The Simple Life

It’s been almost two years since I decided that believing in God was, like, totally for squares, daddy-o, and I wasn’t going to do it anymore. My life has changed a lot since then. One thing I can say for sure is this: I like it. I like being atheist. There are many reasons, and today I’ll briefly explore one of them: it’s simpler.

The universe is a complex place. Understanding its finer points is a task far beyond my capabilities. But that’s okay! I know that there are many wondrous things out there that I will never comprehend, and I’m not the least bit upset about it. No one is making me try to fathom how the universe came into existence, or how time can get all distorted by gravity and such, or how consciousness works. There are answers to these questions out there, and I have some idea as to what they are, but their nuances are beyond my current knowledge, and perhaps the knowledge of anyone. Nonetheless, there is a key difference between life before and after my deconversion: I don’t feel any pressure to try to figure these things out.

Life as an atheist in the big city is pretty easy. This is especially true given the fact that I live in a very liberal city—Seattle. My recent relocation to said township has caused a lot of unrest in my life, but I’m grateful for the fact that I don’t need to worry about going to church or anything like that. I work hard enough as it is during the week; I don’t need to waste even more of my free time on the weekend participating in some cult-like mumbo-jumbo. No thank you, I’ll pass on that.

Back to my point: being an atheist is just less mentally taxing than being a believer. Even as I write that I can hear the rebuttal of the theist: “Ah! So you admit that you’re just pretending God doesn’t exist so you don’t have to follow His rules! Checkmate, atheist!” Okay, okay, I’ll address you in a minute. Life is just better if you can live it without worrying about breaking some kind of obscure tenet set down by ignorant men thousands of years ago. I don’t need to wrap my head around why God would allow terrible evil, or how God doesn’t need a creator but the universe does, or why people who claim to believe in justice and goodness can perpetrate horrific crimes against others. All of that stuff is still there, but as a godless person, I can safely live my life without trying to answer those unanswerable questions.

I feel like I’ve drifted around my point here, so I’ll just end with this: I’m not trying to say that we shouldn’t ask big questions or examine our lives. On the contrary, I firmly believe that we should look into our beliefs with care. What I’m getting at here is the idea that as a believer I was called upon to hold a number of contradictory and obtuse beliefs. I was never very good at compartmentalizing those things away; they always gnawed at me. As an atheist, I take time out for science and philosophy. But the time is my own. And if I’d rather just spend an evening playing video games, I don’t run any risk whatsoever of irritating a petty deity.

Argh, this post is confusing and random. Still, more posts more often! That’s my new motto!

Thanksgiving

Another Thanksgiving come and gone. I spent the day feasting with family and friends. The air was filled with delicious smells, laughter, and the warmth of hearts sharing their love. It was a really nice day, and I couldn’t have asked for better. I want to pause here a moment and talk about this holiday’s buzzword: gratitude.

Back when I was a believer, I made a habit of thanking God before every meal. I had a standard prayer that I’d rattle off under my breath, something along the lines of, “Dear Lord, thank you for bringing me here to enjoy this meal. Please bless my family and friends, especially those in most need of your help.” I felt that this covered the bases pretty well; get some thankfulness in there, and also pitch in a word for those close to me. It was nice. It felt like a good thing to be in the habit of doing.

But what did being grateful to God really mean to me? The feeling was rooted in my understanding of God’s role in my life, which I didn’t exactly hammer down with any great clarity at the time. It went something like this: God created me. He also created this food, and the reason He did that was so I’d have something to eat. He has been guiding me through my life, encouraging me to make certain choices, and those choices have led me here. And I’m happy here. So I should thank God for His assistance in reaching this place.

Thanking God was, for me, a lot like thanking one’s parents for dinner. They “made” you, they put the food in front of you, and they guided you through life thus far. It’s an easy comparison to make, really.

And all of this is probably pretty obvious or generic; I imagine this is how most believers understand their relationship with God.

I wonder now, looking back, why I didn’t ask more questions about this. Actually, no, I don’t wonder. I know why. I was taught not to ask questions. But if I had asked questions, I would’ve quickly found some problems.

First of all, there are the big questions that the situation calls for: how exactly does God “guide” me anywhere? How does he encourage me to make certain choices, while still allowing my will to be free (and more importantly, the wills of the people in my life who are asking me to make the choices in question)? If God has my life all mapped out in his head, do my “choices” even really matter? Could I have ended up anywhere other than where I was just then, sitting at the table with the plate in front of me?

If we put all that stuff aside and just run with it, a second worry comes up: why thank God? Not just for the food, but for anything? Let me explain with an analogy: say I release you into some kind of gigantic maze, like the ones scientists use on rodents, and observe you from above, to see how you navigate it. I’ve spent lots of time making sure this maze is deviously complicated; there are dead-ends and roadblocks everywhere. Now, I’ve also set little pieces of “cheese” along the way for you (whatever reward “cheese” is depends on the person, I suppose). And as you stagger through this test, wondering where you’re supposed to go and why the hell you’ve ended up in such horrendous situation anyway, you come upon these pieces of cheese. Would you be grateful to me, the test maker (by the way, I’ve also left a bundle of old notes about me, the scientist, written by previous maze-runners. I haven’t actually shown myself to you or anything crazy like that)? Would you express your thankfulness to me for the bountiful rewards I’ve seen fit to give you?

I wouldn’t. You can’t buy my love, God. You can’t just give me stuff and expect me to do whatever you ask. I thought that was what free will was all about? Being able to choose whether or not to love God? The problem here is this: if God is going to put all these material rewards in front of me and then wiggle his eyebrows knowingly and go, “Eh? Eh?”, then you can count me right out of that nonsense. Even the promise of an immaterial reward is just that, a promise. Until I see the pay dirt, I don’t have much of a reason to be swayed by such a reward.

