Hi. I’m taking a brief hiatus from my public history posting hiatus. Lots of paid posts have been published this past month if you wanna subscribe, FYI.
And I shall return to regular history posting before too long, but likely not until June because I’m going to be traveling for most of May. Anyfuckingway, the day before I leave, on May 4, something cool is happening. Which brings me to the title of this piece.
God is Not Great is the title of a 2007 book by Christopher Hitchens. I believe it was Richard Dawkins who said that the title could have used one fewer words. The subtitle is "How Religion Poisons Everything." And I know a lot of atheists (and I definitely am an atheist) imagine that humans would have been far better off if we had never invented religion. And perhaps that's true.
But perhaps it's not.
I'm working on a new history of the world book, and much of my studies involve the impact of religion on the development of humanity. And I've been seeing examples of how religion caused humanity to make a significant leap forward. Of course, it's possible that these were forward movements that would have happened much sooner had we been hardened atheists from our hunter-gatherer days. But we'll never know. Humanity is one grand N-1 experiment and we can't test this shit in a lab using control groups and experimental groups.
But still, it's an interesting conversation to have to examine some examples of when religion, without AT ALL intending it, advanced human societies. In fact, they advanced our societies by doing things for selfish reasons that actually backfired decades or even centuries later, giving humans the ability and freedom to say this is fucking bullshit no you can't have 10% of my income abortions for everyone!
And so, I'm gonna do a wee speech on that subject at, you guessed it, an atheist conference. It's called the We Can Reason conference in Calgary and I'm speaking on May 4. If you can’t make it, you’ll just have to wait for my new book, which I’m afraid is going to take a couple of years before it’s on sale.
The speech won’t be an apology for religion. A guy who pokes as much fun as I do exposing its myriad bullshittery would never do such a thing. (Buy my book!). But it will be what I hope is an interesting examination of a few religion-induced leaps forward.
Here is the link for more info and for tickets. There are some very cool other speakers there as well. Check it out:
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Gosh, I'd love to chat with you about this.
I am Jewish and it is very important to me. We keep a somewhat Kosher kitchen, we are getting ready to forgo the five grains for passover, attend synagogue with some regularity, I also don't believe in God. This is a super normal thing in Judaism. We have two entire sects based on God not being real.
Something many of my fellow atheist and agnostic Jews tend to get frustrated by is this total rejection of religion based on a Christian framework. As I am sure you know as a fellow historian, Christianity is a rather unique movement historically.
I'm glad this conversation is FINALLY happening in atheist circles. It might make those spaces more welcoming to thos of us who don't want to assimilate into a christian-normative society more than we already have.
Enjoy your travel and trip!
Does it have to be unintentional? Because the Unitarian Universalists organized the first congressional fact-finding tour in El Salvador in 1978 (maybe '79?) and more after that, which is part of how everyone found out about the U.S. involvement in funding the terrorists there (we didn't call them that at the time, but they were). The Society of Friends has also been active in social justice for a very long time. I am incapable of magical belief, but I do believe in their good works, which includes helping people in Czechoslovakia escape the Nazis.