Penn Jillette

From Philosopedia

Jillette, Penn Fraser (5 March 1955— )

Penn and Teller, magicians who have appeared on Broadway as well as throughout the nation, are known for including a touch of blasphemy in their performances.

Teller, the quiet one who makes noise only when he plays the piano, is the partner of Penn, who delights in talking while the extraordinary tricks are performed to audiences unable to fathom how the magic is possible. From 1982 to 1984, he played bass in the New Christian Right Wing Band, at the same time sporting his “Team Satan 666” T-shirt.

Commented Joshua Quittner in Wired, “Penn is such an ardent atheist he refuses to go to weddings.”

In PC Computing (December 1991), Penn irked some readers with his freethinking. He described how a computer whiz has succeeded in producing a relatively complete text of the secret Dead Sea Scrolls by using a computer. Jillette concludes from this that the scrolls were authored by “some right-wing Jewish hermits” called Essenes. As for scholars needing forty years to release the contents of those scrolls, Jillette asks, “How long can it take to copy a few jugs full of smelly parchment?” As to who could be entrusted to receive the scrolls, Jillette quotes a UPI story that they not be turned over “to anyone who is circumcised.” And what is it in the scrolls which is so controversial? Jillette has the answer: The text is mostly “rules for the religiously proper way to urinate in the desert.”

Penn was interviewed in The Onion (1999?):

[. . .]being pro-science is one of the oddest things you can do in show business. Which is very strange, because it was science that, oh, cured polio. I could list others- isn't that enough? [Laughs.] Oh, Western medicine doesn't work; I'm sorry, we cured polio. What more do you want? Your herbalism has done jack; we cured polio. And guess what? It cures polio even if you don't believe in it. We don't have it on Earth anymore. And then there's also small pox, and then there's mostly dysentery, and we haven't even gotten into the stuff we're good at, which is physics. We're not good at medicine; we're good at physics. We were good at physics in the 20th century; in the 21st century, one would hope, we'll be good at medicine. But we [Penn & Teller] are pro-science, and when you're pro-science, that means you're an atheist, by definition. . . . No matter how much they put "10 Top Scientists Talk About Why They Believe In God" on the cover of Time magazine, you kind of have to look and go, "How come these 10 top scientists are all teaching at community colleges?"

Penn recounts a 1998 appearance on Donny and Marie Osmond's syndicated talkshow: We were asked to do autographs for Donny and Marie. I wrote, "There is no god," and Teller wrote, "He's right."

In PC Computing (December 1991), Penn irked some readers with his freethinking. He described how a computer whiz has succeeded in producing a relatively complete text of the secret Dead Sea Scrolls by using a computer. Jillette concludes from this that the scrolls were authored by “some right-wing Jewish hermits” called Essenes. As for scholars needing forty years to release the contents of those scrolls, Jillette asks, “How long can it take to copy a few jugs full of smelly parchment?” As to who could be entrusted to receive the scrolls, Jillette quotes a UPI story that they not be turned over “to anyone who is circumcised.” And what is it in the scrolls which is so controversial? Jillette has the answer: The text is mostly “rules for the religiously proper way to urinate in the desert.”

(Penn and Teller have an extensive home on the web.)

{CA; E; Skeptical Inquirer, Jan-Feb 1997}