via Sydney Morning Herald
by Rachel Browne
July 17, 2011
Many Australians have abandoned the church but are also left cold by atheism. The third way is ‘spirituality’, writes Rachel Browne.
JUDITH LUCY lost her religion more than two decades ago.
Raised Catholic, at 12 she considered becoming a nun, before finding enlightenment in the more earthly pleasures of sex and alcohol.
It took the deaths of her adoptive parents, Ann and Tony, for Lucy to reconsider her position.
”I found it relatively easy to walk away from the church,” the 43-year-old comedian says from her Melbourne home.
”I went bang, that’s it, it’s all bullshit and [I] didn’t give it a moment’s thought for years.
”Then, when my parents died – and it’s so often the case when tragedy strikes – I found myself asking the big questions.”
And those themes provide the inspiration for her new series, Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey, which begins on ABC1 on July 27.
Starting with her baptism in the Catholic Church, the series follows Lucy as she explores different Christian faiths, eastern religions and new-age spiritualism.
”Over the last 10 years or so, I’ve become much more interested in the questions of why are we here and what’s the point of it all?” she says. ”Apart from getting laid, it’s pretty much all I think about.
”I thought, if I’m interested in this, so are a lot of other people because everyone believes in something, even if it’s nothing.”
Having spent time with everyone from psychics to Pentecostals to yoga devotees in the making of the series, did she come any closer to discovering the meaning of life?
”I am a little bit suspicious of anyone who reckons they do know,” Lucy says.
”There is so much about the universe we don’t understand I just throw my hands up in the air and shrug my shoulders. You know what? It’s certainly got me beat.”
What the series does achieve is to tap into a certain spiritual Zeitgeist.
While the number of Australians with religious affiliations has been declining for years, they are not becoming less spiritual.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 99 per cent of people believed in a deity at the 1901 census.
In 2006, 63.9 per cent identified themselves as Christians, down from 70.9 per cent in 1996. Those who stated no religion rose from 16.6 per cent in 1996 to 18.7 per cent in 2006.
Industries have sprung up to offer alternative forms of spiritual fulfilment, from yoga retreats and life coaching to four-day festivals with something for everybody.
Jane Ford, the managing director of Exhibitions and Events Australia, which runs five MindBodySpirit festivals in Australia each year, has observed the growth of the sector throughout the decades.
Since starting in the early 1980s, the MindBodySpirit festivals now draw more than 100,000 people each year. ”I think it’s grown as people have turned away from more traditional religion they were raised with or their parents were raised with,” Ford says.
”They still want spiritual and personal fulfilment but probably not through traditional means.
”One of the major reasons why people come to the festival is for spiritual enlightenment.
”We are facing a lot of stress in our lives, generally; life is not as simple as it was in our parents’ day.
”People are looking for meaning in their lives and that can take them down a spiritual path.”
The annual Happiness and its Causes conference has also grown during the years to become what is billed as one of the world’s biggest joy conventions.
Star speakers at this year’s conference, in Brisbane last month, included the Dalai Lama and Dr Jane Goodall.
More than 2000 people attended, paying $885 for the two-day main event and up to $1885 for a premium four-day pass.
However, the president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, David Nicholls, doesn’t believe his fellow atheists are seeking to fill the spiritual void in their outlooks with alternative philosophies.
”There will always be crystal gazers and star watchers and people who believe in ghosts,” Nicholls says.
”We are designed to look at very slim evidence and draw conclusions. But most people I know who are atheists don’t replace their lack of belief in God with something else.
”Most atheists are happy to have discovered that it’s most likely there is no such thing as a god.
”That, to me, is the only benefit
I want out of it. To me, that is the most important benefit I have had in my whole life.”
Melbourne will host the world’s biggest gathering of non-believers in April at the Global Atheist Convention, featuring speakers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris.
Nicholls says society is becoming a lot more comfortable with the idea of there being no God.
Even Julia Gillard is an atheist who became the first prime minister to take an affirmation of office rather than swear on the Bible when she assumed the top job.
”Atheists are people who class themselves as free thinkers; they just don’t have religion in their lives,” Nicholls says.
”That is really the definition of what atheism is. It’s from the Greek. ‘A’ – without, and ‘theos’ – deity.”
He puts the growth of non-believers down to better education and higher standards of living in Western countries.
”A few hundred years ago, people believed the Earth was flat and that it was the centre of the universe,” he says. ”We know a lot more about science now.
”Things that might have once been explained as God’s work can now be explained through science.
”A secure political system is certainly another thing which promotes non-religion.
”There is no threat of having your head chopped off or being shunned by the community if you challenge the prevailing religion.”
Nicholls believes next month’s census will reveal an even larger number of non-believers.
As for Judith Lucy, while she’s not totally sold on the concept of religion, she cannot definitively say there is no God.
”I’m slightly more open now,” she says.
”I’ve put a lot more thought into spirituality but I would still say I am only two degrees off being an atheist.”
Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey will air on ABC1 at 9:35 on Wednesday July 27.
Lucy’s program is not to be missed – your spiritual arse depends on it!
“Things that might have once been explained as God’s work can now be explained through science”
Like global warming scientests shoot them selves in the foot ……. according to the scientests the world has been warming up since “the ice age” with no population on the earth ….. now they are saying we are doing it with our bad habits
mmmmmmm
umm, there is global consensus among scientists on climate change Ken.
And yes, many things that used to be referred to as acts of god, can be explained by science. The more we know, the more a god becomes the god of the gaps.
Yes, there is uniequi-vocal declaring by some scientists that the earth’s climate is changing all the time. A lot like chicken-little. It’s been doing that for millenium and we don’t need scientists to tell us it is happening again. Especially since the sky still hasn’t fallen and if and when it does we won’t need scientists to tell us about it.
