Johnson says he started doubting Mormonism when he was 18, but out of a desire to please his family, and still not knowing who he was, he turned in his mission papers and set out to serve an LDS mission. While 18 months out, however, he was exposed to contraband by a secular humanist, stuff like the movieReligulous and Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. Johnson says the exposure opened his mind to new possibilities.

“I remember having a distinct moment where I was like, ‘There is no God,’ and that was a liberating moment,” Johnson says. “I tried to do the rest of my mission without being too much of a hypocrite.”

After his mission, Johnson “did the whole returned-missionary thing for about a month, and felt really bad about it because my family paid for my mission. They had this big banner on my house when I got home, and I thought, ‘Crap, how am I going to tell them?’”

Johnson, who says he’s usually been the sort of person guided by logic, felt like he couldn’t keep going, pretending he was a believer, and resolved to share his disbelief with his family. Doing so, of course, wasn’t going to be easy.

Despite the difficulty, Johnson mustered the courage to divulge his revelation to his parents. The response wasn’t well received at first, especially by Johnson’s disappointed mother. But after a while, he says, things calmed down. And that’s when he discovered a support group of sorts for former Mormons-turned-atheists in Salt Lake City.

After attending a few meetings, Johnson, a Lindon resident, realized he couldn’t be alone in his religious skepticism, even in Utah Valley, and decided that a group could be formed closer to home. With help from others, Johnson formed the Atheists of Utah Valley, a group where other like-minded individuals could convene and support each other. Meeting over coffee in Provo, they’ll plan group discussions and occasionally have guest speakers, or they’ll plot group activities like hiking trips or even sky-diving jaunts. They’ve talked about joining the Adopt A Highway program and lobbying the Utah Valley University library to stay open on Sundays, as well.

According to Johnson, such a group is of vital importance in a religiously charged environment like Utah Valley. Those who leave the Mormon religion often don’t know where to turn, and can quickly be overcome with feelings of desperation.

“When I [became] an atheist, I thought I was the only one,” Johnson says. “If I had somebody to show me that there were others, I definitely would have joined up.”

A LARGER TREND?
It’s common for young adults to become disinterested in religion and pursue their own goals and interests, and this increasing “spiritual disengagement” is drawing the attention of researchers. A 2010 article in Christianity Today, citing various studies, says that the percentage of Americans claiming “no religion” doubled in about two decades, up from 8.1 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008. A substantial 22 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds claimed no religion, up from 11 percent in 1990. Also, 73 percent of these younger people came from religious homes.

The same article makes reference to the research of Robert Putnam and David E. Campbell, authors of a 2010 study called “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us,” which shows that the younger generation is dropping out of religion at five to six times the historic rate. The trends are starting to draw the attention of religious sociologists and leaders, with some attributing the pattern to the aforementioned normal breakaway that youth embark on. But more and more are wondering if, generally speaking, religious influence is simply holding less sway on the younger generation.

The Christianity Today article concludes by suggesting that religious groups, in order to stop the emigration from their rolls, need to “undertake the slow but fruitful work of building relationships with those who have left the faith.” Yet, building these relationships may prove difficult for those who find irreconcilable differences between their true beliefs and the teachings of their former church.

FALLING AWAY
For former LDS missionary Chris Merris, a BYU graduate, the idea of forging a new relationship with a church he no longer believes in isn’t plausible. In fact, he says he resents those who try to instigate that sort of reconciliation and those who try to change the church while remaining members.

“I think I have more problems with those who stick around in it and want to reform it, as if it’s some sort of democratic thing,” Merris says. “There’s this whole movement, like ‘New Order Mormons,’ for people who have become intellectually disenchanted with the church, but they still want to be a part of it. But it’s an invalid organization from the foundations up. Why reform that? Just leave it.”

Merris found out about Johnson’s group after reading an article about it in The Daily Utah Chronicle, the University of Utah student newspaper. The idea of atheists in Utah Valley, where he lives, piqued his interest, and he decided to check it out.

