290: Godless America

Ira Glass

Last year in Janesville, Wisconsin, the city council had to vote in giving some federal money to the Salvation Army to build a homeless shelter. It's a small town, small enough that the council people are volunteers. And one of them, Paul Williams, voted yes to the federal money, but he added wording saying that the Salvation Army couldn't use the facility to hold prayer services or proselytize because of the separation of church and state. Well, these days, those are fighting words.

Ira Glass

It got bigger. On March 1, President Bush himself chastised the city council, saying that they had, quote, "No right to tell the Salvation Army that the price of running a center was giving up its prayers." In other words, yes, it is illegal to use federal money to proselytize. But just as long as the government was only funding the building and not the prayer service itself, it was fine with the president.

For a city councilman who usually deals with sidewalks and zoning questions, who thought he was just following the law, this whole noisy mess was a bit surprising. The local head of the Salvation Army, Major David Taube, was even quoted in The Janesville Gazette, questioning Paul Williams' morality.

Ira Glass

Thanks to pressure from the Feds, Paul Williams lost. There will be prayer services in the federally funded building. Though in an ironically tidy little ending to the story, the man who called him anti-Christian and anti-spiritual, Major David Taube of the Salvation Army, was recently caught emailing a pornographic picture of himself to somebody who claimed to be a 14-year-old boy. But it was, in fact, a Florida police detective.

You know, I don't even know if I should be bringing that up. But once people start calling each other anti-Christian, once it's all about your personal morality, it's hard not to. This is why the Founding Fathers specify in the Constitution that you don't have to have a particular religion to serve in public office. They knew that it just gets ugly when you start dragging everybody's faith into these public debates, and unnecessary.

And it's happening a lot. In Georgia, a science teacher who won the Presidential Award for Excellence in science education, whose taught for 28 years-- and we're asked that we not use her name-- tells this story. Under Georgia state guidelines, she is required to teach evolution, and she's not allowed to teach creationism. So she did what the rule said, and some parents complained. And then a fellow teacher ratted her out, informed the school's administration that evolution was being taught within their walls. Because although the rules say that they're supposed to teach evolution, that doesn't necessarily mean the school followed the rules.

Ira Glass

Over the next few months, she was called into the principal's office two more times. At one meeting, the school superintendent was there to tell her that he didn't believe in evolution and that back when he taught biology, he taught evolution and creationism side by side. She told him that now, that was actually illegal.

Things got even more strange for her when she was called in for a meeting with her incoming principal about evolution.

Ira Glass

Lots of teachers don't want this kind of trouble. And people in science education say that in schools all over the country, evolution is mandated, but not being taught. Just as abortion is legal, but hard to find in many places.

What's happening in this school-- what's happening all over the place actually-- is not really a debate. It's people acting from two totally different assumptions. One group thinking that religion has no place in public life, the other thinking that, of course, it does. In fact, it needs to be there more.

And people who want the separation of church and state these days-- people who thought these issues were settled-- are finding they're anything but. Christian activists are fighting for friendly judges to be appointed to the bench so that they can get court decisions to swing their way on school prayer, and sex ed, and the Bible in school, and Roe versus Wade.

The president has come out and said that he will not appoint judges who don't think that our rights come to us from God. He said this even though the Constitution explicitly forbids a religious test to hold a public office like a judgeship. That's Article Six. You can check that yourself.

In April, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said that the judiciary has imposed, quote, "a separation of church and state that's nowhere in the Constitution."

I read that quote. And when I first read it, I had this reaction I think a lot of people might have, which is, isn't the separation of church and state in there somewhere? Isn't that actually one of the ideas that our country is founded on?

Chances are that you are like me, and you haven't actually read the Constitution since high school. So today, to clarify this, we have answers. Is there supposed to be a separation of church and state in our country? And if so, why do so many Americans think otherwise?

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life, distributed by Public Radio International. I'm Ira Glass. Our program today, Godless America. Act One of our show, a quick summary of the advances that fundamentalist Christians are making in turning their values into national policy. Act Two, why they believe the founders didn't intend a separation of church and state in the Constitution as we normally understand it, and why. Well, they're probably wrong about that. Act Three, in this very Christian country, in this very Christian moment in our history, Julia Sweeney takes on the Bible. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One, The Substance of Things Hoped For In Government.

