So In This Holy Weekend Here's A Question. Does Atheism Fuel My Welsh Nationalism?

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

So it's Good Friday and instead of going to Damascus I'm instead driving along the sunny A48 road to Bridgend for work. I'm listening to a BBC Radio 4 documentary I've downloaded on the writer Christopher Hitchens. An essayist and journalist who I chatted about almost at the very beginning of this blog oh those many years (three) ago.

In it Hitchens defends the rights of homosexuals to live their lives without any pressure from the Catholic church. That part alone was worth a listen to in an enthralling programme about a man who you might disagree with but would always feel stimulated by.

However just before that attack against church anti-gay behaviour there was a speaker who said that atheists (that Hitchens became) live their lives fuelled with a purpose that drives them. Or else family and loved ones asides life becomes pointless if you believe (as I do) that when you die nothing is going to happen other than you're going to be dumped into a glorified biological scrapheap that is a cemetery.

And that got me thinking to the title of this post. Does Atheism fuel my Welsh nationalism?

So let's say straight away that I'm not saying that those who believe in a particular religion cannot be nationalists. That would be stupid. It is just whether in the relatively short time I have on this planet (and as I'm fifty five even shorter) there is something subconscious in me to try and make the area around me better than it is now. Better indeed than it will probably be in the near future because of Brexit.

After all Welsh nationalism believes that a country should be free to make it's own decisions and yes make it's own mistakes as well, But since Brexit has shown the supposed mother of all parliaments and it's government at Westminster have been so inept they've made Laurel and Hardy seem like skilled operators in comparison then why not?

Now that this question has been lodged in my brain since yesterday I think that being an atheist has fuelled my Welsh nationalism. Outside of family it has given me a purpose. A goal. Whether people will remember me when I've gone who knows? But I will know that in my tiny, tiny way I have tried to make Wales a better place.

And I realise now that atheism has given me the push to do that.