Sunday blasphemy: Life without gods is enjoyable and ethical

Ran across this quote as a Facebook status update.

Without God, life would end at the grave and our mortal experiences would have no purpose. Growth and progress would be temporary, accomplishment without value, challenges without meaning.

In other words: There must be a god. If there weren’t, it would be depressing, and depressing things just can’t be true!

Not much of an argument, is it? But you can see the self-congratulatory appeal. It tells the believer: ‘You’re not wasting your time believing. Your belief gives your life a purpose.’ Well, I suppose the author’s church gives him a purpose. Maybe he actually means that his life would be meaningless without the god that he’s based all his hopes and aspirations on.

It also lets him pity atheists — oh, how empty their lives must seem!

Well, he can save his pity. Life without gods is still full of value and meaning, even if it doesn’t last forever. In fact, I find life more precious because of its brief duration.

I’m thinking of Babette’s Feast, a wondrous film that I first saw at BYU. (I wonder if it’s still a favourite on the International Films list.) Babette, a French chef, is a long-time resident of a village full of dour Lutherans. When she announces that she’s making a feast for her friends, it sends them into turmoil — how can they enjoy the feast while renouncing the pleasures of the flesh? Maybe it’s the age I am now, but as a BYU student with false assurances of a future eternity, I thought, “What a neat film.” Now when I think of it, and of our brief time to feast, I am moved to tears. I feel that coming to accept mortality and non-existence has deepened my emotions in way that was impossible when I thought life would go forever.

Is growth and progress temporary — and therefore meaningless — if we die and cease to exist? For the individual, perhaps, but there’s more than just us, you know. There’s also humanity. The great things that people have made and left behind continue to benefit all of us. How short-sighted to claim it’s all pointless if he’s not around to have it forever. How self-centered. How this view devalues life. What paucity of imagination. What meanness of spirit.

There’s more. The author continues:

There would be no ultimate right and wrong and no moral responsibility to care for one another as fellow children of God.

Ultimate right and wrong? Says someone whose barbaric holy books need constant reinterpretation and explanation to bear any resemblance to the morality held by normal people today.

And as far as moral responsibility, if he needs to believe in an invisible man to care about other humans, then I hope he never stops believing. Luckily, we atheists can take care of people we love and contribute to the good of humanity without all the supernatural baggage.

I wonder if the author of this quote would be disappointed to find that atheists aren’t all miserable and depressed. We have the temerity to be happy in this life. And how confusing it must be to see us taking care of other people without an ‘absolute morality’. I think I’ll confuse him even more by dropping a few coins into ‘Non-Believers Giving Aid‘. Figure that one out, God-Boy.