The Loser Letters by Mary Eberstadt (anti-atheist broadside)

[Peas n carrots]

I was in France the summer of that awful heat wave too, and I can attest that the structures there are not made for extreme weather, and air conditioning barely existed. If she wants to knit pick, there was a heat wave in Chicago in 1995 that killed over 700 people. Chicago is in a city of 3 million, and used to extreme weather. France is a country of 65 million and dealing with unprecedented heat. I would say France did a damn good job of taking care of their own.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/443213in.html

Just reading a little of this book, all I can think of is how clueless she is about everything. She's clueless on how to connect with young people, she's clueless about atheism etc. I'm not tooting my own horn here, but the atheists I know are all intellegent, well spoken people who tend to have some post secondary education and don't speak like valley girls. I don't think atheists are her intended audience, but I have a hard time seeing how this book would connect with her intended audience. It's just so poorly written.

[Doomed Harlottt]

The author compares the great cathedrals of Europe to Le Corbusier and downtown Pyongyang to argue that great art is impossible without religion.

Were these works, and others that are considered to be among Humanity's masterpieces even thinkable apart from religion itself? In other words, is there a necessary (as opposed to accidental) connection between the exaltedness of art, and that of religion from which it claims inspiration and deribation?

I love the fact that the author cannot maintain the dippy LOL-speak she's given her fictional narrator. She constantly slips from her supposedly atheist character to argue against atheism straight-up. Apparently she doesn't quite understand how satire works.

Tellingly, the author ignores entire artistic traditions, such as much of Chinese art, which expresses the sublime in decidedly non-theistic terms (such as a painting of a small person contemplating an enormous mountain). She also claims pretty much all of western art and literature for religion on the grounds that folks like Shakespeare, for example, were believers. In doing so, of course, she totally ignores the decidely humanistic bent of western art from the Renaissance onward. With dripping sarcasm, she compares a Bach sonata to Elton John (only one of the most talented songwriters of the last forty years) and Rammstein. I'm shocked that Marilyn Manson wasn't among her list of targets.

We start to hear hints that the fictional narrator's life has been something of a mess. She refers to stoner boyfriend Lobo.

[salsa]

What fantastic bullshit. I can't wait to hear more. I try to keep my sense of humor when I hear of the godly trying to imagine atheists' thoughts, etc. It's always such hyperbole and I have never understood how anyone with even a grain of intelligence can think it's true.

Sense of humor? SENSE OF HUMOR??!?? There's no sense of humor in Christianity!!! :naughty:

(seems like there's plenty of crying, though) :whistle:

[Peas n carrots]

With dripping sarcasm, she compares a Bach sonata to Elton John (only one of the most talented songwriters of the last forty years) and Rammstein. I'm shocked that Marilyn Manson wasn't among her list of targets.

But Elton John is TEH GHEY. I'm surprised she didn't think her Gawd would smite him!

[debrand]

Wasn't Michelangelo gay or at least bisexual? Maybe she shouldn't claim the Sistine Chapel as one of the great works of art.

[Boltingmadonna]

lawfulevil said:

No, unfortunately I already know what being slapped in the face with stupid feels like.

LOL!! The arguments for Christianity (if you can call them that) in this book are not very convincing, but speaking as a professional writer, what I find really awful is the writing. The author apparently thinks that she is cleverly imitating a naive modern teenage/twenty-something girl. So not. Nothing is more wince-inducing than a writer who gets the tone wrong in her character's speech. It makes the whole thing sound awkward and phony--which, of course, it is. If I were in her writers' group critiquing her work, I would suggest that she try to get to know some young people who were atheists before presuming to write from their point of view.

That would ruin her schtick, though, because she'd have to treat them as human beings. The whole point of this work is to dehumanize young atheists by condescending to them, making them sound stupid, and pointing out that they'll end up in Hell if they don't straighten up right quick. She doesn't want her Christian readers to understand and sympathize with them. She just wants them to feel superior. Condescending to your characters doesn't make for good writing either.

[Doomed Harlottt]

First, she claims in general that religion has a lot more converts than atheism -- conveniently side stepping the fact that her religion aggressively proselytizes throughout the world in a way that atheists and minority religions like Jews do not.

The fictional narrator also rails furiously against the traitors who have converted to Loser's side (i.e. God's side), even though so many of them are so brilliant they should know better. She focuses in particular early 20th century mostly British converts: Evelyn Waugh, C.S. Lewis, Malcolm Muggeridge, Graham Greene, Edith Sitwell, Siegfried Sassoon, Hilaire Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, and T.S. Eliot.

