Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller tells the world (well, at least the NPR-listening world) that he believes there is no god. As a member of the segment of the population happily and openly unburdened by belief in a divine force, it's a fucking relief to see someone publicly taking this stance. I particularly like, and agree with, Penn's rejection of atheism's non-belief for a belief in there not being god. I remember some similar discussion of this belief on some fellow blogger's blog a few months ago, but I don't remember quite who/when.
I've had an oddly difficult time writing this post without the use of religiously-rooted expressions. At first the post's title was "amen, brother", and I kept wanting to write, "thank god" in response to Penn's essay. But in this context I realized how weird it is for someone adamantly opposed to god-belief to use those expressions: if anything good happened, it sure as hell didn't have anything to do with, as Penn puts it, some "imaginary friend."
I imagine in the UK, an English-speaking society that seems to have a stronger and longer-standing relationship with secularism than the US (a.k.a. the land of Christian bullyism), they've developed linguistic alternatives to god phrases. I mean, maybe if I incorporated the words "bloody" and "sodding" into my speech I wouldn't need to rely on "goddamn" and "jesus christ" so much. Or, I could simply replace every reference to god or jesus with the word "fuck." For example, "Thank fuck I didn't burn the cookies!"
Fuck, now that's something I can get behind.
7 comments:
I imagine in the UK, an English-speaking society that seems to have a stronger and longer-standing relationship with secularism than the US
don't confuse secularism with atheism, please. the uk still has a state church, for fuck's sake. the commonwealth of virginia, on the other hand, has been a secular state since 1786. the united states is the first modern nation founded on a document (the constitution) that omits the name of the deity entirely.
the fact that ronnie reagan opened the door for theocracy some twenty-five years ago should be seen as a betrayal of our national heritage rather than its natural conclusion.
but, let's give a word-em-up to penn jillette! without him, there would only be a handful of half japanese records, rather than 500000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
right, and i wouldn't have learned how to make homemade fake blood from corn syrup and food coloring when i was 11.
re: British secularism, I was referring more to general cultural attitudes; but, it's still hard to argue, despite the state church, that the government of the UK is more theist than that of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
the point you made was about "traditions" and "long-standing relationships." it's impossible to make the point that britain has "longer-standing relationship with secularism" when it was thomas jefferson who more or less invented it in its valence as an organizing principle of government.
at what point did you interpret the title of this post, "thank fuck," as "a brief and thoroughly informed treatise on the history of secularism in the governments of post-Enlightenment Great Britian and the United States of America"? i did, after all, begin the paragraph with the phrase "i imagine." and by "longer-standing" i meant relative to the length of time i have been alive, i.e. over the last several decades.
i do not claim to post other than the vaguely uninformed musings of one person on this blog. if you'd like to participate in a debate about historical details, there are likely other blogs more equipped to entertain that kind of discourse.
in the meantime, let's get back to the fart jokes.
i'm just doing a public service, trying to supplement your uninformed (and wrong) musings with some information and rightness.
excuse me, buttmunch, but your pants are filled with the wetness of your fart.
So that's why neither of you commented on my own Penn/atheism blog entry. That or you don't read my blog.
As a British atheist with a US citizenship application pending (and a copy of 'US Citizenship for Dummies' on the back of my toilet) I feel uniquely qualified to jump in here.
First off, the US Constitution rocks, at least as a secular document. It's fucking awesome to have all that shit written down, especially without the mention of anyone's imaginary friend.
Second off, the paradox we're caught in here is that countries with established state churches are usually much more secular than secular republics. Which is sort of a shame, as secular republics are awesome. I mean, look at the UK and Germany and all those Scandinavian countries, with their income taxes going to Lutherans, etc. All a bunch of godless heathens. Of course, in the case of the Scandies, they're just a few hundred years from worshipping Odin naked in the forests. Which some of them still do. Though only the white supremacists. Now I've lost my train of thought.
Third off, despite the fact that the UK has a much, much lower rate of imaginary friend belief, there's still a lot of scary religious shit on the books precisely because of both the continued existence of the royal prerogative and because of the established church. I mean, there were still blasphemy trials in the 1970s, for imaginary friend's sake. And now they've just brought in a law against inciting "religious hatred". On the one hand, this is a bold attempt to tackle anti-Muslim, anti-Sikh and anti-Hindu sentiment (Jews have been covered by existing laws against racism, i.e. as an ethnic group). But on the other hand it outlaws things like "disparaging people's religious beliefs", which could conceivably stop atheists from voicing well-reasoned critiques of theism. A number of prominent comedians have complained, including Rowan Atkinson. It's this kind of shit that makes me a free speech fundamentalist, even though, in my Canadian incarnation, I was always in favour of anti-hate speech laws.
Fourth off, French secularism is stupid. This is another way in which America rocks. American secularism is all about separation of church and state (in theory, anyway), whereas French secularism is all about the removal of religion from the public sphere. Though I'm sad that Liberation is in trouble.
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