Sense in a Senseless World
On my post on Approaching Atheists, Ubiquitous Che commented how my post could be reread in Steve Irwin’s voice, like the Crocodile Hunter was explaining how to approach a dangerous animal. What’s funny is this exact same thought occurred to me as I was writing it.
I went over and visited his blog (Che’s, not Steve Irwin’s), rhetoric sans pareil, where I can across a recent post of his. In it, he talks about the Brights movement.
I’ve heard about the Brights movement before, but only as a typical reactionary “They’re trying to make theists sound dim!” What it actually is, if I understand it right, is a simple attempt to promote understanding of the naturalistic worldview. In his post, Che says he will now more promote the positive points of naturalism, which he calls “beautiful and fulfilling,” instead of attacking differing worldviews.
(By the way, the Brights movement says the opposite of “Bright” isn’t “Dim”; it’s “Super,” because Supers believe in the supernatural. While it still sounds like they’re labeling atheism as something for smart people, anything that makes me feel closer to flying around and shooting lasers out of my eyes earns a point in my book.)
Ironically, this sounds suspiciously like a main way of evangelizing Christianity, summarized in a quote from Madeleine L’Engle (that was used in the Approaching Atheists series):
We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.
My reaction to this? I actually view this as good news. Many of the atheists I’ve come in contact with have been completely focused on attacking theism- even to the point of simply mocking it while making no attempt to understand it. It’s nice to see them acknowledging that they won’t win people by simply attacking their worldview alone.
Moreover, I can understand how someone could be content, or even happy with a naturalistic worldview. Were it not for my belief that Christianity is the most rationally justified worldview, I might even be a Bright myself. Except for one thing…
It might be easy to be a Bright when life is good. When the sun is shining and everything is going right, the idea that God might not really exist is trivial- you are happy without God, so why do you need Him? He is only irrelevant clutter, and your worldview is better of without Him.
However, life is not always good. This is a fallen world, and bad, senseless things do happen. Things happen in life that make us question our sanity and whether we have any shred of meaning in the cruel, cold universe.
Times will come when you will wonder if, as Shakespeare wrote, it is “nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? To die: to sleep.” But then you will come to the concept of death, and no matter how you rebrand it, as “peace” or “rest,” you will still have to come to the acknowledgment that, under the naturalistic worldview, death means an ending of your person- you will cease to exist.
Not only that, but this ending, this quick disintegration into nothingness, could happen anytime. It could come very suddenly- you could die tomorrow, or even today, or in fifty or sixty years. But one thing is for sure: death is certain; you will die.
And when life turns dark, and when death stares you right in the face, advancing on you or someone you love, there will be no order, no sense, no meaning. No comfort will be gleaned from the heavens, for even the stars themselves must die. The entire cold universe will eventually fade and end, and everything you did while on this tiny blue spec, all the pain you suffered, will be meaningless.
So if you are happy being a Bright, that’s fine, stay that way. I hesitate to say this, because it’s not really true; the message of the gospel is a message of urgency, for we do not know when we will die. However, I acknowledge that you may not be ready to accept the gospel yet. My job is to plant or water the seed. Only God can make it grow.
But please understand this:
You may not think you need God now. That is fine. But there will come a time when you will need Him. For your sake, please do not turn away from Him then. He’s not your enemy, someone you have to fight to the end. He’s your father, and He wants to comfort you. When the dark times come in your life, remember Him.
Many have turned to atheism when they look at the suffering and say “There is no God.” I believe many more look and say “God is our only hope.” Atheists often accuse theists of clinging to God because they are scared. Perhaps we just understand the implications better.
May 23, 2008 at 1:03 am
Yay! I got mentioned!
First off the bat, I really liked this post – the emphasis on mutual understanding despite disagreement is very, very welcome. There’s two little things I’d like to comment on. The problem is that if I comment on just these two things, it would seem like I’m attacking the whole article. I’d just like to emphasise that this is not the case. It’s a very welcome article indeed.
The two things that you mentioned that I would like to comment on are the fear of death and the need for God in the face of suffering.
First off, it’s very natural for us to fear death. It’s a very deep, very serious fear that I think touches us all at some point in our lives. For this reason, we tend to either avoid thinking about it entirely or obsess over the subject. And be it eternal life, reincarnation or rebirth (rebirth is slightly distinct from reincarnation, but that’s a topic for another thread), one of the biggest points drawing people to religion is the fear of death.
Now I’m going to make a very bold claim: The fear of death can be overcome without religion – although I’ll grant you that it is easier said than done.
