Bullshit Dressed Up

This is supposed to be a post about The Flight of Peter Fromm, the latest selection of Nonbelieving Literati. And I will eventually get to a very short discussion of the book. But first, I need to tell readers a few facts about myself.

I’ve been an atheist for as long as I can remember. When I was four or five years old, it dawned on me that the concept of a god was ridiculous. It didn’t make any sense. I had no need of any deep philosophical or scientific arguments to help me arrive at that position, though; I wouldn’t have been capable of following them if I had. I just felt – “knew,” really – that the idea was silly.

As I grew to adulthood, I learned something about science, something about history, something about sociology, something about comparative mythology. I studied philosophy, even though, as I’ve said dozens of times, I think it’s mostly mental masturbation. I read the bible as a historico-mythical tract, from cover to cover a few times. I can now argue against the existence of god about as well as anyone can.

But, within myself, I don’t need to do that. The skepticism that first bloomed back when I was a sprout is still my primary reason for dismissing supernatural claims. They don’t make any sense.

So it should come as no surprise that I see the “study” of theology as a lot of pseudo-intellectual babble. Yes, it’s occasionally fun to read so-called “literary” exegeses of the bible, but the truth is: I don’t accept most of the bible as having any merit as great writing. Did you ever struggle through Leviticus or Deuteronomy? Or either book of Chronicles, f’Chrissake? From a literary standpoint, quite a few of the epistles are sheer crap. The writing in the Gospel of Mark is comparable to that of a simple-minded sixth-grader. And who can wade through the minor prophets without admitting to himself: This is junk compared to the works of Homer or the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Eddas or the Mahabharata.

But the study of theology is not about literary merit. It’s about ... what the hell is it about? Ostensibly it’s the study of god’s ways, of the relationship between humans and their deity. It’s loaded with nonsense masquerading as logic, twaddle pretending to be deep thinking, baloney passing as critical analysis. Theology is the justification of claptrap in the guise of rational discourse. It's bullshit dressed up. The child in me flips through a few pages of “theological” philosophy and whispers: This doesn’t make any sense.

And that brings me to The Flight of Peter Fromm. The author is Martin Gardner, whose writings I’ve been devouring since I was a teenager. Throughout my life, I’ve joyfully read dozens of Gardner’s volumes on mathematical recreations, science vs. superstition, even his entertaining annotations of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books.

But this Peter Fromm novel has no “soul.” Yeah, there are characters, or at least two-dimensional figures with characters’ names. But the book is mostly what, if it weren’t about theology, I’d call a novel of ideas. (How about: a novel of stupid ideas?) The title character seems to study every branch and sub-branch of 20th century theology he can, and Gardner describes them with varying degrees of insight and success.

After about 100 pages, I’d had enough. I just didn’t care at all about why Peter Fromm had had a fit while preaching an Easter sermon in 1948. Why bother wading through pages and pages of theological hogwash? Not having finished the book, I still don’t know why he had his breakdown; nor am I curious. Maybe the guy got pissed off at himself for having wasted so much time studying a non-subject. Whatever. I saw no reason why I should join him.

[Note: The next book we will be discussing, beginning on November 1, is Remembering Hypatia. See my sidebar for a link to the appropriate Amazon page.]