My Atheism (Revised)

I have started to write something about my world view and my reasons for that viewpoint many times. Many times I have begun to sketch out what I want to say, and many times I have gone no further. I mean, why should anybody be interested in what I have to say? But then, I thought, I would not be writing for anyone else, I would be writing for me. In the act of writing sometimes things become clearer. And my world view, my 'philosophy' could so with some clearing up.

I think I will start with my atheism, why I hold that view and why I dislike the label 'atheist.'

In a story that I have told before, I can more or less pinpoint the moment that I began my development as an atheist. I was 13 years old, my family lived in a council house (public housing – but very good) in a tiny rural village in Lincolnshire, England. The village is called North Owersby. My brother and I were raised as free Methodists. The Wesley brothers were born at Epworth, also in Lincolnshire and Lincolnshire was a bedrock of Methodism.

My family consisted of my mother, who didn't work outside of the domestic scene, my father, a lorry driver at that time, and my younger brother. My brother was 10 years old. Both my brother and I attended Chapel on Sunday evenings and Sunday School (held at the Chapel) on Sunday mornings.

The Chapel building, which was built in 1881, still stands. It is no longer a Chapel, however. It has been converted to private dwellings. I remember it well. The smell of it. The coldness of it. The echoing acoustics that it had. I also remember it being full to capacity, with people standing at the sides and the rear, on Sunday evenings.

The local Minister was, as are most Methodist ministers, part-time. It was he who ran the Sunday school. There was often a guest Minister to take the service in the evenings.

Well, my brother and I attended this Chapel for many years. As a very young child, I regularly won a prize for good attendance or reading a passage from the Bible well, or some such. The prize was almost always a book. Usually a 'Bible Tales for Children' type of tome.

Anyway, after I was maybe 10 or so I became fascinated by two topics – astronomy and dinosaurs. It was unusual for a child to develop an interest in these particular topics way back in the mists of the late 50's – early '60s, there was simply no information aimed at children at that time, unlike today. I think these interests sprang from a growing interest in science-fiction (I was 10 when 'Dr. Who' started, and the various puppet shows by the Anderson’s had caught both my and my brother's attention). My parents also subscribed to a weekly encyclopaedia called 'Knowledge' that built up into 20 odd volumes I think. I was also a huge fan of 'Dan Dare' and a character called 'Jet Ace Logan'. From these sources, my interest was awakened and stimulated and fed.

BUT – in my desire to know more I found books in the library too, often aimed at an adult audience, and I struggled my way through them.

At some point, I found the 'scientific' explanation for stars, planets and dinosaurs more convincing than the 'religious' explanation. Remember, I was getting 'religious' stories pushed at me every week, and I could compare them.

There is almost certainly a hell of a lot of stuff I am not remembering at all, or remembering inaccurately. But this is the narrative I have developed from the data I have, flawed though that certainly is.

One day when I was 13 years old I was reading a rather heavy-going textbook on astronomy and I took it to Sunday School with me. My teacher didn't like that, but Sunday School is voluntary so he didn't make much of it. I had been reading about spectra, and how the rainbow is an example of one. My teacher chose to tell us the story of Noah and how the rainbow was a 'sign from God' and such. I stood up and said, 'That is not true'. I remember a 'discussion' of sorts where I tried to present the 'scientific' explanation to the other children present.

I don't know, or cannot recall, how that went. My Sunday School teacher was a gentle and kind man, so I don't think anything unpleasant happened. I do know that he called by our house later and said that maybe I was too old for Sunday School now. I never went again anyway.

At the age of 13, then, I was ready to reject the religious hypothesis in favour of the scientific hypothesis.

Why?

I have used the phrase 'peasant pragmatic scepticism' in other contexts. That is how I would, roughly, describe the 'culture' I was raised within. The community I grew up in was small, close-knit, very 'agricultural' and, yes, quite religious. The 'religious' element was not obvious and didn't seem to come up in everyday life at all, even though the Chapel was full on Sunday evenings. Most people were open and friendly, pragmatic and sceptical. Sceptical in the sense 'That is all well and good, but show me before I believe it,' and I believe that it was this attitude that prepared me to ask the questions that led me to, at least, agnosticism.

Whatever the reason, my curiosity plus a healthy scepticism led me to take the scientific model much more seriously than the religious model. However, for a long time, I toyed with the religious model as well, trying to make it fit the scientific world-view. In the '70s and '80s in England, there were some very liberal theologians, including the Bishop of Durham (David Jenkins 1984 to 1994), who held opinions and beliefs that were only a hairsbreadth away from atheism. Jenkins, I think, was actually misrepresented greatly at the time by hostile media.

Anyway, I played with various religious ideas and became interested in Buddhism (of course!). By the time I was 30 years old I had given up on religion altogether and was an atheist. I will admit to a residual admiration for Zen Buddhism that is still with me, and I have developed an interest in Stoicism, which is a sort of Western version Zen. It is not very widely known about, but that is changing. I think the 'mystical East' nonsense that grew very strong in the 1960s may have had something to do with its invisibility.

By the time I was 40 years old I was a confirmed Strong Atheist. I still am.

I dislike the label 'atheist' because it gives the impression that all atheists are alike, and we most certainly are not. It also gives the impression that atheism is a structured theory or ideology, and it is not. Atheism comes, as we know, from Greek and means 'No Gods'. Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or gods.

