My Atheism, Charles Hanson

Amongst the details to be noted by staff on a person's reception into prison will be his or her religion. It is likely that those who are unsure of their religious affiliation will be registered as Church of England.

This keeps things simple and avoids problems. Everyone has a religious belief of some sort don't they?

An inmate who professes a belief outside of the mainstream will find that the chaplain, who is always the Church of England will be the one who holds the key for access to the appropriate minister, so to get the practitioner of one's choice one is forced to go through the Church of England representative like it or not.

Nor can those who brave the elements and register as being of 'No Religion' escape. An inmate who registers as thus will find in time that the chaplain will be foisted upon him when a 'Chaplain's Report' is required for an assessment or the Parole Board, although by that time, he will probably already have had the dubious pleasure of finding the chaplain appearing in his cell doorway, curious as to how anyone could disbelieve in the existence of God. At such moments there will be some probing into the inmate's background in an attempt to elicit information of some sort of religious heritage thereby opening the way to a re-conversion to the fold. But for those inmates who make it clear that they really are confirmed atheists, well this is going too far.

To religious officialdom 'Atheists' represent a far more serious case than that posed by the 'No Religion' prisoners who have just not yet made up their minds - or have yet to find their chosen God. A total rejection of the Deity will attract not only a certain curiosity but also from some, a positive resentment.

In certain official philosophies, Godlessness is equated with badness as though only Christianity holds the key to morality. This is an attempt to create a monopoly and should be reported to the Government agency set up to investigate those monopolies that seek to exploit others.

But even so, any monopoly that assumes itself to be the only avenue to an ethical life is, I would argue loaded with arrogance as well as being unlawful. And try telling it to the other major religious groups in the world.

In prison, one is brought abruptly, and often violently, in contact with a reality undreamt of by 'The Man in the Street.' as it is all too often the 'Man in the Next Cell' who occupies one's waking hours as do the prison officials, uniformed and otherwise.

One of the most pivotal posts in the system is that of the Chaplain though this is not immediately apparent. But once in prison one's religious beliefs and the part they play in your life whilst inside takes on a totally different aspect altogether. And one is almost forced to examine one's whole relationship with religion and with its chosen advocate for the man inside, the Church of England Prison Chaplain. My own religious beginnings however are fairly unrepresentative of prisoners.

By way of the Sunday school route, including a spell as an evening chorister at St. Paul's Cathedral and at that time I had St. Paul's 'childish thoughts' and 'saw through a glass darkly*.

But then almost forty years ago, I was arrested for the first time and sent to borstal which brought me for the first time into contact with organised religion as a tool of the State. In those days, prison church attendance was compulsory, whatever shade or persuasion one was; and in his infallibility the prison chaplain determined the belief system that would lead to redemption.

On one occasion as a young prisoner, I was placed in a prison hospital strip cell. This is a cell devoid of any furniture and reserved for disruptive or refractory inmates. I was also compelled to wear restraint clothing comprising of a canvas gown, my toilet was a bucket, my only comforts being a mattress on the floor and there I stayed for three days.

On the second day the prison chaplain attended upon me to enquire how I was which was as good as I looked. I was invited to partake of a bible he had brought with him my first thought was he couldn't have been serious - here am I, eighteen years old, being treated as less than human and all I am offered is a bible. I rounded on him through the open hatch with a torrent of abuse which he duly reported to prison staff, no doubt in a very civilised manner. Though when they duly attended on me it was in a far from civilised fashion. I've often wondered if this Christian Chaplain knew what was going to happen to me or was he just another quasi-official visitor whose five senses strangely begin to fail them once they enter the main gates? From that moment the seeds of doubt were planted about prison chaplains, a doubt which combined with what I consider to be rational thought, eventually led me to 'My Atheism.'

But before approaching the processes that led me to Atheism, it might be profitable to examine the background of these men - How did they originate? What is their brief? How they are recruited? What do they actually do? And what do they achieve? What does religion mean?

The notion of God came at a time in human history when natural disaster was interpreted as the wrath of God, or perhaps a deliverance from ones enemies. Christians also believed for years that the earth was flat. The voice of God, which so many of the faithful claim to have heard, being decisively silent on this matter. And why continue to live in ignorance when all the solutions are available for a prayer? Of course, religion had a powerful hold on the life of almost all communities down through the years. The ignorant and illiterate, who knew little of life beyond their own community were always prey to the manipulation of the church. There was a time when the village parson would impose a fine for non-attendance at church. In addition, the poor often relied on parish relief and assistance, meaning handouts to the God fearing. This, I suppose, was God looking after his own. But as God wasn't always available a class of men sprang up who did the work for him. His priests. These interpreted his wishes and commands - contained in the two volumes of the Bible. The Old, and New, Testaments.

