(N)O! God!?!

Is the spectacular, recent rise of Atheism due to the imminence of The End Times, President Obama‘s dismissal of faith-based reasoning, or just a hipster phase as insubstantial as the popularity of The L Word? While few will bad-mouth lesbians anymore, it has become increasingly fashionable to denounce religion and the ultimate figurehead. Seems every day another prominent celebrity steps up to the bull-E!-pulpit to declare: God is dead. (Friedrich Nietzsche forecast the Lord’s fate over one hundred years ago, though the philosopher’s reports of His death are greatly exaggerated.) And then, there are those who go further, not only trumpeting God’s demise but taking credit for His dispatch. Suddenly, best-seller lists and new-release shelves are awash with possible suspects from Charles Darwin to Christopher Hitchens and the solution appears akin to the climax of Agatha Christie‘s Murder on the Orient Express: everyonedunit!

Recently, I was invited to appear on KUOW Presents on 94.9FM to showcase three films in which God is murdered or, at the very least, severely annoyed. (It’s just a flesh wound?) You can listen to my conversation with Jeannie Yandel for my take on CREATION, RELIGULOUS and THE INVENTION OF LYING. The first film is a noble failure in theaters now, the second is Bill Maher‘s “agnostic” ad hoc-umentary and the last is a brilliant satire co-written and co-directed by Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson.

What all of these movies have in common is an unsettling dogmatism as final and unflinching as any fundamentalist’s beliefs. Don’t misunderstand, I am  a cultural Jew who attends Quaker meetings, who shuns God in any anthropomorphized form yet who embraces the obvious existence of the imponderable. Not all great questions can be answered by mortals. Not all design is intelligent. (Witness the butterfly… ballot.) Science is no more my religion than Scientology is; for at some point neither adequately allows for the notion that, in our lifetimes, we just can’t know, we can only surmise. To say otherwise, is delusional or disingenuous. Right? Too few share Abraham Lincoln‘s sage and simple moral construct:  When I do good, I feel good, and when I do bad, I feel bad, and that’s my religion.

In CREATION, Charles Darwin — as portrayed by Paul Bettany — frets when his colleague applauds the pending publication of On The Origin of Species, saying: “Congratulations, sir. You’ve killed God.” But the author of evolution needn’t have feared: killing God only makes him stronger… in the eyes of His beholden. You can’t end Terrorism by uprooting a single, maniacal cave-dweller nor can you extinguish Religion by dousing a burning bush with alternative explanations. Terrorism and Religion both thrive on root causes that, few pundits and non-believers, will address: Humankind’s need for comfort and conformity in the perpetual grip of Uncertainty and Fear.

So, Atheists, you may kill the supreme being repeatedly, but you’re missing your marks. The devout are as determined as the makers of Doritos and will likewise persevere: Crunch all (the gods) you want, they’ll just make more.