Pervasive Religion

Atheists are often criticised for complaining too much about the religion of others. It is irrelevant to us, so why don't we just shut up and let the believers believe in peace.

Well, we'd be more than happy to, except for the fact that the believers seem to be unable to leave us to disbelieve in peace. It is difficult to get through a day without having religion thrust in your face at least once and be reminded that it is wrong to be godless.

For example:

• I often listen to BBC Radio 4 on the way to work each morning. At about a quarter to eight, they have a "Thought For The Day" segment. At first, this seemed like a nice idea - something interesting to mull over in those quiet moments as I slaved over a hot keyboard. But Alas! Nine times out of ten, it turns out to be "Mini-Sermon For The Day", instead, as some Church Of England Bishop is wheeled in to prattle on about Jesus for three minutes. You'd be surprised at just how diverse a range of topics a well-trained Bish can turn into a plug for his favourite deity, usually leaving it until the last moment before pulling the Bait-And-Switch trick, and showing that belief in Jesus was somehow relevant, even necessary, to the subject matter. Not only that, but as a BBC License Payer (a requirement for living in the UK), I am actually paying for the privilege of listening to this guff. I wouldn't mind if there was a broader mix of views - after all, Britain is a multi-faith country, with Christians (of all flavours), Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Wiccans as well as us lowly infidels. Sadly, it seems that the opinions of Christian ministers are the ones deeded most worthy of airtime. Many newspapers also have a "Thought For The Day", which is invariably just a single verse from the Bible. Gosh, what a lot of Thought they expended that day. (Of course, these papers also run horoscopes, even though the churches generally frown upon astrology.)
  [ Note: Today (13/7/98) the thought-for-the-day-thinker was a Rabbi. Interestingly enough, he spoke at length about the needs of the homeless and barely even mentioned God at all - it was almost secular. The more mature religions seem to be able to get on with life without dragging their deity into every conversation. ]

  Thought For The Day The LORD said to Joshua, "Do not be afraid of them, because by this time tomorrow I will hand all of them over to Israel, slain. You are to hamstring their horses and burn their chariots." Joshua 11:6 For more thoughts from The Good Book, click here