Um, ok. I am not sure that these people converted to Roman Catholicism from atheism. But even so, I've never thought that really smart people can't have faith. But the point is that it's still FAITH.

And then in the spirit of making dishonest comparisons, here we go, with the fictional narrator claiming that atheism has appeal to some people:

Of course we score big time with the young guys who aren't responsible for anything and don't really care about anything besides spending most of their time in the basement playing video games, watching porn, and texting girls unsuccessfully and firing off the occasional crazy blog or e-mail in between making runs to the fridge for booze and Red Bull and leftover pizza.

The reference to "guys" is intentional. Foreshadowing her next chapter, she refers to the New Atheists' "woman problem" and says:

Yes, Loser's side, unlike ours, has plenty of girls!

Yeah, that's right. G.K. Chesterton -- an adamant opponent of women's suffrage -- doesn't have a "woman problem." The Catholic Church, which vigorously opposes women's right to control their own fertility in any reliable way, and which adamantly refuses to admit women into its hierarchy, doesn't have a "woman problem." Right. Can't wait for the next chapter!

Meanwhile, the fictional narrator mentions that she is in some kind of rehab, where she has been instructed to learn German. She is now tossing all sorts of German phrases around. I guess Atheism = Nazism = German. Nice!

[Doomed Harlottt]

Yep, that's the title of the chapter. Apparently, atheists hate children. Really. She's not even talking about abortion here. Actually, it's even worse, atheists apparently are incapable of any kind of strong human attachment (NOTE: her fictional narrator refers to religious people as Dulls):

Some Dulls, for example, come to believe in Loser for one kind of family reason - say, because they love their husbands or wives too much to believe that death really cuts the two apart forever. Even more people - way more, from what this former Christian has seen - are drawn to beleif because they feel that way about their brats. They think in the craziest way that there is something infinite about their love for their children, something that transcends these finite shackles of our cells -- and they infer from that powerful feeling that love really is stronger than death, as their stupid old book says somewhere.

She then names some famous atheists who never had children and notes that Jean-Jacques Rousseau put his five children in an orphanage. Of course, Dawkins and Hitchens are known to be doting fathers, so . . . . . .????

She then makes a faux feminist argument: Women are more inclined to be religious than men. Maybe it's because women aren't as smart? Or maybe it's because women are more inclined to experience infinite love because we have babies -- an experience that obviously an atheist could never understand.

It does somehow defy understanding how a friend of mine could give me this book, knowing that I am not only an atheist, but an older, childless woman.

[ElphabaGalinda]

The author of this book has obviously never met an atheist, so doesn't make her very effective with what she was trying to do. I have strong doubts people like her ever convert anybody with how ignorant and illogical they sound.

[Cran]

Such books are not written to convince atheists to become religious again, they are written to enable crazy religious people to pat themselves on the back and say: "Thanks be to God, we are not like this atheist over there!".

[Doomed Harlottt]

My head is starting to throb after reading so much of this tripe all at once. Suffice it to say this lady's irony meter is dead. After going on about how the atheist's have a woman problem, she then describes pro-choice rallies as follows:

You know those other rallies, I'm sure - the ones full of grim ladies well past aborting age, marching with coat hangers as their emblems, yelling about their "right" to end the pregnancies they'll never again have.

Misogyny, much? Also, is the author oblivious to the fact that she is herself a woman past childbearing age weighing in on a topic that doesn't personally affect her and that has enormous ramifications for younger women?

She then claims that the face of the pro-life movement is a youthful face. That young people are flocking to the anti-choice side because they view the civil rights leaders of your as rock stars, rather than worshipping Dawkins and Hitchens. Um, ok. Again, I think her knowledge of young people comes mainly from her own teenagers telling her what she wants to hear.

Notably absent from her entire chapter is any acknowledgment whatsoever of the suffering and the enslavement of women who are forced to give birth against their will. But, yeah, atheists have a woman problem.

[Doomed Harlottt]

I really am losing steam. Basically, this article posits that without Christianity, it's a slippery slope to bestiality, infanticide, and pedophilia.

YAWN. I think slippery slope arguments are stupid. Each thing needs to be considered on its own merits.

[Doomed Harlottt]

Now we start to learn a little more about our fictional narrator, A.F. Christian, in a chapter dripping with subtle sexism.

