That's a cheerful title for a post isn't it?

Well, don't worry your pretty little heads out there in internet land, my normal silliness will soon resume, I just need to have a huff and puff over some current affairs. Anyone who is religious should probably stop reading now.

From July 15 to July 20, my fair and overdeveloped city of Sydney shall play host to what is billed to be "the time of your eternal life", also known as World Youth Day 2008 (WYD08). This event will see the majority of the city locked down and/or disrupted in order to facilitate the travel and congregation of thousands of young Catholics, clamouring to revel in the presence of none other than Pope Benedict XVI.

The Catholic church's own (conservative) estimate of the cost of the event, paid for by the New South Wales Government, is $150 million. This doesn't factor in $61 million of additional security, compensation to the those who normally use the land (Randwick Racecourse) for the event and emergency health care.

This has lead to the usual hoo-hah, those opposed claiming it's antithetical to the notion of separation of church and state, those opposed who believe it's an inconvenience, those who support it because of their beliefs, those who don't believe in it but support the notion of such an event because of the cultural benefits and of course, that most lovely of groups, those who don't care.

It's bleedingly obvious I'd object based on the inconvenience and the belief that our state shovelling money out for an amoral and wealthy church is a display of largesse so greasy, self serving and offensive to the under-serviced people of New South Wales that it is tantamount to high treason.

That is not the bulk of what I wish to talk about. What I do wish to talk about is an issue that has, by its nature, been once again rolled out for all to whine about endlessly. Atheism and what it means, as well as how it relates to organised religions.

The strongest objectors to WYD08 are atheists (those who don't believe in any creator or greater being) and agnostics (those who believe there may be such a being, but don't know which, or don't believe that any current religion adequately describes it). Of course, church groups in support of events like World Youth Day; or when speaking out against abortion, stem cell research or gay marriage; will of course label these people as simply belonging to an alternative belief system.

The claim put forth by the churches is that as agnostics and atheists have determined there is no evident higher power, they have established a religion of nothing. In doing so they use the greater numbers present in organised religions as a way of invalidating or demonising the arguments put forth by agnostics and atheists.

In my opinion, religion is a flawed mechanism relied upon by society to protect itself from ontological (read: life, death, the universe) fears, as well as enforcing behaviours (like monogamy or conformity). Texts in ancient times designed to proscribe desirable actions (like not ruining your clan's chances of procreating by being gay, or not stealing from your neighbour and starting a tribal war) were slowly fed rituals and lore so that they could continue to hold sway over people's advancing minds, as well as protect them from the all too human fear of death and non-existence.

As an atheist, I don't see myself as a nihilist or crusader for the dissolution of society and it's moral codes. Instead I simply see myself as the fellow who looks up to the sky, and sees the refraction of the sun's light. I look at trees and see the process of photosynthesis, look at rain and see the precipitation cycle. I don't assign these processes a creator or a higher purpose. To me and I assume to others who share this view, it makes perfect sense. There are no giant hands in the sky, no resurrected saints, no force fields protecting the faithful from bullets, no divine interventions protecting the world's "holy" sites. For all that is evident and plain there is nothing beyond the chaotic dissipation and coalescence of molecules and energy that make up the universe.

Those ancient texts that people cling to (the Quran, the Bible, the Torah etc) cannot be proven as being the spoken word of deities, and considering continued debate over who wrote what, and then who chose which parts of those texts to include in their current printed versions, they hardly seem like final and inviolate law. And the miracles and beauty to which they attest in nature have easy and simple physical causes, instead of just accepting these, they endow them with invisible and intangible purpose in order to feed their dreams of meaning and eternity.

If they simply did this, and were content to believe what they believed alone, I would be fine. However, their offense lies in the notion that they expect to be taken seriously, and to have their belief systems, the cobbled together moral lessons and fantasies of the past 2 millennia, enshrined in law or respected by all.

Organised religion usually fends off this criticism saying that they're a majority over agnostics and atheists, and that secular government and law would be another form of enforced belief. However, agnosticism and atheism are not belief systems, as I have said, they are freedom from belief. In other words, it is entirely possible for an atheist government to respect individual beliefs, and VOLUNTARY observance of religious tenets. However, it doesn't work the other way around, churches expect EVERYONE to forsake gay marriage, abortion and contraception in respect of their beliefs.

In an ideal world all governments would be secular, and religion would be free to the extent that it could not force others to adapt to its beliefs. Parents could send their children to religion-focused schools, but not expect all children to be made to pray, churches could teach their members that gay marriage was wrong, but not fight to prevent those who don't follow them from marrying.

However, this is not an ideal world. People need to believe, and they need to reinforce their belief by making others observe and pay for it. I, in the meantime, will continue to point at the sky, and say it's sunlight, and not an invisible higher power, making it blue.