OK. So you've heard about the stem cell fight already, and you've heard about the filibuster fight, which was really about judicial appointments. And you've heard about how gay marriage was outlawed in 13 states in 2004. And you've heard about the pending decisions on evolution in schools in Kansas and Dover, Pennsylvania. But there's a lot more going on than that.

First stop on our tour of Christian activists trying to push the country toward more Biblical values, Virginia, where a former state trooper turned legislator named Bill Carrico introduced an amendment to the Virginia Constitution to, quote, "secure further the people's right to acknowledge God," to permit prayer, and the recognition of, quote, "religious beliefs, heritage, and traditions on public property, including public schools."

Now, of course, it's already legal for a child to pray in a public school, or to read a Bible, or to acknowledge their faith. The Supreme Court saw to that years ago. But Bill Carrico says that people do not understand these rights. And so a lot of these cases actually end up in court, which is why, he says, they should amend the state constitution to make the rules perfectly clear.

Ira Glass

He got interested in the issue when, as a state trooper talking to a high school class before the prom, he mentioned David and Goliath. And parents complained. He says this happens all the time.

Ira Glass

Next up on our tour, Ohio. Pastor Russell Johnson of the Fairfield Christian Church runs something called the Ohio Restoration Project, which wants to sign up 2,000 fundamentalist Baptist and Catholic "patriot pastors" in Ohio's 88 counties, register hundreds of thousands of Christian voters, take control of local Republican groups, and elect a conservative Republican named Kenneth Blackwell to the governor's office in 2006. Pastor Johnson says he's doing pretty well for his goals. 600 pastors signed up so far. He expects to be at 1,000 by Labor Day. He says he is simply restoring Ohio to the Founding Fathers' original Christian values.

Ira Glass

This is something you hear a lot from Christian activists. They are the majority. And they're turning out their voters. Why shouldn't they get their way? That's what democracy is all about. If most Americans think that it would be OK to have school prayer or teach creationism alongside evolution, well, that's our system in this country.

Ira Glass

This is Rob Boston, a man with a rather unfortunate name to any of us who have watched Survivor. But that's another story. He's been monitoring these sorts of things at Americans United for Separation of Church and State for two decades, and he says that he has never seen Christian conservatives making such headway as they are now.

Some of the bills now before Congress, the House of Worship Free Speech Act, which would make it legal to endorse a candidate from the pulpit and still hold onto your church's tax-exempt status. The Constitution Restoration Act, which would try to bypass the courts on things like the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings by making it illegal for the courts to rule against any government official or body whose actions acknowledge, quote, "God as the source of life, liberty, or government." There's the Workplace Religious Freedom Act, which counts among its cosponsors Senators John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. This law would force employers to accommodate religious practices and beliefs in the workplace as much as possible.

This, by the way, is coming at a time when a handful of pharmacists around the country have refused to fill birth control prescriptions on moral grounds. And Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania has talked about introducing a federal Conscience Law which would specifically permit that. Four states already have conscience laws like this, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Dakota. Again, Rob Boston.

Ira Glass

At the heart of everything for the Christian activists, as you've probably gathered, is this idea that America has gotten away from what it was supposed to be. That religious values are supposed to be at the center of everything in our country. And now there's a cottage industry of books and DVDs and other materials telling a history of our country this way.

Ira Glass

This is from a CD put out by Wallbuilders, which does a lot of this stuff. Wallbuilders.com, by the way. The narrator is David Barton, the founder of Wallbuilders, who declined our request for an interview, but who lays out his case in the materials that he sells.

The evidence that our founders did not want a separation of church and state, in Barton's materials, and whenever everybody else seems to talk about it, comes down to this. The founders were believers who often talked about the importance of God and morality in public life.

And Barton and others point out that the phrase "separation of church and state" is not actually in the Constitution. It comes from a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802, which is true.

And then it just comes down to the language of the First Amendment. That's the amendment dealing with religion. Here's David Barton.

