Candidate Without a Prayer: An Autobiography of a Jewish Atheist in the Bible Belt

by Herb Silverman, Richard Dawkins (Foreword by)

Overview

In this deeply revealing and engaging autobiography, Herb Silverman tells his iconoclastic life story. He takes the reader from his childhood as an Orthodox Jew in Philadelphia, where he stopped fasting on Yom Kippur to test God’s existence, to his adult life in the heart of the Bible Belt, where he became a legendary figure within America’s secular activist community and remains one of its most beloved leaders. Never one to shy from controversy, Silverman relates many of his high-profile battles with the Religious Right, including his decision to run for governor of South Carolina to challenge the state’s constitutional provision that prohibited atheists from holding public office. He is equally candid about the battles he has faced in the secular community itself and the many hurdles he overcame in the historic step of politically uniting the country’s major secular, humanist, and atheist groups under the banner of the Secular Coalition for America. Silverman combines a satirist’s pen with an activist’s passion, revealing in humorous and often moving ways a personal side few know. Candidate Without a Prayer offers an intimate portrait of a central player in today’s increasingly heated culture wars.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780984493296
Publisher:	Pitchstone Publishing
Publication date:	05/01/2015
Edition description:	None
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Herb Silverman is founder and president emeritus of the Secular Coalition for America, and distinguished professor emeritus of mathematics at the College of Charleston. He ran for governor of South Carolina in the 1990s. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina. Richard Dawkins is an ethologist, an evolutionary biologist, and a writer. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was formerly University of Oxford’s Professor for Public Understanding of Science. Among his previous books are The Ancestor’s Tale, The God Delusion, and The Selfish Gene.

Table of Contents

Foreword Richard Dawkins xiii

Preface xix

Acknowledgments xxiii

1 In the Beginning 3

Family exclusionism, and how I was affected by it

2 God Thoughts 24

Becoming an atheist, and how a confession from a teacher changed my life

3 An Easy College Choice 33

Learning about different people, and developing some strange leadership skills

4 Leaving Home, at Last 44

Graduate school, and beginning to grow up

5 Teaching and Protesting 57

Skepticism and civil disobedience

6 Southern Exposure 70

Culture shocks galore, for me and for the South

7 The Candidate Without a Prayer 87

Running for governor, and falling in love

8 Local Secular Activism 107

How my modest fame turned me into an activist for atheism

9 National Secular Activism 118

How some local successes took me to the national scene

10 Discussions on Religion 130

From Billy Graham to Bible school

11 Debates on Religion 142

From formal debates in the Carolinas to Oxford University

12 Essays on Religion 166

Freethought writings

*14 Blogging for the Washington Post 183

Excerpts from my "On Faith" column

15 Mathematics and Teaching 187

You don't have to know math to appreciate what mathematicians do

16 Mathematics and God 198

Yes, there is a connection

17 Religious Travels 204

From India to Mount Sinai

18 Jewish Studies Atheist Brunch Talk 215

Jewish atheist is not an oxymoron

19 Family Revisited 221

Still dysfunctional, but I handle it better and begin to understand my childhood

20 Can This Marriage Be Saved? 235

Marital advice from an expert like me

21 Last Words 240

Ending a cliché

Index 241

About the Author 255

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“An entertaining and informative look at America’s culture war from a writer who has been embedded in the front lines.”
—Steven Pinker Harvard College Professor of Psychology Harvard University, and author of The Better Angels of our Nature
 

“Herb Silverman’s autobiography is not an anti-theological treatise. It is, however, a warm, deeply personal, and inspiring tale of one atheist’s travels through life in one of America’s most religion-drenched regions. Silverman ‘plays well’ with believers and nonbelievers who share this core belief: no government official dare treat a person as a second-class citizen because of what she or he believes about God, gods, or the nonexistence of them.”
—Reverend Barry Lynn Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State

 

“Herb Silverman’s lively history of an atheist raised as an Orthodox Jew fills a real gap in the literature of the ‘New Atheism,’ in that it describes the emergence of a creed based on human goodness without godliness in highly personal rather than abstract philosophical terms. In an account that will resonate with people raised in all faith traditions who have made the same journey, Silverman captures the essence of what it means to realize that you think differently from those around you—including the people who brought you into this world.”
—Susan Jacoby author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism

