Emotional resilience and Philistinery

[Creed of Heresy]

Dear interwebz computer friends,

I am writing to express my continued dismay at atheists who simply don't 'get it'. Every time someone mentions that they are an atheist I think 'here we go, another Philistine' - not because I want to, but that's because that has been my experience of atheists. Atheists I have met simply have brutish minds that do not even so much as try to sympathise with others, and who have very little value attached to the need to live a meaningful existence. Far from being social radicals, I have found committed atheists to be philosophically backward and ever-ready to appeal to authority. If there was an atheistic turn in the C20th, it would appear simply to be a demonstrable show of force of science against religion, and not anything critically planned or internally coherent, nothing at all like a socially engaged body of thought.

The positive atheists with agendas are usually former communists or humanist ideologues that believe as much in the tooth fairy as any religious person ever was supposed to have done, (with the figure of a well-defined, rationally autonomous human subject in place of God). The negative atheists - the vast majority of you - are of the 'so what' variety. Observe:

A: "why do you think God doesn't exist?"
B: "I need convincing on the basis of evidence; scientific or philosophical proof of God. There is none, and so there is no God"
OR
B: "The universe doesn't look designed or purposive, and so to think there is a God seems perverse and anthropomorphic"
A: "well religion structures a lot of people's lives and gives meaning to them. What do you propose in its place?"
B: "I didn't understand the question. Religion is often harmful and has to be minimally harmful if it's false, which it almost certainly is. I can't accept it gives meaning to people's lives, it more corrupts their lives"

If this sounds like a frequent discussion of yours, please read intently to what I have to say, because you aren't getting it! Your interlocutor's question is not an opportunity for you to 'so what' the real or imagined needs of others, on the basis of your perception of the real order of things (i.e. the physical fact of the lack of a deity), it is an opportunity for you to actually start to put across your idea of the universe as something meaning-filled, helpful, and non-scary. Religion, for all its demerits, does allow for freedom (of course within limits but what freedom does not have limits?), freedom of thought as a safety of thought, for example. It is safe to think about your life through reading about the life of Jesus. It is not safe to think through your problems with reference to... er, ... well there's nothing is there, really? Unless you imagine a little Christopher Hitchens sat on your shoulder pouring golden words of judgement into your ears (poor you).

Your interlocutor, if at all grasping your supposed truth that there is no God, is standing on a diving board looking down at the deep, dark waters below and saying "it would mean jumping?". Your 'so what' response, your exchange of hollow fact for the richness and sensitivity of human life and the complexities of social discourse and meaning, shows that you only care for yourself. Atheists delight in the exasperation their shallow messages entail. After this difficult Christmas period I want to tell you that your statements of fact are socialised and have consequences for both you and your listener(s). This is an awkward and difficult and dark aspect of human life, I suppose. Especially so if you consider that you can just simply attain and receive fact as a simple, uncomplicated truth, that can link to other simple uncomplicated truths that then form a network and make you into a super-rational, super-neutral member of the New Human Race. Hence when I remarked earlier that atheists are philosophically backward.

I see Dawkins and others with a close eye and understand only that a personal ethic is put forward as exceeding religion. To put it in the words of the title of Dawkins' recent autobiography - 'an appetite for wonder'. Compare such platitudes with the grandness and depth of feeling involved in religious thought - even among the least educated - and you'll see that they lack significantly. For example:

Who could minister a funeral - without knowing the departed - and bang on about the efforts they went to in their lives to demonstrate their love of the free acquisiition of knowledge? Could you do this at the death of a scientist? Sure! A philosopher? Yes! What about the death of an infant? Of someone uneducated, or someone who has had a hard life? How does the wonder and majesty inquisitive minds feel at apprehending the natural world make personal sense of the senseless deaths of millions? Do you get it? You really have to get it. If you don't, you simply have nothing to contribute to the lives of anyone but your friends who happen to share your brutish views.

I would be interested in any replies or refutations. I would particularly like to know if there are any conceptions of an atheistic universe that aren't merely reactionary or facetious, but that can make real sense of human action for the billions of emotional human minds that inhabit this dear planet.