Ira Glass

We meet one of David Barton's biggest opponents when it comes to history, Isaac Kramnick, a professor at Cornell who co-wrote a well-known constitutional history called The Godless Constitution with R. Laurence Moore.

And here is the first surprise about Kramnick. He agrees with Christian activists that there is far too much political correctness about church and state issues. He thinks people get hung up on this stuff too much of the time, that, of course, a kid should be allowed to sing a Celine Dion song mentioning God at a high school graduation. And Professor Kramnick says that Barton's right on other scores too.

Ira Glass

Kramnick says the founders wanted to keep religion out of government completely because they knew what happened in 16th century Europe, when millions of Protestants and Catholics killed each other in religious wars. In the wake of that, the philosopher John Locke theorized about a kind of government that could be completely secular. Take no sides in religion at all. And there's lots of documentation showing that Locke and his vision of government had a huge influence on the drafters of the Constitution.

And sure, says Kramnick. Barton's right again. The Constitution never explicitly says the phrase "separation of church and state."

Ira Glass

Then there were a series of fights over the separation of church and state, including a 20-year battle starting in the early 19th century over whether US post offices should be closed on Sundays so that work wouldn't happen on the Christian Sabbath. Ministers gathered names on petitions. They took it to Congress.

Ira Glass

Isaac Kramnick, coauthor of the book The Godless Constitution. The book is being reissued in August with a new chapter about the Bush presidency.

Coming up, it's the old story. Girl loves God. Girl reads Bible. Girl's not so sure anymore how she feels about God. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, Godless America. And we've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, God Said, Huh?

Religious people don't see it this way, but I would argue that God has gotten a lot of play in the mass media lately. There was that saturation coverage of the death of the pope and the picking of the new pope. There are continual attempts by Hollywood these days, in the post-Mel Gibson environment, to do various God-related projects. There's Joan of Arcadia and Seventh Heaven and Revelations and a number of other TV shows.

This story you're about to hear takes a different point of view about God. Julia Sweeney was on Saturday Night Live. She's been in all sorts of movies and TV shows. She also did a one-woman show a couple years back about her struggle with cancer called "God Said, 'Ha!'" which Quentin Tarantino made into a film. Her latest one-woman show, which has been playing in Los Angeles, is about-- well, it's about God. This is an excerpt.

Julia Sweeney

Not too long ago, two Mormon missionaries came to my door. They were each about 19, in white, starched, short-sleeved shirts, and they said they had a message for me from God. And I guess I was sort of curious, so I said, please, come in. And they seemed really happy because I don't think that happens to them all that often. And I sat them down in the living room, and I got them glasses of water. And after our niceties, I said, OK. I'm ready for my message from God.

But they had a question instead, which really threw me a little. I thought it would be more like a pitch at a studio. And they would tell me their story, and then if I were interested, I would have my people call their people or something. But apparently, this was going to be interactive. And they said, do you believe that God loves you with all his heart?

And I thought, well, of course, I believe in God. But I don't like that word heart because that so anthropomorphizes God. And I don't like the word his either because that sexualizes God. But then I didn't want to argue semantics with these boys. So after a very long, uncomfortable pause, I said, yes. Yes, I do. I feel very loved. And then they looked at each other and smiled, like that was the right answer.

And then they said, do you believe that we're all brothers and sisters on this planet? And I immediately said, yes I do, yes, I do. And I was so relieved that it was a question that I could just answer quickly. And they said, well, then we have a story to tell you.

And they told me this story all about this guy named Lehi who lived in Jerusalem in 600 BC. Now apparently, in Jerusalem in 600 BC, everyone was completely bad and evil. Every single one of them. Man, woman, child, infant, fetus. And God came to Lehi, and he said, put your family on a boat, and I will lead you out of here.

And so he did. And God led them to America.

I said, America? From Jerusalem to America by boat in 600 BC? And they said, yes. And then they told me how Lehi and his descendants reproduced and reproduced. And eventually, over the course of 600 years, there were two races of them, the Nephites and Lamanites. And the Nephites were totally, totally good, each and every one of them. And the Lamanites were totally bad and evil, every single one of them, just bad to the bone.