There was a greek philosopher who is understood to have lived between 340 and 270 BCE that was named Epicurus. He had possibly one of the most elegant approaches to the fear of death that I have ever come across.
This strikes a very deep chord with me. It lays to rest the fear of death, and brings to the fore the love of life. But I have found that this particular piece of reasoning is very much resisted and unwelcomed by people who believe in eternal life or reincarnation (interestingly, the people who believe in rebirth actually agree with it). I think that one of the reasons for this is that the prospect of not being reunited with loved ones beyond the grave is far more distressing than the fear of personal death itself, which I can understand.
To be totally frank, I find the idea of oblivion beyond death quite soothing. This strikes many people as a sign of some kind of sick depression – that I’m some kind of whining teenager with dyed black hair, black clothes, and black mascara that pretends to be a vampire and listens to the violent screeching that such people persist in trying to pass off as music. This is not the case. Instead, I have every intention of living a full, long, happy, and healthy life. I intend to have a good number of loved ones around me – not too many, I’m quite introverted. But a family and some close friends would be nice. Spend my time between family, a rewarding job that I enjoy – I’m a software developer, and love it – and personal reflection and development, which would include helping those around me that are in need.
Such a life would be a wonderful thing, and when my time comes in my dotage I look forward to moving on into the embrace of oblivion in peace, happiness, and contentment. The fear of death is entirely absent from my life. The obvious response to this is in the context of a premature death – getting hit by a bus, for example – which I’ll come to in a moment.
This didn’t happen on it’s own. My grandfather died when I was three years old and didn’t really understand what death was. The funeral was a very august, open casket ceremony. My grandparents are/were (grandma is still alive) Catholic, and they drink/drank their religion neat.
So I had an introduction to death before I was old enough to be distressed by it. So I didn’t feel the need to avoid the subject, and I didn’t feel the need to obsess over it either. This continued as I grew up. The hysteria just wasn’t there. Sure, death is still a sad thing – but it has always struck me that death is sad not because a person has ceased to be. It strikes me as sad because a life has been cut short. In a sense, I mourn for the years of joy and life that the person could have lived rather than the passing itself.
So that’s my take, as someone who holds to the naturalistic worldview, on the subject of death. There are ways of ridding yourself of the fear of death that don’t involve striving to achieve eternal life. I hope this response so far has been a refreshing change from the usual atheist argument: ‘Just because you want there to be eternal life that doesn’t make it true,’ which is technically accurate yet unfulfilling argument to be making.
The other issue at hand was the idea of turning to God in times of stress and suffering. I hope that my response to this is not to be viewed as a callous one, for in fact nothing could be further from the truth.
First off, note that I’m not talking about the moments of extreme suffering such as occur during deplorable battles in the context of war and torture. Those are horrific to me, and are a very serious concern – but they fall outside what I feel to be the scope of this discussion, which seems to me to be the pains and sufferings that can reasonably be expected to strike a person throughout the course of their lives. So although I dismiss atrocious suffering here, I do so not because it is unimportant – only that it is a topic for a different conversation, and I would be doing it no justice to try and incorporate it here.
But to go back to the subject of mourning for a loved one – this is the kind of suffering I think you’re talking about, so I’ll work from this.
Just to get out of the way, I’ve never really lost anyone particularly close to me, and I don’t want to be mistaken for trivializing the grief from losing a family member, or worse – a child. If someone should read this who has than I’m deeply sorry for your loss, and it is not the purpose of my discussion of this topic to open up old wounds, or to suggest that I would have an idea of what it personally feels like to experience such loss. I don’t really know. I can only work from the minor griefs that I do know to try and discern the nature of genuine grief. I mean no disrespect in so doing.
The example that I’d like to use actually comes from a performance in a movie I saw about a year ago. There was a girl I used to work with at a bar before I got my first software job, and I invited her out to see No Reservations. In one scene, Zoe (a young girl) is mourning at the grave of her mother. Zoe was played by Abigail Breslin, and it was a fantastically moving performance – Abigail completely blew Catherine Zeta Jones and Aaron Eckhart out of the water, she was that good.
The girl I was with liked to think of herself as being a tough-girl, but she was sobbing through the entire scene. I didn’t cry myself, but I was still deeply moved. Abigail showed Zoe’s grief very potently, because behind that grief and suffering there was a burning core of the love that had existed between Zoe and her late mother. So on the one hand, it was tragic that a young girl had suffered such grief, but on the other hand, the source of that grief came from something very beautiful – her love for her mother.