“They’re like the nicest group of people that I think I’ve ever met in Provo,” Merris says of the Atheists of Utah Valley. “Very welcoming, very open.”

Merris’ own falling away, like Johnson’s, began on his mission. Serving in nearby Ogden, he began getting into books of deep doctrine at the library, exploring controversial issues about the Mormon faith that weren’t necessarily church-approved. This eventually led him to anti-Mormon literature. One book he came across, One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church, shook him up so badly that he had to consult with his mission’s zone leader.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know, man, some of the stuff made sense,’” Merris recalls. “And he’s like, ‘Well, I had the same experience, and so I have a question for you. How did you feel when you were reading these things?’ And I was like, ‘I didn’t feel really good.’ Then he’s like, ‘Well, then you know it wasn’t of God.’ It made enough sense to me at the time—making sense obviously having nothing to do with reality.”

Certain heavy-handed practices required by his mission also made Merris feel uneasy about his religion. He says that he and other missionaries were encouraged to go beyond the normal missionary discussions with prospective new members, implementing such things as what they called the “Joseph Smith pray now.” This involved getting missionaries and prospective new members to pray in a circle about the reality of Joseph Smith’s status as a seer, and then, after the missionaries testified about feeling the spirit, asking the prospective new members to share their feelings. He says that such methods amounted to manipulation and put pressure on both the missionaries and non-members involved.

“We psychologically manipulated people—it was very clear,” Merris says. “Now that I’ve read about psychological experiments and look at them in that context, I’m like, ‘Yeah, we were clearly manipulating those people.’”

Even after these mission experiences, Merris continued his participation in the LDS Church, eventually coming face to face with the next logical step for a returned missionary—temple marriage. While dating one girl, Merris says his crisis of faith returned due to issues with the idea of revelation.

“I had a revelation that I was supposed to marry a girl, then I had a revelation that I was not supposed to marry her, within a couple weeks of each other,” Merris says.

Well-meaning family members tried to help him, suggesting that one of these revelations was inspired while the other was not. Merris, however, did not find these suggestions helpful.

“Looking back on it, it was ridiculous,” he says.

After these events, it wasn’t too long before Merris’ mind, which still couldn’t make sense out of much of the church’s doctrine and history, eventually gave up trying to justify and rationalize his faith. In going through this process, Merris says he realized the connection to religion is hard to break mostly because of emotional connections.

“I think I’ve known logically it’s not true for a long time,” Merris says. “But it’s still the emotional attachment that’s there. You have so many neural networks built up around it, it’s in the background, and I still feel like I have some of that stuff underlying.”

Merris believes this realization can only come after the fact, when one leaves their faith behind. Even as he believes he manipulated people, he believes he was manipulated, leaving him without the necessary skills, at the time, to leave the church.

“I think I couldn’t see problems before because I didn’t have the right critical-thinking tools,” Merris says. Ultimately, Merris says, logic and critical thinking made him realize that he could no longer be a participating member of his church.

A SHIFTING WORLDVIEW

For former missionary and Atheists of Utah Valley group member Nick Godfrey, similar problems with the church were fundamental to his loss of faith.

Doubts began to circle in Godfrey’s mind about one year after he returned home from his LDS mission. Frustrations with the church culture and its rules regarding morality, which he found confusing, led to disillusionment. One day, in a moment of introspection, Godfrey allowed himself to consider the possibility that the Mormon church wasn’t true.

“In that moment, my entire worldview shifted,” Godfrey says. “Everything that had ever troubled me about the church suddenly made sense. I no longer had to square evolution with the story of Adam and Eve that I had to take literally as a Mormon. I no longer had to play mental gymnastics trying to justify the belief that God made the priesthood conditional on race, or that the Book of Abraham papyrus translated incorrectly, or that the story in the Book of Mormon is contradicted by archeology, linguistics, genetics and pretty much every other scientific field.”

