The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas

EDITED BY

ARIANE SHERINE

Contents

Title Page

WELCOME

The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas

STORIES

It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas

The Real Christmas Story

A Child Was Born on Christmas Day

110 Love Street

Losing My Faith

Hark the Herald Villagers Sing

A Christmas Miracle

SCIENCE

The Sound of Christmas

The Great Bus Mystery

Starry, Starry Night

The Ironed Trouser: Why 93% of Scientists Are Atheists (Depending on Who You Ask)

The Large Hadron Collider: A Scientific Creation Story

The Power of Ideas

How to Understand Christmas: A Scientific Overview

HOW TO

Things to Make and Do at Christmas

How to Have the Perfect Jewish Christmas

How to Have a Peaceful Pagan Christmas

I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas

How To Stop Worrying and Enjoy Christmas

How to Decorate the Outside of Your House with Lights and Not Have Your Neighbours Hate You: A guide to turning your home into a festive something that is so bright it can be seen from space

How to Escape from Christmas

PHILOSOPHY

On Kindness

If God Existed, Would He Have a Sense of Humour?

Unsilent Night

The True Meaning of Christmas

Imagine There’s a Heaven

The First Honest Christmas Round-Robin Letter

A Happy Christmas

ARTS

An Atheist at the Movies

A Christmas Carol

O Little Town

Simon Price’s Christmas Album

Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree

It’s a Wonderful Life

The Good Books

EVENTS

God Isn’t Real

God Trumps

Designing the Atheist Bus Campaign

The Godless Concerts

The Little Atoms Radio Show

A Day in the Life of a Godless Magazine

James Randi: The Real Santa Claus

CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES

Extract

SECULAR RESOURCES

THANK YOU TO...

Copyright

About the Publisher

WELCOME

Welcome to The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas, the atheist book it’s safe to leave around your granny. Here, you’ll find no chapters titled ‘666 Ways to Diss the Pope’, ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Church Graffiti’, or ‘How to Bash the Bishop’. There’s only one joke about Islamic fundamentalists, coming up now:

Q: Why was Abu Hamza a rubbish receptionist?

A: Because the phone was always off the hook*

and an undecided number of jokes about agnostics† (we wanted to write some, but we weren’t sure, and then we thought we might, but we weren’t certain).

*Abu Hamza was indeed a receptionist in a West London hotel in 1983. This was before he had a hook, but let’s not pull apart a joke that wasn’t fit for a Christmas cracker to start with.

† For the purposes of this Christmas book, they should henceforth be known as ‘eggnogstics’.

THE ATHEIST’S GUIDE TO CHRISTMAS

What you will find are forty-two* brilliant contributions from the world’s most entertaining atheist scientists, comedians, philosophers and writers, who have all donated their time, thought and jokes for free to help you enjoy Christmas.

Maybe you bought this book for yourself, or perhaps there’s a price sticker over the ‘A’ of ‘Atheist’ and your devout great-aunt bought it for you, hoping to make you more religious. Either way, all royalties are going straight to the UK’s leading HIV and sexual health charity, Terrence Higgins Trust, so to whoever bought it: thank you. (What do you mean, you haven’t bought it yet and you’re still loitering in the bookshop reading this with your grubby thumbs on the pages? Take it to the counter this instant!)

Whenever I read book introductions, I start bellowing internally, ‘Shut up and let me get on with the book!’ So I hope you enjoy every page, and that you have a truly excellent Christmas.

ARIANE SHERINE

*Because forty-two, as explained in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is the answer to life, the universe and everything. If you haven’t yet read it, you might want to buy it along with this book. Although the sales assistant may then think you only buy books with the title format The _____ Guide to ______.

STORIES

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

MARK TWAIN

It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas
ED BYRNE

‘I’ve already done all my Christmas shopping for this year. I bought all my aunties socks and Y-fronts. See how they like it.’

For many years, that was my only Christmas joke. Seeing as Christmas can be quite a lucrative time for a jobbing comic, a time when you can get paid two or even three times your normal fee in compensation for having to entertain people who are two or even three times more drunk and rowdy than normal, you would think I would have written a slew of seasonal zingers to keep the paper-hatted hordes chuckling into their lukewarm mulled wine. But I never did. I would kick off with my little morsel of Christmas humbuggery and then carry straight on with my usual cavalcade of jokes about smoking, drinking and slagging off Alanis Morissette. Why, I imagine you’re wondering, was this so? Why would somebody who, particularly in his early circuit days, was so eager to churn out crowd-pleasing material not hit that stage with an arsenal of Yuletide yuk-yuks? Surely someone with such a pragmatic approach to comedy would have at least a solid five minutes of holiday-based lateral thinking thrown into a box of sarcasm, wrapped in whimsy paper all tied up in the pink bow of impeccable timing? But no.

The reason for this is simple: I have always found it easier to write jokes about things I hate, and I don’t hate Christmas. Sure, there’s been some dodgy stuff left for me under the tree over the years. ‘Oh, did Santa run out of Scalextric sets? Well, I suppose Tamyanto make one just as good.’ The Santa Claus that came to our house did not believe in paying for advertising. As I grew older and Santa was replaced by my parents, they continued in this vein. Maybe they were early anti-globalisation activists and thought they should boycott major bicycle manufacturers like Raleigh or Dawes. Maybe that’s why at the age of fourteen I was the proud owner of the only Orbita 10-speed in all of North County Dublin.

It wasn’t that my folks were being cheap. They were just doing their bit to fight the power of Big Bike. I’m not saying that Orbita don’t make a quality product, but I can’t help but think that they could have built up much better word-of-mouth if they hadn’t sold my dad a bike with two right pedals. Yes. Two right pedals. When it comes to bicycle pedals, two rights make a wrong. He did try to return the bike a couple of days later, but found out the hard way that a gift shop that wasn’t there before December 1st won’t be there after December 24th. Well, I say he found out the hard way. He wasn’t the one pedalling to school with only one foot. By the time I was fourteen, I was so asymmetrically developed it took all my concentration not to walk in a circle.

Crappy presents notwithstanding, I’ve always been a big Christmas mush, enjoying the sentimentality of the season. New Year, I’ve always felt, can go and shite. Maybe that’s because as a kid I always used to babysit the neighbours’ kids so that the neighbours could go to a party at my parents’ house. But Christmas has always been my favourite time of the year. Even going to mass—a pastime I obviously have little love for if I’m included in this book—was more fun on Christmas Day because we all got to look at each other in our Christmas clothes. Those of us who got decent trendy-looking ones getting to point and laugh uproariously at the chunky-knit efforts of those less fortunate. This was one aspect of Christmas where my mother never let me down. We couldn’t afford Armani, but at least I never had to endure the humiliation of a reindeer on my jumper at age thirteen.

So Christmas has always been in my cool book. I’ve always found it easier to make fun of holidays like Halloween, which must be a very difficult time for paedophiles that are really trying to shake the habit. Imagine! You’ve got the urges. You know it’s wrong, so you lock yourself in the house out of harm’s way. October 31st rolls around and kids are knocking the door down. All of them dressed in cute little outfits, asking for sweets. You don’t even have to offer. Sweets are being requested. That’s almost entrapment, if you ask me.

However, much like everything else since I hit my thirties, certain things are beginning to annoy me about my favourite holiday. Sure, there are the usual headaches that just come as you get older. Not enough time to go shopping. Swearing that next year you won’t leave it too late to do it online. Trying to come to a compromise with your wife regarding whose family you should spend it with. Yours, hers, or perhaps some neutral family that you both loathe equally. Everything gets more complicated as you get older, and the responsibilities of adulthood are always going to do their best to choke the living joy out of any occasion. I’m not really talking about that. I’m talking about something that I used to find exciting about Christmas as a youngster but as an older man I just find wearisome, and that is the length of the lead-up to it.

As you get older there are three things you observe: policemen are getting younger. Teenage girls are dressing more like prostitutes. And Christmas comes earlier every year.

Christmas is a special time for a lot of us, and the rituals, sights, smells and sounds that go along with it can be very effective at stirring up childhood memories of Christmases past and generating a nostalgic, sentimental glow. But if shops start hanging tinsel in October it doesn’t take long for the spell to be broken. Seriously: when you hear Wizzard’s ‘I Wish it Could be Christmas Everyday’, does it remind you of sipping mulled wine next to a roaring fire or does it remind you of November in Woolworths?

I was in my local Tesco a couple of years ago and they were selling Christmas food IN SEPTEMBER. That’s too early. Mid-September and they had shelves of stollen, Christmas pud and mince pies. Nobody is that organised that they buy food three and a half months in advance. Anyone who is that organised makes their own food. Just out of curiosity I pulled a pack of mince pies off the shelf to check the ‘best before’ date and I swear to you it was November 10th. What sort of numpty buys mince pies that go off in November? And don’t tell me that some people might just want to eat mince pies in September. You only eat mince pies at Christmas, and most of us don’t even like them then. I guess the logic is, they’re generally so foul you can’t tell if they’ve gone off or not. Personally, I think you may as well wipe your arse on some digestive biscuits and hand them round as shove a mince pie under my nose, regardless where we are relative to its ‘best before’ date.

What nearly made my wife and I weep genuine tears of actual sadness was the fact that they were also selling single slices of Christmas cake. Imagine that. Not two slices, maybe for a couple who couldn’t be bothered to make a whole cake. No. One slice. That’s a slice for you and no slice for your no pals. It’s important, now and again, to spare a thought for those less fortunate than us who might be spending Christmas alone, but I don’t need such a stark reminder as single slices of Christmas cake on sale in September. That means that, with over three months to go, the bloke in question is already resigned to the fact that he’ll be on his tod this festive season. He’s already got it all planned out. ‘I’ll have a Bernard Matthews Turkey Drummer, followed by a single slice of Christmas cake. Then I’ll open the card I sent to myself. After which I’ll stand on one end of a cracker and pull the other, get drunk, have a wank under the mistletoe and pass out. Happy holidays!’

As depressing a notion as that is, is it any more depressing than the thought of somebody buying mince pies that go off in November? Because, for me, that conjures up images of people who, for some reason, have had to have Christmas early this year. Nobody has an early Christmas for a happy reason. It’s more likely to be a sad reason like, ‘Grandad’s not going to make it to December. We’re having Christmas in November this year and we’re going to enjoy it! We’ll tell him it’s December. He’s so far gone he won’t know the difference.’ Either that or, ‘We have Christmas in October so that Uncle Brendan can spend it with us. He generally goes back to prison shortly after that. It’s not really his fault. He does try to stay out of trouble, but he tends to fall off the wagon at Halloween.’

(Do you see what I did there? That was called reincorporation. It’s a classic comedy trick. You probably thought it was strange that I should even have mentioned Halloween in an essay about Christmas, initially. You probably thought I was just padding out my piece with a bit of Halloween filler. But I wasn’t. All the while I was building to that Uncle Brendan callback. Pretty clever, huh?)

