Every Day is an Atheist Holiday, by Penn Jillette

A year ago, I posted a review of Penn Jilette's book God, No!  Jillette is back this year with more hilarious stories and more atheistic musings in his new book, Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!  As was the case in God, No!, Jillette continues to be thoughtful, funny, and honest, as well as profane and offensive.  The chapters use various holidays as a springboard for some of Jillette's stories.  And he does tell a good story.

Some of my favorites: A reflection on Father's Day, in which he laments that he "will never experience sending and receiving a Father's Day card on the same day."  He speaks lovingly of his parents, causing me to pause and be thankful for my own, as well as to reflect on my role as a father.  For Groundhog Day, he compares Bill Murray's experience in the movie Groundhog Day, in which he lives the day over and over, to the life of a performer, doing the same routine over and over, relishing in the fact that he gets to say and do something over and over, and for the audience they see and hear it for the first time.

I love Jillette's humility about show business.  At several places he acknowledges that show business is nothing compared to "real" jobs.  He would much rather spend hours and hours working on a movie set or perfecting a routine for his live show, than sit at a desk, answering to a boss he can't stand.  He tells the story of meeting Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine.  "I just kept looking him in the eyes and trying to imagine what it felt like to help save that many lives. . . . Doing card tricks for a living is stupid no matter who you're talking to, but look Jonas Salk in the eyes, and it seems everyone else is doing stupid card tricks for a living."

Every Day is mostly about telling stories.  Any fan of Penn and Teller will love hearing about their early days together and some of their experiences along the way.  But true to the title of the book, Jillette makes his case for atheism.  For Jillette, honesty and integrity rate high.  He just doesn't see much of those qualities in religious people he meets.  Not that he doesn't admire certain religious people: "I like the drag-priests and drag-nuns, and turban/beard guys, and yama yama Jews.  I like that they dress so that they can't back down from that part of who they are."  Jillette just doesn't see the need for God in his own life, and is far from convinced by any philosophical arguments in favor of the existence of God.

Jillette closes the book with some observations of his young son.  He sees his son's reasoning through behavioral decisions, and argues that children know morality isn't determined merely by someone's word.  "They understand that right and wrong are separate from authority."  His son learns to control his temper and refrain from hitting his sister "from the inside because it's the right thing to do.  That's morality outside god, and if there's morality without god, we don't need god for morality."  He acknowledges that religion may support morality, but that "some of the rules religion adds in, like kill gays and atheists, wear magic underwear, and don't eat certain stuff on certain days is not morality.  It's just nutty cult rules. . . . Morality is outside religion.  Morality is above religion."

I wonder if Jillette knows that he has hit on a classic argument for the existence of God.  The presence of similar moral codes across various religions can be seen as evidence for an ultimate source of morality (see C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man, for instance).  I feel certain that Jillette is familiar with the natural law argument, so it's curious that he doesn't mention it, if nothing else to debunk it.

This is a must-read for Penn and Teller fans.  Many readers will be offended by his foul language, his frank sexual descriptions, and his demeaning of religion.  But for the most part, Every Day is hilarious and highly entertaining.




Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!