DON'T YOU BELIEVE IT!
Eric Stockton The stated aim of the Sea of Faith people is "exploring and promoting religious faith as a human creation". It occurred to me, an atheist, to try to "create a religion as a humanist exploration".
The classic atheist dictum is that Man creates god in his (man's) own image and of course the thoughts and practices surrounding such a god-creature would constitute the associated religion, its ethos and practice. One has to be clear that "in his own image" does not mean identical with himself - how can it? There would be little point in such a creation; it would be mere vanity. The dictum quoted has to mean conceiving and deifying a positively idealised extrapolation of his kind. (Any resemblance this formula may bear to such phrases as "the sum of our values" or "not a being but a moral focus" is, of course, fortuitous).
Now to the creative work!
An atheist is not so much a person who denies absolutely that god exists as one who has seen little sense in any god-idea on offer and therefore proceeds by the hazardous road of induction to infer indeed that there is no god. An atheist is one to whom the god-idea does not pass the credibility threshold. So my projected creation of a god-centred religion has to start with the liability of my having no entirely credible version of the god-idea to start from. I have to settle for a first cause that does not convince me and a designer that does not impress me. Like the famous Irishman, I would advise starting from somewhere else.
Let us suppose that the universe is the work of a perverse and erratic creator and that evil is part of his somewhat flawed design. Evil, of course, requires good because one of the roles of evil is to torment good. An alert rebel angel saw that the converse is not the case - good does not require evil. (This proposition is fully consistent with the traditional vision of a perfect existence in the hereafter when evil has been vanquished).
This rebel angel, whom I call Natas, sees to overthrow the perverse erratic creator and asks us to help with this laudable project. (He has told me as much in a single-malt induced vision and has actually, on that occasion, sketched this very article for me; I ask you, how could I have done it alone?) The beauty of Natas-worship is that we do not have to make excuses for him; we do not have to pretend that all suffering is either deserved or part of some beneficent plan whose wondrous scope is beyond our comprehension. We do not have to pretend that he is omnipotent; he is a rebel for a good cause and he may be defeated - just like us all.
We Natasians do not have cravenly to worship an authority who fails at least as often as he is held to be infallible. Natas is both like us and better than we are. He is not "other", and often evidently rather worse than we are. We don't worship him; we simply back him up to the best of our real but limited ability and take comfort from his being the sort of father we old fellows, who have adult sons and daughters, try to be.
He says to us, "You have what it takes to make human life better so let's get on with it. I have done most of my bit; now let me see you make the best of whatever I have tried to do for you. One day you will have to do without me." Ultimately, when Natas has earned honourable early retirement, it will be his wish that we be humanists.
Do not send cash now (not even by standing order in favour of E S Stockton a/c 00262924 Royal Bank of Scotland, Kirkwall, Orkney) but think first. Before you all rush to sign up for Natasianity please reflect upon the grim lesson of history. When two or more people share a basic belief do they not soon start kicking each other around as deviators?
Are there not quarrels enough and to spare in this wounded world? Please follow my inspired example; I do not believe in Natas, one one little bit.