It was an interesting time for Godfrey to be questioning his beliefs, as he had an assignment to go speaking in the wards in his stake about his missionary experiences, had a teaching calling and was a veil worker at the temple. After six weeks, spurred by discovering the online community PostMormon.org, Godfrey talked with his parents and explained to them his issues with the church. Even though his parents are devout Mormons, Godfrey says, they have been accepting of his departure from the church.

“They have handled my disbelief as well as I could have hoped,” he says. “We’ve reached a place of mutual understanding and still have a great relationship.”

Godfrey is lucky in this regard. For most people, talking to their family members about their lack of belief is something that is too intense or painful. And for Atheists of Utah Valley group members who attend BYU, being open with their families is usually not a viable option, as they could either lose their ecclesiastical endorsement or lose money from their parents. “While attending BYU, it’s better to kind of keep them in the dark,” says one student who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of how her family would react. “I’m not afraid of what they’ll think, it’s purely for money reasons—just scared of the money going away.”

What concerns Johnson most about this is that it illustrates a problematic, conditional acceptance within families. The idea that one’s relationship to their parents should be so tenuous, depending on whether one believes in God or not, is unsettling to him.

“I think it’s a little indicative of our relationship to our parents that the [LDS] Church puts more importance on being a member and believing in God than the actual family itself, “Johnson says. “That’s what scared me, thinking that my parents would think of me second to their religion. I think that’s what scares a lot of members. They’re scared of losing their family.”

A BATTLE OF CONSCIENCE

Bruce Harr’s move to atheism had less to do with finding the church to be lacking than it did with his general well-being. Growing up in an LDS family, Harr was taught that praying, bearing testimony and fasting would lead to a confirmation of the truth of the church.

“Unfortunately, this never happened,” Harr says.

After first leaving the church, Harr moved in with a family who was very active in the church and started attending once again. He received his Duty to God award, given to young Mormon men who complete certain priesthood, became an Eagle Scout and served a mission, earning high marks from his mission president.

His frustrations with the church resurfaced, however, after returning home. Despite trying to fight off secular temptations by immersing himself in his ward’s choir and throwing away all his R-rated movies, the world of sin beckoned Harr. The ensuing battle of conscience proved to be a huge obstacle in his life.

“It seemed the harder I tried, the worse it was for me,” Harr says. “One bishop expressed his discouragement to me by telling me that he hated seeing me back in his office every week. I stopped attending church at that point and resolved to figure my stuff out before I went back.”

Not long after again quitting attending church, Harr’s father died in a car crash, several months after having revealed to Harr his own doubts about Mormon theology. In order to deal with the grief, Harr sought out a therapist. Although LDS, the therapist helped Harr see that many of his problems and frustrations emanated from the pressures he felt his religion was heaping on him. This counsel led Harr to question the legitimacy of the institution he had followed most of his life, leading to a re-evaluation of all that he once believed.

“This kind of opened my mind to the fact that the church may not be the end-all authority on all subjects,” Harr says. “My opinions on things like homosexuality, the word of wisdom, the death penalty, guilt, the value of faith and the source of morality started to change.”

Though this process opened Harr’s mind to new possibilites, it was also painful to finally leave the religion that he had invested so much time into and that was an important part of his family.

“On the one hand, I felt relief from the oppression of the church, and on the other hand, I was stressed and unhappy at my ‘outcast’ state from my community,” he says.

For relief, Harr began attending a group in Salt Lake called Jack Mormons. To see former Mormons who were well-adjusted surprised Harr, as he’d been taught differently.

“I met several other post-Mormon people who seemed happy and functional despite the negative image I had had of those who left the church,” Harr says. “My perception of people who left the church was that they were miserable and sinners and always bitter.”

It was at this group that Harr learned about the Atheists of Utah Valley. After visiting them, things began to get better and Harr’s adjustment to life without God settled in.

“My life started to change dramatically,” he says. “I was social again, I had friends and I started getting out of my house to do things.”

The next step was one that proves difficult for many Mormons-turned-atheists—telling his family. Harr began this process by dropping hints via Facebook and being more vocal about his new liberal outlook. As his postings on Facebook became more direct, so did the concern of his family members. Although his mother has been supportive, others in his family have not.

