THE SERENITY OF ATHEISM

My “Damascus moment” came in October 1961 on a sleeper train from Edinburgh to London travelling with a school-friend to my first year up at Oxford. I left Waverley Station an often troubled guilt-ridden believer but after much tossing and turning and contemplation in my narrow bunk, I arrived at Kings Cross a much relieved free-thinker and have never suffered the terrors of religion since. It was the dawning of a happy new life.

I came to the sweeping conclusion that religions in general and Christianity in particular were false for a variety of reasons and, while not all the influences came to bear that night in 1961, all my subsequent study since has reinforced my fundamental atheism. I came to see that religions were a human artefact, and following James Frazer in The Golden Bough, progressed from primitive magic to religion and then surrendered to the age of science. Human communities have developed an enormous number of gods, cults and religions. Many had their own creation myths, their own messengers, their own redeemers, and their own human sacrifices.  For any one religion to claim to be absolutely true seemed to me nonsensical.

Man’s position in the world also seemed less important than we once thought. Darwin teaches us that man evolved over thousands of years and our ancestor sounds unpromising: “A hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits.” This creature hardly seems designed to carry the cares of the world on his shoulders and although his brain may have grown larger in archaeological time, it is still a fallible instrument when we consider the neuroses and complexes to which it is prone, if we believe Freud, or the conditioned reflexes it can adopt, if we believe Pavlov. Man is a highly capable cognitive mammal, but an animal basically, not a divine creation.

My rejection of the truth of religions in general was naturally united to a rejection of the Christian religion in particular. Brought up as a Protestant, I was very familiar with the sonorous cadences of the Book of Common Prayer and of the Authorised Version, much of which moved me then and moves me still. However I approach the subject as a historian. The Gospels, John and the Synoptics based on Mark, give a very confused and contradictory account of the life of Christ, and Paul, writing much earlier, speaks of Christ as such a remote and ethereal figure that the actual historical existence of Christ is put into question. Evidence of his ministry, trial and crucifixion is very thin and the nativity, miracles, resurrection and ascension narratives are obviously myths. The ethical teaching ascribed to Christ is unoriginal, derived from Judaism or borrowed from other cults and the morality taught by Christ is eschatological (anticipating imminently the Second Coming) and had to be modified when the Second Coming inconveniently failed to materialise.

What is historically accepted is that the Christian cult, one of many in the Roman East, became established in Jerusalem until its sack and Paul proselytised in the Mediterranean. A long period of obscurity, ecclesiastical growth and persecution followed but eventually the Christian cult penetrated the imperial palace and, by good fortune from its point of view, succeeded in winning over the far from devout Emperor Constantine to its cause in the early 4^th century. Christianity took strong root on becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire and eventually none other was tolerated. The priceless philosophical and artistic legacy of the Ancients was suppressed and Christianity dominated the West until the 18^th century.

To put it mildly, Christianity’s human rights record is not good. Endless theological wrangling created splits in the Church and the concept of “heresy” developed. Supposedly to save their souls, heretics were tortured and murdered often with bestial cruelty. The violent capture of Jerusalem from the Muslims, the Albigensian Crusade, the Latin sack of Constantinople, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, “St” Ignatius Loyola and the Inquisition, “St” Thomas More’s heretic burning, Bloody Mary, the 30 Years War in Germany, all fit a pattern of merciless persecutions and crimes. Happily Christianity started to lose its grip with the Renaissance, was weakened by the Reformation and intellectually overthrown by the Enlightenment. Even in decline its influence was baleful – support for slavery, total opposition to the modern world as set out in The Syllabus of Errors and at least an historic anti-Semitic influence on the route to the Holocaust. The charge sheet is shamefully long.

The positive side of Christianity must be acknowledged. It has inspired great artists, great composers and great architects. It tried to meet its intellectual challenges by sponsoring schools, universities and places of learning. The Christian ethic, when observed, brought comfort and fulfilment to many. In its decline, it has championed a toleration and inclusiveness it did not itself practice in its pomp. But sitting in an agreeable English parish church, singing hymns or intoning well-loved prayers is not enough. I am happy to leave the Church to look after its buildings heritage, happy to see civilised old fogeys of the ilk of archbishops Ramsey, Runcie and Rowland Williams participate colourfully in national rituals while studying some esoteric points of theology. But their role must be form, not substance; we must never again return to them the keys to the rack or the gibbet as they will operate them with chilling efficiency like today’s ayatollahs.

How does this leave the unbeliever, where is his credo, his grand world-view? I do not think he needs one. We live a modest life and unto a modest dust shall we return. I have no expectations for or fears for my immortal soul as I do not believe I have one. We can echo Robert Burns “Whatever mitigates the woes or increases the happiness of others, this is my criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, this is my measure of iniquity.” I do not seek to change other people, but I support the likes of Richard Dawkins, ever watchful against fear and superstition. We have the good fortune to live in a beautiful world and we can leave our mark, singing with Shelley:

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;

To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;

To love and bear; to hope till Hope creates

From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;

Neither to change nor falter, nor repent;

This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be

Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;

This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory.

SMD

13.01.2012

Copyright Sidney Donald 2012.