Then after Jesus died on the cross for our sins, on his way up to heaven, he stopped by America and visited the Nephites. And he said that if the Nephites all remained totally good, each and every one of them, they would win this war against the Lamanites. But apparently, somebody blew it, and the Lamanites killed all the Nephites. All except this one guy named Mormon who managed to survive by hiding in the woods. And he made sure that this whole story was written down in reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics chiseled onto gold plates, which he then buried near Palmyra, New York.

And then they told me how this guy named Joseph Smith found the buried gold plates right in his backyard. And he also found this magic stone back there that he put into his hat and then buried his face into it. And this allowed him to translate the gold plates from the reformed Egyptian into English.

Well, I was just looking at these boys with wide eyes, and I was really wishing I could give them some advice about their pitch. I wanted to say, OK, don't start with this story. I mean, even the Scientologists know to give a personality test before they start telling you all about Xenu, the evil intergalactic overlord.

Well, then they said, well, we also believe that if you're a Mormon and if you're in good standing with the church, when you die, you get to go to heaven and be with your family for all eternity. And I said, oh, dear. That wouldn't really be such a good incentive for me. I mean, everyone in your family?

And then they gave me a Book of Mormon, and they told me to read this chapter and that chapter. And they said they'd come back someday and check in on me. And I think I said something like, please don't hurry. Or maybe it was just, please don't. And they were gone.

OK. So I initially felt pretty superior to these boys and really smug in my more conventional faith. But then the more I thought about it, I had to be honest with myself. I mean, if someone came to my door and I was hearing Catholic theology and dogma for the very first time, and they said, we believe that God impregnated a very young girl without the use of intercourse, and the fact that she was a virgin is maniacally important to us, and she had a baby, and that was the son of God, I would think that was equally ridiculous. I guess I'm just so used to that story. So I couldn't let myself feel condescending towards these boys.

But the question they asked me when they first arrived stuck in my head. Do you believe that God loves you with all his heart? Because I wasn't exactly sure how I felt about that question. Now, if they had asked me, do you feel that God loves you with all his heart, now, that question would have been much easier. I would have instantly answered yes. Yes, I feel it all the time. I feel God's love when I'm hurt and confused, and I feel consoled and cared for.

But since they asked me the question with the word "believe" in it, somehow it was all different. Because I wasn't sure if I believed what I so clearly felt.

OK. My religious history in a nutshell. I was raised Catholic, and for me, it was all in all a great experience. I know we can't stop reading about all of the people who have had just horrific and abusive experiences as a child in the Catholic church. But for me, it was mostly wonderful. I always felt really lucky to be a Catholic. It was easy for me to believe. I even had religious experiences. I know this is more of a Protestant thing than a Catholic thing, but I had a few times, maybe five or six times, where I felt the power of the Holy Spirit, this force of love and transcendence, come over me and just shake me to the core.

And in spite of their nutty story, the Mormon boys inspired me. I realized I'd been getting lazy about my faith. So I decided to rededicate myself to the church.

I went to Mass at several different Catholic churches and finally settled on joining one about 10 miles from my house. Their Masses were so emotional. I would have to choke back tears just to say the Nicene Creed every time I went. "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and of all things seen and unseen." Well, I noticed in the announcements that the church offered a Bible study class on Thursday nights, and I decided to sign up for it.

The Catholics don't really emphasize the Bible all that much. Their attitude is sort of, leave that book to the professionals. Don't you worry your little self with that complicated book. So I felt eager to finally read this book, this book that I'd always wanted to take the time to read, but I really never had. And I was happy to see that the Old Testament starts out with two conflicting stories about the origin of the universe, one where Adam and Eve are created at the exact same moment, and then in the next chapter, a second creation story where Adam is created first, and then Eve is created out of his rib after he gets lonely.

And I thought, wow. For all those people who believe every word of the Bible is true, they can't even have read the first two chapters. In fact, the Bible contradicts itself all over the place.

Then we got to stories like Sodom and Gomorrah. All I remembered about that story is that they were these two sinful cities, like Las Vegas or something, and God got mad and wiped them out. And Lot's wife looked back when she was told not to and got turned into a pillar of salt.

