Atheism Camp: Heathens Score Own Goal With Monumentally Lame Idea

From the Sunday Times, a report that that Britain's first kids 'Atheism Camp' will be held in Somerset this summer.

"The five-day retreat is being subsidised by Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion, and is intended to provide an alternative to faith-based summer camps normally run by the Scouts and Christian groups...Dawkins said it was designed to "encourage children to think for themselves"...instead of singing Kum-bi-ya, they will sit around the embers belting out 'Imagine there's no heaven...and no religion too"...there will also be a £10 prize for the child who can prove the existence of the mythical unicorn."

Ugh. Apart from sounding like the wackest 'holiday' ever, this project just seems like a major own-goal for Dawkins and his disciples. Critics of hardcore atheists often accuse them of essentially making a religion of atheism itself, pointing to the inherent hypocrisy of demanding that people reject the dogma of religion while insisting on the primacy of their personal credo. Rational sceptics typically respond that rational skepticism does not represent a point of view, it suggests a method for arriving at one - atheism is the position arrived at at on the issue of religion having followed that method.

For a number of reasons, the foundation of an 'Atheism Camp' can only serve to undermine the credibility of the Dawkinite claim on a genuine 'think for yourself' policy. For starters - you've founded a camp. A space where children are sent by parents to have their children sold on a particular way of looking at the world. How can a situation where kids are removed from society for a period of time and gathered together to be told there's a right way of engaging with the world and a wrong way of engaging with that world not damage a legitimate culture of free-thinking? And the idea is so cute. Like the Atheist Campaign's 'There's probably no God' posters, the Atheist Camp concept is sort of based on a pun, like - 'Hey. Christian kids get sent to God Camp and sold on God. So get this - we're gonna run an Atheism Camp and sell kids Atheism. And instead of Kum-bi-ya, they're gonna sing Imagine.' The whole thing is bunk. It's self-defeating and disingenuous. Finally, kids are gonna resent being sent to this dork academy just as much as they would any faith camp you could send 'em to. They're gonna leave and run straight into the arms of Jesus.

In The Bleak Midwinter

"In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen,
Snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago."

There was a poll taken over Christmas - I forget a poll of whom...Radio 2 listeners maybe? - asking people to name their favourite Christmas song, and I - along with most people I spoke to about it - expressed no small amount of incredulity at what we considered to be a surprising and undeserving Number One: Christina Rossetti's 'In The Bleak Midwinter.' Indeed, my actual response was almost certainly something like:

" 'In The Bleak Midwinter?' What the hell kind of wrongheaded kill-joy pretentiousness pushed that to Number One? Hey guys - ever heard of Slade?"

But I absolutely retract this opinion now, based on the fact that I never really gave the song itself much thought when forming this 'opinion', aside from sort of half-remembering it as old, probably a bit dull and slow, and not as good as "All I Want For Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey. I have since fallen totally in love with it.

While taking a 'Blowing The Cobwebs Away' Walk in the North Yorkshire countryside after Christmas, strolling through as frosty a scene as I have ever encountered, I found the lyrics of 'In The Bleak Midwinter' turning around in my head, and within a few minutes and a few false-starts as we tried to get the words right, me and my girlfriend were singing it together as we jumped stiles and streams, the icy imagery perfectly describing the stunning crystallised landscape.

Rossetti's words in this first verse now stand as some of my favourite lyrics to any song. I've always enjoyed simple, stock images in lyrics...I like clarity, brevity in lyrics, ideas expressed with economy, have always liked blues and gospel lyrics filled with religious iconography. What I love about Rossetti's lyric here is that the solidness, the firmness of the images perfectly reflects the subject matter, this frozen, still landscape.

"Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone"

Earth like iron, water like stone. I love that. Not a syllable wasted. Everything that is to be expressed has been, and in the most elegantly simple manner. It's perfect.

I love equally the lines that follow:

"Snow had fallen,
Snow on snow,
Snow on snow"

So...you're describing snow, right? Lots of snow. It has snowed, then it has snowed again, and again, and now there are many layers of snow, each the same as the last. So how do you describe this? Some florid icing-cake metaphor? Something about the earth being draped in a blanket? Forget it. Rossetti goes for pure stark minimalism, repeating the word snow five times, mimicking the snow and the minimalist appearance of the landscape itself, the words piling up on top of one another on the page. It is hypnotic, it is precise, and it is a wonderful marriage of structure and image. What else needs to be said?

Allied with Gustav Holst's arrangement, 'In The Bleak Midwinter' is a spectacular piece of work, and without doubt the very finest of Christmas carols. I hope to sing it on many winter walks to come.

Richard Dawkins Is The Opium Of The People

Just thought I'd contribute to the debate surrounding this campaign with the following observation: this campaign is a hopelessly self-satisfied, smirky Dave Gorman-y type gap year stunt, preaching to the happily un-converted, dealing with a complex issue in a pointlessly unhelpful manner, and I'm just as offended by it, in fact more offended by it, than I am by finger-wagging Christian messages, which at least use an entertaining vocabulary and have snappier slogans. Would suggest that atheists take a leaf out of their own heathen book, and - as they're probably right about the whole No God thing - stop worrying and enjoy their lives. Shame on anybody who has found this campaign funny or impressive on any level. Yuk.