“It isn’t often that inveterate honesty and inviolable reasonableness are combined with such a sweet disposition and a wonderful sense of humor. Those who don’t yet know Herb will find in this wonderfully entertaining tale of how he became a fighting atheist a man of true wit, true warmth, and true wisdom.”—Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction“Herb Silverman has long been one of the most important secularist activists in the United States. With this book, you’ll find he is a wonderful storyteller as well. Herb’s warm and thoughtful self-portrait shows what it can mean to be both Jewish and a Humanist. And his story of running for governor of South Carolina as an open atheist is laugh-out-loud funny and worth reading for anyone who ever loved and/or hated the bizarre but hopeful theater that is American political life.”
—Greg Epstein Harvard Humanist Chaplain and author of Good Without God

“Dr. Silverman is certainly unique for Charleston, maybe even unique for anywhere. When he came down here as a fine math professor but a cultural fish out of water, he simply created a flood of reason in which his newly discovered fellow infidels could swim. Herb presents a rational and persuasive alternative to those of faith, both with his words and his behavior.”
—Judge Alex Sanders Former President of the College of Charleston and Founder and President of the Charleston School of Law

 

“Iconoclastic atheist, humorist, and mathematician Herb Silverman takes you on an entertaining tour of his irreverent life, so far.”
—Wendy Kaminer Lawyer, social critic, and author of seven books

"Religious and irreligious people alike can learn from this book lessons about tolerance, freedom of expression, good manners, goodwill, and the importance of not stereotyping but the lessons are not presented in a holier-than-thou tone, as is often the case in the religion vs. science debate."

—Review:Foreword Magazine

Editorial Reviews

"It isn’t often that inveterate honesty and inviolable reasonableness are combined with such a sweet disposition and a wonderful sense of humor. Those who don’t yet know Herb will find in this wonderfully entertaining tale of how he became a fighting atheist a man of true wit, true warmth, and true wisdom.”  —Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction




“Herb Silverman has long been one of the most important secularist activists in the United States. With this book, you’ll find he is a wonderful storyteller as well. Herb’s warm and thoughtful self-portrait shows what it can mean to be both Jewish and a Humanist. And his story of running for governor of South Carolina as an open atheist is laugh-out-loud funny and worth reading for anyone who ever loved and/or hated the bizarre but hopeful theater that is American political life.”  —Greg Epstein, Harvard Humanist Chaplain and author, Good Without God
 


“Dr. Silverman is certainly unique for Charleston, maybe even unique for anywhere. When he came down here as a fine math professor but a cultural fish out of water, he simply created a flood of reason in which his newly discovered fellow infidels could swim. Herb presents a rational and persuasive alternative to those of faith, both with his words and his behavior.”  —Judge Alex Sanders, president, Charleston School of Law


“Woody Allen-esque tale of an uneasy conscience in Christian America.”  —Kirkus Reviews


“An entertaining and informative look at America’s culture war from a writer who has been embedded in the front lines.”  —Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author, The Better Angels of Our Nature


“Herb Silverman’s autobiography is not an anti-theological treatise. It is, however, a warm, deeply personal, and inspiring tale of one atheist’s travels through life in one of America’s most religion-drenched regions. Silverman ‘plays well’ with believers and nonbelievers who share this core belief: no government official dare treat a person as a second-class citizen because of what she or he believes about God, gods, or the nonexistence of them.”  —Reverend Barry Lynn, executive director, Americans United for Separation of Church and State

From the Publisher

A mild, witty memoir by an activist atheist and founder of the Secular Coalition for America. Retired professor of mathematics at the College of Charleston, in South Carolina, a native Philadelphian and a nonpracticing Jew, Silverman delights in contradictions and provocation, such as debating the existence of God with fundamentalists in the Deep South. The author has advocated for years to help empower the non-theistic constituency, most of whom believe morality should be dictated by tried-and-true "human judgments" rather than biblical judgments--which, while fashioning the Golden Rule, he notes, have also been used to condone slavery, anti-Semitism, misogyny and horrendous violence. The only child of "cultural Jews," Silverman chronicles the not-so-small hypocrisies that he witnessed in adults around him, such as their conviction that the execution of the Rosenbergs in 1953 was "good for Jews" and that the games their beloved Philadelphia Phillies played against the Brooklyn Dodgers weren't worthy of their attendance because "of undesirable people (blacks) who came to watch [Jackie] Robinson play." Once he mastered biblical readings as part of his bar mitzvah training, Silverman debated two thoughts with his young self: "either the God of the Bible didn't exist, or he could be as bad as and more powerful than Adolph Hitler." God and sex were forbidden topics in his childhood home, and his early years learning about girls and how to care for himself make for charming reading. Enmeshed in his teaching career, he became radicalized during the incendiary '60s and '70s and later ran for numerous offices, such as governor of South Carolina in 1990 (he lost). The book skips around erratically, somewhat thematically, and dwells at length on his atheist beliefs. A Woody Allen–esque tale of an uneasy conscience in Christian America.

Kirkus Reviews