So, what am I trying to say here? I guess the point I’m making is that shitty Scalextric knock-offs and bikes with two right pedals didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for Christmas, but greedy retailers who try to get me into a premature Christmas mood do. I propose a moratorium on all kinds of Christmas marketing pre mid-November. The Advertising Standards Authority should introduce a rule saying sleigh bells may not feature in adverts until the first week of December. And while we’re at it, let’s introduce a law banning the sale or display of tinsel in shops until December 15th. Failing that, I think Wizzard should get back in the studio and record a song called ‘It Should Only Feel Like Christmas One Month a Year’.

The Real Christmas Story
JENNY COLGAN

I’ve always been enthralled by Christmas. The English ideal, at any rate (where I come from in Scotland, Hogmanay was always the crowd-puller). The crackling snow, the animals lying down in their stalls silently at midnight in homage to the infant king; and, particularly, the glorious carolling heritage (my favourite is the rarely sung Nurse’s Carol, joining the choir being the sole highpoint of a miserable year long ago working in a hospital):

As the evening draws on

And dark shadows alight

With slow-breathing ox-en

To warm him all ni-i-ght

The prince of compassion

Concealed in a byre

Watches the rafters above him

RESPLENDENT WITH FIRE.

Good King Wenceslas, with his foreign fountains and strange ways, was as mystical to me as anything in Narnia; likewise the three kings, whose sonorous names and inexplicable gifts—

Myrrh have I

Its bitter perfume

Breathes a life

Of gathering gloom

Sorrowing, sighing

Bleeding, dying

Sealed in the stone cold tomb.

—gave me strange, excited thrills.

In my teens, I dressed up as a Victorian wench and took part in carol-singing tableaux at the local castle; the same one where, years later, I would get married—at Christmas time, the pillars swathed in holly and ivy. (Incidentally, if you’re having a secular service and aren’t allowed to mention the word God, I can save you some time and effort and inform you that the only carol that legally passes muster for a non-religious Christmas wedding is ‘Deck the Halls’.)

One of the great joys of having your own children, of course, is sharing Christmas with them. My husband, a Kiwi, spent all his childhood Christmases barbecuing on the beach and is entirely unfussed by the whole affair, but I had such wonderful Christmases that I want to make it as special as I can. Still, how to do that without fundamentally accusing their teachers of lying—or, in fact, lying?

And it is, after all, one of the greatest stories ever told—the little baby born in a manger, far from home. It has intrigue, small children (drummer boys are particularly popular in my house), stars, angels, various animals and getting to sleep outdoors—all catnip to littlies.

But, as that wonderfully conflicted cove John Betjeman put it:

…is it true? For if it is…

No love that in a family dwells,

No carolling in frosty air,

Nor all the steeple-shaking bells

Can with this single Truth compare—

That God was man in Palestine

And lives today in Bread and Wine.

Because, of course, accepting the Christmas story means accepting a whole bunch of other stuff; doctrine perhaps not quite so tea-towel—and stuffed-lamb-friendly. And now my three-year-old is at pre-school—a Catholic pre-school, no less, it being our local—of course, the questions have begun.

‘Are you having the Baby Jesus?’ he says, prodding my large pregnant stomach.

‘No,’ I say. ‘That’s been done.’

‘Oh. Are you having a monkey?’

‘I hope not.’

I find him in the bedroom with the lovely nativity book his devout—and devoted—granny has sent him, even though he hasn’t been baptised and thus is slightly damned and stuff, arguing with his friend Freya.

‘Those are the three kings,’ he says solemnly.

‘NO! They’re the three wise men!’ said Freya, in a tone that brooks no argument.

‘NO! They are KINGS!’

‘WISE MEN!’

‘KINGS!’

‘MUM!!! FREYA SAYS SHE KNOWS MY STORY BUT IT IS MY STORY!!!’

‘IT IS MY STORY!’

‘It is,’ I say, ‘everyone’s story. It is one of the most famous stories ever told. Nearly everyone you will ever meet will know a little bit about this story.’

Wallace thinks about this for a bit.

‘No. It is just mine. Grandma sent it to me.’

Sometimes I feel like Charlotte in Sex and the City, having one last Christmas tree before she gives it all up for Judaism.

I take the boys to Christmas-morning mass—where my mother is playing the organ—but they don’t know when to sit or stand, or what to do, and I am unaccountably nostalgic for a life I never wanted.

Christmas, as a practising Catholic child, was seen as a reward for lots and lots and lots of church. We were constantly told that Easter was the more important festival, but Easter is relatively speaking, RUBBISH. Yes, there’s a chocolate egg, but six weeks of no sweets plus Stations of the Cross on Wednesdays, Good Friday mass, confession and the Saturday vigil (HOURS long)—the trade-off is, frankly, just not worth it. Though the palms on Palm Sunday are quite good.

Christmas, on the other hand, is just normal amounts of church (except, alas, that totally gruesome year it fell on a Saturday and we couldn’t believe we had to go again the next day), but also school parties, the Blue Peter advent ring, the calendar, going to Woolies to buy your mum a tiny bottle of Heather Spirit cologne (69p), and the glorious bellowing of ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’—a song more than a thousand years old—all serving merely to heighten the crazed, overwhelming anticipation that could only be sated by a pack of thirty felt-tip pens, graded by shade, yellow in the middle, and getting to eat lots of very small sausages.

But there is another story too, I know, to tell my little ones; perhaps not quite as immediate, but wonderful in its own way, and it starts:

‘In the northern parts of the world, the winters are long, and cold and dark, and people would get sad and miserable. So they have always in the very depths of winter, from the beginning of recorded time, celebrated light, and life, and the promise of renewal and new birth, just when they most needed cheering up.

‘And they would store food, and eat, and drink and be merry. And, in time, different cultures and creeds passed over the world, and changed and added to the stories about why we were celebrating, and said that perhaps we were celebrating because of a green man, or Mithras, or Sol, or that the Baby Jesus was being born, or because Santa Claus is flying over the world—look here, NASA even tracks him by satellite (www.noradsanta.org).

‘And now, like all the millions of people who lived before us, we too use midwinter to see our family and exchange gifts, and feast and be merry and carry on traditions from our ancestors.’

And they will say, ‘Why?’

And I will say, ‘Because we love you.’

And I will wonder, as I often do, why we love our children—our own children, not a chimera wrapped in swaddling clothes and found in a manger—so very, very much, and wishing, as atheists, that there were slightly more reassuring, less genetic, cold scientific reasons that we could give for why this is so.

And then I will probably just say, ‘Shall we sing “Little Donkey” again?’, knowing that they will immediately rush off to fetch their sweet Christmas bells.

A Child Was Born on Christmas Day
EMERY EMERY

Being born on December 25th, I often found myself quite melancholy around the holidays. As a child it was simply not possible for my family to give me the special attention that most enjoy on the hallowed day of their birth. For children unfortunate enough to share their birthday with Jesus, Christmas is an unholy day of disappointment and loneliness.

Every birthday party I attended was clearly a day set aside specifically to celebrate one person’s most important life event—emerging from deep within their mother’s womb and surviving the ordeal. I had survived, but as it turns out, the Christians believe that Jesus was born of a virgin on December 25th and they deem it a miracle. How can any kid compete with that?

My grandmother raised me for my first ten years, and she tried her best to make me feel special every Christmas. She would bake a cake just for me. One year it was in the shape of a snowman and another it was Santa’s face. I especially enjoyed the Santa cake because I was allowed to take a knife to good Ol’ Saint Nick. There was a cathartic quality to it. I don’t remember any Jesus cakes, but that would have been nice as well.

Even though Grandma tried to make Christmas just a bit more about me, her efforts always fell short as throngs of family poured into the house to exchange gifts with each other and give me my two-birds-with-one-stone presents. ‘Happy Birthday & Merry Christmas’ was often written on the gift tags. I recall plotting to give people birthday gifts that said ‘Happy Birthday & Merry Christmas’, and I would then make a conscious decision to not give them anything on Christmas Day. But somehow, I just couldn’t go through with it.

During one of my early teenage years, in a conciliatory effort, my mother decided my birthday would be celebrated on the half-year, June 25th. I thought this was a really great idea, and I was insanely excited. I ran to my room and marked it on my calendar. Sadly, Mom was not very good with follow-through and, while she may well have marked a calendar herself, she had forgotten to check it. June came and went without any fanfare. Needless to say, my disappointment grew even more profound.

Every year that passed brought another Christmas that left not just me unfulfilled, but my sister as well. She had been born on Christmas Eve, one day short of a year after I was born. Just as I suffered the unfortunate side-effects of being swept aside to make room for a grand celebration of the birth of Baby Jesus, my sister endured the same profound injustice. Not only would our day not be ours, it would be everyone’s. Both my sister and I had to split what tiny amount of birthday we were able to cobble together.

One particularly lamentable Christmas, my sister received two identically wrapped packages from our mother. She unwrapped one to find a single, fairly cheap earring. As she unwrapped the other box, revealing the matching earring, Mom exclaimed, ‘One is for your birthday and the other is for Christmas!’ I wish I could report that my sister let loose with an impressively long string of absurdly creative expletives, but I have no memory of this particular event. I suspect I was sitting quietly next to the tree attacking the manger with GI-Joe, as was a common, seasonal private practice of mine.

One year, according to my mother, she had done everything she could to give us a classic birthday. She had planned a huge party for my sister and me. She invited all our friends and scheduled the party for December 23rd, which fell on a Saturday that year. While not all my friends were able to be there with holiday travels and family gatherings pre-empting our party, many of our friends were indeed present, and I am told we had a great birthday party.

While I have no doubt that my mother remembers it that way, I do not have any memory of this amazing party. Any psychologist worth his or her weight in Freudian dogma may be able to explain why I would have no memory of it or why my mother would remember it so clearly, but what I know for sure is that I have no recollection of any Christmas that is fond. This party may have happened and my mother may have had an amazing time, but I was not present at any such event.

Through most of my childhood, I wished Christmas didn’t exist and harboured ill-will to all who enjoyed it. It made me angry and sad. I felt that I was being robbed by Jesus, Santa, all the reindeer and everyone I knew. Then, as a young adult, I found myself investigating Christmas, and discovered some interesting information.

While no one seems to agree on the actual day of Jesus’ birth, most scholars agree that it wasn’t December 25th. Some have it in November. Others claim it was in March, and still more believe it must have been in September. But whatever day it was, it clearly wasn’t on my birthday, and that makes it even worse. Here I am, being robbed of my very own day by a ritual that isn’t even accurate! If only there were a god to pray to and ask for some kind of retribution.

My point is this: any child born on Christmas Day cannot have a real birthday. It’s not possible. There are some who have claimed that I turned to atheism due to my birthday melancholy, but while I will never celebrate my day of birth on the level that most enjoy theirs, I am not an atheist because of this. I am an atheist because I reject all stories that are not rooted in and supported by empirical data—because I do not need to have stories that make me feel better about that which I do not know or that which I fear.

