Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand. [C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed, 41]
After my wife Elizabeth died, I decided to read C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed. When I had first read it, years before, it meant nothing to me. But when I read it, deep in grief myself, suddenly so much of it seemed to be true. The epigraph (above) seemed to me truest of it all. Religion was no consolation. During all the years that Elizabeth was sick, religion offered no consolation at all, no sense of any final destiny, just empty promises that would never come true.
It reminded me that when I had patiently piloted people through times of grief, through funeral arrangements, funeral services and other things that comprise the obsequies we owe to the beloved dead, it had always seemed to me that the religious words and promises were empty, and what helped was the purely human contact, the concern, the busy-ness of a death in the family, and the instinctive coming together of the community in support and encouragement.
These were the important things. The prayers, the services, the solemn burial — all these were the form of our grief or support, not the heart of it. Even when people said — and I could never say — that they would see their loved ones by and by, it was only half meant, I think, very often, just a way of filling the emptiness inside with words. And there’s nothing wrong with doing that. One of the things that the one dimensionality of secularity seems not to provide is something meaningful (even if untrue) to say about the dead. Their gone-ness is the most real thing, and we need something to accompany us in the days when the world simply relentlessly carries on, when, for us, inside, the world has stopped awhile. And here religion seems to provide a remedy, but it is, after all, only a seeming, I think.
Religion promises this, as I say, and many people think that this is religion’s chief contribution to the meaningfulness of life. Even though we seldom think of our own dying — that reality is too brutal for most of us to endure for more than moments at a time — when someone has died, and the chasm of their absence opens up before us, religion, it is thought, fills in the blanks with its assurances. I still remember what a professor of pastoral theology once said to us about the death of a child, and what we might say to the bereaved parents. “Tell them,” he said, “that God only picks the fairest flowers.” But we knew, and he must have known as well, that words like that are empty, for, if God picks flowers at all, he picks them all, not only the fairest and the best.
Of course, the one thing that we can say, and that people very often do say, after a person has died, after all the pain and distress and disintegration are over, is that the person is at rest, at peace now. How many people have I stood beside, as, looking into the open casket, their loved one dressed in their best and finest, their face wearing an expression of sweet contemplation, they say, “Well, at least he is at peace now”? And each time I heard this said, and sometimes, struggling to find words to say, I said it myself, I wanted to object. This is not peace. This is not even what you look like when you die. This is a charade, a game we play with ourselves, to hide the ghastly pallor of death, to hide the blotches, the slack skin, perhaps the jaundiced yellow — all the evidence that this person suffered, went through the last desperate hours, perhaps, gasping for breath or crying in pain. This is the end, not peace. Often we even refuse to use the words ‘dying’, ‘death’ or ‘dead’. We say that they passed, not that they died, as if speaking the word ‘death’ would spell dishonour, and say what we do not really want to say, that this person is no more, that we will never see them again, that they are now as if they had never been.
On these things C.S. Lewis is very good. He hides nothing about the brutal finality of death:
I look up at the night sky. Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?
That has the touch of reality. This is the way it really is, after all the polite words, the cups of tea, the little sandwiches, the words of condolence that avoid those dreaded words. But they only protect themselves with reticence. What the sorrowing really want to hear is that the loss is real, not just this pretended separation, this absence for awhile.
Yet there is more, and Lewis is unerring here too. “They tell me,” he says, that
H. is happy now, they tell me she is at peace. What makes them so sure of this? I don’t mean that I fear the worst of all [viz., that she has gone to hell]. … But why are they so sure that all anguish ends with death? [43]
But she is, is she not, in God’s hands now? And are not those hands good? This, he suggests, is no comfort, because, after all,
… she was in God’s hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why? If God’s goodness is inconsistent with hurting us, then either God is not good or there is no God: for in the only life we know He hurts us beyond our worst fears and beyond all that we can imagine. [44]
So, then, we might wonder, why we should still say, that even “at the grave we make our song: Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!” Is not rejoicing just an empty pretence, whistling while the panic grows within us that we lived our lives in hope, and that hope itself is dead? Lewis is relentless, restlessly seeking an answer to the question that suffering and loss wring from him:
What reason have we [he says plangently], except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive, ‘good’? Doesn’t all the prima facie evidence suggest exactly the opposite? [46]
After all the prayers, all the false hopes, all the X-rays, the strange remissions, the desperate lonely struggle, what is the result but more pain, yet more struggle, yet further hopes dashed — what is there after all this? If God is good, then this must be good. But if this is good, then what God calls good must be just the opposite to what we can call good. If so, then why should we trust God? Why believe in God at all?
