George Gross, and atheists unite and form a church, you have nothing to lose but your faith ...

Sometimes it's impossible not to despair about atheists and atheist thinking.

If they're not fighting each other, besieged by penis envy and other moral panics, they're in search of deluded causes.

Take Dick Gross, please some one take Dick Gross, and his latest missive, A disaster for atheism.

For the first few pars, he takes up the cudgels on behalf of the Pope, the Jensenist heresy, the Pellists, and any other religionist hanging around, and mightily smotes Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins for their many failings.

It seems that they're part of the 'new atheism' which is just a recycling of the atheism sent up by Dickens in the shape of Mr Thomas Gradgrind in Hard Times:

'You are to be in all things regulated and governed,' said the gentleman, 'by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don't walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don't find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,' said the gentleman, 'for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.'

But where does this leave Gross? Well it seems out in the barn with Hitchens and Dawkins:

Atheists, like me, bang on and on about truth and evidence when humanity quite blithely could not care less. For we humans hunger after many things other than the truth. We crave consolation in the face of death. We desire solace for our suffering. We need communities in which to belong. We yearn for involving ritual. Does a repudiation of God deliver on these needs and desires? No, for such tedious arguments of disparagement do nothing to assist humanity with these issues.

But religions do and often do it quite well. Faith is social glue. Sometimes bizarre and destructive glue but glue nonetheless. So really Dawkins and Hitchens work is a distraction and an irrelevance to those ensconced in a cozy faith. It probably just entrenches the faith.

Yep, it's all the fault of hard core atheists that true believers are true believers, and humans are as they are. You see, that's because Dawkins and Hitchens would be much better off dissembling and lying and stretching the truth and telling porkies, and perhaps even acting like a smarmy sanctimonious pious prig of a preacher:

There are four main problems which the Dynamic Duo either ignore or exacerbate. The main one is summed up by my mantra: ‘‘The truth, though interesting, is beside the point.’’ There are many situations where the human animal doesn’t appreciate or seek the truth. Examples go from bad news stories, to political reality or the eternal uxorial question ‘‘Does my bum look big in this?’’ No one really appreciates the honest answer, ‘‘Yes, you look like an obese heifer whose carcase could feed three continents.’’ The universal answer given is, ‘‘You look sublime’’. Dishonesty is marital glue.

You see. Atheists need to learn to lie. You know, there's no god, but if there was one, he'd love you and your big bum, just like I do. Now excuse me while I get out the two wood and take a swing or two with the neighbour.

Now what else do atheists need to do if they're going to smote the wicked and save the planet?

The second issue is related to the first. It is easy to destroy something but harder to build it up. We don’t need yet another rebuttal but a positive tract, which, in a fun accessible way, creates a beguiling alternative to supernatural faith. I have had a go at writing a godless gospel and it is very hard. It is a far more intellectually demanding task that repudiation. We need them to do more of this sort of intellectual grunt. Adulterating the words of the great frog philosopher, ‘‘It’s so easy being mean.’’ What is much harder is being constructive.

You see. Atheists need to write a good book, perhaps a gospel for our times, perhaps some kind of bible or qur'an which will constructively explain the world to the people. So they can keep worshipping a new form of gently dissembling lies - since the truth is not the point, and useless anyway - and which can be dressed up as the good enough for now truth.

A godless gospel is just what every atheist needs, just like the sheep in Animal Farm, so they can recite the newfound truths over and over again.

Unfortunately it seems Gross's book doesn't quality as the new gospel, by sales or cleverness of thinking - once again high fliers like Hitchens are to blame - but still the quest for the godless gospel must go on. But anyway it would make a fine Xmas present, so much deeper than those shallow vituperative thinkers Hitchens and Dawkins.

Now what else can atheists do, seeing as constructivist thinking is all the go?

The third issue is organisational. More difficult than writing yet another book is building and nourishing an establishment that serves the people who don’t believe but still have needs. Any drop-kick can write a book. Even I have done that. But to set up, maintain and grow an international alternative organisation to faith is much more intellectually difficult. Atheism has no infrastructure or corporate entities. It is bereft and organisationally bankrupt. We want our heroes not to waste their time pontificating in yet another book but do the real hard yards in establishing our infrastructure. John Wesley understood this. The Jesuits understand this. The New Atheists don't or can't.

Establishmentarianism. That's what's needed, instead of that evil disestablishmentarianism. We need establishments to serve the needs of those who don't believe but still have the need to believe. Let secular churches grow in abundance. No you gherkin, it's not the same as a bowling club or a footy club or an RSL club, it's for those of a secular faith. So they can get together and study the new atheist gospel and join in prayer and sing new atheist hymns and feel at one with the community. Like nearer my absent god to thine absence are we ...

You see. What atheists need to do is build temples and churches, and perhaps even gigantic gothic cathedrals where people can worship at the font of new atheism. It will be hard, but we need to get together and build an atheist infrastructure and superstructure to celebrate the way we don't believe in god. Why not a huge Gaudi-like structure on the foreshore of Sydney harbour?

You see. To become true atheists, we must think and act like John Wesley and the Jesuits. We must encourage belief, and perhaps, like the Jesuits, organize an Inquisition in which we might process those fools and sceptics who don't have the faith of atheism.

