Not Coming Up On Oprah's Book Club

My current reading of A.J. Jacob's The Year of Living Biblically, where the author tries with dogged determination to faithfully adhere to the letter of biblical scripture in his modern lifestyle, will dovetail nicely into what will almost certainly be the next non-fiction title I read, Phil Zuckerman's Society Without God. While I'm not entirely committed to the camp that feels monotheism is the worst invention of mankind, I certainly don't think it, or any kind of theism, for that matter, is a remotely necessary concept in this day and age of reason.

The Christian right, pious Muslims, Orthodox Jews and likely many more not-so-zealous religious types would probably say that a moral, safe and prosperous nation can not exist without some type of spiritual underpinning. Now, I don't go around picking fights with the faithful over issues like this, but if the point did come up during heated discussion I didn't think there was much ground to stand on for my position other than to use my life as a case study of sorts (been a secular humanist more or less since the age of thirteen, but this doesn't make a for a compelling argument) and state that if it were true that godlessness led to violent, psychopathic, utterly immoral behavior then logic dictates most crimes would be committed by a legion of sociopathic, claw hammer-wielding atheists and agnostics. Obviously they're not. Zuckerman's book, supposedly, offers solid support for our minority who want to imagine along with John Lennon a world with no religion...or as close as has ever been historically observed.

Zuckerman's prime examples are Denmark and Sweden, two nations that, though not completely devoid of religion, have seen support of, participation in and adherence to the church dwindle down to (delightfully) low levels. Yes, some still do attend mass and pray, but it seems like more of an activity one performs as if going through the motions for the sake of ritual. In other words, empty traditionalism. Has this made these two countries a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah? Hell no: both Sweden and Denmark have some of the longest living, healthiest, most prosperous and happiest citizens on the planet. So up yours, Christian rightists.

I'd study Danish and move to Copenhagen ASAP, but holy crap, have you seen their annual weather patterns? Summer temperatures never break what we'd see in SF at the height of spring!

--Matt