How can we be happy without God?

[Charlemagne_II]

Again, how can we be happy without God?

As Augustine said: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

Happiness is not to be confused with contentment of a given moment; victory over defeat; achievement of a desired goal; a rewarding career; a pretty wife, a handsome husband and intelligent children. All these things are pluses along the journey of life, but they are hardly at the center of what makes people happy. All of these things can vanish in a moment. I think the state of happiness must be defined as something that cannot vanish under any circumstance. That would be a state that has to include faith in God and love for God. That alone explains how Job could weather the storms of his life and still be content with God as the unyielding and unshakable foundation of his happiness.

 

[Perplexity]

I think this is semantics. We’re using the word ‘happiness’ to describe different concepts. Charlemagne wants to use this word to describe some ultimate, platonic qualia thingy. That’s fine. If that’s what ‘happiness’ refers to, then I’d be content to say it’s not available on atheism. But, I don’t see what the big deal is. What I’m interested in is the pleasing qualia I use the word happiness to refer to, doesn’t bother me what it’s called. I say this because it seems to me the point of bringing this up is to cause trouble for atheism. If I’ve misunderstood then just ignore this post

 

[tonyrey]

Dawkins said:

**“We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?” **

Dawkins has confused potency with act. As philosophy this sentence alone deserves a grade of F.

Russell’s “unyielding despair” becomes Dawkins’ ungrateful despair.

What would he say to someone whose life was one of continuing misery and suffering, both physical and mental"

“How ungrateful of you to whine and pine for a better life in your illusory beyond! Just shut up and accept that you’re SOL.”

How callous can some people get in their wanton destruction of the beliefs and hopes of others when they have **absolutely nothing **to offer them in return?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Perplexity

**Charlemagne wants to use this word to describe some ultimate, platonic qualia thingy. That’s fine. If that’s what ‘happiness’ refers to, then I’d be content to say it’s not available on atheism. **

Not sure about the “plantonic qualia thingy”!

 

[tonyrey]

I think this is semantics. We’re using the word ‘happiness’ to describe different concepts. Charlemagne wants to use this word to describe some ultimate, platonic qualia thingy. That’s fine. If that’s what ‘happiness’ refers to, then I’d be content to say it’s not available on atheism. But, I don’t see what the big deal is. What I’m interested in is the pleasing qualia I use the word happiness to refer to, doesn’t bother me what it’s called. I say this because it seems to me the point of bringing this up is to cause trouble for atheism. If I’ve misunderstood then just ignore this post

“pleasing qualia” is one of the weakest descriptions of happiness I have ever come across!

 

[tonyrey]

Again, how can we be happy without God?

As Augustine said: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

Happiness is not to be confused with contentment of a given moment; victory over defeat; achievement of a desired goal; a rewarding career; a pretty wife, a handsome husband and intelligent children. All these things are pluses along the journey of life, but they are hardly at the center of what makes people happy. All of these things can vanish in a moment. I think the state of happiness must be defined as something that cannot vanish under any circumstance. That would be a state that has to include faith in God and love for God. That alone explains how Job could weather the storms of his life and still be content with God as the unyielding and unshakable foundation of his happiness.

As opposed to the morbid sterility of materialism which drives so many people to despair and suicide…

 

[tonyrey]

So Dawkins believes in ghosts now?
This is typically inconsistent of him. According to his naturalistic worldview, everything is essentially predetermined, as though we are in the midst of an astronomical chain of dominos, yet he has the nerve to speak of potential persons. That’s not to mention that the argument in itself is irrelevant and nonsensical, from any perspective. “Most people are never going to die, because they are never going to be born.” If the absurdity of that isn’t obvious to you, let me borrow that logic to demonstrate:
“Most cars are never going to run, because they’re never going to be built.”
“We know this because of the incredible amount of raw material in the world that will never be used to make cars. And that which is, could have been distributed in a trillion different ways.”
It’s meaningless nonsense.

What do you expect what a biologist completely out of his depth in the real world of persons and values?

 

[S.J]

Sacred Heart

**Despair has great value to the human soul in the way that it transforms it into something new. **

That’s true if despair yields to hope, as it sometimes does. Unyielding despair leads to suicide, a problem confronted by Sartre and Camus and the statistics worldwide showing a higher rate of suicide among atheists than among believers.

The new atheists would have you believe atheism is positive and spoils nothing.

