Irreligion
is the fastest growing religion in Britain
Consistently
practiced atheism is a benefit to public life. Not that atheism is a key that
unlocks great wisdom. If you are an atheist you can still be a fool, you’re
just an atheist fool. Atheism subtracts belief in supernatural causes for
natural events. It removes at least one barrier in public life to objective human
experience being subjected to collective intellectual inquiry (in the broadest
sense of the word): the unity of theory and practice which, amongst other
things, is the basis of Marxism.
There’s
one problem with this. Atheism in itself is no guarantee against superstition
or bigotry. Supernatural forces find their way into all sorts of theories
considered rational, for example the invisible hand that guides Adam Smith’s
political economy. New Atheism, as some call it, is troubling, to say the
least. What should be a theory of emancipation is often a cover for racism.
Some people object to some religions more than others, usually predominantly
brown-skinned religions.
But we
also stand on the threshold of Truthiness in public life, the quality that
allows someone to know something is true based on whether it feels right,
regardless of evidence or logic. This
is part of the general ideological move to shift public life from a rational
basis. However atrophied we still have a political system that acknowledges
class as the prime division in public life. If this basis is removed religion
will be both a prime means of importing Truthiness into debate and of
reconnecting the ruling class with the classes below.
Given
our understanding of the united front over time we can expect to have all sorts
of temporary allies. With what’s likely to come, strange as it may seem, we may have to ally with some of the
New Atheists at some point. As atheism grows so the current government is
trying, however hypocritically, to reinforce religion, particularly in
education through Gove’s so called free schools.
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