Here's a small pioint, but I think it's telling. As I've mentioned, this whole memoir is filled with bubbly Valley-girl talk: "creepalicious!" and "totally retarded" and "how lame" amd on and on. Well, in the acknowledgments, the author credits her children and "their teenaged friends" whose "cadences, energy, dramas, and facebook pages have helped to breathe life into A.F. Christian." OK-- except the character of A.F. Christian is a 25-year old woman. Giddy teeny-boppers, grown women - what's the diff, right? No wonder this lady doesn't think women should have the right to determine their own reproductive lives.

Anyway, we learn that A.F. Christian moved with loser, stoner boyfriend Lobo to Portland, Oregon. She still considers herself a Christian, but then she gets pregnant. Lobo then tries to bully her into getting an abortion. She doesn't want to, so he buys a bunch of new atheist books for her. Between the bullying and their financial problems, she finally caves and gets an abortion at Planned Parenthood.

See what the author did here? She makes two nasty little points in one fictional fell swoop:

1) Women don't actually have agency of their own in choosing abortion. It's something that's done TO them or that they are coerced into. This is the anti-choice of way of trying to get around the fact that their point of view disregards women's interests in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

2) People get "converted" to atheism so they can do what they want.

In keeping with the theme that giving women rights makes them unhappy, A.F. Christian then describes going into deep mourning for H.D., her Hypothetical Daughter. She buys a doll. And then on H.D.'s due date, she lines up every pill in her house and washes them down with some Grey Goose Vodka. When she wakes up, she is in the rehab center she's been writing the letters from, the place run by a midget in a red cape where she has been instructed to learn German.

[Boltingmadonna]

She then claims that the face of the pro-life movement is a youthful face.

There are some pretty obvious reasons why you see a lot of young people at pro-life rallies. First of all, students tend to not have full-time jobs and small children, so it's easier for them to take a few days off for a rally. Second, their Catholic colleges, high schools, and parishes send buses around and urge the kids to get on them. Without pressure and funding from older organizers, chances are that way fewer of those young people would bother themselves to plan and pay for the trip. I'm not saying no young people are dedicated enough to the pro-life cause to motivate themselves, but probably not as many as Eberstadt would like us to believe.

Also, if you look at the faces of the pro-life leaders, you find mostly childless men (priests) and older women. And yes, denigrating a political position because you claim it's held by fugly lesbians and screechy wrinkled harridans is bigotry and misogyny. I agree that only a person with very little sense of empathy would give such a book to an older woman with no children and expect her not to take it personally at all. "Here's a book about how people like you hate God and people with disabilities, revel in debauchery, and want all babies to die. And you're ugly, so why should we listen to you? Enjoy!!" What a dope.

[Lainey]

When she wakes up, she is in the rehab center she's been writing the letters from, the place run by a midget in a red cape where she has been instructed to learn German.

Er...what? :?

[valsa]

Second, their Catholic colleges, high schools, and parishes send buses around and urge the kids to get on them.

This makes me spitting mad. I was looking at the website for an all-boys Catholic high school and they had pictures of when they'd taken the students to a big "pro-life" rally in their state. Something about seeing smiling high school boys, who are never in their lives going to have to make any decision regarding an unwanted pregnancy, waving anti-choice signs around boils my blood.

[Doomed Harlottt]

The author claims that atheists can't explain the existence of guilt and shame. Again, this seems to be based on an assumption that atheism does not recognize any morality. She continues to wallow in the misery and guilt she assumes her fictional narrator must feel about her abortion:

I mean to say, by the time I went to Planned Parenthood that day, I was as empty of religious superstition as any former believer can be. So why, again, did I feel as ripped up about what happened as I did? I mean, shouldn't Nature have designed me to be happy about getting rid of something that was going to interrupt my life? Wouldn't You think, given all our theories about survival, that a gene for putting nasty things behind You and fast, would have been selected by now?

I'm thinking somebody doesn't understand how evolution works. I am also thinking that somebody wants us to believe that her church knows better than women themselves what reproductive choices are best for them.

NEXT: The "surprise" ending.

[valsa]

NEXT: The "surprise" ending.

I'm guessing she either re-converts (as if she ever really de-converted in the first place) or goes on a killing spree as proof of the ultimate outcome of all atheism.

