24. Just say it
(Post 24 of 33 in my 16-hour shift for the Secular Student Alliance Blogathon.)
7:30 pm EDT
One of the challenges in Voices of Unbelief was the publishers desire (and a good one it is) to create an anthology of atheists and agnostics only — no heretics, no deists, no pantheists. So much for Jefferson, Paine, Voltaire, Einstein — probably half of the usual suspects in these anthologies. But that’s good, it gives it a really distinctive voice overall.
The challenge was made greater by the never-ending effort throughout history to disguise atheism, especially if the person in question was a good guy. If a person is described as “not very religious,” you might think that means “church every other Sunday,” when in fact it usually denotes an outright secular worldview, i.e. NOT RELIGIOUS.
One reference described Nietzsche as “skeptical of religion.” Nietzsche, skeptical? He killed God, for chrissakes! It’s like saying the U.S. killed Bin Laden because we were skeptical of al Qaeda.
So I finish my work day and settle down in bed to read Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield. Interesting book, learned a lot. And then I see John Baskerville (designer of the famous “John” font) described as “suspicious of religion.”
And what exactly the hell does it mean to be “suspicious of religion”? Whenever cookies went missing, he’d shoot a hard look at Buddha?
John Baskerville was not “suspicious of religion.” John Baskerville was an atheist. He went so far as to insist that his body be buried in unconsecrated ground, in his garden, under this epitaph:
Stranger
Beneath this cone in unconsecrated ground
a friend to the liberties of mankind
directed his body to be inhumed.
May the example contribute to emancipate thy mind
from the idle fears and superstitions
and wicked arts of priesthood.
Suspicious my eye. John Baskerville was an atheist.