The truth is that Lewis has dug such a deep pit, that nothing but a lie can get him out of it. God must be good in human terms or God is not good. And he promises us that he will not leave his loved one suffering without purpose. Yet, in human terms, there is no reason to think that, if suffering is our lot here, suffering will not continue to be our lot if we are destined to continue in life in another place or dimension, as the promises and consolations of religion so often encourage us to believe.
How does Lewis make the transition? He simply assumes that God is good, and that all that is purposed for us is good. If so, he says, a perfectly good god might be indistinguishable from a Cosmic Sadist (60). Suppose that the only way that God can achieve his purposes is through the pains and sufferings of this life. A perfectly good god would be like a perfectly good surgeon, Lewis tells us:
The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. [60]
But why all this pain at all? Why, if God has good purposes for us, can’t these be achieved without all this pain? After all, some people suffer so much less than others. Does this mean that those who suffer most are most in need of suffering? This is a question that Lewis does not ask, nor does he try to answer it, but he should have. For he goes on to say:
Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren’t. [41]
But Lewis did not consider that some people suffer more than others. Some people die quietly in their sleep, and how you die does not depend upon your character or your moral failings, but on the disease or trauma from which you die. Lewis’s tricky dilemma may have let him believe again, but it should not have. He forgot his implied promise that he would not leave his wife suffer the tortures that she suffered without answering the question about the goodness of God, whether God was good in human terms or not. All he does is to suggest that the torments must have been necessary, though we do not see the reason why. And that’s not good enough. In saying this he betrays the one he loved, and attaches himself desperately to a hope for which, as he has shown, there is no justification.
The consolations of religion are, I think this shows, empty. That does not mean that the religious community cannot offer its own consolations, and the strength which comes just from being a caring community. But it is not God, it is people who are kind and good, and it is upon them that we throw all our cares, even as we say that we cast them all upon the Lord.
This raises two problems. First, we need to find a way of saying this in such a way that human community alone is sufficient to comfort us in times of sorrow. When we can do this, perhaps we will see more clearly how important it is that we give individuals control over their own dying. So long as we believe that the answer to the sufferings that we endure lies somehow beyond this life, we will go on imagining that suffering has some transcendent purpose, and we will continue to obstruct the choices that people freely make.
But, second, we need to develop secular communities that can support people in times of sorrow and need, and this is something that at least religions do now provide. In my experience, the provision is inadequate, for religious community seldom gives the opportunity to celebrate real human community, for the religious agenda hijacks the community, and pretends that it is something else. And religious community seldom gives us the opportunity to celebrate the life of the one who has died. Elizabeth, before she died, chose a non-religious memorial service. At first she had intended to be buried from the church, in the context of the eucharistic liturgy, but the more she thought about the role of the church in her exile to Switzerland, the more she rebelled. And so she decided to write her own service. I helped her, but the shape of it was hers. And it became a true celebration of her life, of what she felt she had accomplished, and what her life had meant to her, and to me. Instead of being about Jesus, it was about her and what she valued. It spoke to us about the richness of what we had lost, but it also spoke to us about the wonder we had known.
The community that gathered around her, however, was the church community, not a secular one. It was, you might say, ready made. But if we had not been a part of the church community, would we have had a larger community in which we could have celebrated in the same way? I’m not sure, but I agree with Philip Kitcher’s claim that this is something that, if we really do think that it is past time to give up on religion, and find a better way, we must remedy. We must find, within secular reality the kinds of support that religion now provides. We cannot expect that people will simply give up religion without having something to put in its place. It is obvious that religion now satisfies a number of needs that people have. If we are serious about substituting secular forms of thinking for religious ones, we must find out what those needs are, and we must provide ways of satisfying them.
As Kitcher says, religions don’t have to be true to be successful (see Living with Darwin, 143). They provide people with things that they want. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t succeed. So, we have to be honest with ourselves, and with each other, those of us who seek to replace religion with something better and more humane. My own experience is that religion does not really provide the consolation that it promises. This means, as I understand it, that we do not need religion to be consoled, but we have to admit that most people do not know how this consolation without religion is to be found, and many of them do not believe that it can be. If we want, as secular people, and children of the Enlightenment, to find something better to replace the zealous inhumanity of so much religion, then we are going to have to look for it. Criticism alone is not enough. It is important, but it is not all that is necessary. Criticism of religion is only the beginning of enlightenment. We may put away the Gängelwagen (or “children’s walker”) of religion, as Kant bade us do (in his essay “What is Enlightenment?”), but we still need to know what fully adult communities looks like. Until we do, people will continue to seek out the empty consolations of religion, and we will continue to be bound by the rules that religions impose upon us. Finding the answers is a matter of some urgency, and those who want to see the end of theocracy must try to find them.
