Julia Sweeney's Letting Go of God

Susan and I recently listened to Julia Sweeney's 2-CD presentation "Letting Go of God" (thanks very much to our friends Dave and Deb Ross for the recommendation!) Yes, that is the same Julia Sweeney, the comedian, that you might remember from her days on Saturday Night Live (esp. her famous character "Pat"). To refresh your memory of who she is, you can read her Wikipedia entry and visit her webpage.

I highly recommend "Letting Go of God". Presented as an on-stage performance, Susan and I were both laughing often and nodding in serious agreement as Julia tells of her journey from being a Christian believer (Catholic), through a difficult period of doubt, to arrive at a well-thought out position of atheism. Along the way she is critical of more than just her own (former) faith, but also of Mormonism, other Christian viewpoints, Deepak Chopra (and the new age movement), astrology, and much more.

At the end of the presentation she says of God "It's because I take you so seriously that I can't bring myself to believe in you." This is well said: she takes the philosophical questions of God's existence or non-existence, and the effects that has on all other beliefs, very seriously. This means she takes her own life, her own mind, her own duty to the truth seriously. And this was abundantly clear throughout the presentation. Few people could pull that off -- taking such deep questions seriously while at the same time providing so many good laughs.

It is a very effective presentation. I think in some ways it is more effective than the works of standard atheist writers, such Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and others, exactly because it presents the same serious questions and answers in a very approachable way. She does discuss important discoveries from science, as positive evidence and in order to refute claims made by religious apologists, but again, does so in a way that even those with little knowledge of science can follow along quite easily.

Her CD will be of value to both the committed Atheist (for laughs), but also to anyone who is questioning their faith in the supernatural. While a few of the comments will resonate most with those raised as Catholics, the majority of what she says will be meaningful to all. If you currently belief in a God or Gods, but have an active mind, and are willing to hear evidence on both sides, then I highly recommend you get this CD.

I wish I could link to it at Amazon now, but I can't seem to find it listed there (very odd). I'm writing to Julia to ask about this, and will provide a link to it at Amazon here in the future, but for the time being the one link Amazon provides for it is to the downloadable version of it available through their partner site, Audible.com. So you can at least get it easily as a download. I assume it is available on CD in stores like Borders and Barnes and Noble though too -- and the CD comes with nice booklet, so I'd recommend the CDs over the download.