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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.

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Community

Creed

Loneliness

12 May 2023

6 min read

Of singular value

A new report on relationships caught the media headlines. Lauren WIndle is inspired by its take on being single.

Lauren Windle

Lauren Windle is an author, journalist, presenter and public speaker.

A man walks along a street past a orange wall with a huge 'Good' written in cursive script on it.

Photo by Volkan Olmez on Unsplash.

A friend of mine used to work at Lambeth Palace. She had a sister and brother-in-law who were based abroad and one of their visits happily coincided with fireworks night. As a treat, she decided to take her relatives to Lambeth Palace’s display – apparently the gardens are beautiful, and the glistening bursts of colourful light only served to illuminate and enhance its horticultural charm. The evening was perfect, aside from one snag; her brother-in-law, from Uganda, was struggling to cope with the bitter cold of a crisp November evening in the UK. But he needn’t have worried for long. Noticing his distress, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, nipped upstairs to his living quarters and descended with a woolly hat to keep the chill away from the shivering visitor.

This is when I moved from the casual indifference, that I have towards all public figures that I don’t know personally, to really liking Justin Welby. The story endured so much in fact, that even when he politely declined to endorse my book – citing time constraints, it didn’t shake my resolve that he was a man with a good heart, albeit a busy schedule.

I was left with the overwhelming feeling that Justin Welby was telling me to love and care for my fellow man. To hand out woolly hats, if you will.

He has once more come up trumps in my eyes with last week’s publication of Love Matters, a 236-page report on examining relationships and families. It is the third of a trilogy of commissions from the archbishops of Canterbury and York, with the first two focusing on housing and social care.

The report is broadly aimed at informing the actions of the government and Church of England but offers a message to us all. The five key messages are; we need to put more value on families – whatever set-up they have, we need to support relationships and manage conflict well, we need to honour single people and not place such emphasis on romantic love, we need to invest in our children and young people and we all need to work towards a kinder, fairer and more forgiving society.

These, we can all agree, are noble aims. As I read through the detailed communiqué, I was left with the overwhelming feeling that Justin Welby was telling me to love and care for my fellow man. To hand out woolly hats, if you will.

The mainstream media also made noises of approval as the passages on the value of single people gained a huge amount of traction in the press – including a front-page article in The Times.

As the author of a book that directly challenges the Church’s response and treatment of single people, I felt a warm glow. I felt hopeful for change and that a glaring problem had been given the recognition it deserved. The mainstream media also made noises of approval as the passages on the value of single people gained a huge amount of traction in the press – including a front-page article in The Times. The publicity was so far reaching that I even got a message from a friend and features editor at The Sun saying she thought it was a “very Windle sounding message from the Church”. But not everyone in the Christian community shared my (and her) enthusiasm.

This isn’t due to the content of the report, but rather its omissions. The grumbles I’ve heard have accused it of being “weak” and “waffling” in its message and people have been disappointed that it isn’t more forthright in its promotion of marriage. But I would argue that, in church circles, marriage gets enough airtime.

There’s no question in the Church that marriage is important. There is implicit beauty in committing to combine your life with another person – prioritizing someone over everyone else (including yourself), loving, caring for, supporting and encouraging that person. Through the Bible God says it is not good for anyone to be alone. God blesses marriage. God encourages people to go forth and multiply). But somewhere in the mix, Christians stopped celebrating marriage and started idolising it.

I’ve heard of... people being relegated to “all-singles groups” (the equivalent of the kids’ table at Christmas).

Researcher David Voas conducted a quantitative analysis of Church life with a survey and found the majority of English church attendees are married. He said:

“It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that in England individuals don’t go to church, couples do.”

People who run churches are usually married men and their partners take up a first-lady position in doting support. Single Friendly Church’s survey (2012) found 43 per cent of single people felt their church didn’t know what to do with them.

Ministry for single people, if it exists, is often an afterthought and not engineered in a way that makes it appealing to potential attendees. Two thirds of people in the single friendly church’s survey said they felt being married is the expected and accepted lifestyle in the Church. So much so that the Church is based around the school calendar with everything effectively shutting down over August.

I’ve heard of people trying to set up initiatives for single people but being told by church leaders that, as they themselves were single, they probably weren’t best placed. I’ve heard of “pairs and spares” dinners and people being relegated to “all-singles groups” (the equivalent of the kids’ table at Christmas).

It’s high time we recognised that being single isn’t a state to progress out of, or level up from. It is not a waiting room for the as yet unchosen.

To add insult to injury, there are churches that won’t allow unmarried people into positions of leadership. One study found that half the American churches quizzed wouldn’t allow a single person to run a house group. To be clear, this means that Jesus would not be qualified. This hypocrisy received acknowledgement in the Love Matters report. It said:

“The Commission believes strongly that single people must be valued at the heart of our society. Jesus’ own singleness should ensure that the C of E celebrates singleness and does not regard it as lesser than living in a couple relationship. Loving relationships and being able to give and receive love matter to everyone.”

Given this climate in the Church and the fact that outside of it, more and more people are remaining single, the report’s emphasis on the equality of singleness isn’t “weak” but vital. It’s high time we recognised that being single isn’t a state to progress out of, or level up from. It is not a waiting room for the as yet unchosen. It is a valid and valuable life stage that is equal but different to marriage.

For too long Christians have tried to “solve” singleness with marriage. Rather than solving the problems associated with singleness, i.e. loneliness, absence of deep and intimate love, with community and family (in whatever form it takes). I don’t believe that by platforming the value of singleness, that we detract from the value of marriage. It’s not a seesaw whereby one must fall for the other to rise.

Another blow that hits me hard, is that this report is highlighting what the world outside the Church has been aware of for years. Books like The Unexpected Joy of Being Single and What a Time To Be Alone confirm the inherent value of both single people and the time a person spends single (whether for now or for life). This is recognised by the Bible, particularly by Paul in his letters, but rarely highlighted in the Church. It seems like a shame that Carrie Bradshaw and the Sex And The City ladies did more for affirming singleness than our spiritual leaders.

But not anymore. Justin Welby has thrown his woolly hat in the ring. He’s standing up for the value of each person, married or single, each relationship, romantic or platonic, and each family, genetic or otherwise. And you won’t catch any grumbling from me.