What are you on about? “We don’t need scientists to tell us it is happening again”? Not sure your point?
You don’t think understanding our contributions to climate change and the effects of that are important?
Jesus loves each and everyone equally, and he always will. His desire is that all people would seek relationship with him. Please dont make the mistake about all this being religion with rules that define how God will strike you dead when you do wrong. Jesus desires you to seek him, love him for what he did for all of us, and in doing so, desire to do what is right.
To deny him, is to deny the gift he gave us
In love, Chris
Hello Chris.
If Jesus loves me, why is he willing to cause me eternal pain just because I don’t love him ? Why not provide eternal happiness to those who love him and eternal nothingness to those who don’t ? Jesus also has a choice. He can choose to do no harm to those who happen not to love him.
Luke 14:26..”in order to be a disciple of Jesus, you must hate your family”
1 John 3:15..”if you hate your brother, you are a murderer.”
Revelation 21:8..”all murderers will burn in hell.”
Therefore, if you follow Jesus, you’ll burn in hell!
I would like to purchase tickets to the 2012 conferance how do i go about doing that?
Hi Geoff,
Tickets will be available to purchase soon. Sign up to receive updates via http://atheistconvention.org.au/contact
Actually, people haven’t believed the world was flat since before the Ancient Greeks. For some reason there’s this myth that everyone in the middle ages was a flat-earther, but apart from a few stragglers…a spherical earth has been the concensus for thousands of years.
Oh, apart from the Chinese who thought they lived on a disc til the 1600s
ok after reading this i had to post – I think a lot of people actually don’t understand true Christianity, and i know everyone on here will disagree anyways but i actually fell away from God after being catholic for 22 years as well….things like becoming a priest or nun is completely Un-biblical and Un-nessesary…..Catholism doesn’t teach the God of the actual bible, yeah they read the same bible but man has made there own laws teaching religion, laws that aren’t needed, whereas true Christianity is about relationship NOT religious doings and rituals and saying certain prayers.
I’m not on here to make people believe but be careful what you watch or what people say before you make a conclusion on believers or why we believe in God, because this lady clearly from what shes saying jumping from one thing to another cant distinguish ,understand or make up her mind on the difference between religion and God, new age and God, eastern spirituality and God. As religion, new age, eastern beliefs are truely Godless…therefore getting credibility out of this story is completely absurd. Just sayin….
HE IS THE KING OF KINGS … HE IS THE LORD OF LORDS .. HIS NAME IS JESUS JESUS JESUS !!!! OH HE IS THE KING.
PRAISE OUR WONDERFUL FATHER IN HEAVEN … WE LOVE U LORD, WE LOVE U JESUS … AMEN …
Why should Jesus protect you when you reject Him ?
Good one …… I trully believe the cathloc church has alot of explaining to do when they are judged by the Great King
“Star speakers at this year’s conference, in Brisbane last month, included the Dalai Lama and Dr Jane Goodall.
More than 2000 people attended, paying $885 for the two-day main event and up to $1885 for a premium four-day pass.”
Boy, those tele-evangelists could do with a few lessons on ripping people off from these folks!
Actually, eternal nothingness is the better translation of the Greek. But why commit spiritual suicide and be snuffed out of existence?
I would love to be there for this conference but I’m trying to figure out the point of a convention of atheists. Atheists claim they don’t offer a philosophy, they don’t offer a worldview, they have nothing to base morality upon since there is nothing cohesive about atheism, they have never created a viable culture, all they have is a non belief in dieties. So are you guys going to be presenting evidence for the non-existence of God? If so, I hope you’re video taping the conference and will share it with the rest of us who can’t attend. Thanks.
The reason we are coming together is in celebration of reason.
Reasoning and logic is undervalued especially considering the value put on faith in our society and around the globe. This affects different people in different ways. It allows us to talk about issues in society where religion garners rights above and beyond others and how to tackle them. It is about promoting the fact it is ok to be atheist, and folk are not alone. It is about curbing the bigotry toward those that do not believe that is prevalent in our communities. It is about showing solidarity with others that have been oppressed and or victimised by institutions, individuals and sects. In regard how decisions should be based on their merits. That inquiry and doubt are essential checks against deception, self deception, and error, and that logic and proper empirical method is the only way the whole world can arrive at an agreement on the truth about anything.
Not having a belief in a god does not stop people from considering all that is, and revelling in the wonder and beauty of the universe and our inspection of it, of discussing concepts like anyone else. Rather than just be told from thousand year old scriptures, we inspect concepts and ideas, build upon good ideas and if found to be flawed, start again. This process is a method that is self-correcting.
We just simply fail to find the evidence or lack of it for a god or gods, convincing enough to say ‘I believe’.
It’s about being open minded
There appears to be two different definitions of the word “faith”. (Come to think of it, there seem to be multiple definitions of the words “religion”, “atheism” “rational”, “god” and many others in this debate – I suppose it keeps us from resolution enough to sell books for both sides.) One definition of “faith” is the belief of something despite the lack of evidence or presence of evidence to the contrary, e.g. “I believe in God, because no one else has proved otherwise.” The other is the placing of trust in something in which one believes due to the presence of evidence, for instance, believing that the most rational reason for the presence of the laws of physics, life, sentience and rational thought (and indeed, evolution) is an all-powerful deity, and consequently putting one’s trust (faith) in that deity. One “faith” is the one that atheists (unsurprisingly) criticise. The other is one without which no human being can function – we have faith that our car will start in the morning, because we have it serviced. We have faith that our wife/husband isn’t cheating on us, because they haven’t done it before. We have faith that there is an atheist convention on, because it has been advertised. Whilst criticism of faith is not without value, the attempt to shame the word out of the English language is foolhardy – particularly when one considers the impossibility of the dismissal of the concept itself.