I find your reflections very moving. At my time of life you make very good sense and I have reached the point where secularism, while very precious to me, is not the entire answer. I appreciate what you do.
I fear the challenge is insurmountable. This kind of community support can only evolve from what is already present, and religious institutions are the obvious starting point. There is no reason why Christianity, for example, cannot be released from superstition. This is the space occupied by Michael Dowd among others.
But efforts to secularize Christianity, or Islam, seem doomed to failure. What religion sells is the possibility of shelter from the absurd. People may completely lack confidence that there is anything beyond our mortal lives, but they embrace the hope that a supernaturalist faith offers. Christianity stripped of that will have no buyers.
In about 2 hours, I will be attending a funeral. The young man, still in high school, was in a car accident and spent many weeks in the hospital.
The community of friends and family have come together over the last few weeks, through the ups and downs of medical treatment. I have found it difficult to find words to participate. Many of the family and friends know that I am an atheist, and I have helped where I could. So much of the talk has been about prayer, angels, and god. They seem to be uncomfortable when I am around, looking at me in a worried way when they say ‘our prayers are with the family’, or some other attempt at consolation.
I am attending the funeral to honor the boy’s life and the families loss, but, it is the first time that I have been uncomfortable as an atheist, because I feel that my presence may be adding to the confusion and pain during this terrible time.
Developing secular responses to life’s tramas and joys will take a lot time and work. We do have good examples of secular marriages, so maybe all it takes is for more of us to demand the same for funerals, like Elizabeth. Surely, just as I respect the wishes of the family today, most religious people will come and respect my wishes when I die.
I’ve been at several funerals over the last few years. Some relatives and some not.
The ‘best’ funeral was for my mother-in-law. Me and my wife and my brother-in-law were with her when she died, at home, as she wished. I found the whole process from the care shown by the visiting hospice nurses to the funeral director to be very calm, a little dispassionate, but supportive. The cremation service was only faintly religious, as she would have wanted.
When I went to an acquaintances funeral at a Roman Catholic church I found the religious bits very intrusive, almost as if the priest was seizing the ‘exposure’ to get his point across.
I guess that (as a non-believer) it is enough that there is secular process and ceremony. The grief and sadness is personal and I don’t want strangers trying to manipulate it, even if it is well intended. But I suspect other’s views will differ.
Of course there is no consolation in theology for those who are questioning some aspect of it. But for those who have faith there is consolation in doing the right thing; even if that is suffering in some form or another. Faith in theology has a placebo effect – it’s what one believes about it that is important and is what provides the consolation. Self-medication to soften the painful reality that can come ones way. Psychological and intellectual numbness.
Several years ago I was on a mailing list for cancer patients – as a caregiver. At the bottom of ones email one would add a few words about the cancer patient that one was caregiver for. I’m afraid I was not very sensitive at one stage. The list was full of people who were requesting prayers and those who were offering to pray. And what did I do? A nice little note that went on every email – No prayers requested or required. And boy did I upset a lot of people! Eventually I thought better of my atheist stand and removed my in your face request…My point here is that people do in fact get much consolation from theological ideas – if they believe in them.
As to the religious community side of things. The cancer list was an absolutely fantastic source of consolation and comfort to cancer patients and caregivers. I would recommend this type of support wholeheartedly – even though it was Christian to its core.(at one stage there was three offers of free accommodation in the US if going there for cancer treatment was going to be considered…)
Eric, atheists are like cats – Dawkins once remarked, in some interview or another, that organizing atheists is like herding cats……impossible. Atheists look to be always on the outside, looking into the religious communities with perhaps a bit of longing for the solidarity that such communities can offer. But this separation, if you like, between religious communities and atheists is really a misnomer. We are all religious people, that is our nature. It’s only because of a hybrid definition of religion that there is this divide between religious people and atheists. We all have spiritual values (however we may define them) – it’s just that as atheists we have discarded the primary value of many religious people – the supernatural god in the heavens. However, there are many more values that we share than those we discard. The humanitarian values, compassion, empathy etc. Values that are most needed at times of death. Indeed, atheists at a funeral are not going to be offering theological platitudes – but they can offer their sincere concern for the welfare of the family of the deceased.
Atheists, unfortunately, often, very often, allow their intellectual position, as atheists, to short-circuit their humanitarian side. Thus, leaving the non-atheist religionists to carry the can re social/community help for the needy. Methinks, Eric, that it’s not going to be on the cards, any time soon, for atheists to give up their cat like existence. However, what they can do is applaud the non-atheist religious communities that are willing to provide community support in time of need – and not appear to be looking down their noses at theists, as if the theists are only doing good because they want to go to heaven in some fantasy afterlife….
