Arel Dan - Godless: 150 years of disbelief

Godless: 150 Years of Disbelief

Edited by Chaz Bufe

This edition 2019 PM Press.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-62963-641-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949082

Cover by John Yates / www.stealworks.com

Interior design by briandesign

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No Gods, No Masters, a mantra that almost seems long forgotten in todays radical political landscape. Weve lost some of our fervor to call religion what it is and to hold it accountable for the terrible things it has caused humanity to do. Some of this disconnect is understandable when some of the loudest voices claiming to speak out against religion are showing themselves to be in bed with white supremacists or are flat-out white supremacists themselves.

Todays new wave of atheist figureheadsbetter known as New Atheistsare writers and public figures such as Sam Harris, known these days for calling the Nazis marching in Charlottesville peaceful and advocating for the racial profiling of Muslims, or retired biologist Richard Dawkins, who has defended light pedophilia and referred to the phrase Allah Akbar as violent sounding. This is not intellectually challenging religion, this is racism and bigotry.

Yet, while these people may mask their racism and bigotry behind the criticism of religion, we often allow religion to act unchecked. Christian extremists continue to terrorize and murder abortion doctors and staff. Christian politicians continue to use their religious beliefs to fight for laws that limit a womens abortion rights or fight to weaken protections for the LGBTQIA community.

Once upon a time, these critiques of religion were an everyday part of radical left politics and theory. In our modern life, we tend to ignore the impact religion has on climate denial. Ken Ham, the evangelical Christian owner of the Creation Museum, claims that while the climate is changing, theres nothing humans can do about it, God is in control. Others believe there is no climate change at all and attempt to root this ignorance in biblical claims, much like that of Ham, that God controls the heavens and earth and gave humans fossil fuels to burn and animals to slaughter.

Schools throughout the U.S. continue to debate whether or not evolution or sex education should be a part of a childs education. Tax dollars from the working class have been sunk into Noahs Ark theme parks, and so-called leaders in this country continue to push religion into our daily lives.

Maybe we have forgotten this, maybe we are too afraid to critique religion because of the New Atheist bigotry, or maybe we have simply forgotten how important this discussion can be. This is what makes Godless such an important anthology. It takes us back to a time before atheism was overrun with rampant bigotry and racism. This was a time when the discussion around the existence of God or the importance of Jesus was discussed and/or debated in a philosophical way that focused not on the believer but on the belief. This was when religion was properly challenged by those wanting to create a better world.

This does not mean the left doesnt believe in a persons right to religion or to believe in god. What it does mean is working to remove the shackles of control religious leaders have over people and removing a politicians ability to use their religious beliefs to dictate how we live our lives.

The authors within these pages spoke out before atheism was a profitable business that got you invited on cable news networks or took you on campus tours around the world. They spoke out not for fame or fortune, but because it was the right thing to do. They spoke out because someone had to.

The new atheist movement, though important to challenge, is also static. Its disrupting our message, and it has put us off course. This book rights that ship; let it be our compass.

Weve forgotten the importance of what No God, No Masters means. For me, this collection of works serves as a reminder. It reinvigorated my atheism, for a lack of a better term. Its a return to the naturalist argument for the existence of everything, but it also serves as a reminder that just like our desire to abolish the state and return to a world of autonomy, as long as humans continue to believe that they must answer to a higher power and allow the self-proclaimed masters of that power to dictate so many aspects of their lives, we are still dealing with a force with the same kind of controlling power as that state.

Religion, at its most powerful, is used to control and subjugate women, turning them into property. Its used to excuse the abuse of children, by turning away from lifesaving medicine or from sparing the rod, giving parents permission to physically abuse their children. It was and in many ways still is used to condone rape and slavery.

We know that the world can exist without the good that religion claims to provide, and oftentimes exists in spite of it. It is we, those fighting for self-determination, free association, and, above all, mutual aid, who understand best that we as humans must care for one another. We dont seek a higher power to grant us this authority. We dont want authority. We simply want to build a better world, and its the gods and the masters who are standing in our way.

Today, we begin tearing them down.

Among all mental diseases which man has systematically inoculated into his cranium, the religious pest is the most abominable.

Like all things else, this disease has a history; it only regrettable that in this case nothing will be found of the development from nonsense to reason, which is generally assumed to be the course of history.

Old Zeus and his double Jupiter were still quite decent, jolly, we might even say, somewhat enlightened fellows, if compared with the last triplet on the pedigree of gods who, on examination, can safely rival with Vitzliputzli as to brutality and cruelty.

We wont argue at all with the pensioned or dethroned gods, for they no longer do any harm. But the more modern, still officiating cloud lollers and terrorists of hell we shall criticize, expose, and vanquish the more disrespectfully.

The Christians have a threefold God; their ancestors, the Jews, were content with a single simpleton. Otherwise both species are quite a humorous crowd. Old and New Testament are to them the sources of all knowledge; therefore, willing or not, one must read the holy writ if one wants to fathom their shallowness and learn to deride them.

If we only take the history of these deities, we find an ample sufficiency for the characterization of the whole. In a short sketch the case stands thus: in the beginning God created heaven and earthconsequently he found himself next of all in a complete void, where it surely may have been dreary enough to bore even a deity. And it being but a trifle for a god to conjure worlds out of nothing by magic, like a juggler shaking eggs or silver dollars out of his coat sleeves, he (God) created heaven and earth. Somewhat later he molded the sun, moon, and stars to suit himself.

It is true, certain heretics, called astronomers, have established long since that the earth neither is nor could have been the center of the universe, nor could its existence have antedated that of the sun, around which it revolves. These people have proved it to be sheer lunacy to speak of sun, moon, and stars and with the same breath of the earth as being, compared with the former, something special and of great preponderance. It has been taught to every schoolboy that the sun is only a star, the earth one of its satellites, and the moon an under-satellite of the earth; and, furthermore, that the earth, compared with the universe, far from acting a conspicuous part, is only an atom, looking like a rain of dust.