• I am a freelance computer programmer. This means that I work 6-12 month contracts for various companies over the years. It also means that I do not get paid holidays. If I work, I get paid, if I take time off, I don't get paid. There are several national holidays with a religious basis throughout the year (Easter, Christmas and so on), and as such I am forced to lose a day's wages. Admittedly, I am quite happy to get away from work and spend time with my family, but it grates on my nerves a little to know that I am being forced to respect a particular religious event. Again, this is just a Christian thing; there seem to be no nationally recognised Hindu or Muslim holiday days.
• There are two parts to our parliament. The House Of Commons, where all the elected Members Of Parliament sit and trade insults, and the House Of Lords, which sits above the Commons. This is composed of roughly a thousand unelected Peers (nicely democratic, eh?), Lords, Knights and whatnot. Also, it includes twenty-six permanent places for Anglican Bishops. The churchmen, it seems, are adequately qualified to pass judgement on the laws coming up from the Commons. Again, the implicit assumption is that a high-ranking member of a church is automatically a person of superior maturity, wisdom and morality than the rest of us. The current government is considering making changes to the House Of Lords. Whether or not it will be brave enough to boot out the Bishops remains to be seen.
• In my window at home, I have a small, polite notice that says simply "No salesmen or Jehovah's Witnesses. Thank you." to try to keep down the number of unwelcome doorbell-ringers we have to put up with. I am an atheist, and my wife is Catholic, and as such we have little interest in whatever the JW's are pushing this week. Unfortunately, other sects seem oblivious to the hint, and we still get Christian Aid, Salvation Army (this is not too bad, as it gives my wife a good excuse to get rid of all the shirts of mine that she can't stand any longer), and the occasional Mormon (presumably wearing the customary Mormon Magic Knickers, but I'm too polite to enquire).
• Walking round town to get the week's shopping, I am often beset by smiley youths handing out religious tracts, monks giving out books for free (provided you make a minor donation), old men in Day-Glo vests holding large "REPENT YE FOR THE END IS NIGH" banners, and the occasional disturbed individual shouting incoherently about something ("Jesus" and "Sin" are the few words you can easily pick out). Another technique I have seen employed is a group of Christian youths stand in the centre of town and sing for a while. When a crowd has gathered to listen to their (usually excellent) singing, one of them will them stand up and starting informing the crowd about the wonders and truth of their particular sect/cult/religion.
• Whenever there is some debate on TV, or disaster or moral dilemma on the news, you can bet that they will bring out a clergyman to state God's opinion on the matter, or to inform us that prayer is the best way to resolve the situation, or that we need to look for the hidden meaning behind the events (God communicates through plane-crashes? He could just pick up the phone, couldn't He?). Again, the assumption is that priests have some sort of divine authority, or supernatural insight into the workings of the universe. After one of the recent, tragic school-shootings in the USA, a priest said that "We cannot blame this on God, this is nothing to do with Him. The Guardian Angels of those children had to step back, and were crying as they did so." oblivious to the fact that he had just completely contradicted himself.
• The National Anthem of the UK, like the Anthems of many other countries, contains obvious references to the Deity ("God Save The Queen"). As well as being a suicidally tedious tune, it makes wild assumptions about the political and religious beliefs of the entire nation. Do we all believe in God, and if so, do we think that He should save the Queen anyway? And save her from what, exactly? Triffids? And what use is saving the Queen if seven-foot tall, mutant carnivorous plants devour the rest of the population?
• We still have a blasphemy law. Technically, I could be arrested for saying, "God is stinky". Luckily, this law has not been applied for several decades now. (It was last used against the magazine Gay News, for publishing the James Kirkup poem "The love that dare not speak its name", which is still illegal in the UK. Look out! He's got a book of poetry!!! More information here. ) Unfortunately, it is still on the law-books, waiting for some outraged Archbishop to call it into use again. As all atheists know, blasphemy is a victimless crime. ("If God existed, He would be stinky!" isn't quite so catchy, is it?)
• Nearly every small village in Britain has at least one church, and every large town or city is stuffed full of the things. I don't think it is possible to walk a mile in any large conurbation without passing a church (or temple or mosque), complete with huge posters shouting out "JESUS SAVES! REPENT YOUR SINS! COME IN FOR TEA, BISCUITS AND QUIET CONTEMPLATION! THE INFIDELS WILL BE CRUSHED BENEATH HOOVES OF STEEL!"
• Every hilltop seems to have a spired house of worship stuck on top of it, which is very useful for reminding the populous that if they can see it, they are not actually in church, where they should be. Many of these will be built on ancient pagan sacred sites, from the time when Christianity was spreading throughout Europe. The ancient Tor at Glastonbury has the remains of a Christian church on it. How Stonehenge survived without being broken up and rebuilt as a church is beyond me. How much of our ancient culture and history has been lost because it threatened the authority of the church?
• In the USA, the currency has had the legend "In God We Trust" inscribed on it since the 1950s [1]. It doesn't specify any particular God, but it is commonly considered to refer to the Judeo-Christian deity. This obviously infringes on the beliefs of those who worship a Goddess, a pantheon of deities, a different God or no God at all. Every time you buy something, you have no choice but to hand over a bill or a coin informing the recipient that you "trust in God".
• How many times have you been asked for your "Christian name" when filling in some form or talking to the representative of some company? I doubt that anyone is actually making assumptions about your beliefs, but the fact that "Christian name" is synonymous with "first name" or "fore-name" is an indication of how pervasive religion is in our culture. I am occasionally tempted to say "I don't have one, but my first name is Adrian." (but I haven't done, I know they don't really mean anything by it. However, it might make them think a little more if I did.) You are never asked, "What is your Hindu name?" are you? I wonder how Hindus, Jews, Sikhs and Muslims deal with this - I suspect that if a person is obviously not a Christian (i.e. wearing the traditional garb or headgear of a particular faith) the questioners will pick their words with more care. I worked for a large company a few years ago, which had a database containing the details of their several million customers. I couldn't help noticing that the fields in the massive database were labeled SURNAME, CHRISTIAN_NAME, ADDRESS1, ADDRESS2, PHONE_NUMBER etc. I wonder how many non-christians would be annoyed to discover that as far as this company's computers were concerned, they were followers of Jesus Christ? Tempting though it was, I couldn't pluck up the courage to alter the database to use "CTHULHU_NAME".
• Even the calendar is at it. Apart from most desk-calendars informing you whenever it is a particular Saint's Day, what year is it now? As I write this, it is 1998 AD. Anno Domini. The Year Of Our Lord, 1998. This is a completely arbitrary date, as even many theologians will admit that Jesus what most definitely not born on December 25th, 0 AD. (For example, remember that the shepherds were watching their flocks? When do shepherds watch their flocks? Lambing time in the spring, not in mid-winter.) However, this dating system has been with us for centuries now, and is likely to remain so for centuries to come, probably even after the religion that spawned it fades into mythology. A secular way of using it is to refer to dates as CE (for Common Era, as many non-christian countries commonly use the same dates.) So, this year may also be considered 1998 CE and the dinosaurs died out around 65,000,000 BCE (Before the Common Era). I suspect that the AD / BC notations will fall out of use eventually, to be replaced by CE / BCE. It's obviously useful to be able to number the years, but why do we have to number them relative to an inaccurate date for the alleged birth of one particular religious figure (out of the thousands available)? Maybe sometime in the far future, dates will be measured from the birth of Darwin or Einstein, or some other major figure in science. The findings of science, unlike religion, are at least common to us all.

These are a handful of the reasons why we question and critically examine religion and faith. Some of the examples may sound petty and trivial - but that's partly the point. It affects us all in our everyday lives, even when we are doing something completely unrelated to any sort of religion whatsoever.

If believers kept their religion personal and private, there would be no problem. Unfortunately, the followers of many religions believe that not only do they have access to a higher source of knowledge and morality than the rest of us, it is their duty to impose that knowledge and morality on us, apparently for our own good. Seeing no valid evidence that this knowledge has a Divine source, we recognise it as the product of humans from a time long past. We no longer need to be threatened with eternal torture or tempted by eternal bliss in order to form a civilised society (indeed, the evidence would seem to demonstrate quite the opposite).

If the theists were somehow able to resist the urge to inveigle [2] their beliefs into government, education, law and everywhere else it is neither needed nor wanted, then we would have no reason to complain.

[1] Thanks to Eric Harrington for this snippet of information : "I found a factual error in your essay on the pervasiveness of religion. You said that American money had had the motto "In God We Trust" since the 1950's. Actually, the first instance of the motto was on the 2-cent coin when it was first minted in 1864 (during the Civil War, when God was on everyone's mind for SOME reason)."

[2] Inveigle - what a great word. I use it twice every day!