Man-Made
Magic: How Penn Jillette’s Life and Career
Have
Inspired Me to be a Louder, Angrier Atheist Asshole
by
C. T.
for
Advanced Composition, East TN State U, December 2011
Atheism[1]
1.
archaic : ungodliness,
wickedness
2. a :
a disbelief in the existence of deity
b : the doctrine that there is
no deity
Author’s Note: Information for this
piece has been drawn from the firsthand writings of Penn Jillette, notably from
God,
No! Signs You Might Already be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales.
This essay seeks not to describe Penn Jillette’s entire life, career, or
philosophy, but to describe how his life and career have influenced this author
to make his atheism a more visible part of his lifestyle.
In
what I consider a clear violation of the doctrine of separation of church and
state established by the United States Supreme Court, my public high school had
a little shrine to Jesus Christ in the hallway outside the one of the janitor’s
closets. No other deity got a shrine.
There was no 36 x 36 inch Muhammad plastered up on the walls of Seymour High
School. There was no Buddha, no Vishnu, no Zeus. I’m sure it bothered a lot of people, but if
they did complain about it, I sure didn’t hear them. But considering this was Seymour, Tennessee,
a town with a population just north of ten thousand people and where the
largest building in the area was the First Baptist Church,[2]
it’s just as likely that only a few people even thought it seemed out of
place. Suffice to say, as a teenage
atheist in the Bible Belt, I felt alone.
That
feeling of isolation has carried over to my twenties. I learned as a teen to put atheism in a
cabinet in a closet in the attic of my life and to carry on without my lack of
religious belief defining me. This
compartmentalization served as a defense mechanism. However, the older I get, the more I’ve found
myself looking for a mechanism that empowers me and allows me to fulfill all of
my heart’s desires, including living life openly as a nonbeliever.
Skeptic. Freethinker.
Magician. Asshole. Atheist. All
words that describe Penn Jillette, author, radio host, television star, film
star, professional celebrity, upright bass player, and most notably, magician,
with his partner of more than thirty years, Teller. You may have seen one of their TV shows or
one of their many appearances on The Tonight Show, The Late Show, or in several
music videos.[3] God,
No! begins with Penn’s birth on March 5, 1955 in a small town called
Greenfield, Massachusetts to Samuel and Valda Jillette, both in their
mid-forties at the time of his birth.
Jillette describes his parents as sensible, no-nonsense New
Englanders. They had been through the
Great Depression. The believed in
privacy and charity. They were regular
churchgoers for most of their life. They
were theists. His sister, also Valda,
was twenty-three years old when he was born.
She was a theist.
As Penn entered high school, he
began to pick-up an interest in rock and roll (playing in a band) which
conflicted with his parents early Sunday morning church attendance habits. It was agreed that Penn could skip church on Sunday
morning, so long as he attended the church’s adolescent youth group Sunday
school in the evening. This continued
for awhile until, according to Penn, he was asked to leave the church by his
Sunday school leader. He had for several
weeks been asking increasingly challenging questions about the validity of the
gospels and what he saw as inconsistency and hypocrisy within the texts of the
Bible. According to him, the leader of
the group told his parents that he had been eroding the faith of the other
members of the group, and because of this, the church thought it was in the
best interests of both Penn and the other teens for him to stop attending. He exclaims in God, No! that he was “the only teen in the world who had a license
not to go to church, from the church itself!”
Let’s
revisit those New England churchgoers Penn called parents. Upwards of 90% of fundamentalist Christian
parents would attempt to convert a questioning teen to Christianity,[4]
but Penn’s parents respected his beliefs and allowed him to end his
relationship with theism without comment or question. He wasn’t quite as easy on them. For thirty years, Penn badgered his sister
and parents to abandon church and accept that there was no God, could be no
God, and that attending church functions, indeed believing in God at all, was a
waste of time. Despite the frequent
family discussions, his parents and sister continued attending church
regularly.
When
Penn’s mother was eighty-five years old, she told him that she was an atheist
(he had suspected for his adult life that she was) and that she, his sister,
and his father would stop attending church.
A fracas had blown up Greenfield over the lifestyle of the new pastor, a
woman in her mid-thirties who lived with a similarly-aged female roommate. When the national church began disseminating
ballots to local church branches asking whether or not they would vote to allow
gays and lesbians admittance to the church, she signed in favor and sent it
back without consulting the church elders.
A group of these church elders “and I mean elders”[5]
began to pressure the congregation to force the minister’s resignation. This was the last straw for Valda and Samuel,
who both believed details of private lives belonged to private people. As far as they were concerned, the only
person the new minister’s living and/or sleeping arrangements mattered to was
the new minister. They left the church
in protest.
