For some reason this post on Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish struck a chord with me. I started to send him an email, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought it’s something I should talk about here.
Before I delve into that, I need to put a couple of things on the table.
First, let me be crystal clear. I’m an atheist. Not an agnostic, not a believer that God is revealed to us in nature or in the cosmos or other vague stuff. I thought long and hard about belief when I was younger, and the older I get, the more certain I am that there is no god.
Second, this does not mean I hate Christians (or Jews or Buddhists, Zoroastrians etc) or think they’re stupid. My wife is a Christian. She was raised in an aggressively secular society (China) and only found her spiritual calling when she came to the US. Conversely, I grew up surrounded by Southern Baptists in Georgia, and was even baptised my self. Go figure.
So back to the business at hand. Here’s the quote that stood out:
“…Christianity is about the conquest of death, not its enlightened acceptance, and that in the absence of a resurrection, no pious words can make either the miners’ deaths or our own anything but a horror.”
This was in response to the question, how does one explain the deaths of 12 miners in the grand scheme of things, and to what degree are the owners of the mining company culpable? Far too often, in my opinion, religious people offer up bromides such as “the Lord works in mysterious ways” to explain away tragedy.
Such pieties are especially useful if fingers are pointing at you. The real value of pious Christian bromides is to the owners of the company that has such a rotten safety record. If you believe in an afterlife, all suffering – whether by miners, tsunami victims or innocent Iraqis hit by stray missiles or fanatic suicide bombers – is relatively small compared to the infinite ecstasy that awaits us on the other side. And thus even the monstrosities of Hitler, Stalin and Mao are diminished relative to the greatness of God.
But if you believe if there is no afterlife, every ignored opportunity to relieve suffering – giving a dollar to the homeless guy at the interstate exit, sending relief aid to tsunami survivors, refraining from dropping bombs on Iraq – is itself a sin against your fellow man. You cannot dismiss these things with piety (”the Lord works in mysterious ways”) or gruff humor (”kill them all and let God sort them out”). You, in some small way, are responsible for continued suffering. And death is not conquered or transcended. Death is final, not a mere stepping stone to ultimate happiness. The dead are dead, and they will never, ever again experience the joy of a beautiful sunset, a home-cooked meal or the birth of a child.
Who can live with such guilt? It’s much easier to believe in God and Heaven, or at least karma.
One final clarification: this is not an attempt to assert moral authority on my part. I’m as guilty as everyone else when it comes to not doing my part to relieve suffering, or being relatively callous in the face of evil and tragedy. It’s not like I volunteered to go fight terrorists, or to help stop genocide in the Sudan, or even to work in a soup kitchen. I’m just pointing out that I believe religious belief has a dark side that is never mentioned in the culture wars.
(And BTW though the post that inspired this little essay wasn’t written by Sullivan, it’s consistent with the kinds of views he holds. He’s a great example of a thoughtful conservative who isn’t just a mindless bullhorn for the Republican party. I wish there were more voices like him in the blogosphere. Likewise for the Democratic side of the aisle.)