The interesting thing is, though, Mary Helena, that C.S. Lewis, the standard, international measure of spiritual sanity and health did not find the consolations of religion at all helpful when his wife died. Then all he saw was their hollowness, and it took him some time to argue himself back to faith again, and the process took all sorts of wrong turnings, until you have to say that he just waved a faith wand and magicked it all better again. And in my experience, though people used to say that they wouldn’t know what they would have done without their Christian faith, it was seldom faith, so far as I could tell, that provided them the support that they needed, but friends and family, and was interesting to watch how the dynamics of the community worked in this process. The services were all religious, the support was as secular as can be. And it really can’t be anything different, in many ways. It’s one thing to say hopefully that you will see your loved one by and by. It is quite a different thing to say what this can possibly mean, and to my knowledge no one has ever given a satisfactory account of what it would be like. Imagination here comes to an end. These are, of all the different kinds of religious language, the most empty.
And that’s why I think I disagree with you about Dawkins and cats. No one is even suggesting that anyone should be herded. As Hitchens says, once you know that Christians think of themselves as a flock, you already know enough not to want to belong. But this is not what community is, in any event. Churches are hotbeds of disagreement — unless they’re bound by some very literalist fundamentalist statement of faith — and there’s no reason at all that, say, secular humanist communities should be thought of as herds or groups of submissives. Hopefully, like the working men’s clubs — women didn’t count in those days — of the 19th century there would be lots of comradeship, discussion and opportunities for action for social justice, community care, and so on. But there isn’t a reason in the world why nonbelievers should not gather together. The problem, I think, is not the herding of cats, but having a sufficient number of known nonbelievers to make a viable community.
Of course, this means that I disagree with Ken. I think there is no reason why nonbelievers should not be able to get together. In fact, in some places there are very active atheist and humanist groups that meet for fellowship, discussion and argument, and occasionally, I would think, out of social concern. But if secularism is going to take root, and provide an alternative to religion, we probably have to do something along these lines. If churches show us anything it is that people keep ideas alive by gathering together to talk about them and try to encourage others to join them. That doesn’t mean, a la Comte, that we need to conceive of secularism as a religion, but I do think that we need to think of it as a social movement. If we don’t, religion will still run away with the prizes, and if we think that’s a bad thing, as I do, then we need to provide a corrective. Not all secularists will join such a movement, just as not all religious people bother to go to the church of their choice, but it take organisation to make something into a social movement, and I think we need a social movement now.
Just returned from the funeral. There were almost 2000 people there, according to the Rabbi. Ritual and logistics were the overriding themes, as far as I could tell. If the boy’s family had held the services at the local mini-mall, every one of those people would still have attended. We were there to show our support and solidarity to the family and it enabled us to simply ‘do something’ that felt meaningful. The tears, pain, and support would have been there in any venue.
Mary Helena, you say that
but that is not what is happening in situations like this. People are organizing themselves. You go on to say that
I would argue that this is what virtually everyone does at a funeral. Atheists and other secularists can easily accomplish the logistics. For example, the organization can have a provisionally recognized leader or leaders, a venue, and support staff. This is done every day by atheists. This is not a problem IMHO.
I think Eric has it right when he says that
I think we all know enough about human behavior to see how a few dedicated local leaders will, over time, create more and more local groups that provide these functions, especially if there is a moderately good living to be made from doing the work. These, in turn, will network with larger groups and, voila, you have a secular support system. This may take 20 years or maybe not, but I would bet on it happening on a much larger scale than is currently the case.
So long as we believe that the answer to the sufferings that we endure lies somehow beyond this life, we will go on imagining that suffering has some transcendent purpose, and we will continue to obstruct the choices that people freely make.
What a penetrating observation, Eric. And very true.
It’s too bad that those who come to fully appreciate what this means have to be the ones who first see what this transcendent but omnipresent suffering actually looks, feels, and smells like in practice. The toll on these caregivers – these second-hand survivors, as I’m sure you well know – can be horrific and life-altering. Finding a supportive community outside of those who help create, promote and maintain suffering as a force for some nebulous ‘good’ before heading into such an experience can be a life-saver and you are absolutely right to stress its importance. Most of us find it if we are very fortunate with those few close family and friends with whom love, honesty, and respect trumps all other considerations.
Eric:
From now on, this is the way which I will say it.
Recently, a friend of mine and man of the cloth, conveyed some worries about being present in the last moments of the dying. He felt that he was there in only an impersonal, representative, sense, and that any man with similar title would have done as well. Though I felt I was treading a bit too far beyond personal experience to stress the point, I contradicted him, stranger to the family though I was, but I think I managed to convince him that his role was also personal. I have only been to a very few funerals, but these, my own experiences, and the stories of others alone are enough to convince me that the doctrines do not give solace.
