What Non-Believers Should Admit

"We want to hijack your religion. Take it as a compliment."

I went to church again on Sunday alongside a Christian friend of mine. Nothing much new occurred to me, but I have been meaning to note down for a while that with all the objections us atheists have to religion, you just can't deny that sitting down once a week to consider moral matters is probably good for you. It doesn't make the religion you follow any more true, and I remain of the Quaker dispensation that it's probably much more efficient spiritually speaking to just shut up for an hour than have all the preaching. Still, when asked to bow my head and pray, I did get some proper thinking done, and the sermon did make me think about various excesses and temptations in life, even if it was drearily predictably framed in the image of guilt and shame.

 You can do all that stuff without religion, but a scheduled group meeting to do so makes it much easier and harder to put off, which, let's face it, we would otherwise do. I don't know if religious people are statistically more moral than non-religious, but it wouldn't surprise me, because reflection on moral matters is built into their schedule. We as atheists shouldn't be afraid of admitting this- it is, after all, reasonable. It's just what we do about it that's a problem. I appreciate the atheist church idea, but it's still basically laughable, and you can't ask people to gather based on something we reject. Nor can we really hijack Quakerism in good faith. Quakerism is basically what we need, though, so maybe we could have a grand atheist Council of Nicea at some point where we meet with the Quakers, who hopefully would be up for this sort of thing, and hash out a specific branch for non-believers. A humanism with a weekly meet-up for quiet reflection which could also organise for good works would be a great advance in modern Western culture. Worth considering.

(Also, I just learned that Bayard Rustin was a Quaker, so you can add another hero to the "Quakers are probably just the best people ever" thesis)