by Alan Perlman

Created on: March 16, 2007

This just in: The New York Times affirms that God exists.

After years of agonizing over whether the New York Times was going to come down for or against God, I can now rest. God exists. All is right with the world.

God exists NOT

One of the great things about being a secular humanist or at least an agnostic is that you never waste a single moment on the question of whether God exists. As I'm sure many philosophers have pointed out, merely to ask the question is to assume its legitimacy. Why should we even care whether God exists? Why should we care any more than we care about Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, unicorns, or (the example from Bertrand Russell, I believe) a teacup floating in outer space?

There are countless things upon whose existence we could speculate, but we don't. I'm sorry, but I just don't find the question of God's existence that interesting.

But clearly the New York Times Magazine does. I don't believe in "never judge a book by its cover." A book's cover contains invaluable textual and graphic information.

The text

The specimen in question is the March 4, 2007 edition of the New York Times Magazine, whose cover story is "Why do we believe?", subtitled "How evolutionary science explains faith in God."

Except for the author's name, the entire cover is white on black. The clerical color scheme is a dead giveaway. It immediately and subtly confers upon belief in God a social acceptancean indisputable, universal correctnessthe very blessing of the New York Times.

Pronoun envy

As a linguist, I am constantly amazed by the power and subtlety of pronouns. The use of these tiny words can convey major implications about the writer, the audience, and the topic at hand.

Were religion a fringe phenomenon, such as Tarot reading or palmistry, or even Scientology, given its recurrent notoriety, the pronoun of choice might have been "they." In such a case "Why do they believe?" the believers of the doctrine in question would have been excluded from the beaming beneficence and approbation of the New York Times Magazine.

The second-person pronoun is obviously out of the question. "Why do you believe?" would have drawn a clear, bright, and unacceptable line between the magazine and its readers. Not a good strategy. We must ALL believe.

Or perhaps the pronoun could have been replaced by a noun phrase, e.g., "Why do some (people) believe?" At least that would've allowed for the possibility that some don't. But no. We believe. Now all we have to do is explain why, over

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