I am told that the bible is the word of God and that it was based on divine intervention, who said so? The Old Testament was put together a few hundred years before Christ, the New Testament at least seventy years after his death, Christ himself left nothing in writing, which is fortunate - otherwise many people would be out of a job. And have you read it lately?

The Old Testament being a catalogue of murder, mayhem, pillage, rape and destruction, with God telling Abraham to kill his first born, David taking other men's wives, I find only the ten commandments that give some basis for a moral life, but which few of the characters in the Old Testament chose to even follow.

The myths and interpretations continue to this day.

In my view, the New Testament represents a series of contradictory accounts as to the birth, life and death of Jesus. Yet in spite of these variations, many believers accept every word, if I may use the pun, as gospel.

Many of the beliefs we understand to be particularly Christians can be found in the Pagan, Greek. Egyptian and Roman religions. So a class of men grew and prospered by advocating a system of beliefs that, in general, although preaching truth and charity, seemed to favour the rich and powerful. The poor being promised their reward in 'Heaven' which is fair enough if there was nothing for them on Earth. And it is from the men who made these sort of speculative promises that the Prison Chaplain evolved.

The heyday for prison chaplains was the period from the middle of the 19th century until the 1960's. There was a religious element to the design of prisons where it was thought that cellular confinement with a silent regime, and accompanied by a bible and compulsory church attendance would bring about redemption. The ignorance of most people, not least of the all the vulnerable prisoners, ensured a ripe breeding ground for religious indoctrination. Almost all prisoners duly went along with this nonsense. After all, a person about to be burned at the stake is likely to denounce witchcraft.

But to return to the present. I recently wrote to the Chaplain General of the Prison Service, David Fleming, asking what provisions are made for atheists and secularist prisoners. I further enquired whether facilities might be made available for inmates like myself, as a member of the National Secular Society to receive visits from like minded people from that society such as Denis Cobell appointed as humanist chaplain to both the mayor of the London Borough of Lewisham and to the Greenwich Healthcare Trust The Honourary Associates of the National Secular Society include Ludovic Kennedy, Claire Rayner, Joan Ruddock, Gore Vidal, various academics, politicians and members of the House of Lords. I believed that I would receive a favourable answer to my letter, not so, The Chaplain General explained that I was already catered for in the same way as those registered as nil-religion. Obviously, what I was trying to establish and clarify was lost on him. The Prison Service including Paganism caters for most religions. Indeed, ministers from the Pagan Federation are on the approved list of Prison Service ministers.

Scientology and Rastafarianism, however, are proscribed. It seems that the Prison Service is intent on dictating one's beliefs and what access prisoners should have to their respective ministers or advisor. Today, in the view of the negative publicity that can occur, the pressure is subtler.

Prison chaplains write reports on prisoners, sit on assessment boards that determine an inmate's future, and liaise with the various departments within the prison - including security and management Indeed, the prison chaplain's position within the prison staff hierarchy is on the same level as an uniformed Principal Officer, the Head of Security, Industrial Manager and the Head of Education. There is a tendency to perceive atheists and secularists as misguided, perhaps politically motivated and at worst drawn towards 'heathen' beliefs like Satanism.

The turning point for me was Ludovic Kennedy's book ' All in the Mind.'

This demonstrated to me how for so long we humans have deceived ourselves in trying to seek answers for our existence, and pre-occupied ourselves with the irrationality, illogicality, idealism, trivialities and the nonsense of religion. I arrived at conclusions about religion whose only adequate response was one of atheism. I now regard all religion in the same way as I regard supernaturalism, clairvoyance, tarot cards and tea leaf reading which are all manifestations of the search for meaning to our being, there is a tendency to search for and give meaning to all manner of things that affect our everyday existence, including abstractions. I would argue that all of this nonsense is born out of ignorance and is a 'left over' from the days when things 'not understood* were deemed to be acts of God. I began to see the religion for what it is often no more than an emotional crutch for those incapable of overcoming human adversity. For others an escapism, whilst for the most ludicrous - a second chance in some after-life.

Human reason persuades me that there is nothing mysterious about organised religion, the mysteries I would suggest lies in the human potential for nonsense. I am often challenged about my stance and am often confronted with the notion that there must be a reason for our existence. That there must be 'something* else apart from what we know. It is interesting that those who push this view have no idea themselves what this 'something' is. Instead, why not make the most of what we do know, and instead of the exertions that the religious put into the prospect of their own soul, try instead to improve the quality of life in the here and now and in so doing create a better world, instead of the bloodshed and conflicts that are so often instigated by religious differences.

