Because of my activism, I later got elected president of the secular society, and we grew quite a lot. I managed to get some funding from the Secular Party of Australia, which is the lone voice of secularism in Australian politics. With that money, we invested in merchandise and a big poster of the Flying Spaghetti Monster — the deity of the fictitious religion The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster — and some membership cards with the Flying Spaghetti Monster on it. I began to embrace the idea of ridiculing religion, and the group became antagonistic toward the religious clubs on campus. Over time, though, I changed and so did the direction of the club. I didn’t feel as though we were being productive. We wanted to engage with the students from the Christian Union and have respectful dialogue while standing up for the rights of nonreligious students and promoting science and secularism on campus. We ended up organizing a couple of debates with the Christian Union in which we invited guest speakers to come in and represent our viewpoints. We began to have really good and healthy discussions. I think the Christian clubs were actually keen that there were other kids on campus who actually cared about life’s big questions. We continued to grow, and our society now has 300 to 400 members.
While our group found respectful dialogue to be effective on campus, problems regarding religion persist in Australia. Some fundamentalist churches have taken advantage of the tolerant nature of my country. Over the past 20 years, churches have been able to work their way into public schools to give Christian classes during which they try to indoctrinate young children. They give children comic books about how God made the world and how Jesus loves them. The religious groups have been able to achieve such leverage by working out exemptions to various education acts that stipulate that public education should be secular. Groups like the Australian Christian Lobby don’t have a lot of members, but they can cite the amount of citizens who select “Christian” in the census, thus swelling the number of Australians who they claim identify with them. They like to appear as a big voting bloc so that politicians will take them seriously. Consequently, we have had a real lack of reform on issues like euthanasia, abortion, and gay marriage, where the laws that do pass are actually quite conservative even though opinion polls show that the majority of Australians support gay marriage, legalized abortion, and euthanasia.
I do, however, think that secular arguments are winning in Australia. We’re making a lot of progress every year. Secular activists are gradually raising people’s consciousnesses to issues and penetrating the mainstream press. We’ve been able to speak to people in the middle and get them on our side. The statistics indicate that there are a growing number of people who identify as not religious, atheist, or agnostic, which is very encouraging.
Secular organizations like the Center for Inquiry often say that the goal of their institution is to not exist. I think that’s right. I like that goal and hope to work to achieve it. One way to do so is to continue to grow the secular campus movement. Universities in society should be the hub of cutting-edge ideas and debate, the forefront of knowledge. I want students to be organizing on campuses and helping their peers to be aware of the secular movement so that they can come together to debate, learn, and contribute. I think that’s the future.
For me, coming to the realization that there’s probably no God was, at first, kind of scary. I felt isolation, loneliness, and meaninglessness. It was the writings of people like Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan that saved me from depression. Their words inspired me to make the most of the life that I have, along with appreciating the wonder of science and the excitement of the pursuit of knowledge. They helped me get through that moment.
At first, I was really cautious about who I told that I was an atheist. Eventually, I told my parents. They’re now atheists as well. Over time, everyone I know learned that I’m an atheist. All of my friends have heard my perspective and know my beliefs. I’ve had only positive feedback from them.
I have great hope for the secular movement because of people’s current access to information. Today, even if they’re sheltered, individuals often accidentally come across information. I know quite a few people who stumbled across Richard Dawkins on Youtube and spent many weeks constantly watching atheist videos that changed their worldview. Free, instantaneous access to ideas — often new ideas — is changing the world.
I have found all that I have done with secular activism to be absolutely rewarding. It has given me so much purpose in my life. It motivates me and gives me meaning. Before my activism I didn’t have a passion. I was trying to figure out what I believed in, what I stood for. I now have something to stand up for. I feel like I’ve found my niche.
V.
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Ed Beck: Greeks, God and the Marine Corps
Irish Catholics tend to be both gregarious and feisty, like Ed Beck. Ed’s journey to atheism and secular activism was a gradual one. An Iraq war veteran, he was never particularly religious — Ed identifies himself as a former cultural Catholic. His life experience changed him from viewing religion first as harmless, then as an intellectual and cultural barrier to progress, and finally as downright dangerous and destructive.
After returning from Iraq and enrolling in college, Ed became impressed by the accomplishments of the historical Greeks. Their flourishing society, he found, had progressed philosophically and scientifically, only to be undermined and destroyed by dogma and superstition. The transformation that began to take place within him was, above all, invigorating: he found freedom of thought and commitment to objectivity both more fun and more honest. Everything in his life became a bit brighter.
Now that I’m telling my story, I’ll never be able to get elected. Sweet! I remember when I was a kid, the only time I would ever pray was when I was fighting with my parents. I would ask God to smite them.
Growing up, when my family went to church, my father never went. I never knew why. I found out recently that he was never a believer; I plainly never knew that. We probably went to church once a month, maybe every other month, and my mom always felt guilty about not taking me more frequently.
Catholicism was a cultural identifier for us. I was taught that if you’re Irish, you’re Catholic. You were never just Catholic. You were never just Irish. You were Irish Catholic. My grandparents were both second generation Americans; their parents were from Ireland, and they didn’t like Protestants, “those damn Orangemen.” Even though I went to church, I was never taught morality using the Bible; I never had religion held over my head. It was an identity thing, an orientation, that was all.
As I grew older, in high school, I didn’t pay much attention to religion. I thought, “It’s just a human thing, it’s probably not true wholesale, but there’s some value in it.” After high school, I joined the Marine Corps. I was stationed in Iraq and saw what religion and faith, to its fullest extent, can do to a society. In Iraq, there’s a lack of concern for the here and now, along with rife conspiratorial and supernatural thinking. That part of the world is so held behind, so hindered, because religion has such enormous influence over their culture. Secularism hasn’t really taken hold. Iraq is religiously expressive in an active way, and I frequently saw women in burkas. I couldn’t help but wonder what that country might be like if such a large portion of their citizens weren’t so concerned with the supernatural; perhaps there might be more passion to improve their country.