I’ll try to sum this up: I don’t see much reason to thank God for his “gifts”, because they come with a hidden agenda. There is, to borrow the old adage, no such thing as a free lunch. If I cram in a mouthful of the delicious apple pie in front of me, I’m in essence saying, “Ok God, I’ll bite. I’ll accept your gifts, and with them the knowledge that you put them there so that I might believe in you.”

Don’t you see? God has a monopoly on the situation! Where else am I going to go? If I want to turn down his gifts and strike out on my own, I don’t have any other options.

The reason I exist is because God made me; therefore, I begin the game indebted to him. Again I go back to the maze analogy (apt, I think, because a lot of people view this life as a “test”): sure, while trapped in the maze, I might be enjoying these rewards the scientist left for me, but I’m stuck in the maze because of the scientist! I didn’t have any option but to be here! So to be grateful to him for trapping me in a labyrinth and then throwing down treats is a bit… silly. Maybe if I’d been given the option of not being in the maze, then I could see saying “thanks”. But I didn’t get to make that choice. So these “gifts” are permanently tainted by the fact that they’re only put there to placate me and coerce me to follow God’s will.

A kidnapper might be nice and give you candy, but he's still a kidnapper.

All right, enough about this. Thank goodness none of it is true: God didn’t give me my meals because there isn’t a God. Phew.

Thanksgiving is, now, an even better holiday for me. Why? Because instead of thanking some invisible man with a beard for the mountains of grub, I can give my gratitude to those who truly deserve it: my family and friends. I can thank them for being a part this brief, fleeting experience we call living. I can be happy that my brain has produced an epiphenomenon called “me”, and thus I’m able to think about how much I enjoy turkey and stuffing. I can just be glad to be alive now, at this very exciting juncture in human history, instead of a thousand years ago or five hundred years ago or any of the other really nasty time periods prior to the present.

Most of all, I can give thanks for the goodness in the hearts of my fellow human beings. That’s what I was most grateful for this Thanksgiving: the beauty and compassion of everyone around me.

Hope you had a wonderful Turkey Day. I certainly did.

Hey, look at that! It's death!

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. It’s a very big part of a lot of peoples’ lives. People deny things all the time, for starters: “No, I didn’t know about that rule.” “Of course I didn’t sleep with her!” “I’ve never seen that Peruvian cocaine in my life!” But I’m talking about something deeper. Something darker. Something more pervasive, and less easy to brush aside as simple lying.

Let me try to explain by starting with the thought that prompted this… um, thought. I was contemplating death—something I do with greater frequency than I’d prefer, it seems—and I came to the realization that I live in a form of denial almost every day. As an atheist, I don’t believe in an afterlife. Which means when I die, that’s it. Doesn’t matter what I do during my life, I won’t get anything for it at the end. Now, I’m getting a lot better at accepting this as the way things are and finding fulfillment in it, but even so, there’s a nagging worry. No matter how much fame and fortunate I may amass, I won’t be able to change the following fact: one day, the universe will end. All humans will die. Our planet will be destroyed, our civilization lost, and no one will ever know we existed. It’s sad, but it’s true. And knowing this, how can I find much motivation to create anything? It’ll all be annihilated anyway.

Well, that thought was certainly a downer. Yet I’m writing this blog entry, and I write in my journal, and I write stories, and I’m working on a novel. Why? When placed side by side with the knowledge of the ultimate end of the universe, creating things seems like a futile endeavor. So what keeps me going?

Denial. Subconscious, unaware denial, but denial nonetheless. I just pretend it isn’t true. I put the thought out of my head and focus on the task at hand. After a short time of doing this, the thoughts are completely gone and I’m able to devote myself fully to any creative task I might be undertaking. Denial is a great tool for me, it seems.

Perhaps another analogy is in order. I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a chasm. If I want to accomplish anything, I need to keep my eyes zeroed in on something other than the chasm. Sure, I know in the back of my head that someday someone will push me and everything I’ve ever made into that black pit, but by pretending the pit isn’t there, I’m able to actually stay focused on my work. I deny reality to maintain my sanity.

And I don’t see anything wrong with that. Maybe I should? After all, isn’t that the underlying motivation for a lot of people when it comes to belief in the afterlife? They don’t want to face the fact that death is final, so they embrace a comforting thought, regardless of its truth value or how certain they are of its actuality. Is this what I do?

Well, no. Not really. Not even close, actually.

I don’t pretend that I’m not going to die. I don’t pretend that there’s something to look forward to after this life runs its course. I know full well that death is death, the end, goodbye, game over. Even when I’m at my most productive, I can look at the things I believe and find “death is final” among them. So perhaps denial isn’t the best word for this.

Yeah. That’s right. Denial isn’t the right word. I think I know what the word is.

Distraction.

I keep myself busy so that I don’t have time to focus on matters of mortality. In doing so, I don’t deny the truth of the proposition; I simply avoid thinking about it altogether. In that sense, I still do something that believers do—not think critically about what I believe—but I feel that this is simply the way life is, and if we were to do otherwise, we’d drive ourselves mad. Believers live unexamined lives because they’ve been taught to do so, and sometimes they know that examining their beliefs would result doubt. I live an unexamined life when I need to get other things done. But the key difference is this: I examine my life. I look at it with great frequency. Many believers do not.

Are they just doing what I do, though? Being distracted? I really don’t know. I feel like I’ve gotten very far from my original topic here. Guess I’ll just call this entry good and leave with this final comment: I don’t pretend that death isn’t waiting for me. I just ignore it when I need to get some living done.