[slickcat79]

The author claims that atheists can't explain the existence of guilt and shame. Again, this seems to be based on an assumption that atheism does not recognize any morality. She continues to wallow in the misery and guilt she assumes her fictional narrator must feel about her abortion:

I'm thinking somebody doesn't understand how evolution works. I am also thinking that somebody wants us to believe that her church knows better than women themselves what reproductive choices are best for them.

NEXT: The "surprise" ending.

Hmm...I guess we can add "people who have had abortions" to the list of people the author has never met.

[emmiedahl]

The thing about The Screwtape Letters is that they are good because the author is familiar with evil. He was a lay theologian and spent a lot of time thinking about "the enemy". Even if you don't believe that there are demons plotting against us, it is still a believable read in many ways.

Eberstadt clearly is not familiar with atheism. First and foremost, she confuses it with LaVeyan Satanism--organized hedonism. I don't know every atheist on the planet, but the ones I know are just as moral as a theist. Atheists do not as a whole believe in an "anything goes" type of world. They just want to personally remove the threat of God and base their morality on common sense, logic and humanism.

In addition, the author seems to think that atheists believe in a God but reject him (again, some kind of Satanism). Atheists don't believe in a God, cruel or otherwise. You cannot be angry or bitter at someone who does not exist, and they are not.

Being angry at God, rejecting God, these are all predicated on a belief in God that atheists by definition do not have.

[Doomed Harlottt]

To recap (and add a couple of extra details): Our fictional narrator, A.F. Christian is a 25 year old woman who talks like a particularly dizzy teeny-bopper. She began to abandon her faith when she went to a secular college. In her mid-20s, she took up with a jobless stoner boyfriend and got pregnant. They are so poor they can't even pay their electric bill. (It's not clear if she has a job.) He bullies her into an abortion, partly by introducing her to the writings of the new atheists. He walks out on her after the abortion. She then goes into a deep spiral of depression -- adopting a doll to take the place of the baby she would have had and eventually taking an overdose of pills. When she wakes up, she is in some kind of rehab center run by a midget in a red cape, who gives her a German language course to take. She has been writing these letters to her atheist heroes from the rehab center. Wonder where this is going? Read on!

After she finished the last letter detailing the horrible guilt and shame she felt from having an abortion, one of the attendants at the rehab center takes her to the nursery. She had assumed the nursery was full of crack babies. Instead -- the attendant introduces her to a gorgeous, 2-month old baby, A.F. Christian's baby, the one she aborted!!!!

[Doomed Harlottt]

Oops. The rest of my post on the ending got eaten. Stay tuned: I am sure you are on the edge of your seats.

[Doomed Harlottt]

So yeah, A.F. Christian has an emotional reunion with her aborted baby. Lots of tears, swooning over little toes, yada yada yada.

It turns out that she died when overdosing on the pills. The rehab is a holding center in the afterlife, where she was waiting while the Director decided what to do with her. The attendants had her write letters to prominent atheists so they could try to figure out the inner workings of her soul. At first it looked like she was heading to Hell -- which is why they were having her learn German. I am sure German readers of this book will find the idea that German is the language of Hell utterly hi-larious.

Her last letter, however, established that she felt remorse of her abortion and that she did not intend to kill herself. It also established that she had, in her soul, remained a Christian all along. As such, she was going to be sent to Heaven, where she could be with her baby all the time!

The language of heaven by the way is Italian. Go Vatican!

[valsa]

So... what does the midget have to do with anything?

[GolightlyGrrl]

To recap (and add a couple of extra details): Our fictional narrator, A.F. Christian is a 25 year old woman who talks like a particularly dizzy teeny-bopper. She began to abandon her faith when she went to a secular college. In her mid-20s, she took up with a jobless stoner boyfriend and got pregnant. They are so poor they can't even pay their electric bill. (It's not clear if she has a job.) He bullies her into an abortion, partly by introducing her to the writings of the new atheists. He walks out on her after the abortion. She then goes into a deep spiral of depression -- adopting a doll to take the place of the baby she would have had and eventually taking an overdose of pills. When she wakes up, she is in some kind of rehab center run by a midget in a red cape, who gives her a German language course to take. She has been writing these letters to her atheist heroes from the rehab center. Wonder where this is going? Read on!

After she finished the last letter detailing the horrible guilt and shame she felt from having an abortion, one of the attendants at the rehab center takes her to the nursery. She had assumed the nursery was full of crack babies. Instead -- the attendant introduces her to a gorgeous, 2-month old baby, A.F. Christian's baby, the one she aborted!!!!

WTF? This makes Stephenie Meyer look like Margaret Atwood.