“My sister moved out of my house when I left the church because she ‘needed a more positive environment,’” Harr says. “My extended family has responded in a variety of ways, everything from condemnation to complete support and understanding to being asked not to come to family functions anymore.”

Despite the fallout, Harr does not regret leaving his church.

“It has definitely been a roller-coaster ride,” he says. “But I’m glad I’ve come out and am finally able to live my life the way I want to, and not the way the church wants me to.”

FINDING A NEW PATH
Groups for atheists, especially former-Mormon atheists, are found all over the state. Many of them are assisted by UCOR, the Utah Coalition of Reason, the group responsible for billboards with messages like “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.”

Nascent groups like the Atheists of Utah Valley can use as much support as they can get, according to Johnson, who says the need to connect and engage in meaningful activities with other people who have left religion behind is important, considering how difficult it can be for individuals to make a leap away from their churches, families and lifelong support systems.

“A lot of people have come and actually told me that they’ve felt some kind of desperation or dismalness, and once the group had been started and they could come to meetings and express their feelings and have a better experience socially, their life has improved,” Johnson says.

Diego Ibanez, an organizer of the group, says it helps people realize what Harr felt after attending a post-Mormon group, that “it’s OK to be happy as an atheist,” and that members learn that they “can be comfortable being atheist in a society that doesn’t tolerate that or doesn’t like having us here.”

“I feel like what we’re trying to do and express is being a voice for people like that, specifically in Utah, because if they ever need a voice, it’s in Utah.”

Godfrey quickly learned that simply displaying one’s status as an atheist can lead to hostile reactions in Utah.

“This summer, I put a bumper sticker on my car which simply read ‘Atheist,’” he says. “It was torn off in less than a week. A couple weeks later, I bought a similar sticker, which I put on my car along with a Human Rights Campaign sticker. They were also torn off in less than a week.”

Leaving the LDS church, especially for returned missionaries, doesn’t always make sense to their families and others, and as Ibanez points out, many still don’t take the decision very seriously.

“One of the things we face is that if you don’t go to church, you must be dumb, you must not understand life, you don’t know what you’re doing,” Ibanez says. “That’s something that pushes a lot of us to further understand what it means to be atheist and try to imagine what a secular society looks like.”

Source: www.cityweekly.net

Evolution Made Us All from Ben Hillman on Vimeo.

Most Americans feel that the influence of religion is waning in the US, according to a recent poll.

The Gallup organization found that seven in ten Americans think religion is losing influence, one of the highest responses in the 53-year history of the poll.

The survey found that only 25 percent of Americans believe that religion is gaining influence, while an additional two percent see it as unchanged.

The findings represent a major swing from the first part of the decade. Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, only four in ten found religion was losing influence and 55 percent said it was gaining influence.

The new results are on par with last year’s poll. The only time a Gallup survey has found higher numbers was in 1970, when 75 percent of Americans reported that religion was losing influence.

Over the past sixty years, Gallup has found a slow decline in reported membership to churches and synagogues. The number peaked at 76 percent in 1946 and tied an all-time low of 61 percent this year.

The polling organization found at least one stable trend in its religious survey. For the past thirty years, a majority of Americans have said that religion is “very important” in their lives.

Gallup based their results on interviews with 2048 adults, taken May 3-6 and December 10-12. There is a sampling error of +/- 3 percent.

Source: The Raw Story

By RICKY GERVAIS – THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Why don’t you believe in God? I get that question all the time. I always try to give a sensitive, reasoned answer. This is usually awkward, time consuming and pointless. People who believe in God don’t need proof of his existence, and they certainly don’t want evidence to the contrary. They are happy with their belief. They even say things like “it’s true to me” and “it’s faith.” I still give my logical answer because I feel that not being honest would be patronizing and impolite. It is ironic therefore that “I don’t believe in God because there is absolutely no scientific evidence for his existence and from what I’ve heard the very definition is a logical impossibility in this known universe,” comes across as both patronizing and impolite.

