Atheist Manifesto (Somewhat of a Book Review)

by Madeleine Kando

There must be an enormous amount of people who, like me, don’t really believe in the existence of a person with a long beard sitting on a cloud, passing judgment on everyone. They just don’t go about telling everyone how they feel. The ones that do are the activist atheists, the ones that speak for the rest of us.

Authors like Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are explicitly FOR atheism, just like I am for animal rights. But their rational, often passionate arguments pale compared to Michel Onfray’s total destruction of religion in his book: ‘Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam’. Onfray sets out to dissect the Koran, the Bible and the Torah with the precision of a surgical procedure, leaving behind little piles of brittle bones, proving that the bulk of these texts were fabricated, not too different from the fraudulent texts of scoundrels like Joseph Smith. They were written by ‘too many people over too long a period of time’ to be historically correct.

This is not the first book I read about atheism, but it definitely made me stop and think hard about my own views. My thoughts go something like this:

Why is the question whether one believes in God so important? If I define myself as an atheist, does that define me in the same sense as being a Democrat?’ That’s where I get confused: is belief in God part of someone’s public or private identity?

Right now, as I am sitting here writing and thinking, I have no need of a God. I am perfectly happy without him/her. I might be accused of lacking ‘spirituality’, of being simplistic and not taking the BIG questions to heart: why are we here, what is the meaning of life, what happens to me after I die, etc. I wish I could believe in an afterlife, because I am terrified of death. I would love to believe that dying is not the end of everything, but there is really no proof of that, is there?

The idea that all the hard work that went into creating me will be for naught when I die is hard to accept. I will disintegrate, as if I never existed. The magnificent architecture of the being that I am, my fingers obeying the commands in my brain to type these words, there MUST be something more to it. Does one life justify all this labor intensive, well-thought out, inexplicably complex process? Shouldn't the rules of living at least be more demanding? If there is nothing more to it than this short-lived one-time affair: shouldn’t it require some kind of daily entrance exam to prove that you are worthy of being alive?

But just because life is finite is not a reason to deny its value. I agree with Onfray, that religion is greedy. It looks for satisfaction in the afterlife by saying that life is just a stepping-stone. ‘Fleeing life in order not to have to die is not a good bargain. You pay death twice.’

That is exactly the point of this book, that religion has poisoned our appreciation of life, that by dismissing life on earth as insignificant, which makes an afterlife essential, which makes life miserable, which makes an afterlife important, which makes life… etc. Get my drift?

The sad part about religion is that we are no more in control of it than the weather. We have created our own monster. Whatever you believe in the privacy of your own life is nobody’s business, but when religion begins to dictate social policy, which affects everyone, then it becomes everyone’s problem. Gay rights, abortion rights, women’s rights, all these affect ME personally, that’s when someone else’s private belief has metastasized into becoming an ever-growing tumor in the public sphere.

The only part of Onfray’s philosophy that I question is his rejection of ALL Judeo/Christian values, At least atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens do not reject the values of compassion, human dignity and equality. They say we can be moral without God. But Onfray, like Nietzsche, insists that this is an illusion. He talks about replacing Judeo/Christian values with a new ‘Atheology’ based on Utilitarianism and Hedonism, but he doesn’t explain exactly what these values would be.

Besides, morality might not have anything to do with religion at all. We might be born with a moral sense; our genes having made us evolve with a sense of right from wrong. If it is genetic, what need do we have of religion? Of atheism for that matter?

In an episode on 60 minutes, babies watch as a puppet struggles to open up a box. Another puppet appears and lends a hand. Then the scene repeats but this time a third puppet appears and slams the box shut. When offered a choice between the bad puppet and the helpful puppet, most babies preferred to hold the helpful puppet.

One might wonder why the burden of proof is on the person who does NOT believe in God, but sadly, that’s just the way it is. At least we are no longer required to prove that unicorns don't exist.

What I like about atheist activists is that they are trying to balance out theism’s disproportionate influence in our culture. Onfray’s book, even though it doesn’t offer a concrete alternative to theism or atheism, is a worthwhile read. With humor and a generous amount of venom it contributes to the atheist arsenal and brings us closer to a time when religion will be subject to the same scrutiny and objectivity that is applied to other fields of 'knowledge'. leave comment here