Immortal or not, the dead are gone for the rest of your life. This one-dimensionality is binding on all of those who live in reality, secular or not.
I remember many similar, poetic condolences. If taken at face value, many say something along the lines of “death merely proves of the goodness of the deceased”, so in a way, these hardly transcend the worldly, and insofar as they are tenable, they are vacuous. In others, inevitability is evoked: “His time had come”, and etc. So inexorable death sits unshaken. “She’s in a better place” is also quite common, but she is still gone. Platitudes like this, whenever I have said them or heard them, have a sort of sickish, insincere, and obligatory feel to them. They are sincere in that they are well-meant and are designed to comfort, but I can not say them anymore. My thoughts are best spent on being exactly where they should be: the land of the living.
You’re reminding me of Hitchens here, Eric. He often says the same thing about Lewis’ writings on Jesus conceived as a moral teacher but not a God. As Hitchens pointed out, Lewis’ way out of his very serious and strongly worded pit-digging was his not-so-serious conclusion to the trilemma. This is the recurrent style: “It’s basically all or nothing at this point, so I might as well go for all”. It makes the arguments very disappointingly anti-climactic. “Just a little further, Mr. Lewis, and you would have had it all right”, I think to myself.
Well, Mr. Lewis joins a long tradition of those believers, from the survivors of the Lisbon earthquake to Darwin to my former self, who found the doctrines useless in the face of the reality. But I should add that the doctrines might help somebody, but it needs to be qualified that they can also make the grief worse. If the divinely planned and painful death of a relative is softened by the existence of a divine plan, the the existence of a divinely planned yet painful death can be a source of grief. To paraphrase Lewis, the God who guarantees suffering does not guarantee `a better place’.
As an interesting parallel, this same topic shows up when discussing spiritual mediums. I’m not ready to buy the “John Edward” defense.
Eric: There is no doubt that it is the question of human suffering that often brings forth questions re ones theological premises. For those who do have questions re human suffering and their theological premises the outcome can be either go the atheist route or learn to live with contradictions: The reality of human suffering and the theology of a god of love. Some people manage to get along with the contradictions – after all when faced with the suffering servant on the cross – what else is there for them to do if they seek to retain their faith?
On the issue of atheist communities or an atheist social movement. I find the suggestion incomprehensible. Being an atheist, although it resolves around a rejection of theism, reflects an intellectual context in which free-thinking is a prime value. Being a free-thinker is an individual stance. A stance, or a leaning towards individuality as opposed to collectivist/community priorities. Sure, no man is an island and society is a collective in the broad meaning of the term. But society also functions by allowing space, political space, for the individual, for the free-thinkers. Atheists, for the sake of this argument, are the free-thinkers in society. Free-thinkers need the courage of their convictions; they need to be able to stand apart from the collective/community – not to be absorbed within it.
Society/collectives/communities/churches are the ‘home’ from which the atheist free-thinkers go walk- about. And in their walk- about adventures/journeys all they put down are the occasional camp sites; temporary abodes. . No collective/community/church will harness their wanderlust. (Dawkins with his cat analogy and Hitchens with flock avoidance – that’s the atheist, free-thinker, perspective in full flower…)
Dean – I’ve no problem with atheists putting down camp now and again – but for atheists to think they can create a movement or some permanent type of community – I don’t see it at all. It’s just not the nature of the beast..
At it’s smallest level, the family is, of course, the original collective that we began life in. As adults we make our choice as to which way forward appeals to us as individuals. If its a collective/community/church that one desire – there are enough of them around for anyone to find some variation that would appeal to their needs. If its the free-thinking bug that gets to us – then our future will not be one of comfort within a permanent collective. Our future will be the continual coming and going of making camp and pulling up camp and moving on. Which does, I suppose, suggest that atheist free-thinkers are Nomads. One should not be expecting society/collective/community/church type comfort if the free-thinking bug bites one. It’s the cat like wanderings that really light the fire in the belly of the free-thinkers.
Methinks this is a difficult issue for many new atheists – off they want to go and re-create some version of what they have left behind. Being a free-thinker is not about re-creating the collectivist wheel with an atheist shine. Being a free-thinker is about keeping the differentiation between the collective and the individual clearly in mind.
In contrast to your assertion that atheism automatically leads to a kind of individualism that precludes one from belonging to caring and comforting communities, and that it is unreasonable to suggest forming any kind of similar collective for the secular-minded, I think atheists enjoy the freedom to belong to many different collectives unconstrained by some tribal affiliation only to be part of a shared community based on a single criteria like theology.
Certainly the notion of family as a collective to which I belong is central to my life regardless of its individual members (including me) belonging to any other personal affiliations. We’re all still family regardless, and it is still a caring and comforting community.
