Atheism and Hope

"Atheists have no hope."

Of all the slanders and misrepresentations told about atheists and atheism, this is... well, this is the one I'm thinking about right now.

I'm thinking about it because of something I just read. It was in Doris Zine #26 by Cindy Ovenrack, and... well, here's what it said.

"I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, she is a restaurant manager and we'd never really talked about politics at all, but something came up and she said, 'Atheism and anarchist theory were the first things that gave me any hope in this world. They were the things that said we had the power within us to make things better. Everything else said we were either evil or helpless to fate.'" (Emphasis mine.)

Typically, when atheists respond to the accusation that we have no hope, our response is something along the lines of, "We do so!" Which is a perfectly fair response, one I myself have made before and will make again. We point out that there are many things to hope for other than immortality (which we believe to be a false hope). And we list all the things we have hope for. We hope that our book will get published, that our children will go to college, that global warming will get handled before it's too late. We hope that our friend's cancer is treatable. We hope that a reasonably sane and intelligent person will be elected President in 2008. We hope to be remembered after we die.

And I've always felt a rumble of both irritation and pity when I hear this no-hope accusation, a rumble that sounds something like this: "Do you really have no hope for anything other than eternal life? Is your life really so pathetic that you have no hope for anything other than Heaven? Does your life -- the actual life that you're living right now -- have so little joy and meaning that you can't imagine any hope without the promise that, when it's finally all over, you'll get to have another, better, permanent life at the end of it?"

But then I remember:

Maybe the answer is Yes. That's true. They really do have no hope for this life.

I remember, among other things, that rates of atheism are much higher in countries with higher levels of prosperity and social health... and that rates of religious belief are much higher in countries that are riddled with poverty, oppression, and despair.

Now, if the person making the accusation is some yahoo on the Internet, then I feel perfectly free to indulge in my irritation and snark. If you have the time and leisure to be reading atheist blogs, then you have the time and leisure to make something of your life. This life, I mean. The one you actually have.

But for many people, it's not so easy.

Which is why I was so struck by Cindy Ovenrack's comment above.

And I am reminded:

For many people, religion does not offer hope.

For many people, religion offers helplessness, and self-hatred, and despair.

And for many of those people, atheism offers a way out of it.

Atheism doesn't just offer the regular sort of everyday hope, the hope for achievement and health and happiness and a better world. Atheism offers, as Cindy's friend put it, the hope that we have the power within us to make things better. Not the hope that we might be able to convince some moody, capricious, punitive, easily- ticked- off God to make things better for us if we walk on the eggshells just right. It offers the hope that no such God exists... and therefore we don't have to worry about what he thinks or what he's going to do. And that we therefore don't have to listen to religious leaders and teachers who tell us at every step that we're bad people, that we're powerless to make ourselves better, that all the power we think we have actually belongs to someone else.

Atheism offers the idea that this world is all we have. And it therefore offers the hope that we have the power to touch that world, and shape it, and shove it a little bit in the direction that we'd like to see it move.

And that's a pretty big hope.

Comments

[lunalelle]

I recently got that comment on one of my blogs, that this guy felt sorry for atheists because they had no hope. I was just going through some intellectual angst about the Christian voice that still yells in my ear on occasion. Hope, my dear friend, is not my problem. You can hope six ways from Sunday whether you're Christian or not. Hope is a by-product of having a sense of past, present, and future. Hope is simply optimism for the future. Heck, I even hope for some form of immortality sometimes. Being an atheist only removes one hope: the hope of an everlasting life in heaven with the Christian God. It's like that old atheist adage that we only believe in one less (or is it fewer?) god than Christians - we only have one less hope than Christians, which opens up the opportunity to other kinds of hope.

[ErinM]

Considering some of the Christians I know, I fervently HOPE their heaven and their god do not exist. Eternity with them sounds more depressing than no afterlife at all.

[gruntled atheist]

Beautifully written.

[absent sway]

Great post! The parts about religion emphasizing helplessness in some people, and having to walk on eggshells just so, and all the power we think we have being attributed to someone else, resonate with me.

[Ebonmuse]

I wonder - what would it mean for a theist to have hope? After all, aren't they certain that God will eventually swoop in and save the day? It seems to me that if you're absolutely positive that something will happen, you don't have hope, you have certainty. That being the case, not only does atheism permit us to have hope, one could argue that it's the only worldview that plausibly allows for the possibility. We can still have hope: that humanity's moral development will continue, that our ethics will finally catch up with our technology, that we'll enjoy happiness and good fortune in our own personal lives. I don't see what a theist could ever plausibly claim they merely hope for, not if they believe God is benevolent and in control.

[The Nerd]

All the hope promised to my by Christianity was given to me by atheism.

[Kevin]

I completely agree, and expressing this view is part of the motivation for my new blog. Aside from caring about what is actually true, I believe atheism is also the most optimistic and hopeful, as you have beautifully expressed.

