During my long stay in hospital and my slow journey learning to walk again, I have thought a lot about life. Many fellow patients had worse illnesses than I have. They inspired me to focus on the positive. Accept what is real, then improve it. Be fair to myself, and to others. Shortly before my […]
In debates about freedom of religion, people often assume that these protections only apply to religious believers. But they don’t. They also apply to those of us who have nonreligious philosophical beliefs such as atheism, secularism, and humanism. The Council of Europe, based in Strasbourg, oversees the European Convention on Human Rights. The Council has […]
It’s about how we live, not just how we die When my late wife Anne Holliday was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, she made preparations to be able to take her own life at the end, if she needed to do so to avoid unnecessary suffering. Anne died naturally at the end. But the peace […]
Abraham Lincoln promised ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people.’ But a century later, in the 1960s, both main parties were top-down machines. Internal democracy was limited: party elites chose candidates and platforms, and voters then chose between the options given to them. I was born in Ireland during that era of […]
I used to study success, but noticed that many successful people were unhappy. So I decided to study happiness instead. What does the science actually say? The result is my personal model of “happying” as a verb, not a goal. You don’t pursue it. You do it. And the five elements of doing it form […]
Recent years have seen a massive culture shift in Irish marriages. And the pace of three major trends is increasing: Secular marriages up, Christian marriages down, and Spiritualist marriages up. This is yet more evidence that Ireland is no longer a Christian country. These trends are not immediately visible, as the CSO publishes limited marriage […]
I’m starting to blog again, two years after a fall and a rare neurological condition changed my life. Here’s what happened, and why I’m more grateful than ever to be alive. I’ve returned to my voluntary work with Atheist Ireland, and I’ll be writing here and on SubStack, about happiness, humour, reason, atheism, and secular […]
Atheist Ireland has obtained figures from the CSO showing the 62 types of wedding ceremonies in Ireland in 2022. They range from Roman Catholic to the Rites of Passage of the Indigenous Wisdom Tradition of Celtic Druid Temple. Only about 44% were some variation of what would currently be considered traditional religions. Four in ten […]
One in five Irish weddings last year were spiritualist ceremonies, according to information obtained by Atheist Ireland last week. This is twice the number you would think from the published CSO statistics, which hide half of the spiritualist marriages under the label ‘other religious’. This means fewer than 45% of Irish weddings last year were […]
The number of Catholic weddings has recovered from its dramatic drop during Covid, and has returned to the pattern of steady decline that has been happening for the past decade. In the decade since 2012, the percentage of Catholic weddings has dropped from 65.2% to 40.5%, and nonreligious weddings (civil registry and humanist) have risen […]