I also considered the notion about God moving in mysterious ways. I could at least grasp that, for if a God does exist, it's a mystery why he causes so much suffering with famines, earthquakes, floods and other catastrophes, in terms of human suffering that makes him not an understanding God but a cruel and wicked one. Moreover if God is mysterious, does that mean he is incomprehensible? If so, surely it is nonsense, and a great waste of time, to believe in something that can never be understood. The concept of God to me is unintelligible, for surely, man cannot have free-will if his future is already decided, already mapped out and surely if God can foresee the future all the ills of mankind, the 'natural' disasters, wars, suffering, incurable illnesses and unexplained phenomena could be put to rest.

That seems unlikely given that God, through religion has been responsible for so much bloodshed between those made in the image of him. Believers have often told me that they will pray for me. I really have no idea why. There is more chance of me flying to the moon than reverting to the nonsense of religion, even though I am serving a life sentence and need all the spiritual help I can get to see me through my incarceration. Prayers might give some people comfort, but in time most problems will resolve themselves, although the religious would claim divine intervention. Me? I would prefer to talk to myself, for I know that my answers will be the right ones Jesus was not born on the 25th December, nor was he crucified at the period of the year in which we now know to be Easter.

A part of the year that has a Pagan significance. The cross, of course, appears as a Greek symbol many years before Jesus, there is nothing phenomenal about any of this. The millennium celebrations was as expected all hyped-up, the 200th anniversary of Jesus's birth, really? This is remarkable for my calculations make the year 2001 as the start of the new millennium, there was no 0-year.

We saw the religious eccentricities, threats of mass suicides, the end of the world, the Second Coming and all the other hocus-pocus, how would we know were Jesus to return? Who would believe him? Claims to be God or Jesus usually results in one being hospitalised in a psychiatric ward.

My atheism is based not only on human reasoning but also by the lack of any acceptable evidence for the existence of God or the after-life. Of course we hear of the miracles, but there have always been those who have perfected the art of magic and illusions. Jesus himself would have been captivated by the trickery of Paul Daniels. If we add to the fact that many of us look for escapism in our everyday lives, the rider that nothing fascinates us more than ourselves, we are obviously cannon fodder to fortune tellers and clairvoyants; and ripe for plucking as regards aliens, UFO's, the Loch Ness Monster and other phenomena. Somewhere in there is also religion. The philosopher Bertrand Russell on being asked once what he would say were he to meet God responded with, "God why have you made your existence so difficult to prove?" Isn't that enlightening?

All religions are surrounded and entrenched in symbolism, rituals and primitive superstitions whether or not to eat pork, covering ones head, discarding one's shoes before prayer to lighting candles, and what could be more grotesque than the symbolic eating of Jesus's body and drinking his blood, in any other society this might be seen as some type of cannibalistic ritual.

As we go into the 21st century religion is at last beginning to play a lesser role in people's lives. The 1997 Christian Handbook on religious trends reports that only 2% of the population attends church, and only 5% of the 20 to 29 year old age group do so. A 1999 Gallup Poll carried out for the Daily Telegraph showed that 25% of men did not believe in God, the same poll suggests that only half of the 16 to 24 year Olds believed in the Virgin birth and 30% of the same group considered themselves to be Christians. In Holland the move towards atheism is even more dramatic. In 1900 only 1% of the population were not Christians, by 1958 the figure was up to 24% and in 1991 it had risen to 51%. It is estimated that by the year 2002 only 25% of the population will be Christian. In spite of the decline in religious faith, the Prison Service claims that 80% of prisoners identify themselves as having a religious belief, leaving the other 20% like myself of no faith, being under represented. These figures are based on a 1998 survey suggesting of the 64.000 prisoners then, only 14.000 were nil religion or atheists, this strikes me as being remarkable, for these figures show that there exists a higher percentage of believers in prison than outside of it, does this suggest that Christians are statistically more liable to break the law than non-believers.

Is it not about time to rectify the situation for genuine non-believers like myself, those who demonstrate a clear commitment to non-belief, by permitting fellow atheists ideally a member of one of the registered societies to be allowed the same facilities as any other recognised minister? Or is discrimination just another of the manifestations of religion's shortcomings? I know from personal experience that prison chaplains have always been aware of the abuses within our prisons, and I do not accept that there are good prison chaplains when and where such abuses take place. They might not participate in the evils, but they are as equally as culpable if they stand by and ignore them giving the perpetrators tacit approval. It is very much 'see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil*.

Prison chaplains, always know which side their bread is buttered on, there is no mileage in rocking the boat. "It's more than my job is worth."

Charles Hanson, HMP Kingston, December 2001