For the second time in a week, I have written a post that I have deleted in an act of self-censorship.

A little while ago, Paul Graham had an essay about all those things that you are not allowed to say.

The Conformist Test

Let’s start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?

If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you’re supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn’t. Odds are you just think whatever you’re told.

To be clear - the opinions that I censored are things that I often talk about with my peers. We had such a good time discussing one of those topics at the pub last week that I rushed home to blog about it but then, in an act of cowardice, found myself unable to push the publish button. It’s not my peers that I am afraid of. It’s liberal orthodoxy (it would probably offend conservative othodoxy too, but I don’t care so much about offending that).

Paul Graham goes on…

Like every other era in history, our moral map almost certainly contains a few mistakes. And anyone who makes the same mistakes probably didn’t do it by accident. It would be like someone claiming they had independently decided in 1972 that bell-bottom jeans were a good idea.

If you believe everything you’re supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn’t also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s– or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have.

How does an opinion rise to the level of orthodoxy when it is so obviously wrong? More to the point - how to we bring it down again?

It’s not easy being a blogger when all the best topics are forbidden.

Captain Groggy Swag and I were having a pleasant chat in the comments to my post on Songs of Praise about whether it is appropriate for an atheist to sing Carols or say Grace.

There are some religious things that are ingrained into our daily lives that do bug me. What do you do when you sit at a dinner table and someone says grace?

- Captain Groggy Swag

I confessed that I rather enjoy all the trappings of Cultural Christianity. I enjoy the songs, I have a nativity scene on my mantelpiece and I insist that our Christmas cards feature scenes from Luke and Matthew. I really miss not hearing sacred music played around Christmas time and the whole Frosty the Snowman and fat men in red coats thing bothers me much more than it should.

The Times picks up the trail after Richard Dawkins’ recent admission that he happily sings along to God Rest You Merry Gentlemen along with the rest of us Cultural Christians and Ceremonial Deists.

But the really fabulous news I mentioned is that Richard Dawkins, Prophet of Atheism, has said in a BBC interview that he is not against “cultural” Christianity and “Yes, I like singing carols along with everyone else”. Which raises enough tantalising philosophical and ethical questions to keep us going till Christmas Eve. Dawkins sings carols? Does he sing all the words? Does he boom out lines about herald angels, holy nights, the tender Lamb promised from eternal years? Does he croon: “What can I give Him, poor as I am?” Does the polemicist who gave three eloquent pages to deconstructing the story of St Luke’s Gospel happily warble O Little Town of Bethlehem and Once in Royal David’s City? Does the man who says that religious education is tantamount to “child abuse” feel wholly comfortable crooning Away in a Manger?

Apart from the fact that she mentions my three favourite Carols in a single paragraph, I enjoyed her article because it gets to the heart of a cultural divide among atheists.

My guess is that people who have grown up around religion without ever actually believing it are typically more comfortable with the trappings of Cultural Christianity than are the former believers who had a road back from Damascus moment or the atheists who were never exposed to Christian mythology at all. Reading the comments to the Times article confirms my prejudices.

It also confirms my new belief in Ceremonial Deism as the best chance for salvation for mankind. I wonder if Dawkins would be interested in becoming our pope?

A new study by Michigan State sociologist Ralph Pyle presented at this month’s joint meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Religious Research Association in Tampa, Fla., shows how all sides in the conservative-liberal religious divide have work to do in combating prejudice and promoting tolerance.

He found that moderate Protestants held the strongest anti-black attitudes. The next most prejudiced group? Liberal Protestants.

The good news for religious groups: People who go to church regularly were less likely to be prejudiced, Pyle said. The bad news is people with no religious affiliation were also much less likely to be prejudiced than individuals showing modest levels of commitment to their faith, those who attend services monthly or less.

Shurely shome mishtake?