[Alicaida]

A common attitude of Christians is the idea that mankind is fallen, sinful, and that the world will never get better, only worse until God destroys it. They think there must be something else, something good and wonderful waiting for them after death. That isn't hope. That is despair dressed up in a robe.

We affect the world, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. I hope we will work for the better. Sometimes I see it happen, sometimes I just know that it could happen.

That is hope.

[Alex]

Beautifully written!

I have been enjoying your blog since the they a discover it and I would like to repay you with my favorite poem. It talks about being in peace with mortality and the fact that it doesn`t exist a higher force controling our live:

At peace:

Very near my setting sun, I bless you, Life
because you never gave me neither unfilled hope
nor unfair work, nor undeserved sorrow/pain

because I see at the end of my rough way
that I was the architect of my own destiny
and if I extracted the sweetness or the bitterness of things
it was because I put the sweetness or the bitterness in them
when I planted rose bushes I always harvested roses

Certainly, winter is going to follow my youth
But you didn’t tell me that May was eternal
I found without a doubt long my nights of pain
But you didn’t promise me only good nights
And in exchange I had some peaceful ones

I loved, I was loved, the sun caressed my face

Life, you owe me nothing, Life, we are at peace!

- by Amado Nervo

[Kylyssa Shay]

Beautifully written. Then I look over and see you've written some of my favorite erotica!

I'm very familiar with the idea that some hold that life is meaningless and hopeless without God and an afterlife. I, too, strongly disagree!

[nina]

good points - if all the beleivers hope for is eternal life

why would they want that when they are so self loathing in this life?

the idea of permanently being in that state sound way more like hell to me

[Mike]

To think of living for eternity
is like "Groundhog Day" every
day for infinity and then
doubled!

[Rick]

It is obvious that you believe you know something about Christians, but I can assure you that you are greatly mistaken in your assumptions.

My hope doesn't keep me from enjoying this life at all but rather enhances it to its greatest possible pleasure. You see I get the best of both worlds through my faith in Christ. I have fellowship with a living Savior who loves me and has given me hope for every day as well as eternal hope. In addition, I am free from the fears and anxieties that many people suffer because I can "cast all my cares upon the Lord" as the scripture tells me to do.

I fully enjoy life as a husband of a wonderful wife, father to seven very special children and grandfather to three beautiful children and one on the way. I have written a book and published it, have preached, taught, worked to see lives changed for the good and have seen great results in that, and have learned to live for the Lord and by extension for my fellow man by doing all within my power to raise them above the life they now live to victory in Christ.

If I were any more fulfilled in this life I cannot imagine how it could be. But then I know that I will live forever in the presence of a wonderful, loving God on a new earth as foretold in Revelation where there is no more sorrow, pain, sickness or death for all those things will have been put away forever.

Visit my web site if you choose. There is a challenge for those who come there to consider Christ and also a challenge for Christians to put off anything that will hinder them in living as they should. It is not a comfortable feel-good site but rather a site calling for absolute surrender to Christ above everyone and everything.

Rick

[Rick]

First your site said that my comments posted and then an error came up saying it didn't. I hope that it did and further hope that you didn't cut it off because it didn't agree with what you believe.

I feel what I said was considerate and should have been non-offensive unless there is a lack of tolerance for Christians on your site. That would be a pity since all the atheists that I have met that are respectful have had no problem with my posts to date.

[Rick]

It is obvious that you believe you know something about Christians, but I can assure you that you are greatly mistaken in your assumptions.

My hope doesn't keep me from enjoying this life at all but rather enhances it to its greatest possible pleasure. You see I get the best of both worlds through my faith in Christ. I have fellowship with a living Savior who loves me and has given me hope for every day as well as eternal hope. In addition, I am free from the fears and anxieties that many people suffer because I can "cast all my cares upon the Lord" as the scripture tells me to do.

I fully enjoy life as a husband of a wonderful wife, father to seven very special children and grandfather to three beautiful children and one on the way. I have written a book and published it, have preached, taught, worked to see lives changed for the good and have seen great results in that, and have learned to live for the Lord and by extension for my fellow man by doing all within my power to raise them above the life they now live to victory in Christ.

If I were any more fulfilled in this life I cannot imagine how it could be. But then I know that I will live forever in the presence of a wonderful, loving God on a new earth as foretold in Revelation where there is no more sorrow, pain, sickness or death for all those things will have been put away forever.

Visit my web site if you choose. There is a challenge for those who come there to consider Christ and also a challenge for Christians to put off anything that will hinder them in living as they should. It is not a comfortable feel-good site but rather a site calling for absolute surrender to Christ above everyone and everything.

Rick

[Rick]

I apologize for the double post. I didn't intend to do that.

[Toby Stevens]

As one who does believe a God created us, I often wonder about this. My question is primarily ... if there is no afterlife, is there any real purpose in this life?

Or put another way ... if elements randomly organized throughout time to become what now is ... then isn't meaning and hope subjective? So that evil persons hope or meaning is just as valid as anyone else's?

I'm not argumentative, and would like to communicate with others on this. Any input is welcom.