Sometimes you hear people say something along these lines: “I’m a Catholic. I mean, I don’t go to church, I don’t pray, I don’t fast, I use contraception, I have pre-marital sex, I’m pro-divorce, pro-choice, I don’t believe in papal infallibility and I’m sceptical about miracles but I am a Catholic.”
If these people are Catholic I’m an astronaut. When you hear that sort of reasoning, it makes you wonder: how many closet atheists are out there? The problem is that there’s reluctance among many people to call themselves atheists.
In religious people the word atheist conjures up all sorts of terrible and unspeakable things. You can tell from the horrified look on their faces if you tell them you’re one. They look at you as if you just told them you like to eat babies or torture puppies.
And how can it be otherwise? I mean, if you don’t believe in God and his laws, what’s stopping you from stealing, raping and killing? You’re just capable of anything!
You then try to explain that morality clearly doesn’t come from religion. If that was the case, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish between the good and the bad bits in the Bible. It would all be good. The moment you pick and choose (and most of them do), then you’re obviously using criteria that is coming from somewhere else.
But the “a” word also makes many secular people uncomfortable. It just seems too strong, too definitive. It seems to imply certainty. And how can you be sure that God doesn’t exist?
Here is where the nuances of different positions and –isms start: atheism, agnosticism, ignosticism, apatheism, antitheism, nontheism, scepticism, antireligion etc. Whatever. It’s all atheism to me. It’s all good.
So if you value evidence more than faith, knowledge more than dogmas, reason more than superstition, reality more than fairy tales, critical thinking more than wishful thinking, scepticism more than credulity, pragmatism more than rituals, free inquiry more than indoctrination, then maybe it’s time to come out of the closet. It’s not so bad after all.