The idea that “One should not be expecting society/collective/community/church type comfort” if one is an atheist simply does not follow.
I’ve been to more memorial services than I care to remember, all but two non-religious. The universal theme is the celebration of the life of the newly departed and the main event is the sharing of stories about them. There are photos and food and drink, of course, and the consensus is that we perform these services for ourselves, the living.
The one exception was a Catholic funeral mass for a colleague performed by a priest who knew nothing about the deceased. Most of my cohort were offended by the absence of the telling of stories, which suggests that we have a rather strong expectation for a secular rite. A rather formal Episcopalian service for a former pastor did include testimonials by family and friends.
As far as I can tell, non-believers (or rather, people of unascertained and presumably diverse traditions) are already doing an entirely adequate job of celebrating transitions in merely communal human terms.
tildeb:
I think your taking one sentence out of my post and making a case that that sentence means I’m saying atheist should not expect comfort. Have a re-think re the context in which my statements regarding comfort are written. That context is:
“On the issue of atheist communities or an atheist social movement.
“I’ve no problem with atheists putting down camp now and again – but for atheists to think they can create a movement or some permanent type of community – – I don’t see it at all. It’s just not the nature of the beast..
“If its the free-thinking bug that gets to us – then our future will not be one of comfort within a permanent collective. Our future will be the continual coming and going of making camp and pulling up camp and moving on. Which does, I suppose, suggest that atheist free-thinkers are Nomads. One should not be expecting society/collective/community/church type comfort if the free-thinking bug bites one.
No one, hopefully, goes through life without being offered comfort in some shape or form. My point is that atheists are not in the business of setting up new collective communities, or organizations to do so. Atheists do come from families, they have friends and associates – ie they have people around them who know their life circumstances and are able to discern any need for comfort. Additional, should the need for additional comfort arise – as in the case where I joined an-online cancer group (or it could have been a local support group – or even a hospice support structure – a structure that continues to offer family support for six months after the death of the cancer patient). Sometimes, in the case of needing comfort, one may have to reach out – and if one does that I think one would find willing hearts within all types of collectives that would be prepared to offer it. And of course, the converse is also true, atheists should be alert to where they can be offering comfort to people wherever they discern the need for it.
Of any atheist in recent times who had the opportunity to lay the groundwork for an atheist community or movement it was Richard Dawkins – and what did he do?. Things got a little hot and he jumped ship and left ‘his’ community to sink or swim. Swim it did (albeit with a bit of an undercurrent of dissent when Dawkins former website designer/administrator decided to join up to the new forum and state his case re Dawkins filing a court case against him). At the time the Dawkins forum went down there was somewhere between 80 and 90 thousand members – albeit a far lower number of regular forum participants. My point with this is not only that Dawkins should not have set up the online community in the first place – which given how the forum turned out he probably realized too late – but that having an atheist community centred around one man was not healthy, both for him and for his ‘followers’. Imagine, 80 to 90 thousand foot- soldiers in the atheist ‘cause’ and one decides one does not want a community after all! The manner in which the ‘end’ came was traumatic for lots of forum members. Even if the ‘end’ had been amicable for both parties – the ending set lots of people adrift and seeking a ‘lifeboat’. That’s communities, online or secular communities. People are followers, whether followers of one man, or one woman, or followers of a cause, upholders of an ideal. Communities need a bit of glue to stick together. And its that ‘glue’ that keeps many an atheist from commitment. Free-thinkers don’t find ‘glue’ to be a very welcome addition to their lives.
Don’t get me wrong here. Of course, the individual and the collective need to have a mutually beneficial relationship – easier said than done, I’m afraid. The nature of free-thinkers does mean that they are in the habit of treading upon people’s toes…
I get a sense, mh, that you think of atheists as having made the choice to ‘leave behind’ a faith-based community and emphasize the leaving of community rather than the leaving behind of faith. I think this emphasis by you is misplaced. Hence, I infer you to mean that atheists have willingly given up this notion of membership in some long lasting community and so any community based on atheism/free thinking/secularism/etc. is untenable except as some temporary, nomadic pit stop. My example of family is in contrast to this intrinsic nomadic sense you wish to endow on those within the atheistic community.
You are right in the sense that atheism itself requires no fealty, offers no authority, maintains no central dogma, demands no obedience, is made up of nothing but the absence of faith-based beliefs: even Harris (among many others) argues that, because of this, the word itself is meaningless and so it follows that any community based on something without meaning is hardly a firm foundation upon which to build anything specific to atheism alone.
