The Atheism Tapes

In 2004, Jonathan Miller, an eloquent and sympathetic old man/former physician/modern opera and theater director with rainbow socks, hosted a three-part series for the BBC called "Atheism: A Brief History of Disbelief," from which these six interviews were culled. Each interview lasts thirty minutes, and each conversation concerns atheism, which six of the seven participants endorse. Over the course of three hours, Miller talks with Colin McGinn (a philosopher), Steven Weinberg (a Nobel-winning physicist), Arthur Miller (a playwright--no relation), Richard Dawkins (a biologist), Denys Turner (a theologian), and Daniel Dennett (a philosopher). Interviews vary from digressive and anecdotal, to playful and curious, to abstract and solemn. At its worst and most obvious, the project settles for a low-key reciprocal confirmation of disbelief between questioned and questioner. Mercifully, the program is rarely so smug, and when it is, it quickly and sharply snaps back to its fitter purpose: to explore the varieties and rationales of non-religious experience. Each interview is wonderfully and inventively different; each of the six men gives an honest, direct performance and emerges thoughtfully and respectfully, and completely, as an individual. But most remarkable, the host himself, Jonathan Miller, positively shines, radiating a joyous, energetic, compassionate zest both for the topic, to which he personally subscribes, and for the companion with whom he shares his half-hour. His questions are always well crafted and often they are delightful; his commentary is never less than shrewd and occasionally much more than brilliant; and his personality, an anchor and a buoy, grounds our appreciation in the subject's real, human dimension and lifts our attention from interest to enthusiasm. And although he submits his own intelligence to the ostensibly superior wits of the academics, usually it is Miller who lingers longest in the viewer's mind. He never disappoints and often astounds.

Since Sam Harris published his controversial book, The End of Faith, which precipitated the modern atheist movement, many readers, believers and non-believers alike, have accused the advanced atheist guard of intolerance. Public intellectuals like Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins, and to a lesser extent Dennett, have since responded with even more hostility and calculated aggression. The Atheism Tapes promotes a less militant agenda and will appeal to those minds in search of a more subtle and moderate approach. As for myself, while I tend to agree with those, like Hitchens, Harris, and Dawkins, who advocate sweeping religion into the garbage can of history, I was most stimulated and impressed by the project's lone believer, who reminded me that one can accept and coexist with theism while nevertheless rejecting, emphatically, religion as a social, institutional, practical belief system. Conditional theologies--those without positive content--can be sublime and necessary.

The film is not without its flaw. For his cast, Miller chose six white old men. No women, no younger adults, no African or Hispanic or Chinese men or women. Even I, who usually don't notice such things, and when I do, don't really care, have to object to the blatant, lopsided appeal to Europhallogeriatricity, or whatever. Are there no black female atheists under the age of 50? Also, and this isn't really the film's fault, Arthur Miller rambles. Ironic that the only wordsmith on the show is the least articulate.

Highly recommended. A-