Arrogance is another accusation. Which seems particularly unfair. Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence -­- evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold on to medieval practices because they are tradition. If it did, you wouldn’t get a shot of penicillin, you’d pop a leach down your trousers and pray. Whatever you “believe,” this is not as effective as medicine. Again you can say, “It works for me,” but so do placebos. My point being, I’m saying God doesn’t exist. I’m not saying faith doesn’t exist. I know faith exists. I see it all the time. But believing in something doesn’t make it true. Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true. The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.

Why don’t I believe in God? No, no no, why do YOU believe in God? Surely the burden of proof is on the believer. You started all this. If I came up to you and said, “Why don’t you believe I can fly?” You’d say, “Why would I?” I’d reply, “Because it’s a matter of faith.” If I then said, “Prove I can’t fly. Prove I can’t fly see, see, you can’t prove it can you?” You’d probably either walk away, call security or throw me out of the window and shout, ‘’F—ing fly then you lunatic.”

This, is of course a spirituality issue, religion is a different matter. As an atheist, I see nothing “wrong” in believing in a god. I don’t think there is a god, but belief in him does no harm. If it helps you in any way, then that’s fine with me. It’s when belief starts infringing on other people’s rights when it worries me. I would never deny your right to believe in a god. I would just rather you didn’t kill people who believe in a different god, say. Or stone someone to death because your rulebook says their sexuality is immoral. It’s strange that anyone who believes that an all-powerful all-knowing, omniscient power responsible for everything that happens, would also want to judge and punish people for what they are. From what I can gather, pretty much the worst type of person you can be is an atheist. The first four commandments hammer this point home. There is a god, I’m him, no one else is, you’re not as good and don’t forget it. (Don’t murder anyone, doesn’t get a mention till number 6.)

When confronted with anyone who holds my lack of religious faith in such contempt, I say, “It’s the way God made me.”

But what are atheists really being accused of?

The dictionary definition of God is “a supernatural creator and overseer of the universe.” Included in this definition are all deities, goddesses and supernatural beings. Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6,000 years ago, historians have cataloged over 3700 supernatural beings, of which 2870 can be considered deities.

So next time someone tells me they believe in God, I’ll say “Oh which one? Zeus? Hades? Jupiter? Mars? Odin? Thor? Krishna? Vishnu? Ra?…” If they say “Just God. I only believe in the one God,” I’ll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don’t believe in 2,870 gods, and they don’t believe in 2,869.

I used to believe in God. The Christian one that is.

I loved Jesus. He was my hero. More than pop stars. More than footballers. More than God. God was by definition omnipotent and perfect. Jesus was a man. He had to work at it. He had temptation but defeated sin. He had integrity and courage. But He was my hero because He was kind. And He was kind to everyone. He didn’t bow to peer pressure or tyranny or cruelty. He didn’t care who you were. He loved you. What a guy. I wanted to be just like Him.

One day when I was about 8 years old, I was drawing the crucifixion as part of my Bible studies homework. I loved art too. And nature. I loved how God made all the animals. They were also perfect. Unconditionally beautiful. It was an amazing world.

I lived in a very poor, working-class estate in an urban sprawl called Reading, about 40 miles west of London. My father was a laborer and my mother was a housewife. I was never ashamed of poverty. It was almost noble. Also, everyone I knew was in the same situation, and I had everything I needed. School was free. My clothes were cheap and always clean and ironed. And mum was always cooking. She was cooking the day I was drawing on the cross.

I was sitting at the kitchen table when my brother came home. He was 11 years older than me, so he would have been 19. He was as smart as anyone I knew, but he was too cheeky. He would answer back and get into trouble. I was a good boy. I went to church and believed in God -– what a relief for a working-class mother. You see, growing up where I did, mums didn’t hope as high as their kids growing up to be doctors; they just hoped their kids didn’t go to jail. So bring them up believing in God and they’ll be good and law abiding. It’s a perfect system. Well, nearly. 75 percent of Americans are God-­‐fearing Christians; 75 percent of prisoners are God-­‐fearing Christians. 10 percent of Americans are atheists; 0.2 percent of prisoners are atheists.