Penn’s
sister Valda came out as an atheist at the same time as their mother, being in
her upper fifties at the time. Samuel
prayed for his wife and family up until his death, often telling Penn that he
would “put in enough good words for you, so we can all be together [in
heaven].” When Samuel died, a pastor
administered a graveside service, as was Samuel’s request, but Valda told the
man, “Be quick about it. None of us are
believers.”
This
strikes me as something I’d like to call the “transformational power of
atheism.” Maybe, just maybe, if you keep
chipping away at the magic book[6][7]
with logic and reason, maybe you can convince people you love, that you care
about, that affect your life and the lives of everyone else on the planet to
treat the human race with love, kindness, and respect. The problem with magic books is that they
often speak on one hand of kindness to your neighbors and on the next page
demand or exalt the slaughter of your other neighbors. That Penn was able to unconvert members of
his family, or at least make them feel comfortable opening up about such a
major issue in their lives, gives me hope that I can do the same.
Seeing friends and family go to church—some of them even
devote their lives to houses of worship—hurts.
I remember the years of sadness I spent guiltily wondering why I was
different. I remember years of feeling
isolated and alone in my lack of faith.
I remember how sad and hurtful faith-based comments critical of atheists
made me felt as I burned in silent shame.
So when I see people I care about living religious lives, or worse,
silently going through the motions, possibly experiencing the inner turmoil I
went through, I want to reach out and help.
I want to spread support for the ideas of atheism and skepticism. I want to spread Bullshit!.
Penn
claims that the show he hosted with his companion Teller, Bullshit, was the longest running show in the history of Showtime.[8] The show was an idea that Penn and Teller had
been kicking around for a while. They
pitched it in September of 2001. The
World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001 had a profound effect on
Penn. He claims to have said, after the
second plane hit, “There go our civil liberties.”[9] In God,
No! Penn described the days following the attacks as the time that he and
Penn were convinced America needed a skeptical TV show more than ever. The nation was vulnerable, and Bullshit! was the perfect vehicle to
calm the flames with logic and reason.
This
is what inspires me so much about Penn Jillette. He saw a need, and he found a solution to
provide a remedy. Bullshit! hammered flimsy pseudosciences like astrology, Tai Chi,
and homeopathy most often, but also dedicated episodes to debunking myths such
as the 2012 apocalypse and various 9/11 “truther” conspiracies. He has dedicated much of his career to
education based on logic, facts, and reason.
He is brash, loud, and abrasive to many people, but to just as many
(including some of the former) he is helpful, educational, and caring. I’ll never be a magician, and I doubt I’ll
ever host a TV show, but I’m trying every day, to bring a little more magic and
a little less religion to the world.
Jillette,
Penn. God, No! Signs You May Already Be
an Atheist and Other Magical Tales. Simon and Schuster: 2011.
This is one of the most funny, most inspiring, and most
engaging books I have ever read. Part memoir,
part handbook, part propaganda, this is Penn Jillette’s life and career summed
up in 256 pages. He focuses only on
memorable instances, not day in the life snippets, so every chapter is packed
with an escapade and commentary.
Enlightening and inspirational, I encourage you to read it
wholeheartedly, and well, if that sounds like a sales pitch—it is. Buy it.
Read it. Give it away to a friend, or better yet, buy them one too.
[1] Definitions provided by the Merriam-Webster online dictionary
[2] You might think this violates the unwritten East Tennessee rule that the tallest building in every city should be the court house, followed by the First Baptist Church. Seymour, TN, is unincorporated, so while it does have a post office, it does not have a court house. You’ll be happy to know that in the nearby city of Sevierville, TN, the tallest building is the Sevier County Courthouse, and the second tallest building is the First Baptist Church.
[3] They make a brief appearance in the background of the video for Katy Perry’s song “Waking up in Vegas”. I recommend watching with the sound off if you’re just dying to catch a glimpse of them. Penn is the absurdly tall one, Teller is his small-only-by-association companion.
[4] [4] Atheism and Secularlity: Issues, Concepts, and definitions by Phil Zuckerman
[5] They were really old.
[6] The Holy Bible, The Koran, The Book of Mormon, The Torah, etc.
[7] For added explanation on magic books, please enjoy the musical stylings of Australian comedian Tim Minchin, and his song “The Good Book,” linked here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC-fsFT7ZKs>
[8] I checked, and its true. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programs_broadcast_by_Showtime>
[9] When he told this to comedian George Carlin, Carlin pulled out his journal from the same time. He had written “There go our freedoms.”