Sir, – Atheist Ireland did not "come out against" the 1916 commemorations, as suggested by Donald Clarke ("This atheist dogma is beyond belief", Opinion & Analysis, April 2nd). We said we respect the right of the Government to hold these commemorations, and the right of anyone, including Atheist Ireland members, to attend them.
We simply declined an invitation to watch them, just as President Michael D Higgins has since declined an invitation to attend a 1916 centenary dinner in Belfast. Nobody has suggested that Mr Higgins has “come out against” the Belfast commemorations.
Atheist Ireland is neutral between national political allegiances. We work alongside Atheist Northern Ireland and Atheism UK. We participate in an ongoing dialogue process with the Irish Government. We work with Atheist Alliance International on global issues. We spent last week briefing the UN in Geneva about secular human rights.
We are not, as Donald suggests, his leaders. Nobody represents all atheists. Atheists are individual people who typically value their personal philosophical independence. Atheist Ireland is an advocacy group that acts on behalf of our members to promote atheism, reason and an ethical secular constitution, laws, education and healthcare.
In this case, we declined an invitation to watch a commemoration of events that involved killing innocent people in the name of God, celebrated on the wrong day to reinforce religious connotations. We would have declined a similar invitation to watch a religiously-permeated commemoration of the first World War. And there are still people today killing innocent people in the name of their Gods.
We did not reject either Irish nationalism or unionism, or the non-religious aspects of the Proclamation.
One of our committee members had relatives involved in the 1916 Rising, one of whose funerals included a republican military salute.
Another is an Irish nationalist who grew up as a Catholic in west Belfast, and brought his children to the centenary commemorations.
Nor do we operate on the basis of dogma, as the headline on Donald’s article suggests. We believe applying reason to evidence is the best way to understand reality and morality. We reject both faith, which is believing things disproportionately to the evidence, and dogma, which is believing things without questioning them.
With hindsight, we should have added these explicit clarifications to our original statement, in order to avoid confusion. We will continue to promote atheism, reason and ethical secularism, and we remain happy to clarify any misunderstandings about what we do. – Yours, etc,
MICHAEL NUGENT,
Chairman,
Atheist Ireland,
Drumcondra,
Dublin 9.