The Colour Bald

I frequently get asked, 'Are you religious?', or if someone knows me a little better, 'You're not religious?' with a tentative little question mark on the end. My stock standard answer to the question was always 'no', usually with a kind of drawn out, sorry-to-have-let-you-down inflection. But recently I've been wondering if that's a precise response.

'Are you religious?' is a strange question. The adjective 'religious' is a strange word; it comes from the word 'religion', obviously, and that is practically impossible to define in a way that suits every phenomenon we apply the word to. I get the feeling that when someone asks if I am religious, what they really mean is, are you Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, and so on. That is, do you belong to a recognisable, organised institution of people with a certain set of beliefs about the supernatural: something I can understand and pinpoint in my mind. Have you labelled yourself?

This understanding of 'religion' is breaking apart in our current societies, however, which gives rise to the painfully overused response of 'I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual.' That is, I have a set of beliefs about the supernatural, but I have not taken them (as a whole) from any organised institution. Even of those who do label themselves, I would think a lot would fall into this category; the majority of people in developed societies feel free to pick, choose, edit and alter little snippets of belief from any number of religious traditions. So you have Christians who believe in reincarnation, or ignore parts of the Bible that paint a picture of God that goes against their individual conviction. Their beliefs are no less valid. There are as many religions as people on the planet.

But what of atheists, agnostics, humanists? Once again, these are labels that people apply to themselves on the basis of their stance towards the supernatural. And like the 'religious'/'spiritual' distinction, you have (it's a struggle not to use a label) people who believe the supernatural does not exist who do not self-identify as belonging to any of the specific branches of secular faith, like atheism or humanism.

Of course, unlike in the 'believer' case, these labels do not by and large refer to organised institutions. But they can; often the term 'life stance' is adopted as a subsitute for 'religion'. A good example is Humanism (with a capital H) which actually refers to an organised body of people, with publications, events, an ethical code and a statement of beliefs. And other strands of non-belief are beginning to crystallise: the fiery, dogmatic, ethically arrogant style of atheism touted by the likes of Richard Dawkins (a professional atheist, I'm sure) separating itself from the gentler styles of more tolerant atheism. Dawkins, through his website, books, public lectures and notably the Out Campaign, is shaping himself as something of a charismatic leader in the atheist community; and as the history of religions shows, the views of successful charismatic leaders are eventually routinised and channelled into institutional forms. Will we eventually have Dawkinsian sermons and bishops to accompany his canonical literature?

A friend once argued to me that calling atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair colour. I still beg to differ: if we stop looking at religion and spirituality and messy words like those, and start talking about stances toward the supernatural, then clearly atheism stands alongside Christianity, Buddhism and the rest as an equal. 'There is no supernatural' is, to me, an identically worthy claim as 'the supernatural affects my life in the following ways'.

Additionally, there is a distinction between people who actually think about, dwell, question, and decide upon their stance towards the supernatural, and those whose beliefs make absolutely no difference to them. This is what we really should be asking each other: not what religion you belong to, if any, but if you actually care. And if you do care, you could be Dawkinsian or agnostic just as validly as you could be Hindu or Islamic. Perhaps, just to confuse people terribly, I should begin answering that awful question with, 'Yes, I'm an atheist.'

Wikiracing

Possibly the best sport ever, wikiracing has established itself in my mind as the perfect social celebration of one's nerdiness. Basically, you pick two random pages on Wikipedia and race other people from one to the other, using links to other Wikipedia pages. It's fun and surprisingly educational, at least in the pub trivia sense of the word. I've unfortunately only managed to engage in one official set of wikiraces, complete with the entirely embarrassing experience of an old friend walking over halfway through and innocently asking what we were doing.

I took the first race- evidently my prior training at home helped- from the 1974-75 Toronto Maple Leafs Season (ice hockey) to the Macanga District, a stub article about a tiny district in Mozambique. My friend took the next four, including memorable races from George Brent Mickum IV to List of Farscape Episodes, and from Killeen Independent School District to List of cities in the Americas with alternative names, a particularly devilish article to pin down. I took another two after that, re-establishing some geek cred with the final trek from Soki, a type of Japanese pork dish, to Laudakia Caucasia, a reptile native to central Asia. So I lost the seven rounder 3-4, and have temporarily bowed down to my opponent's superior wikiracing skill.

Now there are, of course, many dry details that I have not included here, such as the method of deciding which pages are used, the time allowed to study the goal page before you begin, and exactly what features of Wikipedia are allowed (the search function, for example, is obviously illegal). Of greater interest are the strategies that developed:

1. Geography is the easiest way to get between disparate articles. Most articles link to a country page, and from there it is a simple matter to follow diplomatic and geographic links to any other country, from which one can narrow back down again.
2. Categories are gold mines. Knowing what categories the target article belongs to makes the process a whole lot easier.
3. Actually knowing stuff can also help. In some situations.

At the end of the day it's simply fun. Play it, enjoy it, tell your friends: I yearn for the day when I can proudly answer the questions, 'what are you doing in your lunch break?', 'how did you study for that course?' and 'what are you doing on your first date?' all with one word: Wikiracing.