(For the record, we went out for drinks and dessert after the movie, but I never did get a second date out of her – much to my dissapointment)
It’s one of the things I’ve found since then, at least when I have been confronted with minor griefs that arise from minor losses – such as breaking up with a very close girlfriend. There’s something strangely empowering upon changing the focus of grief away from the loss of something that had been deeply loved, and to instead focus on the love of the thing that was lost. I’m not doing a very good job of explaining this, I’m afraid. It’s… tricky. When you do this, the grief remains – in fact, it cuts even deeper. But by not closing the grief out, and by embracing the core of love that exists within it, you take ownership and possession of that grief. So instead of being overpowered by the grief, it instead empowers you. It’s an important distinction.
Essentially, there are some kinds of suffering that are just a part of the spectrum of human emotion. It’s very natural for us to be adverse to suffering, and to seek to avoid it – as we should. But it is also important to remember that suffering is just a natural part of the whole experience of what it means to be a human. It should not be encouraged by any means – but when it strikes without our choice and against our wishes, we are better able to deal with the situation if we take posession of our suffering and become empowered by it. Denying or trying to escape it will only make it worse.
So for myself, as someone who holds a naturalistic worldview, suffering is something we should work to avoid – but when it does inevitably strike, it should be embraced such that it may empower us instead of overpowering us. So once again – there are other solutions to the problem of suffering than the comfort and solace of religion.
Once again – I hope that this is a refreshing change from the typical ‘just because something is comforting that doesn’t make it true’ atheist argument.
So that’s my naturalistic take on the subjects of the fear of death and the problem of suffering. Sorry if this has been a bit long – but these are very serious topics, and I wanted to be sure to do them justice.
I’m looking forward to your response.
Note: If anyone should read this who has lost somebody they have deeply and dearly loved, and if my discussion of such private matters has hurt you anew, I am truly and deeply sorry. This is a very serious matter, and it is because of its very importance that I wished to discuss it. I can only hope that I’ve done so with all the grace, compassion and sensitivity I can muster. I am sorry for your loss.
May 23, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Haha, I should have taken a cue from the comments on your site and known better than to write about one of your posts; I’ll get a response longer than the original post.
First of all, I want to apologize for the assuming nature of my post. Even as I was writing it, I realized that i was presupposing fear of death. I actually expected you to comment on your lack of fear. You do a good job of explaining your view, though. The same for your response to the idea of suffering. You summarize a rational naturalistic response to death and suffering well.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have emphasized death and suffering so much. Like you, I started my blog to practice my writing, and I’m still figuring out how to transpose my thoughts to written words. I hope my focus on death and suffering didn’t distract from the main point of my post.
What I tried to say is that, although you may feel this way now, views change. We can discuss various philosophical takes, but much like a new soldier before his first battle, we can not know how we will react when we are actually being exposed to serious suffering or staring death in the face.
What I was trying to say is: keep an open mind to God. Though you may think you don’t need Him now, there may well come a time when things have changed and you think you might. Don’t shut Him out completely, and don’t be afraid to turn to Him if you feel the need.
May 26, 2008 at 3:28 am
Heh. Yeah, I know it was a bit longer than it needed to be. I don’t mean to write an essay every time someone asks me a question… It’s just sometimes things are too important to bust out in a paragraph or two.
Would it be totally unbelievable to you if I were to say that I do?
I know that you’re speaking to atheists in general and not specifically to myself, but I’m not totally unrepresentative of the breed. My approach has always been one of total open-mindedness. To me, one of the costs of making the claim to be a free and independant thinker is that you have to be prepared, at all times, to change your mind. You have to be open – even welcoming – of the potential that something you say or do could be wrong, and you have to admit this, gladly and openly, whenever you detect that you have in the past been mistaken. If you’re not prepared to do this – say, an atheist that would not believe in God even with total and conclusive proof – then for all that I may or may not agree with that atheists beliefs, he or she would be no friend of mine.
Out of interest, are you keeping an open mind to the nonexistence of God?
May 26, 2008 at 12:19 pm
That’s good to hear. As for me, I’d say I do too. Something not a lot of people like to admit is that all Christians have doubts about their faith sometimes, and during these times I often wonder about other worldviews. However, these doubts are always eased by one thing or another, and my faith comes back all the stronger for the trials it underwent. To quote atheist-turned-Christian C. S. Lewis:
June 1, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Thanks for the thought-provoking post. It reminded me of an article on the Meaning of life I stumbled across this interview a while back. Thought you might find it interesting:
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/the_ultimate_conversation_stopper_does_life_have_meaning/
September 21, 2008 at 5:21 pm
[...] the comments I acknowledge that I probably focused too much on fear (specifically, fear of death). Ubiquitous Che countered my assumption of fear of death by essentially stating (more eloquently) “When [...]