Now what else can we do? Well, why not go back to church? Merge with the faithful, sorry, I mean the enemy:

Finally, if we can’t create our own, then we have to merge with the enemy. Within the broad church of faith are many who are sympathetic and quite godless. This issue is deserving of a blog of its own but let me quickly assert that there are many God-bothering atheists in churches, synagogues and mosques. They belong to religions not for some supernatural God. They are there for the three C words, to wit, continuity, community and culture. They are our natural allies. So we have to grow out of just bashing faith.

Merge with the enemy? Natural allies? Natural allies to do what? Form an alliance with the Pope? Get friendly with the Pellist and the Jensenist heresies?

What on earth is the man on?

We have to mature beyond criticism and work with tolerant people of diluted belief to see what we have in common and share infrastructure and ideas. That whole process is utterly undermined by the belligerence of New Atheism. Dawkins and Hitchens, and other warriors, are actually an impediment to the growth of unbelief in large parts of our community.

Belligerence? You mean we can't call the Pope a twit? We have to eat cucumber sandwiches with the vicar, and be terribly polite, and be mature and sensible, so we can grow unbelief like a pumpkin in the back yard?

Oh I see, the growth of unbelief is some kind of crusade, like they had back in medieval days. Rather than live and let live, somehow we must convert people to atheism. Perhaps we need to banish simple folks and their evil belief in Jesus and Satan. Perhaps we can exorcise them, by having a kind of blessed atheist holy water, and perhaps we should have a supreme symbol for atheism they can kneel down and worship.

How about a clothes line peg? To show we can hang religion out to dry?

Counter-intuitive though it may be, our best and brightest advocates may be our main bulwarks to progress. What do you think? Is this fair to the Dynamic Duo?

You now, counter-intuitive though it may be, I think that Dick Gross is about as good an argument for forgetting atheism as I've come across in recent times. Luckily Hitchens would cut him up like a carving knife confronted by half-baked butter.

Befuddled thinking, an immense desire to ape religions, and a stupefying need to think of enemies and allies and crusades, and rabbiting on about Jesuits and John Wesley shows he doesn't have the first clue about letting people grow, and learn and think and come to their own conclusions in their own times. And then go their own way in a secular society.

As if there's a natural alliance between me and god-bothering atheists who attend church, or between me wandering off to listen to the creation myth in Haydn's fun adaptation of the first book of the bible, and atheists, or Tim Dick, who can't stand 'spiritual' music.

As if atheists should want to hang around with other atheists so they can rabbit on endlessly about their atheism. So I don't believe in a god, or gods. So, what next? So let's form the uniting order of oddfellow atheists?

Well Gross can go off and set up an international alternative organisation to faith if he likes. He can promote infrastructure or corporate entities, but what a fool he'd become in the process. More to the point, what a strange sounding Napoleon of a pig, as he sets up an atheist animal farm to replace the human religious farm, and suddenly discovers the pigs are human:

Napoleon was now never spoken of simply as "Napoleon." He was always referred to in formal style as "our Leader, Comrade Napoleon, defender of the atheist faith," and the pigs liked to invent for him such titles as Father of All Godless Animals and the new atheism, Terror of religious Mankind, Protector of the unbelieving Sheep-fold, sceptical Ducklings' Friend, and the like.

In his speeches, Squealer would talk with the tears rolling down his cheeks of Napoleon's wisdom, the goodness of his atheist heart, and the deep unreligious love he bore to all animals everywhere, even and especially the unhappy animals who still lived in god bothering religious ignorance and fundamentalist slavery on other farms where strange and evil Gods were worshipped.

It had become usual to give Napoleon the credit for every successful achievement and every stroke of good fortune. You would often hear one hen remark to another, "Under the guidance of our atheist Leader, Comrade Napoleon, I have laid five eggs in six days"; or two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool, would exclaim, "Thanks to the atheist leadership of our dear ungodly unlordly Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!" The general feeling on the farm was well expressed in a poem entitled Comrade fearless atheist Napoleon, which was composed by sceptic Minimus and which ran as follows:

Friend of fatherless atheists!
Fountain of godless happiness!
Lord of the unbelieving swill-bucket! Oh, how my non-existent soul is on
Fire when I gaze at thy
Calm and commanding eye,
Like the faithless sun in the sky,

Like an absent god on the fly,
Comrade atheist Napoleon!

Thou are the giver of
All that thy creatures love,
Full belly twice a day, clean straw to roll upon;
Every beast great or small
Sleeps at peace in his stall,
Thou watchest over all,
Comrade atheist Napoleon!

Had I a sucking-pig,
Ere he had grown as big
Even as a pint bottle or as a rolling-pin,
He should have learned to be
Faithful and true to thee,
Yes, his first squeak should be
"Comrade atheist Napoleon!"

Comrade atheist Napoleon approved of this poem and caused it to be inscribed on the wall of the big barn, at the opposite end from the Seven Commandments. It was surmounted by a portrait of Napoleon, in profile, executed by Squealer in white paint.

Amen, dominus vobiscum, and apologies to George Orwell.

As Luis Bunuel once said, thank god I'm an atheist, and should have added, and thank god I don't need the company of other atheists prattling on about their atheism.