Evidence that ultimately atheism and nihilism are one and the same, regardless of what atheists say.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Sacred Heart

**Despair has great value to the human soul in the way that it transforms it into something new. **

That’s true if despair yields to hope, as it sometimes does. Unyielding despair leads to suicide, a problem confronted by Sartre and Camus and the statistics worldwide showing a higher rate of suicide among atheists than among believers.

The new atheists would have you believe atheism is positive and spoils nothing.

Russell’s point makes sense if one has not yet had an experience of the knowledge that comes via Faith. Without Faith Russell is absolutely right - the highest virtue we can attain to is a recognition and “loving” acceptance of the truth … both kings and paupers, both geniuses and the stupid, die. For those without Faith acceptance of despair is terribly hard to achieve, but it, perhaps, generates less angst and more “comfort” than the denial thereof.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Bertrand Russell from “A Free Man’s Worship” (1903)

“That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs are but the outcome of accidental collections of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave. That all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction…that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried. All these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand…Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”

Will someone explain to me how the last sentence is a rational conclusion to what comes before it?

Russell’s point makes more sense if one assumes he has not yet had an experience of Faith and the revelatory knowledge that comes with it.

Without Faith Russell is absolutely right - the best “comfort” we can attain to is a recognition and “loving” acceptance of this fundamental truth no matter how unpalatable it may be. Yes both kings and paupers, both geniuses and the stupid, die and all our puffery comes to nothing.

If intelligent men/women try to hide/deny this teleological truth of the natural world then they will perhaps suffer more angst than they would if they just accepted the natural order
of things, painful though it is. The comfort of those who honestly face such despair is their union with the True.

Russell seems to be suggesting that a true Religion must base itself on the above reality. He would seem to be right. This seems to be the very thesis of Thomas Merton in his “New Man”. Here Merton insists that one must pass through an “Agonia” of “home truths” in the mystic journey from Earth to Heaven.

It seems that Russell himself did not make it past his own Agonia…but who knows. If he was truly as devoted to the true as he appears to make out then it would seem strange should Faith not find him.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Blue Horizon

If intelligent men/women try to hide/deny this teleological truth of the natural world then they will perhaps suffer more angst than they would if they just accepted the natural order
of things, painful though it is. The comfort of those who honestly face such despair is their union with the True.

If what Russell says is true, there may be comfort in union with the True. But he has no way of knowing for a certainty that what he says is True is really True.

So how can one have “comfort” never knowing for sure one has the True, and all the more so when the True offers only despair?

 

[ivebeenshown]

Happy without God?

Impossible…

 

[Sair]

prodigalson

**They at least admitted they were miserable. **

They did. But they also admitted it wasn’t a good condition to be in. So how does one safely build a “soul’s habitation,” as Russell calls it, on so flimsy a foundation as despair?

Russell was supposed to be one of the premier logicians of his day. But this paragraph above cited from “A Free Man’s Worship” makes him out to be a slave to despair.

One suffers, and then one dies … and that it?

Life is not merely suffering. I know Christians tend to glorify suffering and claim that it brings them closer to God, but the obvious fact is that suffering brutalises people to at least the same extent that it has any chance of ennobling or enlightening them.

As sentient beings, we strive to avoid suffering. As empathetic beings, we can also strive to alleviate the sufferings of others.

There’s been a raft of journalistic flouncing lately on the subject of religion and what it offers people in general - a sense of transcendence, of community, of striving beyond the everyday - but these things are available to the unbeliever as much as to anyone who places his/her hope in a being that has never been reliably demonstrated to exist - you just have to adapt your expectations and seek happiness in life as you know it, in the things that are available to your experience - even in contemplating the possibilities of things we have yet to understand.

What Russell was getting at, I think, is that we have to accept the reality of our condition before we can realistically look beyond it. We are small, vulnerable, and significant to none but ourselves, despite our much-vaunted ability to manipulate our environment to a greater extent than any other animal. But this does not logically lead to despair, unless you have been schooled to expect more than what we are and what we have. Finding out that there is probably no such thing as a god is only cause for despair if you have put all your eggs in that one basket, so to speak…

 

[Sair]

Russell’s point makes more sense if one assumes he has not yet had an experience of Faith and the revelatory knowledge that comes with it.

It seems that Russell himself did not make it past his own Agonia…but who knows. If he was truly as devoted to the true as he appears to make out then it would seem strange should Faith not find him.

Why should this be strange? Why is it necessary to believe in a supreme (anthropomorphic) being in order to find happiness in our human condition? The desire and the search for the true can hardly lead inevitably towards the undemonstrable.

