There aren’t any overwhelming and inspiring collective atheist rituals. I don’t mean that these can’t exist. Olof Palme’s funeral procession was one unforgettable example. But they don’t exist today. Possibly, the London demonstration against Pope Benedict would qualify but in terms of numbers it was wholly insignificant compared with the crowds that he drew, or that flock to church every Sunday.
Against this point the committed atheist replies exactly as a liberal protestant would have done 20 years ago: bums on pews don’t matter; he or she is in the business of truth, not numbers, and the truth must in the course of time prevail. I don’t believe this. I don’t believe it in either case. Individualism without some myth of the collective is quite powerless. This is clearly illustrated by the Tea Party in America where the myth of a particular sort of extreme individualism is inseparable from the myths of a particular sort of America whose history has been invented in almost every detail.
If I’m right, then liberal, individualistic atheism is impossible as an organising principle of society because any doctrine that actually works to hold society together is indistinguishable from a religion. It needs its rituals and it needs its myths.
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