Here’s my column for the Freethinker for this month. It’s another wallop at that idea that religion alone can give people [a sense of] meaning.

The most obvious flaw is that it’s not at all clear how God does a better job of providing “meaning” than anything else does. How is that even supposed to work? How exactly is it more meaningful to be a character in a story someone else creates rather than the protagonist of the story you create? How, that is, is that more meaningful to us, as opposed to the people who administer the story?

It’s easy to see why priests and mullahs find that story rich with meaning: it makes them important characters, who shape