The Happy Atheist

What makes an atheist happy?

In the case of biology professor P. Z. Myers, the answer to that question shouldn’t be all that difficult to discern, especially considering the fact he wrote a book titled The Happy Atheist.

Though I don’t know Professor Myers, should we ever meet, I suspect it is possible we could consider each other a friend, in spite of our vast difference in opinion about certain mutual topics of interest.

One reason I think it’s possible is because it seems that we share a few things in common. Also, I respect his honesty.

For example, I agreed with him completely when he wrote that saying “abiogenesis is not evolution” is a cop-out and commend Professor Myers for his intellectual courage to admit it.

After all, more than once I have asserted that life cannot evolve until it exists myself.

The logical foundation for making the connection between life and its origin would seem to be inarguable — but that doesn’t keep some people from wanting to argue about it.

Several of my atheist friends have tried to rebut the “Big Picture” argument presented in my book Counterargument for God by saying the ability for a living organism to change and the origin of life are two completely separate processes as unrelated as gravity and germ theories, which is just plain silly to even suggest.

The hypothesis called abiogenesis might be an issue for chemistry and the theory of evolution a philosophical interest in biology, but biological organisms are created by chemical reactions forming complex structures. That little fact is undeniable.

Going beyond our agreement about the significance of abiogenesis, it might be interesting to note that Professor Myers and I were both raised Lutheran. Furthermore, we are both writers. He blogs regularly at Pharyngula, and I haphazardly voice my opinion on a very wide range of subjects right here at southernprose.com.

P. Z. Myers

However, I’m afraid that may be the full extent of what P. Z. Myers and I have in common. As an atheist, he believes in neither a supernatural God or an afterlife, and he derives much of his pleasure from looking down rather snobbishly on those who do.

Unfortunately I can’t even score any brownie points with Professor Myers by writing a rave review about his book. Frankly, I’m much more impressed with his blogging.

His book simply wasn’t very good. In fact, The Happy Atheist reads like a cobbled-together collection of lesser material that didn’t merit publication on his blog.

For example, on pages 62 and 63 in an essay titled “Afterlife? What Afterlife?”, Myers wrote:

Look at the stories religious people make up. They know nothing of the deep history of the world, so they create a fable about a humanlike deity as one would construct a house. They know nothing of disease, so they make up imaginary demons and spirits that torment us. They don’t understand geology or the weather, so every natural catastrophe becomes a warning shot from an angry god. They want power, so they pretend that their incantations and rituals will get them the blessings of their god. Most pathetic of all, they fear death, so they’ve invented fabulous heavens to tempt and hells to terrify. They’re all lies. Religious people don’t know what happens after we die–they can only pretend to know. No one has returned from an unambiguous death to tell us what goes on afterward, and the people who do claim to have had visions of an afterlife or ghosts or souls are not consistent with each other. The only reason to invent a story that we have a “spirit” that will “live on” after our death is that it’s what people want to hear. Death is frightening, so it’s easy for people to believe in an afterlife. But there is no evidence at all for an afterlife.

Notice the sweeping generalization containing all these assumptions Professor Myers has made about people with religious beliefs in one paragraph–that we “know nothing” about the deep history of the world, or disease. We don’t understand geology or weather.

Reading Professor Myers, it seems clear that in his opinion, no really logical and smart person could ever believe in God.

However, the most significant problem with his diatribe in the paragraph above is that atheists don’t know what happens when we die, either. Claiming that what others believe is a lie implies that the person making that declaration knows the truth with absolute certainty.

In reality, nobody does. Our best sources for potential information about what happens after we die might be gleaned from interviews with Pam Reynolds or Matthew Botsford.

Regardless of whether it was born of ignorance or denial, Myers’s claim “there is no evidence at all for an afterlife” simply isn’t true.

There are phenomena known as corroborated veridical NDE perceptions that clearly seem to demonstrate that the mind and brain are separable entities and strongly suggest our conscious mind may be able to survive physical death.

On the other hand, in an essay beginning on page 149 titled “Our Brains Are Full of Contradictions,” Myers wrote,

“When we claim that, because so-and-so is a scientist, every thought in his head must be automatically legitimate in the scientific sphere, we’re making a glorified argument from authority — we’re making a logical fallacy. There’s plenty of room for each one of us to be wrong.”

Because I reject arguments attempted using authority on a fairly regular basis, I appreciate the honesty of Professor Myers in conceding that point and agree with his debunking the argument from authority. Unfortunately, he later tries to use a similar argument from authority when on page 160, in an essay titled”Religion Fails as a Source of Knowledge.” Myers wrote:

Science and religion are incompatible in all of the ways that count. Science works. Religion doesn’t.

That is an argument attempting to use his authority as an academic to assert a baseless claim in support of his atheistic beliefs. What does it mean to say “religion doesn’t work?”

Probably the most positive thing I can say about The Happy Atheist is the book is short, a quick read. However, it lacks much in the way of real substance that might serve to validate his atheistic worldview, except to say it makes Professor Myers feel better about himself to feel superior to other people. For him, happiness seems to be found in something other than a normal, well-developed sense of humor.

He claims to derive a schadenfreude-like pleasure from watching people he believes to be foolish acting like fools. In the opening chapter titled “Morning in the Midwest,” Myers describes his neighbors as “good people” and says they aren’t stupid — except about their religious beliefs, of course.

Most of the chapters/essays have pithy titles such as “The Top Ten Reasons Religion Is Like Pornography,” “The Big Pink Guy in the Sky,” and “Laughter as a Strategy for Diminishing Religion.”

The irony of his writing “I’m Not a Spoiled Child Having a Temper Tantrum” is quite delicious, especially considering the fact that in other chapters, Myers brags about his plans to desecrate a communion wafer, and burying Bibles to fertilize his garden.

What Professor Myers fails to explain in his book is how other atheists might become happy without looking down in condescension toward people who believe in a supernatural God. When he proclaims “Science works. Religion doesn’t.” he’s making the tacit admission that he doesn’t really even understand the only two real alternatives from which we must choose, if we seek a glimpse of an existential Big Picture.

We don’t have a choice to make between science and religion. Science is merely a tool we use to help us form answers to our existential questions that conform to our personal worldview.

The existential questions focus on the relative probability of whether or not a creator God exists.

In other words, we must choose between God and virtually impossible, certainly not very plausible good luck.