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.

Events

Identity

Politics

S&U interviews

29 April 2024

4 min read

June 3: Esau McCaulley and Graham Tomlin - get tickets now

Join us in London as we explore today's cultural moments.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen.

A man talks to a camera with his hands together palms up and his finger interlaced.

Esau McCaulley on the Re-enchanting podcast.

Meet Esau and us

Seen and Unseen is hosting an incredibly rare event: Bishop Graham Tomlin in Conversation with Esau McCaulley on 3rd June, at St Mellitus College, 24 Collingham Road, Earl’s Court, London starting at 7.30pm .

As well as hearing more of Esau’s story, this conversation will cover the place of faith in public life, the significance of the black church, US politics, and this cultural moment. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this. I have had a couple of conversations with Esau McCaulley, and they have re-arranged the theological air I breathe.

You can find out more about Esau on his web site and read his New York Times columns. Or listen to my interview with him, as part of our Re-enchanting podcast. 

Places will be limited, get further details and reserve your (free) ticket on Eventbrite.

Belle Tindall writes...

How does one wrestle their faith out of the hands of those who used it as tool to enslave them? How does one keep hold of such a faith when the owner of the local plantation was also the pastor of the local Presbyterian church? When the people who filled the pews were also the people who turned up to the KKK rallies? And how do the descendants of those people wade through the cultural and spiritual residue of such a history? Wrestling, still, with the complex evil that defined their ancestors' days?

And how does one respond when Donald Trump, the likely Republican presidential candidate, endorses a God Bless America Bible as some kind political strategy? What does one do when their community are being peddled their own sacred book, this particular edition of which includes the American Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and the lyrics of a country song also entitled God Bless the USA? Oh, it also has the American flag emblazoned across the front. For good measure, I suppose.

And finally, how does one look out at an increasingly secular culture and remain confident that what it really needs is to be reminded of an ancient Galilean carpenter, as if he’s still some kind of relevant solution to our deepest hopes and fears?

These questions have something in common: they have been, and are continuing to be, answered by Esau McCaulley.

Answered honestly.

Answered powerfully.

Answered ever so publicly.

Last year, Esau was named by the Washington Post as one of the most influential faith leaders in the USA. He is a New York Times contributor and a New Testament Professor at Wheaton College, he is also the author of the award-winning Reading While Black and his latest best-selling memoir, How Far to the Promised Land? What began as a eulogy for Esau’s (rather complicated) father became ‘one black family’s story of hope and survival in the American south’. The eulogy was unapologetically complex, and so is this book. It was unwaveringly honest, and so is this book. It was utterly profound, and so is this book.

Esau, when reflecting on his own history, stretches for truth, refusing to relax into comfortable simplicities or false binaries that don’t belong in reality. Writing this memoir cost Esau something. You can tell. The grace woven into the paragraphs did not come cheap.

This book, as Esau himself explains, is about his father, but his father is a metaphor for America. And so, when it comes to this book (and much of Esau’s work), the political makes its home within the personal; the story that Esau tells is, to an extent, a trojan horse. A challenging commentary of America is sitting within this book’s pages. Esau is clear, his father – who continued to leave a trail of trauma in his wake – made bad decisions. But society played a significant role in creating the context within which those decisions were made. Were the poor decisions his father made down to personal responsibility or was it structural injustice? Esau’s answer? ‘Yes’.

Again, he has an aversion to binaries that don’t belong in reality.

To borrow an Elizabeth Oldfield phrase that I cannot stop thinking about: this book tells us something of our brokenness and our ‘breaking-things-ness’. And, as Esau writes,

‘patience with broken people and broken things is a manifestation of trust in God’

And Esau seems to have a lot of patience. Patience with himself, patience with his father, patience with Rev. Matthew Bone, owner of the Bone planation where his ancestors were enslaved, patience with those who have hurt him, patience with us all.

And that, it seems to me, has bred a persistence in hope. Real, gritty, bruised and yet still beating, joy-filled hope. The kind of hope that can look at the God Bless America Bible and not face-palm. The kind of hope that can research the links between Christianity and slavery and not fall into spiritual crisis. The kind that can observe the theory that faith is losing its place in public life and can use a New York Times column to prove it wrong.

Ultimately, the kind of hope that the world is increasingly paying attention to.