Letters to the Editor
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Faith is really all about doubt.
It seems to me that what gets lost in our post-Christendom, American understanding of religion and religiousness is that, at heart, faith is really much more about doubt than conviction: about what we can't comprehend and yet yearn to, in spite of all of the contradictory facts of our lives.
All religions grow out of the compulsion to get at the big question: 'What does it all mean?' We are peculiarly positioned in this late hour of western civilization, because religious freedom and the fusion of a fluid religious tradition with the independence and individualism fostered by the early shapers of the American mind (I'm thinking especially of Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson) have left us in a space in which we try to reconcile the individual will with the need for human community and authority (the chief uses and purposes of religion).
To refute the truth of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other world-historical religion is different from assuming that, because we do not agree that God spoke to Abraham or that Jesus was his son or Mohammed his holy messenger, that some power, plural or singular, does not exist outside of the sphere of our grossly limited understanding.
Consider: as late as the turn of the 20th century, mesmerism and phrenology(the study of the shape of the scalp and brain as a means of determining talent/aptitude/personality) were still considered viable scientific pursuits, with research studies funded both by US Congress and UK Parliament. Realistically speaking, the field of scientific, evidence-based medicine is at most 200 years old, and was not standardized in western civilization until the 20th century. The idea that we know enough about the mind, the body, the earth, and the universe to conclude that 'God' does not exist is no less preposterous than the idea that God metaphorically atoned for the sins of all humanity by being falsely arrested and executed at the request of the very people he meant to redeem.
We may yet get to know what's out there--and understand in scientific terms the many unexplained phenomena, supernatural or otherwise, which seem to hint at the existence of some 'great beyond'--but until then, we have only the mediocre means of our cultural traditions to give us comfort and some means of purpose and understanding. Where religion--organized or otherwise--fails is in its inevitable use as a means to power. Those of us who recoil at the pretensions of religion--particularly those of the utterly abstract, subjective, and malleable branches of so-called evangelical Christianity--are really responding to the typical human urge to use whatever means are necessary to force our individual and/or collective will on others. These people have lost the beauty of their own religious tradition (how can a religion that celebrates a self-sacrificing pacifist be devoid of potential for beauty and holiness?), because they are not pursuing wisdom or insight, but, rather, exploiting a dogma no different in principal (and sometimes in deed) from Stalinism.
Wallace Stevens once wrote, 'in an age of disbelief, it is to the poet to provide a means of belief, in his measure and his style.' The recently deceased American Pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty similarly argued that the work of religion and philosophy in attempting to explain and shape the world is now and has always been, essentially, poetics. I think it's useful to remember that Jesus spent most of his mature life not performing miracles or enduring torture, but, rather, telling stories. More often than not, he didn't even try to explain the meaning of those stories--he let the telling do the work for him.
What else is valuable about religion is the order it can bring to life. This is why, I think, a lot of confirmed atheists end up gravitating back towards religion (especially orthodox faiths). Many of the great Modernists of the early 20th Century and their spiritual heirs--T. S. Eliot, Hermann Broch, Graham Greene, Caroline Gordon, Katherine Ann Porter, Allen Tate, Thomas Merton, Walker Percy, and many more--converted from atheism or general disbelief to Catholicism late in life. One can't help but suspect that what drew them into the church--if not a divine presence--was a desire for an ordered existence. It is not, in my view, a spiritual retreat or surrender to seek this order. One need not live without irony to be faithful: one need nearly acknowledge the mystery, and be willing to pledge himself and submit to something he believes to be noble and greater than himself, in spite of its imperfections. There are worse ways to live.
Good luck with your quest. Here are a few books that have helped me in my own:
*I And Thou* by Martin Buber
*Fear and Trembling* by Soren Kierkegaard
*The Seven Story Mountain* by Thomas Merton
*The Varieties of Religious Experience* by William James
*The American Religion* by Harold Bloom
*Poetry, Language, Thought* by Martin Heidegger
*Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth* by Richard Rorty
*The Moviegoer* by Walker Percy
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speculative atheism
LW,
it is a little odd to say that the existence of an afterlife is what creates one's sense of purpose, and then to say that such an afterlife, if it exists, must depend on the existence of a god. purpose, afterlife, god, three different things, none of which require the other two in order to exist. each form of meaning has many different philosophical possibilities, possible cosmologies, worlds.
good luck.
anonymous
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Born-again atheist
My story is almost the reverse. After hitting bottom with alcohol at the end of 1990, I was desperate for something, anything to guide my life and give me a sense of worth. The AA group I was in kept hammering away at a higher power, so I adopted one from my early childhood, a protective figure who would guide me through life's storms.
It seemed to work for years, and the verdict was that the psychiatric illness I had suffered was finally healed and would not trouble me again. Life was very sweet, and a number of personal goals that I had worked for for years finally came true (such as publishing 2 novels). Then, fifteen years after my last episode, I was sitting in the office in a hospital answering questions about my "alcoholism" and my "personality disorder". These were files that had not been updated or even opened for 15 years, and the assumption was that I had not changed at all in that time. This was beyond humiliation, beyond rage and beyond shame.
Everything blew apart, and I didn't know why. I couldn't sleep, weird thoughts and scenarios blew through my head, I couldn't stop writing and buying things, and meanwhile a horrible head of depression was building up underneath. I finally insisted (though they fought me hard, saying I wasn't sick enough) that I needed some care, as I was very close to suicide, and ended up in a residential facility for 2 weeks.
When the dust began to settle a bit, I realized that my entire belief system had blown apart. I no longer believed in a protective, loving God that informs our decisions and reaches out to us and others in compassion. The God I knew now was about as compassionate as an insect: ruthless and driven by a will to survive. Individuals didn't even matter in this system - they could be swept off the face of the earth in a second. I could not "worship" this thing that had hold of all of us, and that explained so much about the evil in the world.
I wondered if this loss was connected to grief over the loss of my mental health. I felt betrayed, surely. But one of my experiences while manic was a profound vision - lasting only a second - of what I came to call ultimate reality. Quite impossible to describe to anyone who hasn't experienced it. It seemed that I was seeing everything, all at once, in an instant. Every question I'd ever had, would ever have, could ever have had been answered. Instead of providing comfort, this blazing vision set fire to my brain, so that I literally felt I was being consumed. See the face of God, and you die.
It's a couple of years later, and I am under tremendous pressure to present a "well" persona to everyone, even my psychiatrist. He is an atheist, so will likely see my destroyed faith as a step forward. I can't tell him about my intractible despair, or he will up the doses and flatten me out. The thing is, when I had my crisis, when I fell off the tightrope, GOD WASN'T THERE. There was no sense of a presence or help or comfort or anything at all except raw abandonment. I can only surmise that my former beliefs were illusions. I can't put pieces back together that are so tiny you can't even see them.
On my worst days, I think it's over. I just don't see ahead. I had my shot, and failed. Mental illness is the most feared, the most reviled and the most stigmatized condition there is, and I HAVE IT. If I had the comfort of "God" that used to keep me in balance, I might be able to stand it. But it just isn't there any more. It must have been something I invented.
So, I'd caution people to be very, very careful in coming up with a "God of our understanding", which can be just about anything you want. If it's an illusion, it might just explode into a million bits during a crisis. If you start hearing "voices from God", they might just put you on some very heavy-duty meds (as the psychiatric field is generally not open to spirituality and sees it as a delusion, or at least a weakness). Maybe it's better to just stay an atheist, trust your own judgements about things, and leave the mysteries to the great sages (who didn't know any better than we do).