There was a great deal of interest sparked by our Prime Minister’s recent profession of atheism, and a good deal of subsequent debate. This is an important question and one that deserves consideration: Does atheism make a difference to the performance of a head of government, or is it a side issue?
I have to admit I would have been happier to hear the PM admit she was agnostic. At least agnosticism allows for the possibility that all of we Christians, Jews and Muslims out here may be right after all, she just doesn’t know, but is prepared to have an open mind about it. There is a certain openness, even a humility, in an admission of agnosticism.
Atheism, on the other hand, bears many of the hallmarks of the settled certainty of a religion itself, especially in its more aggressively vocal proponents. It implies that the atheist believes that the majority of people on this planet who hold theistic views are wrong. Not only that, but that we are deluded and duped by empty promises and are quite stupidly prepared to believe preposterous things. Also, that we incomprehensibly are happy to give up many nice and enjoyable things now on the expectation of a nebulous great reward sometime in the never never. Basically that theists are pretty dumb bunnies.
Which sounds quite uncannily like the way some politicians have treated the voting public in the not too distant past, doesn’t it? Now this is quite different from political pragmatism. That essentially means that politicians will try to enact their agenda while attempting to please the majority most of the time in order to win their votes, while keeping as many of their own principles as intact as possible. But where does that leave us when the politician has no bottom line? I would far rather a Christian pragmatist who at least has a bottom line reasonably clearly drawn in his or her Christian principles than an atheist pragmatist who has no compulsion to stick to any bottom line.
Further, an atheist, somewhat disturbingly, essentially denies the truth of the Judeo-Christian ethic on which our whole legal and parliamentary system is built. This invites the serious question of whether they then feel free to subvert this system into a travesty that benefits some vocal minorities simply because it appears to be only dumb deluded theists that believe differently, even if they are in the majority? If there is no understanding or belief in the basis of our western civilised society, this does not bode well for its continued existence as we know it. If atheists think there is no God, then do they really regard as important the sensibilities and beliefs of those who believe in God?
These are hard questions, and challenging ones. As is right and proper in a free country like Australia, we all have to make the ultimate decision for ourselves. This makes it all the more vital that we all look very carefully at our national leadership in the coming weeks and make a very careful decision about what we want our country’s future to be.