But that’s not the point of atheism – to enshrine it as if it were another kind of faith-based belief: the point is to free one’s self from faith-based beliefs first and in their place build on reason and knowledge through intellectual integrity based on respect for what can be known to reveal what’s true. To these ends there are many organizations and communities to which atheists can – and do – dedicate themselves.
But you are wrong in the sense that those who maintain non belief in supernatural agencies means some intrinsic rejection of membership in long lasting community related in some way to promoting a rejection of faith-based beliefs.
tildeb: It’s not an issue of leaving faith behind – therefore – one also leaves behind the idea of a permanent collective/community along with all of its ‘comfort’. The two ideas are not related, ie there are lots of collectives/communities in which faith, of the theological kind, are not involved. So, putting the two together, as you appear to have done, and somehow thinking that this is what my post was about, is just not so. Of course, very many atheists have left communities based upon theological premises. That’s just the way things are for many people, ie they were brought up within that framework. There are also, of course, people who have been brought up by atheist parents – so your equation would fall down here. The basic unit of community/collective is the family. A point I did make earlier.
“But you are wrong in the sense that those who maintain non belief in supernatural agencies means some intrinsic rejection of membership in long lasting community related in some way to promoting a rejection of faith-based beliefs.”
The proof of the pudding, so they say, is in the eating – so lets see the evidence then for “long lasting” atheist communities and their willingness to offer the type of ‘comfort’ found within faith based communities? The theory is great – lets identify the reality. And if there is no such atheist caring communities – why not? What is it about atheism that continually stops short of being able to offer caring collectives/communities? Do you really think that the “New Atheists” are able to create what the old fashioned atheists did not?
I have tried, in my other posts, to address these sort of questions. Atheism is a negative premise – rejection or disbelief in theism. That’s all – and that is not enough upon which to found a collective/community. Mounting a crusade – which is what many ‘New Atheists’ seem to be doing, is, again, no basis upon which to create a collective/community. Negativity is unable to produce or create anything at all. That, it seems to me, is as far as most ‘New Atheists’ have got. They have stopped short, very short, of becoming freethinkers. Intellectually speaking, knocking down idols (or whatever idea..) is not what makes one a freethinker – freethinkers are creators not simply destroyers. And freethinkers are first and foremost individually orientated, not collectivists. But, of course, society needs both to function successfully. Remember that saying: “all for one and one for all” – that’s the humanitarian code. Society needs more freethinkers – not yet more collectivist run around with the nonsense of *us* and *them*. Much better for atheists to try using *I* and *us*…
Mh, you write Atheists, unfortunately, often, very often, allow their intellectual position, as atheists, to short-circuit their humanitarian side. Thus, leaving the non-atheist religionists to carry the can re social/community help for the needy.
This is not only insulting as well as factually incorrect, but highly problematic if you are only willing to allot humanitarianism to faith-based labels rather than measure the actions of people who populate all kinds of caring organizations if they happen to also be atheists. Certainly social programs here in Canada funded by the public have no such religious litmus test.
You continue The proof of the pudding, so they say, is in the eating – so lets see the evidence then for “long lasting” atheist communities and their willingness to offer the type of ‘comfort’ found within faith based communities? The theory is great – lets identify the reality. And if there is no such atheist caring communities – why not? What is it about atheism that continually stops short of being able to offer caring collectives/communities?
You continue with this problematic association without getting beyond (or even recognizing) your own bias. On staff at my hospital, for example, is a significant number of atheists at every professional level. That they don’t congregate as a group of atheists under whose name they commit daily acts of compassion and caring does not mean that you can deduce that atheism itself somehow interferes with expressing their humanitarian side. That you continue to assume as much because there isn’t a similar organization to a church that has some kind of well-labeled outreach program is rather interesting to me. That there are atheists in all kinds of caring and compassionate aid organizations like Doctors Without Borders surely is well known – one recently died in Afghanistan. Because I have already explained why there is no need for an atheist organization to be similar to a church outreach program, your insistence on there being a lack of evidence for such a similar organization falls well short of justifying the earlier conclusion about atheism causing some reduction in caring and compassion.
I have met atheists everywhere there is caring and compassion being shown – including some church organizations! But many of these folk are too intimidated by the all too frequent kind of negative association you also make about atheists to publicize their lack of affiliation (or motivation) to some faith-based program (or afterlife staff bonuses)… programs often favoured to be used as a surrogate agency by the state through special tax exemptions and grants to deliver public dollars in the form of managing various kinds of outreach programs. This tilts the deck in favour of advertising care and compassion by religious organizations when it could be done by state agencies staffed by those motivated to act professionally rather than theologically. Your pointing out the lack of similar organizations under the banner of ‘atheist’ compared to this special status conferred without merit (necessarily) on religious organizations as evidence for some intrinsic lack of humanitarianism on the part of atheists is entirely misplaced.
