Column

Atheism

Creed

1 September 2023

6 min read

Confessions of an atheist philosopher. Part 4: The empty promises of “be here now”

In the fourth of a series, philosopher Stefani Ruper tries the most popular advice given by atheist philosophers.

Stefani Ruper

Stefani Ruper is a philosopher specialising in the ethics of belief and Associate Member of Christ Church College, Oxford. She received her PhD from the Theology & Religion faculty at the University of Oxford in 2020.

A graffited wall shows a stick man face next to 'what now'

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

My name is Stefani. I was a committed atheist for almost my entire life. I studied religion to try to figure out how to have spiritual fulfillment without God. I tried writing books on spirituality for agnostics and atheists, but I gave up because the answers were terrible. Two years after completing my PhD, I finally realised that that’s because the answer is God.

Today, I explain how and why I decided to walk into Christian faith.

Here at Seen and Unseen I am publishing a six-article series highlighting key turning points or realisations I made on my walk into faith. It tells my story, and it tells our story too.

I spent the first thirty years of my life looking for ways to have spiritual fulfillment as an atheist. I even got a PhD studying theology trying to figure out how to get the same peace and joy my religious friends had without believing in God.

For a brief period after finishing my PhD I thought I might have found some solutions. I tried writing books about them titled things like How to Have an Existential Crisis and Agnosticism: The Real Spiritual Truth and Joy. But they were not good books. When I shared this opinion with my friends, they all thought I was being too hard on myself. But I knew the truth: the answers I was providing just weren’t good enough. They didn’t make me feel happy or peaceful. Why would they work for anyone else?

I had one last resort to try: giving up, which is the advice most atheist philosophers provide. According to them, happiness lies not in finding the meaning of life, but in accepting that there is none. Relax, they say. Stop searching for something that isn’t there! Be a good person. Enjoy the present moment. Be here now!

I decided to give it a try—and I really did try my best. I got a prestigious job. I rented an expensive apartment with a balcony overlooking Harvard Square. I bought a brand-new car and paid an extra $600 for a special-edition paint colour. I partied a few nights a week. I meditated every day. I cultivated friendships. I dated. I went hiking and sat on park benches and wondered at the beauty of nature.

Everyone who followed me on Instagram thought I was having the time of my life. But I have never been more miserable.

“Be here now” reduces meaning and possibilities for spiritual fulfillment

Of course, there are beautiful aspects to being present. It is true that being aware, mindful, and grateful in each moment enriches life.

But when that’s all there is, you run into three big problems.

1: Meaning is flimsy

All religions offer meaning that has what Donald Crosby calls a personal-cosmic link—that is, a way to explain our personal stories in terms of a bigger, ultimate story. These stories call us to be the best versions of ourselves for the sake of something beyond us. They give us reason to actualize. They provide solace when we falter or suffer. They offer meaning that is fulfilling, reliable, and concrete.

In contrast, when meaning exists only in the here and now, it’s not out a real thing out there to be discovered, but only something you can make up if you feel like it. Such meaning is flimsy, easily transgressed, and forgotten.

2: The universe is a cold, empty, meaningless void

Believing in God or some transcendent source turns existence into what William James calls a thou. Humans are naturally social beings and always in relationship. Being able to have a relationship with the source of all existence adds great potential for love, awe, adoration, belonging, and homecoming to life. In contrast, when the present moment is all there is, the universe is a cold, empty, meaningless void you just bumble along in until you die.

3: Life is unsatisfying, pain harder to bear, and effort more difficult

“Why bother?” is a common refrain in modern culture. There are many reasons, including unjust systems and corrupt institutions. But one major reason is that living only in the here and now traps what counts as “good” and “evil” in the here and now, too.

The highest good can only ever be pleasure (things like ‘flourishing' and 'well-being' are measurable only by how good they feel), and the worst evil can only ever be pain (suffering and injustice are similarly measurable only by how bad they feel).

Pleasure, however, never lasts. Dopamine, the neuromodulator that creates a feeling of satisfaction every time you obtain something you want (a meal, an achievement, a date with a crush), falls right back down after you get it, typically to levels lower than when you started. No matter how much you love, or how hard you party, or how much you sacrifice to help others feel good, you (and they) end up in the same state of longing you started in—or worse.

The only solution is to keep pursuing more pleasure. Many fall prey to all sorts of unhealthy attachments such as to substances, sex, and entertainment. Personally, I was most attached to professional success, food, and romantic love. I kept chasing ultimate satisfaction—while realising more every day that it was never going to come.

Pain, the greatest evil, is unavoidable. It can never be overcome. This makes us its victims, “helpless cogs in a cruel machine,” as Tim Keller puts it. This can create a victim mentality as well as a sense of futility, as there is nothing you can do to escape it or give it meaning. Many consider it their purpose in life to fight pain, but as none of us can ever put a significant dent in it, such efforts can feel pointless. Personally, I felt hammered by successive loss and the absurdity of injustice. I had no way to cope other than to escape with pleasure or to numb myself.

Back to the drawing board

Living in my sky rise apartment overlooking Harvard, I would often make a cup of tea and go stand on the balcony. I’d stare off into the horizon, my heart thudding dull and sluggish in my chest, and wonder: is this all there is?

It had been more than twenty years since the first time I read a book on philosophy and started my lifelong quest for spiritual fulfillment without God. I had remained hopeful that I would find an answer. And if there wasn’t an answer to be found, I would create one.

But as I sipped my tea and watched the sun slip below the horizon, night after night, I began to suspect that I was going to fail. I had just tried the most popular advice given by the most esteemed atheist philosophers and came up empty handed.

