Proud to be an atheist in Kentucky
The Ruminations on American
Project is an opinion column about American values as explored through
one person in each of the 50 states. Each subject is interviewed about
their respective lives, states and state of the union.
Edwin F. Kagin of Kentucky didn't "make the rules for how the
universe operates."
"Things are born and then they die," he said. "That's
what the evidence tells us."
Kagin said people are "born atheist" but some learn to accept
a "supernatural world view" because of the fear of annihilation.
"I live for life before death," said the Kentucky State
Director and National Legal Director of American Atheists, "not
after. Where do you go after you die? Probably to the same place you
were before you were born."
The son of a Presbyterian minister, Kagin, 65, was born in South Carolina
and lived in Missouri, Kansas and Kentucky while growing up. His son
is now a Christian fundamentalist living in Kansas. Father and son
are "the best of friends," Kagin said, because they don't
discuss their respective views.
Still, Kagin hopes his grandchildren might be atheist in the future.
The main problem with "believers," said Kagin, the author
of Baubles of Blasphemy, is they want everyone else to share their
beliefs or "they aren't comfortable."
"America is the most religious country on earth," he said,
"and the more religious things get, the worse things are in this
country. Some say it's because God was taken out of schools. Do they
believe in a God so weak that it's that easy to take him out of schools?"
Camp Quest, the first camp for the children of atheists in America,
was founded by Kagin, who had perfect attendance for 12 years of Sunday
school growing up.
"I'm an Eagle Scout," Kagin said, "and I founded the
camp when I found out that the Boy Scouts were not admitting those
dirty little atheists."
Kentucky plays host to the Creation Museum, a project of Answers in
Genesis: Upholding the Authority of the Bible from the Very First
Verse. This establishment is one of the most powerful proponents of
creationism education in the nation, which threatens to undermine
millennia of scientific progress.
As Kagin pointed out, Christians haven't hesitated throughout history
to kill perceived "heretics," a problem we face today with
Muslim fundamentalists who have gone off the deep end. Many of the
Americans who support the slaughter of Iraqi civilians, including
pregnant women and children, consider themselves Christian. While
many Christians have been speaking out against the war, millions seem
to have lost the true message of Jesus Christ, who was a pacifist.
You don't get the nickname "Prince of Peace," by going around
killing people.
"We're wasting the life of our species," Kagin said, "on
this religious idiocy."
One of his biggest problems is the criminally dangerous hypocrisy
of "those ordained by God" abusing and raping children.
In New York Times Magazine on September 11, 1930, Albert Einstein
was quoted: "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually
on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis
is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained
by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
In his "The World as I See It," Einstein wrote:
"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures,
or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither
can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives
his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism,
cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity
of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure
of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend
a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself
in nature."
I've always been interested in organized religion, ever since childhood
when I was given a cherished book of Greek Mythology that detailed
the family trees of the gods and goddesses of Mt. Olympus. The beauty
of striving for communion with the totality of the vast mystery is
a dazzling pursuit, but I've just never been able to get beyond the
hubris of assuming that anyone understands the word of God—interpreted,
as it has been, across languages and cultures and the evolution of
consciousness. The violence between cultures and individuals is almost
always caused by—or easily manipulated through--conflicts that
arise between groups of people who are equally convinced that they
alone comprehend God's wishes.
As a girl, I played softball in the Mary Queen of Heaven league, and
I remember asking my parents how God can choose between two teams
who pray with equal passion at the beginning for a victory. Sadly,
God seemed downright angry at my team, the Emeralds.
"The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their
only common feature," said Stephen Jay Gould in his book, Dinosaur
in a Haystack, "the dethronement of human arrogance from one
pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality
in the cosmos."
Kagin said while religious fervor is hitting a fever pitch in America,
the cycle will soon start to swing the other way.
"It has to," he said, "or freedom will be lost."
To see links to the people, places and things mentioned in this column,
visit www.ritajking.com and click on the Ruminations on America tab.
