, and that humans have the capacity to simultaneously believe in two contradictory things.”
And then he immediately cites the mercy-filled work of Sr. Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun, and quotes her:
“The less forgivable the act, the more it must be forgiven. The less loveble the person is, the more you must find the means to love them.”
What’s even more delightful is Sapolsky’s own ability and intellectual curiosity to live comfortably and reconcile his own positions and beliefs. He marvels:
“As a strident atheist, this strikes me as the most irrational, magnificent thing we are capable of as a species. … And this one does not come easily. On a certain level, the harder this is, this contradiction, to take the impossibility of something and to be the very proof that it must be possible and must become a moral imperative, the harder it is to do that, the more important it is.”
Check back on this blog in the coming days when Nancy makes an interesting connection between Evangelical leader Richard Mouw and self-proclaimed atheist Robert Sapolsky.
In the bottom photo, Sister Helen Prejean participates in a demonstration against the death penalty in Paris, France on July 2, 2007. (photo by Mehdi Fedouach/AFP/Getty Images).
He trusts God to keep him safe. And I’m here just in case that doesn’t work out.
—Religious Programs Specialist 2nd Class Philip Chute, a self-declared atheist who is charged with protecting Navy Chaplain Terry Moran, a Seventh-Day Adventist who is ministering to Marines in Afghanistan.
Michael M. Phillips’ Wall Street Journal article “A Chaplain and an Atheist Go to War” gives unexpected insight into some of the strange pairings of battle and the tension of war in all its humanness. Well worth a read.
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Approaches to the Question “Is Religion Potentially Dangerous?”
Andy Dayton, associate web producer
In “No More Taking Sides” Krista describes her conversation with Robi Damelin and Ali Abu Awwad, who both have lost a loved one in the conflict:
“…this is not another version of the tragic Israeli-Palestinian story to which we’ve all become accustomed from the news. Neither is it a touchy-feely story of isolated good will. This story is fiercely human, admitting grief while also yielding to joy, and it is all the more hopeful for its origins in the hard ground of reality.”
Updating the site for rebroadcast, we’ve also been editing our video footage from Krista’s live conversation with Robert Wright earlier this month. His answer to the audience question, “Is religion potentially dangerous?” is one that’s often asked in the context of the seemingly intractable conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
As we produce this interview for air, the most recent script characterizes Wright as “relentlessly logical” — and you might say that Wright’s assessment of religion’s role in this conflict is relentlessly logical in the best sense. But, while logic can be extremely helpful in understanding the forces behind human conflict, it says very little about the experience of those conflicts.
That’s where Robi and Ali come in. When Wright tells us that “human life is potentially dangerous,” their stories show us this on a gut level. Their partnership is a living example of why we’re all in this together is an idea really worth considering.
Ali Abu Awwad, from the transcript:
“When I get to the library that [Robi’s son] David was preparing for the student, a good library, and I saw Robi start crying there, I don’t know, it’s strange, that feeling that I got at that moment. I have that feeling that David is telling me, ‘Take care of my mother.’ This is the first time I’m telling that. I never told Robi that.
And I think [my brother] Yousef was so happy that Robi was taking care of me and I really don’t feel this identity when I feel about David, when I feel about Yousef. I don’t feel that.
They just put us — by passing away, they put us in this deeply feeling with our humanity. And if people appreciate and if politicians appreciate the life as they appreciate the death, peace will be possible.”
None of the theories of the transmission of religious belief favoured by anti-theists work. Religious belief is not a marker of stupidity. In this country, among the under thirties, it is most common in those with a university education. Nor is it transmitted by brainwashing. But if religion is natural, none of this proves it is necessary, nor that it is impossible to suppress…
"There’s a New Power in America – Atheism"
Andy Dayton, Associate Web Producer
Andrew Sullivan, citing the just-released 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, discusses the rise of atheism in the U.S. in his Times column. He traces the rise of the non-religious in America as it relates to the rise of religious conservatism in recent years.
Sullivan’s outlook for religious America isn’t particularly optimistic, and he laments what he considers a shortage of intelligent religious voices in the U.S.:
The days when America’s leading intellectuals contained a strong cadre of serious Christians are over. There is no Thomas Merton in our day; no Reinhold Niebuhr, Walker Percy or Flannery O’Connor. In the arguments spawned by the new atheist wave, the Christian respondents have been underwhelming.
In the past we’ve considered Sullivan as a potential guest for Speaking of Faith, perhaps in response to California’s Proposition 8 ruling on gay marriage; he’s a Roman Catholic and openly gay, giving him a unique perspective on the subject.
Ride the Bus
Andy Dayton, Associate Web Producer
There’s been a bit of controversy resulting from the atheist ad campaign that placed the message “There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life” on buses around the UK. Well now, in the spirit of religious pluralism, anyone can have their own bus ad — or at least a photo of one, generated by the bus slogan generator.
The tag line in the (fake) SOF ad above paraphrases the opening sentence in Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Nature and Destiny of Man, “Man has always been his own most vexing problem.” It’s also a top candidate for our yet-to-be-produced (but often joked about) slogan t-shirts. Tune in to this week’s show for more on Niebuhr from Krista, David Brooks, and E.J. Dionne.
