We are the Nones
  by David Gleeson

I am a “none.” Chances are, every fourth person you meet on the street is a none, too. So are many of your friends, relatives, and business associates.

What is a “none”? It is an individual who claims no religious identity or affiliation. Nones find meaning in life without the help of organized religion. According to recent surveys, nones are the fastest growing “religious” group in the country, comprising close to 25% of the population.

Nones tend to lean to the left on political and social issues because they are free of the rigid constraints of “infallible” scripture. They see the world in varying shades of gray, not the black/white ideology of pious conservatism.


For example, nones know a human embryo bears little resemblance to a thinking, breathing adult, and therefore typically support stem-cell research and a woman’s right to end her early pregnancy. Nones are also more tolerant of homosexuals. We have no Bible telling us their lifestyle is an “abomination,” so we tend to see them not as freakish sinners but rather as responsible, caring adults who are entitled to the same medical, legal and financial protections enjoyed by the rest of us.


Whereas zealots spout on about hellfire and damnation, nones preach love and respect. Many mainstream religious denominations embrace a similar humanistic philosophy. If he were alive today, I suspect Jesus would, too.


If a none doesn’t embrace “spirituality” in the supernatural sense, what gives life significance? I can’t answer for everyone, but for me it is science. Science is my banquet – it’s what gives me my inspiration. There is more wonder in one chapter of an introductory astronomy text than in any ten Bibles. If you want to be blown away by the magnificence of creation, forget Genesis. Pick up a book by Richard Dawkins on evolution or by Stephen Hawking on Big Bang cosmology. The scientific explanations will numb you with amazement.

Science is not for the faint of heart, though. If you’re looking for confirmation that humans occupy a special place in the universe, don’t pick up a science book. In the few hundred years that science has prospered, our egos have taken quite a bruising. Science shows us the world as it truly is, not how we wish it to be – and certainly not how a misogynistic 2000-yearold nomadic tribal society envisioned it.

With science you get no guarantee of an afterlife, no preferred position at the right-hand of God, and no cosmic balancing-of-the-scales in the end. What you do get is a contradictory universe: one that is uncaring and often cruel, and yet at the same time endlessly wondrous and awe-inspiring.

 

So it will be the 60% of Americans who are currently indifferent to these matters who will eventually decide which way the pendulum swings.

Will we continue down the path of secular humanism and the scientific advances it produces, or will we succumb to our superstitious fears and plunge once again into a religious Dark Age?

“God” only knows. But one thing is for certain: we “nones” are here to stay.


 

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