After just nine months, I pulled the plug on the experiment. A professor in France had recently published a paper on atheism I found intriguing. I terminated my lease, quit my job, and hopped on a plane. Two days later I dropped my books on a desk in the university bibliothèque and settled in to keep learning.

Little did I know, the program of research I’d given myself wasn’t about to deepen my understanding of atheism.

It was about to lead me to the one place I never thought I’d end up: in the loving arms of God.

Interview

Belief

Creed

18 September 2025

1 min read

Water from the well: a moment with Rowan Williams on Nicaea

A chance encounter with the former Archbishop led to a profound reflection

Hal St John

Hal is a theologian and writer based in London.

Students sit on the grass in front of a fountain.

Pontifical University garden.

Pontifical University.

The gardens of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas near to the Vatican are a place of quiet reason, where the mind is trained to seek the fundamental truths of existence. But on a sweltering day approaching summer, the temperature was 31 degrees, and reason had given way to a more immediate need: a glass of water.

It was by the water-cooler, tucked behind a shade-giving tree, that I found him: Lord Rowan Williams of Oystermouth, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, a man whose theological depth is matched only by a palpable, gentle presence. Perhaps it was the heat, or a moment of recklessness, but I asked him for an interview. To my delight, he agreed.

The following day, we met. His recent keynote address, ‘Nicaea, the New Creation, and the Body of Christ,’ had laid the groundwork. What followed was not a simple Q&A, but a deep, meandering conversation—a drawing from the well of a tradition that is both ancient and startlingly immediate.

The grammar of divinity

How do you prepare to speak on a Council with 1,700 years of commentary? For Williams, the entry point is not the what, but the why.

“I started by asking - what was the question Nicaea was trying to answer?” he began. “This is the question Nicaea was trying to resolve: How do we say, at the same time, that Jesus really is the embodiment of the eternalism of God… and that he genuinely opens up for us a new relationship with the Father?”

This is what Williams calls the “deep grammar” of the Council—a phrase he embraces with enthusiasm. The Creed, he suggests, sketches a grammar for divinity itself. It asserts a belief in one God, “but the kind of oneness that God is, is a oneness that's always fertile or productive.”

This productive, self-giving life—kenosis—is not just who God is, but the kind of life we are called to participate in. “God is always reflecting itself in word and spirit… boiling over into creation - that's what God is!... a life that is both self-giving (kenotic) and productive… a life that brings others alive.”

The saints, in their radical openness to this “kenotic presence,” become conduits of this new creation. “Rather mysterious things happen,” Williams notes, “when you allow the act of God to go through you.”

The magnetic quiver

But how do we, in our everyday lives, tune into this deep grammar? Williams points not to the esoteric, but to the ordinary acts of faith that structure our existence.

“We’re called on, first of all, to wake up to the fact that in our ordinary lives we're in fact all the time making acts of faith - the faith that what I say to you and what you say to me can be more or less understood... the faith that human commitment and love are significant and worth investing in.”

This trust, this “connectedness,” is a slow “peeling open of human identity to its depths.” It is a universal experience, a “magnetic needle” in creation that “quivers northwards... quivers Godwards. We can't quite keep it quiet.”

He offers a wry, characteristically British illustration: “one of the great mysteries in British society is that British people are much nicer than the Daily Mail thinks they are!”

This inherent pull, this quiver, is what the doctrines of the Creed are meant to protect and describe. The dense, pub-unfriendly language of “consubstantial with the Father” is not an abstract puzzle but a map of a reality we are already, however faintly, experiencing. “The Holy Spirit draws us into the flow of life,” Williams says. “The Creed keeps us aware of it… it's the shape and form we’re growing into.”

The breath of the Spirit

This brings us to the ancient rift of the filioque clause—the Western addition to the Creed stating the Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son.” Is it a fatal block to unity or a matter of semantics?

For Williams, the scriptural reality is paramount. “Jesus says to his disciples I will send you the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father. Jesus is saying - you will be receiving a gift from me, which is given me by the Father, to give to you.”

The key, he suggests, is in the tangible action: in John’s Gospel, the resurrected Jesus breathes on his disciples. “Jesus brings the Spirit into action, into full tangible action in human history.” The Spirit proceeds through the Son into the world. At this point, theology reaches its limit. “I’m quite happy to grin feebly and shrug my shoulders...I dunno!” he laughs. “What matters is that the energy of new life and vision is given.”

And this energy, he insists, “goes with the grain of our humanity.” One can almost imagine a divine sigh: “For Heaven’s sake... just wake up to what you are.”

He finds the perfect image in the parable of the Prodigal Son, who, in the depths of his exile, “came to himself.” It is a “paradigm moment” of das Ereignis—a Heideggerian concept for an event of appropriating, of “coming into one’s own.” “There is a self to come to,” Williams affirms, “and a home to go to.”

A unity already given

Will the divided churches ever find structural unity? At times, he admits, we seem to be drifting further apart. But Williams’ focus is on a deeper, prior reality.

“It helps to be aware that there's a unity given already. We're not quite sure how to embody it. We're not quite sure how to organise it. But there's something there.”

Finally, reflecting on the Council itself, he dismisses any notion of Nicaea as a merely political project for a fractious empire, though Constantine’s desire for harmony was a factor. He paints a visceral picture of the attending bishops, as described by Eusebius: men with missing hands, gouged eyes, and the scars of persecution. When Constantine greeted them, “he kneels down and kisses their wounds.”

“They're not just purple cassocked prelates sitting in armchairs! Their faith has been through the fire!”

This is the well from which this Creed was drawn. It is a creed of the persecuted, a truth forged in fire. A truth, as Williams learned from Pakistani Christians this year who heard the story of Nicaea and simply said, “we know about that,” that is known in the bones before it is understood in the mind. It is the water that waits, cool and deep, for any who come thirsty.

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