In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

5 “Why I Am an Atheist” O’HAIR COMPOSED THE original draft of Why I Am an Atheist in 1961. She was in the midst of her legal battle with the Baltimore Public Schools, which she was asked to address by the student body of the University of Maryland. It became her “perennial favorite lecture,” which she revised, recorded on a two-record LP album, and used as a publication to inaugurate the American Atheist Press.1 In Why I Am an Atheist, O’Hair introduced herself as “the Atheist,” not merely “an Atheist,” and explained that she was the person who fought the battle that removed Bible reading and prayer recitation from the public schools. In the 1991 edition, she added that she was “probably the bestknown Atheist in the world today.” Moreover, although at other times likely to include herself among a collection of freethinkers, whose common goal was the separation of church and state, in its earliest printing, she specifically rejected all other labels but atheist. She suggested that nonbelievers chose other titles, like agnostic, in order to hide and to avoid reprisals and sanctions. “Well, I am neither afraid nor ashamed to say what I believe or what I think,” she announced. “I am an Atheist.”2 O’Hair established her “intellectual lineage” in Why I Am an Atheist . She traced the origins of her beliefs to the ancient Greek materialist Democritus, who theorized that matter is composed of atoms and concluded that nothing exists but natural phenomena; Anaxagoras, who personified the spirit of scientific inquiry; and Epicurus, the proponent of “a modest life lived in the pursuit of its natural sweetness,” or hedonism . “Reactionary aristocrats” destroyed Democritus’s work because “he rejected the idea of divine intervention in nature and in human affairs .” Religion, he insisted, arose as a result of man’s fear and awe of the wonders of nature. Anaxagoras was banished from Athens for impi170 ety or, as O’Hair preferred to put it, for being an atheist. And although he was revered by the ancients for liberating man from fear of the gods and for asserting the validity of science, Epicurus was anathematized as “an enemy of morality and a disseminator of vice.”3 O’Hair sought to differentiate materialists from idealists, who maintained that “idea or spirit or mind existed before nature or that it created nature.” Materialists proposed that matter exists without regard to thought and that there would still be a universe if we were not here to perceive it. There is no larger consciousness or universal life force. Nor is there a creator. Matter and energy are eternal and do not require a “first cause” or a “grand designer.” She wrote: “Everything traced has been found to be materialist (i.e., comprised of matter). The physical laws of nature are always in operation. They do not step aside even for a moment to permit anything else, such as spirit, to rule. The materialist holds that there is no spiritual existence apart from the material body.” The argument between idealists and materialists is not “academic ,” she insisted. “It is a very real and living thing,” and it concerns “the goal of life.”4 Materialism, O’Hair emphasized, “liberates us by teaching us not to hope for heaven beyond the grave, not to hope for happiness in death, but rather to prize life on earth and strive always to improve it. Materialism restores to man his dignity and his intellectual integrity.” At the same time, she pointed out, contrary to common opinion, materialism is more than the practice of hedonism as popularly defined— namely, as focused exclusively on the accumulation of material goods and “getting pleasure out of life.” Materialists are not accumulators, wasteful users, or conspicuous consumers, she insisted. Neither do they “revel in the glorification of man.” They do not hold that man is “an exceptionally unique being.” They “shy away from systems which exalt the human animal” and realize that they “must share the earth with all other animals.”5 O’Hair explained that materialism was driven underground by Christianity, but that it was reborn in the nineteenth century as scientific materialism. Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud led the attack on religion , using reason and science as their weapons. Religion fought back and held its ground, she allowed, but scientific materialism made inroads in the forms of Marxism, humanism, and atheism.6 O’Hair explained that she did not...

Share