The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas by Robin Harvie

Author:Robin Harvie [Harvie, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

Unsilent Night

HERMIONE EYRE

Perhaps there should be some kind of course you can take in Atheist Assertiveness Training. I mean, there should definitely be a course you can take in Atheist Assertiveness Training. It would be run by someone rather in the mold of Barbara Woodhouse. “Louder,” she would say as we shuffled up and down mumbling about how if it was all right with you we thought church and state should be separate. “And prouder!” she’d shout. “You’d be drowned out in seconds by a Sally Army band. You, in the tracksuit—say you don’t believe like you mean it!” Then we’d hive off in pairs and practice non-aggressive confrontational skills before cooling off to a reading of Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo.

Sure, it isn’t going to happen, and that’s partly what I love about atheism: the quiet individualism, the self-reliance, and the lack of enforced singing, organized sanctimony, and bake sales. But then again, it can get lonely out there in splendidly rational isolation. For the active minority, British Humanist Association lectures, campaigns, and meetings supply a sense of community among the godless. But in a general social sense, it’s easy to feel alienated. Often, as with a minor ailment, you need to know someone quite well before you even realize they have atheism. You can begin a dinner party tirade without knowing if anyone round the table is going to back you up. At a church wedding it can be a surprise to see who else’s head also refuses to bend in prayer; moreover, catching someone’s eye during the Nicene Creed can imply many things besides religious skepticism.

It is hard to know how to—adopt American twang here, please—“self-identify” as an atheist. Fittingly for a once dangerous belief, it does not readily announce itself. Public burnings, dismissals from university, and so on have tended to disincentivize ostentatious displays of atheism over the years, and besides, freethinkers naturally mistrust uniforms. We don’t want to conform to wearing our hair a certain way or adopting a vestigial hat. We have no symbolic trinkets, no Sikh karas or Catholic rosaries; no arcane taboos, no dietary requirements, no cult pronouncements. How good it is to be free of these trappings; yet sometimes, without any rituals to observe or outward signs to flaunt, I find that my deeply held beliefs can feel insubstantial as air. I am not proud of this, but a small, atavistic part of me feels the lack of a badge or banner. These age-old urges die hard.

But to show our solidarity by wearing a regulation GOD IS DEAD T-shirt or an overpriced piece of string around the wrist would be wrong, wrong, wrong—and lazy. When you raise a totem you agree to be bound to whatever it symbolizes; you surrender independent thought. Better, surely, to express your atheism through a thousand rational acts; through constant low-level social vigilance; through countless tiny words and deeds.

As a movement, we rightly resist banding together—even writing “we” makes me feel a little coy—but we are never going to progress unless we’re more vocal.

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