Linda and I watched most of tonight's Golden Globe awards tonight. We muted atheist-comedian Ricky Gervais, who was hosting it.
I forgot to mute the end, and heard Gervais declare, "Good night. And I thank God that he made me an atheist." This is Gervais's confessional, his testimony. I'm glad I heard it.
Recently he gave us the reasons why he is an atheist. I commented on them here. He doesn't actually have, at least in his writing on his atheism, any good reasons to be an atheist. He's a comedian, so we should not expect much here.
Note: no tu quoques allowed. They are irrelevant.
It's hard not to psychologize Gervais here. I know that, logically, psychologizing someone is irrelevant. But his last comment struck me as preaching the good news of atheism via the bad news of religion. Since Gervais lacks good reasons to be an atheist one wonders about his past, and what's made him so angry.
I've written about such things before; viz., the oddness of the "evangelistic atheist." I've studied with some philosophically brilliant atheists who actually had reasons for their unbelief, and who could care less about mocking religion via ad hominen abusives. The evangelistic atheist who resorts to jokes humors me in their oddity. I'd never really seen this in atheistic philosophical literature, which has often made me really think. (I remember, e.g., as a young philosophy student and new Jesus-follower reading Spinoza's ethics and not only thinking but in a way experiencing the logic of his version of pantheism. I was truly shook by this.)