I appreciate all that my mother and my grandmother tried to do. They can’t be held responsible for my failed childhood birthdays—they were up against aeons of ritual and tradition. But now, as a full-grown adult with my destiny in my hands, I hold myself responsible for my own happiness and no longer sit around, sullen and depressed, every Christmas. In fact, I enjoy celebrating Christmas in my own way. My wife and I fly out to visit her parents each year, usually on Christmas Day in fact. Since most people think it sacred, flights are usually half price—and if they’re overbooked, we often give up our seats in exchange for travel vouchers.

One Christmas we did just this, had a lovely evening in a nice hotel, got up on the 26th, flew into our destination and had a wonderful dinner with my wife’s parents. We awoke on the 27th, had a very nice gift exchange, ate birthday cake and played in the winter snow. While my wife’s parents believe in God, they aren’t really much for ritual. They just look forward to seeing us for the holidays, whichever day we arrive.

Whether travelling, staying in a hotel or enjoying my wife’s family, December 25th isn’t Christmas Day to us. My wife has taken to referring to it as Emerymas. Sure, Emerymas is a contrived and fully invented construct meant to mark the birth of my wife’s husband. But why not? If ancient priests could do it, so can my wife.

If you’re a kid born on the 25th, Christmas sucks. Emerymas, however? A day like any other day, with one very distinct exception: I was born. And according to my wife, that’s something to celebrate.

110 Love Street
CATIE WILKINS

I remember being confused as a four-year-old, as I sat in assembly at primary school and everyone said the Lord’s Prayer. I did as I was told and joined in, saying, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’ But I thought we were thanking our dads for working hard at their jobs to bring us, their families, home our daily bread, so that we could have Marmite on toast, and jam sandwiches, and other nutritious bread-based snacks. I remember thinking that perhaps I wasn’t really eligible to join in anyway, as my dad didn’t actually work in heaven, he worked for Tesco. I kept my fears under my hat, but felt like a potential fraudster.

My dad, a supremely rational man, even when addressing four-year-olds, answered my question, ‘What happens when you die?’ logically and truthfully. He replied, ‘No one really knows, but we have lots of theories. Some people believe in heaven and hell, some people believe in reincarnation, and some people believe that nothing happens.’ The other four-year-olds were not privy to the open, balanced information that I had, leaving me the only four-year-old to suggest that heaven might not exist. Unlike John Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’, this suggestion was not met with delight or praise or musical accolades. The other children just said I was wrong. I became more of an outsider.

I guess I must have continued to feel like an outsider, as when I was five I attempted to send a Christmas card to the Devil. Not to rebel—I was trying to cheer him up. I sent one to God as well, to keep it fair. I wasn’t taking sides in their cosmic disagreement.

The card to God (complete with made-up address 110 Love Street) said, ‘Well done, you must be very proud.’ The card to the Devil (who of course lived at 110 Hate Street) said, ‘Please try to have a good time, in spite of everything.’ I guess I thought he might be feeling blue or left out on the birthday of his archnemesis.

But I think I could relate more to the Devil, and could associate more with his underdog status of everyone hating him. I was chucked out of ballet at the age of four for being disruptive, so I think that the Devil and I both knew what it was like to be excluded from things—the eternal paradise for rebelling against the supreme being; I, a ballet class, for finding it hilarious to say ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’ when the register was called.

I didn’t expect the Devil to write back. Everybody knows he’s a bad boy. But God didn’t write back either, and he had no excuse. I’d heard the phrases ‘Ask and you shall be given’ and ‘Seek and ye shall find’, but I had scientific evidence that Father Christmas was more communicative than either of them. I’d seen that he’d eaten the mince pies I’d left out for him, but when I’d asked God if I could become a mermaid, my legs had stayed resolutely in place.

However, I decided it was understandable that God was far busier than Father Christmas. After all, while they were both very old and had to keep their long white beards in shape, God had to work 365 days a year (except for Sundays), while Father Christmas only worked for one night, and he also only had to help children, not adults, leaving him more time to stuff his face with mince pies. I guess Father Christmas just had a better union.

I think I partly wanted to become a mermaid because of the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark—if it happened again, at least I’d be able to swim away. I had always been a bit worried about this story from an animal rights perspective: the other children enjoyed the bit where the animals went in two by two, but I felt sorry for those who hadn’t made it on to the ark. For them, it must have been like an animal-based Titanic. My one consolation was the fact that all the sea creatures (including dolphins and sea horses) would have survived.

I officially called myself an atheist from the age of ten. I was the only atheist in my class, but the other kids and I did agree on one thing: I wasn’t going to heaven. (Though my reasoning was that you couldn’t go somewhere that didn’t exist.)

I had one ally in our physics teacher (who was an atheist, even though it was a C of E school). He told us the various things humans have believed about the world, from it being flat, to the sun going round the earth, and also told us about the various scientists who had been killed or imprisoned for making new discoveries that went against the doctrine of the church at the time.

He also made a joke which delighted me. Gesturing at the white-board he said, ‘People used to believe that heaven was up here, earth was in the middle, flat, and hell was down there below earth. Which of course we now know can’t be true, because hot air rises, and all the people in heaven would have got burned.’

This teacher said that science was like a box, and that we could never open its lid. We could, however, investigate in other ways: we could conduct experiments and try to recreate events to get the same results. So we could build an identical box, the same weight and size, and say, ‘I have discovered what is in the box’; but then, if the first box suddenly turned green, but our box didn’t, we would have to conclude, ‘Okay, I was wrong’, and start again to try to make our own box go green. In this way science was always learning, changing and expanding, but admitted to not being absolute.

When I heard that the money from this book was going to go to the HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust, I was really glad it was going to such a fantastic and worthwhile cause. And it seems appropriate that money raised from a book by atheists is going towards humans helping humans, in both a literal and practical sense.

December is historically a time when humans have a festival to cheer them up because the sun has gone, and Christmas holds the current title. Christmas has done well, to its credit. It’s beaten off the competition and is the reigning champion.

There’s also a lot to be said for Christmas. The high spirits, good food and bringing people together are excellent things for humans. Although anyone who says it is the greatest story ever told clearly hasn’t read Watchmen.

Now I am an adult, I can look back on the things that used to make me feel confused, alienated and excluded as an atheist, and take the positives. And, in retrospect, sending a Christmas card to the Devil is ironically possibly the most Christian thing you can do—what with all those parables about turning the other cheek.

So my advice to anyone wanting to celebrate an atheist Christmas would be: imagine there’s no heaven, then try to have a good time in spite of everything.

Losing My Faith
SIMON LE BON

I love Christmas. I always have, ever since I was a child. Back then, Christmas was all about the Baby Jesus—my parents encouraged belief in him. But even if they hadn’t, church and school—which were both C of E—would have greatly influenced my beliefs.

School was very Christian. At Christmas, we had nativity plays, but I never got a leading role in them. I think I was a sheep! I always thought I was destined for great things there, but I never achieved them.

However, though I was Christian and believed in Jesus, I remember that at school there were these fascinating children who were excused assembly. They didn’t have to attend, and for a long time I thought this was because they were atheists. It was only later that I realised this was because they were Jewish, or Muslim, or Hindu.

I was fascinated by the fact that they were allowed to stay out—I would have loved to. While everybody was in assembly, you could have wandered around the whole school by yourself without anybody watching you. That was my fantasy—to get up to mischief in the back of the art room!

I had a lot of faith at one time. I was tempted to go to church as a child, because they told me you earned a shilling every week for singing in the choir. I thought, ‘Mm, wages!’ and became a choirboy.

When you’re in a church choir, you actually go to church about five times over Christmas. You go twice on Christmas Eve, and sing three times on Christmas Day, if you’re doing Matins, the Communion Service and Evensong. So that’s potentially five professional engagements for a shilling a week over Christmas. The music and the choir were very important to me, and they gave me this feeling of godliness, which I really liked—and I prayed.

But I don’t miss that feeling—when it went, it went. It was like somebody pulled the plug out of the bath and the water went down. It didn’t feel good while it was going down, but by the time it had gone you’d got used to your bodyweight, got out of the bath and got on with something else. That’s kind of how it was.

Losing my faith was very gradual. I was confirmed, and I absolutely 100% believed in the Christian God. And then, after a while, it started to change. I started losing my faith when I started trying to figure out what God was: ‘He can’t really look like us! This whole thing about “Man created God in his own image”…’

When it came to working out what I really believed in, I realised that, if there is a God, he doesn’t have a personality. He certainly doesn’t have a set of morals—certainly not human morals, which we impose. And then I started thinking, ‘Well, what if it’s just people trying to personify life? To personify the fact that there is matter, and that there is a universe? If there is a God, that’s it. God doesn’t have a brain, God doesn’t think, God is just existence.’

And when you get to that point, you realise, if that’s what God is, then there’s no such thing.

For me, the hardest thing about losing my faith was facing the possibility that this life is all there is. One of the foundation stones of all religion is people’s fear of death and non-existence. People will do anything and believe anything if they can think, ‘You don’t really die. There’s somebody up there who says you carry on and you go to heaven.’

The Buddhists believe in reincarnation, but I tend to think it’s rather unlikely that we’re going to come back. However, I think there’s strength in agnosticism, because you accept that there are things that you cannot know—I cannot know if I’ve ever existed before this life, and I cannot know if I’m going to exist again. The idea of faith is almost as though, ‘If I believe it enough, it’ll be true.’ It’s a romantic ideal that just doesn’t wash with me—I’m too logical.

It’s a hard truth, because our instinct is to survive and to continue existing, but I’ve come to accept that this is it. I’m not scared of not existing. Socrates said that death is unconsciousness, there’s nothing to fear.

I don’t want to die, and I’m scared of things which can kill me, so there is a dread of not being around, of not experiencing things, of not seeing the sun rise in the morning, of not knowing what goes on in the world, of not being part of it. But that’s normal. There’s nothing I can do about it: it’s the one great truth, that we all die—you just have to accept it. And I hope that, when I do die, it’ll be at a point when I’m completely ready for it.

* * *

I quite like the Atheist Bus Campaign slogan, ‘There’s probably no God’. I didn’t like it at first—I thought it was too nice. I thought you should have been harder, and wanted you to say, ‘There’s no God, so forget it! You’re living in a dream world!’ But then it made sense to me, because probability is one of the things I really believe in, in a scientific sense. It’s quite healthy to have an open mind.

Religion helps people cope with many things. It helps them deal with death. And I believe in marriage—I doubt the institution of marriage would have existed without religion. To some extent, religion has upheld essential morals and modes of behaviour. There are some really important values in all religions.

However, I think human beings go through different stages. As a child, you have someone looking after you. And then you start to break away from that, and eventually you achieve a degree of independence from your parents. Maybe humanity needed a parent and that was the part religion played. Maybe we’re at a stage now where we are growing up and ready to achieve a greater degree of independence.

