My Two Weeks with the Atheists of Prague with Updates
Final Presentation
Gary Wedgewood
Atheism and Philosophy
PHIL 3310, Spring 2022

Prague is one of the most scenic cities of Europe. It features a beautiful Cathedral at Prague Castle and the largest group sculpture in Europe, during its brief existence, which featured Joseph Stalin.

The United Methodist Church has had a presence in Prague since 1920, thus throughout WWII and during all the years of Communist rule and the strong nationalism which suppressed religion.  The Czech Republic is the third least religious country in the world with some 30-40% of it’s citizens claiming to be Atheists.

Franz Kafka was a famous resident of Prague. According to Sander L. Gilman's biography "Franz Kafka," at 17 Kafka even read passages of Nietzsche aloud to a girl he was interested in. Kafka's wide reading of philosophy and other ideas would eventually lead to him declaring himself an atheist…

The crowded Jewish cemetery in the Jewish quarter of Prague had very limited space so burials were on top of other burials.  Jews have lived in this area for 1000 years. The Holocaust led to the Terezin prison (concentration camp) for the Jews of Prague. Jews faced further challenges under the Communist’s starting in 1948. They were only free again after the Velvet revolution in 1989.

Terezin was an ancient fort converted to a Prison Camp and Cemetery and surrounded by a walled in Jewish ghetto.  After being registered at Terezin, prisoners were assigned to quarters and a “bed” (wooden bunks with straw or nothing for a mattress)… Many were executed against the bullet riddled wall.  The riflemen of firing squads ironically shot from cross shaped platforms. There was a crematorium with four furnaces (holding 3 bodies at a time) that was operated 24/7 by prisoners.

We attended several worship services at the enclave of the United Methodist Church during our two weeks in Prague.  In conversations with church members & ministers we heard about experiences under communist rule when the church services would have visitors who were spying for the government & recording names of those attending the services. Their purpose was intimidation and suppression. Their reports resulted in young people of the church being prevented from pursuing higher education. The implication was that the only official and acceptable “religious” view under communist rule was Atheism.

William James, with obvious approval, quotes James Henry Leuba as saying, “God is not known, he is not understood, he is used—sometimes as meat-purveyor, sometimes as moral support, sometimes as friend, sometime as an object of love. If he proves himself useful, the religious consciousness can ask no more than that. Does God really exist? How does he exist? What is he? are so many irrelevant questions. Not God, but life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, is, in the last analysis, the end of religion.” Richard Rorty in “Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism”

Observation:  “Most people do not remain religious only for the sake of having a God.  The practical every day benefit of experiencing a better life is what keeps their attention most of all.” Gary Wedgewood

From an interview with MARGARET ATWOOD …after I’d written “The Handmaid’s Tale,” it got made into a movie…We launched it in West Berlin…then we went across to East Berlin, and we launched it there. People watched it very intently and threw bouquets up on the stage afterwards and said, this was our life. And they didn’t mean the outfits. They meant you couldn’t talk to anybody because you didn’t know if they were spying on you…Prague was…similarly…shut down. And similarly, you didn’t know just who was listening in. But when we got checked into our room in the hotel, the bellman pointed to the chandelier and put his finger to his lips. In other words, that’s bugged.

So, we went in search of Kafka…no Kafka…very verboten, Kafka, at that time. We then went back in ’89, and already, there were Kafka handkerchiefs, Kafka playing cards…I went back a little bit later, and it was full-blown Kafka. Oh, you sort of couldn’t avoid Kafka. There was a statue. There’s an award. I’ve got the award. I got the Kafka award. I was thrilled.

So this is a story about two things, number one, about how some literary figures get repressed under certain kinds of regimes. Why Kafka? Because he wrote stories about impenetrable bureaucracies, the justice of which could not be figured out. And that was a bit too close to the bone, I suppose. And the other part of the story is how something can disappear but then reappear, how you can be a villain for one regime and a hero for the next. And that can work both ways.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-margaret-atwood.html

Thousands of Russians in Prague protest against war in Ukraine
By Jason Hovet
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/thousands-russians-prague-protest-against-war-ukraine-2022-03-26/

PRAGUE, March 26 (Reuters) - Thousands of Russians marched through Prague on Saturday, waving the white-blue-white flag that has become a symbol of protests against Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Carrying signs that read "Killer" over a picture of President Vladimir Putin and chanting "No to War", protesters walked from Prague's Peace Square through the centre of the Czech capital. Police put the number of marchers at about 3,000.

The Czech Republic is home to 45,000 Russians, the fourth largest foreign community in the former communist-ruled country. Nearly 200,000 Ukrainians lived in the Czech Republic - making them the biggest foreign community - before Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. The Czech government estimates 300,000 Ukrainians have fled to the country.
"This is an act to show the Czech Republic and the Czech people that Russians (are) against Putin," protest organizer Anton Litvin said. The protesters in Prague said they believed they were reflecting what many people in Russia feel but are unable to say.

Copson writes:  “The argument for secularism based on individual freedom is rooted in a particular understanding of human dignity. It starts from the assumption that, as far as is possible, we want to be free to make up our own minds about important questions.”

Copson, Andrew. Secularism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (p. 47). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.

John Stewart Mill “believed that ‘human nature is not a machine … but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides’. All this is only possible with freedom of conscience, thought, and religion, and these freedoms have a correspondingly high value in the social and political thought of any liberal.”

Copson, Andrew. Secularism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (p. 48). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.

The Soviet Union lasted for over seventy years, and over the course of its history there were different schools of thought…religion should be left to its natural fate…Others argued it must be exterminated…‘The League of the Militant Godless’…active from the 1920s to the 1940s…trying to persuade and coerce people away from the religions of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. It sent state-sponsored atheist missionaries…issued periodicals and…pamphlets satirizing and condemning both religious beliefs and religious believers…in 1930 it adopted a five-year plan to eliminate religion entirely…persecution of the religious came in waves in the Soviet Union…

Copson, Andrew. Secularism (pp. 67-68). Kindle Edition.

Discussion Questions:

1. How is the prevalence of atheism or theism in a society tied to the political climate at any given time?
2. What was it about Kafka that threatened the government and caused him to be banned at one time and revered at another time?
3. Do you think the current attitude about Putin and the war in Ukraine might have differed at another time in the political history of the Czech Republic?
4. Would you allow a government or political leader to influence what belief system you choose?