The title of this piece caught my eye the other day when it appeared on Google News: "The Blessings of Atheism." I wondered what those might be, so I read it. It's by Susan Jacoby, one of those activist atheists. And the purported blessings she offers are pretty thin stuff. I certainly sympathize with her difficulty in wrestling with the problem of suffering. But it's a little sad, and a little amusing, that she recommends that atheists respond to the grieving with the news that at least when you're dead you won't suffer anymore. Speaking of the president's response to the Connecticut murders, she says
Somewhere in that audience, and in the larger national audience, there were mourners who would have been comforted by the acknowledgment that their lives have meaning even if they do not regard death as the door to another life, but “only perfect rest.”
She's not at all clear as to what that meaning is--something to do with social justice etc., it appears. Fine, as far as that goes, but ultimately she can offer only the counsel that death puts an end to everything, including suffering.
He could have said something like, “Whether you are religious or nonreligious, may you find solace in the knowledge that the suffering is ours, but that those we love suffer no more.”
And in time you'll follow them into nothingness, and suffer no more from their loss. This reminds me of a guy I worked with on the farm many years ago: his response to any vexing problem--a broken piece of machinery, uncooperative cattle--was "A hundred years from now you'll never know it." A useful bit of perspective when one is inconvenienced, but hardly what we're looking for in a philosophy of life.
“only perfect rest.”
How can you be at rest when you no longer exist? The "rest" parallel works fine with theism, but with atheism even the metaphor is meaningless, let alone what it symbolizes.
Posted by: Rob G | 01/11/2013 at 06:21 AM
No more suffering, and no more joy--oh wait! No joy to begin with.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 01/11/2013 at 07:52 AM
I'm sure she would argue with that--"we find joy in rainbows and love etc." But she probably wouldn't admit that the shadow of the Reaper is always there.
"Perfect rest" is indeed meaningless in that context, but the use of the notion illustrates how hard it is to conceive of one's own non-existence. It's very hard not to turn it into some sleep-like image. But a more accurate approach is to compare it to the time before you were born.
Posted by: Mac | 01/11/2013 at 09:07 AM
"When we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your thegns and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a moment of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing."
Posted by: Paul | 01/11/2013 at 11:47 AM
Bede, right? I know I've read it somewhere. Extraordinarily fine image.
Posted by: Mac | 01/11/2013 at 11:56 AM
Right.
I left off the pagan priest's conclusion: "Therefore, if this new teaching has brought any more certain knowledge, it seems only right that we should follow it."
Posted by: Paul | 01/11/2013 at 07:02 PM
Smart fellow. Would that our sophisticates were as smart. Now Britain and all her children are throwing it away.
Posted by: Mac | 01/11/2013 at 09:07 PM