Although it’s very tempting to defer responsibility to ‘God’, I would like to see humanity taking responsibility for its own actions. There’s a certain bravery in standing up and saying, ‘We are alone, there’s no one looking after us.’ It’s a kind of liberation.

Despite having lost my faith, I still celebrate Christmas and I love church music. I go to church to listen to the music. But there’s a definite school of thought which says, ‘If you don’t believe it, you can’t celebrate it! If you don’t believe in God, you can’t have Christmas. Sorry—you’re excluded!’

To me, it’s important that people can believe whatever they like. I’m a liberal, I’m just not religious. If someone else wants to believe in God, they have every right to. I always felt I had the right to believe when I was a Christian.

Most atheists and agnostics feel the same way—we say, ‘Okay, if you want to believe that, that’s fine.’ It’s essential that everyone discovers and develops their own beliefs.

Part of me would like there to be a God, because part of me wants there to be a parent looking after me. To say, ‘Hey, it’s okay, it’s all under control. No matter how much you mess up, I’m here to save you.’ That’s a very natural feeling, very normal. But on the other hand, I don’t think it’s enough. I’ve found I’m more responsible, freer and more liberated living a life without God. And I love my freedom. I think we all overestimate our freedom, but in reality, the freedom to think, to feel and to experiment is one of the few freedoms we have left.

Hark the Herald Villagers Sing
ZOE MARGOLIS

My first encounter with religion was when I was six years old. At school one day, my teacher told me that I couldn’t be in the Christmas nativity play because I wasn’t the ‘right religion’. I remember returning home, crying, devastated that all my friends were going to be having fun in rehearsals, and I would be left alone without their company at break time. And, more importantly—to a six-year-old wannabe actress—I would miss out on the fame and stardom from acting in the play, which was to be performed in front of the entire school. Not to mention not receiving the free sweets used as bribes by the staff for good behaviour; I would do anything for a strawberry cream, me.

Brought up in an atheist household, I didn’t understand what my teacher meant by ‘religion’: for some reason I thought it suggested I had the lurgy or that something was wrong with me. If I was the ‘wrong’ religion, then surely I could try to become the ‘right’ one and then be part of the school play?

That night, my parents patiently tried to explain the concept of ‘God’ to me. I must admit, being the snotty-nosed brat that I was, who absorbed books like oxygen, I was slightly impressed by their bringing out a copy of the Bible to show me, whilst they attempted to condense a few thousand years of religious doctrine into a six-year-old-child-friendly atheist version. But even then I was cynical: I’d learned early on that the Tooth Fairy was pretend; I’d recently discovered that Santa Claus was purely fictional (and was pretty devastated by that); so why should I believe in this God bloke? It’s not like I’d ever seen any evidence of him—and he’d certainly never left me any coins under my pillow or filled the stocking at the end of my bed with presents. What had God ever done for me—besides prevent me from getting a starring role in the Christmas play? Even then, I knew I didn’t like him. And that whole burning bush thing scared me a bit, if I’m honest.

The following day, my mum grabbed me by the arm, stormed into the school, and had a huge argument with my teacher; I remember lots of heated words being exchanged. Back then, I just thought my mum was sticking up for her wannabe actress, prima donna, daughter; it was only as an adult that I learned she had accused the teacher of discrimination. I now understand and appreciate the importance of my mum sticking up for her atheist beliefs, and the rights of her child not to be subject to prejudice because of them.

The teacher finally caved in to my mum’s persuasiveness, and agreed to let me have a part in the play. I was joyous with happiness: now I would have fame! Glory! Attention! Me, as Mary! (Whoever she was: I didn’t care—she had the lead role and I wanted it.) Or as an angel! (Again, not sure what/who they were, but if they got to flutter around in a white tutu, I was more than game.) I was so excited: I could almost see my name in lights. Almost.

I bounced around the rest of the day and, like the precocious diva I was, looked forward to my costume fitting. And, when it came, I lined up with all my friends and waited for my name to be called as the roles were divvied up in alphabetical order. (NB. This has been the bane of my life, given my name begins with a Z. Last in line for everything.)

‘Ashling!’ my teacher called, and my friend was given the role of Mary.

Damn. Lost the lead role. Oh well, I will still be a pretty angel!

‘Cathy!’ the teacher said, and proceeded to make my best friend an angel.

I grew ever more excited though: I couldn’t wait to try on the tutu!

‘Fiona!’ the teacher barked, and my friend went off to get her tutu fitted.

It would be me soon! Tutu, here I come!

‘Helena!’ shouted the teacher, and yet another friend was sent to the angel queue.

This went on for a while, until there were a dozen angels, as well as a few wise men, and only a couple of us left standing in the queue.

I think I knew, at that point, that my hopes of having a starring role were about to be severely dashed. But—ever the (noneternal, reincarnation-cynical) optimist—I thought that perhaps I would be made a Special Angel: a lead angel who was in charge of all the other angels and who got to boss them around and stuff. Maybe I could wear a black tutu instead, like in Swan Lake?

My name was finally called: I was back of the line; there were few costumes left; I was the last pupil to be given a role.

‘You’re going to be a villager in the choir,’ my teacher informed me.

I stared at her, gobsmacked.

‘Tell your mum that you will need to bring a scarf, gloves and hat with you to wear to all the rehearsals.’

Oh great, I don’t even get a costume. My dreams of stardom vanished in a second.

‘And,’ my teacher continued, ‘you get to hold this lantern: isn’t it nice?!’

I think, even back then, I knew she was being sarcastic.

My teacher handed me a long wooden stick, with a pretend lantern dangling on one end.

And it was at this point that I had a stroke of genius: a way for me to decline this minor, irrelevant role, and be promoted into a proper acting part.

‘I can’t hold that,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘I’m allergic to wood.’

I don’t know if she was more surprised by the absurdity of what I had said, or the fact that it had been said by a smart-alec, upstart six-year-old, but whichever it was, she wasn’t pleased: she wrote me a huffy note, which I gave to my mother later, that said I had been offered a role but was now making up lies to get out of it.

My mum sat me down that night and asked me what I wanted to do (whilst sniggering about my wood-allergy comment, I should add). My only options, it seemed, were either not be in the school play at all, or accept the role of an ‘extra’ and perform in the choir. With all my friends already practising their lines, and not wanting to be left out, I chose the latter.

Photographs taken of the play, when it was performed some weeks later, just before Christmas time, show a very cheery Mary and Joseph; some happy wise men; many elegant, joyous angels; and, standing in the back of the villagers’ choir, one extremely pissed off, scowling six-year-old, holding her lantern fully askew. Let’s just say I was not at all happy.

Years later, when I look back on that event, it seems clear to me that that was the defining moment when I realised I could not believe in God. Sure, as an adult, surrounded by science and reason, it’s obvious to me that God doesn’t exist. But, as a starry-eyed six-year-old, my disbelief in religion came down to three simple facts:

1. I never got to eat a strawberry cream, because being last in line all the time meant everyone else had already nabbed them. (God can’t be that cruel, surely?)

2. I did not achieve international stardom from my role as a ‘villager’. (God can’t be that mean, surely?)

3. Anyone that would allow a child to be forced to sing ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!’ is a sadist, not a deity. (I am assuming God is not into S&M.)

Although, I suppose it could be argued that God might exist, for the world at large was prevented from being exposed to my performing at a professional level. Given my singing voice, that really is something to rejoice and say ‘Hallelujah!’ over.

A Christmas Miracle
RICHARD HERRING

Even as an atheist, it’s cool to celebrate Christmas. I like Jesus and think that there’s a lot of sense in the stuff that he might have said or that has at least been ascribed to him. For my money his philosophy and his sacrifice mean very little if he was actually a god. Who cares about him being crucified then?

He knew he was all powerful and that he’d rise again and get his revenge on those pesky Romans or Jews (delete depending on your own prejudices). But if he was a man, then the stuff he said and the fact that he actually properly died for it (not just for thirty-six hours—that’s a hangover, not a death) is much more impressive.

Anyway, I’m not having a go. I’m a Christite. Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged. Bang on!

One particular Christmas, I was staying at my sister’s house in Cheddar. It is a house packed with people: my sister, her husband, their three practically totally grown-up children, with various boyfriends or girlfriends in tow. But there’s also a menagerie of cats and dogs and who knows what other pets hidden round every corner.

They woke me up early for Christmas breakfast, which wasn’t totally appreciated, as I’d had a late Christmas Eve in the pub with my old school friends and was feeling a little delicate. But I managed to rouse myself for another day of drinking and gorging and then drinking and gorging some more—it’s what Jesus would have wanted.

That night I was pretty glad to excuse myself from my parents’ house and head round the corner to my sister’s for an early night. The rest of the family stayed where they were to eat and drink some more.

I went into the bathroom to rid myself of waste and was surprised to see one of the family cats sitting in the bath tub. I couldn’t be bothered to chase it out into the house. If it wanted to watch me have a poo then that was up to it. Neither of us, I am sure, was remotely turned on by the idea of a cat watching a man defecate. And anyone who says that I am turned on by a cat watching me defecate is lying.

The cat seemed to be trying to drink some water out of the tap and was licking at it hopefully, but there was hardly any moisture there at all. So in an act of generosity which I am sure would have made Jesus happy if he was watching, I leant over from my seat and gently turned the cold tap in the hope of making more of a dribble of water come out to quench the thirst of this destitute Christmas cat. I could already see the children’s book being written about this act of charity. It was a beautiful scene and for me summed up the whole festival.

But the tap moved quite a bit without any more water coming out and I was concerned that if I turned the dial too far, too fast then a deluge would occur, soaking the cat below, sending it into a tornado of wet cat rage, which would ruin the story. How would kids respond to the sight of a fat naked man on a toilet being bitten in the face by a drenched moggy? Badly. Book sales would plummet.

The taps gurgled and a small stream of water started coming out. The cat licked away at the tap with all its might, sucking on the tap for what seemed like ages. It got its fur slightly wet, but it didn’t seem to care. It must have been really thirsty. I am not saying that my sister is not looking after her animals and is failing to give them drink. You must draw your own conclusions on this and only phone the RSPCA if you are sure she is guilty.

I have to say that from where I was sitting this was one of the funniest sights I have seen all year. To appreciate the humour, you might have to find a thirsty cat and put it in a bath and then get it under a drizzle of water, but I laughed as much at this as I have at anything in ages. It seemed to me the cat was laughing too. But then I suppose he had quite a funny view as well.

But surely Jesus got the best view, getting the hilarity of both the drinking cat and the fat defecating man, which I am pleased about because it’s nice that he should have something to make him laugh on his birthday. Especially when he’s the only person who doesn’t get loads of presents today, which seems a bit rich, but we all have our cross to bear.

SCIENCE

I do not believe in a personal God and have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If there is something within me that can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

EINSTEIN

The Sound of Christmas
SIMON SINGH

While Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas, atheists may wonder if there is another birth which they might be able to commemorate. One possibility is to give thanks for the arrival of Isaac Newton, who was born on Christmas Day 1642 according to the Julian calendar that was still in use in England at the time. Another possibility, and probably my preference, is to use Christmas Day as an excuse to celebrate the biggest birth of all, namely the creation of the entire universe.

