I have known a number of atheists and they have always struck me as profoundly unhappy people. That’s a generalization, I know, but if one lives one’s life trusting solely to one’s intellect, devoid of any sense of a greater force or power in the life of the universe and our planet, then the only thing left is a belief that a random senselessness pervades our lives.
So what’s the point of conducting one’s life as if it had any purpose, any meaning? Is it just about being able to eat, sleep, and propagate? Life is often so daunting that millions escape into alcoholism, use mind-altering drugs, while others ignore the laws of society to pander to their base desires.
Why do we find it surprising that so many find a new and better life through a belief in a personal God?
Judaism and Christianity provide a reason to get up each day and to celebrate life. They provide a Creator of our universe and a general set of rules by which to live in a manner that minimizes and warns against our human penchant for self-indulgence, horrid conceits, and, yes, evil.
I cannot speak for either Buddhism or Hinduism as I am not that familiar with these largely Asian faiths, but one must assume they too provide solace. To watch the sun rise over the Ganges, above the Mekong, illuminating the Atlantic or Pacific oceans is to share the same experience in largely the same way. It cannot fail to inspire awe.
I was thinking about this when I recently listened to a debate on C-SPAN between outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens and David Berlinski who has written a book, “The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions.” Hitchens is the author of ”God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”
Hitchens has been stricken with cancer and, despite chemotherapy, clearly is in the final stages of his life. The first question he was asked was “How’s your health?” It was an entirely human, empathetic concern devoid of any intellectual trappings.
The great divide among the two monotheistic religions and the third, Islam, is their perception of death.
Islam preaches a terrible hell for wrongdoing while at the same time making death palatable with a promise of a paradise filled with wine and sex. It urges death as preferable to life to the point that dying for Allah and the spread of Islam has generated numerous suicide bombers, men and women, for whom murder is the gateway to eternal life. The murder of unbelievers is inscribed in its so-called holy book.
Islam is the faith of over a billion people and an estimated tenth of all Muslims, 100,000,000, ascribe to jihad, the war against unbelievers.
It can be argued that religion has often been the cause of wars and no one disputes that. The West is slowly awakening to the fact that, since 632 A.D., Islam has been at war with Christianity and Judaism. The contempt Muslims feel for Buddhists and Hindus is inexpressible. They are, to Muslims, people without “a book.”
Americans have taken to asking whether Barack Obama is a Muslim. It’s more than a pastime, an idle question in a nation where 98% believe in God and, in particular, a Christian one.
The dangers Americans sense about a life without God is at the core of this concern, seen most lately in a Monday news story noting that the President and his family walked across the street for services in an Episcopal church. In a year and a half in office, he has done this only four times.
They worry when he ignores an annual prayer breakfast at the White House. They worry that he recently neglected to mention the words, “endowed by their Creator” when citing the Declaration of Independence.
Cool, intellectual, detached in manner and approach to the job, Americans worry that the President lacks a moral compass. As is often the case, Lincoln said it best. “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
Atheism offers no real hope, no real reason for living, but Hitchens is clearly doing whatever he can to live, to defeat the cancer. A friend of his proposed a
day of prayer for him, but Hitchens said he would not attend, deeming such prayers “a nice gesture.”
Atheists I have known say they have their own morals, comparable to that of those who believe in God, but the rest of us worry that we find ourselves living in a society whose judges have authorized abortion as a national law instead of having left this issue to the individual States as the Tenth Amendment requires.
We worry about judges ignoring the will of voters to institute same-sex marriage. We worry about homosexuality being taught in the schools to children too young to decide what clothes to wear that day.
I believe the nation wants to return to the long established and proven rules for a moral life and prudent governance. It is mobilizing to restore those rules. They are based in religion and in the Constitution.
America was founded to resist despotism and to spread liberty. The starting point to achieve this is the commonly held belief that the Creator exists and that we must be mindful of His requirements.
© Alan Caruba, 2010
