'I don't believe in the concept of an afterlife and it frightens me that people do believe in it,' Petty Officer Christopher Holden tells Riazat Butt

"Humanism doesn't have a lot to say about war and conflict; what it would say is that the subjugation of women and the lack of human flourishing might give a reason for this war," says Petty Officer Christopher Holden from 3 Commando Brigade, which is deployed in Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province.

The 38-year-old from Peterborough describes himself as a humanist because "it seems the most moral philosophy".

Christopher joined the Royal Navy in 1990, aged 17. He was, as he puts it, "flunking his A-levels with too much partying". His friends were in the forces. He wanted to travel so he signed up. He is on his first tour.



His experiences of church, like so many deployed troops, are restricted to births, marriages and deaths. In a similar vein, his only regular exposure to religion is the vigil, something explored earlier in this series. It is here that Christopher's feelings diverge from the established narrative. He feels ambivalence towards the ceremony and a "certain amount of anger".

It's overtly religious at vigils and that surprised me at first. I can see the need for a ritualised, communal expression of grief. I don't feel I'm forced to go against my will but there's an element of disbelief there, because I don't believe a word of it. I don't believe in the concept of an afterlife and it frightens me that people do believe in it. From that flows all manner of justification for certain things. Even though the vigils frustrate me they do offer a dependable mechanism for grieving.

Pascal's Wager seems to be at work in theatre - that living your life as if there were a God is a win-win situation. There is no harm done, everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Essentially you are religious or not depending on whether your parents were. If you had someone who was raised in a secular way, they won't drop to their knees out here. They'll have that mechanism ingrained in their mind.

While he objects to the religious elements of the vigil service he accepts that, in a military setting, it is the obvious choice. He doesn't want a vigil for himself, but ultimately he knows that, once he dies, the nature of his funeral won't affect him.

It wouldn't matter to me one way or another. But if there is an afterlife I wouldn't be screaming in rage. Perhaps when I was young I took it for granted that there was a God. There are a few lads who wouldn't want a religious vigil service. I do feel like I'm in a minority - but only at the vigil.

He feels a combination of tradition, established religion and a religious culture among the officer cadre contribute to the ties between the church and the army - especially the presence of a chaplaincy.

I'm ambivalent about military chaplaincy. On the one hand they offer a mechanism that seems difficult to replace in a secular way; that's because it's an institution, an institutional norm; there are ties between the church and the state as a whole. I'd welcome a humanist chaplain, but chaplain is the wrong word. As soon as you say chaplain you're talking about organisation and structure while humanists are about individualism. I can't imagine what you would call a humanist chaplain.

The world would be better off without religion and so would the armed forces, he says, but he concedes that chaplains and religion are a part of the military and always have been. "It's hard to shake tradition," he says.

• You can read more about Christopher's experiences in the October edition of New Humanist magazine. Read all Riazat Butt's posts from Afghanistan here