But the nuns of my grade school didn't explain to us what happens right before they flee. Right before they flee, two angels that are masquerading as two men come for a visit and stay overnight at Lot's house. And this mob forms outside, and they yell, send out those two angel-like men to us so we can have sex with them. And Lot yells, no, which I think is a basic rule of hospitality. Don't give up your guests to be raped by an angry mob.

But then what does he say next? He says, instead of the men, please, take my daughters, and rape, and do what you will with them. They're virgins.

After Lot and his traumatized daughters flee Sodom and Gomorrah, they all go to a cave in the mountains. And during the night, Lot's two daughters get him drunk and rape him. Do they do this in revenge of what their father did to them? No. The Bible says it's because there aren't any other men around. Even though the Bible also says that they're not that far from a city named Zoar. So I guess no men around for maybe a few miles? And wait a minute. So Lot's daughters just had to drug and rape someone? And I guess if you're their dad and you're the only one there--

I knew the Bible had nutty stories, but I guess I thought they'd be wedged in amongst an ocean of inspiration and history. But instead, the stories just got darker and more convoluted. Like when God asks Abraham to murder his son Isaac. As a kid, we were taught to admire it. I caught my breath reading it. We were taught to admire it? What kind of sadistic test of loyalty is that, to ask someone to kill his or her own child? And isn't the proper answer no, I will not kill my child or any child?

At the next class, Father Tom reminded us that Isaac represents what matters to Abraham most, and that's what God asks us to give up for him. I said, but protecting and loving and caring for the welfare of your child is such a deep ethical, loving instinct and act. So what if what matters to you most is your own loving behavior? Should we be willing to give up our ethics for God? And he said, no, it's what matters to you most. It isn't your ethics because your ethics is your love and faith in God. That confused me, but I decided to just let it go.

But then I found that Abraham wasn't the only person willing to murder his own child for God. They're all over the place in the Bible. For example, in the Book of Judges, a guy named Jephthah tells God that if God helps him win this battle, he will kill the first person to greet him when he comes home. Who turns out to be his daughter. Who he sets on fire.

Some people argue that without the Bible, morality would be relative and wishy-washy. But in the Bible, morality is relative and wishy-washy. In fact, it sure seems like our modern morality is much more loving and humane than the Bible's morality.

After Mass one Sunday, Father Tom saw me outside the church, and he said, Julia, you always look so very sad in Bible study class. And I said, well, God is so offensive in the Old Testament. I mean, like, bipolar. And Father Tom said, well, you know, the Old Testament. The stories are legends. They're tales of trickery and deception that were told around the campfire. There's no evidence that Abraham is anything other than legend. Or Isaac, or Moses. But Julia, you can't approach the Bible with modern historical eyes. You've got to read it with the eyes of faith. This is the story that God wants us to know.

As I drove home, I thought, OK, calm down. This is the Old Testament. Old. Old is right in the title. A new, a newer testament is coming up. And that's why God sent his son Jesus. Because we clearly hadn't gotten the message right. Right? I could hardly wait to meet Jesus again as if it were the first time.

But oh dear. Well, first off, Jesus is much angrier than I expected him to be. I knew that Jesus got angry with all those money changers in the temple and everything, but I didn't know that he was so angry so much of the time. And very impatient.

For example, Jesus says he teaches in parables because people don't understand anything else. But the parables are often foggy and meaningless, and Jesus is snippy when even the disciples don't get them. He says, if you don't understand this parable, then how can you understand any parable? And, are you incapable of understanding?

I kept thinking, don't teach in parables then. It's not working. Even your staff doesn't understand them. Why don't you just say what you mean?

And it was hard to stay on Jesus's side when he started saying really aggressive, hateful things. Like in Luke. Jesus says that he is like a king who says, anyone who does not recognize me, bring them here and slaughter them before me. Or in John chapter 15, where Jesus says that anyone who doesn't believe in him is like a withered branch that will be cast into the fire and burned. In Matthew, he says, I come not to bring peace, but a sword. And then in Luke, he says, and if you don't have a sword, sell your clothes and buy one.

