Atheism

Atheism should mean getting, and laughing at, the mother of all jokes: that we're animals--animated mud--agglomerations of molecules that have evolved the ability to reproduce themselves and have formed into large colonies that we regard as plants, animals, people (but which our selfish genes "regard" as cities and vehicles)--colonies whose Weblike web of neural interconnections can even produce an impression of consciousness. We, the "most evolved" of these colonies, anointed ourselves the center and purpose of the universe, only to discover that we're not, but that the likes of us have apparently been left in charge of a planet in a universe without purpose, center, leader, or moral authority; that we're all, as the Firesign Theater once put it, "just bozos on this bus." Which suggests we'd better put aside tribal myths, absolute truths, and obsessional mass neuroses and learn to get along. Jack Hubberman