But anyway, there I was happily drawing my hero when my big brother Bob asked, “Why do you believe in God?” Just a simple question. But my mum panicked. “Bob,” she said in a tone that I knew meant, “Shut up.” Why was that a bad thing to ask? If there was a God and my faith was strong it didn’t matter what people said.

Oh…hang on. There is no God. He knows it, and she knows it deep down. It was as simple as that. I started thinking about it and asking more questions, and within an hour, I was an atheist.

Wow. No God. If mum had lied to me about God, had she also lied to me about Santa? Yes, of course, but who cares? The gifts kept coming. And so did the gifts of my new found atheism. The gifts of truth, science, nature. The real beauty of this world. I learned of evolution -– a theory so simple that only England’s greatest genius could have come up with it. Evolution of plants, animals and us –- with imagination, free will, love, humor. I no longer needed a reason for my existence, just a reason to live. And imagination, free will, love, humor, fun, music, sports, beer and pizza are all good enough reasons for living.

But living an honest life -– for that you need the truth. That’s the other thing I learned that day, that the truth, however shocking or uncomfortable, in the end leads to liberation and dignity.

So what does the question “Why don’t you believe in God?” really mean. I think when someone asks that they are really questioning their own belief. In a way they are asking “what makes you so special? “How come you weren’t brainwashed with the rest of us?” “How dare you say I’m a fool and I’m not going to heaven, f— you!” Let’s be honest, if one person believed in God he would be considered pretty strange. But because it’s a very popular view it’s accepted. And why is it such a popular view? That’s obvious. It’s an attractive proposition. Believe in me and live forever. Again if it was just a case of spirituality this would be fine.

“Do unto others…” is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. But that’s exactly what it is -­‐ a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now. It’s knowing that I try to do the right thing. That I lived a good life. And that’s where spirituality really lost its way. When it became a stick to beat people with. “Do this or you’ll burn in hell.”

You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.

Ricky Gervais is the writer and star of HBO’s “Ricky Gervais Out of England 2: The Stand-Up Special”

You can leave your thoughts about this essay in the comments section.

What was missing inside the plush and awfully polite Roy Thomson Hall was not wit, wisdom or star wattage. For a debate about religion and its influence on world politics and humankind you could do no better than Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens. What was missing was Michelle Robidoux.

More specifically, we needed the indignation of Ms Robidoux, a 49-year-old translator who, with about 60 other angry souls, braved Toronto’s sub-zero winds outside as the audience arrived to vent noisily about the former prime minister and the invasion of Iraq. “Don’t fete him, arrest him,” she told this reporter. “How dare he come and talk about God? He lied not just to Britain but to the whole world.”

The pre-debate hour was quite the hurly-burly, in fact. Not only was the event a sell-out but tickets were changing hands on the internet for $300 (£190). Moreover, patrons more used to Purcell and Liszt hadn’t been warned to come early, yet every handbag, whichever the designer, had to be searched for grenades. Few knew what the resulting delay – the lights went down half an hour late – was costing. Hitchens is weakened not just by an aggressive cancer but by aggressive chemotherapy, too. If you sat close you could see that his lower eyelids have that thin red edge of distress. When staff came to his small backstage room to inform him of yet another 10-minute delay, he looked up and nearly begged; the energy was leaking away.

One of a series of so-called Munk Debates – Peter Munk is a gold tycoon and philanthropist here – this encounter invited us to consider the resolution “Religion is a force for good in the world”. Votes were taken before the encounter and after. The pre-debate scores showed that Blair, looking entirely trim, had a hill to climb. It was 57 per cent for cons and 22 per cent for the pros. (The rest were undecided.)

Both men came amply equipped for this particular battle, of course. Post-Downing Street, the converted Catholic Blair has created a foundation that precisely seeks to close rifts between the world’s dominant faiths. To make sure that religion is indeed a positive force, he teaches about it at Yale.

