MORE PRAISE FOR SPIRITUAL ENVY
“A much-needed cleansing agent for the dogmatic certainty that infects so much of today’s public discourse.”
— Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle
“In his role on Forum, Krasny is known for being a thoughtful, even-handed moderator who respects diverse opinions. He sought to bring a similar mind-set to Spiritual Envy….Krasny breaks down the fundamental differences between agnostics and atheists, examines the prohibitions set forth in the Ten Commandments, and presents a passionate case for religious tolerance.”
— Mercury News
“According to the public-opinion polls, agnostics and atheists are the group Americans trust least — even though nonbelievers conduct themselves more ethically than do the religious faithful. It helps in reducing such ignorance and fear for nonbelievers to come out of the closet and profess not only their opinions but the emotional and intellectual struggles behind them, as the always engaging Michael Krasny does in this probing examination of his spirituality and ours.”
— Timothy Ferris, author of Coming of Age in the Milky Way
“Michael Krasny’s Spiritual Envy is a memoir of seeking and questioning, of a battle between a man’s deepest yearnings and formidable intellect, of the longing for belief in the face of the impossibility of belief. If doubt is an element of faith, then Krasny’s grappling with doubt is a kind of act of faith itself. This is a beautifully written book, and reading it is a spiritual adventure.”
— Dani Shapiro, author of Family History
“An eloquent and deeply personal journey to find some kind of spiritual center in what has become an increasingly polarized debate about the role and function of religion in America.”
— Reza Aslan, The Daily Beast
“The vitality and integrity of this beautifully written book is bound to touch anyone who knows how to value a truly independent mind and spirit.”
— Jacob Needleman, author of What Is God?
“In this engrossing memoir, Michael Krasny searches for God and fails to find Him. Yet God finds Michael Krasny in the ‘negative way’ known so well to so many who seek Him. God is not an entity to be accessed and understood. God is love, infinite and eternal. To seek Him is to find Him, even as we envy those who have stumbled upon what they believe to be the answer.”
— Kevin Starr, professor of history, University of
Southern California
MICHAEL
KRASNY
SPIRITUAL
ENVY
AN AGNOSTIC’S QUEST
Foreword by Joyce Carol Oates
Copyright © 2010 by Michael Krasny
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, or other — without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Text design by Tona Pearce Myers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Krasny, Michael, date.
Spiritual envy : an agnostic’s quest / Michael Krasny ; foreword by Joyce Carol Oates.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-57731-912-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Agnosticism. 2. Krasny, Michael, date.—Religion. I. Title.
BL2747.2.K73 2010
| 211’.7—dc22 | 2010029392 |
First paperback printing, January 2012
ISBN 978-1-60868-069-6
Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my father and mother,
Hyman “Zaz” Krasny and Betty Krasny.
If memory is blessed, you both are there.
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
— ALBERT EINSTEIN
Contents
Foreword by Joyce Carol Oates
Introduction
1. My God
2. The Ten Commandments and God’s Existence
3. The Ten Commandments and a Code of One’s Own
4. Where Is God? More on Codes and God’s Place in Mine
5. God’s Identity
6. The Universe and the Face of God
7. Who Are the Agnostics?
8. The Force That Is or Isn’t, and Coincidences Minus Answers
9. From Nowhere to Somewhere: Spiritual Envy
10. Respect for the Faithful, the Faithless, and the Wishy-Washy
11. Accursed Time
12. Escaping Time
13. Deliver Us from Evil
14. Doing Good
15. Cosmic Joking
16. Separating the Agnostics from the Herds
17. Peace unto Thee and Me, and an Old Elvis Top-Ten Hit
18. Some Final Thoughts
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author
Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic’s Quest is both a strikingly original, boldly candid, and poignant memoir of one man’s dramatic experience with “faith” and a kind of everyman’s pilgrimage with special resonance for contemporary Americans who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s. The author’s voice is wonderfully frank, conversational, and illuminating — Michael Krasny seems to have read virtually everything relevant to his thorny topic and has fresh and original things to say about what he has read. This “agnostic’s quest” might also be called an “agnostic’s handbook” — nothing could be more timely!
— Joyce Carol Oates
After I published my memoir, Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life, I began to think a lot about goodness. I had written about wanting, as a young man, to find an answer to the