2005年NPR美国国家公共电台十一月-This I Believe: There Is No God
时间：2019-01-08 作者：英语课 分类：2005年NPR美国国家公共电台
Steve Inskeep: This is morning edition from NPR news. I'm Steve Inskeep.
Renee Montagne: And I'm Renee Montagne.
I believe in honor, faith and service
I belive that a little outrage 1 can take you...
I believe in freedom of speech
I believe in empathy
I believe in truth
I believe in the ingredients of love
Steve Inskeep: This I Believe.
Renee Montagne: On Mondays we bring you our revival 2 of the 1950 series, this I believe, this moring we hear from Penn Jillette, half of the magic and comedy team Penn and Teller 3. He is most readily identified as the bigger one who talks. He is also executive producer of the movie, the Aristocrats 4, and is the H.L. Mencken research fellow at the Cato Institute. Here is our series curator, independent producer Jay Alison.
Jay Alison: When working with her essayists, we quote the guidelines of the original "this I believe" team, refrain from saying what you do not believe, they were as we are, interested in affirmative statements, Penn Jillette took aside our word and being clever with his words, found the way to express the absence of belief as a personal credo. Here is Penn Jillette with his essay, for this I Believe.
I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond Atheism 5. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do. You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word "elephant" includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?
So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The Atheism part is easy.
But, this "This I Believe" thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life's big picture, some rules to live by. So, I'm saying, "This I believe: I believe there is no God."
Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic 6 lottery 7 and I get joy every day.
Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.
Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up," or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, "How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do." So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.
Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient 8, omnipresent, omnipotent 9 force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.
Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-o and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.
Jay Alison: Penn Jillette, with his essay, for this I believe. As always, we hope our series inspires you to think about what you believe and to write down your thoughts in 500 words, for information about submitting your writing and to find all the essays we've aired so far, please visit our website at NPR.org, you can also call 202-408-0300. For this I believe, I'm Jay Alison.
Renee Montagne: Next week, in this I believe essay from Illinois professor and journalist John Fountain who found a belief in God.
Steve Inskeep: This I believe is made possible by a grant from Farmers Insurance.
- When he heard the news he reacted with a sense of outrage.他得悉此事时义愤填膺。
- We should never forget the outrage committed by the Japanese invaders.我们永远都不应该忘记日本侵略者犯下的暴行。
- The period saw a great revival in the wine trade.这一时期葡萄酒业出现了很大的复苏。
- He claimed the housing market was showing signs of a revival.他指出房地产市场正出现复苏的迹象。
- The bank started her as a teller.银行起用她当出纳员。
- The teller tried to remain aloof and calm.出纳员力图保持冷漠和镇静。
- Many aristocrats were killed in the French Revolution. 许多贵族在法国大革命中被处死。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- To the Guillotine all aristocrats! 把全部贵族都送上断头台！ 来自英汉文学 - 双城记
- Atheism is the opinion that there is no God.无神论是认为不存在上帝的看法。
- Atheism is a hot topic.无神论是个热门话题。
- It's very difficult to treat genetic diseases.遗传性疾病治疗起来很困难。
- Each daughter cell can receive a full complement of the genetic information.每个子细胞可以收到遗传信息的一个完全补偿物。
- He won no less than ￡5000 in the lottery.他居然中了5000英镑的奖券。
- They thought themselves lucky in the lottery of life.他们认为自己是变幻莫测的人生中的幸运者。
- He's nervous when trying to potray himself as omniscient.当他试图把自己描绘得无所不知时，内心其实很紧张。
- Christians believe that God is omniscient.基督教徒相信上帝是无所不知的。
- When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science.我们达到万能以后就不需要科学了。
- Money is not omnipotent,but we can't survive without money.金钱不是万能的，但是没有金钱我们却无法生存。