Australia is becoming a secular society. Religion of the boring old traditional type our grandparents followed is on the way out. Church services had a minor Christmas boom but generally are ill-attended. Cool people tick ‘no religion’ on the census form.

Oddly, many no-religionists are keen on church-like rituals and none more so than the militant secularists at Humanists Australia.

The Humanists have an elaborate website that details, in patronising, explaining-to-the-kiddies language their attachment to various ceremonies which resemble religious rites of passage.

‘Celebration of life events is a very human thing’ the blurb begins, as though anyone imagined that such celebrations were reserved for rabbits. Humanists will supply ‘whatever ceremony and whatever kind of celebrant you are after, whether it be LGBT, formal, funny, etc’. What a combination – the heart quails. Hannah Gadsby-style ‘comedy’ in top hat and tails.

‘Here in Australia we have many fine experienced humanist celebrants’ boast the Humanists. I don’t know about fine but we certainly have many, ever since the Whitlam revolution when Gough’s secularist government decided that a good way to shaft the churches was to break the near-monopoly they had on weddings. People wanted a bit of ceremony on their big day and the only place they could get it then was in a church, even if they weren’t churchgoers. The bleak alternative was the registrar’s office. On the Soviet Palace of Marriage principle, the Whitlam regime invented civil celebrants and the opportunity to have a marriage ceremony with flowers and organza in a vineyard or on the beach. You could write your vows, an exercise in composition that continues to yield excruciating efforts. The monopoly was broken and church weddings are now well under a quarter of the national total.

The Humanists’ website offers ‘Marriages and Commitment Ceremonies’ illustrated by a picture of two women in bridal attire, which suggests that humanists consider same-sex weddings as typical, which they probably are these days when fewer people enter into what the eloquent controversialist Clementine Ford calls the tyranny of marriage, but which nuptially disposed gays and lesbians have made an emblem of their liberation.

Marriage used to lead to christenings, or what humanists call ‘Baby Namings’. ‘The birth of a child is a wonder-filled (sic) event’ , says the website. Tell that to the many humanists who are enthusiasts of abortion.

When it’s time for ‘Coming of Age’, the celebration can be ‘accompanied by the teaching of life skills’. Who does the teaching is not stated but there’s a picture of a kid in a wheelchair who seems to be getting a lesson in photography from a non-disabled child, so perhaps the latter is a junior celebrant of this rite of passage, a secular substitute for Christian confirmation.

All too soon we get to what the website calls ‘End of Life’, at which point humanists will see you off with a funeral or memorial service, just like churches, or ‘simply by scattering ashes’ – without, it is implied, a tear being shed.

Before you go you might like to try a humanist ‘Other Life Event’. ‘Our lives are rich and varied,’ burbles the website. ‘Often there are simple reasons to celebrate: house warmings, boat namings’, (why not your golf clubs or laptop too?) ‘pet ceremonies, anniversaries, birthdays’ – no corner of life is exempt from Humanist rejoicing: ‘even divorces can be celebrated with a Humanist celebrant!’ So stop thinking of marriage break-up as a tragedy. Drown your recriminations at a Humanist party instead (if, after the financial settlement, you can afford it).

Disbelief is a rich landscape, and we mustn’t ignore the Atheist Foundation of Australia, the charismatics of secular religion. Compared with them the Humanists are like the lukewarm Laodiceans in the New Testament, neither cold nor hot. The Atheists are so committed, proclaiming with dogmatic certainty that God does not exist. As their website reveals, they throw themselves into their disbelief with the same zeal as born-again Christians. One of their committee members founded a campaign against school chaplaincies. Another, an immigrant, became an atheism crusader when he found himself ‘shocked by the overt use of religion in public life, politics, and the workplace’ in Australia, though this is perhaps not as apparent to the rest of us as it was to him. One, who is also a wit, ‘was an optometrist who helped people see in the literal sense, but more recently has sought to help people see in the religious sense’ and believes that the Bible and Koran ‘are based on fiction’ (he should be careful about saying that out loud). Another, as a labour of love, is reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. It must be heavy going because he was reading it when I first looked at the website two years ago.