The hopeless atheist

Atheism might be true, but it's so depressing. Atheists have no reason to get up in the morning, no reason to be moral, no hope for the future, and no afterlife. Atheists are one sad and depressive lot, and they only manage to cling to atheism because they cannot see the bliss of ignorance.

Religious people, on the other hand, bathe in the comfort of their faith. They hope for a better future, a world where everything is good and harmonious. They live for the Lord, and are safe in his hands. They know that God will provide, and will preserve their life for eternity. Being a religious person is worthy of merit and praise, because that person is a beacon to the world.

Of course, not one person has said these things exactly, but I am assembling a kind of portrait of general religious opinions on the subject. I think it's fairly obvious that anyone who believes the first two paragraphs demonstrates a serious fracture with reality - at least, to get to a mindset where a non-intervening, invisible being in the sky can make you happy. This kind of thinking also illustrates the power of emotion over reasoning, how so many people believe something because it gives them comfort or certainty.

The "hopeless atheist" myth is false - both factually and spiritually. Most atheists reject it factually but many still adopt it spiritually. In my opinion, this is a terrible mistake. We (as well as our critics) should not see ourselves as freaks of nature, devoid of any hope, comfort or spiritual desire.

1. Atheists have no reason to get up in the morning, no reason to be moral.

Both are related to the notion of value. Basically, what Christians are saying is : God gave us value from the sky, so why should you have any values ? Why should you want to be good, heck, why should you want to exist at all ? All that you have is the here and now, which is so intolerable as to warrant no consideration whatsoever.

It is intolerable perhaps to the religious vision of eternity (as an aside, most religious people don't seem to have a firm sense of proportions, including on what that e-word really means : but that's another subject entirely). To the infinite, any finite is nothing, sure. It is a grandiose delusion.

To us, values are grounded in reality, in the "here and now". We are children of spacetime, not of an eternal, abstract divine essence. We live and act the way we do precisely because there is no alternative, no god to give out easy solutions, no afterlife. Life in reality is more complex, but that is because of the exaggerated simplicity of religious systems, not because of atheism.

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