Hitchens, of course, wrote a book on the topic, God Is Not Great, wherein you will find much of the thesis that he brought to Toronto: religion is destructive, is based on superstitious hokum and, a bit like communism, might briefly seem noble until you see that it steals your every freedom away. Religions, he offers in his opening statement, require that we “are created sick and then ordered to be well”. He goes on: “And over us to supervise this is a sort of celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea … Salvation is offered at the low price of the surrender of your critical faculties.”

The advantages for Hitchens over Blair were probably many, even beyond our sympathy for his personal plight. Toronto, judging by that pre-debate vote, is a rather secular place. But, most importantly, it is just much easier to highlight all the bad things humans have done in the name of religion – and even get some laughs – than it is to explain the good faith can do, to individual souls as well as the world.

He might feel “toasted”, as he later confided at a post-debate VIP reception where he and Blair shook hands and accepted congratulations, but on stage Hitchens summoned himself well. “Religion forces nice people to do unkind things … and to do stupid things.” Not for the last time in the evening he evoked circumcision. “Please pass me that sharp stone for its genitalia so that I might do the work of the Lord.”

When a questioner in the audience asked about the tendency of religions to be exclusive and therefore competitive, it was Hitchens who found the humour. “It has always struck me that there is something strange about having a special church for English people, but I suppose I see the point.”

But Blair can do humour too, of course. “I do not consider the leader of North Korea a religious icon,” he said in a return of serve. But there, in the early minutes of the debate, he conceded partial defeat before he really needed to. “It is undoubtedly true that there are people who have committed horrific acts in the name of religion.” But religious people do good things too, he went on quickly. Christians and progressive secularists joined to abolish slavery, for instance.

So was Hitchens after a world without religion? There were, Blair pointed out, moments of the 20th century “scarred” by leaders who had just that vision – Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot. “Get rid of religion and you’re not going to get rid of fascism, and you’re not going to get rid of wrong in the world.”

It is hard to compete with the pith of Hitch, and Blair had moments of meandering, both verbally and with those hands, which continually clasped and gestured. Just sometimes, he sounded like a decent but slightly dull vicar giving another Sunday sermon. “You can list all the faults of religion but, for so many people, the reason why they try to do good – and what they do – is because faith motivates them.” He cited nuns helping HIV/Aids children in South Africa. And he cited reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

The chatter when we were filing out of the auditorium with our final ballots did not bode well for the ex-PM. “He was very vague,” complained Joanne Tod, 49, a local painter. “Hitchens had all these great examples, but Blair didn’t really have anything.”

Not quite fair. There was Northern Ireland, where Protestants and Catholics finally got past all those years of hatred. But did Hitchens let that one go by? “How very touching,” he responded. “And where did that religious divide come from?” So, after all those decades of war and killing of each other’s children they thought it was a good idea to stop? “I should bloody well think so!” the atheist blustered.

So they jockeyed and teased. But this was sparring with no loss of body fluids. Someone raise Iraq, please. Finally, a scripted question to Tony from the moderator. Did his Christianity influence the decision to invade? “We can nail that one fairly easily,” Blair responded, saying that, when it came to policy decisions, faith did not help. The decision to invade was taken “because I genuinely believed it to be right”.

That the collision of British-born atheist intellectual and British Catholic statesman happened at all should probably be enough to satisfy, even if nothing – of course – was resolved. (The post-debate vote showed a “technical” victory for Hitchens, with 68 per cent opposing the resolution and 32 per cent supporting it.)

Before an aide bundled him away from the VIP reception for a plane “to the Middle East”, Tony Blair acknowledged he has never done a debate of this kind before and professed it had been “fun”. He crossed the room to say goodbye to his opponent, who was seated on a low couch signing copies of his new memoir, Hitch-22. “I’ll see you soon,” said Hitchens, looking up for a second. Maybe they’ll do it again.

Some striking mile markers appear on the road through young adulthood: leaving for college, getting the first job and apartment, starting a career, getting married—and, for many people today, walking away from the Christian faith.

