Wendy Kaminer

From Philosopedia

Kaminer, Wendy (20th Century)

Kaminer, a Public Policy Fellow at Radcliffe College, wrote I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional (1992), in which she described herself as a “liberal feminist Jewish atheist.”

She also wrote True Love Waits: Essays and Criticism and “The Last Taboo, Why America Needs Atheism.” The latter New Republic (14 October 1996) article noted that today, with belief in guardian angels and creationism “becoming commonplace,” it is as risky to make fun as “burning a flag in an American Legion hall.” Almost all Americans, 95% she noted, profess a belief in God or some universal spirit, and 76% imagine Him as a heavenly father who actually pays attention to their prayers.

Kaminer, herself an atheist, lamented that we have no Mark Twains and H. L. Menckens to counter today’s Jimmy Swaggarts and born-again Christians.

Readers complained that she had suggested religious belief is childish, that “worshiping a supernatural deity . . . is like worrying about monsters in the closet that find you tasty enough to eat.” The New York Times called “offensive” her remark that the sacraments are “silly.” Others, however, supported her wholeheartedly. Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety (1999) continues her deconstruction of pop culture and piety. She finds New Age spiritual practices “painful stupidities that people embrace to ease their fears of death,” and she also laments our age’s “blind antipathy to reason.”

{Free Inquiry, Fall 1999}