Church for Atheists

This past Sunday I did something that people who know me would find uncharacteristic: I went to church. The reason this might be surprising is that I'm a non-believer. In fact I agree with the New Atheists that the existence of a miracle-performing personal god is a scientific question with a scientific answer, and so far the answer is this: very unlikely.

But the question of the validity of individual religious claims is only one part of the argument, and probably the less important one. More than the truth of religion, the debatable point is its usefulness. This question itself divides into two: is religion good for individuals and is it good for society as a whole.

The answer I’ve settled on recently is, yes, religion is useful, but only the parts that aren’t intrinsic to religion as we know it. I don’t, for example, think that you need to believe in an afterlife and eternal soul in order to get through life without being in constant despair. And I don’t think that there has to be a punishing, watchful god for people to behave morally. There are entire nations of unbelievers in the western world that get by just fine without god.

I do, however, think that when left to our own devices, there is a tendency to become self-absorbed and, over time, isolated. Both intuition and evidence tell us that being charitable and social are far more likely to lead to sustainable happiness than being tightfisted and independent. But, as rational economic actors, each choice we make will often come down on the side of financial caution and personal independence. Religious institutions evolved, in part, as a way of mitigating these natural tendencies to act against our own long term happiness.

Of course this doesn’t take away the problems of religion as preservers of primitive superstition and intolerance. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris seem to think the solution to religion’s problems is to work to end all religion. In their view, religious moderates do more harm than good by “giving cover” to religious fundamentalists.

I disagree. Religious fundamentalists and religious moderates have little or nothing in common. Most religious moderates today would be considered atheists and deists in another time. I doubt, for example, that many liberal Christians or Jews believe that the bible is the literal word of God. They do, however, choose to preserve the institutions of religion for the reasons I already mentioned.

The “solution” to religion isn’t to convince everyone to become atheists, but to moderate it until it no longer resembles the religion of history, but more like Unitarians, who are basically just humanists with a church, or many Reform Jews who have no problem being both secular and Jewish. In essence, as it moderates over time, religion will just become culture, like some Jewish culture, that doesn’t imply dogma but rather tradition and community.

This is, unfortunately, the opposite of what is actually happening in the world – moderates are leaving their religions while the fundamentalists grow in numbers – but I thought I’d do my part by attending a Unitarian church on Sunday. It was an interesting experience. The minister, a Jewish woman who studied at Harvard Divinity School, invited a few members of the Montreal Muslim community to attend. Most of the service was an interview on the tenants of Islam. At one point the minister said: “you mentioned God, but people in this room have a very diverse understanding of the word ‘God.’ What does ‘God’ mean to you?” As an atheist, I very much approved.

There was a decent size crowd in attendance, but maybe 75% had white hair, and I can’t imagine who will be replace them. April and I were the only people of our age group. It’s a little disheartening, but I’m glad I went, and if I can get out of bed on Sunday morning, I’ll probably go again.