Oh, come of it, tildeb. Firstly, “insulting” is part and parcel of the New Atheists rhetoric . Don’t they say somewhere that no one has a right not to be insulted (or some such words). It’s ironic that any New Atheist would bleat about being ‘insulted’. I’m truly stunned.
Let’s keep this exchange away from any emotional responses.
Secondly, your post is again imputing to me a position that I have not articulated, ie your inference that I am only allowing the humanitarian label to be connected with faith based people. This means talking to you becomes a difficult endeavour.
Humanitarian action is no respecter of faith based – or ideological based, beliefs or ideas. That’s a basic, fundamental, assessment of human nature. Nothing that I have written in any shape or form has sought to contradict this reality. I have not posted anywhere that has stated, as you are once again imputing to me, “about atheism causing some reduction in caring and compassion”. Individuals are beings capable of caring and compassion. The point I am making is that atheists have not been able to translate this individual ability into a collectivist/community of caring and compassion.
My posts in this thread are contrasting collectives/communities with the desire of some atheists, seemingly the New Atheists, of wanting to create their own atheist communities; atheist communities that can offer the sort of comfort that is found, in particular, within faith based communities. I addressed this issue from a perspective of the individual and collective. I don’t wish to go over those arguments again.
Tibdeb: “I have met atheists everywhere there is caring and compassion being shown – including some church organizations! But many of these folk are too intimidated by the all too frequent kind of negative association you also make about atheists to publicize their lack of affiliation…”
Oh, my. Perhaps the New Atheists might give a thought or two to the negative press that they, themselves, are creating about atheists. It’s no wonder that atheists with a strong humanitarian pull would be off put by all the insulting of people who uphold a faith perspective that goes on in the name of furthering the atheist ‘ cause’. Blasphemy day, mockery of symbols of belief – yep, great fun days for the New Atheists. Methinks the cost to the New Atheists might not be what they are budgeting for…
Yep, religion is a scam say the New Atheists. So what does that humanitarian atheist doctor feel, when, after driving past that great big new atheist billboard, he arrives at the hospital to see his dying patient holding a rosary in her hands (as did my dying mother on her death bed). How does he go about his work with the sick and the dying, who need all the compassion and care that he can muster, with that billboard in his head? And how does that dying patient feel, knowing his/her doctor believes the message of that billboard, that religion is a scam, when wanting some symbol of their belief to be near them as they end their lives? Would the dying patient feel ill at ease with that atheist doctor who looks down upon their dying needs?
http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/of-atheist-tribes-a-repost-and-riposte-in-honor-of-david-silvermans-foolery/
A moving target is difficult to hit, mh, even when I quote you directly. Your position to pigeonhole the nature of atheists as well as atheism itself to be the problem of forming caring and compassionate communities under the atheist banner is misguided I think.
My point remains that it’s not the banner – or lack of it – that matters or offers us anything descriptive, you see. In the same way that the lack of organizations centered around non belief in Muk Muk of the Volcano does not tell us anything whatsoever about the nature of all of us unbelievers nor offer us the slightest clue about any fallout from our Muk Muk non belief in social terms (like the effects of this non belief in the caring and compassion and comforting of its non believers), so too does the lack of organizations centered around atheism tell us anything whatsoever about the nature of atheists or atheism itself in social terms (like the effects of this non belief in the caring and compassion and comforting of its non believers) as you – in various linguistic pop-up disguises – seem to suggest.
There’s simply no causal link there except in the minds of people who believe that link is there and that the link just so happens to be negative. Such a belief is itself problematic and is not only misguided but has needlessly offensive consequences that paints the assumed and asserted effects of non belief inaccurately. This belief is itself deserving of criticism, confrontation, and exposure for the lie it truly is.
bJ, your comment reminds me of a Baha’i funeral I attended for an aunt. The ceremony – like the Catholic mass you describe – was very somber and proper and was to end with a few words by some who knew her. These folk began to describe some stories that revealed who and what the aunt was and the ceremony quickly turned into a tremendous and positive affirmation of her life that brimmed with the joy she brought to so many. Nobody wanted to leave after the last ‘official’ speaker so people gathered into large groups in the hall and many people kept offering more and more personal and very funny stories. There was so much laughing (and crying) and more laughing that the funeral director kept popping into the room and asking the gathering to keep it down out of respect for another funeral service that was finishing up. Some of these other ‘mourners’ not only came into our hall to see what was going on but almost all stayed! The director eventually had to break up the party and insist that everybody had to leave. My uncle approached us after the internment and told us how much she would have loved this funeral, that no finer tribute and emotional send off could have been made on her behalf.