The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

"Shhhh-shhh."

The shusher is Ken, the leader of New York City Atheists. Ken looks a bit like Jackie Mason, but a strapping, broad-shouldered Jackie Mason. He's at the front of the room, wearing a blue-and-white atheist baseball cap. My neighbor, the one with the Darwin hat, tells me that Ken worked at IBM for thirty-seven years, and instead of golf, atheism is his retirement hobby.

Ken starts with the week's announcements. They are looking for guests for the weekly atheist cable access TV show.

Also, the weekly movie night will be at five-thirty on Thursday, and they will be watching the Nazi war-crime film Judgment at Nuremberg.

"Judgment at Nuremberg?" says a bald guy in the back. He doesn't seem happy.

"Yes," says Ken.

"What does that have to do with atheism?"

"You'll see," says Ken.

"It doesn't seem like it has a lot to do with atheism."

"It has a lot to do with atheism. And a lot to do with skepticism."

The bald guy was, as you might have guessed, skeptical.

Then Ken goes into his sermon proper--the importance of confronting "believers."

"We have to stop being polite. We may not make as many friends. But we have to say, 'The Bible is literature, not history.'"

"Moussaka! Who has the moussaka!"

Ken pauses while the waiter delivers the moussaka. There's only one server, causing some "feed the multitudes" jokes.

"You know the saying there are no atheists in a foxhole?" says Ken. "You know what? I think they should stop praying and dig a deeper foxhole."

"Greek salad? Who ordered the Greek salad?"

Ken is a good speaker, even charismatic, as close as you can get to a godless preacher. He has a booming voice, he slaps the palm of his hand to punctuate a point, he all but says amen. Problem is, no one believes Ken's authority derives from God--which means it's much harder to command attention. There's lots of murmuring and cross talk during his sermon.

I leave the meeting early--child-care duties--but return a week later to chat with Ken. He says his road to atheism began when, as a kid, he figured out there could be no Santa Claus.

"It just was not feasible to deliver all those presents," he says. "This was before FedEx."

So Ken was tipped off to the Santa Claus falsehood because of faulty logistics. Very IBM of him, I think.

"I started to ask myself, what else are they telling me that's not true?" says Ken.

I ask him if it's hard to lead a group of atheists. Like herding cats, he says. Atheists aren't, by nature, joiners. "They're individualists," he says. Which perhaps explains why we had thirty separate checks for lunch.

Ken has, in fact, boosted the group's membership and started some programs. But go to an atheist meeting, and you'll see why the religious lobby doesn't have to worry about the atheist lobby quite yet. You'll see why there are no soaring atheist cathedrals and why hotel room nightstands don't come with a copy of Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell in the top drawer. It's hard to be passionate about a lack of belief.

Recently, atheists have made a good effort, with authors like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens acting as the movement's antipopes. But if organized religion is Goliath, then organized atheism still qualifies as David.

Keep your tongue from evil . . . --PSALMS 34:13

Day 70. A lot of my friends expect me to speak like a walking King James Bible. They want me--or at least my alter ego Jacob--to spout words like thou and woe unto and whosoever shall. I get a lot of emails that start "Give ear, O Jacobs." And phone calls that begin, "Verily, I ask thee, would you like to meet us for pizza?"

I try to play along as best I can ("Yea, I shall rejoice in a feast of pizza"). But it's not high on my list of priorities. Such language is more a reflection of seventeenth-century England than of ancient Israel.

No, speaking biblically requires a far more radical change than raising my diction a few notches. It requires a total switch in the content of my conversation: no lying, no complaining, no gossiping.

They're all hard, but let me just focus on the gossip for a bit, because that's turning out to be a killer. The Bible has at least twenty passages condemning gossip. In English editions, translators use words such as slander or talebearing or unwholesome talk or evil tongue.

This means I can't join in when my coworkers discuss a certain boozy actress who scribbled obscenities on a bathroom mirror, or the rumor that a news anchor is about to ditch his wife for a younger woman. That's a feat in itself, but I expected living biblically would require that.

The problem is, if you really want to be biblically safe, you should go much further. You should avoid almost all negative speech whatsoever. Here's how one of my Bible commentaries defines evil tongue: "This refers to any derogatory or damaging statement against an individual--even when the slanderous or defaming remarks are true--which if publicized to others would cause the subject physical or monetary damage, anguish, or fear."

In other words, about 70 percent of all conversations in New York. In Hebrew, evil tongue is called Lashon hara, and the rabbis compare it to murder. As the Talmud says, "The gossiper stands in Syria and kills in Rome." Many Christians have a similar concept about negative speech. As Paul says in Ephesians 4:29: "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." Parts of the Bible do allow some types of bad-mouthing--a gentle rebuke is OK, as is warning your friend that he's about to open a coffee shop with an embezzler. But for the most part, all sniping, snarkiness, disparaging, mocking, scoffing, and scorning is off-limits. Which is beyond difficult. I fail on a daily basis. An hourly basis.

Consider the scenario I faced last weekend. Julie and I went to a

wedding on Long Island; the bride and groom, thoughtfully enough, had hired a van to schlep the guests back to New York. However, there would be no napping on this ride. Instead we would be forced to eavesdrop on a very loud, very drunk goateed guy.