Is atheism in Malta on the rise? That is the suggestion that emerges from a recent poll carried out by Malta Today, which revealed that atheists and agnostics are now the second largest belief group in Malta – nearly doubling in number since a similar survey six years ago.
Some 4.5 per cent of people said they did not believe in God in the latest survey, ahead of those who identified as Muslim (2.6 per cent) but still small compared to other European countries where secularisation has taken a greater hold. In Norway, for example, a survey this week revealed that nontheists now outnumber believers for the first time ever.
“For a number of years we’ve seen a significant drop in religious practice, such as attending Mass on Sunday,” philosophy professor Joe Friggieri told The Sunday Times of Malta. “If people are abandoning core obligations of their religion, it is not surprising that we would also be seeing a drop in belief.”
Moral values can be based on a lot of things other than religion- Joe Friggieri
While the surveys show that faith in core religious teachings is declining along with practice, Prof. Friggieri added that people’s own conceptions of God and religion could be partly responsible for the shift away from religious belief.
“For a lot of people, God was introduced to them during their upbringing as a kind of store-keeper or floor manager – a provider of goods and services,” he said. “With that kind of ‘God of the gaps’ mentality, it’s quite understandable that one would stop believing when those goods and services aren’t delivered.”
But does a society increasingly – albeit slowly – turning away from God imply the future moral wasteland that has sometimes been claimed?
While highlighting the fact that religious values can and often do serve as a basis for morality, Prof. Friggieri is unconvinced.
“I don’t see Maltese society as being more moral than others simply because it is religious,” he said. “Moral values can be based on a lot of things other than religion.”
In any case, Malta is not alone in witnessing the trend. A 2014 study by the Pew Research Centre in the US similarly found that atheists and agnostics had nearly doubled since 2007, now standing at about 7.1 per cent.
Moreover, led by a wave of high-profile, media-savvy figures including Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson and the late Christopher Hitchens, non-believers are also now more visible than they have ever been in the past.
Often seen as a watershed, a campaign by humanist groups in London in 2009 raised some €190,000 to emblazon buses across the capital with the slogan: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”
“I think people are finding the encouragement to discard their former religion as they see more people doing it,” said Ramon Casha, president of the Malta Humanist Association. “In a broader sense, gods were invented to fill in the gaps in our knowledge of the universe – everything from lightning to rainbows and the reason the sun rises in the morning.
“Today we know better, making these gods redundant and more of an embarrassment than an explanation.”
Despite increased visibility and official legal protection, many humanists argue that atheists continue to be stigmatised – both by believers and by State structures and practices built around the weight of religious tradition. For Mr Casha, as belief itself fades, tradition is increasingly becoming the only thing holding the line for religion’s place in society.
“Personally, I think that many people say they are Catholic because they can’t think of another answer, or feel no pressing need to identify as anything else,” he said.
“Church used to be the centre of people’s lives; today it’s just the place where some people still go for half an hour every week, many only for tradition’s sake. The State should recognise that the idea of a homogenous Catholic Malta is a myth.”
For the Church, meanwhile, the figures might make for alarming reading. Certainly, the Church hierarchy has in the past taken an unequivocal stand against the creeping rise in non-belief.
The late Archbishop Joseph Mercieca declared in 2004 that atheism posed a threat to society, and that the view that religious principles should be put aside from public life was “based on a wrong understanding of the nature of human beings”.
The prayer is that they follow their instinct for truth and beauty and possibly meet the loving and compassionate God- Archbishop Charles Scicluna
Today, however, the view is markedly different. “There’s no one simple answer to the phenomenon,” said Archbishop Charles Scicluna. “We can’t argue with facts. We have to be comfortable in the context we live in.
“That doesn’t mean resigning ourselves to the situation; we have a mission, to continue to proclaim Jesus Christ, but we must do that while respecting the freedom and intelligence of the human person.”
Atheists, Mgr Scicluna argues, are not a homogenous group and all have different stories to tell: some have turned away from a “caricature of God”, some have taken a philosophical approach to the existence or absence of a deity, others have felt angered or pushed away by the Church and rejected God along with the institution.
Nevertheless, he insisted, the Church’s default position remains one of dialogue and engagement: “Every Good Friday, in the solemn liturgy, the Church has a special prayer for people who do not recognise God – the prayer is that they follow their instinct for truth and beauty and possibly meet the loving and compassionate God.”