For tens of thousands of years, humans have stared up into the heavens and wondered about the origin of the universe. Up until now every culture, society and religion has had nothing else to turn to except its creation myths, fables or religious scriptures. Today, by contrast, we have the extraordinary privilege of being the first generation of our species to have access to a scientific theory of the universe that explains its origin and evolution. The Big Bang model is elegant, magnificent, rational and (most importantly of all) verifiable. It explains how roughly 13.7 billion years ago matter exploded into being and was blown out into an expanding universe. Over time this matter gradually coalesced and evolved into the galaxies, stars and planets we see today.

Before explaining how you might celebrate the birth of the universe, let me quickly explain why we are convinced that there was a Big Bang. First of all, telescope observations made back in the 1920s seemed to show that all the distant galaxies in the universe were redder than they should have been. Red light has a longer wavelength than all the other colours, so it was as if the light from the galaxies was being stretched. One way to explain this stretching of galactic light (otherwise known as the ‘red shift’) was to assume that space itself was expanding. Expanding space is a bizarre concept, but it is exactly how we would expect space to behave in the aftermath of a Big Bang explosion.

However, this single piece of evidence was not enough to convince the scientific establishment that the Big Bang had really happened, particularly as the observations were open to interpretation. For example, the Bulgarian-born astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky pointed out the redness of the galaxies was merely an illusion caused by the scattering of light by dust and gas as it passed through the cosmos.

By the way, as well as being a critic of the Big Bang and the data that seemed to support it, Zwicky was also responsible for inventing a beautiful insult. If a colleague annoyed him, Zwicky would scream out ‘spherical bastard’. Just as a sphere looks the same from every direction, a spherical bastard was someone who was a bastard whatever way you looked at them.

A second pillar was needed to support the Big Bang model and this time the crucial evidence relied on measuring the ingredients of the universe, most importantly hydrogen and helium. These are smallest atoms in the Periodic Table and the most common in the universe, accounting for 74% and 24% of all the atoms. Crucially, the only way to create such large amounts of hydrogen and helium is in the wake of the Big Bang. In particular, the pressure, density and temperature of the early universe would have cooked exactly the right amount of hydrogen and fused it into exactly the right amount of helium. In other words, the Big Bang is the best (and probably the only) way to explain the abundances of these light elements.

Nearly all the other elements were made later in collapsing stars. These stars provided the perfect environment for the nuclear reactions that give rise to the heavier elements that are essential for life. Marcus Chown, author of The Magic Furnace, highlighted the startling significance of stellar alchemy: ‘In order that we might live, stars in their billions, tens of billions, hundreds of billions even, have died. The iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, the oxygen that fills our lungs each time we take a breath—all were cooked in the furnaces of the stars which expired long before the Earth was born.’

Because we are made from the debris of nuclear reactions that took place in exploding stars, the romantics among you might like to think of yourselves as being composed of stardust. On the other hand, cynics might prefer to think of yourselves as nuclear waste.

The third, and even sturdier, pillar to support the Big Bang model is the afterglow that should have followed a creation event, which can still be seen today. The theory behind the Big Bang suggests that intense short-wave radiation was released just a few hundred thousand years after the initial expansion. This radiation would have been stretched as the universe expanded, meaning that it would exist today in the form of microwave radiation. These microwaves from the Big Bang should still exist in all parts of the universe at all times and are therefore an excellent ‘make-or-break’ test for whether or not the universe did start 13.7 billion years ago.

Although the Big Bang microwaves were predicted in 1948, they were soon forgotten because astronomers did not have any technology that was sensitive enough to detect microwaves from outer space. However, in 1964 two American radio astronomers discovered them in an episode of pure serendipity. (Serendipity is the art of making fortunate discoveries by accident, or as one anonymous male scientist put it: ‘Serendipity means looking for a needle in a haystack and finding the farmer’s daughter.’)

Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were using something called a radio telescope to study galaxies. A radio telescope is like an ordinary telescope, except it is a large dish or cone and it detects radio waves instead of visible light waves. Annoyingly, the astronomers noticed that they were picking up unexpected radio waves coming all the time from all directions. Initially, they thought the signal might be an error caused by a component within the telescope, so they began to check every single element of the equipment. They searched for dodgy contacts, sloppy wiring, faulty electronics, misalignments in the cone and so on.

When they climbed inside the cone they discovered a pair of nesting pigeons that had deposited a ‘white dielectric material’. Thinking that this pigeon poo was somehow causing the spurious signal, they trapped the birds, placed them in a delivery van and had them released thirty miles away. The astronomers then scrubbed and polished the cone, but the pigeons obeyed their homing instinct, flew back to the telescope and started depositing white dielectric material all over again. When I met Arno Penzias in 2003, he described to me what happened when he recaptured the pigeons: ‘There was a pigeon fancier who was willing to strangle them for us, but I figured the most humane thing was just to open the cage and shoot them.’

Of course, even without the pigeons and their pigeon poo, the microwaves still kept coming and after several weeks Penzias and Wilson eventually realised that they had discovered the leftover radiation from the Big Bang. This was one of the most sensationally serendipitous discoveries in the history of science, and a decade later the lucky duo were rewarded with the Nobel Prize for essentially proving that the Big Bang had really happened.

Some people sneer at the accidental nature of this discovery and question whether it deserved the Nobel Prize. Such folk would do well to remember the words of Winston Churchill: ‘Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.’ Indeed, it seems likely that other astronomers probably detected the microwave radiation from the Big Bang before 1964, but it was so faint that they ignored it and carried on regardless.

In fact, you have probably witnessed this Big Bang radiation yourself without realising it, because most old radios are capable of picking up microwaves. And because a radio can act as a very, very, very primitive radio telescope I suggest that you use one as the focus for your Christmas celebration of the birth of the universe. Here’s what you need to do:

At some point over the Christmas period switch on an analogue radio and retune it so that you are not on any station. Instead of ‘Jingle Bells’ or ‘Away in a Manger’, all you should be able to hear is white noise. This gentle, calming hiss is the audible output caused by all sorts of random electromagnetic waves being picked up by your radio aerial. You cannot single them out, but can rest assured that about 1% or 2% of these waves are due to microwaves from the Big Bang. In other words, your humble radio is capable of detecting energy waves that were created over 13 billion years ago.

While everyone else is pulling crackers or arguing over the last chocolate orange segment, you can simply close your eyes and listen to the sound of the universe. You are experiencing the echo of the Big Bang, a relic of creation, the most ancient fossil in the universe.

The Great Bus Mystery
RICHARD DAWKINS

I was hoofing it down Regent Street, admiring the Christmas decorations, when I saw the bus. One of those bendy buses that mayors keep threatening with the old heave-ho. As it drove by, I looked up and got the message square in the monocle. You could have knocked me down with the proverbial. Another of the blighters nearly did knock me down as I set a course for the Dregs Club, where it was my purpose to inhale a festive snifter, and I saw the same thing on the side. There are some pretty deep thinkers to be found at the Dregs, as my regular readers know, but none of them could make a dent on the vexed question of the buses when I bowled it their way. Not even Swotty Postlethwaite, the club’s tame intellectual. So I decided to put my trust in a higher power.

‘Jarvis,’ I sang out, as I latchkeyed self into the old headquarters, shedding hat and stick on my way through the hall to consult the oracle. ‘I say, Jarvis, what about these buses?’

‘Sir?’

‘You know, Jarvis, the buses, the “What is this that roareth thus?” brigade, the bendy buses, the conveyances with the kink amidships. What’s going on, Jarvis? What price the bendy bus campaign?’

‘Well, sir, I understand that, while flexibility is often considered a virtue, these particular omnibuses have not given uniform satisfaction. Mayor Johnson…’

‘Never mind Mayor Johnson, Jarvis. Consign Boris to the back burner and bend the bean to the buses. I’m not referring to their bendiness per se, if that is the right expression.’ ‘Perfectly correct, sir. The Latin phrase might be literally construed…’

‘That’ll do for the Latin phrase Jarvis. Never mind their bendiness. Fix the attention on the slogan on the side. The orange-and-pink apparition that flashes by before you have a chance to read it properly. Something like “There’s no bally God, so put a sock in it and have a gargle with the lads.” That was the gist of it, anyway, although I may have foozled the fine print.’

‘Oh yes, sir, I am familiar with the admonition: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”’

‘That’s the baby, Jarvis. Probably no God. What’s it all about? Isn’t there a God, Jarvis?’

‘Well, sir, some would say it depends upon what you mean. All things which follow from the absolute nature of any attribute of God must always exist and be infinite, or, in other words, are eternal and infinite through the said attribute. Spinoza.’

‘Thank you, Jarvis, I don’t mind if I do. Not one I’ve heard of, but anything from your shaker, Jarvis, always hits the spot and reaches the parts other cocktails can’t. I’ll have a large Spinoza, shaken not stirred.’

‘No, sir, my allusion was to the philosopher Spinoza, the father of pantheism, although some prefer to speak of panentheism.’

‘Oh, that Spinoza. Yes, I remember he was a friend of yours. Seen much of him lately?’

‘No, sir, I was not present in the seventeenth century. Spinoza was a great favourite of Einstein, sir.’

‘Einstein, Jarvis? You mean the one with the hair and no socks?’

‘Yes, sir, arguably the greatest physicist of all time.’

‘Well, Jarvis, you can’t do better than that. Did Einstein believe in God?’

‘Not in the conventional sense of a personal God, sir, he was most emphatic on the point. Einstein believed in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.’

‘Gosh, Jarvis, bit of a googly there, but I think I get your drift. God’s just another word for the great outdoors, so we’re wasting our time lobbing prayers and worship in his general direction, what?’

‘Precisely, sir.’

‘If, indeed, he has a general direction,’ I added moodily, for I can spot a deep paradox as well as the next man, ask anyone at the Dregs. ‘But, Jarvis,’ I resumed, struck by a disturbing thought. ‘Does this mean I was also wasting my time when I won that prize for scripture knowledge at school? The one and only time I elicited so much as a murmur of praise from that prince of stinkers, the Rev. Aubrey Upcock? The high spot of my academic career, and it turns out to have been a dud, a washout, scrapped at the starting gate?’

‘Not entirely, sir. Parts of holy writ have great poetic merit, especially in the English translation known as the King James or Authorised Version of 1611. The cadences of the Book of Ecclesiastes and some of the prophets have seldom been surpassed, sir.’

‘You’ve said a mouthful there, Jarvis. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher. Who was the preacher, by the way, Jarvis?‘

‘That is not known, sir, but informed opinion agrees that he was wise. “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth.” He also evinced a haunting melancholy, sir. “When the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.” The New Testament too, sir, is not without its admirers. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…”’

‘Funny you should mention that, Jarvis. The passage was the very one I raised with the Rev. Aubrey, and it provoked a goodish bit of throat-clearing and shuffling of the trotters.’