Then Jesus just starts acting downright crazy. Like in Matthew chapter 21. When a fig tree doesn't have a fig for him to eat, Jesus condemns the fig tree to death. That's right. Jesus condemns a fig tree to death. Not a parable, by the way. Just Jesus, pissed off that the fig tree didn't have a fig for him to eat when he wanted one. Not exactly the Prince of Peace who taught us to turn the other cheek.

And then there's family. I have to say the most upsetting thing to me about Jesus is his family values, which is amazing when you think how there's so many groups out there who say they base their family values on the Bible. I mean, he seems to have no real close ties to his parents. He puts Mary off cruelly over and over again. At the wedding feast he says to her, woman, what have I to do with you? And once, while he was speaking to this crowd, Mary waited patiently off to the side to talk to him. And Jesus said to the disciples, send her away, you are my family now.

Jesus actually discourages any contact his converts have with their own families. He himself does not marry or have children, and he explicitly tells his followers not to have families as well. And if they do, they should just abandon them. Isn't that what cults do? Get you to reject your family in order to inculcate you?

So that's the New Testament family values for you, the supposed big improvement over the Old Testament family values, which seemed to be mostly about incest and mass slaughter and protecting your own specific genetic line at all costs. The Bible. The Good Book. The Good News.

I was so disillusioned with the Bible by the time I finished the Epistles, I didn't think it could get any worse. But it did. We were just about to read the last and most oddball book of the Bible, Revelation.

Revelation tells us that in heaven, Jesus will resemble a dead lamb with seven horns and seven eyes. And when the gates of hell are opened, locusts pour out with human faces wearing tiny crowns, and they sting people with their tails. Revelation tells us that only 144,000 people will even be saved and go to heaven. And none of them will have quote "defiled" themselves with women, which I guess excludes most heterosexual men from heaven. And depending on how you interpret that word "defiled," I would say excludes all women too.

As we finished Revelation, the whole Bible study group just sat there, dumbfounded, our Bibles on our laps. I said, Father Tom, I am having a really hard time with this book. And he told me to pray for faith.

I left the church thinking, is this one big practical joke? Where is my God, the Jesus I thought I knew? The one that I love and the one who loves me?

I drove home, and I was stopped at this red light on Crenshaw and Wilshire. And I saw all these people walking to church, holding their Bibles. And I wanted to yell out the window, have you read that book?

I felt like I was in a horror film. And I realized that the clue to the insanity was not some secret document. It was a book that everyone was holding, that was in every hotel room. The biggest bestseller of all time. And yet if you cared enough to just glance inside, you found you'd opened the door to an insane asylum with a bunch of crazy people dancing around, yelling, "yippidee-yippidee-yah!" And I had quickly shut that door. And how was I going to pretend that I hadn't opened that door?

But some things were just too big to ignore. Like the whole point of the New Testament, that Jesus died for our sins. As if someone can pay for someone else's sins.

For the first time, after going to church my whole life, I considered the idea that God's son came to earth and suffered and died for our sins. Why? Jesus suffered, but you can't argue that he suffered any more than a lot of other people have suffered. I could think of examples in my own family. My brother Mike who had cancer, he suffered unspeakably for a very long time. Eyelids freezing open, and his eyes drying up. Canker sores all over his throat, and he couldn't swallow. Weeks and then months of gut-wrenching vomiting and nausea before he then died.

So OK. Jesus suffered. He apparently suffered terribly for one, maybe even two days. I heard someone say once, Jesus had a really bad weekend for our sins.

I suddenly thought, why would a God create people so imperfect, then blame them for their own imperfections, then send his son to be murdered by those imperfect people to make up for how imperfect those people were? And how imperfect they were inevitably going to be? I mean, what a crazy idea.

So I tried to concentrate on what I did like about the church. The stained glass windows were pretty. The light in the church. The religious art. The songs. Not the words to the songs exactly, but the melodies were nice. Especially at Christmas. It was also pretty in the church then.

After Mass, Father Tom saw me outside the church, and he said, Happy Easter, Julia. And I said, Happy Easter, Father. And he said, you know, I can see you frowning from the pulpit. And I said, I'm sorry, but Father, help me. What can I do? It all just seems impossible to believe.

