Imagine there’s no heaven

It’s easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today…

— from Imagine by John Lennon

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“Hi, my name is Steve and I’m an atheist.”

OK, I admit it doesn’t the same ring to it as: “Hi, my name is Steve and I’m an alcoholic.” But admitting you’re an atheist these days is every bit as brave as admitting you were an alcoholic 30 or 40 years ago.

How did this come to be?

I can’t say for sure, but I think it has something to do with politics. At some point during Richard Nixon’s presidency in the United States in the late 1960s and early ’70s, religion and politics became entangled in a way that’s hard to explain. Like love and marriage, it now seems you can’t have one without the other — not if you plan to run for public office.

Last year, I spent endless hours following the U.S. presidential election. The Republican primaries, the conventions, the presidential debates — even the vice-presidential debates. Candidate after candidate evoked the name of God.

God bless America.

God bless the Republican Party.

God bless those who were born poor and have no hope of raising the millions it costs to run for the office of president.

It got me thinking: “What if an atheist wanted to run for president, or for prime minister in Canada?”

Sadly, I came to the belief that a woman, an openly gay person of either sex, a minority or someone with a disability would each have a better chance of becoming prime minister or president than an atheist. Which is a shame, really, because an atheist is exactly the kind of person we need to fill the top position in the land — be it Canada or America.

Hear me out.

First, atheists live in the here and now. No promise of an afterlife for us. If you’re an atheist, heaven is a place on Earth — not up among the clouds, just behind the pearly gates.

Atheists are also inherently honest. We don’t have the benefit of confession, like Catholics do, or soul-cleansing or forgiveness and atonement rituals like other religions. As Bob Dylan once sang: “To live outside the law, you must be honest.” Believe me, we atheists take this to heart.

Then, there’s the little matter of armed conflict. Consider these statistics:

Number of wars caused by atheism: zero.

Number of wars caused by religion: most of them.

If we had an atheist as prime minister or president, I guarantee you we’d spend a lot less of our time and resources trying to kill each other.

How come? It’s simple. Because there’s no afterlife for atheists, we can’t afford to find out we were wrong, after trying to nuke ourselves to heaven. Atheists have to find our peace and happiness right here on Earth — even if there’s the possibility there might be 72 virgins waiting in heaven for true believers.

Then there’s this one: Religious people like to say, God is love; atheists, on the other hand, believe love is God.

The difference is subtle, but real. All you have to do is turn on the TV and watch the endless parade of images dancing across the screen to get it. Shootings, stabbings, bombings — it seems there’s no end to the violence, hatred and intolerance. God is either dead, missing in action or just downright cruel and indifferent to the suffering of the innocent. And don’t get me started on the weather — so-called “acts of God” like hurricanes, earthquakes and tornados.

What’s missing in this debate, of course, is love — love and respect.

For instance, just because I’m an atheist doesn’t mean I won’t defend your right to believe whatever you want to. Why? Because I love and respect you as a human being. And because I understand the need for an imaginary friend. Whether it’s Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad — no one really knows for sure who’s right and who’s wrong. And that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it?

Although I have to be honest with you, as a practising atheist, there are days when I think I’d be better off worshipping little green men from outer space, or maybe my sweet dog, who if I were dyslexic, I would call “God”.

But enough. Let me end my little sermon by leaving you with the following thought:

Someone once said, “You can’t do it if you can’t dream it.” While I’ll never be president of the United States of America, and it’s unlikely I’ll be replacing the prime minister any time soon, I can dream.

An atheist as our leader.

Imagine.

Stephen Skyvington is the president of PoliTrain Inc. politrain@sympatico.ca

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CANADIAN PMs BY RELIGION

9: Catholics

4: Anglicans

3: Presbyterians

3: Baptists

2: United Church

1: Christian and Missionary Alliance