Why sacredness is not a thing, and its OK to climb Ayers Rock

Plenty of things are described as sacred: buildings, natural sites, books, objects, maybe even people. I don't profess to be an expert on sacredness. In fact, I don't think anyone can be an expert on sacredness, because sacredness is not a thing. Nothing is sacred as a matter of fact. You might think that this book or that building is sacred, and that opinion will be shared by some but not others, but nothing is, as a matter of fact, sacred. This is because sacredness, like being valuable, beautiful, or delicious, is just an opinion, not a genuine property of something. This puts me squarely in the antirealist camp when it comes to sacredness, which fits with my atheism. We are clever apes who have progressed to the point where we make books, buildings, and artefacts, we hold ceremonies and make laws and pray to (non-existent) gods.

Of course, if you are religious then you will probably want to jump ship here, because you may not like what you're about to read.

Still with me? Ok then. So, take some inanimate objects like bricks, paper, fabric and wood. Bricks can be thrown in a pile, left in a builders merchants, built into a garden wall, or built into the shape of a church. If the bricks happen to be built into the shape of a church, the bricks do not suddenly become sacred in virtue of having been arranged into the shape of a church, do they? After all, I could (were my bricklaying skills good enough) arrange bricks into the shape of a church in my garden, and then use the structure for picnics, a place to keep my bins, or whatever; arranging bricks into the shape of a church wouldn't make them sacred. We'd agree that it wasn't a sacred place wouldn't we? I don't know, maybe some people would say the bricks had become sacred in virtue of being arranged into that shape?!

The same can be said about the other substances - paper can have all kinds of words and pictures printed on it - the terms and conditions from a contract, a story about Spiderman, or religious passages. To me, no piece of paper is any more sacred than any other simply because of the words that a printer printed on it. Burning 'sacred' or 'holy' texts in private, where no one will know (omniscient gods notwithstanding) seems morally unproblematic to me. In the same vein, wood can become a chair leg, or a cross; fabric can become a mini skirt or a headscarf.

Clearly, some people do believe that some items are sacred, so my simply denying that sacredness is a thing might seem odd.

But consider the following. Suppose we take an item which everyone agrees is not sacred. For example, a child's sock. Now let's suppose that one child believes the sock is sacred. Does that make it sacred? It seems not. But what if ten or twenty people believe it's a sacred sock? Once a group of people say an item is sacred, its sacredness seems to gather some weight. We might shake our heads and think that they are silly people, but still they'd believe the sock was sacred.

And if a whole ethnic group or religious group say the sock is sacred and they reinforce that through their actions - for example, they worship the sock or make offerings to it - then we would presumably have to shrug and say ok it's sacred to them. And maybe being sacred to someone is just the same as being sacred full stop?

How many of us have heard stories or experienced this ourselves - instances of people who've gone on holiday to strange and wonderful countries, and been doing something which they thought was totally reasonable, only to discover that the locals think the object or place is sacred and the tourist's actions are offensive or blasphemous. For example, taking a photo of a painting, or sitting on a rock, or talking in a building, or taking a selfie next to a statue, or touching a book, or standing under a tree. This list really could be extensive, because people the world over believe the most unexpected items are sacred. And that's ok, this is a free world where people can hold whatever beliefs they want.

But any such beliefs about sacredness need to be held by a threshold number of people in order to count as something that people should respect. If I believe that red chairs are sacred and I tell others not to sit on red chairs, but instead to take a quiet moment of contemplation when in the presence of a red chair, I am likely to be laughed out of town. But if I start a chair religion and gather a few hundred thousand people, my beliefs about the sacredness of red chairs might be a little more respected or tolerated.

But let's face it, red chairs are not sacred, and nor are socks. The sacredness is not an inherent feature of red chairs or socks, but simply something that onlookers may believe. "But it's just a chair" or "it's just a sock", people would insist, and they'd be right. Chairs and socks are not sacred, and nor are crosses and 'holy' texts. My believing a sock is sacred does not, as a matter of fact, make it sacred. It would make it precious to me, but not sacred, because the term sacred implies some godlike presence endorsing my belief in the sacredness of socks.

Should we respect sacredness?

Disclaimer: I like the ethical freedom to flit between deontological and consequential ethics. I do this as and when I please to suit my argument at the time. It's a free world.

In the case of supposed sacredness, I think consequentialism gives us the most sensible result. Suppose that a group of people think a particular piece of wood is sacred and should not be photographed, then it seems right that when in the presence of such people, I should not photograph the piece of wood. But when no one is around (and no CCTV or the like) then it doesn't matter one way or the other whether I take a photo of the piece of wood, just as it wouldn't matter if I photographed the red chair or the sock.

As I said above, people the world over hold the most ludicrous beliefs - that this rock should not be sat on, this building should not have menstruating women in it, this painting should not be photographed, or this mountain should not be climbed. Their belief that X does not make it the case that X.

Ayers Rock

Now, there are some objects or landmarks whose supposed sacredness is what makes them famous. For example, a statue of Christ, or Mecca, or the area where Moses parted the Red Sea. Without any beliefs in religion or sacredness, these places would be unremarkable and pretty unknown. Given that it is the area's supposed sacredness which makes it famous, it wouldn't seem right to travel to a place because it is said to be sacred, and then to disrespect its alleged sacredness in view of others.

But some landmarks would be remarkable even if no one knew that some people felt it was sacred - Ayers Rock is a prime example of this. The rock is remarkable because it's in an area of total flatness, and this natural monolith sprouts from the ground. (By the by, there are a couple of other similar monoliths in the area which are almost as impressive - Mount Conner and The Olgas). The rocks are remarkable and impressive in spite of any beliefs which locals may have about sacredness; visitors to the area would want to see these rocks whether or not they were said to be sacred. This seems to mark out Ayers Rock and its sisters as being interesting independently of supposed sacredness, and I suggest that this difference is crucial. I climbed Ayers Rock back in 2002. At the time, it was known that the locals did not want people to climb up it, because they felt it was a sacred rock. But I - and a couple of hundred other people - did climb it that day, and I imagine that similar numbers have continued to do so every day over the past 20 years. But it seems that tourism has finally bowed down and will soon stop people from ascending the rock, solely because some people have said it's sacred. It continues to draw attention due to this soon-to-be-enacted ban.

Even people who believe in God and believe that a church or a Qur'an or a turban is sacred might struggle to believe that a lump of rock can be sacred, so you can imagine how difficult it is for an atheist to accept that Ayers Rock is sacred. If some people said that Mount Everest or Lake Michigan or the English Channel were sacred, would that stop people from visiting them, walking on them or sailing on them? Of course it wouldn't. And not should it.

When I walked up Ayers Rock, I noticed that some areas had worn smooth with being walked on so much, and I suppose that smoothing has continued over the past 20 years. That is a contender for a sensible reason to prevent people from walking up it, in the same way that we don't traipse all over the Sphynx. It has nothing to do with sacredness, and everything to do with preserving incredible sites of interest. But how much damage has in fact been done to Ayers Rock? A millimetre here or there is nothing to write home about, and therefore we can easily see that the seemingly sensible reason is not really that sensible at all. Every day, people traipse up and down Ayers Rock, and even if it's a centimetre rather than a millimetre which has been lost, this is still not reason enough to stop people walking on it.

Ayers Rock is geologically incredible, Christ the Redeemer in Rio is impressive, and a religious text may tell a good story; they may be culturally important, financially valuable, and historically significant, but they are not sacred, because sacredness is merely an opinion which exists in the eye of the beholder. Ayers Rock is interesting and peculiar, but it is ultimately a lump of stone with no sacredness at all within its molecules.