The Happy Atheist - Hardcover

Myers, PZ

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307379345 ISBN 13: 9780307379344

Publisher: Pantheon, 2013

Synopsis

“I’m an atheist swimming in a sea of superstition, surrounded by well-meaning, good people with whom I share a culture and similar concerns, and there’s only one thing I can do. I have to laugh.” —PZ Myers
 
On his popular science blog, Pharyngula, PZ Myers has entertained millions of readers with his infectious love of evolutionary science and his equally infectious disdain for creationism, biblical literalism, intelligent design theory, and other products of godly illogic. This funny and fearless book collects and expands on some of his most popular writings, giving the religious fanaticism of our times the gleeful disrespect it deserves by skewering the apocalyptic fantasies, magical thinking, hypocrisies, and pseudoscientific theories advanced by religious fundamentalists of all stripes.

With a healthy appreciation of the absurd, Myers not only pokes fun at the ridiculous tenets of popular religions but also highlights how the persistence of Stone Age superstitions can have dark consequences: interfering with our politics, slowing our scientific progress, and limiting freedom in our culture.

Forceful and articulate, scathing and funny, The Happy Atheist is a reaffirmation of the revelatory power of humor and the truth-revealing powers of science and reason.

About this title

About the Author

PZ Myers is a professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, Morris. He was named Humanist of the Year in 2009 by the American Humanist Association and received the International Humanist Award in 2011 from the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He has lectured throughout the world on biology, evolution, atheism, and skepticism. Awards Pharyngula has received include the 2006 Weblog Award for Best Science Blog and the 2005 Koufax Award for Best Expert Blog. In 2006, the journal Nature listed Pharyngula as the top-ranked blog by a scientist.

Reviews

Myers’ exploration of his atheism is brilliantly designed and executed to entertain and enlighten, but also to be shocking; for some, it will surely be hurtful. He uses words almost as weapons, calling religion “a kind of parasite of the mind,” calling God “a lazy invisible man in the sky.” But he’s not just doing this to be insulting; Myers has a plan. He wants us to be appalled, to be angered—to be so steamed that we’re compelled to try to refute his arguments, which are, it must be said, usually cogent and well presented. (Heaven, he says, no matter which way you look at it, would strip us of our humanity.) Readers of the author’s popular blog Pharyngula, from which many of this book’s chapters are drawn, know him to be outspoken and a bit on the antagonistic side, but even they might be surprised at the linguistic and thematic extremes he goes to here. This is a very entertaining and thought-provoking book, but it’s definitely not for all tastes. --David Pitt

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prometheus’s Sin
 
Why are science and religion in conflict? Because changing ideas and new knowledge are sacrilegious.
 
Throughout Ken Ham’s Creation Museum, in northern Kentucky, a persistent story is exhibited in display after display. Two ways of looking at the world are shown: “God’s Word,” the ultimate source of knowledge, the Bible; and “Human Reason.” For Christians, human reason is always the fall guy, the error-filled path, while the only truth lies in listening to what God has to say. Christians have an old book with the whole story laid out—literally, as the creationists like to claim—and by their definition, all observations about the natural world must be accommodated to it. In contrast stands human reason, which dares to contradict the Bible, dares to show great truths not encompassed by the Bible’s stories, and most horribly, proposes an alternate, better source of knowledge than a body of ancient myths.
 
That’s a major theme throughout the “museum,” that science defies the word of God, and that the only valid knowledge must be that which is reconcilable with the Bible; Scripture is the sole arbiter of truth.
 
According to the Creation Museum,
 
“In a biblical worldview, scientific observations are interpreted in light of the truth that is found in the Bible. If conclusions contradict the truth revealed in Scripture, the conclusions are rejected.”
 
To that mind-set, insisting on the primacy of evidence other than the Bible is heretical—a theme at the evangelical Christian creationist organization Answers in Genesis, for instance, is that even the phrase millions of years is a signifier of gross, un-Christian error, since the Bible clearly (doesn’t it?) explains that the earth is only six thousand years old.
 
But, you might say, isn’t fundamentalist Christianity a kind of pathological religion that carries its antirational claims to absurd extremes? Is it fair to judge faith in general on the basis of this one radical example? Yes. Because fundamentalist Christianity isn’t at all unusual. Consider that well-known sixteenth-century theologian Martin Luther. Oh, Luther offers a rich vein of distressing statements opposing rationality.
 
“Reason is the Devil’s greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil’s appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom. . . . Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism. . . . She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets. Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but—more frequently than not—struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.
 
People gave ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us [Joshua 10:13] that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.”
 
Note that last objection: this is not just the opinion of some radical Protestant. The idea was shared with the Catholic Church, which similarly resisted the conclusions of astronomers. Islam also promoted geocentrism, despite the fact that the Koran is said to be without error and contradiction. That’s the problem with having a source that is claimed to be infallible but was actually written by people who knew next to nothing about the world around them—the stories don’t hold up.
 
Unfortunately, the religious strategy for coping with this conflict is not to maintain flexibility and adapt to new information, but instead to restrict new knowledge and condemn it when it contradicts tradition.
 
At the very least, religion’s fear of honest information about the world leads to stagnation; at worst, it is destructive to any culture that values scientific advances and the education of its children. Here’s a nightmare to contemplate: the staff of Answers in Genesis teaching children about science. And they do! They lead groups of children through recitations condemning evolution and all science that denies the “facts” of the Bible, sing songs about how the earth is only six thousand years old and the dinosaurs sailed on the Ark with Noah, and teach them how to stump scientists. (It’s easy: ask scientists “Were you there?” and when they say no, you’ve demonstrated that they have no evidence to back up their science.)
 
I’m beginning to think that child abuse is a tenet of the Abrahamic religions.
 
So here are some more sacrilegious acts you can commit: Learn something new. Teach something new. Question dogma. Challenge tradition. Laugh at the quaint myths religion offers us.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pantheon
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0307379345
• ISBN 13: 9780307379344
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208