‘Indeed, sir. What was the precise nature of the late headmaster’s discomfort?’

‘All that stuff about dying for our sins, redemption and atonement, Jarvis. All that “and with his stripes we are healed” carry-on. Being, in a modest way, no stranger to stripes administered by old Upcock, I put it to him straight: “When I’ve performed some misdemeanour”—or malfeasance, Jarvis?’

‘Either might be preferred, sir, depending on the gravity of the offence.’

‘So, as I was saying, when I was caught perpetrating some malfeasance or misdemeanour, I expected the swift retribution to land fairly and squarely on the Woofter trouser seat, not some other poor sap’s innocent derrière, if you get my meaning, Jarvis?’

‘Certainly, sir. The principle of the scapegoat has always been of dubious ethical and jurisprudential validity. Modern penal theory casts doubt on the very idea of retribution, even where it is the malefactor himself who is punished. It is correspondingly harder to justify vicarious punishment of an innocent substitute. I am pleased to hear that you received proper chastisement, sir.’

‘Quite, Jarvis.’

‘I am so sorry sir, I did not intend…’

‘Enough, Jarvis. This is not dudgeon. Umbrage has not been taken. We Woofters know when to move swiftly on. There’s more, Jarvis. I hadn’t finished my train of thought. Where was I?’

‘Your disquisition had just touched upon the injustice of vicarious punishment, sir.’

‘Yes, Jarvis, you put it very well. Injustice is right. Injustice hits the coconut with a crack that resounds around the shires. And it gets worse. Now, follow me like a puma here, Jarvis. Jesus was God, am I right?’

‘According to the Trinitarian doctrine promulgated by the early Church Fathers, sir, Jesus was the second person of the Triune God.’

‘Just as I thought, Jarvis. So God—the same God who made the world and was kitted out with enough nous to dive in and leave Einstein gasping at the shallow end, God the all-powerful and all-knowing creator of everything that opens and shuts, this paragon above the collarbone, this fount of wisdom and power—couldn’t think of a better way to forgive our sins than to turn himself over to the gendarmerie and have himself served up on toast. Jarvis, answer me this. If God wanted to forgive us, why didn’t he just forgive us? Why the torture, Jarvis? Whence the whips and scorpions, the nails and the agony? Why not just forgive us? Try that on your Victrola, Jarvis.’

‘Really, sir, you surpass yourself. That is most eloquently put. And if I might take the liberty, sir, you could even have gone further. According to many highly esteemed passages of traditional theological writing, the primary sin for which Jesus was atoning was the Original Sin of Adam.’

‘Dash it, Jarvis, you’re right. I remember making the point with some vim and élan. In fact, I rather think that may have been what tipped the scales in my favour and handed me the jackpot in that scripture knowledge fixture. But do go on, Jarvis, you interest me strangely. What was Adam’s sin? Something pretty fruity, I imagine. Something calculated to shake hell’s foundations?’

‘Tradition has it that he was apprehended eating an apple, sir.’

‘Scrumping, Jarvis? That was it? That was the sin that Jesus had to redeem—or atone according to choice? I’ve heard of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but a crucifixion for a scrumping? Jarvis, you’ve been at the cooking sherry. You are not serious, of course?’

‘Genesis does not specify the precise species of the purloined comestible, sir, but tradition has long held it to have been an apple. The point is academic, however, since modern science tells us that Adam did not in fact exist, and therefore was presumably in no position to sin.’

‘Jarvis, this takes the chocolate digestive, not to say the mottled oyster. It was bad enough that Jesus was tortured to atone for the sins of lots of other fellows. It got worse when you told me it was only one other fellow. It got worse still when that one fellow’s sin turned out to be nothing worse than half-inching a D’Arcy Spice. And now you tell me the blighter never existed in the first place. Jarvis, I am not known for my size in hats, but even I can see that this is completely doolally.’

‘I would not have ventured to use the epithet myself, sir, but there is much in what you say. Perhaps in mitigation I should mention that modern theologians regard the story of Adam, and his sin, as symbolic rather than literal.’

‘Symbolic, Jarvis? Symbolic? But the whips weren’t symbolic. The nails in the cross weren’t symbolic. If, Jarvis, when I was bending over that chair in the Rev. Aubrey’s study, I had protested that my misdemeanour, or malfeasance if you prefer, had been merely symbolic, what do you think he would have said?’

‘I can readily imagine that a pedagogue of his experience would have treated such a defensive plea with a generous measure of scepticism, sir.’

‘Indeed you are right, Jarvis. Upcock was a tough bimbo. I can still feel the twinges in damp weather. But perhaps I didn’t quite skewer the point, or nub, in re the symbolism?’

‘Well, sir, some might consider you a trifle hasty in your judgement. A theologian would probably aver that Adam’s symbolic sin was not so very negligible, since what it symbolised was all the sins of mankind, including those yet to be committed.’

‘Jarvis, this is pure apple sauce. “Yet to be committed”? Let me ask you to cast your mind back, yet again Jarvis, to that doom-laden scene in the beak’s study. Suppose I had said, from my vantage point doubled up over the armchair, “Headmaster, when you have administered the statutory six of the juiciest, may I respectfully request another six in consideration of all the other misdemeanours, or peccadilloes, which I may or may not decide to commit at any time into the indefinite future? Oh, and make that all future misdemeanours committed not just by me but by any of my pals.” Jarvis, it doesn’t add up. It doesn’t float the boat or ring the bell.’

‘I hope you will not take it as a liberty, sir, if I say that I am inclined to agree with you. And now, if you will excuse me, sir, I would like to resume decorating the room with holly and mistletoe, in preparation for the annual Yuletide festivities.’

‘Decorate if you insist, Jarvis, but I must say I hardly see the point any more. I expect the next thing you’ll tell me is that Jesus wasn’t really born in Bethlehem, and there never was a stable or shepherds or wise men following a star in the East.’

‘Oh no, sir, informed scholars from the nineteenth century onwards have dismissed those as legends, often invented to fulfil Old Testament prophecies. Charming legends but without historical verisimilitude.’

‘I feared as much. Well, come on, Jarvis, out with it. Do you believe in God?’

‘No, sir. Oh, I should have mentioned it before, sir, but Mrs Gregstead telephoned.’

I paled beneath the t. ‘Aunt Augusta? She isn’t coming here?’

‘She did intimate some such intention, sir. I gathered that she proposes to prevail upon you to accompany her to church on Christmas Day. She took the view that it might improve you, although she expressed a doubt that anything could. I rather fancy that is her footstep on the stairs now. If I might make the suggestion, sir…’

‘Anything, Jarvis, and be quick about it.’

‘I have unlocked the fire escape door in readiness, sir.’

‘Jarvis, you were wrong. There is a God.’

‘Thank you very much, sir. I endeavour to give satisfaction.’

Starry, Starry Night
PHIL PLAIT

When I was a kid, I used to have a real problem with Christmas.

It’s true. These feelings took root in those deep, dark recesses of childhood where my memory is now dimmed, but I suspect it all started because I was raised Jewish. No doubt some jealousy was involved—I do remember trying to tell my friends how much better Hanukkah was than Christmas because it lasted eight days and not just one—but I suspect it was also just getting sick and tired of constantly hearing about something in which I wasn’t participating.

I’m also pretty sure Christmas music had something to do with it. Man, I still hate Christmas music.

So of course I was teased a lot by the other kids. I grew up in a suburb of Washington, DC, and while there were many Jewish families, we were definitely a minority. Most of my friends were Christian, and in the days leading up to the end of December, Christmas was all they could talk about. I never believed in Santa no matter how much they tried to persuade me of his existence. That made me a bit of an outcast, of course, but I took some consolation in being right.

Over time, things—as they tend to do—changed. I was never that big on anything in the Jewish religion, even when I was very young. By middle school I was for all practical purposes an atheist…and I suppose that has never changed since, come to think of it. But despite that, my attitude towards the holiday season evolved.

In secondary school, my best friend was Marc. His family was kinda sorta Jewish (the father) and some flavour of Christian (the mother), and they had long since decided to celebrate Christmas every year as a family event. Marc and I were pretty close, so I was over at their house a lot, including at Christmas time. When the holiday approached I would help them get their tree, set it up, string the beads or fake cranberries or whatever the heck they were—I remember one year we tried popcorn, but were less than successful getting it to stay on the fishing line—and then we’d decorate the tree.

On the night before Christmas, my non-Christian house would be business as usual—dinner, fool around, read, whatever. Even then I was the budding astronomer, so I might take out my telescope for some relaxing, but frigid, sky viewing. But eventually I’d go to bed, unhappy that every freaking TV and radio station (this was long before the web, kiddies) was either playing the dreaded jingles or was simply off the air.

Once I was up in the morning the long wait would begin. I knew Marc and his brother Dave would have been up early, opening presents, getting all kinds of awesome gifts. One year they both got Nikon cameras; we were heavily into photography then, with my bathroom at home being a makeshift darkroom complete with noxious chemicals that my mom was always giving me grief over. The Nikon camera Marc got was really nice, much better than my crappy Konica…but no, jealousy wasn’t an issue then. Of course not.

Finally, after a tortuous wait, Marc would call and invite me over, and I honestly had fun sharing in their celebration. His mom would make a Yule log cake, and we’d eat tons of chocolate and then go outside in the snow and have fun.

So for a while Christmas was really cool. Of course, in high school I was a band dork, and that meant every December concert I played Christmas music. So the barely restrained murderous impulse was still there, but mollified a bit.

In college, things died down somewhat because all the other students left to go home and be with their families for the holiday. It was great for me because I could stay behind and make good use of all the fallow computers. My software written to analyse and model astronomical data ran scads faster since the machines were otherwise idle. I always got a huge amount done during those weeks.

But it was lonely.

With one exception, for a few years Christmas was neither a joy nor a drag. The holiday was just something that happened, a few weeks of sales at the stores, barely tolerable jingles over half-shot speakers at the malls, and half-price chocolate bars the day after the holiday. The one exception that stands out was spent studying for my PhD qualifying exams. I was home with my parents but I hardly saw them; I was up every night until 2 or 3 a.m. studying and doing endless exercises in calculus, physics, and astronomy. That particular holiday is now blurry in my memory, difficult to distinguish from fiercely complicated equations, dozens of pages of algebraic computations and notes, and endlessly having to sharpen my pencils.

But this too did pass. As did I, as far as my exams went. But it wouldn’t be the last time I would associate Christmas and astronomy.

To me, when I was younger, winter months always meant crisp, clean air, the sharp pinpoints of stars in the sky undimmed by the East Coast’s summer haze. In December especially, while my friends were dreaming of gifts and fun, my thoughts would turn to the brilliant colours of the stars in Orion as the constellation stood solidly over my southern horizon. I read everything I could about astronomy, and also practised what I read: I would haul my 80-kilo telescope to the end of the driveway and, shivering in the sub-freezing temperatures, patiently aim it at various objects in the sky. Jupiter, Venus, the Orion Nebula…these all became my friends as I spotted and studied them.