That is it.

Atheists do have things in common. Most atheists are from the better-educated members of society, for example. They are also more likely to be male, European, and under 35 years of age. Well, I have post-graduate education, I am male and I am European. I am, however, not under 35. Atheists are more likely to be humanists, social-democrats and liberal. I would call myself a Humanist, but that requires definition, and I am neither a social-democrat nor particularly 'liberal', at least in the modern sense of the word.

These demographic statistics only demonstrate the background of people who self-identify as 'atheist', but nothing else.

At the risk of sounding pompous I regard my own view as 'post-theist'. In this regard, I cannot recommend too highly the book Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam by Michel Onfray (ISBN2-246-64801-7)

I regard all theology as empty air and the issues it discusses as meaningless, until and unless there is material evidence available.

Notes on Denmark.

Denmark is a beautiful country geographically. I cannot comment too much on the islands, of which there are 443 named islands (1,419 islands above 100 square metres (1,100 sq ft) in total), because I live on the mainland – the Jutland peninsula. Here the landscape is very agricultural, with rolling hills and small copses and forests scattered about. It is intensively harvested and very clean and ordered.

The society is also very ordered. When I first moved here 14 years ago I was struck both by the similarities with England, my homeland, but also with the differences. Danish society is very ordered. It is a 'classic' Scandinavian welfare state and has a very collective 'culture'. The tax rates are the highest in the world, but Denmark also consistently comes at the top of various attempts to measure and compare happiness within and between countries.

If all human societies lie somewhere on a spectrum with 'Perfect Individualist Society' at one end and 'Perfect Collective Society' at the other, then Denmark lies very close to the 'collective' end in contrast, say, to the USA which lies close to the 'individualist' end of the spectrum.

This has costs and benefits and the question is always what price is one prepared to pay in order to achieve the values or goals one sees as important.

This 'collectivism' is seen in many, many ways. One thing that struck me very quickly was how accepting of officialdom and official authority figures most Danes are, how law abiding they are. Even though they have a 'self image' as laid back party going types (and to some extent this is true) it has, for the most part, to be 'within the rules'. And that is not just 'official' rules. In fact, the informal rules are much more important, as is the case in most cultures. I was struck early on by how certain social events like birthdays and Christmas are governed by quite strict informal rules. Rules as to when certain things occur, what is to be eaten, who is to do what and so on.

Again, this is not unique to Denmark, but it has a very 'rigid' quality here.

The 'collectivism' of the culture is seen in many other ways to. I would guess that the majority of Danes are a member of some club or association. These can be social, sporting, political, hobby related and such. And these groupings mean a lot to the members and have rules and formal meetings and officers and such. Their private life is very 'social', but in a very structured way.

And even in the 'informal' periods of private life there is a kind of structure. When I first came over many of my wife’s friends and associates were very open and friendly and I thought that this was wonderful. Then …. nothing. The greetings done there was no other contact or invitations. Even though with time this changed, the initial impact is to give an impression of a very cold people.

The social class system in Denmark is very 'flat', at least in appearance. There are, of course, very wealthy people here and there is most certainly a cultural divide between status groups. However, it is not visible too much in daily life as the 'code of dress' in Denmark is very casual, whoever you may be. Casual to positively scruffy I would say, as a well brought up English man ;-)

The Danish economy has traditionally been agriculture. Essentially primary sector based extractive activity like farming, fishing, and a little mining has been the economic driving force historically. Denmark never underwent a heavy industrial revolution and even though there were attempts in the early days of the Twentieth Century, it has no auto mobile industry, for example.

Today agricultural output is still a major part of the Danish economy, but it employs very few people. Denmark has undergone the shift from traditional labour intensive farming to industrialised and 'technologised' farming. The majority of people, as in all other First World economies, work in the Service Sector. So Denmark has shifted from a primarily agricultural society to a technological service sector economy in a relatively short time and without a period of industrialising. Today Denmark is a Tertiary Sector economy that produces little actual physical product, again that is the trend in the West.

Denmark is also a very small country, 5.6 million people on 42,915 square kilometres, about 130 people per square kilometre, assuming that everyone was evenly spread out of course. Given that the metropolitan area of Copenhagen contains almost 2 million people one can appreciate that the population density is light. This, plus there relatively recent history as an agricultural society helps towards understanding some aspects of Danish culture.

Relatively small close knit communities bound directly or indirectly to the soil develop tight informal means of social control and a communal outlook that ensures that necessary tasks are done and that no one threatens the collective 'good'.

This tight knit agricultural society was not smashed into pieces by the impact of industrialisation and was not, therefore, required to reconstruct itself under radically new circumstances.

I accept that the Occupation of Denmark by Nazi Germany during World War Two probably had an impact. But I think that a case could be made for arguing that the occupation had the effect of 'tightening' Danish culture in resistance and opposition to a common enemy.

Of course, Danish culture is changing, slowly, as are all 'cultures'. Denmark is under economic pressure as a member of the EU and under social pressure due to the emergence of a more radical form of Islam within its borders. The internationalising effect of the information technology 'revolution' links more and more people globally, regardless of culture. The younger generation are much less, I feel, 'traditional' then their parents generation. This, of course, is normal and often the younger generation slides more and more into 'traditional' rules and roles as they age.

It remains to be seen if that will happen in Denmark.