It’s been said many a time that happiness is a journey, not a destination. It is possible for us to find happiness in small things, though as a species, we are not very good at living in the moment, but tend to look forward - and to need things to look forward to in order to sustain us through the moments in between. But do you really think that if death is all there is at the end of life, that you have therefore nothing, ever, to look forward to? Moreover, if death is, as appears very likely, the cessation of individual consciousness, then there is likewise nothing to fear from it - it’s not like we’ll be aware of any loss at the time.

 

[tonyrey]

Life is not merely suffering. I know Christians tend to glorify suffering…

False! We are expected to follow the example of Jesus by alleviating and preventing suffering whenever and wherever possible.

…and claim that it brings them closer to God.

Unless we have suffered we cannot feel compassion and are wrapt up in ourselves.

, but the obvious fact is that suffering brutalises people to at least the same extent that it has any chance of ennobling or enlightening them.

Suffering ennobles and enlightens people because they learn to share and help others. A person who has never suffered is a spoilt weakling.

As sentient beings, we strive to avoid suffering.

False! Men and women choose to perform feats of endurance to demonstrate their skill, courage and powers of endurance.

As empathetic beings, we can also strive to alleviate the sufferings of others.

We not only can but should…

There’s been a raft of journalistic flouncing lately on the subject of religion and what it offers people in general - a sense of transcendence, of community, of striving beyond the everyday - but these things are available to the unbeliever as much as to anyone who places his/her hope in a being that has never been reliably demonstrated to exist - you just have to adapt your expectations and seek happiness in life as you know it, in the things that are available to your experience - even in contemplating the possibilities of things we have yet to understand.

If your experience is restricted to material things you are inevitably bound to have a superficial view of reality.

What Russell was getting at, I think, is that we have to accept the reality of our condition before we can realistically look beyond it.

“reality” = “imagined reality”!

We are small, vulnerable, and significant to none but ourselves, despite our much-vaunted ability to manipulate our environment to a greater extent than any other animal. you just have to adapt your expectations and seek happiness in life as you know it, in the things that are available to your experience - even in contemplating the possibilities of things we have yet to understand.

"things" is the key word… Glory, honour, power and glory to matter in the lowest!

But this does not logically lead to despair, unless you have been schooled to expect more than what we are and what we have.

You have obviously schooled yourself to underestimate what we are and what we have - assuming that you have **the power to choose **to school ourselves (which is inconsistent with being an animal).

Finding out that there is probably no such thing as a god is only cause for despair if you have put all your eggs in that one basket, so to speak…

On what do you base your probability? On the primacy of inanimate objects rather than persons?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Sair
**
Moreover, if death is, as appears very likely, the cessation of individual consciousness, then there is likewise nothing to fear from it - it’s not like we’ll be aware of any loss at the time. **

It is not so much death that we naturally fear, but the end of our living. We want that living to go on. We hope in that. Without such hope, there is nothing but ultimate hopelessness. You don’t get around that by merely saying we fall into endless sleep and will never know what we have lost. It is approaching death with that precise conviction, that we will lose everything. that makes atheism such a suicidal philosophy.

That too is reflected in the actual statistics world wide for suicide.

 

[ASimon]

Sair
**
Moreover, if death is, as appears very likely, the cessation of individual consciousness, then there is likewise nothing to fear from it** - it’s not like we’ll be aware of any loss at the time.

It is not so much death that we naturally fear, but the end of our living. We want that living to go on. We hope in that. Without such hope, there is nothing but ultimate hopelessness. You don’t get around that by merely saying we fall into endless sleep and will never know what we have lost. It is approaching death with that precise conviction, that we will lose everything. that makes atheism such a suicidal philosophy.

If that was actually what you feared, what exactly would suicide accomplish? Who, when faced with the knowledge that they would lose everything when they died, would think killing themself was a viable alternative?

 

[S.J]

If that was actually what you feared, what exactly would suicide accomplish? Who, when faced with the knowledge that they would lose everything when they died, would think killing themself was a viable alternative?

If someone thought everything ended at death, then suicide would be a viable option to eliminate undue suffering.

 

[mgreen77]

If that was actually what you feared, what exactly would suicide accomplish?

The bugger is that suicide doesn’t “accomplish” anything, but neither does living - if you feel everything ends in death. Both are equal.

 

[ASimon]

If someone thought everything ended at death, then suicide would be a viable option to eliminate undue suffering.

What suffering?