He pulled me towards the coffee and doughnuts table. He said, I've spoken with some of the other priests about your predicament. I loved how he said "predicament." I felt like I was 16 and knocked up. I said, yeah? What do they suggest? And he said, listen. We all struggle with doubt, but we all come back. Just remember Proverbs 3:5. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.

So God gave us the gifts of reasoning and intelligence and curiosity, but then we're not supposed to use them?

Father Tom sighed, like he was so tired of me and my struggle. And I felt so angry that he used that particular proverb, like he was shutting the door.

Then Father Tom suddenly blessed me. It was kind of awkward. He just started waving his hands over me and chanting this phrase in Latin. Not that this is so out of the ordinary or wrong. It just felt like he was trying to perform an exorcism.

I came home, and it felt remarkably quiet. Just me and God. Not saying much. And the truth was, I was starting to get nervous about our relationship. I felt like we were this married couple in trouble, just trying to find some common ground.

And then one day I was Cometing out my bathtub, and I thought, what if it's true? What if humans are here because of pure, random chance? What if there is no guiding hand, no one watching? I realized I had spent so much time thinking about what God meant that I hadn't really spent any time thinking about what not God meant.

A few days later, as I was walking across my backyard into my house, I realized that there was this teeny-weeny thought whispering inside my head. I'm not sure how long it had been there, but it suddenly got just one decibel louder. And it whispered, there is no God.

And I tried to ignore it. But it got a teeny bit louder. There is no God. There is no God.

I'm embarrassed to report that I initially felt dizzy. I actually had the thought, well, how does the earth stay up in the sky? You mean we're just hurtling through space? That's so vulnerable. And then I thought, well, what's going to stop me from just rushing out and murdering people?

And I had to walk myself through it. Like, why are we ethical? Well, we have to get along with each other in order for communities to exist. So I guess that's why I don't run out and just murder people.

And then I felt like I'd cheated on God somehow. And I went in the house, and I prayed. And I asked God to please help me have faith. But already it felt slightly silly and vacant, and I felt like I was just talking to myself.

And then, over the course of several weeks, God disappeared.

And I wandered around in a daze, thinking, no one is minding the store. I had shared my mind with God my whole life, and now I realized my thoughts were completely my own. No one was monitoring them. No one was compassionately listening to them.

One day I was sipping my coffee, walking along a busy shopping area near my house. And I was lost in thought, thinking, so I don't think anything happens to us after we die. Our brain just stops like every other organ. So people just die.

And then I thought, wait a minute. So Hitler, Hitler just died? No one sat him down and said, you screwed up, buddy, and now you're going to spend an eternity in hell. Huh. So Hitler just died.

And my brother Mike. He just died. I always had this idea that Mike's death, while premature, was his divine destiny somehow. And that his spirit didn't really die, but it lived on. Not just in the memory of those that knew him, but in this real, tangible sense. And I realized that I now thought he died. He really died, and he was gone forever

And then I realized I had to go back and basically kill off everyone I ever knew who died who I didn't think really died. And then I thought, oh, so I'm going to die.

Then I started thinking about all the happenstances, all the random little moves which resulted in me being alive, me, in particular, at this moment. Not just of my parents meeting, but even of the billions of sperm against the hundreds of possible eggs. I thought about this randomness multiplying. My parents, their parents, and all the ways it could have gone one way, but it went the way it went. Richard Dawkins wrote, "Certainly those unborn ghosts include poets greater than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. But in the teeth of these stupefying odds, it is you and I in our ordinariness that are here."

Ira Glass

An excerpt from "Letting Go of God," Julia Sweeney's new one-woman show. She's planning on a movie and a book. For news of all that, go to her website, juliasweeney.com.

Ira Glass

Our program is produced today by Sarah Koenig and myself with Alex Blumberg, Diane Cook, Jane Feltes, and Lisa Pollak. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder. Elizabeth Meister runs our website. Production help from Todd Bachmann and Laura Bellows.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

You know you can download today's program at our archives at audible.com/thisamericanlife. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International.

[FUNDING CREDITS]

WBEZ management oversight for our program by Torey Malatia, who keeps telling me to give up on these big, conceptual shows about current events that I want to do.

Julia Sweeney

It's not working. Even your staff doesn't understand them.

Ira Glass

Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

Announcer

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