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.

Article

Creed

Identity

Nationalism

30 October 2025

5 min read

Flags on lampposts are a cry from long-neglected communities

As banners fly, they whisper of pride and pain

Philip North

Philip is the Bishop of Blackburn

A St George's Cross flag flutters on a tower.

St Helen's Church, Welton, Yorkshire.

Different Resonance on Unsplash.

A flag meant to symbolise unity within a nation. Yet over the summer, flags in the UK became less a source of togetherness and more a flashpoint for division.

In towns and cities across the nation, flags of St George and Union Flags have appeared on bridges, on lamp posts and on buildings. The motivations of those hoisting the flags are often unclear, but the way in which different sets of people perceive these flags carries an alarming message about the widening gulf that now exists within our nation.

For one set of people, the flags are sinister and carry a deep sense of threat. For many people of global majority heritage, the flags bear an intimidating message that those with racist motives are claiming the nation 'back' from them, leaving them stateless and with nowhere to belong. Meanwhile for those on the centre or left of the political spectrum, the flags feel like a straightforward claim to power by the far right and a sign of the growing popularity of their policies and rhetoric. The Church of England has mostly placed itself on this side of the divide and many church leaders have spoken of the flag flying phenomenon with anxiety and distaste.

But there is another narrative at play. As the flags continue to flutter in the autumn breeze, something which is a symbol of fear for one set of people is for another a welcome sign of hope.

This was powerfully brought home to me during a meeting with a leading Orthodox rabbi following the synagogue attack in Manchester. In the course of a lengthy conversation, I asked him how he understood the flags and his comments were striking. 'When I returned from my holiday and saw the flags flying in Salford,' he told me, 'I felt the most tremendous sense of relief.'

So for that rabbi, the flags are claiming back a distinctive and confident British identity, lost by a failed experiment in multiculturalism that has left his own community deeply fearful. And he is far from alone.

One of the strengths of the Church of England is that we place well-trained, professional clergy and lay leaders in every neighbourhood in the country. That means that, in a culture of echo chambers and algorithms, we are uniquely placed to understand every side of a conflict.

When I contacted a group of church leaders from flag-flying communities in Lancashire, the results were intriguing. Of course they were aware of the darker side of this phenomenon. But they also understood the needs and fears of the people for whom the flags are welcome.

One priest told me of a volunteer in her church who assists with projects for the vulnerable and is good friends with asylum seekers in her congregation and yet she is still flying a flag because she feels that immigration has now 'gone too far.'

Another priest spoke of the flags as an outlet for the intense frustration of local people who feel left behind and ignored. Another spoke of them communicating a chronic disillusionment with a political system that has failed them.

For others there is frustration that their institutions seem willing to fly many different flags – the Ukraine flag or the LGBTQI+ flag – but perceive those same institutions to be embarrassed by the flag of their own nation.

Indeed, a chance to demonstrate a love for country was the most often cited reason. Many people take genuine pride in the flags flying over their communities as it gives them a chance to express pride in a nation that often seems to them to be overly apologetic about its past and embarrassed by patriotism.

Perhaps the most poignant reflection was a from a priest who has stood up to Tommy Robinson marchers on his estate and yet wrote, 'I think for some of those people who put up flags it was a desperate cry for their nation to take better care of them, like a neglected child trying to remind everyone that they're a part of the family too.

For many working-class communities, the globalisation and transnationalism that is viewed by those who hold power as the path to greater prosperity has been bad news. It has outsourced jobs, it has forced down wages so that many in-work people are still benefits-dependent and it has resulted in major demographic changes to communities over which local residents have no had no say.

Combined with years of grinding austerity and a political class that is quick to promise and slow to deliver, there is a powerful and intense anger in many parts of working-class Britain for which the flags have become a lightning conductor.

It seems now that one flag now symbolises two nations. And what is so alarming is that one side barely understands the other.

So how should Christians respond? A divided nation wants the established Church to take sides and indeed sees us as weak and vacillating if we do not. But the task of the Christian is not to take on one side or the other in every binary debate. It is to be on the Lord's side. And in this context, I think that means a twin response.

First it means attentively listening to everyone. We should hear the fears of those for whom flags are a sign of growing intolerance and so condemn racism and hatred. But equally importantly, even when we don't agree, we should understand and give voice to the anger of working-class communities who fear that the nation they love is being taken away from them. If that voice is not heard and attended to, then the far right will be all too happy to fill the vacuum that is left behind. In a divided nation, part of the vocation of the Church is to help one side to understand the other.

And second, it means speaking into the place of conflict words of Gospel peace. The Union Flag is more than a symbol of nation. It carries three crosses, each one pointing us to the saving work of Jesus Christ through which we are reconciled to the Father and so to each other. We listen, we understand, but above all we hold the cross high, for in that symbol is the only true and lasting source of unity.

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