A few years ago, shortly after college, I was in my studio apartment with a friend and fellow pastor’s kid. After some small talk over dinner, he announced, “I’m not a Christian anymore. I don’t know what happened. I just left it.”

An image flashed into my mind from the last time I had seen him. It was at a Promise Keepers rally. I remembered watching him worship, eyes pinched shut with one slender arm skyward.

How did his family react to his decision? I asked. His eyes turned to the ground. “Growing up I had an uncle who wasn’t a Christian, and we prayed for him all the time,” he said wistfully. “I’m sure they pray for me like that.”

About that time, I began encountering many other “leavers”: a basketball buddy, a soft-spoken young woman from my church’s worship team, a friend from youth group. In addition to the more vocal ex-Christians were a slew of others who had simply drifted away. Now that I’m in my early 30s, the stories of apostasy have slowed, but only slightly. Recently I learned that a former colleague in Christian publishing started a blog to share his “post-faith musings.”

These anecdotes may be part of a larger trend. Among young adults in the U.S., sociologists are seeing a major shift taking place away from Christianity. A faithful response requires that we examine the exodus and ask ourselves some honest questions about why.

Sons of ‘None’

Recent studies have brought the trend to light. Among the findings released in 2009 from the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), one stood out. The percentage of Americans claiming “no religion” almost doubled in about two decades, climbing from 8.1 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2008. The trend wasn’t confined to one region. Those marking “no religion,” called the “Nones,” made up the only group to have grown in every state, from the secular Northeast to the conservative Bible Belt. The Nones were most numerous among the young: a whopping 22 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds claimed no religion, up from 11 percent in 1990. The study also found that 73 percent of Nones came from religious homes; 66 percent were described by the study as “de-converts.”

Other survey results have been grimmer. At the May 2009 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, top political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell presented research from their book American Grace, released last month. They reported that “young Americans are dropping out of religion at an alarming rate of five to six times the historic rate (30 to 40 percent have no religion today, versus 5 to 10 percent a generation ago).”

There has been a corresponding drop in church involvement. According to Rainer Research, approximately 70 percent of American youth drop out of church between the age of 18 and 22. The Barna Group estimates that 80 percent of those reared in the church will be “disengaged” by the time they are 29. Barna Group president David Kinnaman described the reality in stark terms:

“Imagine a group photo of all the students who come to your church (or live within your community of believers) in a typical year. Take a big fat marker and cross out three out of every four faces. That’s the probable toll of spiritual disengagement as students navigate through their faith during the next two decades.”

Source: Christianity Today

With the flourish, in recent years, of popular and widely accessible debates on this subject, the arguments coming from the theistic side have very quickly become predictable, stale, old, and even less convincing than they may have been the first time they were used.

This debate has to change. Theists – when all of your arguments have been debunked, and you keep spouting them anyway, congratulations – you’re not convincing anyone except the credulous and weak minded. Are you proud of that?

This debate ended a few decades ago. Everything that had been brought to the table then is what we’re still seeing being brought to the table now. What we “new” or “affirmative” atheists are doing is trying to knock some nails into the coffin so that this whole thing can be put to rest in what Sam Harris so eloquently calls “the vast graveyard of mythology”.

Theists – you simply must educate yourself before you go opening your mouth about all these tired old topics. Evolution. 20th century killers. The U.S. constitution. Atheism and atheists, and what it actually is that they DON’T believe. When you spout them- you get knocked down by the sheer force of facts. When you spout them and then get knocked down and then spout them again – I’m lost for words. Where is the virtue in that? Where? How can you be proud of that? How can you support others whom you see doing that?

Since then, the Irish Justice Minister has responded to the campaign against the law by saying that he will propose a referendum, later this year, to remove the reference to blasphemy from the Irish Constitution, thus enabling the blasphemy law to be repealed.

This makes the new exhibition in IMOCA not just a challenge to the blasphemy law, but also a celebration of artistic freedom, and freedom of expression generally. The exhibition runs until 25 April and is open from 12 noon to 5 pm every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, or by appointment through contacting IMOCA.