Penn Jillette on Placebo Prayer: Should Atheists Talk to God? | Big Think

Penn Jillette on Placebo Prayer: Should Atheists Talk to God?

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Right before he goes to sleep every night, staunch atheist Penn Jillette does something surprising. He says a little prayer – sort of. It’s called ‘Penn’s Guilt Round Up’ and it’s where he reflects on all the things throughout the day that he regrets, or wonders if he should have done and how they affected people. Then he moves on to thinking about what he wants in life and how he can get there. Before he made 100 pounds disappear from around his middle (hey presto!), he used to think, frustrated and longingly, about having the discipline to lose weight, to tell that slice(s) of pizza to talk to the hand because the face (with glowing skin and no chin) ain’t listening.

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PENN JILLETTE:

Penn Jillette is a cultural phenomenon as a solo personality and as half of the world-famous Emmy Award­-winning magic duo Penn & Teller. His solo exposure is enormous: from Howard Stern to Glenn Beck to the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared on Dancing with the Stars, MTV Cribs, and Chelsea Lately and hosted the NBC game show Identity. As part of Penn & Teller, he has appeared more than twenty times on David Letterman, as well as on several other TV shows, from The Simpsons and Friends to Top Chef and The View. He co-hosts the controversial series Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, which has been nominated for sixteen Emmy Awards. He is currently co host of the Discovery Channel's Penn & Teller Tell a Lie and the author of God, No! and Presto!

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TRANSCRIPT:

Penn Jillette: I very rarely look in this kind of proximity when I’m not sexting. If you want to know how to be a good leader watch Donald Trump and don’t’ do that. Don’t do any of that. I realized recently that I do something very close to prayer. And I don’t want to show any disrespect to people by using the word prayer because I know from my friends who are religious that prayer has a supernatural element, that people are actually connecting to a higher power. And I don’t want to show disrespect to that. But I also want to make a little bit of an argument. Sam Harris makes his argument for atheist meditation. I want to make a little bit of an argument for atheist prayer. I do something before I go to sleep at night called Penn’s guild roundup. And Penn’s guild roundup is I go through conversations that I’ve had like tonight before I go to bed I’ll think should I really have made that sexting joke when I was at the Big Think. Should I really have done that? Did that make people uncomfortable. Is that a line. And I’ll run through how I could have done that better.

I say that with no joke. I’ll actually do that. And I run through conversations I’ve had and things I’ve done. One that comes up every night was, you know, should I treat Teller better? And the answer is always no. But I do reflect about it. I do think about it. I also try to think of what I want and how I can get there. Now I’m very fortunate because when I go to my desires they’re not very often material desires because my family is well cared for. I’ve been very lucky and I’ve done well. But I think about – I used to think about my weight and one of the things I used to – and I’m very hesitant to use the word because I don’t want to show disrespect for those who think it really is supernatural. But I would pray to be able to control the watts of my diet. Wouldn’t that be great? And I try to run through how to do that and I do believe with God there’s a lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I’m not referring to baptism there. I’m referring to the fact that so much of the social and personal elements of religion are really good. I would say maybe more than good, maybe very close to necessary.

Try to find ways for people to get together and help each other and be in celebration and all over this country now. When I first started talking openly about atheism the country was set at about .8 percent for atheism - .8. Less than one percent. And now some polls are giving you over 20 percent. I don’t think that people are being created as atheists. I think they’re just simply coming out of the closet and we have to show a great deal of gratitude to the religious people in the U.S. for being more tolerant of atheists so they do dare to come out. But I’m watching now a lot of my friends struggle with how to get that community in their life. And every community in thi...

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