It was around that time of my life when it dawned on me that people generally misunderstood astronomy. I myself was a victim of this; when I was of a certain age I believed in all manner of nonsense, including UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle and astral projection (well, I didn’t actually believe in that last one, as even then I was a budding skeptic and decided to do some experimental testing; I tried to project my mind using a book I found at the library, but, sadly, the girl I had a crush on showed no signs the next day that I had spent an hour trying to communicate with her from a higher plane).

The more I read about astronomy, the more instances I found of people misapplying it. Horoscopes were hugely popular, of course, as was the idea of aliens having visited humans, teaching us how to draw really long straight lines in the desert and paint confusing imagery on our stone walls.

And, of course, every year in December, the newspapers would have articles about the Christmas Star. You know the story: a star appears in the sky to guide the three wise men to the birthplace of Jesus. From the King James Version:

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,

Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

A lot of folks in America like to interpret the Bible literally, so this passage is clear enough: an actual new Star appeared in the sky that guided the wise men to Jesus. Ignoring for a moment that if they lived to the east, and followed the Star to the east, they’d get further from Bethlehem rather than closer, and that while Matthew makes a big deal of the Star, Luke doesn’t even mention it—which already makes a literal interpretation of the Bible somewhat dicey—what we have here is an obvious astronomical tie-in with Christmas.

It’s a star, after all.

Even as a lad I could see the implications of this story, and certainly every Christmas special on TV has some variation of a brilliant star in the sky as a symbol for Christmas. Really, my getting involved once again with Christmas was unavoidable.

So I thought this legend over. Was the Star real? A lot of people thought so. That meant I had to look at the evidence.

It’s thought that the wise men were astrologers, so they would’ve had some familiarity with the sky; back then astronomy and astrology were pretty much the same thing, even if today they are as different as real medicine and homeopathy, or stage magicians and psychics, or…well, you get the point.

The point is, these guys would know the sky pretty well. If we take the Star at face value, then it must’ve been something amazing, because these three guys wouldn’t have dropped everything to make a long trek over some mundane star. The obvious conclusion is that it must have been very bright.

What astronomical objects are bright, can appear in the east, and disappear after some amount of time?

While there are lots of potential candidates, to an astronomer the answer is obvious: a supernova—a star that explodes at the end of its lifetime—is a perfect fit. So all we need to do for proof of this idea is to look for a 2,000-year-old supernova remnant, the expanding gas from such an explosion.

And lo, some do exist! But it turns out they wouldn’t have been in the east, or wouldn’t have been bright enough.

Certainly none fit the story well enough, and it’s doubtful any would’ve been enough to suddenly inspire a trio of men to get a hankering for a road trip in the desert.

If it wasn’t a supernova, then what was it? Another bright astronomical event is a conjunction, when two planets pass near each other in the sky. Jupiter and Venus are both astonishingly bright, and when they pass very close to each other would make a spectacular scene. And they can also both be in the east!

Were there any conjunctions like that around that time?

In fact, there were. Recently, an astronomer, using computer programs to map the positions of the planets in the sky, discovered that in 2 BC Venus and Jupiter passed very close to each other; so close in fact that to the eye they would have appeared as a single star! So have we found the Star?

Not so fast. First off, the planets move relative to each other, so even two days earlier or later they would’ve been seen as two separate objects. The wise men would never have mistaken that for a single star.

And oh, did I mention this apparition occurred in June? The wise men certainly took their time getting to Bethlehem!

Okay, so a planetary alignment doesn’t fit our Biblical bill either. And you can keep looking for other objects that might represent what the wise men are claimed to have seen, but at some point I think you have to realise that you’re grasping at cosmic straws. No real cosmic event matches the description in the Bible well enough to inspire the story.

And yet, people keep looking. In December every year, without fail, some newspaper article breathlessly reports some astronomer has found another candidate for the Star, yet another as-it-turns-out weak explanation for a Biblical passage of dubious reality.

And every year I read these articles and wonder, why do they try so? What are these people really searching for?

In 1992, as I could just start to spy the PhD lurking murkily at the end of my graduate career, I started dating Marcella. Two years later I had my degree and a job, and the next year Marcella and I were married. After a decade or more of no real religious involvement, I found myself with a Catholic family, one that really celebrated Christmas every year. Food, the tree, midnight mass, reading ‘The Night Before Christmas’, and yes (sigh), singing the dreaded carols. A year after Marcella and I married, our daughter was born, and that cemented the celebrations; in my family Christmas is absolutely for kids.

Now, it’s not like I jumped right into this. Thirty years of secular winters is more than just a habit. At first I was reluctant to participate much. And in some ways this new rekindling reawakened the reasons I didn’t like it all those years before.

But then something funny happened: one year, I decided I liked the tree.

It was cool. I had a tree in my house. Pine trees smell good. They’re pretty. Hanging ornaments and lights, if done properly, is actually rather festive. And I found I liked going out and physically getting the tree. We even once went to a huge farm where trees were grown specifically for the purpose, and I cut one down for us using a bow saw and everything. It was very macho.

Ironically, my wife—raised with this holiday—prefers fake trees. But maybe that’s because she always winds up doing the decorating (I’m hopeless at it, and likely to set fire to something) and it takes her all day. However, I won’t stand for an ersatz tree. Every year we get a real tree and let it make our house smell piney and arboreal.

And, yes, Christmassy.

Now, after many years of celebrating this holiday, I’ve come to really enjoy it. I know my in-laws well enough to know what kinds of gifts to get, and my own daughter makes it clear what she wants (somehow, the video games we get for her are always the kind Marcella wants to play). I always get the same sort of gift from them: a big Toblerone bar (400 grams!), thermal socks (my office is cold even in the summer) and various computer doodads and gizmos.

And every year I’m happy. I mean, honestly happy. Some people say the gifts are not the reason for the holiday, but they’re wrong: of course it’s about the gifts. They’re the centre-piece of the holiday; it’s about giving them, and having fun getting them, and then playing with them (or wearing or eating them) afterwards. And not to be all TV Christmas special here, but it’s about being with family while you’re doing all that.

So here I sit. An atheist, a skeptic, a guy raised Jewish who hated Christmas has found the meaning of the holiday, and he wasn’t even searching for it.

And every year, when I read the blogs, the papers, and watch the news, I see that same story of the Christmas Star resurrected, an undead story that won’t stay down. And people keep looking for the evidence.

But they won’t find it. They can’t. It’s just a story.

So for me, just being with family, enjoying their company: it’s enough. And, of course, every winter I still go outside to observe the sky and look at the stars, the real stars. You don’t need to search for them—they’re there, festooned across the sky for everyone to see.

The Ironed Trouser: Why 93% of Scientists Are Atheists (Depending on Who You Ask)
ADAM RUTHERFORD

Atheism and science should make good, comfortable, spooning bedfellows. Even though they are totally separate types of thing, the former being a position, the latter a process, the casual assumption is that they should skip hand in hand through gloriously evolved fields of reason. Those who oppose either or both like to conflate the two for a convenient jab-swing combo to pulverise rational thought in favour of religious fervour. Science must be bad because it lies so comfortably with godlessness.

The term ‘scientific atheism’ is tossed around sometimes, but I don’t really understand what it means. Atheism exists fully independently of science. As the onus is on the faithful to demonstrate the existence of Yahweh, Allah, Thor, Hanuman or whoever, atheists need to do nothing at all to be devoted to their stance. ‘Scientific atheism’ is equivalent to saying ‘ironed trousers’. Like science, ironing is a process, which can be applied to all manner of items: dresses, shirts, even underpants, if one were so inclined. It straightens things out, makes them fit together nicely. Fortunately, trousers exist and function perfectly adequately without ironing. And atheism exists without back up from science. But it does make it look a bit smarter.

In the twentieth century, there were several attempts to quantify the overlap of eggheads who were godheads. In 1916, psychologist James Leuba found that out of 1,000 scientists, 60% were agnostic or atheist. Eighty years later, the experiment was repeated, and the results were virtually identical. Within a different sample, only 7% of the members of the American National Academy of Sciences indicated a belief in God. More recently, a survey of the fellows at the UK’s most august scientific body, the Royal Society, revealed only 3.3% who believed in God.

As with so many surveys, it depends on who you ask, and how you phrase the question. Is the Royal Society a representative sample of scientists? Oh Lord, Mary Mother of Jesus, heavens to Betsy, Christ on a bicycle, no. How so no? For starters, only 5% of Royal Society fellows are women, something like ten times lower than in the general scientific community. A recent survey* indicated that Royal Society fellows are 38% grumpier than other scientists. Many fellows are so old it’s difficult to ascertain if they are even alive, let alone God-fearing. It is possible that this gives them an inside track on the big answer, but one would have to untimely wrest them from their peace to find out.

But what is clear is that those of a science bent are more likely to also lack religious faith. Why should this be? Because the process by which scientific knowledge is revealed is one that requires logic and rational thought at every stage. Any researcher will tell you that there are plenty of moments that necessitate creative guesswork, or simply having a wild stab in the dark, but in general these moments are massively outnumbered by the grinding out of small incremental steps towards better theories. Science as a way of acquiring knowledge certainly predisposes one towards ruling out the inconsistencies and irrationality inherent in religion.

Furthermore, science explains how things are. There is a nonsensical variant of the argument from ignorance referred to as the ‘God of the Gaps’. Very simply, where there is a hole in knowledge, insert God as the explanatory force. It’s nonsensical because historically, it was gaps all the way down. What science does very well is fill them in. To those gappists, I say ‘just because you don’t understand something, doesn’t mean I can’t’.

So, there are two robust reasons why scientists are less likely to be religious. But a much more interesting question is why any scientists are religious. Opponents sometimes screech that scientists have to have faith in science itself. This is true in a sense, but at least the robustness of the scientific method is such that a belief that the system works is based on countless data points which show it to be reliable: where once there was ignorance, science has inserted knowledge. Having faith requires an absence or ignorance of scientific evidence, a belief that is not supported by a logical progression. That’s why it’s called faith.

One might be tempted to suggest that scientists who believe are not very good scientists. Empirically this is simply not true, and I’m not talking about the preachers of that creationist fig-leaf they call Intelligent Design. No, there are plenty of good scientists who are religious, who have faith, who see the laws of nature, evolution, gravity, the whole damned universe as a manifestation of a non-interventionalist divine force that now acts like an absentee landlord: he sets up the rules of the cosmos and then clears off for ever. These people are technically Deists.

I don’t really see the point of this stance, but I accept that the cultural trappings of religion can be hard to shake. It may be one of my own bountiful shortcomings, but I have not stumbled across a convincing argument for this apparent internal conflict that doesn’t rely on a form of compartmentalisation of one’s rational and irrational minds.

