Review: An Atheist's Guide to Christmas
REVIEW
The Atheist's Guide to Christmas: Foyles Bookshop, Charing Cross Road, London
Featuring: Richard Dawkins, AC Grayling, David Baddiel & Derren Brown.
Host: Ariane Sherine.
The follow-up to the headline-grabbing ‘Atheist bus’ adverts of earlier this year is a book taking an often humorous look at what Christmas means to people who don’t share Christians’ belief in Christ, and offering tips on how to celebrate the season in a non-religious way.
Some 42 celebrity sceptics contributed to the book, which was edited by comedy writer Ariane Sherine (the brains behind the ‘Atheist bus’ ad campaign, and host for the evening).
Thanks to a typo on the website I looked at, I turned up at 6.45pm for an event I thought was starting at 7pm – only to find that it actually started at 6.30pm. I arrived in time to hear David Baddiel saying it was impossible to make a film with a truly atheist storyline, as “fiction has a tendency to reclaim the idea of God” – a point he was to make repeatedly all evening.
I found the evening thought-provoking, occasionally amusing, and tragic in places. It was interesting how even in a roomful of people generally disposed to believing that faith is irrational, there were still some who were willing to admit that there were some mysteries cold rational thinking could not sufficiently explain.
At the same time, some of the contributions made me wonder whether religion (Christianity in my case) wasn’t partly to blame for people’s unbelief. Take Derren Brown, for example, who said he had been a Christian for many years, but had packed it in because he’d found himself unable to defend his faith intellectually as he had wanted to.
I was less impressed by Richard Dawkins’ feigned shock that Jesus was tortured and killed because Adam had “gone scrumping”. Yes, he was being funny (in a PG Wodehouse style), but the way in which he’d completely missed the point of atonement and original sin was just laughable.
Ultimately, you couldn’t help but detect an air of smugness about the whole thing; a smugness aptly summed up by David Baddiel, who said more than once that people who professed a faith were “all wrong” – even his close friend and comedy partner Frank Skinner.
Richard Dawkins was right about one thing, though: Jesus taking the punishment for sins he hadn’t committed himself “just doesn’t add up.” But then, when did grace and unconditional love ever “add up”?
Happy Christmas – whoever you believe in (or don’t) …
George Luke
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