Terry Sanderson: "I’m a confirmed Indifferent"

NSS President Terry Sanderson on how he has had enough of the battle of theologies

Just as the confrontation between atheism and religion escalates, I have decided that I don’t want to be part of it.

I have come to the conclusion that I am not an atheist or a believer, but an Indifferentist. (Not the Catholic kind of indifferentism, which makes it just another way of opposing religion, but proper indifferentism that means not giving a monkey’s).

My Indifferentism means that I couldn’t care less whether there is a God or not. I really couldn’t give a damn (my dear), whether Jesus was a historical figure or a figment of someone’s fevered imagination. I am uninterested in Islam; unconcerned about Hinduism; apathetic about Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Mormonism and all the other belief stuff with which people burden themselves. I care not a fig about the Pope’s opinions on heaven and earth, although my newspaper never tires of telling me what they are. The ayatollahs are, as far as I’m concerned, just blokes spouting.

What if Jesus did walk on water – I couldn’t give a tinker’s. What if the Angel Moroni really did dictate the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith? So what? What difference does it make to me or the world at large come to that?

I’m apathetic about the battle of slogans on buses. There probably isn’t a God or there definitely is a God. I couldn’t give two hoots either way. I’m just grateful that the atheists and the evangelists have contributed a significant amount of cash to keeping the transport system running.

And besides which, I’ve still got to decide what to have for dinner tonight.

Theology gets me yawning. I consider H.L. Mencken had it right when he said: “Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.” And Thomas Paine said it even better: “The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.”

Someone very wise once said to me that if science disappeared from the world, we would still be living in caves. But if theology disappeared from the world, no-one would notice.

So why all the excitement about it? Why do grown men spend their entire lives devoted to it when there are hundreds of episodes of Coronation Street to catch up with?

So why, my critics might ask, am I the president of the National Secular Society? Surely that’s a bunch of atheists trying to bring religion down and destroy the simple beliefs of simple people?

Actually, no it isn’t. The NSS wants to ensure that religion doesn’t take over the world and force itself on to the lives of us Indifferents.

My indifference to the beliefs of the believers is shared by a huge tranche of the population of this country. When they define themselves as “subscribing to no religion” in the many surveys that try to measure the level of religious belief, they are actually saying: “It doesn’t interest me. There are better things to do with my time.” Don’t believe a word of it when they say they’re “spiritual but not religious” – that’s just a polite way of saying “religion bores the hell out of me but I like people to be nice to each other.”

It is the rights of such people that the NSS seeks to protect. We want their right to Indifference to remain unsullied and intact – unless, of course, they make a voluntary decision to compromise it. Their couldn’t-care-lessness about “faith” is precious to them and they are entitled to cleave to it without discrimination.

This means that religion should not be able to run our shared institutions – schools, the government, the police, local authorities, hospitals, social services etc. etc.

Religion has a place for those who want to believe it and, unfortunately, pious Christians and Muslims are duty bound to try to proselytise. If they knock on your door or accost you in the street you can, at present, tell them to go away. The best way to get rid of them is to sigh resignedly, look at your watch, roll your eyes, sigh, shrug your shoulders and pick lint off your coat as they talk. When they ask the yawning-stifling Indifferent the inevitable question about what they believe, he or she will say: “Eh? What did you say? Sorry, I was miles away.”

This is true Indifferentism in action and it will overwhelm and demoralise even the most fervent evangelist.

But pleasant as many believers may be, they shouldn’t have the right to corner us Indifferents and our children. They shouldn’t be able to force us to listen to their tiresome message when we’ve got urgent knitting to do. They shouldn’t be able to force their dreary, repetitive ideas on to our children in places where they can’t escape (schools, scouts, youth clubs, summer camps etc).

I don’t think faith is silly, I don’t think it is anything. I just don’t think about it.

As long as it stays strictly where it belongs — in the head of its adherents and its places of worship — religion is fine for those who want it (it’s difficult to accept that they “need” it). For the rest of us – all we ask is that the Popes and Archbishops, Rabbis and Muftis should reserve their authoritarianism for their own followers and leave the rest of us out of it.

See also:

Atheist and evangelical collide: nothing happens

Atheism isn’t in itself a movement