And that’s fine. Everyone, even the most hardline rationalist, behaves in absurdly irrational ways. It’s the nature of humankind. I couldn’t believe in God any less: it makes no sense to me, and more importantly, my trust in science’s extraordinary explanatory abilities renders the need for divine answers superfluous. All things are potentially explicable without recourse to the supernatural. But that doesn’t mean I exist in a purely rational way. I’ve spent the last twenty-eight years supporting a football team who in that time have won a grand total of two trophies, both before I was seven. All because of the random cosmic happenstance of having emerged into the world in a hospital lift in the small market town of Ipswich. And even so, I will be a ‘tractor boy’ till my cardiac myocytes twitch their last. Is that rational? No. It’s not even very much fun much of the time, Goddammit.

While some consider it to be a weakness, the true strength of science is that it is always and willingly subject to being wrong. What scientific truth is right today may yet prove to be incorrect, or need to be modified in incremental steps towards a better, truer truth. If the supernatural turned out to be real, with God and angels and demons and unicorns and behemoths and whatever else, then it would instantly stop being super, and start being just natural. At that point, scientists would want to know what the hell was going on.

I like to fantasise that God does exist, and what He and I might talk about. In the extremely unlikely event that He did appear before me, it would indeed be a revelation. Who knows? I might even indulge in a bit of glossolalia. But once I’d reassembled my lower jaw, stopped gibbering, composed myself, and apologised to my devout Catholic gran for giving her such a hard time all these years, the realisation would be that although much of what we assume to be true is not, the revelation would simply open up a new, mouth-breathingly exciting branch of science. If He did make everything, quarks and all, then surely he’d be pretty excited to let us mortals make some new discoveries:

ME: Sorry about all that ardent non-believing I’ve been doing. By giving me choice, you didn’t really give me much choice.

GOD: Don’t sweat it. Any questions? I’m in a bit of a rush, I’ve got an urgent dice game to play with Einstein.

ME: Right. Did Maradona handle the ball in the 1986 World Cup Finals against England?

GOD: ‘Hand of God’, my divine arse. Nothing to do with me, mate.

ME: I forgive you. Listen, loads of questions to ask you, like, ‘What have you been up to for the last 13 billion years?’ and ‘What the hell is the point of Belgium?’ But I’m just going to stick to the facts: What are you made of?

GOD: Well…[answers in full]*

ME: Riiiight. Wow. That explains why in 10,000 years of history we haven’t been able to categorically verify one single instance of your existence.

GOD: Yeah, sorry about that.

ME: We’re gonna need some new technology and a seriously colossal grant to start researching this.

GOD: Anything else?

ME: One last thing: would you mind just clearing up the ‘Thou shalt not kill’ commandment? There seems to be a bit of confusion about it here on Earth.

GOD: [slightly embarrassed mumbling, exit stage left]

One can but dream. What scientists are very good at is asking questions. The scientific method provides a framework that allows us to ask those questions, rather than accept assertions. Take the example of the great and never-ending shouting match between those who understand evolution and those who are unencumbered by the gifts of fact or reason: creationists. A literal interpretation of the Biblical account of creation fails at every possible rational or scientific question one might put it. It is an assertion of truth based on nothing other than a fiction.

A thousand years ago, it wouldn’t have been all that easy to demonstrate how creationism is wrong. It existed largely in a knowledge vacuum, devoid of any evidence to the contrary, or any understandable evidence at all. The age of the Earth was unknown, the fact of evolution was unobserved, and the idea of a high-throughput automated fluorescent DNA sequencing machine was a matter for the dunking stool. For almost every question one could ask, the answer would be ‘we don’t know’. For many years Biblical creation was the only explanation. How were they to know that snakes have almost none of the physical attributes required to talk?

But by the first half of the nineteenth century, well before Charles Darwin graced us with evolution by natural selection, plenty of evidence had accrued that indicated that creationism could not be right. A whole steaming heap of wrong. And then in 1859 Darwin published On the Origin of Species. In it he outlined one big idea that not only fitted the observed evidence about the age of the Earth and the process of evolution, but it made predictions about what we would find next, many of which turned out to be very right. It’s not so much that creationism is wrong (which it most certainly is), but that evolution by natural selection is so much righter. So right in fact that it is now the only sensible way of understanding the origin of species on Earth. With varying degrees of wrongness other ideas and theories have come and, via the bypass of experiment and the slip road of failure, gone. It now seems unlikely that any theory will come along that could wholesale replace natural selection. But should that happen, scientists would be committed to investigating it fully. Currently, and for the foreseeable future, evolution by natural selection is categorically, emphatically and by far the best explanation for understanding the breathtaking diversity of life on Earth.

Evolution, as a scientific fact, is nothing much to do with being an atheist. It has a lot to do with ruling out medieval religious dogmas as childish hangovers from an ignorant past. But the process by which the fact of evolution was realised, tested and modified has a lot to do with the revelation of knowing that there is probably no God.

And that is science’s greatest strength: as a way of knowing. It’s an unending pathway towards knowledge and enlightenment about how stuff works. It’s a thought process based on observation, experimentation, rational thinking and logic. There’s no recourse to jumping to conclusions or leaps of faith. There are dogmas in science, but they are always subject to change. When it’s wrong, it’s wrong, and we need to modify our preconceptions and develop a new and better way of tackling the problem. That’s why science is the best way of knowing how things truly are. And as such, it’s a way of thinking that should have the effect of eroding faith. So whatever the real number of egghead godheads is, the fact that there are any at all reveals not a weakness of science, nor a strength of religion, but the fallibility of people.

*This survey was entirely made up, by me, for the purposes of making a glib point.

*Precise details of this section of this conversation were unavailable at the time of going to press.

The Large Hadron Collider: A Scientific Creation Story
BRIAN COX

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva is the biggest and most complicated scientific experiment ever attempted. Over 10,000 scientists and engineers from eighty-five countries have built a machine that can recreate the conditions present in the universe less than a billionth of a second after the Big Bang. The reason that the world has come together at CERN in the pursuit of pure knowledge is simple: we want to understand how the world came to be the way it is. This quest has led to a remarkable description of the violence and beauty of the origin of the world, and ultimately the emergence of life and civilisation in our universe.

Around 13.7 billion years ago, something interesting happened, and our universe began. One ten million billion billion billion billionths of a second later, gravity began to separate from the other forces of nature and has remained a weak enigma ever since. After a billion billion billion billionths of a second, the universe underwent an exponential expansion, growing from less than the size of an electron to the size of a melon in one hundred thousand billion billion billionths of a second. The universe then steadied its growth, and the energy that drove the expansion was transformed into sub-atomic particles, the building blocks of everything in the universe. Around a million millionths of a second after the interesting event, something known as the Higgs field began to behave in an unusual way. This caused most of the subatomic particles to acquire mass, and there was substance in the universe for the first time. From this point onwards, we are reasonably sure that our story is correct because over the last century the LHC’s smaller cousins have explored these violent conditions in exquisite detail. We are therefore the first culture in history that is engaged in a program to test our creation story experimentally. The primary job of the LHC is to explore the story during the time when the Higgs field became influential.

The LHC is a 27-kilometre-long circular machine that accelerates sub-atomic particles called protons to as close to the speed of light as is possible with our current technology. Approximately half of your body is made up of protons; the other half is made of neutrons. The machine straddles the border between Switzerland and France, which the protons cross twenty-two thousand times every second inside two parallel drainpipe-sized tubes. Over sixteen hundred powerful electromagnets, operating at—271 degrees Celsius, keep the protons spiralling neatly around the machine in precisely controlled orbits. The tubes cross at four points around the ring, allowing up to six hundred million protons to smash into each other every second at each point. Surrounding these mini-explosions are four detectors; digital cameras sitting inside cathedral-sized caverns a hundred metres below the vineyards and farms. It is their job to photograph the stage in our creation story that we want to explore.

According to theory, the Higgs field acts like cosmic treacle. The sub-atomic particles that make up our bodies and everything we can touch in our world acquire their masses by interacting with this all-pervasive stuff. Imagine attaching a string to a ping-pong ball and pulling it through a jar of thick treacle. If you didn’t know better, you might conclude that the ping-pong ball was very massive because it feels difficult to move. This is roughly how the Higgs field works in our best theory of the sub-atomic world known as the Standard Model of particle physics. It may sound far-fetched, but the Higgs model has survived for over forty years without actually being shown to be correct because it has very elegant mathematical properties that physicists find convincing.

With the LHC, however, D-day has arrived for the Higgs model. If it is correct, then particles associated with the Higgs field known as Higgs particles must show themselves in the LHC’s underground detectors. We can be so sure because, to do the job necessary in our creation story, the Higgs particles must be light enough for the LHC to create them in its high-energy proton collisions. If the Higgs particles don’t show up, then nature must have chosen some other mechanism to generate mass in the universe, and we will observe that instead. It’s as if the LHC allows us to journey back in time to the point in our story where mass appears in the universe for the first time, and take pictures of this most important of historical events. Because we can repeat the collisions billions of times, we can carry out very high-precision measurements that will allow us to investigate our creation story scientifically.

This time in the universe’s evolution is known as the electroweak era, because two of the four forces of nature, the familiar electromagnetic force and the less familiar weak nuclear force, reveal themselves as different facets of a single unified force at these temperatures. The weak nuclear force is shielded from our everyday experience deep within the atomic nucleus, but it is vital in allowing the sun to shine because it allows protons to change into neutrons, and therefore hydrogen to fuse into helium with the release of sunlight. The LHC will probe this unification, which intimately involves the Higgs mechanism, with unprecedented precision, and verify or refute our current theoretical models.

There are also hints that there may be surprises in store. Some particle physicists believe that the Standard Model Higgs theory is flawed because it requires a very delicate fine-tuning of parameters to make it work. Fine-tuning is considered ugly in physics; if the universe only works if the strengths of the forces or the masses of particles take on very precise values then physicists naturally want to know why this should be so. Coincidences do happen, but it is wise to look for more elegant explanations. There is a popular alternative to the Standard Model that goes by the name of the Minimally Supersymmetric Standard Model, or MSSM. This theory requires a doubling of the number of fundamental particles in the universe, plus no less than five different Higgs particles.

This sounds like additional complexity rather than an elegant simplification, but the MSSM achieves more than solving some of the fine-tuning problems: it also provides a possible answer to a decades-old problem in astronomy. It has been known for some time that there is much more matter in the universe than can be accounted for by simply counting up the number of stars and galaxies that we can see. In fact, it appears that five times as much matter is required to explain the orbits of stars around galaxies and the motions of large clusters of galaxies through the universe. Models of this missing stuff, known as Dark Matter, work best if the missing matter takes the form of an as yet undiscovered heavy sub-atomic particle. Within the MSSM, such a particle does exist, and if the model is correct then this particle and a whole new zoo of its sisters should show up at the LHC. Such a discovery would represent a giant leap in our understanding of the sub-atomic world and the evolution of the universe as a whole.

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