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An atheist in “The Twilight Zone”?

An atheist in “The Twilight Zone”?

Last updated on: July 21, 2025 at 8:24 am by Dan Peterson

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An atheist in “The Twilight Zone”? 2025-07-21T08:24:46-06:00 Dan Peterson

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Three crosses on a hill at sunset (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

It’s at times like this, when we’re acutely aware of our powerlessness to do anything meaningful to help, that we most starkly realize our desperate need for the only one who actually can help us:

“The Words of Christ Bring Comfort and Hope to Grieving Families and Friends in Lesotho: Church and government leaders join families in finding hope in Christ at a combined funeral service in Maputsoe”

“‘God is still God’ — Remembering the lives lost in Lesotho bus accident: Thousands gather over 2 days to share hope and memories as 11 individuals are remembered at funeral and memorial services in Maputsoe”

Thou shalt live together in love, insomuch that thou shalt weepfor the loss of them that die, and more especially for those that have not hopeof a glorious resurrection. And it shall come to pass that those that die in me shall not taste of death, for it shall be sweet unto them. (Doctrine and Covenants 42:45-46)

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. (Revelation 21:4)

How long, O Lord?

The Plan of Salvation in an illustration that I recall from my childhood. I believe it.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I just ran across this little poem. I liked it and I’ve decided to share it:

Do not ask your children

to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable,

but it is the way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder

and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting

tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them how to cry

when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure

in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.

The extraordinary will take care of itself.

(William Martin, from The Parent’s Tao Te Ching)

Curiously, the poem reminds me of a large framed quotation that appeared on the front wall of the chapel, to the congregation’s right behind the sacrament table, where I grew up in San Gabriel, California. Far from fading away as background noise, it’s still plainly visible to me in my mind and recollection:

Inasmuch as parents have children in Zion . . . that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents. (Doctrine and Covenants 68:25).

If I recall correctly, FreedomFest 2019 was held at the Paris Resort Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.. Not my usual hangout. Definitely it was held in Las Vegas. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Just slightly more than a month ago, I published a column in Meridian Magazine about Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, a book written by the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. I want to share with you a passage from the book that I marked during my reading of it:

In the early 2010s, the fiancée of a prominent American writer moved from her native Germany to California. Among the heirlooms she brought with her was a broken 1978 Philips transistor radio, a gift from her deceased grandfather, Walter. She had been raised by a single mother, and Walter, a music lover, had played the paternal role in her life until his death when she was sixteen. The radio had been dead since then as well, and the woman’s American fiancé, understanding its significance, tried to get it working—new batteries, new connections, even what he jokingly called the “percussive maintenance” of smacking it hard from different angles. Nothing worked, and the couple placed it in the back of a bedroom drawer and forgot about it. Flash-forward to their wedding day: an exchange of signatures in a Beverly Hills courthouse, an exchange of rings at home with a crowd of family and friends. But most of the crowd was there for the American groom, and his bride, feeling isolated and homesick and wishing that her grandfather had been there to give her away, asked the groom to take her away from the crowd, into the back of the house, where they could hear music playing. Mysterious music, since nothing was turned on—not computers or stereos or iPhones or any other system—and yet the music was a love song, the kind you would play for the first dance at a wedding. Finally they found the source: the grandfather’s broken radio, in the back of the desk drawer, working again for the first time in decades, spilling romantic music into their Californian home. A relative told them that she had heard it begin playing just as the wedding ceremony started. It played all that night, switching from love songs to classical music; the next morning it was dead once more, and it never worked again. In his famous case for presumptively disbelieving in all miracles, the Scottish philosopher David Hume argued that with any supposed witness to the supernatural, however credible they might otherwise appear, it’s always more likely that they are either credulous or lying than that a supernatural event has actually occurred. The Hume rule is set up to be universally discrediting, but if you were looking for someone who would come closest to passing its exacting test, someone with every incentive not to lie or be deceived, the source for this touching not-quite-ghost story is an unusually good candidate. The bridegroom in the story, the American writer, happens to be Michael Shermer, proud atheist, editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, and a man who has spent his entire professional career trying to debunk the supernatural. (66-67)

By the way, and for whatever little it may be worth, back at FreedomFest 2018 in Las Vegas I debated Dr. Shermer, who was, at the time, a regular columnist for Scientific American. Our exchange was recorded by — and, for all I know, may still be accessible through — the cable network C-SPAN: “Is Faith Compatible with Reason?”

Posted from Richmond, Virginia

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