Discussion and debate are integral parts of a democratic society. They happen everywhere—from parliaments to lecture halls to television studios and social media. But have you ever come across a debate about religion unfolding in a newspaper column, with a Hindu voice posting the questions and a committed atheist answering them?
That unique exchange is the heart of Atheism in 150 Words: Reflections on God(s), Society, Nature, and Life, a book that stems from the Faith Forum, a popular weekly multi-faith conversation on religion and spirituality published in the Reno Gazette-Journal, a major newspaper in Nevada, USA.
Simple questions, unexpected answers
The questions are posed by Rajan Zed, producer of the Faith Forum and president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, and answered by author and self-described pious atheist Anthony Shafton. Together, they bring 200 questions and answers into a lively exploration of religion, atheism, belief, doubt, and the questions that surface in everyday conversations about faith.
The premise is perhaps less surprising than it first appears. Zed points out that Hinduism has traditionally accommodated atheistic thought and values the exploration of truth. That openness may explain why Shafton, an atheist thinker, found a place alongside representatives of diverse faith traditions on Faith Forum.
What makes the book interesting is the gap between the simplicity of the questions and the complexity of the answers. The questions often sound straightforward, even conversational. The answers, however, push the reader to look beyond the obvious and realize that questions revolving around faith rarely have simple, one-dimensional answers.
Take the question on Page 29—What is admirable in other religions, missing in yours? It sounds simple enough. But Shafton’s response broadens the question. Even as an atheist, he says, one can recognize in religion elements worth admiring—spiritual guidance, community, moral principles, rites of passage, historical continuity, and a sense of connection with the universe. The answer moves the discussion away from belief versus disbelief and towards what religion means to human beings.
Another question feels particularly relevant at a time when religion, science, and public life frequently collide: Is everything in scriptures still applicable?
Shafton’s answer is succinct. He says, “Symbolically yes, literally no.” He argues that religious stories can retain symbolic value, but problems arise when they are interpreted literally in ways that reject established scientific understanding.
The book also turns to contemporary questions—how can we effectively reach millennials? Trust Shafton to come up with the unexpected answer: “Let it be,” Shafton argues, and says that not every atheist is hostile to religion.
He describes himself as a “soft “atheist”—someone who respects religion and experiences what he calls the “religious impulse,” but without subscribing to what he considers false ideas. He says atheism does not necessarily mean campaigning against religion.
When atheism makes room for spirituality
That distinction helps explain an amusing observation Shafton makes about his exchanges with Zed. He recalls that after emailing some of his 150-word responses, Zed would occasionally call to chide him that he did not sound like an atheist.
Perhaps the answer to why becomes clearer in another exchange — What is and isn’t a religion? Shafton writes that spirituality is at the heart of religion, but spirituality itself is not necessarily religious. He traces spirituality to a much older human impulse – the sense of awe at existence, which, he argues, can thrive even without religion.
As the pages progress, the questions become increasingly connected to contemporary anxieties.
Is the apocalypse near? elicits a characteristically unexpected response—”Who “knows?” Shafton dismisses a literal religious apocalypse but accepts, from a scientific perspective, that Earth will ultimately return to cosmic dust. The atheist answer, once again, does not simply shut down the question; it opens another way of looking at it.
The same complexity emerges in his response to “What is the best and what is the worst thing about your religion, denomination, or practice?” For atheism, he identifies joy and loneliness. The absence of community, he says, can be one of the hardest aspects of atheism. His observation that even atheists can feel isolated by their beliefs adds an unexpectedly human dimension to the discussion.
This is perhaps the strength of a newspaper-column debate. The participants are not debating merely to win an argument or to be heard. At its best, the exchange gives readers something to consider, question, and ponder.
That becomes especially evident in the question on Page 156: What is the current biggest headache of religion?” Shafton’s answer—its own worst enemy—points to the ways religion can become entangled with politics, nationalism, violence, and intolerance, while also acknowledging the ammunition such examples provide to militant atheists. His larger question is whether religion’s involvement in civil affairs too often produces a toxic mix.
It is this willingness to enter uncomfortable territory and to allow an atheist voice to sit alongside religious ones that gives Faith Forum, and now Atheism in 150 Words, its distinctive character.
The column occupies a prominent, often full-page space in the Reno Gazette-Journal, bringing together representatives of Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Greek Orthodox, Jewish, Muslim, Roman Catholic, United Methodist, and Unity traditions, alongside a university professor emeritus of religion and Shafton’s distinctly atheist perspective.
The result is not a conventional debate with winners and losers. It is a conversation in which a simple question can lead somewhere far more complicated and sometimes far more interesting. And that may be the real value of the book Atheism in 150 Words: it does not necessarily tell the reader what to think; it gives the reader something to think about.
Atheism in 150 Words: Reflections on God(s), Society, Nature, and Life co-authored by Rajan Zed and Anthony Shafton, 215 pages.
Paperback: $16.95 on Amazon
Rajan Zed, who follows Hinduism, has made interfaith dialogue his calling, bringing people of different faiths and worldviews into conversation. A religious statesman and advocate of pluralism, he has delivered opening prayers before 365 legislative bodies across 47 US states, a US territory and Canada, including the US Senate and House of Representatives. A recipient of the World Interfaith Leader Award, Zed has also served as a panelist for On Faith, produced by The Washington Post, and is the producer of Faith Forum, a weekly interfaith panel in a USA Today group newspaper since 2011.
Anthony Shafton, a Jew but an atheist, studied philosophy at Harvard and creative writing at Stanford. The author of Atheism in 150 Words, he has written five nonfiction books exploring consciousness, dreams, African American culture, and Nevada’s history, along with the novel The Apostate Heriger, published in France as Le Moine Apostat. He is currently writing a book on the evolution of consciousness.
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